Palestinians call for boycott of genocide conference in Jerusalem by Rania Khalek

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has called for a boycott of this year’s conference of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) in Jerusalem… The title of this year’s conference is, ironically, “Intersections: Holocaust Scholarship, Genocide Research and Histories of Mass Violence.”.. One of the scheduled speakers is Adama Dieng, special adviser on the prevention of genocide to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

… The conference is scheduled to take place from 26 to 29 July at Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, some of which was constructed on land that Israel illegally expropriated from Palestinians in East Jerusalem after Israel militarily occupied the West Bank in 1967… “The conference is sponsored by five deeply complicit Israeli academic institutions,” PACBI states. “Israeli universities are profoundly complicit in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel’s recent war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza; justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, rationalizing the gradual ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians; providing moral justification for extrajudicial killings and indiscriminate attacks against civilians; systematically discriminating against ‘non-Jewish’ students in admissions, dormitory room eligibility, financial aid, etc.; and many other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law.”

… At the very least, says PACBI, “Whether Israel’s decades-old crimes against the Palestine people meet the UN definition of genocide or not, they should make any honest scholar think twice before participating in a conference on genocide organized by Israeli universities on occupied Palestinian land.”

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/palestinians-call-boycott-genocide-conference-jerusalem

Israeli settler praised for throwing pork on body of Palestinian by Rania Khalek

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Online incitement by Israelis against Palestinians has skyrocketed in recent weeks, according to a report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper… a video surfaced showing an Israeli throwing pork at al-Jabari’s body as he lay on a stretcher. As the man dangles the meat before the camera and then drops it on al-Jabari’s face, he shouts, “Here, see this? This is pig meat. Friends, just in case you don’t know it, they really love pig meat. … He should enjoy with his virgins, with the pig meat.”… Anti-Semites, ironically, have used the same logic to attack Jewish symbols and insult Jews. Last May, for instance, pork was left at a Holocaust memorial in Massachusetts…Israeli Internet incitement may be on the rise, but it is hardly a new phenomenon.

What is clear is that the genocidal hatred many Israelis express online does not stay there. It has already spilled into the streets.

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-settler-praised-throwing-pork-body-palestinian

Israeli leaders lit the match that burned baby Ali Dawabsha by Rania Khalek

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In Israel, killing Palestinians and advocating for genocide builds political careers.

Violent demagogues occupy key positions in government, not in spite of their anti-Palestinian incitement or the killings they have perpetrated, but because of them. After endorsing a call last June for Palestinian mothers to be slaughtered in their beds to prevent them from birthing “little snakes,” Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked was rewarded by being appointed justice minister…  Eli Ben-Dahan, the settler rabbi in occupied East Jerusalem who decreed that “[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human,” is Israel’s recently appointed deputy defense minister. He is now in charge of the “Civil Administration,” the name Israel gives to the military body that rules Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. It is no accident that clerics like Ben-Dahan have been largely silent about baby Ali. After all, they inspire an extreme messianic, eliminationist version of Judaism that drives settler violence… Politicians that rule a society where Palestinian babies are routinely called a “demographic threat,” and where many joyfully celebrate their slaughter, cannot claim innocence and purport to be “shocked” when settlers burn Palestinian children alive.

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-leaders-lit-match-burned-baby-ali-dawabsha

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Obama gives $1.9 billion in weapons as welcome gift to Israel’s racist government by Rania Khalek

The Obama administration approved a $1.9 billion arms sale to Israel in recent days as “compensation” for the US nuclear deal with Iran, which the Israeli regime staunchly opposes. Among the tens of thousands of bombs included in the weapons package are 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 12,000 general purpose bombs and 750 bunker buster bombs that can penetrate up to twenty feet, or six meters, of reinforced concrete… Israel used those bunker buster munitions to pummel Gaza’s high rise towers and wipe out entire families as they sheltered in their homes during Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israeli assault that ultimately killed over 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including over 500 children.

Continue reading at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/obama-gives-19-billion-weapons-welcome-gift-israels-racist-government

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Unauthorized Disclosure – Guest: Janice Williamson by Rania Khalek

Rania Khalek on Unauthorized Disclosure​ podcast (from minute 00:36:34) reports on and analyses the latest developments vis-à-vis Israel and genocide, connecting the dots between the makeup of the new government and the latest Breaking the Silence​ report on Israel’s last campaign of extermination in Gaza.

Listen to the podcast at http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/unauthorizeddisclosure/id/3545331

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.

Watch: testimonies of atrocities in Gaza from the Russell Tribunal

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine convened an emergency session in Brussels last month to examine whether Israel committed war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip during “Operation Protective Edge,” the summertime military assault that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, and left Gaza in ruins.

After hearing testimony from journalists, eyewitnesses, legal scholars and physicians present during the onslaught, the twelve-member jury, made up of world-renowned intellectuals and international law experts, found Israel guilty of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide…”

Taken together, the testimonies presented at the Russell Tribunal (all of which can be viewed here) demonstrate a clear pattern of intentional destruction of Gaza and its people by an increasingly extreme settler-colonial state “primed for genocide,” as Max Blumenthal put it.

Genocide does not happen overnight or in a vacuum. There are warning signs, many of which were raised at the Russell Tribunal.

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