Former President Donald Trump just named Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate, and the country’s largest labor federation is already using The Lever’s coverage of Vance to declare the move “A corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”
For years, we have been pointing out Vance’s hypocrisies and what they mean for the American people.
Vance authored the 2016 blockbuster memoir Hillbilly Elegy and fashioned himself as a “conservative outsider” fighting for everyday people. But during his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, we revealed that the one-time venture capitalist counted himself among the elite few able to take advantage of a notorious carried-interest tax loophole that allows private equity and hedge fund moguls to pay a fraction of what they’d otherwise owe on their income.
In 2023, following our coverage of lax railroad safety regulations and the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Vance co-authored the Railway Safety Act, designed to quickly improve the poor rail conditions that contributed to the disaster in his home state.
“Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again,” Vance said at the time.
But three months later, we exposed that Vance had since quietly amended his own legislation to delay the safety reforms at the request of rail and chemical industry lobbyists.
In its statement on Trump’s running-mate announcement, the AFL-CIO labor federation cited our coverage on Vance to argue that the senator would be “nothing more than a rubber stamp for [Trump’s] anti-worker vision” and would help usher in “a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”
Before he became a rabid Trump supporter, Vance wrote in The Atlantic that instead of believing Trump’s false promises to help the country, “I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other.”
We agree. Together, we have the power to hold Vance and his cohorts accountable. That fight starts now.
The Israeli army committed another massacre against displaced Palestinians in tent encampments, this time in the coastal Mawasi area, which Israel had designated as a “safe zone.”
THE AFTERMATH OF THE MAWASI MASSACRE, JULY 13, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
In a crater in the ground almost larger than a schoolyard, a group of young men dig through the sand and pull out the bodies.
“His head is there! His head is there!” someone yells. A man emerges from the hole, carrying a child.
“Who knows who this child is? Who knows his family? Where are his parents?” he calls out.
Behind him are dead bodies and severed limbs scattered across the ground. Some poke out from beneath the sand, half-buried.
When the Israeli army struck the coastal displacement camp in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, there was no rubble. The Israeli-designated “safe zone” was little more than a sea of tents on the beach, so people were buried in the sand instead.
At 10 a.m. on Saturday, while people were starting their day, the Israeli military targeted the area with successive airstrikes, leading to a massacre that, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has, as of the time of writing, killed 90 people and injured over 300 others. Half of them are women and children, the health ministry says.
Shaima Farwaneh, 16, was near the site of the massacre when it happened. She was preparing to make breakfast for her family when the bombs fell.
People and sand scattered everywhere, limbs that were once attached to bodies flying over their heads.
“A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” Shaima told Mondoweiss. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.”
Shaima describes hearing seven explosions in short succession before it was over. “What a life we live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.”
SHAIMA FARWANEH AFTER THE MAWASI MASSACRE. (PHOTO: HASAN SULEIH)
When the ambulance and Civil Defense crews arrived near a well-known crowded market for residents of the area, their vehicles were targeted as well, according to the director of the Civil Defense in Khan Younis, Yamen Abu Suleiman. Two Civil Defense workers were killed in the strike.
Abu Suleiman said that the occupation targeted Al-Mawasi with a large barrage of missiles, which led to many casualties. “The occupation targeted the area more than once to prevent us from any rescue operation,” he tells Mondoweiss, denouncing the silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross over Israel’s prevention of rescue teams from doing their work.
Israel claims that the airstrikes were an attempt to assassinate Muhammad al-Deif, the head of the armed wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the commander of al-Qassam’s Khan Younis District Brigade, Rafi Salama. The Gaza government media office denies the Israeli claims, emphasizing that they are nothing but a way of diverting the world’s attention from the reality of the massacre the Israeli army committed as part of the genocide of Gaza’s people.
According to local sources, over 80,000 displaced people currently reside in tents in that area.
‘No state does this’
Fawzia Sheikh Youssef, 82, was buried in the sand from the bombing but survived. She describes what she experienced during the massacre as something she had never seen in her entire life. She tells Mondoweiss that she was already displaced during the Nakba of 1948 when she was only 6 years old, coming to the Khan Younis area and staying with her family for two years in a tent. 76 years later, she found herself back where she started, but this time witnessing massacres the likes of which she had never seen even during the Nakba.
“There is no country in all the world that does this to children, women, and civilians,” she says. “This isn’t how wars are.”
Fawzia was eating her breakfast when the bomb ripped through her encampment, demolishing her tent and trapping her underneath it. She found herself covered in sand and trapped inside but was not critically injured. She began crawling on the ground and extricated herself from beneath the tent, eventually escaping to a place far away from the shrapnel and missiles, closer to the main road.
“I saw before my eyes one missile after another descending next to the tents. Missiles I have never seen in my life in all of Gaza’s wars. Isn’t this internationally forbidden? Shouldn’t the civilian population be protected and not face genocide and mass killing? Isn’t this forbidden?”
FAWZIA SHEIKH YOUSEF, WHO WENT THROUGH THE NAKBA, SAYS THE MASSACRE SHE WITNESSED WAS WORSE THAN WHAT SHE SAW IN 1948. (PHOTO: HASAN SULEIH)
“They killed young people and old women. They do not respect humans. Aren’t we human?” she continues. “There is nothing to protect us from these missiles. The tents fell on our heads, and I was hit with two pieces of shrapnel in my leg. I may get poisoned, and I did not harm anyone.”
“These are not humanitarian actions,” Fawzia says. “A normal state would know that children have value, and women have value. Their lives are respected. Killing them is forbidden. There are wars. Some countries fight in the world, but not like this. Not like what happens with us.”
‘I left my son and fled from the horror of the bombing’
Samah al-Farra, a survivor of the massacre, says she fled from the horror of the missiles, leaving her son behind without knowing what she was doing. She describes what she saw after the incident as witnessing the horrors of the Day of Resurrection. The sound of the explosions, the panic of the people around her, the stampede in the attempt to escape, women leaving their tents without even wearing their clothes — Samah has to live with witnessing all these brutal scenes.
“People were running. There was sand in our eyes and fire over our heads. I left my son behind me and started running. I found the world turned upside down. The bodies of the martyrs were next to us, cut into pieces. It was a massacre. The fragments, sand, and bodies flew over our heads as we ran,” Samah describes.
She says that if this density of missiles had fallen on fortified buildings, it would have destroyed them. “But what about when they fall on tents whose owners are protected only by a piece of cloth?”
She describes the scene as a shower of missiles falling four times in a row, with more than one explosion occurring during each shower. “We saved ourselves. If we had stayed where we were, we would have been cut up and buried under the sand.”
Media reports have said that the bombs used in the al-Mawasi attack were JDAMs made in the U.S., which turn highly destructive unguided bombs into more precise missiles.
‘The entire area was overturned‘
Aziza Abu Tahir sits in front of the devastation after the bombing. Scattered bags of flour, gallons of water, vegetables, pillowcases, and utensils litter the area. She owns an oven and sits beside it every day. The women of the camp send their dough to her to bake for a small fee.
“When they dropped the bombs above our heads, all the people were running and screaming and saying that these were incendiary bombs, and this is the first time we have heard a sound like this,” Aziza tells Mondoweiss. “We ran away, and no one knew where to run. Some people went from one direction and were bombed, and some of them went from another direction and survived. But no one knew where they were going.”
AZIZA ABU TAHER IN AL-MAWASI. (PHOTO: HASSAN SULIEH)
As she speaks, a small child is hugging her, the son of her neighbor. Aziza says his mother takes care of orphans, and explains that when the attack started, his mother was bringing some dough for Aziza to bake in order to then resell to get an income for her family. “She was just here, and I baked what she wanted, and she went to sell it. As soon as she walked away, the bombing started. I don’t know where she is now, and I don’t know if she will return. The entire area she was walking in was overturned, and everything was buried.”
Hassan Suleih conducted interviews and provided photography for this report.
Tareq S. Hajjaj Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent, and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. He studied English Literature at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. He started his career in journalism in 2015 working as a news writer and translator for the local newspaper, Donia al-Watan. He has reported for Elbadi, Middle East Eye, and Al Monitor. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.
Ibrahim Salem’s family are convinced that he is the man standing in this photograph, leaked to CNN.
Ibrahim Salem had been missing for months.
In December, the Israeli military attacked his home in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza. Many of his family were killed or injured.
Ibrahim made arrangements for three of his children to be treated for their wounds in Kamal Adwan hospital.
While he was at the hospital – located in the city of Beit Lahiya – it came under an Israeli attack.
The Israeli troops went on a killing spree. Those who stayed alive were arrested.
Ibrahim’s family have been unable to contact him since that time.
At first they thought he had been killed. But there was no sign of his body in the hospital.
When it appeared that he had been taken into detention, the family sought assistance from lawyers and other human rights advocates. Yet they were unable to find information about him.
“This made me feel more helpless,” said Wasim, Ibrahim’s brother.
A CNN report broadcast in May provided the family with some basic details.
The report focused on Sde Teiman, the Israeli military camp in the Naqab desert, where Palestinians from Gaza are being detained. It featured leaked photographs from the camp.
One of them showed a prisoner standing up, blindfolded and with most of his face covered.
When Wasim saw the image from the CNN report, he was taken aback at first. When he zoomed in on it, he was sure that it was Ibrahim.
Despite how the detainee’s face was mainly covered, the family are sure from the features that were visible that it was Ibrahim in the photo. As Ibrahim was barefoot in the picture, the family could confirm that one of his toes has a distinctive shape as he had undergone surgery.
Although it was a relief to learn that Ibrahim was still alive, his family are distressed by how he looked unwell.
“He was very thin and it appeared that his health was failing,” Wasim said. “It was obvious that he had been abused and tortured.”
Located in the Naqab desert, Sde Teiman has been used to lock up thousands of Palestinians since October.
Detainees who have been subsequently released have given testimony of how they were beaten and subjected to electric shocks while being interrogated. Medical neglect is rife and food inadequate.
As prisoners have been prevented from communicating with the outside world, Ibrahim’s family lacks solid information about him. All they have is a grainy photograph indicating that he is still alive.
Can you imagine how much bleaker, hopeless, and shitty this world would be if Roger Waters were on the side of the massacres, starvation and mass-scale brutality and sadism?
‘Thanks for small mercies’, the cliche goes, and it is so true in the case of the political stances one of the greatest, most glorious, and admired musicians in history took in real time, in defiance of the cultural and political establishment of his era Personally, I’d be heartbroken if the musical hero of my youth went from singing ‘Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb?’ to supporting genocide; it would have been too terrible. I hate to even think about it.
Waters remained true to his lyrics, his vision, and his integrity. His pain as a fatherless child who lost his political and brave father in WW2, and who made generations of listeners cry and feel the wound of his fatherlessness. I remember listening to The Final Cut as a teenager and being mesmerized by ‘The Gunner’s Dream’, which starts
‘Floating down, through the clouds
Memories come rushing up to meet me now
But in the space between the heavens
And the corner of some foreign field
I had a dream I had a dream’
We all had a dream. We all do. Roget Waters remained true and faithful to his. and for this, for this absolute show of character and grace, he has my eternal love and admiration
Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was the head of the orthopedic wing at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. During the war, he had to wander from one hospital to the next, as they were all destroyed by the IDF. He has not been back to his home in Jabalya since the start of the war, and last December all trace of him disappeared. Recently, it transpired that he had died in an Israeli jail, apparently due to the torture of beatings during interrogation.
The last people to see him were other doctors and detainees who have been released. They told Haaretz correspondents Jack Khoury and Bar Peleg that they had barely recognized him. “It was clear he had been through hell, torture, humiliation, and sleep deprivation. He wasn’t the person we knew; he was a shadow of himself.” (Haaretz, May 12.) A photo of him published after his death showed an elegant man. A photo from during the war showed his hospital gown covered in blood. He had a wife, Jasmine, and they had six children. He studied medicine in Romania and did a residency in the United Kingdom. The rapper Tamer Nafar wrote a beautiful lament for him. (Haaretz, May 6.)
A doctor, a hospital ward director, was beaten and tortured to death in an Israeli jail. That did not set off alarms here. Nearly all his physician colleagues, including heads of the medical establishment and those who take part in the horrific torture ongoing at Sde Teiman base and in Israeli prisons, did not say a word. A department director was beaten to death. So what? After all, almost 500 doctors and medical staffers have been killed in the war and their fate failed to arouse any attention. So why should Al-Bursh‘s death attract any attention? Because he was a department director? No war crime committed by Israel in Gaza has aroused any feelings here in Israel, with the exception of the joy felt by the bloodthirsty right-wing.
On top of the doctor’s death came another heinous act: the response of the authorities. The Shin Bet was silent as usual. Ex-Shin Bet officers are now star commentators on television, asked to show us the way, to give us their opinion, but the Shin Bet never talks about those it has interrogated and tortured. The IDF shirked responsibility; the doctor was only “processed” at an army detention facility, and was immediately transferred to the Shin Bet interrogation facility in Kishon, and from there to Ofer Prison, which is under the charge of the Israel Prison Service. The IPS response was pure audacity: “The service does not address the circumstances of the deaths of detainees who are not Israeli citizens.”
A man dies in prison, yet the Israel Prison Service does not think it should report the circumstances of his death to the public because he was not a citizen of the state. In other words, the lives of those who are not citizens have no value in Israeli prisons. We should remember this when an Israeli is arrested in Cyprus for rape, or in Peru for drugs, and we are outraged by the conditions of his detention. We remember this even more poignantly when we complain to the world, and rightly so, about the fate of our hostages.
Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, who was the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
How can people identify with the pain felt by Israelis over the fate of the hostages, when these same Israelis turn out to be cold-hearted and indifferent to the fate of the other side’s hostages? Why isn’t there a single banner in Tel Aviv’s “Hostage Square” calling for an investigation into the killing of the doctor from Gaza? Is his blood less red than the blood of the Israeli hostages who died? Why should the whole world take an interest and work only for our for hostages, and not for the Palestinian hostages, whose conditions of imprisonment and whose deaths in Israeli prisons should horrify everyone?
Ever since the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, none of the regional powers in the Middle East had shown genuine solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement.
Jordan severed its ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1970; Lebanon ceased to be the geographical hinterland for the movement in 1982; Syria, which probably was more loyal than other states, did not allow Palestinian independent strategy and visions while Egypt altogether ceased to play a prominent role in regional politics.
Other Arab countries were also quite absent from the Palestinian struggle.
Türkiye, under Erdogan, at times showed greater solidarity, in particular with the besieged Gaza since 2005, but also pursued an ambivalent policy due to its strategic relationship with Israel.
The only regional power that constantly and unconditionally supported the Palestinian cause was Iran.
Erroneous Equation
The Western narrative equates erroneously, and probably intentionally, Iran with the Islamic State (ISIS), that very same organization that, in actuality, planted bombs in Iran, killing many people.
It should also be remembered that the Western support of Sunni Jihadism as a counterforce to the secular and left anti-colonial movement planted the seeds from which both Al-Qaeda and ISIS grew and prospered.
Their violence was also directed against Shia groups in Southeast Asia and the Arab world. Many of these groups are directly linked to Iran.
Contrary to Western propaganda, the Iranian support to mainly Shia resistance groups is part of its perception of self-defense and not derived from a wish to impose a kind of Jihadist regime all over the world.
De-Zionized Palestine
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, over 30 years ago, Israel is the only state in the region that enjoyed unconditional support from an external superpower and its allies.
And it is important, even at the risk of sounding trite, to mention once more what this unconditional support is for.
Under this US-championed international immunity, Israel stretched over the whole of historical Palestine, ethnically cleansed more than half of its population over the years, and subjected the other half to a regime of apartheid, colonization and oppression.
Thus, direct support for the Palestinian cause from an important regional power such as Iran is meant to counteract the existential danger faced by the Palestinian people in the last 75 years.
Iran is a complicated ally. It still has some way to go in terms of its own human rights record.
The vocabulary and reservoir of images used by Iranian leaders and, at times, media does a disservice to the truly genuine Iranian solidarity.
Slogans such as “Small Satan” or “Death to Israel”, along with promises of total destruction, are all unnecessary tropes for galvanizing a nation that is already galvanized. Indeed, during the dictatorship of the Shah, the Iranian people supported Palestine and resented their regime for its close ties with Israel.
Aside from rhetoric, however, the policy itself is highly valuable in terms of redressing the imbalance of power between apartheid Israel and the occupied Palestinians, who, again, are facing an existential threat.
It should also be noted that the language Israeli propaganda uses in referring to Iran, the Palestinians or Hamas is far worse – as was revealed in full in the material the government of South Africa handed over to the International Court of Justice last December.
In this respect, many of us share Iran’s vision of a de-Zionized and decolonized one-state solution in historical Palestine, which, at least I hope, will also be a democratic welfare state.
Iran’s policies towards Israel are portrayed in the West as motivated by antisemitism of the worst kind.
Due to Israel’s intrinsic resentment of any pro-Palestine sentiments, in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world, Iran’s strong position in support of the Palestinians makes it the main target for Israel and its allies. In order for Israel to maintain Western-led pressure on Iran, it often, if not always, rewrites the history, the very chronology of the events, thus always presenting Iran as an aggressor and Israel as a country in a permanent state of self-defense.
Israel’s Aggressions and Iranian Counterattack
For a long time, Iran has tolerated sabotage acts on Iranian soil, including the assassination of scientists, the killing and wounding of its personnel in Syria and the Israeli pressure on the US to abolish the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.
Imagine if Iran would have destroyed an American embassy, killing some of the most senior officers of the US army, one would only imagine what the American reaction would have been.
In their last attack on Israel, on April 13, Iran did everything in its power to show that it is not seeking collateral damage or wishing to target civilians. In fact, they gave Israelis more than ten days to get ready for the strike.
Yet, Israel and the West were very quick to declare that the Iranian attack was an utter failure that caused no damage at all. A few days later, however, they had to admit that two Israeli air bases were, indeed, directly hit in the Iranian strike.
But this is hardly the point. Of course, both sides have the capability to inflict great damage and loss of life on each other. This balance of power, however, has implications that are far more important than the ones analyzed by military experts.
A Counterweight
If the Hamas operation on October 7 cast doubt on the invincibility of the Israeli army, the technological know-how Iran has introduced is another indicator that Israel is not the only military superpower in the region.
It should also be noted that Israel needed direct support from Britain, France, the US, Jordan and some other Arab countries to protect itself from the Iranian attack.
So far, there is no sign Israelis internalized the important lessons they should have learned in the last seven months: about the limitations of power, the inability to exist as an alien state in the midst of the Arab and Muslim world, and the impossibility to permanently maintain a regime of racial apartheid and military oppression.
In this respect, the technological capacities of a powerful regional power such as Iran, by itself, is not a game changer. But it does constitute a counterweight to a strong and wide coalition that has always supported the Zionist project since the very beginning. A counterweight that was not there for many years.
It is obvious that the situation in historical Palestine will not change through the development or transformation of one single factor. Indeed, change will occur as a result of many factors. The combination of these processes will eventually merge into a transformative event, or a series of events, which will result in a new political reality that is situated within decolonization, equality and restorative justice in historical Palestine.
This matrix requires a strong Iranian presence, which can even be more effective if coupled with reforms inside Iran itself. It also requires the global south to prioritize Palestine; a similar change should also be registered in the global north.
A united and younger Palestine liberation movement, alongside the de-Zionization of the global Jewish communities, are also two important factors.
The social implosion inside Israel, the economic crisis and the inability of the government and the army to address the current needs, are also crucial developments.
When fused, all of these factors will create a powerful transformation on the ground, which will lead to the creation of a new regime and a new political outfit.
It is too early to give the new outfit a name and it is premature to predict the outcome of the liberation process.
However, what is quite visible is the need to help this new reality to unfold as soon as possible. Without it, the genocide in Gaza would not be the last horrific chapter in Palestine’s history.
– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. He is the co-editor, with Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation.’ Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
The most repulsive thing I saw yesterday was a Zionist justifying the genocide of Palestinians by reference to the genocide of Syrians. Three points. One: One genocide doesn’t make another OK. Obviously.
Two: Israel was a major reason why the US stopped serious weapons reaching the Free Army. Other than a few rhetorical comments, the US worked with Iran (doing a deal) and Russia (welcoming it into Syria to ‘solve the chemical weapons problem’, which of course it didn’t) to save Assad. This, according to what American officials told Syrians lobbying for weapons, was because Israel was worried about ‘instability’, especially about Syrians having anti-aircraft missiles and heavy weapons. So hundreds of thousands of Syrians were murdered, millions expelled, and the country utterly destroyed, for the sake of the apartheid state’s ‘stability’.
Three: Israel is doing exactly the same to Gaza as what Assad/Iran/Russia did to Homs, Aleppo, the Ghouta, etc: it is destroying the civilian infrastructure, imposing starvation sieges, hitting schools, hospitals, residential blocks, bakeries. Its aim is the same – to remove or annihilate the civilian population. Its genocidal rhetoric is the same, but it seems to be far more deeply spread amongst Israeli Jews than it is amongst Assad’s ‘loyal’ Alawi community. The difference in method is that Israel does the killing faster and more efficiently, with more advanced western (American and German) weapons.
So Israel does the same as Assad/Iran/Russia, only faster, and Israel contributed to the disaster in Syria anyway, and you can’t justify your fascist genocide in the south of bilad ash-sham by pointing to the fascist genocide in the north. You are all fascists, and the people of the region in their overwhelming majority despise you both. There will be no peace until both of your ideologies and murderous power systems are dismantled.
It is because the Assad regime (murderer of tens of thousands of Palestinians, which kept the border with the occupied Golan quiet for decades and silenced all Syrian political organisation) and Israel have so much in common that they have protected each other over the decades.
The Zionist line on this is : ‘look how Assad committed a real genocide, whereas Israel does its best to protect civilians.’ These people are worse than liars. They are propagandising to cover a clear genocide, whose sole aim is to destroy civilians. It’s ‘look at the savages doing genocide, whereas we are civilised people doing gentle, civilised police work.’ But you, if you are Zionists, are perpetrating genocide, murdering the children first, in order to defend an apartheid state built on land stolen from another people.
(Meanwhile, there are also ‘leftists’ and supposed ‘anti-Zionists’ who say, against all evidence, that Assad/Iran/Russia are anti-imperialists working to stop Israel. Such people are ignorant at very best, fascists laughing at the slaughter of Arabs and Muslims at worst. Don’t trust them.)
Maybe it was German Zionists who invented the ‘look at the Syrian genocide’ tactic, because their usual argument is ‘because of our genocide of Jews, we should also commit genocide against Palestinians’. They are used to justifying one genocide by referring to another. (And this is their genocide, their weapons, their arrests of protesting Jews and Muslims, their visa bans, their racist hysteria against Arab immigrants. This genocide is being perpetrated by the US and Germany as well as Israeli Jews, and the UK, France, Canada, and many others are complicit. This is the worst thing the west has done in half a century, and it changes everything.)
Some perspective on the new and hilariously named ‘Antisemitism Awareness Act’, and two predictions
First, let’s remember reality (always important when dealing with propaganda, and I’ll touch on this in a sec). In real life, Israel and Netanyahu don’t have anywhere to go.
Wherever Israel and Netanyahu look in real, head reality, there is a very serious wall of opposition. Iran and Hizbullah tower over Israel’s ambitions (read: delusions), Egypt and Jordan, pliable as they are, cannot be just swept aside, and politically as well as geographically, Israel and Netanyahu can expand nowhere. A heavy wall of ideological and military resistance makes any major advance impossible. Even Rafah is going to be pricey, and killing another 20,000 Palestinians will only make Israel’s situation more dire while providing absolutely no benefit.
So where can Netanyahu and Israel go? In reality, nowhere. But there is one place where he (and the deranged beliefs that he represents) can make substantial gains, and that’s America. Or, to be more precise, American consciousness.
Knowing he has hypnotic power over American lawmakers and absolute control over mainstream media, Netanyahu knows he can create an illusion of progress by making American public life crazier and crazier, haunted, paranoid, and clinically insane.
So this is where he concentrates his efforts at the moment. By throwing America in an antisemitic scare, he can present his and Israel’s war as a heroic war of defense waged by brave fearless warriors, rather than a campaign of senseless killing that has no purpose.
Netanyahu exploits his (and his Zionist followers) unlimited access to American consciousness to distort how his idiot’s murder crusade is perceived, and he cannot care less if America is destroyed in the process. As a matter of fact, I think he’ll enjoy it very much. This is both ancient revenge, but also a sense of self-affirmation in a license to do whatever the hell you want (If you can kill and annihilate with impunity, then you must really be God’s chosen one).
But there is an even more sinister aspect to this onslaught on America (which is just beginning). This is the political objective of destroying the American left, which is connected deeply to the Palestinians, but also sees fighting Islamophobia as an important part of its mission.
So by presenting Palestinians and Muslims, and their American sympathizers, as antisemites, Netanyahu can employ the full force of the American state to completely crush them. This is the strategic aspect of this effort, of which ‘Antisemitism Awareness Act’ is a nig first step.
Netanyahu needs Americans to see Arabs as Muslims, and those who support them, as enemies of the state, which is the American wording for dehumanization.
Legislation is not enough: violence is needed, and it will suddenly and spontaneously (of course) start to appear soon. American Jews will all of a sudden be under a great and imminent threat, and it will be used to delegitimize, criminalize, and punish a political camp.
Predictions
I was asked yesterday what I think was going to happen in America. So the rise of violence and tensions between Jewish and Arab and Muslim communities, and far-left activists, is my first prediction. I have two more.
The deep connection between Israel and the US became a symbiosis and now is a complete unity. This unity is not making Israel strong anymore. It only makes America weak, as it absorbs and embraces Zionist views as its own. One major aspect of this is victimhood. Soon you’ll start to hear what you never heard before: American politicians speaking as if they were victims of dark, conspiratorial, global forces.
This will be part of the shift America is undergoing from (at least partially, if not mostly) reality-based discourse to one completely dominated by fantasy and fiction (and this is why resistance must bring up reality first, always).
2. As the protest spreads and becomes radicalized by establishment brutality, thousands will be arrested, and then more. If the war is not seen as coming to an end, and as freedom of speech continues to be crushed in America, new legal mechanisms for detaining large numbers of people will be discussed and perhaps implemented. I have no doubt Israel is already providing guidance on this issue. Some of these new measures will bear a prominent resemblance to Israel’s ‘Administrative Detention’.
It is really hard to see how this Zionist takeover of American consciousness is going to end. I don’t know American society enough, and this is really unchartered territory. I do know, though, that reversing from this back to normalcy is going to be long and painful. But you have to fight for your future and your country, that’s all I know
THE AFTERMATH OF THE MAWASI MASSACRE, JULY 13, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
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