International Law is Dying and the Mask of Western Democracy is Disappearing With It
Brilliant complication of scenes
of violence by the New York Police set to The Hanging Treee
It
is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. In the case of
Israel’s attack on Gaza even the word ‘war’ is a lie. Unless the devastation of
hospitals and the murder of doctors and patients counts as a war.
In
1984, Orwell's dystopian novel,
doublethink was the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas and
believe in them both simultaneously. The three slogans of the party — "War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery; Ignorance
Is Strength" — are examples.
Today
we see this playing out in Israel’s war on the Palestinians. Genocide is called
Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ and ‘terrorism’ is the Palestinians’
resistance. If anyone is the terrorist it is the Israeli state whose military has
destroyed every university, nearly every hospital and virtually all civil
society infrastructure such as churches, mosques and schools.
US Police Attack Student Demonstrators
Orwell
lived before the advent of social media but what he wrote is as true now as
when he wrote it nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
political
speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the
continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the
dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by
arguments which are too brutal for most people to face... Thus political language
has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy
vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants
driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on
fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.... Such
phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental
pictures of them.
We
can replace pacification with the war against terror but the meaning is
the same. We live in a world of lies, where truth is deemed subversive. Yet
Orwell was wrong was in believing that people would simply accept the situation
and adjust their thinking accordingly. Opinion polls in Britain
and America
have uniformly shown that the 70% of people wants an immediate ceasefire and a
majority of young
people and legal
scholars see Israel’s actions as genocide.
The National Guard's Murder of 4 Students at Ohio University in 1970
Even
members of Biden’s own administration have protested. On May 15 Lily Greenberg,
a Jewish-American political appointee, resigned.
On May 13 Major Harrison Mann resigned
from the Defence Intelligence Agency, accusing
Biden of ‘advancing a policy that enables
the mass starvation of children’.
Mann
cited an “unexpected outpouring of
support” from colleagues testifying to the unprecedented dissent in the
intelligence agency.
Fmr Minister Ayelet Shaked:"After we turn Khan Younis too into a soccer field […] we need to take advantage of the destruction [to tell] the countries that each of them should take a quota, it can be 20000 or 50000 […] We need 2 million to leave. That's the solution for Gaza."> https://t.co/1vQRo6ZHd1 pic.twitter.com/UMFPhVKwSo
— Israel, translated (@israeltrnsltd) November 22, 2023
Lily Greenberg Call went from being a college student involved in Israeli government hasbara to publicly resigning from a US goverment job in protest of the Gaza genocide.
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) May 15, 2024
Israel's mass murder has irreparably damaged its image in the minds of young Jewish-Americans. pic.twitter.com/953dm9LkmW
National
Security Council member John Kirby had said he didn’t
believe Israel was deliberately committing war
crimes. Presumably they were accidental!
Kirby denied
that there had been any breach of international law. Call wrote:
My whole life has been spent
in Jewish community in the US and Israel. I have spent time in Israel/Palestine...,
I am terrified by rising antisemitism around the world. And yet I am certain
that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent
Palestinians through displacement, famine and ethnic cleansing....
As of writing this. Israel
has killed 35,000 people in Gaza, including 15,000 children. The Israeli
military has bombed medical infrastructure, besieged a hospital, left mass
graves behind, destroyed every university in Gaza, targeted journalists and aid
workers and committed many, many inexcusable atrocities. These are all
violations of international law, none of which would be possible without
American weapons, and none of which have been condemned by President Biden.
The President has the power
to call for a lasting ceasefire, to stop sending weapons to Israel, and to
condition aid. The United States has used nearly no leverage throughout the
last eight months to hold Israel accountable; quite the opposite. we have
enabled and legitimized Israel’s actions with vetoes of UN resolutions designed
to hold Israel accountable. President Biden has the blood of innocent people on
his hands....
Any system
that requires the subjugation of one group over another is not only unjust. but
unsafe. Jewish safety cannot – and will not – come at the expense of
Palestinian freedom. Making Jews the face of the American war machine makes us
less safe.
United States support of Israel is based on a series of lies.
WH spokesman John Kirby: "We don't have any indications that there's deliberate efforts to commit war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces."
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) January 19, 2024
Came in response to question about Chile & Mexico asking the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against civilians in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/ztx2lL5oRL
The Lies About
October 7
The
first lie was the comparison of October 7 with the Holocaust. Zionism, having
opposed the rescue of Jewish refugees from the holocaust, lost no time in
exploiting it for propaganda purposes.
Even to the extent of Netanyahu suggesting
that it was the Palestinians who gave Hitler the idea of killing the Jews.
Yocheved
Lifshitz Press Conference
The
Nazis and their allies murdered Jews because
they were Jews. The Palestinian Resistance killed Israelis, not because
they were Jewish but because they were their oppressors. It is as if people
fought the Nazis because they were Germans.
The
next lie was the allegation of mass, systematic rape. Certainly there were
atrocities and some Israeli women may have been raped. What is absolutely
certain is that Hamas did not organise a rape orgy.
The
New York Times ran an ‘exclusive’ Screams Without Words. The story has
been comprehensively discredited in the Electronic
Intifada, The
Intercept and the Grayzone
among others. It employed as their main researcher an Israeli Anat Schwartz. On
her social media feed, Schwartz liked a tweet saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”
“Violate any norm, on the way to
victory,” read the
post. “Those in front of us are human
animals.”
None
of the women captives who were released made such claims. They claimed they had
been treated like Queens
and humanely.
Release of Hostages
When
Yocheved Lifshitz was released by Hamas, she gave a press conference at the
Hadassah hospital where she spoke
of the humane treatment she had received from Hamas. Immediately there were
recriminations as to how this press conference had been allowed. The hospital employee
who arranged the press conference was
dismissed yet no one in the press even considers this at all
newsworthy.
Ex-Prisoners Recall Time In Israeli Detention
Contrast
this with the treatment of Palestinian prisoners. They speak
of beatings, food deprivation, being held incommunicado and suffering petty
restrictions.
Compare
the letter
of Danyal and Emilia that was freely given to Hamas by an Israeli captive. Israeli
Channel 13 reported,
that the released Israeli hostages said they did not experience mistreatment or
torture. The food was scarce, which was not surprising since Israel has imposed
a total water and food blockade on Gaza.
Hin & Ajam Were 2 Prisoners of
Hamas
Tel Aviv kept the released Israeli hostages away
from the media and allowed only relatives and friends to meet them. The
hostages were forced into media silence as Israel
tightened its control on interviews.
Columbia Protests
A report from Israel’s Channel 12 noted
that Israeli authorities had arranged a special media process for the hostages’
post-release, in order to ensure that they remain in control of the narrative.
Alon Ben
David: "Hamas treated the Israeli hostages well"
Political
analyst Yaniv Peleg, said in an article for Israel Hayom
that broadcasting the footage live was detrimental to Israel. How is broadcasting
the truth ‘detrimental to Israel’?
Peleg even complained of the professionalism of Hamas footage!
Police violence at Columbia University
At 8:20 a.m., terrorists entered Dvir’s home, he lunged at them
with an axe, tried to protect my two kids who were with him, and was murdered
in front of their eyes,” she posted. “His partner Stav also tried to
protect them, but was murdered as well. The terrorist calmed down my Daria and
Lavi, covered them in a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the wall: ‘The
al-Qassam [Brigades] people don’t murder children.
This was before Israel’s propaganda machine got going but it doesn’t
suggest that Hamas were baby killers.
Joe Biden though swore that he had personally seen photographs of
beheaded babies, which the White House later had to ‘walk
back’.
Antony Blinken, his Secretary of State also testified before a Senate Committee to gruesome acts of murder and torture
which simply didn’t happen. Our rulers think
nothing of lying to justify genocide.
Never
before has genocide been so openly supported by amoral politicians for whom the
truth is an alien being. Equally culpable is a media which has focussed on
Israel’s pretext, the attack on October 7, as if an occupied people
should not resist. One wonders if they would have had the same advice for
France under Nazi occupation in 1940?
Abby Martin Describes What
Conditions Are Like on the West Bank
For
the BBC and Sky history began on October 7. For reasons unknown Hamas attacked peaceful
Israelis living near the Gaza fence. With the exception of Al Jazeera, none of
the media have put October 7 in the context of a half-century occupation and
the Nakba.
Which
is why has now banned
Al Jazeera. Israel has already forbidden journalists to enter Gaza and it has killed
at least 109 journalists. As the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism wrote, The
killing of journalists in Gaza is an unprecedented attack on the truth.
There
has not been a squeak out of Biden or Sunak. Yet they would have screamed if Russia had murdered
journalists in Ukraine. One could only imagine the headlines of the gutter
press.
השב"כ הודיע על צוות ניל"י לחיסול משתתפי הטבח.
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) November 9, 2023
את הצלמים שלקחו חלק בצילום הטבח יש לצרף לרשימה.
