Gulali

Made of dreams and a little sugar.

[Gulali @thatsrightrama]

I'm calling on the Speaker to block Trump from addressing Parliament during his unprecedented second State Visit. Will you join me? https://t.co/tFFgDEY38b

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

Keir Starmer pointed out that many Palestinians 'lost their lives'. That was careless of them.
Tony Benn, eve of Iraq War, Feb 17 1998:

[Tiberius @tiberiusfiles]

For the whole of 2024, Israel killed an average of 44 children per day — that we know about. The real number is likely much higher. That’s at least one dead child every half an hour, for an entire year.

There is only one word for this: GENOCIDE.

[Abby Martin @AbbyMartin]

The media won’t tell you Gaza is a warehouse of millions of ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees that live trapped under brutal Israeli blockade. Here’s the forbidden historical context from #GazaFightsForFreedom:

[Electronic Intifada @intifada]

Breaking news and analysis on day 418 of Gaza's Al-Aqsa Flood | The Electronic Intifada Podcast https://t.co/NIUiJbY5Kv

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

How Musk broke Twitter and helped elect Trump
(Location: Tesla European HQ, Amsterdam)

[Hind Khoudary @Hind_Gaza]

Sitting here, in-front of this group of displaced children at Al Aqsa Hospital, laughing and playing on the bars where people usually line up for treatment tickets.

It hit me hard, and suddenly I was back in my childhood, at school in Beit Lahiya—a town that’s being wiped out right now.

I remember how much I loved playing on the monkey bars, just like those kids. But now, I can't help but feel an overwhelming guilt. I had a childhood, these children didn’t have.

Bro, this war is worse than anything anyone could ever imagine.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Israel is already accusing the ICC of antisemitism for issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. But, as I explain here, that's BS because a Holocaust survivor/ex-Israeli diplomat was one of the legal advisers on this ICC arrest warrant, who agreed with it.
https://t.co/SyJd2TiF6V

[Electronic Intifada @intifada]

They began taking young men – even boys – out of the crowd, separating them from their families. I saw mothers whispering, “go on, don’t be afraid,” even as their children’s faces were contorted in terror. #eiGazaDispatches
https://t.co/qhWJVcEeVC

[🦋Ann Van Haute 🦋 @Anneke172351868]

@Jonathan_K_Cook https://t.co/H82CCUi1rD

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Your headline is utterly cowardly, Guardian. It is not just Palestinians saying they were used for days on end as human shields – a very clear war crime. Israeli soldiers admit they've been routinely using Palestinians this way too. It's in your own story.

And there's more. These Palestinian human shields are forced to wear Israeli army-issued tracking devices so they can't escape – meaning that this war crime is being approved and organised from the top of the military command. That's what the whistleblowing soldiers say too.

The headline should read: "Israeli army routinely using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza"

Another thing. These admissions "reveal" nothing. Israel has been using Palestinians as human shields for decades. It used to be called the "neighbour procedure". Again, your reporters mention this at the end of the article. These new testimonies simply confirm what we've long known.

There have been various court hearings over the years in which the army has promised to stop the practice of making human shields of Palestinians. It never does because Israel doesn't regard Palestinians as human. It sees them as "human animals".

I interviewed a Palestinian who was turned into a human shield way back in 2002 – 22 years ago. You can read about it here: https://t.co/EonTsg3ZEX

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

New footage broadcast by a Hebrew channel shows regular acts of abuse and torture by the Israeli military against Palestinian prisoners & hostages inside detention centers. Israel continues to hold thousands of civilians without trial, subjecting them to enforced disappearances.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Reliable sources in #Gaza confirm this is accurate. The threat of yet another massacre is northern Gaza is very real.
Israel must be ordered to stop assaulting the Palestinians trapped there and withdraw immediately from the occupied Palestinian territory, as already decided by the #ICJ.
#PalestiniansNeedProtection

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

We continue to march because we refuse to let the memory of Palestinians die.

We continue to demand an end to all arms sales to Israel.

We continue to speak up for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine.

[Zeteo @zeteo_news]

“Anyone that’s been [to Palestine,] speaks out loud,” Historian @DalrympleWill tells @mehdirhasan why he chose to speak out in defense of Palestinians living under a "very blatant apartheid."

Watch the full episode of ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’:
https://t.co/6rWixEKB34

[Ofer Cassif עופר כסיף عوفر كسيف @ofercass]

It bacame common for little children in Gaza to write wiils. What kind of people murder little children systematically, and what kind of a world let that happen?
Rasha didn't know that her 8 year old brother Ahmad, for whom she left a will, was also killed by Israel.

Damn you, baby killers!

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

BBC interview with Hamas deputy chief is a case study in state propaganda:

The BBC no longer bothers to hide the fact that its news service acts as nothing more than the British state’s willing propaganda channel.

Last night on the News at Ten, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen secured a rare interview with Hamas’s deputy political chief, Khalil al-Hayya.

Anchor Clive Myrie introduced the segment by warning: “Many will find his comments abhorrent.”

But the only person making abhorrent assertions was Myrie himself, observing that, in the interview, the Hamas leader “claims the Palestinian people have faced violence at the hands of Israel for several decades”.

No, Clive. The world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, as well as every major human rights organisation, has concluded that Israel’s belligerent military occupation of the Palestinians’ territory is illegal and violent – not as a claim, but as an indisputable fact.

Israel’s refusal to recognise a Palestinian state and allow Palestinians self-determination; Israel’s building of hundreds of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and the transfer of Israeli Jews, often militia groups, into those settlements; Israel’s 17-year siege of Gaza; and Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people to force them to submit to these indignities, are all forms of structural violence. Again, that is not a claim. It is how international law judges what Israel has done and is doing.

Next, Myrie required Bowen to justify at length why the BBC was allowing a Hamas political leader – not a military leader – to be given air time. Note, al-Hayya’s boss, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated by Israel while he was involved in negotiations to bring about a ceasefire. Like some kind of gangster, Israel murdered the man on the other side of the table it was supposed to be talking to.

The BBC provided none of that as context, of course, for its interview. It was too busy placating Israel and the British government by issuing apologies and warnings before it offered a rare insight into Hamas’ side of the story.

So what did al-Hayya say that was so “abhorrent”? Here are the main points al-Hayya raised in the interview – you can listen to his precise wording via the link below – under Bowen’s mainly hostile questioning:

1. Hamas launched its attack on October 7 because the world had forgotten about Gaza even as Israel was slowly strangling the tiny territory to death through its 17-year siege. Hamas wanted to put Gaza back on the international community’s radar, and had decided it could do so only through military action.

2. Hamas fighters had been told not to target Israeli civilians on October 7, only Israeli occupation soldiers. Hamas does not endorse harming civilians. However, there were failings by individuals in sticking to that plan.

3. Israel, not Hamas, is the party responsible for destroying Gaza as evidenced through its bombardments of schools, shelters and hospitals. Hamas’ killing of 1,200 people could not be used to justify Israel killing more than 50,000 people in Gaza. Israel is “motivated by the lust to destroy”.

4. The accusation that Hamas uses the people of Gaza as “human shields” is not true. “They [Israel] destroyed mosques on the heads of their owners when there were no fighters. They destroyed houses and high-rise buildings when no one was in them… It is all Israeli propaganda.”

5. Netanyahu is the one obstructing a ceasefire. Even if Hamas surrendered today, Gaza’s next generation would take up the struggle because the Palestinian people want their freedom and have a legitimate right to resist the occupation. “People need to understand that Israel wants to burn the whole region.”

6. The Palestinians need a state and self-determination, and the Palestinian refugees a right to return to their homeland, if the region is ever to calm down.

7. It is Israel trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, not the Palestinians destroying Israel. “Give us our rights, give us a fully sovereign Palestinian state… Israel does not recognise a one-state solution or a two-state solution. Israel rejects it all.”

8. [Responding to a question about whether he considers himself a terrorist] “I’m seeking freedom and defending my people. To the occupation, we are all terrorists – the leaders, the women and the children. You heard what Israeli leaders called us: we are all animals.”

Now, one can debate whether al-Hayya’s statements are accurate or truthful, or whether he is being sincere. But nothing at all he says here can be viewed as “abhorrent” – unless you are shilling for Israel. He deplores attacks on civilians, he accuses Israel of bringing about Gaza’s destruction, he blames Netanyahu for blocking a ceasefire, and he appears to be ready to settle for a two-state solution, though he doesn’t believe Israel will agree to it.

In fact, his comments are far, far more moderate and far less inflammatory than statements regularly made by Netanyahu and most of the Israeli political and military leadership. Netanyahu, remember, is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, while the country he leads is on trial for what its sister court, the ICJ, considers a “plausible genocide” Netanyahu has incited and overseen. Not that the BBC ever mentions either fact.

And yet the state broadcaster never prefaces remarks from Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders – such as the self-declared fascist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – with any kind of warning, let alone one that many viewers may find their remarks “abhorrent”.

And while we are at it, if al-Hayya’s remarks are the yardstick, how was Keir Starmer’s comment that Israel had a right to deprive Palestinian civilians of food, water and fuel – that is, to collectively punish them by starving them to death – not also deemed “abhorrent” by the BBC?

What becomes ever harder to deny is that the BBC isn’t reporting what is happening in the Middle East. It is aggressively framing it in such a way as to present Israel as the victim of events, and thereby assist it in carrying out a genocide in Gaza and beginning a second slaughter in Lebanon.

This article, with supporting links, can be read and shared here: https://t.co/7IrCUj16Ts

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

With all due respect, this is not accurate. Palestinians have a right to self-determination that means Israel's (and others') duty to allow Palestinians enjoy their right to exist and determine themselves (i.e. right to self-determination) in their land. Statehood is the form of self-determination that Israel and the PLO started negotiating over 30 years ago. The enjoyment of self-determination is NOT negotiable "by the parties on the ground". Should statehood be obstructed and Israel persists in maintaining control over the land, than it must recognise full rights to all Palestinians. Apartheid is no longer an option.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

A must watch for those who believe the tale that violence suddenly eruptred 11 months ago in a quiet day in the quiet middle east.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

BREAKING:

Happening today in London.

An absolutely massive pro-Palestine protest, demanding an end to Israel’s massacres in Gaza and a halt to weapons sales to Israel.

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