Israel Murders Babies

A lot has been written and spoken about the murder of babies on Oct 7, 2023, when the al-Qassam brigades and other fighters escaped the fortified borders of Gaza and attacked numerous military and nonmilitary targets in Israel in the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation. Hundreds of articles were written, hundreds of videos recorded, leading to hundreds of millions of conversations, live and digital, about Hamas targeting babies in their attack. Political decisions were made, war plans were laid, personal opinions were set, funds were raised, lamentations were expressed, hatred was established, or was reaffirmed, or was pushed into vengeance over this understanding.

Virtually 100% of all of this was a lie.

The number of babies killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was two.

The old saying that a lie travels half way around the world while the truth is putting on its boots needs to be updated for our times and our media reality. Nowadays a lie will travel around the world a hundred million times before the truth can even remove its shackles.

The number of babies killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was two.

Neither of these two babies was killed in a deliberate attack targeting the baby directly. One baby was killed when it was struck by gunfire or shrapnel fired through a safe room door. One baby was born in an emergency surgery after her mother was killed and lived only 14 hours.

So what does the propaganda serve?

As with all propaganda, it serves to influence individuals into collective thought and action and to conceal, obscure, or forgive the propagandist and their allies’ actions. As such, the baby murder propaganda surrounding Al-Aqsa Flood was enormously effective.

The number of babies killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was two.

The number of identified babies under 1 year old killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7, 2023 is at least 710.

That number does not include indirect deaths by starvation, disease, or lack of medical care caused by the widespread Israeli destruction of Gaza infrastructure, medical facilities and the long term denial of food and aid. It also does not include corpses trapped under rubble and unable to be recovered. It also does not include babies between age 1 and 2. The real number of babies murdered by Israeli forces is almost certainly several times the reported 710.

Israel murders babies. If they don’t want to be known as baby murderers, then they should stop murdering babies.

One of the most important and most effective groups opposing the murder of Palestinian babies, and children, and adults, has been Palestine Action. Palestine Action is undertaking a multi-year direct action campaign to shut Elbit Systems down by targeting Elbit facilities and the companies that support and do business with Elbit. Elbit Systems is an Israeli Arms company with branches and subsidiaries in the UK and other nations. It is the primary military supplier for Israeli drones and produces 85% of Israel’s land based military systems.

Lord Walney (aka John Woodcock) recently complained about Palestine Action on Twitter:

“Engineers who are going into work every day in sites around the country are being called baby killers and spat at by these activists. Many of these people are just engineers trying to go to work, do their jobs and earn a living.”

They’re just ordinary men and women, just trying to go to work designing and building weapons to kill babies.

Lord Walney, former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, supporter of the rights of Incels and “Gender Critical” individuals (who don’t actually criticize gender, but criticize and sometimes harass trans folks) in his May 2024 report as UK independent adviser on political violence and disruption, supports banning groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil. Not sure what Lord Walney’s views on killing babies is, but he supports the engineers who are designing and building weapons used to kill babies. And he is really upset that the engineers who are designing and building weapons used to kill babies are being called baby killers.

So, we could ban the group that is trying to force them to stop designing and building weapons being used to kill babies, or, perhaps, if they don’t want to be known as baby killers, they could just stop designing and building the weapons being used to kill babies.

A Poem In A Park

I came upon a Poem in a Park

And it broke me

It broke me before I read a word

Except the title

For it wasn’t an ordinary poem

And

It wasn’t an ordinary park

It was a park where I came to bury my heart

An unspoken pledge not yet kept

A pledge to history

A pledge to people struggling to survive

A pledge to myself struggling to be born or to leave a mark or to be peace or to something I can’t understand

The park was small

Bounded by busy roads

A bit of green

Amid glass and brick

Cathedral and commerce

Steel and wheels

Made famous to me

As the final breathing place

Of Greg Levy

Who set himself aflame

For peace

It did not work

But he took a piece of my heart

Which I hardly noticed and have not missed

As I have used it so little

He followed and preceded many

Most of whom I do not know

But the few of late

Wynn Bruce

Unnamed person in Atlanta

Aaron Bushnell

Matt Nelson

Have each also taken a piece of my heart

As genocide ravages Palestine

I came here to find something

And to leave something

I am not sure what I came to find

But

I found a book

And a poem

And it broke me

The title at least

Burnt Offerings

Some realities drive us to our knees

And I buried my heart

Where the young man came to meet death

Killer Carrots

I needed a few basic groceries and I decided to try out my local megamarket’s online shopping and delivery. Signed up, chose what I wanted, and placed my order. The order came and was missing several items. They did not deliver any of the cold items I had ordered. No lettuce, no broccoli, no cheese and no carrots.

I took a closer look than usual at the receipt to identify exactly what was not delivered and was surprised to see listed, “Carrots 1lb Israel.“ Damnit. I had ordered genocide carrots.

I went back to the website to investigate. Nowhere in the description of the carrots on the site does it mention the country of origin. If I zoom into the pixilated image of the back of the package, there it is. “Product of Israel”

These particular carrots are a product of Dorot Farm.

According to the Dorot Farm website.

Dorot Farm is a third-generation family owned produce company. It is the #1 Carrot Growers Group, growing and selling fresh & sweet carrots directly from their farms to food service companies, retailers, wholesalers, processors, and fresh & cut companies, all around the world.

Dorot Farm carrots are enjoyed in areas ranging from North America, to Europe, to Africa, to The United Emirates.

The Dorot Farm website also describes its history, “Kibbutz Dorot was established in 1941 and has been growing a variety of fruits and vegetables there ever since … As the years went on, the farm expanded and thrived.”

Before there was Kibbutz Dorot, which lies just to the east of Sdorot, there was the village of Huj. Huj was established by the Ottoman governor of Gaza between 1818 and 1820. Various descriptions of Huj up through the 1880s describe it as a small village of adobe dwellings comprising about 300 inhabitants who were primarily farmers and breadmakers. Following the British victory over the Ottomans and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine, Huj expanded to the west and east and the residents farmed crops including grains, apricots, figs, grapes and almonds. A 1922 census put the population at 618 inhabitants, all Muslims. By 1945 inhabitants of the new Kibbutz Dorot were included in a count of the population of Huj and the numbers included 810 Muslims and 230 Jews.

The residents of Huj were friendly with the Jewish immigrants, even providing sanctuary to the Zionist paramilitary Haganah during a crackdown by the British Army in 1946. But, after the UN Partition plan in 1947, the Negev Brigade expelled the Huj from their land, looted and blew up their houses and displaced the remaining inhabitants to the Gaza Strip in 1948. It is estimated that over 6000 Gazans are descendants of refugees from Huj. After the depopulation and destruction of Huj in the Nakba, Dorot expanded onto its land.

These carrots have a history.

They support the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement to win freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people. Among their targeted boycotts of specific companies operating in Israel, they call for a boycott of Israeli Fruits and Vegetables.

Fruits, vegetables and wines from Israel are often wrongly labelled as “Produce in Israel” when they come from stolen Palestinian land. Boycott all produce from Israel in your supermarket and demand they are removed from shelves.

Every action we take to support the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation is important, whether it take place in the streets, online, in government offices, on college campuses, or in the aisles of your local supermarket. Wherever you are, find ways you can make a difference.

Just Fucking Do Something

Utah Phillips once said of himself, amid one of his righteous harangues on one important topic or another, “Oh, yeah. No rant control!”

