Nothing but the truth. Even if against me.
Thursday, February 29, 2024
Israel's Claim to Have Killed 10,000 Hamas Fighters is Bogus
Israel Gaza: Checking Israel's claim to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters
Merlyn Thomas, Jake Horton & Benedict Garman - BBC Verify
Thu, February 29, 2024
Israel faces growing concern about the number of civilian deaths, after at least 30,000 Palestinians were reported killed in Gaza - as well as pressure to show it is eliminating Hamas as it vowed after 7 October. BBC Verify examines Israel's claims about how many of those killed were combatants.
The Israeli military says it has killed more than 10,000 fighters in its air strikes and ground operations in response to the Hamas attack which killed about 1,200 people.
But there are concerns about whether it is able to separate fighters from ordinary civilians. President Joe Biden said in December that Israel had the support of the world as well as the US, but "they're starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place".
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have consistently defended their tactics, stressing that they are trying to be precise in their targeting of Hamas fighters and infrastructure, while seeking to minimise civilian deaths.
Hamas does not provide any figures for its military fatalities. The Reuters news agency reported that an official had admitted 6,000 fighters had been killed, but Hamas denied this figure to the BBC.
The toll of at least 30,139 killed, from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, has previously been described as trustworthy by the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional emergency director Richard Brennan.
The WHO says the ministry has "good capacity in data collection" and its previous reporting has been credible and "well developed".
But its overall tally of those killed does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
More than 70% of those killed in Gaza have been women and children, according to the health ministry
The health ministry's last demographic breakdown from 29 February indicated more than 70% of those killed had been women and children.
So, with the figures suggesting less than 30% of those killed were men - some of whom are likely to be over fighting age - experts have raised questions about how Israel arrived at its claim of killing 10,000 fighters.
BBC Verify has repeatedly asked the IDF for the detail of its methodology for counting Hamas fighter deaths but they have not responded.
The BBC tried to piece together a fuller picture through claims and videos published by Israel.
The IDF has issued press statements and social media posts since October, making claims about the outcome of its operations in Gaza. References to the numbers of fighters killed in these announcements are more sporadic and approximate than the Hamas-run health ministry's regular updates on fatalities.
One IDF estimate before the war suggested Hamas had about 30,000 fighters in Gaza.
In December, it described an assessment that it was killing two civilians for every Hamas fighter as "tremendously positive", given the challenges it faced on the battlefield.
On 29 December, IDF spokesman Major Doron Spielman told Sky News Australia that 8,000 Hamas fighters had been killed, saying the figure was based on intelligence, interrogations and examination of satellite photographs.
In mid-January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel had "destroyed" two-thirds of Hamas fighting regiments in Gaza.
On 19 February, the Times of Israel reported the IDF as saying 12,000 fighters had been killed. We put that figure to the IDF who, in two separate responses to us, said the figure is "approximately 10,000" and "more than 10,000".
The Israeli embassy in the UK told us they think the total number of Hamas fighters killed is "between 10,000 and 12,000".
But they said it was hard to distinguish between civilians and combatants as many of them are not wearing military uniform and Hamas also has fighters who are aged 16 and 17.
Other factors cited by experts as obstacles to counting combatant casualties include Hamas operating in tunnels.
BBC Verify reviewed all 280 videos posted to the IDF YouTube channel from 7 October up to 27 February and found that very few contained visual evidence of fighters being killed.
Of these just one - posted on 14 December - purports to show dead bodies of fighters. A handful of other videos appear to show fighters being shot at.
We also attempted to count the number of individual claims of Hamas fighters killed on the IDF's official Telegram channel. We found 160 posts claiming to have killed a specific number of fighters, for a total of 714 fatalities.
But there were also 247 references which used terms such as "several", "dozens" or "hundreds" killed, making a meaningful overall tally impossible.
Since the beginning of the IDF incursion into Gaza, the military has accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields.
But some experts are concerned that the IDF might be counting some non-combatants as fighters merely because they are part of the Hamas-run territory's administration.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at Kings College London, said: "Israel takes a very broad approach to 'Hamas membership', which includes any affiliation with the organisation, including civil servants or administrators."
The fatality data for the current conflict from the Gaza health ministry shows a sharp increase in the proportion of women and children among the dead compared with previous wars.
A graph showing how the porportion of women and children killed in this conflict is far greater than in previous conflicts betwen Israel and Gaza in 2008 and 2014
This "indicates a much higher civilian death rate," according to Rachel Taylor, the executive director of the Every Casualty Counts organisation, a UK-based organisation that aims to record victims of violent conflicts.
Nearly half of Gaza's population is under 18 and about 44% of the fatalities of war are also children, according to the health ministry's 29 February demographic data. Ms Taylor said the fact that the deaths closely track the demographics of the general population "indicates indiscriminate killing".\
A chart showing the numbers killed in Gaza since 7 October until 29 February and how the majority of these have been women and children
"In contrast, in 2014 there was a fairly high percentage of 'fighting age' men among the dead, but this is much less evident today," she said.
The pace of killing appears, on the face of it, to have slowed down, from about 330 deaths a day in the first month of the conflict to approximately 110 deaths a day over the past month.
But some experts told the BBC that the real scale of those killed by the Israeli offensive is likely to be significantly higher as many hospitals, where deaths are usually recorded, are no longer operating.
These figures also only include deaths from military attacks, and not starvation or disease, which are increasingly concerning international aid organisations.
B'tselem, a Jerusalem-based human rights organisation, said the current war is far deadlier than previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza. Spokesperson Dror Sadot said: "These are numbers that we never saw in previous wars and strikes in Gaza or the other territories."
Trump's Useful Idiot Mitch McConnell to Exit Senate: Good Riddance
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said. “So I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.” GOOD RIDDANCE to the sneakiest, double-faced hypocrite conservative idiot from Kentucky.
His decision follows a recent career as a subservient ideological puppet of Donald Trump. President Joe Biden, who has had a productive working relationship with McConnell, said he was kind of sorry to hear the news.
Aides said McConnell’s announcement was unrelated to his health. The Kentucky senator had a concussion from a fall last year and two public episodes where his face briefly froze while he was speaking.
The senator had been under increasing pressure from the restive, and at times hostile wing of his party that has aligned firmly with Trump. The two have been estranged since December 2020, when McConnell refused to abide Trump’s lie that the election of Democrat Biden as president was the product of fraud. Yet, this is the senator who refused on numerous occasions to vote against Trump in impeachment trials regarding Trump's treasonous relationship with the Russian Dictator Putin. In other words, McConnell constantly chose party loyalty over national interests.
McConnell also protected all the radical right-wing nominees to the Supreme Court and rushed their nominations at the very end of the Trump term, which went against the traditional courtesy of not fielding nominees on the cusp of a new term, thus enabling Trump to stack the Supreme Court with radical right-wing judges who are about to issue a judgment on Trump's fake claims of immunity in his attempt at violating the constitution.
Trump has pulled the party hard to the ideological right, questioning longtime military alliances such as NATO, international trade agreements and pushing for a severe crackdown on immigration, all the while clinging to the falsehood that the election was stolen from him in 2020.
McConnell and Trump had worked together during Trump's time in the White House, remaking the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in a far more conservative image.
When Trump refused to accept the results of the Electoral College, there was a superficial rupture in the Trump-McConnell relationship. While McConnell assigned blame and responsibility to Trump and said that he should be held to account through the criminal justice system for his actions, he did not go far enough and refused to vote to convict Trump.
Americans generally see him as a shifty Rasputin-like figure, cooking up mischief and plotting in backroom deals. Even Republicans are repulsed by him. According to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 45% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of McConnell.
He concluded his address to the Senate, "It is time for the next generation of leadership.” Not soon enough and good riddance. May McConnell go spend his remaining years in the boonies of Kentucky and get his disgusting drooping face out of our lives for good.
Robert De Niro: Trump is Pure Evil
Below is a statement by actor Robert De Niro commenting on fellow New Yorker Donald Trump. De
Niro made his feelings clear at an event held in late 2023 by media outlet The New Republic (TNR), even though he wasn't there in person.
During the Stop Trump Summit, which took place Oct. 11, 2023, in New York City, which De Niro did not attend because of a Covid-19 infection, he issued a lengthy statement that was read aloud by former Trump administration official Miles Taylor.
Besides the dangerous toxicity of a second Trump term to domestic America, remember that Trump loves Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (and the imminent threat he poses to Europe) and Zionist terrorist and criminal of war Benjamin Netanyahu (and the threat he poses to American interests in the Near East).
I'm sorry I couldn't be with you today. A few days ago, I came down with a heavy case of Covid. I was looking forward to being with you, hearing the other speakers, and speaking with Miles. I first encountered Miles when he was still "Anonymous." Through his writing, commentary, and books, I've come to admire his intelligence and courage. I'm grateful that he's agreed to be my voice today.
I am with you in spirit. I am watching. This is an important conversation. What The New Republic is doing in this "Stop Trump Summit"—what you all are doing here today—can help determine our future.
I've spent a lot of time studying bad men. I've examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there's something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don't see a bad man. Truly.
I see an evil one.
Over the years, I've met gangsters here and there. This guy tries to be one, but he can't quite pull it off. There's such a thing as "honor among thieves." Yes, even criminals usually have a sense of right and wrong. Whether they do the right thing or not is a different story—but—they have a moral code, however warped.
Donald Trump does not. He's a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself—not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his "friends." He has contempt for all of them.
We New Yorkers got to know him over the years that he poisoned the atmosphere and littered our city with monuments to his ego. We knew first hand that this was someone who should never be considered for leadership. We tried to warn the world in 2016.
The repercussions of his turbulent presidency divided America and rattled New York City beyond imagination. Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world. We lived with Donald Trump's bombastic behavior every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbors piling up in body bags.
The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behavior. That was the consequence of New York's warning getting ignored. Next time, we know it will be worse.
Make no mistake: the twice-impeached, four-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can't let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously.
So today we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke—right here in the beating heart of New York—to the rest of America:
This is our last chance.
Democracy won't survive the return of a wannabe dictator.
And it won't overcome evil if we are divided.
So what do we do about it? I know I'm preaching to the choir here. What we're doing today is valuable, but we have to take today into tomorrow—take it outside these walls. We have to reach out to the half of our country who have ignored the hazards of Trump and, for whatever reason, support elevating him back into the White House. They're not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice. Our future doesn't just depend on us. It depends on them.
Let's reach out to Trump's followers with respect. Let's not talk about "democracy." "Democracy" may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they've already turned their backs on it. Let's talk about right and wrong. Let's talk about humanity. Let's talk about kindness. Security for our world. Safety for our families. Decency. Let's welcome them back. We won't get them all, but we can get enough to end the nightmare of Trump, and fulfill the mission of this "Stop Trump Summit."
Thank you. Robert De Niro
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Oh Look it: An Anti-Semitic Israeli Jew - Part 2
Update to: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2024/02/oh-look-it-antisemitic-israeli-jew.html:
YUVAL ABRAHAM: TO THE GERMAN HOLOCAUST ASSASSINS AND GENOCIDERS: FUCK YOU AND YOUR GUILT.
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Israeli Filmmaker Slams German Politicians for Branding Berlin Award Acceptance Speech “Antisemitic”
No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham has hit out at German politicians and the Israeli media for branding his award acceptance speech at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday as “antisemitic.”
In a post on X,
formerly Twitter, Abraham, part of a collective of four Israeli and
Palestinian filmmakers that took home the prize for best documentary at
the Berlinale for No Other Land, said he had received death threats and had to cancel his flight back to Israel. [Iznogood: A Jew who does not dare go to Israel because of other Jews is a sure sign that the foundations of the racist supremacist British-American Jewish colony in Palestine are unraveling. I look forward to an Israeli civil war between the "civilized" and repentant colonial settlers of Tel Aviv and the "barbarian" Yahweh-crazy settlers of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Looking forward to a rehash of the Bronze-Age-vintage Judah-Israel civil war, evidence of how primitive is this supremacist ethno-religious nationalism that cannot take an equal and humble place among other nations]
“This happened after Israeli media and German politicians absurdly labeled my Berlinale award speech — where I called for equality between Israelis and Palestinians, a ceasefire and an end to apartheid — as ‘antisemitic,’ ” Abraham said on the social media platform.
“The appalling misuse of this word by Germans, not only to silence Palestinian critics of Israel, but also to silence Israelis like me who support a ceasefire that will end the killing in Gaza and allow the release of the Israeli hostages — empties the word antisemitism of meaning and thus endangers Jews all over the world,” he added.
As the Berlinale this year was overshadowed by political events, including the Israeli-Gaza conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, festival organizers faced a backlash from the local media and German politicians over the awards ceremony on the weekend, where winning filmmakers made statements in support of Palestinians when accepting their trophies.
“The sometimes one-sided and activist statements made by award winners were an expression of individual personal opinions. They in no way reflect the festival’s position,” the Berlinale said in a statement.
No Other Land chronicles the Israeli government’s attempts to expel Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, a rural village in the occupied West Bank. The documentary appeared in Berlin’s Panorama sidebar section, where it won the audience award for best documentary.
Fellow director Basel Adra, who is Palestinian, and Abraham at the Berlinale closing ceremony called on the “powerful people in this room” to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the occupation” of the West Bank by Israel.
THR reached to Abraham and the other No Other Land filmmakers for a direct comment.
The complete X post by Yuval Abraham follows:
“A right-wing Israeli mob came to my family’s home yesterday to search for me, threatening close family members who fled to another town in the middle of the night. I am still getting death threats and had to cancel my flight home. This happened after Israeli media and German politicians absurdly labeled my Berlinale award speech — where I called for equality between Israelis and Palestinians, a ceasefire and an end to apartheid — as ‘antisemitic’. The appalling misuse of this word by Germans, not only to silence Palestinian critics of Israel, but also to silence Israelis like me who support a ceasefire that will end the killing in Gaza and allow the release of the Israeli hostages — empties the word antisemitism of meaning and thus endangers Jews all over the world. As my grandmother was born in a concentration camp in Libya and most of my grandfather’s family was murdered by Germans in the holocaust, I find it particularly outraging that German politicians in 2024 have the audacity to weaponize this term against me in a way that endangered my family. But above all else, this behavior puts Palestinian co-director Basel Adra’s life in danger, who lives under a military occupation surrounded by violent settlements in Masafer Yatta. He is in far greater danger than I am. I’m happy our award winning film, No Other Land, is sparking an important international debate on this issue — and I hope that millions of people watch it when it comes out this year. Sparking a conversation is why we made it. You can have harsh criticism of what me and Basel said on stage without demonizing us. If this is what you’re doing with your guilt for the holocaust — I don’t want your guilt.
According to Faltering Zionists, 99.99% of the World is Anti-semitic
[Of course, for criminal Zionists, any support of Palestinians smacks of terrorism and anti-semitism! Someone once said, "Le ridicule tue". At this diarrheal rate of stale Zionist accusations right and left, the entire world is antisemitic and pro-terrorism, except for a few barbarians in the US, UK and German governments. How rich!]
Israel says China's support for Palestinian 'right to self-defence' may be seen as support for October 7 attack
Israel's foreign ministry has said China's recent statements of support for Palestinian self-determination could be interpreted as support for Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7.
The Israeli government responded on Monday to China's comments at an International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
At the hearing, China's representative Ma Xinmin cited the United Nations Charter and previous UN resolutions in a statement in support of the Palestinian right to self-determination, saying that "numerous [UN General Assembly] resolutions recognise the legitimacy of struggling by all available means, including armed struggle".
"The Palestinian-Israeli conflict stems from Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel's long-standing oppression of the Palestinian people," Ma said.
"The Palestinian people fight against Israeli oppression, and their struggle for completing the establishment of an independent State on the occupied territories are, essentially, just actions for restoring their legitimate rights. The right to self-determination serves as the precise legal foundation for their struggle."
Ma said struggles for self-determination "should not be considered terror acts," but that during armed struggle "all parties are obliged to comply with international humanitarian law and, in particular, to refrain from committing acts of terrorism in violation of international humanitarian law".
Hamas on Friday responded to China's statement in a Telegram channel. According to The Jerusalem Post it said: "We also appreciate the position expressed by the People's Republic of China, and its emphasis on the legality of the occupied peoples' pursuit of self-determination, by various means, including armed resistance, and the necessity not to confuse terrorism with the armed struggle practised by the Palestinian people against the Zionist occupation."
On Monday, Israel's foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat condemned China's statement, saying it "could be interpreted as support for the murderous terrorist attack committed by Hamas on October 7".
"The laws of war do not permit the systematic and deliberate attack of civilians or the use of civilians as human shields, two war crimes that Hamas commits in the name of 'armed struggle'," Haiat said.
"China should ask itself why the Hamas terrorist organisation was so quick to praise the words of the Chinese legal adviser at the ICJ."
The October 7 attack killed about 1,200 Israelis, many of them civilians, while Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 29,000 people, including more than 12,000 children.
Since the beginning of Israel's current war against Hamas in Gaza, China has called on "all parties" to end the fighting and advocated for negotiations towards a two-state solution to resume. China has not specifically named Hamas in its statements or labelled its actions terrorism, in contrast to many Western countries.
Although China has repeatedly expressed a desire to play a direct role in realising peace in Israel and Palestine, it has been passive on issues such as the Houthi strikes on ships in the Red Sea as it attempts to grow its influence in the Middle East.
Hongda Fan, a professor at the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University, said China's recent International Court of Justice statements did not represent a change in its stance on the conflict, but did reveal an escalation in its support and concern for Palestinians.
"Since the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, China has always emphasised the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through political means, and indeed rarely emphasised the Palestinian people's right to use force to resist Israel," Fan said.
"Although China's statement complies with international law, it does further highlight China's position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a certain extent."
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Monday, February 26, 2024
Pakistan's Barbarism and Ignorance Reach Higher than the Himalayas
Charming conjunction of:
- Stupefying igorance: they pray in Arabic but don't know the language. Like the Catholics who prayed for more than one and a half millennium in Latin without understanding a single word;
and
- Religious barbarism: Arabic print on a dress is blasphemous, as if the only Arabic around is koranic.
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Pakistan woman wearing Arabic script dress saved from mob claiming blasphemy
Caroline Davies - Pakistan correspondent
Mon, February 26, 2024
An angry mob in Pakistan accused a woman who wore a dress adorned with Arabic calligraphy of blasphemy, after mistaking them for Quran verses. She was saved by police who escorted her to safety after hundreds gathered. She later gave a public apology.
The dress has the word "Halwa" printed in Arabic letters on it, meaning beautiful in Arabic.
Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. Some people have been lynched even before their cases go on trial.
Police told the BBC they first received a call at about 13:10 local (08:10 GMT) on Sunday that a crowd had gathered around a woman at a restaurant in Lahore, the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Around 300 people had crowded outside the restaurant by the time they arrived, said Assistant Superintendent Syeda Shehrbano.
Videos of the scene circulated on social media, with one showing a woman, visibly scared, sitting in the far corner of the restaurant, shielding her face with her hand.
In another, she is surrounded by officers, who had formed the only barrier between her and a growing crowd who were shouting for her to remove the shirt. In some videos, people can be heard chanting that those who blaspheme must be beheaded.
Footage shared on social media shows Ms Shehrbano standing at the restaurant's entrance, trying to restore order to an increasingly charged crowd.
"Nobody actually knew what was written on the shirt," she said. "The major feat was to try to get that woman out of the area in order to ensure that she is safe."
Ms Shehrbano adds that she had to "negotiate" with the crowd.
"We told them we would take the woman with us, her actions are going to be taken into account and we're going to hold her responsible for whatever crime committed as per the law of the land."
The footage later showed Ms Shehrbano putting her arm around the woman, now covered by a black robe and a headscarf, and pushing through the crowd. Other police officers formed a chain with their arms to clear their path as people in the crowd pushed against them.
Ms Shehrbano said supporters of the hardline Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) party were among those in the crowd.
The woman was brought into a police station, where several religious scholars confirmed that the text on her dress was Arabic calligraphy, not verses from the Quran.
The police then asked the scholars to record a video stating their findings and that the woman was innocent.
"I didn't have any such intention, it happened by mistake. Still I apologise for all that happened, and I'll make sure it never happens again," she said, adding that she is a devout Muslim and would never commit blasphemy.
Authorities said she was in Lahore to do some shopping, and has since left the city.
Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, a former adviser to the prime minister on religious affairs said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the men in the crowd, rather than the woman, should have been the ones to apologise.
Ms Shehrbano said authorities have seen a "mushrooming of incidents" similar to that on Sunday.
"Had I not screamed and had I not convinced the crowd that we will do something about it, It would have turned nastier… Thank God," she said. She has been widely praised, with the Chief of Punjab police calling for her to receive an award for her bravery.
Laws against blasphemy were first codified by India's British rulers and expanded in the 1980s under the military government.
In August last year, scores of churches and homes were burnt in Jaranwala, a city east of Pakistan, after two men from the city were accused of damaging the Quran.
Oh, Look It: An antisemitic Israeli Jew!
Plus:
The fucking German Nazis are so terrified of their own past that they have now become more Zionist than the Zionists. They used to call Jews "sub-human vermin". Now these neo-Fascist Germans, tormented by their past and their deep existential psychological problems, go so far as to label "anti-Semitic" those Israeli Jews who sympathize with the Palestinians. In other words, for the brand new repentant Germany, the Palestinians are now the "sub-human vermin". See? Germans have a difficulty with nuance and moderation. Believe me, I have personal experience with the troubled German psyche. As George Friedman has predicted [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emCEfEYom4A], the world's biggest problems are, again, going to be made in Germany.
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‘No Other Land’ Director Receives ‘Death Threats’ After Calling for Gaza Ceasefire at Berlinale
Samantha Bergeson
Mon, February 26, 2024
“No Other Land” co-director Yuval Abraham announced he is receiving death threats after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza onstage during the 2024 Berlinale closing ceremony.
Abraham, who co-directed documentary “No Other Land” alongside Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, pointed to the different experiences between himself and Adra due to their ethnicities. While Abraham is Israeli, Adra is Palestinian and living under military occupation in the West Bank; according to Abraham, despite living only a half-hour from one another, their political rights vastly vary.
“We are standing in front of you. Now, we are the same age. I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. And in two days, we go back to a land where we are not equal,” Abraham said onstage at Berlinale while accepting the Best Documentary Award alongside Adra. “I am under civilian law; Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from one another but I have voting rights. Basel does not have voting rights. I am free to move where I want in this land. Basel, like millions of Palestinians, is locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, has to end.”
Abraham later tweeted the Berlinale clip, writing, “Our film ‘No Other Land’ on occupied Masafer Yatta’s brutal expulsion won best documentary in Berlinale. Israel’s channel 11 aired this 30 second segment from my speech, insanely called it ‘anti semitic’ — and I’ve been receiving death threats since. I stand behind every word.”
“No Other Land” follows Palestinian activist Adra, who additionally co-directed, as he fights against the Israeli occupation of his town, Masafer Yatta. Co-director Abraham, also a subject of the documentary, is an Israeli journalist who joins Adra in documenting the destruction of Masafer Yatta’s Palestinian community as soldiers destroy civilian homes.
During the ceremony, Adra called the Israel-Palestine conflict a “massacre” (per Deadline) and called out German arms sales to Israel.
The Berlinale closing ceremony was rife with political discord, as “Direct Action” director Ben Russel wore a Palestinian keffiyeh, commonly a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, while onstage.
Filmmaker Eliza Hittman called for a ceasefire, saying (via Deadline), “As a Jewish filmmaker who won the Silver Bear in 2020, it is important for me to be here. There is no ‘just war,’ and the more people try to convince themselves there’s a just war, the more they commit a grotesque act of self-deception.”
The official Berlinale social media pages were hacked by “unknown persons” that shared posts “about the war in the Middle East,” according to an official festival statement. The infographics uploaded by the hackers included statements like “Genocide is Genocide. We are all complicit,” and that followers need to “shed the idea that German guilt absolves us of our country’s history or our current crimes” and call for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.
A post shared, “From our unresolved Nazi past to our genocidal present — we have always been on the wrong side of history. But it’s not too late to change our future.”
Governing Mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner reacted to the hacked Berlinale page and tweeted that the city itself is “firmly on Israel’s side” of the conflict. Since Berlinale is a state-funded festival, Wegner stated that the “new management” of the festival should be responsible for no other “incidents” occurring.
“Antisemitism has no place in Berlin, and that also applies to the art scene,” Wegner wrote. “I expect the new management of the Berlinale to ensure that such incidents do not happen again.”
He continued, “Berlin has a clear stance when it comes to freedom. Berlin is firmly on Israel’s side. There is no doubt about that. Full responsibility for the deep suffering in Israel and the Gaza Strip lies with Hamas. It [Hamas] alone has the power to end this suffering by releasing all the hostages and laying down her weapons. There is no room for relativization here.”
As the Berlinale closing night was airing, the Film Independent Spirit Awards were simultaneously taking place in Santa Monica, California. During the ceremony, a pro-Palestine protest interrupted the broadcast. Spirit Awards host Aidy Bryant said onstage, “We’re at the beach and people are exercising their freedom of speech.”
Our film “No Other Land” on occupied Masafer Yatta’s brutal expulsion won best documentary in Berlinale. Israel’s channel 11 aired this 30 second segment from my speech, insanely called it “anti semitic” – and I’ve been receiving death threats since. I stand behind every word. pic.twitter.com/2burPfZeKO
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) February 25, 2024
Das, was gestern auf der Berlinale vorgefallen ist, war eine untragbare Relativierung. In Berlin hat Antisemitismus keinen Platz, und das gilt auch für die Kunstszene. Ich erwarte von der neuen Leitung der Berlinale, sicherzustellen, dass sich solche Vorfälle nicht wiederholen.
— Kai Wegner (@kaiwegner) February 25, 2024
Netanyahu to Hostage Families: Accept Your Loved Ones as Martyrs for Zionism
By insisting on his much flaunted Rafah assault, despite opposition from the entire international community, Benjamin Netanyahu is revealing two things:
1- For him, the hostage families should stop protesting and calling for a ceasefire. They should accept that their sons and daughters be sacrificed for the greater good of Israel. In his mind, the hostages are essentially Jewish suicide bombers - martyrs - who ought to be sacrificed for the greater cause. The greater cause, as he sees it, is continued expansion of the Anglo-saxon colony in Palestine, land theft, ethnic cleansing of Palestine, expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population to make way for fresh-off-the-boat Jewish idiots from New York, etc. etc.
The Zionists have always justified their illegal expansionist programs with security arguments: "We have to continue stealing land and killing Palestinians because they want us ill." But does he, or anyone behind him, wonder why the Palestinians want Israel ill? I'm sure they do, but they are too afraid to face the undeniable fact: 100 years ago, Palestinians made up 98% of the population, with a smattering of Jewish pilgrims visiting the Holy Sites. Today, the Palestinian hosts are in refugee camps, occupied and brutalized every day of their lives by vicious, terrorist, foreign Jewish land thieves calling themselves a "state".
To keep the Israel charade going on in Palestine, the modus operandi of the Zionists is to always portray themselves as victims of their own victims. The Israel-Palestine affair is best summarized in this manner: Israel is the only colonial occupier rapist that demands protection from its own occupied and raped Palestinian victims.
2- Netanyahu is clinging to war and violence because he is terrorizing his own people into submission. No sooner will the war end, that he'll be dumped in the trashbin of history and most likely in prison. He faces corruption criminal charges and was behaving like an autocrat by trying to destroy the judiciary system to protect himself and have an unchallenged hold on his country's policies.
By keeping the carnage going in Gaza, he's blackmailing the Israelis who, scared as they are for the future for their Jewish Disneyland, are less likely to destitute him under the pretense of national unity. Netanyahu has magnified the October 7 attacks by Hamas to the level of a second Holocaust, which is really a joke. There is nothing comparable between October 7 and the Holocaust. The Holocaust was an unprovoked, barbaric, systematic plan by Germany and the other Nazi Europeans to rid themselves of their own Jewish communities, for no reason whatsoever. In contrast, October 7 is one in a 100-year-long series of rebellious actions by a colonized indigenous people, the victims of the Zionist rape of Palestine. It is a totally justified action of resistance against a brutal illegal foreign occupier. The alleged commission of atrocities by the Hamas attackers is a secondary consideration that should not obfuscate the underlying cause: the colonial rape and occupation by foreign invaders and land thieves of an indigenous people and its land.
But Netanyahu and his fundamentalist ultra-religious Jewish terrorists have hyped October 7 up to a level that is commensurate with a license to kill and steal more land. And now, Netanyahu is using October 7 as a buoy to keep himself from sinking.
I Told Ya: Conservative Allies of Israel are Antisemitic Nazis
White supremacist Trump followers are conservative republicans. On one hand, they and their pseudo-religious neanderthal evangelicals of the dumbass southern United States love Israel beyond measure, but at the same time, they hate the Jews for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and are anti-semitic Nazis of the first kind. There are two explanations for this contradiction:
- They love Israel - Zionist-occupied Palestine - because it serves them as a dumpster in which they hope to get rid of their Jews in the form of settlers.
- The imbecilic morons of the Trump evangelical movement believe that by the creation of Israel and the
"return" of the biblical Hebrews to Jerusalem, the Messiah Jesus will
also return to usher the end of times, Armageddon, at which point the Jews will
be faced with two options: Convert to Christianity or be killed. Evangelical
morons love Israel to death, literally.
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Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies
Ben Goggin
Updated Sat, February 24, 2024
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year.
Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes.
But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.
At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
One member of the group, Greg Conte, who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, said that his group showed up to talk to the media.
Another, Ryan Sanchez, who was previously part of the Nazi “Rise Above Movement,” took photos and videos of himself at the conference with an official badge and touted associations with Fuentes.
Other attendees in Sanchez’s company openly used the N-word.
For several years, CPAC and its supporters have attempted to temper the most extreme fringes of the conservative movement, and have welcomed the continued debate between Trump and more moderate conservatives.
This year, however, some attendees and former attendees have expressed frustration with the conference’s stronger association with Trump and his wing of the party.
In one of the most viral moments from this year’s conference, conservative personality Jack Posobiec called for the end of democracy and a more explicitly Christian-focused government. While Posobiec later said his statements were partly satire, many CPAC attendees embraced his and others’ invocations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
CPAC organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Only Gaza Genocide Will be Remembered. Bye Bye October 7
It’s revealing how quickly the October 7 massacre is being forgotten and how the Gaza Genocide, given the scale of the Jewish-inflicted horror, will be the only thing that history will remember.
The sight of pro-Palestine activism,
especially stickers and posters about “Israeli apartheid” and "Gaza genocide", has swamped the public discourse across the world since October 7. Whenever I can, I peel the pro-Israel stuff and pictures of Israeli hostages off walls, benches, lampposts and the like. They mean nothing in comparison with the barbarity of what foreign Jews continue to do to indigenous Palestine.
At the end of last week, I marveled at a giant blue Star of David crossed out with a red bar
reading, “Boycott Israeli genocide” and featuring a red rim around
the circle that said: “Boycott Child Killers… Boycott Terror…Boycott
Liar Zionists… Boycott Land Thieves”.
It is beginning to feel as if the world has finally taken stock of the charade of the creation of the colonial state of Israel, after decades of Zionist lies and propaganda that were initially taken as truth because of the Zionist monopoly over information. Not anymore. There are still toilet rags, like the colonialist imperial English The Telegraph, that keep chanting pro-Zionist tunes from the bottom of the cesspool in which it finds itself.
Instead
of supporting Palestine in its attempt to finally obtain justice after its 75-year-long rape by European settlers, we see instead a diminishing "Decrescendo" of stale deceptive tunes like "Israel protects the West" or "the future of the free world is in continuing the genocide in Gaza", or "Palestinians want to eradicate the Jews", and such inanities of world war II vintage that virtually everyone on earth has come to realize not only as outright lies, but absurdly archaic and anachronistic.
Indeed, the barbaric continuation of Israel’s murderous campaign has enraged both the respectable – Lord Cameron, Sir Keir Starmer and hundreds of parliamentarians – and the less so, including Kippa-wearing far-Right Jewish neo-Nazi neanderthal fundamentalists and former white supremacist Nazi activists, and of course the dwindling few who desperately turn out on the streets every weekend to demonize Palestine and present the entire Palestinian population as "terrorists".
It’s not surprising that this lot is an expert in the concept of waging savage unjust wars and why doing so is the exact definition of committing genocide; they've done it in the 1920s and 1930s, maxed it in the 1948 pogroms carried out by foreign invaders against indigenous Palestinians, and then continued throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s... and to our present time with stealing land, killing people, uprooting olive orchards, claiming God's preference for them and other idiocies from the Bronze Age. But it’s more troubling that this barbarity has stood the test of time since the early 20th century when colonialism and racism were still in fashion. But the edifice is crumbling now before our eyes, after 100 years. "I was blind, but now I see". The rape of Palestine can only be seen for what it has always been: the invasion and rape of an innocent country and an indigenous people by colonial white European settlers who happen to be of the Jewish faith.
The barbarism of Hamas on October 7 is vanishing across the Western world. Why? Because its genesis is the inhuman caging and blockade of the entire population of Gaza for decades. Because we now know the truth that the Crime Minister Netanyahu, not so smart after all, has himself facilitated the rise of Hamas to spite the Palestinian Authority and divide the Palestinian camp. Because we see that, on the horror scale, October 7 is nothing in comparison to the abject violence perpetrated by the Jewish army on an innocent population. When Israel says it is "at war", it is again lying. A war is waged by two more or less equally equipped armies. A war is waged in open fields and not in densely populated cities. Gaza is such an unequal and unfair war. If the Palestinians had access to the same armament that the US generously bestows on the otherwise incompetent Israeli soldiers (whose fear makes them shoot their own hostages just freed by Hamas), the fight would be fair, and guess who has more at stake in the outcome of the fight? The people defending their land? Or the invading marauders?
The Zionists claim that Hamas is using the Palestinian civilian population as human shields. But where do you want the Hamas fighters to position themselves to fight without exposing the civilians to harm? Are there any defensible open terrains in Gaza? No. When you cram people in a cage, how and where would an "ethical" fighter segregate himself from the civilians to fight from? Nowhere but in buildings, in streets, in neighborhoods where the civilians are. Again, Israel portrays its savagery in Gaza as a fair fight. But it is everything but.
In the English Parliament, Labour,
the SNP and the Conservatives fought like cats about the wording of
their various amendments to condemn Israel, the main difference between
them being the brave decision by the Scottish Nationalists to declare that the Palestinians were enduring collective punishment.
It is, in short, that the actual events of October 7 have simply and rightfully ceased to exist outside of Israel. Even within Israel, the death of a couple of hundred of Israelis at the hands of Hamas is not worth the unraveling of the myth of Israel as a result of its vengeful action. The world now knows what it didn't know, or did not dare know, regarding the incongruent and barbaric genesis of the state of Israel. Hamas’s actions and Islamist-based ideology, abhorrent as they may be, stem from decades of oppression and abuse of the indigenous Palestinian people by the colonial land thief Israel, the obsessive propaganda to dehumanize the Palestinians in order to justify their extermination, of tarnishing a legitimate national liberation resistance movement by amalgamating it with radical Islamist ideology, of declaring the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a terrorist organization then hypocritically embracing it, the continued building of foreign Jewish illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land, the propagation of lies that "there is so such thing as a Palestinian people", the determination to erase the Palestinian identity of Jerusalem and replace it with a fake imported Jewish identity, the determination to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build on its ruins a new Jewish temple - how primitive, anachronistic and biblically-barbaric of the Zionists; Accusing anyone who calls for a ceasefire of being “anti-Semitic".
Some say that Israel, one
of the most vicious and ambitious terror mobs the post-war world has
known, had “won the propaganda war”. That was true prior to October 7. Almost every country on earth was willing to forget the millions of Palestinian refugees chased out of their homes, villages, and cities by the barbarian European Jews. But the tables have now turned. The truth is that Israel thought all along that, because of the power of filthy Nazi-inspired Zionist propaganda and the Jewish stranglehold over dumb America, the world would end up siding with it. Unfortunately for Israel, because of October 7 and the revelation to the world of Israel's real nature - an English colonial enterprise in the Near East for easy access to Arab oil - the world has had enough of Israeli arrogance and Zionist greed. Israel is now not an asset for the West in the Levant; it has become a liability, a burden and a threat to Western interests. The world today is no longer the 1945 world.
Politicians and international bodies are pulling together to stop Israel from completing its genocide and ethnic cleansing. The West and the world community cannot be forced by Netanyahu and his settler hordes to assume responsibility for the atrocities Israel is now engaged in. Potential retribution by billions of people who have been watching the Gaza carnage is not worth paying to rescue a few million Yahweh-crazy Jewish copycats of Daesh, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The Palestinians must finally be given justice by unilaterally recognizing a sovereign, independent and fully-free Palestinian state that should include ALL the illegal settlements built by rabid Jewish terrorists who are foreign to the land. The settlers will have to become minority citizens of the Palestinian state or pack up their garbage and relocate back to Brooklyn NY, and if there is any decency left in them, they will not demolish their settlements before evacuating. The Palestinians did not demolish their homes when they fled Jewish terror in 1948: Jewish squatters and terrorists took them and live in them today as "Israelis". President
Biden bravely and finally chose to reassert America's long-standing position, nixed by the dumbass Donald Trump, that Israeli settlements are illegal. But it is not enough to speak: Actions must match the words. Israeli government and army back the criminal settlers; they both should be sanctioned as terror organizations. Sanctioning five settlers with denial of visas to the US is a joke.
What Israel is doing since October 7 merits the very harshest of punishments. No one, no country is above the law.