progressiveissuesblog

Nakba

Updated 2024-07-26

Nakba – Wikipedia   The Nakba was the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Palestine war through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property and belongings, along with the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is also used to described the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the shattering of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

Palestinian Nakba News       https://www.bing.com/search?q=The+Palestinian+Nakba+%26+The+Establishment+of+Israeli+Apartheid

Nakba Timeline Map (work by Nisreen Zahda)   Nakba Timeline Map: One second for every depopulated Palestinian city and village” (infographic map). This time animated map describes the chronological order of the systemic depopulation and then the erasing of more than 437 Palestinian cities and villages during the 1948 Nakba. Work by: Nisreen Zahda   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnLsVA0RYoQ

Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (“Catastrophe”)        https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba

Tantura – Documentary     The untold story of Israel’s foundation.  Hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in 1948. To Israelis, it was the War of Independence, to Palestinians it was ‘Al Nakba’ – the Catastrophe. Director Alon Schwarz revisits former Israeli soldiers as well as Palestinian residents in an effort to re-examine what happened in Tantura, the location of an alleged, Israeli-perpetrated massacre, and find out why ‘Al Nakba’ is still a taboo in Israeli society.     https://www.journeyman.tv/film/8315

Al-Nakba Debate Documentary     The historic struggle for Palestine is characterised as the claims and counter-claims of Arabs and Jews, but one factor that is often overlooked behind the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’ of 1948, is the part played by an old imperial power, Britain. The history is written by the victors, who are the rewriters of history as new information, new documents, and new historians, come to light. It is time to examine how history itself is the battleground for the hearts and minds of new generations today.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6b-18B37O8&t=1s     

How did the Nakba happen? | Al Jazeera English 70 years have passed since the Nakba, the “catastrophe” in Arabic, took place in Palestine in 1948.    In which more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcefully displaced from their homes and pushed into refugee camps in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and neighbouring countries.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=megzzpTWajg&t=7s

2024-05-24 Nakba Day – The struggle continues for a free Palestine   People all over the world demonstrated during the week of May 12 — 19 to commemorate the 76th anniversary of Nakba (“the Catastrophe”), the day on May 15, 1948, when the new Zionist state of Israel culminated its brutal removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands.  https://www.workers.org/2024/05/78837/

2024-05-24 Cambridge remembers Nakba Day, in solidarity with Rafah!    Around 200 demonstrators gathered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge on May 15 to demand an end to the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the liberation of Palestine. Members of the Boston Coalition for Palestine, including the Palestine Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and student organizers at MIT, organized the action to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba — the 1948 genocidal colonization of Palestine.   https://www.workers.org/2024/05/78868/

2024-02-07 ‘Gaza has given me a greater understanding of the Nakba’ | Alana Hadid | Real Talk    Alana Hadid belongs to one of the most recognisable Palestinian families in the world. So when she sat down with us on Real Talk, we tried to unpack the pressures that come with that.    In our conversation with Hadid, we spoke about Gaza and how she was impacted by the last few months. We also spoke about her activism, her views on how Gaza may influence the upcoming US elections, and a closer look at the forced expulsion of her Palestinian father and grandparents from their home during the Nakba of 1948.

#RealTalk is a Middle East Eye interview show hosted by Mohamed Hashem that delves into the stories and experiences of a diverse range of guests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcE3fB_Gzg

2023-10-13 Why I no longer stand with Israel, and never will again   The Arabs of Abu Yahiya provided Yaakov and his fellow Zionists with fresh water and would often guard the property of the Kibbutz while the men were away on work. There was an understanding between the leaders of Abu Yahia and the Hatzerim Kibbutz that they would be allowed to remain once Israel took control of the Negev. Instead, when war came, the Kibbutzniks from Hatzerim turned on their Arab neighbors, killing them and driving the survivors away from their homes forever.  

Most of the survivors ended up living in Gaza.   The slaughter and physical eradication of the village of Abu Yahiya, the town of Bersheeba, and the 245 other Arab towns and villages in the Negev by Israeli settlers and soldiers has gone down in history as the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” The Palestinians, when speaking of the Nakba, do not only address the events of 1948, but everything that has transpired since then in the name of the post-1948 sustainment, expansion, and defense of Zionism that defines modern-day Israel. Israelis do not talk about the Nakba, instead referring to the events of 1948 as their “War of Independence.”

“Silence on the Nakba,” one contemporary scholar on the subject has observed, “is also part of everyday life in Israel.”   https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/why-i-no-longer-stand-with-israel

2023-05-15 The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago   Every year on May 15, Palestinians mark a sombre occasion: the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) that befell Palestinians in the lead-up to and during 1948, when they were expelled from their historic and ancestral land by Zionist militias.   During the Nakba, a mass expulsion ensued where hundreds of villages were depopulated, homes were destroyed, and thousands were killed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPqUbYJIDhw

2023-05-12 The Nakba: Why Palestinians refuse to forget  “A majority of the Arab population of Palestine was expelled from their homes in 1948. People don’t forget that.”   In this interview with MEE, Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi explains why the memory of the Nakba is stronger than ever.    Every year on 15 May, Palestinians mark the Nakba (catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948.   Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist forces seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine and expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsfhOq57u6U

2023-05-10 Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity   On May 15, 2023, the Palestinian Nakba will be 75 years old.

Palestinians all over the world will commemorate the tragic occasion, known as the ‘Catastrophe’, when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and nearly 500 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed  of their inhabitants in historic Palestine between late 1947 and mid-1948.

The depopulation of Palestine carried on for months; in fact, years after the Nakba was supposedly concluded. But the Nakba has never actually concluded. Until this day, Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, in the southern Hebron hills, in the Naqab Desert and elsewhere, are still suffering  the consequences of Israel’s quest for demographic supremacy. And, of course, millions of refugees remain stateless, denied basic political and human rights.

In a speech before the ‘UN World Conference against Racism’ in 2001, Palestinian intellectual, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi aptly described the Palestinian people as “a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba”. Elaborating, Ashrawi described this ‘ongoing Nakba’ as “the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism and victimization.” This means that we must not think of the Nakba only as an event in time and place.

