Category: Israel

Israel

What We’re Not Hearing About Oct 7

Any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be wary of repeating the Israeli claims about what happened during the initial Hamas assault, writes Jonathan Cook.

The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoon-fed. Far too much is at stake.

Hamas committed war crimes on Oct. 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.

And Israel’s actions — from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major Western politician.

Source: What We’re Not Hearing About Oct 7

Israel

Massacre of the Innocents – Pearls and Irritations

Concept of crisis in Gaza, Middle East.

The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most.

The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most. What we see on our TV screens every night is impossible to watch. Did Netanyahu see the young lad who had just carried the decapitated body of his friend from the rubble. If so, what did he think? He almost certainly thought the same as Natali Bennet the former Israeli prime minister who said to a reporter on Sky News: “Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? We’re fighting Nazis”. 

In other words, there are no civilians, there are no innocents, all Palestinians, including children, are the antithesis of us, all deserve and need to be exterminated. In fact, in this logic, there is no entity that can be called Palestine, there are no peoples to be called Palestinians. This is not just the slaughter of innocents, it is the annihilation of innocence, it is the breeding ground of the next generation of retributive violence and of lives lived out of pure hatred.

It is past time that truths were stated with utmost clarity.

Source: Massacre of the Innocents – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

Israel’s moral power ebbing away in a human rights catastrophe – Pearls and Irritations

Jerusalem and flag of Israel.

Israel may have survived this phase. It is doubtful whether any Arab state would any longer attack it, although Iran, and some of the Gulf states, continue to fund Palestinian causes. The longer-term threat – one that will persist until Israel makes some peace and accommodation with the Palestinians — is of increasing international disdain from the wider international community, including from nations that supported its establishment in 1948. Despised for the obvious ill-treatment of Palestinians and accused of establishing apartheid. Not hated for being Jewish but for being a continuing threat to the peace from its encouragement of illegal settlements.

No longer a decent and liberal society, forgetting for a moment its treatment of the Palestinians, but threatening to become an intolerant ultra-nationalist theocracy, as backward as its equivalents in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Afghanistan. A nation run by a crook who is in the process of subverting the judiciary.

That’s not what the idea of a Jewish homeland promised. If the state imploded, the risk is not of a new Holocaust or program of extermination, but of a new diaspora, going elsewhere for the educational and intellectual and

Source: Israel’s moral power ebbing away in a human rights catastrophe – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Netanyahu

Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Performative Genocide in Gaza

The most recent Israeli poll indicates that more than 75 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. It can’t be soon enough.

Hamas is winning the public relations war as Netanyahu leads Israel into becoming a pariah state. Hamas, however horrifying and grisly their actions may be, is playing three-dimensional chess with world opinion. Netanyahu is playing whack-a-mole, resulting in a horrific death toll that Hamas anticipated would weaken support of Israel and halt its rumored incipient recognition by Saudi Arabia.

For Israelis concerned about security, having Netanyahu as Prime Minister is like having an arsonist guard the fire station.

(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to destroy Hamas, whatever the cost to civilians in Gaza, is based on a brutally cynical reality that such a goal will not be achievable without completely decimating Gaza or forcing the Gazans into exile in Egypt (either of which many of his political partners endorse, calling all Gazans ‘beasts’ or ‘sub-human.’) Recently, Netanyahu referred to a biblical old testament passage that called for the killing of every Amalekite, as he sought to justify the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. As reported  on November 3rd in Mother

Source: Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Performative Genocide in Gaza

Israel

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians – scheerpost.com

Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.

Source: Chris Hedges: Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians – scheerpost.com

Israel

Scott Morrison lands in Israel, Australians arrive home from Gaza

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There is something extremely suspicious about the mechanical repetitious reporting about the Gaza-Israel war. Not much mention is made that of the 1400 Israelis killed between 400-700 were IDF personnel. They seem to have been killed by friendly fire. It has also been said that the 240 hostages are hidden in tunnels that are being bombed by Israel in order to save them. All in all that repetitive sound of the 1400 and hostages sounds more like an ad necessarily placed in all media reports but without ” Israel’s Military says “attached.

However the “The Gaza Health Officials” are always named when the daily Palestinian death count is delivered. 9488 in this case but what isn’t always reported is that 4,888 of these are children and another 30,000 have been injured. Furthermore, not mentioned is Hamas has constantly tried to negotiate a hostage swap with Netanyahu to stop the carnage of civilians but Netanyahu has simply refused. One of his MPs called it just “mowing the grass” while one suspects Netanyahu sees it as an opportunity for genocidal dispossession, the total takeover of Gaza under the guise of righteous  “justice” and Scott Morrison’s media revivalist second coming

Israel’s ground forces have encircled Gaza City after stepping up a bombing campaign aimed at “annihilating Hamas” after the group, considered a terrorist organisation by the Australian government, killed 1400 people and took more than 240 hostages in an October 7 assault in southern Israel.

Gaza health officials said on Saturday that 9488 Palestinians have been killed after Israel cut off power, food and water – allowing in a small number of aid trucks – while unleashing a bombing campaign that has targeted hospitals, refugee camps, ambulances and schools.

Source: Scott Morrison lands in Israel, Australians arrive home from Gaza

Israel

What our Media fails to tell you about October 7 – Pearls and Irritations

Gaza envelope after coordinated surprise offensive on Israel.

It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day.

There is a possible reason for those similarities – one that the BBC is studiously failing to report, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources, including the Israeli media. Instead the BBC is sticking resolutely to a narrative crafted for them, and the rest of the western media, by the Israeli military: that Hamas alone caused all this destruction.

Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.

Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?

And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?

Source: What our Media fails to tell you about October 7 – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes

Hundreds of Thousands March Against Israel’s War

Netanyahu an anti-Semite shows just who he is. While some politicians might support him the tide has turned against him. The sea of hatred that once parted for the Jews has parted a second time. This time a humanity that believes in Universal Human Rights is walking through it Palestinians and Jews together against the would-be king of Israel

Huge crowds of protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities on Saturday joining hundreds of thousands around the world to demand a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Hamas, which has killed and wounded more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip in just one month.

Source: Hundreds of Thousands March Against Israel’s War

Israel

How Hamas Became the Violent Face of Palestinian Resistance

Hamas has been all over the news since its brutal October 7 attack, but there’s much less understanding of how the group emerged. Only by studying Hamas’s history can we chart a better way forward.

Source: How Hamas Became the Violent Face of Palestinian Resistance

Israel

Israel-Gaza War Is Deadliest Month for Journalists Covering Conflict in Over 3 Decades

funeral of Palestine TV correspondent

“In over 30 years, no one has killed journalists at the rate Israel is currently killing them (not to mention their families) in Gaza,” said one analyst. Jessica Corbett Nov 03, 2023 4

Source: Israel-Gaza War Is Deadliest Month for Journalists Covering Conflict in Over 3 Decades

Israel

Expose and dismiss the dominating Israeli narrative – Pearls and Irritations

The letters of the word Paelstine made up by the word Israel

For decades, the western world has been fed Israeli/Zionist narratives about their country being exceptional, Palestinians not existing or being less than human. False Israeli accounts have been swallowed by a compliant media and by politicians scared of being accused of being even slightly anti-Semitic.

A narrative polished and promoted for decades has reached its inhumane crescendo in a refusal to admit cruelty as policy – Palestinians as animals indistinct from Hamas, the thousands of children in Gaza blown to bits, unending dispossession and murder on the West Bank, hundreds of children and thousands of Palestinian adults imprisoned in Israeli jails without charge.

Given western governments seventy five years long responsibility for the carnage in Israel and genocide in Gaza, their leaders have stayed largely silent or have tasted and swallowed the Israeli narrative whose major objective is to impose a world rule which says no one should criticise Israel.

For too long, at the expense of the Palestinian people, this toxic narrative has contributed to confusion, untruths, murder and mayhem.

After the Gazan genocide, the chance of small steps being taken to foster peace with justice will depend on truths emerging, on diplomatic posturing and arrogance being discouraged, on this narrative being derided and dismissed.

Expose and dismiss the dominating Israeli narrative

Israel

The BBC Is Failing to Report the Ugly Truth About Israel’s War On Gaza

Britain’s BBC is one of the world’s most influential and trusted news sources. But pressure from conservative political elites has warped its coverage of Israel’s war and caused it to downplay the violence being inflicted on Palestinian civilians.

Source: The BBC Is Failing to Report the Ugly Truth About Israel’s War On Gaza

Israel

With focus on Gaza there is escalation of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank – Pearls and Irritations

Vector map of Israel and Palestine, showing the areas of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Image: iStock / Dimitrios Karamitros

This process of ethnic cleansing in the remote areas of the West Bank, with the forcing of impoverished unprotected shepherds out of their lands and homes by violent “hill top” Israeli settlers and Israeli youth, supported by the Israeli military, is violent ethnic cleansing on a wide scale. The attempt is to leave a vast area from east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho emptied of Palestinians. With the taking of more and more land, the prospect of a two-state solution (long dead) cannot be touted by our Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong as a solution. It is dead, dead and the Palestinians are still there in apartheid enclaves. They surely know this to be the case but are refusing to support the possibility of peace which begins, at the very least, with a ceasefire on Gaza.

Source: With focus on Gaza there is escalation of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

IDF Screens Raw Hamas Footage For Journalists | HuffPost Latest News

A teddy bear is left on the ground near bloodstains where Israeli Defense Forces say two grandparents held a bomb shelter door closed to protect their grandchildren during an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on this kibbutz in Holit, Israel. All were injured, but survived. More than three weeks since Hamas' attacks in Israel, which killed 1,400 people according to Israeli authorities, just over half of the dead have been laid to rest, and more than four-fifths have been identified.

Israel didn’t release the footage of Jewish Settlers and IDF behaving atrociously like brutes in the West Bank because humans behave badly and in stomach-churning ways no matter which side they are on. But rest assured brutish Israeli behavior has been captured and found on video too. Hamas or simply Palestinians aren’t able to call a press conference to hammer home their truth.

It has little or nothing to do with justice. Hamas like Viet Cong have no planes and are less able to kill as clinically as the Israelis do. They kill from a distance “surgically” and cleanly like “professionals” not challenged by death the most likely outcome for Hamas fighters. But the photographic images of the results on the ground would in reality be as, if not more, horrific. Israel with its technology easily hides the voices and sights of its revenge. The indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocents after bomb and drone raids leaves far more unrecognizable body parts.

Justice seems all but missing in this exercise. We were shocked at the footage of Mai Lai, Abu Ghraib, the waterboarding, and the extreme torture that we know the Americans were capable of because journalists like Julian Assange, became must-get targets, for releasing the footage of innocents being killed in the Middle East. Some 30 reporters have been killed by Israel alongside 50 UN staff, Doctors Hospitals and schools destroyed because in reality “precision enemy targets” really means “anything goes”

Horror is horror and justice is never achieved by more horror. Justice can’t begin to be achieved for everyone without taking a step back. But that doesn’t mean the what’s being done isn’t planned which makes it worse.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

There is no intended Justice in simply taking a pound of flesh but there is intent and another plan and it’s more than just “mowing the grass” as an Israeli MP described it.

The Israeli military showed unreleased bodycam video from the Oct. 7 attacks, as the death toll in Gaza rises and some activists deny Hamas’ atrocities.

Source: IDF Screens Raw Hamas Footage For Journalists | HuffPost Latest News

Israel

The Reality of Gaza’s Forced Exodus: Unveiling Israel’s Secret Plan – scheerpost.com

There is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate [sic] the entire Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government. An immediate, realistic and sustainable plan for the resettlement and humanitarian rehabilitation of the entire Arab population in the Gaza Strip is required which aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.

Source: The Reality of Gaza’s Forced Exodus: Unveiling Israel’s Secret Plan – scheerpost.com

Informed Comment, Israel, Israel Crimes

The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children – Pearls and Irritations

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants' surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages

They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss.

Source: The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

Palestine’s Obituary – scheerpost.com-Video

It was not hard to see the irony in the Western response, as Scheer points out: “The hypocrisy of Germany, which was the author of the worst crime of modern history, the Holocaust, and the French, who certainly were anti-Semitic to a considerable degree, and others in Western Europe, [are] now saying you can’t even demonstrate for Palestinian rights.”

Source: Palestine’s Obituary – scheerpost.com

Israel

Israeli Rabbi Describes Settler Rampages Across West Bank – CounterPunch.org

In the days leading up to the lecture, Ascherman used his car to block a convoy of settlers, which was accompanied to a Palestinian village by a military Jeep “to do who knows what to a shepherding family that they’d already the day before, sent three of them to the hospital, and broke windows, solar panels and cars.”

Ascherman was hit with a rifle butt and had his phone stolen.

“But … they didn’t get to the family. We protected them, as a human being should do,” he said.

When Ascherman went to the police station to file a complaint against the settlers and soldiers, he was shouted at by a cop on the balcony, who told him he wasn’t welcome in the police station. The officer called him a traitor and accused him of doing human rights work for the money.

(Wonder who gets paid more — a rabbi volunteering to put himself in physical danger to protect Palestinians in the West Bank, or a cop?)

Source: Israeli Rabbi Describes Settler Rampages Across West Bank – CounterPunch.org

Israel

The Gaza Protests Can Save Lives — Maybe Even Your Own

BERLIN, GERMANY - MARCH 29: Anti-war protesters march from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column March 29, 2003 in Berlin, Germany. Over 50,000 people took to the streets in Berlin in a peaceful protest against the U.S.-led war in Iraq. (Photo by Kurt Vinion/Getty Images)

Today, the same is even more true for the large, impressive protests about Gaza led specifically by Jewish Americans. There have also been smaller protests in Israel calling for a ceasefire.

