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Julian_AV: And they wonder why the world hates them so much !!

Julian_AV to emmsie: You of all people on this dreadful site will appreciate this post, EMMA

In a profoundly moving and meticulously crafted address, Palestinian author and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa captivated the Oxford Union during Thursday’s debate on the motion: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” The motion passed with overwhelming support, 278 votes to 59, but it was Abulhawa’s speech that resonated deeply, leaving the audience in stunned silence.

Abulhawa, the daughter of Palestinians displaced during the 1967 war and the founder of the NGO Playgrounds for Palestine, laid bare the historical and ongoing struggles of her people under Israeli occupation. Her speech, delivered with calm yet unyielding resolve, painted a stark picture of Palestinian suffering and resilience.

Below is Susan Abulhawa’s Speech at the Oxford Union:

“Addressing the challenge of what to do about the indigenous inhabitants of the land, Heim Weizmann, a Russian Jew, said to the World Zionist Congress in 1921 that the Palestinians were akin to the rocks of Judea—obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path. David Ben-Gurion, a Polish Jew who changed his name to sound relevant to the region, said, ‘We must expel Arabs and take their places.’

There are thousands of such conversations amongst early Zionists who plotted and implemented the violent colonization of Palestine and the annihilation of her native people. But they were only partially successful, murdering or ethnically cleansing 80% of Palestinians, which meant that 20% of us remained an enduring obstacle to their colonial fantasies.

Zionists lamented our presence and debated publicly in all circles—political, academic, social, and cultural—regarding what to do with us, what to do about the Palestinian birthright, about our babies, which they dubbed a demographic threat. Benny Morris once expressed regret that Ben-Gurion did not finish the job of getting rid of us all, which would have obviated what they referred to as the ‘Arab problem.’ Benjamin Netanyahu once bemoaned a missed opportunity during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising to expel large swaths of the Palestinian population while the world’s attention was focused on China.

Some of their articulated solutions to the nuisance of our existence included the ‘break their bones’ policy in the 1980s and 1990s, ordered by Yitzhak Rabin. That horrific policy, which crippled generations of Palestinians, did not succeed in making us leave. Frustrated by Palestinian resilience, a new discourse arose, especially after a massive natural gas field was discovered off the coast of northern Gaza worth trillions of dollars. This new discourse is echoed in the words of Colonel Efraim Eitan, who said in 2004, ‘We have to kill them all.’

Aaron Sofer, an Israeli so-called intellectual and political adviser, insisted in 2018 that ‘we have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day.’ When I was in Gaza, I saw a little boy, no more than nine years old, whose hands and part of his face had been blown off from a booby-trapped can of food the soldiers had left behind for Gaza’s starving children. I later learned that they had also left poison food for people in Shuja’iyya and booby-trapped toys in southern Lebanon.

The harm they do is diabolical, and yet they expect you to believe they are the victims, invoking Europe’s Holocaust and screaming ‘anti-Semitism.’ They expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so-called ‘kill shots’ and the bombing of entire neighborhoods that bury families alive is self-defense.

They want you to believe that a man who had not eaten a thing in over 72 hours, who kept fighting even when all he had was one functioning arm, was motivated by some innate savagery or irrational hatred, rather than the indomitable yearning to see his people free in their own homeland.

It’s clear to me that we’re not here to debate whether Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state. This debate is ultimately about the worth of Palestinian lives—about the worth of our schools, research centers, books, art, and dreams. It is about the worth of our homes, which contain the memories of generations, and the worth of our humanity and agency.

If the roles were reversed—if Palestinians had spent the last eight decades stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping, and killing them—there would be no debate about whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.

Yet here we are, enduring the indignity of debating those who think our only life choices should be to leave our homeland, submit to their supremacy, or die politely and quietly.

But you would be wrong to think that I came to convince you of anything. This house resolution, though well-meaning and appreciated, is of little consequence in the midst of this Holocaust of our time. I came in the spirit of Malcolm X and James Baldwin, both of whom stood here and in Cambridge before I was born, facing finely dressed, well-spoken monsters who harbor the same supremacist ideologies of Zionism.

I’m here for the sake of history—to speak to generations not yet born and for the chronicles of this extraordinary time, where the carpet bombing of defenseless indigenous societies is legitimized. I’m here for my grandmothers, both of whom died as penniless refugees while foreign Jews lived in their stolen homes.

I also came to speak directly to Zionists, here and everywhere. We let you into our homes when your own countries tried to murder you and everyone else turned away. We fed, clothed, and sheltered you. And when the time was ripe, you kicked us out of our own homes and homeland, then killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives. You carved out our hearts because it is clear you do not know how to live in the world without dominating others.

No matter what happens from here, no matter what fairy tales you tell yourself and tell the world, you will never truly belong to that land. You will never understand the sacredness of the olive trees, which you’ve been cutting down and burning for decades just to spite us and break our hearts a little more. You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill all day, every day. We are not the rocks that Heim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land. We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories.

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free. She will be restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic, pluralistic glory. We will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, and beyond. You will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.”

Abulhawa’s address not only emphasized the enduring spirit of the Palestinian people but also called attention to the systemic violence and dispossession that have defined their plight. She concluded by expressing hope for a future where justice prevails and Palestine is restored as a beacon of pluralism and peace.

Her speech at the Oxford Union is already being hailed as a pivotal moment, a searing testament to the Palestinian struggle and a call to the global conscience to act against injustice.

Julian_AV: In a profoundly moving and meticulously crafted address, Palestinian author and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa captivated the Oxford Union during Thursday’s debate on the motion: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” The motion passed with overwhelming support, 278 votes to 59, but it was Abulhawa’s speech that resonated deeply, leaving the audience in stunned silence.

Abulhawa, the daughter of Palestinians displaced during the 1967 war and the founder of the NGO Playgrounds for Palestine, laid bare the historical and ongoing struggles of her people under Israeli occupation. Her speech, delivered with calm yet unyielding resolve, painted a stark picture of Palestinian suffering and resilience.

Below is Susan Abulhawa’s Speech at the Oxford Union:

“Addressing the challenge of what to do about the indigenous inhabitants of the land, Heim Weizmann, a Russian Jew, said to the World Zionist Congress in 1921 that the Palestinians were akin to the rocks of Judea—obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path. David Ben-Gurion, a Polish Jew who changed his name to sound relevant to the region, said, ‘We must expel Arabs and take their places.’

There are thousands of such conversations amongst early Zionists who plotted and implemented the violent colonization of Palestine and the annihilation of her native people. But they were only partially successful, murdering or ethnically cleansing 80% of Palestinians, which meant that 20% of us remained an enduring obstacle to their colonial fantasies.

Zionists lamented our presence and debated publicly in all circles—political, academic, social, and cultural—regarding what to do with us, what to do about the Palestinian birthright, about our babies, which they dubbed a demographic threat. Benny Morris once expressed regret that Ben-Gurion did not finish the job of getting rid of us all, which would have obviated what they referred to as the ‘Arab problem.’ Benjamin Netanyahu once bemoaned a missed opportunity during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising to expel large swaths of the Palestinian population while the world’s attention was focused on China.

Some of their articulated solutions to the nuisance of our existence included the ‘break their bones’ policy in the 1980s and 1990s, ordered by Yitzhak Rabin. That horrific policy, which crippled generations of Palestinians, did not succeed in making us leave. Frustrated by Palestinian resilience, a new discourse arose, especially after a massive natural gas field was discovered off the coast of northern Gaza worth trillions of dollars. This new discourse is echoed in the words of Colonel Efraim Eitan, who said in 2004, ‘We have to kill them all.’

Aaron Sofer, an Israeli so-called intellectual and political adviser, insisted in 2018 that ‘we have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day.’ When I was in Gaza, I saw a little boy, no more than nine years old, whose hands and part of his face had been blown off from a booby-trapped can of food the soldiers had left behind for Gaza’s starving children. I later learned that they had also left poison food for people in Shuja’iyya and booby-trapped toys in southern Lebanon.

The harm they do is diabolical, and yet they expect you to believe they are the victims, invoking Europe’s Holocaust and screaming ‘anti-Semitism.’ They expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so-called ‘kill shots’ and the bombing of entire neighborhoods that bury families alive is self-defense.

They want you to believe that a man who had not eaten a thing in over 72 hours, who kept fighting even when all he had was one functioning arm, was motivated by some innate savagery or irrational hatred, rather than the indomitable yearning to see his people free in their own homeland.

It’s clear to me that we’re not here to debate whether Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state. This debate is ultimately about the worth of Palestinian lives—about the worth of our schools, research centers, books, art, and dreams. It is about the worth of our homes, which contain the memories of generations, and the worth of our humanity and agency.

If the roles were reversed—if Palestinians had spent the last eight decades stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping, and killing them—there would be no debate about whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.

Yet here we are, enduring the indignity of debating those who think our only life choices should be to leave our homeland, submit to their supremacy, or die politely and quietly.

But you would be wrong to think that I came to convince you of anything. This house resolution, though well-meaning and appreciated, is of little consequence in the midst of this Holocaust of our time. I came in the spirit of Malcolm X and James Baldwin, both of whom stood here and in Cambridge before I was born, facing finely dressed, well-spoken monsters who harbor the same supremacist ideologies of Zionism.

I’m here for the sake of history—to speak to generations not yet born and for the chronicles of this extraordinary time, where the carpet bombing of defenseless indigenous societies is legitimized. I’m here for my grandmothers, both of whom died as penniless refugees while foreign Jews lived in their stolen homes.