There
has even been a campaign in Israel to encourage the killing of journalists. Danny Danon,
a Likud MK, called
for the “elimination” of photo-journalists “who participated in
covering the massacre.” Reporters Without Borders condemned
calls
by Israeli politicians in the past 24 hours for journalists in Gaza to be
killed. Prompted by unsubstantiated conjecture about the journalists’
integrity,... . Targeting journalists is a war crime.
In an interview on
Israel’s Kan Radios’ “This Morning Show” on 16 October hosted by Aryeh Golan,
Yasmin Porat, an Israeli survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri said Israeli forces
killed their own civilians
The
first person to challenge Israel’s narrative about Hamas atrocities was Yasmine
Porat in an interview
with Israeli radio. Porat told of how she and her partner had been treated
humanely by Hamas and how the inhabitants of Kibbutz Be’eri, where she had fled
to after the attack on the rave, died because Israel’s military opened fire
with tank shells on the houses where their inhabitants were being held captive.
The damage caused by Israeli tanks at Kibbutz Be'eri
Yasmine Porat
Interview – Israeli Radio – 23 November 23
An
article
in the Times of Israel tells how:
An IDF officer has recounted a tough decision he made
on October 7 to order a tank to fire two light shells toward a house in Kibbutz
Be’eri in which Hamas terrorists had been holding 14 Israelis hostages during
the Palestinian terror group’s onslaught — fire that killed at least one
Israeli.
Today, the IDF responds to Hiram’s
acknowledgment by praising the IDF commander
A
cursory
look
at the damage to Kibbutz Be’eri makes it clear that the militants, who were
only carrying light weapons, could not possibly have caused it. The mainstream
media has refused to mention Israel’s Hannibal
Directive.
The Grayzone
quotes Haaretz
as saying that the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after “shelling” the homes of Israelis.
The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri
residents were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the
bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses.
It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.
The cars burn out as a result of Apache missile strikes
Those
Israelis who were burnt alive were the victim of Israel’s
Apache helicopters
which, by the admission of
the pilots, fired randomly on cars escaping from the rave and into Gaza.
Apache
helicopter pilots told
Israeli media that they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence,
unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and
yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are
so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.
Israel
could of course have negotiated the release of the Palestinian prisoners but
they preferred the death of their own citizens to the release of Palestinians.
Lies About Anti-Semitism
Lies
about ‘anti-Semitism’ have been the most persistent. Yet a moments reflection shows
that these allegations are made in bad faith.
Suella
Braverman, who has the distinction of being the most racist Home Secretary to
fill that post, accused
the anti-genocide Palestinian demonstrations of ‘hate’ and ‘anti-Semitism’.
Was
this anti-Semitism the Oxford
English Dictionary definition, hostility to or prejudice against Jews? Braverman’s concerns
were about the government being ‘in the
grip of a 'pro-Palestine' sentiment’. This was 'not a time for walking away' from Israel.’
This
was about Israel not Jews. But Israel is not a Jew. It is a state based on
Jewish racial supremacy. As Primo Levi was
reported as saying, Palestinians are Israel’s Jews.
This
is the same Suella Braverman who ‘dreamed’
of sending refugees to Rwanda. A century ago she would have dreamt of doing the
same to Jewish immigrants. At the beginning of the 20th century Tories
demonised Jewish refugees. Arthur Balfour introduced the Aliens Act
of 1905 directed at Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia.
Sussex University Students Encampment
James
Lowther MP, the Cruella Braverman of his day, spoke
in a House of Commons debate about Jewish
refugees on 11.2.1883 about
These
destitute aliens... are being sent over here in large numbers to compete not
only with honest labour in the market, but with the charitable funds of this
country,. ... the condition in which these emigrants for the most part live is
filthy and revolting in the extreme. ... Their dwellings arc of the most foul
and loathsome character; they are huddled together in numbers and under
conditions which happily do not prevail in these days among the home-born
population of this country; and the general hygienic conditions under which
they live are such as to render their presence a source of permanent danger to
the health of this country. ... when we find that persons are living within a
few minutes' drive of this House under revolting conditions of human existence
which can be scarcely imagined, can it be denied that the presence of these
people constitute a source of permanent danger with regard, not only to the
initiation, but to the propagation of disease?
Suella
Braverman has existed for over a century in one form or another. But whereas
Jews were once the target of these racists they are now their tame pets, an
alibi for their imperialist ventures.
The Constitution of the Union of Jewish Students includes an 'enduring commitment' to Apartheid Israel. UJS represents Zionist i.e. racist Jewish students only
"Jewish students are angry, they are tired, and they are hurt by the continuous torrent of antisemitic hatred on campus since October 7th."
— Union of Jewish Students (@UJS_UK) May 2, 2024
"Let us be clear, we will not stand for this hatred. It is time that universities take their duty of care to Jewish students seriously." pic.twitter.com/To37Opeglx
The Lie of Violence
When
student encampments began in Britain, Sunak called
on
universities ‘to protect Jewish
students.’ He immediately summoned university vice chancellors to Downing
Street because he was concerned about their safety! It was reported
that
Some senior
staff accused Rishi Sunak of “scaremongering” by summoning
vice-chancellors to Downing Street last Thursday
to urge them to “take personal responsibility” for protecting Jewish students.
The
‘protection of Jewish students’ is a theme of the war mongers. Biden too, who
is happy to supply Israel with 2000 bombs to drop on Palestinian civilians is also
concerned
about
antisemitic
posters and “slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel” on college
campuses. “Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked while
walking to class,”
The ‘friendship’ song shown on
Israel’s main public broadcast Kan shows sweet little school children singing a
song about annihilating Palestinians
The ‘anti-Semitism’ they talk about is that of
the IHRA
which was drawn up to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Stephen
Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge observed
it ‘fails the first test of any
definition: it is indefinite.’
The IHRA has 11 illustrations, 7 of which are
about Israel not Jews. One of its illustrations states
that ‘Holding Jews collectively
responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is anti-Semitic.’ So when
Sunak and Biden raise the issue of Jewish safety because students, many of whom
are Jewish, are protesting about Israel’s genocide, then even by their own
definition it is they who are anti-Semitic.
Breaking: Students in #Greece participate in the worldwide encampment demonstrations for #Palestine#FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/yHDGvcQUMT
— Chris Avramidis (@chris_avramidis) May 13, 2024
What
Sunak, Biden and the Tory press are doing is associating Jews with Israeli
actions, genocide included. Why? Because
it provides them with a moral cover for their actions.
If
anyone is endangering Jews in this country it is not those who support the
Palestinians but Sunak and Braverman. Every word they utter is a lie, born of
the dishonesty and malice of their politics.
Sunak
called
for
police action against the encampments. Like Braverman, Sunak has done his best
to have Palestinian demonstrations in London banned.
The encampment at University of Amsterdam had the riot police called on it in its first 12 hours. UvA called the police on its own students, who then razed unarmed student protestors with a bulldozer. Over a 100 protestors are now arrested.
— Mariya (@mariyankhan) May 7, 2024
power to the students. in our lifetime pic.twitter.com/lLkG8Veu7e
Violence Against American
Students & in Europe
Despite
the allegations of violence against America’s student encampments the violence
has been one way. It is the encampments which have been violently attacked.
At UCLA, pro-Israel protesters attacked pro-Palestine students with fireworks and tear-gas. Men wielding clubs assaulted the students. The violent thugs were outsiders who came to campus prepared for their violent attack. Campus police abandoned the site. None of attackers have been arrested.
STATEMENT [12 MAY 2024]: Hostile Men Attack Oxford Palestine Encampment.
— Oxford Action for Palestine (@OxAct4Pal) May 12, 2024
We will not be deterred. pic.twitter.com/viryppi7oF
The
following day the governor sent in the police. They too assaulted
the camp and arrested 200 protesters. The campus
thereafter became an armed camp patrolled and controlled by police.
The
violence of the American state was effectively co-ordinated with the far-right
Zionist vigilantes. Beneath the thin layer of democry there is a deeply
repressive and militarised police state in the USA.
Exeter Liberated Zone pic.twitter.com/KhG90owXL4
— Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 (@LalehKhalili) May 14, 2024
The
USA has never outgrown its settler colonial origins. Because of its role as the
world’s major imperialist country it has developed a police force that is
highly militarised with a National Guard that is a quasi army. As Richard
Silverstein wrote:
An unsavory alliance of US university administrators, law enforcement, MAGA Republicans, pro-Israel billionaires and the Israel Lobby has collaborated to destroy
the US national student movement protesting Israel’s Gaza War.
Encampments and protests
have spread to 120 campuses nationwide. Over 2,300
students have been arrested. Hundreds have been suspended and even expelled for
their activism.
Israel Lobby
groups like the ADL and Aipac echo the same charges. Jonathan Greenblatt
of ADL smeared Students for Justice in
Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace “campus proxies for Hezbollah.”
The
Columbia administration declared that students arrested after seizing the
campus building will be expelled.
Locals in Oxford call out supporters of the pro-Palestine university encampment, fed up with terrorist-sympathisers disrupting their city.
— Turning Point UK 🇬🇧 (@TPointUK) May 13, 2024
People have had enough. pic.twitter.com/zm7OndvV4a
At
Columbia University Baroness Minouche Shafik called on New York’s Police to
clear the encampments, not once but twice. According to The Intercept students who were arrested were
denied water and food for 16 hours, according to two faculty members at
Columbia University’s Barnard College .
Last night, around 8:50pm, the Oxford encampment was attacked by six men who arrived in a taxi.
— Madeleine Jane (@_MadeleineJane) May 12, 2024
They ripped down banners, screamed at students and made threats.
Protesters did not engage and de-escalators moved local community members away from the attackers.
1/ pic.twitter.com/fE1pETE3nS
Other
students reported that they were beaten by New York City Police Department
officers after their arrests and taken to the hospital for injuries before
being returned to central booking. Shafik was part of the liberal elite and
former Director of the LSE.
BREAKING: Our students at King's College London started their #encampment demanding @KingsCollegeLon to condemn Israel's war crimes in Palestine, boycott complicit Israeli academic institutions, pledge to help rebuild #Gaza's education sector & safeguard freedom of speech 🧵 1/7 pic.twitter.com/orCoTNenM0
— Prof. Hanna Kienzler 🧡 🇵🇸 (@HannaKienzler) May 13, 2024
The Arts
and Science Faculty at Columbia passed a no confidence motion in Shafik. None of
which stopped Biden’s lies to the nation.
Biden’s Lies
Biden
continually invoked “anti-Semitism,” endorsing the false claims that hatred of
Zionism and Israel is hatred of Jews.
We love to see it. New encampment at Kings College. Zionism is over I am telling you #StudentProtests #kingscollegeencampment pic.twitter.com/RijiCEjuIc
— Rachida Benamar🐝 (@ramapublishing) May 13, 2024
Protesters
have deliberately maintained a non-violent stance, even in the face of police
and counter-demonstrator assaults. They have not prevented anyone from
accessing campus. In fact it was the administration who cancelled classes
because pro-Israel students felt “unsafe.” The only outside agitators
engaged in violence are the police who violently attacked students.
The attack at the @OxAct4Pal encampment yesterday was disgusting. Here are the two of the 6 culprits - https://t.co/4kyAT4a4Ee
— Darshan Sanghrajka (@chiefchimpanzee) May 12, 2024
Avi Libbert - CEO of Capri Fashion.
Marcus Olsberg of Duke Capital Limited.
The mob threatened to kill Jewish students and they got away with it!! https://t.co/bXZjV5zLFM pic.twitter.com/AySv7hjW9n
One
bright side is that students and administrators at Portland State University,
University of Minnesota, and Brown University achieved a compromise that offered a path to discuss
divestment, along with providing full scholarships to Palestinian students
whose universities have been destroyed by Israel. Evergreen State College
and Ireland’s Trinity College agreed to divest.
I spent most of today at the @SOAS Liberated Zone for Gaza helping create a ramp to the encampment on behalf of DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest).
— Anna Landre ♿️ (@annalandre) May 13, 2024
This is the only green space on campus, & student have been asking the uni to make it accessible for 3 yrs. We made it happen in 3.5 days.🇵🇸♿️ pic.twitter.com/IGmgsNd1uB
07 May 2024 SOAS University, London, at student encampment set up day before part of wave of student protest camps globally
— SEP London (@Sep_london) May 8, 2024
Haya said "Whether you vote Labour or Conservative, they're both the same, & nothing's going to change" #GazaGenocide #StudentsforGaza#RafahUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/txtKjnPQiE
America’s student
activists are paying a price in terms of academic suspension, expulsion,
damage to career prospects, and injury at the hands of the police. As Frederick
Douglass wrote:
“Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out
just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact
measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will
continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
The Lie of American Democracy
Israel LOSING PR
War? Antony Blinken BLAMES TikTok: Watch
What the
current events demonstrate is that the United States, which is always happy to
support ‘wars for democracy’ lacks any semblance of democracy itself. Its
elections are bought, its Supreme Court is the property of the Republican Right
and it is governed by two parties – Democrats and Republicans – who share the
same war agenda.
Queen Mary University encampment for Gaza is go! Get down if you can and show your support ✊🏽 #FreePalestine 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/lOA9oIPCQk
— Shabbir Lakha (@ShabbirLakha) May 13, 2024
Only
recently Congress has voted to force Tik Tok to effectively shut down or sell
itself off. The reason given was national security – it is a Chinese company.
The real reason is that it doesn’t censor pro-Palestinian content like Mark
Fuckerberg’s Facebook.
