Families of hostages reportedly heckled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he gave a speech in Parliament on Monday, according to Reuters.
The families, sitting in the chamber, held posters of their loved ones and interrupted Netanyahu as he spoke, per Reuters.
Netanyahu said in his address that military pressure is needed to free the remaining people being held hostage by Hamas, Reuters reported.
CBS NEWS adds, "There was no respite Christmas Day, with the army saying it continued its ground, air and sea operations and struck several Hamas targets, including commanders."
So this is a talking entry. I dip into the e-mails and try to answer some questions.
Paul asks if THIRD is posting a new edition? Ava and I finished our piece Sunday morning at 10 a.m. EST. Nothing else was done. Ava and I have written one piece in the last hour, come up with a list piece on TV, started a playlist for what we listened to while working on the edition and come up with one truest. I'm taking a break from that to do this post right here. But our goal/plan is to post shortly after this goes up. We'll grab a Gaza piece from here -- Saturday or Sunday -- to repost. Other than that, I'm not sure what else. Oh! We'll call Stan. He and I have been talking two things that aren't needed on TV. We'll do that as a piece with him. So that's where THIRD stands.
Nancy e-mailed upset about "The Biggest Crook In TV History! Norman Lear Even . . ." I'm sorry that a different -- and accurate -- viewpoint upset you. Norman Lear is not the hero that Jimmy Kimmel portray him as. The stuff being reported in that video is accurate. If it offends you, you're offended by Norman Lear's own actions and words. He's always been a White hero for White people. But even when ALL IN THE FAMILY originally aired, CBS' own polling (which they buried for years) found that Archie Bunker's racist ways didn't raise awareness of racism, many viewers were in agreement with Archie.
Roxanne notes these two posts from today:
She notes that after the Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. video went up, ten minutes after, the transphobes video went up. "You didn't want to give the Christmas song a full 30 minutes."
I did want to. That was my mistake. I was going over details from Christmas dinner (lunch) and making sure everything was right, sat down quickly with the laptop to pull together six posts that would go up over the next few hours and hit "publish" on the transphobes one without having set the time on it. Didn't realize that until it was up and had already been seen. If I had immediately realized what I'd done, I would have reverted to draft and then changed the time on it and then published it (so it was scheduled to be published).
"Roslyn Kind - Save The Country" resulted in several e-mails. I hadn't posted it sooner, one question, because I wasn't aware of it until Christmas Eve. When I saw it on YOUTUBE for the first time, I immediately put into a scheduled post. Big fan of Laura Nyro's music and she was also a wonderful person to know. And if you know me personally, you know that I can -- and often do -- listen to the same song over and over. The night after Bright Eyes performed "When A President Talks To God" on THE TONIGHT SHOW, for example, that was the only song (via YOUTUBE) that we listened to when we weren't speaking to groups about the Iraq War. Over and over, we listened to. And, to at least two groups we spoke to, we also played it to make sure they were aware of it.
I say that to explain "Save The Country - Laura Nyro, the 5th Dimension, ..." Originally, those were all going up as original entries. I did that once with Neil Young's "Helpless" including covers by Patti Smith, kd lange and others. And people did not like that. Remembering that, I instead pulled them together in one post -- so you got Laura's performance, as well as performances by, among others, the 5th Dimension, Melissa Manchester, Roberta Flack, Cass Elliot (with Lulu and Ray Stevens), Thelma Houston and others. Those could have -- and almost did -- go up as one post after another. I love Laura and that song is more pertinent today than ever.
Martin is a huge Judy Collins fan and is upset that I don't appreciate her talent. Martin, you've misunderstood me. I appreciate her talent. I don't like her as a person -- for that see Ava and my "Trapped in an AA meeting with Judy Collins (Ava and C.I.)."
In terms of her art, we do note her here.
I'd argue that FIRES OF EDEN, PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN GIRL, FIFTH ALBUM and IN MY LIVE are classic albums. If someone wanted to argue that WILDFLOWERS, WHO KNOWS WHERE THE TIME GOES and WHALES & NIGHTINGALES were classics as well, I wouldn't disagree.
I can -- and do -- draw the line between the artist and the art. I know a lot of people who are extremely gifted at what they do but are not gifted at interacting with others.
Let's note this from the Center for Constitutional Rights:
Palestinian human rights organizations, together with Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S., filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court against President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin for the U.S. officials’ failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide against them, their families, and the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Among the plaintiffs, Defense for Children International–Palestine (DCIP) and Al-Haq are leading Palestinian human rights organizations dedicated to preserving and promoting the human rights of Palestinian people across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, consisting of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. In Gaza, the lawsuit is also brought by Ahmed Abu Artema, founder of the 2018 Great March of Return, Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, a 24-year-old intern physician at Nasser Medical Complex, and Mohammed Ahmed Abu Rokbeh, a field researcher with DCIP. These plaintiffs reside with surviving family members in Gaza, where they have been subjected to a suffocating siege, coupled with indiscriminate Israeli bombardment that killed six members of Ahmed Abu Artema’s family, including his 12-year-old son, five members of Dr. Al-Najjar’s extended family, and eight of Mr. Abu Rokbeh’s. All have been displaced several times in the last few weeks as they seek refuge for themselves and their families. Mohammad Monadel Herzallah, Laila Elhaddad, Waeil Elbhassi, Bassim Elkarra, and “A.N.” are citizens and current residents in the U.S. whose families in Gaza have been subjected to repeated Israeli bombardment by air, land, and sea. Their families remain precariously vulnerable to Israel’s continued direct attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, indiscriminate bombardment, and its continued withholding of critical life supporting necessities of water, fuel, and electricity. Together, the individual plaintiffs counted over 100 members of their families killed at the time of filing.
On behalf of plaintiffs, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the case against the three high-level U.S. officials for violations of customary international law, codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention and the corresponding Genocide Convention Implementation Act (18 U.S.C. § 1091) passed by the U.S. Congress in 1988.
Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including “human animals.” At the same time, the Israeli military has bombed civilian areas and infrastructure, including by using chemical weapons, and deprived Palestinians of everything necessary for human life, including water, food, electricity, fuel, and medicine. Those statements of intent – when combined with mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and the total siege and closure creating conditions of life to bring about the physical destruction of the group – reveal evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide. Immediately after the launch of Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign on Gaza, President Biden offered “unwavering” support for Israel, which he and administration officials have consistently repeated and backed up with military, financial, and political support, even as mass civilian casualties escalated alongside Israeli genocidal rhetoric.
The lawsuit situates the unfolding genocide within a history of Israeli actions against the Palestinian people, starting with the Nakba in 1948. It sets out how defendants Biden, Blinken, and Austin have not only failed to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza but have helped advance the gravest of crimes by continuing to provide Israel with unconditional military and diplomatic support, coordinating closely on military strategy, and undermining efforts by the international community to stop Israel’s unrelenting and unprecedented bombing campaign and total siege of Gaza.
The plaintiffs are filing this federal complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief asking the court to declare that these U.S. officials have failed to prevent genocide and are aiding and abetting genocide, and to order an end to U.S. military and diplomatic support to Israel. The lawsuit is accompanied by declarations from leading experts in genocide and the Holocaust and a preliminary injunction (PI) motion, which seeks an emergency order to prohibit any further U.S. military and diplomatic support to Israel while the case is being considered.
Planned for this to be longer but I'm reading more (e-mails) than I'm writing about and I need to get back to THIRD because Stan just texted that he can help us write that article I noted above. The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
sfd
