Wednesday, June 26, 2024

 Aljazeera:
"Happening again: Guantanamo victims say Israel using ‘US-style’ torture. When former Guantanamo detainee Asadullah Haroon looks at pictures of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, the memories of his own abuse and torture in United States detention centres come flooding back.

'This is the worst form of oppression,' he says. 'When you are labelled as a terrorist you cannot defend yourself in any way. Without a doubt it’s the same process; they are torturing the people in the same way. I think the Americans have made this and the Israelis are implementing it.' ...

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and other human rights organisations have called on the United Nations special rapporteur on torture for urgent action to end 'the systematic abuse, torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.' ”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/22/happening-again-guantanamo-victims-say-israel-using-us-style-torture

-->This story can't be read in the US media. The deadly links between US and Israeli torture are to be expected. Neither country has much respect for human dignity or human rights.

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Aljazeera:
"Tens of thousands of protesters waving Israeli flags and chanting slogans against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday, demanding new elections and the return of captives held in Gaza.

Large protests have occurred in the Israeli city on a weekly basis over Netanyahu’s handling of the nearly nine-month-old war in Gaza started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. Many protesters held signs reading 'Crime Minister' and 'Stop the War' as people poured into the biggest Israeli city’s main thoroughfare. ...

Antigovernment protest organisation Hofshi Israel estimated more than 150,000 people attended the rally, calling it the biggest since Israel’s war on Gaza. Some demonstrators lay on the ground covered in red paint in the city’s Democracy Square to protest what they say is the death of the country’s democracy under Netanyahu."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/22/all-of-the-rats-in-the-knesset-mass-anti-war-protest-in-israel

-->No US media seems much interested in this story. The left paints Israel as a genocidal state. The right wants Israel to kill even more Palestinians. But why are demonstrations like this ignored?

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Common Dreams:
"'Visible Signs of Wasting': Heat, Forced Malnutrition Strangle People of Gaza. ...

Humanitarian officials at the United Nations warned Wednesday evening that with Israel continuing to block aid deliveries across Gaza, thousands of children are among those facing acute malnutrition as extreme summer heat exacerbates suffering in the besieged enclave.

The Site Management Working Group for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released its latest report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, noting that aid deliveries in recent days have done little to improve the condition of a population that has been under attack by the U.S.-backed Israeli military—and facing an illegal blockade—for more than eight months. ...
 
'No nutrition screenings have been conducted to assess the scale of malnutrition and treat identified cases due to limited capacity,' reported OCHA. Last week, the World Health Organization reported that more than 8,000 children have been diagnosed with and treated for acute malnutrition, including 1,600 with severe wasting."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/malnutrition-gaza

-->There is not that much interest in these stories about starving children. This story in Common Dreams shows the body of a starving four year old. When the NYT can bring itself to print a picture like this, the Gaza genocide will be over. It is only the ignorance of the American people that keeps this slaughter of Palestinians from ending.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Common Dreams:
"Israeli Politician Quotes Hitler to Argue for Resettlement of Gaza. Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a 'Hebrew Gaza.'

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

'We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it...' Feiglin said, adding, 'As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/moshe-feiglin-hitler

-->This story really links Israeli thinking with the mind of Adolf Hitler. Feiglin claims the right to mass murder,and it is clearly in retribution for the Holocaust. The NYT didn't print this story. Maybe because it shows the genocide that the US is supporting.

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The Intercept:
"Israel’s New Air War in the West Bank: Nearly Half of the Dead are Children. ... The world’s attention has been on the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 36,000 people — including more than 15,000 children — and prompted accusations of genocide from U.N. officials and at the International Court of Justice. In the name of eliminating Hamas in retaliation for the attacks in October, the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip continues.

But Israel has also transformed its tactics in the West Bank. Since June of last year, and with increasing regularity during the Gaza offensive, the Israel Defense Forces have shown a new willingness to use air power in the West Bank, regardless of the collateral damage to children and other civilians caught in the blasts.

An open-source Intercept investigation documented at least 37 Israeli airstrikes, drone strikes, and attacks by helicopter gunships in the West Bank since June 2023, which have killed 55 Palestinians, according to the United Nations. Most attacks struck densely populated urban areas and refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus, all in the northern part of the West Bank."
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/12/israel-west-bank-airstrikes-drones-palestinians-killed-children/

-->The West Bank is turning into a killing field, but our media mostly ignores this fact. The NYT didn't think it was worth printing.

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Aljazeera:
"50,000 Gaza children require urgent treatment for malnutrition: UN. ... In a statement on Saturday, the agency noted 'with continued restrictions to humanitarian access, people in Gaza continue to face desperate levels of hunger. UNRWA teams work tirelessly to reach families with aid, but the situation is catastrophic'.

On Wednesday, UNICEF had a mission to drive a truck full of nutritional and medical supplies for 10,000 children, Elder said. Their task was to deliver the aid, which was pre-approved by Israeli authorities, [a 25 mile] round trip.

'It took 13 hours and we spent eight of those around checkpoints, arguing around paperwork – ‘was it a truck or a van’,” he said. 'The reality is this truck was denied access. Those 10,000 children did not get that aid … Israel as the occupying power has the legal responsibility to facilitate that aid'.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/15/over-50000-children-in-gaza-need-treatment-for-malnutrition-un-says

-->In truth, the NYT is the newspaper of the genocide, always playing it down and hiding the dirty little secrets of Israel's mass murder. But truth will out someday, and the terrorist state of Israel will collapse, freeing millions of Palestinians. We the people can work for that day, when Israel's war crimes become visible to the entire world.

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Aljazeera:
"Attacks on US-linked businesses rattle Baghdad as anger over Gaza surges.

A dozen masked men jump out of two SUVs and a white pick-up and storm a KFC in Baghdad, smashing everything in sight before fleeing the scene. A few days earlier, similar violence played out at Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken and Chili House – all US brands popular in the Iraqi capital.

Though no one was seriously hurt, the recent attacks – apparently orchestrated by supporters of Iran-backed, anti-US militias in Iraq — reflect surging anger against the United States, Israel’s top ally, over the war in Gaza.

Iraqi governments have for years walked a delicate line between Washington and Tehran, but the eight-month war in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, has critically upped the stakes."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/7/attacks-on-us-linked-businesses-rattle-baghdad-as-anger-over-gaza-surges

-->A worldwide boycott of US products over the genocide in Gaza. It's about time, but you won't read about it in the American media.  

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Common Dreams:
"Historic, But So, So Late: Israel Added to UN's Child-Killing 'List of Shame.'

'It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,' said one Palestinian observer.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called 'List of Shame' of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068

-->The NYT covered this story, but stressed that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had also been added. That's better than the rest of the US media, which didn't cover this news at all. Child killing, when it comes to Israel, is almost always censored by the press.

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Common Dreams:
U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published Tuesday that he does not believe the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, contradicting the findings of leading human rights organizations that have documented Israel's deliberate obstruction of food aid as Palestinians die of malnutrition. ...

The U.S. Agency for International Development has also determined that Israel has unlawfully impeded the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, leading to a 'deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza [that] is unprecedented in modern history.' ...

'The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention. It is clear as day,' Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at HRW, wrote in response to Biden's TIME interview, pointing to her group's December report that found the Israeli military was 'deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-starving-gaza

-->The US media did not cover this story of Israel's purposeful starvation and Biden's denial. Starvation is almost always described as a byproduct of war, rather than a purposeful act and a crime against humanity. Could the US ever really report this brutal story?