On Drop Site’s live stream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the terms of a new ceasefire proposal and the Israeli aid scheme that is being compared to “ghetto” conditions.
Thanks for such great (continual) insight. Today, I'm just abundantly more grateful. Despite just about every avenue and plea available to end this aggression/war/Genocide, the very conventual 'arguments' that we used to rely on, that i thought to be bedrock, didn't seem to penetrate the most bitter/blackened hearts. Morality, Humanity, Compassion/Empathy, et al.., simple reasoning, for God's sake!
And the group, whom seems to be in line with the very heart & desire of the people of Palestine, that has been most vilified; is Hamas. in reality, have remained steady, with no sign of waving, have demonstrated all these qualities above, with an integrity I've never witnessed from players on the global scene.
So, if it takes a narcissistic lunatic, as we have The Circus of Trumpet Blowers and Clowns in our govt, to be the one to get this war ended... Then, I'm all for him to get something whimsical up his ass, something that will make him look good to his liking... The world... Especially the precious people of Palestine, need to eat and exhale.
Dear Jeremy and Ryan...thank you for updating us. Forgive my seeming to have replied out of context. I understood that the content of your video and discourse was about the apparent duplicity in all statements and negotiations on the subject of humanitarian aid but I also wanted to point out too that these deceptions are across the board(as you well know) and my possibly inappropriate reference to the UK declaration of suspending trade with Israel if aid wasn't permitted and the assault on Gaza "will not hesitate to take concrete actions etc" was to inform Americans that may not know that we have in the House of Lords persons who are declared Friends of Israel and one of them is a UK trade envoy who cited the need to maintain trade relations etc despite the "awful scenes i Gaza" and that it could all be stopped straightaway if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered. Like many pro-Israelis he seems to think that all would be well etc leaving the whole main issue out...that Israel is an Apartheid state, does not adhere to international law and human rights;is in fact pursuing illegal activities...even crimes against Humanity. Lord Austin was described by one Goldstein as "a friend and ally of Israel". Two other Lords and Friends of Israel leapt up in the House of Lords to point out the error about children in Gaza facing imminent death that Tom Fletcher made in his recent impassioned address. Is it any wonder there seems so little progress toward justice?
Israel is not an apartheid state. Non-Jews (including Arabs, even if they consider themselves to be Palestinians) have full civil rights. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals by medical staffs that include Jews and Arabs. Arabs can (and do) bring suit against Jews in court. For that matter, Arabs can also be judges in Israeli courts. The head of the largest bank in Israel is an Arab. Yussef Haddad is an Arab who chose to serve in the IDF because, in his words, he wanted to serve his country. He notes that, during his service, he gave commands to Jewish soldiers. No black served in the army of apartheid South Africa and, most certainly, no black person in apartheid South Africa gave orders to white people.
I am sure you study the middle east far more thoroughly than I ever have. Perhaps I use the term apartheid incorrectly. So I will change my post to "Israel is an unjust state"...is that better for you? When Palestinians...at least in the illegally occupied territories, are subject to military courts and Israelis to civil courts would that be your definition of justice? When the illegal IOF and the Israeli police force protect the illegal and criminal bullies attacking and , brutalising,and terrorising..destroying the rightful property of Palestinians and utterly despoiling almost every aspect of their lives...even intimidating little children, beautiful little children on their roundabout way to school...by their ugly presence at every corner...a great number of them young punks who barely know their arse from a hole in the ground, I don't see any semblance to "full civil rights". Perhaps you mean that Palestinians can apply for permission to build a house...but they are seldom granted it. You know that Israel is a shit country and when you cite "Arabs" in positions of influence, so what, Israel will embrace any means to defend its privileges and comfort...that is all it wants to defend! That is the "threat" Israel fears. What a fearful nation!
Perhaps you are unaware that the 1964 founding document of the Palestine LIberation Organization specified that the PLO made no claim to the areas then occupied by Egypt and Jordan. You may also be unaware that those areas (Gaza and "The West Bank" = eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria) had been seized by Egypt and Jordan when Arab nations went to war against the Jews in Palestine and in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa rather than helping the Arabs of Palestine prepare for the autonomy offered them by the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine (the actual area being the 20% of British Mandatory Palestine that had not been used to create the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).
For the past two decades, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, nearly all Palestinians have been living under the administration of leaders of their own choosing -- either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. Neither has made any effort to develop the economies of land under their administration. PA President Mahmoud Abbas says that his adminidtrations primary finanacial obligation is keeping the Martyr's Fund solvent. That the fund which provides liflong stipends to Palestinians who answer the call for violent resistance to the "Occupation." The amount of the stipend is tied to the number of Israelis killed and is given to the murderer's family if he or she is killed in the act or imprisoned.
Hamas claimed an Israeli blockade prevented the development of Gaza's economy.
But Hamas managed to spend a billion dollars building its extensive network of tunnels, deliberately embedding the fortifications so deeply amid the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas' attacks would kill some Gazans despite Israel's best efforts to avoid harming civilians. Read up on the statements of Major John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies in West Point's Modern Warfare Institute.
Thank you for your comprehensive defense of Israel's continued terrorism. I, like many others are not scholars, just individuals who bristle at blatant injustices and all forms of bullying. I am ashamed to have to admit that I took little interest in the troubles of the region over the decade following decade, and that was because to me politics is an unclean term that has been soiled by lies, underhand deals, and obfuscation, and self-interest. The self-interested parties have deliberately kept things slumbering along nicely to prevent disruption to their various little and big schemes...not anymore...it is out in the light of day and people are reacting to it strongly. That is very "inconvenient" to Israel and the USA as well as complicit countries now being dragged into it reluctantly...and now stating what ordinary pro-Palestinians...the students and the marchers and organisers of the resistance who have been vilified over more than eighteen months of genocidal intent by Israel, have been TELLING them. To put it simply as I can...oppressors are ALWAYS wrong and the oppressed ALWAYS right!
I agree with you -- oppressors are wrong; the problem is determining who is the oppressor. Two examples:
1) Arab-initiated violence created two groups of refugees. Fewer than 700,000 Arabs fled or were displaced from Palestine and over 1,000,000 Mizrachi Jews were driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the Mizrachim emigrated to France or the US, but Israel absorbed 800,000 of them during the first three decades of the existence of the modern State of Israel. Food was being rationed in the early years, Israel was also rehabilitating Holocaust survivors, Arab armies were still attacking, and terrorist raids were being staged in areas illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But Israel absorbed and uplifted the Mizrachim whose descendants comprise the majority of Israel's current Jewish population. Every post in Israel's governance (except Prime Minister) has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the MIzrachi communities.
In contrast, Arab nations refused citizenship to the Arabs who' fled or were displaced and to their descendants. Their numbers have grown to 6,000,000 Palestine refugees on UNRWA rolls; 99.5% of them were born in UNRWA "camps" (actually cities that have become breeding grounds for terrorism). The "refugees" have been told (by Arab and Palestinian leaders) that Israel will, someday, be forced to give them the homes that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents,... lost when Israel became a state. But the "refugees" have grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for killing Jews. Taking them in would be the death knell for the Jewish state (which is the intention of Arab and Palestinian leaders).
2) Between 1948 and 1967, when Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank") were under Jordanian occupation, Jews were ethnically cleansed from the areas and Palestinians were given the homes from which the Jews had been driven, Israel liberated "The West Bank" and Gaza in the Six Day War in June, 1967.
In September, 1967, the Arab League rejected Israel's offer to withdraw from newly-liberated lands (not all; Israel wanted to retain control over east Jerusalem) in exchange for recognition and peace. The Arab League reponded with "Three NO's" -- no recognition; no negotiations; no peace. There is no record of Palestinian leaders objecting ("Accept the offer! We want to build our state.") This left Israel with a problem. Palestinians were living in home to which Israelis had legitimate claims. Israeli courts ruled that Palestinians would be recognized as owners of the homes if Jordan had given them title. However, those Palestinians who had been granted title would be considered tenants and required to pay minimal rent to the Jewish owners. This worked well until the Palestinian Authority told the tenants to stop paying (and the tenants stopped--it's not safe for a Palestinian to defy the PA or Hamas). There was a big to-do about this situation a few years back when Israel (of course) was accused to trying to push Palestinians out of thei homes so Jews could be installed in them,
I have to admit that you have knowledge(whether it is correct or not is a different matter). I am sure there are many different opinions on this subject...shall we blame Germany? or perhaps Britain after the first world war, when Britain and France dishonoured agreements with some of the Arabs that fought with the allies? Some historians claim that T E Lawrence was much disaffected by this treason. However.as I have stated, I am neither historian or scholar...you might be. What I and many other ordinary people are highly disturbed about is the present. an I candidly ask you if you consider starving a population ethical and permissive?(especially young children that need nutrition to develop and grow. If you have children would it concern you that they were being deliberately starved as well as bombed and denied all medical necessities? I will answer that question I posed for you...you would, so how can you appear to detach and defend Israel's cruel and evil intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza and to expand the illegal occupation? I appreciate that you have been civil despite our opposing perspectives, but I shall adhere to the wisdom of great orator and holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. I suggest with all due respect that his opinion bears more weight than yours or mine.
The UK is, and needs to impose sanctions against Israel, and after the recent call by 800 Judges inc High Court Judges to meet its legal commitments under international law, the Brit Gvt is finally doing something. It is suspending the latest round of trade talks, imposing new sanctions on West Bank Settlers “ in response to the persistent cycle of serious violence”, Uk Gvt joins French and Canadian Gvts https://www.ft.com/content/f6a2e3ce-0dfa-4194-a1d7-0c6797e40216
Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria (dubbed "The West Bank" by Jordanian aggressors in 1948) employ both Israelis and Palestinian workers and serve both Israeli and Palestinian consumers. Those businesses should be lauded for proving that Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in peace. It's Palestinian leaders who are more interested in destroying the nation-state of the Jews than in creating societies in which Palestinians can become productive citizens. See Bassam Tawil on "What do Palestinians really want?" in Gatestone.
The UK government TALKS about severing trade agreements and a trade envoy...Lord Austin boasts from a balcony(I think) "we are here to negotiate trade interests for UK/Israel" or something like that...I've not got the exact words before me. He looked very full of himself as these people do when talking about billions (presumably lucre). Is he free- lance or employed by the UK government? I am confused!
An American scam, or put another way, another gross national product.
Thanks for such great (continual) insight. Today, I'm just abundantly more grateful. Despite just about every avenue and plea available to end this aggression/war/Genocide, the very conventual 'arguments' that we used to rely on, that i thought to be bedrock, didn't seem to penetrate the most bitter/blackened hearts. Morality, Humanity, Compassion/Empathy, et al.., simple reasoning, for God's sake!
And the group, whom seems to be in line with the very heart & desire of the people of Palestine, that has been most vilified; is Hamas. in reality, have remained steady, with no sign of waving, have demonstrated all these qualities above, with an integrity I've never witnessed from players on the global scene.
So, if it takes a narcissistic lunatic, as we have The Circus of Trumpet Blowers and Clowns in our govt, to be the one to get this war ended... Then, I'm all for him to get something whimsical up his ass, something that will make him look good to his liking... The world... Especially the precious people of Palestine, need to eat and exhale.
Dear Jeremy and Ryan...thank you for updating us. Forgive my seeming to have replied out of context. I understood that the content of your video and discourse was about the apparent duplicity in all statements and negotiations on the subject of humanitarian aid but I also wanted to point out too that these deceptions are across the board(as you well know) and my possibly inappropriate reference to the UK declaration of suspending trade with Israel if aid wasn't permitted and the assault on Gaza "will not hesitate to take concrete actions etc" was to inform Americans that may not know that we have in the House of Lords persons who are declared Friends of Israel and one of them is a UK trade envoy who cited the need to maintain trade relations etc despite the "awful scenes i Gaza" and that it could all be stopped straightaway if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered. Like many pro-Israelis he seems to think that all would be well etc leaving the whole main issue out...that Israel is an Apartheid state, does not adhere to international law and human rights;is in fact pursuing illegal activities...even crimes against Humanity. Lord Austin was described by one Goldstein as "a friend and ally of Israel". Two other Lords and Friends of Israel leapt up in the House of Lords to point out the error about children in Gaza facing imminent death that Tom Fletcher made in his recent impassioned address. Is it any wonder there seems so little progress toward justice?
Israel is not an apartheid state. Non-Jews (including Arabs, even if they consider themselves to be Palestinians) have full civil rights. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals by medical staffs that include Jews and Arabs. Arabs can (and do) bring suit against Jews in court. For that matter, Arabs can also be judges in Israeli courts. The head of the largest bank in Israel is an Arab. Yussef Haddad is an Arab who chose to serve in the IDF because, in his words, he wanted to serve his country. He notes that, during his service, he gave commands to Jewish soldiers. No black served in the army of apartheid South Africa and, most certainly, no black person in apartheid South Africa gave orders to white people.
I am sure you study the middle east far more thoroughly than I ever have. Perhaps I use the term apartheid incorrectly. So I will change my post to "Israel is an unjust state"...is that better for you? When Palestinians...at least in the illegally occupied territories, are subject to military courts and Israelis to civil courts would that be your definition of justice? When the illegal IOF and the Israeli police force protect the illegal and criminal bullies attacking and , brutalising,and terrorising..destroying the rightful property of Palestinians and utterly despoiling almost every aspect of their lives...even intimidating little children, beautiful little children on their roundabout way to school...by their ugly presence at every corner...a great number of them young punks who barely know their arse from a hole in the ground, I don't see any semblance to "full civil rights". Perhaps you mean that Palestinians can apply for permission to build a house...but they are seldom granted it. You know that Israel is a shit country and when you cite "Arabs" in positions of influence, so what, Israel will embrace any means to defend its privileges and comfort...that is all it wants to defend! That is the "threat" Israel fears. What a fearful nation!
Perhaps you are unaware that the 1964 founding document of the Palestine LIberation Organization specified that the PLO made no claim to the areas then occupied by Egypt and Jordan. You may also be unaware that those areas (Gaza and "The West Bank" = eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria) had been seized by Egypt and Jordan when Arab nations went to war against the Jews in Palestine and in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa rather than helping the Arabs of Palestine prepare for the autonomy offered them by the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine (the actual area being the 20% of British Mandatory Palestine that had not been used to create the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).
For the past two decades, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, nearly all Palestinians have been living under the administration of leaders of their own choosing -- either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. Neither has made any effort to develop the economies of land under their administration. PA President Mahmoud Abbas says that his adminidtrations primary finanacial obligation is keeping the Martyr's Fund solvent. That the fund which provides liflong stipends to Palestinians who answer the call for violent resistance to the "Occupation." The amount of the stipend is tied to the number of Israelis killed and is given to the murderer's family if he or she is killed in the act or imprisoned.
Hamas claimed an Israeli blockade prevented the development of Gaza's economy.
But Hamas managed to spend a billion dollars building its extensive network of tunnels, deliberately embedding the fortifications so deeply amid the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas' attacks would kill some Gazans despite Israel's best efforts to avoid harming civilians. Read up on the statements of Major John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies in West Point's Modern Warfare Institute.
Thank you for your comprehensive defense of Israel's continued terrorism. I, like many others are not scholars, just individuals who bristle at blatant injustices and all forms of bullying. I am ashamed to have to admit that I took little interest in the troubles of the region over the decade following decade, and that was because to me politics is an unclean term that has been soiled by lies, underhand deals, and obfuscation, and self-interest. The self-interested parties have deliberately kept things slumbering along nicely to prevent disruption to their various little and big schemes...not anymore...it is out in the light of day and people are reacting to it strongly. That is very "inconvenient" to Israel and the USA as well as complicit countries now being dragged into it reluctantly...and now stating what ordinary pro-Palestinians...the students and the marchers and organisers of the resistance who have been vilified over more than eighteen months of genocidal intent by Israel, have been TELLING them. To put it simply as I can...oppressors are ALWAYS wrong and the oppressed ALWAYS right!
I agree with you -- oppressors are wrong; the problem is determining who is the oppressor. Two examples:
1) Arab-initiated violence created two groups of refugees. Fewer than 700,000 Arabs fled or were displaced from Palestine and over 1,000,000 Mizrachi Jews were driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the Mizrachim emigrated to France or the US, but Israel absorbed 800,000 of them during the first three decades of the existence of the modern State of Israel. Food was being rationed in the early years, Israel was also rehabilitating Holocaust survivors, Arab armies were still attacking, and terrorist raids were being staged in areas illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But Israel absorbed and uplifted the Mizrachim whose descendants comprise the majority of Israel's current Jewish population. Every post in Israel's governance (except Prime Minister) has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the MIzrachi communities.
In contrast, Arab nations refused citizenship to the Arabs who' fled or were displaced and to their descendants. Their numbers have grown to 6,000,000 Palestine refugees on UNRWA rolls; 99.5% of them were born in UNRWA "camps" (actually cities that have become breeding grounds for terrorism). The "refugees" have been told (by Arab and Palestinian leaders) that Israel will, someday, be forced to give them the homes that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents,... lost when Israel became a state. But the "refugees" have grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for killing Jews. Taking them in would be the death knell for the Jewish state (which is the intention of Arab and Palestinian leaders).
2) Between 1948 and 1967, when Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank") were under Jordanian occupation, Jews were ethnically cleansed from the areas and Palestinians were given the homes from which the Jews had been driven, Israel liberated "The West Bank" and Gaza in the Six Day War in June, 1967.
In September, 1967, the Arab League rejected Israel's offer to withdraw from newly-liberated lands (not all; Israel wanted to retain control over east Jerusalem) in exchange for recognition and peace. The Arab League reponded with "Three NO's" -- no recognition; no negotiations; no peace. There is no record of Palestinian leaders objecting ("Accept the offer! We want to build our state.") This left Israel with a problem. Palestinians were living in home to which Israelis had legitimate claims. Israeli courts ruled that Palestinians would be recognized as owners of the homes if Jordan had given them title. However, those Palestinians who had been granted title would be considered tenants and required to pay minimal rent to the Jewish owners. This worked well until the Palestinian Authority told the tenants to stop paying (and the tenants stopped--it's not safe for a Palestinian to defy the PA or Hamas). There was a big to-do about this situation a few years back when Israel (of course) was accused to trying to push Palestinians out of thei homes so Jews could be installed in them,
I have to admit that you have knowledge(whether it is correct or not is a different matter). I am sure there are many different opinions on this subject...shall we blame Germany? or perhaps Britain after the first world war, when Britain and France dishonoured agreements with some of the Arabs that fought with the allies? Some historians claim that T E Lawrence was much disaffected by this treason. However.as I have stated, I am neither historian or scholar...you might be. What I and many other ordinary people are highly disturbed about is the present. an I candidly ask you if you consider starving a population ethical and permissive?(especially young children that need nutrition to develop and grow. If you have children would it concern you that they were being deliberately starved as well as bombed and denied all medical necessities? I will answer that question I posed for you...you would, so how can you appear to detach and defend Israel's cruel and evil intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza and to expand the illegal occupation? I appreciate that you have been civil despite our opposing perspectives, but I shall adhere to the wisdom of great orator and holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. I suggest with all due respect that his opinion bears more weight than yours or mine.
My facebook friend said:
"Today I went to the point of aid distribution that America created but the soldiers fired bullet at us."
The UK is, and needs to impose sanctions against Israel, and after the recent call by 800 Judges inc High Court Judges to meet its legal commitments under international law, the Brit Gvt is finally doing something. It is suspending the latest round of trade talks, imposing new sanctions on West Bank Settlers “ in response to the persistent cycle of serious violence”, Uk Gvt joins French and Canadian Gvts https://www.ft.com/content/f6a2e3ce-0dfa-4194-a1d7-0c6797e40216
Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria (dubbed "The West Bank" by Jordanian aggressors in 1948) employ both Israelis and Palestinian workers and serve both Israeli and Palestinian consumers. Those businesses should be lauded for proving that Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in peace. It's Palestinian leaders who are more interested in destroying the nation-state of the Jews than in creating societies in which Palestinians can become productive citizens. See Bassam Tawil on "What do Palestinians really want?" in Gatestone.
Thank you Jeremy & Ryan for this incite to whats going on. You mention Trump being motivated
by financial deals. Could Israel's action now be bad for his big deal with Quatar, Saudi's, Emirates
for trillions of dollars.
The UK government TALKS about severing trade agreements and a trade envoy...Lord Austin boasts from a balcony(I think) "we are here to negotiate trade interests for UK/Israel" or something like that...I've not got the exact words before me. He looked very full of himself as these people do when talking about billions (presumably lucre). Is he free- lance or employed by the UK government? I am confused!