More than 9,000 children in Gaza have undergone amputation, in many cases without anesthesia: In the Gaza Strip, the life of any child could turn into a nightmare in the blink of an eye. Families try to keep their children safe, but this becomes harder and harder with the intense bombardments. Many houses have been destroyed, and many children ended up under the rubble. More than 9,000 children have been injured in the Gaza Strip, leaving them grappling with the loss of an arm or a leg.
Read the story of 4-year-old Ghazala, who lost a leg, here.
This harrowing story is taken from the Israel-Palestine News site at If Americans Knew (IAK). It is an excellent source for daily updates on the situation in Palestine-Israel, bringing facts and figures to Western readers that you will never see on the mainstream, corporate media.
Massive anti-war demonstrations have erupted around the world, sparked by Israel’s genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Several days ago, half-a-million people (!) marched through London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Similar marches have occurred throughout the USA, in India, Pakistan, the UK, and many other countries.
Yet, the political elites in these countries continue to control the propagandistic news media while ignoring the protests of the common people.
Craig Murray has a good story critiquing the disparate, undemocratic actions that keep the people’s voices muted, ensuring that worldwide calls for peace go ignored.
The article at Consortium News is titled “Something has Snapped.” Below is an excerpt:
There seems to be a presumption that the general population harbour the same Zionist assumptions which the journalists are paid to promote. Well, we don’t.
It feels like something has snapped, not only in Palestine but in the U.K. and much of Europe, where the process of alienation between the governed and the ruling classes has been accelerated.
Democracy has been failing in the West for a while . . .
There are key moments in societal breakdown, and this is one.
Katie Halper is an independent journalist and political commentator. Until last week, Ms. Halper was a visiting host on the news program The Hill.
That is, she WAS a regular guest on the show until she was summarily fired for reading her editorial spot explaining the details of Israeli apartheid.
Yes, Israel IS an apartheid state. It has always been an apartheid state, since day one. There is NO non-apartheid phase in Israel’s history because Israel was founded as a Jewish supremacist state.
If this is new information to you, then I encourage you to read my new book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Cascade, 2021).
But the pro-Israel, pro-Zionist public relations machine works very hard to hide this fact from the rest of the world.
They have been working particularly hard in recent years since Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem have all published their own reports extensively cataloguing the ins-and-outs of Israel’s comprehensive, systemic, apartheid regime.
I encourage you to read Mr. Hedges’ recounting of the many ways American democracy has been undermined over the decades. You won’t be wasting your time.
Recently, Chris Hedges was interviewed by Jimmy Dore and asked to explain what he meant by his claim that the USA is not a democracy. The clip is titled “Your Democracy Was Stolen Long Before January 6.”
I would say that the news clip below is “unbelievable” except that it appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network. A network that conforms its opinion pieces so closely to the conservative, Republican obsession with “law and order” that you’d be forgiven for assuming its commentators all had day jobs as prison guards.
This editorial discussion is supposedly highlighting the importance of the
Jayland Walker
public “having all the facts” about a situation before drawing conclusions or making objections to the work of the authorities.
But then, conservative Christianity has always highlighted the importance of “obeying the authorities,” no matter how abusive they may be.
The matter at hand is the police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio and the quick display of community outrage that followed.
The initial police reports, the details of which have not been changed, explained that Mr. Walker was going to be stopped for some unspecified sort of traffic violation.
Mr. Walker then took the police on a high speed chase which ended with him leaping from his car and running away. Police allege that Walker fired a gun out his car window during the chase.
As Walker ran away, his was chased by 8 – 9 policemen who fired 90+ rounds at his back. Mr. Walker never returned fire because, as the police later discovered, he was unarmed. (Duh, the fact that he never turned to fire back while unsuccessfully dodging a hail-storm of gunfire, hadn’t tipped them off to this already?)
Walker’s body was hit by 60+ bullets. He died at the scene.
These were the original facts. They are still the facts.
Mr. Walker is another unarmed black man gunned down for the crime of running from the police who consistently insult, abuse, assault, and murder unarmed black men.
