They bombed a hospital. No one intervened. So they bombed the rest.
They killed civilians and hostages waving white flags. No one intervened. So they did it on live TV.
They murdered starving people at an aid convoy. No one intervened. So they've attacked at least 3 more.
Israel is currently attacking the Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza (March 18) with tanks and heavy gunfire, resulting in an increasing number of casualties and abductions including journalists who were reportedly severely beaten and taken to an unknown location.
Israel is literally relishing in its impunity. All we have been hearing from those in power is "concerns" and pathetic words of condemnation while Israel continues to boast about its atrocities, six months on.
It kills me how everyday the posts and content about Palestine decrease because of how many people are getting killed everyday.
It also kills me how many stopped boycotting or has never even tried to boycott.
Somethings are so small to do and easy yet people don't even bother when it's a genocide that has been going and going and going not since October 7th but for decades.
I feel like it's worth stating again by the way but when I ask that you read The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, it isn't so that you will be more convinced that what Israel is doing is bad. I am assuming you already know this. The point is that Zionists' biggest tool in their arsenal is the obfuscation of truth. Every moment this genocide is going on, the major news networks of your country (I'm talking mainly global north/"western"/english speaking countries as well as western europe) are feeding zionist propaganda in some form or other to your friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, bosses, employees, roommates, etc. We need to be able to combat this with fact, we need to convince them to read about Palestine as well, to learn its history and its peoples struggle. We cannot simply live while so many others die. We cannot horde the information we learn for ourselves. Knowledge must be shared and it must be done in a continuous, ongoing process if it is to matter. Please.
[...] More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.
The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the [occupied] West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.
“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”
Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son.
"That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.
And continuing, on the security structures featured in the The Last of Us Part II:
Besides the familiar zombie fiction aesthetics of an overgrown and decomposing metropolis, The Last of Us Part II's main setting of Seattle is visually and functionally defined by a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers. There are many ways to build and depict structures that separate and keep people out. Just Google "U.S.-Mexico border wall" to see the variety of structures on the southern border of the United States alone. The Last of Us Part II's Seattle doesn't look like any of these. Instead, it looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000.
Illustrations, from the article:
The first barrier Ellie and Dina encounter when arriving in Seattle / West Bank barrier.
🚨 Dozens of Palestinians have been killed and wounded by the occupation forces as they stormed the complex at dawn today.
🚨 2 violent explosions happened inside the hospital complex.
🚨 Israeli forces assaulted Al Jazeera journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul and his crew then abducted all of them.
🚨 More than 30 thousand displaced people inside the complex.
🚨 Israeli forces have forcibly entered the hospital and have already abducted more than 150 civilians into custody.
🚨 Israeli forces have also forced many critically ill patients to vacate the hospital and relocate to the south under threat of gunfire and bombings.
🚨 Israeli forces are currently bulldozing the courtyard around the hospital.
🚨 The surrounding land is mostly graves of Palestinians who were killed when the Israeli forces attacked the hospital the first time.
🚨 Homes surrounding Al Shifa medical complex are now being targeted.
“Israeli occupation forces attacked Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Alghoul in Gaza whilst he was performing his journalistic duties. Following the attack, he was arrested, and the broadcast vehicle along with cameras and equipment was destroyed.
Al Jazeera Media Network demands the immediate release of its correspondent and the other journalists who were detained alongside him, and holds the occupation forces fully responsible for their safety.”
THOUSANDS OF PROTESTERS HIT THE STREETS IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIANS UNDER SIEGE IN THE GAZA STRIP
📹 Scenes of thousands of protesters hitting the streets of San Francisco in the U.S. to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people under blockade, siege and bombardment in the Gaza Strip.
More than 31'553 Palestinian civilians have been killed as a result of Israel's ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, more than 25'000 of which are assessed to be women and children according to the United States Pentagon, with an additional 73'546 Palestinians wounded since the beginning of the current round of Israeli aggression beginning on October 7th, 2023.
ISRAEL are currently attacking Al-Shifa Medical Complex in GAZA.. Families, Patients and displaced Palestinian people at the Hospital are fleeing Al-Shifa on foot as Israeli warplanes attack the hospital.
A fire broke out on the upper floor of the hospital, it’s reported that there are dozens of casualties and civilians are being forced to evacuate under heavy gunfire.