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OMNI WAR
WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #170, MARCH 27,
2024 . Compiled by Dick Bennett
Michael Swanson. The War State.
OMNI, AFSC, FCNL Mission Statement.
Michael Swanson. The War State: The Cold War Origins Of
The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963. 2013.
[For
readers who have not studied US post-WWII/ColdWar/Imperial history, this book
provides a basic introduction simply and clearly written; those who know the
history will find this a good review and handy reference (despite its lack of an
Index). –Dick]
Author’s Overview
Today
when you factor in the interest on the national debt from past wars and total
defense expenditures the United States spends almost 40% of its federal budget
on the military. It accounts for over 46% of total world arms spending. Before
World War II it spent almost nothing on defense and hardly anyone paid any
income taxes. You can't have big wars without big government. Such big
expenditures are now threatening to harm the national economy. How did this
situation come to be?
In this
book you'll learn how in the critical twenty years after World War II the
United States changed from being a continental democratic republic to a global
imperial superpower. Since then nothing has ever been the same again. In
this book you will discover this secret history of the United States that
formed the basis of the world we live in today.
By
buying this book you will discover:
- How
the end of European colonialism created a power vacuum that the United States
used to create a new type of world empire backed by the most powerful military
force in human history.
- Why
the Central Intelligence Agency was created and used to interfere in the
internal affairs of other nations when the United States Constitution had no
mechanism for such imperial activities.
- How national
security bureaucrats [=fear and war mongers] got President Harry Truman to
approve of a new wild budget busting arms race after World War II that is still
going on to this day.
- Why
President Eisenhower really gave his famous warning against the
"military-industrial complex."
- Why
during the Kennedy administration the nuclear arms race almost led to
the end of the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
- How
President Kennedy tried to deal with what had grown into a "permanent
government" of power elite national security bureaucrats in the executive
branch of the federal government that had become more powerful than the
individual president himself.
[Consequently he was assassinated by national security officers,
according to James Douglass in JFK and the Unspeakable, 2008, apparently
unread by Swanson. --D]
In this
book you will discover this secret history of the United States that formed the
basis of the world we live in today.
Here’s a sample:
“The spirit of NSC 68 [codifying the secret move of the US from a policy of
containing the Soviet Union to “one of global empire”) lives on today more than
the spirit of 1776. At the beginning of
the twenty -first century, the United States simply replaced a battle against
communism with a ‘war on terror’ to provide the ideological underpinning for
imperial policies.” Swanson references
Ernest May, American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68.] --D
The mission the OMNI Weeklies—War
Watch Wednesdays and Climate Memo Mondays—is the same as that of the OMNI:
Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology (2001), which copied the mission of the
two US Quaker organizations-- AFSC and FCNL:
a world free of war and the
threat of war;
a society with equity and justice for all;
a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled,
and an earth restored.
The statement serves as our
optics and our measure in reading and reflecting on US history and the USA
today.
GAZA ANTHOLOGIES #16
March 25, 2024
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; #12 , Nov. 16, 2023; #13, Dec. 16, 2023;
#14, Jan. 12, 2024).
http://omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS
Decomposing
Bodies of Premature Babies Discovered in Besieged Gaza. Jamie Stern-Weiner. Gaza and
Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. (book).
Art
Hobson. “World Grieves for Palestine and
Israel.“
Chris Hedges. “The Cost of Bearing Witness.”
Progressive Magazine Dec. 23-Jan. 24. Eight articles, on Gaza.
·
“Interview
with Phyllis Bennis” by Norman Stockwell.
“’This Is a Very Dangerous Time.”
·
David
Boddiger. “There Must Be a Ceasefire in
Gaza.”
·
Norman
Stockwell. “Our View of an Eye for an
Eye.”
·
Bill
Lueders. “Don’t Blame the Squad; End the
Killing.”
·
Samer
Badawi. “Truth Should Not Be a Casualty of War.”
·
Jennifer
Lowenstein. “The War on Gaza: How a
Colonial Mentality Assures Western Failure.”
·
I.
F. Stone. “On Justice for the
Palestinians.”
·
Rabbi
Laurie Zimmerman. “I Protest This
Bloodshed.”
·
Edward
Said. “An Exile’s Exile.”
·
Mosab
Abu Toha. Poem. “My Son Throws a Blanket
Over My Daughter.” Author of
collection: Poems from Gaza.
Boyd and Mitchell. Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution.
“Human
Rights Groups Demand ICC Issue Arrest Warrants On Israeli Officials.”
“Palestinian
Activist Tied Up, Beaten, And Arrested By Israeli Forces.”
Black Agenda Report. “Teaching
Hatred And Normalizing Violence Against Palestinians.”
Socialist Project . “Toronto
Picketers At Military Contractor Pratt And Whitney.“
“We need to act fast
to stop the situation in Gaza from triggering a wider war in the Middle East.“
“The Red Sea Is Now
the Second Front in the Gaza War. “
“Blood
money: The top ten politicians taking the most Israel lobby cash.”
“UN Leaders Speak Out
Against Siege.”
“ADL’s Campaign to
Silence Criticism by Calling ‘Antisemitism.’”
“‘Moral insanity’:
Biden Admin Bypasses Congress to Rush Tank Shells to Israel.”
Bruce Gagnon. "Trading
in Terror."
“I used to think the term ’Judeo-Nazis’ was excessive. I
don’t any longer.”
“They Stole a
Country in Full Bloom’.”
“Murder.”
“The Death Of Israel.” Scheer Post.
“Boycott
Switzerland, The Partner In Genocide! “
“Investigate Reports ‘Israel’ Burying Victims
Alive.”
“BP, Evergreen Suspend Red Sea Tanker Traffic; Yemen Continues Attacks. “
TEXTS
What might
an individual do to help the people of Gaza? Here’s my reply tonight. The finest thing a human can do is to try to prevent
a war. If that fails, then try to stop
the destruction and slaughter, try to stop the war, care for the wounded. The US, the world have many excellent peace
organizations who beg for your donations and participation. Use your search engine, and get to work. And relieve the suffering. Here’s an idea that might work for you. What’s the condition of children’s hospitals
in Gaza or nearby (Jerusalem?
