As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features ha...
As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest.
The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” says Sidhwa. “I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.”
We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department.
This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,” says Musleh. “My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.”
The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” says Sidhwa. “I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.”
"democracy dies in darkness", yet there is seemingly no journalists with any integrity, capable of showing the world the reality of the war machine. "Out of sight, out of mind" enables war and genocide.
We can help protest to change the current administration's policies and be part of the resistance, whether small or large, money or time, everything helps. Collective action is the best tool we have, even if we have little power individually.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
"Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963
People are so used to being expected to take personal responsibility for large scale crimes they have zero chance of impacting individually, like recycling or climate change, it's their default setting now just like their owners want it.
But you'll never hear these self flagellates take personal responsibility for Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, China, or the Central African Republic because they only see Palestine in the news. They don't actually care about human suffering, only insofar as it is used to make them uncomfortable.
It's hard for the whole world to do anything when the largest economy on Earth will undo any small step, political statement or protest with large amounts of cash, weapons and strong arming allied countries to agree with them via trade and sanctions, such as via the Anti Israel Boycott act H.R. 6940 which even affects the European Union. The whole world isn't just standing aside. It's just hard to stand on the path of the freight train that is the USA.
Nevertheless the ICC is proceeding, protest are occurring in many cities worldwide to embargo Israel and the UN is trying to prevent the US from sweeping this under the rug with constant world affirmations of rights of a Palestinian state and condemnations of Israeli actions, despite the US voting against.
Nobel prize winners are using their time in the spotlight to speak about it, presidents and prime ministers are urging more countries to stop trading with Israel, universities are refusing collaboration with Israel universities and exchange programs, investment capital is refusing to invest in Israeli companies and even Israeli tourists are being shunned abroad in several countries, including mine where they were booed on the streets. All this in the face of potential retaliatory action from the US.
Of course, it's not what we hoped it would be or as effective as we need it to be for our dying Palestinian and Lebanese brothers and sisters, but it is a far cry from standing aside doing nothing. People are doing things and it would be a hell of a lot easier if the US either stopped helping the enemy or at the very least did nothing. I don't wanna be writing "America bad" posts, I've been trying to make an effort to avoid making sweeping hot take statements about the US in general, but hot damn, in this case, i can't help it. America very bad on Israel support and this will tarnish US international image for ages to come, even worse than the war on terror did.
The international community sees the US right now as the americans see Harris. It's better than the alternative, sure, but we'd sure enjoy a whole lot less of genocide right about now.
The problem in the European Union is called Germany, whose politicians seem to have never leaved the whole "We support any Holocaust as long as it's a ´good´ race ´solving the problem' of a ´bad´ race" mindset.
If the US tries to hit any EU country with any commercial sanction the EU as whole is Treaty bound to impose counter-sanctions on the US and America doesn't really want to see its access to a market of 470 million people cut and its tacit support from the biggest trade block around to it's Guerrilla Trade War with China to dissapear completelly.
One of the main reason why the EU exists (the other being to incentivise Peace in Europe through tight trade ties) is exactly because whilst large nations like the US can indeed bully small and even medium sized nations via trade and sanctions, they can't bully a tightly integrated association of nations adding up to a larger Economy with a larger Market than the US.
The US trying that shit on EU nations would just result in a Trade War and a significant acceleration of the current post-Imperial decay stage the US is in.
Never before in human history have such heinous war crimes been so thoroughly documented.
And the world stands by and does nothing.
Tbf, anyone who tried would be liberated back into the stone ages. They'd be liberated so hard, their great-grandchildren will still be hurting from it.
Ireland and South Africa have already done great work, and nobody is going to invade them
Probably a quarter of the countries at the UN have done something. Hell, like 20 countries at the UN don't even recognize Israel as a State
The problem is that the US blocks everything with veto power. This is why the ICJ case for genocide is so important; the US can't veto in the ICJ, and even the judges at the ICJ are independent. They don't represent the US
Its great work and I'm not looking to take anything away from them but I meant more direct action than Ireland, South Africa or anyone else is comfortable doing, with what America would do to them if they did.
I mean like, as in if their neighbours try to stop their neighbours from being killed.
Of course, where else would you shoot someone after you've already captured them and made sure they weren't a threat? Honestly it's almost wholesome that they're offering the children a clean death, I'm sure many of the Israeli soldiers would prefer to do much worse. The war crimes they've gleefully filmed themselves committing have shown me that the IDF is made entirely of fucking animals.
Neoptism is the reason for this. Even if a politician wanted to end this, nobody can say so upfront and outright. All of the people installed that have ties to Israel will not allow it to happen. Religions and groups the world over pull this shit, from Scientologists, to Christians, to Judaists. Democrats and Republicans literally fight over who can suck Israel's cock the hardest. And now, Israel is committing genocide - and it's not that nobody cares - it's that our governments are packed with so many people who have a direct benefit in it happening that nobody can speak up without being silenced.
It's not even surprising that Israel is doing this, they've been saying they wanted to for decades now.
At a certain point, each and every one of those politicians and likely their families too, unfortunately for all of them, are going to be swallowed whole by the collective response.
Here's hoping that if any of them make it to old age they get tried like the nazi-esque war criminals that they are.
I think you mean Cronyism, which unlike Nepotism isn't limited to family.
Looking at my own country, which has a massive culture of Cronyism, some years ago I concluded that Corruption is really just Cronyism in exchange for money hence why it's so easy for it to develop in countries with a culture of friends using the power and money entrusted to them by others to help their friends.
It seems to me this also applies to the US were "campaign contributions" facilitate the buying of active politicians in a way which is not legally treated as Corruption, just things like the "speech circuit", non-executive board memberships, funding of foundations and gold-plated "consultancy" are used to reward "friendly" policians after they retire from Politics in ways that completely obscure any Qui Pro Quo involved hence do get treated as Corruption even when they most definitelly are that (i.e. when a politician has explicitly agreed to use their power in a specific way when given a overt promise of such a reward at a later stage).
Want to see who politicians benefit, start by looking at whose parties they go to and which people do they socialize with.
Neoptism isn't limited to family. Nepotism is defined as: the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives, friends, or associates, especially by giving them jobs.