Though the massive influx of refugees in 1947-48 was a direct outcome of the Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign as devised  in ‘Plan Dalet’, that event had officially ushered in a greater Nakba, which continues to this day. ‘Plan Dalet’, or Plan D, was initiated by the Zionist leadership and carried out by the Zionist militias with the aim of emptying Palestine of most of its native inhabitants. They did so successfully, while paving the way for decades of violence and suffering, the brunt of which was borne by the Palestinian people.  In fact, the current Israeli occupation and entrenched racial apartheid regime  in Palestine are not simply the intended or unintended outcomes of the Nakba, but direct manifestations of a Nakba that never truly concluded.  https://www.blackagendareport.com/erasure-vs-sumud-how-nakba-came-define-collective-palestinian-identity

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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

Libya

Updated 2023-10-27

2023-09-06 Libya’s Attempt to Normalize Relations with the Zionist Entity is a Multilayered Treason   There are Arab governments going along with the U.S. push to normalize relations with Israel. But people throughout the region are adamantly opposed to such treachery, as the now suspended Foreign Minister of Libya discovered.  

On Sunday, August 27, 2023, news broke out Libya’s Foreign Minister, Najla el-Mangoush , a student of the CIA-supported George Mason University , was in Italy and had a meeting that was cheered by the Foreign Minister of the Zionist entity. Given the secret nature of the meeting, el-Mangoush fled to Turkey on a private jet after the news became public. The Ministry’s Facebook page denied that this meeting was intentional and that it happened unplanned . However, this is not the first time where el-Mangoush met with Zionists and sought collaboration.

In 2011, she met with the Zionist French philosopher in Libya, Bernard Henry Levy, who was the mouthpiece for NATO intervention (who also happens to be cheering in Ukraine’s frontlines with Azov and in 2014’s Maidan protests; supported military intervention in Syria). Her committed anti-Libya policies are numerous. She called for the lynching of Black Libyans in 2011 under the pretext that they were “African mercenaries” – as if by the virtue of them being African and mercenaries legitimates such racist attacks, while forgetting that Libya is in Africa.   

Despite such an ill-studied geopolitical stunt by the GNU that assumed Libyans are apathetic to the inhumanity of the Zionists, mass protests erupted on Monday, August 28. A clear sign that Libyans are alive and care about Palestine. The protestors attacked the office of the Ministry, burned street tires, blockaded roads, and set ablaze Zionist flags and pictures of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The protests were not confined to the capital city of  Tripoli, but the following days saw a furor against such a stunt in other major cities and towns.

We must understand that Palestine, its sovereignty and struggle against settler colonialism is not a single issue. This struggle is entangled with imperialism, led by the US and supported by the functionaries of imperialism across the globe. The US annually provides the Zionists with more than $3.8 billion dollars for military purposes. Whereas the collective West jumps at any opportunity to sanction and isolate any revolutionary regime, they oppose the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement. This double standard makes the so-called rules-based world order a farce. Further, any critiques of the apartheid regime carried out by the Zionists is defined as being anti-Semitic. Yet, sanctions and collective punishment on the people of Gaza goes unnoticed by the rules-based world order. Combining this double standard, sanctions, and blind eye to Zionist crimes is the cornerstone of imperialism. Normalizing relations with the Zionists is normalizing imperialism.   https://www.blackagendareport.com/libyas-attempt-normalize-relations-zionist-entity-multilayered-treason

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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 as a Democracy

Updated 2024-04-03

2024-03-02 Thousands protest in ‘Tel Aviv’, Israeli Police conduct arrests    Israeli settlers protested on Saturday evening in “Tel Aviv”, condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government policies regarding the Israeli captives held by the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip, calling for early elections.

Israeli media reported that thousands of settlers gathered in Kaplan Square in central “Tel Aviv” to protest against the government and demand an immediate detainee-captive exchange. The protesters at the “Azrael Junction” blocked the road in both directions, and Israeli police arrested seven demonstrators on charges of disturbing public order. Additionally, authorities recorded 15 traffic violations committed by the demonstrators. Hence, the Israeli police tried to disperse the demonstrators using force. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/thousands-protest-in–tel-aviv—israeli-police-conduct-arre

2024-01-05 The myth of Israel’s ‘democracy’ w/Ilan Pappé | The Chris Hedges Report      Israel’s status as a bona fide democracy is often taken to be a self-evident truth, but a more critical look at the history and reality of Zionism calls this into question. After all, how can a democracy exist in a country constitutionally defined as an ethnostate that can only exist through the suppression and gradual elimination of its Others? Israeli historian Ilan Pappé joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion on Israel as an inherently colonial, and therefore anti-democratic, project.

Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-directs the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Prior to coming to the UK, Pappé was a historian and politician in Israel. He is the author of several books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PKlV1JMBU

2023-09-23 Gatekeepers of democracy: The 3 women who are the Israeli gov’t’s biggest enemies     By chance (or not), the government’s three biggest enemies, the gatekeepers of democracy and public services, happen to be women. 

This year, Rosh Hashanah came at the end of one of the most challenging years in Israel’s history. The country is facing difficulties that run the full gamut of society: the economy, high cost of living, security, terrorism, and internal strife. Above all, this year has been marked by internal conflicts that have led to division among the Israeli people, tearing the country apart from within.   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sixth government, the most religious and extremist government in Israel’s history, promised stability and tranquility. And yet during the nine months of its existence, its leaders have not stopped to lay down their swords for even one moment.    

 From the judicial reform to the budget allocations for settlers and haredim and the daily attacks by coalition MKs on the gatekeepers – the Supreme Court and senior IDF and security establishment leaders – the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir-Smotrich government has left no stone unturned in its comprehensive attack on anyone who does not toe the line.  Ever since Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s belligerent reform roused the liberal camp, which launched unprecedented and massive weekly protests, the government has not stopped creating new reasons for the protesters to take to the streets and defend their cause.

Just this week, for example, Netanyahu and his coalition partners compared the demonstrators to Israel’s greatest enemies, such as Iran, the PLO, and BDS, which only fanned the flames of protest in Israel and in the US.   https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-760078

2023-01-11 Israel Was Never a Democracy: So why is the West Lamenting End of “Liberal” Israel?   US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reportedly “hinted ” that the US government would also boycott “other right-wing extremists” in Netanyahu’s government.   However, these strong concerns seemed absent from the congratulatory statement by the US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, on the following day. Nides relayed  that he had “congratulated (Netanyahu) on his victory and told him that I look forward to working together to maintain the unbreakable bond” between the two countries.

