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British Jews Against Genocide Protest Outside the Offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is condoning genocide in Gaza. They don’t represent us.

British Jews Against Genocide Protest
British Jews Against Genocide Protest (Copyright)

Today, 4 August 2014, outside of the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, on the 27th day of Israel’s military attack on the Gazan people, Jews in Britain Against Genocide staged a die-in to commemorate the hundreds of Palestinian children deliberately targeted and killed by Israel. We displayed toys, clothes and replicas of mutilated children and babies smeared red to symbolise the blood of Palestinian children murdered by Israeli forces.

We are Jews in Britain outraged at the Board of Deputies’ uncritical support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The Board of Deputies claims to speak in our name when it lobbies in defence of Israeli violence. It organises with the Zionist Federation rallies in support of Israel’s slaughter. It demands that John Prescott be punished for comparing Gaza to a concentration camp (Daily Mirror, 26 July 2014). It attempts to intimidate local councils for flying the Palestinian flag as an expression of solidarity with Gaza, and has written to the prime minister thanking him for his support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza. It cynically uses the Nazi genocide of Jews to silence critics of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

We Jews know, from our history, about persecution, concentration camps, starvation and murder. Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp by imposing a seven-year military siege, by restricting access to food, water, fuel and medical supplies, by imprisoning 1.8 million people and squeezing them even further by imposing no-go areas within the Gaza Strip.

In the current assault on Gaza, entire families are killed and neighbourhoods obliterated. UNICEF has condemned Israel for deliberately targeting women and children. Nearly 400 children have been murdered in less than four weeks, and more than 2000 have been injured and maimed. Gaza’s dead children are dead simply because they are Palestinians – this is genocide.

At least a quarter of a million Gazans are homeless because of Israeli bombing. There is nowhere safe to escape to — Israel has bombed UN-protected schools, hospitals and other UN buildings, killing civilians seeking refuge. Ten thousand people have been killed or injured. The bombardment of Gaza from the sea, land and air increasingly turns Gaza from a concentration camp into a death camp.

We support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and in particular we demand that the British government end its complicity in genocide by first of all ending its arms trade with Israel.

The Board of Deputies claims it wants Israel to be treated fairly and impartially within British society, but in fact it demands exceptionalism. It wants Israel to be exempted from any sanctions in spite of its apartheid and now its genocidal campaign against Gaza.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of condoning the atrocities the State of Israel commits in Gaza by attempting to silence Israel’s critics. This massive blood stain will not go away.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of joining with the anti-Semites in equating Zionism with Judaism and telling the world that all British Jews support Israel. That is a lie.

Jews in Britain Against Genocide

________________________________________

NOTES

Genocide is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as any act committed with the intention of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. http://www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus/treaties/genocide.asp

Concentration camp is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution’

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Children As Grass

golden sheaves
spread in school yard
salt coast grown,
resistant stems
of native centuries
warned from homes
to wretched refuge
without respite
no shafts to freedom
where none are safe

threat of grass
and budding seed
shields real estate
coveted by
lawnmower men
with tunnel vision
of western pretexts,
colonial deterrents
to permanence,
not never again,
but again and again

unseen drone buzz
no fertilising bee
searing scythe
explodes from thirsty sky
row on row ripped
before flower blown
monstrous harvest
in Gaza charnel house
beneath earth strewn
with blood and bone
olive tree kernels awaken

August 2014

Names of Palestinians Killed in the War on Gaza since 8 July

AUGUST 1 UPDATE: Child death toll in Gaza approaches 200 and rising

Related Links

The IDF prepares to attempt to cover its tracks, but thousands of photos of disproportionate death and destruction don’t lie. Israel has been engaged in a deliberate, planned act of genocide, with accompanying war crimes. Its attack on the Occupied people of Gaza breaches the Geneva Conventions in the first place. Israel to the Hague!

Another vile story calls for genocide of Gazans in the Israeli media, this time in JPost and phrased as ‘humanitarian relocation of the non-belligerent Arab population’

The author of this scurrilous piece of incitement, Dr. Martin Sherman of the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies, has the gall to quote Einstein in support of his solution for the Palestinian question “No, periodically mowing the lawn is not a policy that can endure for long – it simply will not cut it. The grass needs to be uprooted – once and for all.”

How do these drooling fascists live with themselves?

More zionist genocidalists – Prof. Efraim Inbar is director and Dr.Eitan Shamir a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

“Against an implacable, well-entrenched, non-state enemy like the Hamas, Israel simply needs to “mow the grass” once in a while to degrade the enemy’s capabilities.”

Another genocidal Israeli lawnmower man: David M. Weinberg is Director of Public Affairs at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

Racism is the Foundation of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge Joel Beinin:

The viciousness of Mordechai Kedar, lecturer in Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, was even more creative than Shaked and Elitzur’s merely genocidal proposal. “The only thing that can deter terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them,” he said, “is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” As a university-based “expert,” Kedar’s heinous suggestion is based on his “understanding” of Arab culture. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” he explained, hastening to add, “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts.”

Racism has become a legitimate, indeed an integral, component of Israeli public culture, making assertions like these seem “normal.”
…
Israeli security officials sardonically call these operations “mowing the lawn” because well-informed observers know that Hamas cannot be uprooted and is capable of rebuilding its military capacity. There is no long-term strategy, except, as Gideon Levy put it, to kill Palestinians. Major General (res.) Oren Shachor elaborated, “If we kill their families, that will frighten them.” And what might deter Israel?

Times of Israel publishes a zionist’s defence of genocide – the article was withdrawn but is archived.

Behind the Lying Eyes of Mark Regev

Behind the lying eyes of Mark Regev from One Democratic State Group on Vimeo.

Discrimination against Arab families:

‘In an attempt to lure the small ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism into his new government, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to pay extra child allowance to religious Jewish families with many children in a way that guarantees the extra payments do not also go to large Arab families.

This is the latest in a long line of manoeuvres by successive Israeli governments to ensure that Jewish and Arab citizens receive differential child allowances so that higher birth rates among Jewish families can be encouraged without also encouraging increased fertility among Arab families.

Such schemes are widely seen as being part of government initiatives to counter the perceived “demographic threat” posed by high Arab birth rates and maintaining Israel’s Jewish majority. Child allowance was only equalised for Jews and Arabs in the mid-1990s.’

Olmert and the ‘demographic threat’:

‘The time is fast approaching when Arabs will constitute a majority in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. Then, Olmert said, Palestinians will abandon their calls for an independent state and instead will demand a one-man-one-vote system in a binational state that they will control.

“The day we come to that, we will lose everything” Olmert said. “Even when they carry out terror, it’s hard for us to convince the world of the justice of our cause.”

“How much the more so,” he continued, “when all they ask for is one man, one vote? I shudder to think that the same liberal Jews who led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa will be at the forefront of the struggle against us.”’

More Olmert:

‘Mr Olmert said it was not the first time he had articulated his fears about the demographic threat to Israel as a Jewish state from a faster growing Palestinian population.

He made similar comments in 2003 when justifying the failed strategy of unilateral withdrawals from Israeli-occupied land which holds large Palestinian populations.

“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,”

Rape of Palestinian women:

‘If the Or Yehuda banner only hinted at rape and the WhatsApp image played coyly with it, a leading Israeli academic blatantly floated the idea of using rape against the Palestinians at the very start of the current round of hostilities.

On July 1, just after the bodies of three Israeli teens who had gone missing in the West Bank were found, Bar Ilan University lecturer Dr. Mordechai Kedar spoke on Israeli radio about raping Palestinian women in order to deter “terrorism,” saying that only the knowledge that Israel could dispatch agents to rape a Palestinian militant’s mother or sister, as retribution for his crimes, could deter him from carrying out those actions.’

Here’s Netayahoo in 2003 bemoaning the ‘demographic threat’ of Palestinian wombs in Israel:

Israel’s growing demographic problem is not because of Palestinians, but of Israeli Arabs, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference on security, Netanyahu said Israel had already freed itself from control of almost all Palestinian Arabs. He said he could not foresee a future in which “any sane Israeli” could try to make Palestinians either Israeli citizens or “enslaved subjects.” The Palestinians would under all circumstances rule themselves and administer their own affairs, he said.

“If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens,” he said. The Declaration of Independence said Israel should be a Jewish and democratic state, but to ensure the Jewish character was not engulfed by demography, it was necessary to ensure a Jewish majority, he said.

Joseph Massad – “Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy”

Who could forget these IDF T-shirts?

Deliberately killing children:

“Monica Awad, the spokeswoman of the UNICEF, condemned Israel’s targeting of women and children in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.”

In an interview with Al-Jazeera on 31 July, Awad said “Israeli forces had deliberately killed 264 children in Gaza, which is equal to 11 children per day, and injured more than 2,000.”

“Where’s the international community’s reactions to the slaughtering of children in Gaza? Where are the international human rights covenants?”

IDF Sniper Admits On Instagram To Murdering 13 Gaza Children

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Israel, War Criminal and Initiator of Attacks on Occupied Gaza

In its latest manufactured spectacle of horrendous violence, Operation Protective Edge, Israel broke an 18 month truce and fired on Hamas first, although this was just one of many significant breaches Israel perpetrated against Gaza since November 2012.

“Because memories are short. On 29 June, Israel killed a Hamas member in Gaza. On 30 June, this headline” (thanks, Ben White)

Israel fires first

Yet the mainstream media one-sidedly have spun Israel’s propaganda that it is merely “defending itself” and “responding to rocket attacks”, and most despicably, the lie that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields“.

Israel has a history of concocting hasbara to pervert the historical record of its unilateral pre-planned attacks on the people of Gaza. As revealed by Wikileaks cables, Operation Cast Lead was cooked up with malice aforethought in concert with the US and initiated by Israel. In November 2012, the zionist state commenced its next attack on the Gazan people, Operation Pillar of Cloud, ‘in order to restore its increasingly frayed deterrent posture vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the region and the world at large.’

Regardless of its duplicitous, traditional posture of ‘self-defence’ which zionists have been utilising ever since their 1947 Plan Dalet conquests were termed ‘counter-measures’, Israel does not have a right to attack the population of Occupied Gaza to ‘defend itself’ or otherwise, and certainly not to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Nor is it sufficient for Egypt in collusion with the US and with the assistance of Tony Blair, to broker a one-sided cease fire and not consult with one of the parties at all. This manouevre attempted to make it look as though Israel was the blameless party seeking peace, when in actuality it provided a rubber stamp for Israel to accelerate its massacres and destruction in Gaza. This is not a “war” or “conflict”, it is a continuance of the settler colonial genocide of and theft from Palestinians which Israel has been conducting assiduously since 1948.

Also pertinent to Israel’s murderous campaign is the fact that Israel has its eyes on Gaza’s gas and this is another reason, besides deterrence of resistance to its hegemony, why Israel is attacking the people of Gaza, to divide the Palestinian people all the better to arrange comfy deals for resource exploitation with neoliberal collaborator PA nepotists.

The US/UK and other imperial cronies have been indulgent, irresponsible ‘parents’, have cossetted, enabled and grown a fascist juggernaut to plague Palestinians and the region. By permitting their sociopathic child, which acts as a ‘farm’ and ‘laboratory’ for imperial arms tech, intel tech and security tech development and testing on live Palestinian targets, to terrorise Palestinians and others, the empire tells the rest of the region that it will never be permitted to be free, unify, enjoy basic human rights or resist the empire’s predations.

Israel’s genocide of and theft from Palestinians must stop and the criminal eight year siege which it has imposed on the people of Gaza end.

Palestinians have called for the international community to oppose Israel’s crimes through boycott, divestment and sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel.

As Jennine Abdul Khalik, Co-editor of Arab-Australian site Sajjeling and Palestinian human rights advocate says:

‘The BDS movement, initialised and endorsed by Palestinian civil society in 2005, is one of the most impactful things we can do to challenge Israel’s impunity and its normalcy. It begins in our streets, in our universities, and amongst our businesses and organisations. We can cut through government silence from below.’

Present at the huge protest for Palestinian rights at Qalandia checkpoint in the West Bank today, Diana Buttu, Palestinian advocate and lawyer highlights the importance of BDS:

‘First and foremost, The BDS movement is growing and needs to grow further … Beyond that there needs to be a push for an arms embargo on Israel and accountability for its actions.

The boycott movement is our way of reclaiming our voices.’

Palestinian academics, writers and public figures emphasise that a cease fire must incorporate the end of the blockade on Gaza:

‘As academics, public figures and activists witnessing the intended genocide of 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, we call for a ceasefire with Israel only if conditioned on an end to the blockade and the restoration of basic freedoms that have been denied to the people for more than seven years.

Our foremost concerns are not only the health and safety of the people in our communities, but also the quality of their lives – their ability to live free of fear of imprisonment without due process, to support their families through gainful employment, and to travel to visit their relatives and further their education.

These are fundamental human aspirations that have been severely limited for the Palestinian people for more than 47 years, but that have been particularly deprived from residents of Gaza since 2007. We have been pushed beyond the limits of what a normal person can be expected to endure.
…
Likewise, Hamas represented the sentiment of the vast majority of residents when it rejected the unilateral ceasefire proposed by Egypt and Israel without consulting anyone in Gaza. We share the broadly held public sentiment that it is unacceptable to merely return to the status quo – in which Israel strictly limits travel in and out of the Gaza Strip, controls the supplies that come in (including a ban on most construction materials), and prohibits virtually all exports, thus crippling the economy and triggering one of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the Arab world.

To do so would mean a return to a living death.

Unfortunately, past experience has shown that the Israeli government repeatedly reneges on promises for further negotiations, as well as on its commitments to reform.

Likewise, the international community has demonstrated no political will to enforce these pledges. Therefore, we call for a ceasefire only when negotiated conditions result in the following:

Freedom of movement of Palestinians in and out of the Gaza Strip.
Unlimited import and export of supplies and goods, including by land, sea and air.
Unrestricted use of the Gaza seaport.
Monitoring and enforcement of these agreements by a body appointed by the United Nations, with appropriate security measures.

Each of these expectations is taken for granted by most countries, and it is time for the Palestinians of Gaza to be accorded the human rights they deserve.

Related Links

Don’t forget the men that the Israeli killing machine is butchering and maiming
On Zionism’s violence against women: “When a state views a population — its dispossessed, disenfranchised and occupied indigenous population — as a ”demographic threat,” that view is fundamentally both racist and gendered. Racist population control relies specifically on violence against women.”
Americans still brainwashed by imperialism and zionism
Extremely disturbing vid footage in this piece, including a bizarre dancing ritual by zionist fanatics as they wish evil upon “the Other”, inscribing deadly artillery shells with curses

On truce: ‘The Hamas official acknowledged that the militants realized that getting Israel to end the eight-year siege in tandem with a ceasefire was unrealistic.

“There needs to be an agreement on the principles, the schedule (for ending the blockade) and the mechanism,” the official said.

Hamas’s chief Khaled Meshaal on Wednesday again insisted on a ceasefire only after an end to the siege, in force since Hamas was democratically elected in 2006.

The official, who works closely with Meshaal, said however that they understood that the blockade would be eased only after the ceasefire, but they required a schedule in place first.’

This is what the US enables in its disgraceful one-sided support for genocidal apartheid Israel – grotesque war crimes against civilians
Two dozen killed as several UNRWA schools hit in Gaza

Solidarity with Muslim leaders boycotting the NSW Premier’s “Ramadan” dinner.

The Liberal Democrat MP David Ward has refused to apologise for saying he would probably fire a rocket into Israel if he lived in Gaza, despite his party “utterly condemning” the comments.

Promoting the Rape of Gaza and Its Women

‘On July 21, Israeli media reported that Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of the West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba, issued a religious edict on the rules of engagement during wartime, which he sent to the country’s Defense Minister. The edict stated that according to Jewish religious law, it is permissible to bomb innocent Palestinian civilians and “to exterminate the enemy.”’

Up to 20,000 Palestinians protest in the Occupied West Bank – Israel opens fire with live ammunition killing 2 people

Why the UK must end its military support for Israel

Israel lies so it can commit and conceal crimes of war
“Both sides” aren’t to blame in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel is

GPO Advisory to Journalists Covering Operation Protective Edge from the Gaza Strip

Tony #Blair, #MiddleEast ambassador for the US, UN, EU and Russia, helped #Egypt write up the #ceasefire.

With a total death toll as at 25 July of 828, at least 70% of which are civilians, the “most moral” military in the world has killed but 10 what it terms as ‘senior terrorists’.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including staff, are helping Israel’s massacre in Gaza

West Bank rage at Gaza bloodshed as protests erupt over UN school attack

“Thousands of Palestinians took part in a demonstration after more than 15 women, children and United Nations staff were killed and around 200 injured when a UN shelter for those fleeing the Israeli bombing was hit.

The Israel Defence Forces insisted it had given the occupants of the shelter time to leave before shelling the area. But the UN flatly contradicted that, saying it had made repeated attempts to negotiate a window during which people could safely leave the area but none was granted. It said it had given the IDF precise co-ordinates of the location of the school.

Meanwhile reports emerged that the US secretary of state, John Kerry, had presented both sides with a new proposal for a cessation of violence. It centred around a week-long temporary ceasefire with Israeli troops allowed to stay in Gaza to locate and destroy tunnels; and simultaneous negotiations for a permanent deal, with guarantees by the US, EU and UN that the primary concerns of each side would be addressed.

Kerry was said to be awaiting a response from Israel and Hamas before leaving Cairo to return to Washington later on Friday. Israel’s security cabinet was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the plan. It will also discuss the option of expanding its eight-day-old ground operation in Gaza.

Hamas’s leader-in-exile, Khaled Mishal, said a truce must include a guaranteed end to Israel’s eight-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. “We want a ceasefire as soon as possible, that’s parallel with the lifting of the siege of Gaza,” he told the BBC.

The school in Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza was one of the grimmest incidents of the conflict, now in its 18th day and in which more than 800 Palestinians – mostly civilians – have been killed. Thirty-four Israelis and one Thai worker have died. “

Israel used fabricated images to justify bombing al-Wafa hospital

Freedom and justice For Gaza: Boycott action against 7 complicit companies

Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.

Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza—Debunked

Israel’s propaganda machine, however, insists that these Palestinians wanted to die (“culture of martyrdom”), staged their own death (“telegenically dead”) or were the tragic victims of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes (“human shielding”). In all instances, the military power is blaming the victims for their own deaths, accusing them of devaluing life and attributing this disregard to cultural bankruptcy. In effect, Israel—along with uncritical mainstream media that unquestionably accept this discourse—dehumanizes Palestinians, deprives them even of their victimhood and legitimizes egregious human rights and legal violations.

It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All

Time for Israel’s war criminal genocidalists to meet justice at the ICC:

In a less widely-reported speech, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in Paris on March 20, 2013 reportedly said that the ICC is “waiting” for the Palestinians to “come back,” implying that following the UN vote, she would view Palestine as a state, even though the UN Security Council has not recognized it.

Put succinctly, the threat of criminal allegations against Israelis going anywhere (though there are many obstacles besides the statehood bar) at the ICC are far greater now than they were when the Goldstone Report came out.

Classic fascist newspeak from genocidalist war crim Moshe Feiglin. Israel loves “life and liberty”, Palestinians are just “savages” who resist the glorious zionist entity, so send them to their deaths.

Attacks on hospitals expose Israel’s “self-defense” claims as lies

Gaza is not “a tragedy in which ‘both sides’ share the blame” …
“We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and we want our Government to do the same, to cut diplomatic relations, to sever trade, to boycott Israel until it ends its violent occupation.”

Palestinians working toward a secular democratic one state.

Mob of zionist brownshirts sing songs about Gaza school children not being able to attend school, because there’s no children left.

Will fascist Israel flaunt the directives of the UNSC as it has done countless times before?

Khaled Meshaal to interviewer Charlie Rose:

‘”We are not fanatics, we are not fundamentalists. We are not actually fighting the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers,” he said.

“I’m ready to coexist with the Jews, with the Christians and the Arabs and non-Arabs,” he said. “However, I do not coexist with the occupiers.”‘


Only 27 Australian politicians condemn Israel’s attack on Gaza. Only 27.

In The Age:

‘The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.

As none other than Malcolm Fraser tweeted this week: “If any other country went to war killing as many civilians, women and children, it would be named a war crime.”‘

If the media reported everything the way they report on Palestine…

An overview of Israel’s collective punishment and war crimes against the people of Gaza resultant from Operation Defective Heads

Genocidal Israeli settlers moan about missing out on the night life, worry that their lack of partying is damaging the economy.

Belgian doctors call for sanctions against Israel

Israeli soldier was captured before the 72 hour cease fire, and Israel aborted the cease fire by attacking.

