Month of attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem increases tension; exposes racist policies
By Chris Carlson | International Middle East Media Center | August 11, 2014
As the Israeli Central Court of Jerusalem releases three youth accused in the recent homicide of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, another young Palestinian is found stabbed to death in Silwan, while a 13-year-old child is arrested under the pretext of carrying a knife.
Over the past month, during Israel’s relentless and bloody aggressions on the Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem area has become a crucible of violent confrontations between Palestinians and colonial Jewish settlers and police, with numerous reports of multiple raids and ensuing arrests continuing to surface throughout the West Bank region.
Just following the Israeli Central Court’s decision not to hold three youth who admittedly conspired in the brutal torture and burning of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudeir, in early July, local media reported that the police found the body of another young Palestinian in Silwan, south of the Old City of Jerusalem.
PNN sources say that the body had several visible stab wounds but that the Israeli police have declared that the motive behind the crime is not clear.
Meanwhile, Silwanic has reported that Israeli police took into custody one 13-year-old Daoud Sawalha, Thursday night, while he was at the barber shop, in the neighborhood of Ein Al-Lozeh, under the pretext of carrying a knife.
Each year, around 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are arrested, detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system, with the majority of Palestinian child detainees being held on charges of throwing stones.
The same day, Silwanic reported that three Israeli settlers attempted to run over a Jerusalemite woman named Ola Alayan, as she was going home to her Bet Safafa residence, south of Jerusalem.
She was verbally assaulted by the settlers but was able to escape the area and safely reach the entrance of the village.
As in the case of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, who was also chosen at random and not for personal reasons, not all Jerusalemite Palestinians are so lucky.
On Thursday, July 31st, a young Palestinian man from Ras Alamoud was reported to have been assaulted by a group of Israeli settlers who attempted to kidnap him after tying him and dragging him to their car.
When the group failed to drag him to their vehicle, they assaulted 21-year-old Ali Mohammed al-Abbasi with a large amount of pepper spray.
Ali’s father confirmed that a fellow co-worker took his son to the hospital, after ambulance and police failed to respond.
The week prior, Amir Shwiki and Samer Mahfouz, both 20 years old and from Beit Khanina, were attacked by settlers with iron bars and baseball bats while walking to a Light Rail station, following the evening Ramadan meal.
The two were seriously wounded and lost consciousness during the beating, upon which they were hospitalized in Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, Jerusalem.
Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property is not new to the region, but has been in a state of extreme escalation since the beginning of Israel’s renewed series of attacks on Gaza’s civilian population, with mass solidarity protests resulting in further violent confrontations.
Reports of vandalism, including that of agricultural lands, homes and vehicles, as well as both Christian and Muslim holy sites frequently surface from numerous locations all across Israel and occupied Palestine, with the majority of such acts being perpetrated by colonial settlers, and often with the backing of Israeli military and/or police.
A recent statement by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reveals that 60-80,000 Palestinian Jerusalem residents have been without running water for months, with no further reports appearing in regard to appeals made to Hagihon and the Jerusalem Municipality.
Israeli policies against Palestinians have isolated entire communities and turned them into fragmented, isolated ghettos, leaving what remains of the occupied Palestinian territories to now appear as little more than large open-air prisons, from which militant resistance and defiance is the only defense.
See also : Special Report: “800,000 Palestinians Imprisoned By Israel Since 1967”
SOS: Hospital Ships Needed to Save Gaza’s Children
By Franklin Lamb | Al-Manar | August 12, 2014
The statistics are just beginning to be analyzed—by UN agencies and a myriad of NGO’s whose mandates include salvaging young lives from the nearly incalculable ravages of the five-week (and counting) Zionist aggression upon Gaza. It is of course the third aggression in six years against the 1.8 million Palestinians, sardine-canned into what is increasingly referred to as history’s largest open air prison, but the outcome this time is looking particularly cruel and grim.
As the Netanyahu regime announced (on 8/10/14) that its attacks on Gaza would continue, increasing numbers of obscene calls—for Israel to “finish the job” and “go all the way” etc.—are floating in the Zionist state’s malodorous public echo-chamber, emanating from such figures as the Knesset’s deputy speaker, who advocates driving Palestinians into the Sinai desert and resettling Gaza with Jews.
In Khuza’a “the Israeli military had trapped at least 32 people in a home and then prevented the Red Cross from evacuating them before shelling the area,” reported Lebanese-American journalist Roqayah Chamseddine. Hoping for safe haven, the people in the house sought refuge in the basement of a neighbor’s home, where they found additional families already inside.
“By that point we were 120 people, 10 men and the rest women and children,” Kamel al-Najjar recalled for Human Rights Watch.
After dawn and without warning (no polite leaflets or knocks on the roof apparently), Israel struck the house, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
The toll of the war on Gaza’s children has been “catastrophic,” according to UN agencies. At least 450 have been killed, and those not having their physical bodies buried have found their innocence entombed. It is another casualty in the war—a war against all things daring to live and resist in Gaza. According to Chamseddine:child slaughtering:
“Israel has forced the children of Gaza to lay flowers atop headstones, and watch helplessly as coffins that are filled with not only their most beloved family members, teachers, neighbors, and friends but also their most treasured memories, lullabies, lessons learned and those that will never come, descend into the belly of the earth. Their lips will memorize and form prayers for the dead and the stars that defied the siege that flickered freely high above them will be snatched from their skies,”
Increasingly it is being heard from Gazans that “Israel has stolen everything beautiful in our lives,” and Israel’s barbarity confirms this sentiment.
Middle East analysts point out that it is difficult to recall a time in modern history when there has been so much sustained slaughter of this region’s civilian population, with more than two-thirds of the victims being women and children. For the past year, UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations have lamented a simple reality—that there is not a sufficient level of international aid to save lives and treat those in need of emergency and longer term medical care.
But now something is changing.
The horrors we have just witnessed, especially with respect to traumas inflicted on children, is producing, as should be the case, a major and rapidly growing international focus on salvaging young lives. Descriptions and evaluations of the consequences of Gaza wars are being published and urgently discussed. Some analysts and government officials, including Pentagon planners, are calling for a ‘Medical Marshall Plan,’ to save Gaza’s children. One proposed first step is the dispatching of a humanitarian support group of hospital ships that would sail to Gaza without further delay.
What can and must be done, by the United States and other countries with the naval and medical capacity to do so, is to organize a Hospital Ship flotilla to break the siege of Gaza, to anchor offshore, and to begin caring for the medical needs of all, with a special focus on children and their psychological well-being. Call it a Mercy Mission. Initially it could include the following countries—all well known for their hospital ships with up-and-running medical staffs: the USA, UK, France, China, Russia, Spain, Argentina, and Australia. Within this group of nations are ships with hundreds of patient beds and fully stocked pharmacies. Moreover, it is a group not likely to be interfered with by those who have imposed the inhumane blockade of Gaza (and of course it even includes some of their collaborators in the region), but perhaps most importantly, every country on the list possesses one or more hospital ships that are fully staffed and available to act.
France is reportedly ready to join such an effort and is also working on a related crisis—in Iraq, where it plans delivery of first aid equipment “in the coming hours,” according to the office of Francois Hollande. The French president has “reaffirmed the will of France to stand by the side of civilian victims of continued attacks” in Iraq, and his spokesmen said that “France will do the same thing for Gaza.”
“The European Union is called upon to also take necessary measures with great urgency to respond to immediate humanitarian needs,” the spokesman added.
Hundreds of EU citizens, with their specialized skills in fields of pediatric medicine and child psychology, are reportedly ready to help the children of Gaza. Two fully stocked and staffed American medical ships, the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort, could contribute greatly to the effort. Each ship’s hospital is a full floating medical treatment facility, containing 12 fully equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed patient capacity, digital radiological services, medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, and intensive care ward; each also has a dental clinic with full services, CT scanner, and two oxygen-producing plants.
Helicopter landing decks are available as well, for patient transports, and the ships also have side ports that could take on patients from Gaza fishing boats and other crafts at sea. In addition to these two mammoth-sized medical vessels, dozens of other US Navy ships also have hospitals on board. For example, in one year, the medical department of the USS George Washington handled over 15,000 out-patient visits, drew almost 27,000 lab samples, filled almost 10,000 prescriptions, took about 2,300 x-rays, and performed 65 surgical operations—and nearly 100 other US ships are capable of doing the same.
Just one example with respect to capacity is illustrative. In April of this year, the USNS Comfort—a converted 70,000-ton tanker—sailed from Norfolk, Virginia carrying 900 doctors, nurses, and engineers, including staff from the U.S. military, civilian agencies, non-government charities, and even foreign navies. The ship is designed to be deployed quickly for four month intensive full service medical assistance; yet similar capacities obtain in certain other US ships and in foreign navies as well. All of these resources must be put to immediate use to save Gaza’s children.
Looking at the longer term, the Pentagon should seriously consider ordering a sufficient number of catamaran transports and shallow-draft littoral ships to fill out the flotilla, vessels capable of delivering aid by sea via the relatively shallow Gaza coastline. The success of breaking the siege of Gaza will likely give impetus to a UN Security Council decision to construct a seaport for Gaza, perhaps with a shipping lane to Cyprus.
Similarly, the UK hospital ship, RFA Argus, designated as a ‘Primary Casualty Receiving Ship,’ is moored in Falmouth, England, and is also uniquely designed for this type of humanitarian crisis; and it, too, is reportedly ready to sail once given the green light by Downing Street.
Five Hospital ships are urgently needed along Gaza’s shoreline at the following locations: opposite Jabaliya and North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, as shown in the map below:
Although attacking a hospital ship is clearly a war crime, the Israeli pattern of targeting medical facilities in Gaza is well known, and threats from the settler movement and the right wing Likud Party to “sink any ship that enters Gaza waters if judged to be aiding the terrorists” must be taken seriously. Yet one imagines the occupation regime would have to think carefully about sinking another US Navy vessel as it did in 1967 with the repeated bombing of the USS Liberty.
Instead of recycling raw combat power, the White House can best meet the demands of a war-weary American public through an emphasis on missions such as those the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are designed for. Poll after US public opinion poll reveal that Americans believe their humanitarian values are best reflected when our navy is tailored for delivering humanitarian aid to places like Gaza, and not by delivering munitions to occupying colonial regimes.
Jewish Lobby got journalist fired over a ‘Gaza Cartoon’
Rehmat’s World | August 7, 2014
![remote+control+bombing+of+Gaza[1]](https://rehmat1.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/remotecontrolbombingofgaza1.jpg)
Mike Carlton, 68, Australia’s veteran journalist and author, has resigned after his employer Sydney Morning Herald suspended him under pressure from country’s powerful Jewish Lobby.
Australian Jewish groups had slammed the newspaper over Carlton’s July 26 column in which he accused the Zionist entity of “waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population”. The column was accompanied by a cartoon (shown above), which was widely condemned as “anti-Jew” by leaders of country’s organized Jewry which also threatened to take legal action against the newspaper under country’s “Hate Law”.
Initially, the newspaper defended the cartoon, explaining that Le Lievre’s drawing was inspired by “news photographs of Israeli Jews seated in chairs and lounges, observing the Israeli shelling of Gaza.”
But then, as expected, the Jewish Lobby invoked the “Six Million Died” smoking gun to demonize the newspaper. The Australian Jewish News wrote: “Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ on Israel’s part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by ‘a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.’ “This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.”
If I were Carlton, I would have responded: “If the shoes fit, wear them.”
However, in order to avoid further backlash from the Jewish community and the pro-Israel Tony Abbott government, on August 3, Herald published an editorial saying it “unreservedly apologizes” for any hurt caused to the Jewish community. The paper also removed the cartoon based on facts from its website. Dr. Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia welcomed paper’s apology and departure of anti-Semite Mike Carlton.
The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the 30% Australian media which is not owned by the Crypto-Jew billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd..
On October 13, 2010 America’s highest paid Israeli lobbyist Abraham Foxman (nearly $700,000 per year) awarded Murdoch his organization’s (ADL) highest award for looking after Israeli interests through his media empire.
Former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, and former foreign minister, Robert John Carr have claimed that country’s organized Jewry runs Australia.
Israeli Genocide and its Willing Accomplices
By James Petras | The Peoples Voice | August 11, 2014
Introduction
Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.
The purpose of this essay is 4-fold: 1. To identify the nature of the crime – the genocidal character of the armed assault and the sequence leading up to it; 2. To identify the direct perpetrators of the war crimes and their domestic and international accomplices; 3. To explain the ties binding leaders, policymakers, propagandists, accomplices and followers, including their ideologies, material interests and organizational structure which make these crimes not only possible, but met so far with impunity and 4. To identify the larger imperial interests with which Israel allies with the US, and in pursuit of which, the Gaza assault is a horrifying dress rehearsal.
The ‘Morality’ of Prison Guards in a Genocidal State
Policymakers in the genocidal state run a highly militarized society where citizens and soldiers, criminals and professionals, torturers and sociopaths can and do coexist within the same person. Cold rationality is harnessed to mass murder, technology to massive devastation, language to euphemisms and executioners parade themselves as victims (and vice versa). Moral precepts become debased and supplanted by the ethics of mass murder. Moralists, rabbis and ethical philosophers all join to bless the bombs dropped on hospitals and schools and homes and all living things – even the dead and buried do not rest in peace when the cemeteries are bombed.
Rulers, imbued with a genocidal vision, see only military objectives – an oppressed people do not exist – all human existence and institutions in the target areas are to be demolished. The destruction of human life, of Palestinian daily existence has become the ultimate goal of this obscene operation.
The practical decision to exterminate Palestinians was conscious, planned and pursued with implacable resolve at the very top and carried out with savage enthusiasm by Israel’s ‘citizen army’.
The unfolding of this deadly plan began with what appeared a ‘generous’ peace offer. In 2004, Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon ‘granted’ the Palestinians self-government in Gaza and in August 2005 withdrew a few thousand Jewish settlers and their Israeli ground troops. The consequence of this benevolence: Over 1.4 million Palestinians were to be locked and crowded into the most densely packed open air prison in the world: the largest ghetto in history. This was a sickening reminder of the Nazi roundup of Polish Jews herding them into the Warsaw ghetto . . . where they too were granted ‘self-government’. Once the Jewish settlers were removed (and paid up to $300,000 per family ‘compensation’), Israel’s military closed all of Gaza’s entrances and exits. Land, sea and airspace were blockaded and total control imposed on the entrance of food, medicine, school books and the exit of Palestinians for medical treatment, university studies, normal travel and commerce of any kind. This mirrored the Nazi policy toward those trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. Palestinian farmers were shot tending their fields, acts of brutality reminiscent of the Nazi starvation blockade of Leningrad… And the world was appalled!
