Gaza

I will do everything in my power to help Gaza – and I am not alone

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/i-will-do-everything-my-power-help-gaza-–-and-i-am-not-alone

SOLIDARITY: Charlotte Church (right) takes part in a pro-Palestine march in central London during a national demonstration for ceasefire in Gaza

My name was traduced and my safety threatened after irresponsible reporting by the Establishment media when I sang for charity to help Palestinians with socialist choir, Cor Cochion, writes CHARLOTTE CHURCH

I WISH I didn’t have to write this — I am an artist, not a politician, and would rather speak through creative action than explanatory text — but I find that for several reasons, I must respond to accusations and smears made against me these last couple of weeks.

At the weekend I participated in the 10th national march for Palestine in London, in solidarity with our siblings in Palestine, as well as those at home, and for doing so I was called all manner of ungodly things online, often violent, misogynistic and racist. Some of those people had phrases like “whites will not be replaced” on their profiles, and images of iron eagles as banners. And I’m the extremist?!

Since footage was shared online of a Sing For Palestine event I took part in to raise money for a new ambulance for the al-Awda hospital through the Middle East Childrens’ Alliance, I’ve been continuously dragged in the press and on social media as an anti-semite (which I am not) and need to respond to those accusations fully.

My attempts to protest the atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, and the West’s complicity in them, have been ridiculed by powerful men in the media in conversations that I have not been asked to contribute to, including a discussion as to whether or not I should be arrested for my activism, and so I must respond.

My safety and the safety of my family has been threatened by some pretty scary people, emboldened by the rhetoric of front-line politicians, as well as cravenly irresponsible coverage by liberal legacy media outlets, including BBC News, and so I must respond. But perhaps most urgently I have to take the opportunity to speak out because since the start of the genocide very little of the campaign that calls for an end to Israeli aggression in Palestine has been covered by the press, except when it is being denounced as “hateful” or “Islamist” by some of the most notorious racists in the Western world.

‘From The River To The Sea…’

I am not, and have never been, and will never be an anti-semite. I hold the Jewish people in my life very dearly, and have always kept great reverence for Judaism and Jewish culture, since travelling around Israel and Palestine as a teenager. It makes my stomach turn to know that due to the double-speak and whataboutery of bad faith actors in the media, some Jews today think that I am anti-semitic. I hope that my words here can reassure them that I am not, and make it clear that I have deep compassion for what Jewish people all over the world are experiencing right now, due to the rise of genuine anti-semitism.

I do not believe that the phrase “From the river to the sea…” is in any way a call for the ethnic cleansing or genocide of Israelis, and certainly when I have used it or heard it used by other people, it has always been as a call for the liberation of Palestine (ie the most face-value interpretation). Often it is accompanied by the phrase “…we are all Palestinians.”

A call for one group’s liberation does not imply another’s destruction, and those suggesting that it does when it is in fact that first group who are currently being murdered in their thousands, are leveraging a grotesque irony. I will not have my rhetoric around resistance and solidarity redefined by those who most violently oppose my democratic engagement.

Palestinians living all over historic Palestine are living under an apartheid system. Those who live in Israel (one fifth of the population) are treated as second-class citizens and the Palestinians living in Palestine are under military occupation. “From the river to the sea” is a call for Palestinians to live with equal rights and to end the illegal apartheid system they have been living under. It is widely accepted all over there world that no group of people should have supremacy over another, so why is it called “genocidal” when this is demanded by and on the behalf of Palestinians?

What I hope will be inferred from the phrase is a demand for a conversation about the future of Israel and Palestine — one that includes Palestinian voices, and acknowledges and attempts to rectify the many crimes that have been inflicted upon Palestinians over the last 75 years. This is the only path to peace and has to begin with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

At this point it becomes necessary for me to state that I do not support Hamas and condemn them for the attack on October 7. While it is difficult to know the full truth of what happened that day, and hopefully with the fullness of time we will have a better perspective on this, there were undoubtedly war crimes committed, appalling acts, including the massacre of innocent civilians and hostage-taking. My heart goes out to the victims of that attack, the hostages, and their families.

None of that justifies the horrors that have been inflicted upon the Palestinian people since that day.

‘She’s just a naive idiot’

Nigel Farage has spoken at length over many years about “Cultural Marxism,” “Soros-funded organisations,” “unelected globalists” and innumerable other anti-semitic dog-whistles. Often this has been in conversation with people like Alex Jones of InfoWars or Rick Wiles of TruNews — known and self-avowed anti-semites. He is also notorious for sowing division, particularly along racial lines. But apparently none of that disqualifies him from being interviewed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson about what should and shouldn’t be done about “extremists” in Britain today. When Robinson asked Farage whether I should be arrested (!) for singing “From the river to the sea…” Farage called me a “naive idiot” and said that I should be “given a severe warning” and “made to see the error of [my] ways.”

David Baddiel is a man whose checkered history with racism needs no commentary from me, but who has notably repositioned himself as an expert on racism in recent years. On his new podcast with Tory peer Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Baddiel laughed theatrically at my activism, before deigning to correct me for not understanding the meaning of my own words. (It’s worth noting that Warsi went on to say that for “a whole load of people” the phrase “from the river to the sea…” means “equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis in the lands from the river to the sea.”)

Perhaps the superiority of being a self-proclaimed “public intellectual” has gone to his head, but Baddiel, as with Farage, is an all-too-common example of a professional opinion-monger who resorts to tactics made to silence voices that dissent from his own. I am not the right sort of person to be discussing this in the eyes of Baddiel, Farage, Robinson, or any of the others, and the condescending manner in which my charitable work is being spoken of reeks of misogyny. I am incredibly familiar with the “shush, silly girl” strategy. It is used to discredit me and my message of solidarity without engaging me in debate. I truly am sick to the back teeth of men like these.

‘Charlotte Church denies anti-semitism’

This was the headline on the BBC News website. The Guardian ran the same one. There were many, many more news outlets that ran even more alarming headlines and stories, but I’ll focus on the BBC and Guardian stories. Making the story about my denial of anti-semitism is pure clickbait designed to accentuate the perceived scandal and obscure the reality of the situation — I sang a protest song in Bedwas Workmen’s Hall, and yet it sounds like I committed a hate crime.

An article from the BBC News last Sunday (March 3), entitled “Nuance is being lost” seemingly without irony, said: “Charlotte Church sang the controversial pro-Palestinian chant ‘From the river to the sea’ at a concert. (She denied she was anti-semitic).”

No more context was given — not the fact that this was a charity event, specifically to raise money for an ambulance in Gaza — not even the fact that it was an event in solidarity with Palestine, calling for a ceasefire. Not that it was an interfaith, intergenerational choir singing freedom songs from all over the world, No mention of the actual history of the usage of the phrase. Just incredibly irresponsible “journalism.”

At a time when democratic norms in the House of Commons are being overturned, supposedly due to fears for MPs safety, I have to ask the BBC and The Guardian, among others: what about my safety?

I have been called many things in my time, but not until this week have I received so much imaginative and violent hate. I’ve never before been called “traitor.” The threats to my safety have resulted in the police coming round to check in on us. And the BBC continues to publish articles, with extremely inflammatory language that does not accurately represent the reality of the situation. I’m pretty sure it has broken its own guidelines about being “accurate and fair.”

And then Nick Robinson’s question to Nigel Farage: “Do you think Charlotte Church should be arrested?” I mean, are you real? To think that this was not only broadcast across multiple BBC platforms in a pre-recorded interview, but also that someone made an editorial decision to clip that bit up and toss it into the maelstrom of social media to promote the show, at a time of such febrile debate… how is that contributing to social cohesion, let alone considering my safety?!

