Anne #EndIsraeliGenocide#CeasefireNow

[Defend Our Juries @DefendOurJuries]

NO CHOICE

It’s 6 Days to go until hundreds take peaceful action outside Labour’s Liverpool conference.

Andy Burnham has a choice: Lift The Ban on Palestine Action, or continue to allow the arrests and prosecutions of thousands of UK citizens for peacefully protesting.

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

If you're in London this Wednesday, get your tickets for The Shroud Maker, a play written by Ahmed Masoud, a Palestinian playwright from Gaza.

Please support Palestinians to tell our own stories, in our own voices, with our own talents and potential—because opening your mind and heart to indigenous storytelling will open your heart to a truth hidden for so long in the fog of empire's carefully crafted brainwashing.

https://t.co/PDdhmYTksY

[Aontacht @Aontacht_Media]

Ed Sheeran sacked Macklemore at the behest of a Zionist mentioned in the Epstein files. The backlash has been swift and brutal, though not as brutal as the genocide in Gaza that Sheeran and his Zionist friends like Kraft pretend is not happening.

https://t.co/zKHS6qzL7Q

[Eye on Palestine @EyeonPalestine]

A heartbreaking scene of Palestinian children crying inconsolably as they bid farewell to their mother, who was killed by Israeli gunfire in central Gaza.

[Abubaker Abed @AbubakerAbedW]

With less than a week until Ireland's game against Israel, the Irish players will determine their legacy on this day.

Either honour and pride for the Irish and the world, or an indelible disgrace that Ireland's future generations won't be able to wipe away.

[Eye on Palestine @EyeonPalestine]

Infant Hamza (32 months old) is waiting for a chance at life and treatment outside the Gaza Strip, as he suffers from a critical heart condition caused by valvular stenosis and urgently requires specialized surgery. His health has deteriorated, requiring specialized medical care that is currently unavailable, and he awaits a helping hand to save his future. 
We appeal to the relevant authorities and international organizations to intervene urgently to save Hamza’s life and give him a chance at survival. 
📌For contact: 0592134427

الرضيع حمزة (32 شهراً) ينتظر فرصة للحياة والعلاج خارج قطاع غزة، حيث يعاني من حالة قلبية حرجة بسبب ضيق في الصمام ويحتاج تدخلاً جراحياً عاجلاً. لقد تدهورت حالته الصحية بشكل يتطلب رعاية طبية متخصصة وغير متوفرة حالياً، وهو بانتظار يد العون لإنقاذ مستقبله. 
نناشد الجهات المختصة والمنظمات الدولية بالتدخل العاجل لإنقاذ حياة حمزة ومنحه فرصة النجاة. 
📌للتواصل: 0592134427

[Mosab Abu Toha @MosabAbuToha]

It’s 5:25 p.m. in Gaza right now. Since this morning, Israel has killed at least four Palestinians. Here is what has been reported:

At 8:30 a.m., a Palestinian mother, Feda Totah, 31, was shot and killed on Salah el-Din Street near al-Bureij Camp.

At 8:41 a.m., at least two people were injured and a house was set on fire in al-Bureij Camp after Israel shelled it.

At 10 a.m., Israel shot a child in the chest in Mawasi Rafah and killed him. His name was Ismaeel al-Bardaweel.

At 10:48 a.m., several people were injured when Israeli missile boats shelled a camp for displaced Palestinians in Shati Camp, west of Gaza City.

At 11:45 a.m., a young man, Mohsen Bahjat, succumbed to injuries he sustained to the head yesterday in an Israeli attack in Jabalia Camp.

At 3 p.m., Israel killed Mosa Abu Marouf in an airstrike in Khan Younis.

At 4 p.m., at least two people were shot and injured by Israeli fire in Jabalia.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Remember the iron rule of reporting on the Middle East:

Nothing justified Oct 7th.

Oct 7th justified everything.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

The media can make us believe anything they want – even that Charles loved Diana:

The current narrative of “beloved king shocked by claim he said something nasty 30 years ago” is a perfect example of how, given a bit of time, the media can reinvent the very reality the media itself once created, readily flipping on its head a now inconvenient, earlier narrative.

Anyone who lived through the Princess Diana years should be able to recall that, according to the media of that time, Charles was the undoubted villain – a cold-hearted man who cheated from the start of his marriage on a young, beautiful, doting wife he never loved.

Charles wanted his old flame Camilla as his bride and future queen – and, with Diana’s untimely death in 1997 at the hands of the press pack as her car was chased through a Paris underpass late at night, he soon got his way.

Earl Spencer’s new claim in a book published this week that Charles told him, shortly after Diana’s death, that she would “soon be forgotten” fits all too snugly with that earlier narrative.

But not with the new narrative.

Now, with Charles a “kindly old king and family man battling to recover from cancer”, the sort of behaviour that made perfect sense in the earlier narrative is a nuisance. Which is why Earl Spencer is receiving a lot more pushback than he would have expected had he made such a claim in the late 1990s.

Three decades ago, Charles was portrayed as an unpopular Prince of Wales, a man lacking the common touch of Diana, and a crank obsessed with irrelevant things like the environment and architecture. The Queen, so the story of that time went, was so unsure of his ability to rule effectively that she dared not abdicate.

Fast forward to the present day, with Queen Elizabeth II dead and Charles III head of state.

The King is now a wise elder statesman bearing lightly the heavy burden of high office, managing Britain’s tricky relations with a deranged Trump administration better than any politician, and doing it all through serious illness. Ever the good father, he is fulfilling his duties as king to provide his son, William, with the chance to raise and enjoy his young family before he himself is crowned.

We’re in permanent telenovela land. Who knows which bits of this, if any, are true. But the plot twists serve a purpose, like soap opera, to keep us entertained and distracted from the real problems we desperately need to be focusing on.

And most importantly, whichever way the plot switches, the media cash in on the drama of it all.

But there is a deeper point. The media, through sustained plot engineering, can have us believe anything – that black is white, and up is down. They can, through sheer force of a new narrative consensus, make us believe the very opposite of what we were encouraged to believe a few moments earlier.

That is why billionaires buy up newspapers. Because they can, through their ownership of everything, and most especially the media, shape our minds into believing it is a good thing that billionaires own everything.

They make us believe that any change to that order would be catastrophic.

They make us believe that our societies are in decline, not because the billionaires have siphoned off all the wealth to their off-shore accounts but because small boats are “invading” our shores.

For decades, they had us believing the planet was doing just fine despite what all the scientists said. It was simply down to each individual to be more responsible: to cycle more, to recycle more, and to switch to long-lasting lightbulbs. Now that climate chaos is upon us, they tell us we will just have to adapt to hotter summers and colder, stormier winters.

The only consistent element is that the billionaires never address their own role in engineering this ecological disaster. Their choice to prioritise rocketing profits over the health of the planet is never scrutinised by the media they own.

Last year the writer Omar El Akkad published the book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This on the West’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. One can already see how prophetic the book’s title is.

A British government led by Sir Keir Starmer that deeply colluded in the mass slaughter in Gaza is now recasting itself as an opponent, under the new leadership of Andy Burnham.

Similarly, the billionaire-owned media is slowly taking a less enthusiastic stance on Israel, doubtless hoping that Israeli voters evict prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the forthcoming general election so that the media can have a freer hand to rewrite their script. Then they will gradually accept as a given that what Netanyahu did – though not Israel – was a genocide. And of course, they will have always been against it.

Any lie can be repackaged as a self-evident truth once you have absolute narrative control. The naked emperor can be magically clothed, if the media so decides.

Amid this pervasive unreliability, there is one North Star by which to navigate. Anything that benefits the billionaires cannot be trusted.

As long as they are in charge, we will continue squabbling among ourselves, victims of their self-serving story-telling.

[Normal Island News @NormalIslandNws]

Ed Sheeran performed at Lincoln Financial Field last night, only two and a half hours later than planned. He cut his show in half after his support acts dropped out in solidarity with Gaza. Apparently, something bad is happening over there.

Anyway, the concert was the most exciting experience since the bank left me on hold for 45 minutes, playing “Shape of You” on loop. It was amazing when it finally got going. It’s just a shame we had to wait around forever.

Instead of the opening performances, we got Gaza protests. Strangely, ordinary people don’t find it hard to make a stand like Ed does. They can look at schools and hospitals being bombed and say, “This is wrong, no matter what Israel’s excuse is”. Personally, I blame social media.

For a few days, it looked like the tour would be called off, after the other acts realised it’s embarrassing to perform with Ed Sheeran. Luckily, Ed scraped together a replacement band that wouldn’t let genocide get in the way of making a few quid.

When he finally walked out on stage, you could’ve heard a pin drop, if it wasn’t for Tommy Robinson loudly clapping and yelling, “Go on, Ed.”

While it was brilliant to see the likes of Little Tommy and Boy George, thousands of Ed’s fans didn’t turn up. The place was so quiet, it reminded Ed of his busking days, although he played to bigger crowds back then. He was just relieved anyone turned up at all and immediately teared up. He cried for himself like he couldn’t cry for the kids of Gaza. He then addressed the elephant in the room. No, not Lucy Connolly. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Ed made a speech about the Macklemore thing and really spoke from his heart. Well, he read from a teleprompter, but that’s the same thing when you’re a robot. He sensibly started off with Israel’s excuses and carefully rebranded the genocide as a “conflict”. He told us that what’s happening over there is “unjustifiable”, but wouldn’t say who’s to blame.

He explained he’s too stupid to understand concepts like war and genocide, which is why he never gets involved in this stuff. He performed a concert for Ukraine just a month after that war started, but he hasn’t figured out Gaza after three years. These things are easier to understand when the victims are white.

Needless to say, Ed was let down by his good friend Macklemore. He honestly had no idea Mack would perform the same songs he performs every time he’s on stage. He certainly didn’t expect him to say “Free Palestine”—that one came out of the blue.

Ed honestly thought Macklemore would Mackle less. You can imagine his confusion when the other acts turned out to also not be moral vacuums. He thought they were all fake Irish like him, but they’re actually real Irish. Apparently that means something.

Ed skilfully exonerated himself from blame, insisting he did not make the decision to drop Macklemore. His promoter did, after pressure from Bob Kraft and other billionaires. As the headline act, Ed was powerless in this situation. He couldn’t have walked out, or threatened legal action, or even said, “Look mate, I’m Ed Sheeran. You’ll do as I say.”

All of this happened against Ed’s will, which is why he didn’t apologise for dropping his friend of 13 years, or even say he disagreed with the decision. He simply called it one of the worst weeks of his life, centring himself as the real victim of genocide.

We all know that Ed and Bob are massive humanitarians, now that they need to rebuild their tattered reputations. Ed cares so much about Palestinian children that he didn’t bother saying which charities “in the region” he’s donating to. If he admitted it was the IDF that could’ve got awkward.

To prove he truly cares, Ed dedicated his opening performance of the night to the children of Gaza and then began with “When your legs don’t work like they used to before…”

...

Thanks for reading. If you love Ed and Israel as much as me, sign up to the Substack newsletter here: https://t.co/U0FUcQkZ95

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Through sheer force of a new, imposed narrative consensus, the media can make us believe the very opposite of what we were encouraged to believe moments earlier.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/jIJ178Yr76

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

👉NEW -- Israel killed three UK citizens. Now their families want answers

by @jmcevoy_2

A coroner’s court has been asked to investigate Israel’s aid worker massacre and review surveillance tapes held by Britain’s military
https://t.co/RW8jBAFNf5

[PACBI - BDS movement @PACBI]

NFL football player Azeez Al-Shaair wore the name of Wafaa Akila before yesterday’s match between the Houston Texans and the Cincinnati Bengals.

Wafaa Akila, an 8-year-old Palestinian child, was killed by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza on Sept 6, her first day of school.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Wonderful to see the great Avi Shlaim on Piers Morgan. The @BBC of course, shamefully, never platforms our greatest Middle East scholar

[Anne #EndIsraeliGenocide#CeasefireNow @mitchcjam]

https://t.co/jIiVg5PRC5

[Ben Jamal @BenJamal48]

Been reflecting a lot this week on the important steps being made, however slow and overdue they are, of the continued attempts to suppress those standing up for justice- see Macklemore- and the space and platforms still given to the racist bleatings of those like Levy who , in any decent society or age would be confined to the margins of discourse. This is of course the most documented genocide in history and sometimes the detail of barbarous acts is to much to compute. But certain facts break through and resonate across history because they speak to the fundamental underpinning truth. A people has been allowed to treat another people as less than human. So consider tbe testimony of Dr Nick Barnard , verified by around 20 colleagues and confirmed by the UN Special commision of enquiry. IDF soldiers used Palestinian children for target practice. One day they shot children in the neck. The next in the abdomen. One day, just boys, all in the testicles. Children. Shot. For fun. Think about that. Then decide which side of history you stand on.

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

👉NEW -- The UK charities sending nearly £2 million to illegal settlements

by @melissamull3r

Exclusive: Six British charities appear to funnel donations to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank
https://t.co/DQRxnGRAly

[Stop The Game @TadhgHickey]

Ed Sheeran is worth about half a billion for being "such a lovely guy" playing soulless, objectively God awful, pop music. Would it have killed the cowardly prick to cancel a few gigs to stand with his mate of 13 years and, more importantly, the slaughtered, starved and unimaginably traumatised children of Gaza?

[State of Palestine @Palestine_UN]

Real artists choose courage not complicity.

@edsheeran

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

Sheeran is clearly a man who bends with the prevailing wind.

But this is now becoming a major trial of strength between the billionaires and those artists who do have moral backbone. The reaction of the fan base is key.