What is the ethical response to witnessing a great moral crime? Turn away and allow oneself to be distracted? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Or acknowledge the crime for what it is, and take some sort of action to try to stop it?
Source: Columbia Students are Sick at Heart, just as we were in ’68
Last week, billionaire former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg released Screams Before Silence, which is being promoted as “a documentary film on the sexual violence committed by Hamas” on 7 October 2023.
But it is a total fraud. Seven months after that day, Israel has still not identified a single survivor of the alleged mass rapes on 7 October, nor a single credible eyewitness.
While Israel claims that many Israeli women and even some men were raped and sexually tortured in horrific ways on 7 October, before being killed, not one deceased victim has been identified either.
We debunked the film’s sensational but demonstrably false claims on this week’s Electronic Intifada Livestream and showed how many of the “witnesses” Sandberg interviewed are lying.
You can watch that segment in the video above or in the video embedded in this tweet:
The pro-Israel community telegraphed its intent to target Jayapal early on, primarily for suspicion that her politics on Israel–Palestine may align with her younger sister’s, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who called for a ceasefire early in the current war on Gaza.
Source: AIPAC Is Secretly Intervening in Portland’s Congressional Race
and
The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.
During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department [Counterterrorism unit] arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.
Source: The Israeli Connection to the Raid on Columbia University
Nahla Al-Arian lost more than 200 relatives in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Then Eric Adams said she was the reason police raided Columbia.
Source: NYC Mayor Smears Grandmother as Columbia “Outside Agitator”
My conclusion: While protest movements are often ignited by many different things, and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people — most of them women and children — in Gaza.
To interpret these protests as anything else — as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian — is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.
Source: What’s Really Motivating the Protests? | The Smirking Chimp
One day, the students who are protesting the genocide in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians today will be seen as on the right side, too. History will prove it. Until then, let’s turn the discussion back to where it belongs: an end to the war on Gaza.
Final Note: This piece was written before the president and trustees of Columbia called in the riot police on the night of April 30th, against the advice of many faculty, to arrest the students in the encampment, as well as those who had occupied Hamilton Hall. Videos show considerable police violence against the students. What happens next remains to be seen.
Source: The Distortion of Campus Protests Over Gaza – ScheerPost
Before the 1940s, most Jews were offended by Zionist ideas, insisting that their religion was not a national ideology and they were loyal citizens of their countries of birth, a loyalty on which they feared the Zionists would cast doubt. Leftist Jews decried Zionism as a form of nationalist chauvinism. Some American Jews say they are Zionists in the sense of just being proud of the considerable accomplishments of the Jewish people, without necessarily buying into feelings of ethnic superiority or entitlement.
In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, however, there is only one politically successful tendency in the Zionist movement in Israel. The people in power adhere to forms of right wing Zionism. These are a witches brew of virulent ethno-nationalism and open hatred of the Other. They differ mainly in whether they are secular, as with the Likud Party of Benjamin Netanyahu or Yisrael Beitenu of Avigdor Lieberman, or whether they are rooted in Jewish fundamentalism, as with Religious Zionism and Jewish Power or Shas.
Right wing Zionism has many resemblances with the MAGA movement spearheaded by Donald J. Trump (or spearheaded by him when he was not engaging in massive real estate fraud or shtupping porn stars and then buying their silence).
Source: Top Ways MAGA and Right Wing Zionism Converge, and Why Smotrich is Embracing Trump
The raid was orchestrated in unison with a newly appointed Colombia junior associated Jewish professor in unison with the NYPD’s “counter-terrorism” branch and that of Israel. The only violence witnessed was by ultra-right-wing masked Zionists who came in off-campus/
An anti-left, anti-Palestinian coalition has spent the past seven months, and the last few weeks in particular, manufacturing an entire alternate reality where the United States is in the grip of a hate movement akin to Nazi Germany.
Source: Liberals Must Resist the New McCarthyism Over Israel Criticism
Israel’s forensic cleansing
I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at Al Shifa Hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces in the Ofer military prison.
Source: No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation – Pearls and Irritations
After months of Israeli attacks on agriculture and other key sectors, the “productive basis” of Gaza’s economy “has been destroyed,” the report notes.
