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The Israeli Government Must Be Stopped

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 1, 2024,  https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-israeli-government-must-be-stopped/
David Swanson is Executive Director of World BEYOND War.

The Israeli government has been dragging Western weapons and militaries into wars for far too long, putting all of the world — and its global institutions — at risk. The move into Lebanon, creating more dead, injured, traumatized, and homeless already in huge numbers ought to snap some war supporters out of their trance.

The danger of a catastrophic war on Iran that is joined by the United States and NATO on one side, and additional nations on the other, looms horrifically on the horizon.

It is high time for the world’s governments, including that of Israel’s top supplier, the United States, to begin complying with the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and each of the treaties and domestic laws violated by each arms shipment.

While the UK and Canada have stopped some weapons, that is far from sufficient. While a handful of U.S. Senators anti-democratically plan a vote weeks from now after a U.S. election, on halting illegal arms shipments to Israel, that is far from sufficient, and yet more than we see in the U.S. House of so-called representatives.

Western governments have emboldened the Israeli government with weapons supplies for so long that Israel understands there are no limits. There is nothing it can do that anyone could reasonably expect the U.S. and allied governments not to support, not to protect with propaganda assistance, Security Council vetoes, and yet more instruments of mass killing. That has to change.

Public pressure in the West has prevented western governments from going to war with Iran for decades. But Israel is now expanding an existing war in an effort to create a wider war without any debate or decision. Western media is already using the passive language of “being dragged into” a war — as if no decision need be made at all. This could not be more dangerous, more dishonest, more opposed to the supposed ideal of democracy.

The good people who have raised their voices and taken nonviolent action against the genocide in Gaza for a year and more, and those who have been silent, must all rise up together now and declare that nothing permits wider war, nothing justifies these outrages, no election season puts a pause on our moral duty to protect all life.

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Netanyahu: Israel Is Fighting a War on Seven Fronts

  

The Israeli leader called the UN General Assembly a ‘Swamp of Antisemitic Bile’

by Kyle Anzalone September 27, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/27/netanyahu-israel-is-fighting-a-war-on-seven-fronts/#gsc.tab=0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN during his remarks at the 79th General Assembly summit on Friday. He called the body a swamp of antisemitism while saying Israel needed to defend itself on seven fronts.

The Israeli leader’s speech was contentious. Before Netanyahu took to the podium, Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif blasted Israel for waging a genocide in Gaza and creating a war with Lebanon. As Netanyahu began his address, a large portion of the UN General Assembly body walked out.

During his remarks, Netanyahu referred to the UN General Assembly as a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” He went on to slam the International Criminal Court (ICC) for considering charging him with war crimes, adding the true war criminals are in Iran and its allied nations.

During his address, Netanyahu presented two maps, one titled “the blessing” and the other “the curse.”  The Israeli leader said Tel Aviv is still seeking a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. He claimed that if Riyadh established official ties with Israel, the world would receive a “blessing,” but Iran represented a “curse” to the region.

The Israeli leader explained “the blessing” was establishing a “landbridge” from India to Israel. The blessing requires Saudi Arabia to enter the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel. Netanyahu claimed that would have happened, but the October 7 Hamas attack prevented the deal.

In the map titled “the curse,” five countries were represented in black: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. The Israeli leader claimed that Tehran was working to eliminate Tel Aviv using its allies in the region. Netanyahu presented the conflict as a battle between forces of civilization against barbarism.

When discussing Gaza, Netanyahu said “Hamas must go.” He added that any end to the war that would see Hamas remain in power in Gaza is equivalent to allowing the Nazis to rebuild Germany after World War II.

As with Hamas, Netanyahu also said Israel would continue to wage war against Hezbollah until all its objectives were met. Over the past week, Tel Aviv has significantly ramped up its military operations in southern Lebanon, killing over 700 in the past week.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

October 2, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Illusion of a Solution: Killing Hassan Nasrallah

Australian Independent Media, September 29, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,

The ongoing Israeli operation against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group so dominant in Lebanon, is following a standard pattern. Ignore base causes. Ignore context. Target leaders, and target personnel. See matters in conventional terms of civilisational warrior against barbarian despot. Israel, the valiant and bold, fighting the forces of darkness.

The entire blood woven tapestry of the Middle East offers uncomfortable explanations. The region has seen false political boundaries sketched and pronounced by foreign powers, fictional countries proclaimed, and entities brought into being on the pure interests of powers in Europe. These empires produced shoddy cartography in the name of the nation state and plundering self-interest, leaving aside the complexities of ethnic belonging and tribal dispositions. Tragically, such cartographic fictions tended to keep company with crime, dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing and enthusiastic hatreds.

……………………………………………………… The Israeli strategy in this latest phase was made all too apparent by the number of military commanders and high-ranking operatives in Hezbollah the IDF has targeted. Added to this the pager-walkie talkie killings as a prelude to a likely ground invasion of Lebanon, it was clear that Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, figured as an exemplary target.

……………………..Israeli officials have been prematurely thrilled. Like deluded scientists obsessed with eliminating a symptom, they ignore the disease with habitual obsession. “Most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated,” claimed a triumphant Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called the measure “the most significant strike since the founding of the State of Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with simplicity that killing Nasrallah was necessary to “changing the balance of power in the region for years to come” and enable displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north.

Various reports swallowed the Israeli narrative…………………………………………………………………………………..

Ibrahim Al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos, summarises the efforts of Israel’s high-profile killing strategy as shortsighted feats of miscalculation. “History shows every single Israeli assassination of a high-profile political or military operator, even after being initially hailed as a game-changing victory, eventually led to the killed leader being replaced by someone more determined, adept and hawkish.” Another Nasrallah is bound to be in tow, with several others in incubation.  https://theaimn.com/the-illusion-of-a-solution-killing-hassan-nasrallah/

September 30, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Israeli nuclear risk no one is talking about

Israel’s ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons, while never officially acknowledged, remains at the heart of its security doctrine

September 27, 2024 https://inews.co.uk/news/world/what-happens-us-stops-supporting-israel-3296914

A tenuous and inherently unstable military stand-off between Israel and Hezbollah – has finally shattered.

The latest outbreak in fighting is certain to result in increasing civilian casualties as Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire across the border.

As Israel faces numerous threats its possession of nuclear bombs lurk behind the growing debate over arms supplies to the nation.

Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza in the past year has already forced the Biden administration to address the option of limiting the supply of US arms if US officials determine that Israel has committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian assistance.

In addition, Senator Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would affect more than $20bn (£15bn) in US arms sales to Israel.

There is no chance that such measures will pass, but that is not the point. As an AP report noted, “the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the US’s long-time bipartisan support for Israel.”

Indeed, Washington and Jerusalem must face the unwelcome fact that such actions by Congress or the White House, however symbolic, may well undermine the longstanding bargain that not only keeps Israel’s conventional arsenals full … but also ensures that its nuclear bombs stay in the basement – undeclared and shrouded in a veil of ambiguity.

The Jewish state has long enjoyed a nuclear weapons monopoly in the region, and its ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons, while never officially acknowledged, remains at the heart of its security doctrine.

In the first days of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” War, for example, Israel is believed to have placed a small number of nuclear warheads on alert and may have considered their deployment to stop a Syrian tank advance into Israel’s heartland.

It is no accident that Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons. US policies developed in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six Day War have played a critical role in shaping Israel’s conventional and nuclear superiority.

Washington did oppose Israel’s nuclear weapons activities in the 50s and 60s. In the wake of the June 1967 war, however, a quid pro quo with Israel was established.

In return for Israel maintaining a policy of nuclear weapons ambiguity, Washington would guarantee what was termed Israel’s “qualitative military edge” – QME. That is, Washington will ensure that as long as Israel keeps its “bombs in the basement” – undeclared, unacknowledged, and unused – Washington will guarantee Israel the conventional weapons arsenal necessary to defeat any combination of regional enemies.

In the decades since, every change in US political or defence policy, every diplomatic or military engagement with Israel, has featured a ritualistic reaffirmation of Washington’s commitment to maintain Israel’s QME. See for example, the Democrats’ election platform, which declares that “our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself … is ironclad.”

Indeed, the State Department recently reaffirmed that “the US is by statute mandated … to guarantee that … Israel has a qualitative military edge over rivals in the region. It’s not a discretionary question. It is a statutory requirement, and it is one that we are committed to.,, There is also an important deterrent effect to the United States continuing to send a message to Israel’s adversaries that if they attack Israel, we will defend it. And that’s a message that we will continue to send loud and clear.”

Since Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Iran under the rule of the ayatollahs has been deemed the biggest challenge to Israel’s regional hegemony in both the conventional and nuclear realms. and the biggest test of “ironclad” US support for QME.

Notwithstanding an officially declared intention to refrain from creating a nuclear weapons option, Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium continues.

Iran’s stock of uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride enriched to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90 per cent of weapons grade, grew an estimated 22.6kg to 164.7kg, according to a confidential quarterly International Atomic Energy Agency report recently sent to member states. According to an IAEA yardstick, that is 2kg short of being enough, in theory, if enriched further, for four nuclear bombs.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken observed in July that “instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, (Iran) is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that… what we’ve seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that’s actually moving forward” with its nuclear programme.

One might think that the prospect of a nuclear stand-off in the Middle East might arouse an international chorus of concern, especially since Blinken’s plaintive warning about a nuclear Iran is part and parcel of the metastasizing failure of US led effort to stabilise the cascading crises already consuming the heart of the Middle East.

Iran has declared its opposition to the development of a nuclear weapons capability and has shown no progress in integrating such a capability as part of its strategic doctrine.

Nevertheless, as Blinken’s remarks illustrate, Iran is proceeding with developing critical constituent parts necessary to achieve a weapons capability while retaining a veil of ambiguity about its intentions.

In the wake of the demise of the JCPOA, Iran’s cultivation of nuclear ambiguity has established a new policy framework for its continuing nuclear programme and tested the continuing relevance of Washington’s commitment to QME.

The blowback from the Gaza war, has had an unexpected and unwelcome impact on this long-held policy.

National Security Memorandum, NSM-20 requires US military aid recipients to provide “credible and reliable assurances” that they will abide by international law when using the weapons or risk losing access to US arms. Israel, it is argued, has violated laws prohibiting the transfer of American military aid to governments that have committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian assistance.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Washington to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. “Give us the tools faster,” he advised Congress, “and we’ll finish the job faster.”

A US decision to withhold arms for Gaza won’t affect the course of the war and it is in any scenario unlikely.

But any US action along such lines, however symbolic, will no doubt test Israel’s confidence in the continuing US commitment to the broader security assurances at the heart of QME, which, like it or not, has succeeded over the decades in restraining the nuclear weaponisation of the entire region and preserved Israel’s nuclear weapons monopoly.

Indeed, the current crisis creates an opportunity for Israel to exploit the relative freedom enabled by Washington’s ineffectual Gaza diplomacy and to test its support for QME to destroy two threats at the heart of Israel’s security doctrine – to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and to defeat the Iran-led axis now active along Israel’s frontiers.

Should Washington fail the QME test in Israel’s eyes, it might well precipitate a dramatic change in Israel’s nuclear doctrine – ending the thin veil of ambiguity about Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal and sparking a regional nuclear arms race.

Policies that make sense in Jerusalem, however, may not survive scrutiny in Washington. The Biden administration continues to give its “partner” Israel an unprecedented free hand in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon.

And it is taking extraordinary pains to demonstrate its “ironclad” commitment to QME, and thus keep the lid on a potential slide towards the nuclearisation of the crisis and an explicit change in Israel’s nuclear deployment and war fighting doctrine.

President Biden strives to contain rather than confront. He has no interest in prompting a crisis of confidence between Washington and Jerusalem that raises questions about Washington’s commitment to QME and its unwritten support for Israel’s nuclear monopoly. So he is deploying unprecedented military and diplomatic resources, so far without success, to prevent a hot war that has the potential to define the region and perhaps beyond for generations.

Geoffrey Aronson writes about Middle East affairs. He consults with a variety of public and private institutions dealing with regional political, security, and development issues. He has advised the World Bank on Israel’s disengagement and has worked for the European Union Coordinating Office for the Palestinian Police Support mission to the West Bank and Gaza

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East (w/ Gideon Levy) | The Chris Hedges Report

 September 28, 2024 

It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the apartheid and occupation of the Israeli state. On today’s episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Levy joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe, and explain the spiritual destruction, both of Israel and Palestine, that the current genocide in Gaza is causing as well as the implications of new military operations in Lebanon.

The worst change, according to Levy, is that Israel has lost its humanity. “Everything is acceptable,” Levy tells Hedges as he describes the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the brutal killing of prisoners, the censorship at the hands of the state and the overall indifference to it all.

“There is practically only one camp in Israel, the camp which supports apartheid and occupation,” Levy says.

There isn’t even any room left for empathy of the innocent victims in Gaza, according to Levy. Teachers have been subject to interrogation and termination because they “express[ed] empathy with the children of Gaza, with the victims of Gaza. Even this is not legitimate anymore in Israeli society 2024,” Levy contends.

Although the horrors following October 7 are devastatingly unprecedented, Levy asserts that this entire catastrophe was years in the making and the meaningless gestures of advocating for a two-state solution, for example, will perpetuate it further.

In the first years following the war in 1967, the occupation of Palestinians as a way of life quickly became normalized, according to Levy. “[Palestinians] clean our streets, they build our buildings, they pave our roads and they will never have citizenship. The only people in the world without any citizenship of any state,” Levy says.

As Israeli society attempts to continue this way of living, only disruptive movements and moments, such as the First Intifada, the Yom Kippur war and now October 7, will bring meaningful attention to the Palestinian struggle most of the world is okay with ignoring.

As Levi writes in his book,

“The way of terror is the only way open to the Palestinians to fight for their future. The way of terror is the only way for them to remind Israel, the Arab states and the world, of their existence. They have no other way. Israel has taught them this. If they don’t use violence, everyone will forget about them, and then a little later, only through terrorism will they be remembered. Only through terrorism will they possibly attain something. One thing is certain, if they put down their weapons, they are doomed.”

Levy says that history has told the Palestinians and the world something crucial about Israel: “the message is, if you want to achieve anything from us, only by force. And the message for the world is the same, if you want the world to care about you, raising your voice is not enough. You have to take measures. You have to take actions, and unfortunately, many times violent ones, aggressive ones, and many times even barbarian ones, like on the seventh of October.”……………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2024/09/28/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle-east-w-gideon-levy-the-chris-hedges-report/

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, media | Leave a comment

US Gives Israel $8.7 Billion in Military Aid for Operations in Gaza and Lebanon

The new aid comes as the US claims it’s pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon

by Dave DeCamp September 26, 2024.  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/26/us-gives-israel-8-7-billion-in-military-aid-for-operations-in-gaza-and-lebanon/#gsc.tab=0

On Thursday, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that it secured $8.7 billion in military aid from the US to support its “ongoing military efforts,” meaning the genocidal slaughter in Gaza and Israel’s dramatic escalation in Lebanon.

The ministry said in a statement that its director-general, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, concluded negotiations in Washington to secure the military aid. It said the package includes $3.5 billion for “essential wartime procurement” that has already been sent to Israel and a $5.2 billion grant for air defenses.

The ministry said the $5.2 billion for air defenses “will significantly strengthen critical systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling while supporting the continued development of an advanced high-powered laser defense system currently in its later stages of development.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin vowed Thursday that the US would continue arming Israel and brushed off the idea of the US setting red lines. “We’ve been committed from the very beginning to help Israel, provide the things that are necessary for them to be able to protect their sovereign territory and that hasn’t changed and won’t change in the future,” he said.

So far, the US has not announced the details of the $8.7 billion weapons package, but the funds are likely being pulled from the $17 billion in new military aid for Israel that was included in the $95 billion foreign military aid bill President Biden signed into law back in April. Israel also receives $3.8 billion from the US in annual military aid.

News of the new US support for Israel comes as the Biden administration claims it’s pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon. But the US has not altered its support of full-throated support for Israel, and the military aid and pledges to defend Israel if the situation escalates have only emboldened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejected the US calls for a truce on Thursday.

September 28, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Going From “The Civilian Buildings Are Hamas” To “The Civilian Buildings Are Hezbollah”

Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 24, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/going-from-the-civilian-buildings?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=149346214&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I have no patience for people who this late in the game still say they don’t know enough about the Palestine situation to have an opinion. It’s like, okay, well, that’s a character flaw, and you should change it. 

Western ignorance and indifference on this issue is hurting real human beings; you don’t get to just be all “tee hee I don’t like learning” and expect this attitude to be treated as some kind of cute little personal foible. 

It’s not a complicated issue, bitch. Learn.

Now that Israel has ramped up its attacks on Lebanon, the IDF is saying that Hezbollah are hiding missiles in civilian homes. 

So I guess we’re doing this again. If you liked “All the civilian buildings are Khamas,” you’ll love Israel’s new hit “All the civilian buildings are Khezbollah.”

❖

Israel has spent a year committing genocide, attacking its neighbors, trying to start World War 3, destroying hospitals, assassinating journalists and lying, yet next month the entire western political-media class is still going to spend a day tearfully portraying it as a victim.

Everyone who publicly criticizes Israel gets accused of working for Hamas and Hezbollah, and now Israel apologists are showing up in our notifications making “jokes” about murdering us with weaponized electronic devices. They’re deliberately trying to sow fear among western critics of Israel. 

This is who these people are. This is the quality of person who supports Israel. They’d happily murder us all with the push of a button, just because we criticized their favorite apartheid state.

❖

Netanyahu has reportedly said he is considering a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. After a year of lies and spin, they’re finally starting to get a bit honest about what this has always been about.

CNN, The Jewish Insider and the Anti-Defamation League have been colluding in a full-on mass media psyop to deceive the public into thinking Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic comment about her state’s attorney general. CNN’s Jake Tapper has been knowingly lying about comments Tlaib made in an interview, falsely reporting that the congresswoman said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel only filed charges against anti-genocide protesters “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” CNN’s Dana Bash then repeated these false allegations.

It never happened. They made the whole thing up. Tlaib never made any comments remotely of that nature, and the reporter who did the interview has been all over social media saying CNN is falsely reporting on her words. 

It’s perhaps not the most significant thing happening in the world right now, but it does say important things about the outlets and reporters who tell people how to look at major world events in our society.

CNN, The Jewish Insider and the Anti-Defamation League have been colluding in a full-on mass media psyop to deceive the public into thinking Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic comment about her state’s attorney general. CNN’s Jake Tapper has been knowingly lying about comments Tlaib made in an interview, falsely reporting that the congresswoman said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel only filed charges against anti-genocide protesters “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” CNN’s Dana Bash then repeated these false allegations.

It never happened. They made the whole thing up. Tlaib never made any comments remotely of that nature, and the reporter who did the interview has been all over social media saying CNN is falsely reporting on her words. 

It’s perhaps not the most significant thing happening in the world right now, but it does say important things about the outlets and reporters who tell people how to look at major world events in our society.

Biden had another lost at the podium moment the other day, this time forgetting he was meant to be introducing Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi after a speech.

Biden supporters were so rabidly nasty to those of us who said he has dementia. They called us Russian agents, fascists, and conspiracy theorists. They never admitted they were wrong. They just pulled him from the race and, much like their president, forgot the whole thing.

It’s so surreal how we’re all seeing clear and undeniable evidence that the US has no functioning president and doesn’t actually need one even as the presidential race consumes all political energy and attention in the nation for months.

During a speech at the Israeli American Council on Thursday, Donald Trump admitted that while he was president the late megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam were at the White House “almost more than anybody outside of people that worked there” demanding political favors for Israel, and that he “gave” them what they wanted.

In 2013 Sheldon Adelson said the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. This was the sociopathic oligarch who, according to Trump, essentially bought his way into the White House via campaign donations. 

Donald Trump is a big fat Israel slut.

If the UK and US carved out a piece of China or Russia and gave it to the Mormons, that new nation would exist in a continuous state of western-backed violence for as long as it existed. Israel exists in a continuous state of western-backed violence for the exact same reason.

September 26, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Israel: ‘Escalate to De-escalate’

By Ray McGovern and Robert Scheer / ScheerPost Staff Writers, 24 Sept 24  https://scheerpost.com/2024/09/23/israel-escalate-to-de-escalate/

In this week’s episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. In the universe of “Playing President,” however, Scheer is not a journalist, but instead plays the President of the United States attempting to navigate the geopolitical landscape of governance and media with the help of his trusty daily briefer from the CIA, Ray McGovern.

This week, McGovern updates the president on the major escalations going on in Lebanon via massive Israeli bombing.

September 25, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s Tally of War Crimes in Lebanon Increases in Wake of Exploding Pagers

The Israeli bombing of a residential neighborhood in Beirut is also a war crime.

By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, September 23, 2024

Israel escalated attacks against Lebanon on September 23, marking the deadliest day of Israeli bombings in that country since 2006. Israel’s strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the capital city of Beirut, left a death toll of at least 274, including women, children and paramedics. The Israeli military targeted “medical centres, ambulances and cars of people trying to flee,” according to Al Jazeera, which cited Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad as the source for the information. Israel also targeted civilian homes, which it claimed were housing Hezbollah weapons.

This latest targeting of Lebanese civilians comes on the heels of Israel’s detonation of hand-held electronic devices in civilian areas of Lebanon on September 17 and 18, when Israeli forces remotely triggered multiple explosions of electronic pagers and walkie-talkies that killed at least 37 people, including a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, and maimed or injured 3,250 people, 200 critically. About 500 people suffered severe eye wounds and others received grave injuries to their hands, faces and bodies. The blasts occurred in residential buildings, barber shops, grocery stores, cars and at funerals. Many civilians, including government and hospital workers, were killed.

Elias Warrak, an ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut, treated several of those injured by the blasts. He told the BBC that between 60 percent and 70 percent of the patients he attended had to have at least one eye removed. “Some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years in practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes as I did yesterday [September 17].”

Israel’s weaponization of 3,000 to 4,000 pagers and walkie-talkies programmed to explode simultaneously constituted “terrifying” violations of international law, according to 22 independent United Nations experts, including 13 special rapporteurs.

The radios and pagers were reportedly distributed to people associated with Hezbollah, which includes both military and civilian individuals. “At the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby,” the experts noted. “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities.”

A booby-trap is defined as something designed to kill or injure unexpectedly when a person performs an apparently safe act like answering a pager. International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-traps that are disguised as harmless objects when they are constructed and designed with explosives. They breach the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions.

War Crimes of Murder, Attacking Civilians, Indiscriminate Attacks, Violence to Spread Terror

“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” the U.N. experts wrote. “Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks.”

The U.N. experts declared, “It is also a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians, including to intimidate or deter them from supporting an adversary,” adding, “A climate of fear now pervades everyday life in Lebanon.”

Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah, told Drop Site News, “Everyone’s scared to send text messages, to make calls, and they’re afraid to open laptops. It’s definitely led to some level of complete disorientation, fear, confusion, paranoia. It has huge psychological effects.” Saad noted that the purpose behind the explosions “was to terrorize and paralyze and demoralize.”………………………………………………………………………………………………..more https://truthout.org/articles/israels-tally-of-war-crimes-in-lebanon-increases-in-wake-of-exploding-pagers/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-09-23-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlesisraelstallyofwarcrimesinlebanonincreasesinwakeofexplodingpagers&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=097274f518-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_09_23_08_53&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-097274f518-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

September 24, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel Unleashes Hell On South Lebanon With Giant Mystery Bomb As War Escalates

Zero Hedge, by Tyler Durden,  Sep 22, 2024

Massive escalation along the southern Lebanese border is very clear at this point, as Israeli jets have pounded Hezbollah positions through much of Saturday. 

Al Jazeera correspondents have confirmed that “Israel’s military launched 400 attacks on Lebanon on Saturday and Hezbollah fired rockets at the Ramat David base near the city of Haifa, in their largest exchange of fire since the war on Gaza began.”

Another indicator of the escalation is that Israel is apparently beginning use much bigger bombs compared to much of the past nearly year of internecine fighting. The below widely circulating footage shows a large flash and skyscraper-size fireball, resulting in some viewers speculating it was likely a heavy bunker-buster bomb, or possibly even a tactical nuke of some sort. Whatever it was, there’s never been anything like it used on Lebanon (that we know about).

……………. Since Thursday and the deadly chaos of the two-day pager explosion attack, southern Lebanon has seen the most intense exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel since the conflict began after Oct.7.

On Saturday the expanded pace of fire has continued, with Hezbollah having launched at least 90 rockets on northern Israel, and the IDF saying it has mounted at least 80 raids on weapons installations belonging to Hezbollah…………………………………..

The death toll from Friday’s Israeli airstrike which killed Hezbollah special forces commander Ibrahim Aqil has risen to 37, after a day-long rescue operation and workers picking through rubble of a residential building, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Reports say that a meeting of Hezbollah leaders was taking place in either a garage, or a tunnel underneath the building in south Beirut.

“According to source, the meeting was being held in a tunnel under a residential building, a location that was being used for the first time, which has raised Hezbollah’s concerns about the extent Israel has infiltrated its ranks,” Middle East Eye reports. Hezbollah has since confirmed that 16 of its members were killed in the attack.

Lebanon’s government says three children and seven women were among the victims. Over 60 others were injured. The White House has still called the Israeli strike “a good outcome”.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described Aqil as having “American blood on his hands and has a rewards for justice price on his head.”

He has long been sought by the US for his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut, and well as kidnapping of Westerners in the the later 1980s. He had a $7 million bounty on his head issued by the Justice Department.

“He is somebody who the United States promised long ago we would do everything we could to see brought to justice,” Sullivan said. “You know, 1983 seems like a long time ago,” he added. “But for a lot of families and a lot of people, they’re still living with it every day.”

Some Middle East pundits and commentators expressed “shock” at the celebratory statements by the Biden administration, given the Israeli operation resulted in a high civilian death toll.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/idf-says-180-targets-eliminated-southern-lebanon-us-lauds-good-outcome-beirut-strike

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With US $billions and diplomatic support, Ukraine and Israel are destroying themselves.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 22 Sept 24

Joe Biden began his presidency doing a great thing for peace. Three years ago he ended America’s illegal, immoral, criminal war in Afghanistan.

But Biden is no friend of peace. He’s spent the last three years instigating and funding proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia, and funding and enabling Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

Neither of these murderous wars could continue without America’s endless billions and fervent moral support in word and deed.

But both Ukraine and Israel have fallen for US support to head down the path to failed state status.

Ukraine is already there. A fifth of their land gone. Economy shattered. Military largely destroyed. Millions displaced internally or fled to o other countries. Dependent upon on massive, unrepayable loans from the US and NATO countries simply to function. Cancelled elections spell the end of Ukrainian democracy. It could hardly be worse.

This all could have been avoided had the US not demanded Ukraine join NATO to isolate Russia from the European political economy, and supported a coup toppling the Ukrainian president who sought economic relations with Russia. Nor would it have happened had Ukraine President Zelensky rebuffed Biden’s NATO membership overtures and provided regional autonomy to Donbas as promised under the 2015 Minsk II Accords.

While not the basket case Ukraine is, Israel appears hell bent to join it as a failed state. By exploiting the October 7 Hamas attack to initiate all out genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Israel is destroying itself as well. Outside of the Biden administration, it has lost worldwide support as a moral nation. It has greatly weakened Israel’s economy, overtaxed it military, irrevocably divided its populace, forced over 60,000 citizens to flee northern Israel, and embarked on a self destructive war it cannot win.

Make that 2 wars. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza has provoked blowback in northern Israel from both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Like Hamas in Gaza, neither of these two additional opponents can be defeated by Israel alone. Just like with Ukraine, endless billions from Biden will not turn the tide.

Both Zelensky in Ukraine and Netanyahu in Israel have one Hail Mary toss to fling….bring the US directly into the battle on their side. Zelensky has been promoting this explicitly since his losing war with Russia began 31 month ago. Netanyahu, is more discreet, simply taking provocative actions like bombing Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon and Syria, engaging in terrorism using explosive cellphones and pagers, all designed to ignite regional war involving Iran that the US would feel compelled to join.

So far President Biden has resisted direct US involvement in both senseless wars. But either could blow up in his face at any moment, triggering direct US involvement. Should that occur, we’ll see much worse than Ukraine and Israel self destructing. America and the rest of the world’s 193 countries might well join them.

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Israel’s Collapse Is Imminent Amid Escalation In Lebanon

 September 22, 2024, By Mnar Adley / MintPressNews,  https://www.mintpressnews.com/scott-ritter-lebanon-pager-attack-hezbollah-brics/288312/

It sometimes feels like the world is on the brink of war. Israel has just escalated the conflict in the Middle East with a massive attack on Lebanon, implanting bombs in hundreds of pagers and other electronic devices, killing many and injuring thousands.

Around the world, the action has been condemned as an act of terror.

Today’s guest, Scott Ritter, unequivocally denounced the move. “This is something that is unjustifiable under any circumstances. There is no element of the law of war that would allow this kind of indiscriminate attack,” he said. Ritter is a former United States Corps Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq. He is an author and a geopolitical analyst, whose work you can find at ScottRitter.com. He has closely followed the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The attack, he said, will have widespread implications, not least for Western corporations, who were caught unaware. “This is going to create a crisis of confidence among consumers that could end up costing Western companies billions of dollars,” he explained, adding:

Anybody with any shred of common sense will immediately throw away their Western-made electronic device and source one from a country such as China, where Israel is not going to be able to infiltrate and corrupt the integrity of the electronic device to achieve either intelligence collection goals or assassination [goals].”

While the Israeli military is vastly better armed and funded than Hamas, Ritter claimed that it was actually the Palestinian force that has come out on top after 12 months of fighting, stating:

“Hamas right now, in my opinion, is winning this conflict. They are winning it strategically. They are paying a horrible price for it. But on October 6, nobody was talking about the creation of a Palestinian state. Today, it is on the tip of the tongue of so many people around the world. Why? Because the world has seen the truth about Israel.”

Not only that, but Israel is eating itself from within. Its military is seriously depleted; its economy has been shattered by rocket attacks, and by 12 months of war economy; and its society is beginning to fragment.

The United States, too, has been damaged. It is increasingly isolated on the world stage, and its prestige is slipping. Fewer nations look to Washington for leadership and, instead, see organizations such as BRICS as the future.

Later this month, a BRICS summit will be held in Kazan, Russia, bringing its core member nations together with its new invitees. Palestine will be a key issue, and no doubt countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be put under pressure to stop covertly aiding Israel and come to a solution to end the war.

BRICS has already succeeded in helping to lessen tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and it is possible that the new bloc can act to bring about peace in a manner that many hoped the United Nations would be able to do.

Whatever happens, it is clear that October 7 fundamentally changed the situation for Israel and Palestine forever.

September 23, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

World demands end to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, in landslide UN vote

The vast majority of the world voted at the UN General Assembly to demand an end to Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory within 12 months, with 124 countries (64%) in favor, 14 (7%) against, and 43 (22%) abstentions.

GeoPOliticalEconomy, By Ben Norton, 19 Sept 24

The countries that voted against the resolution, in effect supporting Israel’s illegal occupation, were the United States, Israel, Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Malawi, Papa New Guinea, and Paraguay, plus the tiny Pacific island nations of Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga, and Tuvalu.

These small island countries that consistently echo Washington’s unpopular votes in the UN are essentially unofficial US colonies, and mostly use the US dollar or Australian dollar as their currencies. Together, the six have a combined population of just over 1 million people, making them some of the smallest nations on Earth.

Among the large countries that abstained were India, Australia, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia.

However, in a break with Washington, a few longtime US allies voted in support of the resolution, most notably Japan, as well as France, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain…………………………….

The resolution was not controversial; it simply called for the implementation of a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top legal body.

On July 19, the ICJ issued a historic ruling stating:

– the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful;

– the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible;

– the State of Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory;

– the State of Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;

– all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The US government is essentially the only obstacle standing in the way of the implementation of international law, and the recognition of Palestine as a full UN member state.

In May, 143 countries voted in the General Assembly to admit Palestine as a full UN member. At present, it is only an observer state.

This May General Assembly vote came after an April session of the Security Council, in which the US used its veto power to kill a resolution that requested full membership for Palestine.

Since war broke out in Gaza in October 2023, Washington has repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions that call for peace and a ceasefire.

US President Joe Biden has strongly supported Israel as it has brutally bombed civilians in Gaza, in what UN experts say is a campaign of genocide.

In a press conference in Tel Aviv in October, Biden asserted that “if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it”, given how strategic the colonial state is for US imperial interests.  https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/09/19/end-israel-occupation-palestine-un-vote/

September 21, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

The World’s Chance To Confront US-Israeli Genocide

Popular Resistance, By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Consortium News., September 18, 2024

As nations come together in the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, they face both a serious challenge and an unprecedented opportunity.

On Wednesday, the General Assembly is scheduled to debate and vote on a resolution calling on Israel to end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within six months.

Given that the General Assembly, unlike the exclusive 15-member Security Council, allows all members to vote and there is no veto in the General Assembly, this is an opportunity for the world community to clearly express its opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

If Israel predictably fails to heed a General Assembly resolution calling on it to withdraw its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the United States then vetoes or threatens to veto a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling, then the General Assembly could go a step further.

It could convene an emergency session to take up what is called a Uniting For Peace resolution, which could call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other sanctions against Israel — or even call for actions against the United States.

Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950.

The Sept. 18 resolution comes in response to an historic ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19, which found that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”

The court ruled that Israel’s obligations under international law include “the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements” and the payment of restitution to all who have been harmed by its illegal occupation.

The passage of the General Assembly resolution by a large majority of members would demonstrate that countries all over the world support the ICJ ruling, and would be a small but important first step toward ensuring that Israel must live up to those obligations.

Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu cavalierly dismissed the court ruling with a claim that, “The Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.”

This is exactly the position that the court had rejected, ruling that Israel’s 1967 military invasion and occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories did not give it the right to settle its own people there, annex those territories, or make them part of Israel.

Settler Violence

While Israel used its hotly disputed account of the Oct. 7 events as a pretext to declare open season for the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem used it as a pretext to distribute assault rifles and other military-grade weapons to illegal Israeli settlers and unleash a new wave of violence there, too.

Armed settlers immediately started seizing more Palestinian land and shooting Palestinians. Israeli occupation forces either stood by and watched or joined in the violence, but did not intervene to defend Palestinians or hold their Israeli attackers accountable.

Since last October, occupation forces and armed settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have now killed at least 700 people, including 159 children.

The escalation of violence and land seizures has been so flagrant that even the U.S. and European governments have felt obligated to impose sanctions on a small number of violent settlers and their organizations.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has been murdering Palestinians day after day for the past 11 months. The Palestinian Health Ministry has counted over 41,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, but with the destruction of the hospitals that it relies on to identify and count the dead, this is now only a partial death toll.

Medical researchers estimate that the total number of deaths in Gaza from the direct and indirect results of Israeli actions will be in the hundreds of thousands, even if the massacre were to end soon.

Israel and the United States are undoubtedly more and more isolated as a result of their roles in this genocide. Whether the United States can still coerce or browbeat a few of its traditional allies into rejecting or abstaining from the General Assembly resolution on Sept. 18 will be a test of its residual “soft power.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://popularresistance.org/the-worlds-chance-to-confront-us-israeli-genocide/

September 21, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

‘Genocide Can and Should Never Be Just a Normal Story’CounterSpin interview with Gregory Shupak on Palestinian genocide

Janine Jackson, https://fair.org/home/genocide-can-and-should-never-be-just-a-normal-story/ 19 Sept 24

Janine Jackson interviewed the University of Guelph-Humber’s Gregory Shupak about the Palestinian genocide for the September 13, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: The September 11 New York Times reports a fatal Israeli airstrike hitting part of the Gaza Strip that Israel had declared a humanitarian zone. On a separate matter, we read that Secretary of State Antony Blinken rebuked Israel for the killing in the West Bank of 26-year-old US human rights activist Aysenur Eygi.

While it relayed terrible news, the Times story also contained the mealy-mouthing we’re accustomed to. Blinken rebuked Israel’s killing Aysenur Eygi “after the Israeli military acknowledged that one of its soldiers had probably killed her unintentionally.” People did dig with their bare hands through bomb craters in the dark to search for victims, but “health officials in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualties.” And while it notes that the UN and other rights organizations have said “there is no safe place in Gaza,” the Times repeats that “Israel insists that it will go after militants wherever it believes them to be.”

What’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is horrific, the possibility of an expanded war in the Middle East is terrifying, but for elite US news media, it’s as though war in the Middle East, and Palestinians being killed, is such a comfortable story that there’s no urgency in preventing the reality.

Joining us now to talk about this is media critic, activist and teacher Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and he’s author of the book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Gregory Shupak.

Gregory Shupak: Hi.

JJ: So the New York Times September 10 had a story about how health workers are trying to vaccinate children in northern Gaza against polio, but supplies of fuel and medicine are being obstructed by Israeli forces, including one convoy of UN groups that was held at gunpoint for eight hours. So the meat of the Times story is here:

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had intelligence suggesting that there were “Palestinian suspects” with the convoy, but did not say what they were suspected of doing. In another statement on Tuesday, it said that “Israeli security forces questioned the suspects in the field and then released them.” The episode highlighted the challenges facing humanitarian efforts, like the vaccination campaign, and what UN officials say is increasing Israeli obstruction of aid deliveries to Gaza.

So Israel holds up a humanitarian group at gunpoint for eight hours, and they don’t offer anything resembling a reason, and the upshot is “this highlights challenges”; “UN officials say” that this is an obstruction of aid. Knowing reporters, we know that some of them are saying, “Look how we pushed back against Israel here. We said they couldn’t say what the suspects were suspected of.”

But it doesn’t read as brave challenging of the powerful to a reader. And of course we know that that language is a choice, right? So what are you making of media coverage right now?

GS: Two main observations come to mind, not specifically with regard to the story you’re talking about–although that does continue, as you said, the longer-term trends of this mealy-mouthed refusal to just report what has flatly and plainly and obviously happened, and who’s responsible for it. But setting that aside, I would note a couple of other things that have troubled me.

One is that I think so much of the Palestinian issue right now has just been metabolized into US election coverage, so that most of what the public is getting on the issue is “how is the political theater going to be affected by the fact that a genocide is occurring in which the US is a direct participant?” rather than more urgent questions, such as “how can this genocide be immediately stopped?” So I think that that’s a real case of focusing on the wrong question.

I think, likewise, you get some attention to, “Well, how is the Harris campaign going to suffer because the Biden administration, of which she’s a part, has alienated so many Arab and/or Muslim voters in the United States because of the Gaza genocide?” Again, that just reduces the Palestinians and their supporters amongst Arabs and Muslims–not to say that there aren’t many other segments of American society that do support Palestinians to one extent or another–they’re just here reduced to, “Well, how’s this going to factor into the electoral calculation?”

And so that, I think, is, again, really not at all adequate to the challenge of responding to one of the worst series of massacres that we’ve seen since World War II. In fact, the UN special rapporteur just the other day, said that this is the worst campaign of deliberate starvation since World War II. So just treating this as a subset of US domestic politics is not proportional to the severity of what’s unfolding.

The second observation I was going to make is that I think, to a really, really depressing extent, the mass murder of Palestinians, the mass starvation of Palestinians, the total destruction of essentially every structure in Gaza by this point, it’s becoming a “dog bites man” story, in that it’s just become, and I hate to use the word “normalized,” because I think it’s totally overused these days, but this is sort of a case study where it’s barely even newsworthy, that really just shocking atrocities are dropping day by day.

So last week, Israel bombed a shelter within the compound of the Al-Aqsa hospital, I believe it’s the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, and this has, as far as I can tell, effectively zero coverage in major English-language American or Western media broadly. But, again, that is a real travesty to just allow this to not be a leading story every day because it keeps happening; in fact, the fact that it keeps happening ought to be in itself proof of how dire and urgent these matters are.

JJ: You wrote for Electronic Intifada back in July about how even after credible source after credible source confirms that Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians, you said “we find ourselves living through a mass public genocide denial,” and without at all trying to be coy, I wonder, are we now at acceptance?

GS: Yeah.

JJ: Now it’s just kind of a factor. And I wrote down “dog bites man” because it very much gives that feeling of, “Oh, well, these folks are at war with one another. That’s just a normal story.”

GS: Yeah, and first of all, genocide can and should never be just a normal story, but that is very much what it’s being treated like. And second of all, it’s also: yes, brutal, violent oppression of Palestinians has been the case since Israel came into existence in 1948, and, in fact, in the years leading up to it, there were certainly steps taken to create the conditions for Israel. So it is a decades-old story, but there is a kind of hand-waving that creeps into public discourse, and I think does underlie some of this lack of attention to what continues to happen in Gaza and the West Bank.

In reality, this is a very modern conflict, right? It’s a US-brokered, settler-colonial insurgency/counterinsurgency. It’s got very little to do with religion and everything to do with geopolitics and capitalism and colonialism. But it’s easier to just treat it as, “Oh, well, these backwards, savage barbarian and their ancient, inscrutable blood feuds are just doing what they have always done and always will. So that’s not worthy of our attention.” But that, aside from being wildly inaccurate, just enables the slaughter and dispossession, as well as resistance to it, to continue.

JJ: Finally, to promote the idea or to support the idea that this genocide is kind of OK, or par for the course, anyway, and that protesting it is misguided, or worse–that requires mental gymnastics, including charges of antisemitism against Jewish people. Jewish people are leaders in the opposition to Israel’s actions, including on college campuses. And I would encourage folks to read Carrie Zaremba’s piece on Mondoweiss about the lengths that university administrators are going to right now to crack down on and impossibleize dissent and political expression.

But the point is, we still see the dissent. So even the problems that we’re talking about, that media are ratifying and pushing out day after day, people are seeing through them, and there is dissent. And I just wonder what your thoughts are, in terms of, maybe not to use the word hope, but where do you see the resistance happening? You’re a college professor.

JJ: Finally, to promote the idea or to support the idea that this genocide is kind of OK, or par for the course, anyway, and that protesting it is misguided, or worse–that requires mental gymnastics, including charges of antisemitism against Jewish people. Jewish people are leaders in the opposition to Israel’s actions, including on college campuses. And I would encourage folks to read Carrie Zaremba’s piece on Mondoweiss about the lengths that university administrators are going to right now to crack down on and impossibleize dissent and political expression.

But the point is, we still see the dissent. So even the problems that we’re talking about, that media are ratifying and pushing out day after day, people are seeing through them, and there is dissent. And I just wonder what your thoughts are, in terms of, maybe not to use the word hope, but where do you see the resistance happening? You’re a college professor.

GS: Certainly on campuses and many other places as well. Labor organizations: there was a coalition here called Labor for Palestine, and I know there are similar outfits in the United States and other parts of the world. Religious organizations of all sorts, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, likely others as well.

I would, in addition, say that certainly, in terms of just getting out analysis and information, that one of the very few advantages or bright spots that we have, I think now as compared to the past, is that it is easier for independent sources like FAIR, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss and others to circulate quickly to wide audiences. And that, I think, has been a big reason why the Palestinian counternarrative has been able to puncture, I think, the public consciousness more so than it could in the past. I think it’s totally the independent educational efforts by the Palestine solidarity movement that has done that.

And one major tool at their–perhaps I will dare say our–disposal is independent media, because this is where you’re getting much more information, much more accurate information, and much more rigorous analysis than the fluff and pablum that you get on the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, much less the blood-curdling racism you get on the Wall Street Journal and its editorial pages. So I think that this era does have one serious advantage, and that’s that outlets like those that I’ve mentioned have

a much greater capacity to reach people who might not otherwise be exposed to this anti-Zionist narrative.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber, and his book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media is still out now from OR Books. Greg Shupak, thanks so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

September 21, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, media | Leave a comment

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