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 But while the data on the number of people including kids killed is out of date, massively wrong now, the feeling of the post is important.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.
It is glossed over in the report but Russia has been targeting Ukrainian civilians for over a year. Russia fights dirty, they don’t try for military targets, they go after civilians, women and children. In the recent might time missile / drone attack they did not target a single Ukrainian military instillation, but they did go after power plants electric grids, shopping centers, and apartment buildings. Ukraine has been told by the west don’t use the weapons we give you to target in Russia, so all the pain of Russia’s invasion has been felt by Ukraine. Now let Russia feel pain also, and maybe they will stop their bullshit. Hugs. Scottie
By my dogs that love gravy, how far entrenched and deep is this fascist racist bigoted stain go in the US? WTF. A bit long, but the first half is riveting in the way these people think. They all want to act out, to harm others, to do what ever they feel they should have the right against anyone else … but they fight hard not to be held accountable for what they have done. They love to shout their racist bigoted misogynistic shit as loud as possible and when they get the chance to act on it, but they know it is not acceptable so when called out on it they hide. Hugs. Scottie
There are a lot of photos and stuff at the website I don’t want to take the time to individually copy over. To see the “chilling images from Jan 6th …” please go to the link above.
The young man is seen running with the crowd of Trump supporters toward the U.S. Capitol early in the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. He wears a thigh-length dark blue coat, his face almost fully covered with a mask. The bill of an off-white baseball cap pokes out of the hood of his gray sweatshirt.
At 2:35 p.m. and 20 seconds, a security camera inside the Capitol captures the man as he steps across the threshold of the west door of the upper west terrace, holding up his phone, apparently capturing the moment himself. Immediately behind him is the far-right internet personality “Baked Alaska.”
For a few seconds, his distinctive pink Adidas Continental 80 sneakers are visible.
The security footage is among videos released during the trial of another Jan. 6 participant, a member of the Proud Boys prosecuted for seditious conspiracy. In it, and in other photos from the day, his face remains partly concealed behind the mask.
But all signs point to Oliver Krvaric, a young Republican star and scion of a powerful GOP family from San Diego. Krvaric is most notable for his job at the time of the riot.
A USA TODAY review of arrests concluded Krvaric would be the first full-time employee of the Trump administration identified entering the Capitol in the insurrection. On Jan. 6, 2021, Krvaric was working for the Office of Personnel Management on a short-lived Trump executive order that sought to rid federal agencies of certain diversity and inclusion training.
By then, the 22-year-old had built a public persona as an up-and-coming student GOP leader. Even earlier than that, his name had been used to create an identity on a site for white supremacists.
Asked whether he was at the Jan. 6 riot, Krvaric initially told USA TODAY he was not. Pressed about the photos that online researchers say show him that day, Krvaric acknowledged he attended former President Donald Trump’s speech, but said he didn’t go inside the Capitol. Asked about images that appear to show him inside the Capitol, he then said he didn’t remember whether he went inside. Sent copies and links to the footage, he stopped responding.
As for the online persona, an email address in Krvaric’s first and middle names was used in 2016 to create a profile on a neo-Nazi website. That user praised Adolf Hitler, backed deportation of non-white people and expressed disgust of the LGBTQ+ population.
Kvaric said he did not recall the posts. He did not deny making them, and said he did “not particularly” recognize the email address behind them.
“I don’t know if that’s long in the past, or — I wouldn’t recognize anything,” Krvaric said about the posts, which appeared on the now-defunct white supremacist forum “Iron March.” “I just don’t have a recollection.”
Krvaric led the College Republicans while at San Diego State University. In a 2020 opinion column in the San Diego Union Tribune, he penned a portentous message:“The temporary upheaval that consumed the Republican Party up through the early months of the new administration is nothing like what’s coming should President Trump lose re-election in November.”
The following January brought the insurrection. Since then, more than 1,000 people have been charged for crimes ranging from simply entering the building to seditious conspiracy. But as the third anniversary approaches, hundreds of other participants who may be identifiable in photos and videos remain free.
Online sleuths used high-tech facial recognition software to try matching photos of Krvaric to photos from Jan. 6. That technology pointed toward the man in the blue coat.
But other evidence also places Krvaric on the streets of the capital that day.
Krvaric was working in D.C. at the time, and acknowledges being at Trump’s rally on Jan 6. Others close to him had also heard he was involved in the insurrection, including two former colleagues who told USA TODAY they heard Krvaric’s younger brother bragging about Krvaric storming the Capitol. One of the former colleagues reviewed the photos from the day for USA TODAY and identified the man in the mask as Krvaric.
The man in the blue coat was also photographed waving a flag connected to a far-right group Krvaric has been photographed with in the past.
And then there are the distinctive shoes. A year and a half before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Krvaric appeared in photographs from a San Diego Republican Party event. On his feet in those photos: Adidas Continental 80s. Color: pink.
At the insurrection
A spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, which serves as a sort of human resources department for federal agencies, confirmed that Oliver Krvaric was employed by the department as a “confidential assistant” from November 2020 to January 2021.
Krvaric also lists his work for the Trump administration on his LinkedIn page. He now works for a security firm, and his LinkedIn page says he’s looking for political work.
In his interview with USA TODAY, where he acknowledged being in Washington on Jan. 6, he initially said he was at work that day, not at the Capitol.
Only after being asked about the photographs of the man in the blue coat in the crowd, holding a Trump flag and a blue “America First” flag connected to the far-right extremist “Groyper” movement, did Krvaric acknowledge he was on the streets of the capital that day. He said he attended Trump’s now-infamous speech at the Ellipse, where the former President called on protestors to march to where the votes from the 2020 election were being certified.
“I was not in the Capitol. I did not go into any offices, I didn’t wander the halls,” he said. “I was not in the premises.”
Then asked if that meant he truly never crossed the threshold of the building, he said, “What do you mean by ‘the threshold’?”
Told of the surveillance video from inside the Capitol, Krvaric said: “I don’t know about that, I’d have to see it.” USA TODAY sent him a text message with a link to that footage in early December. He has not responded.
In the footage, the man in the blue coat walks down a corridor toward a second door, looks inside and nods his head enthusiastically, before retracing his steps. As he heads toward an exterior door, a camera catches him in full frame: ball cap, blue coat and pink Adidas shoes.
It’s unknown whether he went elsewhere in the Capitol. Mere presence inside the building has been enough for a charge in other cases. Among the 1,000-plus people charged for events that day, one of the most common charges is “entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds.”
Anthime Gionet, the far-right extremist influencer known as “Baked Alaska,” who livestreamed video online as he walked into the Capitol at the same time, was charged with knowingly entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry and disorderly conduct. In January he was sentenced to two months in prison and ordered to pay $2,500. Other rioters who committed vandalism and violence have been sentenced to harsher sentences.
The idea that Krvaric participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol raid has circulated in political circles in his hometown.
Two former colleagues of Oliver Krvaric told USA TODAY Krvaric’s younger brother, Victor, bragged to them that Oliver had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. Two other former colleagues said they heard this rumor from people Victor told. All four sources asked not to be identified because they still work in local politics.
Victor Krvaric declined comment for this story.
One of Oliver Krvaric’s former colleagues said she was concerned enough to alert the FBI in late 2021. She’s the one who was shown the footage of the man in the blue coat and commented that it showed Krvaric’s “very distinctive face” – which is long, with close-set eyes.
“Oh yes that’s him,” she wrote in a message.
The FBI, asked whether it had received a tip or was investigating Krvaric, declined to comment.
The man in the security footage is not apparently included on current FBI “wanted” lists. However, as USA TODAY reported earlier this year, even among those whose faces have been published on FBI lists, many have yet to be charged. A USA TODAY report in March identified two such people; the FBI arrested them in August and November – nearly three years after the insurrection.
House speaker Mike Johnson has promised to release tens of thousands of hours of security footage from the Capitol in the coming months.
Research about Krvaric was first provided to USA TODAY by a member of the Sedition Hunters, a group of volunteer sleuths who have used facial recognition and other research to identify hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kevin Bowyer, a computer science professor and expert on facial recognition, said because the man in the blue coat’s full face isn’t seen in footage and photographs, any facial recognition match is a starting point for further research.
USA TODAY reviewed the surveillance videos, photos from outside the Capitol, social media photos identifying Krvaric, and the leaked online data and public records that linked him to the email address for the profile that made the white-supremacist online posts.
Working for the federal government
The list of people already charged or convicted for activity inside the Capitol that day includes numerous active-dutymilitary members, and at least onepolitical appointee, but does not so far appear to include regular federal employees.
The details of Krvaric’s work as a federal employee aren’t clear. The spokesman wouldn’t discuss his work at the federal agency beyond confirming dates of employment. Krvavic’s LinkedIn page says he was hired by the OPM “for immediate assistance with enforcement and implementation of Executive Order 13950.”
That order, signed by Trump on Sept. 22, 2020, purports to “promote unity in the Federal workforce, and to combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating.”
At the time, a national debate was raging over the teaching of so-called “Critical Race Theory” in schools, colleges and places of work, and this order was widely seen as Trump’s contribution to the pushback. President Joe Biden revoked the order the day he was inaugurated.
For Krvaric, the brief stint working in Washington perhaps couldn’t have been a better fit with his own worldview. It also aligned with a profile that had been created, years earlier, on the notorious neo-Nazi forum “Iron March.”
Posts on a neo-Nazi forum
On Sept. 12, 2016, a new user posted on Iron March. The newcomer used the handle “NeoSvensk.” “Svensk” means “Swedish” in the Swedish language. Tony Krvaric, Oliver’s father, emigrated to the United States from Sweden.
Three years after the post appeared, Iron March was hacked and the site’s data was posted online for all to see. The data reveals that the NeoSvensk account was created by someone using an email address that begins “OllyIvan.” Ivan is Oliver Krvaric’s middle name. The IP address connected to the account was geo-located in San Diego.
The username NeoSvensk was also used to create an account on the instant messaging app Kik. That account’s profile picture is a stylized photograph resembling Krvaric.
In Iron March posts obtained by USA TODAY, NeoSvensk – applying to join the forum and meet like-minded white supremacists – bragged of his Swedish ancestry. He talked openly of his admiration for Hitler and fascism and his disdain for multiculturalism, and used a derisive term for gay men, whom he described as “utterly revolting.”
Other details from those accounts all show alignment between Oliver Krvaric and the person writing as NeoSvensk: The poster said he was 18 — Krvaric’s age in September 2016; that he was attending university and living in California — Krvaric lived in San Diego at the time and graduated from high school that spring; and that he has a grandmother in Malmö, Sweden — where Krvaric’s father grew up.
“I understand working from within the current system is frowned upon but it’s the only way I know,” the NeoSvensk account wrote.
Five years later, Oliver Krvaric was working inside the federal government.
Asked about the posts on Iron March, Krvaric said he didn’t recall making them. But when he was asked directly if he recognized the “OllyIvan” email address used to create the online accounts, Krvaric said, “Not particularly.”
“In order to mobilize and win the trust of their voters, Republican candidates must increasingly demonstrate their commitment to ‘MAGA,’” he wrote in a July 2020 opinion column in the San Diego Union Tribune.
When Carlson asked Krvaric what he thought about the H1-B visa program, which allows foreign nationals to work in the United States, Krvaric responded:
“Personally, I think it’s unconscionable … American patriots, going back to the 1990s and even further on, have repeatedly sounded the alarm on the guest worker abuse that’s displacing American workers.”
On Iron March, NeoSvensk had discussed immigration in other terms, expressing a particular admiration for the British fascist Oswald Mosley.
“[T]he accomplishments of white Europeans and their frequency vastly and significantly outweighs anything ever produced or built by those of any other race or continent,” a typical post reads. “I have no qualms with forcibly deporting and repatriating all non-whites from Sweden,” adds another post.
In interviews with USA TODAY, Krvaric stressed his conservative values and doubled down on his support for former president Trump. He disputed the categorization of his politics as “extremist.”
“The left will consider any conservative platform not entirely focused on lukewarm fiscal policy to be extreme,” he wrote by email. “They would prefer the GOP to be a defanged party.”
A family history
Tony Krvaric, patriarch of the Krvaric family, has been well-known in political circles in California for decades. While he no longer heads the local GOP, the elder Krvaric retains political power behind-the-scenes, said Larry Remer, a political consultant based in San Diego.
“He’s still a player in Republican politics,” Remer said. “He’s one of the local wise men of the Republican party.”
In 2020, an old animated video surfaced of the then-chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. The video, produced decades earlier, features photographs of Hitler doing a Nazi salute and swastikas, interspersed with photos of a young Tony Krvaric wearing dark sunglasses. It also depicts one man with a swastika drawn on his neck.
The elder Krvaric did not respond to phone calls and text messages from USA TODAY requesting an interview, but he condemned the video in an August 2020 interview with the San Diego Union Tribune, and said it was created as part of a smear campaign against him.
“Of course it’s in bad taste and it’s offensive,” he told the newspaper. “All those things go without saying.”
Last year, Victor Krvaric, Oliver’s younger brother who was a Marine reservist and now works for the family investment business, was investigated by the Marine Corps for alleged ties to white supremacist groups including the extremist Texas-based group Patriot Front.
Krvaric was separated from the Corps in May 2022, a Corps spokesman told USA TODAY.
According to copies of Patriot Front’s online chats, which were leaked online by the journalism collective Unicorn Riot, Victor Krvaric allegedly told a recruiter for the group that he was introduced to right-wing literature by his older brother.
On one topic, however, Oliver and Victor’s father, Tony Krvaric, has made a public comment: On Jan. 7, 2021, he retweeted a tweet from USA TODAY calling for help identifying people who broke into the Capitol the day before. He added a caption:
“I’m 100% on board with prosecuting everyone who broke the law yesterday.”
Remember there is no Hamas in the West bank. However, while the Palestinians are forbidden to have any guns, the settlers are allowed to be fully armed. I recently posted how a settler shot and killed a Palestinian man who the settlers were taking his land, while IDF soldiers were standing there watching. The settlers routinely take the positions, entire homes, lands, crops, and smash the property they don’t steal from the Palestinians. All with IDF soldiers standing there watching. The Palestinians have the same status as slaves did in the 1840s US southern states. None! Plus as this video shows, the killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank is at an all-time high as well. Now do you understand what fuels Hamas and the anger the Palestinians feel towards Jewish people and Israel? Think how you would feel if you were treated like that where you live? Hugs. Scottie
This is a fucking hard short video to watch. Children found alive buried under ruble of bombed buildings. The rescuers are just normal people and they want to help so badly that they get into each other. Some try to yank the kids out, which hurts the kids, but others make them stop. There are a few that seem to know they have to move the stuff first to get the weight off the kids. These are the terrorist that Israeli is targeting with the bombs in crowded places, little kids and civilians. Israel has the most sneaky intelligence spies that tracked down German Nazis all over the world, why not use them to get Hamas members instead of killing over 20,000 civilian men, women, and so many innocent children. This is why Israel will never get rid of Hamas, the hate against them, will never win this war. They are just creating more people who hate them. I know from experience you can not have respect and love beaten into you. Israel won’t get the Palestinians to love them by abusing them, killing them, making their lives miserable, making them live in fear. Trust me that just breeds more hate and anger. Sad angry hugs. Scottie
This is the incredible moment Palestinians pull out children trapped underneath the rubble of a house in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
This report is on the lies and atrocious propaganda of Israel and it’s supporters. Israeli authorities themselves have lowered the number of killed by Hamas to 1,000. The lies about all the babies killed was debunked as only one baby was killed by Hamas and the burned babies and others turned out to have been by Isra
I have no more words left, only anger. Hugs. Scottie
30 Palestinian child detainees were released on Tuesday morning, as part of the prisoner exchange deal between the Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli government.
Mohammed Nazzal, from the city of Qabatiya, was one of them. Soon after his release, he was moved to the emergency room of the Ibn Sina Hospital in the city of Jenin.
Mohammed was severely injured in both his hands due to the beating by Israeli soldiers in the Negev prison, one week ago. The hand fractures were deliberately neglected by the Israeli Prison Service, which led to complications in the child’s right hand.
“One week ago, we were savagely beaten with metal bars. I put my hands on my head to protect it from injury, but the soldiers did not stop until they broke my hands,” Mohammed added.
They waited for the journalists to leave, then the police call and told the family they would be arrested again if their interview aired. The family called the report in panic. Tells me two things, they are watching the families and they do not want the truth out in the world. Like all abusers, they want it to be their dirty little secret between them and the abused. Hugs. Scottie
Freed Palestinians spoke about the grave conditions they faced while in prison. More Palestinians are expected to be released as part of the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas. But there are concerns among who have already been freed about the never ending intimidation and threats of being arrested again.
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid sat-down with three recently freed Palestinian prisoners in the Occupied West Bank.
Will Carless
Scottie's Playtime 