From lawn chairs to setting up the parlor so they don’t miss a moment of the ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza. When we say there is a deep psychosis in Zionism that makes it irredeemable, this would be the proof. We need to continue anatomizing this rancid ideology but this scene would be the pièce de résistance of condemnation.
(Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)
This Palestinian man from the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza is holding & pointing to flechette darts in his bombed-out home. Flechette shells are anti-personnel weapons fired from tanks which explode in air & release thousands of metal darts. Remarkably, they are not prohibited under international humanitarian law. Maybe if they shoot a few up Ban Ki-moon’s ass the UN will change its mind. In 2002 the Israeli Supreme Court upheld their legality for military use by the IDF–a done deal, if there ever was one. An unidentified Israeli military source said they were only used against “legitimate military targets in accordance with international law” but didn’t specify that “legitimate targets” included small children & anybody within shooting distance of those tanks.
They’ve been around a long while since they were invented by deranged but well-remunerated scientists in the US. Israel used them in Lebanon & in Gaza in it’s 2008-2009 phase of Operation Ethnic Cleansing. The pieties of international law have never stopped Israel from deploying illegal weapons. In the 2008-2009 assault they used artillery shells containing white phosporous which caused many agonizing deaths & massive burn injuries.
Things are really breaking down on the propaganda front for Israel. So while a few days ago, The Washington Post was calling for the complete destruction of Gaza, now they’re bringing on a liberal Zionist rabbi calling for “radical empathy” on both sides. She doesn’t like the vitriolic language or strident voices that “ignore or deny the painful narrative of the other.”
Just dripping in empathy she says we need to hear “pro-Palestinian voices that empathize with the Israelis racing for shelter, that denounce terrorism & rocket attacks, & that refuse to tolerate any anti-Semitic tropes masquerading as criticism of Israeli policy.” And, she goes on, “We need to hear pro-Israel voices expressing authentic grief at the deaths of Palestinian children, calling for protection for civilian populations, acknowledging the damage inflicted by 47 years of occupation, and denouncing any language that dehumanizes Palestinians or Muslims.” Well isn’t she the very soul of graciousness.
We share her concern at the rise of anti-Semitic violence around the world but why does she try to vilify Palestinian supporters as the perpetrators? She claims protesters against the slaughter in Gaza held up signs saying “Hitler was right” & encouraging reading of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Golly, we’d sure like to see some documentation of that accusation & we wonder how in the hell she spotted those signs in the sea of placards demanding Israel stop the massacre in Gaza. But we’re still waiting for documentation of property damage in Israel from those Hamas rocket attacks.
In her homilietic she says radical empathy will “force us to see the humanity of the other, to reject hate speech & violence, & ultimately to demand a political solution that protects the human rights of Palestinians & Israelis.” But why is her sermon addressed mainly to Palestinian supporters? We’re not the ones sitting in the hills of Sderot cheering on ethnic cleansing? We’re not supporting a government & military engaged in ethnic cleansing. We’re on the record as publicly opposing it.
Behind the smarmy mask of empathy & noblesse oblige is the–at this point in time–hopelessly stupid proposal for a bantustate solution. Behind the smarm is the refusal to face the moral, political, & criminal bankruptcy of Zionism & a shameful attempt to portray Palestinians defending themselves with homemade rockets as morally equivalent to one of the mightiest military apparatuses on the planet.
It is not those who stand with Gaza against ethnic cleansing who need sermons on empathy. Nice try rabbi, but your smarmy homiletics & unsubstantiated accusations don’t cut it. You need to direct your sermons to Israel & your condemnations too. And by the way, if Palestinians use epithets against those psychos in the Knesset & the hills of Sderot cheering on the murder of their children, well, “bombs & mortars will break your bones; words will never hurt you.” So shove your smarm & your phony homiletics.
Long live Palestinian intifada! Take it international in rallies & in honoring the economic boycott of Israel (barcodes beginning 729, 500, 871)
(Photo by Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images)
This young boy embraces his small sister who was killed in an Israeli attack on Rafah, Gaza, as they drive to the cemetery to bury her. Does such grief need elaboration? Could words be anything but intrusive? Is this how you mourn a human shield?
Twitter this, Israel!
(Photo by Anne Paq)
War propaganda to justify ethnic cleansing becomes more irrational with every day. The media caption to this photo said “A fresh wave of violence killed dozens in Gaza.” “A fresh wave of violence” from whom? Killer bees? Those evil fairies again? Or Israeli bombs, mortars, flechette shells, DIME shrapnel? We’re told the UN & US proposed ceasefire “collapsed.” How does a ceasefire collapse? When Israel ignores it (again) & starts bombing market places & refugee centers? An Israeli soldier was killed trying to take out small Palestinian children & this was denounced furiously by Israel & the US as kidnapped by Hamas. Odd that, since the US has never raised a peep of objection when Israel tosses hundreds of Palestinian kids into its gulag & terrorizes, tortures, & threatens them. But “kidnapped” in a war; isn’t that what they call a POW when Hamas isn’t involved?
This despondent looking little Palestinian girl is trying to eat something sitting in the rubble of her home destroyed by Israeli bombs yesterday. The trauma of small children must be unbearable to endure & wrenching for parents to witness because there are no reassurances they all won’t die in the next airstrike. World media will simply report–with a treachery & psychosis pro forma in journalistic coverage of Gaza–that hundreds of Palestinians died when they parked their kids in front of Hamas rocket launchers or at the entrance to those imaginary tunnels–& Israel, regretting the carnage, had to bomb them into smithereens..
The international solidarity movement that refuses to accept racist propaganda to support ethnic cleansing has an immense mission: to continue mobilizing, speaking out, educating, explaining until we’re blue in the face because Palestinians under siege cannot. We have a commitment to justice & cannot give an inch to despondence when Israel & its supporters do not bend immediately to our demands. Keep this little girl in mind; keep justice in mind–& continue to tell the truth & demand an end to the slaughter.
Protests continue worldwide; the boycott of Israeli products must expand (barcode beginning 729, 871, & 500). Stop the massacre in Gaza!
(Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)
It has to be said bluntly, without hedging, that Zionism has a deeply psychotic tendency–not something peripheral to Zionism but part of it’s very nature. This murderous assault on Gaza shows hasbara falling apart at the seams, unable to render a coherent explanation of why they are bombing children & refugee centers. But worse, it exposes Zionist ideology as cultural dry rot debasing & corrupting the very soul of its adherents.
We see it not only in people like Netan-psycho-yahu, Regev, Dermer, & other Israeli leaders but in Israelis who sit in lawn chairs & cheer on ethnic cleansing; in the claim that Palestinians use their children as human shields; in the IDF soldier who boasted on Instagram of killing thirteen Palestinian children like he was shooting squirrels; in the roving goon squads in Israel going after peace protesters & Palestinians. We see it in media like The Jerusalem Post or the Washington Post, urging the complete destruction of Gaza, or The Times of Israel, explaining why genocide is appropriate for Gaza. Such hatred sucks the breath right out of you. Such hatred is the dry rot of Zionism heralding it’s demise.
Hasbara can’t explain the hundreds of photos of Palestinian children mangled, dismembered, laden with shrapnel, traumatized that have circulated hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter & social media. That’s when they bring out their most troubled, conscienceless apologists like Phillippe Assouline, a UCLA doctoral student who bills himself a lawyer, free lance journalist, & peace activist. (And I’m a monkey’s uncle.) ASSouline has been writing hasbara for a while now, including for The Times of Israel, a right-wing tabloid that tries to make up in sensationalism & venom what it lacks in journalism. In his insipid style (his hatred doesn’t compensate for lack of talent), he opposes BDS, defended the November 2012 Israeli bombing siege of Gaza, & now this stage of Operation Ethnic Cleansing, which is looking more & more like the “final solution.” But genocide of Palestinians does not make our man squeamish one iota.
ASSouline’s a smarmy fellow; bold-faced lying is his stock in trade & there is no indignity in that realm he won’t stoop to. In an August 1st article in The World Post entitled, “Pornography of Pain: Why the Heartbreaking Images Out of Gaza Are Hurting the Palestinians,” he swears he’s seen Hamas launch rockets from their schools & homes & use children as human shields. (And I’ve seen images of the Virgin Mary in a grapefruit tree out back.) So hasbara has tasked him with explaining all those mutilated children & we should not doubt for a moment, remunerate him handsomely for services rendered.
Well listen to our man speak about those photos of children–the same photos that most human beings in the world view aghast in horror: “Preying on human emotions as a proxy for journalism, even where sprinkled with facts, may be good for ratings–like fear and sex–but it has turned too much of the coverage out of Gaza into little more than snuff with a halo.” Don’t miss the image he creates of deceased & beloved Palestinian children: “snuff with a halo.” That’s his version of Netan-psycho’s “telegenically dead” Palestinian children. Take a moment to catch your breath. He goes on to say “This macabre sensationalism also distorts our perception.” Oh that it does all right! It strips that Exodus narrative right down to it’s bony ass to expose hate & racism as all that’s left to justify a Jewish-only state.
Hasbara might want to take ASSouline out of service. To equate the gruesome deaths of children with sexual snuff films is something only a pervert & a Zionist could conjure. This photo is Palestinians outside a hospital in Khan Younis, a center of much Israeli bombing, holding their noses against the smell of death as bodies recovered from cement rubble are delivered to the morgue. Sergey Ponomarev, the freelance photojournalist covering Gaza for the NY Times said: “That’s the way this city lives now–one funeral to another, hiding from bombs & collecting the dead.”
All out in solidarity with Gaza! Long live intifada! Take it international by rallying & boycotting all Israeli products (barcodes beginning 729 & 500).
(Photo by Sergey Ponomarev/NY Times)
Just to be clear, this unexploded shell in Gaza is what Israel is dropping on homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, refugee centers hoping to take out all of Gaza’s children in the name of Exodus, the messianic mission invented by Hollywood scriptwriters which Zionists thought had become official history.
But bombs have a way of forcing truth to be heard. It isn’t that this time Israel went too far because they’ve been violently engaged in ethnic cleansing for over 66 years. It’s that this time, Palestinians laid the groundwork of understanding in the international movement of Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS). There’s a historic shift against Israel & Andy Williams crooning The Exodus Song doesn’t cut it any more. Millions of people around the world know something isn’t stacking up in the explanations rendered.
After nearly four weeks of slaughter, many protesters feel overwhelmed by the odds against Gaza & they are monumental. Some ask, what’s the point of all those protests since Israel isn’t stopping the bombing? The Vietnamese gave best testimony to the power of massive public opposition & held the international antiwar movement in the highest esteem. Other exposures of US policy like the “Pentagon Papers” gave further testimony by revealing the US made no moves in Vietnam without gauging the antiwar response. You can’t stamp your foot a couple times & expect to bring tyranny to it’s knees. For that a sustained, relentless movement is required.
This is not the time to be daunted by the weight of Israel with a military arsenal supplied by the US & a propaganda arsenal by world media. The Palestinians haven’t let that stop intifada in 66 years of standing alone. So enough with the disillusionment, it’s time to organize. All out this weekend demanding “Stop the massacre in Gaza!”
(Photo by Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)
This is a photo of Palestinians running from Israeli soldiers following a protest against the slaughter in Gaza outside the Ofer prison, an Israeli military prison & the site of frequent Palestinian protests. Ofer prison is near Ramallah in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers don’t just excessively use tear gas against Palestinians protesters; they use stink bombs, stun grenades, & live ammunition & in fact have already killed young activists in the West Bank protesting the slaughter in Gaza.
What’s interesting about this photo is it typifies photojournalism from the West Bank & makes it appear Palestinian intifada is a handful of young holligans with rocks. A far more compelling sight would be the reportedly 50,000 protesters near Ramallah a few days ago or the 30,000 Palestinians who marched yesterday in the West Bank city of Hebron. Both marches were confronted by Israeli jackboots using live ammunition. There have been some deaths & dozens of injuries inflicted. You have to hunt high & low to find photos of those massive protests which apparently didn’t pique the interest of editors but are mighty interesting to the rest of us because of the remarkable Palestinian defiance of the Israeli jackboot occupation in the West Bank.
Palestinians have been vilified in the most insidious & repugnant way as terrorists by Israeli propaganda because they defy the nonsense of the Exodus narrative claiming God promised Palestine to Jews so Palestinians have to pack up & get out or be violently dispossessed. There are even Zionists who claim they moved from Iowa or New Jersey or wherever the hell because they feel a mystical affinity with Palestine. Mystical affinity, my ass! Most of us feel mystical affinities getting deals at a flea market so mysticism must really go into high gear when you get land & all sorts of perks for free just by claiming you’re Jewish & moving to Israel. Jews in the Americas or Europe have no more affinity to Palestine than those of Celtic descent have to the Rhineland.
Stand with Palestinian justice this weekend by getting to the nearest rally demanding “Stop the genocide in Gaza!” Honor the economic boycott of Israeli products (barcode beginning 729).
(Photo by Majdi Mohammed/AP)