WAR AND PEACE
September-October-November
In Truthout, Gaza, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine, West and Central Africa...children are freezing, starving, maimed, educationally stunted, and dead. "According to Save the Children, about 468 million children — about one of every six young people on this planet — live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities.”
Two deaths among thousands -
On October 17, Israeli security forces shot a 59-year-old Palestinian woman harvesting olives with her family and other community members in Faqqu’a, Jenin, on land near the Wall in the occupied West Bank. According to information gathered by the UN Human Rights Office, the harvesters were not posing any threat when Israeli security forces fired multiple shots at them without prior warning. Faris Abu Salami, who was with his mother when she was shot, said the local council had negotiated permission from the Israeli army for the family and other villagers to pick olives on their lands providing they stayed at least 100 metres from the wall. Settler violence against farmers in the West Bank, living as an agrarian society, in an effort to destroy their livelihood is common.
The death of Yahya Sinwar the day before on October 16, evidenced by a grainy photograph by the IDF, shows the Hamas leader apparently throwing a stick at an Israeli drone as he sat dying in an old chair in the middle of rubble. He is portrayed by Israel’s leadership as the mastermind behind October 6. Sinwar’s persisting account was that he is part of a rebellion of the people; a protector of people harvesting olives.
The IDF said they killed Sinwar in a random bombing and shooting having missed him as a target. This reporting of an apparent incidental killing of a Hamas leader might also be interpreted as further justification for the country’s horrific killing of thousands of men, women, children, and entire families.
In any case, Israel's publication of the photo of what can be seen as a dying Sinwar's last act did not go well. It is too late for Israel to backtrack its publicized visual boast that will predictably be seen by many as David against Goliath.
It doesn’t matter what horrific pictures emerge from wars grounded in racism and /or ethnicity and territory as a basis for genocide. War is normalized and biases frozen in place.
The reality of this moral failure was apparent in the United States presidential and vice presidential debates held on June 27 and October 1,2024 respectively.
Under the protective cloak of militaristic leanings that assume war, there was no mention of peace. Body counts and lost homes and lands were smothered in rhetoric, and remarkably there was no mention of Palestine in the vice presidential debate.
Accordingly, the media tossed around the question who won the debate rather than report through the lens of a moral failure where there are no winners because the United States is a responsible party in the death of many thousands and the displacement of millions in a war without end and that will live on in history.
Condemnations of Israel's invasions occurring in Lebanon or Gaza or the West Bank, Ukraine, or Sudan, that have been voiced through overwhelming protests around the world despite oppression, ask in the case of Israel, for an arms embargo and peace in the name of ethics, morality, the rule of law, and humanity.
Meantime, Netanyahu and his cadre of political zionists mockingly and disproportionately continue claims of self-defense, deny peace, and indiscriminately kill. They have created a widening cesspool of fear and confusion and gutted the rule of law to the detriment of Israel, the Arab nations, the United States, and the world.
The complicity supporting a war without end must end. The costs to generations are beyond reckoning.
On the Real News Network (shared by Jacobin) - The Canada Revenue Agency has revoked the status of the Jewish national Fund. Aside from the organization's lack of compliance regarding required documentation, part of its mission is to support Israeli settlements in the West Bank which does not fall under the definition of charitable. Also on RNN, In a video revealing streets filled with sewage, mothers tell of what is happening to their children. There is no way to stop the spread of disease as the war continues. The agency's reasons for revoking the organization's status is found here.
The organization has one year to wind up its charitable operations and dispose of its $30 million in assets.
In The Guardian 8/26/24, women must not speak or show their face outside their homes. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud even inside of their own homes. In DW, while there is condemnation over the Taliban's gender apartheid actions, the group still has gained some legitimacy on the international front despite open violations of human rights. "Rights groups, meanwhile, say the international community must move beyond rhetoric and take concrete action to support Afghan women and hold the Taliban accountable for their actions."
Rabbi Aker Ascherman was arrested by the Israeli army on October 10 in the occupied West Bank. On October 31 in defense of Palestinian lands he went back to work protecting his Palestinian flock from the Settlers' growing violence.
He has done this work for many years.
Many of those Israelis who were once his friends or acquaintances are now serving in the Israeli army. They are enraged, confused, and mourning losses. Everyone is pressured to take sides.
The Rabbi has no sides. He has his work like any good Shepherd. He suspects there are people on both sides who do not want the war to end.
In The Real News Network, Rabbi Arik Ascherman is a Reform rabbi and executive director of the Israeli human rights organization He is a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Rabbi David J. Forman Memorial Committee’s Human Rights Award. "He’s deeply respected in the Palestinian world. He is a Zionist, but a Zionist that came from the left, that came from the tradition of those fleeing death at the hands of Antisemites."
In the July 2 interview with Real News the Rabbi said, "... it is so easy for us to blame the awful government, and we do have the most extreme government we’ve ever had in our history. We blame the settlers, but we have to look at ourselves, the people that inspire these people to do these acts, the people who say that they’re with us, but they sit in their coffee houses and say, isn’t it terrible?"
In the Intercept, “Find your dream home in Israel,” American real estate companies around the US are marketing Palestine's West Bank.
In Aljazeeraa, dated July 4, 2024, meantime, Israel has approved 5,295 new housing units in its continuing land seizure of the West Bank.
In Counterspin, Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies points to where realistically the hope for Gaza lies.
As of July 27 Israel has not stopped its warfare and has reactively intensified its war against the Palestinian people.
However, greatly thanks to the South Africa initiative (Wikipedia) before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), awareness and resolve in the name of International justice is growing around the world while, despite its rhetoric, the United States remains a significant outlier in the search for justice and has little respect for international law.
Still there is hope. Around the world the public and world leaders are increasingly following South Africa and taking their own initiative in the name of solidarity to an unprecedent degree. Under the banner "the right to life" Bennis says, "people have responded as human beings, which is an amazing thing. It doesn't happen all the time." The unwavering call across the US and the world is ceasefire now.