Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced Palestinians in
central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several
children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international
mediators about a proposed cease-fire." Since October 7th, the Israeli government has attacked over 200 schools and universities in Gaza. Along with the thirty killed, at least 100 more people were left injured.
, "Blood was everywhere in the minutes that followed the strike, with
pieces of flesh visible on the stairs and handicapped residents trying
to flee, according to NPR reporter Anas Baba, who witnessed the
immediate aftermath." Australia's
, "At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, ambulances raced wounded
Palestinians into the medical facility. Some of the wounded also arrived
on foot, their clothes stained with blood." This was supposed to be a safe area -- as defined by the Israeli government. However, this week, they began demanding evacuations.
, "The United Nations said more than 180,000 Palestinians have fled Khan Yunis since the Israeli operation began on Monday."
, "The United Nations currently estimates more than 80% of Gaza's residents -- more than 2 million people -- are under similar evacuation orders
across the territory." Thursday,
As of Monday, 83 percent of the Gaza Strip has been marked unsafe for Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military.
This big chunk of the beleaguered enclave has either been designated
as a “no-go zone” by Israel or people there have been issued evacuation orders, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
While the remaining 17 percent is not subject to evacuation orders, residents in Gaza say no place is safe as Israeli attacks throughout the Strip have continued for more than nine months. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Since the beginning of Israel’s most recent assault on October 7, almost all Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes, some even multiple times.
Entire neighbourhoods in northern Gaza, where Israel’s offence began, have been destroyed. So-called ‘safe zones’ in southern Gaza continue to shrink and deteriorate.
On Monday, the Israeli military posted on X ordering the residents of
the eastern part of Khan Younis to evacuate further west in the
al-Mawasi evacuation zone. The military claimed that the Palestinian
group Hamas was embedded in the area.
THE NATIONAL notes that Israeli president Isaac Herzog declared today, "There are no words that can comfort the families of the young victims who lost their lives through no fault of their own." However, he wasn't speaking of the innocents killed in the attack on the Gaza school. He was referring to an attack on the Golan Heights -- a region that Israelis occupy after having stolen it from Syria in 1967.
AP adds, "Footage aired on Israeli Channel 12 showed a large blast in one of the
valleys in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights, which
Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed in 1981.
Some Druze have Israeli citizenship. Many still have sympathies for
Syria and rejected Israeli annexation, but their ties with Israeli
society have grown over the years." Many people died when the Golan Heights was seized but I doubt Herzog has ever noted that they were "the families of the young victims who lost their lives through no fault on their own."
Since Herzog and others refuse to observe that reality, I guess we're all just supposed to pretend it never happened and that the Golan Heights was never stolen from Syria.
The Israeli government is insisting Hezbollah carried out the assault, Hezbollah is saying that they didn't.
What we do know is that the show boating War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu ended his Evita like "Rainbow Tour" to rush back to Israel as the evidence mounted that he was doing everything but protecting Israel.
On the topic of leaders . . .
An idiot Jill Stein supporter wrote the public e-mail account (common_ills@yahoo.com) to insist that Jill will end "the war and Kamala Harris won't. I find it very telling that you and others of the so-called Common Ills community have yet to call on Kamala to end this war. Very telling, I would say. You just pretend to care about the people Israel is at war with. Jill is the only answer."
Jill is the only answer?
I guess so . . . if the question is: Who's utterly wasted her entire life?
Then she's the answer.
As for pressuring Kamala to end the war? Actually, as for "the war." I've never called this a war. The Palestinians are innocent civilians. This is not a war. We have called it an "assault," we have called it a "slaughter" and we have called it "genocide."
But this is not a war between two countries. First off, the Israel government doesn't believe the Palestinians should have their own land -- not the land they're on now and not the land that Israel has stolen from Palestinians for decades.
Equally true, the Palestinians don't have war planes are attack helicopters.
It's not a war. It's a genocide.
But I guess a term like that is too difficult for a Jill Stein supporter to use.
Now back to Kamala.
I'm sorry, stupid JS supporter, you're wanting to end this slaughter in January? You're fine with it going on until then?
We could put 100% pressure on Kamala to end the war next week and it would be time wasted.
She is not the President of the United States. Joe Biden is. I hope Kamala's the next president of the United States. If she wins the November election, she will be. But she still won't be inaugurated and sworn in until January 2025.
How telling that Jill Stein's bird brain supporter is perfectly comfortable allowing Palestinians to be slaughtered for six more months.
Joe Biden is the president. He's the only one who can't stop the supply of weapons to the Israeli government. You can try pressuring Congress but there are not enough votes there (within Congress) or the desire to carry this out.
I deal in reality.
This same Jill Stein supporter e-mailed on Monday to tell me, "You are a piece of s[**]t elitist who worked to overturn an elected president. You and your elite cabal just wanted the black woman to be president. That's what this is all about."
Yes, I am of the entertainment world. I didn't start the movement for Joe to step aside. I actually thought he rallied in the debate and I hailed him here (with Ava) as the winner of that debate.
The next day it was nothing but press attacks on Joe. It depressed the hell out of me and, as I've noted here before, I dictated the snapshot and went back to bed, waking up at 11 only because I had agreed to speak at noon. Otherwise, I would've slept the entire day. I was very depressed. I didn't think it was fair and I did my part to fight back here and to stem the bleeding by speaking to other donors.
It was at the end of the next week, when the ABC interview with Joe aired, that I stopped objecting.
I had been asked by people who wanted Joe gone to join the movement. I think you could hail, in the entertainment industry, George Clooney and Jon Stewart as leaders of that movement. I had declined.
But when I saw that interview, I knew it was over. And I didn't say anything here or to any friends offline, I just told them Ava and I would be writing a piece that would go up Sunday and they should read it. "
Media: It's Time For Joe To Go" went up Sunday July 7th.
In that piece, Ava and I outlined the basics. Joe needed to fight the narrative and give the media something different. Instead, the Friday before he was in the interview with George and George was doing George's job -- repeatedly asking about the debate and Joe's stamina and strength. And there was Joe, with a raspy voice, refusing to change the narrative. Every question George asked should have seen Joe taking that question and spinning it around. Two weeks later (two, right?) with Lester Holt, he would do what he should have done with George.
But by not doing that with George, Joe attached the narrative. He accepted it.
Joe was too old and too shaky and not really all there.
That was the narrative and he'd failed -- with George -- to defeat it.
It had now been attached for a full week and Joe embraced it in his interview with George.
In the entertainment industry, most of us grasp the important of appearances. We also grasp the importance of narrative. And we know that when the narrative is, for example, Lindsay Lohan parties and is out of control, it's going to take forever for that to go away.
Joe was lucky to be a man. Men can shake narratives far more quickly than women. Does anyone care about Christian Slater's drunken behaviors, or when he attacked the police and bit one?
No, most people don't even remember that.
Christian went into career rehab and hired a damage control expert and his past is now largely forgotten.
But that didn't happen in one week.
Could Joe have shaken the narrative?
Not at that point. The best he could hope to do between now and the November election was to not make another major mistake in public. And if he did that and everything broke our way and we all worked extra hard, we could get him back to the point where he was just a little behind Donald Trump.
But that's not good enough to win the election. And that was provided he didn't make another screw up. And even if he didn't, everything he did would reflect the narrative. The media would say, "This afternoon, President Biden took questions and, for most of it, he did okay. However . . ."
The only way to change the narrative was for him to step aside.
We get that in the entertainment world because we know how the media operates and we know that at the end of the day they are not our friend. Their jobs and our jobs are in direct conflict.
So we did see what was happening and what that meant.
But sure, call us "elites."
Why don't you and Jill Stein put some pressure on Joe?
He's the only one who can stop the assault on Gaza -- the only American -- at this point.
Are you getting just what a piece of crap David Sirota is?
Why bring this up now?
David's
been in the conversation regarding the nominee. David wants Joe Biden
out. Okay, he's not alone on that. There are others who want the
same. But David's also pimping a replacement: Josh Shapiro the governor
of Pennsylvania who doesn't believe in mask mandates or addressing
climate change. But for our focus here? Let's note this from ALJAZEERA:
While he may not have the national name recognition that his fellow
governors Newsom and Whitmer enjoy, Shapiro is considered one of the top
candidates to potentially replace Biden.
