X-ray of Mira, a four-year-old Palestinian girl, shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. Photo: Mimi Sayed.
On September 9, Israel tried to assassinate Hamas’ political leadership in a surprise bombing raid on a compound in Doha where they were gathered in a Qatari government building to assess the latest ceasefire proposal with the imprimatur, for what it’s worth, of the Trump administration.
It wasn’t worth very much. In fact, it may well have been a setup. While the Trump administration claimed it had no foreknowledge of the attack and only learned of it when the Israel fighters were in the air, it strains credulity to think that Israel could get away with sending an attack squadron over Jordan and Iraq to bomb a US ally, which enjoys a security agreement with the US, in a country where the US maintains one of its largest overseas military bases, where 11,000 US troops are stationed.
And it, in fact, Israeli news outlets, including the Netanyahu mouthpiece Channel 14, claimed almost immediately that the Trump administration had been given prior warning of the attack and consented.
This was confirmed a few days later by Axios’s Barak Ravid, a reporter with very close ties to Israeli officials and the IDF: “At least three Israeli officials told me Netanyahu called Trump…around 8 a.m. to tell him that Israel is planning to conduct a strike in Qatar against Hamas leaders. And I have to tell you that, after I ran the story, I got a call from a fourth senior Israeli official that told me that the story was 98% accurate. When I asked him what were the other two percent, he said, ‘The call was not at 8 am — it was 7:45.'”
+ But Trump officials failed to pass this information on to Qatar until after the attacks were underway. According to Qatar’s foreign ministry, “The communication received from one of the U.S. officials came during the sound of explosions.”
+ Ravid quoted a senior Israeli official describing Netanyahu’s state of mind as he ordered the assassination raid on the Hamas leadership in Doha: “He fell in love with being the regional bully, that nobody can expect his next move.”
+Hamas’s leadership survived the attack that killed multiple civilians and members of the Qatari security forces.
+ Qatar has hosted the Hamas political leadership at the request of the US since 2012.
+ Two days before the attack, Trump blasted out on social media what he called his “last warning” to Hamas, demanding that they agree to his ceasefire/hostage release plan or else: The Israelis have accepted my terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”
+ In the last year, Israel has bombed: West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Tunisia and Qatar…(That we know of.)
+ Trump dispatched Marco Rubio to Jerusalem, supposedly to chastise Netanyahu for his (unsuccessful) strike on a US ally. Netanyahu greeted his arrival by escalating his attacks on Gaza City, bombing 30 residential buildings and forcing “thousands of people from their homes.” It received no rebuke from the Secretary of State for the Trump administration.
+ Trump’s response to a question from a reporter about the concerns raised by families of the Israeli hostages/prisoners of war that they might be killed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza City: “Many strange things happen in war and many results occur that no one would have believed could happen.”
+ Among the many “strange things” about wars involving Israel is that the IDF not only has a license to kill American civilians, including children, any time, any where, but that successive US governments (both Democrat and Republican) seemed to actually condone these lethal strikes on their own citizens…
+ After Israel killed 417 Palestinians in Gaza last week, the official death toll has surpassed 65,056, with another 165,697 wounded for a total number of casualties at 130,745. The real death toll may be as high as 680,000.
+ The ongoing Israeli assaults, largely on Gaza City, have displaced 246,000 Palestinians in the last 30 days, at least 125,600 in the last week, many of them multiple times. There are 450,000 Palestinian children in Gaza City, which is now under continuous bombardment. Nearly 20% of the children in Gaza City are suffering from malnutrition. The malnutrition rate among all children in Gaza climbed from 8.3% in July to 13.5% in August.
+ There have been at least four new deaths by starvation in the last 24 hours in Gaza, increasing the number of dead from Israeli-induced famine to 432, including 146 children.
+ Mohammed al-Astal: “What Israel is practicing on the ground goes beyond eliminating Hamas. There’s a general impression among Palestinians that Israel wants to eliminate Gaza and the people.”
