Israeli Politician Says “Children of Gaza Have Brought This Upon Themselves”
When children are explicitly framed as “not innocent,” all-out genocidal warfare is possible.
TruthOut, By Jonathan Ofir , MONDOWEISS, October 18, 2023
t really is hard to imagine a more malicious statement than “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves” when children in Gaza are now being massacred by the hundreds. But this was actually said in a recent Knesset session. And it wasn’t someone considered an extreme right-winger, but a liberal centrist – Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid.
The full, over-three-hour session from Monday can be seen here. Ben-Ari is evidently getting worked up as Palestinian lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman (around two hours into the session) bemoans the loss of civilian lives “both in the area surrounding Gaza and in Gaza,” imploring to make an effort to release hostages and to “get the civilians out of the circle of blood.” “Jews as well as Arabs, Israelis as well as Palestinians.” “A child is a child,” Touma-Sliman reminds everyone, pointing out that at that point, over 900 children had been killed from Israel’s bombing of Gaza (a day later, that number swelled to well over a thousand).
All this humanity was just too much for Ben-Ari. She started shouting and heckling Touma-Sliman, saying, “There is not symmetry, there is no symmetry!”
“Between children there is symmetry,” she said.
Ben Ari went livid: “There is no symmetry!!”
Touma-Sliman emphasized: “A child is a child is a child.”
Twenty-five minutes after this unbearable episode, Ben-Ari came up to speak, admittedly unplanned. This is precisely 2.5 hours into the session video:
“I did not plan to speak, of course, but I have to say one thing that should be clear: There is no symmetry. There is no symmetry. Me, my friends, ok, were on the way to the synagogue on the day of Simchat Torah, and they were shot at, only because they were Jews in this state. That’s it. And friends of mine – their children went to the party, to celebrate – seculars, religious, doesn’t matter who, only because they were Jewish, they were murdered. So there is no symmetry! And the children in Gaza – the children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves! We are a peace-seeking nation, a life-loving nation. There is no symmetry – our children are kidnapped over there!” (My emphasis)……………………………………………………………………..
Ben-Ari’s genocidal rhetoric was actually echoing a comment just made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is also known as a liberal, even from further left. At a recent press conference on October 13, Herzog answered a question by Rageh Omar from ITV, who asked him what Israel can do to alleviate the impact on the over two million civilians in Gaza, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. Herzog answered:
“We are working, operating militarily in terms according to rules of international law, period. Unequivocally. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. …………………………………..
This is really unmistakable – Herzog is really implying that an “entire nation is responsible,” and the implication is that they are legitimate targets. However, he later denied that this is what he meant.
This rhetoric has a long history among Israeli politicians. In 2018, when Avigdor Lieberman was Defense Minister, he declared that “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip” because “everyone has a connection to Hamas.” This was in April 2018, when Israel was beginning to turkey-shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Great March of Return. When a video filmed by Israeli snipers, where they celebrate their shooting of a motionless, unarmed Palestinian, surfaced on social media around that same time, Lieberman commented that they deserved a medal for their shots. I could just as well mention that Lieberman has advocateddecapitating “disloyal” Palestinian citizens with an axe and the drowning of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. Lieberman is now regarded as a Netanyahu critic who is considering joining the “unity government” so as to “join the war cabinet in order to bring about the fastest possible victory.”
You may say this is just rhetoric, but these words also lead to actions. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s comments referred to Palestinians as “human animals” as Israel closed all the water taps to Gaza, making the already unlivable living conditions there a genocidal nightmare. The relationship between words to actions is obvious. ……. more https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-politician-says-children-of-gaza-have-brought-this-upon-themselves/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=431d0bc2ba-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-431d0bc2ba-650192793&mc_cid=431d0bc2ba&mc_eid=73e1cd43d0 #Israel #Palestine
Zelensky orders reporters to keep silent about corruption – Ukrainian media.
https://www.rt.com/russia/584929-ukraine-gags-media-corruption/ 16 Oct 23
The Ukrainian president reportedly told journalists not to mention the issue until the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict
President Vladimir Zelensky has allegedly ordered Ukrainian journalists to avoid reporting on corruption, the editor-in-chief of the Zerkalo Nedeli (‘Mirror of the Week’) news outlet has claimed.
The Ukrainian president told journalists not to mention the issue until the end of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to a leading Kievb outlet.
Speaking at the National Media Talk 2023, Yulia Mostovaya said that she had learned of Zelensky’s demand from colleagues who had attended an off-the-record meeting with him.
