Media call this a war. It is not. It is a slaughter, it is a state-driven terrorism with the goal of genocide, against a people with no air force or anti-missile technology to help them. They are sitting ducks in a pen, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight back. The Gaza civilians, women and children are not Hamas, they have no weapons to fight with. All they can do is suffer and die. Israel tries to justify it saying they were attacked, Hamas started. One boy hits another boy doesn’t give the struck boy the right to kill the other boy’s entire family and neighborhood. Israel lies about allowing food and other aid into Gaza because it is about causing as much hurt, pain, and destruction as possible. The Israeli government think they are above any attempts to stop them and have the right to do what ever they want to anyone they like. We need to show them they are wrong. Hugs. Scottie
With the Israel-Hamas war entering its 100th day, there is growing international concern about the increasing civilian death toll in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue the assault. Meanwhile, vigils were held in Israel in support of those who remain held hostage in Gaza. Charlie D’Agata reports.
Over 23,000 Palestinians dead, about 11,000 are children, most of the rest are women. There are an estimated 2 million people homeless and displaced, with no shelter or food in the winter cold and rain. Israel said it won’t stop, it says it will continue what it is doing all through 2024. Their plan is for an incredible dense small area reservation tightly controlled by Israel, which hopes to force the Palestinians to become so desperate they will either overwhelm the Egyptian border or die off and leaving until there are no Palestinians left. Israel has said they are working to force deport the all Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank. This is a land grab genocide by Israel. Different officials in the government admit it. Bibi brags about knifing the US in the back as he has demanded more money, he laughs as he claims he prevented any attempt to form a two-state solution. He is as racist against Palestinians as republicans are toward brown people. Hugs. Scottie
Now 100 days old, the latest Israel-Hamas war is by far the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive conflict between the bitter enemies.
The law he touts that would allow local police to arrest people they “think” are not here legally and a local judge gets to order their immediate removal. Guess what that means in reality? Arrest all brown people, charge them, quickly send them to Mexico at gun point … learn later they were here legally, or maybe even citizens. Ah who cares, they republican leaders get their nice white straight cis ethnostate where they are complete rulers over how people live. Hugs. Scottie.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
“… the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal”.
Department of Public Safety troopers stand guard over migrants in a detention area Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass as a surge of migrants push across the border.
William Luther
WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is doing everything to stop border crossings short of shooting migrants because the Biden administration would “charge us with murder.”
“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” the governor said in an interview with conservative commentator Dana Loesch. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
The comments came during an appearance on Loesch’s show last week in which Abbott was asked what he believed was the “maximum amount of pressure” he could implement to secure the border.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
The clip was aired on Loesch’s program again Thursday without the line about shooting migrants. A version of the audio was also posted on social media by Heartland Signal, a progressive radio show based in Chicago.
Abbott said Friday that he was asked to point out where he was drawing the line on what the state can legally do to secure the border.
“I pointed out something that is obviously illegal,” Abbott said. “It’s that simple.”
The comments come as the Biden administration has sued the state to stop a slew of Abbott’s border security efforts, including the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal.
Abbott also has strung miles of razor wire along the border and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Biden administration is also fighting to have removed in a separate court battle.
But Abbott still has faced pressure from some conservatives to do more, and some in the GOP have called for the use of deadly force to stop suspected traffickers. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged as much during a campaign stop in Texas last summer, saying those breaking through border barriers and displaying “hostile intent” should “end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety last month found no wrongdoing by agency officials after six troopers working for Abbott’s border security initiative alleged mistreatment of migrants last summer.
The complaints included an email from a DPS medic describing “inhumane” treatment of migrants he witnessed while deployed in Eagle Pass. The email said troopers had been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and told not to give water to asylum-seekers even in extreme heat. The agency’s inspector general found that most of the incidents raised by the troopers did happen, but concluded that DPS officials did not violate law or agency policy.
Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at ben.wermund@houstonchronicle.com. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.
People like Abbott are precisely the reason why laws exist. He has no moral compunction against murder, but luckily realizes it could land him in prison.
Like everyone, I always have the best of intentions. I planned this weekend for getting to comments and putting away old saved tabs. But fate and my memories get in the way. And right now I hurt badly. Not asking for sympathy, I just want to explain if I end up late on doing what I said I would.
This last week I have fluctuating between active memories of my abuse including the feelings as it was happening, to being very depressed and not wanting to even get out of bed. So I went from if I sleep having nightmares to not being willing / able to sleep to when sleeping not being willing to get out of bed to function. Plus Friday I had my allergy shots, had a bad reaction had to take Benadryl, and while tearing my skin off went to bed early.
This morning is an example. I went to bed at 4 pm yesterday (remember having a bad allergy reaction and taking Benadryl) telling Ron I wanted to get up at 6 pm. But when he came to me then, I said I was not ready to get up. He understood. Since I opened up to him more about my abuse he understands some of the moods I have and me trying to hide in being distracted. I woke at midnight but couldn’t bring my self to get up. I laid there watching the clock, the thoughts in my head fighting with each other. Some telling me to get up and do computer stuff, the other voices told me to stay in bed, ignore everything, maybe sleep. A couple of times I did sleep for a few minutes until the dreams turned bad, and I woke up agitated. Once Ron woke me asking if I was OK because I was having a bad dream about my abuse and verbalizing it. At 2 am, I reminded my self of my promise to get up and work on comments. At 4 am, I told my self the outside cats needed to be fed and cared for. Finally at about 5 something I forced my self out of bed but mostly because my stomach was hurting due to lack of food (something I knew all too well and was triggering on its own which caused its own bad feedback loop in my head. As an adult in a restaurant I would order far more than I could eat, and it took Ron a long time to teach me how not to do that. At home I would cook for far more people than the two of us could eat. When Ron would cook I would fill my plate with far more than I could eat. Only after I told him how I had been denied food, hospitalized and went clinically dead from being starved and was suffering malnutrition for long periods of my childhood did he understand. If my grandfather had not grabbed me and taken me to the ER I would not be here.) and plus my bowels needing relief.
I got up and was doing well, I feed and took care of cats, I did other chores and went to town on the computer stuff I needed to get done. But yesterday the water was off for most of the day, so we didn’t wash the dishes from yesterday. So about 10 am I started washing dishes, cleaning up the kitchen, and washing the more dishes. Also pre-making the coffee for morning. For some reason that whole thing took me until 2 pm! During that I had to take extra medication, and now I am having a vodka cola drink.
All this to say, I am going to concentrate on current comments while saving posts so that by morning they won’t disappear. I will work as long as I can (Ron has already been asking me what I want for supper as he knows how tired I am and wants to make sure I eat before going to bed) doing the comments and will save those I don’t get to for tomorrow, which should be a slower day. I saved all the comments from the last few days so if you left comments know I will answer them, I really love that you commented. Thank you. It just has been a struggle for a few months with my memories, emotions, and my body. Hugs, loves, best wishes to all. Scottie
Aside from the normal hate and bigotry towards the LGBTQIA that religious republicans normally show, this guy adds a new wrinkle. And it goes back to the point I made that some people can not accept change. While not really old at 59 he shows he can not adjust to modern times. He says, “From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.” He seems to reject any advancements since time immemorial. You do know that at one time humans thought thunder and lightning were caused by gods, we also thought the world was flat, we were sure that sickness and disease were caused by spirits and demons, religious leaders at one point were so certain that the earth was the center of everything with the sun orbiting the earth that they burned anyone to death who said otherwise … so much more we always knew, took as concrete never changing fact, and we were totally wrong about. Just as he is about gender, sex, trans issues, and anything his religious teaching say about the LGBTQIA people. He rejects modern science and medical best practices but instead demands that proven harmful conversion therapy be mandated by law. “”It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex”. Hugs. Scottie
A Northeast Florida lawmaker wants to legally define the words “man” and “woman” based on biological sex at birth. Jacksonville Rep. Dean Black filed the proposed What Is A Woman Act this week, which would also impose new requirements related to transgender individuals on state agencies and insurance companies.
House Bill 1233 requires state agencies to revoke any identification cards, like driver’s licenses, that don’t match up with a person’s sex on their birth certificate.
“From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.”
Black’s bill would also require any health insurance policy in the state that covers transition-related “prescriptions or procedures’’ to also cover “treatment to detransition” from such procedures.
It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex.
The bill would also require any school district or state agency “that collects vital statistics for the purpose of complying with anti-discrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering accurate public health, crime, economic, or other data” to identify the birth sex of people in the data set, potentially restricting data collection on trans people.
Dean Black last appeared here for a bill that would allow DeSantis to remove any elected official who votes to remove Confederate monuments.
In October 2023, Black called for banning elected officials from participating in Pride events after Jacksonville’s newly-elected mayor led her city’s parade.
"It is an ugly, mean-spirited bill that helps NO ONE,” @CarlosGSmith said, “it should be voted down and rejected by lawmakers for what it is." https://t.co/7XVsoLhttp
My favorite is all the dudes who scream about trans women using women’s bathrooms. Uh………dudes? We don’t see each others’ genitals in the bathroom anyway. Because we use stalls. With locks. I have no way of knowing if the woman in the stall next to me is trans. Why would I care?
Notice how their obsession is overwhelmingly with trans women. Trans men, not so much. This is evident in his proposed legislation being titled the “What is a Woman” act.
Once again, misogyny is the root of all hatred of sexual minorities.
They also seem to think that it’s a big party in there, when all we’re doing is peeing, pooping, and menstruating. Most of us don’t even talk to anyone in there.
Take out all urinals. Put in stalls. Make every bathroom unisex. That way, men will have to wait in line just like women do now. (I went to a football game where they had port-a-potties while they were building the bathrooms. Port-a-potties, of course, are unisex. But there was one that was for women only, and of course I waited in that line for it. The other ones were disgusting.
They don’t realize that they’re saying men can’t control themselves around women and are constantly suppressing the urge to rape someone. Hell, Mike Huckabee said something like this a few years ago.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someday that red states require a mandatory genital’s check to make certain that you are male or female per their standards on gender and ID. Sigh.
Not only is he an asshole, but he’s simply fucking wrong. Factually incorrect, whether he knows or accepts it. Humans can be born with XX, XY, XO, XXY, (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) or XYY chromosomes. Take your “there are only two genders” bullshit and fuck off for all eternity.
This is pure Christian bigotry. They don’t want to be forbidden to harass LGBTQIA homeless kids, tell them they are broken and wrong so they need Christian fixings. It is all about being able to forbid trans kids to transition even socially, and to send gay and trans kids to conversion therapy. Ask yourself why it is so important to them to disrespect LGBTQIA kids? And the fact is, this rule does not keep religious people out of the foster system. What it does is prevent LGBTQIA children from being placed in homes where they would face abuse due to their being gay or trans. But it prevents Christian bigots from being able to harass and harm gay and trans kids. Again that is what the republicans are fighting for, the right to force gay and trans kids to live as straight cis kids while trying to force them to join Jesus. Hugs. Scottie
A bill filed in the House and Senate in November by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a former GOP presidential candidate, would prevent government agencies from penalizing child welfare service providers that are unwilling to “take action contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs,” including affirming a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The duo introduced identical legislation in 2019 and 2021.
Nonreligious service providers, meanwhile, have largely argued that the draft rule is needed to protect LGBTQ young people already vulnerable to abuse.
A new rule requiring child welfare agencies to place LGBTQ children in “environments free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse” based on the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity or expression is drawing opposition from Republicans.
The proposed rule, issued in September by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), also would require caregivers to undergo cultural competency training to ensure LGBTQ youths are placed in homes where their identities are affirmed.
In a statement, Health Department SecretaryXavier Becerra said the proposal puts “children’s well-being first.”
Studies have shown that LGBTQ young people are overrepresented in the child welfare system. Lesbian, gay and bisexual children are more than twice as likely to experience foster care placement compared with their heterosexual peers, a 2019 study found, and roughly 30 percent of foster youth identify as LGBTQ, according to the Children’s Bureau, the federal agency responsible for overseeing the child welfare system in the U.S.
About 5 percent of foster youth identify as transgender.
But the rule has met some opposition in the GOP.
A bill introduced last month by Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who is currently running for an open Senate seat, would prevent foster and adoptive families from being required to affirm a transgender child’s gender identity. The measure, called the Sensible Adoption For Every Home Act, has four Republican co-sponsors.
Banks in astatement to Fox Newssaid the bill was drafted in response to the HHS proposal, which he said discriminates against prospective caretakers that are “opposed to irreversible sex change procedures on kids.”