+++
+ On September 16, the UN finally released the results of its inquiry into Israeli war crimes in Gaza, concluding that they amounted to four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births. The release of the report was buried on page 8 of the print edition of the New York Times.
+ According to Navi Pallay, head of the UN commission,
The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza. It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention. The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons, who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza. The Commission also finds that Israel has failed to prevent and punish the commission of genocide, through failure to investigate genocidal acts and to prosecute alleged perpetrators.
+ UN Commission: “Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts….To do nothing is not neutrality. It is complicity.”
“The Genocide Convention was born from the ashes of the Holocaust with a solemn vow: ‘Never again.’ That vow is meaningless if it applies only to some and not to others.”
+ Genocide in the cause of initiating a coastal “real estate bonanza”…
+ Israel’s Innovation Minister Gila Gamliel, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party: “We’ll make Gaza uninhabitable until the population leaves, and we’ll do the same in [the West Bank].”
REPORTER: Is Israel committing genocide?
TRUMP: Did anyone commit genocide on October 7th? What do you think about THAT? THAT was genocide, at the highest level. Murder, genocide, call it whatever you want. Babies chopped in half, heads cut off, arms cut off.
Needless to say, no babies were chopped in half on October 7.
+ Francesca Albanese: “Israel is bombing using unconventional weapons … it is trying to forcibly evacuate Palestinians. Why? This is the last piece of Gaza that needs to be rendered unliveable before advancing the ethnic cleansing of that piece of land.”
+++
+ Credit where credit is due: It turns out the numbers put out by the “Hamas-controlled” Gaza Health ministry, and ridiculed as “untrustworthy” by both the Biden and Trump administrations, were, in fact, trustworthy. By the Israeli military’s own statistics, the IDF has inflicted at least 200,000 casualties on Palestinians in Gaza, or nearly 10 times the estimated total number of Hamas fighters.
+ In a recorded conversation, former Israeli army commander, Herzi Halevi, said that Israel had killed or maimed “more than 200,000 Palestinians” and that “not once” was he ever restricted in how he conducted operations.
+ “This isn’t a gentle war. We took the gloves off from the first minute. Sadly, not earlier,” Halevi said. “Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once. Not the military AG [advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] who, by the way, hasn’t the authority to restrict me. There are legal advisers who say: We will know how to defend this legally in the world, and this is very important for the state of Israel. No one is working gently.”
+ A month ago, the IDF published an internal assessment of Operation Gideon’s Chariots. According to the data, during the five months of the operation, the IDF carried out 10,000 strikes and killed 2,100 Palestinians. In other words, nearly 5 strikes per victim. Who was killed in 4 out of every 5 strikes? Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children.
+ 15 of every 16 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza since March have been civilians, according to a report from independent conflict tracker Acled.
+ In the last two years, Israeli forces have also killed nearly 3,000 people attempting to get aid in the Gaza Strip and wounded almost 20,000 others, according to an open-source analysis, suggesting a deliberate policy.
+ Matthew Cassel, a journalist for The Guardian, spent three days speaking to dozens of young Israelis in Tel Aviv and found scant concern for Palestinians as famine, ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter take place day after day, across the border, a mere hour’s drive away.
Cassel: “You might go fight in Gaza.”
Israeli Teen: “I’d love to.”
Cassel: “You would love to?”
Israeli Teen: “Yeah. People think that the children and the men and the women in Gaza, they’re innocent. Bullshit. Everyone has taken part in October 7. You can’t ignore this. No matter what you say, you can’t ignore this. No innocence. Even women and children are not innocent in Gaza. The mothers support terrorists. The children are going to grow up to be killers.
+ Haaretz’s Amos Harel on Netanyahu: “The man leading Israel to deepen the war in the Strip, with a slim chance of victory, is a failed, isolated, and persecuted leader determined to cling to power by any means.”
