Amira Hass writes in Ha’aretz that Israeli soldiers who kill unarmed Palestinians didn’t pop up for the 1st time three weeks ago. Nor did the army’s excuses start only then. Gross violation of human rights (and Israeli denial) are as old as the state itself – even older. The actions excuses continue unabated in spite of smartphones and security cameras.
Richard Silverstein reports on the assassination of Gazan engineer Fadi al Batsh in Malaysia and notes it resembles that of of Mohammed al Zoary last year. He asks why Israel kills academics and then protests academic boycott. His answer: An Israeli professor “would never see the equivalence between him or herself and a dead Palestinian professor.”
As Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary, a child and grandchild of exiled Palestinian refugees describes his remarkable family history – family members harbored Jewish neighbors in 1929, helped Count Folke Bernadotte, after Israel confiscated the family home, Golda Meir lived there… and discusses the continuing injustices endured as Palestinians resist Israel’s violent colonization.
Pro-Israel curriculum provider Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) is working with local Jewish groups and the Virginia Department of Education to whitewash Virginia textbooks by removing words like “occupied” and “settlements” and replacing them with more favorable terms like “captured” and “communities.”
In the past 10 years, Israel has launched three massive genocidal wars of aggression on occupied Gaza… this came after years of a deadly medieval Israeli siege of Gaza… this followed Israel’s ethnic cleansing of multitudes Palestinians… It is time for the world to stand up to the only remaining apartheid regime in the world
A Statement of US Churches and Christian Agencies on Gaza: “As US churches and Christian agencies, we support the Palestinian people as they courageously stand up for their rights.” Statement supports refugees rights, calls for end of blockade of Gaza, calls for U.S. to censure Israeli violence…
Amira Hass writes in Ha’aretz: ‘How did you destroy villages?’ one daughter will ask. ‘How did you agree to imprison two million people?’ another will whisper. The answers will only make their weeping louder.
Crowds of young men went to the border area, setting tires on fire to create a smokescreen to obstruct the vision of Israeli snipers. They were met with gunfire and tear gas as they hurled stones at the heavily armed Israeli soldiers backed up by tanks and warplanes. Israel, which controls all of Gaza’s border crossings, airspace and waters, imposed a ban on the entry of tires, and Israeli forces brought huge fans and massive water cannons to extinguish the fires…
The US is in a toxic relationship that has made us indifferent on our best days, complicit in murder on our worst. Our mainstream media and our government join with Israel in bloodguilt.
Even before the protest began, Israeli spokespeople framed it preemptively as a Hamas production, even though it was supported by Gaza civil society organizations and all political parties. Civilian Gazans’ willingness to walk to that fence measures their yearning to express themselves as humans and claim their freedom, even at immediate risk.