CARA MARIANNA
The Floutist

PALESTINIAN VOICES

Flags and guns are all they have. The wall of Old Jerusalem. (C.M., 2024.)

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11 OCTOBER—
My first impression of Israel, as I sat in a taxi and looked out the window on an early evening in April of this year, was shock. Much of the land I rode through on the way from Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem was, in a word: ugly. It was barren and dry with little to distinguish it except for high-rise buildings in the near distance. Urban sprawl appeared out of control as new construction gobbled up the fragile terrain. It wasn’t until the taxi ascended into the Judaean Mountains north and west of Jerusalem that the landscape was transformed into a rugged kind of beauty.

Even at this, the startling number of Israeli flags hanging from light poles that line the freeways and overpasses on the drive to Jerusalem did nothing to improve the view. I didn’t fully comprehend this obsessive display of the national flag until, some days later, it was explained to me by a child in Hebron.

“The flag is all they have,” ten-year old Sofia told me. “And guns.”

I would come to understand the Israeli flag—to say nothing of the guns, or all the other weaponry—as a symbol of an insecure people. The blue Star of David on its white field is everywhere surrounding Old Jerusalem. Israelis fly their flag from cars and apartment balconies, shopping centers, intersections… anywhere and everywhere there is a place to hang it. It is, to put it quite bluntly, the attempt of a frightened people to proclaim their dominance—just as they are now doing with their bombing raids in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. One wishes they would be content with the flag. But it is impossible that Israel should be content merely to fly its national flag given all that it stands for: conquest, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide. The very presence of the Israeli flag implies the imperative of violence for a nation that has nothing more.

This compulsion to fly flags, to mark and claim territory, reminded me of American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the Stars and Stripes on the moon in the summer of 1969. On one hand it is meaningless, pure hubris. But on the other hand: the Israeli flag—like the American flag—is a deadly serious symbol. It functions like a chess-piece in the opening gambit in a life-and-death struggle over the land of Palestine.

The sudden appearance of an Israeli flag on a hilltop in the West Bank indicates that another land grab is in process. It begins when the Israeli occupation force seizes an area of land and establishes an outpost. Next, a flag appears along with a military observation tower. Very soon a new illegal settlement springs up around both. And from that settlement atop a hill violence rains down upon the Palestinians living nearby. It is almost as if the Israeli flag itself is the very wellspring of all the racist brutality that flows from the apartheid Jewish state.

I am writing here about land. The flag being merely a symbol of Israel’s settler-colonial project. The Israeli pursuit of total conquest turns the land into a battle ground where violence is directed against the Palestinian people and against the land itself.

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When I was in the West Bank city of al-Bireh, I met a man named Abu Hamed, not his real name. Abu Hamed was active in local politics during the 1970s. He worked with others in his community and throughout the West Bank to build economic independence and organize resistance to Israel’s illegal military occupation. He was successful enough that the Israelis arrested him. They drove Abu Hamed into the desert and left him there along with six other people. Together the seven men crossed into Jordan on foot. Abu Hamed spent the next 20 years in exile, first in Jordan and then in Lebanon, where he worked with the PLO. His sons grew up without their father.

For many generations, Abu Hamed’s prosperous family has owned large tracts of land and olive groves in the West Bank. Much of it has been stolen and is now occupied by settlers. Fifteen years ago he planted new olive trees in one of his remaining groves. This year, during the Muslim holy days of Eid al-Adha, 16 to 18 June, settlers burned his young olive trees.

One of Abu Hamed’s sons, a journalist whose name I cannot share, made a video of his father standing in the burned grove. This is what Abu Hamed said: “Olives trees are holy creatures for us. Nobody burns them. Even if they are cold they won’t cut a tree to heat themselves or their homes.”

His son asked, “Why do you think they burned the land? Why do you think they burn the farmland and the olive trees across the West Bank?”

Abu Hamed replied, “They don’t want to see either our trees or us, we as a people. They don’t want to see our people in their land.”

And then Abu Hamed, who was 92 years old when the video was made said, “I need fifteen years more to start these trees again.”

