Category: Israel

Check Out My Recent Article in the “Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies”

Today the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies published my article  titled “Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading.”

Below is the abstract, that is a brief summary of the article:

The apologetics of pro-slavery, pro-segregation Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were identical to the methods of biblical interpretation used by Dispensationalist Christian Zionists today. The ideology’s specific rules of ‘literal interpretation’ and ‘antecedent theology’ led both groups to similar conclusions about slavery and racial segregation, on the one hand, and Jewish privilege and Palestinian displacement, on the other. Abolitionist efforts to promote a Christ–like hermeneutic rooted in Christian morality points the way forward to correcting modern theologies, such as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, that continue to sanction human oppression.

I believe that clicking the highlighted title above will allow access to the article online. However, if this does not work for you, let me know and I can send you a copy.

Yes, I too am disappointed by the numerous formating and editorial errors in my article. Yuck! Unfortunately, it is too late for me to do anything about it now…sigh…

More Than 700 Bodies Discovered in Two Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals

One mass gravesite is near Al Shifa hospital. The other is near Nasser hospital. Both hospitals have been demolished by Israeli forces.

Many of the corpses have their hands tied together.

Many are women. Some are children.

Others are wearing hospital gowns. Some even have the IV drip tubes still attached to their arms.

I have posted a selection of video reports below. Since most are age restricted I have enclosed the URL in quotation marks. Simply copy the URL to your web browser in order to watch:

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhsRRGvl1dc”

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clg-x1dchv8”

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcZ4_dZ8WZU”

 

Nowhere is Safe in Gaza, Not Even in the So-Called ‘Safe Zones’

An NBC investigative report demonstrates the frequency with which Israel continues to bomb areas and travel routes that have been designated by Israeli officials as “safe zones.”

Destitute Palestinians travel to areas where they were told they would remain safe from attack, only to be bombed, shot and terrorized in their  freshly erected makeshift homes.

It’s as if the ‘safe zones’ were deliberately designed holding pens created to ensure a higher percentage of civilian targets for Israeli bombs.

There is LITERALLY no safe place in Gaza today. Watch:

 

Why Are American Police So Violent Without Provocation?

I have experienced unnecessary, unprovoked police violence myself. I was marching in a perfectly peaceful anti-NATO rally in Chicago.

For no reason other than a chance to flex their muscles, hundreds of Chicago policemen attacked the crowd and arrested dozens of people for nothing more than exercizing their Constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

We see this happening now across the country as police violently assault college students gathered together in peaceful demonstrations.

One of the reasons this happens — but only one reason out of many, which I will address in future posts — is because many US law enforcement agencies have outsourced their police training programs to the state of Israel.

But here is the outrageous catch: It you have watched any of the recent anti-Netanyahu marches in Israel’s cities over the past six months, you will notice a sea of Israeli, Jewish humanity protesting the current government without a police officer in sight.

The only time Israeli police really clamp down on protests or demonstrations is when they are carried out by Palestinians. And all Israeli security forces always treat Palestinians as The Enemy.

And the Palestinian Enemy always “deserve” the harshest, most brutal treatment prior to their arrest, no matter how peacefully they behave.

It is these brutal tactics in “crowd control” that American police bring back with them from their Israeli training. (Often Israeli security forces come to the US to train entire departments here.)

The result is that American demonstrators are treated as if they, too, were The Enemy. Thus, protesters are literally attacked for no reason.

Our civil rights are trampled underfoot. Innocent people are beaten, tasered, handcuffed and jailed simply for speaking out and exercizing their civil liberties.

This Israeli-like behavior is a very large part of “the violence” reported now on US campuses. The students are not out of control, folks. It’s the police.

Watch Kim Iversen’s video explaining it all below, titled “Shocking IDF Link Exposed”:

 

Chris Hedges: “Revolt in the Universities”

The journalist Chris Hedges recently posted the following article at his substack page. It’s titled “Revolt in the Universities.”

I wish he had said “Peaceful Revolt” because the vast majority of anti-war demonstrations now occurring on American campuses are peaceful.

Sure, there are always a few exceptions. But the vast majority of the “violence” you see on the reports carried by mainstream media are due to:

  • rare exceptions to the rule, often by non-students
  • violent attacks instigated by the police
  • outside instigators, often connected to pro-Israel, Zionist agitators

I ‘ve searched for but cannot find any student protests of this sort happening in my part of the country, unfortunately. If I could find one, I would be chanting and carrying signs to stop the slaughter in Gaza right beside them.

These young people and their moral sentiments are the future hope of American civil society.

The fact that many Christian evangelical leaders are standing with Israel in vilifying these young men and women is a spiritual disaster of epic proportions.

Below is an excerpt of Chris’s article:

PRINCETON, N.J. — Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.

She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.

She wonders where she will spend the night.

The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.

“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”

Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students —  many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.

Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.   

Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.  

Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.

The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists. 

As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”

The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

But if the students again attempt to erect tents – they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning – it seems certain they will all be arrested.

“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”

Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.

“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”

These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.

Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”

“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”

She starts to cry.

. . . There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. 

The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes. 

History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.

You can read the entire post here, though it may be behind a paywall.

Here Is Why Israel’s Actions Only Ensure Endless Bloodshed

The three short videos all speak for themselves. Please watch and pray.

 

 

Trita Parsi: “Will Israel Cross Iran’s Red Line?”

Dr. Trita Parsi

Dr. Trita Parsi is an American-Iranian scholar who always provides well-reasoned, cogent analysis on Iranian actions.

Dr. Parsi has written 3 books on Iran-US relations and is the cofounder of the Washington DC think-tank, The Quincy Institute for Responsible State-Craft. (The other founder is Col. Andrew Bacevich.)

Again, discover some level-headed analysis free of the common western-Israeli anti-Iranian hysteria.

Is Israel the Only Country with a Right to Self-Defense?

On April 1st Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing between 12 to 16 people (reports vary). At least 7 of those killed were Iranian military personnel. At least 1 of them, a high ranking general.

Embassies around the world are all considered the sovereign territory of the nation it represents. To attack an embassy is to attack the country.

Imagine the American response, or the Israeli response, if Iran had attacked

Missiles fly over Jerusalem

the American embassy in Israel, or the Israeli embassy in the US. You can bet your bottom dollar that this would be described as a flagrant act of war and a significant military response would soon

follow.

Yet, when Iran responds similarly Israel and the US describe Iran’s counter-attack as an uncalled-for act of aggression.

The UN Security Council censured Iran for its response. Yet, the same UN body failed to censure Israel for its previous attack against Iran. This is anything but even-handedness.

Given the rank hostility against Iran eminating from Israel and its western allies, let me mention a few facts about Iran’s attack that a westerner is unlikely to learn from the mainstream (or the Christian) media:

  • Yes, Iran launched between 300 to 350 attack drones and missiles against Israel over the weekend. Some of the missiles were cruise and ballistic, but the vast majority were slow moving, outdated hardware (like the drones).
  • The attack was launched in two waves. The massive first wave consisted of the older, slower hardware. The vast majority of which was shot down by Israeli defenses working in tandem with US, French and British anti-missile defenses in the region.
  • The second wave consisted of high-powered cruise and ballistic missiles targeting two Israeli military facilities, one in the north and one in the south of Israel. These two were targeted because they were the two operational bases from with the assault against Iran’s embassy were launched.
  • Both of these military bases were struck and damaged by Iranian missiles. Yet, no personnel were injured.
  • Analysts claim that Iran intended for the first wave of attacks to act as ‘cover’ for the second wave, knowing that Israel’s defensive capacities would be nearly overwhelmed by this attack. Hence, the idea of its providing ‘cover’ for the second wave of missiles.
  • The only Israeli casualty was a young Bedouin girl injured by falling missile debris. No one was killed.
  • Iran had given the US 72 hours advance warning of what it was planning to do.
  • Iran gave Israel an additional advance warning 8 hours before the attack.
  • This hardly seems like the actions of a ‘crazy, out of control nation’ (as the western media so often describes Iran) hungry to slaughter Israeli Jews.

Below is an excerpt from a recent article by Scott Ritter, former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector. He offers a careful, informed analysis of this attack following Israel’s aggression against Iran.

Scott Ritter

The article is titled “The Missiles of April”:

I’ve been writing about Iran for more than two decades. In 2005, I made a trip to Iran to ascertain the “ground truth” about that nation, a truth which I then incorporated into a book, Target Iran, laying out the U.S.-Israeli collaboration to craft a justification for a military attack on Iran designed to bring down its theocratic government.

I followed this book up with another, Dealbreaker, in 2018, which brought this U.S.-Israeli effort up to date.

Back in November 2006, in an address to Columbia University’s School of International Relations, I underscored that the United States would never abandon my “good friend” Israel until, of course, we did. What could precipitate such an action, I asked?

I noted that Israel was a nation drunk of hubris and power, and unless the United States could find a way to remove the keys from the ignition of the bus Israel was navigating toward the abyss, we would not join Israel in its lemming-like suicidal journey.

The next year, in 2007, during an address to the American Jewish Committee, I pointed out that my criticism of Israel (which many in the audience took strong umbrage against) came from a place of concern for Israel’s future.

I underscored the reality that I had spent the better part of a decade trying to protect Israel from Iraqi missiles, both during my service in Desert Storm, where I played a role in the counter-SCUD missile campaign, and as a United Nations weapons inspector, where I worked with Israeli intelligence to make sure Iraq’s SCUD missiles were eliminated.

“The last thing I want to see,” I told the crowd, “is a scenario where Iranian missiles were impacting on the soil of Israel. But unless Israel changes course, this is the inevitable outcome of a policy driven more by arrogance than common sense.”

On Monday night, early Tuesday morning, April 13-14, my concerns were played out live before an international audience — Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, and there was nothing Israel could do to stop them.

You can read the entire article here.

American Doctors Describe the Egregious Suffering of Palestinian Children in Gaza

Democracy Now recently interviewed two US doctors who have just returned from working in a hospital in Gaza. The interview includes photos and video of their patients.

The injuries are horrific, made more horrific by the lack of medicines and equipment.

Children’s bodies mangled with shrapnel from cluster bombs and debris are hard to forget.

“If I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would be less than a drop in the ocean of what is needed,” one doctor said.

Please, don’t turn away from these mangled, young bodies. They are being shredded and killed by American weaponry purchased with our tax dollars.

Genocides proceed, in part, because regular people turn away.

Watch the interview with images below:

More Evidence That Israel Deliberately Targets Civilians in Gaza

Several weeks ago I posted a breaking news story from +972 magazine discussing an Israeli military program blasphemously called “The Gospel” that used artificial intelligence (AI) to bomb civilian targets in Gaza.

Now +972 has broken a second story exposing two additional AI programs also being used for bombing Gaza. They are called Lavender and Where’s Daddy?

As the article describes, Israel’s favorite tactic is to bomb suspected — note SUSPECTED (Israel’s military leaders admit that the programs have as much as a 10% error rate) — Hamas fighters in their homes at night, slaughtering entire extended families in their sleep.

Apparently, the program title Where’s Daddy? is meant to be a cruel joke, as in: We know where daddy is sleeping, and we are going to bomb his entire family to smithereens. Ha ha ha.

Yes, Israel has intentionally been slaughtering civilians from the beginning of its war against Palestinians in Gaza.

It is no accident that the death toll is now more than 33,600 people, 70% of whom are women and children. Over 13,000 of them under the age of eighteen.

Compare that last figure to the approximately 500 children killed during the past two years of fighting in Ukraine. Here is more tragic evidence of the gruesome anti-Arab racism animating the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel.

Below is a brief excerpt of the +972 article followed by a video clip of an excellent editorial by Krystal Ball from Breaking Point news:

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

You can read the entire article here.