In other words, this ‘unbreakable bond’ is stronger than any public US concern regarding terrorism, extremism, fascism, and criminal activities.   Ben-Gvir is not the only convicted criminal in Netanyahu’s government. Aryeh Deri, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, was convicted of tax fraud in early 2022 and, in 2000, he served  a prison sentence for accepting bribes when he held the position of interior minister.   Bezalel Smotrich is another controversial character, whose anti-Palestinian racism has dominated his political persona for many years. While Ben-Gvir has been assigned the post of national security minister, Deri has been entrusted with the ministry of interior and Smotrich with the ministry of finance.

Palestinians  and Arab countries  are rightly angry, because they understand that the new government is likely to sow more violence and chaos.  With many of Israel’s sinister politicians in one place, Arabs know that Israel’s illegal annexation of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories is back on the agenda; and that incitement against Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem, coupled with raids of Al-Aqsa Mosque will exponentially increase in the coming weeks and months. And, expectedly, the push for the construction and expansion of illegal settlements is likely to grow, as well.   These are not unfounded fears. Aside from the very racist and violent statements and actions by Netanyahu and his allies in recent years, the new government has already declared  that the Jewish people have “exclusive and inalienable rights to all parts of the Land of Israel”, promising to expand settlements, while distancing itself from any commitments to establishing a Palestinian State, or even engaging in any ‘peace process’.   https://www.blackagendareport.com/israel-was-never-democracy-so-why-west-lamenting-end-liberal-israel

2022-07-28 Ex-soldier: My commanders ‘handed me over’ to be raped by jailed terror convict     Former prison guard says army tried to silence her, implores public to urge investigative committee over scandal that allegedly saw female soldiers ‘pimped’ to Palestinian inmates.  “Hila” said she was “handed over” by her commander to a dangerous terrorist “so that he could hurt me and sexually abuse me again and again,” and added that other female guards suffered the same fate.   She identified her victimizer as the person who has been named in the media in connection with “the pimping of female prison guards,” and claimed that in the prison he was known as the “commander.”  Hila said that throughout her service at Gilboa Prison, “I became a prisoner, the private sex slave” of the convict.

 According to Hila, the prisoner “controlled all the officers and staff, who listened to him and carried out his ‘commands’ without debate.”  The man, she said, “walked around the prison freely, uncuffed, and with his filthy hands touched the bodies of female soldiers without consequence. Everybody knew, everybody was silent. Everybody was afraid. Everybody worked for him.” 

Earlier this week the Ynet news site reported that a Palestinian prisoner convicted of terrorism, Mahmoud Atallah, was being investigated by police over sexual assault while behind bars.  Atallah has been in solitary confinement since 2018, over a scandal in which an intelligence officer allegedly “pimped” female guards to him and to other Palestinian inmates, at his request. A female soldier who came forward said that she had been ordered to accompany Atallah around the facility, which gave him opportunities to assault her, including by groping her buttocks, while her bosses turned a blind eye.  In exchange, Atallah, a powerful figure among the prisoner population, kept the facility quiet for the prison staff.   

The reports alleged that the intelligence officer, Basha, had placed female guards in the facility’s security wing at the request of Atallah. Channel 12 news has reported three soldiers were involved in the case.   In an interview with Channel 12 last year, Basha denied the allegations, saying they “aren’t true” and that the female soldiers had in fact been “agents” tasked — with their full consent — with extracting information from the inmates. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-soldier-my-commanders-handed-me-over-to-be-raped-by-jailed-terror-convict/

2016-07-16 IDF’s chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime       Col. Eyal Karim, the IDF’s intended next chief rabbi, has previously provided misogynistic interpretations of Jewish law that consider female conscription ‘utterly forbidden’ and permits raping ‘attracting Gentile women’ as a way to keep up morale; female MKs and women’s rights organizations, incensed, call for his appointment to be cancelled.   

The 59-year-old colonel was chosen to replace the outgoing chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Rafi Peretz, who is stepping down after six years in the position. Karim has been serving as the head of the Rabbinate Department in the Military Rabbinate. He is an alumnus of the Bnei Akiva Nachalim and the Ateret Cohanim yeshivas, and he served previously as a combat paratrooper, eventually commanding their elite reconnaissance unit, before taking a break from the military and eventually returning to its rabbinate. 

“What are the problems with conscripting girls to the army?”  Karim replied, “In a situation that existed, such as in the War of Independence, that exposed the nation of Israel to an existential threat, and the reality is defined as actually pikuach nefesh (a Jewish concept that requires setting aside most religious restrictions in order to save a life —ed.), then women also participated in defending the people and the country, even though the reality wasn’t so modest. But currently, we aren’t in a situation of actual pikuach nefesh.  “Because the damage to modesty that is likely to be caused to a girl and to the nation is decisive, the greats of the generation and the chief rabbinate have ruled that girls serving in the IDF is completely forbidden.”

 The rabbi gave a more shocking answer on the same site when asked if soldiers were permitted to rape women during war. Karim replied that, as part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers’ morale during fighting, it is permitted to “breach” the walls of modesty and “satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will, out of consideration for the difficulties faced by the soldiers and for overall success.”  https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4827240,00.html

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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

Genocide Intent

Updated 2024-08-25

2024-08-12 “Pieces of People”: Israeli Strike on Gaza School Kills 100+, Bodies Destroyed Beyond Recognition     The official death toll in Gaza now stands at just under 40,000, though the true number of casualties is likely far higher with many thousands of the dead unaccounted for. In one of the deadliest attacks of the entire war, Israel on Saturday bombed the al-Tabin school in Gaza City where thousands of Palestinians had sought shelter. Officials in Gaza say over 100 Palestinians were killed in the attack, many of them while they were praying at a mosque inside the school. Many of the dead were dismembered or destroyed beyond recognition, with medics reportedly collecting body parts in plastic bags. CNN has confirmed a U.S.-made GBU-39 small diameter bomb was used in the strike, which resulted in “over 100 pieces of people,” says Palestinian journalist Shrouq Aila in Gaza. “I’m saying ‘pieces’ because nobody was able to recognize the full body of their beloved ones.”   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hourhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGsag3IFDmo

2024-08-14 Extremist Israeli Leaders Slammed for ‘Reckless Pursuit’ of New West Bank Colony      “My life’s mission,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is “to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”—even as an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations support independence for Palestine.   

