Genocidal toll of those wonderful kikes now in Gaza, suckers: over 30,000 Palestinians dead, including over 10,000 children

[Apollonian]

Unmasking Media Complicity: The Urgent Call for Truth in Gaza​

By Nour Jaghama and Melissa Garriga
Global Research, December 15, 2023

Link: https://www.globalresearch.ca/unmasking-media-complicity-the-urgent-call-for-truth-in-gaza/5843334/

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***
Bisan Owda, a 25-year-old journalist from Gaza, recently expressed a bleak outlook: ‘I no longer have any hope of survival…I am certain that I will die in the next few weeks or maybe days.’ Bisan’s harrowing sentiment reflects the dangerous reality journalists face, risking their lives to expose the brutal truths obscured by the fog of war.
Bisan and other Palestinian reporters, such as Motaz, another courageous photojournalist from the Deir al-Balah refugee camp, stand as unsung heroes amid a devastating genocide. Bisan, tearfully acknowledging the imminent danger she faces, and Motaz transitioning from documenting to surviving underscore the extraordinary courage of Palestinian journalists determined to unveil the truth.
In contrast, mainstream Western media, epitomized by The New York Times, presents a stark disparity. Instead of amplifying the voices of individuals like Bisan and Motaz, major publications propagate a narrative that perpetuates misinformation and greenlights the ongoing tragedy.
The toll in Gaza is staggering—over 20,000 lives lost, including nearly 10,000 innocent children. Amidst the ruins of homes and the echoes of airstrikes, it becomes clear that the valiant efforts of these journalists serve as our only window into the extent of this horror.

Regrettably, The New York Times is failing to report the situation accurately. Its persistence in publishing misleading information not only aids in spreading propaganda but also follows a historical pattern. The current reporting echoes the publication’s prior engagement in a misinformation campaign preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. The New York Times is failing an open-notes test it has taken many times.
Notably, instead of reporting on the confirmed cases of genocide, the New York Times seems fixated on fake controversies sparked by controversial lawmakers such as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R–N.Y.) that feed into the false idea that supporting Palestinians and demanding an end to the genocide is antisemitic. This type of reporting creates a false sense of danger and weaponizes people into rejecting the Palestinian struggle as the human rights issue it is.
As the Israeli military intensifies its attack on Gaza, the urgency for accurate reporting becomes paramount. Netanyahu’s unwavering pursuit of genocidal goals, evidenced by the bombing of schools, hospitals, and UN buildings, demands unfiltered attention. Strikingly, Israeli leaders have laid bare their intentions for ethnic cleansing through genocide, yet U.S. media remains conspicuously silent.
The betrayal of journalists like Bisan, Motaz, and countless others who put their lives on the line becomes even more egregious when juxtaposed with The New York Times’ failure to uphold journalistic standards. It is no longer a matter of misguided reporting; it is the perpetuation of a historical pattern that prioritizes profit and imperialism over truth and justice.
Western media has the potential to be a catalyst for change. We have seen the impact of unfiltered reporting during the Vietnam War when journalists chose to reveal the truth, irrespective of government constraints. There are the equivalents of the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre currently being in Gaza by Israel. Any reporting by Western media that doesn’t center its context around that is a disservice to humanity.
News reporting, at its core, should be about saving lives. Instead, influential publications opt to provide manufactured consent for violence and oppression, holding the line for war criminals while the atrocities unfold in real-time. In doing so, this makes publications like the New York Times complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, mixing the blood of innocent Palestinians with that of those murdered in Iraq twenty years ago—shame on the New York Times and all.

 

[Apollonian]

Israel Is Killing Gazans with Hunger​

The people of Gaza are being starved, and they are being starved as part of a deliberate policy.​

DANIEL LARISON
DEC 18, 2023

Link: https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/israel-is-killing-gazans-with-hunger/

Human Rights Watch released a new report today that confirms what we have been seeing for the last two months:

The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip, which is a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.

