Today on BBC the Jordanian foreign minister called on the world to demand an end to the slaughter of children and other innocents in Gaza, so as to keep the Middle East from sliding into the abyss– and that is the good news in this perilous moment for the world.
Thoughtful people around the globe are awaking to the vengeful spirit and actions of the Israeli government, and they are aroused to unprecedented demonstrations and actions and prayers. They move knowing that fellow beings in Gaza are subject to unending plagues and a nightmare of force very few of us have experienced. A collective punishment that many have identified as a genocide.
100,000 demonstrated in London, filling bridges and thoroughfares. Australia, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Yemen, Iran, and Malaysia. Hundreds of thousands in Turkey.
The biggest antiwar demonstrations in the U.S. since Iraq war. Thousands of brave Jews and their allies shut down Grand Central Terminal in the name of peace. Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have in one moment risen to the occasion and seized the future of that community from the Zionists. There is turmoil inside that community in the United States, as the conscience of that community at last asserts itself.
No, the world is seeing that the horrifying atrocities of October 7 did not happen in a vacuum, as secretary-general Antonio Guterres said this week. They are the result of persecution, as a demonstrator in Seattle above points out.
We remember the Kufr Qassem massacre of 1959. What a portent it was of the world we are in today. Israeli forces killed 49 Palestinians, who were shepherds and farmers, and wounded 31 people, as they made their way back to their homes. Innocents.
The numbers are in the thousands today. It goes without saying that we are at a reckoning, that civilization is getting to look at itself in the mirror and judge what humans are capable of. Or approve. Orly Noy of the Israeli leftwing publication Local Call addressed the bloodthirsty racism in her society on Facebook:
“I look at you, obsessively uploading pictures of Israeli children who were murdered, kidnapped, left orphaned after the massacre in the south while you absolutely demand the murder of children in Gaza. I no longer believe a word of yours. Anyone who doesn’t understand how terrible is what we’re doing now in Gaza; how end-of-the-world, morally, is what we’re doing in darkened, silenced, isolated-in-the-extreme Gaza, doesn’t really believe in the sanctity of life. They believe in the sanctity of Jewish blood instead. History is full of those who believed in the sanctity of one kind of blood, but the blood of others was considered less significant than water. We saw where that led, thank you very much. I don’t believe you anymore…. You don’t mourn for anyone; you don’t understand the value of any child’s life. I don’t believe a single word of yours anymore.
Of course, it is not just Orly Noy’s society and leaders that are complicit. We in the U.S. are especially implicated. With Joe Biden signing off on the slaughter and the further dispossession of Palestine. With the Onion proving to be more reliable on the morality of Israel than the mainstream media. With Bernie Sanders refusing to call for ceasefire, and Jan Schakowsky, too, saying against all evidence, this is not a war against the Palestinian people.
Even as ten brave members of the House have stood up for the civilians. A moment of reckoning indeed. “May God have mercy on our souls,” writes one secular friend.
Thank you for reading our site this week,
Phil
(h/t Ofer Neiman, Sol Salbe)
Zionism is reacting to this tragedy by operating from base instincts. This enables seeing that it has not become a light for humanity. Perhaps Israel could rise via a creative constitution that provides for cultural, religious, and individual rights.
Phil Weiss achieved the impossible. Wrote an essay about the present situation without mentioning:
· The massacre of innocent civilians in Israel.
· The kidnapping of hundreds of innocent people, including babies and small children.
· The continuing rocket attacks from Gaza, on our civilian population, and now also from Hizballah .
· Hamas
· The demonstrators who justify Hamas atrocities. The manifestations of Anti-Semitism among the demonstrators.
Free the kidnapped hostages!
Thoughtful? Hardly. Here are some questions that require thought: 1. What should a country do when attacked by the barbarism of October 7th? 2. What should a country do when its civilian citizens, including babies and retirees are kidnapped?
No answers are offered here or in these identitarian rallies.
I don’t think vengeance is thoughtful, but neither do I think that any nation could or should tolerate a terrorist group controlling territory adjacent to their own.
On October 6th thoughtful people might have offered a 2 state solution or a 1 state solution or a federalist solution. On October 8th, these ideas were smoldering in the rubble.
People marching extolling “any means necessary” extolling the virtues of Nat Turner. These aren’t thoughtful people. They are knee jerk jerks. Only a go with the crowd jerk would call them thoughtful. Feh!
Click on link below for details & see the details of the table below regarding the killings / massacres:
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The History of Terrorism in Israel and Palestine
Israel’s Sacred Terrorism See also, Table: Israeli Versus PLO Terrorist Killings Below.
Edward Herman
Excerpt from The Real Terror Network
South End Press, 1982
As quoted by Third World Traveler
“Begin’s list is indeed “partial.” It is supplemented by former Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur, who stated that “For 30 years, from the War of Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities,” offering as examples the bombardments that cleared the Jordan Valley of all inhabitants and that drove a million and a half civilians from the Suez Canal area in 1970, among others. The Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff summarized General Gur’s comments as follows: “In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it…the importance of Gur’s remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously…the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets… [but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck.”
There are other examples that might be cited, among them, the terrorist attacks against civilian targets (including U.S. installations) in Cairo and Alexandria in 1954 carried out in an effort to poison relations between the United States and Egypt; the murderous attacks on the villages of Qibya, Kafr Kassem, and others; the shooting down of a Libyan airliner in 1973 with 110 killed as it was attempting to return to Cairo after having overflown the Sinai in a sandstorm; and many others. Lebanon has been a regular target of Israeli terrorism, including direct invasion and systematic bombardment of cities, villages and rural areas that has caused hundreds of thousands of refugees and many thousands of casualties. Still another dimension of state terrorism is the brutal treatment of the civilian population in the occupied territories,”
Israeli Versus PLO Terrorist Killings*
https://ifamericansknew.org/history/terrorism.html