progressiveissuesblog

Hamas – Israel Connection

Updated 2023-12-08

2023-10-31 For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces   For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.   The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.    Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.  Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.   Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.    https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

2023-10-24 THE MYSTERIES OF OCTOBER 7   Gaza and Hamas—the Islamist group that has led the territory since 2007—remain murky, confounding subjects today. Why did Hamas stage an early morning raid on October 7 in what turned out to be a series of unguarded kibbutzim in Israel south? Why were only a few Israelis Israeli soldiers on duty that morning?

We in the media do not know the full story. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is saying nothing about Israel’s failure to defend its citizens, although a number of leading generals have publicly apologized for their lapse, and Hamas has insisted that the mission it authorized was solely aimed at the capture of a few Israeli soldiers to be used for a possible prisoner exchange. Hamas operatives began the operation early on the morning of October 7 by blowing up the unguarded fences separating Gaza from Israel.

Hamas also has claimed that the bulk of the mayhem was caused by other terrorist groups and the aggrieved citizens of Gaza who flooded across the downed gates and fences, with no Israeli soldiers to stop them. It has been widely reported that Israel, at the instigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was financing Hamas, via funds supplied by Qatar, in the belief that a strong Hamas would make a two-state solution, long sought by some in Washington, unlikely.

One serious complication that has not been publicly discussed since the October 7 attack is that the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, were not the sole attackers or collectors of hostages on a day in which there was no Israeli Army presence in the kibbutzim and villages under attack for at least eight hours.

“We know,” the American official told me, “that the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade participated.” He was referring to a coalition of Palestinian armed groups that have been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel, the European Union, and a number of other nations worldwide. (Hamas has also been designated a terrorist group by the US and the EU.)

“The goal of the Palestinian operation,” he told me, “was exactly what happened—a shocking and inspired military operation that humiliated the Israelis and shook them to their foundation. Hamas military commanders had a map of bases [inside Israel] and wanted to take computer servers with all of the potentially compromising information they contained and would probably have sent them to Iran for analysis.”

Another Hamas goal, I was told, was to take Israeli Army prisoners and force Israel to trade for the release of thousands of Gazan and West Bank prisoners, break the siege of Gaza, and continue to compete with the Palestine Liberation Organization that was initially designated by the 1993 Oslo Accords to control the West Bank and Gaza. “A further bonus of a successful attack,” the expert said, “would have been to stifle the ongoing normalization talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel.” 

The expert said that the critical issue for the Israeli military today, in the view of the Hamas leadership, is that a planned Hamas commando raid aimed at seizing IDF soldiers “turned into a prison break.” News of the unchallenged penetration of the initial Hamas attackers quickly spread throughout Gaza, and spontaneous groups of Gazans and hastily formed martyr hit teams poured through the downed fence. The result, said the expert, turned “the operation into a catastrophic success.”

There are scores of videos providing evidence of what clearly was a fly-by-night attack that succeeded because of a stunning Israeli Defense Force failure that thus far has not led to the punishment of a single Israeli army officer. That possibility—that the initially limited Hamas goal turned into the horror that took place essentially because of the IDF failure—has yet to be acknowledged by Israel’s military and political leadership.    (for full article will require membership)  https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-mysteries-of-october-7?

2023-10-20 “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/divide_and_rule_how_israel_helped

2023-10-09 Wikileaks Cable = Hamas and IDF    Remember when Wikileaks revealed cables indicating Hamas might be working with/for the IDF to further Israel state policy?  👇🏻

HAMAS–RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

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20.  MANY WEST BANKERS BELIEVE THAT ISRAEL ACTIVELY SUPPORTS HAMAS IN AN EFFORT TO DIVIDE PALESTINIANS AND WEAKEN THE INTIFADA.  THEY POINT TO THE FACT THAT HAMAS OPERATIVES ACT BOLDLY IN DISTRIBUTING THEIR LEAFLETS. SHOPKEEPERS IN JERUSALEM AND NABLUS REPORT THAT, WHEREAS UNLU LEAFLETS ARE DISTRIBUTED SECRETLY FOR FEAR OF ISRAELI SECURITY FORCES, HAMAS OPERATIVES WALK INTO SHOPS AND PRESENT THEIR LEAFLETS DIRECTLY TO THE OWNERS.  MAYOR FREIJ OF BETHLEHEM CLAIMS THAT MEMBERS OF SOME WELL KNOWN FAMILIES WHO COLLABORATE WITH ISRAELI OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN SEEN AMONG HAMAS STREET GANGS IN BETHLEHEM.  FURTHERMORE, DESPITE MASSIVE ARRESTS–AND THE PUBLIC IDENTITY OF MANY MB LEADERS–RELATIVELY FEW HAMAS LEADERS HAVE BEEN DETAINED.  IN RECENT WEEKS, FUNDAMENTALIST LEADERS HAVE GIVEN INTERVIEWS TO ISRAELI PUBLICATIONS THAT WOULD HAVE LANDED SECULARIST LEADERS IN DETENTION.  WE BELIEVE THAT, WHILE ISRAELI FORCES MAY BE TURNING A BLIND EYE TO HAMAS ACTIVITIES, THERE IS INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE TO CONCLUDE THAT ISRAEL IS PROVIDING ACTIVE SUPPORT. Source: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/88JERUSALEM3168_a.html#efmDRFDi0

EARLIER IN THE UPRISING, SOME ISRAELI OCCUPATION OFFICIALS INDICATED THAT HAMAS SERVED AS A USEFUL COUNTER TO THE SECULAR ORGANIZATIONS LOYAL TO THE PLO.  A NUMBER OF PALESTINIANS LOYAL TO THE PLO ALLEGED THAT THE IDF WAS USING HAMAS FOR SUCH A PURPOSE.  Source: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89TELAVIV14032_a.html#efmAqcAue

2023-10-08 For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces       The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from.    https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

2014-07-30 How Israel helped create Hamas   It also obscures Hamas’s curious history. To a certain degree, the Islamist organization whose militant wing has rained rockets on Israel the past few weeks has the Jewish state to thank for its existence. Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first intifada, or uprising, with a charter now infamous for its anti-Semitism and its refusal to accept the existence of the Israeli state. But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.

At the time, Israel’s main enemy was the late Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party, which formed the heart of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Fatah was secular and cast in the mold of other revolutionary, leftist guerrilla movements waging insurgencies elsewhere in the world during the Cold War. The PLO carried out assassinations and kidnappings and, although recognized by neighboring Arab states, was considered a terrorist organization by Israel; PLO operatives in the occupied territories faced brutal repression at the hands of the Israeli security state.

Meanwhile, the activities of Islamists affiliated with Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood were allowed in the open in Gaza — a radical departure from when the Strip was administered by the secular-nationalist Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egypt lost control of Gaza to Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which saw Israel also seize the West Bank. In 1966, Nasser had executed Sayyid Qutb, one of the Brotherhood’s leading intellectuals. The Israelis saw Qutb’s adherents in the Palestinian territories, including the wheelchair-bound Sheik Ahmed Yassin, as a useful counterweight to Arafat’s PLO.

“When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake,” one Israeli official who had worked in Gaza in the 1980s said in a 2009 interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Higgins. “But at the time nobody thought about the possible results.”  

Yassin’s Mujama would become Hamas, which, it can be argued, was Israel’s Taliban: an Islamist group whose antecedents had been laid down by the West in a battle against a leftist enemy. Israel jailed Yassin in 1984 on a 12-year sentence after the discovery of hidden arms caches, but he was released a year later. The Israelis must have been more worried about other enemies.    Eventually, the tables turned. After the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel’s formal recognition of the PLO and the start of what we now know as the peace process, Hamas was the Israelis’ bete noire. Hamas refused to accept Israel or renounce violence and became perhaps the leading institution of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, which, far beyond religious ideology, is the main reason for its continued popularity among Palestinians.

Yassin was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004. In 2007, after a legitimate Hamas election victory that rankled both the West and Fatah, the Islamist group took over Gaza — a move that led to strict Israeli blockades and the grinding cycle of conflict that is once more repeating itself.  https://archive.ph/oZ5oO#selection-449.0-449.30

2014-07-17 Pounding Gaza – World’s Largest Open-Air Prison   An already troubling humanitarian crisis has intensified with the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, an area about twice the size of the District of Columbia that has about three times as many residents (1.8 million). Israel has been using its highly touted precise missiles to hit numerous targets. This collective punishment, a war crime per se, wreaks havoc on civilians and their life-sustaining infrastructure.

That is only part of the continuing war against Gaza. For years, Israel has maintained a siege/blockade, restricting the importation of adequate food, medicine, water, electricity, construction materials and other necessities needed by the refugees in the world’s largest open-air prison. These daily deprivations have taken a deadly toll. Fatalities, sicknesses, untreated cancers have resulted. Half of the children are seriously malnourished due to the dire poverty associated with the Israeli air, land and sea encirclement. (There are even harsh restrictions on Gazan fishermen.)  

 Israel’s complex association with Hamas, the elected governors of Gaza, is rarely reported or discussed. First, the Israelis, with U.S. support, helped start Hamas over thirty years ago to counteract the influence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat. More recently, Israeli officials have been in regular communication with Hamas over the administrative details of the selective siege, custom duties and transfers of tax revenues by Israeli to pay for Hamas’ 40,000 public employees.

Even when open hostilities commence, the two adversaries remain in close communication to sense how far each can go, given their own internal political struggles, in the ensuing “lopsided battle,” as the New York Times calls it. Without any army, air force or navy, the Gazans have very limited military options. The Israelis have unlimited military options. The military invasion of the Palestinian enclave may unleash forces that may be uncontrollable and move Israel into a civilian catastrophe starting with no drinkable water and other human disasters.   In recent years, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have suffered at least four hundred times more civilian causalities – both fatalities and injuries—than Hamas has inflicted on the Israelis whose immensely powerful forces occupy, colonize, brutalize, and loot the land, water and people of the remaining 22% of Palestine that has not already been taken by Israel.   https://nader.org/2014/07/17/pounding-gaza-worlds-largest-open-air-prison/

2009-01-24 How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas   Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with “Yassins,” primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric.    

Last Saturday, after 22 days of war, Israel announced a halt to the offensive. The assault was aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from falling on Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a “determined and successful military operation.” More than 1,200 Palestinians had died. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.  

Since then, Hamas leaders have emerged from hiding and reasserted their control over Gaza. Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at a more durable truce are expected to start this weekend. President Barack Obama said this week that lasting calm “requires more than a long cease-fire” and depends on Israel and a future Palestinian state “living side by side in peace and security.”

A look at Israel’s decades-long dealings with Palestinian radicals — including some little-known attempts to cooperate with the Islamists — reveals a catalog of unintended and often perilous consequences. Time and again, Israel’s efforts to find a pliant Palestinian partner that is both credible with Palestinians and willing to eschew violence, have backfired. Would-be partners have turned into foes or lost the support of their people.  https://archive.ph/jxzhP#selection-1867.5-1867.37 

2004-09-13 Spotlight: Hamas      Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state in mandatory Palestine. The group is unlikely to moderate its platform or meaningfully participate in the peace process in the foreseeable future. Consequently, Hamas will continue to be a well-positioned obstacle to a lasting settlement in Palestine, and by extension, a danger to American interests in the region and beyond. The Israeli assassinations of senior leaders has both enraged and handicapped Hamas. Nevertheless, as two recent suicide bombings in Beersheba suggest, Hamas remains operationally resilient and determined to make its presence felt as Israel contemplates its “unilateral disengagement” from Gaza and areas of the West Bank. The popularity of Hamas among Palestinians continues to grow, and it is unclear how Israel ’s planned withdrawal will impact its base of support.

Hamas coalesced as an organization in 1987 during the first Intifada. Its birth posed a challenge to Israeli security as well as to the primacy of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Palestinian national movement. Hamas established itself as a militant and Islamic alternative to the PLO, expanding into the void left by the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon, its relative weakness in the occupied territories, and its subsequent participation in the peace process.

Hamas is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. The Islamic context of its platform has two important implications. First, it provides Hamas with an organic connection to Palestinian society that is not necessarily available to its secular counterparts. Second, it casts the struggle against Israel as jihad (holy struggle), insinuating a connection between the destruction of the Israeli state and religious devotion. This has locked Hamas into a doctrinal position that is difficult to modify for other than tactical reasons.    https://www.pogo.org/investigations/spotlight-hamas

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Genocide of Gaza Palestinians

Updated 2024-08-25

2024-07-09 Eyewitness To Genocide in Palestine  Today on the Show: The Haiti action center protests the reoccupation of Haiti by US supported and armed Kenyan troupes. Also,  Eyewitness to Genocide in Palestine; bay-area activists bare witness to the killing fields  https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-july-9-2024/

2024-08-22 “So Horrific”: Doctor Recounts Treating Patients in Gaza Injured in Massacres Enabled by U.S. Bombs     Tanya Haj-Hassan is a pediatric intensive care physician who has volunteered in Gaza multiple times over the past 10 months. She joins us to recount what she witnessed there and to explain why she is calling for an end to U.S. support for the Israeli military and the resumption of comprehensive humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Over the course of Israel’s assault, Haj-Hassan has treated victims of “massacre after massacre,” with injuries and casualties “enabled by American bombs.” She joins demands for Palestinian voices to be allowed to address the convention onstage and argues that Democratic Party leadership’s refusal is part of a systematic “process of dehumanization” targeting Palestinians.  Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsmOCcyl8Gs

2024-08-15 As Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000, Congress Urged to Block New Weapons to Israel      “U.S. arms transfers to Israel have fueled unimaginable suffering in Gaza, including staggering levels of civilian harm,” said one embargo advocate.  

As the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s 314-day assault on Gaza passed 40,000—a figure Palestinian and United Nations officials say is made up of mostly women and children and is likely a vast undercount—human rights groups this week decried the Biden administration’s approval of $20 billion worth of new weapons for Israel and renewed pleas for Congress to block further arms transfers to the nation’s far-right government. https://www.commondreams.org/news/arms-embargo-israel-congress 

2024-08-11 Palestinians Say US Responsible for Latest ‘Massacre’ of Children in Gaza    The office of the Palestinian Authority’s president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to ‘pieces,’ according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency’s spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration “responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel.”

Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its “blind support” to Israel “that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-responsible-for-gaza-massacre

2024–07-31 Unspeakable: We Are Swimming In A Pool of Blood     Unimaginably, Gazans continue to endure the atrocities of a heedless Israel: Strikes on schools that kill mostly children, polio-tainted sewage “everywhere,” catastrophic hunger, universal trauma, gutted hospitals, shattered families seeking small bodies rotting under rubble. To many, the ongoing savagery through 10 bloody months marks the moral deterioration of an Occupation increasingly acquiescent to the concept “there are certain groups of people who can be killed…They are not like us.”

While it’s tumbled off most front pages, Israel’s blithe defiance of both world censure and ICJ rulings goes on apace. This week, the U.N’s largest body of human rights experts hailed an earlier “historic” ICJ finding that Israel’s Occupation is “unlawful” and must end; they declared Palestinians’ right to “freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable,” adding, “Israel must stop acting as if uniquely above the law.” But that shift feels woefully distant in the wake of Netanyahu’s chilling, rabid avowal before Congress to press on until “total victory.”

Meanwhile, 86% of Gaza is under ever-unrolling evacuation orders, with thousands perpetually forced to uproot; 96% of Gazans face acute food shortages, with communities “wasting away” and children “sleeping hungry” while often going up to 3 days without food; and public health experts cite the “ticking time bomb” of a polio epidemic from overflowing sewage – “The smell is killing us, we are begging to be saved from the sewers” – along with soaring cases of hepatitis, dysentery, gastrointestinal disease and skin infections. https://www.commondreams.org/further/unspeakable-we-are-swimming-in-a-pool-of-blood   

2024-07-31 Report From Gaza Aid Agencies Shows ‘Catastrophe on an Entirely New Level’    Israeli attacks on relief workers and designated “humanitarian zones” in Gaza, as well its tight control over borders and repeated evacuation orders, have devastated the ability to deliver much-needed aid to residents of the beleaguered strip, 20 non-governmental organizations warned in a report released Tuesday.

Israel has now issued “evacuation orders” that cover 86% of the Gaza Strip’s land area, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This means that Gaza’s 2.1 million people are now expected to squeeze into only 14% of Gaza’s 141 square miles.

“We are doing everything we can to save children’s lives in Gaza, but our job becomes more and more challenging by the day,” said Jeremy Stoner, the Middle East regional director of Save the Children, one of the organizations behind the report. “Forcibly displacing civilians into areas that cannot accommodate them is causing a humanitarian catastrophe on an entirely new level.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/aid-agencies-gaza-catastrophe

 2024-7-30 Whoever Wins in November, Our Movement Must Make Palestine Nonnegotiable   While the world has become transfixed by the unfolding political crisis in the U.S. presidential election, Israel continues to lay waste to Gaza, expand settlements in the West Bank and massacre Palestinians in skyrocketing numbers.

In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Eman Abdelhadi — an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics — discusses the ceasefire negotiations, Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, the Palestinian resistance, the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the tasks of the Palestine solidarity movement.https://truthout.org/articles/whoever-wins-in-november-our-movement-must-make-palestine-nonnegotiable/

2024-06-15 America Crawls Further Into Global Isolation by Backing Gaza Genocide    Aside from supplying Israel with the needed weapons to conduct its crimes in the Strip, the U.S. has gone as far as threatening international legal and political bodies that tried to hold Israel accountable, thus ending the “extermination” of Palestinians in Gaza —a term used on May 20 by the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

Washington continues to behave in such a way despite the fact that Israel refuses to concede to a single U.S. demand or expectation regarding peace and negotiations.   Indeed, Israel’s political discourse is deeply invested in the language of genocide, while the Israeli military is actively carrying it out.

The West Bank, where the bulk of the Palestinian state would supposedly take shape, is experiencing its own upheaval. Violence there is unprecedented compared to recent decades. Across the West Bank, tens of thousands of illegal settlers are torching homes, cars, and attacking Palestinians with total impunity, in fact, often alongside the Israeli army.

Yet, despite the occasional gentle reprimand and ineffectual sanctions on a few settlers, Washington continues to stand firmly by its declared policy regarding the two states and all the rest. Not a single mainstream Israeli politician, certainly not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of extremists, is willing to entertain the very thought.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-isolation-gaza

2024-06-14 End the Israeli War on Gaza and Palestine   Eight months ago, Israel began a genocidal war against Gaza and the further increase of repression in the West Bank including thousands imprisoned, and expansion of the settlements there. Torture is commonplace of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank and especially of prisoners in Gaza. 90 per cent of the population of Gaza is hungry, famine is occurring.  Besides the 15,000 children killed, almost all Palestinian babies and young children are likely to have permanent health problems if they live from Israel’s systematically starving them and destroying the health care and educational system. Over a million Palestinians were forced to move to Rafah in southern Gaza fleeing their homes beginning May 6th.  A million Palestinians in Rafah have been forced to flee again, under the threat of immediate murder by Israel, with no safe place to go to, nor to a place that can sustain life.