Gaza and the Ghetto were first set up to be open-air prison camps . . . temporary measures to mask the real plans. Gaza’s young population had grown to over 1.8 million entrapped human beings by 2014. Obviously, if the Gazans could not travel, farm, fish and trade by normal means, they would dig tunnels for supplies and fight against their relegation to the status of caged animals by the Israeli state. The next steps after the successful enclosure would be systematic and pre-meditated: the Zionists, like the Nazis, launched total war against the inevitable acts of resistance by the oppressed. They sent planes, tanks, missiles and bombs to level populated areas, especially neighborhoods where young fighters rose up to resist this unendurable cruelty. The heroic young fighters of Gaza, like their Warsaw predecessors, resisted their totalitarian enemies time and again. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Israeli Jews cheered the devastation while claiming to be the victims and young overseas Jews volunteered to join the IDF in its slaughter of the Palestinians, just as the German population celebrated, along with the overseas German Bund, their leaders’ totalitarian crimes. Their responses were almost identical although in different times and places: Chosen People and Aryans of the world have united against what they both termed ‘terrorists’ claiming their tunnels will become their graves!
In line with this super race mythology, Israel’s killing machine is really most effective at murdering unarmed civilians– invalids who cannot run, doctors who stay to care for the wounded and mothers and children in their flimsy shelters– and rather pathetic when it confronts face to face determined armed resistance fighters. As of 8/6/14 the Israeli Air Force, Navy and artillery slaughtered 1,594 Palestinian civilians –via long distance high tech warfare -compared to 3 civilians in Israel (one Bedouin, one Thai farm worker and an Israeli Jew), a mind-boggling ratio of over 1,500 Palestinian civilians to one of the ‘Chosen’. But when it came to ‘ground fighting’, 64 Israeli soldiers were killed compared to 281 Palestinian partisans, a 4.4 to 1 ratio. Despite all the Israeli air cover support and high tech protective gear, the Israelis took heavy military casualties when their invasion came down to a more level fighting field where poorly equipped partisans are willing to die for their homes and liberation.
The War Criminals: Who are They and What are their Crimes
Clearly the commanding officers of the Israeli armed forces, the self-styled Israel Defense Forces, who are responsible for the systematic land, aerial and maritime attacks on civilians, hospitals, schools, refugee sanctuaries are first in line for the war crimes docket. They should be joined by Israeli military strategists and policy makers who systematically and criminally targeted homes, neighborhoods, water purification and sewage plants, electrical grids and power plants in a deliberate planned effort to destroy any possibility of normal daily existence for almost 2 million Palestinians: They have committed grave Crimes against Humanity, according to the Geneva Conventions and legal standards established at Nuremburg. There is eye-witness testimony and documentation showing middle and lower rank soldiers engaged in wanton shootings of school children, shoppers and mothers with babies fleeing combat zones. War crimes prosecutions cannot be confined merely to a few dozen senior officers – these crimes were committed at all level of the IDF.
Political leaders and policymakers, starting with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet, leading Party and Knesset members, who were the prime movers in launching the blitz against Gaza and justified the massive civilian killings, clearly should be at the center of any International War Crimes Tribunal.
But what about the Israeli public, the great mass of Israeli Jews, who view themselves as morally above world public opinion despite a near-universal revulsion over Israel’s crimes? More than 90% of Israeli Jews gave unstinting support to the ongoing blood bath, knowing, indeed cheering daily from grandstands erected on hills overlooking Gaza, the criminal consequences of their support – they also are an essential part of this criminal enterprise. They celebrated the carnage and they violently attacked the few Israelis who openly questioned this ‘war’. Israelis have no claim to ‘innocent ignorance’; they cannot call this a “tragic conflict between two peoples”. No Israeli can absolve himself by claiming ignorance of the nature of the crimes committed in their name – nor do they want to claim ignorance! The majority of informed Israeli Jews demanded this war from the beginning, many joining racist marches with banners and chants demanding ‘Death to Arabs’! They wear their endorsement of the Gaza holocaust as a badge of honor. Ninety percent of the Jewish citizens in Israel rejected any humanitarian ceasefire: Newspaper columnists and the vast majority of letter writers in the daily press argued openly for extermination! Self-declared war criminals are feted as Israeli heroes by their overseas brethren who hasten to endorse or even join the slaughter. Gidon Levy, Haaretz’s lonely dissident journalist, is spat upon in all the fashionable cafes and has to take his coffee at home now.
What can be said about the ‘moralists’, the famous chief rabbis, who have no qualms in piously urging on the mass slaughter: is there a High Court of Religious Authority to hold these “holy men” accountable for their incitement of war crimes? What about the worldwide network of international Zionist organizations who secure billions of dollars of the murderous arms shipments from the corrupt and craven US Congress and Executive? Are they not accomplices to genocide before and after the fact?
