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Forums - Politics Discussion - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ 3 days ago

AIPAC spent $20m ‘to unseat my brother’: Cori Bush

A day after US Representative Jamaal Bowman lost his district’s Democratic primary, his fellow Congress member Cori Bush issued a statement denouncing the outside spending in the race.

Bowman’s loss was historic. More than $20m was spent in his New York primary race, as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — a pro-Israel lobby — and other forces sought to advance the candidacy of a centrist candidate. Bowman and Bush have both been outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza.

“20 million dollars. That was the staggering price tag put on unseating Jamaal Bowman,” Bush wrote on social media. She said it was evidence of “just how desperate these billionaire extremists are in their attempts to buy our democracy, promote their own gain, and silence the voices of progress and justice”.

Progressive groups said the battle to unseat Bowman was a direct result of his vocal criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Bowman is part of a small but growing number of voices in Congress questioning the US’s commitment to Israel, its “ironclad” ally. He ultimately lost Tuesday’s Democratic primary to George Latimer, an executive for Westchester County.


Pro-Israel groups endorse US challenger to Israel critic Cori Bush

Late on Tuesday, incumbent US Representative Jamaal Bowman lost to a fellow Democrat in his New York primary, after the pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent millions of dollars to unseat him.

But other progressives face similarly tight races — a fact underscored by a new poll out on Wednesday.

Cori Bush, a US Congresswoman representing Missouri, is headed for her own contentious primary in August, and Wednesday’s poll shows her trailing her centrist rival Wesley Bell.

He was ahead of Bush by one point, with 43 percent support to her 42 percent, a difference well within the margin of error. The poll was conducted by the Mellman Group, on behalf of the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel.

The publication The Hill, however, said the poll could indicate weakness in Bush’s re-election efforts. “This is a notable improvement for Bell from January, when a poll by the firm found Bush leading by 16 points,” it said.

Like Bowman, Bush has been outspoken against Israel and has called for a ceasefire in its war in Gaza. The Hill reported that Bell’s website states that he supports Israel’s right to defend itself and “pursue those responsible for conducting the October 7 attack”.

Pro-Palestinian protests erupt outside UK general election debate

As UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer prepared to debate on Wednesday night, protesters gathered outside the debate venue in Nottingham to show their support for the Palestinians facing war in Gaza.

Some demonstrators waved Palestinian flags. Others raised banners reading, “Condemn genocide.”

On the debate stage, host Mishail Husain addressed the shouts, which could be heard from within the venue. "If you can hear any noises, ladies and gentlemen or anyone at home, there is a protest taking place outside, which is also an aspect of our democracy and people exercising their freedom of speech,” she said.


Amazon summit disrupted by pro-Palestine supporters over Project Nimbus

Pro-Palestine activists and technology workers have disrupted the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington, DC, to protest Amazon and Google’s $1.2bn contract with the Israeli government and military called Project Nimbus.

The contract, signed in 2021, aims to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services to Israel, which has faced condemnation for its war on Gaza.

United Nations experts and several countries have accused Israel of inflicting a “genocide” on the Palestinian people as part of its military offensive.

Since the contract was signed, Amazon and Google workers have called on their companies to end Project Nimbus and carried out demonstrations in protest.



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SvennoJ 3 days ago

Israeli defence minister Gallant sees ‘significant progress’ in ensuring US weapons supply

After a meeting with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Israel Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said progress was made on “a variety of issues”, including “the topic of force build-up and munition supply that we must bring to the state of Israel”.

“During the meetings, we made significant progress. Obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed,” Gallant said. “I would like to thank the US administration and the American public for their enduring support for the state of Israel.”

In recent days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly accused the US Biden administration of slowing down weapons deliveries to Israel, which has been at war in Gaza since October 7.

US officials, however, have repeatedly denied his claims and said that their country had only frozen a single shipment in May over concerns about civilian casualties in Rafah. That shipment included heavy 2,000-pound bombs.

Israeli minister orders food reduction for Palestinian prisoners

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says he has ordered a further reduction in the amount of food offered to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, advancing a policy that rights groups have compared to forced starvation.

After October 7, Ben-Gvir closed prison canteens and kitchens, leaving Palestinian detainees entirely reliant on the prisons themselves for food.

In a letter on Wednesday, however, he said he gave further instructions to reduce the amount of food given to the prisoners. He said the move was aimed at deterring attacks from fighters, but he did not explain how the two could be related.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has challenged the food restrictions in court, arguing they amount to a policy of starvation.

Citing prisoner testimony, the rights group says the food provided is insufficient and unhealthy and has led to “severe damage to [prisoners’] health and dignity”. It says the prisoners suffer from “constant hunger, extreme weight loss [and] forced fasting” and are held in “veritable torture conditions”.

Since the start of the war, the number of Palestinian prisoners has ballooned, as Israel carried out large-scale raids in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. The total number of Palestinians held by Israel has climbed to about 9,000 since October 7.



SvennoJ 3 days ago

Germany urges citizens to leave Lebanon ‘urgently’

The German foreign ministry has updated its travel guidance for the country, saying: “German nationals are urgently requested to leave Lebanon.”

“The current heightened tensions in the border area with Israel could escalate further at any time,” the ministry explained. There is also an “increased risk of terrorist attacks” in Lebanon, which could be directed against Western foreigners or large hotels, it added.

Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the war on Gaza began in October, with tensions escalating in recent weeks. That has fed fears that an all-out war may break out in the region.

 

Israeli forces hit another southern Lebanon town

Lebanese platforms and journalists on the social media platform X have shared footage of the Israeli raid on the Mashaa neighbourhood in the town of Nabatieh.

The videos, verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit Sanad, show plumes of smoke rising and damage caused by the attack.

Five people injured in Israeli strike on southern Lebanon

Lebanese state media has reported that five people have been injured after an Israeli strike on a two-storey building in the town of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon.

The strike destroyed the building at around 10pm local time (19:00 GMT), it said, adding that five people who were in the vicinity of the structure were wounded and taken to hospital.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed six attacks against Israeli military positions in the border region.

Israeli attack kills two in southern Syria: Report

The Syrian state media agency SANA has reported that two people have been killed and a soldier injured after Israel launched an “air aggression” targeting sites in Syria’s southern region.

A military source told SANA that Israel launched the attack from the direction of the “occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in the southern region”.

The source added that its air defences shot some of the missiles down.



SvennoJ 3 days ago

Israeli forces raid medical complex in occupied West Bank

The Israeli army has stormed the al-Ahmad Medical Complex in Jenin and deployed snipers on residential buildings adjacent to it, according to Al Jazeera Arabic reporters on the ground.

They also say Israeli forces are closing the streets leading to al-Shifa and Jenin hospitals.

Israeli attacks kill at least 15 in Beit Lahiya

Gaza’s Civil Defence says Israel’s bombardment of northern Gaza has left a level of destruction that “defies imagination”.


Several killed in Israeli bombardment in northern Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report that several Palestinians have been killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on the Jabalia refugee camp. They say Israeli forces struck the al-Alami area in the camp.


Almost all of Gaza ‘totally and completely uninhabitable’

Arwa Damon, the founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (INARA), says that – on a recent trip to Gaza City to distribute aid – she saw “how widespread the destruction is of every single aspect of life that would make the Gaza Strip inhabitable”.



Israeli forces carry out school raids in southern Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report that Israeli forces have launched six raids on a school in the town of Abasan, east of the city of Khan Younis.

Israeli attacks have continued across the Gaza Strip, with Al Jazeera Arabic reporting earlier about a deadly attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.


Palestinians carry the body of a man killed in an Israeli bombardment to a hospital morgue in Khan Younis, part of the southern Gaza Strip


Casualties following Israeli bombing in northern Gaza

Al Jazeera Arabic reporters on the ground in Gaza say people have been killed and injured as a result of an Israeli raid on a house in Beit Lahiya.



jason1637 3 days ago
SvennoJ said:

AIPAC spent $20m ‘to unseat my brother’: Cori Bush

A day after US Representative Jamaal Bowman lost his district’s Democratic primary, his fellow Congress member Cori Bush issued a statement denouncing the outside spending in the race.

Bowman’s loss was historic. More than $20m was spent in his New York primary race, as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — a pro-Israel lobby — and other forces sought to advance the candidacy of a centrist candidate. Bowman and Bush have both been outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza.

“20 million dollars. That was the staggering price tag put on unseating Jamaal Bowman,” Bush wrote on social media. She said it was evidence of “just how desperate these billionaire extremists are in their attempts to buy our democracy, promote their own gain, and silence the voices of progress and justice”.

