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Protesters shut down UK arms factory to ‘disrupt Israeli war machine’

Press TV – November 10, 2023

Hundreds of trade union members have blocked the entrance of Britain’s largest weapons maker, calling for an immediate end to arms supplies to Israel amid the regime’s brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Demonstrators gathered outside the gate of the BAE Systems site in Rochester, Kent, on Friday.

They were holding Palestinian flags and chanting slogans like “Stop Arming Israel,” “ceasefire now,” and “How many kids have you killed today?”

One organizer said more than 400 trade unionists were involved in the action at the site.

Union members were calling for “an end to the UK government’s complicity in war crimes being committed in Palestine”, which includes an end to arms sales to the occupying regime and support for an immediate ceasefire.

A teacher and member of the Nation Education Union, who took part in the protest said, “As a teacher, seeing 185 schools and other educational institutions in Gaza bombed is utterly heartbreaking.”

“We’re here today to disrupt the Israeli war machine and take a stand against our government’s complicity and we urge workers across the UK to take similar action in their workplaces and communities,” she added.

The factory, run by BAE Systems, claims it does not directly export equipment to Israel. Activists say the company – which includes the site being blockaded – “provides 15% of the components in the F-35 fighter jets that are currently being used in the bombardment of Gaza.”

The value of components supplied by BAE Systems to Israel could be worth more than £300m since 2016, according to campaigners.

Similar protests were also held outside Israeli-owned factories in Britain.

Two of Israel’s biggest weapons factories, Elbit and Rafael, both have operations in the United Kingdom.

The governments of the UK, the United States and the European Union member states have been providing Israel with weapons and military assistance, since the regime launched its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip on October 7.

Palestinian officials in the besieged Gaza Strip say the Israeli regime has dropped more than 32,000 tons of explosives on the territory in its ongoing war of aggression.

Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the besieged enclave has now killed and injured more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

November 10, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

How big does Palestine rally need to be for honest reporting?

By Yves Engler | November 7, 2023

On Saturday over 50,000 marched in Montréal against Justin Trudeau’s role in enabling Israel’s genocidal siege and slaughter in Gaza. I say this confidently having walked from one end of the march to the other and watched overhead drone footage. This was the largest antiwar/international solidarity mobilization in Montréal since the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq.

The largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in Canadian history concluded in front of CBC’s office to highlight pro-Israel media bias. Proving the point, Global News reported that “hundreds gathered”.

While Global’s Farah Nasser described how “hundreds gathered in Montreal” the images on the screen showed at least ten thousand rallying. The jarring juxtaposition between lived reality and the “journalism” that is supposed to report the truth puts into context why some protestors put fake blood on the building’s glass doors and wrote “call it genocide” and “justice for journalists in Gaza” on the ground in front of the CBC.

At the end of the march, I was asked to speak outside the CBC/Radio-Canada offices as part of protesting Canadian media coverage of the 10,000 Palestinians killed in recent weeks.

Below is a portion of my prepared remarks:

“The Canadian media is enabling Israel’s genocidal siege and violence in Gaza. CTV and Global both recently fired Palestinian/Arab reporters for opposing the genocide on their social media.

“The media humanizes Israelis and dehumanize Palestinians. For instance, a young Vancouverite who travelled 10,000 kilometers from their home to join the Israeli military is lauded and mourned, but any Palestinian killed fighting Israel isn’t even considered.

“On multiple occasions Canadian outlets have directly manufactured consent for Israel’s war crimes. As an example, yesterday the National Post and other Postmedia outlets published “How Hamas uses hospitals as shields during war against Israel”.

“The media have been promoting the narrative that Israel has a right to defend itself. But Israel is the occupying power that has been oppressing Palestinians for more than 75 years and it always kills many times more Palestinians during every flare up in violence.

“Two weeks ago a leftist journalist began a list of prominent commentators supporting Israel’s genocidal violence. A few days ago he began asking them how many more thousands of Palestinian children would have to be killed before they supported a ceasefire. They mostly refused to respond.

“Media bias against Palestinians is not new and there are innumerable examples to point to. CBC English has mandated its reporters not to use the word “Palestine”. In 2019 they even forced a radio host to apologize for using the word Palestine when interviewing an author who published a graphic novel titled Palestine!

“When I published Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid in 2010 a Montreal Gazette reporter told me he enjoyed the book and would’ve sought to review it if the title hadn’t included the word apartheid. When a (single) daily paper reviewed my book it prompted a counter review. In the lead-up to the London launch, University of Western Ontario professor David Heap submitted a positive review to his local paper. But two weeks later, the London Free Press published Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) head Mike Fegelman’s response claiming it was “professionally unethical for Heap to not disclose his highly partisan stance on the Mideast file” when reviewing Canada and Israel.

Of course, the HRC did not disclose it is a well-resourced ‘flack’ organization that criticizes media for not towing their pro-genocide and apartheid line. They write replies, submit complaints and instigate email campaigns to media outlets when they publish something deemed objectionable.

But the HRC does nothing more than reinforce the dominant media’s broader structural bias towards power. On Palestine they largely echo the position of the Israel lobby, Canadian government and US empire.

Still, it was shocking to witness the media crassly downplay such a large demonstration. As thousands chanted in front of CBC “every time the media lies another family in Gaza dies”.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Ireland’s most popular party wants Israeli ambassador expelled

RT | November 4, 2023

Israeli ambassador Dana Erlich “should no longer enjoy diplomatic status in Ireland,” Sinn Fein party leader Mary Lou McDonald said on Friday. McDonald’s party, which has deep historical ties to the Palestinian cause, has repeatedly condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

“[The Israel Defence Forces] are engaged in a ferocious military offensive against a civilian population; breaking international law by targeting civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, forcing mass population displacement and cutting off vital supplies of water, food, medicines and fuel,” McDonald told reporters.

Erlich’s presence in Ireland has become “untenable,” McDonald continued, adding that the ambassador should “no longer enjoy diplomatic status in Ireland while Israel refuses the imperative for ceasefires and as the suffering and death toll grow.”

Earlier on Friday, McDonald discussed the conflict with diplomats from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Israel’s embassy in Dublin criticized the Sinn Fein leader for not inviting Erlich to the meeting, accusing her of “only [seeking] to isolate Israel, rather than offer a forum for constructive engagement.”

“To exclude Israel from such a forum is quite telling of Sinn Fein’s position on the conflict,” the embassy said in a statement.

Sinn Fein is Ireland’s most popular political party, with a 13-point lead on its closest rival, the centrist Fine Gael. Sinn Fein is excluded from power, however, by a coalition agreement between Fine Gael and historical rivals Fianna Fail, as well as the Green Party.

As the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Sinn Fein’s support for the Palestinian cause is long-standing. The party’s supporters, particularly in Northern Ireland, view their own struggle against British colonialism as analogous to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. While the IRA has laid down its arms, Sinn Fein has remained in contact with Hamas; former party leader Gerry Adams met with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2009, while McDonald hosted an online conference with the militant group’s foreign relations head, Dr Basem Naim, in 2020.

Sinn Fein “will never rule out meeting or talking to anybody, because that doesn’t serve any purpose” in securing peace in the Middle East, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Matt Carthy, said last month.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has adopted a more neutral stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, declaring on Friday that Israel “has a right to defend itself [and] has the right to go after Hamas, so they can not do this again.” Varadkar also condemned Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, stating that it “isn’t just self-defense, it resembles something more approaching revenge.”

Ireland voted last month for a UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and opposed a now-scrapped EU plan to suspend aid payments to the enclave. However, Varadkar told reporters on Friday that he is “not sure [the Israelis] listen very closely to what we have to say, quite frankly.”

November 4, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Protesters block US military supply ship’s departure for ‘occupied territories’

Press TV – November 4, 2023

Protesters opposing the US’s military aid for Israel, which is waging a hugely deadly war against the Gaza Strip, have blocked the departure of a military supply ship reportedly earmarked for delivering weapons to the occupied territories.

The crowd of roughly 200 protesters turned up at the Port of Oakland on Saturday, blocking the vessel’s departure for Washington, where they said it was to be loaded with weapons destined for the occupied territories.

Several protesters climbed a ladder on the side of the vessel attached to a cargo hatch.

The protest was organized by the San Francisco-based Arab Resource Organizing Center.

“The community became aware that the ship was headed to Israel to carry military cargo to the apartheid state of Israel because of the courage of crewmembers who decided not to take this job,” said Lara Kiswani, the group’s executive director.

“I’m here at the Port of Oakland with a group that’s protesting the departure of this ship that is planning to deliver weapons to Israel in support of the genocide of innocent people in Gaza,” said protesters Becca Lewis.

“The goal is to get the ship workers to stand in solidarity with the movement of people who are concerned about the shipment of weapons,” she said.

The United States, Israel’s biggest and oldest ally, has provided the regime with thousands of arms consignments since October 7, when Tel Aviv started the yet-ongoing war against Gaza.

On Friday, the 28th day of Israel’s genocidal attacks on the coastal territory, the death toll reached at least 9,227 people, including 3,826 children and more than 2,405 women. At least 23,516 people have been wounded.

The regime launched the war after Gaza’s resistance groups conducted Operation al-Aqsa Storm, their biggest operation against the occupying entity in years.

Since the onset of the war, the US has backed Tel Aviv’s ferocious attacks on the Palestinian territory as a means of “self-defense.”

Washington has also been casting its veto against the United Nations Security Council resolution that calls on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.

November 4, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

ALL OUT FOR PALESTINE in Washington, DC, and everywhere around the world, November 4!

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

In the United States, Saturday Nov. 4 is a major national mobilization to Washington, DC, to confront imperialism in the belly of the beast. It is on track to be the largest demonstration for Palestine in U.S. history. Around the world, from Johannesburg to Caracas to Beirut, from Santiago to Vancouver to Tokyo, people will march for Palestinian liberation. Samidoun is one of hundreds upon hundreds of organizations endorsing and supporting this major mobilization.

If you are in the United States and can come to Washington, DC, we urge you to join the mass mobilization and demonstrate popular power and resistance to imperialism and Zionism! 

Samidoun is collecting demonstrations and actions around the world on the Global Calendar of Resistance for Palestine. TO ADD YOUR EVENT TO THE CALENDAR: Email us at samidoun@samidoun.net or tag us on social media! We know that these events are mainly international and that the Arab people are marching everywhere for Palestine — we will be honored to add Arab events.

Please attend all of these events and actions in your area. The genocide is continuing — and the resistance is still rising. ALL OUT FOR PALESTINE!

Saturday, November 4

Sunday, November 5

November 3, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | | Leave a comment

Algerian parliament unanimously votes to support Palestine militarily

The Cradle | November 3, 2023

The Algerian parliament on 2 November unanimously voted to authorize President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to enter the Gaza-Israel war and throw his support behind Palestine.

The 100/100 vote came a day after the anniversary of Algeria’s war of liberation against French colonialism.

Algeria is the second Arab nation that looks to enter the war against Israel, following Yemen’s declaration of war just two days prior.

“We launched a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Zionist enemy in the Palestine Occupied Territories,” the spokesperson of the Yemeni armed forces, General Yahya Saree, said earlier this week. “We emphasize that this operation is the third operation in support of our oppressed brothers in Palestine.”

Saree then added that “the position of our Yemeni people towards the cause of Palestine is fixed and principled, and the Palestinian people have the full right to defend themselves and use their full rights.” “Our forces performed their duty in supporting Gaza and fired ballistic and cruise missiles at enemy targets in the Occupied Territories.”

Arab nations have recently been following suit in their support of the Palestinian piece; Kuwait has condemned the Israeli aggression, Bahrain has cut all diplomatic ties, and Jordan has recalled their ambassador to Israel.

Nations outside of West Asia who have voiced their support for Palestine include Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia – who’ve cut diplomatic ties with Israel completely – Nicaragua, and others.

November 3, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Countries Begin Downgrading Ties with Israel Over Relentless Bombing of Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 1, 2023

A trio of South American countries, along with Jordan, have cut ties with Israel over the onslaught in Gaza. According to Palestinian sources, the Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed nearly 9,000 people, half of which are women and children.

On Tuesday, Bolivia took the most extreme step and cut all ties with Israel. Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani explained that Bolivia “decided to break diplomatic relations with the Israeli state in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive taking place in the Gaza Strip.”

The next day, Tel Aviv responded by saying Sucre’s move was “capitulation to terrorism and to the ayatollah regime in Iran.”

Colombia and Chile announced they would recall their ambassadors to Israel. Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X, “I have decided to call our ambassador in Israel for consultation. If Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people we cannot be there.”

Chile posted a press release saying Santiago would also recall its diplomat.

“Given the unacceptable violations of International Humanitarian Law that Israel has incurred in the Gaza Strip, the Government of Chile has decided to recall the Chilean ambassador to Israel, Jorge Carvajal, to Santiago for consultations. …”

“Chile strongly condemns and observes with great concern that these military operations – which at this point in their development entail collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza – do not respect fundamental norms of International Law, as demonstrated by the more than eight thousand civilian victims, mostly women and children.”

Jordan joined the South American nations in downgrading ties with Israel. The Foreign Ministry announced it was recalling its ambassador. “Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi decided to immediately recall Jordan’s ambassador to Israel,” a statement said. The move is to reflect Amman’s condemnation of the “Israeli war that is killing innocent people in Gaza.”

While Tel Aviv receives near unconditional backing from Washington, Israel lacks the international community’s support for its war. On Monday, the UN General Assembly voted 120-14 for a ceasefire in Gaza.

After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv launched a military operation. The bombing campaign and ground invasion have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 3,600 children.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU may become complicit in ‘genocide’ – Spanish official

RT | October 30, 2023

Spanish Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra has urged European leaders to take immediate action against Israel, including severing diplomatic ties and imposing economic sanctions, amid the intensified bombing and expanded ground operations against Hamas militants in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

She also called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be prosecuted for the alleged war crimes committed against civilians in Gaza.

“After this hellish night in Gaza, I have a very simple but very important message for European leaders. Do not make us complicit in genocide. Act. Not in our name,” Belarra said in a passionate video message on X on Saturday.

https://twitter.com/ionebelarra/status/1718266381433503782

More than 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,342 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s air campaign began, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. The unprecedented Hamas raid into Israel, as well as hundreds of rocket strikes on Israeli territory earlier this month, left around 1,400 people dead, while 230 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Addressing the severity of the current situation in Gaza and Israel’s disproportionate retaliation, the minister highlighted the termination of internet and telephone services in the strip, claiming that the move “has a very clear objective” of guaranteeing that “Israel commits crimes against humanity without consequences.”

“Our inaction is turning us into accomplices,” the minister stressed, arguing that “Israel believes that its international alliances guarantee its impunity.”

“We have to act now, tomorrow will be too late,” she continued, voicing her message to the EU leaders: “Cut diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. Carry out exemplary economic sanctions against those responsible for this genocide. And without a doubt, let’s take Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court, so that he can be tried for what he is, a war criminal.”

She also appealed to EU citizens to take to the streets and raise their voice so that “this genocide” comes to an end.

The IDF escalated air and ground attack on Gaza on Friday, causing a near-total communication blackout. Connectivity was partially restored over the weekend, but the Israeli blockade of Gaza continues; Netanyahu announced the “second stage” of the war against Hamas on Saturday.

October 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Place where protests didn’t happen does support Israel

By Yves Engler | October 29, 2023

Apologists for Israeli crimes are constantly gaslighting Palestinians and their supporters. They seek to make those opposing violence and colonialism feel like oppressors.

Last Friday a rally was held in front of Deputy Prime Minister Christya Freeland’s office in Toronto. Freeland recently declared that “Canada stands with Israel” and when she was foreign minister said Canada would act as an “asset for Israel” on the United Nations Security Council.

The poster announcing the rally declared: “PROTEST DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA CHRYSTIA FREELAND OUTSIDE HER TORONTO OFFICE”. During the rally bodies of babies were placed in front of Freeland’s office and at some point a man with an Israeli flag went directly in front of Freeland’s office in a bid to provoke the protesters. There’s video of police intervening and standing in front of the building housing Freeland’s office.

As the rally grew, it reportedly spilled onto the street and intersection directly in front of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre (MNJCC). According to a Canada Files post, someone came out of the community centre to complain and film the Palestine solidarity rally. Footage was later posted to X claiming a Jewish community centre was targeted by protesters. According to multiple comments online, the initial post was deleted after being bombarded with derisive comments about their inability to look at a map. But Canada United for Israel shared the video tweeting, “Targeting a Jewish community center where there is a kindergarten is pure antisemitism. How can the anti-Israel movement justify scaring children?”

Far right Rebel News founder Ezra Levant quote tweeted that statement claiming “Hamas protesters target a Jewish kindergarten” while the head of the ‘progressive’ media watchdog CanadaLand, Jesse Brown, made a similar claim. The incident was referenced by the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, National Post and other media.

In a transparent bid to enable Israeli violence and colonialism, apartheid apologists regularly fabricate or distort events to claim victimhood. Over two decades I’ve been privy to repeated examples of this. While I no longer consider the tactic noteworthy, an element of the psychological side of it is. In other domains it would be called gaslighting.

In brief, those screaming loudest “it’s just a Jewish institution that has nothing to do with Israel” are generally best placed to know this is untrue. Those who’ve been through the MNJCC – and similar institutions – know they are deeply Zionistic.

MNJCC operates an “Israel Connection” program and promotes the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Toronto’s annual Walk for Israel. It hosted and cosponsored an Israeli general’s talk, which was held in tandem with the Israeli consulate.

The Thomas & Marjorie Schwartz preschool centre & Junior Kindergarten housed there has three pictures posted on MNJCC’s site. In one the kindergartners are smiling with an Israeli and Canadian flag hanging on the wall. In its “core elements” the kindergarten describes​ “Israel as a Source and Resource”.