Move over, Itamar Ben-Gvir, you wuss; stand aside, Bezalel Smotrich, you wimp, and check out Israeli settler Iris Bernstein’s rabid testimony before the Knesset:
How the hell, two years after October 7, does Gaza still exist? How does the Gaza Strip still exist? How are its residents still able to go to the market in some cities? How is it after we were slaughtered in the Gaza Envelope, civilians and soldiers, how are the terrorists still alive, breathing, healthy, their heads held high? When will you understand that the civilians of Gaza are Hamas? They are the ready reserve for new terrorists, every day, again and again and again. , There is a nation here that must be vanquished…What happened to us, the Jewish state that is a superpower? How did we become weak, cowardly, eating ourselves from within? How do we have a leadership so weak in my eyes, cowardly, leftist and domineering officials, generals who are busier trying to please the media, than trampling the enemy and eradicating them. What about tomorrow’s terrorists? Who will deter them? What’s become of us that we turned into doormats, …nobodies instead of wiping Gaza off the map with one giant bulldozer and driving the residents out to the world that cares about them?
+++
+ The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published a devastating new investigation into Israeli sniper attacks on Palestinian children. They consulted with 15 international doctors in a report finding that at least 114 Palestinian children were killed by single gunshot wounds to the head/chest. The forensic experts said the wounds are consistent with aimed fire. Two independent forensic pathologists, asked to review images and X-rays, said the injuries were consistent with bullets (not shrapnel). ’In all likelihood, these are distance shots aimed at the head and/or neck with military ammunition,’ says forensic pathologist Wim Van de Voorde, emeritus professor at the University of Leuven.
+ Dr Faidel Naem, an orthopedic surgeon in Gaza, on this week’s bombing of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City: “Last night, Al-Rantisi hospital, Gaza’s only specialized children’s hospital, was bombed 3 times. Inside: 40 patients, 4 ICU children, 8 newborns, cancer & dialysis patients. Some fled under fire, others remain trapped with the staff. A sanctuary of healing turned to horror.”
Nada Abu Alrub treats a 14-year-old with a gunshot wound to the head, suffered at a GHF food distribution site.
+ Australian doctor Nada Abu Alrub shares this from inside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where she is volunteering:
We see what horror movies don’t dare show: abdomens ripped open, limbs gone, brains exposed, eyes destroyed, children burned alive.
The majority come from so-called “humanitarian aid” sites, famine zones turned death traps. Young people risk everything for a bag of flour, only to return shot in the head, neck, or chest. Snipers, illegal bullets tearing inside their bodies. Most are under 25. They are starved, then slaughtered at the very places meant to feed them.
This is a 16-year-old with a bullet to his brain shot at the Netzarim Gaza Humanitarian Foundation GHF site.
This is Gaza. And no words, no screen, no distance can carry the weight of what’s being done to its people.
+ Imagine how wretched conditions must be for Israel’s Supreme Court to rule that the government has deprived Palestinian detainees of even a minimum subsistence diet.
+++
+ The UN endorsement of a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine passed by a vote of 147-10, with only the US, Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, and the tiny Pacific Island nations of Nauru, Tonga, Micronesia, & Palau. Of course, the two-state solution is far past its sell-by date.
+ United States vetoed a Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and immediate, dignified release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups.
+ She Wore Red for the Occasion…
In Favor: 14
Against: 1 (US)
Abstain: 0
+ The week the UK, Canada and Australia recognized Palestinian statehood, followed a few days later by France. Here’s Keir Starmer’s cautiously worded letter to Mahmood Abbas…
+ BBC: “Isn’t it a strange logic that you’re recognizing a Palestinian state when much of the place has been flattened and tens of thousands of people have been killed?”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy: “That’s precisely why you might decide that it’s important to stand up for those two states.”
+ The really strange logic is that Gaza has been flattened and tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel with weapons supplied by the UK.
+ Leila Sansour, writing in the LRB, on the recognition of Palestinian statehood, as a first step toward liberation: “It is an act not of concession, but of discipline and clarity. It formalizes the reality that Palestinians live on this land, and that we will continue to live here. Recognition does not create these facts; it simply acknowledges them. It offers Israel a predictable set of obligations, creating a stage where the security of both peoples is not merely proclaimed but enforced through verified agreements, monitored borders and structured co-operation.”
+ In an emphatic speech before the UN General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for a UN protective force to be sent into Gaza. This measure will soon be put to a vote before the full assembly. Every country will be forced to go on record and Israel can’t rely on the US to bail it out since the measure will not be subject to a veto.
We need a powerful army of the countries that do not accept genocide. That is why I invite nations of the world and their peoples more than anything, as an integral part of humanity, to bring together weapons and armies. We must liberate Palestine. I invite the armies of Asia, the great Slavic people who defeated Hitler with great heroism and the Latin American armies of Bolivar.
+ President of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, said that his country was willing to provide 20,000 soldiers for an armed force that could be deployed in Gaza.
+ In the last week, Spain canceled a 700 million euro contract with Elbit Systems for artillery systems and a 275 million euro contract for Spike missiles from Rafael, both Israeli-owned firms.
+ In 2024, more Israelis fled the country than the number of immigrants who moved there. About 31,000 immigrants arrived in Israel compared to more than 82,000 who left. By comparison, in 2023, 46,000 immigrants entered Israel and about 55,000 left the country.
+ Netanyahu explains the root cause of the collapse of international support for Israel. In a word, TikTok: “Countries like Qatar and China invest huge sums to influence Western media with an anti-Israeli agenda, using bots, AI, and publications. You open your phone and you’re bombarded, especially on TikTok. It’s far more powerful than traditional media.”
+ The UAE’s “red line” was drawn in the same disappearing ink as Biden’s…
Ex-IDF soldier: “When you’re in a combat zone and you can see an Arab begging for his life and peeing his pants, and you…you know what? Let’s say you put a bullet in his head. A month or two goes by and you say to yourself, ‘I actually killed a person, who was begging for his life.’ Maybe he wasn’t even involved, you know, because there are…uh, not everybody hates us. When you look at the big picture, maybe there are those who don’t want this at all, and all they want is to wake up in the morning, make a living, feed their family and live to raise children. And when you put a bullet in the head of someone like that, it stays with you for years. And it can leave you with a massive wound that will never go away.”
+++
+ On September 9, two boats in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were attacked by drones (apparently Israeli) while in Tunisian coastal waters. One of them was hit while moored in a Tunis port. Liam Cunningham: “Not only was this an attack on the flotilla, it was an attack on Tunisian territory and an attack on Portugal. The ship ‘FAMILY’ travelled under a Portuguese flag.”
+ On September 10, Israeli airstrikes killed 31 journalists in targeted attacks on the media offices in the Houthi government’s Moral Guidance Directorate in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
+ The Committee to Protect Journalists, which now maintains a database of journalists killed by Israel in the Middle East: “At least 201 journalists and media workers were killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists began gathering data in 1992.”
+ Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, stated that she plans to investigate the media’s role in abetting the Gaza genocide: “I’ve already planned to investigate this in one of my upcoming reports…Western media have put themselves at the service of this genocidal enterprise.”
+ Altamont comes to Gaza: A BBC report revealed that members of an anti-Islamic biker gang of Iraq war vets called the Infidels have been hired to provide security for UG Solutions, a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid delivery sites–scenes of mass shootings where more than 1,000 starving Palestinians have been gunned down while trying to get parcels of aid.
+ Israeli forces are firing on water deliveries by humanitarian aid groups. Médecins Sans Frontières: “On 15 September, Israeli forces fired upon our clearly marked water truck in Gaza City. This attack cannot be dismissed as an error. It was a deliberate attempt to sabotage water distribution to civilians.”
+ David Klion: “I think those of us who spoke up about the Gaza genocide when Biden was president intuitively understand, in a way more recent converts might not, that none of our institutions are led by people with principles or integrity, and none of them are going to stand up to Trump.”
