Explained: Why did Israeli forces storm Al-Aqsa Mosque? May 7, 2021
‘Over 215 Injuries Among Palestinian Worshipers At Al-Aqsa Mosque’, Quds News Network, May 10, 2021
Occupied Jerusalem (QNN)- The Red Crescent said that the number of injuries among Palestinian worshipers at Al-Aqsa Mosque has increased to reach more than 215, including 135 cases that were hospitalized and 4 in critical condition.
Most of the injuries were to the face and eyes, as the occupation forces have been firing rubber-coated metal bullets and stun grenades at the worshipers, the Red Crescent said.
Several worshipers are also trapped in the Qibali prayer room at Al-Aqsa Mosque, as the Israeli forces prevented them from going to the courtyards of the mosque, and attacked them with tear gas canisters.
‘In photos: 24 hours in Gaza; Photos from the last day in Gaza, where 28 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes’, Mondoweiss Editors, May 11, 2021
‘The Israel Narrative Is Crumbling’, Caitlin Johnstone, May 11, 2021, via popular resistance (in part):
“Twenty-four people, including nine children, were killed in Gaza overnight, most of them in Israeli strikes,” reads a new report from AP.
Nine children, killed with the help of United States funding to the tune of $3.8 billion a year.
Remember kids, the US loves Muslims and just wants to protect their human rights.
The Monday night airstrikes were in response to rocket attacks by Gaza resistance groups which had reportedly injured six Israelis, and those rocket attacks were in turn were a response to a deluge of Israeli police brutality footage in Jerusalem in preceding days. Electronic Intifada reports:
‘This came at the end of a day of violence that began in occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli forces assaulted worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, injuring hundreds.
Scenes of brutality in Jerusalem generated outrage and solidarity among Palestinians and around the world.
The military wing of the Palestinian resistance organization Hamas issued an ultimatum giving Israel an hour – until 6 pm local time – to withdraw its forces from al-Aqsa and the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, and free detainees.
When the deadline passed, resistance groups in Gaza fired volleys of rockets towards Jerusalem for the first time since the summer 2014 war, prompting celebrations from some Palestinians.’
“The mass media are working furiously to spin this in a way that rivals my satire piece from the other day. The New York Times has been cartoonishly re-writing its own reporting in a desperate attempt to make Israel look like an innocent victim of unprovoked attacks instead of the obvious aggressor against people protesting a brutal apartheid regime backed by an entire empire. The New York Post falsely reported that the deaths on Monday were caused by “Airstrikes from Hamas militants” (when did Hamas get an air force?) when sharing an article which falsely implied that those fatalities were inflicted by both sides. DW News framed its headline in a way that suggested the nine children killed had been involved in “fighting” against Israeli forces, and the word “clashes” is being thrown about willy nilly to describe a very one-sided assault.
But it isn’t working.
Social media is teeming with viral video footage of police assaulting peaceful worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, of Israelis cheering and chanting “Yimach shemam (may their names be erased)” at the sight of a fire near the mosque, of Israeli soldiers arresting Palestinian protesters using the signature knee-on-neck maneuver made famous by the murder of George Floyd, many of which have millions of views. Mainstream politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are putting out statements explicitly condemning Israel as the aggressor in these attacks, and the White House is facing some actual adversarial journalism for once regarding its refusal to denounce the killing of Palestinian children and its absurd position that Palestinians have no right to defend themselves. […]
This is the most mainstream that criticism of Israeli apartheid oppression has ever been in my lifetime, and as more and more mainstream human rights groups begin acknowledging the reality of that oppression it’s only getting more so.
Whenever I say something critical of Israel I always get readers saying “Oh man, you’re going to get attacked so bad for this, dissent on Israel is not tolerated,” but quite honestly that hasn’t been my experience at all and I think it’s an outdated perception. In the few years I’ve been at this commentary gig I’ve found I get far more aggressive pushback when I criticize establishment narratives regarding Russia or China, or even Syria and Venezuela, than I do when I criticize Israel. The pushback is there of course, but it’s not nearly as virulent as what I’m used to.
There are a lot of factors contributing to the growing awareness of Israel’s brutality, but I think the main reason is very simple: there are only so many viral videos of unconscionable acts that can be dismissed with “Actually this is way more complicated than it looks.” It is not more complicated than it looks. Clearly. It looks bad because it is bad.
I’m building a new house. There were people living where I wanted to build it, so I just started building it on top of them. They tried to stop me so I had to kill them for being terrorists. If you disagree with my actions you’re basically a Nazi. My house has a right to exist.
“Awareness is spreading of Israeli apartheid brutality for the same reason awareness is spreading of US police brutality: the internet combined with smartphone cameras. Seeing is believing. Seeing brings change.
This is why the powerful are working so hard to censor the internet. If they can’t control what our dominant narratives are going to be, they will not be able to rule us.
Philip Weiss agrees: ‘Zionism’s endgame has begun’, Philip Weiss, May 13, 2021 (he opens):
“Last week the Guardian newspaper in London expressed shame over one of its worst errors of judgment: that in 1917 it supported and facilitated the Balfour Declaration, the imperial document that awarded Jews the “right” to make a homeland in Palestine. This counter-declaration was met with rage by Israel supporters.
And well it should, for it represents another blow to the legitimacy of Zionism in the west. All around us today we hear these blows falling on the central creed of Israel: the supposed right of a Jewish collective to national self-determination in a land populated by others.” […]
“Of course the news headlines are the greatest source of delegitimization: Israel’s own brutal conduct. Yesterday Benny Gantz, the former general who earlier bragged of bombing Gaza back to the stone age in a campaign to be prime minister, threatened to do even worse to Gaza in a video message that blames 2 million people under siege for their own destruction. “This is it, this is what Israel is. Pridefully threatening (even worse) murder. And then glibly transferring all responsibility for it to its victims,” writes an ally.
Bear in mind, this Gantz was once the American liberal Zionists’ hope for saving Israel from Netanyahu.”
‘Live blog: Israel starts ground invasion in Gaza, mobilizes army to police Palestinian citizens’, Mondoweiss Editors, May 13, 2021
- Gaza death toll reaches 109, including 28 children and 580 injuries, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health; seven Israeli casualties, including one child
- U.S. prevents statement from Security Council
- Israel military heads discuss possible ground invasion
‘Stop Israel’s war on Gaza, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem’, Patrick Martin, wsws.org, May 12, 2021 (w/permission)
“Dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs and missiles, which have rained down on at least 500 locations in an area no larger than the cities of Detroit or Philadelphia, with a population of more than two million.
Some leaders of the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been killed, under circumstances that remain unclear. But it seems to be a combination of deliberate assassination using missiles and a more generalized bombing campaign to destroy buildings used by Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
The most prominent casualty is Bassem Issa, commander of the Gaza City brigade of the Hamas military force. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gloated: “We eliminated senior Hamas commanders and this is just the beginning … We will inflict blows on them that they couldn’t even dream of.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) mobilized 5,000 reserve troops, including armored units and paratroopers, deploying them along the Gaza border, in positions to invade the enclave if given orders by the Israeli security cabinet, which was on a war footing Wednesday. It was the largest show of force since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014, which killed thousands of Palestinians in a monthlong slaughter.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz, visiting the southern city of Ashkelon near Gaza, which has been targeted by crude and largely ineffective rocket attacks by Hamas, indicated the Israeli operation would go on for some time. The military “will continue to strike and will bring complete quiet for the long term,” he said. “There is currently no end date.”
IDF spokesman Hidai Zilberman acknowledged Palestinian civilians were likely to be injured or killed by Israeli attacks but claimed that Hamas was deliberately using civilians as “human shields” for its operations, a phony justification used countless times by both US imperialism and the Zionist state for the slaughter of civilians. […]
The threatened Israeli evictions in Sheikh Jarrah have a particularly provocative character, accompanied by marches through the neighborhood by far-right Zionists chanting, “Death to Arabs.” As noted in an op-ed in the New York Times by activist and filmmaker Rula Salameh, “The Sheikh Jarrah families who have faced eviction are Palestinian refugees who were driven from their homes in Haifa and Jaffa during the 1948 war.” They were later resettled in East Jerusalem by the government of Jordan, which controlled the area until the 1967 war.
Sheikh Jarrah directly adjoins the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Arab Quarter of the Old City, the historic walled portion of Jerusalem that includes both the Wailing Wall and the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine of Islam. Israeli authorities closed the Damascus Gate last month and are now removing Palestinian families from the neighborhood outside it, in what could well be preparations for clearing out the Arab Quarter entirely.
The Netanyahu government is entirely capable of such drastic actions and may see such a provocation as a political necessity, given Netanyahu’s struggle to form a government and thus evade conviction in his ongoing trial on criminal corruption charges. After the prime minister’s initial failure to obtain a majority in the fractured Israeli parliament, Israeli President Ruben Rivlin has given opposition leader Yair Lapid a chance to form a coalition government.” […]
“Since the crisis erupted, the Biden administration has been engaged in a frenzy of pro-Israel activity. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have made repeated phone calls to their Israeli counterparts, offering the support of US imperialism for its principal client in the Middle East.
Blinken declared, “There is, first, a very clear and absolute distinction between a terrorist organization, Hamas—that is indiscriminately raining down rockets, in fact, targeting civilians—and Israel’s response, defending itself, that is targeting the terrorists who are raining down rockets on Israel.”
Austin called Gantz to convey the “ironclad support” of the United States, declaring, “he strongly condemned the launching of rockets by Hamas and other terrorist groups that targeted Israeli civilians.”
There is a still more dangerous aspect to the conflict that has exploded in Gaza. War is the mode of existence of the Israeli state, the only condition in which the social contradictions ripping apart the Zionist enterprise can be contained. At seven years since the last such war—the invasion of Gaza in July 2014—a military operation against the Palestinians is probably viewed by the Israeli leadership as an overdue necessity, and not necessarily confined to the Palestinians.
Particularly ominous is the column which appeared Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post, one of the principal press voices of the Israeli right wing, under the headline, “Is massive Hamas attack on Israel the assault Iran warned of?” The author suggests that the rocket barrage by Hamas is not really in response to Israeli actions in Jerusalem but is instigated by Iran, coordinated through Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, in response to Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
The purpose of such commentary, without the slightest factual basis or evidence being presented, is to prepare public opinion for an Israeli military strike against Iran. This would likely target Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, already hit by an Israeli operation last month, involving the remote-controlled detonation of an explosive device smuggled into the plant.
The crisis in the Middle East is on a knife’s edge. The United States is the principal sponsor of the Zionist regime, while Iran has developed economic, diplomatic and military ties with Russia and especially China. An Israeli strike against Iran could draw all the major powers into the cauldron of war, with incalculable consequences.”
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
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