Biden (maybe) wants Israel to stop using US bulldozers for ethnic cleansing

 Al Jazeera English

On Sunday, Israeli media reported a freeze in certain bulldozer shipments from the United States to Israel. The prominent English-language website Ynet News, for example, went with the sensational headline: “D9 bulldozer shipment stalled by US embargo, leaving Israeli soldiers exposed.” To be sure, there is nothing more tragic than “exposed” soldiers belonging to a genocidal army.

According to the article, 134 bulldozers “ordered and paid for” by the Israeli military are currently “awaiting export approval from the US State Department” but their shipment has been stymied by internal US opposition and an apparent decision by President Joe Biden’s administration to freeze deliveries “for several months”. The D9 model is manufactured by the US firm Caterpillar Inc.

Some observers have taken this move to mean that the Bidenites are registering their displeasure with the Israeli war crime of ethnic cleansing. But if you’re going to be against ethnic cleansing, why not go all the way and be against genocide too? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’

FAIR

Back in May 2015, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner decided to moonlight as an Israeli military propagandist by penning an alleged exposé (5/12/15)—headlined “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk”—in which she diligently conveyed all that Israel had to say about Hezbollah’s infrastructure in south Lebanon.

The minuscule hamlet of Muhaybib, for example, was said to contain no fewer than “nine arms depots, five rocket-launching sites, four infantry positions, signs of three underground tunnels, three anti-tank positions and, in the very center of the village, a Hezbollah command post.” In the village of Shaqra, home to approximately 4,000 people, the Israeli army had meanwhile identified some “400 military sites and facilities belonging to Hezbollah.”

Only after 11 full paragraphs of transmitting the Israeli line did Kershner manage to insert the disclaimer that “the Israeli claims could not be independently verified.” But by that time, of course, the damage had been done, the reader having already been persuaded that south Lebanon was one big Hezbollah military installation, where Israel could not afford to concern itself with civilian lives in any future conflict. Driving the point home was former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, who informed Kershner that “many, many Lebanese will be killed” in the next showdown with Hezbollah. READ MORE AT FAIR.

It was anger that won Trump this election

 Al Jazeera English

Despite obviously belonging to America’s financial super-elite, the billionaire Trump has wooed a wide sector of the domestic working class into viewing him as a saviour from their economic plight in a plutocratic system of which he himself is an integral part. The indignant appeal to “Make America Great Again” deliberately ignores the fact that there was never anything great about a nation predicated on mass socioeconomic inequality, where Republicans and Democrats alike perpetuate plutocracy under the guise of democracy. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

It’s raining bombs in a city by the sea

 Al Jazeera English

On Monday, the Israeli military set about maniacally bombarding the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, striking residential buildings left and right and converting the scene into a typical Israeli-induced horrorscape. Since the beginning of the genocide in neighbouring Palestine in October last year, Israel has killed more than 2,700 people in Lebanon, the majority of them over the past month and a half.

An ancient Phoenician port sacked by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Tyre is of course no stranger to destruction. The city bears three sets of Roman and Byzantine ruins – one of which incidentally played host to a more unique form of destruction in 2013 when the convoy belonging to then-United States ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly managed to damage the historical site while inexplicably driving over it. This particular episode prompted the Jadaliyya headline: “Tires over Tyre: US Ambassador Ruins Ruins.”

Given its fierce partnership with the state of Israel, the US has certainly had an outsized hand in ruining Lebanon over the course of contemporary history. In 1982, for example, the US greenlit the Israeli invasion that killed tens of thousands of people in the country. And during Israel’s 34-day war on Lebanon in 2006, which killed approximately 1,200 people, the US expedited bomb deliveries to the Israeli military while agitating to delay a ceasefire – an approach the Joe Biden administration has now basically supercharged to accommodate the genocide in Gaza. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

In Midst of Palestinian Geocide, Late Hamas Leader Scolded for ‘Eradicating’ Israel

 FAIR

The Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip on October 17, and it didn’t take long for the usual media suspects to line up with their anti-eulogies.

Reuters (10/18/24), for example, produced an obituary headlined “Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas Leader Committed to Eradicating Israel Is Dead”—a less than charming use of terminology in light of the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating in Gaza.

Since last October, more than 42,000 Palestinians have officially been, um, eradicated—although according to a Lancet study (7/20/24; Al Jazeera, 7/8/24) published in July, the true death toll could well exceed 186,000. Per the view of Reuters, this is really the fault of Sinwar, a “ruthless enforcer” ... 

Never mind that Sinwar’s elimination will have no impact on the genocide, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still  not been completed.” READ MORE AT FAIR.

Yahya Sinwar may be dead, but there is no end in sight to this genocide

 Al Jazeera English

On Thursday, October 17, Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip – the latest “high-value target” in a genocidal war that has dispensed with more than 42,000 Palestinian lives in just over a year and that has now spread to Lebanon.

Of course, the elimination of Sinwar hardly spells the end of genocide, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in his post-assassination announcement: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still not been completed.”

Fortunately for the powers that be in a nation whose very existence is predicated on perpetual slaughter, the Israeli “task” will never be fully completed – at least as long as there are still Palestinians and fellow Arabs committed to resisting Israel’s bloodthirsty efforts.

And yet Sinwar’s killing will make it ever more difficult for Israel to continue to justify its current war on Gaza, not that justification ever really matters to Israel’s primary international backer, the United States of America. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The United States is already at war

 Al Jazeera  English

Yesterday, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s assassination in Beirut of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah last week and its assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in July.

United States President Joe Biden instructed the US military to assist Israel in neutralising the missiles – not that Israel is not already equipped with various layers of ultra-sophisticated protection against incoming projectiles, which permit it to go about slaughtering folks left and right while suffering minimal damage in return. . . .

Of course, not once has it occurred to the Biden administration to meticulously thwart Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 people have been killed in less than a year although the true death toll is without a doubt exorbitantly higher. Nor has the oh-so-skilled US military deemed it necessary to interfere in the wanton butchery currently going down in Lebanon, where Israel just killed more than 700 people in less than a week. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel’s assassinations can’t kill resistance

 Al Jazeera English

After assassinating Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in a devastating air strike on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood, the Israeli army took to the platform X to boast triumphantly that Nasrallah would “no longer be able to terrorize the world”.

Granted, the objective observer would be forgiven for failing to detect how it is that Nasrallah is supposedly responsible for terrestrial terror when he is not the one who has been presiding over genocide in the Gaza Strip for nearly a year. Nor, obviously, is he the one who just killed more than 700 people in Lebanon in less than a week.

Israel takes the credit for all of that, just as it takes the credit for pulverising numerous residential buildings and their inhabitants in the quest to kill Nasrallah – as good an example as any of “terrorising the world”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Big Brother without borders: Israel’s psychopathic warfare in Lebanon

Al Jazeera English

Exactly one week ago, on Tuesday, Israel remotely detonated hundreds of handheld pagers used by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, killing at least 12 people. Two children were among the fatalities of the terror attack, which also wounded thousands and overwhelmed Lebanese hospitals.

The following day, walkie-talkies exploded across the country, ending 20 lives. Two days after that, on Friday, an air strike on a densely populated neighbourhood in the Lebanese capital of Beirut killed scores of people. And on Monday, the Israeli military commenced a patently psychopathic bombing spree over various sectors of Lebanon that has killed more than 550 people, including 50 children. . . .

To be sure, the very existence of the state of Israel has always been predicated on mass killing – an arrangement that has produced, inter alia, the continuing genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in less than one year but the true death toll is, no doubt, many times higher. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

The Lebanon pager attack: Israel’s terror playbook strikes again

 Al Jazeera English

On Tuesday, hundreds of handheld pagers used by members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, including two children. Nearly 3,000 others were wounded, many of them critically.

No one has claimed responsibility for the operation, but it is not hard to guess who is behind it: Israel, a nation that specialises in terrorising selected Arab civilian populations under the pretence of fighting terror. Since October of last year, this same nation has busied itself carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed but the true death toll is likely many times higher.

And while the ostensible targets of Tuesday’s attack were pager-wielding Hezbollah members, it was carried out with the full knowledge that the fallout would be indiscriminate and that massive civilian casualties would ensue. But that is the whole point of terrorism, is it not? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Netanyahu and the Israeli protesters are on the same genocidal page

 Al Jazeera English

In July 2014, shortly after the kickoff of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the Gaza Strip – a 51-day affair that ultimately killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children – Danish journalist Nikolaj Krak penned a dispatch from Israel for the Copenhagen-based Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.

Describing the scene on a hill on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza border, Krak noted that the area had been “transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre”. Israelis had “dragged camping chairs and sofas” to the hilltop, where some spectators sat “with crackling bags of popcorn”, while others partook of hookahs and cheerful banter. Fiery, earth-shaking air strikes on Gaza across the way were met with cheers and “solid applause”.

To be sure, Israelis have always enjoyed a good murderous spectacle – which is hardly surprising for a nation whose very existence is predicated on mass slaughter. But as it turns out, the applause is not quite so solid when Israeli lives are caught up in the explosive apocalyptic display.

For the past 11 months, Israel’s “reality war theatre” has offered a view of all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where the official death toll has reached nearly 41,000. A July Lancet study found that the true number of deaths may well top 186,000 – and that is only if the killing ends soon.

Now, massive protests have broken out across Israel demanding that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enact a ceasefire and hostage deal to free the remaining 100 or so Israeli captives held in Gaza. On Sunday, when the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives, CNN reported that some 700,000 protesters had taken to the streets across the country. And on Monday, a general strike spearheaded by Israel’s primary labour union succeeded in shutting much of the economy down for several hours.

Although certain wannabe peaceniks among the international commentariat have blindly attributed the protests to a desire to end the bloodshed, the fact of the matter is that Palestinian blood is not high on the list of concerns. Rather, the only lives that matter in the besieged, pulverised, and genocide-stricken Gaza Strip are the lives of the captives – whose captivity, it bears underscoring, is entirely a result of Israeli policy and Israel’s unceasing sadistic treatment of Palestinians.  READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The US is Israel’s accomplice, not a ceasefire mediator

 Al Jazeera English

On July 21, 2006, nine days into the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon that killed 1,200 people, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opined that “an immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense”.

In response to a journalist’s question at a press briefing, the secretary declared that she had “no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante”. . . .

Fast forward 15 years to Israel’s straight-up genocide in the Gaza Strip, which is undoubtedly a more effective means of eradicating the “status quo ante” – at least if we take “status quo ante” to mean Gaza and its inhabitants. With official fatalities now exceeding 40,000 Palestinians and predictions that the real death toll may in fact be many times higher, an immediate ceasefire is the only non-genocidal option on the table.

And while US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stressed the urgency of just such a ceasefire, it is a bit tricky to stop a war when you have just approved an additional $20bn in weapons transfers to the party that has officially killed nearly 17,000 Palestinian children since October. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

‘Less flexible?’ Just say it NYT, Israel is sabotaging a ceasefire deal

 Al Jazeera English

Once in a while, The New York Times has to tell inconvenient truths regarding Israel, the preferred partner in crime of the United States and the recipient of billions upon billions of dollars in American aid and weaponry.

However, just because the US newspaper of record has to tell the truth doesn’t mean it has to do so in a straightforward way.

There was that time in 2014, for example, that The Times reported on the Israeli missile strike that killed four young boys playing football on the beach in the Gaza Strip. While the text of the article did unflinchingly convey the fact that Israel had slaughtered four children, the headline was rendered preposterously vague: “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife”.

Now that the Gaza Strip has become not only the “centre of Mideast Strife” but the site of a straight-up genocide, The Times has once again found itself creatively diluting the news, as in Tuesday’s headline: “Israel Was Less Flexible in Recent Gaza Cease-Fire Talks, Documents Show”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel is not interested in peace

Al Jazeera English

Just when you thought the situation in the Middle East couldn’t get any more incendiary, the assassination of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh has propelled regional tensions to a whole new level of bad.

Haniyeh was killed in a strike late on Tuesday in Tehran, the capital of Iran, where he had attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The assassination is without doubt the handiwork of – who else? – the state of Israel, although the Israeli government seems to have adopted a “no comment” policy for the moment.

One Israeli official, Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, apparently couldn’t contain his exuberance, and took to X to proclaim: “This is the right way to clean the world of this filth … Haniyeh’s death makes the world a little better.”

In his social media post, Eliyahu also swore that there would be “no more imaginary peace/surrender agreements”, and that “the iron hand that will strike is the one that will bring peace and a little comfort and strengthen our ability to live in peace with those who desire peace”.

That’s a lot of usage of the word “peace” for folks who fundamentally don’t want, well, peace. To be sure, killing one of the main negotiators for a ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip is a pretty good way to thwart any prospect of peace for the time being. READ MORE AT ALJAZEERA ENGLISH. 

Israel is in no place to talk about ‘red lines’

 Al Jazeera English

On Saturday, July 27, at least 12 children from the Druze community were killed in a rocket attack on the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel blamed the strike on Hezbollah, declaring that it constituted “the crossing of all red lines”. Hezbollah, which generally has no qualms owning up to its handiwork, vehemently denied the accusation.

Regardless of who is responsible, it is no less than ludicrously obscene that Israel should fancy itself qualified to talk about “red lines” when the Israeli army is presently perpetrating straight-up genocide in the Gaza Strip. Since October 7, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have officially been killed in Gaza. A recent Lancet study suggests the true death toll could exceed 186,000.

Israel’s education minister, Yoav Kisch, called on his government to respond “with full force” to the Majdal Shams attack and threatened the possibility of “all-out war” with Hezbollah. Again, it takes a special sort of logic to threaten war in retaliation for an attack on a territory you are illegally occupying.

But, hey, that’s how Israel rolls. Aggressor becomes victim, occupier becomes rightful owner, genocide becomes self-defence. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Biden is out, but American plutocracy carries on

Al Jazeera English

And so it has come to pass.

United States President Joe Biden has dropped out of this year’s presidential race, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared that his train wreck of a performance in the June presidential debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump – among other episodes – would render the octogenarian less than appealing to the US electorate.

So much for Biden’s decree that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to withdraw from the race. Or maybe the Lord had a hand in it, after all. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Is America’s gun fixation backfiring on its pushers?

 Al Jazeera English

It was a shot heard round the world – but most of all by presidential candidate Donald Trump, the victim of Saturday’s assassination attempt at a presidential rally in the US state of Pennsylvania.

A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear as he was filling the audience in on his plans to make United States immigration policy even more hellish for refuge seekers. One crowd member was killed in the gunfire and two others wounded. The shooter, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot and killed by Secret Service officers.

The episode will no doubt earn Trump substantial points among supporters, who will be ever more convinced that their hero is under existential attack in his sociopathic quest to “Make America Great Again”.

And while much of the analysis in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania rally has focused on the “polarisation” of the US citizenry, it is also worth pointing out the bleeding obvious – that firearms-related bloodshed would not transpire with such regularity if the country did not have more guns than people. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH

US election 2024: People’s will or donors’ will?

 Al Jazeera English

In the aftermath of United States President Joe Biden’s train wreck of a performance in the June 27 presidential debate with Donald Trump, Democratic Party donors went into a tizzy over the incumbent’s perceived inviability as a candidate in the November elections.

Various wealthy donors suspended their monetary contributions to organisations aligned with the Biden campaign, stipulating that Biden must be replaced as a presidential contender before the money starts flowing again.

Among these donors is Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, who explained to CNBC that “if Biden does not step down, the Democrats will lose”. The outlet also quoted Moriah Fund president Gideon Stein as warning that, unless Biden is removed from the equation, “my family and I are pausing on more than $3m in planned donations”.

Objectively speaking, of course, screwing up a debate is a far less egregious political transgression than, say, abetting Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip for the past nine months – a policy that is instead applauded by many of Biden’s top donors. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The rule of law is made to be broken

 Al Jazeera English

Monday was a good day for Donald Trump, the former United States president and current Republican presidential hopeful, who is waging a forever war to “make America great again”. The first former US head of state to be criminally prosecuted and convicted of a crime, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2023 for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results that produced the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden.

But the US Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority, has now conveniently ruled 6-3 that presidents are essentially above the law – in a decision that is unprecedented in the nation’s 248 years of existence.

The text of the ruling states: “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”

So much for checks and balances and all that good stuff. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Commandment 11: ‘Thou shalt not think’

 Al Jazeera English

On Wednesday, June 19, Louisiana’s far-right governor Jeff Landry signed House Bill 71 into law, which will require all public school classrooms in the southern US state – from kindergarten through college – to display the Ten Commandments. The legislation stipulates that the Commandments “be printed in a large, easily readable font” on a “poster or framed document that is at least 11 inches by 14 inches”.

Shortly prior to signing the bill, Landry boasted: “I can’t wait to be sued.” Sure enough, his prayer was swiftly answered, and on June 24 a coalition of civil liberties groups and Louisiana parents filed a lawsuit contending that the law is unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of church and state.

If the case makes it to the US Supreme Court, chances are the court’s conservative supermajority will see to it that Landry’s excitement at being sued was not unfounded. Recent rulings by the nation’s top judicial body on matters of religious freedom have been a godsend for Christian nationalism – as if there were any doubt that right-wing politics and religion were a match made in heaven. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Nothing ‘out of the box’ about Italy’s asylum offshoring deal with Albania

 Al Jazeera English

Imagine for a moment that you are a racist Western government plagued by an influx of asylum seekers, many of them dark-skinned. Wouldn’t you dream of packing them off to a distant land to be dealt with out of sight and out of mind?

Well, that dream is now becoming a reality for Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is overseeing an agreement with the Balkan nation of Albania to open two processing centres for seaborne asylum seekers intercepted en route to Italian shores.

Located in the northern Albanian towns of Shengjin and Gjader, the centres are expected to hold up to 36,000 people per year. The scheme will cost Italy at least 670 million euros ($720m) for the initial five-year period – but the price tag is apparently worth it in terms of racking up xenophobic nationalist points for the government. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Collateral genocide in Nuseirat

 Al Jazeera English

On June 8, the Israeli military slaughtered at least 274 Palestinians and wounded nearly 700 more in a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Concerned sectors of the international community responded with typical ineffectual handwringing; the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the latest Israeli “massacre of civilians”, declaring that “the bloodbath must end immediately”.

Four Israeli captives held by Hamas were also rescued during the assault, which has sent Israeli social media into a jubilant tizzy of self-congratulation and genocidal fanfare. The internet is awash with sensational accounts of the rescue and the captives’ weepy reunification with loved ones – and never mind all those dead Palestinians.

Indeed, the blatant disregard for Palestinian life is hardly shocking in the context of a war that has officially killed more than 37,000 people in Gaza in just over eight months. The actual death toll is without a doubt far higher given the number of bodies remaining under the rubble. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Mexico’s election: A victory for organised crime

 Al Jazeera English

On June 2, Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as its first woman president. The 61-year-old scientist served as mayor of Mexico City from 2018 until 2023 and is the protégée of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), to whose Morena party she belongs and in whose shadow she will now govern.

In the largest election in Mexico’s history, Sheinbaum faced off against ex-senator Xóchitl Gálvez, head of a conservative coalition. In addition to the presidential race, Mexicans also voted for candidates contesting more than 20,700 federal and local positions countrywide.

In the run-up to the election, observers relentlessly cast the prospect of an impending female head of state in Mexico as a victory for women’s empowerment, although a glance at facts on the ground suggests the prematurity of any such celebration. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Letter from ‘Kibbutz Israel’

 Al Jazeera English

In the wee hours of May 8, police officers in Washington, DC violently cleared the pro-Palestine encampment at George Washington University (GW) with the help of pepper spray, arresting 33 people. University president Ellen Granberg had called the cops on what she claimed was an “unlawful” on-campus expression of solidarity with the victims of Israel’s current genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has officially killed some 36,000 people in less than eight months, although this number is no doubt a grave underestimate.

Granberg denounced the encampment as “an illegal and potentially dangerous occupation of GW property” – an ironic choice of words, to say the least, given the context of the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the Israeli military’s decidedly dangerous behaviour. Now, the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” – which is not so much a conflict as a psychopathic Israeli campaign to usurp other people’s property – is playing out in a battle for the landscape in the capital of the United States, Israel’s BFF and devoted arms supplier. . . .

Of course, the US political establishment in Washington remains firmly committed to the idea that genocide is “self-defence”, and continues to fling money and armaments at the Israeli military accordingly. And yet folks on the ground are finally opening their eyes, as the truth conquers new terrain in the nation’s capital and beyond – from the Potomac River to the Chesapeake Bay, you might say.

Or better yet: From sea to shining sea, Palestine will be free. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Not even the US government knows the US government line on Rafah

 Al Jazeera English

In an interview on Sunday with NBC News, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken was questioned about President Joe Biden’s recent threat to withhold offensive weaponry from Israel in the event of an all-out assault on Rafah, the city in the southern Gaza Strip where more than 1.4 Palestinians are sheltering.

When asked by the interviewer what exactly Biden’s “red line” is and “what would trigger him to say, ‘I am now withholding weapons,’” Blinken responded: “Look, we don’t talk about red lines when it comes to Israel.”

This was a curious statement, to say the least, since Biden himself has talked about red lines when it comes to Israel. During an interview with CNN last week, the president laid out the latest red line with characteristic eloquence: “I made it clear that if they [the Israelis] go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”

Clear, indeed. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Give or take a few bombs, US complicity in genocide remains ‘ironclad’

 Al Jazeera English

On Wednesday, May 8, United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin became the first senior administration official to publicly confirm that the US government has uncharacteristically paused a weapons shipment to Israel. Over the past seven months, the Israeli military has killed some 35,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with solid US backing.

Speaking at a Senate subcommittee hearing, Secretary Austin remarked that the pause takes place “in the context of unfolding events in Rafah”, the city in southern Gaza where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, including more than 600,000 children, are currently sheltering. The majority of these people were forced to flee to Rafah from other parts of Gaza, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of making Palestinians refugees over and over again.

And while Rafah has hardly been spared the terror and slaughter that have characterised the past seven months of Israeli operations in the coastal enclave as a whole, the threat of a full-scale assault on a mass of trapped civilians in the city has made even the global superpower – Israel’s devoted BFF – a bit squeamish. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

US Gaza protests: Calling the cops on free speech

 Al Jazeera English

On April 17, students at Columbia University in New York City set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus to call for divestment from Israel and a complete ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where the US-backed Israeli military has now slaughtered some 35,000 Palestinians in less than seven months.

Columbia called the cops – since it apparently constitutes more of a disturbance of the peace these days to protest against genocide than to support it. More than 100 students were arrested, which has only spawned further protest as similar encampments have sprung up on college campuses nationwide.

Columbia’s president Nemat Minouche Shafik came under fire from numerous faculty members following the crackdown, although some professors have preferred to proudly advertise their disdain for anything approaching basic morality. Columbia linguist John McWhorter, for example, recently took to the opinion pages of The New York Times to complain about his music humanities class being interrupted by the sounds of a pro-Palestinian crowd with a penchant for “lusty chanting” and “drumbeats” – altogether a “relentless assault” by protesters that “is beyond what any people should be expected to bear up under”.

But if drumbeats propel your panties into such a massive bunch, imagine how annoying it would be if your house was blown up and your family along with it. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Strikes on Iran: Can one demand ‘restraint’ while funding Israel?

 Al Jazeera English

Early on Friday, Iran activated its air defence systems after reports of explosions in Isfahan province. According to Iranian state media, three small drones were shot down over the city of Isfahan.

And while no one has officially claimed responsibility for the aerial attack and the Iranian government has not assigned blame, it is not difficult to hazard a guess as to its origins, given Iran’s recent launching of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. This, mind you, took place purely in retaliation for the lethal April 1 Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria.

United States media outlets have reported confirmation from anonymous US officials that Israel was indeed the source of the latest attacks. For his part, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani – chairman of this week’s G7 meeting in Capri, Italy – has asserted that the US informed its Group of Seven partners that it had received a “last minute” warning from Israel re: impending drone action in Iran.

The action took place amid ubiquitous global calls for “restraint” to avoid further “escalation” in the region after the Iranian assault on Israel, which killed exactly zero people but saw Iran slammed with fresh US sanctions – something that obviously never happens in response to far more deadly Israeli behaviour. READ MORE AT AL JAZAEERA ENGLISH.

Sorry, but Iran is not the aggressor here

Al Jazeera English

On Saturday, April 13, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, that took place on April 1.

The vast majority of the projectiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defence system, with assistance from the ever-helpful United States military, and damage was minimal. Having completed its retaliation, Iran has now declared that the matter can “be deemed concluded” – although Israel is not usually one to let anyone else have the last word.

In the meantime, the barrage of criticism of Tehran’s “aggression” has continued unabated in the West. . . .

The Iranian attack, mind you, occurred a little over six months into Israel’s ongoing pulverisation of the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians, including some 13,800 children. And yet given the thousands of missing persons presumed to be buried under the rubble, even these terrifying numbers are no doubt grave underestimates.

More than 76,000 people have been wounded, as the Israeli military has busied itself flattening entire neighbourhoods and blowing up schools, hospitals, and other basic infrastructure, all the while condemning the territory’s inhabitants to famine and starvation. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

Weaponising underwear: Genocide with a semi-pornographic twist

 Al Jazeera English

Let’s pretend for a moment that, in the course of waging war against the state of Israel, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip had taken to posing for social media posts with lingerie belonging to Israeli women who had been forced to flee their homes and/or killed in the war.

Imagine the moral outrage that would swiftly ensue, inevitably entailing racist and self-righteous allegations of Arab perverseness, the barbaric sexism of Islam, and the violent tendencies of sexually repressed Muslims.

The Fox Newses of the world would have had a field day.

As it turns out, a version of this hypothetical spectacle is true – except that it stars Israeli soldiers and Palestinian women’s lingerie. A recent Reuters article titled “Israeli soldiers play with Gaza women’s underwear in online posts” describes how combatants from the world’s self-appointed “most moral army” have been “posting photos and videos of themselves toying with lingerie found in Palestinian homes, creating a dissonant visual record of the war in Gaza”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Gaza is one big ‘kill zone’

Al Jazeera English

Four Palestinian men are walking in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip through an area largely pulverised by Israeli bombardments. There is no indication that they are carrying weapons or doing anything aside from putting one foot in front of the other, as humans do to get from one place to the next.

Suddenly, a direct air strike on the pedestrians takes out two of the men. The third continues walking and is quickly blasted to bits as well. The fourth is eliminated by yet another strike after falling to his knees.

This episode, which reportedly took place in February, is depicted in Israeli drone footage released in March by Al Jazeera. Watching the defenceless men systematically picked off from the sky in a fanatical display of firepower, one is reminded of the Collateral Murder video published by WikiLeaks in 2010, in which a dozen Iraqi civilians were exuberantly massacred by helicopter-borne United States military personnel. . . .

An Israeli military spokesperson has huffily denied the “kill zone” reports. And yet at the end of the day, the Gaza Strip is one big kill zone – with literally no space off limits to killing. How else do you explain massacres at Palestinian hospitals and United Nations shelters or the slaughter of people waiting in line for food aid as children starve to death? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The US ‘contingency plan’: Send Haitians to Guantanamo, again

 Al Jazeera English

In March, amid a flare-up in gang violence that prompted the declaration of a state of emergency in Haiti, the United States made it known that – as usual – Haitians fleeing for their lives would not be welcome on US shores.

To that end, preparations were being made to deal with a potential mass maritime migration of US-bound Haitian refugees by diverting them to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which is located on occupied Cuban territory and is of course better known for its illegal US prison-cum-torture centre.

A March 13 CNN article quoted General Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command, on the military’s preparedness for such an eventuality: “We did a full walkthrough of our contingency plan on Gitmo last summer with all of the interagency and all of my components.” The Stars and Stripes military magazine offered additional reassurance from Richardson: “Everything is refreshed – the equipment, everything is ready to go.”

And while media reports have been careful to specify that intercepted Haitians would be sent to a migrant processing facility in Guantanamo that is separate from the complex that houses “terrorist suspects”, it is hard to see the US’s “contingency plan on Gitmo” as anything but yet another racialised carceral undertaking. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.