Stop Arming Israel

An Oxfam activist points at a mock bomb placed among flowers during a protest in London by the charity against the UK supplying weapons to Israel.

Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Wed 31 Jul 2024 09.54 EDT

The Guardian

Liberate Yourself From The Israeli Identity

Liberate yourself from the Zionist identity.

Undo the brainwashing and indoctrination you received in Israel.

The IDF should not exist.

Israel should not exist.

Israeli Pilots Who Bombed Hospitals In Gaza Identified

Reports on the Israeli pilots involved in the airstrikes that targeted hospitals and civilians in Gaza have been published by Nournews.

Tal Zahavi, pictured on the left, boasting over 23 years in the Israeli Air Force, has been involved in air operations against civilians in Gaza for the past 73 days, including the bombing of Deir al-Balah’s residential areas on October 19 and November 7, and the bombing of Rafah on October 26 and December 12, leading to the tragic killing of at least 675 Palestinians, including 230 children.

Guy Isaac Alon, pictured on the right, has also been actively involved in the last 73 days, participating in the bombing of two hospitals, namely Gaza’s Baptist Hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital. He also played a role in the bombing of six mosques, Al Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis, as well as other densely populated civilian areas, resulting in the tragic killing of at least 500 Palestinians, including 165 children.

Via: Mint Press News

Israel Can Never Defeat HAMAS

Israel can never defeat Hamas because it is, first and foremost, a resistance movement.

They could kill Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh, and the next generation of orphaned boys turned to men would replace them.

As long as occupation exists, so too will resistance.

Images like this are Hamas’s best recruiting tool.

Israel creates the most effective pro-Hamas propaganda.

Once Thieves, Always Thieves!

Just like the Nazi’s who stole personal belongings from their victims – even gold teeth – these Zionist Parasites stole Palestinian land and personal belongings from civilians they murdered, then brag to their families that they’ll give them stolen presents.

A Historic Day For Palestinians

Israel completely and utterly shocked and outclassed by HAMAS’ bold and genius attack on its military bases.

October 7 2023 is a historic and epic day and shall be remembered and celebrated forever.

Resist Israel, Victory For Palestine!

When Americans Honored An Icon Of Jihad

It's NOT A Conflict!

And when one side which is trespassing is being guarded while the other side is asked to leave in the middle of their payers by pointing a gun at them or beating them up & treating them like a herd of animals!!!

Courtesy of: Paliyana

Dutch Man Renounces "Righteous Among The Nations" Honor

Saved Jews During Nazi Holocaust, Now Returns His Medal To Israel

He saved Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, but now a 91-year-old Dutch man who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust museum has given his award back.

During the German occupation of his nation, Henk Zanoli had bravely risked his life for the sake of others. But on Thursday returned his medal and certificate to Yad Vashem because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli Defense Forces bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip last month.

Back in 2011, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum awarded both Henk Zanoli and his late mother, Johana Zanoli-Smit, the Righteous Among the Nations award for having saved a Jewish child, Elhanan Pinto, when the Nazis occupied Holland. Zanoli’s own father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 as a result of his politically outspoken opposition to the occupation.

He eventually would die at the Mauthausen concentration camp in the month of February 1945. Zanoli’s brother-in-law was executed as well, for resistance against the Nazi war machine. One of his brothers, as well, had a Jewish fiancée, and was killed by the Nazis.

But Zanoli’s great-niece, Angelique Eijpe, is a Dutch diplomat. She is the head of her nation’s diplomatic mission in the country of Oman. Her husband is the economist Isma’il Ziadah, who was born in the al-Bureij refugee camp located in central Gaza. Ziadah’s parents were born in now renamed town of Fallujah, which is now known as town of Kiryat Gat.

Now, Zanoli has returned his award to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague – exactly where he received them in an official ceremony three years ago. He sent the following letter, addressed to Ambassador Haim Davon.

Zanoli opened by explaining the high price his family paid for fighting for the lives and rights of the Jewish people.

“Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel,” he explained.

Read the full letter, embedded, below: 

“The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their [Palestinian] grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army … For me to hold on to the honor granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.”

Israel’s actions in Gaza, he said further, “have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.”

~ My Only Wish: That The Truth Has A Tongue ~

Song: My Only Wish Artist: Sami Yusuf

~  Native American Indians Stand With Gaza ~

Palestinian people and Native Americans have been drawn by many. Speaking in San Francisco, Tony Gonzales of the American Indian Movement (AIM), ”with a common legacy of bantustans (homelands) – Indian reservations and encircled Palestinian territories – Native Americans understand well the situation of Palestinians.”

  Gyasi Ross, writing “Why I, As A Native American, Support The Palestinian People,”explains the following:

  (Article by Mike Ahnigilahi)

'Deployed, Destroyed and Enjoyed Gaza 2014'

How Israelis Rejoice At Gaza's Destruction

An Israeli army reservist officer with his back to the camera, has been spotted enjoying a drink and chatting with friends at a bar in Jerusalem in the early hours of Wednesday morning, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan 'Deployed, Destroyed, Enjoyed, Gaza 2014' emblazoned on the back.

Photo, snapped by an Associated Press photographer

~ Egypt's Usurper Regime Betrays Gaza's Resistance ~

i24 ضيوف قناة   الإسرائيلية يثنون علي دور المخابرات المصرية و نظام السيسي المساند لهم ضد حماس و القضية الفلسطينية  سفير إسرائيل السابق في القاهرة يتسحاق ليفانون يفضح #الفاسد #محمد_فريد_التهامي رئيس #مخابرات_الفسدة: - التهامي أخبر المفاوضين الفلسطينيين باشتراط وقف إطلاق النار أولاً قبل أي تفاوض، مصراً علي معادلة التهدئة مقابل التهدئة، ومحاولاً سلب المقاومة من أي ثمرات لانجازاتها العسكرية. - التهامي أخبر المفاوضين الفلسطينيين أن فتح معبر رفح خارج طاولة المفاوضات. - التهامي أخبر الإسرائيليين أنه يخطط لإعادة السلطة الفلسطينية لإدارة معبر رفح علي الطرف الفلسطيني كجزء من المفاوضات. - المبادرة المصرية للتهدئة مقابل التهدئة هي مبادرة إسرائيلية مصرية، والفلسطينيون لم يشاركوا في وضعها. - المخابرات المصرية عارضت إعادة فتح المطار والميناء، وتصر علي محاصرة غزة ونزع سلاح المقاومة. - مصر الانقلاب أكثر تشدداً وعداءً للمقاومة من إسرائيل ... باختصار، مخابرات الفسدة تفاوض بالنيابة عن إسرائيل، ولهذا لا يوجد لهم وفد مفاوض في القاهرة. والسؤال المهم هو: هل حول الفاسد محمد فريد تهامي المخابرات المصرية إلي فرع للموساد؟ وهل خلت المخابرات المصرية من شريف واحد يوقف هذا البلاء!!؟؟

~ Israel Is Not My Birthright ~

I WAS RAISED TO THINK THE COUNTRY WAS OURS BY DIVINE RIGHT. BUT THIS HORROR HAS CHALLENGED EVEN MY DEEPEST BELIEFS

  I’m writing this in my new baby niece’s room. I am here in Florida visiting my family because of this niece, this tiny pudgy innocent baby. We are Jewish, and it’s time for my niece to receive her Hebrew name in a sweet little ceremony at our longtime synagogue.

Last night I sat at the synagogue next to my 19-year-old daughter. I felt a swell of joy as the services began; I’d been away too long. I’d loved services as a child and teenager.

And then we hit the first mention of Israel as the Promised Land, and I burst into tears.

On the way to services, I’d caught up on Twitter a bit. I’d read about the Israeli missiles still falling on Palestine. I’d read about the outright murder of Palestinian children.

And I sat there and listened to the rabbi call Israel our Promised Land, and it broke something in me.

I am an American Jew of a certain age (40), and what that means is that I was raised to believe that Israel was ours by divine right.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it aloud. Especially because, like many of my generation of Jews, I’m not particularly religious. Many Jews my age slid into paganism, a sort of ambivalent agnosticism, or outright atheism; we are cultural Jews rather than religious Jews. And yet when I first spoke about the conflict between Israel and Palestine some years ago, I found that falling out of my mouth – that God promised us Israel. It’s ours because God said so.

My daughter, trying to comfort me after the services, said, “Maybe it is the Promised Land, just not right now.”

My daughter is an atheist. And the narrative got her, too.

The history we are taught in our Sunday school is that we were there first, and that therefore the Palestinians are occupying our land. How long ago were we there, though? And who, exactly, iswe? I find myself using that we – “We need to stop bombing Palestine,” “we need to give land back,” but I am not Israeli. I have never been to Israel. This is how deep it runs, this idea of possession.

American Jewish teenagers get a free trip to Israel, paid for by a Jewish foundation. These are called Birthright trips.

My daughter went to Israel two years ago. Not on a Birthright trip, the very name of which raises the hairs on the back of my neck, that entitlement to land that others have lived on for generations. She went with my parents, who have gone many times before. She visited various landmarks; she took lots of pictures.

My daughter sat beside me last night at the synagogue, and I was acutely aware that she could not read Hebrew. Neither can my sister, and my husband lost the language right after his bar mitzvah, years ago.

I moved my finger beneath the words as I sang. I whispered to my daughter at opportune moments – this is the R, this is the L, here are the vowels.

Yud. Sin. Resh. Aleph. Lamed.

Yisrael.

I hoped fervently that it would not happen, but it did – the rabbi spoke of those who hate Israel and hate the Jews, but did not speak of the Israeli army, which is burning children alive; did not condemn the hate of Israelis for Palestinians. He spoke of peace, but he spoke of peace as a thing to force on the Gaza strip, not a thing for both sides to work toward. I clutched my daughter’s hand, trying not to cry, thinking but we are killing children. Where is the peace in that action?

Who is we?

We. We are killing children, we are killing civilians, because we were told that God gave us this land, and half of us don’t even believe.

Our Birthright ™.

They, not we. The Israeli navy bombed children who were playing on the beach. This is not we, this is not us, this is not in my name. These are nightmarish actions taken by a government I have no real tie to, despite my childhood indoctrination, despite my name, despite my alleged birthright.

At services last night we spoke of peace, but no peace can come of this.

The answer to occupation is not more occupation.

The answer to genocide is not genocide.

I sat there clutching my sefer, wildly praying for true peace, for all of this to stop, and I can’t see it from here. I can’t see Israel backing off. I can’t see an end to the murder, and it horrifies me. I think no one can possibly be reading the Torah anymore because this is not what we were told to do, this is not how we were told to act, and if you believe Israel is yours because God says so, how can you ignore the rest of what he said?

The rabbi encouraged us to go to Monday’s pro-Israel rally, and my stomach turned.

I am naïve, I suppose. I know that I am heartbroken. I just want everyone to live.

Shin. Lamed. Mem. I trace the letters and teach my daughter the word for peace.

Updated, 7/27/14:  In the initial version of this post, the author incorrectly referred to a Palestinian child burned  by Israeli soldiers. The child was burned by civilians, and Salon regrets the error.

By Shira Lipkin

~ The Palestinians' Right To Self-Defense ~

If Israel insists, as the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo, on using the weapons of industrial warfare against a helpless civilian population then that population has an inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. 

  The international community will have to either act to immediately halt Israeli attacks and lift the blockade of Gaza or acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to use weapons to defend themselves.

  No nation, including any in the Muslim world, appears willing to intervene to protect the Palestinians. No world body, including the United Nations, appears willing or able to pressure Israel through sanctions to conform to the norms of international law. And the longer we in the world community fail to act, the worse the spiral of violence will become.

Violence, even when employed in self-defense, is a curse. It empowers the ruthless and punishes the innocent. It leaves in its aftermath horrific emotional and physical scars. But, as I learned in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian War, when forces bent on your annihilation attack you relentlessly, and when no one comes to your aid, you must aid yourself. When Sarajevo was being hit with 2,000 shells a day and under heavy sniper fire in the summer of 1995 no one among the suffering Bosnians spoke to me about wanting to mount nonviolent resistance. No one among them saw the U.N.-imposed arms embargo against the Bosnian government as rational, given the rain of sniper fire and the 90-millimeter tank rounds and 155-millimeter howitzer shells that were exploding day and night in the city. The Bosnians were reduced, like the Palestinians in Gaza, to smuggling in light weapons through clandestine tunnels. Their enemies, the Serbs—like the Israelis in the current conflict—were constantly trying to blow up tunnels. The Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, with their meager weapons, desperately attempted to hold the trench lines that circled the city. And it is much the same in Gaza. It was only repeated NATO airstrikes in the fall of 1995 that prevented the Bosnian-held areas from being overrun by advancing Serbian forces. The Palestinians cannot count on a similar intervention.

  The number of dead in Gaza resulting from the Israeli assault has topped 650, and about 80 percent have been civilians. The number of wounded Palestinians is over 4,000 and a substantial fraction of these victims are children. At what point do the numbers of dead and wounded justify self-defense? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? At what point do Palestinians have the elemental right to protect their families and their homes?

  Article 51 does not answer these specific questions, but the International Court of Justice does in the case of Nicaragua v. United States. The court ruled in that case that a state must endure an armed attack before it can resort to self-defense. The definition of an armed attack, in addition to being “action by regular armed forces across an international border,” includes sending or sponsoring armed bands, mercenaries or irregulars that commit acts of force against another state. The court held that any state under attack must first request outside assistance before undertaking armed self-defense. According to U.N. Charter Article 51, a state’s right to self-defense ends when the Security Council meets the terms of the article by “tak[ing] the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Resolution 465 stated that the “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem.” 

Israel, as an occupying power, is in direct violation of Article III of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. This convention lays out the minimum standards for the protection of civilians in a conflict that is not international in scope. Article 3(1) states that those who take no active role in hostilities must be treated humanely, without discrimination, regardless of racial, social, religious or economic distinctions. The article prohibits certain acts commonly carried out against noncombatants in regions of armed conflict, including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It prohibits the taking of hostages as well as sentences given without adequate due process of law. Article 3(2) mandates care for the sick and wounded.

  Israel has not only violated the tenets of Article III but has amply fulfilled the conditions of an aggressor state as defined by Article 51. But for Israel, as for the United States, international law holds little importance. The U.S. ignored the verdict of the international court in Nicaragua v. United States and, along with Israel, does not accept the jurisdiction of the tribunal. It does not matter how many Palestinians are killed or wounded, how many Palestinian homes are demolished, how dire the poverty becomes in Gaza or the West Bank, how many years Gaza is under a blockade or how many settlements go up on Palestinian territory. Israel, with our protection, can act with impunity.

  The unanimous U.S. Senate vote in support of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the media’s slavish parroting of Israeli propaganda and the Obama administration’s mindless repetition of pro-Israeli clichés have turned us into cheerleaders for Israeli war crimes. We fund and abet these crimes with $3.1 billion a year in military aid to Israel. We are responsible for the slaughter. No one in the establishment, including our most liberal senator, Bernie Sanders, dares defy the Israel lobby. And since we refuse to act to make peace and justice possible we should not wonder why the Palestinians carry out armed resistance.

  The Palestinians will reject, as long as possible, any cease-fire that does not include a lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. They have lost hope that foreign governments will save them. They know their fate rests in their own hands. The revolt in Gaza is an act of solidarity with the world outside its walls. It is an attempt to assert in the face of overwhelming odds and barbaric conditions the humanity and agency of the Palestinian people. There is little in life that Palestinians can choose, but they can choose how to die. And many Palestinians, especially young men trapped in overcrowded hovels where they have no work and little dignity, will risk immediate death to defy the slow, humiliating death of occupation.

  I cannot blame them.

  Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

~ Shades Of Anger ~

RAFEEF ZIADAH is a Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist. Her debut CD Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth, who still fly kites in the face of F16 bombers, who still remember the names if their villages in Palestine and still hear the sound of Hadeel (cooing of doves) over Gaza.