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)

Mountains of cement rubble now mark what was once Gaza: its homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, playgrounds, university. Bereft Palestinians retrieve from rubble what little remains of their lives. This little boy is trying to retrieve books from the rubble of a mosque. Rescue crews still comb through shifting cement to retrieve bodies, hoping some will be found alive. When Israel’s tanks & bombers leave Gaza, the magnitude of psychic & physical survival is impossible to imagine.

This phase of Operation Ethnic Cleansing is part of–& an acceleration of–the economic blockade of Gaza (since 2007) where Israel allows in only measured amounts of calories per person, creating massive malnourishment; only limited amounts of medicine in a war zone when sewage facilities have been destroyed & diseases of all kinds will emerge & with people suffering massive injuries from shrapnel, burns, disfigurement. Israel bombed out the hospitals precisely to assure most would not survive. Israel embargoes building materials of all kinds, in particular cement. And when they bombed the smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border, it was to make sure there was no possibility for humanitarian aid to enter or for Gaza to rebuild–creating massive homelessness. And still the UN sees no violations of international humanitarian law.

In short, we are witness to barbaric genocide where governments remain silent because they are complicit in the crimes. But we will not remain silent. Our international commitment to solidarity has only just begun. No man or woman of good will can stand aside. We need to build international collaboration to continue protesting the blockade & demanding sanctions against Israel for genocide; we need to organize humanitarian aid to Gaza; organize teach-ins, forums, speak-outs & have Palestinian speakers tour our cities to tell the truth. We will need to build the hell out of the economic & cultural boycott of Israel. We need to do everything in our power to stop the genocide.

We have the daunting task of exposing the Exodus script as propaganda & replacing it with the truth of Palestinian justice. Many lauded the late arrival of Latin American government officials to the revolution, who took nearly three weeks to make a wimply diplomatic gesture of recalling ambassadors. Wimpy doesn’t cut it in a genocide. We need an international campaign to demand these governments sever all economic ties with Israel & use their massive resources to mobilize humanitarian aid for Gaza.

When we speak of humanitarian aid, we mean food, medicines, toiletries, appliances, books, clothing–& yes, cement & steel. But the biggest humanitarian aid of all will be to continue massive mobilizations demanding “Stop the massacre in Gaza!” “End the blockade of Gaza!”

(Photo by Sergey Ponomarev/NY Times)

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)

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)