Denying Palestinian refugees the right to come back to the areas from which they were ethnically cleansed is deeply unjust. We must recognize the Palestinian right of return.
Source: Palestinians’ Right of Return Is a Basic Question of Justice
Category: Israel
The World Court cited “exceptionally grave” developments, especially the “spread of famine and starvation,” in once again ordering Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza
Source: ICJ Issues New Order in Genocide Case as Another Gaza Child Starves to Death
Bertrand Russell would have pleaded, ‘Remember humanity and forget the rest.’
Source: A Plea for Gaza: ‘Remember humanity & forget the rest.’ – Pearls and Irritations
Genocide foretold-Mr Fish
The genocide in Gaza is the final stage of a process begun by Israel decades ago. Anyone who did not see this coming blinded themselves to the character and ultimate goals of the apartheid state.
- Netanyahu in Hospital
- Massive Demonstrations against the government
- Polls show if an election were held The Netanyahu government would be soundly defeated
- Good excuse to be sedated and in hiding
Israeli strikes have killed 77 Palestinians in Gaza in the past 24 hours, health authorities say, as Egypt hosted an Israeli delegation for a new round of talks in a bid to secure a truce with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrichannounced Israel was seizing nearly 2,000 acres of land in the occupied West Bank, which would allow the country to build more illegal settlements. The country’s settlement-planning authority said earlier this month it had approved the construction of 3,500 new housing units in the territory.
Source: ‘Every Year It Is More Relevant’: Palestinians Mark Land Day Amid Genocide
Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv denouncing the Netanyahu government and demanding an immediate deal for the release of captives.
The resumption of indirect negotiations, reported by Egypt’s Al Qahera News TV on Saturday, comes as more protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted in Israel’s capital.
Many Israelis feel that Netanyahu is the main obstacle to signing a deal with Hamas and bringing the captives held in Gaza back home, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said.
“These people have been calling for a deal to bring back the captives for more than 175 days. They say that the policies of Israel’s government have simply failed,” Salhut said, reporting from a protest in Tel Aviv where thousands, including families of the captives, had gathered.
Demonstrations also took place near Netanyahu’s residence and in other cities across Israel.
Abed Abdi, Palestine, “Massacre in Lydda,” 1980.
Kushner is now advising Israel to illegally shift even more Palestinians to al-Naqab, many of whom were originally pushed to Gaza from cities in parts of Palestine that are now within Israel. As Kushner might know, both a population transfer to al-Naqab and the seizure of Gaza are illegal according to Article 49 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
The displacement that faced Palestinian Bedouins in 2011 and that faces Palestinians in Gaza today is reflective of the plight that has been inflicted upon Palestinians since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.
So as we travel this place in shared space-time, let us connect however we can. The small things, as we interact with each other and plant seeds of commonality. I think many would be surprised how these beliefs and actions can take root. A basic foundation of shared humanity is enough to halt almost every ill. We need to advance the notion that the brave stance is this, not the false bravado, the chest-thumping that comes from internal feelings of inadequacy—the feelings that breed violence and compartmentalization. We can be so much more than our own insecurities. We have power, but it’s locked up in belief systems that benefit only a ruling class, and even for them, it’s a pathology of misery. If in the end, it truly turns out to be futile– planting these seeds with perhaps no long-term human survival on the docket…well, it’ll still make the trip around that much better for us all if we begin to erode this fallacious notion of separation. Bitterness and hate takes its toll. We don’t have to be mired in the horror of the world every moment;we have an obligation for joy as well, but we certainly never have to turn off our hearts and agree with the sickness. If we know a party is to end, it doesn’t mean we decide…. hey let’s murder the host of the party, take their stuff and shit on the floor. But right now, that’s kind of how humanity is acting at the party.
A less reported aspect of the March 28 order, passed by fifteen votes to one, was that Israel’s military refrain from committing “acts which constitute a violation of any rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group” under the Genocide Convention “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”
In this, the Court points to the possible, and increasingly plausible nexus, between starvation, famine and deprivation of necessaries as state policies with the intent to injure and kill members of a protected group. It is no doubt something that will weigh heavily on the minds of the judges as they continue mulling over the nature of the war in Gaza, which South Africa continues to insist is genocidal in scope and nature.