LGBTQ rights advocates have denounced the Indiana congressman’s bill and his justification for introducing it, which they say reflects misconceptions about gender-affirming health care for youth and misrepresents what the Health Department’s draft rule aims to achieve.
“No part of this says anything about changing the sex of a child,” said Allen Morris, policy director at the National LGBTQ Task Force. “It’s talking about making sure that [LGBTQ youths] are not in an abusive home or somewhere that’s going to mistreat them.”
Other Republicans have argued that the proposed rule would discriminate against faith-based providers.
A bill filed in the House and Senate in November by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a former GOP presidential candidate, would prevent government agencies from penalizing child welfare service providers that are unwilling to “take action contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs,” including affirming a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The duo introduced identical legislation in 2019 and 2021.
Sen.Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the bill’s 17 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate,wrote in a December editorialthat the measure would effectively overrule the Biden administration’s “new woke standards.” Rubio’s Lifting Local Communities Act, introduced last January, would similarly bolster the ability of religious organizations that receive federal funding to operate in accordance with their religious beliefs.
In aDec. 8 letterto Becerra, however, 19 Democratic senators voiced their support for the Health Department’s proposed rule, writing that its stipulations are needed “to protect children in the foster care system more than ever.”
“As members of Congress we are committed to ensuring all children, including LGBTQIA+ children, thrive in safe and stable environments,” the senators, led by Sen.Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), wrote in the letter.
Compared with their cisgender and heterosexual peers, LGBTQ children and adolescents in the child welfare system are more likely to report poor treatment related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. In a 2014 study of LGBTQ foster youths in Los Angeles,nearly 38 percentreported poor treatment connected to their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C., have explicit laws or policies in place to protect LGBTQ youths in foster care from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and another six have laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation only, according to theMovement Advancement Project, a nonprofit organization that tracks LGBTQ laws.
In 13 states, state-licensed child welfare agencies may legally refuse to place and provide services to children and families — including LGBTQ people and same-sex couples — if doing so conflicts with their religious beliefs.
Republicans at the state level have also sought to push back on the rule.
In a November letter to the Children’s Bureau, more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general said the Health Department’s proposal discriminates against Christian caretakers and provides solutions to a problem that does not exist.
The letter, led by Alabama Attorney GeneralSteve Marshall (R), references a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that sided with a Philadelphia Catholic social services agency that had refused to accept same-sex couples as foster parents.
“This proposed rule seeks to accomplish indirectly what the Supreme Court found unconstitutional just two years ago: remove faith-based providers from the foster care system if they will not conform their religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity,” the attorneys general wrote in the Nov. 27 letter.
A Health Department spokesperson declined to comment on the letter but said members of the public are encouraged to express their views on the draft rule. A 30-day public comment period ended Nov. 27.
Responses to the proposed rule from Christian organizations have been mixed, although most submitted to the Health Department center around concerns that the rule, if implemented, would discriminate against faith-based providers and hinder the recruitment and retention of foster families, many of whom are religious.
“Among the most concerning — and most likely — negative impacts of the proposed regulations would be a significant chilling effect on the involvement of people of religious faith in the foster system,” one group wrote in a Nov. 20 letter to Becerra. “This rule would push many of them away.”
Nonreligious service providers, meanwhile, have largely argued that the draft rule is needed to protect LGBTQ young people already vulnerable to abuse.
“With all of the pain, rejection, broken promises and separation that many youth in foster care experience, a targeted and specific plan for LGBTQI+ youth’s health and wellbeing through safe and appropriate placements can ensure youth are acknowledged and affirmed when they express their needs,” wrote a coordinator for a Cleveland-based nonprofit that works with foster youth.
“Then, when this plan is followed through, youth will actually experience their needs being met, their voices mattering and a caring network of individuals,” they wrote. “This is vital for all youth, but especially youth who identify LGBTQI+ because we know that so often this is not the case.”
But some nonreligious and Democratic organizations have been critical of the proposal, which they say does not go far enough because it still allows for individuals who do not support LGBTQ identities to become foster parents.
Multiple groups in comments submitted to the Health Department referenced a 2021 survey of young people who concealed their LGBTQ identities prior to placement over fears of “how their social worker may react” and “concerns about losing their placement.”
“The flexibility allowed within the rule presumes that those who are LGBTQI+ and not yet out would be served well when placed with any family — including those who opt out of being ‘safe and appropriate,’” the executive director of one children’s rights organization wrote. “However, not requiring that every provider be a safe and appropriate placement for LGBTQI+ children will mean that LGBTQI+ youth are placed in inadequate placements.”
Banks and other Republicans are also seeking to reinstate a ban on transgender military members. Earlier this year Banks founded the House Anti-Woke Caucus.
Many LGBT youth end up in foster case because their “parents” etc. reject them. The notion they should be set up for more abuse or worse cuz religious freedom is straight up bullshit.
. . . raised in the families of their birth. The GOP aren’t fans of supporting foster children. They complained about automatically extending benefits to high school graduation, and a six month transition. They didn’t like opening up public colleges to them.
And pro parental rights. Parents have an absolute and inviolate right to do what they deem best for their children… but only insofar as that furthers the white supremacist Talibangelical agenda.
They’re so pro-life that in cases of unviable pregnancies they want mothers to die in childbirth. I dunno ’bout you guys, but if I had a wife, a sister, or a niece, I’d want the doctors to do everything they could to save her life.
They’re so pro-life that in cases of unadopted kids who are no longer babies, they call them “unadoptable” (read: unlovable).
They’re so pro-life that they rip immigrant families apart and but babies, children, and adults in cages in squalid conditions. And then don’t even both to keep track of who is who and where they’ve been placed.
“Other Republicans have argued that the proposed rule would discriminate against faith-based providers.”
This is why I hate the combination of Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, and Catholic Charities v. Philadelphia. Faith-based organizations are not persons, have no right to freedom of religion, and have no standing in child placement. The only basis for child placement decisions in PA state law, and the only basis for child placement decisions in practice should be the welfare of the child. Not the parents, not the state, and not the fucking private provider.
This video was recorded weeks ago. Yet at this point Israel had destroyed 98,000 buildings, and most if not all would have had people in them or near them. At this time the Palestinian death toll is over 20,000 and 1/3 of them are children. Hugs. Scottie
Ari Tolany, research consultant for Women for Weapons Trade Transparency, to discuss her recent piece that she co-authored in In These Times entitled “How Israel Got an Endless Supply of U.S.-Made Smart Bombs.”
Tolany walks Sam through the particular proliferation of Precision Guided Missiles in these overseas stockpiles, and the contradictory nature of why these missiles are manufactured (reducing collateral damage) and how they have been used by US allies – namely Saudi Arabia and Israel – before wrapping up with a brief conversation on the importance of international investigation in actually holding the US accountable for their bombs.
Please notice the date of the article. I am desperately trying to clear older tabs, so I can clean this computer up. Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link, how he finds time to read all this stuff and make lists of the links is beyond my understanding. But while the data on the number of people including kids killed is out of date, massively wrong now, the feeling of the post is important. I hope you will read it. The US must stop supporting Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people. Hugs. Scottie
*** Edited to add the link to Ten Bears’ website. I would hope by now that people would already be following his blog but if not here is the link. https://homelessonthehighdesert.com/ ***
Here are quotes from the article which are clearly true.
The goal of the Netanyahu government and his right-wing extremists is not just the destruction of Hamas (which is unlikely to occur as the pulverizing of Gaza leads to new recruits for the terrorist organization and Hamas’s 30,000 man fighting force remains resilient, its leaders alive and negotiating with Israel through Qatar), it is the removal of all presence of the Palestinian people to allow for an expanded “Eretz Yisrael,” including the children.
The Holocaust does not bestow impunity for reckless, brutal and merciless acts by the State of Israel (the massive killing of children and their civilian families), even if these acts are conducted in response to execrable and monstrous acts against its citizens.
Can one excuse the relentless murder of children within Gaza as justified retaliation for the horrifying massacre of the Israelis near the Gazan border on October 7, or are they both equally heinous acts?
The children of Gaza do bleed, die of disease or are crushed to death, their body parts scattered amidst the debris of 2000 pound bombs?
(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Is there a scale that can measure the value of 7,000 dead Palestinian children vs. 1200 dead Israelis?
What is to be measured, the weight of their souls? Can such a scale ascribe the worth of one group of the dead as being of greater value than the other group, one soul to a person or child?
One can, ironically, turn back to the plaintive speech of a benighted Shylock, a Jew trapped in an anti-Semitic stereotype, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for some guidance to answer this question, replacing the names of religions to reflect the current catastrophe in Gaza:
I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
In the original version of Shakespeare’s timeless monologue for Shylock, the word replaced by “Palestinian” above was originally “Jew,” and the word “Jew” was originally “Christian.”
The goal of the Netanyahu government and his right-wing extremists is not just the destruction of Hamas (which is unlikely to occur as the pulverizing of Gaza leads to new recruits for the terrorist organization and Hamas’s 30,000 man fighting force remains resilient, its leaders alive and negotiating with Israel through Qatar), it is the removal of all presence of the Palestinian people to allow for an expanded “Eretz Yisrael,” including the children.
The Holocaust does not bestow impunity for reckless, brutal and merciless acts by the State of Israel (the massive killing of children and their civilian families), even if these acts are conducted in response to execrable and monstrous acts against its citizens.
Can one excuse the relentless murder of children within Gaza as justified retaliation for the horrifying massacre of the Israelis near the Gazan border on October 7, or are they both equally heinous acts?
“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
The children of Gaza do bleed, die of disease or are crushed to death, their body parts scattered amidst the debris of 2000 pound bombs?
Recently, an Informed Comment article by Charles Hirschkind, was entitled “The Invisible Slaughter of Gazan Children.” Hirschkind wrote:
of Gaza are being slaughtered at a horrific rate. No, you will not find the terms “slaughter” or “horrific” in Western media accounts of Israel’s current assault on the Palestinians residents of Gaza (these terms are reserved for Israeli deaths), but nonetheless, there is little disagreement among media professionals that nearly half of the deaths resulting from Israel’s current assault on Gaza are children.
According to the charity Save the Children, “More children have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks than in every other armed conflict annually since 2019.”
Yes, we know that the current figure of the dead children in Gaza is probably far more than 7,000 (adding the innumerable more buried in the rubble.) We know that the death toll of these innocents is growing by the day as the Israeli war machine of vengeance continues to pulverize Gaza.
There are no posters with photos plastered on lampposts of the children killed in Gaza. No marches bearing the likenesses of the mangled children. They remain largely invisible and faceless, denied the basic recognition of their individual humanity. This is intentional.
“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once falsely proclaimed.
It’s no surprise then that a December 18thWashington Post article indicated that a clearly identified journalist in Gaza was shot in the leg, likely by an Israeli sniper, after reporting the discovery of decomposing bodies of Palestinian babies, victims of the Israeli pummeling:
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Israel-Gaza war has been devastating for journalists, with at least 64 killed and 13 wounded, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The risks are gravest for Palestinian reporters based in Gaza, who must keep themselves safe while also dealing with the loss of their homes, families and colleagues.
The Israeli government and IDF “press liaisons” don’t want journalists to disseminate photographs that would turn Palestinians into sympathetic people, or to allow the West to develop empathy for the dying children.
Horrifyingly, parents of Palestinian children in Gaza, and the children themselves, are writing their names on their arms and legs, so that when a limb is found the child can be identified.
As American poet devorah major (initial lower caps, her preference) haunted by this macabre image was inspired to write,
“remember?
not wanting to be one of the missing or one of the unable to be identified killed the little girl wrote on the inside of her heart shaped palm between heart and lifelines in neat Arabic script “if my hand survived this is my name” before she was slain.
these children do not have numbers burned into their arms but many have written their own names statements and identification numbers”
Many of these children were too young to formulate their aspirations. Who knows what wonders they could have experienced? They are snuffed out without the chance for their futures to blossom like ripe olive trees, olive trees that are now violently being cut down and destroyed by Israeli West Bank zealots and thugs who want, like most of Netanyahu’s cabinet, a Greater Israel from “the river to the sea.”
Yes, who can weigh the value of a soul? The children in Gaza and the Israeli dead are equalized in their irreversible deaths. Their futures have been cut short by the madness of a vile and intractable hatred from Hamas and Netanyahu’s Israel.
Scottie's Playtime 