The Ceasefire Between Israel and Iran Was At Israel’s Request

 The Attempt to Smear Palestine Action as Terrorists Can Be Defeated By People Declaring ‘We Are All Palestine Action’ & Refusing to be Deterred by the Lie that Protest=Terrorism

Sit in at Brighton Station & Demo In Protest Against the US Strike Against Iran's Nuclear Facilities

Last Monday was a day of two demonstrations on two separate but interlinked issues. At midday there was the energetic and lively demonstration against the proscription of Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group.

At 5.30 pm when back in Brighton there was firstly a sit-in at Brighton Railway Station and then a march and demonstration against the United States attack on Iran.  I am posting videos and photos from both demonstrations. I spoke twice at the Brighton demonstration and sit-in.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Tony Greenstein Speech at Brighton's Clocktower on 23 June after a march against the Attack on Iran

Just as in 2006 when a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah, which Israel got Bush to arrange when Israel was getting the worst of the fight, so too with the ceasefire that Trump arranged on Tuesday.

The ceasefire was clearly at Israel’s behest. Trump also came out with strident criticism of Israel for having broken the ceasefire not understanding that in Israel’s eyes a ceasefire means you cease and we’ll fire.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Demonstration Against the Proscription of Palestine Action 23 June 2025

Israel launched the attack on Iran hoping to remove its regime and thus establish complete dominance in the region.  The lie that Iran was developing nuclear weapons has been comprehensively discredited by US Intelligence.

However we should be clear. Israel and the United States attack on Iran never had anything to do with Iran' non-existent nuclear weapons. The aim is to eliminate the Iranian state from disrupting Israeli  and US plans for the Middle East. An extension of the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia at its centre.

The latest manifestation of this is The Abraham Shield which is Israel’s New Blueprint for Regional Control After Gaza. The aim is the integration of the Gulf and Arab economies with that of Israel as the latter excludes the Palestinians, both physically and politically from having any say in their future. It is an Orwellian nightmare of total control by Israel and the Arab regimes of the destiny of the Arab peoples.

The attack on Iran has been the fulfilment of a 20 year wet dream by Netanyahu. He believed that with Trump in power that he could drag the US into the conflict. However despite the fact that the US bombed three nuclear installations, it was clear that the US didn’t want to get embroiled in Netanyahu’s war.

Netanyahu was under the impression that the surprise attack on Iran would be a cakewalk. It was anything but. Instead Iran gave Israelis a chance to experience what Palestinians in Gaza have experienced with demolished buildings and streets and an understanding of what war means in reality. One-third of Tel Aviv was damaged or destroyed.

Not since 1948 in the so-called War of Independence has Tel Aviv been bombed (by the Egyptian airforce).  If Hezbollah had done the same when they had the chance then Israel might have thought twice about devastating Gaza.

The Police were at their aggressive best

What now? Israel will not give up easily having been bruised in the current encounter. Iran will need to replenish their missile stocks and renew their air defences as well as trying to supply their allies in the region, the so-called Axis of Resistance, with new weaponry.

But the challenge is not only military but political and this is where the Iranian regime is fatally flawed.  It is a repressive, undemocratic regime that is at odds with its own citizens. Although Iranians rallied round when Israel was attacking it, they are not going to tolerate a corrupt and dictatorial clerical state that believes in using religion to justify its attacks on women, minorities and the working class.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Iran suffered a great deal of damage from Israeli air attacks on its infrastructure. It is also suffering from economic sanctions and the thinly veiled hostility of neighbouring Arab regimes. Both Jordan and Saudi Arabia were involved in shooting down Iranian missiles. Qatar hosts the largest US base in the region.

Iran is unable to respond to these treacherous regimes precisely because it is not dissimilar in its contempt and repression of its own people. That is the problem for those who believe that the struggle is simply military. The Iranian regime is unable to appeal to the wider Arab populace as Egypt's President Nasser was once able to. Theocratic dictatorships are not popular, either in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Of one thing we can be sure and that is that Israel is not going to give up and it is going to enlist the Arab regimes in its plans. The Iranian regime, which believes it can ally with those regimes is very much mistaken if it thinks they will help it resist US imperialism and its Israeli attack dog.

The Mullahs are incapable of a genuine anti-imperialist alliance because that would mean allying with the very forces, the Arab street, which in Iran would also remove its own dictatorship.

The Iranian regime is often seen as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. This is a mistake.  It had a golden opportunity with its ceasefire with Israel to demand that Israel also agree to a ceasefire and withdrawal in Gaza. I doubt if the idea even entered the head of Khameini and Iran’s rulers.

In Lebanon the forces of the state and the Phalangists are encircling Hezbollah which has become very unpopular given the way they handled the confrontation with Israel. Allowing suppliers to provide them with pagers containing explosives without checking them raises the question as to how they were so careless.

It is clear that Hezbollah was penetrated from top to bottom by Zionist agents and that Israel was in possession of real time information about the whereabouts of Hezbollah’s leadership.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

But the real problem is that Hezbollah became part of the corrupt Lebanese Establishment. It had no programme for social and political change that could unite the different communities. It had no proposals for ending the confessional nature of the Lebanese political system whereby a Christian becomes President, a Sunni Prime Minister, a Shi’ite Speaker of the Parliament etc. The 128 seats in Parliament are divided equally between Muslim and Christian despite Muslims being in a majority.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Changing this was the main goal of the Lebanese National Movement in the civil war of the 1970s. A civil war which saw Syria’s Assad intervene on the side of the Phalangists.

MSNBC on Donald Trump and his Lies About 'Obliterating' Iran's Nuclear Sites

Netanyahu succeeded in his aim in that the US bombed Iran's 3 nuclear sites last weekend. Unfortunately for Trump, despite his boasts that he had obliterated the facilities it is clear that the MOABs did not do the job as the facilities were too well protected.

The Familiar Face of Alexei Sayle

However the present ceasefire is not designed to last and we can be sure that Israel will be plotting with the traitorous Arab regimes, not least those of Jordan and Saudi Arabia how to renew the conflict.

It now seems that a desperate Israeli military has taken to threatening Iranian officials and their families: rebel or we’ll kill you

The guy on the right was the speaker before me

"WE ARE ALL PAL ACTION"

Meanwhile at home Palestine Action is due to be proscribed despite massive opposition to Starmer’s giant step towards a police state. It is clear to most people that the terrorists are the genocidaires not those who oppose them.

Even that beacon of fair-weather liberal opinion, The Guardian, has come out strongly against the proposals of Starmer and Cooper with its legal correspondent Haroon Sidique saying it would have a ‘chilling effect’ on other protest groups, which of course was the whole purpose.

Its leading article asked ‘if red paint is terrorism, what isn’t?’ begging the question as to why the Guardian backed Police State Starmer and the ‘feminist’ Yvette Cooper against Jeremy Corbyn in the first place.

The war of this miserable ‘Labour’ government against our democratic rights, coupled with their attacks on the disabled and working class people shows that it is nothing but a continuation of the Tories. Labour is preparing the way for Nigel Farage’s far-right racist Reform.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli Lies About the Bombing of Al Ahli Hospital Unravelling as Al Jazeera and Channel 4 Investigations Expose Israeli Propaganda as Lies

 The Conversation Between 2 Hamas Members that Israel Posted are Fake & Digitally Manipulated – the Missile Came From the East not West

Al Jazeera Investigation in Israel's Bombing of the Al Ahli Hospital

Was the Gaza hospital attack caused by a failed rocket launch? | Bird’s Eye View

Channel 4 News tonight broadcast the first scientific analysis by Forensic Architecture based at London University that Israel’s ‘evidence’ that Islamic Jihad carried out the horrific bombing the Al-Ahli hospital is as genuine as a 9 bob note.

Israel's Crude Forgery of a Conversation Between 2 Hamas Operatives

Firstly the missile came from the opposite direction to that which Israel alleged – East not South West. Secondly that the ‘conversation’ between two Hamas operatives had been digitally manipulated and consisted of two separate conversations, clearly by two Israeli actors.

Now why should Israel do this if its conscience is clean? If in fact it was a misfiring by Islamic Jihad that caused the explosion that killed 500 people what possible reason is there to employ actors to narrate a fictional conversation?

The Missile that destroyed the Al Ahli Hospital came from the East not the South-West as Israel alleged

Of course the Americans and the BBC are eager to accept the Israeli denial that it deliberately targeted a hospital because they wish to portray the Israeli attack on Gaza as what they say it is, highly selective rather than it being an indiscriminate attack on the civilian population of Gaza. 

