Saturday, April 27, 2024

Paul Rudnick, Burkina Faso, Chris Housman, and the baroness gets rebuked

Paul Rudnick.



She really did shoot her dog, by the way.  She also had the affair but I think we all know about that.  In her new book, she reveals she shot her dog.  On purpose.  Reminds me of those old Time-Life books about the old west and a man who "was so mean, he once shot a man just for looking at him."


They should haul that old commercial out to promote Noem's new book.


This is from Friday's headlines on DEMOCRACY NOW!


Burkina Faso’s U.S.-trained military forces “summarily executed” at least 223 civilians, including dozens of children, across several villages in the northern Yatenga province in late February. That’s according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, which says the extrajudicial mass killings are part of a widespread military campaign to exterminate residents accused of collaborating with Islamic militants. Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Tirana Hassan said in a statement, “The repeated failure of the Burkinabè authorities to prevent and investigate such atrocities underlines why international assistance is critical to support a credible investigation into possible crimes against humanity.”

Burkina Faso is a country in west Africa, just FYI.  We've got our dirty hands in countries across the world and we're training killers.  Never forget that when people wonder how the US government can continue to support the government of Israel as it carries out genocide.  There is so much going on in the world right now and it can be difficult to keep up with even the major events.  Related, in this community, Ruth covers Donald Trump and if you need to know about Friday's court appearance, check out her "Developments on Day 8 of one of Trump's four criminal trials."


I also note it because in a college course, we did a UN simulation and I was the representative for Burkina Faso; however, back then it was the Republic of Upper Volta. 

 Let's note some music.



That's Chris Housman's "Guilty As Sin."  C.I., Ruth, Mike, Kat and Marcia have already noted it so let me join them.  It was at 10,000 when I first saw it.  It's now at 205,000 views.

Please read Marcia's "Oh, Ellen, get real" as well as Ava and C.I.'s "TV: The media -- can't deliver an honest laugh, can't deliver the honest truth." Also Ann's doing a book review this weekend so check her site for that.  I'm sure you've already checck out Kat's "Kat's Korner: The tortured lyrics (not poetry) of Taylor Swift" from Sunday but, if not, please read it now.


Lastly, the baroness who needs to return to the country she has a title in (England) got bad news.  t Nemat Minouche Shafik has been (rightly) rebuked by Columbia University's senate.  ALJAZEERA reports:


After a two-hour meeting on Friday, the Columbia University senate approved a resolution that Shafik’s administration had undermined academic freedom and disregarded the privacy and due process rights of students and faculty members by calling in the police and shutting down the peaceful protest.

“The decision … has raised serious concerns about the administration’s respect for shared governance and transparency in the university decision-making process,” the senate said.

The senate, composed mostly of faculty members and other staff plus student representatives, did not name Shafik in its resolution and avoided the harsher language of a censure.

The resolution also established a task force to monitor the “corrective actions” the senate asked the university’s administration to take in dealing with protests.


I stand with the students. 

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, April 26, 2024.  Calls for cease-fire increase as campus activism in the US soars -- even as some outlets ignore the students and their bravery.


Sabreen al-Sakani has passed away.  Her life was brief, not even one week.  Born last Sunday after her mother was killed, she seemed a 'survivor' of the assault on Gaza.  BBC NEWS explains:

Baby Sabreen al-Sakani was delivered by Caesarean section in a Rafah hospital shortly after midnight on Sunday.

Amid chaotic scenes doctors resuscitated the baby, using a hand pump to push air into her lungs.

However she died on Thursday and has been buried next to her mother after whom she was named.

Baby Sabreen was among 16 children killed in two air strikes in Rafah last weekend. All were killed in a bombardment targeting the housing complex where they lived.

[. . .]

Sabreen's mother, also called Sabreen, was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the Israeli air strike on the al-Sakani family home took place just before midnight on Saturday as she, her husband Shukri and their three-year-old daughter Malak were asleep.

 


Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave. 

Thankfully, her baby daughter lived after being delivered by emergency Caesarean section, at a hospital in Rafah last weekend. With more on this story - and the latest on the war in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel – UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to Dominic Allen, from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA.

She was thought by some to have been a sign of hope but on Thursday she became another sign of reality, another child dead as a result of the actions of the Israeli government and their never-ending assault on Gaza.  Sabreen al-Sakani is one more child in the growing number of over 14,000 dead as a result of the Israeli government.

And yet some wonder why US students are protesting the assault on Gaza. If you're one of those wondering, the many reasons why are staring you in the face if you'd only open your eyes.