The Israeli government said Wednesday that it has completed plans for the first new apartheid settlement in the occupied West Bank since 2017, a move the country’s far-right finance minister said was due in part to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood amid Israel’s obliteration of Gaza and a recent World Court affirming the occupation’s illegality.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/new-israeli-settlements

2024-08-05 Israeli Minister Laments That ‘Nobody Will Let Us’ Starve 2 Million Gazans To Death     “This is what fascism and the desire for mass extermination and displacement look like,” a Palestinian-American expert said. “These criminals want to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza, not just Hamas.”  Far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday said that it might be “justified and moral” to cause two million Palestinian civilians to starve to death until Hamas returns Israeli hostages, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups.

Human rights campaigners have demonstrated that Israel is limiting and delaying aid into the Gaza Strip, and even using starvation as a “weapon of war.” United Nations’ experts warned earlier this month that famine had spread across the enclave, calling it an “intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people” and “a form of genocidal violence.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-minister-block-aid-let-gazans-die

2024-07-25 Netanyahu Vows to “Finish the Job Faster” in Gaza If US Gives Him More Weapons    n his speech to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to U.S. lawmakers to send Israel more weapons, vowing, chillingly, that the weapons shipments would enable Israel to “finish the job faster” in Gaza.

Netanyahu drew one of the clearest lines yet between the supply of U.S. weapons and Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza, essentially straight out saying that the slaughter has been made possible by U.S. assistance — and that the speed of Israel’s genocide is scaled to how many U.S. weapons they receive.

“Fast tracking U.S. military aid can dramatically expedite an end to the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East,” said Netanyahu, who tried to stoke war with Iran later in the speech. https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahu-vows-to-finish-the-job-faster-in-gaza-if-us-gives-him-more-weapons/ 

2024-07-24 Israeli Forces Have Killed 366 UN Workers and Their Family Members in Gaza   A leaked report obtained by Drop Site estimates that Israeli forces have killed at least 366 United Nations staffers and their family members in the Gaza Strip since October, an indication of the grave threat Israel’s ongoing assault poses to humanitarian relief workers and the enclave’s broader civilian population.

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim reported Wednesday that the confidential figures, assembled by the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Center, show that three family members of World Food Program staffers and four dependents of U.N. Children’s Fund workers were among those killed by Israeli forces. The total number of U.N. staffers killed so far is 195, according to the data.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the primary aid agency operating in Gaza, has seen the largest impact on staffers and their family members. The leaked report estimates that Israeli forces have killed 158 dependents of UNRWA staffers since October.    https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-forces-have-killed-366-un-workers-and-their-family-members-in-gaza/

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/

2024-07-17 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.  “As with its relentless targeting of hospitals, Israel’s regular attacks on the so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ in al-Mawasi threaten to normalise such flagrant violations of international law,” Forensic Architecture wrote on social media.  https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-attacked-gaza-safe-zone-at-least-10-times-since-rafah-invasion/

2024-05-18 Palestine Talks | John Mearsheimer discusses Gaza  Professor John Mearsheimer joins TRT World to discuss the Israeli lobby and provide a realist theoretical perspective on Israel’s assault on Palestine’s Gaza. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqPQ5dUfSTw&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=2&t=298s

2024-07-16 Israeli Forces Dropped 2,000-Pound Bombs on Gaza “Safe Zone,” Killing 90   Israeli forces dropped eight tons of bombs on an area Israel labeled as a “humanitarian safe zone” in Gaza on Saturday, wielding explosives built to maximize destruction on an area sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been forced to flee Israel’s genocidal campaign again and again.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Israeli military dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs during its attack on Al-Mawasi on Saturday, striking civilian areas including a market, a soup kitchen and a water source. These bombs have the power to level entire neighborhoods or strike deeply into concrete bunkers, and humanitarian groups have said that using even one of these 2,000-pound (or smaller) bombs in civilian areas is a war crime.

The Israeli military killed 90 people and injured at least 300 others in the attack, according to Palestinian health officials. This is the deadliest of several attacks in recent days as Israel has escalated its bombings in central and southern Gaza — despite dubious reports by Israeli officials that they are supposedly entering a less deadly phase of their genocide.https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-forces-dropped-8-2000-pound-bombs-on-gaza-safe-zone-killing-90/

2024-07-15 Israel Has “Flattened” UNRWA HQ in Gaza in “Blatant” War Crime, Agency Says       After months of successive attacks on humanitarian aid facilities, Israeli forces have now “completely destroyed” the headquarters of the primary aid group for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the agency reports.

Israeli forces attacked the facility as they carried out their horrific raid of Gaza City last week, leaving nothing but rubble in its place. The building was one of many operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the largest aid group for Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.

UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel’s attack on the facility represents a “blatant” war crime.https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-flattened-unrwa-hq-in-gaza-in-blatant-war-crime-agency-says/

2024-05-01 Israeli Finance Minister Denounced for Calling for ‘Total Annihilation’ of Gaza       In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of cities and refugee camps in the blockaded enclave.

“There are no half measures,” said Smotrich at a government meeting. “Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat—total annihilation.”   “‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven,'” he added, quoting the biblical story of the nation of Amalek, whose people God commanded the Israelites to exterminate and which right-wing Israeli leaders have long invoked to justify the killing of Palestinians. https://www.commondreams.org/news/smotrich-gaza-annihilation

2024-03-21  “Humanitarian Violence” in Gaza: Architect Eyal Weizman on Mapping Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign”   A new report by the research group Forensic Architecture counters Israel’s argument at the International Court of Justice that it followed humanitarian policies to safeguard civilian life in Gaza. South Africa argued in January before the ICJ that Israel was guilty of genocide during its war on Gaza. The report argues that what Israel says are humanitarian evacuations in Gaza actually amount to the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime. It found that since October 7, Israel has issued imprecise and sometimes contradictory evacuation orders, attacked people even in so-called safe zones and evacuation routes, and failed to provide the necessities of life for those civilians, all while pushing the population further and further south into areas that are then also attacked or evacuated at a later time. “We cannot see it as anything else but part of the genocidal campaign,” says Forensic Architecture director Eyal Weizman, who accuses Israel of using humanitarian principles as yet another weapon against Palestinians in Gaza. He says Israel’s objective is to “exercise pain on the civilian population” in order to deter “ongoing resistance to the Israeli occupation.” https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/21/forensic_architecture_gaza_israel?

2024-03-02 Palestine Talks | Dr. Mads Gilbert on Israel’s “systematic strategy” to destroy Palestinians    Norwegian physician and professor emeritus Mads Gilbert opens up about his decades-long experience working in the occupied Palestinian territories and how the current situation is — in terms of Israeli brutality against Palestinians — unlike any other he’s witnessed in an exclusive interview with TRT World Digital.   He also reflects on his activist side, inviting viewers to consider our shared humanity and what is required on the part of the international community, however challenging, to end Israel’s genocidal assault against Gaza. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fzBf7Omllk&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=10

2024-02-20 Israeli Spokesperson EXPOSES Israel’s Real Intent  Eylon Levy isn’t even trying to hide it.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z5aa9HV4aw

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

2023-12-26 Palestinians Say Netanyahu ‘Confessions’ Reveal Truth of ‘Genocidal War’ in Gaza [MEK Note: Hitler spent years forcing Jewish people to leave Germany before the Holocaust years.  No country would take them in mass.  Zionists worked with Nazi to get out some to Palestine.  This also seems to be Netanyahu and Israel’s long-time plan that has failed after 75 years!  So now it is genocide if necessary] 

The Foreign Ministry said that the Israeli prime minister’s push for what he terms “voluntary migration” shows that ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave is the real goal of the ongoing bombing and ground invasion.      Amid a ramping up of bombardments and military ground operations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was working toward what he referred to as a “voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Hayom Daily reported.   “Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb (them), and we are working on it,” he said, according to a translation from the Anadolu Agency.     https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-voluntary-migration-gaza

2023-12-26 Israel Rebuked for ‘Baseless’ Visa Bans for UN Officials Over Gaza     “Israel thought they could blackmail everyone, including the U.N., into collaboration with the propaganda cover of their crimes,” said one Palestinian critic.   

Israel’s foreign ministry said Monday it would deny visas for multiple United Nations employees after officials and agencies within the world body—including a panel on which an Israeli expert accused the country of genocide—continued their sharp criticism of the war on Gaza. 

“Baseless attacks against the U.N. only proves moral cowardice,” Albanese said in response to Cohen in a social media post. “The UN has been weakened by decades of Israeli impunity for breaches of international law, including colonization of occupied territories and Palestinian forced displacement. The UN must hold Israel to account if it is to salvage its reputation and purpose.”  The alternative to accountability, she continued, “is playing itself out in Gaza today. With freedom for all, there will be freedom for none.”   Albanese called for an immediate ceasefire, release of Israeli hostages as well as arbitrarily detained Palestinians, and the end of occupation in order to restore peace, full protection for all civilians, and put the region on a path towards justice.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-nation-and-israel

2023-12-11 Genocidal Statements Made by Senior Israeli Officials    As Israel continues to pound Gaza into dust, MintPress compiles some of the most genocidal statements made by senior Israeli officials, proving that their intent is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its population.    https://twitter.com/MintPressNews/status/1734328617981685953

2023-12-10 ‘People will die in the streets’: Gaza dreads onset of winter as disease rises    inter is fast coming to Gaza. Rain storms and powerful winds have already swept through the coastal strip, scattering tents and soaking those with little shelter in a crisis in which about 1.8 million Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s offensive.  And with the advent of winter, an already catastrophic situation in which almost all of Gaza’s healthcare has collapsed is quickly worsening.  Women are giving birth in tents in unsterile conditions. Smoke from the wood fires is exacerbating respiratory ailments. Those in need of medicine have been forced to go sometimes to up to 10 pharmacies in an often fruitless search.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/people-will-die-in-the-streets-gaza-dreads-onset-of-winter-as-disease-rises

2023-11-15 Palestinians sue Biden to stop Gaza genocide   Palestinians are suing US President Joe Biden and his secretaries of state and defense to stop them from further aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  The legal move comes as the Israeli military has stormed al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest health facility, after US officials parroted Israel’s claims that Hamas uses it as a commander center, despite a lack of credible evidence.    The complaint lays out “the very clear, specific intent announced and admitted by Israeli officials to destroy in whole or in part the Palestinian population in Gaza,” she added. 

“It is very rare in cases of genocide that at the front end of an unfolding genocide, we have such clear evidence of specific intent,” Gallagher said.    “And that is part of why the duty to prevent is something that is so important to enforce in this case. We should not have to wait until the death counts rise” and people start dying from starvation, dehydration and lack of medical care “before people act.”

The 1948 Genocide Convention – to which the US, Israel and Palestine have all acceded – puts an affirmative duty on states with influence to “take all measures that they can from the moment they know that there is a serious risk of genocide” to prevent it,” Gallagher added. 

Biden and secretaries Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin III “have not only been failing to uphold the country’s obligation to prevent a genocide,” according to the lawsuit, “but have enabled the conditions for its development by providing unconditional military and diplomatic support – disavowing any constraint or ‘red lines’ on Israel’s military campaign.”   This unconditional support is despite “numerous Israeli government statements reflecting a genocidal intent,” according to the complaint. “Defendants have refused to even initiate internal processes to assess whether there is a genocide unfolding in Gaza, or to monitor how US weapons are used there.”   Meanwhile, the US leaders have refused to call for a ceasefire and vetoed UN resolutions calling for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s attacks, all while influencing and “guiding” Israeli military strategy.

Israeli leaders made statements demonstrating genocidal intent as soon as its military offensive in Gaza began after an attack led by Hamas on 7 October left some 1,200 people dead, according to the Israeli government.    That day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Palestinians in Gaza to “get out now.” Two days later, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip,” preventing the transfer of electricity, food and fuel to the territory, which had already been under a severe blockade for 16 years.   The Israeli general who heads the COGAT military unit meanwhile said that “human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction.”   “You wanted hell, you will get hell,” he added.

On 10 October, the Israeli military spokesperson announced that the army was dropping “hundreds of tons of bombs,” adding that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”    On 29 October, Netanyahu invoked the biblical story of Amalek in which God commands the killing of the Amalekite people and their animals – “divinely mandated genocide,” according to one scholar quoted in the lawsuit. 

The filing puts the current genocide into the context of Israel’s “historical policy and practice of seizure of Palestinian land and dispossession of the Palestinian people.”   The complaint also observes that “Israel’s sustained military hostilities and assaults against Palestinians, even when alleged to be ‘self-defense,’ breach fundamental principles of international law.”  As the occupying power, Israel cannot apply Article 51 of the UN charter pertaining to the use of self-defense by states, “when the threat originates from a territory over which Israel exercises control.” https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinians-sue-biden-stop-gaza-genocide

2023-11-03 U.S. General ADMITS Israel Is Starving Out Gaza – On CNN!    During a recent segment on CNN, Retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson admitted to the hosts that Israel was committing — and poised to commit more — war crimes, stating that “This IS a war.” Meanwhile, former CNN anchor Marc Lamont Hill, now with Al Jazeera, confronted a former Israeli Foreign Minister with indisputable evidence that Israel was engaging in collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, also a war crime.    Guest host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to  independent journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen about these startling admissions.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9jspDDuZH8&t=3s

2023-11-03 Video: Netanyahu Admits To Plan To Wipe Out Gaza!     Recently surfaced decades-old footage of Benjamin Netanyahu goes a long way to explaining the Israeli Prime Minister’s thinking when it comes to Palestine, the United States and the rest of the international community. Israel needs to devastate Gaza, he says, and, when asked, adds that the United States is easily manipulated and that he doesn’t care what the international community thinks.    Jimmy, along with The Convo Couch host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger, discusses the comments that should give Netanyahu heartburn if the media would ever ask him about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdq1zhLANT0&t=18s

2023-10-30 Netanyahu Accused of ‘Genocidal Intentions’ in Gaza After ‘Holy Mission’ Speech      “The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal,” noted one theologian after the prime minister invoked an ancient enemy. “The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals.”   Human rights defenders on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an “explicit call to genocide” after he delivered a televised address calling Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza a “holy mission” and invoked an ancient mythical foe whom the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded the Israelites to exterminate.   Declaring the start of a “second stage” of Israel’s war on Gaza—which he described as a “holy mission”—Netanyahu said that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.”   According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose extermination was commanded by God to Saul via the prophet Samuel. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-genocide

2023-10-27 The Genocidal Language Behind Israel’s Intent in Gaza     Long before Oct. 7, the Zionist-Israeli discourse was always that of racism, dehumanization, erasure and, at times, outright genocide, writes Ramzy Baroud. 

“(Tutsis) are cockroaches. We will kill you.”    Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”    The first quote was a line repeated frequently by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio station, which is largely blamed for inciting hatred towards the Tutsi people.    The second is by former Israeli army Chief-of-Staff Gen. Rafael Eitan in 1983, speaking at an Israeli parliament’s committee.   Rwanda’s hate-filled radio station operated for only one year (1993-94), yet the outcome of its incitement resulted in one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in modern human history: the genocide of the Tutsis.   Compare “Radio Genocide” to the massive Israeli-U.S.-Western propaganda, dehumanizing Palestinians almost with identical language to that used by Hutus’ media.     

“There is… a risk of genocide against the Palestinian People,” the U.N. experts said in a statement on Oct. 19. But this “risk of genocide” is not born out of recent events.   Prior to the establishment of Israel, Zionists denied the very existence of the Palestinians. Many still do.   Even when Palestinians factor into the Israeli political discourse, they become “bloodthirsty animals,” “terrorists,” or “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”    It would be too convenient to label this as just “racist.” Though racism is at work here, this sense of racial supremacy does not exist to merely maintain a sociopolitical order, in which Israelis are masters and Palestinians are serfs. It is far more complex. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the man responsible for translating Israel’s declaration of war into an action plan: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” he said on Oct.  9. “Accordingly,” here, meant that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” And, of course, thousands of dead civilians.   Expectedly, Israel’s supporters in the U.S. and other Western countries joined the chorus, also using the most violent and dehumanizing language, thus cementing mainstream Israeli political discourse among ordinary people.  https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/27/the-genocidal-language-behind-israels-intent-in-gaza/

2023-10-26 Justifying Genocide – Shir Hever pt 2   Why is most of Israeli society supporting the imminent genocide against the population of Gaza, knowing that 40% of the population are children? Shir Hever says Israel is disintegrating as it tries to wipe Gaza off the map.   https://theanalysis.news/justifying-genocide-shir-hever-pt-2/

2023-10-25 Craig Murray: The Chances of a Regional War  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.

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.

Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal.   https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/craig-murray-the-chances-of-a-regional-war/

2023-10-13 Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets   As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8

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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

American Police

Updated 2023-10-27

2023-02-08 Memphis Police Chief Trained with Israel Security Forces     The death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers last month once again ignited outrage over the violent, militarized nature of U.S. law enforcement and placed scrutiny on police departments’ bloated budgets .

Among the objections to policing that are being revived are criticisms of a controversial series of trainings and exchange programs  for U.S. police in Israel. Scores of American law enforcement leaders have attended the programs, where they learned from Israeli police and security forces known for systemically abusing the human rights of Palestinians.   Some of the Memphis Police Department’s top brass, including current Chief Cerelyn Davis, participated in the programs. Davis, who previously helmed the police department in Durham, North Carolina, completed a leadership training  with the Israel National Police in 2013. While an officer with the Atlanta Police Department, Davis also established an international exchange program with Israeli police and coordinated department leaders delegations to Israel, according to an old résumé .

“We know, without a shadow of a doubt, that what takes place during US-Israel police exchanges does nothing to keep our communities safe,” Eran Efrati, director of campaigns and partnerships for the progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace. “But the exchanges refine and enhance the militarization rooted in American policing with Israeli tactics and technology of occupation and apartheid that are being tested on Palestinians on a daily basis.”   https://www.blackagendareport.com/memphis-police-chief-trained-israel-security-forces

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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

Africa

Updated 2023-10-27

2023-04-19 Efforts to Reduce Israeli Influence in Africa Continue   As the Israeli government intensifies its efforts to win influence on the African continent and other geopolitical regions, several governments have responded by heightening their solidarity with the Palestinian people.  

In South Africa, the National Assembly based in Cape Town voted in early March to further downgrade the diplomatic presence of Israel inside the country.   Since 2019 there has been no South African ambassador credentialed to its embassy in Tel Aviv. This measure stems directly from the failure of the Israeli government to negotiate a settlement to end the occupation of Palestine.

In fact, repressive policies against the Palestinians have worsened over the decades with massive bombing campaigns by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza killing thousands and displacing many more from their homes and refugee camps. Every year more Palestinian communities are being taken over by the Israelis through the building of settlements for Jewish households.  

During the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry attempted another hostile disruption of the continental organization composed of 55 member-states representing 1.4 billion people. In 2021, the AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, made a unilateral decision to grant Israel observer status within the body.  In 2021, South Africa described the surprising move as “unjust” and “shocking”. The Republic of Namibia, also in Southern Africa, said , “Granting observer status to an occupying power is contrary to the principles and objectives of the Constitutive Act of the African Union.”  Israel blamed South Africa and Algeria for engineering the removal of the diplomat from Tel Aviv at the AU gathering. The Israeli Foreign Ministry went as far as to say that Algeria and South Africa are controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such an absurd claim only highlights the failure of the regime to rationalize its presence in international forums within the Global South. 

Africa has waged liberation struggles for many years for independence, unification and sovereignty. The alliance between the Palestinian national movement and the progressive forces in Africa are based upon mutual interests and concern for the emancipation of humanity from all forms of exploitation and oppression.   https://www.blackagendareport.com/efforts-reduce-israeli-influence-africa-continue

2023-02-22 The Israel of Africa    Much of the evolution of this situation is explained in an essay, “How did Israel end up with AU observer status? ” published by African Arguments in April 2022, after Israel had been given the accreditation that was later suspended. It was written by Dialo Diop, an activist from the Palestine solidarity movement in Senegal, and Roshan Dadoo, the co-ordinator of the South African BDS Coalition. Both are spokespersons for the Pan-African Palestine Solidarity Network , a coalition of African civil society groups and activists from 20 African nations.

They write:  “The AU’s predecessor, the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), noted the similarities between the Israeli and apartheid South African regimes. At a meeting of OAU heads of state in Uganda in 1975, the organisation declared: ‘the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being’.”

Why have so many since chosen to embrace the apartheid state? They write:

“One answer is that Israel has been increasingly muscular in its diplomatic offensive and offers of technological and agricultural support, particularly in West Africa and East Africa. Another answer lies in the fact that, in the last decade, Israeli military exports to the continent have increased by 306% . In recent years, several authoritarian regimes in Africa have also used Israeli spyware against their own citizens and even other African heads of state .

“This highlights another worrying aspect of an AU embrace of Israel. Its acceptance does not only contradict the body’s principles, but also points to the growing reach of authoritarianism, surveillance, and oppression on the continent. The growing influence of the Israeli regime in several African states is a threat to those countries’ peace and democracy.”    https://www.blackagendareport.com/israel-africa-0

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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

Climate Crisis & Militarism – Military Veterans & Allies Respond!

Sunday Forum with Janet Weil, Steve Morse and Vince Dijanich

Sunday, October 29, 9:00 am, TSK Room (online & in person)

A light breakfast will be offered at 9am and the program will begin at 9:30am.

The twin existential threats to life on Earth, the climate crisis and militarism, are regarded as too abstract and scary to deal with. How are they related, and what can we do about them?  Veterans For Peace members of the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project (CCMP), Janet Weil, Steve Morse and Vincent Dijanich will discuss how military veterans who understand the intersection of climate and war/militarism, and allies, are responding with educational events, protests, campaigns to stop military air shows, attending UN COP conferences, and more. This lively, interactive presentation will include a brief quiz, and a lively Q & A session.

*Janet Weil, a former national CODEPINK staffer, is an Associate Member of Veterans For Peace since 2011 and has served on the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project since its inception. Janet worked with Extinction Rebellion in Portland, Oregon.  During the heady days of the Occupy Movement, she co-founded the SF 99% Coalition with UUSF members.

Steve Morse has been with Veterans for Peace for many years, and co-founded the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project of VGP in 2020.  He was active in the GI Resistance Movement that included time in Viet Name and US Army prisons.  He has also worked as a mathematics teacher and as a coordinator of the GI Rights Hotline.

Vince Dijanich is a co-founder of Veterans For Peace Climate Crisis and Militarism Project and a Bay Area environmental activist.

Zoom Link https://zoom.us/j/99177559640?pwd=c01DZ252TjBDZEU4MXhTSGFnYUZ5QT09#success.

You can phone in at +1 669 900 6833. Meeting ID: 925 6460 7793, Passcode: 2823

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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

Russia

Updated 2024-07-30

2024-04-12 Russians sent warning that nuclear war is now ‘inevitable’ with ‘millions at risk’     Russians have been chillingly told that nuclear war is now unavoidable and millions are set to perish. Experts stated that nuclear conflict is certain – with Vladimir Putin poised to annihilate 250 million Europeans.

This horrifying assertion was made by a professor on the state-controlled Rossiya 1 TV channel, alarming Russian viewers. Dmitry Evstafiev, a Russian political analyst, declared on the broadcast that Putin’s deployment of nuclear arms against Europe is an inescapable reality.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russians-sent-warning-that-nuclear-war-is-now-inevitable-with-millions-at-risk/ar-BB1lw7dk?

2024-02-03 ‘Destruction and Chaos’ – Russia Condemns US Aggression on Middle East, Calls for UNSC Meeting   The United States has “once again demonstrated its aggressive essence and disregard for international law,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said in a statement, adding that the attack led to the destruction of civilian infrastructure and casualties among ordinary people.    “The obedient participation of the British Royal Air Force in the US attacks should not create the illusion of some kind of ‘international coalition’ for anyone,” Zakharova said.   “We strongly condemn the new blatant act of American-British aggression against sovereign states. We are seeking urgent consideration of the current situation through the UN Security Council,” the ministry’s spokeswoman added.   https://www.palestinechronicle.com/destruction-and-chaos-russia-condemns-us-aggression-on-middle-east-calls-for-unsc-meeting/

2023: The Year the Bubble of US Leadership Burst   If Ukraine exemplifies yet another iconic U.S. military failure, and BRICS the changing of the guard in the economic realm, the sadistic savagery in Gaza repudiates the moral right of the U.S. to lead… anything. 

Ukraine is lost. In a war of attrition, the advantage goes to the side with the greater population. Russia’s population is six times Ukraine’s. And a defense has an inherent 3-to-1 advantage over an offense. Russia, having captured 20% of Ukraine, is now on the defense. Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower, the artillery, the ammunition, the air power, the air defenses, the time, the money, the strategy, or the allies to repel what U.S. News & World Report says is the strongest military in the world. Absent the U.S. getting directly involved, which is just not going to happen in a presidential election year, there is no plausible scenario in which Ukraine wins. Insiders know this. The public will have to wait until after the 2024 election to get the memo. Either way, the damage done in the loss is incalculable.

