DESPITE THE CEASEFIRE – Nationwide rallies and marches for Palestine are on today

1. Fantasy Israeli Ceasefire

   by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)

   By hot and other means, Israeli war on Occupied Palestinians has been ongoing nonstop for 73 years.

   Ebbing and flowing but never quitting, there’s no end of in prospect because of one-sided US/Western support for the worst of Israeli apartheid ruthlessness against long-suffering Palestinians their ruling regimes don’t give a damn about, never did, and won’t ahead without sustained intifada revolution for positive change unable to be achieved another way.

   A permanent state of undeclared Israeli war exists like always before.

   Halted Israeli aggression on Gaza and its people is temporary, never permanent.

   It’s just a matter of time before its war machine goes wild again against the Strip and its beleaguered people for whatever invented pretext its ruling regime uses to justify what’s unjustifiable.

   At the same time, Israel terrorizes millions of Palestinians throughout the Territories daily — how the scourge of Zionist apartheid always operates without mercy.

   https://stephenlendman.org/2021/05/fantasy-israli-ceasefire/

2. The blind leading the blind. Israel won. Again.

   • You are full of shit Gaby.

     • JUst don’t let it all go at once Gaby! 🙂 LOL LOL LOL

       • The kind of typical childish response one can guarantee from the haters; puerile attempts to deflect attention from their ignorance. Pitiful.

   • Seems a bit odd to come on here and say that if it were true. You may be convincing yourself but everyone else is recognizing that something has shifted. I hope destroying all those tunnels was worth turning world opinion further against Israel. Tunnels will be rebuilt but the brutality of Israel’s occupation is now permanently exposed. That genie won’t go back in the bottle.

   • What did they win? They have a military advantage & massive US financial help all with the aim to occupy land that they lost the right to occupy about 2000 years ago. There have been enough respectable people with Jewish links
     https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/125172617/as-a-jewish-new-zealander-i-am-ashamed-by-israels-long-history-of-inflaming-tensions-in-the-mideast
     making the point better than I can that all they have achieved is the prospect of more trouble, not anything to boast about in my opinion.

     • And they have survived 70 years of constant attacks aimed at their genocide. Israel is the winner all right and always will be. Even their fellow Arabs have turned their backs on the Palestinians, sad osers, mired in pointless racial hatred.

       • Yep Gaby, and the US is going in the opposite direction to your new mates, the dictatorial leaders who accepted Trump’s backhanders and who ignore the wills of its people. (https://www.rt.com/news/524791-blinken-consulate-jerusalem-abbas-palestinians/)

3. Paul Craig Roberts Israel Supremacy, Palestine Apartheid, Ceasefire
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj9FtLTXGTw

   • Why did the American Indian get overwhelmed by the colonists and why did the Palestinians simarly be overwhelmed? Not because they lacked resistance these forces had massive external aid and support in their conquest. Therefore PCR is talking rubbish about Palestinians not having fighting spirit. Israel is nothing but an extension of U$$$$$$$$ oil grabbing and regional dominance paradigm. These peaceful people murdered and their life of joy and tranquility. Israehell and the Great Satan criminal destroyers.

4. Israeli security forces storm al-Aqsa after Gaza ceasefire
   Jean Shaoul
   4 hours ago

   On Friday, just hours after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad came into effect, Israeli security forces fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at worshippers in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. At least 20 Palestinians were injured, with two taken to hospital.
   https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/22/gaza-m22.html

5. F-35s Bombing Gaza
   By Manlio Dinucci
   Global Research, May 19, 2021
   PALESTINE
   Israeli Forces spokesman Zilberman announced the start of the bombing of Gaza, specifying that “80 fighters are taking part in the operation, including the advanced F-35s” (The Times of Israel, May 11, 2021). It is officially the baptism of fire for the US Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter, whose production Italy also participates in as a second-level partner.

   Israel has already received twenty-seven F-35s from the US, and last February decided to buy no longer fifty F-35s but seventy-five. To this end the government has decreed a further allocation of 9 billion dollars: 7 were granted by a US to Israel free military “aid” of 28 billion, 2 were granted as a loan by the US Citibank.

   While Israeli F-35 pilots were being trained by the U.S. Air Force in Arizona and Israel, the US Army Engineers built in Israel special hardened hangars for the F-35s, suitable for both fighters’ maximum protection on the ground, and their rapid take-off on attack. At the same time, the Israeli military industries (Israel Aerospace and Elbit Systems) in close coordination with Lockheed Martin enhance the fighter renamed “Adir” (Powerful): above all its ability to penetrate enemy defenses and its range of action which was nearly doubled.

   These capabilities are certainly not necessary to attack Gaza. Why then are the most advanced fifth-generation fighters used against Palestinians? Because it serves to test F-35s fighters and their pilots in real war action using Gaza homes as targets on a firing range. It does not matter if in the target houses there are entire families.

   The F-35s, added to the hundreds of fighter-bombers already supplied by the US to Israel. are designed for nuclear attack particularly with the new B61-12 bomb. The United States will shortly deploy these nuclear bombs in Italy and other European countries, and will also provide them to Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East with an arsenal estimated at 100-400 nuclear weapons. If Israel doubles the range of F-35 fighters and is about to receive eight Boeing Pegasus tankers from the US for refueling the F-35s in flight, it is because it is preparing to launch an attack, even nuclear, against Iran. https://www.globalresearch.ca/f-35s-bombing-gaza/5745665

6. Apartheid Doesn’t Stop’: Hours After Cease-Fire, Israeli Police Assault Palestinians at Al-Aqsa

   “A cease-fire premised on Palestinians ceasing fire while Israel continues apartheid is a cease-fire with an inevitable expiration date,” said one Palestinian rights advocate.
   https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/21/apartheid-doesnt-stop-hours-after-cease-fire-israeli-police-assault-palestinians-al

   Emphyrio

   The Israeli MO is to incite Palestinian protests against the endless zionist Occupation , numerous killings/murders, including Americans – Rachel Corrie only one -, illegal “settlements”, Al Aqsa incursions by IDF and/or right-wing extremists, home demolitions, water rights – the list of Israeli atrocities and provocations oppression is very long and they use the “last straw” response from Palestinians as pretense for further crimes against humanity. The israeli regime and its treasonous US allies and agents are war criminals without any conscience or humanity, only racist supremacist extremist beliefs.

   Remember the Israeli IDF policy to “break their bones”? (see link) Any Palestinian kid caught throwing rocks at tanks or fully armed IDF goons had their arms or legs put against a curb or whatever and stomped to break their arms! Now they shoot to kill or maim!
   There is ZERO justice or independence from the sycophant Israeli asslicker US administrations – at this point in time uncle joe biden – none! Yeah, right, Joe! lap-up and parrot the Israeli line of lies/propaganda and deceit – “Israel has a right to defend itself” – as depraved craven support for Israeli crimes as ever was! MoFo’s! The Palestiniand would have been far-better honest allies than Israel ever was!

   Hell, the Israeli extremist-terrorists attacked and tried to sink the USS Liberty in an attempted “false-flag” op, killing or wounding over 200 American sailors to blame another nation or blind our intell in the 1967 war and the US gov has never done anything about it! They just keep giving more billions annual tribute to Israel to coddle the US Jewish vote and arms industry! Far beyond ordinary kissing corporate ass for campaign contribution bribery! The Israeli subversion of US sovereignty and foreign policy has been a fact for many decades – only getting more entrenched, extremes and treasonous

   ~https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-06-22-mn-431-story.html

   BDS! Zionism IS Racism! The Israelis are NOT America’s friend – they only use us for their own basically racist expansionist purposes to take Palestine by force – an odious truth that has cost America dear in wars, killings, political respect around the world, and our own integrity! ENOUGH!

7. The steps outside Israel’s Toronto consulate were spattered in red paint by a Jewish anti-war group and other peace activists to symbolize “blood on the hands of Israel.”
   https://www.rt.com/news/524502-israel-consulate-canada-protest/

8. From a small island nation with a big pair of nuts.

   Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih condemned Israel over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday.

   “Never before has the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people been so acutely and blatantly dismissed by Israel, marginalised and discriminated against, in complete disregard of international law”

   https://edition.mv/news/12587

9. How Israel STOLE Palestine
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE8GCX1w3ys

10. The MSM and their approach to this conflict that they sell to idiot westerners.

    https://www.thecanary.co/cartoons/2021/05/20/mainstream-media-guide-to-gaza-coverage/

    • Why Israel blows up media offices & targets journalists.

      Excerpts:
      Israel’s missile attack on media offices in Gaza City last weekend was successful. A gratifying response came quickly from the head of The Associated Press, which had a bureau in the building for 15 years: “The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.”

      For people who care about truth, that’s outrageous. For the Israeli government, that’s terrific.
      ——–
      Israel’s military began threatening and targeting journalists several decades ago, in tandem with its longstanding cruel treatment of Palestinians. Rather than reduce the cruelty, the Israeli government keeps trying to reduce accurate news coverage.

      The approach is a mix of deception and brutality. Blow up the cameras so the world won’t see as many pictures of the atrocities.

      Of course, there’s no need to interfere with journalists documenting the also awful—while relatively few—deaths of Israelis due to rockets fired by Hamas. In recent days the Israeli government has spotlighted such visuals, some of them grimly authentic, others fake.
      ——–
      In the midst of all this, shamefully, President Biden is pushing ahead to sell $735 million worth of weapons to Israel, a move akin to selling more whips and thumbscrews to torturers while they’re hard at work tormenting their victims.
      ——–
      “For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights. In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions,” Ocasio-Cortez pointed out.

      Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, said: “The harsh truth is that these weapons are being sold by the United States to Israel with the clear understanding that the vast majority of them will be used to bomb Gaza.”
      ——–
      Israeli leaders know that truth about human consequences of their policies is horrific when illuminated. That’s why they’re so eager to keep us in the dark.

      Full article by Norman Solomon

11. Massive health emergency in Gaza

    According to the Washington Post, about 70,000 people in Gaza sought refuge in schools, underground shelters, community centers, and other sites as residential areas were bombed and homes were destroyed. Thousands of people also crowded into relatives’ homes.

    “People stopped [social] distancing,” Dr. Shadi Awad, head of respiratory care at al-Shifa hospital, told the Post. “They had no choice.”

    As Common Dreams reported last week, Israel bombed Gaza’s only coronavirus testing facility and Dr. Ayman Abu al-Ouf, who helped lead the territory’s coronavirus response, was one of at least 248 Palestinians killed.

    The loss of the testing lab will leave asymptomatic Covid-19 cases undetected, health officials told the Post, in a place where less than 2% of the population has been vaccinated—compared with more than 56% of Israelis.

    On Friday, al-Shifa hospital was able to test 50 people and found that 40 tested positive for the coronavirus, leading to critical care beds being filled to capacity. Read more

12. Urgent need for emergency relief funding – UNRWA

    In addition to the crowding of hospitals and shelters where Covid-19 has apparently been able to spread rapidly, water supplies have been cut by 40% in Gaza, leading to sanitation concerns.

    The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) on Friday called for $38 million in relief funding for food, water, health needs, and sanitation and hygiene.

    “Despite the preparedness of UNRWA staff and UNRWA facilities in providing shelter in conflict, UNRWA now also contends with the unprecedented circumstance of the Covid-19 pandemic which requires additional measures to be taken,” said the agency.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross told the Post it was sending medical supplies including monitors, defibrillators, and a mechanical ventilator to Gaza, while the COVAX vaccine program planned to deliver a shipment of coronavirus vaccine doses to the territory.

    The Israeli blockade, however, will make it difficult for the equipment and doses to reach overwhelmed hospitals quickly.

    UNRWA said the surge in Covid-19 cases will only worsen Gaza’s already limited ability to recover from the latest Israeli bombardment.

    “Every time there is a conflict in Gaza, intense air bombardment pulverises basic infrastructure, homes, hospitals, and factories,” Tamara al-Rifai, a spokesperson for UNRWA, said in a statement.

    “It then takes UNRWA and aid agencies several years to rehabilitate their premises and many homes and livelihoods of Gazans are never rebuilt.” Read more

    • Hamas receive over $700 million a year in overseas aid and squander it on building weapons and terror tunnels instead of building infrastructure and prosperity for their people, 50% of whom are unemployed while the Hamas leaders hang out in their mansions in Doha. Let’s not forget those people voted in this gang of thugs in the first place, so have reaped the whirlwind. Now naive international community will pour more money their way to rebuild their terrorist base and the suffering will continue as they can never beat Israel. Irrational, hate-driven jihadists will never change. Israel should go in and shut Gaza down for good.
      https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/may/18/heres-the-truth-hamas-is-a-terrorist-group-on-a-mi/

      • Israel should go in and shut Gaza down for good.

        Do you comprehend that these are actual real living human beings? Men, women, children and tiny infants.

        People like Samir Mansour, who’s library deliberately was targeted and destroyed.

        “There are 100,000 books buried under this mountain of concrete,” he said. “And for what? Not only my library had nothing to do with any political party or group, I myself do not have any personal affiliation with any party or group.”

        This was not a random bombing – a phone call was received specifying the target (as were others – specific targets).

        Bombing of Samirs library, with photos

        • Israel’s precision targeting is second to none, selecting viable military targets and trying to reduce collateral damage as much as possible. Hamas are no better than ISIS or al Qaeda and no one has a problem with bombing them. Hamas must be rooted out for the terrorists they are. Let’s remember also: the Gazans voted in this jackbooted mob knowing full well they would sacrifice their kids.

          • “Israel’s precision targeting is second to none” – the best that the US taxpayers can buy at the behest bribed Senators and Congress representatives and the best the US MIC can supply. Just the same as for the numerous other terrorist organisations that the US supports.

          • Israel kills about 5 civilians for every combatant it slays.
            Given that, in Germany during WWII, when the Allies carpet bombed the place, the ratio was 1 civilian to 5 combatants, this:
            “Israel’s precision targeting is second to none, selecting viable military targets and trying to reduce collateral damage as much as possible”
            ….is an absolute crock.

          • If Israel’s precision targeting is second to none, then these were their precise targets

13. One such action is closing the Israeli embassy in Wellington

    YES

    • Never going to happen. We support the only democracy in the ME.

      • Gaby, “We support the only democracy in the ME?”

        What do you call a corrupted political system that is lining up for a 5th election in two years and doesn’t have universal suffrage? An Israeli joke!

    • The govt do have the power to take some form of meaningful action to SHOW that we in AO/ NZ are not and will not be a party to the horrendous abuse of humans that we are seeing in Gaza, not least, the unleashing of a Covid pandemic disaster by taking out the Covid testing station and the medics in charge.

      By failing to take any such meaningful action, they are not only complicit by their silence, but are ensuring that all of us, our entire nation is similarly complicit.

14. Reminder:
    Israeli airstrikes in the center of the occupied Gaza Strip on Monday caused severe damage to the territory’s lone coronavirus testing lab and the offices of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, an attack that was immediately condemned as a war crime.

    Citing eyewitnesses to the bombing, Middle East Eye reported that Israeli war planes hit the six-story Ghazi al-Shwwa building with “at least three missiles, completely destroying the upper floors.”

    MEE noted that the bombing damaged “dozens of adjacent buildings, including Gaza’s main coronavirus laboratory, an orphanage, a female high school, and the Palestinian Ministry of Health offices.”

    “If the Ministry of Health is not safe, then there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” said Abu Hamed Abufoul, an eyewitness to the airstrikes. “This is a war crime and the world cannot remain silent.”

    Speaking in front of the impacted buildings on Monday, Dr. Yousef Abu al-Rish—the undersecretary of Gaza’s health ministry—said the Israeli attack rendered the testing facility inoperable, badly wounded several health workers, and disrupted the territory’s ability to administer Covid-19 vaccines, compounding the difficulties caused by Israel’s blockade.

    “Targeting the Ministry of Health building, al-Remal Clinic, and the medical staff is a heinous crime aimed at preventing the ministry from continuing its humanitarian work in saving the lives of the wounded and providing health care to citizens,” al-Rish said. “The international community must hold the occupation accountable for its heinous and ongoing crimes against medical personnel and health institutions.”

    “Horrifying,” MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tweeted in response to the bombing. “It was bad enough when Palestinians in Gaza weren’t able to get vaccinated, but now to reportedly lose their only coronavirus testing lab is… beyond words.”

    The airstrikes came shortly after Israeli bombs killed two of Gaza’s senior doctors, including one of the officials leading the besieged territory’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

    As the Washington Post reported last week, Israel’s latest assault—which has thus far killed more than 200 people and injured at least 1,300 in the occupied coastal strip—began as coronavirus infections and deaths in Gaza had started to decline after reaching record highs in April. Read more

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