a slaughter with full US support

Alison Weir (not to be confused with the British author), the American journalist whose eyes were opened two decades ago to the Palestinian plight, has for some time published the figures showing the lopsided cost of the strife in Palestine/Israel where state of the art weapons inflict a great number of casualties on the Palestinians. Her website, If Americans Knew, is well worth a visit for the graphics she presents.

Yesterday, I discovered an equally powerful presentation of the same kind of information, shown just below, by way of Prof. Juan Cole's website, Informed Comment. This graphic shows an over 200:1 ratio of fatalities and a 560:1 ratio of injuries within the 13 months of the Palestinian Great March of Return beginning in March of 2018 (referred to as GMR in the graphic below). This documents the assassination and injury of unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza border of Israel by Israel soldiers with sniper rifles. Seeing this, you can understand how Israelis can easily live with the destruction their country inflicts on the Palestinians.

Watch an outstanding investigative video of a Palestinian medic killed by the Israeli sniping from the New York Times, an uncharacteristically honest look at situation by that paper. Informed Comment has also published this: thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza at risk of amputation from Israeli sniping.

Goodbye New York Times

I have subscribed to the New York Times for many years, but I am ending my subscription tomorrow.

I'm doing so because the NYT did not so much as mention the Edward Snowden revelation that the NSA has been systematically turning over all the intelligence it gathers on all Americans to Israel with no meaningful strings attached.

The NYT claims that this was because the story was insignificant! How foolish do they think people are to believe such a preposterous claim?

I've tolerated the pro-Israel spin given to stories from the middle east for as long as I can remember. In the last two years there have been signs of improvement. One, just this week, is Ian Lustick's spot-on opinion piece in the Sunday Review about the pointless "peace talks". But my tolerance has run out.

I'm going to subscribe to the Washington Post because I am hopeful that Jeff Bezos has a better idea of what journalism is than what has been the American newspaper of record, whose motto when it comes to Israel is to protect the views of the powerful.

is the New York Times coming around?

The New York Times has employed Ethan Bronner as its correspondent in Israel for some time. His son is in the Israeli Defense Forces and his stories have never been such to cause unhappiness among the supporters of Israel.

Lately, though, the NYT has been slipping in recognition of the Palestinian viewpoint. Recently it published the anti-occupation lyrics sung by some of those who disrupted the performance of the Israeli orchestra in London.

Today, Sunday, there is a story that describes how Israel is finding itself isolated and under siege. It's a routine Bronner telling, but in the second to last paragraph comes this:

"But as the months of Arab Spring have turned autumnal, Israel has increasingly become a target of public outrage. Some here say Israel is again being made a scapegoat, this time for unfulfilled revolutionary promises.

But there is another interpretation, and it is the predominant one abroad — Muslims, Arabs and indeed many around the globe believe Israel is unjustly occupying Palestinian territories, and they are furious at Israel for it. And although some Israelis pointed fingers at Islamicization as the cause of the violence, Egyptians noted Saturday that Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, distanced themselves from Friday’s protests and did not attend, while legions of secular-minded soccer fans were at the forefront of the embassy attacks."

This is a clear statement of the foundation of outrage against Israel that has been present for decades, though it still hedges by saying "many around the globe" instead of "everyone around the world except Zionists". Who approves of armed robbery but those who gain by it? But it's progress for the NYT that I'm glad to see.

the Holocaust fixation

Today, Saturday, in the New York Times is a big spread (front page of the Arts section) on the Illinois Holocaust Museum. I felt that a letter to the editor was needed. Here it is...

Dear New York Times editor:

The Holocaust was a horror that began in the 1930's and ended with the conclusion of World War II in 1945. I was born in 1950. In my 60 year life I have been exposed to innumerable presentations of the Holocaust in books, films, TV and as with your article, in newspapers. In Illinois, it is a law that public school students must learn about the Holocaust. The Illinois Holocaust Museum is an easy bicycle ride from my home. Americans are steeped in the Holocaust.

Two years before my birth, in 1948 the Catastrophe, the Nakba, in which Palestinians were driven from their homeland began. Just as the Holocaust was carefully planned, so was and is the Catastrophe. Unlike the 15 years containing the Holocaust in which Jews were victimized along with others, Palestinians are to this very moment, still being thrown out of their homes and land, still being killed on an average of about 1 to 2 per week, still subject to no law but that of the Israeli occupying army and subject in every detail of daily life to the desires of Israel. There are no memorials in the United States to lost Palestine, the subject is never mentioned in Congress and Israel, the ongoing oppressor behind the Catastrophe cannot be praised more highly, paid more lavishly with U.S. foreign aid or given too many weapons. American public school students are not required to know one thing about anything Palestinian.

There is no stranger irony in a country that claims to support human rights, than the fixation with a horror long since ended accompanied with absolute blindness to a horror that has continued with active, eager U.S. support for decades and would end this second without it. The Nazis drove the Holocaust for a relatively brief period, we Americans drive the Catastrophe with no end in sight.