The U.S. and more than a dozen other nations suspended funding for UNRWA in the wake of the Israeli allegations. In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini later called an act of “reverse due process,” the agency terminated nine employees in response to Israel’s claims, despite admitting to having no evidence to support their firing.
Source: US State Department Claims It Hasn’t Seen Reports of Israel Torturing UNRWA Staff
Instead of dealing with the clear warnings he was given, the Israeli prime minister focused on crushing democracy, establishing his status as the supreme ruler and transferring resources to the ultra-Orthodox and the settlements
The Democratic Party had one last chance to implement the kind of New Deal Reforms that could save us from another Trump presidency and Christian fascism. It failed.
News Corp’s attempts to claim victimhood over the Moomba Parade’s cancellation mirrors the exact viewpoints it so often seeks to chastise as “soft”, Dr Victoria Fielding writes.
Source: Murdoch media weaponises victimhood until convenient to itself
I would think that if the Marriage Equality plebiscite were, as he sates, a human rights issue, the law that was changed would have been one which denied a human right and therefore needed changing. Which then leads onto the proposed plebiscite to gain endorsement for a change to the law which would allow nuclear power plants to operate in Australia sometime in the next twenty years or so since that is how long it will take according to the various commentators on this topic, coal fired plants will have to keep operating and CO2 emissions will keep rising as renewable energy sources are rejected.
Source: No wind power, no solar farms. Let’s go NUCLEAR! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Right now, for example, there is no mechanism to stop any Australian Government from taking us into another foolish war. They can’t even be made to debate that on the floor of Parliament itself.
Source: Gaza explosions expose Australian faultlines – Pearls and Irritations
Source: Sen Van Hollen Says Netanyahu Spreading ‘Flat Out Lies’ About UNRWA
On Monday, the Times of Israel reported that the country’s forces intended to unilaterally dismantle UNRWA within Gaza, with its functions hived off to other agencies of the military’s choosing.
While it was not clear which agencies the Israeli military had designated, or if negotiations were under way, the report did note that this move against the agency came as the latest in a longstanding campaign to discredit it, which goes back to UNRWA’s 1949 founding, mandating the agency to support displaced Palestinian refugees until they could return home.
As hunger worsens, with 15 children reported to have starved to death in recent days, UNRWA’s role in helping prevent what agencies are warning of a “humanitarian crisis” grows increasingly vital.
Other agencies, such as the Danish Refugee Council have warned that neither they nor other NGOs still operating in Gaza can replicate UNRWA’s role.
Source: Here’s What Pramila Patten’s UN Report on Oct. 7 Sexual Violence Actually Said – ScheerPost
Source: Say What These Attacks Are: Not Just Islamophobia, but Anti-Palestinianism
We only hear what Hamas did from Israelis but here we see what Israelis do not just hear the wild stories of propagandists
It was the tongue that stopped me cold. The tongue and the savage, shit-eating grin on the soldier’s face as he and his buddy mug for the camera. Look at us! Look what we found. It’s a bra, a woman’s bra, a Palestinian woman’s bra left in a home she was forced to flee. And now it’s ours, and we’re going to play with it because we can, and we’re going to take it on the street and pose with it and show the world who we are, frat boys pumped for genocide.
There is another picture circulating. It shows an IDF soldier with a box of new white jeweled dress high heels, which he’s looted from a Palestinian woman. He’s going to bring them home and give them as a present to his woman instead. A souvenir from a genocide.
THE BATTLE between democratic freedoms and despotic oppression worldwide will be intense this year. As we saw here last month, more people will vote for national governments in 2024 than in any year ever.
Source: Trump & Orbán: The deceptive allure of strong men in power
Palestine In Israeli School Books
Biden is still Israel’s patron, but is attempting to restrain it from its worst instincts under Bibi. Trump fueled and empowered Bibi’s worst instincts during his presidency. Schumer gets credit for his candor and cojones for stating the obvious: It’s time for Bibi to go. It may be too late for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, but that Schumer seems genuinely to want one at this juncture is significant. It matters that Schumer is a descendant of Holocaust survivors, an observant Jew, a Zionist and highest ranking Jewish-American elected official in history.
Max Blumenthal discussed the crisis within the Democratic Party as the party grassroots revolts against President Joe Biden’s vehement support for Israel’s rampage in the besieged Gaza Strip, where at least 30,000 have been killed to date – mostly women and children.
Blumenthal points the finger at the Democratic Party establishment for crushing any and all iterations of antiwar politics, and illustrates how its most prominent figures have been bought off by the Israel lobby.
‘The Genocide Democrats’ — Max Blumenthal Speaks at Woman’s National Democratic Club – ScheerPost
In the past 24 hours of the Israeli attack on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces committed 13 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in at least 149 Palestinians killed and 300 wounded, according to medical sources.
Meanwhile, ambulance and rescue teams have been unable to reach hundreds of wounded and killed, with dead bodies still trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads as Israeli occupation forces continue to obstruct the arrival of medical teams.
Source: Updated: Day 161 of Israeli Attack on Gaza: 149 Killed | – IMEMC News
Shawwa had just returned from distributing humanitarian aid and was still wearing his Anera jacket when the shelter in central Gaza where he was staying with his extended family was hit, according to the charity.
Israel claimed that Muhammad Abu Hasna, who it said was a Hamas fighter, was killed in the strike. According to Reuters, citing a statement from Hamas, the Palestinian faction said “Abu Hasna was a member of its police force and condemned his killing as a ‘cowardly assassination’ meant to disrupt aid distribution.”
Israel’s targeting and killing around a dozen Palestinian police officers guarding humanitarian aid envoys has forced UN agencies and other organizations to suspend aid missions due to security concerns.
UNRWA, which has the largest humanitarian footprint in Gaza, said that more than 150 of its facilities have been hit since 7 October and more than 400 people were “killed while seeking shelter under the UN flag.”
Source: US charity demands probe into killing of Gaza aid worker | The Electronic Intifada
It’s not just the defense industry — plenty of US-based corporations do business with Israel and are complicit in its violation of Palestinian human rights in Gaza and beyond. Here are some of the worst offenders.
Source: The Obscene US Profiteering From Israeli War and Occupation
That is how, for Israelis anyway, we can understand how good people do bad things. And, when good people do bad things, they need good people to stop them doing bad things.
Source: When good people do bad things – Pearls and Irritations
Friends of the Earth is calling on the government to extend the existing temporary decommissioning levy to force the oil and methane industry to pay for world-standard onshore breaking and recycling facilities.
Source: Plan to dump eight toxic oil platforms off Gippsland – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath … It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country,” he warned while talking about the impact of offshoring on the country’s auto industry and his plans to increase tariffs on foreign-made cars.
Source: On Campaign Trail In Ohio, Trump Warns Of ‘Bloodbath’ If He Loses In November | HuffPost Latest News
If America is to survive as a functioning democracy, we must recover and restore trust while diminishing the power massive corporate monopolies (including media monopolies) have over our everyday lives.
That means overturning corrupt Supreme Court decisions that allow politicians to pick or purge voters; that give the morbidly rich the “right” to own their very own politicians; and that limit the ability of working people to form a union.
Political dark money and racial/religious hatred are like heroin or fentanyl being injected into the bloodstream of our nation. Over the short term they numb us; over the long term they kill our trust in democracy itself.
Source: Why Trust is the Thing Enemies of Democracies Always Target First | The Smirking Chimp
It suits the Coalition to be seen as the closest party to Israel. The Trumpification of the LNP proceeds apace. This is purely Australian domestic politics – a principle-free zone that leads to bad policy.
Anyway, the longer we’ve waited to resume funding, the fewer UNRWA staff there are to pay.
At least 165 UNRWA team members have been killed on duty and more than 400 people have been killed while sheltering under the UN flag.
But none of that matters here. It’s only what domestic wedging can be attempted or risked or avoided.
Source: Australia’s ‘utter embarrassment’ in Israel-Palestine conflict
In this light, the Senate majority leader’s comments should not be taken as an effort to engineer a color revolution on the streets of Tel Aviv, but rather a last attempt to prevent Israel from descending to a level of ostracism from which even the U.S. would strain to rescue it. “Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world,” Schumer said.
Israel’s supporters who were incensed by his words would be better off taking them as wise counsel.
Source: Pro-Israel Right Outraged by Chuck Schumer’s Netanyahu Speech
Thus, the leaked emails prove beyond any doubt that both the Israeli government and the IDF liaise with some of the most powerful people in the entertainment world in order to push forward a pro-Israel message and stamp out any deviance from that line.
Together, the Sony Archive – a cache of emails published by Wikileaks – prove that influential entertainment magnates attempted to whitewash Israeli crimes and present the situation as defending itself from an impending “genocide”, liaised with Israeli military and government officials in order to coordinate their message, attempted to cancel those who spoke out against the injustice, and put financial and social pressure on institutions who hosted artists criticizing the apartheid government’s actions.
AIPAC attendees applauded his pursuit of genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, neighborhoods wiped out, and the Israeli military has overseen starvation policies now taking the lives of Palestinian children.
Source: AIPAC applauds Netanyahu genocide | The Electronic Intifada
Hebrew University in Jerusalem has suspended an internationally renowned Palestinian professor for saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a feminist scholar whose work focuses on the impacts of militarization, surveillance and violence on the lives of Palestinian women and children. She made the remarks in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday, where she also said it was time to “abolish Zionism.” Shalhoub-Kevorkian has been under pressure to resign from her position at Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law Institute of Criminology and at the School of Social Work and Public Welfare since October, when she signed a petition of over 1,000 academics calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This comes as no universities have been left standing in the Gaza Strip, and nearly 5,000 university students and staff have been killed during Israel’s assault. “I am calling for abolishing Zionism because I see it as very violent towards the people and as causing criminality,” says Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who discusses the atmosphere of silencing and reprisals against those who criticize Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. “Anti-Zionism is to refuse to accept continued dispossession, is to refuse to accept this ideology of supremacy, is to refuse to accept the securitized ideas of one group against the other.”
The start of Operation of Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was accompanied by a deluge of Israeli propaganda. Claims of beheaded babies, infants found in ovens, mass rape, and other heinous atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas circulated far and wide, promoted by a range of interlocutors that included journalists, celebrities, legacy media, and even President Biden himself. Months later, the most outrageous of these claims of Hamas atrocities have been debunked, but the damage has already been done. Ali Abuminah joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Israeli propaganda campaign providing cover for the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of corporate media in these crimes.
Chris Hedges: Oct. 7 and Israel’s propaganda war w/Ali Abunimah – ScheerPost
Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins us to discuss U.S. media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States. Hasan says U.S. media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences. “Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict,” he says. Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news program on MSNBC and Peacock earlier this year. Hasan’s interviews routinely led to viral segments, including his tough questioning of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev, but the cable network announced it was canceling his show in November. The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in U.S. media. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which human rights groups warn would be a massacre. President Biden has said such an escalation is a “red line” for him, but Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead anyway. “Where is the outcry here in the West?” asks Hasan of reports of Israeli war crimes, including the killing of over 100 journalists in the past five months in Gaza and the blockade of aid from the region. “It’s a stain on [Biden’s] record, on America’s conscience.”
Israeli militias expelled between 60,000 and 70,000 inhabitants of the two towns and refugees from nearby villages under direct orders from Yitzhak Rabin – who was at the time director of operations for Operation Dani – with David Ben-Gurion’s agreement. Those who sought shelter in the Lydda mosque were massacred. Between 80 and 176 people inside Dahmash Mosque were massacred with machine guns, grenades and rockets. Twenty-five were killed elsewhere.
The rest were expelled at gunpoint by Rabin in what became known as the “death march” to Ramallah. Old men, women and children fell by the wayside, dying of exhaustion, dehydration and disease.
Money and women’s jewelry were looted at leisure by Israeli soldiers. Some were killed if they resisted. There was so much looting that 1,800 trucks were said to have been loaded with stolen property.
Source: The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
Dear Child, written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges takes the viewer on an uncompromising journey into the life of a child from Gaza living under Israeli bombardment. The film intentionally challenges the viewer to look at their own actions or lack there of, while also hinting at a possible hopeful future.
Source: October 7 Fact Check
Israel has further isolated Gaza by deliberately targeting and destroying communications infrastructure. The resulting communications blackouts have thrust Gaza further into the dark, making it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to share evidence of Israeli war crimes with the outside world. As a result, efforts to push back against Israeli disinformation are severely hindered and Israeli propaganda can run amok.
At the time of writing, Israeli forces have killed over 30,000 Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023. They have targeted hospitals, schools, and civilians fleeing their homes. Israel’s assault is marked not only by the historic scale of violence being inflicted upon Palestinians, but by the unprecedented flood of disinformation being deployed to justify it.
The question that needs to be asked is AIPAC their focus
Source: FBI Warns Gaza War Will Stoke Domestic Radicalization “For Years to Come” – The Intercept
World attention has understandably focused on the horrific violence Israel is inflicting upon the people of Gaza. But the brutal apartheid system in the West Bank has also been intensifying, along with the lethal violence used to enforce it.
Source: Israel’s Rule Over the West Bank Is an Apartheid Regime
The Jewish Communal Fund,
which lets contributors direct their donations, blocks gifts to Jewish Voice for Peace because of its stance on Israel.
Source: Jewish Communal Fund Bars Donations to Jewish Voice for Peace
Only with the media assistance of the money-making media camp followers who regard him as a product to be used essential to their bottom line. This alters Robert Reich’s statement a little that Trump is so talented
To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.
Source: Seriously, Again, How Dumb Is Trump? | The Smirking Chimp
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.