Tag: politics

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Israel Refuses UN Entry to North Gaza to Rescue People From Under Rubble

David Ben Gurion in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos, 5 October 1937.

“Not one village must be left, not one tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.”

 Joseph Weitz, Head of Jewish National Fund, from his diary, December 1940.

“We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.” 

Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, quoted in Israeli National Daily, Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969.

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

David Ben Gurion, Founder of Israel and First Prime Minister; May 1948 to the General Staff, from ‘Ben Gurion’, a biography by Michael Ben Zohar. Published NY 1978.

“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.” 

Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces – New York Times 14 April 1983.

“Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.

Menachem Begin from Iron Wall, by Z’ev Japotinsky p. 25 & Simha Flapan, p. 32

“There were no such thing as Palestinians, It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”

Golda Meir, quoted in The Sunday Times, London and The Washington Post. June 1967. 

“The way to deal with Palestinians is to beat them up. Not once, but repeatedly. Beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable”. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, caught on video speaking to Israeli settlers 2001.

Israel Refuses UN Entry to North Gaza to Rescue People From Under Rubble

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Israeli minister taking ‘legal measures’ against French arms fair ban

Netanyahu accused Macron of a “distressing distortion of history”, saying his country’s founding was achieved by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, not a UN ruling.

Macron told his ministers that Netanyahu “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations general assembly on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

What Netanyahu conveniently ignores is what preceded what he calls the “Arab War” for more than two decades before there was the TERROR of the ZIONIST WAR . Which came first the chicken or the egg is very clear in this case. Their Project was to establish the Palestinian territory and British Mandate as the “Jewish Homeland”

The Jews conducted a war against both the British and Arabs who had initially accepted Jews as asylum seekers and immigrants. Only 2% of the Jews however purchased any land in Palestine and stole the rest. Before 1929 there was no real tension between Palestinians and Jews other than that “manufactured” by the Zionists to fulfil their political ambition. There was no excuse like the Holocaust in Europe.

Israeli minister taking ‘legal measures’ against French arms fair ban

Israel

The Promise: controversy rages, understanding lost-2011

This television series was released in 2011 and resulted in an extreme reaction by Zionist Jews in Australia, almost as extreme as today. Dare anyone reveal the historical truths about Zionist Terror in the takeover of Palestine by the Ashkenazi Jews and show the reality of the birth of Israel it needs to be censored. We stand witness in 23/24 to the continuance of that historical context & truth. Israel & their Lobby continue today to deny that truth and don’t want it told or in any way examined.

Australia’s Jewery as far back as 2011 were able to threaten the ABC & SBS’s funding at government levels for showing this film then reveals attitudes and influences that are even more amplified today. While their objections echoed here have been reduced to little more than trope the true story of Israel’s birth and development remains untold. That the Ashkenazis were only defending themselves in 1945 and the Israelis are still defending themselves today amounts to what has always been Zionist propaganda

How seriously should the ECAJ’s complaint – or feeling in the Jewish community that the series is anti-Semitic and grossly insulting to Holocaust survivors – be taken?

They also object that SBS marketed a fictional account as a historical truth.

The principal objection from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to the series – as explained in a strongly worded and detailed complaint to SBS – is that the “insidious” series involves a collective group libel that:

“Unrelentingly portrays the entire Jewish presence throughout the country, including modern-day Israel, as an act of usurpation by Jews who, without exception, are aliens, predators and thieves and who enforce their usurpation by brutal, racist policies akin to those inflicted by the Nazis upon the Jewish people.”

This is an extraordinary charge. In addition the ECAJ’s concerns are going to be raised via political allies at Senate Estimates hearings in mid-February, to which SBS director Michael Ebeid has been summoned. There is an implied threat to SBS funding.

The Promise: controversy rages, understanding lost

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Jordanians hail as hero man who killed settlers at Allenby crossing

“Everyone came to congratulate us,” said his cousin Sheikh Habis al-Jazi at the funeral of the Jordanian truck driver who fatally shot three Israelis at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank on 8 September, and was himself killed by Israeli guards.

Shooting at Allenby

Maher Thiab Hussein al-Jazi arrived by truck at the goods inspection area on the occupied West Bank side of the Allenby Bridge on Sunday morning and opened fire with a handgun at Israelis operating the crossing.

Yohanan Schuri, Yuri Birenbaum and Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer died of their wounds. All three lived in illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The three settlers were employed as forklift operators by the Israel Airports Authority, a department under the Israeli ministry of transport that manages land crossings.

Israel considers them to be civilians, although they were part and parcel of a military occupation that the International Court of Justice recently declared to be inherently illegal.

Israeli security guards shot and killed al-Jazi on the scene.

Footage circulated on social media, taken by someone from a nearby vehicle behind a fence, shows the lifeless body of al-Jazi. A man with a pistol then approaches the body and shoots al-Jazi in the head at point-blank range, even though he is already incapacitated.

Jordanians hail as hero man who killed settlers at Allenby crossing

Israel

The 1948 Irgun re-born?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel gives a joint address to Congress in the US Capitol in Washington, DC on July 24, 2024. The Prime Minister’s visit caused mixed reactions from Congress, with some members refusing to attend or claiming to have other preexisting commitments. Image:AAP/ Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA

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?

The 1948 Irgun re-born?

Israel

Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education


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.

Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education

Israel, Israel Crimes

Israel lobby ramps up scare campaigns in fear of truth
Israel lobby ramps up scare campaigns in fear of truth

Israel lobby groups have increased efforts to silence those accusing the nation of genocide in Gaza.

The United States makes much of the role of the Iranian Council of Guardians selecting acceptable candidates for political office but ignores the role of its own Council of Guardians, AIPAC, which decides on suitable candidates for office.

U.S. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, once a recipient of lobby largesse, after seeing reality in Palestine on a J Street-funded excursion, called Gaza a genocide and said boycotts were legitimate.  

Israeli lobby groups spent $9.9 million in a Democrat primary to get rid of him in favour of a supporter of Israel.

The scare campaign around rising anti-Semitism, which conflates criticism of Israel’s mass atrocities with prejudice against Jews, is a feature of most of the old colonial countries.

Mary Kostakidis, one of Australia’s most respected journalists, who speaks truth to power, has written regarding the Israeli genocide in Gaza:

‘In an effort to silence me, the Zionist Federation have filed a complaint with the [Australian Human Rights Commission] for racial vilification, aided by a reporter who can’t do his own research.’

The lobby levelled another case of harassment and suspicious accusations against a Palestinian Australian engaged in anti-genocide activity

Hash Tayeh, who had to present himself to the police over alleged anti-Semitic comments, was not charged and his matter has been referred to the Office of Public Prosecutions.

His Caulfield Burgertory outlet was set on fire, allegedly by two men, on 10 November, an attack he claimed was linked to his involvement in a pro-Palestine rally and thus a hate crime.

Then we witnessed the arrest of a Palestinian activist in the Prime Minister’s electoral office.

Sarah Shaweesh, who was asking about the delay in visas for her family in Gaza, was arrested.

The office refused to help her.

She is a key organiser of the 24/7 Gaza sit-in protest in front of the PM’s office.

Israel lobby ramps up scare campaigns in fear of truth

ISRAEL |

Bilal Cleland

Informed Comment

Why Isn’t the Media Reporting on Trump’s Growing Dementia?

A few weeks ago, at a rally in Nevada, Trump told his followers that boat manufacturers are now required to use electric engines. He claimed that someone at a boat company in South Carolina told him, “It’s a problem, sir. They want us to make all-electric boats.” (There is no such requirement.)

Trump then said the South Carolinian warned him “the boat is so heavy it can’t float. Also, it can’t go fast because of the weight.”

Trump continued:

“So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question,’ and [the South Carolinian] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT — very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’

Why Isn’t the Media Reporting on Trump’s Growing Dementia? by Robert Reich | July 8, 2024 – 6:23am | permalink

» article continues…

— from Robert Reich’s Substack

Israel

Palestine is an issue of justice not religion


At the coming elections, many of us will vote on the basis of a party’s or a candidate’s stance on the issue of Palestine. It will be a vote to reject the occupation, apartheid, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and a myriad of other unspeakable horrors. And it will be an appeal to our common humanity to stop the genocide in Gaza and to help Palestinians get peace with justice. I sincerely hope it will not be a religion-based vote.

Palestine is an issue of justice not religion

Israel

It’s fundamental, so it must be right! – » The Australian Independent Media Network

It must be of great comfort to hide behind those fundamental beliefs as non believers are punished for their unbelief. To be so sure of the ‘rightness’ or righteousness of the persecution of ‘others’, whoever they may be, they are not worthy of respect. Not obeying “Everything I have commanded you” is severely punished through persecution and the denial of their humanity.

Source: It’s fundamental, so it must be right! – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Israel

Australia must recognise Palestine to promote peace – Pearls and Irritations

22nd October 2023, Melbourne, Victoria, Australian. The Palestinian Flag and the blurred faces of Supporters of the Pro Palestine Rally, Credit: Contributor: P.j.Hickox / Alamy Stock Photo

If we don’t recognize Palestine we don’t recognize that Israel has killed and wounded over 120,000 people and has continued to illegally occupy seize and settle land disposed of the people living there. Basically, we are washing our hands of the matter like Pontius Pilate. Pilate washed his hands in front of the crowd before announcing, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” The Jewish people shouted in response, “His blood be on us and our children.” It’s a passage that would be used for millennia to persecute the Jewish people.

In opposition, our prime minister and the Labor Party were fierce champions of Palestine and passionate voices for justice. I ask that we summon that spirit of old and do the same in power. Let historians write of us that we were on the right side of history, that we boldly reinforced international law, and that we were a shining beacon and voice for freedom.

It is time to recognise Palestine.

Source: Australia must recognise Palestine to promote peace – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes

Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations

Parliament House 2 Landscape panorama

Australian parliamentarians are responsible for the wellbeing of Australia’s multicultural society but in the last eight months the majority have failed to understand the reaction of those citizens who have experienced colonisation, occupation and war. These Australians are more likely to identify with oppressed people, so they expect their parliamentarians to articulate commitment to international humanitarian law. And of course, as we know many Australians are opposed to militarism as a means to resolve conflict. It is important to recognise those few political representatives who have tried to initiate difficult debate about how Australia should respond when a hitherto trusted ally ignores international law to engage in ethnic cleansing? Australians want to see their representatives and senators engage in informed consideration of complex issues that require sensitivity and courage. Time is running out for many parliamentarians to fulfil their obligations and Australians are watching and waiting for greater responsibility .

Source: Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations

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“This Is a Crime”

StoryMay 30, 2024

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/30/israel_icc?jwsource=cl

A joint investigation by The Guardian and the Israeli +972 Magazine revealed that Israel surveilled, hacked, smeared and threatened top ICC officials, including chief prosecutor Karim Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. The former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, is said to have personally threatened Bensouda. The revelations come just a week after Khan announced he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three top leaders of Hamas. “This is a crime,” Roth says of the Israeli campaign against the ICC. He says the revelations also undermine U.S. claims that Israel can hold itself accountable. “There is no good-faith Israeli investigation. There is a concerted, high-level effort to undermine justice to protect Netanyahu, Gallant and others from war crime charges.”