The GOP position was expressed by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton – a lawyer no less – who said last October, for posterity’s eternal damnation: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.” This is exactly what the massacring Israeli juggernauts have done with the weapons, taxpayers’ money and diplomatic cover enabled by corrupt outlaws like Tom Cotton.
Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Leo Davies, presents Sonnie Lipshut with an Air Force Commendation for the Lipshut Family Bursary
Australia giving Israel’s bomb-maker Elbit Systems a $917m defence deal is just the latest in a long and secretive history of military and aerospace activity. For the first time, Jommy Tee investigates Australian Zionist corporate connections with Israel which stretch to Australia’s most powerful lobbyist Mark Leibler.
However, the overlap between the Zionist representation role of the individuals concerned, the potential conflicts of interest between that role and the roles of the companies for which they acted, and how these were managed, and whether they were revealed to governments, suggests a more shadowy underbelly.
Halting the Gaza war means recognizing that Israel’s military goals were unrealistic — and that it cannot escape a political process with the Palestinians.
The fact is Netanyahu was warned and had 18 months to develop a plan for what his government intended to do post 7/10.
The Hamas attack gave Netanyahu an opportunity to reassert Israel’s – and Jabotinsky’s – Iron Wall.
The massive and wantonly destructive war that Netanyahu has led against Hamas and Gaza since that date is the Iron Wall in its most elemental manifestation: unleashing overwhelming force as a signal that no territorial compromise with the Arabs over historical Palestine is possible. Or, as Netanyahu has repeatedly said in recent weeks, there will be no ceasefire until there’s a complete Israeli victory.
Source: Israel’s ‘Iron Wall:’ A Brief History of the Ideology Guiding Benjamin Netanyahu
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
Israel has decided the Gazan Concentration Camp was too good for the likes of the 2.3M Gazans. Two choices became their offer genocide or transference as the Germans once did. They rephrased transference to make it more palatable and called it Ethnic Cleansing
Arguably the largest music festival in Australia this side of the Tamworth Country Festival in January, the abrupt cancellation sends ominous signals about the state of the Australian live music industry. Are the insurance premiums too steep? Are corporate backers getting too greedy for returns?
Source: ICJ Issues New Order in Genocide Case Against Israel
Despite public protestations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is helping Israel transfer 1.4 million Palestinians from Rafah to tent cities in the Sinai Desert.
summarise:
1, Israeli, American and Egyptian Intel chiefs met in Paris (IMO) to put the finishing touches on a plan to expel the Palestinians from Gaza.
2, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is about to provide Egypt with a $10 billion loan for “handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.” (The Cradle)
3, Egypt is preparing a “desert area with some basic facilities” to shelter potential refugees” in the near future.
4, The IDF has continued its daily airstrikes on civilian sites in Rafah in order to intensify feelings of high-anxiety and panic that will help to trigger a stampede into Egypt.
5, Food trucks are prevented from entering Gaza. Israel is deliberately starving the Palestinians so they will flee their homeland as soon as there is an opening at the border.
Source: Egypt sells out Palestinians for $10 billion loan package – Pearls and Irritations
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.
“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.
Source: ‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel
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
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The coalition government changed U.K. law in 2011 to enable Israeli ministers accused of crimes to visit Britain without fear of prosecution.
Tzipi Livni
Livni was the Israeli minister of foreign affairs between 2006 and 2009, and a member of Israel’s war cabinet during the brutal bombing of Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.
According to a U.N. report, “numerous serious violations of international law… were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza”, which killed around 1,400 Palestinians, 333 of whom were children.
Those crimes included “the direct targeting and arbitrary killing of Palestinian civilians”, as well as a “deliberate and systematic policy… to target industrial sites and water installations”.
The U.N. report specifically cited Livni as saying:
“Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and that is a good thing”.
Prior to this, Livni had declared:
“I am a lawyer… But I am against law — international law in particular. Law in general”.
Source: Censored: Keir Starmer’s Emails About Israeli War Crimes Case
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’
olddogthoughts 
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