“Unlike previous wars, the destruction in Gaza today is unprecedented in scope and scale and coupled with the loss of homes, livelihoods, natural resources, infrastructure as well as institutional capacities, may have deep and systemic impacts for decades to come,” said Rola Dashti, ESCWA’s executive secretary.
Source: Israel’s Destruction of Gaza ‘Unprecedented in Scope and Scale’: UN | Common Dreams
‘Anti-Semitism’ has been the weapon that Zionism has deployed to defend genocide in Gaza. It is not out of choice but necessity. Any manifestation of support for the Palestinians is deemed anti-Semitic for one simple reason. It is impossible to defend mass executions, starvation of a population, destruction of hospitals and mass murder of children unless you attack your critics. It is as if protesters against Apartheid in South Africa had been motivated by hatred of White people.
Source: Tony Greenstein’s Blog
Jewish Voice for Peace Action slammed what it called IHRA’s “controversial and dangerous mis-definition that does not help fight real antisemitism and is only a tool for silencing the movement for Palestinian rights.”
Source: Nearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah ‘Injured, Sick, Malnourished,’ Says UNICEF | Common Dreams
Let me conclude by saying, I must admit, I find it incomprehensible that members of Congress are spending their time attacking the protestors rather than the Netanyahu government which brought about these protests and has created this horrific situation.
Source: On the Nationwide Student Protests and the Ongoing Humanitarian Disaster in Gaza – CounterPunch.org
Then on Tuesday a spokesman for President Biden’s White House actually denounced the term “intifada” as “hate speech” and hinted that using it was a form of antisemitism. But Arabic is a Semitic language, so how can a Semitic word be “antisemitic”? I’m confused.
Source: “Intifada” in Arabic just means Uprising or Mass Protest; it is used for the Jewish Warsaw Uprising
Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered […] but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport. […] ‘We all threw rocks,’ said ten-year-old Ahmed Moharb. ‘Over the loudspeaker the soldier told us to come to the fence to get chocolate and money. Then they cursed us. Then they fired a grenade. We started to run. They shot Ali in the back. I won’t go again. I am afraid.’
Source: Israeli Violence against Palestinian Children is rooted in Viewing them all as Dangerous Adults
There are no “Jewish victims”, only protesting “right from wrong” and what a nation values. 14,000 dead children aren’t understandable 1139 dead Israelis are wrong, but understandable.
Source: I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged.
On the morning of Jan. 13, a five-man crew from Paltel — a Palestinian telecommunications company that provides telephone, cellular, and internet services across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip — set out to repair a switchboard generator that had run out of fuel in the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. The repair operation was coordinated in advance and in real time with the Israeli military, which also sent the team a detailed map of the area specifying the routes they were authorized to take. The Palestinian men completed the repair job and, by early afternoon, had set off on their return journey to the city of Rafah.
But then, without warning, an Israeli tank fired a shell directly at one of the team’s clearly-marked vehicles, killing two technicians.
Source: A Gaza team went to repair a telecoms machine. An Israeli tank fired at them
Google downplays its military work with Israel, but “Project Nimbus” documents tie the American tech giants to Israel’s deadly military capabilities.
Source: Project Nimbus Contract Ties Google, Amazon to Israel Arms Firms
In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Asked if Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, cable news viewers said no by a 34-32 margin. All other news consumers said Israel is committing genocide, including print (36-33), YouTube (41-31), and social media users, who agree with the statement by a 44 to 19 percent margin. People aged 18 to 29, meanwhile, have similar views (48-21 percent), while those over 65 say by a 47 to 21 percent plurality that Israel isn’t committing genocide.
Source: Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds
Israel: Hey Joe, just letting you know Hamas has retaliated to our decades long Occupation and repression and have broken through the prison gates and attacked Israelis. Go figure.
US.: Here’s your chance. It’s going to be a tough media manipulation, but we’ll do our best. Good luck.
Israel: We’re going to bomb the shit out of Gaza from top to bottom.
U.S.: Okay we’ll reward you from start to finish with ammunition, money, vocal support and all the aid you need.
Israel: We’re going to target civilians and say Hamas is hiding behind them.
Source: We’ll reward you for genocide – Pearls and Irritations
warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
Source: How Israel Violates International Law in Gaza: Expert Report – ScheerPost
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Palestinians have dug up more than 400 bodies from mass graves at two Gaza hospitals. Some have shown signs of torture and possible executions. The International Court of Justice had already issued a preliminary order against Israel after finding that its actions in Gaza might amount to genocide. So how will the world respond to this?
Only social media users said they’d be more likely to support a candidate who supported Palestinians (33-19 percent). Just 15 percent of cable news viewers said the same, even though 31 percent of cable viewers agreed that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.
Source: Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds
The Israeli authorities, in their campaign of remorseless killing, doctoring and adjusting the numbers of the Palestinian populace for whatever future awaits, have been found wanting on accusations that Hamas terrorists packed, stacked and filled UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).
US/ Israeli Circus
The IDF conducted an investigation and discharged two junior officers from the unit, but no legal action was taken. This is just one episode in a list of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by members of Netzah Yehuda on Palestinian civilians that have come under investigation by the US government.
Source: Netzah Yehuda: the ‘Violent and Aggressive’ IDF unit the US is Thinking of Sanctioning
CNN reports ominously this week that “Biden is actually 11 percentage points behind Trump among young voters 18-34 in a head-to-head match in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released over the weekend.”
Officials with four US bureaus have told Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, that Israel’s assurances that it is using American weapons in compliance with international law are not “credible or reliable,” according to an internal State Department memo reviewed by Reuters.
Source: US implicated as Israeli impunity nears its end | The Electronic Intifada
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is part of its war of annihilation against the Palestinian people carried out with increasing fervor across historic Palestine, including the West Bank, under the most right-wing government in Israeli history.
Source: Israel Is Waging a War on All Palestinians, Not Just Gazans
Jean-Pierre responded: “So, we’ve been really clear about the ICC investigation. We do not support it. We don’t believe that they have the jurisdiction. And I’m just gonna leave it there for now.”
Source: ‘We Do Not Support’ ICC Probe of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza, Says White House | Common Dreams
Haaretz reported that the Israeli government is working under the assumption that arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and IDF Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi could be issued as soon as this week. The report said that the US is already engaged in an effort to block the warrants.
The US backed the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Putin
Source: US Working To Prevent ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu – ScheerPost
The regimes in Israel and Palestine both claim to be victims in the violence that engulfs them. Interpreting the situation through “victimhood” assists in understanding the human forces that arise from age-old conflicts and that continue to cause so much horrific suffering.
Small wonder at the psychological crisis this history has created for American Jewry. The “never again” faction loudly worries that Palestinian liberation is incompatible with Israeli survival and sees growing American antisemitism behind every picket sign. But support for Netanyahu and his government contradicts everything valuable in Jewish tradition and divides Jews from their historic allies in this country and worldwide. People who have spent decades supporting the civil rights movement and efforts for peace and justice throughout the world are now alienated from their traditional values and beliefs.
Does anyone wonder where Einstein and Freud would stand in this debate?
Source: Being Jewish In a Time of Mass Hysteria – ScheerPost
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen news coverage as shallow as the Israeli media’s coverage of the pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the United States in recent days.
In a segment that aired on April 24, for example, Channel 12’s Yuna Leibzon showed footage of the protests outside Columbia University’s campus: viewers saw a handful of people chanting that Tel Aviv should be burned to the ground, and a lone masked protester holding a sign bearing an antisemitic statement. The implication was clear: these individuals are representative of all the protesters, and the entire pro-Palestine movement is illegitimate.
Neria Kraus, Channel 13’s correspondent in New York, also reported from Columbia’s campus. In her coverage, she used three terms interchangeably: “pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” “anti-Israel demonstrations,” and “antisemitic demonstrations.” The message, again, was clear: to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel is to be antisemitic.
smearing the student demonstrations on U.S. campuses as one big frenzy of antisemitism is unserious journalism.
Serious journalism would provide the context, which the Israeli media has failed to do since October 7 — and, it must be said, a long time before that.
Source: Israeli media’s inevitable hysteria over U.S. campus protests
Israel’s religious Zionists are playing a long game, which is not linked to a particular election, individual or government coalition. They are redefining the state, along with its ideology. And they are winning.
Ben-Gvir and his threats to topple Netanyahu’s coalition government have been the main driving force behind the genocide in Gaza.
