THE AMERICAN POWER ALLIANCE IS CRITICIZED BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE FORCE ON EARTH

Some Say It’s Strange And Suspicious That We Spend Time Criticizing The American War Machine, It’s Actually Strange And Suspicious That Everyone Else Does Not.

We don’t spend our time attacking the American war machine because we have any special love for Hamas, Iran, Russia, China, or any other power. We do it because the American empire is quantifiably the most destructive and tyrannical force on this planet, by an extremely massive margin.

No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions and displacing them by the tens of millions. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, starving people around the world with blockades and economic sanctions, staging proxy wars, color revolutions and coups all over the earth, and working to destabilize and destroy any nation anywhere on this planet who dares to defy its dictates.

Only the American empire is doing this. No other power comes anywhere remotely close.

That’s as murderous and tyrannical as it gets. Propaganda-addled empire simps sometimes try to act like it’s strange and suspicious that we spend time criticizing the American war machine, when what’s actually strange and suspicious is that everyone else does not.

The American State Department is justifying continued American support for Israel’s Gaza assault despite its own acknowledgement of evidence of Israeli war crimes, claiming there’s been a “substantial increase” in efforts to get aid into Gaza. It makes this claim days after Israel shut down the most crucial entry point of aid into Gaza, which remains closed.

It’s hilarious how imperial spinmeisters keep trying to convince young people that it will be those who opposed a genocide who will have to worry about their futures. Israel apologists are aggressively hammering this line “If you protest against Israel employers won’t hire you!” You idiots, young people know they live in a world where opposing a genocide can hurt your job prospects. That’s why they’ve decided to change the world.

Besides October 2023, the all-time month with the most searches for the word “Nakba” is May 2024, when one artist released a song containing the line “the Nakba never ended”. You want to know why the kids are pushing celebrities to oppose the Gaza genocide? That’s why.

You should be done listening to people complain about Gen Z. After watching what superstars and leaders these kids have been on Gaza these last seven months, we shouldn’t be asking how we can guide them, we should be asking how they can guide us.

One of the many reasons it’s absurd to say a Jewish person from New York has more of a claim to Palestine than the Palestinians because the New Yorker is “indigenous” to the land is that their argument depends on expanses of time that have no relevance to the human lifespan. Claiming you had ancestors there 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 years ago is a moot point, because vast stretches of time like that have no meaningful personal relevance to a species that only lives about eighty years, whereas there are survivors of the Nakba still alive today.

If an event is so far back in history that you don’t personally experience its reverberations and its consequences, then it’s not recent enough to have any personal relevance to you. American descendants of slavery can rightly claim that slavery is personally relevant to them for example, because that population is still experiencing the reverberations and consequences of that historical event. Some white guy in New York who happens to share a religion with people who lived in Palestine a few millennia ago cannot make the same claim.

Ironically if Biden was really the anti-Israel Hamas lover that Republicans claim he is and if Trump was really the pro-Russia isolationist that Democrats claimed he was, we wouldn’t be seeing the horrors in Gaza and Ukraine that we’re seeing today.

That’s just what abusers do when people start calling their obvious abuse what it is, whether you’re talking about interpersonal or international affairs. You see bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton using the “it’s complicated” talking point all the time, because if you look at the raw data of the American war machine’s behavior it’s very clearly an extremely abusive and destructive force.

Imperial narrative managers work hard to make the depravity of the empire sound a lot more complicated than it is so that people will assume it’s best left to the authorized “experts”. And because of how locked down our rulers have the information ecosystem it often works; people look at things like Israel-Palestine and assume it must be very complicated, because if it was as simple as it looks then surely their government and their media would not be so supportive of Israel.

THE LARGEST NUMBER OF PALESTINIAN HOMES WERE DEMOLISHED BY ISRAEL IN YEARS

Bulldozers Destroyed 47 Homes Belonging To The Same Family, Which Included Some People Who Helped Israelis During The October 7th Conflict.

Israeli bulldozers, under the protection of police forces, on Wednesday destroyed 47 Bedouin homes in the southern Negev region, in the largest day of demolitions in years.

The demolitions, near Umm Butin village, targeted the houses of members of the same family, Abu Asa, leaving hundreds of them without a home.

Israeli authorities carried out the demolition under the pretext that the structures did not have the proper building permits, which are very rarely granted to Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev desert, known as the Naqab in Arabic.

Several Abu Asa family members decided to burn down their own homes prior to the operation rather than watch the Israelis destroy them. One Palestinian, Ahmed Abu Asa, was arrested after he tried to obstruct the bulldozers.

Kayed Abu Latif, a farmer and agricultural studies researcher, said the demolition order was “surprising”, especially given that Palestinian citizens in the area had helped Israelis during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7th.

The Arab community, especially in the Negev, made great sacrifices, especially the Abu Asa family, at the beginning of the war on 7 October. They contributed in saving the lives of many Israelis in the Gaza Envelope and the Sderot areas,” Abu Latif said.

The Israeli government is blatantly ignoring the sacrifices made by the Palestinian community in the Negev during the war.”

Abu Latif said Wednesday’s operation was the largest home demolition carried out in a single day in the Negev in years.

Before destroying the houses, Israeli authorities also confiscated furniture, taking it away in trucks, Abu Latif said.

In one video posted by local media, a Palestinian woman can be seen talking to police after they confiscated personal belongings, including momentos and photo albums, that she had taken out of her home.

AN ORGANISED CRIME”

The area where the demolitions were taking place was closed off by police in the early hours of Wednesday. A Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was prevented from approaching the site.

The High Follow-Up Committee for Arabs in the Negev, a political body representing the needs of Palestinian citizens of Israel, said in a statement that the demolitions have left women, children and the elderly out in the open under the scorching sun, without shelter or anywhere to go.

The destruction of the homes of hundreds of citizens is an organized crime and a dangerous indicator of the hostile practices against Palestinian citizens of Israel, particularly in the Negev, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir,” Jumaa al-Zabarqeh, a member of the committee, told local media.

