ActionAid Media Release
“We categorically denounce the reported green light from the US for Israel to undertake military action in Rafah and forcibly transfer the million plus people sheltering in Rafah to so-called “humanitarian islands” within Gaza so Israel can continue its violent rampage which is now entering its 6th month.
“These people are not simply an inconvenience in this war, this flagrant disregard for international law constitutes a gross violation of the rights of Gazans, who have already endured countless displacement since this crisis began. Palestinians in Gaza must be guaranteed their inalienable right to return to their homes.
“We demand an immediate cessation of this plan and call for all parties to prioritise the protection of civilians and adhere to their obligations under international law. All this ceasefire talk from leading nations is hot air if they allow the Israeli government to facilitate the mass transfer of the now largest refugee camp on earth. This cannot be allowed to happen, and we urge governments to ensure it does not for the good of humanity.”
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
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Only difference between these ‘refugee camps’ and concentration camps is that those controlling concentration camps had to provide some sort of sustenance . How low will lsrael go in its contempt for Palestiand citizens and for world morality ? And how blind their sycophants?
@ Win – yes, my thoughts exactly.
Israel is morally and ethically bankrupt at this point in time, as are their supporters.
“Humanitarian Islands” Pull the other one.
Netanyahu has lied so many times that nobody is going to believe this nonsense.
Win J. –
Excellent comment – I couldn’t agree more with what you have said.
Israel is now completely rogue and downright evil. Was glad to see a U.S. Democrat politician, Schumer (?) speak loud and clear, how much he is against what Israel is doing and particularly pointed to Netanyahu as the perp in charge … his words were more than interesting.
I was going to comment….but nothing makes me sick.
Annie B,
The anti-Netanyahu elements in Democratic senate leader Chuck Schumer’s speech is just one of many recent signals of a possible significant shift in US foreign policy regarding Israel and it’s ongoing atrocities .
Thank you CB for posting this video. It is very interesting. I forgot to mention before, that further to Schumers very strong words, he is a Jewish gentleman, and I think that says a lot too.
It’s my thought – and hope – that many Jewish people feel the same way, but they are often reticent to say much about political preferences or opinions.
I’d like to second Anne’s comment; it’s the first time I’ve watched a Beau of the Fifth Column offering, and I found it to be on point and pertinent wrt to the current dilemma that the USA faces vis-a-vis its relationship with Israel. An unfolding and potentially radical reappraisement of that historical nexus.
Anne N B & Canguro,
You’re both welcome, glad you got something out of it. This tracks with the positive feedback I have received from other AIMN regulars regarding ‘Beau of the Fifth Column (singular exception noted).
A link to Beau’s recent take on the way confronting incidents and images (“trauma-memes” in modern patois) imprint upon and indelibly effect the attitudes of the generations that witness/experience them, as pertains to the humanitarian disaster being perpetrated in Gaza;
Although BotFC posts 3-4 short clips a day & is part of my regular yewchoob viewing list, my personal policy (based on prior experience) is to deliberately restrict myself to only posting the occasional video where he touches on topics or offers extra information directly related to the central subject article.
There are certainly significant moves afoot.
Numerous significant Israelis, publicly (on Oz TV) declaring Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir & Smotrich untrustworthy, and like terrorists.
The invitation to the White House and meeting last week with Benny Gantz and Vice President Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer and other lawmakers is very significant.
After driving hate, hopelessness and a confusion of dogma in Israeli jewish citizens via authoritarianism, and smashing Israeli reputation by murder and destruction in Gaza (etc), it would appear that the divisive and incompetent Netanyahu and his Likud coalition government’s days are being severely numbered.
Israeli citizens are well used to rolling elections. Getz may have entered into 2-way assurances and provided the Washington administration insider nuances of current Knesset manoeuvres, numbers, ways and means to bring about an Israeli election and an end to the current horrors.
It will almost certainly spell the end of Netanyahu, and get the US off the international hook of complicity, and breech of its own laws and stem the death and destruction in Gaza (etc) – all an imperative well before the US elections in November.
Of course, it won’t end there, following on, the whole world will have to devise and pay for the easing of ME tensions and impasses, and the long term resolution and reconstruction of the Palestinian society in the region, and also that of Israel.
Why does anyone find what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank surprising? Right from the inception of Zionist Israel violence has been its way. Violent oppression is in the DNA of all colonizers.
Clakka,
Given Itomar Ben-Gvirs multiple convictions for inciteful hate-speech in support of proscribed organisations’ (aka “terror groups”) methinks calling Netanyahu’s security minister a “terrorist” is probably neither a verbal nor a legal overstep.
Regarding Gantz, he ain’t exactly a cuddly moderate (high-brass IDF with a longview towards the Jordan), but he’s currently a least-worst alternative.
On your last paragraph, the state of Israel certainly needs serious fundamental reforms, both to increase it’s layers of resilience (remember Bibi’s attacks on the Israeli judiciary prior to 7/10), and to address prejudicially bigoted aspects of it’s constitutions (eg automatic right of ‘return’ under Aaliyah).
More could be said regarding organised representation of collective Palestinian aspirations (beyond surviving till the next available meal), but I haven’t the backgrounding or brainpower to even begin.
ajpgrady,
So the imperative for imperialist expansion manifests as a specifically identified genetic marker?
Interesting.
ajogrady
‘Violent oppression is in the DNA of all colonizers.”
Your comment brought to mind observations by early explorer [Major] Thomas Mitchell who, when leading an expedition of men, bullock carts, cattle and horses in 1846 was being guided to water holes by local Aborigines in the vicinity of the Narran Wetlands, NW NSW.
These watering places were critical to the explorers as they were to the natives, he said in his journal :
“I found near the ponds (wetlands) several huts made of fresh branches of trees and the remains of fires doubtless the deserted home of fugitives of yesterday . At these fires I found the roasted pods of the acacia already mentioned . The water was surrounded by fresh herbage and such was the simple fare of those aborigines, such the home whence they fled. As I looked at it in the presence of my sable (aboriginal) guides, I could not but reflect that the whiteman’s cattle would soon trample these holes into a quagmire of mud, and destroy the surrounding verdure and pleasant freshness for ever. I feared that my good-natured but acute guides thought as much and I blushed inwardly for our pallid race.”
It was ever such, the coloniser will destroy what he fails to respect or understand. It brings to mind an old Palestinian man whose olive tees had been uprooted and burned by settlers on the West Bank : he asked plainitively ‘why would they do this to me?’ There was no answer then and there is no answer now.
One culprit; religion.
Arguably defined as the politicisation of spiritual faith.
Cb, thanks for your observations on my comment.
I am aware of the matters you portray, and have no issues there.
I could go on a rant about the incursions by many, and the devious meddling by the Romans / Byzantine ~ European Christians, and British / French meddling since the Great War through and later with the Americans leading to the farcical construct and apologia of the UN Resolution 181 – just a further prescription for the troubles that ensued.
But I am more interested in the over-arching politics of the now and immediate actions.
Certainly, in that, and the future, issues pertaining to the Israeli Constitution would come into play. I am aware of Bibi’s attacks on the Israeli judiciary, and the mass protests surrounding (maybe a precursor requiring a subversion via the 7/10 attacks), and long-running issues with the IDF / Police and Israels military court / incarcerations. But I know little of any matters pertaining to the Constitution.
Perhaps you can enlighten us.
Clakka,
Not without seriously swotting up, I’m more a casual observer than a serious ME policy wonk, and you know that shit ain’t exactly simple.
For example; here’s a domestic Israeli article regarding ‘how do you solve a problem like Aaliyah?’; https://www.timesofisrael.com/even-among-its-advocates-changing-the-law-of-return-proves-trickier-than-expected/
Myself, I can’t muster any energetic attention to be fixing problems in New Zion, I’m a bit personally preoccupied about whether the specialised association between Ocybadistes knightorum (‘black grass dart butterfly’) and Alexfloyddia repens (‘Floydd’s grass’) extends into the latter’s 2 anomalous populations existing outside estuarine environs (the ‘headland patches’). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277362381_The_distribution_of_the_endangered_Black_Grass-dart_Butterfly_Ocybadistes_knightorum_Lepidoptera_Hesperiidae
Humanitarian islands sounds euphemistic for concentration camps.
Sorry.
For me the ideas of humanitarianism and netanyahu are antithetic.
It’s not just Bibi that has to go to try and settle things down it’s also the rabid fanatical nationalist and religious nut jobs he made deals with to get power.
cb, re. the video ‘This Land’, the succinct truth expressed in three and a half minutes. Both hilarious & tragic. Human nature unchanged over thousands of years, lizard brain territoriality at play, which is what ajogrady was implying in his literary use of the phrase ‘DNA of all colonizers.’
Given the changing of the guards over millennia, not that any of us will be here to witness it but I’d be surprised if Israel as a geographic cum political entity continues to exist into eternity. Someone, and some future point, will turn the Middle East into a blackened and glazed wasteland courtesy of the most lethal of military technologies, Dutton’s preferred energy source, thereby solving the ‘problem’ for all by annihilating all inhabitants and rendering said territory uninhabitable forever.
Such a smart creature, the hominid bided! [/sarc]
After a lot of Jewish folk left Europe prior to WW2, often as voluntary immigrants, they were never encouraged to return.
Their departure was not that remarkable since they tended to be separate from their surroundings, and often unpopular( and this comes from records at the time).
Surrounded by hostility their move was a solution to “Europe’s problem”, and for those who did not move we have the Holocaust.
When hostilities ended the NIMBY plan materialized, and this time Palestine was targeted.
History is now repeating, and if the Jewish folk did actually find a spot on this planet without people to upset, then the middle east would no longer have its “problem”, and they could enjoy some peace.
But the arms trade is never going to allow this, so we just wait for Armageddon to arrive.
Major General Smedley D Butler of the US Marines wrote his takedown on warmongering, War Is a Racket in 1935. Eisenhower warned of the dangers posed to American society by the unlimited acceleration of the Military-Industrial Complex in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. Such is the power of the arms industry that both these truth-tellers have been utterly sidelined; wars continue, they’re still rackets, and arms industries elevate profits over peace and human lives. The obscenity at play, in full sight, is a shameful blot on the human race that will likely never be erased. Things are likely only to come to an end when we’ve reduced the planet to a pile of smouldering ash, post-Armageddon.