“This Is a Crime”: Ken Roth on Israel’s Secret War Targeting the ICC to Derail War Crimes Charges

Israel, Israel Crimes

Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission attack on US Universities

The backdrop to the plan of troglodytes in Congress to harass the ICC is that Netanyahu’s government in Israel has run a decade-long campaign of spying and intimidation against the judges of the International Criminal Court, according to an investigation of The Guardian and two Israeli magazines, +972 Mag and Local Call, published by journalists Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan, Yuval Abraham, and Meron Rapoport.

It is important to point out that the same cast of cyber-bullies has run an operation against American universities under the rubric of “Canary Mission,” in coordination with the inquisitorial Ministry of Strategic Affairs. headed by the American Ron Dermer. So reported James Bamford in The Nation. Canary Mission smears and doxes students and professors at American universities who stand for Palestinian rights in an attempt to interfere with their careers and for the purpose of intimidating them and others into silence.

Both operations are Israeli government-inspired but aided by local agents. Despite the US federal law, FARA, which requires agents of foreign governments to register, Israeli such agents have been exempted from such requirements for political reasons, including Canary Mission and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Source: Israel’s Stalking Operation against the ICC is Mirrored in its Canary Mission attack on US Universities

Israel

We don’t know what Australian Jews think about Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

Australia and Israel flag together relations textile cloth fabric texture

Since October 2023, much has been said about what Jewish Australians think about Israel’s war in Gaza. If you’ve been reading the statistics quoted in media articles, you can be forgiven for thinking that the vast majority of Australian Jews support Israel’s war in Gaza and believe that the student protests on Australian University campuses constitute antisemitism and should be shut down. In reality, we have no idea what the majority of Australian Jews feel about either of these issues because there is no representative survey that has asked us.

Instead, the statistics that are stated in media articles, provided by both Jewish and non-Jewish contributors, are ostensibly drawn from a survey that was finalised prior to the attacks of October 7, 2023, the subsequent violence of the Israeli military in Gaza, and actions in support of Gaza on our University campuses. If you read these articles carefully, you will note that the oft cited statistics don’t even relate to the Israeli military actions and the fallout from them. Instead, they cite wide support for Zionism and Israel and conflate this with support for what has unfolded in Gaza over the past seven months.

Source: We don’t know what Australian Jews think about Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes

Biden and Congress Are Destroying International Law for Israel – ScheerPost

Colonialism failed indigenous Australians who have had a continuous genetic and lived connection to the land for 75 years. Their land rights were usurped and unrecognized from 1778- 1992. Australians recently had the opportunity to recognize and reverse the injustice done in the referendum on the Voice but voted “No”.

Zionists have been Colonizing and voting “No” at the point of a gun continuously for less than 100 years and have been doing it in the 21st Century with the support of America in denial of the majority of nations and peoples of the world

Whether it is through more subtle means, as Biden prefers, or the all-out and blatant assault on the rule of law preferred by Republicans, the end result will be the same. This is a moment of truth for the ICC and for international law in general. The world has already failed Gaza, as it has failed Palestine for a century. If there can at least be some justice after the fact, there might at least be something to build a better world on.

Source: Biden and Congress Are Destroying International Law for Israel – ScheerPost

Israel, Israel Crimes

Israel Wants Endless War. Joe Biden Is Going Along for the Ride.

TOPSHOT - Israeli army main battle tanks and other military vehicles are positioned in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on May 9, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the Hamas movement. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP) (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

The legendary Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, whose works remain an influence on U.S. military officers today, wrote in his famous 19th-century treatise “On War” that “war is merely the continuation of politics by other means.” A military general himself advising on how best to wage an armed conflict, Clausewitz nonetheless reminded his readers that the purpose of war is to achieve political goals, not to pursue violence as end to itself, or as a wholesale substitute for diplomacy.

Clausewitz’s words would have been well-heeded by the U.S. and Israel before the start of the current war in the Gaza Strip, which has now reached a painful yet predictable impasse. So far, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded, Israel now faces genocide charges at the International Court of Justice, and Hamas control is already returning to parts of Gaza previously declared conquered by Israel.

Source: Israel Wants Endless War. Joe Biden Is Going Along for the Ride.

Israel

Palestine and History: Macklemore v. Hillary Clinton

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered herself of some ahistorical and distorted remarks about Palestine on Morning Joe, maintaining that the young people protesting the Gaza atrocities do not know history.

Ms. Clinton’s self-serving description of the 2000 Camp David process has been debunked by many historians. In fact, her husband Bill Clinton promised in the Oslo Accords in 1993 that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank by 1997. He then allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage that process and allowed the Israelis to double the number of squatters they sent in to the Palestinian West Bank to steal property and terrorize people. When Netanyahu went out and Ehud Barak came in, Clinton sponsored negotiations, but Barak was maddeningly vague about what he would offer and never produced a text that Yasser Arafat could sign. It is not clear why Arafat needed to sign anything more; he already signed the Oslo treaty, which should have resulted in an Israeli withdrawal that never came. Soon thereafter Barak lost to Ariel Sharon, who was as determined to sabotage any land for peace deal as Netanyahu had been, and he wrecked the whole process.

Her placing of all the blame on the Palestinians is typical of inside-the-Beltway Goy Zionism, and is profoundly ahistorical. The young people can’t be fooled by these glib words. They see what they see.

Source: Palestine and History: Macklemore v. Hillary Clinton

Israel, Israel Crimes

A Speculation About Biden, Trump, Israel, the USA and Gaza Politics – CounterPunch.org

Then Vice President Joe Biden visit to Israel March 2016 Meet with PM Benjamin Netanyahu

[1] The Zionist Lobby (AIPAC et al.) is stringing President Biden along with just enough money to keep him “in line” with Israel’s demands—but The Lobby much prefers Trump, to whom they may be giving even more money.

