#checkpoint blockade

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Israeli settlers casually fleeing back to the US or Europe or wherever they want to go really thanks to passport privilege while Palestinians are literally trapped in a giant cage waiting for the Israeli military to bomb the shit out of them highlights another power asymmetry of the Palestinian occupation: the freedom of movement, or lack thereof. Palestinians are not free to move across their own land. Everything is controlled through the most elaborate and heavily militarized borders, security checkpoints, military blockades, minefields, etc. in the world. Even if those didn't exist you can bet a Palestinian wouldn't be able to just get on a plane and go wherever they please without so much as a visa (not to mention the likely thousands of Palestinians who have been put on no fly lists due to be pure racism). When conflict breaks out they simply have nowhere to go. An Israeli can hop on a jet and fuck off back to Long Island or wherever until it simmers down.

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

As an actual Israeli Jewish woman, please do tell me about the apartheid in my country

The only argument you have are the blockades

-you do realise the blockades you always mention as an example go both ways, right? Israelis have to go through the same check points…

The blockades are there for a reson: they save lives.

-you know? countries usually have boarders and checkpoints on borders with neighbouring countries- let alone countries with terror organisations that massacred their citizens and have repeatedly said that they’ll do so again…

And by the way- Jordan and Egypt both have the same blockades and even more of a military presence on their boarders with Palestinians- yet you only care when it’s Israel…

-in fact, Israelis face more restrictions of movement : Palestinians living in the West Bank can enter Israeli governed territory while Israelis (mainly Jews) can’t .

Gazans could enter Israel freely as long as they had work permits/ passed the checkpoints without any issue They were payed wayyy better than what they could potentially earn in Gaza too btw

-There are no discriminatory laws , no Jim Crowe-like laws

-There was never any form of slavery (Palestinians did have slaves though , they still do)

—-

Seriously, westerners are hell bent on projecting their history of inequality and racism on this conflict

And Ffs, read a book,talk to an actual Israeli, read a credible articles and sources that aren’t* heavily * biased, terror-supporting and antisemitic (like Al Jazeera).

[fairuzfan]

What kills me about this person is that they admit the Palestinians are occupied and israel is an occupying force but they still manage to blame the occupied for the circumstances the occupier inflicts on them. And this is what drives me up a wall about liberal zionists. They admit that israel is occupying Palestine and and that the occupation must end but it's all just... buzzwords to them. They think the occupied and occupier need to work together to end the occupation and that occupation is some set of rules that a government imposes on people when it's a systematic violence that's perpetuated even by civilians who are determined a "higher class" than the occupied. Like they're willing to admit the occupation is bad and should not happen but that's as far as they're willing to admit. They are completely unwilling to even say that Palestinians are oppressed by Israelis (yes, all Palestinians are oppressed by all israelis, it's not a statement of morality its a statement of relationships between two groups of people) and are insisting that Palestinians are to blame for the occupation, on some level.

And this is not an exaggeration. Because they do say "israelis see the apartheid was as a security wall to stop the suicide bombings so you can understand how israelis feel about palestinians" but the occupied are constantly expected to make room for their occupiers' feelings. Like in every single instance. Even when talking about "peace" (which is never really peace, just a quieter occupation) Palestinians are expected to "hold up their side of the deal" in order to gain basic rights. Like they're constantly told "Well israelis are afraid that you'll kill them so you gotta promise to be nice and then we will stop shoving a gun in your face" as if the Palestinians hold any sort of meaningful structural power over israelis.

Like, I'm sorry but there's not a reality in which Palestinians oppress israelis in this entire world. None. We have no structural power compared to israelis. We will always be bottom rung compared to them, we will always be guilty before proved innocent, we will always have the gun in our faces, we will always be bombed and bombed and bombed and starved and bombed and no structural power will help us. Sorry if this is a hard truth to swallow but Palestinians are oppressed by israelis. Even HAMAS (the favorite israeli boogieman) is oppressed by israelis. Because that's the nature of the world. The occupied are, by definition, oppressed. The people who are blockaded and their food and water are controlled by an occupying entity are the oppressed people. So it's like, even if you want to argue the "shared humanity" route, you have to acknowledge that oppression is structural and enduring and that every Palestinian IN THE WORLD experiences oppression from israelis and those that ally themselves with israelis. Otherwise, your hollow statements of "wanting to end the occupation" just sound to me like you really don't understand that the occupation is present in every aspect of Palestinian life and that, unfortunately, israelis have to do more than tear down the apartheid wall and the settlements and the checkpoints and have to fundamentally reshape society if they want *real* peace.

But the sad part is, they don't really care about actually helping Palestinians, they care about seeming "moral" and "doing the right thing" but they've made up their minds about what doing the right thing is without even speaking to Palestinians about it. Or I should say, caring about speaking to Palestinians about it.

[steveyockey]

I paid $5 to access séamus malekafzali’s latest substack on palestine, here’s the full text,

It is easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, even with military occupation.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine has gone on longer than many of us on Earth have been alive, now going on 75 years. The levels of that deplacement, blockading, and violence have ebbed and flowed over years and decades, but that hand around the neck has always remained, even if how much it constricts has a tendency to loosen and tighten. Over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year in its occupation. News bulletins of them dying, oftentimes teenagers, come up through the headlines of Palestinian newspapers and channels as often as the weather. These deaths at the hands of Israeli security personnel are not isolated incidents, with soldiers materializing on roadsides and at checkpoints as unfortunate coincidence. They are constant spikes in the waveform of an incessant low-grade hum of humiliation, imprisonment, and destruction that has made daily life a forced agreement to constantly exist on the precipice of death.

This framing is not meant to be a tired retread of the conflict between Israel and Palestine or the nature of the Israeli occupation. This is meant to be a bulwark against the inevitable framing of this latest battle unfolding around Gaza, as it will appear in the Western media in the days to come.

There is a tendency, a deep-set one, to report Israel and Palestine as two countries that are on roughly the same playing field internationally, as you might report on a war that might involve Israel battling against a place like Jordan or Egypt. This kind of coverage obscures how deeply interlocked Israel’s military operations are with the fabric of the Palestinian society.

In the West Bank, settlements and checkpoints have made Palestinian land into a kind of comical archipelago, where in addition to being separated from Gaza by a huge land border, they are also separated from traveling to communities only a stone’s throw away from them without going through significant anguish. In Gaza, while no Israeli soldiers walk the streets, all their land borders are essentially sealed, their ports almost completely blockaded. Israel’s continued occupation has been so pinpoint and precise that its planes have gone as far as bombing bookstores, and its restrictions did not let up even when the COVID-19 pandemic reduced one health organization to carrying only as many tests of the deadly disease as could fit in a car.

This is not a matter of moral justification; one does not need to constantly busy themselves with having to make a full ideological conversion before understanding this. This is a matter of cause and effect.

What is the logical expectation, regardless of politics, ideology, culture, and creed, when a population of people is thrust into conditions that can only be described as an open-air prison, where every individual is a criminal in the eyes of the military occupying power regardless if they pick up a rifle or not, because there is supposedly always the threat that they will one day?

These are the basic conditions that have preceded the initiation of Operation al-Aqsa Storm this morning. As dawn broke on the morning of October 7, only one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, launched a military operation of unprecedented scope in its history. Hamas fighters would not only attempt to enter Israeli territory proper with ground troops, already in of itself an intensely bold action (though not without precedent in the past decade). This operation would be a combined incursion into Israel by both land, sea, and even air. Ground forces would cut the border fence into settlements surrounding Gaza, speedboats would make landings in southern Israel, and fighters from a newly-inaugurated paraglider division would fly over the border fortifications and then further inland.

Threats of an invasion of Israeli territory proper have been a staple of speeches from Hamas and Hezbollah and groups like it for years. There was a long-standing perception by outside observers that it was fanciful. An intentionally lofty piece of propaganda that fires up supporters while the real military wheeling and dealing is done under far more subtle and controlled terms, as with most militant organizations. After all, no Israeli-administered town, the ones occupied in Palestine during the initial 1948 war, had ever been taken in any war against the Jewish state since its creation, even by a combined force of multiple Arab national militaries.

That notion now can no longer exist.

At sunrise, Hamas fired a gigantic barrage of rockets into Israeli territory, a staggering 5,000 in the first wave alone. As Israeli military and police forces were distracted by fires and rocket destruction in residential areas of the country, Palestinian forces in Gaza proceeded to make their primary move.

After the sun rose, Hamas cut through the border fence surrounding Israel and sent both fighters on foot and on motorcycles into Israel. Images released by the group seem to tell a story in frozen figures. Israeli soldiers, strewn dead, caught by surprise, one having even rushed out so quickly that he put on his military gear but no other clothes except his underwear. An even grimmer story could be found in one of the IDF military dormitories, where an entire room full of soldiers had been massacred, only having perhaps seconds earlier gotten the alarm that Hamas had breached the perimeter, many of them seemingly mid-way through getting out of bed.

From there, Hamas made unprecedented move after unprecedented move. Hamas fighters moved as far north into Zikim, built on the former Palestinian village of Hiribya, and moved as far east as Ofakim, built on the former hamlet of Khirbat Futais. The Erez Crossing, for years the only legal border crossing that Israel operated with the Gaza Strip, came under full Palestinian control. Sderot, a city where Israelis had once gathered on couches dragged to high peaks to watch the bombardment of Palestinians, now found themselves facing down Palestinian fighters in their own streets.

An additional shock would come in Israel’s initial response. Amidst cataclysmic scenes like hundreds of ravers in the desert near Gaza fleeing on foot, neither the Israeli president nor the prime minister spoke in those early hours in the morning.

The Israeli high command, despite the continuous insistence of Palestinian factions that they would one day attempt to take the fight into Israel itself, had become complacent. They, like many observers of Israel-Palestine, believed the occupation they had constructed could go on forever, unburdened by the need to adapt. Israeli soldiers after all were now more used to sniping reporters and unarmed protesters than engaging in military conflict. Entropy was what was propelling the military occupation complex of the Jewish state, not a wholly active effort.

Despite an ungodly amount of Western military equipment, highly advanced anti-aircraft systems programmed to shoot down thousands of rockets, an international reputation for tenacity and strategic knowhow, and multiple victories against Arab nations again and again and again, all of it ended up being useless against a Hamas fighter flying in on a box fan and a parachute.

This failure is two-fold, and both are closely related. One is the expectation that things could go on as before without addressing the root of the issue (that being a military occupation of an entire state), and the other in expectation that those being occupied had no capacity to learn from experience how Israel’s military strategy operates, people who could then going on to capitalize on that knowledge.

There is a fundamental flaw in the perception of Western powers toward the Middle East in general and Arabs in particular that because the groups fighting with Israel or the United States are irregular, bereft of highly professional uniforms and dedicated gigantic military headquarters, that they do not have the same ability to strategize and to confront the forces that are occupying their countries. Flashes of how faulty this thinking is rear their head again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan and everywhere in-between and around, but still the idea, unspoken as it may be, remains that they are fundamentally unequipped compared to the might they are fighting against. But Hamas has military strategists of its own, ones that understand the asymmetric situation they are dealing with, and ones that understand what the actual capabilities of Israel are, versus what their perception is.

The perception of Israel’s invulnerability versus what has actually been displayed today could not have been more different. Instead of being forced to immediately pull back, in essence making today a raid, Hamas has instead actually contested several Israeli settlements, which are still being fought over at time of this writing many hours after the initial incursion from Gaza began. A single Israeli soldier captured and held in Gaza used to capture the Israeli imagination for years; now there are believed to be not only tens of soldiers captured by Hamas, but tens of Israeli civilians as well, all now being held within the Strip. Hamas has also brought Israeli military vehicles back into the Strip, the novelty of working IDF equipment now under Palestinian control a source of celebration within the territory. Over 100 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the first day of Hamas’ attack, and nearly 1000 injured, a shocking early casualty count in an ongoing conflict where casualties on the Palestinians’ side are usually far more lopsided.

Israel’s response so far to Hamas’ operation has been to escalate rhetorically, with Netanyahu now calling this a war, and escalating its usual military strategy with Gaza, with carpet bombing now on an intense, concentrated scale. At the time of this writing, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in only a few hours, with that number expected to rise significantly in the days to come. Already, news has come in of Israeli planes having leveled Gaza’s second-largest building, the Palestine Tower, which housed a plethora of media offices, in scenes reminiscent of Israel’s bombing of another tower block of media offices in 2021 that infamously took out the local bureau of the Associated Press.

As fighting continues into the night in ways never seen before since 1948, the question remains: after all these decades, why now?

The ostensible justifications of what the clincher was that sparked this operation are innumerable, but two appear to be most clearly illuminated: the recent increased activity of far-right Zionists at the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (hence the name of the operation itself), but just as well the indications that the Saudi Arabia and Israel may be close to a normalization deal, which would be the largest such development in the Abraham Accords yet. Hezbollah mentioned this operation as being a “message” and a “decisive response” to Arab nations pursuing the idea of normalization with Israel. Still, it is important to recognize that pinning the undertaking of a completely gigantic operation of this scale as just a simple message to Saudi Arabia would be reductive. As the Los Angeles Times’ international correspondent Nabih Bulos says of the matter:

“To pretend that Hamas did this to be a spoiler of KSA-Israel normalization is just downright epic in its navel-gazing nonsense.”

What is important to always return to is that eternally governing line above everything: the low hum of constant occupation, and who has been causing its spikes. Israel’s government, its most far-right in its history, has been on the warpath almost immediately from its inauguration, with figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, now thrust to the forefront, doing everything large and small to provoke a Palestinian response. The hope is that the inevitable Palestinian response can mobilize the Israeli society, that it can be swiftly defeated by the Israeli military, and that the Israeli state can use such an opportunity to impose its sovereignty over what little of Palestine governed by Palestinians remains, and perhaps even what lies beyond it.

But that formula relies on the Palestinian side only accepting being provoked, themselves having no strategy of their own outside of firing rockets and yelling on television. Military occupation breeds a feeling of annihilation, but that annihilation is enclosed with it inevitable feelings of rabid and desperate hope, inspiring within irregular groups desires to try things never tried before. These are not always guaranteed to be successful: one may look at Aleppo when rebel groups managed to come together and break the siege on the city in the final stages of the battle, only for it to fall in the months to come anyway. Nevertheless, there is a real perception within Israel, communicated out to the world by its media and by its intelligentsia, that it is a nation on the verge of internal collapse, brought to the precipice by far-right forces it has let fester for decades without envisioning its eventual conclusion.

What does looking at how Israel is faring now communicate to Palestinian factions in Gaza? What do young people in Gaza, who make up 47% of the Strip’s population, imagine might lie ahead for them as they see these events unfold? What does a Hamas fighter imagine might be possible when, as the writer Josef Burton says, he exits a 25 by 7-mile space he’s never left in his entire life?

[najia-cooks]

فخارة العدس / Fukharat l'adas (Palestinian clay-pot lentils)

The name of this dish comes from "فَخَّار" ("fakhar"), meaning "pottery," and "عَدَس" ("'adas"), meaning "lentils." It is traditionally cooked in a قدرة ("qedra," clay pot) made from clay refined from local soil and shaped in family-owned pottery workshops. This type of pot is also used to make a lamb and rice dish of the same name commonly eaten in Gaza and Hebron. The qedra is filled with the cooking ingredients, sealed with a flour-water paste or with aluminum foil, and placed in a wood-fired oven—or buried in an earth oven—to cook for several hours, or even overnight.

This simple dish cooks red lentils with yellow onion, olive oil, and cumin to produce a smooth, earthy stew; additional olive oil and fresh lemon juice squeezed on after cooking add freshness and a tart lift, and شطة (shatta, red chili paste) is spooned in for heat.

As of 2019, the number of families producing qedra in Gaza had decreased from 40 or 50 to 3 or 4, according to workshop owner Sabri Attallah. The Israeli blockade which began in 2007 closed off foreign markets for Palestinian qedras, while cheaper, metal imports cut in on the local market. When the pots are exported to Israel, the multiple checkpoints and mandatory searches between Gaza and Israel cause many of them to break. The compression of Palestinians into small areas by Israeli government and settlers also spells problems for the qedra industry, as the smoke caused by firing pots reduces air quality for nearby residents. Many consider pottery-making to be both an integral part of Palestinian identity, and to be dying out: thus the targeting of Palestinians' economic self-determination targets cuisine and culture as well.

Today, Israeli weapons threaten Palestinian existence. Palestine Action has called for bail fund donations to aid in their storming, occupying, shutting down, and dismantling of factories and offices owned by Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.

For the lentils:

1 cup split red lentils, rinsed

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground

Salt, to taste

About 3 cups water

For the shatta (شطة):

100g (about 1 cup) fresh red chili peppers

2 tsp table salt

2 Tbsp olive oil

To serve:

Olive oil

Juice of 1/2 lemon, or to taste

Sweet peppers, radishes, spring onions, pickles, olives, leafy greens, shatta (red chili pepper paste).

Instructions:

For the shatta:

1. Wash peppers and remove stems. Use a mortar and pestle, food processor, or potato ricer to reduce peppers to a paste.

2. Add salt and stir. Add olive oil and stir. Store extra shatta in a jar in the fridge; cover with a thin layer of olive oil to avoid spoiling.

For the lentils (in the oven):

1. Coat the inside a piece of clay cookware of sufficient size, such as a Palestinian qedra or a Moroccan tanjia or tajine, with olive oil. Add the rest of the ingredients, followed by enough water to cover the lentils by at least an inch (about 3 cups). Make sure that the opening of the pot is completely covered (e.g. with a layer of aluminum foil, and then the pot's lid).

