‘War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide’: If you were Palestinian, how would you respond? / By John Raby

_{^{Palestinians carrying some belongings walk past ammunition containers left behind by Israeli troops as they flee Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on Feb. 2, 2024. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP}}

_{Portland, Maine}

As this column goes to press, the Israeli government has just charged members of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza with being active in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, has fired the people so charged and pledged a through investigation to determine the accuracy of Israel’s allegations. None of this news negates what is not a case of strange arithmetic, though it may be a case of strange fruit. The details follow.

Since last October’s start of the current war between Israel and Palestine, the Israeli armed forces have killed over one percent of Gaza’s population, with 63,000 wounded. Forty percent of the dead are children. Add the women killed, and the proportion rises to 70 percent. Among those still living, everyone is food insecure, and one-half are starving. Ever since December, easily preventable contagions have been spreading. Almost all their homes have been reduced to rubble. Ever since the Israeli authorities began restricting food, fuel, and medical supplies to Gaza starting in 2007, anemia and stunted growth among Gaza’s children have been commonplace. In one particularly grisly incident in December, an Israeli detachment ran bulldozers over sick and injured people who were taking refuge from bombardment in a hospital, crushing them to death. Among the dead were children.

If you were Palestinian, how would you respond? Imagine the same proportions in the United States: 9,300,000 wounded and 3,900,000 dead; of the dead, 1,500,000 children and 1,200,000 women; nationwide, all of us food insecure, with 165,000,000 starving. With almost all our hospitals flattened and almost no food, fuel, clean water, or medical supplies allowed in, how would we minister to our ill-fed, sick, and wounded? How would we deal with increasing disease? With almost all our homes destroyed, where would we shelter, now that it’s winter? Where would we put the corpses, and who would be left strong and available enough to bury them? As an American, how would you respond?

Then there’s the West Bank. Ever since 1967, Israeli settlers have been steadily shoving Palestinians off the land, demolishing their homes, uprooting their olive orchards, and from time to time shooting to kill or merely blow away their knees. This has been going on under the protection of the Israeli armed forces, who have joined in the shooting every so often, and who arrest and detain Palestinians without a formal indictment or due process as a matter of routine. Those so detained have often spent years in prison. It should come as no surprise that from time to time, desperate Palestinians have replied with gunsmoke of their own, on a scale far smaller than what Israeli settlers and the IDF have wrought.

In response, the UN General Assembly passed a series of resolutions in 1982, with only the United States and Israel voting no. Here are excerpts from those resolutions:

_{· That Israel desist from the removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and from the destruction of their shelters.}

_{· That Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, are illegal.}

_{· That all measures and actions taken by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory are in violation of the Geneva Convention.}

_{· That Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territory, its diversion of water resources, its depletion of natural and economic resources of the occupied territories, and its displacement of the population of those territories, are without legal validity.}

_{· That the Israeli occupation is contradictory to the basic requirements for the social and economic development of the Palestinian people. That hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity.}

_{· That historical injustices have contributed to the poverty, marginalization, social exclusion, and instability that affect many people in the world.}

_{· That no derogation from the prohibition of racial discrimination, genocide, and the crime of apartheid is permitted.}

Lest all the foregoing seem like special pleading, consider this: how many of you have donated to Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, or the International Red Cross? All five of these organizations see the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza as war crime, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. Meanwhile, the United States continues its unrestricted weapons shipments to the Israeli armed forces, all paid for with American taxpayers’ money. It all adds up. As was once written long ago, where our treasure is, there lie our hearts also.

_{John Raby is a retired history teacher and conscientious objector who is currently co-chair of Peace Action Maine. From 2014 to 2021, when he lived in New Hampshire, he was active with New Hampshire Peace Action and wrote the clean energy policy for New London, New Hampshire. He centers his activism around war and peace, environmental, and social justice issues.}

Israel Ministers Call for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza at Settler Conference / Olivia Rosane

_{^{Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir speaks during a convention calling for Israel to resettle Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank at the International Convention Center on January 28, 2024 in Jerusalem, Israel | Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images}}

“The colonial meeting in Jerusalem poses a blatant challenge to the International Court of Justice decision, accompanied by public incitement to forcibly displace Palestinians,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

Members of the Israeli government—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—attended a far-right conference on Sunday calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza and increased Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The conference, at which both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich repeated calls for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, came days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent its military from committing genocide in Gaza.

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

Sunday’s conference, titled “Conference for the Victory of Israel—Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria,” was organized by the right-wing Nahala organization, according to Haaretz and Al Jazeera. The group argues for an expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even though these settlements are illegal under international law, as Reuters explained.

Israel also held settlements in Gaza for 38 years before withdrawing them in 2005. At Sunday’s conference, Smotrich said that settlers who had left Gaza as children had returned as soldiers during Israel’s ongoing bombardment and invasion of the enclave.

“We knew what that would bring and we tried to prevent it,” Smotrich said of the 2005 withdrawal. “Without settlements, there is no security.”

Ben Gvir also said that he and others had warned against leaving Gaza.

“If we don’t want another October 7, we need to return home and control the land,” he said, as Reuters reported further. He also called for Israel to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir have made similar statements in the past, with Smotrich saying in December, “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” as Al Jazeera reported at the time.

In early January, Ben Gvir said the war presented an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” according toThe Times of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel does not plan to establish permanent settlements in Gaza, as Al Jazeera reported, but he has also dismissed calls for a Palestinian state at the end of the war, which is the favored policy of the United States, arguing that Israel needs “security control over all territory west of the Jordan River.”

A National Security Council spokesperson said the U.S. was “troubled” by Sunday’s event, as The Times of Israel reported.

“We have also been clear, consistent, and unequivocal against the forced relocation of Palestinians outside of Gaza,” the White House said in a statement. ‘This rhetoric is incendiary and irresponsible, and we take the prime minister at his word when he says that Israel does not intend to reoccupy Gaza.”

In addition to Smotrich and Ben Gvir, 12 ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud party were also present at Sunday’s event, as Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.

One, Likud Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, said of calls for voluntary migration out of Gaza that, during a war, “‘voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent,” as Haaretz reported.

Conference organizer Daniella Weiss outlined a plan to use starvation to force population transfer in a video from the event posted on social media.

“So we don’t give them food. We don’t give the Arabs anything. They will have to leave,” she said. “The world will accept them.”

United Nations workers and doctors warned this month that famine in Gaza imposed by Israel’s blockade was already causing children to die of starvation.

Palestinian-American expert and advocate Mariam Barghouti told Al Jazeera, that 15 Knesset members were also present at Sunday’s conference, adding that it was “not a joke.”

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza,” Barghouti said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth pointed out on social media that there was a “consistency problem” among Israel’s allies such as the U.S., who continue to fund Israel after ministers call for “a war crime” but cut funds to the United Nations Relief and Public Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after it fired 12 of its workers over reports from Israel that they were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The October 7 attack killed around 1,100 Israelis and led to the taking of around 240 hostages into Gaza. Israel’s subsequent campaign against Gaza has now killed 26,637 people and wounded 65,387, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced on Monday.

_{Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.}

Pingree among House Democrats condemning forced transfer of Palestinians / by Dan Neumann

_{^{Rep. Chellie Pingree speaks on the House floor. | Via C-SPAN}}

^{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree is among a group of 57 House Democrats urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to affirm the United States’ strong opposition to the forced transfer of Palestinians from Gaza.

Last week, Democrats, led by Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, sent a letter to Blinken outlining concerns about the Biden administration’s mixed messages regarding its stance on whether it will allow Israel to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

The letter comes as some in the Israeli government are floating proposals to forcibly and permanently transfer 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It also comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly rejected calls by the Biden administration for the future establishment of a Palestinian state, calling for Israel to be in control of the region from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

“Israel and Hamas are no closer to peace than when I called for a ceasefire months ago,” Pingree said in a statement. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reported recent statements badly undermine the only path for lasting peace: a two-state solution. These statements call into question his government’s ability to end this war and achieve peace.”

Pingree joined the growing list of federal lawmakers who have called for a ceasefire in November, weeks after protesters were arrested in her Portland office demanding the First District Congresswoman take a stand. Pingree is the only member of Maine’s federal delegation who has called for a ceasefire.

Pres. Joe Biden and his administration have expressed their opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians, which can constitute a crime against humanity under international law. Blinken emphasized this earlier this month, stating, “Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow. They cannot, they must not, be pressed to leave Gaza.”

However, despite Blinken’s words, the Biden administration has refused to place any conditions on diplomatic and military aid for Israel, which enables the ongoing siege against Gaza where the death toll has surpassed 25,000 — 70% women and children. Earlier this month, South Africa initiated a case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

Citing the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, House Democrats urged Blinken to support the increase of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.

“Due to the ongoing conflict, over 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza, nearly 80% of the population, have been internally displaced in the Gaza Strip,” the lawmakers wrote. “Worsening sanitary conditions, shortages of food, water, fuel, and medicines, and thousands of cases of acute respiratory infections, diarrhea and chicken pox reflect an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.”

In the letter, the lawmakers also sought clarification from Blinken regarding Biden’s supplemental request for humanitarian and security funding, sent to Congress on Oct. 20. The request specifically sought funds to address the potential needs of Gazans seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

“In light of the President’s recognition of the importance of preventing Palestinian displacement, we aim to prevent any confusion or misinterpretation that this funding request could in any way signal U.S. support for potential transfer of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip,” the lawmakers continued. “We ask for a clarification of the U.S. position on this question and that you continue to make clear American opposition to any forced transfer of population to both the Israeli government and the Palestinian people.”

_{Dan Neumann studied journalism at Colorado State University before beginning his career as a community newspaper reporter in Denver. He reported on the Global North’s interventions in Africa, including documentaries on climate change, international asylum policy and U.S. militarization on the continent before returning to his home state of Illinois to teach community journalism on Chicago’s West Side. He now lives in Portland. Dan can be reached at dan@mainebeacon.com.}

‘We Europeans have created this’ / An interview with Yanis Varoufakis

_{^{Image credit: DiEM25 – Democracy in Europe Movement 2025}}

_{Reposted from Aljezeera}

Six weeks after Hamas’s attacks on October 7, Israel continues its bombardment and siege of Gaza.

While Israel’s response has the full support of the majority of European countries, some dissenting voices are making themselves heard and calling for a ceasefire.

So, what role is Europe playing in the Israel-Gaza war? And how has its support for Israel changed over time?

On UpFront, economist and former Greek minister of finance, Yanis Varoufakis, joins Marc Lamont Hill to discuss Europe’s historic responsibility and current role in the Israel-Gaza war.

_{Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician. Since 2018, he has served as Secretary-General of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founded in 2016. Previously, he was a member of Syriza and served as Greece’s Minister of Finance between January 2015 and July 2015, negotiating on behalf of the Greek government during the 2009-2018 Greek government-debt crisis.}

Let Them Eat Cement / by Chris Hedges

_{^{Image Made in Israel / by Mr. Fish via chrishedges.substack.com/}}

_{Reposted from the Chris Hedges Report}

Israel is not only decimating Gaza with airstrikes but employing the oldest and cruelest weapon of war — starvation. Israel’s message, on the eve of a ground invasion, is clear. Leave Gaza or Die.

Israel, with the backing of its U.S. and European allies, is preparing to launch not only a scorched earth campaign in Gaza but the worst ethnic cleansing since the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The goal is to drive tens, most probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the southern border at Rafah into refugee camps in Egypt. The reverberations will be catastrophic, not only for the Palestinians, but throughout the region, almost certainly triggering armed clashes to the north of Israel with Hezbollah in Lebanon and perhaps with Syria and Iran.

The Biden administration, slavishly doing Israel’s bidding, is fueling the madness. The U.S. was the only country to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver food, medicine, water and fuel to Gaza. It has blocked proposals for a ceasefire. It has proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that says Israel has a right to defend itself. The resolution also demands Iran stop exporting arms to “militias and terrorist groups threatening peace and security across the region.”

The U.S. and its Western allies are as morally bankrupt and as complicit in genocide as those who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and did nothing.

The conflict, which has taken the lives of 1,400 Israelis and at least 4,600 Palestinians in Gaza, is widening. Israel carried out a second airstrike on two airports in Syria. It daily trades rocket barrages with Hezbollah militias. U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked by Shia militias. The USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer, shot down three cruise missiles on Thursday, apparently launched by the Houthis in Yemen and heading towards Israel.

Israel is also struggling to quell daily violent clashes in the occupied West Bank. It carried out an airstrike on Sunday on a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp – the first air strike in the West Bank for two decades – that killed at least 2 people. Armed Jewish settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian towns in the West Bank. At least 90 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by armed settlers or the Israeli military since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. Some 4,000 workers from Gaza and 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested in the past two weeks, doubling the number of Palestinian prisoners to 10,000 held by Israel, over half of whom are political prisoners

“Many of the prisoners have had their limbs, hands and legs broken … degrading and insulting expressions, insults, cursing, tying them with handcuffs to the back and tightening them at the end to the point of causing severe pain … naked, humiliating and group search of the prisoners,” the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees’ Affairs, Qadura Fares, said at a press conference.

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, told the BBC that since the Oct. 7 attack, it had documented “a concerted and organized effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank.”

Inside Israel, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Jerusalem IDs are being harassed, detained, arrested and expelled from jobs and universities in what is described as a “witch hunt.” More than 152,000 Israelis have been evacuated from towns and villages near the borders of Gaza and Lebanon.

The U.S., in an effort to thwart a military response by Iran that could trigger a regional war, is deploying an additional 2,000 troops to the Middle East. It will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf and send additional air defense systems to the region. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group — which last weekend was being deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to join the USS Gerald R. Ford — has been redirected to the Persian Gulf. A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery, and Patriot missile defense system battalions, have also been sent to the Persian Gulf.

Israel has unleashed its Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Death, Famine, War and Conquest.

It has given Gazans two choices. Leave Gaza or die.

Palestinians will be killed not only from the bombs and shells, and eventually, with the ground invasion, bullets and tank shells, but from hunger and epidemics such as cholera. Without water, fuel and medicine and with the breakdown of sanitation, diseases will spread swiftly. The U.N. states that hospitals in Gaza “are on the brink of collapse.” Thousands of patients will die once fuel runs out for hospital generators.

A doctor from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza reported in an interview Saturday, “We are collapsing.” He spoke of a lack of oxygen, light and medical supplies, no water in some departments, concerns about cholera and the loss of doctors killed by Israeli airstrikes, including a dentist killed in Israel’s bombing of an Orthodox church that left at least 18 dead, including several children.

The handful of trucks, 37 so far, of aid into Gaza is a cynical public relations gimmick demanded by the Biden administration. It will do little to alleviate the Israeli-engineered humanitarian crisis. The U.N. says it needs at least 100 aid trucks a day. Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant shut down on Sunday because of a lack of fuel.

Israel has no intention of lifting the total siege on Gaza. It announced it will increase its airstrikes. It will continue, as it has for the past two weeks, to extinguish the lives of Palestinians and terrorize and starve them into leaving Gaza.

The ground assault on Gaza will not be quick. It will involve weeks, perhaps months, of street fighting. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin compared the looming battle in Gaza to the U.S. assault on the Iraqi city of Mosul, held by ISIS, in 2014. It took the U.S. nine months to recapture Mosul.

When Israel says this will be a “long war” they are, for once, telling the truth.

Israel has requested more military aid from Washington, $14.3 billion including $10.6 billion for air and missile defense. It will get it. Israel is rapidly depleting its stocks as it pounds Gaza, including in the south of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced families from the north have fled.

Israel will not permit the distribution of the $100 million in U.S. aid pledged for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, at least not until their scorched earth campaign is finished. But by then, Gaza will be unrecognizable. Israel will have annexed part or all of it. Maybe the money can go to building more illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. And pledging aid is not the same as appropriating it. So perhaps that, too, is part of the illusion.

Egyptian officials are acutely aware of what comes next. Up to half, maybe more, of the 2.3 million Palestinians will be pushed by Israel into Egypt on Gaza’s southern border and never be allowed to return.

“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refuge and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted,” Egyptian president Abdulfattah al-Sisi warned.

Reports out of Egypt contend that Washington has promised to forgive much of Egypt’s massive $162.9 billion debt, as well as offer other economic incentives in exchange for Egypt’s acquiescence to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The refugees, once they cross the border into Egypt, will be left to rot in the Sinai.

“There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.

Israel has long used war to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Government officials have openly called for another Nakba, or “catastrophe,” the term for the events of 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine and driven into refugee camps to create the state of Israel. During the 1967 war, which led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel ethnically cleansed another 300,000 Palestinians during the Naksa, or “day of the setback,” which is commemorated every year by Palestinians.

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, however, is not limited to wars. There has been an ongoing slow motion ethnic cleansing as Israel has steadily built more Jewish-only colonies and incrementally seized Palestinian land. Palestinians, denied basic civil liberties in Israel’s apartheid state, have been robbed of assets, including, often, their homes. They have faced mounting restrictions on their physical movements. They have been blocked from trading and business, especially the selling of produce. They have found themselves increasingly impoverished and trapped behind walls and security fences erected around Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, they have endured periodic Israeli airstrikes, targeted assassinations and near daily attacks by armed Jewish settlers and the Israeli army.

Israel prevented Palestinians who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip from returning at the rate of about 9,000 Palestinians per year following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, according to the Israel human rights group HaMoked. Israel has also revoked the residency permits for some 14,000 Palestinians who lived in East Jerusalem since 1967 according to B’Tselem.

Israel demolished 9,880 structures, including over 2,600 inhabited residential buildings, displacing over 14,000 people and affecting 233,681 in the West Bank alone between Jan. 1, 2009 and Oct. 7, 2023, according to data from the U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Since the Oct. 7 attack, a further 38 homes and other structures were demolished in the West Bank affecting an additional 13,613 people and displacing at least 73.

Less than 2.2 percent of Palestinian requests for construction permits made between 2009 and 2020 were approved, according to data from Peace Now and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The number of Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, however, has gone from zero before the June 1967 war, to between 600,000 to 750,000 spread out across at least 250 settlements and outposts throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, all of them in violation of international law.

Israel makes no secret about its intentions.

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told troops preparing to enter Gaza, “I have released all the restraints.”

Knesset member Ariel Kallner, part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called on X, formerly known as Twitter, for “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.”

The Israeli army mobilized Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old army veteran, to “motivate” the troops. Yachin was a member of the Lehi Zionist militia that carried out numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians, including the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, where over 100 Palestinian civilians, many women and children, were slaughtered.

“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them,” Yachin said addressing Israeli troops.

“Erase them, their families, mothers and children,” he went on. “These animals can no longer live.”

“Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them,” he said. “If you have an Arab neighbor, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him.”

Where are our humanitarian interventionists? The ones who wept crocodile tears about the human rights of Ukranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and Afghans, to justify massive arms shipments and war? Where is the old anti-war wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal class? What has happened to the public intellectuals who used to decry the slaughter of innocents and the U.S. war machine? Where are the jurists who uphold the rule of international law? Why are the few lonely voices speaking out about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians attacked, censored and doxxed?

“The previous president wanted to ban us and probably put us in concentration camps,” said Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, at a rally in support of a ceasefire on Oct. 20 in Washington in front of the U.S. Capitol. “This one wants us just to die. That’s how it feels. Shame on them.”

Israel will not halt its genocidal campaign in Gaza against the Palestinians until there is a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Our weapons systems, munitions and attack aircraft sustain the slaughter. We must terminate the $3.8 billion in military aid that the U.S. gives to Israel each year. We must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demand suspension of all free trade and other agreements between the U.S. and Israel. Only when these props are knocked out from under Israel will the Israeli leadership be forced, as was the apartheid regime in South Africa, to integrate Palestinians into one state with equal rights. As long as these props remain, the Palestinians are doomed.

_{Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans for fifteen years for The New York Times. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is host of the Emmy Award–nominated RT America show On Contact. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, is the author of numerous books, and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has taught college credit courses through Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system since 2013.}

_{The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication covering US foreign policy, economic realities, and civil liberties in American society.}