Amid the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, the West Bank has risen.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians marched with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement from the West Bank city of Ramallah toward Jerusalem to protest Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 800 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
The protest appears to be the largest mass demonstration since the 1980s. The uprising promises to be different from previous intifadas, partly because it comes in the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other mass protest movements around the globe. But the way in which the world engages with protest has also evolved, due to the advent of Twitter and cell phone video, which can focus attention on raw conflict in a way that bypasses the mainstream media. Today’s march is being live tweeted at the hashtag #48kMarch.
More here:
From Gaza: I Would Rather Die in Dignity Than Agree to Living in an Open-Air Prison
Posted: 07/28/2014 2:54 pm EDT
Gaza is a tough place; it’s tiny, overcrowded and besieged. But the people are kind. The food is delicious, and the beach, though filthy, allows us to pretend that we’re free. The sunset at sea is a spectacular scene, despite the Israeli warships dotting the landscape. Take a stroll down the street, and you’ll meet vendors, mostly young children hawking their wares. Take a taxi, and by the time you get off, you’ll be exchanging phone numbers with your newest friend, the taxi driver.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mohammed-suliman/gaza-die-dignity-open-air-prison_b_5627590.html
Shall we ask Chicago’s Jewish Mayor Rahm Emanuel?
*daps*
SG2, do these fools really think we’re that stupid that we can’t do this:
For real!
Looky here folks!
Pipe dream? Israeli gas exports to Turkey hinge on Palestinian issue
http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.607468
Now that Australia’s Woodside Petroleum has pulled out of the Leviathan offshore gas field, taking its expertise in liquefied natural gas with it, the future of Israeli energy exports seemingly lies with finding customers in the region.
BLOO FOR GREED. Disgusting!
OMG! The video is horrifying. Soul crushing. Those poor people.
Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVRY_PAFdbQ
Amid a renewed cycle of escalating tensions and violence, Israel launched a military offensive on the Gaza Strip on July 8, 2014.
On the 13th day of the assault on Gaza, Israel intensified its campaign with a ground offensive. The densely populated district of Shujayea in Gaza City came under intense bombardment
Rock stars Peter Gabriel and Bobby Gillespie urge arms embargo on Israel
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/amena-saleem/rock-stars-peter-gabriel-and-bobby-gillespie-urge-arms-embargo-israel
The rock star Peter Gabriel and film-maker Ken Loach are among 21,000 people who have signed an open letter to David Cameron, the British prime minister, demanding an immediate halt to the arms trade between the UK and Israel.
The letter was delivered today, directly to Cameron’s residence at 10 Downing Street in London by Loach and three members of parliament — Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Jim Fitzpatrick.
Prominent signatories included fashion designer Bella Freud, journalist and activist Jemima Khan, musicians Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, Brian Eno and Bryan Adams, the writers Will Self, Hanif Kureishi, Ahdaf Soueif, Esther Freud, Laura Bailey and William Dalrymple, and the actors David Morrissey, Maxine Peake and Alexei Sayle.
Academics Karma Nabulsi (a PSC patron), Ghada Karmi and Steven Rose and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman also signed the letter.
The letter was posted on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s website earlier this week and gathered 21,000 signatures in just two days.
Thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv for a peace rally on Saturday evening, calling for an end to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. (July 26)
Turkey to send another Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/europe/13059-turkey-to-send-another-freedom-flotilla-to-gaza
The Turkish humanitarian relief organisation (IHH) is currently organising a “Freedom Flotilla II” which will carry humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, IHH chairman Bulent Yildrim said Thursday.
In statements to Gulf Online, Yildrim said that his organisation has embarked on legal procedures and paperwork required to obtain a permit for the trip. As soon as a final permit is issued, the IHH along with other international organisations will immediately set up the convoy.
The chairman of IHH, a major organiser of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla I, said that Turkish army troops will accompany the ships to protect it from any potential attack, pointing out that his organisation demanded the government to provide protection for them as Turkish citizens.
Maze Keheil, the president of the European Campaign for Lifting the Siege on Gaza, confirmed his campaign’s intention to take part in the new flotilla, as it did in first one in 2010.
Warning! This may leave you shaken.
The moment of bombing Doghmosh family’s house by a missile from Israeli drone
I have a difficult time thinking of Israeli’s as humanitarians. Maybe it’s the “we need a rest before we re-start the genocide.”
I feel the same way, Liza. I’m so sad. So many lives lost for nothing.
Gaza: 12-Hour Ceasefire As Peace Talks Begin
Hey Chicas!
Remember when the media told us Hamas started this war by kidnapping and killing the 3 boys? It didn’t happen. Israel used this to kill Palestinians!
It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-israeli-teens-after-all.html
When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,” he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region.
But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas’s handiwork after all.
Non-plagiarizing BuzzFeed writer Sheera Frenkel was among the first to suggest that it was unlikely that Hamas was behind the deaths of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. Citing Palestinian sources and experts the field, Frenkel reported that kidnapping three Israeli teens would be a foolish move for Hamas. International experts told her it was likely the work of a local group, acting without concern for the repercussions:
[Gershon Baskin] pointed out that Hamas has earlier this month signed an agreement to form a unity government with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, bridging, for the first time in seven years, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza.
“They will lose their reconciliation agreement with Abbas if they do take responsibility for [the kidnappings],” Baskin added.
Jun 15, 2014
Benjamin Netanyahu on bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers: Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay.
Here’s what you need to know, folks!
Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza—Debunked
http://www.thenation.com/article/180783/five-israeli-talking-points-gaza-debunked#
Israel claims that it is merely exercising its right to self-defense and that Gaza is no longer occupied. Here’s what you need to know about these talking points and more.
Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.
Israel’s propaganda machine, however, insists that these Palestinians wanted to die (“culture of martyrdom”), staged their own death (“telegenically dead”) or were the tragic victims of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes (“human shielding”). In all instances, the military power is blaming the victims for their own deaths, accusing them of devaluing life and attributing this disregard to cultural bankruptcy. In effect, Israel—along with uncritical mainstream media that unquestionably accept this discourse—dehumanizes Palestinians, deprives them even of their victimhood and legitimizes egregious human rights and legal violations.
This is not the first time. The gruesome images of decapitated children’s bodies and stolen innocence on Gaza’s shores are a dreadful repeat of Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012 and winter 2008–09. Not only are the military tactics the same but so too are the public relations efforts and the faulty legal arguments that underpin the attacks. Mainstream media news anchors are inexplicably accepting these arguments as fact.
Below I address five of Israel’s recurring talking points. I hope this proves useful to newsmakers.
1) Israel is exercising its right to self-defense.
As the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Territories more broadly, Israel has an obligation and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. It governs by military and law enforcement authority to maintain order, protect itself and protect the civilian population under its occupation. It cannot simultaneously occupy the territory, thus usurping the self-governing powers that would otherwise belong to Palestinians, and declare war upon them. These contradictory policies (occupying a land and then declaring war on it) make the Palestinian population doubly vulnerable.
The precarious and unstable conditions in the Gaza Strip from which Palestinians suffer are Israel’s responsibility. Israel argues that it can invoke the right to self-defense under international law as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The International Court of Justice, however, rejected this faulty legal interpretation in its 2004 Advisory Opinion. The ICJ explained that an armed attack that would trigger Article 51 must be attributable to a sovereign state, but the armed attacks by Palestinians emerge from within Israel’s jurisdictional control. Israel does have the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, but it must do so in accordance with occupation law and not other laws of war. Occupation law ensures greater protection for the civilian population. The other laws of war balance military advantage and civilian suffering. The statement that “no country would tolerate rocket fire from a neighboring country” is therefore both a diversion and baseless.
Israel denies Palestinians the right to govern and protect themselves, while simultaneously invoking the right to self-defense. This is a conundrum and a violation of international law, one that Israel deliberately created to evade accountability.
It’s time to throw down the GAUNTLET on Benjamin N and his genocide squad.
Israel rejecting the ceasefire is a SLAP in the face to SoS John Kerry! Got dammit, Israel!
Nutty-YAH-ZOO, is an animal, and he does NOT want nor never has ever wanted a ceasefire, until he sees all Palestinians dead. YEAH, I said it.
Breaking News: Israel’s cabinet rejects ceasefire deal.
POWERFUL
Israel loses control in Gaza
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025289543
Israel set itself clear goals when it launched its assault on Gaza. Stop the rocket fire into Israel and close the tunnels that might allow Hamas to infiltrate fighters into Israel. Some 18 days into the offensive, and these goals have not yet been achieved. But that is not the only sign that Israel’s Gaza offensive is going wrong. On the contrary, there are multiple signs that Israel is losing control of the situation:
1. After a slow start, international outrage about the Gaza offensive is building. The international reaction had been relatively muted – perhaps because there are so many other competing horrors in the Middle East. (Some 700 people were killed in just two days fighting in Syria, last week.) As my colleague Roula Khalaf points out, Hamas has also lost crucial political support across the Arab world. The coincidence of the Gaza and Ukraine crises also probably took the pressure off Israel, briefly. But the shelling of the UN school in Gaza yesterday may mark some form of tipping point – with much stronger statements coming from the UN Secretary-General and Gaza dominating the headlines in Europe.
2. Unrest has spread to the West Bank. If the riots last night are repeated, then Israel risks facing a third intifada. The Gazan offensive will then have comprehensively back-fired, by ending a prolonged period of relative calm enjoyed by Israel.
3. The revival of Hamas: At the start of the Gaza offensive, Hamas was in an extremely weak position. It had lost vital support from Egypt and Iran, and enjoyed little sympathy in the west. But by successfully prolonging the fight with Israel – and even briefly all-but closing Ben Gurion airport – Hamas has chalked up some important propaganda victories. If it can get some sort of lifting of the Gaza blockade agreed – as part of the cease-fire negotiations – it will certainly be able to claim some sort of victory.
Stay on it, SG2! All this bloodshed committed in the name of power, greed, and religion.
SMH