progressiveissuesblog

Hate Crimes Against Palestinians

Updated 2024-08-25

2024-07-30 US Data Shows Surge in Hate Against Muslims, Palestinians Persists     A spike in “relentless” Islamophobia across the United States that began in October with Israel’s U.S.-backed attack on the Gaza Strip continued through the first half of this year, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released data showing the sustained surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate from January to June 2024, with 4,951 documented complaints, a 69% increase over the same period in 2023.

That came after CAIR received 3,578 complaints from last October through December, a 178% increase from a similar three-month period the previous year, as Common Dreams reported when the data was published in January.

The largest share of 2024 complaints related to immigration and asylum cases (19%), which is in line with 2023. That was followed by employment discrimination (14%), education discrimination (10%), and hate crimes and incidents (8%).  https://www.commondreams.org/news/islamophobia-in-the-united-states

2024-02-06 Tlaib Calls for DOJ Hate Crime Probe After Palestinian American Stabbed in Texas     “The constant dehumanization of Palestinians, Arab, and Muslim Americans has real, dangerous consequences,” the Michigan Democrat warned.   Democratic Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Tuesday joined a leading Muslim advocacy group in urging the U.S. Department of Justice to open a hate crime investigation following the stabbing of a young Palestinian American man in Texas.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinian-american-stabbed

2023-12-01 Resumed Bombing of Gaza Will Be Crushing to Palestinian Students Shot in Vermont, Says Victim’s Mother   We speak with the mother of Hisham Awartani, one of the three 20-year-old Palestinian college students who were shot last weekend in Burlington, Vermont, in a suspected hate crime. Elizabeth Price traveled from her home in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to see her son, who is still hospitalized in Burlington. He was shot in the spine and, while in stable condition, now faces an immediate loss of mobility. Price shares how her son’s “resilience” and “brotherhood” with his childhood best friends who are the other survivors of the shooting, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, have been an integral part of his recovery. She also emphasizes that had Awartani been shot in Palestine, “he would have been dead in prison or thrown somewhere in a medical facility without the support to recover from this.” We also discuss life under occupation in the West Bank, U.S. displays of solidarity with Palestinians, and the media narrative surrounding the shooter’s motives. Of the three young men’s commitment to highlighting the larger picture of Israeli oppression of Palestine, Price says that “the fact that the Israelis have started bombarding again in the Gaza Strip is something that will crush them more than their injuries.”      https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/elizabeth_price_hisham_awartani_vermont_shooting

2023-11-23 Obama Advisor’s Insane Racist Tirade Caught On Video MULTIPLE Times!     Give it up for the latest superstar viral sensation — former Obama administration diplomat Stuart Seldowitz, who recently blew up online after multiple videos emerged showing Seldowitz berating an Egyptian-born New York City street vendor over his Muslim beliefs. Seldowitz has since been detained and charged with hate crimes over comments that simply have to be heard to be believed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEOmSvhL3ms

2023-10-16  6-Year-Old Illinois Boy Killed, Mother Injured, in Anti-Muslim Hate Crime     In Plainfield, Illinois, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death Saturday in his own home in an anti-Muslim hate crime.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/headlines/protests_across_the_us_call_for_israel_to_end_its_siege_and_genocide_in_gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Hamas – Palestinian Resistance Movement

Updated 2024-08-25

2024-08-08 Yahya Sinwar,  Hamas has a new political leader.   Yahya Sinwar, described by some as a hardline strategist, spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons and now holds unprecedented power within the movement.  His appointment comes a week after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel accuses him of masterminding the October attacks which led to Israel’s war on Gaza.

So with Sinwar at the helm, what are the prospects for a ceasefire?

And how will Hamas balance its political and military ambitions?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom 

Guests:

Omar Rahman — Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs who focuses on Middle East geopolitics and American foreign policy in the region

Beverley Milton-Edwards– co-author of ‘Hamas: The Quest for Power’ and a former EU special adviser to the Middle East peace process.

Norman Finkelstein — Political scientist who specialises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_TVBJgxqC4

2024-02-09 Hamas’ Gaza Chief Untraceable? Yahya Sinwar ‘Not In Touch’ With Leaders Amid IDF Offensive     Speculation is mounting over the whereabouts of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar reportedly lost touch with other leaders “weeks ago” and was not involved in Hamas’ response to the latest truce proposal. IDF believes that Sinwar and other Hamas leaders are hiding in Khan Younis.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PicagrKhCA8

2024-02-04 ‘Houthis Our Brothers’: Gaza Militants Come Out In Support Of Yemeni, Iraqi Resistance Against U.S.        Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad blasted U.S. and UK strikes on Iran-linked groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and accused the western nations of supporting ‘Israeli crimes’ against Palestinians in Gaza by striking anti-Israel militants in neighbouring countries.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JHpaqATrZU   

2023-12-19All the Reasons Israelis and Palestinians Need a Cease-Fire in Gaza—Now!      What follows is an issue by issue look at why a ceasefire is necessary to save innocent Palestinian lives, release Israeli hostages, prosecute the perpetrators of October 7, and follow international law.  There is no military solution — this was true in Afghanistan and Iraq and it is true in Gaza. It is not possible to destroy Hamas militarily.   Going to war against a small group of militants doesn’t work — with nearly 20,000 Palestinians killed, it still appears as of this writing that Israeli forces haven’t killed any top leaders of Hamas. Such military action only breeds greater resistance.   

Hamas isn’t only made up of its military wing. It has a political wing that carries out Islamic education, social welfare, and other functions. And while its religious focus is not particularly popular, it is perceived by Palestinians across Gaza as the only Palestinian force standing up to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and the 17 years of siege Israel has imposed on Gaza since before October 7.

Destroying Hamas would require the destruction or expulsion of much of the population of Gaza (and even then, the group and its ideas would likely continue in exile).  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cease-fire-in-gaza-now

2023-12-04 Israel’s Impossible Dilemma     Despite American and other entreaties to limit civilian casualties, Israel appears determined to push into the south of Gaza, but its strategic thinking seems to end there, and to hold no plausible endgame in sight. As a consequence, the next phase of this vicious conflict will almost certainly lead Israel to an unenviable dilemma: whether to grant Hamas a small and ultimately hollow victory or a much larger and all-too-real one.  

The next stages of the fighting seem clear. Israel will likely seize all of the significant aboveground urban areas in Gaza’s south, just as it did in the north. After that will come a major battle for control of Hamas’s extensive underground tunnel network, where most of the group’s fighters, leaders, equipment, and remaining hostages are presumed to be located.   

All of those goals are plausibly achievable. But Israel’s larger stated aim—of utterly eradicating Hamas—is impossible. Hamas is a brand name, not a list of individuals and objects. Israel could destroy its leaders and all of its equipment, declare victory, and leave Gaza to its fate. Hamas, in some form, would still crawl out of the rubble and declare a “divine victory” of its own. 

Not only that: Hamas has cadres all over the Middle East, including the group’s de facto diplomatic branch in Qatar, as well as significant pockets of fighters in the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Israel could assassinate them all—and still, at the end of this round of fighting, somebody, in the name of Hamas, will declare victory over Israel, even if only by pointing to October 7 and claiming to have destroyed Israel’s veneer of invincibility, sense of impunity, and insufferable arrogance, while reviving the Palestinian issue on the international stage.

For Israel, leaving Gaza comes with this risk, no matter how severe the physical devastation. Not only could Hamas declare victory, but it could resurrect its governing structures in Gaza if Israel leaves. Israel would then continue its de facto siege and fortify its buffer zone, while Hamas would declare that Israel had retreated in humiliation and defeat.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-impossible-dilemma/ar-AA1kZ7th

2023-12-19 Who is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas ‘mastermind’ in Gaza?    Israeli officials say Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and a member of its politburo since 2013, was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack, along with Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing the Qassam Brigades, and Marwan Issa, Deif’s deputy. But Sinwar seemingly has the biggest target on his back, as Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have called him a “dead man walking”. 

Sinwar, also known as Abu Ibrahim, has myriad stories around him, most adding to the idea that he is a near-mystical villain.   This man painted as “the face of evil” was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, to a family that had been displaced by Zionist gangs during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” of 1948. They were from al-Majdal, a Palestinian village razed and built over to create the Israeli town of Ashkelon.  Before he turned 20, in 1982, Sinwar was first arrested by Israeli authorities for “Islamic activities”. In 1985, he was arrested again, and it was during this second stint in prison that he met and became close to Hamas’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Sinwar was drawn to Hamas and, at 25, he helped establish al-Majd, the group’s internal security organisation, which earned him an uncompromising reputation in dealing with Palestinians who collaborated with Israel.   Adding to that reputation was former Shin Bet officer Micha Kobi’s interview with the Financial Times telling of Sinwar boasting to him in the late 1980s about making the brother of an alleged informer bury the accused man alive.

In 1988, at 26, Sinwar was arrested and charged with plotting the murder of two Israeli soldiers and killing 12 Palestinians. He was given four life sentences.   During the next 22 years in prison, Sinwar remained strictly disciplined, learned to speak and read Hebrew fluently and became a leader among the prisoners and a focal point for negotiations with prison staff. An Israeli government assessment from his time in prison described Sinwar as charismatic, cruel, manipulative, content with little, cunning and secretive, according to the BBC. 

On October 18, 2011, Israel exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas, and Sinwar was among the Palestinians traded for Shalit.   Outside jail, Sinwar quickly climbed the ladder in Hamas. His name landed on Netanyahu’s desk as a target for assassination, but the Israeli premier allegedly rejected plans to kill Sinwar on several occasions. In 2013, he was elected as a member of Hamas’s politburo in the Gaza Strip, before becoming the movement’s leader in Gaza in 2017, replacing Ismail Haniyeh. 

Still, in 2018, Sinwar signalled that Hamas’s tactics were moving towards non-armed resistance. Another war with Israel is “definitely not in our interest,” he said at the time.  But by late 2022, Sinwar’s calculus seemingly changed. On December 14, 2022, Sinwar and other Hamas leaders told a large crowd in Gaza they predicted an “open confrontation” after Israel elected the most right-wing government in its history. Sinwar’s threats were repeated in early 2023.     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/who-is-yahya-sinwar-the-hamas-mastermind-in-gaza/ar-AA1lIrV7

2023-11-13 Why Norm Finkelstein Won’t CONDEMN Hamas   The foremost scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict returns to Bad Faith podcast to weigh in on why he refuses to condemn Hamas despite acknowledging the atrocities of October 7th, and update the pod on the most recent hospital bombing. He also destroys Jake Tapper and Hilary Clinton’s rationales for Israel’s siege against the civilians of Gaza, and debunks common talking points circulated by Zionist mainstream media figures. This is an epic nearly 3 hour conversation you’re not going to want to miss.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXikmXo2Gw

2023-11-12 Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish       We need a basic analysis of power and history to understand that Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians, while egregious, had nothing to do with those Israelis’ religion and everything to do with occupation and settler colonialism.   In all my urgency, I’d neglected the core thing that needed tending to in my Jewish community: the assumption that Hamas’ attacks on October 7 were an expression of antisemitism, and thus, a threat to all of us.

Much of my family was killed in the Holocaust. On my grandparents’ wedding night, Hitler invaded their home country of Belgium. I grew up hearing my grandmother’s stories of narrowly escaping death at every turn, the wails of Jewish mothers over their dead children, fields of lifeless bodies. My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen.

So I can understand why many of my fellow Jewish Americans’ limbic systems were triggered on October 7, especially in a world where antisemitism still very much exists, particularly in the context of white nationalism. A world where we are told the same story that Elena was, and where Palestinians are demonized to legitimize that story.  Jews can grieve for Israeli lives lost and refuse the weaponization of that grief to commit genocide against Palestinians.

Antisemitism is defined as “discrimination against, violence toward, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish.” Let me be clear: Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians were wrong, in clear violation of international law. But they weren’t about antisemitism.   

The key thing to understand is that, in Israel/Palestine, unlike anywhere else in the world, Jewish people—specifically white Ashkenazi Jews—are the ones in power. Jewish Israelis are the occupiers and Palestinians are the occupied. When I spent eight months in the West Bank documenting human rights abuses, I saw the way Israel controls every aspect of Palestinian life, separating Palestinians from their schools and hospitals; torching their olive groves; demolishing their homes; imprisoning them without trial; discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and bringing about the slow, sometimes quick, death of Palestinians in Gaza by cutting them off from the outside world, putting them on a collective “diet,” and periodically bombing civilian infrastructure, homes, and families.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/hamas-attacks-not-antisemitic

2023-10-26 Hamas: Today’s Amalek    There are some pretty despicable characters sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible; Amalek and his followers are among the worst. Exodus 17:8-16 recounts that, not long after the glorious celebration of dance and song described so beautifully in the Song of Miriam, the Israelites were ambushed by the Amalekites.  We learn more about the brutality of the attack near the conclusion of the Torah, in Deuteronomy 25:17-18: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by the fear of G-d, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.” The implication is that if there are any accepted rules of warfare, the Amalekites ignored them with their ruthless barbarity. 

The Amalekites, eternal enemies of the Jewish people, are said to be the embodiment of pure evil.  Just as the Nazis were the 20th century’s version of Amalek, Hamas has proven that they are the Amalek of today.    I see the words “Do not forget” as an admonition to minimize the chances that this nightmare will happen again. Learn from military intelligence mistakes, don’t trust in the humanity of enemies who have none, and always remain vigilant.  

At this stage, I doubt that many of us need be reminded of what Hamas did to our people. And I suspect that we agree on what we need to do in return. If we ever hope to live in peace alongside our Palestinian neighbors, Hamas, like Amalek, must be removed from the world.      https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/364360/hamas-todays-amalek/

2023-10-20 “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood    “This isn’t an effort to try to quell, to destroy Hamas specifically,” says Tareq Baconi, Palestinian analyst and author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. “This is an effort to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip and beyond the Gaza Strip, as we see the violence rising in the West Bank.” Baconi lays out Israel’s history of enabling Hamas while designating them as terrorists in order to maintain tight control over Gaza. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/divide_and_rule_how_israel_helped

2023-10-19 US Warmongers Keep Pushing The Narrative That Hamas Is To Blame For All Deaths In Gaza     US warmongers have been forcefully pushing the propaganda narrative that Hamas bears 100 percent responsibility for all deaths in Gaza, and Israel bears zero percent, as Israel ramps up its mass slaughter of Palestinians. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-warmongers-keep-pushing-the-narrative

2023-10-14 THE PLAN TO WIPE OUT HAMAS    It’s been one week since the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel took place, and the shape of what is to come from the Israeli armed forces is clear, and uncompromising.    Over the past week Israeli jets have conducted around-the-clock bombing of non-military targets in Gaza City. Apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques were torn apart, with no prior warning and no effort to minimize civilian casualties.

By the end of the week Israeli jets were also dropping leaflets telling the citizens of Gaza City and its surrounding areas in the north that those who wished to survive had better start going south—walking if necessary—25 miles or more—to the Rafah border crossing leading to Egypt. As of this writing, it was not clear whether financially stricken Egypt will allow a million immigrants, many of them committed to the Hamas cause, to cross. In the short term, I have been told by an Israeli insider that Israel has been trying to convince Qatar, which at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a long-time financial supporter of Hamas, to join with Egypt in funding a tent city for the million or more refugees awaiting across the border. “It’s not a done deal,” the Israeli insider told me. Israeli officials have warned Egypt and Qatar that without a landing site, the refugees will have to “go back to Gaza.    https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-plan-to-wipe-out-hamas

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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

Fascism

Updated 2024-08-25

2023-12-04 Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt warn against fascism in Israel      The letter below, published 75 years ago today in the New York Times, was prescient.   Signed by Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt among others, it describes the emergence “in the newly created state of Israel” of “a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties”.

It goes on to say: “It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.”  It was led by Menachem Begin, who would go on to become Prime Minister of Israel from 1977-1983, presiding over the Sabra and Shatila massacre and beginning the slide to the right which culminated this year in the inclusion of open fascists, in driving seats, in Israel’s coalition government.

Back in 1948 these signatories were “urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism”.  Western leaders seem to have learnt nothing and understood nothing about fascism and the Holocaust. “Never again” has morphed into an injunction to turn a blind eye to the atrocities and genocide are now witnessing.

For Einstein’s letter:   https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/albert-einstein-and-hannah-arendt-warn-against-fascism-in-israel/

2023-11-15 Renewed Fascism: In Gaza Western Elites Live Out Genocidal Fantasy Against Global South     This is a mask off moment for the imperialist West. All of the sociopathic narcissism that underpins the dystopian global order they created is on display for everyone to see. They have made a mockery of international humanitarian law and killed any pretense of the freedom and democracy they claim to represent. Meanwhile they turn inward to repress their own populations from protesting against Israel’s shocking aggression on Gaza.

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Matteo Capasso, the Marie Curie Research Fellow at Columbia university and university of Venice Italy, Author of “Everyday politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” and editor of Middle East Critique. His work focuses on the nature and impact of US-led imperialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZDGvT04sNA

2023-11-14 ‘THE FEAR IS EVERYWHERE’: ISRAEL’S INTERNAL CRACKDOWN  As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, the Netanyahu government turns to fascist repression against dissenters from within.  Al Aqsa Flood and its consequences are shaking Israeli society from within. While Netanyahu’s government continues a brutal campaign of collective punishment against Gaza, some Israelis are questioning why their government is more committed to massacring Palestinians than effectively securing the swift release of hostages. As dissent spreads, the government is turning to fascist methods to repress those who speak out, effectively eliminating freedom of speech and arresting those who defy them. Israeli photojournalist Oren Ziv joins The Marc Steiner Show for a special discussion co-hosted with Israeli filmmaker Lia Tarachansky.   https://therealnews.com/the-fear-is-everywhere-israels-internal-crackdown

2023-10-24 The war in Gaza and Israel’s descent into fascism | The Marc Steiner Show      It’s been 17 days since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood triggered Israel’s punishing bombardment of Gaza. Thousands are now dead in Gaza and Israel without a clear end in sight to the bloodshed. As the world looks on in horror, we must not forget the decades of history that have brought us here. Israel has held Gaza under siege for the past 17 years, sealing off 2 million people in an open-air prison. At the same time, Israel’s democratic institutions have eroded and mutated into a theocratic fascism. Israeli filmmaker Lia Tarachansky joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss this history and her recent article reflecting on the war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsFgr6EW-gQ

2022-12-11 Israel and the Rise of Jewish Fascism  Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed coalition government of Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots represents a seismic change in Israel, one that will exacerbate Israel’s pariah status, erode external support for Israel, fuel a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, and create irreconcilable political divides within the Jewish state. 

Israel long ago became an apartheid state. It directly controls through its illegal Jewish-only settlements, restricted military zones and army compounds, over 60 percent of the West Bank and has de facto control over the rest. There are 65 laws that directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the OPT.  The old tropes are being replaced by screed-filled diatribes that paint Palestinians and Arabs (Muslim and Christian) as contaminants and an existential threat to Israel. This hate speech is accompanied by a vicious internal campaign to silence Jewish “traitors,” especially those who are liberal or left-wing and secular.  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israel-and-the-rise-of-jewish-fascism

2022-11-04 Fascists in government won’t dent Western support for Israel    The most disturbing outcome of Israel’s general election this week was not the fact that an openly fascist party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in Israel or abroad, as a result.

