Tag: palestine

Israel Bombs, America Yawns and Gatekeepers Con

As gatekeepers of the corporate information bazaar, you have served Israel well.  Echoing the propaganda of Tel Aviv and Washington has become mainstream fare, with omission at the heart of the campaign.  

Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, judiciously wrote in 1789: “Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government.”  Unfortunately, today’s media mind managers have forgotten that.  The public’s right to know the truth about Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, supported by the United States, has been subordinated to currying the favor of special interest groups and monied interests.   

You have been tranquilized by your intimate relationship to the national security state, ever willing to espouse the pro-Israel views of the White House, State Department, the Pentagon, and most, if not all, members of the American political class.

British novelist, George Orwell, in a passage from his prophetic novel, 1984, aptly described the relationship that has evolved between the establishment media and Israel; he wrote:  “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”  

There is a tendency among journalists to believe in their individual autonomy, although most work in large, hierarchical, corporate media organizations.  Many have convinced themselves that they are engaged in watchdog journalism, when they are, in fact, acting as stenographers for the powerful.  

In the case of Israel, journalists quickly learn compliancy, what can and cannot be said to protect careers.  While pro-Israel reporting and editorializing are rewarded, exact narratives and historical perspectives suffer repercussions.   

Censors have become unnecessary because an ideological self-censorship has formed and congealed.  Many of them can recall instances when they were told not to antagonize powerful interests and advertisers, and can name principled  journalists, like the late Helen Thomas and John Pilger, who were banished for saying the “unacceptable.” 

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The IDF Will Plan For Total Defeat Of Hamas In Gaza If Hostages are Not Released By Trump Inauguration

Israel’s Defense Minister Yisrael Katz instructed the IDF to bring him a plan for the complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza as soon as possible:

“I have instructed the IDF to present me with a plan for the total obliteration of Hamas in Gaza, should they fail to release the hostages by the time President Trump assumes office.”

The Defense Minister emphasized that it is unacceptable to be dragged into a war of attrition against Hamas in Gaza, while the hostages remain in the tunnels, putting their lives at risk and suffering severely.

Katz asked the IDF to indicate what points might make it difficult to implement the plan, including humanitarian issues and other issues, and to leave it to the political echelon to make the necessary decisions.

On another note, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump declared there will be ‘Hell to pay’ if the hostages are not released by the time he assumes office in 10 days.

What does that mean? U.S. involvement in the conflict?

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Genocide: The New Normal

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.

The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.

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Leaked emails expose ‘collaborative efforts’ between Israeli govt and Center for Countering Digital Hate

Emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal how leading “anti-hate” campaigner Imran Ahmed collaborated with Israeli embassy officials to censor pro-Palestine social media accounts — and courted them for donations to his censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Since emerging in America from seemingly out of the blue in 2020, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has become one of the trans-Atlantic establishment’s most effective tools for censoring online speech. Its founder, Imran Ahmed, has nurtured close ties with the Biden White House since moving to Washington DC, targeting its political enemies with calls for their removal from social media. Back in his hometown of London, Ahmed was an influential advisor to the neoliberal wing of UK Labour, helping sabotage the leftist insurgency of Jeremy Corbyn and place his ally, Keir Starmer, in charge of the party. 

Ahmed has been embroiled in controversy since journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi published internal CCDH documents showing he held private meetings with influential Democratic lawmakers throughout 2024 to advance a plan to “kill Elon Musk’s Twitter.” The billionaire Twitter/X owner and his allies in president-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle retaliated by accusing the British operative of violating laws against foreign interference in American politics.

Ahmed, for his part, has dismissed the charge that he colludes with foreign governments as a kooky conspiracy. “The Center for Countering Digital Hate researches conspiracy theories. We don’t engage with them,” he said.

However, internal CCDH emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal that while Ahmed nurtures ties to the Labour government in Britain, the self-styled “anti-hate” campaigner also enjoys a secret, “collaborative” relationship with a rogue foreign government whose leadership currently stands accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice, and is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Provided by a CCDH insider who requested to remain anonymous out of fear that Ahmed and his allies would retaliate against him, the emails reveal that top officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC helped introduce Ahmed to potential funders, and were even invited to review a CCDH report before its publication. The report urged Meta to remove pro-Palestine Facebook groups on the grounds that they promoted “anti-Jewish hate.” 

Ahmed seemed agitated when The Grayzone reached him by phone and asked him to confirm his email exchanges with the Israeli officials. “I have no idea which emails you’re talking about,” he stated. “You’ll have to send them through to us and have a look at them and come back to you.”

When asked if he had collaborated with the Israeli government, Ahmed did not deny the relationship. “We work with all governments,” he claimed. 