Source: The Gaza Protests Can Save Lives — Maybe Even Your Own

Israel

A Pro-Israel Super PAC Is Smearing Rashida Tlaib for Standing Up for Palestinian Lives

The even better news is that the so-called Democratic “Majority” for Israel is anything but. Fifty-six percent of Republican voters, 57 percent of independents, and a whopping 80 percent of Democrats agree with Tlaib about the urgent need for a cease-fire. The DMFI ghouls have a lot of money to spend on ads. But they’re still losing the argument.

Source: A Pro-Israel Super PAC Is Smearing Rashida Tlaib for Standing Up for Palestinian Lives

Israel

A Tidal Wave of State and Private Repression Is Targeting Pro-Palestinian Voices

The neo-McCarthyist trend is particularly rife in the press, where debate and critical thinking are, at least in theory, supposed to be crucial for the sake of an informed public.

Source: A Tidal Wave of State and Private Repression Is Targeting Pro-Palestinian Voices

Israel

What Do You Know About Israel’s Role in the Origin Funding of Hamas? | The Smirking Chimp

Israel’s early support for strengthening Hamas set the stage for Hamas to seize total control of Gaza in 2007, and for its October 7 massacre of 1,400 civilians and Israeli soldiers. As of this writing, Israel has unleashed a bombing campaign that has killed more than 9,000 Gazans, according to The Gaza Health Ministry. Israel has now started a ground invasion that will yield even more casualties.

Israel’s support of Hamas for reasons of political expediency has resulted in decades of tragedy for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Now, that support has unleashed a new wave of death and destruction that threatens not only to surpass all previous carnage, it threatens to destabilize the entire region, and perhaps even lead us into the darkness of World War III.

Source: What Do You Know About Israel’s Role in the Origin Funding of Hamas? | The Smirking Chimp

Israel

‘Turning Gaza into Ashes’: Israeli Hasbara vs the World  – CounterPunch.org

This is a picture of those Israel says it has to kill to win fucking what? The wealth of the Gazan Gas Fields? The Land these kids are sitting on? These are children. Since October 7th Israel has endangered all Jews around the world in an effort to have them come and colonize Gaza and the West Bank? Jews are the most educated people on the planet led by the most primitive and barbaric. Is it any wonder more Jews are leaving Israel than running to it as they did in 1967?

The discussion should now return to where it should have always been – the priorities of the oppressed not the oppressor.

It is time that we speak about Palestinian rights, Palestinian security and the Palestinian people’s right, in fact obligation, to defend themselves.

It is time for us to speak about justice – real justice – the outcome of which is non-negotiable: equality, full political rights, freedom and the right of return.

Gaza has told us all of this, and much more. And it is time for us to listen.

Every Palestinian-Arab overture for peace was rejected, even the supposed ‘peace process’, namely the Oslo Accords, turned into an opportunity for Tel Aviv to entrench its military occupation, expand its settlements and to corral Palestinians in Bantustan-like spaces, humiliated and racially segregated.

Source: ‘Turning Gaza into Ashes’: Israeli Hasbara vs the World  – CounterPunch.org

Israel

“This cannot go on” – a cry for an end to intolerable suffering – Pearls and Irritations

Gaza_UnicefQuote. Image: Croakey. Published with permission.

Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are intensifying as the traumatic toll on civilians sees thousands of children being killed, many health and aid workers and journalists dying on the job, the destruction of health services, surgery taking place without anaesthetic, and civilians unable to access necessities, including life-saving healthcare, food and water.

Source: “This cannot go on” – a cry for an end to intolerable suffering – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes, Israel-Body Count, Netanyahu

Thousands of Children Still Alive in Gaza, Netanyahu Warns — The Shovel

The Netanyahu Israeli Government has warned that thousands, potentially even millions of minors are still at large in Gaza, despite sustained bombing over the past few weeks.

Source: Thousands of Children Still Alive in Gaza, Netanyahu Warns — The Shovel

Israel

Slander and Threats Won’t Stop the Protests Against Israel’s War on Gaza

As the Israeli military uses ever more violence against Gaza’s civilian population, there have been massive demonstrations calling for a cease-fire. The protesters are taking a stand for basic human solidarity against the moral bankruptcy of Western leaders.

Source: Slander and Threats Won’t Stop the Protests Against Israel’s War on Gaza

and

In Israel, the crackdown against Palestinian solidarity is reaching grim new heights. Activists and ordinary citizens alike are getting fired and arrested for daring to say a word in support of Palestinians.

Israel’s Far-Right Government Is Suffocating Domestic Dissent

 

and

 

Israel

Kathy Hochul Israel Trip Bankrolled by Group Funding Settlements

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Under the cover of darkness, the show goes on. Nothing is what it seems. Switch on the lights and The Governor of New York trip was funded by the UJA which funds the West Bank Settlers

“The UJA has helped destroy any semblance of a ‘peace process’ or possibility of a two state solution, instead deepening a violent apartheid reality for Palestinians with no end in sight,” Borgwardt told The Intercept. While funding groups operating in settlements, UJA has not supported efforts to de-escalate the current war, Borgwardt said: “If the UJA and Governor Hochul are concerned about safety for Israelis and hostage returns, they should join us in calling for an immediate ceasefire, release of the hostages, a de-escalation, and an end to the conditions of occupation, apartheid and siege that led to the current nightmare.”

Source: Kathy Hochul Israel Trip Bankrolled by Group Funding Settlements

Israel

The British Relationship With Zionism, Israel and Its Consequences for Palestinians – CounterPunch.org

History in Perspective

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”. The great British Lie needs to be understood.

This British alliance with Zionism and the Israel it created, has held firm from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to Israel’s violent formation in 1948 to today. Even as Britain fled Palestine and its responsibilities in 1948, allowing war to break out in the process and the Nakba (Catastrophe) to befall the Palestinians, and as its empire faded, Britain has continued to play a cynical and deadly role in the region.

Source: The British Relationship With Zionism, Israel and Its Consequences for Palestinians – CounterPunch.org

Israel

Things the Zionist media doesn’t say about Hamas

Things mainstream media does not say about Hamas

“These scholars offer different perspectives than traditional media, providing insights into the arguments that reconfigure the narrative that seeks to dismiss Hamas as a freedom-fighting movement. Why was Nelson Mandela seen as a ‘terrorist’ by the US until 2008?”

“We know very well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Nelson Mandela.

The military occupation of Gaza aims to transfer sovereignty over the gas fields to Israel, a crime that violates international law and involves massacres, to displace Palestinians until the objectives are achieved.

While mineral wealth and strategic natural resources flow in the depths of the ocean and beneath the land of Occupied Palestine, the Zionists and their allies spend for a $100,000 missile, launched by a $20 million plane, traveling at a cost of 6 thousand dollars per hour to kill people who live on less than 1 dollar a day in the Gaza Strip, whose financial equation has been sustained for 75 years by the blood of thousands of innocents in mercilessly Occupied Palestine!
BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine 1 and Gaza Marine 2. British Gas’ gas reserves are estimated to be approximately 430 million cubic meters, which is equivalent to around 4 billion dollars. These are the figures announced by the British Gas Company, although it is possible that the size of gas reserves in Palestine is even greater. The issue of sovereignty over the gas fields in Gaza is extremely important and, from a legal point of view, these reserves belong to Palestine.

Source: Things the Zionist media doesn’t say about Hamas

Israel

Without Hamas, Gaza Would Still Not Be Free

First, settler colonial movements are distinguished from standard colonialism — like British rule in India — by the fact that the settler population wishes not just to steal the native population’s resources but to replace the native population itself.

There are lots of examples of this: European settlers dispossessed native peoples in what we today call the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example.

The final model for a settler colonial population is to drive the native population over the border, in an act of ethnic cleansing. This was Israel’s preferred option in 1948 and again in 1967, when it decided to expand its borders by occupying the remaining Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

When Israel seized Gaza during the 1967 war, it had to fall back on the second settler colonising option: apartheid. So it turned the enclave into an open-air prison, or – if we’re going to be more honest – a long-term concentration camp.

Israel’s – harsher version of the townships that held the native black populations in apartheid South Africa.

In the current attack on Gaza, it is implementing a mixed model: genocide for those who remain in Gaza, ethnic cleansing for those who can get out (assuming Egypt finally relents and opens its borders).

None of that has anything to do with Hamas. The most one can say is that Hamas’ resistance has forced Israel’s hand. It has had to abandon its siege-apartheid model — the long-term imprisonment of a population with no resources, no freedom of movement, no clean water, no jobs.

Instead, it has returned to the tried-and-tested formulas of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Source: Without Hamas, Gaza Would Still Not Be Free

Israel

This is genocide – The Shot

But if you are going to cheer on the slaughter – and people will – at least don’t be a coward about it. Don’t mentally deny the humanity of those you are wishing and sanctioning genocide upon. That’s the easy way out, and it should be beneath every educated, loved, healthy mind. Palestinian children are just as real as yours, just as real as mine. Powerful forces are working diligently to strip the Palestinian people of their humanity – do not let them take yours as well. If you find yourself cheering on the massacre of thousands of children, you’ve already lost.

