A dramatic scene at the Great Return March today where Israeli snipers face off against protesters ‘armed’ with Palestinian flags.
Israel has absolutely no right to place snipers & tanks at the apartheid barrier with Gaza to prevent Palestinians from peacefully protesting for the right of millions of refugees to return home. When we see the carnage Israel is wreaking on unarmed Palestinians, we marvel that they continue to protest, knowing they might be shot or disabled. If we play our role in building solidarity, the whole world will know what Israel is doing & all the Israeli propaganda in the world will not undo the images of who the real terrorists are in the conflict between Palestinians & Israeli apartheid & genocide.
A protester at the Great Return March today who knows the world is watching urging us to honor & build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel to end apartheid & genocide.
There are several photos of Palestinian protesters at the Great Return March today using tennis rackets to return tear gas canisters. The photos were posted with the comment that were it not for the occupation & live bullets that take young people’s lives, they might be professional tennis players.
The Great Return March resumes today in Gaza & their supporters around the world dread to hear how many more will be shot down by Israeli snipers. There were protest rallies in solidarity with Palestinians in Turkey & Jakarta. They need to spread around the world so that our anxieties become action.
This woman at the Great Return March today is gathering tires to burn to shield protesters from the Israeli snipers. She isn’t quite the image Israel wants projected of the ‘Palestinian terrorist.’
This is a photo of the armored vehicle running down & killing Adil Ahmed on May 5th. Some reports say he was protesting in Srinagar against the killing of civilians; his mother said he had stepped out from the shop where he stitched schoolbags to support his family. He was also a student. He was only in his teens. Police authorities initially called it a road accident but even if it is properly investigated & acknowledged as a criminal act, it will not be prosecuted because of India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which grants complete impunity for occupying forces from criminal prosecution. AFSPA originates in British legislation during the colonial era. The US coercively brokers similar agreements in Iraq & Afghanistan. The colonial character of AFSPA & the US security agreements is manifest not just in impunity for criminality but in vesting the Indian army with legal jurisdiction over Kashmir so that Kashmiris have no recourse to seek justice. The same is true for Iraqis & Afghans under the US agreements.
It’s conceivable, although not likely, that it was an accident. But since there was a protest going on against the civilian killings in an area of Srinagar that is congested, the armored convoy should have been traveling at a snail’s pace instead of clipping along. What makes the crime more than criminal negligence & vehicular homicide is that the armored truck did not stop when it ran over Adil but continued on leaving him to die on the street, making it also a human rights crime. It cannot be called a war crime since only one side is armed.
This is a moving video of Adil’s family speaking about his loss:
Is it true that both the New Testament & the Quran tell you to turn the other cheek? “Vengeance is mine, I shall repay” saith the Lord in the Old Testament. But why should God have all the fun? Maybe saints are made by long-suffering abuse but I say forego the halo since it is never sane nor healthy for the oppressed to tolerate indignity & insult. It makes you feel small to stand there taking abuse without standing up for yourself. If you think about the times in your life that you regret, it is usually when you let someone run you around the block. I’m not disagreeing with God but just saying that maybe when those books were written he had no idea just how bad things were gonna get. Think of standing your ground not so much vengeance as pedagogy of the hard-scrabble kind.
There were reportedly massive anti-Putin protests in Russia in at least 90 cities but media coverage has been appalling. That’s probably due to repression of journalists & perhaps restrictions on foreign media access. Russian working people are a sleeping behemoth which when roused to action are a formidable force for change. Same with China. Same with the US.
It would be wise for people to distinguish between the Arab regimes & the Arab peoples whose interests in every single country are at odds. Or what were the Arab Spring uprisings all about? Assad propagandists have resurrected a skewed pan-Arabist mythology about the Syrian people being of one mind & breathing in sync with Assad–except for the head-chopping Wahhabi/Salafi terrorists, of course–but in autocratic & capitalist societies there is an unbreachable chasm between working people & rulers.
If you’re not a military strategist or what Assad propagandists call a geopolitical analyst, there are no glib explanations for why Iran launched rockets from Syria at the Golan Heights which is illegally occupied by Israel or why Israel retaliated with risky bombing sorties over military targets in Syria. With so many military forces operating in Syria, all with conflicting military & political goals–except for destroying the Syrian Arab Spring uprising–it’s a risky business they’re all engaged in. The possibility of Armageddon comes to mind. It does appear Israel is taking an independent course from the US-coalition because of how it sees the threat from Iran. This is a complicated, contradictory scenario & sustained study & analysis is required, not off the cuff vituperations.
We don’t have to understand what the hell is going on in the mind of the Iranian regime or of Netanyahu, who is presently in Russia collaborating with Putin. As principled antiwar people, our response is to denounce & oppose Iranian & Israeli bombing & to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.
This photo, supplied by Syrian state media, allegedly shows Israeli missiles hitting military targets in Damascus, Syria.
When I see a former ally in the antiwar movement post an article from Global Research, an Assadist & libertarian journal, or from fascists Bartlett or Beeley, I must admit to feeling kind of sad. At least before my adrenalin acts up. But then I remember many of them were latecomers to antiwar politics & got sucked into the orbit of Stalinist socialist groups who were part of the Minneapolis antiwar movement–& not an easy part to deal with. The attraction to Stalinism has always escaped me even in my most naive days. Just before I retired to Texas from Minnesota, a group of those antiwar activists formed a study group & the first readings were from the collected writings of Joseph Stalin–not to understand autocracy & tyranny but as though he were a political teacher. It’s no wonder they became supporters of Assad since Assadism is very much the grotesque amalgam of fascism with Stalinism. That isn’t where those naive activists hoped to end up. But it’s where they are. Because you can’t short-circuit democracy & you can’t justify dictatorship.