Why should Israel behave in this way? Because it has ordered Palestinians to vacate northern Gaza and therefore wanted all hospitals to close and not to shelter Palestinian civilians. This is genocide pure and simple.

Channel 4 Investigation of Attack on Al Hilwa Hospital

In a press conference, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, said the al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist Hospital in Gaza was warned on Saturday, Sunday and Monday by the Israeli army to evacuate. It was then bombed on Tuesday. Clearly the Israelis were becoming impatient with the hospital still functioning and decided to take it out.

Three days before the fatal missile strike the hospital had already been hit. However it is understandable that Israel wants to reassure its gullible Zionist supporters abroad that it was not the culprit and sure enough the BBC and Sky News go to town on Israel’s lies, endorsed by the senile American President Biden and his puppet Sunak.

If there was any doubt about whether Israel has lied then the Al Jazeera investigation tonight lays that doubt to rest. There was only one rocket launched from Gaza that night and it was intercepted. The only party who could have launched the missile on the hospital was Israel and of course they know that.

It comes hot on the heels of Israel’s attack on the Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius, the oldest church in Gaza, some 1600 years old. Once again Palestinian civilians were sheltering in the church assuming that although Israel bombs mosques without qualms it would draw the line at Christian churches.

The reality is that Israel has no red lines when it comes to attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza – be it hospitals, schools, churches or mosques. These are multiple war crimes yet Biden, Sunak, Starmer et al. have no hesitation in backing Israel. We are led by war criminals.

Hotoveli – all Palestinians are Nazis and we should kill 600,000 of them

The cat however was let out of the bag by Israel’s far-right religious nut and Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli who described all Palestinians as Nazis and compared what Israel was doing now to the British bombing of Dresden and Hamburg. She alleged that 600,000 were killed in those bombings and then used them to justify murdering a similar number of Palestinians.

Of course if we were to call the Zionists and Israelis Nazis that would be anti-Semitic but if the Zionists call Palestinians ‘Nazis’ then that is fine because the Holocaust narrative is Israeli property, to twist and distort as they will. Instead of being an object in why racism and fascism is a wrong, the Zionists use the Holocaust as a justification for whatever evils they perpetrate.

"Hamas need to pay the price."

Israel's ambassador to the UK @TzipiHotovely claims "there is no humanitarian crisis" in Gaza, adding that Israel is working to "make sure all Palestinian civilians will be safe".

Live: https://t.co/U2zRf41GbH

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/V0WrAFS1xF

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 16, 2023

According to Hotoveli there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and in any case Palestinians are Nazis so who cares. There is no acknowledgment of the starvation siege of Gaza for 17 years or any admission of any culpability whatsoever.

Adam Keller, a veteran Israeli peace activist in an article on the Gush Shalom site, The Most Horrifying of Times - And What Can We Still Do? writes about how genocide is now an appropriate term to use about Israel’s actions. Keller describes how the word ‘extermination’ with all its resonance of Auschwitz has now entered the language of Israeli politics in the so-called liberal oasis of Tel Aviv.

This week Roy Sharon, a "respectable" radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza”.

And the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading "Exterminate Gaza!". Not "Destroy!", not "Flatten!" – but clearly and explicitly "Exterminate Gaza!". "Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!" - "Exterminate!" Every Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. ….

the idea of Genocide has now entered the public agenda in the State of Israel, and there is every justification to use this terrible word and to beat all the drums and raise all the possible alarms. ….

An invasion in which the army would invade and crush Gaza with all its might would most likely lead to the killing of the Israeli abductees, among all the many others who would be killed. This was expressed with characteristic bluntness and ruthlessness by the extreme right Minister Smotritz: "We need to be cruel, not to think too much of the captives". Negotiating with Hamas for a prisoner exchange deal is not compatible with a total war whose goal is to completely destroy Hamas. This was explicitly stated by Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel's National Security Council. The State of Israel has a choice between two courses that in practice rule out each other - either an effort to bring back the captives and abductees from Gaza, or a ground invasion that will multiply the killing and destruction already caused in the week of bombings.

None of this is broadcast by fake media outlets like the BBC and Sky. They are instead happy to buy into Israel’s lies, the BBC especially, because they are funded by the British government through the TV license.

Meanwhile in ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ there has been a crackdown on Arab citizens who express any sympathy with the people of Gaza.

NBC’s Chantal Da Silva reported from Ashdod in Israel that one student is facing suspension for posting a picture on social media celebrating her sister’s engagement. Others have been targeted for expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. All are suffering from what some schools and the Adalah egal advocacy group is calling an Israeli crackdown on free speech.

Police, schools and employers are targeting people for seemingly innocuous social media posts including quotes from the Quran according to Adi Mansour, a lawyer with Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told NBC News on Wednesday.

Mansour said Adalah has received at least 80 reports from students at colleges and universities of being suspended, expelled or even arrested for their online musings.

Some social media users threatened “to kill them, to rape them, threats to go to their house,” Mansour said. Others had been doxxed, meaning their personal information was posted online.

In a strongly worded letter to Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Wednesday, nine schools complained that they were coming under pressure to investigate their students and report their handling of the cases to The Council for Higher Education in Israel, which they said risked “creating an atmosphere of McCarthyism and mutual informing on every campus.”

“Honestly, it’s terrifying what’s happening,” Mansour said.

Doxxing and disciplinary action

All of the students targeted identified themselves as being Palestinian or Arab. One student at Tel Aviv University, who asked not to be named because of security fears, said the addresses and pictures of homes of Arab students had been published on social media.

As I write Israel is continuing its bombing of Gaza with one aim. To ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinians in order that Israeli Jews can ‘return’ and fulfil their messianic destiny. The least people can do is to attend the demonstration in London tomorrow, assemble 12 .00 at Marble Arch. Then go on to picket and lobby every MP until pressure is put on Israel to desist and for Britain not to supply weapons of murder to Israel’s killers.

ALSO:  Google censors have deleted my previous post Israel’s Denial That It Bombed Al Ahli Hospital Is As Credible As Its Denial That It Murdered Shireen Abu Akleh 

In an article How Google and Amazon help Israel sustain its apartheid Ramzy Baround describes how the words, “We are anonymous because we fear retaliation,” were part of a letter signed by 500 Google employees in October 2020, when they decried their company’s direct support for the Israeli government and military. In their letter, the signatories protested a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon Web Services and Tel Aviv that provides cloud services for the Israeli military and government that allow

“for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.”

Google gave no explanation for its decision other than that it breached its 'community guidelines' as if Google Censors have a community. However it has firmed up by decision to go on Substack where anonymous censors don't interfere with free expression.

However you can still access my article on my shadow blog, see

Israel’s Denial That It Bombed Al Ahli Hospital Is As Credible As Its Denial That It Murdered Shireen Abu Akleh

Tony Greenstein

Full Support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising

The Hypocrisy of Biden & Cleverly is  nauseating - they Support Ukrainian Resistance but Condemn the Palestinian Resistance

Like most people it was with shock and surprise that I woke to learn that the Palestinians in Gaza led by Hamas had launched a counter-offensive against Israel’s occupation.

My first reaction though was the opposite of the political hypocrites and presstitutes who wondered how it could be that Palestinians were once again attacking those poor, defenceless and long suffering Israelis. My mood in contrast was elation not despair.

Gaza city fighters drive captured Israeli jeep

Israeli media: 200 Israelis were killed, at least 1,000 wounded.

🎥 Destruction in #TelAviv following the last barrage of 150 missiles fired by the Resistance in #Gaza in response to the Israeli bombing of a residential building

FOLLOW OUR LIVE BLOG: https://t.co/sU4Q8VJjo7 pic.twitter.com/3hXjHnFE43

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2023

My first thoughts were that finally the inhabitants of the Gaza Ghetto had struck back at those who had maintained a 15 year, suffocating siege on the Strip. A siege that meant 95% of Gaza’s water was polluted, that thousands of its inhabitants were living on the brink of starvation, that nothing could move in or out without the agreement of the Israeli state. All with the agreement of Egypt’s police state under its President and US puppet, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

SS General Jurgen Stroop, who led the attack against the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance and who was executed after the war 

Of course the retribution of Israel will be bloody and savage. So was the revenge of General Stroop, the Commander of the Nazi forces that retook the Warsaw Ghetto after the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. The savagery of the colonialist is always far greater than the violence of the oppressed.

Abu Obeida, military spokesperson for Al-Qassam Brigades:

"We hold tens of Israeli prisoners, including high-ranking officers and soldiers - All captured Israelis are in safe areas and some of them are placed in the Resistance tunnels."

LIVE BLOG: https://t.co/sU4Q8VJjo7 pic.twitter.com/wZcbjG1uEU

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2023

 

rocket fire towards Israel

We see that with the call from Al-Qassam leader, Mohammed Deif who called on Resistance fighters not to target old people or children. Israel is now bombing Gaza mercilessly, it has topped 5 tower blocks already. Israel makes no distinction between men, women and children but the only thing we shall hear from Biden, Not So Cleverly and the other hypocritical western leaders is about how Israeli suffering not that of the Palestinians.

Israeli-anti-tank-missile

To those who object to the comparison with the Warsaw Ghetto all I have to say is that it was the last Commander of the Warsaw ghetto resistance, Marek Edelman, who compared their resistance with that of the Palestinian resistance. Which is why the Zionists wrote Edelman out of history.

Two hundred Israelis have so far been killed and many captured. The bias of BBC and Sky News were on full display as they interviewed at length Jotam Confino, the Foreign Editor of the right-wing Zionist Jewish News who constantly referred to ‘terrorists’ rather than guerillas or resistance fighters.

The Palestinian Resistance has undoubtedly killed many Israeli civilians but we have to remember that most Israelis are not only reserve soldiers but they have given overwhelming support to the slaughter of Palestinians.

Damaged Israeli apartment block

The massive demonstrations against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms went out of their way not to include in their demands any call for democracy in the Occupied Territories. The murder of over 240 Palestinians including 45 children in the West Bank was not part of their agenda. Their demands were wholly within the settler community.

Residential building hit in Tel Aviv

It is ordinary Israelis who have elected Israel’s neo-Nazi Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi of the settlers’ rabbis issued a statement at the time of the last attack on Gaza that

“There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them … A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

This is the voice of a genuine Jewish Nazi yet Israelis are quite happy with having this genocidal maniac controlling its Police and Security forces. So let no one tell us that Israeli civilians are innocent. It was they who elected the present ethnic cleansing far-right coalition government.

Operation Protective Edge in 2014 killed 2,200 civilians including 551 children. This war was supported by 95% of Israel’s Jewish population (rising at one stage to 97%). In Tel Aviv mobs took to the streets chanting ‘There's no school tomorrow,there's no children left in Gaza! Oleh!’

Rockets from Gaza

The notorious Erez Military Checkpoint (Beit Hanoun crossing) was stormed by Palestinian fighters.

This crossing has served as a noose around the collective neck of Palestinians.

Suddenly, Palestinians were not trapped following a brief, but bloody battle. pic.twitter.com/y6jSM3Cl7Q

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2023

 

In 2014 there were Israelis who set up armchairs and coffee machines on a hilltop in order that they could get a better view and cheer on the ongoing destruction taking place in Gaza.

As Harriet Sharwood wrote in The Guardian of 20.7.14

‘Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza, People drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive.’

This attack by Hamas and other groups was also aimed at the normalisation with Israel by the corrupt and treacherous Arab regimes led by the chief snake of all, Mohammed Bin Salman, the mass murderer who presides over Saudi Arabia.

The Arab regimes believe that they can make their peace with the Zionist settler colonial regime in Tel Aviv but they are very mistaken. As the football fans made clear in the World Cup last year in Qatar the Arab street is firmly behind the Palestinians.

The task of the moment is for the Arab masses to rise up and overthrow MBS and Sisi in Egypt and all the other corrupt Arab regimes who, with Israel have been responsible for maintaining the siege of Gaza. The Palestinians in the West Bank also have the task of overthrowing the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah which acts as Israel’s military subcontractor.

🔴Mohammed Deif, commander of Al-Qassam Brigades, declared in a televised speech on Saturday morning that the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood Battle’ has begun.

Find translated excerpts here!

➡️https://t.co/y7pBf9VT4V pic.twitter.com/HUXaUToSAo

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2023

Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon's Hezbollah - A Paper Tiger? 

But it is not only the Arab regimes who are normalising the Israeli state who should be criticised. So too should Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In response to a call by Hamas for them to join the resistance, Hasrallah’s response was that

“The leadership of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon is closely following the significant developments on the Palestinian scene, monitoring the field conditions with utmost interest.’

That sounds very much like Hezbollah are not going to do anything except sit it out and allow Israel, at a time of its choosing, to attack Lebanon again. The time to fight is now.

Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should congratulate them on this well planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.

Israeli Weapons Industry’s Bottom Line: Ethnic Cleansing

Haaretz Editorial, 1st Oct 2023

Nearly all the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have become refugees overnight, following a blitzkrieg by the Azerbaijani army which put an end to the district’s independence.

More than 100,000 victims of ethnic cleansing have had to abandon the towns and villages their families have lived in for generations, fleeing to Armenia across the border. More than 100 years after the Armenian holocaust under the Ottoman Empire, members of this small nation are again running for their lives in fear of occupation and oppression.

However, Azerbaijan was not alone in this campaign. Israel supplied Azerbaijan’s army with the best and most advanced weapons that enabled the cleansing operation. This included surface-to-surface missiles, offensive drones, guided rockets, air defense systems, artillery, mortars, tank upgrading equipment, assault rifles, naval vessels, anti-tank missiles, and, obviously, cyber and espionage tools.

As reported in Haaretz (March 6), Israel allowed an airlift from the Uvda airbase to Azerbaijan to carry huge amounts of armaments and ammunition, on their way to the Nagorno-Karabakh front. Unlike other customers of Israel’s defense industry, who wish to keep their relations with Israel under wraps, Azerbaijan’s ruler Ilham Aliyev actually enjoyed boasting about his blue-and-white weapons systems.

Now that the results of the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh are evident to everyone, it’s appropriate to ask the heads of Israel’s defense industries and all the people who supported, aided and enabled the billion-dollar deals with Aliyev: How do you feel when you see Armenian families running for their lives, the terror in the eyes of children, the new refugee camps in Armenia?

Do Michael Federman (Elbit Systems), Yuval Steinitz (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems) and Amir Peretz (Israel Aerospace Industries) see the ethnic cleansing and the horrific war crimes, or just the bottom line of the companies they head? Do they feel any empathy toward the victims or are they engaged only in calculating the dividends their investors will receive, the royalties paid to the government and the bonuses they’ll be paid? What passes through the head of Rachel Klein, the director of the Defense Exports Control Agency, who spearheaded a “reform” that loosened the regulation of such exports? Is she happy that all the forms were correctly filled, or does she feel a twinge in her heart?

Aliyev is not the first tyrant whose army relies on weapons from Israel. He was preceded by the heads of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the generals in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the regime in China and the Shah of Iran. Azerbaijan supplies oil to Israel and helps it in its confrontation with Iran.

And yet, despite these precedents and the strategic justifications, Israel’s partnership in the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh requires a change in Israel’s export policies, and the curbing of sales to aggressive dictatorships. Israel must also provide aid to Armenia to help the country absorb the refugees.

Hostages: Learning From Israel

Norman Finkelstein

The crocodile tears have begun over Israeli hostages taken by Gaza militants.  But Israel has held the 2.1 million people of Gaza, including one million children, hostage in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet for nearly 20 years.  In fact, Israel was the only country in the world to have legalized hostage taking.  Revered President of the Israeli High Court Aharon Barak held in 1997 that “a detention is legal if it is designed to promote State security, even if the danger to State Security does not emanate from the detainees themselves,” and that “detention ... for the purpose of release of ... captured and missing soldiers is a vital interest to the State.”  (The decision wasn’t reversed until 2000.) If the past is any guide, Gaza’s leadership will swap the Israelis for some of the 4,500 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons on alleged “security grounds.”  Gaza is only playing by the book written by Israel.

“All the chorus of calumny, which the Party of Order never fail, in their orgies of blood, to raise against their victims, only proves that the bourgeois of our days considers himself the legitimate successor to the baron of old, who thought every weapon in his own hand fair against the plebeian, while in the hands of the plebeian a weapon of any kind constituted in itself a crime.” Karl Marx, The Civil War in France

John Brown's Body - in Gaza 

Norman Finkelstein 

Pete Seeger – John Brown’s Body

Dolores Ibarruri, La Passionaria, famously exhorted during the Spanish Civil War, “Better to die on your feet than live forever on your knees.”  

For the past 20 years the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, have been immured in a concentration camp.  Today they breached the camp’s walls.  If we honor John Brown’s armed resistance to slavery; if we honor the Jews who revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto—then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic resistance in Gaza.

I, for one, will never begrudge—on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul—the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled. 

The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down.  Glory, glory, hallelujah.  The souls of Gaza go marching on!