Having Religious Zionism at the heart of government will alter the tone in which Israeli politics is conducted, making it even coarser, more thuggish and uncompromising. But it will make no difference to the ethnic supremacism that has driven Israeli policy for decades. https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/fascists-in-government-wont-dent

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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

Culture of Deceit

Updated 2023-11-06

2023-10-30 Honest Government Ad | Israel & Gaza     The Government™ has made an ad about Israel & Gaza, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.   https://theanalysis.news/honest-government-ad-israel-gaza/

2023-10-18 Israel’s Culture of Deceit    Israel was founded on lies. The lie that Palestinian land was largely unoccupied. The lie that 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages during their ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 because they were told to do so by Arab leaders. The lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize 78 percent of historic Palestine. The lie that Israel faced annihilation in 1967, forcing it to invade and occupy the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, as well as land belonging to Egypt and Syria.

Israel is sustained by lies. The lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that Israel is an “outpost of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism.” The lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.   Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians are always greeted with lies. I heard them. I recorded them. I published them in my stories for The New York Times when I was the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief.      https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-culture-of-deceit

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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

Criticism of United States

2023-10-18 Rashid Khalidi on Biden’s “Israel-First Approach” & Growing Outrage over Gaza Across the Middle East     Meanwhile, international outrage is growing over a massive explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital that killed hundreds of people on Tuesday. Palestinian authorities say it was an Israeli airstrike, while Israel has claimed a failed rocket launch by Gaza militants caused the blast. “Whoever was responsible, the result will be enormous, enormous anger at the United States for its support of Israel, as well as a further increase in this enormous death toll inside Gaza,” says Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbiahttps://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/rashid_khalidi_gaza_israel

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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

Covid Pandemic

2023-10-17 Israeli DNA and Human Lab Rats    Listen to Benjamin Netanyahu (below in this short video) talk about he purposefully used his own people as experimental lab rats during the pandemic. How he sold Pfizer on the idea of using the jab in Israel first – so Pfizer could collect data on an unknown, experimental product. That is was possible for Pfizer to do this experiment on an entire population because of the great digitized medical record keeping by the government, going back twenty years.   

Bibi then goes on to theorize about the possibilities of using his own people as lab rats for other clinical trials in the future, because the possibilities of combining a a population’s medical records and DNA database are endless. Think of the money to be made, the biotech companies flocking to the new biotech nirvana: Israel.    https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/israeli-dna-and-human-lab-rats

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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

Conservatives

Updated 2023-11-26

2023-11-17 Dennis Prager: Supporting Hamas is like supporting Nazis in WW2      Dennis Prager is a conservative thinker, commentator and one of America’s most successful political entrepreneurs; He is most well known for establishing PragerU, one of the largest conservative online platforms. Steven Edginton is joined by Mr Prager to discuss threats to Western civilization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OudTXT_9CzY

2021-05-14 “America First” Conservatives Declare: “Actually, We Meant Israel First”    Usually the formulation is to triumphantly proclaim that so-and-so person, place, or thing “stands with” Israel. Like the state of Arkansas “stands with Israel,” or Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota “stands with Israel,” or some random New York State Senator “stands with Israel.” What it means to “stand with” a foreign military force is seldom precisely defined — no one appears to be physically standing, for one thing. This incantation is quickly followed by a rote affirmation that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” as if that’s responsive at all to the actual details of the situation unfolding. https://mtracey.substack.com/p/america-first-conservatives-declare

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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

Censorship Around the World

Updated 2024-03-25

2024-03-14 New UK Definition of ‘Extremism’ Called Attack on Right to Dissent     “The government should recognize that real British values involve defending the rights of all political opponents to speak freely and openly,” said one advocate.

Coming weeks after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed the United Kingdom is in danger of “mob rule… replacing democratic rule,” a new definition of “extremism” published by the government on Thursday was viewed by one rights advocate as a “smash and grab” on the right to protest, among other freedoms.

The Conservative government updated the definition of the word under its anti-extremism agenda, known as Prevent. The government will now treat as extremism “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”

“The government will undertake a robust process to assess groups for extremism against the definition, which will then inform decisions around government engagement and funding,” said a public notice from Michael Gove, Sunak’s secretary of state for leveling up, housing, and communities.   The government is expected to release a list in the coming weeks of groups it deems as in violation of the new definition of extremism.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/uk-extremism-definition

2024-02-14 “Democracies” Deny the Popular Will While Suppressing Protest and Dissent      Most people here in the United States, 61% according to one poll , want a ceasefire in Gaza. That number is significant but it shows no correlation whatsoever with how the state acts. Only 69 members of the House of Representatives and 5 members of the Senate have publicly called for a ceasefire.

The same is true in the rest of the “democratic” nations known as the Collective West. A leaked letter from a cabinet level ministry in the Netherlands read in part, “What can we say so that it appears that Israel is not committing war crimes?” The outgoing prime minister is angling for the NATO General Secretary’s job and wants to stay on the good side of the U.S., hence the need to give the appearance that Israel isn’t committing crimes that the whole world can see. Meanwhile, Dutch civil servants protested against their own government’s support for Israel and yes, they were ignored. That nation has been ordered by its Supreme Court to stop selling F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel but the elected government has chosen to appeal their court’s decision.

Not to be outdone, France is forcing any organizations receiving governmental aid to repeat debunked allegations that Hamas committed atrocities on October 7.  https://blackagendareport.com/democracies-deny-popular-will-while-suppressing-protest-and-dissent

2023-11-27 BBC Censors BAFTA Acceptance Speeches Expressing Solidarity with Palestine    In Glasgow, Scotland, the BBC has been accused of censorship after the network edited calls for a Gaza ceasefire out of its coverage of an awards ceremony. This is BAFTA-winning director Eilidh Munro, who won for her short film “A Long Winter” but had her acceptance speech cut from BBC’s edited version of the ceremony posted online.

Eilidh Munro: “We have got a responsibility to elevate the world’s most important stories, and we want to take this opportunity tonight to say that we stand in solidarity with everyone in Palestine.”   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/headlines/bbc_censors_bafta_acceptance_speeches_expressing_solidarity_with_palestine

2023-10-25 Craig Murray: The Chances of a Regional War  As countries with influence over Israel actively encourage the slaughter, Murray considers what will happen internationally and what is happening in Western societies.

Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous.   Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel, they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defence” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population.   The Western leadership glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the U.N. is astonishing.  

Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal.   In the U.K. people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure.

I have myself attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by, and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.

A wave of racism has been unleashed in the U.K. and elsewhere. I am astonished by the Islamophobia and racial hatred released online, with no apparent comeback.  U.K. ministers claim to be alarmed at the “terrorist sympathies” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, yet it is perfectly legal to call for Palestinians to be exterminated, to compare them to different types of animal and vermin, and suggest they should be driven into the sea. That does not horrify ministers at all.   It has also become dangerous to merely suggest that Palestinians too have a right to self-defence and may offer armed resistance to genocide — a right they enjoy beyond doubt in international law.  Remember, Israel has formally declared war. Is it the position in British law that the only belief it is legal to hold and express, is that in this war the Palestinians must simply line up quietly to be killed?    The major cause of terrorism here is Israel, the terrorist apartheid state.   https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/craig-murray-the-chances-of-a-regional-war/

2023-10-24 Incredibly, I Face Investigation for Terrorism – Defense Funds Appeal   My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear.        https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/incredibly-i-face-investigation-for-terrorism-defence-funds-appeal/

2023-10-19 Silencing Palestinian voices helps no one cope with the war     On Oct. 13, the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany announced it would no longer host an award ceremony for the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli and her book “Minor Detail.” A public discussion with Shibli and her translator was also canceled. The German literary association Litprom, which is behind the award, stated that its decision was “due to the war started by Hamas, under which millions of people in Israel and Palestine are suffering.”

“The terror war against Israel contradicts all the values that Frankfurter Buchmesse stands for,” said Frankfurt Book Fair director Juergen Boos. “Frankfurter Buchmesse has always been about humanity, its focus has always been on peaceful and democratic discourse.” He added that “we want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair.” 

It is understandable why, especially in Germany, people felt the need to stand unequivocally against the brutal murder of Jews. But why sharing in Israeli mourning required silencing a Palestinian writer with no connection to Hamas — why Palestinians could not be part of the book fair’s peaceful and democratic discourse — was not explained. The very notion of a Palestinian being recognized, speaking in public, was evidently beyond the pale. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/19/palestinian-writers-canceled-censorship-literature/

2023-10-13 Western Governments Ban Palestinian Solidarity Demonstrations    The French government has banned all rallies in response to the Israeli bombardment and total blockade of Gaza. On Thursday, police in Paris used tear gas and water cannons against pro-Palestine protesters who gathered despite the prohibition.    In the United Kingdom, activists have vowed to take legal action if officials ban the Palestinian flag. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has urged police forces to use the “full force of the law” against protesters waving the Palestinian flag, which she said “may not be legitimate” if it’s found to be a sign in support of “terrorism.”    In Australia, human rights defenders are warning of the government’s escalating repression against actions in support of Palestine.   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/western_governments_ban_palestinian_solidarity_demonstrations

2023-09-25 UK and Israel: Has the fightback against weaponized antisemitism begun?    There has been a wave of highly damaging but unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism against students and academics, according to a new survey of British universities.   In 38 of 40 cases brought against lecturers, students, student unions and societies in the five years to 2022, no evidence was found to support the accusations of antisemitism. Hearings in the other two cases have yet to conclude.

