Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1: 3-3-08; #2 Nov. 16, 2012; #3 Nov. 17, 2013; #4 May 31, 2014; #5 July 28, 2014; #6 August 30, 2014; #7 April 8, 2015; #8 May 13, 2021; #9, October 15, 2023; #10, October 23, 2023; #11, Nov. 4 and Nov. 7, 2k023).
[Note on #11. A short version of 9 articles appeared Nov. 4, a fuller version of 32 articles was published Nov. 7 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/11/gaza-cease-fire-rally-gather-at-court.html )
CONTENTS #12
Part I: Gaza March AND RALLY in Fayetteville including Abel Tomlinson’s Palestine Peace Rally Speech
Part II: Gaza Anthology #12, p. 10
Guttenplan. Gaza in the Long Run
Musa Al-Gharbi. The Truth War
UNRWA
Sara Roy. Unsilencing Gaza.
Chris Hedges. “Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians.”
Scott Ritter. “Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done”
Theia Chatelle. “The Government Encourages the Settlers to Attack. . . .”
Spencer Ackerman. “Biden’s Middle East Policy Collapsed”
Fareed Zakaria. Israel to Vet Reports from Gaza.
Iman Abid. “Resist Genocide with Your Whole Heart and Body.”
CADTM. cadtm-newsletter-en@cadtm.org
Code Pink. “Take action for Palestine!”
Ron Jacobs.. “Bernie and a Cease Fire.”
Ajamu Baraka. “The demand must be for decolonization and Palestinian self-determination.”
Chodhury Interviews Khaled Barakat: Gaza demands end of genocide.
Natalia Marques. Editor. mronline.org. International actions demand an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and an end to all aid to Israel.
TEXTS #12
Misc. Correspondence Regarding the WALK AND RALLY FOR PEACE NOVEMBER 4, 2023, AND FUTURE EVENT
No Hate Speech at Palestine Protests in Fayetteville
(from Abel Tomlinson)
Dear Friends,
As you may know, dangerous false rumors of “hate speech” at our November 4th Palestine March & Rally have been widely circulating in Fayetteville. These rumors made their way all the way to the top of Fayetteville City Government.
To dispell these rumors, we have now uploaded the full unedited video from our Palestine Peace Rally.
On a similar note, the powerful Israel Lobby group Anti-Defamation League has published a nationally MSM syndicated report on a “400 percent increase in antisemitic incidents.” Along with scores of other Palestine Protests, ADL cited our previous Oct. 22 protest as “Anti-Israel Rallies w. Support for Terror.” (Interactive Map at embedded link):
Please watch our rally video and see this as proof that there was no “hate speech” or “antisemitism” at our event. Quite the opposite, in fact, as multiple speakers explicitly rejected antisemitism and expressed a whole lot of love for humankind; we also had a speaker from Jewish Voice for Peace, Dr. Ted Swedenburg, as well as professor Mohja Kahf and a former United Nations employee, and voices for peace from across the Middle East.
Please urge whoever is spreading these rumors to watch the full video of our rally and see that there is no hate speech; we are all driven by love for humankind and a desire for peace and justice.
Full video:
Sincerely,
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair
Palestine March & Rally Follow Up, and Upcoming Events
We had a very successful Palestine Peace March & Rally last week! A Big Thank you to everyone that participated!
A few hundred people showed up calling to Free Palestine, to Stop the Genocide, Apartheid & Occupation. A couple short video clips of the march are here and here, and a bunch of photos are here and here. We had a great rally with excellent speakers, and a video of the full rally will be uploaded here soon. We also had excellent news coverage from 5 News and KNWA News, and decent coverage from KUAF radio and UATV.
In terms of upcoming events, please follow NWA for Palestine on Instagram, or email them at NWAforPalestine@gmail.com to ask to be added to their email list. There are Palestine Peace Protests planned for tomorrow November 12th at 2 PM at the intersection of 14th & Walton,
and on November 18th at 11 AM at Joyce & College intersection in Fayetteville, and on November 18th at 10 AM at Rogers Avenue (in front of Mercy Hospital) in Fort Smith.
Unfortunately, Arkansas Antiwar Alliance will be less publicly active for now.
Big thank you to NWA for Palestine for keeping this ball rolling.
Toward Justice & Peace,
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
Palestine Peace Rally Speech
Abel Tomlinson
Palestine Peace Rally Speech – Abel Tomlinson (wordpress.com)
I became a lifelong antiwar peace activist after 9/11, starting right here on these very steps 20 years ago, as we were bombarded with lies to wage war on Iraq. Over a million humans were killed, and millions more harmed, physically, psychologically or by being displaced as refugees.
