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…)
Category: Israel Palestine
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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
SpokesmanTerrorists, the terrorists
Hiding under the Hospitals
Under the Kindergartens
Under the Schools
The colonial narrative
Always
Baying for more deadNo electricity, no water
No food, no shelter
What will happen
Hapless Gazans
I worryStarvation dehydration trauma
Trauma for life
Trauma for the unborn
Flight desperation
The Will to LiveI 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 onLimbs hands bones sticking
Out of the rubble
Bits of clothing
Bits of wheels
Bits of utensils
Bits of rags
From under the rubbleI 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 DecencyThe ordinary children
The ordinary women
The ordinary men
InnocentEnough of revenge
Enough of killing
Enough of murderI hear Biden, Netanyahu, Blinken
Fencesitter, Perpetrator, Apologist
All Respectively
All for this War
All war criminalsEliminate Hamas
We are not Terrorists
We the civilised
We the technologically advanced
We the Enlightened
We the successful conquerors
We the ethnic cleansersWe 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 NecessaryNow our task is to cleanse Gaza
It’s NecessaryHow dare they protest
Being caged like
Animals in an open air prisonWe give the work
Ungrateful savages
Complaining, ungracious
The wretched of the EarthWe have only beaten them
Caged them
Restricted their movement
Humiliated, Condescended
It was NecessaryOnly killed around a hundred thousand
Not much
Since the First Nakba
It was NecessaryWe only tried to break their Spirit
It was NecessaryHow dare they stand up
Revolt against us
The Civilised
The MastersAnd we will go on
Until we cleansed
You savages
Especially you now in GazaIn Africa, Latin America
Asia and Everywhere
Everywhere…For our Lebensraum
For we are One with GodJohn-Janusz Ebel , 23 November 2023
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)
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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…)