As an African-American friend asked me not long ago, “David, why can’t white people understand why we are afraid of the police? We have good reason to be.”
Nevertheless, these CBN commentators object. They insist that most, perhaps all?, media reports have not mentioned the (alleged) gunshot out of Walker’s car window during the car chase.
However, EVERY report that I have read and watched HAS either shown the relevant video or mentioned the alleged gun fire from Walker on the highway.
In other words, CBN is ginning up an illegitimate, irrelevant concern for their own rhetorical purposes. Can anyone say, MANIPULATION? or PROPAGANDA?
But they all say these things oh so unctuously with such apparent concern…
They also fail to mention the many, many times that the police have been caught LYING to the public in their initial police reports in order to protect themselves and hide their own wrongdoing.
Naturally, the local black community responded with a large, peaceful, public protest demanding answers and accountability.
The very next day these three CBN Christian stooges, doing the half-step shuffle for white privilege, self-righteousness, hard-heartedness, foolishness and stupidity, scold the black community (!) for expressing their grief and anger, while exercising their first amendment right to cry out in the streets for justice.
I am sorry, but I find the entire diatribe to be absolutely infuriating!
Here we see three comfortable, extremely well paid, audacious examples of the poisonous fruit of white privilege dripping with the decay of dead men’s bones, all white-washed and dressed up pretty for broadcast TV.
I am sorry, but this report is nothing but pious hackery, blindingly oblivious to the persistent and pernicious racial/racist dynamic playing itself out over and over and over again in our city streets.
It is also painfully obvious — AGAIN– that something has gone horribly wrong with the way police officers are being trained to handle both people and their weapons.
It’s not a few “bad apples,” folks. It’s the entire system that appears to be rotten.
I could go on, but I will stop now. Watch for yourself. Especially notice the mini-sermon about “unrighteous responses” given in coordination with the film of African-American protesters walking through the streets.
Really?!?!
I have asked in the past. I am asking again. If anyone has a video clip of an unarmed white man being shot or chocked to death by police, please send it to me.
Here is an exercise in seeing the difference that “framing” makes in the way different “authorities” can tell the same story to very different effects.
The first clip below is from an Israeli national news program. You will hear a conversation about yesterday’s fatal shooting of the Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Listen and make a few mental notes on what you hear.
What is emphasized? What are the guest’s primary concerns? What do you think is omitted from this discussion?
The next clip is from the alternative news site Democracy Now. Amy Goodman talks with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward W. Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
You will notice that professor Khalidi’s way of framing of the shooting is very different from Dan Perry’s framing in the Israeli clip.
Make some mental notes. What is Khalidi’s emphasis? What does he discuss that you did not hear in the previous interview? What did Mr. Perry discuss that you do not hear about from Khalidi?
How can you account for these differences?
A number of issues strike me as very important.
First, notice how Mr. Perry frames the issues in terms of competing media narratives, or battling storylines. He laments that fact that, in his opinion, Israel is currently “losing” the media battle to the Palestinian version of the story.
Personally, I do not believe that he has a basis for his lament, although his focus of the public’s perception of Israel — quite apart from what actually happened — is typical of what you will hear from Israeli representatives.
Second, I also hear Perry repeat the characteristic lament over “Israeli victimhood”; my words, not his. For the Israeli propaganda machine (yes, I know, I am letting my own framing show itself at this point), Israel is always under attack; Israel is always the innocent victim; any and all accusations made against Israeli behavior are inevitable examples of the world’s eternal hatred of the Jews.
This victim mentality is an essential component of political Zionism.
Third, I do agree with Perry, however, when he criticizes the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for refusing to cooperate in a joint enquiry into the shooting. This is a foolish move on his part, which will hopefully be overturned quickly.
Fourth, notice the alternative framing offered by professor Khalidi. He describes this shooting as another in a long line of murderous incidents illustrating the brutality of Israeli settler-colonialism — a perspective with which I happen to agree.
Naturally, Mr. Perry never raises this settler-colonial perspective because the majority of Israelis refuse to see themselves in this light. This is not surprising, however.
All throughout history, colonizers have always tried to whitewash their
Filling a mass grave with frozen Lakota bodies after the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)
crimes, in one way or another. Guilt is always laid at the feet of those who have been colonized. The settlers were bringing civilization to eradicate the barren wilderness and to bring enlightenment to primitive people.
Both the bloodshed, the shirking of responsibility, and the political rhetoric in Israel-Palestine are no different. This is why the two video clips above offer such divergent analyses.
The frozen body of Spotted Elk, leader of the Sioux band slaughtered at Wounded Knee in 1890
Think of the 17th to the 19th century settlement history of the United States. The white, European settlers commonly, almost universally, framed themselves as the innocent victims of Native savagery.
To the white mind, the Indians were always the senseless aggressors. Every
settler storyline began at the moment the Indians appeared threatening or attacked,
Spotted Elk’s village at Wounded Knee prior to the cavalry’s attack. Government authorities feared the Lakota enthusiasm for the new Ghost Dance ceremonies might lead to rebellion
unjustly, inexplicably. Rarely did anyone discuss what the settlers had been doing to the Natives beforehand.
White settlers also never lacked a noble justification for their latest betrayal.
Modern Israel is the last settler-colonial state in this world of ours, and we are seeing the same colonial distortions of history working themselves out in Israel-Palestine today.
Israel’s airwaves provide the final frontier of media battles over “competing narratives.” Israel, and its many Zionist sympathizers, tell their stories from the settlers’ perspective.
Frozen, dead bodies and burned teepees are all that remain after the soldiers attack at Wounded Knee
Palestinians, on the other hand, tell their stories from the Native perspective. The Palestinian narrative, whether or not it “wins” the nonstop media battle, explains how a powerless, conquered people continue to be abused by their conquerors, conquerors who hold the power and always carry the biggest weapons.
In the wake of yesterday’s murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military, Mr. Levy recalls the numerous innocent Palestinians who have also been murdered recently in the West Bank.
Ms. Abu Akleh is not an outlier. Rather, her circumstances are characteristic of Israel’s ongoing colonial atrocities. The Palestinians are a subordinate, oppressed, occupied people. Israel holds all the power.
Below is Mr. Levy’s article (all emphasis is mine):
Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh
The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.
That is how Hanan Khadour was killed. Then, too, the military spokesman tried to cast doubt on the shooters’ identity: “The matter is being examined.” A month has passed, and this “examination” has yielded nothing, and never will – but the doubts were planted, and they sprouted in the Israeli fields of denial and suppression, where no one actually cares about the fate of a 19-year-old Palestinian girl, and the country’s dead conscience is silenced again. Is there a single crime committed by the military that the right and the establishment will ever accept responsibility for? Just one?
Abu Akleh seems to be another story: an internationally known journalist. Just this past Sunday a more local journalist, Basel al-Adra, was attacked by Israeli soldiers in the South Hebron Hills, and no one cared. And a couple days ago, two Israelis who attacked journalists during the Gaza war last May were sentenced to 22 months in prison. What punishment will be meted out to soldiers who killed, if indeed they did, Abu Akleh? And what punishment was given to whoever decided on and carried out the despicable bombing of the Associated Press offices in Gaza during the fighting last year? Has anyone paid for this crime? And what about the 13 journalists who were killed during the Gaza war in 2014?And the medical personnel who were killed during demonstrations at the Gaza border fence, including 21-year-old Razan al-Najjar, who was shot dead by soldiers while wearing her white uniform? No one has been punished. Such things will always be covered by a cloud of blind justification and automatic immunity for the military and worship of its soldiers.
Even if the smoking Israeli bullet that killed Abu Akleh is found, and even if footage is found that shows the face of the shooter, he will be treated by Israelis as a hero who is above all suspicion. It’s tempting to write that if innocent Palestinians must be killed by Israeli soldiers, better for them to be well-known and holders of U.S. passports, like Abu Akleh. At least then the U.S. State Department will voice a little displeasure – but not too much – about the senseless killing of one of its citizens by the soldiers of one of its allies.
At the time of writing, it was still unclear who killed Abu Akleh. This is Israel’s propaganda achievement – sowing doubts, which Israelis are quick to grab onto as fact and justification, though the world does not believe them and is usually correct. When the young Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura was killed in 2000, Israeli propaganda also tried to blur the identity of his killers; it never proved its claims, and no one bought them. Past experience shows that the soldiers who killed the young woman in a taxi are the same soldiers who might kill a journalist. It’s the same spirit; they are permitted to shoot as they please. Those who weren’t punished for Hanan’s killing continued with Shireen.
But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.
Abu Akleh died a hero, doing her job. She was a braver journalist than all Israeli journalists put together. She went to Jenin, and many other occupied places, where they have rarely if ever visited, and now they must bow their heads in respect and mourning. They also should have stopped spreading the propaganda spread by the military and government regarding the identity of her killers. Until proven otherwise, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the default conclusion must be: the Israeli military killed Shireen Abu Akleh.
At Consortium News Joe Lauria describes the ongoing battle that has broken out between the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress over America’s military posture towards Russia.
The Pentagon. photo by Joe Lauria
Guess which agency is fighting the hardest to avoid an all-out war with the nuclear-armed Russian Bear — yep, the military guys at the Pentagon.
Because, as crazy as they may be at times, those military professionals know stuff.
To summarize its conclusion — don’t believe the official, mainstream narrative about Russia’s actions in Ukraine. No, Russia is not losing. No, Russia is not targeting civilians. No, Russia is not currently planning to flatten Ukraine.
Below is an excerpt (emphasis is mine):
. . . But on Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” reported Newsweek in an article entitled, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”
The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”
A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: “We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”
The article says:
“As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). …
A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.
‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’”
A second retired U.S. Air Force officer says:
“I’m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe. I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so. In fact, I’d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.”
These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that instead of being “stalled,” Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible. . .
Yes, the US government engages in censorship just like the Russians. But, of course, the US corporate media will never admit to such things.
Of course, anti-war voices have been censored for a long time in this country. That’s why all of my favorite journalists work for independent news outlets and are never heard from on the major networks.
However, recently the censorship has become worse. Now independent reporting is being attacked wherever it appears. The video below offers two stories in one. First, independent journalist Abby Martin describes the erasure from the internet of the video archive from her old show “Breaking the Set” on RT television.
If you don’t think our government censors the news, listen to her story. She is not the only one who has experienced it recently.
Secondly, Aaron Mate discusses the role of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the Ukrainian national guard, as well as the influence of Nazi politicians in the Ukrainian government.
But, of course, the average American has no idea that we are supplying military weapons to a government that arms Nazis without hesitation. That’s because of CENSORSHIP.
Mate’s report on Ukrainian Nazis begins at the 20 minute mark.
Martin begins to tell her story of censorship at the 29 minute mark.
Former top Pentagon advisor retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor was recently interviewed by journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone.
The Colonel offers a VERY different perspective on the war in Ukraine, Russia, Putin, NATO, and the US role in this conflict than you will ever hear from the monolithic, pro-war, propaganda machine called “news” in this country.
Colonel Macgregor’s interview takes up the first 60 minutes of this two hour video. Max and Aaron discuss the issues in the second hour.
I strongly encourage you to listen to the Colonel’s words. If only Biden were listening…
nightmare in the blink of an eye. Families try to keep their children safe, but this becomes harder and harder with the intense bombardments. Many houses have been destroyed, and many children ended up under the rubble. More than 9,000 children have been injured in the Gaza Strip, leaving them grappling with the loss of an arm or a leg.
Craig Murray has a good story critiquing the disparate, undemocratic actions that keep the people’s voices muted, ensuring that worldwide calls for peace go ignored.
book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Cascade, 2021).
I encourage you to read Mr. Hedges’ recounting of the many ways American democracy has been undermined over the decades. You won’t be wasting your time.
