However, the unimaginable sufferings of the Gaza population have now brought Starmer to his senses. Since entering No 10 Downing Street on July 5, he has shown fresh thinking over Gaza. He has not only broken with the approaches of his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, but also distanced the UK from the US. And it is not hard to see why.
A voice that reminds us of these ideas can carry weight because of what it says, not because of the identity of who says it. The values articulated shouldn’t be accepted because they’re Jewish, but because they’re values that should carry meaning for those struggling today for freedom.
we can turn attention away from identities of people, which are so often invoked to justify oppression (the need for a Jewish state, the defense of the Jewish people, the superiority of one people to uncivilized others, and so on). We can draw attention instead to traditions of emancipation, which can be meaningful to anyone who cares about them.
A new Israeli human rights group report shows that Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention centers during the war on Gaza are subjected to torture, sexual abuse, violence, humiliation, starvation, sleep deprivation, and denial of medical care.
“There was a water well in the school that provided for more than 300 families inside the school, and the Israeli army directly bombed the well,” Hamada said. “The world ignores our slaughter, if these scenes were published somewhere else, it would be a crime that everyone would condemn.”
This brings us to the question Netanyahu’s speech forces upon us. Does the U.S. control Israel or does Israel control the U.S.? Is the apartheid state another of Washington’s client regimes, albeit — let’s borrow a little from the Chinese — a client with Zionist characteristics? Or is Israel a case — rare, if not unique — of a distant outpost that dictates to the imperial center? The periphery exercises power over the metropole, this to say: This would have to be something new under the sun, surely.
The immediate answer, perhaps obvious, is the terrorist at the podium. It cannot be lost on anyone paying attention that more or less every member of Congress in attendance — and good on the 100 or so members who boycotted — has in the past taken and continues to take money from the Israel lobby, notably but not only the profoundly antidemocratic American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the infamous AIPAC.
Netanyahu knew this. He spoke to some people who genuinely believe in the Zionist cause and some people concerned with the imperium’s geopolitical position in the Middle East. Some and some, O.K. But everybody he addressed, allowing for exceptions, was on the take from AIPAC. Thomas Massie, the libertarian Republican from Kentucky and one of the exceptions, told us just how AIPAC works — a combination of bribes, threats, and coercion — in quite unbelievable detail when Tucker Carlson interviewed him on these subjects a couple of months ago.
Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who also served as Israel’s Defence Minister, had this to say in a video interview on the forces taking over in Israel:
“When you talk about Smotrich and Ben Gvir: They have a Rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the Rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War’. Do you [not] hear them talking in terms of the Last War; or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse”.
“My hair stands on end when I say that – as he said it. I learned and grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors and ‘never again’. It is Mein Kampf in reverse: Jewish supremacy: and therefore [Smotrich] says: “My wife won’t go into a room with an Arab”. It is anchored in ideology. And then actually what he aspires to – as soon as possible – is to go to a big war. A war of Gog and Magog. How do you start the flames? A massacre like the [1994] Cave of the Patriarchs? Baruch Goldstein is a student of this Rabbi. Ben Gvir has hung up Goldstein’s picture [in his house]”.
“This is what goes into the decision-making process in the Israeli government”.
Rabbi Dov Lior has been described by Netanyahu as the “élite unit that leads Israel”, because of his influence and control over the settler forces. The 1948 Irgun, drawing heavily on the Mizrahim, is being reborn?
In addition to physical or psychological abuse, bullies use power in relationships to pressure others to adopt their world views. The bullying may appear in letters, lobbying, radio and television interviews, secret meetings with politicians and business leaders and even in legal action against those who criticise the bullies’ points of view.
The controversy arose because of comments Smotrich, a far-right politician, made about humanitarian aid at a conference on Monday.
“We bring in aid because there is no choice,” he said. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Critics argued that Smotrich’s remarks conveyed not only indifference to Palestinian suffering and death but also, more specifically, an attempt to justify Israel’s documented practice of blocking or disrupting aid from reaching the Gaza Strip.
The brave and meticulous Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, has issued a report aptly entitled “Welcome to Hell” on the functioning of the Israeli prison system, in which it concludes that Israeli authorities are now routinely using torture on Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli society is divided over the arrest of 10 soldiers for the brutal gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner caught on video.
The video, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him.
“Look, the question really isn’t about rape,” Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “The question is – can Israel, or Israelis, be reproached for anything they do in defence of the state?”
In an astonishing “Fuck you” to the survivors of the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, several Western countries including the US, Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the UK have just dropped a bombshell: reportedly announcing their ambassadors are shunning this week’s commemorations in solidarity with Israel.
Last week the mayor of Nagasaki, Shiro Suzuki, rescinded Israel’s invitation to the annual peace ceremony. It was a gentle but pointed diplomatic message: Lest we forget what it was – and still is – all about.
The Israel lobby built its strength on the fact that its opposition was politically weak. Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro and the massive cost it took to defeat Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush show this is no longer the case.
Israel’s anti-Palestinian racism is a glaring example of the dehumanization that racism entails and the murderous brutality racism enables. This is what the world has seen play out in Gaza these last ten months. There could be no better example, right now, of why Israeli racism should not get a pass in the U.S., nor anywhere, ever again.
The Biden administration has instead supported Israel at every turn, while at the same time haplessly protesting what Israel is doing or not doing.
To make matters worse, neither Congress, nor Republican leaders, nor the mainstream media, has pushed the Biden administration to pressure Israel to change its behavior in any meaningful way.
This disturbing situation raises the obvious question: why?
The answer: the awesome power of the Israel lobby.
How do we continue with business as usual after another friend, and another icon of Palestinian journalism, was brutally killed by Israel for doing his job?
While efforts may have been made to mount a defense of assassinations such as that of Hamas’ Haniyeh, there is a simple truth: Lethal force is highly restricted, and assassination is never legal.
Israel began as and Agent of America to maintain order and American interests in the Middle East. They now need an escalation of war in the region to prove that an Eretz Israel is necessary. However, in doing so they have jumped the gutter and become the enemy and are bringing America down.
The fatality figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel, writes Jonathan Cook.
“The 100 unit has been assigned to guard the prisoners. Their job is supposed to be to intervene when there is disorder. They are rough people. So they are guarding the prisoners. You are letting animals guard animals without supervision and in nightmarish conditions.”
The bombing on Sunday was not the first time that the Israeli army has targeted the tents of the displaced people in Gaza. Just last month, an Israeli airstrike targeted tents housing displaced Palestinains in the al-Mawasi area outside of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing 90 people. Two weeks ago, an Israeli strike targeted a tent housing journalists inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, killing one person.
“Rapists as heroes,” Gideon Levy said in Haaretz newspaper last week. “Heroically sodomizing shackled and helpless men. How can we dare to complain about their Nukhba? [Hamas’s elite fighters, some of whom are accused of rape on October 7th].
“Even the shocking number of prisoners who have died in detention and the number of amputees do not tell the story of the evil and the sadism of Sde Teiman in full. The brutality, torture and inhumane conditions were, insofar as is known, accompanied by various kinds of sexual violence.
Israel has been known to carry out FALSE FLAG operations to pursue their goals. The US Liberty springs to mind with 214 dead and injured American sailors and Israel blaming Egypt. They want the US to engage in a wider war. How would they go about that? They have proved to be unreliable allies
An Intercept investigation found 63 U.S. bases, garrisons, and shared facilities in the region. U.S. troops are “sitting ducks,” according to one expert.
People often object to criticisms of Israel’s ongoing mass atrocity in Gaza by saying, “Well what SHOULD Israel have done in response to October 7 then?” They say it like the question should confound you, as though it’s some kind of thought-terminating unanswerable Zen koan or something.
The back-to-back assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran were acts of either strategic folly or willful pyromania. While Israel has claimed responsibility for the former and remained cryptic about the latter, there is little doubt that it orchestrated both — and even some of its allies believe that, this time, the Israelis went too far.
“In every classroom in Israel there is a map,” says Nadav Weiman. “But it is a map without any green line and without any names of Palestinian villages or towns. Between the river to the sea it’s only Israel.”
Weiman is the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers who have served in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since September 2000 and who seek peace, an end to the Israeli occupation and the release of Israeli hostages.
What democracy would accept a member of parliament agreeing that it was permissible and acceptable for its soldiers to sexually abuse political prisoners by “putting a stick up their rectum” and reinforcing this torture and war crimes by saying, “Yes, with these people everything is acceptable. Everything”. That so called “democracy” is Israel. It has for years boasted about it’s military being the “most moral army in the world” when in fact it is now the most immoral army in the world run by a fascist, brutal, extremist, rogue government dominated by messianic settlers.
The Israeli leader had hoped to press the reset button and return to his silly theories about the irrelevance of Palestine to the Middle East, and the world. He was proven wrong, again, making him a false prophet or, at best, a failed leader.
U.S. politicians have been able to undercut such logic by touting vague notions of “national security” in response. But that excuse won’t work with respect to Israel. Let Israel worry about its “national security” while Americans focus on funding our needs.
Not only could antiwar and pro-Palestinian activists center the financial costs of gifting weapons to Israel as an election issue, but Harris could use it as political cover for doing the morally right thing.
The U.S. is vowing to defend the state of Israel from all security threats “from Iran and its proxies.” But what’s it’s really doing is committing to help Israel attack other countries.
And so does the slaughter. If Washington and Tel Aviv have their way, the slaughter could well expand in ways we can only imagine. Lindsey Graham’s resolution to attack Iran and its oil refineries must be stifled. Those who support Israel without reservation should be challenged wherever they go. Israel must be boycotted, divested from and sanctioned. The war profiteers and their bankers cannot be let off the hook. Business as usual should not include accepting the genocide of the Palestinians. The occupation must end.
So some quadcopter with a video attachment connected to an Amazon or Google database saw someone going into a school shelter that looked at least vaguely like one of the fighters in the massive Israeli database. So whether this individual was a fighter or not, the Israeli Air Force scrambled to strike the shelter, at a robot’s orders.
That is a ridiculous situation and one that makes a mockery of US propaganda declaring the US to be a “leader of free nations” or “the world’s most powerful country.”
At a minimum, the New York Times should be honest about that, and not blithely claim that US “seems not in control’ of its purported ‘“ally” Israel.
olddogthoughts 
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