GAZA ANTHOLOGY #15 GENOCIDE February 9, 2024

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/02/omni-gaza-anthology-15-genocide.html

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

What’s at Stake:  Among several, the US is giving $4 billion a year for arms to a country guilty of genocide.

CONTENTS

Miko Peled.  Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Since 1948.
Chris Hedges.  The Brief Submitted by South Africa to the ICJ.
Middle East Monitor.  The Indonesian Brief.
Craig Murray.  Genocide in Gaza: Why It had Not Been Referred to the ICJ by Dec. 2023.  
Richard Falk.   “In Gaza, the West is enabling the most transparent genocide in human history. “
Margaret Kimberley.  “South Africa’s Case At World Court Also Exposes The US And The West.”
Margaret Kimberley.  US Ramps Up War Crimes After ICJ Rules Against Israel.
Jonathan Cook.  “‘Are we the baddies?’ Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes.”

Chris Hedges.  “It May Be Genocide, But It Won’t Be Stopped.” 

Chris Hedges.  “Let Them Eat Dirt.”
Gaza Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden Has Day In Court” By Center for Constitutional Rights. 
Natalia Marques.  “Everywhere He Goes, Biden Is Haunted By The Martyrs Of Gaza.”
CALLS FOR CEASEFIREArt Hobson.  “World Grieves for Palestine and Israel:  America Must Demand a Cease-fire”. 
CODE PINK Calls for Cease Fire and Boycotts of Israeli Genocide Supporters. 
Ann Wright Calls for a Cease Fire in Her Testimony at UN.

“Human Rights Groups Demand ICC Issue Arrest Warrants On Israeli Officials” By People’s Dispatch.
US CAMPAIGN FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS.  Contact Responsible Officials.
“The Death Of Israel” By Chris Hedges.

TEXTS

 ISRAEL’S ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE SINCE 1948

Miko Peled.  “They Stole a Country in Full Bloom’.”  Consortium News (12-16-23).

Pro-Palestinian Israeli activist Miko Peled explains to a Melbourne, Australia audience Thursday how Israel stole Palestinian cities and farmland in 1948 and has continued its ethnic cleansing until today’s brutal operation in Gaza. Read here…

SOUTH AFRICA AND INDONESIA

The Case For Genocide By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide. Israel’s smearing of South Africa as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies…-more-

Editor.  mronline.org (1-28-24).

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must cease its warmaking in Gaza–cease committing and inciting genocidal acts–and that the case charging Israel with genocide must proceed.

Indonesia Files Lawsuit Against Israel At World Court

By Middle East Monitor. Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported that Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit against the Israeli occupation at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In doing so, Indonesia joins South Africa, which filed the first lawsuit against Israel for committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry had previously assembled a team of experts to help draft Indonesia’s ICJ case to hold Israel accountable for its “policies and practices” in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the local Jakarta Post website, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that the case will help support global… -more-

THE DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE, WHY ISRAEL IS GUILTY OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA, AND WHY IT HAD NOT BEEN REFERRED TO THE ICJ BY DEC. 2023.
Craig Murray.  “Murder.”  Craig Murray  CraigMurray.org.uk  December 15, 2023.  Consortium News ( Dec. 17, 2023).

Al Jazeera are leading their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.

On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them there is nothing to discuss.

Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining bakery.

It is worth stating why this is plainly a genocide in Gaza:

1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems, bakeries and fishing boats;

2)  Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;

3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from universities to primary schools;

4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society, including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and deliberate destruction of administrative records;

5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;

6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8 percent. In Ukraine it is 6 percent. In Gaza it is 42 percent. This is indiscriminate destruction of an ethnic group;

7) Mass executions of civilians;

8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually abusing them;

9) Forced mass movement of population;

10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage buildings;

11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;

12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both civilian and military establishment.

This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

On Tuesday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.

The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.

The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Benjamin Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Rishi Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.

The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.

A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social media.

But to the global 1 percent whose interests rule the world, no number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk.

This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western and Arab states.

It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.  This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

Richard Falk.   “In Gaza, the West is enabling the most transparent genocide in human history. “ Common Dreams (January 17, 2024).

This is extraordinary because the states supporting Israel, above all the United States, have claimed the high moral and legal ground and lectured the states of the Global South about the importance of the rule of law.    Editor.  mronline.org (1-21-24). 

