Israel

[956 Worldwide 35516]

1 hour ago, Chuckie Finster said:

"you" meaning the greater you and not you specifically... although I have seen many instances (again, not from you) of blatant antisemitism hidden behind "anti-zionism is not antisemitism!!"  It's not a get out of jail free card.

I appreciate your honesty, but this is an INSANE statement.  Seeing someone create a definitive opinion of an entire group of people based off of folks you meet in a message board is truly very worrisome.

The poster you’re engaging with has written that when Jews say “never again,” they are actually a threatening the rest of the world with nuclear apocalypse.  It’s up in this thread. 
 

Just so you’re aware how far the mask is here. 

[Welshy 914]

3 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

You're obviously free to form an opinion, just make sure you caveat that this opinion is already filtered down to those that have chosen to discuss the topic on that particular forum.  That is not a representative basis for the population as a whole.

Echoing Skipper's point, would you want someone from another country drawing definitive conclusions about Texans based on Texags?

[Welshy 914]

3 hours ago, chainsaw said:

All of this. Many voices within Israel are being silenced by an authoritarian government. The kind of stuff they are trying to do here in the US, in terms of controlling the narrative and discourse, would have made Michael Flynn blush.

Israel's government is shitty and authoritarian. Agreed

 

What about Hamas? Supported by most Gazans...and most Palestinians?

You know, the rapists and butchers who specifically and deliberately murdered babies, grandmothers, pregnant mothers to be and children in their homes.

The people who say over and over Israel must be obliterated.

Who won't allow the evacuation of its own civilians.

Who is the "health authority" in Gaza reporting suspect health info?

Who has copious amounts of staged, repurposed and suspect media with duplicative actors, dolls and clearly fabricated scenes depicting their "oppression?"

Who is holding 200+ innocent civilians, as well as its own civilians, PLUS all the international workers they will not allow to to leave gaza, hostage? 

 

They need fuel for hospitals so bad they have been on their last reserves for days. Every day they are out of fuel for hospitals. Weird. Now I hear they are going to "run out" this weekend. Again. I wonder if Hamas wants fuel? Of course they do...and not for hospitals. Their lack of concern for Gaza citizens is pretty clear at this point.

 

[freyguy 4364]

4 hours ago, linux said:

Well I participate in online discussions and I have never seen the safeguards I would expect from people I would entrust to do the right thing, I saw every single video the IDF put out showing the massacre, because it was my responsability to see what hamas did and not just do "don't see evil".

But I don't see this from Israelis, and if I don't see this from suppsedly left wing Israelis, and see pure bloodlust from right wing ones then yeah I am not giving Israel the benefit of the doubt.

[Welshy 914]

4 hours ago, linux said:

Well I participate in online discussions and I have never seen the safeguards I would expect from people I would entrust to do the right thing

I'm Gen X, which basically means I trust no one, so I have a head start I suppose, but tell me...who do you trust to do the right thing? *Honest question. 

Do you understand how humans work? *not so honest. I think I know the answer to this one.

[GW Hayduke 1957]

31 minutes ago, Welshy said:

Israel's government is shitty and authoritarian. Agreed

 

What about Hamas? Supported by most Gazans...and most Palestinians?

You know, the rapists and butchers who specifically and deliberately murdered babies, grandmothers, pregnant mothers to be and children in their homes.

The people who say over and over Israel must be obliterated.

Who won't allow the evacuation of its own civilians.

Who is the "health authority" in Gaza reporting suspect health info?

Who has copious amounts of staged, repurposed and suspect media with duplicative actors, dolls and clearly fabricated scenes depicting their "oppression?"

Who is holding 200+ innocent civilians, as well as its own civilians, PLUS all the international workers they will not allow to to leave gaza, hostage? 

 

They need fuel for hospitals so bad they have been on their last reserves for days. Every day they are out of fuel for hospitals. Weird. Now I hear they are going to "run out" this weekend. Again. I wonder if Hamas wants fuel? Of course they do...and not for hospitals. Their lack of concern for Gaza citizens is pretty clear at this point.

 

This reads like a “just asking questions” guy who’s sole source of media is Twitter.

Collective punishment against 2 million people isn’t justified no matter what you think the polling of Gazans says. 

[mchookem 16727]

1 hour ago, Welshy said:

Echoing Skipper's point, would you want someone from another country drawing definitive conclusions about Texans based on Texags?

 i mean have you seen the leadership of Texas?

 

[chainsaw 10243]

23 minutes ago, Welshy said:

Israel's government is shitty and authoritarian. Agreed

 

What about Hamas? Supported by most Gazans...and most Palestinians?

You know, the rapists and butchers who specifically and deliberately murdered babies, grandmothers, pregnant mothers to be and children in their homes.

The people who say over and over Israel must be obliterated.

Who won't allow the evacuation of its own civilians.

Who is the "health authority" in Gaza reporting suspect health info?

Who has copious amounts of staged, repurposed and suspect media with duplicative actors, dolls and clearly fabricated scenes depicting their "oppression?"

Who is holding 200+ innocent civilians, as well as its own civilians, PLUS all the international workers they will not allow to to leave gaza, hostage? 

 

They need fuel for hospitals so bad they have been on their last reserves for days. Every day they are out of fuel for hospitals. Weird. Now I hear they are going to "run out" this weekend. Again. I wonder if Hamas wants fuel? Of course they do...and not for hospitals. Their lack of concern for Gaza citizens is pretty clear at this point.

 

Where the hell do you get your news? A majority of Gazans were opposed to violence. Nobody's been able to poll them since the attacks (probably on account of the place being constantly bombed and over 42% of their homes being destroyed) but I'm guessing most of them would support a ceasefire.

Don't use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe 2.2M people, over 98% of whom have no affiliation with Hamas. Don't engage in the Trumpian practice of calling them "rapists and butchers" when that isn't what those civilians did, and there's no proof the civilians "support" any rapes or murders.

Don't engage in the baseless sowing of doubt and genocide denialism by disparaging the Gazan health authority's reports without even a shred of evidence that they're lying about the casualties.

And the hospitals have already gone dark. I'm not sure that "the people in hospitals aren't dying fast enough for me" is the argument you think it is.

[Brisketexan 106614]

Absolutely, seeing this from a lot of people ranging from simple ignorance to straight up neo Nazi agitprop. It's important not to fall for racist canards no matter which side you're arguing for in a given moment.
I saw the video from yesterday (?) of the guy in the car just spewing vile hatred at this person on a bike for being Jewish. Absolutely broke my mind, I just can't fathom how people can reach such a state of mind.

Well, one thing that helps them is some loud and numerous voices saying pretty much “sure, what Hamas did was bad [handwaving here], but this is all on Israel, the evil colonial apartheid occupier murderer of children.” Come on. That’s the rhetorical message and technique, and it works.
The people who shout the loudest about not demonizing one “side” just because they committed unspeakable atrocities on Oct 7….happily lead people down the primrose path of demonizing everyone on the other “side” because they are affiliated with Israel.
TLDR; we all know that Islamic terrorism leads to the reactionary evil of Islamophobia. Yet so many people have a blind spot when they feed the same beast with respect to Israel and Jews.

[Welshy 914]

1 minute ago, GW Hayduke said:

This reads like a “just asking questions” guy who’s sole source of media is Twitter.

Collective punishment against 2 million people isn’t justified no matter what you think the polling of Gazans says. 

It could real like war and peace, but those things happened. Each one.

Hamas contrived this situation. Boxed Israel so that they had no option but to look like the aggressor and the villan. If Israel does nothing, Hamas will kill more Israelis, and more brutally. Hamas will not stop. What option has Hamas left Israel? You can call me twitteriffic, but you cannot ignore the contrived nature of all of this.  

[Welshy 914]

5 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

Where the hell do you get your news? A majority of Gazans were opposed to violence. Nobody's been able to poll them since the attacks (probably on account of the place being constantly bombed and over 42% of their homes being destroyed) but I'm guessing most of them would support a ceasefire.

Don't use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe 2.2M people, over 98% of whom have no affiliation with Hamas. Don't engage in the Trumpian practice of calling them "rapists and butchers" when that isn't what those civilians did, and there's no proof the civilians "support" any rapes or murders.

Don't engage in the baseless sowing of doubt and genocide denialism by disparaging the Gazan health authority's reports without even a shred of evidence that they're lying about the casualties.

And the hospitals have already gone dark. I'm not sure that "the people in hospitals aren't dying fast enough for me" is the argument you think it is.

I could go line by line, but I'll offer a few pieces.

Gazan's do have an affiliation to Hamas. Hamas is their government. 

"Opposed to violence" is not the same thing as opposed to Hamas, who perpetuated the violence. Hamas leads Gaza. I think you know this.

 

Proof and shreds of evidence. From one quickly searched article:

“Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible,” Luke Baker, a former Reuters bureau chief who led the organization’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinian territories from 2014 to 2017, said in a recent X thread. (Baker declined to comment to TIME.) Like Biden, Baker does not dispute that civilian deaths have occurred. Rather, he says that the extent of the death toll is unverifiable and that those tasked with tracking casualties in Gaza may not be able to do so freely. “Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences,” Baker said. 

 

"...Skepticism over the death toll spiked in the aftermath of last week’s explosion at Gaza City’s Al Ahli hospital, in which hundreds are believed to have been killed. In the immediate aftermath, the Gaza health ministry said that 500 people had been killed in the blast—a sum that was later revised down to 471. (U.S. intelligence offered a more conservative estimate of between 100 and 300 deaths.) The only thing more contentious than the death toll is who was ultimately responsible for the blast. While Gaza’s health ministry spokesman laid the blame on an Israeli airstrike, Israel said that it was the fault of an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza—an assessment that has been supported by the White House. A recent visual investigation into the blast carried out by the New York Times remains inconclusive."

 

Different source:
"President Biden, meanwhile, said on Oct. 25 that he has “no notion that Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed” in Gaza. The U.S. leader said that he was sure that “innocents have been killed” and called on Israel to be “incredibly careful” to avoid civilian casualties, but he cast doubt on the reliability of Palestinian figures.

“I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” Biden said.

 

10 second search, and more than a shred - and not twitter based. 

I think it's clear what the Gazan government did, and what they deliberately set up Israel for. 

Also: "genocide denialism." brought the chuckles. Jesus. 

[Anastasis 23699]

Israeli incursion into Jenin tonight. The West Bank is the objective. 

And always has been. 

[Welshy 914]

6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Israeli incursion into Jenin tonight. The West Bank is the objective. 

And always has been. 

Link?

[956 Worldwide 35516]

59 minutes ago, Welshy said:

It could real like war and peace, but those things happened. Each one.

Hamas contrived this situation. Boxed Israel so that they had no option but to look like the aggressor and the villan. If Israel does nothing, Hamas will kill more Israelis, and more brutally. Hamas will not stop. What option has Hamas left Israel? You can call me twitteriffic, but you cannot ignore the contrived nature of all of this.  

It’s almost as though an organization that derives its legitimacy and external funding from killing Jews and martyrdom must create martyrs and kill Jews to perpetuate its own existence. 
 

But now I know better and this is just liberation. 

[Smax 3800]

It’s a hard one to unravel, even for us graduates of the University of Comancheria at Austin. 
 
I grieve for the Palestinians. It is a real humanitarian crisis. I don’t expect Israel to relieve the crisis. Hamas has taken a couple hundred hostages, civilians, children, to keep the IDF from storming in, and that is an effective tactic (do you grieve for the hostages?). Letting Gaza stew in famine and disease is the only counter tactic Israel has. Taking care of Israelis is Israel’s job. Taking care of Gazans is Hamas’ job. 
 
I don’t blame the allies for the humanitarian disaster in 1945 Germany; I blame the Nazis for starting the war they could not win, and fighting so cruelly. 
 
I don’t blame the US for the humanitarian disaster in 1945 Japan, not even Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I blame Imperial Japan, for starting a fight they could never win, and fighting so cruelly. 
 
I don’t blame the north (counter to how I was raised in Georgia) for the humanitarian disaster in 1863 Savannah and Atlanta. I blame the CSA for starting a war it could never win. 
 
I don’t blame Israel for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. I blame Hamas, for starting a war it can’t win, and fighting so cruelly. 

This is where I'm at. Everything bad that is happening in Gaza right now, the mythical intentional targeting of civilians thay chainsaw claims is 100% hamas fault.
Palestinians want to live in peace, get rid of hamas

[Welshy 914]

U.S. military aircraft have carried out strikes in eastern Syria against facilities associated with Iranian-backed militant groups believed to be responsible for more than a dozen rocket and drone attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria that injured 21 service members, the military said Thursday night.

"Today, at President Biden's direction, U.S. military forces conducted self-defense strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups," said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement.

Chainsaw, GW, godspeed. Hope you survive the nuclear winter. 

 

 

1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It’s almost as though an organization that derives its legitimacy and external funding from killing Jews and martyrdom must create martyrs and kill Jews to perpetuate its own existence. 
 

But now I know better and this is just liberation. 

[Brian Fantana 6856]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Well, one thing that helps them is some loud and numerous voices saying pretty much “sure, what Hamas did was bad [handwaving here], but this is all on Israel, the evil colonial apartheid occupier murderer of children.” Come on. That’s the rhetorical message and technique, and it works.
The people who shout the loudest about not demonizing one “side” just because they committed unspeakable atrocities on Oct 7….happily lead people down the primrose path of demonizing everyone on the other “side” because they are affiliated with Israel.
TLDR; we all know that Islamic terrorism leads to the reactionary evil of Islamophobia. Yet so many people have a blind spot when they feed the same beast with respect to Israel and Jews.

You're kinda going wild here, dawg

[Brisketexan 106614]

You're kinda going wild here, dawg

Naah. Just see the surge in actual anti-semitism here and abroad, and the rhetoric that accompanies it.
Or…go ahead and believe that the kind of rhetoric that leads to Islamophobia doesn’t work the other way.
One of those things makes sense.

[Brian Fantana 6856]

49 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Naah. Just see the surge in actual anti-semitism here and abroad, and the rhetoric that accompanies it.
Or…go ahead and believe that the kind of rhetoric that leads to Islamophobia doesn’t work the other way.
One of those things makes sense.

Nah man lol we know it works both ways. It's all shit.

[linux 1760]

3 hours ago, Welshy said:

I'm Gen X, which basically means I trust no one, so I have a head start I suppose, but tell me...who do you trust to do the right thing? *Honest question. 

Do you understand how humans work? *not so honest. I think I know the answer to this one.

There are still psychological tricks, generally speaking empathy is important for out tribal groups.

When MAGA started warning each other on day one of the Trump presidency, to not look at immigrant sob stories, I knew that the goal was complete assault on immigrant rights.

Then you have narcissism vs science, everyone should have known the colossal fuckup disaster incoming on Feb 2020. Purely based on the Donald denials about COVID.

[Welshy 914]

Your opinion didn't and hasn't bothered me, really. I have valued your input, even if it's wrong.

Netanyahu's fault for not immediately invading.  He's really, irrevocably, stupid. Worse, he's incompetent.

But just so we're clear, trump could occasionally, randomly, mistakenly bump against my mentality. I despise the man, his coalition and his party (now). Netanyahu too. Not a single thing I have said or posted has been based on Trumpism.

If Trump says the sun is bright, and I say it's bright, that doesn't mean we're fucking blood-brothers. I would never vote for Donald and would fist-fight him. Aggressivly. With extreme chingasos. 

I'm not a trumper. I'm not a Jew, and I'm not a Palestinian. ...but I can math, and I can see what has happened in the last 3 weeks. Hamas did this, and Palestinians did too. Period. Not the zeitgeist now, but I was here. I saw.

Reality has warped into Jewish fault and culpability for Gaza. They are definitely at fault. As is Palestine (not arabia, it's important to note - many Arabian countries have a less than positive opinion of Palestine - and Gaza in particular. Blame the ottomans, the british, the germans, the US, the Iranians... and Israel twice.

The solution is not to allow Hamas to murder and rape its people.

[DDD Dad 14570]

9 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Israeli incursion into Jenin tonight. The West Bank is the objective. 

And always has been. 

So… Israel plotted the October 7 attack to take over the West Bank?

[Huckleberry 34404]

8 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

Nah man lol we know it works both ways. It's all shit.

His analogy holds that Israel is a terrorist state. So there's that. 

[bernorange 8385]

Senator Graham upon hearing the news of the US hitting Iranian targets in Syria:

[Anastasis 23699]

1 hour ago, DDD Dad said:

So… Israel plotted the October 7 attack to take over the West Bank?

Good drop in DDD. 

['stache 22115]

1 hour ago, DDD Dad said:

So… Israel plotted the October 7 attack to take over the West Bank?

They’ve been fostering terrorism and allowing it to pop up here and there so that they can always justify oppressing the natives. I think the severity of this attack caught Bibi by surprise. They never wanted all out war but the west is stalwart in “We Support Israel” and anyone who desires to dig a little deeper into the past is labeled a genocidal anti-Semite. I don’t think even Bibi expected that level of support, so the opportunity is there, might as well wipe out the natives and take what’s left.

[Schulz2.0 29241]

 

[Dnaguy 12572]

4 hours ago, bernorange said:

Senator Graham upon hearing the news of the US hitting Iranian targets in Syria:

 

[InkaUtexas 26795]

1 hour ago, Schulz2.0 said:

 

I think that would be a major violation of federal export laws. But it is Florida so who knows. 

[Schulz2.0 29241]

2 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

I think that would be a major violation of federal export laws. But it is Florida so who knows. 

[wildcat09 29556]

17 hours ago, Smax said:

Palestinians want to live in peace, get rid of hamas

This is an impossible demand to make of literal children.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

36 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

I think that would be a major violation of federal export laws. 

Possible Logan Act violation as well. 

[statsman 5675]

It’s clear the Palestinians have no interest in a two state solution. 
 
I will give them the benefit of the doubt, that they (most) would be ok with another Jewish diaspora instead of a Holocaust repeat. 
 
The idea is: make Israel so uncomfortable that, like the French in Algeria and the British in the Levantine, that they…leave. 
 
The problem with that idea is that there is no place for Jews to go, in the world. I used to think that Israelis would always be ok in America, but that doesn’t look sure any more. They are two generations from a genocidal event and Israel is all they have. They’re not going anywhere. 
 
In the west, “never again” means that we will never look away from a genocide (spoiler- ask the Tutsis if that’s true). 
 
To Israelis, “never again” means they will never, ever rely on another people or state for survival. 
 
So, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. 

[LCHorn 2749]

4 minutes ago, statsman said:

To Israelis, “never again” means they will never, ever rely on another people or state for survival. 

One correction; Israel has never, ever NOT relied on the US for survival. 

[statsman 5675]

1 minute ago, LCHorn said:

One correction; Israel has never, ever NOT relied on the US for survival. 

1948. And Nixon was damned late in 1973. 
 
And I don’t believe they have ever asked permission to assassinate an Iranian physicist. 

Edited October 27, 2023 by statsman

[Chuckie Finster 22978]

[MC Fresh Breath 4075]

Genocide Is Underway in Gaza. US Leaders Can No Longer Say “We Didn’t Know.”

Quote

The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.

Spoiler

The past two weeks have been very painful for me and my Palestinian American family, but especially for our relatives in Palestine. I’ve had little sleep, and when I did manage to close my eyes, I was unable to stop the nightmares. The horror that is taking place in Gaza became like a noose around my neck preventing me from breathing. I couldn’t help but think of all the children who lost their parents, their homes, and who can’t understand why no one in the world cares about them and why no one is coming to their rescue. Close to half the population of Gaza was born under the 17-year-long suffocating siege and have known nothing but misery and extreme hardship.

The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.

“Hospitals have lost their ability to treat [patients], and medical teams are treating the patients with very limited capabilities,” Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said in an interview.

Under the watchful eye of world leaders who continue to repeat the same mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” but are indifferent to Palestinians and their right to resist their occupation and blockade, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israel National Security Council, said in Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction,” said Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement at yesterday’s UN Security Council session that the UN “must affirm the right of any nation to defend itself and to prevent such harm from repeating itself,” simply adds fuel to the fire. Every government official in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU who isn’t calling for a ceasefire and an end to the carnage should be held accountable for their part in this genocide. Sending billions of dollars in missiles and weapons to the Israeli military in order to mercilessly kill and ethnically cleanse more Palestinians amplifies the U.S.’s complicity in the atrocities. The tragic loss of Israeli lives on October 7 should not be used as a pretext to launch this genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel is actively implementing a strategy I have called the “out-of-state” solution. This strategy aims to transfer Palestinians — or keep terrorizing and oppressing them until they give up and leave — to neighboring Arab countries, dispossessing them of their homeland. This is what we are witnessing in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem before our very eyes.

According to the Palestine Ministry of Health in Ramallah, Israel Defense Forces and armed settlers have killed at least 100 Palestinians in the West Bank and displaced at least 13 Palestinian communities in the last two weeks.

The two-state solution promised to Palestinians during the Oslo Accords is no longer possible; the chances of a one-state solution with equal citizenship rights for everyone are even slimmer, since Zionists insist on keeping Israel a Jewish state with democratic rights for Jews only.

What is left — and what many in the new extremist Israeli government are in favor of — is driving as many Palestinians as possible out of Israel/Palestine.

The Netanyahu government made clear its intention to commit genocide against the Palestinians and is counting on people around the world becoming numb as the death toll rises.

During French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Israel, Netanyahu said that the fight “was a battle between the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘the free world’.… This battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Macron’s visit to Israel completes the series of pilgrimages to Israel by prominent Western leaders renewing their pledges of allegiance to the Israeli state and giving it the green light for its ground offensive.

But, as we’ve seen time and time again, Palestinians are resilient and are determined to keep their struggle alive, no matter how severe Israeli attempts are at their erasure.

There is a newly invigorated global grassroots movement for justice in the Arab and Muslim world as we’ve seen from the massive demonstrations in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, and elsewhere. Palestine is on the minds of the masses in Europe, too. From Paris — in defiance of a pro-Palestinian protest ban — to Dublin, London, Edinburgh and Geneva, the voices of Palestinian supporters chanting “Free Free Palestine” are reverberating in cities throughout the Western world. And in Washington, D.C. we heard the voices of American Jews mobilizing in solidarity with Palestinians and loudly declaring “Not In Our Name” as they marched to Capitol Hill and called on their representatives to demand an immediate ceasefire. On October 19, they shut down Congress to draw attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in spaces ranging from cultural institutions to college campuses to media outlets are being silenced, harassed and discriminated against.

My latest personal experience of this occurred in Germany, where I spent this past week attending the Frankfurter Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF). Upon my arrival in Frankfurt, I was greeted by an overwhelming display of Israeli flags everywhere — at the airport, on train ticket machines, on government buildings. Why, I wondered? Is it because Germany is still atoning for its past crimes? The next morning, I woke up to a shocking statement by the FBF Director Juergen Boos that said: “We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair.… Frankfurter Buchmesse stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”

As if this was not bad enough coming from a renowned institution that was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and one that prides itself on promoting cultural exchange and freedom of expression — the FBF followed its one-sided statement by announcing a decision to cancel the award ceremony of the LiBeraturpreis 2023 “due to the war in Israel.” Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the German literature prize this year. Contrary to what The New York Times initially reported, Shibli, whose first two novels Touch and We Are Equally Far Away from Love were released by Interlink Publishing, (the Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house that I founded), did not agree to the cancellation.

In light of these announcements and the FBF’s attempt to silence Palestinian voices, many exhibitors — Indonesia’s collective stand, Malaysia’s collective stand, the Arab Publishers Association, the Sharjah Book authority, and others — decided to withdraw their participation as a sign of protest, leaving behind many empty booths. In a statement, the Sharjah Book Authority, organizer of the world’s third-largest book fair, said: “Given the recent announcement by the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we have decided to withdraw our participation this year. We champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people. We believe that this role is more important now than ever.”

I, too, was compelled to withdraw from my scheduled talk sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I was initially asked to participate in a discussion about the role of literature-in-translation in promoting cross-cultural understanding and knowledge. How could I participate in such a discussion when the FBF had just silenced an author whose novels we translated into English simply because she is Palestinian?

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims to monitor the Frankfurt Book Fair each year for books that foment “antisemitism and hate” apparently did not like the Palestine-related books displayed on our stand and suggested that our publishing house, Interlink Publishing, “be denied access, in the spirit of the Fair’s rules.” The center called several of our titles “in the lineage of the so-called ‘self-hating’ Jews.” While the “Hate Prize” went to a Turkish publisher, Timas Publishing Group, the “Runner-Up Prize” is shared by our publishing house Interlink Publishing and French publisher La Fabrique “for their combined effort to demonize Israel and indulge in antisemitism.”

The silencing of Palestinian voices and their supporters is not restricted to Germany. It is happening here in the United States, in mainstream media and on college campuses. The New York City cultural institution known as the 92nd Street Y canceled an event with author Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel. As a result, several authors — including Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe and Andrea Long Chu — have canceled their own upcoming talks at the 92nd Street Y. Similarly, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel canceled its contract to host the upcoming conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights scheduled to take place on October 27-29. You can read the full press release here. And according to a report in Arab News, the U.S. news network MSNBC suspended Muslim anchors Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi amid the Israeli war in Gaza. On October 26, 57 UMass Amherst students were arrested for democratic dissent.

The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing oppression, occupation, apartheid and genocidal tactics against Palestinians provides the context for what is taking place now. Fearing a repeat of their mass displacement 75 years ago, many Palestinians in Gaza are opting to stay where they are and risk death. Israel’s message to the people of Gaza to leave or die is being ignored because Palestinians know that if they leave, they will not be able to return.

There is an urgent need for a ceasefire to stop the deliberate mass killing of Palestinians, which is in flagrant violation of international law. The genocide is underway. We can no longer say that we didn’t know.

https://truthout.org/articles/genocide-is-underway-in-gaza-us-leaders-can-no-longer-say-we-didnt-know/

[MC Fresh Breath 4075]

Israel’s UN envoy slams General Assembly resolution
Gilad Erdan says “this is a dark day for the UN and for mankind” after the UNGA passed the resolution, which urged a humanitarian truce in Gaza.

The Israeli ambassador promised that Israel would use “every means” in fighting Hamas.

“Today is a day that will go down as infamy. We have all witnessed that the UN no longer holds even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance,” Erdan said.

[MC Fresh Breath 4075]

Quote

 

Internet and cell service have been cut off in the Gaza Strip as Israeli airstrikes intensify on the besieged territory, where more than 7,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants.

News outlets and on-the-ground aid groups reported on Friday that their communications with individuals within Gaza have been severed, and the 2.3 million people who live there are now left in a near-complete digital blackout. Jawal and Paltel, Palestine’s largest internet service providers, said Friday that service had collapsed due to Israel’s bombardment of the region, which has intensified in the last 24 hours. “The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” Paltel wrote in a statement.

 

 

https://news.yahoo.com/gaza-internet-cell-cut-off-203531860.html

[Chuckie Finster 22978]

Genocide Is Underway in Gaza. US Leaders Can No Longer Say “We Didn’t Know.”

The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.

Spoiler

The past two weeks have been very painful for me and my Palestinian American family, but especially for our relatives in Palestine. I’ve had little sleep, and when I did manage to close my eyes, I was unable to stop the nightmares. The horror that is taking place in Gaza became like a noose around my neck preventing me from breathing. I couldn’t help but think of all the children who lost their parents, their homes, and who can’t understand why no one in the world cares about them and why no one is coming to their rescue. Close to half the population of Gaza was born under the 17-year-long suffocating siege and have known nothing but misery and extreme hardship.
The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.
“Hospitals have lost their ability to treat [patients], and medical teams are treating the patients with very limited capabilities,” Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said in an interview.
Under the watchful eye of world leaders who continue to repeat the same mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” but are indifferent to Palestinians and their right to resist their occupation and blockade, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israel National Security Council, said in Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction,” said Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement at yesterday’s UN Security Council session that the UN “must affirm the right of any nation to defend itself and to prevent such harm from repeating itself,” simply adds fuel to the fire. Every government official in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU who isn’t calling for a ceasefire and an end to the carnage should be held accountable for their part in this genocide. Sending billions of dollars in missiles and weapons to the Israeli military in order to mercilessly kill and ethnically cleanse more Palestinians amplifies the U.S.’s complicity in the atrocities. The tragic loss of Israeli lives on October 7 should not be used as a pretext to launch this genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is actively implementing a strategy I have called the “out-of-state” solution. This strategy aims to transfer Palestinians — or keep terrorizing and oppressing them until they give up and leave — to neighboring Arab countries, dispossessing them of their homeland. This is what we are witnessing in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem before our very eyes.
According to the Palestine Ministry of Health in Ramallah, Israel Defense Forces and armed settlers have killed at least 100 Palestinians in the West Bank and displaced at least 13 Palestinian communities in the last two weeks.
The two-state solution promised to Palestinians during the Oslo Accords is no longer possible; the chances of a one-state solution with equal citizenship rights for everyone are even slimmer, since Zionists insist on keeping Israel a Jewish state with democratic rights for Jews only.
What is left — and what many in the new extremist Israeli government are in favor of — is driving as many Palestinians as possible out of Israel/Palestine.
The Netanyahu government made clear its intention to commit genocide against the Palestinians and is counting on people around the world becoming numb as the death toll rises.
During French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Israel, Netanyahu said that the fight “was a battle between the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘the free world’.… This battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Macron’s visit to Israel completes the series of pilgrimages to Israel by prominent Western leaders renewing their pledges of allegiance to the Israeli state and giving it the green light for its ground offensive.
But, as we’ve seen time and time again, Palestinians are resilient and are determined to keep their struggle alive, no matter how severe Israeli attempts are at their erasure.
There is a newly invigorated global grassroots movement for justice in the Arab and Muslim world as we’ve seen from the massive demonstrations in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, and elsewhere. Palestine is on the minds of the masses in Europe, too. From Paris — in defiance of a pro-Palestinian protest ban — to Dublin, London, Edinburgh and Geneva, the voices of Palestinian supporters chanting “Free Free Palestine” are reverberating in cities throughout the Western world. And in Washington, D.C. we heard the voices of American Jews mobilizing in solidarity with Palestinians and loudly declaring “Not In Our Name” as they marched to Capitol Hill and called on their representatives to demand an immediate ceasefire. On October 19, they shut down Congress to draw attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Palestinians in spaces ranging from cultural institutions to college campuses to media outlets are being silenced, harassed and discriminated against.
My latest personal experience of this occurred in Germany, where I spent this past week attending the Frankfurter Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF). Upon my arrival in Frankfurt, I was greeted by an overwhelming display of Israeli flags everywhere — at the airport, on train ticket machines, on government buildings. Why, I wondered? Is it because Germany is still atoning for its past crimes? The next morning, I woke up to a shocking statement by the FBF Director Juergen Boos that said: “We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair.… Frankfurter Buchmesse stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”
As if this was not bad enough coming from a renowned institution that was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and one that prides itself on promoting cultural exchange and freedom of expression — the FBF followed its one-sided statement by announcing a decision to cancel the award ceremony of the LiBeraturpreis 2023 “due to the war in Israel.” Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the German literature prize this year. Contrary to what The New York Times initially reported, Shibli, whose first two novels Touch and We Are Equally Far Away from Love were released by Interlink Publishing, (the Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house that I founded), did not agree to the cancellation.
In light of these announcements and the FBF’s attempt to silence Palestinian voices, many exhibitors — Indonesia’s collective stand, Malaysia’s collective stand, the Arab Publishers Association, the Sharjah Book authority, and others — decided to withdraw their participation as a sign of protest, leaving behind many empty booths. In a statement, the Sharjah Book Authority, organizer of the world’s third-largest book fair, said: “Given the recent announcement by the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we have decided to withdraw our participation this year. We champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people. We believe that this role is more important now than ever.”
I, too, was compelled to withdraw from my scheduled talk sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I was initially asked to participate in a discussion about the role of literature-in-translation in promoting cross-cultural understanding and knowledge. How could I participate in such a discussion when the FBF had just silenced an author whose novels we translated into English simply because she is Palestinian?
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims to monitor the Frankfurt Book Fair each year for books that foment “antisemitism and hate” apparently did not like the Palestine-related books displayed on our stand and suggested that our publishing house, Interlink Publishing, “be denied access, in the spirit of the Fair’s rules.” The center called several of our titles “in the lineage of the so-called ‘self-hating’ Jews.” While the “Hate Prize” went to a Turkish publisher, Timas Publishing Group, the “Runner-Up Prize” is shared by our publishing house Interlink Publishing and French publisher La Fabrique “for their combined effort to demonize Israel and indulge in antisemitism.”
The silencing of Palestinian voices and their supporters is not restricted to Germany. It is happening here in the United States, in mainstream media and on college campuses. The New York City cultural institution known as the 92nd Street Y canceled an event with author Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel. As a result, several authors — including Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe and Andrea Long Chu — have canceled their own upcoming talks at the 92nd Street Y. Similarly, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel canceled its contract to host the upcoming conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights scheduled to take place on October 27-29. You can read the full press release here. And according to a report in Arab News, the U.S. news network MSNBC suspended Muslim anchors Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi amid the Israeli war in Gaza. On October 26, 57 UMass Amherst students were arrested for democratic dissent.
The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing oppression, occupation, apartheid and genocidal tactics against Palestinians provides the context for what is taking place now. Fearing a repeat of their mass displacement 75 years ago, many Palestinians in Gaza are opting to stay where they are and risk death. Israel’s message to the people of Gaza to leave or die is being ignored because Palestinians know that if they leave, they will not be able to return.
There is an urgent need for a ceasefire to stop the deliberate mass killing of Palestinians, which is in flagrant violation of international law. The genocide is underway. We can no longer say that we didn’t know.

https://truthout.org/articles/genocide-is-underway-in-gaza-us-leaders-can-no-longer-say-we-didnt-know/

I am in no way calling Israel the beacon of truth, but how can anyone site any numbers from the Palestinian health authority with a straight face?

[Anastasis 23699]

2 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

I am in no way calling Israel the beacon of truth, but how can anyone site any numbers from the Palestinian health authority with a straight face?

What are the other sources that we can bounce the numbers of the dead children of darkness up against?

[Brisketexan 106614]

12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

What are the other sources that we can bounce the numbers of the dead children of darkness up against?

Maybe bounce those numbers up against the wall at GWU where "Glory to the martyrs" of Hamas is being projected.

I really, really, really want to sympathize with the Palestinian cause.  And I do not excuse Israel's complete blockade of Gaza, which is a war crime.  Nor do I excuse any purposeful targeting of civilians by Israel - any specific act of Israel which is determined to be a purposeful targeting of civilians should be treated as a war crime.  And frankly, I very much hope that Israel opts NOT to launch a full ground offensive, and allows the conflict to cool to a simmer, avoiding significant additional loss of life.

But goddamn.  The fucking repeated bullshit from the pro-Palestinians, fucking glorifying and praising Hamas's horrific crimes against humanity, make it functionally impossible to sympathize.  You have me with "the conditions in Gaza and the WB are inhumane," and "rampant Israeli settlements in the WB are intended to torpedo any chance for peace," and "Netanyahu is a fucking war criminal," and dozens of other very valid points and reasons to side with the Palestinian cause....and then fucking person after person, group after group, has to top it off with the fucking turd of "and glory to the martyrs" or "those israelis they grabbed are prisoners, not hostages," or tearing down posters of the hostages, or waving signs showing that jews should go to the wastebin of history, or that Israel should be wiped off the map ("from the river to the sea").  Nope.  Don't care what's underneath, what you're serving is a shit sandwich.  There is no two-state solution that will ever work with that in play.  There is no solution at all with that in play.  It is a plain drawing of a line -- may the party best able to commit genocide win.  What a stupid fucking line to draw, but goddamn, stupid is the order of humanity's day, every day.

So, let's just treat this as a fucking war.  Hamas has to pay for its crimes against humanity. Israel has to be held accountable for any war crimes.  But fuck it, let them fight, let them bring ruin and destruction upon the entire levant, so maybe the last person standing can rule the smoldering rubble.  One side will be wiped out.  The other side will be the evil side that succeeded at genocide.  YAY, what a winning outcome!

[Chuckie Finster 22978]

What are the other sources that we can bounce the numbers of the dead children of darkness up against?

There’s no sources anyone can trust, by design.

One thing I do trust, the comments under this Bernie tweet should be a giant wake up call to all the people trying to claim anti-Zionism is completely separate from antisemitism.

[Brisketexan 106614]

1 minute ago, Chuckie Finster said:

There’s no sources anyone can trust, by design.

One thing I do trust, the comments under this Bernie tweet should be a giant wake up call to all the people trying to claim anti-Zionism is completely separate from antisemitism.

 

 

 

 

"Sure, that's unfortunate, but have you heard about how shitty Israel is?"

[TreatyOak 17194]

38 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Spoiler

  Reveal hidden contents

The past two weeks have been very painful for me and my Palestinian American family, but especially for our relatives in Palestine. I’ve had little sleep, and when I did manage to close my eyes, I was unable to stop the nightmares. The horror that is taking place in Gaza became like a noose around my neck preventing me from breathing. I couldn’t help but think of all the children who lost their parents, their homes, and who can’t understand why no one in the world cares about them and why no one is coming to their rescue. Close to half the population of Gaza was born under the 17-year-long suffocating siege and have known nothing but misery and extreme hardship.
The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.
“Hospitals have lost their ability to treat [patients], and medical teams are treating the patients with very limited capabilities,” Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said in an interview.
Under the watchful eye of world leaders who continue to repeat the same mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” but are indifferent to Palestinians and their right to resist their occupation and blockade, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israel National Security Council, said in Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction,” said Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement at yesterday’s UN Security Council session that the UN “must affirm the right of any nation to defend itself and to prevent such harm from repeating itself,” simply adds fuel to the fire. Every government official in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU who isn’t calling for a ceasefire and an end to the carnage should be held accountable for their part in this genocide. Sending billions of dollars in missiles and weapons to the Israeli military in order to mercilessly kill and ethnically cleanse more Palestinians amplifies the U.S.’s complicity in the atrocities. The tragic loss of Israeli lives on October 7 should not be used as a pretext to launch this genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is actively implementing a strategy I have called the “out-of-state” solution. This strategy aims to transfer Palestinians — or keep terrorizing and oppressing them until they give up and leave — to neighboring Arab countries, dispossessing them of their homeland. This is what we are witnessing in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem before our very eyes.
According to the Palestine Ministry of Health in Ramallah, Israel Defense Forces and armed settlers have killed at least 100 Palestinians in the West Bank and displaced at least 13 Palestinian communities in the last two weeks.
The two-state solution promised to Palestinians during the Oslo Accords is no longer possible; the chances of a one-state solution with equal citizenship rights for everyone are even slimmer, since Zionists insist on keeping Israel a Jewish state with democratic rights for Jews only.
What is left — and what many in the new extremist Israeli government are in favor of — is driving as many Palestinians as possible out of Israel/Palestine.
The Netanyahu government made clear its intention to commit genocide against the Palestinians and is counting on people around the world becoming numb as the death toll rises.
During French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Israel, Netanyahu said that the fight “was a battle between the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘the free world’.… This battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Macron’s visit to Israel completes the series of pilgrimages to Israel by prominent Western leaders renewing their pledges of allegiance to the Israeli state and giving it the green light for its ground offensive.
But, as we’ve seen time and time again, Palestinians are resilient and are determined to keep their struggle alive, no matter how severe Israeli attempts are at their erasure.
There is a newly invigorated global grassroots movement for justice in the Arab and Muslim world as we’ve seen from the massive demonstrations in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, and elsewhere. Palestine is on the minds of the masses in Europe, too. From Paris — in defiance of a pro-Palestinian protest ban — to Dublin, London, Edinburgh and Geneva, the voices of Palestinian supporters chanting “Free Free Palestine” are reverberating in cities throughout the Western world. And in Washington, D.C. we heard the voices of American Jews mobilizing in solidarity with Palestinians and loudly declaring “Not In Our Name” as they marched to Capitol Hill and called on their representatives to demand an immediate ceasefire. On October 19, they shut down Congress to draw attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Palestinians in spaces ranging from cultural institutions to college campuses to media outlets are being silenced, harassed and discriminated against.
My latest personal experience of this occurred in Germany, where I spent this past week attending the Frankfurter Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF). Upon my arrival in Frankfurt, I was greeted by an overwhelming display of Israeli flags everywhere — at the airport, on train ticket machines, on government buildings. Why, I wondered? Is it because Germany is still atoning for its past crimes? The next morning, I woke up to a shocking statement by the FBF Director Juergen Boos that said: “We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair.… Frankfurter Buchmesse stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”
As if this was not bad enough coming from a renowned institution that was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and one that prides itself on promoting cultural exchange and freedom of expression — the FBF followed its one-sided statement by announcing a decision to cancel the award ceremony of the LiBeraturpreis 2023 “due to the war in Israel.” Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the German literature prize this year. Contrary to what The New York Times initially reported, Shibli, whose first two novels Touch and We Are Equally Far Away from Love were released by Interlink Publishing, (the Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house that I founded), did not agree to the cancellation.
In light of these announcements and the FBF’s attempt to silence Palestinian voices, many exhibitors — Indonesia’s collective stand, Malaysia’s collective stand, the Arab Publishers Association, the Sharjah Book authority, and others — decided to withdraw their participation as a sign of protest, leaving behind many empty booths. In a statement, the Sharjah Book Authority, organizer of the world’s third-largest book fair, said: “Given the recent announcement by the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we have decided to withdraw our participation this year. We champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people. We believe that this role is more important now than ever.”
I, too, was compelled to withdraw from my scheduled talk sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I was initially asked to participate in a discussion about the role of literature-in-translation in promoting cross-cultural understanding and knowledge. How could I participate in such a discussion when the FBF had just silenced an author whose novels we translated into English simply because she is Palestinian?
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims to monitor the Frankfurt Book Fair each year for books that foment “antisemitism and hate” apparently did not like the Palestine-related books displayed on our stand and suggested that our publishing house, Interlink Publishing, “be denied access, in the spirit of the Fair’s rules.” The center called several of our titles “in the lineage of the so-called ‘self-hating’ Jews.” While the “Hate Prize” went to a Turkish publisher, Timas Publishing Group, the “Runner-Up Prize” is shared by our publishing house Interlink Publishing and French publisher La Fabrique “for their combined effort to demonize Israel and indulge in antisemitism.”
The silencing of Palestinian voices and their supporters is not restricted to Germany. It is happening here in the United States, in mainstream media and on college campuses. The New York City cultural institution known as the 92nd Street Y canceled an event with author Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel. As a result, several authors — including Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe and Andrea Long Chu — have canceled their own upcoming talks at the 92nd Street Y. Similarly, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel canceled its contract to host the upcoming conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights scheduled to take place on October 27-29. You can read the full press release here. And according to a report in Arab News, the U.S. news network MSNBC suspended Muslim anchors Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi amid the Israeli war in Gaza. On October 26, 57 UMass Amherst students were arrested for democratic dissent.
The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing oppression, occupation, apartheid and genocidal tactics against Palestinians provides the context for what is taking place now. Fearing a repeat of their mass displacement 75 years ago, many Palestinians in Gaza are opting to stay where they are and risk death. Israel’s message to the people of Gaza to leave or die is being ignored because Palestinians know that if they leave, they will not be able to return.
There is an urgent need for a ceasefire to stop the deliberate mass killing of Palestinians, which is in flagrant violation of international law. The genocide is underway. We can no longer say that we didn’t know.

https://truthout.org/articles/genocide-is-underway-in-gaza-us-leaders-can-no-longer-say-we-didnt-know/

I am in no way calling Israel the beacon of truth, but how can anyone site any numbers from the Palestinian health authority with a straight face?

An English general who fought in Afghanistan recently said to remove a 0 from whatever number the Afghani's give you. 

[Smax 3800]

1 hour ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

Genocide Is Underway in Gaza. US Leaders Can No Longer Say “We Didn’t Know.”

  Reveal hidden contents

The past two weeks have been very painful for me and my Palestinian American family, but especially for our relatives in Palestine. I’ve had little sleep, and when I did manage to close my eyes, I was unable to stop the nightmares. The horror that is taking place in Gaza became like a noose around my neck preventing me from breathing. I couldn’t help but think of all the children who lost their parents, their homes, and who can’t understand why no one in the world cares about them and why no one is coming to their rescue. Close to half the population of Gaza was born under the 17-year-long suffocating siege and have known nothing but misery and extreme hardship.

The death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment has surpassed 7000, including 3000 children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Fifty-one percent of all homes in Gaza have now been destroyed, and over 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The dire, inhumane consequences of Israel’s halting deliveries of food, water, fuel, electricity and medicine will take their toll and will result in the death of an even larger number of Palestinian children and civilians in the coming days.

“Hospitals have lost their ability to treat [patients], and medical teams are treating the patients with very limited capabilities,” Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said in an interview.

Under the watchful eye of world leaders who continue to repeat the same mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” but are indifferent to Palestinians and their right to resist their occupation and blockade, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israel National Security Council, said in Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction,” said Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement at yesterday’s UN Security Council session that the UN “must affirm the right of any nation to defend itself and to prevent such harm from repeating itself,” simply adds fuel to the fire. Every government official in the U.S., the U.K. and the EU who isn’t calling for a ceasefire and an end to the carnage should be held accountable for their part in this genocide. Sending billions of dollars in missiles and weapons to the Israeli military in order to mercilessly kill and ethnically cleanse more Palestinians amplifies the U.S.’s complicity in the atrocities. The tragic loss of Israeli lives on October 7 should not be used as a pretext to launch this genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel is actively implementing a strategy I have called the “out-of-state” solution. This strategy aims to transfer Palestinians — or keep terrorizing and oppressing them until they give up and leave — to neighboring Arab countries, dispossessing them of their homeland. This is what we are witnessing in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem before our very eyes.

According to the Palestine Ministry of Health in Ramallah, Israel Defense Forces and armed settlers have killed at least 100 Palestinians in the West Bank and displaced at least 13 Palestinian communities in the last two weeks.

The two-state solution promised to Palestinians during the Oslo Accords is no longer possible; the chances of a one-state solution with equal citizenship rights for everyone are even slimmer, since Zionists insist on keeping Israel a Jewish state with democratic rights for Jews only.

What is left — and what many in the new extremist Israeli government are in favor of — is driving as many Palestinians as possible out of Israel/Palestine.

The Netanyahu government made clear its intention to commit genocide against the Palestinians and is counting on people around the world becoming numb as the death toll rises.

During French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Israel, Netanyahu said that the fight “was a battle between the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘the free world’.… This battle is not merely our own … it’s everybody’s battle.” Macron’s visit to Israel completes the series of pilgrimages to Israel by prominent Western leaders renewing their pledges of allegiance to the Israeli state and giving it the green light for its ground offensive.

But, as we’ve seen time and time again, Palestinians are resilient and are determined to keep their struggle alive, no matter how severe Israeli attempts are at their erasure.

There is a newly invigorated global grassroots movement for justice in the Arab and Muslim world as we’ve seen from the massive demonstrations in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, and elsewhere. Palestine is on the minds of the masses in Europe, too. From Paris — in defiance of a pro-Palestinian protest ban — to Dublin, London, Edinburgh and Geneva, the voices of Palestinian supporters chanting “Free Free Palestine” are reverberating in cities throughout the Western world. And in Washington, D.C. we heard the voices of American Jews mobilizing in solidarity with Palestinians and loudly declaring “Not In Our Name” as they marched to Capitol Hill and called on their representatives to demand an immediate ceasefire. On October 19, they shut down Congress to draw attention to the U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in spaces ranging from cultural institutions to college campuses to media outlets are being silenced, harassed and discriminated against.

My latest personal experience of this occurred in Germany, where I spent this past week attending the Frankfurter Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF). Upon my arrival in Frankfurt, I was greeted by an overwhelming display of Israeli flags everywhere — at the airport, on train ticket machines, on government buildings. Why, I wondered? Is it because Germany is still atoning for its past crimes? The next morning, I woke up to a shocking statement by the FBF Director Juergen Boos that said: “We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair.… Frankfurter Buchmesse stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”

As if this was not bad enough coming from a renowned institution that was celebrating its 75th anniversary — and one that prides itself on promoting cultural exchange and freedom of expression — the FBF followed its one-sided statement by announcing a decision to cancel the award ceremony of the LiBeraturpreis 2023 “due to the war in Israel.” Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the German literature prize this year. Contrary to what The New York Times initially reported, Shibli, whose first two novels Touch and We Are Equally Far Away from Love were released by Interlink Publishing, (the Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house that I founded), did not agree to the cancellation.

In light of these announcements and the FBF’s attempt to silence Palestinian voices, many exhibitors — Indonesia’s collective stand, Malaysia’s collective stand, the Arab Publishers Association, the Sharjah Book authority, and others — decided to withdraw their participation as a sign of protest, leaving behind many empty booths. In a statement, the Sharjah Book Authority, organizer of the world’s third-largest book fair, said: “Given the recent announcement by the organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we have decided to withdraw our participation this year. We champion the role of culture and books to encourage dialogue and understanding between people. We believe that this role is more important now than ever.”

I, too, was compelled to withdraw from my scheduled talk sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, where I was initially asked to participate in a discussion about the role of literature-in-translation in promoting cross-cultural understanding and knowledge. How could I participate in such a discussion when the FBF had just silenced an author whose novels we translated into English simply because she is Palestinian?

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims to monitor the Frankfurt Book Fair each year for books that foment “antisemitism and hate” apparently did not like the Palestine-related books displayed on our stand and suggested that our publishing house, Interlink Publishing, “be denied access, in the spirit of the Fair’s rules.” The center called several of our titles “in the lineage of the so-called ‘self-hating’ Jews.” While the “Hate Prize” went to a Turkish publisher, Timas Publishing Group, the “Runner-Up Prize” is shared by our publishing house Interlink Publishing and French publisher La Fabrique “for their combined effort to demonize Israel and indulge in antisemitism.”

The silencing of Palestinian voices and their supporters is not restricted to Germany. It is happening here in the United States, in mainstream media and on college campuses. The New York City cultural institution known as the 92nd Street Y canceled an event with author Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel. As a result, several authors — including Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe and Andrea Long Chu — have canceled their own upcoming talks at the 92nd Street Y. Similarly, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel canceled its contract to host the upcoming conference of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights scheduled to take place on October 27-29. You can read the full press release here. And according to a report in Arab News, the U.S. news network MSNBC suspended Muslim anchors Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi amid the Israeli war in Gaza. On October 26, 57 UMass Amherst students were arrested for democratic dissent.

The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing oppression, occupation, apartheid and genocidal tactics against Palestinians provides the context for what is taking place now. Fearing a repeat of their mass displacement 75 years ago, many Palestinians in Gaza are opting to stay where they are and risk death. Israel’s message to the people of Gaza to leave or die is being ignored because Palestinians know that if they leave, they will not be able to return.

There is an urgent need for a ceasefire to stop the deliberate mass killing of Palestinians, which is in flagrant violation of international law. The genocide is underway. We can no longer say that we didn’t know.

https://truthout.org/articles/genocide-is-underway-in-gaza-us-leaders-can-no-longer-say-we-didnt-know/

 

 

color me skeptic on those numbers

[Skipper 6406]

17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

But goddamn.  The fucking repeated bullshit from the pro-Palestinians, fucking glorifying and praising Hamas's horrific crimes against humanity, make it functionally impossible to sympathize.  

This.  Civillians have had 3 weeks to get out of the war zone.  It seems like the terrorists are now in the FAFO phase.  Good riddance to all those that shot women and children point blank.  Hope they get them all.

[Anastasis 23699]

20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Maybe bounce those numbers up against the wall at GWU where "Glory to the martyrs" of Hamas is being projected.

Can we also bounce them off the wall at the radical settlement schools teaching that Arabs are subhumans and will be genocided, except for the few that they decide to keep around as slaves. 

[Anastasis 23699]

22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

So, let's just treat this as a fucking war.  Hamas has to pay for its crimes against humanity. Israel has to be held accountable for any war crimes.  But fuck it, let them fight, let them bring ruin and destruction upon the entire levant, so maybe the last person standing can rule the smoldering rubble.  One side will be wiped out.  The other side will be the evil side that succeeded at genocide.  YAY, what a winning outcome!

I can get on board with this, with the caveat that no US funds or weapons should be injected into the situation now and moving forward, and that our supports efforts should be humanitarian focussed in nature.  

[Smax 3800]

27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

But goddamn.  The fucking repeated bullshit from the pro-Palestinians, fucking glorifying and praising Hamas's horrific crimes against humanity, make it functionally impossible to sympathize. 

 

 

That plus the images of palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11 make it real hard for me to empathize. The thought of woman and children being killed is unfortunate, but part me feels they brought this on themselves