progressiveissuesblog

Language of Violence

2023-10-08 Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them   Israel has spoken this blood-soaked language of violence to the Palestinians since Zionist militias seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, destroyed some 530 Palestinian villages and cities and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in more than 70 massacres. Some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed between 1947 and 1949 to create the state of Israel in 1948.  Israel’s response to these armed incursions will be a genocidal assault on Gaza.  

The collective retribution against innocents is a familiar tactic employed by colonial rulers. We used it against Native Americans and later in the Philippines and Vietnam. The Germans used it against the Herero and Namaqua in Namibia. The British in Kenya and Malaya. The Nazis used it in the areas they occupied in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe. Israel follows the same playbook. Death for death. Atrocity for atrocity. But it is always the occupier who initiates this macabre dance and trades piles of corpses for higher piles of corpses.  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/palestinians-speak-the-language-of

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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

Jewish Activism

Updated 2023-12-02

2023-11-15 Rabbis for Ceasefire: Jewish Leaders Organize to Halt Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza   We speak to Rabbi Alissa Wise, an organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire and the founding co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Rabbinical Council, about Tuesday’s “March for Israel” in Washington, D.C., that was covered widely by the mainstream media and platformed antisemitic Christian Zionists. Wise sees a deep connection between Jewish religious principles and anti-Zionist activism and says accusations that anti-Zionists are antisemitic are a cynical strategy used to “shield Israel from accountability.” She says Israel cannot be uniquely exempt from political and humanitarian critique. “Israel is not a Jewish person. Israel is a state. God forbid we should not be able to cry out when states are committing horrific genocidal violence in the name of Jewish people.”     Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOOaC_HxOo

2023-11-04 1,500+ Israelis Urge ICC Action on ‘War Crimes and Genocide’ in Gaza      “Persistent impunity has created the conditions for the consolidation of the Israeli apartheid regime, which is intent on committing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Indigenous Palestinian population,” says the open letter.

Israelis Against Apartheid, a group representing more than 1,500 citizens, this week urged the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor “to take accelerated action against the escalating Israeli war crimes and genocide of the Palestinian people” in Gaza.   “For the safety and future in the region, all elements of international law must be enforced and war crimes should be investigated,” declares the letter to the ICC’s Karim A. A. Khan, noting his ongoing Palestine investigation and recent remarks on the war.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/international-criminal-court-israel

2023-10-30 “Not in Our Name”: 400 Arrested at Jewish-Led Sit-in at NYC’s Grand Central Demanding Gaza Ceasefire   We bring you the voices of Jewish Voice for Peace and their allies who shut down the main terminal of Grand Central Station during rush hour Friday in one of New York’s largest acts of civil disobedience in 20 years to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. The multiracial, intergenerational movement says about 400 people were arrested, including rabbis, famous actors and elected officials from the New York State Assembly and Senate and the City Council.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I7W99OVcjo

2019-10-17 Jewish activism from the US-Mexico border to Palestine.     https://codepink.substack.com/p/episode-12-jewish-activism-from-the-9d5#details

Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Jenin attack

2023-08-25 A Visit to Jenin Shows the Consequences of Performative US Policies     The assault in July was executed using weapons from U.S. arms deals, despite tightened restrictions issued by President Joe Biden in February.   A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank where a major attack by the Israeli Occupation Forces , or IOF, was carried out in July under the guise of a military operation targeting militants. The two-day raid resulted in the murder of 12 Palestinians, including four children, over 100 wounded, and 3,000 forced to evacuate by the IOF’s indiscriminate violence.

Nearly a month later, there were signs of the invasion everywhere, forcing Palestinians to relive this violence daily. Streets that were destroyed by the IOF remained inaccessible, homes torched by drone strikes were haunting, bullet holes marked almost every home I passed by. The local showing me around, a resident of Jenin refugee camp, informed me that the IOF struck the streets first so that movement would be restricted. The IOF deliberately destroyed the streets of a densely populated refugee camp before attacking it from ground and air.  https://codepink.substack.com/p/a-visit-to-jenin-shows-the-consequences

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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

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Israel’s 9/11Moment

Updated 2024-04-03

[MEK Note: There are two other major differences between the U.S. 9/11 and Israel’s “9/11”.  (1)  The U.S. 9/11 was a 100% inside job ($100K Reward if I am wrong), while Israel just “greased the wheels” to made theirs easier to happen.  (2)  The progressive movement has been active in protesting and exposing the truth about Israel’s “9/11” while they not only swallowed the U.S. 9/11 narrative but joined in attacking and smearing members and evidence discovered by the 9/11 Truth Movement.]

2024-02-07 NETANYAHU’S WAR ON TRUTH   Two weeks before  Hamas commandos led a series of raids into Israel on October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before an empty chamber at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The Israeli prime minister brandished a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. On this map, Gaza and the West Bank were erased. Palestinians did not exist. 

He was speaking on the grand stage of the U.N. General Assembly, but no world leaders bothered to attend. Outside, some 2,000 people, a mixture of American Jews and Israeli citizens, protested his attacks on the independence of the Israeli judiciary system. The scene served as a reminder of how deeply unpopular his far-right governing coalition, not to mention Netanyahu himself, had become in Israel. At that moment, it seemed that Netanyahu was pushed against the ropes, in a losing battle to continue his political reign.

Just days later, as Hamas commandos penetrated the barriers encircling Gaza and embarked on their deadly raids targeting several military installations as well as kibbutzim, everything changed in an instant.    Just as the Bush administration exploited the 9/11 attacks to justify a sweeping war in which it declared the world a battlefield, Netanyahu is using the horrors of October 7 to wage the crusade he’s been preparing for his entire political career. With his grip on power fading last fall, the October 7 attacks provided him with just the opportunity he needed, and he hitched his political survival to the war on Gaza and what could be his last chance to eliminate Israel’s Palestinian problem once and for all.   https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/

2024-01-25 Israel, the United States, and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror   In a New Yorker piece published five days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, American critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag wrote, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.” Sontag’s desire to contextualize the 9/11 attacks was an instant challenge to the narratives that President George W. Bush would soon deploy, painting the United States as a country of peace and, most importantly, innocent of any wrongdoing.

While the rhetorical strategies he developed to justify what came to be known as the Global War on Terror have continued to this day, they were not only eagerly embraced by Israel in 2001, they also lie at the heart of that country’s justification of the genocidal campaign that’s been waged against the Palestinian people since October 7, 2023.

Giving Israel further license for unfettered state violence under the guise of a war on terror, in remarks in Tel Aviv President Biden stated that “since this terrorist attack… took place, we have seen it described as Israel’s 9/11. But for a nation the size of Israel, it was like 15 9/11s. The scale may be different, but I’m sure those horrors have tapped into… some kind of primal feeling in Israel, just like it did and felt in the United States.”

It bears noting that while Israel quickly deployed the rhetoric of the War on Terror on and after October 7th, weaponizing the language of terror was not in and of itself novel in that country.  https://tomdispatch.com/israel-the-united-states-and-the-rhetoric-of-the-war-on-terror/

2023-10-10 “Israel’s 9/11” Is a Slogan to Rationalize Open-Ended Killing of Palestinian Civilians     When Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke outside the Security Council on Sunday, he said: “This is Israel’s 9/11. This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS NewsHour interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said: “This is, as someone said, our 9/11.”

While the phrase might seem logical, “Israel’s 9/11” is already being used as a huge propaganda weapon by Israel’s government — now engaged in massive war crimes against civilians in Gaza, after mass murder of Israelis by Hamas last weekend.   On the surface, an analogy between the atrocities just suffered by Israelis and what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 might seem to justify calls for unequivocal solidarity with Israel. But horrific actions are in process from an Israeli government that has long maintained a system of apartheid while crushing basic human rights of Palestinian people. https://freepress.org/article/%E2%80%9Cisrael%E2%80%99s-911%E2%80%9D-slogan-rationalize-open-ended-killing-palestinian-civilians

2023-11-20   CO23168 | Israel’s 10/7 is Not its 9/11  Israel’s labelling of the October 7 (10/7) Hamas attacks as its 9/11 and paralleling its response to that of the United States are misleading. The two events occurred under different circumstances with their own nature and intensity.    Israeli leaders have referred to the October 7 (10/7) Hamas attacks as their 9/11, an event which resulted in the US intervention in Afghanistan and wider “war on terror”. The implication is that Israel is justified in responding to Hamas’ assaults just as the US responded to the 9/11 attacks. Hence Israel’s declared determination to eliminate Hamas no matter what the cost. However, a comparison of 10/7 with 9/11 is misplaced. 

The first time that the Israeli leadership drew on 9/11 to quell Palestinian resistance to occupation was during the government of former prime minister Ariel Sharon (2001-2006).   After Sharon’s incapacitation following a stroke in 2006, Netanyahu advocated a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians based on “peace for peace”, not “land for peace”, as enshrined in the Oslo deals. In March 2015, he declared that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.  

Afghanistan was not under US occupation or blockade prior to 9/11. Al Qaeda’s attacks were planned by its leaders, especially Bin Laden, under protection of the extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In retaliation, America’s main objective was to dismantle Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime, and ensure that Afghanistan never again became a hub for terrorist groups.

America’s Afghanistan campaign did not amount to an invasion but rather an intervention. It was backed by the United Nations and most of the countries around the world, including those in the Muslim domain. During its two-decade long intervention, the US did not drop more than 7,000 bombs in a four-week period that could kill more than 10,000 Afghan civilians, including many children. Nor did it at any time seek to deprive the population of Afghanistan of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine or cause them mass dislocation. The US, along with its allies, provided an unprecedented amount of reconstruction, and humanitarian and security aid to ensure reasonable livelihoods for as many Afghans as possible.   The US also did not dislocate 1.5 million Afghans, and isolate Afghanistan from the rest of the world and conduct its operations in total darkness to hide the rate of casualties and destruction from the public eye. No UN Secretary-General ever accused the US of collectiv   https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/israels-10-7-is-not-its-9-11/

2023-10-16 Gaza is Burning in Lockstep with the Great Reset   The latest Israel-Hamas conflict was either deliberately engineered or it was the result of a remarkable concatenation of security lapses. Current affairs commentator Efrat Fenigson, a former Israel Defense Force (IDF) reservist, was among the first to concisely unpack the sheer improbability of a Hamas sneak attack on an ultra-secure Israeli border complex.   https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/gaza-is-burning-in-lockstep-with-the-great-reset.html

2023-10-11 It’s A Trap! The Wave Of Repercussions As The Middle East Fights “The Last War”   But here’s what’s going to happen:  the establishment will seek to force Americans and Europeans into these wars regardless.  The corporate media and some political leaders are already suggesting that the recent full-scale attack on Israel was planned by governments outside of Gaza. Some are accusing Iran, and others accuse Lebanon. From the extensive amount of footage of the attack that I have examined, I have no doubt that someone other than the Palestinians orchestrated the event. The tactics were far too advanced and far too coordinated; the Palestinians have never been all that smart when it comes to military strategy.

Who drafted the attack is another question entirely. So far there are a lot of rumors but no hard evidence leading to any specific governments. Another big question is, how did the Palestinians manage to organize all of this and execute the invasion WITHOUT Israeli intel services knowing about it? Mossad is known to be one of the most intrusive and pervasive covert agencies in the world, yet they were caught completely off guard by this unprecedented attack?  I think not.

I’m reminded of the events of 9/11 and the strange series of intelligence failures that preceded it. I’m also reminded of the lies, propaganda and the reactionary response which led to two decades of meaningless war.   https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/its-a-trap-the-wave-of-repercussions-as-the-middle-east-fights-the-last-war.html

2023-10-09 “Israel’s 9/11 Moment”?!    Former IDF tower guard blows whistle raising questions about authenticity of official “surprise” narrative.   In his recent Substack, Robert Morningstar points toward some of the many parallels between 9/11 and the Hamas attack, Sun, Oct 8, 2023 at 8:25 pm.

While most researchers in the 9/11 truth movement agree that the 9/11 false flag operation was a MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose), Morningstar suggests that Israel may be complicit here in a LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose).  He reposts on Twitter from Inversionism: “I’m not falling for this charade again. I learned this lesson years ago investigating 9/11.”   https://richardgage911.substack.com/p/israels-911-moment

2023-10-08 Something Is Not Right About The Israel/Hamas War — Could It Lead To Genocide, World War Three?   Israel claims that the surprise element of the attacks were the result of a catastrophic failure of intelligence on the part of the Israeli intelligence apparatus. In short, Israel claims that Hamas used methods to bypass its surveillance system and thus avoid detection during a prolonged period of planning. While Israel has a robust system of cameras and internet/cellphone monitoring, it is reported that Hamas used more traditional methods of communication such as in-person meetings and the use of couriers to deliver messages, thus avoiding technology and the pitfalls of technological surveillance. 

Something Doesn’t Seem Right.   However, something simply doesn’t add up when it comes to the Israeli explanation. Gaza is one of the most surveilled areas of the world. The Israelis are exceptionally good at intelligence gathering and putting that intelligence to use and yet we are supposed to believe there were not enough Israeli intelligence agents on the ground in Palestinian territory to catch wind of such a monumental operation? Anyone who understands geopolitics and has been to the Middle East knows well how powerful and effective Israeli intelligence is in the region.

Given the questionable nature of the Israeli official story and the questionable allegiances of Hamas, what would be the end game of allowing a Hamas attack on Israeli soil? For the Israeli government, there are several options:

1.) Declare martial law on the Israeli population who have been divided and restless over the economy and cultural manipulation as well as other political issues inside Israel. This war has effectively silenced political dissent and internal disagreements.

2.) Create an “Israeli 9/11” that would generate support both inside and outside Israel for the “final solution” to the Palestinian “problem.” In other words, a massive incursion into the Gaza Strip and possibly other territories.

3.) An excuse to launch an attack against Hezbollah before the Iranian-backed militia gains so much strength that Israel is unable to defend itself successfully, a very real possibility given the increasing strength and skill of the militia currently.

4.) To launch a war against Iran that will logically draw in the United States to do the brunt of the fighting, thus breaking its largest functional enemy in the region.

Naturally, it would be important to point out that it is unlikely that the Israeli government would take such steps without first consulting the United States and being reassured the American military will quickly come to its rescue.   https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/something-is-not-right-about-the-israel-hamas-war-could-it-lead-to-genocide-world-war-three.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

Israel Narrative

Updated 2023-12-09

The Times of Israel   https://www.timesofisrael.com/

Anti-Defamation League (ADL)   ADL fights all forms of antisemitism and bias, using innovation and partnerships to drive impact. A global leader in combating antisemitism, countering extremism and battling bigotry wherever and whenever it happens, ADL works to protect democracy and ensure a just and inclusive society for all.   https://www.adl.org/

Mothers Against College Antisemitism (“MACA”)       https://www.facebook.com/groups/656718683235049/

United With Israel    https://www.facebook.com/unitedwithisrael

Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 5 Easy Points       https://www.mayimachronim.com/israel/

2023-12-06 Kamala Harris’s Performative Scolding of Israel   With Israelis in a grueling fight against a dangerous terrorist enemy, Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to Dubai to deliver a scolding of our close ally for the benefit of Arab leaders. Her remarks were morally weak and untethered from reality.   In remarks in the United Arab Emirates after meetings with leaders of the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and the Hamas-sponsoring Iranian ally Qatar, Harris delivered a version of the same message. It was rooted in the same failed Obama-era strategy of trying to show “daylight” with Israel in the groundless hope that it will earn more trust in the Arab world. She reiterated the administration’s “steadfast conviction” that “Israel has a right to defend itself” but then insisted, “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”

In the immediate wake of the October 7 Hamas assault, and again when we gave President Biden credit for his visit to Israel, we argued that the true test of his administration’s pledges to have Israel’s back would come over time, during the slow and arduous — but necessary — process of destroying Hamas.  

As time has dragged on, the public comments in support of Israel from administration officials have become more subdued, while the tongue-lashings about Israeli conduct and calls for restraint have become more frequent.   On a visit to Israel last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized Israel for inflicting too many civilian casualties and reportedly instructed the Israel Defense Forces that the successful tactics they employed in northern Gaza should not be used in the south, which is now where Hamas jihadists and operational leaders are believed to be holed up. He also said Israel didn’t have the “credit” to carry on their mission for several more months. One wonders if 1,000 more dead Jews would be needed to buy Israel more time from Blinken.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kamala-harris-s-performative-scolding-of-israel/ar-AA1l1RGV

2023-12-05 Israel Would Consider Another Cease-Fire to Get Back Hostages   Israel would consider another short-term cease-fire if an agreement can be reached with Hamas to return more of its 137 hostages still in captivity.   Securing the release of all those seized by Hamas and other armed groups on Oct. 7 remains an aim of the war alongside destroying the Islamist militant group, Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, said on Tuesday.     

The cease-fire came to end, Israel said, when Hamas reneged on an agreement to return all women and children. Hamas, which is classified as a terror group by the US and European Union, still holds 20 women, two boys and 115 men, Israel has said. It’s unclear if all of them are alive.

Levy also defended Israel’s record in protecting civilians, as criticism mounts over its air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, in which almost 16,000 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The military is giving advance warnings of strikes, conceding the element of surprise, he said.  “It’s upsetting that our attempts to protect civilians are mocked or discarded,” he said. “We would like to seek greater appreciation for the efforts Israel is making to protect civilians.”   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-would-consider-another-cease-fire-to-get-back-hostages/ar-AA1l1OZc

2023-12-04 Israeli Peace Activists Face Reckoning After Hamas Attack The Oct. 7 attacks that Israeli authorities say killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, are prompting a reckoning in parts of southern Israel that bore the brunt of the violence, and that for decades have been home to scores of activists who sought to promote coexistence and greater rights for Palestinians.   The region, home to many collective communities known as kibbutzim, has also been far more supportive of pursuing negotiations for a two-state solution with Palestinians than the rest of Israeli society, which has moved sharply to the right since the failure of peace talks more than two decades ago.

In Nir Oz, Be’eri and Kfar Aza—three of the kibbutzim that were among the hardest hit in the Hamas attacks—right-wing parties garnered on average less than 10% of the vote in last year’s elections, which resulted in what analysts consider the most right-wing, religious and ultranationalist government in Israel’s history. Among Israelis who identified as left-wing, 83% were in favor of a two-state solution, in contrast with 16% on the right, according to a recent poll.

 “The kibbutzim were bastions of the left. You’ll find in the kibbutzim people who went out of their way to cooperate with Arabs,” said Benny Morris, a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I fear that Oct. 7, with the mass killing of civilians, has further undermined the left in Israel.”

For years, the left in Israel drove the peace process. The Labor Party, whose roots go to the state’s founding, led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, signed the 1993 Oslo Accords that were seen as laying the groundwork for a future Palestinian state.

After the collapse of peace talks, Palestinians launched a yearslong bloody uprising known as the Second Intifada that left many previously pro-peace Israelis disillusioned. Support for a two-state solution fell and right-wing political parties rose to power, and have continued to dominate Israeli politics.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-peace-activists-face-reckoning-after-hamas-attack/ar-AA1kWXw5

2023-11-22 The Western Media Is Amplifying The Israeli Narrative    Western media never had any problem with health statistics from Gaza — until Israel was accused of bombing a hospital there. For years, English-speaking journalists straightforwardly cited reports from the “Palestinian health ministry in Gaza,” using its official name. But after the October 17 attack on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, media outlets began portraying the ministry as an arm of the rebel force Hamas.

Foreign journalists had struggled to make sense of the carnage on October 17, and whether Israeli or Palestinian forces were to blame. The New York Times edited its headline several times, and initially reports may have overstated how many hundreds died. The Israeli army and U.S. President Joe Biden took advantage of the confusion to cast doubt on the truthfulness of Gaza’s medical authorities.     https://progressivehub.net/the-western-media-is-amplifying-the-israeli-narrative/

2023-11-21 The BBC Has Finally Turned Against Israel!     Ever since the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel, the Israeli government has been allowed to get away with spreading all kinds of lies and propaganda, almost always echoed uncritically by the mainstream western media. But the latest episode of duplicity, involving a doctored video ostensibly showing evidence that the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza is used by Hamas as an operations center, was deemed too over the top even for BBC host Ros Atkins.  Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss what it means if Israel has lost the BBC.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvkBXfirPo

2023-11-15 Israel-Hamas War: D.C. Rally DENOUNCES Antisemitism & DEMANDS Release Of Hostages | TBN Israel    Join Erick Stakelbeck as he shares the latest updates on Israel’s war against Hamas, and his analysis from the “March For Israel” in Washington D.C. on Nov. 14, 2023. Hear from Alana Zeitchik, the cousin of six Israelis held hostage by Hamas, and Tovah Feldshuh as she condemns global antisemitism. Stay up-to-date with the latest here on TBN Israel!  Please join us in praying for the peace of Israel and Jerusalem.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTDOBP9WdY

2023-11-07 Israel says there’s no lack of food, water and humanitarian supplies in Gaza     In a press briefing to reporters, IDF Col. Elad Goren of the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit insisted that amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, the levels of humanitarian assistance being supplied to Gaza were well above the minimum levels required by international law, and that the humanitarian situation is being constantly reviewed.

UN agencies such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and UNICEF, and other international agencies such as the World Health Organization have deplored the situation in the territory and called for increased supplies to be transferred, but have not stated that there are shortages of critical supplies.

Gaza health authorities, controlled by Hamas, say that more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, but the figures issued by the terror group cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include its own terrorists and gunmen, as well as Palestinians killed by the hundreds of rockets fired by terror groups that have fallen short inside the Strip. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-theres-no-lack-of-food-water-and-humanitarian-supplies-in-gaza/

2023-11-07 Thousands gather for pro-Israel rally in NYC, 30 days after Oct. 7 Hamas massacre    Speakers at the event, held along Central Park West on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, mourned the attack’s 1,400 victims, demanded the release of the more than 240 hostages held in Gaza and decried rampant antisemitism in the US in recent weeks. Organizers estimated the crowd size at around 12,000 people.  Participants carried photos of the hostages and signs reading “Bring our children home,” “Let my people go,” and “We stand with Israel.”   Thousands streamed past police cruisers on their way to the event, chanting “Bring them home” and singing Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.”

Speakers included Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Daniel Goldman, both Jewish Democrats; actors Brett Gelman and Debra Messing; and two relatives of hostages. Israeli singers Gad Elbaz and Idan Raichel performed for the audience.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-gather-for-pro-israel-rally-in-nyc-30-days-after-oct-7-hamas-massacre/

2023-11-07 Moms Band Together to Fight Shocking Rise of Antisemitism on Campus: ‘It Scares the Living Daylights Out of Me’   Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel left 1,400 dead and immediately ignited war in the region, incidents of antisemitism have surged across the globe — and some of the ugliest have happened on college campuses in the U.S.    Elizabeth Rand, a Jewish lawyer and mother of a son in his senior year of high school, felt she had to do something and turned to Facebook to create a group for other concerned moms.    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/moms-band-together-to-fight-shocking-rise-of-antisemitism-on-campus-it-scares-the-living-daylights-out-of-me/ar-AA1jyCcV

2023-11-07 INSIDE ISRAEL: Spirituality Triumphs on the Battlefield, Turning Darkness into Light!    This episode of our Inside Israel podcast highlights how Israelis, in the midst of a deadly war with Hamas following the October 7 massacre, are able to turn darkness into light.   Witness how the people of Israel transform deeply hidden sparks of spirituality into massive flames of unimaginable light and power. Connection to G-d and adherence to Torah are the keys to delivering incredible success and open miracles on the battlefield.  https://unitedwithisrael.org/inside-israel-spirituality-triumphs-on-the-battlefield-turning-darkness-into-light/

2023-11-06 Miss Israel Exposes Oppression In Gaza   “Two weeks ago, on October 7, Hamas infiltrated the state of Israel after years of terror attacks, starting a war in my country,” Cochva said.    “Their so-called ‘freedom fighters’ beheaded babies, raped young girls, kidnapped elderlies, burned entire families in their homes. They killed anyone they saw. Anyone. And our Kibutzim were burned to the ground,” Miss Israel added, referring to anti-Israel activists calling terrorists “freedom fighters.”   Cochva also discussed the situation in Gaza, pointing out that Hamas misuses funds meant for the citizens and uses them to build terror bases.   She emphasized that the blame for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza lies with Hamas, not Israel.     https://www.stateofunion.org/2023/11/06/miss-israel-exposes-the-oppressive-organization-the-people-of-gaza-live-under-in-viral-video-2/

2023-11-06 Fighting Back: Moms Rally to Combat Antisemitism on Campus     With antisemitism soaring in the U.S. and abroad following the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7th, a group of concerned mothers is organizing to counter the spread of anti-Jewish bigotry and harassment on college campuses.     https://unitedwithisrael.org/fighting-back-moms-rally-to-combat-antisemitism-on-campus/

2023-11-05 Israeli Ambassador Slammed for Claiming ‘There Is No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza’     “Does he think the world is not seeing the horrific reality in Gaza? Does he think we will believe his lies?” said one peace advocate. “No, we won’t.”   Despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations claimed in a televised interview Sunday that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” and was swiftly rebuked by people around the world.  

Challenged by CNN’s Dana Bash, Ambassador Gilad Erdan doubled down on his position: “I’m not saying that the life in Gaza is great. And, obviously, Hamas is the only one that should be held accountable for any situation in Gaza. But there’s a standard, due to international humanitarian law.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-denies-gaza-humanitarian-crisis

2023-11-05 New Facebook group Mothers Against College Antisemitism has 43K members and counting      https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-facebook-group-mothers-against-college-antisemitism-has-43k-members-and-counting/

2023-11-05 Israel’s Current Government Cannot Envisage Peace    Alexandra Boutri: It’s been 27 or so days since Hamas unleashed a massacre in Israel, killing more than 1400 people and capturing more than 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has been hammering Gaza with airstrikes and artillery as retribution for the surprise attack by Hamas and Israeli ground forces have also moved inside the besieged region, though without a clearly stated objective other than to destroy Hamas. So far more than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed, with the majority of them being women and children, and Gaza’s infrastructure has been totally destroyed. But let me start by asking you what you make of certain left-wing defenses of Hamas. 

Netanyahu’s government didn’t seem to have a plan for what comes next when he declared war on Hamas and started the bombardment of Gaza Strip, but perhaps the hope was that the Israelis could somehow succeed in transferring Gaza’s Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It could also be the case, now that Israeli ground forces are inside Gaza, that they want to force all of Gaza’s Palestinians to move to the southern part of the besieged region. But I don’t think that Israel has any interest in governing Gaza.

The assault on Gaza is driven by rage. But I also believe that Netanyahu is mostly interested in quelling the public anger against him and is hoping that he can do so with a war against Hamas, which he called “a battle of civilization against barbarians.” And in the process of doing so, he doesn’t care how many “Palestinian animals” are killed. Apparently, this is what leaders of civilized nations do, according to Benjamin Netanyahu! Nor does he care about the hostages. Unfortunately, however, he may have the majority of Israeli citizens on his side. Netanyahu’s government is more than extreme, but “Jewish Israeli citizens have moved significantly rightward over the years.” And hate speech against Palestinians seems to have become today something of a national sport for many Israelis.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-gaza-vision-for-peace 

2023-10-31 Suspect in Antisemitic Threats at Cornell University Identified, Charged     Patrick Dai, 21, was arrested and charged Tuesday for allegedly making threats against Cornell’s Jewish community.  21-year-old student at Cornell University has been charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly sending threats to the school targeting Jewish students and staff members.   Patrick Dai, a junior at the university, was charged following an investigation by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, according to federal prosecutors. Dai was arrested earlier Tuesday afternoon.   Dai faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and up to three years of supervised release if he is convicted of posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.   https://themessenger.com/news/antisemitic-threats-cornell-university-suspect-identified-patrick-dai

2023-10-30 Hidden History of Zionism    What is the true definition of “Zionism”? When did the movement really begin, and why? Join us as we explore the surprising origins and hidden history of Zionism.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqyZUm05o7w

2023-10-30 Antisemitism Flares as Israel Wages War Against Hamas   Anger against Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is hardly new, and in the past, far less intense Israeli attacks against Gaza have led to major protests against the government and often against the U.S. for supporting Israel.    But the recent incidents suggest an increase in the volume and breadth of blatant and public antisemitism.

Nothing has matched the attack in Dagestan, where security forces took control of the airport Monday and arrested dozens of the attackers. Meanwhile, leaders of the region’s small Jewish population were wondering how to respond.  In the U.S., meanwhile, President Joe Biden announced measures Monday to deal with a swell of antisemitism on American college campuses. Among other actions, the White House said the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would partner with campus law enforcement to track online hate rhetoric and share federal resources with schools.    

In Europe, France has recorded 800 antisemitic acts in the last three weeks, and in an address to the German Parliament, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a crackdown on antisemitism.    Scholz said antisemitic slogans and demonstrations that glorified killings were actions “which we cannot accept here,” a thinly veiled reference to Germany’s Nazi past.     https://themessenger.com/news/anti-semitism-flares-as-israel-wages-war-against-hamas

2023-10-23 Listen to Noa Tishby’s powerful speech!   She is correct! We warned you! We warned you! Now, as we mourn our dead, let us fight to defend our people, to defend our home, our land.  We will win!   Am Israel Chai! The People of Israel Live!🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱   https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1099404717895865&extid=WA-UNK-UNK-UNK-IOS_GK0T-GK1C&ref=sharing&mibextid=qC1gEa

2021-05-29 Israel Narrative Management Is Getting Incredibly Desperate And Brazen    Supporters of Israeli apartheid and mass murder are losing control of the narrative, which has led to redoubled perception management efforts ranging from the cringey to the iron-fisted. In the former category we’re seeing them pen entire articles attacking Seth Rogen for tweeting a fart emoji at virulent Israel apologist Eve Barlow and claiming that putting “fart” in Barlow’s name is the same as a literal pogrom. In the latter category they’re blowing up entire press offices and arresting Palestinian journalists. This is narrative management at its least subtle. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-narrative-management-is-getting

2021-05-11 The Israel Narrative Is Crumbling Because Of Phone Cameras And The Internet    There are a lot of factors contributing to the growing awareness of Israel’s brutality, but I think the main reason is very simple: there are only so many viral videos of unconscionable acts that can be dismissed with “Actually this is way more complicated than it looks.” It is not more complicated than it looks. Clearly. It looks bad because it is bad.  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-israel-narrative-is-crumbling

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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

Iran

Updated 2024-08-26

2024-08-21 Cause of helicopter crash that killed Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi revealed     The helicopter crash in which president Ebrahim Raisi was killed was allegedly caused by bad weather conditions, Iran’s initial probe has found.   Raisi, 63, died alongside Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and two senior local officials on board the helicopter on 19 May. The bodies were found after hours of frantic search through a foggy mountainous region in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province.

The president and the other men were flying in a US-made Bell 212 helicopter, when due to harsh weather conditions the aircraft lost the ability to handle the weight it was carrying, Fars news agency reported, citing a security source.  “The investigation in the case of Ayatollah Raisi’s helicopter crash has been completed,” the unnamed source told the news agency.   The source stressed it was absolutely certain that “what happened was an accident”. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cause-of-helicopter-crash-that-killed-iranian-president-ebrahim-raisi-revealed/ar-AA1pdRLm?

2024-08-14 Seeds of Today’s Middle East Disaster Were Sown by the CIA | Opinion    Seventy-one years ago this week, a pair of energetic American brothers carried out a plan to overthrow a pesky Middle Eastern government, setting in motion a chain of events that has the region on the cusp of all-out war. The convoluted tale offers a clear illustration of a truism we tend to ignore: Beware most of all the consequences that are unintended.   

 In the summer of 1953, the target of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, was Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry. It was a popular move that was part of a broader effort to assert Iranian sovereignty and please Iranians frustrated with foreign control of their resources.  

Mossadegh set about reforming the system to diminish the power of the pro-Western head of state, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been in power for just a decade and was the latest incarnation of centuries of monarchic rule. Having come of age in World War II, the “Shah of Iran” was mindful of the preferences of the victors, chiefly the United States and Britain, and knew well that they preferred their oil close at hand.   

As the government seized more and more of the shah’s authority, he attempted to dismiss Mossadegh through a royal decree—but the premier refused to step down, leading to a political crisis. Fearing for his safety, the shah fled Iran, going first to Baghdad and then to Rome, leaving Mossadegh briefly fully in charge.  

Enter the brothers Dulles, aided by Britain’s spy agency, MI6. Only declassified in recent years, their Operation Ajax included all the hallmarks: Psychological warfare, bribes, orchestrated street protests and dark propaganda warnings of a world where the Soviet Union could gain a foothold in the oil-rich Middle East if Mossadegh’s nationalist agenda prevailed.   The effort began in earnest on Aug. 15, 1953, and reached its climax four days later when pro-shah forces stormed Mossadegh’s residence, leading to his arrest. The shah was reinstated with U.S. and British backing, his return celebrated with orchestrated jubilation.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/seeds-of-today-s-middle-east-disaster-were-sown-by-the-cia-opinion/ar-AA1oNzhM?

2024-04-16 Checkmate    The world’s attention has, rightfully so, been focused on the fallout from Iran’s retaliatory strike against Israel on April 13-14, 2024. Iran’s purpose in launching the attack was to establish a deterrence posture designed to put Israel and the United States on notice that any attack against Iran, whether on Iranian soil or on the territory of other nations, would trigger a retaliation which would inflict more damage on the attacker than the attacker could hope to inflict on Iran. To achieve this result, Iran had to prove itself capable of overcoming the ballistic missile defense systems of both Israel and the United States which were deployed in and around Israel at the time of the attack. This Iran was able to accomplish, with at least nine missiles striking two Israeli air bases that fell under the protective umbrella of the Israeli-US missile defense shield.

The Iranian deterrence posture has implications that reach far beyond the environs of Israel or the Middle East. By defeating the US-Israeli missile defense shield, Iran exposed the notion of US missile defense supremacy that serves as the heart of US force protection models used when projecting military power on a global scale. T     https://scottritter.substack.com/p/checkmate

2024-04-14 The Missiles of April  “The last thing I want to see,” I told the crowd, “is a scenario where Iranian missiles were impacting on the soil of Israel. But unless Israel changes course, this is the inevitable outcome of a policy driven more by arrogance than common sense.”

On the night of 13-14 April 2024, my concerns were played out live before an international audience—Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, and there was nothing Israel could do to stop them. As had been the case a little more than 33 years prior, when Iraqi SCUD missiles overcame US and Israeli Patriot missile defenses to strike Israel dozens of times over the course of a month and a half, Iranian missiles, integrated into a plan of attack which was designed to overwhelm Israeli missile defense systems, struck designated targets inside Israel with impunity.

Despite having employed an extensive integrated anti-missile defense system comprised of the so-called “Iron Dome” system, US-made Patriot missile batteries, and the Arrow and David’s Sling missile interceptors, along with US, British, and Israeli aircraft, and US and French shipborne anti-missile defenses, well over a dozen Iranian missiles struck heavily-protected Israeli airfields and air defense installations.  https://scottritter.substack.com/p/the-missiles-of-april

2024-4-13 Chikli calls for regime change: ‘We will soon bring a new dawn to Iran’    Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli called for regime change in Iran after the barrage of suicide drones launched at Israel by the Islamic state on Saturday night.   “Tonight we learned that Iran’s Islamic terror regime is weaker than ever,” said Chikli. “Our freedom-loving brothers in Iran, now is the time to act, and with God’s help, we will soon bring a new dawn to Iran.”  

Chikli shared on social media the remarks of the son of the deposed Iranian Shah, who said that the fates of Iranians and Israelis were intertwined by common hopes of peace and the common enemy of the Islamic republic.

Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince and son of the late Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran also wrote on X that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was trying to start a war to save his regime.   “Iranians have made it clear: the criminal mafia occupying Iran does not represent our nation, our values, or our aspirations,” said Pahlavi. “The path to lasting peace and security in the Middle East is to support the people of Iran who are fighting to reclaim our country and our rightful place in the world.  I call on our friends in the region and Western powers to embrace this, lasting solution for our region and to empower the Iranian people, their allies for peace.”  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/chikli-calls-for-regime-change-we-will-soon-bring-a-new-dawn-to-iran/ar-BB1lA7zo?

2024-02-03 Iran Called Washington’s Aggression in Middle East ‘Strategic Mistake’ – This is Why   The US has made a huge blunder by attacking targets in Iraq and Syria, as it will only further inflame tensions in the already turbulent region, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has said.   In a statement on Saturday, Kanaani condemned the US airstrikes on various groups in the two countries.  The ministry’s spokesman insisted that Washington had violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria,

American officials have claimed that the attacks targeted groups linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Quds Force, an elite military unit specializing in foreign operations.  Kanaani added that the root cause of the current region-wide crisis is “the occupation of the Israeli regime” as “the genocide of the Palestinians with the unlimited support of the United States.”  The spokesman did not address US claims that it had attacked Iranian-affiliated groups. Tehran previously stated that regional groups that attacked American military facilities were acting independently and not on Iran’s orders.

Prior to the US moves, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also said that Tehran “will not be the initiator of any war,” but vowed to “respond firmly” to anyone who would try to pressure his country.  All of these developments are directly linked to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as the attacks by Arab Resistance groups began as a direct response to the US support of Israel in its war on the Palestinians.  .https://www.palestinechronicle.com/iran-called-washingtons-aggression-in-middle-east-strategic-mistake-this-is-why/

2024-02-01 Military Escalation Against Iran Is Foolish and Unjustified    Biden administration has warned that if an Iran-backed militia attack kills U.S. troops, the U.S. could respond with strikes inside Iran.    

“Hit Iran now. Hit them hard,” South Carolina’s Senator Lindsay Graham demanded. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said that Biden would be “a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief” if he didn’t. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for the imposition of “crippling costs…not only on front-line terrorist proxies, but on their Iranian sponsors.”

Yet expanding the war in the region to a wider war with Iran serves nobody’s interests. The utility of the residual 900 U.S. troops in Syria and 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq has outlasted its best before date. Now that the Islamic State is no longer the danger it was, that objective is outweighed by the provocativeness of the troops’ presence and the easy target they present.   Expanding the war to Iran would be hard to contain. Iran has developed much stronger ties to China and Russia. Even if war with Iran didn’t risk drawing the U.S. into the war with Russia and China that has so far been avoided in Ukraine, it does risk breaking the dams in the region and drawing in countries from Lebanon and Yemen to Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

What’s worse is that the fatal strike on the U.S. base has not even altered the assessment of U.S. intelligence that Iran does not intend to start a wider war with the attack in Jordan.   https://www.theamericanconservative.com/military-escalation-against-iran-is-foolish-and-unjustified/? 