The governor, who previously served as Pennsylvania’s attorney
general, comfortably won his election in the Mid-Atlantic swing state in
2022. Since taking office, he has had positive approval ratings.
With regards to the war in Gaza, Shapiro has been a staunch supporter of Israel.
“The whataboutism used by some to justify Hamas’s unprovoked actions
is ignorant and wrong,” he said last year. “There is no moral
equivalency here. Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Shapiro has also been outspoken in denouncing what he describes as anti-Semitism by protesters who oppose the war in Gaza.
In April, he likened pro-Palestinian student protesters
to the Ku Klux Klan. The campus protests, however, have been largely
peaceful, and student leaders say accusations of anti-Semitism
misrepresent their aim: to encourage their universities to divest from
Israeli companies linked to the country’s human rights abuses.
“We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were
people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about
people who are African American in our communities,” Shapiro told CNN.
And
that's who David Sirota supports. David wants Joe Biden out and he
wants Shapiro in. How exactly is David a progressive whatever it is
that he calls himself these days? (I just call him an ass regardless.)
Maybe David Sirota needs to sit his tired ass down and keep it down?
(For the record, he never apologized to Tina.)
This is a hopeful moment for the whole left-liberal coalition. The
vibes, for once, are good. Almost every leftist I know is excited about
Harris and thinks Trump is beatable. With a newly united party behind
her, there are only so many ways Harris can screw it up, but one seems
all too plausible: She could select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
as her running mate.
On paper, it’s understandable why Shapiro is among the leading candidates reportedly being
vetted by Harris. Like nearly all of the veep contenders, he’s a white
male governor with a centrist reputation. At 51, he’s even younger than
Harris and a fresh face, having only held his current job for 18 months.
He has already shown himself to be a more than capable administrator, generating a lot of good publicity for
repairing a damaged section of Interstate 95 within two weeks. Most
importantly, Pennsylvania is the most valuable swing state in play,
worth 19 electoral votes, and Shapiro is very popular there.
Unfortunately, Shapiro also stands out among the current field of
potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine. It’s not
just that he, like many Democrats, is an outspoken supporter of
Israel—though he certainly is, having championed Israel’s war against
Hamas consistently and without any apparent concern for
Palestinian civilians. Shapiro has, moreover, done far more than most
Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that
call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights.
In his previous role as Pennsylvania attorney general, Shapiro championed the
state’s constitutionally dubious anti-BDS (boycott, divestment,
sanctions) law against Ben & Jerry’s after the ice cream maker
refused to license its product for sale in Israeli settlements. “BDS is
rooted in antisemitism,” Shapiro wrote in a statement in 2021, as he
condemned a company named for its two Jewish American founders. “The
stated goal of this amorphous movement is the removal of Jewish citizens
from the region and I strongly oppose their efforts.”
As governor, Shapiro’s particular animus against pro-Palestine
activism has only grown more apparent and troubling. Last December, he
played an active role in the GOP-orchestrated sacking of University of
Pennsylvania President Liz Magill. During a visit to Goldie, the popular
Philadelphia restaurant co-owned by the Israeli-born celebrity chef
Michael Solomonov, Shapiro condemned Magill’s testimony on alleged
antisemitism on the Ivy League campus before Representative Elise
Stefanik, the MAGA right’s grand inquisitor. “That was an unacceptable
statement from the president of Penn,” Shapiro said,
referring to Magill’s unwillingness to accept Stefanik’s slippery
framing on what constitutes antisemitism. “Frankly, I thought her
comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn
genocide.” Magill resigned four days after her testimony and three days
after Shapiro’s statement, legitimizing the GOP’s wider assault on
academic freedom, which would be repeated successfully against Harvard President Claudine Gay weeks later.
In April, Shapiro’s office baselessly claimed that
a peaceful pro-Palestine encampment on the Penn campus threatened
student safety. “If the universities in accordance with their policies
can’t guarantee the safety and security and well-being of the students,
then I think it is incumbent upon a local mayor or local governor or
local town councilor, whoever is the local leadership there, to step in
and enforce the law,” Shapiro told Politico at the time. In May, he urged Penn to
shut down the encampment completely. “The University of Pennsylvania
has an obligation to their safety,” he said, once again alluding to
nonexistent threats to the physical well-being of Jewish students. “It
is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the
encampment, and to restore order and safety on campus.” The university
complied; one day and 33 arrests later, Shapiro’s office said Penn “made the right decision.”