2. Place the clay pot in your oven and then heat it to 500 °F (260 °C).

3. Reduce the heat to 150 °F (65 °C) and cook for 2-3 hours, until lentils are mushy.

For the lentils (on the stovetop):

1. Heat olive oil in the base of your clay cookware, or a large pot. Add onions and cumin and fry briefly.

2. Add water and lentils and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes on medium.

3. Lower heat to low and cook for another 30 minutes, until consistency is smooth and mushy. Add water as necessary.

To serve:

Transfer lentils to individual serving bowls. Top with lemon juice and olive oil. Serve alongside shatta (which you may choose to spoon into your bowl) and fresh vegetables.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Gregory E. Williams

Donald Trump found himself rebuffed on multiple fronts at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, as did millionaire Gov. “Janky Jeff” Landry. The message of resistance sounded both inside and outside the Superdome. 

Despite heavy rain, more than a hundred protesters took to the streets, rallying first at Armstrong Park and then marching as close to the Dome as possible. This was difficult because police blocked routes to the Dome during the march. But a concentration of repressive forces had already been building in the city. 

After the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack and leading up to the Super Bowl (which makes the big tourism bosses a lot of money), the French Quarter has been turned into a military occupation zone. Racist governor Landry flooded the majority-Black city with state police and the National Guard. Checkpoints with armed guards have gone up in parts of the tourism-focused French Quarter.

Even with these hindrances, the crowd defied both Trump and Landry. Coming out at all was a big statement. We can’t give into fear. It’s time to fight. 

[soon-palestine]

HP hewlett packard

HP-branded corporations provide and operate technology that Israel uses to maintain its system of apartheid, occupation and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people. Hewlett Packard’s violations of Palestinian human rights have been well documented. Aside from providing services and technology to the Israeli army and police that maintain Israel’s illegal occupation and siege of Gaza, HP provides Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority with the exclusive Itanium servers for its Aviv System. This system enables the government to control and enforce its system of racial segregation and apartheid against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and is directly involved in Israel’s settler colonialism through its “Yesha database”, which compiles information on Israeli citizens in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

HP has been described as the “Polaroid of our times”, a reference to huge mobilisations against the use of Polaroid technology by the South African apartheid regime for its racist passbook system. Polaroid’s 1977 withdrawal from South Africa marked a turning point in the international effort to end apartheid there.

HP-E is contracted by Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority to provide and maintain the Itanium servers that house Israel’s population registry through 2020. Known as the Aviv System, this population registry is the basis of Israel’s ID card system. This ID system forms a core part of the Israeli apartheid regime’s tiered system of citizenship and residency that privileges Israel’s Jewish population and gives inferior status and rights to Palestinians, especially those in East Jerusalem. This leads to institutionalised racial discrimination and segregation in freedom of movement, housing, employment, marriage, healthcare, education, and policing. This discrimination is further exacerbated in the case of Palestinian “residents” in occupied East Jerusalem, whose most basic rights can and are being revoked arbitrarily.

The system also holds information about Israeli citizens living in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, therefore serving Israel’s settler colonial project directly. HP-E’s spin-off DXC Technology runs an R&D facility in the illegal settlement of Beitar Illit.

In 2015, HP split into HP Inc.- which carried on the brand name and provides consumer hardware, and HP-E for business and government services. In such a scenario, the BDS National Committee maintains that: “The onus is on each company to demonstrate to the public that it is free of illegal and unethical business activities.” Further, despite multiple requests for clarification, both the new companies sharing and profiting from the HP brand are yet to provide unambiguous evidence to show that their business activities with Israel do not violate International Humanitarian Law and Palestinian Human Rights. HP has, in the past, held a contract with the Israeli Ministry of Defence under which it developed and maintained the Basel System- the biometric identification system installed on checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian Territory, controlling the mobility of Palestinians. It also worked with the Israeli military, helping build its IT infrastructure. This included a program with the Israeli Navy which enforces the illegal naval blockade on Gaza. For these and other past ties of complicity with Israel’s occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism, HP-branded companies must provide reparations to the Palestinian victims of these crimes.

https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp#tab3

[bpod-bpod]

Breaking Down Barriers

A strong wall keeps invaders out, but a flimsy fence is easier to breach. Such is the case, researchers have found, with two types of colorectal cancer that respond differently to immunotherapy. By mapping the microenvironments in and around tumours with a combination of genetic sequencing and imaging, the team revealed that immune checkpoint blockade therapy works in one type but not the other in part because of the physical barriers they build around themselves. In one type, a poorly organised boundary between tumour (pictured, pink) and stroma (supportive tissue around the tumour, green) allows immune cells in to tackle the tumour, whereas when this barrier is well structured, immune cells are blocked out. This highlights the influence spatial organisation of tumours has on treatment response, and raises the possibility that first targeting the barrier could prime more tumours for treatment and open the gate for more effective immunotherapy.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Yu Feng and Wenjuan Ma, and colleagues

Shanxi Medical University—BGI Collaborative Center for Future Medicine, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan; State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, November 2024

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Bluesky

[leengazaps]

Day 582 + 583

🗣️ Hamas will release an Israeli-American hostage — confirms that direct negotiations w/ US ongoing about ceasefire & entry of aid

🇵🇸 61 Palestinians killed in Gaza in past 2 days

‼️ Economist: report based on Lancet study shows actual Gaza death toll could reach 109,000

🚩 West Bank (WB): Jenin Brigade targeted group of IOF soldiers at Jalameh checkpoint in response to Israel’s assassination of the commander

🩺 @Euromedhr: 14 elderly people killed by complications related to hunger, malnutrition & lack of medical care in past week in Gaza amid 71-day total aid blockade

🪖 IOF: 7 soldiers & 2 officers injured by landmine explosion in Shujayea (north) during search operation

🇵🇸 104-day Tulkarem siege (WB): IOF deployed around hospital, firing sound bombs; abducted 3 Palestinians incl. a journalist; explosions heard, firing ammunition, sound bombs & surveillance drones in Tulkarem & Nur Shams camps; blew up 4 homes in Nur Shams

🚩 WB: Clashes erupt between Palestinians & IOF in Beit Furik (Nablus) & Ramallah

🇵🇸 Heavy attacks across Gaza City (north): IOF bombing targeted displacement tents in Tuffah & Sabra killing 11 people incl. a mother, father & their 3 kids; bombing of school-shelter & a home killed 4 people

🇵🇸 2 attacks targeted displacement tents in Khan Younis (south) killed 2 people, injured 5+; drone bombed car killing 3 Palestinians

🚩 Clashes ongoing between IOF & resistance fighters in Rafah (south)

[connorthemaoist]

March 21, 2024 | Ang Bayan

Desperate to “finish off” the revolutionary armed resistance of the Filipino people, the US-Marcos regime’s armed tentacles is carrying out a rampant terrorist and fascist rampage throughout the country. Marcos and the AFP are set to make one false declaration after another that provinces have become “insurgency-free,” especially in areas that have long been targets of foreign corporations for mining, plantation and energy projects. At the behest of US imperialism, the AFP is also in a hurry to “end” the armed struggle of the Filipino people so that the US military can fully employ the AFP in its war of provocation against China which is likely to intensify in the coming year.

Marcos and the leadership of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have recently ordered an all-out war. The declared aim of this war is to dismantle all NPA guerrilla fronts by the end of March, destroy all NPA combat units by the end of June, and destroy all regional Party committees before the end of the year. Thousands of military troops, alongside police combat troops and tens of thousands of paramilitaries armed by the AFP, have been dispatched to ravage the countryside.

Hundreds of villages are being garrisoned by Marcos’ fascist minions. Oppressive soldiers are controlling people’s lives and livelihoods, silencing them and trampling on their rights and freedoms. Checkpoints and food blockades, prohibiting people from working in their fields or swidden farms, armed soldiers occupying barangay centers, going house to house and forcing people to “surrender,” harassing young women or even married women, all-night drinking, beatings and altercations, indiscriminate firing of guns—this is how people perceive the rotten soldiers. Amid drought and disasters, fascist soldiers are like pests who bring nothing but disaster to their communities.

Using powerful weapons such as drones and jetfighters, helicopters and howitzers, Marcos’s terrorist soldiers are bombing mountains and fields, indiscriminately firing night or day, destroying the forests and poisoning waters, shattering the peace and causing deep trauma to the people, especially children, pregnant women and the elderly. These result in unnecessary number of lives lost, contrary to all principles and laws of civilized warfare.

The evil aim of Marcos is to instill fear in the hearts of the people and force them prostrate while allowing their land to be grabbed by big foreign capitalists and their partner comprador bourgeoisie and big landlords. But instead of falling on the ground, the people are more and more roused to stand up and fight, and tread the path of armed revolution.

In the guerrilla fronts across the country, the units of the New People’s Army (NPA) continue to enjoy deep and widespread support from the peasant masses. Military officers of the AFP and the reactionary state are furious that despite their intensified all-out war which has lasted for almost seven years, the peasant masses continue to provide political and material support to the Red fighters. Young farmers, as well as young students, workers, as well as professionals continue to join the people’s army.

The people’s desire to carry forward the armed struggle continues to burn. Amid fascist attacks perpetrated by the armed minions of the US-Marcos regime, and oppressive policies that worsen their plight, it is becoming clearer to the minds and consciousness of the peasant masses that they completely have nothing if they do not have the New People’s Army on their side to defend their lives and rights, and to fight with for their land and livelihood.

In recent years, the NPA has suffered losses and setbacks in various parts of the country due to the errors and weaknesses of conservatism and complacency with its previous accomplishments. Instead of boldly treading the path of continuous expansion and invigoration of the armed struggle, the scope and mass base of guerrilla units were reduced, and units became passive and vulnerable to enemy encirclement. Under the guidance of and inspired by the Party, the NPA is determined to rectify errors and move forward on the path of strengthening and galvanizing the people’s war.

In the spirit of the rectification movement, the NPA must more vigorously wage armed struggle in all parts of the country. Utilizing the broad mass movement in guerrilla warfare, they must use all weapons—guns and rocks, spears and punji traps, shotguns and landmines—and carry out large or small tactical offensives that can be won against weak and isolated parts of the enemy. Strike at the enemy’s fascist troops and all its tentacles by way of rendering justice for the people and inspiring their resistance. Only by waging widespread armed resistance can the NPA consolidate, overcome setbacks and strengthen.

Since its establishment, five and a half decades ago, the NPA has served as the true people’s army in promoting the revolutionary aspirations of the Filipino people for national democracy. On its coming anniversary on March 29, let us celebrate its accomplishments for the past 55 years, pay tribute to all the martyrs and heroes, and reaffirm the determination to advance the protracted people’s war, without fear of sacrifices and hardships, to achieve ultimate victory in the future.

[curmemini]

retrieved from thiagoavilabrasil on instagram. the video is captioned as

We are about to be attacked by the most cruel and hateful army in the world. The unit S13 that has been deployed to attack us is the same that 15 years ago executed 10 of our participants of the @gazafreedomflotilla ⛴️🇵🇸 We are now attempting to break the siege and to create a people’s humanitarian sea corridor to stop the starvation of children in Gaza. We have international law on our side, we have the hearts and minds of the social majority of this 8 billion people planet that know in their hearts that starving children to death is wrong, that cannot stand anymore seeing hospitals being bombed, schools, shelters, residential areas… we have courage, solidarity, love, hope and all they have is weapons, bombs, hate and violence. They cannot win. They will not win. That’s why we are not afraid of them and the Madleen continue pushing forward to Gaza. If they indeed commit this war crime, we need all of you to riseup. Riseup everywhere but not for us, but for the Palestinian people who have been suffering 8 decades of genocide and ethnic cleansing, 18 years of a horrific blockade, 611 days of the escalation of the genocide and more than 3 months with a total blockade where no food or water comes in except those to disguise their military checkpoints that they pretend are food distribution centers. It has been the greatest honor of our lives being part of this riseup with you. Whatever comes now we will face with all the dignity that we learned from the Palestinians. We will learn from the Sumud. And we will always be with you, one way or another. We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

[posted on instagram June 8th 2025, posted approximately 6:27 PM EST]

An alarm was raised 40 minutes ago that the vessel had been surrounded. 30 minutes ago a video was posted that the vessels had moved on. The Freedom Flotilla has been threatened with destruction by Israel. The vessel has not moved on the FFC tracker for the last hour.

EDIT: 7:38 PM EST - This is a quickly moving situation, @ yaseminacr_ posted a video from the Madleen showing a drone right above the ship. They are taking cover right now.

Editing late (9:41 PM EST) to update that the Madleen was boarded by Israeli forces while in international waters at around 8:06 PM EST. There has been no further contact with the ship.

[workersolidarity]

A short while ago, the ongoing battle of Sderot between the Zionists and the resistance fighters

-Hamas

🇵🇸🇮🇱 If you suffocate a population, don't be surprised when they claw their way to the surface gasping for a breath of fresh air.

Gaza is living under complete blockade; denied access to the most basic food, medicine, medical technology, infrastructure such as water and sewage or garbage collection; the Palestinian population of Gaza is clearly being suffocated one day at a time.

And now, we see them clawing their way to the surface for air. Within Israel, it is apartheid, militarized checkpoints and invasive state oppression, and without Israel it is blockade, regular military bombardment and raids.

Wherever Palestinians exist, they are being suffocated. We cannot act surprised when they lash out or conduct retribution when we're talking about two populations opposed to each other where one has hegemonic control over land, sea and air, as well as the military domination of those spaces, and a dysfunctional, colonial style governance over the people there, while the other is being dominated in all spaces.

Regardless how someone feels about the so-called "right" for Israel to exist, a colonialist project of ethnic displacement, replacement and genocide, the Palestinians have a RIGHT TO LIFE.

If you deny that to them, they will choose to die fighting.

[extrathicccarlwheezer]

Here's my fifth build in Tiny Glade. I was inspired by one of the pictures on the game's steam page, and put together most of this build in like 5 hours one night. as always, more after the cut :)

the main defensive goal of this castle (like all castles, really) is to buy time. in order to achieve this, there are SEVERAL heavily defended checkpoints you'd need to pass through before you can truly claim the castle proper. let's walk through the process of capturing the castle.

first, there's a gatehouse across the bridge from the castle itself, which has all its defenses pointed outward (and none pointed back towards the castle, which means that even if you capturs it, it wouldn't be very useful since there's nowhere in the gatehouse that can't be fired upon by the castle).

next you'd need to cross the bridge andbreak into the first entry hall. fwiw, the hall has a small stable to its right, but that wouldn't grant access any further into the castle. the entry hall also has a fortified room above it, which would have plenty of murder holes to drop rocks or other projectiles onto anyone attempting to take the castle (with no access to said room from below).

next up you have the two walkways ascending the side of the castle. while crossing the lower walkway, you'd take fire from the upper level, before having to break into the second entry hall (which slowly spirals upward to reach the second level). this hall also has a fortified room above it, again with plenty of murder holes. again, you'd then need to break onto the second walkway, and again fight your way up to the secondary hall (while taking fire from above).

next up you'd need to break into the secondary keep. this building would contain the throne room, a guest suite, and living quarters for servants and soldiers. it may be half the castle, but it's definitely not the most important half, and you haven't truly captured the castle yet.

next up you need to cross this bridge, the only way from the secondary keep to the primary keep. this primary keep contains the grand dining hall, the kitchen, the royal quarters, administrative rooms, food storage, the treasury, and more quarters for servants and soldiers. only once you've fully captured this keep can you consider the castle yours. however, you may not have accomplished all your objectives…

because the primary keep also contains the sally port, a small and heavily fortified rear doorway with access to the river that encircles the castle. without a thorough blockade surrounding the castle grounds (and covering the river), the royal family may escape with the treasury, leaving the kingdom's leadership to fight another day.

capturing this castle would take so many soldiers (and the accompanying resources to feed and pay them) that it could only be done with a full nation behind the endeavour. this is the castle of a king, the capitol of an entire nation, with the resources and supplies to hold out until the enemy runs out of funds or until reinforcements arrive to drive said enemy off. as always, defending a castle is a matter of buying time, and this castle takes that to the extreme.

so yeah, that's the build. this was my first time going Big and Grand with tiny glade, seeing what massive structures were possible in the game. it also inspired my city build; a castle like this would have a town near/around it, and while tiny glade's build area didn't allow me to have it literally nextdoor, i imagine the city is a short ways downriver of it. however, working on this and the city back to back kinda wore me out; such complex structures require a LOT of work and planning to make them look good. for my next build i decided to go back to a smaller scale settlement, which i'll post soon enough :)

[i-am-aprl]

UNIVERSITY VP REFUSES TO SAY PALESTINIANS ARE HUMAN

A video of Columbia University’s Senior Executive Vice President Gerry Rosberg refusing to respond to the question, ‘Are Palestinians human?’ has angered the public.

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine shared the 6 December video on X (formerly Twitter) on 12 March. In response to the students, Rosberg was heard replying, ‘I will not be intimidated.’

On 10 November, Rosberg announced student groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were suspended until the autumn semester ended on 22 December, saying they ‘repeatedly violated university policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event [on 9 November] that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.’

While support for Palestinian liberation has raged for decades on US campuses, social media has amplified the solidarity movement, bringing more people into the struggle against Israel’s occupation, military attacks, evictions, checkpoints, surveillance, intimidation and the blockade of Palestinian territories.

For example, 34 Harvard University student groups issued a statement on the day the 7 October escalation began in the Gaza Strip. It mentioned, ‘We … hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum.’

The US Congress ordered four university presidents to testify on 6 December about alleged anti-semitism on their campuses. Within a month, the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned.

Do you think Palestinians are humans?