Palestinians
Well over 100 civilians murdered as Israeli tanks, gunboats fire on crowd waiting for aid delivery
Terror and chaos in Gaza City after IDF ‘trap’
Injured wait on lorries and a donkey cart (social media image)
More than a hundred Palestinian civilians have been slaughtered and many more injured, after Israeli tanks, gunboats and armoured vehicles opened fire on a crowd of people waiting for a scheduled aid delivery to arrive. The Israeli military has admitted opening fire, claiming that troops felt ‘endangered’. The IDF also tried to blame the civilians for their own deaths, saying some were trampled – presumably as terrified people tried to escape the fire zone.
Some reports have put the death toll at 170, with more than a thousand wounded. Social media posts show the carnage and the attempts to evacuate the injured. The Al Jazeera news service reported that the victims had fallen into a ‘trap’ set by the Israeli military:
Palestinians who witnessed the Israeli attack on aid seekers in Gaza city say it was a trap.
According to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli forces have killed almost 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October last year, the vast majority of them civilians and a large majority women and children, and have wounded more than 70,000 others, many of them severely. The World Health Organization and others have reported that more than a million people are in, or at imminent risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade and military assault, and victims of starvation have already died.
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Israel supporters shamelessly smear Bushnell with ‘dead jews’ claim. It’s an outright lie
US serviceman whose self-immolation resonated around the world did not say ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews are dead’, as multiple pro-Israel accounts have claimed
Supporters of apartheid Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians have begun spreading a claim that Aaron Bushnell, the US serviceman who died this week after setting himself on fire outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, posted a comment to his Reddit account that ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews [sic] are dead’.
The image has been touted by accounts well known for dismissive and often racist commentary about Palestinians as a means of trying to justify Israel’s war crimes. ‘Comedy’ writer Lee Kern was one of the most prominent:
Kern not only propagated the fake claim but described the whole of Palestine as a ‘racist hate movement’
Kern described the whole of Palestine, not just a resistance group, as a ‘suicide death cult’
Writer Kern’s 2021 comment appears to have been deleted but was commented on as early as 2021 and he does not appear to have made a denial to the many times it has been thrown at him
A careful examination of Bushnell’s Reddit account by fact-checker Snopes, over a wider period than the two months ago that the image shows – including using a service that records deleted posts – showed that no such post had ever been made by Bushnell and the image is completely fake. A reverse image search also revealed no other instances before the image began to be circulated by propagandists.
Bushnell’s shocking protest has focused even greater attention on Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The attempt by supporters of the slaughter to divert from his aim in his terrible protest by posting an outright lie about him after his death is shameful and entirely unsurprising.
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Met confirms arrest of Gaza protester at Thornberry’s office
Outrage among activists at anti-genocide protest
The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed the arrest of a protester on Monday night at what outraged other protesters have said was a lively but entirely peaceful protest, outside the Islington office of Shadow Attorney Emily Thornberry, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Labour regime’s support for it.
A Met spokesperson told Skwawkbox that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and bailed ‘pending further investigations’:
A small demonstration was held in Islington High Street during the evening of Monday, 26 February. A woman was arrested at the scene on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. She was taken into custody and later released on bail pending further enquiries. Next due on a date in April.
Protesters against genocide and for the human rights of Palestinians have been demonised by politicians and supporters of Israel for supposed ‘hate speech’ since Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank accelerated after the Hamas raid and the Israel military’s well-known – but ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media and politicians – killing of ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens. The Tory government, aided by ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer, have continued to attack the civil rights of the UK people to protest.
Right-wing MPs, along with pro-Israel campaigners, continue to call for tougher police action against demonstrators, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of protests.
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NYT ‘journalist’ who co-wrote ‘Hamas rape’ piece is IDF propagandist with ‘no journalism experience’
Anat Schwartz found to have liked racist and violent posts about Palestinians
Image: Wikipedia
A huge scandal has broken out in the US after the New York Times (NYT), one of the United States’ leading newspapers, was found to have run a major front-page story smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence co-written by an Israeli film-maker with no journalism background who served as a in Israeli military intelligence – and had ‘liked’ social media posts featuring racism and violence toward Palestinians.
Anat Schwartz co-wrote the already-discredited article titled ‘Screams without words’, which made lurid, unevidenced claims about rape and mutilation by Palestinians during the 7 October raid – claims that have already been furiously denied by the family of the victim who took up around a third of the piece, who further claimed that the authors had misled them about the purpose of their article and never mentioned supposed the rape of their daughter, which they say did not take place and for which there is no evidence.
Scrutiny of Schwartz’s record revealed shocking facts about her background and that of her second co-author, who is her nephew by marriage:
Quick bio I found: pic.twitter.com/WWMZqRh1py
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Now let's get to her co-author, who also didn't write beforehand Oct 2023… pic.twitter.com/x9gkZwIlv7
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
It is her nephew!
This is a post from her husband. pic.twitter.com/Sgtz4B6wlL— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Lead author Jeffrey Gettelman fares little better under scrutiny:
He admitted to it. pic.twitter.com/zibbbEby31
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Schwartz, for her part, Schwartz reportedly ‘liked’ a post that talked about turning Gaza ‘into a slaughterhouse’ including the summary execution of prisoners and ‘violat[ing] any norm’:
Schwartz also ‘liked’ a post about the quickly-debunked ’40 beheaded babies’ claim – and the woman who took the photo of the ‘woman in the black dress’ that the article claimed falsely had been raped, said that the NYT’s authors had told her they needed to speak to her because it was ‘important for Israeli advocacy’, not for accurate journalism:
Lead author Gettelman said it was ‘not his job to gather evidence’ for the claims his article made:
Mondoweiss reported that Schwartz had served in Israeli military intelligence. The NYT has ‘launched an investigation’ and the paper’s staff are said to be split, with many outraged at the abandonment of journalistic standards.
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US serviceman sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in protest over Gaza genocide
Aaron Bushnell says he can no longer ‘be complicit in genocide’ in Gaza
A US airman has set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, an active duty serviceman, recorded a video en route to the embassy gates in which he said he could ‘no longer be complicit in genocide’. Despite the terrible protest he was about to make, he seemed quite calm and composed, saying that what he was about to suffer was nothing compared to the suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza:
I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
Aaron Bushnell
Security personnel attempted to put out the fire before Bushnell was rushed to hospital with extensive burns, but family members said that he later died of his injuries.
Before the act, which he reportedly live-streamed, Bushnell sent a message to news agencies:
Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Bushnell is said to have worked in IT for the US air force. Whether that led him to seeing things that his conscience couldn’t bear is not know. His last words were ‘Free Palestine’. Police pointed guns at him as he burned.
The protest was reminiscent of Thich Quang Duc, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and the first of several to do so, who set himself on fire in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the US-friendly South Vietnamese government in the 1960s. Duc’s sacrifice galvanised public opinion around the world and focused international attention on Vietnam.
Another victim of Israel’s genocide and war crimes, Bushnell clearly hoped that his protest would do the same and shock a complacent US government and (in part) public into action against the apartheid occupation regime and its war crimes.
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French economy minister tells EU to raid €35 TRILLION from private savings to fund war
“35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts… is no longer acceptable” – Bruno le Maire, who said he was going to collapse Russian economy, now wants the money of millions of EU citizens
Bruno le Maire’s ‘rant’
Bruno le Maire, arch-centrist French president Emmanuel Macron’s economy and finance minister, said in 2022 that France and the EU was going to collapse the Russian economy. Now, with Russia’s economy outperforming both the EU and US, le Maire has decided that the EU doesn’t have enough cash reserves and that he wants to raid the bank accounts of European citizens to get access to what he says is 35 trillion euros lying ‘dormant’.
And he wants them, at least in part, to fund war-readiness.
As French observer Arnaud Bertrand has pointed out, le Maire wants to “mobilize all the savings of Europeans” by taking their savings into a ‘European savings product’ – but while le Maire says that it will be ‘voluntary’ for EU nations to enter the scheme, there is no mention of ordinary people having the same freedom of choice if their country does enter it. In a video on the topic, le Maire says:
I am at the Council of Ministers of Finance in Ghent, Belgium, and I just raised a fuss because the capital markets union is not progressing. What is the capital markets union? It’s the ability to mobilize all of Europeans’ savings – 35,000 billion euros – to finance the climate transition, fund our defence efforts, and invest in artificial intelligence.
Since things aren’t moving forward with all 27 members, I proposed that we move forward on a voluntary basis with a small number of member states to propose a European savings product in the coming months, to propose European supervision of capital markets to ensure that regulation works well, and therefore to raise several tens of billions of euros to finance our growth and prosperity.
Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the climate turning point because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the artificial intelligence turning point because it is unable to agree on this capital markets union and make Europeans’ savings work.
35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts instead of fostering Europe’s prosperity tomorrow, instead of financing artificial intelligence, instead of financing the climate transition, is no longer acceptable. That’s the gist of my rant this morning in Ghent.
Deducing, probably correctly, that ‘defence’ really means the Ukrainian military, Betrand called le Maire’s plan:
immensely ironical that mister “I’ll collapse Russia’s economy” comes back to us 2 years afterwards, telling us “Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months”, we need to take your savings… When Russia’s economy, far from collapsing, has been growing faster than all European countries. All this in part to “fund our defense efforts”, likely a code for “send it to Ukraine”, the most corrupt country on the continent currently fighting an endless money pit war that it has no chance of winning. Pure madness.
Europe and NATO seem increasingly determined to have war, with Sweden reintroducing conscription, other countries discussing it, the UK and EU banging the drum about Russia, whitewashing Ukrainian nazis and misrepresenting military goals, and many of them seemingly ready to conscript the life savings of civilians in order to fund endless conflict.
If only the same resolve was directed toward the actions needed to stop the actual genocidal war being perpetrated by Israel on the civilians of Gaza as there is to fanning the flames of war in Europe.
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Starmer admits spoke to Israeli president before torpedoing SNP Gaza motion. Sky deletes vid
Starmer’s admission too hot for Sky News to handle?
Keir Starmer admitted today that he had spoken to Israeli president Isaac Herzog before embarking on the parliamentary manoeuvres – including alleged threats to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, though Starmer has since denied it – that torpedoed the Scottish National Party’s motion calling for a full ceasefire in Gaza and condemning Israel’s war crimes.
Starmer quickly attempted to row back on his comment to Sky’s interviewer and tried to replace it with ‘to the people who are actually involved’ – which means the same thing, since Starmer certainly didn’t get the Palestinians’ ok to his betrayal – but the words were captured loud and clear:
The short clip was published by musician and pro-Palestinian campaigner Lowkey, but a fuller excerpt shows that it was not misleadingly edited:
It seems the admission was too explosive for the ‘mainstream’ broadcaster, since the clip appears to have been deleted.
Starmer may well deny ever saying this – after all, he denied saying Israel had the right to cut off food, water and fuel from the people of Gaza, even though he said that on camera too. He went on to say that Hoyle did the ‘right’ thing in caving to his bullying urging. Hoyle was, of course, breaking Parliamentary protocol and depriving the SNP of a vote on their motion, even though it was their ‘Opposition Day’, so that Starmer could replace their clear wording with a spineless, Israel-friendly version that gave the apartheid state a veto over any ceasefire and made the whole thing about Israel’s rights instead of Israel’s war crimes. Hoyle now rightly faces a no-confidence motion by SNP and Tory MPs.
Israel has murdered some 35,000 civilians in Gaza so far and maimed tens of thousands more, with 1.5 million on the verge of famine and dying from disease after the destruction of their healthcare system. The regime is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
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Starmer reported to parliamentary Privileges Committee over Hoyle threat
Starmer alleged to have threatened Speaker Lindsay Hoyle with removal under Labour government if he refused to break Commons protocol and allow Labour to hijack SNP Gaza ceasefire motion
Keir Starmer has been reported to the parliamentary Privileges Committee over his alleged but widely-reported threat to remove Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle under a Labour government, to force Hoyle to include Labour’s weasel-worded, Israel-friendly ‘ceasefire’ motion in yesterday’s SNP ‘Opposition Day’ debate.
While the SNP motion was clearly worded and condemned Israel’s war crimes as well as causing for an immediate ceasefire, Labour’s version gave Israel an effective veto over any ceasefire and prioritised Israeli lives and security above the slaughter, ethnic cleansing and oppression faced by more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Starmer’s manoeuvres and Hoyle’s compliance led to no vote being taken on the SNP’s motion, triggering a walk-out of SNP and Tory MPs – and a motion of no confidence in Hoyle being lodged on Thursday morning and already signed by 67 MPs at the time of writing.
But now Alba party Westminster leader Neale Hanvey has reported Starmer to the Privileges Committee, saying that it is “essential to establish if Starmer coerced the Speaker” into putting the Labour amendment through for debate and that it would make Starmer guilty of contempt of the House of Commons if so.
Hanvey’s letter to the committee reads:
Dear Ms Harman and committee members,
In the course of the last twenty-four hours, it has been reported in the media and to the chamber that the Leader of the Opposition and/or those acting on his behalf applied unwarranted and unacceptable pressure on the Speaker of the House for political purposes.
It has been alleged that this course of conduct was pursued to ensure that the Labour amendment to the SNP motion for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was given priority as the Leader of the Opposition sought to prevent his members voting against the Labour party whip.
Furthermore, it has been alleged that the Speaker was subjected to coercive threats relating to the support he could expect to receive from the Labour Party in any upcoming General Election to force his hand to break with convention and act against the advice of the Clerk of the House.
In order to reassure the house, I am asking the Committee of Privileges to initiate an urgent and rapid investigation into the allegations set out above, including any and all related matters.
I would also request that any such investigation specifically examine the actions of Leader of the Opposition and consider whether the Rt Hon member’s conduct amounted to a contempt of the House.
The Privileges Committee featured in headlines last summer when it concluded that former Tory PM Boris Johnson lied to Parliament about his and his office’s breaches of lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic. Johnson resigned from Parliament rather than face censure.
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Graham suspends official who refused to cancel pro-Palestine Labour conference fringe
Simon Dubbins told Graham’s proxies she should come and tell him herself if she wanted Unite Palestine solidarity fringe cancelling.
CORRECTION: Dubbins is ‘under investigation’, but not suspended..
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has suspended a senior Unite official who refused last October to cancel a solidarity fringe even for the Palestinian people that he had arranged during Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.
Graham sent underlings to tell Simon Dubbins, Unite’s Director for International Affairs, that the event must be pulled – but as Skwawkbox revealed exclusively at the time Dubbins refused, telling the proxies that if Graham wanted the event cancelled she should come and say so herself. She didn’t, and it went ahead.
The official reasons for the suspension have not been revealed, but Unite insiders have linked it to the fringe event.
Sharon Graham has been slammed for her actions – and inaction – relating to Palestine and the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza. She has been publicly silent about the slaughter, but has been criticised for banning Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests, banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam – and an email from her official union address to an angry member dismissed the genocide perpetrated on the people of Gaza.
Ms Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including alleged destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in both an employment tribunal for discrimination and a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
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SNP Westminster leader Flynn adds name to Hoyle no-confidence motion
Front-benchers do not often sign EDMs
Stephen Flynn and Lindsay Hoyle (inset)
The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has added his name to the ‘Early Day Motion’ (EDM) of no confidence in Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle – reflecting the depth of the SNP’s outrage at Hoyle’s actions yesterday during the party’s ‘Opposition Day’ debate calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Hoyle allowed an Israel-friendly Labour’s amendment to hijack the debate, despite being warned by Commons clerks that this was a breach of normal Commons procedure, prompting Tory and SNP MPs to storm out in protest amid chants calling for the return of Hoyle’s predecessor John Bercow.
Flynn said last night he would ‘take significant convincing’ to believe it was tolerable for Hoyle to remain in the role. It seems he has not received the convincing required.
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