I have had BBC News on in the background for the last two hours. In that time there have been three lengthy interviews with different relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. There has not been a single interview with a Palestinian relative of a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel.
Today 13 Israeli prisoners and 39 Palestinian prisoners are due to be released. 90% of the BBC mentions of prisoner releases do not include the Palestinians at all. Just finished is a ten minute interview of a Professor in Kent on the psychological effects on Israeli hostages. Earlier there was an expert from Tel Aviv on the psychological impact on Israeli hostages’ families. There has been no report whatsoever of the impact on Palestinian prisoners and their families.
The BBC simply does not treat the Palestinians as human, whereas the emphasis on Israeli personal victimhood is incessant and unrelenting.
Of the 300 Palestinian women and children prisoners on the list possibly to be released during the ceasefire, 252 have never been charged with any crime. 23 were charged with stone throwing.
Since October 8 over 200 Palestinian children have been taken prisoner, none of whom had anything to do with the October 7 attacks. That rather puts the possible release of 33 children and six women today into perspective. But it is not a perspective the BBC would ever give you.
Over 2,000 Palestinians are held by Israel in “administrative detention”, without charge or trial. Some for over twenty years.
Since 1967 Israel has made over 1 million arrests of Palestinians. This “justice” system is an essential part of the imposition of apartheid and the slow genocide, which did not just start this autumn. The BBC won’t tell you that either, and appears to have no problem with permanently showcasing its Israel based correspondents churning out the Israeli propaganda narrative, with no attempt at either perspective or balance.
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Reading this piece published today(see link) by Patrick Wintour, about US and UK chicanery to thwart Palestinian statehood over the years. It’s absolutely infuriating. Especially Boris Johnson’s despicable conduct. Don’t agree with much of Wintour’s output normally, but this is an informative review/recap of recent history. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/corrupt-discredited-could-a-reformed-palestinian-authority-run-gaza
‘Another legal nonviolent avenue pursued by the PA was to go to the UN’s international court of justice, the top court for dealing with disputes between countries…
But no sooner did the PA lawyers turn up in The Hague than so did US and UK government lawyers, again saying this was an improper legal avenue for the Palestinians to pursue. Oral proceedings are due in February next year and the US is now telling the PA to pull out if it wants Israel’s agreement to let the PA into Gaza.’
The US’s and UK’s role can only be described as incredibly biased to the point of malevolence.
The geographical divide for Palestinians is a major barrier for their ability to self-rule. With the major shifts in the rules-based world order changing existing balances of power, it will be interesting to see if the situation holds for much longer. The coming court case in The Hague could become a bit of a high water mark.
Palestinians facing a choice between The Palestinian Authority, Hamas or Hezbollah, are in a hell of a bad place. For me, the Two State Solution was stillborn and has now decomposed, but how can a one state solution come about? Is there even an alternative…?_
Israel’s leaders would never accept a one state solution with citizenship for Palestinians, in large part because of the demographic population trends. And there’s the thorny issue of ‘right of return’ for the displaced who make up the Palestinian diaspora. Israel’s leaders’ vision is very much that of a white, European/US, Russian ‘Jews only,’ expansionist state. Hence why Netanyahu constantly calls Israel the Jewish State. It’s why even Israeli Arabs have 2nd class citizenship.
I find the UK behaviour sneaky and underhand, in that the UK population are largely unaware of our diplomats’ shitty moves against the Palestinians. The UK of all countries, given our role and the utterly outrageous Balfour Declaration, that started this whole nightmare for the Palestinians. As it formed the basis of all other claims to the land since.
Israel’s leaders will have to suck up to whatever the world order decides, that world order is being decided as we speak. Like Ukraine, they can’t stand on their own resources
When Antonio Gutteres made his “vacuum” speech at the Rafah border crossing, I think he was representing all those international voices which are quite clearly putting a lot of pressure on the UN to get this problem ended. American standing in the world is a sell, not a buy, or a hold, it’s got a one way ticket to Palookaville.
The US position is weakening by the day, I’m as sure as I need to be that Israel will eventually join all those states that have been abandoned by the US and thrown under the bus. Those nations will want the Palestinian issue resolved.
A UN that simply enforces resolutions long ignored won’t cut the mustard. I only see a UN going for a one state solution as working. And yes, I accept, I have a dream…_
I still think the Israeli govt are crazy and arrogant enough to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza and steal the land. With the world watching on in horror.
They appear to work to a completely different set of moral / ethical rules to the West. if it happens and the US is already in the loop, I’d wager they are having second thoughts. They must surely realise the explosive worldwide reaction such an act is likely to engender, and the atrocious, possibly irreparable damage it’ll do to Israel’s reputation in the West.
I mean, millions of Gazans wouldn’t just vanish. they’d be stuck there, in limbo. In Egyptian camps, or on the move, migrating to Europe? It’ll lead to sanctions and govts having to condemn Israel, whether they’d want to or not.
This seems an unusual side to the propaganda war, propaganda that isn’t loudly spoken about. It is about the massive need for farm labourers in Israel, which includes some 30,000 Thai labourers. You will have seen them being released in the exchanges currently taking place.
I recommend that you all search out the info on this side of the conflict that isn’t well publicised. I am surprised how little I knew about how Israel gets its courgettes.
Not only that, but the negotiations to release the immigrant labourers was conducted separately to the Hamas/Israel/Red Crescent teams, by delegations from the foreign workers own governments: Hamas, Egypt, Qatar and Red Crescent. Israel, so it seems, had no involvement and is possibly a reason for some of the recent transfer delays. Anybody else got a take on this…_
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/24/12-thai-one-filipino-captive-released-in-separate-deal-mediated-by-qatar
Sobering thought for the Blitz obsessed British is that in six weeks more explosives have been dropped on Gaza than the entirety of the UK during all of 1941, resulting in a casualty rate equal to 25% of the UK casualties for the entire Blitz of WW2.
This selective attention paid to the victims of a conflict is what the MSM does all the time, ignoring:
— the Russian speakers of eastern Ukraine 2014–2022,
— civilian victims of continuing economic sanctions on Syria,
— various groups in the ex-Yugoslav wars of 1991-1999 (ethnic Serbs, Fikret Abdic-aligned Bosnian Muslims, non-Albanian minorities in Kosovo, etc).
excellent point. plus they lie about all of these. they lie about the victims of the Busha Massacre, for example, and they lie about who did it. they lied about a gas attack that never happened, and who killed the people in Douma.
may be native speakers here can give a better assessment of this text – I don´t entirley get it:
Human rights lawyer Conor Gearty writes in the latest LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS about the ICC case regarding Gaza.
I don´t know what to say to this except something is utterly wrong. Or do I miss the finelining of BE?
“War Crimes”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/conor-gearty/short-cuts
Gearty says for instance:
“All agree that Israel has a right to defend itself, though there are many differences of opinion among lawyers as to the basis for this. What no one contests, however, is that serious violations of humanitarian law by your opponent do not give you licence to do the same to them.”
Craig Murray says there is no such right. Others say so as well. Where are those serious human rights lawyers who still argue over “self defense” after 6 weeks of atrocities and 15,000 killed?
What I don´t understand here: He stays abstract almost all the time when talking about Israeli crimes.
I am aware that numbers do not necessarily matter to questions of “genocide” – but I would find it utterly absurd to claim HAMAS committed genocide.
Gearty has a single long paragraph where he states the various actions that qualify as war crimes.
Like depriving people of food and water or bombing hospitals.
But how is it possible that he never mentions the actual numbers of casualties known and the acts committed?
Dozens of (?) hospitals attacked/destroyed. The children among the dead. In fact the claim to destroy a military oganisation and then kill 15.000 cilvilians over course of that.
Neither does he mention the (possible) lies spread by the Israeli forces regarding missiles, bunkers etc.
He doesn´t have to agree that IDF lies. But he should at least make clear that there are serious doubts to what the IDF claims.
What about the employees of the UN mission, the journalists killed?
How can Gearty leave it uncommented that all this is utterly criminal.
You could argue that he imitated the devil´s advocate. But for that he should not argue as he does in the end:
After quoting the infamous racist phrases by the Israeli politicians (“fighting human animals and will act accordingly’, that the plan is to ‘eliminate everything’ and that ‘Gaza won’t return to what it was before.’”) etc. – he finishes writing: “Such statements have a genocidal intent.”
What is the intention of his text? I don´t get it.
I love the whining that the Israeli captives in Gaza have lost weight and had a limited diet – without mentioning that the strip has been under Israeli siege for well over a month. What did they expect? – To dine like kings???
An alternative link for the “Guardian” link posted earlier:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231128144008/https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/corrupt-discredited-could-a-reformed-palestinian-authority-run-gaza
The article omits the suspicious death of Arafat. I can’t help thinking that if Zionist terrorists had succeeded in assassinating Winston Churchill, then Israel would have far fewer friends in this country.
It’s grotesque. The Guardian too runs features on ‘see who the released Israeli hostages are’, individualizing their suffering. ‘Oh and some few dozen Palestinians were released.’ The media know that they’re witnessing ethnic cleansing and genocide happening before their eyes, as it’s clearly evident in the uneasy reporting of Palestinian suffering, something that has never really reached the mainstream subservient media in the past. Yet still they can’t avoid this lapse into ‘Israelis = real people,’ ‘Palestinians = statistics.’ The assault on Gaza won’t end until the Gazan population is crammed into an enclave and the rest levelled ready for future colonization. Meanwhile journalists like Jonathan Freedland lament the ‘tough choices’ faced by the Israeli government in how exactly to perpetrate genocide.