If Meir Kahane were still alive, he would have been proud of his followers. The ideology of the once marginalized and loathed extremist rabbi is now the backbone of Israeli politics.
Source: How Extremists Became the New Face of Israel – ScheerPost
“This is something that forces us to call for an independent investigation of all the suspicions and all the circumstances because it indeed creates the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights committed,” the EU’s spokesman, Peter Stano, declared.
‘Might have been’? There was evidence even without the discovery of mass graves, but the international community prefers to rest on speculation in the face of evidence. With one phrase, proof has been turned into an assumption. Can the international community, at least, stop sensationalising the horror of mass graves and focus on the entire genocidal process which wants to eliminate all traces of Palestinians? No independent investigation will cancel the fact that genocide unfolded with the international community’s blessing and, as a result, so did the mass graves.
As Palestinians reckon with the genocide being inflicted on them and their prospects for national liberation, it does them a disservice to flatten their political diversity and complex ongoing debates.
Motivated by vengeance and retribution, Israel is a narcissistic society wallowing in its own injury and using that injury as an excuse for its monumental crimes against the Palestinian people. Palestinians find Israel cruel, callous, and horrifying, and their first thought is “protect me from Israel.” Is this the Israeli society that Palestinians should be expected to live with in dignity and with equal rights?
Whatever the future holds, Palestinians need to be able to work through their devastating predicament collectively, democratically, and without fear. To insist on that is to boost their right of self-determination.
In calling for a boycott, our students are following in the footsteps of the generations before them who protested and called for a boycott to hasten the end to South Africa’s apartheid regime in the early 1990s.
The conflict over Israel’s obliteration of Gaza and the Palestinian people, and the American funding and munitions behind it, should have been what we professors call a “teachable moment” that could have taught lessons about war and conflict, justice and genocide.
Instead, our University’s silencing of some of its students has now led to the cancellation of the general commencement, impacting all students. This, too, is a teachable moment, although one taught by self-inflicted injury rather than intentional pedagogy. The lesson is that silencing those we disagree with can end up silencing everyone.
On the other hand, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has thumbed his nose at the court since it indicted him last year. His movements, however, have been affected, since when he travels abroad he risks arrest. He had to cancel a trip to South Africa last summer because Pretoria is an ICC signatory and may have been constrained to arrest him.
Source: Are Netanyahu & Co. about to face Arrest Warrants from the Int’l Criminal Court for Gaza War Crimes?
Source: US Reportedly Working to Stop ICC From Issuing Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu | Common Dreams
The outcome of the vote further isolates the United States precisely as much as the Israeli genocide in Gaza has also exposed and isolated Washington.
So two things are being asserted:
1. Famine in Gaza is now unavoidable and will kill many civilian noncombatants even if more food aid starts getting in now.
2. The responsibility for this starvation of children, women and noncombatant males lies squarely with Israel, which is obstructing food aid deliveries.
That is all you need to know. These experts have never seen a situation so bad.
Source: USAID: Israel has already Imposed Unavoidable, Exponential Famine on Gaza outpacing Somalia’s
( Human Rights Watch ) – (Jerusalem) – The Israeli military either took part in or did not protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the West Bank that have displaced people from 20 communities and have entirely uprooted at least 7 communities since October 7, 2023, Human Rights Watch said today.
“We are in danger here, there are bombs, it is stressful and scary,” he said, burying his face in his arms as he cried.
“Many of the protesters here are saying Netanyahu is deliberately prolonging this war in Gaza because it saves him from the ultimate reckoning of the ballot box.”
Source: Hamas releases video of two Israeli captives held in Gaza | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
I don’t know if the war will stop while we’re still alive, but what matters is that many people are resisting what is more important than weapons. Every day, a father walks under bombardment to feed us. A mother stands against bulldozers and tanks, hoping to protect her daughter, knowing that even if she dies, what matters is that her daughter will live. A grandson carries his grandmother and never considers leaving her behind for even a moment. A sister pulls her brother out from under the rubble, away from death, and tries to save him.
Mom, this is my country, this is my people. Every generation of Palestinians will pass these lessons onto the next.
Source: “The Bulldozer Kept Coming”: A Girl Stares Down Death in Gaza – ScheerPost
olddogthoughts 