progressiveissuesblog

Osama bin Laden

Updated 2023-11-22

2023-11-21 Destroying History to Preserve an Illusion    On April 9, 2016 Consortium News published an article, republished last September 12, “Why Americans Are Never Told Why,” that sought to explain why the historical context surrounding terrorist attacks on the West is suppressed to whitewash any responsibility Western governments have for putting their populations in danger.

Instead Western leaders prefer their people believe the illusion that totally irrational actors attack them because “they hate their freedoms” and not because of an aggressive foreign policy towards the Middle East.     https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/21/destroying-history-to-preserve-an-illusion/

2023-11-17 Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America: Transcript in Full [MEK Note: As with most documents associated with Osama, we need to be suspicious.  While the letter is characterized as an explanation for his 9/11 attacks, nowhere in the letter does Osama take direct credit for the 9//11 attacks.  This gives it more credibility as I know that the 9/11 attacks were a 100% inside job by elements in our government (see my decades old unclaimed $100K reward for the first person to prove otherwise).  The government/media (military-industrial-complex) story is a total lie including the faked death raid of Osama in 2011!  With the apparent success of the 9/11 attacks, one would have thought Osama (immediately accused) would have gladly taken credit for it even if he had not been involved, yet Osama quickly released a statement that he hadn’t been involved. The FBI also never found any reason to accuse Osama of 9/11 attacks. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. MIC desperately needed a new enemy and one which they could blame for the 9/11 attacks. Osama was the perfect villain who would direct any immediate attention away from the need for a real investigation of the facts of 9/11. An investigation which has still never happened except among some members of the 9/11 Truth movement. The long delayed 9/11 Commission Report was a cover-up that ignored any and all facts that would have exposed the MIC.]  

All   Document (in full) written by Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden 21 years ago to explain the ideology behind the 9/11 attacks has suddenly become viral on social media, as many Americans claim to have found some truth in the words of the al-Qaeda founder.

In the document, titled “Letter to America” and written in 2002, bin Laden goes on a rant about the U.S., blaming the country’s intervention in the Middle East, including its decades-long support for the state of Israel, for the bloodshed of both Afghans and Palestinians.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/osama-bin-laden-s-letter-to-america-transcript-in-full/ar-AA1k5Cx3

2023-11-17 Osama bin Laden Letter’s Popularity on TikTok Stuns Biden Official  The U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona calls the popularity of Osama bin Laden’s letter circulating on TikTok “stunning.”   The two-page document titled “Letter to America” written by bin Laden in 2002 has been circulating over social media recently, catching the attention of some young Americans who believed that the man in charge of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, made some valid points.  https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-letter-popularity-biden-1844905

2023-11-16 Deleted Osama bin Laden Letter Sparks Censorship Accusations    Amid the current and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the letter has recently been viewed millions of times on TikTok. A number of young pro-Palestinian Americans described the letter as “mind-blowing” and a “revelation,” with some even arguing that bin Laden’s analysis of U.S.-Israeli relations “was right.”  https://www.newsweek.com/deleted-osama-bin-laden-letter-censorship-accusations-1844435

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Mandatory Palestine

Updated 2023-11-22

2014-09-29 Mandatory Palestine: What It Was and Why It Matters   The idea of a mandatory nation, using the common definition of the word, is an odd one: a country that’s obligatory, something that can’t be missed without fear of consequence. But the entity known as “Mandatory Palestine” existed for more than two decades—and, despite its strange-sounding name, had geopolitical consequences that can still be felt today.   

The word “mandatory,” in this case, refers not to necessity but to the fact that a mandate caused it to exist. That document, the British Mandate for Palestine, was drawn up in 1920 and came into effect on this day in 1923, Sept. 29. Issued by the League of Nations, the Mandate formalized British rule over parts of the Levant (the region that comprises countries to the east of the Mediterranean), as part of the League’s goal of administrating the region’s formerly Ottoman nations “until such time as they are able to stand alone.” The Mandate also gave Britain the responsibility for creating a Jewish national homeland in the region.

The Mandate did not itself redraw borders—following the end of World War I, the European and regional powers had divvied up the former Ottoman Empire, with Britain acquiring what were then known as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) and Palestine (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan)—nor did it by any means prompt the drive to build a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism, the movement to create a Jewish homeland, had emerged in the late 19th century, though it wasn’t exclusively focused on a homeland in Palestine. (Uganda was one of several alternatives proposed over the years.) In 1917, years before the Mandate was issued, the British government had formalized its support for a Jewish state in a public letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour known as the Balfour Declaration.    https://time.com/3445003/mandatory-palestine/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

London Conference of 1946–1947

Updated 2023-11-22

London Conference of 1946–1947 – Wikipedia    The London Conference of 1946–1947, which took place between September 1946 and February 1947, was called by the British Government of Clement Attlee to resolve the future governance of Palestine and negotiate an end of the Mandate. It was scheduled following an Arab request after the April 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry report.  The Conference’s failure to reach agreements between Arabs and Jews regarding the future of Palestine led Britain to renounce the Mandate and “submit the problem to the judgment of the United Nations. 

The conference began on 9 September 1946, with only representatives of the Arab States in attendance, but without Jewish or Palestinian representatives.   The first item for discussion was the Morrison–Grady Plan,[6] which was to be rejected by all parties.   The British government later described the Arab reaction to the plan:  The Arab Delegates at once made it clear that they were opposed to this plan in principle and could not accept it as a basis for discussion. They criticized many of its features; but was clear that, fundamentally, their rejection of this solution was based on their conviction that any scheme of provincial autonomy would inevitably lead to partition.

The alternative plan put forward by the Arab states consisted of the following:

(a) Palestine would be a unitary State with a permanent Arab majority, and would attain its independence as such after a short period of transition (two or three years) under British Mandate.

(b) Within this unitary State, Jews who had acquired Palestinian citizenship (for which the qualification would be ten years’ residence in the country) would have full civil rights, equally with all other citizens of Palestine.

(c) Special safeguards would be provided to protect the religious and cultural rights of the Jewish community.

(d) The sanctity of the Holy Places would be guaranteed and safeguards provided for freedom of religious practice throughout Palestine.

(e) The Jewish community would be entitled to a number of seats in the legislative Assembly proportionate to the number of Jewish citizens (as defined) in Palestine, subject to the proviso that in no case would the number of Jewish representatives exceed one third of the total number of members.

(f) All legislation concerning immigration and the transfer of land would require the consent of the Arabs in Palestine as expressed by a majority of the Arab members of the Legislative Assembly.

(g) The guarantees concerning the Holy Places would be alterable only with the consent of the United Nations; and the safeguards provided for the Jewish community would be alterable only with the consent of a majority of the Jewish Members of the Legislative Assembly.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Conference_of_1946%E2%80%931947

Proposals for the Future of Palestine/Arab Plan      Constitutional Proposals put forward by the Arab States Delegations to the Palestine Conference on 30th September, 1946 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_Future_of_Palestine/Arab_Plan,  https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/24963/arab-constitutional-proposals-london-roundtable-conference

2023-11-18 What ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really Means   n 1946, the Delegation of Arab Governments proposed instead a “unitary state” with a “democratic constitution” that would guarantee “freedom of religious practice” for all and would recognize “the right of Jews to employ the Hebrew language as a second official language.”

The following year, the United Nations instead approved a partition plan for Palestine, which would have forced 500,000 Palestinian Arabs living in the proposed Jewish state to choose between living as a minority in their own country or leaving.

It’s in this context that the call for a unified, independent Palestine emerges, according to Arabic scholar Elliott Colla.

During the 1948 war that led to the formation of the state of Israel, around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their villages and towns. By the end of the war, Palestine was split into three: 78% of the land became part of the Jewish state of Israel, while the remainder fell under Jordanian or Egyptian rule.

Palestinian refugees believed they had a right to return to their homes in the new state of Israel. Israeli leaders, seeking to maintain the state’s Jewish majority, sought to have the refugees resettled far away. Meanwhile, a narrative emerged in the West in the 1950s claiming that Palestinians’ political claims were invalid.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/from-the-river-to-the-sea-meaning, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-river-to-the-sea-a-palestinian-historian-explores-the-meaning-and-intent-of-a-scrutinized-slogan/1948-02-02 The Palestine Solution – The Arab Proposalshttps://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/amed/amedeltaher/2017498789/2017498789.pdf

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Jill Stein

Updated 2024-04-03

2023-12-20 Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka on Politics, Palestine and the Police State    Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka joins RSTV host Kalonji Changa for a discussion around the Green Party, RFK, Trump, Cornel West and current affairs. 

Jill Stein was the Green Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016. In 2016, Ajamu Baraka ran as the Green Party nominee for Vice President.   Jill Stein is a Physician and Ajamu Baraka currently serves as the national organizer and spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80s4UvWbyjI

2023-11-18 Jill Stein on Trump, Israel and Why Democrats Are Scared   ill Stein is running for president again, and she’s making no apologies for 2016—saying it’s a “badge of honor” when Democrats blame her for former President Donald Trump’s win.   If Stein succeeds in securing the Green Party’s nomination, it will mark her third long-shot bid for the White House, as she first ran in 2012 prior to her 2016 campaign. In a moment when both of the likely major party candidates, incumbent President Joe Biden and Trump, are uniquely unpopular, her supporters would say that 2024 just might be the right moment for someone like her to break through.

Already, pundits and some Democrats have begun to raise alarms about Stein’s campaign, particularly as national and swing-state polls show Trump leading Biden in a still hypothetical 2024 rematch. Stein believes that Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. 

Stein hit Biden, Democrats and Republicans for their unabashed support for Israel, the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, their handling of economic issues that impact everyday Americans and the dire risk of nuclear war. The presidential hopeful said she has a message that’s not only for leftists who may hold their nose and vote Democrat, but one that can reach Trump’s MAGA supporters as well.   https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-jill-stein-trump-israel-why-democrats-are-scared-1844766

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Islam

Updating 2024-04-03

Islam – Wikipedia      Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centered on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad, the religion’s founder. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number approximately 1.9 billion worldwide and are the world’s second-largest religious population after Christians.[9]

Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier prophets and messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injil (Gospel). They believe that Muhammad is the main and final Islamic prophet, through whom the religion was completed.     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam  

Islam vs Muslim: Difference and Comparison     Islam spread on the world map through the teachings of Prophet Mohammad and all those Muslims who later gave their lives to reach more and more people by spreading the words of Mohammad. 

Islam is a monotheistic religion founded in the 7th century, based on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran, with core beliefs including the Five Pillars of Islam.

Muslim is a term used to describe a follower of Islam, an individual who adheres to the beliefs and practices of the Islamic faith.

Islam is the religion, while Muslim is the term for an individual who follows that religion.   https://askanydifference.com/difference-between-islam-and-muslim/

2023-11-19 Hamas and Jihad: An Object Lesson in Incompatibility      Why is this not a religious conflict? Before the 20th century, for thirteen hundred years or so, Muslims and Jews got along pretty well, and Jews lived in Muslim lands for centuries. The “they’ve always been at each other’s throats” is lazy nonsense that attempts to rewrite history in light of Israel-Palestine. Islam accepts Judaism and Christianity as part of Islam and therefore Jews were considered to be people who had received an earlier revelation from God. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are therefore, in the Islamic view, religious cousins. Remarkably, the Qur’an explicitly says that it’s not just Muslims who will go to heaven, but that “the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians—all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good—will have their rewards with their Lord. No fear for them, nor will they grieve” (2:62). When, in 1492, over 50,000 Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition (from which Muslims also fled), they fled to the Ottoman Empire, which welcomed them. Traditionally, the physician to the Ottoman Sultan was always Jewish.

Although the Israel-Palestine conflict is not motivated by religion, both sides use religious language to advance their agendas. Hamas, though it couches its language in the language of the religious texts, is a nationalist organization, not interested in world dominance but in resisting the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has invoked the biblical reference to Amalek and referred to the bombing of Gaza as a “holy mission.”     https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/hamas-jihad-gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Israel Officials – Genocide

Updated 2024-02-25

2023-11-21 Anti Palestine TikTok   In this video we examine a handful of short form content pieces from supporters of Israel, and connect this content to broader Zionist attitudes. this one’s not an easy watch but i hope it gives at least one person some context on what Israel is doing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdlJqlzOGgU

2023-11-18 ‘We Are Too Humane. Burn Gaza Now,’ Says Senior Israeli Lawmaker       Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi is one of many Israeli leaders who have made genocidal statements against Palestinians.    

Nissim Vaturi, the far-right deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, raised eyebrows and ire Friday after asserting on social media that Israel’s war on Gaza—which has killed and maimed over 40,000 people and displaced around 70% of the population—is “too humane.” 

The social media platform X—whose multibillionaire owner Elon Musk is in hot water for promoting an anti-semitic post—deleted Vaturi’s tweet, and others including one in which he wrote that Israel should leave just “one old man” alive in Gaza so he could “tell everyone” what happened there.   Vaturi is far from alone in making what legal experts call statements of genocidal intent. 

Earlier this month, Israeli President Isaac Herzog asserted that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to “eliminate everything” there.   Galit Distel Atbaryan, a member of the Knesset from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said that “Gaza should be wiped off the map.”   Ariel Kallner, another Likud parliamentarian, urged a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48,” a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49.  Yet another Likud lawmaker, Tally Gotliv, demanded nothing less than a “doomsday kiss”—that is, use of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons. “Not flattening a neighborhood,” she clarified, but “crushing and flattening Gaza. Without mercy!”   Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, who said “we are now rolling out the Great Nakba,” was admonished by Netanyahu for saying the quiet part out loud.

Netanyahu said it out loud last month during a televised address when he called Israel’s imminent ground invasion of Gaza a “holy mission” and invoked Amalek, the ancient biblical enemy of the Israelites whom God commanded his “chosen people” to exterminate, in what critics called “an explicit call to genocide.”

