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Silenced: Journalists in Gaza, south Lebanon killed for exposing Zionist crimes

By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | November 25, 2023

“Life will not last, hug those you love.” This was a post the 25-year-old Lebanese journalist Farah Omar had pinned on her X account, formerly Twitter, days before her killing.

Omar and her colleague Rabih al-Maamari, Beirut-based journalists, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday while reporting from the outskirts of the town of Tayr Harfa – about 3.5 kilometers from the Lebanese border with occupied territories.

A video clip of the location where they were targeted showed bodies strewn in an open field, a camera mounted on a tripod and press vests scattered all around the place.

Omar had been working as an editor and correspondent for the Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen news network since 2021.

The intrepid journalist had covered important events for the channel, including the Turkish presidential elections in May and the Lebanese parliamentary elections in 2022.

“Farah is gone, but there will be a million more like her… What happened is an offering for the sake of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group), and the resistance will live on,” the grieving father said at his daughter’s funeral.

In her last tweet, the young war reporter had lauded Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement for seizing an Israeli ship, calling it “a heroic and honorable act.”

“Known for her bravery, Farah insisted on covering the unfolding events in southern Lebanon, conveying the truth, and giving the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of her message,” her employers said in a statement after her tragic death.

A senior Al Mayadeen photojournalist Maamari, also killed in the attack, was working with the Beirut-based news network since 2012. Father of two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively, he was an important member of Al Mayadeen’s news team.

The 44-year-old photojournalist was in the field since October 7, covering all developments in southern Lebanon amid the Israeli regime’s indiscriminate shelling.

In its condolence message, the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah condemned the heinous crime, extending its commiserations to the Al Mayadeen channel and the families of the two martyrs, asserting that the Israeli aggression “will not go unanswered.”

In his statement, the Lebanese caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati said the attack “proves once again that there are no limits to Israeli crimes, and that its only goal is to silence the media that exposes its crimes.”

Al Mayadeen’s director Ghassan Bin Jeddou, in his statement, said “Every correspondent in Lebanon today feels like Farah and every cameraman in Lebanon also feels like Rabih.”

Shooting the messenger

The killing of two Lebanese journalists came amid a spate of murderous attacks by the Israeli regime on journalists in both southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip since October 7.

As of November 25, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 53 journalists and media workers are among more than 14,000 Palestinians killed in the besieged Gaza Strip since the no-holds-barred onslaught was launched seven weeks ago.

Independent Palestinian groups have put the number of fatalities of journalists much higher.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, in a statement on Saturday, said 66 journalists and media professionals have been killed in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7.

A day before the killing of Omar and Maamari, a Palestinian freelance journalist Ayat Khadoura was killed along with her family members in an Israeli strike on her home in Beit Lahya, northern Gaza.

On November 6, Khadoura shared a video called “my last message to the world”, in which she said: “We had big dreams but our dream now is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”

On the same day that Khadoura was killed, Alaa Taher Al-Hassanat, a Palestinian journalist and presenter at AlMajedat Media Network, was also killed with her family members.

A day before their killing, on November 19, Jadallah, a prominent Palestinian journalist and director of Press House-Palestine was killed in his car in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike.

On November 18, Abdelhalim Awad, a media worker and driver for the Al-Aqsa TV was killed in an Israeli airstrike. His killing came hours after Mansour, director of the Quds News Network, and his colleague Hassouneh Salim were killed in an airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

Hassouneh Salim, a Palestinian freelance photojournalist, was also killed in the same airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp. Mostafa El Sawaf, a Gaza-based writer and analyst was also killed on the same day with his wife and two sons in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City.

Amro Salah Abu Hayah, a media worker with Al-Aqsa TV, and Ashour, a photojournalist, were also killed the same day in separate attacks. Ashour’s killing reportedly has taken place before.

Ahmed Fatima, a photojournalist for Al Qahera TV and a worker with Press House Palestine, was killed on November 13. The same day, Yaacoub Al-Barsh, a director of the Namaa Radio, succumbed to his injuries sustained in an attack a November 12.

On November 10, Ahmed Al-Qara, a photojournalist who worked for Al-Aqsa University and was a freelance journalist, was killed in an Israeli airstrike near Khan Yunis.

Three days before that, Yahya Abu Manih, a journalist with A-Aqsa radio station, was killed in a strike in Gaza City. Mohamed Abu Hassira, who worked for Wafa news agency, was also killed on the same day along with 42 members of his extended family.

Mohamed Al Jaja, a consultant at Press House Palestine, was killed in an airstrike with his wife and two daughters on November 5 in the Al-Naser neighborhood in northern Gaza.

On November 2, Mohammed Abu Hatab, a journalist and correspondent for Palestine TV was killed along with 11 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Yunis.

A day before that, Majd Fadl Arandas, a member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, was killed in an airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Iyad Matar, an Al-Aqsa TV journalist, was also killed earlier that day with his mother in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza – cemetery of journalists

It was the continuation of the killing spree of journalists in the Gaza Strip, occupied West Bank and southern Lebanon that started on October 7.

In the last seven weeks, hundreds of other journalists have also been reported missing, detained, or injured or their media offices and homes have been damaged in Israeli strikes.

The attack on Omar and Maamari was not an isolated incident in southern Lebanon. Israeli regime attacked a group of journalists there on 13 October as well, killing Essam Abdullah of Reuters and wounding three other journalists working for AFP and Al Jazeera.

CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg has dubbed the Israeli aggression since October 7 as the “deadliest period for journalists covering conflicts that CPJ has ever documented”, adding that they have been recording attacks on journalists for more than thirty years worldwide.

In a statement, an organization for journalists in the Middle East and North Africa, CPJ MENA called for an “independent investigation” into the killing of journalists and emphasized that “journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties.”

Describing Gaza as the “cemetery of journalists,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also voiced its concerns over journalism being eradicated in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s aggression and a refusal to heed calls to protect media personnel.

“This rate of attrition among media workers has deeply shocked journalists the world over. No one can watch the growing tally of fallen colleagues without mounting horror,” Anthony Bellanger, the secretary-general for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said in a statement on November 2.

RSF asserted that journalists were clearly identifiable by the virtue of wearing press vests and that missiles that struck them came from occupied Palestinian territories.

The Paris-based organization also submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on October 31, saying the Israeli regime perpetrated war crimes against journalists in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Jonathan Dagher, the head of RSF’s West Asia desk said this is “one of the deadliest tolls in a century”, adding that “reporters there have no safe refuge and no way of leaving.”

“They are being killed one after another. Since 7 October, the Palestinian territory has been subjected to a veritable eradication of journalism,” he said.

November 25, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

ANALYSIS: HOW THE UK AND US MEDIA DEHUMANISE PALESTINIANS

BY CLAIRE LAUTERBACH AND NAMIR SHABIBI | DECLASSIFIED UK | NOVEMBER 22, 2023

Nazis. Beneath animals.

This is a small sample of what Palestinians have been called by commentators speaking to Western media outlets in the last month of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – examples of the bestiary of zoological terms natural to a coloniser’s view of the colonised.

Political philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote during France’s colonial war in Algeria of “hordes of vital statistics”, “hysterical masses”, “faces bereft of all humanity”, and “children who seem to belong to nobody”.

These are all terms that could describe how western media covers the suffering of Palestinians —  “a tide of humanity… a teeming mass of Gazans”, as the BBC put it (15 October). This is all sharply in focus since Hamas’ October offensive, and Israel’s genocidal razing of the Gaza strip.

We analysed the front page coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza by five major US and UK news media — the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC (the news landing page at 7am daily) between 7-26 October.

Over these three weeks following Hamas’ offensive, the mechanics of the Western press’ dehumanisation of Palestinians in death and life are revealed as clinical and routine.

Israelis are murdered, Palestinians die

The dehumanisation process begins (or ends) with questioning who counts in death, and how the killer and the victim are portrayed.

In the UK-US mainstream media, Israelis die actively. They are either killed or murdered by Hamas, or “after a surprise Palestinian attack”. “The Palestinians” stands in for “Hamas” for sloppy or ideological editors, for example in the Guardian on 8 October.

Palestinian civilians, by contrast, die passively – and yet it is they who have done most of the dying since 7 October; over ten times the number of Israelis killed.

Gazans aren’t killed by Israeli forces or Israeli government policies. They “dehydrate to death as clean water runs out” (Guardian, 18 October) while Israeli airstrikes “continue to pound the Palestinian territory”.

On 9 October, the BBC ran with “700 people have been killed on the Israeli side with more than 400 also dead in Gaza”, presumably succumbing to shock or an act of God.

On 8 November, the Times of London noted: “Israelis marked a month since Hamas killed 1,400 people and kidnapped 240, starting a war in which 10,300 Palestinians are said to have died”, which is of course qualified.

Palestinian deaths are natural, undifferentiated. This is only possible because the media treat Israel’s blockade of Gaza as wholly logical, proportionate and even restrained.

Violations of international law

Collective punishment, which is essentially what Israel is doing by striking civilian “targets” and totally blockading the “open prison” (in former prime minister David Cameron’s words), is also illegal. This is the view of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, UN human rights chief Volker Türk and Human Rights Watch, among others.

When UN chief António Guterres noted Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine and called for an end to the siege, Israel’s UN representative demanded he resign. At least one of Guterres’ colleagues, the head of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Craig Mokhiber, resigned of his own accord, protesting Israel’s “genocide unfolding before our eyes” in Palestine.

However, in none of the three weeks’ of front-page headlines and lead paragraphs for the five UK-US media analysed for this article are Israel’s serial violations of international law mentioned.

The exclusion of this important context on Israel’s crimes is important. As journalists we’re trained to account for the fact that most people don’t read beyond the headlines or first paragraphs.

Off the front page, some media published separate analysis pieces, such as the New York Times’ “Israel, Gaza and the laws of war” (12 October). This unsurprisingly goes nowhere near calling Israel’s crimes what they are: crimes.

Despite discussing at length how civilians cannot be targeted or disproportionately harmed for military purposes, the closest the New York Times gets to criticising the action of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is quoting the opinion of an expert on siege law.

This was that Israel’s siege is “an unusually clear-cut example of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is considered a violation of international humanitarian law, a crime against humanity and a war crime” (emphasis added).

A swift qualifier follows: “Jurisdiction over some war crimes would depend on whether the conflict is considered inter-state.” So some crimes are not a crime as long as Palestine or Palestinians don’t exist, as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir asserted over 50 years ago, repeated by current Israeli politicians.

By contrast, Hamas’ actions are, to the same cited expert, “not close calls”.

Preventable deaths

Moving on from, or ignoring completely, both the illegality of Israel’s total siege of Gaza, the UK-US media portray the starvation and preventable deaths resulting directly from it in almost entirely passive, naturalistic language.

For example, the Washington Post’s print version front page: “Civilian harm in Gaza looms over Biden’s visit; Rising human toll from attacks could threaten Israel’s global backing” (harm arising of course from Israel’s battering).

On 13 October, from the New York Times : “300,000 homeless in battered Gaza as food runs low” (because Israel is blocking food from entering Gaza). It continues: “Hospitals overwhelmed and fuel scarce” (because Israel is blocking medical supplies and fuel from reaching Gaza) “as Israel strikes back at Hamas.”

That’s fine then – the reader should feel at ease since Israel’s crushing of hospitals is merely an act of “self-defence”.

The Israeli military is not much a fan of Gazan hospitals – it regularly bombs them. It ordered 23 hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate on 13 October, and seems to have been picking them off, with patients inside, ever since.

When Israel might have gone too far, as it did in almost certainly bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October, most outlets covered the strike by repeating both Israel’s and Hamas’ “he said-she said” accusations against the other.

Nevertheless, the New York Times gave the IDF’s denial more weight with “Hamas fails to make case that Israel struck hospital” (23 October, emphasis added), which is a catchier headline than “We don’t know, and don’t want to work it out ourselves”.

Meanwhile, the Times ran with “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”, swiftly adding that “Israel denies responsibility and blames jihadis”, with no comment from a Palestinian voice.

Mirroring the discrepancy between how Palestinians have died (passively, often with no mention of Israeli actions) and Israelis have died (actively, directly attributed to Hamas or “Palestinian” actions) is how the media describes child victims of both sides.

Discussing a prisoner exchange, a Washington Post columnist described Israel’s “children hostages” while referring to Palestinian children as “young people”. Under Military Order 1591, the Israeli government can hold minors as young as 12 without trial and potentially indefinitely in “administrative detention”, UNICEF reports.

When Gazan civilian deaths from siege and strikes against civilian infrastructure are shown as authorless natural disasters rather than as war crimes, any access Gazans get to essential goods becomes “aid” or “relief”, and every tiny amount allowed to reach them is an act of Israeli mercy.

For example, the New York Times (19 October): “Deal lays groundwork for aid to reach desperate Gazans”. Or the Washington Post (12 October): “Closed borders, falling bombs choke Gaza; thousands injured as supplies wane”, adding “humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens” (due to Israeli siege, let’s not forget).

Also in the Washington Post is the incredible headline (16 October) “As Palestinian death toll rises, aid stuck in Egypt”, as if it couldn’t physically fit through the door, which ignores the fact that Israel prevented aid from entering Israel via Rafah, demanding proof it would not be diverted to Hamas.

The numbers

Having reduced Palestinians to numbers, the work then becomes to cast doubt on these numbers.

When Israel’s flattening of Gaza began raising international alarm, Biden said he didn’t trust that “Palestinians” (or the Hamas government, since to him the distinction is irrelevant) “are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”

His statement was the latest in a time-honoured tradition of US administrations disputing the number of deaths wreaked by their allies abroad, from Suharto’s Indonesia, to Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s and Saudi Arabia today, as historian Bradely Simpson notes.

No one seriously disputes the Gazan Ministry of Health’s numbers as too high. If anything, they are likely a serious undercount given how many bodies are trapped under rubble.

Nevertheless, the attribution of figures to the “Gaza Ministry of Health” is now almost always prefaced by “Hamas-government” or followed by “controlled by Hamas”. This would seem an odd waste of words, considering that everyone from the UN to the US State Department cites Gazan health ministry casualty data, and Gaza’s government is run by Hamas.

Dead Palestinians are simply irrelevant for some media. The first mention of Palestinian deaths in Times headlines occurred 11 days after Hamas’ assault: “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”. It had by then run several front page pieces about specific, named Israeli victims, including an in-depth profile (with portrait) of a kibbutz family horrifically killed by the Hamas-led offensive [or not].

Unsurprisingly, on 12 October, the Telegraph published the number of Israelis killed in factors of “9/11s” in a striking infographic which didn’t even bother to include an estimate of Palestinian deaths.

Double standards

Once a people are truly dehumanised, it becomes logical – necessary, even – to apply a wholly different standard of (in)decency to them.

UK-US media report Palestinian deaths passively, as if through apparent acts of God, often couching the deaths in language suggesting that they were mostly Hamas or Hamas-adjacent, or at least that they inconveniently stood in missiles’ way.

For still-breathing Palestinians, it is not enough to have somehow escaped being killed by the almost 6,000 bombs Israel launched in its first six days punishing the densely populated territory. This is more than the US, not usually known for its restraint, deployed in any single year of its war in Afghanistan.

A living Palestinian must justify his or her continued aliveness by disavowing Hamas. A viral example of this can be seen in BBC Newsnight’s interview of the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot.

Presenter Kirsty Wark barely flinched upon hearing Zomlot describe in detail how members of his family had been killed by Israeli strikes in the previous days before repeatedly demanding Zomlot condemn Hamas’ actions.

To reverse this, in other words, to ask every Israeli who had lost a family member in this conflict to first begin by condemning Israel’s murders and collective punishment of civilian Gazans would be rightly seen as outrageous. Unsurprisingly, we have not seen any examples of such in the Western press.

The UK-US press also tells us that to support Palestinians is to support Hamas, in case anyone doubted the conflation.

The BBC declared London’s peaceful pro-Palestine protesters as providing “backing for Hamas.” It later retracted its “poorly phrased” comments.

Sky News did no better in using images of peaceful protesters bearing Palestinian flags to accompany its discussion of efforts by the London Metropolitan Police to “tackle extremism”.

These “slips” pale in comparison with the virulently offensive terms guests on BBC programmes have called Palestinians, completely unchallenged by their hosts.

For example, BBC Arabic hosted former Israeli intelligence veteran-turned academic, Mordechai Kedar who refused to recognise popular Israeli racism towards Palestinians, claiming that bestial comparisons of Palestinians are “denigrating to animals.”

Tellingly, the BBC Arabic host neither ejected Kedar from the interview, nor did she admonish him and demand an apology. Instead, the host pivoted away from Kedar’s genocidal language with the comment “that’s your opinion”.

Platforming Israeli justifications

UK-US media have also taken to running pieces platforming Israeli justifications for the IDF’s actions when the staggering number of dead Gazan civilians was becoming harder to write around.

“How Israelis justify scale of airstrikes” ran the New York version front page of the New York Times on 26 October. It was later rewritten as “Israel’s strikes on Gaza are some of the most intense this century”.

It is unthinkable that a Western newspaper would carry a piece platforming in the same benign-to-neutral terms Palestinian rage, or worse, justifications for Hamas’ crimes.

Another trend is to normalise Israel’s actions by focusing not on its costs in Gazan lives, but its intentions which, of course, are shown as benign. (Note: intentions don’t matter in the laws of war.)

Three days into Israel’s illegal total blockade of Gaza, the BBC asked: “Could an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza meet its aims?” (14 October). Charitably characterising Netanyahu as “risk-averse” (for Israelis, not Palestinians), the New York Times ran with “All-out war is untried ground”, comforting readers that “limited strikes in past were safe politically”.

Dissenting voices: harder to hear

Journalists at the BBC and Agence France Presse (AFP) who have been critical of their agencies’ bias against Palestinian lives and minimisation of Israeli war crimes told Declassified that there is no space to discuss editorial concerns.

Palestinian commentators have seen their segments edited out of mainstream news programmes. Palestinian Americans report their events are being cancelled while they’re called Hamas supporters.

Meanwhile, a senior editor at US publication Newsweek called for Gaza to be flattened to resemble a parking lot, apparently without censure.

Elsewhere in the media ecosystem, an official of the UK’s communications regulator OFCOM, Fadzai Madzingira, was suspended for a social media post criticising UK support for “ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians” and “this vile colonial alliance”.

None of these points – that Israel may be committing genocide, that it continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinian land or that Israel was founded as a colonial project which still uses settler outposts to consolidate territorial control – is outside of reasonable analysis of historical facts.

It’s looking an awful lot like the beginning (or end, depending on your starting point) of a genocide.

