2 hours ago https://www.trtworld.com/middle-eas...-human-rights-much-before-hamas-raid-17971657 Five Israeli army units found violating human rights much before Hamas raid Washington declines to identify military units who've committed serious crimes against Palestinians in occupied West Bank but press reports say a battalion called Netzah Yehuda, composed mainly of ultra-Orthodox Jews, is one of the units. US State Department is reviewing its plans to impose sanctions on the Israel Army battalion "Netzah Yehuda" battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank./ Photo: X The United States, which continues to arm Israel and shield it at the UN, has concluded that five Israeli military units committed serious human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank much before the Hamas raid on October 7. Four of these units have taken remedial measures, the State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday, with consultations under way with the Israeli government over the fifth unit. "After a careful process, we found five Israeli units responsible for individual incidents of gross violations of human rights," State Department added. All of this behaviour took place before the October 7 Hamas attack and it was not in Gaza, he noted. Patel declined to identify the units or say what measures the Israeli government had taken against them. Press reports have identified one battalion called the Netzah Yehuda, with a lengthy history of misconduct, influenced by an ideology ingrained in settler-colonialism, as being accused of abuses. US law bars the government from funding or arming foreign security forces against which there are credible allegations of human rights abuses. United States is the main supplier of military and monetary assistance to Israel, giving its ally $3.8 billion in annual military dole. It declared its full support for Israel since the beginning of the war last year. US never holds back in arming Israel, regardless of alarming Gaza civilian casualties. Genocide in Gaza? The Palestinian resistance group Hamas says its October 7 blitz on Israel that surprised its arch-enemy was orchestrated in response to Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank and to put Palestine question "back on the table." In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside Gaza, including towns and other communities as far as 24 kilometres from the Gaza fence. In many areas, they are reported to have confronted numerous soldiers as Israel's military hurried to mount a response, resulting in the killing of some 1140 Israelis, hundreds of them soldiers. Hamas fighters took some 240 captives to Gaza as well. Dozens of them were later exchanged for Palestinians incarcerating in Israeli dungeons. Presently 130 captives remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes. Since October last year, Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza from air, land and sea, killing more than 34,400 Palestinians, mostly children and women, wounding more than 77,600 and displacing most of 2.3 million people in the tiny coastal enclave. For their complicity in the Gaza massacre, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is likely to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior military officials, according to multiple media reports. Already, the International Court of Justice has found it is plausible that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, says there are reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. SOURCE: AFP
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/29/...el-hamas-war-voter-disapproval-sot-src-digvid Michael Moore's message to Biden Biden knows its wrong but continues to do it. Isn't that the story of all Christians? They can't help themselves even when they know it's wrong. So much for the 'power of jesus to change lives' - it's a myth but most can't admit it.
Hey Biden & Blinken. Keep supplying the bombs. You know Netanyahu is corrupt, you know he's avoiding accountability, you know he's using war fighting to stay in power for as long as possible. You know this has turned into one big giant fuckup where you'll get booted out of office soon. (unlike Netanyahu). But let's not think about that, let's keep blaming Hamas for all our problems. Netanyahu says Israel will invade Rafah as Gaza ceasefire talks continue Israeli PM Netanyahu says Israeli forces will enter the southern Gaza city ‘with or without a deal’. Relatives of Palestinian victims who lost their life after Israeli air raid, take their bodies from morgue of al-Najjar Hospital for buried in Rafah, Gaza on April 29, 2024 [Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu Agency] Published On 30 Apr 2024 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has renewed his promise that Israel will launch a ground assault on Rafah in southern Gaza amid shaky ongoing truce talks to reach a ceasefire deal. Netanyahu on Tuesday said Israel will destroy Hamas’ battalions there “with or without a deal” to achieve “total victory” in the nearly seven-month war. Israel and Hamas are negotiating a potential ceasefire agreement and an exchange of hostages held by Palestinian groups in Gaza for prisoners held in Israeli jails. “The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’ battalions there – with or without a deal, to achieve the total victory,” the prime minister said in a meeting with families of hostages held by armed groups in Gaza. Hamas has repeatedly said it will not accept a deal that does not include a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza – which have been major sticking points in negotiations. Netanyahu has for months repeatedly pledged to go ahead with an invasion of Rafah, despite public pushback from Israel’s main ally the US. Aid agencies have warned that an assault of Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, would be catastrophic. UN chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday urged Israel not to go ahead with a military assault that would “be an unbearable escalation, killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.” The Israeli war on Gaza war followed the unprecedented October 7 Hamas-led raid into southern Israel in which at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics, and about 250 others were seized as captives. Israel has said the fighters are still holding approximately 100 captives and the remains of more than 30 others. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. The war has driven approximately 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, mostly to southern Gaza, and caused vast destruction in several towns and cities, while pushing the north to the brink of famine. Looming assault Israel’s army radio said a plan to attack Rafah will get the go-ahead “in the coming days” if there is no ceasefire deal with Hamas. Israel’s GLZ Radio attributing information to “security officials”, said in a social media post “the order will be given to launch an operation in Rafah” if progress is not made within days on “negotiations for a deal”. Israeli media outlet N12 in a post on X reported that, according to hostage families, Netanyahu told them the evacuation of the population in Rafah has already begun. Translation: The families of the Hero Forum: Prime Minister Netanyahu told us at the meeting that the evacuation of the population in Rafah has already begun in preparation for an operation that will happen soon, and said that all the cabinet ministers support this. However, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday that “people have not yet been asked to evacuate from Rafah”. “But there is a sense that if there is not a ceasefire deal this week, it could happen at any time,” he said during a news briefing in Geneva. The Reuters news agency reported that “a person close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” said Israel is waiting for Hamas to respond to its proposal before sending a team to Egypt to continue ceasefire talks. According to UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, the Israeli proposal would see a 40-day pause in fighting, rather than a permanent ceasefire as Hamas has repeatedly asked for. A response to Israel’s latest proposal is expected from Hamas by Wednesday evening, Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker reported. Hamas reviewing proposal US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not respond directly to reporters when questioned about Netanyahu’s plans to go ahead with the ground assault. He instead stressed that Washington’s focus was on reaching a truce deal and the release of hostages. “Now it’s on Hamas. No more delays, no more excuses. The time to act is now,” Blinken told the press on the outskirts of Jordan’s capital, Amman. “We want to see in the coming days this agreement coming together.” “[A truce] is the best way, the most effective way, to relieve the suffering and also to create an environment in which we can hopefully move forward to something that is really sustainable and has lasting peace for the people who so desperately need it,” he added. Blinken is expected to visit Israel on his latest trip to the region, which began Monday in Saudi Arabia. Hamas said it continues to review the Israeli proposal. A senior official from the group noted it continues to ignore demands for a permanent end to the war. “It’s clear from the Israeli paper that they are still insisting on two major issues: they don’t want a complete ceasefire and they are not talking – in a serious way – about the withdrawal from Gaza. In fact, they are still talking about their presence, which means they will continue to occupy Gaza,” Hamdan told Al Jazeera on Monday. “We have serious questions for the mediators. If there are positive answers, I think we can move forward.” Egypt, Qatar and the US have been mediating talks between Israel and Hamas. Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
All the more reason to vote for Trump, the pendulum is swinging.... an hour ago https://www.trtworld.com/us-and-can...d-had-bad-experience-with-bibi-trump-17987536 'Biden will be prosecuted... had bad experience with Bibi' —Trump In an interview with Time magazine, Trump says if he wins back White House, Biden could face multiple criminal prosecutions, while also reflecting on his "bad experience" with Netanyahu, leaving open possibility of withholding military aid to Israel. Reuters Former U.S. President Trump's criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records continues in New York / Photo: Reuters Former US president Donald Trump has issued a blunt warning, indicating that should he be re-elected as president in November, Joe Biden and his family may find themselves subject to multiple criminal prosecutions. In a freewheeling interview with Time magazine's Eric Cortellessa, Trump gave a glimpse of what his second term would be like —hinging on the outcome of his legal battles, while emphasising that unless the US Supreme Court grants him immunity, Biden's future could be fraught with legal challenges. With recent polls Trump edging out Biden by slim margins in pivotal swing states, the former president is marking a notable shift from his previous campaigns. Speaking with the American news magazine in his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump vowed to appoint a "real special prosecutor" to pursue Biden, asserting, "If they [US Supreme Court] said that a president doesn't get immunity, then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes." Israel-Palestine conflict Reflecting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brutalities in Gaza, Trump refrained from endorsing him when questioned about his continuance as prime minister. Asked whether he would consider withholding US military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war in Gaza, "he doesn't say yes, but he doesn't rule it out, either." "I had a bad experience with Bibi," Trump told the magazine. "There was a time when I thought two-state could work," the former president reflected on the Israel-Palestine conflict, "Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough." January 6 riots Addressing concerns about potential violence akin to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots, Trump expressed confidence in a peaceful outcome. "I think we're gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence," he states. Regarding the 2020 election, Trump voiced skepticism towards hiring individuals who accepted Biden's victory. "I wouldn't feel good about it," he admits. Trump's plans for this final term as president include extensive control over the Department of Justice, intending to pardon most January 6 rioters and dismiss any US attorney who defies his directives, according to Time. Regarding the January 6 incident, Trump told the magazine, he would "absolutely" entertain the notion of pardoning the defendants. SOURCE: TRT World