The Israeli military campaign has killed nearly 20,000 people according to the official count (the real tally is likely much higher), but even greater threats to civilian life right now are hunger and disease. As UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said in a recent interview with The Financial Times, “it is disease, hunger that is beginning to be the lead cause of death and deprivation.” It is important to remember that people perishing from hunger and disease are dying because of the Israeli government’s siege. The Israeli government is criminally depriving the population of essential food and water as well as fuel and power critical to providing medical care. The people of Gaza are being starved, and they are being starved as part of a deliberate policy:

“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza's population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”

The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon has been clear from the beginning of the war. From the outset, top Israeli officials said that they would cut off supplies of food, water, and fuel to Gaza, and that is what they have done. Many of us have been raising the alarm about it since then.
Many diseases are now rapidly spreading among the nearly two million displaced people in Gaza, and the population is even more vulnerable to contracting diseases because of the lack of food and clean water created by the siege. Hundreds of thousands of people whose homes have been destroyed by the bombing lack proper shelter, and the approach of winter will create even worse conditions.
This is not the first time that a U.S. client has used starvation as a weapon in recent years. Saudi Arabia and its allies have been doing this to Yemen since 2015. The blockade and economic warfare have varied in intensity, but they have driven tens of millions of people to the brink of famine and in some cases pushed people into famine conditions. The siege of Gaza is more comprehensive and even more devastating than that, and it has been paired with a relentless bombing campaign and forced displacement of almost the entire population. Even if we didn’t have Israeli government officials announcing their intention to punish everyone living in Gaza, it would be clear from their actions that this is what they sought to do.
As the report says, the use of starvation as a weapon is a war crime. As long as the U.S. supports this war, our government is enabling that crime against the people of Gaza. Support for this war amounts to support for a creating a famine that will likely result in large-scale loss of life. The U.S. must end its support for the war or be counted as an accomplice in the ongoing starvation of millions of people.
There must be a ceasefire, but the siege also has to be lifted and life-saving aid delivered in huge quantities as soon possible. There can be no adequate delivery of essential supplies while the war is ongoing, and the people of Gaza need more than a trickle of aid in any case. If the war goes on for months, as both the Israeli and U.S. governments say it will, that will mean the deaths of an untold number of innocent people that could and should have been prevented.

 

[Apollonian]

UN Report Says Over 570,000 People Are Starving in Gaza​

Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war

by Dave DeCamp Posted on December 21, 2023

Link: https://news.antiwar.com/2023/12/21/un-report-says-over-570000-people-are-starving-in-gaza/

One in four Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — over 570,000 people — are starving due to the Israeli siege, according to a report using data from the UN and other aid agencies that was released Thursday.
The report, published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said the Israeli onslaught in Gaza has “caused catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity across the Gaza Strip.”
The IPC has a five-phase scale for malnutrition, and the report estimates the entire population of Gaza is facing Phase 3 or higher. Phase 3 is defined as: “Households either have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition; or are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.”
One in four households in Gaza is in Phase 5, which means catastrophic famine-like conditions. Phase 5 is defined as: “Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For famine classification, the area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.”
The IPC report came after Human Rights Watch said Israel was committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza’s civilian population. HRW said Israeli forces were “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”
When Israel’s onslaught first began after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” on the already blockaded enclave and said Israel was fighting “human animals” in Gaza, which is home to over 1 million children.
Over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the US-backed Israeli slaughter so far, including over 8,000 children. As the war continues, many more could die from starvation and disease caused by the siege.

 

[Apollonian]

1,000 children have undergone amputations without anaesthesia in Gaza​

Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/2...gone-amputations-without-anaesthesia-in-gaza/​

December 27, 2023 at 1:53 pm

Wounded Palestinian children, are taken to hospital after Israeli attacks on December 23, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza. [Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images]

Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.
It added that allowing the continued shelling of Gaza means greenlighting the killing of more children.
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip has previously stated that nearly 70 per cent of the casualties of the aggression were children and women.
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra also said that 54,536 people had been injured in the months-long offensive.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid acute shortages of food and clean water.

Gaza: Palestinian woman gives birth to quadruplets prematurely

 

[Apollonian]

Israel's mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza began seven decades ago​

Joseph Massad
26 December 2023 17:23 GMT | Last update: 5 days 11 hours ago

Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-mass-murder-palestinians-gaza-began-seven-decades-ago

Israel's ongoing genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza is part of a long and brutal history that goes back to 1951

Injured relatives of Palestinians killed during Israeli strikes mourn at the EU hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 21 December 2023 (Said Khatib/AFP)

The US, EU, and UK do not tire of defending Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people with the cliched incantation that “Israel has the right to defend itself”.

In August 2022, Israel bombed Palestinians in Gaza over three days, killing 49 people, including 17 children. The US and the EU’s response to the massacre was to declare emphatically their support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and mutedly to regret the death of Palestinian civilians.

That was the last major massacre Israel committed in Gaza before its current genocidal war, but it certainly was not the first. For that, we must go back to 1951, when Israel began to raid the Gaza Strip.


Israel had already expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Gaza between the end of 1947 and the summer of 1950 when the remaining 2,500 Palestinians from the Mediterranean town of Majdal ‘Asqalan (now the settler-colony of Ashkelon) were loaded on to trucks by the Israeli army. Israel would also expel 7,000 Palestinian Bedouins to Egypt during this period up to 1955.

A history of war crimes​

In October 1951, the Israelis raided Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians and Egyptians, demolishing dozens of houses, and blowing up wells to curb the attempts by the expelled Palestinians to return home across the new borders erected by the Jewish settler colony.

At the time, foreign observers did not mention Israel’s 'right to defend itself' and called the massacre 'an appalling case of deliberate mass murder'

Earlier, in August 1949, Israeli soldiers captured two Palestinian refugees. They killed the man and 22 soldiers took turns raping the woman before killing her. In March 1950, Israeli soldiers abducted two Palestinian girls and one boy from Gaza across the new border.

They killed the boy and then raped the two girls before killing them. By then, it was quite common for Israeli soldiers and police to rape female Palestinian refugees attempting to return to their homes, a practice that was widespread during the Nakba a few years earlier.
In August 1950, for example, four Israeli policemen raped a Palestinian woman picking fruit from her family’s orchard across the West Bank border.

Israeli raids on Gaza would continue in 1952 and 1953, culminating in the Bureij refugee camp massacre in August of that year. The Israeli military unit 101 killed at least 20 Palestinian refugees, including seven women and five children, by throwing bombs through the windows of their huts while they slept and shooting those who fled. Dozens were injured. Other sources put the final tally of Palestinians killed at 50.
At the time, foreign observers did not mention Israel’s “right to defend itself” and called the massacre “an appalling case of deliberate mass murder”. That same year, the Israelis slaughtered 70 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank village of Qibya, which even the Indianapolis-based, pro-Israel National Jewish Post compared to the Nazi massacre at Lidice.

In February 1955, the Israelis raided an Egyptian military camp in Gaza, killing at least 36 Egyptian soldiers and two Palestinian civilians, one of whom was a child.

Until then, Egyptian authorities had been placating the Israelis by policing the borders and preventing Palestinian “infiltration”. After the raid, Palestinians in Gaza rose up against the Egyptian authorities, demanding weapons to defend themselves from the unceasing Israeli raids.

Exasperated by Israeli brutality and bellicosity, and under pressure from the Palestinian refugees, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser acceded to the Palestinian demand. A group of Palestinian fedayeen retaliated against Israel by raiding it in August 1955 and infiltrating as far as 27 miles inside its borders - ambushing soldiers, laying mines, and attacking vehicles and buildings - during which five soldiers and 10 civilians died.

Port Said inhabitants search among the ruins of their city after Israel's invasion of Egypt, on 1 November 1956 (Staff/AFP)

Lest anyone think that the current Jewish supremacist Israeli government is the first to invoke the biblical “Amalek” to provide a religious imprimatur to its ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinians, as Benjamin Netanyahu did, it was in fact the secular Prime Minister David Ben Gurion who first used the analogy seven decades ago.

Ahead of Israel's invasion of Gaza and Egypt in October 1956, Ben Gurion proclaimed that “the hosts of Amalek” were rearming themselves to “destroy the State of Israel and the people of Israel”.

The Israelis bombed the Gaza city of Khan Younis on 2 November 1956 from the air, killing scores of civilians before Israeli tanks entered the city on 3 November.
The Israelis rounded up resistance fighters and executed them on the spot or in their homes. Meanwhile, in the adjacent refugee camp, the Israelis rounded up all men and boys above the age of 15 in the town square. They proceeded to machine-gun them, killing between 300 and 500 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians and half being 1948 refugees. They occupied Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula until they were forced out by the US and the USSR in March 1957.

'Genocidal atrocities'​

In the past few weeks, Israel carried out massacres in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, which Israel dubbed “a dangerous combat zone” after it had served as a safe zone for one million Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza. It included the slaughter of 30 civilians sheltering at a school from Israel’s savage bombings. The relentless mass killing of Palestinians since 7 October makes the 1956 savage Israeli massacres seem humane in comparison.

The only 'victory' that the Israeli military has scored since 7 October is the slaughter and injury of tens of thousands of civilians and displacement of more than two million others

In 1967, Israel again invaded and occupied Gaza. It expelled 75,000 Palestinians from the Strip and prevented 50,000 more (who were working, studying, or travelling outside Gaza when Israel invaded) from returning home. It confiscated 60 percent of the land and all the water of the Palestinians, much of which was for the exclusive use of the Jewish colonists who had access to 18 times the amount of water available to the indigenous Palestinians.
The Jewish colonists had 85 more (stolen) land per capita than the Palestinian owners of the land. Israel subjected the entire Palestinian population to a racialised military occupation during which it destroyed Gaza’s economic infrastructure until 2005.
Since Israel’s redeployment around Gaza in September 2005 and its incarceration of 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza concentration camp, the Israelis launched numerous bombing campaigns against the camp’s civilian inmates and the resistance, including in 2006, 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, killing thousands of civilians.
The only "victory" that the Israeli military has scored since 7 October is the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians, with tens of thousands more injured, and more than two million others displaced. It has further succeeded in the destruction of homes and residential buildings, hospitals, schools, libraries, municipal buildings, churches and mosques. Despite all the civilian slaughter and destruction, its reputation for military preparedness has been lost for the foreseeable future.
As more and more details trickle out of Israel’s murder of its own civilians and destruction of their homes on 7 October, it will be a long time before it can recapture some of the fictional military allure it had previously enjoyed in the West and among its Arab allies.
One of the more interesting ironies of the current Israeli war is that whereas the US empire and its EU and UK subsidiaries continued to rearm Israel since 8 October without respite so that the settler colony could continue its genocidal war, it is the Palestinian resistance that has had no weapons replenishment since that date and yet continues to score military victories against the Israeli invaders.
But not only have the Americans been the major party to this war against a colonised and brutalised people, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, went further by identifying the US with Israel so much that he referred to the Palestinian resistance as the “enemy” of the United States.
Sullivan said he had “discussed the conditions and timing for Israel to wind down the current phase of its operations with Israeli leaders", including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But he declined to specify a time frame, saying that neither wanted to “telegraph for the enemy what the plan is”.

Israel's latest massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is part of a long history of war crimes
Read More »
If pro-Israel Americans likened the 1953 Qibya massacre to the Nazi massacre at Lidice, and famed Ashkenazi Israeli columnist Yehoshua Radler-Feldman, known by the pen name Rabbi Benyamin, wrote of the 1956 massacre of 50 Palestinian citizens of Israel in the village of Kafr Qasim “that soon we will be like Nazis and the perpetrators of pogroms”, today both Israeli officials and Palestinian resistance spokespersons are repeatedly referring to each other as “Nazis”.
But while the Palestinian spokesmen refer to the Israeli government and its military as Nazis and fascists, Israeli officials label the Palestinian people as a whole as “Nazis”.

Given the shameless racist discourse among Israeli officials about the Palestinians as “animals” and “subhuman”, the extraordinary force of the indiscriminate Israeli killing machine, and the scale of Israel’s genocidal atrocities, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the analogy is up for debate.
What remains beyond doubt, however, is that while the industrial scale of Israeli atrocities in Gaza is unprecedented, their cruel nature has been part and parcel of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people since 1948.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.

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[Apollonian]

The People of Gaza Are Being Starved to Death​

We are watching an atrocity famine unfold in front of us.​

DANIEL LARISON
JAN 16, 2024

Link: https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/the-people-of-gaza-are-being-starved/

Alex de Waal sounds the alarm again about the famine in Gaza:

If the catastrophe in Gaza continues on its current trajectory, the prediction of mass death from disease, hunger and exposure will come to pass. If humanitarian assistance is provided promptly and at scale, deaths from hunger and disease will stabilise and decline, but they will still take time to return to pre-crisis levels. Even with an immediate cessation of hostilities and delivery of emergency aid, along with efforts to restore water, sanitation and health services, mortality would remain elevated for weeks or months. Even this would constitute a ‘major’ famine, according to the definition of 10,000 or more deaths. A ‘great’ famine, with 100,000 or more excess deaths, may be in prospect if the current level of hostilities and destruction continues.

As I wrote in my column last week, this is one of the worst man-made famines in recent history. The people of Gaza are being deliberately starved by Israel’s siege as part of a policy of collective punishment. We are watching an atrocity famine unfold in front of us. Our government isn’t just failing to do anything about it, but it is also actively helping the perpetrator wage its war and it is providing diplomatic cover for the crime.
The reality of mass starvation in Gaza is already here, and if nothing else changes it will only get much worse over time. The UN emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, had this to say:

The “great majority” of 400,000 Gazans characterized by UN agencies as at risk of starving “are actually in famine, not just at risk of famine,” Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

There must be a ceasefire, but a ceasefire alone won’t be enough to halt the humanitarian catastrophe. The catastrophe involves not only severe hunger, but the rapid spread of disease as well. As we all know, a starving population is more susceptible to disease and it is at much greater risk of perishing. Maya Rosen wrote at the start of the year about the epidemiological war being waged on the people of Gaza, and she explained that a ceasefire is only the beginning of what will be needed to stop people from dying from preventable causes:

But, as Asi noted, a ceasefire would only address the most explicit forms of violence, and the indirect toll of the war is likely to keep growing even if the bombs stop falling. “We have now reached the point where a ceasefire in one minute would not end the suffering of many for weeks, if not months,” Asi said. Fighting infectious disease, public health experts agree, requires allowing in food, medicine, and vaccines; building houses to shelter Gaza’s nearly two million displaced people; and investing in infrastructure—water treatment, sewage systems, and power grids.

Stopping the ongoing devastation and killing is necessary, but there will still have to be a major relief effort to avoid further massive loss of life. The world doesn’t lack for the resources necessary to save the people of Gaza from a terrible fate, but the governments that have the most influence to prevent a disaster won’t even acknowledge the problem. The administration hasn’t been assessing whether the Israeli government is violating international law, so it goes without saying that they have had nothing to say about the massive crime being committed against the entire population of Gaza.
De Waal, a scholar who has written the book on the history of modern famine, goes on to say this:

In the historical catalogue of famines and incidents of mass starvation, it is hard to find a close parallel with the situation in Gaza. Few cases combine such a comprehensive siege with such comprehensive destruction of OIS [objects indispensable to survival]. The absolute numbers of people who die in Gaza will not match those of the calamitous 20th-century famines, because the afflicted population is smaller, yet the proportionate death toll may be comparable [bold mine-DL].

The U.S. is in a unique position to stop the worst from happening. Our government has considerable leverage with Israel, if it would only use it. The failure to use that leverage over the last three months is one important reason why the situation is so dire. The president and members of Congress have a choice: they can be accomplices to the crime of starving innocent people to death in huge numbers, or they can act to stop the crime before more lives are needlessly lost.

 

[Apollonian]

Five Things Liberals Say To Avoid Taking A Real Position On Gaza​

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
FEB 1, 2024

Link: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/five-things-liberals-say-to-avoid?utm_source=post-email-title/



Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Here are five noises western liberals often make to avoid having to take a real position on Gaza:
1. “It’s heartbreaking!”
2. “It’s complicated!”
3. “BUT TRUMP!”
4. “I really hope there can be peace there someday!”
5. “I support a two-state solution!”
Let’s talk about these a bit.

“It’s heartbreaking!”

Liberals love talking about how “sad” and “heartbreaking” what’s happening in Gaza is like it’s some kind of natural disaster, some tragically tragic tragedy that their government has been passively witnessing instead of actively facilitating. It lets them express their progressive humanitarian feelings without actually taking a meaningful political position against what’s being done in their name with their tax dollars and with their tacit consent.​

In reality the genocide in Gaza is not sad or heartbreaking or tragic; those are words you use for diseases and accidents. When someone is murdered with malicious intent, we don’t heave a heavy sigh and shed a tear and move on — we prosecute their murderer. It isn’t raining bombs in Gaza because that’s just the unfortunate weather there today, those bombs are being dropped by Israel with genocidal intent with the full backing of the United States and its allies. This is a crime which requires outrage and punishment, not empty crocodile tears.