President Shafik, one week ago, you authorized the New York Police Department to clear Columbia’s South Lawn of student protesters. We watched police officers zip-tie and arrest 108 of our friends, classmates, and coworkers. In response, students have mobilized in the hundreds at Columbia and campuses across the country, defending their right to peaceful protest for divestment from Israel. Now, police battalions surround campus, students enter and exit through security checkpoints, NYPD correctional buses circle the block, helicopters drone overhead, reporters probe students for front-page quotes, and communication from the administration has all but disappeared—with the exception, of course, of ominous late-night emails.

Columbia has become a national spectacle. Instead of defending your students’ right to free expression or engaging publicly with activist organizations, you and other administrators are scrambling to save face—granting campus access to select media outlets, the founder of a hate group that is as rabidly Islamophobic as it is antisemitic, and the occasional opportunistic politician—while abandoning the rest of campus. As tensions escalate here and elsewhere—Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, and Brown University, to name a few—we question whether you understand the impact of what you have done. President Shafik, this is your legacy: a president more focused on the brand of your University than the safety of your students and their demands for justice.


Her legacy is in tatters and her actions last week, her resorting to lies (the peaceful students were no clear and present danger) and bullying tactics did more to grow the movement than anything else.  This will remain her legacy.


What she can't grasp, the US Secretary of State does.  AFP quotes Antony Blinken speaking of the campus protests this morning while he was in China, "It's a hallmark of our democracy that our citizens make known their views, their concerns, their anger, at any given time.   I think that reflects the strength of the country."

CNN notes, "A wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests is rippling across the US, with hundreds of people arrested at universities throughout the country this week."  Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Jennifer Hassan,  Richard Morgan and Karin Brulliard (WASHINGTON POST) add, "Arrests at pro-Palestinian protests that expanded Thursday to colleges across the country brought the total number of people detained in a week of demonstrations to more than 500, with officials struggling to quell the unrest by clearing encampments and closing buildings."  The US has seen this before.  Michael Albert (ZNET) explains:

I went to MIT, class of 1969. It is now 2024 not the late sixties, but rebellion for change is again in the air. I think it is just getting revved up. I can feel it. I’ll bet you can feel it too. And maybe, hopefully, it will not crescendo any time soon but will instead persist. And perhaps, hopefully, it will seek more than immediate changes. And maybe, and I think I can feel this too, it will be much smarter than we were back then, back in 1968.

The rebellious events at Columbia last week have spurred rebellions of students and sometimes others at a rapidly enlarging community of campuses, including at my personally much-despised alma mater, MIT. [Note, I am not unbiased about campus rebellion or about MIT. The former undergirds mass change, over and over. Have at it. The latter is an instance of elite, academic, grossly rotten business as usual. When I was president of MIT’s student body, during steadily growing and intensifying rebellion, among the epithets I used for MIT was “Dachau on the Charles” because of its war research. Some on campus were too literal or too dense to see why I named it thus. For them, I would acknowledge the main difference, which was that MIT’s victims were not local, like Dachau’s—no, MIT’s victims way back then were half a torn-up world away in Vietnam enduring American carpet bombing. And regarding Dachau, MIT’s victims were not hanging like burned out lightbulbs in MIT’s corridors nor lying breathless like fish out of water gassed in MIT’s labs. And now, 56 years later, MIT’s current victims are way off in Gaza enduring Israeli carpet bombing (but with American bombs). They are not being forcefully exiled from MIT’s classes, dorms, playing fields, and clinic—not yet, anyway. My point: history sometimes repeats, sometimes with ironic differences, sometimes with healthy differences.




A number of people were arrested at Ohio State University in Columbus after demonstrators refused to leave part of campus Thursday night, a university spokesperson said.

The number of arrests was not immediately available.

“Well established university rules prohibit camping and overnight events. Demonstrators exercised their first amendment rights for several hours and were then instructed to disperse,” spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email.

“Individuals who refused to leave after multiple warnings were arrested and charged with criminal trespass,” he said.

The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported that its reporters witnessed at least a dozen people being taken into custody.


CBS NEWS adds, "In Philadelphia, more than 100 students at Temple University walked out of class and marched from campus to City Hall, CBS Philadelphia reported. The protesters were also joined by students from Drexel University."





AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have rocked campuses from coast to coast over the past week amid an intensifying police crackdown. At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, including some on horseback, who violently broke up a student encampment on campus. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues a week after over a hundred students were arrested in a failed attempt by the university administration to clear the demonstration. University President Minouche Shafik had said on Tuesday — had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Shafik to resign.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in New York by Sarah King, member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She is Jewish, one of the students arrested at the encampment last week who’s now suspended. We’re also joined by Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at University of Texas Austin, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Austin, who was at Wednesday’s protest.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Josh, there were more than 50 arrests at UT Austin. If you can respond to the House speaker, who’s saying that these encampments around the country are antisemitic and pro-Hamas?

JOSHUA SKLAR: It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was there with a contingent of Jewish students, and we were received very warmly. There were even Jewish Zionists there, and they were not harassed at all. In fact, I would say that they probably felt safer than the majority of protesters.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah King, if you could describe what’s happening now at Columbia University and your own position? You were suspended?

SARAH KING: Yes, I was one of the over 100 students who was arrested as part of a peaceful protest in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and I’m one of the student who’s been suspended, as well, so I’m currently not allowed to be on campus. And I have to say it’s — the camp itself is very beautiful. It’s been a real place of interfaith celebration and solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are now at over 200 days of genocide. But, you know, the threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has sent the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, Sarah, about what’s happened, how you got suspended and your treatment? I’ve been talking to a number of Columbia and Barnard students who said that some of them were given 15 minutes to get out of their dorm, and your meal card canceled, as you’re banned from campus, as well.

SARAH KING: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m one of the lucky ones, because I live off campus. But many students live in Columbia housing, and so they were evicted from their homes or locked out from their homes, probably illegally in many cases. We’re looking into it. And they lost access to their normal food. I had an undergraduate who is low-income and was staying with me, because she was evicted with no notice and lost access to her meal plan.

And it’s really very concerning the way Columbia uses the threat of — initially it was just — “just,” quote-unquote — the threat of housing, the threat of loss of food to try to — you know, as a cudgel to get students into the correct political line that is best for its pocketbook, its investment portfolio. And now they’re threatening to set the National Guard on us, risking another Jackson State, another Kent State, where students have been killed because the National Guard were set on students. And they’re willing to risk the threat of violence at their hands because we’re not, you know, consistent with what’s best for their board of trustees or for their portfolios.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Sarah, what about your response to Mike Johnson being invited to speak at Columbia University on campus yesterday?

SARAH KING: Yeah. I mean, first, I think it’s shameful that he was allowed there. Like, I myself am not allowed on campus. I’m, you know, one of many talented and promising students with bright futures who have been banned from campus, but Mike Johnson, who is an open racist and white supremacist, along with people like Gavin McInnes, the head of the Proud Boys, they were welcomed on campus yesterday.

And to me, that really tells the story of what’s at stake here, which is that, you know, the students fighting for Palestinian liberation are part of an interracial coalition — so many Jewish students, Muslim students, Black, Brown, Arab students — working together for the cause of freedom, on one side, and then, on the other side, you have political opportunists, like the House speaker, who, you know, will take any excuse they can get to come after that kind of interfaith, multigenerational coalition fighting for freedom. And right now it happens to be under the guise of something like antisemitism. But, you know, there’s no substance to it at all. And I think anybody who came to campus and saw, the worst prosecution that the Jewish students on campus are facing is from Columbia University. We were disproportionately banned by Columbia because so many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment trying to prevent a genocide in our name.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Joshua Sklar, wrote a piece in The Austin Chronicle. “We need a ceasefire now,” it was called, the subtitle, “Anti-Palestinian violence is not 'on the other side of the globe.' It’s here in Austin, too.” If you can talk about that and how protesters were treated yesterday? You had riot police on horseback?

JOSHUA SKLAR: Yeah. I think that there’s been this narrative that there’s been rampant antisemitism. And this simply is not the case. The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students. Police came in on horseback, and they attacked protesters. I heard from other students that during an earlier part of the protest, they were clearly targeting Brown people and women. I wasn’t there personally, but this is what I heard.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Sarah King a final question. We have 10 seconds. And that is, 48-hour extension goes ’til tonight. What are the plans? Ten seconds, Sarah.

SARAH KING: You know, I think most of the people at the encampment have already agreed to risk arrest, and they won’t move unless moved by force or until Columbia concedes to our demands, which are for divestment, amnesty and financial transparency.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Sarah King, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Joshua Sklar at UT Austin. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.



As Mike has said repeatedly at his site, "I stand with the students."  The students have taken action because elected leaders have failed to lead.  For over 200 days, this active genocide has taken place and the best the US can offer is Joe Biden say, "I'm not kidding, Israel, you calm down or I'm pulling this car over."  Joe does nothing except give the government of Israel -- a corrupt and brutal regime -- millions and billions of US tax dollars -- $26 billion just this week, he just signed it this week.  There are no consequences for the War Crimes.  Joe continues to turn a blind eye.  That's why the students have to lead -- because officials have failed and the body count grows higher and higher each day that this assault continues.

