IF A GENOCIDE FALLS IN THE FOREST

Ed Noor: 
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Dear readers, I have not, as you may have noticed, done much coverage of the current carnage and horror in Gaza.  There are reasons for this. During Operation Cast Lead this blog was one of the first to post real photos of events in Gaza. I was tired of white washed photos that showed destruction but no carnage as if bodies were not also being destroyed. So every photo I found got posted. I was merely trying to fill the void.
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I was not even sickened by those images back then, but I was also new to the Israeli kinder gentler form of war and just kept on looking for proof. I studied thousands upon thousands of them with a cool eye despite my horror. My rationale was, if the Palestinians had to deal with it, surely my stomach could handle just looking. I suppose I was hardening myself to such visuals for my stomach has always been queasy at such sights.  How I could look at these so closely and weep so little despite the emotions they aroused? The horror was put into a Pandora’s box and left there. 
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The photos coming out of Palestine lately have been beyond the pale. I have just not been able to look at them beyond a glimpse before crumbling. I cannot look at them and then carry on my day as need be. I don't want to be the angry woman it will create for I will get into a mood that will not let the sun through. As it is, wherever I go, whatever I do, Palestine is first and foremost in my thoughts, the imagery is too much. The heavy horror of Cast Lead imagery has taken its toll and, to my shame, these victims of today’s onslaught are not being honoured or remembered here.  
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Years later, we have Operation Protective Edge, which in Hebrew has a much more ominous translation. Suddenly international media is all over it.  The world population is now seeing these images but, alas, usually with the pro-Israeli narrative and the strong intimation that Hamas is responsible for this Israeli holocaust of Palestinians.
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I believe as well that, as with other massacres, the international community is being intentionally traumatized by the PTB as well as inured to the sight of what is done or can be done to those who resist.  It is part of the campaign to drive the people of the world to the brink of such madness we turn to our “leaders” for a solution ~ any solution ~ that will end the wars and clashes everywhere. The volume has been, and will continue to be, amped up until the bringing in of the NWO/JWO.  At our request.  Keep always in mind that old Hegelian dialectic: Problem, Reaction, Solution.
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They need our consent. And they will get it at any cost ~ we have already seen their madness and yet we continue to live under their rule. On the map below, see how many support the rights of Palestine to exist. Right now, the cost is Palestine.
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If you, dear readers, wish a collection of images of these horrors, please leave a message in Comments and I will be happy to oblige. But otherwise, to see these things, Press TV and The Ugly Truth or Facebook are good places to start. There are Palestinian photographers in FB who provide excellent coverage as well. Younes Arar is a good place to start. Or Nahida Exiled. 
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We are all Palestinians. 
We MUST keep up the fight for all Palestine. 
Muslim Palestinians, 
Christian Palestinians. 

Their fight is OUR fight. 

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This is the most important of all struggles on the planet today. 

The above green countries officially recognize Palestine. Western media seems to forget to point this out to the populace but most of the world gets slightly better international coverage.
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Media coverage in the West.

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Apology to David Swanson: I could not post the “Blowin’ in the Wind” Dylan verse simply because the man is Chabad and his frequently plagiarized music beyond dead to me.  

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By David Swanson

August 5, 2014

Source: War is a Crime

Hat Tip: Mami’s
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There's a wide and mysterious chasm between the stated intentions of the Israeli government as depicted by the U.S. media and what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza, even as recounted in the U.S. media. 
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ED Noor: Canada is even worse.
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With the morgues full, Gazans are packing freezers with their dead children. Meanwhile, the worst images to be found in Israel depict fear, not death and suffering. Why the contrast? 
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If the Israeli intent is defensive, why are 97% of the deaths Gazan, not Israeli? 
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If the targets are fighters, why are whole families being slaughtered and their houses levelled? 
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Why are schools and hospitals and children playing on the beach targeted? 
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Why target water and electricity if the goal is not to attack an entire population?
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ED Noor: Nothing is new here. During Cast Lead they wiped out almost all the sewage treatment in Gaza and left the people flooded in the filth.  There has been precious little repair since then. This, on top of the general theft and poisoning of Palestinian water, has created a dire situation of squalor and disease; this is an ongoing war crime.
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The mystery melts away if you look at the stated intentions of the Israeli government as not depicted by the U.S. media but readily available in Israeli media and online. 
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On August 1st, the Deputy Speaker of Israel's Parliament posted on his FaceBook page a plan for the complete destruction of the people of Gaza using concentration camps.  He had laid out a somewhat similar plan in a July 15th column.
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ED Noor: Such a good Jewish girl! But she is far from the first. Years ago, Avignor Lieberman, among others, was widely quoted as being fully in favour of nuking Gaza to eradicate the locals. Yidiot seems to have not considered the effects of such actions upon the Israelis themselves....
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Another member of the Israeli Parliament, Ayelet Shaked, called for genocide in Gaza at the start of the current war, writing:

"Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."

Taking a slightly different approach, Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University has been widely quoted in Israeli media saying,

"The only thing that can deter [Gazans] is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped."

The Times of Israel published a column on August 1st, and later unpublished it, with the headline "When Genocide Is Permissible." The answer turned out to be: now.

On August 5, Giora Eiland, former head of Israel's National Security Council, published a column with the headline "In Gaza, There Is No Such Thing as 'Innocent Civilians'."  Eiland wrote: 
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"We should have declared war against the state of Gaza (rather than against the Hamas organization). . . . [T]he right thing to do is to shut down the crossings, prevent the entry of any goods, including food, and definitely prevent the supply of gas and electricity."

It's all part of putting Gaza "on a diet," in the grotesque wording of an advisor to a former Israeli Prime Minister. 
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If it were common among members of the Iranian or Russian government to speak in favour of genocide, you'd better believe the U.S. media would notice. Why does this phenomenon go unremarked in the case of Israel?

Noticing it is bound to get you called an anti-Semite, but that's hardly a concern worthy of notice while children are being killed by the hundreds.

ED Noor: Around the time of Operation Cast Lead I penned a piece on why I was a proud anti-semite. It is, to me, a compliment if it this standing for life over death. Sadly, the piece is so long ago I cannot even dredge up the link to it!
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Another explanation is U.S. complicity. The weapons Israel is using are given to it, free-of-charge, by the U.S. government, which also leads efforts to provide Israel immunity for its crimes.  Check out this revealing map of which nations recognize the nation of Palestine.  (ED Noor: Map reproduced above.)
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A third explanation is that looking too closely at what Israel's doing could lead to someone looking closely at what the U.S. has done and is doing. Roughly 97% of the deaths in the 2003-2011 war on Iraq were Iraqi.  Things U.S. soldiers and military leaders said about Iraqis were shameful and genocidal.
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War is the biggest U.S. investment, and contemporary war is almost always a one-sided slaughter of civilians.  If seeing the horror of it in Israeli actions allow us to begin seeing the same in U.S. actions, an important step will have been taken toward war's elimination.