Israeli forces damaged buildings and dug up roads after a series of raids in Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank lasting almost two whole days.
Much of the raids on the occupied West Bank have been focused on Palestinian refugee camps.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid reports.
Israeli soldiers have been filming themselves mocking Palestinians and posting it on social media as they continue their offensive in Gaza.
Come out to stand with concerned citizens Saturday January 27 at 1:30pm to say NO to bad funding priorities -- no more $$ for Israel! No more $$ for Ukraine!
We'll stand on the busy intersection of Main Street & Broadway in downtown Farmington near the university campus. We are organizing with a group at UMF, and student Crow Then created the original art for this month's poster!
As the genocide in Gaza continues, and violence spreads through the region, the Biden administration wants to rush more billions to Israel for bombing and terrorizing Palestinians. Already 20,000+ Palestinians have died, and nearly 2 million residents of Gaza have been displaced.
Still the U.S. continues funding and arming genocide, going around Congress twice recently to do so. While many in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck, struggling just to get by.
Our demands:
Co-sponsors: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), Party for Socialism & Liberation Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, People’s Party of Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Veterans for Peace - National, and United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC).
“So take note, Butcher Biden, the ancestors of the Ireland that you claim to be from disown you keep our country out of your mouth.”
Irish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Clare Daly has criticised US President Joe Biden's support for Israel. Daly claims that despite losses on the ground, Israel refuses to admit defeat, resorting to desperate acts to incite conflicts. She accuses Biden of enabling Israeli aggression and warns him to keep Ireland out of his rhetoric.
Daly also targets Ursula von der Leyen and Germany for supporting Israel in the International Court of Justice, stating, "Not in our name. The people of Europe stand with Palestine and with South Africa."
A large crowd of protesters who denounced Israel's military actions in Gaza were trying to shut down the Port of Oakland on Saturday morning.
People in Gaza now starving.
Keep the pressure on all governments globally to support immediate ceasefire!
Craig Murray at the International Court of Justice in the Hague on the unanswerable case of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and how it was facts not emotion or theater by South Africa which won it.
Read Murray's latest article outlining Israel's case on the second day of the hearing at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/01/your-man-in-the-hague-in-a-good-way-part-2/
MB and I arrived at the home of dear friends Ken and Melody yesterday just outside of Asheville. They used to live in Maine but moved south almost 10 years ago. We've visited with them before and they often return to Maine so we see them fairly often.
Today Ken took me on a 4 mile walk along the Swannanoa River. We got a nice view of the Smoky Mountains in the distance - visible in the photo above. The river has risen quite a bit due to recent rains in the area.
At 4:00 pm Ken and I made our way to a bridge over Hwy 240 in Asheville to hold huge banners that he had made and were joined by 16 others during 1 1/2 hour protest in support of Palestine.
At the same time Melody and MB went downtown to do the same at Pack Square in the heart of the city. They had 35 people there.
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| Photo by Pamela Mumby |
While standing on the bridge we witnessed a good reception from the thousands of cars driving by that was about 10-1 positive with our message. One woman who saw the protest parked her car and joined us. It was a good mix of young and old together.
MB and I felt so happy to be able to stand for Palestine today. Since leaving Maine on December 20 we have been missing our regular weekly vigils in Brunswick in support of Gaza and the West Bank.
While on the bridge I got a warm hug from old Florida friend Clare Hanrahan who now lives in Asheville. We got arrested together in Titusville, Florida on August 9, 1985 at the McDonnell Douglas cruise missile plant in that city.We were observing the 40th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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| Photo by Pamela Mumby |
Thirteen of us were arrested that day for attempting to talk with aerospace officials about converting the plant to peaceful production. Two hundred folks were present to witness the action including two Hibakusha from Japan, survivors of Washington's attack. They spoke to the assembled at our rally before we were arrested.
On Monday I do an interview via Iran with a couple others and then we hop back in the car and begin the long drive home.
On most of the trip we have been taking back roads to avoid trucks and heavy traffic. This slower route allows us to truly see the country and how small towns are holding up under Washington's disinvestment of virtually everything except military production and endless war.
Free, free Palestine!
Bruce
WSJ explains how this startup is operating in order to disrupt the U.S. defense industry.
This guy who founded this evil company sits on the board of WestExec, the mlitary/tech consulting firm founded by Blinken and Flournoy, and of whom Lloyd Austin's company was a client.
Host of the Mother of All Talk Shows and former UK MP George Galloway came on the show to discuss South Africa's case against Israel at the Hague and how it will change everything for not just the conflict in Gaza, but the entire world as well.
He calls the US 'Israel's chief armorer, funder and diplomatic and political protection racket'.
Galloway says, 'the floodgates are open, a damn has broken...'
Truth is now visible.
The empire is a paper tiger.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Israel’s legal team started off weak but made a few strong points near the end.
Bishara said the lawyers’ efforts to deflect blame for Israel’s attacks and ignore the context of Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine came across as “illogical”.
Their claims that Israel’s forces are trying to protect, rather than harm, civilians were also unconvincing given the toll of the war: 23,357 Palestinians, including 9,600 children, since October 7.
However, Bishara said Israel’s lawyers did well to zero in on the jurisdiction of the ICJ – pointing out that the court must specifically prove Israel is guilty of genocidal intent, not any other violations.
“You can claim Israel has committed heinous crimes, but if they do not fall under the framework of genocide, the court has no jurisdiction,” Bishara said.
There is imminent and irrevocable evidence of urgency. UN aid remains unimplemented. Humanitarian ceasefire calls have been ignored. Since the case was filed, over a thousand have been killed. Over 85% repeatedly forced to move, into shrinking slivers of land. This is a population that was already vulnerable after 16 years of blockade. Many dying from preventable problems. Children in particular subjected to mental torture, much of which is irreparable.. Many people have no access to food, water, medicine or safe shelter. A trapped population that has nowhere safe to go.
In addition services are denied or restricted, even though even the US asked for it to be allowed. Israel denies it is responsible for the crisis. 500 aid trucks were necessary daily before 7 October. Promises of future aid therefore hold little sway. UN SG has stressed that number of trucks doesn’t matter, because o aid cannot be delivered effectively. Everyone and everything remains at imminent risk if irreparable prejudice.
The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people. The horror being live streamed, as victims broadcast their own destruction in real time. This has repercussions for generations to come. “The world should be ashamed”. Palestinian pastor on Xmas Day “this is a genocide, we will arise…but this is by far the biggest blow we have received”. South Africa is doing what it can, standing up to be counted.
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| Click on the photos for better view |
Mary Beth and I drove to Montgomery, Alabama and yesterday visited the outstanding museum there built in an old warehouse once used to sell slaves. Created by the Equal Justice Initiative, the museum opened in 2018. MB has wanted to go to the museum ever since.
See their web site here.
The museum has three sites spread out over the city. We went to two of them are were deeply moved by all that we saw. The first, more traditional museum, did not allow photos while the second one we visited did. So all the photos above (except for the first one) came from the second one. They have a free bus take you from one to the other.
On their site they state:
On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of Black Americans who were enslaved, terrorized by lynching, humiliated by racial segregation, and presumed guilty and dangerous.The entry fee was only a surprising $5 per person. Loads of students (white and black) filled the museum. I asked one large group of white students where they were from and they responded - 'upstate New York'. Impressive for sure.
More than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 are remembered here. Their names are engraved on more than 800 corten steel monuments—one for each county where a racial terror lynching took place—that form the main structure of the memorial at the heart of this six-acre site.
The museum bus driver asked MB and I if we ever heard of the 'Red Summer'. We had not. He went on to give us an impassioned account of the horrid story of racist attacks on black citizens all across the nation in 1919.
Throughout 1919 the exercise of black agency — black veterans wearing their military uniforms in public, black children swimming in the white section of Lake Michigan, black sharecroppers in Arkansas organizing for better wages and working conditions — was met with white mob terror. A wave of anti-black collective violence usually and problematically termed “race riots” occurred in Charleston, South Carolina; Longview, Texas; Bisbee, Arizona; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Knoxville, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; and Elaine, Arkansas. In addition, white supremacists lynched nearly 100 black people and initiated dozens of smaller racist clashes throughout the country in 1919. In Pittsburgh, the Klan made clear the goal of this bloody work in the printed notices posted around a black neighborhood: “The war is over, negroes. Stay in your place. If you don’t, we’ll put you there.”The bus driver also shared that two more sections to the museum are now under development - which he joked were 'top secret'.
After finishing our museum tour (which could have lasted for hours more) I talked briefly with a young black woman from Montgomery. I asked her what local politics were like in Montgomery these days. (Montgomery was famous for the 1955 bus boycott led by MLK Jr and initiated by Rosa Parks.) At first a bit hesitant, she went on to say that things were not so good. The economic situation for black people has not changed much since the 1960's and the police were still not trusted by the people. She finished by saying, 'We don't have good leadership'.
Our next stop on our whirlwind tour of parts of the country will take us to Asheville, North Carolina where on Friday we will join a Palestine solidarity protest. We've been following the Palestine story throughout our trip by listening to Al Jazeera live while driving from place to place.
I've been closely paying attention to another Tony Blinken public relations tour of the Middle East region. It appears clear to me that the US is actually doing nothing to enact a ceasefire in Gaza. In fact it is more than obvious that the US is complicit in war crimes while playing good cop-bad cop with Israel. Washington calls for the 'slowing down' of killing Palestinians but then looks the other way as Tel Aviv continues with their genocidal attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.
I am also following the run-up to the two-day hearing of South Africa’s historic case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. I checked the list of judges on the 15-person ICJ that will hear the case and counted at least nine of them coming from countries that are in the 'western imperial bag' - including Israel. So I don't have much confidence for a good outcome. (I hope I am completely wrong about this.) That is why massive protests all over the globe are vital in the coming days. Especially in the US and Europe.
If the ICJ takes a dive on this case then I believe global opinion of the United Nations (and all of its various agencies) will crash to an all-time low. Everyone paying any attention to the UN knows that it is controlled by the US-EU.
(See Pepe Escobar's article on the case here.)
We've had lucky weather throughout our trip. So we are hoping that after we leave Asheville to head home to Maine we remain lucky and avoid any blizzards and such.
Bruce
MintPress founder and director, Mnar Adley, was recently invited to speak at a conference in Chicago.
She spoke about Israel's ongoing attack against Palestinian journalists, how Western corporate media whitewash Israeli crimes along with sharing her personal journey of surviving Israeli occupation.
This same ruling class has brought us the wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and now Palestine.
We are witnessing a global enlightenment.
Palestinians protest Blinken’s visit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday
Alastair Crooke, CMG, is a former British diplomat, and is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.
Previously he was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy.