So now American citizens are attacking each other. A fine mess Biden and Blinken (the ambasador for Israel) have brought to the country. Pro-Palestinian student camp in Los Angeles attacked by Israel supporters By DAVID SWANSON, Reuters Published May 1, 2024 Pro-Israel counter-protesters attack an encampment of students supporting Palestinians in Gaza on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), May 1, 2024. REUTERS/ David Swanson LOS ANGELES — US police deployed in force on the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) campus on Wednesday morning after Israel supporters attacked a camp set up by pro-Palestinian protesters. Witness footage from the scene, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to attack wooden boards being held up as a makeshift barricade to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom held placards or umbrellas. On the other side of the country, police in New York arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment on Tuesday night. The Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave have unleashed the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism protests of 2020. As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's bombardment and blockade of Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests. About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack but the Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, obliterated much of the enclave's infrastructure, and created a humanitarian crisis verging on famine. The student protests in the United States have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment. On Tuesday, school officials informed the protesters that the encampment was unlawful and violated university policy. UCLA Chancellor Gene Brock said it included people "unaffiliated with our campus," though he provided no evidence of the presence of outsiders. Footage from the early hours showed mostly male counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment. Some yelled pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off. "They were coming up here and just violently attacking us," said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA. "I just didn't think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them." Demonstrators on both sides sprayed each other and fights broke out. Another pro-Palestinian student protester, Sophia Sandino, said: "We had people [spraying] us, beating us with bats and sticks, throwing whatever they could to us and none of this law enforcement was here at all. So it's kind of disappointing that we're seen as the perpetrators here." The Los Angeles Police Department said it had responded to a request from UCLA to restore order and maintain public safety "due to multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on their campus." Broadcast footage later showed a police cordon clearing a central quad beside the encampment. By 5 a.m. (1200 GMT) they had erected a metal crowd barrier in front of the encampment and the area was quiet. Los Angeles Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district includes UCLA, posted on X: "Everyone has a right to free speech and protest, but the situation on UCLA’s campus is out of control and is no longer safe." Columbia demonstrators arrested On Tuesday night, New York City police had arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League school had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks. Officers climbed through a second-storey window into Hamilton Hall, which protesters had occupied in the early hours of Tuesday—and which they had renamed Hind's Hall, after the six-year old Gaza girl who had begged for rescue for hours before being found dead, along with the Palestinian ambulance workers who had gone to retrieve her, in an Israeli strike. Within three hours, they had cleared the protesters and arrested dozens, a police spokesperson said. Columbia president Minouche Shafik asked police to stay on campus until at least May 17—two days after graduation—to maintain order and ensure that encampments were not set up again. Students standing outside the hall—the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s—jeered at police with shouts of "Shame, shame!." Police were seen loading dozens of detainees onto a bus, with their hands bound behind their backs by zip-ties, the scene illuminated with the flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles. "Free, free, free Palestine!" protesters chanted outside the building. Others yelled "Let the students go!" Sueda Polat of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of student groups that organized the protests, said they did not pose a danger and urged police to back down. Shafik accuses protesters of vandalism and trespass Shafik said the Hamilton Hall occupiers had vandalized university property and were trespassing. The university earlier warned that students taking part in the occupation faced academic expulsion. A few hours before police entered Columbia, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and police officials said the Hamilton Hall takeover had been instigated by "outside agitators" unaffiliated with Columbia. Adams provided no evidence. One student protest leader, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar attending Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, disputed the assertion. Police were also called in to clear encampments and make arrests overnight at Tulane University in New Orleans, University of Arizona and City College of New York in Harlem. Dozens were arrested at City College, the New York Times reported. UCLA is part of the University of California system. It has about 32,000 undergraduate students and is located in the residential neighborhood of Westwood just outside of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. — Reuters
It doesn't take much imagination to see how this shit show will morph. On the one side you have cultist Israel / zionist / religion leaders like Biden and his flanky Blinken pushing for conflict while pretending not to. On the other side you have the majority of Americans who don't want a bar of another forever war in the MEast. Then you have Russia and Iran who see an opportunity to exploit the situation, possibly China too. So you have Biden and the people pulling in opposite directions. I can't see this ending well. Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. MATT: 22 25
The reality of Biden's policy. "I want Israeli hostages returned safe by the killing of Palestinian civilians to achieve that aim by supplying the weapons to Israel." "I know Netanyahu is a nutcase but what can I do?" "What I don't know is that I too am a nutcase".