2023-12-2-30 IRGC commander: October 7 was independently conducted by Palestinians      Esmail Qaani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, told Iranian news organization IRNA this week that Hamas planned and executed the October 7 attacks on southern Israel without Iranian help.   IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) is funded and controlled by the Iranian government.

Qaani reportedly commented at a commemoration of “martyr” Hossein Pourjafari that “resistance” groups across the Middle East each have their own independent and individual structures. “Resistance groups have grown step by step, and today, all the elements of the resistance front at their regional level make their own decisions and judgments.”

Iran funds numerous proxies in the region including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. All of these groups have launched regular attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/irgc-commander-october-7-was-independently-conducted-by-palestinians/ar-AA1mdNHp

2023-12-23 Iran’s Khamenei calls on Muslim nations to block shipping to Israel     Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday urged Muslim countries to prevent vital supplies from reaching Israel as the United States accused his country of “deep involvement” in attacks by Yemeni rebels against international shipping.   Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a meeting in Tehran with people from the Iranian provinces of Kerman and Khuzestan, denounced Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as “bloodthirsty and cruel” and called on Islamic governments to take action against materiel heading to Israel.   It is the duty of Muslim nations “to prevent goods, oil and fuel from reaching the Zionist regime, the regime which itself has blocked off water access to the people of Gaza,” Khamenei said, according to official news accounts.  At the same time, the supreme leader “denounced some Islamic states for their criminal act of assistance towards the Zionist regime,” official media said.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-s-khamenei-calls-on-muslim-nations-to-block-shipping-to-israel/ar-AA1lWRn

2023-12-24 Iran summons Russia’s envoy again over islands dispute    Iran has once more summoned the Russian envoy to Tehran after Moscow signed another joint statement with Arab nations calling for negotiations over three disputed islands that the United Arab Emirates claims as its own.   

At the Foreign Ministry, the Russian envoy was reportedly told that respect for the territorial integrity of nations is a fundamental tenet in relations between any two countries. IRNA also said the official was told the three disputed islands “forever belong to Iran” which renders any outside claims unacceptable.

The islands in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, namely the Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, have been governed by Iran since 1971 when its navy took control of them after British troops withdrew from what is today the UAE.  The UAE claims them as part of its territory as well and has recently received increasing support on them from Russia and China, which Tehran also counts among its allies.     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-summons-russia-s-envoy-again-over-islands-dispute/ar-AA1lYtV2

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 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.

The two were identified as Mohammad Ali Ataee Shoorche and Panah Taqizadeh, with the IRGC saying they were carrying out an “advisory mission” in Syria.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-drone-kills-son-of-hezbollah-s-golan-heights-terror-chief/ar-AA1lePXF

2023-11-24 Iran’s Khamenei warns in Hebrew that war in Gaza won’t go unanswered    Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip would not go unanswered, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in Hebrew on Thursday.  “This bombing will not make up for the crushing defeat that the Zionist entity suffered (October 7). This bombing will shorten its life, while the deprivation and atrocities will not remain unanswered,” wrote Khamenei.

At the beginning of November, Khamenei published another tweet in Hebrew reading “The Zionist entity is lying to you, and it is also lying when it expressed concern about its prisoners with the Palestinians. Rather it also destroys them with the shelling it does. The occupying entity is helpless and confused now, and without American support will be silenced within days.”  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-s-khamenei-warns-in-hebrew-that-war-in-gaza-won-t-go-unanswered/ar-AA1ks8WC

2023-11-15 Iran tells Hamas it will not enter the war with Israel  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Ismail Haniyeh that Iran – a longtime backer of Hamas – would continue to lend the group its political and moral support, but would not intervene directly, according to three Iranian and Hamas officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked to remain anonymous.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-tells-hamas-it-will-not-enter-the-war-with-israel/ar-AA1jZkuR

2023-11-05 US Diplomatic Setbacks Make Isolating Iran Difficult   A joint statement signed by the Foreign Ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, U.A.E, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Morocco called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza Strip. In an admonition to the U.S. and Israel, the statement stated, “The right to self-defence by the United Nations Charter does not justify blatant violations of humanitarian and international law.”   Looking ahead, the big question is about American intention. Is it muscle-flexing or a hidden plot to create facts on the ground that can be seized as casus belli to launch an offensive against Iran, which has been a longstanding project of the neoconservatives dominating the U.S. foreign policy discourses? 

Biden declared at a press conference in the White House that he had warned Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that if Tehran continued to “move against” U.S. forces in the region, Washington would respond.   To quote Biden, “My warning to the Ayatollah was that if they continue to move against those troops, we will respond. And he should be prepared. It has nothing to do with Israel.” Biden was referring to growing attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria.   The political deputy at the Iranian president’s office, Mohammad Jamshidi has since countered Biden’s remark, saying, “The U.S. messages were neither directed to the leader of the Islamic Revolution nor were they anything but requests from the Iranian side. If Biden thinks he has warned Iran, he should ask his team to show him the text of the messages.”  https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/05/us-diplomatic-setbacks-make-isolating-iran-difficult/

2023-11-05 Iran issues chilling threat to US over Israel war saying it will be ‘hit hard’     Iran has issued a chilling threat to the United States, warning it will be “hit hard” if it does not implement a ceasefire in Gaza, according to state media.   The country’s Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani was quoted saying that America should “immediately stop the war”. According to Tasnim news agency, Ashtiani said: “Our advice to the Americans is to immediately stop the war and implement a ceasefire, otherwise you will be hit hard.”    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-issues-chilling-threat-to-us-over-israel-war-saying-it-will-be-hit-hard/ar-AA1jquW9?

2023-11-04 Psychopathic Liar Nikki Haley Pushes War With Iran!     Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign Republican Nikki Haley has emerged as perhaps the most ardent and bloodthirsty warmongering candidate, and that’s saying something among a group who are not shy about threatening military force all over the globe, from Russia to Israel to Mexico. Haley in particular wants to point U.S. military capabilities at Iran, which she blames for the recent Hamas attacks.    Guest host Craig Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss Haley’s brazen lies about how Iran and Hamas are determined to kill Americans.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KlguVEaIIc&t=4s

2023-10-26 Iran’s Foreign Minister issued a direct warning to the United States at the UN:    I say frankly to the Americans, who are now managing the war in Gaza, that we do not want the expansion of war into the region. But if the genocide in Gaza continues, they [America] will not be spared from the fire. This is our home, and West Asia is our region. We do not compromise with any party or any side, and we have no reservation when it comes to our home security.    https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1717577352048496955?

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.

Iran has greatly improved its diplomatic position in the last year. The Chinese-brokered lessening of hostility with Saudi Arabia has potential to revolutionize Middle Eastern politics and the benefits of this will not lightly be laid aside by Tehran. Iran had also made real progress with the Biden administration in overcoming the blind hostility of the Trump years.  

Iran has no desire to throw away these gains.  That is why it seems to me extremely improbable that Iran endorsed the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Iran is now restraining Hezbollah.    But there are limits to the patience of Iran. The extraordinary truth is that Iran is probably the only state under discussion here with a genuine humanitarian concern for the lives of Palestinians. If the genocide unfolds as horribly as I anticipate, Iran can be pushed too far.      https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/craig-murray-the-chances-of-a-regional-war/

2023-10-23 We Are Going To Wipe You Off The Face Of The Earth, Israeli Minister Threatens Iran     Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat said on Sunday that the Israeli forces would “eliminate” Hezbollah and target Iran if the Palestinian militants open up a “northern front.”   “The plan of Iran is to attack Israel on all fronts. If we find they intend to target Israel, we will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran,” Barkat told The Mail on Sunday. He added, “the ayatollahs in Iran are not going to sleep good at night” if they move against Israel.  Barkat warned that Lebanon and the pro-Palestinian militant group Hezbollah “are going to pay a heavy price, similar to what Hamas is going to pay.”  

Israel would go “after the heads of Iran” if necessary, the minister said. “Israel has a very clear message to our enemies. We are saying to them, look what is happening in Gaza – you are going to get the same treatment if you attack us. We are going to wipe you off the face of the Earth.”  https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/we-are-going-to-wipe-you-off-the-face-of-the-earth-israeli-minister-threatens-iran/

2023-10-18 Iran Warns of Possible Attacks Against Israel Amid Cross-Border Skirmishes Between Israel and Lebanon   Turkey has said it is in talks with Hamas to release hostages taken by the group in its deadly October 7 attack in Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has warned of potential “preemptive” action against Israel as it prepares for a possible ground invasion of Gaza. Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese group backed by Iran, have been exchanging fire on the Israel-Lebanon border.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/headlines/biden_sides_with_israel_after_airstrikes_level_gazan_hospital_killing_hundreds_of_palestinians

2023-10-13 Hawks Are Using Gaza Violence as a Pretext for War with Iran     The response in the United States to the surge of violence between Palestinians and Israelis holds no surprises whatsoever.  The usual bipartisan contingent of pro-war figures in the political arena, the policy community, and the corporate news media presented a predictable narrative from the outset that quickly became dominant.  

It is the same script that America’s pro-war elites used with respect to the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo, the two wars with Iraq, and the disastrous meddling by the United States and its allies in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.  The motive is the same as well – to whip-up public support for the client that the U.S. government is backing and visceral hatred for the “aggressor.” Such imagery also is designed to create sentiment in favor of a possible direct U.S. military intervention. 

The other, increasingly visible narrative theme is that Iran, using its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon, has served as the inspirational and logistical godfather for the latest Hamas offensive.  Indeed, some of them were involved in the dishonest campaign to tar Iraq for alleged involvement in the 9-11 terrorist attacks – an assertion that has been thoroughly debunked.  Unfortunately, that lobbying effort was all-too-successful and paved the way for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, which unleashed chaos throughout the Greater Middle East.  Such hawks are trying to get the Biden administration to go down a similar path with respect to Iran.  https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/hawks-are-using-gaza-violence-as-a-pretext-for-war-with-iran.html

2023-10-13 Iran’s Foreign Minister Meets Lebanese Leaders, Warns Israel Could Face “Other Fronts”    Thousands of residents of southern Lebanon have fled their homes near Israel’s border amid fears that cross-border skirmishes between Israel and Lebanese militants could escalate into a war. The exodus continued Thursday as Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, traveled to Beirut, where he met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Iran has warned the war risks spreading to “other fronts” if Israel keeps bombing Gaza.   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/competing_pro_israel_and_pro_palestine_demonstrations_raise_tensions_on_college_campuses

2023-10-11 A Brutal Occupation Begets a Brutal War Between Israel and Hamas – Trita Parsi     Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, analyzes Iran’s role in supporting Hamas’ brutal coordinated attack on civilians in Israel. Parsi unpacks Palestinian grievances, as well as Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment and illegal blockade of Gaza. With host Talia Baroncelli.   https://theanalysis.news/a-brutal-occupation-begets-a-brutal-war-between-israel-and-hamas-trita-parsi/

2023-10-10 War Expansion: Israel Calls Hamas “Proxy of Iran”   Israel says that it will “never forgive” this past weekend’s attack by Hamas and that the war will take “a long time” because the country is going to have to deal with the major “terrorist threat.” At the same time, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said on Monday that Hamas is “the proxy of Iran” and accused the militant Palestinian group of carrying out “a historical massacre that the world will not forget.”    https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/war-expansion-israel-calls-hamas-proxy-of-iran.html

2023-10-10 Israel Will Win This Iran-funded War  But Middle East experts have dismissed Iranian denials, as it is well-known that Iran funds Hamas and supplies training and weapons to the terrorists.    The recent Biden administration decision to release $6 billion to Iran has come under severe criticism as having, at least partially, lent a hand to the unfolding tragedy currently taking place.    But the Biden administration is not the first.

Under the guidance of deposed Iran advisor Robert Malley – now under investigation for allegedly helping Iranian spies gain jobs in sensitive US government positions – the Obama administration in 2009 released $150 billion to the Iranian regime.   With such an influx in cash, it is easy to see where that money went – to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran also funded the Houthis in Yemen, who had been attacking Saudi Arabia for several years.  Let it be crystal clear: Iran is the source of terrorism in the Middle East and Israel is fighting a proxy war with Iran in Gaza.  https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/israel-will-win-this-iran-funded-war.html

2020-01-16 Iran, Palestine, and the International Criminal Court      https://codepink.substack.com/p/episode-23-iran-palestine-and-the-c4a#details

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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

International Law

Updated 2024-08-26

2024-07-24 Netanyahu’s Visit to Congress Underscores US Contempt for International Law      The U.S. has long ignored many commands of international law, but its casual disregard of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has come into sharp focus this week as the U.S. Congress extends a warm welcome to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just five days after the ICJ notified all UN member states that they have a legal “obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The World Court’s historic 83-page advisory opinion, which was issued on July 19 and held that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, was quickly hailed by Middle East political expert Nomi Bar-Yaacov as a “legal earthquake” and the strongest decision that the court had ever issued.

Unsurprisingly, however, both the Israeli and U.S. governments denounced the ICJ’s ruling and proceeded with their plans — including Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C. — as if it had never occurred. https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahus-visit-to-congress-underscores-us-contempt-for-international-law/

2024-05-06 ‘Unlawful and Catastrophic’: IDF Begins Forced Evacuation of Rafah    Israel’s army on Monday ordered roughly 100,000 people living in eastern Rafah to evacuate ahead of an imminent military assault on the area, terrifying families who have been forcibly displaced to the southern Gaza city in recent months and intensifying warnings of a bloodbath.

“Israel’s military offensive in Rafah could lead to the deadliest phase of this conflict, inflicting horrific suffering on approximately 1.4 million displaced civilians in the area,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “The relocation orders issued by Israel today to thousands of Gazans, directing them to move to Al-Mawasi, are beyond alarming. The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services. It lacks the capacity to house the number of people currently seeking refuge in Rafah, with no assurances of safety, proper accommodation, or return once hostilities end for those forced to relocate.”

“The absence of these fundamental guarantees of safety and return, as required by international humanitarian law, qualifies Israel’s relocation directives as forcible transfer, amounting to a serious violation of international law,” Egeland said. “Any Israeli military operation in Rafah—which has become the largest cluster of displacement camps in the world—will cause potential mass atrocities.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/evacuation-order-rafah

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

2024-03-05 To Save Israel, the US is Destroying the International System It Once Constructed    The coming years shall prove that the crisis in international legitimacy, resulting from the abuse of power, will hardly be rectified with superficial changes and reforms.  In a conversation in 2020 with Princeton Professor Emeritus Richard Falk, he told me that historically, colonized nations that have won the legitimacy war have always won their freedom.

Palestine is unlikely to be the exception. The Gaza war, however, is confronting the world with an unprecedented challenge, specifically to governments’ relationship with international law and their obligations to international institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and others.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-us-international-system

2023-11-10 UN Human Rights Chief Demands Investigation Into Israel’s Use of ‘High-Impact’ Explosives in Gaza   The United Nations’ top human rights official on Friday demanded an investigation into the Israeli military’s bombardment of densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip with “high-impact explosive weapons,” a call that came as Israel’s forces surrounded Gaza’s largest city and reportedly attacked several hospitals packed with wounded and displaced civilians.

“After four weeks of bombardment and shelling by Israeli Forces in Gaza, the indiscriminate effects of such weapons in a densely populated area is clear,” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement. “Israel must immediately end the use of such methods and means of warfare, and the attacks must be investigated.”

“Considering the predictable high level of civilian casualty and the wide scale of destruction of civilian objects,” Türk added, “we have very serious concerns that these amount to disproportionate attacks in breach of international humanitarian law.”    https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-rights-chief-investigation-israel

2023-11-06 Israel and the Laws of War—A Conversation with Neve Gordon   Writing in these pages in 2016, Lisa Hajjar noted Israel’s role as innovator when it comes to pushing the limits of international humanitarian law and challenging the law’s protections of civilians (the article, from MER issue 279, is worth reading in full). At the time, Hajjar speculated that Israel’s new interpretations might alter legal norms, mainstreaming extreme state violence. The piece is important for moving beyond the question of whether violence is legal to underscore the unevenness of humanitarian law as powerful states maneuver within it. To discuss these and other facets of the law as it is being mobilized in Israel’s ongoing campaign on Gaza, MERIP’s managing editor, Marya Hannun, spoke to Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University in London and co-author (with Nicola Perugini) of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press, 2020). Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  https://merip.org/2023/11/israel-and-the-laws-of-war-a-conversation-with-neve-gordon/

2023-11-24 Israel’s War and Hamas’ Attack Through the Lens of International Law      FEATURING STEPHEN ZUNES – The Israeli Army has issued evacuation orders to people living in Northern Gaza, demanding that they immediately relocate to Southern Gaza in anticipation of a deadly ground escalation of war. Israel’s latest war is in retaliation for a series of attacks by Hamas aimed at Israeli civilians that killed well over a thousand people and trapped about 100 hostages. So far, Israel’s air attacks on Gaza have been indiscriminate, also apparently targeting civilians. Over the weekend there were mass protests in cities around the world supporting Palestinian rights. Today we’ll examine what’s unfolding in Israel and Gaza through the lens of international law. https://risingupwithsonali.com/israels-war-and-hamas-attack-through-the-lens-of-international-law/

2023-10-13 It’s time to renew our commitment to international law    As the war between Hamas and Israel escalates and threatens to spread north to Lebanon, you may be wondering where international law stands amid the death and destruction. The short answer is it has been missing in action. As the latest round of bloodshed illustrates, in times of war, law is subordinate to brute force and vengeance.   https://www.alternet.org/unequal-justice-its-time-to-renew-our-commitment-to-international-law/

2023-10-12 Human Rights Lawyer Michael Sfard: “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”   Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard.   “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/israel_international_law

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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

Hypocrisy of the West

2023-10-08 The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning    The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.   Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.   This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage in 2007, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air.   https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-wests-hypocrisy-towards-gazas

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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

Hostages (also see Palestinian Hostages)

Updated 2024-08-25

2024-08-24 Slamming Israeli Media Lies, Freed Hostage Says IDF Strike—Not Hamas—Wounded Her  Responding to reports in outlets including The Jerusalem Post—which on Thursday ran the headline “Hamas Beat Me All Over”  “I cannot ignore what happened here over the past 24 hours, taking my words out of context,” said Noa Argamani. “As a victim of October 7, I refuse to be victimized once again by the media.”  

Prominent Israelis including President Isaac Herzog and pro-Israel voices around the world including writer Aviva Klompas and the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council amplified the false claim that Argamani was “beaten” by her captors.

An Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas militants on October 7 and held hostage for 245 days before being rescued lashed out on Friday at Israeli media outlets that twisted her words to make it seem as if she was wounded by her captors when in reality she was injured in an attack by the military in which she once served.   

“Things were taken out of context,” the 26-year-old navy veteran from Be’er Sheva said of her earlier comments to Group of Seven diplomats in Tokyo. “I was not beaten… I was in a building that was bombed by the Air Force.”   “I emphasize that I was not beaten, but injured all over my body by the collapse of a building on me,”  

Prominent Israelis including President Isaac Herzog and pro-Israel voices around the world including writer Aviva Klompas and the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council amplified the false claim that Argamani was “beaten” by her captors.

Argamani was partying with her boyfriend Avinatan Or at the Nova rave near the Gaza border when the festival was attacked by Hamas-led militants in the early morning hours of October 7. In now-famous video footage, she is seen begging, “Don’t kill me!” as her captors whisk her away toward Gaza on a motorcycle. Or was also kidnapped and is believed to still be in Hamas custody. 

Argamani was one of four Hamas captives rescued during a June raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, an operation in which Israeli forces killed at least 236 Palestinians, most of them women and children. Three other Israeli hostages taken from the Nova rave were also rescued in the raid.

“It’s a miracle because I survived October 7, and I survived this bombing, and I also survived the rescue,” Argamani said in Tokyo on Thursday.  Argamani’s rescue fulfilled a dying wish from her mother, who had terminal cancer, to be reunited with her daughter before she passed. Argamani was also freed on the birthday of her father, Yakov Argamani, who, from the start of the hostage ordeal, urged Israeli leaders to eschew revenge after the October 7 attack.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/slamming-israeli-media-lies-freed-hostage-says-idf-strike-not-hamas-wounded-her/ar-AA1pmPcF?

2024-08-22 Former Hamas hostage refuses to meet with Netanyahu, accuses PM of stalling deal      Margalit Moses, who was held hostage in Gaza and released in November, said on Thursday that she would not attend a Friday meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she was invited to along with other released hostages.

“Thank you for the invitation, but I will not take part in a meeting for the sake of a photograph and public relations while my friends are suffering in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza,” Moses, 78, wrote in a reply to Netanyahu, Ynet reported.   “I saw them alive in captivity with my own eyes, and now, because of the continued neglect since October 7, we’re getting them back in caskets,” she said.

Moses’s response comes after the IDF recovered the bodies of hostages Alex Dancyg, 75, Yagev Buchshtav, 35, Chaim Peri, 79, Yoram Metzger, 80, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Avraham Munder, 78, on Tuesday.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/former-hamas-hostage-refuses-to-meet-with-netanyahu-accuses-pm-of-stalling-deal/ar-AA1pgbjd?

2024-07-27 Released Israeli captive recounts conversations with Hamas guards in Gaza     Released Israeli captive Liat Beinin Atzili said in a recent interview that her time in captivity in Gaza was marked by long conversations she had with the Hamas members holding her.  “I understood that what would help me survive was as much communication as possible with them,” she told Israeli newspaper Haaretz in an extensive interview published on Saturday.

“They wanted us to see them as people, and we wanted them to see us as people. So very quickly conversations started about family, about our lives, and it worked. I was totally dependent on those people. I wanted them to like me, I wanted them to get to know me, I wanted them to care about me. That’s how you survive.”   

When the fighters reached Atzili’s home on 7 October, she said she was not scared.  “They had weapons but they didn’t threaten me,” she said. “They told me, ‘You don’t have to be afraid, we won’t hurt you, come with us.’ They gave me time to get dressed and organised, but I wasn’t capable of doing that because I was in shock.”  

“After a few days, it was pretty clear that they weren’t going to hurt us. I was really afraid they would transfer us to other people.”  One of the Hamas members guarding them was a lawyer, while the other was a teacher, according to Atzili.  The conversations went from cooking to politics, with Atzili, a history teacher and a guide at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, talking to one of them about the genocide.https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/released-israel-captive-recounts-conversations-hamas-guards-gaza?

FB Meme https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10160327235245003&set=a.10150284474015003

2024-06-10 “Massacre”: Analyst Slams Israeli Military Raid That Frees 4 Hostages, Kills 270+ Palestinians    Israel’s weekend attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp that freed four Israeli hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians and wounded nearly 700 was reportedly supported by the Biden administration, which provided intelligence to Israel ahead of the raid. “There’s no question that what unfolded in that operation was a massacre,” says Palestinian American political analyst Omar Baddar. “To look at a death toll of this scale and then to celebrate this kind of operation as some sort of success, you would basically have to openly say that the lives of Israelis are more valuable than the lives of Palestinians.” Baddar discusses the political and humanitarian impact of the raid and his outlook on ceasefire negotiations. “When push comes to shove, the Biden administration is unwilling to apply any meaningful pressure on Israel,” he says. “That dynamic is not going to lead to anything positive.”  Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCE5CggVzAk

2024-06-08 ‘Horrific Massacre’: IDF Kills 200+ Palestinians Rescuing 4 Hostages   Palestinian officials said at least 210 people were killed and more than 400 injured as the Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday to rescue four of over 240 hostages taken by Hamas militants last year.

Israeli forces rescued Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv—all attendees or security guards at a music festival that Palestinian militants attacked on October 7—from two locations in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the IDF. There are 116 hostages still being held in the Hamas-governed enclave, and at least 41 are believed to be dead.

Abu Obaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, said Saturday that “the enemy succeeded in releasing some of its hostages by committing horrific massacres, but at the same time, killed some of them during the operation.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-hostages-gaza

2024-04-26 ‘No doubt’ Netanyahu preventing hostage deal, charges ex-spokesman of Families Forum   Haim Rubinstein claims Israel rejected early Hamas offer to free all civilians if IDF didn’t enter Gaza, lays out PM’s alleged political meddling that led him to quit last month  

On Sunday, Rubinstein began meeting with relatives of the abductees. One of those he met was Moshe Or, Avinatan Or’s brother.   “Moshe told me something that still echoes in my ears, to this day,” Rubinstein recalls. “He told me, ‘We don’t need anything. They’ll be back within two days.’ I said I didn’t believe that would be the case.”   By the end of that day, Rubinstein had an initial list of some 250 hostages and missing people, and he put together a list of their relatives so that he could stay in touch with them.

Rubinstein resigned last month as the Forum’s spokesman. This is the first time since that he’s agreed to share his almost six-month-long experience – and to explain why he felt he had to leave the Forum that he had co-founded.  

“We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.

“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”   https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/amp/?

2024-03-31 For five months, we thought our son was alive. Release Hamas hostages and spare others our pain.   Earlier this year, I wrote about the moment I learned my son was taken hostage. Last October – a few days after Hamas’ murderous rampage through Israel – a group of Israeli officials stood at my doorstep.

My 19-year-old son, Itay Chen, was taken captive while serving at the Gaza border. He was in the hands of terrorists who murdered, mutilated and raped hundreds of Israelis, but he was believed to be alive as there was no evidence to prove the alternative. So, there was reason for hope.

For five months, we lived off that hope. The hostage families established a nonprofit organization to coordinate all the hostage family efforts for 241 families from more than 40 nationalities, and I joined its executive steering committee. I have met presidents, chancellors and ambassadors; visited Qatar, Germany and, of course, Washington, D.C., to try to influence the decision-makers so that the next time an official showed up at my door, it would be cause for celebration. My son was coming home. 

