Israeli war propaganda deeply rooted in racism and colonialism

Gazan man with child August 6 2014

The truth of the matter is Palestinian parents must be worn out & frantic trying to protect their children from bombs, from being buried in cement rubble, from being embedded with flechette darts & DIME shrapnel. And then to have Israeli war propaganda & world media accuse them of using their beloved children as human shields for rocket launchers!

Beat the drums loudly for justice in Palestine. Stand with the parents & children of Gaza & answer hasbara with the truth.

Keep marching; keep boycotting all Israeli goods (barcode beginning 729).

This man & his little girl are resting in the rubble of their home in an area of Gaza which has seen some of the worst destruction. They will be among the hundreds of thousands left homeless.

(Photo by Carolyn Cole/LA Times)

Is this what hasbara means they call Palestinian children human shields?

Gaza man and child August 6 2014

This must be what Zionist apologists for ethnic cleansing mean when they claim Palestinians use their children as human shields. This man has no where to go with his small child since Israel is taking out homes, markets, mosques, hospitals, & UN refugee centers. There’s no place to go, no place to keep your children safe & where you aren’t a sitting duck. But hasbara is clinging to that human shield story because it is frantic to undo the damage of hundreds of photos of mangled & dismembered Palestinian children. Those wee martyrs have become Israel’s undoing. May they RIP.

Some witnessing this carnage are bereft that massive protests haven’t stopped Israel but if you think Israel & it’s allies aren’t sweating bullets about those protests, take a look at some of the war propaganda Zionist apologists are frantically barfing out. Some of it is completely indistinguishable from burlesque. Brigitte Gabriel, a shady, half-baked character, is the queen of farce in this regard. Gabriel, who has a couple names (probably from running from the law), is a hateful Islamophobe who claims she was used as a human shield by Palestinians in Lebanon. According to her, Palestinian fighters (in 1975-76) would park rocket launchers in front of each house, shoot off a cannon, & move on to the next house to make the evening news. You don’t have to be an artillery expert to recognize folly.

She’s a nasty piece of work too, claiming Palestinians “cannot win militarily against Israel so what they do is they use their own children as disposable collateral in order to win the war of public opinion against Israel.” She’s described by book venders as “fiercely articulate & passionately committed” when the pithy “unhinged” would be much more suitable. But when it comes to finding people to peddle this crap, beggars can’t be choosers. Hasbara takes what it can get.

This is the hay day of the Islamophobe who usually live isolated lives since even feral cats & mad dogs want nothing to do with them. A case in point would be witless, right-wing comedian Pat Condell, the UK’s own version of the contemptible Bill Maher. He posted a several-minute rant hating on Arabs who he calls “a bloody nuisance to human civilization.” Our man has no respect for anything except the sound of his own croaking. In denouncing Palestinians for using their kids as human shields he claims Hamas used child labor to build the tunnels between Gaza & Israel. Where did he get that information since Israel claims it didn’t know about those tunnels? Does our man have metaphysical sources of intelligence? Or like the rest of hasbara, does he simply make stuff up? It’s clear now why the mad dogs want no part of him, not even a ragged bone.

Hasbara thinks it really snagged a live one when they interveiwed retired Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan. To enlightened minds, not the best authority to address justice but again, beggars can’t be choosers. This interview is where you confirm crackpot Zionism has taken over the hasbara factory. He claims–contrary to IDF press releases–that Israel did not bomb a hospital & refugee center in Gaza; they were in fact bombed by misfired Hamas rockets. The rare (& entirely questionable) images of Hamas rocket damage in Israel are the size of potholes. Is our man actually claiming that one of those took out an entire hospital & a refugee center?

The only thing of value this military servant of neoliberal colonialism says is that the people of Britain have been deeply affected by the photographs of Palestinian children. To counter that, he claims Hamas falsifies these photos & includes images of Israeli children as dead Palestinian kids. His lies are even topping the state of Israel which has not claimed any deaths from Hamas except among the occupying soldiers.

This human shield story is obvious crap but it’s all Israel has got left. So this sorry-assed fool claims the high number of children killed in Gaza are because Hamas used them as human shields as a “key element of their strategy.” Listen to the jackass in his own words: “They want to lure & force Israel to kill civilians. And so you see images of dead babies, dead boys on the beach, women screaming about their children, & no reality can overcome those images. It’s understandable in a way, because it is heart-wrenching, I’ve seen firsthand what shrapnel can do to a baby, & it’s horrifying, & the problem is that there’s no reference, no open-mindedness to the fact that the only reason these children have been killed is because of Hamas’ aggression towards Israel.” The devil made them do it!

It isn’t that Hamas uses kids as a key element in their military strategy but that hasbara uses that racist accusation drawn from the rancid well of 19th century colonialism as a key element in their war propaganda.

The most powerful way to answer this racist rubbish is to continue public protests denouncing Israeli ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The official lies aren’t stacking up, millions of people have seen the photos of small Palestinian children & know that something stinks in the state of Israel. It’s up to us to hammer home the truth & stand for justice.

Stand publicly for Palestinian justice! Honor the economic boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729).

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP)

Palestinian intifada lives!

Gaza- Intifada lives August 5 2014

Supporters of Palestine around the world are worn to a frazzle with concern for Gaza because for now four weeks that small but densely populated area has been pounded with hundreds of bombing sorties every day along with bombardment from tank artillery. How could Palestinians possibly recover from such a barbaric & relentless assault!?

Never underestimate the political fortitude of people who have stood alone for 66 years against the most insuperable odds & never bent the knee to colonialism. Here a young Palestinian flashes the victory sign & holds up a map in the colors of the Palestinian flag. He’s standing in the rubble of his family’s apartment taken out by Israeli bombs in Beit Lahiya, an area where Israel simply went berserk probably to put on a good show for those sitting just across the border in their makeshift parlors in the hills of Sderot.

We hope those psychos in Sderot spot this flag with their binoculars. We should tweet it to the four corners of the globe so everyone who stood with Gaza knows: Palestinian intifada lives.

We only hope this young man knows over a million strong & growing raise our fingers in response: solidarity forever until Palestine is free.

(Photo by Adel Hana/AP)

Former terrorist Elie Wiesel has no shame

Eely Weasel ad August 5 2014

If there’s one guy who has no shame, it’s Eely Weasel–known better by his stage name, Elie Wiesel. He’s made a career grandstanding his sorrow as a holocaust survivor & after he’s spent 50 years in public weeping we’re left to wonder just how deep that font of misery goes. Or can he turn it on & off depending on remuneration?

He’s the oh-so-earnest, self-serving preacher who said: “I swore never to be silent whenever & wherever human beings endure suffering & humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Leaving us to question why he never spoke up against Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing, why he clammed up & looked ponderous while the world awaited his indictment. Is it possible our man is an utter fraud–& a rather contemptible one at that?

So now the man has spoken in a full-page ad in the NY Times & several other national papers in Chicago, LA, Miami, Washington DC (those cost big bucks & you can be sure he didn’t fork it out of his own account). It’s titled: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Drawing on the Old Testament & the holocaust (the sucker is so predictable), he accuses Hamas of using children as human shields, calls on Obama & other world leaders to denounce Hamas, & urges people to support Israel in their hour of need. You gotta hand it to the guy! He’s a real performer.

We would never demean the suffering of Jews from historic persecution, including pogroms & the holocaust of WWII. We would never accommodate modern libertarian anti-Semitism that is a devil’s brew of illuminati, Free Masons, & the Rothschilds. But don’t ask us to fall for this guy’s schtick which is a manipulation, guilt-baiting, & a source of considerable personal income serving as apologia for Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, & Zionist racism.

Zionist sources rued the ad in the NY Times was placed opposite an article “wrongly condemning Israel for attacks on Gaza’s UN schools.” They also claimed the ad was to “promote universal Jewish values in culture, media & politics.” We don’t know what those values are or how they differ from the values that all humanity honors but we do know you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim to be high-principled & at the same time refuse to condemn Israel for bombing women, elderly, disabled, children seeking refuge from ethnic cleansing.

(Image of Eely Weasel ad in NY Times)

Palestinian solidarity must carry the banner of intifada while Gaza grieves

Gazan boys August 5 2014

Solidarity can do nothing to alleviate the grief that will haunt & traumatize Gaza for a long time. Mourning loss of such epic scale is not something most of us can even imagine nor something we can salve. What solidarity can do is carry the banner of Palestinian intifada while Gazans take time to grieve & get their bearings.

The mission of solidarity has only just begun but a world movement has formed to hammer at Israeli lies & counterpose the truth of Palestinian’s just claims to live in peace in their own lands. We need rallies, forums, teach-ins, speak-outs, pickets, protests; we need to build the holy hell out of BDS, encouraging everyone to boycott all Israeli products & pressure academics & performers to refuse their gigs in Israel.

No one need longer fear to speak the truth or whisper support for Palestinians lest we provoke charges & be ostracized as anti-Semite. Speaking support for Palestine once seemed a case of the still living attending the Vampire’s Ball or the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The rosy hue of truth was not just unwelcome but vilified. Kiss that crap goodbye. The truth has been tweeted round the world now millions of times. Uninformed people of good will want to know the truth & won’t accept half-assed explanations or having the dead bony finger of hasbara pointed at them to denounce them as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews.

We need to grab this historic moment & run with it because Palestinian solidarity is no longer voices crying in the wilderness. It is now an international solidarity movement of the kind we haven’t seen since the Vietnam War. History is being remade; justice is being served. The voices of Palestine must now be heard.

Long live intifada! Take it international in solidarity with continuing rallies & honoring the economic boycott of all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729).

(Photo of boys outside their bombed-out house in Gaza City by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Crackpots are now running the hasbara factory

Gaza rubble August 5 2014

Let’s speak bluntly since diplomacy takes too much time. It’s too tedious to search for polite ways to say ugly truths. If you believe Israeli propaganda justifying ethnic cleansing, you don’t just have rocks in your head or cognitive dissonance or dissociative disorder; you need a guardian to handle your affairs.

The crackpots are now running the show in the hasbara factory. Just a review of the idiocies: Israel used a Patriot missile to shoot down a Hamas drone aircraft headed for Tel Aviv; Hamas was using specially trained skydivers for terrorist attacks in Israel; Hamas was rigging up suicide donkeys; Hamas rockets headed for Israel miraculously reversed course & landed in Gaza; Hamas has rocket launchers & tunnel accesses in homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, marketplaces, even UN-refugee centers. And the pièce de résistance of foolishness? According to Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, Palestinians booby-trap toasters & fridges in their houses.

The Exodus baloney only takes you so far, Israel. When people believe Palestinians use their children for human shields, it only shows the depth & power of racism. It exposes that Israel draws on its roots in 19th century colonialism & racism to vilify the colonized as less than human. It links Israel to modern neoliberal colonialism, the barbaric phase of capitalism, where dispossession & plunder have created millions of homeless & forced them to travel the planet looking for a home & where those who resist are shot down like animals.

But when Israel blames Palestinian children for getting killed by getting in the way of a bomb, we haven’t just entered an Onion or Mad Magazine reality. We’ve entered the Twilight Zone; we’re entering the historic moment when the Exodus myth was stripped bare of romance & exposed as colonial racism.

Look at the mountains of cement rubble that now mark Gaza & ask yourself what was Israel’s intent? To take out rocket launchers destroying Israel & menacing it’s population? After nearly four weeks of relentless carnage in Gaza, Israel has yet to produce a single photo documenting property damage in Israel from Hamas rockets. And when we say document, we do not mean a 20-second grainy image of what might just as well be an unrepaired pothole.

(Photo of Beit Lahiya by Adel Hana/AP)

Israel bombs UN refugee center in Beit Lahiya

Beit Lahiya school August 4 2014

Remember this little guy? On July 17th I did a post about him that said: “In even the worst of human tragedies, there are always moments when human beings reveal the stardust we are born from. This little guy with his baby donkey is at the UN school in Beit Lahiya (north Gaza) where his family took refuge after evacuating their home. Even in hell holes, humans can make magic.”

On July 31st, Israeli tanks shelled the Beit Lahiya school injuring over 30 people, mostly women, sleeping children & infants. It’s unclear how many died. We don’t know what happened to this beautiful child. We only know that against this hell hole we must raise hell till justice is served.

Rally for Palestine; boycott all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729).

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

The grieving children of Gaza

Gaza- grieving girl August 4 2014

This young girl is mourning the death of three family members killed when Israel bombed the Jabaliyah refugee camp in northern Gaza. We can no longer bear to look at images of bodies being recovered from rubble, of children being carried into hospitals embedded with shrapnel & disfiguring injuries, of people lying in the street in pools of blood. It’s more than we can bear & our nightmare is this girl’s life.

Until now, the Exodus fiction had people swooning for Israel (even though it has to be the most boring epic film Hollywood ever made). Even Paul Newman’s good looks & Andy Williams crooning schmaltz couldn’t save it’s sorry ass. But the myth prevailed in propaganda form. Well that hasbara can now bend over & kiss it’s ass goodbye. The decades of vilifying & stereotyping Palestinians as terrorists & suicide bombers can bend over with it. The truth is out–bombed to smithereens &, one could even say, tweeted to death.

A new era is begun: the era of truth & justice & solidarity with Palestine; the era of calling the bantustate swindle what it is & fighting for a democratic secular state where Jews & Palestinians can live as brother & sister.

We are so sorry to our Palestinian brothers & sisters that we could not stay the hand of genocide & they have suffered so unbearably. But justice is on the march & “there aint no stoppin’ us now!”

All out for Gaza! Honor the economic boycott of Israeli products (barcode beginning 729)

(Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Homeless in Gaza

Gaza- homeless August 4 2014

This forlorn man is carrying the few belongings he salvaged from his bombed out house in the village of Khuzaa in central Gaza. He really has no place to go & certainly no place to hide from Israeli bombers & tanks. He’s got no toothbrush, no soap, no clean underwear, no clean shirt & all the comforts & accoutrements of his life are buried in rubble.

Does he know Palestinians no longer stand alone? That over a million people all around the world are in the streets in a thunderous chorus demanding justice for Palestine? Has he heard the news that a historic shift is taking place–not just what they call a paradigm shift but a power dynamic like the movement that helped the Vietnamese people defeat the US military which, until then, seemed invincible?

The bombing is still going on, they’re still recovering bodies & the injured from the rubble, Gaza is grieving & burying the dead, despondence is unavoidable; it will take a while before the spirit of intifada can rise from the rubble & the ashes. But when it does emerge, we need to be there campaigning on every front that forges solidarity: marching, speaking out, touring Palestinians, honoring those who served so admirably in Gaza, & evangelizing for the economic boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729).

How dare Israel & it’s US & European allies think they could go this far in the age of Twitter & social media when hasbara could be discredited & exposed in a trice & in a million tweets?

Long live Palestinian intifada–the spirit of resistance to Israeli apartheid & ethnic cleansing! Take it international with solidarity? Palestine will be free!

(Photo by Oliver Weiken/EPA)

Using feminism to support ethnic cleansing

Weeping women of Gaza August 4 2014

Hasbara is bringing out the heavy artillery now–nothing lower caliber than feminism to justify targeting children in Gaza. It worked so well to justify the US-NATO war in Afghanistan they decided to give it a go in Gaza. They must have complete meatheads running the hasbara operation these days.

An article in the UK journal called New Scientist dated August 1st, 2014 is titled “The reasons why Gaza’s population is so young.” Demographics & babies are always a primary concern to colonial powers. The young represent potential rebellion & in Gaza continued intifada, so Israel & it’s colonial allies keep close watch on just how many kids Palestinians are having.

The article cites a few different studies–one more imbecilic than the next. There’s an unfortunate schnook in Oslo named Jon Pedersen whose academic reputation may never recover from his public idiocies. Our man Pedersen says women in Gaza working outside the home & seeking a career are significantly lower than in other Arab countries “with similar cultures to Gaza.” Presumably Saudi Arabia is not included. Not content with leaving bad enough alone when it comes to idocy, Pedersen elaborates that while women are housebound, their husbands earn more money the more kids they have: “Traditionally, men will get extra wages if they have extra children.” Well that’s not a bad system at all if you have kids to feed, but our man is simply talking through his ass, which is what makes him so suitable for hasbara. The estimated unemployment rate in Gaza due in large part to the Israeli embargo is 41 percent. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics bases that rate on the number of people actively looking for work, not the total number of those unemployed. It’s the embargo, stupid! Not the unwilllingness of Palestinian women to work.

The second study they report was headed by Sara Randall, an English anthropologist, who claims: “Palestinian women are not having lots of children because they don’t know about contraception or can’t access contraception. So one has to conclude that they actually want lots of children.” Randall’s study concluded it was intifada driving the birth rate in Gaza & our man in Oslo agrees. Pedersen says Hamas is urging women to pump out babies “to create a larger army” while Randall acknowledges some measure of oppression (without identifying it’s source as the Israeli embargo) but says “Reproduction is one of the few liberties which remains, & also contributes to the larger goal of increasing the Palestinian people.” How demeaning can you get?

But these foolish studies are small potatoes. Hasbara really thinks it’s using big guns when it quotes the Somali-born Islamophobe named Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You may not have heard of her, though she’s built quite a career hating on Islam, but when you know she married Niall Ferguson, that should situate her politically. Meatheads of a feather creating their own little demographic nightmare. Ferguson is a well-schooled smug fellow, pickled in neoliberal apologetics, & spouting some of the silliest & most loathsome historical theories humankind has seen since “Mein Kampf.”

Ali bills herself as a feminist & if you consider Hillary Clinton a feminist, why not include Ali too? If you think war mongering, religious intolerance, & social hatred are compatible with feminism, why not invite Henry Kissinger to the party?

Hasbara doesn’t give a rat’s ass about feminism or about the oppression of women. Witness the unseemly campaign conducted on Facebook by Israeli women writing pro-war graffiti on their naked torsos to cheer on Israeli bombers & tanks. These attempts to degrade Palestinian women while Israel attempts to exterminate them are unspeakable & feminists around the world need to thunderously denounce this crap for the war propaganda it is.

We don’t concern ourselves with Palestinian demographics; we leave that to the women of Gaza. We don’t care how many kids they have or why. Our job is to defend the women, men, & children of Gaza against ethnic cleansing. And that’s that!

These women are outside the morgue at the hospital in Jabaliya where their family member & 14 others are being prepared for burial after an Israeli bomber took out a school the UN used as a refugee center. Our deepest condolences.

Long live intifada! Take it international in solidarity with rallies & honoring the economic boycott of Israel (barcodes beginning 729).

(Photo by Carolyn Cole/LA Times)