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nevermindirah · 4 years

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Ok it's Jewish Booker o'clock, I can no longer stop myself, let's do this!

Why Jewish Booker? Dude was born in Marseilles in 1770, which happens to be a FASCINATING time and place in Jewish history, and it adds ridiculous layers to his character (without excusing a damn thing). Alternately just because I think he’s neat :)

Jewish Booker headcanons that make me happy:

not to be all "real Jews do X" but Jews fuck with candles hard. Book of Nile thrives on old/modern analog/digital giggles. Booker lighting Shabbat candles, lighting yarzeit (memorial) candles for his wife and sons (sob), lighting a menorah, lighting candles just because he's feeling emotional even though it's not chag (a holiday) or a yarzeit and Nile thinks he's trying to be sexy but he's really just in his feelings. just like. so many candles.

maybe Booker was the person who punched Richard Spencer at Trump's inauguration, just bringing back that time somebody punched a famous neonazi in the street and said neonazi has all but stopped appearing in public after a few rounds of public punching

were the Old Guard in Charlottesville in 2017? how many times has Booker the Blond Jew infiltrated North American white nationalist / Klan type activities and then stolen their weapons and/or killed them? likewise there's plenty of horrifying white nationalist shit happening across Europe this century, how many Pim Fortuyn types has he been involved in taking down? (I Am Of Course Not Endorsing Violence TM ;) ;) )

SINGING. Mattias Schoenaerts sings in Away From the Madding Crowd but it's church shit, sigh, anyway he has a nice voice. a lot of Jewish prayer is sung/chanted (depending on when/where you are and the gender rules of the community you're in) and there’s been a lot of innovation to Jewish singing in Booker’s lifetime, and I just want Nile to overhear him singing to himself on Friday afternoons

Nile Freeman was four years old when The Prince of Egypt came out, she grew up on that shit, she would want to introduce her new family to that shit. Please join me in picturing Booker, Nicky, Joe, and Andy all shouting "that's not how it happened!!" throughout this beautiful nightmare of a movie with lovely animation and songs but where white people voice most of the Egyptian and Jewish characters, because Booker Nicky and Joe's religious texts all frame the Exodus story a little differently and Andy was probably there when it happened (except for how it didn't actually happen it's an important story but it's just a story pls just let me giggle about Andy being super old)

Read below the cut for sad Jewish Booker headcanons, French Jewish history (mostly sad), context on antisemitism (enraging/sad), and all the way to the very end for a himbo joke.

Jewish Booker headcanons, I made myself sad edition:

he is a forger. who was alive. in 1939. visas. VISAS. V I S A S. how many of us did he save? how many more could he have saved if he didn't sleep that night? how heavily does that weigh?

how do we think he BECAME a forger? most likely he was doing what he needed to do to support his family, which gets extra poignant if he was also trying to help his people, forging documents as well as money even during his mortal life

Booker raised Catholic by crypto-Jews adds ANOTHER layer to the forgery thing, no shit he'd get good at falsifying paperwork and coming up with plausible cover stories

do we know how Booker made it back home after his first death in 1812? his route between the Russian Empire and Provence in 1812 would've been a patchwork of laws about Jews, in case starvation and frostbite weren't enough for him to have to deal with, he's blond and could maybe get away with pretending not to be Jewish if he had to, alternately maybe synagogues and yeshivot took him in on his way home

the structural and sometimes-interpersonal dynamics of antisemitism cause many individual Jews to experience feelings of teetering on the fence between a valued member of a not-exclusively-Jewish community and a scapegoat/outcast/problem. HOLY SHIT BOOKER. "what do you know of all these years alone" is the most Jewish loneliness-in-a-crowd shit I've ever heard. fear that we're not wanted, or only wanted so long as we're useful — that's something that basically all people struggle with under capitalism, but it's especially poignant for many Jews because of the particular way antisemitism operates. (NOTE this can tip from a legit Jewish Booker reading to woobification of the sad white man who couldn't possibly be held responsible for his own actions because he's so sad, which, NOPE. it's very understandable for him to feel left out and misunderstood and not as wanted, as the youngest and not part of an immortal couple and maybe Jewish, but NONE OF THIS excuses his betrayal.)

Crusaders murdered a lot of Jews on their way to the ~holy land~. how many of Booker's people did Nicky kill on his way to kill Joe's people? has Booker ever actually talked to either of them about it?

I read this really beautiful fic about Joe needing to circumcise himself after getting run over by a cart (ouch) — this is a hell of a thing for Joe and Booker to have in common

just generally Jewish Booker adds more layers to him and Joe so clearly being such close friends, ugh that look Joe gives him when they're leaving the bar at the end of the movie, and I very much do not mean this in a gross Arab-Israeli-conflict way because Joe is Amazigh not Arab and Booker is Jewish not Israeli (and also a lot of Jews are Arabs) (but most importantly there's no ~eternal conflict~ between Muslims and Jews) (more about OP Is Not A Zionist below)

like, the UK and France (and to a certain extent Italy) carved up the former Ottoman Empire after WWI; among other things, the UK took Palestine, and they could've worked on eradicating European antisemitism so Jews wouldn't have to leave but instead they used their control of Palestine to encourage Zionist emigration of Jews out of Europe, and France took what is now Iraq, which has some pretty direct implications for US military involvement in that country in Nile's lifetime; France colonized Tunisia in the late 19th century and still held it during the Vichy era which means Tunisian Jews were subject to Nazi anti-Jewish laws which is just layers upon layers of colonial racist Islamophobic and antisemitic nightmares for Joe and Booker to live through

to be crystal clear before anybody gets ooh Muslim-Jewish conflict up in here, antisemitism is an invention of European Christians that they imported to the places they colonized, the European colonial powers encouraged Zionism because it was easier for them to encourage Jews to leave Europe and set us up as middle agents between the colonial powers and the ~scary brown people~, the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim governments historically have had a second-class citizenship category for non-Muslims that rankles my American first amendment freedom of religion sensibility but was very much not targeting Jews specifically, and these two men who've lived for a long-ass time through many varieties of geopolitical awfulness (and alongside a certain unwashed Crusader who has since learned his lesson) would have Things To Say about how our current mainstream discourses frame these things

getting off my soapbox and back to this action movie I'm trying to talk about, the ANGST of Booker's exile, which is simultaneously a very valid decision for Andy Joe and Nicky to make, an extremely long time for Nile who is only 26 years old to be separated from the one person on the planet in a position to really understand the crisis she's going through, and holy shit expelling a Jew from your group when he's already been expelled from mortality and his family and being expelled from places and continually having to start over somewhere new is THE curse of surviving through antisemitism, OUCH MY FEELINGS

Some French Jewish history:

France, like basically all of Europe, periodically expelled its Jews, but Provence (where Marseilles is) wasn't legally part of France during the expulsions up through 1398 so Provence had a continuous active Jewish community; about 3,000 Iberian Jewish refugees ended up in Provence after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s

the 1498 expulsion of French Jews DID apply to Provence but many "converted" to Christianity and reestablished a Jewish community when enforcement of the expulsion chilled out (which was in the government's interest because they were really into taxing Jews at higher rates, so much so that they taxed "new Christians" at higher rates once they realized expelling Jews meant they wouldn't be around to overtax, ffs) — by the mid-18th century Provence had notable communities of Jews and crypto-Jews (forced converts and their descendants who still kept some Jewish practices in secret)

Booker would've been 21 when revolutionary France granted equal legal rights to Jews in 1791 — his mortal life and first century of immortality happens to line up almost perfectly with the timeline of legal emancipation of Jews across Europe

the American and French Revolutions happened pretty much concurrently and took different approaches to religious freedom that make Book of Nile with Jewish Booker and canon Christian Nile extra interesting — French emancipation, at least from my American sensibility, is about secularism and religion not "interfering" (hence French Islamophobic shittiness about banning hijabs), whereas American religious freedom is more of "the government can't stop me from trying to evangelize / religiously harass people at my school/workplace/etc" — to be clear I think both countries' approaches to religious "freedom" are hegemonic as shit and have devastating flaws, but they're different models that emerged at the same time in Booker's youth and Christianity is clearly a source of emotional support for Nile and there's so much to explore here

Napoleon tried to ~liberate~ the Jews of places he conquered for his dumbass French Empire, but liberation from ghettos came with strings attached (like banning us from some of the only jobs we'd been legally allowed to have for centuries, and liberating us for the stated purpose of getting us to assimilate and stop being Jews) and many places that were briefly part of the French Empire reinstated their antisemitic laws after Napoleon was gone, can you imagine being a French Jew forced to fight and die in Russian winter for that jackass and then have to trudge back through a dozen countries whose antisemitism was all riled up by French interference?

Some facts about antisemitism:

antisemitism operates differently than many other oppressions, it doesn't economically oppress the target group in the same way as antiblackness or misogyny or ableism etc — the purpose of antisemitism is to create a scapegoat to blame when European peasants are mad at the king / the church / the people actually in charge, and structural antisemitism encourages a system where some Jews become visibly successful so that those individuals and our whole community are easier to make into scapegoats

one of the historical roots of antisemitism is stuff in the Christian Bible about moneylending as sinful — Jews in medieval Europe were often barred from owning land and Christians barred from moneylending, so some Jews found work in finance and some of us became very visibly successful for working with money — a few individual Jews running a particular bank or finding success as jewelry dealers turns into "Jews control global financial systems" scapegoating — a more recent example of this is the participation of nonblack Jews in white flight and the role of Jewish landlords doing the visible dirty work of non-Jewish institutions in American antiblack housing discrimination, Nile grew up on the South Side of Chicago and would have seen some shit along these lines and might repeat hurtful ideas out of a lack of knowledge, here's Ta Nahesi Coates on some of these dynamics

Booker canonically being a forger (specifically of coins in the comics?) needs a little extra care to avoid antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, I will happily answer good-faith asks about this if you want to check on something for a fic/etc

antisemitism in the United States where I live in October 2020 isn't institutional in the sense of targeting Jews for police violence or anything like that. it IS systemic, however, for example in all the antisemitic conspiracy theories the Trump administration and several other Republicans peddle (ie QAnon), and in how the Trump administration points to support for Israel as if that means support for Jews (it doesn't, it's evangelical Christians who push the US government to support the Israeli government because they think Jews need to be in the ~holy land~ for Jesus to come back that's literally why the United States funds Israel at the level it does). antisemitism also gets weaponized to encourage white Jews (those of us of European descent, who in the United States are definitely white because the foundation of US racism is slavery and antiblackness as well as anti-indigenous genocide, maybe European Jews aren't included in whiteness everywhere but we definitely are where I live) to side with white supremacy instead of building solidarity with other marginalized people (ie a lot of mainstream Jewish groups shit on the Movement for Black Lives because of its solidarity with Palestinians)

the Nation of Islam has a major presence in Chicago and its leader Louis Farrakhan who lives in Chicago has long spread a variety of antisemitic as well as homophobic bullshit but there are genuine good reasons many Black people find meaning/support in the Nation of Islam and Nile would've grown up with that mess in the air around her, this is a good take from a Black Jew about the nuance of all that

the way the Old Guard comics draw Yusuf al Kaysani is HOLY SHIT ANTISEMITISM BATMAN I hate it please summarize the comics for me because I DO NOT WANT to look at that unnecessarily caricatured nose why the fuck did they do that human noses are beautiful there is absolutely no need to draw Joe like a Nazi would

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice is a local NYC group that recently developed a fantastic resource for understanding and fighting antisemitism (pdf) 11/10 strongly recommend

Zionism disclaimer: A lot of Jews feel strongly that we need a Jewish-majority country in order to be safe from antisemitism. I strongly disagree with this idea on its merits (Jews disagree about who is a Jew and making Jewish status a government/immigration matter means some of us are going to get left out; also non-Jews aren't fundamentally dangerous and separatism isn't going to end antisemitism) but I have a lot of empathy for the very valid fear that leads a lot of my people to Zionism. Whether I want a Jewish-majority country or not, what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians is a deal breaker. Emotions run very high on this subject — I spend a lot of my not-Tumblr life talking to other Jews about Zionism and I'd rather not have this Jewish Booker headcanons post become yet another place where fellow Jews yell at me in bad faith. Block me if you need to, you're not going to change my mind. Call me self-hating if you want, I know I love us.

Racism in fandom disclaimer: I feel weird about increasing the volume of meta about Booker in this fandom. Nile Freeman is the main character and deserves lots of attention and adoration from the fandom — and she deserves emotional support from as many friends and orgasms from as many partners as she wants. I think Jewish Booker makes her friendship and potential romantic relationship with him even more interesting, hence this post. Ship what you ship, but be aware of the racist impact of focusing your fandom activity on, for example, shipping two white men while ignoring awesome characters of color especially the canon man of color one of those white dudes has already been with for a millennium. Please and thanks don't use my post for shenanigans like sidelining Joe so you can ship Booker with Nicky.

Oh and a non-disclaimer fun fact, Matthias Schoenaerts was born in Antwerp which apparently has one of the largest Jewish communities still remaining in Europe?? ~Jewish Booker headcanons intensify~

In conclusion: Jewish Booker! Just because it's fun! It exponentially increases the angst of his mortal lifetime and it puts his first century of immortality smack in the middle of the most intense changes to Jewish life since the fall of the Second Temple (aforementioned emancipation, also founding of Reform Judaism, the Haskalah, Zionism, and then of course the Holocaust). It makes his relationships with Nile, Joe, and Nicky more interesting and potentially angstier and with more intense commonalities and tenderness about their differences. It's very common for Jews to not believe in God (this confuses the shit out of a lot of Christians) and this would probably have further endeared him to Andy.

One more thing: Booker as golem. (A golem is basically an earthenware robot of Jewish folklore.) He's tall and blond and the most Steve Rogers-looking of all of them and from the Himbeaux region of France. THE trope of Book of Nile is he will do WHATEVER Nile wants or needs him to do. I was today years old when I learned that Modern Hebrew speakers use golem figuratively to mean "mindless lunk" and I'm choosing to squint and read that as "hot kind and dumb as rocks" because it amuses me.

#sebastien le livre #tog meta #jewish booker #book of nile #i couldn't stop myself #antisemitism #genocide cw #antiblackness #european imperialism #us imperialism #antizionism #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really wanna talk about it #except i just did #jewish things #jewish history #tog #mine

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years

Video

youtube

NETTA - TOY

[5.00]

She won Eurovision, but can she win us over?

Jessica Doyle: True story: twenty years ago I got back to Grenoble, after a weekend away with the other kids in my study-abroad group, to find my (Orthodox, Lubbavitcher, Sephardic) host mom grinning. "Israel won Eurovision," she explained. Last I heard at least one of her four kids had moved to Israel with their families; and I worry sometimes, in the face of no direct evidence whatsoever, that such a move had more to do with increasing anti-Semitism in France than with their personal circumstances. (Reading this, written in 2012, made me simultaneously nostalgic and sad. But there's still a Chabad in Grenoble, yay!) And now there's "Toy," which is too gleefully, deliberately mindless to lend itself well to a Zionist analysis -- and God bless, at a time when even poor Natalie frickin' Portman can't pass the Zionist-Enough test, that somebody decided Israel was confident enough to risk a Eurovision anthem that didn't lend itself well to a Zionist analysis. And God bless all those European voters who were willing, at a time when the personal has to be political (and when Lorde's camp apparently can't tell the difference between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem), to forget about boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning for a moment and cluck along. [7]

Jonathan Bogart: During the final ceremony, I thumbnailed Israel's entry as "Meghan Trainor meets Reggie Watts," an uncharitable but not inaccurate reading of Netta's gleefully unhip beat-box looping grafted onto proudly full-figured but otherwise embarrassing empowerment anthems. (I should perhaps have added Beth Ditto for sheer vocal power.) But it was the Wonder Woman line that made me pause, because Israel's soft-power propaganda campaign has had its clearest advocate over the last several years in Gal Gadot. Like Gadot, Netta served her mandatory term in the IDF; unlike her, she served exclusively in military bands. It would be foolish to reduce my response to Netta entirely to her nation's crimes (if it came to that, few of us could escape judgment), but I can't help wondering how complicit she, and all of us (I saw Wonder Woman opening weekend), are. [5]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: I love the fact that Netta's "Toy" won Eurovision, yet I hate the idea of Israel hosting next year. The most brilliant track conquered Europe, rightfully, but I have a huge problem with my favorite music event of the year taking place in an apartheid state. That being said, there's so much going on in the song, and it's all so freakin' exciting, I don't know exactly where to begin. Okay, the song is built around a vocal looper, and Netta's incredible acrobatics, chicken noises, percussive clicks and sheer rhythmic brilliance, but there's also a bona fide ethno-pop banger underneath, in which we can hear her deliver all sorts of ear-catching melodies (even going full Migos flow for a while). And just because she's that much of a badass, there's a full-on dabke break at the beginning of the second verse, a homage to the rich musical traditions of the Levant. "Toy" is a work of genius; both accessible and experimental, both ethnic and cosmopolitan, in line with contemporary trends, but compositionally in a league of its own. It was the best song, by far, in Lisbon, a clear pre-show favorite, and it took the crystal microphone. It's also a well-deserved fuck you to last year's winner Salvador Sobral's tone-deaf, unfortunate "fireworks vs. feelings" statements; not only because Salvador himself hated the song, but because Netta is indeed an incredibly accomplished musician, and however funny and bubbly "Toy" is, everything about it is as "real music" as that jazz interval show with Caetano Veloso in the Grand Final. Last year I mentioned how the contest will still be a big, beautiful, camp, queer party, and that music can be fireworks, feelings, and fun. "Toy" is all that, and much, much more. [9]

Katherine St Asaph: Douze points to... takes! So many separate vectors for takes that the intended #MeToo take doesn't register at all. Or any song. [2]

William John: The zany affectations and gurned squeaks bring to mind the way in which Björk is conceptualised by those who've never before heard a Björk song as the embodiment of unexplainable eccentricity. But the more obvious reference point for "Toy" is the singer previously of Karmin (who, as an aside, is now masquerading in blackface under a new nom de plume). In the same way that Karmin's showy YouTube cover clips endeavoured to reduce rap to a game of tongue-twisters, performer Netta here overwhelms her song's attempt to champion autonomy with garish, irritating theatrics. [1]

Will Adams: The studio version of "Toy" is a stormer, zooming from section to section with off-the-wall production so fast it's hard to keep up with. We've got Pikachus and teddybears and iPhone dings and Netta's committed performance all leading up to an uplifting breakdown that quickly swerves into Arrested Development-style mockery of the stupid boy. The song itself is great. But Eurovision songs don't exist in a bubble; they incorporate staging, choreography, styling choices, the pressure to play to juries and audiences' expectation of what Eurovision "zaniness" looks like. And so we get bullshit like the Netherlands's tone-deaf entry and Israel's Stefani-esque grossness. The problem here is that it's 2018 and people are still trotting out that old "what's WRONG with paying tribute to OTHER cultures it's not offensive it's BEAUTIFUL" chestnut. And in a year that was very subdued by Eurovision's standards, it's too egregious to ignore. [6]

Iain Mew: When TV commentators on the semi-final promised upcoming chicken noises, my thoughts turned immediately to Wang Rong. Little did I realise how apt that would prove, with the performance of "Toy" being every "check out this Japanese/Korean/Chinese pop culture, it's so WTF!" article in stage form, but this time skipping the need for anyone East Asian to even be involved. There could be something in separating out "Toy" from its staging, up to the point of Netta explaining that "Baka is also 'stupid' in Japanese" and the realisation that treating Japanese as interchangeable with animal sounds is integral to the song too. [2]

Edward Okulicz: Netta is a superlative performer, and "Toy" has an actual message, but it's taken a really weird, silly song, musically, to bring both of those out. The way she clucks out those syllables while throwing in actual words between the clucks is evidence of impressive verbal dexterity. She's all sing-song in the pre-chorus, and spitting fire in the actual chorus, so it's not just dexterity, it's ability to switch acting personas so playfully that's also astonishing. The song makes me like Netta. But I don't love the song itself, because the chorus with its "boy/toy" rhyme feels very childish and I keep waiting for the string swoops to turn into "7 Nation Army" -- now there's a killer bootleg waiting to happen. As frequently occurs with Eurovision songs, the on-stage production had some questionable aesthetic choices, but I can't say I've ever seen a performer on stage quite like her. [5]

Alex Clifton: God, it's nice to have a fun winner for the first time in a few years, isn't it? Don't get me wrong -- I liked Portugal's song last year, and "1944" is a gorgeous song loaded with pain -- but I come to Eurovision for silly, fizzy pop. "Toy" is an earworm for the ages that makes you want to dance, and also feels welcome in the age of #MeToo. "I'm not your toy" is a sentence I've thought as I've dealt with boys who somehow forget that women have interiority and lives not related to them, but rarely have I felt it as joyfully as when Netta yelps it. Empowerment songs are weird because for all the inspiring lyrics, they rarely have the actual undercurrent of power that should accompany them. Thankfully, Netta's got charisma and force and sells this both as a dance song as well as a warning to the guys who may try to cross her. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Netta

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aboriginalnewswire · 7 years

Link

US-Supported Israel Defence Forces Continue 'Acts of Genocide' Against Indigenous Arab Palestinians Under 'Operation Protective Edge' As the International Community Observes

APNS /North America [08.06.2014] – As the State of Israel began extracting its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning in observance of another (72-hour) ceasefire, the SOI and factions representing the Palestinian Nation have committed themselves to negotiations in Cairo, Egypt to discuss terms for an extended truce and the rebuilding of Gaza's crippled infrastructure after hostilities have ended. The SOI says it is willing to compensate the Palestinian population with the rebuilding of the Gaza if Hamas will agree to the total disarmament of the armed resistance; (Source: 'Official: Israel to allow Gaza rebuilding in exchange for disarmament', Ma'an News Agency: Aug. 5th 2014: http://ow.ly/A32mi)

Palestinian Authority (PA) representatives have also met with International Criminal Court (ICC) investigators in a (late) attempt to hold the SOI accountable for war crimes. The PA has said that they wish for a seat in the ICC, in order to help give the 'international' court jurisdiction over the Occupied Palestinian Territories, legally side-stepping the SOI.

One factor that could muddle the negotiations is the international news story of three, 2008 US diplomatic cables (leaked through WikiLeaks) that show the SOI discussing its intention to maintain pressure on the Gaza Strip's economy in an effort to keep it teetering 'on the brink of collapse'. The Norwegian news agency, Aftenposten, which cited the cables, say that the documents clearly show Israeli officials briefing the US Embassy in Tel Aviv on its designation of the entire Gazan region as a 'hostile entity' and its plan to persist in blockading the Gazan community until the Palestinian resistance to Israel, 'breaks'.

As the talks continue, the State of Israel's military offensive against the Palestinian Territories (codenamed: 'Operation Cast Lead') continues to wreak havoc on the Indigenous Arab population of the Gaza Strip as an Israeli-led air strike destroyed yet another UN-operated refugee facility in the southern quarter (Rafah) of the embattled region. Palestinian health officials and International news agencies report that at least 10 Indigenous Arabs had been killed and another three dozen left severely injured after Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shelled the refugee structure (claiming) that the attack was targeting an Hamas outpost lobbing homemade rockets aimed at Israel.

It should be noted here that UN sources have repeatedly made clear that buildings under their control are well known to the Israeli authorities and that the refugee station at Rafah was protecting up to 3,000 homeless, non-combatant, Palestinians. Earlier on the same day, IDF attacks reportedly killed about 30 people in the Gaza wounding some three dozen others.

The Indigenous Arab death tally – as of this writing – according to Palestinian health officials, stands at 1,900, (Gaza Health Ministry: 430 Children Killed; UNICEF Warns of "Tragic Impact" – August 06, 2014 | Democracy Now! http://ow.ly/A2vRk) more than 9,000 injured and at least $7 billion USD worth of infrastructure destruction to the Gaza Strip. The Israel's ministry has confirmed at least 67 IDF personnel lost in active combat, mostly during the OPE ground offensive, including three civilian casualties as a result of Palestinian rocket fire. The NGO American Friends of UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) has reported (via Twitter) that the total number of displaced in Occupied Gaza now stands at an estimated 475,000 with almost 260,000 Indigenous Arabs seeking food, water and shelter from the violence in 90 UNRWA Palestinian school buildings.

Amidst this, the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HWR) has come forward with evidence that accuses Israel Defence Forces (IDF) personnel of shooting civilians in Khuzaa who were trying to run away after they ordered them out of their homes. The NGO has also begun reporting on an execution-style killing of several Palestinians found heaped upon one another in the toilet of a private residence, (Source: Jesse Rosenfeld, 'Who Is Behind Gaza's Mass Execution?': 08.01.14 - The Daily Beast).

These cases are not being discussed very much with the Hasbara machine working overtime in the background. And Israeli PM 'Bibi' Netanyahu has gone on the defensive, calling the IDF targeting of Palestinian infrastructure and the bombardment of recognised UN facilities in the Gaza, 'justified', laying fault for civilian casualties and widespread destruction upon the leadership of Hamas, (Source: 'Benjamin Netanyahu: Deaths in Gaza justified’ - The Independent: 06 August 2014 http://ow.ly/A2ho5). PM Netanyahu and his Likud faction insists that Hamas militias and rocket teams use residential areas as 'human shields' dismissing the substantial data highlighting the overwhelming human density of Israeli-imposed, Palestinian encampments, (See: 'Demographics of Palestine: Population density' http://ow.ly/A2ADO).

The US has also ignored this and doubled-down its own defence of the SOI's genocidal actions with Secretary of State John Kerry saying:

'We fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and the fact that it was under attack by rockets, by tunnels, and it had to take action against Hamas. Hamas has behaved in the most unbelievably shocking manner of engaging in this activity. And yes, there has been horrible collateral damage as a result of that, which is why the United States worked very, very hard with our partners in the region, with Israel, with Egyptians, with the Palestinian Authority, with President Abbas, to try to move towards a ceasefire'. (Source: Democracy Now! : Aug. 6th, 2014 : http://ow.ly/A2xtE)

The hasbara effect continued when Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel also defended the SOI and the actions of the IDF in an full-page advert entitled; 'Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it's Hamas' turn' - (pdf) where he states: 'I call upon President Obama and the leaders of the world to condemn Hamas' use of children as human shields', which helped to set the framing of the discourse away from IDF atrocities during OPE, back towards the Indigenous victims. Zionist blogger Yochanan Gordon went so far as to post an editorial titled: 'When Genocide is Permissible' on August 1, 2014 (the post has since been removed, but an archived page is still available here) and deputy speaker of the Knesset, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, has openly called for the SOI to pursue OPE until the Gaza Strip is 'reconquered' and has called for the IDF to erect tent cities (reservations) for Indigenous Palestinians somewhere along the Sinai until, 'relevant emigration destinations are determined': (Source: The Times of Israel: Aug. 5th, 2014 http://ow.ly/A2OSX).

Conversely, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called the last IDF attack on the UN in Gaza a 'moral outrage' and a 'criminal act' and requested that the Israeli government and military officials responsible for authorising OPE be held to account without specifying how this would happen or under what conditions. (See: 'Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on December 9th 1948') This is a chilling repeat of his earlier condemnations of similar acts of gross IDF violence against UN outposts in the Occupied Territories during 'Operation Cast Lead' in 2009; ('Ban “appalled” by Gaza's damage', BBC, Tuesday, 20 January 2009: http://ow.ly/zVClJ).

This past Thursday, Navi Pillay – the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – slammed the July 30th attack by the IDF, raised the issue of UN facilities trying to protect Palestinians and pointed out the intentional targeting of what remains of the Gaza's meagre infrastructure. The commissioner also emphasised the increasing number of juvenile casualties citing (at the time) the loss of more than 250 Indigenous Palestinian youths and babies. (Source: 'Pillay condemns continuing attacks on civilians in Gaza', UN News Service: http://is.gd/prSVzB)

'Under international law, humanitarian relief personnel and objects used for relief operations – this would include UNRWA schools in Gaza being used as shelters – must be respected and protected', Pillay said. 'An attack against humanitarian relief personnel and objects used exclusively for relief operations, is a violation of international humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime'. (UN News – July 31st, 2014)

Others have followed suit in announcing their condemnation of the SOI's official policy of broad, 'collective punishment' against civilian lives, infrastructure and Indigenous Palestinian political independence. In Europe, UK Foreign Office minister, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, has resigned, saying Britain’s policy on the crisis in Gaza is 'morally indefensible'. Surprisingly, the minister did so publicly by announcing her resignation via Twitter stating: 'I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza' and that: '...British government can only play a constructive role in solving the Middle East crisis if it is an honest broker and at the moment I do not think it is.'

The intense condemnation of the SOI has also extended beyond the usual borders of Anglophone political and economic influence to include the South American Indigenous states of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru and Brazil which have all recalled their ambassadors as their governments officially condemned the attacks. Venezuela and most notably Bolivia – which has officially listed Israel as a 'Terrorist State' (See: 'Bolivia Government Officially Lists The State of Israel As a Terrorist Nation', APNS Dispatch: http://is.gd/XVW78I). Both nations have identified OPE as an act of genocide against Indigenous Arabs and have called for universal condemnation of the SOI. Venezuela has demanded a special hearing of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to end the invasion of the Gaza in an official statement. Argentina and Uruguay have decided to leave their embassy staff in place, although they did enter into a joint statement with other S. American states strongly decrying the violence as 'disproportionate', (Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: WNU #1229: 3 More Nations Recall Israel Envoys http://ow.ly/A2pfu).

Legendary revolutionary Cuban leader Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz compared the SOI's OPE invasion into Palestinian Territory and its historic abuse of Indigenous Arabs is a 'genocide' that he said was being wilfully assisted by the United States. He also suggested that it is clear to the world that the US is now 'unable to control' its Mid-East client-state:

'I think that a new and disgusting form of fascism is emerging with considerable force at this moment in human history': ('Holocausto Palestino en Gaza', Granma: 5 de agosto de 2014: http://ow.ly/A34TY)

The Caribbean Communist nation hasn't had a diplomatic relationship with the SOI since 1973 when Cuba officially voiced its objection to Israel's questionable treatment of Indigenous Arab Palestinians.

To date, US government spokespersons have only expressed official condemnation about the attacks against UN structures saying that the Obama administration is, 'appalled' by the 'disgraceful shelling' and asked (nicely) that the IDF (please) consider the risk of harm to non-combatants. (Source: zeenews.india – 08.04.2014) US State Dept. spokesperson Jen Psaki also raised the possibility of an investigation into the spate of IDF attacks on recognised UN facilities without providing any details.

But despite these statements, the US government has also quietly stepped-up its long-standing tradition of providing military assistance to Israel (seemingly) in tacit support of OPE. And Pentagon officials have now confirmed rumours of munition transfers being quietly released to the IDF since the beginning of OPE (Source: 'U.S. Has Sold Ammunition to Israel Since Start of Gaza Conflict' - ABC News: Jul 30, 2014: http://ow.ly/zX2zK) from its (1 billion USD) War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel (WRSA-I) caché maintained by the US military within the SOI, (Sources: Tikkun Magazine – July 31, 2014: http://ow.ly/zVw99 / ABC News – Jul 15, 2014: http://ow.ly/zX33l).

It is important to remember here that the SOI began 'Operation Protective Edge' against the (elected) Hamas government on July, 8th following a false-flag propaganda manoeuvre that fed the international public deliberate misinformation about the abduction and murder of three Israeli settlers in the West Bank by a (claimed) column of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) operating within Palestinian territory; (Source: 'Jihadist group takes credit for teens' killings', The Times of Israel: July 3, 2014: http://is.gd/jRCmam). Although Israeli Prime Minister 'Bibi' Netanyahu repeatedly insisted that Hamas was directly responsible for the killings – the moral justification for beginning OPE – it has since been revealed that SOI intelligence authorities knew from the very start that the murders were not connected to, nor ordered by the Palestinian (Hamas) government, (Source: 'J.J. Goldberg - 'How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza' – Forward.com, July 10, 2014: http://ow.ly/zX3d9).

It is also known that the Shabak enacted an immediate gag order (d-notice) that allowed resentment against the Indigenous Arab population within Israel and the Occupied Territories to fester based upon this false information. And there is good reason to suspect that the revenge murder of a young Palestinian – Mohammed Abu Khdeir, (who was burned alive by his assailants) by several racist Israelis in East Jerusalem was due to this propaganda pressure.

And oddly enough, an outspoken Mossad agent had actually predicted such an abduction scenario just weeks before it actually happened; (See: 'Mossad chief's chillingly prescient kidnap prophecy' - By Barak Ravi, Haaretz: 15.06.14 http://ow.ly/zXcMn).

What is also in amplified debate is the actual objective of these latest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip (Hamas territory) since the killing of the settlers – the base rationale behind OPE – took place in the (PLO dominated) West Bank? Some have speculated that the ultimate goal is to dismantle the new Palestinian Unity Government (PLO/Hamas) and there is good reason to suspect this; (See: 'Israel's Operation Protective Edge: Why now?', middleeastmonitor.com: July 21st, 2014 http://ow.ly/A2Zef: 21). But as we have mentioned in previous dispatches, some petroleum and economic analysts have suggested that the real aim behind OPE is to secure Palestinian petroleum sources for the SOI and International energy firms: (See: 'IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis', theguardian.com – Wed. 9th July, 2014 – and – 'Oil in Palestine: A gurgle of hope' | The Economist Mar 20th 2014: http://ow.ly/A2Jy3).

Independent political analysts Professor Michel Chossudovsky and Felicity Arbuthnot have both addressed this issue in detailed articles for globalresearch.ca. One titled; 'War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields' and first published in 2009 by Prof. Chossudovsky, pointed out that one year after the end of 'Operation Cast Lead', the SOI made public the 'discovery' of natural gas in the Levantine Basin, or as the Israeli press termed it, just 'off the coast of Israel'; (See: 'Gas Deposits Off Israel and Gaza Opening Vision of Joint Ventures' - New York Times http://ow.ly/A2Je7 Sept. 15th, 2000) and articulates the following information:

'British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority. The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007). The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001). The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.' (emphasis mine.)

Ms. Arbuthnot's later analysis appeared in Global Research on Dec. 30th, 2013 where she discussed the back-room deal making and international political fault lines involved in the capitalist exploitation of the natural resource:

'Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.” At the time the gas field was: “ … the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.” (i) Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration. Also involved is Perth, Australia-based Woodside Petroleum, which has signed a memorandum of understanding for a thirty percent stake in the project, in negotiations which have been described as “up and down.” There is currently speculation that Woodside might pull out of the deal: “ …since the original plans to refrigerate the gas for export were pursued when relations between Israel and Turkey were strained. That has changed, more recently, which has opened the door for gas to be piped to Turkey'. – 'Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant – 2013'. (emphasis mine.)

Prof. Chossudovsky in particular has connected the timing of large-scale IDF incursions as a military cover for the industrial exploitation of Indigenous Palestine's natural petroleum resources. Further speculation along these lines also hint that the SOI's stated goal of eliminating the Hamas wing of the Palestine Unity Government would facilitate this agenda as they would certainly continue to bargain for more equitable terms. Or perhaps, the concern on the part of the US and the SOI is that Hamas will at some point simply (and expectedly) claim (with justification) the entire Levantine Basin petroleum reserve as Palestinian Territorial property. A situation that will likely keep this crisis going until something breaks. Or until the oil flows.

– –

Further Notes:

Joshua Norman 'WikiLeaks: Israel Intentionally Kept Gaza on Brink of Economic Collapse', CBS News (Jan. 5th, 2011) http://ow.ly/A367w

David Wurmser, 'The Geopolitics of Israel’s Offshore Gas Reserves', (April 4, 2013) http://ow.ly/A37JW

Al Shawa Petroleum & Gaza Company: Private Company Information - Businessweek http://ow.ly/A37L3

'Israel shells UN school in #Gaza' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English (17 Jan 2009) http://ow.ly/zVkDk

Sam Hamad, 'Operation Protective Edge: Reading between the lines', middleeastmonitor.com (July 16th, 2014) http://ow.ly/A31gk

[globalsecurity.org] – Operation Protective Edge http://ow.ly/A31ES

A. Kofi [w/ sources] -- APNS [2014-08-07 07:17:32]

– – Aboriginal News Group (ANG) ang-newswire.blogspot

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freedomss0n · 7 years

Text

Words by Hiba Krisht. Hiba is Lebanese and Palestinian, as well as a scholar and brilliant writer, so when she talks about Palestinian welfare and discourse about Palestine, everyone should listen.

"I'm at the point where I can't see how focus on the Israel Palestine question re: Chicago Dyke March is anything other than derailment. I'd also like to say that perception that pro-Palestine sentiment here is being silenced *as a general trend* very much does not sit well with me because I believe the silencing to be happening the other way around, and think this is in fact a longstanding destructive feature of discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause. Also, I believe most of those engaging in defense of a pro-Palestinian liberation stance right now mean well but do not understand how much its framing decenters actual Palestinian welfare.

I will elaborate on both counts. I'm agitated from all sides about this and I can't do brevity so bear with me I guess.

First, the derailment. It's of particularly troubling sort because it falls into a larger pattern of whataboutism where what *should be* a case of clearcut antisemitism cannot ever be identified and unilaterally condemned by the left without also being hashed and rehashed in exculpatory ways "because Israel."

This is ESPECIALLY troubling when: - There is a persistent phenomenon that's almost like a lefty inversion of the concept Israeli exceptionalism. Like a reverse- exceptionalism, whereby discussion of Israel's transgressions are held to singular standards of scrutiny to the exception of other nations/populations with comparable and/or far more deplorable histories and actions and crises. And in that I am including all the unspeakable injustice and destruction the larger MENA region has wrought to Palestinians, and how accountability seems no concern there, in part *because* of eternal return to obsessive, unilateral focus on Israel as the central Palestinian issue.

- Cases of anti Muslim bigotry aren't held to the same scrutiny. The fact that people will demur about antisemitism but not anti-Muslim bigotry betrays a terrible lack of self awareness re: double standards. I mean, if you want to go 'head and make weak arguments about how religious symbols are politically wielded, I'm going to have to start wondering why you aren't referencing the much more appalling and deadly scope of human rights abuses committed under Muslim banners whenever the question of banning Muslim symbols comes up. Which would be a clearly terrible argument, but maybe it's worth reflecting why the same argument suddenly makes sense when it comes to Jewish symbols.

- Casual antisemitism often manifests as (among other things) conflations between Jewish symbols or beliefs / various Zionist ones / various Israeli nationalist ones. We ALREADY know the Dyke March incident to be an iteration of this problem. Now think about how fucked up what happened next is: the ban of a Jewish symbol at a public event based on a bigoted conflation is called out as anti-Semitic. Then, as a kind of precondition for defense against or acknowledgement of such anti-Semitism, people on the left apparently see fit to hold Jewish people accountable, individually and as a group, for *the same bigoted conflations targeting them*, basically needing Jewish people to declare their politics and/or unilaterally renounce Zionism -- essentially acting as gatekeepers despite being outsiders operating from apparently rather reductive and narrow presumptions of Zionist politics, since they somehow have the arrogance of assuming they understand and can judge what any given Jewish person's Zionist adherence entails and means based on the label alone??? Who the fuck else does this? Who the fuck else has to go through this? Do we have to establish and approve of the political and ideological leanings of Muslims in order to defend them against anti-Muslim bigotry, or do we engage in whataboutism re: the scourge of political Islamism in the Middle East to determine if Muslims have the right to display their religious symbols in the west?

Now the Palestine thing. And necessary conversations. And silencing and whatnot.

Even points that are so reasonable and evident they may well be tautologies by now, like 'Palestinians are entitled to basic human rights', bear a different weight when made in these contexts. They don't exist in vacuum, but carry the shadow of a discourse that already has huge issues with privileging particularly anti-Zionist or anti-Israel Palestinian advocacy no matter how tangential to the conversation, and never mind what else is minimized and derailed in the process.

I am not doubting the sincerity and concern of my friends who are struggling to express pro-Palestine sentiment while being confused by hostility right now, but I would urge a more thorough consideration of the relative space taken up by the respective conversations thus far, and to not confuse long overdue push-back from folks who have every reason to be frustrated and sick of derailment and semantic squabbles over definitions of Zionism every time anti-semitism comes up.

If it seems like there is rejection from the left when you want to assert a pro-Palestinian stance here, it is less likely to be because people have a problem with pro-Palestinian politics as such, and more likely to be because there is a salient point regarding how cavalier antisemitism already is today and how these patterns of derailment every damn time end up gatekeeping attempts to counter an insidious kind of racism that can and must be discussed without forcing marginalized people to jump through the Israel Blame Game hoops to defend their humanity. The Israel Palestine thing needs to stop hijacking conversations about antisemitism. Palestinian welfare does not suffer if people refuse to derail conversations about anti-semitism, but conversations about anti-semitism certainly suffer when what-about-Palestine pops up.

And that's all besides the fact that no matter how well-meaning, this Palestine-specific whataboutism does not contribute anything appreciable to Palestinian welfare and is so oblivious in some ways it's kind of heartbreaking to try to navigate through. I firmly believe that the kneejerk way the Palestinian Cause is held up like a trump card whenever convenient and the infuriating reverse exceptionalism with which the conflict is treated has been a firm factor in prolonging the crisis and exacerbating Palestinian suffering. I'm struggling to find the words for why it troubles me so much to see all these conversations stuck on questions of whether anti Zionism is anti Semitism because don't forget Israel and what about accountability for Palestine.

Please. Please. Please try to understand that an anti-Zionist pro-Palestine liberation stance is not one that needs championing in the left, that nobody fucking lets us forget Israel when we try to talk about Palestine, and nobody stops talking about Palestine when anyone mentions Israel, and it hasn't done shit for diaspora or territory Palestinians except turn us into a handy slogan. Establishing a stance of basic advocacy for the rights and welfare of the Palestinian people is not what the discourse lacks, it is what the discourse needs to *move past* already. Everybody is well-versed and comfortable with the Israel Blame Game-- it drowns out and supersedes everything else, and it's everything else that Palestinian advocacy desperately needs.

This is something that frustrates me to no end because it's not reducible to something like Israeli conduct being dealt with disproportionate scrutiny in the left *as such*, but as a function of urgency and relative space. When Israel overshadows discourse about Palestinian welfare even though it is Arabs who are responsible for the most staggering and horrific ongoing Palestinian abuses, we have a problem. And it can never be talked about or addressed because only Israel's actions are viewed with agency and significance, and attributing Palestinian suffering to anything else is instantly condemned as insidious detraction.

So you can see how it is frustrating to go through the whole 'is pro-palestinian anti-zionism anti-semitic' rigmarole when it is so often a distraction from more functional questions of Palestinian welfare.

Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are also anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are not anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of Zionism that are consistent with upholding the rights and freedoms of Palestinian Arabs, and, fact: there are kinds that are categorically not.

Educated opinion: Not only is anti-Zionism the established and normative stance across most of the Middle East, but, if we're being honest, probably the most prevalent and established type of anti-Zionism in the discourse is that which engages in solid pro-Palestinian advocacy while also falling into both gross and casual anti-Semitism. This is definitely the case in the broader discourse on the issue in the Middle East, and what's more, there is next to no self-awareness of the anti-Semitic assumptions, myths, and bigotries, not to mention the historical revisionism, threading popular and political anti-Zionism in the MENA region and popular Palestinian and Lebanese culture as well. This is a problem, and one that will never be addressed as long as pro-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are presumed to be wholly non-overlapping binaries by well-meaning leftists. It is both possible and necessary to acknowledge and mount critique of anti-semitic elements in pro-Palestine discourse while maintaining Palestinian advocacy. Acknowledging anti-Semitism in the discourse is not going to undermine the Palestinian cause. Again, people don't need to be perfect moral agents to justify a defense of their humanity.

Educated opinion: Leftist discourse centering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is overall entrenched in rigid, binary thinking and overwhelmingly leans pro-Palestine but in unfortunately too-basic, reductive ways. It already has an ideological rigidity problem. The discourse is such that to be pro-Palestine is to be above all transcendentally righteous: the lines of oppression and blame are clear and brook no further complexity; it is the cause no reasonable person can deny or fail to center in any conversation, and Palestinian advocacy is almost synonymous with condemnation for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and aught else.

It is troubled with issues of allegiance and abstraction-- maintaining certain principled stances re: the Cause is treated as an almost inviolable tenet for anybody who can claim to care about Palestine, despite the fact that the central narrative of the Cause pits the immediate welfare and prosperity of generations of living, breathing Palestinians against the memory of a Palestine that has not existed for decades and an abstract future promise of a right to return to a place that never again will be. The narrative may have once been in service of the people, but it has not been so in a long time. And it is only the narrative that is treated with sanctity by the most vocal champions of Palestine, and if it comes at the expense of Palestinian lives like in Yarmouk, so be it. Palestinian advocacy is more about condemning Israel than it is about supporting Palestine, and that is the problem.

It's beginning to feel like despair, seeing how pro-Palestinian discourse is framed in terms of the questions of Zionism and anti-Zionism over and again, constantly centering and recentering the question of Palestinian welfare as a foil to Israeli aggression in broad nationalistic and/or existentialist terms, assuming unilateral causes, ascribing agency very selectively to regional actors, brooking no interrogation of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim agency in the conflict, and obsessively resistant to moving past the past.

It's been decades and Palestinians continue to suffer large-scale crises in basic resources, public health, trauma, and disenfranchisement, and they have largely been allowed to persist in the name *of* Palestine, at the hands of Arab regimes that shrug off all accountability in Israel's direction, though for fifty years diaspora Palestinians in the larger Levant have been purely at the mercy of the Arab states housing them. We do not need to hear tired pro-liberation stances when it is those very stances that are used to justify keeping us holed up in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps, stateless, in suspended animation, without civil rights or wealth or upwards mobility, dying slowly of poverty and deplorable living conditions and isolation if we're lucky, and if we're unlucky, until a guy like Assad comes along and murders, maims, starves, and makes refugees out of a whole city of us-- and yet it is in the name of liberating Palestine that Assadist discourse proliferates, being anti-Israel, and Palestine's catastrophe is only and ever subsumed into the crimes of Israel and not of those of Syria or Lebanon or Assad or Hamas or the PA or Fatah or the GCC states or anybody else. When I want to talk about Palestinian advocacy, I want to talk about Assad and the nearly 200,000 Palestinians in Yarmouk camp that are now dead or gone or starving under siege and I want to talk about how the Lebanese state has made pariahs and a lost people out of *generations* of diaspora Palestinians practically quarantined in refugee camps because of petty sectarian concerns and I want to talk about the Palestinian political elite grievously frittering away resources and opportunities that could have prevented significant Palestinian suffering and death because of political feuds and a reckless privileging of a jihadi cause over popular welfare-- but I cannot, because the justifications, distractions, conspiracy theories loop incessantly back to Israel. Which cements *my* concern that these conversations are not really *about* Palestinian welfare at all."

#CDM #Chicago #Chicago dyke march #antisemitism #Palestine #Palestinian #Israel #Judaism #Jumblr

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akajustmerry · 7 years

Text

i really wish people would stop treating wonder woman like it is something revolutionary that will change the landscape of the action/superhero genre, like it is the first action film ever to have a female lead and so ALL women (including black women, woc, lgbt+ women) must unite to make it successful etc because ya’ll can miss me on that

ya’ll are acting like mad max fury road, divergent, the hunger games, etc. don’t exist ya’ll are acting like ww is the first film to have a white woman w brown hair as a lead and its gonna change the genre, when white women have been staring as leads in action films consistently for (at least) the last decade like ya’ll can preach female solidarity but it has been years since fury road, the hunger games etc and all im seeing is more white women as leads and more woc (particularly black women) being killed off for white motivation/shunted to sidekick or both in action films

wonder woman might be a small revolution for being a major female lead action flick with a female director, but even then it is a victory for white women and i can guarantee you that even if ww becomes the highest grossing film in history, it will not lead to woc being leads in action flicks, or woc being given more directorial roles in hollywood

try not to tell a woc that this white-washed, white feminist action film lead by a zionist is a “feminist film” that all women must support lest we never get another female centric action film, because if you think that than you clearly haven’t been paying attention to the films you’ve been watching, nor do you have a grasp on what intersectional feminism is

also white women, stop telling woc to support your so called feminist films when you prove time and time again (see: the latest us election stats) that you don’t support us, you don’t support palestine, you support no one but yourselves when it comes down to the crunch.

#gal gadot #wonder woman #sexism in media #racism in media #patty jenkins #media representation #wonder woman media coverage is making me so fkn annoyed at white women these last few days

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rook-seidhr · 7 years

Quote

I'm at the point where I can't see how focus on the Israel Palestine question re: Chicago Dyke March is anything other than derailment. I'd also like to say that perception that pro-Palestine sentiment here is being silenced *as a general trend* very much does not sit well with me because I believe the silencing to be happening the other way around, and think this is in fact a longstanding destructive feature of discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause. Also, I believe most of those engaging in defense of a pro-Palestinian liberation stance right now mean well but do not understand how much its framing decenters actual Palestinian welfare. I will elaborate on both counts. I'm agitated from all sides about this and I can't do brevity so bear with me I guess. First, the derailment. It's of particularly troubling sort because it falls into a larger pattern of whataboutism where what *should be* a case of clearcut antisemitism cannot ever be identified and unilaterally condemned by the left without also being hashed and rehashed in exculpatory ways "because Israel." This is ESPECIALLY troubling when: - There is a persistent phenomenon that's almost like a lefty inversion of the concept Israeli exceptionalism. Like a reverse- exceptionalism, whereby discussion of Israel's transgressions are held to singular standards of scrutiny to the exception of other nations/populations with comparable and/or far more deplorable histories and actions and crises. And in that I am including all the unspeakable injustice and destruction the larger MENA region has wrought to Palestinians, and how accountability seems no concern there, in part *because* of eternal return to obsessive, unilateral focus on Israel as the central Palestinian issue. - Cases of anti Muslim bigotry aren't held to the same scrutiny. The fact that people will demur about antisemitism but not anti-Muslim bigotry betrays a terrible lack of self awareness re: double standards. I mean, if you want to go 'head and make weak arguments about how religious symbols are politically wielded, I'm going to have to start wondering why you aren't referencing the much more appalling and deadly scope of human rights abuses committed under Muslim banners whenever the question of banning Muslim symbols comes up. Which would be a clearly terrible argument, but maybe it's worth reflecting why the same argument suddenly makes sense when it comes to Jewish symbols. - Casual antisemitism often manifests as (among other things) conflations between Jewish symbols or beliefs / various Zionist ones / various Israeli nationalist ones. We ALREADY know the Dyke March incident to be an iteration of this problem. Now think about how fucked up what happened next is: the ban of a Jewish symbol at a public event based on a bigoted conflation is called out as anti-Semitic. Then, as a kind of precondition for defense against or acknowledgement of such anti-Semitism, people on the left apparently see fit to hold Jewish people accountable, individually and as a group, for *the same bigoted conflations targeting them*, basically needing Jewish people to declare their politics and/or unilaterally renounce Zionism -- essentially acting as gatekeepers despite being outsiders operating from apparently rather reductive and narrow presumptions of Zionist politics, since they somehow have the arrogance of assuming they understand and can judge what any given Jewish person's Zionist adherence entails and means based on the label alone??? Who the fuck else does this? Who the fuck else has to go through this? Do we have to establish and approve of the political and ideological leanings of Muslims in order to defend them against anti-Muslim bigotry, or do we engage in whataboutism re: the scourge of political Islamism in the Middle East to determine if Muslims have the right to display their religious symbols in the west? Now the Palestine thing. And necessary conversations. And silencing and whatnot. Even points that are so reasonable and evident they may well be tautologies by now, like 'Palestinians are entitled to basic human rights', bear a different weight when made in these contexts. They don't exist in vacuum, but carry the shadow of a discourse that already has huge issues with privileging particularly anti-Zionist or anti-Israel Palestinian advocacy no matter how tangential to the conversation, and never mind what else is minimized and derailed in the process. I am not doubting the sincerity and concern of my friends who are struggling to express pro-Palestine sentiment while being confused by hostility right now, but I would urge a more thorough consideration of the relative space taken up by the respective conversations thus far, and to not confuse long overdue push-back from folks who have every reason to be frustrated and sick of derailment and semantic squabbles over definitions of Zionism every time anti-semitism comes up. If it seems like there is rejection from the left when you want to assert a pro-Palestinian stance here, it is less likely to be because people have a problem with pro-Palestinian politics as such, and more likely to be because there is a salient point regarding how cavalier antisemitism already is today and how these patterns of derailment every damn time end up gatekeeping attempts to counter an insidious kind of racism that can and must be discussed without forcing marginalized people to jump through the Israel Blame Game hoops to defend their humanity. The Israel Palestine thing needs to stop hijacking conversations about antisemitism. Palestinian welfare does not suffer if people refuse to derail conversations about anti-semitism, but conversations about anti-semitism certainly suffer when what-about-Palestine pops up. And that's all besides the fact that no matter how well-meaning, this Palestine-specific whataboutism does not contribute anything appreciable to Palestinian welfare and is so oblivious in some ways it's kind of heartbreaking to try to navigate through. I firmly believe that the kneejerk way the Palestinian Cause is held up like a trump card whenever convenient and the infuriating reverse exceptionalism with which the conflict is treated has been a firm factor in prolonging the crisis and exacerbating Palestinian suffering. I'm struggling to find the words for why it troubles me so much to see all these conversations stuck on questions of whether anti Zionism is anti Semitism because don't forget Israel and what about accountability for Palestine. Please. Please. Please try to understand that an anti-Zionist pro-Palestine liberation stance is not one that needs championing in the left, that nobody fucking lets us forget Israel when we try to talk about Palestine, and nobody stops talking about Palestine when anyone mentions Israel, and it hasn't done shit for diaspora or territory Palestinians except turn us into a handy slogan. Establishing a stance of basic advocacy for the rights and welfare of the Palestinian people is not what the discourse lacks, it is what the discourse needs to *move past* already. Everybody is well-versed and comfortable with the Israel Blame Game-- it drowns out and supersedes everything else, and it's everything else that Palestinian advocacy desperately needs. This is something that frustrates me to no end because it's not reducible to something like Israeli conduct being dealt with disproportionate scrutiny in the left *as such*, but as a function of urgency and relative space. When Israel overshadows discourse about Palestinian welfare even though it is Arabs who are responsible for the most staggering and horrific ongoing Palestinian abuses, we have a problem. And it can never be talked about or addressed because only Israel's actions are viewed with agency and significance, and attributing Palestinian suffering to anything else is instantly condemned as insidious detraction. So you can see how it is frustrating to go through the whole 'is pro-palestinian anti-zionism anti-semitic' rigmarole when it is so often a distraction from more functional questions of Palestinian welfare. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are also anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are not anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of Zionism that are consistent with upholding the rights and freedoms of Palestinian Arabs, and, fact: there are kinds that are categorically not. Educated opinion: Not only is anti-Zionism the established and normative stance across most of the Middle East, but, if we're being honest, probably the most prevalent and established type of anti-Zionism in the discourse is that which engages in solid pro-Palestinian advocacy while also falling into both gross and casual anti-Semitism. This is definitely the case in the broader discourse on the issue in the Middle East, and what's more, there is next to no self-awareness of the anti-Semitic assumptions, myths, and bigotries, not to mention the historical revisionism, threading popular and political anti-Zionism in the MENA region and popular Palestinian and Lebanese culture as well. This is a problem, and one that will never be addressed as long as pro-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are presumed to be wholly non-overlapping binaries by well-meaning leftists. It is both possible and necessary to acknowledge and mount critique of anti-semitic elements in pro-Palestine discourse while maintaining Palestinian advocacy. Acknowledging anti-Semitism in the discourse is not going to undermine the Palestinian cause. Again, people don't need to be perfect moral agents to justify a defense of their humanity. Educated opinion: Leftist discourse centering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is overall entrenched in rigid, binary thinking and overwhelmingly leans pro-Palestine but in unfortunately too-basic, reductive ways. It already has an ideological rigidity problem. The discourse is such that to be pro-Palestine is to be above all transcendentally righteous: the lines of oppression and blame are clear and brook no further complexity; it is the cause no reasonable person can deny or fail to center in any conversation, and Palestinian advocacy is almost synonymous with condemnation for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and aught else. It is troubled with issues of allegiance and abstraction-- maintaining certain principled stances re: the Cause is treated as an almost inviolable tenet for anybody who can claim to care about Palestine, despite the fact that the central narrative of the Cause pits the immediate welfare and prosperity of generations of living, breathing Palestinians against the memory of a Palestine that has not existed for decades and an abstract future promise of a right to return to a place that never again will be. The narrative may have once been in service of the people, but it has not been so in a long time. And it is only the narrative that is treated with sanctity by the most vocal champions of Palestine, and if it comes at the expense of Palestinian lives like in Yarmouk, so be it. Palestinian advocacy is more about condemning Israel than it is about supporting Palestine, and that is the problem. It's beginning to feel like despair, seeing how pro-Palestinian discourse is framed in terms of the questions of Zionism and anti-Zionism over and again, constantly centering and recentering the question of Palestinian welfare as a foil to Israeli aggression in broad nationalistic and/or existentialist terms, assuming unilateral causes, ascribing agency very selectively to regional actors, brooking no interrogation of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim agency in the conflict, and obsessively resistant to moving past the past. It's been decades and Palestinians continue to suffer large-scale crises in basic resources, public health, trauma, and disenfranchisement, and they have largely been allowed to persist in the name *of* Palestine, at the hands of Arab regimes that shrug off all accountability in Israel's direction, though for fifty years diaspora Palestinians in the larger Levant have been purely at the mercy of the Arab states housing them. We do not need to hear tired pro-liberation stances when it is those very stances that are used to justify keeping us holed up in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps, stateless, in suspended animation, without civil rights or wealth or upwards mobility, dying slowly of poverty and deplorable living conditions and isolation if we're lucky, and if we're unlucky, until a guy like Assad comes along and murders, maims, starves, and makes refugees out of a whole city of us-- and yet it is in the name of liberating Palestine that Assadist discourse proliferates, being anti-Israel, and Palestine's catastrophe is only and ever subsumed into the crimes of Israel and not of those of Syria or Lebanon or Assad or Hamas or the PA or Fatah or the GCC states or anybody else. When I want to talk about Palestinian advocacy, I want to talk about Assad and the nearly 200,000 Palestinians in Yarmouk camp that are now dead or gone or starving under siege and I want to talk about how the Lebanese state has made pariahs and a lost people out of *generations* of diaspora Palestinians practically quarantined in refugee camps because of petty sectarian concerns and I want to talk about the Palestinian political elite grievously frittering away resources and opportunities that could have prevented significant Palestinian suffering and death because of political feuds and a reckless privileging of a jihadi cause over popular welfare-- but I cannot, because the justifications, distractions, conspiracy theories loop incessantly back to Israel. Which cements *my* concern that these conversations are not really *about* Palestinian welfare at all.

Hiba Bint Zeinab, a Palestinian-Lebanese woman living in the US (reposted by permission)

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svartikotturinn · 8 years

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Tel-Aviv huh? Whats your stance on the occupation?

It’s fucked up. Aside from politicians profiting off of it, journalism here is doing a shitty fucking job of covering it properly, preferring to publish fluff pieces about the army instead of covering the daily dickery going on in the Palestinian Territories (I’m not calling it Palestine strictly because de facto, it’s not an independent country yet; whether or not it should be is a separate issue I won’t go into now). But I do put a whole lot of blame on mainstream Israeli society who is hardly keen on hearing about it.

But the thing is, outsiders don’t quite realize how complicated the situation actually is. They don’t know, for example, that a lot of the territories conquered in the Israeli War of Independence were conquered for the sake of territorial continuity that was vital for the protection of Jewish territories that were too isolated to protect (Israelis aren’t aware that those territories amounted to 6% of the land here though). Or that the Green Line is extremely close to Gush Dan, where Tel-Aviv and its satellite cities are: if the rockets from Gaza make life for towns and kibbutzim around it hellish, you can imagine what kind of damage rockets on Gush Dan could deal. They also don’t seem to get how deeply ingrained the history of animosity towards Jews is ingrained in the Jewish psyche: I’ve heard quite a few Europeans and Americans talking about how anti-Semitism was pretty much a thing of the past, and while to a great extent they’re right, you can see Jews were pretty much spot on about their fear that it could come back any time, and that’s without even bringing up the rampant anti-Semitism in Muslim communities. (This is why Jews here are very suspicious of Western mediation.)

People don’t get just how hard dismantling the Occupation actually is. Aside from ‘mainstream’ right-wing Jews who see land ownership in terms of collective ownership by peoples rather than individuals (a notion I parodied here) and bring up historic Jewish presence dating back millennia (e.g. old coins with Jewish inscriptions or the notable absence of pig bones), or nuttier Jews claiming the evil psychopath Yahweh promised them the land, there are more practical concerns. Dismantling all the Settlements and re-settling Jews within the Green Line would be an economic and logistical nightmare: Israel is already struggling with a serious shortage of real estate as it is.

Also, Jews don’t really trust Palestinians for pretty good reason: their leadership has repeatedly talked about how they want to destroy all of Israel and take it over, relying on alternative historic facts claiming e.g. that Tel-Aviv was originally ‘Tal Rabí‘’ (nonsense, aside from a few neighbourhoods it was mostly built by Jews before the war on land bought legitimately and named after a monumental piece of Zionist literature). They believe that getting full control of Judæa and Samaria (using these terms instead of ‘the West Bank’ to emphasize that it’s an area much larger than just the strip of land along the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip is just a way to get their foot in the door before taking over everything. And, of course, there’s the humanitarian concern of what establishing an overwhelmingly Muslim independent state would mean for its women and minorities and plain old political dissidents: so far their record hasn’t been all too great (honour killing, civil war between Fatah and Hamas, brutal murder of suspected collaborators, GSM persecution, Christian persecution…).

On top of that, Israelis have a lot of misunderstanding on their part. First off, Hebrew does not distinguish between ‘conquest’ and ‘occupation’ (both are כִּבּוּשׁ kibúsh), and most Israelis don’t get the difference between ‘conquest’ and annexation, as has traditionally been the case. For many Israelis, war is a process where participants essentially wager their territory in armed conflict, and territory lost fair and square should be ceded. This is especially the case for Israelis, who believe that they’ve never instigated a war; at most, they responded to aggressive actions the only reasonable way they could.

In general, international law and the customs of war are very recent, dating back to only a few decades ago. Israelis think that Western powers preaching to them about how wrong conquering territories is is incredibly hypocritical, not realizing the rules have changed or thinking they apply selectively. This is particularly infuriating to them as they believe that unlike Western empires, Israel needs its extra territories for survival (whether or not that’s true is an issue I won’t go into).

What complicates matters further is that English terminology also has its limits: while Hebrew distinguishes between ‘Palestine’ as a geographic term (אֶרֶץ יְשׂרָאֵל Èretz Yisra’él, lit. ‘Land of Israel’, also used extensively in religious contexts) and as a (would-be) political entity (פָלַסְטִין Falastín), English has one term for both, as does Arabic (فلسطين Filasṭīn). You can imagine how aggravated Israelis get when they come across what looks like trying to establish a hostile political reality but is actually just a reference to geography, but more pressingly, they don’t get what Palestinians actually claim.

Jewish Israeli narrative centres around the idea that they owned the land fair and square and were driven out of their rightfully owned territory, including Judæa and Samaria (partial truth: the traditional narrative claims Jews were expelled by the Romans, but the truth is many left voluntarily when the Romans started persecuting them), sometimes argued that God Himself gave it to them, and define their ‘peoplehood’ based on (overwhelmingly) religious practice; the Palestinian one, on the other hand, is based on connection to the land, emphasizing a connection to all the people who’ve settled in the region and their heritage. When they say ‘Jesus was Palestinian’ they think that’s true: he was Jewish by faith but was born and raised and lived his whole life here, his roots were here, ergo he was Palestinian. As a matter of fact, Palestinians are the ethnic group most closely related genetically to Jews, but Jews here would normally claim (as is taught in high school history, or at least was when I was in high school) that they are overwhelmingly descended from relatively recent immigrants who came when Jews started prospering, to get a chunk of that working for them. (This is often based on the widely derided claims in Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial and selective and grossly misleading quotes from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad.)

The Palestinians, on their part, think Jews came here as some kind of extension of colonial powers: they saw all those Jews coming in from European countries and put two and two together (which has some merit but is a GROSS oversimplification). This is why they often have more respect for Mizrakhi and Sephardi Jews than Ashkenazi Jews. And, of course, as pointed out above, they’re often all too keen on buying into anti-Semitic rhetoric: Israeli right-wingers often point out that Mahmoud Abbas himself was (and, they claim, still is) a Holocaust denier.

So you can see why there is little trust between the two sides and why dismantling the Occupation safely is akin to diffusing a very sensitive bomb. There has to be a lot more earnest dialogue before that can happen.

Also, amusingly (in a dark way), while leftist Jews (moderate and otherwise) are mad about all the money spent on the Settlements, Settlers are mad about how their Settlements don’t actually expand or multiply. The actual problem is that corrupt right-wing politicians pass the money to their own rather than the Settlements…

This is a very complicated issue, but I think there are plenty of steps Israel could take and simply doesn’t for some reason:

More emphasis on Arabic in school. Nowadays students are often given the choice between Arabic and French or Russian in many schools, and many get exempted from studying a third language to avoid learning a ‘terrorists’ language’ by getting a didactic diagnosis and feigning idiocy; about a year ago there was a bill proposed by MK Oren Khazan of all people to make it mandatory from the first grade, but from what I’ve heard it was not realistic considering the massive shortage of Arabic teachers in Israel, and I’m not sure why but it kinda stopped moving forward for some reason. (Personally I think Israeli and Palestinian Sign Languages should be taught too, as well as optional linguistics, but I’m kinda biased as a ling. major with a keen interest in SL and Deaf culture.)

Reforming the way civics and history are taught. Civics is grossly underrepresented in Israeli schools, putting ethnoreligious sentiment on equal footing with democratic concerns. History is often taught through a narrow prism of Jewish persecution, and things like legitimate objections Arabs had before 1948 and what the 1948 Exodus was actually like are barely mentioned if at all. (The 6% figure? I had no idea about it until it was mentioned on a blog and I looked it up myself. And if you ask most Israeli Jews, they’ll tell you the Arabs left willingly to allow Arab forces to take over and finish Israel off, so they’ve no right to complain Israel isn’t too keen on letting them back in.) Also, Tanakh as a subject should be abolished yesterday.

Training combatant soldiers to deal with civilian populations. I recently saw (parts of) a documentary about the Kfir Brigade, where the soldiers explained that they’d never been taught to learn to deal with civilian populations or even any Arabic beyond phrases like ‘stop or I’ll shoot’ or ‘give me your ID’. You can see how counterproductive this is to de-escalating tensions there.

Changing arbitrary regulations used by Border Patrol. You can read more about it here.

Making justice against soldiers who bully Palestinians and worse more visible. The way things go now, while justice is normally served (if only for fear of foreign involvement), far too many get off the hook too easy, with the military court system delaying justice until the law says it’s been too long past their service to prosecute them, or they get comically small punishments (this normally happens when the military needs the soldier for some reason). When it is served, the IDF should e.g. spread leaflets announcing it and claiming repeatedly that they are earnest in their attempts to clean up their act.

Banning openly racist soldiers from serving. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to documenting horrifyingly racist outbursts on Facebook, including people wishing violent death on Arabs, African refugees, and children with a Jewish father and a Jewish mother in Israel, and celebrating events like the recent massacre at the mosque in Québec; the number of comments left by people serving in the IDF (some of which relish the thought of massacring Arab babies) is horrifying. I’ve even met a person in south Tel-Aviv (which is notorious for its rampant xenophobia) who boasted being a war criminal.

Abolishing conscription, or at least restricting it severely. There have been two state committees who looked into it and determined that conscription should be abolished already and replaced with a professional military. Opponents of this move include not only the IDF itself, which absolutely looooves its fat cheques and cushy jobs for its senior officers, but also run-of-the-mill Israelis who are afraid that the IDF would dwindle to the point Israel couldn’t defend itself against its enemies surrounding it (including, according to them, so-called ‘friends’ who signed peace treaties but are just waiting for an opportune moment to stab it in the back). I think it should either be abolished or, as they did in Sweden up until a few years ago, recruit only those who are most fit to serve. Aside from the obvious need for soldiers who do their job right, the current situation means that Israelis normally can’t distinguish between soldiers and civilians and think that attacking soldiers (‘our children’) is as illegitimate as attacking civilians, labelling guerrilla fighters (who, don’t get me wrong, are legitimate targets in an armed conflict) ‘terrorists’ (the media does that too and that sure as hell doesn’t help).

Better coordination within the military. As of now the IDF has a surplus of soldiers who are grossly mismanaged as a result of petty infighting from within. That’s how you can find offices with one secretary collapsing under the workload and another with three secretaries with barely any work to do. This is a pretty serious issue in and of itself, but this gets even worse when you consider that, for example, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don’t know how far away from the Separation Wall they have to be to avoid getting shot (which is pretty serious because many of them have agricultural lands close to the fence that they can’t work on).

Taking a stronger stand against settlements the State had no hand in building. Some particularly zealous Settlers sometimes take Palestinian land by force, relying on the fact that their legal owners would have to go through a legal hell to get it back, and that the military normally follows an order saying they’re not allowed to physically touch Settlers. Those should be clamped down on HARD.

Abolishing the underhanded techniques the State uses to seize Palestinian land. Israel uses the military to declare certain areas as necessary for training and kicks the locals out, then a year later they say that since the owners left their land for over a year they no longer have a claim to it, and allow Settlers in instead. It does the same with KKL and the Israeli Antiquities Authority. This shit needs to stop.

Applying Israeli law to Settlements that already exist. What Israelis don’t get is that when outsiders talk about the ‘apartheid state’ in Israel they don’t mean ‘within the Green Line’: nominally, Arab Israeli citizens are perfectly equal before the law (aside from where the stupid fucking Millet system is in force). This refers to Judæa and Samaria, where Settlers are generally subject to Israeli law (not always: the mayor of Ariel once boasted how he claimed not to be a legitimate part of Israel when he needed to pay taxes but it was when it needed funds from the State), but Palestinians are subject to martial law. This means, among other things, that employers over there can get away with paying Palestinians below minimum wage. While Israel is in charge it should do so properly.

Reforming imprisoned terrorists. As the UK demonstrates, this is immensely helpful in gutting terrorism from within.

Actually sticking by contractual obligations. Yitzkhak Rabin famously got the Oslo Accords going (hell, he got shot to death for it), but in practice he never actually took down a single Settlements, claiming that ‘there are no sacred dates’ (i.e. ‘I’ll take ‘em down… eventually’). On the other hand, enough violent resistance and outright terrorism on the Palestinians’ part got Israel to leave the Gaza Strip unilaterally. The Palestinians naturally understood that Israelis understand nothing but brute force.

Understanding what actually comprises terrorism. Aside from attacking soldiers, as explained above, Israelis seem to be under the impression that diplomatic moves (e.g. ratifying the Geneva and Rome conventions and pushing for recognition in the UN) are terrorism too (‘state terrorism’). As one blogger put it, they might soon call Palestinians breathing ‘respiratory terrorism’.

Abolish the religious exception to anti-incitement laws. Israel obviously has laws against incitement to violence, but for some bizarre reason those laws do not apply to incitement made on a religious basis. This gives both Jewish and Muslim religious leaders the ability to incite somewhat freely, avoiding persecution, while young hotheads do their bidding and get fucked over for it. (Kinda like right-wing militia leaders, as described here, under #2.) Israel needs to crack down on all the bullshit it allows as part of ‘religious freedom’ in general, but for the purpose of this discussion, this is the #1 priority.

Back in the day I used to believe in cantonizing the country and giving the Gaza Strip and Judæa and Samaria a special status similar to Québec. I wrote about it extensively here. I asked around, and Jews mostly told me that they think it would be nice, but the Arabs would be against it; then I asked Arabs, who mostly had no objections to the idea. I asked MK Zehava Gal’on, who said she didn’t trust the Jews to not turn this country into a full-blown apartheid state all over. I eventually let go of the idea when I talked to an Arab student who was more politically aware, who said it was impractical because the State has the habit of not allowing Arab towns and villages to form or expand (this, coupled with poor law enforcement in Arab areas, creates the problem of violent criminal wars over territories), and keeps building new Jewish communities between them to detach them from one another. You can’t have Arab cantons this way.

On a final note: I want to point out that this is what I think Israel should do. Palestinians also have more than enough steps they can take, but I don’t live there, so I don’t really know what it’s like over there and I don’t get a say anyway. However, I do want to point out that the Palestinian Authority makes selling (and I think renting too, but I’m not sure) lands to Israelis punishable by death; this means that even if Settlers legitimately buy (or rent) the lands they want to settle on, it could be a huge pain to prove the legal owner of their lands allowed them to do so, because they’d be putting them at huge risk. One leftist activist, Ezra Nawi, notoriously boasted turning in would-be sellers to the PA; as a leftist myself, I was utterly infuriated: as far as I’m concerned, as the legal owners of the land, they have every right to do as they please with it.

And that pretty much concludes my views on the issue. Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify it.

#Israel #Israeli politics #Occupation #Palestine #1948 Palestinian Exodus #Zehava Gal’on #Ezra Nawi #Palestinian Authority #anti-Semitism

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delwray-blog · 6 years

Text

THE REAL LIFE SUPERMAN

THE COMING OF THE REAL LIFE SUPERMAN

The Church to be withdrawn before this Superman is revealed.

"And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way." 2 Thess. 2:6-7

“The Coming Superman”

"And this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." 1 John 4:3. The Chosen People I am not an enemy of the Jews. For many years my written and spoken utterances have abounded with such phrases as "There is a very real sense in which the Jews are God's Chosen People. Taken as a whole they are the most remarkable race of people in the world. They have retained their existence as a separate and distinct people in spite of hundreds of years of persecution. The most ingenious methods have been used by other nations in seeking their destruction but they have weathered every storm. In the coming world crisis, the Jew will play an important part in the drama of fulfilled Bible prophecy. And, let it be remembered that Jesus Christ came to earth dressed in the garb of a Jew." For nineteen hundred years these strange people have wandered over the earth, like the legend of the Wandering Jew, without a homeland; yet they have retained their race consciousness and are more firmly banded together today than any other nation in the world. This very thing makes them the great miracle of both history and prophecy. No other feature need be considered to confirm the fact that over them there exists a providential leadership. A Blessing and a Curse From Genesis to Revelation we read of their origin, national victories, apostasy, delusions, suffering and final triumph. No matter where they go or what they do, as a nation, they are simply being poured into the molds of prophecy, fulfilling a predestinated purpose. It is impossible to understand the historic and prophetic phases of the Bible without understanding the position of the Jews with reference to the program of the ages. Though they frequently prove to be a curse to the world, yet their ultimate blessing is assured because we are told that following the coming epoch of world-wide "tribulation" that "They shall declare my glory among the Gentiles." Isaiah 66:19. The Genesis prophecy will then be fulfilled, "Thou shalt be a blessing." The promise made to father Abraham has been fulfilled a thousand times, "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Genesis 12:3. But when considering their virtues and blessings in one period of history, we are also duty bound to contemplate their short-comings and observe what a curse they have been to other periods. The present age in which we are living finds them in a "delusion", as described in Isaiah 66:4. We are also reminded that on the day of the mock trial of their Messiah, Whom they rejected, they invited a national curse, in these words, "His blood be on us, and on our children." Some of the prophecies describing them as being a dangerous channel of mischief and evil to the world are as follows: "Thou shalt become an astonishment a proverb, and a byword among all nations." "Thou makest us a byword among the brethren, a shaking of the head among the people." "A reproach a taunt and a curse in all places." "This people's heart is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes have they closed." Perverted Egotism The Jews are essentially egotistical people. Embedded deep in the subconscious strata of their natures is the everlasting feeling that "I am better than thou." In olden times Gentiles were called "dogs". It is in the blood of the Jew to look with contempt upon other nationalities. No matter how he may try to overcome it, the feeling always lingers with him, that he is superior to others that he is made from special cloth. This would be a legitimate assumption if his people were loyal to their calling and true to the moral principles and commandments of the Bible. But in his present condition, he is apostate and his bigoted attitude only becomes an egotistical perversion. Being of superior intellect and possessed of superfine intuitive, soul and emotional qualities, when the Jew becomes self-centered and hypnotized with the delusion of his own powers, he is capable of sinking to depths untouched by mortals of lesser mental and spiritual equipment. Gentile persecution has isolated and made him bitter. Resistance in opposing his persecutors has, in turn, made him strong. In overcoming his enemies he has become sly, subtle, cunning and deceptive. It is in his deepest religious nature to take advantage of the Gentile "dogs" who have sought his destruction for so many centuries. His spiritual sentiments lack the altruistic outlook upon life. He crucified the One Who taught, "All things whatsoever ye would that men do to you, do ye even so to them." Predicted Return to Palestine It is the consensus of opinion among the nations of the world that the Jew is the rightful owner of Palestine and that it is only a question of time until the Zionist Movement will succeed in its attempt toward restoration. The World War broke the grip of the Turk upon the Holy Land thus making possible the inflow of a Jewish population. For more than one hundred years, students of eschatology have been describing the return of the Jews exactly as we see them going back today. It is prophesied that they will return in unbelief and spiritual darkness. Their success will not be the result of deep religious convictions accompanied by the piety of their fathers so much as from political maneuvering and financial scheming. As a matter of fact, the triumph of restoration occurs during a time of dark apostasy. And when the various leaders of Zionism pull out of the nations of the world they will take so much gold that an economic collapse will be certain to follow. It is reliably reported that a small group of wealthy Jews control the financial destiny of the entire world and could affect a foreclosure at any time. They are said to hold a mortgage on civilization. The present quickening of the national consciousness in Jewry is described symbolically by Jesus in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew as "the budding of the fig tree." In prophecy, the fig tree typifies Israel. Jesus predicted that the sap of patriotism would come up in the veins of the nation as we see it being done at the present time. The entire nation is now energized by a new spirit. A Mystery of Iniquity The inner workings of what appears to be the most mysterious, gigantic and diabolical plot ever perpetrated against an unsuspecting world has been uncovered in recent years by certain breath-taking disclosures. For years the writer has been sifting reports, making observations and accumulating material; step by step and fact upon fact, certain hidden forces have been traced back, back, back to their secret sources, and if the evidence reaching him is based upon actual facts, then it is safe to say that a certain group of heartless, wealthy, powerful Jews are guilty of a monstrous wrong which cannot do other than eventually react against their race. Were it not for my knowledge of Bible prophecy, I would be utterly without explanation for this alleged crime against Gentile civilization. But with a knowledge of the prophetic Scriptures it is not difficult to trace the Antichrist spirit through the entire chain of evidence and see how the nations of earth are preparing themselves, and moving unmistakably toward the final and inevitable period of universal suffering, when our humanity will literally burn itself out in the white fires of its own lusts. The present world-wide economic collapse, the breaking down of moral standards, the ever-increasing corruption in politics, the disrespect for law and order, the growing selfishness and suspicion existing between nations, the general disregard for God, the birth and development of Communism and the atheaizing of the masses of people, may all be explained by the hypothetical proposition that behind the scenes there is A HIDDEN HAND; “THE POWERS THAT BE”; a small group of super-intelligent personalities who control the gold of the world and pull wires for the deliberate purpose of tearing down the Gentile peoples. Fantastic as this may seem at first glance, careful observation reveals that such a hideous scheme is a decided possibility. When facing these disclosures, one comes to understand, in a new way, the meaning of Paul's words, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Evil Forces Rooted in Personality All destructive ideas originate in the plastic, formless realm of the abstract and become potent only when embodied in the brain cells of rational personalities, thus becoming concrete. The whole invisible sphere of the mind and spirit of man is inhabited by intelligent forces. When the mind hurls itself into a great mental wave, it is like the contact formed when two electric wires are united. Sparks are generated. The unseen becomes seen, the invisible cause produces a visible effect, and the personality becomes obsessed with a creative impulse. Satan, therefore, works through personalities, even as God also accomplishes His purposes through personalities. Black and white currents flow constantly from hidden sources out into the world. It is decidedly possible for men to permit themselves to come under the control of demon powers. Black dragons and white angels fight constantly for race supremacy. Things do not just happen. Back of every effect, there must be an adequate cause. Behind every abnormal condition with which the human family is victimized, there are equivalent evil forces. I knew that the hellish agencies which are today going out to the ends of the earth, had to have their secret octopus-roots fastened in demon-possessed brains somewhere; so I started reasoning from effects back to causes. I soon came upon the amazing discovery of what purports to be a conspiracy, which is centuries old, to overthrow the religious and governmental systems of the Gentile world. Disraeli, the Jewish Premier of England, once said, "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." I believe this to be literally true. There is cause to suppose that about three hundred men from different parts of the world, work behind the scenes, pull wires and launch schemes for the purpose of accomplishing their selfish ends, to promote world chaos. And, I firmly believe that it was in this realm that Communism had its origin. The Protocols In the British Museum, there is a strange volume called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion bearing the date of August 10th, 1906, the time that it was received. The book was published by Professor Sergyei Nilus, a Russian, in 1905. When Kerensky began his agitation against the Czar, which resulted in the final overthrow of the Russian government, his régime demanded the destruction of all the Nilus books but a few copies were preserved, one finally making its way to the British Museum. To own a copy has become a sufficient crime in Russia to ensure the owner's being shot on sight by the Reds. I have before me as I write, a translation of the original document by Victor E. Marsden, who was for many years the Correspondent for the London Morning Post, in Russia, and after being banished by the Communists he returned to England to become personal Correspondent for his newspaper to the Prince of Wales on his world tour. Mr. Marsden believed in the authenticity of The Protocols and made what is regarded by many as being the most perfect translation from the Nilus production ever prepared. We are told, "Mr. Marsden was eminently qualified for the work. His intimate acquaintance with Russia, Russian life and the Russian language on the one hand, and his mastery of a terse literary English style on the other, placed him in a position of advantage which few others could claim." Mr. Edgar E. Strother, a missionary in China, is responsible for the publication of the Marsden translation which was made from the original in the British Museum and he says, "They (The Protocols) contain, it seems to me, the only explanation of the real origin of Bolshevism and its programme of worldwide Revolution. The public should be permitted to have this information." The Protocols first attracted wide attention in the United States some years ago when Mr. Henry Ford began discussing them in his Dearborn Independent as a part of an exposure of the activities of "the International Jew." On February 17th, 1921, he said, "The only statement I care to make about The Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now." Even, a casual perusal of the documents will show that they fit world conditions much better now than they did twelve years ago when Mr. Ford made the above statement. We are reminded, however, that about three years ago Mr. Ford made a lukewarm apology, praising the Jews and reversing his attitude of opposition to them, which was taken generally to be a repudiation of his previous convictions. It is, of course, well known that his turn-about-face was not made until after powerful Jews had forced him into several legal battles. None of the litigation with which he became involved had anything to do with his use of The Protocols as far as we know. His exposure brought down upon him the wrath of powerful Jews and the constant attack to which he was subjected evidently proved too much for him. At any rate, his mouth was closed on the subject. But the stubborn fact remains that the very things which the HIDDEN HAND of international Jews is said to have threatened, in these papers, are coming to pass exactly as outlined. The prophecy contained in The Protocols and their fulfillment among the nations is too glaring to be ignored. Professor Nilus averred that immediately prior to the time he made his translation in 1905, the innermost circle of Jewish financial wizards of the various nations held a secret meeting. The Protocols are claimed to be the "minutes of the proceedings" of the so-called Learned Elders of Zion at that meeting. Nilus said that the leaders discussed plans and methods for extending their program of Gentile catastrophe. This terribly inhuman document purports to be a publication of the records and speeches which the leaders made during the particular meeting concerning which Nilus claimed to have first-hand information. It is emphasized that the rank and file of the Jewish population knows little or nothing of the existence and activities of the heartless leaders. Notwithstanding, the HIDDEN HAND, with its control of gold, is recognized as having sufficient power to mold all Jewry according to its plans and purposes. It also has it in its power to manipulate affairs behind the scenes to the extent of virtually holding the Gentile peoples of the earth in the palm of their hand. Because of their apostasy and "delusion" the Elders feel that they are doing the will of God in breaking down Gentile power and at the same time they are paving the way for the coming of a Messiah of their own making, a Messiah who will meet the requirements for establishing a temporal kingdom which will bring the entire world under their control. It will be recalled that the Jews rejected the true Messiah two thousand years ago because He lacked earthly power. The coming of a humanly made Messiah-Superman is clearly prophesied in the Bible. Prophetic students call him the Antichrist. Jesus referred to the coming false Messiah when He said to a group of Jews one day, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." The Protocols breathe the spirit of Antichrist and if true, they are certainly paving the way for the coming Dictator who Paul called "The Man of Sin" and "The Son of Perdition." The stage is being set; the Antichrist will soon put in his appearance. He will come out of Central Europe, from the borders of the Old Roman Empire, according to Daniel. The Symbolic Snake As to the identity of the Elders whose meetings Professor Nilus claimed to have reported, Mr. Strother says, "They are not the 'Board of Deputies' (the Jewish Parliament in England) or the 'Universal Israelite Alliance' which sits in Paris. But the late Walter Rathenau of the Allgemeiner Electricitaets Gesellschaft has thrown a little light on the subject and doubtless, he was in possession of their names, being, in all likelihood, one of the chief leaders himself. Writing in the Wiener Freie Presse, December 24th, 1912, he said: 'Three hundred men (Jews, of course), each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continent, and they elect their successors from their entourage.'" Mr. Strother remarks that while The Protocols are frequently called forgeries, yet "they never attempt to answer the facts." He also points out that the "threats" contained in the documents are coming true exactly as stated. This he submits, to be sufficient proof of their authenticity. Nilus says that the organization of Elders dates as far back as the time of Solomon who "thought out a scheme in theory for a peaceful conquest of the whole universe by Zion." That Solomon used the Gentiles as tools for the carrying out of his plans will be recalled by all students of Old Testament history. It is assumed that the Elders has been a self-propagating body as it has come down through the centuries, its power having been greatly reinforced during recent decades. In the writings of Nilus we read, "These learned men decided by peaceful means to conquer the world for Zion with the slyness of the Symbolic Snake, whose head was to represent those who have been initiated into the plans of the Jewish administration, and the body of the Snake to represent the Jewish people, the administration was always kept secret, even from the Jewish nation itself. As this Snake penetrated into the hearts of the nations which it encountered, it undermined and devoured all the non-Jewish power of these States. It is foretold that the Snake has still to finish its work, strictly adhering to the designed plan, until the course which it has to run is closed by the return of its head to Zion and until, by this means, the Snake has completed its round of Europe and has encircled it, and until, by dint of enchaining Europe, it has encompassed the whole world. This it is to accomplish by using every endeavor to subdue the other countries by an economic conquest. "The return of the head of the Snake to Zion can only be accomplished after the power of all the Sovereigns of Europe has been laid low, that is to say, when by means of economic crises and wholesale destruction effected everywhere there shall have been brought about a spiritual demoralization and a moral corruption, chiefly with the assistance of Jewish women masquerading as French, Italians, etc. These are the surest spreaders of licentiousness into the lives of the leading men at the heads of nations." The last paragraph reminds one of King Carol of Rumania whose illicit affair with the Jewess daughter of a blacksmith during the last few years has made him a disgrace in the eyes of the world and driven his wife and son from the palace and into exile. Regarding the mystery of the snake, Nilus continues, "A map of the course of the Symbolic Snake is shown as follows: Its first stage in Europe was in 429 B.C. in Greece, where, in the time of Pericles, the Snake first started eating into the power of that country. The second stage was in Rome in the time of Augustus, about 69 B.C. The third in Madrid in the time of Charles V., in 1552 A.D. The fourth in Paris about 1790, in the time of Louis XVI. The fifth in London from 1814 onwards (after the downfall of Napoleon). The sixth in Berlin in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian war. The seventh in St. Petersburg, over which is drawn the head of the Snake under the date of 1881. "All these states which the Snake traversed have had the foundations of their constitutions shaken, Germany, with its apparent power, forming no exception to the rule. In economic conditions, England and Germany are spared, but only till the conquest of Russia is accomplished by the Snake, on which at present (i.e., 1905) all its efforts are concentrated. The further course of the Snake is shown on this map, but arrows indicate its next movement towards Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa." Without Conscience There are twenty-four Protocols in the series, each being a separate outline of attack on Gentile morals, religion, and government. It is a religious conviction on the part of the Elders to batter down every good thing that has ever been built by non-Jewish hands. The theory is, "Whatever is, is wrong and must be destroyed" until such time as Israel can gain control of the helm of the world. By their religious philosophy, they actually justify themselves in the light of their own conscience. We learn from this that the conscience is a tricky instrument. By way of illustration, we turn to the ninth Protocol, "For us, there are no checks to limit the range of our activity. Our Super-Government subsists in extra-legal conditions which are described in the accepted terminology by the energetic and forcible word, Dictatorship. I am in a position to tell you with a clear conscience that at the proper time we, the law-givers, shall execute judgment and, sentence, we shall slay and we shall spare, we, as head of all our troops, are mounted on the steed of the leader. We rule by force of will because in our hands are the fragments of a once powerful party, now vanquished by us. And the weapons in our hands are limitless ambitions, burning greediness, merciless vengeance, hatred, and malice. "It is from us that the all-engulfing terror proceeds. We have in our service persons of all opinions, of all doctrines, restoration monarchists, demagogues, socialists, communists, and utopian dreamers of every kind. We have harnessed them all to the task: each one of them on his own account is boring away at the last remnants of authority, is striving to overthrow all established form of order. By these acts all States are in torture; they exhort to tranquility, are ready to sacrifice everything for peace: but we will not give them peace until they openly acknowledge our international Super-Government, and with submissiveness." In Protocol eleven we read, "The Gentiles are a flock of sheep, and we are their wolves. And you know what happens when the wolves get hold of the flock?" The eleventh document also says that the curse of dispersion throughout the world which the Jews have suffered is, in reality, a blessing because it has taken their power into places which would never have been touched otherwise. It says, "God has granted to us, His Chosen People, the gift of the dispersion, and in this which appears in all eyes to be our weakness, has come forth all our strength, which has now brought us to the threshold of sovereignty over all the world. There now remains not much more for us to build up upon the foundation we have laid." Fulfilled Threats The twenty-four Protocols are actually just so many links in a chain of threats, threats which are in process of coming to pass every day. We will now go through the records briefly, quote a few statements and place them in parallel with their current and obvious fulfillment. Every root force which the Elders discussed back in 1905, as reported in The Protocols, is actually in operation today, most of them having been set in motion during the last few years. "Liberalism" The first Protocol emphasizes the matter of "Liberalism" in government. We shall now sum up the principal statements regarding this line of attack which has been launched for the purpose of destroying faith in the governments of the world and undermining all law and order. It will be necessary to make a few random quotations, in order to show the power of the HIDDEN HAND, as it has maneuvered in this direction during recent years. Nilus quotes the leader of the Elders as saying, "In the times when the peoples looked upon kings on their thrones as on a pure manifestation of the will of God they submitted without a murmur to the despotic power of kings: but from the day when we insinuated into their minds the conception of their own rights they began to regard the occupants of thrones as mere ordinary mortals. The holy unction of the Lord's Anointed has fallen from the heads of kings in the eyes of the people, and when we also robbed them of their faith in God the might of power was flung upon the streets into the place of public proprietorship and was seized by us. The abstraction of freedom has enabled us to persuade the mob in all countries that their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove. Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' words many times repeated since those days by stupid poll-parrots who from all sides round flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the mob." The speaker discoursed at great length upon the subject of "Liberalism," and said that it was the opening wedge which they had used to pry stabilized nations loose at their foundations and had thereby created general unrest and dissatisfaction. He says, "When we introduced into the State organism the poison of Liberalism its whole political complexion underwent a change. States have been seized with a mortal illness, blood-poisoning. All that remains is to await the end of their death agony. Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, so-called Liberalism, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears the slackened reins of government are immediate, by the law of life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority fits into the place of the old already weakened by Liberalism." The whole world has now become inoculated with the virus of "Liberalism." The very phrase has become a kind of sacred cow to which all politicians are bowing down in adoration. The HIDDEN HAND has dramatized the principle of "Liberalism" to the point where it has become firmly fixed in the political imagination of the nations. This is borne out in the 1932 Presidential election of the United States when Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept into office under the slogan of "Liberalism." Being a man who floats along on the mass mind, it was easy to ensnare him into this trap. In his first public statement after his election, he said, "We are about to enter upon a new period of Liberalism and of sane reform in the United States, and we shall require unity of purpose, if not of opinion, if we are to achieve permanent and practical results. The United States has become a great nation, and its economic life functions along national lines, where our political life still clings too much to the political machinery of the past. As President of the United States I shall do my utmost, in co-operation with the people and with their chosen representatives, to restore the balance of our economic interests and to simplify and vitalize our political institutions, so that as changes come they may be effected without injury to the proper rights of any individual and without conflict with the spirit of American institutions." Change and revision of government seem to be uppermost in the mind of Mr. Roosevelt. We question if he even suspicions that he may be the victim of a conspiracy carried along on the crest of a wave of so-called "Liberalism" which was started from secret sources for the purpose of creating national unrest. Assault on Morality Realizing that no nation can survive a moral collapse, it is explained that the Elders have been determined to promote immorality among the Gentile masses. To do this, all manner of temptations had to be flaunted before the minds of the people, including sexual vice, polluted amusements, filthy literature, the unrestrained use of alcohol, etc. That there has been unloosed upon the nations an avalanche of immoral forces during recent years no thoughtful person will dispute. A prominent English divine said recently, "It is as though the world had been suddenly cursed by millions of sex demons beyond human control. I stand amazed at the breaking down of moral standards and am without an explanation as to the origin of the trouble." Had this noted preacher been familiar with The Protocols he would have had an idea as to the possible cause of the calamity. We will now examine a few succinct statements by the Elders, "Behold the alcoholized animals, bemused with drink, the right to an immoderate use of which comes along with freedom. It is not for us and ours to walk that road. The peoples of the goyim (non-Jews) are bemused with alcoholic liquors; their youth has grown stupid on classicism and from early immorality, into which it has been inducted by our special agents, by tutors, lackeys, governesses in the houses of the wealthy, by clerks and others, by our women in the places of dissipation frequented by the goyim. In the number of these last, I count also the so-called 'society ladies,' voluntary followers of the others in corruption and luxury. In countries known as progressive and enlightened, we have created a senseless, filthy, abominable literature." Does this account for the tons of vile literature which are released every week on the news-stands of America? Does this account for the constant carnival of immorality sponsored by the motion picture industry which, by the way, is under complete Jewish domination? The Cause of the Depression The Protocols provide a rational explanation for the depression which hit the world late in the year 1929. When the full meaning of this amazing disclosure breaks upon one's mind, it is almost stunning. Remember that Nilus prepared these documents in 1905, or twenty-four years before the economic crash of the world. Should a historian take up his pen in the next few years, look back and write about the depression, he could not write more accurately than Nilus wrote in 1905 when looking ahead. The spokesman of the Elders from which we shall now make random quotations emphasized the fact that a small group of Jews controls most of the wealth of the world and that they have it in their power to manipulate forces and pull wires in the background, in a way to produce any kind of economic conditions they may wish. He says, "This hatred will be still further magnified by the effects of an economic crisis, which will stop dealings on the exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, a universal economic crisis whereby we shall throw upon the streets whole mobs of workers simultaneously in all the countries of Europe. These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in the simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot. 'Ours' they will not touch, because the moment of attack will be known to us and we shall take measures to protect our own." Notice the threat to "throw upon the streets whole mobs" of unemployed men. As these words are written there are 12,700,000 idle working men in the United States and conditions in Europe and other parts of the world are even worse. The above threat also says that these men will automatically become criminals and will form themselves into "mobs" to "rush delightedly to shed the blood" of their leaders. What a picture of conditions of the world at this moment! What a picture of the Communistic revolutionary spirit as we see it in the world today! These Elders, what heartless wretches that they should have produced such suffering! Intoxicated on the wine of power! But the Bible makes it clear that in the end, their own nation will be thrown into convulsions at the hands of the Messiah-Superman whom they themselves are preparing to welcome. In other words, they are building a machine, a Frankenstein monster that will grind them to powder during the coming period which Jesus describes as being "the great tribulation." It will be recalled that there was a state of financial inflation and mad speculation just prior to the depression in 1929. According to the Sixth Protocol, this wild business orgy of insane spending was deliberately planned by the Elders. We read, "To complete the ruin of the industry of the goyim we shall bring to the assistance of speculation the luxury which we have developed among the goyim, that greedy demand for luxury which is swallowing up everything. We shall raise the rate of wages which, however, will not bring any advantage to the workers, for at the same time we shall produce a rise in prices of the first necessaries of life, alleging that it arises from the decline of agriculture and cattle breeding: we shall further undermine artfully and deeply sources of production, by accustoming the workers to anarchy and to drunkenness and side by side therewith taking all measures to extirpate from the face of the earth all the educated forces of the goyim. In order that true meaning of things may not strike the goyim before the proper time, we shall mask it under an alleged ardent desire to serve the working classes and the great principles of political economy about which our economic theories are carrying on an energetic propaganda. We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of colossal riches, upon which even large fortunes of the goyim will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom, together with the credit of the States, on the day after the political smash." Turning now to the Twentieth Protocol, which deals entirely with the financial policy of the HIDDEN HAND, we will quote a few significant statements, "Economic crises have been produced by us for the goyim by no other means than the withdrawal of money from circulation. Huge capitals have stagnated, withdrawing money from States, which were constantly obliged to apply to those same stagnant capitals for loans. These loans burdened the finances of the State with the payments of interest and made them the bond slaves of these capitals. The concentration of industry in the hands of capitalists out of the hands of small masters has drained away all the juices of the peoples and with them also of the States. You are aware that the gold standard has been the ruin of the States which adopted it, for it has not been able to satisfy the demands for money, the more so that we have removed gold from circulation as far as possible. In our hands is the greatest power of our day, gold: in two days we can procure from our storehouses any quantity we may please. Surely there is no need to seek further proof that our rule is predestined by God?" Schools to Be Corrupted Realizing the importance of inoculating the minds of the children and young people with the poison of degeneration, we find woven into The Protocols an explanation of Jewish strategy in securing the destruction of the Gentile educational systems. We learn that back in 1905 they were discussing methods for turning all higher institutions of learning into hotbeds of radicalism and breeding places of atheism. A part of the program is to tear God out of the heart of the rising generation. Everybody knows that atheistic philosophies have been taken as the foundation of education throughout the civilized world. It is also well known that high schools, colleges, and universities are honey-combed with godless teachings, jungle evolution, immoral and Communistic ideas. The following utterance by one of the Elders is indeed illuminating, "Do you suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, and Nietzscheism. To us Jews, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the goyim. Who is going to verify what is taught in the village schools? We have got our hands into the administration of the law, into the conduct of elections, into the press, into the liberty of the person, but principally into education and training as being the corner-stones of a free existence. We have fooled, bemused and corrupted the youth of the goyim by rearing them in principles and theories which are known to us to be false although it is by us that they have been inculcated." Control of the Press An elaborate and almost fantastic system for dominating the newspapers of the world is presented in The Protocols. The only means for controlling the sources of information and in molding public sentiment on a worldwide scale was to organize and disseminate news through a few avenues. By consolidating and directing the outflow of press information through these channels, it would be possible eventually to gain complete control of the public mind by manipulating things at the top from where news would filter down to the masses. If these source springs could be polluted with propaganda, the entire mind of the world would be influenced. This elaborate system is being presided over by powerful Jews in the various nations it is claimed, for the purpose of gagging the press in the coils of a perfect dictatorship. A few quotations will suffice to illustrate the plan: "Through the press, we have gained the power to influence while remaining ourselves in the shade; thanks to the press we have got the gold in our hands, notwithstanding that we have had to gather it out of oceans of blood and tears. But it has paid us, though we have sacrificed many of our people. Each victim on our side is worth in the sight of God a thousand goyim. We shall deal with the press in the following way: What is the part played by the press today? It serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose or else it serves selfish ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight curb: we shall do the same also with all productions of the printing press, for where would be the sense of getting rid of the attacks of the press if we remain targets for pamphlets and books? The produce of publicity, which nowadays is a source of heavy expense owing to the necessity of censoring it, will be turned by us into a very lucrative source of income for our State: we shall lay on it a special stamp tax and require deposits of caution-money before permitting the establishment of any organ of the press or of printing offices: these will then have to guarantee our government against any kind of attack on the part of the press. For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy. Such measures as stamp tax, a deposit of caution-money and fines secured by these deposits. will bring in a huge income to the government. It is true that party organs might not spare money for the sake of publicity, but those we shall shut up at the second attack upon us. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification. I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us, but they will attack exclusively points that we have pre-determined to alter. Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them. Even nowadays already, to take only the French press, there are forms which reveal Masonic solidarity in acting on the watch-word; all organs of the press are bound together by professional secrecy; like the augurs of old not one of their numbers will give away the secret of his source of information unless it be resolved to make the announcement of them. Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other. These sores would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few the prestige of the journalist attracts the majority of the country, the mob follows after him with enthusiasm." The Birth of Communism The principle of Communism has existed for centuries. Its primary purpose has been to create internal strife and revolutions. If it is true that the Elders have existed as a self-propagating organization for hundreds of years for the purpose of influencing Jews toward precipitating acts of violence in all parts of the world, it may not be amiss to credit them with bringing about the fall of many nations through the centuries. Nilus claimed that in 1905 they were concentrating their guns upon Russia. It is significant to note that the leaders of the Russian revolution were Jews, including both Lenin and Trotsky. While Russia is the only nation so far that has come under the complete control of the revolutionary spirit, yet out from it has gone the same Red idea to the ends of the earth. Today, there is scarcely a spot in the world over which the Red shadow is not being cast. This is exactly the plan made known in The Protocols, whereby all nations are to be thrown into internal chaos, making it necessary eventually to turn to the powerful Jews, who control the gold of the world, for relief. It will be then, that they will offer our humanity a political and financial Messiah. The worldwide menace of Communism, exactly as we see it today, as outlined in these documents as an important part of the international conspiracy. A few random extracts will now be submitted showing the Elders were planning back in 1905 to make the entire world a breeding place of Communism: "The intensified struggle for superiority and shocks delivered to economic life will create, nay, have already created, disenchanted, cold and heartless communities. Such communities will foster a strong aversion towards the higher political and towards religion. Their only guide is gain that is gold, which they will erect into a veritable cult, for the sake of those material delights which it can give. Then will the hour strike when, not for the sake of attaining the good, not even to win wealth, but solely out of hatred towards the privileged, the lower classes of the goyim will follow our lead against our rivals for power, the intellectuals of the goyim. Throughout all Europe, and by means of relations with Europe, in other continents also, we must create ferments, discords, and hostility. Therein we gain a double advantage. In the first place, we keep in check all countries, for they well know that we have the power wherever we like to create disorders or to restore order. All these countries are accustomed to seeing in us indispensable force of coercion. In the second place, by our intrigues, we shall tangle up all the threads which we have stretched into the cabinets of all States by means of the political, by economic treaties, or loan obligations. But you yourselves perfectly well know that to produce the possibility of the expression of such wishes by all the nations it is indispensable to trouble in all countries the people's relations with their governments so as to utterly exhaust humanity with dissension, hatred, struggle, envy and even by the use of torture, by starvation, BY THE INOCULATION OF DISEASES, by want, so that the goyim see no other issue than to take refuge in our complete sovereignty in money and in all else. But if we give the nations of the world a breathing space, the moment we long for is hardly likely ever to arrive. But, in the meantime, while we are re-educating youth in new traditional religions and afterward in ours, we shall not overtly lay a finger on existing churches, but we shall fight against them by criticism calculated to produce schism. The word 'freedom' brings out the communities of men to fight against every kind of force, against every kind of authority, even against God and the laws of nature. For this reason, we, when we come into our kingdom, shall have to erase this word from the lexicon of life as implying a principle of brute force which turns mobs into bloodthirsty beasts. These beasts, it is true, fall asleep again every time when they have drunk their fill of blood and at such times can easily be riveted into their chains. But if they are not given blood they will not sleep and continue to struggle. This is the reason why it is indispensable for us to undermine all faith, to tear out of the minds of the goyim the very principle of Godhead and the spirit, and to put in its place arithmetical calculations and material needs. In our day the power which has replaced that of the rulers who were liberal is the power of gold. Time was when Faith ruled. The idea of freedom is impossible of realization because no one knows how to use it with moderation. It is enough to hand over a people to self-government for a certain length of time for that people to be turned into a disorganized mob. We appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our social masonry. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy and strong. We are interested in just the opposite, in the diminution, the killing out of the goyim." The Antichrist To the person who has not taken the trouble to inform himself regarding what the Prophecies say about the rise of a world Dictator, the idea at first glance may strike him as being a heavy draft on the imagination. However, a careful study of Bible Prophecy in the light of history and current events will show that everything is being made ready for the appearance of just such a colossal personage, whose characteristics are outlined down to the smallest details. Under the administration of this great industrial, philosophical, political, intellectual and financial Monarch the most unspeakable tortures will be visited upon the human race, in the end, time of this dispensation, prior to the second coming of Christ. Everything in The Protocols converges upon the coming of one Man and the specific objective of the Elders, according to these documents, is to set the stage for him. This Superman will be offered to the world by the powerful apostate Jews as their Messiah and for a brief period of about three and one-half years, according to the Prophet Daniel, he will administer world affairs in a most satisfactory manner. At the beginning of this period, he will officially declare Palestine to be the property of the Jews and will make his headquarters in Jerusalem. He will be the blackest, most ferocious, diabolical character the world has ever known, a counterfeit Christ, energized by demon power, a veritable Judas-Nero-Napoleon-Mussolini-Nietzsche, all rolled into one super-personality. It is my deliberate conviction that this man is in the flesh at the present time. In the not distant future, he will be unveiled as the world's most powerful potentate, a high-brow, a scholastic, a wizard in finance, a Superman. But, before his unveiling, there will be perpetual outbreaks of anarchy, war, political upheaval and economic abnormalities. The Protocols show how unrest is being created for this express purpose. He will emerge as the human saviour to bring cosmos out of chaos. For over twenty years I have been familiar with the facts relating to the coming of a world Dictator, and have proclaimed them constantly but only in recent years have I learned of a HIDDEN HAND consciously preparing the way for his coming. I am now ready to say that from all indications The Protocols describe perfectly the highway on which this great character will walk when he appears on the scenes with great glamour and drama. Many Scripture verses could be quoted from both the Old and New Testaments in confirmation of the above deductions. Back in the fifth century before Christ Zechariah predicted that the tribe of Judah would get the wealth of the world out of Gentile hands. The modern Jews are of course descendants of the tribe of Judah although the term Jew has come to stand, in modern times, for the entire Israelitish nation. Zechariah 14:13 speaks of the coming tribulation period which will consummate the present age of Gentile history as a time when everyone will raise his hand against his neighbor. Then the 14th verse says this will take place when Jews control the finances of the world: "And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the heathen (Gentiles) round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance." Practically, every page of The Protocols breathes the Antichrist atmosphere. Here and there we have culled utterances by the Elders which all students of eschatology will recognize as being in exact parallel of the plain teachings of the Scriptures regarding the coming of the Devil's Christ. A few typical quotations are as follows: "Without an absolute despotism, there can be no existence for civilization which is carried on not by the masses but by their guide, whosoever that person may be. The mob is a savage and displays its savagery at every opportunity. The moment the mob seizes freedom in its hands it quickly turns it into anarchy, which in itself is the highest degree of savagery. When the hour strikes for our Sovereign Lord of all the World to be crowned it is these same hands which will sweep away everything that might be a hindrance thereto. Ever since that time we have been leading the peoples from one disenchantment to another so that in the end they should turn also from us in favor of that King-Despot of the blood of Zion, whom we are preparing for the world. By all these means we shall so wear down the goyim that they will be compelled to offer us international power of a nature that by its position will enable us without any violence gradually to absorb all the state forces of the world and to form a Super-Government. In place of the rulers of today, we shall set up a bogey which will be called the Super-Government Administration. Its hands will reach out in all directions like nippers and its organization will be of such colossal dimensions that it cannot fail to subdue all the nations of the world. You gentlemen, here present, who are economists, just strike an estimate of the significance of this combination! In every possible way, we must develop the significance of our Super-Government by representing it as the Protector and Benefactor of all those who voluntarily submit to us. The recognition of our despot may also come before the destruction of the constitution; the moment for this recognition will come when the peoples, utterly wearied by the irregularities and incompetence, a matter which we shall arrange for, of their rulers, will clamor: 'away with them and give us one king over all the earth who will unite us and annihilate the causes of discords, frontiers, nationalities, religions, State debts, who will give us peace and quiet, which we cannot find under our rulers and representatives.' If already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what goy stupidity calls State secrets: what will our position be then when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world. The supreme lord who will replace all now existing rulers, dragging on their existence among societies demoralized by us, societies that have denied even the authority of God, from whose midst breaks out on all sides the fire of anarchy, must, first of all, proceed to quench this all-devouring flame." Down to the closing sentence of The Protocols, the coming Superman is described. The concluding statements of the Elders in the twenty-fourth Protocol are as follows, "The King of the Jews must not be at the mercy of his passions, and especially of sensuality: on no side of his character must he give brute instincts power over his mind. Sensuality worse than all else disorganizes the capacities of the mind and clearness of views, distracting the thoughts to the worst and most brutal side of human activity. The prop of humanity, in the person of the supreme lord of all the world of the holy seed of David, must sacrifice to his people all personal inclinations. Our supreme lord must be of an exemplary irreproachability." The above notation with reference to the demands of purity on the part of their coming false Messiah may appear high sounding in its phraseology at first glance but Daniel says the same thing in the eleventh Chapter of his book in the 37th verse, "Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god, for he shall magnify himself above all." The End Apostate Jewry will actually dramatize their Superman to the position where supernatural claims will be made for him, and strange enough, he will live up to the claims. Standing at the head of a great, humanized religious system which he will have invented, he will demand and receive worship. Ten dictators will emerge out of the political and economic chaos of Central Europe in the near future and he will stand head and shoulders above the other nine. He will occupy the spotlight on the stage of the world for about seven years, after which his career will come to a tragic close. There will be no end to revolutionary achievements on his part, but the revival of the old Roman Empire and the official restoration of Palestine to the Jews will be two of his major accomplishments. Concerning the giving of the Holy Land to the Jews, Daniel says, "And he shall confirm the covenant" for seven years and "in the midst" of this period, or after three-and-one-half years, he will cause the daily sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple which will have been reestablished, to cease and with supreme blasphemy he will assume the position of a modern deity. The Apostle Paul describes this stupendous event in these words, referring to the Antichrist, "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." Daniel calls this "the overspreading of abominations" and Jesus refers to it as "the abomination of desolation (standing) in the holy place." At the instant, this horrible event takes place the final "great tribulation" will break upon the world in all its fury. The Antichrist will manipulate superhuman powers during his reign and will be the world's greatest mastermind in all scientific, political and economic matters. He will possess a new knowledge and will achieve wonders which will make the whole world gasp. Daniel says, "But in his estate shall he honor the God of forces." He will produce poison gases, death rays, air machines, electrical devices and other destructive methods of warfare which will lash the whole world into subjection. During the early period of his catastrophic reign his mastery of the arts of arbitration and diplomacy; his genius in disposing of economic, industrial and political problems, will inspire the confidence of the deceived human family. His ability to bring temporary harmony to a world which has been upset by the secret conspiracy of the HIDDEN HAND will draw to himself the support of the torn nations. He will eventually become THE MAN OF THE AGE. Standing at the head of a World Bank, he will introduce a universal, standardized currency and will dominate the money markets of the world. Hence the words of John the Revelator, "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." This describes his absolute dictatorship of business and economics, the power of Mussolini multiplied many times over! About seven years after his ascension to power, when the most horrible war of history will be in progress under his domination, Jesus Christ will return to this planet exactly as He went away. The Antichrist will be utterly destroyed by the brightness of His appearing and the 110th Psalm will be literally fulfilled, where we read "The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Jesus Christ has enemies, but in that day they shall become His footstool. The Jews will then "look upon me (Christ) whom they have pierced (at the time of His crucifixion)." The "delusion" will be lifted, the scales will be taken from their eyes, and under the personal leadership of their true Messiah, they will become ambassadors of good-will to minister throughout the whole earth. It will then be known everywhere that the Jews have been truly a Chosen People since the days when God first called father Abraham out of Babylon, although guilty of many mistakes during the intervening centuries. But even under the reign of the coming Superman, there will be a faithful "remnant," a spiritual nucleus of faithful ones within national Israel. As in Elijah's time when there were seven thousand who refused to bow the knee to Baal; as in Isaiah's time there was a "very small remnant"; as during the captivities there were loyal souls like Ezekiel, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Esther, and Mordecai; as at the end of the Babylonian captivity the nation had Ezra and Nehemiah; as at the time of Christ there were loyal ones like John the Baptist who "looked for redemption in Jerusalem;" so also in the impending "tribulation" there will be a faithful group who will know both the Old and New Testament prophecies and will not be deceived by the cunning devices of the Superman and the national apostasy of their nation. Notes

On December 23, 1932, the Editor of the Morning Post wrote me as follows: "It is perfectly correct that Mr. Victor E. Marsden was a correspondent of ours for a considerable time. He was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and suffered such hardships that he returned to England a broken man, and died about twelve years ago." This information will help identify the translator as being a dependable gentleman.

The term "goyim" is used throughout The Protocols and has been retained by Mr. Marsden from the original translation meaning, "Gentiles or non-Jews, a term of offense and contempt and reveals the innermost spirit of Judaism."

Dr. Gerald B. Winrod; (1933)

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aboriginalnewswire · 8 years

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Archived Editorial :: IDF Continues 'Acts of Genocide' Against Indigenous Arab #Palestinians Under '#OperationProtectiveEdge' As the International Community Observes [7.8.14]

US-Supported Israel Defence Forces Continue 'Acts of Genocide' Against Indigenous Arab Palestinians Under 'Operation Protective Edge' As the International Community Observes

The US has also ignored this and doubled-down its own defence of the SOI's genocidal actions with Secretary of State John Kerry saying:

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Further Notes:

Joshua Norman 'WikiLeaks: Israel Intentionally Kept Gaza on Brink of Economic Collapse', CBS News (Jan. 5th, 2011) http://ow.ly/A367w

David Wurmser, 'The Geopolitics of Israel’s Offshore Gas Reserves', (April 4, 2013) http://ow.ly/A37JW

Al Shawa Petroleum & Gaza Company: Private Company Information - Businessweek http://ow.ly/A37L3

'Israel shells UN school in #Gaza' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English (17 Jan 2009) http://ow.ly/zVkDk

Sam Hamad, 'Operation Protective Edge: Reading between the lines', middleeastmonitor.com (July 16th, 2014) http://ow.ly/A31gk

[globalsecurity.org] – Operation Protective Edge http://ow.ly/A31ES

A. Kofi [w/ sources] -- APNS [2014-08-07 07:17:32]

– – Aboriginal News Group (ANG)

#human rights #Palestine #occupied Palestine #petroleum #oil&gas #colonialism #Fascism #Israel

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