Source: This is genocide – The Shot

Israel, Israel Crimes, Israel-Body Count

US Stands Isolated in backing Gaza Massacre

Soon after America jumped the gutter calling for a “Humanitarian Pause” After meeting with the Australian PM. Meanwhile, Peter Dutton calling for ally loyalty found himself standing alone

On Friday, October 27, the nations of the world voted in the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 120 to 14, for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza. The resolution was sponsored by the government of sometime U.S. ally King Abdullah of Jordan.  Israel’s UN Ambassador responded with utter disdain, accusing those who voted in favor of the “ridiculous resolution” of supporting ‘the defense of Nazi terrorists’ over Israel. In Gaza, Israel’s response to the global call for a truce was to escalate its bombing

Source: US Stands Isolated in backing Gaza Massacre

Israel

AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Do You Condemn Israel?

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The Arab and Muslim worlds are increasingly radicalized, and the West by its reaction to Israeli assaults on Gaza, has made Hamas more popular than ever. Even those who used to criticize Hamas find it now difficult to do so. Jordanian journalist, Bassam Baddarin, observed that Abu `Ubayda (the spokesman of the military wing of Hamas) could be elected in any Arab country.

That is your doing.

Source: AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Do You Condemn Israel?

Israel

Israel-Hamas war: hard experience says a land war won’t go well – and faltering international support suggests the world knows it

That has not happened and will not happen now. Instead, there is every prospect of a bitter war with many thousands more Palestinians killed, tens of thousands of young Palestinians all too ready to fight in the future, and a peaceful resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict delayed by at least another generation.

Source: Israel-Hamas war: hard experience says a land war won’t go well – and faltering international support suggests the world knows it

Israel

Endangered and Dangerous Israel, Endangering Jews – CounterPunch.org

Israel calls itself a “Jewish state,” but there is nothing “Jewish” about mistreating people because they are of a different religion or ethnic group. Indeed, Zionism has, it seems, turned its back on the universal Jewish moral tradition which Jewish critics of Zionism such as Albert Einstein, Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt warned that it would.

What effect on the status of diaspora Jews if the state is defeated?

What effect on Jews elsewhere from manifestly wrong or immoral actions of that state?

The call from Israel when Jews abroad are in danger is, Come home to Israel, where you belong and will be safe from violence inflicted because you are Jewish.

It is now less credible to think of Israel as a safe place for Jews as Jews, in an ironic twist. And the more extreme measures Israel wreaks on Gaza for Israel’s safety, the more imperiled by association Jews outside Israel will be.

Source: Endangered and Dangerous Israel, Endangering Jews – CounterPunch.org

Israel

Gaza-Israel Catastrophe — Autocracy

One of the founders of the “Peace Now” movement was the late novelist Amos Oz, a dear friend whose book on the settler-induced divisions In the Land of Israel (1983) I would later translate. He was among the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Oz warned of the dangers of the occupation back in1967 and called the radicalized settlers neo-Nazis. At the same time, he also said he loved Israel, “even when I can’t stand it.” In one way or another, all of us were called “traitors.” But like Amos, we’d respond: “At least we’re in good company.”

Like the peace movement, the international community considers the settlements a violation of international law.

[Related: Biden Administration’s Capitulation to Israel]

Yet, hawkish advocates of national security favoured their expansion. For all practical purposes, they have won. In the early 1970s, there were barely 2,000 settlers in the West Bank. Today, that figure exceeds 500,000. Their problem is that they will never win the peace.

Source: Gaza-Israel Catastrophe — Autocracy

Israel

Israeli MP Says It Clearly for World to Hear: ‘Erase All of Gaza From the Face of the Earth’

Israeli MP Says It Clearly for World to Hear: 'Erase All of Gaza From the Face of the Earth'

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Israel’s Public Diplomacy Minister: “Erase all of Gaza from the face of the earth. That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence & try to enter Egyptian territory or they will die & their death will be evil. Gaza should be erased!”

Still questioning a genocidal intent?

An Israeli lawmaker from the ruling right-wing Likud Party on Wednesday offered fresh evidence that the Israeli government’s aim in its bombardment of Gaza is a genocidal effort to kill or forcibly remove the more than 2 million Palestinians living there, declaring, “Gaza should be erased.”

With the support of the United States and other Western countries, Israel has claimed since October 7—when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing as many as 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage—that its bombardment of Gaza is necessary to destroy the armed group, even though the IDF has repeatedly struck civilian targets and killed nearly 9,000 Palestinians so far, including over 3,500 children.