Not only is the United States government complicit with and participating in Israel’s genocidal war but also many U.S corporations.     https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/14/end-the-israeli-war-on-gaza-and-palestine/

2024-04-12 ‘Genocidal Actions’ Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and US Weapons Flow      A week after Israeli officials promised the Biden administration they would open a border crossing and a port to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, relief organizations and the United Nations reported Friday that life-saving supplies are still being blocked, and warned that the White House must take more decisive action to force Israel to stop starving Palestinians.

The U.N. reported that just 212 aid trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday, far lower than the 467 reported by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who promised to “flood Gaza with aid” after a tense phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden last Thursday.

But as The Guardian reported Friday, the Ashdod port has not been opened yet, and instead of opening the Erez crossing last Sunday as promised, Israel has opened another crossing into northern Gaza but has not yet allowed U.N. agencies to use it.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-still-blocking-aid

2024-04-30 The student movement for justice in Palestine is exploding peacefully across America    Today on the Show: The student movement for justice in Palestine is exploding peacefully across America, despite  a violent police crack down on several campuses; we’ll feature live reports from New York City and Los Angles. Also Ziad Abbas is back for a frontline update on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the west bank: And we’ll also have a rafa update on the threatened israeli invasion https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-april-30-2024/   

2024-04-07 World Marks Six Months of ‘Relentless Death and Destruction’ in Gaza      Peace and human rights advocates on Sunday renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an increase in lifesaving humanitarian aid for its starving people as the embattled enclave marked six months since the start of Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the October 7 attacks.

In six months of bombardment by air, land, and sea following the Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,100 people in Israel—with over 240 people taken hostage—Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 116,000 Palestinians, including people believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Gazans—especially children—are starving to death as Israel severely restricts the amount of aid allowed to enter the strip. Women are “burying their newborns every day” as they have nothing to feed them.

Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, perhaps permanently, in what many Palestinians and international observers are calling a new Nakba, the ethnic cleansing catastrophe perpetrated by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Gaza’s infrastructure has been obliterated, with reconstruction expected to cost $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-genocide-2667714326

2024-03-19 Cornel West slams Joe Biden’s Gaza policy: ‘Most of our politicians are cowards’ | Real Talk Online     Our guest this week is US independent presidential candidate Cornel West, and we ask him why he called Joe Biden a “war criminal”.   He also explains why he feels Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a “gangster”, why Biden’s Gaza policy makes him a “hypocrite” and how Arab-American voters will turn their backs on him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRz5Bjv9KKM

2024-03-22 On the Blood of the Murdered Mothers and Children   Cruelty upon cruelty: Today is Mother’s Day in Gaza, and across the Arab world. Still the slaughter, the wounding, trauma, hunger go on. Israel has killed over 12,000 Palestinian children, with many thousands more injured or orphaned ; each day, 37 more mothers are killed. Those who survive battle to keep their children alive, and mourn those they’ve lost. “The children are always ours,” said James Baldwin. But in Gaza, says one mother, “Today, like all mothers, I feel broken.”

This year, the Mother’s Day marked each March 21 is, for Gazans, a bloody travesty. The numbers still numb: More than 31,988 people have been killed in the ongoing) Israeli assault; another 74,188 have been injured, including over 32,800 children and 25,000 women, and 25,000 children have lost one or both parents.   https://www.commondreams.org/further/on-the-blood-of-the-murdered-mothers-and-children

2024-03-12 We Need Feminism Without Condescension to Respond With Clarity to the Gaza Genocide     I looked up the definition of “condescending” for this, just to see if it would provide anything I didn’t already know. What we immediately assume the word to mean if we have heard it before is something like patronizing, or talking down to people. But what is also included in the definition of condescension is “disdain.” Disdain is the feeling that someone is unworthy of your respect.

We know how mainstream Western feminists talk about Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim women. Examples include insisting, either directly or indirectly, that war and occupation will help them somehow or that their oppressors treat women better than they do. “Feminists” like Tammy Duckworth or Nancy Pelosi will always agree that Israel treats women great, as if Palestinian women who are murdered and abused at the hands of Israel don’t exist at all. The subtext of this being that Palestinian women couldn’t possibly know what’s good for them. That’s disdain. That’s not feminism.

Having a perspective on feminism that rejects condescension allows us to avoid the same pitfalls so many people didn’t when the U.S. was talking about invading Afghanistan under the guise of “liberating women.”

When The New York Times came out with a story about mass rape on October 7, we were able to ask, “Where is your evidence?” And we were right to ask those questions, right? And we should be asking a lot of questions when the intent of the story was to galvanize feminists in the West to support the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. They didn’t need evidence. They just needed Western women to consent to dropping bombs on Palestinian women to exact revenge for something that they completely made up. It demanded we value Israeli women over Palestinian women because that’s what they do.

Feminism that is free of condescension allows us to act with clarity in these moments. It allows us to act with humility. It allows us to be in genuine solidarity with women all over the world and not just in our hyper-specific contexts   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/feminism-without-condescension-gaza

2024-03-08 With Genocide in Gaza, the Word ‘Never’ Has Been Stripped From ‘Never Again’   The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.

Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/genocide-gaza-never-again

2024-03-07 Media Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain       America’s corporate media serves as a key cog in the machinery of genocide.

Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.

As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-malpractice-gaza-genocide

2024-03-06 Why Biden is hiding   Biden’s team has taken to hosting smaller events and keeping locations a secret until the President arrives, lest he be heckled by pro-Palestinian protesters — and they’re reportedly considering hiring a private company to screen attendees ahead of a major fundraiser this month.

The facade of unquestioning U.S. support for the Israeli government is crumbling, thanks in large part to the immense pressure being exerted by the Palestine solidarity movement.    Biden knows U.S. complicity in the Gaza genocide could cost him the 2024 election, and he’s willing to do just about anything to save face — except cut off the flow of U.S. dollars to Israel’s genocidal military.   https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/03/06/why-biden-is-hiding/

2024-02-08 Instead of Diplomacy and Peace, US Chooses to Back Genocide and War   The horror Americans feel at the plight of people in Gaza and the U.S. role in it is a shocking new low in this disconnect between the humanity of ordinary Americans and the insatiable ambitions of their undemocratic leaders. 

At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been touring the shrinking number of capitals in the region where leaders will still talk to him, playing the United States’ traditional role as a dishonest broker between Israel and its neighbors, in reality partnering with Israel to offer the Palestinians impossible, virtually suicidal terms for a ceasefire in Gaza.  

The position of the United States and Israel today is that ending a massacre that has already killed more than 27,700 people is not a serious option, even after the International Court of Justice has ruled it a plausible case of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and drafted the Genocide Convention from his adopted home in New York City, must be turning in his grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery.

The United States’ support for Israel’s genocidal policies now goes way beyond Palestine, with the U.S. expansion of the war to Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to punish other countries and forces in the region for intervening to defend or support the Palestinians.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/genocide-ceasefire-war-middle-east  

2024-02-08 Expanded Rafah Assault Would Be ‘Stain on Israel’ and Its Backers: Refugee Group     Accusing Israel of waging war on a “gigantic refugee camp” where more than 1 million Palestinians have moved to escape air and ground attacks over the last four months, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council on Thursday called on the Israel Defense Forces to stop its shelling of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and halt further plans for an intensified assault.

With Israeli military officials reporting that they have not devised a plan to protect civilian lives in Rafah, NRC Secretary-General Jan Egeland said that a ground offensive in the city—previously designated a “safe zone” where more than 1 million Palestinians were told to go as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched air and ground attacks across the enclave—would be a “stain on both Israel and those nations providing arms,” including the United States.

“It would be a bloodbath, and among children and women, among the innocent,” Egeland told CNN, adding that reports of Hamas’ tactic of “blending in with civilians… does not in any way justify indiscriminate attacks.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-attacks-rafah

2024-02-05 Palestinian Groups Warn of Catastrophe as Israeli Forces Close in on Rafah     A coalition of Palestinian human rights groups issued a joint statement Monday warning of impending catastrophe as Israel’s military signaled plans to expand its ground assault to Rafah, the small city near Gaza’s border with Egypt where hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge from Israeli bombs.   The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and Al-Haq appealed to the international community to intervene and prevent an attack on Rafah, warning that an Israeli incursion “would significantly exacerbate the ongoing genocidal acts perpetrated by the Israeli military and authorities against the Palestinian population in Gaza and blatantly violates the provisional measures order issued by the International Court of Justice on 26 January 2024.”

Roughly half of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million is currently in Rafah, with many living in makeshift tents and struggling to survive without adequate food, medicine, and clean water. The city is so crowded that humanitarian relief officials have said there is just one toilet for every 500 people, conditions that are accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/rafah-gaza-israel

2024-02-04 Death Toll Rises as Israel Continues to Target Homes, Besiege Hospitals    According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 27,238 Palestinians have been killed, and 66,452 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.   Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.https://www.palestinechronicle.com/death-toll-rises-as-israel-continues-to-target-homes-besiege-hospitals/

2024-02-04    8,000 Missing, Presumed Dead – Gaza Genocide Death Toll Updated     The Gaza Ministry of Health reported that the death toll resulting from the ongoing Israeli genocide on the enclave has climbed to 27,365, the majority of whom are women and children. The number of injured individuals has also surged to 66,663.

Medical sources further revealed that at least 8,000 people are unaccounted for, with many of them still trapped under rubble or scattered in the streets, as Israeli occupation forces are blocking access of ambulance crews and civil defense teams to many areas across the enclave.

Worse still, the aggression has resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly 2 million people from all of the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.  https://www.palestinechronicle.com/8000-missing-presumed-dead-gaza-genocide-death-toll-updated/

2024-01-24 In Gaza We Are Witnessing the 21st Century Version of How the West Was Won     At least 25,000 Gazans, the vast majority children and women, have been killed or wounded. Twenty-five thousand is one-in-a-hundred Gazans and just over 20 times the number of Israelis killed in October. If we translate that proportionately into U.S. numbers, it’s the equivalent of more than 3 million U.S. people. Three percent of all Gazans have been either killed or wounded, and no end is in sight.  

 As a Jew, it is also painful to recognize, as I have for many years, that deep and profound Zionist racism lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and today’s genocidal war in Gaza.   Many who escaped European pogroms, survived the Holocaust and Soviet antisemitism, and the banalities of American life carried Euro-American racism and colonial values with them to Israel and to the lands and people conquered in 1967.   

That said, as Thomas Friedman has repeatedly written in The New York Times these last three months, there were other alternative responses that would have reinforced Israeli security and allowed it to retain the moral high ground. Instead, Netanyahu and the most right-wing and racist government in Israel’s history opted with to destroy Palestinian Gaza. Israeli General and War Cabinet member Yoav Gallant’s description of Palestinians as “human animals” announced the IDF’s racist, genocidal campaign. And as the South Africans documented in the Hague, similar expressions of racism and commitments to elimination have flowed from the mouths of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, other cabinet members, military leaders, and military units, as well as in the Israeli press.

One possible Netanyahu escape hatch is to widen the war in order to bring the U.S. more deeply into it on Israel’s behalf. This helps us to explain the drone assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards intelligence chief in Damascus and the ultimatum Israel has delivered to the Lebanese government to contain Hezbollah in Lebanon, or else.  Would that it was otherwise. President Joe Biden appears to be falling toward Netanyahu’s trap as our president widens the conflict with an unwinnable war against the Houthis in Yemen.

There is of course a way out: Biden could and should declare, “Enough!”, cease providing diplomatic cover in the United Nations and elsewhere for the IDF’s genocide, and end the deluge of weapons flowing to the IDF that makes the Gaza massacre possible.  These and the firm resolve that constructive U.S.-Israel relations depend on an Israeli commitment to engage in credible diplomacy for either a two-state solution or another political framework that guarantees Palestinians national self-determination and the full exercise of their human rights.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-21st-century-colonialism

2024-01-15 Day 101: 24,100 martyred, 60,834 injured     The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported on Monday that the death toll resulting from the Israeli genocidal war on the Strip has reached 24,100 martyrs and 60,834 injuries after 101 days of of war.   This death toll, however, remains provisional, as thousands of Palestinians remain missing or under the rubble since October 7.   The ministry stated that, in the past 24 hours, the Israeli occupation committed 12 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 132 martyrs and 252 injuries.    

Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, told Al Mayadeen that the Israeli occupation is strangling the health system in Gaza, with most health centers going out of service.  https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/day-101–24-100-martyred–60-834-injured    

2023-11-25 Justifying the Unjustifiable in Palestine     Ralph is joined by author and human rights activist Miko Peled. They discuss the excuses that Israel uses to defend the atrocities they commit against Palestinians, and the truth behind all the propaganda.

 Miko Peled is an author, writer, speaker, and human rights activist living in the United States. He is considered by many to be one of the clearest voices calling for justice in Palestine, support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the creation of a single democracy with equal rights in all of historic Palestine. Mr. Peled was born and raised in Jerusalem. His grandfather was a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and his father was a general in the 1967 war.   https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/justifying-the-unjustifiable-in-palestine

2023-11-23 “Text-Book Case of Genocide”: Top U.N. Official Craig Mokhiber Resigns, Denounces Israeli Assault on Gaza   Hear from Craig Mokhiber, a longtime international human rights lawyer, who previously served as director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on why he left his post while decrying U.N. inaction over what he calls a “text-book case of genocide” unfolding in Gaza. Mokhiber’s letter of resignation went viral last month. He spoke to Democracy Now! shortly after.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/23/dissenters

2023-11-21 Gregory Shupak on Gaza and Genocide     US corporate news media’s initial response to Israel’s terror campaign against Palestinians, unleashed in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, was characterized largely by legitimization, a rhetorical blank check for whatever Israel might do. Israel, the New York Times editorial board said, “is determined to break the power of Hamas, and in that effort it deserves the support of the United States and the rest of the world.”

We’re more than three months into that “effort.” The death toll for Palestinians is, conservatively, as we record on January 18, over 24,000 people. The UN secretary general calls Gaza a “graveyard for children.” So how does the Times’ assertion that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law” stand up now?  We talk this week with media critic, activist, and professor Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto and is author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books.

First, Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at some recent press coverage of immigration.  https://kpfa.org/program/counterspin/

2023-11-20 Israel Vows Extermination, Ignoring World Demand to End Gaza Genocide, w/ As’ad Abukhalil    The Israelis and their US sponsors have created a world where it’s normal to fire on hospitals, journalists and UN workers while killing 5,500 children in 45 days.     Rania Khalek will be joined by Prof.  As’ad Abukhalil for a special live episode of Dispatches to discuss the genocide in Gaza, western double standards and racism towards Palestinians, Israel’s bad propaganda, and growing resistance from the Middle East to the streets of the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsbwUT-p8vo

2023-11-20 ‘Nowhere Safe in Gaza’ as Evidence of Israeli War Crimes Mounts    Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes with two recent bombings of a church and a home in a refugee camp.

Palestinians in Gaza and human rights advocates on Monday pleaded with the international community to see the ongoing killing of thousands of people in the blockaded enclave for what it is—a massacre in which Israel has shown “a chilling indifference to the catastrophic toll on civilians,” according to Amnesty International, and has committed numerous war crimes as it bombards civilian targets.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/amnesty-israel-war-crimes

2023-11-20 Slaughter in Gaza Continues on World Children’s Day     As of Monday, World Children’s Day, Israel’s six-week war on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 5,500 Palestinian children and threatens the lives of about a million more who are enduring the Israeli bombardment and raids of homes, schools, and hospitals.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/children-in-gaza

2023-11-19 Intensified Israeli Airstrikes Push Gaza Death Toll Over 13,000     Israeli airstrikes on Gaza reportedly killed more than 100 Palestinians on Saturday—including upwards of 80 people in the hard-hit Jabalia refugee camp—bringing the Palestinian death toll in the 44-day war to over 13,000 as the Biden administration refuted reports of a breakthrough in cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/jabalia-bombing

2023-11-10 No more genocide in Gaza. Ceasefire now! w/Medea Benjamin | The Chris Hedges Report     Israel’s devastating campaign of collective punishment against the people of Gaza has aroused international condemnation and popular mobilization in support of a ceasefire and an end to Israeli Apartheid. This movement has also spread to the US, where over a hundred thousand people flocked to Washington DC on Nov. 4 for the largest pro-Palestine march in US history. Support for a ceasefire in Gaza is widespread among the US public—with more than half of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike in favor of such a measure, according to Data for Progress. Yet the federal government continues to largely ignore calls for a ceasefire and an end to US aid to Israel, with only a minority of House Democrats willing to back a resolution for a ceasefire. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, a key organization in the current Palestine solidarity movement, joins The Chris Hedges Report to explain what the movement is demanding from leaders in Washington to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

Editor’s note: The death toll in Gaza from Israel’s bombardment campaign has now exceeded 10,000—including over 4,000 children. On Nov. 9, the White House announced Israel would observe a daily four-hour pause in bombing to allow Palestinian civilians to flee from northern Gaza. The Biden Administration continues to resist calls for a full ceasefire.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN5FgiwYGp0

2023-11-10 Over 50 Bodies Pulled From Rubble of Gaza School Bombed Amid Israeli Assault      Palestinian civil defense officials said Friday that more than 50 bodies were recovered from the rubble of a school in northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering when it was destroyed during overnight Israeli bombardment.

Palestine’s WAFA News Agencyreported civil defense and ambulance rescue teams removed the blasted and crushed   remains of victims of Thursday night’s missile and artillery strikes on the al-Buraq School in the al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. The outlet said that most of those killed were women, children, and elders.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bombing-schools-and-hospitals

2023-11-10 Global Cease-Fire Call Grows as Israel Wages ‘War Against Hospitals’ in Gaza    “Children in Gaza are hanging by a thread,” said a UNICEF director, calling for attacks on healthcare facilities to stop immediately and the urgent delivery of supplies to hospitals.    As Israeli forces waged what al-Shifa’s director described as a “war against hospitals” in Gaza on Friday, United Nations officials, human rights groups, and doctors demanded the protection of medical facilities and renewed calls for a cease-fire.

“Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers are not functioning at all,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the U.N. Security Council. “Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities. The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow is continuing to deliver some lifesaving care.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on October 7 that killed around 1,200 Israelis, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) assault of Gaza has devastated civilian infrastructure, displaced about 70% of the strip’s 2.3 million residents—about half of whom are children—and killed over 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children. Tens of thousands more are injured or missing.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bombs-hospital-in-gaza

2023-10-28 Obscuring Mass Murder  As Israeli siege warfare cuts Gazans off from both electricity and communications, we’re seeing the lights go out in Gaza in more ways than one, writes Caitlin Johnstone.  “This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch correctly notes.   And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably not just a convenient coincidence for Israel. A genocidal massacre in total darkness works very much to the advantage of those doing the massacring.   https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/28/obscuring-mass-murder/

2023-10-27 With 7,300+ Gazans Dead, Israeli PM Adviser Says ‘Tonight We Are Starting Payback’   One critic declared that “a horrific slaughter is happening in plain sight, while the world watches and the U.S. shamelessly aids and abets it!”

Clearly undeterred by the mounting civilian death toll and global calls for a cease-fire three weeks into Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Friday that “tonight we are starting payback.”   Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev said: “You can be sure that if you’re in a Hamas bunker somewhere, if you’re in a Hamas tunnel, if you’re in a Hamas stronghold, then we’re gonna come and find you and we’re gonna eliminate that target. Hamas will pay for its crimes against humanity. Hamas will pay for slaughtering our people.”  

After ordering about 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to move south earlier this month, Israeli forces bombed a fleeing civilian convoy, killing 70 people, mostly women and children, according to Iyad Al-Buzm, a spokesperson for the strip’s Interior Ministry.   “They’re taking revenge by killing our children,” said Wael Al-Dahdouh, the chief of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau, after he learned while reporting on-air Wednesday that his wife, son, daughter, and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike. “What happened is clear, this is a series of targeted attacks on children, women, and civilians.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-starting-payback

2024-10-24 Zionist think tank publishes blueprint for Palestinian genocide   As Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza entered its third week, leaving over 5000 dead and at least one million residents displaced, a Tel Aviv-based think tank published a blueprint for self-proclaimed Jewish state’s final solution.

In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided. 

Though Egypt has so far rejected Israeli pressure for a mass exodus of Gaza residents through the southern Rafah crossing, Weitman argued Cairo will welcome the mass exodus of Palestinian refugees  as “an immediate stimulus” that will “provide a tremendous and immediate benefit to al-Sisi’s regime.”

Weitman claimed that Cairo’s major creditors — including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — are likely to welcome a revitalized Egyptian economy, courtesy of “Israeli investment” in the Palestinians’ permanent removal. He surmizes that Western Europe will welcome “the transfer of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,” because it will significantly “reduce the risk of illegal immigration…a tremendous advantage.” Meanwhile, he expects Riyadh to embrace the move because the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.” https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/24/zionist-think-tank-palestinian-genocide/

2023-10-20 Gaza: The Combined West opts for genocide   The grand strategy of Israel has been, like other settler-colonial states, incrementalism. Constant pressure on the Indigenous population. Constant encroachment. The use of the law to seize land. The assassination of leaders. The imprisonment of leaders. The suppression of cultural expression. Taking control of the means of survival and using that control. As Canada used the famines of the 1880s to force Indigenous peoples in the West onto reserves, at gunpoint and on pain of starvation, Israel uses aid to refugees whose access to land, water, electricity and food have been taken away (when Palestinians build infrastructure Israel bombs it) as a means of control. Periodically, there are crises – wars, uprisings – for Israel these crises are opportunities to increase the quotient of violence and get closer to the exterminist goal.

For Israel’s strategy to succeed there are a number of things that have to go well for them, and these things appear to have been going well for Israel since 1948. These are:

An unshakeable alliance with the dominant world power, the US (or rather, the US, UK, Europe, Canada, etc.). If US support were to wane for any reason, Israel might be forced to make concessions away from Netanyahu’s map. 

Opponents must be divided with some of them working on Israel’s behalf (the Gulf monarchies, the Islamic State, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority) and others mired in internal wars or invaded by the US (Iraq, Syria). Netanyahu’s map can only be made reality if Israel’s neighbors are disunited.

A “qualitative military advantage” over any of their possible rivals (in the past Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, notably Syria, in recent decades Hezbollah and Iran, and of course the Palestinians). Without military superiority, Netanyahu’s map remains a colonizer’s dream.   https://justinpodur.substack.com/p/gaza-the-combined-west-opts-for-genocide

2023-10-19 Israel may kill “600,000 civilians,” says Israel ambassador   Israel could kill as many as “600,000 civilians” in Gaza, the entity’s ambassador to the UK suggested on Tuesday.  In a blood-curdling TV interview with celebrity presenter Piers Morgan, Tzipi Hotovely compared Israel’s attacks on Gaza to Britain’s attacks against German civilians during World War II.

“There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” she said. “Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed.”

Hotovely continued by comparing the Palestinians to the Nazis: “Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes.”   https://asawinstanley.substack.com/p/israel-may-kill-600000-civilians

2023-10-19 Stop the Ethnic Cleansing & the Genocidal Israeli War on Palestine! India Stands WithPalestine   We, the People of India, stand utterly shocked at the depravity & barbarism of the Israeli regime. The missile attack by the Israeli forces on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which has killed more than a thousand innocent civilians, is more evidence of the genocidal intent of the fascist Neo-Nazi Zionist Netanyahu regime. Moreover, Israel has threatened the 1.1 Gazan population in the North with dire consequences if they do not move towards the South, even as they prepare to invade Gaza yet again. Sections of the Jewish Zionist radical leadership have further threatened the entire population if they do not move out to the Sinai desert in Egypt. The Palestinians know that once they leave their land, they will never be allowed to return back to their homeland and will be reduced to refugees.

This clearly constitutes a war crime by international law. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,1948 states: https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/stop-the-ethnic-cleansing-the-genocidal-israeli-war-on-palestine-india-stands-with-palestine/

2023-10-19 Gaza Death Toll Nears 3,800 as Israel’s Siege and Bombardment Enters 13th Day    The human rights group Defense for Children International–Palestine reports Israeli strikes have, on average, killed one child every 15 minutes in Gaza since fighting escalated. This is Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon in Gaza City who narrowly survived Tuesday’s explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital, a blast Palestinians blame on Israel.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day

2023-10-18 U.N. Rapporteur for Palestine: Gaza War Risks “Largest Instance of Ethnic Cleansing” in Mideast History    Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, says the latest violence in Israel and Palestine has shocked even long-term observers of the conflict. She says Hamas atrocities cannot justify Israeli crimes in Gaza, where at least 3,300 people have been killed since Israel began pounding the territory with thousands of bombs. “What we are watching is a catastrophe of Olympian proportions,” says Albanese. “The only reasonable and necessary thing to ask for is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, which of course must be also accompanied by the release of the civilian hostages that Hamas has taken.” She says the scale of Israel’s response cannot be considered proportional, and warns that the displacement of potentially millions of Palestinians from Gaza would constitute the “largest instance of ethnic cleansing in the history of this tormented land.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/un_special_rapporteur_palestine_albanese

2023-10-16 “This Is a Genocide”: Gazans Face Constant Israeli Attacks, a Closed Border as Essentials Run Out   In Gaza, another half a million people, or one-quarter of its population, have fled their homes in the past few days, as Israel bombards the besieged enclave for the 10th straight day and amid an anticipated ground invasion. Last week, Israel ordered 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south of the territory, a virtually impossible task which would also constitute the war crime of forcible transfer.     https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/headlines/protests_across_the_us_call_for_israel_to_end_its_siege_and_genocide_in_gaza

2023-10-15 What the media forgets to tell you about Israel and Gaza   The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.   

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967.  It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.  The ‘settler’ project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: ‘Judaisation’, or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.    https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/what-the-media-forgets-to-tell-you

2023-10-14 The Punishment of Gaza   Ralph welcomes Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy to discuss recent attacks by Hamas and the Israeli military in Israel and Palestine. Then, international law expert Bruce Fein speaks with Ralph about the recent violence, America’s response, and America’s historical culpability.   https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/the-punishment-of-gaza#details

2023-10-13 Noura Erakat: Western Leaders & Media Are Justifying Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign” Against Palestinians   The unfolding crisis in Gaza, where relentless Israeli bombardment has killed more than 1,500 people since Saturday, is “a humanitarian catastrophe,” says Palestinian American human rights attorney Noura Erakat. She says Western leaders and the mainstream media have relied on racist, Islamophobic tropes to build a false consensus “that war is inevitable and that whatever consequences come out is the fault of Hamas, thereby further blaming the victims for their own killing and massacres.”  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/noura_erakat_palestine_gaza_israel

2023-10-10 Refaat Alareer in Gaza: Israel’s “Barbaric” Bombardment Is Part of Ethnic Cleansing Campaign      As hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed by those killed and wounded in Israel’s massive bombing campaign, we go to Gaza City to speak with Palestinian academic and writer Refaat Alareer about conditions inside the besieged territory. Israel announced Monday it was completely cutting off all food, fuel and electricity to Gaza amid airstrikes of unprecedented intensity, launched in response to Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel. Hamas has threatened to begin killing hostages if civilians inside Gaza are targeted without warning. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10/refaat_alareer_gaza_israel_bombing

2022-08-21 Gaza: New Killings, Old Narratives   To say that Gaza was under attack this August is definitely correct as Israel’s most recent attack left 49 killed, 17 of them children. To say that Gaza is always under attack, as it has been under a brutal siege imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007, is also correct, even when the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack isn’t trending.

Once again, we have seen images of people being pulled from under the rubble, children without limbs and parents holding the bodies of their dead children.   And although these are the faces and the highest human cost imaginable of Israel’s attack on Gaza, they didn’t reveal anything new about the Israeli state-sponsored violence, at least not to the ones who have been following what’s happening in Palestine.   https://codepink.substack.com/p/gaza-new-killings-old-narratives

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Collective Punishment

Updated 2023-11-15

2023-10-24 Justifying Collective Punishment: Israel’s Assault on Gaza    For anyone concerned about the moderating restraint international law is meant to offer, especially when it comes to the use of force by states, Israel’s approach against the imprisoned populace of Gaza is bound to cause profound despair and lingering disgust.   

In its modern, public relations iteration, Israel’s way of waging war is seen as cleaner, more observant of international rules, than the swarthy, ill-kept barbarians who hold them in such contempt.  It is couched in medical, operational terms.  The killing is more surgical, more civilised, if you will.  This is a reductive, machine morality, dehumanising and deidentifying victims.  When slaughtered by shells, missiles and advanced weapons of war, humans are merely unintended targets.  

Gaza City, according to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a reprobate agglomeration within which a wicked organisation, Hamas, operates.  The conflation, which Netanyahu made in his October 7 speech, is effortless, purposeful.  It follows that those living in such a morally regressive environment escape for their sake – lest they be tarnished by biblical wickedness.  “I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

Alian, who serves as Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, went on to state that Hamas had morphed into ISIS, and gravely noted how “the residents of Gaza” had taken delight in their exploits against Israeli citizens.  “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity, no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”    https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/justifying-collective-punishment-israels-assault-on-gaza/

2023-10-17 HRW Condemns Israel’s Collective Punishment on Gaza, Urges Biden to Help Restore Humanitarian Aid   “People are worried. All of this is unprecedented,” says Sari Bashi, program director at Human Rights Watch in Ramallah. Bashi is co-founder of Israeli human rights group Gisha, which works against apartheid policies that affect Palestinians, and urges U.S. lawmakers to address the human rights violations that led to this conflict. “No U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine will be successful if it doesn’t address the abuses on the ground.”https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/17/sara_bashi_west_bank

2023-10-16 “Gaza Is Running Out of Life”: Human Rights Watch Sounds Alarm on Israel’s Collective Punishment   As the humanitarian crisis worsens, we get an update from Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, who says conditions in Gaza are dire, as Israel has cut off access to electricity and safe water, and many disabled and ill residents are physically unable to obey the evacuation order. This comes as Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his government holds the entire population of Gaza, including civilians and children, responsible for Hamas’s attack. Shakir also discusses Israel’s use of white phosphorus, an illegal weapon of war. “People in Gaza are saying their goodbyes to the world,” says Shakir.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/omar_shakir_israel_gaza_hrw

2023-10-13  U.N. Warns of “Devastating Humanitarian Consequences” as Israel Orders 1.1 Million to Evacuate Gaza   Israel’s army has ordered 1.1 million civilians in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate “southwards” within just 24 hours — an order the United Nations called “impossible” without “devastating humanitarian consequences.”  The Norwegian Refugee Council condemned what it called “the collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly,” which it said “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/competing_pro_israel_and_pro_palestine_demonstrations_raise_tensions_on_college_campuses

2023-10-12 Report from Gaza: Two Palestinians Describe “Horror” on 6th Day of Israel Bombing Besieged Enclave   We speak with two Palestinians in Gaza City about Israel’s devastating bombing campaign while blocking all food, water and fuel from entering the besieged territory. The U.N. reports that all of Gaza’s 13 hospitals are only partially operational due to a lack of fuel and medical supplies as the International Red Cross warns “hospitals are going to be turned into graveyards.” The territory’s only power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel, yet Israeli authorities are vowing to continue the siege of Gaza until Hamas releases the over 100 hostages it seized during its unprecedented attack on Saturday.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/gaza_update

2023-10-11 Death Toll in Israel and Gaza Tops 2,200 as Gazans Face Total Energy Blackout and No Safe Refuge    The majority of Palestinian deaths are in Gaza; at least 18 deaths were reported in the West Bank. Israel is amassing some 300,000 reservists close to Gaza as it continues to pound the besieged enclave with airstrikes. Officials warn Gaza is on the cusp of a humanitarian catastrophe as the territory’s power plant is running out of fuel. The scale of atrocities committed against civilians continues to come to light. In Gaza, rescuers are still pulling bodies from the rubble as desperate residents seek refuge. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11/headlines/death_toll_in_israel_and_gaza_tops_2_200_as_gazans_face_total_energy_blackout_and_no_safe_refuge

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Censorship by United States

Updated 2024-04-24

H.R.6940 – Israel Anti-Boycott Act (not passed yet only one Democrat cosponsor)  This bill prohibits participation by certain entities and individuals in boycotts or requests for boycotts imposed by international governmental organizations (i.e., the United Nations and the European Union).   Specifically, the bill applies to covered persons the prohibition of specified actions in compliance with or in support of a boycott against a country that is friendly to the United States and that is not itself the object of a U.S. boycott. The bill defines a covered person as a domestic concern, the U.S. government or a state government, or a representative or official of such domestic concern or government. The bill also adds to the list of specified prohibited actions the act of furnishing information to any foreign country or international governmental organization that furthers an imposed boycott.

Under current law, a person who violates the prohibitions against such boycotts may be subject to a monetary fine or imprisonment; however, the bill removes imprisonment as a potential penalty for certain violations.      https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6940?r=1&s=2

2024-08-20 Remembering TV Icon Phil Donahue: He Brought Antiwar Voices to the Airwaves Until MSNBC Fired Him     The acclaimed television host Phil Donahue died Sunday at the age of 88. Donahue’s commitment to bringing major social and political issues to the American public spanned decades, a mission that was perhaps best encapsulated by his platforming of antiwar perspectives during the leadup to the Iraq War. He was fired in 2003 from his eponymous MSNBC talk show for doing so. In 2013, Democracy Now! spoke to Donahue about his firing. We play an excerpt from that interview and speak to journalist Jeff Cohen, who served as a senior producer on MSNBC’s Donahue before its cancellation. “Phil was a progressive. He was for peace and justice. He exuded it. It’s what made him tick,” recalls Cohen.   Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/2…    Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SugpYJxMGIg

2024-08-12 Rights Group Sues US for Placing Palestinian American on ‘Illegal, Racist Watchlist’     The largest U.S. Muslim civil rights group on Monday announced it is suing Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal officials for placing one Palestinian American on its “no-fly” list and for seizing another’s electronic device and interrogating him about his constitutionally protected organizing for a free Palestine.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Los Angeles office (CAIR-LA) are suing Garland, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, Terrorism Screening Center Director Michael Glasheen, and other national security officials on behalf of Mustafa Zeidan and Osama Abu Irshaid.

According to the lawsuit, the men “are both United States citizens of Palestinian descent” who have never “been charged or convicted of a violent crime.”

“Yet, recently, the federal government has placed Dr. Abu Irshaid and Mr. Zeidan on a secret list, subjecting one to a humiliating process of detention, questioning, and phone seizure at the border and barring the other from flying altogether,” the filing states. Irshaid is on the terrorism watchlist while Zeidan cannot fly. https://www.commondreams.org/news/cair-lawsuit

2024-05-21 Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Interrogation at U.S. Airport and “Collapse of the Zionist Project”    We speak with renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about his recent trip to the United States, when he was interrogated for two hours by federal agents upon arrival at Detroit airport about his political views on Gaza, Hamas and Israel, as well as demanding to know whom he knew in U.S. Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities. Pappé was only allowed to enter the country after agents copied the contents of his phone. “They refused to tell me why they stopped me,” he says. Pappé, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, also discusses the Nakba, growing support for Palestinian rights, and why he believes “the collapse of the Zionist project” is imminent.  Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZinFUbEboA

2024-03-13 ‘Blatant Censorship’: Critics Blast US House Vote for TikTok Ban     U.S. progressives on Wednesday decried what they called a xenophobic censorship bill passed by House lawmakers that would ban TikTok if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell its stake in the popular social media app, with critics arguing that Congress should instead pass a comprehensive digital privacy law.

Lawmakers passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 352-65 vote. The legislation “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary-controlled application” like TikTok, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese tech company ByteDance. Fifty House Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill.

“I voted no on the TikTok forced sale bill,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said in a statement. “While I have serious data privacy concerns with TikTok, this bill was rapidly rushed to a vote by the Republicans with almost no public scrutiny—and that’s a recipe for unintended consequences.”  Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who also voted no, said on social media that “not only are there First Amendment concerns, this is bad policy.”    Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), another no vote, said that “rather than target one company in a rushed and secretive process, Congress should pass comprehensive data privacy protections and do a better job of informing the public of the threats these companies may pose to national security.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/tiktok

2024-03-11 Biden, Netanyahu spoke on the phone for the first time in over a month Thursday    Free speech defenders on Monday condemned Republican North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx’s subpoena of a labor union after its members overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire and condemning Israeli genocide, apartheid, and other crimes in Palestine.

The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA) Local 2325 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) voted 1,067-570 in December to approve a sweeping resolution endorsing the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and condemning Israel’s “occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide” in Palestine. The measure called for an end to these and other human rights violations as well as “an immediate cease-fire” in Gaza and an end to the Israeli siege on the embattled Palestinian territory.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/virginia-foxx

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. Even worse than the sparse number willing to speak up for what the people want, those who say they want a ceasefire are duplicitous in making their own case. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has visited the Rafah border crossing and was incensed that Israel is preventing aid from getting through to Gaza. In a speech on the senate floor he called Israeli officials war criminals but when push came to shove, he was pushed and he voted to send $14 billion in aid to Israel. It seems that elected representatives see no need to actually represent their constituents.