Almost as irresponsible is MP Andrew Percy who said that I should “hang my head in shame,” before doing the news round talking of MPs safety and how pro-Palestine activists are “dictating the terms of the debate.” Considering this was in the same news cycle that three prominent Conservatives (Lee Anderson, Suella Braverman and Liz Truss) were all banging the drum for Islamophobia, the PM following with his deranged speech about extremism on Friday evening, I have personally never felt less safe. I feel caught up in a political parlour game played by lunatics, with incredibly high stakes, that I do not consent to being a part of.

Singing for freedom

In the late 1980s, the Estonian people brought about a liberating revolution from the failing USSR, not with weapons, but with voices. The civil rights struggle in America has a glorious history of singing woven through it. Music was a major part of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa, not least with the Specials hit, Free Nelson Mandela. Jamaica, Estonia, Iceland, Zimbabwe, the feminist movement, the LGBTQ movement, I could go on and on. There has never been a liberation movement that hasn’t had music and song at its heart. Heart being the most powerful word here, because singing together brings us into a place of feeling, of emotions, and unity and love. Disconnection and separation cannot survive in this environment. In my opinion it is the most powerful tool of togetherness that we have.

This is why I was so delighted to work with Cor Cochion, the socialist choir first formed in Cardiff during the miners’ strikes in the 1980s, who have used singing to tirelessly protest against apartheid, the BNP, the invasion of Iraq, and many other injustices. Their director, Wendy Lewis (incidentally one of many Jewish people who is opposed to the Israeli occupation), is a wonderful genius of community action. Her rewrite of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in Cymraeg about Palestinian liberation is just about the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in years.

My heart breaks every day witnessing the atrocities that are being enacted — the hell on Earth that is being wreaked by Israel and its allies — but more than anything, what breaks my heart as open as the sky is the love I’m witnessing between the Palestinian people. Those orphaned children who hold each other close after having to endure painful surgeries, have limbs amputated or maybe their faces or chests stitched back together after being purposefully targeted by an IDF sniper. Those desperate, bereaved grandparents who’ve just seen the last of their grandchildren killed; those beautiful teenage boys, that remind me so much of my own son, full body hugging the shrouds of their beloved mothers. And the pain and love and tenderness of the mothers and fathers … I will do everything in my power to help. I despair for anyone who would tell me I am wrong for doing so.

I am not alone. What is being allowed to happen in Palestine by Western governments is waking people up to the violent reality of what the West is built upon: inequality, exploitation, colonisation. A line has been crossed and the majority of the people of the world are rising up against this most grotesque show of power and domination. We will never forget what has been allowed to happen.

I think we need to bring to the forefront of this conversation weapons. As one human race, we must understand that if we had to murder thousands of children with our bare hands we would massively lose the taste for war. Our fetishisation of increasingly efficient impersonal killing machines makes slaughter very easy.

My dream is that we can with love, care, grief, deep mutual understanding, dismantle every weapon on Earth.

And if my voice can bring us any closer to that, then no matter what you call me, I will keep singing.

This Mother’s Day I call to all mothers, all grandmothers, in fact all those who have mothers, to hold in our hearts all those who had mothers in Gaza and now do not, all those mothers whose children have been murdered, and the families whose every member has been brutalised and wiped out. Let us listen to our bones, our great-great-grandmothers’ instincts that live within us, and reject the fallacy of Western patriarchal moral authority. Feel and trust your feelings. Let us consciously bring about the coming of the deep maternal healing that must come.

This article first appeared at www.charlottechurch.co.uk.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/i-will-do-everything-my-power-help-gaza-–-and-i-am-not-alone

This is the Brigyn version of Haleliwlia. I don’t know if it’s the translation by Wendy Lewis mentioned in the article above.
Continue ReadingI will do everything in my power to help Gaza – and I am not alone

How the UK government rebranded protest as extremism

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Original article by Anita Mureithi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Rishi Sunak used his first speech outside 10 Downing Street to say “hateful” groups had “hijacked” the streets in recent months, in reference to pro-Palestine marches | Carl Court/Getty Images

Daughter of terror attack victim Makram Ali says politicians are ‘fuelling fire’ by equating Muslims with extremism

James Eastwood and his union colleagues got to their office one Tuesday afternoon to find that someone had broken in. The intruder hadn’t taken personal valuables or expensive equipment: all they had done was pull down the pro-Palestine posters in the window.

