Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says

 

Amnesty International joined a growing chorus of human rights experts who say Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The group called on states and arms suppliers of Israel to "bring Israel’s atrocities...to an immediate end.”

Leading international human rights organization Amnesty International has concluded, in a report it released on Wednesday, that Israel was responsible for acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip.

The group said that it had been analyzing events and statements by Israeli officials for months, concluding that the legal threshold for the crime of genocide has been met. It is the first time that Amnesty has reached such a conclusion during an ongoing conflict.

Amnesty’s chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement on Wednesday that “month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” adding that “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”

The report comes more than a year after Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. At the time of the report’s release, the death toll in Gaza had surpassed 44,500, including 60% women, children and elderly, according to the Palestinian health ministry.  (more...)

Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says

Related:

U.S. mainstream media downplays Amnesty International’s finding that Israel is committing genocide

They Would Not Do That To Us

 

I mean surely, that stuff happens over there. Right?

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Jews Occupy Ottawa

 

Not in our name

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Poilievre, Patrick Brown & Foreign Interference

 

Pierre Poilievre still doesn't have his security clearance, and David Wallace says he knows why. It stems from the leadership campaign Poilievre won, and how he won. The caveat? All of this could mean that Doug Ford becomes our next prime minister.

Syrian Women Exploited in MI6 Propaganda Ops

 

The propaganda value of women in conflicts has long-been cynically exploited by Western intelligence services. A leaked CIA memorandum from March 2010 on covert means of increasing flagging support for NATO’s Afghanistan mission noted women “could serve as ideal messengers” in “humanizing” the military occupation. This was due to their “ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory”:

“Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories...could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the mission. Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.”

Throughout the US occupation of course, Afghanistan remained one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman, by some margin. Roughly a year after that CIA memo was authored, Gay Girl in Damascus, a blog purportedly written by Syrian-American lesbian Amina Arraf, garnered significant mainstream attention. Widely hailed for her “fearless” and “inspiring” eyewitness reporting, she was lauded as a symbol of the “progressive” revolution erupting in the country.

In June 2011, Amina’s cousin announced on the blog Amina had been kidnapped by three armed men in the Syrian capital. In response, numerous Facebook pages were set up calling for Amina’s release and ‘liked’ by tens of thousands, #FreeAmina trended widely on Twitter, journalists and rights groups begged Western governments to demand her release, and the US State Department announced it was investigating Amina’s disappearance.

Six days later, it was revealed ‘Amina’ was in fact Tom MacMaster, a middle-aged American man living in Scotland, who had penned extensive lesbian literotica fantasies under that alter ego. While corporate news outlets quickly forgot all about the hoax they’d so comprehensively fallen for, their appetite for dubious human interest stories emanating from the crisis wasn’t diminished.  (more...)

Syrian Women Exploited in MI6 Propaganda Ops

Is Israel descending into a ‘fully fledged fascist dictatorship’? | MP Offer Cassif

 

“In Israel they are either bigots, fanatics, sometimes murderous ones… and they are cowards… and unfortunately there is no brave figure that I can see” - Offer Cassif, Israeli MP

Israeli MP Offer Cassif has been staunchly against Israel’s long occupation of Palestine and has been highly critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The coalition he is a part of  consists of only five seats out of 120 in the Israeli Knesset.

He joined us for a second time on UNAPOLOGETIC to discuss how Israeli society is largely embracing its leadership’s descent into a “fully fledged fascist dictatorship”.

EU’s Frontex gives seal of approval to Israeli surveillance firm

 

The European Union’s border guards have been quietly recommending surveillance technology made by an Israeli firm.

Frontex – the EU’s border and coast guard agency – arranges “industry days” during which weapons firms can showcase equipment deemed helpful in tracking migrants.

Unnoticed by news media, Israel’s BeeSense took part in one such event during April.

BeeSense had been invited to do so because Frontex placed it on a shortlist of 16 firms offering what the agency described as “technological solutions.”

While presenting its radars and sensors at the Frontex event, BeeSense boasted of a “strong footprint in the IDF [Israel’s military].”

Chris Borowski, a Frontex spokesperson, told me by email that the “industry days” offer a “platform to explore innovations in border management technologies.” EU governments are provided with “a chance to learn about the latest tools in the field.”

“It’s worth mentioning that Frontex doesn’t decide whether these technologies get used,” Borowski added. “That’s up to the national authorities.”

Borowski’s attempt to pass the buck is inexcusable. By shortlisting BeeSense, Frontex gave a seal of approval to Israeli surveillance technology at a time while Israel is actively destroying Gaza.  (more...)

EU’s Frontex gives seal of approval to Israeli surveillance firm

Israel's secret weapon supplies from Britain via America revealed

 

Over 500 shipments of F-35 parts sent from British airbase to the US, where they can be exported to Israel amid Gaza genocide.

• Britain’s Ministry of Defence confirms that the global pool of F-35 spares is owned by the Pentagon.
• Campaign group says it raises “serious questions about how much sovereignty over export controls the UK and other F-35 partner nations have surrendered”.

Can Keir Starmer control these weapon sales?

Indigo’s Copyright Victory Opens A New Front In BDS Struggle

 

The company’s win is a familiar story for movement politics in court, where activists meet a legal system that privileges property rights.

In October, Indigo won an order blocking a website calling for a boycott of the bookseller. The case, largely ignored by the media, revealed a new and unlikely front in the struggle in Canada between the movement for Palestinian liberation and Israel’s powerful supporters, one which could have ramifications for other solidarity efforts. 

In August, anonymous activists created the website IndigoKillsKids.ca, which has been endorsed by the Canadian BDS Coalition and other pro-Palestine organizations. The site, borrowing Indigo’s visual style, told visitors to boycott the company, promoted the September 25 day of action against it and offered links to various BDS resources. It was the latest phase in a years-long campaign to boycott the bookseller over the HESEG Foundation — founded and run by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman and her husband, Indigo’s owner Gerald Schwartz — which offers scholarships to Israeli army veterans without family in Israel.  

Soon after the site went live, Indigo’s lawyer demanded it be taken down, and two weeks later filed a suit requesting an order for all major internet providers in Canada to block the site. The court granted the request, first under an interim decision issued September 19, and then with a two-year injunction on October 23, effectively shutting down the offending website along with several social media accounts for the foreseeable future. That month, it was reported that Israel’s military had killed at least 16,900 children in its assault on Gaza.

The legal issue in the case had little to do with Indigo’s alleged support for Israel’s genocide. Rather, the proceedings centered on the website’s biting appropriation of the branding associated with the division Indigo Kids, darkly parodying the cute, non-threatening logo with a horrifying assertion: “Indigo kills kids.”  (more...)

Indigo’s Copyright Victory Opens A New Front In BDS Struggle

Genocide as Charity: a critical look at the Mizrachi Organization of Canada

 

The work of the Mizrachi Organization of Canada shows how Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity are embedded within the Canadian charitable sector.

No one charity epitomizes the synergy between rampant financial complicity in the aiding and abetting of Israeli war criminality and the laissez faire attitude that plagues the Canadian tax regulator, better than the Mizrachi Organization of Canada. Legally registered as a charitable organization as of 1979, Mizrachi Canada’s bold-faced website advertises itself as the Canadian home of the Religious Zionist Movement, ready and energized to move tax-deductible donations to supposedly worthy causes in Israel. With Canadian Jewish private and public foundations sitting on multiple billions of dollars, Mizrachi Canada serves as the most overt conduit for Canadians looking to support Israeli war crimes – and earn a charitable tax credit in the process. 

Welcome to Canada, where Palestinian erasure is a charitable pastime and the Canada Revenue Agency, the charitable sector regulator, is either complicit or inept.  

For starters, as I’ve written about in detail here, Mizrachi Canada operates as a tax receipt-issuing conduit for the Israeli website, jgive.com. Jgive.com, the forward-facing platform for the Israeli-based organization, ASUR Fund, plays virtual host to thousands of Israeli-registered charities. Thumbing its nose at customary international legal frameworks, like the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statutes (which Canada has internalized into its own Criminal Code) hundreds of these Israeli charities are physically located in illegally occupied Palestinian territory.  (more...)

Genocide as Charity: a critical look at the Mizrachi Organization of Canada

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Palestine, and a message of resistance

 

In The Message, Coates writes of a constellation of shared experiences and renews a call for global solidarity

In East Jerusalem, roughly a dozen participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature, including American author Ta-Nehisi Coates, are met by Israeli soldiers outside the Al-Aqsa complex and are made to wait. “No justifications were given, no questions asked, no instructions offered,” Coates writes. The following day, in the West Bank, as the group of authors are navigating the many checkpoint of Hebron, a soldier asks Coates his religion. When Coates replies that he has none, the soldier inquires about the religion of his parents. “When I told him they were Christian, he allowed me to pass.” On his visit to the West Bank, Coates sees the cisterns, or water reservoirs, that collect rainwater atop the homes of Palestinians—a survival strategy in the face of unequal access to water. He also sees the metal fences ahead of revolving gates and autonomous turrets that fire “non-lethal” rounds via remote control.

Coates’ trip lasted only 10 days, but what he took away from his brief stay and relates in his new book The Message is varied and deep. Coates, a Black man from the United States, found what he witnessed in Palestine reminiscent of Jim Crow in the American South, and of South African apartheid. He sees Israel as being, “like its American patron, an expansionist power” that wants “the land without the Palestinians on it.”

Some would say it is that expansionist drive that connects the everyday indignities, inconveniences, humiliations, and brutalities Palestinians have faced since Israel’s formation with the current moment of live-streamed genocide in Gaza.

Jason Hickel, a professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Barcelona, also attributes US support for Israel to expansionism and, more precisely, its determination to “maintain the conditions for capital accumulation and geopolitical hegemony.”  (more...)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Palestine, and a message of resistance

Victims of Communism memorial delayed over Nazi link controversy to open

 

Ottawa’s latest monument arrives under scrutiny, with no names on its wall for now.

After more than a year of delay the controversial Victims of Communism memorial will be officially unveiled in Ottawa on Dec. 12.

The unveiling of the memorial was put on hold last year because of the controversy over parliamentarians honouring a Waffen SS soldier and potential links between the monument and Nazi collaborators, according to records obtained by the Ottawa Citizen earlier this year.

In addition, Jewish groups have voiced their ongoing concerns about the names of alleged Nazi collaborators and other fascists being inscribed on the memorial.

Charles Thibault-Béland, a spokesman for Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, said Tuesday that at this point there will be no names on the memorial. Department officials are still reviewing the backgrounds of the names and events to be commemorated.

“At the time of the unveiling, there will be no names on the monument’s wall,” Thibault-Béland confirmed.

The memorial, which is located near the corner of Wellington and Bay streets, is supposed to honour those who suffered under communism.

But a Holocaust education organization has warned that a large number of names that were to be inscribed on the memorial had links to the Nazis.  (more...)

Victims of Communism memorial delayed over Nazi link controversy to open

Who Is Sebastian Gorka?

 

Max Blumenthal briefs the Judge on Middle East turmoil and the destruction of the international legal order.

Authors Demand Giller Prize Sever Partnership With Scotiabank

 

Canada's most prestigious literary prize was awarded on November 18 amid controversy. The Giller Prize ceremony is normally broadcast live on CBC, but this year, it was pre-recorded. This was not for technical reasons, however, but rather because protesters had disrupted the ceremony the previous year. They demanded that the bank withdraw its investments from Elbit System, Israel's largest arms producer.

The actions targeting the literary prize have grown out of a wider campaign against Scotiabank to condemn its $500 million investment in Elbit Systems. Scotiabank is the largest foreign investor in Elbit.

This massive investment, beginning in October 2022, sparked outrage with many activists who were aware of the history of Elbit Systems' weapons being “battle-tested" on Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. In response to pressure from the campaign, Scotiabank has incrementally divested from Elbit Systems, selling off shares in each quarter of 2024, down to $112 million according to the most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

The Canada Palestine Association launched the campaign against Scotiabank officially in June 2023. Since then, their coordination led to actions picketing 18 of the bank's branches on March 15 and 35 branches on June 25 and shut down multiple branches in the Lower Mainland of B.C. on October 2.

The campaign has called for people to move their savings and close their Scotiabank accounts to protest the bank's war profiteering. “I think that it is the most minor thing we can do is be mindful of our economic binds that are directly involved in the ongoing genocide in Palestine” said Emily Fedoruk, host of the “No Arms in the Arts: People's Tour” book club event.  (more...)

Authors Demand Giller Prize Sever Partnership With Scotiabank

Why we demand an arms embargo on Israel

 

A view from the sit-in at Parliament

That Israel is committing crimes against humanity on an industrial scale is no longer a matter of debate. In the past year, the Trudeau government has indirectly acknowledged as much, first by ceasing to issue new military export permits to Israel, and then by stating that it would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now indicted by the International Criminal Court, should he enter Canada.

In spite of this, Ottawa continues to equip the Israeli military with the very weapons that it is using to slaughter Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. As Amnesty International has stated, Ottawa now “risks becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law—including war crimes—and a plausible genocide.”

For several months, the Trudeau government has responded to public concerns about complicity with tokenistic gestures that attempt to hide or downplay the scope of its ongoing military linkages to Israel. The result has been incoherence and hypocrisy. Canada now has approximately 200 active export permits with Israel, which are valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In September, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly suspended 30 of these. She did not specify which permits were suspended, nor did she suggest that any have been cancelled. The government weakly defends its position by arguing that its standing permits are for “non-lethal” goods—a term that has no legal definition and is at odds with the broader language of Canadian and international law. In fact, these permits are for aircraft, ground vehicles, and components such as imaging technology and specialized circuit boards, all of which may be used to lethal effect.

Moreover, Canada continues to export military wares to Israel via the United States with little restraint or transparency.  (more...)

Why we demand an arms embargo on Israel

Christian Zionism: Its origins, goals, and influence

 

The word Zionism is embroiled in division, angst, hate, and war. To restore peace in the Middle East and the world, we need to understand what Zionism really represents.

How Israeli Hooligans Found Out In Amsterdam

 

Lowkey catches up with the legend of Dutch Hip Hop, Appa, who witnessed the events surrounding the Maccabi Tel Aviv vs. Ajax football match in Amsterdam, which ended in violence.

Antony Loewenstein: Palestine Laboratory Podcast

 

Apart from the fact that I really enjoy speaking with Antony Loewenstein, he has teamed up with the folks over at Drop Site News to make his book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, into a podcast. The four part series takes a deep dive into Israel and its arms export industry. What I loved most about the podcast is that it made me go off and research things that I didn’t know were connected to the formation of the state of Israel and its war tactics, things like the Irish War of Independence of 1919. The podcast also lays bare how essential early Zionist militia's (terrorists) were to the formation of the state.

Roger Waters : Campaign for Peace

 

We don't need no thought control

With ‘friends’ like this peace movement doesn’t need enemies

 

Why did Steven Staples join Pierre Poilievre, Justin Trudeau and other genocide promoters in smearing an anti-NATO demonstration as “antisemitic”?

On Saturday the Council of Canadians Treasurer and board member sent his PeaceQuest list an error filled, anti-Palestinian, power-serving ‘questionnaire’. As Israel’s holocaust in Gaza enters its fourteenth month Staples published “4 ways to ‘shake off’ antisemitism claims. Can the pro-Palestinian movement take advice from Taylor Swift?”. At the top of his smear against those challenging Canada’s complicity in genocide Staples quotes anti-Palestinian bigot Jim Good. A few posts below the one quoted by Staples Good wrote on Facebook: “Return the hostages. Surrender. Recognize Israel. The only peaceful way forward. Otherwise Israel will annex Gaza. No country wants Palestinians. Don’t let them in to Canada! Everywhere they go it’s death to this, death to that. Death, death, and more death. They are insane! Anyone supporting them is a willing dupe.”

In a post just below that one Good notes, “Fuck off with your Intifada bullshit. Hamas are like ISIS. A warped, perverted death cult. Incapable of peace. … They’d love to start a civil war, here. They hate us. They want us to die.

“Hamas want it to hurt. Their hatred is that strong. They are mad. Hamas hide behind their own children, intentionally draw fire, and escape into a tunnel, leaving the families to perish. They’re convinced if they die martyrs they’ll have a great afterlife. 18 virgins or something like that.”  (more...)

With ‘friends’ like this peace movement doesn’t need enemies

Trials & Denazification

 

49th Parahell is back again and so is returning guest Duncan Kinney, host of the Progress Report, to discuss Canadian Nazi monuments, our disturbing and mostly-hidden fascist history, and how he himself has become a part of this story after being charged with vandalizing one of these monuments in Edmonton a few years ago.

Zionist infiltration of the media

 

In today's show, we will be unpacking the shocking revelations that a number of prominent journalists previously worked as spooks for the Zionist entity.

In our first report, Latifa Abouchakra names and shames some of the guilty parties.

Our next report looks at the wider Zionist infiltration of the media and highlights how the Zionist movement starts grooming youngsters from a very early age.

Canada wants to jail activist for vandalizing monument honoring Nazis

 

Canadian activist Duncan Kinney has been charged with vandalizing statues commemorating the SS. Why are there even statues honoring Nazis in the first place? Canada, you okay?

U of T Alumni Are Withholding Their Donations

 

The movement for Palestinian liberation is stronger now than it has ever been, and alumni are playing a critical role in challenging @uoft’s complicity in the ongoing genocide. Read the Donor Divestment Statement by members of Pharmacy Class of 1984, and use the phone script, email template, and endorsement form in our bio to join the campaign!

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Mother Mary & the Zionist Ghouls: Laith Marouf & Craig Murray Tour Maghdouche’s Lady of Awaiting.

 

Craig, Laith, Hadi Hotait & Niels Ladefoged, visit the Lady of Awaiting Cave/Church, in Maghdouche, south Lebanon, where Mother Mary waited for Jesus Christ when he would go preaching to the Canaanites in Saida city. The Holy site faired better than many other churches that were targeted or desecrated by the Zionists, like the Deir Mimas Church & the Shrine of Peter the Apostle. We were lucky enough to also speak to the Father in charge of the shrine.

Palestine protester who smashed Israeli arms firm stuck in UK jail | Her mum speaks out

 

20-year-old Fatema Zainab Rajwani tried to stop Israel's genocide in Gaza by breaking into an Elbit Systems site in England. She was arrested, denied bail and could face 15 months in prison before her trial even starts. Declassified spoke to her mother Sukaina Rajwani about the chilling crack down on Palestine Action's Filton 10.

Sign their petition: https://www.change.org/t/filton10-en-gb

How Israel Weaponizes Food to Erase Palestinian Identity

 

This is how Israel uses food to colonize Palestine and erase Palestinian culture and identity.

Santa writes to Indigo informing them they are at the top of his Naughty List

 

Beginning November 29, 2024, Santa Claus is asking all citizens of conscience and those who cherish the lives of children, to gather at Indigo, Chapters, and Coles locations across Canada, to demand that CEO Heather Reisman stop funding the HESEG Foundation. Santa is also calling on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the HESEG Foundation’s charitable status, as part of a holiday season of public pressure and action.

During the recent double-check of his Naughty and Nice lists, Santa saw a dramatic decrease in the number of children. Over 20,000 names had disappeared from his list since last year. Requesting assistance from his elves, Santa learned about the “Indigo Kills Kids” campaign and how Indigo Books’ CEO, Heather Reisman, uses her profits to donate to the HESEG Foundation—a charity in Israel that provides scholarships to “lone soldiers,” non-Israeli citizens, who enlist and complete service in the Israeli military.

Continuing their research, Santa and his elves also learned that Indigo was using the legal system to silence the “Indigo Kills Kids” campaign, winning an injunction against the campaign’s website and social media accounts, and preventing Canadians from accessing these sites to learn about Indigo’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Thankfully, Santa saw the campaign rebrand and redirect to “Boycott Indigo Books.”

Additionally, upon reading UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s reports on genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Santa searched Hind Rajab’s name and was devastated to hear her final call to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Hind was only 5 years old when she was killed by Israeli forces while she waited for help.

It was all too much. Santa had no choice but to place Indigo Books & Music Inc. at the top of the Naughty list, and to support the “Boycott Indigo Books” campaign. He has also taken the time to write to Indigo and explain why they will only be receiving coal this holiday season.  (more...)

Santa writes to Indigo informing them they are at the top of his Naughty List

Israeli Mossad targets ICC prosecutor

 

The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the years of spying and sabotage operations deployed by Israel's Mossad intelligence services against successive ICC prosecutors.

Trudeau’s ‘good guys’ and bad reveal hypocrisy of supporting US Empire

 

As Israel slaughters tens of thousands Justin Trudeau wants us to believe Russia is responsible for the “might makes right” philosophy in international affairs. He knows ‘serious’ journalists won’t challenge his nonsense.

At NATO’s 70th annual Parliamentary Assembly the prime minister claimed Canada would continue pumping resources into the fight against Russia since Moscow had reverted to a “might makes right” philosophy “long after it disappeared” in international relations. In his Montreal speech, Trudeau also bemoaned Russia’s “destabilization of the rules based international order.” He added: “If Russia succeeds in gaining an inch of territory in Ukraine because of their illegal invasion, countries around the world will look at their historical grievances around a border. They will look at the fact that perhaps they have a slightly larger military than their neighbour and wonder if it isn’t time now to redraw lines on a map, to violate the UN Charter, as Russia has, to once again destabilize the rules-based order in a way we have not seen since the end of the Second World War. The prosperity we have had for decades around this world happens because we agreed to rules — and we abided by them even during the Cold War.”

In his story headlined “Trudeau opposes Russia keeping Ukrainian territory” senior Globe and Mail reporter Steven Chase quotes Trudeau but fails to offer readers any alternative to the PM’s absurd statement (the only criticism Chase includes is that Canada hasn’t increased military spending fast enough). Didn’t NATO “destabilize the rules based international order” with its “might makes right” wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya? Didn’t the USA’s might-makes-right wars against south-east Asia destabilize the rules based international order? What about the dozens of U.S.-sponsored and Canadian supported coups around the since the Second World War? Isn’t Canada backing Israel’s “might makes right” genocide in Gaza while enabling that country “to redraw lines on a map, to violate the UN Charter” in the West Bank?

As Trudeau and Chase know, the International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for the leader of a country Canada is arming. Additionally, the International Court of Justice advised UN member states they were obligated to cease enabling Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  (more...)

Trudeau’s ‘good guys’ and bad reveal hypocrisy of supporting US Empire

Gaza Family Reunification Program failing to bring relatives to Canada

 

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the federal government introduced a special program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily work, study and stay in Canada until it was safe for them to return home. Nearly 300 thousand people have since arrived through that program. In late 2023, Canada announced a similar program to help Canadians get family members out of Gaza. 10 months later, it is unclear whether the program has facilitated the exit of any Palestinians from Gaza. We speak with immigration and refugee lawyer Randall Cohn.

Germany has a duty to dump Israel

 

Germany’s representatives have a ready-made response when a question is asked about their country’s backing for Israel: “historical responsibility.”

Invoking that “responsibility” is a convenient tool in shutting down debate. Everyone must accept that the Berlin government can only atone for the Holocaust if it facilitates the ongoing holocaust in Gaza.

Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s new foreign minister, seems to be demanding a maximalist approach from German politicians as they prepare for a February election.

Last week, Sa’ar thanked Alexander Dobrindt, a leading player in Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), for expressing himself with a “moral clear voice.”

A “moral clear voice,” according to Sa’ar, is one which opposes the International Criminal Court and the warrants it has issued for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, until recently the defense minister.  (more...)

Germany has a duty to dump Israel

I met with the Chairman of the @CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag my friend Alexander Dobrindt, who described the ICC decision as a "disgrace and a shame."

I thanked him for his moral clear voice and for standing with Israel! pic.twitter.com/DvfdRamiJo

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) November 25, 2024

Leak reveals UK lawyers, Israeli government planned ‘special unit’ to counter human rights reporting. Here’s what we know.

 

Leaked documents show the extent of collaboration between the pro-Israel legal advocacy group and the Israeli government, in their attempt to “counter” the work of human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

On 10 August 2017, pro-Israel advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) approached the Embassy of Israel in London with a “pitch for business”: a proposal to setup “a rapid response unit to correct false narratives” regarding Israel.

According to the proposal, human rights organizations “such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, routinely publish material condemning Israeli government policy [in Palestine] as disproportionate and discriminatory”.

To counter this, Steven Kay QC and Joshua Kern from London’s 9 Bedford Row International (9BRI) were offering to work with UKLFI “as a response unit to counter” such reports, in order to “develop content capable of responding” to them, at a “granular, detailed, or item by item level”.

This proposal, as well as emails from UKLFI to officials within the Israeli Ministry of Justice, are part of a trove of documents leaked in a hack by a group that calls itself “Anonymous for Justice”. The dataset has since been published by the non-profit journalist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The documents show the level of coordination between UKLFI and the different organs of the Israeli government, despite recent denials by UKLFI of any links.  (more...)

Leak reveals UK lawyers, Israeli government planned ‘special unit’ to counter human rights reporting. Here’s what we know.

FIFA Is Whitewashing and Sportswashing Israeli Genocide and Sporticide. Football Stadiums Into Concentration Camps

 

Israel ‘Defense’ Forces, with unconditional support of the United States, have been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, resulting in an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe. They dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs, exceeding the amount of explosives used in World War II.

More than 44,000 Palestinian have been killed, including over 16,000 children, 190 journalists, 1,000 health workers, 230 United Nations staff members and many others. Over 104,000 are wounded – most of them children and women – while at least 11,000 are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes.

As part of its genocide, Israel is also committing sporticide, killing more than 500 Palestinian athletes, including over 344 footballers. Two of them were on the Palestinian National Team, including Mohamed Barakat, the first Palestinian to score over 100 goals professionally. Israel also jailed footballers, referees, and club owners. 

Israel’s air strikes in Gaza have resulted in extensive destruction of stadiums and, sports facilities in Gaza and the West Bank. They turned football stadiums into concentration camps where they detain and humiliate thousands of Palestinians who are paraded almost naked on television screens.

Thus, the Al Yarmouk stadium was turned into a makeshift concentration camp for Palestinian detainees. Men, women and children were rounded up, stripped down to their underwear, and blindfolded, while armed soldiers and tanks encircled the field. Blindfolded men and women were forced to kneel in front of a goal with the Israeli flag attached to the net.

Israel allows football clubs based in illegal settlements in West Bank to compete in official Israeli leagues in violation of international law. In the occupied Jerusalem they mounted a violent attack on the headquarters of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).

In Apartheid Israel sports is rampant with racism and dehumanization of Palestinians. At an Israeli match a banner is displayed saying the lives of Palestinian children are worth nothing. Israeli football fans’ favorite anthem is “Death to the Arabs!” Such practices were noticed when Israeli team was playing in the Netherlands.  (more...)

FIFA Is Whitewashing and Sportswashing Israeli Genocide and Sporticide. Football Stadiums Into Concentration Camps