The IDF has instructed all Palestinians to flee south of the Wadi Gaza area “for their safety” from Israeli strikes. Some were struck as they were evacuating, and Palestinians are still being shelled by the IDF in southern refuge areas.

Soldiers plant Israeli flags on Gazan beaches, while Israel’s intelligence agency floats the idea of permanently expelling Gazans to Egyptian Sinai as a preferred solution. Netanyahu invokes a Bible passage where God orders the Israelites “to put to death men and women, children and infants” of a rival kingdom.

Still, the New York Times uncritically presents Netanyahu as “seeking [a] permanent end to threat but not a reoccupation” (13 October).

That last bastion of dissent, gallows humour, is also at grave risk. Michael Eisen, editor of science journal eLife, was sacked for posting on Twitter an article from humour site the Onion, with the headline “Dying Gazans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas”.

The Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell’s contract was not renewed after his sketch of Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach with an outline of Gaza was deemed too reminiscent of the “pound of flesh” anti-semitic trope.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a cartoon of a Hamas official with Gazan children and women strapped to him saying “How dare Israel attack civilians”. It’s since been deleted following racism complaints.

Yet the cartoonist is still drawing for mainstream media. Last week he published another cartoon in the Las Vegas Review showing a (fat, black) woman with a Black Lives Matter t-shirt holding up a sign saying “Terrorist Lives Matter: Blame Israel, Support Hamas”.

How dare Israel attack civilians indeed.

Claire Lauterbach is an independent investigative journalist and producer. She is the former Head of Investigations at Privacy International where she investigated the use and abuse of surveillance and military technologies, and a former Senior Investigator at Global Witness. Claire previously investigated war crimes in Goma, DR Congo for Human Rights Watch.

Namir Shabibi is an independent investigative journalist, visiting lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Westminster, and PhD candidate researching covert paramilitary action in the ‘War on Terror’. He is a former International Committee of the Red Cross delegate investigating breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Darfur and Guantanamo Bay.

November 25, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestine’s days of glory

By lecridespeuples | Resistance News Unfiltered | November 25, 2023 

Just two months ago, no one could have predicted the earthquake of October 7, which was by no means a massacre perpetrated by Hamas, but a spectacular military operation that decimated the Gaza Brigade in less than 3 hours.

And after the deluge of iron and fire that fell on the besieged Palestinian people, in a real war of extermination waged by the fanatical, distraught and desperate Netanyahu government, eager to wash away Israel’s defeat in blood, the hideous face of the temporary usurping entity was revealed to the world: its insatiable morbid thirst, its open contempt for the most elementary morality and the rule of law displayed with the medieval blockade on drinking water, foodstuffs, electricity and fuel, its deliberate targeting of hospitals, women and children killed by the thousands, down to premature babies asphyxiated by the dozens as a result of their incubators being shut down, all part of an assumed plan to render the territory of Gaza uninhabitable and deport over two million Palestinians to the Sinai desert. Faced with such an apocalyptic scenario, who could have imagined that Hamas would be able to bring the enemy to heel in less than two months?

The prisoner exchange agreement that has just been signed is no more and no less than what Hamas proposed from the outset: a partial exchange (men for men, women for women and children for children), or a total exchange (all Palestinian prisoners for all Israeli prisoners). The people of Gaza, subjected to a savage assault unprecedented in modern history, pushed to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe of biblical proportions, abandoned by all (with the notable exception of the Axis of Resistance, in particular Hezbollah, Yemen and the Iraqi resistance), held firm and stayed the course despite unimaginable suffering. Once again, it was Israel, “more fragile than a spider’s web” in Nasrallah’s famous words at the Liberation of southern Lebanon in 2000, that had to bend, bogged down in the sands of Gaza in the face of heroic urban guerrilla warfare, as it failed from achieving the slightest military feat: rockets have continued to reach Tel Aviv and beyond, no area of Gaza is safe for the occupying forces bled dry by constant attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds of soldiers (official Israeli casualty figures are only a fraction of the reality), no leading (or even second-tier) Resistance cadres have been killed, and the populations of Gaza evacuated to the south are returning en masse to the north, braving every danger.

This is a truly historic achievement. The tiny Gaza Strip forced the occupier to yield in less than 50 days, whereas it took two years for a prisoner exchange to be concluded between Israel and Hezbollah in 2008, and more than 5 years for Hamas to release Gilad Shalit in 2011, in exchange for more than 1,000 prisoners (including Yahya Sinwar, the current Hamas leader in Gaza).

Israel’s humiliation could not be greater. And it’s not just Netanyahu, but the whole entity: government, army and society, which are closer than ever to collapse. Zionist leaders promised never to agree to a ceasefire before they annihilate Hamas, but now they’re giving in to al-Qassam’s every whim. And, the icing on the cake, the Israeli prisoners were not being held in southern Gaza, but in the north, shelled, occupied and raked by the occupier, who was chasing the mirage of liberating its citizens by force, coercion and mass terrorism.

Since 1948, the massacres perpetrated by Israel have aimed to drive the Palestinian people to despair, division and renunciation, but they have only served to push them ever more resolutely onto the path of armed resistance. Hamas once again demonstrated the validity of this choice on October 7, and the unity of the Palestinian people and their cause despite geographical and political separation, by overexposing Gaza to come to the aid of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel’s disproportionate reaction, motivated by rage, the quest for revenge and the will to impose collective punishment on the Palestinians in order to break them and set them against the Resistance, failed miserably and even led to the opposite result: far beyond Palestine, the monstrosity of the occupying army convinced more people than ever of the impossibility of peaceful coexistence. This prisoner exchange, snatched up in record time, will only strengthen the conviction of the Palestinian and Arab-Muslim peoples that the armed struggle is the only possible path to Liberation, and increase its appeal, strength and power tenfold.

The scenes of jubilation in Palestine, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, celebrating the release of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel, will be remembered as one of the greatest days of triumph for Palestinian resistance. Only a people of indomitable character, truly a legendary people, could wrest such a victory from the occupier. In its impotent rage, Israel increased the number of raids on the homes of the families of the prisoners who were about to be released, banning the festivities and confiscating pastries and sweets, even threatening the freed children with recapture if they took part in any public gathering, but it was an effort as pitiful as it was futile. The Palestinian people are indomitable, and no threat could prevent them from celebrating this resounding victory of David over Goliath.

As for the freed Israelis, in view of the public relations disaster caused by 83-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz’s statements following her release by Hamas on humanitarian grounds, in which she praised the humanity of her captors whom she had gratefully shaken hands with, the only “festivities” planned are interrogation by the Shin Bet and a ban on speaking to the media, except to make statements pre-written by the Israeli propaganda machine. While this will be a great relief for the families of the freed captives, it is a day of mourning for Israel.

One question remains: did the release of a few hundred, or even all, of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners (for already, this outcome seems inescapable) justify all these sacrifices? More than 20,000 dead, half of them women and children, Dantean destruction, untold suffering, and a veritable programmed annihilation of the Gaza Strip? The answer lies first and foremost with the Palestinian people. And there is no doubt about it. Yes, a thousand times yes.

When a Palestinian asked Hanane Barghouti, who had just been released, what message she had for the children of Gaza, and in particular for the thousands of them killed by Israeli bombardment, she replied: “O children of Gaza, we will meet again in paradise. We will meet again in paradise. And this victory is yours.“

This has been the message of the people of Gaza since October 7. There are countless videos of men, women and children emerging from the rubble, the sole survivors of their families, finding themselves alone in the world and deprived of everything, and pledging again their loyalty to the Resistance. Even as they embrace the lifeless bodies of their children, Palestinians cry out that “As long as the Resistance is well, all is well.”

The scale of the massacres and suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza is beyond comprehension; but their patience, resilience and unwavering attachment to their cause are even greater. As Khader Adnan, the martyred prisoner who repeatedly defeated the occupation from within the gaols through his hunger strikes, put it,

“Some fight for their daily bread, but others fight for something nobler, namely our freedom, dignity and honor. Dignity can’t be bought, it can’t be sold, but it can be snatched by force, by empty stomachs. They want to break our dignity and yours, but we defend our honor and yours. Why are we abandoning Hisham [Abu Hawash, a Palestinian prisoner who spent 141 days on hunger strike before winning his case]? Who are we abandoning him to? To which dogs among the settlers? To [Naftali] Bennett? To [Benny] Gantz? When their bestiality is well known? Have we lost all dignity to let the occupation trample us like this? Have we lost all honor? Have we lost all our trump cards, to the point of letting the occupier kill our dignity by killing Hisham?”

Indeed, it’s not just a question of freeing prisoners: beyond this imperative ethical, humanitarian and national duty, it’s a question of reaffirming the dignity of an entire people, and reminding the world that its struggle is sacred and will only cease with martyrdom or victory. For rather than wait for illusory help from the international community or the Arab League, rather than let themselves be killed slowly and disappear in silence, the Palestinian people listened to Khader Adnan’s exhortations and preferred to take matters into their own hands to acquire their freedom, whatever the price.

At the end, it’s the struggle for the liberation of ALL Palestine that’s at stake. This prisoner-exchange agreement is a major milestone in this process, and has shattered all of Netanyahu’s illusions: while he dreamed of definitively liquidating the Palestinian cause, he will probably go down in history as the main gravedigger of the usurping entity.

The colonial anachronism that is Israel, created at a time when the old empires were collapsing, will not disappear without violence, because any struggle for decolonization and liberation requires immense sacrifices. In the eyes of the Palestinians, none will ever be too great for Al-Quds (Jerusalem), the Al-Aqsa mosque and the land of Palestine. Not to mention their priceless dignity.

Through their unrivalled courage, unyielding determination and heroic resistance, the Palestinian people have not only wrested their rights and dignity from Israel: they have commanded the respect and even admiration of the entire world, and put their struggle back at the forefront of international issues.

This dazzling victory is only a prelude to others, far more spectacular.

November 25, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Spain blasts Israeli accusations after criticizing Gaza genocide

Press TV – November 25, 2023

Spain has lashed out at Israel for “terror” accusations, calling them “false and out of place” after Madrid criticized Tel Aviv for killing more than 14,000 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares condemned Israel’s allegations against prime ministers of Spain and Belgium as “unacceptable”, vowing “a response.”

Albares’ comments came hours after Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo were “giving support to terrorism,” and summoned both nations’ ambassadors in Tel Aviv for a “harsh rebuke.”

Albares stressed that Israel’s “false” accusations were “especially serious” given the fact that Spain is representing the European Union as the current president of the EU Council, a position that will be handed over to Belgium on January 1, 2024.

Speaking with Spanish media, Albares had criticized “unbearable number of Palestinian victims, including children” killed by Israeli attacks during a tour of West Asia.

“This is not incompatible with the message we’ve been repeating since day one … the right to defend itself must be with the scrupulous respect toward international humanitarian law,” he had said.

Sanchez is visiting Israel, Palestine and Egypt in a bid to put an end to Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.

“Violence will only lead to more violence. We need to replace violence with hope and peace,” said Sanchez on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Friday.

His tour, however, ended in a diplomatic blow-up with Israel.

On Friday, Barcelona City Council suspended the city’s relations with the Israeli regime as long as the latter continues its ongoing deadly war against the Gaza Strip.

November 25, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

German government’s pro-Israeli policy not supported by public: Poll

MEMO | November 24, 2023

The German government’s pro-Israel stance on the Gaza war is not supported by the public, a new poll revealed on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

The poll by the Allensbach Institute found that the majority of Germans are against taking sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and strongly oppose providing military support to Israel.

Some 43 per cent of those surveyed said Germany should stay out of the conflict, and only 34 per cent said they agree with the view that Germany bears special responsibility for Israel due to its Nazi past.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly said that Israel’s security is non-negotiable, and in the current conflict with Hamas, Germany “has only one place” and that is “firmly at the side of Israel”.

In the poll, only 31 per cent of respondents backed Scholz’s approach, and said they are supporting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza against Hamas.

In contrast, 38 per cent of those surveyed said Israel should be urged to exercise restraint to prevent casualties among the Palestinian civilian population.

The poll showed that the majority of the Germans expect the government to take a more balanced stance and step up efforts for a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Overall, 57 per cent of Germans said Scholz’s government should pursue a mediating role between the warring parties.

Meanwhile, 17 per cent of the respondents criticised the Israeli government, saying it does not want peace at all.

Around 38 per cent said Israel has “too little understanding for its Arab neighbours” and “unjust occupying territories”.

Asked about the German government’s offer of military support to Israel, the majority of the respondents opposed sending ammunition or weapons.

Some 8 per cent of Germans said they support sending weapons, and only 3 per cent said the German armed forces, Bundeswehr, should offer to support Israel in its military campaign.

November 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook greenlit ads inciting violence against Palestinians

The Cradle | November 24, 2023

The Intercept revealed on 21 November that Facebook has allowed incendiary advertisements that promote violence against Palestinians to appear on its platform; more specifically, several ads calling for a “Holocaust for the Palestinians.”

Even though such derogatory phrases are a direct violation of Facebook’s policies, ads containing phrases such as “wiping out Gazan women and children” were able to pass through moderation filters.

Nadim Nashif, the founder of 7amleh, a Palestinian organization specializing in social media research and advocacy, remarked that green lighting of these advertisements represents yet another misstep by Meta in its dealings with Palestinians, adding that “throughout the crisis, we have seen a continued pattern of Meta’s clear bias and discrimination against Palestinians.”

Advertisements in Hebrew and Arabic, breaching Facebook and Meta’s guidelines, were submitted. Some of these ads overtly promoted violence, explicitly urging the killing of Palestinian civilians.

The initiative to scrutinize Facebook’s automated content moderation system arose after Nashif noticed an advertisement on Facebook blatantly advocating for the assassination of Palestinian rights advocate Paul Larudee.

This promoted content bypassed Facebook’s automated systems to filter out dangerous material. Even though the advertisement was eventually taken down after a complaint was lodged, it raised serious concerns about how such explicit calls for murder, clearly against Facebook’s policies, managed to get approved for display on the platform.

The advertisement calling for the murder of the Palestinian rights advocate was sponsored by a far-right group known as Ad Kan, established by a former Israeli military official.

November 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Over 90% of pro-Palestinian content deleted since Oct. 7 on social media following Israel’s request

The New Arab | November 22, 2023

Social networking sites, mostly Meta-owned, have deleted thousands of pro-Palestinian posts since the outbreak of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, in response to Tel Aviv’s request to do so.

The Israeli Attorney General’s Office has sent approximately 9,500 requests since October 7 to Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – as well as the video-sharing app TikTok, to remove content related to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, according to a recent report published by Forbes.

As a result, around 94 percent of that content has been deleted, digital researcher Mona Shttayeh said in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher, citing the report.

The number of requests to delete such content has increased since the report’s publication, she said.

Shtayyeh said that it is “impossible” to comprehend the magnitude of the large number of Israeli requests to restrict Palestinian content, adding that the number of demands has increased tenfold since Israel’s onslaught on the besieged strip, which has killed over 14,000 Palestinians began.

Last month, Instagram had deleted and later reinstated the Eye on Palestine account, which has been a source of on-the-ground images and videos in Gaza.

Prior to the war, pro-Palestinian content already experienced censorship, restrictions and shadow-banning. In 2021, Facebook was accused by activists for censoring Palestine-related posts on its platform on Israel’s military assault in Gaza and protests against forced expulsions of Sheikh Jarrah families in the same year. The social networking giant was then investigated, and found guilty of violating Palestinian human rights in documenting Israeli atrocities.

Last year, in 2022, prominent Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid said she was shadow-banned when attempting to post Palestinian content relating to the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Instagram Stories feature.

Shttayeh also stressed that incitement and hate speech against Palestinians on social media also increased as Israel’s military campaign in Gaza began.

Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian censorship online could witness a significant increase following the Knesset’s approval of a draft law banning the consumption of terrorist publications earlier this month.

Digital advocacy group 7amleh told The New Arab in a press release that the bill could pave the way for “the preemptive criminalisation” of people who have neither committed nor planned any crime. The draft law could also increase the Israeli authorities’ surveillance of Arab Palestinian citizens while infringing on their rights to privacy, freedom of expression and the right to access information.

There have been several cases of Palestinian citizens of Israel being arrested for sharing pro-Palestinian content on social media, including singer Dalal Abu Amneh who wrote “there is no victor but God”, in support of Gaza.

November 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Marching for Israel? American and Israeli war criminals celebrate together

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 24, 2023

For those who missed it or chose to ignore it, there was a large demonstration in Washington on Tuesday the 14th dubbed the “March for Israel” with many posters and signs featuring “Israel We Stand With You.” I have no big problem with Americans “standing with Israel” as long as they go over to Israel to do it and in some cases at least put their own lives at risk in so doing, but that is not the way they operate. What I do have a problem with is the cause they are supporting, namely the ethic cleansing of an entire nation or even, if required to do that, a military style genocide of the inhabitants of an area that was entirely populated by an ethnic group called Palestinians before Israel’s mostly European immigrants entered the scene and used foreign provided force majeur to steal the land and property. While so doing they were also killing thousands of locals and forcing three quarters of a million more to abandon their homes and spend their lives in refugee camps, a process of ethnic cleansing that has continued and been expanded through the creation of illegal settlements since the founding of the Jewish state 75 years ago.

The rally was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America in solidarity with Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack. Apart from backing the Israeli government in its devastating counterattack on Gaza, the stated goals of the rally were to support Israel in general, to call for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and to combat antisemitism. “Rising antisemitism” allegedly followed the October 7th Hamas attack and the Israel reaction that marked the start of the war. The usually cited source the Anti-Defamation League has stated that antisemitism has increased 388% in the US since October 6, 2023. Now one must observe that the ADL is not a reliable source when it comes to antisemitism as its agenda is clearly to send the message that Jews as a group are threatened, which is just not true to anything near the extent that is being implied. The reason why antisemitism and holocaust denial are used so often against critics is to discredit them without having to provide any evidence. For ADL, a Jewish college student walking on campus and passing a pro-Palestinian poster and being upset by it is an antisemitic incident. What I am saying is that this is an entirely faked exercise to convince the audience that Israel and Jews are the victims in spite of the fact that many more Palestinians have been killed and dispossessed since the founding of Israel in 1948. If there is any real increase in actual antisemitism it is in response to the highly visible bestiality that the Jewish state has exhibited against the original occupants of what was once Palestine. Israel wants the Pals gone and these are the first steps in what might be termed a final solution, aided and abetted by American monsters like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have made the United States complicit in war crimes.

Many participants in the Israel rally came by charter buses organized by Jewish houses of worship and schools. Most of the crowd appeared to be Jews but there was also a strong Christian Zionist component. Groups came from New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia and Miami plus other domestic and even international locations. US college students were given $250 in travel and expenses money to attend as an incentive. The crowd was considerable though there is some confusion about how many were actually in attendance. The organizers predicted 60,000 which was the number initially accepted, but other estimates of the crowd were as low as 10,000 or 25,000. The numbers quickly grew in some news stories to uncorroborated estimates of 270,000 to 300,000. There is, of course, certain bragging rights in large numbers and the March was in competition with a Palestinian rally that attracted 300,000 the week before, so let’s just accept that there was a large group present on the Mall.

Joe Biden did not personally attend the rally but he said on the following day “[that] Israel’s military operation in Gaza would stop when Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.” He left out the part of continuous abuse of Palestinians, going back 75 years and clearly is not paying attention to senior Israeli government officials who are making comments that indicate that the grand objective is to remove the Palestinians from what will soon be Eretz or Greater Israel.

Speakers at the three-hour long rally included Israel’s self-described protector in Congress Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Joni Ernst, Pastor John Hagee, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (via video from Jerusalem), who praised US President Joe Biden for his “moral clarity and bold actions…” Johnson predictably declared that “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous!” while the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt also delivered on demand a plea “Do not cower, allow no one to make you afraid.” Meanwhile Donald Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served mostly as an apologist for the Jewish state while in office, roamed the Mall expressing his joy at developments. Other notable speakers included Natan Sharansky and actress Debra Messing. Speeches followed the predictable narrative, with descriptions of how Israel had been attacked by terrorists who sought to destroy the Jewish state, that Israel is America’s best friend and closest ally, and how Israel is only defending itself from attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not speak, stated in an interview in Israel that if his country does not succeed in crushing Hamas, the next terrorist attacks would be directed against America, an evidence free claim to strengthen US resolve, but as Netanyahu hardly ever tells the truth it should be taken for what it’s worth.

And, of course, everyone’s openly stated or subliminal message was that the United States must stand by and do whatever it takes to help defend its good friend and ally, including rejecting a cease fire or negotiations and letting the slaughter of Gazan women and children continue. The discredited tales of torture and mass rapes of Israeli women and the killing by beheading of Jewish babies, which are still being replayed by President Joe Biden, were also part of the rally agenda and appeared as the messages on signs and posters. What was not mentioned however was the systematic Israeli bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, and infrastructure, all of which are war crimes, as are the attacks on high density civilian targets which have produced more than 11,000 deaths as of this writing, mostly consisting of women and children. Targeting civilians in that fashion in those numbers can and should be construed as genocide. Israel’s war on hospitals can also be regarded as part of a systematic campaign of genocide. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations, children, medical and aid workers has been elevated to an Israeli government policy to drive the Palestinians from what was once Palestine.

Official Washington was on parade and in lockstep to demonstrate its unshakable loyalty to Israel even as opinion polls suggest that the American public is tired of the charade. A couple of brave peaceniks dared to move on the fringes of the crowd with signs calling for a ceasefire to end the carnage, but they were openly derided and threatened so they kept their distance. One truly shocking attendee at the rally was former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was present and spouting the straight Israel line about how it was the victim of terrorists. Tulsi said “It is inspiring to see how many people are flooding into Washington – understanding the seriousness of this moment, coming from all over the country. Many Jewish people [and] many people who are not Jewish . . . are coming and saying that we must stand up against antisemitism. We must stand up for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we must take a strong stand against the Islamist terrorists who seek to not only exterminate the Jewish people but also to exterminate and kill anyone who does not adhere to their radical interpretation of Islam.” She sounded something like the State Department’s despicable number two Victoria Nuland looking for another country to attack. Now that RFK Jr has also obligingly rolled over for the Jewish state there is no genuine peace candidate anywhere on the horizon with the exception of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the beat of the war drums will continue to sound.

More out of sync perhaps was the presence as an ally of convenience evangelical Pastor John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group which was well represented both at the rally and as the key largest Christian Zionist component of the Israel Lobby in the US. Hagee has said that Hitler was a “half-breed Jew,” created and sent by God as a “hunter” to drive European Jews on a divine mission to fulfill prophecy by creating the state of Israel to bring about the End Time and the Second Coming of Christ followed by the Rapture of all true believers into heaven. Jews will have to convert to participate. One brings someone as controversial as Hagee out of the woodwork only to send a message that this is not about making sure that Jews are safe. It’s about showing solidarity with Israel, no matter what it does. And what kind of rally against antisemitism includes racist signs calling for more war, more bombings, and the destruction of not just Hamas but also the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Or as one sign held by a masked protester read, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you will see.”

The so-called holocaust was evoked a number of times by speakers, particularly when it came time to describe Gaza on November 7th as the biggest killing of Jews since the Second World War. Nor did anyone mention the fundamental dysfunction in the US-Israeli relationship, which is that Israel calls nearly all the shots, including the killing of 34 sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 and the more recent shooting of American citizen journalists covering Palestinian protests by Israeli Army sharpshooters. Israelis who kill Americans are never punished unlike the demands or retribution being made by speakers in Washington at the rally to kill not only all of Hamas but also the Gazan voters who elected Hamas in the first place. Though it is somewhat repetitive to say so, lest there be any confusion, that is referred to as genocide which is regarded as the most serious crime against humanity. And no one spoke up at the rally against the involvement of the US military in the operation against Gaza, which Biden is lying about and which is opposed by a majority of the public. Nor did anyone cite recent comments by US General Richard Clark that American soldiers must be “prepared to die for the Jewish state.”

Perhaps the politicians in Washington should ask US soldiers whether they are “prepared to die for the Jewish state.” Or maybe there should be called a national referendum asking the public whether it wants to continue arming and sending billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine as well. Evidence suggests that a clear majority would oppose both policies, which have hardly been debated at all in any serious way. Americans who want to “stand with Israel” should be allowed to go there with a one-way ticket in exchange for which they have to turn in their US passports as another major issue is “Who are they actually loyal to?” I’ll bet I know the answer to that one!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

November 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UN Experts Voice Alarm Over Attacks on Critics of Israeli Policies in Palestine

Sputnik – 23.11.2023

Western journalists, athletes and students who criticize Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories or share pro-Palestinian views face censorship, threats and discrimination, the UN special experts said in a fresh report, published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

“Journalists and media outlets in Israel and Western countries reporting critically about Israeli policies and operations in the occupied territories or expressing pro-Palestinian views have been the target of threats, intimidation, discrimination and retaliation, which have increased the risk of self-censorship, undermining the diversity and plurality of news that is essential for press freedom and the right of the public to be informed,” the report out Thursday read.

At least one media outlet in Israel has reportedly been threatened with closure for allegedly being “biased” toward Palestine, while pro-Palestinian content is being disproportionately and wrongfully removed by social media platforms, the experts said.

“The experts raised concerns about suspensions and expulsions of students from universities, dismissal of academics, calls for their deportation, threats to dissolve student unions and associations, and restrictions on campus meetings to express solidarity with the suffering civilians in Gaza and denounce the ongoing Israeli military response,” the report added.

In some universities, students have been blacklisted for supporting “terrorism” and threatened with diminished prospects in their future careers, according to the report.

Certain athletes, “particularly in Europe,” have been suspended from their teams and competitions after posting their opinions on the situation in the Gaza Strip on social media, while others have been threatened with suspension, termination of contracts and even deportation, the experts said.

Calls to an end to the violence in the Gaza Strip and to humanitarian ceasefire, as well as criticism of Israeli government’s policies and actions, have often “misleadingly equated with support for terrorism or anti-Semitism,” the experts said.

The document was signed by four UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights, including UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule.

On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip and breached the border, killing around 1,200 people and abducting over 200 others in neighboring Israeli communities. Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel.

On October 27, Israel launched a large-scale ground incursion inside the Gaza Strip with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people in Israel and over 14,800 in the Gaza Strip.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Health Ministry stops coordination with WHO until detainees released

Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra
Palestine Information Center – November 23, 2023

GAZA – The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza on Thursday held the Israeli occupation forces fully responsible for the lives and safety of the doctors, who were detained on Wednesday.

It announced that it will stop coordinating with World Health Organization (WHO) on the rest of evacuations until the international agency submits a report on the Israeli detention of medical personnel and until they are all released.

The spokesman of the Ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a press conference at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, “The United Nations bears full responsibility for this event, and we await appropriate and urgent measures on their part to address this situation”.

He pointed out that they were informed by the United Nations about coordination with WHO to evacuate those who were present in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, which is subject to Israeli siege, raids, and destruction, and were stranded inside the hospital with no food, water, medicine, electricity, or security.

Al-Qudra explained that a convoy from the United Nations, represented by WHO, moved on Wednesday to evacuate some of the patients and medical staff who were subjected to the most horrific Nazi practices in addition to starvation.

“We were surprised that this convoy was stopped by the Israeli checkpoint separating the north from south of Gaza, for about seven hours, during which Israeli occupation forces maltreated the patients, their companions, and the medical staff, before arresting a number of them, including Director General of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya,” Al-Qudra said.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (By AFP)

He pointed out that WHO has not yet submitted any report to the ministry to clarify what happened, including the numbers and names of detainees, stressing that the inability to communicate with Al-Shifa Medical Complex made them unable to know who was arrested.

The Ministry’s spokesman expressed his concerns over potential liquidation of those detainees.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

al-Qassam Brigades destroy 335 enemy vehicles since Israel’s ground operation started

Palestine Information Center – November 23, 2023

GAZA – Abu Obeida, the spokesman for al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, has said that the group’s fighters have destroyed 335 Israeli army vehicles fully or partially since the beginning of the Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

33 of those vehicles, including tanks, troop carriers and bulldozers, were targeted and destroyed in the last 72 hours, Abu Obeida said in a recorded statement broadcast by Al Jazeera satellite channel on Thursday evening.

Abu Obeida added that al-Qassam fighters carried out “dozens of operations” targeting Israeli soldiers on foot, including in Beit Hanoun and east of al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City.

During the last three days, al-Qassam fighters also conducted “special operations” that resulted in the killing of several “enemy forces,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman emphasized that the Palestinian resistance is ready to confront “the enemy” for as long as the aggression against Gaza continues.

He urged the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the resistance groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq to escalate their confrontation with the Israeli occupation forces.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel lobby offers US politician $20mn to unseat Rashida Tlaib

Actor and US Senate candidate Hill Harper – October 20, 2023 [Jemal Countess/Getty Images for NOBCO]
The Cradle | November 23, 2023

A prominent US actor turned politician was offered $20mn by the Israel lobby to run in upcoming elections against Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, as she faces fierce criticism for her stance against what she says is Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American lawmaker in the US Congress, has stood alone in opposing the Biden White House’s staunch support for an Israeli military campaign that has killed over 13,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, in six weeks.

The $20mn was offered to Hill Harper on 16 October by Michigan businessman Linden Nelson, who is connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful Israeli lobby group in Washington.

Frank Eugene “Hill” Harper, 57, a Hollywood actor who most recently portrayed Dr. Marcus Andrews in The Good Doctor on CBS, is running to succeed retiring Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow in Michigan.

But Nelson offered the money to Harper in exchange for dropping out of the Senate race and running for Congress against Tlaib instead.

Harper confirmed the report on Wednesday, tweeting: “I didn’t intend for a private phone call to turn public. But now that it has, here’s the truth. One of AIPAC’s biggest donors offered $20m if I dropped out of the US Senate race to run against Rashida Tlaib. I said no. I won’t be bossed, bullied, or bought.”

He also tweeted: “Yes, telling the truth here will put a target on my back. But if we ALL come together, we can win.”

“I’m not going to run against the only Palestinian-American in Congress just because some special interests don’t like her,” he added.

Harper revealed that he had been approached to primary Tlaib after Politico reported that Michigan businessman Nelson offered him $10mn in direct contributions to his potential campaign and another $10mn in independent expenditures if he ran against her.

Regarding his transition to politics, Harper explained, “I’ve had a successful acting career, and I’m not someone who grew up thinking I wanted to be a politician,” he said.

“I’m running because I want to break the stranglehold wealthy special interests have on our politics, whether it’s the Israel lobby, the NRA or Big Pharma,” he added.

Nelson’s decision comes despite his history of ties to AIPAC, which has contributed to previous failed campaigns to oust Tlaib from Congress.

In a social media post, Tlaib accused President Joe Biden, the leader of her Democratic Party, of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people” by providing unconditional military support to Israel.

Earlier this month, many of her fellow Democratic members of Congress joined Republicans to censure Tlaib for her comments over the war, which critics slammed as antisemitic.

“It is important to separate people and government,” Tlaib said. “The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent. And it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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