Two days after my visit with Abu Hamed, I drove with my guide and translator to speak with shepherds and farmers from the village of al–Mughayyir. We met on the road outside of the village and spent an hour together on a hillside in the shade of an olive tree drinking coffee made over a small fire. I listened to their stories and took notes.

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The shepherds of al–Mughayyir. (C.M., 2024.)

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Kathem, one of the olive growers, was the spokesperson and our village guide that day. “We used to graze our herds on open land near the settlement,” he told me. “Since 7 October settlers have been taking our land. They put tents on the land and steal our herds. Because they don’t let us graze on our land we have to buy fodder to feed the animals and their health isn’t good. Our animals are suffering.”

Kathem continued:

“We had thirty wells near the settlement. All have been destroyed. They polluted the water and filled them with rocks. Now we have to haul water. It costs 100 shekels to deliver water. They shoot the water tanks and puncture them. Or they steal the tanks.”

The other men listened quietly and smoked cigarettes while Kathem spoke. A young shepherd boy with an engaging smile, the son of one of the men, joined us. My interpreter translated and I scribbled notes. Someone added fuel to the small fire and refilled my cup of coffee.

“My cousin, they took his sheep and goats,” Kathem said as he pointed to a man wearing a green sweatshirt. “He had 120 animals. It was his entire herd.” Another man handed me his phone. On it were photographs of sheep and goats lying dead in a field. They had clearly been shot. Settlers routinely steal herds and shoot any animals that try to escape or run away. They also kill sheep dogs.

“For the olives,” Kathem continued, “none of the land near the village was harvested this year. Olive oil is a main source of income for us. The village lost a lot of money.” When I asked why the olives hadn’t been harvested he explained, “Since October, they won’t let us near our land. They shoot at us if we get close.”

Kathem had recently been given a grant from a farming cooperative to plant new olive trees. “I planted 100 little trees and they are all destroyed.” Settlers brought their sheep to Kathem’s olive grove to eat the young trees. They all died. “I have another piece of land with grapes,” he said. “But I can’t get to it because the soldiers will shoot.”

I heard the same story from Bedouin shepherds in the village of Umm al–Khier, in the South Hebron Hills. One can hear this story all over the West Bank.

■

There is often little apparent distinction between soldiers and settlers who have been given uniforms and military-grade weapons. Indeed, settlers often raid al–Mughayyir wearing military uniforms. Villagers quickly learned to distinguish between the two: “All we have to do is look at their shoes,” Kathem said. “The army doesn’t issue military boots with the uniforms.”

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An IDF raid on al–Mughayyir in June. (Photo courtesy of Kathem, 2024.)

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Settlers appear to enjoy playing at being soldiers. In another common bullying tactic, settlers dress as soldiers and order shepherds off of their land. But just as commonly settlers remain dressed in civilian clothing as they bully shepherds. When these illegal incidents are later reported, the same settlers don military uniforms and, in a sadistic cat-and-mouse game, mockingly “investigate” their own crimes. The villagers, who recognize their victimizers, are powerless to do anything and have no legal recourse.

As one of the shepherds said, sharing a thought I had not considered, “They want people to hate themselves. That’s why they harass and humiliate people.” But the same man, who clearly did not hate himself, also told me, “I like being a shepherd. My father and grandfather were shepherds. It’s inherited.”

■

After finishing our coffee we returned to the car and drove some five kilometers into the village. Kathem accompanied us, pointing out blackened areas along the road where settlers had set cars on fire six weeks earlier.

For two days in April, 12-13, settlers rampaged through al–Mughayyir and numerous other villages, throwing rocks and shooting people. Such raids are frequent. During the April raid one villager was killed, at least twenty-five were injured. Cars and houses were set on fire and sheep were stolen. The Israeli occupation forces stood by and watched. Soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse villagers who had gathered to defend themselves. Much of the damage was still clearly visible on the day I visited the community.

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The olive groves and farmlands of al–Mughayyir. (C.M., 2024.)

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Al–Mughayyir stands on the shoulder of a hill overlooking a fertile valley to the north and east. Kathem took us to a house on the edge of the village where, standing on a second floor terrace, we could look out over the farmland below. Spread across the valley were wheat fields, olive groves, grape vineyards, peach and almond trees, greenhouses, vegetable fields.

Two illegal settlements were visible in the near distance: Adei Ad to the north and Mal’achei Hashalom, to the east. Any villagers approaching the farmland risked being shot at by soldiers or settlers. Since 2022, the Israeli military had prevented villagers from using the main road that cuts through the valley, thus preventing them from accessing their fields, groves, and grazing land on the far side. Since 7 October and the April raids, the villagers have lost access to the fields on the near side of the road—virtually all of their agricultural lands.

The ethnic cleansing of the smaller Bedouin and Muslim communities surrounding al–Mughayyir has been under way since at least 2019. Settler violence has forced numerous communities to abandon their lands and homes. As reported by +972 Magazine—an independent journal run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists doing some of the best commentary and reporting from the region—“settlers weaponize shepherding as a means to take over Palestinians’ land and force them out.”

Kathem pointed to the east and said:

All of the land reaching to the Jordan Valley, no one can access it. When I was young we used to go to the Jordan Valley every Friday. Now we can’t even cross the road. We can’t access our land.

As we stood on the terrace looking across the valley, the matron of the house carried coffee out to us on a tray. It was thick and dark and served in what must have been her best ceramic demitasse cups. “Last week they shot at our house,” she told me. “The kids were inside. I was sitting out here on the terrace when they started shooting. They broke one of our windows.”

We sipped coffee and looked out over the land. “I have a wheat field there,” she gestured. “I have goats. Now I have to keep them penned and buy food for them. They are losing weight and getting sick. We have to sell sheep and goats to feed the other animals.” She later showed us her sheep which were languishing in stalls below the house. These were small dark pens where normally the animals would have spent only the coldest weeks of winter.

Kathem looked at me. “They are made to destroy,” he said, the anger visible on his face. “They are a destruction machine. They kill, they steal, they take everything. Everyone in the world wants peace and stability,” Kathem said. “They don’t. They want to kill and steal.” He pointed to the top of a nearby hill where I could see an Israeli flag and military outpost. Beyond it was another small settlement.

Few Palestinians I met would name the occupier. Rarely would a Palestinian utter the words “Israel” or “Israeli,” as if to do so might invoke their presence or intensify their brutality. It seems best to leave the evil unnamed. “They” has all the force of a four-letter word in the West Bank. But perhaps, now I think about it, this refusal to name the occupier was how Palestinians denied Israel’s legitimacy.

Ugly. It was my first and lingering impression of Israel. As Abu Hamed might say: “Olive trees are not sacred to them.” Nor indeed it seemed, as I listened to the shepherds of al–Mughayyir, is anything else.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara MariAnna is an artist and writer with an interest in fighting injustice wherever it may rear its ugly head. The oppression of Palestinians now providing an almost inexhaustible focus for her work. 

@winterwheat

 

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Indispensable OpEds

Genesis 15:18
"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates."

Deuteronomy 2:16 2:17
"You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. 2:17 You must completely destroy them the Hethite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite as the Lord your God has commanded you."

Joshua 6:21
"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

Samuel 1 15:3
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (Christian Standard Bible)

'Rabbi Dov Lior, a national- religious leader and the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, published a letter on Monday saying that Jewish law permits destroying the entire Gaza Strip' [Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2014]

A rabbi whose yeshivah is being funded by the government shamelessly calling for the murder of an entire population. Wiping them all out. This happened. And nothing is being done to stop him or silence him or even defund this guy yet to this historian's knowledge. "Controversy Over Sephardi Chief Rabbi's Comments on Gaza" (Israeli Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, March 15, 2024).

Israeli pilots know that they kill children when dropping massive amount bombs on city centers, the bombardment these pilots carry out resulting in the death of exponentially monstrously more civilians, including children, than died in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Western media outlets portray the pilots as heroes who did not intend to kill non-combatants, but they have bombed homes, residential buildings, mosques, schools, universities, bakeries, shops, hospitals, U.N. facilities et al. As of October 13, 2024, the U.N. has reported over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October 7, 2023

Have the pilots been made to feel that God is on their side in any and all circumstance? during the 2014 bombing that took 2,200 lives? during Operation Cast Lead (2008–2009) when approximately 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including a large number of civilians, while Israel lost 13 soldiers? during Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) when over 160 Palestinians were killed, while only six Israelis died? during Operation Guardian of the Walls (2021) wherein over 250 Palestinians were killed, including women and children, and 13 people in Israel died? during the long merciless Israeli invasion 1982 war in Lebanon in which from 10,000 to 20,000 were killed and which led to the abominable bloody massacre at Sabra and Shatila?[statistics provided by AI ChatbotGTP]

All to seize the land [that supposedly] 'God gave their ancestors' more than seventeen centuries ago.

Albert Einstein letter to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind dated January 1954

"For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people" I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the New York Times on December 4, 1948, co-signed by several prominent intellectuals and Jewish figures. The letter specifically referred to the Deir Yassin massacre (April 1948), in which over 100 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Irgun and other forces, calling it an example of the group’s brutality. It also warned against Menachem Begin's politics of expansionism and aggression. The letter represented a moral appeal against the rise of extremist nationalist movements within Zionism (but Menachem Begin came to be Israel's sixth prime minister).

In spite of Einstein's efforts, the Palestinians Arabs, while still suffering British military occupation as a colony since the end of the First World War, became expelled and/or re-colonized after the Second World War by another group of armed Europeans through a genocidal civil war planned and provoked by Anglo-American machinations.

The State of Israel from its creation has been in bed with a US war-investing business elite that once heavily invested in Hitler, was itself anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent and even complicit during the Holocaust its investments had made possible.

The billions of US dollars spent on munitions and weapons of mass destruction to kill Palestinians who keep on attacking fighting for rectification of the heartless injustice done them, could have been used to begin to compensate Arabs made destitute refugees by the criminal seizure of their lands, homes and properties.

But then where would faith in the Bible be? And U.S. support for Israel's military with the latest high tech bombs and war planes? And Israeli support of the many U.S./NATO regime-change wars in the oil rich nations of the Middle East? And the billions in profits for the investors in U.S. and European giant weapons manufacturing corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and BAE Systems (UK), Airbus Defense and Space (EU), Leonardo (Italy), Thales Group (France) and Rheinmetall AG (Germany), whose CEOs are most probably well educated and knowledgeable about the Bible.

Post Script

 GREAT FUN?

As journalists in the West sought to portray the war on Gaza as complex and nuanced rather than the genocide it was accused of approaching by a U.N. court, a flood of social media posts from Israeli soldiers suggested they regarded it as anything but.

"Journalists Are War Criminals! It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists; journalists are war criminals. ...the reality that is constructed around us is constructed by liars."

Apparently, for a considerable amount of Israeli soldiers war against defenceless Palestinian civilians can be great fun, and worth sharing with society at large.

An Al Jazeera feature length investigation exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year-long conflict.

Israeli troops laugh as they blow up a mosque in Gaza. For the most part, soldiers posted material in their own names on publicly accessible platforms and often gave details of when and where the incidents depicted took place.

Al Jazeera began collecting these videos and photos, compiling a database of more than 2,500 social media accounts.

A soldier told a man being tortured: “Nothing prevents us from killing you. We could just kill you all. That’s normal. No one will deter us, and no one will call us to account.”

The behaviour displayed in the photos and videos ranges from crass jokes and soldiers rifling through women’s underwear drawers to what appears to be the murder of unarmed civilians.

It reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to demolitions of neighbourhoods and murder featuring wildly joyous grins and laughing while watching terrifyingly huge fiery explosions.

Could it possibly be Bible based 'Schadenfreude'?         (Schadenfreude is a German word that means to take pleasure in someone else's misfortune. It is a combination of the German words Schaden, which means "harm" or "damage," and Freude, which means "joy".)

=========END=========

ADDENDUM 1

"The Oppressed Will Rise!"                                             
Eventual Rebellion of Those Who Have Been Subjugated

       Back in 1956, Moshe Dayan, Israeli military leader and politician, commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War spoke thusly at a funeral.

"Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate" a sea of hatred and desire for revenge is swelling"

OCTOBER 7, 2023!
As Reported in Hegemonic Western Media

On Oct. 7, the militant Palestinian organisation Hamas based in Gaza led a brutal invasion of Israel. Israel accuses Hamas of killing 1,200 people, mainly civilians, however the major Hebrew newspapers have carried Israeli military admissions that firing from Israeli Apache Helicopters and tanks accounted for some of the Israeli civilian deaths. Hamas, which is also the democratically elected government of the Israeli open air prison of Gaza, claims most Israeli casualties were military.

By October 17, ten days later, the Israeli armed forces had bombed to death more than 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, at times dropping 2,000 pound bombs on apartment buildings, and had cut off all water, food and fuel to Gaza.

On that same 17th day of October 2023, Dr. Norman Finkelstein gave a talk at the University of Massachusetts labeled, "The Struggle for Justice in Palestine: Past, Present, and Future."

"Palestinians have been trapped in a concentration camp for twenty years" as "the international community had abandoned them, and whatever tactic they attempted, including nonviolent resistance, had no impact on freeing them from that concentration camp." [Dr. Norman Finkelstein]

China to International Court of Justice:

"Palestine has ‘inalienable right’ to armed resistance.  "Palestinian ‘use of force to resist oppression is an inalienable right’ and cannot be equated with terrorism."

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, tweeted on X, April 8, 2023

"Israel can't claim it has a right to defend itself from the people it oppresses and whose land it colonizes,"

Right away, on October 9, Israel's defence minister announced a "complete siege" of Gaza, describing the Palestinian fighters who attacked Israel over the weekend as "human animals." "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza," Gallant said. "There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed." [Oct. 9, 2023 HuffPost]

Once Reported - Thereafter Made to be Forgotten

'Erase Gaza': War Unleashes Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel

WEB

Nov 15, 2023 - "Erase Gaza. Don't leave a single person there," Yair Golan an Israeli politician and senior military officer, said in an interview with Channel 14 on Oct. 15. New York Times Nov. 15, 2023

An Israeli rabbi urged the killing of women and children in the Gaza Strip and said he considered it a response to the teachings of halakha, or Jewish law.

It came from Eliyahu Mali in a video that was widely circulated Thursday on social media.

Mali heads the Shirat Moshe religious school in Jaffa in central Israel, where students serve in the army.

He claimed that those described as "vandals" in today's war are “the children of the previous war whom we kept alive, and in reality, it is the women who produce terrorists.”

“Whoever comes to kill you with this concept does not only include the young man aged 16, 18, 20, or 30 who is now pointing a weapon at you, but also the future generation (the children of Gaza), and those who produce the future generation (women of Gaza), because there is really no difference,” he said.

Since October 7, 2023

A Reconstructed 'Reality' in Gaza, Reconstructed by Western Media' Wars Enabling Journalists

Portraying the Annihilation in Gaza as 'Acceptable,' 'Excusable,' and/or a 'Reasonable and 'Proportionate' 'Necessary' Defensive Reaction,' and Not Seen as Genocide.

(",,wars can be started by lies, - then kept going by lies!") —Julius Assange

Hamas "beheading 40 babies"

- headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. U.S. President Biden claimed to have seen "confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies," and that "Israeli women were raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies"

This is journalism that projects thinking the wholesale destruction of Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified.

As usual, the vilest headlines came from the Anglo-American press.

Hamas is pictured as bloodthirsty savages.

'Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother's womb.'

An Israeli first responder to the October 7 terror attack has claimed that Hamas terrorists roasted a baby in an oven in shocking video testimony. Asher Moskowitz, of the United Hatzalah first responder group, published a video of himself speaking to a camera, delivering his witness account.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken describing in graphic detail - an incredible Hamas attack on an Israeli family watched and heard by this writer on C-Span, but now blacked out of the Internet.

"The father's eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother's breast cut off, the girl's foot amputated, the boy's fingers cut off before they were executed.Then their executioners sat down and had a meal."

Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims being obstructed by Israel have gone unreported.

NEWS Le Monde April 3, 2024: "On October 10, official Israeli accounts relayed a sordid but unfounded allegation. Six months later, it continues to circulate, fuelling accusations of Israeli disinformation."

Western Media Journalists Avoid Mention of IDF Videos Showing Israeli soldiers Laughing as Universities, Mosques, Hospitals, and Apartment Buildings Are Blown Up

As hegemonic news media makes sure this macabre inhuman slaughter in Gaza goes on and on, we can recall what hero publisher of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, cried out during the barbaric U.S.—UK led war on Iraq.  Assange suggested we ask ourselves:

"Of the complicit media, (which is the majority of the mainstream press), what is the average death child count that could be attributed to each journalist?"

"When we understand that wars come about and are continued as a result of lies peddled to the British public and the American public and the publics all over Europe and other countries then who are the war criminals?"

"Journalists Are War Criminals!"

"It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists; journalists are war criminals. ...the reality that is constructed around us is constructed by liars."

Julian Assange spoke succinctly about those media journalists who read us selected, bent and twisted one-sided news to disinform, blind or subtly trick the public to support, accept or ignore ongoing atrocity wars even when massive amount of lives are being taken.

Julian Assange has brought to our attention the pleasant-looking evening news anchor who captivates TV audiences with alternating joviality and gravitas, asking whether they should be seen as insidiously evil as they generate support for horrific suffering, death, maiming and destruction.

Media Falsified 'Search for Peace in the Holy Land

For seventy-five years, the powerful media of the 'Colonial Powers renamed 'Free World' and finally 'the International Community of Nations' have kept up a murderously deceitful pretence of trying to bring peace to Palestine and the oil rich Middle East. A quick glance at the provisions of the 1946 proposed UN partition that were fully expected and obviously intended to incite violence and create deadly conflict, permanent hostilities, destabilisation and facilitate Western imperialist penetration, exposes this pretending to search for a peace which that financial element that rules the United States and Wall St. has never wanted.

75 years of pro-Israel journalism for the same U.S. war investing business elite that once heavily invested in Hitler, was itself anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent and even complicit during the Holocaust its investments had made possible.

Since October 7, Israel has blocked, food, water, electricity and fuel from entering Gaza, with the unholy desired effect of the present famine with children now dying of malnutrition. This has been rarely mentioned in pro-Israel journalism.

Commercial newscast time is almost entirely devoted to the hostages, with almost never a word regarding the thousands of Palestinians, many children, the hostages were taken to exchange.

Journalists of the U.S.-Led Hegemonic West Are Responsible For Prolonging the Genocide of Their Fellow Human Beings - almost Half of Them Children! -by delaying the world from putting an end to Israel's American provisioned and supported slaughter of Palestinians through air strikes and famine.

How many more children will soon die because Journalists working for the giant entertainment/news corporation conglomerates of the U.S.A.-led hegemonic colonialist West have for twelve months been underreporting this inhumane blockade of life-sustaining aid, focusing its audiences attention instead on Israeli propaganda of mostly lies of horrendous atrocities during the Palestinian freedom fighters guerrilla attack on October 7, 2023, which Western journalists never fail to label a terrorist attack by Hamas repeating 'which the U.S. and other nations have cited as a terrorist organisation.'

This article is dedicated to the indescribably inhuman horror of death and destruction being brought down upon Palestinians, especially on thousands of their children.

For one whole year Israel has rained death. maiming and terror down upon a more than 2.2 million of God's children in Gaza. As of early October 2024, the ongoing conflict in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of around 17,000 Palestinian children since October 2023, according to reports from local authorities and humanitarian organisations, with UNICEF warning of the unimaginable horrors faced by Gaza’s children during the relentless Israeli attacks. Many of these children are not only victims of the violence but also suffer from severe psychological trauma, physical injuries, and the loss of parents.

Today's seemingly ubiquitous accessory to wars CIA overseen hegemonic international media must and will eventually be taken down by a growing alternate media and new media from powerful greatly populated countries like China, India and other prospering nations of the awakening South. Today's twisted realities and their mass murderous history will soon be apparent even to Americans, who, along with the victims of its wars, will benefit from the truth.

MARTIN C. FREDRICKS IV

Confessions of a Propagandized
I wish I’d known on 10/7/23 what I knew on 10/7/24.

MARTIN C. FREDRICKS IV

OCT 09, 2024

 

 

AP photo by Nathan Howard from the Columbia Journalism Review, “How the State Department briefing room became ‘bizarroland’”

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On the one-year anniversary of the Hamas incursion in Palestine, the “Israel was a victim” posts surged across social media and mainstream media. As expected.

It’s true that a year and two days ago Hamas fighters killed Israelis in an attack. It’s equally true that even at the low end of death estimates, and using the inaccurate figure of 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on that day, in the past year Israel has visited 35 October 7ths upon the people of Palestine. Factor in estimates of people trapped under the rubble and otherwise missing, and it’s more like 167 October 7ths. Finally, it’s true that Israel has been murdering Palestinians for 76 years now.

Meanwhile, much of what we’ve been fed since Oct. 7, 2023 by the governments of Israel and the USA has been untrue.

For example, you’ll notice I didn’t write that Hamas fighters killed approximately 1,200 Israelis on that fateful day. That’s because Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed many of their own people – soldiers and hostages – while implementing the Hannibal Directive.

I did not say Hamas beheaded babies or repeat any of dozens of other atrocious lies Israeli and U.S. officials have told since that day.

I also did not write that Hamas attacked Israel, because the fact is the fighters escaped from the open-air prison that was Gaza into lands that Israel had previously stolen from Palestinians. These Palestinians “attacked” occupiers in Palestine. The fact is, while Oct. 7, 2023, was certainly an armed incursion, it is more accurately described as resistance to 75 years of apartheid and brutal oppression by Israel.

You’ll notice, also, that I refrain from describing what Israel is perpetuating in Gaza and the West Bank as a “war.” Wars are fought by armies. Calling indiscriminate killing of unarmed, unhoused and starving men, women and children a “war” is a detestable act of propaganda.

Where were all the commemorations and words of consolation this week for the at least 40,000 Palestinians, and more likely 200,000, a majority of whom have been children and women, the IOF has killed since Oct. 8, 2023?

For about six months I’ve been asking U.S. citizens who attack me for saying these things, "What if Israel was bombing your children? What if the USA was funding weapons to wipe out your grandchildren? What if Israel was obliterating your neighborhood day after day after day? What if it was you?" I also ask, "Do you think George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were terrorists?"

Not surprisingly, not one responded to those questions, choosing instead to deflect with more of the propaganda they – we – have all been fed throughout our lives.

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Meanwhile, The Times of Israel is reporting a poll of Israelis regarding their opinions about continuing operations in Gaza. According to the poll, one year after the nation began its genocide, 43 percent of Jewish Israelis support a continuation of the killing.

It's monstrous. 

The facts are that Israel has repeatedly violated international laws in carrying out its attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank. The USA has repeatedly violated international and U.S. laws by supplying funding and weapons to Israel for that purpose.

I know this now, after reading hundreds of thousands of words about Israel’s actions since at least 1948.

I started with stories from U.S. mainstream media, but read less and less of those as I saw, with my own eyes, how they twist headlines and stories in favor of Israel.

The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017,” by Rashid Khalidi, who is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies in the Department of History at Columbia University and director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding. I heartily recommend it to anyone who actually wants to understand Israel’s impact on Palestinians and the broader region rather than just believing the malarkey we’re constantly fed by Israeli and U.S. media and politicians.

I also follow and read blogs by people who are not afraid to call out injustices and hypocrisy when they see them, and there’ve been heaps of both in the case of Israel’s longtime apartheid and more recent genocide against Palestinians.

But on Oct. 7, 2023, I was one of the multitude of U.S. citizens nodding his head in agreement when the talking heads and members of the Biden administration kept repeating, “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

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That’s because all my life my government and the mainstream media have told me Arabs are bad, if not evil, that they’re constantly attacking Israel for no good reason other than a difference in religion and that they want death for all westerners. That everything in the Middle East would be fine if the crazy Muslims would just leave Israel alone. That they’re unreasonable, insane people constantly lusting for blood of westerners, and that every single one of them would cheer another 9/11 attack every day of the week. (Those paying close attention also noticed that Israeli zionists described them as less than human.)

All. My. Life.

Nonsense.

 

If you doubt for a second that all of this is the result of deliberate propagandizing, then at the least you need to watch “The Occupation of the American Mind,” a documentary from the Media Education Foundation. And if you doubt the brutality and inhumanity of Israel, then you need to watch “‘The Night Won’t End’: Biden’s War on Gaza,” an Al Jazeera/Fault Lines documentary that, among other atrocities, focuses on the murder of five-year-old Hind Rajab. (Editor's Note: YouTube (Google) is doing its best to restrict circulation of this powerful documentary, so they list as  Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines), knowing full well that many people will NOT watch the material, nor give it extra circulation by publishing it on their own blogs.)

‘The Night Won’t End’: Biden’s War on Gaza https://t.co/yqlGWwP5X3 via @AJEnglish

— Patrice Greanville (@AddisondePitt) October 10, 2024

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Do not avoid. Do not recoil. Do not look away. If you’re a U.S. citizen, you have a responsibility to watch documentaries and read stories about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and destabilizing presence in the Middle East. After all, your tax dollars are paying for everything depicted in them.

Speaking of which, what’s been worse than realizing I never questioned the lies about Muslims, Arabs and the Middle East is learning the USA has stoked the violence with billions of dollars in funding and weapons year after year after year for decades, not to mention political cover for Israel at the United Nations and other international bodies and misleading reporting by the USA’s mainstream, legacy media.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken lied to Congress about Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the gaslighting – from Democrats just as much as from Republicans – has been unbearable. Again, there are hundreds if not thousands of examples from the past year, but the most blatant is the use of “Israel has a right to defend itself” as justification for the genocide and the USA’s enabling of it.

It’s painfully obvious that Israel’s actions have been anything but defensive. In truth they’re as offensive as it gets, in all senses and meanings of the word.

Even so, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said “Israel has a right to defend itself” so many times it might as well be her campaign slogan. To be fair, Donald Trump’s might as well be “Let Israel finish the job.” Both have promised under no uncertain terms to continue arming and funding Israel so it can continue its genocidal actions in Gaza and the West Bank, expand them into Lebanon and continue bombing other nations.

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Unlearning everything I thought I knew has been painful, initially because of my embarrassment at believing it all in the first place without bothering to seek out information on my own or trying to find other perspectives. It’s also been distressing to listen to people I once thought of as my friends, some of whom I even admired, brushing off the deaths of Palestinian children as if they were nothing more than bothersome flies at a backyard bar-b-que. And listening to them try to justify their upcoming votes for Harris and Trump has been excruciating.

Despite their having access to all the same information and ability to see photo after photo of shredded Palestinian children just as I have, many if not most Americans still accept, if not parrot, the version of events that stars Israel as a perennial and perpetual victim.

The result is I fervently support Palestine and Palestinians, along with people of all religions, nationalities and beliefs around the world who are being oppressed.

One last thing – spare me the cries of antisemitism. That’s nonsense, too. Whether someone is Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or any other of the hundreds of religions in the world does not enter my calculations, especially when people are killing their neighbors.

And as I’ve said many times over the course of the past year, resistance to oppression is a human imperative. It’s just as true for oppressive propaganda as it is for murderous occupation.

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  Endorsed by The Greanville Post—

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By Martin C. Fredricks IV · Launched 2 years ago

IV Words (four · words / fore-words / for-wards / fôr · wərdz) is a forward-looking, forward-thinking, progressive, BS-calling and at times irreverent blog that’s always moving ahead, even when it requires looking back over our collective shoulders.

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SELECT COMMENT(S)

Serial Misfit Serial Misfit 22 hrs agoLiked by Martin C. Fredricks IV Most people have no idea that the countries of the Middle East were drawn on a map by the British and French after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, in a way that it would guarantee future frictions among the populations. Frictions that they kindled in societies that were peaceful, multicultural and for the most part secular. They created radical Islamists to use as tools against peaceful Muslims, who were in their majority (according to British polls of the time) in favour of the creation of one country, "Greater Syria" that would encompass the Levante and would be multiethnic and multicultural. And then they promoted the cartoonish version of a violent deranged Muslim, through their movies and media, to manufacture consent for their bloody wars. How many people know that socialism, panarabism, and secularism was on the rise across the Middle East when the West murdered their leaders and installed puppets? Or that Hassan Nashrallah was a book worm, close friend of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky? Disgust does not even begin to describe how I feel

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This is what we think of Muir and his breed of media whores. They are all the same: they put their filthy careers ahead of their duty: to tell the truth.—The Editors