Tag: palestine

Who wrote that Gaza peace proposal? All we know is Biden lied

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, went in front of the cameras at the White House on May 31 and presented a multi-stage process for an end of war in Gaza that would release all the hostages, declaring it to be an Israeli peace plan.

It would be interesting to learn from Biden which Israeli came up with this plan.

Biden’s “Israeli” plan sounded comprehensive but it wasn’t, and it didn’t sound right. 

According to Biden we would get all our hostages after we release several hundred merciless killers and accepting a ceasefire that would become a permanent cessation in fighting. But no word about the defeat of Hamas and its leaders.

In other words, Biden’s Israel plan gifts a victory to Hamas.

Our officials have negotiated with any partner, friend or enemy, to get our hostages back for months, but the thought that Hamas would emerge armed and dangerous was never on the cards. In fact, this detail has split a part of Israeli society who want the hostages home even if Hamas is left to repeat the horrors of Oct. 7, but they are a vocal but small part of the population.

This part also wants to remove Netanyahu as Israel’s leader. These are led by the malcontents that had split Israeli society up to the day that Hamas attacked on Oct. 7. Prior to that day they included notable, some would say malevolent, former leftist politicians and retired IDF and air force commanders who were telling reservists not to turn up for duty as long as Bibi was prime minister.

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Trump promises crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests if elected

Former United States President Donald Trump has promised that he will crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses if he wins the 2024 US presidential election.

Earlier this month, the likely Republican nominee told a small group of predominantly Jewish donors that he would expel student demonstrators, who he claimed were part of a “radical revolution”, from the US if he is elected, according to a report by The Washington Post released on Monday.

“If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this … we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” Trump said, according to the report, quoting people at the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The former president also praised the New York police for clearing the campus at Columbia University in late April, and said the other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now”.

Student protests against the Israeli war on Gaza have rocked the US over the past few weeks, prompting a police crackdown on many campuses and more than 2,000 arrests.

In mid-April, Columbia University saw a Gaza solidarity encampment, with students urging the institution to divest from companies associated with Israel. This movement spread to campuses in California, Texas, and many other states.

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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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No diploma: Colleges withhold degrees from students after pro-Palestinian protests

Graduation is an important moment for many Americans. More than just pomp and circumstance, the ceremonies mark when students are handed the most coveted testimonial in academic life: A diploma.

But for some college students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, campus activism has cost them their degrees – at least for a while.

“Four years and just a criminal record, nothing else,” said Youssef Hasweh, one of four students at the University of Chicago who have had their degrees withheld pending an investigation into a protest encampment. “A decade of (high school and college) work down the toilet because I decided to express my free speech.”

Students being denied conferment – some of whom have faced arrests, expulsions, suspensions and other disciplinary action – say they’re in limbo and are being made into examples. As they await appeals processes and the results of university investigations, they’re preparing for an uncertain future. In the worst-case scenario, they’ll be saddled with debt and will have no degree to show for it.

But while the stakes are high, they told USA TODAY that none of them regret their part in campus protests over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“I have these punishments and have to work through this stress, but it’s incomparable to the plight of Palestinians,” said Devron Burks, a Vanderbilt student who was arrested and expelled following the occupation of a campus building. “I don’t regret it, and I don’t think I ever will.”

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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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Neocon Nikki Signs Israeli Bombs Urging Israel To Kill Palestinian Civilians

Just when you thought “Neocon Nikki” could not sink any lower, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has posted on Twitter/X a deeply disturbing photo of former Republican presidential candidate – and reportedly in the running for Trump’s VP pick – in Israel signing bombs destined for Palestinian refugees living in tents in Rafah with the slogan, “FINISH THEM!”

Just one day after the Israeli military incinerated untold scores of Palestinian refugees in Rafah and after the International Court of Justice demanded that Israel stop its offensive against civilians, Nikki Haley urges the Israeli regime to “finish” the job of killing Palestinians.

You can despise Hamas if you wish, but if you call yourself “conservative” or especially “pro-life” it should go without saying that urging a foreign military – fully underwritten by the US government through the involuntary “contributions” of the US taxpayer – to “FINISH” families displaced in tent encampments after their homes have already been destroyed, is the epitome of endorsing mass murder.

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To cover for war crimes, Israel claims it ‘lost control’ over soldiers

Several months after media commentators began predicting a “strategic defeat” for Israeli forces in Gaza, Israel’s military high command is claiming it has lost control over various units in their armed forces. 

The argument appears to scapegoat occupation soldiers to provide plausible deniability for their superiors and dissociate them from war crimes charges. The vast body of evidence emerging on these alleged ‘rogue Israeli units’ could potentially lead to a damning indictment of Tel Aviv’s military leadership.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) recent call on Israel to halt its military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains resolute in his vow to invade, even while personally facing an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant. Marred by internal division and pressure to comply with the ICJ order, Tel Aviv finds itself in a precarious position.

‘Rogue units’ in the occupation army 

Hebrew-daily Haaretz dropped a narrative bombshell last weekend when it claimed that the Israeli army’s “General Staff lost control over the units, especially reserve units, months ago.” The article attempts to depict a situation in which Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has just “woken up” to the reality of allegedly rogue elements operating under his watch, with these ‘uncontrolled units’ committing the crimes cited by the ICJ against Israel.

Throughout the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers have been publishing evidence of themselves committing crimes, showing genocidal intent, and performing perverse acts while operating inside the besieged coastal territory. 

These incriminating clips, published primarily on TikTok and Instagram and also within Telegram groups that glorify the killing of Palestinian civilians, have attracted a lot of bad press. It appears that Israel’s leadership is now floating the “few bad apples” strategy to absolve their military high brass of accountability.

It won’t be easy. Some of these social media groups are run by occupation officials. Furthermore, the Israeli military establishment has admitted to running accounts on Telegram that showcase snuff films as part of a psychological warfare operation under the “Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department.”

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Israel’s 2025 budget in the hole as Gaza war cost to reach $70bn

The chief of Israel’s central bank said on 30 May that the cost of the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip will amount to nearly $70 billion of the Israeli budget for 2025.

“The costs of the war, by 2025, will reach NIS 250 billion (approximately $67.4 billion),” said central bank head Amir Yaron at an economic conference on Thursday.

“There is no doubt that more expenses will be needed, since the economy needs security and security needs the economy. However, it is important to emphasize – you cannot give an open check on the issue of security spending, you must find the right balance between things,” Yaron added. 

“The defense and civilian costs amount to hundreds of billions of shekels – it is a heavy burden … The country’s risk premium increased while the excess devaluation of the shekel continued, with devaluation of course leading to price increases.” 

The significant boost in defense spending has played a major role in the mounting costs. 

Manuel Trajtenberg, a professor from Tel Aviv University’s economics department, warned that Israel “may slide back into another lost decade” if it does not lower its defense-spending-to-GDP ratio, referring to a period of economic decline following the 1973 Arab–Israeli war after which Israel spent years trying to balance between its defense and development spending as a result of the costs of that war on its economy. 

The central bank chief’s comments came a day after Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council, said that another seven months of fighting is expected to take place in the Gaza Strip, where Tel Aviv has yet to achieve its stated goal of eradicating Hamas and returning its captive prisoners. 

Israel’s economy has taken significant losses as a result of the war. 

Its gross domestic product (GDP) plummeted nearly 20 percent in the final months of 2023, according to statistical data released in February. 

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Pro-Palestinian Group Claims To Cut Fiber Cables At UK Defense Factory Making F-35 Targeting Systems

“It’s only a matter of when – not the if – when you are going to see a nation-state, group, or actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure in the United States,” Michael Rogers, the former second commander of the US Cyber Command (2014-18), warned during a 2016 speech.

Back then, Rogers should’ve expanded his geographical threat horizon across the West, not just the US. This is because there are mounting risks that some terrorist organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the guise of pro-Palestinian demonstrations – are attempting to dismantle the Western world. Sounds outrageous, right? 

Well, not really. According to the Director of National Intelligence, PFLP is a terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It unites Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. It promotes the destruction of “Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” 

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between some Palestinian activist groups and global Marxist networks, like Black Lives Matter, are cut from the same radical cloth, with the end goal of destroying the West.

The quiet part is said out loud. 

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