The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem began a media campaign today urging Israel Defense Forces soldiers posted on the Gaza border to disobey “patently illegal” shoot-to-kill orders against unarmed protesters. B’Tselem has taken an irrevocable, and breathtakingly brave, step.
Democratic Congresspeople Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and 9 others met with Israeli leaders even as Israel announced it was sending “dozens of snipers” to Gaza border. Four days later they shot hundreds of Palestinians, killing 17. Pelosi and Schiff and the others have issued no criticism of the shootings. Did they give Netanyahu the OK?
Arabic is the fifth-most-commonly spoken language in the world, with an estimated 250 million native speakers. It’s a useful language to know, and a university in the Gaza Strip is offering to teach it via Skype — while reducing the isolation imposed on it by a decade-long Israeli blockade.
Tema Okun’s new poem examines how the Israeli military uses Palestinians for “experimenting the latest weaponry of war on fenced in old men, pregnant women, toddlers.”
The Israeli IDF spokesperson released photos of some of the Palestinians shot dead in Friday’s Gaza massacre, suggesting they were “terrorists” because they were affiliated with Hamas. This dubious propaganda campaign eliminates distinctions between civilians and combatants and is an incitement to state terror.
A video posted by a Gaza journalist today appears to show the moment that Mohammed Khalil, a young Palestinian football player, was shot in the leg, destroying his knee, and his career, evidently by an Israeli sniper while the young man was merely video’ing himself near the Israeli border last Friday. Israel killed 17 Palestinian protesters and wounded hundreds more.
Rana Shubair set out with her husband, two children, and a collection of other relatives to join 30,000 more Palestinians who marched to the border with Israel for Gaza’s Great March of Return: “As I pondered the faces of my people there with me, one fact was clear to me more than ever: None of us had anything more valuable to lose than what we already had—our home.”
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In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Mohammed bin Salman said Israel has the same “right” to their land that the Palestinians have, putting the competing land claims on an equal footing for the first time.
US officials have defended Israel’s massacre of civilians in Gaza as a ‘response’ to terrorism – even before it happened. And afterward, the US “sheriff”, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, again kicked her high heels, blocking a draft UN Security Council statement which called for an “independent and transparent investigation” of the violence. The only answer to official support is grassroots pressure.