The very worst of this phase of Operation Ethnic Cleansing has abated in Gaza but it has not ended & bombing sorties continue to take down buildings. Several people have died. Meanwhile Israel is on a propaganda blitz to attempt to undo the damage done by its murderous over four week rampage.

This propaganda offensive is sucking on the dregs because it is so hard to counter the hundreds of gruesome images of Palestinian children tweeted around the world. The primary intent is to vilify Hamas which has its problems but is not one iota responsible for this rampage. Some of the reports in “respectable” media seem more like Onion or Mad Magazine pieces; other reports draw on the methods of the scurrilous & anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” invented by czarist agents in Russia (in 1903) & which continue to feed social hatred against Jews.

One report is that a Hamas official admitted to the kidnapping of the three Zionist teens in the West Bank. Patent & provable nonsense. Another punk Palestinian who claims he’s the son of a Hamas founder is being interviewed all over the place, pretending he’s got the goods on Hamas crimes. Problem is the guy is disturbed & a traitor who worked within Palestinian politics as an undercover agent for Israel. Fox News & The Times of Israel report that a secret letter smuggled from a Palestinian within Gaza claims Hamas used forced labor to build the tunnels & then killed them all so they couldn’t identify the location of the tunnels. One video purportedly shows a Muslim child teaching how to “behead the infidel” per the Quran. Reports are also attempting to identify Hamas with ISIS in Iraq & Syria. This kind of rubbish is pouring out everywhere to sow confusion & discord. But the bombing in Gaza & the deaths of hundreds of men, women, & children in the most barbaric ways speak louder than dozens of crazy-assed lies.

Schools are opening up in just days & it’s the best time to plan educational events because many people of good want to understand what the media tries so damn hard to make inscrutable. Rallies need to continue & we need to beat the drums loudly for the boycott (BDS) of all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729)

These young men–of the “Hamas age”, so Israel considers them outside the parameters of ethnic cleansing–are trying to douse a fire after an Israeli airstrike today.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

No this is not a Hamas fighter but he a Palestinian teenager in Gaza. Media (including the NY Times) did an analysis of the death count in the latest phase of Operation Ethnic Cleansing to counter the gruesome image of so many children riddled with shrapnel & dismembered by bombs. They concluded with a smug, amoral sense of righteousness that teens–the Hamas age–were the greatest number killed. And rabid Zionists around the world heaved with vindication–not that infants had been spared, but that so many teens had died.

Israel, the US, European leaders, & that creepy Ban Ki-moon claim all the deaths were regrettable & “collateral” (a psychotic military concept invented by a US stink tank for Iraq) & entirely the political fault of Hamas. They’re beating that alibi to death to make a racist lie & vilification a cliché that becomes history.

But evidence of war crimes from Gaza testify otherwise. This young boy wraps his head with a bandolier of spent bullets left by the Israeli army near his family’s bombed out home in Beit Hanoun. Beit Hanoun is not far across the apartheid wall from the hills of Sderot, Israel, where residents made an international spectacle of their psychoses by cheering on ethnic cleansing from lawn chairs. Did the most sophisticated, high-tech military in the world use bullets to destroy those alleged cement tunnels? Or were they more likely used for “collateral” destruction–like this young boy?

Stand with Palestinians, as they stand with justice in Ferguson. Don’t let history & justice pass you by. Keep rallying to demand Israel cease the bombing & end the blockade of Gaza; & evangelize for the economic boycott of all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729).

(Photo by Hatem Moussa/AP)

Israel has temporarily abated Operation Ethnic Cleansing but solidarity activitists cannot be deceived, nor our protests ended. As long as the Israeli blockade prevails, Gaza will be unable to get equipment to remove the mountains of cement, will be unable to rebuild, thousands will be homeless with no place to live or go the toilet, will have insufficient food, no medicines or medical equipment to address life-threatening injuries reportedly sustained by over 10,000 people–& no rest from continued bombing sorties.

Media coverage of the Israeli rampage is like dispatches from a parallel universe. The US Pentagon always waited a respectable amount of time (at least a couple months each time) before they shifted explanations for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan, later echoed in media. Israel is more impetuous in their deceits. Reuters now reports: “Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 in response to a surge of rocket attacks by Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists.” This is the first we’ve heard of those rockets in July. Wasn’t the stated reason on July 8th that the assault was retaliation for the Hamas kidnapping of three Zionist kids in the West Bank? A kidnapping we (& Israel) always knew Hamas did not commit?

Israel needs the specter of “Hamas terrorism” to maintain apartheid & conduct ethnic cleansing. If Hamas did not exit, Israel would have to invent it as a foil for their barbarism. On the slight chance the unity agreement signed in April between the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by traitor Mahmoud Abbas & Hamas worked out, Israel launched a bombing assault on northern Gaza–a little over two months before Operation Protective Edge–& there were no Hamas rockets even alleged. Netan-psycho threatened Abbas: “Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other.” To make Abbas’s choice for him & to maintain the specter of Hamas terrorism, Israel used whatever artifice it could to prevent Palestinian unity.

The crisis of leadership plagues social movements around the world. It has stature as the greatest political dilemma of our era–& has been for a very long time. We see it played out in every political venue from the labor movement to social justice movements to the great struggles for self-determination like in Palestine–& Ferguson. The political weaknesses of Hamas or the PA are not reason to truncate support for the just demands of the Palestinian people. We render them solidarity & trust them to resolve their own leadership problems.

Gruesome images that continue to circulate remind us of the horrors Gaza just endured & we witnessed. It’s a reminder not to retreat from solidarity now that the worst of bombing has abated. The bombing will not cease & the blockade will not end without our continued active solidarity.

This little girl waits in a minibus as her family prepares to leave their neighborhood in Gaza City where the homes are now rubble.

Continue marching, continue educating; build the hell out of the economic boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729). As schools open up this fall (though church halls are just as good a place), it’s an ideal time for speak-outs, forums, teach-ins as part of evangelizing for justice.

(Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)