Source: Israeli MP Says It Clearly for World to Hear: ‘Erase All of Gaza From the Face of the Earth’

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Israel in Search of Its Hiroshima: Massive Bomb Wipes Out 20 Apt. Buildings, Kills, Wounds 400 Civilians – scheerpost.com

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is letting the fascist government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu get away with mass murder. As a result, no one in the global South will ever listen to Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken say the words “rules-based international order” again without falling down laughing. The US attempt to cut Russia off from the world economy will now completely fail.

Source: Israel in Search of Its Hiroshima: Massive Bomb Wipes Out 20 Apt. Buildings, Kills, Wounds 400 Civilians – scheerpost.com

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How Jewish Nonviolence can help guide the Path forward on Israel-Palestine

In an article entitled “What does Jewish law say about the war between Israel and Hamas,” Jay Michaelson explores biblical, talmudic and medieval sources to answer that question, noting the long arc of rabbinic tradition bends toward nonviolence. In Jewish life, the normative perception of Torah is that it was given to protect its weakest individuals as the powerful do not need protection.

Source: How Jewish Nonviolence can help guide the Path forward on Israel-Palestine

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‘Abu Ghraib 2.0’: IDF Torture Videos Spark Renewed Calls to End US Military Aid to Israel

Stripped, blindfolded, and bound Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces sit on the ground

“It’s no surprise… that the same government that tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib is funding the same tactics on Palestinians,” said Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has reported the ethnic cleansing of at least scores of Palestinian families from their homes and farms in Area C, the Israel-designated West Bank occupation zone completely administered by Israel.

“While all eyes are on Gaza… the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank could intensify further,” Israeli international law and human rights professor Neve Gordon wrote for the London Review of Books blog Monday, “with Israeli forces pushing Palestinians out of their homes and possibly across international borders.”

Source: ‘Abu Ghraib 2.0’: IDF Torture Videos Spark Renewed Calls to End US Military Aid to Israel

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Further | In What Is Called A War | Opinion

Gazan father Muhammed Gouda and his baby daughter Misk lay dead at Aqsa Hospital

As to Netanyahu, his blood lust is far from sated. On Monday, in a chilling speech experts deemed “an explicit call to genocide,” he termed Israel’s slaughter of innocents “a holy mission” and invoked their ancient foe from the Old Testament: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible: ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'” Calls for a ceasefire, he declared with stunning cognitive dissonance, are “a call for Israel (to) surrender to barbarism…The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” Still, mournfully, Ahmed Nehad nonetheless pleads for the trifling mercy of a ceasefire, that “a mere handful might endure.” “Grant us the luxury of one last hug,” he writes. “Our end is nigh, rest assured.” Those already dead and documented – name, age, ID number – total 6,747; the number excludes thousands still under rubble or not yet identified. To read the list, you must keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. May their memories be for a blessing.

Source: Further | In What Is Called A War | Opinion

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Patrick Lawrence: Deeper Into Depravity – scheerpost.com

Israel, the U.S. and the rest of the West cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the grave, grave error of al–Nakba in 1948, when began the forcible removal of Palestinians from their land. See the Toynbee reference above: Nobody in power has the creativity, imagination, or confidence to confront the present as the consequence of this error and begin acting to correct it. And so Israel will continue to pull us in the wrong direction—or further in the wrong direction, I ought to say. I hope I am not around if ever Americans start in with the sadistic videos.

Source: Patrick Lawrence: Deeper Into Depravity – scheerpost.com

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Israel confirms responsibility for jet strike on Gaza refugee camp

Even this article amplifies Israeli suffering more than it does it’s genocidal attack on 2.3M people one needs to asks what’s wrong with the New Daily’s approach to News? It’s unbalanced there is no justification for Netanyahu’s madness so why report what Israel tells you?

Israel has confirmed responsibility after a deadly explosion “like an earthquake” reportedly killed about 50 people in Gaza’s largest refugee camp.

The mounting death toll has drawn calls from the US, Israel’s top ally, other countries and the UN for a pause in fighting to allow more humanitarian aid to reach the enclave.

Source: Israel confirms responsibility for jet strike on Gaza refugee camp

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The First Televised Genocide

More killed in 3 weeks than Russia did in 19months

The mass murder of innocent Palestinian civilians by Israel continues, with the bombing of the Jabaliyah refugee camp north of Gaza City on Wednesday. History has seen a procession of genocides. But this is the first to be televised.

Source: The First Televised Genocide

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Netanyahu invokes Genocide – Pearls and Irritations

Official portrait of Israel's 9th Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu

Dutton Voted YES to Israel and Netanyahu but No to Indigenous Australians. Yes to those with a 3000-year claim to connection with the land but No to those with a non-debatable 65000-year connection.

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass,” (1 Samuel 15:3). ( Netanyahu)

Prime Ministers Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison have signed a statement drafted for them by the Zionist Federation of Australia in support of Israel. In doing so, were they aware that on Sunday, in launching the ground offensive into Gaza, Netanyahu invoked a genocidal precedent for his war on Gaza?

Modern day Israel is not a continuation of the northern nation state of the same name that disappeared and was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in 720 BC. Nor is it a continuation of the southern State called Judah which disappeared in 586 BC absorbed into the Babylonian Empire. On the other hand, it is true that Jewish people have cultural, religious, and ancestral ties, along with many other peoples, with this land for 3000 years.

Modern Day Israel was not created by fiat of the Divine. It was created through an act of partition by the United Nations in 1948. This partition was infamously preceded by the Balfour Declaration of 1917. That Palestinians were not jumping for joy in being told from afar they were about to lose 50% of their ancestral lands, is not surprising. In fact, they have lost 78%. Apparently, Israel considers 78% to be insufficient.

You six prime ministers who have signed a statement prepared for you by those who demand not 78% but 100%, will you issue another statement which clearly articulates the state of play which you believe should exist post the ‘war’, setting out your moral and legal arguments to support what you think should be the ‘new normal’?

You may also be interested inPaul Keating’s article regarding his refusal to sign the same draft:

Source: Netanyahu invokes Genocide – Pearls and Irritations

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Hamas has set a trap. It depends on Israel’s brutal response – Pearls and Irritations

Israel written in letters made up of the word Palestine

To me, the most persuasive argument for a smaller and more restrained response is the simple fact that Hamas wants a massive over-reaction and believes this will serve its cause. It is very hard to believe that Hamas accurately reflects Palestinian opinion or will, but it is easy enough to assume that it understands the local politics of the struggle. Rather better than the Israelis anyhow. They have consistently misunderstood the cause or the strength of the feelings behind it. Their fabled intelligence services failed to predict or anticipate the Hamas atrocities, or the extent to which they were indifferent to international opinion and calculated to enrage and inflame Israelis to an ill-judged reaction. One can understand that the bitter bereaved – indeed all of Israel – have an instinct for a response that is utterly “firm”. Disproportionate, rather than measured, if only to ensure that not one of the survivors will even think of such actions against. And loud, shocking and awesome, to show the world and Israel’s enemies that the nation will not be intimidated, terrorised or distracted from its purpose.

To such brave words, one could only ask why that involves doing just what the enemy wants.

Source: Hamas has set a trap. It depends on Israel’s brutal response – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

New Document Leak on Plan to Expel Gaza Population

A leaked document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence to an Israeli news site on Monday lays out a plan to transfer more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai desert, reports Joe Lauria.

Source: New Document Leak on Plan to Expel Gaza Population

Israel

Israel Has Killed More Kids in 3 Weeks Than Were Killed in All Global Conflicts Annually Since 2019

Gaza injured child

One child’s death is one too many, but these are grave violations of epic proportions,” said the humanitarian group Save the Children. “A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety.”

Source: Israel Has Killed More Kids in 3 Weeks Than Were Killed in All Global Conflicts Annually Since 2019

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‘No one trusts Netanyahu’: Israel’s war cabinet divided amid Gaza conflict | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz (not pictured) in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv , Israel , 28 October 2023. ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS

“This is a very difficult military campaign so you want a responsible prime minister and there is not a single person [in the government] that trusts Netanyahu – that’s the main issue for this cabinet,” Mekelberg said.

According to a poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute released last week, trust in the government collapsed to a 20-year low with 20 percent of Israelis saying they trusted Netanyahu’s cabinet – eight percentage points lower compared with June.

 

Source: ‘No one trusts Netanyahu’: Israel’s war cabinet divided amid Gaza conflict | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera

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Israel must protect Gazans, end settler violence: US

Gaza City

Biden demands a “Humanitarian Pause”? America seems to have listened to Albo and calls for a “Humanitarian Pause” admitting to an overreach in revenge death and destruction by Israel. Dutton’s left alone squawking on 2GB about loyalty and allies when even Israelis and Jews worldwide are calling for a ceasefire. Dutton has been left an isolated comic character out of Dr Strangelove

They heard what Peter Dutton said and gave him the finger. Peter Dutton is the only one Anglo- ally Israel has left and he’s not a country just a…..

The White House says Israel has a responsibility to protect civilians in Gaza and must “rein in” Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Source: Israel must protect Gazans, end settler violence: US