Dispatch #110 White Lesbian Age 71 Considers US Pledges More Billions for Genocide & Vetoes UN Resolution Calling for Ceasefire
- Kathleen A. Maloy
- Oct 19, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 31
Oct. 20th 2023
972 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President
123 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin
483 Days Since Supreme Court Ruled Women Don’t Have Human Rights
After two weeks of Israeli relentless bombardment, more than 4200 Gazans are killed with more than 1000 missing and presumed buried under rubble, and more than 13,000 Gazans are wounded. Thirty percent of housing in Gaza has been destroyed. Two weeks ago, Israel cut off access to food, water, electricity, fuel creating a dystopian hellscape for 2.2 million Gazans condemned to suffering and death. Israel has just ordered the evacuation of a major hospital with 400 patients and 12,000 sheltering Gazans.
As Biden affirms absolute solidarity with Israel, his claims that Israel is conducting its ‘War with Hamas’ consistent with international law are chillingly Orwellian while Israeli officials call Palestinians animals and promise to raze Gaza into rubble. Hewing to the US lead, Western leaders rush to support Israel while ignoring the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza where more than ½ of the casualties are children. Expressions of concern and support for Palestinians continue to be decried as pro-Hamas and antisemitic.
“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/raz_segal_textbook_case_of_genocide
Gaza Is Being Killed. We Desperately Need Your Help www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-is-dying-dispatch-bombing/
"Gaza Is Running Out of Life": Human Rights Watch Sounds Alarm on Israel's Collective Punishment www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/omar_shakir_israel_gaza_hrw
Pro-Palestinian views face suppression in US amid Israel-Hamas war
Israel’s War Isn’t Against Hamas—It’s on the Palestinian People www.thedailybeast.com/israels-war-isnt-on-hamasits-on-the-palestinian-people
Israeli Journalist Amira Hass: How Can the World Stand By and Witness Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza?
Yes, the Western world is indeed standing by, joining the US with their complicity. Entirely one-sided Western media coverage paired with vicious public recriminations directed at anyone raising concerns about Palestinian lives serve to dehumanize Gazans and promote consent for war and retaliation. The annihilation of Gaza proceeds apace in plain view.
In his speech explaining why billions of dollars of US military support must be sent to US border with Mexico, Ukraine and Israel, Biden declared this moment an ‘inflection point in history’ when America can be a ‘beacon to the rest of the world.’ America has chosen weapons, revenge, and war crimes as the beacon instead of cease-fire, international law, and human rights.
Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/17/israel-palestine-hamas-gaza-west-leader-view
Israeli Peace Activist Whose Parents Were Killed in Hamas Attack Calls for Ceasefire
Biden’s Israel trip reflects a deeply flawed and hypocritical foreign policy
Two recent essays by Phyllis Bennis, Middle East Expert at the Institute for Policy Studies Fellow and international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace, are must-reads and present essential contextual commentary on how and why this moment arrived.
We Need an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza. Millions of innocent Gazans are in danger. https://otherwords.org/we-need-an-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza/
As Israel and Gaza erupt, the US must commit to ending the violence — all the violence
The following excerpts are taken from the essay published in The Hill:
As the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem describes it, “in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. … [I]n 2007, Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip that is still in place. Throughout all of these years, Israel has continued to control nearly every aspect of life in Gaza from outside.”
Generations of Palestinians, 80 percent of them refugees, have grown up in the teeming, impoverished Gaza Strip, one of the most crowded pieces of land on Earth. Since Israel besieged Gaza in 2007, most of them have never been allowed to leave the walled-in, military-guarded Strip, have never glimpsed the West Bank or Jerusalem, let alone 1948 Israel, and certainly not the wider world.
In 2018, a series of overwhelmingly non-violent marches, organized by Ahmed Abu Artema, a young Gaza poet, and taking place inside the besieged Strip, called for an end to the blockade and freedom of movement for the Gaza population. They were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and Israeli sharpshooters taking aim at the mostly young protesters.
After two years, the result was 214 Palestinians killed, including 46 children, and more than 36,000 injured, including 8,800 children. More than 8,000 of those injured were hit by live ammunition. By the time the protests waned, in 2019, the United Nations reported that 1,700 of the protesters faced amputation of legs or arms because Gaza hospitals had insufficient health care funding to provide advanced care for those shot by Israeli snipers.
In 2012 the UN determined that without “herculean action” by the international community, by 2020 Gaza “will not be livable” – largely, though not only, because of the profound lack of access to clean water. In 2015 the UN again reported that conditions had worsened, particularly because of the Israeli military assault in 2014 and its destruction of water and electrical infrastructure. And once again they urgently warned that Gaza would be “unlivable” by 2020.
Yet more than 2 million Palestinians remain in Gaza, locked into an open-air prison. 2020 has come and gone. The international community did not take “herculean action” to stop Israel’s blockade or to stop the current extremist government’s annexation of Palestinian land. They did nothing (then-President Trump even praised it) when Israel passed a law stating that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” — so even Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are officially denied equal rights. And Gaza remains unlivable.
In his 19 October speech, Biden pledged an additional $10billion to Israel for defense contracts and weapons transfer; Israel has already received $3.8billion from US for military spending. On 18 October, the White House announced that $100million in humanitarian aid will be sent to Palestinian people in Gaza.
And so it goes.
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