Tuesday, November 14, 2023

No one wants to donate to Doo-Doo DeSantis

First off, scary news via THE HUMANIST REPORT.



Now for more on the GOP,  ABC NEWS reports:



Republican Tim Scott said Sunday night he is suspending his presidential campaign.

Scott made the announcement on "Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy" on Fox News.

"When I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that -- they're telling me, 'Not now, Tim,'" Scott said.


I guess he thought bringing his beard to last week's debate was going to turn his campaign around.  It didn't.  Now he has four more years to shop around for another beard.  He joins the growing list of  drop outs Mike Pence, Will Hurd, Larry Elder and Francis Suarez.  Tom Boggioni adds:




MSNBC contributor Sam Stein noted that the Scott campaign was completely unaware of what was to come, to the point that they had, moments before, just sent out an email seeking campaign contributions.

He wrote, "If you were someone who decided to give to Tim Scott's presidential campaign 20 minutes ago, when they sent a fundraising email, I'd be interested in hearing from you."

Comedian Paula Poundstone, echoing multiple comments about Scott's' just revealed girlfriend, joked, "Tim Scott dropped out of the Presidential race. I wonder if he'll have to give the girlfriend back."


Where will his support go now that he's left the race?  Hmmm.  Here:



Two donors who supported Sen. Tim Scott's (R-SC) presidential bid have switched their support in the wake of his campaign being suspended.

One donor, Eric LeVine, who was campaigning for Scott in New York, said he was caught off guard by the news but would be supporting former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley because she stands as the party's best chance at winning the White House in 2024.

“[Scott] stepped aside with dignity. He is a true patriot. I could not have been prouder to have supported him,” LeVine told the Associated Press. "[Haley] is our last best hope to defeat Donald Trump and then take back the White House."

LeVine added that he is planning to host a fundraiser for Haley, according to Reuters.


Another donor, metal magnate Andy Sabin, said he would throw his support behind Haley. South Carolina donor Chad Walldorf, said he would be donating to Haley's campaign now that Scott is out but praised Scott for suspending his campaign early enough that voters and donors could consider who else to support. A fourth donor, Jeff Burns from California, said he was leaning toward Haley but had not decided.



No one wants to waste a dime on Doo-Doo DeSantis.  

Meanwhile, THEM reports:


Brock McGillis, a former professional hockey player, will tour his native country of Canada, visiting minor league hockey teams to talk about the homophobia he experienced in the sport and hopefully make it better for other LGBTQ+ players in the process, according to Outsports.


Good for him.  Imagine if a hate merchant like Martina Navratilova took the time to do something like that instead of repeatedly ripping apart trans women?  And let me also point out, I love how these hate merchants tip toe out with "It's just about sports" and then they go crazy attacking every transwomen -- and it doesn't even involve sports anymore.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Monday, November 13, 2023.  The assault on Gaza continues, 101 UN workers have been killed, hospitals are under attack, protests increase and much more.

As the day starts in the US, ALJAZEERA reports:

Incubator babies and dialysis patients hooked up to machines dependent on fuel are at particular risk – especially as Al-Aqsa is the sole facility for kidney patients in the central Gaza Strip governorate, Khalil al-Dakran, the hospital’s spokesperson, told Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad.

“If electricity and water outages persist and fuel depletes, patients will be transferred to mass graves if the aggression continues,” al-Dakran warned.

“And the world [just] watches,” he continued bitterly.


Also this morning, CNN reports, "Premature babies at Gaza’s largest hospital are being wrapped in foil and placed next to hot water in a desperate bid to keep them alive, the hospital director warned, as Israeli firepower continues to pound surrounding streets and remaining fuel reserves dry up, leaving the facility unable to function."  The United Nations noted::

The regional directors of the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), children’s agency UNICEF and health agency WHO, said they were “horrified” at latest reports which indicate many have been killed – including children – in facilities across Gaza city and other northern areas of the Strip.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society is reporting that the second largest hospital in Gaza, Al-Quds, is in effect out of service due to fuel shortages with the NGO saying it has only been able to make sporadic contact with the facility.

Writing on social media platform X, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said having managed to establish contact with the largest hospital, Al Shifa, in the past few hours, "the situation is dire and perilous."

He said medics had been three days without electricity and water "and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential care.

"The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances. Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly", he added.

He said the hospital "is not functioning as a hospital anymore", concurring with the regional directors that there must be international intervention.

News reports quoting the health ministry, said earlier on Saturday that five wounded patients have died because they could not be operated on due to a lack of fuel.

Two babies in the intensive care unit there were reported to have died on Saturday, with water, food and electricity cut off.

Tedros expressed grave concern for the safety of staff and patients caught in crossfire late on Saturday noting that Israeli tanks were reportedly surrounding Al Shifa.

The Israeli military has repeatedly denied its forces are targeting hospitals, claiming that Hamas and other militants are using the facilities as shields with their headquarters located beneath Al Shifa.

“Intense hostilities surrounding several hospitals in northern Gaza are preventing safe access for health staff, the injured, and other patients”, said the statement released by Laila Baker of UNFPA, UNICEF Regional Director Adele Khodr, and Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, of WHO.



Meanwhile on Monday, the UN flag flew at half-mast at the Organisation’s offices around the world in memory of the 101 staff members of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ massacres perpetrated in southern Israel on 7 October.

“Today, we join the UN community in a moment of silence to mourn and honour our colleagues killed in Gaza,” UN World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain wrote on social platform X.

At a solemn ceremony at the UN Office in Geneva, Director-General Tatiana Valovaya thanked staff for their sacrifice, highlighting the importance of their work at a time when multilateralism was under threat.


August 19, 2003.  That's what comes to mind.  That's the date of an attack on the UN in Baghdad.  It was a deadly attack that left 22 people dead.  World Humanitarian Day was commemorated to remember those aid workers who lost their lives. 

22 day died and the world was horrified.  But now 101 UN workers have died in the assault in Gaza and the Israeli government seems to think they should get off with a 'whoopsi!'


United Nations workers observed a minute's silence on Monday to honor the more than 100 employees killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began last month as UN flags flew at half-mast. 

Staff at UN offices in Geneva bowed their heads as a candle was lit in memory of the 101 employees of UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza.

"This is the highest number of aid workers killed in the history of our organization in such a short time," said Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the United Nations in Geneva.

"We are gathered here today, united in this very symbolic location, to pay respect to our brave colleagues who sacrificed their lives while serving under the United Nations flag."

UNRWA has said that some staff members were killed while queuing for bread while others were killed along with their families in their homes in Israel's aerial and ground war against Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 cross-border assault by the group. 



As the assault continues, the protests increase.  Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) notes, "Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave's hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory's humanitarian crisis." BBC NEWS explains, "It was the biggest UK rally since [. . .]  7 October."  We've removed the phrase "since the war between Israel and Hamas began on" because the war didn't begin that day.  October 8th? That's when the latest assault on Gaza began because Gaza's been under assault for years.  Fatima al-Kassab (NPR) adds, "Protesters marched overwhelmingly peacefully through the city, meeting at London's Hyde Park and walking to the U.S. Embassy. The Met police reported 'no issues'' with the protest itself, saying that it had stuck to the prescribed route. The route for Saturday's march, which coincided with Armistice Day, was intentionally drawn up by protest organizers to avoid London's war memorials such as the Cenotaph, where two minutes of silence were held to commemorate the U.K. war dead an hour before the march began."  Mark Townsend, Tobi Thomas, Rajeev Syal and Toby Helm (GUARDIAN) quote activist Rachel Solnick,  "I feel really appalled by how some of the framing around liberation for Palestine has been as if there’s an opposition, or some kind of binary between Jewish safety and Palestinian safety. I absolutely disagree with that framing.  I think that loads of us who have Jewish ancestry feel really strongly that what is taking place in Palestine is ethnic cleansing and we don’t want it to happen in our names. It feels so important to gather here in numbers, as Jews and as members of the British public in general, to counter that narrative."  Chris Marsden (WSWS) observes, "Sir Keir Starmer’s backing of Israel has made him the most despised Labour leader since Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq war in 2003 based on lies. This has led to mass resignations and a collapse of support in inner city areas. Many demonstrators carried homemade banners targeting Starmer as an accomplice to war crimes."  UK SOCIALIST WORKER reports:


 The national march for Palestine—of at least 800,000 people—in London on Saturday made even the massive protests of the last month seem small. 

“Now I have hope, now I think we can make a real difference to help stop the agony of Gaza,” protester Rania told Socialist Worker. She was born in Ramallah in Palestine and fears for her family and friends.

It was so big that there was a demo to the demo. Half an hour before the advertised start time, around 50,000 or more marchers packed the mile-long street from Oxford Circus to the assembly point at Marble Arch

Marcher Alex said, “I have been on the sit-ins and marches. I can’t rest and just go back to ‘normal life’. It’s hard for me to understand why even more of us aren’t on the streets and closing down buildings and places where people work. We need to stop society.”

Mariam is a GP. She told Socialist Worker that she couldn’t stand aside and watch a genocide happen in real-time. “As a health worker I have to stand against what’s happening in Gaza,” she said. “Israel is bombing hospitals and ambulances and killing my colleagues.

Raw fury at Israel and its backers was everywhere. Maryam came from Manchester to be at the demonstration because she was “just so angry” “I can’t take the double standards,” she told Socialist Worker. 

“Why is it that when the Ukrainian people fight back with Molotov cocktails everyone celebrates them but if the Palestinians do the same they are terrorists? I’m also sick of the media saying things like ‘Palestinians were killed’—no they were murdered.

“I know why this double standard exists—because the Palestinians are mostly Muslims.” 

Marchers were proud to have defied the cops’ and home secretary Suella Braverman’s attempts to halt the demonstration and slur protesters.

“Piss off Braverman, we’re on the streets and you can’t stop us. Your lies about ‘hate marches’ are so rubbish,” said health worker Andy Wollerton from the West Midlands. “Braverman’s the hate-person.” 

At the rally at the end of the march, Lindsey German from the Stop The War Coalition said, “The police wanted to call off the march. The prime minister wanted it called off. Braverman wanted to ban the march. But we marched and we will keep marching. 

“If there is any violence today it is the fault of pound shop Enoch Powell, the home secretary. She should be sacked.”

Encouraged by Braverman, the thugs of the far right fought the cops at the Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall as they showed how they remember wars. Meanwhile, their fuhrer, Nazi Tommy Robinson, drove to safety in a taxi.

Demonstrators knew who to blame for Western support for Israel. As they arrived at the US embassy in south London, they chanted, “Joe Biden—blood on your hands. Rishi Sunak—blood on your hands. Keir Starmer—blood on your hands”.

Anger at Starmer ran through the march. Hazel from east London said, “He’s a murderer, I hate him more than Sunak because he’s supposed to be the opposition. He will do anything to keep in with the rich, even ignore kids’ deaths.” 

Imran Hussain, the MP who resigned as a Labour shadow minister this week, told the rally, “It was the people of Bradford who sent me to Westminster. They expect me to stand up against injustice.  This is beyond a humanitarian crisis, it’s a breach of international law and a war crime.”

Labour MP Apsana Begum said, “The situation is urgent. It is chilling—as are the attempts to vilify those opposing mass killing. 

“History will judge those that have the green light to slaughter. Demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to the oppression of the Palestinians. None of us are free till we are all free.”

There is a point—very rare—when a march moves from a normal demonstration to a city-halting, government-defying, revolt-inspiring social force.

Saturday 11 November was one of those. All of those who were part of it will speak of it to friends, workmates and those they live alongside in the next few days. They will remember it for years to come.

People speak sometimes of a change “from quantity to quality”. It means that increasing size doesn’t mean an event is bigger than another one, but that it becomes much more significant. 

This should be the spur to urgent and more militant resistance that’s desperately needed to break the British government from its full-throated support for Israel’s crimes. The magnificent march has to be a launch pad for even more effective action. 

There must be more demos, more sit-ins, more occupations and blockades, more campuses disrupted. And we need more discussion, more debate, more educating ourselves and talking about a stronger socialist fight on all the class issues workers face, as well as Palestine.

This was by far the biggest ever march for Palestine in Britain—and that’s partly because it’s not just about Palestine, but all the injustice people face. The trade union block on the march was bigger than previous ones with banners from branches or the national NEU, UCU, Unite, CWU, RMT, Aslef and PCS. 

Stop The War has called a workplace day of action for Wednesday—15 November. Everyone should try to build it and make it disruptive.

Those who are already set to strike that day should make Palestine a theme of their day and urge others to join them. This includes 15 further education colleges, the Go North East bus strikers, the Barnet mental health social workers and others.

The organisers of Saturday’s march called for local protests across Britain next Saturday 18 November, and said they will announce another national demonstration soon. 

Freeing Palestine will take a revolution. This movement, if it escalates still further, can point the way to building the forces that can make one.

  • Around 15,000 people took to the streets of Glasgow. 
  • Around 2,000 people joined a march for Palestine in Cardiff. Some protesters then occupied Cardiff Central station.
     
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.   



Another notable protest was one in Austin, Texas.  Pooja Salhotra (TEXAS TRIBUNE) reports, "Thousands of Texans descended upon the state Capitol Sunday afternoon in support of Palestinians to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. and Texas aid to Israel. [. . .] The crowd stretched across multiple blocks and spilled onto sidewalks. One group climbed onto a nearby parking garage and held banners over the roof. Another group carried a white banner that listed the names of every person killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. The protest was organized by a coalition of pro-Palestine groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Party for Socialism and Liberation."  Bianca Moreno-Paz (AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN) adds, "Chants of 'From Palestine to Mexico, the walls have got to go,' thundered through the crowd as they unrolled a scroll measuring 100 feet, listing the Gazan children killed by Israeli attacks since Oct. 7. Overhead, an airplane circled the Capitol, its banner saying, 'Save Palestine, Cease Fire Now'."  Tan Radford (FOX 7) quotes Abdullah Alqaroot stating, ""It's incredible, I don't think Austin has seen this big of a crowd. It's just a testament of what the people want, and it is a testament for what Palestinians are going through, which is a pretty hard time right now."




Today's protest in Austin follows a Thursday walk-out on the UT Austin campus.  Lily Kepner (AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN) reports:


More than 1,000 University of Texas students and community members gathered in pouring rain Thursday afternoon in support of Palestinians.

The Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which serves as both the community and UT student organizing group for Palestinians in Austin, held a “Walk Out” event Thursday at the Gregory Gym. Students left class to gather and chant for the end of the occupation of Gaza and the end of aid to Israel.

An estimated 1,200 attendees then marched to the UT Main Mall, chanting under umbrellas.

Thursday’s walkout was part of a national walkout held by Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. There are more than 180 chapters on U.S. college campuses.


Protests over the weekend also included Chicago and WSWS reports on that protest:

Thousands marched in the streets of Chicago again on Sunday to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Demonstrators gathered around the Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue along the commercial shopping district of the Magnificent Mile.

The demonstration on Sunday followed one on Thursday evening where over 5,000 protested the visit of President Joe Biden’s visit to Chicago for a fundraiser, chanting “Genocide Joe” over and over at the heavily policed event. 

At the march on Sunday, a number of protestors came to the IYSSE table, purchased literature and signs and spoke at length with a number of reporters from the WSWS.

“It’s atrocious what Israel has been doing against Palestinians for years, and I never supported anything they were doing against Palestinians,” said Han, a public school teacher in a Chicago suburb.

“As far as what Republicans and Democrats have been doing for Palestinians, there were apparently peace talks for a while but I think that turned out to be all fluff, considering they were supporting Israel the entire time. They are two sides of the same coin. If Israel benefits them, why would they support Palestinians?”

When asked how the billions spent on war funding every year affects the US working class, he said, “There’s a hundred things that it could be used for. For one thing, it could go to education. Since I’m a teacher that’s the first thing that comes to mind. It could go toward social programs for the elderly and working class children, to infrastructure in rural areas that don’t have much maintenance done on roads, public transportation access, housing. I don’t want to sound like an isolationist, but there are a hundred things that can be solved here at home instead of going abroad to police the world, so to speak. 

“There needs to be an alternative to capitalist and imperialist society and politics, for that matter. They say money’s the root of all evil, but when you follow the dollar signs of what’s going on between Palestine and Israel, you see a lot of it’s tied to US war profiteering companies. And these major corporate interests are supporting Democrats and Republicans during their campaigns.”

Han also spoke to the broader context of opposition to capitalism: “It’s hard for me to justify the belief that capitalism is helping people, and the nonsense that there is a ‘trickle down effect’ of capitalism. Everyone at the top is living fine, but down here we’re all suffering. 

“Why do we have to struggle just to make it out here to demonstrate and support Palestinians? I work in a Republican district where a lot of officials are Trump supporters, and I’m concerned for my job if they knew I was here. Why should it be that way? Why does it have to be a struggle for people to put food on the table and have housing? It shouldn’t be that way. These are basic necessities for every human being. It shouldn’t be a struggle to live in any country.”

Ryan, a young actor and worker said, “I’m out here because what’s happening here is incredibly wrong. And because what’s happening is not just relegated to Palestine, not just relegated to Gaza, it’s the entire world. When we fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people, we’re fighting for everybody’s liberation.

“The people who are oppressing the Palestinian people are the same people who are saying that it’s okay to destroy the world for their own profits, for their own profits. 

“So for me, with what Biden is doing, it’s just incredibly disgusting. What’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is on display for the entire world to see. We just talked about Motaz Azaiza, who is documenting so clearly what is happening on the ground. It’s so easy to get on Instagram and see what he’s posting and see what he’s sharing.

“And then for all that to be in the face of the world, for the president of the United States to authorize billions more dollars to this genocidal government that is trying to eradicate these people… Meanwhile, we have our own problems in this country that can be solved with all that money. It’s just disgusting to me.

“I did vote for Biden in 2020. But now do I even want to vote for anybody at this point? What is the point of engaging with this system, if all it does is it fuels governments like Israel who are committing genocide against innocent people?

“People who are working class or lower class in terms of the social hierarchy rising up and saying, ‘no, this is wrong’ is a beautiful, wonderful thing.” 


AP notes, "Activists protesting corporate profits, environmental abuses, poor working conditions and the Israel-Hamas war marched in downtown San Francisco on Sunday, united in their opposition to a global trade summit that will draw President Joe Biden and leaders from nearly two dozen countries." Kaitlin McKinley Becker (NBC BOSTON) notes, "Hundreds gathered Sunday in Boston's Copley Square at the "Rally to Return," calling for a ceasefire now. Demonstrators at the pro-Palestine rally told NBC10 Boston that they are pushing for an end to U.S. funds supporting Israel in this war."

Protests were noted on Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW!


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

We return to Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. The Israeli American scholar has been described by the U.S. Holocaust Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on genocide. He spoke to us on Wednesday, one day after the House voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, for her criticism of Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bartov, you are a professor at Brown University in Providence. You’re in Cambridge right now. And I wanted to ask you about the dissent on college campuses and how they’re being dealt with. In Cambridge, at Harvard, you know about the students who were protesting on behalf of Palestinian rights. A truck carries around their faces, and above their faces, it says, “antisemite.” And on television, you’ll see pieces on antisemitism, which is very real in the world, for example, the burning of the Austrian cemetery in Vienna and many other situations. But they will be blended together — this is on the mainstream networks — with images of people protesting, holding a Palestinian flag. Can you talk about what’s happening on college campuses and people fearing that their concern for justice is being translated as antisemitism and cause for them to be blacklisted?

OMER BARTOV: So, look, this is a very complex issue, I agree. I think part of it is, frankly, ignorance about the reality on the ground in Israel-Palestine. And that has to do, obviously, not with your show, but with much of how the mainstream media in the United States is presenting things. But also, young people, students can find other sources of information to better know what is happening on the ground. So, generally, I think there’s a little bit of an issue of information.

Antisemitism is real, as you say, and has been growing, and is a not just lamentable, but frightening phenomenon. And obviously, I have no sympathy with it. But there is, and there has been for a long time, a tendency to label any criticism of the state of Israel, any criticism of the policies of any particular government, let alone criticism of Israel as a state as such, as antisemitism. And that is a policy of the right wing in Israel, and that’s a policy of the right wing in this country, and it has nothing to do with the truth. One can be a Zionist or a non-Zionist or an anti-Zionist, and not be antisemitic. One can be, again, Zionist, but against particular Israeli policies. I very strongly support the existence of the state of Israel, and I’m highly critical of its policies, and some people would call me a self-hating Jew. But that is nonsense. That has to do with criticism of policies that not only function as oppression of Palestinians over a very long period of time, 56 years of occupation of Palestinians, a refusal by the Israeli government to ever talk about what happened in 1948, so this kind of shutting up the entire conversation, and at the same time a belief that Jews, like other nations, have a right of self-determination. So we have to separate the two.

I think that at the moment, in the demonstrations, there is a sort of heightening of passions, and in part it is because of the policies of the Israeli government. I do feel that when people march in support of Palestinian lives — and I’m very much in favor of that — one does also have to remember what happened on October 7. On October 7th, over a thousand Jewish civilians, Israeli Jewish civilians — there were actually some Arabs there, too, some Bedouin, who live there, too — were butchered in the most heinous manner. And this was live-streamed. This has been deeply wounding to Israeli society. Almost every person in Israel knows people who were killed there or kidnapped, including myself. Members of my own family were either killed or are now in Gaza. And one has to recall that there are 240 people now held as hostages. And so, I think that when when protests the policies of Israel, for the sake of — and this has to do also with what Representative Tlaib said, which I completely agreed with. I thought it was a very moving speech. But I think it’s important to also stress that other side.

There has been a dehumanization of both sides. Occupation dehumanizes people. It dehumanizes the occupier, and it dehumanizes the occupied. And the way to deal with this is to talk about the political future: How do we move forward? A ceasefire would be wonderful, and I’m very much in support of it, but it won’t put an end to the violence. The end to the violence will come only as a result of a peaceful resolution of this 100-year-old conflict which has caused so much blood. That is, I think, what we should try to push the American administration to do, to change its policies, to put pressure on the Israeli government to finally relent and to begin again negotiations with the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you about the term “from the river to the sea,” which the Israeli government takes, and those who charge others with antisemitism say, it means the annihilation of the Jewish population of Israel. I’m looking at the Likud party platform of March 1977, “The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel),” which is the land of Israel. And it says, “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” That’s between the sea and the Jordan River, between the river and the sea. Can you talk about that term?

OMER BARTOV: Yes. You know, the originators of the Likud party, the Revisionist part of Zionism, under the great leader Jabotinsky, had a song that they used to sing. And the song was, “The Jordan has two banks / this one belongs to us, and the other one, too.” That is, they were not only talking actually about so-called historical Palestine, which is Mandatory Palestine of the interwar period; they were actually talking also about parts of the Jordan, of what is now the Kingdom of Jordan, as belonging to the future Jewish state.

So, when we talk about “from the Jordan to the sea,” we are talking about the territory that is now controlled by Israel. In that territory, there are now 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians — 2 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, 3 million Palestinians who are in the West Bank, and two to two-and-a-half million Palestinians — most of the population of Gaza are refugees in Gaza. So it’s 7 million versus 7 million.

To talk about a Palestinian state or a Jewish state between the Jordan and the sea, the question, of course, arises: So, what happened to the — what will happen to the other half? That is really the question. If one talks about a Palestinian state that refuses to recognize the Jewish right of self-determination — that is, of the right of Jews to have a state of their own — the question is: What will happen to the Jews there? Would they go back to Europe, as some people say, whatever that actually means? And if you have a state the way the Israeli right, the Likud party, and now the much more radical, really Jewish supremacist elements in Netanyahu’s government, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, these people who sort of trace their roots back to Rabbi Kahane, who are really Nazis — if you think — if you ask yourself, “What do they mean?” they want to create a Jewish state that does not have Palestinians in it, nor Arabs in it. And the policy has been consistently to make life as unbearable for the Palestinians there, so that either they will finally move out, which they have no intention of doing, or to use an emergency situation, such as exists right now, under the cover of which they could be ethnically cleansed. And that’s a major worry now among Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, who are worried about a second Nakba, a second expulsion of Palestinians after 1948, something that has been mentioned by a number of Israeli politicians, and, of course, a major worry in the West Bank and in Gaza.

So, what we need to think of is not the term “from the Jordan to the sea,” which is the territory that Israel now controls, but how does that territory get to be shared by these two groups in ways that do not include oppression, lack of any rights, lack of equality, and certainly does not include violence and expulsion.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Professor Omer Bartov, the issue of a two-state solution or a one-state solution, if you could take that on in a nutshell?

OMER BARTOV: Yeah. So, you know, I used to be a strong supporter of the two-state solution. And I gradually realized that this was a sort of fig leaf of the Israeli left, while the country kept settling the West Bank and making it impossible to create an independent Palestinian state there. And we kept saying, “Well, but at the end, there will be a two-state solution.” So, the traditional two-state solution, to my mind, is no longer viable. ’

So what is viable? And I think — and I belong to a group of people who have been talking about it for quite a while — that the only solution is a confederation, which would mean that there would be two states. There would be a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. They both would have full sovereignty. And they would be along more or less the borders of 1967, the Green Line, so-called, but they will make a distinction between residency and citizenship, so that people, say, Jews who live in a Palestinian state, could remain Israeli citizens, who have rights of residency in a Palestinian state, but have to then adhere to all the laws, rules and regulations of that Palestinian state. And Palestinians who live, say, in Nablus and would like to live in Haifa, like a French man from Paris who would like to live in Berlin, could move to Haifa, and they could have rights of residency, but they’d have to conform to all the rules and regulations of the Israeli state, but they would vote for — to a Palestinian parliament. And Jerusalem would be the joint capital of both. And above that, there would be institutions that will take care of the mutual affairs of these two states, which are very tightly woven together now by the infrastructure, electricity, water and so forth. It’s really impossible to cut them apart. That is — right now, of course, sounds like a pipe dream. But I think that in the long run, that is probably the only viable solution.

And I’ll add one last thing to that, which is very important both to Jews and Palestinians, which is that both states would have the right of return. The Jews could say, as they say now, that Jews who want to become Israeli citizens, wherever they live, can come. And Palestinians in the Palestinian state could say all Palestinian refugees who would like to come back to Palestine could come and become Palestinian citizens, and, under certain rules, could also move to the Israeli part of so-called Mandatory Palestine as residents.

AMY GOODMAN: And why not simply a one-state solution?

OMER BARTOV: I think a one-state solution is something that neither one side nor the other wants, because the Palestinians, quite rightly, want the right of self-determination, want to have their own state, as do the Jews. And both sides are afraid that the other side would be more powerful. Obviously, right now, under current conditions, the state of Israel is much more powerful militarily, economically than the Palestinian part of the land. And so, in that sense, a one-state solution would actually perpetuate Jewish supremacy in the whole country.

AMY GOODMAN: Omer Bartov is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. The Israeli American scholar is one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. He recently signed an open letter warning of Israel committing a potential genocide in Gaza.

Coming up, three Palestinian groups have petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for committing genocide and apartheid. Back in 30 seconds.


Two more videos regarding protests.





Now let's wind down with Matteo Lane's latest comedy special.






New content at THIRD:



The following sites updated:







Sunday, November 12, 2023

REACHER, Doo-Doo DeSantis,

Let's start with some REACHER news.  Season two starts next month.  AMAZON PRIME will deliver three new episodes on December 15th (Friday) and it will then do one episode a week wrapping on Friday, January 19th.  Season one was great and I'm really looking forward to watching season two.




But it turns out it was a lie, according to his own appointee, who sought to expose him for it, reported The Tallahassee Democrat.

Ray Rodrigues, DeSantis' appointee to chancellor of the State University System of Florida, told the paper that the universities found proof that the groups weren't "subservient or under" that national organization when they investigated the constitutions of the two chapters of the National Students for Justice in Palestine.

While the national groups may be drawing criticism and accusations of terrorism, Rodrigues said the student groups aren't.

"The universities have not deactivated their university chapters," he told the Florida Board of Governors meeting on Thursday. "Additionally, both universities have obtained legal opinions. We have reviewed those opinions and, in short, they raise concerns about potential personal liability for university actors who deactivate the student registered organizations."



Oh, Doo-Doo.  Maybe he can take comfort in the fact that he's not the most despised in the world.  Right now, the most despised would be the Israeli government.  Abby Zimet (COMMON DREAMS) reports:


On the same day GOP clowns and yahoos played out an evil, vapid game of condemning the only Palestinian-American member of Congress for opposing genocide and insisting "we cannot lose our shared humanity," Palestinian doctors facing "an avalanche of human suffering" unveiled their grisly new acronym for a kind of war victim "unique to the Gaza Strip": WCNSF, for "Wounded Child No Surviving Family." One doctor: "(This) should be seared into our collective conscience, and haunt us."

In its grotesque distortion of a righteous stand, the House finally censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib for denouncing a savage Israeli assault that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians - most civilians, almost half children - in a month. Twenty-two Democrats joined Republicans to vote for a resolution that falsely accused Tlaib of calling for the "destruction of the state of Israel"; its sponsor Rep. Rich McCormick also charged Tlaib “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel." In fact, Tlaib has painfully, repeatedly mourned the loss of civilian lives on both sides while decrying a brutal apartheid system that gave rise to it and an ongoing, anti-Palestinian bigotry that has sustained it. In a tearful speech, she argued she seeks only to ensure that all people can live "in peace and equality." "I can't believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable," she said. "The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you." Insisting "no government is beyond criticism," she noted a majority of Americans support a ceasefire, "but this Congress isn't listening to their voices."

This was the second censure effort after Marjorie Space-Laser Greene unsuccessfully charged Tlaib led "an insurrection" by joining a peaceful protest of Jews demanding a ceasefire; Greene tried (and failed) again by changing the language to "illegal occupation," evidently without irony. Still, critics blasted the malevolent idiocy behind GOP efforts to silence Tlaib rather than save lives, and their partisan, unprecedented wielding of censure to do it - especially after they remained silent when GOP colleagues compared all Palestinians to Nazis and called for turning Gaza into "a parking lot." In stark contrast, argued supporters, "Congresswoman Tlaib's moral courage will never be extinguishable." "Tlaib should ask for a copy of the censure resolution, dip it in bronze, and hang it on her office wall," wrote Derek Davison. "Being condemned by this abhorrent mob of sociopaths is a badge of honor if ever there was one." Others blasted Dems who joined in the bigotry. "It is clear that while Israelis and Palestinians may be equal in the eyes of God, they are not in the eyes of the U.S. government," wrote Waleed Shahid. "It's now up to Democrats of conscience to dismantle the horrific hierarchy of human value that has taken hold at the highest places in our party."

Meanwhile, the killing goes on. It has been a month of "unimaginable loss" in Gaza, with deaths creeping up toward 11,000. UN and other rights workers describe "disastrous" and "catastrophic" conditions: No food, power, clean water, flour for bread; infectious disease "surging" from failing sanitation systems; hospitals overflowing with patients on floors as depleted doctors perform surgery without anaesthetic. Relentless Israeli airstrikes hit a humanitarian convoy of trucks carrying vital medical supplies to hospitals; unfathomably, they also hit Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital, including the pediatric cancer ward, reportedly twice. Wrenching videos show civilians fleeing Gaza City on foot, white flags and hands in the air, and the aftermath of a bombing in al-Maghazi refugee camp that killed nine members of one family - people weeping, yelling, running with small bodies to an idling car hoping to get them to a hospital alive. Media coverage often worsens the crimes: Talk of a "conflict," use of a passive "were killed" with no mention of the killers, like an act of God; disbelief about the devastation - "We must verify our deaths as we die" - amidst the grim reality that, "There is not a single person who will come out unscathed, physically or psychologically."

As always, the true victims are children. Israel has now killed over 4,200 Palestiniain children, one roughly every 10 minutes, and twice the total killed since 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza combined. Thousands more remain missing under rubble, presumed dead - another unfathomable. Those are just the "lucky" ones; many more now die slowly of hunger and thirst, of infections from drinking sewage or sea water, of cancer untreated and disease left to spread. These were children already broken, scarred, their lives convulsed by violence, whose mental health has been "pushed beyond breaking point." Since the 2007 blockade, 80% of Gazan children have reported feeling perpetual fear, grief, anxiety; now, with death on all sides, there is no safe place to take their trauma. "There is a lot of loss and a lot of pain," says a UN staff member and father of three young children. "We are fearful of what the coming hours will bring, what tomorrow will bring. My children look into my eyes every day. They are searching for answers. I have no answers for them." So many children have lost so many family members, says Jason Lee of Save the Children, "We are running out of words (to) articulate the scale of children’s suffering."



Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, November 10, 2023.  The assault on Gaza continues. 


The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there have been some “issues” getting aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

At a briefing, the agency said the crossing had been designed for pedestrians, not trucks.

Only 65 trucks carrying food, medicine, hygiene supplies and water, and seven ambulances, crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Wednesday, it said, adding that none of that aid can reach northern Gaza.

“We cannot drive to the north at the current point, which is of course deeply frustrating because we know there are several hundred thousand people who remain in the north,” said OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke.

“If there is a hell on Earth today, its name is northern Gaza,” he said. “It is a life of fear by day and darkness at night and what do you tell your children in such a situation, it’s almost unimaginable — that the fire they see in the sky is out to kill them?” he said.


"If there is a hell on Earth today, its name is northern Gaza."  CNN notes:


“Demands for civilians to relocate to an Israeli Defence Force designated ‘safe zone’ are also very alarming,” Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said during a news conference in Amman, Jordan.
“A so-called ‘safe zone,’ when established unilaterally, can heighten risks to civilians, and raises real questions as to whether security can be guaranteed in practice. At the moment, nowhere in Gaza is safe, as bombardments are being reported in all parts of the Strip.”




NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israel and the United States are continuing to reject calls for a ceasefire in Gaza as the death toll from Israel’s bombardment tops 10,500, including over 4,000 Palestinian children. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza have evacuated their homes on foot as Israeli troops attempt to forcibly seize control of the area. The U.N. estimates 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza — that’s 70% of Gaza’s population. Many Palestinians fear Israel will never allow them to return to their homes.

On Wednesday, the top human rights official at the United Nations, Volker Türk, traveled to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, where he accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes.

VOLKER TÜRK: The Rafah crossing has been the symbolic lifeline for the last month for the 2.3 million in Gaza. The lifeline has been unjustly, outrageously thin. These are the gates to a living nightmare, a nightmare where people have been suffocating under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel. … On the other side of this gate is Gaza, already described as the world’s biggest open-air prison before 7 October, under a 56-year occupation and a 16-year blockade by Israel.

The atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups on the 7th of October were heinous. They were war crimes, as is the continued holding of hostages. The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians is also a war crime, as is unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: In Gaza City, Israeli airstrikes have hit areas near Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital. Meanwhile, most operations at al-Quds Hospital have been halted due to dwindling fuel supplies and daily Israeli attacks on areas around the hospital. Most roads to the hospital have been destroyed. The hospital is run by Palestine Red Crescent Society, which is part of the International Red Cross.

We go now to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where we’re joined by Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

Thanks so much for being with us. If you could start off by talking about the state of the hospitals in Gaza right now? And what hospitals are you being told that you must have evacuated? And what is the response of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Nebal?

NEBAL FARSAKH: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

The situation now in hospitals is dire. Almost 18 hospitals out of 35 in Gaza Strip have been — have gone out of service, either due to bombardment or because extreme shortage of — they are running out of fuel and medical supplies. The rest of the hospitals are operating under extreme difficult situations. They are having extreme shortages of medical supplies and medicine, as well as almost running out of fuel.

For example, al-Quds Hospital, yesterday we had to reduce all services and operations in al-Quds Hospital to the extent that the major and main generator in the hospital has been turned off, and now we are only using the small generator. The hospital’s surgical ward has been shut down, as well. The hospital’s oxygen generator also has been shut down, and now we are using oxygen cylinders. According to the information, we are only now for 24 hours, and we will be completely shutting down, because we will be running out of fuel. Basically, up to this moment, none of the aid has been allowed to get into al-Quds Hospital.

This is the fourth day, and al-Quds Hospital has been under intense bombardments, along of all roads that lead to al-Quds Hospital are closed. Because of the bombardment, the roads are closed. Our emergency medical services team, they are also inside the hospital, so they are unable to go out of the hospital to arrive the wounded people in the area. They can see from where they are inside the hospital that there are many wounded people very close to the hospital, but, unfortunately, they feel helpless. Because of the intense bombardment, it’s so much dangerous. So they even can’t go out to arrive those wounded people and save their lives. And the area where the hospital is located now became so much dangerous. As highlighted, all roads are closed, so nobody can get into al-Quds Hospital.

Unfortunately, none of the aid has been allowed to get into al-Quds Hospital. Two days ago, we were waiting for aid to come in through ICRC. However, the ICRC convoy was targeted by Israeli occupation forces. And unfortunately, they were unable to deliver the aid to al-Quds Hospital.

So, now the situation, not only the problem is the fuel; we are barely having food or water for our staff and our patients and for over 14,000 civilians who are currently sheltering inside the hospital. Because of the continuous bombardments, all the windows have been falled down — I mean, the glass. So they are literally open. And at nighttime, it became so much cold, even for families who are lying and sleeping on the ground. You can’t imagine the picture of children who are feeling so much cold and don’t even have a blanket to warm them up. So now we are in urgent need for everything, for blankets, for food and water. Those children, they even have a very minimum amount of food. As I mentioned, we barely have even food for the staff or for the patients. This is the third day all Gaza City and the north is out of bread, because all bakeries have already run out of fuel. So none of Gazans who are now currently in Gaza and the north are able to get any piece of bread.

There’s still in Gaza and the north almost 500,000 civilians who are still now sheltering in schools and hospitals in those area where Israel forced its people to evacuate. It’s not easy to say just “evacuate,” because intense bombardments are just taking place all over, and it’s not safe to evacuate yourself, taking into consideration that, as you highlighted, many people have to do that on foot under intense bombardment. There is no transportation. There is complete destruction of the road and infrastructure. And simply an ICRC convoy was targeted while it was on its way from the south to the north. So, how it would be safe for civilians to evacuate themselves to the south?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nebal, so if you could respond to the fact that Israel has said, either evacuate from al-Quds Hospital, or the Palestinian Red Crescent is responsible for any deaths? And then, also, you know, you’ve said that oxygen generators have now been shut off, you’re relying on oxygen cylinders, that fuel is running out. I mean, what do you — how will this go, if you don’t have access to fuel? What do you fear will happen to these patients who are dependent on oxygen, not to mention all of the other medical supplies that are dwindling, if not have entirely run out?

NEBAL FARSAKH: Yes. We have announced repeatedly that we have around 500 patients inside the hospital. Many of them are connected to life support machines. They are in the intensive care unit. We have babies in incubators. We don’t have the means to evacuate them safely. Evacuating them means killing them. Taking into consideration that already intense bombardments are taking place, so there will be no even any way to evacuate the staff, along with 14,000 civilians who are currently taking shelter because, simply, they have nowhere, no way to go to.

Hospitals, healthcare personnel, healthcare facilities should be protected under international humanitarian law. There will be no justification for Israel targeting al-Quds Hospital, although — even the WHO has announced that evacuation orders against hospitals are impossible to implement. They constitute a death penalty for patients. Doctors, nurses, healthcare workers should not put in an option to choose either to lose your life or risk your life or even turn back — turn your back to your patients and just go away. This is not acceptable.

And this situation, to be under intense bombardment, under constant fear and panic of losing your life, it’s also unacceptable. As I said, for over at least a week, now two weeks almost, intense bombardments are taking place in a very close area of the hospital, to the extent that most of the buildings in the surrounding area of the hospital has been damaged. Airstrikes are taking place even 15 meters away from the hospital. It has resulted to at least 16 people were injured during these bombardments, to the extent that a patient in the intensive care unit was also injured. This should not be acceptable.

I can’t describe the situation now inside the hospital, when I’m talking about 14,000 civilians — most of them are children and women — just sleeping on the hospital’s ground. Every single corner in the hospital, there is internally displaced people, who have no other option. This is the last choice for them. It’s just seeking shelter to a place they thought they will be in a safe place. Unfortunately, this is not the case, because Israel, it looks like it’s absolutely over and above the international humanitarian law.

Unfortunately, as a humanitarian organization, we have completely run out of all of solutions. Over three weeks now we have been calling on the international community to intervene immediately to allow the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and including fuel. We have warned repeatedly, “We are running out of fuel.” We have already run out of fuel a week ago. So, we managed to get some fuel from some gas stations who had some left over. Unfortunately, because of the continuous blockade on Gaza, particularly, and the north, it’s now an impossible mission to find one liter of gas, one liter of fuel in Gaza and the north. We have come to an end. We have already reduced all of our operations, all of our services, in order just to manage to take care of those patients who are now inside the hospital. And although we have taken all of these measures, we are only for 24 hours. At that point, the hospital’s small generator will shut down, and then the lives of those who are connected to life support machines, they will lose their life. And we even — we even can’t imagine the situation we will be in. As a humanitarian organization, we feel helpless. We feel helpless.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Nebal, your response to Israel saying, if you don’t evacuate al-Quds Hospital, your organization, the Palestinian Red Crescent, is responsible for any deaths?

NEBAL FARSAKH: As I said, international humanitarian law is clear: Hospitals, healthcare worker, healthcare facilities, civilians should not be a target. If an attack or whatsoever happened for al-Quds Hospital, this will be a responsibility of Israel, the responsibility of the international community, who are, up to this moment, fail to stand up for humanity, fail to pressure Israel to ensure the protection of civilians, healthcare personnel and healthcare facilities. Up to this moment, four colleagues were killed during conducting their humanitarian role, trying to save other people’s life. Twenty-two other paramedics were injured. At least eight ambulances completely went out of service due to Israeli bombardment and targeted for ambulances. This also should be stopped. Under all circumstances, in all conflicts, healthcare workers, healthcare personnel, healthcare facilities and hospitals, along with civilians, they should be protected. Unfortunately, 70% of the victims, of thousands of people who were killed in Gaza, are children, women and elderly people. This war crime should be stopped.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nebal, I mean, if you could talk specifically about the situation of children, over 4,000 killed, countless others thought to be under the rubble? But apart from that, there’s a new acronym that’s been in use in Gaza hospitals: WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family. If you could say something about that, Nebal, whether you’re witnessing that, how much you’re witnessing it in hospitals there, al-Quds included?

NEBAL FARSAKH: Unfortunately, because of the intensive bombardments that is taking place on people’s residential buildings, houses, without even any prior warning, that has resulted to wiping out whole families. And unfortunately, many children who are survivors now, they don’t even have any family member.

We have saved a 12-years-old girl. She was under the rubble for almost 30 hours. Unfortunately, she has lost all of her family. And now she is currently sheltering inside the hospital. Our psychosocial support team try as much as they can to support her, but no words can describe the traumatized situation that this 13-years-old girl, along with other children in Gaza, are living because of this intense bombardment.

Even those who didn’t lose anyone, simply being under intense bombardments day and night, and hearing strong bombardments with complete darkness because of the cut of electricity, is just so much horrifying and panic among those children who are living unprecedented situations that no child in this world, we wish, is be living.

AMY GOODMAN: Nebal Farsakh, we want to thank you for spending this time with us, spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Coming up, we’ll speak to the Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah. Israel has killed dozens of his family members in Gaza in just the past month. Stay with us.

 
Nebal Farsakh stated, "As I said, international humanitarian law is clear: Hospitals, healthcare worker, healthcare facilities, civilians should not be a target. If an attack or whatsoever happened for al-Quds Hospital, this will be a responsibility of Israel, the responsibility of the international community, who are, up to this moment, fail to stand up for humanity, fail to pressure Israel to ensure the protection of civilians, healthcare personnel and healthcare facilities."   Nidal Al-Mughrabi (REUTERS) reports this morning, "Israeli air strikes hit Gaza's biggest hospital, the Al Shifa, on Friday, killing one person and wounding others sheltering there, Palestinian officials said, one of several hospitals reported struck at dawn as Israel battles Hamas in the heart of the enclave."  An hour ago, ALJAZEERA noted:

Gaza resident Motei Ibrahim says the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, is “totally overwhelmed by people who have evacuated their homes”.

“People are living inside the corridors,” he told Al Jazeera from the hospital. “The situation is so dire and so difficult,” Ibrahim said.

“The repetitive scene here is the people who are targeted by the Israeli air strikes frequent the road to the hospital and their relatives and beloved ones come to bid a farewell to them and carry them to their last destination,” he added.

“The grief is overwhelming.”


It's amazing what people can lie to themselves and justify.  And it's worth noting that once they lie like that, the behavior gets easier and easier.  ALJAZEERA notes, "Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra says Israel has bombed al-Shifa Hospital buildings five times since Thursday night." The Israeli government is openly targeting hospitals now.  Gone is any effort to argue that it wasn't them.  It matters less and less, the war machinery keeps grinding on.  And we can thank the feckless leaders like Joe Biden who have refused to address this issue in a rational manner. Andre Damon (WSWS) reports:


On Thursday, as he was leaving for a campaign event in Illinois, US President Joe Biden again categorically reiterated his opposition to a ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Asked, “What are the prospects of a Gaza ceasefire?” Biden replied, “None. No possibility.”

Biden’s comments made clear that the United States is actively instigating Israel’s genocide in Gaza and working to inflame a wider war in the Middle East. They came just two days after White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated again that the United States has no “red lines” on the number of civilian casualties it will accept.

Biden’s remarks sparked worldwide outrage, with clips of his statement viewed or shared by millions of people on all social media platforms. He was met in Chicago by thousands of people demonstrating against US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The crowd chanted, “Genocide Joe” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

While Biden was speaking in Illinois, he was interrupted by a protester who yelled, “10,000 Palestinians have been killed. Half of them are children.”

Before Biden left for Chicago, he was asked whether Israel’s “retaliatory airstrikes” were working, he replied, “Yes,” adding, “they’re hitting the targets they’re seeking.”

So targeting hospitals is working?  Good to know.  Good to know how low Joe is willing to go.  He's a War Criminal.  



Ooh you're slickYou investors in hateYou Saddams and you BushesYou Bin Ladens and snakesYou billionaire bulliesYou're a globalized curseYou put war on the masses while you clean out the purse
And that's how it's done war after warYou old feudal parasites just sacrifice the poorYou've got the cutting edge weapons But your scam's still the same as it's been since the RomansIt's the patriot gameIt's the war racket
You twisters of languageYou creeps of disguiseYour disinformationLike worms in your eyesYou privileged bankersYou gambler thievesYou profit on warThere's less money in peace
That's how it's done time after timeCountry after country, crime after crimeYou pretend it's religion and there's no one to blameFor the dead and impoverished in your little patriot gameHoney, that's the war racket

-- "War Racket," words and music by Buffy Sainte-Marie, first appears on her album MEDICINE SONGS.


Amnesty International has called for a cease-fire. ALJAZEERA noted earlier this week, "The leaders of 18 United Nations agencies and non-profit organisations (NGO) have called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war, expressing 'shock and horror' at the mounting death toll from the conflict."  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) notes:


  As Israeli troops neared the hospital on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on social media that "with ongoing strikes and fighting nearby, we are gravely concerned about the well-being of thousands of civilians there, many children among them, seeking medical care and shelter, including people on life support, those who lost limbs in air strikes, and burn victims."

"Videos from inside al-Shifa's compound, verified by HRW, show hundreds of people in a courtyard next to the [emergency room], including sheltering civilians, medics tending to patients, emergency workers collecting dead bodies, and journalists. Satellite imagery shows many tents there," the group said. "Videos and photos taken in recent days show civilians and emergency workers bringing hundreds of injured and dead people to the hospital day and night, by ambulance, by car, on foot, and by donkey cart. People regularly walk in and out of the hospital's main entrance."



CNN’s Zeena Saifi reports, "Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called for an end to the war in Gaza and the end of the 'forced displacement' of Palestinians."  Mithil Aggarwal (NBC NEWS) notes, "Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed news that Israel would formalize daily humanitarian pauses but said that 'more needs to be done'."  More needs to be done?  Well you're an abject failure so clearly it won't be accomplished by you. 



There’s no question that US aid provides a substantial share of Israel’s war costs. A rough sense of the overall importance of US aid to the Israeli war effort can be developed by comparing the $14 billion in military aid proposed by the Biden administration with an estimate by the Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist, first reported by Reuters. Calcalist estimates that the conflict in Gaza will cost Tel Aviv roughly $50 billion if it goes on for eight to 12 months.

If the Calcalist estimate is on the mark, that would mean that if the $14 billion in proposed US aid is approved and disbursed over the next year, it would account for just over one-quarter of the total cost of the war to Israel. About half of the estimate—$25 billion—represents direct military costs, with the additional costs related to negative economic impacts of the war, compensation for businesses, and reconstruction. If US aid is compared only to the estimate of direct military costs of the war, it would amount to more than half of relevant expenditures. No estimate made in the midst of an ongoing conflict will be entirely accurate, but what we do know suggests that US tax dollars are a major factor in sustaining the Israeli war effort.

The role of US-supplied weapons may be even more important than the question of how much of the costs of the war would be paid for with American tax dollars. The United States has been Israel’s principal arms supplier since the nation’s inception—supplying military aid to the tune of $124 billion over that time period before adjusting for inflation. Washington is currently in the fifth year of a 10-year $38 billion military aid commitment to Tel Aviv, or $3.8 billion per year. This annual figure will be dwarfed by the $14 billion in military aid contained in the administration’s pending emergency aid request. The types of weaponry in the package include large quantities of bombs and tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells that can be put straight to use in the Gaza war.


Joe makes all Americans complicit in these War Crimes.  Gabriel Black (WSWS) notes:

On November 2, Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker who ran as the rank-and-file socialist candidate for president of the UAW, issued a video statement demanding the immediate cessation of production for equipment and munitions used by the Israeli military. At the time of writing, his statement has been viewed over a hundred thousand times, particularly on TikTok where it was widely shared.

In his statement, Lehman endorsed the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions asking workers around the world to “refuse to build weapons destined for Israel … refuse to transport weapons to Israel … [to] take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege.”

Lehman noted, however, that the leadership of the UAW “has ignored the appeal by the Palestinian trade unions,” with UAW President Shawn Fain—the backed candidate of the DSA—inviting President Joe Biden to Michigan “to posture as a friend of working people.” At the time of writing, the UAW leadership remains silent on the call of the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions to shut down the production of bombs, missiles, and other equipment for war.

More than 1,100 General Dynamics workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania were set to strike on October 22 but the UAW announced a last-minute deal to prevent a walkout at the giant defense contractor, which supplies weapons to Israel.

The American weapons being used by the IDF to destroy Gaza

Over ten thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In just one month of bombing, the IDF has killed 4,000 children. Responding to the slaughter which has been made possible by Biden and the imperialist powers in Europe, United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres described Gaza as a “graveyard for children” on Monday.

The vast majority have been killed inside their apartments, tents, or place of shelter, as bombs fired by Israeli warplanes either kill them on impact or collapse the infrastructure around them, in which case they are crushed to death or suffocate beneath the rubble. Civilians hear the whistling of the bombs for several seconds before the bombs land on their homes and explode. On-the-ground footage from independent journalists, such as Motaz Azaiza (Instagram) and Eye on Palestine (Instagram), shows Palestinian civilians desperately trying to free their relatives and loved-ones from the rubble every day—hoping for signs of life beneath the concrete.

The IDF has one of the more advanced militaries on the planet—funded, almost exclusively, by billions of American tax-dollars. The US has spent over $130 billion on supplying Israel with weapons since the country’s founding in 1948.

The IDF fires bombs on Gaza from a fleet of American made war planes. Cross-referencing information from Reuters, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Al Jazeera suggests this fleet consists of:

  • 40 F-35 advanced Lockheed Martin stealth warplanes (Reuters reports that a total of 75 have been ordered)
  • 196 F-16 multi-purpose planes made by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin
  • 83 F-15 fighters designed and produced by McDonnell Douglas (which is now Boeing)

These warplanes are equipped with bombs, missiles, and guidance kits largely manufactured in the United States. 






AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, we’re joined in Houston, Texas, by Fady Joudah. He’s an award-winning Palestinian American writer and poet, as well as a physician. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic into English, including work by the renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Dozens of his family members have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. His recent piece for LitHub is titled “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation.”

Fady Joudah, welcome to Democracy Now! First of all, of course, our condolences on the loss of your family members. If you could say a little bit about those family members and how you and your family here in the U.S. are keeping in touch with people who remain in Gaza?

DR. FADY JOUDAH: Thank you.

We have had more than 50 or 60 people in our extended family killed by Israeli airstrikes. Some of them are in-laws of one of my cousins, and others are different families. Others were also killed by the dozens in one strike. One particular story is of a woman I knew since when I was a child in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And her brother’s grandkids were killed because Israel bombed the house next to them, and in the bombing, one of the walls — one of the walls of their house fell off on them. And they were sleeping, and it killed the three grandchildren and the parents. And only the grandfather survives. So this is also a different spectrum of what we hear about the children being the only survivors in entire families. There are also stories of elderly people who have survived 1948, the Nakba, and/or 1967, and they’re the only ones who are surviving or who have survived their families.

We try to keep in touch with some family members through social media or WhatsApp or what have you, but you know there’s no guarantee that there is regular access or regular communication. You can send a message and maybe get a response the next day. In the beginning of the war, we could get a few phone calls in. But the stuff now is just very difficult to access many people.

The situation is unspeakable and will remain unspeakable, I think, for generations and decades, has been a culmination of the Palestinian experience for a hundred years, since the British Mandate and the beginning of settler colonialism with Zionist immigration into Palestine. It is really beyond words to describe what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment, the accumulation of multigenerational trauma and memories that activates in each one of us previous memories we’ve tried overcome with hope and a flair for life and for freedom, only to find that there is always some horrific episode that reminds us that we are on this Earth in this time, liable to be massacred and lied about. It is —

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of which, Fady — we’re speaking to Fady Joudah, who is an award-winning Palestinian American writer and poet and physician. As you speak to us from Houston, we’ve spoken to so many Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, as well, but you are here in the United States. And the United States is so important when it comes to how Israel deals with Palestine, because of the amount of aid, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and is now asking for much more. Can you talk about how the media here covers this issue?

DR. FADY JOUDAH: Well, it’s how the media doesn’t cover it. I think that I’ve written in the piece there — and I’ve written in other pieces before — there is a collective psychosis in the mainstream language of U.S. media and administration, that is bizarre to the point of ghosting Palestinians, permitting their erasure, year after year, decade after decade.

When we say, for example, Israel has a right to defend itself, we’re also saying that Palestinian lives are not equal to any other lives that we deem superior to them. And I think that we have not repeatedly asked the question in American media and culture: Do you believe that Palestinian lives are equal to Israeli lives and to Jewish lives? There are many, Jewish people among them, who believe the answer is yes. But there are many more who haven’t even entertained the question honestly. And I think the importance of the question is to go beyond the moral lip service reflex of saying, “Of course, yes,” because to say “yes” means that you have to believe in the equal humanity of Palestinians as a political condition for freedom. When we hear about all the stuff from Blinken or Biden, it is really a language that says, “We believe that the Palestinians have rights when we decide that they have equal rights. We will put it on the back burner.” Always on the back burner.

And what I say is that we have reached a point where the murder and the destruction of Palestinian lives has reached a point of every time it reaches, it goes up higher, escalates in what is permissible about destroying Palestinian lives. We are not just talking about the numbers of the dead. We are talking about 2 million people who are living a life worse than death, and they have to overcome that and the trauma, that is unspeakable. And I do not expect the U.S. media and mainstream media or politics to even care about this. The ghosting continues.

Yesterday in The Washington Post, they published a racist cartoon, in — which they took down because there was an immediate back — I mean, lashing out at the racist cartoon. It is unimaginable to think that this — and it shouldn’t be imaginable — to think that this would be directed at Jewish lives or Israeli lives, but it is permissible to dehumanize Palestinians, until it has become part of the accepted feeling within the American psyche or consciousness on the whole. And so, everyone, I think, on the whole, except pockets here and there, is really complicit in the permissibility of the destruction of Palestinian lives, that has reached an unprecedented level in our hundred years of being massacred, displaced, dehumanized.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Fady, I want to ask you about a point that you raise in this beautiful essay that you’ve written, “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation.” In the essay, you cite Aimé Césaire, the renowned Martinican poet, very important anticolonial thinker, who wrote one of the canonical texts on colonialism, A Discourse on Colonialism. You cite him saying, “Neither America nor Europe seem able or willing to solve their colonial addiction, their civilizational motif. Israel is a translation of that failure, a prized Western desire. But Israel has agency in mechanizing this desire.” Could you explain, elaborate on that?

DR. FADY JOUDAH: Well, I think that, for some of us who know, or don’t know, that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 was a response to the Zionist movement in Europe by a Jewish people in Europe who had suffered a lot of oppression. But to overcome that oppression, they chose to side with the colonial aspect, the domineering aspect of the culture that dominated them, and export that as a mode for success and triumph into a Palestine, without much recognition of the racism involved in dehumanizing what they call the Arab population of Palestine.

And since then, it has been in the interest of the West and the U.S. to prop up Israel as an outpost, so to speak, for further domination of the Middle East for various reasons. But the problem is that this kind of propping up has really gone mad at this point. And, you know, I think we’ve reached a moment — and others have said it — where the degree of colonial viciousness that exists now in Israeli society, and is supported by the West, sends us back to 19th century barbarism, really, colonial barbarism. And then, obviously, Israel is interested in affecting this kind of behavior within the U.S. through major lobby influences and also cultural influences.

As I said, I — or let me say it this way. It would be an amazing achievement if Zionists in the U.S., and outside it, would actually say to a single Palestinian, “I am sorry.” Just once. This has not happened in a hundred years. It has happened, of course, on an individual level. I have Jewish friends and colleagues who have said it, because we are all human, and there is no monolithic collective anywhere.

But I think that one of the things we need to do is to begin to shift the language that speaks of the Palestinian and to allow for more Palestinian presence in the American consciousness, beyond death and dying. It seems to me that Palestinians in the West are only alive when they are dying, and that is abhorrent and unacceptable. And that is part of a settler colonial mentality that only humanizes its subjects when they are limp, near dying, completely helpless, obedient. Any sense of resistance or rise toward freedom or liberation is denied them through dehumanizing language and, you know, manipulative approaches and processes.

AMY GOODMAN: Fady Joudah, we want to thank you so much for spending this time with us, Palestinian American writer, poet, translator and physician, speaking to us from Houston. Dozens of his family members have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. We’ll link to your recent piece for LitHub, “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation.”



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