Israel has killed over 14,000 children in Gaza—over 14,000 futures destroyed. In the Gaza solidarity encampments, it brings tears to my eyes to see young people fighting for a future beyond Israel's colonial occupation, war, and genocide. #FreePalestine#CeasefireNOWhttps://t.co/JoKDR4GYOQpic.twitter.com/HONqZlINHH
The worst of the Israeli military units, the U.S. investigation found, is now in Gaza.
Israel has been abusing and murdering Palestinians for decades in Gaza and the West Bank. Clearly, Hamas did not start the war.
Rather than apologizing and promising to put a stop to the human rights abuses, Israel’s fascist prime minister responding angrily and dismissed the report.
The U.S. must cut off all funding for Israel immediately, as required by law. Further, the International Criminal Court must issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu:
When they commit gross violations of human rights but they are your buddies ❤️ https://t.co/93vGmkpsPz
Hedges told the students that the good is found where peace-loving people stand up to power, and he noted that such defiance comes with a cost. But, he said that only by speaking the truth can justice prevail.
“To resist radical evil, as you are doing, is to endure a life that by the standards of the wider society is a failure,” he told the students. “It is to defy injustice at the cost of your career, your reputation, your financial solvency and at times your life. It is to be a lifelong heretic.”
But despite this harm that is inflicted upon student protesters, Hedges said, “we must come to a place where it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.” In other words, it is better to suffer punishment than to deliver it. Thus, the students who are harmed by their university’s administrators and police are morally in the right while their oppressors are on the wrong side of history. And it is through this sacrifice by the students that the oppressors are exposed as fearful of the truth being expressed.
The student protests are the embodiment of the purpose of universities: the discovery and expression of the truth. The university administrators are afraid of the protesters because they are afraid of the truth.
None of the administrators who bullied and censored the students should retain their positions after the semester ends. But the students will have the lifelong satisfaction of knowing that at this extremely important moment in history they upheld what they were taught by their professors: to always speak the truth and to stand up for what is right.
The Lantern, the student newspaper at Ohio State University, covered the protests at OSU yesterday. Follow @TheLantern for great coverage on this issue and more. https://t.co/p8KhYeIjfZ
Instead of providing encouragement to college students for having the moral courage to publicly oppose Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, university administrators in the U.S. are suspending, evicting and arresting them:
Videos clearly show that police are using tasers and zip ties and violently throwing peaceful protesters, including professors, onto sidewalks. When professors rush to plead for mercy for their students, police aggressively apply headlocks and pin their arms behind their backs. Police at Emory University fired pepper balls and rubber bullets — which can cause permanent blindness — at students and professors. This kind of police brutality is unwarranted and university presidents must be held responsible for requesting it at their campuses.
The administrators are behaving shamefully, while the students are demonstrating their moral convictions. And for that, the administrators still have their well-paying jobs while the students are banned from campus.
One takeaway should be that students should choose other universities in the years to come. Institutions that teach about the virtues of social justice and civil disobedience while punishing students who participate in those activities should be shunned.
But for now, professors should hold votes of no confidence in their oppressive university presidents to force them out of office. Board trustees who fail to fire such university presidents should be voted out of office. Professors are also protecting students by blocking police and by standing close to officers and demanding they stop their brutality.
The over-the-top mistreatment of peaceful student and faculty protesters shocks the moral conscience and it must stop immediately. And the justification for the aggressive police behavior is bogus.
The loud and clear message that the mistreatment of peaceful student and faculty protesters is sending is that not only will the U.S. continue to support genocide in Gaza, but also that anyone who protests against the mass murder of innocent children will be beaten and arrested. Once again, history repeats itself and it is a sad time to be a U.S. citizen.
Universities and colleges are supposed to be places where free speech is not only encouraged but protected as a fundamental and cherished right. “Universities have an obligation at large to engage in this conversation. … They are supposed to be that shining place, (where) free expression is the default,” said Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
Police are also violently attacking journalists, which sends the message that they want to brutalize protesters without the scrutiny of the press exposing what they are doing.
This is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University. When she saw students being viciously assaulted and the cops told her to step back, she simply said "No." So they arrested her. https://t.co/v7OtOZexLb
— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) April 26, 2024
Faculty have formed a human barrier between their CUNY students and campus police. pic.twitter.com/ZainMmk1f9
It is worth watching this CNN video from the moment Emory Econ Professor @CarolineFohlin came across the violent arrest of a protester on campus and asked the police, with shock, "What are you doing?" That's all that prompted an officer to hurl her to the ground and handcuff her. https://t.co/QKNRqOoIiSpic.twitter.com/3wzSIOcD6U
USC students are moving to another location as they protest against Israel’s genocidal attacks in Gaza. They are demanding their university divest from companies that support genocide in Gaza.
Chants of “The people, united, will never be defeated!”
Police in full riot gear with clubs have formed a line at one university. Live cams at Columbia University, the University of Texas and the University of Michigan:
Don’t want thousands of innocent children in Gaza to be blown to bits or starved to death? And you care enough to speak out against this morally indefensible mass murder? Well, that may cost you your high profile job:
Cheerleaders for death or silent cowards may work in the entertainment industry now. Everyone else will find their work prospects cut off or at least challenging. Students are also facing suspensions, arrests and blacklisting for having a moral conscience and the courage to speak out.
If you are not an apologist for genocide or someone who is too afraid to speak out, you may find it difficult to work in entertainment. That has been the sad arrangement for a while now, but it really picked up steam in October, and that is where it remains.
By controlling the narrative, loyal supporters of Israel seek to win sympathy for the country’s genocidal attacks in Gaza. They know they can’t convince everyone that their mass murder of Palestinians is morally defensible, but by influencing enough people and bullying the rest they can murder millions and get away with it, or at least that is what they think.
And so for college students and a few celebrities to have the courage to speak out against genocide in this stifling climate of pro-Israel propaganda and intimidation is especially impressive and encouraging.
In a powerful demonstration of solidarity against Israel’s genocidal attacks in Gaza, students at colleges and universities across the U.S. are protesting and demanding divestment:
Columbia University and Barnard College students protesting against extremely brutal genocide and apartheid in Gaza were met with suspensions, evictions and arrests today for peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights:
This over-the-top response by the university and police is an outrageous violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and express their opinions. Indeed, the police said the students were peaceful.
One of the students is the daughter of a U.S. Congress member.
As pointed out in this Los Angeles Times’ editorial, barring a student from speaking because of a complaint sends the message that all anyone needs to do to block content that differs from their own is to object loudly enough. That response sets a dangerous precedent. But is that really what happened?
It appears not. Instead, the obvious message is that Muslim students must be silent, especially when what they have to say needs to be heard.
It is ironic in the worst possible way that at a time when everyone desperately needs to hear from voices in opposition to genocide, the University of Southern California’s administration shamefully decided to censor her address to the university. The administrator deserves an award for coward of the year and another for dunce of the year, as does the administrator at Columbia University in New York.
University of Southern California has cancelled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech after pro-Israel groups condemned her for sharing information about Palestine. “I'm only advocating for human equality and for the sanctity of human life,” says Tabassum. pic.twitter.com/siMcEv2cMh
When someone arms and pays another person to commit murder, we hold both parties responsible for the killing.
And that is what we must do with President Biden. He chose to arm and pay genocidal Israel to murder thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, and he must be held fully responsible.
Biden should be charged and convicted as a war criminal, rejected as a pariah, impeached and/or voted out of office, and spend the rest of his elderly years in prison in disgrace.
Surgeons who have seen the horrors of wars and natural disasters across the world for decades said they have never seen suffering like what they witnessed in Gaza. And all of it paid for by the U.S.:
This is soooo tragic. These wonderful, compassionate people from the @WorldCentralKitchen murdered by Israel for feeding hungry people in Gaza. Is there no limit to what Israel can get away with???????? https://t.co/QEIeZBHDZR
“As a mother & grandmother, I can’t bear watching the ongoing suffering of the mothers in Gaza, especially knowing that we in the US are paying for the weapons that are killing them and their families…" Susan Sarandon pic.twitter.com/zMDx8xrOz3
After more than 33,000 deaths in Gaza, Biden has said that continued U.S. support for Israel will require improvements in the treatment of Palestinians:
While Biden’s demands are welcome news, they come too late for the thousands of women and children who were slaughtered in Gaza by Israel in the past six months.
What is essential now will be whether Biden backs up his strong words with concrete actions. The world is watching to see if this new approach will be carried out quickly with significant improvements. If Biden fails to successfully follow through, his bid for reelection may be finished.
I’m deeply saddened by the deaths of these brave aid workers in Gaza, including an American citizen.
I join @POTUS in calling for more humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians and an immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal. Far too many innocent civilians have lost their… https://t.co/geeGmkvcQd
World Central Kitchen had coordinated its movements for the volunteers with Israel’s military specifically to prevent these kinds of attacks. Israel killed them anyway.
World Central Kitchen has suspended operations in Gaza, which is what Israel wanted when it planned the attacks. Starvation is Israel’s depraved goal in Gaza.
In other news, doctors in Gaza said that Israeli snipers are targeting children with head shots. Five Palestinian children were shot in the head and died. With each day, genocidal Israel sinks deeper into hell and reaches a new low with its monstrous actions.
The heartbreaking story of one young Palestinian killed by Israel:
Update: The killings of the seven humanitarian volunteers were the latest in a pattern of intentional and reckless attacks by Israel’s military. A total of 224 aid workers have been killed in Gaza.
Israelis snipers shot children aged 5-8 in the head.
Gaza is no longer just a concentration camp; it’s a death camp. This is Nazi behaviour. https://t.co/wyMYT6azd6
Today @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They… https://t.co/rM3xbsiQ1Q
— Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 (@chefjoseandres) April 1, 2024
Israel's assassination of World Central Kitchen workers was intentional and achieved its objective: WCK pausing operations. All involved in provide aid in Gaza are walking with targets on their backs, as they interfere with the effort to starve the population to death https://t.co/AJjJbmNizP
Israel is now a fascist, neo-Nazi apartheid state of the most despicable kind, and it has therefore lost any shred of legitimacy or standing that it may have had (if it ever had any).
Opinion: I'm an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn't war — it was annihilation. "On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were…
I lived through siege of Sarajevo where Serb snipers targeted women and kid’s knees. We called them inhuman monsters. @IDF “most moral army in the world” – worse. @POTUShttps://t.co/UtqDalHgRv
People in Gaza are starving. And civilians are dying every day—including in today's horrible incident in Gaza City. ENOUGH. @POTUS must demand accountability & ensure that large scale deliveries of aid can reach desperate civilians NOW. We cannot be complicit in this catastrophe: pic.twitter.com/y8tFhwtmME
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) March 1, 2024
But hypocrite “Genocide Joe” Biden has decided to send even more weapons and bombs to Israel:
The Biden Admin just agreed to send Israel billions more of the most devastating bombs and more fighter jets, including more 2,000-pound bombs responsible for some of the most civilian-destroying damage in Gaza.
More than 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been slaughtered in Gaza. But if mainstream Israeli religious, political and military leaders have their way, all of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza will be killed in a mass genocide:
Genocide Joe Biden keeps talking out of both sides of his mouth. He wants us to believe he opposes genocide while giving billions of dollars in genocide weapons to Israel:
Israel is not complying w @CIJ_ICJ binding order in genocide case—starving Gaza's 2.3 million ppl more harshly than before—@hrw finds. Its disregard for the World Court is a challenge to rules-based int’l order. Time for sanctions to press Israel to comply https://t.co/DwF4QVRXfQpic.twitter.com/z16lzFaOu6
Because of biased stories — including one that described Hamas as animals and another that falsely reported the decapitation of babies — the blood of more than 30,000 Palestinians is on the hands of New York Times writers and editors.
It is the duty of journalists to hold the powerful accountable and to report what the government does not want the people to know. Instead, The New York Times did exactly the opposite: It carried the water for Israel’s propagandists. And then tens of thousands of innocent people died.
It is encouraging that there is a vigorous discussion going on in the Times’ newsroom about biased and dehumanizing reporting. There are talks that indicate many journalists at the storied newspaper oppose such slanted writing. But until there is a house cleaning to clear out the biased and insensitive staffers and leaders, it is clear that no one should trust The New York Times in its reporting about the Middle East.
The first order of business must be the firing of Thomas Friedman and the editor who approved his insensitive column. Also, Anat Schwartz and her editor should be shown the door. Further, any other editors who allowed these stories to be published should also be fired. There should also be a serious and sustained effort to educate and train all New York Times writers and editors about the ethical obligation to report the news without a pro-Israel or anti-Muslim bias.
oh my god. One of the three authors of the New York Times' "mass rape" atrocity propaganda hoax is Anat Schwartz. She liked posts calling for Gaza to be turned into a "slaughterhouse". This the person the NYT hired to write about Palestinians and frame them as sub-human monsters pic.twitter.com/vlaKLVxwil
Israel's war in Gaza is starving over 1 million Palestinians. Death from hunger and starvation is hard to measure during war. That means that official tolls of how many Palestinians that Israel has killed in Gaza is probably an underestimate.
Despite claiming otherwise, Biden is OK with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Actions speak louder than words.
Israel has murdered nearly 30,000 innocent civilians in Gaza since October. And the U.S. has actively supported the genocide with multiple UN vetoes and billions of dollars in funding.
Reaction from @hrw to latest shameful US veto on UN Security Council #Gaza ceasefire resolution: a page out of Russian playbook on Syria. By continuing to provide Israel with weapons & diplomatic cover as it commits war crimes, the US risks complicity in the atrocities. https://t.co/iqe8Kf4UQV
Israel and the U.S. are falsely claiming that the court ruling gives a green light to continue their mass slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza:
Actually, the court’s ruling states that Israel must “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide convention.”
More specifically, the court ordered Israel to cease: “(a) killing members of the group; ( b ) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and ( d ) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
MULTIMEDIA: photos and videos of today’s reading of the #ICJ Order in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (#SouthAfrica v. #Israel) are available here https://t.co/iF6i9iRiBZpic.twitter.com/Fhr7rCcmce
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers sing about all Palestinians being guilty as a way to justify slaughtering 23,000 of them, even though most Palestinians just want be left alone to live in peace. And genocidal Israeli legislators openly say they want to “exterminate” all Palestinians.
Israelis have become neo-Nazis.
Gaza genocide @CIJ_ICJ case provides world court historic oppty to consider measures to prevent atrocities, ensure respect for int’l law & scrutinize Israel’s conduct—vitally needed given severity of abuses. Govts should speak out in support of proceedings pic.twitter.com/VzhVAQr22Lhttps://t.co/96wrmQBu4m
Professor and war correspondent Chris Hedges says that Israel’s goal is to slaughter not only lives in Gaza but the very idea of Palestine:
After enduring the Holocaust in Europe, no one should know better than to subject people to immoral genocide than Israel. And yet, this is what Israel is waging in Gaza. Such is the source of heartbreaking irony. Israel, the creation of victims, is now the monstrous bully.
I taught my students that while balance has its place in journalism, more important is reporting the truth. If the truth is that a leader is a heartless rotten scoundrel, then that is how he should be portrayed. And if one country’s leadership is waging horrific genocide, then that is what should be reported. Hedges definitely agrees with that approach to reporting. And he said that his refusal to sell out is the reason that he has been banished from corporate media.
Hedges is among the best of the world’s journalists. And that, ironically, is the reason that he no longer reports for the mainstream news media. Corporate media today will not employ a journalist who reports the unvarnished truth.
Israel is facing genocide charges in the International Court of Justice for its extreme, over-the-top attacks in Gaza that have slaughtered 21,500 Palestinians, most of whom are innocent civilians:
Israel denies the charges publicly and outrageously lies by claiming it attempts to minimize civilian deaths. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers laugh and joke about killing thousands of women, children and the elderly in Gaza. And Israeli generals said they want diseases to spread and kill more people in Gaza.
Israel’s barbarity in Gaza is so cruel that 1,000 injured Palestinian children have had surgery without anesthesia. Many have died because of disease caused by Israel’s war on Gaza, and 500,000 innocent civilians face death from disease within one year in Gaza if filthy living conditions caused by the war continue.
And what does “Genocide Joe” Biden do in response to the horrific suffering in Gaza? He doubles down and gives hundreds of millions of dollars worth of more weapons to Israel so that it can murder even more innocent civilians.
Breaking: South Africa has filed case against Israel at @CIJ_ICJ, offering the World Court oppty to issue provisional measures to protect the Palestinian people & to ensure compliance with the Genocide Convention—a vital step to propel greater support for impartial justice. @hrwhttps://t.co/wva2v387cspic.twitter.com/H3KptCQyXk
By severely restricting deliveries of food into Gaza, Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinian civilians. And that, Human Rights Watch says, is a war crime:
Israel and the U.S. are waging a war crimes filled genocidal terrorism assault specifically designed to target civilians including children and journalists. Exhibit No. 1 as proof: Israel and the U.S. have murdered 7,000 children in Gaza in just the past two months, and Israeli soldiers joke and laugh about the carnage: