public opinion
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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Super Bowl Propaganda: Patriots’ Robert Kraft’s Ties to Israel Explained
Amid the fast-paced action that saw the Kansas City Chiefs win their third championship in five years, Americans tuning in to watch the Super Bowl were met with a barrage of unusual propaganda.
Nestled between the typical ads for cars and beer were two bizarre messages: one from the Foundation to Combat anti-Semitism (FCAS) and the other from the State of Israel itself. Both were intimately related to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and trying to draw attention away from Israeli war crimes.
Targeting Black Americans
The FCAS commercial features Clarence B. Jones, the former advisor to Martin Luther King, who drafted his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The message is that there is a growing tidal wave of racist intolerance in America and that we must all come together to oppose anti-Semitism — the commercial ends by telling people to visit the website StandUpToJewishHate.com.
Super Bowl ads do not come cheap, and its $7 million for 30-second air time price tag was footed by the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots NFL franchise, Robert Kraft. Kraft (net worth: $11 billion) made his fortune in the paper and packaging business and has deep ties to the state of Israel, including donating hundreds of millions of dollars to pro-Israel groups and funding pro-Israel candidates in U.S. elections. He even enjoys a close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We are asking all Americans to stand up to hate and not be silent. Millions of people saw our ad during the Super Bowl and we have one question: how will you stand up? #StandUpToJewishHate # pic.twitter.com/uA6cRi5aaL
— Stand Up to Jewish Hate # (@StandUp2JewHate) February 12, 2024
Kraft married his wife in Israel in 1962 and has reportedly made over 100 visits to the country, including leading dozens of PR missions there, bringing celebrities and sports stars with him. He also maintains a network of charities across Israel.
In December, he pledged a gigantic $100 million to the FCAS. This was, Forbes reported, to “educate the public about the rise in antisemitic incidents and further develop the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities.” Considering its content and invocation of Dr. King, it seems clear that the Super Bowl ad was part of Kraft’s plan to target the Black community.
Black Americans are far more progressive on Palestine than the rest of the population. Many Black leaders, as well as movements such as Black Lives Matter, have allied themselves with the Palestinian cause, seeing parallels and connections between the oppression of Palestinians abroad and the treatment of Black Americans at home.
A December poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that 28% of the Black population favored an immediate ceasefire, as opposed to 20% of white Americans. Only 5% of African Americans wanted the U.S. government to show “unwavering support” to Israel, versus 23% of the white population.
Funding anti-anti-Semitism
In Kraft’s view, therefore, the Black population’s outlook is a problem. The billionaire sports owner founded the FCAS in 2019 amid growing domestic and international opposition to the state of Israel’s apartheid policies in Palestine. He announced the move at a lavish ceremony in Jerusalem, where he was presented with the Genesis Prize – an Israeli government-backed award given to individuals who most aid the Jewish state.
After the ceremony, he had lunch with his friend, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Kraft had previously supported Netanyahu by attending his speech to Congress in 2015. “Israel does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Kraft,” Netanyahu said.
Kraft was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize for his efforts in philanthropy and “combating anti-Semitism.” Yet his views on what does and does not constitute anti-Semitism are contentious, to say the least.
Benjamin Netanyahu and the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft pose for a photo in Jerusalem, June 20, 2019. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
In the wake of the historic wave of protests across the U.S. calling for a ceasefire in the Middle East, he appeared on MSNBC to denounce those taking part as supporters of terrorism. “It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them,” he said, clearly equating supporting Palestinian rights with terrorism. “Hamas is preaching the eradication of all Jewish people from the Earth,” he added.
Thus, while the FCAS claims to be standing against lies and racism, its founder continues to spread his own disinformation in service of the Israeli project.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he also opposes the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a grassroots campaign to peacefully bring economic pressure on the state of Israel to stop its oppression and occupation of its neighbors. Kraft sees BDS as a form of anti-Jewish racism, lumping it in with attacks on synagogues or the growing threat from the far-right.
“My vision is to work to end the violence against Jewish communities. To counter the normalization of anti-Semitic narratives that question Israel’s right to exist, disguised as part of legitimate debate on campuses and in the media,” he said, thereby hinting that the FCAS will attempt to insert themselves into college campuses nationwide and pressure the media to take (even) more pro-Israel stances.
The Israel Lobby’s Financier
Kraft is one of the Israel lobby’s chief benefactors, donating millions of dollars to various groups throughout his life. In 2022, for example, he gave $1 million to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) super PAC. AIPAC works to push pro-Israel policies across the U.S. and insert pro-Israel language into as many pieces of legislation as possible.
He also funds the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces – a group that raises money to help Israeli soldiers, even as they carry out war crimes in Palestine, Syria and beyond. Other pro-Israel groups, he has given sizeable donations to include:
- American Friends of the Israel Museum
- American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center
- The Anti-Defamation League
- The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
- The Jewish Agency for Israel
- The Jewish National Fund
- StandWithUs
- The Israel Project
Through his organization, Touchdown in Israel, Kraft regularly organizes propaganda trips to Israel for former NFL players, no doubt hoping they will become advocates of the Jewish state.
Arguably the most influential way in which Kraft influences American public life, however, is his consistent funding of right-wing Democrats standing against progressives and advocates for justice in Palestine.
In 2021, for example, he donated $5,800 to Congresswoman Shontel Brown in her contentious face-off against progressive Nina Turner and another $2,900 to her reelection. Brown was a little-known but strongly pro-Israel candidate standing against a democratic socialist, national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election campaign, and an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies.
Vast amounts of pro-Israel money flowed into Brown’s campaign, helping her to defeat Turner. In her acceptance speech, Brown praised Israel and later thanked the Jewish community for “help[ing] me get over the finish line.”
Kraft has also given money to pro-Israel Democrats, including David Cicilline; Juan Vargas; Ted Deutch; Jake Auchincloss and Ritchie Torres.
His actions, donations and public pronouncements have drawn condemnation from some who have followed them. Sports journalist Dave Zirin, for example, recently wrote that:
He appears to think that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a ceasefire and a free Palestine that are part of the problem. And Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.”
Israel on TV
Super Bowl viewers were subjected to another pro-Israel ad in between the action, this one directly funded by and representing the Israeli government.
“To all the dads,” the voiceover says, as images of wholesome fatherhood activities play on the screen, “The funny ones, the silly ones, the strong ones, the adventurous ones. To all the dads held in captivity by Hamas for over 120 days, we vow to bring you home.”
On the surface of the ad, the Israeli government was sending a message to Israeli fathers still in Hamas custody. That message was that they were working to bring them home (by spending millions of dollars to air the message on American TV during the Super Bowl.)
The reality, however, is that this was an attempt to sway the American public into identifying with Israel, suggesting that this could happen to any of their fathers’ too.
Israel ran an ad during the Super Bowl vowing to "bring all their dads home" in reference to the Israeli captives being held in Gaza.
But what about the dads in Gaza who have suffered the worst grief imaginable at the hands of Israel's genocidal campaign? pic.twitter.com/JerxiRHkKy
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) February 13, 2024
Many viewers felt that what they saw amounted to little more than expensive disinformation. “I’m sorry, is Israel seriously airing a SOB STORY PROPAGANDA AD during the SUPER BOWL while SIMULTANEOUSLY BOMBING THE REFUGEES AT RAFAH???????” wrote one viewer on Twitter.
Nevertheless, the Super Bowl was the most-watched American telecast ever, reaching over 123 million viewers. Some say you cannot put a price on that sort of publicity, but apparently, you can, and that price is $7 million. Propaganda it might be, but in America, money talks. And both Robert Kraft and the government of Israel certainly have a lot of it to spend.
Feature photo | Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds the NFL Super Bowl trophy during a meeting with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in Jerusalem, June 20, 2019. Sebastian Scheiner | AP
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post Super Bowl Propaganda: Patriots’ Robert Kraft’s Ties to Israel Explained appeared first on MintPress News.
Rage over Gaza: Washington Will Pay for Its Support of Israel
A famous quote by Franz Kafka says, “Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”
The same principle, I believe, applies to any other powerful feeling, including resentment, hate, anger, even rage.
American officials should know this well as they continue to support Israel with billions of dollars of military and economic aid and anything and everything that would allow Israel to continue with its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Arabs, the Muslims – in fact, the whole world – are watching, listening, reading, and are getting angrier by the day at the direct American role in facilitating the Gaza bloodbath.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza “has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II” and “now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history,” the Associated Press reported, based on recent satellite data analysis.
Aside from the tens of thousands of dead and missing in the rubble, even a higher number of people have been injured and maimed, including thousands of children. Countless children are left “grappling with the loss of an arm or a leg,” according to UNICEF.
This agony of Gaza is being watched on television and is also being viewed through every possible medium of communication. It is as if the world is suffering along with the Gaza children, but without being able to stop or slow down the genocide.
And, yet, even when all European countries, save a few, reversed their position on the war, joining the rest of the world in demanding an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire, Washington continued to reject these calls.
UNICEF | SoP | 2023
This is how US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, justified her country’s use of the veto, striking down the first serious attempt by the UN Security Council to achieve a permanent truce on October 18: “Israel has the inherent right of self-defense as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.”
That same logic has been repeated many times by US officials since then, even when the extent of the Gaza tragedy became known to everyone, including the Americans themselves.
This self-serving logic goes against the very spirit of international and humanitarian law, which vehemently rejects the targeting of civilians during times of war and conflict and the prevention of humanitarian aid from reaching civilian victims of war.
Indeed, the vast majority of Gaza’s victims are civilians, and according to UNICEF, over 70 percent of all of those killed and wounded are women and children.
Moreover, due to the inhumane Israeli practices, Gaza survivors are now dealing with an actual famine, an unprecedented event in the modern history of Palestine.
“Every day is a struggle for survival, finding food and finding water” @TomWhiteGaza
#Gaza is grappling with catastrophic hunger. 40% of the population are now at risk of famine.
The reality is, we need more aid. The only remaining hope is a humanitarian #ceasefire https://t.co/8a5a4AjBt3
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) December 28, 2023
Yet, Israel continues to prevent access to food, medicine, fuel, and other urgent supplies to Gaza, thus violating Washington’s own laws on the matter.
“No assistance shall be furnished to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” the US Foreign Assistance Act (Section 620I) states.
The Biden Administration has done nothing to pressure – let alone force – Israel to adhere to the most basic humanitarian laws in its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Worse, President Biden is furnishing Israel with the needed tools to prolong this destructive war.
According to a December 25 report by Israel’s Channel 12, more than 20 ships and 244 US airplanes have delivered over 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since the start of the war.
These military supplies include, according to the Wall Street Journal, at least 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, which have been repeatedly used throughout the Israeli war, killing and wounding hundreds each time.
The only tangible action that the US has taken since the start of the war was to create a coalition named ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian,’ with the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of ships crossing the Red Sea into or from Israel.
The US, however, seems to have learned nothing from the past, from its devastating wars on Iraq, from the so-called war on terror, and from its failure to find a balance between its support for Israel and its respect for Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. On the contrary, some US officials seem entirely detached from this reality.
Israeli soldiers watch over a leveled neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, Dec. 29, 2023. Ariel Schalit | AP
At a press conference at the White House on December 7, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, proclaimed:
Tell me, name me, one more nation, any other nation, that is doing as much as the United States to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Gaza. You can’t. You just can’t.”
But how are ‘dumb bombs,’ ‘smart bombs,’ bunker busters, and tens of thousands of tons of explosives “alleviating the pain and suffering” of Gaza and her children?
If Kirby is unaware of his country’s role in the genocide in Gaza, then the crisis in American foreign policy is worse than we could have imagined. If he is aware, as he should be, then his country’s moral crisis is arguably unprecedented in modern history.
The problem in US politics is that American administrations have a segmented view of reality, as they are intently focused on how their action, or inaction, will affect their political parties in future elections.
But Americans who care about their country and its position in a vastly changing Middle East and rapidly shifting global geopolitics should remember that history neither starts nor finishes on a fixed November date, once every four years.
“In the end, love will return in a different way,” Kafka wrote. He is right. But hate, too, tends to return as well, manifesting itself in myriad ways. Washington should have realized that on its own more than any other country.
Feature photo | People use phones to photograph a Palestinian man carrying the body of a child in Al-Najjar Hospital killed in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 4, 2023. Abed Rahim Khatib | AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth.’ Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
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