Of the 5.5 million registered Syrian refugees, 50 percent are female & over 51 percent are children under 17 years of age. Of course like Palestinian & Rohingya refugees, many are unregistered with the UN. Census & UN estimates disagree markedly but various sources report that there are at least 3.5 million Syrians living in refugee camps in Turkey, over 2 million in Lebanon, over a million in Jordan, 500,000 to 2,500,000 in Saudi Arabia, over a million in other Arab countries, & at least a million in Europe.

Much of the political accounting for the betrayals of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising will come from the refugees & the children growing up in refugee camps, as we have seen with the Palestinian struggle. In that regard, it is of note that Syrian bombers & artillery are today laying siege to Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp south of Damascus. They are doing so, of course, under the guise of taking out “jihadis” holed up in the camps.

Refugee rights are human rights. Stop the bombing. Open the borders.

(Photo tweeted by Nino Fezza)

The actress Natalie Portman who was born in Israel & retains dual citizenship has long been an ardent Zionist. It was announced last year that she would win the 2018 Genesis Prize, a $1 million award for Zionist notables, raised to $2 million for Portman in the name of women’s empowerment. The prize, given to those renowned in their fields who give exemplary service to the state of Israel, was started in 2012 by Russian-Jewish businessmen in league with Netanyahu & the Jewish Agency for Israel, a group that recruits Zionists to move to Israel. Previous recipients are Michael Bloomberg, the actor Michael Douglas, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, Itzhak Perlman. Actress Helen Mirren, also an ardent Zionist, once served as the master (sic) of ceremonies. The fund has been making quite a to-do over Portman, plastering her image all over their website & social media pages in anticipation of the June ceremony.

The Genesis Prize Foundation just announced that they have cancelled the award ceremony because Portman’s representative notified them that “recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her & she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” & that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.” Although she did not specify which events have been distressing, we needn’t play stupid about it. Prize officials expressed “fear that Ms. Portman’s decision will cause our philanthropic initiative to be politicized, something we have worked hard for the past five years to avoid.” But who’s kidding who? The damn thing was part of the continuous campaign to legitimize the state of Israel & add celebrity glamour to apartheid & genocide. It’s quite a blow to the prestige of the Genesis Prize that Portman refuses to accept it.

Portman has been critical of the cultural boycott but she has also been critical of Netanyahu for his shameless racism. She isn’t likely to turn on the state of Israel & become an anti-Zionist but her action highlights the growing discomfort many have with the extreme genocidal violence of Israel against Palestinians. A political fault line is emerging among American Zionists, reflected also among leading Zionist feminists who were horrified by Israel’s bombing campaign over Gaza in 2014 or comedian Sarah Silverman, who supported the 2014 bombing of Gaza but now supports Ahed Tamimi. In the long run, the only workable solution is a democratic, secular state where Jews & Palestinians are equals. So these fissures & ruptures over Israel’s genocide are a political opening that bode well in the long run for that vision.

Photo is cover page the The Genesis Fund website.

Justice for Asifa billboard greets Modi on his trip to London. Our little sister who suffered so unbearably is now the battle cry for women & children around the world, especially those in war, occupation, & genocide. The savage crime against her has brought to the fore justice denied for sexual violence against women under occupation in Kashmir, against women of the oppressed castes in India, against Rohingya women by the Burmese army, against Mayan women in Guatemala, against Syrian women by the Assad regime. May her memory keep us steadfast in the struggle against sexual violence.

https://www.facebook.com/JewishVoiceforPeace/videos/10157315979909992/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTM5MjQ0OTM0OTk1MzU/

In the ongoing confusions about whether or not Starbucks is included among companies to boycott as part of BDS, they have hired the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to do their anti-racist training after the scandals about racism against Black patrons. This video from Jewish Voice for Peace about the racism of ADL should clear up all the confusions once & for all. Game on. Boycott Starbucks. And let them know why.

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/19/dear-bashar-al-assad-apologists-your-hero-is-a-war-criminal-even-if-he-didnt-gas-syrians/

A brilliant polemic by Mehdi Hasan. There isn’t a single apologetic for Assad that comes close to the cogency of this analysis.

When Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan was asked his views on rape, he responded: “Even discussing this issue feels disgusting, don’t bring up this issue. It is terrible to even talk about it.” Such refined sensibilities, so cultivated, so urbane. But we don’t buy it. Squeamishness covers a multitude of evasions. Women & children have been silenced for generations out of shame, as if something they did brought on sexual assaults. One of the most important, if still incomplete, accomplishments of the feminist movement has been to drag sexual assault, particularly against children, out of the darkness into the full light of day so that the shame of this crime adheres entirely to the perpetrators & not to the victims. Squeamishness will no longer be used to silence & shame.

You shake your head in disbelief that white people who’ve only been to Syria a matter of days or weeks embedded up the ass of the regime are given any hearing at all over the voices of 5.5 million Syrian refugees or activists like Yassin Al Haj Saleh, a former Assad political prisoner, & the White Helmets. Eva Bartlett once admitted she didn’t know anything about Syrian history or politics before 2013 when she got hired on as a propagandist. She admitted her entire education came from Global Research, the libertarian, anti-Semitic, & Islamophobic cesspool–& probably from David Icke who thinks reptilian Jewish bankers rule the world & for whom she worked–though you don’t need an education if you function as a ventriloquist dummy. Vanessa Beeley was riding horses & doing sales before she got hired on in 2014. So what gives them credibility to say the videos of bombing victims are all staged with kidnapped child actors? Are they video forensics experts too?

What gives Robert Fisk, who looks down on Arabs & doesn’t understand one damn thing about the Arab Spring uprisings, more authority than the White Helmets, Syrian citizen journalists, or the several doctors who say they were coerced into denying the chlorine attack on Douma? What gives Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Rania Khalek, Vijay Prashad, Craig Murray, Jonathan Cook, or all the others any credibility? These are social climbers & children of privilege with an instinctual abhorrence to working class rebellion against injustice & inequality. They have no commitments except to their careers. They’ll say anything that gets them honoraria & TV slots.

The answer to this enigma is written all over the script: white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. The fact that Black writers like Margaret Kimberley, Glen Ford, & Ajamu Baraka are among the most ardent & paranoidal fellow travelers of the white propagandists doesn’t alter that reality an iota but only testifies to the crisis of Black political leadership that libertarianism has made such inroads into their thinking. The only reason these propagandists carry such weight–other than idiocy, racism, & credulity–is that Russian media, especially RT, back these propagandists to the hilt & give them income & a platform & that the Assad regime & Russia know how to manipulate & play social media.

There will come a time of accounting. Those Syrians now shouted down will set the historic record straight. It will be too late to salvage the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. But not too late to rebuild the historic movements of the Arab peoples to build new societies based on equality, democracy, & justice.

Photo is White Helmet rescue worker with child suffering the chlorine attack on April 7th in Douma.

(Photo from White Helmets)

Muhammad Mouria updated us about Palestinian Abdul Rahman Nofal, an unarmed 12-year-old protester at the Great Return March who was shot in the leg by Israeli snipers & was prevented by Israeli authorities from leaving Gaza for medical treatment. Abdul’s father announced that an urgent amputation took place this morning at the Ramallah Hospital in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israeli propagandists claim that those shot at the Great Return March were terrorists.

A remarkable vignette from Gaza: a young man, one of many who have lost limbs in Israeli bombing, watering a flower planted in what is likely the boot from his amputated leg.

Stand with Palestinians in demanding the end of occupation, self-determination, & a democratic, secular state where Jews & Palestinians live as brothers & sisters.

(Photo tweeted by Gazan Muhammad Smiry)

Women propagandists have come into their own in service to the Assad dictatorship. It’s a necessary role if one is to sell Islamophobia & the need to save Muslim women by bombing their children, spouses, mosques, schools, fields, cities, hospitals to smithereens. Who better to claim the suffering of children is staged by kidnapped children forced to foam at the mouth on cue, as Vanessa Beeley did in this interview with rightwing libertarian Ron Paul? It’s just a wonder that so many who call themselves progressive never noticed the rightwing politics of all these women or their associations with organized fascism. It’s just a shame so many cannot tell real suffering from false or real revolutions from street theater. But that’s nihilism for you. It’s just a pity that so many women who once played positive antiwar roles are now marching like lemmings behind propagandists. We once thought better of them.

(Photo is screenshot of Beeley on Ron Paul interview show)