Mary Kostakidis and Quentin Dempster explore the Australian mainstream media’s blind eyes on the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Gaza.
Source: Accessory to genocide in Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
Category: Israel
President Biden owes an apology to fellow American Furkan Doğan, whom Israeli commandos murdered on May 31, 2010, as he videoed their illegal attack in international waters on the aid ship Mavi Marmara. At the time, Biden justified the massacre.
Doğan and other volunteers were trying to bring food and medical aid to Gaza. After their cargo was seized by the Israelis, the latter actually delivered it to the UN for distribution in Gaza. This act served as an admission that the cargo was inoffensive, and there had been no reason to kill all those volunteers.
Source: Biden owes an Apology to the Volunteers of the Mavi Marmara, the First Aid Flotilla to Gaza
Israel and America bypassed the UN and allowed for the killing of Palestinians. Israel found it convenient to pass its own directives to legitimize whatever it wanted to do. The Hannibal Directive, The Bethlehem Doctrine, The Dahiya Doctrine, Administrative Detention, and Extrajudicial execution are all Israel’s imaginary light sabres to protect them from the UN, ICJ and ICC
We have to start claiming collective responsibility for the wrongs of our governments, which means confronting the dehumanization they use to justify atrocities.
Source: Opinion | Call Them ‘Terrorists’ and You Can Kill as Many as You Want | Common Dreams
The most moral looters on the planet
As Israeli historian Adam Raz describes in his recent book, Looting of Arab Property in the War of Independence, Jewish fighters and civilians looted everything from jewellery, books, and embroidered gowns to food and livestock to furniture, kitchenware and even floor tiles.
Source: Israel is pillaging not just Gaza’s cities but also its waters | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera
Israel persistently shirks responsibility for Gaza despite subjecting it to closures, permits, and assaults. Returning to those policies is not an option.
Source: Strangled by Israel for decades, Gaza’s future must begin with free movement | +972 Magazine
Netanyahu also said “If you protest you will be jailed” and 500,000 Israelis left the country
“I don’t know exactly what the president meant, but if he meant by that that I’m pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of Israel, then he’s wrong on both counts,” Netanyahu told Springer.
Western Media Concocts ‘Evidence’ UN Report On Oct 7 Sex Crimes Failed to Deliver Western media promoted a UN report as proof Hamas sexually assaulted Israelis. Yet the report’s authors admitted they couldn’t locate a single victim, suggested Israeli officials staged a rape scene, and denounced “inaccurate forensic interpretations.”
Source: Western Media Concocts ‘Evidence’ UN Report On Oct 7 Sex Crimes Failed to Deliver – ScheerPost
An honourable way out of complicity in genocide does not exist. Certainly, governments may be able to rely on the fact that Israel has, so far, failed to provide credible evidence to justify its allegations that UNRWA staff members were involved in the 7 October incursion into Israel. But genocide is a war crime, and starvation as a weapon of genocide is not only dishonourable, but intentional.
Source: Gaza Aid and the West: An Honorable Way out of Complicity in Genocide Does not Exist
One only needs head into the city on a Sunday in order to hear it: loud and vociferous condemnation of Israel and – together with it – the evils of Zionism as a political philosophy. But what is Zionism? I would imagine that many of those who so loudly condemn it would be hard placed to give it a definition.
if Zionism is to be equated with Jewish nationalism in Palestine, why do so many Zionists live in the diaspora?
![Anti war protest in Tel Aviv during municipal elections on October 27 [Al Jazeera/Mat Nashed]](https://olddogthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/20240227_131857-1709045472.jpg?w=845)
Many anti-Zionists like Maya and the people she works with view Zionism as a Jewish supremacist movement which has ethnically cleansed most of historic Palestine and systematically discriminates against the Palestinians who remain, either as citizens of Israel or residents of the occupied territories.
Maya, a Jewish Israeli, travelled to Greece to help Syrian refugees. At the time, she was an exchange student in Germany and she had been deeply moved by the pictures she saw of desperate people arriving there in small boats.
That was where she met Palestinians who had been born in Syria after their parents and grandparents fled there during the founding of her own country in 1948.
They told her about the Nakba – or “catastrophe” – in which 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes to make way for the newly established Israel. Maya, 33, who had been taught that her country was born through “an independence war” against hostile Arab neighbours, decided that she needed to “unlearn” what she had learned.
“I never heard about the right of return, or Palestinian refugees,” she told Al Jazeera.
“I had to get out of Israel to start learning about Israel. It was the only way I could puncture holes in what I was taught.”
