Nakba

The Trump administration’s decision to scrap all future aid payments to the main agency helping Palestinian refugees marks a new – and most likely disastrous – chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US State Department said on Friday it would no longer continue its $360 million annual contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), depriving it of a third of its budget. US officials described the organisation as “irredeemably flawed”.

In May 2018 Gaza demonstrations, by its arrogant and aggressive stance toward legitimate demands of a people it has oppressed for decades, Israel indicted itself several times, validated Palestinian actions, and exposed its tyrannical manner. Translating Israel’s self-indictments to actions by the world community is an obligatory challenge for those who comprehend Israel’s oppressive policies.
One self-indictment

Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, killed by Israeli sniper on May 14, 2018 in Gaza

Fathi Harb should have had something to live for, not least the imminent arrival of a new baby. But last week the 21-year-old extinguished his life in an inferno of flames in central Gaza.
It is believed to be the first example of a public act of self-immolation in the enclave. Harb doused himself in petrol and set himself alight on a street in Gaza City shortly before dawn prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
In part, Harb was driven to this terrible act of self-destruction out of despair.

Israeli “Defense” Forces Kill Coldly, Calculatedly, Then Cheer

On 14 of May 1948 Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Is it appropriate for NDP Members of Parliament to be working for “greater friendship” with a country that is killing and maiming thousands of non-violent protestors?
Would it have been appropriate for any elected member of the party to be a “friend” with South Africa’s government during the apartheid era?

Gideon Levy has written in Haaretz about the “absurd” situation whereby, in his words: “The leader of the Palestinian people is forced to apologize to the Jewish people” for saying something “anti-Semitic” about the Holocaust. According to Levy, “The one who was robbed apologizes to the robbers, the victim apologizes to the rapist, the dead to the killer.” His article was headed, “Dear Occupiers, sorry if we hurt your feelings” and he pointed out that, “You don’t have to be an admirer of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to understand the depths of the absurd.

The gaping chasm between reality and unreality is exemplified by recent contrasting statements about journalism from two veteran reporters. On the one side we have Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, who enjoys a public image of principled honesty and a supposedly fierce commitment to news balance and impartiality.

May 14th was quite a day for the empire, the shit show on full display exhibiting lots of swagger in its death throes. The people on the inside are the last to know. They don’t see it but everyone else does. The rest of the world can see the toxic death culture, they see the rationalizations for idiocy and how silly they seem. The US empire has no clothes but wears only a paper thin emotional veneer resembling a child who attempts to lie for the first time after murdering the family dog. This is the modern American mind of empire.