palestine

In killing Nasrallah, Israel chose to open the gates of hell. We’ll all pay the price

Hezbollah has confirmed that its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was among the hundreds of Lebanese killed in Israel’s massive bombardment of a suburb of Beirut last night.

Israel’s action will achieve nothing apart from teaching his successor, and leaders of other groups and countries labelled as terrorist by western governments, several lessons:

  • That Israel, and the West standing squarely behind it, do not play by any known rules of engagement, and that their opponents must do likewise. The current restraint from Hezbollah that has been so baffling western pundits will become a thing of the past.
  • That Israel is not interested in compromise, only escalation, and that this is a fight to death — not just against Israel but against the West that sponsors Israel.
  • That Israel’s ideological extremism — its Jewish supremacism, and its endless craving for Lebensraum — must be met with even greater Shia-inspired extremism.

https://twitter.com/jonathan_k_cook/status/1840005616435077334?s=61

The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel’s crimes | Middle East Eye

The more Israel expands its war across the Middle East, the more the western media intensifies its war on our minds.

Establishment media outlets like the BBC are weaponising the language of their reporting against audiences no less effectively than Israel weaponised primitive pieces of technology against the people of Lebanon.

(https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/bbc-lebanon-israel-reporting-weaponising-crimes-pagers?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)

Are restrictions on pro-Palestine speech ‘the new McCarthyism?’

From The Bottom Line – 8 Sep 2024 | Updated a day ago

Is there an attempt to chill debate on Palestine and Israel on both sides of the Atlantic?

The United States, and the West in general, are in a “dire period” of repression of speech on Palestinian freedom or criticism of Israel, argues Dima Khalidi, founder of Palestine Legal.

Khalidi tells host Steve Clemons that despite strong constitutional protections for free expression, “there seems to be this exception when it comes to Palestine”, as witnessed by the wave of censorship, intimidation, firings and restrictions on activism in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza.

https://aje.io/1zxct0

You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?

Profits from slaughter

It isn’t just arms manufacturers and the hi-tech industries, with their booming surveillance businesses, whose shares are soaring on the back of the slaughter in Gaza and Ukraine. 
Bloomberg reported last month that Israeli air strikes on Gaza had turned the homes of 2.3 million Palestinians into 42m tonnes of rubble. That’s enough to fill a line of dump trucks from New York to Singapore. 


It won’t be Gaza companies raking in the profits from the mammoth clean-up operation. After a 17-year blockade of the enclave by Israel, Gaza’s industrial and commercial sector barely existed even before Israel’s current wrecking spree. The beneficiaries, once again, will be western corporations.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathancook/p/you-cant-arm-a-genocidal-state-into?r=7w1yj&utm_medium=ios

Zeteo | Substack

I still remember the joy I felt seeing Majed Abu Maraheel, the first Palestinian Olympian, as he entered the Olympic arena carrying the Palestinian flag at the 1996 Atlanta Games. The games were carried live on screens in Ramallah, where I had just arrived for the summer. The crowd erupted in cheers seeing the Palestinian team bearing the Palestinian flag for the very first time.

https://bit.ly/3yaWxJd

Starmer learnt that the price of power was support for genocide

By a crushing majority, the 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled more than five months ago that Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza.
The highest court in the world put Israel on trial, accused of the ultimate crime against humanity.
Much has happened since that decision – and all of it is even more incriminating against Israel than the evidence considered by the World Court back in January.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathancook/p/starmer-learnt-that-the-price-of?r=7w1yj&utm_medium=ios