Again, we owe it to these 7 #WCK volunteers to watch The #Gatekeepers, a documentary by an Israeli filmmaker who managed to interview 6 former directors of #ShinBet.
It's not a bug, it's a feature of the Biden Administration's policy on Israel.
"The process [of delivering aid by sea] implicitly accepts Israel’s decision to deny the passage of food into Gaza through more efficient land crossings."
Today in Labor History March 16, 2003: Israeli Defense Forces murdered American activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah by running over her with a bulldozer. She had been defending a Palestinian home that the IDF was trying to demolish as part of their collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Have western governments now directly engaged in genocidal actions in #Gaza?
To understand why some experts are saying this may be the case, let us sketch some context:
• For the last sixteen weeks or more, #Israel has escalated its comprehensive devastation of the entire population of Gaza, causing tens of thousands of violent deaths, many more serious injuries, likely condemning tens or hundreds of thousands more to die in coming weeks and months from dehydration, starvation, exposure, disease, and a collapsed health system, and displacing around two million people.
• It seems to me that the governments of these nine nations, who were already deficient in failing to take action to prevent this #genocide, and for some of them, already complicit in continuing to arm the #Israeli military, may now have become directly co-perpetrators of genocidal acts through the deliberate deprivation of the necessities of life from a civilian population. This is life-or-death #CollectivePunishment of the #Palestinian population for the unproven crimes of twelve people.
• Many legal experts agree with this perspective (that defunding #UNRWA at this point amounts to a genocidal activity), including #FrancescaAlbanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories; US #HumanRights lawyer and professor of #InternationalLaw, #FrancisBoyle (one of a very small number of lawyers to have successfully prosecuted a genocide case in the ICJ). And it is a point that has been made by multiple international aid organisations, as well as members of at least two #Labor branches in NSW, who voted a day or two ago to warn their federal MPs (both government ministers) that they are at risk of contributing to genocidal activities.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says that “nothing can justify the collective punishment of the people in Gaza”.
Listing off the types of attacks attributed to Hamas during its October 7 raid on southern Israel, the UN chief said on social media that even such horrendous crimes do not justify punishing the entire population of the Palestinian territory.
‘Resistance to occupation cannot justify criminal acts, just as the call to fight terrorism cannot justify the murder of civilians and collective punishment’, said Bosnian Grand Mufti Husein Kavazovic [Armin Durgut/AP]
Naomi Klein: The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.
The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement". It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding #settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing #collectivepunishment on #Gaza through the brutal #blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And in December European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
Israeli military forces have killed more medics than Hamas commanders, with hundreds of documented attacks on medical facilities, ambulances & personnel.
Combined with deprivations of food, clean water, shelter & energy, the collapse of the health system in #Gaza means devastating epidemics approach.
Senior Israeli government figures have openly been using #eliminationist language.
Giora Eiland, former #IDF operations chief & current defence advisor, wrote this in a major 'centrist' newspaper in Israel: "The international community is warning us against severe humanitarian disaster and severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this. After all, severe epidemics in the south of Gaza will bring victory closer. There's no reason why the Hamas generals in southern Gaza wouldn't surrender when they have no fuel, no water, and when plagues reach them and the danger to the lives of their family members will increase".
To which the current finance minister replied: "I agree with every word".
The goals of #Israeli leadership go well beyond merely targeting #Hamas. That line, endlessly repeated by western governments & media, is PR for a modicum of #PlausibleDeniability. According to many recognised experts in such matters, the goal of this conflict is #EthnicCleansing and #genocide.
@PJ_Evans Indeed, which is why the alleged 'justifications' offered by the Israeli government for the siege are such BS and so blatantly a form of #CollectivePunishment (#WarCrime) in service of a broader (openly stated) agenda of making #Gaza uninhabitable and its residents in such #HumanitarianCrisis that the international community will be forced to collude with the #IDF's #EthnicCleansing.
Disappointingly, it showed a strong #MediaBias towards #Israel in multiple ways:
No mention of #Palestinians being released until the final quarter of the story (and this was covered in seconds, rather than the minutes given to the return of #Israeli hostages held by #Hamas), with no footage (no mention of Israeli government suppression of such footage).
No mention of the fact that the government of #Israel has held thousands of Palestinians in detention for years, often with no charge (how is this meaningfully different from holding them as hostages?). By barely mentioning the Palestinians being released, the context of their detention can be passed over without comment.
After spending some time on the emotions of #Israeli families receiving their released loved ones, the BTN video mentioned that what the #Palestinians were receiving in return was "hundreds of trucks cross[ing] the border, bringing much needed supplies", but without noting that this was only 187 out of the 800 trucks that were promised (and many many thousands needed), and without mentioning that the reason these supplies are so desperately needed has been due to deliberate and illegal Israeli #CollectivePunishment of the civilian population.
The single mention of the massive Palestinian #PalestinianDeathToll came late in the piece in a quote from a #UN#WHO figure with a heavy accent, and with footage that was out of date (and so with a lower figure), all of which distance this information from the intended audience. It was framed by the narrator saying "Israel has faced some criticism for the scale of its response" (an understatement), and was immediately followed by the narrator providing uncritical repetition of Israeli rebuttals, with a sudden shift in the soundtrack subtly implying that this is to be taken as conclusive.
1/2 Enraged Israeli spokes people are a very common sight on Western TV these days, but this exchange between Sky's Kay Burley and Israel's Eylon Levy seem to set a new low.
Speaking to Levy about Israel's decision to handover 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli children and babies, Burley said she had spoken “to a hostage negotiator” about the discrepancy in the numbers. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians and Israel has said that it will release, [...] Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?"
#translation [reposted] How does a 14-year-old become a "security prisoner"? Far too easily
The first thing that catches the eye in the list of 300 Palestinian prisoners published by the Ministry of Justice, intended for release as part of the prisoner exchange deal, is their young age. The vast majority of them are 18 years old or younger, as required by the terms of the deal. And yet, looking at this list, one cannot help but wonder - how does a 14-year-old become a "security prisoner"?
For example, by throwing rocks at a security vehicle in Jerusalem. Another 14-year-old boy from #Jerusalem is listed only as an "administrative detainee". Arrested for what? It is unclear. Both have no organizational affiliation. Another young Jerusalemite, aged 17, has been sitting in prison for two years for the "crime" of "throwing rocks and causing damage to cars using a stick". This is in a city where settlers regularly attack Palestinian residents until they bleed, suffer serious injuries and prolonged hospitalizations - as a matter of routine - without the police bothering to investigate or arrest anyone. But a Palestinian boy will be jailed for years for causing damage to cars using a stick.
More than anything, this list is dizzying testimony to the central place of detentions and imprisonment in the Israeli occupation and control project over the Palestinians. According to the HaMoked Center for the Defence of the Individual, as of November 2023 Israel holds 6,704 "security prisoners", among them 2,313 prisoners serving sentences, 2,321 detainees not yet convicted in court, and 2,070 administrative detainees held without trial.
Not one of the 300 prisoners on the list has "blood on their hands". Almost all are relatively new prisoners, from the past year or two. The few exceptions who have been jailed longer are 10 women detained since 2015-2017, mostly Jerusalemites and West Bank residents, most of them charged with attempted or actual stabbings of cops and soldiers, some that resulted in no injuries, some in minor to medium wounds.
This is in a judicial system that decided to close the case against a settler who stabbed a Palestinian youth to death, because "his claim of self-defense could not be discounted". However, self-defense under the Israeli apartheid regime is a right reserved for Jews only. While Jews who have rampaged, attacked and even killed Palestinians receive full immunity from the system, the Ministry of Justice list shows that Palestinians can be arrested by the truckload merely on the basis of the “intention” to resist. One of the prisoners, a 45-year-old Jerusalemite woman, has been sitting in prison for over two years because “she was caught in the Old City with a knife. She stated her intention was to carry out an attack”.
So while the Minister of National Security pleads with Jews to arm themselves and distributes weapons in synagogues like candy, Palestinians are apparently expected to get a license even to carry a knife. I do not know under what circumstances this woman stated her intention was to carry out an attack, but I would be happy to refer the Israeli police to the endless number of people who gleefully declare their intention to "kill as many Arabs as possible". I have dozens upon dozens of those in my inbox.
But even the “intention” to act without having committed any concrete action is not the lowest bar set by the indictments of the prisoners on the list. An 18-year-old from Jerusalem “was arrested together with others because he called out Allahu Akbar”. An 18-year-old woman from the West Bank has been jailed for months for “incitement on Instagram”. I do not know what that “incitement” was for which this young woman was arrested, but it bears reminding that in a state where explicit calls for genocide are considered legitimate as part of whipping up national morale, Palestinians, even citizens of Israel, risk arrest over posting a picture on social media of a #keffiyeh alongside a Palestinian flag.
Among the prisoners’ indictments on the list, only a few are related to actual shooting or weapons use (and even in those cases, as stated, there were no fatalities). In the vast majority of cases they involve throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, shooting fireworks and “disrupting order”.
Clearly #Israel has presented here a specially "soft" list of prisoners that in the absence of fatalities is not supposed to arouse too much public objection, and it is clear that in prison there are also Palestinian prisoners with serious and grave indictments. But this list, which Israel was able to rapidly compile, 300 names, almost all very young, almost all from the past two years, almost all sitting for nonviolent popular resistance (yes, throwing rocks at military or police vehicles is nonviolent popular resistance), should also elicit some reflection on the link between the harsh repression of any expression of popular resistance, and the strengthening of armed and violent resistance groups. That is assuming that the Israeli public will finally grasp the basic fact that as long as occupation and oppression continue, so will resistance.
And following Nadav Frankovich’s piece here, we should also ask ourselves whether it was really worth holding onto those kidnapped women and children in Gaza for a few more weeks just for the right to continue incarcerating a teenager who dared cry “Allahu Akbar”, and many like him.