Israel/Palestine Thread

Maybe in hindsight, removing Jeremy Corbyn because he was an alleged 'anti semite' has not aged so well.

The subsequent purge of pro-palestinian labour activists played right into the hands of the Tories and the Israeli government

the irony - a representative of the only country that has used nuclear weapons in anger….

latest strap lines from Haaretz show international pressure on Israel is quickly mounting - and the starvation death toll is climbing.

The United Nations Security Council is set to convene Sunday for an emergency session over Israel's decision to capture Gaza City and enact Israeli control over the entire Gaza Strip. Israel's UN mission said the session was requested by the U.K.

• On Friday, the foreign ministers of Australia, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom strongly condemned Israel's plans for Gaza, saying they "risk violating international humanitarian law."

• United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Friday that he was "gravely alarmed" and warned the decision was "a dangerous escalation."

Jewish groups in North America, including prominent pro-Israel organizations, issued statements warning against a newly approved Israeli plan to expand military operations in Gaza. The American Jewish Committee, a leading mainstream Jewish organization, said, "The profound risks posed by a full military takeover of Gaza City cannot be overlooked."

The Gaza Health ministry said 11 people died of malnutrition and starvation in the previous day, bringing the total number of malnutrition-related deaths to 212.

Not only is international pressure mounting, internal pressure is too.

Wouldn't be surprised if there's a violent uprising against the monsters in charge - and quite right too.

Very strong words including asking the international community to sanction Israel to "save its dying soul" and there's direct threats against alleged War Criminal #1 (at large). Hopefully, there is a real possibility enough people will support and assist his transport to The Hague. That's what happened to Duterte….

Hostages' families called for a shutdown of Israel's economy following the security cabinet decision.

• Anat Angrest, whose son, Matan, is held hostage in Gaza, addressed the Israeli public and business leaders in a statement, saying. "Will you be with me when I call to halt everything? …. The silence is deadly."
• Vicky Cohen, the mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, also appealed to the public, saying: "There is only one way to stop this: to stop everything.
  
• Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif of the left-wing Hadash-Ta'al party called on the international community to sanction Israel to save the "hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been starved and slaughtered," as well as the "tortured Israeli hostages. He added that sanctions would"save the dying soul of Israeli society."
  
• Israelis are protesting around the country to call for a hostage/cease-fire deal, with the main protest taking place in Tel Aviv.
• Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, spoke outside of Defense Ministry headquarters ahead of the protests. Addressing Netanyahu, she vowed that if the hostages were killed because of the approved military action, "we will go after you in the squares, in the elections and at any time and place."

Some very disturbing detail here on Likud and their far-right mates.

It really could be a mirror image of the 1930s…

"Lawmakers from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, former senior military officials and lawmakers from the ruling Likud party have been using uncannily similar language lately.

Likud's Hanoch Milwidsky, the new head of the Knesset Finance Committee who is also being investigated on suspicions of rape, declaimed on Channel 14 in mid-July:

'Enough of talking about [hostage release] deals at all. ... We need to take land. ... You kill their people, they don't care, destroy buildings – they don't even care about famine. What they care about is land.'

We should have known this was coming: Amit Segal, the political commentator who is the closest person to the government in the mainstream media, argued the same logic in January in The Wall Street Journal.

Someone gave it to someone and suddenly that line is everywhere"

Dahlia Scheindlin

I wonder if that means that all Israelis are guilty the way we were told that all Palestinians were guilty?