Rather than address that truth, college officials and politicians call for the students to be attacked.


At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, who violently crushed a student attempt to set up an encampment on the university’s South Mall. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown. In a statement, the teachers wrote, “We have witnessed police punching a female student, knocking over a legal observer, dragging a student over a chain link fence, and violently arresting students simply for standing at the front of the crowd.”

In Massachusetts, police made at least 108 arrests as officers broke up a student encampment at Emerson College in Boston overnight. Meanwhile, students at Harvard University defied school orders and began a tent encampment at Harvard Yard, which had been closed on Tuesday.

And earlier this morning, police moved in and started arresting Princeton students as they were setting up their own Gaza solidarity encampment.


Marianne Williamson Tweeted last night.




At Atlanta's Emory University, 28 demonstrators were arrested on Thursday after refusing to leave.

Emory's police force said protesters had "pushed past" officers protecting the area set up for commencement on Thursday morning.

The force acknowledged that chemical irritants had been released as part of crowd control measures, though they said it was in response to objects being thrown at officers.

Atlanta Police also confirmed using chemical irritants but denied reports they had fired rubber bullets at protesters.


CNN adds, "A group of Democratic Georgia state lawmakers condemned the “excessive force used by Georgia State Patrol” during arrests at Emory."  INDIA TODAY notes, "Police in the US state of Georgia used excessive force while trying to disperse protesters at a pro-Palestine protest at Emory University in Atlanta. A professor was knocked to the ground by a police officer, while another held her down as they handcuffed her with zip-ties."  


What to do?  One thing is to seek legal recourse.  Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

A day after Columbia University officials warned it may call on the National Guard to remove nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns since last week in solidarity with Gaza, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a federal civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the school's "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies."

The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.

The complaint details how the escalation against students, who have set up an encampment on campus to demand Columbia divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, is part of a monthslong pattern of the university's targeting of pro-Palestinian students.

According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel's U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including... Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more."



Faculty from universities across the country have begun to mobilize in solidarity with the student movement for Palestine. From NYU, where faculty linked arms to protect students from police; to Columbia University, where faculty engaged in a solidarity walkout with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment; to Barnard College, where faculty planned a sick-out in defense of their students — faculty are rising up in defense of their students. At the University of Texas Austin, faculty have announced a 24-hour work stoppage as part of the fight against student repression.

The action is the first so far in which faculty are using their power as workers to halt university operations in solidarity with student protestors. They are leveraging the fact that they make the university run in order to grind it to a halt. As we noted recently, while the past few years have seen many graduate worker and contingent faculty strikes, it’s very unusual in recent decades for faculty to mobilize to this extent outside of the context of collective bargaining.

Notably, public sector workers in Texas have serious restrictions on collective bargaining, meaning they do not have the ability to organize unions and negotiate from those unions. In other words, these workers are acting as a united group without having a union. Additionally, Texas has a full ban on public sector workers engaging in work stoppages — this means faculty at UT Austin are acting together, without a union, to break the law and stop work in order to protect the student movement. This action shows that, even if workers have no current legal pathway for unionization, they can still act as a union — in fact, public sector collective bargaining rights were won through strikes like these. 






These protests are huge news.  We've covered them every day this week, for example.  And some e-mails wonder why I'm ignoring progressive outlets?  

I'm not.  We're noted many.  We're posting YOUTUBE videos throughout the day from Marc Lamont Hill, ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, THE MAJORITY REPORT, SECULAR TALK, MIDDLE EAST EYE, DEMOCRACY NOW!, etc and the snapshots have included those and COMMON DREAMS and COUNTERPUNCH articles.  

But the people e-mailing me are actually wondering why I'm not noting coverage from THE PROGRESSIVE?  That's the US magazine and website that bills itself as "A voice for peace and social justice since 1909."  Why am I ignoring their coverage?  

I'm not.

They've offered no coverage.  

This is week two.  This all started last week at Columbia University.

And THE PROGRESSIVE can't say one damn word about it.

That's very telling.

We may call out a show -- Ava and I -- at THIRD.  As it stands, we just turned it off last night.  But the reason that adults who think they're on the left could misrepresent the protests so easily is because 'power outlets,' 'prestige outlets' on the left are silent.

Hey, IN THESE TIMES, don't sneak out of the room.  We're talking about you and your lazy ass too. I see you've published articles this week, just not any on the brave students taking action.  Trying to wait and see where public opinion lands?  Too scared so you want to play it safe?

