Israeli soldiers fire on unarmed protesters in Gaza

Gaza city protesters (Mohammed Abed:AFP:Getty Images) Oct 10 2015

To understand the art of propaganda, to really get a belly-full of the stuff, you just have to read coverage about the Israeli rampage against unarmed Palestinians. Its cleverness lies in omissions & evasions, half-truths & utter lies. And even with that, it’s still dumb-ass. Because the crimes of apartheid are so egregious.

Palestinians in Gaza wanted rightly to express political solidarity with those under military siege in East Jerusalem & the West Bank & about 200 gathered to protest near the apartheid barrier between Israel & Gaza. According to the Israeli army (the last source one would go to for verification but the only source media uses), they came too close to the fence & trespassed the no-go buffer zone imposed by Israel. They also allegedly threw rocks & rolled burning tires toward the army on the other side of the fence. Of course if the army weren’t deployed there, there’d have been no problem.

But it doesn’t matter whether the Palestinians in Gaza threw rocks or not. They could stand there twirling hula hoops or doing pirouettes in tutus & the Israeli military would consider a gathering defiance because what they are trying to crush is Intifada–the spirit of popular rebellion against colonialism & apartheid. Since they haven’t been able to crush it in Gaza after three carpet bombing sieges, Israel recognizes it has a problem–especially in the face of growing BDS.

In an act that surely violates umpteen international laws governing occupation & dealing with unarmed civilians, Israeli troops began firing across the fence at protesters. An army spokesperson said the soldiers “fired at the main instigators in order to halt their advance & disperse the riot.” And Reuters ate that up & published it as the gospel truth.

Six Palestinians were killed & at least 13 more were injured. Reuters tried to soften the blow of shooting down unarmed people by saying “the Islamist movement Hamas is calling for more unrest.” And damn well they should! There needs to be unrest all over this planet against Israeli soldiers shooting down unarmed protesters giving the victory sign.

The photo is the protest fired on by Israeli soldiers.

We stand with our brothers & sisters in Gaza. We are all Palestinians!

Build the boycott of Israel & pull out the forces of solidarity in emergency rallies demanding no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

Armed Israeli goon squads in the West Bank against unarmed Palestinians

Thugs

The caption to this photo in a Reuters report said: “Israeli security guards carry their weapons during clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron, October 9 2015.” Doesn’t it look straight out of the movie “Exodus,” which romanticized Zionist terrorists & death squads taking over Palestine as freedom fighters? So has Israel deputized the settlers now as “security guards” & adjuncts to the army so they can go after unarmed Palestinian protesters with assault weapons?

On the same news day, Reuters had a headline saying: “US says it considers violent acts against Israel as terrorism.” John Kirby from the US State Department tried to talk out of both sides of his ass when he said the US “condemns in the strongest possible terms violence against both Israeli & Palestinian citizens.” But then he continued his flatulent condemnation by saying the US considers the violence, the “stabbings & killings there, particularly in East Jerusalem, as terrorism.”

After the bombing of the hospital in Afghanistan, does the US have a moral leg to stand on to condemn anything, anywhere, anyhow? More importantly, what about the killings & shootings & barbarisms against Palestinians at Al-Aqsa, in East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank? What about the marauding death squads in the West Bank, the deputized thugs with assault weapons going after Palestinians with sling shots?

There’s only one way to cut the crap on all this & that is to hold emergency rallies around the world in defense of Palestinians demanding no aid to apartheid Israel & to build the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel (BDS).

(Photo by Mussa Issa Qawasma)

Media’s sleazy coverage of Israeli rampage against Palestinians

Crybaby boy

The Guardian-UK has the headline: “Six dead as violence continues in Israel & Palestinian territories.” Calling it “violence” rather than a a violent rampage by Israeli soldiers is a foxy way of equating Palestinian self-defense to aggression when the article goes on to show that the people getting killed are Palestinians shot by IDF soldiers.

This photo is another example of that kind of sleazy journalism which prevailed in media until BDS turned that narrative on its ass. The caption says: “An ultra-Orthodox Jewish teenager is treated by a medical team after he was stabbed by a Palestinian man in Jerusalem. An 18-year-old Palestinian was arrested after a 16-year-old Jewish teenager was stabbed near a main road separating Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods from Palestinian districts.” This is one of those stories where the devil is in the details.

Where was our ultra-Orthodox lad when he got stabbed? And what was he doing there? Was he in a gang of extremists at the Noble Sanctuary compound trying to get entry to vandalize the mosque? Was he taunting or beating on a Palestinian? Was he prowling East Jerusalem looking for trouble with Palestinians who not only can’t pray without soldiers standing over them but who are under martial law? Or was he just ambling down the street in a martial law zone minding his own business? We trust his injuries are minor, if existent at all, but would like to know what happened to the alleged attacker. Pardon us if our credulity has been taxed to the max by 67 years of lies.

From the NY Times to Israeli tabloids, the story is Palestinians are getting shot after attempting to stab Israelis. But according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, in just the last ten days, 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers & 1,000 were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets, live ammunition, tear gas inhalation & suffocation. Some Palestinians, like in Gaza, are getting fatally shot at protests, some at checkpoints. An unarmed Israeli Palestinian woman with her hands in the air was shot in cold blood at a petrol station. Can Israel report a single incident of a fatality where the perpetrator was Palestinian & not just alleged to be? For that matter, outside the death of the two Israeli couples allegedly by Palestinian gunmen, can they point to any fatalities or injuries at all? Because 1,000 injured Palestinians is a daunting comparison.

Palestinians grieve & bury their dead–as those in Kashmir also do–with massive political protests honoring their martyrs. Their losses are profound. Our solidarity must also be massive with emergency rallies & building the hell out of the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel (BDS).

(Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

Obama’s worthless apology for bombing hospital

Obomba

Obama–putting on his somber face rather than the toothy grin thing–apologized for bombing the hospital in Afghanistan. He can take that apology & stuff it where the sun don’t shine. You cannot apologize for the bombing of a hospital that went on for one & a-half hours. Fires from the bombing burned for hours, explaining why 24 staff & nine patients are still missing. As Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have made quite clear, it was a war crime because they repeatedly alerted the US it was a hospital. Exactly like Israel in Gaza.

Media is reporting it was a rare apology. Of course it is. The US negotiated & bullied Afghanistan for months into a bilateral security agreement exempting its personnel from prosecution for war crimes. The only reason Obama apologized for this war crime is because he got nailed by the authoritative MSF & couldn’t weasel his way out.

This bombing follows on revelations that between 2012-13, Green Beret operatives in Afghanistan tortured, disappeared, & murdered 17 Afghan civilians whose bodies were uncovered outside the US military base after the Green Berets were driven out of the area by protests against the murders. No apology has been forthcoming.

There was also no apology in 2012 when Robert Bales, a US soldier massacred 16 Afghan civilians; nor for the mass murder of 800 surrendered Taliban in 2001 when US bombers pummeled their prison for three days; nor for the mass murder of at least 1,500 surrendered Taliban prisoners suffocated to death in closed metal shipping containers & later dumped in mass graves; nor for Bagram, the infamous prison the CIA operates for purposes of torture. These are the best known incidents but barbarism is the nature of high-tech war.

There’s no apologizing for these crimes. They’re too monstrous, too unspeakable. Obama is made of the same moral sewage as Kissinger & Netanyahu. That’s why the most imperative need is to re-build the international antiwar movement, a movement that can organize war crime tribunals to hold these monsters accountable.

No US war in Afghanistan! No US war in Iraq! Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US-NATO personnel including their mercenary forces. Out now!

(Photo of Obama should be a mug shot)

Refugees with disabilities from land mines in Afghanistan

Afghan amputee:refugee at Lesbos (AP Photo:Santi Palacios) Oct 9 2015

We aren’t told anything about these two men except they’re Afghan refugees who just arrived on a dinghy to the Greek island of Lesbos & that the one fellow is preparing his prosthetic leg to start walking immediately. That’s one tough & determined guy who before boarding the dinghy had already crossed overland 4102 km/2549 miles.

There are many reasons a person could become an amputee, including things like infections & tumors, but when a guy comes from Afghanistan it’s morethan likely he’s one of the over 25,000 people who had a limb blown off by a land mine. Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world due to the USSR occupation & the US-NATO war. They estimate there are still 10 million land mines & that one million Afghans live within 500 meters of one. And of course, US bombers are still dropping them.

For those who would defend the shameful USSR occupation, they dropped thousands of cluster munitions that looked like toy butterflies. When children chased them in delight, hundreds were blown up or disabled. That’s not liberation; it’s barbarism. That’s the thing about land mines–they don’t discriminate & children are as often victims as seniors.

An interesting thing about the Associated Press (AP) caption to this photo is the comment, “More than 500,000 people have arrived in the European Union this year seeking sanctuary or jobs.” The AP think they’re being foxy here by running interference for the EU which is already beginning to separate out political from economic refugees. Those determined to be the latter will be denied asylum & deported. Since the distinction is completely fallacious, not to mention despicable, many fleeing from war like the fellows here may be deported. Nobody crosses over 4000 km on a prosthetic leg just looking for a job.

Immigration is a human right! Open the damn borders! End the US-NATO war in Afghanistan!

(Photo by Santi Palacios/AP)

Israeli pogroms against Palestinians escalate

Friday prayers in E Jerusalem (Ahmad Gharabli:AFP:Getty Images) Oct 9 2015

Since Israel has for many months denied men under 50 years-old entry to Al-Aqsa mosque, they gather to pray in the public streets. Now, with Israel’s violent rampage against Palestinians, there are scenes like this all over occupied-East Jerusalem: steroidal riot cops standing over men kneeling in prayer. This man is in Ras al-Amud, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem long a center of conflict between Israeli settlers & Palestinian residents.

There is nothing about this current Israeli rampage that is not alarming. There is a video of an Israeli Palestinian woman in a gas station with her hands in the air as she is circled by several Israeli cops with assault weapons who shoot her in cold blood. That is what’s going on–not Palestinians rising up with knives in their hands stabbing innocent Israelis, as much of media reports.

This rampage is a provocation to Palestinians so Israel can justify coming down with the full force of their arsenal on unarmed Palestinians to destroy political resistance to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, incarceration & torture in the gulag, the blockade of Gaza, & dispossession.

Emergency rallies are imperative along with building the economic, cultural, & economic boycott of Israel (BDS) & demanding no aid of any kind to apartheid Israel.

(Photo byAhmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)

Photo-op gone bad between EU commissioner for immigration & Eritrean refugee

Eritrean refugees & Euro guy ( (AP Photo:Andrew Medichini)) Oct 9 2015

The classy-looking fool on the left is the EU’s commissioner for immigration patronizing this Eritrean refugee for a regrettable photo-op where he comes off not looking suave but like a jackass. The looks on the three men’s faces can only be called priceless–or even revenge.

The ever-so-suave jackass is making a big production of seeing them off to Sweden as part of a group of 19 Eritreans granted asylum there. Nice job EU. In several months, that’s 19 down, 499,981 to go.

What’s not amusing is that behind the smarmy photo-op, thousands of refugees will be deported back to their home or a third country without due process.

Immigration is a human right! Open the damn borders!

(Photo by Andrew Medichini/AP)

The connections between Palestinians, Kashmiris, & Rohingya Muslims

As we witness the extremes of violence perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians, we should remember there is another Intifada going on in Kashmir which receives as little media coverage as Palestinian Intifada once did–where young & old stand defiant armed only with with rocks against the brutal occupation of 700,000 Indian soldiers.

Most people have no idea what has been going on in Kashmir because there is a news blackout. It is a killing field where four million Muslims are subject to arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial assassinations, disappearances, mass graves, rape, torture, curfews, checkpoints.

The deepening alliance between Israel & India is not coincidental at all; nor is the growing alliance between Israel & the Myanmar regime which is engaged in the brutal ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

When we do educational work to build solidarity with Palestine, we can yoke these other struggles (through inviting speakers from them) in the spirit of solidarity & help to bring them out of the shadows where so many violent human rights crimes are perpetrated.