Unfortunately, I was wrong. On March 11, the Israel Defense Forces and U.S. officials came back with new intelligence: My son was among the more than 40 American citizens murdered on Oct. 7, and Hamas savages took his remains, apparently to use as a future bargaining chip.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/03/31/hamas-hostage-crisis-amid-war-gaza/73131624007/

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

2024-01-22 Hamas still holds my American son hostage in Gaza. Every day has been a living nightmare.      I wake up not knowing where my son slept last night, whether he was given any food or water, whether he’s been injured. We don’t even know if he is alive.  A few days after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, we received the dreaded knock on the door by Israeli army officials. Our 19-year-old son, Itay Chen, was protecting southern Israel with the Israel Defense Forces, and we had not heard from him since the attacks broke out. 

I was told there was, in fact, “good” news – Itay had been abducted by Hamas terrorists.    Although far from being good news, it could have been worse; my son was alive. My wife and I were now members of a dreadful new club: the families of the 241 hostages who were being held by Hamas.    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/01/22/hamas-israeli-american-hostages-gaza/72267891007/ 

2024-1-15 Family of 4-Year-Old Hamas Hostage Abigail Edan Share Her Story | The View      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u-s-tanker-seizure-shown-on-iran-state-tv/vi-AA1n0IUn

2023-12-20 Netanyahu rules out cease-fire as Hamas leader visits Egypt | DW News     The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has been in Egypt for talks on halting the fighting with Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again ruled out a cease-fire until Hamas is eliminated and the remaining hostages are freed. Several countries including Germany classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Meanwhile there’s been no let up in attacks on the Palestinian territory. 

We spoke live to Efrat Machi-kawa, from Israel. Her uncle, Gilad Moses, is still being held hostage in Gaza, after being kidnapped during the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7. His partner Efrat was killed in that attack. His wife and his partner’s daughter and two grand-daughters were among the hostages released during the week-long cease-fire. The Islamic Jihad militant group has just released a video showing Gilad in captivity – the first sign of life since his abduction.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8fkwng56M

2023-12-06 Freed Israeli Hostages TEAR INTO Netanyahu For Incompetence In Leaked Audio Young Turks      Freed Israeli hostages are furious at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of their captivity. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.   Freed hostage says Israel bombing terrorized them and caused injuries to some hostages and that IDF helicopter fired on them as they were taken to Gaza on Oct 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAixhJUi4AU  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAixhJUi4AU&t=1s

2023-11-29 ‘They Assaulted All The Girls’ – Jailed For Posting a Palestinian Flag      Palestinian teenager Zeina Abdo was jailed for posting a Palestinian flag on social media.   She says Israel retaliated against Palestinian detainees after Hamas’ attack on October 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQP-eKSk21U

2023-11-28 Gaza hostage believed to be dead in captivity – report   Ravid Katz, one of the remaining hostages held in Hamas captivity, was announced dead by his family on social media on Tuesday.   The report came after a family member of Katz’s posted of his death on Facebook.  Yesterday we received bitter news about Ravid Katz, brother of my wife Doron, who is no longer alive from the events of 10/7,” the message read.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/gaza-hostage-believed-to-be-dead-in-captivity-report/ar-AA1kEwPs

2023-11-27 Israeli mother’s letter to Hamas: ‘Thank you for extraordinary humanity’      Danielle Aloni pens an emotional letter expressing gratitude to the Hamas fighters for the care they given to her daughter Emilia during their 49-day captivity in besieged Gaza.  On November 24, the Israeli mother and daughter were released as part of a temporary ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel and reunited with their relatives.

Before they left Gaza, Danielle Aloni wrote a “thank you” letter to Hamas saying, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your extraordinary humanity shown towards my daughter, Emilia.”   

In her handwritten letter in Hebrew, Danielle said: “She (Emilia) acknowledges feeling like all of you are her friends, not just friends, but truly beloved and good”.   Aloni acknowledged the good care given to hostages in Gaza and wrote: “Thank you for the many hours you spent as caregivers.”   She further stated her daughter has not only bonded with Hamas but also felt like a queen.   “Children should not be in captivity, but thanks to you and other kind people we met along the way, my daughter felt like a queen in Gaza,” she said.

Aloni ended her letter with compassion for Hamas, stating: “I will remember your kind behaviour shown in spite of the difficult situation you faced and the severe losses you suffered here in Gaza.”   “I wish in this world we could truly be good friends,” she wrote and added her well wishes to Gazans “I wish you all health and well-being… health and love to you and your families’ children.”  https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israeli-mothers-letter-to-hamas-thank-you-for-extraordinary-humanity-16005866? 

2023-11-27 Calls Mount to Extend Truce as Dozens of Hamas Captives and Palestinian Prisoners Freed    Calls are mounting to extend the four-day truce in Gaza, which is now in its final day. Hamas backed the extension Sunday, as have international mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is open to extending the truce by one day for every 10 hostages released by Hamas. A total of 58 hostages have been released so far, including citizens of Thailand, the Philippines and Russia. A 4-year-old American girl, Abigail Edan, was among the captives released Sunday. One hundred seventeen Palestinian prisoners have been freed from Israeli detention during the truce. Scenes of reunited families and celebrations over the weekend offered a glimpse of hope amid the temporary lull in fighting. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians celebrated on the streets as their loved ones returned.

This is Hanan Takatkah, a mother in Bethlehem whose son was freed on Friday.   Hanan Takatkah: “It was an indescribable feeling and happiness when I heard that there was a deal, thank God. In Palestine, our joy is not complete. We are happy that our children are released, but our joy is not complete. First of all, our families, children and beloved ones in Gaza are full of blood. At the end, we were very happy for our children, but there was a price we paid. There were other children who died.”

Ahead of the prisoners’ release, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir banned celebrations in East Jerusalem and ordered police to raid the homes of prisoners’ families. Ben-Gvir said, “My instructions are clear: There are to be no expressions of joy.”   Some 15,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s assault on Gaza started on October 7, mostly women and children. Researchers say the rate of death is unprecedented in this century. The assault has also caused mass displacement and widespread destruction, including to hospitals and other essential infrastructure. Some displaced Gazans said they were barred by Israeli forces from reentering the neighborhoods and homes they fled. Meanwhile, the Red Crescent said northern Gaza is finally getting an influx of aid thanks to the truce.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/headlines/calls_mount_to_extend_truce_as_dozens_of_hamas_captives_and_palestinian_prisoners_freed

2023-11-27 Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal Highlights Plight of Palestinian Prisoners, Many of Them Children   With a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas set to expire after Monday, we look at who has been released and the growing pressure to extend the pause in fighting that has given Gaza residents small respite from Israel’s relentless bombardment and allowed humanitarian aid to reach people inside the territory. The pause began Friday to allow for the release of Israelis and foreign nationals kept hostage by militants in Gaza in exchange for the freedom of some of the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, many of whom are minors and women. “We are talking about over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli prisons right now. More than 2,500 are being held under administrative detention … without a charge and without a trial,” says Tala Nasir, a lawyer with Addameer, a group that advocates for Palestinian prisoners. We also speak with Israeli journalist Orly Noy, who says the sheer number of Palestinian prisoners shows “how central the tool of incarceration is in the Israeli project” of occupying and oppressing Palestinians. “The same system that allows every Jewish settler, citizen or soldier or policeman to walk away after killing Palestinians under the most outrageous circumstances is the same system that treats a 12-year-old who threw stones as a dangerous terrorist,” says Noy.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvDiXwqNxR8

2023-11-25 Delayed But Not Denied: 2nd Hamas-Israeli Prisoner Swap Goes Through     The group included 13 Israelis and four foreign nationals believed to be Thai, Middle East Eyereported. Israel also began to release 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange as the second day of a four-day cease-fire concluded.   “After a delay, obstacles to release of prisoners were overcome through Qatari-Egyptian contacts with both sides,” Majed Al Ansari, a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, tweeted, adding that the hostages were transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

The Israeli military confirmed to The Associated Press that the hostages reached Israel after midnight local time. The hostages included seven children and six women, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. One of the hostages, a young girl named Emily Hand, was previously believed dead by her father.

The swap appeared to be in danger earlier in the day when Hamas said that Israel had not allowed enough aid to enter northern Gaza, which has taken the brunt of the Israeli military’s force since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 [MEK Note: After one month, Comon Dreams still doesn’t know IDF killed at least half the civilians] and taking around 240 hostages. Israel has since killed more than 14,800 Palestinians in Gaza in its response. The two sides have agreed to a four-day cease-fire beginning Friday that will see a total of 50 Hamas-held hostages and 150 Israeli-held Palestinians released.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2nd-hamas-israel-prisoner-swap

2023-11-25 Emily Hand among latest Gaza hostages freed   A nine-year-old Irish-Israeli girl is among the latest hostages to be freed by Hamas in the Israel-Gaza conflict.  The Irish department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Emily Hand is one of 13 hostages freed on Saturday night.  Tanaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) saidd in a statemend that “a bright and beautiful girl” had been released and would now be reunited with her family.  He said it was “a precious and deeply moving moment for the Hand family”.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/emily-hand-among-latest-gaza-hostages-freed/ar-AA1kwAcR

2023-11-25 ‘Sign of Hope’ as First Israeli Hostages and Palestinian Prisoners Freed     The first 24 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released Friday evening in exchange for 39 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.   The exchange came on the first day of a Qatari-brokered four-day cease-fire that is slated to see at least 50 Israeli hostages exchanged for at least 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israel. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the pause would be extended a day for every additional 10 hostages released.   “It’s a sign of hope for Palestinians and Israelis that the cease-fire will continue and the killing will stop,” Mohammed Khatib, who watched the release of the first Palestinian prisoners Friday, toldBBC News.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-hostages-palestinian-prisoners-released

2023-11-24 After successful release: what can be expected in the coming days? | DW News     The Israeli military has confirmed that the first hostages released by Hamas are now in Israel.   The International Red Cross confirmed Hamas released a total of 24 hostages.    Among them are Israelis who have been freed in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinian detainees. This swap is part of the deal brokered by Qatar.   Also among the freed captives are a group of Thai nationals.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkhyP7-LCw8

2023-11-24 Hamas Captives and Palestinian Prisoners Released   24 captives held by Hamas and 39 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have been set free. The exchange is part of the truce deal that also stipulates a 4-day pause in fighting.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWP1JG-0ndY

2023-11-24 Israel-Hamas war: Freed hostages return to Israel from Gaza        The freed hostages will be taken to four hospitals across Israel – where they’ll be reunited with their families and be given specialist medical and psychological care.  Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said each and every one was “an entire world” – declaring “we are committed to the return of all our abductees”.   Israel has also released the first group of Palestinian prisoners – as part of the exchange deal. They include 24 women and 15 teenage boys – and have been greeted by a crowd waving Palestinian flags. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZFzWavGuQ

2023-11-24 Hamas releases footage of hostages handover   Video released by Hamas’ military wing shows women and children being shepherded out of a vehicle and into the care of Red Cross workers.  A total of 24 people held by Hamas for the past seven weeks have been released as part of a hostage deal.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEKoAdvqX4E

2023-11-24 New footage from Hamas shows Israeli hostages being released        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGROicXEu08

2023-11-24 Israel-Hamas hostage deal: Hamas frees first batch of hostages under truce, including 13 Israelis   Photos included.  Israel teargassed Palestinians awaiting released of the their  families and froeinds.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkaFtF3o0T4

2023-11-24 Israeli TV stations: Israeli captives have been transferred to the Red Cross in Gaza      Israeli TV stations are saying that the Israeli captives have been transferred to the Red Cross in Gaza and are on their way to the crossing with Egypt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvWeM-IwDg

2023-11-24 The hostages’ families should have been jailed to shut them up, says former US citizen who was an Israeli spy.    Jonathan Pollard, a former US intelligence analyst imprisoned for spying for Israel, has called for hostages’ families to be silenced and arrested.  Pollard told Israeli media that the families of Israeli hostages should have been jailed to shut them up. He also said posters of the captives should never have been hung up.   “When Israel declared war, the first thing that the government should have done was declare a state of national emergency and told all the hostages: ‘You will keep your mouth shut or we will shut them for you,'” Pollard said.  He said the Israeli government should have prevented the hostages’ families from “interfering” with their management of this war.   He implied that the hostages’ families were being “used by the international community” or “by our own leftists” as a weapon against the Israeli government.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-hostages-families-should-have-been-jailed-to-shut-them-up-says-former-us-citizen-who-was-an-israeli-spy/ar-AA1ktxTD

2023-11-22 Don’t Trust a Model UN Nerd   Hostage deal: Israel and Hamas just agreed to a four-day pause in fighting during which 50 Hamas hostages will be returned to Israel, and 150 Palestinian prisoners currently held by Israel will be returned to Gaza. The pause will allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gazans in need, and the Israeli government has also declared that “the release of every 10 additional hostages will result in an additional day in the pause.”  Hostages will not be released until tomorrow at the earliest. “Our hands will remain on the trigger,” said Hamas, and “our victorious brigades will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation and its aggression.” All statements from Hamas and Israel relating to the deal can be found here, via Al Jazeera.

Aid sites hit: “The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities,” reports Politico. But this has not dissuaded the Israeli military from hitting those areas. “Israel’s continued bombardment of these humanitarian facilities raises more questions about whether Washington has the political sway many in the administration want with Israel.”  

Aid workers have said that the Israeli military’s commitment to protecting humanitarian groups from strikes has been stronger in the past, but that they are showing less concern for those sites now. “We don’t see eye-to-eye on what they consider collateral damage or military necessity and what we consider a very high civilian toll, whether it’s in life or in infrastructure, including ours,” a United Nations official told Politico.   https://reason.com/2023/11/22/dont-trust-a-model-un-nerd/

2023-11-21 Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal Reportedly in ‘Final Stages’    Israel and Hamas are reportedly on the verge of a deal that would involve the release of hostages and a pause in bombing that has killed more than 13,000 people in Gaza and intensified the strip’s humanitarian crisis.  An unnamed source briefed on the talks toldReuters on Tuesday that negotiations are in the “final stages” and a deal is “closer than it has ever been” since October 7, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed around 1,200 people.    The Qatar-mediated deal, according to Reuters, “envisages the release of around 50 civilian hostages by Hamas and of female and minor-aged Palestinian detainees from Israeli custody, as well as a multi-day pause in fighting.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-hamas-hostage-deal

2023-11-20 ‘Very embarrassing’: Hear what families of hostages have to say ahead of Israeli war cabinet meeting   CNN’s Oren Liebermann details what happened in Israel’s Knesset when families of Israeli hostages confronted lawmakers about a proposed law to reinstitute the death penalty for terrorists, saying the proposal could endanger hostages.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/very-embarrassing-hear-what-families-of-hostages-have-to-say-ahead-of-israeli-war-cabinet-meeting/vi-AA1kg8gc?

2023-11-18 US ‘Indispensable’ in Israel-Gaza Peace Process: Bahrain Crown Prince  Bahrain’s Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, told reporters on Friday that the United States is “indispensable” in creating peace between Israel and Gaza. 

“This is an intolerable situation, and we must do everything in our power to stop it. I condemn Hamas, unequivocally,” he said Friday ahead of the annual Manama Dialogue security summit. “The attacks on October 7 were barbaric. I unequivocally condemn the air campaign that resulted in the death of over 11,000 people in Gaza, 4,700 of which are children.” 

The Arab leader called on Hamas to release the women and children hostages, but also requested that Israel “release the women and children they hold, in exchange that we can get some sense and a few days or weeks or months or maybe years of peace and calm.”   Hamas has offered to exchange its hostages for roughly 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, which Israeli officials have rejected.    https://www.newsweek.com/us-indispensable-israel-gaza-peace-process-bahrain-crown-prince-1844958

2023-11-15 Peter Beinart: Israel Will Only Be Secure & Safe If Palestinians Are Given Freedom     Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of _Jewish Currents_, discusses proposals for a prisoner swap with Hamas, the ongoing cycle of Palestinian oppression and resistance, censorship of pro-Palestine advocacy in the United States, what he calls a “generational struggle” among American Jews over Zionism, and more on Israel’s current assault of Gaza.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0s8phVmcOI

2023-11-10 Hamas offered Israel 50 hostages for a 5-day cease-fire but the deal got rejected, reports say    Hamas proposed exchanging 50 Israeli hostages for a five-day cease-fire in Gaza, but Israel rejected the offer, according to The New York Times.    Citing Arab and Western officials with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Times said that the negotiations took place in the days leading up to the ground invasion of Gaza.

The invasion took place on the evening of October 27.    The incursion had been delayed briefly to allow time for negotiators to try to reach a deal, two officials told the Times.According to The Guardian, which cited three sources familiar with the talks, the originally proposed deal for a five-day cease-fire primarily involved the freeing of children, women, the elderly, and sick people.  Hamas said it needed a five-day pause in Israel’s bombardment to gather the hostages, the Times reported.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-offered-israel-50-hostages-for-a-5-day-cease-fire-but-the-deal-got-rejected-reports-say/ar-AA1jHTi9?

2023-11-07 Israel Threatening to Bomb Gaza’s Only Pediatric Cancer Unit, Says Palestine Children’s Relief Fund    As the U.N. secretary-general repeats his call for an immediate ceasefire, the death toll in Gaza has topped 10,000, including 4,000 children. We speak to an American doctor who just left Gaza and the founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which runs the only pediatric cancer unit in Gaza. Israel has just ordered the hospital with the unit to be fully evacuated. “They’re not getting care right now because their hospitals are under attack,” says PCRF founder Steve Sosebee, who describes medical workers trying to evacuate to Egypt or continuing to provide care while sheltering in the hospital. “We can’t heal their bodies until this conflict stops.” Dr. Barbara Zind, a pediatrician who arrived in Gaza to support the PCRF a day before the Hamas attack, describes finding shelter and rationing food and clean water. After nearly a month trapped in Gaza, she was finally evacuated through the Rafah border crossing and arrived back home on Monday.    Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sITnlKEdGDs

2023-10-24 Freed Hamas Hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, Says She Was “Treated Well” After Enduring “Hell”    Hamas has released two Israeli civilians held hostage in Gaza, 79-year-old Nurit Cooper and 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, with the militant group saying they were let go for “humanitarian reasons and poor health grounds.” Hamas shared a video of armed fighters releasing the elderly hostages that shows Lifshitz reaching back to shake the hand of one of her captors and saying “Shalom” — the Hebrew word for “peace.” We feature comments from Lifshitz upon her release as she describes humane treatment by her captors and expresses criticism of Israel’s intelligence failure, and we get a response from Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri. “She represents probably the essence, I think, of what makes Judaism such a special religion. It is based on ethics … and the pursuit of justice,” Khouri says. The struggle of Palestinians “is not with Jewish people. It is with the Zionist movement that became the state of Israel, which is widely recognized around the world as an apartheid system.”    Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzGd92axe_o

2023-10-20 Rights Groups Call On Hamas to Release Civilian Hostages ‘Unconditionally and Immediately’      Nearly two weeks after Hamas led a deadly surprise attack on Israel, which has retaliated with an intense bombing campaign and “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, human rights advocates worldwide are demanding that Palestinian militants release all civilian hostages.  In a statement Friday, Amnesty Internationaldeclared that hostages should be freed “unconditionally and immediately.”

“Amnesty International is calling on Hamas and other armed groups to urgently release all civilian hostages, and to immediately stop firing indiscriminate rockets,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of the group, which has also documented proof of war crimes by Israeli forces.

“A spokesman for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Musab Al-Breim, said in an interview that the group had around ’30 prisoners’ but would not share the exact number,” according to the newspaper.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), another group urging Palestinian militants to free the captives, explained in a statement Thursday that “Hamas has said it will not release the hostages until Israel ends its bombardment of Gaza, and only then in exchange for the release of 5,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including women and children.”

“Islamic Jihad has also said that it will not release hostages until Palestinian prisoners are freed. They have made unverified claims that 22 hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza,” the group added. “As of October 1, Israel held, according to Israeli Prison Services figures, 5,192 Palestinians in custody for ‘security’ offenses, including 1,319 in administrative detention without trial or charge.”attack.https://www.commondreams.org/news/hamas-hostages

2023-10-16 Newly released video shows a woman taken hostage by Hamas   One of the more than 200 hostages now known to be held hostage by Hamas is being seen and heard for the first time since her abduction — in a video released by the terrorists.    We do not know if she was forced to speak. But we do know the 21-year-old woman was attending a music festival a little more than a week ago when Hamas terrorists invaded, killing hundreds of people and kidnapping others.   Hamas claims that Israeli airstrikes have already killed dozens of hostages. Scripps News cannot verify the accuracy of that claim.   Hamas is claiming that it, and other groups it’s allied with, are holding up to 250 people.

In the video, the hostage identifies herself as Mia Shem — a 21-year-old French-Israeli national taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attack. She speaks as the sound of air strikes or artillery fire are heard in the background.  Early in the video, we see Shem treated by someone in a white coat and gloves for an obvious arm injury. Speaking in Hebrew, Shem says she underwent three hours of surgery and begs to be returned to her family.   Shem had previously been reported as a hostage after going missing from a music festival on Oct. 7, just three miles from the Gaza border.

The video was released just days after a previous Hamas video showed even younger hostages, including a baby. In that video, a small child is made to repeat “bismillah” — an Arabic blessing — before drinking from a cup. 

The Israel Defense Forces say representatives have been in continuous contact with Shem’s family, and IDF says it is deploying all possible measures to bring her and other hostages back home. According to IDF, the video is Hamas’ attempt to “present itself as a humanitarian organization while in fact it is a murderous terror group, responsible for the murders and kidnappings of babies, women, children and the elderly.”     https://www.kxlh.com/newly-released-video-shows-a-woman-taken-hostage-by-hamas

2023-10-13 Hamas Says 13 Hostages Captured in Israel Have Died in Gaza Airstrikes    Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, says 13 of the hostages it took during its weekend attack in southern Israel were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza over the past day. Meanwhile, Israeli relatives of those slain and kidnapped by Hamas are reeling from the ongoing tragedies.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/competing_pro_israel_and_pro_palestine_demonstrations_raise_tensions_on_college_campuses

2023-10-11 Families of Israeli Hostages Speak Out as Survivors Grapple with Hamas Attack    In Israel, over 100 bodies were found at the Be’eri kibbutz near Israel’s separation barrier with Gaza. It was one of several kibbutzim attacked by Hamas fighters, killing entire families, including children. Meanwhile, at least 100 hostages are believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza. Among those missing are U.S. citizens.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11/headlines/death_toll_in_israel_and_gaza_tops_2_200_as_gazans_face_total_energy_blackout_and_no_safe_refuge

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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

History of Israel/Palestine Conflict Matters

Updated 2024-07-25

Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Primer by Middle East Research and Information Project     https://merip.org/palestine-israel-primer/

Israel and Palestine: A Century of Conflict Videos   https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Israel+and+Palestine%3a+A+Century+of+Conflict+Video&FORM=VDMHRS

State of Israel is Born  (Video) https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4yPHmDxW7K/

Palestine 101    https://decolonizepalestine.com/introduction-to-palestine/

2024-05-15 Breaking news and analysis on day 222 of Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Flood | The Electronic Intifada Podcast    00:00 Introduction.  01:25 Nora Barrows-Friedman delivers news roundup from Gaza   26:52 Dr. Khaled Dawas on providing medical care in Gaza    01:04:39 Jon Elmer covers fighting by Palestinian resistance forces in Rafah, Gaza City and Jabaliya  02:18:15 Group discussion on Hasan Nasrallah’s speech and how Israel has lost the warhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW1XN9lz1Zg

2024-03-18 Israel’s Right-Wing Wants All the Palestinian Land—and This Explains Its State   The Israeli government’s “solution” to the Palestinian problem – eviction or destruction and colonization of what’s left of Palestinian land – did not begin after the October 7th Hamas raid.   For many decades Israeli politicians have been working toward the goal of establishing what they call “Eretz Israel” or “The Greater Land of Israel” – a greater Israel composed of all of the Palestine mandate “from the Sea to the River Jordan” (their words). After the partition of Palestine under UN auspices in 1948, Israel has expanded its territory, by military and non-military means, and now comprises 78% of what was once Palestine, plus Syria’s Golan Heights.

There is a clear historical record of deliberate displacement documented by many scholars, including the book, “Plowshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel,” (Verso, 2008) by Princeton Professor Arno Mayer. Coming off the horrors of Russian pogroms and Nazi genocide, the early Founders of the Israeli state were in no mood to respect the rights of the indigenous Palestinians.

It took an American-born Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir (1969-1974), to speak the ultimate antisemitism against the Arabs of Palestine, declaring “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”

Other Israeli leaders before and after Golda Meir were brutally frank about what they were making happen on the ground. Israel’s lead Founder, David Ben-Gurion, in 1937 wrote in a letter to his son, “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…” A year later he said in a speech, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. …” Many years later, in the 1980s, Ben-Gurion renewed his candor: “There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

In 1979, Israeli war hero, top general Moshe Dayan, recognized that “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.” After naming a number of them, he added “There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” Speaking to Jewish settlers, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1988 warned resistors, meaning Palestinians would be crushed “like grasshoppers” and their “head smashed against the boulders and walls.”

Other Israeli Prime Ministers – Menachem Begin (1977-1983), Ariel Sharon (2001-2006) and the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed similar assertions of the need to expel the Palestinians, as they have repressed and impoverished them in the Occupied Territories. Now, Netanyahu wants to push Palestinians out of Gaza entirely, if he can, into Egypt and Jordan.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak (1999-2001), responding to a columnist asking what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian, frankly replied “I would have joined a terrorist organization.”  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-state-terrorism-gaza

2024-02-26 Ilan Pappé on KPFA    The death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to climb. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and almost 70,000 people have been injured. Yet this unspeakable crime has been rationalized by much of the U.S. media. Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé says that such justifications rest partly on a distorted view of the history of Palestine/Israel, including of the multiethnic society that existed in Palestine before the establishment of the state of Israel.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-drive-special-ilan-papp%C3%A9/id78900506? 

2023-12-Israel’s Long History of Ethnic Cleansing    Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.

Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-19nth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.  

Enter “transfer.” As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (née Grün), chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place.”  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-history-ethnic-cleansing

2023-12-02 The Chris Hedges Report with Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi on Zionism’s 100-year war against Palestinians.   The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, which has reached a terrifying crescendo with the savage obliteration of Gaza, is the outcome of a 100-year-old colonial occupation by Jewish Zionists in Israel backed by major imperial powers, starting with the British and a century later with the United States. This century-long assault by Israel has one objective – to force an indigenous people from their land. The historian Rashid Khalid breaks what he calls “the hundred years of war on Palestine” into six periods.

The first is the British support for Jewish Zionists during the British occupation of Palestine from 1917 and 1939. The second declaration of war is the 1947-1948 Nakbeh, or catastrophe, that saw Zionist militias ethnically cleanse 750,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine and carry out a series of massacres. The third is 1967 war when Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and expelled another 250,000 Palestinians. The fourth declaration of war on Palestine was Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut, followed by the departure of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters to Tunisia and the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The fourth war against the Palestinians began with the first intifada, or uprising in 1987, continued with the second intifada and is taking place with the Israeli brutal assault on Gaza. The backdrop to this century of war by Israel on the Palestinians is the failure by Arab leaders to offer meaningful support to the Palestinians, in fact these leaders often colluded with Israel to weaken the Palestinian resistance movement. Joining me in the studio to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, how it is being played out in Gaza and its consequences, is Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonization and Resistance, 1917-2017.”  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-columbia

2023-11-09 Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict     Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and president of Eurasia Group, joins us to discuss the historical and political context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In this conversation, Bremmer and our editor-in-chief, Robert Chapman-Smith, explore the current dynamics between Israel and Palestine, particularly during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure.   

They also delve into internal politics in Israel — including growing dissent against the government, how the conflict in Gaza is being handled, the influence of hard-right political parties, and the impact of these factors on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.

0:00 Palestinians forgotten

6:30 Israel’s domestic instability

13:17 Israel and Gulf states

19:28 Hamas’ strategy

27:06 Social media disinformation

37:20 Israel’s strategy and peace

44:40 U.S. support for Israel

49:32 World War 3?

54:07 Two-state solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5tcwIicICg

2023-11-18 Israel’s long war on Gaza w/Norman Finkelstein | The Chris Hedges Report     Israel has unleashed a horrific war of collective punishment against the people of Gaza, the latest in a long history of anti-Palestinian oppression. As corporate media shamelessly provides cover for what is undoubtedly a genocide unfolding in real time, the need to ground our understanding of the conflict in its proper history is more important than ever. Norman Finkelstein joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss Israel’s 17 year blockade of Gaza and its crucial significance to understanding the events of the past two weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0aemeCbRTk&t=74s

2023-10-19 Professor Ilan Pappé-Crisis in Zionism, Opportunity for Palestine?     A lecture by Professor Ilan Pappé, Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, UK  October 19th, 2023  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OcjOP8iUCU&list=PLcKTcNwy7BrF2fsCRkNDSpVvfpG6_RKiW&index=3

2023-10-16 Israel, Hamas, and the Laws of War  

1:37 Israel’s military plans for northern Gaza

4:37 How does international law apply to Israel and Hamas?

15:47 The first casualty of war is truth

24:22 Do Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute ethnic cleansing?

31:38 The evolving definition of genocide

39:08 How the US and Israel helped Hamas seize power

49:50 America’s ill-fated push for Arab-Israeli normalization

52:49 The hazards of overreacting to Hamas’s attack

1:00:58 How western media has covered the conflict so far 

https://nonzero.substack.com/p/israel-hamas-and-the-laws-of-war#details

2023-10-16 Origins of Colonial, Racist, Zionist, Apartheid Israel: Mobilize to Stop Israeli’s Palestine Genocide!    The history of European colonization, not to mention the colonization of America, has been justified by the racist colonizers with the proposition that its conquered or to-be-conquered victims were either subhuman, heathen idolaters, and, more recently, communists and terrorists. In the language of today’s racist Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Palestinians are “animals in human form.” Today, if the historically illegitimate Israeli colonial government has its way, the Palestinian people are slated for near annihilation. That process is already underway.  https://socialistaction.org/2023/10/16/free-free-palestine-for-emergency-united-front-mass-action-mobilizations-to-stop-the-genocide-of-the-palestinian-people/

2023-10-14 Conversation with Fareed Zakaria — The Conflict in Israel and the State of Foreign Affairs     Fareed Zakaria, the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN and a columnist for The Washington Post, joins Scott to break down the conflict in Israel, including the historical context that is needed to know and the implications that are to follow within the region and around the globe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h1XD7fQSfg

2023-10-14 The Gaza Strip: Why the history of the densely populated enclave is key to understanding the current conflict   The focus on conflict in the Middle East has again returned to the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s defense minister ordering a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave.  But how did Gaza become one of the most densely populated parts of the planet? And why is it the home to militant Palestinian action now? As a scholar of Palestinian history, I believe understanding the answers to those questions provides crucial historical context to the current violence.   https://www.alternet.org/the-history-of-gaza-strip/

2023-10-13 Papers That Ignore Causes of Violence Can’t Help Prevent It   If the commentary that news media outlets offer up is supposed to equip audiences to understand the world, then major US outlets’ coverage of the unfolding horrors in the Middle East are failing spectacularly. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post combined ran seven editorials on Israel/Palestine between October 7–9: one from the Times, four from the Journal and two from the Post.

These three days of coverage begin the day that Hamas fighters broke out of the besieged Gaza Strip to kill and take captive hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians, after which Israel launched yet another massive bombing campaign against the Strip, killing hundreds of Palestinian militants and civilians. At no point do these analyses provide readers with the information necessary to comprehend what is happening and why, and they consistently mislead readers about key facts. 

The root causes of these repeated cycles of violence must be addressed as a matter of urgency. This requires upholding international law and ending Israel’s 16-year-long illegal blockade on Gaza, and all other aspects of Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on all Palestinians. The Israeli government must refrain from inciting violence and tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, especially around religious sites.    https://fair.org/home/papers-that-ignore-causes-of-violence-cant-help-prevent-it/

2023-10-10 Israeli Conscientious Objector Haggai Matar: Hamas Attack Reflects Israeli Violence in Palestine       Journalist Haggai Matar of +972 Magazine says that while the violence shocked Israelis, the unending military occupation and apartheid set the stage for this weekend’s events. “There is no military solution. These recurring attacks on Gaza bring nothing but death and destruction, and no hope for any of us,” says Matar, a conscientious objector who refused service in the Israel Defense Forces. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10/haggai_matar_israel_reservists_palestine 

2023-05-17 FACT SHEET: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, 1967  Do you know that the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) published a fact sheet in 1967 detailing the truth about the history of Zionist, British, and U.S. aggression against the Palestinian people? Read it below to learn more – and help to fight for a free Palestine!   https://www.blackagendareport.com/fact-sheet-palestine-problem-test-your-knowledge-student-non-violent-coordinating-committee-1967

2022-11-08 FAQ #1: The Palestinian People & Israel: Where Are We & How Did We Get Here?    Today, 7 million Palestinians and 7 million Jewish Israelis live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli government and military have near total control over all 14 million people.

Despite their lives being controlled by Israel, 5 million of these Palestinians do not have citizenship or any say over the government that rules over them with military force. Palestinians have been denied their right to self-determination and the Palestinian Authority (PA) has only extremely limited autonomy over certain parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In essence, we have today a one-state, undemocratic reality.

And for the past 75 years, Israel has oppressed the Palestinian people through unjust policies, including forcing Palestinians off their land, denying refugees their right to return home, brutal military rule, inequality and discrimination, killing civilians, destroying homes, and many other human rights abuses.  

Israeli laws and governance privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. This two-tiered system is the textbook definition of apartheid.  

The UN unjustly recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the wishes of the indigenous Palestinian majority in 1947. Almost immediately after, Zionist militias began massacring Palestinians, forcing Palestinians from their homes, stealing their land and property, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. 

Israel invaded the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 1967, and has imposed brutal military rule ever since. This means that for the past 55 years, Israel has ruled over all of original Palestine. 

The small percentage of Palestinians who were able to remain in what became Israel in 1948 are today citizens of the state, but are discriminated against by over 60 laws and widespread Israeli racism, making them second-class citizens in their own homeland. https://imeu.org/article/what-every-new-member-of-congress-needs-to-know-about-palestine-israel-poli    

2022-08-17 Israel’s War on Palestine – Ali Abunimah     Israel’s attacks on Gaza stem from its escalating ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem and growing solidarity amongst Palestinians inside Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Well, the most recent events really stem from Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, as you’ll know that under the Trump administration, the U.S. recognized Israel’s illegal claim to sovereignty in Jerusalem. Donald Trump said, we’ve taken it off the table. Various Arab regimes, particularly the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, made so-called peace deals with Israel, and Saudi Arabia, although it didn’t formally do so, is, of course, tacitly approving all of this. So you can also say that Saudi Arabia has, in effect, made peace with Israel. What that meant is that Israel felt emboldened to push ahead with its ethnic cleansing, its Judaization of Jerusalem, believing that there was no one really to stand against it and that the Palestinian cause was dead. I think the Arab regimes that celebrated their marriages to Israel did so over what they thought was the dead body of the Palestinian cause.

Instead, what happened is that there has been tremendous popular resistance in Jerusalem and indeed across Israel from Palestinian citizens of Israel. Tens of thousands came to Jerusalem to support Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in particular and this came to a head over the last week or so when Israel carried out a number of armed raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque. You may have seen videos of Israeli soldiers firing tear gas and stun grenades inside the mosque, which is one of the most revered sites for Muslims all over the world, a scene, which I think would have generated outrage from the West if it had been in a synagogue or a church instead of in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I think this kind of entrenched Islamophobia means that Muslims are being attacked in the holy places and people are fine with it. A lot of people are fine with it, sadly.  https://theanalysis.news/israels-war-on-palestine-ali-abunimah/

2021-02-17 KPFA LIVE: Rashid Khalidi & Nora Barrows-Friedman discuss The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine 02.16  A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history

“A riveting and original work, the first to explore the war against the Palestinians on the basis of deep immersion in their struggle—a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal.  —Noam Chomsky

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Rashid Khalidi is the author of seven books about the Middle East, among them the award-winning Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage.   His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and many other publications. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and coeditor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a longtime broadcaster and journalist who has focused on Palestine and Palestinian rights issues for nearly 20 years. She was the co-host and senior producer of Flashpoints on KPFA from 2003-2010, and has since been an associate editor and reporter for The Electronic Intifada. Nora is the author of “In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbE4jBG76pI&list=PLcKTcNwy7BrF2fsCRkNDSpVvfpG6_RKiW&index=5

2020-03-06 The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017     n 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important,The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies in the department of History at Columbia University. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1970, and his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1974. He is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is author of: Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013); Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1996); Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986); British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980); and co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991), and The Other Jerusalem: Rethinking the History of the Sacred City (2020).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH8Ip1cvlRY

2018-05-30 The Occupation of the American Mind (original 84-minute version)      Over the past few years, Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.

Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor. From the U.S.-based public relations campaigns that emerged in the 1980s to today, the film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies.

Narrated by Roger Waters / Featuring Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP0-YohJR-g&list=PLcKTcNwy7BrF2fsCRkNDSpVvfpG6_RKiW&index=3

1984-10-00 Israel, Palestine, and Territorial Partition   In the midst of bloodshed it is hard to keep in mind that in cases of prolonged conflict, peace is achieved, more often than not, after violent convulsions. So it was with the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the peace between Israel and Egypt, and so it was with the first intifada and the Oslo Accord. People often turn to compromise only after failing to impose their maximum demands. Diplomacy, in this sense, is the continuation of war by other means, but (so we hope) aimed at ends cut to realistic size. It is less a product of goodwill than a recognition of impossibilities.  I don’t mean that war leads naturally to peace. It may well lead to more wars. Right now, it is too early to tell which way the Israeli-Palestinian war will lead.    

The leaders now in power are unlikely to promote compromise. Ariel Sharon was elected because of, not despite, his violent reputation, and Yasir Arafat proves himself again and again a permanent eve-of-the-revolution leader.   The current violence may promote de facto separation of the two peoples or it may lead to a Bosnian entanglement. It may force the two national movements to acknowledge the limits of their aspirations—neither can take possession of the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean—or it may lead to an entrenchment of maximalist fantasies.      https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/israel-palestine-and-territorial-partition/

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