The president reportedly made the request after the Ukrainian press published reports about inflated food prices paid by the country’s armed forces.
According to Ukrainian media reports, including Zerkalo Nedeli, the Defense Ministry had been buying food and clothing for its service members at prices two to three times higher than the market price. For example, the ministry paid up to 17 hryvnia ($0.47) for a single egg and 22 hryvnia ($0.60) for a kilogram of potatoes, while the average prices for those goods at stores in Kiev at the time were about seven hryvnia ($0.19) and eight hryvnia ($0.22), respectively.
Mostovaya stated that Zelensky’s request to avoid the topic of corruption in media publications was something the Ukrainian press may have considered if Zelensky had presented it in a “balanced manner” and explained that reporting on such issues could affect Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities.
“We would accept these conditions if the president had said: ‘Here is a person. Here’s his phone number. If you have substantiated facts, please provide them to this person, he will immediately pick up the phone. And give us a week to respond. If there is no reaction within a week, send it to print.’”
However, no such proposal was put forward by Zelensky, Mostovaya claimed, noting that instead the president told reporters to “remain silent until victory.”
“If we remain silent, there will be no victory,” the editor-in-chief said.
The issue of corruption in Ukraine has repeatedly been brought up by journalists and officials, both within the country and in the West.
Last week, the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated that Ukraine will likely be unable to join the EU anytime soon because it is “corrupt at all levels of society.” He also urged Brussels not to make any “false promises” to the Ukrainian people who are already “up to their neck in suffering.”
Ukraine has for years been seen as among the most corrupt countries in Europe and was ranked 116th out of 180 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2022. #Ukraine
This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen
This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, October 15, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/this-way-for-the-genocide-ladies-and-gentlemen/
Washington and European governments are cheerleading Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The failure to intervene to halt the carnage threatens to ignite violence throughout the region.
I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.
Gaza is such a small area — 25 miles in length and about 5 miles wide — and so densely populated that the only outcome of an Israeli ground and air assault is the mass death of those Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls “human animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “human beasts.” Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv suggested dropping “doomsday weapons” on Gaza, widely seen as a call for a nuclear strike. Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday dismissed calls to protect Palestinian civilians. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could’ve risen up, they could’ve fought against that evil regime that took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” He added, “We will break their backbone.”
The demand by Israel that 1.1 million Palestinians — nearly half of Gaza’s population — evacuate northern Gaza, which will become a free fire zone, within 24 hours, ignores the fact that given the overcrowding and sealed borders there is no place for the displaced to go. The north includes Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the strip, with 750,000 residents. It also includes Gaza’s main hospital and the Jabalia and al-Shati refugee camps.
Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion military aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to close 14 food distribution centers leaving half a million people without food relief. Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel. The United Nations says 12 of its staff have been killed by Israeli air strikes, 21 out of 22 UNRWA health facilities in Gaza have been damaged and hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
The West refuses to intervene, as 2.3 million people, including 1 million children, are deprived of food, fuel, electricity and water, see their schools and hospitals bombed and are butchered and rendered homeless by one of the most advanced military machines on the planet.
The gruesome images of Israelis gunned down by Hamas is the currency of death. It trades carnage for carnage, a macabre dance that Israel initiated with the massacres and ethnic cleansing that allowed for the creation of the Jewish state, followed by decades of dispossession and violence meted out to the Palestinians. The Israeli army, before the current assault, had killed 7,779 Palestinians in Gaza since 2000 including 1,741 children and 572 women, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. This figure does not include Gazans who died due to drinking contaminated water or being denied access to medical treatment. Nor does it include the rising number of Gazan youth who, having lost all hope and struggling with deep depression, have committed suicide.
I spent seven years reporting on the conflict, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bodies of Israeli victims of bus bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian suicide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, including children, in the corridors in Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I watched Israeli soldiers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then callously shot in the Khan Younis refugee camp. I sheltered from bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes. I climbed over the rubble of demolished Palestinian homes and apartment blocks along the border with Egypt. I interviewed the bloodied and dazed survivors. I heard the soul crushing wails of mothers keening over the corpses of their children.
I arrived in Jerusalem in 1988. Israel was busy discrediting and marginalizing the secular, aristocratic Palestinian leadership of Faisel al-Husseini and driving Jordanian administrators from the occupied West Bank. This secular and moderate leadership was replaced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat. But Arafat, very likely poisoned by Israel, and the PLO were also ruthlessly pushed aside by Israel. The PLO was replaced by Hamas, which Israel openly fostered as a counterweight to the PLO.
The escalating savagery of Israel against the Palestinians is reflected in the escalating savagery of the Palestinians. The resistance groups are Israel’s doppelgängers. Israel believes that with the eradication of Hamas the Palestinians will become docile. But history has shown that once one Palestinian resistance movement is destroyed, a more virulent and radical one takes its place.
The killers feed off each other. I saw this in the ethnic wars in Bosnia. When religion and nationalism are used to sanctify murder there are no rules. It is a battle between light and dark, good and evil, God and Satan. Rational discourse is banished.
“The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.”
The Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots in the current Israeli government need Hamas. Revenge is the psychological engine of war. Those targeted for slaughter are rendered inhuman. They are not worthy of empathy or justice. Pity and grief are felt exclusively for one’s own. Israel vows to eradicate a dehumanized mass that embodies absolute evil. The maimed and dead in Gaza, and the maimed and dead in Israeli towns and kibbutzim, are victims of the same dark lusts.
“From violence only violence is born,” Primo Levi writes, “following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied.”
The Biden administration has promised unconditional Israeli support and weapons shipments.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to “deter any actor” who might widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The carrier group includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford; its eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft; the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy; and the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt, according to a Pentagon statement.
The U.S., as in the past, ignores the far greater death and destruction, as well as the illegal occupation, meted out by Israel to the Palestinians or the periodic military campaigns — this is the fifth major military assault by Israel on Gaza in 15 years — against civilians.
Israel says it recovered 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters after the incursion. This is a number greater than the 1,300 Israeli victims. Nearly all the dead Hamas fighters, I suspect, were young men born inside the Gaza concentration camp who had never seen the outside of the open-air prison until they burst through the security barriers erected by Israel. If Hamas fighters possessed Israel’s technological arsenal of death, they would be able to do their killing more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder versions of those Israel has used against them for decades.
I know this disease, the exaltation of race, religion and nation, the deification of the warrior, the martyr and violence, the celebration of victimhood. Holy warriors believe they alone possess virtue and courage, while their enemy is perfidious, cowardly and evil. They believe they alone have the right to revenge. Pain for pain. Blood for blood. Horror for horror. There is a fearsome symmetry to the madness, the abandonment of what it means to be humane and just.
T.E. Lawrence calls this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”
Once these fires are lit they can easily become a conflagration.
Israeli tanks and soldiers, to thwart an attack by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinians, have been deployed to the border with Lebanon. The Israeli forces killed fighters from Hezbollah, as well as a Reuters journalist, which saw Hezbollah fire a salvo of rockets in retaliation. Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he would distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli settlers, who have carried out murderous rampages in Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Israel has killed at least 51 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Hamas launched its attack on October 7.
Psychologist Rollo May writes:
At the outset of every war…we hastily transform our enemy into the image of the daimonic; and then, since it is the devil we are fighting, we can shift onto a war footing without asking ourselves all the troublesome and spiritual questions that the war arouses. We no longer have to face the realization that those we are killing are persons like ourselves.
The killing and torture, the more they endure, contaminate the perpetrators and the society that condones their actions. They sever the professional inquisitors and killers from the capacity to feel. They feed the death instinct. They expand the moral injury of war.
Israel taught the Palestinians to communicate in the primitive howl of hatred, war, death and annihilation. But it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control. #Israel #Palestine
‘Humanity Must Prevail’ in Gaza, Says UN Official as Refugee Shelters Become IDF Targets
“Wars have rules,” said the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. “Civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics, and UN premises cannot be a target.”
By Julia Conley / Common Dreams SCHEERPOST, October 15, 2023
The emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations on Saturday said that “humanity is failing” as officials in the United States and other powerful Western countries refused to hear the calls of a growing number of humanitarian groups, progressive lawmakers, and governments for a cease-fire in Gaza—allowing Israel to forge ahead with what will likely be an imminent ground assault on the blockaded enclave.
“The past week has been a test for humanity,” said Martin Griffiths one week after Hamas unleashed a brutal surprise attack on Israel, killing at least 1,300 people and taking scores of people hostage. As Israel’s response has targeted Gaza—home to two million people, about half of whom are children—repeated airstrikes have bombarded “homes, schools, shelters, health centers, and places of worship,” Griffith said, leaving at least 2,215 Palestinians dead, including more than 600 children.