Hidden in the raw figures is the enormous toll such false allegations take on the accused: personal suffering and reputational and career damage, as well as the additional chilling effect on academic freedom in the wider university community.   That is unlikely to be an unfortunate side product of these allegations. It seems to be precisely their point.

The spate of allegations was unleashed after universities began adopting a revised, and highly controversial, definition of antisemitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016.  In truth, that was always the aim. The IHRA definition grew out of covert efforts by the Israeli government to blur traditional distinctions between antisemitism and anti-Zionism to shield itself from critics, including human rights groups, who were highlighting Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians.  https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/uk-and-israel-has-the-fightback-against

2010-09-18 Censorship of Al Jazeera Documentary Exposes Influence of Pro-Israel Lobby   A documentary film that aimed to expose Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States has been leaked to the media after the government of Qatar pulled it from Al Jazeera, a media outlet Qatar funds. In August 2018, excerpts of the censored documentary were leaked and later published by a number of online independent media outlets, including the Electronic Intifada, France’s Orient XXI, and Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar. An undercover reporter for Al Jazeera became an intern at the Israel Project, a pro-Israeli organization in Washington, DC, in order to research and document what a November 2018 Electronic Intifada article summarized as “the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate US citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS,” the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.    https://www.projectcensored.org/19-censorship-of-al-jazeera-documentary-exposes-influence-of-pro-israel-lobby/

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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

Biden, Joe President

Updated 2024-04-01

2024-03-27 How Biden Could Radically Alter the U.S.-Israel Relationship     On February 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order on violent extremism by settlers in the West Bank, which has been increasing over the past several months with the world watching the war in Gaza. The Biden administration accompanied this order with sanctions on four settlers who, it charged, had directly carried out violence or intimidation. This month, the Biden administration expanded the sanctions, adding three more settlers and two illegal outposts, which it said were bases used to “perpetuate violence against Palestinians.”  

Elsewhere, it was heralded as a potentially major development, a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly given that U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that they were considering sanctioning two of his coalition’s extremist members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. https://newrepublic.com/article/179968/biden-executive-order-west-bank-us-israel-relationship

2024-03-21 Why Biden’s Strident Support for Israel Could Lose Him Critical Youth Turnout   While few of these young anti-war voters will vote for Donald Trump, they are now far more likely to vote third party or not vote at all.

A recent poll showed that 72% of voters ages 18 to 29 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war. That is a higher percentage of young voters than those who disapproved of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America, or even Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-israel-lose-youth

2024-03-15 Biden Must Choose: Netanyahu or Democracy?  Biden’s big pitch for the presidency is that he will preserve U.S. democracy from Trump, but through his support for Netanyahu, he may very well destroy it.   Biden’s overwhelming support for Israel’s bloody crusade against Gaza has already turned off huge swaths of crucial voters—and some additional aid is far from enough to bring them back.  Ultimately, Biden’s decision to cozy up for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months could cost us our democracy. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-choose-netanyahu-or-democracy

2024-02-16 ‘History Is Watching’? You Bet It Is, Mr. President.  “History is watching,” the president said after the Senate passed his $95.3 billion war bill by a vote of 70-29. He said it three times: “History is watching.” He’s right. Democrats should remember that before trying to use an obscure parliamentary procedure to force a vote on this bill in the House. The move, called a “discharge petition,” would almost certainly fail without support from House progressives. They have a moral obligation to withhold that support.

This bill, deceptively described as an “aid package,” slashes all future funding for the most important humanitarian aid group serving the people of Gaza. At the same time, it provides $14 billion in military aid (which its Democratic sponsors coyly call “security assistance”) to the armed forces that are killing them.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/house-progressive-israel-aid-package

2024-02-09 Biden’s biggest problem in 2024 isn’t age or a shaky memory. It’s the war in Israel.   “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying,” said Biden. “And it’s got to stop.”  It’s a rhetorical shift from the early days of the war, when Biden forcefully backed Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks. But with nearly 30,000 Palestinians already dead, along with the looming threat of famine and disease in Gaza, the president has become more vocally critical of Israel’s conduct.  It’s a shift that’s been driven as much by the situation on the ground in Gaza as it is by the protests and outrage he’s faced from Democrats back home.

But among rank-and-file Democratic voters, the situation is far more dire and could threaten Biden’s chances of being reelected next November.  According to one recent poll, 50% of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. While many Democrats who believe that may be willing to support Biden anyway, there’s a sizeable portion who may decline to support Biden’s reelection.

And even as Democratic leaders argue that a Trump presidency would be far worse than Biden, those voters are unlikely to be swayed without a significant change in US policies toward Israel.   “It should not be the Biden administration asking his core constituency to support him because he is the lesser of two evils,”  “President Biden himself, by failing to call for a ceasefire, is on track to deliver the presidency back to Donald Trump and his white supremacist buddies,” 

While the issue is especially acute in Michigan, Biden faces a miniature version of it in states across the country, not just from voters who are personally connected to the conflict, but from progressives and younger voters.   f the election’s close, as many expect it to be, even just a few thousand voters per state choosing to leave the top of the ballot blank, or not showing up at all, could have a major impact.  https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-age-memory-war-israel-2024-2&post-bottom-piano-recommendations

2024-02-06 Denting Reelection Hopes, 60% of US Voters Disapprove of Biden’s Israel Policy    Along with persistent protests at public events held by U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, recent polling is continuously demonstrating that the White House’s vehement support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza despite the rising civilian death toll is not winning them accolades among the voters whose backing they depend on in the upcoming election—and a new survey out Tuesday was no exception.

In the UMass Poll, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov found that out of 1,064 respondents nationwide, just under 60% said Biden is not handling “the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas” well, while just 31% approved of Biden’s policy regarding Israel.  Taken from January 25-30, the poll asked American voters about a wide range of topics, from inflation and their individual ability to afford necessities to their views on whether Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces have killed at least 27,585 people in air and ground attacks as well as blocking nearly all humanitarian aid—plunging the enclave into a crisis of widespread starvation and disease.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-2024-israel

2024-01-23 Biden Endorsements on the Line as Outrage Over Gaza Grows      U.S. President Joe Biden’s refusal to do all he can to stop Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has consequences for not only Palestinian civilians in the besieged enclave but also this year’s presidential contest in which the Democrat is seeking reelection.

Multiple polls over the past couple of months have shown Biden’s approval rating at all-time lows, partly related to how he has handled Israel killing nearly 25,500 people in Gaza—as of Tuesday—in response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7.   Biden last month called out Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza and said that “I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives,” but he has also bypassed Congress to arm Israeli forces while asking lawmakers for a $14.3 billion package on top of the United States’ $3.8 billion in annual military aid to its Middle East ally. 

On the eve of the New Hampshire vote, a prominent group in California—where the primary is March 5, or Super Tuesday—announced its members “overwhelmingly voted” to rescind an endorsement of Biden from October due to “widespread outrage and international indignation over the president’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict.”  “Focused on the crisis in Gaza, we condemn President Biden’s misguided and perilous actions, and inaction, which undermine the long-term interests of both Israelis and Palestinians,” the San Francisco-based Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club said Monday. “While our stance doesn’t extend to the November 2024 general elections, we aim to send a powerful signal to President Biden and the Democratic establishment that our base demands to be heard.”

The San Francisco club isn’t alone in reconsidering a Biden endorsement. With 3 million members, the National Education Association (NEA) is the largest union in the country, and it endorsed Biden in April—followed by various key labor groups last year.   Now, some rank-and-file members want the NEA to revoke the teachers union’s endorsement of Biden until he fights for a permanent cease-fire; stops sending military support to Israel; and uses diplomatic pressure to secure the release of all political prisoners and hostages as well as end Israel’s blockade of Gaza, settlement activity in the West Bank, and killing of journalists.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-gaza-election

2024-01-16 How Biden Can Stop Houthi Missile Attacks—Without Risking War   There is a simple reason why U.S. and U.K. military strikes against Yemen’s Houthis will not achieve their objective of re-opening the crucial Red Sea lanes for international shipping: The Houthis don’t have to succeed in striking additional commercial vessels, or even successfully retaliate against U.S. military ships. All they need to do is to try. That is enough to sustain a de facto shipping blockade of the Red Sea, through which a staggering 12% of global trade flows. Many Western commercial vessels will simply not risk moving their ships through those waters, not in spite of President Joe Biden’s military strikes, but now because of them.  The Houthis had managed to increase the cost of container shipping in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war by launching missile attacks at cargo ships passing through the vital waterways. But the Biden Administration’s retaliatory strikes on Yemen’s Houthis have turned off shipping companies, perhaps irrevocably, until the war ends.

Biden can certainly choose to up the ante and intensify the targeting of Houthi weapons depots and missile launchers. But unless there is a substantial degradation of Houthi military capabilities—a scenario that seems improbable given their large arsenal of anti-ship missiles and estimated 200,000 fighters—continued strikes will only beget more of the same: escalating tensions that strengthen the de facto Houthi blockade and elevate the potential for the conflict to expand into a full-fledged regional war. This is an outcome the Biden Administration claims to want to prevent.  

Yet a ceasefire is far more likely to curb Houthi and Iraqi militia attacks; reduce tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border, where regular exchanges of fire have been taking place; secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas; and, most important of all, stop further civilian casualties in Gaza.   Instead, under the guise of restoring deterrence, Biden has done the opposite.  If, in the worst-case scenario, Biden’s escalation against the Houthis sparks a regional war, there should be little doubt that this is another war of choice—and one without Congressional authorization. Not because Biden desired it, but because he refused to pursue the most obvious and peaceful path to prevent it.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-biden-can-stop-houthi-missile-attacks-without-risking-war/ar-AA1n0O6A

2024-01-13 A Visit from Uncle Joe and Auntie Jill   What are we to make of a president and a first lady who face an audience of children afflicted with a range of medical problems and read them a story about a charming but fictitious event written for the author’s presumably healthy, well-cared-for children? It’s not much of a stretch to imagine families watching the telecast of the reading and thinking about how blessed we are to have a president and a first lady who are loving and compassionate, attuned to the needs of children, particularly those who are coping with severe, life-threatening illnesses, and willing to manifest the spirit of Christmas in word and deed? At the end of the reading, President Biden reminds the audience of something his father used to say: “Keep the faith. We’re going to beat all this. I promise you… God bless you all.”