Maya, who asked that her full name not be used for fear of reprisals, is one of a small number of Israeli Jewish activists who identify as “anti-Zionists” or “non-Zionists”.
The current tenuous leadership in Israel today has turned the light on the history of the State and making of Israel
The vengeful, scheming, genocidal response unleashed since October last year in Gaza, by Israel, has prompted a profoundly intensified global review of the punishing history related to the establishment of the State of Israel and its colonial-settler expansion ever since 1948.
Source: Thinking intensely about the holocaust, Israel and Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. Arundhati Roy Mar 08, 2024 Common Dreams 19
A minimum target for trucks entering Gaza every day should be the pre-war average of 500. Given the scale of destruction and destitution, the aim for combined traffic of commercial vehicles as well as those operated by the United Nations and other non-government organisations should now be even higher.The Conversation
Source: Joe Biden’s Gaza Aid Pier isn’t Enough: 6 More Things that Must be Done
U.S. President Joe Biden was recorded saying he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they are going to have a “come to Jesus moment” in a conversation on the sidelines of the State of the Union address on Thursday.
Source: Biden To Bibi: ‘You And I Are Going To Have A Come To Jesus Moment’ | Crooks and Liars
Trucks get in but the IDF is stopping them. Israel hasn’t provided sufficient entry points near the areas most needed. So to self-congratulations is stands out and shines a spotlight on their real intent to continue to weaponize starvation.
“The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated,” said Canadian lawmaker Salma Zahid. “It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”
Source: Canada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Report Accuses Israel of Torturing Agency Staff
Every religion is rooted in core beliefs or dogmas but is judged or weighed by the character it espouses and the values with which it identifies. Belief is verified or condemned by the way life is lived. Christianity is known to espouse “love your neighbour as yourself” or, “do to others as you would have them do to you”, or, “do not judge”, or “forgive others” etc. By those critical of any value in religious expression it is rightly weighed by the lived quality of these characteristics. Often, Judaism has shamefully been characterised in the negative, such prejudicial characterisation rightly called ‘antisemitism’. I wish to do the reverse, to speak of the essential virtue of Judaism which has clearly been abandoned by the State of Israel.
Source: Israel and Judaism part company – Pearls and Irritations
‘A person who can justify genocide, a person who can commit genocide, I can’t count him as a Jew. People (who) justify genocide, they are more Nazis than Jews,’ Orthodox Rabbi Elhanan Beck tells Anadolu
Source: ‘Bloodshed after bloodshed’: Israel fails to bring safety to Jewish people, says rabbi
Biden administration is pushing Hamas to accept the terms on the table, claiming that a “rational” offer had been made for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. The White House statements seem to be “a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails,” says Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. Mustafa also provides updates on UNRWA’s collapsing operations, repression in the West Bank and the utility of international law for Palestine today.
But then, after a few seconds, Harris added: “for at least the next six weeks,” qualifying what at first sounded like an unequivocal ceasefire call.
Source: Biden’s regime change agenda prolongs Gaza genocide | The Electronic Intifada
“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”
Source: UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements
Denied access to the world and hemmed in on land by barbed wire and electric fences, the Mediterranean shores used to be the singular place for Palestinians in Gaza to breathe in the majesty of God’s earth.
Source: On the floors of genocide: sand, shit, decomposing flesh and odd slippers | The Electronic Intifada
Palestinians across the West Bank describe how Israeli settlers, with military backing, are intensifying their takeover of land for illegal construction.
Source: A new surge of settler outposts is terrorizing Palestinians off their land
Israel is escalating its provocations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in the wake of the holy month of Ramadan, despite claims that it is attempting to prevent further escalation.
Source: Will Ramadan tip the West Bank into eruption? | The Electronic Intifada
Abdelhadi says that by arming Israel while offering limited aid to the starving population of Gaza, the Biden administration is “effectively holding a gun to Palestinians’ heads, shooting at them with one hand and throwing crumbs at them with the other.” Adding that campaigners plan to hold Biden electorally accountable for his continued support for Israel. “We are going to make sure that the DNC knows where we stand on this issue.”
Neta Heiman Mina, a member of the Israeli chapter of Women Wage Peace, whose 84-year-old mother, Ditza Heiman, was one of the hostages released during the temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in November. Meanwhile, Mina calls on the Israeli government “to do everything we can” to return the remaining hostages, including an immediate ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners. “This genocide has been going on for 152 days, and it is 100% an American project,”
Pramila Patten’s report has done nothing to uncover any evidence to back up Israel’s claims. It has only handed Israel more deceitful propaganda to further its genocide against Palestinians and its attack on the UN.
Source: UN report launders Israel’s fraudulent “mass rape” propaganda | The Electronic Intifada
Above all, it lets weak Secretary of State Antony Blinken and duplicitous President Biden be less servile when Netanyahu dismisses the low death toll by taunting them: What about Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
As a percentage of the total population being killed, Gaza can expose the Israeli ruling racist extremists to a stronger rebuttal for ending U.S. co-belligerent complicity in this never-to-be-forgotten slaughter of mostly children and women. (The terrifying PTSD on civilians, especially children, will continue for years.)
Respecting the more accurate casualty toll of Palestinian children, mothers, and fathers presses harder for permanent cease-fires and the process of recovery and reparations for the survivors of their holocaust.
Source: The Real Gaza Death Toll
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
Britain’s two main parties are still defending Israel’s war on the people of Gaza despite overwhelming public support for a cease-fire. Rishi Sunak’s government would rather attack democratic rights in Britain than withdraw its support for war crimes.
Source: Slaughter in Gaza Has Discredited Britain’s Political Class
You might want to argue with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ view expressed in November 2023 that the Gaza Strip was even then a “graveyard for children”. An unimaginably small area (365 square kilometres; Greater Sydney is 34 times its size), it is – perhaps was – the most densely populated area on earth. As relevant, half the population of Gaza is under the age of 18.
Othering” is humanity’s original sin. Yet, for the first time in recorded history, we are direct witnesses to what we cause one another in the name of religion, racism and/or political ideology. Witnesses, too, to what we “cause” when from relative safety we respond with boredom, cynicism, indifference, hatred – or the delusion that extreme behaviours “typify” this group or that. But not “us”.
Our responses cannot end there. The most urgent challenge facing our human family is to call out evil wherever we see it, strenuously resisting our conditioned inclinations to excuse or even forgive what “we” do…and to see injustice, evil – and the greatest of wrongdoing – only in what “others” do. The world’s children need saving NOW from the terrors of the past living on in the terrors of the present.
It is not Plato but the historical Buddha who is attributed with the earth-shaking teaching: “We are what we think. With our thoughts, we make the world.” The “making” of our world, of our minds, must change. It must change now. We must change now. There is no Plan B for failure, not in Gaza, not in Israel, not anywhere.
Source: How have we come to this? “Othering” is humanity’s original sin – Pearls and Irritations
Arguments over whether Israelis or Palestinians count as “really indigenous” are beside the point. No one’s human rights should depend on their ethnicity or religion or where their ancestors come from.
Source: No One’s Rights Should Depend on Where Their Ancestors Lived
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.
“When people ask, ‘What do you want Joe Biden to do?’ the answer is: Stop making these weapons deals,” said one campaigner.
Source: ‘Unconscionable’: Biden Has Approved 100+ Arms Sales to Israel in Just Five Months
How linguistic warfare manipulates narratives in the ongoing Gaza conflict Language, crafting a narrative that strips us Palestinians of our humanity, portraying our resistance as illegitimate, and branding it as either antisemitism or terrorism
Israel’s ploy, labeling all our resistance, even peaceful actions like economic boycotts, as terrorism.
With 75 years marked by ethnic cleansing, 56 years of military occupation, and 17 years of siege on Gaza, we find our people ensnared in an ongoing genocide. The toll is unbearable: more than 30,000 people killed, 70,000 injured, and many more trapped beneath the rubble.
Despite being labeled differently, the deal compelled the world to acknowledge the presence of 7,200 Palestinian individuals, including men, women, and children in Israeli prisons. Prisoners or Hostages?
Israel’s Claim “Only Strategic Targeting”
A preliminary investigation by Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor affirmed that bullets that killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians waiting for food aid are the same type fired by Israeli troops’ guns.
Source: Bullets Found at Gaza Flour Massacre Site Belie Israel’s ‘Stampede’ Claim
Even as this in extremis tool is being used, US made military hardware continues to be used at will by the Israel Defence Forces. The point was not missed on Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch: “We have a situation where the US is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two. And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”
Source: Aiding Those We Kill: US Humanitarianism in Gaza – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Meanwhile half of American adults believe Israel has gone too far in Gaza, which means half of Americans have more common sense than either Trump or Biden.
As for Trump, as usual nothing he said was true. Iran was not behind the October 7 attack on Israel, and in fact was entirely taken by surprise, according to a CIA assessment. For this reason, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Hamas official Ismail Haniya that Iran would not intervene militarily on the side of Hamas in the current conflict.
