News
Israel’s Savagery Is So Shocking It’s Sometimes Hard To Take In
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/e27f06e8881db792ebc898c2ebab79ae/href
Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something.
It happened to me yesterday when I was watching a Sky News report about a teenage boy who was shot by Israeli forces in Jerusalem for celebrating the release of Palestinian prisoners in the hostage negotiations with Hamas. I was watching it thinking to myself, I must be misunderstanding what I’m looking at. I know that Israel does gross things, but surely the story here isn’t that they shot a kid for being happy about something.
Katie Halper A Jew For #CeasefireNow on Twitter: "I don't understand. Was a teenager shot for celebrating? https://t.co/zAJdcHRK4K / Twitter"
I don't understand. Was a teenager shot for celebrating? https://t.co/zAJdcHRK4K
Then, as has happened so many times over the last two months, I kept watching and learned that yes, that is indeed what happened. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is seen defending the shooting by saying “part of the deal is that there would be no celebrations for the release of attempted murderers” (this was actually not a part of the deal, it was just a decree issued by Israel’s national security minister) and claiming dishonestly that “we’re talking about the release of attempted murderers” (the vast majority have not been convicted of any crime and have been denied any due process for the accusations against them).
The band Eve6 nicely summed up what it felt like watching the clip of the deputy mayor’s comments, tweeting, “The remarkable thing about this clip is her self assurance. Like she’s supremely confident that ‘we shot the teenager because he was celebrating’ is a thing that people will find reasonable.”
Electronic Intifada on Twitter: "Five tiny infants died starving, cold and alone. Their bodies decomposed. They were still connected to ventilation and intravenous tubes, 17 days after Israeli soldiers stormed the al-Nasr pediatric hospital and ordered doctors to leave https://t.co/IBLdmH0kvJ / Twitter"
Five tiny infants died starving, cold and alone. Their bodies decomposed. They were still connected to ventilation and intravenous tubes, 17 days after Israeli soldiers stormed the al-Nasr pediatric hospital and ordered doctors to leave https://t.co/IBLdmH0kvJ
I had the same experience reading about the five premature babies who were left to die after the IDF raided al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital in Gaza earlier this month, their decomposing bodies only discovered when the temporary ceasefire allowed access to the hospital. It’s just too insane to believe — they attacked a pediatric hospital? And then they left the babies there to die? What??
The only reason we’re learning about this now is because the pause in fighting allowed journalists to get cameras into the building and show the dead infants to the world. This calls to mind the Politico report immediately prior to the ceasefire which said that the White House was worried “an unintended consequence of the pause” would be “that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”
Indeed, since the pause in fighting began the world has been receiving drone footage from mainstream platforms like Reuters and The Washington Post revealing vast expanses of urban terrain completely destroyed by a blanket of Israeli military explosives spanning from city block to city block. Looking at the blatantly indiscriminate devastation that’s been caused by Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 7 makes it clear that the IDF are not targeting Hamas but Gaza itself.
The Washington Post on Twitter: "Drone footage captured the wide-scale destruction of Gaza City. The territory's northern population was advised by Israeli authorities to evacuate south as Israel waged war. Israel recently indicated the military operation may move south. Live updates: https://t.co/5mnahfQYxN pic.twitter.com/2qAlaDUZvY / Twitter"
Drone footage captured the wide-scale destruction of Gaza City. The territory's northern population was advised by Israeli authorities to evacuate south as Israel waged war. Israel recently indicated the military operation may move south. Live updates: https://t.co/5mnahfQYxN pic.twitter.com/2qAlaDUZvY
I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been sleeping since the ceasefire started; that’s why I haven’t been writing as much. I guess spending weeks staring at unbelievable horrors unfolding on your screen can be pretty hard on your system if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, so my body’s been resting up as much as it can while there’s an opportunity.
And I’m just here watching this all unfold safely from my home in Melbourne. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be living in the midst of this horror for the last two months, trying to figure out the best way to survive while also grieving the family, friends and neighbors you’re losing along the way. These people have all been deeply traumatized in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, if they survive the violence, disease and deprivation that’s to come.
This thing is so astonishingly ugly, and it could get a whole lot uglier after the ceasefire ends. If there’s anything positive to be found in this living nightmare, it’s that it’s so earth-shakingly ugly that it just might shake the world awake.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Hamas Uses Human Shields? The Evidence
Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields. You’ve heard the claim echoed ad nauseam in Western corporate media. Yet numerous reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights groups have found the allegations, which are brought to bear by Israeli officials nearly every time Gaza hits the news, to not only be untrue, they’ve discovered that Israel itself has consistently engaged in wanton use of Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields.
In 2014, Amnesty International said of allegations that Hamas was using human shields:
Amnesty International is monitoring and investigating such reports, but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks. In previous conflicts Amnesty International has documented that Palestinian armed groups have stored munitions in and fired indiscriminate rockets from residential areas in the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law. Reports have also emerged during the current conflict of Hamas urging residents to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate. However, these calls may have been motivated by a desire to minimize panic and displacement, in any case, such statements are not the same as directing specific civilians to remain in their homes as “human shields” for fighters, munitions, or military equipment. Under international humanitarian law even if “human shields” are being used Israel’s obligations to protect these civilians would still apply.”
The International Red Cross defines “human shielding,” the term used in international humanitarian law to describe the practice, as “the act of placing a civilian in front of a military objective to deter attacks due to their civilian status.”
Despite their accusation against Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces themselves regularly used Palestinian civilians as human shields under an Israeli military doctrine called the “neighbor procedure” until it was outlawed by the Knesset in 2005. This left Israeli military officials incensed. Former Israel Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz even appeared in court to argue for the ban’s repeal.
Lots of documented evidence that Israeli soldiers, use Palestinian children as human shields http://t.co/XyqwRsg0oc pic.twitter.com/Kker5hRZRy
— Anonymous Palestine (@PalAnonymous) August 17, 2014
B’Tselem, a prominent Israeli human rights organization operating in the occupied territories, reports that since Israel’s 1967 occupation, Israeli security forces have reportedly exploited Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as human shields. The rights group found that:
Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, Israeli security forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip as human shields, ordering them to perform military tasks that risked their lives. As part of this policy, soldiers have ordered Palestinian civilians to remove suspicious objects from roads, to tell people to come out of their homes so the military can arrest them, to stand in front of soldiers while the latter shoot from behind them, and more. The Palestinian civilians were chosen at random for these tasks, and could not refuse the demand placed on them by armed soldiers.”
Israel is often touted as the only democracy in the Middle East; its robust legal system is praised as a panacea to the dictatorial regimes and monarchies of neighboring Arab states. One could infer, therefore, that since it was outlawed by the Israeli Knesset in 2005, the Israeli Defense Forces have halted the barbaric practice, and any soldiers caught resorting to it would be swiftly brought to justice per Israel’s own legislation.
Yet ‘Breaking the Silence,’ a group of former Israeli soldiers and conscientious objectors who speak out about human rights abuses by the Israeli military, say the practice continued unabated well after it was outlawed in 2005. Dozens of highly publicized cases, both inside and outside of Israel, corroborate their claims.
On May 13, 2022, 16-year-old Ahed was left traumatized after being used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers. Defense for Children International reported that:
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position… Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.”
Just one week later, Israeli forces were photographed forcing a Palestinian man into acting as a human shield during a raid into the occupied West Bank after Palestinian resistance fighters began firing on invading Israeli troops.
Despite its ban under Israeli law, justice has eluded Palestinian victims of the practice. In fact, the last time an Israeli soldier was punished for using a Palestinian as a human shield was in 2010 for an act committed during the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza.
B’Tselem summed up the charges against the two offending soldiers as follows:
The two soldiers in question had ordered a nine-year-old boy, at gunpoint, to open a bag they suspected was booby-trapped. Despite the gravity of their conduct – putting a young child at risk – the two were given a three-month conditional sentence and demoted from staff sergeant to private, some two years after the incident took place. None of their commanding officers were tried.”
There is little evidence to suggest that Israel has plans to ditch the practice either. There have been multiple cases documenting Israeli troops using human shields since the events of October 7, 2023.
A video posted to X by renowned Palestinian human rights activist Isso Amro on November 10 shows an Israeli soldier ducking behind a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man during an IDF raid in the Al Fawar Refugee camp in Hebron.
Watch how Israeli soldiers used a Palestinian detainee as a Human Shield in Al Fawar Refugee camp in Hebron . pic.twitter.com/pV9HcPXZi4
— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو (@Issaamro) November 10, 2023
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
The post Hamas Uses Human Shields? The Evidence appeared first on MintPress News.
Ben Gurion Canal: US Supports Israel’s Gaza War Over A Trade Route
The U.S. and Israel have been planning the construction of brand-new trade routes, which are only possible through normalization agreements signed between Tel Aviv and the Arab World.
So, what is the Ben Gurion Canal, India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, and why is this so important to Washington’s considerations when backing the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza? Could the reason the U.S. is supporting Israel’s war against Gaza, full force, be because of a trade route?
Lately, there has been some talk of what is known as the ‘Ben Gurion Canal’ Project, which would essentially be an alternative trade route created through Israel-Palestine, which would be inorganically carved out of the earth to replace Egypt’s Suez Canal, which of course is crucial to international shipping at this point, and would bring in significant revenue for the Israelis.
In fact, after Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalized ties in 2020, there was a lot of talk about bringing this project to the forefront of the economic cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Then, in 2021, there was even more chatter about this as the United Arab Emirates and Israel wanted to reap the benefits of providing an alternative trade route to the Suez Canal.
Yet there were many issues at hand, including the environmental costs. And, of course, the fact that Saudi Arabia had not normalized ties with the Israelis and to make such a project work without any problems, mainly due to the waterways that ships would have to pass through to enter the canal, Saudi Arabia was going to have to normalize ties.
The Ben Gurion Canal project is not a new idea. According to leaked documents, in 1963, the U.S. proposed using some 520 nuclear bombs to make it a reality. The proposed trade route would run from the port city of Eilat and head north. The canal that would have to be dug would have been even longer than the Suez Canal. The U.S. and Israel didn’t go through with the project for several reasons.
However, something that was being actively discussed before the October 7 Hamas attack was the possibility of creating a land route that would run through Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories through the Port of Haifa into Europe. Called the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, the route would have revolutionized trade and was a major item on the agenda of the G20 summit in September. The U.S. was determined to make the plan a reality to shape what Benjamin Netanyahu called at the United Nations General Assembly, recently the New Middle East, and was integral to the U.S. plan to combat China and its Belt and Road Initiative.
The trade route all went up in flames with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, undermining international confidence in Israeli security. To make their project work, the U.S. and Israel would have to crush Hamas and crush Gaza and any Palestinian resistance that ever again challenged the objectives of the United States in the Middle East.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe.’ Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
The post Ben Gurion Canal: US Supports Israel’s Gaza War Over A Trade Route appeared first on MintPress News.
Hamas Isn’t The Target, It’s The Excuse
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/a886e4156173edf6dc81234c91c48a83/href
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If you’re just tuning in, Israeli intelligence ignored mountains of information that the October 7 attack was coming and left Israelis completely undefended, then the IDF killed significant numbers of Israelis with indiscriminate fire and pinned the blame for 100% of Israeli deaths on Hamas, and all those deaths are now being used as justification to push Gazans off their land to the south and shoot them if they try to return while Israeli officials keep talking about how great it would be to get all Palestinians out of all of Gaza.
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Such a crazy coincidence how every single step of Israel’s military operations against Hamas in Gaza has looked exactly the same as what you’d expect to see if Israel was trying to permanently drive Palestinians off a large stretch of Palestinian land.
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This isn’t a war against Hamas. It’s not a war at all. It’s a military operation to facilitate an ethnic cleansing.
Hamas isn’t the target, it’s the excuse.
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Israel isn’t bombing Gaza with the intention of wiping out Hamas, Israel is bombing Gaza with the intention of wiping out Gaza.
Read Let This Radicalize You on Twitter: "This is Gaza. And this is why any honest person can't really say that Israel is just targeting Hamas. pic.twitter.com/ExGd0TfTwa / Twitter"
This is Gaza. And this is why any honest person can't really say that Israel is just targeting Hamas. pic.twitter.com/ExGd0TfTwa
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A new Guardian article says “Israel’s military estimates it has killed between 1,000 and 2,000 Hamas fighters out of a military force it believes is about 30,000 strong.”
If Hamas was using “human shields” as we’ve been told, killing civilians should also yield a huge Hamas fatality rate, since Hamas would be hiding among civilians. Yet the IDF has managed to kill massive numbers of civilians while barely touching Hamas. Maybe they’re just lying about human shields?
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The whole argument for displacing Gazans from the north to the south was to protect their lives, yet now if they try to return to the north they get shot and killed by Israeli forces. What’s the new argument for this one? Are they killing them to save their lives?
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Find someone who loves you the way Israelis love murdering hospital patients and children. https://t.co/dHA2GQysRp / Twitter"
Find someone who loves you the way Israelis love murdering hospital patients and children. https://t.co/dHA2GQysRp
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Saying Gaza isn’t occupied because Israel “withdrew” in 2005 is the same as saying a prisoner is free because the warden isn’t technically inside his jail cell with him.
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Whenever I say Israel is deliberately killing civilians, half the Israel apologists in my comments are like “NO THEY’RE NOT YOU DAMN LIAR” and the other half are “Yes they are and it’s good.”
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Tell an Israel supporter that Israel is a racist apartheid state and they’ll deny it. Point to the tiered social system and the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and they’ll tell you it’s because Palestinians are all apelike savages who can’t behave themselves.
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Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Ukrainian Official Confirms Russia Was Ready to End War in March 2022 If Kyiv Agreed to Neutralityby Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #diplomacy #UkraineWar https://t.co/8k1QWiZn17 pic.twitter.com/Ph8LuqEjOU / Twitter"
Ukrainian Official Confirms Russia Was Ready to End War in March 2022 If Kyiv Agreed to Neutralityby Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #diplomacy #UkraineWar https://t.co/8k1QWiZn17 pic.twitter.com/Ph8LuqEjOU
In non-Gaza-related news, the leader of President Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament has officially confirmed what many of us have been slandered and smeared for saying for months: that there was a peace deal in the works in the early days of the war in Ukraine if Kyiv would just commit to Ukrainian neutrality, but the deal was abandoned under pressure from western powers.
If you’re ever accused of being a Russian propagandist for pointing out obvious evidence of western malfeasance in Ukraine, don’t worry, wait long enough and a Ukrainian official will eventually come out and prove you right by saying exactly what you said.
And now Washington is starting to push Kyiv to negotiate an end to the fighting while Ukraine’s commander-in-chief calls the war a “stalemate”. Ukraine will surely wind up having to relinquish a lot more than it otherwise would have if it had been allowed to take the peace deal offered at the beginning of the conflict.
All that death and destruction, for what? For nothing. It was all pointless. An entire generation of young men thrown into the war machine in pointless bloodshed which could have been easily avoided except for the US empire’s desire to “bleed Russia” and advance its geostrategic objectives in Europe and Asia.
From Ukraine to Gaza, the US imperial war machine makes everything worse.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Gaza Palestine (Public Domain)
In pictures: supporters fill Liverpool’s streets for Gaza and #CeasefireNow
Large crowd gathers to show solidarity with oppressed Palestinians and to demand a real and permanent ceasefire
A large protest has filled streets in Liverpool’s city centre this weekend in a show of solidarity with Palestinians and a demand for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in Israel’s slaughter of civilians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
Loud, but good natured – and growing as it went as more and more arrived and even bystanders joined it as it passed – the march set off from Liverpool’s Roman Catholic cathedral and filled Hope Street:
All image rights: S Walker
Swelling rapidly, the protest turned down Leece Street toward Bold Street:
Chanting shame on Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer alike for their support for genocide, it then filled Bold Street on its way to Derby Square to hear speakers call for justice and freedom in Palestine and a peace for all:
Solidarity from Liverpool to the people of Gaza and the West Bank against oppression and war crimes. Free Palestine.
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From Poverty to Hedge Fund Manager to Basic Income Advocate
Darryl Finkton, Jr. is a hedge fund manager turned community organizer. Raised in a poor black family in Indianapolis, Indiana, Darryl went on to graduate from Harvard College and Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In his new book End Poverty. Make Trillions, Darryl shares how he rose from rags to riches […]
The post From Poverty to Hedge Fund Manager to Basic Income Advocate appeared first on BIEN — Basic Income Earth Network.
South Africa’s RightfulShare wins recognition as an innovator
RighfulShare: An Income Movement is the first unconditional basic income transfer with GoodDollar in South Africa. The project is growing in strength, pioneering fairer income access bringing both resources and web3 solutions to the small town of Groblershoop in the Northern Cape. “We need a new approach to addressing poverty in South Africa. The current […]
The post South Africa’s RightfulShare wins recognition as an innovator appeared first on BIEN — Basic Income Earth Network.
Launch of Tijs Laenen’s book “The Popularity of Basic Income”
The official launch of Tijs Laenen’s latest book The Popularity of Basic Income: Evidence from the Polls was held on November 16. During the event, he presented the book, followed by a critical discussion by Prof. Philippe Van Parijs (UCLouvain, Belgium), co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. You can view a recording of the book […]
The post Launch of Tijs Laenen’s book “The Popularity of Basic Income” appeared first on BIEN — Basic Income Earth Network.
Basic Income and Climate Change
“Basic income is one of the necessary components of a global, national and regional policymix for socio-ecological transformation”, say Ronald Blaschke from Germany and Min Geum금민 from South Korea. Their memorandum “Basic income as a necessary component of a socio-ecological transformation and key element for climate justice” was first presented atBIEN’s 2023 congress in Seoul, […]
The post Basic Income and Climate Change appeared first on BIEN — Basic Income Earth Network.
Israel Has Damaged Israel’s Reputation Far Worse Than Its Enemies Ever Have
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/d9d8cfbb9e01b8ca3d7323c6183a4f13/href
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Israel raging at Hamas for killing Israelis is like a man raging at his shadow for darkening his floor. It’s maddening to see grown adults acting like Hamas are these foreign invaders who attacked Israelis out of the blue because of a hatred for Jewish people, like they’re internet-radicalized neo-Nazis from eastern Europe or something.
Hamas attacked Israel because Israel is a murderous and tyrannical apartheid regime who butchers children and makes lives miserable for the Palestinian people. The violence on October 7 was the echo of the violence Israel has been inflicting on Palestinians for generations. Only a fool gets angry at his echo for talking back to him.
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Israel has done more to damage Israel’s image in the last seven weeks than anti-semites did in the last seven decades.
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If you’ve ever wondered why society’s most famous and influential voices all have dogshit status quo politics, just look at the current purge of pro-Palestine actors in Hollywood. If your own elite class interests and having loyalty to your rich friends isn’t enough to keep you supporting the empire’s information interests, you’ll just get thrown out.
The influence which comes with celebrity status means you’ll become a threat to the establishment power structure if you start sharing ideas and information which go against its interests. That’s why there are so many safeguards in place to prevent that from happening. If you’re forcefully critical of US foreign policy you won’t be permitted to rise to celebrity status by the Hollywood gatekeepers who are responsible for US cultural hegemony and propaganda, and if you manage to sneak past the gatekeepers they’ll throw you right out on your ass when you make it clear you’re not a trustworthy empire loyalist.
This has created a system where all the most influential and highly amplified voices in western civilization are those who support the political status quo, while the normal people who suffer under that same status quo are left almost voiceless. This helps create the false impression that the system is working fine and no revolutionary changes are needed, because all the most visible people are saying things are peachy.
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Fun challenge: try to name a famous westerner that forcefully and consistently criticizes US foreign policy who never gets accused of being an anti-semite and/or a Russian agent.
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One of the most evil things Trump did while in office was trying to cripple humanitarian aid to Yemen by designating Ansarallah a “terrorist” organization. Now Biden is considering the same action.
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The claim that supporting Israel doesn’t serve US interests is both true and false, depending on how you mean it. It’s arguably true that it doesn’t serve the American people and doesn’t help the US as a nation, but it most certainly serves the interests of the US empire.
There are absolutely arguments to be made that the American people don’t benefit from their nation’s wealth being continuously poured into a foreign state and that the US doesn’t benefit as a nation from backing nonstop aggression and militarism in the middle east, but there’s no way to argue that it doesn’t serve the globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington.
If the US was a normal country minding its own affairs and caring for its own people it would indeed be nonsensical for it to invest so much wealth and resources in Israel, but the US is as far from a normal country as can be. It’s the hub of a vast, undeclared empire made up of allies, client states, proxies, and systems of military, economic and financial coercion which keeps most of the world moving in accordance with the wishes of the empire managers.
History has shown us that this power structure can only be maintained by endless violence, threats, coercion, mass-scale psychological manipulation in the form of propaganda, and fear of nuclear annihilation. As a reliably US-aligned nuclear power which is intimately interwoven with the western war machine and the US intelligence cartel, Israel may not serve the interests of the people who live in the United States, but it is an absolutely indispensable component of the US empire.
Biden wasn’t fully lying when he said “Were there not an Israel the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” He’s just telling a half-truth, because by “the United States” he means the US empire, not the US as a nation.
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People always bitch and moan when I say Gen Z are just plain better people than all previous generations, but these last seven weeks have provided a lot of evidence for my position.
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You’re always hearing that Hamas has proven it cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, when you should be hearing that the Israeli regime has proven it cannot be allowed to remain in control of Palestine.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.