“It’s complicated!”​

No it isn’t. An apartheid regime has been oppressing and abusing an ethnic group which doesn’t receive the same rights and treatment as others, and now they’re dropping bombs on a population trapped in a giant concentration camp. If it was Jewish people enclosed in Gaza while any other ethnicity rained military explosives on them for four months, no liberal in the world would have trouble recognizing what they’re seeing and calling it what it is.

“BUT TRUMP!”​

Push a Biden supporter hard enough on what their president is doing in Gaza and eventually they’ll start babbling about how bad Donald Trump is. As though Trump being bad somehow negates the depravity of backing an active genocide. Or as though backing an active genocide is an excusable offense if it means a little more student debt forgiveness or something.
Democrats have no way to reconcile Gaza with what they believe about themselves and what values they supposedly hold, so when confronted with the horrifying reality of what their president is doing in the middle east they’re left with no option but to plunge their heads into the sand and scream “TRUMP!!!” as loud as they can. Nothing has exposed the true nature of the Democratic Party like a Democrat president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide.

“I really hope there can be peace there someday!”​

Like “It’s tragic!”, this one replaces a meaningful political position with empty emotional fluff to create the false impression that the liberal has said something relevant which aligns with their stated values and ideology.
By saying you want peace but refusing to say how you want the peace to come about, the “peace” you purport to support could mean anything. If Israel bombs Gaza into rubble and drives survivors into refugee camps in the Sinai desert, they could call that “peace” because there won’t be a war anymore. If Israel murders everyone in Gaza, they can call that “peace” because the bombs are no longer falling. Even going back to the status quo of October 6 wouldn’t be “peace”, it would just be returning to the abusive conditions which gave rise to October 7.
Saying you want “peace” without talking about immediate ceasefires and negotiated agreements is just saying you want Israel to keep doing what it’s doing until it decides it’s done enough.

“I support a two-state solution!”​

The “two-state solution” is functionally just a psychological box that liberals mentally tick off so they can pretend they have a real position on Israel-Palestine. Israeli leaders publicly spit on the notion of a Palestinian state with its own military and national sovereignty, and there is no political wherewithal to make such a thing happen. It’s nothing more than a conceptual construct which lets liberals feel nice about their personal politics without actually taking a stand against the western-backed tyrannical power structure that is the state of Israel.
In reality there cannot be peace until Israel ceases to be an abusive apartheid ethnostate, until it and its allies pay massive reparations to the Palestinians, and until all the wrongs of the past are made right. This is entirely possible, but it would be a massive, massive effort toward a goal that would make the current status quo of Israel-Palestine completely unrecognizable from what it currently is. Merely flicking an intellectual thumbs-up to empty notions about a “two-state solution” is just more liberal psychological compartmentalization.
Other popular noises liberals make to avoid taking a real position on Gaza include “Something something antisemitism!” and “It’s just Netanyahu and a few far-right jerks making things bad!” The specific words don’t matter much, because liberals will make whatever noises they need to make to avoid the crushing weight of cognitive dissonance and resist the increasingly loud demands from reality that they dramatically restructure their worldview.

 

[Apollonian]

Death Toll From Israeli Strikes on Gaza Strip Tops 31,000 - Health Ministry​

Yesterday

Link: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240310/d...tops-31000---health-ministry-1117244166.html/

© Sputnik

TUNIS (Sputnik) - The death toll from Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, when the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, has surpassed 31,000, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Sunday.
"The number of victims of Israeli aggression since October 7 has risen to 31,045, with 72,654 people injured," the ministry said on Telegram.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian movement Hamas launched a large-scale rocket attack against Israel and breached the border, attacking both civilian neighborhoods and military bases. As a result, over 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 240 others abducted. Israel launched retaliatory strikes, ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, and started a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages.

World
Gaza Strip's Post-Conflict Reconstruction Estimated at $90Bln
9 March, 13:19 GMT

On November 24, Qatar mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas on a temporary truce and the exchange of some of the prisoners and hostages, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The ceasefire was extended several times and expired on December 1. More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza.