Leaked internal memos from both the State Department and the U.S. agency tasked with providing civilian foreign aid reportedly warn that Israel is breaching a White House directive by continuing to block U.S. aid into Gaza ― a violation that legally requires President Joe Biden to suspend military assistance to the country whose offensive in the Palestinian enclave nears seven months.
In February, Biden issued National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20) after a growing number of Democratic lawmakers began questioning whether Israel was adhering to international law while using U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza. Under NSM-20, Israel and other U.S. weapons recipients are required to provide assurances that it would not violate international humanitarian law, including restricting humanitarian assistance. Israel made that pledge on March 25.
Though NSM-20 imposes no new legal requirements, it also asks Secretary of State Antony Blinken to report to Congress by May 8 on whether he believes Israel has complied with the assurances.
But an internal State Department memo ― obtained by Reuters and published Saturday ― was jointly submitted to Blinken, and included four bureaus who said they do not find “credible or reliable” the Israeli government’s pledge that its military is using weapons supplied by the U.S. in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The senior officials reportedly cited eight examples of Israeli military action in the memo that could be considered such violations ― including the repeated bombing of protected sites and civilian infrastructure, a massive level of civilian harm, the lack of accountability for those who cause significant civilian harm, and the killing of journalists and humanitarian workers. The bureaus also cited nearly a dozen instances that the Israeli military would “arbitrarily restrict humanitarian aid,” according to Reuters.
The US government dithers and lies and minimizes as people are dying. No wonder the students in the US step up to the plate and we should all be grateful to them for doing so.
While THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES and THE PROGRESSIVE continue to ignore the protests, they were a topic today on FACE THE NATION (CBS):
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, went up to Columbia University this week. You had four Democratic lawmakers, all Jewish, who went, they said in solidarity with Jewish students there, and threatened to withhold federal funding. Is that kind of political involvement helpful, or is it putting fuel on the fire?
ROBERT PAPE: It is putting fuel on the fire, because it's so one-sided. If Speaker Johnson had gone together with Hakeem Jeffries with an actual plan to bring calm, and we'll talk about what that might look like, then this is a different story. But by come- making it a surprise, by making threats, you know, if you don't do X, we will fire Y and we're going to do X, and this is all a surprise, this is actually not helpful for crowd control at all. So, I also study the actual violent part of this. And the number one thing when you have protests that are building, is don't do a surprise. In Portland during the George Floyd protests, you might remember DHS surprised Portland, that escalated things. This is a very bad idea. So you need to have a more thoughtful approach to calming tensions that go beyond crowd control, and that are not simply, one side is right, everybody else is wrong. And we're going to hammer it through until we win.
Maybe the overpaid staff at THE NATION could look at just that exchange and weigh in? Would that be too much work for them?
At COMMON DREAMS, Howard Winant writes:
The student-led movement for a free Palestine is not antisemitic. Thousands of Jewish students have joined it. Hundreds of rabbis and cantors too, as well as leaders of Jewish organizations and prominent Jews across U.S. society and beyond. Despite fervent attempts to stigmatize anti-Zionism as anti-Jewish, despite strident efforts on Israel's part to merge its national identity with Judaism itself, or indeed with Jewish culture and ethnicity, despite the wildly inappropriate calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the U.S. to crack down on student protest, Israel does not represent all Jewish people or types of Jewishness. So the movement for a free Palestine is not a movement to destroy Israel and expel Jews. Everybody knows that the Israeli Jewish population is not going anywhere, any more than the Palestinians are. The phrase "from the river to the sea" is frequently used both by both Palestinians and Israelis. The movement for a free Palestine and the Israeli peace movement (small but important) should demand that that language be rearticulated so that it applies to both peoples.
Efforts to repress the student movement for a free Palestine will never succeed. It is too big and too broad. It is part of a worldwide struggle for justice. It is a working-class and poor people's movement. It is an anti-racist movement and a feminist movement. It is an anti-colonialist movement, connected to the long struggle against European empires and the U.S. empire. It closely resembles the movements against South African apartheid and the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others.
It is not an accident that attacks on the movement have concentrated on repressing student voices. As they have so many times before, students have shown that they are our leaders in struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy. As has been true so many times before, opposition to the movement is concentrated among the wealthy and the right wing. It is wealthy donors who play the most significant role in opposing freedom for Palestinians, pressuring universities to prohibit pro-Palestinian speech and seeking to curtail nonviolent student protests. It is right-wing politicians who have become the new "snowflakes," madly canceling students and faculty for the "antisemitism" of criticizing Israel. Not just the students, but the university itself is their frequent target.
Notably, universities were already under sustained attack before October 7, indeed long before that awful day. Universities are one of the most central institutions in society. They have not yet effectively been brought under the control of the wealthy, of anti-democratic governments and political parties, of racist and sexist power structures, and of repressive religiously based groups. This is because universities are institutions where knowledge and culture are produced, where democratic debate happens, where the wisdom of the past is preserved and studied, and where youth are able to develop their ideas and skills. Even though attacking universities is attacking their own children and destroying the futures of their own country, U.S. holders of wealth and power are willing to carry out those attacks, because they feel threatened by their own children's views of the world. They fear the future they themselves are creating: one of permanent warfare, global heating and ecocide, and planetary apartheid. They hate being reminded, especially by their own kids, of their hypocrisy and violence.
The movement for freedom in Palestine shows us what a different future looks like. The movement demands university divestment from the Israeli warfare state and from Israeli apartheid. It calls out the oligarchs who threaten their own type of divestment, threatening to withdraw their funding from Penn, or Harvard, or the University of California, my own professional home. Let them go! Let them support Bob Jones University or Bari Weiss' ridiculous University of Austin. Let them subsidize notorious political hacks like Christopher Rufo and political poseurs like Rep. Elise Stefanik (D-N.Y.). By and large rich donors' funding is based on a hunger for prestige, not on any commitment to education. They seek tax write-offs. They subsidize their businesses through their donations. They hardly care about poor or working-class students, and even less about the humanities, arts, and social sciences, which are the fields where most undergraduate students major, and where the future of civilizational knowledge resides. Higher education is a public trust; it cannot be entrusted to the rich. As elsewhere in the world, it should be financed by the public, not greedy and blind billionaires.
At TRUTHOUT, Frances Madeson writes:
As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, told Truthout the blows landing hardest are the ones from their own chancellors and deans. The activists say university administrators are waging an asymmetrical campaign of enforcement against students demanding an end to their schools’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians.
“We see Pomona for what it is: serving capital and empire. And we know the way to win our demands is to disrupt their flow of cash, disrupt their reputation,” said Amanda Dym, a 21-year-old humanities student at Scripps College, one of the five colleges in the Pomona consortium. “We won’t allow our administrators who facilitate and defend investments in an apartheid state to go about their work undisturbed.”
Dym was among 20 students arrested by cops in riot gear during a sit-in outside Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr’s office on April 5.
“A televised genocide live-streamed on our phones is obviously unlike anything that’s happened in our lifetimes,” she said. That’s why Dym and others were moved to demonstrate, but she says when Starr called in the riot police, the president put them in a whole other category of risk.
“Obviously, it was a scary day, to watch 30-plus riot cops from three cities come in and start bringing my comrades out, one by one,” Dym told Truthout. “The cops were in full gear with automatic weapons, bigger guns than some of us had ever seen. They were yanking students up off the ground, zip-tying their hands so tightly they were losing circulation.”
At ZNET, Saurav Sarkar writes:
Students at more than 40 universities and colleges in the United States and around the world have lit a fire under the Palestine solidarity movement by setting up encampments on their campuses. They are demanding that their universities end their complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine more broadly.
While the first and longest-running student takeover has been at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, it was Columbia University that lit the fuse for a widespread student movement and drew global attention. The administration’s decision at the elite New York City school to sic the repressive New York Police Department on peacefully protesting students led to a global movement and gave hope for the first time in months to countless people. As of April 26, student occupations extended to France and Australia in addition to dozens of campuses in the United States.
Police repression at other sites besides Columbia has been fierce as well. At Emerson University in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Police Department was livestreamed manhandling protesters in the early hours of April 25. At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the police threw Caroline Fohlin, an economics professor who attempted to intervene in arrests of students, to the ground, her head hitting the concrete. The University of Southern California allowed officers to fire rubber bullets at students, and the University of Texas–Austin had local and state police on motorcycles, horseback, and on foot arresting students.
But the police didn’t always have the upper hand. At Cal Poly Humboldt, students successfully barricaded themselves in a building. And, at the City University of New York’s City College, protesters pushed the police back and maintained the integrity of their encampment.
Through it all, students have grounded the protests in what matters: conditions in Gaza and their universities’ ties to Israel. Even as establishment figures hemmed and hawed in the face of the student uprising—President Joe Biden tried to link them to “antisemitism”—two mass graves were uncovered in Palestine, which was from the aftermath of terroristic Israeli raids on two hospitals in Gaza. About 400 doctors, patients, children, and others were found dead, in some cases buried alive.
The higher-ups on campuses, in boardrooms, and in presidential palaces around the world appeared to have nothing new to say about Israel’s horrifying and murderous tactics. The Zionist state’s genocide in Gaza has already reached its 200th day, with at least 34,000 dead and an invasion reportedly imminent in Rafah, the southern city and place of last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
See, it can be done. Just, apparently, not at THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES.
Anna Lamche and Ido Vock (BBC NEWS) report:
At Northeastern University in Boston, over 100 protesters were arrested for trespassing on Saturday by the Massachusetts State Police after refusing to clear their tents from college grounds, according to a police statement. The camp was cleared by police.
Northeastern University wrote on X that "demonstrations had been infiltrated by professional organisers" with no connection to the university. Antisemitic slurs had been heard, it added, saying: "We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on campus." Protest leaders strongly rejected the allegations.
At the University of South California, pro-Palestinian demonstrators returned to campus days after police were called to clear a protest at the university's Alumni Park. The protest was reportedly mostly peaceful but the university administration reported "vandalism" to campus property after Saturday's protest.
The university said the campus had been vandalised "by individuals who are part of the group that has continued to illegally camp on our campus", adding that a statue and fountain had been damaged. The campus would be temporarily closed to non-residents, the university said.
Twenty-three people were arrested at Indiana University on Saturday.
On Sunday's FACE THE NATION, Brennan also spoke with UNICEF's Catherine Russell:
MARGARET BRENNAN: The UN says every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded in Gaza. I mean, that just hits you in the chest when you hear that.
CATHERINE RUSSELL: That's a shocking number.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It's horrific.
CATHERINE RUSSELL: It is what's happening.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And the US called this week for an investigation of this mass grave that was just found in Gaza, of hundreds of people. Were there children there? What do you know?
CATHERINE RUSSELL: You know we don't- UNICEF doesn't know much about that, honestly. I think that I would say a couple things. One, there needs to be a full investigation of what happened. And I think that, at some point, will certainly, I hope, take place. And second, to me, it argues, again, for the importance of having international press in Gaza. I- I- I say this over and over again because you have disputes about what has actually happened, what's going on. And I think not- you know, look, there are incredibly brave Palestinian reporters and press people there who are doing an incredible job. Many of them have- have suffered so much, people have been killed. I think having the international press in there is also really important. And I hope that that gets that- that changes sometime soon and international press folks can get in, really make their own assessments of what's going on.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 205 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." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll reaches 34,454, with 77,575 wounded" 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:
The following sites updated:
-
-
Who's the real blood hound?1 hour ago
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Idiot of the week1 day ago
-
Heart1 day ago
-
-
-
-
Oh, Ellen, get real1 day ago
-
-
-