This was illustrated
in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and
Antony Blinken last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that
generally go unstated by such creatures.
After bemoaning
Israel’s lack of success at PR, Romney said that “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut
down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature”. Romney
went on to say, as Aaron Mate noted:
“If you
look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians
relative to other social media sites—it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok
broadcasts.”
Blinken
responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone got
their information from TV and newspapers like the NYT, who can be relied upon
not to tell the truth.
“Now, of
course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs
every millisecond. And of course, the way this has played out on social media
has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment
in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of
images dominates.... I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect
on the narrative.”
Zionism’s Perpetual Victimhood
Even when
it is committing genocide Israel is the victim. So too with its supporters. A
cartoon by Jewish American political cartoonist Eli Valley illustrates
this phenomenon. At Leeds University pro-Israel activists abused and attacked
pro-Palestinian protesters only to be portrayed as victims of anti-Semitism.
Not only have
Leeds staff and students faced racist harassment and abuse without
repercussions for the perpetrators, peaceful protests have been depicted as
violent, their solidarity slogans labelled “hate speech” and accusations of
antisemitism “weaponised to attack those who are critical of the Israeli
government.”
A letter from
Jewish academics is open for signature by Jewish students and staff in
Leeds and also the wider UK Jewish community.
The same has
happened in the United States. In See
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About
‘Campus Antisemitism’ at Columbia University Jewish student writes
The White
House, Congressional
Republicans, and cable
news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia
University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the
reality on the ground is very different.
Smears from the press and
pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges
of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous
distraction from real threats to our safety.
The most pressing threats to
our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they
come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty
members, and third-party organizations that dox
undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm
the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I
have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian
colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction
of Gaza’s cherished universities.
Murder of 4 Students at Ohio
University 1970
One of
the most notorious of those urging violence against Columbia students is Shai
Davidi, an Israeli-American Assistant Professor who has urged the National
Guard be brought in. The National Guard is infamous for killing
4 students at Ohio University at a Vietnam solidarity demonstration.
Emory's Caroline Fohlin is knocked down by the police while shouting: “I’m a professor!!” Hear the disbelief in her voice. She never expected to be treated like this by her own university for protesting Israel's slaughter.
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 26, 2024
But remember, democracy is on the ballot in Nov... pic.twitter.com/rDiWDlCH9e
It is worth watching this CNN video from the moment Emory Econ Professor @CarolineFohlin came across the violent arrest of a protester on campus and asked the police, with shock, "What are you doing?" That's all that prompted an officer to hurl her to the ground and handcuff her. https://t.co/QKNRqOoIiS pic.twitter.com/3wzSIOcD6U
— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) April 26, 2024
There has also been police violence in the United States directed at faculty too. Professor Caroline Fohlin went out to remonstrate with police about their violence and she became the recipient of the same. In order to sustain violence abroad it is necessary for the United States to erode what remains of its own democracy. And that is being played out on US campuses even whilst the elites condemn the ‘violence’ of those who are the target of violence.
Thugs attack Oxford Encampment
There
have also been attacks by far-right Zionists at the Oxford,
UCL and SOAS
encampments but fortunately the level of violence is nowhere near the violence
in the US.
Is this genocidal language from a zionist/pro israeli towards UCL students at their Gaza encampment?
— Mohammad 🇵🇸 (@mohammadfff_) May 12, 2024
One of them this guy @aaronibs said whilst outside the encampment:
"We bring them in like cockroaches, and then we destroy the cockroaches"
Late on Saturday night a group of… pic.twitter.com/AdkWWqy3uc
At 2 a.m.
on Saturday, while pro-Palestinian students were asleep, more than a dozen
cowardly Zionists attempted to attack the liberated zone for Gaza at SOAS.
“We are going to being them in: we bring them in like COCKROACHES and then we destroy the cockroaches”
Zionist thug Aaron Ibrahim attacked SOAS encampment
was one of the more articulate comments from Aaron
Ibrahim who has been identified as one of the Zionists who
participated in the attack on the SOAS Liberated Zone. Ibrahim serves as the
Head of National Sales at One2One Digital. People might want to contact One2One
to ask whether they want to face a Boycott.
Another
is Adam Tiano who has served in the Israeli Defence Force. He was scheduled to
deliver a speech at the Boys Club House in London- a charity dedicated to
assisting Jewish boys. One can only hope they reconsider. He works
for AST Removals, who might also wish to consider whether they want to employ
racist thugs.
