The ongoing genocide in Palestine
(Article collection from July 17, 2024)
The Old Evil
I returned to occupied Palestine, from where I had reported for The New York Times, after two decades. I experienced once more the visceral evil of Israel’s occupation.
By Chris Hedges
July 12, 2024
RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine: It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain. Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements — illegal under international law — dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have grown in number and expanded in size. But they remain protected by blast barriers, concertina wire and watchtowers surrounded by the obscenity of lawns and gardens. The colonists have access to bountiful sources of water in this arid landscape that the Palestinians are denied.
The winding 26-foot high concrete wall that runs the 440 mile length of occupied Palestine, with its graffiti calling for liberation, murals with the Al-Aqsa mosque, faces of martyrs and the grinning and bearded mug of Yasser Arafat — whose concessions to Israel in the Oslo agreement made him, in the words of Edward Said, “the Pétain of the Palestinians” — give the West Bank the feel of an open air prison. The wall lacerates the landscape. It twists and turns like some huge, fossilized antediluvian snake severing Palestinians from their families, slicing Palestinian villages in half, cutting communities off from their orchards, olive trees and fields, dipping and rising out of wadis, trapping Palestinians in the Jewish state’s updated version of a Bantustan.
It has been over two decades since I reported from the West Bank. Time collapses. The smells, sensations, emotions and images, the lilting cadence of Arabic and the miasma of sudden and violent death that lurks in the air, evokes the old evil. It is as if I never left.
Read more: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-old-evil
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Revealed: America’s secret special forces flights to Israel from UK base on Cyprus
The US military has been flying covert planes to Israel from RAF Akrotiri since the bombing of Gaza began, Declassified has discovered.
By Matt Kennrad
July 11, 2024
- Unmarked planes are being used by US forces to fly from Cyprus to Israel, including as recently as June 26
- The aircraft are believed to be used by highly secretive 427th Special Operations Squadron and the CIA
- Declassified also finds 26 huge US military transport planes have landed at UK base on Cyprus, believed to be carrying weapons for Israel
- Revelations could further implicate British ministers in war crimes
The US Air Force has been sending unmarked planes from Britain’s base on Cyprus to Israel since it began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed.
The planes are all C-295 and CN-235 aircraft, which are believed to be used by American special forces.
Declassified has found 18 of these aircraft which have gone from the sprawling British air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, to Israel’s coastal city Tel Aviv since October 7.
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With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier
„We must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse,“ said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
By Jake Johnson
July 16, 2024
Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.
But you’d hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.
While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel’s onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a „safe zone,“ as Common Dreamsreported.
Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn’t receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel’s war on Gaza.
Read more: https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-massacres
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Qatar: Genuine peacemaker or covert partner of Israel?
Is Qatar a neutral mediator between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation state, or is it secretly leveraging its financial ties to sway Israeli politics in its favor?
By Mawadda Iskandar
July 16, 2024
As Israel continues to refuse to negotiate a reasonable end to its brutal aggression on Gaza, Tel Aviv has taken to launch sharp attacks on key mediator Qatar. The latest incident involves a scathing remark by Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing the Persian Gulf state of being “one of the biggest sponsors of state terrorism.”
Yair Netanyahu’s comments were aimed at diverting criticism away from his father’s government that “is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas’s onslaught on October 7,” and that has since earned global pariah status for its massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was launched last year, the occupation entity has been in a state of “political hysteria,” with accusations flying over responsibility for the Hamas-led resistance operation. Criticism of Netanyahu’s policies has come from various Israeli leaders, including cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who have threatened to bring down the government if the prime minister continues to make decisions unilaterally.
Read more: https://thecradle.co/articles/qatar-genuine-peacemaker-or-covert-partner-of-israel
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Amir Mortasawi (alias Afsane Bahar) (امیر مرتضوی (افسانه بهار 