War

[GenghisKush]

Demonstrations like this are possible only in democracies

Israeli Protesters Mass in Jerusalem to Call for Elections​

The protesters demanded an end to the war and the release of hostages from Gaza, and also called for elections that many hoped would oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Protesters gathered in front of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, on Monday, calling for elections and the immediate return of hostages captured in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Ephrat Livni and Aaron Boxerman
June 17, 2024

Demonstrators walking past posters of Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza.Credit...Marko Djurica/Reuters

Protesters confronting police officers near the Knesset.Credit...Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Jerusalem on Monday to call for elections and the immediate return of hostages held in Gaza in a demonstration that followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent decision to dissolve his war cabinet.

The protest outside the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, highlighted the competing pressures the Israeli prime minister is under from conflicting elements of Israeli society.

Last week, two relatively moderate members resigned from the emergency war cabinet Mr. Netanyahu formed in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel, citing differences over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza. Far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition called on him to appoint them to the war cabinet, but on Sunday, according to Israeli officials, the prime minister communicated to ministers at a wider cabinet meeting that he was dissolving the body instead.

In the crowd in front of the Knesset on Monday was Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Parliament, video posted on social media showed. Some of the marchers carried a banner stating that they were “leading the nation to the day after,” a reference to the end of the war in Gaza.

An Israeli police statement said that the police had helped facilitate the rally near the Knesset, and no arrests were immediately reported there.

However, confrontations appear to have been more intense when some protesters broke off to march to Mr. Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, breaching a police roadblock. Anti-government activists have regularly gathered there throughout the war.

The activists chanted, “You are the chief, you are to blame” in front of the prime minister’s residence. Photographs showed some of them gathered around an open fire. Water cannons were fired, and at least nine people were arrested. The Israeli police said in a statement that some of the protesters had attacked officers, slightly injuring some of them.

Water cannons were fired at protesters who gathered at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem.Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Israeli police said that at least nine people were arrested at the prime minister’s residence, and that a fire had broken out.Credit...Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Israel Police said it would “continue to allow legal freedom of expression and protest but will not allow violations of public order and riots,” noting the fire.

The protests this week by anti-government activists are not connected to Saturday night rallies held weekly in Tel-Aviv and organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the relatives of hostages held in Gaza. That group held a separate conference in Sderot on Monday on their efforts to bring the hostages home.

The anti-government activists are planning another protest in front of the Knesset on Tuesday.
Ephrat Livni is a reporter for The Times’s DealBook newsletter, based in Washington. More about Ephrat Livni

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-protests-government.html

 

[GenghisKush]

Kings support for Israel then was predicated on the assumption that Israel was a democracy. It is not and to assume he'd still hold this same position in 2024 if he were alive ain't serious.

Can you square King's zionism in 1967 with these allegations of decades of war crimes since 1948?

 

[RobFromTX]

Kings support for Israel then was predicated on the assumption that Israel was a democracy. It is not and to assume he'd still hold this same position in 2024 if he were alive ain't serious.

Who knows what he would feel in todays climate. He also disliked homosexuals but you never read about that in school books

 

[GenghisKush]

Dr King wasn't the only leader from the US Civil Rights Movement who identified publicly as a Zionist.

Bayard Rustin* was an organizer beginning with the very first Freedom Rides in 1947. In ~1975 he founded BASIC: Black Americans to Support Israel Committee. Mrs Rosa Parks was a member, as were a number of prominent Black Americans, including Hank Aaron.

* Cannavore, you will find Rustin's political views compelling I think.

Bayard Rustin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[So Hai]

Hayden is a criminal psychopath like Graham or just any other american POS cheering on proxy war against Russia by nuclear terrorism, targeting civilians and so on. Its all fun and games and that is what you have, a bunch of genocidal psychopath losers.

 

[moose eater]

Article and photos courtesy of Ryan Grimm and Drop Site News
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Here’s Murtaza’s new article:

Israeli Forces Shot an American Activist Defending Palestinian Land From Seizure​

By Murtaza Hussain

As the Qaysiya family, friends, and activists walked up to the family land, the IDF created a blockade and ordered them to go back. They refused. The army would not let them pass, declaring it a closed military zone. A standoff ensued. The image on the right is proof of ownership of the property. Photo courtesy of Combatants for Peace and the Qaysiya family.​

Alice Qaysiya's family property in the West Bank city of Bethlehem once hosted not just their home but a restaurant they had built. That was before settlers vandalized and demolished it. Now it is home to a makeshift campground the family guards fiercely.

While the world's attention drifts from the assault on Gaza, the rapidly accelerating seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank continues in the hidden background, reshaping conditions on the ground and pushing a political settlement to the conflict further away.

The Qaysiya family isn't leaving without a fight, and their determined stand has drawn the support of some Israelis and Western activists, who are now putting their bodies on the line to slow the rampage of Israeli settlers.

The Qaysiya family has gone to court numerous times to try and assert legal protection over the property, only to see those claims ignored on the ground by settler activists guarded by Israeli soldiers. The settlers recently began arriving on her family property with weapons as part of the confiscation effort. Drop Site News put together the following account based on interviews with the Qaysiya family and witnesses to the stand-off, backed up by video of the resulting violence.

“This is the last green area in Bethlehem and they are planning to take it. We have been sleeping here in tents since they demolished our house, but we cannot leave since we know that if we do they will take it from us,” Qaysiya told Drop Site. “They took advantage of the war, while the media was busy, and they thought if they did this now it would not create media pressure.”

A number of representatives from the group Combatants for Peace, a mixed group of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants-turned-solidarity-activists have attempted to physically block settlers from displacing the Qaysiya family from their property. In recent days armed soldiers have arrested demonstrators or physically coerced them off the site. Meanwhile, more settlers have arrived, who have vandalized the Qaysiya's remaining property, including a statue of the Virgin Mary owned by the family that was found smashed at the site.

In videos from the property shared with Drop Site, groups of settlers, guarded by IDF soldiers, can be seen mocking the family and activists who have come to defend them, while trying to break into a gate surrounding their land.

The war in Gaza has drawn the bulk of international attention in the Middle East since it began last October. Yet the conflict has also triggered a more intense campaign of violence and displacement in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers, often supported by the military, are waging a campaign to drive out Palestinian landholders by force and expand their footprint over territory allocated by international law to a future Palestinian state.

Palestinians in tents are little obstacle for Israeli settlers, but the addition of Western solidarity activists to the mix has heightened the global stakes of the confrontation. An American passport, however, is no protection from violence at the hands of the IDF or its settler allies.

Alice Qaysiya. Photo courtesy of Combatants for Peace and the Qaysiya family.​

Last Friday, Amado Sison, an activist from New Jersey with the solidary group Faz3a, joined fellow demonstrators near the West Bank village of Beita. In an interview with Drop Site after being discharged from the hospital, Sison said he was taking part in a “protective presence” exercise aimed at defending Palestinian citizens living in the West Bank from settler and military violence. “The Palestinians were holding a rally and doing chants, when Israeli soldiers at a nearby outpost started shooting tear gas and aiming weapons at us," said Sison. "This was only my second demonstration, but some of the more experienced demonstrators shouted that live rounds were being fired and everyone began to run."

Sison and others ran from the gunfire into a nearby olive grove. It was then that he felt a “blunt impact” in the back of his leg. He initially thought he had been hit by a tear gas canister. It turned out to have been a live bullet, which entered his thigh and exited from the front of his leg. In video of the incident taken by Anthony C., an activist with Faz3a, and provided to Drop Site, a group of protesters and local Palestinians can be seen screaming as they attempt to carry a wounded Sison to safety after the shooting.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli volunteer who was at the scene of the shooting, described it as an unprovoked attack on fleeing protesters by IDF soldiers. “The soldiers attacked with tear gas and concussion grenades, before moving on to live ammunition,” Pollak said. “They chased the demonstrators into a nearby olive grove, which is where Amado was shot. He was hit in the back of the thigh. He was shot while his back was to the soldiers.”

Pollak and another group of activists carried Sison over 500 yards to a pickup truck which evacuated him to a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The shooting incident was just one of many violent attacks in Beita, where where Pollak says that over 17 people have been killed since 2020. This June, the Israeli government reportedly gave de facto approval to settlers to repopulate an illegal settlement outpost on the territory under protection of the IDF after it had been evacuated in 2021.

“It’s an awful thing to happen to anyone,” Pollak said about the shooting of Sison. “He’s also an American citizen. If he is shot like that just imagine the level of violence being employed against Palestinians.” Since October 7, over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, with thousands more wounded, as a campaign by Israeli settlers to seize territory there accelerates against the backdrop of the war in Gaza.

"We are aware of these reports involving a U.S. citizen in the West Bank and are in contact with local authorities to gather more information," a State Department spokesperson told Drop Site in respond to a request for comment on Sison's shooting. "We are greatly concerned when any U.S. citizen is harmed overseas and work to provide consular assistance. We reiterate our advice to U.S. citizens to reconsider travel to the West Bank. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in extremist violence and military activity. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment."

After being shot, Sison was treated and discharged from the hospital in Nablus. He was lucky: The bullet that struck his thigh, a dangerous place to be shot, did not hit any major arteries or bone. While unable to put pressure on his leg, he is able to walk with the aid of crutches and is expected to recover from the incident.

In a statement about the shooting reported in the Israeli press, a spokesperson for the IDF stated that troops had “used riot dispersal means and fired live rounds in the air to disperse” a “gathering” in the area near the settlement outpost. The statement added that,“a report was received regarding a foreign national who was accidentally injured by the riot dispersal means and was evacuated to the hospital.”

A number of Americans have been killed or wounded by the IDF in recent years, including both Palestinian citizens living in or visiting the West Bank, and U.S. activists like Sison. Earlier this month, the U.S. government announced that it would not pursue Leahy Act sanctions against an Israeli military unit, the Netzah Yehudah battalion, implicated in the death of an elderly Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, who died after being bound and left exposed to the elements by soldiers from the unit. Two Palestinian-American teenagers, Mohammad Ahmad al-Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, have also been killed in separate shooting incidents by the IDF in the West Bank since the start of this year.

The U.S. government has taken some halting steps in recent months to sanction particularly violent settler leaders. The sanctions stop some individuals and groups associated with the most extreme fringe of the settler movement from accessing the U.S. financial system, while also targeting selected "outposts" in the West Bank for blacklisting by banks. The Biden administration, which is being sued over the sanctions by pro-settler groups in the U.S., has hinted that these limited sanctions measures could theoretically expand in the future to target more of the settlement enterprise.

But analysts say that at present these polices are not nearly enough – especially as the settler movement is no longer a fringe but now backed directly by powerful Israeli government officials, including the current Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

"The permission structure that allows these kinds of attacks comes from the most senior ranks of the Israeli government. Ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich have made no secret of their support for annexing the West Bank and their backing of settlers who aim to do so through piecemeal violence, home by home," said Sara Haghdoosti, Executive Director of Win Without War, a DC-based foreign policy advocacy group. "It is good that the Biden administration has created and used tools to sanction people responsible for settler violence in the West Bank, but it is not enough. The longer Ben-Gvir and Smotrich continue receiving tacit US support, the more right wing settlers will see their attacks as being well worth the small cost they’ve paid thus far."

Photo courtesy of Combatants for Peace and the Qaysiya family.​

For his part, Sison says that despite being shot by the IDF while attempting to resist the settlement project, he will not be deterred from participating in future protective presence actions aimed at defending Palestinians from violence. He brought up numerous recent cases where Palestinian children have been able to use playgrounds and farmers have been able cultivate their lands thanks to the presence of foreign and Israeli volunteers acting as a buffer between Palestinians, settlers, and IDF soldiers. These efforts have often come at great personal risk to the activists themselves, who are frequently assaulted by soldiers and settlers operating under their protection.

While President Biden has promised U.S. retaliation for violent attacks targeting Americans elsewhere in the region, there has been near radio silence over a steady drumbeat of violence incidents that have affected U.S. citizens in the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli military or settler groups. That selective interest and concern by the U.S. government over violence targeting its own citizens has frustrated Sison.
“Biden has said that if any U.S. citizen is attacked, we will respond,” he said. “Yet there have been multiple times now where this hasn’t been the case.”

The violence in the West Bank looks set to escalate, as international attention remains focused on the war in Gaza and fear of the conflict spreading to Lebanon and Iran. That distraction has proven to be a boon for the settler movement, which has also been emboldened by support from powerful members of the Israeli government.

Qaysiya, the Bethlehem resident under threat from settlers, said she fears that it is only a matter time before they are forced to give up property that they have held in their family for years. Even children have gotten involved.

“There are young settler kids also coming who are only around 12 years old with knives and guns,” Qaysiya said. “It is really something shameful that these settler organizations are using these kids, telling them they will be rewarded and taking advantage of them.”

 

[moose eater]

Who knows what he would feel in todays climate. He also disliked homosexuals but you never read about that in school books

Do you know of -any- time that MLK waffled on his beliefs about pacifism or systemic/military abuses?

 

[moose eater]

Bearing in mind the the World Court has ruled that the West Bank 'settlements' are illegal, and gave the thieving bastards 6 months to remove their 780,000 land-thieving, murdering, raping squatters from the West Bank.. Which additionally expresses the true nature of Israel's intentions and behavior displayed in the article posted above.

Land thieves, murderers and rapists projecting their criminal behaviors.

Past time for some serious retribution for/toward these heretics who claim to be 'God's chosen' people.'

Looking forward to them receiving their next '40-years in the desert.' Doesn't appear as though they learned too awful much in their last stint of similar fate.

 

[RobFromTX]

Do you know of -any- time that MLK waffled on his beliefs about pacifism or systemic/military abuses?

No i dont. And btw being a pacifist requires the belief that ANY violence, including war, is unjustifiable under any circumstances.

When you find one on these forums let me know. I'd love to meet them

 

[moose eater]

No i dont. And btw being a pacifist requires the belief that ANY violence, including war, is unjustifiable under any circumstances.

When you find one on these forums let me know. I'd love to meet them

The question was specific to MLK, and he certainly appeared to be a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool pacifist.

I've known numerous conscientious objectors in real time, going way back. Some or all of whom were slapped around behind closed doors at induction centers to see if they'd so much as ball up their fists in reaction to being slapped around.

The kicker here at ICMag involves those who disingenuously claim the status of pacifists or peace-holders, but selectively cheer on wars selectively, often disregarding the histories behind those conflicts or being willfully ignorant about those histories.

Hypocrisy like that shines like ignited phosphorus. And nationalism and cultural/familial programming has far more to do with that than most are willing to honestly examine.

 

[Cannavore]

mad funny dude has to go back to the 1960's and 1970's and cites people who are long dead and likely very influenced by the effects of naziism & civil rights left on society at that time lol.

israel is an apartheid state. apartheid states are not real democracies. they afford the rights to the chosen people and absolutely poop on the rest. you know full well if those protests internally inside israel were done by arabs people would be dead.

 

[Cannavore]

MLK was also against SA apartheid. Had he known the realities of the Israeli system he'd likely come to the same understanding. I guarantee he would have supported BDS.

Most people today WITH the internet still don't know Israel is an apartheid state. I'm sure the media kept that info very lock and key in the 60's.

 

[RobFromTX]

MLK was a hard up Baptist. In a time when Baptists made Catholics look like Episcopalians

 

[audiohi]

Full on apocalypse and genocide in Kiev they say

Good luck turning those tables..

Hayden is a criminal psychopath like Graham or just any other american POS cheering on proxy war against Russia by nuclear terrorism, targeting civilians and so on. Its all fun and games and that is what you have, a bunch of genocidal psychopath losers.

 

[moose eater]

MLK was a hard up Baptist. In a time when Baptists made Catholics look like Episcopalians

Baptists run the continuum, from the fire and brimstone narrow southern baptists, to the born again types.

 

[Cannavore]

I call Cannavore out for his bullshit often.

no, you "call me out" for posting some twitter guy like a maximum 6 times. you've cried more times than i've even posted censored men, and even when i do, it's literally just reporting what's going on on the ground with al-qassam footage or something.

 

[GenghisKush]

Do you know of -any- time that MLK waffled on his beliefs about pacifism or systemic/military abuses?

Here's a good article by Paul Harvey (what !? must be a different guy) about how MLK's views evolved (they became more radical).

The interview of King by JTA in 1967 was published just 6 months before King's murder in April 1968, when his views were at their most radical.

Honoring the Radical Evolution of Martin Luther King Jr.​

Civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers a speech to a crowd of approximately 7,000 people on May 17, 1967 at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, California.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.

How the civil rights icon changed from a hopeful reformer to a radical critic.

BY PAUL HARVEY
4 MIN READ
APR 5, 2018

Martin Luther King Jr. has come to be revered as a hero who led a nonviolent struggle to reform and redeem the United States. His birthday is celebrated as a national holiday. Tributes are paid to him on his death anniversary each April, and his legacy is honored in multiple ways.

But from my perspective as a historian of religion and civil rights, the true radicalism of his thought remains underappreciated. The “civil saint” portrayed nowadays was, by the end of his life, a social and economic radical, who argued forcefully for the necessity of economic justice in the pursuit of racial equality.

Three particular works from 1957 to 1967 illustrate how King’s political thought evolved from a hopeful reformer to a radical critic.

King’s Support For White Moderates​

For much of the 1950s, King believed that White southern ministers could provide moral leadership. He thought the White racists of the South could be countered by the ministers who took a stand for equality. At the time, his concern with economic justice was a secondary theme in his addresses and political advocacy.
Speaking at Vanderbilt University in 1957, he professed his belief that “there is in the White South more open-minded moderates than appears on the surface.” He urged them to lead the region through its necessary transition to equal treatment for Black citizens. He reassured all that the aim of the movement was not to “defeat or humiliate the White man, but to win his friendship and understanding.”

King had hope for this vision. He had worked with White liberals such as Myles Horton, the leader of a center in Tennessee for training labor and civil rights organizers. King had developed friendships and crucial alliances with White supporters in other parts of the country, as well. His vision was for the fulfillment of basic American ideals of liberty and equality.

Letter From Birmingham Jail​

By the early 1960s, at the peak of the civil rights movement, King’s views had evolved significantly. In early 1963, King came to Birmingham to lead a campaign for civil rights in a city known for its history of racial violence.

During the Birmingham campaign, in April 1963, he issued a masterful public letter explaining the motivations behind his crusade. It stands in striking contrast with his hopeful 1957 sermon.

His “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” responded to a newspaper advertisement from eight local clergymen urging King to allow the city government to enact gradual changes.

He argued how oppressors never voluntarily gave up freedom to the oppressed.

In a stark change from his earlier views, King devastatingly targeted White moderates willing to settle for “order” over justice. In an oppressive environment, the avoidance of conflict might appear to be “order,” but, in fact, supported the denial of basic citizenship rights, he noted.

“We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive,” King wrote. He argued how oppressors never voluntarily gave up freedom to the oppressed—it always had to be demanded by “extremists for justice.”

He wrote how he was “gravely disappointed with the White moderate … who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.” They were, he said, a greater enemy to racial justice than were members of the White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other White racist radicals.

Call For Economic Justice​

By 1967, King’s philosophy emphasized economic justice as essential to equality. And he made clear connections between American violence abroad in Vietnam and American social inequality at home.
Exactly one year before his assassination in Memphis, King stood at one of the best-known pulpits in the nation, at Riverside Church in New York. There, he explained how he had come to connect the struggle for civil rights with the fight for economic justice and the early protests against the Vietnam War.

He proclaimed, “Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam.’ It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.”

He remained, to the end, the prophet of nonviolent resistance.

He angered crucial allies. King and President Lyndon Johnson, for example, had been allies in achieving significant legislative victories in 1964 and 1965. Johnson’s “Great Society” launched a series of initiatives to address issues of poverty at home. But beginning in 1965, after the Johnson administration increased the number of U.S. troops deployed in Vietnam, King’s vision grew radical.

King continued with a searching analysis of what linked poverty and violence both at home and abroad. While he had spoken out before about the effects of colonialism, he now made the connection unmistakably clear. He said, “I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

King concluded with the famous words on “the fierce urgency of now,” by which he emphasized the immediacy of the connection between economic injustice and racial inequality.

The Radical King​

King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in August 1963 serves as the touchstone for the annual King holiday. But King’s dream ultimately evolved into a call for a fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources. It’s why he was in Memphis, supporting a strike by garbage workers, when he was assassinated in April 1968.

He remained, to the end, the prophet of nonviolent resistance. But these three key moments in King’s life show his evolution over a decade.

This remembering matters more than ever today. Many states are either passing or considering measures that would make it harder for many Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote. It would roll back the huge gains in rates of political participation by racial minorities made possible by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the same time, there is a persistent wealth gap between Blacks and Whites.

Only sustained government attention can address these issues—the point King was stressing later in his life.

King’s philosophy stood not just for “opportunity,” but for positive measures toward economic equality and political power. Ignoring this understanding betrays the “dream” that is ritually invoked each year.

This article was originally published by The Conversation. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.

Honoring the Radical Evolution of Martin Luther King Jr. - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

Discover insightful articles on Honoring the Radical Evolution of Martin Luther King Jr.. Join us in exploring solutions for a just, sustainable, and compassionate world. #Honoring the Radical Evolution of Martin Luther King Jr.

www.yesmagazine.org

 

[RobFromTX]

Baptists run the continuum, from the fire and brimstone narrow southern baptists, to the born again types.

Like most churches they've adapted to accepting a wider variety of people. Theres a lesbian i went to high school with thats a member of the central baptist church in my home town. You wouldn't have seen that when i was a kid

 

[Cannavore]

religion is dying. but for the real believers they're becoming more radical (and many of them evil). it's an interesting chasm that has formed.

 

[moose eater]

Like most churches they've adapted to accepting a wider variety of people. Theres a lesbian i went to high school with thats a member of the central baptist church in my home town. You wouldn't have seen that when i was a kid

I temporarily attended a Baptist church. Mid-1980's.