OMNI
GAZA
ANTHOLOGY #15
GENOCIDE
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of
Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Https://omnicenter.org/donate
What’s at Stake: Among several, the US is giving $4 billion a
year for arms to a country guilty of genocide.
CONTENTS
Miko Peled. Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Since
1948.
Chris Hedges. The Brief Submitted by
South Africa to the ICJ.
Middle East Monitor. The Indonesian
Brief.
Craig Murray. Genocide in Gaza: Why It had Not Been
Referred to the ICJ by Dec. 2023.
Richard Falk. “In Gaza, the West is enabling the most
transparent genocide in human history. “
Margaret Kimberley. “South Africa's Case At World Court Also
Exposes The US And The West.”
Margaret Kimberley. US Ramps Up War Crimes After ICJ Rules
Against Israel.
Jonathan
Cook. “‘Are we the baddies?’ Western support for
genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes.”
Chris Hedges.
“It May Be Genocide, But It Won’t Be Stopped.”
Chris Hedges. “Let
Them Eat Dirt.”
Gaza Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden Has Day
In Court” By Center for Constitutional
Rights.
Natalia Marques. “Everywhere He Goes, Biden Is Haunted By The
Martyrs Of Gaza.”
CALLS FOR CEASEFIRE
Art Hobson.
“World Grieves for Palestine and Israel:
America Must Demand a Cease-fire”.
CODE PINK Calls for
Cease Fire and Boycotts of Israeli Genocide Supporters.
Ann Wright Calls for a Cease Fire in Her Testimony
at UN.
“Human Rights Groups Demand ICC Issue
Arrest Warrants On Israeli Officials” By People's Dispatch.
US CAMPAIGN FOR PALESTINIAN
RIGHTS. Contact Responsible Officials.
“The Death Of Israel” By Chris Hedges.
TEXTS
ISRAEL’S ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE SINCE
1948
Miko
Peled. “They Stole a Country in Full
Bloom’.” Consortium News
(12-16-23).
Pro-Palestinian Israeli
activist Miko Peled explains to a Melbourne, Australia audience Thursday how
Israel stole Palestinian cities and farmland in 1948 and has continued
its ethnic cleansing until today’s brutal operation in Gaza. Read here...
SOUTH AFRICA AND INDONESIA
The Case For GenocideBy Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. The exhaustive 84-page brief
submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)charging Israel with genocide is hard to
refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of
infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along
with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal
rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza
and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case
against Israel for genocide. Israel’s smearing of South Africa
as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies...-more-
Editor. mronline.org (1-28-24).
The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel
must cease its warmaking in Gaza–cease committing and inciting genocidal
acts–and that the case charging Israel with genocide must proceed.
Indonesia Files Lawsuit Against Israel At
World Court
By Middle East Monitor. Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported that
Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit against the Israeli occupation at the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In doing so, Indonesia joins
South Africa, which filed the first lawsuit against Israel for committing
genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry had
previously assembled a team of experts to help draft Indonesia’s ICJ case to
hold Israel accountable for its “policies and practices” in the occupied
Palestinian territories. According to the local Jakarta Post website, Foreign
Minister Retno Marsudi said that the case will help support global... -more-
THE DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE, WHY ISRAEL
IS GUILTY OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA, AND WHY IT HAD NOT BEEN REFERRED TO THE ICJ BY
DEC. 2023.
Craig Murray. “Murder.” Craig Murray CraigMurray.org.uk December 15, 2023. Consortium News ( Dec. 17, 2023).
Al Jazeera are leading
their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the
school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank
range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.
On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which
consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine
at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them
there is nothing to discuss.
Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining
bakery.
It is worth stating why this is plainlya genocide in
Gaza:
1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the
civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems,
bakeries and fishing boats;
2) Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;
3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from
universities to primary schools;
4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society,
including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and
deliberate destruction of administrative records;
5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;
6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general
percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8 percent. In
Ukraine it is 6 percent. In Gaza it is 42 percent. This is indiscriminate
destruction of an ethnic group;
7) Mass executions of civilians;
8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading
prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually
abusing them;
9) Forced mass movement of population;
10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage
buildings;
11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including
journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;
12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the
President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both
civilian and military establishment.
