It could be my child. The father mourning here could be me. (Photo courtesy NYT)
Yesterday, July 25, New York Times published a report on Israel’s merciless bombing of Gaza schools and shelters, and printed a few photos of Palestinian children killed and their parents mourning. Thousands of readers expressed their anger, and it was the first time I have seen such outrage against Netanyahu’s genocide — outrage from NYT readers, who are normally pro-Israel.
It shows that in spite of U.S. media’s bias, distortion and cover-up of the barbarism happening on the ground, where hundreds of innocent children, women and men were killed, dismembered, and permanently crippled — horror that CNN, Times, Washington Post and their nationwide followers are not exposing as is, and we are not even talking about far right-wing media such as Fox or Rush Limbaugh and Tea Party airwaves, the ordinary Americans are finally getting it.
Like I said before, I do not support violence of any kind: Israel, U.S., Hamas or Taliban. I have made myself very clear on this. But this grotesque Israeli barbarism is beyond belief!
I’m quoting a few readers’ comments from New York Times: for you to judge.
Note that ALL the top “likes” or “recommends” on the reader comments denounced and condemned Israel. In my opinion, that is the most important observation.
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Bottom pit of human civilization. Thanks, USA. (Photo courtesy NYT).
Reader Comment #1.
MM
Danville, CA
Enough Israel, enough. As a father of 2 small kids, seeing these pictures is beyond heartbreaking. This is not going to win you any hearts or minds. You are fast losing the respect of the entire international community whatever is left of it. Yes you have a right to self defense but your actions are leading to indiscriminate killing and maiming of 100’s of innocent children – and that is beyond the pale. You simply cannot claim a moral high ground now. What have you unleashed? Do you have any sense of humanity left? And please do not equate your actions to the thuggishness of Hamas and their tunnels and rockets that have caused far, far less damage than the lasting damage you are causing to an entire population of innocent children. Please, at least for the sake of children stop this madness and figure out a way to more effective self defense.
1153Recommend
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Reader Comment #2.
viola
boston
How much blood on Netanyahu’s hands is necessary before he feels that it is enough!? How many children must die before he is satisfied? Yes Hamas has brought it on to themselves but enough is enough! What Israel is accomplishing now is to create the next generation of terrorists fueled by the hatred that he is creating anew. This will solve nothing. It only proves that Israel has more weapons and is willing to use them. More tunnels will be built. An ultimately impotent strategy
700Recommend
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Reader Comment #3.
amaBern
Brooklyn, NY
It pains me to say this, but I’m grateful my father, grandparents, great-grandparents and other relatives – Jews who fought tirelessly for social justice, peace and helping those less fortunate than themselves – are not alive to see this. I feel ashamed.
681Recommend
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Reader Comment #4.
Midwest Guy
Milwaukee, WI 21 hours ago
I think it’s time for war crimes to be charged against Israel.
641Recommend
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Reader Comment #5.
David
Colorado
It’s time for America to end our blind support for Israel.
It’s time for America to end the billions in U.S. aid to Israel.
499Recommend
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NYT and CNN never quote him. And he is one of the most important intellectuals of all time. I’m happy to have known him.
Reader Comment #6.
brooklynforchange
New York City 21 hours ago
This is absolutely horrific, and I have no words to express my feelings.
However hard pro-Israeli voices and organizations and corporations want to justify the genocide under Netanyahu and his brutality government, it’s absolutely clear to the rest of the world that they’re committing war crimes.
If only the U.S. and its two-party, jingoist plutocracy and Koch Brothers and Heritage Foundation and Tea Party understood it. But they won’t. Obama and Kerry and the Clintons and Bush’s are equally responsible for this prolonged, never-ending brutality on poor, displaced and powerless people — for generations.
Helene Cooper and Somini Sengupta in their story entitled “As Much of the World Frowns on Israel, Americans Hold Out Support,” (July 23) showed us the real reason behind the misperception: media slants, distortions and plain lies. That is precisely why Americans do not know the extent of this genocide.
The photos that New York Times is publishing today is only a small, superficial fragment of what is truly happening on the ground. Without going into the gory details, if, only if Americans and NYT readers knew how children’s bodies are being severed into pieces by Israeli shells and guns and bombs, this perception would rapidly change.
I condemn Israel’s genocide. I also condemn Hamas’ politics of violence. I do not support any violence of any kind.
But what Netanyahu and his government have been doing deserves a war crimes tribunal — the Nuremberg way.
364Recommend
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She could be my daughter. He could be me. (Photo courtesy NYT).
NOTICEABLY, a lot of readers thought Israel was committing war crimes, and that the state and its people forgot what they had went through under Hitler.
Any comments?
Sincerely,
Partha
Brooklyn, New York
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A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. ~Dresden James
It is outrageously senseless, asinine and preposterous. No one is going to stop this. Everybody is benefitting from this, one way or another. From the defense contractors to political gangstas to the media. You, me and billions of others don’t count. Not billions anymore. TRILLIONS of dollars of oil, natural gas and arm deals is involved in all of these cases. Why would they stop? Its not their family or children. It’s their enemies and their children’s mere lives! Who cares?
Who is going to stop these gory acts? What I don’t understand is how could the Jews/ Zionist do that? Not too long ago they were just about to be eliminated by Hitler and his Nazi forces. At that time they couldn’t muster any power, courage or strength to stand up to their challenger and here they are…
What bothers me MOST out of all this is… these figure heads don’t have to worry about their party or the next election anymore. So that makes it even worse. Just like Bush here. He got elected for the second term after Iraq invasion. No big deal. Netanyahu is as popular among his cronies too. Unless Russia & Iran gets involved, there’s no end in sight.
Beside Chomsky, another genius wrote a open letter to NY Times about his thoughts and feelings. The letter was written to warn the people of the United States to prevent them from supporting a party of terrorists, saying, “the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement….It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.” In December 1948, Albert Einstein and 26 other Jewish intellectuals wrote a letter to the New York Times warning of Menachem Begin’s Herut party, which became the Likud Party, saying it was “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Begin was visiting New York at the time raising funds and support for his “terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization.”
Thought you all might be interested.
https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948
This one has much clear print…
http://www.bollyn.com/einsteins-letter-warning-of-israeli-terrorism-2
It is a very sad day and time for humanity. In the word of genius…“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” ― Albert Einstein
Many thanks for the valuable information. I have quoted the world is a dangerous place quote in a couple of my blogs before. It’s not that we don’t know. It’s really the question of do we want to do something about it after we know.
I feel the same way as you do. I do not believe in violence of any kind. It makes no sense, and it accomplishes nothing!
It actually accomplishes a lot of things. It creates more violence, and that’s what precisely what the top 1 percent want. It gives them more validity to crush the small violence — through big violence. War and prison industries and their many politicians are happy.
I find the age has lost all conscience and consciousness human life is no more sacred and though we are just thinking reeds as said by Virginia Woolf we are now just reeds! Hollow men! And women.all this murder for what human life no more sacred for us who respect no more nature of which we too are a part! This war and Israel”s actions show up what this century is unfortunately turning out to be and my question is what can we all do who believe in peace????
Conscience and ethics and peace and calm have lost their traditional meanings. We need to redesign our concepts, and teach our children how to live their lives with all the aberrations and violations and lies. That is the real challenge for today and tomorrow.
Children who have to survive to reach their full potential will like the human species has capacities to evolve or mutate to keep going will do it if we provide them the opportunity to live that’s all they are so amazingly resilient unless we annihilate them and adults can by how senseless we have become children learn or unlearn and do it most often joyfully despite horrible circumstances that befall them.
They are cutting short these poor children’s lives. No mercy. No humanity.
Now, the battle waged by both sides also extends to social networks. The two sides increasingly post images and videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in order to prove their version of events while proving each other liars. While Hamas guides Palestinians to publish photos of wounded on social networks, Israel has created an application that simulates what if Gaza were in your country.
The networks are being flooded with posts aimed at winning hearts and minds of people in the Middle East and the rest of the world.
A little out of context but it made me think that back then, most people didn’t know as much about world events as we do now. In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. News from all over the world, big and small, is at our disposal day and night. We just have to look for it, away from the mainstream. I read news on BBC just a couple of days ago that a mass grave was found near the mine at Potosi, Bolivia. The mine had become the world’s biggest after silver and tin was discovered there by the Spanish in 1545. African and indigenous slaves worked the mines – it is estimated as many as Eight Million may have died over the years. The mines at Potosi were a source of huge riches for Spain until the end of colonial rule in the 19th Century.
“We are talking about a common grave found at about 1.8 metres (5.9 ft), and the human remains are scattered over an area of four by four metres,” Sergio Fidel, a researcher at a museum belonging to Potosi’s Tomas Frias University, told BBC.
A grim but timely reminder of how European countries became so wealthy – by stealing the resources of the global South America & Asia and inflicting grievous human rights abuses.
My question is that, in modern times & in different ways, WHY are WE repeating history? In this case for oil & natural gas. Why are we still so eager to be their slaves, allowing them to still exploit our resources, destroy our environment and abuse our people? Isn’t it time we stood up and followed our own development path as is set out in our own Constitution?
First thing is we need to find a way to STOP this first. There is no way that the House or Senate will pass unanimous resolutions – unless and until it comes to Israel. And they just voted to give yet another $600,000,000 more to Israel… because the US taxpayer just isn’t saddled with enough debt (?) and why fix the schools or provide job retraining when their money can be redistributed to a small foreign state?
Gotta keep AIPAC happy, right? This represents perhaps the best example of this money subverting democracy. Forget for a moment it’s a Jewish state or Jewish groups particularly involved. The ‘Jewishness’ really doesn’t enter into it per se. (I’ll just give you a little clue about AIPAC and you can look up the rest. American Israel Public Affairs Committee).
We have a small foreign state which engages in relentless spying and meddling, dozens of organizations with the ear of top politicians dedicated to promoting the interests of a foreign state, and a Congress terrified of defying AIPAC – even to the extent of voting against an investigation of Israel’s war crimes – and they are committing them as if they are fearless of any repercussion.
Where is the media coverage of the depleted uranium and tissue-tearing munitions Israel is using to “defend itself from rockets”?
The media was very happy to report that Assad used chemical weapons, without much evidence, and happy not to report (as at least Seymour Hersh did and one of my most favorite journalist & author) that it was, in fact, the rebels who had used sarin in Aleppo…
Where’s the outrage at IDF war crimes http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/aipac-explanation-americas-morall…
FYI: Anti-Israeli is not Anti-Semitic. Anti Zionists is not Anti Jews. Just like anti RSS or BJP doesn’t mean Anti Hindu or Anti KKK or Anti White Supremacist doesn’t mean Anti Christian.
And yes yes yes absolutely any terrorist organizations should be SQUASHED. Hamas is a terrorist organization but so is Mossad and so is the CIA. Let’s see in Hamas defense it was created and started in 1987 (I believe) but Zionists are killing Palestinians from 1948. “The War of Independence” or ” al Nakba”.
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/24/hiding-war-crimes-behind-a-question/
But what Netanyahu is doing… is GENOCIDE. Deliberately, pre meditatively, in cold blood, with eyes wide open, with malice, without qualms for personal & political gains and so is American Government and public some knowingly and some unknowingly.
http://revolution-news.com/israel-hasbara-handbook-persuadable/
Netanyahu could not have done it without support from the U.S. government and powerful media.