Tag: palestine

CEO of Web Summit tech conference resigns over Israel comments

The chief executive of one of the world’s largest technology conferences resigned on Saturday amid furor over remarks he made about the Israel-Hamas war sparked a boycott that led to droves of speakers and companies to pull out of the gathering.

Organizers for Web Summit, which drew more than 70,000 attendees last year, said the event will still take place in Lisbon next month and that a new CEO will soon be appointed.

Paddy Cosgrave, the Irish entrepreneur who founded Web Summit and has been running the event since 2009, announced his departure after a flurry of companies, including Google, Meta, Amazon and Intel, withdrew from the event in the wake of Cosgrave’s comments.

Last week, he wrote on X that he was shocked at the rhetoric of so many Western leaders and governments in response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza following the Hamas terrorist attack that killed more than 1,300 people.

“War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are,” Cosgrave wrote, referring to Israel’s wave of attacks on Gaza after the violence committed by Hamas.

The statement set off outrage, with venture capitalists, Israeli startup founders and Big Tech companies all pulling out of Web Summit, an annual conference that for the past 14 years has brought together some of the industry’s top leaders and companies.

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Genocide Unfolding

Tonight has been the most violent bombardment of Gaza so far, notably concentrated on precisely the areas into which Israel ordered the population to evacuate. I find it almost impossible to believe that this genocide is under way with the active support of almost all western governments.

I want to look at two questions – what will happen internationally, and what is happening in western societies.

Israel plainly is on the course of further escalation and intends to kill many thousands more Palestinians. More than 2,000 Palestinian children alone have now been killed by Israeli aerial attack in the last fortnight.

Gaza has no defence from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment.

The population of Gaza are simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.

The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip still further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?

That appears to be the end game: expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza. That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance. This territorial ambition of course accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank which is currently under way, with the world paying almost no attention.  It is very hard indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas at the moment.

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A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack

Since October 7, the day’s events have been shrouded in mystery. There are not only questions about the Israeli intelligence apparatus’s colossal failure to anticipate what was happening in the tightly besieged Strip or the quick collapse of their billion-dollar “Maginot Line” but also the details of what actually transpired in the military bases and settlements around the Gaza Strip. We know that, by common estimates, 1,400 Israelis were killed in the following few days, but we do not yet know the details of how.

Some reports are beginning to appear, including documentation of the killing of Israelis by Palestinian fighters, but there are a growing number of reports that indicate the Israeli military was also responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths on October 7 and the days after.

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Blaming Hamas Shouldn’t Mean Ignoring the Palestinians’ Plight

Who is to blame for the bloodshed in Israel and Gaza?

In one sense, this is a very easy question to answer: Hamas is to blame. This should go without saying, but it has, miserably, become a subject of active conversation thanks to a small but well-placed subset of left-wing activists and students who responded to the initial attack by holding Israel responsible for the violence and loss of life. So let us say it: Hamas is to blame.

Hamas is the explicitly antisemitic terrorist group that began the present conflict on October 7 with a surprise massacre. Hamas is the group that—even if the most horrific accounts, God willing, prove untrue—committed hundreds of war crimes in a span of hours. Hamas is to blame for the deaths of innocents, as yet unknown numbers of infants and children included. Hamas is to blame for kidnapping Israeli civilians and using fellow Palestinians, too, as human shields against Israeli reprisal. 

Hamas is to blame for every abduction, every rape, every murder. Hamas is to blame for its deplorable deception, the lie it tells itself and ordinary Palestinians desperate for a champion, that Israeli civilians deserve to die. Hamas is to blame.

And yet if we stop the judgment there, it will be incomplete, and Americans who are old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks—to which the Hamas onslaught has rightly been compared—should know this better than most. We should know, as we learned at the expense of hundreds of thousands of American, Iraqi, and Afghan lives over the subsequent two decades, that terrorism does not happen in a vacuum. 

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AP erases Israeli pledge to attack Gaza like ‘Axis Power’ as officials threaten Palestinians with ‘Dresden’ doctrine

As Israeli officials proudly compare their bombardment of the Gaza Strip to the Allied firebombing of Dresden, the Associated Press has quietly removed a section noting US alarm over the historical comparison.

The Associated Press has quietly deleted a reference to official Israeli threats to subject the Gaza Strip to a Dresden-style firebombing campaign — the latest move in legacy media outlets’ ongoing push to downplay the impacts of Tel Aviv’s siege of over two million Palestinians.

“Four U.S. officials familiar with the discussions said American diplomats became increasingly alarmed by comments from their Israeli counterparts regarding their intention to deny water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel into Gaza, as well as the inevitability of civilian casualties,” the AP article previously stated.

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The Israel-Hamas War is ALREADY Pushing the Great Reset Agenda

Afew days ago we published an article discussing how the Great Reset agenda is still moving forward behind the scenes, while the headlines are full of Israel-Palestine.

But it’s also true that, in its thirteen days of existence, the war itself has already pushed that agenda forward as well.

CENSORSHIP

Normalising the suppression of dissent and creating a culture of fear around free expression are a major part of the Great Reset, after all the other steps are so much easier if you outlaw inconvenient protests.

And, naturally, calls for the suppression of freedom of expression have sprouted up everywhere since the war started. We covered this in our article “Israel-Hamas “war” – another excuse to shut down free speech”

Since that article was published this campaign has gained momentum.

European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton sent warning letters out to every major social media platform, claiming they needed to “combat disinformation” regarding Israel and threatening them with fines.

In yet another blow to the “China is on our side” narrative, Chinese video-sharing service TikTok has eagerly agreed to “combat disinformation”.

Students from Harvard and Berkeley have been threatened with “blacklisting” for voicing support for Palestine.

German and French police are breaking up pro-Palestine demonstrations, while – in both the UK and US – there are calls to arrest people for waving Palestinian flags, or deport those who “support Hamas”.

Creating a culture of fear, making people afraid to express themselves or their political opinions, is just one of the many things that Covid, Ukraine, Climate Change and now Israel have in common.

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US Republican senators ask tech firms about content moderation in Israel-Hamas war

A U.S. Senate panel’s Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Friday to tech companies Meta Platforms, Google, TikTok and X, formerly called Twitter, seeking information on their content moderation policies in the Israel-Hamas war, the senators said.

The Republican lawmakers of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said they asked the companies “to commit to fully preserving a documentary history of Hamas’s atrocities.”

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians. Since then Israel has bombed Gaza with air strikes. At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of children, in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Gaza, a 45 km-long (25-mile) enclave home to 2.3 million people, has been ruled since 2006 by Hamas. Gaza has been cut off from much of the outside world for 16 years since Israel imposed a blockade.

“We believe it is imperative that we preserve a full documentary history of Hamas’s atrocities,” the Republican lawmakers led by Senator Ted Cruz said.

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The ‘Absolute Right’ To Commit War Crimes? Gaza, Israel And Labour ‘Opposition’   

The attacks by Hamas fighters in southern Israel on 7 October, and the Israeli air attacks on Gaza that have followed, and now the unfolding humanitarian disaster there, once again expose fundamental bias in the state-corporate news media. Does news coverage really convey the impression that all lives – Palestinian and Israeli – are of equal value? After all, they surely deserve the same level of humanity and compassion. Do the news media present heart-wrenching stories of individual victims and their grieving families from both sides? And is the full context and history explained in order for audiences to arrive at a proper understanding of events?

As Jack Mirkinson, an interim senior editor at The Nation magazine, wrote:

‘Who is allowed humanity, and who is not? Whose deaths are tragedies worth paying concerted attention to, and whose deaths can be dealt with in a matter of seconds? Whose children are worth learning about? Whose heartbreak is worth lingering over? And which people, when confronted by bloodshed, deserve to have the world put everything on hold and rush to their side? The answer is clear. Palestinians are killed by Israel all of the time, including when they peacefully protest. But the world never puts itself on hold to bear witness to their heartbreak.’

On BBC Newsnight, host Kirsty Wark listened to Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, describe how six of his family members had been killed by Israeli air strikes. Wark reacted oddly:

‘I’m sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear, though, you cannot condone the killing of civilians in Israel, can you?’

This captures an essential element of western media coverage in the region: the death of Palestinians might be noted, but attention is swiftly brought back to the suffering of Israelis.

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Israel slated to shut ‘pro-Hamas’ network Al Jazeera run by Qatar

The Qatar state-owned network Al Jazeera is facing intense criticism that it is assisting the Hamas terrorist movement in its war against the Jewish state, prompting the government to declare that Al Jazeera’s operation will be outlawed in Israel for transmitting “sensitive information to our enemies.” 

When asked about a ban on Al Jazeera and two additional reportedly pro-Hamas news outlets, foreign ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday “The government is working on something. And it is being led by the Communications Ministry and the Defence Ministry. The idea is if they are crossing the line in assisting Hamas, we can shut out the entire channel. “

He added that the closure of a network is “directed at channels that are crossing the line in assisting Hamas.”

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Israel floods social media to shape opinion around the war

A photo with a bloody dead baby whose face is blurred has been circulating on X for the last four days. 

“This is the most difficult image we’ve ever posted. As we are writing this we are shaking,” the accompanying message says. 

The footage is not from a reporter covering the conflict in Israel and Gaza, or from one of the countless accounts sharing horrifying videos of the atrocities. 

It’s a paid message from the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Since Hamas attacked thousands of its citizens last week, the Israeli government has started a sweeping social media campaign in key Western countries to drum up support for its military response against the group. Part of its strategy: pushing dozens of ads containing brutal and emotional imagery of the deadly militant violence in Israel across platforms such as X and YouTube, according to data reviewed by POLITICO.

Israel’s attempt to win the online information war is part of a growing trend of governments around the world moving aggressively online in order to shape their image, especially during times of crisis. PR campaigns in and around wars are nothing new. But paying for online advertising targeted at specific countries and demographics is now one of governments’ main tools to get their messages in front of more eyeballs. 

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