Originally published: Common Dreams  on January 17, 2024 by Richard Falk (more by Common Dreams)  |  (Posted Jan 20, 2024)

Recall Samuel Huntington’s controversial, yet influential, 1993 Foreign Affairs article, “The Clash of Civilizations,” which ends with the provocative phrase, “The West against the rest.” Although the article seemed far-fetched 30 years ago, it now seems prophetic in its discernment of a post-Cold War pattern of inter-civilizational rivalry. It is rather pronounced in relation to the heightened Israel/Palestine conflict initiated by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli territory with the killing and abusing of Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, as well as the seizure of some 200 hostages.

Clearly this attack has been accompanied by some suspicious circumstances such as Israel’s foreknowledge, slow reaction time to the penetration of its borders, and, perhaps most problematic, the quickness with which Israeli adopted a genocidal approach with a clear ethnic cleansing message. At the very least the Hamas attack, itself including serious war crimes, served almost too conveniently as the needed pretext for the 100 days of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence, sadistic atrocities, and the enactment of a scenario that looked toward making Gaza unlivable and its Palestinian residents dispossessed and unwanted.  MORE https://mronline.org/2024/01/20/in-gaza-the-west-is-enabling-the-most-transparent-genocide-in-human-history/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-gaza-the-west-is-enabling-the-most-transparent-genocide-in-human-history&mc_cid=cf9190498d&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine and is currently co-convener of SHAPE (Save Humanity and Planet Earth).

South Africa’s Case At World Court Also Exposes The US And The West By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. PopularResistance.org.  Cutting off water and electricity, bombing hospitals, and withholding food and medical aid all clearly fall within this definition. Not only has Israel publicly committed these acts, but its officials openly and publicly brag about having done so, and make South Africa’s case easy to prove. But if there is another point which is made obvious by this definition and that is that the United States has and is committing genocide domestically and internationally. Of course Black people played the biggest role in making this case beginning in 1951 when the Civil Rights Congress published the pamphlet… -more-

US Ramps Up War Crimes After ICJ Rules Against Israel

By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.  PopularRevolution.org.  On December 29, 2023, the Republic of South Africa charged Israel with violating the United Nation’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in regards to its assault on the population of Gaza. On January 26, 2024 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that claims of genocide against Israel are plausible and that the killing of Palestinians in Gaza must end. Despite attempts to obfuscate or to claim an Israeli victory, the meaning of the court ruling could not have been clearer. The ICJ did not use the word “ceasefire” as many people had hoped, but judges did… -more-

Jonathan Cook.  “‘Are we the baddies?’ Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes.”

Mronline.org (12-30-23).

Originally published: Jonathan Cook Blog  on December 27, 2023 (more by Jonathan Cook Blog)     Human Rights, Inequality, State Repression, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United StatesNewswire

The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal democratic order for decades.

Chris Hedges.  “It May Be Genocide, But It Won’t Be Stopped.”  Scheer Post. PopularResistance.org.  The International Court of Justice (ICJ) refused to implement the most crucial demand made by South African jurists: “the State of Israel shall immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.” But at the same time, it delivered a devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the “crime of crimes.” A people, once in need of protection from genocide, are now potentially committing it. -more-

Chris Hedges.  “Let Them Eat Dirt.”  Chris Hedges Report.  Feb. 8, 2024.

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. 

Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Criminal Court (ICJ). The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. 

UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.” 

UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA after the ruling of providing false information to the ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics, schools and food, had to be eliminated. Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a political as well as material objective. 

The evidence-free Israeli accusations against UNRWA that a dozen of the 13,000 employees had links to those who carried out the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 did the trick. It saw 16 major donors, including the United States, the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Estonia and Japan, suspend financial support for the relief agency on which nearly every Palestinian in Gaza depends for food. Israel has killed 152 UNRWA workers and damaged 147 UNRWA installations since the attacks inside Israel by Hamas and other resistance groups on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 Israelis. Israel has also bombed UNRWA relief trucks. 

More than 27,708 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, some 67,000 have been wounded and at least 7,000 are missing, most likely dead and buried under the rubble.

More than half a million Palestinians – one in four – are starving in Gaza, according to the U.N. Starvation will soon be ubiquitous. Palestinians in Gaza, 1.7 million of whom have been internally displaced, lack not only sufficient food, but clean water, shelter and medicine. There are few fruits or vegetables. There is little flour to make bread. Pasta, along with meat, cheese and eggs, have disappeared. Black market prices for dry goods such as lentils and beans have increased 25 times from pre-war prices. A bag of flour on the black market has risen from $8.00 to $200 dollars. The healthcare system in Gaza, with only three of Gaza’s 36 hospitals left partially functioning, has largely collapsed. Some 1.3 million displaced Palestinians live on the streets of the southern city of Rafah, which Israel designated a “safe zone,” but has begun to bomb. Families shiver in the winter rains under flimsy tarps amid pools of raw sewage. An estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes.

“There is no instance since the Second World War in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and destitution with such speed,” writes Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” in the Guardian. “And there’s no case in which the international obligation to stop it has been so clear.”

The United States, formerly UNRWA’s largest contributor, provided $422 million to the agency in 2023. The severance of funds ensures that UNRWA food deliveries, already in very short supply because of blockages by Israel, will largely come to a halt by the end of February or the beginning of March.

Israel has given the Palestinians in Gaza two choices. Leave or die. 

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I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs, scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not. The international community, as is in Gaza, did little to intervene. 

The precursor to starvation – undernourishment – already affects most Palestinians in Gaza. Those who starve lack enough calories to sustain themselves. In desperation people begin to eat animal fodder, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from diarrhea and respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it. 

Soon, lacking enough iron to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, they become anemic. The body feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs – brain, heart, lungs, ovaries and testes — atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.

It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.

I saw hundreds of skeletal figures, specters of human beings, moving forlornly at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never gotten up. Many were the remains of entire families. 

In the abandoned town of Maya Abun bats dangled from the rafters of the gutted Italian mission church. The streets were overgrown with tussocks of grass. The dirt airstrip was flanked by hundreds of human bones, skulls and the remnants of iron bracelets, colored beads, baskets and tattering strips of clothing. The palm trees had been cut in half. People had eaten the leaves and the pulp inside. There had been a rumor that food would be delivered by plane. People had walked for days to the airstrip. They waited and waited and waited. No plane arrived. No one buried the dead. 

Now, from a distance, I watch this happen in another land in another time. I know the indifference that doomed the Sudanese, mostly Dinkas, and today dooms the Palestinians. The poor, especially when they are of color, do not count.  They can be killed like flies. The starvation in Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is Israel’s masterplan. 

There will be scholars and historians who will write of this genocide, falsely believing that we can learn from the past, that we are different, that history can prevent us from being, once again, barbarians. They will hold academic conferences. They will say “Never again!” They will praise themselves for being more humane and civilized. But when it comes time to speak out with each new genocide, fearful of losing their status or academic positions, they will scurry like rats into their holes. Human history is one long atrocity for the world’s poor and vulnerable. Gaza is another chapter.  Share

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 “Gaza Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden Has Day In Court”

By Center for Constitutional Rights. January 26, 2024, Oakland, CA – A federal court heard arguments in the case Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden today, including extensive live testimony from Palestinian plaintiffs and a scholar of genocide and the Holocaust. Attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights, together with co-counsel from Van Der Hout LLP, asked the court to immediately order the United States to cease military support for Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and opposed the government’s efforts to have the case dismissed.  -more-

Everywhere He Goes, Biden Is Haunted By The Martyrs Of Gaza By Natalia Marques, People’s Dispatch. Biden is disrupted on the campaign trail at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina by protesters shouting “ceasefire now!” and later gets on a flight to the Dallas airport, where more protesters are waiting for him. Biden’s speech at a Virginia campaign event is interrupted thirteen separate times, and as he leaves his motorcade is met with more protests. Biden, who brands himself as the “most pro-union president” is called out by union workers for his support for the genocide in Gaza as he is receiving the endorsement of one of the largest unions in the country.  -more-
 

CALLS FOR CEASEFIRE

Art Hobson.  “World grieves for Palestine and Israel:  America must demand a cease-fire.  NWADG 26 December 2023.

        I wanted to write about local matters such as Fayetteville’s plans for a more civilized North College Avenue, but events in Gaza draw me again to my first allegiance, which is to the world. 

          Nearly 19,000 Palestinians are now dead in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with many more missing and probably buried amid the rubble.  Two-thirds of these are expected to be women and children.  1200 Israeli civilians were murdered in Hamas’ October 7 attack and over 100 Israeli troops have died.  An Israeli study finds that 61 percent of Gaza deaths from airstrikes are civilians.  As the liberal pro-Israel organization J-Street has put it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”

         Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, states, “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I am Secretary-General” (January 2017). 

          Through its military and diplomatic support for Israel, the United States is indirectly causing thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths.  We not only vetoed UN Security Council efforts to end the war but also approved the emergency sale of $106 million worth of ammunition to Israel.  The UN General Assembly adopted 153-10, with 23 abstentions, a resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the release of all hostages.  Friendly nations voting for the resolution included Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Greece, Honduras, Iceland, India, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey. 

          Because our money, our weapons, and our military support this war, international support for the United States is declining by leaps and bounds. 

          A few truths should be obvious:  There must be an independent nation of Palestine, Israel needs to continue to exist for those Jews who desire a homeland, both nations deserve to prosper, and both nations deserve international support.  Therefore, a two-state solution is essential.  Israel and Palestine have much in common and could, were it not for prejudice and narrow religiosity, help each other find peace, prosperity, and happiness. 

          Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has surrounded himself with religiously orthodox right-wing extremists.  These fanatics support the settlers in the West Bank who terrorize and murder Palestinians in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan once terrorized and murdered blacks in America.  On October 4, 2023, Al Jazeera reported that Orthodox Jews occupied and held secret religious services in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.  Although there is no excuse for Hamas’ attack on Israel, this provocation to Muslim sensibilities could have triggered the Hamas attack three days later. 

          The people of Gaza are not only dying in Israel’s military onslaught, they are also starving because Israel has limited the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, and water that can come into Gaza.  Medical care is urgently needed and yet hard to come by because hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations are destroyed.  Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant admits quite directly that he has ordered a complete siege and there will be no electricity, no food, and no fuel.  According to Gallant, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

          As we have witnessed in television newscasts, Israel publicly humiliates Palestinian men when the Israeli Defense Forces rounds them up, strips them down to their underwear, blindfolds them, and displays them in public in their neighborhoods. 

          Israel has stated that it must destroy Hamas so that it cannot commit another October 7 atrocity.  But Israel’s attack on Gaza will not destroy Hamas, because Hamas represents a culture of rebellion against Israel and the siege only strengthens that idea.  For every slain Hamas terrorist, more are created.  Israel’s goal to destroy Hamas augers only endless war and terrorism on both sides.  Israel cannot win this war.  If it continues, Israel and America will eventually stand isolated amid accusations of war crimes. 

          The United States has helped fund and weaponize this war.  For the sake of America, Israel, and the world, we must take matters into our own hands.  We must tell Netanyahu he will lose America’s military and diplomatic support unless Israel declares a cease-fire.  We must also demand that Israel end the occupation and work toward a two-state solution that establishes a free and independent nation of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza. 

References: 

• Number of deaths in Gaza war:  NWADG  15 Dec 2023 article beginning on page 1A. 

• 61% of airstike deaths are civilian:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/09/civilian-toll-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-unprecedented-killing-study#:~:text=Israel%2DGaza%20war-,Civilians%20make%20up%2061%25%20of%20Gaza,from%20airstrikes%2C%20Israeli%20study%20finds&text=The%20aerial%20bombing%20campaign%20by,an%20Israeli%20newspaper%20has%20found.

• Statement by J-Street:  https://jstreet.org/press-releases/moment-of-truth-for-israels-government/

• Guterres quote:  https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2023-11-20/secretary-generals-press-conference-unep-emissions-gap-report-launch

• Sale of ammo to Israel:  NWADG 10 Dec 2023, page 11A. 

• The UN vote on the war:  https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717

• Countries voting for and aginst the UN resolution.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/13/un-vote-gaza-ceasefire-countries-against/

• Orthodox Jews occupied Al-Aqsa Mosque shortly before the Hamas attack.  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot

CODE PINK CALLS FOR CEASE FIRE AND BOYCOTTS OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE SUPPORTERS 
“I’m not used to seeing Gaza getting bombed that way, even though I lived through four aggressions before…I never saw Gaza like that. I never saw people cut into pieces like that,” Gazan journalist Plestia describes the brutality of the Israeli military in its most recent bombardment of Gaza. Israel murdered over 19,000 people in Gaza, with nearly half of them being children, over 51,000 people are injured, and thousands more are missing under the rubble, unable to be saved while the carpet bombing continues. 

For 69 days straight, the people of the world continue to rise in a moment of unprecedented mobilization to end Israel’s attack on Gaza. Israel is entering the third month of its genocidal campaign, despite overwhelming opposition expressed by the majority of the world. However, we have yet to see adequate reporting on protests by outlets that enable Israel like CNN. Instead, organizers across the globe and reporters on the ground in Gaza have taken to social media to broadcast their message.

Join us in demanding CNN take accountability!

Why CNN? CNN has a pattern of silencing the truth in Palestine. In a livestream from an Israeli settlement miles away from Gaza on October 11, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward lied about the threat of Hamas rockets on Israel. She reported while laying on the ground, taking cover from a “massive barrage of rockets”, but footage released later shows Ward being the only one laying on the ground, while others directly near her are standing calmly.  In 2018, CNN suspended the contract of commentator Marc Lamont Hill following a speech he delivered at the UN which criticized Israel and advocated for Palestinian human rights.  CNN’s viewership rose when the attacks first broke out, a trend they regularly experience during major international conflicts, including after 9/11 and during the wars in Iraq and Ukraine. Mainstream media has proven to make a killing off killing!

Help us get 10,000 signatures demanding CNN call Israel’s attack what it really is—genocide!

When the petition goal is reached, we will have a coordinated action across the US delivering the petition to local offices, forcing them to hear our message. You can bring your message directly to your local news station!

As long as Israel remains an occupying force in Palestine, and as long as it carries out its genocidal campaign, we will rise up against it and every entity that aids and abets in these crimes against humanity. In the US, diligent efforts have moved 62 members of Congress to support a ceasefire, but our success does not end at politicians. Calls for boycotts have emptied Starbucks locations across the country and Puma announced that it’s ending its sponsorship of the Israeli football team next year. Our action is working. Let’s take our demands to the media, for Bisan, for Motaz, for Plestia, and for Palestinians everywhere!
Towards Peace,
Nour and the entire CODEPINK team

ANN WRIGHT CALLS FOR A CEASE FIRE IN HER TESTIMONY AT THE UN

CEASEFIRE GAZA !!!!!  STOP THE GENOCIDE !!

ANN  (From Bentonville, Ann has spoken at OMNI three to four times.  AR’s most prominent world peace advocate.  —D)

From: Joseph Gerson, The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common .

“When Those Of Us Who Are Not Diplomats Have The Rare Opportunity To Speak In The United Nations There Are Rules About What Can And Cannot Be Said!”  

While testifying about the evil of weapons sales and transfers, their devastating human toll, and the evil of military-industrial complexes, former colonel, U.S. diplomat, and now Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security board member Ann Wright turned her testimony into a condemnation of Israel’s unconscionable Gaza mass murder and devastation into an appeal for a ceasefire – NOW!

Ann Wright’s Testimony At The U.N.

With 20,000 civilian dead in two months, 85 % of the Palestinians of Gaza displaced and deprived of food, water and fuel essential for life, and the destruction of between a third and a half of Gazans’ homes we have been watching something akin the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in real time. Even as the holidays turn us toward family and friends, we must find ways to insist on a ceasefire and diplomacy that leads to peaceful and just Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.

So much more to say, but the killing must STOP!

Write to you member of Congress, a letter to the editor, join a demonstration, AND DON’T BE SILENCED!

Joseph

In her 29-year career in the Army and Army Reserves, Colonel Ann Wright served at the NATO subcommand Allied Forces Central Europe, and later as a diplomat serving in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US government in March 2003 in opposition to Bush’s war on Iraq. She is an advisory board member of Veterans For Peace, International Peace Bureau, World BEYOND War, Gaza Freedom Flotilla, NO to NATO, Hawaii Peace and Justice, Pacific Peace Network, Women Cross DMZ and Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security. 

From the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security | 4 Washburn Street, Watertown, MA 02472

“Human Rights Groups Demand ICC Issue Arrest Warrants On Israeli Officials” By People’s Dispatch. Popular Resistance.org (12-23-23).   Hundreds of human rights organizations and activists issued a joint call on Wednesday, December 20 asking the International Criminal Court to immediately issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials accused of being involved in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Addressed to Karim Khan KC, the ICC prosecutor, the letter underlines that the warrants are necessary to prevent the “continuing commission by Israeli officials of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians.” The letter was written in support of the three Palestinian human rights groups, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human… -more-

“The Death Of Israel” By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical amnesia.  -more-