The MNJCC elementary school shows a picture with dozens of Israeli flags. On its Instragram the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School (DJDS) recently posted that “Jewish people have always had and always will have a relationship with Israel. We continue to stand in solidarity with Israel.” Days into that country’s horrific siege and violence in Gaza, DJDS posted on October 13 that “classes created inspirational cards for Israeli soldiers, and sent cards full of well wishes to former classmates now living in Israel.” The MNJCC school’s site notes, “Each year, our school warmly welcomes two young Israelis to the Paul Penna DJDS community. We are delighted to partner with UJA Federation, the Downtown Jewish Community School, and The First Narayever Congregation on this fantastic initiative. These teens have completed high school and have chosen to defer their army service in order to become Israeli ambassadors or ‘shlichim’, spending a year focused on presenting contemporary Israel to our students in passionate, creative ways.”

MNJCC has deep ties to UJA Toronto, which brings young Israeli ‘shlichim’ to live with Toronto families so they can do outreach in schools and community organizations. At the top of UJA’s website, which is prominently linked on the MNJCC site, is an Israel financial appeal and its official advocacy arm is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Alongside a link to UJA Toronto, MNJCC’s site links prominently to the JCC Association of North America. The top of that site notes “JCCs of North America Stand With Israel”.

MNJCC’s namesake funded a major project at the racist Jewish National Fund’s Canada Park, which is built on the remnants of three Palestinian villages in the West Bank. On the board of the JCC, Miles Nidal is a staunch anti-Palestinian.

Even if the target of Friday’s protest had been the JCC it would be altogether legitimate (though considering the political climate, organizers should seek to detail the JCC’s anti-Palestinianism in promotional literature). No organization that promotes and defends Israel the way MNJCC does can then claim, “we are simply Jews, not backing Israel” when it becomes convenient to deny the connection.

It’s highly manipulative for individuals who know the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre is part of a network of anti-Palestinian institutions to claim protesting it is antisemitic. Call the complaints what they really are: gaslighting.

October 29, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

Why I Support Hamas

And you should too

BY KEVIN BARRETT | OCTOBER 29, 2023

In this week’s False Flag Weekly News I outperformed Cat McGuire (for once) in saying things the ADL won’t like. Angered by the genocide of Gaza, I uttered many uncomplimentary and/or inflammatory remarks about the Chosen People and their Chosen State. But of all of the “oy vey” things I said, what the ADL will hate the most is my open declaration of support for Hamas.

And that, of course, is the most obvious reason to support Hamas: “They” really, really don’t want you to. The strategists who are trying to keep the genocide of Palestine going apparently realize that if significant numbers of Westerners start openly supporting Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance, the Zionist goose will be well and truly cooked. That’s why they’ve used advanced propaganda techniques to inject the obligatory “I don’t support Hamas, but” disclaimer deep into the collective unconscious of the West in general and its relatively-Palestine-savvy people in particular.

“They” don’t really care if you deplore the massacre of thousands of Gazan women and children. “They” don’t mind if you support a two-state solution, or even a one-state solution. “They” can live with you calling for a ceasefire. “They” could care less if you utter words like apartheid or even genocide.

It’s like when Joel Stein said “I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.” The Zionist position is: “I don’t care if Americans think we’re committing human rights violations, apartheid, or genocide. I just care that we get to keep committing them.”

Americans complaining about Zionist human rights violations, apartheid, and genocide won’t stop those things. They will only be stopped at gunpoint. And it really does matter that people support the right of genocide victims to pick up guns and stop the genocide.

Jews, who think of themselves as paradigmatic genocide victims, should be the first to support armed resistance against genocide. And indeed, the smartest and most courageous Jews do. Check out what David Rovics has to say about Al-Aqsa Flood being the new Warsaw Ghetto uprising:

Hamas is the closest thing to an elected government the Palestinians have.  In fact, the last time they had a real election in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas won by a landslide….Physically fighting back against an occupying army, according to international law that all the countries in the world have signed on to long ago, is justified, and is not “terrorism.”

Why Supporting Hamas Is Strategically Savvy

In any struggle between two sides, the outcome will be largely determined by the intensity of support enjoyed by each party to the conflict. Small, weak countries like Vietnam and Afghanistan were able to defeat the mighty USA because they were far more intensely committed to ending US occupation than Americans were committed to maintaining it. Like the Palestinians today, they were willing to accept a lopsided casualty ratio as they continued raising the price of occupation to the point that the occupier opted to stop paying it.

The Western propaganda apparatus currently allows and tacitly encourages pro-Zionist intensity, while making pro-Resistance intensity taboo. “I stand with Israel” is acceptable, even mandatory; “I stand with Hamas” is practically illegal and unthinkable.

When Side A is passionately and intensely supporting its fighters, while Side B mumbles apologies and obligatory disclaimers, obviously Side A will enjoy a morale advantage that will translate into an advantage on the battlefield. But when Side A is a criminal aggressor and genocide perpetrator, it may find it difficult to maintain its intense support, and to prevent neutral people who care about justice from becoming passionate supporters of the other side. So it will use every propaganda trick in the book to prevent neutrals and lukewarm supporters of the other side from becoming brazen and passionate.

The best way to change that pro-genocide Overton Window is to throw a brick through it. And tied to that brick, a simple message: “I SUPPORT HAMAS.”

Pro-Vietnam-War people really hated it when Jane Fonda high-fived Hanoi as thousands of Americans gathered in the streets to shout their support for the Viet Cong: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win!” But that, and US troops fragging their officers, is what ended the war. Humanitarian complaints about napalmed babies and My Lai massacres were only useful insofar as they pissed off enough people to the point that they realized that the Vietnamese resistance fighters were the good guys, and Uncle Sam was the villain, and that all decent people had a moral duty to support the Vietnamese resistance. That shifted the Overton Window radically, to the point that “withdraw ASAP and to hell with the consequences” became a middle-of-the-road position and then a political reality.

If we can get a small but noticeable number of Americans openly and brazenly cheering for Hamas at the top of their proverbial lungs, it will have the same effect on ZOG that Al-Aqsa Flood had on Israelis: It will drive them crazy, puncture their inflated sense of invulnerability, and incite them to lash out in irrational and strategically counterproductive ways. ZOG’s mask will come off, and it will show its psychotic, genocidal face to America, just as the Israelis have shown theirs to the region, the BRICS nations, and the Global South.

And the Overton Window will shift. Pretty soon “end aid to Israel” and “one-state solution” will become middle-of-the-road positions and then political realities.

Why Supporting Hamas Is Your Moral Duty

I began by explaining why supporting Hamas is strategically savvy, rather than addressing the moral argument, because much of my audience already understands what I am now about to say. For them, the strategic benefits of supporting Hamas may not be evident, even though the moral arguments are.

So I risk belaboring the obvious in stressing that the most important point—the forest that people miss while peering at the trees—is that the Palestinian cause is just, and the Zionist one unjust. Every just war theory, whether Christian, Islamic, or secular, is based on the non-aggression principle: The side that initiates aggression, in this case by crossing the seas to invade and murder and steal the other side’s land and property, is in the wrong, while those fighting to stop that aggression are in the right. No sane person who takes the time to study the history of Palestine in a reasonably comprehensive and unbiased way can fail to conclude that there has never been a war in history that has been more obviously and completely just than the Palestinian war against Zionist invasion, occupation, and genocide.

And of all the big lies uttered in history, there has never been a bigger one than “The Israeli-Palestine conflict? It’s complicated.” No it isn’t. And it isn’t a conflict, it’s a genocide. The rights and wrongs are not the least bit complicated.

Zionist attempts to obfuscate the injustice of their genocidal project are so absurd that they would be hilarious if there were not right now more than a thousand Gazan children buried beneath the rubble of what used to be their homes, suffering and dying slowly in some cases, expiring quickly and mercifully in others. Consider the most popular excuses:

“Yahweh gave us Palestine 3,000 years ago. Surely that should count for something! What?! You don’t honor Yahweh’s 3000-year-old real estate deals?!!”

*“We deserve Palestine because of the Holocaust. So why isn’t Israel in Germany? Umm… next excuse!”

“We are an ethnic group so we deserve a state of our own. And yes, we know that there are tens of thousands of ethnic groups on Earth, and that virtually none of them have states, but we are just so special that we deserve one! And if you don’t agree, you are anti-Semitic!”

“We have gotten into terrible conflicts with every neighbor we’ve ever had, and have been expelled from more than 100 countries for no reason at all except that our neighbors like to pointlessly persecute us, so you ought to sympathize and side with us no matter what we do.”

“There are lots of terrible injustices, so if you complain about this one, you must be an anti-Semite!” Alternate version: “Genghis Khan (or Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler) killed more people than we have, so why are you attacking us, you anti-Semite?”

“The Palestinians and their supporters, as we portray them in our propaganda machine, are very bad, wicked people, so you should cheer for us as we steal their stuff and exterminate them.”

“We are a democracy even though we murdered or expelled most of the people who should be voting in our elections.”

“Israel’s existence is really, really beneficial to US national security, even though it makes billions of people in geopolitically-crucial energy-rich countries hate America’s guts.”

“You have to support us because we call our enemies ‘terrorists’ and other nasty names.”

And when all else fails:

“Support us and do what we say, or you’ll never work in this town again!”

Refuting the extant arguments for Israel’s existence would be superfluous and an insult to the reader’s intelligence. They are not even arguments, just inarticulate, incoherent grunts and howls of tribally-intoxicated psychopathy.

But it may be worth unpacking one of them: the “terrorist” blood libel. Terrorism is usually defined as “A military tactic consisting of deliberately attacking civilians to incite fear and achieve a political objective.” And that is exactly what “Israel” is: A terrorist organization. Zionist terrorists have been attacking and terrorizing the civilian population of the territory they invaded, namely Palestine, ever since they got there. The various Zionist terror groups were so drunk on terrorism that they even terrorized each other, as well as their fellow aggressors and invaders, the British, in a bloody orgy of terror that has no parallel in modern history. Much of the story can be found in Thomas Suarez’s State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel.

So the conflict is between terrorists who crossed the seas to attack the Palestinian civilian population in order to kill some and scare the others into leaving; and the civilian population they have been terrorizing. On one side, the Zionist terrorists; on the other, the Palestinian anti-terrorist Resistance. In this as in so much else, the Zionist propaganda machine has turned reality on its head.

Today, the Zionist terrorists continue to deliberately target and mass-murder Palestinian civilians by the thousands. About two-thirds of the Palestinians they kill are women and children. The Zionists probably kill about a hundred civilians for every Hamas fighter. Compare that to al-Aqsa Storm, the Hamas operation that killed roughly equal numbers of Israeli military fighters and civilians. And of the civilians killed in al-Aqsa Storm, the majority were killed by the Israeli military, whether accidentally in crossfire, or deliberately in accordance with the Hannibal Directive, which recommends eliminating both hostage-takers and hostages using overwhelming firepower in order to prevent the enemy from using hostages as a bargaining chip.

Hamas, unlike the Zionists, primarily targets the Israeli military, when it can. Clearly, al-Aqsa Storm primarily targeted the IDF. Hamas’s orders were to take hostages, but to avoid killing unarmed civilians. And while there may have been a few instances of Palestinians killing civilians, photo evidence proves that the worst carnage—music festival goers caught in heavy artillery crossfire, houses and kibbutzes and other buildings full of people destroyed by tank and artillery shells—was perpetrated by the IDF. Hamas soldiers, carrying light weapons, could not possibly have caused that kind of damage, or killed those large numbers of people.

This and most of the rest of the damage to civilians on October 7 was meted out by Israeli heavy weapons, not Hamas’s light firearms

But what about the rockets? Since unlike Israel, Hamas doesn’t enjoy billions of dollars worth of of US-taxpayer-provided weaponry, it fires relatively unsophisticated rockets that cannot take out hardened military targets, but do frighten and occasionally harm Israeli “civilians.” So… is that terrorism? No—because Israelis are settlers, not civilians. Under international law, military resistance against occupation, including targeting settlers, is legitimate. So we can argue about proportionality—I would assert that Hamas errs on the side of mercy by doing a whole lot less settler-killing than it has every right to be doing — but at the end of the day, international law, morality, and basic common sense dictate that Hamas’s use of rockets to retaliate against massive genocide is justifiable… and rational, as part of a multi-pronged strategy to keep raising the costs of occupation to the point that the genocidal occupier will finally take Helen Thomas’s advice and “get the hell out of Palestine.”

Arguing with Orwell’s O’Brien

You know who has lost the argument not only by Godwin’s law a.k.a. reducto ad Hitlerum, but also by which party feels the need to use coercion to force the other party to shut up. The Zionist terrorists have not only lost the argument, they have no argument. No wonder they ceaselessly invoke Hitler and the Nazis. And no wonder they constantly run professors out of universities, get media personalities fired, launch specious persecutions and prosecutions, and generally terrorize everyone into going along with their genocidal absurdities.

Arguing with a Zionist is like arguing with Orwell’s O’Brien: He knows he’s full of shit, has no compunctions about it, and is going to do whatever it takes to ruin your life.

