#while the violence of Israelis against Palestinians is of opportunity.

[opencommunion]

since zionists want to act obtuse about why we're criticizing a superbowl ad, here's an explanation from before the ad even aired. it was openly designed to act as pro-genocide propaganda. fighting antisemitism is a worthy goal but that's not what's happening here:

"The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its 'Touchdown in Israel' program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see 'the holy land' and come back to spread the word about 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza."

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled 'Stop Jewish Hate' that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. 

... The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, 'It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.'

This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a 'Hamas flag,' and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the 'rise in antisemitism.' Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because 'hate leads to violence.'

Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.

... Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing 'love Israel, hate Jews' perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.

No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice."

#zionism

[psychotrenny]

Now I've received a few comments about the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Israel during the mid 20th century, specifically about Israel's lack of culpability towards it. And there's a few things I've said in response to this that I'd like to reiterate

For one, a number of commenters have attributed the time period of these migrations to the "30s and 40s" which I don't understand. Even Zionists usually consider the "Mizrahi Exodus" to date from the 50s onwards; a big part of how the process is portrayed by pro-Zionist sources is the framing as Israel as this land of opportunity and safety for Jews fleeing the violence and intolerance of the Arab world, something that couldn't exactly happen until Israel was actually established as a state in 1948.

Secondly as I've already stated multiple times the displacement, marginalisation and violent attack on Palestinians by Zionist European Settlers was already underway in Mandatory Palestine by the 1920s, as embodied by the existence of groups like Haganah and Irgun. So like even if we for whatever reason backdate the supposed mass exile of the Mizrahi to the "30s and 40s" it's still very easy to see the correlation between violence perpetrated by European settlers in the name of "Jewishness" and the development of conflict between previously peacefully co-existing communities of Jews and Gentiles in North Africa and West Asia.

And finally, the idea that the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Palestine was the result of intolerance from Muslim neighbors is essentially a Zionist distortion of a much more complicated situation. Soon after the establishment of Israel, the new government actively encouraged Jews from the surrounding region to migrate and worked with many of the surrounding governments (usually the European colonial governments that still controlled extensive tracts of the region) to facilitate this. Some Jews (such as those of Yemen or Morocco) were even essentially deported against their will by the wishes of the Israeli government. While there was an increase in inter-communal conflict between Jewish and Gentile populations in the region, this was both due to the general aftermath of Israeli's brutal establishment and in response to specific actions such as the Mossad terrorist attacks in Egypt in 1954 with some actions even being specifically undertaken in order to cause conflict (or even just the appearance of conflict) and induce migration such as Mossad's activities in Iraq through the 1950s. And while there was certainly a significant level of violence and maltreatment (both legal and extra-legal) directed towards Jewish people in various West Asian and North African countries in response to Israeli's invasion, the sheer degree that direct violence and persecution played in such migrations has also been greatly exaggerated by Zionists in order to justify their continued aggression against the people of Palestine and their Allies. The idea that you can draw any real equivalence between the population movements of the Mizrahi Aliyah and that of the Palestinian Nakba is a ghoulish distortion of history that only serves to justify Zionist atrocities both past and present. One was a more or less voluntary* migration that was only partially induced by fears (both hypothetical and actually realised) of conflict while the other was an incidence of direct and unambiguous ethnic cleansing. The factors that led to the Mizrahi migration has plenty of "pull" in addition to "push" and a great deal of said "push" was deliberately engineered by the Israeli government rather than being purely the result of some natural Islamic cruelty or antagonism

*while not an entirely fair thing to say, and its accuracy will vary a lot on a case by case basis, the Mizrahi migrants on the whole had a lot more freedom than the Palestinians in both the decision to leave and their choice of destination (as several of those linked articles mentioned, some Mizrahi migrated to Europe or the Americas rather than Israel)

#stella speaks

[megabuild]

Here's Pixriffs' full post today along with links. ID/transcript under the cut.

Doctors Without Borders / WFP / MSF / IFRC

Today's Minecraft Survival Guide episode has been postponed in solidarity with a global movement calling for a ceasefire and end to hostilities in Gaza.I've been watching the violence unfold through the lens of media here in the UK, and conversations with my partner and friends - and while I try to keep my online presence light and entertaining, I don't want to turn a blind eye to this situation and I encourage anyone with a conscience to do the same.To be absolutely clear, I condemn the violent actions of Hamas and the rise of antisemitic sentiment in the wake of these events. With the same voice I condemn the disproportionate and shocking mass violence the government and military of Israel has brought to the civilian population of Gaza in their retaliation, the restriction of aid from Gaza with its continued assault, and the rising wave of islamophobia in the West Bank and elsewhere.

On December 8th the UN Security Council voted almost unanimously to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Only two countries dissented - the UK, which abstained from the vote, and the USA, who blocked the call for a ceasefire with their power of veto. The last successful exchange of Israeli and Palestinian hostages came at the previous ceasefire, and with it came an opportunity for organizations to reach displaced Palestinian civilians with aid. Now any further ceasefire is looking increasingly unlikely, with humanitarian and aid organisations like Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calling this "a vote against humanity".

In recent weeks my partner and I have contacted our local member of the UK Parliament, who has been pushing for the UK to support a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access to Gaza. I encourage you to contact your elected representatives, and donate to aid organizations the UN World Food Programme (https://www.wfp.org/), MSF (https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/), and the Red Cross and Red Crescent (https://www.ifrc.org/), who are working to provide assistance to civilians on both sides of this conflict.

I recognize it's a huge shift from light-hearted family-friendly Minecraft videos to messages like this - but having seen the amount of families affected by this conflict, families who deserve a chance to raise their children in health and in peace, I wanted to share a message of compassion. I hope for a lasting and meaningful peace and will continue to support organizations which are working towards that goal. Survival Guide will return on Wednesday.

Much love.

Pix

#mine #i haven't really posted much about this on main but i hope it goes without saying i stand with palestine against ongoing genocide #i felt it was only fair to post the full condemnation with links #and encourage everyone to donate if they can and continue to spread word and condemn if you can't

[beardedmrbean]

How can we understand the terrible, self-imposed deprivation now gripping the people of Gaza? The heart-wrenching stampede that unfolded in Gaza last Thursday casts a stark light on the brutal reality of life under Hamas's rule. It is a somber reminder of the urgent need to address the suffering of Gaza's people, but it also serves as a crucial moment to clarify the accountability for Gaza's plight.

The chaos and desperation that led to this tragedy are direct outcomes of Hamas's governance, which prioritizes violence and killing Jews over the welfare of its population. The stampede, occurring during an aid distribution, tragically underscores the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Driven by sheer desperation, people found themselves in a deadly crush, a situation that should never occur.

To pave the way for peace and stability for my brothers and sisters in Gaza, it is essential to acknowledge the root causes of their suffering. Hamas's diversion of resources, suppression of dissent, and neglect of civilian needs must end. The international community, along with the Palestinian people, must demand accountability and seek a future where governance prioritizes human dignity, economic opportunity, and peaceful coexistence. Only through addressing these fundamental issues can we hope to prevent such tragedies and build a brighter future for all Palestinians.

