Colombia’s Foreign Ministry responded to the recent Israeli military campaign in Gaza by expressing “concern over terrorist acts” and “solidarity with the victims of these actions.” But the terrorist acts it condemned did not include Israel’s 11 days of airstrikes against a captive, mostly refugee population crowded into a densely populated strip, while its solidarity was reserved only for the 12 Israelis killed, not for the 248 Palestinians.
That was no surprise though, because Israel and Colombia are two peas in a bellicose pod, engaging in the United States-backed state terrorism known as the War on Terror. Israel and its allies reserve the “terrorist” label for Palestinians, who, as we know, have been subjected to 70-plus years of land theft, ethnic cleansing and massacres. In Colombia, the “terrorists” have traditionally been members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – the left-wing guerrilla movement formed in the 1960s in response to obscene economic inequality and authoritarian tyranny – although the term is quite flexibly applied to pretty much anyone opposed to a right-wing government.
Like in Israel, land theft and the forced displacement of Indigenous communities is also a theme of the Colombian political landscape. The survival of campesino, or small farmer, communities has tended to complicate corporate plunder and other profitable endeavors in resource-rich areas. Many years ago, I visited the persecuted peace community of San José de Apartadó in northern Colombia. The community co-founder María Brígida González – whose 15-year-old daughter Eliseña was killed in her sleep in 2005 by Colombian soldiers who portrayed her as a FARC militant – surmised that the purpose of such operations was to “sow terror” in order to clear the land and facilitate resource exploitation. READ MORE AT subtext, by AJE+
28 May 2021
Two oppressive states join forces
23 May 2021
From the Twitter trenches: The Israeli army’s propaganda war
On May 14, the official Twitter account of the Israeli military tweeted a “pop quiz” video, inviting viewers to “imagine” that they themselves were the Israeli armed forces deciding what to do in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. The answer options were: “A. Nothing[.] Allow terrorists to destroy Israeli cities,” or “B. Target the terrorists who fire the rockets.”
According to the military, there was “only one right answer”: option B. In reality, a more accurate answer would have been something like: “C. Bomb Gaza to smithereens and massacre entire Palestinian families in ‘response’ to rockets that are not even capable of destroying Israeli cities – and that are only being fired at Israel because Israel has spent the past 73 years massacring and otherwise tormenting Palestinians.”
Nearly 250 Palestinians have thus far been killed, including 66 children, in the Israeli assault that began on May 10. As usual, the Israeli military Twitter account has served as a valuable weapon for conducting a parallel propaganda war to bolster the physical one. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.
13 May 2021
What Kind of Democracy Kills Children?
During a press briefing on Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price discussed Israel’s latest all-out assault on the Gaza Strip — dubbed Operation Guardian of the Walls — which had begun the previous day and quickly dispensed with thirty Palestinian lives, including ten children.
Asked by a reporter whether the killing of Palestinian children by Israeli air strikes was “something to condemn,” Price responded in typical State Department style by verbosely not answering the question:
"Well — and I said this yesterday, that the loss of innocent life is something that we would — that is deeply regrettable. It is — of course, Israel has the right to defend itself against those attacking Israel, against Hamas and terrorists responsible, including for the loss of life in Israel, but the loss of civilian life in these operations is something that we deeply regret. It is precisely why we have said that, just as the Israelis do, the Palestinians have every right to live in safety and security."
Obviously, it’s a bit difficult for Palestinians to aspire to safety and security when the imperial power that throws billions of dollars a year at Israel can’t even say that slaughtering kids is bad. Nor is the Palestinian population provided much security considering the Israeli state’s seventy-three-year predilection for ethnic cleansing. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.
12 May 2021
Sheikh Jarrah: Clashes, scuffles, conflict - western media's euphemisms for Israel's violence
Let’s imagine some creative wartime reporting: "On April 26, 1937, the inhabitants of the Basque town of Guernica 'clashed' with German warplanes dropping high explosives and incendiary bombs. The town was pulverised in the course of the 'scuffle', and up to 1600 people perished".
Obviously, the above lines would never be written by any non-delusional person, since the nature of the power relationship between human bodies on the one hand and bomb-spewing airborne monstrosities on the other is quite clear.
Yet, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - itself a euphemism for Israel’s forever war on Palestinians - the Western corporate media never miss a chance to report blatantly one-sided brutality as "clashes" and "scuffles".
Take, for example, the Great March of Return, the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that began in the Gaza Strip in March 2018. According to the United Nations, the Israeli military killed 214 Palestinians - 46 of them children - in the context of the Great March, and injured more than 36,100. “During the same period,” by contrast, “one Israeli soldier was killed and seven others were injured.”
The media takeaway from the same event: there were "clashes". READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.
03 May 2021
15 Salvadoran Military Officers Could Soon Go on Trial for the El Mozote Massacre
In April, El Salvador began the final phase of pretrial hearings in the criminal case against the accused perpetrators of the 1981 El Mozote massacre. The massacre, which took place during the country’s civil war of 1980–1992 and killed some one thousand civilians in and around the village of El Mozote — most of them children — was carried out by the US-trained and -funded Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran military. If the judge concludes that there is sufficient evidence to move ahead with the trial, fifteen retired military officers could face prison sentences.
In his book Weakness and Deceit: America and El Salvador’s Dirty War, former New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner cites the recollections of massacre survivor Rufina Amaya, whose blind husband and three daughters were slaughtered:
From her hiding place in the trees, she heard the soldiers’ conversation: “Lieutenant, somebody here says he won’t kill children,” said one soldier. “Who’s the son of a bitch who said that?” the lieutenant answered. “I am going to kill him.”
The day after the bloodbath began, soon-to-be Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abrams took up a post as Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs and set about denying that the massacre had ever happened. Even after the civil war ended, Abrams insisted that the Reagan administration’s legacy in the Central American nation had been one of “fabulous achievement” — this despite the loss of upward of 75,000 lives, with the vast majority of atrocities attributed to the US-backed state and allied paramilitary formations and death squads. READ MORE AT JACOBIN.