Tag: ethnic cleansing

Facebook Ramps Up Censorship Amid Israeli Pressure

On July 10, it was announced that social media giant Meta would broaden the scope of its censorship and suppression of content related to the Gaza genocide. Under the new policy, Facebook and Instagram posts containing “derogatory or threatening references to ‘Zionists’ in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis” will be proscribed. Unsurprisingly, a welter of Zionist lobby organizations – many of which aggressively lobbied Meta to adopt these changes – cheered the move. Emboldened, the same entities are now calling for all social media platforms to follow suit.

The Times of Israel noted that “nearly 150 advocacy groups and experts provided input that led to Meta’s policy update.” This prominently included Tel Aviv-based CyberWell, mundanely described by the outlet as “a nonprofit that has been documenting the swell of online antisemitism and Holocaust denial since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.” These malign activities have had a devastating impact on what Western audiences see and hear about the Gaza genocide on their social media feeds.

In January, CyberWell published an extensive report on how it was seeking to censor many prominent X accounts that expressed doubts about the official narrative of October 7, including the widely disseminated, proven-to-be-false libel that Hamas fighters beheaded dozens of infants. Users in the firing line included popular anonymous Zei Squirrel, Al Jazeera, The Grayzone chief Max Blumenthal, and famous rapper Lowkey, of MintPress News. CyberWell claimed such legitimate skepticism was comparable to Holocaust denial.

The impact of these lobbying efforts isn’t clear, although almost simultaneously, Zei Squirrel was abruptly suspended from X without warning or explanation, sparking widespread outrage. It was only due to relentless backlash that the account was reinstated. More recently, CyberWell submitted formal guidance to Meta on censoring the Palestine solidarity phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Zionists falsely claim is a clarion call for the genocide of Jews.

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Israel Uses Water as a Weapon of Its Genocide in Gaza

Through persistent, systematic, and widespread targeting of the Gaza Strip’s water sources and desalination plants, Israel is using water as a weapon against Palestinian civilians. In addition to imposing famine, Israel is deliberately reducing the amount of water available to residents of the Strip—especially potable water sources—intentionally targeting the over 2.3 million people who live there as part of its genocide, ongoing since last October. 

On Monday, July 1, the Euro-Med Monitor field team observed significant damage to a desalination plant in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, as a result of direct Israeli targeting. This also resulted in the killing of a young man who was filling a gallon with water, plus the wounding of other individuals. The station, which provided services to at least 50,000 people in several nearby residential neighbourhoods, sustained significant damage after being bombed by the Israeli army with a GBU missile that broke through multiple stories and detonated on the ground floor.

As summer temperatures rise, the people of the Gaza Strip are facing significant challenges in accessingwater. Estimates show that since October of last year, the per capita share of water in the Gaza Strip has decreased by 97% due to the extensive destruction of water infrastructure by Israel. Therefore, as a result of the genocide, the per capita share of water in the Strip has decreased to between 3 and 15 litres per day, while in 2022 it was approximately 84.6 litres per day.

In view of the ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people that deprive them of necessities for survival—such as the destruction of over 700 wells and water desalination plants since the start of the genocide—all areas of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a shortage of water, and the sewage system is collapsing. Meanwhile, certain areas of the Strip are suffering from a shortage of fuel, which Israel forbids from entering the Strip, despite the large number of casualties—including children—caused by infectious diseases and epidemics that spread through the accumulation ofcontaminated water due to inoperative sewage stations.

Continued destruction and devastation by the Israeli army is rendering the Gaza Strip unlivable, particularly after the army’s destruction of 9 out of 10 water tanks and half of the water networks, or 350 km out of 700 km.

Additionally, as a result of the crimes and arbitrary policies of Israel, all six wastewater treatment plants have been disrupted, approximately 65 sewage pumps stopped, and 70 km of sewage networks destroyed. This has resulted in the unchecked disposal of wastewater, estimated to be around 130 thousand cubic metres per day, onto Gaza Strip roads and shelters for displaced people.

According to United Nations estimates, about 96 percent of the Strip’s population (2.15 million people) faces high levels of acute food insecurity. While the whole territory is classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), over 495,000 people (22 per cent of the population) are still facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5). In this Phase, households experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities.

Euro-Med Monitor warned last January that distress is engulfing Gaza City and the Strip’s northern regions in alarming ways—a result of Israel’s cutting off of the water supply in the Strip, systematic and intentional Israeli bombing of water sources and wells, and a lack of fuel required to run water conversion and distribution facilities.

The lack of drinking water in the Gaza Strip has become a matter of life and death, with residents currently being forced to drink unclean well water amid continued Israeli military attacks and lack of food, water, and fuel supplies.

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Israel turbocharges West Bank settlement expansion with largest land grab in decades

Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said Wednesday, a move that is likely to worsen already soaring tensions linked to the war in Gaza.