Progressive groups said the battle to unseat Bowman was a direct result of his vocal criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Bowman is part of a small but growing number of voices in Congress questioning the US’s commitment to Israel, its “ironclad” ally. He ultimately lost Tuesday’s Democratic primary to George Latimer, an executive for Westchester County.

Voted for Bowman here in westchester. So sad he lost.



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SvennoJ 3 days ago

US officials went line-by-line through arms shipments to Israel with defense minister to rebut Netanyahu’s delay claim

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/politics/us-arms-shipments-israel/index.html

American officials went through a line-by-line explanation of hundreds of US weapons shipments to Israel in meetings this week with the country’s defense minister in a bid to rebut claims from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that President Joe Biden was delaying military assistance.

The meetings with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came amid a growing spat between the Biden administration and Netanyahu, who has claimed that armaments are being delayed to the intense frustration of Washington. It was the latest spat between the two allies, which have diverged over Israel’s war tactics in Gaza.

US officials meeting Gallant this week brought in experts from across the government to engage in “professional to professional” discussions that ticked through in exacting detail the current state of munitions shipments.

“We had a very good opportunity to sit down with experts from across our system and go through every single case,” a senior US administration official said. “This is one of the most complex security partnerships we have, one of the most multifaceted.”

The official attributed Netanyahu’s claims – made multiple times over the course of the last week, including in a video in English released on social media – to “misunderstandings” on the Israelis’ part.

“There’s stuff happening literally every day across the US government and across the Israeli system, and we were able to go through everything,” the official said, adding the US was able to clarify the status of certain shipments as they make their way through a complex delivery process.

There was “real progress” in developing an understanding of that process and of prioritizing certain cases, the official said, adding there was an agreement to identify any “inefficiencies” going forward.

...



Israel, US ‘very good at theatre’, analyst says of apparent dispute between allies

Analyst Rami Khoury says while there was a “little hiccup” in what he called the massive flow of weapons and money from the US to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, it was not a major issue between the two close allies.

“The US and Israel are very good at theatre, and this is theatre that we’re watching right now,” Khoury, a professor at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera.

“There’s no closer relationship in the last half-century anywhere in the world probably than the US’s support for Israel. It’s domestic theatre,” he said of the apparent dispute between the two allies over the speed of weapons transfers.

Khoury pointed out that back in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in “big trouble” and it played well to be seen to be tough with the US. “He’s fighting with people in his own party. He’s fighting with his own military leaders. He’s fighting with people all around the world,” Khoury said.

“Netanyahu has almost run out of people that he can have a feud with. But by acting like a tough guy who stands up to the US and gets whatever Israel needs from the US, he strengthens some part of his base in Israel. And he’s going to need that because his coalition is a little bit shaky,” he said.

 


Ignoring Israel’s abuses gave ‘licence to harm’ Palestinian children: Envoy

Palestine’s envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour says he regrets it took so long for Israel to be added to the UN secretary-general’s “blacklist” of countries that commit abuses against children in armed conflict.

Speaking to a UN Security Council meeting held to discuss the blacklist, Mansour said that not adding Israel to the list earlier “was an abandonment of Palestinian children”, which Israel took as a “licence to harm them more”.

“It took a genocidal war against our people, an unprecedented crisis for our children, to finally add Israel to the list of shame this year,” he said.



SvennoJ 3 days ago

AIPAC Bullies Brag About Jamaal Bowman's Primary Loss

 

MASSIVE ISRAELI DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN EXPOSED



Listen To Bisan Owda's Acceptance Speech At The Peabody Awards



hellobion2 3 days ago

Thanks for posting the videos and espcially of secular talk who I have been listening to for many years now.  Also the money spent against Jamal was crazy. 

SvennoJ said:

AIPAC Bullies Brag About Jamaal Bowman's Primary Loss

 

MASSIVE ISRAELI DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN EXPOSED



Listen To Bisan Owda's Acceptance Speech At The Peabody Awards



BiON!@ 

SvennoJ 3 days ago

We need ‘out of box’ solution to end war

Gershon Baskin, a former Israeli negotiator for captives’ release and Middle East director of the International Communities Organisation, has suggested the UN send international peacekeeping forces into Gaza to “protect the Palestinian people and force the Israelis to withdraw”.

“We need to think out of the box and come up with solutions that will enable this war to end, the Israeli hostages to come home, and a rebuilding process of Gaza to begin,” Baskin told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv. “It needs to be done collaboratively [with Palestinians], but we need to get this war to end quickly.”

Baskin also called for more international pressure on Israel to open up border crossings and facilitate more aid flow within Gaza, where hundreds of thousands face catastrophic hunger.

“This has to be done and it has to be a result of international pressure because it’s doubtful Israel will do it on its own,” he said.

War has ‘no end in sight’

Baskin is not optimistic about the prospects of Israel and Hamas reaching a ceasefire deal, saying there is an “unreachable gap” between the two sides.

He points out that Hamas is not willing to strike any agreement that does not fully end the war, while Netanyahu is only open to a “partial agreement” that would bring home Israeli captives during a temporary truce.

The Israeli prime minister has not given negotiators the green light to make any concessions beyond this, Baskin said. This means “we are stuck”, he said.

“The families of the hostages are extremely frustrated and sad. We are nine months into this war now and no end in sight.”

 

Israeli soldiers in Rafah ‘feel like ducks in the shooting range’

Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party and former Israeli defence minister, has made the comments criticising Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“We are losers and unable to win and Israeli deterrence is zero,” he told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “There is a lot of frustration among our soldiers in Rafah, they don’t understand what they want and they feel like ducks in the shooting range.”

“The government is not able to win, neither in the south nor in the north, and Gallant bears responsibility immediately after Netanyahu,” Lieberman added.

US has provided $6.5bn in aid to Israel since October: Report

The US has transferred security-related aid totalling $6.5bn to Israel since October 7, The Washington Post reports, citing an unnamed senior Biden administration official.

The official added that almost half of that military aid was provided last month alone. “This is a massive, massive undertaking,” the official said.

The Post said the official was disclosing the previously unannounced figures to show the depth of US support for Israel amid accusations from Netanyahu that Washington is withholding arms. The official said the figures were cited in discussions between senior White House officials and Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington, DC, this week.



SvennoJ 3 days ago

Israeli protesters block two key intercity routes to demand elections

Israeli demonstrators have blocked the country’s coastal Route 2 linking Tel Aviv to Haifa, chanting “the country is burning”, to demand elections.

Israeli broadcaster Kann said Route 2 was blocked from both directions at the Habonim bridge in the north of the country. Protesters also partially blocked Route 79 westwards in the Lower Galilee, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth media outlet.

Protest organisers were quoted as saying the road closures were “just the beginning”, and promising the government that demonstrations would not stop “until the mandate returns to the people”.

"Enough with the government of destruction, only elections will extinguish the fire,” they said.



Translation: Another traffic disruption by the protesters at Afek Junction, Highway 79 West, blocking two lanes out of three.

Failure to address day-after in Gaza could keep Hamas in power: Israel’s ex-security official

Eyal Hulata, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, has criticised the Israeli government for failing to develop a post-war plan for Gaza after nearly nine months of fighting.

“This is one of the biggest failures, because the actual result is the gradual return of Hamas to control the Gaza Strip,” Hulata told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

Netanyahu has repeatedly promised to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed, even though the military spokesman has said that entirely eliminating the group would be impossible.



Israel can reprimand its soldiers for misconduct

Israeli army ‘suspends’ soldiers after arrests during antigovernment protests: Report

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reports that the army has “suspended” four reserve soldiers after their arrests during antigovernment demonstrations in recent months.

One of these soldiers, Alon Gruzov, 35, part of the Nahal Brigade in the north, told the newspaper that he was detained briefly in April for protesting “against the criminal negligence of the abductees” and was surprised on Monday by an order from his company commander to dismiss him and freeze is military service.

Yoni Nussbaum, a lawyer for those reservists, told Haaretz that “the army accepts the police’s request to freeze the reserve service without examination or hearing of the reservists”.

An army spokesperson told the newspaper that “the reservists who were reportedly temporarily detained by the Israeli police have been suspended until the end of the proceedings in their case”.

According to Haaretz, this is the first such army action against the reservists who participated in antigovernment protests.

Shows that the army doesn't consider war crimes including tying wounded Palestinians to the hood of a Military Jeep as anything worthy to suspend soldiers for.