While the events in Trump-world such as the Epstein files get a lot of attention in the US media, the real horror is what is happening in Gaza where it seems like Israel is engaged in the wholesale slaughter of Gazans. They are killing in large numbers the elderly, women, children. desperate people waiting for aid, first responders, medical workers, journalists, starving people trying to get food, people in cafes, any gathering of people, anyone else that they happen to feel like killing, and stops aid convoys trying to ease the suffering.
There used to be a time when the Israeli authorities would go through some form of ritual after each massacre of civilians, saying that it had been done inadvertently while they were seeking out militants. But that veneer of deniability had long worn thin and now they do not even bother, only saying it when they cross a fresh frontier, such as bombing a Catholic church. The Israeli government used to once boast that the Israeli Defense Forces were the most disciplined and ethical in the world. That was never true and is never true of any military. Any army of occupation inevitably ends up terrorizing the local population and the IDF is revealed to be just another army of cold-blooded murderers.
Here is an excerpt from just one article in which the Pope has spoken against the ‘barbarity’ of Israel’s actions and its “indiscriminate use of force”.
On Sunday the UN’s agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, said Israeli authorities were “starving civilians in Gaza”, including 1 million children. “Unrwa has enough food for the entire population of Gaza for over three months stockpiled in warehouses,” it said in an earlier social media post that included photos of a warehouse in Arish, Egypt. “Open the gates, lift the siege, allow Unrwa to do its work and help people in need among them 1 million children,” the agency said.
Unrwa said last week that babies were dying from “severe acute malnutrition”.
Israel banned all cooperation with Unrwa in Gaza and the West Bank, accusing the agency of having been infiltrated by Hamas, although an independent review found Tel Aviv had failed to provide evidence of its claims that Unrwa employees were members of terrorist organisations. The agency had been the main distributor of aid in Gaza and provider of basic services, including health and education, to Palestinians across the region.
Pope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force” as Gaza’s health ministry said at least 73 Palestinians had been killed queueing for food.
The ministry said on Sunday that the victims had been killed in different locations, mostly in northern Gaza.
It said 67 of the dead had been killed by Israeli fire while waiting for UN aid trucks entering through the northern Zikim crossing with Israel.
The UN World Food Programme said that shortly after entering Gaza, a WFP convoy of 25 trucks carrying food aid encountered “massive crowds of hungry civilians” who then came under gunfire.
“WFP reiterates that any violence involving civilians seeking humanitarian aid is completely unacceptable,” it said in a statement.
…Since May aid has been largely distributed by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in place of the traditional UN-led system. Food has become scarce, and very expensive, since Israel imposed a blockade on 2 March.
The UN has said that as of 13 July, 875 people had been killed in recent weeks trying to get food, including 674 in the vicinity of GHF sites. The remaining 201 victims were killed on the routes or close to aid convoys run by the UN or its partners. Children have been killed fetching water for their families.
Meanwhile, the US in complicit in all this because of the military and diplomatic cover it gives to the murderous Israeli government
We look back with horror at the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda and wonder how the world could have let such things happen and not done anything to end the slaughter.
The killing fields of Gaza will be another dark chapter in that book of shame.
Israel is just imitating what Russia does in Ukraine. And Russia is imitating earlier colonial powers, USA included. You can go back to Wounded Knee.
A tiny bit of schadenfreude: Shady Netanyahu seems to have bought food from an equally shady business and is currently sick with food poisoning.
(OT)
The Israeli enabler DJT has just published an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested. The world is burning and this is how the presisent is spending his tine.
Given that this is just the latest iteration of a campaign Israel has been waging since its founding, I’d say that any imitation is going the other way.
.1. AFAICT, the Israeli’s are quite literally just using the Palestinians for target practice.
They are shooting into crowds of civilians trying to get food with tanks.
.2. This is mass murder and a crime against humanity.
It is also at the least ethnic cleansing and/or genocide.
.3. No one can or will stop the Israelis.
.4. Mano Singham in the above OP.
“We look back with horror at the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda and wonder how the world could have let such things happen and not done anything to end the slaughter.”
Well, here we are again.
I can’t say it any better.
@Raven, I would say, “Here we are, still”. Ever since the Nakhba nearly 60 years ago, Israel has been slaughtering Palestinian toddlers playing soccer on their own beach and elderly Palestinian women in their own homes, disappearing Palestinians without a trace, attacking Palestinian farmers on their own land, bulldozing homes and century-old olive trees and building wall after wall to make life impossible for the Palestinian people. Nobody will say a word against this lest they be labelled antisemitic. They’ve been allowing illegal settlers to murder Palestinians in the West Bank. The IDF has escalated to killing American citizens and everyone just ignores it in terror of being called antisemitic.
“everyone just ignores it in terror of being called antisemitic”
And that will continue… for as long as being called antisemitic is the worst possible thing one could be called. It is the unique, very special level of absolutely universal condemnation even the implication of such prejudice inevitably attracts that gives it its power. And that is what gives Israel power.
For as long as “antisemite” is a worse insult than “paedophile”, Israel will operate with complete impunity, which is why the Israel lobby works so hard to make sure it remains the most potent accusation.
Good luck changing that.
birgerjohansson @ # 3: The world is burning and this is how the presisent is spending his tine.
How unfair of you to neglect his important initiatives mandating Coca-Cola replace high-fructose corn syrup with cane sucrose and demanding sportsball teams return to using names widely denounced for their racism!
The man never stops working on America’s most important challenges!!!
From Haaretz--hardly an anti-semitic source, about how the ultra-religious are horrible no matter what flavor of religion they espouse. These folks want to destroy the Middle East to summon their messiah. In short, they’re nearly orgiastic over the violence and genocide they’re inflicting:
Russia has its own long history of colonialism and massacre, as do all the most prominent European states, and China, Japan, Turkey…