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

2024-02-08 ‘Trusted Messengers:’ Volunteer Censors Trained to Control Your Community’s Speech    Missouri V. Biden and congressional probes have limited the ability of the government to directly pressure tech companies to censor Americans, or do so by proxy through coordinating with private sector organizations.   Because of this, the organizations that push online censorship are adopting a new strategy to entrench its influence: the recruitment and training of private individuals and civil society organizations, to build a critical mass that can survive without direct government support.

FFO recently exposed how censors are recruiting individual citizens to act as spies and censors under the brand of “Civic Listening”, a term promoted by the congressionally chartered National Conference on Citizenship’s (NCoC) censorship project, the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI). Since 2020, both NCoC and the ATI have been led by Cameron Hickey, who formerly monitored “disinformation” at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.

These citizen spies use online tiplines to log “problematic” content in Junkipedia, ATI’s speech monitoring database that “centralize[s] the collection of problematic content” from all major platforms, including encrypted messenger apps like WhatsApp.   In the video below, Romualdo describes his job as “capacity building” by recruiting volunteers for social media monitoring and teaching the Latino community how to spy on their community’s online messages. Recruiting people — everyday citizens to volunteer and report the speech of their peers — is the goal.   https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/grassroots-censorship-volunteer-misinformation-monitors/

2023-12-29  ”Material Support” in the Form of Speech Can Be Criminalized     Depending on when you hear this, the Rutgers/New Brunswick chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine might be the most recent campus group to be suspended for what administrators called “disruptive and disorderly conduct,” and “failure to comply with university or civil authority.”  Calls for a ceasefire, at least, are growing in this country and around the world, but that’s in the face of ever-more aggressive, top-down efforts to shut those calls, and the people making them, down. If we are to resist what many are calling a new McCarthyism, we need to inform ourselves of what and where the concerns are, and to stay in conversation with one another. 

Listeners will have heard the unsettling reports—more, it seems, each day—of not only student groups being shut down on campus, but powerful people calling for publishing lists of the names of any students who even sign a petition, so that they can be denied future jobs. 

We’ve seen editors and journalists and other workers fired, forced out or reprimanded for indicating in any way that they oppose, not even the state of Israel, but the killing and harming and displacing of thousands and thousands of people. Poetry and art events canceled, just for suggesting support for Palestinians, and many of it coming with this kind of fig leaf of: This targeting—which to be clear, we do hope ruins your life—it isn’t just because you don’t support Israel in all of its actions, but because, by our reckoning, you insufficiently oppose Hamas and what it does.   https://fair.org/page/2/?s=Israel+Palestine

2023-12-28 Cease-Fire Now! What I Said to the UN Security Council      Not many people have the opportunity to provide an oral and written statement to the United Nations Security Council. I had my chance on December 11, 2023, when I was asked as a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former U.S. diplomat to speak on weapons transfers in the Russia-Ukraine war.   I introduced myself as a U.S. taxpayer who was fed up with my tax money being used by the powerful and wealthy U.S. arms industry authorized by the U.S. government for sale to countries that are killing innocent civilians.

My statement to the Security Council was simple. Wars will never end as long as weapons transfers into the conflict area continue. I noted, as the Security Council well knows, that civilians will be the primary victims of the transfer of weapons.  I cited the two wars to which the U.S. is providing weapons: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/un-security-council-cease-fire

2023-12-22 Wadie Said on the New McCarthyism   People in the US, 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. It’s a sign of where we’re at that there are currently congressional efforts to put people in prison, 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, lest it be confused, of people critical of Israel’s ongoing mass murder and displacement of Palestinians.    https://fair.org/home/wadie-said-on-the-new-mccarthyism/

2023-12-15   Warren Demands Facebook-Instagram Explain Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Content     “It is more important than ever that social media platforms do not censor truthful and legitimate content, particularly as people around the world turn to online communities to share and find information.”    The senator is seeking clarification regarding documented occurrences on Facebook and Instagram of censorship of pro-Palestinian content, labeling the Palestinian flag as “potentially offensive,” and translating the words “Palestinian” and “Alhamdulilah”—Arabic for “praise be to God”—as “Palestinian terrorist.”

Progressive U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers to questions about the Facebook and Instagram parent company’s alleged suppression of pro-Palestinian content during the ongoing Israeli obliteration of Gaza.   “Over 90 human rights and civil society organizations have raised alarm about Meta’s reported suppression, filtering, and mistranslation of Palestine-related content over the past two months, calling on the company to provide additional transparency as to content moderation and to address discriminatory algorithmic design,” Warren (D-Mass.) wrote.

“Even more concerning, Meta reportedly manipulated its content filters to apply stricter standards to content generated in Palestine compared to the standards in place in the rest of the region and the world,” Warren noted.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/facebook-censorship

2023-12-15 Gessen’s Cancellation Can’t Go Unchallenged    when Gessen turned their lens to Israel, they fell victim to pro-Israel censorship. Their recent essay (New Yorker, 12/9/23) on Holocaust remembrance culture in Germany was a self-fulfilling prophecy: As a result of Gessen’s observation that the language that most accurately describes what is happening in Gaza—”the ghetto is being liquidated”—comes from the Jewish experience during World War II, the Green Party–affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS), which was planning to award Gessen its Hannah Arendt Prize, canceled the event.

In the essay, Gessen, who uses they, criticized Germany’s unequivocal support of Israel, drawing attention to the Bundestag’s 2019 resolution condemning the Israel boycott movement BDS as antisemitic and quoting a Jewish critic of Germany’s politics of Holocaust remembrance as saying memory culture had “gone haywire.”

In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

The foundation said Gessen was implying that Israel aimed to “liquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto,” adding that “this statement is unacceptable to us and we reject it.”   https://fair.org/home/gessens-cancellation-cant-go-unchallenged/

2024-12-10 Sonya Meyerson-Knox on Jewish Voice for Peace   As we record on December 7, the news from Gaza continues to be horrific: The Washington Post reports, citing Gaza Health Ministry reports, that Israel’s continued assault throughout the region has killed at least 350 people in the past 24 hours, which brings the death toll of the Israeli military campaign, launched after the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed a reported 1,200 people, to more than 17,000.

In this country, Columbia University has suspended two student groups protesting in support of Palestinian human rights and human beings, though the official message couldn’t specify which policies, exactly, had been violated.  

There are many important and terrible things happening in the world right now — from fossil fuel companies working to undo any democratic restraints on their ability to profit from planetary destruction; to drugmakers who’ve devastated the lives of millions using the legal system to say money, actually, can substitute for accountability; to an upcoming election that is almost too much to think about, and the Beltway press corps acting like it’s just another day.

But the devastation of Gaza and the vehement efforts to silence anyone who wants to challenge it — and the failure of those efforts, as people nevertheless keep speaking up, keep protesting — is the story for today.   We speak with Sonya Meyerson-Knox, communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

But first, Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of climate change.   https://kpfa.org/episode/counterspin-december-10-2023/

2023-11-29 CAIR, Muslim Groups Call to Reinstate Hate-Crime Commissioner Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany   The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants Maryland’s attorney general to reinstate Zainab Chaudry to the state hate-crime commission following Chaudry’s ouster for her antisemitic social media posts.  Chaudry is CAIR’s Maryland director and was suspended from her role on Maryland’s hate-crime commission after she compared Israel to Nazi Germany on Facebook last week. CAIR officials and two dozen Muslim organizations now want the attorney general to restore Chaudry.  

“Like Zainab, many members of the Maryland community have been critical of the Israel government’s horrific crimes against the Palestinian people,” CAIR’s letter to the attorney general said. “As you know, the Israeli government has bombed residential buildings, refugee camps, hospitals, ambulances, mosques and churches, killing over 13,000 people, most of them women and children.”   “Israeli leaders have also made genocidal remarks about the Palestinian people, calling them ‘human animals,’ claiming that there are ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza, and threatening to ethnically cleanse millions of people,” the letter continued. “Suspending Zainab for criticizing the Israeli government’s horrific crimes and for expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people is unacceptable. This attack on her is an attack on all of us and we will not accept it.”  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cair-muslim-groups-call-to-reinstate-hate-crime-commissioner-who-compared-israel-to-nazi-germany/ar-AA1kGJvz 

2023-11-28 There’s No Justification for Destroying Gaza’s Health Infrastructure       As the health care system in Gaza collapses from more than seven weeks of targeted Israeli bombardment and complete siege, medical institutions in the United States have been silent. Worse, they have attempted to justify the violence. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Nov. 8, 2023, published an essay that we felt created moral ambiguity around bombing hospitals in Gaza.

We are physicians, and in countless private conversations with other physicians, nurses, and medical workers around the U.S., we hear whispers about people being afraid to lose their jobs if they show support for Palestinians. They have been instructed by their leadership not to say the words “Gaza” or “genocide” in their professional roles, while they watch Israeli forces bomb hospitals, murder health care providers, and assault ICU patients. Many health care workers are discovering—much to their surprise—how many people in leadership roles in their institutions support ethnonationalism, even when health care workers and hospitals are targets.

We wrote the following essay in response to JAMA’s promotion of ethical ambiguity around bombing hospitals. It was rejected for publication—yet another act of institutional silencing. As Israeli media now tours the Gaza hospitals that Israel destroyed, alleging these were military targets, we see no Hamas command center. But we do see thousands of dead patients—many of them children—and hundreds of dead medical workers as a result of Israel’s unprecedented violence.  https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2023/11/28/hospital-israel-bombing-gaza

2023-11-27 NYU Cancer Doctor Sues After Firing for Racist Posts       In New York, the former director of NYU Langone hospital’s cancer center has filed a lawsuit after he was fired for sharing racist cartoons of Arab people on social media, as well as several messages against Palestinians, including one questioning the scale of the death toll in Gaza due to Israel’s nonstop bombardment. Dr. Benjamin Neel is accusing NYU Langone Health of violating city and state human rights laws. Neel’s firing came after NYU Langone first removed a Palestinian medical resident from one of its hospitals. Dr. Zaki Masoud posted messages on social media in solidarity with Palestine. Neel responded, saying he had been “offered up as a sacrificial lamb” so NYU Langone could claim impartiality.https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/headlines/nyu_cancer_doctor_sues_after_firing_for_racist_posts

2023-11-23 Susan Sarandon DROPPED By Talent Agency For Opposing Genocide     Susan Sarandon has been a full-throated supporter of Palestinian rights, and now as a result the Academy Award-winning actress has been dropped by her talent agency, UTA. As Glenn Greenwald points out, of all the people who’ve lost their jobs or otherwise been censured surrounding the recent flareup of violence between Israel and Hamas, ALL have been supporters of Palestine.    Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the time Sarandon referred to Jimmy as a “loose cannon.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XcngOeKbbQ

2023-11-19 Firing of Law Firm Associate for Anti-Israel Letter       https://reason.com/volokh/2023/11/19/firing-of-law-firm-associate-for-anti-israel-letter/

2023-11-17 PUBLIC DEFENDERS GET RESTRAINING ORDER TO BLOCK THEIR OWN UNION FROM VOTING ON GAZA STATEMENT     FIVE GROUPS PROVIDING public defender services in New York City are cracking down on speech about Palestine. Leadership at the groups are pushing back on statements or internal communications that reference the siege on Gaza, and at least one staffer has been forced to resign.

Two of the organizations sent cease-and-desist letters to union shops considering resolutions calling for a ceasefire. Another group called staffers into meetings with human resources for using work channels to share links about Palestine and proposing to do fundraising for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund in lieu of an annual holiday party.

Management at several of the offices said statements on Gaza under consideration by their unions were jeopardizing funding. Pro-Israel activists launched a petition to defund the Bronx Defenders after its union issued a statement opposing Israel’s “genocidal intent in Gaza.” Public defender offices across the country are already severely underfunded. While most rely heavily on public funding, many also receive support from private institutions, including major law firms. Several firms have responded to criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza by rescinding job offers and threatening to curb recruiting efforts at law schools.   

The suppression of speech at publicly funded legal defense agencies comes as governments and workplaces around the world have disciplined and fired staffers for criticizing Israel’s nonstop bombing of Gaza. Suppression of speech about Palestine has come in the form of bans on rallies and vigils, suspensions of student groups, doxxing and death threats, and the cancellation of television interviews with Palestinian commentators.   https://theintercept.com/2023/11/17/public-defender-gaza-legal-aid-bronx-defenders/

2023-11-14 NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign, Join Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza     Democracy Now! speaks to award-winning writers Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles in their first broadcast interview since being forced out of The New York Times Magazine for signing an open letter condemning Israel’s siege on Gaza. The magazine’s editor Jake Silverstein said the letter violated the outlet’s policy on public protest, but Keiles says there are no clear guidelines, especially for contributing writers. He explains he signed on to the letter due to his disappointment in the journalistic standards missing from mainstream coverage of the war in Gaza, saying “this is an industrywide question.” Both writers say their former institution’s scrutiny of pro-Palestinian activism is a double standard that indicates tacit support for Israel.    Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRk-iR6gGoU

2023-11-11 Doctors Are Being Fired After Pro-Hamas Posts   A prominent watchdog group has been calling attention to doctors who have posted messages in support of Hamas, and several of those doctors have since reportedly been fired.   StopAntisemitism, an American nonprofit watchdog organization, began resharing alleged pro-Hamas posts from doctors following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/doctors-are-being-fired-after-pro-hamas-posts/ar-AA1jJoq2

2023-11-02 Ron DeSantis Comes Out AGAINST Free Speech!   Ron DeSantis may have stood up to the Pharma lobby — somewhat — during the height of COVID, but one powerful interest he’s NOT standing up to today is the Israel lobby. In fact, DeSantis has responded to the latest flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian violence by sending weaponry from the state of Florida directly to Israel while echoing the most bloodthirsty language embracing violence against Hamas and Palestinians.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3BJBGBHnyc&t=46s

2023-10-31 US regime change activist named Web Summit CEO after founder forced out for condemning Israeli ‘war crimes’   The CEO of one of the world’s leading tech conferences was forced to resign after criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza. He was quickly replaced by one of the industry’s most prominent US government-affiliated regime change specialists.

Europe’s biggest tech conference, Web Summit, has appointed a veteran US regime-change operative named Katherine Maher as its new CEO, just days after founder Paddy Cosgrave stepped down from the position following an industry-wide backlash to his suggestion that Israel forces have carried out “war crimes” in their ongoing assault of Gaza.

Cosgrave’s future at Web Summit had been in doubt since October 13, when he sparked pro-Israel outrage after tweeting that “war crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies.” Industrial and tech behemoths including Siemens, Intel, Amazon, Meta and Google subsequently declared that they wouldn’t be attending this year’s conference, which is slated to take place in Lisbon, Portugal from November 13 to 16.   https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/31/regime-change-web-summit-ceo-israeli-war-crimes/

2023-10-27 Stanford Slammed by Alumni, Students for Hamas Response    Stanford University leadership is coming under increasing criticism for failing to clearly condemn the Hamas attacks on Israel and recent acts of antisemitism on campus.   More than 1,400 people have so far put their names to an open letter sent to interim President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez. The list includes Menlo Ventures partner Shawn Carolan and tech luminaries from Latin America, including David Velez and Marcos Galperin.   

The Stanford letter called on Saller and Martinez to unequivocally condemn antisemitism and the Hamas attack, and to take concrete actions to ensure the safety of Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union.   The letter said that Stanford’s actions now are inconsistent with its prior statements, including “the plight of black people in America after the brutal murder of George Floyd” when former President Marc Tessier-Lavigne demonstrated his thorough understanding of the issue.   Tessier-Lavigne resigned in July after scrutiny over flaws in his scientific research and the university is currently seeking a new president.

At the University of Pennsylvania, a group of donors and alumni have demanded that the school’s leadership quit. At Harvard, billionaire donors have pulled their support, while Harvard Business School alumni Mitt Romney and hedge fund manager Seth Klarman led an open letter accusing the school of ignoring the safety of Jewish students amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Investor Leon Cooperman has said he’ll no longer give to Columbia University because of anti-Israel protests.

The university’s leadership issued a statement Oct. 11 condemning “all terrorism and mass atrocities. This includes the deliberate attack on civilians this weekend by Hamas.”    A non-faculty instructor at the school in Palo Alto, California, was also suspended this month for allegedly singling out students based on their backgrounds while discussing events in Israel.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/stanford-slammed-by-alumni-students-for-hamas-response/ar-AA1iX74Y

2023-10-27 Israeli targets journalists, kills their families as Big Tech & Biden admin silence Palestinians   With Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killing at least twenty Palestinian journalists—and the Biden administration working to muzzle others—Big Tech is quietly coordinating with Tel Aviv to muzzle Palestinian media outfits.

Big Tech censorship has proven indispensable to Israel’s propaganda war. In the aftermath of October 7, multiple social media platforms have suspended or deactivated profiles belonging to numerous prominent journalists, human rights advocates, and Palestinian activists. The crackdown follows years of complaints alleging double standards when it comes to anti-Zionist content on social media.  

Despite Meta’s denial, it is worth recalling the company’s record of complying with Israeli government censorship requests. Following the approval of a so-called “Facebook Bill” aimed at clamping down on digital “incitement” in 2016, fanatical former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked bragged that Facebook, Twitter and Google were complying with 70 percent of their takedown orders.  https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israeli-assassinates-journalists-big-tech-biden-palestinians/ 

2023-10-21 AP erases Israeli pledge to attack Gaza like ‘Axis Power’ as officials threaten Palestinians with ‘Dresden’ doctrine     As Israeli officials proudly compare their bombardment of the Gaza Strip to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, the Associated Press has quietly removed a section noting US alarm over the historical comparison.

The Associated Press has quietly deleted a reference to official Israeli threats to subject the Gaza Strip to a Dresden-style firebombing campaign — the latest move in legacy media outlets’ ongoing push to downplay the impacts of Tel Aviv’s siege of over two million Palestinians.

“Four U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said American diplomats became increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts regarding their intention to deny water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties,” the AP article previously stated.    https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/21/israeli-attack-axis-gaza-dresden/

2023-10-18   US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’s (USCPR)      Yesterday, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel, capitulating to external pressure from hate groups, unilaterally canceled the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’s (USCPR) upcoming conference. The cancellation was made with very little notice or advanced warning. Our experience is not an isolated incident. Across the country we have seen a concerted effort to vilify and silence anyone who speaks up for Palestinian human rights.

USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid said, “The breach by Hilton is clearly an act of ethnic, racial and religious discrimination. Further, canceling the conference because of our organization’s political positions goes against our First Amendment rights. Not only has Hilton breached their agreement with us, they have also sent a strong message that they stand on the side of hate and bigotry. Moving forward we will explore all options to remedy this. We will fight back and remain undeterred in our mission to advocate for justice, equality, and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”

Following the breach by Hilton, an alarming tweet by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, which attacked our organizers, and dehumanized Palestinians, put our staff, volunteers, and participants in harm’s way. The Governor’s rhetoric, and actions by the hotel echo and inflame the sharp increase in hate incidents that are targeting Arabs, rhetoric that led to the murder of 6-year-old Wadie Al Fayoume.

