Phil Weiss reports from Jerusalem that the Republicans love Israel and Israel loves Trump. Two toxic brands are having a merger. But the Israel lobby’s oath, that Israel must remain a bipartisan issue is broken. The Republicans own Israel but it’s going to be a hot potato among Democrats. The massacre has done that.
Jonathan Ofir: “The presence of the people across the fence in the Great March of Return is a gigantic mirror, saying not only ‘we are still here,’ but ‘this is who you are.’ And Israel wants to shatter that mirror, so it sends hundreds of snipers to shatter it. All Jews should consider whether they can bear possessing such a mirror for their narcissistic self-image, while it tears apart Palestinian existence and has done for over 70 years.”
“We are the victims now with our tanks and artillery pounding the bodies of those who oppose our wildest dreams
We decimate and maim a people who stand in the way of our glorious vision
Their cries of despair and agony deafened by our own righteous movement
For we are God’s special victims”
Howard Cohen writes an ode to the State of Israel in the light of the massacres of the Palestinian people.
Jonathan Cook: “For seven decades, the west has pampered Israel at every turn. The lack of any meaningful punishment for violating Palestinian rights led directly to Monday’s massacre.”
“Today is one of the most tragic days in the history of the Jewish people” – A letter to the Israel Action Committee of a synagogue in Westchester, New York shows the anguish a growing number of American Jews are feeling towards Israel and its actions in Gaza.
Rawan Yaghi: “The opening ceremony of the embassy, as well as the nauseating tweets of Trump and Netanyahu, confirm and conclude Israel and the US view Palestinians as unworthy of the basic right to live, let alone speak. For Gaza, it was a sad day from which people woke up in shock. Our lives only too real, not science fiction.”
Celebrities are outraged over Israel’s killing of protesters in Gaza. At the Cannes Film Festival in southern France actor Benicio del Toro joined about a dozen Palestinians for a minute of silence, while many other stars are tweeting their grief and frustrations.
The New York Times article, “’Next Year in Jerusalem!’ In Israel, Eurovision Win Is Seen as a Diplomatic Victory, Too,” has enough accuracy to sound credible, but wreaks of the kind of bias and double speak that infects much of the main stream media.
Thousands of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip participated in massive demonstrations on Monday, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. Azhar Abu Srour, a Palestinian refugee who was at a protest in Bethlehem, told Mondoweiss, “I am here as a refugee, to demand my right of return to my homeland, Beit Nattif, which we were expelled from 70 years ago. I am also here to protest against the massacre of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza, who have been protesting for weeks, for this same basic right of return.”
After more than 70 years of the Nakba, Gaza refugees have raised their voices through the Great March of Return. A day after the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war, Ahmad Kabariti asked protesters what they were thinking about on this Nakba Day.