Noting that statements of intent to commit genocide are a key element of the crime, Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal told Democracy Now! in an interview last month that “if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.”    “We’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent,” he added. “This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-genocide

2023-10-24 Zionist think tank publishes blueprint for Palestinian genocide     In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.

Published in Hebrew on the organization’s website, the paper was authored by Amir Weitman, “an investment manager and visiting researcher” at the Institute who also leads the libertarian caucus of Israel’s ruling Likud Party. The document began by noting that there are 10 million vacant housing units in neighboring Egypt that could be “immediately” filled with Palestinians. Weitman then assured readers that the “sustainable plan…aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”

Weitman’s ethnic cleansing proposal echoes forced transfer plans advanced in recent days by former Israeli officials while capitalizing on evacuation orders delivered to the entire civilian population of northern Gaza by the Israeli military.       https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/24/zionist-think-tank-palestinian-genocide/

2023-10-21 AP erases Israeli pledge to attack Gaza like ‘Axis Power’ as officials threaten Palestinians with ‘Dresden’ doctrine     The Associated Press has quietly deleted a reference to official Israeli threats to subject the Gaza Strip to a Dresden-style firebombing campaign — the latest move in legacy media outlets’ ongoing push to downplay the impacts of Tel Aviv’s siege of over two million Palestinians.

“Four U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said American diplomats became increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts regarding their intention to deny water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties,” the AP article previously stated.

In an October 16 interview, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, shrugged off concerns about the thousands of innocents killed in IDF strikes on Gaza.  “There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” she told a Sky News anchor. “Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.”   Comparing the militarily occupied Palestinian population to Nazis, Hotovley continued: “Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes.”   Media coverage of that exchange, however, largely centered on the Israeli ambassador’s repeated insistence that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

But she was not the only Israeli official who openly invoked the Allied attacks on German civilians to justify Israel’s assault on Gaza. In a heated exchange with another Sky News host, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared that “when Great Britain was fighting the Nazis during World War Two, no one asked what’s going on in Dresden.”   https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/21/israeli-attack-axis-gaza-dresden/

2023-10-11 Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village    The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.   In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.”    He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”   

David Ben Zion, is a leader of the Shomron Regional Council of 35 illegal West Bank settlements who called this year for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “wiped out.”   “Enough talk about building and strengthening the settlements,” Ben David said in a Twitter post on February 26, 2023. The deterrence that was lost must return now, there’s no room for mercy.”    Ben David was quoted in Israeli media proclaiming soon after, “The village of Huwara should be wiped out, this place is a nest of terror and the punishment should be for everyone,” a clear call for the collective punishment of Palestinians.   

Ben David’s tweet was ‘liked’ on Twitter by Israel’s-then Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a move which prompted 22 legal scholars to call on the Attorney General to open an investigation into the official for “inducing war crimes.” When Smotrich later echoed Ben David, calling to “wipe out” Huwara the following month, the US Department of State condemned his rhetoric as “dangerous.” 

But Ben David’s call for collective punishment in Huwara was far from his only genocidal imprecation against Palestinians. Indeed, he has used his social media accounts to repeatedly call for war crimes as well as the “deportation of the [Palestinian] masses.”  “The Palestinian people… [are] an enemy,” Ben David wrote in 2016. “We can’t change their barbaric DNA.”   Ben David appears to have been at the forefront of settler extremism for years.

Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village

2023-10-09 The True Face of Israel    Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has announced a “complete siege” of all of Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Saturday, justifying the deliberate targeting of civilians with siege warfare by the claim that Israel is at war with “human animals”.   “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said Monday, adding, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”   So there you have it, folks: they’re attacking civilians, which is fine, because they’re not actually attacking human beings.    https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-true-face-of-israel

2023-08-02 Israeli leaders left & right in their own words!    Israeli leaders have always fueled anti-Palestinian hostility.  Their inflammatory rhetoric explains the acts of violence Israel inflicts on Palestinians.

“[The way to deal with Palestinians is to] beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.” Benjamin Netanyahu, 2001

“I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.”  – Bezalel Smotrich, 2023

“I ordered the removal of [Palestinian] flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel.”   – Itamar Ben-Gvir, 2023

 “I wish I could wake up one day and find that Gaza has sunk into the sea.”  – Yitzhak Rabin

“Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done — we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head.”  – Avigdor Lieberman, 2015

“I am happy to be a fascist!” – Miri Regev, 2012

“We must defend ourselves against the wild beasts.”  – Benjamin Netanyahue, 2016

“One hair on the head of an Israeli soldier is more precious than the entire Gazan populace.”   – Moshe Feiglin, 2014

“[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human.”   – Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, 2013

Israeli leaders’ statements expose the deeply rooted racism in the Israeli society against the Palestinian people.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwqoX4w0FhU , https://english.palinfo.com/video_articles/israeli-leaders-left-%26-right-in-their-own-words/

2015-11-05 ‘I would like to see Gaza drown in the sea’: Remembering the real Yitzhak Rabin, 20 years after his assassination     Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yitzhak Rabin is a hero of liberal Zionists. But for Palestinians, the assassinated Israeli prime minister is remembered for his massacres and opposition to an independent state.   At an election debate in 1988, Israeli statesman Yitzhak Rabin touted his achievements as the defense minister who enacted the “broken bones” policy to suppress the first Palestinian Intifada.  During his campaign in 1992, Rabin warned that a Palestinian state could only be established on the ruins of Israel. Indeed, Rabin was opposed to the creation of a viable Palestinian state, favoring instead a form of limited autonomy in Bantustan-style population centers overseen by dictatorial security forces that coordinated repression with the Israeli army.

Rabin’s aim, and that of his successors, was not co-existence with the Palestinians, but rather a form of hard separation that guarded Israel’s exclusively Jewish character. It was Rabin’s campaign vow in 1992 to “keep Gaza out of Tel Aviv” — to essentially wall off the Gaza Strip — that helped him secure the premiership.   Months later, Rabin declared, “I would like to see Gaza drown in the sea.”  https://thegrayzone.com/2015/11/05/gaza-yitzhak-rabin-assassination/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Israel Lies About October 7th

Updated 2023-11-22

2023-11-21 US OK’s Bombing Children as Hamas Fights for Their Freedom from Illegal Israeli Military Occupation   Israel maintains an illegal air, sea and land blockade on Gaza, not allowing anyone, including children, to escape being bombed to death.  The US government, providing Israel with warplanes, missiles, weapons,  ammunition and political and diplomatic backing,  is complicit in this ongoing genocide of bombing to death thousands of militarily confined civilians, mostly women and children .  The Israeli government claims the right to bomb its illegally occupied and captive Palestinians and kill all the members of their Hamas government.

As to Israel’s using the Israelis killed in the Hamas Oct 7th attack to justify the Israeli response of murdering already 12, 500 Palestinian civilians, resent investigations find that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition, making it very difficult to distinguish between Israelis and Hamas attackers. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many or most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots, who reported that they had blasted anything that moved. https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/us-oks-bombing-children-as-hamas-fights-for-their-freedom-from-illegal-israeli-military-occupation/

2023-11-18 IDEO: What really happened on October 7?     The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal joins Chris Hedges to discuss his investigation into Israel’s indiscriminate use of heavy weapons against Israeli citizens on October 7, and the shock-and-awe campaign of misinformation it subsequently employed to create political space for its brutal assault on Gaza.  

Editor’s note: Since the publication of this interview, an Israeli police investigation has confirmed that Israeli Apache helicopters killed numerous Israeli citizens at and around the Nova electronic music festival, and that Hamas did not know in advance about the festival. The Israeli government has also acknowledged that 200 of those it counted as Israeli casualties were, in fact, Hamas militants killed by its forces on October 7, and that it may have marketed images of their charred bodies to the public as proof of Hamas’ brutality.   

For all the sensationalism surrounding the events of Oct. 7, when Hamas broke through the Gaza fence and seized territory in the Gaza Envelope as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, there is still much that we do not know. The official Israeli death toll from the attack is estimated at 1,200 civilians, revised from an initial estimate of 1,400. Among this figure are several hundred civilians, which Israel says were killed by Hamas militants. Other testimony from survivors of Oct. 7 suggests an alternative explanation—that in its fervor to defeat Hamas, Israeli commanders may have willingly targeted and sacrificed Israeli soldiers and civilians in the crossfire. Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone joins The Chris Hedges Report for an in-depth look.   https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/18/video-what-happened-october-7/

2023=11-17 Max Blumenthal Tweet   Israeli govt propagandist Mark Regev confirms reporting by me and others that burned bodies presented by Tel Aviv as evidence of Hamas atrocities were in fact Hamas activists burned by Israeli hellfire missiles.   This also adds legitimacy to claims that many Israelis found burned beyond recognition were friendly fire victims.  https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1725518601740767338?s=20

2023-11-17 The Chris Hedges Report with reporter Max Blumenthal on how the Israeli military launched a series of attacks on Oct. 7 designed to kill Hamas gunmen along with their Israeli hostages.    https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-reporter

2023-11-13 The October 7 Hamas Assault on Israel   The Most Successful Military Raid of this Century.    Israel has characterized the attack carried out by Hamas on the various Israeli military bases and militarized settlements, or Kibbutz, which in their totality comprised an important part of the Gaza barrier system, as a massive act of terrorism, likening it to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States. Israel supports this characterization by citing the number of persons killed (some 1,200, a downward revision issued by Israel after realizing that 200 of the dead were Palestinian fighters) and detailing a wide variety of atrocities it claims were perpetrated by Hamas, including mass rape, the beheading of children, and the wonton murder of unarmed Israeli civilians.

The problem with the Israeli claims is that they are demonstrably false or misleading. Nearly a third of the Israeli casualties consisted of military, security, and police officers. Moreover, it turns out that the number one killer of Israelis on October 7 wasn’t Hamas or other Palestinian factions, but the Israeli military itself. Recently released video shows Israeli Apache helicopters indiscriminately firing on Israeli civilians trying to flee the Supernova Sukkot Gathering held in the open desert near Kibbutz Re’im, the pilots unable to distinguish between the civilians and the Hamas fighters. Many of the vehicles that the Israeli government has shown as an example of Hamas perfidy were destroyed by the Israeli Apache helicopters.

Likewise, the Israeli government has widely publicized what it is calling the “Re’im massacre,” citing a death toll of some 112 civilians it claims were murdered by Hamas. However, eyewitness accounts from both surviving Israeli civilians and military personnel involved in the fighting show that the vast majority of those killed died from fire from Israeli soldiers and tanks directed at buildings where the civilians were either hiding or being held hostage by Hamas fighters. It took two days for the Israeli military to recapture Re’im. It only did so after tanks fired into the civilian residences, collapsing them onto their occupants, and often setting them ablaze, causing the bodies of those inside to be consumed by fire. The Israeli government has publicized how it has had to make use of the services of forensic archeologists to identify human remains at the Kibbutz, implying that Hamas had burned the occupants’ home. But the fact is it was Israeli tanks that did the destruction and killing.   https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/the-october-7-hamas-assault-on-israel

2023-10-27 October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles     Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire?  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.

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He 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.”

A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “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 was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.   These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives.

An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.   As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described “very, very heavy crossfire” and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis.   While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.”    She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.”

According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled. “Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”   Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.”

Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.  https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/

2023-10-27 October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles

The lighting assault immediately overwhelmed Israel’s Gaza Division. Video recorded from GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets of Palestinian fighters shows Israeli soldiers cut down in rapid succession, many still dressed in underwear and caught off guard. At least 340 active soldiers and intelligence officers were killed on October 7, accounting for close to 50% of confirmed Israeli deaths. The casualties included high ranking officers like Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of Israel’s Nahal Brigade. (Many first responders and armed Israeli civilians were also killed).

The Erez Crossing is the home of a massive military and Coordination of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) facility which functions as the nerve center of Israel’s siege on Gaza. When it was overrun by Palestinian fighters on October 7 with droves of army bureaucrats inside, the Israeli military flew into a panic.

According to Haaretz, the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, “entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the [Erez Crossing] base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”

Video released by Israel’s COGAT ten days after the battle – and the Israeli airstrike – shows severe structural damage to the roof of the Erez Crossing facility.      https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/

2023-10-27 October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles However, the Israeli government has not been content to rely on verified video evidence. Instead, it continues to push discredited claims of “beheaded babies” while distributing photographs of “bodies burned beyond recognition” to insist that militants sadistically immolated their captives, and even raped some before torching them alive.

The objective behind Tel Aviv’s atrocity exhibition is clear: to paint Hamas as “worse than ISIS” while cultivating support for the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has left over 7000 dead, including at least 2500 children at the time of publication. While hundreds of wounded children in Gaza have been treated for what a surgeon described as “fourth degree burns” caused by novel weapons, the Western media’s focus remains trained on Israeli citizens supposedly “burned alive” on October 7.

Yet the mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.

Indeed, it appears that on October 7, Israel’s military resorted to the same tactics it has employed against civilians in Gaza, driving up the death toll of its own citizens with the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons.

October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles

2023-10-11 Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village    An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.  According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets.

The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.   In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.”    He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”

Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Israel Hatred of Palestinians

Updated 2024-08-26

2024-08-24 Hamas urges anger and condemnation over Quran burning by Israeli soldiers      Al Jazeera Arabic had aired footage, obtained from the cameras of Israeli soldiers, showing them ripping up pages from the Muslim holy book and burning them at the Bani Saleh Mosque in northern Gaza.

The channel also published a video from an Israeli drone showing the bombing of the historic Grand Mosque in Khan Younis.   According to the Gaza Government Media Office, Israel has completely destroyed 610 mosques and three churches over the past 10 months in Gaza.

On Saturday, Hamas called on “the free people of the world” to act to defend Muslim and Christian holy sites in Palestine and end “the war of extermination” against the Gaza Strip.  The Israeli offensive has killed more than 40,200 Palestinians and turned large parts of the besieged Palestinian territory into rubble.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a US advocacy group, said the desecration of Quran copies and targeting of mosques in Gaza prove that Israel’s “war on the Palestinian people in Gaza is also a war on Islam itself”. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-urges-anger-and-condemnation-over-quran-burning-by-israeli-soldiers/ar-AA1pn5Cz?

2024-08-22 Israel envoy to UN calls PA ambassador ‘a terrorist in a suit’ at Security Council meeting    srael’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon calls the Palestinian Authority envoy “a terrorist in a suit” at a Security Council debate in New York.

“You have spent two decades in this place proposing resolutions which: stir chaos, sow division and avoid any hope,” Danon says to Riyad Mansour during a debate on the Middle East. “You have accomplished nothing but incite hatred and violence while claiming to be an advocate for peace.”   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-envoy-to-un-calls-pa-ambassador-a-terrorist-in-a-suit-at-security-council-meeting/ar-AA1pgouN?

2024-08-20 Religious Zionism MK calls settler violence ‘a drop in the ocean’ compared to Arab terrorism     Religious Zionist MK Zvi Sukkot characterized the serious incidents of violence committed by settlers in the West Bank as a “super marginal phenomenon, a drop in the ocean compared to Arab terrorism,” the Religious Zionist MK said on Sunday.   .https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/religious-zionism-mk-calls-settler-violence-a-drop-in-the-ocean-compared-to-arab-terrorism/ar-AA1p8Pyy

2024-08-13 Investigation Details IDF Use of Gaza Civilians as Booby Trap Detectors     Believing that “our lives are more important than their lives,” Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.

The report, published Tuesday, features testimonies of IDF soldiers, who said commanders are fully aware of the practice of using captured Palestinians as human shields. One soldier said “there is pride in it,” referring to acts considered war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. https://www.commondreams.org/news/idf-human-shields

2024-08-01 ‘We don’t care enough’ about Palestinian lives, says former IDF paratrooper     Serving as an IDF reservist in Gaza, Yuval Green says he witnessed destruction, looting and a desire for revenge by fellow soldiers, and will no longer serve. He describes his experience to Bianna Golodryga. In an earlier statement to ABC News responding to Green, the IDF said its actions “are based on military necessity,” and any misconduct by soldiers “will be arbitrated, and significant command measures will be taken”.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-don-t-care-enough-about-palestinian-lives-says-former-idf-paratrooper/vi-BB1r2vMk?

2024-07-21 Israeli Soldiers Flaunt War Crimes on Social Media. Why Aren’t They Held Accountable?     Israel’s genocide in Gaza may go down as the first genocide in history where the perpetrators have documented, posted, shared and celebrated their crimes on social media.   Over the past 10 months, Israeli soldiers in Gaza have taken photos and videos of themselves while they blew up homes and schools, and tortured captives.

To boast of their atrocities against civilians, Israeli forces have routinely filmed themselves demolishing residential blocks in Gaza, which they proceeded to share online. In June, an Israeli soldier filmed himself walking triumphantly amid the ruins and rubble of a destroyed neighborhood in Gaza, while boasting: “We were asked to clear the area. Blow it all up. What can I do, I’m an obedient soldier. Tomorrow there won’t be anything here.” https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-soldiers-flaunt-war-crimes-online-why-arent-they-held-accountable/

2024-07-18 Israeli Lawmakers Vote Against Palestinian Statehood Before Netanyahu’s US Trip     While Israel’s troops wage what has been widely decried as genocide on the Gaza Strip, Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing “the establishment of a Palestinian state” west of the Jordan River.

The measure passed Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, 68-9. It was spearheaded by Knesset Member Zeev Elkin of New Hope – The United Right, who shared the key messages from the resolution on social media along with a photo of the final tally.

According to Religious Zionism-affiliated Israel National News:    The proposal says, “The Israeli Knesset firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the land of Israel will pose an existential threat to the state of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and destabilize the region.”   “It will only be a matter of a short time until Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a base of radical Islamic terrorism, working in coordination with the axis led by Iran, to eliminate the state of Israel.”    https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-lawmakers-vote-against-palestinian-statehood-before-netanyahus-us-trip/

2024-07-17 Israel Has Attacked Gaza “Safe Zone” at Least 10 Times Since Rafah Invasion    Just over two months ago, Israel forced more than a million Palestinians who were taking shelter in southern Gaza to flee, once again, to an area it designated as a “humanitarian safe zone” — an area that the Israeli military has since attacked at least 10 times, new research finds.

According to London research group Forensic Architecture, the area in Al-Mawasi now sheltering thousands of Palestinians has been subject to Israeli attacks since May 6, when Israeli officials first delineated the “safe” zone.

The attacks started as early as two weeks after Israel forced Palestinians to flee to the area, a desert region with essentially no infrastructure, laying waste to tents and makeshift shelters set up to house people who Israel has displaced time and again in the past nine months.https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-attacked-gaza-safe-zone-at-least-10-times-since-rafah-invasion/

2024-06-23 Survivor of Israeli raid speaks out: Mujahid Abadi says soldiers beat him despite injuries    Al Jazeera has spoken to an injured Palestinian man who was used as a human shield by Israeli forces in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.  Mujahid Abbadi was strapped to the front of an Israeli military vehicle on Saturday which drove past several ambulances.  For the first time, Abbadi explains what happened to him.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim has more from Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank.   The Israeli Military has said it would be conducting an investigation into the incident and said the conduct of its soldiers “does not conform” to its values.    But Sari Bashi, who’s the Program Director at Human Rights Watch, says it is doubtful their investigation will lead to any kind of accountability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvbLuEDjDKg

2024-05-10 UN Vote Was for Palestinian Membership, Not Statehood     In a blow to the U.S., the U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to give Palestine, whose statehood it has already acknowledged, full U.N. membership, forcing the U.S. into another embarrassing veto at the Security Council, says Joe Lauria. 

The United States will be forced into another embarrassing veto at the U.N. Security Council after the General Assembly on Friday voted overwhelmingly to ask the Council to reverse its rejection of full U.N. membership for Palestine.  

Israel’s furious ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said the U.N. was founded to prevent the kind of tyranny of the Nazis who sought to annihilate the Jewish people.

“Today, you are doing the opposite … welcoming a terror State into its ranks,” he said. “You have opened up the United Nations to modern-day Naziism. It makes me sick.”  https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/10/un-vote-was-for-palestinian-membership-not-statehood/

2024-04-05 How Israel Weaponizes Water     Even before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in the sole coastal aquifer of Gaza was already unsafe for human consumption, writes Vijay Prashad.

By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. “Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water’, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

“Israel,” he noted, “must stop using water as a weapon of war.”   Before Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, 97 percent of the water in Gaza’s only coastal aquifer was already unsafe for human consumption based on World Health Organisation standards. Over the course of its many attacks, Israel has all but destroyed Gaza’s water purification system and prevented the entry of materials and chemicals needed for repair.

In early October 2023, Israeli officials indicated that they would use their control over Gaza’s water systems as a means to perpetrate a genocide. As Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, the head of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said on 10 October, “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”   https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/05/how-israel-weaponizes-water/

2024-03-21 ‘Kill them all’: inside the Israeli blockade on Gaza aid      Journalist Jeremy Loffredo goes inside the grassroots Israeli campaign to block desperately needed aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and elicits the shockingly candid views of the Jewish Israeli nationalists manning the barricades.

Setting out on a bus caravan through illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Loffredo arrives at the Kerem Shalom crossing to Gaza, filming Israeli citizens as they physically block trucks loaded with flour and other essential goods. There, a reservist who served in the military assault on Gaza confesses to an array of war crimes, including blowing up the offices of UN centers dedicated to providing food to the local population.

Loffredo then joins nationalists on a march toward Gaza, where they hope to establish new settlements after the population is violently driven out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRzfb2oMaM

2024-03-13 Discrimination This Israeli writer speaks out on how dehumanization of Palestinians has become the norm in Israeli culture.   https://www.tiktok.com/@ajplus/video/7346346141912452383

2024-03-08 ‘No single loaf of bread’: These Israeli protesters are trying to prevent aid from going into Gaza     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/no-single-loaf-of-bread-these-israeli-protesters-are-trying-to-prevent-aid-from-going-into-gaza/vi-BB1jzUAL?

2024-02-19 IDF Soldier Video of blowing up 4 Palestinian house in Gaza https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3hoBssL19i/?fbclid=IwAR1XPWqQ8QczNd59gIVj9cwMj4pEv_VK7Dc_U-5JOhyYwTM3m055tuYZZUQ

2024-02-09 Israel Army Lands In A Soup; How IDF Ran Racist ’72 Virgins – Uncensored’ Channel On Telegram     The Israel Army has admitted to running a racist, genocidal anti-Palestinian Telegram channel amid the war in Gaza. The ’72 Virgins – Uncensored’ channel was exposed in December last year by Israeli newspaper – Haaretz. The IDF had denied its role back then but launched an investigation which found that the channel was indeed being managed by IDF’s department. The channel posted over 700 gory pictures and videos showing killing of Palestinians, Hamas fighters in Gaza and destruction of the besieged Palestinian enclave until the end of Dec. Watch this video for more details.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMZ04XRaoLU

2024-01-29 Israel Ministers Call for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza at Settler Conference     Members of the Israeli government—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—attended a far-right conference on Sunday calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza and increased Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The conference, at which both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich repeated calls for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, came days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent its military from committing genocide in Gaza.

“The colonial meeting in Jerusalem poses a blatant challenge to the International Court of Justice decision, accompanied by public incitement to forcibly displace Palestinians,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry wrote on social media.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-ministers-settler-conference

2024-01-24 Israel’s scream as performance art and Palestine’s agony      An art event staged in front of Tel Aviv Museum of Art in January 2024 called on the crowd to perform a sustained scream in unison to dramatize Israeli pain and frustration at the hostage situation. To me, this performance was emotionally and psychologically inauthentic, not only because it is rehearsed — i.e., the scream is not a real-life situation like the scream of agony heard coming from Palestinian crowds in Gaza as they are being shelled — but because it is truthful only in so far as it conforms to the artistic tradition of hasbara and its false narrative of Israeli victimhood.

Within the Zionist framework of victimhood and entitlement, Israeli protesters continue to voice their pain out of fear for the safety of their captives in Gaza and for being driven out of their kibutzim. They scream for “compensation,” whereas Palestinians have been screaming for “restitution” for decades. For those who don’t know the difference between the two terms, compensation refers to payment or something given to make up for a loss or injury, while restitution means restoring something to its original state or returning something that was taken. While both terms involve some form of payment or action, the key difference is in the goal: compensation aims to make up for a loss, while restitution aims to restore what was taken.https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/israels-scream-as-performance-art-and-palestines-agony/

2023-12-28 Israel embassy pulls ‘inappropriate’ video imagining Hamas attack on Seoul     he Israeli embassy in South Korea has deleted a video it produced showing an imaginary attack on Seoul by masked assailants it seemed to liken to Hamas, after concerns raised by the South Korean government.   The video, which was posted on the Israeli embassy’s social media channels on Tuesday, was deleted on Wednesday, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.  

“The killing and kidnapping of Israeli civilians by Hamas cannot be justified, but the Israeli Embassy’s production and distribution of a video drawing parallels to the security situation in another country was deemed inappropriate,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.   “We have conveyed our position to the Israeli Embassy in South Korea, and the Israeli side has taken measures to delete the video in question.”   Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, verified the existence of the video, which has since been pulled down.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-embassy-pulls-inappropriate-video-imagining-hamas-attack-on-seoul/ar-AA1m90wT

2023-12-27 IDF Soldier Allegedly Stabs Wounded West Bank Airstrike Victim in Ambulance       Israeli troops on Wednesday allegedly stabbed and assaulted wounded Palestinian victims of an Israel Defense Forces drone strike that killed six people in a refugee camp near Tulkarem in the illegally occupied West Bank.  Dr. Radwan Blaibla, head of Tulkarem Medical Syndicate, toldAndalou Agency that Israeli troops forcibly stopped and boarded ambulances rushing Palestinians injured in the airstrike on Nur Shams refugee camp to a hospital in Tulkarem.   “One injured was stabbed in his neck by a soldier while in the ambulance, posing danger to his life,” Blaibla said. “Two others were forcibly taken out from an ambulance and were subject to kicking and beating by the rifles’ buttstocks on their injuries.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinians-killed-in-the-west-bank

2023-12-21 What Israel Does With Palestinian Bodies    Watch the full conversation with Said here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/palesti…      Katie talks to Palestinian journalist Said Arikat as they talk about the horrible disrespect shown to Palestinian bodies by Israeli’s.   Said Arikat is a Palestinian journalist and Washington bureau chief for Al-Quds, a daily Newspaper which has been published out of East Jerusalem (uninterruptedly) since 1951.   In addition to his work as a journalist, Arikat is an adjunct professor at the American University. He served as the United Nations Chief Spokesman in Iraq from 2005-2010. He is a familiar face at U.S. State Department press briefings, where he has engaged in sometimes contentious exchanges with State Department Spokespersons.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFHlX7eaf6M

2023-12-18 Israel Killed Thousands of Children in Gaza. How Can So Many Israelis Remain Indifferent?     The Gaza Strip is gradually being erased, along with its families, its people, its children, their smiles and laughter. What enables the majority of Jewish Israelis to support this systematic and mass erasure?   What enables them to see it as the only suitable response to the massacre that Hamas and its accomplices perpetrated, to the military humiliation of Israel and to the indescribable suffering of the hostages, the wounded, the survivors, their families and the families of the What enables most of the Jews not to gasp in horror at the crowding of 1.8 million or 1.9 million people into about 120 square kilometers (46 square miles), a “safe area” that’s constantly being bombed? What’s preventing those Jewish Israelis from screaming when they hear about the thirst and hunger of 2.2 million Palestinian civilians and the diseases spreading due to the crowding, the water shortage and the out-of-action hospitals?hundreds killed?

What enables this erasure and the slaying of children with both our active and passive participation? Here are some answers:

• For decades we’ve been educated to believe that only military force can ensure the state’s survival and ability to flourish, while denying rights to the Palestinian people.

• We’ve erased any “context” – incitement has made this word a synonym for support of Hamas and justification of its horrors.

• We Jews have assumed a monopoly on the suffering caused by the cruelty of the Other.

• We’ve chosen not to look at the unbearable pictures of trembling Palestinian children, faces gray with dust, being rescued from between bombed concrete walls. And there’s no way of knowing who’s more fortunate: those children or the ones who were killed.   

• Every mass or gradual killing that we’ve been carrying out against the Palestinians for years, every theft, humiliation and abuse passes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The sifted product is our conviction that the Palestinians are better off than the Somalis or Syrians, so they shouldn’t complain.  https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-18/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-killed-thousands-of-children-in-gaza-how-can-so-many-israelis-remain-indifferent/0000018c-788c-d55c-a7cc-fb8edb100000?

2023-12-14 Israeli Troops Film Themselves Trashing Palestinian Homes      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx8cCvvVGQc

2023-12-12 How Israel Humiliates Palestinians And Films It      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZXpp9rrDig

2023-12-04 SHOCK VIDEO: Israeli Hero EXECUTED By Settler   Krystal and Saagar discuss an Israeli settler shooting and killing an Israeli man who stopped a mass shooting.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAPUBaC_tiE

2023-11-28 Israeli public opinion and the war on Gaza I Sidebar     Veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains how Israeli public opinion has been conditioned to view Palestinian lives as less valuable, and how this has resulted in the lack of internal criticism towards Israeli war crimes. Levy also talks about the role of Israeli media and other things in this episode of Sidebar with Jamal Elshayyal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZJ_Uw_Yu0w

2023-11-21 Anti Palestine TikTok   In this video we examine a handful of short form content pieces from supporters of Israel, and connect this content to broader Zionist attitudes. this one’s not an easy watch but i hope it gives at least one person some context on what Israel is doing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdlJqlzOGgU

2023-11-20 ‘Annihilate Everyone’: Israeli TV Promotes Genocidal Song   The Friendship Song.  This really does have to be seen to be believed.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV0pEUXMz6M

2023-11-10 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Haters and Racists on Both Sides   As I wrote in my 2014 article on Zionism, In Israeli society, anti-Arab racism and discrimination is rampant, whether the censors want that known or not. In a previous article I mentioned “Jim Crow” laws in Israel, and separate buses and schools for Israelis and Palestinians. A 2006 poll conducted by the Center for the Struggle Against Racism found that 68% of Jews polled in Israel would not live in the same apartment building as an Arab, 40% believed that “the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens,” almost half would not let an Arab in their homes, and 41% believed that entertainment venues should be segregated. In a similar 2007 poll the Center Against Racism found that more than half of the Jewish respondents believed that a marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is “national treason.”

A 2010 poll of Israeli high school students conducted by researchers at Maagar Mochot and Tel Aviv University found that half of the students oppose equal rights for Arabs in Israel, and more than half would ban Arabs from serving in the Israeli Knesset. Another 2010 poll of Israeli youth conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Macro Center for Political Economics found that 46% of the youths would revoke whatever rights Arabs actually do have in Israel. 60% of the youths believed that “strong leadership” was more important than the rule of law, and, when asked how they feel about Arabs, 25% answered, “hate.” (Those who would actually admit it, that is.) And a 2012 poll conducted by Israeli pollsters Israel’s Dialogue also showed large percentages of Israeli Jews approving of official discrimination policies against Arabs and denying Palestinians the right to vote.

Have things changed at all since then? Nope.   In 2016, the Times of Israel wrote:   Nearly half of Jewish Israelis agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, and a solid majority (79 percent) maintain that Jews in Israel should be given preferential treatment, according to a Pew Research Center in Israel survey published on Tuesday.   The poll, with 5,601 in-person interviews of Israeli adults, conducted between October 2014 and May 2015, found that Israeli Jews increasingly believe the West Bank settlements help, rather than hurt, Israel’s security – and most (61%) believe Israel was given by God to the Jewish people.

In 2021 the Haaretz newspaper wrote on a 2020 University of Jerusalem survey:   The center surveyed 1,100 teens aged 16-18 who constitute a representative sample of Israel’s different “tribes” – secular, religious Zionist, Haredi and Arab. The questionnaires were filled out between May and July, 2020, before the second coronavirus lockdown…   The survey found that a significant portion of teens view other groups as unfriendly or as having low abilities. About 60% of Haredi teens and 40% of religious Zionists view Arabs that way. Similarly, around half of Arabs and 37% of secular teens view Haredim that way.  Fully 49% of religious Zionists and 23% of secular Jews favored stripping Arabs of the right to vote…Religious Zionists also expressed the lowest support for the idea that minorities deserve equal rights.

Secular Jews and Arabs were the most willing to meet members of other groups, Haredim the least. Religious Zionists were specifically unwilling to meet with Arabs. Only secular Jews expressed relatively high willingness to improve relations with all the other groups.   Arabs are the group most feared and hated by Jews of all kinds. This view was expressed by 24%, 42% and 66%, respectively of secular, religious Zionist and Haredi teens. For secular and Arab teens, hatred is dispersed among several groups; among Haredim and religious Zionists, it is more focused on Arabs. https://www.activistpost.com/2023/11/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-haters-and-racists-on-both-sides.html 

2023-10-02 How Israel teaches its children to hate.  Israel’s school textbooks propagate racism and extremism among its children. Nurit Peled-Elhanan examined 17 Israeli school textbooks and exposed their indoctrination and cultivation of anti-Arab racism.   “Inculcation of anti-Palestinian ideology in the minds of Israel’s youth is achieved in the books through the use of exclusion”, Asa Winstanley.  When they mention Palestinians, it is in an overwhelmingly negative and demeaning light.  Palestinians are often depicted negatively as ‘terrorists,’ ‘refugees,’ and ‘primitive’ farmers.   Israeli murderers are celebrated as heroes.    Israeli textbooks use military-related terminology to instill a combat mindset.  The majority of Israeli crimes against Palestinians are not mentioned. Some textbooks downplay or justify Israeli crimes against Palestinians.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGuDdfyEwrE&t=1s, https://english.palinfo.com/video_articles/

2022-08-17 Why Did 72% of Israelis Want Attack on Gaza to Continue?    Shir Hever, a political economist who grew up in Israel, talks about the extreme right-wing radicalization of most of the Israeli Jewish population  https://theanalysis.news/why-did-72-of-israelis-want-attack-on-gaza-to-continue/

2017-10-01 Empire Files: Israelis Speak Candidly to Abby Martin About Palestinians     On the streets of Jerusalem, Abby Martin interviews Jewish Israeli citizens from all walks of life. In several candid interviews, disturbing comments reveal commonly-held views about Palestinians and their future in the region.   Israeli-born human rights activist and anti-Zionist, Ronnie Barkan, explains why these attitudes dominate Israeli society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e_dbsVQrk4&t=469s

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Indonesian Hospital

Updated 2023-12-02

2023-11-24 Indonesian hospital in ruin, massive damage to facility with patients trapped inside       The truce in Gaza has given Palestinians a chance to go outside after weeks sheltering from relentless Israeli air strikes. Many are horrified by the extent of the destruction.     Al Jazeera has gained access to the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia. A warning that some you might be disturbed by images.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ahIPqtrrg

2023-11-21 Head of Bombed Gaza Hospital Appeals Directly to Biden    The director of the aid group that runs the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza—where Israeli attacks killed at least a dozen people on Monday—appealed directly to U.S. President Joe Biden, imploring him to push Israel to accept a cease-fire in a war that’s killed or maimed more than 40,000 Palestinians.

“Gazans are facing death every day. Every five minutes, a Palestinian child is killed,” Sarbini Abdul Murad, head of Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) Indonesia, wrote in a letter to Biden.

Noting that Israeli forces have attacked “babies, children, women, the elderly, the disabled, hospitals, ambulances, medics, schools, teachers, residential complexes, worship places, and much more,” Murad asserted that “this is completely genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

“It is very unfortunate that your siding with Israel by facilitating weapons of mass destruction has actually made the conflict even wider,” Murad continued. “Your action clearly contradicts various international treaties and agreements that apply to the existence of Palestine. You have destroyed the international rules of the game, insulted the authority of the [United Nations], torn apart the sense of justice, hurt human values, and tarnished the face of human civilization.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/indonesia-hospital-gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

India

Updated 2024-08-26

2024-08-02 Arundhati Roy: India Must Stop Arming Israel or ‘Forever Be Linked to Genocide’     Acclaimed Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy this week joined prominent jurists, diplomats, artists, and others in urging their government to stop selling weapons to Israel, which they called “abominable” and “a serious violation of India’s obligations under international law and our Constitution.”

Speaking Thursday at an event organized by the Press Club of India, Roy—winner of the 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things—said that Indians must “at least show that we do not support that murder in Gaza, we do not support our government’s support of that.”

“What is happening in Gaza, it is not just the murder… of tens of thousands of women and children,” she continued. “It is the bombing of hospitals, the destruction of universities… the attempt to erase the very memory people have of that place. It is a genocide like no other because it’s taking place on live TV.”  https://www.commondreams.org/search/?q=Israel+Palestine

2024-01-12 India’s history of terror makes it sympathetic toward Israel’s war    Within hours of Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attacks, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to express his support for Israel.   “Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel,” he posted on X to his 94 million followers. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” 

Opposition parties, including the Congress Party, claimed that India was swinging too far toward Israel’s side and was ditching its historical backing for the Palestinian cause, and various academics were quoted in the Indian press saying that these tweets could harm India’s relations with key partners in the Middle East.

India’s Foreign Ministry was aware of all this and tried to “balance” the picture. So on October 12, its spokesman Arindam Bagchi stressed, “Our policy has been long-standing and consistent. India always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine, living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel. I think that position remains the same.”  

The pollsters wrote that the attitude of “ordinary Indians” shifted toward Israel not because of geopolitical shifts in the world or Hindu nationalism. Rather, “the reason is the repeated terror attacks on Indian cities and civilians orchestrated by the ‘deep state’ of Pakistan using soldiers of terror outfits like LeT and JeM as perpetrators.”  There is another explanation for this support: Many of India’s Hindu majority – the base of support for Modi – identify with Israel because, like Israel, they see themselves surrounded by enemies: by Muslim countries to their west and east, and by China to their north. As such, they respect “scrappy” Israel for its ability to fight and thrive – something they wish for themselves and want to emulate.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/india-s-history-of-terror-makes-it-sympathetic-toward-israel-s-war/ar-AA1mRYsP

2023-12-26 Indian navy to deploy guided missile destroyer ships after strike off its coast      India’s navy will deploy guided missile destroyer ships in the Arabian Sea after an Israel-affiliated merchant vessel was struck off the Indian coast over the weekend, in an effort to “maintain a deterrent presence,” it said late on Monday.     The Indian navy was investigating the nature of the attack on the vessel, MV Chem Pluto, which docked in Mumbai on Monday, and initial reports pointed to a drone attack, the statement said.

“Further forensic and technical analysis will be required to establish the vector of attack, including type and amount of explosive used,” the statement added.   A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry on Monday called a U.S. claim that Iran had attacked the ship near India “baseless”.     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/indian-navy-to-deploy-guided-missile-destroyer-ships-after-strike-off-its-coast/ar-AA1m28CW

2023-12-03 The Israel-India-U.S. Triangle  In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country’s catastrophic war on Gaza.

It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.  

Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit.   https://tomdispatch.com/the-israel-india-u-s-triangle/

2023-11-28 Israel’s Brutality Is Stoking the Imagination of India’s Far Right  As the genocide in Gaza continues, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking notes.  Within hours of the Hamas attack, Narendra Modi, India’s far-right prime minister, expressed solidarity with Israel, and ministers throughout his party echoed him, many proclaiming that India and Israel share a common struggle against “terrorism.” Meanwhile, Indian media has inundated hundreds of millions of viewers with relentless pro-Israel coverage, and India’s social media users have created such a flood of anti-Palestinian fake news that the cofounder of an Indian fact-checking nonprofit declared India “the disinformation capital of the world.”

This fever pitch of pro-Israel sentiment among right-wing Indians has deep historical roots. As journalist Azad Essa explains in his new book, Hostile Homelands, the movement to establish India as a Hindu-supremacist homeland—known as Hindutva—has long seen Israeli Zionism as a kindred struggle. Both ethno-nationalist movements draw inspiration from 20th-century European fascism, as well as each other. In a 1923 tract, Hindutva cofounder Vinayak Savarkar wrote, “if the Zionists’ dreams are ever realized—if Palestine becomes a Jewish state—it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends.”    https://prospect.org/world/2023-11-28-israels-brutality-indias-far-right/

2023-09-00 India, Israel and the Coordination of Control     Although India and Israel only established formal relations in 1992, the link between the two states predates their respective establishments in 1947 and 1948. Both states were connected to one another by the British Empire, which previously ruled over both historic Palestine and the majority of South Asia. A striking example of this shared legacy can be found in their legal systems. For instance, both Israel and India adapted British wartime laws to take control over dispossessed refugees’ property through implementing the Israeli Absentee Property Law and the analogous Indian Evacuee Property Law.

In the early twentieth century, a fascination with Zionism emerged among Hindu nationalist figures such as V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar. They regarded the settler colonial project in Palestine as a source of inspiration for Akhand Bharat, their vision of an undivided South Asia (and some surrounding regions) under Hindu supremacy. This affinity for Zionism still exists within the most powerful Hindu nationalist institutions, such as Modi’s ruling Indian People’s Party (BJP). Through these influential institutions, it continues to inform both India’s domestic and foreign policy today, as well as popular opinion in large parts of BJP’s stronghold states.   https://merip.org/2023/09/india-israel-and-the-coordination-of-control-2/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

.

Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World