israel determined to start war

[billy.pilgrim]

The Israelis stole their land and have made their lives hell with double standards that make even American Jim Crow look like a holiday for black Americans.
Under the conditions that Israel has perpetrated against the Arabs in Israel and in all the surrounding Arab countries the victims will often make stupid gestures of retaliatory violence.

How far do we need to go back? Does Israel have a right to exist?

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-e ... -of-israel

Not at the destruction of others.

I easily see returning the properties stolen by the nazis, but why do they get someone else’s country?

btw- I edited above post before you posted

[Vrede too]

How far do we need to go back? Does Israel have a right to exist?

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-e ... -of-israel

Not at the destruction of others.

I easily see returning the properties stolen by the nazis, but why do they get someone else’s country? ...

Can't un-ring that bell, but the privilege of Israel's existence ought to come with enforced mandates for adherence to human rights law and basic decency. The alternative is Forever War.

Palestinian deaths in Gaza pass 30,000 as witnesses say Israeli forces fire on crowd waiting for aid

Israeli troops fired on a large crowd of Palestinians racing to pull food off an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed, bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, according to health officials.

Israeli officials acknowledged that troops opened fire, saying they did so after the crowd approached in a threatening way. The officials insisted on anonymity to give details about what happened, after the military said in a statement that “dozens were killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.”

... While many Palestinians fled the Israeli invasion in the north, a few hundred thousand are believed to remain in the area, which has suffered widespread devastation and has been largely isolated during the conflict. Trucks carrying food reached northern Gaza this week, the first major aid delivery to the area in a month, officials said Wednesday.

Aid groups say it has become nearly impossible to deliver humanitarian assistance in most of Gaza because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order, with crowds of desperate people overwhelming aid convoys. The U.N. says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians face starvation; around 80% have fled their homes.

starvation.

... Medics arriving at the scene on Thursday found “dozens or hundreds” lying on the ground, according to Fares Afana, the head of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He said there were not enough ambulances to collect all the dead and wounded and that some were being brought to hospitals in donkey carts.

Another man in the crowd — who gave only his first name, Ahmad, as he was being treated at a hospital for gunshot wounds to the arm and leg — said he waited for two hours before someone with a horse-pulled cart had room to take him to Shifa.

donkey carts.

Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of the Al-Awda Hospital, said the facility received 161 wounded patients, most of whom appeared to have been shot. He said the hospital can perform only the most essential surgeries because it is running out of fuel to power emergency generators.

In addition to at least 112 people killed, around 760 were wounded, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said. The Health Ministry described it as a “massacre.”

Separately, the Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,035, with another 70,457 wounded.

Hundreds of thousands Palestinians are believed to remain in northern Gaza despite Israeli orders to evacuate the area in October, and many have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive. The U.N. says 1 in 6 children under 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting.

wasting.

Meanwhile, it's easy to find articles about childhood obesity in Israel

... U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Wednesday countered by saying large trucks entering Gaza have to be unloaded and reloaded onto smaller ones. But there aren’t enough of them, and there’s a lack of security to distribute aid in Gaza.

Hamas-run police in Gaza stopped protecting convoys after Israeli strikes on them near the crossing.

Genocide.

[Vrede too]

After 10 years of trying, a Palestinian woman had twins. An Israeli strike killed them both

To be fair, you can plainly see that they were going to grow up to be terrorists.

It took 10 years and three rounds of in vitro fertilization for Rania Abu Anza to become pregnant, and only seconds for her to lose her five-month-old twins, a boy and a girl.

An Israeli strike hit the home of her extended family in the southern Gaza city of Rafah late Saturday, killing her children, her husband and 11 other relatives and leaving another nine missing under the rubble, according to survivors and local health officials.

x 20

... The military on Sunday didn't comment on this attack but said it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

x 20

Of the 14 people killed in the Abu Anza house, six were children and four were women, according to Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the hospital where the bodies were taken. In addition to her husband and children, Rania also lost a sister, a nephew, a pregnant cousin and other relatives.

Farouq Abu Anza, a relative, said about 35 people were staying at the house, some of whom had been displaced from other areas. He said they were all civilians, mostly children, and that there were no militants among them....

“I didn’t get enough of them,” she said. “I swear I didn’t get enough of them.”

... Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history. The war has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Around 80% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and a quarter of the population faces starvation.

The ministry said last month that more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens had been killed in the war, about 43% of the overall toll. Women and children together make up three quarters of those killed. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies.

Israel claims to have killed over 10,000 Hamas fighters but has not provided evidence....

Rafah is also in the shrinking area of Gaza where humanitarian aid can still be delivered.

But Israel has said Rafah will be next, and the roughly 1.5 million people who have sought refuge there will be relocated, without saying where.

