Saturday, February 24, 2024

Netanyahu's government assaults Israelis in Tel Aviv

Day 141, as the assault on Gaza continues, a new development on the part of the corrupt Netanyahu government.



The Netanyahu government -- already on trial for corruption in Israeli courts and on trial for journalism in the International Criminal Court -- openly attacks the families of the hostages.







A defense of the indefensible acts will be offered shortly by Debra Messing, she's just busy right now gluing hair extensions onto the bald spots of her head.  After that, she'll be Tweeting up a firestorm to explain how the Israeli people attacked in Tel Aviv are actually anti-semitic. 


Corky Siemaszko and Chantal Da Silva (NBC NEWS) report:


 An Israeli woman who was released by Hamas after weeks in captivity has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having “forgotten” the remaining hostages in Gaza, including her American husband.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Molly Hunter on Thursday, former hostage Aviva Siegel said she believes Netanyahu is prioritizing his own political survival and his bid to crush Hamas over efforts to return the hostages. 

“I think that Bibi Netanyahu is thinking about himself more than thinking about us,” Siegel, 62, said.

Siegel, who was released in November after 51 days in captivity, said she wanted Netanyahu to “stop the war” and focus on bringing her husband, Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, back “home as soon as possible.”

But, she said, “I think that Netanyahu has forgotten about Keith and forgotten to be human and bring the human people back.”

Read full story.


 The world has seen the reality of the Netanyahu government in its assault on Gaza and now they see the reality of the Netanyahu government in its assault on Israelis.  This as THE NATIONAL reports:


Brazilian President Luiz Inรกcio Lula da Silva alleged on Saturday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, after stirring controversy a week ago by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust.

The president said he wouldn't give up his “dignity for falsehood”, an apparent reference to calls for him to retract comments comparing Israel’s conduct in Gaza to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews and others perished during the Second World War.

“What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Children and women are being murdered.”


Meanwhile, opposition to the continued assault on Gaza builds in the US.  Joe Queally (COMMON DREAMS) reports: 

Texas Democrat Beto O'Rourke became the latest high-profile member of the party to back the push for Michigan voters to tick the "uncommitted" box on the primary ballot next week as a way to protest President Joe Biden's unconditional support of Israel's unyielding assault on the people of Gaza.

"I do think it makes sense for those who want to see this administration do more, or do a better job, to exert that political pressure and get the president's attention and the attention of those on his campaign so that the United States does better," said the former congressman who has run for both president and the U.S. Senate.

In an interview with the Michigan Advance on Friday, O'Rourke explained that he was partly influenced by a recent New York Times op-ed by Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud which argued that "no amount of landmark legislation" passed by the Biden administration "can outweigh the more than 100,000 people killed, wounded, or missing in Gaza. The scales of justice will not allow it."

O'Rourke said he agrees "with the aims and the goals" of the grassroots campaign in Michigan that is urging Democrats to use Tuesday's primary contest, in which Biden faces no real opponent, as a way to express the deep frustration many voters in the state are feeling over the carnage in Gaza.

"We should have a ceasefire, there should be a return of each [and] every single one of those hostages [taken by Hamas], there should be an end to this war and there should be a negotiated solution to Palestinian statehood," O’Rourke told the news outlet. "All of that needs to happen, and I share the concern that the United States is not doing close to enough to bring those things to pass."

Polls have shown a strong majority of Democratic voters support an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, something Biden has steadfastly refused. Disagreement with the administration's policy is especially high among younger voters as well as the Arab American and Muslim Americans who represent a sizeable bloc of Michigan voters.



The killing continues.  ALJAZEERA reports:


Norway’s embassy in Palestine has shared a social media post mourning the deaths of two Palestinian human rights lawyers killed in Gaza.

Norway described Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and Dana Yaghi as two “brilliant young lawyers” who worked with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), defending women’s rights.

PCHR said that Dana Yaghi was killed along with 40 others by an Israeli air strike on her family home in Deir el-Balah, on Thursday.

Two days earlier, “Israeli warplanes killed our colleague Nour Abu Nour along seven members of her family, including her two-year-old daughter,” PCHR added.


Also continuing are the arrests.  THE NATIONAL notes, "Israeli forces arrested at least 22 Palestinians overnight in the occupied West Bank, including a journalist and two children, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said on Saturday. This brings to 7,210 the total number of Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since October 7, the society added."  NBC NEWS notes, "Dozens of medical personnel arrested from the Nasser Medical Complex are still in detention, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza." NBC's Mirna Alsharif and Segilola Arisekola quote the Palestine Red Crescent Society stating, "The Israeli occupation continues to detain the PRCS volunteers Mu’men Othman Dahir, Tamer Mahmoud Shahin, and Hamdan Sameer Abu Khater, for the nineteenth consecutive day. They were arrested while passing through what is called 'the humanitarian corridor' set up to evacuate displaced persons from PRCS Al-Amal Hospital in #KhanYunis."

 
 Gaza remains under assault. Day 141  of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."  NBC NEWS notes, "More than 29,600 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. More than 69,400 have been injured, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead." Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:







And the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."   

Tonight ALJAZEERA reports:

Israeli forces have killed at least seven people, including a child, in Rafah, in the latest deadly attack on Palestinians struggling to survive in the southern Gaza Strip’s largest city.

An Israeli air raid hit a residential building belonging to the Shahin family on Saturday, housing displaced people from the Abu Hamra and Abu Sultan families, the Palestinian state news agency Wafa reported.


Let's wind down with this Tweet from Paul Rudnick.



Well said as always. Paul is our country's most astute and hilarious social critic.   The following sites updated:


 

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