Snippets and insights on Gaza / 3

Devastated quarter in Gaza city. Image: Mohammed Zaanoun/ Activestills

JVL Introduction

Here is another selection of comments and announcements, largely from Twitter. In no particular order they all give cause for thought and reflection:

  • Congressional staff call for a ceasefire
  • Israel’s former Prime Minister Yair Lapid says objective media coverage serves Hamas
  • New report on children under occupation
  • IDF spokesperson justifies shooting demonstrators with live ammunition
  • Barnaby Raine on panics about antisemitism
  • International Centre of Justice for Palestinians threat to prosecute UK government officials for complicity
  • Greta Thunberg called out for having an octopus in the background in a recent photo…
  • On the bombing of hospitals in Gaza
  • This is just a racist lie says Andrew Fisher
  • Who is reponsible? Nurit Peled-Elhanan, member of the Bereaved Families Forum
  • Ethical double standards at work? Surely not…
  • Naftali Bennett on waging the propaganda war
  • Two letters to the Guardian
• Congressional staff call for a ceasefire

• Israel’s former Prime Minister Yair Lapid says objective media coverage serves Hamas

• New report on children under occupation

• IDF spokesperson justifies shooting demonstrators with live ammunition

• Barnaby Raine on panics about antisemitism

• International Centre of Justice for Palestinians threat to prosecute UK government officials for complicity

https://twitter.com/ICJPalestine/status/1714391687831736661

• Greta Thunberg called out for having an octopus in the background in a recent photo…

Thunberg removed a social media post expressing support for Palestine after facing criticism over a stuffed blue octopus, visible in the photo. It was a toy, often used by autistic people to communicate feelings. Here is the offending image:

And here is one of Starmer, Reeves and – you’ve guessed it – an octopus.

• On the bombing of hospitals in Gaza

• This is just a racist lie says Andrew Fisher

• Who is reponsible? Nurit Peled-Elhanan, member of the Bereaved Families Forum

• Ethical double standards at work? Surely not…

• Naftali Bennett on waging the propaganda war

• Two letters to the Guardian

Starmer may regret that in his own anguish he supported publicly the siege of Gaza, but his spokesperson should not lie about what he said.

Not published

In your article ‘Starmer writes to labour councillors amid criticism of israel gaza stance’ you report that Keir Starmer’s spokesperson ‘suggested that Starmer had, in fact, been answering a previous question on Israel’s right to defend itself’.  Anyone can listen to the interview again, as I just did. This assertion is simply false. Starmer had already answered the previous question, and was now responding directly to Nick Ferrari’s specific query as to whether a siege of the Gaza was justified. Without pause, Starmer responded: “I think Israel does have that right.”  That’s very clear. During the interview he repeatedly expressed his total support for Israel to take whatever action it deemed necessary to defend ‘herself’, and there was not one hint of concern for the Gazan children, women and men in the line of their fire.  Maybe he has now changed that stance, in light of the appalled reaction from so many British Muslim people, the growing horror worldwide including from those like me of Jewish heritage at the destruction of Gaza’s people as revenge for Hamas’s ghastly, unconscionable murderous  spree, and the fears that what Israel is doing is turning into genocide.

Starmer may regret that in his own anguish he supported publicly the siege of Gaza, but his spokesperson should not lie about what he said.

Felicity Laurence

Like many, I am historically affected by the atrocities we are witnessing; not as a Jew but as a human being

Published Sun 22 Oct 2023

Howard Jacobson describes his humane pity at the suffering of victims in Gaza, his righteous anger at the inhumanity of people justifying atrocities, and finally outrage at the antisemitism which reserves victim blaming – “they got what they deserved” – for Jews (“Victim-blaming is a crime to so many progressives. Except when it comes to Jews”, Comment).

My mother watched my grandfather, like Israeli hostages, “manhandled into a car” and taken away to Dachau. My great-grandmother died in another Nazi concentration camp where, like Palestinians, she was denied food, water and medicine. So, like many, I am historically affected by the atrocities we are witnessing in Israel and Gaza; not as a Jew but as a human being.

Nobody with any humanity will attempt to justify the murder of innocent civilians by Hamas or by Israel. Still less will they blame the victims on either side. But it is not antisemitic to recognise that responsibility for current events lies in Israel as well as in Gaza. The Israeli government is not the victim in Israel, nor Hamas in Gaza. Hamas wants to destroy Israel, using any means possible. Israeli governments ignore UN resolutions, deny Palestinian rights, and encourage settlers to steal Palestinian land at gunpoint.

The blame for recent atrocities lies with the Israeli government as much as with Hamas. That is simply fact, not victim-blaming. The victims on both sides, as always, are the helpless and the innocent.
Ian Graham
Altrincham, Greater Manchester

Israel’s former Prime Minister Yair Lapid says objective media coverage serves Hamas

Comments (5)

  • Allan Howard says:
    25th October 2023 at 21:17

    I’ve been around a while, and I’ve seen numerous documentaries over the years about the Nazis and the Holocaust etc (and one of the first books I ever got out of the library – my father having turned me on to the Hornblower series of books, amongst others, like The Grapes of Wrath, for example – was Nightmare (by CS Lewis), but I had never heard or come across the octopus (squid) thing until earlier this year when there was the row about the cartoon in respect of the outgoing BBC boss Richard Sharp.

    And as if Greta and her friends – one of whom was Jewish – would do it deliberately, or have reason to, and she and her friends obviously didn’t know about the historical use of an octopus to depict Jews as controlling the world. I mean if you DID know about it, it would be absurd to deliberately stick one in the picture and risk the possibility of being vilified for having it in the picture.

    And I assume that Starmer didn’t get any flak for posting the picture above on his Instagram account??!

    PS And if you didn’t see Newsnight last night (Tuesday) please check out the last ten minutes or so on Iplayer in which Kirsty Wark speaks to Rachael Riley about the big increase in A/S recently on account of the ‘war’, and Riley dissembles a whole string of blatant and malicious falsehoods.

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  • Richard Snell says:
    25th October 2023 at 22:24

    I have had my fair fill of Twitter telling me through multiple mouths that this whole war is about Hamas, that any-one who opposes Israel in this supports Hamas’s terrorism, and that Israel is to be given every encouragement to do whatever it takes to return peace to Israel.
    So many commentators who speak as if Hamas somehow chose to carry out its attacks solely on the basis that they want to kill Jews and win their land from them.
    So many who refuse to even hint that Israel has a history in Palestine, and that history is a bloody one.
    So many who refuse to acknowledge the threat that Israel has posed to Palestine and its people for seven decades, or the murderous ways in which it has confirmed that threat.
    So many who ignore Israel’s utterly brutal use of language and its ruthless expression of genocidal intent.
    Where do these people come from that can just not see what is becoming more and more plain to the rest of the world?
    And when you have James Cleverley saying, repeatedly but not actually cleverly, that ‘Hamas is no friend to the Palestinians’, is it not to be wondered what kind of education he has had on the subject of basic logic?
    I need to stop this now: the steam coming out of my ears is misting up the screen.

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  • Guillaume Dohmen says:
    26th October 2023 at 11:24

    During WW2 news was managed by Germany and always promoted the German idea of National Socialism constantly winning. The thing was that in occupied Europe we stopped buying news papers and listening to news on the radio.

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  • Allan Howard says:
    26th October 2023 at 18:12

    Just came across this excellent video on youtube (15 mins) in which Chris Hedges speaks about the world, the universe and everything:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp3gCeAI0ds

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  • Allan Howard says:
    26th October 2023 at 20:04

    I just realised that I put CS Lewis, and it was of course CS Forester who wrote the Hornblower series an Nightmare.

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Comments are now closed.

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