+ Jacinda Arden, former Prime Minister of New Zealand: “We should start with Gaza. There is a path to stopping the genocide still happening daily before us: more countries must recognise Palestinian statehood; any cooperation that facilitates military action must end; humanitarian aid needs to urgently reach the trapped and starving and medical care must be available for the injured, the malnourished, and for the expectant and new mothers.”
+ Last week, Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov called for an end to the war during a London concert. A few days later, he was arrested at a demonstration on the Gaza border against the war. “Stop the genocide,” Volkov said as he was being hauled away by Israeli police. “It’s ruining everything. Stop it now.”
+++
Laila al-Arian and the Fault Lines team at Al Jazeera have produced a riveting new documentary on Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who has been held by Israel under horrific conditions for more than 250 days.
+++
+ A panel of UN experts on the economy determined that “Economic life in Gaza has been decimated. Most commercial, agricultural and industrial assets have been damaged. Unemployment has surged to 80+%. GDP has dramatically shrunk, and trade has stalled. Poverty is endemic.”
+ Among the economic crises Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, the UN panel highlighted the following:
Most banks and ATMs have been destroyed.
+ Israel has blocked the inflow of new currency, with severe cash scarcity driving drastic cost-of-living inflation and a decline in the value of wages.
+ Cooking oil prices rose by 1,200% and flour by 5,000% by mid-2025.
+ Humanitarian workers are reportedly losing nearly 40 per cent of their salaries just to access their wages.
+ Digital payments are impeded by electricity and telecommunications outages.
+++
+ I asked AI to translate this into English, idiomatic American English even, but it gave up…Trump: “So they have hostages, it could be a little bit less than 20, you know, they tend to die. Even though they’re young people, they’re dying. Young people don’t die. Young people stay alive…We have about 38 bodies. Bodies. Meaning bodies”
+ Mahmoud Khalil (who a Trump immigration judge has just ordered deported to either Syria or Algeria, despite holding a green card, being married and a father to US citizens and having no criminal record) ring a bell, Chris? No? How about Rümeysa Öztürk?
+ Tom Barrack, Trump envoy to Syria and Ambassador to Turkey on the “end game” in Gaza:
Peace is an illusion. There will probably never be peace. Because everybody’s fighting for legitimacy. So people will say, ‘They’re fighting over borders and boundaries.’ That’s not what they’re fighting over. A border or a boundary is the currency of negotiation. The end result is that someone wants dominance, which means that somebody has to submit. And in that part of the world, submit? There’s no Arab word for “submit.” They can’t wrap their heads around “submit.”
Note to Barrack: “Islam” means “submission” and a “Muslim” in Arabic means a “submitter.”
+ Intriguingly, Charlie Kirk was killed as his views on Israel, which he once boasted he would “kill and die” for, had begun to moderate, ever so slightly, evidence of just how deeply Israel’s genocide in Gaza has begun to blow back against its supporters in the US. He spoke out against GOP plans to expand laws banning anti-Israel boycotts, claiming attempts to suppress the BDS movement would backfire on the party and “play into growing narratives that Israel is running the U.S. government.” Kirk opposed the crackdowns on campus protests when they targeted US citizens: “We’ve allowed far too many people who hate America to move here from abroad, but the right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.” He urged the Trump administration to back off plans to criminalize “anti-Semitic/Zionist” speech, saying, “Once ‘antisemitism’ becomes valid grounds to censor or even imprison somebody, there will be frantic efforts to label all kinds of speech as antisemitic — the same way the left labeled all kinds of statements as ‘racist’ to justify silencing their opposition.” He speculated that Netanyahu had advance warning of the October 7 attacks and allowed them to proceed in order to justify an all-out war in Gaza. He opposed the US going to war against Iran. He credibly claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent.
+ Here’s Kirk earlier this summer explaining to a focus group the amount of pressure he was getting to cancel an appearance by Tucker Carlson at one of his events because of Carlson’s fervent opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza:
Whatever, that’s not gonna happen. The reason we’re doing this focus group is that I have been trying to tell them there is an earthquake coming on this issue and in this country, and they don’t believe me. So I’m like, why don’t you just hear it from people themselves?
+ Hasan Piker on what he would have told Kirk during their scheduled debate:
I was supposed to debate Charlie Kirk. Here’s what I would have told him…The genocide in Gaza has claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives. Meanwhile, Israel has carried out brazen assassinations and attempted assassinations in Iran, Qatar, Lebanon and Yemen. Backed up by Mr. Trump and, previously, by Mr. Biden, our government’s virtually unyielding support for Israel tells a scary story about the country we live in.
It suggests that, merely because we designate them as such, American enemies can be marked for death. Whether such rivals pose a legitimate threat, the “fire and fury” of our military and our allies have clearly become the default answer for how we deal with a world whose interests don’t align with our own. Pulling a gun or launching a missile has become part of our national character, a sad reduction of morality to the time it takes for fingers to pull triggers?
+ Mike Huckabee is just plain weird. Here he is comparing the US relationship with Israel to his own marriage:
Israel is the most resilient nation I’ve ever seen on Earth. It may sound a little as if I’m almost speaking on behalf of Israel more than the US, but I want to explain that part of my advocacy in our relationship is because, if you came to my house tonight for dinner and you came in and you said, “Oh, Mike, we really like you, we really think the world of you, we just enjoy being here with you, we’re so exciting to be here with you and having dinner with you, but your wife? We can’t stand her. We don’t like her a bit. I hope she’s not going to be at the table.” I would say, “She will be. You won’t be. Get out.” Because if you were to insult my partner. You have insulted me.
+ This week, Zohran Mamdani reiterated his pledge that, if elected mayor of New York City, he would order the NYPD to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.
+ Jeremy Fistel, the man from Plano, Texas, had some very specific and very depraved fantasies about how he wanted Zohran Mamdani to be killed, including, “I’d love to see an IDF bullet go through your skull.”
Pretty sure Mr. Fistel is not a card-carrying member of ANTIFA.
+ How ironic that anti-fascism is about to become the new anti-semitism…
+ Mario Savio, where are you? The administrators of UC Berkeleyturned over to the Trump Administration the names of 160 students and faculty members, including the philosopher Judith Butler, for making what it alleges are anti-semitic statements.
Judith Butler: “The students, the faculty, the staff who have opposed genocide or who have supported Palestinian rights and freedoms have been consistently accused of anti-semitism even though there is no good evidence that antisemitism is rampant on campus. To take a position against genocide is certainly not an antisemitic thing to do. Most Jews are against genocide and we were taught to be against genocide. And we were taught, as well, that ’Never Again’ is a slogan that should apply to all people.”
+ I keep coming back to this line from Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis,when thinking about the liberal West’s hollow handwringing on Gaza: “To know and not to act is not to know.”
+ More from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Jane Fonda of the Far Right: “They believe in a ‘war economy’…They’ll say ‘Marjorie, you have thousands of jobs in your district that rely on these government contracts.’ Well, you want to know something, I’m not very interested in funding an economy that’s based on killing people, especially innocent people and children.”
+++
+ Dutch Member of Parliament Esther Ouwehand, leader of the Party for Animals, was told to change her outfit after wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag during a parliamentary debate. She soon returned to the floor in a blouse with a watermelon print and resumed her speech. (If we had a Party for Animals, I might consider voting again.)
+ Hannah Einbinder on saying “Go birds, fuck ICE and free Palestine!” during her acceptance speech at the Emmys…
It is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel. Our religion and our culture is such an important and long-standing institution that is really separate to this sort of ethnonationalist state.
+ More than 4,500 film workers (including Ayo Edebiri, Brian Cox, Josh O’Connor, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Cynthia Nixon, Javier Bardem, Hannah Einbinder and Morgan Spector) are boycotting Israeli film institutions implicated in the genocide & apartheid of Palestinian people…
+ Spain’s PM, Pedro Sánchez, at Columbia University:
Defending your country is one thing. But killing 60,000 civilians, bombing hospitals, and starving children to death is something else entirely…We are witnessing one of the darkest tragedies of the 21st century unfold before our eyes.
+ Sánchez also warned Israel to stop its attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and said Spain would join Italy in sending warships to the Mediterranean to protect the humanitarian aid ships bound for Gaza: “The Government of Spain demands that international law be complied with and that the right of its citizens to navigate the Mediterranean under safe conditions be respected. Tomorrow itself, a maritime action vessel equipped with all necessary means will set sail from Cartagena in case it is necessary to assist the flotilla and carry out any rescue.”…
The Government of Spain demands that international law be complied with and that the right of its citizens to navigate the Mediterranean under safe conditions be respected. Tomorrow itself, a maritime action vessel equipped with all necessary means will set sail from Cartagena in case it is necessary to assist the flotilla and carry out any rescue.
+ “The Sea,” an Israeli film about a Palestinian boy who wants to visit the beach in Tel Aviv, won the Israeli film Academy Award and will represent Israel at the Oscars. In response, the Israeli government suspended all funding to the Israeli film academy…
+ Banksy’s latest mural appeared on the morning of September 8 on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice building in London, after the arrests of 900 people protesting the criminalization of Palestine Action.
+ British police tried to remove Banksy’s image and made it even more haunting…Wasn’t it Robert Rauschenberg who erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning, thus turning a doodle into an iconic piece of post-modern art?
+ How Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Canadian pediatrician who has months working on the ground in Gaza, to a German politician who dismissed accounts by health care workers of famine and genocide in Gaza:
Honestly, sir, if you can listen to what we said, if you can listen to every credible international organization, whether its the UN to Doctors Without Borders, to Save the Children or the International Court of Justice. If you can listen to any credible organization, and some of the only independent witnesses let in on the ground, sharing these testimonies with you and consistently across every one of the groups I mentioned, we’re telling you the same thing, and you can respond with what you just responded, I think you need to really consider what inherent racism and dehumanization you have in you.
+ From Kaouther Ben Hania’s acceptance speech at the Venice Film Festival after her film The Voice of Hind Rajab won the Grand Jury Prize…
Hind’s voice was a cry for rescue that the entire world could hear, but no one answered. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability and justice is served. Cinema cannot bring her back nor can it erase the atrocity that was committed against her. But cinema can preserve her voice. This is not only about memory but urgency. Hind’s mother and little brother, are still in Gaza, their lives are still in danger. I urge the leaders of the world to save them…This is not just Hind’s story, it is the story of a criminal Israeli regime that acts with impunity… May Hind rest in peace, may the eyes of her killers never sleep, and free Palestine.
+ This sounds like some kind of parody from the Onion, but it really happened. The Los Angeles Holocaust Museum came under such fierce attack from Zionist donors for producing a meme saying, “‘Never again'” Can’t Only Mean Never Again for Jews” that it deleted the image and apologized for posting on social media.
+ On her book tour, Kamala Harris has taken to saying that she pleaded with Biden to extend the empathy he expressed for Ukrainians to Gaza, but “he couldn’t do it; while he could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced.” Of course, Harris couldn’t do it either, refusing to allow even an elected Palestinian-American from Georgia a speaking spot at the convention. Moreover, Palestinians didn’t need empathy from Biden and Harris, they needed them to simply abide by US and international law and stop the flow of arms to Israel when it became clear Israel was using American weapons to commit genocide.
+ Michael Rosen’s poem, Don’t Mention the Children, read by British celebrities as a protest against the UK government continuing to arm the genocide in Gaza…
On July 30, Israeli forces fired on this group of Palestinians, as they awaited the arrival of a UN convoy delivering parcels of food and water. 71 Palestinians were killed at other food aid sites that same day. (Still from video shot by OCHA.)
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