How warm, how cheery and bright. The perfect message for hospitalized children on a winter’s night. A few questions come to mind, though: Who’s going to beat what? Does God bless all children or only certain children? Does He bless children in Gaza the same as He blesses children at the hospital in Washington D.C. where the Bidens went? If He blesses children in Gaza, how would we know? 

What sort of story would the president and first lady read to children in a hospital in Gaza, assuming there is a hospital in Gaza that is still functioning and has adequate medical supplies, to say nothing of electricity, clean water, food, and beds? Of course, only in an alternate universe would the Bidens be invited to Gaza as ambassadors of a friendly nation defending the rights of the Palestinian people while condemning Israel’s genocidal onslaught. In this universe (the only one we actually know of), Joe Biden is okay with the deadly shelling of civilian homes and infrastructure, and the nonstop killing of mostly women and children. And since his wife, with a doctorate in education, hasn’t issued a word of protest to the policies of the Biden administration, I think it’s safe to assume that the public version of Dr. Jill Biden is onboard with those same policies and has no moral qualms about the evisceration of Gaza and the dispossession of its people. (I have no idea of what her private convictions might be or if she shares them with her husband.) https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/uncle-joe-and-auntie-jill

2024-01-12 Biden admin continues push for two-state solution as critics warn: ‘efforts repeatedly fail’      https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-admin-continues-push-for-two-state-solution-as-critics-warn-efforts-repeatedly-fail

2024-01-12 Biden confronted by hecklers shouting ‘go home’ during Pennsylvania visit: ‘You’re a loser’     President Biden received a hostile welcome from swing state voters in Pennsylvania during a visit to several small businesses to tout his Bidenomics economic plan.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-confronted-by-hecklers-shouting-go-home-during-pennsylvania-visit-you-re-a-loser/ar-AA1mTa7O

2023-12-20 A Conversation on the Horrors in Gaza with Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous     Everything we know about Joe Biden’s 50-year history of supporting and facilitating Israel’s worst crimes leads to one conclusion: He wants Israel’s destruction of Gaza — with more than 7,000 children dead — to unfold as it has. When will it stop?   Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill and journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the U.S. role in Israel’s scorched-earth campaign to annihilate Gaza. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeeLEJTZHNk

2023-12-12 In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future    President Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed Tuesday over who should govern Gaza after the war, in a remarkable public display of differences emerging between the two leaders over the conflict. 

Biden made his toughest remarks since the war began about Netanyahu’s government. He suggested that its hard-line stance has prevented Netanyahu from accepting the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, and that it would also obstruct progress toward political, economic and security arrangements that could spawn a separate Palestinian state—an outcome the U.S. president sees as a long-term solution to the conflict.

President Biden’s comments came as Netanyahu said in Israel he would block the Biden administration’s postwar plan to have the Palestinian Authority take over Gaza, the sharpest sign of Israeli pushback against the U.S. blueprint for administering the enclave after Israel’s invasion ends.

“After the great sacrifice of our civilians and our soldiers, I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who educate for terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Palestinian Authority, which currently oversees parts of the West Bank, in a statement Tuesday.

The plan was already facing opposition from Arab governments and from Palestinian Authority officials themselves, who say they want Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza and withdraw its troops before they will agree to serious talks about postwar planning.

Israel’s position on who will replace Hamas in postwar Gaza may not become fully clear until elections that are expected to be held next year, when it will be decided whether Netanyahu survives as prime minister. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/in-dueling-remarks-biden-and-netanyahu-spar-over-gaza-s-future/ar-AA1lou8j

2023-12-07 Biden Should Just Say ‘No’ to Israel    In recent weeks, the Biden administration has attempted to pivot from its initial unconditional support for Israeli actions in Gaza by combining caution with a vague plan for “the day after.” 

As U.S. polls showed growing disapproval for Israeli actions and the administration’s timid response, coupled with signs of increasing Arab world dissatisfaction with America’s refusal to rein in Israel, the administration attempted to create even more distance. Key White House talking points now included: urging Israel to adhere to the “rules of war” by limiting civilian casualties, warnings that the U.S. wouldn’t accept the reoccupation of Gaza, and insistence on increased humanitarian assistance to displaced Palestinians.    Despite this slight change in tune, there was no shift in policy.

To facilitate this, the U.S. would have to change its “No” at the United Nations to a “Yes” and support a Security Council resolution recognizing Palestine as a state, declaring its continued occupation as a threat to regional peace and security, and ordering an empowered U.N. peacekeeping force to the occupied territories to provide peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Such moves from the U.S. would undoubtedly cause a shock to both societies. Only under the security provided by such a U.N. mandate would the Palestinians be able to put their house in order. At the same time, the shock of a U.S. “No” to Israel and “Yes” to a U.N. Security Council resolution that would change the status of territories to Palestinian land, Israelis would be left to ask hard questions about where decades of unchecked acquisitiveness and expansion have led them. They would be forced to reexamine whether they could continue to oppress Palestinians with impunity. In the aftershock, sane voices will be able to break through in the public square reigniting both Israeli peace forces and Palestinian moderates. It won’t be easy, but leaving the cancer in place is nothing more than a prescription for certain death. A shock to the system is required and it all begins with a U.S. “No” followed by “Yes.”  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-should-say-no-to-israel

2023-11-16 When Middle East Politics (Almost) Tipped an American Presidential Election    In 1948, Henry Wallace peeled off enough of the Jewish vote to deny Harry Truman the nation’s then-most populous state, New York. What this does—and doesn’t—augur for Joe Biden. 

Several political reporters are speculating that President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict could lead to his defeat in 2024. Several polls indicate his support for Israel’s military response, however nuanced, has caused a dip in support among younger voters nationally and a cratering of support among Arab and Muslim voters who are key constituencies in the swing state of Michigan. 

Most presidential elections hinge on the economy, except when American troops are fighting and dying abroad. The only elected incumbents to lose reelection in the last 100 years—Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump—couldn’t overcome high unemployment.

Two others—Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson—were hounded out of running for reelection while waging unpopular wars. Preparations for war complicated the reelection campaigns of Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, but neither had yet sent American troops into battle, and both won re-election. We don’t have an example of a presidential election outcome determined by an international crisis that doesn’t involve American troops. 

If Middle East politics could splinter the 1944 Democratic coalition in New York, could the same happen in 2024 with Michigan?   It’s mathematically possible. But the Arab/Muslim vote in Michigan today is much smaller than the Jewish vote in 1940s New York. Arabs make up about 3 percent of the Michigan population. Jews in 1948 made up about 13 percent of the New York population.

Clearly, Biden should not be cavalier about Michigan’s Arab/Muslim vote, just as Truman couldn’t be about New York’s Jewish vote. That’s one lesson from 1948. But another conflicting lesson is that presidential elections are shaped by a myriad of factors, usually most significantly by the overall economy. Any slippage Biden suffers from one constituency over one issue could be offset by others.    A third related lesson is that while presidents can’t be blind to political considerations, they should first pursue the policies they believe to be the wisest and worry about politics second. There are simply too many factors that can theoretically tip an election. Bending over backward to appease one constituency can alienate others. Doing an overall good job will please many constituencies.     https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/11/16/when-middle-east-politics-almost-tipped-an-american-presidential-election/ 

2023-12-02 Behind Israel’s Brutal Genocidal Attack on Gaza Stand Joe Biden and Congress   [MEK Note: also see November 14th White House letter]     

Biden can get more humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza simply by enveloping them with the American flag and daring Israel to delay, obstruct or destroy these carriers of live-saving food, water, fuel and medicine. But he is too weak and too cowardly to do so.  He has made the U.S. a co-belligerent by unconditionally supplying abundant weapons, military intelligence and political cover, including vetoes of United Nations resolutions.

We asked why he wants Congress to make U.S. taxpayers pay another $14.3 billion for a prosperous country’s colossal military and intelligence operations, especially since Israel’s leadership failed to protect its people on October 7th.   Biden has another apprehension—the near total control of Congress by the “Israel’s government can do no wrong” lobby. The indentured rubber-stamping Senators and Representatives have no problem supporting Israel’s violent repression and land dispossession in what is left of the original Palestine and its five million encircled Palestinians. Would these politicians deploy such eagerness in helping poor American children and their families in our country?

In response to Biden’s repeated urging that Israel comply with the “laws of war” we described how Benjamin Netanyahu and his regime are doing just the opposite with its brutal terror campaign against defenseless Palestinian civilians and their critical public support structures.  Israel’s extremist right-wing politicians use words such as “human animals,” “annihilation” and “extermination” as declared objectives of their mass terrorism.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-biden-israel-genocide-gaza

2023-11-28 As Anti-Israel-Hamas War Movement Deepens In US, So Does ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden’s 2024 Poll Conundrum   A movement calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war has erupted across the United States condemning US President Joe Biden’s reluctance to push ally Israel for a long-term ceasefire in war-ravaged Gaza. Amid domestic and international pressure, Biden seems to have changed his tone. Watch for details.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqkLjJw2Fg

2023-11-27 Team Biden Goes From Denial to Panic   The outlook is now grimmer than ever, but the big divide between Biden’s low popularity and public support for the Democratic Party overall was clear a year ago, despite the hype giving Biden credit for midterm election results in November 2022. Back then, the New York Times reported that one House Democrat offered a more candid assessment: “Biden’s numbers were ‘a huge drag’ on Democratic candidates, who won in spite of the president not thanks to him, the lawmaker said on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House.”

Our RootsAction.org team had no reason to avoid antagonizing the White House. Immediately after the 2022 election, we launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign. Last winter, it included TV ads in New Hampshire and other early primary states as well as in DC. We also placed full-page ads in print editions of The Hill newspaper, widely read on Capitol Hill; one depicted congressional Democrats as having their heads in the sand. A steady flow of news releases went out, citing data on Biden’s electoral vulnerabilities. A mobile Don’t Run Joe billboard circled the Capitol and White House when Congress reconvened in January.

But elected Democrats, loyal boosters and allied organizations stuck with the party line. Apparently, they couldn’t imagine being independent enough to call for a candidate who could champion a progressive agenda and be a stronger contender than the anemic Biden in the 2024 race   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-biden-polls-2024

2023-11-25 Biden endorses Israel’s war to eliminate Gaza   Amid “utter carnage” in Gaza, the White House insists that the Israeli government has a “legitimate objective.”    According to Politico, “there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

The Biden team’s concern is understandable: the devastation that they have supported in Gaza is without precedent in recent memory.    The United Nation’s top aid official, Martin Griffith, describes Gaza as “the worst ever” crisis that he has witnessed. “I don’t think I have seen anything like this before,” Griffith remarked. “It’s complete and utter carnage.”    https://www.aaronmate.net/p/biden-endorses-israels-war-to-eliminate

2023-11-23 White House Triggered by “Genocide Joe” nickname      First up is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lulls a whimpering Fox News host in his loving cradle, explaining that Israel is actually fighting America’s war against terrorism. And all those dead civilians are just his way of saying: thanks.

With the Palestinian death count mounting higher and higher, only being paused when the bodies under the rubble have become too many to count, Joe Biden has earned the nickname ‘Genocide Joe.’ But don’t ask Communications Director John Kirby what he thinks of that nickname…      “This word genocide’s getting thrown around in a pretty inappropriate way,” he tells reporters. “Yes, there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza. Yes, the numbers are too high. Yes, too many families are grieving. But Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map.”    https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/white-house-triggered-by-genocide

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

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

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

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

2023-11-19 President Biden Has Let the Children Down    As of now, 4,237 Palestinian children have been killed in just over a month. Over 1,000 more are missing or buried under the rubble of bombarded buildings. Those not killed by bombs are dying from starvation, disease, and dehydration. Most at risk are the youngest—children born during the war in shelters and streets amid rubble. Medical workers are using the term “wounded child no surviving family,” to describe 2023 war orphans in Gaza. The United Nations describes this a “graveyard of children.”

A full 70% of the Gaza’s population—more than 1.5 million people—has been displaced. The Israeli government has bombed hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and even U.N. shelters. There is no safe place for the innocent.

Now I am 16 years old, and doubt clouds my belief in the U.S. government. Mona and I wrote to the president because we believed that the United States had the power to stop these horrors. But the United States aids and abets this merciless carnage. It provides $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel each year. Now the Biden administration is transferring billions more in military aid to Israel, including the bombs that are dropping on Gaza. My grief for the children in Gaza is inconsolable; their blood is equally on my government’s hands.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/president-biden-children-gaza

2023-11-18 BIDEN TANKS IN POLLS, BUT MEDIA DOWNPLAYS IMPACT OF GAZA ON VOTERS      Bumfuzzled by losses among young voters, media outlets obscure how much Biden’s lockstep support of Israel is harming his prospects in the 2024 election. In the 2020 election, Biden’s support from young voters was a commanding 20 points higher than Trump’s; now, he’s virtually tied with Trump with young voters in five key swing states. The headlines don’t look good for the President. “Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds,” The New York Times warned on Monday.  https://therealnews.com/biden-tanks-in-polls-but-media-downplays-impact-of-gaza-on-voters

2023-11-16 “Failure to Prevent Genocide”: Biden Sued as U.S. Provides Arms & Support for Israel’s Gaza Assault    As Israel rejects growing international calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States is suing President Biden for failing to prevent genocide. The center is seeking an emergency order to block Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from providing further military funding, arms and diplomatic support to Israel. Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights on the case, argues the U.S. is complicit with Israel in the “crime of crimes” by “aiding and abetting genocide” with military aid, advisers and political support despite clear signs of intent to collectively punish the Palestinian population.    Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOOgv_Bnhg

2023-11-15 Palestinians sue Biden to stop Gaza genocide   Palestinians are suing US President Joe Biden and his secretaries of state and defense to stop them from further aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  The legal move comes as the Israeli military has stormed al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest health facility, after US officials parroted Israel’s claims that Hamas uses it as a commander center, despite a lack of credible evidence.

The complaint was filed in a federal court on Monday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, on behalf of the Palestinian human rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine and Al-Haq and several Palestinians who are inside Gaza or are US citizens with family there.

The suit calls for the defendants to “take all measures within their power to exert influence over Israel to end its bombing of the Palestinian people of Gaza” and to lift the siege and prevent the forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians in the territory.   The plaintiffs also ask the court to “order an end to US military and diplomatic support to Israel,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a press release on Monday.

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

Among the plaintiffs is The Electronic Intifada contributor Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the founders of Gaza’s Great March of Return protests, whose nearly 13-year-old son Abdullah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on 24 October.   “All have had multiple family members killed, subjected to the closure of Gaza, and displaced,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Katherine Gallagher, an attorney with the civil liberties group, said that the lawsuit brings forward two claims: “a claim of their failure in the duty to prevent genocide, and complicity in genocide.”  The crime of genocide “means to destroy, in whole or in part, a group because of its identity,” Gallagher said. “In this case, we are setting forth the case of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.”   The complaint lays out “the very clear, specific intent announced and admitted by Israeli officials to destroy in whole or in part the Palestinian population in Gaza,” she added. 

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

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

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinians-sue-biden-stop-gaza-genocide

2023-11-15 Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’      “I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.   Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”

On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/15/biden-israels-gaza-hospitals-intelligence/

2023-11-15 Biden Faces Rebellion Over Israel Policy | Vantage with Palki Sharma      Over 500 political appointees and staff members from about 40 US government agencies sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, protesting against his unwavering support for Israel.      The letter, presented to Biden and his cabinet, calls for the president to seek an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.     The US has acknowledged this dissent but there is still no change to policy.  Palki Sharma tells you all about the brewing dissent in the United States.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQH8HYIkCwU

2023-11-14 White House Repone to Ralph Nader    [MEK Note:   White Houe Letter demonstrates deliberate ignorance of the facts publicly known for almost a month.  1300 innocent civilians killed on October 7th??? There are at best only 800 civilian deaths!  100 were Hamas fighters and about 400 were IDF military, police and security persons!  Worse yet, Israeli investigations have shown the IDF used Apache helicopters to fire on the music festival crowd and IDF tanks fired on Kibbutz villages without concern of IDF troops and civilians clearly killing half or more of the civilians and even many of their own soldiers.]  https://nader.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/BidenResponse.pdf

2023-11-14 Biden SLAMMED for Israel/Gaza ‘MISINFORMATION’ By 100+ STATE DEPARTMENT Employees Internal Memo     Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave react to latest updates on Israel and Palestine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cck1z_N71K8&list=RDNSDQH8HYIkCwU&start_radio=1&rv=DQH8HYIkCwU  

2023-11-13 LEAKED State Dept. Memo Condemns Biden’s Policies On Israel      An State Department dissent memo said that Israel is committing war crimes and that President Biden is misleading the American people on what’s happening. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.   “An internal State Department dissent memo accuses President Biden of “spreading misinformation” on the Israel-Hamas war and alleges that Israel is committing “war crimes” in Gaza, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios.  Why it matters: The scathing five-page memo — organized by a junior diplomat who has suggested on social media that Biden’s support of Israel has made him “complicit in genocide” in Gaza — offers a rare look at the raw divisions within the Biden administration over the Israel-Hamas war.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnK1ELXjHsw&list=RDNSDQH8HYIkCwU&index=2

2023-11-10 Disrupting Biden for Gaza Didn’t Take Courage   Yesterday, I interrupted an event where President Joe Biden was speaking in Belvidere, Illinois, to demand that he call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Over 10,000 Palestinians, half of them children, have been killed by Israeli bombardments in the last month. Entire bloodlines have been wiped off the face of the Earth. And the day I confronted Biden, a harrowing video surfaced of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza evacuating their cities on foot.   Normally, I get incredibly anxious when speaking publicly, and I have a hard time speaking without tripping over my words. You would think that interrupting the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the world, would have made me stop in my tracks. I also knew that if I interrupted the president, the crowd was bound to be hostile, very hostile. My stomach was churning, and my heart was fluttering. But somehow, once the president started to speak, I waited for a quiet moment and then the words just flowed from my mouth; it felt like a miracle.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/disrupting-biden-for-gaza

2023-11-09 John Kirby has no tears and no red lines for Gaza   Last week, we saw National Security Council Communications Director John Kirby showcase his (awful) thespian skills with bogus tears for dead Israelis. Today, with Israel’s bombings of hospitals and refugee camps bringing the Palestinian death toll over 10,000, Kirby has a different message: the US draws no red lines for Israel. They’ve got free rein to kill as many people as they see fit.

And speaking of security-state puppets, CNN’s Jake Tapper, doing his part in the genocidal propaganda machine, has a question for you: What else is Israel supposed to do?  “They hear the calls for a ceasefire,” he drones at his viewers. “And they see no parades for the return of the hostages.” So they have no other choice but to bomb the buildings that the hostages are in.   With all this infuriating, oppressive talk drenching the entire corporate media landscape, who better to tell these propagandists where to shove it than Useful Idiots-favorite Norman Finkelstein.  https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/john-kirby-has-no-tears-and-no-red

2023-11-09 ‘No Possibility’ of Gaza Cease-Fire, Biden Says as 500+ Former Staffers Demand One      “As the president of the United States, you have power to change the course of history, and the responsibility to save lives right now,” the staffers wrote.

U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters Thursday that there is “no possibility” of a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, a remark that came as hundreds of his former 2020 campaign staffers released an open letter urging him to support a cease-fire or be complicit in genocide.   Asked about the chances of a cease-fire in Gaza as he left the White House for a trip to Illinois, the president responded, “None.”

Biden said he has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a “pause” of longer than three days, but Netanyahu has thus far refused. Earlier Thursday, the White House announced that Israel has agreed to allow daily four-hour pauses in parts of northern Gaza, which is currently encircled by Israeli troops. https://www.commondreams.org/news/no-possibility-of-gaza-cease-fire-biden-says-as-500-former-staffers-demand-one

2023-11-09 Contradicting Biden, US Official Says Gaza Death Toll May Be ‘Even Higher’ Than Reported     Contradicting her bosses in the Biden administration who have rejected official Palestinian casualty reports, a high-ranking U.S. State Department official on Wednesday said the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza may be “even higher” than reported—an assessment that came during a congressional hearing interrupted by peace activists.

“In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited. We’ll know only after the guns fall silent.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-death-toll-2666221271

2023-11-07 Progressive Leaders Warn Biden’s Support for Gaza ‘Slaughter’ Risks Millions of Young Votes     “Every day Biden chooses to fund genocide, he loses support,” said Sunrise Movement.   The leaders of youth-led progressive groups on Tuesday published an open letter warning U.S. President Joe Biden that his administration’s staunch support for Israel’s war on Gaza—which many experts say may be genocidal—could cost him millions of young votes in next year’s presidential election.

“We mobilized the record youth turnout in 2020 that pushed your ticket over the finish line in key swing states. Many of us worked to provide the critical source of support for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections that prevented the Red Wave. We have been preparing to mobilize the youth vote again as you face your reelection,” wrote the campaigners—who include leaders of groups like March for Our Lives, Gen Z for Change, and Sunrise Movement.

  “We share your conviction that the 2024 election will be one of the most important in American history,” the letter states. “We write to you to issue a very stark and unmistakable warning: You and your administration’s stance on Gaza risks millions of young voters staying home or voting third party next year. We are pleading with you to use every tool available to you to broker a cease-fire, now, and to revive the peace process.”    https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-gaza-2024

2023-11-03 “Wealthy American Women Are The Real Victims Of Hamas” – Joe Biden    Joe Biden has been unabashedly behind Israel in the current conflict with Hamas in Gaza, and calls in to The Jimmy Dore Show to explain why. Palestinians lie about civilian deaths, he tells Jimmy, campus antisemitism is a huge problem and he feels he needs to align himself with Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman because wealthy white women are the real victims of Hamas.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd0ZMFamO8&t=114s

2023-10-30 Biden Is a Genocide Denier and the “Enabler in Chief” for Israel’s Ongoing War Crimes    For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza.   The same crucial standards that fully condemned Hamas’s murders of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 should apply to Israel’s ongoing murders that have already taken the lives of at least several times as many Palestinian civilians. And Israel is just getting started.

“We need an immediate ceasefire,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote in an email Saturday evening, “but the White House and Congress continue to unconditionally support the Israeli government’s genocidal actions.”   That unconditional support makes Biden and the vast majority of Congress directly complicit with mass murder and genocide, defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The definition clearly fits the words and deeds of Israel’s leaders.https://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/3226-biden-is-a-genocide-denier-and-the-enabler-in-chief-for-israels-ongoing-war-crimes

2023-10-27 Biden Loses Democratic Support With Israel Backing     The Biden administration has asked Congress for $14 billion in additional military aid to Israel, despite warnings he and other officials could be rendering themselves complicit in genocide.  

A new Gallup survey shows that U.S. President Joe Biden’s approval rating among Democrats has fallen by 11 percentage points this month, a possible indication that his unconditional support for Israel as it carries out massacres in the Gaza Strip is angering part of his base.   In September, 86 percent of Democrats approved of Biden’s job performance. But between October 2 and October 23, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats has fallen to 75 percent, according to Gallup—the lowest level of his presidency.   Megan Brenan, a research consultant at Gallup, argued the survey results released on Thursday suggest that “Biden’s immediate and decisive show of support for Israel following the October 7 attacks by Hamas appears to have turned off some in his own party.”  https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/27/biden-loses-democratic-support-with-israel-backing/

2023-10-27 Behind Biden’s shift on Israel-Hamas war – Gaza deaths, international pressure    But a rapidly rising Palestinian death toll, the difficulty of freeing hostages held by Hamas and an increasingly vocal outcry from Arab nations, European allies and some Americans at home, have pushed Biden’s team to support a humanitarian pause to Israel’s attacks and focus on getting aid to Palestinians, say multiple sources inside the administration and out.

A White House official said the shift in tone was based on “the facts on the ground” in Gaza with a humanitarian crisis worsening and the Biden team’s “conversations with countries around the world.”    There has been a tug of war behind the scenes among Biden and his advisers about the US message, said one former official who is in touch with current officials.   

The shift followed a plea from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for civilians to be protected and increasingly desperate appeals from U.N. organizations to allow in aid.   The US revised its own U.N. resolution from a focus on Israel’s right to defend itself to include calls for all measures, specifically to include humanitarian pauses, to allow unhindered humanitarian access of aid.

During Blinken’s six-day trip, the death toll in Gaza soared from Israeli air strikes and concerns grew about food and water. Every Arab leader Blinken met in the region pressed him to urgently find a solution to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/behind-biden-s-shift-on-israel-hamas-war-gaza-deaths-international-pressure/ar-AA1iVAFn

2023-10-26 Biden Accused of ‘Genocide Denial’ After Casting Doubt On Civilian Death Toll in Gaza   Palestinian officials, U.N. experts, and even Israeli media say nearly 7,000 men, women, and children have been killed by Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling. 

Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon White House press conference, Biden said that “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”   “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” the president continued. “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Responding to Biden’s remarks, Palestinian American poet, author, and activist Remi Kanazi said: “Genocide denial has a long sordid history. Israel and Joe Biden know exactly what they are doing when they play down the death toll in Gaza.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-death-toll

2023-10-25 Biden’s Gaza “Aid” Plan a Fig Leaf for Genocide    The Biden administration on Wednesday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver urgently needed aid to Gaza.  But it put forward its own bogus “aid” plan that amounts to nothing more than “humanitarian” window dressing for Israel’s genocidal, US-backed bombing campaign.  

The resolution introduced by Brazil “called for humanitarian access to Gaza and protection of civilians” and “condemned the Hamas attack on Israel” on 7 October, The New York Times reported.   Majed Bamya, a diplomat representing the Palestinian Authority at the UN, said that Brazil’s “draft resolution was biased, politicized, failed to acknowledge Palestinian victims and the Israeli indiscriminate attacks against them, failed to call for a ceasefire, all to avoid a US veto.”  “It was just vetoed nevertheless,” Bamya added.   The US cast its veto, according to the Times, “because the US wanted to give diplomacy a chance as President Biden was in Israel and because it did not state that Israel has the right to defend itself.”   https://blackagendareport.com/news/260/47/Bidens-Gaza-Aid-Plan-a-Fig-Leaf-for-Genocide

2023-10-19 Biden Visits Israel to Oversee Humanitarian Aid to Palestinians     US President Joe Biden travelled to Israel on Wednesday amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. This is the first time a sitting president has visited Israel during a war. The terror group is said to be holding 199 hostages – men, women, and children – including approximately 13 Americans.   Biden on Wednesday pledged his support for Israel during his trip to Tel Aviv and said that while America stood by during the Holocaust, this time, America has Israel’s back.   At the same time, Biden was in Israel to ensure the safe passage of Palestinian civilians and to ensure they are able to receive humanitarian aid.https://www.activistpost.com/2023/10/biden-visits-israel-to-oversee-humanitarian-aid-to-palestinians.html

2023-10-18 WHAT IS BIDEN TELLING BIBI?   The White House and Central Intelligence Agency are again at odds, as they have been during Ukraine’s losing war with Russia, over the facts on the ground as President Joe Biden suddenly decided to fly again to Israel, supposedly at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered Israeli prime minister.   https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/what-is-biden-telling-bibi

2023-10-12 Biden lied about seeing photos of beheaded Israeli children    The White House confirmed on Wednesday evening that President Joe Biden’s claim that he had seen photos of Israeli children beheaded by Hamas fighters is false.  “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said to leaders of US Jewish organizations at the White House on Wednesday evening.  The president was echoing lurid claims by the Israeli government that women and children had been beheaded by Hamas fighters who took over an Israeli settlement across the boundary from Gaza in recent days.

But the administration quickly backtracked on the president’s seeming confirmation of a story Israel has been using to justify its ongoing mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.  “A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” The Washington Post reported. “The president based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman and media reports from Israel, according to the White House.”     https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-lied-about-seeing-photos-beheaded-israeli-children

2023-10-10 Univ. of MD Prof. Shibley Telhami to President Biden: Value Palestinian Life as Well as Israeli Life   As we continue to cover Israel’s war on Gaza, we speak with Middle East scholar Shibley Telhami, who says this latest violence is likely to have a major impact on the wider region, especially if other actors like Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters get involved in the conflict. He says U.S. President Joe Biden’s support for Israel following the Hamas attack on Saturday was understandable, but that focus must shift to finding a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “This is not a military challenge,” says Telhami. “This is a political problem, and the occupation has to be addressed.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10/shibley_telhami_israel_hamas_war_region

2023-02-22 By Caving to Israel, Biden Opens the Door to War With Iran      U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Sunday that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back” — a thinly veiled reference to military action.

These comments do not appear to be outliers. After Israel struck a defense compound in Iran on January 29, the Biden administration uncharacteristically hinted to reporters that the Israeli operation was part of a new joint effort by the U.S. and Israel to contain Tehran’s nuclear and military ambitions. When Secretary of State Tony Blinken was asked about it a day later, he offered no criticism and no concern for the destabilizing potential of the strikes, let alone a condemnation. Instead, he offered what amounts to a defense and justification of the Israeli strike: “[It is] very important that we continue to deal with and work against as necessary the various actions that Iran has engaged in throughout the region and beyond that threaten peace and security.”      A senior Biden administration official tells me that this does not signify a major shift in policy, but, without a public walk-back, such assurances leave much to be desired. From George W. Bush to Barack Obama to even Donald Trump, the U.S. government has sought to prevent Israel from bombing Iran since Washington risked getting sucked into that war — and the end result would most likely be a severely destabilized Middle East and an Iran with a nuclear weapon. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-biden-war-iran

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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

BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (also see Israel Boycott)

Updated 2024-07-15

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions    In 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations issued a historic, rights-based call to the international community for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel and institutions complicit in its oppressive policies towards Palestinians until it complies with international law and ensures freedom, justice, and equality.

USCPR endorsed the Palestinian call for BDS shortly after it was issued in July 2005. Academic and cultural boycott were endorsed in 2009. Active campaigns in the US include those targeting Ahava, Airbnb, Ben & Jerry’s, G4S, HP, Jewish National Fund, Re/Max, Sabra Hummus, and SodaStream. Divestment campaigns are happening in churches, campuses, local city councils, and beyond, and have already won more than 250 victories in the United States alone. Here’s a list of victories!    https://uscpr.org/activist-resource/boycott-divestment-and-sanctions/

Israel Anti-Boycott Act, H.R. 6940   was introduced again in March 2022. Versions of this bill have been introduced and did not pass in previous Congresses (116th Congress, H.R. 5595; 115th Congress, S. 720). The bill criminalizes participating in boycotts of Israel, specifically banning U.S. organizations and institutions from complying with boycotts of Israel imposed by international organizations, such as the UN or the EU. It also prohibits supplying information for the U.N. Human Rights Council database for companies contributing to illegal Israeli settlement expansion. The bill is not currently expected to come up for a vote.

The Combating BDS act of 2021, S. 2119, attempts to authorize state and local laws that prohibit state contracts with organizations engaging in BDS campaigns. Many of these kinds of local laws have been found unconstitutional and blocked by courts. The bill only has two cosponsors and is not currently expected to come up for a vote.     https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6940?r=1&s=2

We Have a Right to Boycott for Justice – USCPR   In the face of both rising justice movements and a rising right wing, defending our right to boycott for justice is vital. There are regularly various bills proposed in Congress that limit the right to boycott, or criminalize solidarity with the Palestinian people through other means. See below for an overview on different legislation from the current 117th Congress, as well as campaigns from the 116th Congress.   https://uscpr.org/campaigns/right-to-boycott/

2024-02-04 ‘Divestment from Israel’ – Palestinian, Jewish Students Launch Hunger Strike at Brown University    The group, consisting of 19 students, including Palestinians, Jews, and others, vows to continue the strike until the university takes action to promote an immediate and permanent ceasefire.   Their key demand is the introduction of a divestment resolution during the upcoming meeting of the university’s highest governing body, the Corporation of Brown University. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/divestment-from-israel-palestinian-jewish-students-launch-hunger-strike-at-brown-university/

2021-12-24 Wadie Said on the New McCarthyism   People in the U.S., the story goes, value few things more than individual freedom and money. So you’d think the way an individual uses their money would be sacrosanct. A sign of where we’re at are currently congressional efforts to put people in prison, and fine them millions of dollars, for choosing not to buy products from countries that are not declared “official enemies” by, well, presumably whoever’s in the White House at the moment. The anti-boycott measure the House Foreign Affairs Committee is pushing may never see daylight, of course, but it indicates a willingness by some in elected office to use state power to silence and sanction anyone using their voice in dissent of official actions — in this one case, of people critical of Israel’s ongoing mass murder and displacement of Palestinians.

The work to shut down opposition to the siege of Gaza, and U.S. facilitation of it, reminds Americans of what it means when powerful institutions, including in the media, combine a decidedly selective understanding of free expression with a vehement desire to enforce it.

We talk about that with Wadie Said, professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, and author of the book Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions.    https://kpfa.org/episode/counterspin-december-24-2023/

2020-12-01 Silenced in Savannah: Journalist Abby Martin Challenges Georgia’s BDS “Gag Law”  Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that aims to end support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, was scheduled to give a keynote speech to the annual International Critical Media Literacy Conference that was to be held at Georgia Southern University on February 28 and 29, 2020. Her talk was canceled because she refused to sign a contract stating she would not support a boycott of Israel. Georgia, along with 27 other states, has enacted anti-boycott laws that prohibit state offices or agencies from doing business with any companies or individuals that boycott Israel, as teleSUR English reported. Eventually the conference at which Martin was to speak was called off entirely after numerous colleagues supported Martin in her refusal to sign the contractual pledge.

BDS is a global movement driven by citizen activists. It works to peacefully pressure corporations, universities, and cultural organizations to stop doing business with the state of Israel, with the goal of pressuring Israel to obey international law and respect the human rights of Palestinians.   https://www.projectcensored.org/24-silenced-in-savannah-journalist-abby-martin-challenges-georgias-bds-gag-law/

2020-03-10 The US Supreme Court Is Putting Israel’s Interests Before the First Amendment   On February 21, the United States Supreme Court revealed its cowardice when it refused to hear a case challenging an anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) law in Arkansas.

BDS is a movement led by Palestinians calling on people to boycott Israeli products, divest institutions from the State of Israel and companies that uphold the occupation of Palestine, and impose sanctions banning business with Israeli settlements and ending military trade with Israel. The Arkansas law prohibits public employees from engaging in BDS — despite the fact that economic boycotting is a form of freedom of speech.   

BDS, according to precedent, is protected by the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court refusing to hear the case allows the Arkansas law to stand. Although the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the decision does not equate to a precedent that this law is constitutional, it nevertheless runs the risk of passively giving the green light for similar legislation in the future. https://codepink.substack.com/p/the-us-supreme-court-is-putting-israels

2014-02-06 Resolution 42: Palestinian solidarity: support for the Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS)   The 29th World Congress of Public Services International (PSI), meeting in Durban, South Africa, on 27-30 November 2012 NOTES the following:

a) That Israel continues to ignore or flaunt UN resolutions aimed at reducing conflict, and continues to use lethal force and occupations of land to marginalise the Palestinian population in the region.

b) That Israel continues to be a major recipient of US arms and development aid despite the fact that it frequently and unapologetically transgresses international conventions.

c) That given the armaments and political support that Israel receives from the US and its allies, this Congress rejects the notion that there is an equal responsibility between Israel and the Palestinian people for the continuation of the crisis, and that the aggressive and divisive character of Israel and its occupation remain major stumbling blocks in arriving at a peaceful settlement.

d) That there is a growing opposition within Israel of those who are no longer prepared to support a military solution of the crisis, and within the broader Palestinian community of those who have rejected minority action in favour of building popular mass-based campaigns.

e) The courageous and vital role played by the PSI regional organisation in supporting independent and democratic trade unionism, and providing support for workers in struggle.

f) That in many parts of the world, an understanding of Israel being an apartheid state has gathered momentum and not least in South Africa where the characteristics of an apartheid state, and the implications for the oppressed are understood, and not evoked without serious consideration of the facts.

g) The launch of the BDS campaign in Palestine, and the broad global support that it has gained over the last two years from a very wide range of organisations including trade unions.This Congress further NOTES:

h) That one of the principal aims of the BDS campaign is to draw attention to the systemic discrimination that takes place against Palestinians by Israel, and which have earned it the dubious title of being an apartheid state.

i) That attempts to impose a solution of any description on the peoples of Israel and Palestine are unlikely to succeed as long as there continues to be widespread discrimination and manipulation of the Palestinian people, including attempts to marginalise them

.j) That only a democratic, inclusive and non-sectarian approach can provide a lasting peace to the conflict, and this is conditional on the dismantling of all oppressive instruments, including legislative, military, political, social, economic and political barriers. At the very least this must involve:

Recognising the fundamental rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties;

An immediate end to Israel’s illegal settlements, and blockade on Gaza.

This Congress therefore RESOLVES:To endorse the BDS Campaign and support its associated activities including the annual Israeli Apartheid Week.

To share the activities of PSI affiliates in this regard, including campaigns to make every municipality/government department an Israeli Apartheid-Free Zone.

To continue to give maximum support to our PSI regional office (for North Africa and the Middle East) and its work to build representative, independent and democratic unions throughout the region including in Israel and Palestine.

To call upon all governments to acknowledge the divisive nature of the Israeli state and to argue for its isolation until it is prepared to dismantle its apartheid infrastructure in favour of democratisation and commit to abiding by UN resolutions.

To raise the demand in trade union and governmental forums for stopping the arming of the Israeli state by the United States of America and its allies.

To continue to speak out against all forms of discrimination including anti-semitism, islamophobia and other sectarian sentiments in favour of a secular and tolerant approach to the crisis in the region.

See all Congress resolutions including the Program of Action and the Constitution.  https://publicservices.international/resources/news/resolution-42-palestinian-solidarity-support-for-the-boycott-disinvestment-and-sanctions-campaign-bds?

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