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Gaza killings: Names and faces of those killed by Israeli forces this week

Middle East Eye | May 15, 2018

Eight-month-old Laila is youngest Palestinian killed in Gaza on Monday, the deadliest day since 2014 war.

From left: Ahmed Alrantisi, Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, Ahmed Altetr, Alaa Alkhatib Ezz el-din Alsamaak, Motassem Abu Louley (screengrab)

Sixty-two people were either killed or died of wounds inflicted by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Monday and Tuesday as thousands of Palestinians demonstrated across the occupied territory to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Gaza Ministry of Health released the names of 59 Palestinians killed:

1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old

2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old

3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old

4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old

5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old

6. Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, 18 years old

7. Eman Ali Sadiq Alsheikh, 19 years old

8. Zayid Mohamed Hasan Omar, 19 years old

9. Motassem Fawzy Abu Louley, 20 years old

10. Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh, 21 years old

11. Mohamed Abd Alsalam Harz, 21 years old

From left: Fadi Abu Salah, Motaz Al-Nunu, Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh

12. Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, 22 years old

13. Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, 22 years old

14. Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, 23 years old

15. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23 years old

16. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shahadah, 23 years old

17. Ahmed Awad Allah, 24 years old

18. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, 25 years old

19. Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26 years old

20. Bilal Ahmed Abu Diqah, 26 years old

21. Ahmed Majed Qaasim Ata Allah, 27 years old

From left: Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah (screengrab)

22. Mahmoud Rabah Abu Maamar, 28 years old

23.Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, 28 years old

24. Ahmed Fawzy Altetr, 28 years old

25. Mohamed Abdelrahman Meqdad, 28 years old

26. Obaidah Salim Farhan, 30 years old

27. Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, 30 years old

28. Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, 30 years old

29. Motaz Bassam Kamil Al-Nunu, 31 years old

30. Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, 31 years old

31. Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, 31 years old

32. Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, 32 years old

33. Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, 35 years old

From left: Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, Obaidah Salim Farhan (screengrab)

34. Mohammed Mahmoud Abdulmoti Abdal’al, 39 years old

35. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27 years old

36. Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk, 30 years old

37. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Alrantisi, 27 years old

38. Alaa Alnoor Ahmed Alkhatib, 28 years old

39. Mahmoud Yahya Abdawahab Hussain, 24 years old

40. Ahmed Abdullah Aladini, 30 years old

41. Saadi Said Fahmi Abu Salah, 16 years old

42. Ahmed Zahir Hamid Alshawa, 24 years old

43. Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, 33 years old

44. Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, 34 years old

45. Mokhtar Kaamil Salim Abu Khamash, 23 years old

46. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, 21 years old

47. Abdulrahman Sami Abu Mattar, 18 years old

48. Ahmed Salim Alyaan Aljarf, 26 years old

From left: Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk (screengrab)

49. Mahmoud Sulayman Ibrahim Aql, 32 years old

50. Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah, 25 years old

51. Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old

52. Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old

53. Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old

54. Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old

55. Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old

56. Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old

57. Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old

58. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old

59. Bilal Badeer Hussein Al-Ashram, 18 years old

60 – 62: Unidentified

Middle East Eye has live coverage of protests in Palestine and Israel here.

May 15, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Trump / Israel Collusion on Syria

By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | May 15, 2018

Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.

In presenting their own self-serving narrative of lies and distortions that Iran is conducting a ‘secret’ nuclear weapons program, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump remain oblivious to the stunning hypocrisy of their own duplicity and stupidity; as if the rest of the world does not see through their pathological deceits. In their most recent public presentations, both pathetically flawed individuals, trapped in a Matrix of their own, continue to confuse war with peace and have no clue how to distinguish the difference.

Publicly projecting one’s own evil agenda onto an ill-fated population is an old political trick to deflect attention from one’s own sins while pointing the finger elsewhere and it would come as no surprise to discover that National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has dual citizenship with Israel, has been the key choreographer.

Immediately after Trump’s April 3rdtime to get out of Syria” and ‘bring our troops home” statement, an alleged gas attack occurred on April 7th that was allegedly ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That attack was followed by Netanyahu’s April 30th dog and pony show as a warm up for Trump’s much anticipated announcement withdrawing from the nuclear accord with Iran (JCPOA) on May 8th. By May 9th, Netanyahu was in Moscow viewing the Russian Victory Day parade along side Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We can only speculate on the details of the Putin-Netanyahu conversation but it is an unlikely coincidence that Russia’s previous plan to provide its sophisticated S300 surface to air missile system to Syria has been put on the backburner and it appears the Russians took no active role to counter the Israeli offensive.

As reported in Haaretz, Netanyahu used the old cliché with Putin that “Israeli has the right to defend itself in the face of Iranian aggression and as Putin should be aware, that is smokescreen lingo for Israel will pursue its policy of death and destruction throughout the Middle East with no apologies to anyone and international law be damned.

All this of course comes after the US, Israel, Saudis and their proxies suffered a humiliating defeat in Syria thanks to the Russians in the air and Iranians on the ground, both of which provided military assistance at the request of Assad.

Netanyahu’s promise to provide a ‘new and conclusive proof of a secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive” proved to be nothing more than a rehash of outdated, useless talking points.

It was not an oversight that Netanyahu failed to provide his own data about Israel’s super secret nuclear weapon arsenal which has been kept top-secret since the 1960’s. Estimated at 200 nuclear warheads in a 2016 email by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former President Jimmy Carter revised his estimate upwards in 2014 to 300 Israeli nuclear warheads while in 1996 the authoritative Jane’s magazine put the number at 400 Israel nuclear warheads. If American intelligence was correct in 1986 that Israel had 200 nuclear warheads, with a production schedule of ten each year since the mid 1970’s, a more accurate current estimate could be as high as 600 Israeli nuclear warheads.

It might have been worth the price of admission to hear Netanyahu’s response to Iran’s Hassan Rouhani’s first UN visit as President in 2013 when he called for a ‘nuclear free zone’ in the Middle East? Or let’s hear Netanyahu or Trump explain how Iran signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968 with its Parliament ratifying the Treaty in 1970 while Israel has consistently refused to sign and refused to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its nuclear facilities? The NNPT has now been signed by 191 nations, not including Israel.

It is astonishing that after his ‘fake news’ testimony before a subservient Congress in 2002, Netanyahu continues to perpetuate the Iran lie practically word for word as he perpetuated the Iraq wmd lie in 2002:

“there is no question whatsoever, that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development nuclear weapons, no question whatsoever – and there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately…”

While Trump’s long anticipated declaration relied heavily on scare tactics, bombast and a barrage of belligerent, unverified accusations citing ‘new evidence’ presented at Netanyahu’s flim-flam event, Trump failed to provide one iota of evidence that Iran had not been in compliance with the Agreement. Trump failed to explain how attempts to improve the Agreement had failed and totally missed the irony when he dutifully parroted that Iran’s ‘regime has funded a long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people” as if America’s history of spreading global chaos and terror remains a Deep State secret.

Within hours of Trump’s green light, Israel initiated a massive bombing attack on Iranian positions in Syria, according to Haaretz, firing from Israeli positions in the disputed Golan Heights in southwest Syria. The GH, which is within missile range of Damascus, has been occupied by Israel since the Six Day War in 1967 and remains internationally recognized as Syrian territory.

The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) reported that its Iron Dome missile defense system was deployed and intercepted some twenty incoming projectiles in what may have been an unprecedented return volley from Syria which Israel labelled as an “act of aggression”. The Iron Dome system was built for Israel by the American weapons manufacturer Raytheon and with Congress funding the system, courtesy of $705 Million from the American taxpayer.

As Israel Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said referring to an increased US budget allotment for Israel, “I thank our great friend the United States, which has invested $6.5 billion to defend the skies of the State of Israel.”

The speed and ease with which Israel stepped in and took control has been stunning, requiring the capitulation of Trump and Putin as Israel assumed all the authority to initiate attacks with no fear of reprimand or being held accountable to anyone. With the same confident assurance since the confiscation of Arab lands for Israeli settlements began in 1947, Israel has never been a nation that respected diplomatic protocol or honored international law.

Meanwhile, Members of the US Congress continue to “sit in their places with bright, shiny faces.”

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.

May 15, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump served legal notice warning of Israeli false flag operation

MEMO | May 15, 2018

US President Donald Trump has been served with a legal notice reminding him of his Constitutional duties with regard to the situation in the Middle East, especially his decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and warning him of an impending Israeli false flag operation likely to threaten the lives of US citizens. America’s responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council are also pointed out by the signatories to the notice, who are British journalist Sarah Jane (Lauren) Booth; former CIA Operations Officer Phil Geraldi; ex-Pentagon official Michael Maloof; Scott Bennett, a former US Army Officer and State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism; ex-US Diplomat and Attorney J. Michael Springmann; and Edward C Corrigan, a Canadian Barrister and Solicitor.

Their formal letter has been sent to Trump with copies going to the International Criminal Court, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, among others. The signatories give the US President “legal notice” of “a massacre beginning at the time of the Nakba anniversary in order for you to register a response and call upon the Israelis to cease and desist in your capacity as President of the United States and a Permanent Member of the Security Council and NATO.” The address for receipt of the notice to be acknowledged is given as International Delegates of the New Horizons Conference in Tehran.

The US President is reminded that he is expected to advise the US Congress, the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court in The Hague) about this legal matter. He is warned “that ‘false flag’ attacks may be used by Israeli agents in order to assign blame to Palestinian factions and escalate the ongoing protests in Gaza and the West Bank into a larger conflict in order to falsely draw the United States and American military personnel into this artificially created conflict.” Such an attack, claim those behind the legal notice, “represents a clear and present danger to the citizens of the United States of America, because it may be designed to trigger and escalate American military actions against Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Russia, since these nations are opposed to the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem; and rising tensions already exacerbated by the US withdrawal from the [nuclear deal with Iran].”

The initiation of this impending attack, Trump has been told, will involve a new and higher level massacre of Palestinian civilians protesting against the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Furthermore, the letter serves as “Legal Notice [that] the United States can have no military alliance due to the fact that Israel has no internationally recognised fixed territorial borders which are required to be defined in such an agreement.” This notice, it is pointed out, will be “EXHIBIT 1 in any war crimes investigation and prosecution (past, present, future) relating to this matter.” There are, it is claimed, “national and international legal violations” involved.

The signatories cite a number of publications as evidence of the seriousness of their claims and warning to the President, and seek legal protection for themselves against “any retaliation, detainment, investigation, sequestration, interrogation, discrimination, imprisonment, torture, financial consequences, or any other negative or prejudicial consequences or actions taken against them.” Indeed, the former government and military officers and officials seek “whistle-blower protection” because they are “fulfilling [their] oaths to the US Constitution.”

May 15, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Stomach-Churning Victim Blaming by “Labour Friends of Israel”

By Craig Murray | May 14, 2018

The true face of the organisation calling itself “Labour Friends of Israel” has been revealed today, in truly disgusting victim-blaming tweets reacting to the massacre of over fifty Palestinians – including yet more children – by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza.

No Israelis were injured and no “border communities” attacked. This amplification of the worst extreme right wing zionist propaganda by the Likud government shows beyond doubt that “Labour Friends of Israel” is nothing whatsoever to do with the professed values of the Labour Party, but rather a well-funded entryist front solely intended to promote the interests of a violent, expansionist and aggressive foreign state.

I am not a Labour Party member and I do not know what institutional ties the “Labour Friends of Israel” has to the Labour Party, but whatever they are they should be cut off immediately.

The “Labour Friends of Israel” featured very prominently on our TV screens after the recent English local elections, beating the drum for their widespread accusations of anti-semitism within the Labour Party. They have been driving that agenda for many months. One would like to think that the mainstream media would, after today, cease to accept them as a genuine and well-motivated group and understand them for the hate-filled fanatics they truly are. Of course that will not happen, and they will be back on television shortly accusing yet more lifelong anti-racism campaigners who have the temerity to criticise Israel.

May 15, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

When Is a Massacre Not a Massacre?

By Craig Murray | May 14, 2018

On the day the Israeli Defence Force massacred dozens of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and maimed over 400 more, our media has carefully avoided the use of the word massacre. Here is a Google search of News I did five minutes ago on the word “massacre”.

A massacre occurred today in which more people were killed than at Glencoe. All of them were unarmed and the majority were well over a hundred yards from the border fence. It says everything about the kind of nightmare fascist state Israel now is, that if you look through those news results for “massacre”, the only mention you get of Palestinians is a claim by the Israeli Defence Force that the Palestinian Defence Forces were planning a massacre of Israelis.

The Turkish government have now come out with a statement condemning the massacre, and in the UK the Daily Express and the Daily Star have both reported that; but both have chosen to put the word “massacre” in the Turkish statement into inverted commas, as though it were not true.

The Western media far prefers the word “clashes” to “massacre”. Because those terrible Palestinians insist upon demonstrating against the continuing theft of all their land and resources, and keep attacking innocent Israeli bullets with their heads and bodies. If you look through the Google search of News this time for “clashes”, you discover that the western and Israeli media peculiarly have precisely the same preference for this entirely inappropriate word. That, again, is fascinating.

The gross injustice of the apartheid state of Israel appears immutable. The overwhelming force of the political and financial Establishment is behind Israel in the West, in the Russian oligarchy and even in most of the horribly corrupt leadership of Arab states. But the situation is not as dire as it seems, because the hold of those Establishment elites on the people they exploit has never been more shaky. Israel remains a touchstone issue. In order to help redress the terrible agony of the Palestinians, we must first effect a change in our own system of elite exploitation of the people at home. That change is coming.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

America’s Jerusalem embassy for mass murder, occupation and wider war

By Finian Cunningham | RT | May 14, 2018

How obscenely ironic. Embassies traditionally symbolize diplomacy and peace. The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was occasioned by a grotesque baptism of murder of Palestinians, heralding wider war in the Middle East.

Not only that, but on the very anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes of ethnic cleansing and dispossession over the past century – the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians – the US government is brazenly siding with the heirs of that historic violence, the Israeli state.

Trump’s wholesale abandonment of any shame in endorsing Israeli violations against Arab historic rights is an incitement to regional conflagration.

It’s hard to express the horror. Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, while some 100 kilometers away in Jerusalem, US dignitaries and evangelical pastors were blessing the opening of Washington’s new embassy as ‘God’s work’.

US President Donald Trump’s policy in the Middle East, if you could call it “policy”, has descended into absolute lunacy. No wonder, most European states stayed away from the US reception for unveiling its new diplomatic center.

Trump’s reckless disregard for Palestinian-Israeli peace is plunging the region into a blood bath. This week’s incendiary snub to Palestinians and the wider Arab region followed his tearing up of US obligations to the Iran nuclear accord. That violation of an international treaty has left diplomats from Europe, Russia, China and Iran scrambling to salvage a deal, which if it falls apart will unleash more instability and even war in the Middle East.

When Trump announced in December the moving of his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it was roundly rebuked at the United Nations. The move violates decades of international consensus that Jerusalem should be a shared capital between Palestinians and Israelis pending the outcome of peace negotiations.

Trump said his decision was merely a “reflection of reality”. Cynically, it marks US acquiescence to illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

To be fair, Washington’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem was made over 20 years ago in 1995. Presidents Clinton, GW Bush and Obama opted to delay the actual move, claiming that such a move depended on progress in peace talks. Trump has now put into action legislation that was already on the books.

But what his declaration signifies is the jettisoning of any pretense by the US of being an “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now refuse to even engage with US officials, such is their disgust.

Paradoxically, Trump is helping to clarify the situation. The US is openly backing Israeli conquest of Palestinian territory and oppression of Palestinians. Washington is now transparently complicit in criminal Israeli policy rather than hiding behind a facade of mediation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump this week for “making Israel great again”. With typical chutzpah, Netanyahu urged other nations to follow suit, absurdly claiming that by relocating their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem they would facilitate peace.

The perverse logic, as proven already by the US policy, is that any chance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is being utterly destroyed.

The hellish conditions that Palestinians are subjected to under relentless Israeli occupation are driving them to the desperate act of lining up in their thousands under the fire of Israeli snipers.

Over the past six weeks since Gaza’s population began the “Great Return March” some 50 unarmed protesters have been murdered by Israeli live fire. On the day of the US Embassy opening, dozens of more civilians were shot dead, within hours of the Jerusalem ceremony.

Israeli commanders have openly admitted that a shoot-to-kill tactic is being used whereby soldiers are even targeting children who dare to approach a separation barrier on Gaza’s eastern border with Israeli-held territory.

The Gaza protests were organized by ordinary Palestinians to highlight their desperate plea against a barbaric occupation and prevention of residents returning to their historic homes, including in Jerusalem. Some 70 per cent of Gaza’s population are descended from refugees who were displaced by Israeli settlers in the 1948 pogroms and later in the 1967 War.

Under Israeli siege, which the UN has described as illegal, Gazans are prevented from moving out of the coastal strip. Some two million people – half of whom are under 18 years old – subsist in unlivable conditions. Over 90 per cent of Gaza’s water supply is contaminated, electricity is available for only a few hours per day, fisherman are prevented from going beyond a few miles from the shore where human sewage runs directly into the sea.

As American historian Norman Finkelstein points out, Gaza is being tormented by military occupation, an inhuman blockade, massacres conducted with impunity by Israeli military, and children being poisoned. It is this context of genocide in which the recent protests are taking place.

Those protests were organized to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declared foundation on May 14, 1948. The next day, May 15, is what the Palestinians and many supporters around the world prefer to focus on – the Catastrophe.

Trump’s decision to open the US Embassy in Jerusalem this week could not be more provocative and criminally insane.

It truly is a shockingly callous display of US support for seven decades of barbaric oppression against Palestinians and the wider Arab region.

Jerusalem is seen as a holy site for Muslims and Christians. Washington’s acquiescing to Israel’s declaration of the city as “undivided capital” of the Jewish Israeli state is an outrageous blow to hundreds of millions of people from other faiths. As well as a vandalistic swipe at world opinion based on ordinary principles of justice, morality and compassion towards the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Europe bears a heavy responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. After Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006, the EU and the US both moved to sanction the new Hamas government owing to its refusal to recognize the state of Israel. The Israeli siege on Gaza has thus been perpetrated with the complicity of the EU and the US, albeit the latter appearing more brazenly complicit under Trump.

European governments may be discomfited by Trump’s strident contempt for Palestinian rights and international law. But they have contributed to the present deterioration in the Middle East by pandering towards Washington’s policies of sponsoring Israeli occupation, as well as sponsoring reactionary Arab client regimes like Saudi Arabia, and fomenting illegal wars and regime-change operations.

Trump’s impetuousness and ignorance – no doubt encouraged by multi-million-dollar donations from rich Jewish Americans like Sheldon Adelson – has set the US on a collision course with the Arab masses from his insolent indifference to their rights. As if that could not be any more combustible, Trump is pushing the same Israeli-Saudi despot agenda of hostility towards Iran, as evinced by the nuclear accord sabotage.

Europe has for too long tied itself to the shipwreck that is US policy in the Middle East. Surely, European governments must realize by now that if explosive violence and conflict is to be avoided in the Middle East, they must abandon the US shipwreck and begin asserting an independent foreign policy.

A genuine peace process advocating for long-neglected Palestinian rights, and repudiating US attempts to collapse the Iran nuclear accord are two immediate matters for the Europeans to claw back some sanity and respect – before it’s too late.

Read more:

US ‘totally unconcerned about loss of Palestinian lives’ – ex-UNHRC official to RT

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish Past vs Jewish State

Young Palestinians protestors at the Gaza border carry signs in Hebrew: “Soldier, we are not objects, we are human beings.’
By Gilad Atzmon | May 14, 2018

Zionism promised to solve the Jewish problem. It vowed to fix Diaspora Jews by means of a ‘homecoming,’ to make the Jews loved, empathic, bond them to the soil; in essence, to make them ‘people like all other people.’

The horrific scenes flooding in from Gaza today demonstrate that Zionism failed miserably. The Jewish State is an embarrassment to its original humanist endeavour and to humanity in general.

Just today, at least 43 Palestinian protestors have been killed and 2,200 wounded by Israeli troops at the Gaza border. Some reports suggest that half of the injuries were caused by live ammunition. This is  devastating news. The criminality of Israel is institutional. This is not about one odd sniper who laughs as he shoots a young Palestinian in the knee, crippling him for life. Israel is displaying a systematic hierarchic murderous apparatus designed to sustain the oppression of the indigenous people of the land for an unlimited period.

Despite the Zionist dream, the Jewish state isn’t loved by its neighbours. It isn’t loved by the rest of the world either. In fact Israel’s actions evoke global repulsion. Instead of solving the Jewish problem, Zionism has only relocated the problem and amplified the symptoms it vowed to eliminate.

Truth can be a disturbing notion; no matter how much you try to suppress it, truth manages to come out. Accordingly, it is impossible to grasp the history of Jewish suffering without taking into consideration the atrocious actions of the Jewish state.  As it happens, Israeli politics is driven by a complete dismissal of the other. The Israeli military operation in Gaza is simply a license to murder. One would hope that a state that names itself the Jewish State would be slightly more vigilant with its excessive  use of power.

By now I believe that Israel is going to be remembered as the darkest chapter in Jewish history and beyond.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

My Home is Beit Daras: Our Lingering Nakba

By Ramzy Baroud | American Herald Tribune | May 14, 2018

When Google Earth was initially released in 2001, I immediately rushed to locate a village that no longer exists on a map, which now delineates a whole different reality.

Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp, and then moved to and lived in the United States, finding a village that was erased from the map decades earlier was not, at least for me, an irrational act. The village of Beit Daras was the single most important piece of earth that truly mattered to me.

But I could only find it by estimation. Beit Daras was located 32-kilometers northeast of Gaza, on an elevated ground, perched gently between a large hill and a small river that seemed to never run dry.

A once peaceful village, Beit Daras had existed for millennia. Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans ruled over and, even tried to subdue Beit Daras as in all of Palestine; yet they failed. True, each invader left their mark – ancient Roman tunnels, a Crusaders’ castle, a Mamluk mail building, an Ottoman khan (Caravanserai) – but they were all eventually driven out. It wasn’t until 1948 that Beit Daras, that tenacious village with a population of merely 3,000 was emptied of its population, and later destroyed.

The agony of the inhabitants of Beit Daras and their descendants lingers on after all of these years. The tragic way that Beit Daras was conquered by invading Zionist forces has left behind blood stains and emotional scars that have never healed.

Three battles were bravely fought by the Badrasawis, as the dwellers of Beit Daras are called, in defense of their village. At the end, the Zionist militias, the Haganah, with the help of British weapons and strategic assistance, routed out the humble resistance, which consisted mostly of villagers fighting with old rifles.

The ‘massacre of Beit Daras’ that followed remains a subdued scream that pierces through the hearts of Badrasawis after all of these years. Those who survived became refugees and are mostly living in the Gaza Strip. Under siege, successive wars and endless strife, their Nakba – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48 – has never truly ended. One cannot dispel the pain if the wound never truly heals.

Born into a family of refugees in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Gaza, I took pride in being a Badrasawi. Our resistance has garnered us the reputation of being ‘stubborn’ and the uncorroborated claims of having large heads. We truly are stubborn, proud and generous, for Beit Daras was erased but the collective identity it has given us remained intact, regardless of whichever exile we may find ourselves.

As I child, I learned to be proud from my grandfather: A handsome, elegant, strong peasant with unshakable faith. He managed to hide his deep sadness so well after he was expelled from his home in Palestine, along with his entire family. As he aged, he would sit for hours, between prayers, searching within his soul for the beautiful memories of his past. Occasionally, he would let out a mournful sigh, a few tears; yet he never accepted his defeat, or the idea that Beit Daras was forever gone.

“Why bother to haul the good blankets on the back of a donkey, exposing them to the dust of the journey, while we know that it’s a matter of a week or so before we return to Beit Daras?” he told his bewildered wife, Zeinab as they hauled their children to navigate an endless exile.

I cannot pinpoint the moment when my grandfather discovered that his “good blankets” were gone forever, that all that remained of his village were two giant concrete pillars, and piles of cactus.

It isn’t easy to construct a history that, only several decades ago, was, along with every standing building of that village, blown to smithereens with the very intent of erasing it from existence. Most historic references written of Beit Daras, whether by Israeli or Palestinian historians, were brief, and ultimately resulted in delineating the fall of Beit Daras as just one among nearly 600 Palestinian villages that were often evacuated and then completely flattened during the war years. It was another episode in a more compounded tragedy that has seen the dispossession and expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.

But for my family, it was much more than that. Beit Daras was our very dignity. Grandpas’ calloused hands and leathery weathered skin attested to the decades of hard labor tending the rocky soil in the fields of Palestine. It was a popular pastime for my brothers and I to point to a scar on his body to hear a gut-busting tale of the rigors of farm-life.

Later in life, someone would give him a small hand-held radio to glean the latest news and he would, from that moment, never be seen without it. As a child, I recall him listening to the Arab Voice news on that battered radio. It once had been blue but now had faded to white with age. Its bulging batteries were duct-taped to the back. Sitting with the radio up to his ear and fighting to hear the reporter amidst the static, grandpa listened and waited for the announcer to make that long-awaiting call: “To the people of Beit Daras: your lands have been liberated, go back to your village.”

The day grandpa died, his faithful radio was lying on the pillow close to his ear so that even then he might catch the announcement for which he had waited for so long. He wanted to comprehend his dispossession as a simple glitch in the world’s consciousness that was sure to be corrected and straightened out in time.

But it didn’t. 70 years later, my people are still refugees. Not just the Badrasawis, but millions of Palestinians, scattered in refugee camps all across the Middle East. Those refugees, while still searching for a safe path that would take them home, often find themselves on yet another journey, another dusty trail, being pushed out time and again from one city to the next, from one country to another, even lost between continents.

My grandfather was buried in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp cemetery, not in Beit Daras as he had wished. But he remained a Badrasawi to the end, holding so passionately onto the memories of a place that for him – for all of us – remain sacred and real.

What Israel still fails to understand that the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees is not merely a political or even a legal right to be overpowered by the ever-unfair status quo. It has long surpassed that into a whole different realm. For me, Beit Daras is not just a piece of earth but a perpetual fight for justice that shall never cease, because the Badrasawis belong to Beit Daras and nowhere else.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Western leaders betrayed Palestinians 70 years ago. There is no sign that’s about to change

Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever since the Nakba, one that historians scouring the archives have exploded

The National – May 13, 2018

On Monday and Tuesday, Palestinians will commemorate the anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, their mass expulsion and dispossession 70 years ago as the new state of Israel was built on the ruins of their homeland. As a result, most Palestinians were turned into refugees, denied by Israel the right to return to their homes.

Israel is braced nervously for many tens of thousands to turn out in the occupied territories this week to protest against decades of its refusal to make amends or end its oppressive rule.

The move on Monday of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a city under belligerent occupation, has only inflamed Palestinian grievances – and a sense that the West is still conspiring in their dispossession.

The expected focus of the protests is Gaza, where unarmed Palestinians have been massing every Friday since late March at the perimeter fence that encages two million of them.

For their troubles, they have faced a hail of live ammunition, rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas. Dozens have been killed and many hundreds more maimed, including children.

But for more than a month, Israel has been working to manage western perceptions of the protests in ways designed to discredit the outpouring of anger from Palestinians. In a message all too readily accepted by some western audiences, Israel has presented the protests as a “security threat”.

Israeli officials have even argued before the country’s high court that the protesters lack any rights – that army snipers are entitled to shoot them, even if facing no danger – because Israel is supposedly in a “state of war” with Gaza, defending itself.

Many Americans and Europeans, worried about an influx of “economic migrants” flooding into their own countries, readily sympathise with Israel’s concerns – and its actions.

Until now, the vast majority of Gaza’s protesters have been peaceful and made no attempt to break through the fence.

But Israel claims that Hamas will exploit this week’s protests in Gaza to encourage Palestinians to storm the fence. The implication is that the protesters will be crossing a “border” and “entering” Israel illegally.

The truth is rather different. There is no border because there is no Palestinian state. Israel has made sure of that. Palestinians live under occupation, with Israel controlling every aspect of their lives. In Gaza, even the air and sea are Israel’s domain.

Meanwhile, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former lands – now in Israel – is recognised in international law.

Nonetheless, Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever since the Nakba, myths that historians scouring the archives have slowly exploded.

One claim – that Arab leaders told the 750,000 Palestinian refugees to flee in 1948 – was in fact invented by Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. He hoped it would deflect US pressure on Israel to honour its obligations to allow the refugees back.

Even had the refugees chosen to leave during the heat of battle, rather than wait to be expelled, it would not have justified denying them a right to return when the fighting finished. It was that refusal that transformed flight into ethnic cleansing.

In another myth unsupported by the records, Ben Gurion is said to have appealed to the refugees to come back.

In truth, Israel defined Palestinians who tried to return to their lands as “infiltrators”. That entitled Israeli security officials to shoot them on sight – in what was effectively execution as a deterrence policy.

Nothing much has changed seven decades on. A majority of Gaza’s population today are descended from refugees driven into the enclave in 1948. They have been penned up like cattle ever since. That is why the Palestinians’ current protests take place under the banner of the March of Return.

For decades, Israel has not only denied Palestinians the prospect of a minimal state. It has carved Palestinian territories into a series of ghettos – and in the case of Gaza, blockaded it for 12 years, choking it into a humanitarian catastrophe.

Despite this, Israel wants the world to view Gaza as an embryonic Palestinian state, supposedly liberated from occupation in 2005 when it pulled out several thousand Jewish settlers.

Again, this narrative has been crafted only to deceive. Hamas has never been allowed to rule Gaza, any more than Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank.

But echoing the events of the Nakba, Israel has cast the protesters as “infiltrators”, a narrative that has left most observers strangely indifferent to the fate of Palestinian youth demonstrating for their freedom.

Once again, these executions, supposedly carried out by the Israeli army in self-defence, are intended to dissuade Palestinians from demanding their rights.

Israel is not defending its borders but the walls of cages it has built to safeguard the continuing theft of Palestinian land and preserve Jewish privilege.

In the West Bank, the prison contracts by the day as Jewish settlers and the Israeli army steal more land. In Gaza’s case, the prison cannot be shrunk any smaller.

For many years, world heads of state have castigated Palestinians for using violence and lambasted Hamas for firing rockets out of Gaza.

But now that young Palestinians prefer to take up mass civil disobedience, their plight is barely attracting attention, let alone sympathy. Instead, they are criticised for “breaching the border” and threatening Israel’s security.

The only legitimate struggle for Palestinians, it seems, is keeping quiet, allowing their lands to be plundered and their children to be starved.

Western leaders and the public betrayed the Palestinians in 1948. There is no sign, 70 years on, that the West is about to change its ways.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Seven decades after the Nakba, Palestinians want nothing more than to return to their land and live in dignity

By Mousa Abu Marzouq | MEMO | May 14, 2018

Two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are slowly being suffocated. Over 40 per cent of Gazans are unemployed; there is virtually no economy; no electricity; the water is undrinkable; and the medical system has collapsed. It is the Israeli occupation that is responsible for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza due to its 11-year-old siege imposed on the coastal enclave.

Since 2007, following Hamas’s victory in internationally-monitored elections, Israel has retained absolute control over the movement of people and goods via Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, and land borders. This blockade subjects Gaza’s population to collective punishment, in contravention of international law.

Confronted with such oppression and the world’s silence in response to Israeli war-crimes, Palestinians in Gaza have no other option than to raise their voices in protest. Seventy per cent of Gaza’s population are refugees, or descendants of refugees, who were violently expelled from their homeland in 1948 to make way for the Zionist state of Israel. Israelis celebrate this land-grab as “independence” but for Palestinians it is the Nakba (catastrophe).

We, Palestinians have never been allowed to return to our land, despite United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 guaranteeing us this inalienable right. In the Israeli apartheid state, Palestinians are stripped of their humanity; their identity reduced to that of “demographic threat”.

Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians have been participating in the Great Return March (GRM), sending a united message to Israel and the world: We have the right to return to our homeland that was stolen from us in 1948. We have the right to move freely, to have electricity, to travel, to work. Through the GRM movement, Palestinians are not only demanding the right to return – but also the right to live.

The GRM is not Hamas-driven; it is Palestinian-inspired and driven.  It is the embodiment of Palestinian popular resistance involving youth, women, and all Palestinians that steadfastly refuse to collaborate with the occupiers, accept Israeli occupation and submit to Zionist apartheid.  They are fighting back, armed only with their rights and international law.

The GRM also shows that the Palestinian people are determined to achieve their freedom, their independence, and their right to return to the villages that they were forced out of 70 years ago.

These protests have also shown the world the brutality of the Israeli occupation government. Israeli forces use jeeps and drones to fire tear gas at paramedics and children. Dozens of snipers, armed with internationally-prohibited explosive bullets designed to permanently maim, have been stationed along the border, targeting and killing unarmed protesters like 15-year old Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, and journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein. Israeli bullets have, so far, killed 50 Palestinians and injured more than 7000 people over the last six weeks.

By killing and wounding so many, Israel had hoped that the masses would retreat, that the protests would subside and, eventually, end. This was not the case, and popular resistance will intensify as we approach 15 May, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.

Like the apartheid South African government, Israel justifies its decades of state terrorism by demonising legitimate resistance movements, especially Hamas. Hamas was established only in 1987. What then explains the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since 1948? What explains Israeli settlements and land thefts, Palestinian home demolitions, forced displacement, disproportionate use of force, detention without trial, arrest without due process, denial of entry, land confiscations, and movement restrictions against Palestinians for over 50 years? Israel can no longer rationalise its oppression of Palestinians by blaming Palestinians who exercise their natural and internationally-recognised right to resist.

The GRM is a turning point, just as the 1960 Sharpeville massacre was a turning point in South Africa’s liberation struggle. In Gaza, the world is witnessing an apartheid military regime killing non-violent protesters. The world did not look away from Sharpeville, and it must not look away from occupied Palestine either. The Palestinian call for justice, freedom and dignity must be heard and respected. Seventy years after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to become refugees through Zionist massacres and violence, we, our children and our grandchildren remain firm on our desire to exercise our right to return home.  For Palestinians – and especially Palestinian refugees – the GRM represents a reclaiming of our dignity, and an announcement to the world that we will not accept the oppression of our people. We will continue resisting, the occupation will end, and we will achieve our liberation.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel bans entry of medical delegation into Gaza

Palestine Information Center | May 13, 2018

RAMALLAH – The Israeli occupation authorities on Sunday decided to prevent a Palestinian medical delegation from entering the Gaza Strip.

Ministry of Health said in a statement that the Israeli authorities refused to issue the necessary entry permits for the members of the medical delegation formed by the Palestinian Minister of Health in Ramallah Jawad Awwad to assist medical staff in Gaza.

The Ministry stressed that this ban is a further crime committed against the Gazan people who are also prevented from travelling abroad for treatment.

The Ministry called on international organizations to pressure Israel to allow medical teams to visit Gaza and help the staff working there.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Army Kills 41 Palestinians In Gaza: Health Ministry

IMEMC News – May 14, 2018

The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that Israeli soldiers killed, Monday, 41 Palestinians, including children and four officers of the Ministry of Interior and National Security, in the Gaza Strip, and injured more than 1700.

The Ministry of Interior and National Security said among the slain Palestinians are four of its officers, identified as:

Mousa Jaber Abu Hassanein, 36 – medic, Civil Defense Department.
Mo’taz Bassam an-Nuno, 30 – Internal Security Department.
Mos’ab Yousef Abu Leila, 30 – Military Intelligence Department.
Jihad Mohammad Mousa, 30 – Internal Security Department.

It said the slain officers were performing their duties and national services when the soldiers shot them dead.

Their deaths bring the number of Palestinians, killed by Israeli army fire since morning hours Monday, to 37, while more than 1700 have been injured, including many who suffered serious wounds.

Among the slain Palestinians are five children, including one girl, and among the wounded are 122 children, and 44 women.

27 of the wounded Palestinians suffered very serious wounds, 59 serious injuries, 735 moderate wounds, and 882 suffered light wounds.

772 of the wounded Palestinians were shot with live rounds, three with rubber-coated steel bullets, 91 with shrapnel, 100 cuts and bruises and 737 suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

65 of the wounded were shot in the head and neck, 116 in their arms, 48 in the chest and back, 651 in the lower extremities, 52 in several parts of their bodies and 737 suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

The soldiers also caused damage to at least one ambulance, and injured one medic and eleven journalists.

In addition, the Health Ministry called on Egypt to urgently send emergency medical supplies and specialists, mainly surgeons, intensive care physicians, anesthesia specialists, and to allow the transfer of a large number of the wounded to Egyptian hospitals, especially those in need of urgent surgeries, since Gaza hospitals lack the needed supplies due to the siege on the coastal region.

May 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment