Netanyahu won't stop the killing

Netanyahu won't stop the killing

The Common Ills

Nathan Morley (VATICAN NEWS) reports, "US President Joe Biden has announced Israel had proposed a three-stage plan to Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire. Amid a mounting death toll in Gaza, the United States is under huge pressure to end the conflict. Mr. Biden defined the plan as a thorough Israeli proposal that paved the way for a permanent ceasefire."  But?  John Yang (PBS NEWSHOUR) explains,  "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thrown up a hurdle to President Biden's proposed path to ending the war in Gaza.  He said there could be no permanent cease-fire until Hamas' military and government capabilities have been destroyed."  THE GUARDIAN's Julian Borger reviews  just how humiliated Joe Biden has been:

The latest peace plan for Gaza was given a launch worthy of a historic turning point, with the US president delivering remarks directly to camera from the White House state dining room, declaring it finally “time for this war to end”.

Yet even as Joe Biden spelled out the proposal – leading in theory to a permanent end to hostilities, large-scale food deliveries and the start of reconstruction, there was clearly something awry.

If this plan was an Israeli proposal as Biden claimed, why was it being launched by Biden in Washington? There had been no word from Israel. By the time Biden began his remarks, it was already Friday night in the Middle East, the sabbath was under way and government offices closed.

When the prime minister’s office did produce a statement in response, it exuded all the reluctance and irritation of a politician roused from sleep. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu had “authorised the negotiating team to present a proposal” but it was one that would “enable Israel to continue the war until all its objectives are achieved”.

A second statement issued after daybreak was even blunter. Any plan that did not achieve Israel’s war aims, including the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capacity, was a “non-starter”.

US officials argued the deal would fulfil Israel’s essential security requirements so there was ultimately no conflict, but there was no getting around Netanyahu’s choice of language, which made it clear he was not the author of the new plan, but a grudging participant. It also appeared designed to humiliate Biden. An experienced communicator like Netanyahu would know that the phrase “non-starter” would appear in the morning’s headlines alongside pictures of the president making his bid for peace.

By now, Biden is used to humiliation at Netanyahu’s hands. In early May, he warned that if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went into Rafah: “I’m not supplying the weapons”. Three weeks on, Israeli tanks have rolled into central and western Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which has been a refuge for more than 1 million displaced Palestinians. Nearly a million have had to flee for their lives once more.

Biden has not delivered on his threat to curb arms deliveries, which would have triggered outrage from not just Republicans but pro-Israel Democrats. Administration officials have instead sought to parse what “going into Rafah” means. When he issued his ultimatum a month ago, Biden had suggested it meant the IDF advancing to the city’s “population centres”. That has clearly already happened, but US officials are now arguing the forays so far have not been “major operations”.

Abbas Nasir (DAWN) reminds, "President Biden, just five months away from an election, is trailing in the battleground or ‘swing’ states, having angered and alienated many Blacks, Muslims, young voters and progressive Democrats by his unconditional support of Israel, which has translated into the export of billions of dollars’ worth of arms, bombs, ammunition and military equipment to the Zionist state."

War Criminal Netanyahu continues to disregard the law and world opinion.  Sophie Lamotte of FRANCE 24 reports on the thousands calling for a cease-fire in Paris. 

In the US?  Talia Jane (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:

Roughly 100 Columbia University students and alumni launched a “Revolt for Rafah” encampment on Friday night. Student protesters say their protest is a direct response to the Rafah massacre and a recent Washington Post article exposing a group of wealthy elites who used their power to influence New York City Mayor Eric Adams into using the police to quash student protests at Columbia University in April.

Dubbed “Revolt for Rafah: Installation 1,” the encampment was launched on Alumni Reunion Weekend at Columbia University. To date, alumni have stated intent to withhold an estimated $67 million dollars in donations to the university unless they drop disciplinary charges against student activists. On Friday, The Intercept reported Columbia University had quietly changed its disciplinary rules as disciplinary hearings were set to begin.

In April, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of several pro-Palestine groups at Columbia University, launched the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the nation. After that encampment was swept by the NYPD and more than 100 students were arrested, students at Columbia University launched a second encampment. Students at more than 130 campuses across the U.S. followed suit, launching their own Gaza Solidarity Encampments, according to data compiled by Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium—with more globally.

AP notes a protest Friday at the Brooklyn Museum, "Hundreds of protesters marched to the museum Friday afternoon, set up tents in the lobby and unfurled a 'Free Palestine' banner from the building’s roof before police moved in to make arrests."  Tyler Walicek (TRUTHOUT) reports:

A strike is underway within the University of California (UC) system — with UCLA, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz all now participating — as unionized graduate student workers take collective action to protest the brutalization and repression of fellow union members and Palestine solidarity protesters.

With academic employees unionized with the United Auto Workers (UAW) walking out at all three schools, the UC administration has found itself contending with the consequences of its decision to invite state aggression upon its own students as they protested the ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Those consequences appear to be piling up, with additional union workforces at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara set to join the strike on Monday, and UC Irvine workers walking off the job on Wednesday, according to UAW 4881.

The strike takes place in a national context in which administration crackdowns on Gaza solidarity encampments have encompassed everything from sanction, expulsion and eviction of students and firings of faculty (and even top administrators willing to parlay), all the way up to violent police action, as was on especially ugly display at UCLA. The striking UC workers, who are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 (also called the Academic Student Employees Union), were provoked to strike after UC administrators decided to shut down UCLA’s Gaza solidarity encampment by calling in city police, who stood by while a pro-Israel mob attacked the camp and beat protesters. The police crackdown led to direct harm to UAW members, among others. A subsequent encampment at UCLA was similarly dismantled by riot police — and a similar response is presently underway at UC Santa Cruz, where on Friday, May 31, police surrounded and cleared protest barricades at the entrance to campus, detaining an unknown number of demonstrators.

 

Gaza remains under assault. Day 239 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, "Gaza death toll reaches 36,379 killed and 82,407 wounded."   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."