Is this what self-defense looks like?

Is this what self-defense looks like?

    Wednesday, September 25, 2024   No comments

If these are the images and characterization of what Israeli "self-defense" looks like, then what basis is there to condemn other "self-defenses"?

If Israel can kill babies and women, starve two million people, throw injured persons off rooftops, kills medical doctors and aid workers, sexually abuse Palestinian prisoners, and torture detained Palestinians, then what basis is there to condemn others if they do it?

UN approves proposal for arms embargo on Israel

UN approves proposal for arms embargo on Israel

    Wednesday, September 18, 2024   No comments

Ignoring the US plea for UN to reject the resolution, the UN overwhelmingly adopted resolution to impose sanctions, arms embargo on Israel. The US does not have the veto power it enjoys and always uses to shield Israel from UNSC resolutions.

The U.S. urged the General Assembly to reject the resolution demanding Israel end its 'unlawful presence' in the Occupied Palestinian Territory within 12 months, arguing it undermines the two-state solution, but lacked veto power. Only a handful of small nation-states joined the US to vote against it. Even other Western nations, including some European US allies voted for the resolution, or abstained. Although UNGA resolution are not binding, they represent a moral and ethical judgement by the world community, exposing US's double standard, and lack of principles in relations to human rights and respect to International Humanitarian Law, which has been violated by Israel many times.

Israeli media took notice of this development.

Media review, CNN: "Israel’s military tells Gaza residents to go home but they find only rubble"

Media review, CNN: "Israel’s military tells Gaza residents to go home but they find only rubble"

    Sunday, September 01, 2024   No comments

For the first time since the Israeli military began ground operations in Gaza in October, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has sent out messages to people’s phones and on social media saying that the residents of some areas can return to their neighborhoods.

The IDF posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday that people who had been ordered to leave three neighborhoods of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza could go home.

CNN interviewed a number of families who had returned to find scenes of destruction.

One man, Abdulfattah Al Bourdaini, said: “We came home and found nothing, no power, no gas, no house, and we cannot change our clothes.”

All he had been able to salvage was a teddy bear for the son he hoped one day to have.

“I am penniless like the day I was born,” Al Bourdaini said. “I have nothing. I came to check on my house, didn’t find a house or anything, nothing is left… There is nothing left to cry about.”

‘Nothing is left’: Israel’s military tells Gaza residents to go home but they find only rubble.

The colonial pillaging and plunder continues

The colonial pillaging and plunder continues

    Friday, August 30, 2024   No comments

In 2022, Josep Borell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, triggered a controversy by saying that Europe was a garden of prosperity and “most of the rest of the world” was a jungle. 

Some accused him of tone-deafness and racism. He defended his statement saying that his "reference to 'jungle' has no racist, cultural or geographical connotation." But he never explained how the "jungle" has become, in his mind, a jungle and how the garden of prosperity has become a garden of prosperity and how has it been kept a garden of prosperity. That task was left to the French president who, in a different context, identified the systems by which the Western world accumulated wealth and siphoned it from the rest of the world causing not only a desert of capital in the Global South, but also created a brain drain that continues to pillage and plunder the human resources of the rest of the world, turning them into the "jungle" they describe. 

The plunder and pillaging continue without direct war, allowing the pillagers to plunder and claim the moral high ground at the same time, which, the moral posturing that is, too, can be used to suppress resisters and attract willing collaborators.

Here is France's president explaining how the Russian citizen, who is now worth $15 billion, became a French citizen, a member of the garden of prosperity:

"It's a decision we made in 2018, which I fully stand by," Macron said Thursday. He added that it was "part of a strategy to allow women and men when they are artists, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, when they make the effort to learn the language, when they create wealth, when they ask for it, to grant them French citizenship. I did it for Mr Durov, who took the trouble to learn French, just as I did it for Spiegel. I think it's good for our country," he declared as reported Politico.

... excerpted from The colonial pillaging and plunder continues.

Dehumanizing Opponents as an Instrument of Supremacism: "human animals"

Dehumanizing Opponents as an Instrument of Supremacism: "human animals"

    Monday, July 15, 2024   No comments

We have not forgotten the descriptions and expressions that Yoav Galant, the occupation's Minister of War, made at the beginning of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, when he said, "Israel is fighting human animals and is acting accordingly," until he returned, after more than nine months of the war of extermination that "Israel" is practicing in the Strip, to repeat the same descriptions about the resistance and its people. Is it a coincidence that Galant, followed by Netanyahu, returned two or three days later to the same speech, or is the matter related to considerations and a general context that governs Israeli colonial behavior. The expressions that Minister Galant used at the time, or those he uses today, were not born of the moment of the shock of the flood or the "outburst of anger" that was generated in Israeli society immediately after October 7, as some like to describe it, and this behavior of "Israel" is not a new policy that it is practicing today, but rather an extension of a colonial policy that it has been practicing for many years, the title of which is death, destruction, pain and terror, and what it produced in this war is nothing but a double mixture of the same horrors.

Looking at "others" with inferiority, from a position of superiority, as something "different", as "goyim", primitives, or "human animals" living in this universe that is harnessed to serve the "chosen Jew" and is fed by a huge store of hatred and arrogance.

This superior, “Western in origin” view of the “backward” world has not disappeared since the time of colonial Europe, just as racism has not disappeared today in the Zionist racial mentality, even after 9 months of massacres, and even after these racist, supremacist descriptions were used against “Israel” and its leaders by the South African representative and by judges in the International Court of Justice.

Although it was met with strong international human rights rejection, as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch considered the statements of the occupation’s minister of war “disgusting and an explicit call to commit war massacres,” Netanyahu and his Zionist minister of war still see Gaza as a “human animal cage,” slaughtering whoever he wants, whenever he wants, and however he wants, then razing it to the ground, and torturing its “primitive” people, who are cut off from electricity, water, and food, just as the Minister’s European ancestors did with the “human animals” they brought from Senegal and the Congo until they died of thirst, cold, and disease outside the walls of the Roman Catholic Church in Brussels, because they are “human animals, nothing more.” This description, which Galant deliberately and provocatively uses, is enough to indicate Israel's intention, coupled with action, to do everything and anything to take revenge on the Palestinians, even if this revenge results in killing children and the elderly and demolishing hospitals, shelters, schools and mosques on the heads of the displaced. As long as these are just "human animals", any harm that Israel inflicts on them, no matter how heinous, is "permissible and legitimate because they deserve it".

More importantly, in addition to what we have indicated about the deep-rootedness of this approach in the Israeli consciousness and behavior since the inception of this usurping entity, understanding the Israeli reaction, which adopts a policy of complete destruction without restrictions and without any regard for the rules of international humanitarian law, requires understanding the backgrounds and motives that specifically drive it today and push its leaders to return and insist on repeating its ABCs, especially describing the Palestinians as "human animals".

The first of these motives is to reproduce the narrative of the war and its spirit within Israeli society as if it were its first day, so that Israeli society remains led by its government and its agenda, thus silencing all voices and protests calling for an end to the war and demanding a negotiating path that leads to political arrangements, allowing Netanyahu and his partners to evade the societal accountability that will end the rule of this extremist right-wing coalition if the war stops, as if the charge of anger that is being fueled by the continued evocation of the narrative of “human animals” will, over time, reduce the extent of what many of them described as the massive military and security failure on October 7 and what followed. Because this narrative needs support to remain present in the consciousness of Israelis and the world, it must continue to be reminded and broadcast through media platforms from time to time. The second is the fierce competition in which the leaders of "Israel" compete to incite against the Palestinians and the people of Gaza in particular, as Israeli politicians, military personnel and religious men excel in inciting against the Palestinians, to the point that repeatedly describing the Palestinians as "animals" has become an essential part of their political discourse.

In this race of incitement, "Israel", its leadership and its army are using everything they have at their disposal without limits, crushing all of Gaza and leveling it to the ground without mercy. For the people of Gaza and Palestine in general, mercy has always been outside the dictionary of Israeli aggression, which means that the repeated mention of "human animals" in Galant and Netanyahu's speech was nothing more than a "natural" description in the context of the spirit of war and fighting that has inhabited Israeli society since its inception.

The third is that "peaceful" and "civilized" "Israel" must weave its vision of the other "barbaric and backward" party, as the Palestinians are not human beings, and it is determined to give the world a new narrative that moves it from the position of self-defense to the position of "exterminating animals", while preserving its "humanity".

In order to ensure that it "whitens its image and behavior", Israel must continue to criminalize and dehumanize the "other", to ensure that the world does not turn against it while it exterminates "these animals", accusing it of confronting what it calls "atrocities" with greater atrocities, and what it calls "terrorism" with more horrific terrorism. This is what was expressed by the position of the Chief of Staff of the occupation army, Herzi Halevi, a few months after the beginning of the war, when he said: "We fight with determination and remain human, unlike the other side that fights like animals."

The fourth motive is the contempt for international law and its institutions, as "Israel" has a superior ability to destroy, and its history is littered with the rubble of cities and villages and human remains, and its record also has a long history of destroying international law, kicking it and turning its back on it, as Netanyahu stood proudly a few days ago, saying: "We have proven that no force in the world can stop us."

Because international law, when it comes to "Israel", is very theoretical, very timid, very weak, and far removed from reality, all its prohibitions are violated and violated to the point of insane chaos as long as the victim is a "Palestinian Arab" and the killer is an "Israeli Jew." Perhaps this is also a message to those who rely on the rules of international law and the Geneva Conventions, and bet on "rationalizing" "Israel's" behavior and preventing it from targeting unarmed civilians, as the Israeli army, according to Galant, does not see itself bound by these agreements, as it kills "human" animals, and these rules and agreements do not include them. It seems that stripping opponents of their humanity has become a basic method in racist wars, and "Israel" is the protégé of the colonial West and its creation and image, imitating today, as it used to do in the past, what its early Western European colonial ancestors did, and it is inhabited by narratives of violence that shape the public conscience in "Israel", and in which religion, culture, and art intertwine by pressing the trigger of the fire that Gaza is burning with Today, the earth is uprooted and its "human animals" are burned alive.

_________

Muhammad Halsa, Writer and researcher; content of byline articles express the opinion of author(s).

Media review: Gaza War, Famine, Israeli troops documenting themselves committing war crimes, and the terrifying war between Hezbollah and Israel

Media review: Gaza War, Famine, Israeli troops documenting themselves committing war crimes, and the terrifying war between Hezbollah and Israel

    Friday, July 05, 2024   No comments

Despite the consequential events happening around the world, Gaza remains the central issue driving the news for the ninth month. Even in national elections in France, UK, and Iran (and the US Nov. elections), candidates were forced to answer questions related to the war in Gaza, and in the UK, many candidates campaigned and won on a platform that put ending the suffering in Gaza on top of the list. Here are some news stories from this week.

Spanish Defense Minister: What is happening in Gaza is a real genocide... something that cannot be ignored

Spanish Defense Minister: What is happening in Gaza is a real genocide... something that cannot be ignored

    Saturday, May 25, 2024   No comments

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles confirmed today, Saturday, that the war on the Gaza Strip is a “true genocide,” in light of the deterioration of relations between “Israel” and Spain, after Madrid’s decision to recognize the Palestinian state.

“We cannot ignore what is happening in Gaza, which is a true genocide,” Robles said during an interview with the official TVE television, pointing out that Madrid’s recognition of a Palestinian state aims to help “end the violence in Gaza.”

Robles' statements came after similar statements from Yolanda Diaz, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister yesterday, who also confirmed that the war on Gaza is genocide.

Diaz pledged to continue pressing, from her position in the government, to defend human rights and put an end to the genocide committed against the Palestinian people.

Diaz's pledge came in a video clip circulated by activists on social media, in which she expressed her welcome of Spain's recognition of the State of Palestine, and stressed that her country's move towards recognizing the Palestinian state, on May 28, is "just the beginning, and we cannot stop at this point."

“We are living in a moment where doing the bare minimum is heroic, but it is not enough at the same time,” added Díaz, who also serves as Minister of Labor and Economy.

She said, "Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea," referring to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, between which Palestine lies.

In a related context, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albarez, said in a post on the “X” platform that “the precautionary measures taken by the International Court of Justice, which included the decision to stop the Israeli attack in Rafah, are mandatory,” calling for their implementation. The ICC, too, has moved to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders accusing them of crimes against humanity and other war crimes.

Yesterday, the International Court of Justice ordered the Israeli occupation to stop the military attack on Rafah, stressing that any additional military action will lead to partial or total destruction in the region, in accordance with the Genocide Convention, without urging a comprehensive ceasefire in the Strip.

It is noteworthy that Spain, Norway, and Ireland announced, two days ago, officially recognizing the State of Palestine as of May 28, amid Arab welcome and Israeli anger.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday, "If more countries recognize the Palestinian state, this will increase international pressure for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip."

Before this development, European Union member countries had previously recognized the State of Palestine, including Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Sweden.

Media Matters: Clash of views about Gaza, Palestine, human rights abuses, and Iranian retaliation on attack on its diplomatic mission in Syria

Media Matters: Clash of views about Gaza, Palestine, human rights abuses, and Iranian retaliation on attack on its diplomatic mission in Syria

    Sunday, April 21, 2024   No comments

One of the most representative clashes between two worldviews: Iranian worldview versus Western worldview as represented in Piers Morgan's interview, debate with Iranian Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi.

Morgan repeating the fabricated story of 40 babies beheaded by Hamas, to justify to mass killings in Gaza, and Mirandi referencing the investigative journalists and NGO reports that challenged the narrative of beheadings, and finding that Israeli forces have committed sexual violence and torture against Palestinians, turned Morgan flustered and rude. 

The interview is available on a number of Internet sites, and embedded from a couple of sites below.

  

Why does it take the killing of non-Gazans for the West to see war crimes?

Why does it take the killing of non-Gazans for the West to see war crimes?

    Wednesday, April 03, 2024   No comments

Politico reported that the US and other Western governments were “outraged” by the “devastating” attack that killed 7 workers from the World Central Kitchen, just another a war crime. Ironically, these governments do not seem to be outraged by the fact that these seven aid workers were killed because they were in Gaza feeding 2 million people starved by a war that is enabled by them. 33,000 civilians killed in Gaza, 70% of whom are children and women, did not cause outrage to summoned Israel diplomats. But this incident does.

The news outlet reported that

 "Israel’s strike against aid workers trying to get food to residents in Gaza reverberated across Washington on Tuesday, particularly resonating because of the American death and the connections the group’s founder — José Andrés — has to the capital. Administration officials lashed out at new levels, and Israel was left struggling for damage control."

Western media provided extensive coverage as if these are the only seven uninvolved civilians killed by Israelis strikes in the past 6 months. 

Another US government employeee resigning in protest of gaza War: "Why I’m resigning from the State Department"

Another US government employeee resigning in protest of gaza War: "Why I’m resigning from the State Department"

    Wednesday, March 27, 2024   No comments

Another US government employeee resigning in protest of gaza War: "Why I’m resigning from the State Department", the State Department employee, Annelle Sheline, PhD,  wrote on CNN.

For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.

...

President Joe Biden himself indirectly admits that Israel is not protecting Palestinian civilians from harm. Under pressure from some congressional Democrats, the administration issued a new policy to ensure that foreign military transfers don’t violate relevant domestic and international laws.

...

She also invoked another employee of US government, Aaron Bushnell, US Navy Pilot, who committed the most extreme act of protest, setting oneself on fire.

I am haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

I can no longer continue what I was doing. I hope that my resignation can contribute to the many efforts to push the administration to withdraw support for Israel’s war, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians whose lives are at risk and for the sake of America’s moral standing in the world.

In October, another State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers, Josh Paul, resigned this week in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel as it lays siege to Gaza in its war with Hamas.