This is the official definition of Genocide in
international law, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide:
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group
to another group
On Tuesday I attended a session called by Palestine at the United
Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted
of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss
with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide
Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International
Court of Justice.
The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried
that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of
Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no
respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.
The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a
genocide, it follows that not only are Benjamin Netanyahu and hundreds of
senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely
plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Rishi Sunak and members of their
administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided
military support for the genocide.
The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of
genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to
issue arrest warrants.
A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is
has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social
media.
But to the global 1 percent whose interests rule the world, no
number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On
the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth
concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for
their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk.
This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western
and Arab states.
It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the
enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing
something about it.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was
British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of
the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent
on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully
received. This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
Richard Falk. “In Gaza, the West is enabling the most
transparent genocide in human history. “Common Dreams (January 17, 2024).
This
is extraordinary because the states supporting Israel, above all the United
States, have claimed the high moral and legal ground and lectured the states of
the Global South about the importance of the rule of law. Editor. mronline.org
(1-21-24).
Originally published: Common Dreams on January 17, 2024 by
Richard Falk (more by Common Dreams) | (Posted Jan 20,
2024)
Recall Samuel
Huntington’s controversial, yet influential, 1993 Foreign Affairs article,
“The Clash of Civilizations,” which ends with the provocative phrase, “The West
against the rest.” Although the article seemed far-fetched 30 years ago, it now
seems prophetic in its discernment of a post-Cold War pattern of inter-civilizational
rivalry. It is rather pronounced in relation to the heightened Israel/Palestine
conflict initiated by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli territory with the
killing and abusing of Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, as well as the
seizure of some 200 hostages.
Clearly this attack
has been accompanied by some suspicious circumstances such as Israel’s
foreknowledge, slow reaction time to the penetration of its borders, and,
perhaps most problematic, the quickness with which Israeli adopted a genocidal
approach with a clear ethnic cleansing message. At the very least the Hamas
attack, itself including serious war crimes, served almost too conveniently as
the needed pretext for the 100 days of disproportionate and indiscriminate
violence, sadistic atrocities, and the enactment of a scenario that looked
toward making Gaza unlivable and its Palestinian residents dispossessed and
unwanted. MORE https://mronline.org/2024/01/20/in-gaza-the-west-is-enabling-the-most-transparent-genocide-in-human-history/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-gaza-the-west-is-enabling-the-most-transparent-genocide-in-human-history&mc_cid=cf9190498d&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor
Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and served as UN Special
Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestine and is currently co-convener of SHAPE (Save
Humanity and Planet Earth).
South Africa's Case At
World Court Also Exposes The US And The WestBy Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. PopularResistance.org. Cutting off water and electricity, bombing
hospitals, and withholding food and medical aid all clearly fall within this
definition. Not only has Israel publicly committed these acts, but its officials
openly and publicly brag about having done so, and make South Africa’s case
easy to prove. But if there is another point which is made obvious by this
definition and that is that the United States has and is committing genocide
domestically and internationally. Of course Black people played the biggest
role in making this case beginning in 1951 when the Civil Rights Congress
published the pamphlet... -more-
US Ramps Up War Crimes
After ICJ Rules Against Israel
By
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. PopularRevolution.org.
On December 29, 2023, the Republic of South Africa charged Israel with
violating the United Nation’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide in regards to its assault on the population of Gaza. On
January 26, 2024 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that claims of
genocide against Israel are plausible and that the killing of Palestinians in
Gaza must end. Despite attempts to obfuscate or to claim an Israeli victory,
the meaning of the court ruling could not have been clearer. The ICJ did not
use the word “ceasefire” as many people had hoped, but judges did... -more-
Jonathan Cook. “‘Are we the baddies?’
Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes.”
Mronline.org (12-30-23).
Originally published: Jonathan Cook Blog on December 27, 2023 (more by Jonathan Cook Blog)
Human Rights, Inequality,
State Repression, WarAmericas,
Gaza,
Israel,
Middle
East, Palestine, United
StatesNewswire
The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes
highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal
democratic order for decades.
Chris Hedges. “It
May Be Genocide, But It Won’t Be Stopped.” Scheer Post. PopularResistance.org. The International Court of Justice (ICJ)
refused to implement the most crucial demand made by South African
jurists: “the State of Israel shall immediately suspend its military operations
in and against Gaza.” But at the same time, it delivered a
devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints
itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing
genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are the victims, not the
perpetrators, of the “crime of crimes.” A people, once in need of protection
from genocide, are now potentially committing it. -more-
Chris
Hedges. “Let
Them Eat Dirt.” Chris
Hedges Report. Feb. 8, 2024.
There was never any possibility that the
Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the
verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass
starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean
total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically
starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This
is a number Israel intends to exceed.
Israel, and its chief
patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a
war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Criminal Court
(ICJ). The court found the
charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and
facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six
provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian
catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate
and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services
in Gaza.
UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I
covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate
Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe
zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.”
UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well
as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli
government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA after the ruling of providing false information to the
ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which
supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics,
schools and food, had to be eliminated. Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a
political as well as material objective.
The evidence-free Israeli accusations against UNRWA that a dozen of the 13,000 employees had
links to those who carried out the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 did the trick.
It saw 16 major donors, including the United States, the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland,
Finland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Estonia and Japan, suspend financial
support for the relief agency on which nearly every Palestinian in Gaza depends
for food. Israel has killed 152 UNRWA workers and damaged 147 UNRWA installations since the attacks inside Israel by Hamas and other
resistance groups on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 Israelis. Israel has
also bombed UNRWA relief trucks.
More than 27,708 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, some 67,000 have been wounded and at least 7,000
are missing, most likely dead and buried under the rubble.
More than half a million Palestinians – one in
four – are starving in Gaza, according to the U.N. Starvation will soon be
ubiquitous. Palestinians in Gaza, 1.7 million of whom have been internally
displaced, lack not only sufficient food, but clean water, shelter and
medicine. There are few fruits or vegetables. There is little flour to
make bread.
Pasta, along with meat, cheese and eggs, have disappeared. Black market prices
for dry goods such as lentils and beans have increased 25 times from pre-war
prices. A bag of flour on
the black market has risen from $8.00 to $200 dollars. The healthcare system in
Gaza, with only three of Gaza’s 36 hospitals left partially functioning, has largely collapsed. Some
1.3 million displaced Palestinians live on the streets of the southern city of
Rafah, which Israel designated a “safe zone,” but has begun to bomb.
Families shiver in the winter rains under flimsy tarps amid pools of raw
sewage. An estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their
homes.
“There is no instance since the Second World
War in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and
destitution with such speed,” writes Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace
Foundation at Tufts University and the author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future
of Famine,” in the Guardian.
“And there’s no case in which the international obligation to stop it has been
so clear.”
The United States, formerly UNRWA’s largest
contributor, provided $422 million to the agency in 2023. The severance of funds ensures
that UNRWA food deliveries, already in very short supply because of blockages by Israel, will largely come to a halt by the end of
February or the beginning of March.
Israel has given the Palestinians in Gaza two
choices. Leave or die.
I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs, scars
from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was
strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated
and did not. The international community, as is in Gaza, did little to
intervene.
The precursor to starvation - undernourishment
- already affects most Palestinians in Gaza. Those who starve lack enough
calories to sustain themselves. In desperation people begin to eat animal
fodder, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from diarrhea
and respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and
ration it.
Soon, lacking enough iron to produce
hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to
the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled
with a lack of vitamin B1, they become anemic. The body feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is
impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems
crash. Vital organs – brain, heart, lungs, ovaries and testes -- atrophy. Blood
circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as
typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the
thousands.
It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated
victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want
to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest,
are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired
with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and
hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an
adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.
I saw hundreds of skeletal figures, specters
of human beings, moving forlornly at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese
landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small
children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of
villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and
never gotten up. Many were the remains of entire families.
In the abandoned town of Maya Abun bats
dangled from the rafters of the gutted Italian mission church. The streets were
overgrown with tussocks of grass. The dirt airstrip was flanked by hundreds of
human bones, skulls and the remnants of iron bracelets, colored beads, baskets
and tattering strips of clothing. The palm trees had been cut in half. People
had eaten the leaves and the pulp inside. There had been a rumor that food
would be delivered by plane. People had walked for days to the airstrip. They
waited and waited and waited. No plane arrived. No one buried the dead.
Now, from a distance, I watch this happen in
another land in another time. I know the indifference that doomed the Sudanese,
mostly Dinkas, and today dooms the Palestinians. The poor, especially when they
are of color, do not count. They can be killed like flies. The starvation
in Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is Israel’s masterplan.
There will be scholars and historians who will
write of this genocide, falsely believing that we can learn from the past, that
we are different, that history can prevent us from being, once again,
barbarians. They will hold academic conferences. They will say “Never again!”
They will praise themselves for being more humane and civilized. But when it
comes time to speak out with each new genocide, fearful of losing their status
or academic positions, they will scurry like rats into their holes. Human history
is one long atrocity for the world’s poor and vulnerable. Gaza is another
chapter. Share
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“Gaza Genocide Lawsuit Against Biden Has Day In Court”
By Center for Constitutional Rights. January 26, 2024, Oakland, CA – A federal court
heard arguments in the case Defense for Children International – Palestine v.
Biden today, including extensive live testimony from Palestinian plaintiffs and
a scholar of genocide and the Holocaust. Attorneys from the Center for
Constitutional Rights, together with co-counsel from Van Der Hout LLP, asked
the court to immediately order the United States to cease military support for
Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and opposed the
government’s efforts to have the case dismissed. -more-
Everywhere He Goes, Biden
Is Haunted By The Martyrs Of GazaBy Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Biden is disrupted on
the campaign trail at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina by
protesters shouting “ceasefire now!” and later gets on a flight to the Dallas
airport, where more protesters are waiting for him. Biden’s speech at a
Virginia campaign event is interrupted thirteen separate times, and as he
leaves his motorcade is met with more protests. Biden, who brands himself as
the “most pro-union president” is called out by union workers for his support
for the genocide in Gaza as he is receiving the endorsement of one of the
largest unions in the country. -more-
Art Hobson. “World
grieves for Palestine and Israel: America must demand a cease-fire. NWADG 26 December 2023.
I wanted to
write about local matters such as Fayetteville's plans for a more civilized
North College Avenue, but events in Gaza draw me again to my first allegiance,
which is to the world.
Nearly 19,000 Palestinians are now dead in the Gaza war
according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with many more missing and probably
buried amid the rubble. Two-thirds of
these are expected to be women and children.
1200 Israeli civilians were murdered in Hamas' October 7 attack and over
100 Israeli troops have died. An Israeli
study finds that 61 percent of Gaza deaths from airstrikes are civilians. As the liberal pro-Israel organization
J-Street has put it, "The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian
casualties is nearly unfathomable."
Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of
the United Nations, states, "We
are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in
any conflict since I am Secretary-General" (January 2017).
Through its military and diplomatic support for Israel, the
United States is indirectly causing thousands of Palestinian civilian
deaths. We not only vetoed UN Security
Council efforts to end the war but also approved the emergency sale of $106
million worth of ammunition to Israel.
The UN General Assembly adopted 153-10, with 23 abstentions, a
resolution demanding an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" and the
release of all hostages. Friendly
nations voting for the resolution included Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh,
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, El
Salvador, Finland, Greece, Honduras, Iceland, India, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan,
Laos, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru,
Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South
Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Because our money, our weapons, and our military support
this war, international support for the United States is declining by leaps and
bounds.
A few truths should be obvious: There must be an independent nation of
Palestine, Israel needs to continue to exist for those Jews who desire a
homeland, both nations deserve to prosper, and both nations deserve international
support. Therefore, a two-state solution
is essential. Israel and Palestine have
much in common and could, were it not for prejudice and narrow religiosity,
help each other find peace, prosperity, and happiness.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has surrounded
himself with religiously orthodox right-wing extremists. These fanatics support the settlers in the
West Bank who terrorize and murder Palestinians in the same way that the Ku
Klux Klan once terrorized and murdered blacks in America. On October 4, 2023, Al Jazeera reported that
Orthodox Jews occupied and held secret religious services in Jerusalem's
Al-Aqsa Mosque. Although there is no
excuse for Hamas' attack on Israel, this provocation to Muslim sensibilities
could have triggered the Hamas attack three days later.
The people of Gaza are not only dying in Israel's military
onslaught, they are also starving because Israel has limited the amount of
food, fuel, cooking gas, and water that can come into Gaza. Medical care is urgently needed and yet hard
to come by because hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations are
destroyed. Israel's Defense Minister
Yoav Gallant admits quite directly that he has ordered a complete siege and
there will be no electricity, no food, and no fuel. According to Gallant, "We are fighting
human animals, and we are acting accordingly."
As we have witnessed in television newscasts, Israel
publicly humiliates Palestinian men when the Israeli Defense Forces rounds them
up, strips them down to their underwear, blindfolds them, and displays them in
public in their neighborhoods.
Israel has stated that it must destroy Hamas so that it
cannot commit another October 7 atrocity.
But Israel's attack on Gaza will not destroy Hamas, because Hamas
represents a culture of rebellion against Israel and the siege only strengthens
that idea. For every slain Hamas
terrorist, more are created. Israel's
goal to destroy Hamas augers only endless war and terrorism on both sides. Israel cannot win this war. If it continues, Israel and America will
eventually stand isolated amid accusations of war crimes.
The United States has helped fund and weaponize this
war. For the sake of America, Israel,
and the world, we must take matters into our own hands. We must tell Netanyahu he will lose America's
military and diplomatic support unless Israel declares a cease-fire. We must also demand that Israel end the
occupation and work toward a two-state solution that establishes a free and
independent nation of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza.
References:
• Number of deaths in Gaza war: NWADG
15 Dec 2023 article beginning on page 1A.
• 61% of airstike deaths are civilian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/09/civilian-toll-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-unprecedented-killing-study#:~:text=Israel%2DGaza%20war-,Civilians%20make%20up%2061%25%20of%20Gaza,from%20airstrikes%2C%20Israeli%20study%20finds&text=The%20aerial%20bombing%20campaign%20by,an%20Israeli%20newspaper%20has%20found.
• Statement by J-Street:
https://jstreet.org/press-releases/moment-of-truth-for-israels-government/
•
Guterres quote:
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2023-11-20/secretary-generals-press-conference-unep-emissions-gap-report-launch
• Sale of ammo to Israel:
NWADG 10 Dec 2023, page 11A.
• The UN vote on the war:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717
• Countries voting for and aginst the UN resolution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/13/un-vote-gaza-ceasefire-countries-against/
• Orthodox Jews occupied Al-Aqsa Mosque shortly before the
Hamas attack.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot
CODE PINK CALLS FOR CEASE FIRE AND BOYCOTTS OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE
SUPPORTERS
“I'm not used to seeing Gaza getting bombed that way, even though I lived
through four aggressions before…I never saw Gaza like that. I never saw people
cut into pieces like that,” Gazan journalist Plestia describes the
brutality of the Israeli military in its most recent bombardment of Gaza. Israel
murdered over 19,000 people in Gaza, with nearly half of them being children, over
51,000 people are injured, and thousands more are missing under the rubble,
unable to be saved while the carpet bombing continues.
For 69 days straight,
the people of the world continue to rise in a moment of unprecedented
mobilization to end Israel’s attack on Gaza. Israel is entering the third month
of its genocidal campaign, despite overwhelming opposition expressed by the
majority of the world. However, we have yet to see adequate reporting
on protests by outlets that enable Israel like CNN. Instead,
organizers across the globe and reporters on the ground in Gaza have taken to
social media to broadcast their message.
Join us in demanding
CNN take accountability!
Why CNN? CNN has a
pattern of silencing the truth in Palestine. In a livestream from an
Israeli settlement miles away from Gaza on October 11, CNN chief international
correspondent Clarissa Ward lied about the threat of Hamas rockets on Israel. She
reported while laying on the ground, taking cover from a “massive barrage of
rockets”, but footage released later shows Ward being the only one laying on
the ground, while others directly near her are standing calmly. In
2018, CNN suspended the contract of commentator Marc Lamont Hill following a
speech he delivered at the UN which criticized Israel and advocated for
Palestinian human rights. CNN’s viewership rose when the attacks
first broke out, a trend they regularly experience during major international
conflicts, including after 9/11 and during the wars in Iraq and Ukraine.
Mainstream media has proven to make a killing off killing!
Help us get 10,000
signatures demanding CNN call Israel’s attack what it really is—genocide!
When the petition goal is reached, we will
have a coordinated action across the US delivering the petition to local
offices, forcing them to hear our message. You can bring your message directly
to your local news station!
As long as Israel remains an occupying force
in Palestine, and as long as it carries out its genocidal campaign, we will
rise up against it and every entity that aids and abets in these crimes against
humanity. In the US, diligent efforts have moved 62 members of Congress to
support a ceasefire, but our success does not end at politicians. Calls for
boycotts have emptied Starbucks locations across the country and Puma announced
that it’s ending its sponsorship of the Israeli football team next year. Our
action is working. Let’s take our demands to the media, for Bisan, for
Motaz, for Plestia, and for Palestinians everywhere!
Towards Peace,
Nour and the entire CODEPINK team
ANN WRIGHT CALLS FOR A CEASE FIRE IN HER TESTIMONY AT THE UN
CEASEFIRE GAZA !!!!! STOP THE GENOCIDE
!!
ANN
(From Bentonville, Ann has spoken at OMNI three to four times. AR’s most prominent world peace
advocate. —D)
From: Joseph Gerson, The Campaign for
Peace, Disarmament & Common .
“When Those Of Us Who Are Not Diplomats Have
The Rare Opportunity To Speak In The United Nations There Are Rules About
What Can And Cannot Be Said!”
While testifying about
the evil of weapons sales and transfers, their devastating human toll, and the
evil of military-industrial complexes, former colonel, U.S. diplomat, and
now Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security board member Ann
Wright turned her testimony into a condemnation of Israel’s
unconscionable Gaza mass murder and devastation into an appeal for a
ceasefire – NOW!
Ann Wright's Testimony At The U.N.
With 20,000 civilian dead in two months, 85 %
of the Palestinians of Gaza displaced and deprived of food, water and fuel
essential for life, and the destruction of between a third and a half of
Gazans’ homes we have been watching something akin the liquidation of the
Warsaw Ghetto in real time. Even as the holidays turn us toward family and
friends, we must find ways to insist on a ceasefire and diplomacy that leads to
peaceful and just Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
So much more to say, but the killing must
STOP!
Write to you member of Congress, a letter to
the editor, join a demonstration, AND DON’T BE SILENCED!
Joseph
In her 29-year career
in the Army and Army Reserves, Colonel Ann Wright served at the NATO subcommand Allied Forces Central
Europe, and later as a diplomat serving in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra
Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US
government in March 2003 in opposition to Bush’s war on Iraq. She is an
advisory board member of Veterans For Peace, International Peace Bureau, World
BEYOND War, Gaza Freedom Flotilla, NO to NATO, Hawaii Peace and Justice,
Pacific Peace Network, Women Cross DMZ and Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and
Common Security.
From the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and
Common Security | 4 Washburn Street, Watertown, MA 02472
“Human Rights Groups Demand ICC Issue
Arrest Warrants On Israeli Officials” By People's Dispatch. Popular
Resistance.org (12-23-23). Hundreds
of human rights organizations and activists issued a joint call on Wednesday,
December 20 asking the International Criminal Court to immediately issue arrest
warrants for Israeli officials accused of being involved in the genocide of
Palestinians in Gaza. Addressed to Karim Khan KC, the ICC prosecutor, the
letter underlines that the warrants are necessary to prevent the “continuing
commission by Israeli officials of genocide, crimes against humanity and war
crimes against Palestinians.” The letter was written in support of the three
Palestinian human rights groups, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human... -more-
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“The Death Of Israel” By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its
genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the
United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and
genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its
dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain
stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked
victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from
public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical
amnesia. -more-