However, it is a blatant, conscious lie and fabrication to claim, like some phony critics on the ‘Left’, that ‘America shares responsibility’ for the Israel’s crimes against Gaza. Who asked the American people to endorse this slaughter? When did the American people organize a “lobby” to buy Congressional votes? Did the American people organize multi-million dollar fundraisers at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria where Republican and Democratic elected leaders pledged to give an additional $225 million dollars in missiles and tanks to Israel, to resupply its arsenal used up in razing thousands of homes and obliterating entire families in Gaza? Any serious researcher, who has looked at American domestic politics, knows that the Presidents of the 52 Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations are complicit in Israel’s terror bombings of Gaza. And polls show that a majority of young Americans sympathize with the rights of the Palestinians…
Is there any clause in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal proceedings which can bring charges against the overseas accomplices to war crimes? What about prominent leftist academics and ‘progressive’ journalists who cover-up for the overseas accomplices by falsely accusing “America” (and implying the American people) in this slaughter?
The Ties that Bind
We have identified a chain linking Israel’s political elite, military command and the mass of the Israeli public directly to war crimes and genocide with the active material complicity of overseas Zionist organizations. They act as one cohesive force plunging forward into the blood and gore of total war against the Palestinians – the original inhabitants and rightful owners of what is now called ‘Israel’.
The question arises: What unites them in this horrible undertaking? What moral blindness so afflicts them that they ignore the bookshelves cluttered with the writings and humanist teachings of Spinoza, Kant, Babel, or Buber? Are these tribal loyalties derived from Old Testament tales of vengeance and infanticide? Are these expressions of an ethno-religious fanaticism linked to the quest for a regional empire and plunder?
Racist ideology and its virulent expression both from high office and the “Jewish Street” are wide-spread and open. Degrading Palestinians, while claiming to be a superior race above the laws of the rest of the world, serves to justify all crimes against the people of Gaza. Near and far, this expression of “collective Jewish identity and solidarity”, based on ethnic-religious superiority always threatened by hostile, inferior ‘native’ people, accounts for the unflinching support by top Hollywood moguls, Ivy League professors, French intellectuals, British peers and prominent investment Wall Street bankers.
Ideological affinities and ethno-religious loyalties aside, many Israeli Jews also have a major, material stake in robbing and expelling the people of Palestine: Seized Palestinian lands result in new cheap subsidized housing, swimming pools for Jews only, developments on lands where olive groves once flourished and extended families had lived and died. Middle and working class Jews obtain free housing; real estate speculators seize choice ocean front properties for luxury condos and tourist destinations. Building contractors secure lucrative construction contracts from the state. Pillage forms an important material basis for Israel’s high standard of living, many times higher than that of Palestinians, much higher that that of Israel’s non-Jewish population and higher even than the Americans who have been forced to subsidize the ‘Jewish State’ for almost 50 years.
Equally important, Israel’s assault on Gaza serves as a testing ground for its weapons of mass destruction and its anti-missile Dome. In this regard, the slaughter in Gaza serves as a dress rehearsal (and a graphic warning) for new wars across the region in association with the US and its clients. NSA analyst Edward Snowden’s latest documents reveal that Israel works in tandem with the US throughout North Africa, the Middle East, The Persian Gulf, South Asia and Islamic countries in choosing targets and making war plans… Greater Israel is no longer the crackpot dream of Jewish visionaries: it is underway and its bloody beginnings in Gaza foreshadow bigger and bloodier wars against humanity in the future.
Conclusion
Israel’s total war against Gaza has provoked condemnation from millions of people around the world, greater outrage at their crimes against humanity, and calls for an international war crimes tribunal. If such a tribunal were to be convoked, the question arises of how wide the net should be cast – where to draw the line between leaders, soldiers, masses and complicit overseas supporters, all implicated to one degree or another? How many ‘willing accomplices’ to mass murder should be investigated and tried?
The rising horror and indignation has isolated Israel from the greater majority of mankind, including from thousands of Jews – but it has hardened its leaders and aroused its powerful core of influential supporters, especially in the US.
Bitter-enders, in their luxurious suites, are on the counter-offensive. Leading Hollywood producers denounce the morally outraged actors who have dared to criticize Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, labeling them ‘anti-Semites’ and threatening them with a lifetime of blacklists from any further work in ‘film or on stage’. Powerful Zionist organizations, not only secure US opposition to any UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli war crimes, but unanimous (100%) Congressional and White House approval and an ‘emergency allocation’ of over $250 million tax-payer dollars’ to re-supply Israel with the bombs and missiles it had dropped on the people of Gaza. The hardliners, who speak for the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, have not relented in their support for Israel’s carnage even in the face of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marching around the world to support the rights of the people of Palestine. The hardliners openly flaunt their blind support for Israel’s war crimes. These fanatics are convinced that every critic of Israel’s war crimes, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or atheist, is an anti-Semite, a pervert or terrorist to be censored or crushed! Inside the Zionist bunker there is an iron-fisted reinforcement of loyalty to Israel, while outside, there is the smooth outpouring of propaganda which minimize Israel’s war crimes and vehement denials of overseas complicity with genocide.
Epilogue: A Dialogue between Zionists
The Right Zionist says to the Left, “Crimes at the service of Greater Israel are virtues.” The Left replies “There are crimes but America is ultimately responsible”.
A shrewd old Zionist observer comments with approval: “It’s our division of labor: the Right Zionists defend Israel and the Left Zionists confuse its critics.”
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James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies.
A Next Step in the Fight for Steven Salaita?
By Corey Robin | August 8, 2014
I don’t have the time to organize this, but it occurs to me that if in every discipline—English, sociology, history, political science, mathematics, and so on—a statement of refusal were organized, stating that its signatories would refuse any invitation to come and speak on any campus of the University of Illinois, that this might be a powerful next step in the campaign to reinstate Steven Salaita.
We’ve had a week of letters, emails, phone calls, and a petition, which at last count has more than 11,000 signatures. But the way a campaign works is if pressure grows, if opposition doesn’t remain static but expands: not just in its numbers but in its modes of expression.
So what if in the next week, instead of thinking things were dying down, the University of Illinois were to learn that this past week’s slowly rumbling campaign was growing into a quiet roar? What if in the next week, one person in each discipline took it upon herself to organize a statement for her field, a simple, short statement, in which her fellow academics would refuse any invitation to come and speak, until Chancellor Wise rescinded her rescission of the University of Illinois’s invitation to Steven Salaita? Which would then be circulated among all her friends and colleagues, who would then circulate it among their friends and colleagues? And if each of these statements, once they had, say, 100 signatures, would then be sent to the Chancellor, to the campus presidents, and to the chairs of the respective departments on all the campuses of the University of Illinois?
The University would get the message: that far from going away in the lazy days of August, this campaign was gearing up for the brisk weeks of fall.
Though I’ve organized many of these types of campaigns in the past, I don’t have the time, as I say, to take on this one. But the beauty of this type of campaign is that it doesn’t need one person to organize it. It can be completely grass-roots; anyone can take the initiative. It just needs one person in each discipline to get it started, and I suspect it will take off quickly from there.
I’m happy to serve here on this blog as a clearing-house, to publicize any one statement from any one discipline. And of course to sign any such statement that political scientists in my field chose to organize.
In the last few days, I’ve been quietly surprised at just how many academics have spoken out on this issue, have not only taken the time to sign a petition, but to make a phone call, write a letter, to do something. Something about this case has touched many of us. I think we could do this next step.
Feel free to circulate this statement widely.
Another Shameful ‘NYT’ Casualty Count
By Greg Mitchell | Pressing Issues | August 8, 2014
Late Friday: Revised version of story now correctly states that “most” of the casualties in Gaza have been civilians, not “many.” Not sure if my widely linked and tweeted complaint (below) had any effect, but hope it did.
On the other hand, in another typical example that suggests the Times, perhaps, bowing to a complaint from IDF: A headline on another Rudoren story that once read: “A Boy At Play in Gaza, an Israeli Missile, a Mourning Family” has been changed to “A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Return to Warfare, a Family in Mourning.” It’s all the more odd because, in a rarity in a Rudoren story, she clearly says that an Israeli drone fired the missile. Then again, she’s in Gaza now. Perhaps her usual IDF spokesman source couldn’t reach her to insist on the usual, “Israel denies… might be Hamas rocket… looking into it….” Note: She does severely under-count the death toll of children, which the UN places at 440 tonight, while Rudoren simply has it at “more than 300.”
Earlier: Along with many others, we’ve critiqued Jodi Rudoren’s major piece for the NYT the other day which reflected Israel’s spin on a supposedly lower civilian body count in Gaza. At least then, Rudoren still admitted a majority of the dead were likely civilians (even if she rejected UN and other counts that put that percentage at 70 to 82% or more).
But in today’s piece, on the end of the ceasefire, written with the other half of the Times’ less-than-dynamic duo, Isabel Kershner, they actually write this: “Since the fighting began on July 8, more than 1,880 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, and 67 have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.” Can you dig it? “Many” of them civilians, which could mean, oh, 100 or so, not the (even in Rudoren’s recent count) 1000 or more. Perhaps the IDF now claims less than half are civilians and Rudoren, with steno pad out, has relayed that without a journalistic filter.
And then then for the Israelis, “mostly soldiers”–when the tally is actually 64 soldiers and 3 civilians. Do the Times’ editors have no shame?
UN tonight updates: about 1,400 of 1,600 dead IDed in Gaza are civilians, with another 300 fighters or not yet IDed. That sure is “many” civilians.
As we noted earlier, the IDF (and needless to say, Rudoren’s) count is based on statistics showing that a large number of young males have died in the shelling. The only explanation? They were militants aiding Hamas and so were somehow precisely targeted as fair game by the Israelis. This, of course, ignores the reality captured by other reporters and videos: the majority of aid workers, medics, ambulance drivers, and others out in the streets trying to help people, dig out the rubble, or go for food and water are… young males. Who often then fall victim to new air strikes. I guess they also all double as Hamas rocketeers.
Enough of Elie Wiesel and His Lies!
By Gilad Atzmon | August 8, 2014
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the London Times refused to run an ad featuring Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.
The ad’s headline reads: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Wiesel’s statement is a blatant lie and the London Times knew it.
Jews have never stopped sacrificing their children. The Hannibal Protocol is an IDF directive that orders soldiers to take ‘necessary measures’ to prevent their comrades from being captured by enemy forces. ‘Necessary measures’ include risking the life of the Israeli soldier and anyone who happens to be in his vicinity. Similarly, the Kastner Affair shows that at the peak of the Shoah, Ben Gurion and the Zionist establishment were willing to sacrifice many Jewish lives on the altar of the Zionist goal.
The growing number of genocides and massacres committed by Jews in the last hundred years suggest that at least some Jews are pretty careless with other people’s children. Wiesel should examine the Holodomor and the role of ‘Stalin’s willing executioners’ as Jewish American historian Yuri Slezkine elucidates in his invaluable book The Jewish Century. Wiesel can also read Israeli Sever Plocker’s declaration that “some of (the) greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish.” Just a few years after the Holodomor, the Yiddish speaking International Brigade murdered Catholics and burned their churches in Spain (1936). The tragic and violent circumstances in which the Jewish State was born didn’t sate the lust for violence among some of its Diaspora supporters, quite the opposite. The immoral Neocon interventionists that have been advocates for the death and carnage of millions of Muslims for the past two decades are largely Jewish Zionists. Wasn’t Lord Levy, the chief fundraiser for Tony Blair’s Government at the time we were led into an illegal war in Iraq, a proud Zionist Jew? Weren’t the Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen, who enthusiastically endorsed the Iraq war in the British media, Jewish? Perhaps the time has come for Aaronovitch and Cohen to explain their advocacy of lethal ‘moralism.’ Consider the infamous Bernard Henri Levy who admitted that “as a Jew” he “liberated” Libya. Isn’t it time for him to take responsibility ‘as a Jew’ for the sacrifice of other people’s children?
I would like to advise Elie Wiesel that the argument that Hamas is using civilians and children as ‘human shields’ is not only wrong, it actually provides a glimpse into Zionist cultural morbidity and intellectual barbarism. Let’s imagine a volatile situation in which a bank robber failed to escape in time and is surrounded by police. Scared for his life, the robber takes a hostage and hides behind his/her back while sticking a pistol to the hostage’s head. Could you imagine a police officer ordering a sniper to kill the hostage together with the villain? The answer is, of course, NO. But Israel’s logic is very different. If it is true (and I don’t suggest that it is) that Hamas is using the Palestinian civilian population as hostages, then the IDF is clearly murdering the hostages and on a scale that has reached industrial homicidal proportions. Israeli officials occasionally admit that this is their tactic and it is consistent with Israeli military doctrine that adheres to the ‘power of deterrence.’ Israeli decision makers believe that civilian deaths discourage Arabs from entering into a conflict. The emerging number of casualties from recent rounds of violence suggests that Israel’s tactics are homicidal. They target innocent civilians and on purpose. This shows clearly that the Jewish State is an outlaw among nations and it may even be possible that the London Times realises that this is the case. The humanist message is obvious. The time is ripe for cleansing our cultural and public life of Elie Wiesels and other Jerusalemites who promote dubious non-universal ethics in our midst.
Hamas: No clear Israeli response to demands
Ma’an – 09/08/2014
GAZA CITY – Israel did not provide a clear response to the Palestinian ceasefire conditions, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Friday as truce talks stalled in Cairo.
At a news conference in Gaza City, Abu Zuhri said that the lack of response undermined Palestinian demands and that “Israeli stubbornness led to not extending the ceasefire.”
A 3-day ceasefire expired Friday morning, leading to renewed clashes between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza. Another unofficial ceasefire mostly held later the same day.
Abu Zuhri accused Israel of stalling and wasting time, adding that its leader must accept all Palestinian conditions.
He said that Israel rejected the establishment of an airport or a seaport and refuses to expand the fishing zone.
Also Friday, Hamas leader Izzat al-Rashq said that the Palestinian delegation in Cairo did not receive an Israeli response to any of the Palestinian demands.
He added in a posting on Facebook that the Israeli delegation was maneuvering and held it accountable for the failure to achieve an agreement.
Israel’s ‘Hannibal Protocol’ and Two Criminally Insane Governments
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | August 7, 2014
The sickness of present-day Israel, on display over the past horrible month of the one-sided slaughter of nearly 2000 Palestinians (including over 400 children) in the fenced-in ghetto of Gaza, has finally reached its nadir with the ugly case of the deliberate Israeli Defense Force murder of captured IDF 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin.
According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, once it was determined that Goldin had been captured by Hamas fighters in the Gaza town of Rafah, the IDF initiated what it calls the “Hannibal Protocol” — the deliberate liquidation of the captive — to prevent his being used as a hostage to win concessions from Israel in future truce negotiations with the Palestinians. One reason for the almost instantaneous and ruthless Israeli decision to kill Goldin rather than attempt to rescue him, is that this captured soldier had the misfortune of being related to Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, making him a valuable prize indeed for Hamas.
And so began a massive bombardment of the entire residential area where Goldin was captured.
As Haaretz reports in an editorial about this case of deliberate sacrifice of an IDF officer, headlined “What Happened in Rafah?”, the ensuing high-explosive blitz on the area didn’t just kill Goldin, but also indiscriminately killed over 150 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Indeed, the paper states that the IDF “… shelled and bombed houses and their inhabitants indiscriminately, and as they tried to flee homes, hit them with shells and bombs in the streets.” The fatal bombing of a targeted UN-operated school in Rafah, which was condemned by the US government and by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who called it a “criminal act and a moral outrage,” was part of that Hannibal Protocol action.
Now recall that President Obama was quick to label the Hamas capture of Goldin “barbaric.”
The trouble is, having rather absurdly deployed that term to characterize the capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier who was at the time reportedly exploring a tunnel and trying to capture or kill enemy fighters, though, what then does Obama — what indeed does any person — call the indiscriminate slaughter of 150 civilians in the interest of eliminating one of one’s own captured soldier?
Certainly the Hannibal Protocol is in itself “barbaric” in its cool calculus of denying the enemy a bargaining chip. But that term hardly seems to capture the horror of what was done by the IDF in this case. Clearly implementing the Hannibal Protocol would have been okayed at the highest level of the Israeli government, particularly with the relative of a top government official involved. And when a military organization or a government moves beyond just killing the captive and his immediate captors to slaughtering everyone in the surrounding area, we’ve moved way beyond a word like “barbaric.”
I’m a journalist, and part of my job is being good with words, but I admit I’m at a bit of a loss here. Perhaps “criminally insane” is appropriate, but that is usually a term applied to an individual. In this case, though, we are talking about a whole government, or at least the military establishment and the senior leaders of that government, taken collectively.
The mind reels. Can an entire government be criminally insane? Certainly what happened with this Hannibal Protocol incident suggests that it can.
Recall, though, that this crime extends well beyond the borders of Israel. For the bombs and shells that were unleashed by the IDF on the people of Rafah as part of this murderous Hannibal Protocol campaign were, for the most part, manufactured and provided, at taxpayer expense, by the United States of America.
This massive war crime is thus as much a US atrocity as it is an Israeli one.
And if the Israeli government is criminally insane, so is the US government for uncritically and unthinkingly backing it.
We knew the US government and its military were criminally insane back in the Vietnam War, when we were told that peasant villages were being burned to the ground by US troops on the theory that “we have to destroy the village in order to save it.” Now we’ve moved a step further towards the depths of insanity in backing an Israeli policy of “slaughtering a village in order to kill one of our own soldiers.” Even in the moral cesspool that was America’s war on the Vietnamese people, the US military didn’t sink to that — they stopped at just slaughtering villlages.
Canadian Jewish Politics: From Anti-fascism to Zionism
By Jay Knott | Dissident Voice | August 7, 2014
On July 30, Dissident Voice published an article by Yves Engler remarking on increasingly strident support for Israel among sections of the Toronto Jewish community.
He describes aggressive Jewish support for the child-murderers of the Israeli Defense Forces, including attacks on protesters like himself, then contrasts this with what Jews were like before world war two:
The idea that Toronto’s Jewish community in 2014 would be front-and-centre in backing racist militarism is profoundly depressing and quite the historic reversal. Seven decades ago righteous Jewish youth fought back against fascist thugs terrorizing non-Anglo-Saxons in the 1933 Christie Pits Riot.
But perhaps the reason Jews defended other minorities against “fascist thugs” is because it was in their interests to do so. Perhaps that’s why many of them support “racist militarism” today – so long as it’s Jewish racist militarism. A consistent sense of Jewish ethnic identity would lead to strong opposition to white supremacists, and strong support for Jewish supremacists. The most economical explanation of the “reversal” Engler talks about is that it’s not a reversal at all.
Not only is this the more parsimonious explanation, it is a more realistic approach to Palestinian solidarity. It’s Engler’s approach that is “profoundly depressing”, because it continues to fail to grasp the nettle of the connection between Jewish identity, Jewish politics, and the Jewish state.
Another of my attempts to dabble in Canadian Jewish leftist politics, can also be found on Dissident Voice – Defend Jennifer Peto, a Brave Canadian Critic of Zionism.
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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