murder
Ireland leading EU coalition to recognise Palestine, review EU-Israel relationship over human rights
Irish PM Varadkar says ‘a lot’ of EU countries moving toward Palestinian statehood and potential severance or downgrade of Israel accord
Leo Varadkar (image: Houses of the Oireachtas, Creative Commons)
Irish PM Leo Varadkar is leading a coalition of EU countries toward formal recognition of Palestinian statehood – and a review of the EU’s relationship with Israel, over Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement contains conditions on human rights, and Varadkar told reporters he believed Israel ‘may’ be in breach of those provisions – and that ‘a lot’ of other EU nations were of like mind:
EU-Israeli relations are founded on an agreement which has a human rights clause, and a lot of us believe that Israel may be in breach of it. That’s something we’re talking about.
Irish MPs, MEPs and public have been outspoken in support of Palestinian human rights and in condemnation of Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza, which has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, according to human rights watchdog Euro-Med Monitor.
Varadkar’s announcement will infuriate Israel’s extremist regime, which has been frothing since the International Court of Justice put it on trial for genocide last week and ordered Israel to protect Palestinian lives, a legally-binding instruction that the Netanyahu regime has flouted. Norway’s foreign minister has warned the leaders of states supporting Israel’s mass slaughter that they face potential prosecution for complicity in genocide.
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Video: Israeli forces dress as hospital staff, Muslim visitors to assassinate paralysed patient in West Bank
Yet more war crimes – and in the West Bank where Hamas does not operate
Israeli troops dressed as medical staff and Muslim visitors to infiltrate a hospital in the West Bank today – where Hamas does not operate – before assassinating a paralysed man and two visitors in his room, as well as terrorising genuine staff and visitors, including forcing one man to kneel with a coat over his head as they milled about with guns. Some of the Israelis appeared to be men dressed as women:
Israel later claimed the man they killed was about to launch an attack on Israel similar to the 7 October raid from Gaza – in which Israel killed ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens, a fact now common knowledge and discussed by media in Israel but ignored by western press and broadcasters – despite being paralysed, in a wheelchair, and a patient in hospital.
Just days after the ICJ’s confirmation that it is on trial for genocide, Israel has added to its war crimes the crime of ‘perfidy’, using civilian dress to claim protected status and then attacking – and added to its already horrific tally of summary executions, the slaughter of civilians and bombing of hospitals and schools.
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Video: Webbe challenges govt over support for Israel already flouting ICJ ruling. Meaningless reply
Leicester East MP continues strong record on Gaza and Palestinians, challenging government to say what it is doing to obey ICJ when Israel is already murdering hundreds more civilians – and government continues abject collusion
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe has been one of the few MPs to stand up strongly for Palestinians and to challenge the government over its complicity in Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza. In Parliament today, during urgent questions, she asked the Tories what they are doing to protect Palestinians when Israel is already killing hundreds of Palestinians a day and intensifying its genocidal incitement despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) explicit order to take every measure to prevent them being killed.
The answer was utter, meaningless platitudes:
In fact, the UK continues to aid and abet Israel in its wanton slaughter of innocent Palestinians and to impede the arrival of desperately needed food, fuel and medical supplies – while attempting to accelerate then death rate from hunger and disease still further by smearing the UN relief agency UNRWA. The UK, like the US, has cut off its funding to the vital relief organisation on which millions of desperate Palestinians are relying, despite Israel’s long record of blatant and already-discredited lies to excuse its actions – and the prospect of a change of government sometime this year promises more of the same, as so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer is just Pavlovian in his support for the apartheid colonisers.
Few MPs bothered even to turn up to the ‘urgent question’ session.
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Israeli ministers speak to extremist conference about clearing Gaza for settlement
A day after the ICJ’s damning verdict that found Israel’s genocidal acts as fact, government ministers call for more war crimes
Around twenty Israeli government ministers and Knesset members have attended a right-wing extremist event demanding the clearing of Gaza and the replacement of the indigenous Palestinian people with Zionist settlers.
Security minister Itamar ben Gvir, communications minister Shlomo Karhi, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke at, and a string of other members of the Netanyahu government and government parties attended, the event – titled “Conference for the Victory of Israel – Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria”.
Ben Gvir – himself an illegal settler – told the far right gathering of the imperative to ‘voluntarily’ move the Palestinian population out of Gaza:
We need to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians] and impose death sentences on terrorists.
I turn to you, PM Netanyahu: this is time for brave decisions.
Smotrich, according to Israeli paper Haaretz, said:
We are rising, we have a nation of lions [and many children] are returning there as combat fighters. We must make sure they return there as settlers to protect the people of Israel.
Karhi clarified what a farce all talk of ‘voluntary’ migration is:
‘…voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent.
Katz added, in chilling language:
Today, after 18 years [from disengagement from Gaza], we have the opportunity to rebuild and expand the land of Israel. This is our final opportunity.
The conference came just a couple of days after another far-right event titled ‘Victory Convention: Conquer and Colonise Gaza’.
Israel has continued to slaughter hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its interim ruling, despite being ordered by the court to take all measures to prevent any Palestinians being killed. Now, after the court found as fact the genocidal language used by Israeli government figures, others are piling the evidence still higher.
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Video: “I lost my family in Gaza” – police aggression as protesters shame Rayner and Reynolds
Deputy Labour leader and Shadow Business Secretary confronted with their complicity in Gaza slaughter during fundraiser
Police aggressively forced protesters – including two women – out of a Labour fundraising event for the ‘crime’ of protesting against the complicity of deputy party leader Angela Rayner and Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
At least three protesters stood to confront the two front-benchers with the horrific reality of the slaughter in Gaza, with the women targeting Rayner’s ‘modern feminism’ while thousands of women are killed by Israel and more than a million undergo daily loss and humiliation. Party leader Keir Starmer has argued that Israel has a ‘right’ to commit its crimes, yet the pair continue to support him.
Reynolds has been pictured smiling during a funded visit to Israel shortly after the Israeli regime massacred peacefully-protesting Palestinians in 2018. Rayner told a pro-Israel front group earlier this month, in the middle of the ongoing genocide, that she and the party ‘completely oppose’ any boycott or sanctions against Israel.
And despite the completely non-violent behaviour of the protesters, they were forcibly – even violently – removed from the event so that the MPs could avoid being challenged for their actions:
So far, according to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor and the World Health Organisation, more than 33,000 civilians – mostly women and children – have been killed in Israel’s wanton slaughter, at least double that amount have been wounded with many maimed, and almost two million people have been forcibly displaced into ever-smaller areas as famine and disease begin to outstrip the death toll from bombs, missiles and bullets.
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Uni ‘urgently investigating’ pro-Israel professor who told Greenstein ‘all Jews should be gassed’
Justin Stebbing says he was clearly speaking ironically in attack on left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jew Tony Greenstein – but went on to say Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled’ to murder all Jews during WWII
A professor at Imperial College is being ‘urgently’ investigated by the university after sending emails to left-wing Jewish pro-Palestinian activist Tony Greenstein about ‘gas[sing] all Jews.
Greenstein is a Brighton-based human rights campaigner who received a suspended sentence last year in a farcical trial for criminal damage to an Israeli-owned weapons factor when no damage occurred and who has been further targeted by anti-terror police for saying he supports the struggle of Gazans for freedom. He told Skwawkbox that he didn’t know who Stebbing was when he first received an email, from a personal email address, linking to discredited claims of mass rape and mutilation by Hamas and saying that Stebbing ‘agree[d] with you [Jews] should all be gassed‘.
Greenstein reported the incident to police as hate speech, but then realised Stebbing is an academic and, assuming his email had been hacked, contacted him on his university address to let him know. Greenstein said he was astonished when Stebbing wrote back – from his official email – to attack him further.
Stebbing retorted that he was being ‘ironic’ when he made his comment – but claimed that Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled to gas all Jews’ if he had been alive during the Second World War:
“My e mail was pure irony, but as always here the response to the crime is blamed. I have zero doubt that in WW2, you ,would have been thrilled to gas all Jews. That was the point I was making.”
The email headers showed that the email was genuinely from an Imperial email account. Greenstein accordingly sent a complaint to the university, which received an email acknowledgment.
Skwawkbox contacted Prof Stebbing about his emails to Greenstein. He responded:
The reason I wrote to Tony Greenstein was him contacting several senior colleagues accusing them of being doctors for genocide. He was of course aware he had just written that e mail and would and should have understood my e mail as being ironic in that context. We have had previous contact. Tony Greenstein knew that he’d written that so would have understood the context and this affects the meaning of what I wrote and it was clear, as I’d said, I was being ironic.
On Stebbing’s allegation that Greenstein had previous contact with him, Greenstein said:
They were doctors opposing a BMA statement calling for a ceasefire and accusing Israel of having broken international law including his colleague at Imperial. Yes I accused them of being Doctors 4 Genocide. There was an article in the Jewish Chronicle (see below) naming them. However Stebbing wasn’t named and I didn’t contact him. So it’s a lie that we have had previous contact. I’ve searched my email and his name doesn’t come up and it’s an unusual name so I would see immediately.
All these doctors say they have resigned from the BMA which is a good thing. Good riddance as Ghada Karmi said.
He added:
I emailed Stebbing to let him know that someone was clearly impersonating him. You could have blown me down with a feather when he responded saying that I was wrong. He wasn’t being impersonated. It was him. An ultra Zionist lunatic.
An Imperial College spokesperson told Skwawkbox that it was ‘urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor’:
There is no place for antisemitic or hateful behaviour of any kind at Imperial. We are urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor.
The International Court of Justice is expected to give a decision on South Africa’s application under the Genocide Convention for an order to Israel to stop its slaughter, which has killed and maimed more than a hundred thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, as well as 117 journalists and more than 150 United Nations staff.
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UK exclusive: Hamas issues statement about events of 7 October raid
Group’s denial of Israeli claims and description of mass killing of Israelis by IDF fits with evidence and witness testimonies
Hamas breaks through Israeli border fence on 7 October
Hamas, the government of Gaza and resistance group – designated terrorists by the UK, US and other western governments – has issued a statement about the background and events of its 7 October raid into Israel, countering the ‘atrocity propaganda’ that Israel has used to try to justify its genocide and other war crimes against Palestinian civilians, including tens of thousands of children and women murdered and around double the number wounded and maimed.
The statement has been ignored by the UK and other so-called ‘mainstream’ media. It includes the historical and political background of Israel’s decades-long apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people, a detailed account of its aims and actions on the day targeting military personnel and installations, refutation of Israeli claims – and a call for a full and transparent international investigation – along with a summary of its own political aims.
On the events of 7 October, it reminds readers of the testimonies of survivors and hostages about the civil treatment they received from Hamas fighters and of the now common knowledge – of course ignored by the UK media, but not by their Israeli counterparts – of the ‘immense’ (the IDF’s own description) ‘friendly fire’ deaths inflicted on Israeli citizens by Israeli tanks, helicopters and troops, as well as informing readers of the deaths of sixty Israeli hostages to IDF bombs and shells in Gaza.
The briefing, which was forwarded to Skwawkbox, via Flavio Centofanti, a UK-based activist for Palestinian rights, from renowned Palestinian academic Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, who, after a long career in the US, now teaches at Bethlehem University and runs the Palestinian Museum of Natural History, reads:
In light of the Israeli fabricated accusations and allegations over Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 and its repercussions, we in the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas clarify
the following:
- Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange
deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.- Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite
the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.
Since its establishment in 1987, the Hamas Movement committed itself to avoiding harm to civilians. After Zionist criminal Baruch Goldstein in 1994 committed a massacre against Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in occupied Hebron City, the Hamas Movement announced an initiative to avoid civilians the brunt of fighting by all parties, but the Israeli occupation rejected it and even did not give any comment on it. The Hamas Movement also repeated such calls several times, but received by a deaf ear from the Israeli occupation which continued its deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians.- Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.
As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza, and sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them, and that’s what happened during the week-long humanitarian truce where those civilians were released in exchange of releasing Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails.- What the Israeli occupation promoted of allegations that the Al-Qassam Brigades on Oct. 7 were targeting Israeli civilians are nothing but complete lies and fabrications. The source of these allegations is the Israeli official narrative and no independent source proved any of them. It is a well-known fact that the Israeli official narrative had always sought to demonize the Palestinian resistance, while also legalizing its brutal aggression on Gaza.
Here are some details that go against the Israeli allegations:Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.
was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement. A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”- It is also a matter of fact that a number of Israeli settlers in settlements around Gaza were armed, and clashed with Palestinian fighters on Oct. 7. Those settlers were registered as civilians while the fact is they were armed men fighting alongside the Israeli army.
- When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms. This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”
- The brutal killing of civilians is a systematic approach of the Israeli entity, and one of the means to humiliate the Palestinian people. The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza is a clear evidence of such approach.
- The Al Jazeera news channel said in a documentary that in one month of the Israeli
aggression on Gaza, the daily average killing of Palestinian children in Gaza was 136, while the average of children killing in Ukraine – in the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war – was one child every day.- Those who defend the Israeli aggression do not look at the events in an objective manner but rather go to justify the Israeli mass killing of Palestinians by saying there would be casualties among civilians when attacking the Hamas fighters. However, they would not use such assumption when it comes to the Al-Aqsa Flood event on Oct. 7.
- We are confident that any fair and independent inquiries will prove the truth of our
narrative and will prove the scale of lies and misleading information in the Israeli side. This also includes the Israeli allegations regarding the hospitals in Gaza that the Palestinian resistance used them as command centers; an allegation that was not proven and was refuted by reports of many western press agencies.
The document is far more in accord with the available evidence than the claims of the Israeli regime – but it is Israel’s claims that are being amplified by western media, including the Guardian and the New York Times, despite the evidence. More will be published in the next day or so.
Mr Centofanti told Skwawkbox:
There has been a good deal of coverage by other news outlets including the Israeli media of evidence pointing to a large number of Israelis having been killed by their own forces on Oct 7th. Many of the claims of atrocities committed by Hamas originally made by Israel, such as those involving babies beheaded or baked in ovens have been dropped or debunked.
According to the journalist Jonathan Cook, the Israeli military itself has conceded that it had killed its own civilians “in immense and complex quantity” but that “it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents”. A lot of evidence points to the IDF’s indiscriminate use of tanks and helicopter gunships as the cause of many deaths. The fact that Israel revised its original figure of 1400 Israelis killed down to 1200 and then again to 1140 suggests that it was not sure who its own forces had killed. Its claims of systematic rape and torture have also been questioned as they are based on partisan and unreliable witnesses who have changed their stories several times.
We also know that the IDF have a strategy of using overwhelming and disproportionate force. And from the way they killed their own three hostages waving white flags that they are trigger-happy. Also, on Oct 7th they will have been in a state of panic. Finally, that the IDF have a rule called ‘Hannibal’ which they employ to prevent hostages being taken even if it means killing them.
All of this suggests that the version of events we have been given requires verification. Has The Guardian checked its sources to verify all the claims of atrocities made by Israel. If not, why does it routinely repeat the Israeli narrative without clarifying the source (Israel). For example, The Guardian routinely refers to what happened on Oct 7 as “Hamas’s atrocity against Israel”. This suggests that The Guardian is satisfied that all the claims made by Israel are correct. But if questions are being raised about the truth about what happened on Oct 7 even in the Israeli media, why has The Guardian not covered this story?
Not doing so is highly irresponsible and dangerous because it gives Israel continued moral justification and makes it complicit in prolonging the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.
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Why does the ‘march against antisemitism’ look so much like a National Front rally?
Far right is a strong presence at both
A pro-Israel ‘march against antisemitism’ and a National Front march – but which is which?
The latest ‘march against antisemitism’ – code for a gathering of those who support Israel despite or because of its apartheid and its genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – bears a strong resemblance to National Front marches and rallies.
Wonder why that might be – well there’s the pervasive presence of the far-right at both. At a recent such march, members of the demo protested against the removal of right-wing extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson – and the links between pro-Israel hardliners and the far right have long been well established, if largely ignored by the so-called ‘mainstream’ media.
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Israeli media discussing ‘horrifying’ mass ‘friendly fire’ killings by IDF – but UK media stay silent
Mass murder of Israeli citizens by country’s own military during Hamas raid has been a topic of discussion in Israeli papers and TV for some time – now it is an acknowledged fact, yet UK media still talking as if it never happened
Cars burned – it’s now clear by Israeli rockets – on a road from an Israeli rave to the Gaza border in October
Israeli media has begun to freely discuss as fact the mass murder of Israeli citizens by so-called ‘friendly fire’ from the IDF during the 7 October Hamas raid near Israel’s border with Gaza.
The reality of the killings has not been treated with any serious doubt by Israeli papers and broadcasters for weeks – they could hardly do otherwise, when they have interviewed survivors who have talked about it, Israeli police have admitted it and even the IDF issued a statement to Israeli press saying it would not be ‘morally sound’ to investigate the ‘immense and complex’ deaths its troops, tankers and pilots had caused on that day.
But now a new article in Israeli paper Haaretz – including quotes from a similar article by Yediot Aharonot, a more right-wing paper than Haaretz – discusses the ‘friendly fire’ attacks by Israeli tank fire and helicopter missiles as established fact with Asa Kasher, the Israeli army’s ‘ethics chief’. For example:
Kasher discussed another incident that took place on October 7, on the Israeli border with Gaza. According to an investigation conducted by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, troops received orders to prevent hostages from being taken into Gaza by force, if necessary.
Around 12:00 P.M. on October 7, IDF helicopters strafed cars attempting to cross the border.
The burned cars and incinerated bodies were caused, according to experts, by US-made ‘Hellfire’ rockets fired by Israeli helicopters. A number of Israeli civilians – including children – were similarly killed by tank shells deliberately fired into kibbutz homes. Kasher discussed those with Haaretz too and the paper noted:
According to [survivor Yasmin] Porat, after she was released by a Hamas terrorist, she was questioned by the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit and told them that there were about 40 terrorists and 14 civilian hostages still in the house. Dagan was among the hostages inside the house, where she says an Israeli tank fired two shells at it. She was the only Israeli to survive, and she has confirmed Porat’s account.
Kasher is no ‘bleeding heart liberal’ eager to criticise Israel’s genocidal military. On the contrary, he is a right-winger who has openly valued Israeli lives above those of Palestinian civilians – in 2006 Asher wrote that Israeli troops must never be put at risk to protect Arab civilians, summarised by Haaretz:
Professor Asa Kasher, who compiled the IDF’s Code of Ethics, said that the restraint exercised by Israel to save civilian lives when bombing a terrorist apartment was a “mistake” that cost more Israeli lives later…
Kasher said it was inconceivable to let people be killed in Israel because the only way to prevent it involved killing dozens of Palestinians. “It is unacceptable to let people get killed here even if the number of people killed there is expected to be bigger,” he said.
Kasher considered the idea of Israeli soldiers deliberately firing at Israeli civilians ‘horrifying’, saying:
How is it possible that a high ranking army official would give a command that so immediately and definitely endangers the life of so many civilians? It’s just horrifying.”
But Kasher doesn’t for a moment deny or doubt that it happened.
As journalist Jonathan Cook has pointed out, despite the open discussion of the mass ‘friendly fire’ deaths on the day of the Hamas raid, the UK media continues to discuss the deaths as if they were all caused by Hamas. In an email article to subscribers, Cook writes:
So how is it possible that the BBC and the rest of the western media keep revisiting the horrors of October 7 but never to raise these issues , even though they have been so prominent in the Israeli public space for many weeks?
The only possible answer is that western media outlets are consciously censoring this story because it directly conflicts with the West’s ideological and strategic agenda. It raises disturbing questions about western complicity in genocide.
Once again, the establishment media’s unwillingness to report the real story starkly gives the lie to their claim to be ‘free and fearless’. In truth, they are there to uphold a narrative of western moral and civilisational superiority. They are there to justify the West’s wars – and the war industry and resource-grab portfolios that our economies, and the media corporations themselves, are so heavily invested in.
Subscribe to Jonathan Cook’s email bulletins here. Skwawkbox has received no incentive for including this link.
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Video: Irish MEP Daly hammers ‘Butcher Biden’, ‘Frau Genocide’ von der Leyen over Gaza complicity
One of a number of outstanding Irish MEPs, Clare Daly tells Biden to take the name of Ireland out of his mouth
Clare Daly, an outspoken and courageous left-wing Irish MEP, has an outstanding track record of taking the right side of global issues – and she has let US president Joe Biden and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have both truth-barrels for their complicity in Israel’s genocide and array of other war crimes against the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza.
Publishing the clip of her speech at the European Parliament, Daly said:
As Israel loses in the court of public opinion, we see desperate attempts to widen the conflict. All with the blessing and material support of the Butcher Biden, a US President who claims Irish descent. Keep our country out of your mouth, @JoeBiden. Your ancestors disown you.
As well as arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, Biden has eagerly amplified the Israeli regime’s lies about the events of 7 October to help it ‘justify’ the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of civilians.
And von der Leyen has sided with Israel shamelessly, despite saying Russia was committing a war crime by cutting off electricity and water in Ukraine – a situation far less grim that the one created by Israel doing the same and worse to Gazans.
Oh for politicians of Daly’s calibre in the UK Parliament, to actually provide the opposition that is conspicuous by its absence with warmongering friend of apartheid Keir Starmer masquerading as ‘Labour’ leader.
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