2023-11-25 Like the Berlin Wall in the 1980’s the prison fortress of Gaza is a crime against humanity! Tear it down and send some pieces on a World Tour for Peace! Professor Finkelstein is one of the most courageous and principled voices for the people of Gaza! https://substack.com/home/post/p-139150503
2021-12-11 Gaza: What the iron wall built by Israel means for besieged Palestinians Stretching along the entire boundary between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israel’s new $1.1bn iron wall and fence was hailed as the “only one of its kind in the world” as it was inaugurated on Tuesday. For Israel, it was the culmination of three and a half years’ work, the latest in a series of fortifications and security measures that have isolated Gaza and the occupied West Bank, strangling hopes of a two-state solution.
For the two million Palestinians living in Gaza – half of which are children – the hi-tech wall represents more than a technological or security innovation: it is confirmation that they live in the world’s largest “open-air prison”. “The wall left a huge psychological impact on the people of Gaza, especially on the youth,” says Ruwaida Amir, teacher and journalist. “Now it really feels like we are in a prison with this steel wall surrounding us.”https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-iron-wall-gaza-palestinians-siege
2020-07-08 In Pictures: Israel’s illegal separation wall still divides Thursday marks the 16th anniversary since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed Israel’s separation wall illegal. In 2002, Israel started constructing the wall, slicing through Palestinian communities, agricultural fields, and farmland at the height of the second Intifada.
The wall has been described by Israeli officials as a necessary security precaution against “terrorism”. Palestinians, however, have decried it as an Israeli mechanism to annex Palestinian territory as it is built deep within the West Bank and not along the 1967 Green Line, the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank.
While the ICJ’s decision is non-binding, it found the wall violates international law and called for its dismantlement. It also ruled Israel should pay reparations for any damage caused. A month after the ICJ decision, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly to demand Israel to comply with the UN’s highest legal body. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2020/7/8/in-pictures-israels-illegal-separation-wall-still-divides/
2010-04-29 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements and the breaking of Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bank’s vision of “economic development,” however, evades any discussion of the Wall’s illegality.
The World Bank has meanwhile outlined the framework for a Palestinian Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) policy in their most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004, “Stagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects.” Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. Built on Palestinian land around the Wall, these industrial zones are envisaged as forming the basis of export-orientated economic development. Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and dispossessed of land can be put to work for low wages.
The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints along the Wall, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. A supplemental “transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels will allow Palestinian workers to be funneled to their jobs, while being simultaneously denied access to their land. Sweatshops will be one of very few possibilities of earning a living for Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos throughout the West Bank. The World Bank states: https://www.projectcensored.org/9-the-world-bank-funds-israel-palestine-wall/
2003-11-03 Backs to the Wall Uncertainty about the future intensified for Mufida Ahmad’s family this year when a mammoth wall ripped through their land in the West Bank village of Jayyus. Ahmad and her husband had bought the quarter acre for $1,400—a hefty but hopeful investment for the family of seven. On it, they cultivated eight olive trees. To pay for the land, and pay off a $4,000 bank loan they had taken to meet the family’s basic needs, Ahmad worked nine hours a day in a sewing factory for a mere $150 a month. But the trees, land, and future for which they had sacrificed have all disappeared under the Israeli Separation Wall.
The Wall—called a “security fence” by the Israeli government and the “Apartheid Wall” by Palestinians—is actually a series of walls, razor wire, electrified fences, trenches, and watchtowers flanked by a 30- to 75-yard “buffer zone” which the Israeli military patrols. The first phase of construction was launched in June 2002 and finished just 13 months later, in July of this year. The completed section stretches for 90 miles in the northwestern West Bank districts of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Qalqiliya. At several points it cuts almost four miles into the West Bank (which spans only 35 miles at its widest section; see the map on p. 29). The Wall has already resulted in Israel’s de facto annexation of fertile Palestinian agricultural land, groundwater wells, and 10 illegal Israeli Jewish-only settlements. Although the first phase of construction was declared complete, demolitions and razing continue around it. The Israeli government has announced three more building phases and it plans to finish the structure by 2005. https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/1103mair.html
How to Use the U.S. Military Funding to Israel Map First, type in your city or state. When you do, you’ll see the total estimated funds the U.S. government sends to the Israeli military from taxpayers in your area, through federal tax dollars. The graphic will also update, showing what needs could be funded for the future of your local community instead. Imagine what your community could look like if the U.S. government funded healthcare, education, and housing instead of systems of violence. https://uscpr.org/activist-resource/us-military-funding-to-israel-map/
End U.S. Military Funding to Israel – USCPR It’s clear—the United States is the Israeli military’s greatest funder and enabler. Every year, the U.S. government writes Israel a blank check for at least $3.8 billion to fund Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people. Rather than using those funds to provide for communities in need here, our government uses taxpayer dollars to enable the Israeli military to kill Palestinians, destroy their homes, and steal their native land. But we know that this doesn’t have to be the only way. We know that if we collectively rise, we can stop the funding of state violence. We know that Palestine will never be free, until we are all free. https://uscpr.org/campaigns/end-u-s-military-funding-to-israel/
2024-08-26 Squadron of US Stealth Jets Arrives in Israel in Bid to Prevent Iran Starting WW3 The United States has deployed 12 of its avant-garde stealth fighter jets to the Middle East as the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas threaten to break down.
2024-08-21 Former Israeli and Palestinian Fighters Join With US GIs to Call for Peace in Gaza A group of former fighters from Palestine and Israel plus active duty U.S. GIs announced last week why they decided to stop participating in war and urged U.S. military members to tell Congress to stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza via the ” Appeal for Redress v2.”
The online news conference was organized by Veterans For Peace and featured a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) special forces member, a young Israeli who just finished 85 days in jail for refusing to join the military, a former Hamas youth activist, and three active-duty U.S. military members who are awaiting discharge as conscientious objectors. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israeli-palestinian-fighters-peace
2024-08-20 ‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.
Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/uncommitted-dnc
2024-08-15 “Incomprehensible”: U.S. Approves $20 Billion in New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000 Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel’s 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S. approved the sales despite growing calls for an arms embargo on Israel. “This is just a continuation of a policy that has been going on now for 10 months of the U.S. providing to Israel all the arms that it requests,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest over Gaza policy in October. “It is a dark day for American foreign policy.” We also speak with Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says it’s “incomprehensible” that the U.S. keeps supplying Israel with weapons. “There should be no more arms going into that place before there is a ceasefire.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCtywovwpx8
2024-08-15 As Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000, Congress Urged to Block New Weapons to Israel “U.S. arms transfers to Israel have fueled unimaginable suffering in Gaza, including staggering levels of civilian harm,” said one embargo advocate.
As the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s 314-day assault on Gaza passed 40,000—a figure Palestinian and United Nations officials say is made up of mostly women and children and is likely a vast undercount—human rights groups this week decried the Biden administration’s approval of $20 billion worth of new weapons for Israel and renewed pleas for Congress to block further arms transfers to the nation’s far-right government. https://www.commondreams.org/news/arms-embargo-israel-congress
2024-08-09 US releases $3.5 billion to Israel to spend on US weapons, military equipment Washington will provide Israel $3.5 billion to spend on U.S. weapons and military equipment, the State Department said on Friday, with the release of the money coming months after the U.S. Congress appropriated it during Israel’s war in Gaza.
2024-07-23 Major Unions Urge Biden to Stop Arming Israel Amid Netanyahu Visit A group of seven major unions, including some of the largest unions in the U.S., are calling on President Joe Biden to immediately stop sending military support to Israel amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. this week.
In a letter sent to Biden on Tuesday, the unions said that ending weapons shipments is the only way to secure the ceasefire deal that U.S. negotiators have supposedly been working on for months. It is one of the strongest statements yet from organized labor in the U.S. against the genocide.
2024-05-07 ‘Overdue But Welcome’: Biden Reportedly Holds Back Bombs for Israel “The White House must leave no stone unturned in its effort to stop the Israeli government’s offensive on Rafah—the hundreds of thousands displaced there do not have more time,” said the head of Win Without War.
Anti-war voices on Tuesday welcomed Politico’s reporting that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is delaying “shipments of two types of Boeing-made precision bombs to send a political message to Israel,” which on Monday launched a long-awaited invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bombing
2024-05-02’Stop Sending Arms’: Global Day of Action to End Israel’s Assault on Gaza The straightforward demand consistently made by human rights experts, a top European Union official, and college students across the U.S. and in a growing number of countries formed the basis for a Global Day of Action on Thursday, with 250 groups organizing direct actions to call on governments around the world to “Stop Sending Arms” to Israel.
Groups including Amnesty International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence helped organize actions in at least 12 countries, “with a strategic emphasis on countries with significant arms exports” and an “aim to resonate globally.”
Protest events including rallies, “die-ins,” and the projection of messages and images on government buildings were organized in countries including the United States—the top supplier of arms to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—Canada, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Slovakia. https://www.commondreams.org/news/day-of-action-gaza
2024-04-11 US Tax Day Campaign Urges Congress to Stop Arming Israel’s Genocide in Gaza “This scale of devastation is only possible because of financial, political, and military support from the United States,” said one Quaker campaigner. With the April 15 U.S. federal income tax filing deadline just around the corner, the American Friends Service Committee on Thursday announced a Tax Day campaign to demand members of Congress stop funding Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.
This year, the group’s focus is on U.S. military aid to Israel amid the ongoing Gaza genocide, in which at least 109,500 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces, often using weapons supplied by Washington—including 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks. The majority of Palestinians killed during the war have been women and children, including more than 13,000 minors. https://www.commondreams.org/news/afsc-israel
2024-04-07 Israel’s Aid Capitulation Exposes the Lie Behind Biden’s Gaza Policy The Biden administration has insisted there’s very little it can do to alter policy in the region and acted as though Israel’s policy decisions are unconnected to the United States, the country that gives them more than $4 billion a year in military aid. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-s-aid-capitulation-exposes-the-lie-behind-biden-s-gaza-policy
2024-03-21 The False Charges of ‘Antisemitism’ by Apologists for Israel’s Atrocities in Gaza The gist of the trick is to equate Israel with the Jewish religion—and then to equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism.
The U.S. government continues to make the atrocities possible. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick said midway through the second month of the war: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.” He added: “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.” https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/antisemitism-genocide-israel-gaza
2024-03-20 While Mulling Israel Claims, Biden Urged to ‘Stop Weapons Sales Now’ “After over half a million uncommitted votes and counting, it’s time Biden administration officials finally listen,” said one campaigner. “We need concrete action to stop weapons aid immediately.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has until March 25 to certify to Congress that Israel is adhering to President Joe Biden’s February 2023 memo stating that “no arms transfer will be authorized where the United States assesses that it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit… genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949… or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.”
If Israel fails to provide written assurance that it is using U.S.-supplied weapons in accordance with international law, arms sales would automatically be suspended. According to HuffPost, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew on Tuesday privately claimed to the State Department that Israel is in compliance with domestic and international law. However, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Wednesday that officials from three State Department bureaus—Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Population, Refugees, and Migration; and the Office of Global Criminal Justice—as well as the United States Agency for International Development are deeply skeptical of Lew’s claim. https://www.commondreams.org/news/u-s-arms-sales-to-israel-2667561951
2024-03-19 Rights Groups Tell Biden Israeli Claims About US Weapons Use in Gaza ‘Not Credible’ As the Biden administration formally reviews the use of U.S. weapons by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, a pair of human rights groups on Tuesday submitted a joint memorandum detailing Israel’s abuse of Palestinians and demanding an end to all arms transfers.
“There are good reasons why U.S. law prohibits arms support for governments that block lifesaving aid or violate international law with U.S. weapons,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Given ongoing hostilities in Gaza, the Israeli government’s assurances to the Biden administration that it is meeting U.S. legal requirements are not credible.”
HRW and Oxfam’s memo comes after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week signed a letter claiming his country has not arbitrarily blocked humanitarian aid and U.S.-supplied arms have been used in line with international law, assurances required under a national security memorandum about weapons support that U.S. President Joe Biden released in February. https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-weapons-in-gaza
2024-03-19 Armed With US Weapons, Israel Carpet Bombs Genocide Convention The backbone of the war on Gaza comes with a label: “Made in USA.” It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its “orders,” and (2) how hard the Biden administration has pushed Israel to abide by those orders. Spoiler alert: the short answers are (1) not well and (2) not very.
The American government has provided most of the armaments and targeting technologies being used to kill Gazans by the thousands while turning many of the rest of them into refugees by destroying their homes, offices, schools, and hospitals. Nor did the Biden administration threaten to withdraw that support when Israel blocked shipments of crucial food and fuel to the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip. It also keeps vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions that would hold Israel accountable. And President Biden, despite an increasing amount of rhetorical shuffling, continues to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), even though they have ignored the International Court’s orders and continue committing atrocities.https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-weapons-israel-gaza-genocide
2024-03-15 Israeli Assurances on US Weapons and International Law Called ‘Sick Joke’ “We know Israel won’t comply so long as there are no consequences,” said one advocacy group. “The U.S. must cut off weapons now!”
Israeli officials gave a written assurance to the Biden administration on Friday that it would use U.S. weapons in accordance with international law. The assurance comes more than five months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in which the country’s U.S.-backed military has killed at least 31,490 Palestinians, including more than 12,300 children, while claiming to be targeting Hamas members.
Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, noted that Israel has also killed at least 95 journalists in Gaza, attacked healthcare facilities, and starved civilians by blocking humanitarian aid deliveries while explicitly calling on the Israel Defense Forces to commit genocidal acts. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-assurances-weapons
2024-03-15 The Elders Chair Mary Robinson Calls For Biden to Stop Arming Israel In his meetings with the U.S. leader, Ireland’s prime minister must “make it clear that Israel depends on the United States for military aid and for money,” said Robinson, a former Irish president. The Elders chair Mary Robinson on Friday highlighted the unique leverage that the United States has with Israel and suggested that the Biden administration should stop giving the Middle Eastern nation military assistance for its assault on the Gaza Strip. https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-arms-israel
2024-03-13 25 Groups Demand Biden ‘Urgently Comply With US Law’ and End Israel Arms Sales More than two dozen human rights groups on Tuesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden “urgently comply” with domestic law by suspending arms sales to Israel and pressuring its far-right government to end its genocidal policy of blocking aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza.
In a joint letter to Biden, the 25 organizations asserted that his administration’s “unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance” to Israel apparently “violate Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (22 U.S.C. § 2378-1), which prohibits the United States from providing security assistance or arms sales to any country when the president is made aware that the government ‘prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.'”
“U.S. weapons, security assistance, and blanket political support have contributed to an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and possible war crimes in Gaza,” the groups wrote. “We demand that you urgently comply with U.S. law, end U.S. support for catastrophic human suffering in Gaza, and use your leverage to protect civilians and ensure the impartial provision of humanitarian assistance.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/u-s-arms-sales-to-israel-2667506147
2024-03-05 Majority of Americans Want Halt of US Weapons Bound for Israel: Poll “Everyone knows that the U.S. could end this today if we wanted to,” said one analyst. A new poll released Tuesday revealed that a majority of Americans want to the U.S. government to stop supplying the Israeli military with weaponry to carry out its brutal assault on Gaza that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, most of them civilian men, women, and children.
As organizers called on Democratic voters in at least seven states to vote “uncommitted” on their Super Tuesday primary ballots on Tuesday to help push the Biden administration to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, the YouGov poll provided another measure of Americans’ growing outrage over their government’s material and political support for the “genocidal” campaign by Israel’s far-right government.
Commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the poll of 1,000 U.S. adults asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement: “The U.S. should stop weapons shipments to Israel until Israel discontinues its attacks on the people of Gaza.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-weapons-israel-2667435101?
2024-02-13 VETERANS DEMAND TERMINATION OF WEAPONS TO ISRAEL In a letter to the Inspector-General of the U.S. State Department, a national veterans’ organization today demanded the State Department terminate weapons shipments to Israel and called on the Inspector General to investigate alleged criminal acts by senior Biden administration officials in violation of U.S. law, including ratified treaties, which are the supreme law of the land. The letter from Veterans For Peace alleges violations by the U.S. government and its officials of:
2023-12-13 Sanders Urges President Biden to Withdraw Support for $10.1 Billion in Military Aid to Israel and Support UN Efforts for a Humanitarian Ceasefire Sanders lays out the devastation in Gaza, now equivalent to that of Dresden after two years of bombing during World War II, and emphasizes it is being carried out with bombs produced and provided by the United States.
In a letter sent to President Biden on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the president to make two critical policy changes in his approach to Israel and Gaza. First, that the president withdraw his support for the $10.1 billion for offensive weaponry for Netanyahu’s right-wing government contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package requested from Congress. And second, for the president to support the recent UN resolution that demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and full humanitarian access – a resolution which was vetoed by the United States. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-urges-president-biden-to-withdraw-support-for-10-1-billion-in-military-aid-to-israel-and-support-un-efforts-for-a-humanitarian-ceasefire/
2023-12-11 State Dept. Whistleblower Blasts Blinken for Bypassing Congress to Send 14K Tank Munitions to Israel The Biden administration has bypassed Congress to approve an “emergency” sale of over $100 million of tank ammunition to Israel. Congress was notified just hours after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire. We get response from Josh Paul, former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which oversees arms transfers to Israel and other nations. Paul resigned from the State Department in October to protest the Biden administration’s push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its ongoing siege on Gaza. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/11/state_department_arms_israel
2023-12-05 Bernie Sanders Rejects $10B in Military Aid for “Extremist Netanyahu Government” The Vermont senator described Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip as unlawful and “immoral.” S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that he opposes sending billions of dollars in additional military assistance to the Israeli government as it continues to wage a catastrophic war on the Gaza Strip, an assault that the Vermont senator described as unlawful and “immoral.” “I do not believe we should be appropriating over $10 billion for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military approach,” Sanders, who has faced backlash from progressives and some of his former campaign staffers for refusing to support a permanent cease-fire, said in remarks on the Senate floor.
Sanders’ speech came as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) set the stage for a procedural vote on a $106 billion supplemental package that includes military assistance for Israel and Ukraine. The vote is expected to fail as Republicans push for the inclusion of asylum restrictions that progressive Democrats have condemned as draconian.https://truthout.org/articles/bernie-sanders-rejects-10b-in-military-aid-for-extremist-netanyahu-government/
2023-11-16 Rep. Omar Introduces Resolution to Block Weapons Sale Used to Fund War Crimes in Gaza Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a joint resolution of disapproval today for the proposed export license for $320 million in Spice Family Guided Bomb Assemblies to Israel. These weapons have already been used in the siege on Gaza, which has taken the lives of over 4,000 children and over 11,000 civilians, making it the deadliest conflict for children this decade. The United Nations and human rights experts around the world have condemned the bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity and called for the prevention of genocide.
“Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ethnonationalist government continue to commit war crimes in their siege of the Gaza Strip,” said Rep. Omar. “From requests to minimize civilian casualties, avoid a ground invasion, avoid reoccupation of Gaza, and institute a meaningful humanitarian pause, Netanyahu continues to thumb his nose at U.S. policy and requests. The United States already provides the Israeli government with $3.8 billion of military aid a year, and holds enormous leverage over their actions. It is the responsibility of Congress to exercise oversight over weapons sales. That is why we must not allow weapons sales that will be used to directly violate U.S. and international law, human rights, and our own moral standing in the world.”
“We cannot be both against occupation, and for it. We cannot be both for freedom, and against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse,” writes Josh Paul in his letter of resignation. After 11 years in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs — the entity most responsible for arms transfers to allies and partners — Paul quit October 18, over increased, “indeed expedited” arms sales to Israel. In this conversation, one of the first full-length interviews with Paul since his resignation, he sits down with Laura Flanders to discuss why he resigned, his concerns about how the weapons will be used, the unique way that Israel is treated when it comes to US arms sales and why the US approach to creating peace in the Middle East is clearly not working. US double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to human rights crimes, he says, are dangerous for all concerned. All that, plus a commentary for Laura on the war economy.
“The impact of the operation may be to kill terrorists, but it will also raise another generation who has no confidence in the peace process…This is not a recipe for lasting peace.” – Josh Paul “There is just an unwillingness to criticize Israel…There are many reasons for that, some of them legitimate, but what it means at the end of the day is I think if you don’t have a global standard, you don’t have a standard…” – Josh Paul
🔹 In this episode you’ll get
1️⃣ A thorough examination of Josh Paul’s decision, a move that has stirred various reactions within the State Department, but also across the interagency and congressional staff.
2️⃣ An in-depth analysis of the circumstances surrounding his resignation, and the professional and personal challenges that diplomats often confront, especially in high-stakes scenarios such as the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
3️⃣ A breakdown of the US’ approach to creating peace in the Middle East, and why it is failing.
4️⃣ More information on the US’ military spending, and why President Biden’s expedited transfer of arms to Israel is a unique situation.
2010-05-08 US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza The devastating Israeli firepower, unleashed largely on Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the three-week attack starting December 27, 2008 was fueled by US-supplied weapons paid for with US tax dollars. Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault were decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza.
Researchers in Gaza found several weapon fragments after the attacks. One came from a 500lb (227kg) Mark-82 fin guided bomb, which had markings indicating parts were made by the US company Raytheon. They also found fragments of US-made white phosphorus artillery shells, marked M825 A1.
Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released March 25, 2009. On January 15, several white phosphorus shells fired by the Israeli military hit the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, destroying medicine, food and other basic aid. One fragment found at the scene had markings indicating it was made by the Pine Bluff Arsenal, based in Arkansas, in October 1991.
The UN Security Council, Amnesty International, International Red Cross, and voices of protest from around the world demanded a ceasefire. Yet, with shocking lack of regard, both houses of US Congress overwhelmingly endorsed resolutions to support a continuation of Israel’s “self defense.”
Four days after the carnage ensued, on December 31, the US Navy’s Sealift Command hired ships to deliver another 3,000-odd tons of arms to Israel through Greece. This last shipment was halted mid-January due to Greek protest. The US has long been the largest arms supplier to Israel; under a current ten-year agreement negotiated by the Bush administration, the US will provide $30 billion in military aid to Israel.
“As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program director. “To a large extent, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with US taxpayers’ money.” This is among the reasons why it’s so important that stories like the US Congressional endorsement for Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” against Gaza be made known to the public. https://www.projectcensored.org/9-us-arms-used-for-war-crimes-in-gaza/wn to the public. https://www.projectcensored.org/9-us-arms-used-for-war-crimes-in-gaza/
2024-04-20 Historic Number of Democratic Reps Vote Against Unconditional Aid to Israel “Most Americans do not want our government to write a blank check to further Prime Minister Netanyahu’s war in Gaza,” a group of nearly 20 of the 37 no-voting lawmakers said. Nearly 40 House Democrats voted against a measure to send around $26 billion more to Israel as it continues its war on Gaza that human rights experts have deemed a genocide.
While the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act passed the Republican-led House by a vote of 366-58, party insiders said it was significant that such a large number of Democrats had opposed it, with more centrist lawmakers joining progressives who have called for a cease-fire since October.
“Despite the weapons aid package passing, this is the largest number of Democratic lawmakers to vote against unrestricted weapons aid for Israel in recent memory,” senior Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid observed on social media. https://www.commondreams.org/news/historic-number-dems-vote-no-israel
2024-03-22 AOC Pleads for Biden to End Israel Aid Amid ‘Unfolding Genocide’ in Gaza Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor Friday to demand a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel as it wages a genocidal war on Gaza and deliberately starves Palestinians to death in the besieged enclave.
“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government,” https://www.commondreams.org/news/aoc-israel-gaza
That’s not rhetorical overkill. In its present form, the bill would provide Israel with $10 billion in additional weaponry and $4 billion in other military support. Although Democrats coyly describe its Israeli aid as “security assistance,” its real purpose is to reload a massive killing machine. Its passage would give Israel a green light to continue the slaughter.
And despite their boasts that it provides “humanitarian aid” to Gaza, the bill permanently cuts off all funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a group other relief agencies describe as “irreplaceable.” That will result in additional civilian deaths. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democrats-aid-package-gaza-genocide
2024-02-04 ‘Standalone’ Aid Package – US Congress to Discuss Billions of Additional Funds for Israel The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, announced on Saturday that he would hold a vote on a “clean, standalone” aid package for Israel that will not entail any spending cuts. The newly proposed legislation is set to include $17.6 billion in additional military funding as well as “important funding for US forces in the region.” The initial $14.3 billion package, rejected by the Senate last year, included an equal amount in spending cuts to the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and was therefore branded by Democrats as a “poison pill.” https://www.palestinechronicle.com/standalone-aid-package-us-congress-to-discuss-billions-of-additional-funds-for-israel/
Sanders’ speech came as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) set the stage for a procedural vote on a $106 billion supplemental package that includes military assistance for Israel and Ukraine. The vote is expected to fail as Republicans push for the inclusion of asylum restrictions that progressive Democrats have condemned as draconian.https://truthout.org/articles/bernie-sanders-rejects-10b-in-military-aid-for-extremist-netanyahu-government/
2010-04-09 U.S. Aid to Israel Fuels Repressive Occupation in Palestine U.S. aid to Israel over the course of its fifty-four years of nationhood has fueled the illegal occupation of Palestinian land superceding Palestinian rights to self-government.
During the last 25 years U.S. aid to Israel has been about 60% military aid and 40% economic aid. There is a new plan to phase out all economic aid by 2008 in order to have all the aid going to military. Israel receives about $3 billion a year in direct aid and $3 billion a year in indirect aid in the form of special loans and grants. Under the Arms Export Control Act the U.S. can only supply weapons that are used “for legitimate self defense”. The US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military assistance to any country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”. The Proxmire Amendment bans military assistance to any government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities. All three of these laws are currently being broken with aid to Israel. https://www.projectcensored.org/24-us-aid-to-israel-fuels-repressive-occupation-in-palestine/
2023-12-09 Israeli strike kills son of Hezbollah’s Golan border terror chief – report The son of the head of Hezbollah’s terrorist operations near the Syrian-Israeli border was eliminated in an alleged Israeli drone strike in western Syria on Friday, according to Syrian reports. On Friday afternoon, Syrian media reported that four people were killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting a vehicle in Madinat al-Baath in the Quneit.
A few hours later, Hezbollah announced that three of its members, Ali Idris Salman “Abbas,” Hussein Issam Taha “Abu Turab,” and Hassan Ali Daqduq “Jawad” were killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” although the announcement did not say where or in what circumstances.
The Syrian Capital Voice news site reported that the three were killed in the drone strike in western Syria alongside Muhammad Anas al-Tamer, one of the commanders of the Arab Nationalist Guard, a pan-Arab militia aligned with the Assad regime. Tamer was one of the founders of the Arab Nationalist Guard, but had since become a central part of Hezbollah’s Golan File (Unit 142), according to the Syrian Ain al-Sham news account.
A little less than a week ago, two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes which targeted sites near Damascus early Saturday morning, according to the IRGC.
2023-10-27 US Bombs Syria Amid Growing Fears of Wider Regional War The U.S. military early Friday carried out airstrikes on two sites in eastern Syria that the Pentagon claims are used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and allied groups, a move that came amid mounting fears that Israel’s ongoing, U.S.-backed assault on Gaza could spark a broader regional war in the Middle East. The strikes were carried out at the direction of U.S. President Joe Biden—but without congressional authorization—in the wake of recent drone and rocket attacks on American forces stationed in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. officials have blamed Iran for the attacks, even while conceding they don’t have evidence that Iran ordered them. The attacks left more than 20 U.S. personnel with minor injuries. The Pentagon said one U.S. contractor “died from a cardiac incident while sheltering in place” during a drone attack. The U.S. has around 900 troops in Syria and thousands in Iraq.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives voted down a bipartisan resolution that would have required the president to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria within six months. Far from withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria and Iraq, the Biden administration is preparing to send hundreds more to the Middle East as Israel prepares to invade the Gaza Strip. https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-bombs-syria
2024-08-24 Top U.S. general makes unannounced Middle East trip as Iran threat looms The top U.S. general began an unannounced visit to the Middle East on Saturday to discuss ways to avoid any new escalation in tensions that could spiral into a broader conflict, as the region braces for a threatened Iranian attack against Israel. Air Force General C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began his trip in Jordan and said he will also travel to Egypt and Israel in the coming days to hear the perspectives of military leaders.
2024-08-02 Bibi’s Death Wish In one 24-hour period, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the killing of a top Hezbollah leader in an air strike on Beirut, and the assassination of the lead Hamas peace negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. That’s one sure way of destroying the peace talks.
Of all the Hamas leadership, Haniyeh was reportedly the most in favor of making a deal with Israel that traded a hostage release for a cease-fire and staged regional settlement. Now, talk of a hostage deal is off the table, much less the regional entente that the Biden Administration has been promoting—humiliating President Biden yet again.
Since the assassination of Haniyeh took place at an Iranian guesthouse, the world now waits to see what sort of retaliation ensues. Last April, the Iranians rained down some 300 missiles on Israel, taking care to limit casualties. That attack was in retaliation for Israel’s last assassination, one that also violated diplomatic immunity—the strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate on April 1 that killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, including two senior commanders.
Hezbollah was not involved in that carefully limited Iranian retaliation. But this time, Israel is on the verge of a war with Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time. Netanyahu has managed to bring together sworn enemies of each other, Sunni Hamas and Shia Hezbollah. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah is armed by Iran and capable of inflicting massive damage on Israel in a regional war. https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-08-02-netanyahu-israel-war-hezbollah-iran/
2024-01-08 Israel is hinting at a wider war in the Middle East — one that the US thinks it will lose: report With Israel’s war in Gaza still raging, tensions have also been flaring between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — and Israel hinting that a wider war may be on the horizon, according to a report from the Washington Post. But the US has privately warned Israel that it might not stand a chance against the Iran-backed militants, the Post reported. That’s because the US thinks Israel’s resources will be spread too thin in a broader conflict, the Post reported, citing two people familiar with a secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-is-hinting-at-a-wider-war-in-the-middle-east-one-that-the-us-thinks-it-will-lose-report/ar-AA1mEcz3
2023-12-11 Displacement, Disease and Death Plague Gazans as Israel Continues Its Genocidal Assault Meanwhile, a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon is warning the likelihood of a “wider conflict” is increasing amid escalating cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip continues as the death toll has reached 18,000 Palestinians killed in just over two months. Airstrikes rocked the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza overnight. At least 23 people were killed in Maghazi. Airstrikes also struck at least two residential homes in Rafah. Meanwhile, the ground battle is pushing ahead in Khan Younis, which is under heavy bombardment.
The mass displacement and war on the besieged territory has led to a public health disaster. The U.N.’s World Food Programme warns half of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people is starving and that nine out of 10 people are not able to eat every day. As clean water becomes more scarce, diarrhea, skin infections, acute viral hepatitis, scabies and measles are multiplying. Earlier today, the World Health Organization passed a resolution calling for immediate humanitarian aid access and an end to fighting in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, usually busy streets and commercial areas are empty today in observance of a general strike for Gaza. Global actions are also taking place today, including marches and calls to refrain from buying anything.
2023-10-25 Craig Murray: The Chances of a Regional War As countries with influence over Israel actively encourage the slaughter, Murray considers what will happen internationally and what is happening in Western societies.
Gaza has no defense from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment. The population of Gaza is simply defenseless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
The net effect is that I see no current hope for averting the atrocity which is unfolding before our horrified eyes.
Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous. Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel, they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defence” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population. The Western leadership glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the U.N. is astonishing.
Gaza Fights Back (Film) Filmed in 2021 during the attack and in the days following the ceasefire, the documentary tells the story of how Gaza’s armed resistance groups outwitted the vastly superior Israeli military and established their ability to intervene against Israeli ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and provocations at the al-Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem. https://www.mintpressnews.com/micro-site/gazafightsback/
2024-08-15 Israeli Academia’s Complicity in Israel’s Settler-Colonial Project On todays show – a conversation with Maya Wind, a scholar of Israeli expertise and militarism. Her new book is Towers of Ivory & Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. As this book shows, Israeli universities serve as pillars of Israel’s system of oppression against Palestinians. Towers of Ivory and Steel is a powerful exposé of Israeli academia’s ongoing and active complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial project. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-august-15-2024/
2024-05-06 Israel Is Ignoring the Lessons of Settler-Colonial History The more resistance that the colonized shows, the more brutal the colonizer becomes. Genocidal Israel is now walking in the footsteps of all other settler colonies on their deathbed.
It has been 212 days since the beginning of the Gaza genocide. Over 34,200 civilians have been killed, including 14,500 children and 10,000 women. Over 10,000 people are still buried under the rubble. Mass graves have been uncovered at hospitals in the north and the south of Gaza.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented 140 mass and unmarked graves so far in Gaza. The barbarity by Israel is unprecedented. Among the deceased in the mass graves at al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals, some people had been stripped of their clothes and buried with their hands tied. According to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza on average. Ghebreyesus paints a gloomy picture: “Nowhere and no one is safe.” https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-settler-colonialism
2024-03-11 The Zone of Interest Is a Film About the Nazi Official as a Settler Hannah Arendt’s (by now highly cliched) notion of the “banality of evil,” a phrase she coined while covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann, known as the “architect of the Holocaust.”
But Arendt’s own refusal to interrogate the inherently colonial nature of European fascism, a refusal inseparable from her own racism and Western chauvinism, has blunted the sharpness of that term’s capacity for critical insight. Yes, the Holocaust was engineered by middle managers, but to what end? What did they get out of the horrific affair, besides satiating their sadism?https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/zone-of-interest-nazis-settlers
2024-01-03 Beyond Settler-Colonialism – KPFA – Against the Grain The modern nation-state has been premised on the violent creation of permanent minorities ruled over by ethnic or religious majorities, argues Mahmood Mamdani. The acclaimed scholar of colonialism and anti-colonialism reflects on the United States, Nazi Germany, South Africa, and Israel — settler-colonial societies built on internment and ethnic cleansing. He calls for a decolonialism that transcends nationalism altogether, moving beyond the divisions fostered by colonial rule (Encore presentation.). Resources: Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities Harvard University Press, 2020 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-settler-colonialism/id78900506?
2023-11-27 Top EU Official Slams Settlement Expansion Funds in Israeli Budget The European Union’s foreign affairs chief on Monday said he was “appalled to learn” that Israel’s wartime government is preparing to vote on a budget plan that includes money for illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, where settler violence against Palestinians has grown in recent weeks amid Israel’s assault on Gaza.
“In the middle of a war, the Israeli gov is poised to commit new funds to build more illegal settlements,” Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, wrote on social media. “This is not self-defense and will not make Israel safer. The settlements are a grave [international humanitarian law] breach, and they are Israel’s greatest security liability.”
“During the first eight months of 2023, settler violence soared to its highest level since the U.N. began recording this data in 2006; three incidents per day on average, up from two in 2022 and one in 2021,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, wrote last week. “That rate has almost doubled since October 7.”
“These abuses are a part of Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, as documented by Human Rights Watch and other Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations,” wrote Shakir. “The roots of the violence in Israel-Palestine are multiple and run deep; ending the violence requires dismantling the systems of oppression that feed it, including in the West Bank.”
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, echoed that message on Monday in response to the Israeli government’s budget proposal. “The settlements in the West Bank,” she wrote on social media, “are part and parcel of the system of apartheid against Palestinian people, along with unlawful detention, torture, arbitrary killings, forced displacement, etc.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/top-eu-official-slams-settlement-expansion-funds-in-israeli-budget
2023-10-30 Israeli human rights groups: Israeli officials backing settler violence against West Bank farmers The coalition of groups — including B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and the Israeli arms of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights — released a joint statement calling on the international community “to act urgently to stop the state-backed wave of settler violence which has led, and is leading to, the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank.” The Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday that 111 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 7.
“Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year’s income,” the groups explained. “Yesterday Bilal Muhammed Saleh from the village of As-Sawiya south of Nablus was murdered while tending to his olive trees. He was the seventh Palestinian to have been killed by settlers since the current war began.”
Jewish settlers have recently tried to scare Palestinians into fleeing the West Bank by displaying dolls covered in blood or a substance meant to mimic it and distributing leaflets with messages like “Run to Jordan before we kill our enemies and expel you from our Holy Land, promised to us by God.”
2023-10-30 Israeli ‘rage’ in West Bank alarms France and US “[Israeli] prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu does have a responsibility to rein in the extremist settlers on the West Bank who are … pouring fuel on the fire,” US national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a TV interview on Sunday (29 October). The French foreign ministry said: “France strongly condemns the settler attacks that have led to the deaths of several Palestinian civilians over the past few days … as well as the forced departure of several communities”.
Israeli forces have also killed over 100 Palestinians in the West Bank in the same time frame, according to the Palestinian health ministry. And lethal incidents aside, a wave of violent harassment by armed settlers, with Israeli military protection, has also driven dozens of West Bank Palestinian families from their homes in fear in the past 20 days. “These incidents are likely to set the area alight”, Israeli intelligence chief Ronen Bar warned his own government on Sunday, Israeli media reported.
“Settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities,” said a coalition of 30 NGOs, including prominent Israeli human-rights groups Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem. https://euobserver.com/world/157631
2023-10-30 West Bank toll rises to 111 after Israeli settler kills Palestinian harvesting olives The Palestinian Health Ministry says the death toll from Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank has reached 111 since October 7th. At least seven of those were killed by Israeli settlers, including 40-year-old Bilal Muhammad Saleh, who was fatally shot Saturday near Nablus as he was harvesting olives with his family. Over the weekend, residents of the Jenin refugee camp said Israeli army bulldozers destroyed a memorial for the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh erected at the spot where she was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in May 2022. https://www.radiohc.cu/en/noticias/internacionales/337944-west-bank-toll-rises-to-111-after-israeli-settler-kills-palestinian-harvesting-olives
2023-10-28 Settler Colonialism If you’re confused or just don’t know much about Palestine/Israel take a look at the creation of Israel in 1948 and the Ideology of Zionism. From the beginning Zionism was and remains a Western colonial project. As a religious nationalist project on Palestinian land Zionism followed in the Western tradition of settler colonialism. The inability of Americans to understand their own history as a settler colonial society limits the ability to understand the basics of what has been happening in Palestine for the last hundred years.
The same people that are remaining neutral today are following in the same tradition as all the people that remained neutral for the hundreds of years in which the Europeans were colonizing the “Americas,” Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia and Africa by exterminating native populations. What’s happening today and for the last 100 years in Palestine is consistent with the history of the West for the last 500 years.
America had an ideology that summed up settler colonialism very well, “Manifest Destiny,” the idea that it was divine providence that white Europeans would bring civilization to the “savages.” In the Declaration of Independence Liberal darling Thomas Jefferson refers to the indigenous nations as “merciless Indian savages.”
What Israel is doing today is a much smaller scale of what the British and Americans did to the indigenous on this continent for 300+ years. What both Zionism and Manifest Destiny have to offer people is the bribe of land and wealth. People have a long history of trading their integrity for a little land and wealth. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/28/letter-to-the-editor-settler-colonialism/
2022-05-12 Rights group: Israel approves over 4,000 new settler homes Israel advanced plans for the construction of more than 4,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, a rights group said, a day after the military demolished homes in an area where hundreds of Palestinians face the threat of expulsion.
It was a jolting illustration of Israel’s policies in the territory it has occupied for nearly 55 years. Critics, including three major human rights groups, say those policies amount to apartheid, a charge Israel rejects as an attack on its very legitimacy. Hagit Ofran, an expert at the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now, told The Associated Press that a military planning body approved 4,427 housing units at a meeting on Thursday that she attended. “The state of Israel took another stumble toward the abyss and further deepened the occupation,” she tweeted. https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-middle-east-israel-west-bank-b3ca07a132d5df29f9c7d8c78fc14804
2021-10-27 Israel OKs some 3,000 new settler homes, despite U.S. rebuke Israel approved about 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, a day after the United States issued its strongest rebuke yet of such construction. It was the biggest announcement of settlement plans during the Biden administration. The plans were approved by a Defense Ministry committee, according to a security official who was not authorized to speak publicly and did not provide further details. The anti-settlement group Peace Now also confirmed the approvals. The decision marked the latest boost for Israel’s half-century-old settlement enterprise on occupied lands the Palestinians seek for a state. Successive Israeli governments have expanded settlements, making an internationally backed two-state solution — a state of Palestine arising alongside Israel — increasingly impossible.
The Trump administration had tolerated settlement growth and abandoned the decades-long U.S. position that the settlements were illegitimate. Israel embarked on an aggressive settlement spree during the Trump years, advancing plans for more than 12,000 settler homes in 2020 alone, according to Peace Now, the highest number since it started collecting data in 2012.
Wednesday’s decision was bound to raise friction with Europe and the United States. Only a day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had protested the plan during a phone call with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, according to a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
2023-10–16 Challenging Narratives: Unmasking Zionism, Media Bias, and the ‘EARN IT’ Act Eleanor Goldfield opens the program with a conversation about Gaza; her guest, Nora Barrows-Friedman, rebuts common Israeli / US talking points, and identifies Zionism as the actual obstacle to peace. Then Shealeigh Voitl tells Mickey about some of her recent research and writing. She finds fundamental differences in how corporate media and community media cover gun violence, and takes entertainment-industry publications to task for employer-biased coverage of the Hollywood writers’ strike. Also, she points out flaws and dangers in the so-called “EARN IT” Act. https://www.projectcensored.org/challenging-narratives-unmasking-zionism-media-bias-and-the-earn-it-act/
2010-09-18 Censorship of Al Jazeera Documentary Exposes Influence of Pro-Israel Lobby A documentary film that aimed to expose Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States has been leaked to the media after the government of Qatar pulled it from Al Jazeera, a media outlet Qatar funds. In August 2018, excerpts of the censored documentary were leaked and later published by a number of online independent media outlets, including the Electronic Intifada, France’s Orient XXI, and Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar.
The pro-Israel lobby successfully pressured the Qatari government not to release the Al Jazeera documentary. In June 2018, the Electronic Intifada reported, a Qatari government official stated that the film’s release would be indefinitely delayed due to “national security” concerns.
In September 2018, Max Blumenthal reported that the censored Al Jazeera film also documented how Israeli operatives and US lobbyists coordinated efforts to recruit established black civil rights activists as pro-Israel proxies and to discredit the Movement for Black Lives after August 2016, when that activist coalition issued a platform that characterized Israel as an “apartheid state” and affirmed support for the BDS movement in response.
2023-10-28 Something Has Snapped The Zionist grip on the political and media class is stark. Ordinary citizens are left with feelings ranging from rage to deep sorrow, but with a feeling of helplessness at having no power and no genuine voice in the country where they live. The bought-and-paid-for politicians intone “Israel’s right to self-defense” as justifying the slaughter of any number of Palestinian children. They pretend they do not see the obvious genocide which is happening before their eyes. The Guardian’s framing of the death of hundreds, probably thousands, of young children Friday night, as destruction of Hamas tunnels, ought to be astonishing. Sadly it is entirely unsurprising.
The strange thing is, the BBC and The Guardian, and nearly the entire rest of the MSM, pump out their propaganda as though we have no other access to information or understanding of what is happening. More than that, there seems to be a presumption that the general population harbour the same Zionist assumptions which the journalists are paid to promote. Well, we don’t. It feels like something has snapped, not only in Palestine but in the U.K. and much of Europe, where the process of alienation between the governed and the ruling classes has been accelerated. Democracy has been failing in the West for a while. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/28/craig-murray-something-has-snapped/
2024-02-29 Killed Day by Day Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians in less than 150 days. These are the names and faces of people killed since Oct. 7 across Gaza and the occupied West Bank. https://www.tiktok.com/@ajplus/video/7341072113396124959
2023-12-29 Israel executes Gaza’s elders Hammam Farah was speaking to The Electronic Intifada livestream last week from Toronto about how Gaza’s Christian community – among the world’s most ancient – is on the verge of extinction at the hands of Israel’s military, which treats mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, homes and civilians as legitimate targets. One of the victims of the genocide Hammam talks about in detail was a beloved Gaza elder, his 84-year-old great aunt Elham Farah.
A musician and retired educator, she had been displaced to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City in early November but according Hammam, “she couldn’t stand being sheltered at the church anymore, so she found a ride to take her back to her house.” “Relatives tried to tell her that she should stay in the church for her own safety … but she was quite an independent woman,” Hammam says. The driver would not risk taking her all the way to her house, so she got out. As she walked the final stretch, an Israeli sniper shot her below the knee and she fell to the ground.
Israel’s horrific and apparently deliberate murder of Elham Farah is sadly far from an isolated incident. “The Israeli army has executed dozens of older Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in direct shooting operations,” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said last week. Israel executes Gaza’s elders | The Electronic Intifada
2023-12-18 Israeli Bombing Took 12-Year-Old’s Leg, Her Family, and Finally Her Life “Dunia’s story is the distillation of the Palestinian child’s experience in Gaza,” said one campaigner. “Displaced, bombed, orphaned, maimed, and finally killed by the Israeli military.”
Among the more than 19,450 people killed in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip this year is Dunia Abu Mohsen, a 12-year-old who previously lost a leg in an Israeli airstrike and shared the experience in an interview published Monday. Abu Mohsen was killed on Sunday by an Israeli tank-fired shell that hit al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), which spoke with the child on-camera last month. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-in-gaza
2023-10-30 This is a list of the names of more than 6,000 Palestinians that Israel has killed in Gaza Here are the names, ages, and ID numbers of more than 6,700 of the Palestinians killed so far in Israel’s assault on Gaza. As you move through the list, you will notice that dozens of the dead come from the same families. According to the health ministry, tens of Gazan families have been completely wiped off the Palestinian population registry. You will also notice the names of thousands of children. As of October 29, the child death toll in Gaza rose to 3,195. According to Save the Children, the number of children killed in Gaza in three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed in conflict zones since 2019. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/this-is-a-list-of-the-names-of-more-than-6000-palestinians-that-israel-has-killed-in-gaza/
2023-10-27 Gaza Officials Identify 6,747 Palestinians Killed In Israel’s ‘Brutal Massacres’ In a pointed riposte to U.S. President Joe Biden—who said he has “no confidence” in Gaza casualty figures provided by Hamas, Palestinian health officials on Thursday released a 212-page list identifying 6,747 people killed by Israeli air and artillery attacks on the besieged enclave since October 7.
The Gaza Health Ministry published the names, ages, genders, and civil identification numbers of 6,747 Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, including 2,665 children. The list is in Arabic, with an English version said to be forthcoming. https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-death-toll-2666079177
progressiveissuesblog 