You should be ashamed of yourself.  You're adults and your cowards.  Students are putting their futures on their line and you're too scared to even publish a piece on the biggest US news story of the week.  Shame on you.

THE NATION?

Honestly, I don't ever note THE NATION unless a friend with the magazine asks me to.  Why? It's one of those paywall sites and so people -- readers as well as community members -- don't feel it should be noted.

But I went there this morning (I do subscribe to the periodical) and nothing.  Story after story published this week.  They had time to wonder if Trump was on drugs (I think Ruth's "Is Donald Trump on a public drunken bender?" is better -- and she certainly pulled her theme together better and closed with a better ending), for example, but no time for the students.  And this is an election year.  If you're unaware, that's when THE NATION pretends to pay attention to students -- in order to turn them out at the polls for the Democratic Party.

THE NATION doesn't care about the protesters.

So next time when you're at your favorite site, look and see if they've managed, since last week, to cover this huge story, the biggest story this week in the United States.  Bigger than Donald Trump, bigger then any case before the Supreme Court.  Students across the country are standing up.  This is a major news story -- as is the oppressive response to the students' actions.

While the Holy Trinity of Cowards -- THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES -- played the quiet game, some elements of corporate media haven't been so reluctant.  Ari Paul (FAIR) notes:

A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24)  hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.

In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?

And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):

Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.

Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).

 

Corporate media like FOX "NEWS" gets away with smearing and attacking the protesters because The Holy Trinity of Cowards remains silent.  And, again, it's not just FOX "NEWS."  I don't watch FOX "NEWS."  Ava, Mike and I were watching a 'reliable' program last night when the students were attacked on air by a left or 'left' voice with the program.


AP provides a round-up of various campuses and we're going to note this on Northwestern:

Northwestern University changed its student code of conduct Thursday morning to bar tents on its suburban Chicago campus as student activists set up an encampment.

Groups including Jewish Voice for Peace and Educators for Justice in Palestine said the encampment on the Evanston campus was “a safe space for those who want to show their support of the Palestinian people.” The students want the university to divest from Israel, among other things.

Dozens participated as University President Michael Schill issued an email saying the university had enacted an “interim addendum” to its student code to bar tents, among other things, and warned of disciplinary actions including suspension, expulsion and criminal charges.

“The goal of this addendum is to balance the right to peacefully demonstrate with our goal to protect our community, to avoid disruptions to instruction and to ensure university operations can continue unabated,” Schilling said.


While THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES ignore the students and their activism, the world doesn't.  THE NATIONAL notes:

Student-led protests over the war in Gaza were widening in Europe on Friday as activists in Britain and France follow the lead of a campus demonstrations spreading in the US.

Protesters in Paris blocked an entrance to elite university Sciences Po on Friday, refusing to back down after a tent “occupation” was broken up by police a day earlier.

Activists at University College London were planning a rally in the name of a “global student movement for Palestine”, taking inspiration from protests at New York’s Columbia University.

Groups of students in both cities are demanding that university bosses cut ties with Israel and give free rein to pro-Palestinian protesters.

In Berlin, 150 police officers moved to ban a protest camp set up near the German parliament, citing repeated criminal offences. It was not clear whether the activists were students.

The US unrest inspired by Columbia’s tent occupation has meanwhile continued to spread, with more than 200 people arrested overnight at campus protests Los Angeles, Boston and Austin.


Students in Paris protested again on Friday after police broke up a pro-Palestinian solidarity demonstration Wednesday night at Sciences Po, one of France's most prestigious universities. The Paris student protest comes amid a wave of similar demonstrations at US universities. Attempts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza war continued with an Egyptian delegation heading to Israel ahead of a possible invasion of Rafah. Read our liveblog to follow today's developments in the Middle East.         


Again, it's the biggest story of the week in US domestic news and its garnered world attention but somehow the protests don't show up on the websites of THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES.

The U.S. State Department’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Hala Rharrit, resigned Thursday, citing her opposition to the Biden administration’s policy on Israel’s war in Gaza. Her departure marks at least the third resignation in the department since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“I resigned April 2024 after 18 years of distinguished service in opposition to the United States’ Gaza policy,” Rharrit wrote on LinkedIn.

When asked about Rharrit’s resignation, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that the department offers avenues for employees to express dissent when they disagree with the decisions of senior leaders.

Rharrit joins a list of ex-officials that includes Annelle Sheline, who worked on human rights issues, and Josh Paul, who worked on arms sales.


