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In violation of the UN charter, international humanitarian law and the US constitution, the United States has joined Israel in its war of aggression against Iran.

We can only wait for the blowback and inevitable escalation which could — quite literally — lead us to World War III. While Trump’s bloody-minded, MAGA sycophants cheer on his doomsday recklessness, the remainder of the  world’s thinking citizenry can only hold their breath contemplating the arrival of an imminent Apocalypse.

This is what can happen when two nuclear-armed nations (the US and Israel) are governed by two psychopaths (Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu) with no conscience, no capacity for empathy, no concern for the rule of law, no regard for actual facts, and inflated egos always starving for greater adulation.

THIS is the principle fact of the matter: every US intelligence agency has agreed that — at least until yesterday’s attack — Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003.

Israel’s description of their attack as a “preventative first strike” offers nothing more than a malicious cover story for Israeli aggression. It is a blatant violation of international law. And the US now shares in that needless, illegal aggression against a nation that poses no threat whatsoever to US security.

Israel and America are wanton bullies whose crimes endanger the human race. That is not an exaggeration.

For more on these facts, please check out the following analysis of former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter:

Three things now are as certain as death and taxes:

One, the US has become an aggressor in a needless war that could eventually include Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and parts of Europe;

Two, Iran now almost certainly is developing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. That’s the big lesson from these events — if you don’t yet have nukes, get ’em quick;

Three, as Israel-watchers now turn their attention from Gaza to Iran, Israel will hasten its wholesale slaughter of innocent Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/7/10/freed-former-palestinian-bodybuilder-alleges-abuse-by-israeli-jailers

 

As the assault on Rafah continues I notice how regularly the news headlines follow a similar pattern: residential home bombed + at night + X number of women & children killed.

I strong suspect that these repeated headlines offer more evidence that Israel is continuing to use the AI programs Lavender and Where’s Daddy? Programs that I have discussed here previously.

The IDF uses these programs to intentionally bomb (1) the homes of suspected Hamas fighters (2) after dark (3) when the families are sleeping together. Hardly the practice of a military that was sincere in its insistence that it worked hard to avoid civilian casualties.

Well, here is yet another story demonstrating Israel’s disregard for murdered civilians.

When you bomb a crowd of people waiting for their turn to access a public internet connection, what else can you expect but — NUMEROUS CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. It’s not rocket science.

No one but no one can claim that these deaths were accidental, collateral damage due to the fog of war. It’s long past time for the LIES to stop.

Maung Zarni is a scholar who has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. He has spent his career studying genocide, specifically the Nazi holocaust.

In a recent interview he stated that “what is happening in Gaza is simply mass extermination without the gas chambers.”

You can read a excerpt from the article by Ahmet Gurhan Kartal at “If Americans Knew” below:

“What we are seeing in Gaza is simply mass extermination without the gas chambers,” he said, referring to the brutal Nazi method of killing prisoners in concentration camps during World War II.

“You don’t need to destroy a population with gas chambers only. If you are able to carpet bomb … 80% of the living space, the residential area, most schools, hospitals, you are destroying the population.”

Zarni also pointed out Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s statement that “no one in Gaza is innocent.”

“That’s 2.3 or 2.4 million Palestinian people, including infants. Half of the 2.3 million Palestinians are children and youth,” he said.

“So, what we are seeing is the repeat of Auschwitz in Gaza.”

You can read the entire article here.

Contrary to Israeli propaganda, the primary factor in the declining population of Christians in Gaza is not Muslim persecution.

As I have heard many times, most Christian families emigrate in order to escape Israeli violence. With respect to Gaza, it is the regular bombardments and military campaigns against them that has cause the Christian community to dwindle.

Today there are approximately 1,000 Christians remaining as a witness to their Savior from the oldest churches in the world.

Terry and I first met Anas this past March as we sat talking with his young, pregnant wife, Maysan. We were visiting with Maysan in her father’s home inside the Aida Refugee Camp.

Maysan’s father is our good friend, Sayid, who was once shot in the shoulder by an Israeli soldier while standing inside his own home. Yes, such things happen often to those living under Israeli military occupation.

Maysan has begun a new, thriving dental practice in Bethlehem. She and Anas were eagerly expecting their first child, a daughter, who happened to arrive while we were still visiting in Aida.

Anas is the director of the Aida Youth Center, the organization which Terry and I have worked with closely over the years.

As the Center’s director, Anas is committed to providing educational opportunities and improving the lives of the many children growing up inside a refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

Now Anas has been arrested simply for being a Palestinian man living in the West Bank.

Below is the account of what happened yesterday as posted by another friend, Munther Amira, on Facebook.

Please join us in praying for Anas’ swift and safe return from Israeli detention (all emphasis is mine):

Jeff Halper is an Israeli anthropology professor and a political activist who founded the organization ICAHD, the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions.

Earlier this week the ICAHD newsletter included the following article from Jeff:

I am going to bed tonight in full certainty that as I sleep, Israel, a member state of the UN, abetted, armed, and egged on by the US and the other G-7 countries that rule the world, is committing genocide in Gaza.

Confining two and half million people to a tiny area (while cynically and cruelly advising them to “leave”), cutting off all food, water, and electricity, declaring that all Gazans are Hamas, thus making even children legitimate targets, carpet bombing for days to “soften” the terrain, and then, tonight as I sleep, invading with an army of 300,000 soldiers — that is THE definition of genocide.

The world is run by war criminals, which imperils oppressed and poor people the world over. But tonight, we must think of the people of Gaza, thousands of whom will die in the next days, their lives destroyed, their cities, town and villages obliterated.

Read the entire article here.

As “pro-life”, Texas governor, Greg Abbott, installs a murderous, floating fence of razor wire down the middle of the Rio Grand river to shred the bare flesh of illegal immigrants, Phillis Zagano asks a probing question at the Religious News Service: what does it really mean to “respect life?”

[A number of dead bodies have already been retrieved from Abbott’s killer fence.]

Below is an excerpt:

Before backing a law banning abortion in Texas altogether, Gov. Greg Abbott propelled a 2021 measure banning abortion after a heartbeat has been detected, saying he “would protect the life of every child with a heartbeat.” He happens to be Catholic.

So why did Abbott put razor wire and a floating barrier in the Rio Grande? Do migrant children not have heartbeats?

There is an angry selectivity when it comes to life issues. Abortion is certainly a tragic reality in too many places in the world. Without denying the ability of the polity to legally allow or disallow abortion, the better course is to make it unnecessary.

To respect life means just that: the unborn, yes, and the elderly and the stranger, the migrant, and the homeless individual. Respect life includes the “other,” no matter how defined — by gender, skin color, language, ethnicity — the list is endless.

Yet too many so-called pro-life advocates demonstrate an abject denial of others’ right to life.

You can read the entire article here.

Avi Shlaim began  his academic career as an Israeli graduate student who went to England for his doctoral work.

He is now a long-time Oxford professor who has done pioneering historical research on the origins of the modern state of Israel and the history of Zionism.

He is one of those rare people of moral character who is willing to be self-critical. He is more committed to a consistent ethic applied equally to all than he is to nationalism or ideology.

Here is a brief excerpt from a longer interview with Human Rights Watch.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of former Israeli soldiers who are trying to educate their fellow citizens about the brutality of Israel’s military occupation over the Palestinian people in the West Bank.

Watch as this woman tells her story (with English translation). She explains how the Occupation is both persecuting Palestinians and poisoning Israel.