Trenchant article by Phil Greaves dealing to western liberal apologists for imperialism and zionism, in particular Owen Jones and Laurie Penny:

‘On the other side of the bargain, and providing the most crucial return in supporting Zionism for the western imperial class, is the furthering of regional chaos, antagonism, and conflict, perpetuating a weakened and subordinated condition of the Arab states and peoples that western capital seeks to repress – to force down the road of political reaction and to exploit. In one form or another Israel has provided western imperialism with its most reliable asset in the repression and exploitation of the Middle East. Until this colonial manifestation of western imperialism is abolished in full, and its racist ideological structure along with it, thereby freeing the Palestinians and Arabs from western imperialism and Zionist oppression, there will be no “durable peace”.

The western “Left” liberals and social chauvinists seeking mere “understanding” of the oppressor and affording it false equivalence aim to mitigate and obscure both the inherently fascistic character of Zionism and the Israeli State, and its critical role in buttressing western imperial domination of the Middle East.’

Craig Murray:

I have no hesitation whatsoever in stating that what is happening in Gaza is a part of a continuing process of deliberate genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israelis. When I have previously stated this, some commenters have taken issue with the word genocide. I see no other word that fits.

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Visible in Gaza

They shot the child in her innocent beauty
said she was a human shield
she made them do it they said
yet she was just a child.

They shot the mother who held the child
her womb a demographic threat
she made them do it they said
yet she was only a mother.

They shot the boy who ran from them
said his stones were missiles
he made them do it they said
his face blazes at them still.

Sylvia Posadas, July 2014.

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Brian Jonestown Massacre Mutiny

Another show in apartheid Tel Aviv which has been cancelled since Israel’s Operation Protective Edge attack of the captive people of Gaza commenced on July 8 is Brian Jonestown Massacre.

The band’s performance was due yesterday, 15 July. They cancelled at the very last minute on Monday, 14 July.

The group was split right in the middle, described as:
“…group pulled a mutiny at the last moment “

“Joel rob and Matt decided to bail on it today at the last minute and stick me with the hassles and blame like fake friends do”

Clearly Anton Newcombe attempts to obscure the cancellation, saying:
“…like I said by going on about it you just give free attention to sneaky cowards that fuck their so called friends”

“…it’s kind of like the more I talk about it just now the more publicity I throw on the self righteous.”
Which suggests the cancellation was at least partially implicitly in protest against the Israeli actions against the people of Gaza.

Anton Newcombe blames his his band members:
“…I didn’t cancel it, members of my group said they were not going at the last minute like pussies so get your facts straight”

According to band member, Matt Hollywood:
“We expressed concerns, were ignored. Felt it was inappropriate to go.”
https://twitter.com/Matt_Hollywood1/status/489352348784160768

It should be noted that even Neil Young probably cancelled partially at least because of the boycott, as the stage and fencing were not built, which suggests he had no intention to play but allowed Israel to manipulate the reasons.

Since Israel initiated its current belligerence against the people of Gaza, business is not booming in the Zionist state. Acccording to Haaretz, “Manufacturing, retail, advertising and tourism have all been hit hard.” Retail sales are down by 70%, and travel agents are reporting drops of 30-60% in reservations. One Israeli citizen has been killed.

As at July 15, Israel has slaughtered 195 people of Gaza, including 111 civilians, 38 children and 45 undetermined non-civilians, according to OCHA.

The most recent murders of Palestinians perpetrated by Israel are four Palestinian children from the same family as they played on the beach in Gaza. The children are Ahed Bakr, 10, Zakaria Bakr, 10, Mohd Bakr, 11, and Ismail Bakr, 9.

Gazan civil society has issued an urgent call to the international community to intensify the boycott against Israel at this time.

We insist on international action:

– Severance of diplomatic ties with Israel

– Trials for war crimes

– Immediate International protection of the civilians of Gaza

We call on you to join the growing international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign to hold this rogue state to account that is proving once again to be so violent and yet so unchallenged. Join the growing critical mass around the world with a commitment to the day when Palestinians do not have to grow up amidst this relentless murder and destruction by the Israeli regime. When we can move freely, when the siege is lifted, the occupation is over and the world’s Palestinian refugees are finally granted justice.

Co-authored with Yael Kahn