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Friday, July 18, 2014
20 Facts You’re Not Being Told About Israel and Gaza on TV
1) 4 Palestinian boys playing soccer on a beach were killed yesterday when an Israeli airstrike suddenly took their lives. Dozens of international journalists were stationed at the Al-Deira Hotel as they watched in horror while Israeli airstrikes fired upon the Palestinian civilians for a second time, chasing the children across the beach as they screamed for someone to help.
Since July 7th the death toll in Gaza has swelled to well over 200 Palestinians. A whopping80% of the victims have been confirmed as civilians, including several dozen Palestinian children.
One Israeli has been killed in the conflict.
2) The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, recently called the Israeli oppression of Palestinians “one of the worst examples of human rights abuse in the world“.
3) 1,562 Palestinian children and 131 Israeli children have been killed in Gaza since September 29, 2000. This does not include deaths caused by the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by Israel.
To this day, 200 Palestinian children are kept in Israeli prisons.
4) Last year AIPAC sent 13,000 lobbyists to warn Congress not to touch the annual $3 billion in aid the U.S. provides Israel.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC) is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States.
5) Former U.S. lawmaker and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, along with several other activists, were detained and sent to an Israeli prison in 2009 for more than a week.
What were they guilty of? Nothing but attempting to deliver medical aid to the victims of Israeli aggression towards Gaza.
“We were in international waters on a boat delivering humanitarian aid to people in Gaza when the Israeli Navy ships surrounded us and illegally threatened us, dismantled our navigation equipment, boarded and confiscated the ship,” – Cynthia McKinney
6) At least 27,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel‘s government since 1967. In 2003, an American peace activist named Rachel Corrie was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver.
The United Nations has condemned the demolitions several times, urging Israel to follow international law.
7) Earlier this week a film scholar from the University of London, Haim Bresheeth, sent an open letter to Israeli academics urging them to condemn Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians. The open letter states:
“We have been asked by our academic colleagues in Gaza – whose universities have been destroyed a number of times in the last six years, who are unable to teach or study, and who are also in growing need of food and medicines, like the rest of the almost two million Palestinians living in Gaza – to urge you to act urgently, to make your voice heard in Israel and abroad against what the Israeli government is inflicting on the Gaza population.”
Stephen Hawking has been critical of Israeli aggression and even pulled out of conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres last year in protest of Israel’s aggression towards the Palestinians.
8) Last year Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without removing information about US citizens.
9) Dianne Sawyer of ABC News aired a segment in which she mistakenly identifies the destruction in Gaza caused by Israel, as destruction in Israel caused by Hamas rockets. This description was the exact opposite of reality and completely unacceptable.
ABC apologized for the mistake on Twitter the next day but the damage had already been done.
10) A week before three Israeli teenagers went missing, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo outlined a similar scenario.
“What will you do if in a week three 14-year-old girls will be kidnapped from one of the settlements?,” he asked.
A week later the kidnapping was reported. Hamas immediately denied responsibility and urged calm with Israel. Before the bombing campaign started, Israel arrested over 500 people in the West Bank and has yet to produce evidence implicating a Palestinian in the murders.
11) In the Gaza Strip, 1.8 million people are confined to a tiny section of land. Anyone who approaches the buffer zone next to the border is automatically shot. This is common knowledge in Gaza.
You’d think if Palestinians really just ‘wanted to die’(as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it), they would just simply approach the buffer zone.
12) There are more than 400,000 Israelis living in Palestinian territory. The Israeli government offers tax incentives to Jewish citizens willing to move to the West Bank to establish more settlements.
“The settlement enterprise has been characterized, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” said a leading Israeli human rights group.
The United Nations’ report on Israel’s settlement policy states they are illegal under international law and demands Israel immediately stop such expansion.
13) Israel has been on the receiving end of at least 77 U.N. resolutions and the Palestinians have been the target of one. The United States consistently vetoes U.N. resolutions against Israel.
“The major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbors; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.” – Donald Neff.
According to the United Nations, the Israeli regime is guilty of several war crimes and the blockade on Gaza is “illegal and must be lifted“. We could list all of the U.N. resolutions against Israel one by one(example), but a quick Google search reveals all.
14) To this day, Israel denies having a nuclear weapons program even though whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu revealed details of their nuclear weapons program to the world in 1986.
A decade after his release from prison, Vanunu was denied permission to attend a human rights conference in London.
15) Israel pays students to defend their military actions against Gaza on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said the students receive scholarships to engage international audiences online ‘to combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel‘.
According to the Israeli government, the students’ messages parallel statements from the Israeli government.
16) Israeli citizens have access to a government smartphone app which warns them of Hamas rocket launches, while Palestinians are given no warning except for a ‘smaller explosion”, three minutes before the ‘bigger explosion’.
This is not a fair warning. What are the Palestinians supposed to do in such little time, and where exactly are they expected to evacuate to?
“Evacuate to where? Have you f*cking seen Gaza? Israel blocked this border. Egypt blocked this border. What, are they supposed to swim for it?” Stewart asks.
17) Several high ranking Israeli officials refer to Palestinians as if they were a lesser race. Here are just a few of the dozens of quotes available from a quick Google search.
“A deep and wide moral abyss separates us from our enemies. They sanctify death while we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty while we sanctify compassion.” - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“The Palestinians are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.” - Uri Elitzur, former adviser to Netanyahu and leader of the settler movement.
Why do Israeli citizens watch airstrikes on Palestinian civilians as if they’re watching a movie?
18) If you are upset with the military action Israel has taken against Gaza, you’re not alone. Millions of people across the world protested Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza on July 15th.
As you’re reading this articles, dozens of more protests are being organized across the world. There is likely to be a protest less than 50 miles from your home.
19) When the Germans claimed there was no viable alternative to murdering thousands of civilians as they bombed the city of Leningrad nearly 70 years ago because extremists were part of the city’s civilian population, most of the world considered such justification to be absurd.
This is the same flawed logic Israel’s government is using whenever they claim there is no viable alternative to launching airstrikes on Gaza because Hamas is there. Remember those 4 Palestinians boys killed by an Israeli airstrike while they were playing soccer yesterday? The U.S. State Department does not consider Israel responsible for their deaths and placed the blame squarely on Hamas.
Gaza has one of the most dense populations in the world. Of course Hamas is going to be among the civilian population. This does not give Israel the right to murder innocent civilians.
20) You can easily find thousands of graphic images showing dead Palestinian children by simply doing a quick Google search. The mainstream media surely won’t be showing any of those images on TV.
If you don’t have the courage to look at the children being murdered by Gaza in Israel yet you’re going to defend their bombardment of Gaza, then your opinion on the matter is worthless.
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