The break-in didn’t come as a huge shock to Eastwood, co-chair of the University and College Union (UCU) branch at Queen Mary University in east London. A day earlier, uni bosses had called him asking for access to the office so they could remove the posters, one of which had a Palestinian flag on it, and another of which read: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Eastwood had agreed, requesting only that he be allowed to make the case before any action was taken.

The university was unwilling to wait, and forced the lock the next day. But Eastwood lays the blame beyond the office of the president and principal, Colin Bailey, who last year took home nearly £359,000. Instead, he holds the government responsible, feeling ministers have decided that “it’s not OK to be in solidarity with Palestine”. The university admits it took the posters down, telling openDemocracy that “such permanent displays… can stifle freedom of speech and make members of our community feel unsafe”.

Communities secretary Michael Gove is this week expected to widen the government’s definition of extremism to include “promotion or advancement of ideology based on hatred, intolerance or violence or undermining or overturning the rights or freedoms of others, or of undermining democracy itself”.

This might sound reasonable in isolation. But Gove’s intervention is the culmination of a months-long campaign by Tory politicians to paint pro-Palestine protesters as extremists.

Ahead of a march on 11 November, then home secretary Suella Braverman called the demonstrations “hate marches” and suggested the sanctity of Armistice Day was under threat. This led hundreds of far-right thugs – more than 90 of whom were arrested – to gather in Whitehall to “protect” the cenotaph from a march for Palestine that was taking place in another part of the city.

The posters were displayed on the windows of UCU’s office at Queen Mary University of London | James Eastwood

Emboldened by this narrative, former deputy Tory Party chair Lee Anderson last month claimed “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor. He later doubled down and refused to apologise, after which he was suspended for conflating “all Muslims with Islamist extremism”. The prime minister described Anderson’s comments as “wrong” but avoided calling them Islamophobic.

This rhetoric, which also included false claims from MPs that there were “no-go” Muslim-majority areas in Birmingham and east London, climaxed in a hastily-arranged, Friday night speech from Sunak outside 10 Downing Street at the beginning of March. This was a significant intervention – it was the first time he had addressed the nation in this way since becoming PM 18 months ago.

He warned that “extremists” were “spewing hate” and “hijacking” protests. He also called on protesters “to stand together to combat the forces of division and beat this poison”.

Campaigners believe the new definition of “extremism” will in practice mean public authorities being forced to cut links with a widening circle of proscribed pro-Palestine groups. Even three former Tory home secretaries said yesterday the politicisation of extremism had gone too far.

Eastwood said the mood music from the government “filters down and creates a climate where organisations including universities feel pressure to show that they’re doing something”.

“You see a reproduction of some of the government lines on what’s acceptable speech, what’s offensive speech, what speech is to be allowed or not allowed,” he added.

Fuelling the fire

On 18 June 2017, Darren Osborne drove a van from Cardiff to London with plans to attack a pro-Palestinian march. A jury would go on to hear he had wanted to kill then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as well as Sadiq Khan.

Osborne, 48, had viewed posts on social media by former English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (also known as Tommy Robinson) and Britain First before driving his van directly into a crowd of people leaving the Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park – Corbyn’s constituency – following evening Ramadan prayers. He killed 51-year-old Makram Ali and injured 12 others.

As he tried to escape, he is reported to have said: “I want to kill more Muslims.”

Ali’s daughter, Ruzina Akhtar, says politicians’ attempts to equate Islam with extremism are “fuelling the fire” and “inciting more hatred” towards Muslims.

“Every day, that’s going into someone’s ears who doesn’t have positive feelings towards Muslims,” she told openDemocracy. “It only takes one comment, or one thing to push someone over the edge. It’s not just actions – words speak loudly as well. Politicians need to be really careful with what they say and how they say it, because every single word could potentially be a threat to someone’s life.”

While politicians pontificate over definitions, Akhtar warned: “They’re in their own political bubble. They’re not thinking about the wider effect their words could have.

“Instead of inciting hatred, they need to be working together with communities. On the one hand, they’ll talk about how Britain is multicultural and so inclusive, but then they’re putting targets on people’s backs.”

Ruzina Akhtar and her dad, Makram Ali | Ruzina Akhtar

Akhtar will be easing into yet another Ramadan without her dad today. The one thing she wants people to remember is how dangerous these dehumanising, Islamophobic tropes can be. “Muslims can be targets as well,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings.”

Of course, the UK government’s rebranding of pro-Palestine voices and peaceful protesters as extremists is not a new phenomenon.

For years, people who support Palestine vocally and publicly have been targeted under Prevent – the UK government-led counter-terrorism programme, which human rights organisations say is discriminatory and ineffective. In his speech, Sunak doubled down on his support for the programme.

In 2016, Rahmaan Mohammadi – a schoolboy from Luton – was referred to Prevent and questioned by anti-terrorism police for wearing ‘free Palestine’ badges and wristbands to school. He also claimed that he was told to stop talking about Palestine in school.

And openDemocracy revealed in January that more than 100 schoolchildren and university students had experienced “harsh repression and censorship” following the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October.

Now, ahead of a general election, Fatima Rajina, an academic specialising in issues on identity, race, British Muslims and postcolonialism, says long-standing Islamophobic and anti-Muslim tropes have been invoked in order to win votes and deflect from government failures.

“It’s stoking fear, because that is what has been done for the last 20-plus years,” she said. “The ‘war on terror’ rhetoric has meant that politicians rely on very well established tropes about Muslims. And they proceed with that because that is what gets into people’s minds.”

War on terror

If you’ve ever been to a march for Palestine you might have watched the prime minister’s Downing Street address and wondered if you were being gaslit. For many, the marches have been largely peaceful, with people of different faiths, backgrounds and ethnicities coming together to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

openDemocracy recently revealed that, despite attempts by some MPs to form a narrative that the marches amounted to “mass extremism” and were “openly criminal”, only 36 people out of the millions who attended last year had been charged with a crime.

The post 9/11 so-called ‘war on terror’ touched all aspects of day-to-day life for Muslims in the UK, from Prevent referrals to surveillance in mosques and schools, as well as so-called ‘schedule 7’ stops at UK ports and airports and increased use of stop and search.

Rajina says the government relies on convincing people that such measures are for the sake of “safety” and the public good, and calls this framing “very sinister”.

“All of these concerns are packaged into ‘the Muslim is the problem’,” she said. As children starve to death in Gaza, more airtime is given to the concerns of politicians who say they feel threatened by constituents who want the attacks in Palestine to stop.

But the mood music isn’t just coming from the government. Labour politicians including deputy leader Angela Rayner and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves last month reported feeling “unsafe” and “intimidated” by members of the public protesting the siege on Gaza, while Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle suggested MPs could be in danger from pro-Palestinian constituents for voting against a ceasefire.

“It’s Muslims who are being targeted as the ones who are causing all this trouble outside MPs’ offices, scaring them,” said Rajina. “And that is because there’s already an established fear. Tapping into that then makes people think: ‘Oh my God, these Muslims don’t know how democracy works’.

“I think this idea of it being a Muslim issue, and framing it in that way, is really and truly about the upcoming election. It is about stoking fear and playing with established fear. It’s also to deflect from the fact that we’re going through a cost of living crisis.”

What’s also clear is that the UK government’s branding of activists and protesters as ‘extremists’ hasn’t been limited to Muslims and pro-Palestine voices.

When Black Lives Matter protests swept through the UK in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, then prime minister Boris Johnson similarly claimed that anti-racism protests in the UK had been “hijacked by extremists intent on violence”.

And when Extinction Rebellion (XR) gained prominence after its first action in 2018, its activists were labelled as “eco-terrorists”.

The backlash bears the fingerprints of right-wing think tanks. In a 2019 report, influential right-wing think tank Policy Exchange called XR an “extremist group” that wanted to overturn democracy and ran the risk of “[breaking] with organisational discipline and [becoming] violent”. Months later, XR was designated an extremist group by counter-terror police, while openDemocracy revealed in 2022 that a controversial anti-protest law appeared to have come directly from the Policy Exchange report.

Policy Exchange has now turned its attention to pro-Palestinian voices, briefing politicians that academics on the board of equality and diversity at Research England – a government science and research body – had showed “support for radical anti-Israeli views”.

The document appears to have made its way into the hands of cabinet minister Michelle Donelan, who was last week forced to pay damages to one of the academics in question after wrongly accusing her of supporting Hamas. Her £15,000 libel bill is being footed by the taxpayer.

As well as arrests under the Policing Act – and its sequel, the Public Order Act, which also gives police more powers to restrict protests – an increased number of activists with groups such as XR and Just Stop Oil have been referred to the Prevent anti-terror scheme.

Ban

This narrative that activist movements are undemocratic or opposed to British values is underlined by John Woodcock, a peer and former Labour MP who now serves as the government’s adviser on political violence. Woodcock believes a ban on MPs and councillors having contact with groups like Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Extinction Rebellion, and Just Stop Oil, would restore faith in liberal democracy.

But the attempt to turn supposedly ‘ordinary’ Brits against ‘extremist’ protesters has very real human consequences, particularly when layered with Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate.

As recently as last month, amid a wave of Islamophobic and antisemitic hate crime since October 7, an east London mosque reported its second bomb threat in two months.

And citing experiences of Islamophobia reported by MPs Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana, Rajina said: “These are prominent and well known public figures here in Britain. So then imagine what it looks like when it trickles down to the ordinary person who is just going about their everyday activities, doing their shopping and catching the train and whatever other mundane activity, and then suddenly they are at the receiving end of Islamophobic abuse.”

The demonisation of protesters has also laid the foundation for violence against peaceful climate activists.

“We’re trying to teach young people to go out there, make sure you’re holding your MP to account… put pressure on councils. And now suddenly, we’re saying: ‘Hold on a second, that’s not the way to do it’. But what are we saying? What sort of citizenship are we looking for? What do you want people to do?”

Original article by Anita Mureithi republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Sunak’s extremism speech 1 to 5

Continue ReadingHow the UK government rebranded protest as extremism

You won’t stop us marching for peace

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/you-wont-stop-us-marching-for-peace

People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London during a national demonstration for ceasefire in Gaza, March 9, 2024

Defiant protesters reject ‘extremism’ label by MPs to stop marches

CAMPAIGNERS have slammed the government’s “repressive” attempts to clamp down on the right to protest and redefine extremism, warning they are “poorly drafted and open to legal challenge.”

Communities Secretary Michael Gove is expected to announce a looser definition of extremism within days.

Organisations and individuals that breach the new definition will be banned from receiving public funds, engaging with government agencies and appearing at university campuses.

Several Muslim groups are reportedly set to be on the list, including the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Engagement and Development NGO.

Mr Gove claims he aims to ban groups which “undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy.”

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/you-wont-stop-us-marching-for-peace

Continue ReadingYou won’t stop us marching for peace

Instead of Holocaust Museum, Detour Signs Direct Israel’s Herzog to The Hague

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Original article by COMMON DREAMS STAFF republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Human rights activists of Amnesty International hold traffic boards showing the way to the International Criminal Court for the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog on March 10, 2024 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The President of Israel is in Amsterdam to open the Holocaust Museum. (Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

“How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalize genocide today?” asked one Dutch Jewish organizer behind the protest.

Human rights activists in The Netherlands greeted Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday with large protests and directed him towards the International Criminal Court at The Hague over his nation’s alleged war crimes against the Palestinian people in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Herzog was in Amsterdam to attend the opening of the new National Holocaust Museum, but demonstrators said Herzog’s presence needed to be challenged given the large scale death and destruction that Israel’s military has unleashed in Gaza over the last five months.

As Al-Jazeera reports:

Dutch Jewish anti-Zionist organization Erev Rave, which organized the demonstrations at the musuem’s opening with the Dutch Palestinian community and Socialist International, said that while it is important to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, it cannot stand by while the war in Gaza continues.

“For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past,” said Joana Cavaco, an activist with Erev Rav, addressing the crowd before the museum’s opening ceremony. “How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalize genocide today?”

A pro-Palestinian Dutch organization, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”

Along Herzog’s route through the city, members of Amnesty International—which has accused Israel of apartheid and backed the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which said policies in Gaza may amount to genocide—carried fake detour signs pointing the motorcade towards the nearby ICC.

As the president of Israel, Amnesty International Netherlands said Herzog “is the political symbol of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. It is unfortunate that Herzog was invited after his controversial statements. That is why we are taking action.”

Amnesty and other rights groups have documented numerous incidents in Gaza and the West Bank that they say may amount to “war crimes,” including the indiscriminate bombing of civilians areas, the use of prohibited weapons like white phosphorous, attacks on hospitals and emergency medical personnel, the blocking of life-saving food, water, and other supplies, and other acts of “callous disregard for Palestinian lives.”

At a square nearby the museum where Herzog gave his speech, reportsReuters, demonstrators crowded the streets and chanted slogans like “Cease-fire Now!” and “Stop Bombing Children!” as they held signs that read “Jews Against Genocide” and “The Grandchild of a Holocaust Survivor Says: Stop Gaza Holocaust.”

Ahead of Sunday’s opening, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that operates the new museum, said in a statement that it was “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

The statement said the museum stands “for a just and resolution for all those directly involved” and the impact the ongoing violence and hatred is having beyond the Middle East:

The reduction to black-and-white opposites and apparently incompatible arguments – oppressed against oppressor, good against bad, truth against lie. This polarization has spread hatred toward Jews and Islamophobia. It takes courage to speak out against injustice. It takes courage to recognize that the real world is complex and contradictory, and that our empathy need not be confined to one side.

At the heart of the National Holocaust Museum’s mission is the desire to build a just society in the Netherlands by signalling the danger of dehumanizing and excluding those who live among us. That is the message in our presentation, our educational program and our events.

The group said Herzog had been invited to attend the opening prior to the Hamas-led attack on October 7 of last year, but that the fighting since has only further revealed the importance of remembering and learning from the past.

That “the war continues to rage,” the statement concluded, “makes our mission all the more urgent.”

Original article by COMMON DREAMS STAFF republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Israeli President Herzog Opens Holocaust Museum In Amsterdam … ›

With Genocide in Gaza, the Word ‘Never’ Has Been Stripped From ‘Never Again’

Continue ReadingInstead of Holocaust Museum, Detour Signs Direct Israel’s Herzog to The Hague

Media Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain

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Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Pro-Palestinians in New York City join “Shut down colonial feminism” rally in front of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s office, U.N. Women office and New York Times building on Friday, January 12, 2024. (Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza.

America’s corporate media serves as a key cog in the machinery of genocide.

Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.

As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.

This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

How does a Palestinian-American with family in the region reconcile the disconnect between “reality” and the “story” our press is “telling”?

Consider a day in the life in Gaza: Palestinian schools, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and heritage sites are being systematically destroyed. Civilians, nearly half children, are being murdered on a mass scale (over 30,000 dead, nearly half children). The calculated deprivation of food and water is literally starving families to death. Babies are being born into a living hell, with screams of terror, the ear-piercing explosions of limb-searing U.S.-made bombs, and the painful moans of their parents among the first sounds they hear. The electricity powering the oxygen machines keeping sick patients alive cut off, leaving them to struggle to gulp each of their final breaths. Amputations of children’s limbs without anesthesia with barbed wire have become obscenely routine. Broken, but alive, Palestinian bodies riddled with shrapnel require each piece to be pulled from their flesh. Hungry children are found dead with single Israeli sniper shots to the head because they made the mistake of seeking out food from an aid truck. The deliberate decimation of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has left families unable to communicate with one another, or with the world, allowing daily atrocities to become increasingly invisible and unreported.

For those fighting for survival in Gaza, there is nowhere left to run, nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

American Media’s Israel Bias and Censoring Journalists

Quantitative analyses conducted by The Intercept, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and an independent collective of U.S. journalists, writers, and media makers of coverage in The York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times lay bare our news media’s dramatic pro-Israel bias. The litany of press failings are disturbing in their sheer scope and intention. Findings included the systematic undermining of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim perspectives and the invocation of inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. Misinformation spread by Israeli officials is commonly printed along with consistent failures to scrutinize Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. Israeli deaths are disproportionately emphasized, and more humanizing language is used to describe them than Palestinians. This is to name just a few.

Case-in-point: In what’s now being called the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians while waiting for food from desperately needed aid trucks. Leading news media descriptions referred to the slaughter as “food aid deaths,” “food aid-related deaths,” “chaotic incident,” and “reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy.”

Do these headlines properly convey the massacre of starving civilians?

The New York Times: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”

The Washington Post: “Chaotic Aid Delivery Turns Deadly as Israeli, Gazan Officials Trade Blame”

The Guardian: “Biden Says Gaza Food Aid-Related Deaths Complicate Cease-Fire Talks”

BBC: “More Than 100 Killed as Crowd Waits for Aid, Hamas-Run Health Ministry Says”

Sadly, censored journalists who speak out are paying the price. The Los Angeles Times recently banned 38 journalists from covering Gaza for at least three months after they signed an open letter criticizing Western newsrooms for their biased reporting on Israel and their role in dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

But it’s not just print that is to blame. The Guardian reported the accounts of six CNN staffers from multiple newsrooms, including more than a dozen internal memos and emails, finding that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict pro-Israel guidelines on coverage. Every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau—which has close ties with Israel’s military—before broadcast or publication.

In light of these exposes, it’s no wonder then, that after four months of some of the most indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians in human history, a global public outcry, and overwhelming support for a cease-fire in the United Nations, the U.S. continues to fund the slaughter and block international efforts to end it.

Holding Media Accountable, Supporting Journalists, and Promoting Independent News

There is no shortage of ways people can help bring this nightmare to an end. Among them should include pressure campaigns on the corporate media to commit to journalistic integrity and truth. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times have a unique opportunity to educate millions by providing rigorous, evidence-based reporting that could serve to end the ongoing genocide—rather than enable it.

Petitions to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable deserve support. But petitions aren’t enough.  (including protests, boycotts, and sit-ins) and strategies that target these institutions’ advertisers, revenues, and reputational interests are also required.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow.

Over 122 journalists, more than any war in history, have been killed in Gaza. Journalists seeking to put their own lives at risk to report the truth must be protected. And journalists who have stories to tell about the censorship they have endured must be encouraged to tell them, anonymously if necessary.

Finally, independent, non-corporate news serves as dependable sources of fact-based information and a powerful check on the official narratives of their corporate counterparts. Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza. Thankfully, these alternatives exist, and need our support, from Pacifica radio to a long list of independent news sites.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow. “Never again” is not meant to be a phrase of remembrance, but a call to action. Let’s not let the corporate media forget it.

Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingMedia Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain