Category: Israel Palestine

  • CNN goes to Gaza

    CNN goes to Gaza

    CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her crew became the first western journalists to enter Gaza independent from Israeli forces since October 7, briefly visiting a 150-bed hospital that was recently constructed in a soccer stadium by the United Arab Emirates in the southern part of the enclave before leaving to report on the footage from Abu Dhabi. (more…)

  • What next after the General Assembly vote?

    What next after the General Assembly vote?

    The UN General Assembly has now voted on the resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel/Gaza conflict which the United States vetoed in the Security Council. Only two European countries voted with Israel and the United States. No country in Asia either voted “no” or abstained on this resolution. This suggests that the U.S. government’s hopes of enlisting loyal Asian support for confronting, containing and countering its perceived primary adversary, China, will not be easily achieved. (more…)

  • Gaza is deliberately being made uninhabitable

    Gaza is deliberately being made uninhabitable

    Infectious diseases are tearing through Gaza, whose healthcare system has been rendered almost nonexistent, and people are beginning to starve in massive numbers. All of this is due to concrete policy decisions made by Israel in its horrific assault on the Gaza Strip. (more…)

  • How to end the war in Gaza

    How to end the war in Gaza

    It is urgent to end the loss of life and destruction in Gaza, but as the joint Statement by the Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand recognises, a sustainable ceasefire will require agreement to a balanced set of conditions consistent with eventually achieving a lasting peace based on a two-State solution. This is how to end the war in Gaza. (more…)

  • Journalism, propaganda and war

    Journalism, propaganda and war

    Journalism, whether practised in a proclaimed democracy or in a country controlled by politburo or despot, is fraught and contentious but it is meant to tell the public and the world what is really going on. (more…)

  • Kill them all

    Kill them all

    This is a direct quote from a banner that was paraded in Tel Aviv in 2016 in support of the Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria who shot, at point blank range, a Palestinian teenager, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif two years earlier. No matter how many Palestinians the Israeli Occupation Forces kill, the cry will always be ‘Kill them all’. (more…)

  • Hypocritical US vetoes UN ceasefire resolution, cowardly UK abstains

    Hypocritical US vetoes UN ceasefire resolution, cowardly UK abstains

    As the bloodbath in Gaza moves towards 18,000 casualties, 70% of whom are women and children, as a humanitarian catastrophe affecting a whole people persists, the rich and powerful US vetoes a U.N. Resolution calling for a ceasefire. The rich and powerful UK ducks for cover and abstains. (more…)

  • Explaining the Gaza genocide: Settler colonialism in Palestine

    Explaining the Gaza genocide: Settler colonialism in Palestine

    In a settler colonial state, the indigenous population has to be physically erased because they are an ongoing reminder of the violence and injustice that occurred at the foundation of the political community. Their continuing existence constitutes a legal and political challenge to the state’s legitimacy. (more…)

  • Australia has abandoned international law

    Australia has abandoned international law

    Two months have passed since the events of October 7. Publicly, Australia has done nothing except perhaps indicate that it desires a two-state solution, and expects Israel to only take action which has regard to the need to protect civilians. Is this enough? The answer is no. (more…)

  • As you read this, physicians are amputating childrens’ hands, arms and legs without anaesthesia

    As you read this, physicians are amputating childrens’ hands, arms and legs without anaesthesia

    Doctors without Borders (the French volunteer organisation Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF]) has written a poignant letter to the United Nations Security Council imploring for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as hospitals are turned into “Morgues”. (more…)

  • The realpolitik of the Gaza war

    The realpolitik of the Gaza war

    If this 2022-23 opinion poll is correct then a clear majority of Palestinians want a single-Islamic state, not a shared Islamic-Jewish one let alone a two-state solution. (more…)

  • The horrors in Gaza are happening because the US empire wants them to happen

    The horrors in Gaza are happening because the US empire wants them to happen

    I came across an interesting quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza. (more…)

  • Israel has Haaretz newspaper in its sights as it tightens screws on media freedom

    Israel has Haaretz newspaper in its sights as it tightens screws on media freedom

    The Israeli government is putting pressure on the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz to line up in support of the government in its conduct of the war in Gaza. (more…)

  • As genocide unfolds, what can you do? Boycott. Divest. Sanction.

    As genocide unfolds, what can you do? Boycott. Divest. Sanction.

    Israeli children sing, “We will annihilate everyone” in Gaza. The song was played on Israel’s national broadcaster Kan. This fact was exposed by the Electronic Intifada – Ali Abunimah – on 19 November. It pretty well says it all. So, what can you do about it? Well, one thing you might do is support BDS. (more…)

  • Poem: The Second Nakba

    Poem: The Second Nakba

    I wake up and I check
    The radio News I dread
    I hear the authoritative voice
    The Newsreader then Israeli government
    Spokesman

    Terrorists, the terrorists
    Hiding under the Hospitals
    Under the Kindergartens
    Under the Schools
    The colonial narrative
    Always
    Baying for more dead

    No electricity, no water
    No food, no shelter
    What will happen
    Hapless Gazans
    I worry

    Starvation dehydration trauma
    Trauma for life
    Trauma for the unborn
    Flight desperation
    The Will to Live

    I look at photos, hospital photos
    Wreckage, electric cables hanging
    From missing ceilings
    Dead people, Dead children
    Faces full of unimaginable fear
    Faces of children of women and men
    On trolleys with missing wheels
    With all wheels, blood on

    Limbs hands bones sticking
    Out of the rubble
    Bits of clothing
    Bits of wheels
    Bits of utensils
    Bits of rags
    From under the rubble

    I want and I wish
    For the Genocide
    To Stop! Stop! Stop!
    Stop!
    In name of Compassion
    In name of Humanity
    In the name of Basic Human Decency

    The ordinary children
    The ordinary women
    The ordinary men
    Innocent

    Enough of revenge
    Enough of killing
    Enough of murder

    I hear Biden, Netanyahu, Blinken
    Fencesitter, Perpetrator, Apologist
    All Respectively
    All for this War
    All war criminals

    Eliminate Hamas
    We are not Terrorists
    We the civilised
    We the technologically advanced
    We the Enlightened
    We the successful conquerors
    We the ethnic cleansers

    We have a long history
    We cleansed North America
    We cleansed Africa
    We cleansed Australia
    We, we, we cleansed the Planet
    Wherever and whenever
    From the uncivilised savages
    From the Terrorists
    It was Necessary

    Now our task is to cleanse Gaza
    It’s Necessary

    How dare they protest
    Being caged like
    Animals in an open air prison

    We give the work
    Ungrateful savages
    Complaining, ungracious
    The wretched of the Earth

    We have only beaten them
    Caged them
    Restricted their movement
    Humiliated, Condescended
    It was Necessary

    Only killed around a hundred thousand
    Not much
    Since the First Nakba
    It was Necessary

    We only tried to break their Spirit
    It was Necessary

    How dare they stand up
    Revolt against us
    The Civilised
    The Masters

    And we will go on
    Until we cleansed
    You savages
    Especially you now in Gaza

    In Africa, Latin America
    Asia and Everywhere
    Everywhere…

    For our Lebensraum
    For we are One with God

    John-Janusz Ebel , 23 November 2023

  • Imagine the outrage if Al Jazeera agreed Hamas could vet its footage?

    Imagine the outrage if Al Jazeera agreed Hamas could vet its footage?

    US corporate media outlets allow IDF to vet ‘all materials’ from embedded reporters in Gaza. “Israel is killing the journalists that expose their crimes, then bribing the journalists that cover for them,” said one critic. (more…)

  • War is not abstracted anymore

    War is not abstracted anymore

    Pentagon contractor Elon Musk and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu had a conversation that they broadcast on Twitter during Musk’s apology pilgrimage to Israel in a desperate bid to salvage his public image amid costly accusations of antisemitism. (more…)

  • A monstrous Gaza proposal is evil in plain sight

    A monstrous Gaza proposal is evil in plain sight

    Giora Eiland is one of the “thinking officers” in the Israeli Defence Forces. He has an idea – epidemics in Gaza are good for Israel. “After all, severe epidemics in the southern Strip will bring victory closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers.”  One only has to wait for the daughters of Hamas’ leaders to contract the plague, and we’ve won. (more…)

  • US hypocrisy results in persistent Western failures in resolving the Palestinian crisis

    US hypocrisy results in persistent Western failures in resolving the Palestinian crisis

    The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which spans over seven decades, serves as a potent illustration of the persistent failures of Western nations, particularly the United States, to facilitate an equitable and enduring resolution. (more…)

  • You cannot reason with an abuser

    You cannot reason with an abuser

    You must take away their power, and protect their victims. (more…)

  • Two solutions for the “Question of Palestine”

    Two solutions for the “Question of Palestine”

    In these terrible times in the wake of October 7, there is one perception as to which the Israeli government and virtually all other governments now publicly profess to agree, sincerely and passionately in the Israeli case and at least rhetorically in the case of the Global West: The “Question of Palestine” can no longer be ignored or “managed” but must, finally, be definitively resolved. (more…)

  • Why are so many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails?

    Why are so many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails?

    Four in 10 Palestinian men spend time in Israel jails. Hamas says it wants to exchange captured Israelis for them. (more…)

  • White House fears pause in fighting will let journalists see what’s been happening in Gaza

    White House fears pause in fighting will let journalists see what’s been happening in Gaza

    Israel and Hamas have reportedly agreed to a four-day ceasefire which will entail the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 150 hostages held by Israeli forces. (more…)

  • A UN Mandate for the Gaza Strip

    A UN Mandate for the Gaza Strip

    Israel’s military campaign to rout the war machine and government authority of Hamas in the Gaza Strip has entered its sixth week. Its steady physical destruction of the terrorist organisation’s military capabilities above and below ground has left a trail of physical ruin and a growing humanitarian tragedy as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians evacuated their homes in the war zone in northern Gaza and fled to tent encampments in the south at the border with Egypt. (more…)

  • Australia’s role in the bombing of Gaza

    Australia’s role in the bombing of Gaza

    Being part of the global supply network that supplies parts for the Israeli F-35 jet fighters used over Gaza implicates Australia in their alleged war crimes. (more…)

  • Antisemitism and criticism of Israel: open letter to Julian Leeser MP

    Antisemitism and criticism of Israel: open letter to Julian Leeser MP

    Shocking discrimination suffered by Jews in the past does not give Israel a warrant to make victims of others. You say anti-Zionism is a cover for antisemitism. Let me tell you why your view is wrong. (more…)

  • Two-state solution won’t deliver peace for Israel/Palestine. But this might

    Two-state solution won’t deliver peace for Israel/Palestine. But this might

    At the end of October, three weeks after the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers that killed around 1200 people, US President Joe Biden said that he still firmly believed in the justness of the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. Two states for two peoples. (more…)

  • When is genocide ever balanced?

    When is genocide ever balanced?

    ‘Balance’ between supporters of Israel and of the Palestinians is what most police and State governments in Australia say they seek. So does the ABC. But what’s happening in Gaza isn’t balanced: it is asymmetric warfare. (more…)

  • The most successful military raid of this century: the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel

    The most successful military raid of this century: the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel

    There is a truism that I often cite when discussing the various analytical approaches to assessing the wide variety of geopolitical problems facing the world today—you can’t solve a problem unless you first properly define it. The gist of the argument is quite simple—any solution which has nothing to do with the problem involved is, literally, no solution at all. (more…)