That same week, The New York Times profiled Shapiro
as one to watch in his party with the headline “A Rising Democrat Leans
Into the Campus Fight Over Antisemitism.” In that piece, Shapiro made
clear the low regard in which he holds pro-Palestine campus activists.
“If you had a group of white supremacists camped out and yelling racial
slurs every day, that would be met with a different response than
antisemites camped out, yelling antisemitic tropes,” he told the Times. (This echoed a statement made in an earlier interview in which he compared campus protesters to the Ku Klux Klan.) Then, in an executive order, Shapiro updated his
administration’s code of conduct to forbid state employees from
engaging in “scandalous or disgraceful” behavior, a vaguely worded
instruction that civil libertarians immediately interpreted as
threatening pro-Palestine speech.
Shapiro is an observant Jew with personal ties to Israel; on October 7, he tweeted,
“Our family has shared many special moments in Israel and our hearts
break for those living this horror now.” If selected as Harris’s running
mate and subsequently elected, he would become the first Jewish vice
president in American history (a distinction narrowly missed by the late
Joe Lieberman when Republicans stole the 2000 election).
Get it? You focus on what is doable. If you want to call out Kamala, call her out for considering Josh Shapiro as a running mate. He cannot be the running mate. If you want to end the assault on Gaza before the end of the year, pressure Joe Biden who remains the president.
Need more realities? Jill Stein's not going to be the next president. Here's some more: And she shouldn't. She's a Karen that traffics in racism and flies to Moscow to sit with a butcher -- sit at a table with a butcher and an abuser of human rights. You can feel whatever you want about Ukraine. You can be backing that government or you can be against it. But that doesn't change who Vladimir Putin is and has been for years. I do not want the US (further) involved in that war. But long before that, Vladimir -- who's held power since 1999 -- had earned his reputation as a despot.
Jill flew to Moscow to make nice with him, sit at his table and get her picture taken.
She's not fit to be president and, again, she fortunately never will be.
But she can mislead people, she can fool and trick people and, in doing so, still real votes.
Donald Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday, claiming that "no president has done what I've done for Israel".
The meeting signalled that both men are looking to ease tension that developed since Mr Trump left office in January 2021.
Warmly
clasping hands, Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu greeted each other outside
the former president's home in their first face-to-face meeting in
almost four years.
About 50 pro-Palestinian protesters were on the bridge leading to the resort.
Given
a possible return of Mr Trump to the White House, Mr Netanyahu – whom
CNN reported had requested the meeting – was expected to be driven to
mend fences.
If you care about Palestinians, you're not voting for vanity candidate Jill Stein -- 74 years old and planning to be the Green Party's presidential nominee for the third time. It's a wasted vote.
I don't say that about Chase Oliver or about Cornel West or about Claudia De la Cruz. I don't think they're going to win but they are running real campaigns. If they speak to you, you should absolutely vote for them.
But there are people who are not real candidates -- Jill Stein is one, Robert Kennedy Jr is another and Joseph Kishore is a third. They're jokes, at best.
You vote for who you want. It's your choice. I'm not going to judge you on it unless you vote for destruction and that's what a vote for Donald, Jill, Junior or Kishore is.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 295 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 rises to 39,258 killed with 90,589 woundedd." 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:
April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as
killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000
Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has
estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into
Israeli prisons. In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
As for 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."
Dozens of
American doctors and nurses who volunteered in the Gaza Strip since
October 7 have written to the White House to describe horrific
conditions in the besieged enclave, where disease is rife and barely functioning hospitals lack even basic supplies.
The 45 physicians, surgeons and nurses told President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris
and first lady Jill Biden that they estimate more than 92,000 people
have been killed in Gaza since October 7, about 4.2 per cent of the
population.
The
letter, sent on Thursday, and its supporting documents show “probative
evidence that the human toll in Gaza is far higher than is understood in
the United States”.
The following sites updated:
