{"id":113011,"date":"2018-06-20T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-20T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=113011"},"modified":"2018-06-19T16:19:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T15:19:49","slug":"the-great-march-of-return-the-gaza-sniper-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/06\/the-great-march-of-return-the-gaza-sniper-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great March of Return: The Gaza Sniper Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo country would act with greater restraint than Israel.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the UN<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

10 Jun 2018 – <\/em>The Gaza Sniper Massacre in response to the Great Return March is one more milestone in Palestinian resistance and yet another frightening episode in the Israeli apartheid narrative of cruel and excessive violence, a shameful sequel of crimes for which there exists no adjudicative tribunal available to the victimized party to pursue justice. The post that follows consists of juxtaposing news items, a searing opinion piece by the courageously uncompromising Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and a wide-ranging brilliant commentary by my friend, Jim Kavanaugh. The post and is dedicated to the memory of Razan al-Najjar, the brave 21year old paramedic mortally shot while tending Palestinian demonstrators wounded at or near the Gaza fence. This young woman epitomized the purity of nonviolent yet heroic resistance, an identity given historical depth by her joy for life and her supreme sacrifice imposed by sniper brutality.<\/p>\n

The Israeli political leadership and military commanders must be presumed to have chosen such a display of excessive and vindictive violence for a clear political objective, which will remain undisclosed. It would seem to be taking advantage of having unlimited support from the Trump presidency and the most favorable regional political situation of their history, but we may still ask \u2018to what end?\u2019 My best guess is that the effort was designed to convince the people of Gaza, more than Hamas, that resistance, and especially unarmed resistance was futile. Without a diplomatic path and with the annexationist path wide open, Israel would benefit from a Palestinian acknowledgement that the struggle is over, and they have lost. The Great March of Return was a defiant refusal to concede defeat, no doubt angering Israel, and inflicting a major defeat in the other war\u2014the Legitimacy War being fought for hearts and minds on the basis of seizing the high moral and political ground.<\/p>\n

Finally, we need to understand that the problem of winning the Legitimacy War is mostly a struggle to have the truth heard, to have it understood on all the major issues in dispute, law and morality are aligned with the Palestinian demands, but this has so far proved politically irrelevant as geopolitics and military capabilities strongly lean in an Israeli direction. Can Palestinian resistance as reinforced by a growing global solidarity movement overcome these Israeli advantages? Time will tell. So far the corporatized media has sided with Israel, which is a battlefield in the Legitimacy War where the Palestinians have mainly fared badly.<\/p>\n

******************************<\/p>\n

(1) The Free Gaza Movement<\/h2>\n

Please share this news with everyone you can think of. The only way we have a hope that these brave sailors will be safe is if the news gets out. There has been very little coverage so far. This is what we have found in the past day.<\/p>\n

Quds News Network<\/strong>\u00b7<\/p>\n

For the first time,\u00a0#Gaza<\/u>\u00a0will attempt to break the 12-year-long siege by sea<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, ships will set sail with a number of injured Gazans and patients abroad, carrying the hopes and dreams of the Palestinian people for freedom.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s Gaza flotilla will coincide with the 8th anniversary of an Israeli attack on the Turkish \u201cMavi Marmara\u201d flotilla, in which nine Turkish activists were killed when the Israeli navy attacked the vessel in international waters. A tenth activist died nearly four years later, succumbing to injuries sustained during the raid.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.middleeastmonitor.com\/20180527-gaza-boats-will-attempt-to-break-israel-navy-siege-on-tuesday\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-israel-palestinians-violence\/israeli-air-strikes-target-boat-moored-in-gaza-residents-idUSKCN1IO06T<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/05\/boats-carrying-gaza-patients-set-bid-break-israel-blockade-180527150238689.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Greta Berlin, Co-Founder, the Free Gaza movement<\/p>\n

*****************************<\/p>\n

(2) Jonathan COOK \u2018LETTER FROM NAZARETH\u201d<\/h2>\n

The flames that killed Fathi Harb should make us all burn with guilt and shame<\/strong><\/p>\n

The National \u2013 27 May 2018<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In part, Harb was driven to this terrible act of self-destruction out of despair.<\/p>\n

After a savage, decade-long Israeli blockade by land, sea and air, Gaza is like a car running on fumes. The United Nations has repeatedly warned that the enclave will be uninhabitable within a few years.<\/p>\n

Over that same decade, Israel has intermittently pounded Gaza into ruins, in line with the Israeli army\u2019s Dahiya doctrine. The goal is to decimate the targeted area, turning life back to the Stone Age so that the population is too preoccupied with making ends meet to care about the struggle for freedom.<\/p>\n

Both of these kinds of assault have had a devastating impact on inhabitants\u2019 psychological health.<\/p>\n

Harb would have barely remembered a time before Gaza was an open-air prison and one where a 1,000kg Israeli bomb might land near his home.<\/p>\n

In an enclave where two-thirds of young men are unemployed, he had no hope of finding work. He could not afford a home for his young family and he was about to have another mouth to feed.<\/p>\n

Doubtless, all of this contributed to his decision to burn himself to death.<\/p>\n

But self-immolation is more than suicide. That can be done quietly, out of sight, less gruesomely. In fact, figures suggest that suicide rates in Gaza have rocketed in recent years.<\/p>\n

But public self-immolation is associated with protest.<\/p>\n

A Buddhist monk famously turned himself into a human fireball in Vietnam in 1963 in protest at the persecution of his co-religionists. Tibetans have used self-immolation to highlight Chinese oppression, Indians to decry the caste system, and Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs once used it to protest Soviet rule.<\/p>\n

But more likely for Harb, the model was Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in late 2010 after officials humiliated him once too often. His public death triggered a wave of protests across the Middle East that became the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n

Bouazizi\u2019s self-immolation suggests its power to set our consciences on fire. It is the ultimate act of individual self-sacrifice, one that is entirely non-violent except to the victim himself, performed altruistically in a greater, collective cause.<\/p>\n

Who did Harb hope to speak to with his shocking act?<\/p>\n

In part, according to his family, he was angry with the Palestinian leadership. His family was trapped in the unresolved feud between Gaza\u2019s rulers, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. That dispute has led the PA to cut the salaries of its workers in Gaza, including Harb\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

But Harb undoubtedly had a larger audience in mind too.<\/p>\n

Until a few years ago, Hamas regularly fired rockets out of the enclave in a struggle both to end Israel\u2019s continuing colonisation of Palestinian land and to liberate the people of Gaza from their Israeli-made prison.<\/p>\n

But the world rejected the Palestinians\u2019 right to resist violently and condemned Hamas as \u201cterrorists\u201d. Israel\u2019s series of military rampages in Gaza to silence Hamas were meekly criticised in the West as \u201cdisproportionate\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where there is still direct contact with Israeli Jews, usually as settlers or soldiers, watched as Gaza\u2019s armed resistance failed to prick the world\u2019s conscience.<\/p>\n

So some took up the struggle as individuals, targeting Israelis or soldiers at checkpoints. They grabbed a kitchen knife to attack Israelis or soldiers at checkpoints, or rammed them with a car, bus or bulldozer.<\/p>\n

Again, the world sided with Israel. Resistance was not only futile, it was denounced as illegitimate.<\/p>\n

Since late March, the struggle for liberation has shifted back to Gaza. Tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians have massed weekly close to Israel\u2019s fence encaging them.<\/p>\n

The protests are intended as confrontational civil disobedience, a cry to the world for help and a reminder that Palestinians are being slowly choked to death.<\/p>\n

Israel has responded repeatedly by spraying the demonstrators with live ammunition, seriously wounding many thousands and killing more than 100. Yet again, the world has remained largely impassive.<\/p>\n

In fact, worse still, the demonstrators have been cast as Hamas stooges. The United States ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, blamed the victims under occupation, saying Israel had a right to \u201cdefend its border\u201d, while the British government claimed the protests were \u201chijacked by terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n

None of this can have passed Harb by.<\/p>\n

When Palestinians are told they can \u201cprotest peacefully\u201d, western governments mean quietly, in ways that Israel can ignore, in ways that will not trouble consciences or require any action.<\/p>\n

In Gaza, the Israeli army is renewing the Dahiya doctrine, this time by shattering thousands of Palestinian bodies rather than infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Harb understood only too well the West\u2019s hypocrisy in denying Palestinians any right to meaningfully resist Israel\u2019s campaign of destruction.<\/p>\n

The flames that engulfed him were intended also to consume us with guilt and shame. And doubtless more in Gaza will follow his example.<\/p>\n

Will Harb be proved right? Can the West be shamed into action?<\/p>\n

Or will we continue blaming the victims to excuse our complicity in seven decades of outrages committed against the Palestinian people?<\/p>\n

(3) The Israel Massacre Forces<\/h2>\n

The shooting on the Gaza border shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes<\/p>\n

Gideon Levy<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/opinion\/.premium-the-israel-massacre-forces-1.5962852<\/a><\/p>\n

The death counter ticked away wildly. One death every 30 minutes. Again. Another one. One more. Israel was busy preparing for the seder night. TV stations continued broadcasting their nonsense.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to imagine what would have happened if a settler had been stabbed \u2013 on-site broadcasts, throw open the studios. But in Gaza the Israel Defense Forces continued to massacre mercilessly, with a horrific rhythm, as Israel celebrated Passover.<\/p>\n

If there was any concern, it was because soldiers couldn\u2019t celebrate the seder. By nightfall the, all of them by live fire, with more than 750 wounded. Tanks and sharpshooters against unarmed civilians. That\u2019s called a massacre. There\u2019s no other word for it.<\/p>\n

Comic relief was provided by the army spokesman, who announced in the evening: \u201cA shooting attack was foiled. Two terrorists approached the fence and fired at our soldiers.\u201d This came after the 12th Palestinian fatality and who knows how many wounded.<\/p>\n

Sharpshooters fired at hundreds of civilians but two Palestinians who dared return fire at the soldiers who were massacring them are \u201cterrorists,\u201d their actions labeled \u201cterror attacks\u201d and their sentence \u2013 death. The lack of self-awareness has never sunk to such depths in the IDF.<\/p>\n

As usual, the media lent its appalling support. After 15 deaths Or Heller on Channel 10 News declared that the most serious incident of the day had been the firing by the two Palestinians. Dan Margalit \u201csaluted\u201d the army. Israel was brainwashed again and sat down to a festive meal in a spirit of self-satisfaction. And then people recited \u201cPour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not,\u201d impressed by the spread of plagues and enthusing at the mass murder of babies (the killing of the first-born Egyptians, the 10th plague).<\/p>\n

Christian Good Friday and the Jewish seder night became a day of blood for the Palestinians in Gaza. You can\u2019t even call it a war crime because there was no war there.<\/p>\n

The test by which the IDF and the pathological indifference of public opinion should be judged is the following: What would happen if Jewish Israeli demonstrators, ultra-Orthodox <\/a>or others, threatened to invade the Knesset? Would such insane live fire by tanks or sharpshooters be understood by the public? Would the murder of 15 Jewish demonstrators pass with silence? And if several dozen Palestinians managed to enter Israel, would that justify a massacre? The killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes. There\u2019s nothing cheaper in Israel than Palestinian blood.<\/strong> If there were a hundred or even a thousand deaths Israel would still \u201csalute\u201d the IDF. This is the army whose commander, the good and moderate Gadi Eisenkot, is received with such pride by Israelis. Of course, in the holiday media interviews, no one asked him about the anticipated massacre and no one will ask him now either.<\/p>\n

