Israel #9

Les Misérables à Gaza...

Israel Gaza: Large number of bullet wounds among those injured in aid convoy rush - UN
Christy Cooney & Paul Adams | 2 Marh 2024

...Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the BBC he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital found a large number of people with bullet wounds.

He said all but a handful of the 70 to 80 patients in the emergency room he visited had been injured during the convoy incident.

In addition to those with bullet wounds, he said doctors had treated many who had fallen down or been trampled - but he was unable to say with certainty which group was larger.

Mr Petropoulos said those with bullet injuries had suffered wounds in the upper and lower body. One patient told him he had been shot in the chest and who had walked to Shifa to get treatment.

"He said they (Israeli troops) usually shoot in the air. This time, they shot into the thickest part of the crowd," Mr Petropoulos said.

But, Mr Petropoulos emphasised UN personnel had not been present during the incident making it very difficult to know precisely what happened.

Dr Mohamed Salha, interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, previously told the BBC that they had received 176 of the injured, of whom 142 had bullet wounds.

He added that the others had suffered broken limbs...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68454348

Poor Yemeni fishermen lose? Oh, and an insurance co. or two.

Visegrád 24 @visegrad24 | 8:29 AM · Mar 2, 2024

BREAKING:
The British-owned bulk carrier Rubymar has now sunk after it was hit by Houthi anti-ship missile 2 weeks ago.
It’s the first ship to be sunk by the Houthis.
It was carrying more than 41 000 tons of fertilizer. Major ecologic disaster...

1:48 (https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/763919547709423679)
From Roman o Wojnie
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Red Sea attacks depriving Yemeni fishermen of their livelihood
Abdullah Ali, Taez, Yemen | Feb 20, 2024

Fishermen told to stay close to shore as international warships seek to stop Houthis from hitting commercial vessels
Houthi attacks in Red Sea leave Yemen's fishermen in troubled waters...

https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/2024/02/21/red-sea-attacks-depriving-yemeni...

ETA: I googled locations on leaflet and they are all within Israel, so-o unless there are some settlement properties being peddled under the table, real estate agents are at most guilty of really bad timing?
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Wow, protests about Palestinian land being offered for sale in Jewish venues in Toronto area met with cries of "anti-semitism", plans for police presence. Soon coming to NJ and NY:

https://twitter.com/mohammad_ehsan/status/1764164354654851361/photo/1

Matt Lee (Associated Press) gets featured at the very top of John Oliver's show this week. Couldn't be more deserved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-dJMqpGvjM

Nicaragua says Germany facilitates genocide by aiding Israel
DW | 03/01/2024March 1, 2024

Nicaragua has filed a case at the International Court of Justice against Germany for financial and military support it provides to Israel. A hearing could take place within weeks

...Germany is one of the largest arms exporters to Israel along with the United States.

Nicaragua asked the ICJ to issue emergency measures that would require Berlin to suspend its military aid to Israel...

https://www.dw.com/en/nicaragua-says-germany-facilitates-genocide-by-aiding-isra...

I met the Israeli settlers Biden placed sanctions on. They’re bad – but part of a rotten system (Guardian)

I saw settlers attack Palestinian shepherds with dogs, destroy their crops, and steal their homes – all under the aegis of rightwing Israeli leaders...

>6 John5918: These settlers act with impunity. They know that instead of punishment they'll be rewarded. Some of this is being seen for the first time by average people in Europe and North America but it's been going on for a long while. So hopefully soon Israel will no longer be seen as some kind of beacon of democracy in the Middle East....because it's not. It's an apartheid and racist kind of system and Israel has become a fascist kind of state that discriminates against roughly half of its own inhabitants.....and the Palestinians are the ones then who are branded as terrorists. Our political leaders here in the United States and many other European nations will be just about the last ones to open their eyes......it it happens at all. Might not in what's left of my lifetime.

From his stint as UN Peacekeeper ('58/'59), my dad would watch tv news on settlements (80s?) and say that he didn't recognize all the settlement names, but the ones he did were the green areas and hilltops, rare among the dusty, rocky, dry land that is Palestine.

DW News @dwnews | 12:45 PM · Mar 5, 2024:

"God protect us from what is coming."

Children are starving in Gaza amid a growing hunger crisis. One in six children under two in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished, the World Health Organization says.

1:35 DIFFICULT TO WATCH ( https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1765071105461784983 )
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Israel’s war on Gaza live: Israeli attacks kill 86 Palestinians in a day
Injured Palestinians
Stephen Quillen, Linah Alsaafin and Federica Marsi | 6 Mar 20246 Mar 2024

People in Gaza waiting for outcome of ceasefire talks amid continued Israeli attacks, our correspondent reports.

The World Food Programme said an aid convoy was denied entry to north Gaza by Israel’s military. WFP said “to avert famine”, there must be road access to Gaza’s north...

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1765071105461784983

US now pushes UN to back 'immediate' Gaza ceasefire to free hostages
Michelle Nichols | March 5, 2024

...The United States on Tuesday revised language in a draft United Nations Security Council resolution to back "an immediate ceasefire of roughly six-weeks in Gaza together with the release of all hostages"...

The third revision of the text - first proposed by the U.S. two weeks ago - now reflects blunt remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris. The initial U.S. draft had shown support for "a temporary ceasefire" in the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. wants any Security Council support for a ceasefire to be linked to the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies...

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-now-pushes-un-back-immediate-gaza-c...

The Double Standards Debate at the UN (International Crisis Group)

The Gaza war has led to acrimony at UN headquarters, with critics accusing the U.S. and its allies of hypocrisy in dealing with international crises. The rows are indeed divisive, but many member states seem not to want them to obstruct all other diplomacy...

>11 John5918: at a diplomatic level.....on the surface what the US and UK are doing certainly is hypocritical. A takeaway could be though that instead of trying to resolve peacefully either the issue of the Russia/Ukraine or Israel/Palestine conflicts we've decided to choose sides and want to see one side come out a clear winner and the other a clear loser. So the US and UK are seeing it very coldly and simply as geopolitical goals. In doing so we've ceded any moral high ground and also perhaps are creating the conditions to start another Cold War with more leverage from former Soviet satellite states on our side now and a calamitous starve the people out ethnic cleansing situation for Gaza in support of a fascist ally (not that they're our only fascist ally). This port to bring in food and medical supplies that Biden was talking about in his state of the union speech seems very much a pipe dream. Whether he or his State Dept. or Washington politicians realize it or not the people of Gaza do not have the two or three months estimated for its construction to wait before they start dying in their thousands from starvation. They need immediate help and for that to happen Biden has to put his big boy pants on and force the Israelis to stop their blockade. It is going to happen otherwise and if they think the press and all the protests they're getting now is bad.....just wait.

Israel says Sweden and Canada wrong to resume UNRWA funding
DW | 9 March 2024

Israel has said a dozen of UNRWA's 30,000 workers actively participated in the October 7 Hamas attack...triggered an immediate halt to Western funding, in turn causing UNRWA, which is central to getting humanitarian aid to beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, to warn of the organization’s collapse if funding was not renewed.

Fifteen major donors, including the US, UK and Germany, suspended funding in late January ...

Canada said funding would resume "because of the dire humanitarian situation on the ground."

Israel accused Canada and Sweden of "ignoring the involvement of UNRWA employees in terrorist activity"... called the reversal a “serious mistake.”

UNRWA boss Philippe Lazzarini on Saturday said he was "cautiously optimistic" that other countries would resume funding over "the coming weeks."

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-hamas-war-doubts-grow-over-ramadan-cease-fire-deal/...

>13 margd:

Most of the reports I've read suggest that Israel has produced no actual evidence to support its claims about UNRWA employees.

>14 John5918:
No evidence provided.
~12 of 30,000 alleged to have participated in Oct 7 atrocities.
I assume alleged participation was not on UNWRA time or direction.
The need is dire!

Countries should restore funding, and figure out any adjustments later.

There's also no other entity able to step in and do the things that UNWRA does. As collapsed as the humanitarian aid situation is....the people in UNWRA at least provide a framework to get things up to speed if the international community can beginning providing real aid again. Despite what Israeli govt. people say that they want aid to go through and they're not trying to collectively punish Palestinian civilians....they're lying....that's exactly what their intentions are and what they are doing. Taking out UNWRA is just part of this strategy for them.

>13 margd: Oh, they've got "evidence."
Canada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Israel Accused of Torturing Agency Staff
https://truthout.org/articles/canada-sweden-restore-unrwa-funds-as-israel-accuse...
In a new report, UNRWA employees testify that Israeli officers beat and waterboarded them into making false confessions.

>16 lriley: There's also no other entity

It's also difficult to imagine any other entity anywhere in the world which would be defunded because of unsubstantiated allegations against 12 out of 30,000 staff, ie 0.04% of its personnel. I doubt whether the IDF, the USA nor any other western military can put its hand on its heart and state that it hasn't had 0.04% misbehaviour. Are they all being defunded?

Israel prepares 'contingency plans' for Lebanon attack
This includes preparing shelters for settlers in Israel's north to protect from Hezbollah missiles
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/23827

Shelters in the north aren't going to cut it.

The Israeli army is preparing "contingency plans" to launch a wide-scale attack on Lebanon, including preparing shelters and food for Israeli residents of northern settlements, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on 10 March.

In a meeting Saturday with settler leaders from the Mata Asher and Ma'ale Yosef regional councils, Israeli Army Northern Command head Major General Ori Gordin stated, "We are preparing contingency plans to launch an attack in Lebanon. Our commitment, mine, is to change the security situation so that the residents can be returned home."

In preparing for a potential war with Hezbollah in northern Israel, the army is launching "Operation Steady Anchor" to establish dozens of mass shelters, mainly in underground parking lots, to which the residents can flee to escape Hezbollah missile fire.

Hezbollah is estimated to have some 150,000 rockets and ballistic missiles capable of causing massive damage to Israeli cities, including Haifa and Tel Aviv.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the plan was formulated and budgeted in the last two months. Plans to host displaced settlers in hotels and tents outside the possible conflict zone were dismissed as unworkable. Most Israeli hotels are full as they are housing settlers displaced from Israel's south near the Gaza border.

The preparations come days after Israel informed its western sponsors of a 15 March deadline to reach "a political settlement with Lebanon," after which Tel Aviv says it plans to "escalate military operations to a broad war," according to western diplomats who spoke with Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar.

But Hezbollah has vowed not to back down from Israeli threats. "The position is clear. As long as the war continues in Gaza, this means that the Lebanon front is affected by it, and when it stops in Gaza, it stops in Lebanon," Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem told Lebanese news channel LBCI. "When there is a truce in Gaza, we will have a truce."

>19 davidgn: It's mad if they do this but when you think of Netanyahu/Likud's/Israel's right wing settler's movement necessity to stay in power by keeping the conflict going even expanding it is probably their only way but also most of Israel's voting population....the Palestinians are not that.....will give them the go ahead despite their overall loathing of Netanyahu. It's like this population is being held hostage by the same government it hates and its own will for revenge which kind of explains its looking past all the atrocities being committed in their name. I get the same sense from Israel supporters even in the United States. What matters most to them is the destruction of the Palestinian people no matter how it's done or how it looks on the world stage or how destructive it is to themselves and the state.

>20 lriley: the destruction of the Palestinian people

Which is another way of describing genocide.

>21 John5918: To understand as well where much of the US was after 9-11 where we could be bullshitted into getting into 2 separate conflicts....the first chasing after the masterminds of the attack all over Afghanistan and Pakistan and our attempt at 'nation building' which inevitably ended in catastrophe which was where it was always going to end and the second in a country that had nothing to do with the attack. 'Shock and Awe' was very exciting for a lot of people and the media really ran with it. A good majority of our population was for all of it.....the better part of that majority has selective memory today. A major reason for being anti-war is these things just take you down bad paths and then you painfully have to find your way out....if you can but then with all kinds of destruction left behind. We never as a population got to the point of a social psychotic fit however where it was acceptable to starve a population to extermination en masse. A lot of prep work by Israeli leaders was necessary to get a population to that point. Our own invasion of Iraq though does show how susceptible we in the US can be to the same. Meanwhile western states defending and arming Israel at this point is not just shameful it's criminal.

Alastair Crooke: Biden Out of Touch with Reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VXye0HXaxI

(changes topic to Nuland and Russia ca. 20:47)

Gaza medics tell BBC that Israeli troops beat and humiliated them after hospital raid (BBC)

Palestinian medical staff in Gaza have told the BBC they were blindfolded, detained, forced to strip and repeatedly beaten by Israeli troops after a raid at their hospital last month. Ahmed Abu Sabha, a doctor at Nasser hospital, described being held for a week in detention, where, he said, muzzled dogs were set upon him and his hand was broken by an Israeli soldier. His account closely matches those of two other medics who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. They told the BBC they were humiliated, beaten, doused with cold water, and forced to kneel in uncomfortable positions for hours. They said they were detained for days before being released...

UK pressing for ‘full explanation’ of alleged abuses after Gaza hospital raid (Guardian)

A UK Foreign Office minister has called for an investigation into a report that medical staff in Gaza faced violent and humiliating treatment in detention after an Israeli raid. Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis – at the time the largest functioning hospital in the Palestinian territory – was raided over several days by Israeli forces in an attack that began on 15 February. At the time, doctors said that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground troops stormed the premises after cutting off roads to the medical centre and shelling its facilities. The attack forced patients, medical personnel and displaced civilians sheltering at the hospital to flee, and at least 13 patients died in the aftermath, staff said, mostly due to a lack of electricity needed to run equipment such as ventilators... Three sources described being blindfolded, forced to strip to their underwear, and repeatedly beaten and subject to other cruel and humiliating treatment during detention. Dr Ahmed Abu Sabha, 26, said that he was held for a week, during which time muzzled dogs were set on him and his hand was broken by an interrogator...

Israel Gaza war: EU says starvation being used as a weapon (BBC)

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Gaza, the EU's foreign policy chief has claimed. Josep Borrell described the lack of aid entering the territory as a "manmade" disaster...

