OMNI
GAZA ANTHOLOGIES
# 12
November 16, 2023
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of
Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1: 3-3-08; #2 Nov. 16, 2012; #3 Nov. 17, 2013; #4 May 31, 2014; #5 July
28, 2014; #6 August 30, 2014; #7 April 8, 2015; #8 May 13, 2021; #9, October
15, 2023; #10, October 23, 2023; #11, Nov. 4 and Nov. 7, 2023).
[Note on #11. A short version of 9 articles appeared Nov.
4, a fuller version of 32 articles was published Nov. 7 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/11/gaza-cease-fire-rally-gather-at-court.html
)
CONTENTS #12
Part I: Gaza
March AND RALLY in Fayetteville including Abel Tomlinson’s Palestine
Peace Rally Speech
Part
II: Gaza Anthology #12, p. 10
Guttenplan.
Gaza in the Long Run
Musa Al-Gharbi. The Truth War
UNRWA
Sara Roy. Unsilencing
Gaza.
Chris Hedges. “Israel’s Final
Solution for the Palestinians.”
Scott Ritter.
"Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is
done"
Theia Chatelle. “The Government Encourages
the Settlers to Attack. . . .”
Spencer Ackerman. “Biden’s
Middle East Policy Collapsed”
Fareed Zakaria. Israel to Vet Reports
from Gaza.
Iman Abid. “Resist Genocide with
Your Whole Heart and Body.”
CADTM. cadtm-newsletter-en@cadtm.org
Code Pink. “Take action for
Palestine!”
Ron Jacobs.. “Bernie and a Cease Fire.”
Ajamu Baraka. “The demand must be for decolonization and
Palestinian self-determination.”
Chodhury Interviews Khaled Barakat: Gaza demands end of genocide.
Natalia Marques. Editor. mronline.org. International actions demand an end to the
Israeli genocide in Gaza and an end to all aid to Israel.
TEXTS #12
Misc. Correspondence Regarding the WALK AND RALLY FOR PEACE
NOVEMBER 4, 2023, AND FUTURE EVENT
No Hate Speech at Palestine Protests in Fayetteville
(from Abel Tomlinson)
Dear Friends,
As you may know, dangerous false rumors of "hate
speech" at our November 4th Palestine March & Rally have been widely
circulating in Fayetteville. These rumors made their way all the way to
the top of Fayetteville City Government.
To dispell these rumors, we have now uploaded the full unedited video from our Palestine Peace Rally.
On a similar note, the powerful Israel Lobby group
Anti-Defamation League has published a nationally MSM syndicated report on a
"400 percent increase in antisemitic incidents." Along with
scores of other Palestine Protests, ADL cited our previous Oct. 22 protest as
"Anti-Israel Rallies w. Support for Terror." (Interactive Map at
embedded link):
Please watch our rally video and see this as proof that there
was no "hate speech" or "antisemitism" at our event.
Quite the opposite, in fact, as multiple speakers explicitly rejected
antisemitism and expressed a whole lot of love for humankind; we also had
a speaker from Jewish Voice for Peace, Dr. Ted Swedenburg, as well as professor
Mohja Kahf and a former United Nations employee, and voices for peace from
across the Middle East.
Please urge whoever is spreading these rumors to watch the full
video of our rally and see that there is no hate speech; we are all driven by
love for humankind and a desire for peace and justice.
Full video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g_6Mq2N_9Y&t=1096s
Sincerely,
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance,
Founder
OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair
Palestine March & Rally Follow Up, and
Upcoming Events
We had a very
successful Palestine Peace March & Rally last week! A Big Thank you
to everyone that participated!
A few hundred people
showed up calling to Free Palestine, to Stop the Genocide, Apartheid &
Occupation. A couple short video clips of the march are here and here, and a bunch of
photos are here and here. We had
a great rally with excellent speakers, and a video of the full rally will be
uploaded here soon. We also had excellent
news coverage from 5 News and KNWA News, and
decent coverage from KUAF radio and UATV.
In terms of upcoming
events, please follow NWA for Palestine on Instagram, or email them
at NWAforPalestine@gmail.com to ask to be
added to their email list. There are Palestine Peace Protests planned
for tomorrow November 12th at 2 PM at the intersection
of 14th & Walton,
and on November 18th at 11 AM at Joyce & College
intersection in Fayetteville, and on November 18th at 10 AM at Rogers Avenue (in front of
Mercy Hospital) in Fort Smith.
Unfortunately,
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance will be less publicly active for now.
Big thank you to NWA
for Palestine for keeping this ball rolling.
Toward Justice & Peace,
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
Palestine Peace Rally Speech
Abel Tomlinson
Palestine
Peace Rally Speech – Abel Tomlinson (wordpress.com)
I became a lifelong antiwar peace
activist after 9/11, starting right here on these very steps 20 years ago, as
we were bombarded with lies to wage war on Iraq.
Over a million humans were killed, and millions
more harmed, physically, psychologically or by being displaced as
refugees.
It disgusted me to my bones.
I began actively organizing opposition to most every U.S. war
since. I quickly came to find that virtually every US war comes wrapped
in a pack of lies. The U.S.-Israeli war on Palestinians also is based on
many lies.
They are lying about the causes
of the conflict, suggesting that this all started on October 7th with
Israel being attacked for no reason and Israel is just an innocent
victim. They want us to ignore over 75 years of well
documented history of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, the brutal blockade, home demolition, land theft,
illegal settlements, war crimes, repeated carpet bombings of civilians, destructions of olive orchards, poisoning of livestock,
abusive checkpoints and roadblocks, sniper massacres
of peaceful protesters during the Great March of Return, etc, etc.
Thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza prison protested peacefully, and
Israeli snipers mowed them down by the hundreds, including killing medics,
journalists, kids and disabled people; all war crimes.
I have heard it said we should
not call this a war, as it is a genocide, with numerous experts calling it a
Textbook Case of Genocide, such as this top ranking U.N. official and this Jewish Israeli genocide scholar. Indeed,
Palestinians have no army, navy, or air force, so, yes, this is largely a
one-sided massacre of people trapped in what numerous scholars call the World’s Largest Open Air Prison or Largest Concentration Camp. Yet, I would
suggest there is a difference of a war BETWEEN two relatively equivalent
militaries, and a Bully War ON a militarily weaker nation. It was a U.S.
Bully war on Iraq, a U.S. Bully war on Libya, on Afghanistan,
Yemen, Somalia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and dozens more nations.
The conflict now is similarly a
war on Palestinians, starting 75 years ago with the Nakba and
the ethnic cleansing has never stopped. According to Palestinian-American
historian Rashid Khalidi its actually 100 year war on Palestine,
if you go all the way back to the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Make no mistake: This is very
much a U.S. war too. The US has given over $260 billion in foreign military aid to Israel since the
Nakba, with the U.S. House just passing another $14 billion to
fund this genocidal bombing campaign. The US has also given massive
political support by vetoing over 53 UN resolutions that
condemned Israel’s many violations of international law. The US has
enabled Israel to escape all accountability for scores of war crimes, which
encourages Israel to continue committing them. For decades, the majority
of the world has long been trying to hold Israel accountable, and to create
justice for Palestinians. The United States is the world leader at
preventing progress, and sustaining Palestinian oppression.
We should all wish and work for
Peace and for violence to cease, and to really identify and solve the root
causes of war, which are overwhelmingly injustices. Justice is the
foundation for real Peace. As Dr King said, we must not seek a negative
peace or the mere absence of tension, but seek a positive peace, which is the
presence of Justice.
Overwhelmingly, it’s Palestinians
that have experienced manifold injustices for the past 75 years and
beyond. If we’re sincere about seeking peace, we must seek justice for a
Free Palestine. It is really in the best interest for Israelis too.
Some people dismiss protests or
small acts we do online, but everything we say has some affect on Public
Opinion, which is the real ruler of all societies. That’s why dictators
or corporate oligarchs spend immense resources on propaganda to shape public
opinion, to manufacture consent as Noam Chomsky says.
Rulers always need consent to rule, or they will be rapidly removed, one way or
another.
We must withdraw our consent for
our rulers that support endless war and endless injustice for Palestinians and
so much of our world. A growing number of Americans are frustrated by
politicians of both parties, and since they don’t represent us on issue after
issue, at some point consent will break.
Most of us don’t have enough
money to buy a Congressman, but every one of us has some power. We each
have a voice in the field of Public Opinion, and we all have wide diversity of
creative talents we can employ to displace this System of Perpetual
Injustice. Every courageous post we make, every act of resistance and
solidarity, every conversation we have with friends or family has some impact,
however small. It all adds up.
We must raise our voices to Call
for Immediate Ceasefire and Stop to the Genocide. We must call for an End
to Apartheid, Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing. As Americans, we have a
distinct duty to speak out for a stop to our government’s massive support of
this injustice.
We are witnessing massive
protests all over the world and a major national protest is occurring today in Washington
D.C. Millions of voices are rising up in the streets all over
the world.
We have now joined them.
Let Gaza Live & Free
Palestine.
Palestine Peace March & Rally in Fayetteville
this Saturday
|
|
Dear Friends,
This
is a final announcement for our upcoming Palestine Peace March and Rally this
Saturday, November 4th. We will meet at the Washington County Courthouse
at 10 A.M. and march down Dickson Street at 11 A.M. to a rally in front of the
U of A Student Union. I am copying the media advisory below that includes
more details about the rally speakers and more.
We
still need more help with publicity for the event, so if you are on Facebook,
please take a few minutes to directly invite friends through our event page, and share it to
your timeline.
Also, please forward this email to your email contacts. I am also
attaching our event flyer, so please share this flyer on Instagram or other
social media.
We
still need people to make signs, so please make a few signs if you can.
We also need volunteers to help record video of the march and rally and upload
it to Youtube, so let us know if you can help. We also still need someone
to create a good list of chants and to lead chants with a megaphone. We
also still hope to have a marching band, so if you and your friends play any
kind of music, please bring instruments, especially drums, and make some
noise!
Toward Justice & Peace in Palestine,
Abel
Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Saturday, November 4th at 11 A.M. in front of Washington
County Courthouse in Fayetteville, members of the Arkansas
Antiwar Alliance and NWA for Palestine will hold a Free Palestine
March and Rally. We will march from the Courthouse down Dickson Street to
a Rally at the UA Student Union Mall. Speakers will include voices from
across the Middle East, students, a UA professor, activists and a United
Nations employee with experience in Gaza. We are
joining millions of people all over the
world calling to Free Palestine from Genocide, Apartheid and Occupation. and
a massive national Free Palestine March is
occuring on the same day as ours in Washington D.C. Hundreds of
Jewish people have protested & been arrested in the U.S. that were
calling for a ceasefire and to stop the genocide.
We too are calling for immediate Ceasefire and a Stop to this
"Textbook Case of Genocide",
according to Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal. We are also
calling to Free Palestinians from Apartheid, as defined by the major
human rights organization Amnesty International, and to Free
Palestinians from Israeli military occupation, the longest occupation in modern
history. These are some of the deeper causes of the 75 year conflict, which started
with the 1948 Nakba.
We are also calling for a stop to U.S. taxpayer funding of
Israeli policies. The United States sponsors Israeli policy by giving $260 billion in foreign aid
to Israel since the 1948 Nakba, primarily military
aid. The U.S. also gives massive political support by vetoing at least 53 U.N.
resolutions (as of 2021) that condemn the illegal Israeli military occupation,
illegal settlements, massacres of nonviolent protestors, bombings of Gaza &
war crimes. The Biden Administration is also giving
full support to the ongoing Israeli indiscriminate bombings of
residential areas in Gaza.
We are calling for Justice and Peace for Palestine.
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance,
Founder
GAZA WATCH ANTHLOGY #12
“A Cease-Fire in Gaza Is Just the First Step.”
We must end the slaughter. And then comes the hard part.
D.D. GUTTENPLAN for THE NATION
A
Cease-Fire in Gaza Is Just the First Step | The Nation
Demonstrators
protest the bombing on Gaza on October 20, 2023.This article appears in
the November 13/20, 2023 issue, with the headline “Gaza in
the Long Run.”
Condemning the slaughter should be
the easy part. Yet in the hours and days after Hamas carried out its October 7 attack, killing hundreds of Israeli
civilians—including babies and young children—some on the left seemed reluctant
to even acknowledge, let alone denounce, these murders.
And when Israel responded with
murder from the air, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in
Gaza—including babies and young children—most Americans in influential
institutions, from mainline Jewish organizations to establishment media to the
vast majority of Democratic and Republican elected officials, were quick to
justify the carnage. President Joe Biden flew to Jerusalem to embrace the
architect of this slaughter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even attending
a meeting of Israel’s “war cabinet.” Then he flew home and gave a speech from the Oval Office calling for billions
of dollars in new weapons to “sharpen Israel’s qualitative military edge.”
Appearances matter. And the images
of Biden and Netanyahu embracing mean that America, too, now owns
Israel’s war in Gaza.
Policy matters. The fact that the
Biden administration continued Donald Trump’s criminally stupid attempt
to bypass negotiations with the Palestinians,
encouraging Israel to pursue a separate peace with the Saudi dictatorship that
Biden once had promised to treat as a pariah state, means that
America, too, has the blood of those murdered by Hamas on its hands. Because
for all our horror at Hamas’s tactics, and despite the terrible price already
paid by Palestinian women, children, and elderly people in Gaza—not to mention
the predictable result when Israel’s “sharper edge” meets civilian flesh in the
weeks ahead—no one can deny that we are all talking about Palestine now.
History matters. Not just the
history of Palestinian dispossession, but also the long decline from the 1991 Madrid Conference—a genuinely international
attempt, cochaired by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, to resolve the
dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians, bringing all the parties
together for the first time—to the US-brokered 1993 Oslo Accords, with its fraudulent promise of
Palestinian statehood, to Bill Clinton’s Camp David talks in 2000, the collapse
of which marked the last sustained US engagement with the Palestinians. The
recriminations in the wake of that failure led to the enduring myth that the
Palestinians had refused a “generous offer” and the rapid decomposition of the
ill-named “peace process”—while the unchecked spread of illegal Israeli settlements under both Labor and
Likud governments pushed any viable Palestinian state farther and farther out
of reach.
Penned in by Israel and
Egypt, deprived not just of clean water, adequate food,
electricity, and medical supplies but of any hope for improvement, or even so
much as a gesture of concern from the US government, the 2.3 million
inhabitants of Gaza—almost half of them children (as NPR recently explained, “Many Palestinians simply don’t get the
chance to grow old”)—had every reason to feel desperate. And to wonder why
the 526 children killed in Gaza by Israeli security
forces in 2014 were so quickly forgotten.
No American progressive would want
to live under Hamas rule. But then none of us would want to live in Gaza under
Israeli blockade, either. And while it is easy to condemn Hamas as reactionary
theocrats, much the same can be said of Netanyahu’s coalition partners.
Language matters too. When Biden
describes Hamas as a “terrorist group,” he isn’t wrong—the clear aim of the
killings on October 7 was to terrify Israelis, to make it impossible for them
to feel safe in their beds. But then what label do we use to describe the Israel Defense Forces, which had brought death and
destruction to Gaza on a far greater scale before October 7—and is now working
assiduously, with American aid, to increase the body count?
Terrorism is a tactic, not a
strategy—the tactic of the desperate, who lack the dignity of a state or an
army. And if we tell ourselves that terrorism never prospers, that’s only
because when it does, or when a state does it, none dare call it terrorism,
favoring instead labels like “counterinsurgency” or “shock and awe.” Or we call
it Zionism—which, before it became respectable, didn’t
always scruple over the use of bombings and assassinations to achieve its
goals. Referring, as Biden did, to “the tragic loss of Palestinian life” (in
the passive voice) while condemning the “horrific horror of the attack by
Hamas” demonstrates not moral courage but its opposite.
Though absent in the White House,
real courage was shown by the demonstrators there and on Capitol Hill—Jewish, Palestinian, and others—demanding
not fresh blood but an immediate cease-fire. Ending the slaughter being done in
our name—and paid for by our taxes—is an essential first step.
Then comes the hard part. And here
some inconvenient truths must be acknowledged. The first is that those who make
nonviolent resistance impossible make violence inevitable. The criminalization of dissent—not just in Israel and the West Bank but in the
US, where the nonviolent movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)
has been banned from college campuses and outlawed by legislatures in 35 states—entrenches
an unjust and unsustainable oppression.
However, the advocates of BDS can
be faulted, too, for not always having been clear or candid on whether their
aim is to end Israel’s occupation of the territories it conquered in 1967 and
gain full civil rights for Palestinians on either side of the Green Line (goals
all people of conscience should support)—or to abolish the state of Israel
altogether. The latter is hardly something most Jews—who rightly wonder why, of
all the ethno-states in the world, only theirs is targeted for elimination—could
ever endorse.
Israel, though it often behaves
like a settler colonial regime, is not like France in Algeria. No amount of
violence will induce most Israelis to quit (as Gandhi urged the British to
“quit India”), for the simple reason that, like most Palestinians, they have no
other country to go to. And though theology is no substitute for politics, the
Jewish yearning for Zion dates back centuries, not decades.
Both peoples will have to find a
way to share the land—in peace, yes, but also with justice. In the long run,
that is the only solution to the unending cycles of violence. For that to ever
happen, the left in particular must hold fast to certain values:
No human
being should be threatened with “transfer” out of his or her home or land; no
human being should be discriminated against because he or she is not of an X or
a Y religion; no human being should be stripped of his or her land, national
identity, or culture, no matter the cause.
Those principles, set down in 1979
by Edward Said, remain essential for anyone seeking to address the Question of
Palestine. The path to peace and justice may seem impossible to detect right
now. But there is, as Israelis like to say, no alternative.
We Must Not Let the
Truth Become a Casualty of This War
Now more than ever, it’s crucial that we
talk about what is actually happening in Gaza and Israel, not about unverified
rumors.
We
Must Not Let the Truth Become a Casualty of This War | The Nation
On October 7, hundreds of Hamas
fighters breached the boundaries dividing Israel and Palestine and committed
atrocities against vulnerable populations. They targeted noncombatants hiding in shelters. Women. Old people. Children. Foreign nationals. They rampaged through Israel
for more than a day before being driven back by Israeli forces and took
hundreds of hostages with them as they fled.:12
In response, Israeli Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a full siege of Gaza—cutting residents off from all food,
water, electricity, and aid. Communications infrastructure has been
targeted, limiting Gazans’ ability to communicate with the
outside world. Aerial bombardments have killed over 2,000 Palestinians,
including over 700 children. Huge swaths of Gazan cities have
been destroyed, rendering an estimated 300,000 Gazans homeless. A ground invasion is imminent.
All of the above facts are
verifiably true and important. But as the war enters its second bloody week,
many false or unsubstantiated claims are circulating as well. As the conflict
escalates, it will be critical that journalists, academics, and observers of
all kinds work overtime to make sure that we are talking, thinking, and writing
about events on the basis of things we fully know to be true.
The conflict
was rife with hazy or outright false information from the start. There were
claims about Iranian involvement in the attack that were paired with criticism
of President Joe Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets in exchange
for US hostages. However, Iran had not yet spent a single dollar of these funds (which are
tightly regulated and monitored). Moreover, US intelligence reportedly suggests that Iran had no direct knowledge or
involvement in the plot (and was, in fact, surprised by the assault).
Nonetheless, the Biden administration decided to renege on its agreement with Iran, refreezing the
assets in order to stave off right-wing criticism—a decision that will probably
have significant geopolitical consequences.
There were many strong claims made
about sexual assaults carried out by Hamas. Rape is a recognized and
all-too-common weapon of war, and it should always be seen as a possibility
during conflict. Yet, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told The Forward that
it has no evidence that rape occurred during the raid or in its aftermath. Many
journalistic outlets have walked back these claims as a result, though
politicians in the United States and Israel have continued to repeat them.
One of the most horrifying
allegations that have gone viral on social media and the mainstream press was
that Hamas beheaded 40 babies while carrying out a massacre at a kibbutz.
However, when Sky News tried to get confirmation of this atrocity, the IDF said
it was unable to confirm the claims (other outlets were subsequently given
similar responses). Unfortunately, many other media organizations had already
reported this incident as a fact based on unverified claims from a known political extremist.
Some have subsequently issued retractions and clarifications or added
editor’s notes. However, this diligence arrived too late to limit the spread of
this uncorroborated claim because, on October 11, President Biden seemed to
confirm the story. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never really thought
that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,”
Biden said.
Shortly after the president left
the podium, the White House walked back this statement and acknowledged
to The Washington Post that neither the president
nor US intelligence services have any corroboration or have seen any
photographic evidence of the specific atrocity in question. The president, they
said, based his comments on news coverage (which, itself, had never been
substantiated). When the Post reached
out to the IDF for information about whether new evidence had emerged to
support the allegations, the IDF declined to comment.
Many other examples could be
offered: There were widely shared videos that purported to show terrified
Israeli children locked in cages by laughing Hamas militants. Follow-up reporting showed that the video was
actually taken days before the conflict exploded and that it was impossible to
determine the identity of the children. There was a video of a young woman
being burned alive. While the atrocity was real, it was actually a video from Guatemala in 2015. Shani Louk, who was
alleged to have been sexually assaulted, murdered, and then paraded
around, seems to be alive and was apparently taken to a
hospital.
However, even if many of the most
incendiary claims seem to be false, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, or lack
critical context, it is also the case that many documented atrocities were
committed by Hamas and are worthy of being acknowledged and condemned.
For instance, although no one in
the Biden administration was presented with verification of decapitated babies
in particular, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken emphasized, “We did see photographs, videos that the
Israeli government shared with us…an infant riddled with bullets, soldiers
beheaded, young people burned alive in their cars or hideaway rooms.” Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since shared some of these images with the press.
It should not need to be said that
murdering women, children, senior citizens, uninvolved foreign nationals, and
other noncombatants for sport is not “resistance.” Nonetheless, a distressing number of activists and intellectuals
have tried to implicitly justify or outright celebrate these crimes—discrediting their causes and organizations in the
process.
What Hamas is known to have done is
bad enough without requiring exaggeration. But truth, as they say, is the first
casualty of war. False or uncorroborated claims of Hamas’s atrocities have been
used in order to justify ongoing and impending war crimes against Gazan
civilians. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s communications minister
has proposed emergency regulations that would punish
Israeli citizens for spreading information perceived to undermine the country’s
morale or give ammunition to its adversaries.
For those
who would like to minimize unnecessary suffering and death, it is critical to
respond to information warfare with solid facts, stated as straightforwardly,
objectively, and holistically as we can manage.
For instance, while it’s important to recognize the magnitude of the
tragedy that Israelis are working through, it’s just as critical to acknowledge
the scale of Palestinian death and suffering—imposed primarily upon
people who had nothing to do with the massacre.
According to data by the Israeli
conflict monitoring organization B’Tselem, between 2000 and September
2023 eight times as many Palestinians as Israelis have
been killed in the ongoing conflict. Critically, roughly half of all Israeli
deaths occurred in Palestinian territories, not in their own country.
Ninety-nine percent of Palestinian casualties likewise occurred in Palestine.
Many more will perish in the territories over the days to come.
Life in Gaza was already quite desperate. The new layers of collective
punishment being meted out against ordinary Gazans is a war crime just as much as Hamas’s hostage
taking, targeting of civilians, or use of human shields.
However, thanks to US veto power in
virtually all international bodies, Israel is not meaningfully accountable to international
law.
It has little to fear from
neighboring states either. The United States has moved multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the
eastern Mediterranean and has stated unequivocally that any third parties who
try to involve themselves will have to reckon with the US military in addition
to the IDF. Most have sent signals that they plan to sit this one out.
Secure from international
pressures, Gallant has “released all constraints” on Israeli forces. Netanyahu
has vowed to turn Gaza into a “deserted island” and kill every single member of Hamas.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, has asserted that all Gazan civilians bear collective
guilt for the crimes of Hamas: “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s
responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not
involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
For his part, Netanyahu has instructed Gaza’s civilian population to “get out
now” and has insinuated that anyone who “chooses” to stay will
be considered a legitimate target (although convoys of refugees fleeing south
as Netanyahu instructed have also been targeted).
The truth is, Gazans have nowhere
to go. Israeli blockades prevent exit by sea or air. Most of the rest of the
land perimeter of Gaza borders Israel and has been closed in the aforementioned
siege. Practically speaking, the only way out of Gaza is by exiting into Egypt.
However, the Egyptian government has refused to allow Gazans into their country for
fear that it would be a one-way trip.
Within the Arab world, it is widely believed that the proposed humanitarian
corridor is a means of ejecting most of Gaza’s population permanently and
annexing the vacated Gaza Strip fully into Israel. . . . .
HeadquartersAmman, Jordan and Gaza, Palestinian Authority
PurposeProvide direct relief and works programmes for
Palestinian refugees
ServicesEducation, health care, relief/social services, infrastructure/camp improvement, microfinancial assistance and emergency response
Commissioner-GeneralPhilippe Lazzarini
Deputy Commissioner-GeneralLeni Stenseth
Parent organizationUnited Nations
Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on
Resistance by Sara Roy. Pluto Press, 2021.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211228...
Sara Roy’s succinct observations made
towards the end of her book, Unsilencing
Gaza: Reflections on Resistance
sums up the impunity which shields Israel as it persists in oppressing
Palestinians. But Palestinians refuse to
be silenced and their struggle must not be ignored.
Roy,
Chap. 11, “The Gaza Strip’s Last Safety Net” (2015)
UNRWA
is the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(let’s you and me use UNRWAPRNE! to be specific). And let’s be frank about the situation: Gaza
is a prison in which some one and a half million
prisoners (2014) were systematically oppressed, food and energy shortages
recurrent, etc., assaulted and killed
sometimes numerously. The Israeli
position for Gaza was: “No development, no prosperity, no humanitarian
crisis.” This means “a strangling
blockade, and…three major military assaults on Gaza since the end of 2008
[Operation Protective Edge] , leveling neighborhoods, destroying infrastructure
and inflicting immeasurable damage….” And
“…decline in funding for one of the few forces standing between the people of
Gaza and unmitigated humanitarian suffering” (UNRWAPRNE).
Regarding children in 2014-2023, growing in number, classroom limits tightened,
new schools and teachers ended.
ETC. Finally the prisoners rose
up in defiance in 2023. But those
problems for Israel are ending by Israel physically removing all prisoner children
from N. Gaza by forcing them to move to S. Gaza and by bombing and destroying
the infrastructure, homes, schools, etc.
Please read the chapter (orig. pub. In The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-gaza-strips-last-safety-net-is-in-danger/
)
And then I hope the entire
book.
Chris
Hedges. “Israel’s Final Solution for the
Palestinians.”
When Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists, religious
zealots, ultranationalists and crypto-fascists in the apartheid state of Israel
say they want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.
I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I
reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office
and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization
by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin
Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against
Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin
dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for
Rabin.
Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4,
1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his
supporters for her husband’s murder.
Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996,
has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor
Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked. His father,
Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir
Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader
in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of
historic Palestine. Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out
terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel.
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals,
described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a
“political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political
philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”
There has always been a strain of Jewish fascist
within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.
“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the
toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust
survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind
whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.”
Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin
to Nazism in its early stages.”
The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the
dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish
extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the
genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily. They champion
the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism. Jewish identity and
Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil. Jewish supremacy
is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared
to the Biblical Ammonites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually
Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the
threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the
magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and
Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged.
A leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry
of Intelligence dated Oct. 13, 2023 recommends the forcible and permanent
transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai
Peninsula.
It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling
calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians
seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription.
Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a
“struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between
humanity and the law of the jungle.”
These Jewish fanatics have begun their version of
the final solution to the Palestinian problem. They dropped 12,000 tons of
explosives on Gaza in the first two weeks of assault to obliterate at least 45
percent of Gaza’s housing units, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office.
They have no intention of being detoured, even by Washington.
“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli
leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the
military campaign,” The New York Times reported.
“In private conversations with American
counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other
allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during
World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued.
The goal is a “pure” Israel, cleansed of Palestinian
contaminants. Gaza is to become a wasteland. The Palestinians in Gaza will be
killed or forced into refugee camps over the border in Egypt. Messianic
redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish
extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque - the third holiest shrine for Muslims,
built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by
the Roman army - to be demolished. The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third”
Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank,
which the zealots call "Judea and Samaria," will be formally annexed
by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox
Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will be a Jewish version of Iran.
It is a short step to total Israeli control over
Palestinian land. Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, restricted military
zones, closed highways and army compounds have seized over 60 percent of the
West Bank, turning Palestinian towns and villages into ringed ghettos. There
are over 65 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian
citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories. The campaign
of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, many by rogue
Jewish militias, along with house and school demolitions and the seizure of
remaining Palestinian land will explode. Over 133 Palestinians have been killed
in the West Bank by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers since the Oct. 7
incursion by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up by the
Israeli military, beaten, humiliated and imprisoned.
Israel, at the same time, is turning on “Jewish
traitors” who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish
fascists and who denounce the horrific violence of the state. The familiar
enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals,
artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are already
being targeted. The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu,
will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law
will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.
Fascists do not respect the sanctity of life. Human
beings, even from their own tribe, are expendable to build their deranged
utopia. The zealots in power in Israel could have exchanged the hostages held
by Hamas for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons,
which is why the Israeli hostages were seized. And there is evidence that in
the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel, the
Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli
captives with them.
“Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the
October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence
that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize
Palestinian gunmen,” Max Blumenthal writes in The Grayzone.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for
Kibbutz Be’eri, Blumenthal notes, set up a hotline to coordinate between
kibbutz residents and the Israeli army.
Escapa told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as
desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult
decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate
the terrorists along with the hostages.”
The newspaper reported that Israeli commanders were
“compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the
Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized
control. That base housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers.
Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called
the Hannibal Directive, apparently named for the Carthaginian general who
poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans, following the capture
of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The directive is designed to prevent
Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force,
even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians.
The directive was executed during the 2014 Israeli
assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on Aug. 1,
2014 captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin. In response, Israel dropped
more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area where he was being held.
Goldin was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was
supposedly rescinded in 2016.
Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.
Israelis who cheer on the Palestinian nightmare will
soon endure a nightmare of their own.
SCOTT
RITTER
"Israel
is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeaLnDprf7g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeaLnDprf7g
https://youtube/PeaLnDprf7g?si=jZiPHbVot_7QAlLl
Preview
YouTube video "Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done" -
Fmr. U.S. Marine Scott Ritter | Redacted News
Forwarded to me by Sonny San Juan 11-7-23. I forwarded directly to to Art, George,
Kelly, Sandra, gsloan@uark.edu, Rosalie
https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/10/30/scott...
Scott Ritter on Israel,
Palestine and US Policy in Middle East
WebIn this interview, DD Geopolitics talks with military and
weapons specialist Scott Ritter, about Israel’s brutal
siege and bombing of Palestinians civilians in Gaza. They also break down
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/us-marine...
US Marine Corps Officer Ritter:
Three Nuclear Bombs and Nothing …
WebUS Marine Corps Officer Ritter: Three Nuclear
Bombs and Nothing Wil Be Left of Israel. The current Middle East
crisis, as described by former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter in
an …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvYFopX4_Cc.
Scott Ritter: "Why Israel
is LOSING this war! Netanyahu is FINISHED!"
WebScott Ritter: "Why Israel
is LOSING this war! Netanyahu is
FINISHED!"🔔Subscribe with all notifications
on, and be the first to watch every video!Scott Ritte...
Theia Chatelle.
“The Government Encourages the Settlers to Attack and Gives Them
Permission to Kill Us.” The Nation (November 7, 2023).
There’s been an epidemic of violence across the West
Bank since October 7, as Palestinians have been increasingly targeted by
Israeli settlers.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/west-bank-israeli-settler-attacks-palestinians/
Spencer Ackerman.
“The Weekend Biden’s Middle East Policy Collapsed.”
The Nation (Nov. 7, 2023).
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s diplomatic trip
was a humiliating failure. The administration’s regional approach has gone down
in flames.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-mideast-policy-blinken-failure/
Fareed
Zakaria. “Israel to ‘Vet’ US Corporate
Media Embedded in Gaza.” Consortium News. Nov. 7, 2023.
In a TV segment, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria explained the
submissive arrangements that his outlet and others are making with the Israeli
military. https://www.commondreams.org/news/media-gaza
“Resist genocide with
your whole heart and body.”
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CADTM. 7
November 2023
CADTM
https://www.cadtm.org/ cadtm-newsletter-en@cadtm.org
EDITO
Global protests in support of the Palestinian people are taking
place worldwide while the carnage in Gaza wages on. CADTM stands with the
People of Palestine! We call for an immediate ceasefire, for the international
community to break the blockade and end the collective punishment that the
Palestinian people are suffering. We must bring an end to such apartheid and
occupation. CADTM, together with other organisations, supports the filing of an
accusation with the International Criminal Court against the whole Israeli
government for war crimes and crimes against humanity. . . .
Forwarded by Sonny San Juan.
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Ron Jacobs. Bernie
and A Ceasefire. CounterPunch (11-7-23). Has
Bernie lost his way, or was he always a pro-war zealot?
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