Chris Hayes Says People Complain About College Protests to Avoid Thinking About ‘Real Human Beings’ Killed in Gaza War | Video Stephanie Kaloi Thu, May 2, 2024 https://www.yahoo.com/news/chris-hayes-says-people-complain-024220005.html Coverage of college protests against the Israel-Hamas war has dominated news cycles in recent weeks even as thousands of people continue to die in the actual war, something Chris Hayes described as “a bit decadent.” In a searing segment of “All In with Chris Hayes,” the MSNBC host said that the media attention could be due to the fact that “it’s hard” to think of the tens of thousands of people who have been killed in Gaza, and it’s difficult to “contend with them as actual real human beings who lived lives before you took them.” Instead, it is “much easier to get angry at the spoiled brats on college campuses.” The focus on student protestors is “an evasion” he said. “It avoids the difficult task of being universally empathetic to our fellow human beings, and truly reckoning with the scale of devastation that is wrought by our country, in our names, with our support.” On Tuesday several of those protests tipped past boiling, particularly at Columbia University (where SWAT teams entered the occupied Hamilton Hall in riot gear) and UCLA (where the LAPD faced off against non-student agitators). Hayes argued that these kinds of crackdowns are basically meant to distract from the more important issue. “What seems most worth debating isn’t campus speech, but whether the U.S. government should continue to fund and support an Israeli war in Gaza that has pushed more than a million people to the brink of famine,” Hayes said earlier in the segment. “A war that has damaged half of the buildings in Gaza, a war that has failed to bring home most of the hostages held by Hamas—that has in fact led to the death of some of those hostages, as well as the deaths of an estimated 34,000 Palestinians, including roughly 10,000 women and 13,000 children,” Hayes added. (As of April 24, 2024, ReliefWeb reported an estimated 42,510 Palestinians have been killed over 200 days of warfare. Of those, the aid organization has said 38,621 were civilians. This number includes 10,091 women and 15,780 children, and the bodies of thousands of people are still buried under the destruction.) “Is that ongoing effort morally defensible?” he asked. “Is it strategically wise are we as a nation doing the right or wrong thing and continuing to support it?” Hayes added that the protests called to mind similar actions leading up to the Iraq War in early 2003. Those events, which were “both widely attended and widely attacked,” were also surrounded by conversations that had nothing to do with “whether the war in Iraq was moral and prudent.” “The war in Iraq demonstrably was neither,” Hayes continued. “On that, the protesters were right. Which brings us back to Columbia University, where 56 years ago, almost to the day, student protesters took over the same building, Hamilton Hall, that was occupied earlier this week … They believed the war was a moral catastrophe and the U.S. should stop waging it. They were right.” A heightened focus on protests in the United States “avoids the difficult task of being universally empathetic to our fellow human beings,” Hayes also said, “and truly reckoning with the scale of devastation that is wrought by our country in our names with our support.” As he illustrated, the U.S. spent two decades waging the Global War on Terror after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 430,000 people—”children, women, elderly, innocents.” The Vietnam War killed an estimated 1 million people—”civilians, women, children, male-noun combatants, old people, and the like.” Like the tens of thousands killed in Gaza, “It’s hard to think of them, to contend with them as actual real human beings who lived lives before you took them, who were people like you and I, who were loved by the people in their lives,” Hayes continued. “It is much easier to get angry at the spoiled brats on college campuses.” The university protests began on April 17 when students at Columbia set up an encampment on the school’s lawn and demanded the school divest from Israel. Since then protests have sprung up and students have been arrested at over 40 colleges and universities, including Ohio State University, Tulane University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.