But an army that prides itself on shooting a farmer on his land, showing the video on its website in order to intimidate Gazans; an army that pits tanks against civilians and boasts of one hundred snipers waiting for the demonstrators is an army that has lost all restraint. As if there weren\u2019t other measures. As if the IDF had the authority or right to prevent demonstrations in Gaza, threatening bus drivers not to transport protesters in territory where the occupation has long ended, as everyone knows.<\/p>\n

Despairing young men sneak in from Gaza, armed with ridiculous weapons, marching dozens of kilometers without hurting anyone, only waiting to be caught so as to escape Gaza\u2019s poverty in an Israeli jail. This doesn\u2019t touch anyone\u2019s conscience either. The main thing is that the IDF proudly presents its catch. Palestinian President Mahmous Abbas<\/a> is responsible for the situation in Gaza. And Hamas, of course. And Egypt. And the Arab world and the whole world. Just not Israel. It left Gaza and Israeli soldiers never commit massacres. The names were published in the evening. One man was rising from his prayers, another was shot while fleeing. The names won\u2019t move anyone. Mohammed al-Najar, Omar Abu Samur, Ahmed Odeh, Sari Odeh, Bader al-Sabag. This space is too small, to our horror, to list all their names.<\/p>\n

(4) Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy<\/h2>\n

By Jim Kavanagh <\/em>June 4, 2018<\/p>\n

The Great March of Return is a startling, powerful expression of Palestinian identity and resistance. Thousands of Palestinians have come out, bravely and unapologetically, to say: \u201cWe refuse to remain invisible. We reject any attempt to assign us to the discard pile of history. We will exercise our fundamental right to go home<\/em>.\u201d They have done this unarmed, in the face of Israel\u2019s use of deadly armed force against targets (children, press, medics) deliberately chosen to demonstrate the Jewish state\u2019s unapologetic determination to force them back into submissive exile by any means necessary. By doing this repeatedly over the last few weeks, these incredibly brave men, women, and children have done more than decades of essays and books to strip the aura of virtue from Zionism that\u2019s befogged Western liberals\u2019 eyes for 70 years.<\/p>\n

What the Israelis have done over the past few weeks\u2014killing at least 112and wounding over 13,000people (332 with life-threatening injuries and 27 requiring amputation)\u2014is a historical crime that stands alongside the Sharpeville Massacre<\/a> (69 killed), Bloody Sunday<\/a>(14 killed), and the Repression as a defining moment in an ongoing struggle for justice and freedom. Like those events, this month\u2019s slaughter may\u00a0<\/em>become a turning point for what John Pilger correctly calls \u201cthe longest occupation and resistance in modern times\u201d\u2014the continuing, unfinished subjugation of the Palestinian people, which, like apartheid and Jim Crow, requires constant armed repression and at least occasional episodes of extermination.<\/p>\n

The American government, political parties, and media, which support and make possible this crime are disgraceful, criminal accomplices. American politicians, media, and people, who feel all aglow about professing their back-in-the-day support (actual, for some; retrospectively-imagined, for most) of the Civil-Rights movement in the American South and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa but continue to ignore the Palestinian struggle for justice against Zionism, because saying peep one about it might cost them some discomfort, are disgraceful, cowardly hypocrites.<\/p>\n

You know, the millions of ant-racist #Resistors who are waiting for a quorum of Natalie Portmans and cool elite, preferably Jewish, personalities to make criticism of Israel acceptable before finding the courage to express the solidarity with the Palestinian people they\u2019ve always had in their hearts. Back in the day, they\u2019d be waiting for Elvis to denounce Jim Crow before deciding that it\u2019s the right time to side with MLK, Malcolm, and Fred Hampton against Bull Connor, George Wallace, and William F. Buckley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dis\/Ingenuity<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bankruptcy of purportedly anti-racist and humanitarian liberal-Zionist ideology and ideological institutions reached an apogee with the eruption of various apologia for Israel in the wake of this crime, not-so-subtly embedded in mealy-mouthed \u201cregret the tragic loss of life\u201d bleats across the mediascape. All the usual rhetorical subjects were rounded up and thrown into ideological battle: \u201cIsrael has every right to defend its borders\u201d (NYT Editorial Board<\/a>); \u00a0the \u201cmisogynists and homophobes of Hamas\u201d orchestrated the whole thing (Bret Stephens<\/a>); the protestors are either Hamas \u201cterrorists\u201d or Hamas-manipulated robots, to be considered \u201cnominal civilians\u201d (WaPo<\/a>). And, of course, the recurring pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance: Human Shields!<\/em><\/p>\n

Somewhere in his or her discourse, virtually every American pundit is dutifully echoing the Israeli point laid down by Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014: that Hamas uses the \u201ctelegenically dead\u201d to further \u201ctheir cause.\u201d The whole March of Return action is \u201creckless endangerment, bottomlessly cynical\u201d (Stephens). Women and children were \u201cdispatched\u201d to \u201clead the charges\u201d although they had been \u201camply forewarned\u2026of the mortal risk.\u201d It\u2019s a \u201cpolitics of human sacrifice\u201d (Tobin and Tom Friedman<\/a>), staged by Hamas, \u201cthe terrorist group that controls [Gazans\u2019] lives,\u201d to \u201cget people killed on camera.\u201d (Matt Friedman, NYT Op-Ed<\/a>). The White House, via spokesman,\u00a0Raj Shah, adopts this line as its official response<\/a>\u201cThe responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas,\u201d which \u201cintentionally and cynically provoke[ed] this response\u201d in \u201ca gruesome\u2026 propaganda attempt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shmuel Rosner takes this \u201chuman shields\u201d trope to its ultimate \u201cno apologies\u201d conclusion in his notorious op-ed<\/a> in the NYT, \u201cIsrael Needs to Protect Its Borders. By Whatever Means Necessary.\u201d Feeling \u201cno need to engage in ing\u00e9nue mourning,\u201d Rosner forthrightly asserts that \u201cGuarding the border [or whatever it is] was more important than avoiding killing.\u201d They want human sacrifice; we\u2019ll give \u2018em human sacrifice!<\/em><\/p>\n

He acknowledges that Gazans \u201cmarched because they are desperate and frustrated. Because living in Gaza is not much better than living in hell,\u201d and that \u201cthe people of Gaza \u2026 deserve sympathy and pity.\u201d But the Palestinians were seeking \u201cto violate [Israel\u2019s] territorial integrity,\u201d so \u201cIsrael had no choice\u201d but to \u201cdraw a line that cannot be crossed,\u201d and kill people trying to leave that hell. It was \u201cthe only way to ultimately persuade the Palestinians to abandon the futile battle for things they cannot get (\u201creturn,\u201d control of Jerusalem, the elimination of Israel).\u201dThe alternative is \u201cmore demonstrations \u2014 and therefore more bloodshed, mostly Palestinian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he acknowledges that \u201cthe interests of Palestinians are [not] at the top of the list of my priorities,\u201d Shmuel nonetheless feels comfortable speaking on their behalf. He sincerely \u201cbelieve[s] Israel\u2019s current policy toward Gaza ultimately benefits not only Israel but also the Palestinians.\u201dFollowing the wisdom of \u201cthe Jewish sages\u201d (featuring Nick Lowe<\/a>?) he opines: \u201cThose who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fear not, Shmuel, for the pitiable people of Gaza: Knesset member Avi Dichter reassures us that the Israeli army<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em><\/strong>has enough bullets for everyone. If every man, woman and child in Gaza gathers at the gate, in other words, there is a bullet for every one of them. They can all be killed, no problem.\u201dFor their ultimate benefit.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zionist tough love.<\/p>\n

There is nothing new here. Israel has always understood the ghetto it created in Gaza. In 2004, Arnon Soffer, a Haifa University demographer and advisor to Ariel Sharon, said: \u201cwhen 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it\u2019s going to be a human catastrophe. \u2026 The pressure at the border will be awful. \u2026 So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day\u2026.If we don\u2019t kill, we will cease to exist.\u201d And when challenged again in 2007<\/a>about \u201cIsrael\u2019s willingness to do what he prescribes\u2026 \u2013 i.e., put a bullet in the head of anyone who tries to climb over the security fence,\u201d Soffer replied with a shrug:. \u201cIf we don\u2019t, we\u2019ll cease to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soffer\u2019s only plaint:\u00a0\u201cThe only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.\u201d A reprise of Golda Meir\u2019s \u201cshooting and crying<\/a>\u201d lament; \u201cWe can never forgive [the Arabs] for forcing us to kill their children.\u201d Ing\u00e9nue mourning, anyone?<\/p>\n

We can point out the factual errors and concrete cruelties that all these apologias rely on.<\/p>\n

We can point out that Hamas did not \u201corchestrate\u201d these demonstrations, and that the thousands of Gazans who are risking their lives are not instruments. \u201cYou people always looked down at us,\u201d one Gazan told<\/a> Amira Hass, \u201cso it\u2019s hard for you to understand that no one demonstrates in anyone else\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can point out that the fence the Israelis are defending is not a \u201cborder\u201d (What country are the Gazans in?), but the boundary of a ghetto, what Conservative British PM David Cameron called<\/a>a giant \u201cprison camp\u201d and Israeli scholar Baruch Kimmerling called<\/a>\u201cthe largest concentration camp ever to exist.\u201d It\u2019s a camp that tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced into by the Zionist army. The right of those families (80% of Gaza\u2019s population) to leave that confinement and go home\u00a0<\/em>is a basic human right and black-letter international law.<\/a><\/p>\n

We can point out that Gazans aren\u2019t just trying to cross a line in the sand, they are trying to break a siege,<\/em> and that: \u201cThe blockade is by definition an act of war, imposed and enforced through armed violence. Never in history have blockade and peace existed side by side. \u2026There is no difference in civil law between murdering a man by slow strangulation or killing him by a shot in the head.\u201d Those were, after all, the words of<\/a> Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, when he was justifying Israel\u2019s attack on Egypt in 1967. And they are confirmed today by New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who says<\/a>: \u201cThe blockade of Gaza has to be lifted immediately and unconditionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can point out that there can be no excuse in terms of modern international law or human rights principles for Israel\u2019s weeks-long \u201ccalculated, unlawful<\/a>\u201d (HRW) mass killing and crippling or unarmed protestors who were standing quietly, kneeling and praying, walking away, and tending to the wounded hundreds of meters from any \u201cfence\u201d\u2014shootings carried out not in any \u201cfog of war\u201d confusion, but with precise, targeted sniper fire (which, per standard military practice, would be from two-man <\/em>teams).<\/p>\n

As the IDF bragged<\/a>, in a quickly deleted tweet:\u00a0 \u201cNothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.\u201d Indeed, as Human Rights Watch reports<\/a>, senior\u00a0Israeli\u00a0officials ordered<\/em> snipers to shoot demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life, and many demonstrators were shot hundreds of meters, and walking away, from the fence.<\/p>\n

We can point out that the IDF\u2019s quick deletion of that tweet indicates its consciousness of guilt <\/span>awareness, in the face of proliferating images of gruesome, unsupportable casualties, of how bad a Rosner-like \u201cno apology, no regrets\u201d discourse sounds. After all, it\u2019s hard, since they \u201cknow where every bullet landed,\u201d not to conclude the Israelis deliberately targeted journalists and medical personnel, who were never threatening to \u201cviolate [Israel\u2019s] territorial integrity.\u201d There have been at least 66 journalists wounded and 2 killed<\/a>wearing clearly marked blue \u201cPRESS\u201d flak jackets. And everyone should see the powerful interview with Canadian doctor, Tarek Loubani, who was shot in the leg, describing how, after six weeks with no paramedic casualties, suddenly:<\/p>\n

\u201cin one day, 19 paramedics\u201418 wounded plus one killed\u2014and myself were all injured, so\u2014or were all shot with live ammunition. We were all\u2026 away during a lull, without smoke, without any chaos at all, and we were targeted\u2026So, it\u2019s very, very hard to believe that the Israelis who shot me and the Israelis who shot my other colleagues\u2026 It\u2019s very hard to believe that they didn\u2019t know who we were, they didn\u2019t know what we were doing, and that they were aiming at anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was on another day that this 21-year-old \u201cnominal civilian\u201d nurse, Razan al-Najjar, was killed by an Israeli sniper while tending to the wounded.<\/p>\n

Of course, pointing all this out won\u2019t mean anything to these apologists or to those who give them a platform. Everybody knows the ethico-political double standard at work here. No other country in the world would get away with such blatant crimes against humanity without suffering a torrent of criticism from Western politicians and media pundits, including every liberal and conservative Zionist apologist cited above. Razan\u2019s face would be shining from every page and screen of every Western media outlet, day after day, for weeks. Even an \u201callied\u201d nation would get at least a public statement or diplomatic protest; any disfavored countries would face calls for punishment ranging from economic sanctions to \u201chumanitarian intervention.\u201d Israel gets praise from America\u2019s UN Ambassador.<\/p>\n

Indeed, if the American government \u201cdefended\u201d its own actual international border in this way, liberal Zionists would be on the highest of moral saddles excoriating the Trump administration for its crime against humanity. And\u2014forgetting, as is obligatory, the thousands of heavily-armed Jewish Zionists who regularly force their way across actual international borders with impunity\u2014if \u00a0some Arab country\u2019s snipers killed hundreds and wounded tens of thousands of similarly unarmed Jewish Zionist men, women, children, and paraplegics who were demonstrating at an actual international border for the right to return to their biblical homeland, we all know the howling and gnashing of morally outraged teeth that would ensue from every corner of the Western political and media universe. No \u201cGuarding the border was more important than avoiding killing\u201d would be published in the NYT,<\/em>or tolerated in polite company, for that scenario.<\/p>\n

Nathan J. Robinson got to the bottom line in his wonderful shredding of Rosner\u2019s argument, it comes down to: \u201cAny amount of Palestinian death, however large, was justified to prevent any amount of risk to Israelis, however small.\u201d Western governments and media have fashioned, and are doing their utmost to sustain, an ethico-political universe where Israel can \u201clay siege to a million people, \u2018bomb them occasionally,\u2019\u00a0and then kill them when they show up at the wall to throw rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there a way anymore of not seeing the racism of Zionism? Can we just say, once and for all, that the interests of Palestinians\u2014not as pitiable creatures but as active, fully, enfranchised human beings\u2014are not anywhere\u00a0<\/em>on the list of Soffer\u2019s or Dichter\u2019s or Rosner\u2019s (or the Western media\u2019s or governments\u2019) priorities, and refuse any of their pitifully disingenuous expressions of concern for the Palestinians\u2019 benefit? Nobody gets to put \u201cFor your own benefit,\u201d in front of \u201cSurrender or I\u2019ll put a bullet in your head.\u201d The only<\/em> concern any of these commentators have for the people of Gaza is that they submissively accept their forced displacement and imprisonment in \u201cthe largest concentration camp ever to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does the vulgarity of it shock you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201chuman shields, human sacrifice\u201d trope, which all these apologias hang on, is particularly mendacious and hypocritical as used by Zionists. It\u2019s also a classic example of projection.<\/em><\/p>\n

This\u00a0<\/em>is a \u201chuman shield\u201d:<\/p>\n

It is Israel <\/em>which has repeatedly used the specific, prohibited tactic of using children as \u201chuman shields\u201d\u00a0<\/em>to protect its military forces. According to<\/a>the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, Israel is guilty of the \u201ccontinuous use\u00a0<\/em>of Palestinian children as human shields and informants.\u201d Besides this namby-pamby UN Committee that no red-blooded American\/Zionist would pay any attention to, the High Court of Justice in Israel\u00a0<\/em>identified and denounced the \u201chuman shield\u201d procedures the IDF acknowledged\u00a0<\/a>and defended\u00a0<\/a>using 1,200 times<\/em>. These include \u201cthe \u2018neighbor procedure<\/a>,\u2019 whereby neighbors of wanted Palestinians are forced to go into the wanted man\u2019s house ahead of troops, in case it is booby-trapped,\u201d and Israeli \u201csoldiers forcibly position[ing] members of [a] family, including the children, at the windows of [a] home and proceed[ing] to fire from behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, when Zionists use a \u201chuman shields\u201d argument as a moral cudgel against unarmed civilian protestors, and a moral justification for a powerful army, which brazenly uses children to shield its own soldiers, killing scores of those protestors by the day\u2014well, it\u2019s not a stretch to see this charge is a projection of Zionists\u2019 own pattern of thought and behavior.<\/p>\n

Besides being an ongoing tactic of today\u2019s Israeli army, \u201chuman shields\u201d and the \u201chuman sacrifice\u201d they imply were an integral element of the Zionist narrative\u2014expressly articulated and embraced, with no apology, as a necessity for the establishment of a Jewish State.<\/p>\n

Take a look at what Edward Said in 2001 called<\/a>: \u201cthe main narrative model that [still] dominates American thinking\u201d about Israel, and David Ben-Gurion called \u201cas a piece of propaganda, the best thing ever written about Israel.\u201d It\u2019s the<\/em>\u00a0\u201c\u2019Zionist epic\u2019\u2026identified by many commentators as having been enormously influential in stimulating Zionism and support for Israel in the United States.\u201d In this piece of iconic American culture, an American cultural icon\u2014more sympathetically liberal than whom there is not\u2014explains why he, as a Zionist, is not bluffing in his threat to blow up his ship and its 600 Jewish refugees if they are not allowed to enter the territory they want:<\/p>\n

\u2013You mean you\u2019d still set it [200 lbs. of dynamite] off, knowing you\u2019ve lost?\u2026 Without any regard for the lives you\u2019d be destroying?\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Every person on this ship is a soldier. The only weapon we have to fight with is our willingness to die.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013But for what purpose?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Call it publicity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Publicity<\/strong>?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, publicity. A stunt to attract attention\u2026.Does the vulgarity of it shock you?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More Zionist tough love.<\/p>\n

In the face of the scurrilous \u201chuman shield\u201d accusation against Palestinians now being used to denigrate the killed, maimed, and still-fighting protestors in Gaza, we would do well to recall Paul Newman\u2019s Zionist-warrior, \u201cno apology,\u201d argument for 600 dead Jewish men, women, and children as a publicity stunt to gain the sympathy of the world.<\/p>\n

Lest we dismiss this as a fiction, remember that Paul Newman\u2019s fictional boat, Exodus<\/em>, is based on a real ship, the SS Patria<\/em><\/a>. In 1940, the Patria<\/em>was carrying 1800 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe whom the British authorities refused entry into Palestine. While the Patria\u00a0<\/em>was in the port of Haifa, it was blown up and sunk by Munya Mardor<\/a> on the orders of the Haganah<\/em>, which did not want Jewish refugees going anywhere but Palestine. At least 267 people were killed. The Haganah\u00a0<\/em>put out the story that the passengers had blown up the ship themselves \u2013 a story that lasted 17 years, nourishing the imagination of Leon Uris, author of the\u00a0Exodus\u00a0<\/em>fiction. This wasn\u2019t a commander or leading organization urging people to knowingly take a deadly risk in confronting a powerful enemy; it was \u201ctheir\u201d self-proclaimed army blowing its people up with no warning\u2014and then falsely claiming they did it to themselves! Nobody who wouldn\u2019t use \u201cbottomlessly cynical\u201d to denigrate the Haganah should be using it to denigrate Gazans.<\/p>\n

At a crucial moment in history, it was Zionists who practiced a foundational \u201chuman shield\u201d strategy, holding the victims of Nazism \u201chostage\u201d to the Zionist \u201cstatehood\u201d project \u2013 as none other than the publisher of the New York Times,\u00a0<\/em>Arthur Hays Sulzberger, recognized and criticized<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the unfortunate Jews of Europe\u2019s D. P. [Displaced Persons] camps are helpless hostages for whom statehood has been made the only ransom. \u2026 [W]hy in God\u2019s name should the fate of all these unhappy people be subordinated to the single cry of Statehood?<\/p>\n

The Exodus<\/em>\/Patria<\/em>\/Paul Newman\/Haganah willingness to blow up hundreds of Jewish refugees in order to force their way into a desired territory was an attitude endemic to the Zionist movement, and enunciated quite clearly by its leader, David Ben-Gurion<\/a>, as early as 1938: \u201cIf I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter.\u201d You want human sacrifice?\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

(Sulzberger, by the way, \u201copposed political Zionism not solely because of the fate of Jewish refugees because he disliked the \u2018coercive methods\u2019 of Zionists in this country who use economic means to silence those with differing views.\u201d Yes, the NYT! \u00a0<\/em>So change is possible.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Right Is Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the thing: You want to call what the Gazans did\u2014coming out unarmed by the thousands, knowing many of them would be killed by a heavily-armed adversary determined to put them down by whatever means necessary\u2014a \u201cpolitics of human sacrifice\u201d? You are right.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just as you\u2019d be right to say that of the Zionist movement, when it was weak and faced with much stronger adversaries. And just as you\u2019d be right to say it of the unarmed, non-violent Civil Rights Movement, when it faced the rageful determination of the immensely more powerful American South, to preserve the century-old Jim Crow apartheid that was<\/em>its identity, by whatever means necessary.<\/p>\n

Princeon Professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. nailed it when, to the visible discomfort of his MSNBC co-panelists, he responded to the invocation of the White House line that it\u2019s \u201call Hamas\u2019 fault and that they\u2019re using them as tools for propaganda,\u201d with: \u201cThat\u2019s like saying to the children in the\u00a0Children\u2019s March of Birmingham<\/a>\u00a0it was their fault that Bull Connor attacked them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil-rights activists did\u00a0<\/em>put children on the front lines, and put their own and those children\u2019s lives in danger to fight and defeat Jim Crow. They knew there were a lot of people armed and willing to kill them. And children, as well as activists, were killed. And those actions were<\/em>supported (but by no means \u201corchestrated\u201d) by \u201cextremist\u201d organizations\u2014i.e., the Communist Party. At the time, conservatives attacked Freedom Riders with the same arguments that Zionists are now using to attack Gaza Return Marchers.<\/p>\n

All\u00a0<\/em>unarmed, non-violent but disruptive, Gandhian strategies to eliminate\u00a0<\/em>entrenched systems of colonial-apartheid rule will knowingly sacrifice many lives to attain their victory. Call it a politics of human sacrifice if you want. I won\u2019t make any ing\u00e9nue objections. But it\u2019s not a sign of the subjugated people\u2019s cynicism; it\u2019s a result of their predicament.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman sacrifice\u201d defines the kind of choices a desperate and subjugated people are forced to make in the face of armed power they cannot yet overcome. A militarily-weak insurgent\/liberation movement must use an effectively self-sacrificing strategy of moral suasion. That is now a standard and powerful weapon in political struggle. (Though moral suasion alone will not win their rights. Never has. Never will.)<\/p>\n

For Gazans, it\u2019s the choice between living in a hell of frustration, misery, insult, confinement, and slow death, or resisting and taking the high risk of instant death. It\u2019s the choice faced by people whose \u201cdreams are killed\u201d by Israel\u2019s siege and forced expulsion, and who are willing to risk their lives\u00a0 \u201cfor the world\u2019s attention<\/a>.\u201d Young men like Saber al-Gerim<\/a>, for whom, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter to me if they shoot me or not. Death or life \u2014 it\u2019s the same thing.\u201d Or the one who told\u00a0<\/a>Amira Hass: \u201cWe die anyway, so let it be in front of the cameras.\u201d Or 21-year-old Fathi Harb<\/a>, who burned himself to death last Sunday. Or Jihadi al-Najjar<\/a>, who had to make the choice between continuing to care for his blind father (\u201cHe was my sight. He helped me in everything, from going to the bathroom to taking a shower to providing for me\u2026I saw life through Jihadi\u2019s eyes.\u201d) or being killed by an Israeli sniper while, as his mother Tahani says \u201cdefending the rights of his family and his people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tough choices, to get the world\u2019s attention. This is the kind of choice imposed on the untermenschen\u00a0<\/em>of colonial-apartheid regimes. The only weapon they have is their willingness to die. But Gazans won\u2019t get the sympathetically-anguished Paul Newman treatment. Just \u201cbottomlessly cynical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s choice, Sophie\u2019s choice, is now Saber\u2019s and Jihad\u2019s and Fathi\u2019s, and it\u2019s all bad. Maybe some people\u2014comrades and allies in their struggle\u2014have a right to say something about how to deal with that choice. But the one who doesn\u2019t, the one who has no place to say or judge anything about that choice, is the one who is forcing it. Those who are trying to fight their way out of a living hell are not to be lectured to by the devil and his minions.<\/p>\n

So, yes, in a very real sense, for the Palestinians, it is\u00a0<\/em>a politics of human sacrifice\u2014to American liberals, the gods who control their fate.<\/p>\n

By choosing unarmed, death-defying resistance, Palestinians are sacrificing their lives to assuage the faux-pacifist conscience of Americans and Europeans (particularly, I think, liberals), who have decreed from their Olympian moral heights that any other kind of resistance by these people\u00a0<\/em>will be struck down with devastating lightning and thunder.<\/p>\n

Funny, that these are the same gods the Zionists\u00a0<\/u>appealed to seize their desired homeland, and the same gods the civil-rights activists appealed to wrest their freedom from local demons of lesser strength. Because, in their need to feel \u201csympathy and pity,\u201d the sacrifice of human lives seems the only offering to which these gods might respond.<\/p>\n

The Nakba Is Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Israelis and their defenders are right about something else: They cannot allow a single Gazan to cross the boundary. They know it would be a fatal blow to their colonial-supremacist hubris, and the beginning of the end of Zionism\u2014just as Southern segregationists knew that allowing a single black child into the school was going to be the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. Palestinians gaining their basic human rights means Israeli Jews losing their special colonial privileges.<\/p>\n

As Ali Abunimah points out<\/a>, Arnon Soffer was right, when he said: \u201cIf we don\u2019t kill, we will cease to exist,\u201d and Rosner, when he said the Gazans threatened the \u201celimination of Israel.\u201d To continue to exist as the colonial-apartheid polity it is, Israel must maintain strict exclusionist, \u201cno<\/em> right of return,\u201d policies. Per Abunimah: \u201cthe price of a \u2018Jewish state\u2019 is the permanent and irrevocable violation of Palestinians\u2019 rights\u2026If you support Israel\u2019s \u201cright to exist as a Jewish state\u201d in a country whose indigenous Palestinian people today form half the population, then you\u2026 must come to terms with the inevitability of massacres.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening in Gaza is not only, as Abunimah says<\/a>, a \u201creminder\u2026 of the original sin of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the creation of a so-called Jewish state,\u201d it is a continuation\u00a0<\/em>of that unfinished\u00a0<\/em>work of the devil. The Nakba\u00a0<\/em>is now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m all for everybody on both sides of the issue to be aware of the stakes and risks in this struggle, without any disingenuous denials.<\/p>\n

Whether you sympathize with, or denigrate, the choices of people who put their own, their comrades\u2019, and even their children\u2019s, lives at risk is not determined by whether some tactical choices can be characterized as \u201chuman shields, human sacrifice\u201d; it\u2019s determined by what they\u2019re fighting for<\/em>, and what and whom they are fighting against, anywhere your solidarity lies.<\/p>\n

Stage Left<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the core of the disagreement about Gaza (and Palestine in general): There are those\u2014they call themselves Zionists\u2014who think the Palestinians deserve to have been put in that concentration camp, and who stand in solidarity with the soldiers who, by whatever means necessary, are forcing them to stay there. And there are those\u2014the growing numbers who reject Zionism\u2014who stand in solidarity with every human being trying to get out of that camp by whatever means necessary.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a fight\u2014between those breaking out of the prison and those keeping them in; between those seeking equality and those enforcing ethno-religious supremacism; between the colonized and the colonizer. Pick a side. Bret Stephens, Shmuel Rosner, and Tom Friedman have. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Breitbart have. ABC, CBS, (MS)NBC, and Fox have. The Democrats and Republicans and the Congress and the White House have. And they are not shy about it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s past time for American progressives to clearly and unequivocally decide and declare which side they are on. It\u2019s time for professedly humanitarian, egalitarian, pro-human rights, anti-racist, and free-speech progressives to express their support of the Palestinian struggle\u2014on social media, in real-life conversation, and on the street.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to firmly reject the hypocritical discourse of those who would have been belittling any expression of sorrow and outrage over Emmet Till, Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman<\/a>, and the four black schoolgirls\u00a0<\/a>killed in Birmingham, while \u201cing\u00e9nue mourning\u201d the terrible moral quandary in which those disrupters had put Bull Connor\u2019s boys. Don\u2019t shrink from it, talk back to it\u2014every time.<\/em>Make them ashamed to be defending colonialism and apartheid with such patently phony arguments.<\/p>\n

Politically? At a minimum, demand\u00a0<\/em>of any politician who seeks your vote:<\/p>\n

End the blockade of Gaza, immediately and unconditionally. Support BDS. Refuse any attempt to criminalize BDS and anti-Zionism. Stop blocking UN and ICC actions against Israeli crimes. Restrict arms sales to Israel. Reject the hypocritical Zionist apologetics. Refuse any attempt to censor or restrict the internet. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(This last is very important. Nothing has threatened Zionist impunity more than the information available on the internet, and nothing is driving the demand to censor the internet more than the Zionists\u2019 need to shut that off.)<\/p>\n

This is a real, concrete, important resistance. What\u2019ll it cost? Some social discomfort? It\u2019s not sniper fire. Not human sacrifice. Not Saber\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n

Are we at a turning point?\u00a0Some people think this year\u2019s massacre in Gaza will finally attract a sympathetic gaze from the gods and goddesses of the Imperial City. Deliberately and methodically killing, maiming, and wounding thousands of unarmed people over weeks\u2014well, the cruelty, the injustice, the colonialism\u00a0<\/em>is just too obvious to ignore any longer. And I hope that turns out to be so. And I know, Natalie Portman and Roger Waters and Shakira, and\u2014the most serious and hopeful\u2014the young American Jews in groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and IfNotNow. There are\u00a0<\/em>harbingers of change, and we must try.<\/p>\n

I also know there is nothing new here. Thirty years ago<\/em>, a doctor in Gaza said: \u201cWe will sacrifice one or two kids to the struggle \u2014 every family. What can we do? This is a generation of struggle.\u201d It was obvious thirty years ago, and forty years before that. The Nakba <\/em>was then. The Nakba <\/em>is now<\/a>. Was it ever not too obvious to ignore?<\/p>\n

My mother was an actress on Broadway, who once came\u00a0<\/a>to Princeton University to share the stage, and her professional skills, with Jimmy Stewart and other amateur thespians. She played the ing\u00e9nue. Me, I\u2019m not so good at that.<\/p>\n

By all means, regarding Palestine-Israel and the sacrifices and solidarity demanded: No more ing\u00e9nue politics.<\/p>\n

Article printed from http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org<\/a>: \u202ahttps:\/\/www.counterpunch.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

URL to article: \u202ahttps:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/06\/04\/sacrificing-gaza-the-great-march-of-zionist-hypocrisy\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

****************************<\/p>\n

(5) Israeli army frames slain medic Razan al-Najjar as \u2018Hamas human shield\u2019<\/h2>\n

Mondoweiss<\/em> 7 June 2018 by Jonathan Ofir<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just when you thought Israel couldn\u2019t get any lower\u2026 The Israeli army has just released an incitement\u00a0video<\/u>, titled \u201cHamas\u2019 use of human shields must stop\u201d, in which it frames the slain medic\u00a0Razan al-Najjar<\/u><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0as a \u201cHamas human shield\u201d\u2013 a day after it\u00a0claimed<\/u>\u00a0she was killed by accident. This is more than adding insult to injury. This is adding malice to crime. The propaganda effort is based on twisting al-Najjar\u2019s own words. I have consulted with three Arabic experts, who have looked at the original Arabic interview from which the IDF took the \u201chuman shield\u201d text, and it is clear to them beyond a doubt that the IDF was knowingly and cynically manipulating Razan\u2019s words to mean something other than what she said. Bear with me, this requires close analysis: First the video features Razan throwing away a gas grenade in the field.\u00a0 Obviously, this is one of the tear gas grenades fired by the Israeli army, which she is taking up and throwing to a safe distance. By this visual, the IDF is trying to create the impression that Razan is a kind of \u2018combatant\u2019. Then comes the short clip from an interview. The original\u00a0interview<\/u>\u00a0has been found to be from Al Mayadeen News, a channel based in Beirut. The IDF video runs subtitles, saying: \u201cI am Razan al-Najjar, I am here on the frontlines and I act as a human shield\u2026\u201d That\u2019s all the IDF needs. Now, with the ominous music in the background, the IDF text states: \u201cHamas uses paramedics as human shields\u201d. But the IDF cut out a very significant part of the sentence. Razan actually says: \u201cI the Paramedic Razan al-Najjar, I am here on the Front Line acting as a\u00a0human shield of\u00a0safety<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0to protect the injured at the Front Line. No one encouraged me on being a Paramedic, I encouraged myself. I wanted to take chances and help people\u2026\u201d (my emphasis)\u2026. http:\/\/mondoweiss.net\/2018\/06\/israeli-frames-najjar\/<\/a><\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a>, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.\u00a0In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council<\/a> (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur<\/a> on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories<\/a> occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is <\/em>Achieving Human Rights (2009).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 richardfalk.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Jun 2018 – The Gaza Sniper Massacre in response to the Great Return March is one more milestone in Palestinian resistance and yet another frightening episode in the Israeli apartheid narrative of cruel and excessive violence, a shameful sequel of crimes for which there exists no adjudicative tribunal available to the victimized party to pursue justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":113012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}