Gaza
- US billionaires: Oligarchs
- The Republican Party: The Fascist Party
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the genocide continues, famine grows.
As the world focuses on Iran’s attack on Israel, bloodshed continues in Gaza - YouTube
As the world waits to see how Israel will respond to Iran’s attack, in Gaza, the bloodshed continues. Four were killed in overnight airstrikes in the southern city of Rafah, and 11 were killed - including children - in central Gaza. Israeli tanks have re-entered the north of the strip, surrounding schools housing displaced families.
Continuing genocide.
Aid ‘still not reaching Gaza’, as top US official warns famine has started | The Guardian
A promised surge in aid into that Benjamin Netanyahu promised Joe Biden a week ago has so far failed to materialise, aid workers say, as the US aid chief confirmed that famine is beginning to take hold in parts of the besieged coastal strip.
We speak with two doctors who’ve just returned after two weeks at the European Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter are co-authors of a new piece for Common Dreams titled “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” They describe a hospital “hanging on by a thread,” with the majority of patients being young children, and bombing targeted at Muslim Palestinians “concentrated at the time of evening prayer.” “Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got,” says Perlmutter.
Gaza Is Unlike Anything I’ve Ever Seen, Says NGO Head/Ex-CNN Journalist Arwa Damon - YouTube
Award-winning journalist Arwa Damon has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Gaza in her capacity as the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children. Damon describes the overwhelming need for aid under Israel’s siege of the territory. "
Who has the right to self-defence, the occupier or the occupied? – Arena
To say Israel has the right to defend itself is like saying a chronic abuser has the right to defend himself because his victim hit him. Israel is not an innocent party under attack and defending itself, as it is being portrayed by much of the international media. It is a settler-colonial apartheid regime, established on the ruins of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people in 1948.
Colonialists, occupiers and apartheid regimes do not have the right to defend their occupations and apartheid systems. It’s the occupied who have the right under international law to defend themselves and to liberate their countries. Most of the Jewish settlers are armed and members of Israel’s reserve army; Israel knew the risk it was taking by perpetrating the Catastrophe (al-Nakba) of 1948, occupying someone else’s country and denying Palestinians their rights because they are not Jews, in what was established as a Jewish state.
The ‘human shields’ lie has been conclusively, irrefutably debunked - Pearls and Irritations
One aspect of the recent revelations about the IDF’s Lavender AI system that’s not getting enough consideration is the fact that it is completely devastating to the narrative that Israel has been killing so many civilians because Hamas uses “human shields”.
… a major report from +972 revealed that Israel has been using an AI system called Lavender to compile kill lists of suspected members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which have been carried out with hardly any human verification. One automated system, psychopathically named “Where’s Daddy?”, tracks suspects to their homes so that they can be killed along with their entire families. The IDF has been knowingly killing 15 to 20 civilians at a time to kill one junior Hamas operative, and up to 100 civilians at a time to take out a senior official.
The Israeli publications +972 and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinians on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families
Recommended podcast episode: Millennials Are Killing Capitalism: “Decolonization Is Not a Discourse, It Is a Material Process”. An interview with:
Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.
Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.
A focal point of the interview was the recent publication of their article “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation” . Other topics covered in the discussion: settler colonialism, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians.
Check out the work of the Good Shepherd Collective.
More grassroots anti-war activism in the US:
Walkouts, Blockades, and Student Occupations in Solidarity with Palestine Continue | It’s Going Down
Resistance to the US backed Israeli war and genocide against Palestinians living in the occupied territories remains ongoing, with a chorus of mass protests, sabotage, occupations at US universities, and blockades of weapons suppliers continuing into the spring, as a call grows “to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital” on April 15th.
A carefully presented and well researched video by Randahl Fink: Genocide in Gaza — is Israel guilty? - YouTube
#Gaza #Israel #Genocide
UN Human Rights Council calls for halt to weapons shipments to Israel : NPR
GENEVA — The U.N.’s top human rights body called on countries to stop selling or shipping weapons to Israel in a resolution passed Friday that aims to help prevent rights violations against Palestinians amid Israel’s blistering military campaign in Gaza.
The sweeping measure takes aim at an array of Israeli actions such as impeding access to water and limiting shipments of humanitarian aid into Palestinian areas. It also calls on U.N.-backed independent investigators to report on shipments of weapons, munitions and “dual use” items — that have both civilian and military applications — that could be used by Israel against Palestinians.
Evidence that grassroots, progressive activism in the US is still alive and capable of changing world events. While it’s still early days it seems that the Biden administration may finally be shifting its position on Israel. The killing of the 7 aid workers of the World Central Kitchen seems to have been the tipping point but for weeks efforts by on-the-ground activists in Michigan and most recently Wisconsin have rung Biden’s alarm bells.
Of course, this is only a sign of an early shift directly related to getting food and aid into Gaza. Will enough aid flow in fast enough to blunt the worst case scenario of famine from unfolding? We will soon find out.
Will Israel still launch a large scale offensive into Rafah? Will there be deeper, long term shifts in military aid to Israel or is this just a temporary shift? What comes next? What’s the goal? Is it a ceasefire or something more lasting?
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties
Biden is not passively funding the slaughter of Palestinians, he’s working hard to do so, bypassing Congress at least twice. And his supposed “outrage” at Israel’s genocide is not convincing. With each week Biden seems determined to hand the election over to Trump.
The activist, progressive, empathetic left of the base has been protesting loudly while the wealthier, white, comfortable middle class portion of the Democratic base generally seems more self-concerned. My outsider perspective is that while this wealthy Democratic base has generally dominated the party it may be that Biden’s active support of war crimes and genocide might prove a tipping point.
Almost 50,000 Wisconsin voters just told Biden to stop the Gaza war. Will he listen? | The Guardian
The protest vote in Wisconsin has made clear that this campaign is bigger than Biden. The many people calling for a ceasefire aren’t merely swing voters or bitter castoffs who have long left the party. Many involved in the uncommitted campaigns have, until now, been committed Democrats. But they fear a critical mass of voters may permanently leave the Democratic party if Biden and other leaders don’t implement a ceasefire in Gaza, and quickly. For some voters, even that may be too little, too late.
In this Majority Report clip about Israel’s recent slaughter of WCK aid workers in Gaza Emma Vigeland refers to the IDF as the Israeli Genocide Force.
Calling things out for what they are.
See also:
War Crimes: “Sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old.”
Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipes…
Children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Delusions at the United Nations | Al Jazeera
We have now entered the comforting world of delusions.
Earlier this week, 14 members of the United Nations Security Council agreed on a resolution that called for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas and the “unconditional release of all hostages”.
Applause broke out in the chamber. It was a surreal, farcical scene, punctuated by an expression of self-congratulatory delusion that something tangible had finally been achieved to end Israel’s killing rage in the shattered, dystopian remnants of the Gaza Strip…
Is the US status as a war criminal just being accepted by its citizens? Seems that way.
Interview with Josh Paul, former State Department official who resigned in October to protest increasing arms sales to Israel. The most recent shipment to include 25 F-35 fighter jets and the 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs used to level entire city blocks.
Biden Violating U.S. Law by Rushing More Arms to Israel - YouTube
The Biden administration has recently authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel.
1 in 5 Wisconsin Democrats Said Gaza War Will Impact Their Primary Vote
More than 1 in 5 Wisconsin Democrats said that Israel’s war in Gaza is impacting their vote in the state’s primary on Tuesday, while 71% said they strongly support an immediate and permanent ceasefire, according to a new poll released on Monday.
11% of respondents said President Joe Biden’s handling of the war will impact their vote in November if he does not change course and another nearly 14 percent said it could. Nearly 5%, meanwhile, said their vote has been impacted regardless of a change in policy.
‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel
The Washington Post reported Friday that Biden authorized shipments including more than “1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion.”
“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.
Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments to Israel…