When it gets to the point that ranting is your most appropriate tool then the situation has gotten out of hand. And in the modern Western culture and what we have been convinced are our civilized social systems, so much has gotten out of hand that ranting has been elevated to a necessity.

Housing, food, policing, prisons, education, healthcare, climate crisis, immigration, work, law, diplomacy, trade, etc.

All of our current systemic solutions to the challenges of how to organize ourselves and our systems to support human needs are rant worthy. And that is often related to profit and capitalism.

But I’m not here today to rant about those. Because there is a pressing issue today that needs more attention.

There is a fucking genocide happening in Gaza, where Israel is slaughtering the Palestinian people and making life in Gaza for the survivors un-sustainable.

If you are not doing anything to spread awareness of this genocide, or to disrupt the ability of the US, other governments, and Israel to continue committing this genocide, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Most of us never have and never will face what Gazans are facing, most will not live in constant fear that today may be our last day alive. Most of us will not be traumatized by constant drone of planes and drones and rumble of tanks and exploding bombs. Most of us will not live in constant hunger or die of starvation or lack of clean water. Most of us will not be displaced. Multiple times. On foot. Carrying all that is left of our possessions, with our home reduced to rubble by bombs and shells and bulldozers.

Most of us won’t ever see our loved one’s head explode from an Israeli sniper’s bullet.

Most of us won’t ever have to struggle to rescue our dying sibling from under tons of collapsed concrete, or recover their crushed body from the tomb that was once their home.

Most of us will never have to collect our child’s body parts by hand in plastic bags. The kind of bag you might get at your local convenience store that says “Thank You” or “Have a Nice Day.” All courtesy of US Bombs and intelligence information delivered with vengeance by Israel.

Yes, if you are a US citizen (or UK, or Germany, or India), it is your bombs that are facilitating genocide. Your military intelligence services that are supporting genocide. You’re dollars that are supporting genocide.

You Can’t Be Neutral. It is not possible. Inaction supports genocide. Only active resistance opposes it. If you think you are being neutral, if you think you are not involved you are wrong. You are complicit. Every nation in the world is involved in every genocide, because the law requires nations to prevent genocide. And nations are ultimately us.

So…

Talk about it on social media

Talk about it in real life

Rant about it. You are not unhinged if you do, you are most certainly hinged when you rant against genocide.

Boycott companies that build the bombs and finance the slaughter, and companies that invest significantly in Israel.

Boycott the concerts and venues and parades and events that are sponsored by these companies and be vocal about it.

Join the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement. Palestine civil society groups have asked us all to do this for decades and if we had done this a decade or more ago, maybe we could have prevented today’s genocide, as we ultimately forced change in South Africa.

Join a protest. If you can’t find one, start a protest.

Join a Direct Action. If you can’t find one, launch a direct action.

Donate to Palestine support organizations.

Donate to Palestinians in need.

And while direct action is more important than electoral action. Don’t vote for anyone that is supporting genocide or will support genocide and pressure your current representatives to end support for genocide in Gaza.

Just fucking do something.

Now.

Red Lines in Gaza

There are red lines in Gaza

as Israel lays seige

There are limits to live by

and die by

there are red lines in Gaza

everywhere

if you are Palestinian

you can’t stay in the North

you can’t flee from the South

you can’t find refuge anywhere

you can’t even wave a white flag

(even if you are Israeli)

A white flag is a red line

in Gaza

you can’t be a reporter

or photographer

or videographer

or blogger

Your blue vest is a red line

in Gaza

you can’t provide aid

you can’t feed the hungry

you can’t deliver fuel

or medical supplies

A red crescent is a red line

in Gaza

you can’t be a surgeon

or a doctor

or a nurse

or be a volunteer in the shell

that was once a hospital

which needs volunteers because

the doctors and nurses have been murdered

or kidnapped and rendered to a prison camp

in the Israeli desert

Your teal scrubs are a red line

in Gaza

You can’t harvest your olives

or grow food or

buy food or

steal food or

eat food

Your green thumb is a red line

in Gaza

There are red lines in Gaza

everywhere

and to cross them is murder

or

as the media will say

‘loss of life’

as if it was misplaced

as if you will find it again

if you just look hard enough

and everything will be OK

and every Israeli crime will be

absolved

but you won’t find it

because you did not lose it

it was taken

and you won’t rest

even when you are dead

when you are dead

if there are enough body parts left

with enough scraps of clothing

or enough teeth they can recognize

or by the keys in your pocket

someone claims you as theirs

and

if there is enough space

if there is enough safety

for enough time

maybe

you will be buried in a marked grave

in a cemetery

‘laid to rest’ as they say in english

but you won’t rest

even when you are dead

Your white shroud is a red line

in Gaza

even death is a red line in Gaza

you may not cross it

being dead is not acceptable

and the Israeli bulldozers

the armored earth destroyers

the fortified car crushers

the hardened home wreckers

will exhume your corpse

desecrate you

and kill you again

they are not satisfied to kill you one time

one time is not harsh enough

their hate burns to hot they have to kill you

two times

you must be dead

but you cannot live in Gaza and

you cannot be dead in Gaza

so they will crush you

and

try to erase you

signs that you ever existed are

a red line

when you are Palestinian

in Gaza

Self Defense Should Not Be So Offensive

When I firebomb your house, killing you, your spouse, your three children and 7 grandchildren, is it possible the court would find me not guilty based upon a self defense argument because you killed my child a month ago? Very likely not.

What exactly is self defense? And what isn’t?

It would surely be my right to defend myself and my child during the period of time that you were actively attacking them, or even when the attack was imminent. But, after the attack was over and you no longer posed an imminent or active threat, my legal right to harm you would not exist.

“The mainstream view in international law is that the only legitimate aim of self-defense is halting and repelling an ongoing armed attack, or perhaps preventing an imminent armed attack. Typically, the total destruction of the enemy would not be necessary to achieve that goal,” Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University in the United States, told CNN, according to Egypt Independent.

Despite the repeated narrative, driven by the President and VP of the US, other US government officials from the State Department and Department of Defense, and the western media, among others, that Israel has the right to self defense and the “duty” to defend the people of Israel in relation to the Hamas attack on October 7, that right, if it indeed existed at all, ended a long time ago.

Based upon a reasonable understanding of the right to self defense, Israel’s “right to defend itself” ended when the Hamas attack ended.

Israel already defended itself, during the attack that began on October 7. And did so quite poorly. Catastrophically poorly, in fact.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) failed to protect the people of Israel. And not only did it fail in its mission to “defend” Israeli citizens, but it actively attacked them as it attacked perceived Hamas gunmen. Israel killed an unknown number of kibbutz members, festival goers, Israeli residents, hostages, and potential hostages, all counted among the 695 Israeli citizens killed on October 7.

Almost nothing the IDF has done since 10/7 has been defensive, and all of it has been offensive. In every sense of that word.

Bombing and destroying buildings and killing their occupants when there is no attack being launched from said buildings, depriving hundreds of thousands of safe shelter, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Creating the conditions of starvation by blockading a nation, stopping sufficient food from entering, bombing bakeries, denying power and fuel for cooking, destroying agricultural land, preventing farmers from harvesting their crops, disrupting the work of aid groups and killing relief agency workers is not self defense. It is offensive.

Attacking medical systems and hospitals, killing doctors and hospital staff, sniping nurses and patients, bombing ambulances, killing and burying people sheltering on hospital property, denying power and fuel for hospital operation, blockading medical supplies, rounding up and interrogating hospital staff is not self defense. It is offensive.

Denying an entire population clean water by cutting off water supplies that you control, cutting off electricity and fuel to prevent water pumps from working, bombing desalinization plants, destroying water and sewage treatment facilities and water distribution and sewage systems is not self defense. It is offensive.

Parading stripped men and boys through the streets, blindfolding them, binding them, interrogating them, torturing them, forcing them to act out false surrender scenarios for the camera, and in some reported cases, summary execution of individuals, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Firing over 100,000 tank shells, in addition to tens of thousands of tons of bombs and missiles, into an area the size of Philadelphia, bombing and explosive demolition of historic sites, of mosques, of universities, bulldozing of monuments, and destruction of cemeteries is not self defense. It is offensive.

Displacing 1.9 million people, many of them multiple times, telling them to move to safe places, then bombing those safe places, then telling them to move to other safe places and bombing those safe places, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Killing 8000 children and counting, including premature babies in incubators, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Bombing schools that have turned in to refuges for the displaced, killing teachers and UN employees, assassinating professors and other academics, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Cutting off the electricity for an entire population, preventing fuel for power plants, bombing power infrastructure, destroying internet and cellular infrastructure, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Targeting reporters with bombs, missiles and gunfire, bombing their homes and killing them and their families, and destroying dozens of media offices, no matter how many times the western media calls it “self defense,” is not self defense. It is offensive.

Even “destroying Hamas” cannot be considered self defense. You can’t defend yourself against a possible, or even likely future threat. You can only defend yourself against an active or an imminent attack.

In addition to all of this there is the issue of Israel being the occupying force that controls Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Under international law, an occupying power has the responsibility to provide for the safety and protection of the people under occupation. When the occupying force is also the aggressor in a genocidal campaign against the occupied, it is the world’s responsibility and legal duty to step in. The US is actively preventing this as it fully backs the genocide taking place.

Genocide is not self defense. Bombing people not actively engaged in an attack against you is not self defense. Starving a population is not self defense. Murdering children is not self defense.

It is offensive.

How to Commit Genocide (2023)

An important part of carrying out genocide is quieting the voices of those opposing the genocide.

This is done by the social and cultural institutions of the nation in addition to its government. The media, education system, legal system, and economic system all play a role.

And it starts before the genocide begins. Humans are not naturally prone to genocide, it takes a little conniving and convincing (too often, too little) before we become passive bystanders or active supporters in genocide. The conditions are set in place well before the genocide begins, and othering and dehumanization are the key. It is what Utah Phillips calls controlling the blame pattern, “the public schools build in automatic responses. Levers and Buttons. …Then the government reaches out through its media, in every home, and pushes those buttons and pulls those levers and elicits massive response for or against anything it chooses.” Once those mechanisms are in place, the power of the government to commit genocide or other egregious acts is greatly enhanced.

Active genocide often begins with an event in which one group is actually or theoretically harmed by the actions of another group. At that point the harmed group may have reached a breaking point, or may find it a crisis of convenience to move forward with plans that it has been developing for decades. Settler colonial genocides typically are aligned with the second path. Oppressed people will rebel, which is their right and settler colonial projects will use these rebellions in every manner possible to further dispossess and to commit genocide.

Before the genocide, or before the latest round of ongoing genocide, the nation or group enacting the genocide will dehumanize the victim. An event of rebellion is invariably an opportunity to increase the dehumanization. The event will be exaggerated to the point that it will become unacceptable to believe that the rebelling people have any humanity. This will be claimed directly by the government with the willing alignment of corporate media (they have never aligned otherwise).

Media will feature government spokespersons pushing forward the government stories and lies, and some “ordinary people” that agree with them. Anyone simply trying to put the acts of rebellion in context will be slammed by the government and the media as repugnant and disgraceful. Anyone with any power that opposes the genocide will be maligned and discredited.

If anyone opposing the government version of the truth is heard from in the commercial media at all they will be forced to agree with the primary narrative or will be publicly ridiculed and dismissed. The price of entry into media spaces that will primarily oppose your perspective in relation to the genocide in Gaza is the condemnation of Hamas. Often you will not be allowed to share any other point of view until you have convincingly agreed that Hamas is evil and unredeemable.

College students will be reprimanded, expelled, and recognized student groups disbanded for opposing the genocide as we have already seen at Columbia, Brandeis, Harvard, and in Florida. Media will denounce campus activism against genocide and support the punishment of activists. People will be fired from their jobs for supporting Palestine or opposing genocide, and offers of jobs will be revoked. New laws against freedom will be enacted and individuals will be arrested for reading and sharing information. Private organizations, and Lobbies that exist to support the settler colonialists will focus significant attention on the oppression of the denunciation of genocide.

Many of the actions taken to oppose the genocide will be demonized. Rallies will be called “hate marches” and participants “pro-Palestinian mobs” by pundits and government officials. The very language used to support freedom for Palestinian Arabs will be condemned as a call for genocide of the Jewish people. All as part of the ultimate goal to paint the opposition as hateful and aligned with the rebels that you have painted as savages.

Another intertwined element of committing genocide is incessantly repeating certain beliefs to attempt to make them undeniable.

Promoting falsehoods and biased perspectives reinforces the atmosphere that promotes genocide and denigrates the opposition to genocide. Details related to the Hamas attack of October 7 are still coming to light and the initial disinformation is slowly becoming unsustainable. Those original stories of atrocities have already done their job. They have already whipped up the hatred of all Gazans and of Palestinian Arabs to extreme levels within Israel and have promoted Islamophobia in the US and other nations.

No matter that it is now becoming clear that not only were there no mass beheadings of babies but no babies were beheaded, and only 1 baby has been identified as being killed during the Oct 7 attack according to data published by Haaretz. That baby was named Mila Cohen. According to reporting by Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Mila was killed when Hamas gunmen fired through the door of the family’s safe room while the family was hiding inside. Despite this the baby murder myth persists. The data published by Haaretz lists 29 children between age 4 and 17 killed on Oct 7 out of 1152 identified individuals.

After claiming the death toll of Israelis on October 7 to be 1405 for some time (a figure many news outlets erroneously labeled 1400 civilians despite the clear evidence of there being hundreds of military and police casualties in that number), Israel has lowered the number of killed to “roughly 1200 people,” according to Haaretz. There is evidence that reveals that some of the civilian deaths that occurred on October 7, and possibly some of the military deaths, were at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces as they tried to defeat the Hamas gunmen. Members of the IDF admitted to media that both from the air and the ground, buildings, vehicles and individuals were targeted without knowing clearly who they were. A helicopter pilot was quoted by Mako (translated from Hebrew), “And I choose such targets that I tell myself that the chances of me shooting at abductees here are low." But it's not one hundred percent. "To tell you one hundred percent, it's not.“ The report by JNS that describes the killing of Mila Cohen also describes her mother Sandra’s death, “In the ensuing shootout (between IDF and Hamas gunmen) Sandra Cohen was hit four times in the lung and once each in the arm and leg, but called on her two kids to escape together to a neighboring house.”

In addition to inflating the crimes of Hamas in order to increase support for the Israeli assault on Gaza, additional falsehoods must be spread through rabid repetition. One of these is that Israel has a right, and a duty, to self defense. When a spokesperson for the US state department was asked if the US recognized that the Geneva Conventions apply to the Palestinian Territories, his only response was “we believe wholeheartedly that Israel has every right to defend itself…”

The reality is, that due to Israel’s crime of occupying the Palestinian Territories, it does not have the legal right to self defense related to this attack, and even if it did retain that right under these circumstances, very little of what it is currently doing in Gaza can be described as self defense. This is similar to arguing that the US had a right to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 in self defense. Both Israel and the US commonly refer to attacks on other nations and targets as “self defense,” when no reasonable rules of self defense apply.

Another of these incessantly repeated stories is that Hamas protects itself by using civilians as human shields. This serves the twofold purpose of dehumanizing Hamas and absolving Israel of its blame when civilians are killed. This story allows Israel to kill more civilians. It allows Israel to bomb schools and hospitals and mosques and claim “human shields’ are the reason that non-combatants are dying in such huge numbers.

In investigating the deaths of 11 civilians in 7 incidents in 2009, Human Rights Watch found, “no evidence that the civilian victims were used by Palestinian fighters as human shields or were shot in the crossfire between opposing forces.” In these cases the investigation found that the civilians were directly attacked by the IDF while waving white flags. The HRW investigation did document cases in which, “Israeli soldiers stood behind a Palestinian man who was forced to search a home.  Deliberately using civilians to deter attacks on a military target is considered “human shielding.”  The use of civilians as human shields or to engage in work for military purposes violates international humanitarian law.”

In 2010, an Israeli military court found two IDF soldiers guilty of using a 9 year old boy as a human shield during the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead in Gaza’ after forcing the boy to open bags suspected to be booby trapped.

If you want to slow down the independent reporting of your genocide, it is a useful tactic to prevent international media from entering the war zone unless embedded with your troops and under your supervision of their reporting. Where it is impractical to exert full control over certain stories or news outlets then your tactic can shift to murdering the media.

As it has done in previous military operations such as during the Great March of Return, and in the well publicized assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, Israel is deliberately targeting reporters and photographers in Gaza. At least 36 journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli attacks, as have many family members of journalists. Several more journalists have been injured and several have been detained or are missing.

If you want reporting on the death toll to stop and accurate death toll numbers are reported by hospitals to the ministry of health, you incapacitate the hospitals. Deny them power, water, supplies. Bomb them. This is a war crime, but with your savvy public relations expertise you can just blame Hamas for operating from within or under the hospitals. No mater that there is little evidence that it is true.

To convince people that extensive tunnels underly the hospitals, create a computer simulation of what these tunnels might look like and distribute to friendly media. Show aerial footage of a concrete bordered opening in the ground outside the hospital as proof of the tunnels, jut be careful it can’t be easily debunked by a moderate level of investigation. Claim that a video proves Hamas is working in the hospitals by showing a crowds of people inside with one person holding up what might be a rifle (but make sure there are’s any clear images of the scene proving that it is a police style baton). So far, the Hamas headquarters in hospitals story has less evidence than the Iraqi WMDs.

If there is an agency that has been providing life saving aid to your genocide victims for decades and has produced reams of reports on your previous human rights violations, be sure to claim they are allied with your opponents and just kill them.

How do we battle the genocide deniers tactics? Recognize them, debunk them, expose them, ridicule them. Stop letting them have any power to diminish the efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.

Hellfire and Ginsu

(content warning: description of bombing scene/victim)

Hellfire is the name of an American missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrup Grumman. In its initial design it was created to deliver an explosive charge from the air to an armored vehicle or tank by honing in on a reflected laser pointing at the target. It has been in use since 1984 and several variations of the original design have been developed over the years.

The missile is over 5 feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. It can travel at a top speed just under 1000 miles per hour and can strike from up to 11km away. It is primarily deployed via attack helicopters and drones.

Sales of Hellfire missiles have been approved to at least 30 countries, many of which are in the Middle East, including Israel. The British Ministry of Defense confirmed using Hellfire missile in Afghanistan.

While traditionally designed as an air to ground missile, Israel has used Hellfire missiles to destroy a civilian plane that entered its airspace from Lebanon in 2001 and an Iranian drone that entered from Syria in 2018.

In addition to its initial use against armored vehicles, the missile and its variants have been popular for use in assassinating “high value targets.” Wikipedia has a list of several of these individuals assassinated will hellfire missiles (which appear to all be muslims), including American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was assassinated in Yemen by the US.

There is a special variant of the Hellfire missile with no explosive warhead nicknamed the Ninja Missile or Flying Ginsu. This variant, called the R9X, has one meter long concealed blades that are deployed just before impact to shred its victims.

In a gruesome video posted online on November 9, at least one individual outside of Al-Shifa hospital is sliced apart by what is speculated to be an R9X missile. The projectile, which reportedly targeted a car, bounces around a courtyard area where many people are moving about or in large tents. There is no explosion. A camera moves around the scene in response to the impact and eventually settles on the victim, screaming for help, surrounded by blood and body parts.

It is probably the most gruesome video I have seen of the genocide in Gaza. I have tried to be very careful in what I am viewing to not traumatize myself. A privilege that I know Gazans do not have.

As gruesome as this one scene is, most of the other bombs are worse. This bomb kills only if it strikes you directly, or on ricochet. Explosive bombs will kill you in a direct strike or from a distance, will blow you apart, will incinerate you, can kill you with bomb shrapnel or shrapnel from exploding objects. Explosive bombs can collapse buildings down upon you. Israel has also used white phosphorous bombs in Gaza. White phosphorous burns 1400 degrees Fahrenheit and will continue to burn as long as it is exposed to air. It will burn human flesh down to the bone and fragments or remnants must be removed or will risk reigniting.

Israel has dropped more bombs and missiles on Gaza, an area the size of Philadelphia, than the United States dropped on the entirety of Afghanistan in any one month period during the height of the US war in Afghanistan. They have admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets and Euro-med Human Rights Monitor estimates the bombings have delivered over 25,000 tons of explosives and have contravened several international laws of war.

War is terror. Ceasefire NOW.

From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!

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Since there is a deliberate and concerted effort on the part of many to define the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” as a call for the genocide of the Jewish people from Israel, it is important for those of us that use this phrase to correct this false narrative.

The majority of us that use this phrase envision either a single free state or two free states in what is now Israel and Palestine. In these free states we envision no discriminatory rules or laws based upon an individual’s religion or ethnic or national origin. We envision Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists and other religious or non-religious peoples living together between the river and the sea with no restrictions on movement within any state, no harassment from members of other communities, no rules that burden or unburden one group above another.

We envision the right of return for all peoples forced to flee their homes in the last 100 or so years, and just compensation for the land and property theft of the past. We envision reparations for the systemic burdens and Apartheid placed upon Palestinian and Israeli Arabs by the British and Israeli governments. We envision a system of truth and reconciliation to atone for past oppression similar to what transpired in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Freedom for Black South Africans did not require the elimination of white South Africans. Freedom for Northern Ireland did not require the elimination of Catholics. Freedom for Palestine does not require the elimination of Jews in Israel.

Intentionally conflating the phrase “From the River to the Sea…” with the elimination of the Jewish people is similar to conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The two are not the same, but their linkage serves to dismiss the validity of the opinions and perspective of the oppressed Palestinians and the people that support and defend their human rights. Claiming that the elimination of the Jewish people from Israel is the goal of anyone who uses the phrase is a fear mongering tactic that serves the narrative of dehumanizing the Palestinian people and supporters while stoking hatred of Palestinians in the people of Israel.

In the UK the Labour Party has suspended MP Andy McDonald pending an investigation for saying, “We won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty,” at a protest for Palestine solidarity. UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called for police to take action against people using the phrase, or even waving the Palestinian flag. Braverman describes the phrase as, “widely understood as a demand for the destruction of Israel.”

While the original founding documents of Hamas did not mention the phrase, Hamas’ updated foundational document of 2017, which is a major shift in tone from its earlier declaration, has added the phrase in section 20 (emphasis added):

20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Since Hamas uses this phrase and Hamas has been roundly demonized in the western media, some people may conclude, whether honestly or not, that the phrase must have evil intent and truly seek the elimination of the Jewish people from Israel. That reading, however, negates other parts of the 2017 document, such as,

16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Still, many profess the antisemitism of the phrase. defining it in oppressive and even genocidal terms. But before the updated Hamas document of 2017, another political group in Palestine used a variation of the phrase. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party had this language in their 1977 Party Platform (emphasis added),

a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

And the 2011 Likud Platform uses this language, “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” As well as, “The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

When all people are free from the river to the sea and the conditions are in place for all to thrive, then Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.

fromtherivertotheseapalestinewillbefree.com

Imagine a Gunman

Imagine a gunman (they are almost all men) actively shooting into a crowded auditorium.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

What is the appropriate response?

And imagine this auditorium has had all its doors locked by the gunman and there is no way for anyone to escape. That the gunman has surveilled all of the people in the auditorium for decades, has put rules in place to control their movement, how much water they have, how much food, and how much electricity.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

He stands and watches from a balcony. Chooses a target. Bang.

Do you explain why he has the right to slaughter the people in the auditorium? How one or two of them committed some atrocity against him last week or last month?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Is this gunman exercising the right or the “duty” of self-defense?

Ten dead. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Do you send the gunman more ammunition and defend his actions? Do you point out targets for the gunman? And what do you do when you see people outside defending the gunman and sending him supplies?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Would you call for a temporary halt to the shooting, so the people under attack can have a snack or cup of tea before the shooting starts up again?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Or, maybe, do you cry out that the gunman must stop? Must cease fire.

Do you desperately tell everyone you can about the ongoing slaughter to try and get more people to demand it end?

Twenty dead. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Do you shame and expose and call out the people supporting the gunman? People who have some power to take action on behalf of a group or a nation, do you demand that they stop participating in the slaughter and instead demand it end?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Or do you close your eyes and ears to the carnage and focus your attention on your own existence? Your own struggle to get by and try to live a decent life.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

When the shooting is happening is not the time to defend and explain the shooter’s actions.

First stop the shooting.

Then, try to understand why the shooting happened and put in place conditions that will help prevent it happening again.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza TODAY.

TODAY we need to do what we can to make them stop.

The Craters in the Israeli Military Story

After the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 was widely attributed to the Israeli Military, Israel denied it had bombed the site and shared evidence that the cause was a misfired rocket from inside Gaza. While western governments and media were quick to support the Israeli story, others have called out their evidence as unconvincing and misinterpreted.

One of the arguments put forth by the Israeli military and its supporters to deny responsibility for the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital that killed dozens of internally displaced Gaza refugees was that the aftermath of the blast showed no large crater typical of other Israeli bombings.

The Daily Mail quoted Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari as saying, “The walls stay intact. There are no craters in the parking lot. These are the characteristics that show it was not an aerial munition that hit the parking lot.”

The craters in question are common at some other bombing sites that Israeli military has claimed responsibility for such as the multiple bombings of the Jabalia Refugee camp.

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Damage in the courtyard of Al-Ahli hospital

Craters left from the Israeli bombing of Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza

In contrast to the extensive denial of responsibility at Al-Ahli hospital, the Israeli military was quick to claim responsibility for the attack on an ambulance convoy at Al-Shifa Medical Complex that killed at least 15 and wounded 50. Images from the scene of this attack show many bodies of dead and injured civilians, but none I have seen show any crater or any collapsed walls. It seems the telltale evidence of an aerial munition causing large craters is missing from this bombing that Israel has admitted to.

Israeli airstrike on an ambulance convoy in front of the gate of the Al-Shifa Hospital

This, of course, is not proof that Israel is at fault in the Al-Ahli bombing, but provides some clarification that the absence of craters is not strong evidence that they are not at fault.

Never. Again. (and again)

As I write these words there are children screaming outside of my window. And while they and I are safe in rural NJ, and they are screaming in joy as they play in an inflatable bouncy castle, I know there are children in Gaza screaming. They are screaming in terror. Because Israel has brought terror upon them. They are screaming because their sibling has been murdered, or their parent, or their entire family, or their leg has been blown off in the bombing campaign or been crushed as their building has been deliberately bombed into rubble. Or they have been blinded by shrapnel. Or they are screaming from their life experience of terror, bombs, lack of food and intermittent water and electricity.

And they are not the first nor will be the last screaming children, they scream like the Native American and First Nations children displaced and beaten and abused in settler attacks, forced marches, deprivation and boarding school torture and abuse screamed. They scream like the enslaved children in the Americas, stolen from their homeland or born to or descended from those who were. Who were beaten, abused, neglected, separated, raped, and forced to labor for vile people who saw them as property. They scream like the children of Apartheid South Africa, controlled, deprived, and when they dared resist, massacred. They scream like the Jewish and Roma and other marginalized children put into concentration camps, met with all manner of horrors, many ultimately murdered by people who saw them as less than human. And like the German and Japanese children facing the firebombing of cities and nuclear weapons.

~~~

The western news media use specific language to drive a particular narrative when discussing Israel and Palestine. The brutal attacks from Hamas against settlements near Gaza on October 7, 2023 are invariably called unprovoked and are also called unprecedented. It seems only the Israeli side “responds” to aggression, and is never the aggressor. Both of these characterizations are clear and plain lies.

Unprecedented

After the Holocaust during WWII in which several million Jewish people and members of other marginalized groups were systematically murdered, so many pledged “never again” but, as we have seen in Gaza and more broadly in Palestine, have instead supported “never” again and again.

Israel was born from genocide and born in genocide. It took the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from over 500 villages across Palestine to forcibly create the state of Israel against the will of the Arab residents of the land. This is known as the Nakba, which translates to “catastrophe.”

When media promote the narrative that the attacks on civilians by Hamas are unprecedented in Israeli history, they are deliberately erasing the reality of the Nakba and the lived experiences of the Palestinian Arab population. While for the Holocaust the slogan might be “Never Forget”, for the Nakba it is “Never Remember.” In fact, Israel bans the reference to Nakba in Palestinian textbooks and prohibits institutions from holding commemorations of the Nakba.

From the perspective of many, the Nakba was not just a historic period in the creation of Israel, but is an ongoing practice of the settler colonial Israeli state. The refugees created during the Nakba are refugees today, with no state of their own and no right to return to the homes they were driven out of. And, indeed, displacement is ongoing.

Unprovoked

Even more profuse than the promotion of the Oct 7 attacks as unprecedented, the narrative that the bloodshed was unprovoked is ubiquitous in western media.

It was not unprovoked. Hamas explicitly stated its primary reasons for the attacks. And while we do not need to accept their stated reasons as the only reasons, we can at least start there to understand why they took these actions. Calling the action “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas explains the primary reasons as Israeli incursions and violence at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the ongoing settlement expansion and related violence in the West Bank.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem is managed by Jordan under an international agreement. During Ramadan in 2023, Israeli police began to evict Muslim worshipers from the mosque nightly who had attempted to stay overnight. On April 3, Israeli Police detained a Jewish activist from Temple Mount Administration after reports they were planning to perform a ritual sacrifice at the Temple Mount. On the night of April 4 Israeli Police stormed the mosque, using stun grenades, rubber bullets, and batons, injuring at least 50 people and arresting 400. They stormed the mosque again on April 5.

Palestinians have been dispossessed from their homes and land since before Israel declared its independence in 1948. In the early years this dispossession came at a rapid pace, resulting in hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to neighboring nations. In 1967, Israel invaded Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, eventually occupying the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. After this occupation, Israel began to take more Palestinian land through construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. While it ended the settlement project in Gaza in 2005 and dismantled its settlements, Israel continues to expand settlements and dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank. Palestinian farmers have fled their villages in the West Bank as recently as August 2023 due to Apartheid laws, settler harassment and violence and, dehumanization by Israeli Defense Forces including severe restriction of movement.

The Israeli town of Sderot is about a half a mile from Gaza at its nearest point. It was founded in 1951 as a development town to house Jewish immigrants and was initially populated by 80 families. After decades of expansion, largely from new immigrant populations, it had a population of 30,000 in 2021. By 2010 the city was 94% Jewish and less than 1% Arab. On October 7 the police station in Sderot was the site of a major battle between the armed Hamas fighters and Israeli Defense Forces.

But, before there was Sderot, there was Najd. Najd was a Palestinian Arab village with an estimated population of 620 in 1945, all Muslim. Najd was destroyed in May 1948 during Operation Barak.

Because of its proximity, and its history, Sderot is a frequent target of rockets from Gaza. Sderot is also home to “Sderot Cinema” or the “hill of shame” where residents sometimes go to watch bombings of Gaza, and sometimes cheer when the bombs fall.

As the bombs fall today, I wonder if anyone is on that hill, and how they are responding.

~~~

It is not contradictory to understand oppressed peoples’ reasons for rebelling, to support their right to rebel against occupation and colonialism, and to still see specific actions against specific targets as gross human rights violations. It is contradictory to describe those actions by Hamas as terrorism while describing the genocide in Gaza by the Israel Military as ‘self defense.’

Bombing Philly

As of October 24, Israel has dropped over 8000 bombs on Gaza, which is about the size of Philadelphia. Many of us remember the destruction in Philadelphia when the police dropped 1 bomb back in 1985 on MOVE and destroyed 60 homes.

Imagine 8000 bombs on Philadelphia. And imagine a wall around Philadelphia and a blockade that prevents anyone from leaving without special permits and permission. Imagine hostile warships patrolling the Delaware River and the Philadelphia airport destroyed and airspace controlled. And imagine no power, no electricity, no properly supplied and functional hospitals.

Imagine being told to evacuate North Philadelphia because it will not be safe for you to stay there as the bombing happens and to go to the south where you will be safe. And then being bombed on the road to the south, and then being bombed in the home, or the school, or the hospital you sought refuge in, in South Philadelphia.

And imagine surviving that bombing and being taken to the hospital where the doctors try frantically to stabilize you and operate on you to save your life. On the hospital floor. In a hallway. Without anaesthesia. Or water. Or electricity. Or, where they tell you you are going to die now, and hold your hand, for only a minute, because they have to go and see if they can save the life of the next victim.

And imagine this latest violence is on top of a history of bombing and destruction occurring every two to five years. Imagine being 25, and having survived 5 wars of aggression from the military occupying and controlling your city. The same military force that drove your grandparents off of the land and out of the home they and their ancestors lived in for centuries. Imagine living with them and their trauma and with the generational and original trauma you are experiencing now.

How would you feel? How would you want to respond? How much oppression can you endure?

Gazans don’t have to imagine this. All of them are living it. And thousands of them are being murdered as we watch.

Witnessing Genocide

What we are witnessing, if we are paying attention, is an escalation of the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel.

It is the same overarching story of settler colonialism. Like the genocides committed by settlers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other nations as they were stolen and remade through the displacement of the indigenous peoples of those lands.

After murder and displacement and the destruction of hundreds of communities of Palestinian Arabs. After the invasion and occupation of neighboring nations. After the broad settlement of Israelis on occupied lands. After harassment and sabotage and violence against the indigenous by settlers forced more of the indigenous residents to abandon their land. After several previous mass bombings of Gaza. After the imposition of Apartheid laws in Israel against Arabs. After the bulldozing of homes and infrastructure and ongoing depopulation and displacement, we now have more bombing of Gaza, more genocide, more murder of people, more collective punishment.

And the world watches.

And some cheerlead and excuse the genocide and materially support Israel in its actions. And the US blocks a mild security council resolution calling for restraint. And sends more weapons. More tools of genocide to carry out the elimination and displacement of people previously restricted to a concentration camp disguised as a city. Full of refugees and the children of refugees and the children of the children of refugees.

And some shout, (and some whisper)…STOP! And some march, and talk, and write, and teach, and learn and speak. And we look for any lever, any button, any means to slow the genocide. And there are too few levers, so we go about the difficult task of building the levers, of finding the cracks in the facade and desperately, by hammer and pen, and keyboard, and placard, and speech, and fingernail, apply pressure to the cracks. To chip away. To reveal the truth. To develop a new understanding of the reality under the facade.

Exposing genocide is a first step to ending genocide.

How we get from genocide to post-genocide to reconciliation to freedom is a tough path, but not an untrodden path. There are many on it already.

Truth and Reconciliation, Reparations, Right of Return, Landback

It is of course for the victims to determine what the appropriate remedies are to begin to make them whole, but here are some general thoughts on what it will take to change the structural dynamics that underpin the oppression.

Reparations

For stolen land and homes and property

For denial of human rights and dignity

For denial of economic opportunity

For restriction of movement

For physical harm

For bombing and rocket fire

For deaths of family members

For emotional harm

Guarantees of freedom and recognition and respect for Human Rights

Physical freedom

Equal access and treatment under the law

Equity in education, economic opportunity, access to goods and services, ownership of property

Right of return

Decolonization

How do we take steps in this direction?

How do we make the cost of continuing genocide greater than the cost of ending it? The cost of perpetuating oppression greater than the cost of halting it? The cost of maintaining Apartheid greater than the cost of dismantling it?

Boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Israel. Exposing Israeli Apartheid and oppression so the public see the horrors and understand the dynamics of the relationship between the Israeli oppressor and oppressed Palestinian. Globally shaming Israel for Apartheid and violence until they understand that the cost of continuing the oppression and genocide is greater than the cost of ending it. Then, working with all parties to restore recognition and protection of universal human rights and appropriate reparations for harms committed.

Free Palestine!

What Right Does a Nation Have to Exist?

Does any nation have the right to exist?

No.

The shortcut to get to the point is to ask this question: Does Nazi Germany have the right to exist?

There are certainly other examples, but none as visceral from the past century.

Beyond that, we can become more nuanced and examine to what extent is a nation its government and to what extent do the actions of a government represent and reflect on the validity of a nation. Put simply, governments are people with power that exercise control over the rules by which the residents of a nation live and the rules by which their nation interacts with others.

No government has the right to exist.

This is widely understood and practiced extensively by the US and other global and regional powers, incessantly interfering in governments of nations with less power. Unfortunately, there are few nations with a functional moral compass that genuinely and strategically use their influence to support human rights rather than use their power and influence to obtain more power and influence.

Do nations have the right to autonomy and non-interference? No.

As functions of the self-determination of the peoples within their borders and insofar as they equitably uphold the human rights of all residents within their borders, governments and nations have the right to participate in the global network of nations unimpeded. However, when governments fail to uphold these basic elements of existence and when they actively and independently interfere in the autonomy of other nations, they forfeit their freedoms to act without interference or influence of others.

Nations have the duty to act together through international organizations such as the UN to reign in abuses of human rights or national sovereignty committed by other nations. As individuals, we have the duty to collectively join together and impact these issues through boycotts, and by pressuring private and public entities to divest and sanction nations that abuse human rights.

The end of Apartheid in South Africa was influenced by significant external pressure from individuals, organizations, and governments, which served to support the incessant actions from South Africans to make the change happen. We must do the same to end Apartheid in Israel.

Why I Say: Free Palestine!

The Palestinian people have faced genocide and oppression for more than 75 years at the hands of Zionists, the Israeli government, and with the full and active support of western nations including the UK and US. During the Nakba, which began in the 1948 Palestine war and is ongoing today, Palestinian Arabs have been relentlessly attacked, terrorized, murdered, and have fled their homes in great numbers for their safety. Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their homes and became refugees and over 500 Arab villages were depopulated and destroyed by Zionist militias and, after declaring independence, by the Israeli government in 1948.

Since a war with Syria, Jordan and Egypt in 1967, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights (which it illegally annexed in 1981), Gaza Strip, and West Bank. It has enacted upon the peoples of these occupied territories criminal, dehumanizing, and oppressive conditions that control the populations while continuing to steal their land, drive residents from their homes and villages and incentivize and create new settlements open only to Israeli Jews in the West Bank.

Movement is strictly controlled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where permission is required to move from one area to another, military checkpoints control movements, and certain roads and areas are off limits to travel by Palestinian Arabs. Even where Palestinians own clear title to their own land, Israel controls construction and rarely approves any building permits for Palestinians (while constantly building new communities on Palestinian land for Israeli settlers). Israel regularly destroys Palestinian homes and buildings in the West Bank where it continues to drive people off of their land. This expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied territories and the continued actions creating additional refugees are violations of international law. Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank routinely destroy water sources used by Palestinians, destroy Palestinian crops, takeover grazing lands, and uproot or cut down the olive groves of Palestinian farmers.

Israel controls nearly all outside access to the Gaza Strip and has effectively blockaded it since 2005. Gaza is fully dependent upon Israel and the UN for regular access to electricity, water, food, medicine, and other goods required for survival. Israel does not allow consistent power and water access for Gaza and Gazans frequently have only a few hours per day in which water and power are available. While Gaza is on the Mediterranean Sea, access to Gaza by boat is also blockaded by Israel and fishermen are restricted to certain areas allowed by the Israeli Navy. Israel exerts full control over Gaza and West Bank airspace. Israel controls the land inside the wall/fence separating Israel and Gaza, enforcing a no-go zone near the border via live fire from Israel. During the Great March of Return protests in Gaza in 2018 and 2019 tens of thousands of protesters challenged the no-go zone while calling for the right of refugees from Israel to return to their homes and communities and for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Israel killed 189 protesters during this protest.

The United Nations has passed hundreds of General Assembly resolutions concerning Israel and its actions, over 225 United Nations Security Council Resolutions (with many more Security Council Resolutions with wide support being vetoed by the United States including the recent resolution condemning attacks against civilians calling and for the protection of civilians and humanitarian aid during military actions), and 45 resolutions from the UN Human Rights Council. Many of these resolutions have been ignored by Israel as they continue their occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

Human Rights

Civil Rights

Dignity

Freedom

For these and many other reasons I say: Free Palestine!

The Tale of Mister Morton’s Steakhouse

(to the Schoolhouse Rock tune, “The Tale of Mr Morton”)

This is the tale of Mister Morton’s

A Steakhouse down in DC

It is the subject of our tale

And when the protesters yell,

What’s Mister Morton’s to do?

Mister Morton’s sat Judge Kavanaugh

Mister Morton’s sat

Mister Morton’s took his order

Mister Morton’s took

(yes, sir, right away)

Mister Morton’s was complicit

Mister Morton’s was

Morton’s Steakhouse is the subject of the scrutiny

For the argument was full of flaws

Mister Morton’s knew about the ruling

Mister Morton’s knew

Mister Morton’s grew defiant

Mister Morton’s grew

Mister Morton’s was very angry

Mister Morton’s was

Morton’s Steakhouse was the target of attention

After the Court struck down those laws

The subject is abortion

That's a person’s human right

It's who or what the judgement is about

And the precedent overturned

That is the action (word)

That gets the people up and out

Mister Morton’s said it was an outrage

Mister Morton’s said

The people replied in the evening

“No,” is what the crowd of people said

Mister Morton’s grew very nervous

Mister Morton’s grew

Morton’s Steakhouse cried, “what about privacy?”

And the protesters said “fuck you!”

The crowd chanted

and called him out

that’s what the protesters did

(We Won’t Go Back)

Brett finished eating his dinner

Then ducked out the back and hid

Mister Morton’s talked to the media

Mister Morton’s talked

Mister Morton’s stood by Kavanaugh

And the protesters, it mocked

The Supreme Justice was a nervous man

When the protesters showed up he ran

Kavanaugh made a quick retreat

Kavanaugh he made

Kavanaugh prayed he’d get away

Kavanaugh he prayed

Kavanaugh was ornery

Kavanaugh he was

Until the people showed up with a megaphone

Who says the people can't protest?

Now the Women are unhappy

And Trans folk and NB’s, too!

And no matter what the Court says

We’ll do what we need to do

The American Dream is a Nightmare

The American Dream is a nightmare.

The American Dream as it was sold to us, and surely it was sold to us, is a lie and a myth perpetuated to allow an empowered class to experience leisure supported by a disempowered class.

Unlike most other commodities, we don’t pay for the American Dream in dollars, but nothing comes for free. And while this dream does not have a monetary cost, it has a greater cost. It is the cost of our environment. It is the cost of our mental and physical health. It is the cost of our empathy, of community, of solidarity. It is the cost of our safety. It is the cost of our fellow Americans lives. And it is the cost of our imaginations.

Buying into this myth, which is sold to us in advertisements for food and clothes and houses and cars, and is taught to us in school and church and media, is buying into consumption as a path to comfort and success. It is buying into a potential to improve or maintain the conditions of life by competing for artificially scarce resources. It is buying into an economic structure that thrives on waste. An economic system that demands that we each need to acquire the necessities of life and the luxuries of life individually rather than collectively. That teaches us to take care of ourselves and our families whether or not that comes at the expense of someone else.

When we pay The American Dream’s cost to our imagination, we give up our power. We acquiesce to the myth that someone else, someone smarter, or more important than us solved these problems for us, we just need to go along. This is not an incidental, nor an accidental, cost. These systems are ingeniously constructed to suppress our ability to resist. To suppress our ability to imagine different ways, to imagine better systems.

What if we could consider and imagine alternatives? What if?

We need a new dream.

My dream is a society organized around plenty. An America in which we do not struggle to survive, but we participate to thrive. An America in which food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical care, utilities, all of the necessities of a fulfilled life are provided for collectively. For Free.

An America in which we all work less and provide for each other. A 10 hour work week in which we help create and maintain the goods necessary for life. and then in our non-work life we create what we like, we care for each other, we learn, we teach, we live.

It could be a relatively easy transition. We already produce great surpluses of food, clothing, housing, transportation. The structures could be remade to serve people’s needs rather than to profit the few.

But it won’t be an easy transition, because it means resetting the centers of power from the individual, to the collective. And the people currently in power have built and maintained all of the existing structures to maintain that power for themselves, no matter the cost.

That does not mean it can’t be done, only that we will have a harder time doing it and we will have to do it both inside and outside of the existing system. And this is already happening. Mutual aid and grassroots community cooperative structures are out there. We need more of them.

What is your dream.

The Trouble With Normal

One of the many tools that the folks in power use to build and maintain their power and control over the people is defining what is acceptable and what is not. They use a wide variety of methods to do this. Laws, social norms, peer pressure, education, media and the control of language are a few of these methods.

The word Normal can be defined as “conforming to a regular pattern” or “occurring naturally.” Using terms such as “Normal” in ways that define and amplify human differences or in ways that create the illusion that there is some inherent natural order to the rules of social interaction make it easier for people in power to maintain that power.

Outside of its meaning in a strict scientific process of measuring commonalities in a population and variation from those commonalities, the word Normal has little usefulness in helping humans make sense of the world around us.

Why be Normal

When used to describe human behaviors or human traits, Normal is a box in which we can place acceptable or desirable human behaviors or traits in order to exclude other traits and behaviors. This is often extraordinarily harmful. Defining some human traits as normal and others as not normal provides a foundation for racism, for sexual puritanism, for gender reductionism, for ableism, for ageism, and all kinds of other harmful and dangerous divisions.

Utah Phillips aptly illustrates the way the use of normal constrains us in the following story.

We were in the Grand Union, [a] supermarket, getting some food, over by Greenwich or Cambridge, one or the other, with old Dorothea Brownell, Morrigan's godmother - now this is education! A little kid was fussing at the checkout counter, stuck in one of those baskets - it's all the lights in those places, make kids crazy, we all know that, don't we? Well, and the kid was fussy, and the parents were ragging on the kid, and... I get them to laugh, and the parents laugh, and the checkout person laughs.

Morrigan starts punching me in the side, and said - yelling at me! - she said, "Why can't you be normal?"

And old Miss Brownell rapped Morrigan on her shin - rudely - with her cane, and said: "He is normal - what you meant to say is 'average.'"

The new Normal.

Capitalists often concern themselves with what is normal because they have to both manipulate and react to human behavior in order to make profit. They measure what is considered to be normal behavior in the economic system in order to reduce and eliminate costs while reaping rewards. One of the favorite phrases in corporate boardrooms is the “new normal.” Especially as we move into a more steady state life with COVID-19 persisting, capitalists need to know how this has changed “normal” behaviors. The problem here is that what they consider normal is just manufactured and controlled rules of human interaction that were created by humans. It is no more normal to buy an orange in a store vs, for instance, picking an orange off of a tree. There is nothing normal about human beings being allowed to starve to death because other human beings own and control the distribution of food, especially when those that control the production and distribution of food waste enormous amounts of that production annually.

Human actions can certainly be judged as more desirable or less desirable, but it is not helpful in understanding and assessing human behaviors when we use the term normal to define them. Slavery, murder, hatred, racism, could all be considered normal human behaviors but are certainly not desirable. Compassion, cooperation, sharing, and generosity also could be considered normal human behaviors and are definitely more desirable behaviors in comparison to others. When we understand this we can better see why the term normal distorts our ability to assess the quality of human interactions in relation to our current social structures.

When we start to wean ourselves away from the concept that our current social and economic structures are somehow normal, we can begin to imagine, and build, better systems in their place.

On Nine Eleven

The hijacking of flights on September 11, 2001 and the use of those hijacked aircraft to attack buildings in New York and Virginia, as well as the failed attempt which crashed in Pennsylvania, was a tragedy.

The response by the US government, supported by the American public, was a greater tragedy.

George W Bush, who barely won the presidency with the help of the Supreme Court halting recounts in Florida, saw his approval rating go up to 86%. Mayor Rudi Giuliani was named Time’s Person of the Year. Overt US nationalism exploded with American flags flying everywhere, as did anti-muslim hate crime, which grew 1600% in 2001. Anti-muslim hate crime in the US remains at about 5x the rate it was at prior to 9/11.

After the attacks on 9/11 the US Government and media set into motion its latest plans for war. The US Government always has plans for war. It is how empires function. Always planning and waiting and instigating for a triggering action that will give them the cover they need to bend the will of the people towards another war, another bombing, another “intervention” to expand the empire and gain strategic advantage and access to wealth and resources.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex lied. “They hate our freedoms,” said George Bush who should have known that they mostly hated our actions, especially our use of Saudi territory to attack Iraq in the first Iraq war. And, of course, the US Government strung together a relentless litany of lies to propagandize the public that Saddam Hussein was evil and was a threat to the US culminating in Colin Powell’s infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council. The US media pushed all of these lies out to the pubic with virtually no dissent.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex concealed evidence. It continues to conceal evidence gathered in the FBI investigation of 9/11, some of which, it is expected, implicates Saudi Arabia. Biden has ordered that more of that evidence be declassified over the next 6 months.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex rejected opportunities to avoid war. The Taliban made overtures to turn over Osama Bin Laden to a neutral party for trial before 9/11 (for the US Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and for the USS Cole attack). The US Government ignored the offers. The Taliban made a similar offer after the US began bombing in 2001, which was rejected by the Bush administration.

Empires require propaganda as well as brute force to maintain themselves and the US Government has developed one of the most impressive propaganda systems in the modern era. Through the education system and what is described as the “free press.” the US Government conditions the US public to believe an underlying narrative that it manipulate to generate desired responses for or against whatever it chooses.

The free press of course is a lie. When you have a commercial media apparatus dependent on advertising dollars for survival, and those advertisers are national and international corporations, that press is not free. The influence is constant and powerful. While MSNBC launched a regular program with Phil Donahue in the summer of 2002, they promptly cancelled it in February 2003, when it was the highest rated show on the network, for its potential of becoming “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda” as the US Government and the rest of the commercial media beat the drums for war in Iraq. Even when it was airing, the network put significant pressure on Donahue to slant the content, calling for two conservative or pro-war guests for every liberal or anti-war guest.

So thus was born the “war on terrorism” and the nation applauded, not realizing that terrorism was not an entity with whom you could go to war. Terrorism can be used outside of war, but is also a tactic of war and is inevitably practiced by both sides in nearly every war.

As Howard Zinn said, “How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”

And hundreds of thousands died. And millions were harmed in so many ways. And the world is no safer.

And on top of the casualties and deaths at the hands of our military was the loss of our freedoms. George Bush and the US Congress did more harm to our freedoms after 9/11 than the terrorists did. We got the Department of Homeland Security, enhanced spying, the Patriot Act, torture and detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The US Government response to 9/11 was a greater tragedy than the terrible tragedy of 9/11.