Max Bloomfield

Materials Scientist & Engineer • 🏊🏼‍♂️🚴🏼‍♂️🏃🏻• Bikepacker • Climate Activist

[Abubaker Abed @AbubakerAbedW]

.@Cambridge_Uni has expelled a Palestinian girl student from her accommodation after an Israeli soldier who committed genocide in Gaza complained to them he doesn't feel safe.

I don't have words anymore to describe how low and racist this is.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

It’s official. I will be introducing a Bill for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The government must decide: will it support this inquiry, or will it block our efforts to establish the truth?

[Defense for Children @DCIPalestine]

Israeli forces fatally shot two Palestinian children in the back today in the occupied West Bank. Soldiers fired on both children from inside armored military vehicles.

Ayman Al-Hemouni, 12, in Hebron and Rimas Ammouri, 13, in Jenin.

Read more: https://t.co/7fg5TKtaAg

[Jan Rosenow @janrosenow]

Heat pumps are the most efficient heating technology ever invented.

They provide 4x more heat for the same energy input.

That’s because they use the energy input to compress and transport pre-existing renewable heat rather than burn a fossil fuel.

[Max Bloomfield @MaximilianBloom]

@MillRoad4People https://t.co/U00mFElXeK

[Adam Tranter @adamtranter]

The importance of car parking spaces being available next to shops is often overstated.

A new @livingstreets report out today shows that pedestrians spend more money than people arriving by car, and pedestrianised town centres have higher sales.

https://t.co/HLVUyXEwlf

[Max Bloomfield @MaximilianBloom]

@adamtranter @livingstreets @MillRoad4People

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

A British surgeon returns from Ukraine to tell how Russian drones deliberately execute children there. Would it be front-page news? You bet.

But, when the drones are Israeli and the victims Palestinian children, the media yawns.

More from Media Lens:
https://t.co/YG5i6xxvUG

[Mill Road for People @MillRoad4People]

Tonight we said a huge thank you to all those working 24/7 to deliver a safer healthier thriving Mill Road.

@CambsCC @richardhowitt @neil4labour1
#50years #positivemillroad

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

There is now overwhelming evidence of Palestinians raped by the Israeli army.

The fact that this is not considered newsworthy underlines anti-Arab racism.

Allegations of rape are only of interest if they can be used to present Western enemies as uniquely barbaric.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Absolutely horrifying scene out of Beirut today.

Israel is deliberately wiping out entire civilian apartment buildings without justification or restraint—sheer destruction for the sake of it.

This is an American-funded, American-backed genocide.

[Philippe Lazzarini @UNLazzarini]

🆘🆘 from our @UNRWA staff in northern #Gaza.

Nearly three weeks of non-stop bombardments from the Israeli Forces as the death toll increases.

Our staff report they cannot find food, water or medical care.
The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied.

In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die.
They feel deserted, hopeless and alone. They live from one hour to the next, fearing death at every second.

Throughout the war over the past year, some UNRWA staff stayed in the north & did the impossible to provide aid to internally displaced people.
We kept some of our shelters open despite heavy bombardments & attacks on our buildings.

On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places.

This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict.

#CeaseFireNow

[Greenpeace UK @GreenpeaceUK]

🚨BREAKING: Two PEACEFUL climate demonstrators have just been sentenced to 2 YEARS and 20 months respectively.

The government must stop the outrageous ATTACK on our FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT to protest peacefully.

[Max Bloomfield @MaximilianBloom]

Make Mill Rd Great Again! 🚲🚸🌳

[Mill Road for People @MillRoad4People]

Mill Road TRO consultation numbers are available. As usual no surprises: the vast majority of local people want this. That'll be the vast majority of people who will *actually be affected by it* then

[Humza Yousaf @HumzaYousaf]

Why is there so much moral cowardice from political leaders regarding the outrageous attacks in Lebanon?

Indiscriminate attacks that have killed children and many innocent people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah.

Where is the outrage and condemnation @DavidLammy ?

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

ISIS throwing people from roofs was long regarded as a trademark example of their depravity.

Here’s Israeli soldiers throwing a blindfolded Palestinian from a roof.

We don’t know if he was alive or already executed.

https://t.co/emXKHkkYtZ

[Max Bloomfield @MaximilianBloom]

You have to ask yourself why no UK media is reporting on this, yet another obscene atrocity by Israeli Occupation Forces as part of their undeniable and ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people
#IsraelTerroristState #GenocideinGaza

[Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti @MustafaBarghou1]

The Israeli soldiers killed, mutilated and humiliated the bodies of three Palestinians in Qabatia ( Jenin area) today and threw their bodies from a high building to the ground in a savage and inhuman manner.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank – it's unclear if they are dead or near-dead – is being barely reported by the western media, even though it was videoed from two different angles and a reporter from the main US news agency Associated Press witnessed it.

AP reported on this some nine hours ago. Its feed is accessed by all western establishment media, so they all know.

Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately: even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)

Remember, that same media never fails to highlight – or simply make up – any Palestinian crime (such as those non-existent "beheaded babies").

AP itself treats this incident in the West Bank town of Qabatiya as no big deal. It reports that it may be part of a "pattern of excessive force" by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.

That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP's preferred characterisation of the group's reference to a pattern not of "excessive force" but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

AP makes sure to give Israel's pretext for why it is committing war crimes: "Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy."

But it forgets yet again to mention why that "militancy" exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it – once again illegally – drafts in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.

AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel's occupying soldiers, including "militantly".

Western governments might characterise Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as "terrorism", but that's not how it is seen in the international law codes that western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.

It's also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by "Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem".

As is true with many other western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.

Western news outlets doubtless privately rationalise this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure their copy is "sensitive" to Israel's perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.

Which is precisely the problem. The bias in western reporting is baked in. It's designed not to upset Israel – in the midst of a "plausible genocide", according to the World Court – which means it's entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.

It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel's war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

The AP story is here: https://t.co/Aqf7Y3fxUf

The video of Israel's latest war crime here: https://t.co/LYHFCfaTnq

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

Maybe we should run this as a 3 minute TV ad.

Wadda da ya think?

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

The news from Gaza is being actively buried. Israel’s genocide continues to be tangible, shocking proof that western capitals are not the bastions of democracy and bulwarks against barbarianism they claim to be.

Western politicians have been utterly complicit in the genocide – a fact impossible to hide from their publics. The killing could have been stopped at any point, had the Biden administration so willed it.

Ordinary people have made clear they want the slaughter to end, which is why Biden has to pretend to be “working tirelessly” to negotiate a ceasefire – a ceasefire he could impose whenever he chooses to.

Israel is entirely dependent on US military, diplomatic and financial largesse, as is only too clear from the 50,000 tonnes of weapons the Biden administration has so far shipped to Israel since last October.

But the truth is that western politics is now entirely unresponsive to popular demand. The last vestiges of democratic accountability were gutted many years ago as the West’s political systems were completely captured by powerful globe-spanning corporations.

Tens of millions of people turned out on the streets of Europe to try to halt the US and Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and it made not a jot of difference.

The situation with Gaza is even worse. It is not just that, as before, no one in power is listening. Those opposing Israel’s genocide, and western complicity in it, are being utterly maligned. The millions marching against the slaughter are reported as “tens of thousands”, while being actively smeared as “antisemites”.

Western states – and their self-professed “defensive alliance”, Nato – are not there to represent the public interest. They have become chiefly vehicles for the promotion of the narrow interests of a corporate elite, whose purpose, in turn, is to siphon into private hands the profits from publicly funded, permanent wars.

It isn’t just arms manufacturers and the hi-tech industries, with their booming surveillance businesses, whose shares are soaring on the back of the slaughter in Gaza and Ukraine.

Bloomberg reported last month that Israeli air strikes on Gaza had turned the homes of 2.3 million Palestinians into 42m tonnes of rubble. That’s enough to fill a line of dump trucks from New York to Singapore.

It won’t be Gaza companies raking in the profits from the mammoth clean-up operation. After a 17-year blockade of the enclave by Israel, Gaza’s industrial and commercial sector barely existed even before Israel’s current wrecking spree. The beneficiaries, once again, will be western corporations.

If the “day after” ever arrives, it will be western corporations bidding to rebuild Gaza – and most likely not for the current Palestinian inhabitants. Israel wants them either dead or ethnically cleansed from the territory.

A razed, emptied Gaza will be a tabula rasa. Expensive new beachfront properties can be marketed to wealthy Israeli Jews. New industrial zones and ports will be able to export easily to Europe and North Africa.

And that’s before we consider who gets to exploit the bountiful natural gas just off Gaza’s coast, which western corporations have been greedily eyeing for the past two decades.

More from my new article You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation can be read here:
https://t.co/CAAPNs7Qy6

[Max Bloomfield @MaximilianBloom]

Take action to end Israel's torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners. Write to the UK Foreign Secretary using @PSCupdates online action https://t.co/LgRtpYk3V1 #StopArmingIsrael