We stand with countless others who have been subjected to similar unjust actions in the past. Such incidents remind us that we must persist in our efforts to shed light on the ongoing human rights abuses in Palestine and the need for international intervention.   https://www.uscprconference.org/

2023-10-18 Major Jewish-Led Protest in Capital Calls for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza     inside the White House and other government buildings, staffers have shared with reporters the challenges in calling out Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. Government employees say they fear possible retaliation for even raising the issue of humanitarian protections or restraining Israel.   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/headlines/biden_sides_with_israel_after_airstrikes_level_gazan_hospital_killing_hundreds_of_palestinians

2023-10-16 Israel Is Just A Nonstop Bombing Campaign With A Flag   You are required to turn yourself into an unthinking mental infant who can only relate to world events by pointing at them and yelling “GOOD!” or “BAD!”, with “good” and “bad” always perfectly aligning with the information interests of the US-centralized empire.

If the answers go against the information interests of the US-centralized empire, then you’re not allowed to ask the questions. You can only believe what the talking heads tell you to believe and clap along to the beat of the imperial drum, like a child clapping along to a song on a cartoon show.

When empire simps berate you and accuse you of treasonous malfeasance for talking about the causes of terrible world events, what they are really saying is, “Stop asking questions. Stop thinking. Believe only what you are told. Become stupid. Become a drooling moron with American flags in your eyes. Stop using that tongue to question authority and affix it firmly to the imperial boot forever.”

If you can’t talk about the causes of violence, then you can’t prevent violence. So if you’re an empire that’s held together by endless violence, that’s the last thing you want people doing.   https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-is-just-a-nonstop-bombing

2023-10-16 State Dept. Reportedly Bans Officials from Publicly Using Terms “De-escalation,” “Ceasefire”     HuffPost reports the State Department instructed officials not to use certain terms when speaking in public about the war, including “de-escalation,” “ceasefire,” “end to violence” and “restoring calm.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/headlines/protests_across_the_us_call_for_israel_to_end_its_siege_and_genocide_in_gaza

2023-10-10 Playboy fires former adult film star for ‘disgusting and reprehensible comments’ on Hamas attack   Mia Khalifa, a former adult film performer who was born in Beirut, Lebanon, has been expressing her views on the conflict on X, formerly Twitter. And Playboy has fired her from its Centerfold platform in response to some anti-Israel comments it slammed as “disgusting and reprehensible.”   At Playboy, we encourage free expression and constructive political debate, but we have a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech.”

On October 7, Khalifa tweeted, “Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal.” Later in the day, Khalifa posted, “I can’t believe the Zionist apartheid regime is being brought down by guerrilla fighters in fake Gucci shirts – the biopics of these moments better reflect that.” https://www.alternet.org/israel-hamas-2665870125/

2023-02-17 Silencing Critics of Israel: Biden Pulls Nomination of Human Rights Lawyer For Decrying Apartheid     Last Friday, the State Department announced the nomination of James Cavallaro, a widely respected human rights attorney, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. But earlier this week, the State Department withdrew Cavallaro’s nomination after reports emerged that he had described Israel as an apartheid state and had criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s close ties to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Defending the withdrawal of Cavallaro’s nomination, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, “His statements clearly do not reflect U.S. policy. They are not a reflection of what we believe, and they are inappropriate to say the least.” The decision has sparked outrage within the human rights community. Cavallaro joins us to explain that this move by the Biden administration is particularly troubling because the role he was nominated for does not have any authority over U.S.-Israel relations and is an independent position.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfslgTvNymk

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/

2020-11-28 Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Misguided Defense of John Brennan and The Logan Act: a Dangerous and Unconstitutional Law   The right to dissent from, and to work against, the official foreign policy of the U.S. Government is vital: foundational to Constitutional liberties. There is very little such dissent in the U.S. Congress, where many of the core tenets of the Foreign Policy Community (from CIA drone warfare and clandestine coups to steadfast support for Gulf State and Middle East tyrannies as well as Israel) enjoy overwhelming, at times virtually unanimous, bipartisan support.

This 219-year-old statute (Logan Act) is one of the most unconstitutional and dangerous laws in the U.S. Code. Because it has never been used to prosecute anyone, and was only used to obtain an indictment one time in its entire history — back in 1803, against someone who wrote an op-ed criticizing U.S. foreign policy toward France — nobody knows what it actually prescribes or allows because there is no binding judicial precedent interpreting what it means. It is precisely because it has never been used to prosecute anyone that there is no judicial clarity about what it means, and that’s how the U.S. Government wants it (for the same exact reason, the DOJ has never made good on its threats to prosecute any journalist who publishes classified information under the Espionage Act of 1917: they prefer to weaponize the fear of uncertainty regarding the law’s scope and application rather than prosecute journalists under it and thus risk a judicial ruling declaring it unconstitutional or inapplicable to journalists).  The wildly broad vagueness and lack of clarity is what makes it so dangerous to leave the Logan Act on the books.  https://greenwald.substack.com/p/rep-ilhan-omars-misguided-defense

2019-12-05 TIM WISE SPEECH AT “CRIMINALIZING DISSENT” PALESTINIAN RIGHTS PANEL AT UMASS    Criminalizing Dissent: The Attack on BDS & Pro-Palestinian Speech, a panel featuring Cornel West, Linda Sarsour, Shaun King, Omar Barghouti, Tim Wise, and Dima Khalidi, was held at the UMass-Amherst Fine Arts Center on Nov. 12, 2019 in front of a capacity crowd despite being condemned by university officials and right-wing pro-Israel pressure groups. The panel addressed mounting efforts by U.S. political leaders, right-wing lobbying groups, and college and university administrators to silence pro-Palestinian speech on American campuses and criminalize support for BDS, a nonviolent movement that seeks to pressure Israel to end its violations of Palestinian human rights. Topics included the recent bipartisan vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to condemn BDS, a new U.S. Department of Education policy that threatens to withdraw federal funding from institutions that allow pro-Palestinian speech critical of Israeli policy, and a formal statement issued by the chancellor of UMass condemning the event.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PpLugQAqI

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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 by Israel

Updated 2024-03-25

2024-03-19 Meet the Israeli “traitors” standing against the war in Gaza       While opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza is voiced around the world, in Israel support for the war is still strong, but we speak to one of only two people imprisoned for refusing to serve in the army.  Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told his fellow politicians they need to stand united against the United States, as it cautions against an offensive in Rafah. Mr Netanyahu has sent a delegation to the US to discuss Israel’s planned military operation in Gaza’s southern city, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHAE9C0qJB8

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

2023-11-14 ‘The fear is everywhere’: Israel’s fascist internal crackdown | The Marc Steiner Show       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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10D7WBdNS0

2023-11-11 From the River to the Sea: There is one Israeli dictatorship     A main achievement of Israeli Apartheid over the years was the division of the Palestinian people. While Jews (and other colonialist settlers of all creeds) may roam freely from the river to the sea and enjoy the whole spectrum of privileges, from free speech to the “right” to expropriate Palestinian land, the native Arab Palestinians are confined to enclaves and divided by different systems of discrimination and oppression, different leaderships and different (illusory) political perspectives.

I already reported here in detail about the repression of the first attempts to protest against Israel’s massacres in Gaza and to demand an end to the bloody war. In this second post about Israel’s full-scale dictatorship, I will describe how repression is deepening as the new rules of the game become clear.

On the morning of October 29, the Haifa police did not wait for another demonstration and invaded my house in a big show of force. They confiscated Palestinian flags, posters, and banners from old demonstrations. They arrested me for the night. The next day, they requested to extend my detention on the grounds that by having flags and banners at home, I performed the crime of “behavior that might disturb public order” (this was the article of the law they used). They explained that I might take part in some future demonstrations. Due to my poor health, I was detained mostly in a hospital, where I was handcuffed to a bed and guarded by two armed policemen. The police also sent to the Israeli press some photos of the mess they made in my house and a photo of me in custody, boasting that they detained “a Hamas supporter.”  Read full article for more examples of repression of dissent!  https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/from-the-river-to-the-sea-there-is-one-israeli-dictatorship/ 

2023-11-09 Israel Accused of ‘Thought Policing’ as Legislation Criminalizes Viewing Pro-Palestinian Media      Arab citizens of Israel “are now criminalized for simply sitting in their homes following the news on Gaza,” lamented one professor.    Human rights and free speech advocates on Thursday decried Israeli lawmakers’ passage of legislation criminalizing the viewing of social and other media supportive of the Palestinian resistance struggle.

Knesset lawmakers voted 13-4 to amend Article 24 of Israel’s Counterterrorism Law—which prohibits “demonstrating identification with a terrorist organization and incitement to terrorism”—to include a temporary two-year ban on “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization.”

The amendment identifies Hamas and Islamic State as terrorist groups and allows the Ministry of Justice to add more organizations to the list.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-counterterrorism-law

2023-11-09 ‘Thought police’: Israel passes law criminalizing ‘consumption of terrorist materials’    Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed what rights groups are calling one of the “most intrusive and draconian legislative measures” ever passed in Israel’s history.    On Wednesday, November 8, Israeli lawmakers passed an amendment to the country’s Counter-Terrorism Law by a 13-4 majority, criminalizing the “consumption of terrorist materials,” carrying a maximum of up to one year in prison.     Outlined in the new law is an offense described as the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization.”   https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/thought-police-israel-passes-law-criminalizing-consumption-of-terrorist-materials/

2023-11-05 Israel’s Stranglehold on Media Coverage in Gaza Must End    Unlike previous wars it has waged on Gaza, Israel has barred all outside journalists from reporting on the ground. This reduces mainstream coverage of the war’s human cost to a roster of dead and injured, a series of digits reported in the aggregate—and now always with the compulsory footnote, “according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.”   While western media organizations insist that this caveat is necessary, their argument—that reporters outside Gaza cannot independently verify the horrifying stories emerging from there—has rarely been followed by an equally public insistence that journalists be allowed into Gaza to report for themselves.

On October 29, the French outlet Le Monde called for open access to Gaza for the press, but no such petition, to my knowledge, has been made public by other mainstream outlets. This acquiescence is especially dangerous because it gives Israel carte blanche to undermine the media’s crucial work in other ways, including by targeting Palestinian camera operators, producers, and reporters, who are the public’s only eyes and ears on the ground.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has already documented at least 36 cases of journalists killed during this war. CPJ also notes that many local journalists, like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians in Gaza, have had to relocate, forcing them to “abandon reporting equipment, documents, and protective gear” as they fled Israeli bombardment. With fewer of these journalists able to report on the aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign, evidence of the massive civilian death toll will be lost in the rubble, undermining any future inquiries into the conduct of this war.

Resisting Israel’s stranglehold on media coverage took on new urgency on October 27, when Gaza’s access to the Internet and both its telephone networks was severed.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-media-blackout-gaza

2023-10-27 Israeli targets journalists, kills their families as Big Tech & Biden admin silence Palestinians   With Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killing at least twenty Palestinian journalists—and the Biden administration working to muzzle others—Big Tech is quietly coordinating with Tel Aviv to muzzle Palestinian media outfits.

Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed three Palestinian journalists on October 25 in one of the deadliest days for local reporters since the military’s bombing campaign began nearly three weeks before. As the hours passed, footage appeared showing the moment Ramallah-based journalist Mohammed Farra learned that his wife and children were all killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza’s Khan Younes neighborhood. Similarly heart-rending scenes would play out more than once over the course of the day. Elsewhere in the besieged coastal enclave, an Israeli airstrike killed the wife, son, daughter and infant grandson of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh. 

Suspicions that Israeli forces deliberately targeted Dahdouh’s family were quickly bolstered by comments from News 13 journalist Zvi Yehezkeli.  “Generally we know the target,” Yehezkeli told audiences within hours of the strike, adding, “for example, today there was a target: the family of an Al Jazeera reporter.”

If true, it wouldn’t be the first time the Dahdouh’s outlet found itself in Israeli crosshairs. In 2021, the Israeli military leveled the Gaza tower that housed the officers of both the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The following year, Israeli forces assassinated renowned Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh, a veteran Jerusalem-based correspondent for Al Jazeera, in a shooting that drew international condemnation but was largely ignored by the US government, which echoes the Israeli government’s position that her killing was “unintentional.” Under Blinken, the State Department has distanced itself from its initial expressions of outrage and no longer calls for either an independent investigation or criminal charges for the perpetrators.

Big Tech censorship has proven indispensable to Israel’s propaganda war. In the aftermath of October 7, multiple social media platforms have suspended or deactivated profiles belonging to numerous prominent journalists, human rights advocates, and Palestinian activists. The crackdown follows years of complaints alleging double standards when it comes to anti-Zionist content on social media.  

Despite Meta’s denial, it is worth recalling the company’s record of complying with Israeli government censorship requests. Following the approval of a so-called “Facebook Bill” aimed at clamping down on digital “incitement” in 2016, fanatical former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked bragged that Facebook, Twitter and Google were complying with 70 percent of their takedown orders.  https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israeli-assassinates-journalists-big-tech-biden-palestinians/ 

2023-10-19 Israeli Attacks on Journalists Stifle Reporting on Gaza Horrors   The Israeli communications minister’s attempt to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Jerusalem—on the grounds that the Qatari news outlet is biased in favor of Hamas and is actively endangering Israeli troops (Reuters, 10/15/23)—should inspire some déjà vu. In the last war in Gaza, an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building housing both Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices (AP, 5/15/21). And just months ago, Al Jazeera (5/18/23) reported that “the family of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a Palestinian-American AJ journalist killed by Israeli fire while on assignment, “has rebuked Israel for saying it is ‘sorry’ for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death without providing accountability or even acknowledging that its forces killed her.”  

But the ability of Al Jazeera and other Arab reporters to cover the assault on Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began. The Committee to Protect Journalists (10/18/23) has counted 13 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since the crisis began, with two more missing or detained. Three Israeli journalists were also killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, with another taken prisoner.    https://fair.org/home/israeli-attacks-on-journalists-stifle-reporting-on-gaza-horrors/

2023-10-19 Knesset Suspends Lawmaker Ofer Cassif for Criticizing Israel’s War on Gaza    An Israeli parliament ethics committee has suspended Knesset member Ofer Cassif for 45 days after Cassif criticized Israel’s assault on Gaza. His suspension comes as Israeli authorities have arrested more than 100 Israeli citizens over social media posts supporting Palestinians in Gaza. At least 70 Israeli university students face suspension or other disciplinary action for posting pro-Palestinian sentiments online. Click here to see our interview with Ofer Cassif.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day 

2023-10-18 Reports: Israel to Ban Al Jazeera for Reporting on Gaza War    Israel is reportedly set to ban Al Jazeera’s operations in the country over its coverage of the war. Al Jazeera is one of the few global media networks that has reporters on the ground in Gaza.  In related news, the Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 17 media workers have been killed since the start of the war. Thirteen of them were Palestinian, three Israeli and one Lebanese  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/headlines/biden_sides_with_israel_after_airstrikes_level_gazan_hospital_killing_hundreds_of_palestinians

2023-10-16 At Least 12 Reporters Killed Covering Israel-Gaza War Amid Reports of Harassment and Attacks   The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 12 media workers have been killed since the war started.   Elsewhere, journalists from BBC Arabic say they were pulled from their vehicle by Israeli police in Tel Aviv and held at gunpoint. And on Sunday night, a right-wing mob attacked the home of Israeli left-wing and ultra-Orthodox journalist Israel Frey. The mob accused him of being a “traitor” for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian civilians. Meanwhile, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is pushing emergency measures that would allow police to arrest citizens and journalists whose content “harms national morale.”   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/headlines/protests_across_the_us_call_for_israel_to_end_its_siege_and_genocide_in_gaza

2023-10-11 Journalists Hold Funeral Procession for Their Colleagues Killed in Attacks on Gaza     Among the dead in Gaza are at least seven journalists. On Tuesday, media workers held a funeral procession for two of the slain reporters. Blue “press” helmets were placed on their bodies. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11/headlines/death_toll_in_israel_and_gaza_tops_2_200_as_gazans_face_total_energy_blackout_and_no_safe_refuge

2023-01-25 EU Says It’s Anti-Semitic to Call Israel an Apartheid State   It is anti-Semitic to say Israel perpetrates the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, according to the European Union.  That would mean that major rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International  and Israel’s B’Tselem  – which is funded by the EU  – are guilty of anti-Jewish bigotry, according to Brussels. 

The lawmakers stated that Amnesty’s report last February “alleges that apartheid was inherent in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and has been built on and maintained by successive Israeli governments.”   The lawmakers asked if EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also views Israel as an “apartheid state.” 

The pro-Israel lawmakers should be fully satisfied with Borrell’s written response issued on 20 January.   “The Commission considers that it is not appropriate to use the term apartheid in connection with the State of Israel,” Borrell wrote.   Borrell affirmed the EU’s reliance on the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and emphasized: “Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor is amongst the illustrative examples included under the IHRA definition.”   The highly politicized IHRA definition, heavily promoted by Israel and its lobby, has faced broad opposition due to concerns that it will be used in precisely the manner Borrell is now deploying it: to falsely label legitimate criticism of Israel and its crimes as anti-Jewish bigotry. 

 Borrell provided no factual basis for dismissing the meticulous research from multiple human rights groups showing how Israel perpetrates apartheid, a serious crime against humanity covered by the Rome Statute , the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court.   https://www.blackagendareport.com/eu-says-its-anti-semitic-call-israel-apartheid-state

2022-05-15 The Israeli Execution of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh  Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera reporter with more than two decades of experience covering armed conflicts, knew the protocol. She and other reporters remained last Wednesday in the open, clearly visible to Israeli snipers about 650 feet away in a building. Her flak jacket and helmet were emblazoned with the word “PRESS.”

There were three shots fired in her direction. The second bullet hit the Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi in the back. The third shot, al-Samoudi remembered, hit Abu Akleh in the face below the rim of her helmet.    https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-israeli-execution-of-al-jazeera

2022-05-12 Shireen Abu Akleh was executed to send a message to Palestinians    The execution of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier in the Palestinian city of Jenin, along with Israel‘s immediate efforts to muddy the waters about who was responsible and the feeble expressions of concern from western capitals, brought memories flooding back from 20 years of reporting from the region.   Abu Akleh reported on far too many killings of Palestinians not to have known the risks she faced as a journalist every time she donned a flak jacket. It was a kind of nerve I did not share. According to a recent report by Reporters Without Borders, at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied territories since 2018. Three, including Abu Akleh, have been killed in the same period.  https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/shireen-abu-akleh-was-executed-to

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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

Cease Fire

Updated 2024-08-24

Ceasefire Now    Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 30,500 Palestinians, including more than 13,000 children, and injured more than 71,000 since October 7th. The only way to end this current conflict that is threatening to grow across the Middle East is with diplomatic solutions. The violence must stop, hostages must be freed, innocent captives must be released, and humanitarian aid must flow freely. Ceasefire now!   76/536 Members of Congress fully support a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities*  76 Democrats  0 Republicans  0 Independents   https://ceasefireaction.com/   

2024-08-23 Israel offers new proposal for the Philadelphi corridor to Hamas   Egypt is set to deliver Israel’s latest Philadelphi corridor proposal to Hamas after Israel submitted a revised plan on Thursday as efforts to secure a ceasefire deal to halt the fighting in Gaza continue, a diplomat and an Israeli source familiar with the talks said.

The new Israeli proposal, which includes a map of where Israeli troops would be deployed, reduces the number of troops and military posts along the strategic corridor bordering Egypt from Israel’s previous position, the Israeli source said. Egyptian negotiators had rejected the previous Israeli map days earlier and declined to transfer it to Hamas, calling it a non-starter.

The Philadelphi corridor is a 14-kilometer (8.7-mile) strip of land in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt- that the IDF currently controls.

The deployment of Israeli troops along the Philadelphi corridor during the first phase of a ceasefire agreement has been a major point of contention between Israel and Hamas. Israel has demanded maintaining control of the border zone, whereas Hamas has said Israeli troops must withdraw from the area.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-offers-new-proposal-for-the-philadelphi-corridor-to-hamas/ar-AA1pk1oY?

2024-08-22 Exclusive-Israeli demands for troops in Gaza blocking truce deal, sources say        Disagreements over Israel’s future military presence in Gaza and over Palestinian prisoner releases are obstructing a ceasefire and hostage deal, according to ten sources familiar with the round of U.S.-mediated talks that concluded last week.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/exclusive-israeli-demands-for-troops-in-gaza-blocking-truce-deal-sources-say/ar-AA1pfNmm?

2024-08-21 As Gaza War Is Largely Ignored on DNC Stage, Doubts Grow over Blinken’s Claims on Ceasefire Talks   The Israeli military has ordered new forced evacuations in parts of central Gaza, signaling the expansion of ground operations and the latest displacement of Palestinians, many of whom have already been displaced multiple times over the course of Israel’s war on the territory. At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, pushing the official death toll past 40,200. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his ninth visit to the Middle East since October without securing any breakthrough for a ceasefire deal. In Chicago, where Democrats are gathered for the DNC, Gaza has been mentioned only in passing from the main stage of the convention. The party’s official platform adopted this week does not call for an arms embargo on Israel and reasserts unwavering U.S. support for Israel. “There’s been an almost competition between Democrats and Republicans on ‘how much can we show Israel that we support them and that we have their back?'” says human rights lawyer Zaha Hassan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and previously the senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership. “Why should Israel ever compromise its positions if they know that by holding out, they’ll get more goodies from the U.S.?”   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEop0c70Jxw

2024-08-20 Hostage’s mother claims Mossad chief told her deal ‘impossible’ because of politics    Testifying before an independent civilian commission of inquiry on Tuesday, the mother of one of the 105 hostages remaining in Gaza claimed that Mossad director David Barnea had told her that a hostage deal is impossible to achieve in the current political reality. The Mossad later denied he had said this.    

Recalling what she described as a private discussion with the intelligence chief around May, Einav Zangauker quoted Barnea as saying that “unfortunately, in the current political constellation, a deal to release the hostages is impossible.”

Barnea “explained this was because of politics,” she told the so-called civil commission of inquiry in Tel Aviv — possibly referencing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unwillingness to risk his government, which his far-right coalition partners have threaten to topple if he agrees to what they have characterized as a “reckless” deal.  

Zangauker has been a leading critic of  Netanyahu’s government, protesting and intensely lobbying members of his cabinet to support a deal to free her son Matan Zangauker and the rest of the hostages still held by Hamas.

With Netanyahu repeatedly putting off the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the failures of successive governments’ failures to prevent the October 7 attack, several groups representing survivors of the Hamas massacre and the families of those killed recently announced the formation of the independent probe, which they have said is aimed at “reaching the truth and preventing the next disaster.”   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hostage-s-mother-claims-mossad-chief-told-her-deal-impossible-because-of-politics/ar-AA1p7te5?

2024-08-19 Blinken Heads to Israel for Gaza Cease-Fire Push as IDF Slaughter Continues      Israeli airstrikes wiped out an entire family in al-Zawayda and killed 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon as Hamas poured cold water on President Joe Biden’s claim that a cease-fire is “closer than we’ve ever been.”     

 In a separate statement, Biden said that a U.S. negotiating team presented a “comprehensive bridging proposal” offering “the basis for coming to a final agreement on a cease-fire and hostage release deal.”

“I am sending Secretary Blinken to Israel to reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security, continue our intensive efforts to conclude this agreement, and to underscore that with the comprehensive cease-fire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process,” the president added. https://www.commondreams.org/news/blinken-in-israel

2024-08-19 Palestine Post: Khury Petersen-Smith on ceasefire talks underway   We start our recurring Monday Palestine coverage discussing the latest news from the region with Khury Petersen-Smith, Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he researches U.S. empire, borders, and migration. We discuss the latest ceasefire talks underway in Qatar, while the US continues providing arms and military aid, the wider    https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-august-19-2024/

2024-08-13 Former Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy: U.S. Is Part of “Axis of Zionist Extremism”     The United States, Qatar and Egypt are urging Israel and Hamas to hold a new round of negotiations to finalize a ceasefire deal in Gaza. However, Hamas is urging mediators to enforce the ceasefire terms proposed by President Biden in May that Hamas already agreed to and that Israel rejected. Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin, says U.S.-led efforts for a ceasefire are likely to fail as long as the Biden administration remains unwilling to pressure Israel. “It’s quite clear Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire deal,” says Levy, who adds that the Washington playbook of unlimited support for Israel and threats to keep other regional actors in line could pull the U.S. into a wider Middle East war. “America is playing the role as a member of the axis of Zionist extremism.”   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO8OwqMDDAU

2024-07-26 US Doctors Back From Gaza Push Kamala Harris, Joe and Jill Biden for a Ceasefire    We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel.

The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population. The doctors write, “With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas with no running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking.”

The conditions in Gaza are “unacceptable,” and “people know this is wrong but no one is speaking up,” says Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an obstetrician and gynecologist who volunteered at the Nasser Medical Complex. “We all saw evidence of a death toll that is certainly much higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health,” adds Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital. https://truthout.org/video/us-doctors-back-from-gaza-push-kamala-harris-joe-and-jill-biden-for-a-ceasefire/  

2024-7-30 Whoever Wins in November, Our Movement Must Make Palestine Nonnegotiable   While the world has become transfixed by the unfolding political crisis in the U.S. presidential election, Israel continues to lay waste to Gaza, expand settlements in the West Bank and massacre Palestinians in skyrocketing numbers.

In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Eman Abdelhadi — an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics — discusses the ceasefire negotiations, Israel’s ongoing genocidal war, the Palestinian resistance, the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the tasks of the Palestine solidarity movement.https://truthout.org/articles/whoever-wins-in-november-our-movement-must-make-palestine-nonnegotiable/

2024-07-11 Netanyahu “Trying to Do Everything to Prevent a Deal,” Says Ex-Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy    Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy discusses ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued hostility to compromise and the Biden administration’s ineffectual mediation. Contrary to its claims of brokering peace, the U.S. “will continue to send the weapons” Israel uses to devastate Gaza, unremittingly fueling an increasingly unpopular war, says Levy, who is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project.   Democracy Now! is an independent global newshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pfJzZ2xAkU

2024-05-25 Hamas official rejects talk of new negotiations with Israel     Hamas official Osama Hamdan has said that there is no need for new negotiations with Israel, amid Israeli media reports that there is an intention to renew Gaza truce talks.  In a phone interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on Saturday, Hamdan said that the immediate requirement is for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and for all aggression to stop. 

“We do not need new negotiations,” he said, adding that Hamas has already agreed to a ceasefire proposal that Israel has rejected.  “There is no guarantee that it [Israel] will accept new proposals to go to negotiations … If there are no serious guarantees, this means giving Israel more time to continue the aggression,” he added.  Earlier this month, Hamas approved a proposal for a ceasefire in the seven-month Gaza war put forward by mediators Qatar and Egypt although Israel said the proposal falls short of its demands .https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/25/hamas-official-rejects-talk-of-new-negotiations-with-israel

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

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

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

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

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

2024-03-25 US Abstains as UN Security Council Demands ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’ in Gaza       “This resolution must be implemented,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Failure would be unforgivable.”   

 The U.S. on Monday declined to veto but still abstained from a United Nations Security Council on Monday to adopt a resolution demanding an “immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan” in the embattled Gaza Strip, a move that came amid an ongoing Israeli genocide in which more than 114,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded and hundreds of thousands of others are starving.

The Security Council voted 14-0, with the U.S. abstaining, to approve a resolution for the cessation of hostilities during the Muslim holy month after member states overcame a sticking point over the removal of the word “permanent” from an earlier draft version. Instead, the resolution calls for an “immediate” cease-fire.

“Humanity prevails. Humanity always prevails,” Palestine’s U.N. mission said on social media following the vote. “Today’s historic vote by the Security Council for a #ceasefire and an end to Israel’s crimes is a first step towards justice. The resolution is binding.”    https://www.commondreams.org/news/u-n-cease-fire-resolution?

2024-03-25 UN Security Council passes resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire The UN Security Council has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, after the US did not veto the measure in a shift from its previous position.  It also demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.  It is the first time the council has called for a ceasefire since the war began in October after several failed attempts.    The move by the US signals growing divergence between it and its ally Israel over Israel’s offensive in Gaza.   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68658415?

2024-03-05 Groups Forge Emergency Coalition to Pressure US on Gaza Cease-Fire      “It is long past time for the United States to use its leverage and uphold U.S. law to end Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and have this war come to an end.”  

A broad coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday launched an emergency online campaign to pressure U.S. lawmakers to support an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza.  Demand Progress, Oxfam America, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Win Without War, Common Defense, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and 23 partner groups started CeasefireAction.com, which includes a searchable database of each member of Congress and where they stand on the cease-fire issue, as well as a tool for contacting lawmakers to urge them to publicly support a cease-fire.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/cease-fire-now?

2024-03-05 Biden Expresses Hope on Cease-Fire Talks, but Hamas Appears to Reject Latest Offer    President Biden said Tuesday that talks on a possible six-week cease-fire in Gaza are “in the hands of Hamas right now.” He spoke just before a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to reject a proposed deal the United States is backing, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn.

Mr. Biden said that the Israelis had “been cooperating” in the indirect negotiations, which are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt, and that “a rational offer” had been made. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news?s

2024-02-16 UE, Six Other National Unions Launch Ceasefire Effort   UE is one of seven national unions which announced the formation of the National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC) today, along with over two hundred local unions. The aim of the network is to “end the death and devastation” in the Middle East, and to expand support for the ceasefire among unions nationally.   Together, unions calling for a ceasefire represent over 9 million union members — more than half the labor movement in the United States. The NLNC launch comes on the heels of a statement calling for a ceasefire released by the AFL-CIO last week – the largest federation of unions in the United States.   https://www.ueunion.org/political-action/2024/ue-six-other-national-unions-launch-ceasefire-effort

2024-02-16 Black and Brown Coalition for Palestine     Frank Chapman is Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression . Hatem Abudayyeh is National Chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network . They join us from Chicago to discuss the city council vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Mayor Brandon Johnson cast the tie breaking vote which passed the measure. They are here to update us on events in Palestine and in Chicago.   https://blackagendareport.com/black-and-brown-coalition-palestine

2024-02-07 ‘Our Conditions’ – Full Text of Hamas Response to Ceasefire Proposal     The original Paris ceasefire proposal, at least in the view of Washington, seemed largely interested in helping Israel escape its military and political predicaments in Gaza.   Though it contained many mutually agreed-upon provisions, by both sides, it lacked a comprehensive and detailed view of the Gaza war and its causes, in addition to guarantees that Israeli would not resume its genocide whenever it suits its interests.

Below is the official Hamas response to the ceasefire agreement proposal. It was initially published by the Arabic newspaper Al-Akhbar. It was translated and provided by the Resistance News Network Telegram Channel.   It is published in full without any editing from its original translation by the RNN. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/our-conditions-full-text-of-hamas-response-to-ceasefire-proposal/

2024-02-07 Israel-based civil society and human rights organizations call for a ceasefire      We, the undersigned Israel-based civil society and human rights organizations, call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand the immediate release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip. An immediate ceasefire will prevent further loss of civilian lives and facilitate access to vital aid for Gaza to address the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe there.    

We thus call on all parties to reach an immediate ceasefire and we call upon Israel to allow unfettered entry and delivery of humanitarian aid and goods into and throughout Gaza, as directed to do so by the International Court of Justice. Hamas must unconditionally release all people taken hostage on October 7. We call on the international community to uphold its legal obligation to restore respect for international humanitarian law and protect civilians. The international community must ensure that all those responsible for grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law be held accountable. These steps are vital for ensuring human rights and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike. https://www.btselem.org/press_releses/20240207_israel_based_civil_society_and_human_rights_organizations_call_for_a_ceasefire

2024-02-06 Qatar says Hamas response to truce proposal ‘generally positive’ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/6/qatar-says-hamas-response-to-truce-proposal-generally-positive

2024-02-01 Hamas unlikely to reject ceasefire but will demand Israeli withdrawal -source     Hamas is unlikely to reject a Gaza ceasefire proposal it received from mediators this week, but will not sign it without assurances that Israel has committed to ending the war, a Palestinian official close to the talks said on Thursday.   Qatari and Egyptian mediators presented Hamas this week with the first concrete proposal for an extended halt to fighting in Gaza, agreed with Israel and the United States at talks in Paris last week. Hamas has said it is studying the text and preparing a response. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-unlikely-to-reject-ceasefire-but-will-demand-israeli-withdrawal-source/ar-BB1hBEdH?

2024-01-30 American Federation of Teachers Joins Call for Gaza Cease-Fire     The union’s executive council called for a cease-fire after months of pressure from educators across the United States.     The result of “significant” input from rank-and-file members of the American Federation of Teachers from across the United States, the 1.72 million-strong union’s executive council on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The resolution calls for a “negotiated bilateral cease-fire” that would be guaranteed by the international community, including the U.S. and other countries that are supporting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.   “A cease-fire agreement must include the immediate provision of desperately needed food, water, medical care, clothing, emergency shelter, and other humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the release of all hostages abducted by Hamas from Israel on October 7,” reads the statement.

The resolution also reaffirms “the AFT’s support for a two-state solution,” condemns antisemitism and Islamophobia, and demands that all people should be “safe to express dissent” in the United States.   “The conflict should not be used as an excuse to wage political attacks on American colleges and universities, or as a pretext to undermine necessary efforts to increase diversity, promote equity, and advance inclusion,” reads the union’s statement. https://www.commondreams.org/news/union-ceasefire-2667126890

2024-01-22 Labor unions are making unprecedented calls for a ceasefire in Gaza     Before dawn broke on Jan. 14, hundreds of labor organizers and activists convened at the Port of Oakland for a protest to prevent ships carrying weapons bound for Israel from leaving the docks. Activists from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which co-organized the event, kept the momentum going all day. In the afternoon, 200 workers reportedly refused to cross the picket line to help load the ships.

“The labor movement has the power to disrupt supply chains,” said Zachary Valdez, a union steward with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110 based in New York. “Workers can shut everything down.”   The action was an impressive show of solidarity between the labor movement and the Palestinian cause, one of a number of actions in the Bay Area and across the country co-organized or supported by unions in recent months, including teach-ins and other civil disobedience efforts. https://prismreports.org/2024/01/22/labor-unions-unprecedented-calls-ceasefire-gaza/  

2024-01-22 SEIU Becomes Largest US Union to Demand Gaza Cease-Fire     With over 25,000 Palestinians killed so far in the U.S.-backed Israeli assault of the Gaza Strip, the Service Employees International Union on Monday became the largest union in North America to join a growing coalition of labor groups calling for a cease-fire.

“SEIU’s almost 2 million members believe that wherever violence, fear, and hatred thrive, working people cannot,” said Mary Kay Henry, the union’s president, in a statement. “We condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and hate in all its forms around the world. Our union includes many members and their families—Palestinian and Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian—who have been impacted by the recent violence.”  “As a union family strongly committed to justice and democracy, we believe all people across the globe deserve to live safely and free of fear, with dignity and respect for their human rights, as well as access to food, water, shelter, medicine, and other necessities,” she continued. “SEIU members understand that working people often feel the impact of war most deeply and bear the brunt of its terrible consequences.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/union-ceasefire

2023-12-28 Cease-Fire Now! What I Said to the UN Security Council      Not many people have the opportunity to provide an oral and written statement to the United Nations Security Council. I had my chance on December 11, 2023, when I was asked as a retired U.S. Army colonel and a former U.S. diplomat to speak on weapons transfers in the Russia-Ukraine war.   I introduced myself as a U.S. taxpayer who was fed up with my tax money being used by the powerful and wealthy U.S. arms industry authorized by the U.S. government for sale to countries that are killing innocent civilians.

My statement to the Security Council was simple. Wars will never end as long as weapons transfers into the conflict area continue. I noted, as the Security Council well knows, that civilians will be the primary victims of the transfer of weapons.  I cited the two wars to which the U.S. is providing weapons: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/un-security-council-cease-fire

2023-12-25 Israeli War Cabinet Meets to Consider Egyptian Proposal to End War in Gaza      https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-dismantles-tunnel-network-that-served-as-hamas-command-center-51c017d4  

2023-12-25 Egypt floats plan to end Israel-Hamas war and create transitional Palestinian government    Egypt has put forward an ambitious, initial proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war with a cease-fire, a phased hostage release and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts who would administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat said Monday.  

The proposal, worked out with the Gulf nation of Qatar, has been presented to Israel, Hamas, the United States and European governments but still appeared preliminary. It falls short of Israel’s professed goal of outright crushing Hamas and would appear not to meet Israel’s insistence on keeping military control over Gaza for an extended period after the war.   Israel’s War Cabinet, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will meet later Monday discuss the hostage situation, among other topics, an Israeli official said, but would not say if they would discuss the Egyptian proposal. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The Egyptian proposal was an ambitious bid not only to end the war but also to lay out a plan for the day after.  It calls for an initial cease-fire of up to two weeks during which Palestinian militants would free 40 to 50 hostages, among them women, the sick and the elderly, in return for the release of 120-150 Palestinians from Israeli prisons, the Egyptian official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks. 

