“Look here!”: University of #Pennsylvania president resigns after furor over free speech and #antisemitism
The pro-Israel and Jewish lobby are able divert attention from the massacre in #Gaza by manufacturing crises, aided by the experts in this field, #GOP#MAGA.
“[…] Among those practicing self-censorship since the Israel-Hamas war began, 81 percent said they were withholding criticism of Israel, compared with 11 percent withholding criticism of the Palestinians. Concerns about offending students and pressure from external advocacy groups were cited as the top reasons.
1/2 Enraged Israeli spokes people are a very common sight on Western TV these days, but this exchange between Sky's Kay Burley and Israel's Eylon Levy seem to set a new low.
Speaking to Levy about Israel's decision to handover 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli children and babies, Burley said she had spoken “to a hostage negotiator” about the discrepancy in the numbers. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians and Israel has said that it will release, [...] Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?"
#SelfCensorship The article on the Gaza war and the Nakba was commissioned by HARVARD LAW REVIEW, edited, fact-checked, and prepared for publication — but was then blocked amid a climate of fear.
The article argued that events in #Gaza met the terms of #genocide as defined by the United Nations convention. The author also called for a legally recognised crime of “Nakba” (catastrophe), the Arab word used to describe the forced removal of Palestinians from their land and homes in 1948.
Israel’s #hasbara has officially gone into overdrive, or possibly becoming more desperate. This simulation of a terrorist attack in #London (guess it has nothing to do with London seeing the biggest demonstrations in support of #Palestine) on #Xmas day is supposed to “make Brits feel what it’s like to be ‘in our shoes’ for a minute or two,” according to one of the producers.
——-
London.
Christmas Day.
Your home and dear ones.
What if it were you?
In Israel these days, nothing gets past #hasbara unnoticed.
"People in #Israel, #Gaza and the West Bank are reeling from the repercussions of the 7 October attacks on Israel by the militant organization #Hamas ..."
#haaretz#editorial West Bank settlers are exploiting the “propitious moment” created by the war that #Hamas started to expel thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands. They are terrorizing them through various means in order to drive them from their villages. Far from everyone’s eyes, the West Bank is changing almost irreversibly.
In case you have the appetite for really depressing pearls of wisdom from #Netanyahu and #Begin's ideological master Jabotinsky... in the 1920's Revisionist Zionism pronounced what #Zionism didn't dare to speak (in public). It also set the foundations for #Israel's security doctrine ever since.
"[...] There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority."
"[...] But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the Iron Wall, which is to say a strong power in #Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present."
--- The Iron Wall... translated to English from the original Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923.
It's sad to say, but the media of the "only Democracy in the Middle East" is fully mobilized. Except for #Haaretz, which operates outside the consensus, Israel's news sites and daily newspapers highlight #IDF heroism, while concealing the kidnapped and ignoring or downplaying the killing of thousands of Gazan children.
Israeli readers are getting a daily diet consisting of every food fight on #socialmedia between celebs pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, truly bizarre opinion columns written by an Israeli Palestinian, glorifying #Zionism and admiring Jews, or simplistic and obnoxious opinion pieces like "Gaza minus Israelis = Auschwitz".
From "The massacre brought Jews back to the beginnings of Zionism", penned by Mahmud Abu Raj'ab:
"[...] And before they [the Jews] forget the spirit inspired them when they established the state [of Israel], and before they reach the stage where "blindness blinds their eyes", someone comes who wakes them up from their deep slumber and brings them back to the ground of reality. So do not be frightened or dismayed."
(last expression taken from Joshua, 10:25)
The text on Ynet (which never publishes anything in Arabic) is available in both Hebrew and Arabic, "بعد المذبحة: عودة الى البدايات دولة اليهود لا تزال في صعود."
Lev Greenberg and Daniel de Malach. "Settlement and Resistance in Israel/Palestine: Selected Issues and Historical Events from a Long-Term Perspective" (2023)
The original sin that led to the current systemic collapse was the unilateral withdrawal from #Gaza, misleadingly called "disengagement." The retreat was planned with the goal of foiling the establishment of a #Palestinian state, knowing that the severing from the West Bank and Israel and the siege would lead to a severe crisis in Gaza, resulting in violence against #Israel. Israeli policy since has been based on repeated violent reactions to attacks from the Strip, dubbed "mowing the grass," acquiescing to rocket fire that abandons the residents of southern Israel, and trying to force #Egypt to "take responsibility" for Gaza's residents.
[...] In the current circumstances, an opportunity has arisen to become disillusioned with the narrow military strategic concept of "mowing the grass" and the illusion of "decisiveness," and to recognize that Palestinians too want to live, just like us.
[...] Palestinian citizens of Israel are shocked by the murder of children and women by #Hamas and not only by the killing of their own people in the Strip, and this is a political foothold: top priority must be given to the sanctity of human life, meaning releasing the captives and stopping the firing.
[...] We need a timeout to rethink political alternatives to unilateral steps, to "disengagement" and the endless cycle of violence. The way to weaken the fanatical Islamist leadership that has taken control over two million Palestinians in the Strip is not through continuing the violent confrontation that benefits it. Political thinking in the current crisis must be based on the aspiration to give both Israelis and Palestinians hope for a future based on living together in peace.
Lev Greenberg is an Israeli sociologist and political scientist.
Daniel de Malach is an Israeli journalist and activist
Prof. Yair Bar Haim, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director, the National Center for Traumatic Stress and Resilience, discusses the current situation in Israel. Specifically, what work psychologists perform on the ground while we are at war with Hamas.
He also provides guidance for those in the diaspora about dealing with the associated trauma of what is occurring in Israel.
Random talkback on Israeli news sites in response to current events.
This one in response to Foreign Minister Eli Cohen attack in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after his remark, in a speech to the UN Security Council, saying Hamas' attack did not happen in a vacuum.
“If our public face, advocacy and status rests on one sentence replete with historical truths and one sentence said by a redeemed female captive whose unhealthy husband and hundreds more are still held in Gaza - then we are the opposite of a wonderful nation. This is a weak, miserable, pathetic nation, managed by a gang of fascist garbage, that is more excited about volunteers feeding soldiers hamburgers than about human blood flowing like water with no hope.”
Zertal, Idith. "Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood" (2005)
A book talk with the author in which she reflects on some of the issues around the use of the #Holocaust in political discourse in Israel, and the insistence of some on seeing the victimizers as victims.
A Wagner group mercenaries received an offer to fight for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, one of them told EANews.ru [it's a local news agency from the Ural region of Russia] on the terms of anonymity. According to them, wagners were offered a salary of 650,000 rub (roughly 6,700 usd) per month.