The Government, Guns and Drugs







Muslim, the new black






How Israel Silences Dissent

From the New York Times op ed section.















News and not news

It’s news because its revelatory but it’s not news because it happens time and time again between Israel and its interaction with its neighbors.  The latest Gaza incursion was a bloodfest which made it a war crime.  Max Blumenthal writes about that conclusively here.

Dan Cohen and I conducted an interview with two ICRC volunteers from Gaza, 25-year-old Ahmed Awad, and 24-year-old Ala’a Alkusofi, who worked with ambulance crews throughout the war, the video of which will be released in the near future. They recalled entering Khuza’a during the siege of the town to collect the body of Mohamed Abadla, a local man who had been tied to a tree by both arms and riddled with bullets. When they arrived at the execution site, a group of Israeli soldiers ordered one of the volunteers’ colleagues to exit the ambulance, walk five meters forward, then light a cigarette lighters. When he did so, they shot him in the heart and leg, killing him in front of his colleagues.

The ICRC volunteers told us they later found a man in Khuza’a with rigor mortis, holding both hands over his head in surrender, his body filled with bullets. They then discovered a family — men, women and children — so badly decomposed they had to bury them with a bulldozer in a mass grave. The vast majority of bullet wounds they found were to the head and chest.

In Beit Hanoun, a northern border city that had been comprehensively by Israeli shelling, I met Abdul Rahman, a 50-year-old farmer whose orange groves, bee farm, goat herd, wheat fields and four story home had all been destroyed prior to or during Operation Protective Edge. Rahman told me how his neighbors, the Wahadan family, had been prevented from evacuating by Israeli forces, who warned them they would be shot if they left. Remember that the Israeli military dropped leaflets on Beit Hanoun warning its residents to leave just prior to the ground invasion. A week after trapping seven members of the Wahadan family, the Israeli air force bombed their home, killing seven members, including two-year-old Ghena Wahadan. The survivors of the family were male relatives who had been abducted and interrogated for days in Israeli prisons.

shieldWere the Wahadans used as human shields? That’s an open and legitimate question. In other areas, I documented cases in which the use of human shields by Israeli soldiers was undeniable. On the outskirts of Rafah, for instance, soldiers stripped 19-year-old Mahmoud Abu Said of his clothes and stood him in front of windows in his home while they sniped at his neighbors. In Khuza’a, members of the Najjar family told me soldiers forced them to stand at opposite corners of their roof for a full day. And in the northern village of Oum Al Nasser, members of the Mismeh, Madhoun and Jarrad family told me they forced to sit in the center of town for three hours between 6:30am and 9:30am on July 18 — 100 meters in front of Israeli tanks.


You will not hear about this case of Israel using human shields as it kills Palestinians although the contrast is certainly the case.  Also you can be sure nothing will happen as a result of this exposure although plenty will be said about any cases where Palestinians did such a criminal act and some sort of punitive action will result this is why although it is newsworthy this happened repeatedly during the Gaza invasion last month, nothing will result from it.

Israel’s war on Islam

destroyed masjidIsrael, that racist bastion of religious zionist zealotry and Islamophobia (two deadly combination for everyone)  is hell bent on killing Muslims and destroying their religious symbols.  This article makes that painfully obvious.

The Israeli onslaught on Gaza demolished 73 mosques in 51 days, while 205 others were partially destroyed, a government report said.

According to a committee formed by the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Construction, the damages caused by Israeli aggression on houses of worship, tombs, and charity offices amount to $40.4 million.

The only two churches in Gaza were also hit and partially damaged, while the gates of 10 tombs were destroyed.

The affected mosques represent one-third of Gaza’s mosques, the committee said.

Among the destroyed mosques were historical ones, particularly Al-Omari Mosque in Jabalya which dates back to 649 AD.

The mosque was built 1,365 years ago during the rule of the Muslim leader Amr Ibn Al-‘As and was named after him. It is also called Manarat Al-Zaher.

It consisted of three floors and its area was greater than 3,000 square metres. It could accommodate more than 2,000 worshippers.

Al-Omari Mosque was previously hit by Israeli strikes in 2008 and 2009 and later renovated, but it was completely destroyed in the most recent assault.

The report added that most of Gaza’s mosques were built thanks to donations by citizens since donor countries exclude houses of worship from reconstruction aid.

The targeting of mosques by Israeli warplanes in the latest offensive was three times higher than in 2008 and 2009, the report said.

It’s very difficult to imagine why and how any country that calls itself a democratic country could support an entity that so recklessly and blatantly targets a religion and its adherents as Israel does with Palestinians and Islam.

Another reason to oppose the current government of Egypt

…they are engaging in fratricide in ways that call to mind some of the world’s worst dictatorships.

Egyptian security forces intentionally killed at least 817 protesters during last August’s Rabaa massacre, in a premeditated attack equal to or worse than China’s Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, Human RightsWatch (HRW) has argued in a report.

The 195-page investigation based on interviews with 122 survivors and witnesses has found Egypt‘s police and army “systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds” in actions that “likely amounted to crimes against humanity”.

The report recommends that several senior individuals within Egypt’s security apparatus be investigated and, where appropriate, held to account for their role in the planning of both the Rabaa massacre and others that occurred last summer – including Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt’s then defence minister and new president. As head of the army at the time, Sisi had overall responsibility for the army’s role at Rabaa, and has publicly acknowledged spending “very many long days to discuss all the details”.


In other words, the current President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is a war criminal who encouraged his army to commit crimes against humanity on several occasions!! In an extreme example of chutzpah, this government of war criminals went on to declare the party they ousted and enforced that coup with murder of its citizens, the Sisi regime went on to criminalize the Muslim Brotherhood, calling it a terrorist organization and sentencing close to 200 members of that group with death for “taking part in a deadly attack on a police station”.  What’s important to remember is this is the government which slaughters its citizens in much the same way the Israelis slaughtered people of Gaza that is negotiating on behalf of those Palestinians.  To renew the saying, ‘ it’s the fox guarding the chickens’……

The “specialness” of Israel

Israel claimed Hamas used the civilians of Gaza as human shields for their rocket attacks when it fact it turns out Israeli forces used Palestinians in that way.  Here is the story and eye witness accounts of what happened.

The article below describes how US officials have enabled the Israeli regime to commit and get away with war crimes and are as accountable as the very Israelis who are responsible for the Gaza massacre.  Unfortunately, American administrations are quick to hurl accusations of illegality towards members of the international community but are almost never willing to prosecute its own for illegal acts. In the case of Israel, even when there is compelling evidence that crimes were committed such an acknowledgment is never forthcoming from an American administration.  The ramifications of that are severe for America…..making it as much a pariah state as the one it enables.