Egypt?). Here’s the result of my
search that took just a few minutes. It
reveals what we first need to know: the destruction of children’s care by the
Israeli invasion of Gaza. Then, what
might we do? (Hire a techie to help
you.) For example, Does the last
pediatric hospital in Gaza still exist? If
it does, what does it need now? Find
out. If it is closed, where were the
children sent? Who’s the contact. Let us all know. Even if your search is futile, your few moves
bring you closer to engagement in the facts on the ground essential to
action. And closer to urgent larger
questions. Why instead of providing
bombs to Israel has the USA not provided hospitals for the maimed and dying
children in Gaza and all around Gaza—in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon? Senator Bozeman: Compassion for the Children!
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said it had
discovered the decomposing remains of five premature Palestinian babies who
were left to die after Israeli forces ordered medical staff to evacuate and blocked
access to the intensive care unit at the al-Nasr pediatric hospital. Shocking
footage filmed by the Dubai-based outlet Al Mashhad shows the babies still
attached to ventilation and intravenous tubes as they lay lifeless in their
hospital beds. Rights groups are calling for an international investigation.
"These
children are not worthless casualties," said one advocate. "These
children are as precious as any innocent children. They don't just deserve to
not die. They deserve to live free."
As journalists in Gaza reported that the Israel
Defense Forces bombed the cancer ward of a pediatric hospital in Gaza City on
Sunday, advocates for a cease-fire in the blockaded enclave pleaded with
powerful Western countries allied with Israel—including the United States—to
take action to stop the bombardment that has now killed more than 4,000
children in one month.
Local news outlets Palestinian Hadath, Mayadeen, Haya Jadeeda,
and Quds
Network reported that the third floor of al-Rantisi Pediatric
Hospital had been hit by an Israeli airstrike, while Reuters reported that eight people had been killed in the
attack.
The Daily Beast reported late last month that medical providers in the
ward, which is called the Dr.Musa and Suhaila Nasir Pediatric Cancer Department
and is the first and only children's oncology department in Gaza, feared a
possible bombing of the hospital, where at least 10 children were receiving
in-patient treatment and could not be evacuated when Israeli officials
threatened northern Gaza with imminent airstrikes.
"It's an impossible situation," said Dr.
Zeena Salman, an American pediatric oncologist who has volunteered at the
hospital, told The Daily Beast. "There's a number of
patients who are not stable enough to transfer to another hospital. And there
may not be enough resources in the hospital."
Al-Rantisi Hospital has also been providing shelter
to around 1,000 civilians since Israel's total siege in Gaza began last month.
On Sunday, United Nations agencies representing
children, women, refugees, and health services issued a joint call warning that "women, children and
newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden" of Israel's
attack on the enclave, which it commenced on October 7 after Hamas launched a
surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than
200 hostage.
While claiming to be targeting Hamas, the IDF has
killed more than 10,000 Palestinians since October 7 as it has bombed
hospitals, schools, and refugee camps—all while blaming Hamas for
civilian casualties by saying the group is using Palestinian people as "human shields."
"The idea that 'they were being shielded by
children so we murdered the children too' is so absent of morality, it's
outrageous," said author Gabrielle Alexa Noel last week in response to
an MSNBC segment
in which anchor Joy Ann Reid also condemned the claim.
The death toll in Gaza, said Khaled
Engindy of the Middle East Institute, is now the equivalent of "killing
1.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, in the U.S. in under a
month."
Toby Fricker, spokesperson for the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), toldThe Guardian that while it can
take time to verify the number of dead children and adults in Gaza as hundreds
go missing under rubble after bombings, "the numbers are obviously
catastrophic."
"Verification doesn't occur in real time, which
is why we say 'reportedly killed,' but, generally speaking, in all conflicts we
substantiate initial estimates and in Gaza they have tended to be pretty
consistent," said Fricker, rebuking claims perpetuated by U.S.
President Joe Biden recently that Gaza's health authorities, which are
controlled by Hamas, release inaccurate casualty counts.
The U.N. agencies warned that with roughly
50,000 pregnant people in Gaza, children born during the war will be among the
most at risk if the U.S. and other countries supporting Israel's siege don't
join the growing call for a cease-fire. One hundred and thirty premature babies
living in incubators are also at risk.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine
Russell also warned last week that for the children who survive the
fighting in both Gaza and Israel, the consequences of the trauma they are
living through, including the loss of their parents and, in some cases, their
entire family will have consequences that "could last a lifetime."
One UNICEF aid worker stationed in Gaza said last
week that her children, aged seven and four, have been "begging for
drinkable water and showing signs of severe psychological distress and
fear." MORE
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SHORTEN THE FOLLOWING
CHRIS
HEDGES. “The Cost of Bearing
Witness.” The Chris Hedges Report. 12-23-23
There
are scores of Palestinians writers and photographers, many of whom have been
killed, who are determined to make us see the horror of this genocide. They
will vanquish the lies of the killers.
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Writing and photographing in wartime are acts of resistance,
acts of faith. They affirm the belief that one day - a day the writers,
journalists and photographers may never see - the words and images will evoke
empathy, understanding, outrage and provide wisdom. They chronicle not only the
facts, although facts are important, but the texture, sacredness and grief of
lives and communities lost. They tell the world what war is like, how those caught in
its maw of death endure, how there are those who sacrifice for others and those
who do not, what fear and hunger are like, what death is like. They transmit
the cries of children, the wails of grief of the mothers, the daily struggle in
the face of savage industrial violence, the triumph of their humanity through
dirt, filth, sickness, humiliation and fear. This is why writers, photographers
and journalists are targeted by aggressors in war — including the Israelis —
for obliteration. They stand as witnesses to evil, an evil the aggressors want
buried and forgotten. They expose the lies. They condemn, even from the grave,
their killers. Israel has killed at least 13 Palestinian poets and writers along
with at least 67 journalists and media workers in
Gaza, and three in Lebanon since Oct. 7.
I experienced futility and outrage when I covered war. I
wondered if I had done enough, or if it was even worth the risk. But you go on
because to do nothing is to be complicit. You report because you care. You will
make it hard for the killers to deny their crimes.
This brings me to the Palestinian novelist and playwright Atef
Abu Saif. He and his 15-year-old son Yasser, who live in the occupied West
Bank, were visiting family in Gaza — where he was born — when Israel began its
scorched earth campaign. Atef is no stranger to the violence of the Israeli
occupiers. He was two months old during the 1973 war and writes “I’ve
been living through wars ever since. Just as life is a pause between two
deaths, Palestine, as a place and as an idea, is a timeout in the middle of
many wars.”
During Operation Cast Lead, the 2008/2009 Israel assault on
Gaza, Atef sheltered in the corridor of his Gaza family home for 22 nights with
his wife, Hanna and two children, while Israel bombed and shelled. His book “The Drone Eats
with Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire,” is an account of Operation Protective
Edge, the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza that killed 1,523
Palestinian civilians, including 519 children.
“Memories of war can be strangely positive, because to have them
at all means you must have survived,” he notes sardonically.
He again did what writers do, including the professor and
poet Refaat Alareer,
who was killed,
along with Refaat’s brother, sister and her four children, in an airstrike on
his sister’s apartment building in Gaza on Dec. 7. The Euro-Mediterranean Human
Rights Monitor said that Alareer was deliberately targeted,
“surgically bombed out of the entire building.” His killing came after weeks of
“death threats that Refaat received online and by phone from Israeli accounts,”
He had moved to his sister’s because of the threats.
Refaat, whose doctorate was on the metaphysical poet John Donne,
wrote a poem in Nov., called “If I Must Die,” which became his last will and
testament. It has been translated into numerous languages. A reading of the
poem by the actor Brian Cox has been viewed almost
30 million times.
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made,
flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
Atef, once again finding himself living amid the explosions and
carnage from Israeli shells and bombs, doggedly publishes his observations and
reflections. His accounts are often difficult to transmit because of Israel’s
blockage of Internet and phone service. They have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation and Slate.
On the first day of the Israeli bombardment, a friend, the young
poet and musician Omar Abu Shawish, is killed, apparently in an Israeli naval
bombardment, though later reports would say he was killed in
an airstrike as he was walking to work. Atef wonders about the Israeli soldiers
watching him and his family with “their infrared lenses and satellite
photography.” Can “they count the loafs of bread in my basket, or the number of
falafel balls on my plate?” he wonders. He watches the crowds of dazed and
confused families, their homes in rubble, carrying “mattresses, bags of
clothes, food and drink.” He stands mutely before “the supermarket, the bureau
de change, the falafel shop, the fruit stalls, the perfume parlor, the sweets
shop, the toy shop — all burned.”
“Blood was everywhere, along with bits of kids’ toys, cans from
the supermarket, smashed fruit, broken bicycles and shattered perfume bottles,”
he writes.
“The place looked like a charcoal drawing of a town scorched by a dragon.”
“I went to the Press House, where journalists were frantically
downloading images and writing reports for their agencies. I was sitting with
Bilal, the Press House manager, when an explosion shook the building. Windows
shattered, and the ceiling collapsed onto us in chunks. We ran toward the
central hall. One of the journalists was bleeding, having been hit by flying
glass. After 20 minutes, we ventured out to inspect the damage. I noticed that
Ramadan decorations were still hanging in the street.”
“The city has become a wasteland of rubble and debris,” Atef,
who has been the Palestinian Authority’s minister of culture since 2019, writes
in the early days of the Israeli shelling of Gaza City. “Beautiful buildings
fall like columns of smoke. I often think about the time I was shot as a kid,
during the first intifada, and how my mother told me I actually died for a few
minutes before being brought back to life. Maybe I can do the same this time, I
think.”
He leaves his teenage son with family members.
“The Palestinian logic is that in wartime, we should all sleep
in different places, so that if part of the family is killed, another part
lives,” he writes. “The U.N. schools are getting more crowded with displaced
families. The hope is that the U.N. flag will save them, though in previous
wars, that hasn’t been the case.”
On Tuesday Oct. 17 he writes:
I see death
approaching, hear its steps growing louder. Just be done with it, I think. It’s
the 11th day of the conflict, but all the days have merged into one: the same bombardment,
the same fear, the same smell. On the news, I read the names of the dead on the
ticker at the bottom of the screen. I wait for my name to appear.
In the morning, my
phone rang. It was Rulla, a relative in the West Bank, telling me she had heard
there’d been an airstrike in Talat Howa, a neighborhood on the south side of
Gaza City where my cousin Hatem lives. Hatem is married to Huda, my wife’s only
sister. He lives in a four-story building that also houses his mother and
brothers and their families.
I called around, but
no one’s phone was working. I walked to al-Shifa Hospital to read the names:
Lists of the dead are pinned up daily outside a makeshift morgue. I could
barely approach the building: Thousands of Gazans had made the hospital their
home; its gardens, its hallways, every empty space or spare corner had a family
in it. I gave up and headed toward Hatem’s.
Thirty minutes later,
I was on his street. Rulla had been right. Huda and Hatem’s building had been
hit only an hour earlier. The bodies of their daughter and grandchild had
already been retrieved; the only known survivor was Wissam, one of their other
daughters, who had been taken to the ICU. Wissam had gone straight into
surgery, where both of her legs and her right hand had been amputated. Her
graduation ceremony from art college had taken place only the day before. She
has to spend the rest of her life without legs, with one hand. “What about the
others?” I asked someone.
“We can’t find them,”
came the reply.
Amid the rubble, we
shouted: “Hello? Can anyone hear us?” We called out the names of those still
missing, hoping some might still be alive. By the end of the day, we’d managed
to find five bodies, including that of a 3-month-old. We went to the cemetery to
bury them.
In the evening, I went
to see Wissam in the hospital; she was barely awake. After half an hour, she
asked me: “Khalo [Uncle], I’m dreaming, right?”
I said, “We are all in
a dream.”
“My dream is
terrifying! Why?”
“All our dreams are
terrifying.”
After 10 minutes of
silence, she said, “Don’t lie to me, Khalo. In my dream, I don’t have legs.
It’s true, isn’t it? I have no legs?”
“But you said it’s a
dream.”
“I don’t like this
dream, Khalo.”
I had to leave. For a long 10 minutes, I cried and cried.
Overwhelmed by the horrors of the past few days, I walked out of the hospital
and found myself wandering the streets. I thought idly, we could turn this city
into a film set for war movies. Second World War films and end-of-the-world
movies. We could hire it out to the best Hollywood directors. Doomsday on
demand. Who could have the courage to tell Hanna, so far away in Ramallah, that
her only sister had been killed? That her family had been killed? I phoned my
colleague Manar and asked her to go to our house with a couple of friends and
try to delay the news from getting to her. “Lie to her,” I told Manar. “Say the
building was attacked by F-16s but the neighbors think Huda and Hatem were out
at the time. Any lie that could help.”
Leaflets in Arabic dropped by Israeli helicopters float down
from the sky. They announce that anyone who remains north of the
Wadi waterway will be considered a partner to terrorism, “meaning,” Atef
writes, “the Israelis can shoot on sight.” The electricity is cut. Food, fuel
and water begin to run out. The wounded are operated on without anesthesia.
There are no painkillers or sedatives. He visits his niece Wissam, racked with
pain, in al-Shifa Hospital who asks him for a lethal injection. She says Allah
will forgive her.
“But he will not forgive me, Wissam.”
“I am going to ask him to, on your behalf,” she says.
After airstrikes he joins the rescue teams “under the
cricket-like hum of drones we couldn’t see in the sky.” A line from T.S Eliot,
“a heap of broken images,” runs through his head. The injured and dead are
“transported on three-wheeled bicycles or dragged along in carts by animals.”
“We picked up pieces of mutilated bodies and gathered them on a
blanket; you find a leg here, a hand there, while the rest looks like minced
meat,” he writes. “In the past week, many Gazans have started writing their
names on their hands and legs, in pen or permanent marker, so they can be
identified when death comes. This might seem macabre, but it makes perfect
sense: We want to be remembered; we want our stories to be told; we seek
dignity. At the very least, our names will be on our graves. The smell of
unretrieved bodies under the ruins of a house hit last week remains in the air.
The more time passes, the stronger the smell.”
The scenes around him become surreal. On Nov. 19, day 44 of the
assault, he writes:
A man rides a horse toward me with the body of a dead teenager
slung over the saddle in front. It seems it’s his son, perhaps. It looks like a
scene from a historical movie, only the horse is weak and barely able to move.
He is back from no battle. He is no knight. His eyes are full of tears as he
holds the little riding crop in one hand and the bridle in the other. I have an
impulse to photograph him but then feel suddenly sick at the idea. He salutes
no one. He barely looks up. He is too consumed with his own loss. Most people
are using the camp’s old cemetery; it’s the safest and although it is
technically long-since full, they have started digging shallower graves and
burying the new dead on top of the old—keeping families together, of course.
On Nov. 21 after constant tank-shelling, he decides to flee the
Jabaliya neighborhood in the north of Gaza for the south, with his son and
mother-in-law who is in a wheelchair. They must pass through Israeli
checkpoints, where soldiers randomly select men and boys from the line for
detention.
“Scores of bodies are strewn along both sides of the road,” he
writes. “Rotting, it seems, into the ground. The smell is horrendous. A hand
reaches out toward us from the window of a burned-out car, as if asking for
something, from me specifically. I see what looks like two headless bodies in a
car — limbs and precious body parts just thrown away and left to fester.”
He tells his son Yasser: “Don’t look. Just keep walking,
son."
In early Dec. his family home is destroyed in
an airstrike.
“The house a writer grows up in is a well from which to draw
material. In each of my novels, whenever I wanted to depict a typical house in
the camp, I conjured ours. I’d move the furniture around a bit, change the name
of the alley, but who was I kidding? It was always our house.”
“All the houses in Jabalya are small. They’re built randomly,
haphazardly, and they’re not made to last. These houses replaced the tents that
Palestinians like my grandmother Eisha lived in after the displacements of
1948. Those who built them always thought they’d soon be returning to the
beautiful, spacious homes they’d left behind in the towns and villages of
historic Palestine. That return never happened, despite our many rituals of
hope, like safeguarding the key to the old family home. The future
keeps betraying us, but the past is ours.”
“Though I’ve lived in many cities around the world, and visited
many more, that tiny ramshackle abode was the only place I ever felt at home’”
he goes on. “Friends and colleagues always asked: Why don’t you live in Europe
or America? You have the opportunity. My students chimed in: Why did you return
to Gaza? My answer was always the same: ‘Because in Gaza, in an alleyway in the
Saftawi neighborhood of Jabalya, there stands a little house that cannot be
found anywhere else in the world.’ If on doomsday God were to ask me where I
would like to be sent, I wouldn’t hesitate in saying, ‘Home.’ Now there is no
home.”
Atef is now trapped in southern Gaza with his son. His niece was
transferred to a hospital in Egypt. Israel continues to pound Gaza with over
20,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. Atef continues to write.
The story of Christmas is the story of a
poor woman, nine months pregnant, and her husband forced to leave their home in
Nazareth in northern Galilee. The occupying Roman power has demanded they
register for the census 90 miles away in Bethlehem. When they arrive there are
no rooms. She gives birth in a stable. King Herod -
who learned from the Magi of the birth of the messiah - orders his soldiers to
hunt down every child two years old and under in Bethlehem and the vicinity and
murder them. An angel warns Joseph in a dream to flee. The couple and infant
escape under the cover of darkness and make the 40-mile journey to Egypt.
I was in a refugee camp in the early 1980s for Guatemalans who
had fled the war into Honduras. The peasant farmers and their families, living
in filth and mud, their villages and homes burned or abandoned, were decorating
their tents with strips of colored paper to celebrate the Massacre of the Innocents.
“Why is this such an important day?” I asked.
“It was on this day that Christ became a refugee,” a farmer
answered.
The Christmas story was
not written for the oppressors. It was written for the oppressed. We are called
to protect the innocents. We are called to defy the occupying power. Atef,
Refaat and those like them, who speak to us at the risk of death, echo this
Biblical injunction. They speak so we will not be silent. They speak so we will
take these words and images and hold them up to the principalities of the world
— the media, politicians, diplomats, universities, the wealthy and privileged,
the weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon and the Israel lobby groups — who are
orchestrating the genocide in Gaza. The infant Christ is not lying today in
straw, but a pile of broken concrete.
Evil has not changed down the millenia. Neither has goodness.
· Progressive Magazine. Eight articles on Gaza, a book, and a poem.
“Interview with Phyllis Bennis” by Norman Stockwell. “’This Is a Very Dangerous Time.” Progressive (Dec. 23/Jan. 24.)
Phyllis is one of the wisest and most respected of US peacemakers.
David Boddiger, Managing Editor.
“There Must Be a Ceasefire in Gaza.”
· Norman Stockwell. “Our View of an Eye for an Eye.”
· Bill Lueders.
“Don’t Blame the Squad; End the Killing.”
· Samer Badawi. “Truth Should Not Be a Casualty
of War.”
· Jennifer Lowenstein. “The War on Gaza: How a Colonial Mentality
Assures Western Failure.”
· I. F. Stone.
“On Justice for the Palestinians.”
· Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman. “I Protest This Bloodshed.”
· Edward Said.
“An Exile’s Exile.”
· Mosab Abu Toha. Poem. “My Son Throws a Blanket Over My
Daughter.” Author of collection: Poems from Gaza.
US and Israeli Information Control
Beautiful
Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution. A
TOOLBOX FOR REVOLUTION. Assembled
by ANDREW BOYD with DAVE OSWALD MITCHELL
"The current political moment calls for bold leaps of
imagination, new forms of organizing and a fearless blend of confrontation and
celebration. Beautiful Trouble is a crash
course in the emerging field of carnivalesque
realpolitik, both elegant and incendiary." —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo
Adobe’s Misleading Images
Forwarded by Joanie Connors. (Readers of my anthologies have noted the
absence of images, which has been my policy from the beginning. I have adhered
to texts and, I hoped, evidence and reason.
–D)
The images coming out of the Israel-Gaza war
are haunting, and a daily reminder of the need for a lasting ceasefire and an
end to the ongoing violence. But one corporation is muddying the issue,
making it possible for politicians to dismiss legitimate images because
high-quality fakes are also available.
Adobe has been selling
AI-generated images of the Israel-Gaza war, and these images have been used on
websites without being marked as fake images.
This is more than just irresponsible, it’s extremely dangerous and fuels
misinformation during a time when access to accurate news and images from
occupied Palestine is paramount.
Adobe must stop
selling AI-generated images of war and conflict. Full Stop. Send a message to
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen today. >>
. . . .
Thanks for signing,
Just Foreign Policy
(I think this originated by Win Without War: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/ai-images-of-war/?source=group-just-foreign-policy&referrer=group-just-foreign-policy&redirect=https://secure.actblue.com/donate/sh-jfp-adobeja&link_id=0&can_id=1a5b0ee21cc28ce92ab60fd9e40383bf&email_referrer=email_2153065&email_subject=adobe-must-stop-selling-ai-generated-images-of-war-and-conflict&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_2153065 )
Palestinian Activist Tied Up,
Beaten, And Arrested By Israeli Forces By Leila
Warah, Mondoweiss. Popular Resistance.org (12-23-23). On Monday morning in the occupied West Bank,
just over 15 people of all ages, many still in their pajamas, were piled into
Laila al Waraa’s living room in Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. While the little
room belonging to the 69-year-old family matriarch was accustomed to large
gatherings, this time was different. It was about 5:00 in the morning, and
everyone was trying to piece together what had happened hours before when the
Israeli military conducted yet another overnight raid on the refugee camp.
Around 3:00 a.m., the Israeli army loudly and without warning broke into her
house, where she... -more-
“Teaching Hatred And Normalizing Violence
Against Palestinians” By Essam Elkorghli, Black Agenda Report. Popular Resistance.org (12-23-23). Since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, there have
been numerous Western officials publicly decrying school textbooks in Palestine
and how they instill violence against settlers, occupiers, and the Zionist
entity. The officials rely in their outcries on reports by a liberal institute
that defames Palestinian textbooks, while aggrandizing Zionist entity’s
textbooks as harbingers for peace. Since the Al-Aqsa Flood, there have been
numerous videos circulating showing young settlers not only being apathetic to
the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza but also celebrating such atrocity. -more-
“Toronto Picketers At Military Contractor
Pratt And Whitney”
By Labour Against The Arms Trade and World Beyond War,
Socialist Project. Popular Resistance.org (12-23-23). On Tuesday morning of December 12, more than
two hundred workers and union members from across the Toronto area picketed the
Mississauga manufacturing plant of defence contractor Pratt & Whitney
Canada. As Israel pursues its deadly assault on Gaza for a third month, the
picket lines interrupted business as usual at an aerospace giant that makes
engines for aircrafts that the Israeli military is using to carry out its
bombing campaign against Palestinian lives and infrastructure. Encountering
banners that read “Stop Arming Apartheid” and “Arms... -more-DECEMBER
15, 2023ABELTOMLINSON
Tara
Alami. “Gas, Gaza, and Western
imperialism.” Mondoweiss on December 20, 2023 . (Posted Dec 22, 2023).
Capitalism, Imperialism, State Repression, WarGaza, Israel, Middle East, PalestineNewswire. Editor. mronline.org (12-23-23).
Control
of Mediterranean gas fields is not the reason for the current attack on Gaza,
but the theft of Palestine’s natural resources has long been a goal of the
Zionist settler-colonial project and its Western sponsors.
“We need to act fast to stop the situation
in Gaza from triggering a wider war in the Middle East.” Morning Star Online on December 20, 2023. by Morning
Star Online Editors (more by Morning Star Online) | (Posted Dec
21, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (12-22-23).
Protest, State Repression, Strikes, WarGaza, Global, Israel, Middle East, PalestineNewswire
THE
danger signals of a wider war breaking out in the Middle East are now flashing
red. If the most compelling reason for
securing a stable and permanent ceasefire in Gaza remains the indescribable
suffering of the Palestinian people under merciless Israeli assault, then this
danger constitutes a barely less important second one.
“The Red Sea is now the second front in
the Gaza war. “ Counterfire on December 19, 2023 by John Rees (more by Counterfire) | (Posted Dec
21, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (12-22-23).
WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, United States, YemenNewswireGaza War, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Operation Prosperity Guardian, President Joe Biden, Red Sea, U.S. Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower, U.S. Navy, USS Carney
Long before it hit
mainstream news headlines in the last few days, a conflict has been raging in
the Red Sea which could transform Israel’s war on Gaza into a regional
conflict. In mid-October, the Houthi movement in Yemen, which controls much of
the country, fired drones and cruise missiles at Israel. It took the firepower
of the USS Carney, a U.S. warship in the Red Sea, to stop the missiles hitting
their target.
Ian MacLeod. “Blood money: The top ten politicians taking
the most Israel lobby cash.” lan MacLeod (Posted Dec 21, 2023). MintPress News on December 18, 2023 (more
by MintPress News) |
Empire, Imperialism, Inequality, WarAmericas, Israel, Middle East, United StatesNewswireChairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Mitch McConnell, President Joe Biden, Shontel Brown, Steny Hoyer, Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden Mronline.org (12-22-23).
As the Israeli attack
on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria intensifies, the U.S. public watch on aghast. A
new poll finds that Americans support a permanent
ceasefire by a more than 2:1 ratio (including the vast majority of Democrats
and a plurality of Republicans).
And yet, despite this,
only 4% of elected members of the House support even a temporary ceasefire, and
the United States continues to veto U.N. resolutions working towards ending the
violence. Walter Hixson, a historian concentrating on U.S. foreign relations,
told MintPress News:
THESE ARE INDEED TIMES sent to try
us—and the U.N. The organization makes repeated recommendations—and then those
who consistently ignore its advice condemn it, before frequently trying to use
it as the cherry picker to help them down from the tree that they climbed up. As
the Israeli onslaught continued, the U.N. had gone beyond feeding and educating
Palestinians to housing them in its schools and other depots, although history
and the twelve dead staffers so far suggest that this is a highly qualified safety.
The U.N. has also followed most countries in
seeing a close relationship, indeed an equivalence, between Israeli repression
and Hamas’ attacks.
The eruption/mass-breakout/invasion from Gaza seriously
supports Pontius Pilate’s confused query: “What is truth?” But the Roman was
not around to ask the very pertinent question. It should be no surprise to see
media and politicians looking at the whole thing through blue and white lenses,
but after recent patterns of behavior from Israel and the settlers we could
have expected a cosmetic attempt at objectivity. You do not have to be an
apologist for Hamas—the brutal wannabe theocrats in Gaza—to suggest some cause
and effect between Israel’s policies and this eruption.
I do not propose to burn incense on the altar
of Israeli victimhood. Dropping bombs on apartment blocks in Gaza, allowing,
indeed facilitating Ku Klux Klan-style pogroms in the West Bank, regularizing civilian
executions of Palestinians, not to mention apartheid and ethnic cleansing,
neither can nor should excuse the mayhem Hamas inflicted on
civilians. Holding a music festival near the Gaza fence could be likened to
opening a circus within earshot of the Warsaw Ghetto, but that is no reason for
emulating a West Bank settler mob on a pogrom by massacring the audience.
But the reality of murders and hostage-takings
is no excuse for febrile horror stories of the kind used to incite lynch mobs.
The Israeli allegations of beheading babies and mass rape reminded me of the
public relations-inspired campaign against Saddam Hussain claiming that his
troops emptied babies out of incubators in Kuwait. His army had indeed
massacred Kurds and Marsh Arabs, and Iraqi soldiers had indeed invaded Kuwait,
but there is nothing like a juicy atrocity to prepare the way for bombing civilians.
These allegations of beheadings of Israeli
babies and rapes of women ricocheted through the Internet and almost certainly
provided cover for pro-Israeli politicians in the EU to threaten cutting off
aid to Palestine. The source of those inflammatory news items appeared to be a
report from a Netanyahu-linked TV station based on unsupported statements by an
IDF reservist, who, it transpired, was a West Bank settler leader who had
inspired the settler pogrom on Huwara in the West Bank (which did not rouse a
fraction of the indignation of Kfar Aza kibbutz).
When a serious journalist from Turkey finally
checked and asked, the IDF could not and would not substantiate the reports of
beheadings even though, recognizing a good atrocity story when they saw one,
they could not bring themselves to actually deny it. If Pontius Pilate were
looking for truth, he would not go here!
To add flavor, the settler spokesman also
referred to rapes, presumably because if you want to incite a lynch mob, rapes
and murdering babies are the way to go. Within a day the cycle of unchecked
indignation was complete, and even Biden claimed to have seen pictures of
decapitated infants, but under more sustained questioning his office later
walked that back and said he had seen news reports. As Abraham Lincoln famously
said, presidents should not believe everything they read on the Internet.
He was not alone. The reality was bad enough,
but the created facts had done their work and the tales had permeated the media
miasma enough to occlude the sheer horror and illegality of Israel’s threats
against the people of Gaza. MORE https://www.wrmea.org/israel-palestine/u.n.-leaders-speak-out-against-siege.html
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD.
“ADL’s Campaign to Silence Criticism of
Israel By Calling it ‘Anti-Semitism’.” Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 2023.
POSTED ON NOVEMBER 2, 2023.
IN RECENT
YEARS, there
has been an effort to redefine “anti-Semitism” to include not simply bigotry
toward Jews and Judaism, but also criticism of Israel and Zionism. In May 2022, Jonathan Greenblatt,
CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), declared that, “Anti-Zionism
is anti-Semitism.” He argued that groups calling for
equal rights for Palestinians in Israel are “extremists” and equated liberal
critics of Israel with white supremacists.
This view has been sharply criticized by many Jewish
observers. In his book The Jewish American Paradox, Harvard
Law School Professor Robert Mnookin notes that, “Since World War ll,
institutionalized anti-Semitism [in the U.S.] has virtually disappeared.”
Mnookin describes “the alarmist approach by the Jewish advocacy organizations,
especially the ADL,” as “often exaggerated.” He points to the ADL’s approach to
the 163 bomb threats to synagogues in 2017: “Although virtually all of them had
been attributed to the disturbed Jewish teenager in Israel (who has since been
indicted), the ADL included them in its ‘harassment’ statistics for 2017 and
insisted they were evidence of anti-Semitism. By including these threats in its
2017 report, the ADL was able to claim a dramatic 41 percent spike in
harassment cases in just one year…I don’t think the Jewish community is served
by such hype.”
In an important assessment of the role the ADL is now
playing in the campaign to silence criticism of Israel, Eric Alterman,
CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and author of the
book, We are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel,
published an article in the New Republic on Aug. 21, 2023,
titled “What Does the ADL Stand for Today?”
He points out that “The far right is the source of the
vast majority of anti-Semitism in the U.S. today…The ADL should be saying so
more insistently… Greenblatt had virtually nothing to say about the rise of
white Christian nationalism, together with its undeniably anti-Semitic
‘replacement theory’ that has mesmerized so many MAGA supporters and inspired
murderous violence against Jews…and other vulnerable members of the population.
Instead, he focused his ire on what the ADL calls ‘hostile anti-Zionist activist
groups’ like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace,
which loudly criticize and protest against Israel on America’s college
campuses, calling them ‘the photo inverse of the extreme right.’”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Ron Kampeas
noted that Greenblatt ignored the anti-Semitic advertisements that have been
featured in many Republican campaigns and the fact that more and more
Republican politicians have been turning up at extremist right-wing gatherings.
While Greenblatt assaulted alleged “anti-Semitism” on the
pro-Palestinian left, the ADL’s own “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents 2022”
found that the liberal groups he focused on were responsible for just two
percent of the “anti-Semitic” actions to which the ADL objected. Lara Friedman,
a Middle East policy analyst and frequent critic of the ADL, points out that of
these incidents cited, 53 out of 70 were attributable to a single marginal
group in Ann Arbor, MI.
The ADL’s overall count of anti-Semitic incidents,
Alterman points out, “does not allow for crucial distinctions to be made among
them. A tragic massacre like that in October 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue
in Pittsburgh or the Jews held hostage in a Dallas synagogue for 11 hours by a
gunman last year, are accorded the same statistical significance in the ADL’s
counting as, say, a report of graffiti written on a stairwell of a college
dorm. In the ADL’s statistics, they both count the same.”
The motive for promoting the false idea of mounting
anti-Semitism is clear. “A major reason for the ADL’s addiction to alarmism,”
writes Alterman, “is the same institutional imperative that drives virtually
every other issue-oriented nonprofit: Bad news in the world is good news for
the organizations committed to fighting it. Climate change catastrophes fill
the coffers of environmental groups. Attacks on choice fill the coffers of
Planned Parenthood...”
Alterman continues, journalists who write about
escalating anti-Semitism “are sufficiently intelligent to understand this
phenomenon, but they tend to ignore it when reporting their stories and
therefore pass along the ADL’s skewed and self-interested version of the
problem as the political equivalent of scripture.”
Of course, another motive for focusing on anti-Semitism
is to deflect attention from the actions of the Israeli government, soldiers
and settlers. Journalists and academics who stray from the ADL’s talking points
may find their livelihoods threatened.
While the ADL and other Jewish organizations promote the
idea that there is growing anti-Semitism on American college and university
campuses, there is no evidence that this is true. In 2017 four scholars at
Brandeis University conducted an in-depth study at four high-profile campuses
and found that, “Jewish students are rarely exposed to anti-Semitism on campus.
Jewish students do not think their campus is hostile to Jews. The majority of
students disagree that there is a hostile environment to Jews on campus.”
Scholars associated with the Jewish Studies program at Stanford University
found a similar picture at five California campuses.
Some Israelis admit that the equating of anti-Zionism
with anti-Semitism is a tactic to silence criticism of Israel. Shulamit Aloni,
a former Minister of Education and winner of the Israel Prize, describes how
this works: “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody
criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When, in the United States,
people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”
In an important book, Whatever Happened to
Anti-Semitism?, all of this is examined by Antony Lerman, a British
specialist on Jewish affairs who has served as director of the Institute for
Jewish Policy Research. He is now senior fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for
International Dialogue in Vienna. At the core of the so-called “new
anti-Semitism,” Lerman points out, “is the claim that Israel is the
(persecuted) collective Jew among the nations.” This has no basis in reality:
“a state cannot have the attributes of a human being. Second, it is a heretical
corruption of Judaism because it entails an idolatrous deification and worship
of the state. Third, it is an anti-Semitic construct because it treats being
Jewish as a singular: ‘all Jews are the same.’”
As criticism of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians
grow on the part of groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch, which have characterized it as “apartheid,” Israeli historian Neve
Gordon notes that, “The Israeli government needs the ‘new anti-Semitism’ to
justify its actions and to protect it from international and domestic
condemnation. Anti-Semitism is effectively weaponized, not only to stifle free
speech…but also to suppress a politics of liberation.”
Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent,
provided this assessment: “The Israeli government long ago adjusted its public
relations strategy for the post-two-state reality…so that today, the
Israeli hasbara apparatus’ most active front is the
attempted redefinition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, with the goal of
rendering any opposition to the occupation or Zionism—or even simply Israeli
policies themselves—beyond the pale of mainstream sensibility.” MORE https://www.wrmea.org/israel-palestine/adls-campaign-to-silence-criticism-of-israel-by-calling-it-anti-semitism.html
Julia Conley. “‘Moral
insanity’: Biden admin bypasses Congress to rush tank shells to Israel.” Common
Dreams (December 9, 2023). Mronline.org (12-15-23).
(More by Common Dreams).
Capitalism, Human Rights, Inequality, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United StatesNewswireArms Control Export Act, Cease Fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken, United Nations Security Council, United States Ambassador Robert
Wood
Hours after United
States Ambassador Robert Wood on Friday acted alone to veto a United Nations
Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the
Biden administration again illustrated its growing isolation in continuing to
back Israel’s onslaught as it bypassed Congress to send more weapons to the
country’s extreme right-wing government.
The U.S. Defense
Department posted a notice online Saturday saying U.S. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken had informed Congress that a government sale of 13,000
rounds of tank ammunition was moving forward, even though Congress had not
completed an informal review of the transaction.
"Rushing deadly weapons to the far-right and openly
genocidal Israeli government without congressional review robs American voters
of their voice in Congress," said one critic.
Bruce Gagnon. "Trading in Terror." 2023.
Massive leak by the
acclaimed investigative reporter, Bruce Gagnon, was just re-posted on the AR
Anti-war Alliance's FB/Meta page. A report concerning what appears to be solid
evidence that there was prior knowledge of the Oct 7th Hamas attack into Israel
by several stock investors & the New York & Tel Aviv Stock Exchanges (NYSE
& TASE) brokerage
firms. Millions of $ were
made by investors "short selling" massive #'s of shares of
several Israeli company stocks in the days just before they fell sharply
immediately after the attack & then repurchasing them soon after this
precipitous fall. Similar to what has been going on in the stock market
here in the US for decades by US politicians who frequently generate the news
themselves that will make massive changes in the worth of stocks of
multi-billion $ corps(e) with the legislation they are crafting. So many
similarities between Israeli & US political malfeasance. MORE https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2023/12/overwhelming-proof-of-insider-trading.html
Forwarded to me by David Druding.
Jonathan Ofir. “I used to think the term ’Judeo-Nazis’
was excessive. I don’t any longer.” Mondoweiss (Dec.
8, 2023).
Editor, mronline.org (12-17-23).
I used to think that
Yeshayahu Leibowitz's term "Judeo-Nazis" was too strong to describe
Israel. But today, I feel differently.
Originally published: Mondoweiss on December 8, 2023 by
Jonathan Ofir (more by Mondoweiss) | (Posted Dec
16, 2023). Culture, Inequality, Race, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United StatesNewswireJudeo-Nazis, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Yeshayahu Leibowitz
The late Professor
Yeshayahu Leibowitz applied the term “Judeo-Nazis” back in the late 1980s when
he referred to former Supreme Court Judge Meir Landau, who effectively
legalized torture, by that description. He made his arguments strongly:
The State of Israel represents the darkness of a state body,
where a creature of a human form who was the president of the Supreme Court
decides that the use of torture is permitted in the interest of the state.
I took it as a kind of
moral exaggeration. It was bad–Palestinians were being tortured systematically,
but somehow I thought, we’re not quite as genocidal as Nazis.
But today, I feel
differently. Yesterday, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Arieh King tweeted a photo of over a hundred naked
Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, handcuffed,
and sitting in the sand, guarded by Israeli soldiers. King wrote that “The IDF
is exterminating the Nazi Muslims in Gaza” and that “we must up the tempo”. “If
it were up to me,” he added, “I would bring 4 D9’s [bulldozers], place them
behind the sandy hills and give an order to bury all those hundreds of Nazis
alive. They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman
and that is how they should be treated,” King said. He ended by repeating
Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek genocidal reference:
Eradicate the
memory of the Amalek, . . . MORE
Boycott Switzerland,
The Partner In Genocide!
By Boycott the Partners in Genocide,
Mondoweiss. At a time when
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is increasingly met with international
condemnation, the world has started to take action to halt the daily massacres
against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, most recently with the near-unanimous
adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire. Still,
some international actors have not been fulfilling their roles and obligations,
chief among them Switzerland, which has violated its own commitment to
neutrality by firmly taking a proactive stand on the side of the
perpetrators. -more-
Euro-Med Monitor:
Investigate Reports ‘Israel’ Burying Victims Alive
By Palestine Chronicle, Orinoco Tribune. The human rights organization Euro-Med
Monitor has urged to probe Israeli war crimes after reports of Palestinian
civilians buried alive at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. In a
report published on Saturday, the Geneva-based group said that “an independent
international investigation must be opened into these reports.” According to
Euro-Med Monitor, “Israeli army bulldozers drove into the hospital (on
Saturday) morning and destroyed its southern section, leaving behind massive
destruction following several days of non-stop attacks and siege.” -more-
BP, Evergreen Suspend
Red Sea Tanker Traffic; Yemen Continues Attacks
By News Desk, The
Cradle. BP said it will
pause all its tanker traffic through the Red Sea following an escalation of
attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement in
response to Israel's brutal bombing campaign in
END GAZA #16