It disgusted me to my bones. I began actively organizing opposition to most every U.S. war since. I quickly came to find that virtually every US war comes wrapped in a pack of lies. The U.S.-Israeli war on Palestinians also is based on many lies.
They are lying about the causes of the conflict, suggesting that this all started on October 7th with Israel being attacked for no reason and Israel is just an innocent victim. They want us to ignore over 75 years of well documented history of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, the brutal blockade, home demolition, land theft, illegal settlements, war crimes, repeated carpet bombings of civilians, destructions of olive orchards, poisoning of livestock, abusive checkpoints and roadblocks, sniper massacres of peaceful protesters during the Great March of Return, etc, etc. Thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza prison protested peacefully, and Israeli snipers mowed them down by the hundreds, including killing medics, journalists, kids and disabled people; all war crimes.
I have heard it said we should not call this a war, as it is a genocide, with numerous experts calling it a Textbook Case of Genocide, such as this top ranking U.N. official and this Jewish Israeli genocide scholar. Indeed, Palestinians have no army, navy, or air force, so, yes, this is largely a one-sided massacre of people trapped in what numerous scholars call the World’s Largest Open Air Prison or Largest Concentration Camp. Yet, I would suggest there is a difference of a war BETWEEN two relatively equivalent militaries, and a Bully War ON a militarily weaker nation. It was a U.S. Bully war on Iraq, a U.S. Bully war on Libya, on Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and dozens more nations.
The conflict now is similarly a war on Palestinians, starting 75 years ago with the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing has never stopped. According to Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi its actually 100 year war on Palestine, if you go all the way back to the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Make no mistake: This is very much a U.S. war too. The US has given over $260 billion in foreign military aid to Israel since the Nakba, with the U.S. House just passing another $14 billion to fund this genocidal bombing campaign. The US has also given massive political support by vetoing over 53 UN resolutions that condemned Israel’s many violations of international law. The US has enabled Israel to escape all accountability for scores of war crimes, which encourages Israel to continue committing them. For decades, the majority of the world has long been trying to hold Israel accountable, and to create justice for Palestinians. The United States is the world leader at preventing progress, and sustaining Palestinian oppression.
We should all wish and work for Peace and for violence to cease, and to really identify and solve the root causes of war, which are overwhelmingly injustices. Justice is the foundation for real Peace. As Dr King said, we must not seek a negative peace or the mere absence of tension, but seek a positive peace, which is the presence of Justice.
Overwhelmingly, it’s Palestinians that have experienced manifold injustices for the past 75 years and beyond. If we’re sincere about seeking peace, we must seek justice for a Free Palestine. It is really in the best interest for Israelis too.
Some people dismiss protests or small acts we do online, but everything we say has some affect on Public Opinion, which is the real ruler of all societies. That’s why dictators or corporate oligarchs spend immense resources on propaganda to shape public opinion, to manufacture consent as Noam Chomsky says. Rulers always need consent to rule, or they will be rapidly removed, one way or another.
We must withdraw our consent for our rulers that support endless war and endless injustice for Palestinians and so much of our world. A growing number of Americans are frustrated by politicians of both parties, and since they don’t represent us on issue after issue, at some point consent will break.
Most of us don’t have enough money to buy a Congressman, but every one of us has some power. We each have a voice in the field of Public Opinion, and we all have wide diversity of creative talents we can employ to displace this System of Perpetual Injustice. Every courageous post we make, every act of resistance and solidarity, every conversation we have with friends or family has some impact, however small. It all adds up.
We must raise our voices to Call for Immediate Ceasefire and Stop to the Genocide. We must call for an End to Apartheid, Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing. As Americans, we have a distinct duty to speak out for a stop to our government’s massive support of this injustice.
We are witnessing massive protests all over the world and a major national protest is occurring today in Washington D.C. Millions of voices are rising up in the streets all over the world.
We have now joined them.
Let Gaza Live & Free Palestine.
Palestine Peace March & Rally in Fayetteville this Saturday
| Abel Tomlinson |
Dear Friends,
This is a final announcement for our upcoming Palestine Peace March and Rally this Saturday, November 4th. We will meet at the Washington County Courthouse at 10 A.M. and march down Dickson Street at 11 A.M. to a rally in front of the U of A Student Union. I am copying the media advisory below that includes more details about the rally speakers and more.
We still need more help with publicity for the event, so if you are on Facebook, please take a few minutes to directly invite friends through our event page, and share it to your timeline. Also, please forward this email to your email contacts. I am also attaching our event flyer, so please share this flyer on Instagram or other social media.
We still need people to make signs, so please make a few signs if you can. We also need volunteers to help record video of the march and rally and upload it to Youtube, so let us know if you can help. We also still need someone to create a good list of chants and to lead chants with a megaphone. We also still hope to have a marching band, so if you and your friends play any kind of music, please bring instruments, especially drums, and make some noise!
Toward Justice & Peace in Palestine,
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Fayetteville, Arkansas) Saturday, November 4th at 11 A.M. in front of Washington County Courthouse in Fayetteville, members of the Arkansas Antiwar Alliance and NWA for Palestine will hold a Free Palestine March and Rally. We will march from the Courthouse down Dickson Street to a Rally at the UA Student Union Mall. Speakers will include voices from across the Middle East, students, a UA professor, activists and a United Nations employee with experience in Gaza. We are joining millions of people all over the world calling to Free Palestine from Genocide, Apartheid and Occupation. and a massive national Free Palestine March is occuring on the same day as ours in Washington D.C. Hundreds of Jewish people have protested & been arrested in the U.S. that were calling for a ceasefire and to stop the genocide.
We too are calling for immediate Ceasefire and a Stop to this “Textbook Case of Genocide”, according to Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal. We are also calling to Free Palestinians from Apartheid, as defined by the major human rights organization Amnesty International, and to Free Palestinians from Israeli military occupation, the longest occupation in modern history. These are some of the deeper causes of the 75 year conflict, which started with the 1948 Nakba.
We are also calling for a stop to U.S. taxpayer funding of Israeli policies. The United States sponsors Israeli policy by giving $260 billion in foreign aid to Israel since the 1948 Nakba, primarily military aid. The U.S. also gives massive political support by vetoing at least 53 U.N. resolutions (as of 2021) that condemn the illegal Israeli military occupation, illegal settlements, massacres of nonviolent protestors, bombings of Gaza & war crimes. The Biden Administration is also giving full support to the ongoing Israeli indiscriminate bombings of residential areas in Gaza.
We are calling for Justice and Peace for Palestine.
Abel Tomlinson
Arkansas Antiwar Alliance, Founder
GAZA WATCH ANTHLOGY #12
“A Cease-Fire in Gaza Is Just the First Step.”
We must end the slaughter. And then comes the hard part.
D.D. GUTTENPLAN for THE NATION
A Cease-Fire in Gaza Is Just the First Step | The Nation
Demonstrators protest the bombing on Gaza on October 20, 2023.This article appears in the November 13/20, 2023 issue, with the headline “Gaza in the Long Run.”
Condemning the slaughter should be the easy part. Yet in the hours and days after Hamas carried out its October 7 attack, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians—including babies and young children—some on the left seemed reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone denounce, these murders.
And when Israel responded with murder from the air, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—including babies and young children—most Americans in influential institutions, from mainline Jewish organizations to establishment media to the vast majority of Democratic and Republican elected officials, were quick to justify the carnage. President Joe Biden flew to Jerusalem to embrace the architect of this slaughter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even attending a meeting of Israel’s “war cabinet.” Then he flew home and gave a speech from the Oval Office calling for billions of dollars in new weapons to “sharpen Israel’s qualitative military edge.”
Appearances matter. And the images of Biden and Netanyahu embracing mean that America, too, now owns Israel’s war in Gaza.
Policy matters. The fact that the Biden administration continued Donald Trump’s criminally stupid attempt to bypass negotiations with the Palestinians, encouraging Israel to pursue a separate peace with the Saudi dictatorship that Biden once had promised to treat as a pariah state, means that America, too, has the blood of those murdered by Hamas on its hands. Because for all our horror at Hamas’s tactics, and despite the terrible price already paid by Palestinian women, children, and elderly people in Gaza—not to mention the predictable result when Israel’s “sharper edge” meets civilian flesh in the weeks ahead—no one can deny that we are all talking about Palestine now.
History matters. Not just the history of Palestinian dispossession, but also the long decline from the 1991 Madrid Conference—a genuinely international attempt, cochaired by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, to resolve the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians, bringing all the parties together for the first time—to the US-brokered 1993 Oslo Accords, with its fraudulent promise of Palestinian statehood, to Bill Clinton’s Camp David talks in 2000, the collapse of which marked the last sustained US engagement with the Palestinians. The recriminations in the wake of that failure led to the enduring myth that the Palestinians had refused a “generous offer” and the rapid decomposition of the ill-named “peace process”—while the unchecked spread of illegal Israeli settlements under both Labor and Likud governments pushed any viable Palestinian state farther and farther out of reach.
Penned in by Israel and Egypt, deprived not just of clean water, adequate food, electricity, and medical supplies but of any hope for improvement, or even so much as a gesture of concern from the US government, the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza—almost half of them children (as NPR recently explained, “Many Palestinians simply don’t get the chance to grow old”)—had every reason to feel desperate. And to wonder why the 526 children killed in Gaza by Israeli security forces in 2014 were so quickly forgotten.
No American progressive would want to live under Hamas rule. But then none of us would want to live in Gaza under Israeli blockade, either. And while it is easy to condemn Hamas as reactionary theocrats, much the same can be said of Netanyahu’s coalition partners.
Language matters too. When Biden describes Hamas as a “terrorist group,” he isn’t wrong—the clear aim of the killings on October 7 was to terrify Israelis, to make it impossible for them to feel safe in their beds. But then what label do we use to describe the Israel Defense Forces, which had brought death and destruction to Gaza on a far greater scale before October 7—and is now working assiduously, with American aid, to increase the body count?
Terrorism is a tactic, not a strategy—the tactic of the desperate, who lack the dignity of a state or an army. And if we tell ourselves that terrorism never prospers, that’s only because when it does, or when a state does it, none dare call it terrorism, favoring instead labels like “counterinsurgency” or “shock and awe.” Or we call it Zionism—which, before it became respectable, didn’t always scruple over the use of bombings and assassinations to achieve its goals. Referring, as Biden did, to “the tragic loss of Palestinian life” (in the passive voice) while condemning the “horrific horror of the attack by Hamas” demonstrates not moral courage but its opposite.
Though absent in the White House, real courage was shown by the demonstrators there and on Capitol Hill—Jewish, Palestinian, and others—demanding not fresh blood but an immediate cease-fire. Ending the slaughter being done in our name—and paid for by our taxes—is an essential first step.
Then comes the hard part. And here some inconvenient truths must be acknowledged. The first is that those who make nonviolent resistance impossible make violence inevitable. The criminalization of dissent—not just in Israel and the West Bank but in the US, where the nonviolent movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) has been banned from college campuses and outlawed by legislatures in 35 states—entrenches an unjust and unsustainable oppression.
However, the advocates of BDS can be faulted, too, for not always having been clear or candid on whether their aim is to end Israel’s occupation of the territories it conquered in 1967 and gain full civil rights for Palestinians on either side of the Green Line (goals all people of conscience should support)—or to abolish the state of Israel altogether. The latter is hardly something most Jews—who rightly wonder why, of all the ethno-states in the world, only theirs is targeted for elimination—could ever endorse.
Israel, though it often behaves like a settler colonial regime, is not like France in Algeria. No amount of violence will induce most Israelis to quit (as Gandhi urged the British to “quit India”), for the simple reason that, like most Palestinians, they have no other country to go to. And though theology is no substitute for politics, the Jewish yearning for Zion dates back centuries, not decades.
Both peoples will have to find a way to share the land—in peace, yes, but also with justice. In the long run, that is the only solution to the unending cycles of violence. For that to ever happen, the left in particular must hold fast to certain values:
No human being should be threatened with “transfer” out of his or her home or land; no human being should be discriminated against because he or she is not of an X or a Y religion; no human being should be stripped of his or her land, national identity, or culture, no matter the cause.
Those principles, set down in 1979 by Edward Said, remain essential for anyone seeking to address the Question of Palestine. The path to peace and justice may seem impossible to detect right now. But there is, as Israelis like to say, no alternative.
We Must Not Let the Truth Become a Casualty of This War
Now more than ever, it’s crucial that we talk about what is actually happening in Gaza and Israel, not about unverified rumors.
We Must Not Let the Truth Become a Casualty of This War | The Nation
On October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters breached the boundaries dividing Israel and Palestine and committed atrocities against vulnerable populations. They targeted noncombatants hiding in shelters. Women. Old people. Children. Foreign nationals. They rampaged through Israel for more than a day before being driven back by Israeli forces and took hundreds of hostages with them as they fled.:12
In response, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a full siege of Gaza—cutting residents off from all food, water, electricity, and aid. Communications infrastructure has been targeted, limiting Gazans’ ability to communicate with the outside world. Aerial bombardments have killed over 2,000 Palestinians, including over 700 children. Huge swaths of Gazan cities have been destroyed, rendering an estimated 300,000 Gazans homeless. A ground invasion is imminent.
All of the above facts are verifiably true and important. But as the war enters its second bloody week, many false or unsubstantiated claims are circulating as well. As the conflict escalates, it will be critical that journalists, academics, and observers of all kinds work overtime to make sure that we are talking, thinking, and writing about events on the basis of things we fully know to be true.
The conflict was rife with hazy or outright false information from the start. There were claims about Iranian involvement in the attack that were paired with criticism of President Joe Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for US hostages. However, Iran had not yet spent a single dollar of these funds (which are tightly regulated and monitored). Moreover, US intelligence reportedly suggests that Iran had no direct knowledge or involvement in the plot (and was, in fact, surprised by the assault). Nonetheless, the Biden administration decided to renege on its agreement with Iran, refreezing the assets in order to stave off right-wing criticism—a decision that will probably have significant geopolitical consequences.
There were many strong claims made about sexual assaults carried out by Hamas. Rape is a recognized and all-too-common weapon of war, and it should always be seen as a possibility during conflict. Yet, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told The Forward that it has no evidence that rape occurred during the raid or in its aftermath. Many journalistic outlets have walked back these claims as a result, though politicians in the United States and Israel have continued to repeat them.
One of the most horrifying allegations that have gone viral on social media and the mainstream press was that Hamas beheaded 40 babies while carrying out a massacre at a kibbutz. However, when Sky News tried to get confirmation of this atrocity, the IDF said it was unable to confirm the claims (other outlets were subsequently given similar responses). Unfortunately, many other media organizations had already reported this incident as a fact based on unverified claims from a known political extremist.
Some have subsequently issued retractions and clarifications or added editor’s notes. However, this diligence arrived too late to limit the spread of this uncorroborated claim because, on October 11, President Biden seemed to confirm the story. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said.
Shortly after the president left the podium, the White House walked back this statement and acknowledged to The Washington Post that neither the president nor US intelligence services have any corroboration or have seen any photographic evidence of the specific atrocity in question. The president, they said, based his comments on news coverage (which, itself, had never been substantiated). When the Post reached out to the IDF for information about whether new evidence had emerged to support the allegations, the IDF declined to comment.
Many other examples could be offered: There were widely shared videos that purported to show terrified Israeli children locked in cages by laughing Hamas militants. Follow-up reporting showed that the video was actually taken days before the conflict exploded and that it was impossible to determine the identity of the children. There was a video of a young woman being burned alive. While the atrocity was real, it was actually a video from Guatemala in 2015. Shani Louk, who was alleged to have been sexually assaulted, murdered, and then paraded around, seems to be alive and was apparently taken to a hospital.
However, even if many of the most incendiary claims seem to be false, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, or lack critical context, it is also the case that many documented atrocities were committed by Hamas and are worthy of being acknowledged and condemned.
For instance, although no one in the Biden administration was presented with verification of decapitated babies in particular, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken emphasized, “We did see photographs, videos that the Israeli government shared with us…an infant riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, young people burned alive in their cars or hideaway rooms.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since shared some of these images with the press.
It should not need to be said that murdering women, children, senior citizens, uninvolved foreign nationals, and other noncombatants for sport is not “resistance.” Nonetheless, a distressing number of activists and intellectuals have tried to implicitly justify or outright celebrate these crimes—discrediting their causes and organizations in the process.
What Hamas is known to have done is bad enough without requiring exaggeration. But truth, as they say, is the first casualty of war. False or uncorroborated claims of Hamas’s atrocities have been used in order to justify ongoing and impending war crimes against Gazan civilians. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s communications minister has proposed emergency regulations that would punish Israeli citizens for spreading information perceived to undermine the country’s morale or give ammunition to its adversaries.
For those who would like to minimize unnecessary suffering and death, it is critical to respond to information warfare with solid facts, stated as straightforwardly, objectively, and holistically as we can manage.
For instance, while it’s important to recognize the magnitude of the tragedy that Israelis are working through, it’s just as critical to acknowledge the scale of Palestinian death and suffering—imposed primarily upon people who had nothing to do with the massacre.
According to data by the Israeli conflict monitoring organization B’Tselem, between 2000 and September 2023 eight times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the ongoing conflict. Critically, roughly half of all Israeli deaths occurred in Palestinian territories, not in their own country. Ninety-nine percent of Palestinian casualties likewise occurred in Palestine. Many more will perish in the territories over the days to come.
Life in Gaza was already quite desperate. The new layers of collective punishment being meted out against ordinary Gazans is a war crime just as much as Hamas’s hostage taking, targeting of civilians, or use of human shields.
However, thanks to US veto power in virtually all international bodies, Israel is not meaningfully accountable to international law.
It has little to fear from neighboring states either. The United States has moved multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the eastern Mediterranean and has stated unequivocally that any third parties who try to involve themselves will have to reckon with the US military in addition to the IDF. Most have sent signals that they plan to sit this one out.
Secure from international pressures, Gallant has “released all constraints” on Israeli forces. Netanyahu has vowed to turn Gaza into a “deserted island” and kill every single member of Hamas. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, has asserted that all Gazan civilians bear collective guilt for the crimes of Hamas: “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
For his part, Netanyahu has instructed Gaza’s civilian population to “get out now” and has insinuated that anyone who “chooses” to stay will be considered a legitimate target (although convoys of refugees fleeing south as Netanyahu instructed have also been targeted).
The truth is, Gazans have nowhere to go. Israeli blockades prevent exit by sea or air. Most of the rest of the land perimeter of Gaza borders Israel and has been closed in the aforementioned siege. Practically speaking, the only way out of Gaza is by exiting into Egypt. However, the Egyptian government has refused to allow Gazans into their country for fear that it would be a one-way trip.
Within the Arab world, it is widely believed that the proposed humanitarian corridor is a means of ejecting most of Gaza’s population permanently and annexing the vacated Gaza Strip fully into Israel. . . . .
HeadquartersAmman, Jordan and Gaza, Palestinian Authority
PurposeProvide direct relief and works programmes for Palestinian refugees
ServicesEducation, health care, relief/social services, infrastructure/camp improvement, microfinancial assistance and emergency response
Commissioner-GeneralPhilippe Lazzarini
Deputy Commissioner-GeneralLeni Stenseth
Parent organizationUnited Nations
Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance by Sara Roy. Pluto Press, 2021.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211228…
Sara Roy’s succinct observations made towards the end of her book, Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance sums up the impunity which shields Israel as it persists in oppressing Palestinians. But Palestinians refuse to be silenced and their struggle must not be ignored.
Roy, Chap. 11, “The Gaza Strip’s Last Safety Net” (2015)
UNRWA is the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (let’s you and me use UNRWAPRNE! to be specific). And let’s be frank about the situation: Gaza is a prison in which some one and a half million prisoners (2014) were systematically oppressed, food and energy shortages recurrent, etc., assaulted and killed sometimes numerously. The Israeli position for Gaza was: “No development, no prosperity, no humanitarian crisis.” This means “a strangling blockade, and…three major military assaults on Gaza since the end of 2008 [Operation Protective Edge] , leveling neighborhoods, destroying infrastructure and inflicting immeasurable damage….” And “…decline in funding for one of the few forces standing between the people of Gaza and unmitigated humanitarian suffering” (UNRWAPRNE). Regarding children in 2014-2023, growing in number, classroom limits tightened, new schools and teachers ended. ETC. Finally the prisoners rose up in defiance in 2023. But those problems for Israel are ending by Israel physically removing all prisoner children from N. Gaza by forcing them to move to S. Gaza and by bombing and destroying the infrastructure, homes, schools, etc. Please read the chapter (orig. pub. In The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-gaza-strips-last-safety-net-is-in-danger/ ) And then I hope the entire book.
Chris Hedges. “Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians.”
When Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists, religious zealots, ultranationalists and crypto-fascists in the apartheid state of Israel say they want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.
I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin.
Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.
Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked. His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine. Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”
There has always been a strain of Jewish fascist within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.
“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”
The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily. They champion the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism. Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil. Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared to the Biblical Ammonites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged.
A leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence dated Oct. 13, 2023 recommends the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription. Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
These Jewish fanatics have begun their version of the final solution to the Palestinian problem. They dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza in the first two weeks of assault to obliterate at least 45 percent of Gaza’s housing units, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. They have no intention of being detoured, even by Washington.
“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” The New York Times reported.
“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued.
The goal is a “pure” Israel, cleansed of Palestinian contaminants. Gaza is to become a wasteland. The Palestinians in Gaza will be killed or forced into refugee camps over the border in Egypt. Messianic redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque – the third holiest shrine for Muslims, built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army – to be demolished. The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank, which the zealots call “Judea and Samaria,” will be formally annexed by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will be a Jewish version of Iran.
It is a short step to total Israeli control over Palestinian land. Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, restricted military zones, closed highways and army compounds have seized over 60 percent of the West Bank, turning Palestinian towns and villages into ringed ghettos. There are over 65 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories. The campaign of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, many by rogue Jewish militias, along with house and school demolitions and the seizure of remaining Palestinian land will explode. Over 133 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers since the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up by the Israeli military, beaten, humiliated and imprisoned.
Israel, at the same time, is turning on “Jewish traitors” who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish fascists and who denounce the horrific violence of the state. The familiar enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals, artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are already being targeted. The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu, will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.
Fascists do not respect the sanctity of life. Human beings, even from their own tribe, are expendable to build their deranged utopia. The zealots in power in Israel could have exchanged the hostages held by Hamas for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons, which is why the Israeli hostages were seized. And there is evidence that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel, the Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli captives with them.
“Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen,” Max Blumenthal writes in The Grayzone.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, Blumenthal notes, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army.
Escapa told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
The newspaper reported that Israeli commanders were “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers.
Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called the Hannibal Directive, apparently named for the Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The directive is designed to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force, even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians.
The directive was executed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on Aug. 1, 2014 captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin. In response, Israel dropped more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area where he was being held. Goldin was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was supposedly rescinded in 2016.
Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.
Israelis who cheer on the Palestinian nightmare will soon endure a nightmare of their own.
SCOTT RITTER
“Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done”
Preview YouTube video “Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done” – Fmr. U.S. Marine Scott Ritter | Redacted News
Forwarded to me by Sonny San Juan 11-7-23. I forwarded directly to to Art, George, Kelly, Sandra, gsloan@uark.edu, Rosalie
https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/10/30/scott…
Scott Ritter on Israel, Palestine and US Policy in Middle East
WebIn this interview, DD Geopolitics talks with military and weapons specialist Scott Ritter, about Israel’s brutal siege and bombing of Palestinians civilians in Gaza. They also break down
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/us-marine…
US Marine Corps Officer Ritter: Three Nuclear Bombs and Nothing …
WebUS Marine Corps Officer Ritter: Three Nuclear Bombs and Nothing Wil Be Left of Israel. The current Middle East crisis, as described by former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter in an …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvYFopX4_Cc.
Scott Ritter: “Why Israel is LOSING this war! Netanyahu is FINISHED!”
WebScott Ritter: “Why Israel is LOSING this war! Netanyahu is FINISHED!”🔔Subscribe with all notifications on, and be the first to watch every video!Scott Ritte…
Theia Chatelle. “The Government Encourages the Settlers to Attack and Gives Them Permission to Kill Us.” The Nation (November 7, 2023).
There’s been an epidemic of violence across the West Bank since October 7, as Palestinians have been increasingly targeted by Israeli settlers.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/west-bank-israeli-settler-attacks-palestinians/
Spencer Ackerman. “The Weekend Biden’s Middle East Policy Collapsed.”
The Nation (Nov. 7, 2023). Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s diplomatic trip was a humiliating failure. The administration’s regional approach has gone down in flames.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-mideast-policy-blinken-failure/
Fareed Zakaria. “Israel to ‘Vet’ US Corporate Media Embedded in Gaza.” Consortium News. Nov. 7, 2023.
In a TV segment, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria explained the submissive arrangements that his outlet and others are making with the Israeli military. https://www.commondreams.org/news/media-gaza
“Resist genocide with your whole heart and body.”
| Iman Abid, USCPR Uvia uark.onmicrosoft.com US CAMPAIGN FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS | 3:12 PM (50 minutes ago) | ||
CADTM. 7 November 2023
CADTM https://www.cadtm.org/ cadtm-newsletter-en@cadtm.org
EDITO
Global protests in support of the Palestinian people are taking place worldwide while the carnage in Gaza wages on. CADTM stands with the People of Palestine! We call for an immediate ceasefire, for the international community to break the blockade and end the collective punishment that the Palestinian people are suffering. We must bring an end to such apartheid and occupation. CADTM, together with other organisations, supports the filing of an accusation with the International Criminal Court against the whole Israeli government for war crimes and crimes against humanity. . . .
Forwarded by Sonny San Juan.
| From: CODEPINK <info@codepink.org> Date: Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 11:53 AM Subject: Shut it DOWN this Thursday To: Eifanio San Juan <philcsc@gmail.com> Take action for Palestine!Join Global Strike on Thursday, Nov. 9.Webinar: Censoring Palestinian Voices on Tuesday, Nov. 7Webinar: Mothers Against Genocide on Monday, Nov. 13This Saturday, CODEPINK peace activists converged in Washington D.C. to join the largest protest for Palestine in U.S. history—300,000 people strong. Nour Jaghama, CODEPINK’s Palestine organizer, stood on stage with CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin to deliver a powerful speech to the energized crowd. Together, they represented an intergenerational feminist vanguard for peace and justice in Gaza. Watch the full speech here! In her speech, Nour aimed her questions directly at President Biden: “Is this how you want to be remembered? A genocidal, destructive, warmonger? Shame! Look at this crowd, clearly the American people do not agree with your genocidal plans. You must call for a ceasefire now or solidify your position as one of the most inhumane presidents in American history. The American people demand a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, and the full liberation of Palestine.”Global Shutdown for Palestine, November 9! . . . . Join us in keeping this momentum going! • Join the hundreds and thousands striking on Thursday, November 9, 2023.• CODEPINK Congress Webinar: Censoring Palestinian Voices: Tuesday, November 7, 2023, at 8:00pm EST. Attempts to censor, punish and cancel pro-Palestinian voices has taken on a new chilling dimension. Chat with peacemakers and experts on how to challenge censorship.• The Missing Peace Webinar: Mothers Against Genocide: Monday, November 13, 2023 at 8:00pm EST. We will discuss how, as mothers, we can and should use our collective voice to stop the genocide in Gaza.• The Missing Peace Webinar: Genocide Won’t Work, Monday, November 20, 2023 at 8:00pm EST. Join CODEPINK for a work-related resistance teach-in. Hear from those who left their job or were let go for speaking out against genocide. Also, learn about your rights as an employee advocating for a ceasefire.• Get inspired by our #MothersAgainstGenocide Community Page!• Join more upcoming CODEPINK events here.• Check out False Media Narratives on Palestine: FAQs Debunking the Misinformation. • Elbit is Israel’s largest weapons supplier. Learn more and distribute our informational flyer here.• Sign up to join our Telegram Channel for breaking news, community updates, chats and more.• If you live in the U.S., email Congress to vote NO on more “aid” to Israel! If you live outside the U.S., please sign our petition here.• Shop our CODEPINK Palestine t-shirts. From the East Coast to the West and around the globe, we have more people than ever ready to disrupt business as usual to end the occupation of Palestine. Sign up to join the strike on November 9!Ann, Danaka, Cale, Calla, Farida, Grace, Jasmine, Jodie, Marcy, Medea, Melissa, Michelle, Nancy, Nour, Nuvpreet, Paki, Terry, Tim, and Ysa Help us amplify voices against genocide and war. by Norman Finkelstein |
| Ron Jacobs. Bernie and A Ceasefire. CounterPunch (11-7-23). Has Bernie lost his way, or was he always a pro-war zealot? Ajamu Baraka. The demand for a ceasefire is necessary but not sufficient: The demand must be for decolonization and Palestinian self-determination. Mronline.org (11-12-23). The people of Gaza are in desperate need of a cease fire, but ultimately they need decolonization and self-determination. Special interview with Khaled Barakat: Gaza demands end of genocide, not ‘ceasefire’ mronline.org 11-12-23Saheli Chowdhury Orinoco Tribune interviewed Palestinian activist and author Khaled Barakat about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle in the context of the Israeli occupation’s genocidal aggression against Gaza following the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Natalia Marques. “People across the globe disrupt ‘business as usual’ for Palestine.” Editor. mronline.org. A wide array of actions were organized on November 9 for the Global Shutdown for Palestine. International actions organized in solidarity with Palestine demand an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and an end to all aid to Israel.Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on November 10, 2023 by (more by Peoples Dispatch) | (Posted Nov 11, 2023) Movements, Protest, Strikes, WarGaza, Global, Israel, Middle East, PalestineNewswireAround the world, people took action in solidarity with Palestine on November 9, determined to disrupt the “business as usual” that has led to almost 11,000 killed in the Gaza Strip. The call to “Shut It Down for Palestine” was convened by the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, the ANSWER Coalition, the People’s Forum, the International Peoples’ Assembly, Al-Awda-NY, and the Palestinian American Community Center (PACC)-NJ. |
END GAZA #12