Source: A Speculation About Biden, Trump, Israel, the USA and Gaza Politics – CounterPunch.org

Israel, Israel Crimes

Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill – ScheerPost

The chief architect behind the TikTok bill is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose biggest donor is AIPAC

In December 2023, MintPress investigated The 10/7 Project, a new Zionist lobby entity founded by AIPAC, ADL, AJC, JFNA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The outfit was initially intended to be a very public affair, promoting human interest stories and atrocity propaganda generated by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the media while elevating its eponymous date to 9/11 levels in the American public mind.

The 10/7 Project has, to say the least, failed in this mission not least because citizen activists and journalists have challenged Israeli propaganda and exposed the realities of the Gaza genocide, with such devastating effect, on platforms such as TikTok. As such, it is only to be expected that the same lobbying organizations behind this effort have redoubled their quest for narrative control. If the information war cannot be won fairly, the only option is to nobble all opposition via straight-up censorship.

Source: Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill – ScheerPost

Israel

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner calls for ethnic cleansing of Gaza to ‘Finish the Job’ – Pearls and Irritations
September 20, 2022, New York City, New York, USA: JARED KUSHNER attends the 2022 Concordia Annual Summit held at the SheratonTimes Square Hotel. Image: Alamy/Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press Wire

Trump Heights already exists in the occupied Golan Heights make room for a Trump development in Gaza

Kushner, who served as a key Middle East adviser to Trump, said that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable” and urged Israel to “clean it up.”

“I know that that’s been refused, but [with] the right diplomacy I think it would be possible,” Kushner added. “But in addition to that, the thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there. I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that that’s a better option to do so you can go in and finish the job.”

Source: Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner calls for ethnic cleansing of Gaza to ‘Finish the Job’ – Pearls and Irritations

Israel, Israel Crimes

The Israeli public is dispirited. So why is the right euphoric?

Ministers and MKs dance during the 'Victory Conference' for the resettlement of Gaza at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Zionists the “revisionist muscle-minded Jews” have always fomented chaos, division and threat while waiting for a distracted world. Until the formation of Israel in 1948 they were terrorists. They guerillas conducting a war against both  Britain and indigenous Palestinians. They knew the British Empire was decolonising and that the Palestinians would resist their invasion. But India, China and Korea were a bigger distraction. 1967 saw America busy with Vietnam so using their own “Bethlehem Directive” as an excuse they yelled “invasion” and attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan conducting the 6-day war netting and illegally occupying and settling even more land.

Today it’s Ukraine and Russia that have enabled another perfect storm and an effort to complete more of what was always their intended plan Eretz Israel= The Greater Israel and Final Nakba. All they needed was 7/10 which Israeli intel knew was coming and did nothing about.

The collective despondency derives from various factors, including the lingering trauma of October 7, the soldiers who continue to be killed in Gaza, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis evacuated from the southern and northern regions, the precarious economic situation, and the hostages still held in captivity.

However, it also reflects a deep understanding among significant portions of the Jewish public of several things: that the war in Gaza is not going anywhere; that the total defeat of Hamas is not a realistic goal; that the belief that military force will release the hostages is hollow; and that mass population transfer of Palestinians is not possible, both because Palestinians will refuse to leave and because no one wants to take them in.

Source: The Israeli public is dispirited. So why is the right euphoric?

Israel

Not just the UNRWA report: Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
Bald, bearded man lying exhausted on a reclined hospital bench, with a blanket pulled over him

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: Not just the UNRWA report: Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera

Israel

“Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Hebrew Univ. Suspension | Democracy Now!

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.”

Source: “Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Hebrew Univ. Suspension | Democracy Now!

Israel

Biden’s SOTU on Gaza: Israeli Daughter of Freed Hostage & Palestinian American Professor Respond | Democracy Now!

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,”

Source: Biden’s SOTU on Gaza: Israeli Daughter of Freed Hostage & Palestinian American Professor Respond | Democracy Now!

Israel

The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7 | Democracy Now!

We speak with Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim of The Intercept about their exposé of a major New York Times piece into alleged mass rapes committed by Hamas militants on October 7 that raises serious questions about the accuracy of the story. The Times article was headlined “’Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” and its release in late December helped the Israeli government to justify the ongoing war on Gaza and to paint pro-Palestine supporters abroad as not caring about sexual violence. One of the reporters of the Times piece, Israeli freelancer Anat Schwartz, is being investigated by the Times for her social media activity, which included dehumanizing language and endorsements of violence against Palestinians in Gaza. ”The New York Times has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here,” says Scahill, who criticizes the newspaper for not issuing any corrections for their flawed reporting. We also hear from Ryan Grim about how the flawed Times article touched off “extremely intense debate” inside the newsroom. “They’re used to external criticism, but the amount of internal criticism they’re getting has them on the back foot,” he says.

Source: The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7 | Democracy Now!

Israel

Heartbroken by Israel – CounterPunch.org

Long ago, I came to believe that being a Jew, even a secular one like me, entailed certain responsibilities. A people who had suffered so much yet survived were obligated, if not honored, to serve as witnesses and supporters of other oppressed people and to live in the public interest, to model ethical lives. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Sandy Koufax all made me proud, while I felt ashamed of Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.

I accepted his offer to meet and talk. We became friends. Over more than 40 years he’s joined Rabbi Landman as my spiritual advisor, officiating at my wedding, while offering rational possibilities in chaotic times. Of course, given the world we’re in, we’ve been talking far more urgently of late. Yes, Hamas are thugs and vandals, but how is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any different in his behavior?

The truth is we shouldn’t have to choose between them. It’s important to get rid of them both, while, at least in our thinking, separating two power-mad and murderous ruling bodies from their people, most of whom just want peace. How can we use the “ethical monotheism” of Judaism to find common ground and a country for each? We don’t have that answer and don’t even know if it’s possible, but at least we should know what the only true goal is: to end the present horror. And that would be good for the Jews, with or without God.

