Palestinians left out of Israhell’s Vaccine Success Story

‘Israel’ discusses the new devil gov. in Tehran. US ‘better wake up’ and stay clear of resurrecting the JCPOA peace deal. Next, a discussion of Palestinians rejecting to be vaccinated, not mentioning that ‘Israel’ distributed old vaccines near expiration date. What were the Israelis waiting for, and why does it have to be their brutal occupiers to distribute the vaccines? The genocidal regime BENT ON ELIMINATING THEM, is going to save them?

Just to name a few


Feb 22, 2021 Doctors without borders

Matthias Kennes is a registered nurse and medical referent for the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) COVID-19 response in Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Here, he writes about the striking inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel is an occupying power, and has millions of vaccines.

Palestine is the occupied territory, and has barely a few thousand vaccines. As a medic, I don’t really care who sorts this out.

As a medic, I do care deeply that the most vulnerable are prioritized.

I am left with this shameful thought echoing in my mind—60 times more likely to be vaccinated in Israel than in Palestine, with the most vulnerable in Palestine still left unprotected.

As a medic, I am shocked.

The internationally acclaimed COVID-19 vaccination success of Israel has a dark side: the consequences of which are being felt cruelly in the West Bank Palestinian territory where I work, and in the blockaded Gaza Strip where my MSF colleagues work.

Israel has managed to vaccinate nearly 4.2 million people with a first dose—that’s around 50 percent of the population—and 2.8 million people with the full two doses, more than 30 percent of the population.

Meanwhile, only several thousand doses are available in the Palestinian West Bank, and a delivery of 20,000 reported to have arrived last weekend in Gaza scarcely scratches at the surface of the needs.

At a generous maximum, assuming that the 35,000 reported Sputnik and Moderna vaccines are all available, that would be around 0.8 percent of the Palestinian population.

To make that clearer, you are over 60 times more likely to have a vaccination in Israel than in Palestine.

According to the Geneva Conventions, Israel has a responsibility as an occupying power to ensure the medical supplies of the occupied population, including “adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventative measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics” to “the fullest extent of the means available to it.”

I came to Hebron with an MSF team specifically to help with the COVID-19 response.

In December last year, when the second wave of the pandemic hit the West Bank, the Dura hospital where we are supporting medical assistance was full of COVID-19 patients.

We had mostly elderly people, many with underlying conditions such as diabetes or other chronic diseases. Patients died.

Sick COVID-19 patients have died in hospitals around the world, but these patients died on my watch, and that pains me.

In eight of the 11 West Bank governorates, COVID-19 case numbers are on the rise again.

In Hebron, this increase has been slow and steady for the past four weeks.

I do not want to see any more patients dying of hypoxia. The vaccine is my hope to avoid this. It is also a source of despair.

A few kilometers away in Israel all the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated and they are planning to move onto vaccinating healthy adults and youths, who are less vulnerable, especially to severe complications.

Here in the West Bank there are around 10,000 doses, which is enough for 5,000 people to be vaccinated.

In the hospital where I work, staff have been offered the vaccine, but the available doses do not come close to covering the health care workers, let alone the elderly and people with medical conditions that make them susceptible to dying of COVID-19.

If asked why vulnerable people cannot be vaccinated in Palestine, I do not know how to answer. It is inexplicable and unbelievable. Worse than that—it is unjust and cruel.

As a medic, I don’t really care who sorts this out. As a medic, I do care deeply that the most vulnerable are prioritized.”

We hear information about additional vaccines coming to Palestine from various donation mechanisms, but they are not here now.

And a half-hour drive away, Israel has piles of vaccines and is moving onto vaccinating non-vulnerable groups.

I am outraged, but my colleagues in Gaza are even more so.

It has not always been easy, but the Dura hospital in Hebron where I have been working was able to get most of the supplies needed for COVID-19, and the MSF team was able to provide on-the-job coaching and training to boost the capacity of the staff to manage severely and critically ill patients, all of them needing oxygen.

But in Gaza they have much more severe shortages of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals because the blockade is so strict.

Their capacity for COVID-19 treatment is lower, so their need for the vaccine is all the higher.

And the recent delivery of 20,000 vaccines will not be sufficient to protect both the health care workers and the people most vulnerable to needing critical COVID-19 medical care.

Israel is an occupying power, and has millions of vaccines. Palestine is the occupied territory, and has barely a few thousand vaccines.



Don’t Stop Talking About Palestine


 “We wish to express our definite opposition to a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” 

United Nations Special
the Ashkenasic Jewish Community, Rav Yosef Zvi Dushinsky and Rav Zelig
Ruven Bengis of blessed memory, taken from the United Nations
Trusteeship Library.

Rejected by Palestinian Jews



“People simply disappeared, always during the night (cover). Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”
– George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1

The Palestinian Arab claim on historical grounds is, first, that like the Jews, they have had a presence in the area ever since the time of the Philistines, from whom they are descended and, indeed, from whom the name of the country is derived.

Second, that for the last several hundred years they have formed a majority, by a very large proportion, of the inhabitants of the area.

The third aspect of claims to Palestine is ancestry.

“The Eastern European Zionists are not Semites (though the Arabs are), have no semitic blood, and their remote forefathers never trod Palestinian earth.”


If you as a people have a historical claim to an area, this is obviously made stronger if you can provide chapter and verse for the connection of individuals or families with the area.

In the case of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel, this is not usually the case.

While one can point to Jews – a small minority in fact – living in Palestine over the centuries, the vast majority of Jews who have come to Israel have no such personal or family link.

Their antecedents can usually only be traced back to Jewish communities in Europe, or in other parts of the Middle East.

 The Palestinians’ knowledge of family history keeps their claim to the land a living reality.

“The emir (ruler) is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem”.-Winston Churchill (1921)

Wherever they live, in refugee camps or as prosperous citizens in the West, most Palestinians can relate a family history that can be traced back for centuries, and usually to a specific town or village in Palestine.

The European Jews: The Hebrew language, which had not been spoken as a mother tongue since the second century CE,  became the national language of Israel over Yiddish and Arabic speaking Jews.

“We should know that all the Allied nations are spilling much of their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any (common Jewish) blood, by what right shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when they divide nations and lands at the war’s end? ….for only with blood (Jewish holocaust) shall we get the land (Palestine).”

Nathan Schwalb World Zionist Organization (Zionist Elite) in Switzerland (1942)**** The term holocaust comes from the Septuagint translation of the burnt offering and derives from two words: holos (“whole”) and kaustos (“burnt”).

This Greek translation corresponds perfectly to the Hebrew terms holah meaning “that which ascends” as in fire or smoke, and kalil meaning “whole” or “entire”.

The holocaust was a sacrificial ritual in the worship of Ba’al Moloch.

Such acts are to call upon the great evil entity to aid in battle, to defeat an enemy, to help gain more wealth and more power.

The ritual is a Jewish ritual and the sacrifices are Jews.


Israel is an imperial outpost, an extension of Wall Street and the City of London in the Middle East. That’s the origin of “Israel.”

1-Jewish Rutenberg concession
3-Dead Sea
5-Monopoly of public works
6-All of Palestine resources
7-Economic pressure
8-Wholesale immigration
9-Jewish State

Leopold Amery not only wrote the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which laid the groundwork for the state of Israel, he was a hidden Jew.

World War II was a debate on colonialism, and Zionism won

After World War II with Hitler’s colonizer-faction neutralized, capitalist-colonial European powers were left with one way to resolve the “Jewish Question”: Zionism. The same British and German anti-semites were now proudly on the same side as European Jews ­(as long as they were Zionist).

In 1948 after an influx of European Jewish settlers, and their genocidal expulsion of Palestinians, the Zionist state of israel was formed on stolen Palestinian land.

Colonized Palestinians of all religions are dispersed throughout the world, still blocked from returning to their ancestral lands through a regime of apartheid and genocide.

Jewish colonizers from Europe on a ship destined for Palestine

Not only did israel colonize Palestinian land, but an outpost of colonialism throughout the region, including land belonging to Palestinian and Arab jews.

These acts encourage other colonized nations to become sellouts like Sudan, Bahrain, and the UAE, and attacks Iran, and steals Syrian land because they dare to fight back.

The remnants of Nazi Germany even started paying Israel “reparations” in the 1950s.

This was little more than an investment in a new European scheme of colonization.

To this day, Germany still has not paid reparations to Namibians for the colonial theft and genocide committed against them in the early 1900s.
Colonialism continues, and where are the Jewish movements?

The Ghanaian revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah, wrote that “[the starting task to defeat colonialism] is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents.

They, and they alone, make, maintain, or break revolutions.”

For this reason, there must be absolutely no wavering when calling out false claims of antisemitism from racist colonizers who aim to confuse the masses of colonized people to prevent a united front against all colonialism and all colonizers!

Anti-colonialism is not or ever anti-semitism; the true anti-semitism is the zionist colonization of Semitic peoples/lands; anything someone would characterize as “anti-semetic” coming from anti-colonial revolutionaries is just anti-colonizer!

From the start until the end, communists and anti-colonial movements have always sought to end all forms of oppression.

Weekly outreach for Southern Hammers.

To this day, there are anti-colonial revolutionaries worldwide including in Syria, Iran, Palestine.

Black Hammer Organization aims to unite all colonized people and bring down all forms of colonialism so the poor and working-class can have dictatorship over their land, lives, labor and resources, and where we can end capitalism to build a world where nobody lives at the expense of another.

join our class for colonizers to materially support colonized people

Those who attack anti-colonial revolutionary movements only reveal their investment and unity in colonialism.


snip-In 1988, reports again surfaced in the same Guatemalan newspapers (El Graficoand Prensa Libre) that seven babies had been rescued who were destined for organ transplants in the United States and Israel.

The El Grafico story reported that security agents had captured two Israelies who were working with two Guatemalan lawyers, Jorge Rodolfo Rivera and Carlos Rene Gonzalez, who in turn had the services of a Guatemalan pediatrician,Joaquin Kackler.

They paid women a sum At Issue 245 of 50 quetzales ($20) to nurse and care for the babies.

This business was discovered
by personnel of the Guatemalan Narcotics and Intelligence Section (SIN). El Graficoalso reported that official information revealed the people captured confessed that they exported children to Israel and the United States so that their organs could be sold for the sum of $75,000 to families who needed transplants for their children (El Grafico, Jan. 24, 1988).

Gaza Conflict Has Shown That Trump-Netanyahu Policy Has Utterly Failed

A more extreme right-winger is set to take his place

Israeli leaders will now have to cope with four different variants of the Israel/Palestinian crisis, each of which may, like the coronavirus, become the dominant strain and detonate a new explosion.

Israel and Hamas have ended their 11-day “war”, but even before the shooting stopped it had transformed the political landscape.

The Israel/Palestinian confrontation has shifted away from focusing solely on Gaza to multiple fronts – Jerusalem, the West Bank, Israel itself– and an upsurge in any one of them could start a new round of violence.

Events in Jerusalem ignited the present crisis and there is every chance that they will do so again.

Far-right Israeli groups are intent on tightening their grip on the city and eliminating the Palestinian presence wherever they can.

“The political temperature will stay high, simmering just below boiling point” says Daniel Levy, a former Israeli diplomat and president of the US/Middle East Project.

“Another flare-up in Jerusalem would make it boil over.”

Israeli leaders had hoped that the cantonisation of the Palestinians – three million on the West Bank, two million each in Israel and Gaza, 300,000 in Jerusalem – would fragment them politically as well as geographically.

For a time, this strategy appeared to work, but over the last two weeks the crisis in one Palestinian canton has swiftly spread to the three others.

Israeli police efforts to evict Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem and their use of stun grenades and teargas in al-Aqsa mosque led to Hamas firing rocket barrages from Gaza.

This in turn provoked protests by Palestinians in Israel on a larger scale than anything seen since the second intifada 20 years ago.

On the West Bank, protesters poured into the streets in every town and the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority was mocked and marginalized.

For all the empty talk about one- and two-state solutions to the Israel/Palestine problem, the outcome of the fourth war centered on Gaza proves that the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is a single political unit.

What affects one part of it affects all the rest.

The latest Gaza war showed that Israel does not have a viable military or political strategy for fighting or engaging with the Palestinians.

Israeli generals and officials claim to have degraded the military infrastructure of Hamas, killed some of its commanders and destroyed part of its tunnel system.

Israel was certainly surprised by Hamas firing 3,700 rockets into Israel, despite being isolated in Gaza for 15 years.

Even if Hamas proved to have a little more military muscle than expected, though, there is no doubting Israel’s superiority over the ill-equipped paramilitary force it faces in Gaza.

But this superiority stubbornly refuses to produce victory or rather that Israel knows what such a victory would look like.

It cannot realistically expect to eliminate Hamas and carry out regime change in Gaza without reoccupation, which would provoke even stronger Palestinian resistance.

Keeping the Palestinians there under a state of permanent siege, the status quo for the last 15 years, has just been shown not to work.

Claims of Israeli military success as justification for agreeing to a ceasefire are a smokescreen concealing Israeli failure to gain any real advantage from a bombardment that killed 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, but did little else.

Israeli commentators are franker and better informed about this lack of success than their western counterparts.

The editor-in-chief of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Aluf Benn, calls the conflict just ended “Israel’s most failed and pointless Gaza operation ever”.

He says that all the PR of the Israeli army cannot “cover up the truth: the military has no idea how to paralyze Hamas’s forces and throw it off balance.

Destroying its tunnels with powerful bombs revealed Israel’s strategic capabilities without causing any substantive damage to the enemy’s fighting abilities.”

Many states have faced similar frustration when fighting a so-called asymmetric war against a militarily inferior but undefeatable opponent.

This happened to Britain in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1998.

The sensible response of a government that fails to get its way by physical force is to seek political engagement with the other side to work out a compromise.

But this is precisely what the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political partners cannot do.

For almost a quarter of a century, his strategy since he was first elected Israeli leader in 1997 has been to argue that Israel can have a permanent peace without compromising with the Palestinians.

This view, dominant from the centre left to the hard right, held that the Palestinians had been decisively defeated and there was no need to concede anything to them.

With President Donald Trump giving total support to this maximalist position during his four years in the White House, many Israelis were persuaded that Netanyahu had been right.

Gaza looked as if it had been successfully sealed off, the West Bank broken up into Palestinian Bantustans and expanding Israeli settlements, Jerusalem was encircled from without and increasingly de-Palestinianised from within, while the Palestinians in Israel remained an embittered but impotent minority.

Arab states were normalizing relations with Israel and the Palestinian Question no longer figured on the international agenda.

It was all a mirage.

The latest war in Gaza may look like the three previous ones in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014, but it is far more important because the Netanyahu/Trump policy has collapsed and there is nothing much to put in its place.

The old Israel/Palestinian crisis is back and is more envenomed and widespread than before. An ominous new feature of it is Palestinians in Israel taking to the streets to demand equality and an end to discrimination.

Israeli settlers from the West Bank have been coming back to Israel to lead anti-Palestinian demonstrations within mixed Jewish/Palestinian towns and cities.

Such developments do not mean that the balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians has abruptly skewed in favour of the latter.

On the contrary, one of the problems in convincing Israelis at every level that they should engage with the Palestinians is that they do not believe they need to.

Hamas may have been energised and the Palestinian Authority further discredited by the latest conflict war, but there is an overall vacuum of Palestinian leadership and organisation.

This is not quite such a crippling disadvantage as it might appear since Palestinian political movements have a long tradition of prioritising their grip on power over everything else.

The ceasefire that came into force between Israel and Hamas early on Friday morning ushers in a period of enhanced instability.

Daniel Levy sees Israel as being in a state of permanent crisis because it has no military solution to Gaza/Hamas while its right-wing leaders are blocked off by ideological fixations from seeking to open up diplomatic and political options.

The idea of weakening the Palestinians by fragmenting them has turned out to be counterproductive.


Ilhan Omar’s Only Offense Is Telling the Truth About the US and ‘Israel’

Republicans and Democrats are once again targeting the Minnesota congresswoman for acknowledging the crimes of imperialism and occupation.

As sure as the sun rises in the morning, the American political elite will periodically come together across warring party lines to disparage, slander, and otherwise malign Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑MN).

On Monday, Omar posted on Twitter her exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

There she raised what should be a fairly tame question: What mechanisms exist to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine and Afghanistan?

The United States government opposes the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction to hear alleged cases of human rights abuses by both Israel and Hamas, the United States and the Taliban.

If domestic courts won’t investigate war crimes, and if the United States opposes the ICC’s ability to do so, where can victims of war crimes go for justice?

Secretary Blinken offered a few vague assertions about the value of human life, followed by a reiteration of the State Department’s line: that it opposes the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate claims unless they are referred by a state or by the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

There are just two problems with this defense. One: what if it’s the state itself that is charged with war crimes?

What possible reason would such a state have to call on the ICC to investigate itself?

Two: what if that very state (in the case of the US) or its strongest ally (in the case of Israel), has veto power in the UN Security Council?

How on earth could we ever expect that same body to fairly make a referral?



Like clockwork, Republicans exploded in condemnations of antisemitism. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA) attacked Omar as ​anti-Semitic,” ​anti-American,” and ​abhorrent.”

Other Democratic leaders followed suit. A group of twelve Jewish Democrats issued a statement bemoaning the ​false equivalencies” between ​democracies” such as the United States and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban.

The entire weight of the Democratic Party leadership chimed in with a similar statement demanding that Omar ​clarify” (read: apologize for) her previous comments.

Drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the US and Israel, and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban,” they argued, ​foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all.”

You could be forgiven for doing a double-take.

Aren’t these the very same people that only a couple of weeks ago responded to carnage in Gaza, Israeli air strikes flattening residential buildings and killing hundreds of civilians, the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, unrestrained Israeli lynch mobs shouting ​death to Arabs,” with detached denunciations of ​both sides”?

Drawing equivalencies is apparently only ​false” if doing so threatens to hold Israel or the US accountable.

During Israel’s two-week assault on Gaza, mainstream politicians and the media insisted that ​both sides” were responsible, despite the completely disproportionate death toll of Palestinians, and despite the fact that one side, Israel, is a powerful state which colonizes and occupies the other side, Palestine, a stateless population.

The media sought to hone in on and vilify Hamas in order to dehumanize Palestinians, as though every one of the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli rule is launching rockets, and deserves to be bombed in response.

But, apart from the wildly unequal scale of destruction wrought by Israeli forces, to insist that there is something uniquely reprehensible about Hamas’s methods begs a serious question.

If launching low-grade rockets, which lack precise targeting technologies and therefore risk hitting civilians, is an abomination, is it not a greater abomination that Israel uses state-of-the-art weaponry, which purposefully and precisely attacks civilian buildings, schools, the media, and infrastructure like desalination plants, power and sewage plants?

Infographic: The Human Cost Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Statista

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party leadership claim that the United States’ and Israel’s mantles of self-defined ​democracies” means that they can be responsible for policing themselves, and that they are in a category distinct from an organization like Hamas.

But that argument falls apart when we realize, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ​the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own government,” the United States.

Lest we forget, the United States’ ongoing ​war on terror” is responsible for at least 800,000 deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, and over 37 million people displaced from their homes.

An estimated eight hundred US military bases in more than seventy countries patrol the world over in the service of US global domination.

Israel, for its part, has killed almost 6,000 Palestinians since the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs started keeping tally in 2008, as compared to 262 Israelis killed during that time.

Ilhan Omar

“Would love to know who @IlhanMN thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, though I think I can guess. Bad form, Congresswoman. That’s the second anti-Semitic trope you’ve tweeted. “Would love to know who @IlhanMN thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, though I think I can guess. Bad form, Congresswoman. That’s the second anti-Semitic trope you’ve tweeted. Omar then responded with one word: “AIPAC!”

In that sense, it’s true, there is no equivalency with the damage caused by a group like Hamas — what the US and Israel have done and continue to do around the world is far worse.

Let’s be clear about what this attack on Ilhan Omar is really about.

First, every time the Republicans let loose on Omar, and the Democrats line up behind them, they encourage death threats and put Omar in danger.

Second, such actions distract from the ongoing devastation of Palestinian lives, the blockade of Gaza, the ramifications of the most recent bombing campaign, and apartheid within Israel.

Imagine, as Rep. Ayana Pressley put it, if instead of wasting time targeting Ilhan Omar, ​Congress was as outraged by what Palestinians endure daily.”

Finally, in the context of a deepening rift within the Democratic Party on the question of Israel and Palestine, and growing public sympathy with Palestinians, the actions of the party leadership to call out Omar are an attempt to discipline the Left of the party.

Last month, Omar and members of the ​Squad,” along with other progressive Democrats, called out Israel’s ethnic cleansing and apartheid by name on the House floor.

It is no surprise that now the party leadership has seized the first opportunity to try to shove that genie back in the bottle.

The Democratic Party establishment is as committed to unequivocal support for Israel as their Republican counterparts.

Israel’s utility to the geopolitical interests of the US government means that they will fight tooth and nail to get their ducks back into their traditional pro-Israel row.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, other members of the Squad, and grassroots organizations were right to come to Omar’s defense.

It’s good to finally have a leftist on the House Foreign Affairs Committee calling out US hypocrisy and exposing war crimes, as Omar has consistently done. Neither she, nor the movement for Palestine, has anything to apologize for.

Death without warning

G-d forbid, a person must not allow himself or his children to join the defiled Zionists, for their feet run to do evil and their place is a place of defilement. (Tzavaas Abba 10:20) Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam,Rebbe of Shinova, Galicia (1811-1899)

palestine gif | Tumblr

The Electronic Intifada 15 June 2021

One of the lies told by Israel’s military during the recent bombardment of Gaza was that it aimed to minimize harm inflicted on civilians.

The claim was made, for example, in a tweet issued on 17 May.

Yet on that date and the two previous days, Israel carried out no-warning attacks in which numerous civilians were killed.

Muhammad al-Hadidi lost his wife and all bar one of his children on 15 May.

His wife had gone to see her brother and his family in Beach refugee camp one day earlier and was staying overnight, along with their children.

Muhammad remained alone in his own home.

Early in the morning, he was awoken by a loud explosion.

Shortly afterwards, he received a phone call from a neighbor.

His neighbor broke some terrible news to him.

The home of his brother-in-law had been bombed without warning.

Muhammad’s wife Maha and four of their children were killed.

His baby son Omar – then just 5 months old – was the only survivor from his family.

Muhammad’s sister-in-law and several of her children were also killed.

“Anyone who wants to believe that Israel does not kill innocent people in Gaza should shut up,” Muhammad said.

“Israel always claims that it gives us warnings in order to protect us.

The fact is that Israel kills children and civilians without warning and without a shred of humanity.”

The staff at al-Shanty bakery had become accustomed to working through emergencies.

On the three prior occasions that Israel has carried out a major offensive against Gaza since December 2008, the bakery had remained open.

Its staff were determined to keep producing bread last month, when the fourth such offensive occurred.

Israel forced them to change their plans.

Ahmad al-Shanty was in the bakery – located on Gaza City’s al-Wihda street – during the early hours of 16 May.

He and his colleagues had a large number of orders to process.

Those orders were scheduled for delivery to people who had sought refuge in UN schools.

The neighborhood, according to al-Shanty, was “completely empty; we couldn’t hear any movement, not even a whisper.”

“Then, all of a sudden, missiles smashed through the bakery’s window,” he said. “We had to take cover behind an oven.”

“No mercy”


It was a horrific Israeli assault against a much valued local service.

And it was only the start of a very violent day.

Soon afterwards, Israel bombed a nearby building where the al-Qawlaq family lived.

The building was completely razed. In total, 21 members of the extended family were killed; the oldest was aged 90, the youngest was an infant.

Muhammad Fawwaz al-Qawlaq, 24, was among the few survivors.

He confirmed that Israel gave no warning before it bombed his family.

Muhammad Fawwaz al-Qawlaq treats with contempt claims by the Israeli military that it minimized harm by allowing families to evacuate their homes before they were bombed.

“That is total bullshit,” he said.

“The Israelis killed civilians with no mercy.”

“I’ve seen all the bragging by the Israeli army on the internet about how accurate its bombing was.

The Israelis could have used their technology to check if the people killed on al-Wihda street were civilians or not.

But they don’t give a shit about all the innocent people – including children – who were killed, about all the dreams that were destroyed.

They have no humanity.”

Some 44 Palestinians were killed in the al-Wihda street massacre. Eighteen of them were children.


One day after the massacre, Israel struck the area once again.

The Ghazi al-Shawa building was bombed without warning on 17 May. It, too, is located on al-Wihda street.

Ziad Abu Dayer and his family had actually taken shelter there.

The family’s own home had been razed during the previous day’s disaster, so they went to stay with relatives living in the Ghazi al-Shawa building.

“We thought it would be a safe place to hide,” said Ziad’s son Kamel, 16.

Nowhere was safe.

Ziad and his niece Rafeef were among those killed on 17 May.

Kamel had just checked to see if his father wished to eat something before the bombing occurred.

Ziad was reading the Quran and wanted to continue doing so.

“The bombing started a few minutes later,” said Kamel. “Black smoke quickly spread all around the place.

We couldn’t see anything. I eventually found my father lying on the ground.”

Kamel, who was injured in the arm, accompanied his father as he was rushed to hospital by ambulance.

The ambulance took longer than it should have to arrive.

Al-Wihda street is situated near al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital.

Because Israel had severely damaged the adjoining road, ambulance drivers encountered difficulties traveling to and from the hospital.

Kamel waited in the hospital, while staff tried to save his father.

They were unable to do so. Ziad was soon pronounced dead.

“Israel says that it reached all of its goals [during the attack],” said Kamel.

“Since when can killing innocent people and leaving children without parents be considered an achievement?”

F-35s bombing Gaza

The United States, which has four ammunition warehouse bases in Israel, also provides it with a large arsenal. Israel, which already has one of the most powerful Air forces in the world, is now testing F-35s in combat against the Palestinians.

Israeli Forces spokesman Zilberman announced the start of the bombing of Gaza, specifying that “80 fighters are taking part in the operation, including the advanced F-35s” (The Times of Israel, May 11, 2021).

It is officially the baptism of fire for the US Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter, whose production Italy also participates in as a second-level partner.

Israel has already received twenty-seven F-35s from the US, and last February decided to buy no longer fifty F-35s but seventy-five.

To this end the government has decreed a further allocation of 9 billion dollars: 7 were granted by a US to Israel free military “aid” of 28 billion, 2 were granted as a loan by the US Citibank.

While Israeli F-35 pilots were being trained by the U.S. Air Force in Arizona and Israel, the US Army Engineers built in Israel special hardened hangars for the F-35s, suitable for both fighters’ maximum protection on the ground, and their rapid take-off on attack.

At the same time, the Israeli military industries (Israel Aerospace and Elbit Systems) in close coordination with Lockheed Martin enhance the fighter renamed “Adir” (Powerful): above all its ability to penetrate enemy defenses and its range of action which was nearly doubled.

These capabilities are certainly not necessary to attack Gaza.

Why then are the most advanced fifth-generation fighters used against Palestinians?

Because it serves to test F-35s fighters and their pilots in real war action using Gaza homes as targets on a firing range.

It does not matter if in the target houses there are entire families.

The F-35s, added to the hundreds of fighter-bombers already supplied by the US to Israel. are designed for nuclear attack particularly with the new B61-12 bomb.

The United States will shortly deploy these nuclear bombs in Italy and other European countries, and will also provide them to Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East with an arsenal estimated at 100-400 nuclear weapons.

If Israel doubles the range of F-35 fighters and is about to receive eight Boeing Pegasus tankers from the US for refueling the F-35s in flight, it is because it is preparing to launch an attack, even nuclear, against Iran.

The Israeli nuclear forces are integrated into the NATO electronic system within the “Individual cooperation program” framework with Israel.

Although not a member of the Alliance, Israel is integrated with a permanent mission in the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In the same framework, Germany supplied Israel with six Dolphin submarines. modified for launching nuclear missiles (as Der Spiegel documented in 2012).

Italy’s military cooperation with Israel has become a law of the Republic (Law No. 94 of May 17, 2005).

This law establishes comprehensive cooperation, both between armed forces and military industries, including activities that remain secret because they are subject to the “Security Agreement” between the two parties.

Israel has supplied Italy with the Opsat-3000 satellite, which transmits very high-resolution images for military operations in distant war theaters.

The satellite is connected to three centers in Italy and, at the same time, to a fourth center in Israel, as a proof of the increasingly close strategic collaboration between the two countries.

Italy supplied Israel with thirty Leonardo Aermacchi fighters for pilot training.

Now it can provide Israel with a new version of the M-346 FA (Fighter Attack), which – Leonardo Industry specified – serves at the same time for training and for “ground attack missions with 500-pound drop ammunition, and precision-guided ammunitions capable of increasing the number of targets to hit at the same time “.

The new version of the fighter – Leonardo Industry underlined – is particularly suitable for “missions in urban areas”, where heavy fighters “are often used in low-paying missions with high operating costs”.

The ideal for the next Israeli bombings of Gaza, which can be carried out with “a cost per flight hour that is reduced by up to 80%”, and will be very ” cost-effective “, that is, they will kill many more Palestinians.

A placeholder government going nowhere

Interestingly, the article looks at what’s obvious and the podcast looks beyond the surface. That’s great. But I am not at all pessimistic regarding the colonial criminal state of ‘Israel’…there are many things going on beneath the surface and none of it favors ‘Israel’. Read article and Listen to the podcast!

14 June 2021

Israel’s new coalition has brought about the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure, who after 12 long years is finally a former prime minister.

And it has been particularly amusing to see Netanyahu go full Donald Trump.

Allegations of election fraud caused by a conspiracy of left-wing terror supporters, dog whistles to his base and a final, angry, paranoid farewell speech linking the Jewish holocaust with US policy on Iran.

It’s all there.

That, however, is the only positive thing about a new coalition that initially will be led by Naftali Bennett, a man who brags about “killing Arabs,” wants to annex large swathes of the West Bank and supports neither sovereignty for Palestinians nor equal rights.

“I strongly oppose the giving of even one inch of land to the Arabs,” Bennett said in 2020.

Bennett is one component of a loose coalition that runs from the United Arab List and Meretz through Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid to, well, Bennett’s Yamina and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu.

It’s an eight-party group that holds a single-seat majority in Israel’s parliament and indeed was confirmed by just 60-59 votes with one abstention in Israel’s parliament yesterday.

It is a constellation of parties that agrees on only one thing, ousting Netanyahu.

And it will almost certainly fall at the first or second significant hurdle.

Same, same

That first hurdle might come sooner rather than later.

On Tuesday, Israeli Jewish nationalists are supposed to be marching through Jerusalem to loudly proclaim their exclusive ownership over the city.

It is the kind of provocation that provided the spark for last month’s escalation and led to an Israeli assault on Gaza and the deaths of at least 67 children.

Final approval for the route is expected Monday, after Israeli police on Friday gave the go-ahead as long as marchers do not walk through the Old City.

Hamas has already warned that the march could imperil a “fragile ceasefire.”

A statement from its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, called on Jerusalem’s youth to confront the marchers and on the “military wings of Palestinian factions to be on high alert and to defend Jerusalem if needed.”

A full escalation might not happen. But it could.

And while there may be a new prime minister, but the defense minister is the same – Benny Gantz, no longer PM in waiting: the Israeli military will act with the brutality it always does.

Whether the United Arab List can stay in a coalition killing children in Gaza remains to be seen.

Will Mansour Abbas – the first leader of a party representing the Palestinian minority to become a part of an Israeli government – be able to prevent that from happening? No.

So when it comes to policy on Palestinians in occupied territory there will be no significant change.

There will be no change in the international approach either, judging by the many welcoming statements from around the world.

There is audible relief in some of these statements.

It’s almost as if Netanyahu embarrassed all these fine, upstanding Western politicians by not only disregarding mild European or US protest and hand wringing, but repeatedly lecturing Europeans and Americans on how to behave better.

Placeholder government

International politicians may feel more comfortable around Bennett, but he offers no similar solace to Palestinians anywhere.

While attempts to ensure a bigger budget for Israel’s Palestinian population are certainly welcome, there have been no similar proposals to reform a discriminatory legal system that lies at the root of Palestinian discontent inside the country.

On the occupied territory, Bennett is as hardline if not more so than Netanyahu, and he was a fervent advocate of unilaterally annexing swathes of West Bank land as implicitly sanctioned by former US President Donald Trump’s Ultimate Deal™.

He is of course constricted by a coalition which will almost certainly have to avoid any tough decisions on the Palestinian issue if it is to survive.

But that cuts both ways, and to those politicians and “Middle East experts” who believe the time is ripe to restart some kind of dead-end peace process, the answer is clearly: not going to happen.

For as long as Western countries continue to hold their hands over Israel, protecting it from sanctions and any other consequences of its violent discrimination against and oppression of the land’s Indigenous population, no Israeli government is going to take any significant strides anywhere.

Least of all this one, which is simply a placeholder.

Israeli settler-colonialism protects US interests, hence the unconditional support

The US will not get involved in the current government turbulence in Israel, but remains committed to the security of the settler-colonial state, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has declared.

Her words are a far cry from the impositions which Palestinians faced from the US and the international community when Hamas was elected in 2006 in the “free and fair” Palestinian legislative election.

Palestinian democracy was subjected to unacceptable conditions and the US disregarded the whole electoral process, and the will of the people, to create a false narrative of democracy out of international impositions.

When it comes to Israel, the US won’t interfere in political affairs, even when the government displays open contempt for US policy in the region.

And Washington’s chequebook is always open.

During the course of Israel’s recent military offensive against Gaza, for example, President Joe Biden went ahead and allocated $735 million worth of arms to be “sold” to the rogue state, illustrating how political allegiances have little to do with democracy and everything to do with human and political rights violations.

A week after Israel unleashed its military might against Palestinians, Defence Minister Benny Gantz was in Washington securing assurances from the Biden administration and funding for the Iron Dome missile defence system.

Such funding, of course, was unquestionable.

According to the Acting Secretary of State Joey Hood, Biden is “clear about this administration’s support for replenishing this system to support Israel’s ability to defend itself in the future.”

Since the 1967 Six-Day War, the US has offered unequivocal support for Israel, while embarking upon a pretence of securing the minimum of Palestinian rights; in other words, ensuring that the Palestinian people remain shackled to a humanitarian aid programme and not a path to freedom and justice.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s name has become synonymous with state and settler violations against the Palestinian people, this is merely a question of timeframes.

The incoming coalition led by Naftali Bennett is likely to be just as ruthless and in contempt of international law.

Annexation, for example, was one of Bennett’s aims in previous years, even though many people associate this with Donald Trump and Netanyahu.

Trump/US the puppet of Israel – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Bennett has also been outspoken in terms of refuting the two-state compromise.

His position makes it even more obvious that the “solution” is dead and buried, in large part due to international inaction over Israel’s colonial expansion.

However, in typical fashion, the international community has not mustered any political opposition to settlement expansion, meaning that Bennett’s annexation aims will be fulfilled at an opportune time, as former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman often reiterated in his interviews.

Besides the US military aid which guarantees Israel’s hegemony in the region, the Biden administration’s insistence on the two-state compromise — despite the evidence that it is a farce —is likely to remain the game changer, to the detriment of the Palestinians.

An inconspicuous tactic because it is driven by international consensus, yet influential when it comes to colonial expansion, two-state politics are driving Israel’s annexation plans in the absence of the so-called “deal of the century”.

Bennett or Netanyahu, or anyone else for that matter, will not influence the unconditional US backing for Israel, because it is driven by support for colonialism and regional interests, for which the Zionist state was created to protect.

Zionism Is Evil, but Why Has the USA Become Its Haven?

What is Zionism? 

Is it a political movement in support of Israel, or the code of laws of the Jewish mafia, or the most radical form of Judaism, or an expression of the obsession of the Jewish nation with its own uniqueness? 

 Most probably Zionism has the features of everything mentioned, which does not make its face less evil.

The objectives of Zionists concern not only with the current state of Israel, but with the mere survival of the Jewish mafia in the ever-changing world. 

 Due to the implementation of this program, the state of Israel has become a mini-empire with its tendency to expand at the expense of the neighboring states, big military ambitions and a long record of human rights violations.

The truth of the matter is that Zionist ideas are strikingly similar to those of the Nazis, and they can be also found in the Torah.

  They have to do with the concept of the will for power and with the ideology of racial superiority, and are related to the theory of the exceptionality of the Jewish nation chosen by Jehovah.

You may ask: what the hell does all this stuff have do with the United States? Oh, this is an interesting question. 

  Many activists, intellectuals and spiritual leaders in the past voiced their concern at the outrageous fact that the USA, which is the world’s superpower, is ruled by the Zionists rather than by its own citizens. 

 It is well known that a substantial portion of the US budged is spent annually to allow the members the Kahal to live in luxury and to accumulate fortunes.

One of the main ways for the Zionist clan to increase its influence is through the clandestine corroboration with state institutions, and this story has a long history.

  Now it is no more a secret that Judeo-Zionist groups and organizations flourish in the USA because they enjoy support of influential politicians and businessmen.

What especially disturbs me is how Christian faith is corrupted by the influence of Judaist and Zionist ideas on it. 

The teachings of false prophets create a misleading view that there is no difference between the Jewish god (whose cabalistic name is Tetragrammaton that means a thing of no sense) and Jesus our Lord and Savior. 

Only an idiot cannot notice the huge difference between the teaching of Jesus Christ and the false teachings of the Pharisees whose evil practices in the form of lies, abuses and all sorts of crimes have not changed for two thousand years and who used to saw the seeds of hatred wherever possible. 

Yet the Kahal of evil-doers seeks for new ways to implement their schemes aimed to rob whole nations and countries. 

 The citizens of the USA have been their victims for many years, if not to say generations, so what will come next?
 Will we ever get freedom for all people, or this is only an empty and high-sounding slogan of hypocritical preachers who are in love with jewish whores?

Netanyahu’s Polish Nazi Heritage Showing as Israeli Civil War Erupts

How did a former furniture salesman from Philadelphia named Benny Milekowsky remake himself (with lots of Freemasonic help) into the Hitler of the Middle East?

I am the banker, the carpetbagger, the slumlord, the identity thief, the organ harvester, the snake-oil salesman,the porn King, the con artist, the shit on your shoe, I am the Zionist.

President Barack Obama and his then-French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, came under fire in November 2011 after they were overheard talking about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the G20 summit.

Sarkozy told Obama: “I can’t stand him. He’s a liar,” according to French website Arret sur Images.

Obama is reported to have replied: “You’re tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day.”

Is he a smooth-talking, disingenuous, cunning salesman who knows that everything he asserts about Israel being in danger of annihilation and not having a Palestinian partner for peace is propaganda nonsense, or, does he really believe what he says?

Before I offer my own thoughts here’s a quote from London-based Jamie Stern-Weiner who co-founded the New Left Project. In a recent article published by Mondoweiss he wrote this:

If Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t gone into politics he’d be on Broadway, hamming it up as a pantomime villain.

Israel’s hawkish prime minister is theatrically obnoxious to the point where even Israel’s staunchest allies in the American Jewish community are urging him to tone it down.

He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t just show up to your house uninvited but brings along his dirty laundry, empties your fridge, urinates in the sink and then abruptly storms out, complaining about poor service”.

If President Obama had read that I imagine he would have said to himself something like: “Spot on, Jamie. Couldn’t put it better myself.”

If Netanyahu knows that his assertions are “bs” (a Carterism for bullshit), I think it could be said that he is following in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief.

Underpinning his approach to propaganda was the belief that the bigger the lie and the more frequently it was told, the more likely it was that it, the lie, would be believed.

(In my view that was the key to Zionism’s success throughout the second half of the 20th century.

The good news is that as the 21st century advances the number of Europeans and Americans who are buying Zionism’s propaganda lies is decreasing).

Goebbels put into writing 18 principles for the guidance of all who were waging Nazi Germany’s propaganda war. Here are two of them.


a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses.

b. They must be capable of being easily learned.

c. They must be utilized again and again.

 16. Propaganda to the homefront must create an optimum anxiety level.

The evidence of Netanyahu’s success in creating an optimum level of anxiety on his home front is in the fact that the vast majority of Israel’s Jews believe that they are and always will be in danger of annihilation.

But now comes what seems to me to be a contradiction. In recent weeks Netanyahu has taken advantage of events to play his fear card in Europe with calls to its Jews to move to Israel.

A question arising is this.

If Netanyahu really believes that Israel is in danger of annihilation, is he not being irresponsible in the extreme with his calls for Europe’s Jews to make new lives there?

The only answer I can think of is that he knows Israel is not in danger of annihilation and takes comfort from a statement made by Yitzhak Shamir, the Zionist terrorist leader who became prime minister.

According to a recent article by Israeli writer Akiva Eldar, Shamir once said, “For the land of Israel lying is allowed.”

Any assessment of who and what the real Bibi Netanyahu is must consider what he may have inherited from his Polish-born father Benzion who changed the family name from Mileikowsky to Netanyahu.

Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu was an historian and writer who always believed in a Greater Israel. He opposed the UN Partition Plan because it didn’t give the Israel-to-be enough land; and at the time he was in favour of “transferring” the Arabs out of Palestine.

In fact his analysis of what had to happen in Palestine for Zionism to get everything it wanted was exactly the same as that put into words by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Israel’s army and what was called “Revisionist” Zionism but was actually honest Zionism.

(The only difference between it and what was regarded as mainstream Zionism founded by Herzl and led by Weizmann was that the mainstreamers lied about Zionism’s true purpose and the implications of it.

As I describe in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the mainstreamers went through the motions of pretending there could be an accommodation with the Arabs. They lied for two main reasons. One was the need to avoid provoking too much Arab hostility too soon. The other was the need to mislead and deceive Jews, in Western Europe and North America especially, about Zionism’s real intentions).

Russian-born Jabotinsky wrote The Iron Wall which became the bible of “Revisionist” Zionism and, actually, the main inspirational text for all Jewish nationalists who became Israelis, including those who would not have considered themselves to be revisionists. In 1940 Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu went to New York to be Jabotinsky’s personal secretary.

Because knowledge of the mindset of Jabotinsky and Bibi Netanyahu’s father is the key to understanding how and why Israel became an arrogant, aggressive and oppressive state, I am now going to quote (as I do in my book) nine paragraphs from The Iron Wall.

The whole world does not stand by the Zionists fake history.




They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervour that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of colonization and conquest is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope.


Even an agreement with non-Palestinians (other Arabs) represents the same kind of fantasy. In order for Arab nationalists of Baghdad and Mecca and Damascus to agree to pay so serious a price they would have to refuse to maintain the Arab character of Palestine.


Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable.




Whether through the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate, external force is a necessity for establishing in the country conditions of rule and defence through which the local population, regardless of what it wishes, will be deprived of the possibility of impeding our colonization, administratively or physically.

Force must play its role – with strength and without indulgence. 


If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for that land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else? 

Or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible – not difficult, not dangerous but IMPOSSIBLE! 







That, a decade before the Nazis came to power in Germany, was the ideology of revisionist/honest Zionism. Its Big Idea, which thrilled Bibi Netanyahu’s father, was the application of brute force in order to give the Arabs, when they had been dispossessed of their land, no hope of getting it back.

There was to be no consideration of what was morally right or wrong.

Compromise was entirely ruled out. It was a “them or us” strategy.

Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu died in his Jerusalem home in April 2012 at the age of 102.

Shortly after his death Jason Epstein, a co-founder of the New York Review of Books, let slip to a Jewish discussion group that Benzion once told him that he believed the only way Israel could survive was “by killing all Arabs.”

The question of how much the son was influenced by the father was put to Benzion in an interview with Ma’ariv in April 2009.

He replied: “I have a general idea. Bibi might aim for the same goals as mine, but he keeps to himself the ways to achieve them, because if he expressed them, he would expose his goals.”

And there, I believe, is the key to understanding the real Bibi Netanyahu.

Because he can’t tell the truth, it being that he is not remotely interested in peace with the Palestinians and that his preferred solution is a final ethnic cleansing of Palestine, he has to tell lies.

But to have credibility in the face of Israel’s defiance of international law and criminal actions, they have to be really B-I-G lies and, as Goebbels advised, they have to be repeated again and again.

One obvious conclusion it seems to me is that Bibi Netanyahu has always knownthat everything he asserts about Israel being in danger of annihilation and not having a Palestinian partner for peace is propaganda nonsense.

But the truth about him today as he prepares to address Congress again and deliver a public “F*ck You!” gesture to Obama could be more complicated than that.

Way back in 1980 I had a conversation with Retired Major General Shlomo Gazit, the best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence.

I told him I had come to the conclusion that it was all a myth – that Israel’s existence had never, ever, been in danger. He smiled sadly and replied. “The trouble with us Israelis is that we have become the victims of our own propaganda.”

So it might be that when Netanyahu addresses Congress in a desperate (and I think doomed) effort to create a big enough majority in that Zionist-corrupted assembly to sabotage the deal in-the-making with Iran, he won’t on this occasion be knowingly lying when he asserts that Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence because he has become the victim of his own propaganda, and now believes what he says is true.

If that is the case it would have to be said that he is not only beyond reason but deluded to the point of clinical insanity.

If Israel’s upcoming elections give him a fourth term in office – he is obviously hoping that more standing ovations in Congress will guarantee that – Zionism will continue its cruel and criminal efforts to bring about a Palestinian surrender on its terms, and the pace of the creeping transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism will be quickened.

There’s no mystery about what Bibi Netanyahu is. He’s a disaster. For the Palestinians. For Israel’s Jews. For the region.

For Jews everywhere. And quite possibly the whole world.



But the escalation did not begin there. Since the start of the Islamic holy month, restrictions have been placed on worshippers around the old city of Jerusalem, sparking protests that quickly turned violent.

About two weeks prior to the attack at the Al-Aqsa compound, an Israeli settler mob had taken to the streets, chanting “death to Arabs”. The Palestinian counter-demonstration was violently suppressed by the police and ended up leading to solidarity protests throughout Israel and the occupied territories.

Why has Netanyahu allowed for a Palestinian uprising?

Lehava, the extremist settler group that organised the racist demonstration weeks ago, is headed by a man named Bentzi Gopstein.

Although the group would previously have been allowed no legitimacy by the Israeli government, Gopstein’s lawyer, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a member of the Knesset and a close ally of Israeli PM Netanyahu.

Ben-Gvir heads the Jewish Power party (Otzma Yehudit), which falls under the Religious Zionism slate led by Bezalel Smotrich.

It’s no surprise, then, that Lehava feels they have been accorded a sense of legitimacy, when they witness Israeli members of the Knesset and allies of the prime minister standing beside them in Jerusalem.

Israel just had its fourth round of elections since 2019, in which Netanyahu’s Likud won the most seats of any party.

But Likud’s, combined with the seats of their natural allies, still fell short of the 61-seat threshold required to form a government.

The Religious Zionism slate forms part of Netanyahu’s backbone when it comes to his political survival, so any decision by the Israeli premier to abandon them could hurt him politically.

After Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government, the responsibility to do so was handed over to the opposition figure Yair Lapid, who was invited to form a coalition of anti-Netanyahu parties.

At this point, Netanyahu is fighting not only to stay in government, but also to avoid potentially going to prison on charges of corruption.

Conversely, if Yesh Atid party leader Lapid cannot form a coalition government either, Israel will then head to a fifth round of elections, which would keep Netanyahu in power and give him more time to prepare for a potential future victory at the polls.

Following the Israeli settler “death to Arabs” march, the leader of the Palestinian political party Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, warned that the next march, planned for Israel’s Jerusalem Day would not be tolerated and there would be a response.

In fact, a barrage of about 30 rockets was fired the night following the original march, and claimed by the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in response to attacks on hundreds of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

The issue of Israeli courts processing the orders for evicting Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which threatens to render 550 people homeless, has also been another point of contention.

Instead of stepping in to de-escalate tensions, in accordance with calls from Israel’s close ally, the United States, Netanyahu has allowed his allies from the Religious Zionism slate to provoke Palestinians further.

When last Friday’s attack on worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound occurred, the ‘Joint Operations Room’ of Palestinian armed factions, based in Gaza, vowed a response to Israel if it did not stop the settler march planned for Monday. Yet Netanyahu still stood idly by and refused to act, ignoring the threats, and, on Monday, allowed for another escalation, which led to the injuring of hundreds in Jerusalem.

Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, issued a warning to Israel on Monday that if it did not withdraw its forces from the Al-Aqsa compound and stop its attacks on protesters by 6pm, it would pay a price.

Again, the PM refused to take the words of the armed groups seriously. The deadline came and went, and rockets began to pound sites surrounding Jerusalem and in southern Israel.

If Netanyahu wants to de-escalate tensions, all he has to do is sell out the hardline settlers, but this is a price he’s not willing to pay.

The situation has now developed into what some are describing as a “civil war” inside Israel between Palestinians (that is, Arab Israelis) and Israeli Jews, with rocket fire raining down, demonstrations in Jerusalem and armed clashes in the West Bank.

The hopes of an anti-Netanyahu coalition being formed now seem even further away, with the parties that are attempting to come together spanning the spectrum from left to right, and from Jewish to Arab.

So, in order to survive politically and keep his extremist allies by his side, Netanyahu may have just triggered the third Intifada.

Israel miscalculated the risks

For a long time, the Palestinian issue has been sidelined as something of an annoyance to most Israelis and has not massively factored in political campaigns, beyond claims from prospective leaders that they would be “tough on terrorism”.

Talk of a two-state solution, the current international consensus for a resolution of the conflict, has all but disappeared from the mouths of Israeli politicians, other than to condemn the idea.

During this time, Palestinians residing just half an hour away from Israelis mostly living a European-type lifestyle have been suffering under a military occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel have been growing ever more restless at Israeli policies towards them.

The situation endured by Palestinians throughout the Holy Land has been characterised by groups such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem as apartheid.

The International Criminal Court has also just announced that it has officially opened an investigation into potential war crimes committed by both sides in the occupied territories, which has been shrugged off by Israeli leaders as “anti-Semitic”.

Meanwhile, the armed factions in Gaza have been developing greater weapons capabilities and training their forces for a future confrontation with Israel.

From March 30, 2018 onwards, Gaza’s civilian population also mobilised a mass non-violent demonstration movement against Israel, in which, according to a United Nations Human Rights Council report, men, women, children, journalists, medics and the disabled alike have since been deliberately shot at and killed. Within a year and a half of those protests, there had not been a single Israeli death as a result of the demonstrations, while hundreds of Palestinians had been killed and tens of thousands injured.

The provocative actions of the Trump administration, with its ‘deal of the century’ peace plan, legitimization of illegal settlements and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital also enraged the Palestinians.

All of this and more has factored into what we are seeing today from the Palestinian people: a unified uprising, both armed and unarmed, against Israel.

And, this time, no Israeli can ignore it.

This is the result of years of attempts to sideline Palestinian aspirations for freedom and statehood.

The only solution from this point on, is for the international community to re-engage with the Palestinian issue and give a meaningful push towards ending the conflict. It has become clear that if they don’t, this issue will never stop re-appearing.


US divided over Israel

Five Congress representatives, members of the Democratic Party, have ramped up criticism in Congress against Democratic President Joe Biden.

They accuse him of complicity with Israel in its crimes against the Palestinians.

These women, close to the Defense Department, are already known for their commitment against “systemic racism”.

The US State Department has issued a notice asking US citizens who wish to visit Israel to cancel their trip if possible.

The US Department of Defense has withdrawn at least a hundred of its men stationed in Israel and moved them to Germany.

Monopoly contest stirs up Jerusalem conflict


Hasbro Inc. issued an apology Thursday after an employee, responding to complaints from pro-Palestinian groups, eliminated the word “Israel” after the city in an online contest to select names for a new Monopoly board game: Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition.





But an employee based in London decided on her own without consulting senior management to pull “Israel” from Jerusalem after hearing complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and bloggers who argue that the city is not a part of Israel, Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness said Thursday.





“All the other cities had the country attached to their names,” Saranga said. “We felt very upset.”



“It was a bad decision, one that we rectified relatively quickly,” he said.

“This is a game. We never wanted to enter into any political debate.

We apologize to our Monopoly fans.”

Saranga said Hasbro responded quickly and professionally.

While he wondered whether it was necessary to remove all the country names, he said he was satisfied with Hasbro’s response.



Voting in the contest ends Feb. 2
Bonus Video: Eutace Mullin’s muder by injection