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.