The U.S. menaced Russia for decades by relentlessly moving NATO up to Russia’s borders. Then, the U.S. helped overthrow the democratically elected but Russian-leaning government in Kiev and installed its own oligarchic, crypto-fascist, Western-leaning government. That was the 2014 Maidan coup, referred to by one U.S. intelligence asset as “the most blatant coup in history.” The mission was to dismember Russia and put its vast natural wealth in the hands of U.S. corporations.   The failure of that mission cannot be disguised or minimized. It is especially embarrassing after the very public U.S. defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is all the more damning because Ukraine sacrificed 500,000 of its men to carry out the U.S.’ mission, yet the U.S. couldn’t even keep it supplied with ammunition. Beyond the direct damage, the collateral damage of the loss is staggering.

The never-deserved reputation of the U.S. for military prowess is devastated. NATO is weakened. The Nord Stream pipeline destruction revealed the U.S. to be the world’s greatest perpetrator of international terrorism. The loss of the pipeline has left Europe with energy costs 2.5 times what they were before the war, gravely damaging its international competitiveness. The mythic repute of U.S. weapons, before this only deployed against much lesser foes, is shattered. And, instead of being dismembered, Russia has come out of the war stronger than ever.

In addition to now possessing the world’s strongest military, Russia’s economy shook off “the greatest sanctions regime in the history of the world” and is outstripping those of the U.S. and Europe. It has pivoted east and deepened its strategic ties with China, the world’s leading commercial power and the U.S.’ leading adversary. And it has gained enormous stature in the Global South for having stood up to and defeated the world’s most inveterate bully. Ukraine is an epochal failure for the U.S. in all dimensions, the worse for having been entirely self-inflicted.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/2023-us-leadership-bubble-burst

2023-12-11 Moscow and Gaza: Is Russia Ready for a Major Shift in its Middle East Policy?      Gaza was among the main topics on the agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrived in the Middle East region on Wednesday, December 6.   We know that the situation in Gaza, namely the Israeli war and the subsequent genocide, is a major objective in Putin’s visit, based on press statements from Russia’s official media.  Putin’s visit included the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two of the richest and most economically influential Arab countries, which are, like Russia, members of OPEC+ – the larger and most influential group of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

 In the early phase of the Israeli war with the Palestinian Resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip, Russia had taken a guarded position, condemning the targeting of civilians, while calling for a comprehensive political solution.   But, days later, Moscow’s position began evolving into a stronger stance, namely condemning the Israeli war on Gaza, Washington’s blind support for Tel Aviv and the US’ intransigence during UN Security Council meetings.  President Putin, on October 13, compared Israel’s besiegement of the Gaza Strip to the Nazi siege of Leningrad in 1941. “In my view it is unacceptable, more than two million people live there. Far from all of them support Hamas, by the way, far from all. But all of them have to suffer, including women and children,” he said.  

“All they (the West) can do is to keep (talking) about Israel’s alleged right for self-defense, which, as an occupying state, it does not have, as was confirmed by the (UN) International Court consultative ruling in 2004,” Nebenzia said on November 2. Following the US shameful use of the veto power to block the passing of a UNSC resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the Russian representative Dmitry Polyanskiy stated: “Our American colleagues have condemned thousands – if not tens of thousands – more civilians (..) including women and children, to death, along with the UN workers who are trying to help them.” 

the war gradually began to destabilize the Middle East, involving state and powerful non-state actors, many of whom are close allies to Moscow and protectors of Russian interests in the region.  They include Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and, of course, Hamas itself.      This meaning is compounded by the immediate visit to Moscow by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on December 7, also with the sole purpose of discussing the situation in Gaza.

Is it possible that Russia has finally found a geostrategic opportunity in the Middle East that would allow it to expand, in terms of its strategic alliances and political role, beyond Syria?   This expansion must appear as an attractive opportunity for Moscow, especially as early signs of Israeli military failure and, by extent, American failure, in Gaza are becoming unmistakably clear. https://countercurrents.org/2023/12/moscow-and-gaza-is-russia-ready-for-a-major-shift-in-its-middle-east-policy/

2023-11-30 WATCH: UN Security Council Debates Catastrophe in Gaza      Foreign ministers from several Council nations took part in the meeting Wednesday, in which some countries decried the massacres, while others defended Israel. No solution to the war was found.  See video of a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Palestine, Indonesia, Türkiye, the UAE and Egypt.

Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya (2:08:35), blasted Western double standards for calling for two meetings a month on Ukraine and zero on Palestine. “Perhaps the fate of the Palestinian population is much less interesting for you from a domestic political perspective,” he said.  Nebenzya criticized Western “hypocrites and unprincipled opportunists” who express concern for women’s rights while ignoring the fate of Gaza’s women.  https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/30/watch-un-security-council-debates-catastrophe-in-gaza/

2023-10-25 Putin warns Israel-Hamas conflict could spread beyond Middle East, condemns Gaza bombing   President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that Israel’s conflict with Hamas could spread well beyond the Middle East and said it was wrong that innocent women, children and old people in Gaza were being punished for other people’s crimes.

Putin, who made the comments in a Kremlin meeting with Russian religious leaders of different faiths, said bloodshed in the region had to stop. He said he told other world leaders in phone calls that if it did not, there was a risk of a much wider conflagration. 

Putin conveyed his condolences to the families of Israelis and citizens of other countries who were killed or wounded by Hamas in its bloody Oct. 7 attack.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-warns-israel-hamas-conflict-could-spread-beyond-middle-east-condemns-gaza-bombing/ar-AA1iQx9W?

2023-10-20 China and Russia plan to work together for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians    China and Russia share the same position on the Palestinian issue and plan to try to work together to cool the situation and help establish a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, a top Chinese envoy said Friday.

 “The fundamental reason for the current situation of the Palestine-Israel conflict is that the Palestinian people’s lawful national rights have not been guaranteed,” Zhai said, according to a statement released on Friday by the Chinese foreign ministry.    The two countries want to “play a positive role in resuming talks for peace between Palestine and Israel, truly implementing the two-state solution, and promoting a comprehensive, just and enduring solution to the Palestinian question at an early date,” Zhai said.   https://apnews.com/article/china-middle-east-envoy-israel-gaza-c08587a566ff38fec882118a0e117c3a

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