Gaza remains under assault. Day 203 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "At least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed and 77,368 wounded in Israel's military offensive since October 7, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Friday. The ministry said 51 people were killed and 75 injured in the 24-hour reporting period."  Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

 



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."


This morning ALJAZEERA reports:

Footage published online and verified by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers preventing a number of young men from entering the mosque and assaulting some of them.

Still, thousands of people made it to Islam’s third holiest site to perform Friday prayers.

In recent months Israeli authorities have imposed restrictions on Muslim worshippers wanting to pray at Al-Aqsa. Only men over the age of 55 or women over 50 are allowed to enter and all must have a valid permit. This means that the site is not accessible to the vast majority of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Waqf department on Thursday said more than 1,000 settlers stormed the courtyard of the mosque.



The following sites updated:

Posted by at

Friday, April 26, 2024

We've all grown tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene

Paul Rudnick.


 

Miss Lindsey should be a character on SNL.  


We have all grown tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Ryan Smith (NEWSWEEK) reports:


Bestselling author Stephen King has continued to share other people's withering descriptions of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, days after his social media post in which the Georgia Republican was dubbed "Moscow Marjorie."

Greene has blasted members of her own party after the House passed a Ukraine aid bill on Saturday. As Ukraine continues to fight against the full-scale invasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022, the U.S. has been a key ally to Kyiv. Saturday's bill will provide over $60 billion in foreign aid to help restock Ukraine's arsenal.
[. . .]

On Wednesday, The New York Times published an op-ed headlined: "The Humbling of Marjorie Taylor Greene." In the piece, writer Michelle Cottle tackled Greene's calls for Johnson to resign over the foreign aid package.


By the way, we have all grown tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene.  "Elaine, you just said that."  Yes, I did.  But it also works as a lead-in to Conrad Dias' piece for MEAAS:


Before a vote to approve $95.3 billion in foreign aid for Taiwan, Israel, and Ukraine, Republican Sen Thom Tillis accused MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday, April 23, of 'dragging our brand down', as per the New York Post.

Notably, Tillis responded to Greene with a jab after the fiery congresswoman attempted to obstruct the House's passage of the foreign aid bill.

Tillis said in a recording played live on CNN's 'Erin Burnett OutFront', "She is a total waste of time. She is a horrible leader. She is dragging our brand down. She - not the Democrats - are the biggest risk to us getting back to a majority."


One more time, we have all grown tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, April 25, 2024. Student action on campus increases across the US, Amnesty International  notices the violent response by officials to peaceful protests.


As protests continue across US campuses, brutal thugs think the appropriate response is violence.  At least one human rights organization has stepped up to call out the officials attempting a crackdown.  Apurva Chakravarthy (COLUMBIA SPECTATOR) reports:

 

Amnesty International published a news release on Wednesday urging universities “to safeguard and facilitate all students’ right to peacefully and safely protest or counter protest on their campuses.”

The release comes after University President Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” last Thursday, which led to the mass arrest of 108 individuals. Multiple universities have since called in police to clear out protests and encampments pitched in solidarity, including Yale University and New York University.

“Protests in support of Palestinian rights in and around college campuses have been met with obstructive and repressive responses by university administrations,” Amnesty International’s release reads. “Instead of facilitating and protecting their students’ right to protest, universities’ administrations have gone to great lengths to quash it, even involving local authorities and demanding arrests, while suspending students who engage in peaceful demonstrations.”

Exactly.  Yesterday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson went to Columbia University to hawkeye the young men apparently.  He also whined for the students to 'stop wasting your parents money.'  I'm sorry, Mike does realize Columbia University is not in his district and that he doesn't represent it so, therefore, he was the one wasting money and it wasn't his parents' money, it was our money.  The US taxpayer is not paying him to travel the country.  He needs to get back to work and stop wasting our money.

NBC NEWS notes, "Protests encampments are now in place on at least 20 college campuses across the U.S., including Harvard University, Brown University, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt."  Lex McMenamin (TEEN VOGUE) explains:

The encampments are a push to direct attention to events on the ground in Gaza, where an ongoing incursion by Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Associated Press, following the October 7 Hamas attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and over 200 taken hostage.

A Tuesday release from the United Nations noted the discovery over the weekend of 283 bodies found in mass graves outside Nasser and Al-Shifa Hospitals in Gaza. On Monday in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians are in refuge from ongoing warfare, 22 people, including 18 children, were killed by Israeli strikes.

While US college campuses are in focus at the moment, over 80% of educational institutions in Palestine have been destroyed, prompting UN experts to ask if Israel is intentionally carrying out a “scholasticide”: “the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students, and staff and the destruction of educational infrastructure.”

US students, organizing with campus chapters of groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), are pushing school leaders to divest from companies with economic ties to or investments in Israel. The campus divestment movement, which predates the onset of the current war, has gained momentum in recent months. At the same time, penalties for students who protest have sharply intensified; earlier in April, Teen Vogue reported on the suspensions, expulsions, evictions, arrests, and more happening on campuses, including at Vanderbilt University, Pomona College, and Columbia.

On April 17, Columbia and Barnard students set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment outside the school’s library ahead of President Minouche Shafik’s testimony at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to break up the encampment and arrest more than a hundred students, drawing national media attention.



The nation's colleges are set for another day of pro-Palestinian protest and disruption with sit-ins, rallies and walkouts planned across the country.

Activists at Georgetown, Penn State and Syracuse universities are all due to hold rallies or protests at 10.30 a.m. ET, while more are planned throughout the day at Fordham, Purdue, Indiana, Brown, Stanford, and many more.

Events are expected to continue at least until a teach-in at the University of Virginia at 7.30 p.m.

Events are also planned for tomorrow, in a sign that the protest movement is not slowing down.


It is taking place across the nation.  Days, weeks and months of enaction by a government that would rather be an apologist for War Crimes has forced the young adults to this point and to take this stand.  




REUTERS notes, "In Texas on Wednesday, state highway patrol troopers in riot gear and police on horseback broke up a protest at the University of Texas in Austin. The Texas Department of Public Safety posted on X that 34 people had been arrested."  




Civil rights advocates on Wednesday expressed alarm at a rapid escalation by Texas state troopers who descended on a student-led protest at University of Texas at Austin, which was organized in solidarity with Gaza and other U.S. college students taking part in a growing anti-war movement.

UT students gathered on campus at midday and were promptly given two minutes to disperse by state troopers, who had already been called to the scene.

The troopers were equipped with riot gear, with some carrying assault rifles and several stationed on horses.

Erick Lara, a 20-year-old sophomore, told The Dallas Morning News that the nonviolent protest transformed "within minutes" after the police began arresting demonstrators.

"I didn't think it would escalate this far," he told the outlet. "And I didn't think there would be this much police intervention from what's supposed to be a peaceful protest. Not very peaceful when there's a bunch of aggressors around, especially on horses." 



As AP notes, "Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up on an increasing number of college campuses following last week’s arrest of more than 100 demonstrators at Columbia University."  CNN’s Cindy Von Quednow reports:

The California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt campus will remain closed through the weekend as protesters, including "unidentified non-students," continue to occupy two buildings, school officials said in an update.

Work and classes will remain remote, and officials are considering keeping the campus closed for longer.


At the USC campus in Los Angeles, efforts by students to set up an encampment were also met with force.

Campus security scuffled with students as they took down tents, and dozens of police officers holding batons and wearing helmets later moved in to arrest the protesters as helicopters hovered overhead. The crackdown came after USC Provost Andrew Guzman sent a campus-wide email, saying protesters had “threatened the safety of our offices and campus community”.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from the university, however, said that “this protest against the war on Gaza was entirely peaceful”.

“We did not see any confrontations or harassment among the students,” he said.

Reynolds said some of the students later staged a sit-in with their arms linked.

“One by one, protesting students are being handcuffed with zip ties and led away by Los Angeles police officers, under arrest and taken away to a vehicle on the campus. They did not resist arrest and we did not see any violence on the part of the police,” he added.

The Los Angeles Police Department said some 93 people were arrested in and around the USC campus.

Jody Armour, a law professor at the university, said officials were using claims of anti-Semitism to try and silence the protests.

“We have lots of Jewish, and Muslim, and Palestinian, and Catholic like I am, Protestants too, intergenerational, coming together. Everybody should hate anti-Semitism and fight anti-Semitism, but being opposed to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that the UN has said may plausibly be genocide, does not mean that you’re anti-Semitic, and we need to stop allowing people to weaponise anti-Semitism against real valid protests.”


THE GUARDIAN has a photo essay of the campus actions here.  Marc Lamont Hill spoke with the Columbia University students yesterday.



 

A group of Jewish Barnard and Columbia students detained during Thursday’s New York Police Department sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” held a press conference on Tuesday to restate their demands for the University and speak on how their Jewish heritage informs their decisions to stand in solidarity with Gaza.

The press conference took place in front of the President’s House on 60 Morningside Drive as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” neared its one-week mark.

Sarah, a Columbia student who is participating in the encampment, began the conference by highlighting the ongoing situation in Gaza.

“Right now, Israel is literally starving millions of Palestinians in Gaza, killing children, bombing homes, hospitals, and universities, where there are thousands of young students just like us,” Sarah said. “We are here today as Jewish Columbia and Barnard students who were arrested and suspended for peacefully protesting in support of Palestine.”

They then reiterated CUAD’s three demands of the University, which include financial divestment from all companies that “profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine”; financial transparency of all of the University’s investments; and “amnesty for all students and faculty arrested or fired in connection to the movement for Palestinian liberation.”


While they took it in front of the university president's home, Tuesday saw a number of activists take their action into US Senator Chuck Schumer's neighborhood.  From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!



Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover, held just a block from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to protest ongoing U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. “Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol,” said award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein, one of several speakers at Tuesday’s rally. “They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Among those who addressed the crowd during the seder was award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein. This is some of what she had to say.

NAOMI KLEIN: My friends, I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me has always been uneasy about this story. What kind of god is jealous of animals? What kind of god wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is, of course, a less literal way of understanding this story. It is a lesson about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shining, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.

What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.

It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery, the story of Passover itself, and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the Promised Land, a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across faiths to every corner of this globe, and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militarist ethnostate.

Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba. From the start, it has been at war with collective dreams of liberation. At a seder, it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism has long equated Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and unfreedom and client state. From the start, it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings, but as demographic threats, much as the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites and thus ordered the death of their sons. And as we know, Moses was saved from that by being put in a basket and adopted by an Egyptian woman.

Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm, and it is time that we say clearly it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments — “Thou shall not kill,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet” — the commandments brought down from the mount. It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.

Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value that we place on questioning a practice embedded in the seder itself with its four questions asked by the youngest child. It also betrays the love that we have as a people for text and for education. Today this false idol dares to justify the bombing of every single university in Gaza, the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses, the killing of hundreds of academics, scholars, journalists, poets, essayists. This is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the infrastructure and the means of education.

Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students asking them —

CROWD: Shame!

NAOMI KLEIN: — students embodying the spirit of the seder, asking the most basic question, asking questions like “How can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?”

The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long. So tonight we say it ends here. Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews. Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations. Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in this chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.

Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder, the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike. This ritual, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but one another, even with — we don’t need walls. We need no temple, no rabbi. And there is a role for everyone, including especially the smallest child. The seder is portable, a diaspora technology if ever there was one. It is made to hold our collective grieving, our contemplation, our questioning, our remembering, and our reviving and rekindling of the revolutionary spirit.

So, tonight — so, look around. This here is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost. We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. We want freedom from the ideology that has no plan for peace, except for deals with the murderous, theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world. We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children afraid, that wants us to believe that the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending the weapons and the donations.

That is a false idol. And it’s not just Netanyahu. It’s the world he made and the world that made him. It’s Zionism. What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say, “Let our people go.” We say, “We have already gone, and your kids, they are with us now.”

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein, speaking at what was called the “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on Tuesday at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, a block from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s home. Special thanks to Hana Elias, Eric Halvarson and Ishmael Daro of Democracy Now!



In a desperate search for missing loved ones, Gazans have been gathering in the hundreds at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, where emergency workers are on the fifth day of exhuming bodies from mass graves found on the hospital grounds.

"The hospital smells of rotting corpses. I cannot stand here for long," Ahlam Salama, a 43-year-old mother who went to the hospital to find her son, told ABC News.

"We are all mothers here searching for our children," she said, holding back tears and pointing to the other women who had gathered at the hospital.

Salama is among the hundreds of people who have assembled at Nasser Hospital, hoping for news about missing family and friends.  




             The United Nations has called for an “independent, effective and transparent investigation” into the discovery of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals that were besieged and raided by Israeli troops this year.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement he was “horrified” by the scenes reported from both the Nasser and Al Shifa medical complexes in the besieged enclave.

“Given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators,” Türk said. “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law. And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,” he added, referring to non-combatants.     



Palestinian hospital officials say Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip have killed at least five people.

Among those killed in the strikes overnight and into Thursday were two children, identified in hospital records as Sham Najjar, six, and Jamal Nabahan, eight.

More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it appears to be preparing for an offensive in the city.




Gaza remains under assault. Day 202 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 34,305 on Thursday, the enclave's Health Ministry announced, after 43 people were killed in the 24-hour reporting period. About 64 others were wounded, taking the total number of injured in the war to 77,293."  Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

 



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."



The following sites updated:




Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)