“Entire residential neighborhoods have been razed to the ground,” added Griffiths, who serves as under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations. “Aid workers have been killed. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, already critical, is fast becoming untenable.”
Griffith’s comments came as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported that the indiscriminate bombing campaign has placed its own shelters in “unprecedented” danger, making it impossible for workers to ensure the safety of some 270,000 peoplewho have been displaced and sought shelter at 102 schools run by the agency.
“Wars have rules. Civilians, hospitals, schools, clinics, and UN premises cannot be a target,” said the UNWRA said in a statement. “We are sparing no effort to advocate with parties to the conflicts to meet their obligations under international law to protect civilians including those seeking refuge in UNRWA shelters.”……………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/humanity-must-prevail-in-gaza-says-un-official-as-refugee-shelters-become-idf-targets/ #Israel #Palestine
Palestinians Speak Out
#Israel #Palestine
Report From Gaza: Fears That Israeli Army Is Preparing for Ethnic Cleansing
As Israel massacres entire families and wipes out whole neighborhoods, the Israeli army’s calls for Gazans to flee to the Egyptian border are stoking fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
SCHEERPOST, By Tareq S. Hajjaj / Mondoweiss 13 Oct 23
The WHO put out a statement yesterday saying that medical supplies in all of Gaza’s hospitals have started to run out. At the same time, Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, put out a press release saying that health services have entered a “critical phase,” and that medical supplies, tools, and fuel are about to run out. He added that the hospitals are at full capacity, and the injured are now forced to lie on the floor.
The scene at al-Shifa’ Hospital, Gaza’s central hospital, is bloody. Women, children, and the elderly, and even young people, are forced to lie down on the floor.
Yesterday, Gaza’s sole power plant said that within the next few hours, the plant would shut down completely due to the lack of fuel. Today, electricity has almost been completely shut off everywhere in Gaza; the only exceptions are places with commercial generators, which are also running out of fuel.
The Israeli army sent threatening messages to residential tower inhabitants instructing them to evacuate their homes in the al-Nada and al-Awda complexes in northern Gaza, which include approximately fifty residential towers, and are home to thousands of people.
The humanitarian situation in homes and at UNRWA schools, where many have taken refuge to escape the bombardment, is catastrophic. Homes are overcrowded due to the internal displacement of families to their relatives’ homes in areas they believe to be farther from the line of fire. But no place in Gaza is outside the line of fire. The crowding in homes and schools has led to inhumane conditions, including hour-long lines to use bathrooms.
Last night was bloody. The missiles used by the occupation seem to be new, and haven’t been used in Gaza before. We’ve noticed that there are missiles that explode without making a large sound, but that make the ground shake under people’s feet.
Fears of ethnic cleansing and second Nakba
People are now fearing the mass ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip to Egypt after an Israeli military spokesperson said that the Palestinians affected by the airstrikes can make their way to Egypt. Since the U.S. and Egypt are now working to open a “humanitarian corridor” for aid to enter Gaza, another Israeli military spokesperson said that civilians may all pass through that corridor to Egypt.
These statements have led Gaza residents to fear an impending second Nakba and mass ethnic cleansing. At the same time, rumors are spreading among people in Gaza that the Egyptian city of Sheikh Zweid and other areas in the Sinai have been prepared ahead of time to receive refugees, which many say is an old plan whose time has now come. Talk has also been spreading of how the eventuality of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to areas of the Sinai would be followed by the establishment of a Palestinian state on what remains of the Gaza Strip, in which Egypt would supposedly swap land with Israel. Yet these rumors remain unsubstantiated.
What is certain, however, is that U.S. officials have started to discuss the possibility of the flight of thousands of families and civilians to Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
The Rafah crossing was targeted yesterday by Israeli airstrikes from the Palestinian side, but firefighters and civil defense teams have since cleared the rubble from the area and reopened the crossing………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/13/report-from-gaza-fears-that-israeli-army-is-preparing-for-ethnic-cleansing/ #Israel
France uses teargas on banned pro-Palestinian rally
By Layli Foroudi and Michel Rose, October 13, 20233
PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) – French police used teargas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris on Thursday, as President Emmanuel Macron urged the French to remain united and refrain from bringing the Israel-Hamas conflict home.
Macron’s interior minister had earlier banned pro-Palestinian protests, saying they were “likely to generate disturbances to public order”.
France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities. The Middle East conflict has often stoked domestic tensions in the past.
“This event is an earthquake for Israel, the Middle East and beyond,” Macron said in a solemn TV address. “Let’s not pursue at home ideological adventures by imitating or projecting.”
“Let’s not add, through illusions or calculations, domestic divides to international divides,” he said. “The shield of unity will protect us from hatred and excesses.”
Macron said the government had acted to boost police protection of Jewish sites, including schools and synagogues, and that there could be no justification for atrocities……………..
BANNED RALLY
Despite the ban, several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in central Paris in separate groups that police forces sought to keep from merging……….
“We live in a country of civil law, a country where we have the right to take a stand and to demonstrate. (It is unfair) to forbid for one side and to authorise for the other,” said Charlotte Vautier, 29, an employee at a non-profit who took part in the rally…………….
Two pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Paris had already been banned on Thursday for fear of outbursts when interior minister Gerald Darmanin told prefects to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country…………more https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-bans-pro-palestinian-protests-citing-risk-disturbances-public-order-2023-10-12/
How criminalisation is being used to silence climate activists across the world
As wildfires and extreme temperatures rage across the planet, sea
temperature records tumble and polar glaciers disappear, the scale and
speed of the climate crisis is impossible to ignore. Scientific experts are
unanimous that there needs to be an urgent clampdown on fossil fuel
production, a major boost in renewable energy and support for communities
to rapidly move towards a fairer, healthier and sustainable low-carbon
future.
Many governments, however, seem to have different priorities.
According to climate experts, senior figures at the UN and grassroots
advocates contacted by the Guardian, some political leaders and law
enforcement agencies around the world are instead launching a fierce
crackdown on people trying to peacefully raise the alarm.
Guardian 12th Oct 2023
Biden says he saw evidence of Hamas ‘beheading’ Israeli children; White House clarifies
WION, Washington By: Mukul Sharma: Oct 12, 2023,
US President Joe Biden said he saw “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children”, appearing to corroborate reports of a deadly onslaught allegedly by Hamas militants who devastated Israel’s Kibbutz Kfar Aza, located close to Gaza.
“It is important for Americans to see what is happening. I have been doing this for a long time. I never thought that I would see… have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said during remarks to US Jewish community leaders at a White House roundtable.
“Downplaying Hamas’s atrocities and blaming the Jewish people is unthinkable,” Biden said further.
But later, a White House spokesperson told Washington Post that the US officials and Biden have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently.
Biden reportedly based his comments about the alleged atrocities on the claims from Netanyahu’s spokesman and media reports from Israel, according to the White House.
A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that toddlers and babies were found in Kfar Aza, a ‘kibbutz’ or community in southern Israel, with their “heads decapitated” after Hamas’ attack over the weekend, CNN reported………………………..more https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-says-he-saw-evidence-of-hamas-beheading-israeli-children-645631
TODAY. The monstrous lie – that Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is OK
With its usual snivelling sycophancy, my own country, Australia, and other Western countries go along with this basic lie – and all the other lies that accompany it. Below are just a few of these lies that spring to mind.
*As someone else , (Hamas) committed an atrocity – that makes it OK for us (Israel) to commit an even bigger atrocity.
* “ I have confirmed pictures of (Hamas) terrorists beheading children,” Biden said. (yes – he later went back on that but the damage was done)
* Israel’s massacre of Palestinians is necessary for the security of the United States of America. (Are we supposed to believe that tiny impoverished and oppressed Gaza is a military threat to America?)
* Seeing that Israel’s atrocity (sorry I mean ‘defense‘) is justified, then it’s OK for Israel to use illegal weapons – white phosphorous, and illegal methods – starvation, against the Palestinian people.
* Israel is killing only Hamas members – “human animals” (most adults in Gaza must join Hamas, if only to get a good job, – and what about the children?)
* It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons, and even threaten to nuke Gaza, as long as we pretend that we don’t know .
* Seeing that the Jews were victims of the holocaust, we should let Israel itself do a holocaust
* Those who criticise Israel are just being anti-semitic.
* Those who protest against the genocide in Palestine are terrorist supporters and must be arrested
* Supplying weapons to Israel (and Ukraine, and Taiwan) has nothing to do with promoting USA’s one most prosperous and successful manufacturing industry business – weapons making
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The beauty of lies and dishonest propaganda is that you can go back later, and unsay them, and beat your breast in hypocritical sadness, – once your awful purpose is happening, and can’t be stopped
President Joe Biden on Friday acknowledged the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza”
****************************************************
Then there are the lies of omission:
With the death toll mounting in Gaza as Israeli jets relentlessly bomb the densely populated territory, Biden did not mention Palestinian casualties. Instead, he focused on Israeli victims of Hamas’s attack. Biden also did not address the root causes of the conflict.
“Let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back. — today, tomorrow, as we always have. It’s as simple as that,” he added. #Israel #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants
The US Is Just As Culpable As Israel For The Atrocities Committed In Gaza
The primary job of Israel apologists in the coming days will be producing and circulating narratives explaining why this self-evidently terrible thing is actually perfectly fine and acceptable.
And top-down commands are being issued within the US government to support this massacre unconditionally.
So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government.
These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent.
Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they’re fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.
Caitlin’s newsletter CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, , OCT 14, 2023
The Israeli government dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza telling everyone who lives in the northern part of the strip that they have 24 hours to evacuate to the southern part, and then bombed the people who were trying to evacuate.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric denounced the evacuation order, saying the UN “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Many Palestinians have said they’re going to stay where they are because they have nowhere safe to go, despite being told by Israel they must leave if they want to “save their lives”.
We’re about to see the death and destruction get much, much worse in Gaza, and it’s already very, very bad. As of this writing the official death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza is speeding past 1,900, a number which includes 614 children. The primary job of Israel apologists in the coming days will be producing and circulating narratives explaining why this self-evidently terrible thing is actually perfectly fine and acceptable.
It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.
And top-down commands are being issued within the US government to support this massacre unconditionally.
The Huffington Post reports that the State Department has been circulating internal emails telling staff to avoid calls for peace, instructing them to refrain from using phrases like “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”
Asked about progressive congressional members calling for a ceasefire, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we believe they are wrong, we believe they’re repugnant, and we believe they’re disgraceful.”
On the question of whether there are any potential Israeli actions that the White House would not tolerate, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters “I’m not here to draw red lines or issue warnings or give lectures to anybody.”
So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government. These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent. Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they’re fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.
This is just a continuation and extension of the violence and bloodshed the US government has been inflicting around the world for generations. There’s a clip of George W Bush going around from a California event on Tuesday in which, for some bizarre, unfathomable reason, the former president was asked to provide his opinion on what Israel should do in response to the Hamas attack on October 7.
Bush said pretty much what you’d expect him to say: “You’re dealing with cold-blooded killers,” “negotiating with killers is not an option,” “one side is guilty.” The same book he’s been reciting from since September 11, 2001. What I find much more interesting is, why is anyone asking the absolute worst person you could possibly ask about what should be done in response to such an attack………………………………..
the United States never learned any moral lessons from its warmongering after 9/11 — if it had, George W Bush would be sitting in a prison cell, and the US wouldn’t be backing a mass atrocity in Gaza………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-is-just-as-culpable-as-israel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=137943417&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email #Israel
How To Explain U.S. Empire’s Support For Israel Right Or Wrong?
Finally, this list would be incomplete without mentioning narrative control. In our day this looks like inflammatory claims of beheading babies both quickly debunked and repeated endlessly even after debunking. After President Biden claimed to have seen the pictures (his staff says no, he didn’t see any such pictures). Similar playbook to the false claim that Iraq’s army threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Also, calling it Israel’s 9/11 sure sounds useful for tightening up internal security.
LISA SAVAGE, OCT 13, 2023
This morning came word that the Biden administration will next try to tie funding for Ukraine to funding for Israel, Taiwan, and more fortifications along our bipartisan wall on the Mexican border. Good luck with that grouping — Ukraine funding fatigue is so strong at the moment that it was used to oust the Speaker of the House.
I had already been mulling a blog post on the question of why every politician, elected official, and talking head in Western media seems wedded to the concept of Israel right or wrong. Especially when it’s wrong……………………..
The answers to this question are many, and what relative importance to assign each is up for debate. I’ll list them in rough order of importance as I see it, but you may have other thoughts.
Israel was created as the U.S./NATO outpost in the oily region. Despite certain knowledge of the Holocaust unfolding (known by U.S. government but not the general public), it was allowed to proceed until the Soviet Army began liberating the concentration camps. The Holocaust was then tremendously useful as it underpinned the charge of antisemitism against anyone who dared to criticize Israel.
Meanwhile, actual Nazis were whisked away to found NASA, head up NATO, and populate Canada and the U.S. midwest with staunch anticommunist immigrants.
Israel was allowed to develop nuclear weapons, which is common knowledge but has never been admitted by either Israel or its enablers. PM Golda Meir reportedly jacked up President Nixon over sending war materiel he was withholding, threatening to nuke Russia and make it look like the U.S. did it. She got the ammunition.
Meanwhile AIPAC got busy facilitating the funding of election campaigns and running free trips to Israel for newly minted congressmen and women. It lobbied hard on college campuses knowing that one’s brand loyalties are typically set in place rather early in life.
A young man told me that the Jewish community he grew up in did not agree with AIPAC, however, they felt guilty for emigrating to New York instead of Israel after WW2. And, their guilt encouraged them to never criticize Israel, buying their silence about the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba and the following decades of violent occupation and apartheid. And allowing the perception that AIPAC spoke for them.
- Young Jews in the U.S. were raised to defend Israel right or wrong. Groups like Birthright also worked the demographic angle, taking teenagers on trips to Israel to socialize with IDF soldiers. See the recent documentary ISRAELISM for more details on this.
We’ve not seen the black book of Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts which was used in his procuress Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. As many have speculated, the federal government isn’t going to release the names in Epstein’s black book because they are the names in the book. What we have instead is some fierce investigative reporting by Whitney Webb and the artifact that is the flight log for the Lolita Express. Flying outside the U.S. on a plane used to traffic underage girls for sex is bad for a powerful man’s reputation, so why would Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Bill Gates (among many others) do so? I can’t answer that but Melinda Gates had some choice things to say about her ex-husband’s participation.
Webb reported that a mansion in Manhattan heavily equipped with surveillance devices was gifted to Epstein before the island scheme came into play. It’s also known that Maxwell’s father, Robert, and other family members worked with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
- Finally, this list would be incomplete without mentioning narrative control. In our day this looks like inflammatory claims of beheading babies both quickly debunked and repeated endlessly even after debunking. After President Biden claimed to have seen the pictures (his staff says no, he didn’t see any such pictures). Similar playbook to the false claim that Iraq’s army threw babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Also, calling it Israel’s 9/11 sure sounds useful for tightening up internal security. #Israel
Fascism in the West to Enable Genocide in Palestine
Craig Murray, https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/10/fascism-in-the-west-to-enable-genocide-in-palestine/
The UK and the US are both sending military assistance to Israel to commit a calculated and deliberate act of genocide, which is already underway.
Over 500 children have been killed in Gaza in the last week and over 2,000 maimed, many with life changing injuries. Nobody can claim they do not know what is already happening or what is about to unfold. The cutting off of food and water to Gaza is a major international crime, which the western proponents of the “rules based order” universally refuse to condemn.
In both the UK and the US there can be no more stark illustration of the lack of any kind of meaningful democracy, than the fact that there is no major political party that opposes the genocide – despite massive public opposition.
The bought and paid for media and political class in the west are extremely nervous, throughout the western world. Now they have come to the final genocide for which zionism has always aimed, they face a good deal of popular resistance.
Throughout Europe there is a massive gap between the zionist unanimity of the politicians and the much greater understanding of the Palestinian situation among the general public. Tellingly the response by the zionist political class has been a wave of outright fascist suppression.
In France, Macron has made all pro-Palestinian demonstrations illegal, but as so often the French people are not standing for that kind of authoritarianism.
In the UK, the police have adopted the cowardly tactic of arresting a couple of individuals, one in Brighton and one in Manchester, for pro-Palestinian demonstration. Under Tony Blair’s notorious draconian “anti-terror” legislation, they could face up to 14 years in prison.
The young man in Manchester was arrested on the precise site of the famous “Peterloo massacre”, which generations of British people were taught at school was a terrible crime in breach of the rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Let the irony of that set in.
You can go out in the streets of the UK with an Israeli flag and yell that you want every Palestinian to be cleansed from Gaza. That is not illegal. If you say the Palestinians have a right to resist their genocide, that is illegal.
That appears to be a genuine analysis of the law in the UK, France and many other western countries.
That is intended to terrify all of us. It will not work.
The European Commission has been ferociously zionist and gung-ho for this Palestinian genocide. It displayed the Israeli flag on its Berlaymont headquarters. It has taken a side in the most ferocious way.
It is therefore deeply sinister that the European Commission is actively working to shut down pro-Palestinian information and comment on social media. The European Commission has written to all major social media organisations and is able to threaten them with massive fines if they do not remove information of which the European Union disapproves.
The notion is plainly nonsense that through the fog of war the European Commission – which is 100% parti pris – is qualified to say what information is true and what information is false, and what comment is legitimate.
Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner in charge of this operation, is a former chief executive of electronic companies – and defence contractors – Atos and Thomson. He has no genuine interest in freedom of speech, and is engaged in a process of silencing dissent for military aims, which is quite simply fascist.
We are witnessing almost all western governments deliberately facilitating massacre, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We are witnessing almost all western governments turning on their own people to crush dissent at that complicity in genocide.
This feels not so much like the week that western democracy died, as the week it was impossible any longer to deny that western democracy died some time ago. #Israel
Canada funding Ukrainian groups that celebrate WW2 Nazis – media
13 Oct 23 https://www.rt.com/news/584757-canada-funds-ukrainians-celebrate-nazi/
NGOs which honor the Waffen-SS reportedly received $2.2 million from the government over the last seven years
Ottawa has given $2.2 million over the last seven years to Ukrainian-Canadian groups that celebrate Nazi collaborators, Jewish-American news outlet The Forward reported on Wednesday.
Among the recipients of government grants are defenders of 98-year-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka, whose presence at a special session of the Canadian parliament last month caused a major scandal, according to the outlet.
The largest recipient of government financial support is the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which is known for praising Hunka’s Nazi WWII division (SS Galicia) and protecting a monument to it in suburban Toronto, the Forward article claims. The organization is listed as having received nearly $1.5 million between 2016 and 2022, according to public records.
The Canadian government also supports the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, whose logo includes the insignia of a faction of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Between 2015 and 2022, it received $140,000 in grants, mostly to create summer jobs for youth, the outlet reported, stressing that the federation’s leader made statements exonerating Hunka last month.
The New Pathway newspaper, which fought for the monument to Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevich in Canada, received about $68,000 from a fund that supports local publishers, The Forward reported. Other Canadian government-funded organizations listed in the publication have also supported veterans of the Ukrainian Nazi unit or otherwise praised collaborators.
In late September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for applauding a Ukrainian Waffen SS veteran during a parliamentary ceremony attended by the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky.
A few days later, Canadian Governor General Mary Simon reportedly expressed regret that in 1987, her office awarded the country’s second-highest merit to a Ukrainian immigrant who served in the 14th Waffen-SS Division. #Ukraine
Are more weapons that USA will send to Ukraine likely to end up in the hands of Hamas ?
Hamas using weapons given to Ukraine – ex-Russian president
RT Mon, 09 Oct 2023
Arms Washington sent to Kiev and left in Afghanistan are about to be “uncontrollably used” around the world, Dmitry Medvedev has warned.
The weapons Kiev’s Western backers have actively supplied to Ukraine have found their way to Hamas militants and are now “being actively used in Israel,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said in a Telegram post on Monday, adding that any future military hardware supplied to Kiev could end up on the black market as well.
It will only get worse from here,” Medvedev warned, predicting that the world should “expect missiles, tanks, and even planes from Kiev on the black market soon.”
His words came amid rumors that Hamas militants that control the Gaza Strip had gotten their hands on some US-made weaponry before their attack on Israel over the weekend. No solid evidence confirming these claims has emerged so far. However, an unverified video circulating online showed a Palestinian militant displaying assorted US-made pieces, including a standard-issue M136 anti-tank grenade launcher, while thanking Ukrainians for the weapons.
According to Medvedev, “corrupt authorities” in Ukraine would not hesitate to trade everything they had received from their backers. “They would steal everything in sight,” the former president claimed, adding that the Western weapons sent to Ukraine would soon fuel conflicts in other parts of the world, just like the trove of weapons the Americans left in Afghanistan during their hasty withdrawal from the country in 2021.
The aforementioned video has already sparked concerns in the US, with Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene saying on Sunday that its origins must be investigated. The congresswoman also claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that some of the arms used by the militants might have come from Ukraine or Afghanistan.
Washington has been Kiev’s biggest supplier of military aid since the onset of its conflict with Moscow. The US has poured a total of $46.6 billion into military assistance to Ukraine, including direct weapons and ammunition shipments, as well as grants and loans for weapons and equipment.
Kiev has repeatedly faced accusations of misusing or selling off the weaponry, which it has vehemently denied. On Monday, the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) blamed the rumors about weapons supposedly coming from Ukraine to Hamas on Russia………. more https://www.rt.com/russia/584448-hamas-use-weapons-given-ukraine/–#Ukraine
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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