Source: Heartbroken by Israel – CounterPunch.org

Israel

Human Rights? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The Declaration of Human Rights was written as a response to the inhumanity of the Holocaust which saw the killing of 13 million people because of their race, their religion, their ideologies were not acceptable to the Nazi regime in Germany. The races targeted were Jews and Gypsies, two marginalised groups, marginalised not just in Germany, but in much of Europe, and marginalised for centuries, Jews for their religious beliefs, Gypsies were ‘the wandering spirits of the earth’. On ideologies, these included homosexuals and people with disabilities.

Palestinians are marginalised in Israel, but not just in Israel, also in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt where they are placed in Refugee camps, denied employment, treated as second class people and have really nowhere to go.

It seems those who ignore history are likely to repeat it while those who know history can only look on in wondrous amazement.

Source: Human Rights? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Israel, Israel Crimes

Time to occupy Israel – Pearls and Irritations

Hourglass on Israel and Palestine flags close up.

This century has seen a shift in the term Antisemitism. Away from Jews, as the victims of Germans, to Palestinians. They are the victims of Israel’s adoption of more aggressive policies since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin the Nobel Peace Prize-winning moderate PM who was assassinated by the avaricious extreme right coalition of minority parties currently holding power united in exchange for driving their extreme policies. The policies a Jewish Apartheid State in control of the Judiciary Education and Army to realign control over all of Palestine from the “river to the sea”

To have the appearance of a Democracy the fully formed Fascist State must ensure of an Institutional Jewish voting majority. This means the priority to the ethnic cleansing of the current number of Palestinians, the creation of an even more regulated Apartheid State, or as their final solution the one the Germans had. If not gas chambers in the short term then a guaranteed form of birth reduction in the long term.

Proposals for an occupation of Israel would require sovereignty to be redefined. Current definitions foster violence. Borders must be protected by force of arms. Within those borders, states such as Israel claim entitlement to defend themselves even by attacking people in lands they occupy.

Source: Time to occupy Israel – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

Gov. Hochul’s Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812

There are many things wrong with Hochul’s remark. First, Gaza is recognized by the UN and most countries in the world as an occupied territory over which Israel is the occupying power. It isn’t an independent country. It has no port, airport, or heavy armaments. It is almost completely surrounded by Israel, including from the sea and the skies, and even the Egyptian checkpoint of Gaza is de facto controlled by Israeli policy. Israel has the basic right of self-defense, as do all United Nations member states under its charter. But it doesn’t have the right to wage a total war, to wipe out 30,000 people in Gaza, the bulk of them innocent non-combatants, or to ethnically cleanse 1.9 million people. It has a right to defend itself from the Hamas organization, but not to destroy Gaza. As an occupying power it has a special responsibility to ensure the welfare of the Palestinian non-combatants of Gaza, a responsibility it has abandoned with glee.

Source: Gov. Hochul’s Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812

Israel

Israel’s dignity will be damaged, Hamas will be crowned winner, but the war will end – Pearls and Irritations

map - destination: Israel

Israel’s leadership isn’t about the wisest course of action it’s about material goals to be achieved.  It’s about control over Gaza and its gas fields. Everything we have seen is a cheap investment for Israel”arms for nothing and land for free for the future return. Even the public relations battle later will be relatively nothing compared with the years of wealth to be had. The precedents for their methods have been set in the historical record. You take as much as possible and return as little as required. Israel has the cultural capital to remain the West’s favorite actor because their supporters would need to admit they’ve been scammed all these 100 years. Far from it if one adds the Ben Gurion Canal to the strategic mix The US and UK have been well and truly co-conspirators in the race to dominate World Trade routes over China. This war is for Gaza’s land, gas and devaluation of the Suez Canal

The wisest course of action that Israel should have taken a long time ago was to voluntarily release the security prisoners as a gesture and not just as a concession in negotiations. But there is no chance of that happening – it is too smart. Freeing 1,500 prisoners, as Hamas is asking, is neither a disaster nor is it painful. It will bring the hostages home. Disaster and pain will only result if they are not rescued.Nor would it be a disaster or painful to bring an end to this cursed war, during which Israel lost its humanity without achieving its goals from the indiscriminate killing and destruction, the likes of which have only been seen in the most brutal of wars.

Source: Israel’s dignity will be damaged, Hamas will be crowned winner, but the war will end – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

Israel’s national security minister prefers Trump in power — RT World News

Israel’s national security minister prefers Trump in power

Lets Talk “Terrorist & Terrorism” . Ben Gvir was designated a “Terrorist by the State of Israel”. He is now their Minister for National Security. How is that?

Israel’s “Proud Boy” openly prefers Trump for President and says he won’t be dictated to by Netanyahu or America. It really is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

He first joined a right-wing youth movement affiliated with Moledet, a party which advocated transferring Arabs out of Israel, and then joined the youth movement of the even more radical Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was eventually designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed by the Israeli government.[16][17]  When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was exempted from service by the IDF due to his extreme-right political background.[18][15]

Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has criticized US President Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, arguing that the situation would be “completely different” if former President Donal Trump was in power.

“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel (to Gaza), which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “If Trump was in power, the US conduct would be completely different.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was appointed as a National Security Minister in December 2022, is known for his far-right views. He previously called for the occupation of Gaza and the expulsion of the Palestinian population from the enclave. He also threatened to bring down Netanyahu’s governing coalition if the PM is too soft on Hamas.

Source: Israel’s national security minister prefers Trump in power — RT World News

Israel

Chris Hedges: The Silence of the Damned – ScheerPost

The Sword of Damocles Mr Fish

IS REALITY

There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.” Clinics, along with ambulances – 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank – have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016. Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers. 

The dehumanization of Palestinians is lifted from the playbook of all settler colonial projects, including our own. This racism, where people of color are branded as “human animals,” is coded within the DNA of our institutions. It infects those chosen to lead these institutions. It lies at the core of our national identity. It is why the two ruling parties and the institutions that sustain them side with Israel. It feeds the perverted logic of funneling weapons and billions of dollars in support to sustain Israel’s occupation and genocide.

History will not judge us kindly. But it will revere those who, under siege, found the courage to say no.

Source: Chris Hedges: The Silence of the Damned – ScheerPost

Uncategorized

Toxic effects of censorship on Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

Bandaged mouth of a man with the word censored in English

They are being killed arrested and targeted in any IDF’s radius of operation.

Doctors, Teachers, Journalists, Academics are being disciplined, hauled before disciplinary bodies and even sacked for criticising the slaughter in Gaza and, most heinous sin of all, for mentioning genocide. Arrayed against those professionals is a lobby promoting the notion that criticism of Israeli government policies is anti-Semitic, hence the need to censor commentary about the massacres in Gaza.

Source: Toxic effects of censorship on Gaza – Pearls and Irritations

Israel

Australia’s withholding of aid to Gaza a human rights disgrace

Has this decision been foisted on them by the Australian Israeli Lobby, the LNP, Murdoch, or IPA? It’s certainly not a decision ALP voters would expect of their government. If Palestinian refugees came by boat would they find themselves in forced detention in open-air offshore concentration camps again? We know what Peter Dutton’s position is on that score Yes. While telling Australia it’s a holiday resort compared to where they are now. Israel will be the people smugglers and supply the boats with the foreign aid they already get from us no doubt.

There can be little more morally degenerate than the enabling of and cooperation with what the ICJ has warned is Israel’s “plausible genocide” in Gaza. Wong and Albanese have lost all moral authority and should prepare themselves for their every public utterance to be greeted with contempt, derision and scorn.

The Australian Government has paused contributing to the distribution of aid to Gaza, a decision likely influenced by our toxic allegiance to the USA. Dr Jennifer Wilson reports.

Source: Australia’s withholding of aid to Gaza a human rights disgrace

Israel, Israel Crimes

Israel’s Ministers attend this conference in favor of the Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza. That “joke” about beach front properties was always MORE THAN REAL

https://aje.io/86vyrq

https://aje.io/av8a82?update=2660615

Families of the captives also slammed this conference [calling for building illegal settlements in Gaza], saying the ministers who were dancing there, were “dancing on the blood” of 136 Israelis who are still being held inside of Gaza.

Protests [for the release of captives] are taking place on a near-nightly basis with the families trying to block roads, and holding signs that say, “Give up anything”, to get the captives back.

They have been reiterating this for around 115 days, saying that Israel’s government is simply not hearing their plight. They do not feel heard or seen.

They feel that the government is not keeping in line with what they have previously told them and they say that any deal that is on the table, any concession that needs to be given up [to get the captives back] – the time to do so is now.

Israel

Zionism’s History Is Also a History of Jewish Anti-Zionism

Long but a history that shows the historic division of Jews

Defenders of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza have attempted to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. But since its beginning, different forms of Zionist ideology have competed with varied anti-Zionisms for Jewish allegiance.

Early Zionists repeatedly invoked seemingly antisemitic descriptions of so-called diasporic Jews as weak, sickly, excessively bookish, effeminized — a people whose spirit was crushed not only by non-Jewish political rulers, but also by the dead weight of rabbinical law. They contrasted this weak diasporic figure with a model of a strong new people, drawing inspiration from everything from the Ukrainian Cossack to Palestinian Bedouin.

If you say that a Jew in Tel Aviv is like a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto, then Zionism has accomplished nothing.

The liberal Zionist perspective is certainly on the ropes. What does it mean for a person committed to liberalism to support an illiberal nation-state project?

I know it’s hard for people to get their head around, but there are many pro-Israel antisemites. Their pro-Israelism is part of their Christian dispensational ideology.

Source: Zionism’s History Is Also a History of Jewish Anti-Zionism

Anti- Media, Anti-Media

Israel Lobby Involved with Washington Post

What’s behind Washington Post hit piece on EI? | The Electronic Intifada

Censorship by stealth

What could be the motivation for Dwoskin’s hit piece?

In the segment, I suggest that it is an effort to police and deter reporting about 7 October, by smearing anyone who questions Israel’s official narrative as a Jew hater.

It is also a specific attempt to discredit independent publications including The Electronic Intifada that have reached vast audiences since 7 October with accurate, groundbreaking reporting that mainstream US media refuse to do.

This includes reporting on how Israeli commanders ordered their forces to fire on their own people on 7 October, and debunking Israel’s claims of systematic mass rape by Palestinian fighters.

The Washington Post’s attack on The Electronic Intifada indicates the frustration Israel and its cheerleaders in the US media feel because they have been unsuccessful in imposing Israel’s version of events.

With First Amendment protections for free speech still strong in the United States, direct censorship of publications is not an option.

So there has emerged a nexus among governments, think tanks funded by governments and arms manufacturers, and big tech companies aiming to control what we can all say online.

The Washington Post article is therefore likely to be used by Israel lobby groups to pressure big tech firms to suppress the reach of journalists who challenge Israel’s lies, under the banner of fighting supposed “disinformation.”

This, however, will not stop us from doing our work and pursuing the truth.

What’s behind Washington Post hit piece on EI? | The Electronic Intifada

Israel, Israel Crimes

UNRWA claims: UK halts aid to UN agency over allegation staff helped Hamas attack – BBC News

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians that entered Gaza through Rafah border crossing on the Egyptian border arrive at the UNRWA warehouse, in Deir al Balah,

British Justice applied to “he said, she said” allegations by Israel who’d been severely chastised by the ICJ for blocking aid to Gaza and told to stop. So it seems to have put pressure on their Western allies to cut aid rather than help increase it as the ICJ directed. Israel is making fools of governments and using them to assist in Gazan’s suffering. In the meantime, Doctors, Medical Professionals, UN Aid agencies, Reporters, Academics, and teachers have all had their turn being called Hamas operatives, antisemites, Jew-haters, and rapists and targeted for elimination. Meanwhile, Israel trains conscripts and brainwashes its children claiming they are being maligned for protecting Israelis dining in restaurants from genocide.

“One million displaced people are currently taking refuge in and around UNRWA buildings. They are the ones who will suffer as a result of this decision,” said Mr Gunness, adding: “The curtailing of UNRWA services will also destabilise the region at a time when Western governments are trying to contain a regional conflagration.”

“The UK is appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism that the UK Government has repeatedly condemned,” the UK Foreign Office said in a statement.

“The UK is temporarily pausing any future funding of UNWRA whilst we review these concerning allegations,” it added.

Source: UNRWA claims: UK halts aid to UN agency over allegation staff helped Hamas attack – BBC News

Uncategorized

Old Dog Thought- Zionist Israel is not Jewish it is an Aggressive Apartheid Colonial Expansionist State. An Army with an ultra-right-wing Medusa head

Israeli troops have left Northern Gaza to manufacture an indigenous push-back in the West Bank and repeat the process in Gaza. They are already bombing the illegally occupied territory. They want the land. Some 330 Palestinians are dead, 80 of those children with the IDF actively kidnapping and disappearing Palestinians. The IDF, a foreign force, is actively supporting the illegal colonists who have grown from 2000 to 500,000 almost 20% with full Israeli voting and citizen rights. Israeli Zionists can no longer be the minority in Palestine. However, because the majority of Jews, the diaspora, isn’t racing to Israel and an increasing number of Israeli Jews want to leave the government is desperate to lower the number of Palestinians to become the majority in the larger Zionist State. Furthermore, they have a religious issue that REAL Jews regard them as heretics and idolators so for over 75 years they have been struggling to change the very nature of Judaic religious beliefs and laws

Fighting Fake News with REAL 23/1/24, Hamas Narrative, Conscientious Objector Mitnick,Palestinian Friend Aussie John Pilger,

Julian Assange

The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Given the fact that the US in 2024 has been openly enabling genocide, vetoing the UN, and giving the nod to Bibi to illegally take over Palestine, and it’s all over the internet, why keep Julian Assange locked up? There are no “secrets” Joe. There is Trump and certainly not an effen secret anymore but the Israelis know they have his support. So let Assange go and win some brownie points and deal with AIPAC and let the non Zionist Jews rally in your favour. Become what America pretends to be for once a liberating force

The Russians, Israelis, and Nth Koreans are working their tits off for Trump. Biden is working to unite the English-speaking world against the Chinese and we can see it all. Worst of all we are forced to listen to the bullshit. Listen and watch, watch corporate and right-wing media battle with Rupert Murdoch for any excess gravy flow there is from the least progressive at the very top. After all 2024 is an election year and lobbyists are hard at work making more promises but non in the interests of any Common Good

In terms of posterity’s calling, there are surely fewer better things at this point for a US president nearing mental oblivion to do, or a Tory government peering at electoral termination to facilitate, than the release of Assange. At the very least, it would show a grudging acknowledgment that the fourth estate, watchful of government’s egregious abuses, is no corpse, but a vital, thriving necessity.

Source: The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Uncategorized

Food as a Weapon of War: The Crime of Starvation in Gaza

A worldwide resolution to stop trading with Israel, an immediate global BDS is necessary and would stop this intentional genocidal state in its tracks. It did Racist South Africa and it’s why today they know better than anyone how to stop this Godzilla of carnage. Israel needs America for it’s support to veto the UN and they have done just that. It’s why they created AIPAC to influence its politicians. They need tiny Pacific nations to bribe They need oil companies in the Middle East to protect for the West. They need despots to sell weapons to and wars to show them off. They need the world and their citizens to live in fear. However most of all they need land to give away to Jews and ethnic cleansing because they can’t continue to be a minority in Palestine. They have become an invasive colonial parasite and have partnered with antisemites as their friends

Israel needs Trump and so does Putin, and Kim Jong Un. Israel is currently open to the best offer and has Biden by the short and curlies. They are the tail-wagging the dog in 2024. A rogue state with a lot of options the ready to blackmail and even betray their once best friends and media control. Their Mossad and Lobbys have so many Western politicians all dancing to their tune. It’s something they have been intentionally working on for years to bend democracies. AIPAC is just the tip of the iceberg of influence but its the blueprint they use. Don’t just believe me ask Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. The ABC in Australia. Jews by nature are socialists but Israel’s IDF, religious usurping colonizers Apartheid politics and institutional social systems have been designed to change that social psychology entirely.

“AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents.”

 It is the largest pro-Israel PAC in America and contributed more resources directly to candidates than any other PAC. 98% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general election races in 2022.
They have Biden on a string

In conflict zones, more civilians were killed because of hunger and diseases than by weapons in battle ground. In Gaza, there is no battle ground, everywhere is battle ground, and as one of the Israeli military leaders said: “There is no innocent civilians in Gaza!” This statement itself carries an ‘intent’ to eliminate entire Gazans that consitutes crime of genocide conducted against entire population.

Source: Food as a Weapon of War: The Crime of Starvation in Gaza

Israel

How to Create an Unlivable Hellscape in Gaza | The Smirking Chimp

Weapons Of Mass Destruction were originally designed and promised to be a defensive deterrent never to be used. We invaded Iraq on a suspicion that proved to be a lie and not just a myth that they were going to use them. We know Israel has them. We are witness to the fact that they are prepared to use them. They are currently demonstrating it with their illegal use of white phosphorus and the tonnage being dropped on the postage stamp known as Gaza. Bush invaded Iraq and now the worm has turned and Biden says it’s all OK why? Oil, oil tankers, and that Gas field off the coast of Gaza are far more important than any Palestinians

The violence inflicted on Palestinians by an Israel backed so strikingly by President Biden and his foreign policy team is unlike anything we had previously witnessed in more or less real-time in the media and on social media. Gaza, its people, and the lands that have sustained them for centuries are being desecrated and transformed into an all too unlivable hellscape, the impact of which will be felt — it’s a guarantee — for generations to come.

Source: How to Create an Unlivable Hellscape in Gaza | The Smirking Chimp

Informed Comment

National Times – Nothing seems to have changed since John Pilger… | Facebook

May be a graphic of 1 person and text

In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we shall all be citizens of a murdochracy.

Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 percent of the capital city press and the only national newspaper and Sky Television and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy. What is a murdochracy?

It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along, and wise politicians heed the Murdochism: “What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of shit a day?”

Source: National Times – Nothing seems to have changed since John Pilger… | Facebook

Neoliberalism

The Transformation of Australian Society: A Neoliberal Perspective – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Neoliberalism is a disguise for what has existed throughout the 19th Century in Australia when people living here were defined as deserving and undeserving. The deserving rich were granted Indigenous land leases the poor were allowed charity as long as they were white and Christian exceptions were even made for some Jews, Muslims, Irish and Catholics but never for blacks. It was a perspective not radically different today.

Neoliberal policies have led to a shift in the Australian welfare state policy agenda favouring the free market, small government, and reduced social expenditure. These policies have resulted in the retrenchment of the welfare state, with the introduction of forms of conditional welfare that require participants to conform to behavioural or attitudinal tests to keep eligibility for certain payments. Consequently, even individuals with a university degree now struggle to secure full-time employment.

Source: The Transformation of Australian Society: A Neoliberal Perspective – » The Australian Independent Media Network

LNP

Voice Referendum doomed by Coalition’s digital manipulation

No doubt some of you will think we made a mistake in that first sentence. The Uluru page was created in 2017, during the Coalition Government’s tenure. The now resigned Coalition Minister, Ken Wyatt, as Indigenous Affairs Minister, submitted a final report in July 2021 to the Morrison Government, which designed and funded the Voice with $7.3 million.

The Morrison Government, under former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg‘s direction, subsequently included $160 million in the 2019 Budget for the Voice Referendum, assuring Australia a referendum within three years.

Frydenberg openly supported the Voice and expressed confidence that it would succeed:

 

Source: Voice Referendum doomed by Coalition’s digital manipulation

Money

Reforming money in politics: crushing Dark Money without eliminating quality independents – » The Australian Independent Media Network

A graphic featuring Australian currency and the Yes logo signifying the dangerous influence of money on the democratic process

Show us the Money!! Turn the lights on!!

The referendum showed how vulnerable our electorate is to all the games emerging out of the American Right. It is imperative that we urge the Albanese government to speed up the integrity platform reforms it promised, and to do them with precision. No government lasts indefinitely: Labor needs to protect itself from a post-democratic Right as much as the nation needs them to do it. If the major parties plan to prevent future challenges to their control of government we need to protest before they embed it in legislation.

The connections are rarely straightforward: money and influence have worked in labyrinthine ways over decades to distort the playing field for the interests of the wealthy, in particular for tobacco and fossil fuels.

Over the weekend, investigative reporter Anthony Klan revealed the shadowy status of Advance and its promoters. Precisely in the Atlas model, it has a network of fake “grass roots” seeming bodies – a strategy called astroturfing – that include entities dedicated to attacks on climate action.

Source: Reforming money in politics: crushing Dark Money without eliminating quality independents – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Australia's Shame

Neo-Nazi threats against Lidia Thorpe reveal ugly side of politics

Thorpe has little if no faith in white institutions. To be honest, I don’t have that much myself.

Source: Neo-Nazi threats against Lidia Thorpe reveal ugly side of politics

Climate Change

Crash and Burn – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The longer the burning of fossil fuels goes on, the worse the problem will become. The cost of extracting oil will continue to increase as accessible reserves decrease. When we stop burning oil, all that will be left in the oilfields will be the expensive dregs to extract for making our soap. The sensible approach now would be to encourage the death spiral as quickly as possible. Force the end of fossil fuels for power and preserve as much of our reserves for the rest of society to use. But governments are generally not in the business of forcing huge industries to collapse.

Source: Crash and Burn – » The Australian Independent Media Network

religion

We can’t ignore politicians’ Christianity any longer – » The Australian Independent Media Network

John Pesutto embraces Nicole Werner after her by-election win in Warrandyte

Jews, and Catholics, have in the past seen themselves locked out of politics Christianity or Protestantism was then simply accepted by those that governed us. Religion and Politics were regarded as impolite and ill-mannered if spoken about in public. Gough and “It’s Time changed that and we all wore our politics on our sleeves.

It became strikingly obvious with the coming of Bob Santa Maria’s DLP in the 50s and with Scott Morrison when and how he won preselection for the seat of Cook that Religion and Politics weren’t as separate as advocated. Howard reintroduced monied religious cults into politics.

It has been traditional for journalists and public figures to respect the individual political candidate’s religion as private. America shows us the danger of creeping Christian Nationalism erupting into prominence, and we can’t wave that away as a distant threat. Voters need to know what our candidates’ Christianity means for our future.

Source: We can’t ignore politicians’ Christianity any longer – » The Australian Independent Media Network