So the IDF’s plea to the world backfired. Few people were fooled by its grotesque propaganda. In fact, the IDF just provided an opportunity for people to point to all of the actions that show the Israeli government is the actual threat. Israel has occupied Palestine for over 50 years. It’s stolen masses of Palestinian land. As Glenn Greenwald says, it’s turned Gaza into an open-air prison.
ISRAELI EXCEPTIONALISM
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RENEE PARSONS—It might have been worth the price of admission to hear Netanyahu’s response to Iran’s Hassan Rouhani’s first UN visit as President in 2013 when he called for a ‘nuclear free zone’ in the Middle East? Or let’s hear Netanyahu or Trump explain how Iran signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968 with its Parliament ratifying the Treaty in 1970 while Israel has consistently refused to sign and refused to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its nuclear facilities? The NNPT has now been signed by 191 nations, not including Israel.
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GAITHER STEWART—”Zapping over various channels I stopped on a press briefing underway at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna. U.S. Intelligence officers had unveiled the contents of an allegedly stolen Iranian laptop computer to leaders of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a restricted group of journalists. They disclosed selections from over a thousand pages of what were labeled Iranian computer simulations. Accounts of Iranian military experiments flashed across a screen to demonstrate Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear warhead to fit atop its Shahab-3 missile. According to unconfirmed Israeli reports a Shahab-6 exists with a range of up to 5000 kilometers, about 3,500 miles…”
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JOHN STEPPLING—The settler culture now permeates the IDF and the settlers are barking mad fanatics. Israel has government officials suggesting, openly, a genocide of remaining Palestinians in the West Bank. It is an increasingly sickening spectacle. Not to mention Israel’s openly racist treatment of black Africans. Few countries in modern history so openly flaunt their viciousness and intolerance. This is, too, a level of hubris that I think unprecedented. Israel has stopped even trying to spin elaborate narratives justifying their aggression and violence. And the shift came after the Jenin massacre, I think. The reactionaries in power decided to just go ahead and brag about their treatment of Palestinians. It became a source of pride, almost. ‘We are so badass.’
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On the intentionally murky face of Israel, the monopolising of the Holocaust, and other matters
42 minutes readP. GREANVILLE—Talking about Jewish things is never easy. Jewishness is almost always synonymous with “complicated”. And Jews, in their complexities and contradictions are also ultra-sensitive to any perceived injury, to flesh or mind. And how could it be otherwise? Their long history is punctuated by external and self-inflicted horrors, almost calculated to creating a very schizoid, guarded inner personality (psychobabble, granted). Tales of conquest, submission to a higher power and wholesale death, followed by a reversal of roles, with Hebrews in the executioner’s seat.