Palestine

Using eyewitness reports, video footage, articles, photographs, eyewitness evidence and over investigatory material, much of it recorded by Israeli soldiers, the historian has produced what Haaretz calls “the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza”.

Some of the most shocking incidents documented by Mordechai include a Palestinian woman with a child being shot while waving a white flag, starving girls being crushed to death while queuing for bread, a handcuffed 62-year-old Palestinian man getting run over by an Israeli tank and an air strike targeting people trying to help a wounded boy.

from #MiddleEastEye #MEE
By Nadav Rapaport in Tel Aviv, Israel and Oscar Rickett in London
Published date: 6 December 2024 14:25 GMT

Israeli troops assaulted the school complex, shelled and bombed the area, and issued expulsion orders through quadcopters fitted with loudspeakers, according to witnesses, forcing terrified families outside in the middle of the night.

Leaving much of their scant belongings behind, civilians were forced to walk for an hour and a half, along Salah al-Din road—the main thoroughfare running through the enclave—before being forced to pass through an Israeli checkpoint.

Witnesses describe tear-streaked children covered in dust running panicked in the streets as warplanes and drones roared overhead. Some pleaded for water but Israeli soldiers refused to give them anything and instead poured water on the ground in front of them to taunt them, according to witnesses.

At the checkpoint, Israeli troops separated the men and detained them as their families screamed in desperation. Witnesses described children clinging to Israeli tanks in a desperate attempt to stay with their fathers. After the checkpoint, families were forced to walk for hours more, through the day, making their way a harrowing 10 kilometers south to Gaza City. Some of the wounded fell on the road with no hope of getting treatment.

"I was walking with my sister in the street,” said Rahaf, 16. She and her sister were the sole survivors in their family of an earlier airstrike that killed 70 people. “Suddenly my sister fell due to the bombing. I saw blood pouring from her, but I couldn't do anything. I left her in the street, and no one pulled her out. I was screaming, but no one heard me."

When those who made it finally arrived, they collapsed in the streets exhausted. Children cried from hunger and thirst, and mothers shivered from the bitter cold, with no shelter or safe place to go.

“My colleagues can no longer deny that this is genocide,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). “We must follow our own U.S. laws. We need an Arms Embargo now.”

On Thursday, Amnesty released a sprawling report determining that Israel’s assault of Gaza amounts to genocide, citing Israel’s relentless attacks, blocking of humanitarian aid, targeting of health and other basic infrastructure, forced displacement of 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and more.

Amnesty is the first major international humanitarian organization to outright label Israel’s actions as a genocide. The group was also one of the first major human rights organizations to label Israel’s violent occupation and oppression of Palestine as apartheid, back in 2022.

The human rights group, one of the largest in the world, specifically called out the U.S. as a major collaborator in the genocide due to the Biden administration’s policy of sending Israel weapons with zero red lines. Just last week, despite Israel’s clear, ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, reports emerged of the Biden administration advancing yet another sale of weapons to Israel worth $680 million.

from TheForward
[Jewish publication from USA]

Rob Eshman - Senior Columnist
December 3, 2024

[this might be an article to be shared with someone who still has illusions about Israel. Also has links to some excellent interviews with Khalidi.]

While in the past, the interests of the United States and the Zionist entity may have slightly differed, October 7, 2023, put both on a path of complete alignment. There are two primary factors to keep in mind here when considering this analysis and why it makes sense: The role of Zionist financial power in the US political system and the strategic goals of the American leadership.

What Hamas did was completely destroy the illusion of Israeli security, deterrence, and, by extension, the American projection of regional power. The war shattered the hopes for achieving the US’ desired trade route that would have run through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and then occupied Palestine. It also raised the question: If this is what Hamas, on its own, can do, just how powerful is the Axis of Resistance led by Iran?

Suddenly, overnight, it appeared as if the US role as the dominant power in West Asia was collapsing before our very eyes, that the Zionist regime was in demise, and that Iran was the dominant force regionally. The US could not accept this outcome and decided to work with the Israelis to completely undo what occurred that day.

If you attempt to analyze the course of the war over the past 13 months through a purely Israeli lens, what they have done makes no sense. The decision to continue its genocide past the period of the first few months has in fact crippled the regime. Nearly a million settlers have left, their sense of security has been robbed from them, the already divided society has fractured further, their political system is in disarray, their economy is crumbling, and their "international legitimacy" is gone; only held up by their closest Western allies.

Yet, the struggle shouldn’t be read in this way. The true power lies not in “Tel Aviv” but in Washington.

If you read many analyses put forth by self-professed experts, they present a narrative that the Israeli PM is an irrational actor running an extremist coalition but is being tamed by the United States. This is the kind of fictional presentation of events presented through the likes of Bob Woodward’s recent best-selling book “War”. It attempts to put blame on the alleged independent actions of the Israelis, while the US Biden administration has been there to try and calm the situation down through tirelessly working toward the passage of aid into the Gaza Strip and diplomacy aimed at sparing the entire region from a catastrophic war.

“You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza | Amnesty International USA (2024-12-04)

https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/you-feel-like-you-are-subhuman-israels-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/
———

“Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that the government of Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

“Our findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide, and it must stop now.”

@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe
@israel

#AmnestyInternational #NameGenocideGenocide #StopGenocide

Yes, it's a genocide: Amos Goldberg (Led By Donkeys, 2024-12-04)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMwqhdVV5as
———

"And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent."

A. Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(⬇️ Transcript in thread 🧵)

@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe @israel
#NameGenocideGenocide #StopGenocide

from #Zeteo [Note - may be paywalled]
Prem Thakker
Dec 04, 2024

Hanno Hauenstein
December 3 2024, 6:00 a.m.

from #TheIntercept
Akela Lacy
December 3 2024, 7:33 p.m.

In the case of Palestine, the UN’s role, contrary to what many believe, has been catastrophic. While it is globally viewed as a victim of Israeli restrictions, particularly with the severe funding cuts to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, it has in fact historically operated as a tool for the imperial and colonial ambitions of the global powers that invented it.

Perhaps the most chilling example of this came on November 29, 1947, when the UN formally approved a plan to partition Palestine, thus giving Zionist militias the green light to tear the state apart against the will of its people and the Arab world.

While it should not be considered the starting point for Zionist colonialism, the UN’s partition plan—referred to as Resolution 181—remains central to the map and reality of Palestine today. It served as the catalyst that set in motion the organized and systematic violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947 and 1949, and set the stage for the next seven decades of the same policies.

In the six months between the passing of the partition plan on November 29, 1947, and May 15, 1948, Zionist militias had already committed some of their most horrific massacres and expelled half of the total number of Palestinians that would eventually be displaced during the Nakba.

And while Palestinian and international objections to the plan were loud and clear, the world’s powers enforced it anyway.

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Tue 3 Dec 2024 11.12 EST

By MEE staff
Published date: 30 November 2024 16:30 GMT

[We need marches like this all over, especially in the U.S.]

deleting this because while it is important to note people being intimidated by the FBI, after thinking about it more, I think it is not worth having some of the links to more reactionary sources in the article