Ben Gvir praised the demolitions as “an important step towards restoring governance”, promising in a post on X that more homes would be torn down.

The committee said Israel is forcing the Abu Asa family to move to a different area in order to pave and expand Highway 6 to the south, adding that Ben Gvir’s aim was “deepening racial discrimination”.

The family has refused to move to the location proposed to them by the Israelis and are demanding to live in the agreed-upon neighbourhood of Tel al-Saba,” it added.

Abu Latif said the community was not against paving the highway, but wanted to be given a real solution to their situation first.

Before thinking of the highway, they should first think of the lives of the people whose fate is now unknown.”

Around 300,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel live in the Negev region, including 100,000 who live in 30 unrecognised villages that lack essential public services, including means of transportation, roads and schools.

Palestinian citizens in the Negev, who constitute 32 percent its population, say that Israeli authorities have attempted to force them out and destroy their nomadic way of life for decades, through various tactics.

These include confiscation of lands from native Palestinians and turning landowners into tenants. Additionally, the Israeli government has been accused of preventing the expansion of Palestinian villages and encircling them with new Jewish settlements.

IF YOU OPPOSE ISRAEL’S ATROCITIES IN GAZA, YOU ARE NOT A PSYCHOPATH

You Don’t Oppose The Butchery In Gaza Because You Are A Lefty Or A Commie Or An Anarchist Or An Anti-Imperialist. You Simply Oppose The Butchery In Gaza Because You Are Not A Psychopath.

You would not oppose the butchery in Gaza because you love Hamas or hate Jews or love Islam or hate America.

You would not oppose the butchery in Gaza because you are a lefty or a commie or an anarchist or an anti-imperialist.

You simply oppose the butchery in Gaza because you are not a crazy psychopath.

Opposing Israel’s butchery in Gaza is so obvious, so common sense, such a bare-minimum, fundamental-level, Being Human 101 position that if it isn’t immediately self-evident to you after learning the basic facts, your problem is much, much deeper than whatever ideology or bias or prejudice you might happen to have. There’s something wrong with you as a person.

If you support Israel’s butchery in Gaza, you’ve got much bigger problems than merely not having the correct ist or ism belief system. You’re just all screwed up inside. Your conditioning has made you into a generally bad human being. You have deep and immensely consequential flaws in your character, and you won’t mature as a person until you heal and transcend them.

Opposing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza doesn’t make you a good person, it just makes you a normal person — and supporting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza makes you a bad person. Nobody gets any points for opposing an active genocide; that’s just the basic, bare-minimum requirement for a normal human being with a functioning empathy center in their brain. If you can’t meet that basic, bare-minimum standard, you deserve to be viewed with suspicion and disdain, and anyone in your personal life who cares about truth, morality and humanity should seriously reassess their relationship with you.

One reason the empire is losing young people is because the imperial status quo has given them no investment in it. They’ll never own property. They can’t support a family or retire. They’ve been given no reason not to want to rock the political boat. So they’re rocking it.

The only vested interest young people have left is an interest in breathable air and a livable planet, and the possibility of a future that isn’t intolerably dystopian. All of which are diametrically opposed to the interests and trajectory of the status quo politics of the western empire.

So they’re going for it. They’re beginning to see that there’s no reason for them not to plunge headlong into a push for real change, in direct opposition to the mainstream politics of our time. Like Bob Dylan said, when you got nothing you got nothing to lose.

One of the many things that’s beautiful about this particular protest movement is that these young people aren’t protesting a war that they could get drafted in or could harm their personal interests in any way. They’re opposing something cruel and evil solely out of compassion.

One Palestinian life is worth more than every college campus window in the world.

If you’re wondering why you’re suddenly seeing the word “radicalizing” a lot in mainstream politics and media, it’s because that’s the big scary boogieman the empire plans on using to justify stomping out the burgeoning antiwar movement it created with its atrocities in Gaza.

Israeli police raided Al Jazeera’s office after the Israeli cabinet voted to shut down the broadcasts of the Qatari media outlet on Sunday. The west is protecting freedom and democracy by stomping out its own freedom and democracy to assist the genocidal atrocities of a nation that is also stomping out freedom and democracy.

Republicans pretend to fiercely oppose Biden, but when it comes to issues that really matter like the president encouraging violent police crackdowns against people protesting his actions they’re in furious agreement, even saying he didn’t go far enough. They’re on the same side as always.

FOR WHOM DO BIDEN AND BLINKEN WORK?

Will History Remember The Duo As Really Having Had American Interests At Heart?

Long after the current administration passes from the scene, President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be remembered not for their bumbling, embarrassing encounters with the Chinese, nor for their steadfast refusal to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Russians, which set off a disastrous war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Instead, they will likely be remembered as the abettors of Israel’s transformation of Gaza into an abattoir, and will leave a legacy as bloodstained as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s.

But, to be fair, Nixon and Kissinger knew which country was theirs; they understood that the United States and Israel have distinct and vastly different interests. Indeed, it is little remembered today that as Secretary of State, Kissinger once ordered a reassessment of this so-called “special relationship.”

Lacking the sheen of Kissinger’s not inconsiderable wit and intellect, Tony Blinken, a protege of Marty Peretz, erstwhile publisher of the New Republic and an ideological Zionist, may one day be remembered as his generation’s Robert McNamara: a bland bureaucrat carrying out the obscene orders of his commander-in-chief.

As if more were needed to bolster such a judgment, this week, after acknowledging that five Israeli military units had engaged in gross human rights abuses, the Biden administration signaled it will not apply the Leahy Law—which prohibits aid to militaries that have committed human rights abuses—to Israel. It would be hard to improve upon the following headline from the Hill: “US finds Israeli military units violated human rights; withholds consequences.”

In an incredible performance this Monday at Foggy Bottom, the State Department spokesman Vedant Patel (yet another foreign-born bureaucrat who clearly knows little about the country he is paid to represent) ran cover for the Israelis once again, claiming that the IDF was now in line with Leahy and all is well.

Yet, given Israel’s widespread, heavily documented crimes, including the deployment of AI systems such as Lavender AI systematically to terrorize the Palestinian population, the application of Leahy would seem a mere slap on the wrist. Yet Blinken and Biden have deemed even symbolic measures of disapproval of Israel’s rampage as too great a burden on Tel Aviv.

If Blinken and Biden were serious about stopping the carnage, they could have applied section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits security assistance to countries blocking humanitarian aid. In late March, a group of Democratic senators and congressmen called on the administration to do just that, writing, in a letter to the President,

Federal law is clear, and, given the urgency of the crisis in Gaza, and the repeated refusal of Prime Minister Netanyahu to address American concerns on this issue, immediate action is necessary to secure a change in policy by his government.

If Biden and Blinken were serious, they would have applied Leahy and enforced the terms of the Arms Control Export Act, the American War Crimes Act and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act; if they were serious, they would have supported South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice; if they were serious, they would not have instructed UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield repeatedly to veto measures in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire; if they were serious, they would call for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and others.

And yet, even now, over 90 attorneys within the Biden administration are drafting a letter to the cowardly Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for a halt on military aid to Israel. According to a report in POLITICO on Monday, the lawyers contend that “Israel likely violated U.S. statutes including the Arms Export Control Act and Leahy Laws as well as the Geneva Conventions prohibiting disproportionate attacks on civilian populations.”

What will come of it?

Not a thing. Because Biden and Blinken act not as American statesmen, beholden to American laws in the furtherance of American interests—but rather, as adjunct members of the Israeli war cabinet.

This means they are simply an Israeli puppet regime.

LEARN HOW ISRAEL’S SPY-TECH INDUSTRY IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY ACROSS THE GLOBE

With Government Support, Companies Like The NSO Group Have Been Offering Their Services To Authoritarian Regimes To Help Them Clamp Down On Political Dissent.

Israel’s surveillance industry is one of the most advanced and prolific in the world. A unique environment of legal enablement, partnerships between private firms and the Israeli military, and the availability of Palestinians as free test subjects has allowed the country to become a world leader in surveillance tech exports.

With around twenty-seven surveillance companies, Israel has one of the biggest clusters of such manufacturers in relation to its size. The NSO Group’s Pegasus is a sophisticated form of spyware categorized as a military export by the Israeli state and only sold with its express permission. Like other surveillance manufacturers, the company is licensed by Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

Pegasus is especially dangerous because it can be planted secretly, giving the attacker total control over a victim’s mobile phone. It effectively undermines all the modern security features like encryption and turns a smartphone into a smart listening device. It can also copy messages, photos, and emails as well as recording calls.

Investigations have revealed that Pegasus was used against the inner circle of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi intelligence in 2018. Over the last decade, several reports have also revealed the use of Pegasus against journalists, activists, and political dissidents in various countries. The spyware has facilitated assassinations and severe human rights violations by authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and South America.

ISRAEL AND THE AMERICA

Israel’s authoritarian tech exports serve the dual purpose of generating profits and fostering its military and diplomatic ties with client countries. Although this trade is done at the expense of human rights and free speech, the American regime and its allies continue to take a permissive approach to the NSO Group and the pervasive Israeli surveillance industry.

Over the last four years, the United States has announced several steps to regulate the private surveillance market. In February this year, Washington imposed visa restrictions against those selling and abusing commercial spyware. The ban followed an executive order passed in March 2022 that prohibited American government agencies from purchasing such spyware.

In November 2021, the Commerce Department blacklisted the NSO Group and another Israeli firm for supplying spyware to foreign governments engaging in political repression. A joint statement released in March 2023 by the United States and its allies called for the regulation of commercial spyware. However, it failed to mention the NSO Group or Israel — the industry leaders who continue to export the technology for commercial and political benefits.

The NSO Group and other Israeli spyware manufacturers are integral to the country’s security and diplomatic establishment. For all practical purposes, they are an extension of the Israeli state. However, there has been no explicit diplomatic pressure on Israel from Washington or its allies to put an end to the export of these malicious technologies.

BIG TECH BACKLASH

The major American tech companies — Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — possess immense resources and lobbying capabilities. They have filed lawsuits against the NSO Group and publicly condemned them as “cyber mercenaries.” This hostility stems from the fact that Pegasus undermines the technological architecture and the privacy/security narrative in which these companies have invested through decades of marketing and public outreach.

In addition, the spyware also jeopardizes the fundamental business models of these companies. In 2022, the Pentagon awarded a joint $9 billion cloud computing contract to four major tech companies. The ability of a minuscule spyware company to undermine their security can, therefore, have severe consequences for future defense contracts.

Clearly, the big tech firms and the NSO Group have diverging interests, and that is reflected in the actions of the American regime. The superior influence and money-backed lobbying of American tech might explain why the American government has leaned toward banning the NSO Group and other spyware companies within its territory.

Yet while the NSO Group may have lost its market in the West, that has not deterred it from trying to use the Gaza war to revive itself. It has volunteered to play a role in Israel’s war effort, marketing its attempts to help trace missing Israelis and hostages.

A month into Israel’s war on Gaza, the NSO Group wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and officials of the State Department to request a meeting. Experts termed the outreach a desperate attempt at “crisis washing.” In the last few years, the company has spent millions to lobby American lawmakers and get off the government blacklist. It is now seeking to capitalize on Israel’s Gaza war, which has killed more than thirty thousand Palestinians in the last six months.

SURVEILLANCE DIPLOMACY

Despite facing losses due to mounting lawsuits and state action, the NSO Group continues to survive and export its authoritarian tech. It is now impossible for the Israeli firm to gain government clients in America. At the same time, the EU’s strict surveillance laws and robust civil society present additional challenges to its growth in the region.

However, the company’s flagship product makes it too important to fail. The software’s use in diplomacy follows the decades-old trend of using weapons sales to gain favor with foreign governments. Israel’s push for diplomatic normalization with Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia has been accompanied by secretive weapons sales.

As the backchannel relations have grown, groups such as Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab have traced the use of Pegasus in the phones of Arab journalists and dissidents. The spyware was also deployed against political opponents, journalists, and activists in India, Hungary, and Rwanda.

Israel has found fertile ground in the decline of democratic values in countries like India and the growing appetite for surveillance tech in the Middle East. In 2017, Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit the country. The New York Times reported that a $2 billion deal for sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear was signed during this visit. Pegasus and a missile system were the highlights of this sale.

India has historically supported the Palestinian cause, and its relations with Israel have not been warm. However, in June 2019, it voted in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council, opposing a move to grant observer status to a Palestinian human rights organization, marking a significant departure from its previous stance.

The New York Times investigation also revealed that countries like Mexico and Panama changed their UN votes in support of Israel after purchasing Pegasus. The report further stated that Pegasus played a significant yet undisclosed role in garnering support from Arab nations for Israel’s efforts against Iran, as well as in the negotiations leading to the Abraham Accords in 2020, which established diplomatic ties between Israel and some of its historic Arab foes.

Israel’s global isolation because of its unpopular war on Gaza will only boost its attempts to leverage its surveillance industry for diplomacy. The unquestioned support of the NSO Group from Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Israeli judiciary, along with the country’s corporate-military partnership, will ensure that the sales of the authoritarian tech continue, incentivizing the growth and proliferation of Israel’s spyware industry.

This industry thrives on a constant supply of trained and highly skilled individuals from Unit 8200, the Israeli intelligence unit likened to America’s National Security Agency (NSA). The unit is a launching pad for its members to join private spyware companies and start their own tech businesses.

HOLDING ISRAEL ACCOUNTABLE

In spite of the proven role of Pegasus in facilitating human rights violations and subverting free speech globally, the United States and its allies continue to provide diplomatic support to Israel. NSO Group shares were even bought using British Gas pension funds. In 2020, the British government hosted the NSO Group at a secretive trade fair, which was visited by several authoritarian governments with an infamous track record on human rights.

Although they pay lip service to democratic ideals, the countries of the self-styled free world not only tolerate Israel’s authoritarian exports but also enable them. Israel must be held accountable for its role in undermining democracies and emboldening autocratic regimes. The self-proclaimed “startup nation” that the West likes to call the “only democracy in the Middle East” must be questioned on its rogue surveillance industry.

SAVING GAZA IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY

College Students Should Not Be Solely Responsible For Standing Against This Genocide,  It Is Ours As Well. Each And Every One Of Us Is Responsible For Doing Everything We Can To End This Horror.

One might think one of the reasons it took so long for student protests against the Gaza genocide to kick into high gear in America might be because it took some time for the collective realization to dawn that nobody in charge is interested in ending this nightmare.

If Trump had won in 2020, it may not have taken so long for this to occur. Progressive-minded students would have understood from the beginning that the president is an immoral Israel-coddling imperialist, and we may have been seeing these campus protests that are freaking out the empire managers today a lot sooner.

But because it was Biden and not Trump, there was this background assumption that surely the grownups in charge would take care of this thing. Surely they won’t let this go on for very long. Surely they’re just walking a careful diplomatic line while negotiating a ceasefire in the near term, as any government that cares one iota about human rights would be doing.

It took half a year for that illusion to be dispelled. Half a year for people to really start going, “Oh shit. They’re really just going to keep these atrocities going. Nobody in charge cares about stopping this.”

It took half a year to see that nobody in the White House is going to save Gaza, none of their elected lawmakers on Capitol Hill are going to save Gaza, nobody anywhere in their government is going to save Gaza — not even the ordinary members of the public in the older generations are going to save Gaza.

It took half a year to see that the responsibility for ending an active genocide had been passed all the way down to a bunch of wide-eyed college kids.

Which would of course be a horrifying thing to realize, and would in fact be a profoundly jarring indictment of our entire civilization. But that is indeed what has happened. And you can see how it would take some time for young people to come to understand and process such a thing.

And to be clear, no part of this should be accepted by anyone. The fact that nobody in the world’s most powerful government is taking any responsibility for ending the continual mass atrocity in Gaza proves that government does not deserve to exist, and that it needs to be completely dismantled from top to bottom — including and especially the unelected aspects of that government which are not officially acknowledged. The fact that it has fallen to a bunch of university students to begin causing any meaningful problems for this genocidal regime is obscene, and should never have happened.

Those university students should not be responsible for standing against this genocide, and in truth the responsibility is NOT all theirs — it is ours as well. Each and every one of us are responsible for doing everything we can to end this horror.

None of us can end it single-handedly, but we can all do something every day to help end it collectively. The machine is far too big and powerful for any one person to deal it a fatal blow, but we can all throw sand in its gears to make it harder and harder for it to continue.

We can do this by making our opposition known in every way possible, and by drawing public awareness to the sadistic savagery that’s being perpetrated in Israel with the help of its western allies we live under. Using any medium and platform we can make use of, we can help people understand the ways the imperial media have been manipulating public understanding of this genocide and minimizing their own government’s responsibility for it so that they can really understand the severity and urgency of this issue.

The American empire is heavily dependent on soft power, which means it needs to maintain a good public image in order to continue functioning — that’s what all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley information control, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood is all about. If enough people start working to destroy the empire’s public image by spreading awareness of its depravity in Gaza, it will be forced to retreat or risk losing the credibility of the soft power manipulation systems it has put so much energy into maintaining over the years.

All positive changes in human behavior of any scale are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. By spreading consciousness throughout our society about what’s happening in Gaza, we throw sand in the gears of the imperial murder machine and make it harder and harder for it to keep rolling forward. And it is our responsibility to do exactly that, in every way we can.

This world is so sick because nobody takes responsibility for the things that are happening in it. The rich and powerful shore up more and more wealth and power while offloading the responsibility for it onto others. They destroy the biosphere while offloading the consequences onto ordinary people, while telling us we just need to ride our bikes more and consume less in order to fix the problem. They start wars and back genocides abroad while refusing to provide for the needful at home, and if you complain they tell you you just need to vote harder next election. They take all of the power and none of the responsibility.

We can’t have a healthy world until we reverse this dynamic, and like all matters concerning responsibility that means it begins with the face in the mirror. We all need to step up to the plate and take responsibility for turning this catastrophe around, and in 2024 that means starting with the genocide our own governments are actively facilitating.

YOUR FEELINGS ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS STOPPING THE SLAUGHTER IN GAZA

Stopping The Slaughter In Gaza Is More Important Than Your Feelings. Your Feelings Don’t Really Matter These Days.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than playing along with the persecution-LARPing of Zionist university students.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than some privileged Ivy Leaguers pretending to feel “unsafe” or “unwelcome” on campus.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than whatever you’re pretending to believe “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than making sure everyone says all the right words and condemns Hamas with sufficient fervor.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than making sure Joe Biden maintains enough support to win re-election.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than performing all kinds of mental contortions and prostrations while talking about Israel’s criminality to avoid offending people who make everything about themselves.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than helping you avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance incurred by the contradictions between your stated value system and the genocidal murderousness and cruelty of apartheid Israel.

Your feelings are not more important than Palestinian lives.

Your feelings are not more important than Palestinian displacement.

Your feelings are not even more important than Palestinian feelings.

Your feelings are not important. Stopping the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Gaza is important.

It is a symptom of the cancerousness of western civilization that there are people living their whole lives under the entirely unquestioned assumption that their feelings are so important that it is fine and normal to expect that a limitless number of impoverished foreigners may be killed without any opposition whatsoever in order to promote the interests of their favorite ethnostate, and that anyone who does oppose it is persecuting them.

It is a symptom of how diseased our entire society has become that people are so narcissistic that they now perceive anti-genocide demonstrations on university campuses as a direct attack against them and their identity, and will use any amount of spin and mental contortion to make this seem true.

It is a symptom of the dire need to dismantle the entire western empire that a mainstream narrative structure exists in our society which says opposing a genocide is a far more egregious offense than committing one.

It is a symptom of the dire need for radical revolutionary changes in this civilization that western political systems are urgently discussing the need to stomp out protests against a genocide at university campuses under the pretense of protecting people’s feelings.

Don’t protect people’s feelings. Stop the genocide in Gaza.

People’s feelings should be uncomfortable when a genocide is happening.

People should be experiencing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance and shame when their innately unjust worldview is being completely discredited in front of everyone.

None of us should be feeling comfortable with any of this. We should be feeling very, very uncomfortable, and letting that discomfort drive us to end this nightmare forever.

PENALTIES IMPOSED BY BIDEN AREN’T STOPPING SADISTIC ISRAELI SETTLER ATTACKS ON PALESTINIANS

The Biden Administration Says It Has Focused Its Punishments On Israeli Settlers, But Palestinians On The Ground Have Seen Little Change.

Israeli settlers have enjoyed attacking Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank for years.

Haitham Kaabna and his family were terrified when dozens of Israeli settlers stormed their village of Tajamaa al-Murajaat in the occupied West Bank on October 13th.

The settlers, he says, were protected by the army and carried M16 assault rifles as they attacked farmers.

For two weeks, settlers destroyed olive trees, vandalised cars and stole cattle. The violence led to the forced displacement of some 200 Palestinian families from Tajamaa al-Murajaat, in the Jordan Valley.

Kaabna stayed, until settlers entered his home on October 26th and he felt he had to flee with his family to safety.

Maybe 40 settlers came into our house and began beating up women and children. They also hit my brother and my son, who is only about two years old,” Kaabna said.

Since October 7th, Israeli settlers have attacked and expelled 20 Palestinian communities in the West Bank, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The forced expulsions have flown under the radar due to Israel’s war on Gaza, ostensibly in retaliation for a Hamas-led surprise attack on southern Israel, after which Israel has killed more than 34,000 people and is committing genocide.

Attacks have escalated in recent weeks, despite moves by the United States government to sanction some settlers and cut military aid to an Israeli army unit implicated in grave human rights violations.

Neither move goes far enough to stop a state-backed effort to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians from their villages, experts and activists have said.

We are not just talking about attacks from fanatic settlers,” said Jamal Juma, a Palestinian activist in the occupied West Bank who monitors settler attacks.

We’re talking about organized plans that have been pushed forward on the ground strongly and systematically by the Israeli government.”

LEGITIMISING ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS

Israel has expanded illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank despite signing the 1993 Oslo Accords, which initiated a peace process obliging Israel to freeze settlements to create a Palestinian state.

However, the American regime effectively approved of Israel’s settlement expansion when President Donald Trump’s administration declared them legitimate, contravening international law. Trump’s decision emboldened the Israeli government – and settlers – to step up the confiscation of Palestinian villages, according to Juma.

The settler-colonial project was always there but it needed legitimisation and Trump legitimised Israel’s entire colonisation of historic Palestine,” he said.

Under President Joe Biden, the American regime restored its former position by labelling Israeli settlements illegitimate in February, but only after Israel approved in the same month plans to build 3,300 new homes in illegal settlements.

The American regime is also expected to apply the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid from going to any foreign battalion implicated in human rights violations, to an Israeli army unit named Netzah Yehuda.

The unit is made up of ultra-Orthodox Israeli men and has committed grave crimes against Palestinians, human rights groups and monitors say.

Sarah Elaine Harrison, a former official in the American Department of Defense and an expert with the International Crisis Group, said that the Leahy Law is not the equivalent of sanctions and that Israel can still buy weapons to give to Netzah Yehuda.

She added that there is no tracking system in place to monitor whether Netzah Yehuda will still be able to acquire American weapons via the annual military aid the American regime gives Israel.

It’s complicated because Netzah Yehuda could be still carrying American firearms and we won’t know if they are part of the foreign military financing – the $3.3bn Israel receives from the US each year – or purchased with Israel’s money,” she said.

LITTLE OR NO, ACCOUNTABILITY

Netzah Yehuda could be eligible to regain American military aid if Israel holds soldiers in the unit accountable for violating human rights.

However, Israeli officials have defended Netzah Yehuda and blasted it’s American regime for its move, raising doubts that Israel will begin disciplining its soldiers and commanders.

Benny Gantz, a minister in Israel’s war cabinet, tweeted that the brigade was “an inseparable part” of the Israeli army and that Israel has a “strong, independent judicial system” capable of dealing with alleged violations.

But according to the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, only 2 percent of complaints made by Palestinians harmed by Israeli soldiers in 2019-2020 led to the prosecution of suspects.

The pushback from Israel is that if you criticise one soldier then you undermine the whole apparatus and even the country itself,” Harrison said.

But the American regime has sanctioned four settlers for their role in assaulting and intimidating Palestinians and Israeli activists. Rights groups welcomed the move, but have called for additional sanctions on Israeli officials that authorise illegal settlements. The American regime, of course, has ruled out that move.

There are no plans to target with sanctions Israeli government officials at this time,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in February.

Karim Ali, a 26-year-old Palestinian activist, said that two of the sanctioned settlers live in his area, near Hebron.

While they have stopped attacking Palestinians, Ali said other armed settlers are still vandalising his village by punching holes in water reservoirs or stealing livestock feed.

The settlers, Ali explained, are pressuring the roughly 100 Palestinian villagers to flee their land by sabotaging their livelihoods.

About 90 percent of our fields – which are close to settler outposts – were not cultivated this year, so we are struggling to get food for our sheep. This is a community of shepherds that have no other way to survive. They have no other economic infrastructure,” he said.

COVER-UP

While the Leahy Law and sanctions have not mitigated human rights violations in the West Bank, Palestinians say settlers are protecting their identities to evade possible consequences for committing abuses.

Ali said his uncle was attacked for photographing a vehicle carrying armed settlers. The settlers beat his uncle, zip-tied his hands and threw him in the back of their truck. They then took him to their settlement and told him to delete the photos from his phone.

The settler even took a knife and stabbed the camera lens on [my uncle’s] phone and said: ‘This is what will happen to anybody that raises a phone in front of us again,’” Ali said.

[The settler] said: ‘This time I’ll let you go back home. But not next time.’”

Kaabna, who is now living on a deserted strip of land with his family, said settlers confiscated everyone’s phone when they raided his house.

They don’t want us to photograph or record their violence. They don’t want us taking any pictures,” he said.

Kaabna and Ali stressed that American sanctions will not deter settlers from attacking Palestinian villages unless pressure is also applied to end Israel’s occupation.

Any moves [taken] that show settlers that their crimes are being watched is something [useful] … but the sanctions are just bandaging a problem instead of facing it head-on,” said Ali.

THE MASS DEATH AND NUCLEAR BRINKMANSHIP OF BIDEN’S UNPOPULAR WARS

President Joe Biden, Better Known As Genocide Joe, In Cooperation With A Perfunctory Legislative Branch Has Mired The American People In Savage, Reckless, Costly, And Unpopular Wars.

The White House’s catastrophic foreign policy may force American society to a breaking point.

The American public is increasingly rejecting Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has already cost well over $100 billion, put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and seen Ukrainians killed or injured by the hundreds of thousands.

As Americans are more concerned with simultaneous crises of inflation, healthcare, immigration, and crime, according to the latest Harris poll, 70% of Americans oppose Biden’s policy of unending military aid going to the Ukrainian meat grinder and instead want a diplomatic settlement.

The disconnect between those living in the country and those in Washington DC is highlighted by members of the Senate openly salivating about drawing Russian blood and funneling tens of billions of dollars into the military-industrial complex.

Arch-neocon and top State Department official Victoria Nuland is threatening Moscow that the United States will assist Ukraine to “accelerate [its] asymmetric warfare” and provide “nasty surprises on the battlefield.” At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron says deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to fight Russia should not be off the table.

Subsequent to a meeting with other leaders in Europe concerning the effort to weaken Russia with the Ukrainian battering ram, Macron declared, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.”

In response to Macron’s bluster, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in a speech to the Federal Assembly “[our] strategic nuclear forces are on full combat alert, and the ability to use them is assured.” The Russian leader continued, “Now they have started talking about the possibility of deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine…They must grasp that we also have weapons—yes, they know this, as I have just said—capable of striking targets on their territory.”

Concurrently, the head of the German Air Force has been caught on a leaked tape discussing with his officers plans to provide Taurus missiles to Kiev, weapons which have a range of roughly 300 miles, in hopes of carrying out attacks against Russia. London confirmed last week that “a small number” of British troops are on the ground “supporting the armed forces of Ukraine.”

On numerous occasions last year, neo-Nazis armed with NATO weaponry and ties to Ukrainian military intelligence attacked civilian areas across the border in Russia. Using Western intelligence, Kiev has already waged drone warfare deep inside Russia.

Despite Putin’s ominous remarks and the sentiments of the American people, NATO is launching massive war games, including on Russia’s borders, in preparation for war with Moscow. As the Libertarian Institute’s News Editor Kyle Anzalone reports, “[These] latest drills are a part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender military exercises—the bloc’s largest series of war games, which will see over 90,000 troops participate in about a dozen maneuvers from January through August.”

Biden’s unpopular war with Russia has brought humanity closer to a nuclear holocaust than ever before. But perhaps more widely despised and devastating to the American soul is the genocidal campaign unleashed by Israel against the Palestinian Muslims and Christians inhabiting the besieged Gaza Strip.

Per a recent Data For Progress poll, two-thirds of the American population oppose the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel and instead want the White House to back a permanent ceasefire. 77% of Democrats, 69% of Independents, and a staggering 56% of Republicans agree regarding this issue.

However, Israel’s globally livestreamed mass killing spree—primarily against women and children—is fully supported by the White House. The same government which practically every member of America’s political class swears is “our greatest ally” has cut Gaza off from food, water, fuel, and electricity. Israel is destroying Gaza, making it uninhabitable by bombing cities, neighborhoods, apartments, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances, UN shelters, mosques, churches, greenhouses, orchards, and refugee camps.

So far, the Israeli apartheid army has butchered over 30,000 people, including more than 12,000 children. Unfortunately, these confirmed figures paint a picture less macabre than reality, as thousands of men, women, and children are buried beneath rubble and presumed dead. One can only imagine what the final death toll and excess death rate will be.

Often using dystopian AI programs to select targets, the United States and Israel have leveled a greater percentage of infrastructure in Gaza than the Allied bombings in Dresden during World War II. The Guardian recently reported, “As of 17 January, analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University reveals that between 50% and 62% of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.”

Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, approximately half of which are children, have been bombed everywhere. At times, this has included 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the Israeli-designated safe zones. Virtually every city in Gaza has been eradicated except Rafah, where 1.5 million refugees have fled to and which the Israeli war cabinet plans to hit with a blitzkrieg this month.

Social media feeds in every American household have been flooded with graphic videos and images showing countless Palestinian babies, children, women, elderly people, and men being blown to bits, killed, shot, mutilated, or permanently disfigured with America’s weaponry.

Last week, in what is known now as the “Flour Massacre,” the Israeli occupation opened fire killing over a hundred Palestinians and injuring hundreds more near Gaza City as they desperately attempted to obtain what they could from a trickle of aid that was allowed into the Strip.

Biden, previously known as “Israel’s man in Washington,” is fond of reciting his assertion that “If Israel didn’t exist, [the United States] would have to invent it.” But each day, new horrors and atrocities are unearthed, revealing Israel to be nothing more than a rogue state (incidentally armed with dozens, if not hundreds, of nuclear weapons).

Caitlin Johnstone perfectly sums up the reaction of normal people with a conscience to the unending stream of Israeli barbarism reported daily:

So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother…You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.

This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”

However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.”

Palestinians are being subjected to inhumane torture as well. After The New York Times analyzed a report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the paper reported, “Detainees said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused, and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.”

The Times article continues, “Some detainees, according to the report, told UNRWA investigators that they had often been beaten on open wounds, had been held for hours in painful stress positions, and had been attacked by military dogs.”

One prisoner was “beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and that there was still blood present in his urine…guards made him sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and played music so loudly that his ear bled.”

This coincides with numerous Israeli media reports of torture inflicted against the occupied Palestinians at the hands of their Zionist army captors. In January, +972 Magazine reported on the hellish scenes inside Israeli detention centers holding untold numbers of civilians rounded up in Gaza:

Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day…Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.”

Israel has the population of Gaza trapped in an open-air concentration camp, with 75% of Palestinians crammed into a single city. More than 90% of the Palestinians living in the Strip have been internally displaced amidst the Israeli onslaught.

Tens of thousands of bombs have been dropped in Gaza, as the United States has delivered Israel some 25,000 tons of weapons including thousands of 2,000 pound bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells.

It is a repudiation of every treasured American value for the American government to make all Americans a party to such atrocities under any conditions.

The whole world sees this for what it is. Half of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 believe he is complicit in genocide. Indeed, the International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary ruling that Israel’s actions may plausibly constitute genocide. Nevertheless, our Congress is committed to financing this systematic destruction of Gaza with another $14 billion of the American people’s hard-earned money.

Palestinians are not only being ripped apart with American bombs and shells, they are being starved to death by the hundreds of thousands. As Dave DeCamp reports:

At least 16 Palestinian children have starved to death in the Gaza Strip over the past few days due to the US-backed Israeli siege, and the UN’s child relief agency is warning that the number of child deaths will “rapidly increase” if conditions don’t immediately change.

Last week, we warned that an explosion in child deaths was imminent if the burgeoning nutrition crisis wasn’t resolved,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved.”

The latest Palestinian child reported to die of hunger was Yazan al-Kafarna, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy who was in the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. Fifteen children have also died of malnutrition and dehydration at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

The UN has previously warned that Gaza’s entire population of about 2.2 million people is facing “crisis” levels of food insecurity, and at least 576,000 Palestinians in Gaza are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.””

Despite the dire situation, the State Department reaffirmed on Monday that it will continue to provide military assistance for Israel’s genocidal war.

The last vestiges of deluded American exceptionalism burned up in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. with Aaron Bushnell last month. As the former member of the Air Force stated before his self-immolation in protest of the genocide in Gaza, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

But regardless of what excuses White House spokespeople are able to conjure up in an attempt to hide the blood on their hands, this is not normal and the American people will never accept it. As evidenced by the public opinion polls and protest movements across the country, Biden will pay dearly in the coming election for his role in the mass murder ongoing in Palestine.

NBC News revealed the Biden reelection team has taken “extraordinary steps” to avoid antiwar protesters including “by making [their events] smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, and avoiding college campuses.”

Additionally, the more than 100,000 “uncommitted” protest votes in the Michigan Democratic primary last week foreshadows things to come for Genocide Joe and the Democratic Party establishment. Demonstrators camped out daily in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s residence chant “Blinken! Blinken! We see you and all the war crimes that you do!”

In his last words, Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His message was one that resonates with perhaps a majority of Americans. But in Washington, his message could not be more alien.

Americans have witnessed the true nature of the American empire, its allies, partners, and proxies. They have voiced their abhorrence to their government and have been shocked at the abject lack of empathy for the Palestinian women and children being slaughtered, tortured, and deprived to death on an industrial scale.

In a video last month, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was told by a peace activist on Capitol Hill, “I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids.” Ogles responded proudly, “I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better.”

An American antiwar populace cannot be ruled by unrepentant and unAmerican warmongers in perpetuity; a breaking point cannot come soon enough.

A PALESTINIAN SHEPHERD READING THE QURAN ON HIS LAND WAS MURDERED BY ISRAELI TROOPS

Soldiers Pounced On A Shepherd Sitting Outside His Sheep Pen. They Knock Him Over And Then One Of Them Shoots Him To Death At Point-Blank Range.

Fakher Jaber, 43, made a living as a shepherd. He and has wife Maryam, 42, have four children: Yasmin, 23; Qusay, 21; Sleiwiana, 18, and Ibrahim, 13. They split their lives between two homes, according to the seasons: They spent broiling-hot summers in the family’s home in Aqraba, a town southeast of Nablus, and the rest of the year about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) away, in their home, on their land, in the pastoral community of Khirbet al-Tawil at the edge of the Jordan Valley. That is where they were on Tuesday, March 19th. Since the war in Gaza began six months ago, there have been increasing numbers of attacks by settlers in Khirbet al-Tawil, as has been the case throughout the West Bank.

A torn Palestinian flag, more like a rag, flies from a tall pole in the center of Aqraba. The Jabers’ apartment in town, which we visited this week, is on the second floor of a well-maintained building; their flock had been brought near town, as well.

On the last day of his life, two and a half weeks ago, the shepherd and his wife got up at 5:30 A.M., as usual, and immediately went out together to milk the ewes. With their flock of 120 sheep, their work is never done. Maryam recalls now that they didn’t manage to eat breakfast before the daily Ramadan fast began. After about two hours they finished milking. Fakher took the sheep out to graze and she began to make cheese from the milk, which they sell in Nablus to help make their living.

Maryam then went on to prepare food for the iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast at sundown. Maqluba baked in their tabun was on the menu that day, and when Fakher returned with the sheep in the afternoon, he told Maryam that the aroma of that lamb-and-rice dish baking in the oven was his favorite smell.

After he returned the sheep to their pen, Fakher sat down near it, removed the Quran from his pocket and began to read from it. Maryam finished making dinner. She remembers that everything was normal and relatively peaceful that afternoon, in this beleaguered community, living under the constant threat of invasions by settlers. Suddenly Maryam heard shouting. She rushed outside and saw three Israelis in uniform yelling at and wrestling with her husband. One of the men was masked, which led her to believe that they were settlers – of the type that frequently assault the shepherding communities, graze their livestock on the residents’ lands and water their flocks from their wells.

But it isn’t only the settlers who invade and destroy lives in these parts: The Israel Defense Forces and Civil Administration officials also harass Palestinians frequently, for building on their own land without a permit – which they have no chance of obtaining, of course. The three men confronting Fakher were soldiers.

Meanwhile, things between Fakher and the soldiers became heated, and he collapsed from their beatings. The reason for the assault is still unclear to his widow and to Imad Jaber, Fakher’s 64-year-old uncle, a neighbor and an eyewitness to the attack. When the soldiers first arrived, Imad told us later, his nephew called out to his neighbors not to approach, fearing they would get hurt. Another military force arrived but hung back, nearby, on the ridge of a hill. The settlement of Gitit and the checkpoint of the same name are on the other side of that hill. The settlement of Itamar and its illegal Israeli outposts are also not far away.

The panicked Maryam and her children watched Fakher, who was on the ground. According to B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i, who investigated the case, he grabbed a stone, evidently for self defense. It never left his hand. To his family’s horror, one of the troops pointed his rifle at Fakher – a man probably the age of that soldier’s father, laying on the ground. No fewer than three bullets were fired directly into the shepherd’s body. Maryam screamed in terror and apparently fainted. The eldest son, Qusay, tried coming to his father’s aid but the soldiers threatened to shoot him too. Little Ibrahim also saw his father slain before his eyes. “My father is gone, my father is gone,” the boy shouted, again and again.

The soldiers – among the brave IDF troops who are said to perform “meaningful” military service on behalf of Israel – left immediately, leaving Fakher to bleed to death. There were two bullet holes in his chest and one near his groin. Villagers put Fakher into their car and met up with a Palestinian ambulance that rushed him to the hospital in Nablus, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. The Jaber family has heard nothing since the authorities. There was a shepherd, and he is no more.

“I thought soldiers were supposed to protect the residents,” Maryam says now, bitterly, referring to the troops that were standing not far away but chose not to intervene in what she describes as the execution of an innocent man.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit issued the following, rather bizarre statement about the incident, this week: “Following receipt of a report of the assault of an Israeli boy by two Palestinians near the Gitit roadblock on March 19, forces from the Jordan Valley Brigade rushed to the scene. A disturbance involving some 30 Palestinians developed, which included throwing of stones at the forces. The troops acted to disperse the disturbance and fired at one of the suspects. A hit was detected. The circumstances of the incident are under review.”

In other words, no proper criminal investigation will be launched because, presumably, the killing of Fakher Jaber does not constitute a serious incident. The forces “rushed” to the scene, a public disturbance broke out and then they shot one of the “suspects” to death. “A hit was detected.” Bull’s-eye. What about the “assault of a boy” that ostensibly initiated the whole debacle – but probably never happened? After all, had there actually been an attack on a settler child, the soldiers wouldn’t have left the scene so fast. It is also relevant to note that settlers have been known to report on “attacks” and “thefts” by Palestinians in order to bring in the army to take action against the so-called perpetrators, until they finally leave their land.

Maryam, wearing a traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, relates everything without tears. Besides the photo taken after his death, she has only one picture of her late husband, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt. In the apartment in Aqraba there is no mourning picture, flag or banner, but the picture with the flannel shirt was pinned to the tarp-wrapped walls of the home in Khirbet al-Tawil and affixed to a water cistern. Maryam carefully returns her husband’s belongings to the plastic bag.

Three days after Fakher’s killing, three other shepherds from the same community were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a settler. They are still in custody. Such charges are used to steal the land of the legal residents of Palestine.