Yves here. It’s sad to say that genocide fatigue has set in as outrage across the world has not moved the one actor that could stop the Israel’s slaughter, the US. Photos of starving children provoked a recent spike of condemnation, but that made no difference. The US and Israel keep piling on with their sense of extreme entitlement as they add to their horrowshow rap sheet, from sanctioning the UN’s special rapporteur Francesca Albanese to planning to formalize the status of Gaza as a concentration camp, which Israel is calling, in an insult to intelligence, “humanitarian city”. Gee, like summer camp but with no food, medicine, or clean water?
If you’d been paying attention, Gaza pre October 7 was regularly described as an open air concentration camp. The post by Medea Benjamin below explains that this new concentration camp is presented as a waypost to intended expulsion of the Palestinians, which is ethnic cleansing and verboten under international law, not that Israel and the US are bound by such niceties. However, as readers know well, Israel and the US been trying to get other nations to accept Palestinians who are forcibly removed. There are no takers. So we’ll see how herding Palestinians into an overcrowded area furthers the genocide plan, since the excuse of mere ethnic cleansing seems to remain beyond Israel’s reach. Perhaps cholera will speed the deaths?
Yesterday, Conor linked to a story from +972 Magazine on Israel’s use of drones to herd Palestinians in Gaza. It seems likely these methods will be used on a bigger scale in implementing the new concentration camp scheme. From ‘Like a video game’: Israel enforcing Gaza evacuations with grenade-firing drones:
The Israeli military has weaponized a fleet of Chinese-manufactured commercial drones to attack Palestinians in parts of Gaza that it seeks to depopulate, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call can reveal. According to interviews with seven soldiers and officers who served in the Strip, these drones are operated manually by troops on the ground, and are frequently used to bomb Palestinian civilians — including children — in an effort to force them to leave their homes or prevent them from returning to evacuated areas.
Soldiers most commonly use EVO drones, produced by the Chinese company Autel, which are primarily intended for photography and cost around NIS 10,000 (approximately $3,000) on Amazon. However, with a military-issued attachment known internally as an “iron ball,” a hand grenade can be affixed to the drone and dropped with the push of a button to detonate on the ground. Today, the majority of Israeli military companies in Gaza use these drones.
S., an Israeli soldier who served in the Rafah area this year, coordinated drone attacks in a neighborhood of the city that the army had ordered to be evacuated. During the nearly 100 days that his battalion operated there, soldiers conducted dozens of drone strikes, according to daily reports from his battalion commander that +972 and Local Call reviewed….
“It was clear that they were trying to return to their homes — there’s no question,” he explained. “None of them were armed, and nothing was ever found near their bodies. We never fired warning shots. Not at any point.”
Now to the main event.
B yMedea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Other books include, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” (2018); “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” (2016); “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” (2013); “Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart” (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) “Stop the Next War Now” (2005). Originally published at CodePink
The Israeli government has just put forward one of the most brazenly genocidal schemes in modern memory—and unless we act immediately, the world will once again let it happen.
As reported in Haaretz, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is proposing to force some 600,000 Palestinians—and eventually the entire population of Gaza—into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan is to “screen” the population, separate out alleged Hamas members, and then pressure the remaining civilians—men, women, and children—to “voluntarily” leave Gaza for another country. Which country? That hasn’t even been determined. The point isn’t relocation—it’s erasure. This reflects a long-standing goal among many Israelis, especially on the right, to take full control of Gaza and clear it of Palestinians.
The UN has warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory’s civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.
While all eyes are focused on a possible ceasefire, Katz is not interested in peace—he’s interested in a “final solution.” A speeding up of the second Nakba we have been witnessing for the past 20 months. In fact, he has stated that construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire. So what’s the point of a ceasefire, if it’s used to build a concentration camp?
Once Palestinians are herded into this camp, they will not be allowed to leave for other parts of Gaza. They won’t be allowed to return to what’s left of their homes, their neighborhoods, their farms, their schools. They will be trapped inside this militarized zone, under constant surveillance, held at gunpoint until Israel can arrange their deportation.
Just think of the tragic, unbearable irony: the Israeli government—founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust—is now building a massive concentration camp for an entire population.
If that sounds unthinkable, look at what Israel has already gotten away with.
For the past 20 months, the world has watched—and largely enabled—a genocidal campaign in Gaza. Over 55,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, the majority of them women and children. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques. It has flattened entire neighborhoods with AI-generated kill lists. It has assassinated journalists, targeted ambulances, destroyed bakeries and water systems.
It has used hunger as a weapon of war, deliberately blocking aid trucks, attacking convoys, and starving the population into desperation. And in a cruel twist, it has created the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation—a scheme to funnel aid through Israeli-controlled routes and sideline the UN and experienced NGOs. Its so-called “distribution points” are really death traps, where desperate people have been shot day after day as they risk their lives to get a bit of food.
This engineered starvation is not an accident. It is a strategy—a form of collective punishment on a scale rarely seen in modern times.
We have already failed the people of Gaza—again and again. We failed when we looked the other way as children were buried in rubble. We failed when we allowed our tax dollars to fund the very bombs that wiped out refugee camps. We failed when we kept pretending there was still a line Israel wouldn’t cross.
Now Katz is telling us—explicitly—what comes next: mass internment and forced expulsion. And unless we rise up with every ounce of outrage we have, we will fail again.
Let’s be absolutely clear: the infrastructure for this plan is already being built. Netanyahu and Trump are lobbyingcorrupt governments in the Global South to accept the deported. This is not a negotiating tactic to strengthen Israel’s position in ceasefire talks—it is the next phase of a genocide we’ve been watching in real time for nearly two years.
And what is the U.S. government doing? Still issuing meaningless statements about “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Still shipping weapons. Still blocking accountability at the United Nations—and even sanctioning officials like UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for daring to speak out.
President Trump could stop this today—by cutting off military aid, backing the International Criminal Court’s investigations, and declaring that forced displacement of Palestinians will not be tolerated. But instead, he’s still dreaming of turning Gaza into a Middle Eastern resort for the ultra-rich.
Meanwhile, more Arab governments stand ready to normalize ties with Israel, making deals with war criminals while their fellow Arabs are starved, bombed, and now threatened with mass exile. Where is the outcry from Cairo, Riyadh, Amman? Is there absolutely no red line?
One bright spot on the international scene is the Hague group, which will convene an emergency meeting in Colombia on July 15–16. This growing bloc of nations has joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. These countries are taking a courageous stand to uphold international law and defend Palestinian life. Every nation that claims to value justice must join them—immediately.
And here in the United States, every member of Congress must be pushed—loudly, relentlessly—to take a public stand. No more vague language. No more hiding behind mealy-mouthed scripts. We demand immediate, public opposition to this “humanitarian city” plan—and a full cutoff of military support to Israel. This is a moment of moral reckoning. Choose a side.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking this can’t happen. It is happening. The groundwork is being laid. The walls are going up. The deportation flights are being negotiated.
There is no neutral ground. This is not a policy debate. This is genocide—on camera, with diplomatic cover, and with our tax dollars.
The time to stop Israel’s dystopian plan is not tomorrow. It is now.
Rise up. Speak out. Flood the streets. Bombard Congress. Demand accountability.
Stop the plan. Save Gaza. Before it’s too late.
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Thank you for postung this. As a German I am shocked about Israel an may Goverment who backs this. Our Chancellor even said, that Israel is doing the “Drecksarbeit” /dirty work for us. The childern of the victims of the Nazi are the masters of death today.
This matter has really blocked me from doing my normal work. I shoud go around and yell it every day to everybody, but I can’t.
Seconded. Desensitization has set in despite the flood of grisly images; those pictures and other well sourced confirmations of the butchery in the press have done nothing and will do nothing until the architects of this sadistic blood-shedding lose their power. As Professor Scott Galloway suggested in the video that was shared here earlier, the correction may come in the form of revolution … a thousand Mamdani’s *, or a thousand Luigi’s.
* – if he or others of his ilk manage to make it past the Obama alums they keep hiring
Strange that you mention an unabashed, self-declared supporter of Israel like Galloway in a comment that so cogently captures your opposition to, and disgust at, the horror unfolding in Gaza. He weaves sophist tales trying to justify Zionist atrocities against Palestinians. He fancies himself a sophisticated analyst on geopolitical matters but scratch below the surface of his verbose monologues and he’s just peddling the party line like the rest of the establishment talking heads.
Thuto: Thank you. Good call out, yes … but if anything, his assessment should ring truer because he is by his own admission part of the oppressor class. I didn’t go deeper when the video was originally posted here, but I’ll use this opportunity to scratch beneath the surface in support of your assertion.
cf. Video (via X)
I take issue with a couple points he made:
#TheMiddleClass
The “middle class” he describes in his monologue was not the “innovation”. And that is a little sleight of hand, whether intentional or not. It’s basically what you’d expect someone who’s an entrepreneur to say, right? … that economically empowered individuality (and ::genuflects:: freedom) created this wonderful thing called a middle class which went on to invent wonderful things. Well, what’s behind the smoke and mirrors, there?
THE GOVERNMENT
Yes, that thing that entrepreneurs, finance/tech bros and libertarians hate to acknowledge: government spending. The New Deal, WWII Keynesianism (which created large manufacturing infrastructure) and then the post WWII boom brought America out of the dust bowl era to the land of exploding subdivisions, low unemployment, cheap/free education and a generous social safety net. But you see, Scott Galloway can’t say that. Because as you say, he has to toe the line to some degree. He knows the inequality has consequences, but he has to mask the root cause because …
#TaxesForRevenueAreObsolete
This is his second and decidedly more classic/orthodox economic
fallacytrick. I can’t remember exactly where the conversation happened – might be a thread here, or one at NEP, or maybe X et al – but I remember a discussion with some people from #MMT circles or who like me were #MMT adherent, where the topic was: why one should not keep harping on taxing billionaires as a way to “fix” fiscal policy. You end up exactly in the same dubious place that Galloway leads the listener – billionaires aren’t the problem, it’s the tax code; and the hidden dragon in that painting is this: well, then we need those billionaires to pay their fair share, so let’s not rid of them! He kind of goes there in mentioning some numbers: more than 20% or more than 50%, for the top earners (at about the four minute mark in the video), but the entire tax code analysis is flawed from the top earner perspective. Absolutely, we need to reduce the burden on the lower 90%, but not because we need more money from the top to finance government. We want to tax billionaires to reduce their ability to disproportionally consume valuable economics resources (looking at you, hedge fun bros buying up rentals!), which drives top-down inflation via engineered scarcity of basic goods and services.Ah, it’s coming back to me … was probably during one of Bernie’s runs. Bernie harping constantly on billionaire taxes and some felt it was unfortunately furthering the false notion that country needed their money to be able to afford things for the public good. Galloway being a Zionist is chef’s kiss on the kind of people that are ultimately trapped by their own hatred, like an infinite loop in a program … LOL Every time Scott gets far enough along some humanitarian vein, he’ll ultimately run into his least favorite topic and hit a GOTO statement that sends him right back to the beginning where has to again recount the tale of society’s unabated descent toward revolution.
But on that count, he’s absolutely right. And that’s why I quoted him.
Cheers.
For those who may not know …
Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete (via Bill Mitchell, no not that one, but the Australian #MMT Economist)
Yes! a thousand Luigi’s. The perpetrators of this atrocity need to fear the consequences of their actions. At present there are none and MIC is making money hand over fist.
The one thing we learned from the Iraq war is that marching and writing letters achieves SFA. Medea is delusional if she still thinks the US is a functional democracy where the elites give the plebs anything more than lip service. Only force can prevent the Israeli regime carrying out their evil plan.
The genocide/ethnic cleansing will be carried out – how do you stop the Third Reich when they are allied with the Allies? Only intervention by Russia/China/Iran can avert the inevitable outcome. Sorry, but this is the horrific reality.
I would agree with you, that Iraq war protesting seemed to do nothing (and my late husband & I stood on a street corner in our little village every Saturday for 7 years, with a group of Quakers & Unitarians opposed to that war – including a couple who did time in a Federal prison for protesting the School of the Americas, as well as we traveled to DC in 2007 to protest, all to seeming no avail).
But there is something to be said for taking a stand. Over time the majority came to recognize how wrong that war was, never mind that we didn’t stop it. You can only do what you can, and absolutely I agree for example the Bilderbergers could have stopped it in a minute but don’t care. It suits their purposes, I guess.
When we take ineffective action, there are infinite ways to interpret its results to ourselves. It makes us feel better. It strengthens the communities of values we build up around them. These things can be worthwhile in themselves. Ultimately, however, in my opinion the crucial standard is: did it advance our goal? If the answer is no, and we’re serious about accomplishing it, then we need to reassess our strategy and tactics, perhaps even our goal. Grassroots all-volunteer organizations could benefit from a bit of a self-audit, where they take stock of their capabilities and, in light of them, ask what they can do. Often, it’s growing membership or education, because the mobilizing and organizational capacity to say, stop a war is just not there yet. A hint to Medea, who i like.
I take issue with the position that the protests of the Iraq war did nothing — though I think it’s more important to look back about ten years to the start of the first, “Persian Gulf” war, and the organizing that led in part to the the mass resistance organizing against the WTO. The 90s even saw the growth of a ‘third way’ decentralized Greens movement with locals choosing between direct action and local electoral races based on their potential effectiveness (Before an internal, anti-democratic ‘coup’ merged the Greens to the electoral-only model California Green Party and formed what we now know as the repeatedly ineffective national Green Party).
As with the fledgling Greens, much of the 90s protest was stepping away from the recent “protest and letter-writing” Peace / Environmental / anti-racism / feminist / LGBT, etc. isolated groups, began looking back at anarchist and Communist tactics of direct action, and tried to develop new, integrated organizing to challenge a broad range of issues with an anti-Capitalist (financialization) twist.
And thanks to Cat Fancier for bringing up the also effective School of Americas organizing. I was involved in that project quite early thanks to living in an active, upstate NY Sister City — the year he was released from prison for his personal direct action we brought Father Roy Bourgeois to town for a talk to about 20 people in a church basement. Myself, along with two songwriters and two SOA activists who regularly did prison time for actions at the base, formed a nationally-touring, multi-media group that helped raise awareness of the SOA and performed at the annual gathering (with Pete Seeger) each year, seeing the numbers swell in to the thousands at the base.
It was my experience that the effective organizing of the 90s into the aughts had the effect of State’s focus increased repression and surveillance that the tragic events of 9/11 allowed them to begin and grow year by year.
By the time of the Iraq War the State was busy testing new crowd control methods and investing heavily in technology. For example, with around a million people in the streets of NYC we saw the NYPD start using crowd control barriers and check-points to limit protestors mobility cross-town, and isolate the protest from the daily life of the city. They also experimented more widespread targeted arrests of ‘leaders’ of the protests, and harassment at their homes.
There are a multitude of other examples (including the constant harassment of pro-Palestine organizers through the aughts, and the Green Scare), but I’ll sum up by saying the State was well aware of the effectiveness of mixed-approach mass organizing — direct action, large scale protest, education campaigns, and local electoral take overs. Our successful organizing was met with a massive increase in spending and planning to render those tactics ineffective. Which I’d argue was remarkably successful largely because the idea of State repression was a non-starter conversation with liberals, even very active ‘progressives’ who — especially when Obama was elected (another successful tactic from the State to break apart growing movements) — refused to doubt the Dem Party or the Papers of Record.
I don’t know what’s next, but I look at sparks rising in the youth and I’m hopeful.
I also don’t believe that organizing within the US will be how the global system of repression — of the US Empire itself — will be overthrown. I think that has to come from outside our borders. I do believe we who live in the US have a responsibility to support, amplify, and illuminate the more dangerous efforts of those outside.
And I often think of Angela Davis (paraphrase), who stated that there is no, single, Revolution that gets us to the future we want. Each revolution just takes us to the horizon where we can see the next struggle toward that future.
To amplify a detail here: I was in Sydney at the time, but I too heard that a million people turned out in NYC to protest, despite it being a bitterly cold day. Note that this size of crowd has pretty much never been officially acknowledged.
What I was told was that the protestors were planning to mass at UN Plaza (as in as far east as you can get on the East Side in the 40s). But the cops set up barriers at Second Avenue and herded them uptown into Harlem.
Please see this post: “Protest works. Just look at the proof”
A series of general strikes would move most governments very quickly. It’s possible to peacefully protest with something stronger than just marches.
Agreed. This is a powerful path.
As in Ukraine, China is one of the states that is providing valuable military aid to the Israelis–in the form of easily weaponizable cheap drones, both whole and parts. Perhaps there should be pressure on him to stop Chinese companies selling IDF those drones.
(Did China actually stop selling drones and drone parts to Ukraine after that announcement some weeks ago?)
Pressure by whom? And, how? Marching in the USA, and writing letters?
Occupy Wall Street stopped Obama’s grand bargain and led to the Bernie campaigns. The powers lifted heaven and earth to kill those movements and succeeded. But there is utility in making them deal with us and one day they may be overcome.
As I mentioned in another blog, Iran unfortunately for whatever reason dropped the ball on solving this problem. They had the evil state of Isreal on the ropes and could have eliminated them once and for all
also, once the Gazains are finally eliminated what will prevent a continuous bombardment of the entire land of Isreal as there will be no Gaza civilians left to consider.
I was thinking something similar, that they could have made “cease fire” conditional on resolution, or at least de-escalation, of the wider problems in the region.
On the other hand, now that they have established that they possess an effective conventional deterrent, they could still make peaceful moves in the interest of the people of Gaza, such as sending an aid flotilla. I have to think that the government of Israel might think twice before interfering with such a move.
There seems to be an awful lot of wishful thinking about Iran having had Israel on the ropes. Maybe they did. But I’d suggest there is nowhere near enough information to know that one way or the other.
Even if they did, Iran probably would not have had Palestinians that high on their priorities list…
If you leave out Yemen, Iran has Palestinians on their priorities list higher than everyone else. Back in the day, sea of Arabs around Palestine would get their guns and fight against Zionist, and not alongside them.
Perhaps they didn’t want to tempt the Samson Option?
Assuming that Iran is now proceeding with plans to build nukes that can be delivered by missile (and why wouldn’t they?), all they really needed was to bruise Israel badly enough to buy some time for their domestic nuke project to show results.
After that… it’ll be nuclear-enabled FAFO.
Perhaps they did not care for the implications of driving a genocidal state possessing plenty of nukes and delivery means so far to the wall that it decided to exercise that option?
Uhm, I thought I said that.
Adding: during the 12-day war with Iran, I was somewhat surprised to find a number of my friends had never even heard of the Samson option, nor did they consider the possibility that Israel might use its nuclear weapons.
I shared this quote from Israeli military strategist and historian Martin van Creveld — basically a threat, holding a gun to the heads of the EU leadership — and it was just shrugged off as something not credible, despite several sources corroborating.
Overall, I’m a little surprised at the insouciant attitude that many USians around me seem to have about Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity”, even people I otherwise consider quite well informed. After all, we are watching Israel commit genocide in real time, killing civilians indiscriminately, with full support of all the putatively “civilized” nations in the world, so I fail to see why their nukes are somehow off the table.
Yes you did. My reply was to Mel above, like yours. How it wound up here instead, I have no idea. Sometimes it happens.
Trump will never stop what he is helping do to the Gazans, When he talks about the Ukraine he talks about the killings but when he talks about Gaza he talks about a tragedy as if the people there were the victims of a flood or fire or something. One of the legends for Israelis is the Warsaw ghetto uprising but to see their descendants creating their very own Warsaw ghetto in real time with the full approval of the majority of the Israeli people is just gross on so many levels. Many of them are keen to accuse others of blood libel and in fact I was accused of that on NC sometime ago by one of their supporters. But the inhumanity of the Israelis is something that they will never be able to live down and they can weep all they want at that stupid Wall, it will never be erased even if they get western government to criminalize criticisms of them. Nobody will ever loo a the Israelis in the same way ever again.
One of the nightmares for Jewish people in WW2 was the Einsatzgruppen.
As the Haaretz reports make obvious the IDF are now fulfilling that role.
Seeing the Warsaw ghetto come back to life, with Israeli/Jewish people in charge, is something incredible, as The Rev Kev suggests
However, we have here genuinely traumatized descendants giving the stick to other people, and this will probably go on and on and on. This kind of action-reaction principle going always downward (trampling on the weaker) is very depressing, to say the least.
On another level, a small Western colonial state like Israel may be madly aggressive, but it cannot hope to survive very long in the mist of an hostile environment, especially with a weakening sponsor like the US.
So, let us hope that after much killings and other horrors, after we are dead, some South African solution will be devised to put together what will be left of the different populations concerned.
Traumatized descendants? That is a bit rich. There are several generations of Israelis that haven’t experienced that trauma other than as inflicting something similar on others. Because the leadership was set on getting as much land as possible.
Fun fact: amongst all of the following
president;
prime minister;
chairman of the Knesset;
chief of the general staff;
head of the Mossad;
head of the Shin bet;
none ever was a survivor of the holocaust.
Among the following:
president of the supreme court;
exactly one survived the anti-semitic persecutions of the nazis (Aharon Barak, born in Lithuania in 1936).
Reminds one on the 40 years long wandering through the desert under Moses and his brother. They needed “uncorrupt” people by the Egyptian slavery, with a free spirit to conquer the promised land…
The holocaust survivors were likely considered “corrupted”…
The Warsaw Ghetto analogy is perfect. The last commander of the Ghetto Uprising Marek Edelman was an Anti-Zionist and refused to migrate to Israel.
He was a “bundist”. The Bund was the main organized non-religious — communist — Jewish movement in Europe.
Bundists detested zionism which they viewed as a distraction from the necessary class struggle, and found it all the more suspect since extremely wealthy Jewish capitalists — those exploiting the (Jewish) working class — were supporting zionism financially. Needless to say, zionists deeply hated bundists and did everything they could to undermine them.
Contrarily to the zionists, who emigrated en masse to Palestine, and accessorily the UK or the USA, the bundists remained in Europe — where they died fighting in the Warsaw ghetto, in the Warsaw uprising, in the revolts of concentration and extermination camps, and in partisan groups operating against nazis and their local henchmen.
At the end of WWII, the Bund had been wiped out; liberal assimilationism had been discredited and its proponents massacred in extermination and slave labour camps; the traditional, non-zionist religious Jews starved to death in ghettos and slaughtered by the Einsatzgruppen; only the zionists remained with an intact organization fully staffed with members safely outside Europe.
Now, we know that Germany had the right to defend itself, right? (/sarc)
There is justifiably vexing puzzlement over how the Warsaw Ghetto victims’ descendants could replicate such horrors today. A film answers that question directly and it’s by an Israeli filmmaker.
Yoav Shamir’s DEFAMATION is accessible on Youtube . Its director travels to Europe with a group of high school seniors about to perform service in the Israeli Occupation Forces. Their military minder lies to them about a friendly interaction with local elders passing time in a public park: “They want to kill you” is the message the students are absorbing. The filmmaker confronts the lie. The overall theme of the film is the daily re-traumatizing the Israeli population with paranoid constructs, and alarms about the Palestinian population, whom the students will soon attack and brutalize as Nazis after joining the military.
In a review of Shamir’s new “The Prophet and the Space Aliens” Shamir is described as delivering “ethically challenging interviews with an accessible charm, which entertains and appeals to a broad audience.” That truly applies to DEFAMATION, with its lighthearted and open-eyed approach, exploring the daily re-traumatization delivered by Israeli media, politics and popular culture.
Not to be typically pessimistic but: As has been noted for many years, the The genocide will not stop until the Zionist regime is destroyed, or the US/UK and vassals can no longer support, finance, and arm Israel.
I have great respect for Code Pink and Ms. Benjamin, and it is a good idea to raise hell with our Congress crooks and push back on the madness. However, like other policy areas, our corrupt institutions can simply ignore public opinion. Don’t like the Rs? Whaddya gonna do? vote D? and vice versa. Do we still believe the US has a functional democracy? Both parties are infamously in lock-step with the Lobby, and they never met a war they didn’t like.
There is no way to vote against the interests of the Zionist oligarchy. The Lobby, (part of the MICIMATT) and other interests, openly bribe Congress and they are a bought-and-paid-for private legislature. This is not just with the Lobby, but other convergent interests as well.
In this dire situation, one can only expect the genocide to end if Iran and/or other powers destroy Israel or its capacity to conduct genocide. Then the likelihood of a global conflagration spikes, with the so-called Samson Options in the background. Who can call their bluff?
As it was crystal clear that both candidates were on board with what has been happening, the bottom line is that supporting genocide was not a red line for 155 million US voters, and probably still isn’t for many of them.
E. g. even if T or H had made credible promises to push M4A, I still wouldn’t have voted for him/her. That’s what a red line means: “No matter what other promises you make, I will not support you, because of this.”
Indeed, as long as people vote Team R or Team D, nothing will change.
But there are independent candidates, and there are organizations like Reject AIPAC:
This is a matter of “thinking outside the box”, and simply refusing to vote for any duoparty less-of-two-evil hucksters, and while many USians are evidently too inflexible of doing this, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Yes, I don’t think it can be said enough times, this train will not stop unless it is forced to stop. I too admire and respect Benjamin, and am glad someone is working tirelessly to petition the government for Palestine. But to expect any amount of petitioning to alter this course does not seem wise.
Just look at what they did to the university kids, starting with the Biden administration. If Code Pink was any more effective would they fare better? It’s clearly a bipartisan issue, genociding Palestinians is without a single question from above far more important than any right US citizens or foreign visitors hold.
The mask of liberalism and its idealistic quest for freedom and human rights has been looking rather moldy for a long time, but this genocide and crackdown over dissent has really caused the mask to slip, and everyone is now staring at the face of a corpse.
The failure of anyone in the elite class to see there is no going back from genocide, and no going back from their open and even sadistic contempt of those who oppose it, is the most stunning part of this global nightmare they are forcing on us. What do they think, people will come to love the systematic erasing of a people? It is just mindless nihilism. I don’t even think calling it ‘mindless nihilism’ even approaches what it is. It will continue because there is nobody to stop them. It will also change the world forever and much for the worse, and this cult of ‘power or death’ is looking in the end like death for it might be the only solution.
“What do they think, people will come to love the systematic erasing of a people?”
Well, so far they’ve managed for enough people to not care and to continue to support their heinous actions, if only through acquiescense.
The number of people objecting and protesting is thankfully growing but for the Palestinians it’s too little, too late.
There should have been mass protests in the US at this point, but the sad reality is that many even refuse to withdraw their consent to be governed by these warmongering ghouls.
Yep. They have been there, done that. Systematic erasing of a people is how USA was created in the first place. Do USians have problem with it? Not really. Most of them are proud of their country. Supremacist ideologies have justification of everything baked in. There is nothing new under the sun.
Just imagine if it were discovered that somewhere in the U.S., 55,000 pets had been systematically slaughtered. Rest assured there would be an instant outcry and condemnation, and further slaughter would be halted immediately. But 55,000 Palestinians (surely a vast undercount), and its business as usual. While the media regales us with fawning stories about a 50 million dollar wedding featuring a Dickensian robber baron, what’s left of our humanity lies buried in the rubble.
Direct action is needed to confront Zionist apartheid and genocide – now. Zionist murders in Gaza and the West Bank happen daily without fail. We cannot wait for some future election to rectify this situation. It is of the utmost urgency. Possible actions might include forming picket lines around the nine Israeli consulates in major US cities and its embassy in Washington DC. Other possible targets for protest might include offices of AIPAC or those of members of Congress who are particularly slavish in their fealty to the Zionist lobby (e.g., Ted Cruz, Chuck Schumer, et al). Or one could appear outside the local Hillel Foundation facility with a sign reading “Zionism disgraces Judaism”. At this stage, these demonstrations should be theatrical, news-worthy and highly effective without being illegal.
As the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the NYC mayor’s race (and several polls) demonstrates, there is a growing shift in public opinion to being pro-Palestinian, spawned largely by the publicity given to continuous Zionist atrocities. This trend is especially pronounced among the young and supporters of the “Democratic” Party.
Our power to impact policy toward such measures as ending US aid to Israel is in the streets. In Paris, the first pro-Palestine demonstrations were declared illegal and attacked by the police with Macron’s approval. They continued and grew regardless. Now declaring pro-Palestine demonstrations illegal in Paris would be unthinkable. In the 60’s, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) became the spearpoint of the student antiwar movement nationwide but never ran a candidate for office. We cannot wait for elections to take action against apartheid and genocide in Palestine. I urge all to find a way to participate in this effort.
I like your list.
Bibi and Company’s accusations of “Blood Libel,” denial of genocide and claims of Jewish “ownership” of the Holocaust are only effective because of the vapid absense of historical knowledge in Hollywood-brainwashed western society. Because I was a prosecutor involved in facilitating the incarceration of violent individuals, I have made it a lifelong task to learn and to understand the facts of the Shoah.
The Holocaust was a process that evolved over several years. “Arbeit macht Frei” didn’t start out quite as cynically as it came to later be understood. Jews and other untermenschen were to be deported to the General Government in eastern Europe and worked as slaves.
The Wannsee Conference drawing-up the “Final Solution” didn’t take place until January of 1942 — after the Nazis had seen the vicious pogroms carried out against Jews and Poles by the Banderite “Ukrainians” and the mass murders of the Polish intelligentsia by the NKVD. Until Wannsee Nazi “euthanasia” of civilians had worn a “humanitarian” and “anti-terrorist” veil much like the one being placed over the Rafah proposal.
The most important lesson of the Holocaust is: Don’t be a Perpetrator. Only the perpetrators have a choice; the victims can only be victims. This is why applaud the Labor-Zionist publications Haaretz and +972 for bearing witness and encouraging resistance as much as they can under military censorship.
I think is the right time to resurface this good old NC posting from the War Nerd :
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/07/the-war-nerd-amateurs-talk-cancel-pros-talk-silence.html
With their legal action on Palestinie Action, the British government again shows form and desire to inflict a blanket of silence on its population.
But you have to give it to MTG, she is ripping the silence on Israel away, in a big way:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5392660-marjorie-taylor-greene-stop-israel-aid/
MTG? I would not look to a Congress nutjob for results, just hot air and blah blah as usual. She knows damn well that nothing will come of it. But don’t take it personal, Congress is institutionally corrupt.
A few Congress crooks talk a good game, but then…
Come “election” time, she will tell everyone, just like her D colleagues, to vote for the D/R status-quo. And the Genocide continues…
The problem is that the Palestinians are, pace Neville Chamberlain, “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” Citizens of the West see the images and, even with the heavy dose of pro-zionist spin that MSM applies, there is popular revulsion at Israel and anger at their treatment of the Palestinians. But they are not being bombed themselves and they can do nothing to change the global order so they shrug and go on.
What citizens of the West do not see (unless they lurk here or in similar milieux) is that:
(1) Netanyahu’s Israel is a State of Exception, in the terms of Carl Schmitt: it has declared any opponent of Greater Israel to be the Amalek of the Torah and worthy of *righteous* destruction;
(2) that Exceptional State has stopped at and will stop at *nothing* to suborn other states to support it: it is (mistakenly) a matter of life or death for Israel; and,
(3) the techniques of digital propaganda, lawfare, mass surveillance, remote warfare, internment, extra judicial killing, collective punishment, civilian targeting, starvation and displacement that Israel is using in Gaza are proving trials on behalf of the US Empire (for its forthcoming showdown with its own self-made demons).
The full quote of Chamberlain’s makes it clear that he was talking at a time when war was real and imminent and linking this horror facing the mighty, billion-strong British Empire to a distant melodrama of geopolitical manoeuvring in an Eastern European micrro-state.
“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”
What should rouse our fellow citizens from the sleep is a jeremiad about the censorship, selective prosecution, internment, AI surveillance and general police state authoritarianism being rolled out *in the West* with Israel’s encouragement. And, bluntly, the warm bath of fascism into which tired Old Europe is relaxing.
– Keir Starmer is telling music festivals who may sing
– Keir Starmer is proscribing non-violent political action groups as terrorists
– Keir Starmer is limiting jury trial (allegedly on cost grounds but really because juries can and do refuse to uphold immoral laws)
– Keir Starmer is prosecuting grannies for placing small BDS stickers on ATM’s.
– Keir Starmer is defending mass economic immigration of millions, to lower wages and boost asset prices for his donors, but attacking humanitarian asylum for tens of thousands of refugees.
– Keir Starmer has just appointed the descendant of Ukrainian Nazi’s to run MI6
– Keir Starmer is threatening further austerity economics because his £5bn p.a. welfare cuts were rejected while he is still promising the exact same cash sum annually to the Ukraine *in perpetuity*!
– Keir Starmer is proposing to tear up financial services protections of borrowers to increase mortgage lending, I.e. to make predatory lending safe again for spivs
– Keir Starmer is proposing to tear up environmental and planning protections, to prevent people blocking enclosure of their land by offshore interests
– Keir Starmer, Kid Starver is a friend and husband of Israel, who believes it has a right to withhold food and water as a weapon.
And it goes on and on, every act of the UK government is against its people and their fundamental liberties and rights and for a shadowy oligarchic class of donors, who wish to turn every facet of life into a value trap which can be financialised, leveraged and cashed out. An “Mafia bust-out”, not just of UK PLC but of the land and air and water itself and of all the remaining functioning institutions.
If people want to stop Israel and fascism in Palestine, they need to stop Israel and fascism in the UK and USA first!
The Epstein List “that never was” is just the farcical apotheosis of this situation. Western democracy has been cuckooed by Zionism and fascism.
A Republic, if you can keep it….
Israeli settlers beat U.S. citizen to death in West Bank NPR
Hats off to Revenant for outlining Starmer’s role as a collaborator in the Zionazi genocide, and the aggessive war, overt and covert, the UK is conducting against Russia, and his abuse of England’s traditional liberties.
As a example to others, we must include him and other members of his government as defendants in the resulting war tribunals alogside other equally complicit governments before any peace treaties and trade agreement can be concluded with Russia.
When the Zionazi dystopia goes belly up – as it will – the leadership has got their own ratrun in
place and, surprise, surprise, the destination is the same as their Nazi predecessors:
https://youtu.be/V0RA2mxrFPE?feature=shared
Don’t forget that Starmer’s wife has half her family in Israel and he has said himself that he is a Zionist.
https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/i-have-relatives-in-israel-who-are-affected-by-the-war-says-starmer-ia4mcg4n
I don’t think there is a single reader who thinks WW2 in Europe could have ended with a ceasefire. The obvious reason is that the war was not Allies vs Germany but vs Fascism: Fascism in Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, etc.
The inauguration of the Holocaust and the war itself was rooted in Nazi Fascism. Thus, nothing short of unconditional surrender and the defeat and legal destruction of Fascism would do.
It may already be too late for the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians because the problem is not Israel vs Hamas, but Israel’s apartheid regime which is fueled by a Zionist racist ideology and which supports the elimination of the Palestinians. Thus, I don’t know what Trump is thinking, or what he or anybody else expects, when he talks of a ceasefire.
Like Nazi Fascism, nothing will fundamentally change until the apartheid regime is dismantled, and that won’t happen until it is on the precipice of an economic and political collapse brought about by a combination of BDS, financial sanctions, linking corporations to apartheid, and, more importantly, efforts to convince the US to pull the plug on material and diplomatic support for Israel as long as it remains an apartheid state.
Well, It turned out that Nazism was not defeated (as have been written here on many occasions), and that unconditional surrender was actually a half-century ceasfire. Nazism/Fascism/whatever-one-wants-to-call-it did get an expensive plastic surgery, but not all are fooled by it.
I wish I could find the article; anyroad I’ve seen it argued that WW2 started as a dispute over coal and steel.
The problem for British Labour is much more complex than Starmer’s uncritical personal loyalty to Zionism which is as unforgiveable as Blair’s persistent lying to align the UK with US adventurism in the Iraq war.
Yes, Starmer will pay electorally for his authoritarian reactions to humanitarian sympathies for the Palestinians domestically (I would face 6 months in jail just for wearing my Palestine Action Tee shirt), but like most weak mediocre politicians, he falls back on power plays as he lacks the ability to negotiate and/or persuade.
He is probably toast anyway. But any successor will probably be even more Blairite..
An ethical foreign policy has always been irrelevant to Tories and illusory for the British Labour party, and its main advocate was Robin Cook in May 1997, who was forced to compromise in office as Foreign Secretary in the Blair government but who eventually resigned on principle prior to the Iraq war.
“Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules.”
It was worth a try by Cook, but even in 2003 the rules based world order was tokenistic, and not remotely a multilateral partnership.
British support for the two state solution and pluralism in Middle East politics has often been compromised by ignoring that ‘rules based order’. Fairy tale though it is, it is all we have got internationally.
Pax Americana has always been underpinned by the historic settler colonial mindset, that also drives Revisionist Zionism, (and which is different from the former empire building exploitation of British colonial expansionism).
The USA actually created many of those ‘rules’ to match its perceived self interest, such as the neoliberal World Bank and IMF, as part of the post war settlement. But is happy to ignore them to serve its leaders’ whims.
For the UK the myth of the ‘special relationship’ has then meant repeatedly mis-aligning with the inevitable unquestioning US support for Zionism, itself now bulwarked by the current supremacy of white Christian nationalism within MAGA and the GOP, instead of finding a place within our geographical European orbit, (though Germany’s dilemma regarding a secure Jewish state and Palestinian humanitarianism is still evident).
British Labour has had a perennial problem with this US or Europe emphasis, and where to prioritise its alliances.
The unfortunate default preference for the US has long been the main cop out in British foreign policy, and Starmer is, somewhat uncomfortably, still pursuing that alignment, instead of actively cultivating our place in Europe.
The fact that the EU is basically a corporate neoliberal edifice, institutionally strongly capitalistic, despite the so called social clauses, always alienated a big chunk of the Labour left, so there is a difficult circle to square. The Stability and Growth Pact outlaws and punishes Keynesian fiscal policies. The unelected and unanswerable ECB banksters are firmly in control. So there is a longstanding contradiction within Labour in the relative pull that US and European foreign alliances has in terms of direction.
Palling up to a new best friend from France, another corporate neoliberal, does not remotely redress that balance, though it might send a feeble diplomatic signal to 47s regime, but is mostly performative as Labour have ruled out the UK repositioning itself in trade terms alongside the EU, even to lubricate everyday trade. Here in Scotland, our EU trade has been seriously damaged by Brexit, both politically and economically, and this is being perpetuated by the Starmer government’s fear of Reform.
So we are in a mess in terms of foreign policy , and Starmer is floundering about in a morass of his own making.
With all the glaring issues surrounding this genocide, the people don’t really ever get to hear them. they never get to see them. The vast majority of the populations seem to be willfully ignorant. there is a lot of money and grooming going into this for the last century, at least.
They can be neutered with their cognitive dissonance.
They can turn the vitriol against us, we worms, who speak of the atrocities…. this transference is standard. Kill the messenger.
We are just worms. Nobody hears us talking. No one wants to know what we have to say. The mass hysteria event the world is in right now, is the Zeitgeist of our time.
luckily, for our own sanity we can fight the good fight.
We can still speak truth to power.
We can keep alive that which is true, that which is righteous.
Life has always existed under occupation.
Without really planning to win, we keep going anyway.
we keep talking. even if no one wants to hear us anymore.
It isn’t about who is saying it. It is about the right ideas.
cultivation of the knowing between right and wrong.
We are living through a time which will show those in the future, how not to think.
And we have to keep the higher ideals alive, even if it is only in memory.
We can fight this little fight in our own minds…. because it is free.
We really can’t fight the propaganda, education, economic favoritism, fascist thuggery and depravity…. of those with wrong think, until we have the funds to teach all the kids until they are old… the right way to see the world.
And now we have to wait until another time to even think of the world being in a better place, because now everyone here has been prepped for this moment by the previous 20 years…. 50 years…a lifetime; by the fascists who run the world. everywhere.
Good luck to Ms. Benjamin, and code PINK, fighting the good fight.
We all need examples of action with meaning.
May there be many more.
I’m sorry, but our outrage will do nothing. The only way this stops is if China and Russia decide it’s time to get the war with the US over with and openly state if you do this we will strike you. At this point the US and the West are no longer a peer power with the Russian China alliance, they will win. The only question is how long will they wait. The question now is how long do they let us get weaker vs how much they are willing to let us destroy on the way down.