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Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

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Israel still can’t find any 7 October rape victims, prosecutor admits

There are still zero complainants in alleged cases of rapes committed by Palestinians on 7 October 2023, an Israeli prosecutor has admitted.

But Moran Gez, who handled cases against Palestinians swept up after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, is still calling for mass executions even without any substantial evidence against them.

“Anyone who entered Israel from Gaza on 7 October to kill or to loot, it doesn’t matter, should be included in the indictment and, as far as I’m concerned, receive the death penalty,” Gez said.

She said she made this case to colleagues involved in planning prosecutions related to the 7 October events.

“Why? Because of those who didn’t murder but looted, burned, stole, picked avocados, as some claim, because of this mess, the Israeli army forces were unable to arrive in time,” Gez added. “You came to the door with a drill and opened it to loot? Then a terrorist came in and murdered civilians there.”

Until recently the prosecutor in charge of so-called security cases in Israel’s southern district, Gez played a key role in the effort to put Palestinians responsible for what Israel considers criminal acts on 7 October on trial.

No trials have yet taken place.

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Israeli author RENOUNCES CITIZENSHIP, calls it “a tool of genocide”

Israeli-born author Avi Steinberg announced on Dec. 26 that he has formally renounced his Israeli citizenship, citing his belief that the privilege of citizenship has been and continues to be used as a tool of settler colonialism and genocide.

Steinberg, who was born in Jerusalem to American parents and raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, detailed his decision in an op-ed published on Truthout.

In the article, Steinberg argued that Israeli citizenship is inherently tied to violent crimes and systemic discrimination. He described Israeli citizenship as a mechanism that legitimizes colonialism, pointing to laws such as the 1948 Declaration of Independence, the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law. These laws, he claimed, were shaped by the 1948 Nakba (“the catastrophe” in Arabic), during which approximately 80 percent of the Palestinian population were violently expelled from their homes in modern-day Israeli territory in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign.

Steinberg criticized Israel for creating a facade of legitimacy through what he called “forged documents,” which he said conceal the state’s “fundamental unlawfulness.” He also reflected on his family’s history, noting that his parents migrated to Israel under the Law of Return and later settled in the United States. He described the cognitive dissonance of his parents, who opposed the U.S. invasion of Vietnam while participating in what he termed the “armed settlement of another people’s land.”

The author revealed that the house he grew up in was owned by a Palestinian family who were forcibly expelled to Jordan and barred from returning. He described this displacement as a deliberate strategy to attract settlers by marketing the “native Arab charm” of villages emptied of their original inhabitants.

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Why Congress Members Face a Lawsuit for Funding Israel’s War on Gaza

On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide.”

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.

By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.

Back in February – two months before passage of the enormous military aid package – both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”

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Palestinian Authority Bans Al Jazeera From West Bank For ‘Stirring Strife’

The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced Wednesday the suspension of Al-Jazeera’s operations in the Palestinian West Bank, citing alleged violations of Palestinian laws and ‘interference’. 

The major Qatar-based outlet is accused of “manipulation, interference in internal affairs, and dissemination of misleading and incendiary reports,” according to a statement in the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The broadcaster has been further blamed for “reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the context of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) effort to crackdown on unauthorized armed groups.

For the past more than two weeks the PA has laid police siege to the Jenin refugee camp in an effort to root out the Jenin Brigade and associated factions. The PA has called the groups “outlaws” and “Iranian gangs” which are operating in the camp.

At least nine Palestinians have been killed as a result of the assault, including reportedly children. The PA had already banned Al Jazeera from reporting from inside Jenin amid the crisis.

Al Jazeera issued a Thursday statement saying it was “shocked by this decision” and is urging an immediate reversal of the temporary ban, for which there hasn’t been a timetable. It has confirmed its coverage has moved to Jordan.

The outlet has charged the PA with “an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories, especially what is happening in Jenin and its camps.”

Months ago Israeli commandoes raided Al Jazeera’s West Bank offices and seized equipment and ordered the bureau closed.

As early as October 2023, soon after the Oct.7 Hamas terror attacks, Israel moved to ban Al Jazeera from having offices in Tel Aviv or operating anywhere in Israel.

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UN accuses Israel of turning Gaza hospitals into ‘death traps’

The UN Human Rights Office issued a report on 31 December condemning Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals, saying they had become “death traps.”

The 23-page report documented various Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and the destruction of the strip’s health care system between October 2023 and July 2024.

“The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law,” the report said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said the Israeli military had shown “blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law.”

“As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe, in fact, became a death trap,” Turk said in a statement.

In recent days, the Israeli military escalated its attack on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza while detaining the hospital director, Hussam Abu Safia, and hundreds of others.

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