At the same time, negotiations would continue on extending the cease-fire and the release of more hostages and bodies held by Palestinian militants, he said.  Egypt and Qatar would also work with all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, to agree on the establishment of a government of experts, he said. The government would rule Gaza and the West Bank for a transitional period as Palestinian factions settle their disputes and agree on a roadmap to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, he added.   In the meantime, Israel and Hamas would continue to negotiate a comprehensive “all-for-all” deal, he said. This would include the release of all remaining hostages in return for all Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as well as the Israeli military’s withdrawal from Gaza and the Palestinian militants’ halting of rocket attacks into Israel. Close to 8,000 Palestinians are held by Israel on security-related charges or convictions, according to Palestinian figures.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/egypt-floats-plan-to-end-israel-hamas-war-and-create-transitional-palestinian-government/ar-AA1m0AHv?

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

2023-12-15 Largest Health Union in US Calls for Cease-Fire in Gaza     Days after U.S.-backed Israeli forces conducted its latest raid on a hospital in Gaza and as the spread of diseases including meningitis and chickenpox were reported in the besieged enclave, the largest healthcare union in the United States joined the international call for a cease-fire.

The executive council of 1199SEIU, a union that represents more than 450,000 healthcare workers from five states and Washington, D.C., said all parties involved “must commit to negotiating a permanent, just resolution to this conflict which will enable Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and build a future.”

“1199SEIU calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, to allow for urgent humanitarian relief amid the collapse of the territory’s health and other infrastructure,” said the executive council. “International humanitarian law and the laws of war must be upheld without exception, which include the inviolability of healthcare facilities. War crimes committed by one side of the conflict cannot and do not serve as justification for crimes and breaches of the Geneva Conventions by the other.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/health-union-ceasefire

2023-12-09 Aid groups warn of starvation in Gaza after U.S. vetoes cease-fire call    Palestinians in Gaza are facing mass starvation amid a punishing Israeli offensive that has “stripped families’ options for survival,” aid groups warned Saturday, a day after the United States vetoed a U.N. cease-fire resolution that the groups said would have facilitated the delivery of food and other emergency supplies.  

 The warnings over spreading hunger — from the United Nations, international aid agencies and Palestinian relief workers in Gaza — compounded fears for civilians already grappling with fierce fighting, heavy Israeli bombardment, the collapse of the health system and repeated displacement.

The draft resolution, backed by a majority of the U.N. Security Council, demanded an immediate halt to hostilities, the unconditional release of all hostages and humanitarian access in Gaza. The U.S. move to veto the resolution, which it called “rushed” and lacking in consultation, drew swift condemnation across the region, including from human rights groups, American partners in the Middle East and relief groups working in Gaza.

After the Security Council failed to “provide respite for civilians in Gaza,” London-based humanitarian organization Save the Children said in a statement Saturday that it has “continued to hear harrowing accounts of families going multiple days without food, shelter, water and access to healthcare.”      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/aid-groups-warn-of-starvation-in-gaza-after-u-s-vetoes-cease-fire-call/ar-AA1lgg1V

2023-12-08 ‘Disastrous’: US Vetoes Cease-Fire Resolution at UN Security Council     “The Security Council was again prevented from rising to this moment to uphold its clear responsibilities in the face of this grave crisis threatening human lives and threatening regional and international peace and security,” said the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations.   Nicolas de Rivière, France’s permanent representative to the Security Council, who voted in favor of the cease-fire, argued that there is no “contradiction in the fight against terrorism and the protection of civilians, in strict respect of international humanitarian law.” 

The U.S. has now vetoed U.N. resolutions to hold Israel accountable for its policies in Palestine 45 times, human rights lawyer Noura Erakat said.  Former U.N. human rights official Craig Mokhiber—who resigned in October over the U.N.’s response to the war in Gaza—noted that U.S. blocked the resolution on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the U.N. Genocide Convention.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-vetoes-cease-fire

2023-12-08 US vetoes UN resolution backed by many nations demanding immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza   The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution Friday backed by almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Supporters called it a terrible day and warned of more civilian deaths and destruction as the war goes into its third month.

The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. The United States’ isolated stand reflected a growing fracture between Washington and some of its closest allies over Israel’s monthslong bombardment of Gaza. France and Japan were among those supporting the call for a cease-fire.   https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-chief-many-nations-demand-202238429.html

2023-12-08 Arab Leaders Push US to Support Gaza Cease-Fire as UN Vote Nears    Arab leaders made a last-ditch effort to get the US on board with a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip hours before the United Nations Security Council planned to vote on the issue, as Israel pushed deeper into the south and alarm grew over a burgeoning humanitarian crisis.   

US officials made clear they wouldn’t support a cease-fire, saying a halt to the fighting wouldn’t lead to a lasting peace. But they declined to say if the US would kill the cease-fire resolution by voting against. Instead, the US could abstain and allow the resolution to pass without Washington’s endorsement.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/arab-leaders-push-us-to-support-gaza-cease-fire-as-un-vote-nears/ar-AA1lcVIS 

2023-12-05 “There Simply Is No Safe Place in Gaza”: Aid Groups Demand Ceasefire as Israel Intensifies Its War    The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip, including surrounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and bombing Khan Younis, where many had fled to from the north. With Israel’s attack killing close to 16,000 Palestinians, Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council describes the “hectic, chaotic, desperate” conditions on the ground and says she can barely get in touch with her colleagues in Gaza, let alone coordinate a humanitarian response to the destruction. “If they can’t get in touch with each other, our operations come to a standstill,” says Low. “We desperately need a ceasefire in order to be able to finally address these dire needs.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/5/no_safe_zones_in_gaza

2023-12-05 Humanitarian Groups Demand Ceasefire as Israel Intensifies Genocidal War on Gaza       The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip, including surrounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and bombing Khan Younis, where many had fled to from the north. With Israel’s attack killing close to 16,000 Palestinians, Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council describes the “hectic, chaotic, desperate” conditions on the ground and says she can barely get in touch with her colleagues in Gaza, let alone coordinate a humanitarian response to the destruction. “If they can’t get in touch with each other, our operations come to a standstill,” says Low. “We desperately need a ceasefire in order to be able to finally address these dire needs.”https://truthout.org/video/humanitarian-groups-demand-ceasefire-as-israel-intensifies-genocidal-war-on-gaza/

2023-12-01 UAW Becomes Largest US Union to Back Gaza Cease-Fire  Fresh off historic contract victories, the United Auto Workers on Friday became the largest U.S. union to endorse a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel resumed its bombardment of the Palestinian territory following a weeklong pause.  From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the Contra war, the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe,” said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain. 

Fresh off historic contract victories, the United Auto Workers on Friday became the largest U.S. union to endorse a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel resumed its bombardment of the Palestinian territory following a weeklong pause.    The UAW’s cease-fire call makes the 400,000-member union part of a growing segment of the American labor movement that is pushing for a negotiated end to the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where U.S.-backed Israeli bombing has killed more than 15,000 people in less than two months. https://www.commondreams.org/news/uaw-cease-fire-gazahttps://www.commondreams.org/news/uaw-cease-fire-gaza

2023-11-30 International Trade Unions Urgently call for Ceasefire in Gaza amidst Ongoing Human Rights Violations   Delegates at 31st World Congress of Public Services International (PSI) which took place in Geneva on October 14 – 18, 2023 took a strong and clear position when they voted to support Resolutions 48 The war in Israel and Palestine and 32 For a Free and Sovereign Palestine State. The resolutions are a call to action that reaffirm PSI’s affiliates’ commitment to justice, human rights, and the self-determination of all people. These resolutions follow the resolution on Palestinian solidarity: Support for the Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) passed at PSI’s 2012 global congress in Durban, South Africa.   https://publicservices.international/resources/news/international-trade-unions-urgently-call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza-amidst-ongoing-human-rights-violationshttps://publicservices.international/resources/news/international-trade-unions-urgently-call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza-amidst-ongoing-human-rights-violations?

2023-11-25 Biden Fears That The Gaza Ceasefire Will Reveal The True Scale Of Carnage     The White House is worried that the public will become more aware of facts and truth.

Politico describes the deal as “the administration’s biggest diplomatic victory of the conflict” and reports that White House officials are calling it a “vindication” of Biden’s decision making. Which is an entirely inappropriate level of verbal fellatio for an achievement as minimal as not murdering children for a few days.  

“And 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,” Politico reports.  https://progressivehub.net/biden-fears-that-the-gaza-ceasefire-will-reveal-the-true-scale-of-carnage/

2023-11-22 Detroit City Council passes ceasefire resolution      In a strongly worded resolution, the City Council here called for an “immediate, durable, and sustained ceasefire” to “protect and save human lives.” The action on Tuesday followed weeks of organizing, attending council meetings, phone-calling, and letter-writing by peace activists to pressure elected city council representatives.  The resolution states that the Council “condemns all acts of violence aimed at Israeli and Palestinian civilians and mourns the loss of all civilian lives and hostages” and that the Council recognizes that “a lasting resolution can only be achieved by peaceful means and diplomacy.” It goes on to call for the release of hostages and unconditional passage of critical humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Detroit’s ceasefire resolution comes on the heels of similar resolutions passed in Dearborn and Hamtramck. Those Michigan cities, along with Ypsilanti, are home to the largest Arab American population in the state. Detroit is the largest in a growing list of U.S. cities that have called for a ceasefire via city council resolution. Other cities which have passed ceasefire resolutions include Atlanta; Providence, Rhode Island; Akron, Ohio; Richmond, California; and Wilmington, Delaware.

Councilwoman Santiago-Romero explained that she is “focused on a solution,” and that is “the immediate cease-fire and release of all hostages, and allowing for the unrestricted flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.” The resolution, she said, is “calling that all parties work toward peace.”  https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2023/11/detroit-city-council-passes-ceasefire.html

2023-11-21 Becca Balint, First Jewish Congressmember to Back Ceasefire, Expresses Support for Rashida Tlaib   Dozens of members of Congress are now calling for a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities in Israel and occupied Palestine. We speak to Democratic Congressmember Becca Balint of Vermont, the first Jewish member of Congress to join these calls. “The horrific violence has to stop. Hostages must be released. We have to end the suffering in Gaza. Palestinians and Israelis both deserve safety and security. And now more than ever, I believe that we need a true, negotiated ceasefire to get to a two-state solution,” Balint says of her position. We also discuss her friendship with fellow Democratic congressmember and the only Palestinian American in Congress, Rashida Tlaib. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/21/becca_balint_gaza_israel_ceasefire

2023-11-21 CeaseFire Congressional Status    Ro Khanna is backing a ceasefire. 43 members of Congress are now calling for a ceasefire.    Polls have shown 2/3 of Americans supporting a ceasefire, including ~75% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans.   8% of Congress (zero Republicans) now back a ceasefire.  

2023-11-20 Merkley Just Second US Senator to Demand Gaza Cease-Fire       U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley on Monday became just the second member of the Senate to demand a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, over six weeks into Israel’s brutal bombardment and ground operations that have killed over 13,000 Palestinians, including 5,500 children.

The Oregon Democrat’s move, which he explained in a lengthy post on Medium, follows a cease-fire call from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the number two Senate Democrat, earlier this month, and demands from a couple dozen Democratic House members.

Merkley, who first visited Israel in 1978, wrote that by his fifth visit earlier this year, “far-right extremists were now helping to drive Israeli government policy,” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having “formed a government with Bezalel Smotrich as minister of finance and Itamar Ben-Gvir as minister of national security.”

“Under such a government, attacks by Israel’s settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank have become more frequent and violent, often condoned by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF),” he pointed out. “Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which had worked closely with the IDF to prevent violence by Palestinians, was losing its legitimacy.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/jeff-merkley-gaza-ceasefire

2023-11-17 Health Care Workers Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza    At dusk on November 3—hours after Israel bombed ambulances outside Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, killing 15 and injuring dozens more—a crowd of people in hospital scrubs, many draped with keffiyehs, gathered outside New York City Hall.   Workers from across the city joined the rally, organized by the new national group Healthcare Workers for Palestine, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli occupation.   They gathered to mourn the deaths, show solidarity, and make demands of their union leaders: protect us from retaliation for expressing our political views, and make a strong statement in support of Palestinians.      https://labornotes.org/blogs/2023/11/health-care-workers-demand-ceasefire-gazahttps://labornotes.org/blogs/2023/11/health-care-workers-demand-ceasefire-gaza

2023-11-17 Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren demands Israel ‘stop the bombing now’ after being hounded by pro-Palestinian mob while eating dinner    Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren called for Israel to cease bombing Gaza shortly after she was confronted by a pro-Palestine activist while out eating dinner with friends amid the ongoing conflict in Israel.    A video showing the interaction was posted online by Jewish Voice for Peace Boston on November 10.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/democrat-senator-elizabeth-warren-demands-israel-stop-the-bombing-now-after-being-hounded-by-pro-palestinian-mob-while-eating-dinner/ar-AA1k5unX

2023-11-16 Why These Teachers Unions Are Demanding a Cease-Fire    When asked why her union voted to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, Marcia Howard, a teacher of 24 years, turned to an education metaphor. “It’s an object lesson for the nation and for other laborers,” she said over the phone, ahead of classes at a Minneapolis area high school, where she teaches language and literature to 11th graders. “The challenge has been for the entire working class to move the nation to do the right thing.”

Howard is the acting president of the teachers chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) Local 59. On October 25, her chapter voted at a general membership meeting to pass a resolution urging an immediate cease-fire, rejecting violence against civilians on all sides and condemning “the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”  https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/labor-teachers-union-ceasefire-gaza-israel/https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/labor-teachers-union-ceasefire-gaza-israel/

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

2023-11-15 AOC Leads New Cease-Fire Push as Gaza Children Suffer    Twenty-four House members led by Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, and Betty McCollum sent a letter to President Joe Biden Wednesday renewing calls for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The letter writers emphasized in particular how Israel’s ongoing bombardment has impacted Gaza’s 1 million children. The attack has killed 4,506 children and injured at least 7,695, while at least 1,755 are missing, most likely trapped beneath rubble. Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed at least 51 children in the West Bank in the last 39 days.

“We are profoundly shocked by the grave violations of children’s rights in the context of armed conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the representatives wrote. “International norms require that all parties to an armed conflict protect children and prevent the commission of grave violations against them, including killing and maiming, attacks on schools and hospitals, recruitment and use of children, abduction of children, and denial of humanitarian access.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-cease-fire-gaza-children

2023-11-13 Largest US Medical Lobbying Group Shuts Down Resolution to Back Cease-Fire in Gaza      The AMA has a responsibility to uphold the well-being of healthcare workers and minimize human suffering, and it is clear that these values are not being upheld,” said Healthcare Workers for Palestine.

“Shame on the American Medical Association.”   That was one American nurse’s response to the news on Sunday that the powerful medical lobbying organization had shut down members’ call for a public statement that would declare the AMA’s support for “a cease-fire in Israel and Palestine in order to protect civilian lives and healthcare personnel.”

Since the finalization of the statement and the meeting, MedPage Todayreported, at least 60 medical workers had been killed by Israel’s bombardment, which targeted at least six hospitals in that period.   In recent weeks, doctors and nurses who have refused to leave their posts despite the repeated airstrikes and Israel’s ground attacks have resorted to performing Caesarean sections on pregnant women and other major surgeries without anesthesia, have been unable to properly sterilize medical instruments, and have been buying laundry detergent and vinegar to clean wounds due to the lack of supplies and electricity.

Despite the fact that Israel’s onslaught has seriously endangered doctors and nurses and left them unable to perform their duties, the AMA’s Resolution Committee recommended the statement not be reconsidered and said it did not meet the organization’s criteria for speaking out about an issue affecting the healthcare community.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/ama-ceasefire-resolutionhttps://www.commondreams.org/news/ama-ceasefire-resolution   

2023-11-12 ‘We Are Being Killed Here, Please Do Something’: Nurses and Doctors Plead for Gaza Cease-Fire    “We are nearly sure that we are alone now,” said a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at Gaza’s largest hospital. “No one hears us.”    “We are being killed here, please do something,” the nurse wrote. “The shelling is so close, my kids are crying and screaming in fear.” 

Doctors and nurses in the Gaza Strip issued urgent pleas for a cease-fire as Israeli forces encircled and attacked the territory’s largest hospital, trapping thousands of displaced people and threatening the lives of medical workers and patients.   One Doctors Without Borders nurse texted his colleagues from the basement of al-Shifa Hospital early Saturday, writing that “four or five families”—including his own—were sheltering there amid heavy bombardment and fighting around the facility.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/doctors-nurses-gaza-cease-firehttps://www.commondreams.org/news/doctors-nurses-gaza-cease-fire

2023-11-12 Only Israeli military failure will stop the genocide in Gaza    Thus far, Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Gaza Strip, depriving an entire society of all essential supplies except oxygen; razed entire towns and neighborhoods to the ground; and in the space of one month, killed more than 10,000 people and wounded perhaps three times that number, more than a third of them children.

It has done so as part of a bombing campaign that demonstrably has no legitimate military purpose or objective, and whose transparent purpose is terror, revenge, physical destruction, and the punishment of an entire society. Nor has the bombing campaign degraded the military capabilities of the Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip in any meaningful way. By its own count, Israel has killed more UN employees than Palestinian military commanders.    

If the volume of Palestinian death, destruction, and suffering indeed played a role in the calculations of Western governments, it would have already done so. It hasn’t, and independently of other developments, it won’t. As Israeli forces directly and repeatedly shell schools, hospitals, refugee columns, UN facilities, self-proclaimed safe zones, and all forms of civilian infrastructure, most Western governments continue to proudly stand in full solidarity with Israel’s government. Pope Francis is virtually the only Western leader who hasn’t made the pilgrimage to Netanyahu.    https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/only-israeli-military-failure-will-stop-the-genocide-in-gaza/

2023-11-10 Global Cease-Fire Call Grows as Israel Wages ‘War Against Hospitals’ in Gaza    “Children in Gaza are hanging by a thread,” said a UNICEF director, calling for attacks on healthcare facilities to stop immediately and the urgent delivery of supplies to hospitals.    As Israeli forces waged what al-Shifa’s director described as a “war against hospitals” in Gaza on Friday, United Nations officials, human rights groups, and doctors demanded the protection of medical facilities and renewed calls for a cease-fire.

“Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers are not functioning at all,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the U.N. Security Council. “Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities. The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow is continuing to deliver some lifesaving care.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on October 7 that killed around 1,200 Israelis, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) assault of Gaza has devastated civilian infrastructure, displaced about 70% of the strip’s 2.3 million residents—about half of whom are children—and killed over 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children. Tens of thousands more are injured or missing.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bombs-hospital-in-gaza

2023-11-10 Why the US must support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza      For the past month, Palestinian medics have risked their lives and safety to treat Gaza’s wounded. Despite widespread, indiscriminate, and incessant bombardment by Israeli forces, our colleagues have continued working under fire.   With limited access to food, water, electricity, essential medicines, and medical supplies, they have persevered. On the rare occasions when we are able to connect over the phone—between communications blackouts and frequent movements to avoid attacks—they recount scenes of horror in the hospitals: dead bodies everywhere, people with crushed limbs rescued from collapsed buildings, orphaned children with severe burns covering most of their tiny bodies. They describe patients screaming in pain because there’s not enough anesthesia. All the while, they’re worried about being killed themselves as hospitals and ambulances are hit by airstrikes. And every day, they stay for their patients.

They can’t go on like this. No one in Gaza can go on like this. We need an immediate ceasefire.https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/why-us-must-support-immediate-ceasefire-gaza

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 American Postal Workers Union Becomes Largest US Union to Call for Gaza Cease-Fire      “We join the calls for an immediate cease-fire, the release of hostages, and urgently needed massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. The cries of humanity demand nothing less.” 

The American Postal Workers Union on Wednesday became the largest U.S. union to call for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, joining a growing labor movement mobilization against Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave.

Leaders of the APWU, which represents more than 200,000 U.S. Postal Service employees and close to 2,000 mail workers in the private sector, said in a statement that their union is “shocked and saddened by the tragic and ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/postal-workers-gaza-cease-fire

2023-11-08 Hillary Clinton: Israel, Palestinians Need New Leadership for Peace       “I think there needs to be new leadership of the Israelis and the Palestinians in order to have any chance at some kind of peace deal, especially a two-state solution.” Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks about the Israel-Hamas war. She speaks with John Micklethwait via video conference for the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. (Excerpt)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iorNGSeazk

2023-10-28 San Francisco protest calling for ceasefire in Gaza shuts down US 101 Central Freeway    A large group of several thousand protesters marched up to the Central Freeway in San Francisco around 4 p.m., stopping Saturday afternoon traffic for about an hour, while calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The recent deadly conflict is entering a fourth week of massive death counts, endless bombardments and international furor.    The protest started earlier in the day at 1 p.m. at the Embarcadero. It was sponsored by a coalition of organizations, including the Arab Resources and Organizing Center, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Jewish Voice for Peace – Bay Area. The rally and march lasted several hours.   https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/10/28/san-francisco-protest-calling-for-ceasefire-in-gaza-shuts-down-us-101-central-freeway/?  

2023-10-26 Amnesty Demands Immediate Cease-Fire in Gaza as Israel Readies ‘Cataclysmic’ Invasion    Amnesty International on Thursday became the latest human rights group to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, imploring all nations to demand an end to the deadly violence as Israel launched raids in the northern part of the Palestinian territory and continued bombing ahead of an expected ground invasion.

In a statement, Amnesty warned an invasion could have “cataclysmic consequences for Gaza’s civilians,” who are already suffering an appalling humanitarian crisis with no end in sight as Israel restricts the amount and kind of aid allowed to reach the enclave.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/amnesty-cease-fire-gaza

2023-10-20 The Case for a Ceasefire     It is beyond our power to bring back those innocents whose lives have already been lost, but we can work to prevent the calamity that will surely follow if Israel continues to retaliate as it has so far.   We have each been disappointed by the reaction of many who identify as progressives in recent days. First and foremost, there is the leadership of the Democratic Party, which has offered unqualified support for the Israeli military response. Though we can’t say we are surprised by this, the abandonment of Palestinian civilians to their fate under the rubble strikes us as a profound betrayal by a party that had been moving, albeit very slowly, in the right direction.

The activist left did not rise to the occasion either. Some organizations of the American left, as well as prominent writers and thinkers, have made unaffordable errors in promoting rallies sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER coalition, and playing defense for indiscriminate violence perpetrated by Hamas, including the taking of civilian hostages. These actions only set back the cause of Palestinian liberation. A serious and moral struggle for Palestinian rights must be rooted in a simple fact: Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis will continue to live together in the land between the river and the sea, and all are entitled to freedom, dignity, and equality.  

Where, then, should the left go from here? We are clearly outnumbered in Washington. But we are not voiceless. There are a few honorable members of Congress who have been calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages. A senior State Department official has already resigned in protest of the administration’s total support for the Israeli military response amid low morale and growing dissent in Foggy Bottom. Rep. Ro Khanna’s political director publicly resigned after the congressman refused to support a ceasefire. A letter signed by Jewish and Muslim staffers on Capitol Hill demands equal recognition of Palestinian humanity.  https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-case-for-a-ceasefire/

2023-10-20 Demand a Cease-Fire in Gaza – Shir Hever pt 1   Israeli-born political economist Shir Hever joins host Paul Jay to discuss the urgent need for a cease-fire, humanitarian aid, and a negotiated end to what’s becoming a genocide.       https://theanalysis.news/demand-a-cease-fire-in-gaza-shir-hever/

2023-10-20 Israeli Journalist Amira Hass, Daughter of Holocaust Survivors, Calls for Gaza Ceasefire Now  legendary Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who has reported from the occupied West Bank and Gaza for over 30 years, she discusses attending Wednesday’s historic protest in Washington, D.C., led by American Jewish groups, calling for an immediate ceasefire, as well as the events leading up to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the ongoing hostage situation, and what could come next. “How can they say Israel is not responsible?” asks Hass, who says the government has continued its policy of apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians despite decades of international pressure to end the conflict. “Israel did everything possible to foil the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/israeli_journalist_amira_hass_daughter_of 

2023-10-19 Hundreds of US Congressional Staffers Sign Open Letter Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire     Citing the “catastrophic suffering” inflicted upon the people of Gaza by Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Palestinian territory, hundreds of Muslim and Jewish U.S. congressional staffers on Thursday signed an open letter urging lawmakers to demand a cease-fire as the war approaches the two-week mark.

“We feel compelled to raise our voices in this moment,” the staffers wrote. “Millions of lives hang in the balance, including the 2.3 million civilians—half of whom are children—in Gaza, civilians in Israel, and Jews and Muslims around the world. This is especially urgent with antisemitism, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian sentiment on the rise nationwide, which instigated the brutal murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian American child, Wadea Al-Fayoume.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/congressional-staffers-letter    

2023-10-19 U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for “Humanitarian Pause” of Gaza Assault    The United States has vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian pause to Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and its 2.3 million inhabitants. The resolution, sponsored by Brazil, called for full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access for U.N. agencies to deliver lifesaving aid to the besieged territory. It included a condemnation of Hamas’s attacks on Israel and demanded “the immediate and unconditional release” of hostages. On Wednesday, 12 of the Security Council’s 15 members voted in favor of a humanitarian pause in Gaza; Russia and the U.K. abstained; while the United States used its privilege as a permanent member of the Security Council to exercise its veto.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day

2023-10-18 “Stop the War”: Israeli Peace Activist Whose Parents Were Killed in Hamas Attack Calls for Ceasefire   We speak with Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon, whose parents Bilha and Yakovi Inon were killed in the surprise attack by Hamas militants on October 7 that killed over 1,300 people in Israel. He wants the war to end. “Let’s call for peace. Let’s call for hope. Let’s call for a complete ceasefire. Let’s call for building bridges,” says Inon. “We must build the future, and this future must be based on equality, on partnership, on peace.”   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/israeli_peace_activist_parents_killed

2023-10-17 Congressional Ceasefire Statement   These 7 signed the Ceasefire statement  Barbara Lee (CA-12), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Greg Casar (TX-35), James P. McGovern (MA-02), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Veronica Escobar (TX-16), and Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-04)

“We remain outraged by the horrific terror attacks carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians. We are also deeply alarmed by the rising civilian death toll in both Israel and Gaza, including nearly 1,400 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians. This is a moment that calls for moral and strategic clarity. That is why we believe that the United States must help achieve an immediate ceasefire, or at minimum, a temporary cessation of all hostilities that stops the threats to civilians in Israel and Gaza.

“Let us be clear: our call for a ceasefire should not be mistaken as a lack of support for the protection of the people of Israel. To the contrary, it is because of our dedication to the safety of both Israelis and Palestinians that we seek a path forward without further escalating the toll of civilian dead and injured.

“A cessation of hostilities will allow for the negotiation of the immediate and safe return of all hostages, including Americans, and the delivery of essential humanitarian aid under international auspices. Hamas can and must be stopped and the security of Israel must be guaranteed without the killing of thousands more Palestinian and Israeli civilians. There is a different path. In this devastating time, the United States must lead the way forward.”2023-10-16 Ceasefire Now Resolution urges support for an end to violence in Israel and Occupied Palestine.   Today, Representatives Cori Bush (MO-01), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), André Carson (IN-07), Summer Lee (PA-12), and Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03), alongside Representatives Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and Nydia Velázquez (NY-07) announced a resolution urging the Biden Administration to call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine, to send humanitarian aid and assistance to Gaza, and to save as many lives as possible. A copy of this resolution can be found HERE.   https://bush.house.gov/media/press-releases/reps-bush-tlaib-carson-lee-ramirez-lead-colleagues-in-call-for-immediate-ceasefire

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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

Apartheid (see also Israel Environmental Apartheid)

Updated 2024-08-24

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Amnesty International -Israel Apartheid   https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

Crime of Apartheid     The Government of Israel’s System of Oppression Against Palestinians.   https://www.amnestyusa.org/campaigns/end-apartheid/

A Threshold Crossed  Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution   https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert       https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid     More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule. The common perception in public, political, legal and media discourse is that two separate regimes operate side by side in this area, separated by the Green Line. One regime, inside the borders of the sovereign State of Israel, is a permanent democracy with a population of about nine million, all Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories Israel took over in 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects.

Over time, the distinction between the two regimes has grown divorced from reality. This state of affairs has existed for more than 50 years – twice as long as the State of Israel existed without it. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now reside in permanent settlements east of the Green Line, living as though they were west of it. East Jerusalem has been officially annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory, and the West Bank has been annexed in practice. Most importantly, the distinction obfuscates the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. All this leads to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes that simply happen to uphold the same principle. There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle. https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

2024-07-27 In US, Netanyahu Spoke of “Democracy” But Offers Indefinite Apartheid     Speaking before a joint session of Congress this week in an attempt to justify the mass destruction and death wrought by Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preached about his country’s “powerful and vibrant democracy” to applause from an audience dominated by Republicans as protests raged outside the Capitol.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli occupation in Hebron in the West Bank, said Americans should not be fooled. Military occupation and democracy are contradictory, Amro argued, and alleged war criminals such as Netanyahu have no right to talk about “democracy” when Palestinians living under illegal occupation face state-backed violence and displacement.

“For sure I live under Israeli apartheid and Israeli occupation and Israeli supremacy,” Amro told Truthout after the speech. “Netanyahu can’t talk about democracy when his government is occupying the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem and not allowing us to practice our own freedoms.”  https://truthout.org/articles/in-us-netanyahu-spoke-of-democracy-but-offers-indefinite-apartheid/

2024-04-22 West Bank Pogrom ‘Underscores Urgent Need to Dismantle Apartheid’: Amnesty     Amnesty International said Monday that the ongoing surge in deadly violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank “underscores [the] urgent need to dismantle apartheid” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

For more than a week now, Israeli settlers have been attacking West Bank Palestinians in towns and villages including Al-Mughayir, Duma, Deir Dibwan, Beitin, and Aqraba, killing at least four people including a child; wounding dozens of others; and destroying homes, vehicles, and other property.v   Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have either stood and watched or participated in the settler attacks, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and others are calling a “pogrom.”

Amnesty said the “alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in recent days highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and its longstanding system of apartheid.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settler-attacks-west-bank

2023-11-00 Catastrophe in Palestine and Israel: Apartheid on the Road to Genocide    Israel’s government of Benjamin “Mr. Security” Netanyahu is the most viciously racist, anti-democratic and incompetent, and one of the most corrupt — although there is competition for that distinction — in the country’s history. It is now probably also the most widely reviled for its catastrophic failures.

In fact, Israel’s mass bombing and invasion of Gaza has one overriding priority beyond all other considerations — keeping Netanyahu’s coalition in power and himself out of prison on multiple corruption charges. Neither Palestinian, nor Israeli, nor hostages’ lives can get in the way of that supreme goal.   Because the coalition depends on the support of the fascistic, open ethnic-cleansing Jewish Power and Religious Zionism Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the dimensions of the war are literally genocidal. That potential has been present in Israeli politics all along, but Netanyahu’s need to hold political office for protection from prosecution (sound familiar?) overrides certain restraints on all-out destruction that global politics and U.S. interests usually impose.

Mustafa Barghouti, a physician in Ramallah and president of the Palestinian National Initiative, has repeatedly warned (for example on “Democracy Now,” October 19) of a scenario where Israel depopulates and annexes northern Gaza, then turns to ethnically cleansing and annexing the West Bank. https://againstthecurrent.org/atc227/catastrophe-in-palestine-and-israel/

2023-10-12 Palestinian Journalist: Latest Violence Shatters Notion That Israeli Apartheid Is Sustainable   Palestinian journalist and senior editor at +972 Magazine Amjad Iraqi believes Hamas breaking through the military border between Gaza and Israel has shattered the belief that the occupation is sustainable. Without being able to ignore Palestinians, Iraqi says, long-term reflection on Israel’s apartheid system is possible, but in the short term, the international community is indulging Israel’s desire for revenge. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/amjad_iraqi

2023-10-10 Mohammed El-Kurd: How Much Palestinian Blood Will It Take to End Israel’s Occupation & Apartheid?   Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Western reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza has once again highlighted the double standard when it comes to how Israeli and Palestinian lives are valued. Israel is bombarding the densely populated coastal territory in retaliation for Saturday’s Hamas attack on southern Israel, as well as tightening the existing siege even further. Israeli officials have vowed to wipe out Hamas despite warnings of massive civilian casualties inside Gaza. “One wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.”  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10/mohammed_el_kurd_palestine_israel_gaza

2023-10-09 Palestinians, pushed beyond endurance, defend their homeland against violent apartheid   The humanitarian catastrophe has continued unabated in Gaza for years. The suffocating Israeli military and naval blockade has lasted for 16 years. That blockade has imprisoned and starved two million people and denied them medical aid. Palestinians in Gaza are routinely massacred, and children have been traumatised by recurring bombing campaigns. In essence, Gaza is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. The blockade extends to commercial goods, food, fuel, and even humanitarian aid. The ongoing siege is continuously destroying the lives of the people who live there, in extreme poverty, with little access to clean water and with about four hours of electricity a day. Hamas is responding to same, to occupation, oppression, illegal settlement, and desecration of Palestinian religious symbols, especially, and recently, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

But of course, it is not just Gazans. It is Palestinians. In the West Bank, since the election of the current government in Israel, that government has escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, and daily humiliation. Recently, Israeli forces have repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.  https://johnmenadue.com/palestinians-pushed-beyond-endurance-defend-their-homeland-against-violent-apartheid/?

2023-04-07 Democracy or Apartheid? You Can’t Have Both, Israel.   For two consecutive nights this week, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Israeli military stormed Al-Aqsa mosque. They entered the mosque before prayer was over, firing rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at Palestinian worshippers. These events left at least 12 Palestinians injured, and over 400 were arrested on the first night. Following the raid, Israeli violence spread across the west bank. Dozens have been hurt by inhaling poisonous gas fired by Israeli forces, and a settler in occupied East Jerusalem shot a Palestinian child.

Following the raid on Al-Aqsa on Wednesday night, Israeli settlers were escorted to Al-Aqsa by Israeli forces on Thursday morning. Prior to their arrival, Palestinian worshippers were forced out so that it could be secured for the settlers for the first day of the Jewish Passover holiday. This double standard is not uncommon for Israel as it is inherent to the structure of the settler-colonial state. Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (80% of the Palestinian population) under Israeli control are not citizens and cannot become citizens of the state in which they live, nor can they vote for the government which controls their lives. The other 20% of Palestinians, who have Israeli citizenship, have a 2nd class status.   https://codepink.substack.com/p/democracy-or-apartheid-you-cant-have

2023-01-25 EU Says It’s Anti-Semitic to Call Israel an Apartheid State   It is anti-Semitic to say Israel perpetrates the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, according to the European Union.  That would mean that major rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International  and Israel’s B’Tselem  – which is funded by the EU  – are guilty of anti-Jewish bigotry, according to Brussels. 

The lawmakers stated that Amnesty’s report last February “alleges that apartheid was inherent in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and has been built on and maintained by successive Israeli governments.”   The lawmakers asked if EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also views Israel as an “apartheid state.” 

The pro-Israel lawmakers should be fully satisfied with Borrell’s written response issued on 20 January.   “The Commission considers that it is not appropriate to use the term apartheid in connection with the State of Israel,” Borrell wrote.   Borrell affirmed the EU’s reliance on the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and emphasized: “Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor is amongst the illustrative examples included under the IHRA definition.”   The highly politicized IHRA definition, heavily promoted by Israel and its lobby, has faced broad opposition due to concerns that it will be used in precisely the manner Borrell is now deploying it: to falsely label legitimate criticism of Israel and its crimes as anti-Jewish bigotry. 

 Borrell provided no factual basis for dismissing the meticulous research from multiple human rights groups showing how Israel perpetrates apartheid, a serious crime against humanity covered by the Rome Statute , the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court.   https://www.blackagendareport.com/eu-says-its-anti-semitic-call-israel-apartheid-state

2022-02-02 Amnesty apartheid report: The walls protecting Israel are finally crumbling   A year ago, it was Israel’s most celebrated human rights group, B’Tselem. Months later, it was the New York-based Human Rights Watch.  Now, the one speaking up is Amnesty International – an organisation widely viewed as the most authoritative arbiter of what constitutes human rights violations. Over the past year, all have reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty’s new report published on Tuesday: “Israel’s system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid.”

This is not just a criticism of Israel’s occupation. All three groups have been pointing out for decades Israel’s flagrant disregard of international law, and its likely commission of war crimes, in the occupied territories.  But Israel was little concerned, so long as public debate was confined to the occupation. Its advocates quickly learned that they could always deflect to matters of Israel’s security, by presenting any Palestinian resistance as terrorism.

Now, the consensus is shifting to entirely new terrain – a discursive battlefield where Israel has less effective weapons with which to defend itself. The biggest human rights watchdogs are agreed that everything about Israel’s rule over Palestinians is connected, from its military oppression of those under occupation, to the civil legal system inside Israel that systematically confers inferior rights on the country’s large minority of nominal Palestinian “citizens”. 

In other words, Israel’s apartheid structures cannot be disentangled, separating out the occupied territories from “Israel proper”. It is all part of the same, single system of rule by one ethnic-national group, Jews, designed to oppress and marginalise another ethnic-national group, Palestinians.  https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/amnesty-apartheid-report-the-walls

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