2023-11-10 Palestinian children are not “terrorists” Israel and its advocates claim “there are no innocents in Gaza” and depict all Palestinians as legitimate targets. For them, to be alive in Gaza is to be implicated. Israel’s war on Gaza has brutally blurred the distinctions between civilian and military objects, motives, and identities. Over the past four weeks, civilian spaces have made up much of the theater of war. Priority targets for air strikes in Gaza have included apartment blocks, hospitals, an ambulance convoy, communications infrastructure, a university, refugee camps, fishing boats, and schools. Following attacks by Hamas on civilians and military installations in the areas surrounding Gaza, the war has incurred over 10,000 Palestinian casualties in a month.
Indeed, at its most paranoid and inhumane, the conflation of civilians with Hamas casts some of Gaza’s most vulnerable citizens as terrorists. Children and infants are among the groups who most urgently need homes to live in, beds to sleep in, food to eat, water to drink, caregivers, and functioning communities to support their well-being. In the optic of counterinsurgency—an approach to combat that targets community support for clandestine fighters—children’s needs may indeed be seen, perversely, as aligned with the needs of combatants. Yet, in wartime, children and infants are also disparately vulnerable to injury, illness, and death. The international non-governmental organization Save the Children has reported that the child death toll in Gaza had, by October 29, exceeded the number of children killed in combat zones worldwide since 2019. In Belfast last weekend, hundreds of stuffed animals were left at the gate of the US Consulate to symbolize the Palestinian children who have been killed and to emphasize their status as innocents. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/palestinian-children-are-not-terrorists/
2023-10-08 ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 2: Israel declares war as casualties skyrocket Ongoing fighting in towns around Gaza. As of 2 p.m. local time, Palestinian resistance fighters were still engaged with Israeli forces in several Israeli localities bordering Gaza, while the Israeli army announced that it would be evacuating 25 other border towns, and possibly more in the next 24 hours “according to the assessment of the situation.”
Throughout the day, the fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian commandos has been thickest in Kfar Aza, Re’im, Ofakim, Kissufim, Kibbutz Magen, Erez, Zikim, and several other Israeli colonies, although the map of confrontation continues to shift throughout the day, with some place being taken over by Israeli forces, while others coming under control of Palestinian resistance fighters.
Most importantly, both the resistance factions’ media organs and Israeli military sources are confirming that the Palestinian forces have been able to partially resupply in certain areas, which indicates that the resistance intends to prolong its operation in occupied Palestine.
Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obidah confirmed that Hamas could resupply its fighters inside the occupied territories and managed to infiltrate more fighters. “The Al-Qassam leadership managed to supply the fighters with weapons, shells, and equipment. The leadership also infiltrated new fighters and supported them with over 100 rockets.” Abu Obidah said. In a recent statement by Abu Obidah, he said that the Hamas air forces joined the battle with over 35 homemade drones.
The fighters inside Israel are not only Hamas-affiliated fighters, the PIJ also said that dozens of its fighters are joining the battle and fighting the Israelis.
Whether this may lead to extended control over areas surrounding Gaza, or is part of a moving force meant to fulfill limited tactical objectives before withdrawing, remains to be seen. Media reports have reported increasing Israeli and Palestinian casualties from the ongoing fighting in the settlements, and the Israeli army released the names of 25 soldiers killed during the fighting as of 1 p.m. local time.
Hezbollah launches limited strikes
On Sunday morning, October 8, Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon fired rockets into northern occupied Palestine at three Israeli targets in the Shebaa Farms region, which is historically Lebanese land that has been occupied by Israel since 1967. The areas targeted by Hezbollah were “radar sites” such as Zebdine and Ruwaisat al-Alam.
The Islamic resistance organization put out a statement following the attack, proclaiming that it was “on the road to the liberation of what remains of occupied Lebanese soil,” and that an armed force in Hezbollah had carried out these attacks on the Israeli sites with “a large amount of artillery fire and guided missiles.”
2023-10-07 ‘Operation Al Aqsa Flood’ was an act of decolonization Much of the commentary around the “Al Aqsa Flood” operation, where Palestinian resistance fighters from Gaza broke free from the concentration camp we know as the Gaza Strip, dismisses or outright ignores two things that every Palestinian knows to be true:
1) There is no form of violence that Israel can hope to punish us with for the first time now. Massacres, home demolitions, life imprisonment sentences where prisoners are tortured and sexually assaulted, blockade and siege, execution in the streets. Over and over again, we watch funeral after funeral, and we know that in horror we will see many more.
2) We do not intend to remain a population of oppressed refugees and prisoners and denied access to the land that is our way of life forever.
The resistance fighters came from the Gaza Strip, where the vast majority of the population are refugees ethnically cleansed from their villages, many of which have been destroyed and had settlements built over their remains, like Sderot. They have since been shoved into camps, where rather than having bread and dignity, they are denied access to food, water, and medicine. They have been living at the whim of the settlers who built their lives on the remains of their villages and lands.
From the moment those fighters flew in on paramotors, disrupting the parallel reality that was this music festival, they accomplished something profound (one must wonder what it felt like for these fighters to see a party just outside where they have been trapped under a suffocating blockade). They reimagined their relation to the land not as something in the distance but as a tangible place for them to set foot on. They entered the rest of their homeland not through a checkpoint hoping to be granted a permit, but as a force to be reckoned with. They were autonomous, enacting their will by force against this population of heavily militarized settlers, the very vast majority of whom have “served” or are currently in the Israeli military where careers are made out of Palestinian suffering and death. That moment when a (Palestinian! For Once!) bulldozer took down the fence was decolonization in practice: that fence, and the snipers behind it defending the settler-colonial order, were overcome.
The Palestinian resistance did nothing less than lay the groundwork for the end of violent Israeli rule over our lands. They did so by employing a violence to end the root cause of the oppression of Palestinians, not do another spin of the so-called “cycle.” As Paulo Freire put it, violence had already begun “with the establishment of a relationship of oppression…never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiatiors, if they themselves are the result of violence?” https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/operation-al-aqsa-flood-was-an-act-of-decolonization/
2023-11-02 Obama Sides With The Palestinians! With the ongoing theft of land from Palestinians in the West Bank and resulting Israeli settlements, the prospects for a two-state solution are all but dead. Yet American politicians continue to pay lip service to the idea of negotiating a workable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that will result in a mutually agreeable agreement offering independence and security to both. Guest host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to independent journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen about why politicians promoting the two-state solution are lying to themselves and to us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-GXU3dni5M&t=2s
2023-10-27 How misinformation could shape the Israel-Hamas war I wanted to interview Nicholas Grossman regarding the role of misinformation in the war between Israel and Hamas. In particular, I hoped to ask the professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, and senior editor of Arc Digital, about misinformation that arose from American reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. [MEK Note: The author himself jumps to the conclusion that first on ground reports were untrue, because U.S. Government says so when a full investigation hasn’t happened and corporate media were already caught using fake video. Misinformation is whatever information one wishes to characterize, when it does not want further investigation!] https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/israel-hamas/
Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal The first session of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal was held this evening 2023-11-12. The focus was Palestine. Here is the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUozh3vLFQQ
2023-11-10 750+ Journalists to Colleagues: ‘Tell the Full Truth’ About Israeli Atrocities in Gaza Hundreds of international media professionals have signed on to an open letter published Thursday demanding an end to Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and urging Western newsrooms to call Israeli crimes—including “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide”—by their names. “The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated,” the journalists wrote. “It is imperative that we change course.”
Citing the Committee to Protect Journalists—which says at least 34 Palestinian media professionals have been killed during Israel’s monthlong assault on Gaza—the letter states that “as reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government.”
“An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during two October 13 Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists,” the signers said. https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalist-gaza
2023-11-11 As Jews we know, this is not a war. It’s a genocide Understanding our own history as Jews leads us to speak out against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. We stand for the liberation of the Palestinian people because we have known what it is to not be free. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/as-jews-we-know-this-is-not-a-war-its-a-genocide/
2023-12-19 Jewish Groups Line Up In Support Of Biden’s Muslim Court Pick Assailed By GOP Fifteen Jewish organizations on Tuesday pledged their “strong support” for President Joe Biden’s historic Muslim court pick Adeel Mangi ― days after Republican senators subjected him to hostile and Islamophobic questioning in his confirmation hearing. GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) yelled at and interrupted Mangi throughout his hearing. They demanded that he share his personal views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Oct. 7 attack in Israel and the Israeli-Hamas conflict in general. They also repeatedly tried to tie him to pro-Palestinian comments made by people he didn’t know, and to events he didn’t know about
“Having ethical and unbiased judges is ingrained in our Jewish teachings in which we are taught that ‘judges need to be people of strength through good deeds,’” reads the groups’ letter to all 100 senators, obtained by HuffPost. “It is clear to us that Adeel A. Mangi is a person of strength and good deeds, as evidenced by his career, devotion to his community, and commitment to religious freedom and civil rights.” The letter is signed by the National Council of Jewish Women, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Carolina Jews for Justice, The Shalom Center, and others. The groups collectively represent more than a million people nationwide. The Jewish groups’ letter comes after Mangi, who is a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, endured a series of offensive and irrelevant questions from Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jewish-groups-line-up-in-support-of-biden-s-muslim-court-pick-assailed-by-gop/ar-AA1lLelV
2023-11-06 Conflating Jewish and Pro-Israel Is Wrong and Misleading As protests erupt worldwide against Israel’s ferocious bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinians (Reuters, 11/6/23), US media ponder how all of this impacts Jewish people. Sadly, the way this is often framed completely mischaracterizes Jewish opinion and the pro-Israel movement, falsely acting as if Jewish opinion is unquestionably unified in support of Israeli military attacks and in opposition to Palestinian rights. https://fair.org/home/conflating-jewish-and-pro-israel-is-wrong-and-misleading/
Israeli outpost (wiipedia) In Israeli law, an outpost is an unauthorized or illegal Israeli settlement within the West Bank, constructed without the required authorization from the Israeli government in contravention of Israeli statutes regulating planning and construction. In Israeli law, outposts are distinguished from settlements authorized by the Israeli government. This distinction between illegal outposts and “legal” settlements is not endorsed by international law, which considers both a violation of the norms, governing belligerent occupations, applicable to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Outposts appeared after the 1993 Oslo I Accord, when the Israeli government made commitments to freeze the building of new settlements Although outposts were not officially supported by the government, Israeli public authorities and other government bodies played a major role in establishing and developing them, according to the 2005 Sasson Report, commissioned by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Outposts differ from neighborhoods in that they are built at a substantial distance from authorized settlements, while neighborhoods are attached to an existing settlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_outpost
Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression From South America to South Africa, and all over the world, Israel, often acting together with the United States, has undermined popular movements by supplying weapons, technology and training to repressive governments.
This website seeks to gather testimony and expose Israel’s historic and ongoing role in transforming its colonization of Palestine into profit through exporting repression around the world. https://israelglobalrepression.wordpress.com/