As a Palestinian human rights activist deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the terrorist group Hamas is responsible for the suffering of Gazans.

Outside obfuscators often try to misplace blame for the suffering onto Israel's "blockade" on the Strip, but a brief consideration of the timeline shows the absurdity of this conceit. Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Within hours, Hamas-aligned looters had stripped bare and destroyed the greenhouses and farms Israel had left behind for local sustenance. In 2007, Hamas seized military control of the strip in a brutal local coup against the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA), throwing its supporters off the roofs of buildings.

Since then, rather than engage in peacemaking and economic development, Hamas, like a Mediterranean North Korea, has diverted all of its resources to warfare. It and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have repeatedly fired rocket salvos into central Israel—in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021. In October 2023, Hamas breached all precedent with an all-out invasion of Southern Israel, massacring over 1,200 innocents in a single day—including 300 young people at an all-night nature dance party celebrating peace.

Rape, torture, and bodily mutilation were reported on a systemic scale, and over 240 innocents were dragged back to Hamas's terror emirate in Gaza as hostages. Hamas is still holding over 130 of these innocents hostage.

As a human rights activist and a human being, I recognize that it defies all rules of geopolitics, morality, and human nature to suggest that Israel not respond militarily to dismantle Hamas and rescue its people, who we now know are being raped and psychologically tortured in captivity.

Read more

I'm a Palestinian. Hamas Alone Is Responsible for the Blood Shed in Gaza

We Palestinians Must Dump Our Leaders and Accept Israel's Offers for Peace

Hamas Is Committing Terrorism Against My Palestinian Brothers and Sisters

And yet, amidst the intensity of the ongoing war, Israel has facilitated the transfer of international aid to Hamas-controlled territory—while Hamas has been seizing these essential supplies and transferring them for military purposes. Hamas has built a massive network of tunnels under the Strip that exceeds the New York subway system in length, where hostages have been kept underground without light and used as human shields to protect terrorist commanders. Hamas's cannibalization of the civilian economy has gone so far as to dig up water pipes and convert them into makeshift rockets to fire into Israeli territory.

Beyond economic manipulation, Hamas's rule in Gaza is marked by a severe crackdown on political dissent. Opposition and press voices are silenced, often violently, with human rights organizations reporting arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone else who defies the harsh religious extremism governing all life in the Strip face torture and execution.

The real victims of Hamas's governance are the ordinary people of Gaza, who endure the consequences of their rulers' bloodthirsty actions. The youth, facing unemployment rates that are among the highest in the world, see their futures evaporate in an economy stifled by mismanagement and artificially exacerbated conflict. The sick suffer from a health care system in disarray, with hospitals overwhelmed and under-resourced, in part due to the diversion of medical supplies to serve Hamas's fighters and the repurposing of these healing spaces into military command centers.

As a Palestinian human rights activist, my loyalty lies with the Palestinian people, whose rights and future have been compromised by a cruel leadership that prioritizes military and terrorist objectives over human welfare. For those of us caught in the middle, the path forward requires an honest confrontation with the reality of our situation.

The plight of Gaza is a wound at the heart of the Middle East, a testament to the failures of an international policy that has foolishly coddled a brutal tyrant and implacable foe. Only by dismantling the governing rule of the irredeemable Hamas can we begin to heal this wound and move toward a future where the rights and dignity of all Palestinians are upheld, and peace and economic development alongside our Israeli neighbors can at last bear fruit for both sides.

Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

#nunyas news

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

TORONTO – B’nai Brith is outraged that International Women’s Day (IWD) rallies across Canada are planning to commemorate terrorism while ignoring the violence perpetrated last October by Hamas terrorists against innocent Israeli civilians, including women and girls.

IWD, on Mar. 8, 2024, is intended to celebrate women and their contributions to society. It is also a time to advocate for women’s rights and challenge gender-based discrimination.

Instead of using this day as an opportunity to raise awareness about Israeli women and girls who were raped, mutilated, and killed on Oct. 7, or to demand the release of those still held hostage in Gaza by Hamas terrorists, some groups in Canada will be supporting their captors.

For instance, promotional materials for women’s marches in Toronto and Vancouver feature figures such as Leila Khaled, who participated in the 1969 hijacking of TWA Flight 840 and the 1970 attack on El Al Flight 219 as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a listed terrorist entity in Canada.

Other extremists cited as luminaries of Palestinian “liberation” include Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested for attacking Israeli soldiers and later for inciting violence against Jews on social media.

“The public must see the hypocrisy in these attempts to manipulate IWD into anti-Israel propaganda,” said Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy. “IWD is a day to promote the universal struggle for women’s rights, and to celebrate women’s accomplishments – not to glorify terrorists, even if they are women. If anything, this should be a moment to express global revulsion towards Hamas’ cruel treatment of women on and after Oct. 7.

“It is profoundly concerning that some IWD organizers do not see the pain and suffering of the victims of Hamas terror as something worth acknowledging simply because they are Jewish or Israeli.”

Following public backlash, the Vancouver IWD march organizers updated a Facebook statement to express “support [for] Jewish women,” while hypocritically dedicating IWD this year to Palestinian women who have “engendered revolutionary change.”

#international women's day #support for terrorism #ahed tamimi #leila khalek

[factcheckandchill]

Outside popular framing: why would Hamas do this?

Hamas has launched an invasion of Southern Israel overnight.

Biden and other members of the "international community" have already shown support for Israel, and condemned Hamas.

Hamas has taken hostages after years of dealing with an oppressive Israel. Some of the actions of Hamas are inexcusable and reprehensible.

But, we forget that most of the actions taken by Hamas in the past day have already been committed by Israel on a much larger scale. and now, civilians are bearing the brunt of the retaliation.

The coverage of this is much more heightened than the Pogroms that occurred this year against Palestinians. Israeli hostages are allegedly being taken to Gaza. with many calling that a war crime. But when Palestinian children are taken into Israel to be tried in military tribunals, that's fine and not considered a war crime by the international community.

At the moment, P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that the Gaza Strip will experience something they haven't before. Which while feasible, is a nightmare to imagine.

While the focus will be on Hamas "provoking a war" no attention is going to the apartheid and inhumane conditions that Palestinians are forced to live under.

https://x.com/Blue_flamingo__/status/1710813928891048261?s=20

The recent focus of Israel on the West Bank has also probably given Hamas an opportunity to launch. Israel became so obsessed with simply harassing and making life difficult in the West Bank that it allowed both the emotional and material opportunities for Hamas to do this.

Lack of access to freedom of movement, trade, and lack of dignity, as well as Palestinians living under apartheid, have all contributed to this issue.

Many anticipated the scale of this episode to be more violent than the 2nd Intifada which started for similar reasons.

In 2005, a policy of disengagement from Israel was implemented in Gaza, although a lockdown on borders and travel rights of Palestinians has been implemented. Up to 2007, when tensions with official leadership, Hamas took control of Gaza by force. Since then, things have become worse for Palestinians.

Since then, the flow of goods has been heavily restricted.

Mainly due to Hamas's aggressive methods of retaliation. However, if it was Fatah or a third party, violence would occur as it is natural in these conditions to feel defensive. Especially because people feel like they have no other recourse or future outside of this open-air prison and the indignities of living under violent apartheid.

When people wonder why Palestinians are angry and attacking and committing these 'inexcusable crimes', they should remember that Israel's actions towards Palestinians are the root cause of this retaliatory effort.

Vox said it well when it wrote: "The angrier Palestinians are at Israel, the greater Hamas’s political incentives for violence."

Resistance to occupation is not terrorism.

The path to peace lies in truth-telling, recognition of inequality and injustice, and work to remedy the situation and provide people with rights and access to hope.

Hamas here are opportunists, but we can't forget the other side of this and what made this violence possible.

Palestinians weren't born violent. They are forced to resort to violence.

My thoughts are with the innocent people on either side of the wall.

#palestine #israel #hamas #united nations #politics #refugees #usa #biden #nonprofit #gaza #jerusalem #imperialism

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Statement by the SPHR of Concordia University, concerning the meeting with president Graham Carr on 16/11/2023

The Society for Palestinian Human Rights held a meeting with Concordia University president Graham Carr for multiple concerns, the unaddressed violence on campus towards Palestinian and Muslim students and pro-Palestinian allies by zionists' harassment, as well as the University's investments in arms companies that arm Israel, thus funding the genocide of Palestinians. Here is their response to the disrespectful and dismissive exchanges with him.

Full statement under the cut.

"On Novemberr 16th, two representatives of SPHR Concordia met with University President Graham Carr. SPHR and many other student activists have been concerned with President Carr's efforts in recent years to deepen our universities' ties to Israeli institutions since learning about his trip to Bar Ilan University in August 2022, but the President has so far not responded to these student concerns.

This meeting offered a very important opportunity for SPHR members to voice our concerns around systemic anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia on campus, as well as Concordia's investments in the apartheid regime. Due to the administration's stated intentions to listen to student concerns, we were hopeful that the discussion might lead to some positive changes being implemented.

SPHR came to President Carr to ask the following:

An investigation into recent and ongoing attacks against students of all faiths and backgrounds, many of whom have been explicitly targeted for their solidarity with the Palestinian people. The University's divestment from initiatives and organisations [sic] which actively fund or otherwise support the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Unfortunately, the outcome of the meeting was disappointing as no commitments were made for meaningful repair and positive change and we were once again met with empty words.

When asked if he acknowledges statements by human rights organisations [sic] such as Amnesty international, the UN, B'Tselem (and at least 16 other Israeli NGOs as of July 2023) identifying Israel as an apartheid state, he replied: "I am certainly well aware of those statements and I think part of this question is here is what the role of the university is...?", deflecting and failing to answer the question.

While he could not deny that Concordia invests in several organisations [sic] identified by international human rights groups as being complicit in Israeli war crimes, he claimed that Concordia differentiates itself by saying "there is a way that we can also use investments to bring about social good in the world", to which one of our representatives asked "so social good is delivered by bombs?"

President Carr failed to respond when asked how investing in institutions founded and dependent on ethnic cleansing initiatives constitutes working to bring about this so-called 'social good'. He also did not specify how these philanthropic investments would benefit Palestinians, but rather continued the university's tradition of Greenwashing or "Social Washing" to divert attention from Concordia's more unsavoury investments.

Graham Carr's response to financially contributing to Elbit systems through its BMO investments was "Concordia is not DIRECTLY funding a weapon's company" and asked "so what's your solution on that front?"

In response to our demands of ending our university's complicity with the apartheid regime, he asked "Do you think Jewish students would be more secure?" We certainly believe Jewish students would feel safer knowing their university isn't complicit in a genocide. These types of questions are not only disrespectful to our demands, but also to the Jewish community.

While we were able to establish common ground throughout our meeting that both SPHR and the administration places the safety of students as an absolute priority, we were not provided with a clear statement on when or how the University's administration would be pursuing sanctions against members of the Concordia community who are actively harassing, doxing [sic], threatening, and otherwise attacking Palestinian, Muslim, and racialised [sic] students and their allies.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Graham Carr cut our meeting short without providing us with clear answers on our demands...

As a diverse coalition of students united for Palestinian Human Rights, SPHR would like to put these questions to their fellow students, as well as Concordia faculty, staff and administration:

Why would President Carr meet personally with SPHR to ask about our concerns, if only to belittle the urgent issues of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism and dismiss the urgent need for divestment?

Why is it that Concordia has an entire Israeli Studies Institute, and Israel is the only state in the Middle East to have its own dedicated Poli Sci course, but does not offer a single course specifically on Palestine?

How could a university President who spent nearly $9000 of student tuition on a trip to Israel organised [sic] by the CIJA, the largest pro-Israel lobby group in Canada, be reasonably expected to ensure a balanced and supportive environment for Palestinian students on campus?

Why would the university promote a social and environmental investment policy, while investing in Elbit systems' largest investors?

How can we ensure our tuition money is invested in humanitarian and decolonial initiatives for the Palestinian people as well as Indigenous people around the world instead of "impact investment" initiatives run by companies like BlackRock that has massive investments in Israel and in companies including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman that make the weapons Israel uses to murder Palestinians?"

Transcribed from this IG post by @el-shab-hussein, links added were not included in the original post.

#cdnpoli #University of Concordia #Montreal #Québec #Foreign Policy #zionist occupation of Palestine #western imperialism

[mariacallous]

Last week, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a provisional ruling in South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel, it sent an authoritative message to the world: Allegations of genocide against Israel are not meritless. Notwithstanding Hamas’s unlawful conduct that started the war last October, the court clearly indicated an overwhelming disapproval of the way that Israel has been fighting the war—stating, notably, that Palestinians face a “real and imminent risk” to their right to be protected from acts of genocide.

Even though the court did not rule on the merits of the genocide allegations, which may take years, it evoked strong reactions from around the globe. While human rights experts and groups welcomed the ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the court’s decision, protesting the court’s willingness to hear the case at all.

In any case, the ICJ decision offers an opportunity for lasting peace that should not be missed. For that, credit must go to South Africa for bringing the case.

Pretoria’s “moral leadership,” as some have called it, has garnered support from many countries throughout the global south. However, other countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have opposed the lawsuit. Not only has Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, declared South Africa’s case “meritless,” he’s also argued that the case “distracts the world” from efforts to find a lasting solution to the conflict.

While both sides are entitled to their own views, it is wrong to suggest that a case that seeks to stem the bloodbath is an attempt to distract the world from more durable paths to peace at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is threatening to provoke a wider regional war. Since lasting solutions cannot be found within the chambers of the political organs of the United Nations, including the Security Council, which has become hopelessly dysfunctional, solutions must be sought elsewhere.

Rather than criticize South Africa for daring to launch the lawsuit that asks whether the Genocide Convention has been violated, a more constructive criticism would be to argue that Pretoria limited its case too narrowly with regard to the parties involved and the scope of its litigation—namely, by not initiating proceedings against Hamas and failing to examine crimes other than genocide, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, which are often committed under the cover of war.

South Africa’s case mainly rests on the principle that international lawyers call obligation erga omnes. According to that doctrine, the obligation to protect human rights and humanity from acts of violence is an obligation owed to the whole world—even if they are not direct victims of said violations. Therefore, any country is entitled to bring legal action to ensure continued protection of the concerned rights , as  Gambia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Ukraine have done in the past.

However, South Africa oddly limited the parties to the proceedings by omitting to initiate proceedings against Hamas, which it could have done by including Palestine as a nominal party in the case. This limitation likely results from the argument that Hamas is not a state actor, and therefore its actions cannot be adjudicated at the ICJ. That argument is flawed.

Considering that Hamas is the organization that performs the functions of government in Gaza, a geographic entity forming part of Palestine—which is recognized as a U.N. observer state—it is mistaken to argue that it is not a state actor which could trigger the international responsibility of Palestine. According to the U.N.’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, the conduct of Hamas, as the acting governmental authority in Gaza, is justiciable at the ICJ (just as the conduct of Arizona, a U.S. state, was justiciable at the ICJ in a 2001 case between Germany and the United States).

Another reason for the limitation likely results from the political debate about Palestine as a state. Given that 139 countries have recognized Palestine as a state and the U.N. General Assembly has voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state, the obstacle to initiating proceedings against Palestine at the ICJ depends on the practices of the ICJ. Indeed, Palestine is listed among the states that may be parties to proceedings before the ICJ. Notably, in 2018, the same year it was admitted as a state party to the ICJ statute, Palestine challenged the U.S. relocation of its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

All this is to say that it might have been preferable for South Africa to initiate proceedings against Hamas, too. Israel had compellingly argued before the ICJ that any provisional order by the court to halt the fighting would tie Israel’s hands and not Hamas’s. That argument offers a better explanation for why the  ICJ’s ruling did not go as far as to order an immediate cease-fire, though it indicated several provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent acts of genocide.

By omitting to include Hamas as a party to ICJ proceedings, South Africa lost the opportunity to actually try to halt the ongoing armed conflict by compelling both sides to stop fighting—given that the Security Council has proved unable to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

South Africa also unduly limited the scope of its litigation by confining it to the question of genocide. World leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who argued that Israel was entitled to defend itself and go after Hamas, have criticized Israel for indiscriminate bombings that have killed innocent civilians in Gaza, including women and children, in unprecedented numbers in recent history.

In its defense, Israel argued that it also found the scale of civilian casualties and destruction in Gaza truly heartbreaking, and that it was doing its best to minimize harm to civilians. This defense was made in spite of the many disturbing utterances of multiple Israeli officials suggesting otherwise, and the critical observations of some Israeli citizens, including soldiers, suggesting a lack of restraint. Still, Israel refused to slow down—insisting at once that it must continue bombing and attacking Gaza until it had eliminated Hamas.

The Convention against Genocide is not the only document that Pretoria could have turned to; it could have also cited the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their First Additional Protocol of 1977, a set of treaties which in one form or another bind all nations when fighting wars. The 1949 conventions criminalize the willful killing and willful infliction of great suffering on civilian populations as well as the destruction of civilian property beyond military necessity. The 1977 protocol details the principle of proportionality and forbids indiscriminate attacks.

In any war in which there are conflicting accusations and denials about violations of these norms, the legally proper recourse is to pose those questions to the ICJ—just as countries such as the Netherlands and Canada did in their case against Syria about violation of the Convention against Torture.

It is unreasonable and fundamentally counterproductive to criticize judicial proceedings before international courts, especially when parties are seeking to intervene in life-and-death situations that the global political institutions have otherwise been unable to resolve. Indeed, no nation should object to using judicial proceedings as a last resort in seeking to stop a war.

The irony is inescapable. Since 1928, states have agreed to renounce war as an instrument of state policy and to use peaceful means—including adjudication—to resolve differences instead, an idea subsequently enshrined in the U.N. Charter. Today, there is widespread concern that the ongoing war in Gaza could broaden the conflict across the region or beyond. Given that risk, it is startling that any responsible state would support continuing an armed conflict that has killed so many and destroyed so much, when no effort had been made to use peaceful means of settlement—apart from the brief cease-fire and prisoner exchange last November.

Putting the legal merits of these cases aside, there is much value in countries such as Gambia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and South Africa bringing these kinds of proceedings to the ICJ. If nothing else, the recent case has forced the international community to confront the problem of armed conflict, even if the only way left to do that is through the international courts. The cases allow judges to cut through all the political noise to answer legal questions.

Additionally, such litigation can help to quell the cacophony of recriminations—allegations, denials, and counter-allegations of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression—that these events invariably generate. These lawsuits thus invite trained experts—specifically, highly-qualified judges from across the world, assisted by the briefs and arguments of able counsel—to deliberate these questions and then declare to the world whether there is merit in the allegations, so that they are not left at the level of defamatory political insults or disingenuous denials.

International courts now seem to be the last hope for humanity in a world where the possibilities of science have been harnessed by states to maximize destruction, while the U.N.’s ability to curb the scourge of war has largely failed.

[old-school-butch]

Why did Hamas take hostages and start a war?

I'm tempted to use the fable of the scorpion and the frog here, because what is Hamas without war? It was always going to be war, their entire existence is dedicated to overthrowing Israel and taking it for themselves. They went through a bit of rebranding in 2017 when they created a new charter that said they accepted the 1967 borders of Israel as the basis for a 10 - 100 year ceasefire (not a peace treaty though - that means recognizing the existence of Israel and of course, and never giving up claims to the 'right of return' of Palestinians into Israel, which would give Palestinians majority control over country), and they realized it was more acceptable to say they were anti-Zionist instead of anti-Jew.

But I'd argue they've never been too interested in the leadership of Gaza for the sake of the Palestinian people. They don't govern Gaza really, UNWRA manages most of the foreign aid that sustains schools and hospitals. Little interest is shown in building infrastructure. Hamas' main achievement in holding power was to establish a security force to consolidate it's own power, but at least reduced the anarchy, gang violence and competing terror cells that were running rampant. Gaza has received billions in foreign aid over the last 2 decades, it should look like a seaside paradise by now. I've noticed this with the Taliban too and even the Muslim Brotherhood during it's time in power in Egypt - ideologues and revolutionaries aren't really in it for the bureaucracy and daily work of governing a state. They want to be either unimaginably wealthy or powerful, they dream of running a global caliphate, and destroying Israel is just step 1 in creating the Arab superstate, destroying Western corruption, consolidating power and expanding from there. Hamas is a short form of its official name - Islamic Resistance Movement, and it is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamist organizing to create the new caliphate goes back to the 20s but it was overshadowed by a more secular pan-Arab movement until the six day war with Israel dealt the Arab league a resounding defeat. Islamism has been the new, organizing principle to rally around to consolidate regional, and ideally, global power. I'm finding wikipedia a surprisingly unbiased source if you want a quick overview, although you have to read a few different entries to get the full picture.

Israel has made so many attempts at appeasement and containment, which are ironically now dragged out as if the Israeli government was somehow complicit in creating Hamas because they allowed Qatari money to enter Gaza to be paid to Hamas political leaders (now spun as 'Israel brought briefcases full of cash to Hamas') or that they supported Hamas to undermine the PA (Hamas was elected and fought a war with PA to control Gaza so I'm not sure how Israel could have ignored them. I really can't imagine juggling the PA, PLO and Hamas, and every time you make peace with one the others splinter off and reject your agreements). Hamas, in turn, has spent the last 2 years preparing this attack, while also convincing Israel it was moving away from seeking conflict.

Anyway, you were asking about this war in particular, and not the first and second intifada, their war with Fatah, or the wars against Israel in 2008-2009 or 2014. I'm not privy to what intelligence Hamas possessed that now would be a good time to start another war, but I can make a few guesses:

Opportunity: They learned of security holes in Israel that they could successfully exploit to make a devastating attack.

Method: They had friends willing to supply weapons, training and intelligence. Most significantly, Iran and Hezbollah, but they also met with Russia, they sent a delegation to the Saudis in April and to Syria in June to try to smoothe over those relationships.

Motive: They felt that supply of support might fade in the future, and thus the time to strike was now. The U.S. has been simultaneously getting Arab countries to recognize Israel and normalize relationships with Israel. The Palestinian 'cause' couldn't exist without external support. There's not enough people and, let's be honest, no real history to support a sustained nationalist campaign. The Levant was a sparsely-populated, dirt poor backwater where remnant populations of invading Arab caliphates were overtaken by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. Without external support, anyone who didn't want to be in or near Israel would have left and been absorbed by any number of the 22 Arab Muslim states in the region. Its claim to fame is that it's the site of religious significance to multiple religions and thus, its has symbolic significance.

But Hamas was formed as proxy fighters in a proxy war, and the U.S. efforts were moving toward peace at an alarming rate by sidestepping direct intervention (as they had with Camp David negotiations in the past). Instead, they took their message to the regional powers who, over the years, have now all had their own run-ins with iterations of this movement and now see it as a threat to their own rule. Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain have all recognized Israel. The Saudis were in the process of joining them, which threatened to tip the balance of power in the area.

The goals of this war were to make Israel respond so they could be freshly blamed for regional problems, make Hamas and Palestine relevant again to global interest and as a regional force and remind everyone that making peace isn't possible as long as radical groups remain a force that can undermine that process.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Tamkin for The UnPopulist:

Unable to attend last December’s explosive congressional hearing probing antisemitism on college campuses along with Harvard’s Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth due to prior arrangements to attend a climate conference, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik came before Congress on April 17 and was questioned for over three hours. Shafik insisted throughout the hearing that Columbia had been taking antisemitism seriously, at one point even listing the various ways the university has meaningfully addressed this issue under her watch:

[Our actions included support for students, enhanced reporting channels for incidents, hiring additional staff to investigate complaints, developing new policies on demonstrations, holding listening forums to model respectful behaviors, launching educational programs, and forming a task force of our senior leaders to propose solutions to antisemitism.]

The day after she testified before Congress, Shafik, Columbia’s first woman and first Arab president, called the police to campus to break up a student encampment set up to protest Israeli actions in Gaza. Over 100 students participating in the encampment were arrested, in addition to being suspended by the university. “The president’s decision to send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive, and dangerous,” Christopher Brown, a professor in the history department at Columbia University, told the crowd during a faculty demonstration. “I’m here because I am so concerned with what has happened at this university, with where we are now, and with where we are going,” said Brown, who indicated that this was the first time he’d spoken into a microphone at a protest of any kind. Congress wants to dictate disciplinary and educational decisions to Columbia; this is not the job of Congress, he said. Other faculty I interviewed after the hearing felt similarly.

All of this—the testimony, the protests, the call to the police, the endurance of the protests—is national news. The students are demanding that Columbia divest (that is, that Columbia withdraw from investments that students say are profiting from Israel’s military actions) and there are chants on campus—and off campus by people who are not students—that have made some Jewish students uncomfortable. Some—notably Rabbi Elie Buechler, who directs Columbia University’s Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus—have even said it is not safe for Jews at Columbia. Shafik’s handling of the situation has managed to enrage faculty and students and those on the left who find it shocking that Shafik called police to campus while also enraging those who want the encampment gone. As of this writing, it remains, still standing even after Shafik imposed a removal deadline of 2 p.m. on Monday under threat of suspension. Faculty created a protective rim around their students. Early Tuesday morning, some students took over Hamilton Hall, a building on campus.

Some of the discourse about the campus protests, at Columbia specifically and throughout the country more generally, has made it sound as though the protests are motivated by antisemitism and seek to endanger Jewish students. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as to liken the protests to Nazi Germany. Leaving aside that it is grossly ahistorical to conflate student protests against a war carried out by the Jewish state to a historical episode in which the state carried out violence and discrimination against Jews, this narrative is simplistic and, more than that, wrong. The protests are an opportunity to remind ourselves of the function of universities; that no identity is a monolith; and why students are moved to protest in the first place.

Columbia’s Only Jurisdiction Is Its Campus

Some have conflated action outside Columbia’s gates with action inside the campus. To the students who have to hear “go back to Poland” or “the 7th of October is going to be every day for you!” outside their campus, this may well be a distinction without a difference. And the truth is that Columbia, as an urban campus, bumps up against the real world and real people (including, yes, antisemites) who are not bound by the student code of conduct and are not in community with their fellow students in the same way. This is true not only of pro-Palestine protests, but also pro-Israel protests: Some in the crowd yelled “Go back to Gaza!” from outside the gates on April 26. That’s why members of Columbia’s Policy and Planning Committee of the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences noted in a letter to the media: “It is because of this respect for all Columbians that we have been so distressed by reports that conflate on-campus protests with the actions of bad actors from outside our community.” To the extent that there are specific threats made against or harm done to Jewish students at Columbia by their fellow students, those students should be specifically disciplined. This, in fact, is what the university eventually did in the case of the student who said in a January video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that people should “be glad, be grateful that I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

It is true that, while student protesters are protected by the First Amendment, universities are within their rights to regulate demonstrations on their campuses. It is also true that, as these particular demonstrations are happening on university grounds, student and faculty safety should be paramount. The university has both a higher obligation to academic freedom and a higher obligation to protect the safety of all students. There are moments, however, when it may be hard to distinguish between protests and veiled violence: for example, people within the encampment at Columbia formed a human chain to stop the movement of alleged “Zionists” to protect the privacy of the encampment. That wasn’t violence, exactly, but arguably did contain within it a threat (what happens if you try to go past the chain?). Still, balancing the two, expression and safety, should be the point of a university’s disciplinary policies—not silencing a movement or chilling speech because some disagree with or are upset by its aims, or to privilege one preferred foreign policy outcome over another. Some Jewish students, for example, may not like or even feel uncomfortable because of calls like “from the river to the sea” or calls for the elimination of the Jewish state and establishment of one binational state. However, the current policy of the Israeli government is that there will not be a Palestinian state between those two bodies of water, and that, in the West Bank, Palestinians should live under military rule while Jews live under civil rule; this, too, is surely upsetting to some students. [...]

Jewish Faculty and Students Are Not a Monolith

There is also the reality that Jews ourselves, at both an institutional and personal level, do not agree on what is and is not upsetting to Jews, as we do not agree on what is—and isn’t—antisemitic speech. There are thus Jewish faculty at Columbia writing against the weaponization of antisemitism and Jewish faculty asking that the university send in the National Guard to shut down the protests. (For that matter, faculty disagree even over whether it was appropriate to call for classes to go remote.) This division is reflected not only among faculty, but also among students. There are Jewish students who feel isolated and unsafe because of the protests; Jewish students who support the goals of the protest but worry about antisemitic rhetoric and want to see it more sharply denounced; and Jewish students who are taking part in the protest and indeed held their Passover Seder on the campus lawn. This is to say nothing of the Jewish students covering the protests for campus publication or Jewish students who don’t engage much at all with the issue of Israel. 

[...]

Protests Fulfill, Rather Than Challenge, the Purpose of Universities

It is important to remember that the population under discussion here—students—is ostensibly on campus in the first place to learn and think and challenge themselves and, most importantly, each other. It matters that they are able to do so safely; but it also matters that they are able to do so at all. In that multifaceted educational environment, in which they’re learning and thinking and challenging themselves, they might decide to engage with what is happening in the world around them. They might, for example, go from a history class to reading about the looming famine in Gaza, or from an art history seminar to learning of the physical destruction of Palestinian culture sites, or from a lecture on political science to a report that over 30,000 people have died in Gaza over the course of this war, or from a literature class to seeing that an Israeli strike killed the daughter of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was himself killed by an Israeli airstrike back in December. And perhaps this causes its own kind of discomfort and sense of pain. (On the other hand, some students might leave a history or political science or language class and decide after listening to the protesters that they do not support calls to end study abroad programs with Israeli academic institutions because they decide that that would be counterproductive to getting a full understanding about the conflict or the region.)

I have had some people tell me that they do not think the protests are helping the people in Gaza, and in a sense this is true. The student protesters are not in the White House. They are not in the halls of Congress. They are not setting policy. But those on the lawns of Columbia and other campuses seem to me, more than anything else, to be trying to do what they can with the limited power they have: show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and push their own university to divest. The protests, then, are also an expression of student pain. And that pain, too, needs to be able to be expressed, not only for the sake of our foreign policy debates, and not only for the sake of academic freedom at Columbia and elsewhere, but also for our democracy.

Emily Tamkin wrote in The UnPopulist that shutting down anti-Gaza Genocide (aka Pro-Palestinian) protests are counter-productive to a college's mission to learn.

Also, Tamkin noted that Jewish students and faculty are split over the issue of college campus protests, with some favoring them and some condemning them as "antisemitic."

#Gaza/Israel Conflict #Israel/Hamas War #Israel #Ceasefire NOW Protests #College #Palestine #Israel/Palestine Conflict #Israel Apartheid #Emily Tamkin #The UnPopulist #Minouche Shafik #Antisemitism #Hamilton Hall #Columbia University #Liz Magill #Claudine Gay

[princesssarcastia]

the way public discourse is profoundly failing both Palestinians and Israelis in turns isn't surprising, but it sure is a depressing refresher on the importance of refusing to dehumanize anyone. the importance of remembering that states are not moral actors; and that a nation's government is not its people, and often does not represent the will of its people.

i mean, shit, as an american, how fucked would i be if people in other countries tried to hold me responsible for the bloody things my government has done in my name? pretty goddamn fucked. so i should refuse to level that condemnation at anyone else.

so as we watch netanyahu call this terrorist attack israel's 9/11, and watch his administration gear up to carry out what might charitably be labeled ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, against people who had fuck all to do with it, in some twisted strongman show of force and revenge, in a continuation of the same violence that will only beget more violence as it always does...

i can only see the specters of the american wars in afghanistan and iraq. and i can refuse to condemn israeli people for the actions of their government. all while expressing grief and outrage at the atrocity hamas committed against israel. its truly fucking horrifying what they did, and what israeli people suffered.

and also, as someone whose government has a long, torrid history supporting right-wing dictatorships and leaders, to the detriment of those leaders' peoples and also, to the eventual detriment of americans...

as someone whose country literally lived through the frame of reference that netanyahu is using to contextualize what israel's government is about to do...

i can say firmly that israel's government, much like america's government, creates its own demons. this is what happens when you visit nothing but war and cruelty upon a group of people. this is the end result! this is always the end result of oppression and violence. you reap what you sow.

that doesn't justify what hamas did, or what it will continue to do in the coming days. but goddamn, if you spend decades taking away people's homes, taking away their opportunities for economic advancement, refusing them any meaningful participation in their own governance, penning them in with no resources and no hope, and then gunning them down in the streets when they try to protest it or otherwise acceptably fight for change and progress—

you will always end up where we are right now. always. if you leave a group of people with no other option within a system but to wait for better days and kinder enemies and suffer horrors in the meantime, some of them will inevitably radicalize and seek violent options outside that system.

and millions of Palestinian people are now going to suffer, and die, and become further displaced, as they have suffered for decades. because israel's government, like america's government, can't stop sowing the seeds that inevitably grow into its deadliest enemies.

so long as they continue to oppress palestinian people, things like this will continue to happen. which is why we should take every opportunity to condemn that oppression, and why i can refuse to condemn palestinian people for the actions of hamas. all while expressing grief and outrage at the atrocity the israeli government is committing against paelstine.

#and to all those motherfuckers on twitter now blaming egypt for what's about to happen... #really sincerely FUCK you. fuck y'all #hamas ≠ palestinians #and the israeli government ≠ the israeli people #and CERTAINLY the israeli government ≠ jewish people generally #if you wanna condemn groups or actors for the atrocities being handed out like fucking candy right now-- #good! me too! #but don't conflate palestinians with hamas #and don't conflate israelis—or jews—with netanyahu's government #and be sure you're not dismissing or dehumanizing any of the real people #who are suffering and dying for things outside their control #i might delete this later? #but idk. after several days of consuming mainstream news coverage #and select punditry coverage #and unfortunately also some truly disgusting hot twitter takes #my own thoughts are finally coalescing into something coherent #wanted to get it out

[psychotrenny]

mizrahi jews did not migrate because of the actions of ashkenazi jews, they were exiled from their homelands in the 30s and 40s (iraq, yemen, afghanistan, etc.)

For one, I don't know where you're getting the time period "30s and 40s" from? Even Zionists usually consider the "Mizrahi Exodus" to date from the 50s onwards; a big part of how the process is portrayed by pro-Zionist sources is the framing as Israel as this land of opportunity and safety for Jews fleeing the violence and intolerance of the Arab world, something that couldn't exactly happen until Israel was actually established as a state in 1948.

Secondly as I've already stated multiple times the displacement, marginalisation and violent attack on Palestinians by Zionist European Settlers was already underway in Mandatory Palestine by the 1920s, as embodied by the existence of groups like Haganah and Irgun. So like even if we for whatever reason backdate the supposed mass exile of the Mizrahi to the "30s and 40s" it's still very easy to see the correlation between violence perpetrated by European settlers in the name of "Jewishness" and the development of conflict between previously peacefully co-existing communities of Jews and Gentiles in North Africa and West Asia.

And finally, the idea that the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Palestine was the result of intolerance from Muslim neighbors is essentially a Zionist distortion of a much more complicated situation. Soon after the establishment of Israel, the new government actively encouraged Jews from the surrounding region to migrate and worked with many of the surrounding governments (usually the European colonial governments that still controlled extensive tracts of the region) to facilitate this. Some Jews (such as those of Yemen or Morocco) were even essentially deported against their will by the wishes of the Israeli government. While there was an increase in inter-communal conflict between Jewish and Gentile populations in the region, this was both due to the general aftermath of Israeli's brutal establishment and in response to specific actions such as the Mossad terrorist attacks in Egypt in 1954 with some actions even being specifically undertaken in order to cause conflict (or even just the appearance of conflict) and induce migration such as Mossad's activities in Iraq through the 1950s. The sheer degree that direct violence and persecution played in such migrations has also been greatly exaggerated by Zionists in order to justify their continued aggression against the people of Palestine and their Allies; the idea that you can draw any real equivalence between the population movements of the Mizrahi Aliyah and that of the Palestinian Nakba is a ghoulish distortion of history that only serves to justify Zionist atrocities both past and present. One was a more or less voluntary* migration that was only partially induced by fears (both hypothetical and actually realised) of conflict while the other was an incidence of direct and unambiguous ethnic cleansing. The factors that led to the Mizrahi migration has plenty of "pull" in addition to "push" and a great deal of said "push" was deliberately engineered by the Israeli government rather than being purely the result of some natural Islamic cruelty or antagonism

*while not an entirely fair thing to say, and its accuracy will vary a lot on a case by case basis, the Mizrahi migrants on the whole had a lot more freedom than the Palestinians in both the decision to leave and their choice of destination (as several of those linked articles mentioned, some Mizrahi migrated to Europe or the Americas rather than Israel)

#stella speaks

[news4dzhozhar]

When it comes to the Israeli-led ‘war on terror’, follow the money

It is easy to get distracted by US officials pledging to rally support for a “humanitarian pause” and reducing the number of civilian casualties in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

But what matters is the actions of the Biden administration, not empty platitudes. In early November, the US State Department approved a $320m sale of guided bomb kits, reportedly assisting Israel to more precisely hit targets in Gaza. According to The New York Times, “Modern militaries generally add the guidance systems on their bombs with the goal of minimizing civilian casualties, although the damage can still be devastating, especially in urban areas.”

The United Nations and every major human rights group in the world have routinely condemned Israeli actions in Gaza, along with the Hamas barbarism on October 7, and accused the Israeli army of potentially committing war crimes. Human Rights Watch has rightly called for a suspension of all weapons transfers to Israel and Hamas.

The spectre of 9/11 and the catastrophic response by the US after that fateful September day 22 years ago hangs over Israeli actions in the last month.

US President Joe Biden, in remarks in Israel on October 18, said, “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

Calling some US actions after 9/11 “mistakes” is the height of imperial arrogance. During the Bush administration and beyond, inarguably the most destructive US presidency in the 21st century, there was a worldwide torture campaign, the creation and expansion of the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the use of black sites for extraordinary rendition and the death of nearly five million people, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project.

Today, Israel is also filled with anger and vengeance and does not care one iota about the death of Palestinian civilians. Many in the Netanyahu-led government have expressed genocidal intent towards the entire Palestinian population. Most in the Israeli military and public are celebrating the physical abuse of Palestinians. Amid an atmosphere that is remarkably similar to the US after 9/11, the Israeli “war on terror” is taking shape.

With resounding approval from the general public, the Israeli army has undertaken systematic carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, dropping in a month more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives, the equivalent of two nuclear bombs. The bombardment of the small enclave mirrors the US air campaigns that used an extraordinary amount of ordnance on Iraq and Afghanistan over two decades, leaving behind immense devastation.

There are already reports that Israel is also stepping up the use of torture against detainees. Since October 7, its forces have rounded up thousands of Palestinians, including children, in the occupied West Bank. Many allege serious physical abuse and arbitrary detention. Palestinians from Gaza, who had worked in Israel, were also arrested and tortured before being released back to Gaza.

Violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers has also surged in the occupied West Bank. More than 200 Palestinians have been murdered, many by live ammunition, as far-right Israeli settlers are taking the opportunity to terrorise the Palestinian population while the world’s attention is fixed on Gaza.

The Israeli government has handed out thousands of weapons to settlers, with more potentially on the way, leaving Palestinians even more exposed than before to deadly violence, with no legitimate authority able to protect them.

In the months and years ahead, Israel will likely launch a global assassination drive to track, target and kill Hamas leaders and key backers, reminiscent of the US’s own campaign of so-called targeted killings after 9/11. Israel’s former intelligence head, Amos Yadlin, has confirmed this inevitable plan of worldwide vengeance.

But Israel’s “war on terror” will not be only about revenge, just as the US’s was not.

The Israeli arms industry has been thriving in recent years, with a record $12.5bn in sales in 2022, double the figure from one decade ago. In the last year, 24 percent of arms went to Arab states, including Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. According to the Israeli Defence Ministry’s own figures, the number of countries buying Israeli drones has jumped 40 percent in the last three years, munitions have grown by 45 percent and spyware and related cyber-equipment soared from 67 to 83 countries in 2022.

As I write in my book, The Palestine Laboratory, Israel has used both the endless occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with the siege on Gaza, to “battle-test” ever-evolving new forms of repression and surveillance. These offensive tools are then marketed and sold to the majority of nations on the planet.

In this context, the current war on Gaza will certainly be good for business. The Israeli army’s social media team is already proudly promoting the first time in battle use of the Elbit-made Iron Sling, a mortar designed to hit Hamas rocket launching sites. This is a war for a local and global public audience as well as potential foreign buyers looking to build up their arsenal.

Israel is also likely hoping to expand the sale of its high-tech military and intelligence tools. Even Israeli spyware company, NSO Group, mired in scandals for years, is looking to get in on the action, pitching themselves to Washington as an essential part of this new “war on terror”.

In its assault on Gaza, the Israeli army has boasted about using artificial intelligence (AI) in combat to “produce reliable targets quickly and accurately”. For years, Israel has claimed that it is a pioneer in AI-enabled warfare but there is no evidence that it has reduced civilian casualties while using it. The current death toll of more than 12,000 people in Gaza – the vast majority of them civilians – certainly does not lend credence to this claim.

In the occupied West Bank, AI is used to deepen the complete monitoring and control of Palestinians. It is not a liberating technology in Palestine. It is the complete opposite.

Israel’s pursuit of an ethno-nationalist agenda endangers both Palestinians and critical Jews within the country and across the world. Israel remains an inspiration for huge swaths of the global right and far right, from India to Hungary, in building a lose global coalition of nations opposed to immigration, multiculturalism and abiding by human rights norms.

With Israel claiming that it is fighting a war between so-called Western values and “barbarism”, the decimation of Palestinians’ lives and livelihoods in Gaza is a sign of an increasingly erratic and wild Israeli state. And yet, as it embarks on a dark and bloody “war on terror”, the Western world is supporting it every step of the way.

#vengeance is not justice #war on terror my ass #military industrial complex #follow the money #israel is committing genocide #genocide #israel is an apartheid state #apartheid #ethnic cleansing #collective punishment #carpet bombing #gaza under attack #gazaunderfire #gaza under genocide #gaza under siege #save palestine #free palestine 🇵🇸 #nakba 2023 #propaganda kills #spread the truth #seekthetruth

[papirouge]

It’s kinda hard to separate the Israel Palestine conflict from religion at this point as an exmuslim. Every muslim man I knew is violently pro Palestine and would allow you to protest for them until they’re in power then they want sharia law

Asking for a ceasefire and stop killing civilians ≠ defending islam though. If you know my blog you'd know I'm myself very critical of Islam (which condone pedophilia, female oppression, racism/Arab supremacism and violence) but calling the war crimes of Israel has nothing to do with defending islam. Especially when Christians are also victims of this war. Ask yourself why Christian Palestinians go as far as ally with Muslims in their opposition to Israel oppression (something that Israel is extremely uncomfortable with btw).

I refuse to take seriously anyone fearmongering Christians around how Islam is a threat to Christianism when Judaism is as much anti Christian if not worse (the Quran has yet to say the same awful thing about Jesus and Mary as the Talmud does). The only thing stopping religious Jews from representing a threat to Christians is their low number. The last time Jews had the demographic superiority that gave them the opportunity to oppress Christians they took it : they conspirated & lobbied to the roman government to kill Jesus. Jews killed Jesus, not Muslims. History doesn't lie. That's why I I can't help but roll my eyes BIG TIMES whenever the Israeli government tries to paint itself as this Christian ally uwu like- guys, start to repent for what you did to the Messiah and then maaaaybe we'll take seriously your lame attempts at catering to us. For now, you are still as much enemies in Christ (for rejecting as the Messiah) as Muslims or heathens.

I also find funny how this "association by the cause you fight for" only seems to work one way. Zionists have been spouting the vilest racist, anti Black (look up their treatment of falasha and Ethiopian jews they consider so racially inferior they refuse to see them breeding especially with "racially pure" Jews), Jewish racial supremacism nonsense, and yet I hardly see people like you associate every pro Israel as a racist just because they happen to side with them 🤔

"Arabs/Palestinians are anti Black!!" .... so are Zionists/religious Jews lmao Israel is literally an ETHNOSTATE!! What's your point?? I'm a Black person, every country has a derogatory word against us, of course we know the world hates us - still not a reason to turn a blind eye to them behind genocided¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ maybe that's a groundbreaking statement but noone deserves to be killed for being a piece of trash . I'm Christian, the staple of our religion is that everyone can be redeemed.

I oppose this war like I oppose every other war on this planet. It really ain't that complicated. The reason we go off like this is because the gaslighting and victim blaming of Israel is just insufferable. The "they started it first on October 7!!" narrative is dishonest (the occupation/blocus of Gaza started waaay before October 7 and Palestianian resistance didn't come out of a vacuum) and does not justify bombing CIVILIANS. Ukraine has been attacked first too and still didn't use it as a pass to bomb Russian cities with plentiful of civilians just because Russia started first 🤪 because this is a war crime. IDK why it's so hard to understand. Like many people said, Israel is the only country who can attack and bomb 3 countries in the same times while claiming victomhood....sorry but this shit is insufferable lmao Maybe they would be less annoying if they assumed their villainess like the USA or Russia lol

#answered #Christian

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸🇮🇱🇺🇲 ANGELO GIULIANO AND BRIAN BERLETIC ASKING THE QUESTION: CUI BONO?

WHO BENEFITS FROM OPERATION AL-AQSA FLOOD?

Although I do not agree with some of what Brian Berletic and Angelo Giuliano think about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, they offer much to think about in the broader geopolitical context of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the region.

For decades, the United States, Israeli state security and the Mossad, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others have manipulated the politics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to inflame tensions when convenient and it is important that we always ask the question, Cui Bono? Who benefits by this geopolitical event?

We know the creation of Israel was unjust, but as they discuss in this video, many many Jews have now been born in Israel, and state of Israel is not going anywhere. At some point, this will need to be solved politically and geopolitically in a way that can be just to the civilians of both sides. That much is true.

I'm always grateful for the opportunities these two commentators offer me to ask and think about these questions and to see geopolitical events from different perspectives.

So while I strongly support the Palestinian cause and the use of armed resistance as a Right, reaffirmed in the United Nations, to Liberate themselves from the oppression, blockade and violence inflicted on Palestinians every single day, I may not agree with everything every resistance group in occupied Palestine does, or the tactics they use.

But I firmly reaffirm my unquestioning solidarity with, and support for Palestinians and Palestinian Resistance Groups in the armed struggle against the oppression, ethnic cleansing, stealing of land, and violence inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel, its supporters, and its settlers on a daily basis and I strongly support anyone or any nation willing to help them in that struggle.

WorkerSolidarityNews Telegram

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[jordanianroyals]

14 February 2024: King Abdullah II evening held talks with Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the dangerous developments in Gaza.

At bilateral talks followed by expanded ones in Ottawa, His Majesty stressed the importance of reaching a ceasefire as soon as possible.

The King said many in the region and around the world are working towards a ceasefire, commending Canada’s efforts.

His Majesty stressed the importance of overcoming challenges, especially those pertaining to the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The King called for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict once and for all to give the Palestinians a future where they have their independent state while ensuring Israel’s security.

His Majesty noted the distinguished ties between the two countries, thanking Prime Minister Trudeau for ongoing coordination since the start of the Gaza war and his efforts to end it.

For his part, Prime Minister Trudeau said the situation in Gaza and the Middle East is dire, adding that threats of further action in Rafah are a source of deep concern.

The prime minister that amid such complicated times in the world, the meeting with His Majesty is an opportunity to discuss how to continue working together in the right direction.

Calling for the release of hostages and a sustainable ceasefire, Prime Minister Trudeau stressed the importance of enabling the delivery of more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Trudeau also called for stabilisation in the region, stressing the need to work on the two-state solution as the only way to ensure durable peace and safety in the Middle East.

The prime minister expressed appreciation for His Majesty’s leadership and ability to bring points of views closer, as well as his efforts to ensure the flow of aid into Gaza and his support for the Palestinians.

He voiced commitment to continuing to work with the King to identify what Canada can do amid difficult regional conditions, which have implications on communities around the world.

At the expanded talks, the King warned of the regional implications of the Gaza war, reaffirming Jordan’s rejection of any attempt to forcibly displace the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and calling for enabling Gazans to return home.

His Majesty stressed Jordan’s rejection of any attempt to separate the West Bank and Gaza, warning that extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and the violations in Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem will lead to an explosion in the region.

The King called for maintaining international support for UNRWA to enable it to continue providing its UN mandated services, especially amid the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

His Majesty reaffirmed that there can be no peace nor stability in the region without a just solution to the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution that restores the rights of the Palestinian people and guarantees the establishment of their independent and sovereign state on the 4 June 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The talks also covered the strong ties between the two countries and means to advance cooperation across all sectors.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Director of the Office of His Majesty Jafar Hassan, and Jordan’s Ambassador to Canada Sabah Alrafie, as well as a number of senior Canadian officials attended the talks.

#King Abdullah II