Freed Palestinians Say They Were Tortured, Beaten and Starved in Israeli Prisons
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) November 27, 2023
“To the generals who have accompanied me in recent weeks, it seems we will part ways tomorrow, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your extraordinary humanity shown towards my daughter, Emilia.
You were like parents to… pic.twitter.com/yasR6uPkGQ
The Use of Torture is Legal and Israel’s
Official Policy
Whereas Hamas have treated their hostages
well, the treatment by Israel of Palestinian prisoners is diabolical. 18
Palestinians have died in captivity including Dr Adnan al-Bursh
who died as a result of torture in Sde Teiman, Israel’s desert concentration
camp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnU3mMMqNm0
BBC investigation: Israeli troops
accused of beating and humiliating Gaza hospital staff | BBC News
There
have been dozens of testimonies about the use of torture in Sdei Teman, including
by 3 Israeli whistleblowers. CNN has done a major
investigation into Sde Teiman. The BBC has also
conducted an investigation
into the assault on Al Nasser hospital and the torture of doctors and medics.
David Cameron professed
concern in the Lords but his concern did not extend to cutting off Israel’s
arms supplies.
One
wonders what Cameron would have said if it had been suggested that Hamas should
investigate Israel’s allegations of atrocities on October 7? The reason for the
double standards is because Israel is ‘our’ friend nowithstanding that the
third largest group in Israel’s Knesset, Otzma Yehudit is a neo-Nazi Jewish
Supremacist party.
Israel’s
right to occupy and invade Gaza is treated as normal despite having no legal
right to do so. Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 is treated as abnormal.
One
question that should be asked is whether Hamas had any choice, in its efforts
to free Palestinian prisoners, other than to mount the attack on October 7.
What Israel does is normative.
Palestinian
prisoners in Israel are treated as if they were guilty. No mention is made that
thousands
of them have had no trial, that they received Administrative
Detention, internment without trial.
Palestinian
prisoners are convicted in military courts where the conviction
rate
is 99.74%. Palestinians are tried in
military courts whereas Jewish settlers are tried in civil courts.
Sussex University Student Encampment
Jewish
Supremacism and Racist Attacks are de facto legal in Israel today
Israel’s
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who calls himself a ‘fascist
homophobe’ has recently called
for the ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza. This is the kind of language Hitler and
Himmler used but where is the outrage from western leaders.
There are no half measures. [The Gazan cities of]
Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. ‘You will blot out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
It
is Otzma Yehudit, a Jewish Nazi organisation which is driving Israel’s genocide
yet Biden and Sunak turn a blind eye to this. This is why Sunak, Cameron and
Biden are war criminals.
Genocidal
anti-Semitism is the accusation made of Hamas yet genocidal anti-Palestinian
racism is the issue. When Israeli mobs
march chanting
'death to the Arabs' this goes unreported
in the Western media. The Minister of Police and Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, a
follower of the Rabbi Meir Kahane, used to be one of them.
When Taboon Wine Bar in Jerusalem was attacked
on January 26 by a mob of Israeli settlers in the Christian Quarter shouting “Death to Arabs … Death to Christians.”
he went to the police station that night where he was told by a policeman “Don’t bother me too much.”
Nor
does the MSM ask why Palestinians guilty of killing an Israeli serve 30 or 40
years in prison whereas it is highly exceptional for a settler or soldier to be
gaoled for killing a Palestinian?
The Lie of Legality
The International Court of Justice found that Israel was ‘plausibly’ committing genocide, which is not
surprising since a host of Israeli government ministers were promising exactly
that. Yet US administration described South Africa’s case as ‘meritless’.
When the ICJ ruled that Israel was committing ‘plausible genocide’
what was the reaction of the United States and the West? To completely cut the
funding of UNWRA, the UN food agency.
They adopted Israel’s false, unevidenced allegations that it was a
Hamas front. Although most countries have restored their funding, Britain and
the US have not done so thus contributing to the very famine they purport to
oppose. The hypocrisy of our government is limitless. By
the end of February, UNRWA said Israel had effectively banned it from entering
the north of Gaza.
The Independent has done an excellent
investigation into the famine in Gaza accusing Biden
and his officials of being complicit in Gaza’s devastating famine. It is a sad
reflection on the America’s political system that two sociopaths are the best
that the system can offer.
At least
188 of UNWRA’s staff have
been killed since the beginning of the war, more than 150 of its facilities
have been hit – among them many schools – and more than 400 people killed “while seeking shelter under the UN flag”,
the organisation said.
Following an
attack on a food distribution centre in Rafah in March, UNRWA’s head Philippe
Lazzarini accused
Israel of a “blatant disregard” for
international humanitarian law.
“Today’s
attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza
Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some
areas, turning into famine,” he said, adding that the coordinates for the
facility were shared with the Israeli army.
“I’ve said it
many times: this is a man-made hunger and looming famine which can still be
averted,”
This is
the context in which Biden and Sunak’s condemnation of violence should be
judged. It is yet one more lie.
Tony
Greenstein
I think that it’s safe to say that democracy ends where Zionism begins. It is for the 21st century what Nazism was for the 20th century. Both ideologies have had a symbiotic relationship.
ReplyDeleteSite: Liverpool University Peace Camp. Date:15th May,2024. Time: 0300. Thugs arrive playing loud music through bull-horns (Rule Brittania) & shouting NF chants & making violent threats.
ReplyDeleteNotice how Tony doesn't talk about the rise in antisemitism or advocating to free the hostages. Tells you all you need to know.
ReplyDeleteYacov Moshe
for once Yacov is right. I don't talk about the rise in antisemitism because I don't believe there is one.
DeleteI am all in favour of freeing the hostages - both the Palestinian and the Israeli hostages. So I'm sure that Yacov will join me in wanting an immediate and permanent ceasefire because if there isn't one then there will be no hostages left. Israel is killing them and those it doesn't kill will die of hunger or lack of medical attention.
The Zionists who talk of freeing the hostages tend to not call for a ceasefire which suggests to me that freeing the hostages is just a talking point. That what they are really doing is using the hostages to justify the genocide.
So if Yacov isn't one of them he will devote his time to calling for a ceasefire because it is very clear that Netanyahu and his far-right coalition prefer war to saving the hostages.
OK Tony. Meanwhile, there is only one Jewish nation that has been continuously referred to as the land of the Jews for 1000s of years. Not just in the Bible but throughout history among Roman, Greek, Arabic and many other historians since the plus it is written in the Quran as well.
DeleteIsrael can not be a colony of Israel.
Yacov Moshe
Yacov makes such general points about a Jewish nation that they are virtually meaningless. A nation is not what other people say it is but what it actually is.
DeleteThe fact is that when Zionism came on the scene, preceded by 4 centuries of Christian Zionism, it was they who wanted Jews to form a state not the Jews, most Jews rejected the idea of nationhood. Nations are in any case a recent phenomenon. A product of capitalism. The Jews certainly weren't a nation. They were part of a variety of nations and still are. If you say an Indian, an African and a European/British Jew are one and the same you are talking about race, not nation.
Indeed the early Zionists such as Ruppin and Nordau were explicit that Zionism was about race and were advocates of eugenics, race cleansing.
The problem with you Zionists is you know nothing about your own history because you are so busy telling lies. Being Jewish was a religion. The religion had a concept of leum, a people, not a nation. The Jews in Palestine about 9-10,000 according to the count of the British consul in Jerusalem William Young in 1839. They didn't see their presence as having any political connotations and indeed if you read Weizmann's autobiography 'trial and error' he concedes that what he called the 'old yishuv' opposed Zionism.
But as I said, you Zionist propagandists love the myths because you can't deal with the actuality that Zionism is a poisonous racist creed that is leading Israeli Jews to behave like Nazis and to openly proclaim their genocidal intent.
I wonder if Yacov has seen the vile Israelis glorifying in the deprivation of food and water in their Tik Tok videos, mocking children who are being murdered. This is your Zionism Yacov and you are happy to go along with it for the sake of these racial fantasies of yours
It's a complex issue, for sure. While Zionism aimed to establish a Jewish homeland, it’s important to acknowledge the historical context and the diversity of Jewish experiences.
DeleteThe idea of a Jewish nation, especially in the context of the modern nation-state, is a relatively recent development. Many Jews, historically, have identified more with their local communities and cultures than with a singular Jewish identity.
It's also crucial to recognize the impact of colonialism and European imperialism on the region, which shaped the political landscape and led to the displacement of many Palestinian people.
Rather than focusing on abstract notions of nationhood, perhaps it's more productive to discuss the human rights of all people in the region, including Palestinians and Israelis. Both sides deserve peace, security, and self-determination.
But yeah, Zionism isn't a name of peace, it's a name of terrorism and they are terrorists using the name of Judaism to get their political benefits. ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu is Worthy of praise.
Disagree. It's a very simple issue. one of European settler colonialism. Jews are at home where they live. The idea of a Jewish state is anathema to Jewish tradition and has ended up in the monstrosity of the Israeli apartheid state.
DeleteThere is no Jewish nation. Period.
That Frederick Douglass quote is a good one, I must confess I've never heard of him before.
ReplyDelete