By saying “I like Hamas,” I’m supporting an anti-terrorist group that the Zionist terrorists have falsely and mendaciously labeled, in true Orwellian fashion, “terrorists.” Maybe they’ll try to get me prosecuted for “material support for anti-terrorism,” though I haven’t mailed so much as a dirham to Hamas, POB 123, Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestine, nor have I contributed to any Hamas GoFundMe’s or bought any donuts from the nice little old Hamas ladies at the local mosque. (If they were selling baclava, I’d consider it.)

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably have to admit that the reason that you haven’t yet come around to openly supporting Hamas is fear: fear of what the Zionists might do to you. Well, I’m here to tell you that fear isn’t the right word for that. The correct word is cowardice.

The Palestinians continue to unite in resistance to genocide, even as the Zionists respond by forcing their children to die agonizing deaths, by the thousands, beneath mountains of rubble. And you can’t even openly and publicly admit that you support that Resistance? Come to think of it, maybe cowardice isn’t the right word. It isn’t strong enough.

Come on, grow some stones. Say it with me: “I… SUPPORT… HAMAS.”

Video link

October 29, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran vows to ignore US warnings on Israel

RT | October 29, 2023

Tehran will ignore US warnings not to intervene in the Hamas-Israel conflict, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said. He also blasted the West over alleged reluctance to help end the hostilities.

In an interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera on Saturday, Raisi said that Washington “is asking us not to move while providing broad support to the Zionist entity… This is an invalid demand.”

The Iranian president also claimed that Israel’s expanded ground operations in Gaza were a failure, describing it as “the second victory [for Palestinians] following [the launch of] Operation al-Aqsa Storm,” referring to the initial surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.

He also said that the United States had sent messages to the ‘Axis of Resistance’ – referring to an informal alliance of anti-Western and anti-Israel forces in the Middle East – and “received a practical and public answer on the ground.”

Raisi went on to accuse the US and some unnamed European countries of “obstructing the ceasefire in Gaza,” calling such policies “a crime.” He added that “the United States’ calculations in the region are completely wrong, and said it will not achieve its goals with a new Middle East,” stressing that Tehran’s support for the Palestinians “is not subject to compromise.”

After the Hamas attack on Israel earlier this month, US President Joe Biden pledged unconditional support for Israel while warning Iran to be “careful.” At the same time, he stopped short of backing a cessation of hostilities, with several US media outlets reporting that the State Department had distributed a memo to its diplomats advising them to avoid calling for “de-escalation” or a “ceasefire” in Gaza.

Publicly, Biden has said that ceasefire talks cannot begin until Hamas releases more than 200 hostages. Meanwhile, on Monday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict, saying he believed there was consensus among the bloc’s members on the matter.

Raisi’s comments come after Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned the US that “new fronts will be opened up” against Washington if it does not change its policies in the Middle East, including its unequivocal support for Israel.

October 29, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran, Russia, Hamas officials discuss Gaza-Israel war in Moscow

The Cradle | October 27, 2023

Authorities from Iran, Russia, and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas met on 27 October at the Iranian Embassy in Moscow to discuss the Gaza-Israel war.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani was invited by his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Bogdanov, to discuss a potential ceasefire between Palestine and Israel with Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official.

“Inviting the movement’s leadership to visit Moscow is a message to the whole world that Russia considers Hamas a national liberation movement and not a terrorist movement,” Abu Marzouk told Russian media on Friday, noting that President Vladimir Putin “graciously did justice to the Hamas movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people and protected it politically in the Security Council and the UN.”

During Thursday’s meeting, Kani solidified Tehran’s “undoubtable” support for Palestine. “Tehran’s priorities in talks with foreign sides are declaring an immediate ceasefire, providing aid to people, and lifting the repressive blockade of Gaza,” the Iranian Embassy in Moscow quoted the Iranian official.

Iranian and Russian diplomats held separate talks and discussed the need for a ceasefire in the war between Palestine and Israel and the urgency of delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.

A member of Hamas’ political bureau revealed to Sputnik that the Hamas delegation discussed the region’s future and how this differs from the US narrative.

Israeli authorities were not pleased with the meeting held in Moscow, saying that this was a show of Russia’s support for Hamas.

“Israel condemns the invitation of senior Hamas officials to Moscow, which is an act of support of terrorism and legitimizes the atrocities of Hamas terrorists,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said on social media. “We call on the Russian government to expel the Hamas terrorists immediately.”

Russia has actively monitored the situation between Palestine and Israel, putting forward multiple draft resolutions in the UN Security Council to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the US and its allies have struck down these resolutions.

October 27, 2023 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

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