>24 John5918: These abuses and crimes are obvious to anyone taking even an half assed look. There's nothing hidden about any of this whether or not the Israeli govt. wants to hide all this shit and they probably do but they have no control over their forces on the ground. They won't even exercise control over settlers in the West Bank or protestors blocking aid into Gaza. What they tell the world or the world's press tends to turn into lies. We're finding out now (no surprise really) that they tortured UNWRA employees to get false confessions that they took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. The convenient timing of those false allegations coming the day that the ICJ ruled against them. That western governments like the US, UK and Germany continue to defend them and take them at their word after all the criminality and lies is a tell on how far they have fallen as far as having any kind of moral integrity......and we're not defending the Middle East's only democracy here. Israel is anything but when it denies basic human rights and the vote to pretty much half of its own population. This goal of creating a Jewish ethnostate contradicts it being a democracy at all.

>9 margd: DW News video...

Netanyahu denies Palestinians are starving
Paul Ronzheimer and Joe Stanley-Smith | March 10, 2024

Numerous world leaders and humanitarian charities have criticized Israel for not letting enough food aid into Gaza...The United Nations warns that famine is imminent, with the organization’s expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accusing Israel of starving Gazans deliberately. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s has said people in Gaza are closer to dying than to living.

Responding to these claims, Netanyahu said: “We don’t have that kind of information. That’s not the information we have. And we monitor it closely.”...

https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-pm-netanyahu-denies-palestinians-are-star...

>26 margd: Cartoon villain.

Oct. 7 and Israel's propaganda war w/Ali Abunimah | The Chris Hedges Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pl_QYiIk2Q

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68581090
Israel-Gaza: Aid reaches Gaza shore in first sea delivery

The US charity behind the mission, World Central Kitchen, is carrying out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates.

The shipment contained 200 tons of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine.

>29 Molly3028:

The big question is how this food will be handled and distributed, given that Israel has already dismantled, destroyed and degraded all the relevant organisations and infrastructure. Also, 200 tons is a drop in the ocean compared to the needs of this artificially created famine.

>30 John5918: Apparently World Central Kitchen & United Arab Emirates arranged for Gazans themselves to construct quay of building rubble to accept its barge. Also, local trucks were recruited to distribute. (Swords into plowshares? Isaiah 2:4; lemons--make lemonade?)

200 tons may be a drop in the ocean, but maybe it will embarrass big players--and inspire the rest of us--into imagination and action, all while filling somebody's stomach. (The tale of the starfish: https://www.thestarfishchange.org/starfish-tale )

According to WCK,"To date, we have distributed over 30 million meals." It "has already dispatched over 1,200 aid trucks, participated in an airdrop of humanitarian supplies to the hard-to-reach northern area of Gaza" as well as sent this boat from Cyprus. Also, its Relief Kitchen in Rafah (south Gaza).

Cool, too, that Muslims looking to help during Ramadan, as well as the rest of us, are assured that "100% of donations from {WCK's} Ramadan campaign go directly towards feeding families in Gaza". https://wck.org/ramadan-2024 .

(The bulk of my international charitable contributions goes to big organizations i.e., UN agencies such as World Food Program and High Commissioner for Refugees, but I occasionally contribute a bit to private efforts which are getting the job done, often with breakthroughs in transportation, distribution, local recruitment.)

>30 John5918: If we're talking about the port that the United States Army Corps of Engineers is (maybe) going to construct the Israelis intend to control it all. The United States or whoever will just pay for everything. At best if everything goes as well as possible it will take two months to be ready. At full capacity it will be capable of meeting somewhat less than half of the food needs of the population. In the meantime people (mostly young children) are already dying of starvation. Given two more months it's anyones guess how much worse that can get but it won't be good. Will the Israelis let in food, water, medical aid from other entry points in the meanwhile or even after this port is constructed? Probably not. I think for at least those governing anything less than the Palestinians expelled from Gaza is a concession that they might be forced into but won't be happy with and I don't see them lifting a finger to help feed or reconstruct anything within the territory or at least not as long as it's inhabited by Palestinians and not Israeli settlers. I suspect it will be something like tent city with starvation diets, polluted water, very little in the way of sanitation and MASH style hospital units for the foreseeable future along with on and off again murderous incursions by the IDF particularly from the air.

The Biden administration is kind of congratulating itself for these inadequate measures (meanwhile still sending Israel bombs, munitions and other military support) and in the meantime Sen. Schumer is calling for Netanyahu's head. I guess that's a change from maybe the most pro-Israel Senator in the United States. Just a couple/three months ago he and the House Minority leader Jefferies and the Speaker of the House Johnson were all aglow and triumphant in their support for the Israel govt. at a Washington DC pro-Israel rally doing a victory hand lift. The on the ground reality finally seems to be slowly sinking into more and more in the Democratic Party....whether elected, officials or just regular every day voters. It took Bernie Sanders a good three months to get the picture so that tells you something about how far Dem pols were lagging behind the majority of their voters. What the Republicans/Trump would do would no doubt be worse.....even a lot worse but it's all criminal AFAIC. All their hands bloody. They all should be ashamed.

Israeli Banks Comply with Biden Anti-Settler Sanctions, Smotrich, and Ben-Givr Flip Out
Ireneaus | March 18, 2024

...Cutting off the settlements from the banking system and making it illegal for Americans to support or live in settlements would add a huge burden to a system that is already strained. Getting serious about choking off the money that is keeping the settler movement afloat will go a long way to making a two-state solution and peace a possibility...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/18/2230191/-Israeli-Banks-Comply-with-Bi...
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Bezalel Smotrich
Israeli far-right politician (born 1980), Bezalel Yoel Smotrich is an Israeli far-right politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, he previously served as a Knesset member for Yamina. (Wikipedia)

Itamar Ben-Gvir
Israeli politician, established Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir is an Israeli lawyer and far-right extremist politician who has served as the Minister of National Security since 2022. (Wikipedia)

Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’
Donald Trump’s son-in-law also says Israel should bulldoze an area of the Negev desert and move Palestinians there
Patrick Wintour | 19 Mar 2024

...“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told his interviewer, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair, Prof Tarek Masoud. Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.

“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up...But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

Masoud replied that there was “a lot to talk about there”.

...if {Kushner} were in charge of Israel his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern city of Rafah, and that “with diplomacy” it could be possible to get them into Egypt.

“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there...I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job....I do think right now opening up the Negev, creating a secure area there, moving the civilians out, and then going in and finishing the job would be the right move.”

...“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now...And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?”

...Asked by Masoud about fears on the part of Arabs in the region that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not allow Palestinians who flee Gaza to return, Kushner paused and then said: “Maybe....I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent {sic}. It was the result of a war. You had tribes in different places and then Gaza became a thing. Egypt used to run it and then over time different governments came in.”

Responding to a question about whether the Palestinians should have their own state, Kushner described the proposal as “a super bad idea” that “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-pr...
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Negev: Desert and semidesert region of southern Israel.
The Negev or Negeb is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba, in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city and port of Eilat. It contains several development towns, including Dimona, Arad, and Mitzpe Ramon, as well as a number of small Bedouin towns, including Rahat, Tel Sheva, and Lakiya. (Wikipedia)

Canada to halt arms sales to Israel after non-binding vote in house of commons
Leyland Cecco | 19 Mar 2024

...foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly...government would halt future arms shipments. {still assessing applications for military export permits to Israel on “on a case-by-case basis”?}

The decision follows a parliamentary motion, introduced by the New Democratic party (NDP), {frustrated with what they see as Trudeau's failure to do enough to protect civilians in Gaza} that called on the governing Liberals to halt future arms exports to Israel...passed 204-117 with the support of Liberals, Bloc Québécois and the Green party – also called on Canada to work “towards the establishment of the state of Palestine”...a last-minute deal between the Liberals and the NDP, which had previously called on the government to “recognize the state of Palestine”...Canada’s position that Palestinian statehood should come as the result of a negotiated settlement with Israel...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/19/canada-halt-arms-sales-to-israel

>35 margd: well that's something positive. We, the UK, Germany.....I wonder how many others have been sending them weapons? France probably too. How many are making them even pay for anything?.....or is it a big grift?

Just an observation but the IDF throughout these last several months as an Army has acted with much more brutality than even the Russians have ever done in Ukraine. This has not been a disciplined or moral military force at all. They murder, destroy and loot without any compunction at all. Their own videotaping of this operation suggests that to a great number of them this is a lark. In contrast the video we see from the various Palestinian resistance groups show their fighters despite the lack of uniforms acting much more professionally. For instance any number of these videos show them holding back from firing on IDF soldiers being medivac'd away by helicopter even as they have them in their sights. They don't appear to just be killing for the sake of it. There is a lot of improvisation and care taken with war materials that fall into their hands and a lot of that is unexploded ordinance that the Israelis have gotten from the United States. While the Israelis have been hell bent on destroying the entirety of the Palestinian hospital system, routinely targeting doctors, nurses, medical staff workers, EMT's and ambulances and turning the Palestinian health care system into a hell on earth the Palestinians fighters have shown a restraint that is kind of remarkable. So many Israelis like to call them animals. Maybe that's so. I've often found animals to be nicer than humans.

There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to Israel (Guardian)

Israel has shown it will use these arms indiscriminately against Palestinians. Why does the west continue to supply them?...

>38 John5918: With the Gaza Strip being starved out it's like waiting for a storm to come. When it does arrive the numbers of already dead are going to multiply. As well however many hostages are still alive are also subject to the lack of food, water and needed medicine and care. Getting those hostages back though has never seemed that important to the current Israeli govt. They are pawns in the game. Notices in media in Toronto, NYC and Boston just for three places selling off land in Gaza to would be buyers and developers. Trump's son in law thinks that the strip could be turned into a beachfront resort area. The Palestinians? he says well 'there's nothing for them to return to.'

The point is that this is ethnic cleansing for a designed purpose---the schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, universities, cultural sites and the Palestinian people are all in the way of the ultimate goal. Global world leaders love to talk about two state solutions while continuing to lend aid and support to this regime that has a whole different lookout on how they see things playing out and have been acting toward their goal not the United States, Britain's or any of the others pie in the sky solutions.

>39 lriley: Meanwhile, House Republicans, propose cutting off funding to UNRWA for ONE YEAR:

"...In promoting the bill {$1.2 Trillion Plan to Avert Shutdown}, Republicans cited several ways it would help Israel. Most notably, they highlighted a prohibition on funding through March 2025 for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians in Gaza.

Republicans are insisting on cutting off funding to the agency after Israel alleged that a dozen employees of the agency were involved in the attack that Hamas conducted in Israel on Oct. 7.

But the prohibition does concern some lawmakers because many relief agencies say there is no way to replace its ability to deliver the humanitarian assistance that the United States and others are trying to send to Gaza, where one-quarter of the 2.3 million residents are starving."

https://time.com/6959207/congress-shutdown-plan-spending-package/

UN Security Council does not pass draft US resolution on Gaza ceasefire
Aljazeera | 22 Mar 2024

Russia and China veto US proposal that critics say fell short of demanding an end to Israel’s war on Gaza...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/22/un-security-council-does-not-pass-us-re...

>40 margd: the cutting of funding occurred when the Biden administration decided to take at face value claims that the Israeli govt. made after obtaining admissions after the torture of Palestinian UNWRA workers that they had taken part in the Oct. 7 attack. They've taken at face value pretty much everything that the Israeli govt. feeds them and over and over they turn out to be lies. Such admissions under torture are clearly not worth much at all but the hands off approach....the lack of any follow up by our State Dept., intelligence services etc. to seriously review these claims is telling of the Biden administration's own desires. I have no doubt at this point that there have been many Democratic Party operatives who have tried to move him away from his position of all out support for Israel and it's frankly fucked up on his part....and that now we're hearing a lot of noise from more and more Democrats and from the White House attempting to attenuate this situation and that has a lot to do with this coming November. The protests....the poll numbers have finally got some attention and I don't think that Joe or a lot of other democrats completely understand why all this pushback. FWIW Biden's loyalty to this apartheid regime is misplaced as it can possibly be. Likud, Israeli right wingers in power, Netanyahu himself without any doubt at all feel no loyalty towards him and would much rather see Trump elected in November and both houses of congress under Republican control as well........and there you go and it's like Biden doesn't see that either. It is like he's living in a world of 20/30 years ago.

The immediate problem with UNWRA being cut off is right now. That's on the Biden administration. The Palestinians in Gaza are starving now. They don't have a year. Some of them don't have a week...and thousands and thousands don't have a month or two months. The House Republicans are just being as stupid as usual. They don't see.....have never cared to see. That's who they are. They're just doubling down....circling the wagons and hoping for the return of their leader and if the Israeli leaders get what they want they'll rubber stamp it but a lot of Democratic politicians will too. Basically it just shows how despicable so many of our political leaders are. There are some in the Democratic Party who aren't but not nearly enough and the POTUS isn't one of them. He's on the wrong side of history and he will go down as a bad man just for this.

US Has Redefined “Human Shields” to Enable Israel’s Slaughter of Gaza Civilians (truthout)

President Biden and members of Congress have cynically reinterpreted “human shields” to flout international law... Unable to deny the horrendous human death toll, the Biden administration and many of its supporters have insisted that the responsibility for Israel’s mass killing actually belongs to Hamas for their alleged use of human shields, defined under international law as “Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operation.” However, there is little evidence that Hamas is actually doing this... U.S. officials claimed Hamas was using human shields in previous conflicts, particularly during the 2009 and 2014 wars... However, investigations from previous wars between Israel and Hamas by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Council, and others — while finding Hamas guilty of a number of other war crimes — failed to find a single documented case of any civilian deaths caused by Hamas using human shields... In response, another House resolution adopted by an overwhelming bipartisan majority condemned such investigations because they allegedly “repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon” claims that Hamas used “human shields” despite a supposed “great body of evidence” — though there was no reference in the resolution of any such evidence... Why do such unproven allegations remain unchallenged?...

Why Young Voters Aren’t With Biden on Israel (The Progressive Magazine)

Younger Americans are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever, including a significantly larger population of Muslims than previous generations. People of color are more likely to identify with Palestinians against the predominantly white Israeli leadership. The younger generations also have a keener understanding of institutionalized racism, as exemplified in the Black Lives Matter uprising and movements for Indigenous rights. Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through those lenses, it is pretty hard to support Israel. Zionism, to many younger Americans, is seen as a settler-colonial project instead of a national liberation movement for Jews. Another reason is that older Americans remember when Israel was led by social democrats who had created a relatively progressive society for its Jewish citizens, so it was easier to hide their racist and exclusionary policies... Younger Americans, by contrast, have only known Israel under rightwing leadership that categorically rules out a withdrawal from occupied territories. The government’s overt racism, implementation of what leading human rights groups refer to as a form or apartheid, colonization of the occupied West Bank, and savage repression of the Palestinian population have been the status quo for at least the last two decades. While Israeli Jews have moved to the right, American Jews have been moving to the left, with nearly half of younger Jews believing that Biden is too supportive of Israel. As a result, it has become easier for non-Jews to be critical of Israel and U.S. policy without coming across as being motivated by antisemitism. Yet another factor is that while older Americans get most of their news about the ongoing war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from mainstream media outlets, which still tend to somewhat favor the Israeli narrative, younger Americans increasingly get their news through TikTok and other social media, which more frequently relies on information directly from the source—including from Palestinians on the receiving end of the bombings. Another point is that, unlike the first several decades of Israel’s existence when its support came from the liberal establishment, Israel’s biggest backers today are rightwing Republicans and Christian fundamentalists. Opposing U.S. support for Israel is now often perceived as part of the longstanding tradition of challenging U.S. support for other repressive rightwing governments engaging in war crimes... Still, another shift is that we are getting further away from the Holocaust. The guilt surrounding the failure of the United States to prevent it or even allow fleeing Jewish refugees into the country weighed heavily on many older Americans...

In defying Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu is exposing the limits of US power (Guardian)

The Israeli PM’s refusal to heed US demands on food aid for Gaza is morally indefensible, hurting the president – and opening the door to Donald Trump...

Gaza war: How the crisis is testing the limits of US influence (BBC)

But as the crisis deepens, the limits of American influence have become increasingly clear... This was a superpower being pushed back, despite its pressure... To America's critics the paradox is clear: the US is sending weapons to a key ally, while at the same time urging it, without success, to do much more to alleviate the civilian suffering the military action has unleashed...

The Jewish settlers who want to build homes in Gaza (BBC)

Who wouldn't want a house on the beach? For some on Israel's far-right, desirable beachfront now includes the sands of Gaza. Just ask Daniella Weiss, 78, the grandmother of Israel's settler movement, who says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza immediately. "I have friends in Tel Aviv," she says, "so they say, 'Don't forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,' because it's a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand". She tells them the plots on the coast are already booked. Mrs Weiss heads a radical settler organisation called Nachala, or homeland. For decades, she has been kickstarting Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war... Opinion polls suggest that most Israelis oppose resettling Gaza, and it is not government policy, but since the Hamas attacks on 7 October it is being talked about out loud - by some of the loudest and most extreme voices in Israel's government. Mrs Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements. The dots are scattered all over the map, eating away at land where Palestinians hope - or hoped - to build their state. There are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas now and settler numbers are rising fast. The vast majority of the international community considers settlements illegal under international law, including the United Nations Security Council. Israel disputes this...

>45 John5918: If you are Jewish anywhere around the world it's not hard to get Israeli citizenship and permanent residence in Israel.....to automatically have voting and other rights that Palestinian Christians and Muslims don't have even if they come from families who have lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is much of what the settler movement is about. It's really a state sponsored version of replacement of one ethno/religious group by another. Lots of Jewish people everywhere think this is abhorrent but still the opportunity is there and hundreds of thousands have taken advantage of it over the past few decades.

Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ tribelaw | 12:29 PM · Mar 23, 2024:
{Harvard Law Emeritus, Russian Jewish heritage}

“For the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face growing pressure to choose between them.”

“The American Jews who insist that Zionism and liberalism remain compatible should ask themselves why Israel now attracts the fervent support of Representative Stefanik but repels the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Automobile Workers. Why it enjoys the admiration of Elon Musk and Viktor Orban but is labeled a perpetrator of apartheid by Human Rights Watch and likened to the Jim Crow South by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Why it is more likely to retain unconditional American support if Mr. Trump succeeds in turning the United States into a white Christian supremacist state than if he fails.”

“There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy.”

That’s the future I dream of.
-----------------------------------------------------

Opinion: The Great Rupture in American Jewish Life
Peter Beinart | 22 March 2024

https://dnyuz.com/2024/03/22/the-great-rupture-in-american-jewish-life/ via https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2024/03/22/the_great_rupture_in_american_jewis...

Paywall -- https://nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/israel-american-jews-zionism.html

>47 margd: FWIW the Semetic languages include Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. Yiddish has elements of Hebrew but it's more based on German than Hebrew. Like Zionism (which is in no way a religious ideology) the roots of it are European and if you're a Palestinian and your roots go back centuries in the region considered Israel/Palestine (and whether or not you're Jewish since you're born into a Semitic culture and language) you definitely have a claim to being a Semite (even if you're a Christian or a Muslim) which Ashkenazi Jewish people aren't really or at least not unless they intermarry with Jewish people from the Israel/Palestine region and those with European Jewish roots make up the bulk of the settler population. The settler population likes to claim they have roots in Israel but they don't really. IMO a large % of them are not really even Semetic. But pretty much all Palestinians are.

Israel isolated as UN security council demands immediate ceasefire in Gaza (Guardian)

The UN security council has voted to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, after the US dropped a threat to veto, bringing Israel to near total isolation on the world stage. The vote result sets up the strongest public clash between US president Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the war began. The US abstained and the 14 other council members all voted in favour of the security council ceasefire resolution, put forward by the 10 elected council members who voiced their frustration with more than five months of deadlock between the major powers. Applause broke out in the chamber after the vote. The text demanded “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”. It also demanded the release of hostages but did not make a truce dependent on them being freed, as Washington had previously demanded...

UN Security Council passes resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire (BBC)

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...

Israel’s attempt to destroy Unrwa is part of its starvation strategy in Gaza (Guardian)

Israel’s vendetta against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa) illustrates the callousness with which Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has fought the war in Gaza. It also reflects an effort to use Hamas’s 7 October attack as an opportunity for demographic re-engineering...

On that beach that Jared Kushner discussed:
"Not scenes from an apocalyptic movie, this is Gaza in 2024." :(

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1044228496680177

UK citizens refuse to pay taxes over Israel genocide---and apparently it's legal under the separate ICC and Terror acts. This video is pretty interesting all the way through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLeMVmCY9m0

Ireland backs bid to include blocking of aid in definition of genocide (Guardian)

Ireland is to seek to widen the definition of genocide to include blocking humanitarian aid in a landmark international court of justice (ICJ) case against Israel. The Irish government will intervene in the case taken by South Africa and argue that restricting food and other essentials in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent, the foreign minister Micheál Martin said on Wednesday. “We believe there is a case, given how this war has been conducted,” Martin told the Guardian. “We will be inviting the court to consider the issue of broadening how you determine whether genocide has taken place or not on the basis of an entire population being collectively punished.” A clear pattern of behaviour had impeded humanitarian aid, resulting in widespread suffering, he said. “Half the population of Gaza is facing famine and 100% is experiencing food insecurity”...

Gaza war: UN rights expert accuses Israel of acts of genocide (BBC)

A UN human rights expert says she believes Israel has committed "acts of genocide" in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, presented her report to UN member states in Geneva on Tuesday. But Israel has already dismissed her findings... Ms Albanese concluded that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met"... Genocide is a specific legal term, and Ms Albanese's report suggests some of the legal criteria have been fulfilled. She cites what she says appears to be Israel's intention to destroy Palestinians as a group "in whole or in part", a key clause in the Convention against Genocide. She mentions in particular three elements which point to possible genocide:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part...

Basel Alsourani, of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, welcomed the report. He suggested international law had been violated by all sides in this conflict, but argued that genocide was such a serious crime the international community could not ignore it. "Allowing genocide to happen doesn't only affect Palestinians…, it affects all human beings around the world," he said. "If now Israel is committing genocide without accountability, tomorrow we don't know which country will claim that genocide has been committed by Israel, and {therefore} I can commit genocide with no accountability."

That last paragraph is important. This is not only about Palestinians, but about respect for international humanitarian law - and indeed respect for all human beings.

New Yorker allows one free article(?)

The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza
Eliza Thomson | 21 March 2024

{More than a thousand...what are their futures?}

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-children-who-lost-limbs-in-gaza

Top UN court orders Israel to allow food and medical aid into Gaza (BBC)

The UN's top court has unanimously ordered Israel to enable the unhindered flow of aid into Gaza in order to avert a famine. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel must act "without delay" to allow the "provision... of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance"...

‘Famine is setting in’: UN court orders Israel to unblock Gaza food aid (Guardian)

The international court of justice has ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where sections of the population are facing imminent starvation, in a significant legal rebuke to Israel’s claim it is not blocking aid deliveries. A panel of judges at the UN’s top court, which is already considering a complaint from South Africa that Israel is committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, issued the ruling after an emergency measure in January obliging Israel to admit emergency aid. The judges, who were unanimous in their decision, said Palestinians in Gaza were facing worsening conditions of life, and famine and starvation were spreading. “The court observes that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine … but that famine is setting in,” the judges said. In its legally binding order, the court told Israel to take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” including food, water, fuel and medical supplies. The ICJ also ordered Israel to immediately ensure “that its military does not commit acts which constitute a violation of any of the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance”... The judges also called for the immediate release of all hostages being held by Hamas, echoing the demand of a UN security council resolution that was passed on Monday...

Gaza starvation could amount to war crime, UN human rights chief tells BBC (BBC)

After months of warnings, a recent UN-backed report offered hard statistical evidence that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is turning into a man-made famine. It has increased the pressure on Israel to fulfil its legal responsibilities to protect Palestinian civilians, and to allow adequate supplies of humanitarian aid to reach the people who need it. The UN's most senior human rights official, Volker Türk, said in a BBC interview that Israel bore significant blame, and that there was a "plausible" case that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Mr Türk, who is the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that if intent was proven, that would amount to a war crime...

Several articles from the Guardian today.

Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct – and legality – of war in Gaza

When the US allowed a ceasefire resolution to pass at the UN, the warning was clear – and concern is rising elsewhere...

UK government lawyers say Israel is breaking international law, claims top Tory in leaked recording

The British government has received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public, according to a leaked recording... The revelation will place Lord Cameron and prime minister Rishi Sunak under intense pressure because any such legal advice would mean the UK had to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay. Legal experts said that not to do so would risk putting the UK in breach of international law itself, as it would be seen as aiding and abetting war crimes by a country it was exporting arms to...

UK must restore Unrwa funding ‘without delay’, MPs and peers say

David Cameron has come under pressure to restore funding to the UN’s humanitarian relief agency in Palestine from a cross-party group of more than 50 MPs and peers... In a letter to the foreign secretary, the MPs and peers called for clarity about why the UK decided to suspend funding and why interim reports from investigations into Unrwa had not been enough to resume the supply of money...

Isolated abroad, torn apart at home, Israel must face the future it dreads: a Palestinian state

Enabled by weak and incompetent US and UK foreign policy, Benjamin Netanyahu is using war for his political survival... “Senior US officials complain they don’t understand what Netanyahu wants. But {it} is quite clear. Political survival is his top priority. And if continuing the war, even amid growing claims that Israel is violating the laws of war, is what will keep him in office, he’s completely prepared to do so. All means are kosher, apparently, including further delay in finalising a hostage deal”... What might be rescued from the wreckage in Palestine that could help reverse nihilistic global trends? Netanyahu’s unthinking aggression is boosting, not beating, Hamas politically. He has transformed genuine revulsion at the terrorists’ atrocities into swelling support for the cause they supposedly espouse and he detests – an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. This is the moderate Palestinian majority’s chance. As a divided, traumatised, ill-led and ostracised Israel tears itself apart, as its historical, ideological and democratic credentials shred, re-establishing a credible negotiating process with the explicit, internationally endorsed aim of two states co-existing side by side may – ironically – be the best and only way of saving Israel from itself. It may also be the best hope of saving the community of nations from further descent into lawlessness...

Edited to add: Thousands of Israeli protesters call for Netanyahu’s removal (Guardian)

Thousands of people across Israel have joined families of hostages to protest against the government and call for the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu, as the Israeli prime minister grapples with one of the most serious threats yet to his coalition. The protesters in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Be’er Sheva, Caesarea and other cities on Saturday demanded the release of those still held captive in Gaza and labelled the PM as an “obstacle to the deal”, vowing to persist until he is ousted from office... “The people of Israel won’t forget or forgive anyone who prevents a deal that would bring them the hostages back to us. After 176 days, 4,224 hours, the excuses have run out”... Protesters called out that they “will not stop until they’re all home”, chanting “enough killing, enough despair, the hostages are the most important thing”... The families of hostages have urged ministers, including Netanyahu’s political rival and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, to unite with other Knesset members in removing Netanyahu from power, accusing the PM of deliberately sabotaging efforts to secure the release of their relatives... “Prime Minister Netanyahu, after you abandoned our families on October 7, and after 176 days when you didn’t bring a deal {for their return}, and because you are continually engaged in torpedoing a deal, we have realised that you are the obstacle to the deal. You are the obstacle. You are the one who stands between us and the return home of our loved ones... If we don’t immediately act to move you away from the steering wheel, we won’t get to see our loved ones returning home alive and fast, and we won’t get to see our dead returned for burial in Israel... So today we are compelled to begin a new stage in our struggle"... “If the families knew how small the gap is, which Netanyahu is refusing to close in negotiations with Hamas, they would explode,” said Amos Malka, a former head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence directorate who was among the speakers at the rally in Tel Aviv. “This is more evidence of his unsuitability to serve”...

Gaza’s Christians attend Easter service in darkness (0:59)
Al Jazeera | 31 Mar 2024

The dwindling Christian community in Gaza are holding Easter services without electricity due to Israel’s siege of the bombarded enclave...

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/31/gazas-christians-attend-eas...

Norman Finkelstein and Chris Hedges discuss Israel, Gaza, Oct. 7 at Princeton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eEz22kyukY

Transcript: https://therealnews.com/norman-finkelstein-on-israels-final-solution-in-gaza

>57 margd: A lot of (particularly middle aged and older) people in the US seem to see this war on civilians as the Israelis defending themselves from Palestinian Muslim terrorists. So many Americans have also in their minds legitimized drone strikes and the subsequent collateral damage that comes from such as the wages of waging war that it's not a big step for them to take when Israel takes an apartment building down killing hundreds with the excuse that there was a single Hamas fighter inside. The nature of our own wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were by design much about collective punishment too though propagated as a blow for freedom seeking Western democracy. There once was a very thriving Palestinian Christian culture in Israel too...It's not just a Palestinian Muslim population that Israel's right wing ethno-state designers have had their sights set on and those Christians traveling on their own to see Jerusalem's holy sites in recent years have very often been targets of abuse. The Israel govt. sponsored tours taken by our Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals are fine and well protected though. That's all part of the propaganda machine.

Four foreign aid workers and Palestinian translator killed in Israeli strike, Gaza officials say (Guardian)

Four foreign nationals working for a food aid charity have been killed in an Israeli strike in central Gaza, according to health officials in the occupied territory. The founder of the charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK), confirmed on Twitter that “several” staff members had died in an Israeli airstrike. Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese confirmed an Australian national was among those killed while doing “extraordinarily important work”, naming her as Zomi Frankcom. Other aid workers are reported to be from Poland and the United Kingdom, with the nationality of a fourth not immediately known. A Palestinian translator was also reportedly killed...

>60 John5918: After all that's happened in the past several months one might wonder whether the Israelis are trying to send a message to anyone that might come into Gaza to provide humanitarian relief. This doesn't appear to be an accident. These people were coordinating their movements with the IDF.

The Biden administration continues to talk out of one side of its mouth about these atrocities meanwhile still sending the Israeli apartheid/genocide regime the arms and munitions to continue to carry even more atrocities out. There is no accountability for either their govt. or ours. The expectations of both that they're going to get away with a mass slaughter/starvation campaign of by far mostly civilians and children and that they'll be able to justify all of it in the future. I'm afraid that for Genocide Joe and for at least some of those who actively work for him here though that this event is going to follow them around throughout the rest of their lives. The reality of that will eventually burst the bubbles they live in.

World Central Kitchen halts operations in Gaza after strike kills staff
Kathryn Armstrong, Emily Atkinson & Rushdi Abualouf | 2 April 2024

0:28 Video shows World Central Kitchen vehicles destroyed in Gaza air strike.
Contains upsetting scenes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68710515

OSINTdefender @sentdefender | 10:26 AM · Apr 2, 2024:
Open Source Intelligence Monitor focused on Europe and Conflicts across the World.

According to Cypriot Officials, 240 Tons of Humanitarian Aid including Food and Water which was on the way to the Gaza Strip today from Cyprus on a Ship that was Chartered by the Non-Profit Organization, World Central Kitchen has Turned-Back due to the Announcement that WCK will be Ceasing Operations in the Region; this Announcement comes after 7 Aid Workers with the Organization were Killed yesterday in an IDF Airstrike.

Photo WCK vessel (https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1775167810739560454/photo/1)

‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza (Guardian)

Children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Tens of thousands more young people have suffered severe injuries, including amputations. Nine doctors gave the Guardian accounts of working in Gaza hospitals this year, all but one of them foreign volunteers. Their common assessment was that most of the dead and wounded children they treated were hit by shrapnel or burned during Israel’s extensive bombardment of residential neighbourhoods, in some cases wiping out entire families. Others were killed or injured by collapsing buildings with still more missing under the rubble. But doctors also reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest. Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Palestinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops. Other doctors said they did not know the circumstances of the shootings but that they were deeply troubled by the number of children who were severely wounded or killed by single gunshots, sometimes by high-calibre bullets causing extensive damage to young bodies. In mid-February, a group of UN experts accused the Israeli military of targeting Palestinian civilians who are evidently not combatants, including children, as they sought shelter...

Just the recent assault in one place al-Shifa has left hundreds of people dead. The 32,000 hasn't elevated much in recent weeks. It could be twice as high at this point. People starving, people under rubble. It's like nobody's counting or left to count.

......and to go back to the world kitchen event. Palestinians aren't using cars much because they have no gas. There is not much traffic and what those aid workers were hit with numerous times weren't 2000 lb. dumb bombs. These were precision attacks and maybe with munitions we sent them and the targets strung out over a mile and a half. The people targeting these vehicles did so deliberately knowing full well their targets weren't just anybody and that they weren't hitting Palestinians.

The news of these killings apparently outraged Biden....but at the same the United States is sending more war material including 2000 lb. dumb bombs and 25 warplanes. The Biden administration has managed to do another end run around congress.....not that I think congress would necessarily have stopped them but this way doesn't waste time at all.

At the same time an Iftar dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan that Biden had set up to have a chin wag with US Muslim leaders was cancelled and the only Palestinian invited walked out. It was decided that it would be bad form to have this dinner when pretty much everyone in Gaza is starving. Still it speaks IMO to the tone deafness of Biden when he's been actively aiding and abetting the slaughter to even be trying this now anyway.

.....and now we're all waiting for the Israelis to put to use those 2000 lb. bombs on Rafah. You know they will.

>65 lriley: The people targeting these vehicles did so deliberately knowing full well their targets weren't just anybody

I drove NGO vehicles in a war zone for many years, and like the WCK cars, it is normal practice for them to be clearly marked with their logo, often also painted on the roof or the top of the bonnet (hood on the other side of the Pond), and sometimes with a flag flying from the radio antenna as well. Hitting these three cars was not a mistake. Likewise the fact that they were strung out over 2.5 km (verified by BBC) demonstrates that this was not a single strike which mistakenly hit all three vehicles with a single missile. Plus the fact that they had apparently cleared their mission with the IDF, who therefore knew they were in the vicinity and almost certainly knew their exact route.

But going back to single sniper rounds killing children and other civilians is yet another indication of genocidal intent, not "collateral damage".

Thugs.

>66 John5918: The typical response when the Israelis get pushback on anything is 'we'll investigate' and then that's the last of it....though in the meantime there have been plenty of other things they've been pushed on that they say they're going to investigate. One investigation getting lost in the shadow of the next and the next after. Then United States spokespeople like Matt Miller, Kirby and St. Pierre sometimes acting concerned use these sham investigations to continue to defend Israel whilst deflecting away criticism meanwhile from our role in this. It's like that's on rerun too.

Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law (Guardian)

Three former supreme court justices, including the court’s former president Lady Hale, are among more than 600 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel. In a letter to the prime minister, the signatories, who also include former court of appeal judges and more than 60 KCs, say that the present situation in Gaza is “catastrophic” and that given the international court of justice (ICJ) finding that there is a plausible risk of genocide being committed, the UK is legally obliged to act to prevent it. The 17-page letter, which also amounts to a legal opinion, was sent on Wednesday evening and says: “While we welcome the increasingly robust calls by your government for a cessation of fighting and the unobstructed entry to Gaza of humanitarian assistance, simultaneously to continue (to take two striking examples) the sale of weapons and weapons systems to Israel and to maintain threats of suspending UK aid to Unwra falls significantly short of your government’s obligations under international law”...

Wisconsin's 'uninstructed' voters send Biden a strong message on the war in Gaza
Padmananda Rama, Chuck Quirmbach | Updated April 3, 2024

The movement to protest President Biden at the primary ballot box in response to his handling of the war in Gaza exceeded its own expectations in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

With more than 90% of the votes counted, the "uninstructed" option on Democratic presidential primary ballots has garnered more than 47,000 votes... That's just over 8% of the Democratic presidential primary vote counted so far.

...organizers, who said they wanted to send a message to Biden to change course before November, set a goal to get at least 20,000 people in Wisconsin to vote "uninstructed."

That's about equal to Biden's margin of victory over former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin four years ago...

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/03/1242424035/wisconsin-uninstructed-uncommitted-bid...

‘I will never join the army’: ultra-Orthodox Jews vow to defy Israeli court orders (Guardian)

As their military exemption ends, tensions divide the country and threaten to topple Netanyahu’s government...

The new world disorder: how the Gaza war disrupted international relations (Guardian)

While the US flounders in a conflict it did not foresee, emerging powers see a chance for new voices to join the top table... The great powers compete, coexist or confront one another across the region but none, least of all at the UN, is able to impose its version of order any longer. “Forget talk of unipolarity or multipolarity,” the journalist Gregg Carlstrom recently wrote in Foreign Affairs. “The Middle East is nonpolar. No one is in charge”... Among emerging powers, the lesson of Gaza has been that it is time for new voices to join the top table. “This war is hideous but speaks to a bigger problem: the lack of reform of global governance institutions, including and primarily the UN security council,” said Filipe Nasser, a senior adviser at the Brazilian foreign ministry. “This is the point of convergence across the global south. They feel the international order is profoundly asymmetric and detrimental to their interests. The three US vetoes show how the rules are bent.” The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has spoken of a similar crisis. “The current international system, devoid of fundamental concepts such as solidarity, justice and trust, cannot fulfil even its minimum responsibilities,” he said. South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, has described Gaza as the last manifestation of the conflict against colonialism and imperialism, and went to the international court of justice to prove her point. Among western-based intellectuals, there is a sense that something deep is afoot. “The disaster in Gaza has completely disabused a large segment of liberals and professionals in the Arab world about western claims of upholding and caring about values in the conduct of foreign policy”...

Iran offers no response to Damascus strike if US secures Gaza ceasefire - report
JERUSALEM POST STAFF | APRIL 8, 2024

Iran informed the US that it would refrain from responding to the airstrike in which senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders were killed in Damascus if a ceasefire in Gaza is reached, Jadeh Iran reported on Sunday.

The news outlet cited an anonymous Arab diplomatic source, saying the source spoke to the news outlet two days ago. The source added that "If America succeeds in containing the situation, it will be a great success for the Biden administration and we can build on that."

The report comes as negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal resume between Israel and Hamas in Cairo and as Israel continues preparations for a possible response to the Damascus airstrike that Syria and Iran blamed on Israel...

https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-795866
____________________________________

OSINTdefender @sentdefender | Last edited 10:37 PM · Apr 7, 2024:
Open Source Intelligence Monitor focused on Europe and Conflicts across the World.

Iran appears to have “Backed Down” from their Direct Threat of a Retaliatory Strike against Israeli Territory over the last 24 Hours; it is possible that they have been Bluffing the whole time, but that makes you wonder what U.S, Israeli, and other Western Intelligence Agencies saw on Thursday and Friday which had them so sure of an Imminent Attack.

However, I don’t think we should Total Discount the possibility of a Strike against Israel still taking place until at least the End of Ramadan on Tuesday.

>73 margd:

It's a sad reflection on the polarisation of world politics and opinion when a state makes what could be interpreted as a positive conciliatory gesture, de-escalating the situation in an attempt to obtain a humanitarian result, and it is described as "backing down" in the context of "bluffing".

>74 John5918: It's a sad world all right... I imagine Iran and US share one thing--neither wants conflict to consume the Middle East any more than it already is. Smart move on Iran's part, though, to try to snatch some credit for ceasefire which, fingers crossed, could be first step out of this mess.

>75 margd: As far as the Middle East we are like it or not intruders and have always been and the main reason is oil. And the idea that we like to spin that we've been promoting democracy doesn't fly very well when some of our closest allies in the region are anything but and even Israel it's kind of a sham democracy when one half of their population has no voting rights to speak of. Iran has way more skin in the game in that their population has to live there. Democracy has always been iffy there too but keeping in mind that a big reason it hasn't worked well is that back in the 50's when Mossadegh was elected the United States and Britain didn't like when he tried to nationalize oil resources and worked to overthrow him and then installed a dictator. We've always been for democracy if we like the result. Not so much if we don't.

Stopping Famine in Gaza (International Crisis Group)

The war in Gaza is far from over, but the fate of many of its residents may soon be sealed: the strip’s north may be facing the world’s worst famine, relative to population size, of the past few decades. Unimpeded, sustained and safe humanitarian access to the whole Gaza Strip, with civil authorities and civic groups allowed to safeguard aid distribution, is needed to prevent this outcome. While Israel let more assistance into Gaza in March, it was not enough. Grimmest is the north, where Israel is targeting Hamas figures and civilians overseeing aid... Only a prolonged ceasefire can improve access, movement and distribution enough to avoid mass death. Absent one, the only option is mitigating the famine through modest improvements in these areas, with Israel guaranteeing the safety of aid workers regardless of their nationality and political affiliation...

Crooke today on Lavender (and, implicitly, "Where's Daddy?") and AI-driven genocide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdE4lzerbSI

(as reported by +972:
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ )

Germany faces genocide case over Israel weapon sales (BBC)

Nicaragua has asked the UN's highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel at the start of a landmark case. Germany is accused of breaching the UN genocide convention by sending military hardware to Israel and ceasing funding of the UN's aid agency. Berlin rejects the claims and will present a defence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Tuesday... The allegations build on a separate case taken by South Africa in January, where judges in the Hague ordered Israel to take "every possible measure" to avoid genocidal acts. The court also ordered Hamas to release all hostages taken from Israel during its 7 October attacks immediately. Israel rejects accusations that it is engaging in genocidal acts in its campaign in Gaza... According to papers filed with the ICJ, Nicaragua wants the UN's top court to order Berlin to halt weapons sales and resume funding of the aid agency {UNRWA}, one of the few international bodies still operating in Gaza. It says in the absence of such measures, "Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide and is failing in its obligation to do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide"...

Biden Has Had the Power to Stop Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza Since Day 1 (truthout)

For the first time since Israel launched its devastating offensive on Gaza six months ago, President Joe Biden appears to have convinced right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change policy. The Israeli government’s decision to open up the Erez crossing to allow more relief supplies came after a phone call between the two on Thursday, in which for the first time Biden appeared to threaten some kind of specific action if Israel did not abide by a U.S. request... This raises the question as to why the United States hasn’t taken such firm action sooner and why Biden is still unwilling to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire...

How Biden Immediately Undermined the U.N. Ceasefire Vote (The Progressive Magazine)

The Biden Administration is trying to seem like they’re working to bring an end to the fighting when, in fact, they are not...

>80 John5918: since the assassinations of the world kitchen people there seems to be a real shift in how some of our politicians here are looking at Israel. I didn’t know it before but apparently Jose Andres is something of a prime mover in D.C. particularly with Democratic pols and apparatchiks. The IDF could have gone on and murdered another 50,000 or so Gazans and the most that would have affected most of these people here is they might have got a little more green around the gills but these particular killings woke them out of their apathy or slumber or whatever. We can guess why…..but even Pelosi is saying ‘maybe we should condition?’

The hunt for Hamas has always been bullshit more than less. Hamas is just a necessary boogeyman to get to the real goal of ethnically cleansing Gaza. That’s what the people who put Netanyahu in power want. They could give a shit about the hostages…..and when you see the starvation campaign, the destruction of the health care system…..not just Palestinians but the hostages (or how many of them are still alive) have to try to survive through the same starvation etc. ordeal too. As well the claim that a 2000 lb. dumb bomb dropped in the middle of a condensed population to target even a single Hamas fighter is just crap. These bombs aren’t dropped to kill anyone in particular (they have no guidance; that’s why they’re called dumb)…..they’re dropped to kill anyone they can and the United States has been just been giving them away like candy to the IDF.

>81 lriley: Don't forget the moral hygiene of >78 davidgn:, though. It's very important to displace the responsibility and maintain a fiction which purports justifies these killings.

>81 lriley: Maybe even cynical politicians were thrilled in their heart of hearts to see plucky WCF ship food from Cyprus, building a jetty from the rubble that was once northern Gaza. The loss of WCF humanitarians was so much harder in contrast?

>83 margd:

But in the eyes of the world at large, it is simply another example of the hypocrisy whereby half a dozen or so white lives are apparently valued far more than 33,000 or more Arab lives (or African or Asian lives, for that matter). Killing humanitarian workers is a war crime, but so is killing any noncombatant civilian.

>82 davidgn: Yes.....some bombs to kill people at random. Some bombs more targeted to certain people or their loved ones. There are particular people they want to kill. Not just Hamas, but community leaders, doctors, nurses, journalists, anyone who might support the Gaza infrastructure in any way.

>73 margd: contd.

US Sees Imminent Missile Strike on Israel by Iran, Proxies
Donato Paolo Mancini, Jennifer Jacobs, and Galit Altstein | April 10, 2024

Iran, proxies may strike Israeli military, government sites
Attack would mark major widening of conflict in Middle East

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/us-sees-missile-strike-on-isr...

“We’re Responsible for This”: American Surgeons Return from Gaza, Call for End of U.S. Culpability in Genocide

We speak with two doctors who’ve just returned after two weeks at the European Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter are co-authors of a new piece for Common Dreams titled “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” They describe a hospital “hanging on by a thread,” with the majority of patients being young children, and bombing targeted at Muslim Palestinians “concentrated at the time of evening prayer.” “Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got,” says Perlmutter. “This is dehumanization. The purpose of this is to kill a population.” He also says, of U.S. responsibility in this genocide, “We’re buying the bullets and the gun for the gunman who’s going to the school and killing the children.” “If our support stops, the occupation stops,” adds Sidhwa, urging other Americans to push political leaders and public discourse against the country’s support of Israel. “We have to raise the domestic cost for these policies.” Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Perlmutter worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization in Gaza. Collectively, they have previously volunteered medical assistance in the West Bank, Haiti and Ukraine, and after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing.
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza

Biden should not follow Netanyahu into war with Iran
The Israeli government appears to want to goad Tehran into a military response to divert attention from the slaughter and famine in Gaza and to trap the U.S. into joining the fight
ANALYSIS | MIDDLE EAST
Regions Middle East Israel
DANIEL LARISON
APR 12, 2024
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-netanyahu-israel-war-iran/

Israel & Co. SHATTERING ALL Norms of Intl. Law Will Haunt Us All | Ex-UK Ambassador Craig Murray

Prof. Pascal Lottaz presents Amb. Craig Murray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2juV794znnI

>89 davidgn: So far with the Israeli/Biden relationship it's been the tail wagging the dog. No question that over and over again Biden has lived up to his words that he's a Zionist. Might even call him a Ziontologist for his almost cult like support of the Netanyahu regime. The problem with any kind of ideology is that sooner or later it runs into grim reality and his democratic colleagues might want to think about reining him in because IMO he's more than lost the thread on this. My guess is chances right now of Biden's reelection are somewhere around 50/50....if he takes the country to war with Iran to support Netanyahu's war crimes he's most likely to lose reelection. People on the fence with him already are going to say no.

Israel is a country of 15 million souls. Half of them choose Judaism even if for many of them it's a secular or atheistic version and the other half are Muslim, Christian etc. Our country of some 325 million are going to set the world on fire to support a few million fascist/semi-fascist bigots/assholes who right now are genociding half their own population for religious/territorial land grab reasons? It's fucking absurd and we should have cut bait on this Israeli govt. a long time ago.

>91 lriley: Well, the shit's hit the fan now.
https://www.aljazeera.com/live

https://www.mediaite.com/news/breaking-idf-confirms-iran-just-launched-suicide-d...
BREAKING: IDF Confirms Iran Just Launched ‘Suicide’ Drone Attack On Israel

The Israeli Defense Forces confirmed that Iran has launched a barrage of drones towards Israel on Saturday, setting up for a direct military conflict between the two nations.

Up to 500 drones and missiles ~ Drudge Report

https://www.mediaite.com/news/breaking-biden-rushes-back-to-white-house-as-iran-...
BREAKING: Biden Rushes Back To White House As Iran Launches Drone Attack On Israel

https://www.mediaite.com/news/just-in-u-s-military-reportedly-shoots-down-irania...
JUST IN: U.S. Military Reportedly Shoots Down Iranian Drones Attacking Israel

President Biden @POTUS | 11:15 PM · Apr 13, 2024:

I condemn Iran's attacks in the strongest possible terms and reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.

My full statement on Iran’s attacks against Israel:

A Statement from President Joe Biden on Iran’s Attacks against the State of Israel. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1779347601764020297/photo/1

>96 margd: one might wonder if this is going to be another 'there he goes again' moment and back to the Israeli tail wagging the Unites States dog but also even how much of his democratic caucus will be willing to go all the way with him if he decides to really commit the US military. Sanders? Van Hollen? Warren? Markey? Merkley? Kaine? maybe even Schumer? These are just some of whom have been critiquing the Israeli regime in recent days. Pelosi too after the deaths of the World Kitchen people. Biden can probably count on the Republicans.....he's always wanted to reach across the aisle in friendship to at least some of them like in those golden days of 80's and 90's bipartisanship. He can count of Fetterman and a solid D like Manchin.

Israel seems almost like a Middle Ages Crusade state these days determined to capture all of the Holy Land no matter what and no matter how while Biden's (his age really is showing) giving me the impression of a Don Quixote getting ready to battle a windmill. Problem is we're in the 21st century and who's going to be along for this ride? As our last couple POTUS's have shown you don't have to be very intelligent or even with it to be a successful politician.

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 8:54 AM · Apr 14, 2024:
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org
Author "Russia in Africa" & "Putin's War on Ukraine"

BREAKING: Israel strikes a significant Hezbollah weapons production site in Nabi Chit, Lebanon

Hezbollah also fired 40 rockets on Israel during the Iranian strikes
So this is both an asymmetric response to Iran's attacks on Israel and a retaliation for Hezbollah's latest escalations

Iran’s attack seemed planned to minimize casualties while maximizing spectacle (CNN)

A decades-long shadow war burst out into the open overnight as Iranian drones and missiles lit up the night sky in Israel and the occupied West Bank. Tehran’s operation was highly choreographed, apparently designed to minimize casualties while maximizing spectacle... Only a small handful of locations were attacked, including a military base and an area in the Negev desert, injuring a Bedouin child... Yet it was an operation that seemed designed to fail — when Iran launched its killer drones from its own territory some 1,000 miles away, it was giving Israel hours of advance notice. The symbolism of the attack did the heavy lifting... The strike served as a retaliation against the Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s consulate in Damascus earlier in April that killed a top commander... Iran’s leadership felt compelled to strike Israel in order to reiterate its position as a regional powerhouse and to dispel notions of it as a paper tiger... Yet Iran also needed to try to avoid sparking an all-out war...

After Iran’s attack on Israel, the world must act: this is a crisis that threatens us all (Guardian)

Netanyahu wanted a wider conflict, and Tehran has walked into his trap. The major powers must immediately head this off...

>99 John5918: A lot of what I've heard since Oct. 7 is that Israel has been destroying its own economy. I can believe that. I think Netanyahu wants that wider war but he also wants his allies to bail his economy out by tying them in closer.....that and to push the Palestinians out of Gaza. Between the propaganda machine and the buying off of the majority of our politicians they had the hubris to believe there was an open road to do whatever they wanted. There has never been a good reason for us to give them more weapons and carte blanche, to ignore all the subsequent civilian maimings and deaths and all the destruction. It's looking the other way while something truly evil you've contributed to continues to happen......and like that's not really happening. Biden the empathetic shows himself to be anything but. And I think the United States and some other western democracies have done more damage than even all the death and destruction it's supported with this.....for an example we've truly undermined international law in the eyes of most of the rest of the world and it's questionable how an United Nations or any world court will ever be the same again.

Politicians have this habit of thinking the same old is always going to work again and again. That the public will always fall in line but I think Biden has made a major mistake in that we've woken up day after day for month after month to see some new atrocity......and even with the complicity of the major media to shut those atrocities out or explain them away the relentlessness of one vision of horror after another has not stopped. Politicians might blind themselves to it but a lot of their constituents haven't. I will say that Joe is probably lucky that Donald on his own has been bleeding support for a long time too but to me it's anyone's guess but they're still both really bad.

>99 John5918: Iran sent all it could, but Israel came out looking untouchable to conventional warfare, with its allies returning to the fold. Ceasefire talks collapsed.
Israel sending more troops to Gaza. Allowing in a little more food?

Ukraine on Congress's back burner.

>101 margd:

Hm. The CNN article would seem to suggest the opposite, that there was plenty more they could have done, and they could have done it in a manner which was far more lethal, but they chose to retaliate but not to escalate.

>102 John5918: Good on Iran, if so. I was going by another source.

What I'm reading today is that Biden or whoever in his administration has told Israel if they attack Iran back they'll be doing it on their own and hopefully they don't but we've done way too much for Israel already and getting involved in a regional war would be insane and IMO very well could sink any chance of Biden's being reelected.....not that Netanyahu and his right wingers would give a shit about that. It is way past time we cut any arms shipments to Israel to begin with. It's all for offense and never been for defense......it's always been a canard that Hamas has any ability to destroy Israel or its govt.

Israel has killed thousands of civilians but if anything they've only increased the insurgency against them within the Gaza territory. They've turned the cities into rubble for sure but they've also made them into great ambush sites for the Palestinian resistance to roam around in and they've done little about clearing tunnels and they're at a loss on how to deal with a ground war against a more and more tested insurgency that knows the lay of the land a whole lot better than they do. The IDF so far has only proven one thing they're really good at and that's killing innocents---women, children, old people, people in hospitals, any kind of non-combatant. The cities they've claimed to have cleared they've had to go back into again and there's no real evidence that it's done them any good but on the contrary has battled tested their opposition. To be clear occupying a country or a land with a foreign army in these times is a losing proposition....the IDF has been shown up as undisciplined and amateurish as it is but even more disciplined armies like the United States and Britains don't win either. Occupation though every time comes with this arrogant supposition that either the other side is going to greet the occupier with flowers and/or that the occupied are going to wilt into submission. The latter is what the Israeli govt. expected but they're just bleeding their economy and killing off their own soldiers while further damaging their national reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world. If they could only drag us and other nations into this debacle they can at least share some of that damage with others. That's what they have left. Go on John Fetterman and Ritchie Torres---sign up with the IDF and be heroes. You know you want to.

Netanyahu aims to trap west into war across Middle East, warns Iranian diplomat (Guardian)

Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to trap the west into a total war across the Middle East that would have incalculable consequences for the region and the world, Iran’s top diplomat in the UK has claimed, in his first interview since Tehran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel at the weekend. Seyed Mehdi Hosseini Matin also warned that if Israel made “another mistake” by launching an attack on Iran, there would be a response from Iran that was stronger, more severe, and administered without a warning like that issued before the weekend attack... He ruled out Iran attacking civilian centres or building a nuclear weapon, even though he said Iran knew Israel was an undeclared nuclear state... western leaders have also urged Israel to exercise restraint against escalation. The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said it was a “moment for calm heads to prevail”... Matin argued that the west was losing credibility in the Middle East in a way that would ultimately lead to the US leaving the region, and a peace being reached by regional powers alone. “This is a good opportunity for western countries to demonstrate that they are rational actors, and they are not going to be entrapped by Netanyahu and his goal, which is to be in power for as long as he could actually stay in power,” he claimed. “Iran has considered its actions very carefully, and understood that there is a trap, but not for Iran, for the western countries and allied countries in which they are drawn by the Zionist state into a total war inside the Middle East, and the whole world soon may be unable to control the consequences”...

>105 John5918: The same upshot, from Alastair Crooke https://www.youtube.com/live/u1vdquXGyX0?si=xaQaQ15CxL5WSr0e&t=133

The Israel-Iran Crisis: A Chance to Step Back from the Brink (International Crisis Group)

Israel and its allies fended off almost all the armed drones and missiles fired by Iran on 13 April. This outcome affords both sides a face-saving way out of what could otherwise be a ruinous broader confrontation...

>107 John5918: Reading the NYtimes article today on this and the NYTimes has pretty much become a propaganda tool for the Israeli govt.

Let's also point out that this embassy airstrike (supposedly a war crime in itself) was a handy way for the Israeli govt. to get away from the terrible publicity/black eye it got from the World Kitchen murders.

According to the article though Israel let the United States know of its impending attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria only moments before the strike actually happened. US officials immediately voiced support but privately were pissed. Are they really though? I mean they keep saying it and never doing anything about it. Ronen Bergman the NYTimes writer then tells us 'that Israel had badly miscalculated thinking Iran would not respond strongly'. Let's just say if the United States or Israeli embassies were being attacked out of the blue my guess is the response would be well over the top. Bergman explains away the Israel/Iran dispute as 'escalation after escalation, miscalculation after miscalculation'.....one might ask though who's doing the escalating and miscalculating? I think it's clearly the Israelis.

The article goes on that the planning for the strike started two months before the attack and that Israel didn't expect Iran to respond with the ferocity it did and that Israel thinks it needs to respond to this ferocious attack. So what's the big deal over a premeditated attack on another country's embassy? That Iran gave a well in advance heads up to the United States (and Israel) when it did respond making it very easy to defend doesn't seem to be of any subsequence to Israel (or the NYTimes writer Bergman for that matter) and FWIW that was hardly a ferocious response.....not anything comparable to Israel's premeditated strike anyway. I've seen a statement from some Pentagon official that the 'rules of the game' have changed. Well I guess....and I guess it's good to know that all of this is just a game to some highly placed people in our military. Also that Israeli propaganda has it that Iran (not Israel at all) want a wider regional war. Just reading between the lines and it doesn't seem hard to me it's kind of the opposite.

>108 lriley: I read that Iran also alerted Saudi Arabia (and Jordan?).

>109 margd: It was basically for show. The only person hurt that I know of was a Bedouin kid in the Negev desert......someone that Netanyahu and his right wingers would for sure look at as an undesirable. That hurt child is not a good thing but certainly unintended. The attack on the Iranian foreign embassy was intentional and also an attack on Syria too and something that usually brings condemnation from all corners of the globe. It was also certainly a direct provocation. Israel and Iran have been at it for a while. Iran is allied at least somewhat with Hezbollah and the Houthis and in that I don't think Iran is absolutely blameless.....the Houthis with their attacks on shipping are making things a lot more expensive in Israel.....most of what I've seen from the IDF and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon OTOH is proactive shit from Israel and reactive from Hezbollah.....or Israel wants that way more and Israel has its alliances too and it certainly didn't have to attack that embassy but there are a number of reasons why they want to expand this into a regional war. As a country Israel is a very bad actor.

In any case by alerting the United States and others to the coming attack one could certainly argue that Iran's retaliation showed considerable restraint. I don't believe they want a war with Israel if only because they're not certain what the United States would do. The truth as I see it is that most all of everything that's happened since Oct. 7 is just about killing people and in Israel's case pushing people they don't want out of their territorial borders. Hamas has never had the capability to destroy Israel. As we're finding whether Israel believed it before or not.....they can turn Gaza into rubble that they're not likely going to be able to wipe out Hamas either. Israel even with the United States and the UK on board doesn't have the capability to destroy Iran and Iran isn't going to be able to destroy Israel either. As far as any occupation idealizations unless you can actually get the bulk of the population on your side somehow that never works either and you're not getting a population on your side by killing people in their thousands.

Does Israel Want a Wider War? (The Progressive Magazine)

Provoking Iran is a strategy to distract from the ongoing slaughter of civilians in Gaza...

Biden Claims to Support a Two-State Solution. His Policies Say Otherwise. (truthout)

The administration pays lip service to a two-state solution while blocking every possible avenue toward that goal...

The Other Occupation (The Campaign to End the Occupation of the Western Sahara Newsletter)

This increasing focus on that longstanding {Israel-Palestine} conflict provides an opening for those of us concerned about another UN-recognized occupation which has been going on for 48 years—that of Morocco over Western Sahara. It serves as a reminder that Israel is not the only Western-backed occupying power. And it gives us an opportunity to emphasize the importance of upholding principles of international law everywhere... Despite all this, the Biden administration has refused to call for a two-state solution to the conflict between Morocco and Western Sahara as it has for Israel and Palestine. Indeed, the Biden administration is the only government in the world, besides the Netanyahu government in Israel, to have formally recognized Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara. While U.S. government maps do not include the occupied West Bank as part of Israel, they do show Western Sahara as part of Morocco with no demarcation between Morocco and the occupied territory. The Biden administration is effectively recognizing the right of conquest...

US vetoes Palestinian request for full UN membership (Guardian)

The US has vetoed a Palestinian request to the United Nations security council for full UN membership, blocking the world body’s recognition of a Palestinian state. The vote in the 15-member security council was 12 in favor, the US opposed and two abstentions, the UK and Switzerland... Before the vote, diplomats said the US mission had been trying to convince one or two other council members to abstain, to mitigate Washington’s isolation on the issue, but American officials said they were resigned to having to wield the US veto once more in support of Israel...

>111 John5918: Western Sahara is another deeply shameful matter. I was appalled when the U.S. recognized the Moroccan occupation, and even more appalled when Biden maintained that Trumpian policy.

The US logic for why it vetoed is all bs. They say that this is something that both the Israelis and Palestinians need to work out through negotiations. Israel is already working this out without negotiations. It's kick the other other side out of Gaza and the West Bank and physically force them out of the country and the ones you don't kill don't let them back in. Israel is not interested in talking with a people it long ago decided were a species of subhumans.

And it looks like all this new aid, bombs and other military aircraft the US congress has just approved isn't all going to be for the Gaza's....looks like Israel has in mind to widen things into a regional conflict. When Biden came into office after Trump's 4 years there was a global audible sigh of relief. 3 and a half years later the United States surely has proven to be a rogue superpower state all over again and an impediment to the peace of the world. Well I didn't see that coming but here we are. Again to this aid bill.....if anyone is wondering where the POTUS stands on this.....'We stand by our friends and we won't let Iran and Russia succeed'. Sounds to me like we're ready to go to war with Israel against Iran.

Israel's strike on Iran: Crisis shows how badly Iran and Israel understand each other (BBC)

From the outset, this crisis has shown how badly Iran and Israel understand each other. Both miscalculated, deepening the crisis. Israel seemed to believe that Iran would not respond with anything stronger than outrage when it killed General Mohammed Reza Zahedi in Damascus. Its air strike flattened the consulate at the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing six others, including another general... the government in Tehran hoped Israel would agree to a draw a line after its response. That was another serious miscalculation. If the attack on Isfahan is not followed up with more attacks, then the immediate tensions will ease... The best option for the region, in the opinion of western governments, is for both Iran and Israel to draw a line under the saga. However, even if this is the end of this stage of this crisis, new precedents have been set. Iran has hit Israel in a direct attack, and Israel has responded with its own direct attack. That is a change in what are often referred to in the region as the "rules of the game" governing the long conflict between Iran and Israel. The long clandestine war between the two countries has come out of the shadows. In the process Iran and Israel have shown that for all the obsessive attention they devote to each other, they are not good at reading each other's intentions. In a highly combustible part of the world, that is not encouraging.

In this shadow war between Iran and Israel, the outline of a different future is visible (Guardian)

Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership...

Iran Just Destroyed US Power in the Middle East | Ambassador Chas Freeman (with Prof. Pascal Lottaz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLai2YG4NRc
(and c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lxAqALLNiE interview a day earlier with Amb. Freeman and DialogueWorks)

Israel is fighting on four fronts – but the defeat may come at home (Guardian)

The IDF is embroiled in simultaneous conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and in the West Bank – but hadn’t reckoned on the social and political divisions this would cause...

Palestinians Must Suffer "Agonising" Deaths - Because They Went To The Beach - Israeli TV

Owen Jones continues the tremendous work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT4F-gcgbd4

Israel has yet to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links, Colonna report says (Guardian)

Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said. The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011”... Most of the donor nations have resumed their funding in recent weeks. UK ministers had said they would wait for the Colonna report to make a decision on resuming funding. US financial support of Unrwa has been permanently banned by Congress since the allegations were made... The Colonna review, an assessment of Unrwa neutrality which was drafted with the help of three Nordic research institutes and is due to be published later on Monday, makes clear that Israel has yet to substantiate any of its broader claims about the involvement of Unrwa staff in Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It notes that in March “Israel made public claims that a significant number of Unrwa employees are members of terrorist organisations”. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this,” the report says...

$26.38 billion more to Israel. I wonder what a single nuclear warhead costs? I'm thinking probably a lot less than that. As a way of cutting to the chase instead of all this aid money to Israel we could send them a warhead instead. It would cut away all our pretense and bullshit and save us a lot of money. The Israelis want to do it. We all know it and despite the US govt.'s 'humanitarian' crocodile tears they really don't give a fuck either. Both parties. They can't find any $'s for health care or the environment but they can always find money for our military industrialists and war and destroying and killing. The warhead would save us not only the money but the real benefit for us would be not having to listen to all their fucking lies.

Israel still has no proof of Unrwa terrorist claims – but damage to aid agency is done (Guardian)

Unsupported Israeli allegations about Unrwa links to terrorism led major donors to cut $450m in funding to the main humanitarian agency working in Gaza at a time when people there were dying in droves. Three months later, the situation has only worsened with the onset of a human-made famine on top of the bombing, the collapse of healthcare, the lack of water and a rise in epidemics. And despite a rigorous inquiry by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, supported by three well-respected research institutes, there is still no evidence for the claim that significant numbers of Unrwa employees have Hamas or Islamic Jihad ties...

Columbia, NYU, Yale on the boil over Israel’s war on Gaza: What’s going on? (Explainer)
Al Jazeera Staff | 22 Apr 2024

...A range of student groups are behind the protests. At Columbia, the so-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” has been organised by the student-led coalition, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

...The protesters are calling for Columbia to divest from corporations that profit from Israel’s war on Gaza. The CUAD website lists additional demands, calling for more financial transparency about Columbia’s investments, and the severing of academic ties and collaborations with Israeli universities and programmes. The groups are also calling for a complete ceasefire in Gaza.

...The NYU Alumni for Palestine website details a list of demands in an open letter to NYU’s leadership which was signed by 2,410 alumni. These include the condemnation of the killing of Palestinian civilians, the protection of students and faculty who are speaking up for Palestine against harassment, and divestment from “companies and institutions active in the Israeli occupation and genocide in Palestine”.

Additionally, the alumni letter calls on NYU leadership to shut down NYU’s Tel Aviv campus which “bars Palestinian students, faculty and affiliates from accessing academic opportunities at the site because of their ethnicity,” contradicting “NYU’s principles of academic freedom and egalitarianism”. The letter calls on leadership to re-evaluate the involvement of NYU, particularly its Tandon School of Engineering, in arms research and development, and to cease collaboration with arms manufacturers.

...Yale...protesters demanding that Yale divest from military weapons manufacturers.

...What are their critics accusing them of – and what happened on Sunday?...footage on social media appeared to show pro-Palestine activists outside the Columbia campus telling pro-Israel students to “go back to Poland”. One activist said that October 7 “will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times”... Another activist can be heard saying that October 7 will “be every day for you”.

A chapter of an international Orthodox Jewish movement, Chabad at Columbia University, released a statement saying that protesters also told Jewish students, “You have no culture”, “All you do is colonise” and to “Go back to Europe”.

Yet another video shows a student protester at a gathering inside Columbia saying: “Let it be known that it was the Al-Aqsa Flood {Hamas name for 7 Oct that connotes Al-Quds — Jerusalem — and all its holy places?} that put the global Intifada back on the table again.”

...on Sunday, CUAD {Columbia University Apartheid Divest } distanced itself from what it said were “media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us...At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life”...its members “have been misidentified by a politically motivated mob...We have been doxxed in the press, arrested by the NYPD {New York Police Department}, and locked out of our homes by the university. We have knowingly put ourselves in danger because we can no longer be complicit in Columbia funnelling our tuition dollars and grant funding into companies that profit from death.”...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/columbia-university-on-edge-over-gaza-w...

>121 margd: Meanwhile in the UK...

7 easy steps to outlawing marches that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza
The BBC and other media are willing co-conspirators in promoting the pro-genocide playbook of groups like the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-04-22/outlaw-march-israel-genocide-gaza/

How to interfere, once again, in British politics and further curtail fundamental civil liberties on behalf of a foreign power, Israel – all egged on by the political and media establishment – in seven easy steps:

1. Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, an aggressively pro-Israel organisation which led a smear campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – one enthusiastically amplified by the establishment media – is back in action.

A week ago he decided to bring a film crew to record his efforts to cross a London street where another enormous march was taking place calling for a ceasefire to end the bloodletting and starvation of the 2.3 million people in Gaza. The march, we should note, is prominently attended every week by Jewish groups to show their solidarity with Palestinian civilians Israel has been slaughtering in their tens of thousands for more than six months, in what the World Court calls a “plausible” genocide. Israel has been ably assisted in its genocidal actions by western governments, including Britain’s. None of the Jewish groups that attend these marches has ever faced a problem for being Jewish.

2. The Metropolitan Police mark off much of the route of the weekly marches with barriers and officers to make it difficult for people to join or leave except at designated points. This is standard practice for big demonstrations nowadays, on the grounds, police argue, that it is their responsibility to maintain public order.

However, the policing of these marches has also occurred in the context of malicious efforts by Zionist groups, and the political and media establishment, to smear those attending the anti-genocide protests as trouble-makers and Jew haters – based on precisely zero evidence. A group of Holocaust survivors that are among the many Jewish groups that attend has stated: “Every major pro-Palestine demonstration in London has included a large Jewish bloc, which has received nothing but support and warmth from their fellow demonstrators. Claims that these protests are no-go zones for Jews are completely untrue.”

3. Filmed by his supporters, Falter made a big show of his desire to cross the march at a location where he knew the police were likely to object. Presumably his skull cap offered an added benefit – in addition to the film crew – that the police were more likely to flag him and try to stop him. Falter, of course, did not actually want to cross the street. He wanted to be filmed being stopped from crossing, so he could protest that he was being victimised as a Jew. The police duly obliged. The whole non-incident was captured on film, which was then hurriedly supplied to the BBC and other media....

cf. Owen Jones' take:
Cops vs. Antisemitism Activist: What Really Happened?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpgiDYWCZmk

One might almost say these things look coordinated. But what do I know? I'm just some guy cooling his heels in the Cordillera Oriental.

#121 + 122---both the US and UK governments are trying to paint protesters against the genocide in Gaza as anti-Semites and making university campuses as unsafe for Jewish students. Missing from their portrait is that a lot of these students are Jewish themselves. They're also talking about our young and some of are brightest as if they were violent right wingers. Just on the surface level of would be and future voters caricaturizing them in such way seems pretty damned stupid. And suggesting to people that they can't see what is front of their eyes.....ditto. Like there's 'a bigger political picture' that only those with power or influence are smart enough to understand. This kind of arrogance from power. The big political political parties in both countries are all doing this. My guess but we'll have to see is there would be ramifications over this in the future.

Protesting against slaughter – as students in the US are doing – isn’t antisemitism (Guardian)

The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions and values than at a university?... Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting against this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus – taking a stand against a perceived wrong, thereby provoking discussion and debate... If Columbia or any other university now roiled by student protests were doing what it should be doing, it would be a hotbed of debate about the war. Disagreement would be welcome; demonstrations accepted; argument invited; differences examined. The mission of a university is to coach students in how to learn, not tell them what to think. It is to invite debate, not suppress it. Truth is a process and method – more verb than noun. I love it when my students take issue with something that I or another student has said, starting with “I disagree!” and then explaining why. Disagreeing is not being disagreeable. Disagreement engenders thought and discussion. It challenges students to reconsider their positions and investigate more deeply...

>125 davidgn: Some good coverage by Rising

Anti-Israel Protests RAGE At Columbia, Biden CONDEMNS Anti-Semitism on Campus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyIg2MA9jsY

CHAOS On College Campuses; ISRAEL-GAZA Protesters ARRESTED At Columbia, Yale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36bpdTkOYso

David Doel: Jewish Columbia Student Debunks Media Narrative About Protest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDYB0apVyE

Citing:
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.
JONATHAN BEN-MENACHEM
APR 23, 2024
https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

Why I was banned from Germany
In the name of protecting Israel’s security, the German government has sunk to farcical new authoritarian lows.
By Yanis Varoufakis
https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany-yanis-varoufakis-is...

We need an exodus from Zionism (Guardian)

Jews don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name... Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf... But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent... too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it. That false idol is called Zionism...

Germany to resume funding of Unrwa aid operations in Gaza (Guardian)

Germany has said it will restore cooperation and funding to Unrwa operations in the Gaza Strip after an independent review said Israel had not provided evidence to back up claims that hundreds of employees of the UN agency for Palestinians were members of terrorist organisations... Germany’s decision follows those made earlier by several other major donors, including Australia, Canada, Sweden and Japan, to restore ties with Unwra... The absence so far of evidence presented to underpin Israel’s allegations has raised questions about the snap decision by 19 donor governments to cut millions of dollars of funding to Unrwa, the main channel for humanitarian support for Palestinians, even as the death toll in Gaza soared, the health system collapsed and famine began to loom...

Sanders hits back at Netanyahu: ‘It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable’ (Guardian)

US senator says Israeli prime minister is using antisemitism to distract attention from ‘extremist and racist government’ policies... the progressive senator from Vermont – who is Jewish – accused Netanyahu of “insult{ing} the intelligence of the American people” by using antisemitism to distract attention from the policies of his “extremist and racist government” in the military offensive in Gaza. “No Mr Netanyahu, it is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that, in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed over 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 78,000, 70% of whom are women and children,” Sanders said...

>130 John5918: It took Bernie a while but at least he finally got there. Just to reiterate the nonsensical claim that Israel has a right to defend itself when the issue they're talking about defending itself from is one half of its own population.....a half that it has been repressing and suppressing under apartheid and/or Jim Crow like conditions for a good 70 some years. That is an entirely different thing than defending itself against its neighbors like Syria, Jordan or Egypt. That Israel has been for a long time been recruiting Jewish people from around the globe to come in as settlers and push out and replace non-Jewish Palestinians whether Muslim, Christian, Armenian or whatever so as it can create some kind of pure 100% religious ethno-state. Also that the United States, United Kingdom and Germany among other nations have been complicit in their project and genocidal aims meanwhile these same nations want to be seen as beacons of freedom and democracy......though it's only when it suits their purposes.

Updates from Col. Wilkerson. including commentary near the start on "Mike Johnson and Gavin McGinnes do Columbia U.".

They're Destroying the United States | Col. Larry Wilkerson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQYxh-rfVKw

As Anger Grows Over Gaza, Arab Leaders Crack Down on Protests
Vivian Yee, Emad Mekay, and Vivian Nereim | 29 April, 2024

Grief and rage over the war and Israel have led to demonstrations across the Arab world. Arrests suggest governments fear the outrage could boomerang...Egypt...Morocco...Jordan...Kuwait...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/world/middleeast/gaza-arab-protests-crackdown...
__________________________________

'Hostages Are Also Captives of Netanyahu's Government'
Linda DayanBar PelegAdi HashmonaiShira Kadari-OvadiaNir HassonEden Solomon
Apr 27, 2024

Thousands Protest Ruling Coalition Across Israel, Demand Hostage Deal; Seven Arrested...

'Hamas and the {Israeli} government are hardening their hearts, and the government is waging a campaign against me' said the mother of a hostage being held in Gaza, as demonstrations take place in all major cities across Israel...

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-27/ty-article/.premium/thousands-of-...
________________________________

ACLU letter to US university and college presidents, April 26, 2024:

1. Schools must not single out particular viewpoints for censorship, discipline, or disproportionate punishment

2. Schools must protect students from discriminatory harassment and violence

3. Schools can announce and enforce reasonable content-neutral protest policies but they must leave ample room for students to express themselves

4. Schools must recognize that armed police on campus can endanger students and are a measure of last resort

5. Schools must resist the pressures placed on them by politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/open-letter-to-college-and-university-pres...

https://www.mediaite.com/news/israeli-newspaper-calls-for-firing-of-top-netanyah...
Israeli Newspaper Calls For Firing of Top Netanyahu Minister Over ‘Repeated Calls For Genocide of Palestinians’

On Monday, Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of key cities in Gaza, including Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians have taken refuge after being displaced during Israel’s invasion. Israel is poised to invade the city.

Crackdown or compromise? A tale of two US campus protests (BBC)

The police arrived in force at dawn on Saturday, with orders to clear "infiltrators" from the Gaza war protest camp at Northeastern University in Boston. Within an hour, more than 100 people were under arrest, students and non-students alike, and many of their tents flattened or removed... Other colleges, however, have shown that confrontation, chaos and escalation can be avoided. The story at Northwestern University, just outside of Chicago, is entirely different to that of Northeastern. Its protest camp appeared on Thursday morning. University administrators responded by banning tents and calling in campus police. They stopped short of calling in state police and no arrests were made, and the campus officers eventually left. On Monday, administrators announced a deal: protesters were to be allowed to stay until the end of classes on 1 June if they remove tents and limit those taking part to students and others affiliated with the university. They stopped short of agreeing to stop investments in Israeli companies and arms manufacturers, but agreed to restart an investment committee and increase transparency over its approximately $13.7bn (£11bn) endowment. Northwestern also promised to fund places for two Palestinian faculty members and five Palestinian students. A truce appears to be holding - at least for now...

>135 John5918: As odd as it is for the most part mainstream media repeat verbatim the narratives of DC politicos that these protests are anti-semitic and that Jewish students on the whole are living in fear of their fellow students even if Jewish students have taken a very large part in these protests led often by organized Jewish student groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace. It just shows what hacks there are in our mainstream media in that they don't even try to investigate who these student protesters are or even what they want. From afar Netanyahu voices his displeasure and our politicos, the mainstream media and then the cops pretty much dance to his tune.

A couple days ago Green Party candidate Jill Stein was invited to one such protest during which the cops started arresting people. She's seen on camera in the midst of a crowd on the wrong end of a bicycle wielded by a cop with nowhere to go either left, right or backwards. She's a 71 years old with osteoporosis so definitely not somewhere she wanted to be. She was knocked down in the assault, charged with resisting arrest and also assaulting a police officer when she did nothing other except helplessly get knocked to the ground. Police in this country are the assault dogs of the elite anyway and it's about time that more people realize that they are the lapdogs for the rich and not really public servants. In Texas after they arrested and/or roughed up hundreds of peaceful protesters the crowd afterwards reminded them how terrified they were to go after the shooter at the grade school in Uvalde. Many of the arresting cops were at that massacre site and failed those who died that day.

Before the Violence, U.C.L.A. Thought a Tolerant Approach Would Work
Corina Knoll, Jonathan Wolfe and Emily Baumgaertner | 1 May 2024

The school was ill prepared when...counterprotesters violently attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment...an overnight {30 April? Wednesday} eruption of bloody violence spurred by dozens of counterprotesters...which continued for hours without intervention, was a display of fierce hostility as fistfights broke out, chemicals were sprayed into the air and people were kicked or beaten with poles. Many participants did not appear to be students.

...“They had bear spray, they had mace, they were throwing wood-like spears, throwing water bottles,” said Marie Salem, 28, a graduate student and pro-Palestinian protester who was part of the encampment. “They set off fireworks toward our camp directly. And so, we were all hands on deck, just guarding our barricades.”...

Many critics were incredulous that even after officers with the Los Angeles Police Department arrived, there were no arrests or suspensions.

...In the early hours of Thursday the police started trying to break up the encampment. Their first few attempts to move in were turned back by protesters with improvised wooden shields and flashing lights. Eventually the police began dismantling the encampment’s main barricade and arresting protesters, while some demonstrators shouted “Don’t attack students!” and “Where were you yesterday?”...

...“There’s a sense that the other side has immunity,” {Marie Salem, 28, a graduate student and pro-Palestinian protester who was part of the encampment} said as a police helicopter hovered above. Around her, the landscape was littered with trash, splintered wood, trampled clothing. A large Palestinian flag fluttered in the air...

... the U.C.L.A. Palestinian Solidarity Encampment, which says it is made up of students, faculty members and community members, condemned the school’s “pretense of student safety” in a statement, saying that campus police, external security and law enforcement failed to protect them from counterprotesters as “we screamed for their help.”...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/us/ucla-classes-protests.html
---------------------------------------
ETA:

The New York Times @nytimes | 5:15 PM · May 2, 2024 {X}:
More than 2,000 people have been arrested or detained at pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on U.S. college campuses. Here's where. https://nyti.ms/3UILDms

A map of where campus protesters have been arrested or detained in the U.S. The text reads: "Police interventions on several campuses, including in some of America's largest cities, have led to more than 2,000 arrests. Note: Data as of 3:15 p.m. Eastern time on May 2."
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1786142415700591080/photo/1

margd: Go Blue! U Michigan in Ann Arbor recruited volunteers from among their employees to keep peace during Convocation. Some experience with peaceful interventions from local white supremacists invading the town from time to time over the years. Fingers crossed luck holds.

I Am Building an Archive to Prove That Palestine Exists
For me and my family, this work is an act of hope.
Elena Dudum | 2 May 2024

...this fiction of Palestinians’ nonexistence feels tired. It’s a distraction that not only invalidates us but also places Palestinians on the defensive while Israel’s government builds walls and expands illegal settlements that separate Israelis from their very real Palestinian neighbors ... especially absurd in the face of Israel’s latest military campaign in Gaza ... a cruel self-fulfilling prophecy—claim that Palestinians were never there, and do away with them when they continue to prove otherwise.

...Gaza is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in the world; some of its monuments date back to Byzantine, Greek, and Islamic times. Since the October 7 attacks, however, Israel’s air raids on Gaza have demolished or damaged roughly 200 historical sites, including libraries, hundreds of mosques, a harbor dating back to 800 B.C.E., and one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world. In December, an Israeli strike destroyed the Omari Mosque, the oldest and largest mosque in Gaza City, which housed dozens of rare ancient manuscripts. Israeli strikes have endangered Gaza’s remaining Christian population, considered one of the oldest in the world, and have destroyed every university while killing more than 90 prominent academics...

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/05/palestine-archive/678249/

UN says Gaza reconstruction to cost $30-40 billion, damage on scale unseen since WWII
AFP and ToI Staff | 2 May 2024

United Nations Development Programme report estimates Palestinian economy has shrunk by 26.9% since Hamas’s October 7 massacre

...UN assistant secretary-general Abdullah Al Dardari said,
“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented… This is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since World War II,” ... He added that if Gaza’s reconstruction were to be carried out through the normal process, “it could take decades, and the Palestinian people do not have the luxury of waiting for decades.”

“It is therefore important that we act quickly to re-house people in decent housing and restore their lives to normal – economically, socially, in terms of health and education,” Dardari said. “This is our top priority, and it must be achieved within the first three years following the cessation of hostilities.”

He estimated the total rubble from bombardment and explosions at 37 million tons...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-says-gaza-reconstruction-to-cost-30-40-billion-...

>139 margd: I've heard that cleaning up and removing the rubble as is would be a very very risky process that will take years and years. The major reason for this is that Israel has dropped so many bombs on Gaza and that a significant amount of it is still unexploded. Just from watching videos from the Electronic Infitada it seems that the various Palestinian resistance groups are often repurposing unexploded ordinance to use against the IDF. Quite a lot of what they're using to fight back comes from the IDF courtesy of the United States. For former residents returning to the rubble if they are ever allowed they will live with these risks perhaps years into the future. If they are moved out and settlers/developers move in they will have to deal with it and for years and years too. It will be a very dangerous reconstruction project that almost promises to kill and maim scores of people for a long time to come. I don't think the Israeli govt. has ever put much thought into that.

Palestinian doctor dies in Israeli prison

A Palestinian doctor has died in an Israeli prison after more than four months in detention, Palestinian prisoner associations have said. Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, 50, was the head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli prison service confirmed that a statement published on 19 April about a prisoner who was detained for national security reasons and had died in Ofer prison was Dr Al-Bursh. No details were given on the cause of death, and the prison service said the incident was being investigated. But the Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups said in a joint statement on Thursday that Dr Al-Bursh's death was an "assassination" and his body still remained in Israeli custody...

Israel accused of possible war crime over killing of West Bank boy

In the early afternoon of 29 November last year, several Palestinian boys descended on to their street in the occupied West Bank, where they often played together. Minutes later, two of them lay dead from gunshots fired by Israeli soldiers - Basil, 15, and eight-year-old Adam. As part of an investigation into the conduct of Israel's security forces in the West Bank, which has been under military occupation for more than half a century, the BBC has pieced together what happened on the day the two boys were killed... The evidence we found has prompted Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, to say the death of Adam appears to be a "war crime"...

Turkey halts trade with Israel over 'humanitarian tragedy' in Gaza

Turkey has suspended all trade with Israel over its offensive in Gaza, citing the "worsening humanitarian tragedy" in the strip. The Turkish trade ministry said the measures would be in place until Israel allowed an "uninterrupted and sufficient flow" of aid into Gaza. Trade between the two countries was worth almost $7bn (£5.6bn) last year...

All from BBC

Rubber/plastic bullets were used by LA police to break up the UCLA encampment. Police and authorities in just about every place they've ever been used like to reference these projectiles as non-lethal. They're supposed to be shot low or skipped off the pavement. That's not usually what happens though. In Northern Ireland during the Troubles these non-lethal projectiles were responsible for 17 fatalities. They have been used against protesters in the United States numerous times---at the Occupy and DAPL protests for instance. When police broke up the protest at UCLA the other night at least 5 people were shot in the head. Police were claiming there were no serious injuries while those shot in the head and other protesters were going to the hospital. What plastic/rubber bullets are are for real bullets wrapped in a rubber or plastic coating.

Rubber bullets should be banned altogether. Supposedly in the Land of the Free people have a right to protest. The suppressive forces of the state are using supposedly non-lethal measures to suppress/oppress these rights when challenged by protest more and more often. It's become the go to and sooner or later people are going to be killed. Many if not most police in the United States have this idea in their heads that they're being held back by civilian authority from showing off their power or authority. The 'bad guy' should have no rights---the 'bad guy' these days can also easily be a protester and it's not like there aren't plenty of politicians from both major parties that are fine with that. This is not something new and lots of people in the public sphere also encourage this kind of thinking. The police want more and more empowerment over anything justice related and they expect protection from those with power above them and 99% of the time they get it.

#141--since the beginning of their assault on Gaza the IDF has been killing doctors, nurses, medical staff and ambulance drivers with impunity. It's become practice for all such that when the IDF raids hospitals that they exchange their scrubs for civilian clothing because the IDF has been particularly targeting them. The IDF does seem to hold back however from outside medical people volunteering within Gaza but it's obviously been a goal of the Israeli state to eradicate any semblance of health care within the Gaza Strip. No hospitals or clinics, no doctors, no nurses, no medicine or medical supplies for the wounded and injured. I've watched any number of videos particularly from Democracy Now of Palestinian, American, British, Canadian doctors/surgeons, nurses describe all of the above and more. Kids and small kids with numerous amputations with no anesthetics.....same with burn victims---children walking around right after treatment and there's no pain killers for them afterward and hardly any chance of follow up treatment if they've survived as well as hardly any food to go around making them much more prone to infections and with hardly enough food to go around any ability to recover is further compromised. There are thousand of such adults too. Kill all the doctors is just part of the game that the IDF has been playing with very serious intention.

>142 lriley:

Talking of Palestinian doctors reminds me of when I lived in Khartoum nearly forty years ago. Whenever we were ill we would go to the Palestinian Red Crescent hospital, where we would receive first class treatment. It's so sad to see what is being done to these kind and cultured people today.

Might be worth listening to the Catholic parish priest of Gaza here.

>143 John5918: The current Israeli govt. particularly being pushed by the settler movement hasn't made any distinction between Palestinian Muslims and Christians. They want them all gone though for the Christians it goes pretty much unsaid. I saw Netanyahu just a day or so ago describing his country as the world's only democratic Jewish state.......and FWIW I've never seen Netanyahu as a particularly religious type even if he can recite the story of the destruction of Amalek. As well early on I remember an Israeli spokesperson when asked about the destruction of an Orthodox Christian church in Gaza City making the claim that there were no Orthodox Christian churches in Gaza City. Well maybe not after that but it's not an accident they speak this way. There are other examples but both communities are included which is to say Fr. Romanelli and his congregation are not wanted either. The Christians that the Israel govt. do seem to want are the American evangelist types that come on bus tours of the holy land that they can protect (from their own more rabid citizens) and propagandize to and send home after a week or so. We saw John Hagee as a keynote speaker some months ago to support the Israeli state in Washington DC. He has a very large following in the southwest and is a noted bigot---'the pope is the Antichrist' on Armageddon day 'those jews who don't convert to christianity will burn in hellfire'. There are plenty of other evangelical leaders just like him in the United States who will support any kind of genocide by the Israeli state that they think furthers their beliefs/ambitions and they use these beliefs to raise lots of money. Those are the Christians Israel is ready to accept but only as tourists.

>144 lriley: I read that RCs and traditional denominations rarely, if ever, are among those losing it in the Holy Land, thinking they are John the Baptist or Mary Magdalene... :D
_______________________________

Sounds like a critical moment:

Middle East updates: US renews warning on Rafah offensive
DW | 4 May 2024

US Secretary of State Blinken says Israel has presented no credible plan to protect civilians if it attacks Rafah in Gaza. Hamas says it is sending a delegation to Cairo for talks on a truce proposal.
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'Probably the last chance' for Gaza cease-fire deal, Middle East expert tells DW
DW | 4 May 2024

...Middle East expert Daniel Gerlach...called the talks "probably the last chance that with this constellation, with the involvement of Egypt, Qatar and the United States, a hostage deal can be negotiated...everyone is very serious about the proposal," pointing to the increased pressure on Israel from the US, the presence of a Hamas delegation in Cairo and the visit by the head of the Egyptian national intelligence agency, Abbas Kamel, to Israel.

"There are great expectations, but also a high degree of frustration," he said, adding that — according to Qatari mediators — both Israel and Hamas have "sabotaged" earlier attempts to reach a cease-fire.

Some Arab countries are discussing evacuating "parts of the Hamas leadership to another Arab country," with Algeria being put forward as a suggestion.

"However, I think the Israelis need some sort of a symbolic victory image that proves they have won the war," he added, suggesting that this could be the capture or killing of Yehya Sinwar, the head of the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Gerlach also said Hamas' leadership is divided between members of its political wing based in Doha, Qatar — who have been "threatened to be kicked out of Doha if the deal fails" — and the military wing led by Sinwar, who are fearing for their lives. "They know that even if they get expatriated, the Israelis will hunt them down"...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israeli forces will enter Rafah regardless of any deal but has also shown willingness to allow shared management of Gaza. "But everyone knows in Israel, in the region, and the most in the United States, that Benjamin Netanyahu changes his mind and has a very tactical relationship to truth and his commitments"...

If the negotiations fail again, "many people in Israel will come to the conclusion that the release of the hostages is not the priority on the government side," while "Arab negotiators will realize Hamas is actually not willing to release the hostages...I think it will break down the entire negotiation mechanism that we have now"...

https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-updates-us-renews-warning-on-rafah-offensive/l...

U Virginia...I may have to send another donation to Rep Rashida Tlaib. We're becoming pen pals, looks like... :(

chad wellmon @cwellmon | 5:53 PM · Apr 24, 2024 {X}:
teaches and writes on history of knowledge, media, and technology & intellectual history UVA

Cops didn’t do a thing as these folks marched through my backyard yelling “Jews will not replace us” on UVA’s campus a few years ago. Free speech they said.

0:54 ( https://twitter.com/cwellmon/status/1783253036468457575 )
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molly conger @socialistdogmom | 11:54 AM · May 4, 2024 {X}:
i’m just the note taker. she/her. the cop reading this is wasting tax dollars

after telling students their tents violated school policy, UVA administrators discovered the tents do not actually violate school policy so they simply changed the school policy without any notice whatsoever.
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Quote
Patrick Jackson @PEHJackson
Infectious Diseases UVA: HIV virology, clinical trials at Joint Emerging Diseases Initiative.

Apparently UVA changed this document THIS MORNING! First version downloaded about 9:15 am, second at 11:13 am
Text {https://twitter.com/PEHJackson/status/1786776682386313621/photo/1}
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molly conger @socialistdogmom | 11:54 AM · May 4, 2024 {X}:

immediately after quietly updating the policy to prohibit the previously-allowed activity the students have been engaging in, the police are staging in large numbers nearby to enforce the new policy

Photo, protesters call for reinforcement (https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1786786494784348467/photo/1)
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zeynep tufekci zeynep | 3:13 PM · May 4, 2024 {X}:
Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. Princeton professor. @NYTimes columnist...

A sudden rule change to invite the militarized response on the UVA campus is okay? Prepare to forego your own rights, too.

As this becomes the new normal against something mundane —campuses have all sorts of protests all the time— it will spread as the new normal elsewhere.

CNN DISGRACES Itself Over Gaza
Tinpot dictatorships would be embarrassed to broadcast this level of blatant propaganda.
Owen Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLWJfXBP7Eg

>146 margd: It's almost as if the Democratic Party is trying to recreate as close as it can the situation 56 years ago in 1968. Student protests almost to the day, police riot police ready to start the rioting.....convention's in Chicago. The govt. and universities all over deciding they're going to be on the wrong side of history vs. the younger people of the United States. Like the Biden administration saying to them 'you have no choice but to vote for us the lesser of two evils' because if you don't you'll probably get worse. The two parties coming together to do extraordinary things to free speech rights and the Democratic Party moving to support the speakership of a right wing religious fanatic republican. Sanders remarking that Gaza could be Biden's Vietnam. Young college students were right then and they're right now and the people are moving more and more their way even as politicos on both sides are moving in the wrong direction. Born in 1957 I had an even younger person's perspective of 1968 but this seems at least as horrific.

Has anyone noticed how dead things are this primary season for both parties? Locked up nominations with no real primary voting.....for the democrats they don't have young canvassers out. I don't think that's a good look for their future. The Democrats have always wanted the young out and about for them so this strategy of locking the primaries up beforehand tamps all that down......there seems already like there will be no momentum going into the convention and if so there's likely not going to be much of any momentum coming out. There's just a war against a mostly defenseless civilian population of Gaza that Biden's administration supports and the negative wave that's coming with that to ride on. In this moment however we're in an almost becalmed state even with the Gaza situation. The Democrats are going to lose the Arabic vote, a lot of young and left voters. I don't think there's much doubt about that. It will all be self inflicted.....a product of their own arrogance. There's no real excitement for either candidate though. Low turnouts almost always favor the Republican Party.....my guess though that Donald's also been bleeding support ever since Jan. 6, 2021 and he's got money and legal issues. So who knows how it will turn out. I just don't think whatever happens is going to be good. To me both of these guys are criminals and most of the politicos in congress are only there for themselves.

Inside a 'peaceful and proud' Gaza protest camp at a UK university (BBC)

On a quiet morning outside Newcastle University, a small group of students listen to a lecturer talk about the opening song from Aladdin... The talk then turns to how Said's theories could be applied to the portrayal of Palestinians in Western media. While this scene doesn't sound out of the ordinary, this isn’t your usual university seminar. This lecturer was giving her talk in the middle of an encampment, which university students set up on Wednesday to protest against the war in Gaza... Students themselves do coursework or exam revision on the grass, or slip off for seminars and lectures, as they would if it were student halls. Several staff members come in to show their support and drop off donations of snacks. All of those I speak to tell me they feel “proud” to see their students taking part...

And from the Guardian:

Israel to stop local broadcasting of Al Jazeera TV
DW | 5 May 2024

The Israeli government has voted to shut down the Qatari TV network's operations within Israel's borders. Israel's communications minister has said the decision will come into effect immediately.

...Israel has had a tense relationship with the news organization which has intensely covered the ongoing war in Gaza giving greater weight to the Palestinian side.

Qatar has also been involved in mediating a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — a Palestinian militant group considered a terror organization by Israel, the US and others.

...Numerous journalists have been killed in Gaza during Israel's military offensive, including several who worked for Al Jazeera.

The death of the Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 sparked global outrage. She had been reporting for the network during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank when she was shot dead.

Al Jazeera blamed the Israeli military for the death and took the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Israel has rejected the accusation.

https://www.dw.com/en/israel-to-stop-local-broadcasting-of-al-jazeera-tv/a-69000...

>146 margd: The current dean at the University of Virginia is James E. Ryan who according to his wikipedia was also the Weber research professor of civil liberties and human rights at the University of Virginia school of law. I guess we could say that he made all that read like a lot of nonsense with his in the dark back door suppression of his own students right to protest.

>151 lriley:

Contrast that with the Newcastle University staff mentioned in >149 John5918:. There's still hope for academia if the Geordies can behave like that. Howay, wor canny lads!

>152 John5918: Part of it was circumstance, but I look back on my time in and around Newcastle more fondly than the time I spent in most other parts of the UK. No less baffled by Geordie, though.

The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is a Bipartisan Strategy to Repress Pro-Palestine Speech (The Progressive Magazine)

Unlike apartheid-era South Africa, many universities aren’t even recognizing Israel’s human rights abuses...

Don’t Buy the Right-Wing Disinformation Campaign on “From the River to the Sea” (truthout)

“377 members out of 435 members of Congress, condemns ‘from the river to the sea’ as antisemitic”... In the last few weeks, that slogan has been used to discredit the nationwide protests, primarily focused on demands that campuses divest stockholdings in corporations supporting the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. Members of Congress have insisted that student protesters who use the slogan are expressing support for the mass killing of Jews... For the vast majority of Americans who use that slogan, however, “river to the sea” has a very different meaning. The phrase originally came from secular Palestinian nationalists in the 1960s calling for a democratic secular state within the boundaries of what was the British Mandate for Palestine, encompassing Israel, the then-Jordanian controlled West Bank and the then-Egyptian administered Gaza Strip — that is, the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) adopted it soon after Israel conquered the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967, though they subsequently recognized Israeli control over 78 percent of the territory. There are no indications that any more than a tiny minority using the slogan support the killing or ethnic cleansing of Jews from what is now Israel. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, signed by hundreds of scholars of antisemitism and widely acknowledged as one of the definitive definitions of antisemitism, particularly in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explicitly states that the phrase is not antisemitic...

Antiwar/Solidarity Activism on Gaza: New Generation, New Challenges (Project on Middle East Political Science)

Israel’s war on Gaza and the Biden administration’s strident support for the massive Israeli assault in the face of widespread violations of international humanitarian law and the international outrage at the civilian death toll has brought a new generation of activists to the fore on campuses and elsewhere across the United States... This essay examines these recent developments, the reasons behind the dramatic growth in pro-Palestinian activism among young activism, and the challenges these movements face from both valid and specious allegations of antisemitism...

>154 John5918: It's a clown show really. Cringing deans from elite universities getting berated like little children who said a bad word....told by these congressional clowns they're anti-semitic at congressional hearings by congresspeople some of whom sometimes have made their own for real anti-semitic faux pas and so then these deans go back to their universities determined to show mom and dad they've learned their lesson and sic the police then on their own students. The adults in this charade aren't the congresspeople and definitely aren't the university leaders. The sad fact actually there aren't any adults but it's presented to the American public like it's something for real to be concerned about and much of that public sucks it up to. Which pretty much shows me anyway the imbecilic level that a lot of our population can easily descend to. These are the knuckleheads though that are all over our politics and leading our best universities. It's not a wonder really why the United States does stupid/shitty things. It's in the nation's DNA.

>155 lriley:

Won't be the first time that young students have been way ahead of the general population in compassion, courage and wisdom!