“We have no rights,” Rania said. "I lost the people who were dearest to me. I don’t want to live here. I want to get out of this country. I’m tired of this war.”

Je suis Gaza.

[Vrede too]

Jonathan Glazer's Oscar speech sparks fierce reactions from supporters of Israel

They LIE about what he said and COWER from the humanitarian point of his remarks, typical.

[Vrede too]

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: While the protesters supporting a cease-fire resolution in the Gaza conflict remained silent for the majority of the Feb. 27 Council meeting, tensions rose during public comment.

Good turnout and visual symbolism.

While the Feb. 27 Asheville City Council meeting started like any other, it quickly became a Hamas-Israel war protest site with more than a dozen demonstrators silently raising their red-painted hands and demanding a cease-fire resolution from Council.

Council proceeded through its agenda amid the demonstration ...

Cease-fire protests interrupt public comment

While the protesters remained silent during the business section of Council’s agenda, tensions rose during public comment with both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian commenters speaking for and against a Gaza cease-fire resolution.

“We know it is symbolic. Asheville City Council is not going to pass the resolution, and then all of a sudden, there’s going to be a cease-fire,” said resident Noor Abdelfatta. “But around 70 city councils around the United States have passed similar resolutions. And so there is a movement in this country changing its position on this particular issue.”

One local resolution is insignificant, but 71 is nothing to sneeze at. Joe is responding to the outcry, however it's been expressed. Nuttyahoo is out of control.

Speaking in support of Israel, Monica Buckley said, “There are genocides happening in lots of places in the world right now. And if we’re going to put a resolution on the table for voting in Asheville and making some sort of stand about it, then we’re going to need to do that for every perceived war crime in every nation where there is genocide happening. That will be what I would expect from the City Council if you move forward with this one specifically targeting Israel.”

Ouch, Monica, you just admitted that Israel is engaged in war crimes and genocide, something Israel disputes. Opps. Plus, the response from pro-Gaza folks could easily have been, "Propose other resolutions. If founded we'll support them." Bazinga.

Following an extended chant by pro-Palestinian protestors, Council cut public comment short and went into closed session to discuss legal matters in another room. According to City Clerk Maggie Burleson, at least one person who signed up to speak on another issue was not able to participate in public comment due to the disruption.

That's just rude. If Council is allowing you to comment freely, why take away that opportunity from others? It's one tactic or the other - public comment OR disruption.

[Vrede too]

America's highest ranking Jew, Chuck Schumer, openly calls for regime change in Israel. Wow. That's more radical than what the Asheville City Council demonstrators want.

[Vrede too]

America's highest ranking Jew, Chuck Schumer, openly calls for regime change in Israel. Wow. That's more radical than what the Asheville City Council demonstrators want.

“We’re not a banana republic. The people of Israel will choose when they will have elections, and who they’ll elect, and it’s not something that will be foisted on us.”
-- Nuttyahoo

Pretty cheeky for a nation begging for $4B/year in mostly military assistance.

Anyhow, dummy, the whole point is that Israel is United Fruit, worse. Don't be such a crybaby victim.

... Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu said that calls for an election now — which polls show he would lose badly — would force Israel to stop fighting and would paralyze the country for six months....

Fine, be a patriot and QUIT. Save Israel the pain.

[Vrede too]

Rachel Corrie: Parents & Friend Remember U.S. Activist Crushed by Israeli Bulldozer in Rafah in 2003

Presente! There but for the grace of FSM go I.

Damn, we've been fighting for justice for Palestine for a long time.

[Vrede too]

Will the war hurt Joe and the Dems in Nov as lefties stay home? Should it?

US has agreed to send more bombs and warplanes to Israel, sources say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. in recent days authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel, two sources familiar with the effort said on Friday, even as Washington publicly expresses concerns about an anticipated Israeli military offensive in Rafah.

The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post.

Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally.

The package comes as Israel faces strong international criticism over its continued bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza and as some members of President Joe Biden's party call for him to cut U.S. military aid.

The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration's steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.

Biden on Friday acknowledged "the pain being felt" by many Arab Americans over the war in Gaza and over U.S. support for Israel and its military offensive.

Crocodile tears.

Still, he has vowed continued support for Israel despite an increasingly public rift with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu....

Feed Nuttyahoo and the IDF, nothing else matters.

[Vrede too]

It's not just young and irrelevant lefties:

State Dept. human rights staffer quits over Biden’s Gaza policy

A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, the latest example of dissent among government personnel bursting into public view.

Annelle Sheline, 38, stepped down after a year as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, with nearly half that tenure marked by the war Israel launched in response to a devastating Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

In an interview, Sheline said her focus had been promoting human rights in the Middle East and North Africa, work that was complicated by Israel’s war and a host of accompanying moral, legal, security and diplomatic implications for the United States. Sheline said she tried to raise concerns internally with dissent cables and at staff forums but eventually concluded that it was pointless “as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel.”

“I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore,” she said. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible.”

Sheline’s departure is the most significant protest resignation over the Gaza conflict since the exit of Josh Paul, who was a senior State Department official involved in arms transfers to foreign governments....

Sheline said she had planned to leave quietly, telling her bosses it was over Gaza, but decided to speak up at the request of colleagues who told her they wanted to resign but couldn’t because of financial or family considerations....

At one of those meetings, Sheline recalled, she asked about administration priorities — competition with China, human rights, climate change — that she felt were being undermined by blank-check support for Israel.

“My question was: Why is this support for Israel seen as more important than all of these other, arguably very significant priorities?” she said. “I still don’t feel like I have a great answer as to why.”

Only a handful of officials have left government over the war. For months, however, workers have telegraphed their discontent in other ways. At the State Department, officials have written multiple cables on Gaza in the dissent channel, a Vietnam War-era mechanism for internal protest. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, hundreds of employees endorsed a letter in November calling for the Biden administration to use its leverage to initiate a cease-fire. Other officials have challenged agency leaders during public events.

In February, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington after saying he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” He died of his injuries....

Sheline took a circuitous route to the State Department. She grew up in North Carolina and has written that her interest in foreign policy began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which occurred when she was a sophomore in high school. She pursued studies in conflict resolution, focusing on the Middle East, and later took Arabic classes in Egypt and other countries. For her academic work on the region’s monarchies, she made research trips to Morocco, Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

During this period, Sheline worked as a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that promotes a U.S. “foreign policy that emphasizes military restraint and diplomatic engagement,” according to its website. There, she criticized the U.S. policy of sending arms to Arab allies despite their well-documented human rights abuses. She said she had not planned on a federal career but was awarded a fellowship that came with the condition that she serve at least a year in the government afterward....

It's not just Muslim nations and sectors of America:
A Loyal Israel Ally, Germany Shifts Tone as the Toll in Gaza Mounts

[Vrede too]

World Central Kitchen charity halts Gaza operations after Israeli strike kills 7 workers



... Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid that arrived just a day earlier turned back from Gaza, according to Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to territory. Israel has only allowed a trickle of aid into devastated northern Gaza, where experts say famine is imminent.

... Those killed include three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian, according to hospital records.

Other footage of the aftermath of the strike showed a vehicle with the charity's logo printed across its roof to make it identifiable from the air. The projectile had punched a large hole through the roof....

World Central Kitchen, a food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, was key to the new route. Israel has barred UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been extremely difficult because of the military’s failure to either grant permission or ensure safe passage.

Andrés — whose charity operates in several countries wracked by wars or natural disasters, including Israel after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war — said he was “heartbroken” by the deaths.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The charity said the team was traveling in a three-car convoy that included two armored vehicles, and its movements had been coordinated with the Israeli army....

Anera, a Washington-based aid group that has been operating in the Palestinian territories for decades, said that in the wake of the strike it was taking the “unprecedented" step of pausing its own operations in Gaza, where it had been helping to provide around 150,000 meals daily.

“The escalating risks associated with aid delivery leave us with no choice but to halt operations until our staff regain confidence that they can do their work without undue risk,” it said in a statement.

Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said the strike was “not an isolated incident,” noting that around 200 humanitarian workers have been killed since the war broke out in October....

On Monday, three aid ships from the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus arrived with some 400 tons of food and supplies organized by World Central Kitchen and the United Arab Emirates following a pilot run last month.

Cypriot Foreign Ministry spokesman Theodoros Gotsis said Tuesday that around 100 tons of aid had been unloaded before the charity suspended operations, and that the remaining 240 tons of aid would be taken back to Cyprus....

Two other apparent Israeli strikes late Monday killed at least 16 Palestinians, including five children, in Rafah, where Israel has vowed to expand its ground operation despite the presence of some 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

One of the strikes hit a family home, killing 10 people, including five children, according to hospital records. Another hit a gathering near a mosque, killing at least six people, including three children....

Bastards. If this doesn't cause the US to pause delivery of lethal aid nothing ever will.

[billy.pilgrim]

Nothing ever will

[Vrede too]

Nothing ever will

Probably true Can a First Lady make any difference at all?

'Stop It Now:' Jill Biden privately urges end to Gaza war - report
'Just like the president, the first lady is heartbroken over the attacks on aid workers and the ongoing loss of innocent lives in Gaza,' commented first lady’s communications director Alexander


Jill Biden and Spanish chef Jose Andres of World Central Kitchen greet World Central Kitchen volunteers during a tour of a reception center for Ukrainian refugees in Madrid, Spain, June 28, 2022.

World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés says Israel targeted staff in Gaza 'car by car'

... Monday's strike which killed seven members of his staff was not a mistake, he said, repeating that Israeli forces had been told of their movements....

The convoy was made up of three vehicles, including two that were armoured, which clearly displayed the charity's logo. All three were hit during the strike.

Speaking to Reuters news agency on Wednesday, the Spanish-American celebrity chef said this was not a "bad luck situation where, 'oops,' we dropped the bomb in the wrong place".

In a separate interview with Israel's Channel 12 news, Mr Andrés said "it was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]"....

Humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is in doubt after WCK - a key provider of aid to the territory - suspended operations.

The UN announced it was pausing movements at night for at least 48 hours to evaluate the security situation....

Four days ago, WCK said that it had distributed 42 million meals in the Gaza Strip - dispatching more than 1,700 food trucks and also sending close to 435,000 meals by sea.

According to Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body in charge of civilian policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, WCK is responsible for 60% of the non-governmental aid getting into the territory.

A second charity, the American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera), which was working closely with WCK, told the BBC it was also freezing its operations in Gaza.

More than 196 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the US-funded Aid Worker Security Database, which records major incidents of violence against aid personnel. Not all have been killed in the line of duty....

Part of a systematic campaign to interdict humanitarian aid to Gazans is more plausible than an oopsie to me. Either way, war crime.

[Vrede too]

A sign that our pressure on Joe and his pressure on Nuttyahoo is working?

Israel withdraws most offensive troops from Gaza; Hamas, Israel to engage in talks

Fingers crossed.

[Vrede too]

More than 100 people were killed and 700 injured on February 29 in the “Flour Massacre". The IDF is still lying about it:

Dying for a bag of flour: Videos and eyewitness accounts cast doubt on Israel’s timeline of deadly Gaza aid delivery

Being an aid worker or recipient is very dangerous when the IDF is around

[Vrede too]

Thousands of Palestinians attempt to return home to northern Gaza, but face Israeli fire

Thousands of Palestinians, including men, women, children and elderly, attempted to return to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday when they came under Israeli fire....

[Vrede too]

Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel

... Seeing Google fire (No Tech for Apartheid activist Eddie) Hatfield only confirmed to Vidana Abdel Khalek that she should resign from the company. On March 25, she pressed send on an email to company leaders, including CEO Sundar Pichai, announcing her decision to quit in protest over Project Nimbus. “No one came to Google to work on offensive military technology,” the former trust and safety policy employee wrote in the email, seen by TIME, which noted that over 13,000 children had been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza since the beginning of the war; that Israel had fired upon Palestinians attempting to reach humanitarian aid shipments; and had fired upon convoys of evacuating refugees. “Through Nimbus, your organization provides cloud AI technology to this government and is thereby contributing to these horrors,” the email said.

Workers argue that Google’s relationship with Israel runs afoul of the company’s “AI principles,” which state that the company will not pursue applications of AI that are likely to cause “overall harm,” contribute to “weapons or other technologies” whose purpose is to cause injury, or build technologies “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” “If you are providing cloud AI technology to a government which you know is committing a genocide, and which you know is misusing this technology to harm innocent civilians, then you're far from being neutral,” Khalek says. “If anything, you are now complicit.”...

GoNTAGo!

[O Really]

Why doesn't anybody in the news media remind the public that regarding the current Iran mess that it was Israel that bombed the Iranian embassy and that the drone show was retaliation for that? Why does the story start with "Iran attacked Israel" and everybody talks about whether Israel should "respond"?

Bully steals kid's lunch money. Kid tosses rock in general direction of bully. Bully takes that as unacceptable aggression and knocks kid down and kicks him. And so on and so on and scooby doobie doo.

[Vrede too]

Why doesn't anybody in the news media remind the public that regarding the current Iran mess that it was Israel that bombed the Iranian embassy and that the drone show was retaliation for that? Why does the story start with "Iran attacked Israel" and everybody talks about whether Israel should "respond"?

Bully steals kid's lunch money. Kid tosses rock in general direction of bully. Bully takes that as unacceptable aggression and knocks kid down and kicks him. And so on and so on and scooby doobie doo.

It goes in reverse chronology, too. Zionists would argue that Iran's proxies had been attacking Israel since Oct 7, thus justifying the missile to the Iranian consulate in Syria. And so on and so on

[O Really]

It goes in reverse chronology, too. Zionists would argue that Iran's proxies had been attacking Israel since Oct 7, thus justifying the missile to the Iranian consulate in Syria. And so on and so on

Thus it has always been and thus it will always be until somebody pushes Israel into the sea or makes it look like Gaza.