Israel’s aggressive expansion in the West Bank reflects the settler community’s strong influence in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most religious and nationalist in the country’s history. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, has turbocharged the policy of expansion, seizing new authorities over settlement development and saying he aims to solidify Israel’s hold on the territory and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by The Associated Press. Data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicate it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.

Settlement monitors said the land grab connects Israeli settlements along a key corridor bordering Jordan, a move they said undermines the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state.

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Israel’s leaked plan for annexing the West Bank, explained

The issue of Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank has resurfaced in recent days after a leaked recording of Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed a “dramatic” plan to impose permanent Israeli control over the West Bank “without the government being accused of annexing it,” as Smotrich was recorded saying.

Smotrich’s statements, recorded by the Peace Now Israeli NGO and published by CNN and the New York Times, were made during a speech he gave to settler leaders earlier in June. Smotrich was recorded saying that he had elaborated a plan in the past year and a half and exposed it to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was “fully onboard.”

The plan centers around transferring administrative authorities in the West Bank from the Israeli army to the civil authorities of the Israeli government. Smotrich said that he oversaw the creation of an entire administrative body directly linked to the government and that members of this body were already embedded in the Israeli army’s Civil Administration.

In 1967, Israel began administering the West Bank and Gaza under a military administrative body, the Military Government, and in 1981, the Civil Administration was established in its place. Following Netanyahu’s formation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history in 2022, Smotrich was put in charge of the Civil Administration. Since October 7, Smotrich’s hardline policies pushing for settlement expansion have reached new heights, with the recently leaked annexation plan raising fears about the intentions of the self-described fascist toward the Palestinians living in the West Bank.

According to Smotrich, the administrative changes he wishes to implement represent a “dramatic change” equivalent to “changing the DNA of the system.”

Smotrich said that large budgets were allocated to infrastructure projects for settlement expansion and for “security measures” for the settlements, adding that the aim of such a plan is “to avoid the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state.”

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Liberal Zionism: Gatekeeping Criticism of Genocide

Israel’s ongoing genocide is part of a downward spiral for the Zionist project. In the words of acclaimed historian Professor Ilan Pappe: “We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism.”

Yet Zionism’s long-standing settler goals have not only thrived through genocidal aggression masked as “self-defence” with subsequent land grabs as obscene rewards for its adherents but also via its “liberal” flank serving a crucial propaganda role, posturing as benevolent and humanitarian whilst aligned with aims of American imperialism.

Now, confronted with Israel’s failure to achieve its stated goals and international outrage over its barbaric aggression, liberal Zionist propagandists are intensifying efforts to whitewash Zionism’s genocidal criminality. Their aim is to prevent the project’s collapse by shifting from circling the wagons to rehabilitating the liberal Zionist facade, enabling a return to management of the Occupation with periodic “mowing the lawn.”

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The Media Used a Single Comma To Distract From a Ruling To Stop Genocide

Israel’s claim that a single comma exempts it from having to respect the International Court of Justice’s order last week to immediately halt its murderous attack on Rafah should be ridiculed. Instead it is being given space to breathe by complicit media like the Guardian.

The paper’s diplomatic editor offers an “analysis” that takes seriously claims by Israel and the two judges at the ICJ – one an Israeli – who dissented from the ruling approved by the other 13. They argue the following:

The world is wrong to think that the ICJ has required Israel to halt its Rafah assault and any actions elsewhere in Gaza that are genocidal. Instead, a comma in the text qualifies the ruling to mean the court wants Israel to halt its actions in Rafah and elsewhere only if they are genocidal. Because Israel’s actions are not genocidal, the court is not, in fact, asking Israel to halt anything.

That argument is preposterous on its face. It would be a less forceful statement than the one the court issued back in January, when Israel’s genocide was far less developed than it is now.

But there’s another glaring flaw in the argument’s logic that the Guardian somehow overlooks. If the two dissenting judges are really so sure that is what the overwhelming majority meant – that Israel is barred only from carrying out actions if they are already proven to constitute genocide – why on earth did they dissent?

Were this really the case, there could be only one possible interpretation of their decision to dissent: that they favour giving Israel the green light to commit genocide.

This isn’t rocket science.

Israel wants to muddy the waters – as it always does – so it can carry on with its genocide. The “fierce and continuing debate” about the comma, as the Guardian characterises it, is being aired so that Israel can continue murdering children in Gaza until the ICJ makes a definitive ruling on the question of genocide in a few years’ time. By then, Gaza will be even more of a smouldering ruin than it is already. By then, the Palestinian population will be either dead or have been ethnically cleansed.

Imagine if it were Vladimir Putin’s Russia arguing over a comma as a pretext to avoid implementing a clear ruling by the ICJ to halt atrocities in Ukraine. The ignominy the Guardian and the rest of the media would heap on the Russian president would be relentless – and deserved.

So why are Israel’s genocide-justifying evasions not treated the same way?

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Congress Trains Academia to Deny Genocide

“Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

That’s the question that Rep. Bob Good, a Republican of Virginia, fired at Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, last week in a U.S. House committee hearing.

Holloway, a scholar of African American history who has been steadily climbing the ladder of administrative positions at top-tier schools, looked stunned.

“Um sir, I don’t … have an opinion on Israel’s um …in terms of that phrase.”

Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “Uh, no sir, I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.”

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”

Good: “But you will not say Israel’s government is not genocidal. You can’t say that?”

Holloway stuck to his script: “Sir I believe in the government’s right…”

Good, cut him off: “You can’t be that surprised by the topic of the discussion today and you can’t say that Israel’s government is not genocidal. That’s interesting.”

Good has a point.

It is hard to believe that Holloway, or anyone following world events in the slightest for that matter, would not have formed an opinion on whether the Israeli government is committing a genocide.

While Good was trying to wring a “no” out of Holloway, the correct answer for a university president, as a representative of the domain of knowledge, would undoubtedly have been “yes.” 

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You Can’t Turn Back the Clock on Genocide

As Amal Nassar lay in pain on a bed at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza, the echoes of explosions and artillery fire could be heard all around her. It was mid-January and she had made her way to the embattled hospital to give birth to a baby girl she would name Mira. While Amal should have been celebrating her infant’s delivery, instead she was engulfed in fear, surrounded by the relentless nightmare of death and suffering that she and her family had experienced for months.

“I was muttering to myself, ‘I hope I die,’” she recalled.

Though gut-wrenching, Amal’s story is not unlike those of so many other young mothers in Gaza today. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 50,000 pregnant women are barely surviving there, while having babies at the rate of 180 births a day. Many of those women (especially in the north) are acutely malnourished and few received any medical attention before their labor pains began, often weeks ahead of schedule.

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What Israel Is Doing to Gaza Is a Choice

Anyone who has voiced opposition to what the government of Israel is currently doing in Gaza has undoubtedly heard the various ways Israel’s defenders excuse, dismiss, and justify Israel’s actions. Sometimes you’ll hear that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is doing everything in its power—more than any other military in history—to avoid hurting civilians and that Hamas is responsible for any innocents who get killed because they are using them as human shields.

Other times you’ll be told that the people of Gaza, as a whole, deserve what’s happening to them because some of them voted for Hamas eighteen years ago or because Palestinian support for the attacks on October 7 has only grown in the months since.

But there is a common assumption underlying just about every argument you’ll hear. Israel’s defenders act like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials have had no choice but to react to the attacks of October 7 in the manner that they have.

With that assumption smuggled in, defenders can then act like anyone who has problems with what Israel is doing in Gaza is actually opposed to the operation’s stated goals—rescuing the hostages and breaking up Hamas.

It’s a rhetorical trick that is as dishonest as it is ridiculous. Israel did not have to wage an assault on Gaza like this. And, in fact, by doing so, it appears to be impeding its own stated objectives.

Hours after Hamas fighters had withdrawn back to Gaza on October 7 and the IDF had retaken control of the assailed southern border towns, Israel began employing what would become the defining tool of its response: the airstrike.

In the months since, Israeli forces have dropped tens of thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. In some cases, these strikes are meant to provide direct air support for IDF troops engaged on the ground. In others, Gazan infrastructure and high-rises in the heart of cities are targeted to help “exert civil pressure” on Hamas.

But most of these strikes are designed to kill men that Israeli forces have determined to be Hamas militants. The method used to select such targets was laid out thoroughly in a recent report by Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham.

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US Army Major Quits Intel Agency Over ‘Unqualified’ US Support Of Israeli ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

A US Army officer has resigned from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to protest Washington’s “nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel” — support that’s facilitated “the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.” Mann describes himself as a “descendent of European Jews” who was raised to be “particularly unforgiving” where “responsibility for ethnic cleansing” is concerned. 

When Major Harrison Mann left DIA in April, he sent a two-page letter to a group of his colleagues there, saying he felt they were owed an explanation for his “relatively abrupt departure.” On Monday, Mann shared the letter with the public, via a post to his LinkedIn page. 

His post targets others in government who are feeling morally conflicted by performing duties that support the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) rampage in Gaza. The apparent catalyst for going public now: the start of  IDF attacks on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge after being forced to evacuate other areas of the 25-mile-long strip.   

“I cannot justify staying silent any longer…It is clear that this week, some of you will still be asked to provide support — directly or indirectly — to the Israeli military as it conducts operations into Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza…I am sharing [my letter] now in the hope that you too will discover you are not alone, you are not voiceless, and you are not powerless.

In the April letter explaining his departure, Mann describes how his growing misgivings grew as the IDF’s retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel continued, with US government help: 

“Each of us signed up to serve knowing we might have to support policies that we weren’t fully convinced of. Our defense institutions couldn’t function otherwise. However, at some point it became difficult to justify the outcomes of this particular policy. At some point — whatever the justification — you’re either advancing a policy that enables the mass starvation of children, or you’re not.” 

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