Iran is still broke, since the Biden administration has kept Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran intact. This policy is unwise, since it pushed Iran into the arms of Russia, which gained a strategic asset in its struggle against Ukraine, and because being on a permanent war footing with another country can easily spiral into a shooting war. Iran got around Trump by smuggling oil to China, and it is getting around Biden the same way.
As for destroying a clan-based resistance movement like Hamas by brutalizing the civilian population within which it operates, that was also the US plan for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Source: Trump, Like Biden, supports Israeli Campaign against Gaza: “You’ve got to finish the Problem”
It is impossible to adequately describe the suffering in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is staggering. More than 30,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in just 150 days. 5% of the population is dead, injured or missing. Doctors are amputating the limbs of injured children without anaesthetic. Hunger is everywhere. A man-made famine is looming. It is a stain on our collective conscience that for 75 years UNRWA has had to fill a vacuum left by the lack of a political solution and a genuine peace. And yet UNRWA is now facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them, writes UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
Source: UNRWA is at a breaking point – Pearls and Irritations
How is it NATO supplies a report significantly different to the one Israel produced and the this report is independent of IDF influence.
Clearly, the aim was not to kill civilians, but rather to obtain a bargaining chip for the release of some 5,300 prisoners held by Israel. Eyewitness accounts in the Israeli press suggest that the original idea was to take only military prisoners (who are “more valuable” than civilians for an exchange). These same accounts show that the Palestinians were surprised to find so few military personnel on site, which can be explained by the fact that part of the garrisons had been redeployed to the West Bank a few weeks earlier. Yasmin Porat’s testimony, mentioned above, shows that Hamas fighters stayed with civilians in their homes, waiting for the security forces to intervene. The testimonies indicate that the Palestinian fighters left with civilian prisoners only after the Israeli military had intervened, firing indiscriminately into the houses with their tanks. It therefore appears that the capture of civilians was more the result of a combination of circumstances than a decision taken in advance.
The death of civilians was therefore not an objective, and the fact that the freed hostages declared that they had been treated with respect, and even in a friendly manner, tends to confirm that this was not a “pogrom” against the Israeli population.
“It is long past time for the United States to use its leverage and uphold U.S. law to end Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and have this war come to an end.”
Source: Groups Forge Emergency Coalition to Pressure US on Gaza Cease-Fire
An Israeli invasion of Rafah will not alter the battlefield in favor of the Israeli army, but it will be horrific for the displaced Palestinians, writes Ramzy Baroud.
To say there’s a difference between Biden and Trump is like Israel saying “A record of 277 trucks entered Gaza today we care”. AIPAC will support Trump.
There are limits to Biden’s support for Netanyahu. Trump and the Republican Party have none.
Source: On Israel, Trump Is Even Worse Than Biden – The Intercept
UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian refugee relief agency, has faced severe funding cuts after Israel dubiously accused the organization of ties to Hamas. We spoke with a director of UNRWA in Jordan about the impact of the cuts.
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
“It’s not true,” said the kibbutz spokesperson, of one of the stories featured in the paper’s controversial article.
Source: Kibbutz Be’eri on New York Times Sexual Assault Story: “Not True”
The spokespersons are in damage control. Their country’s reputation as a respectful law abiding state must be maintained, even with a pack of lies.
The Nakba tragedy of 1948 is only one chapter in the development of a violent settler colonialism which has produced a terrorist Israeli state.
Obscuring the criminality of elites and giving cover to genocide requires effort and a commitment to the power of elites. How much easier would it be to call a spade a spade and simply tell the truth?
Source: Tell the Truth About Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity – CounterPunch.org
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.”
Most academic institutions around the world remain silent about Israel’s scholasticide. But others are speaking out. Globally, this includes Librarians and Archivists with Palestine and some academic associations and faculty groups. The ICJ’s recent order to Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza may motivate other scholars and institutions to consider breaking their silence on scholasticide.The Conversation
Source: The War in Gaza is wiping out Palestine’s Education and Knowledge Systems
“AIPAC and their Republican mega-donors are targeting Black and brown Democratic incumbents with the same right-wing playbook across the country,” warned Rep. Cori Bush.
Source: AIPAC’s Dark Money Arm Unleashes $100 Million Blitz on Progressives
Military might alone is hardly enough for any country to acquire and sustain its legitimacy. Neither does economic influence or clever diplomacy. For legitimacy to be maintained, it requires much more than this, starting with the very basic premise that the spirit of international law was not meant to prolong war, but to end it.
Source: To Defend Israel’s Actions, the US is Destroying the Int’l Legal System it once Constructed
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.