I also came to speak directly to Zionists, here and everywhere. We let you into our homes when your own countries tried to murder you and everyone else turned away. We fed, clothed, and sheltered you. And when the time was ripe, you kicked us out of our own homes and homeland, then killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives. You carved out our hearts because it is clear you do not know how to live in the world without dominating others.

No matter what happens from here, no matter what fairy tales you tell yourself and tell the world, you will never truly belong to that land. You will never understand the sacredness of the olive trees, which you’ve been cutting down and burning for decades just to spite us and break our hearts a little more. You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill all day, every day. We are not the rocks that Heim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land. We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories.

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free. She will be restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic, pluralistic glory. We will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, and beyond. You will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.”

Abulhawa’s address not only emphasized the enduring spirit of the Palestinian people but also called attention to the systemic violence and dispossession that have defined their plight. She concluded by expressing hope for a future where justice prevails and Palestine is restored as a beacon of pluralism and peace.

Her speech at the Oxford Union is already being hailed as a pivotal moment, a searing testament to the Palestinian struggle and a call to the global conscience to act against injustice.

Julian_AV: A film exposing the brutality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary.⁠
⁠
Set in the town of Masafar Yatta, No Other Land is directed by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian journalist Basel Adra.⁠
⁠
Its shortlisting for the Oscar was announced on Thursday despite the film not having any distribution deal in the US.⁠
⁠
Much of No Other Land is made up of footage dating back to Adra’s childhood showing his activist father squaring off against Israeli soldiers and settlers in order to stop appropriation of Palestinian land.⁠
⁠
The movie previously won the Documentary Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in February last year.⁠
⁠
Accepting that award, Abraham and Adra sparked outrage for using their winners’ speech to condemn the occupation of Palestine.⁠
⁠
“I am free to move where I want in this land, but Basel, like millions of Palestinians, is locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end,” said Abraham.⁠
⁠
At the time, the speech sent shockwaves through the German cultural establishment, with politicians issuing condemnations of the pair.⁠
⁠
Berlin’s official online portal faced backlash for claiming the film about Israel’s takeover in the occupied West Bank contained “antisemitic tendencies”.⁠

Julian_AV to emmsie: Hi EMMA … just posted: Israel’s leaders committed genocide in Gaza and must pay for it. Their political and media allies must too
By Owen Jones

Keep up the fight for Palestine 🇵🇸 xx

Julian_AV: Israel’s leaders committed genocide in Gaza and must pay for it. Their political and media allies must too
Owen Jones

This unprecedented slaughter could not have happened without powerful cheerleaders. Hold them to account
Thu 23 Jan 2025

Unless those complicit in the Gaza genocide are held to account, the brutal consequences will be felt far beyond that shattered land. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas offered a respite for traumatised survivors. But Donald Trump’s declaration that he is not confident it will last has prompted renewed terror. From the new president’s decision to lift the pause on shipments of 2,000lb bombs to Israel, which were dropped repeatedly on civilians in so-called safe zones, to his pick for the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who once said there was “really no such thing as a Palestinian”, those hoping for lasting peace are right to worry that the carnage will soon begin again.

The assault on Gaza is normalising an almost limitless violence against civilians, all facilitated and justified by multiple western governments and media outlets. It is worth recalling the destruction of Guernica by Nazi and Italian forces during the Spanish civil war nearly nine decades ago. Guernica was one of the first aerial mass bombardments of a civilian community, and it scandalised the world. The then US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, deplored how “civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered from the air”. The Times journalist George Steer wrote that, “In the form of its execution and the scale of destruction it wrought, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history.” Alas, Guernica turned out to be a trial run for the aerial obliteration of European cities a few years later: the Nazi military leader Hermann Göring told the Nuremberg trials that Guernica allowed the Nazis to test out their Luftwaffe.

What of Gaza? Last week, Joe Biden claimed he told Benjamin Netanyahu, “You can’t be carpet-bombing these communities”, at the start of Israel’s military onslaught in October 2023. Presumably, the former president believed telling the world he has said this would aid his rehabilitation. But it seems more like an inadvertent confession of criminal complicity. The US, after all, handed Israel nearly $18bn worth of weapons the following year, when he knew, or should have known, that Netanyahu’s bombing campaign violated international law. In the first three weeks of the conflict, according to the NGO Airwars, at least 5,139 civilians were killed. This was a conservative estimate; the true number is probably higher. The bombs that killed them were supplied predominantly by the US.

What was the military purpose of this? The US doesn’t seem to have an answer. Its former secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said last week that Hamas had “recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost”. If that is true, it undermines the entire stated aim of Israel’s brutality, which was to eliminate Hamas. Israel’s other claimed objective was to bring back hostages by military means. Yet, as a commentator in the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom recently put it, “We can state with certainty that military pressure has killed more hostages than it has returned alive.” Most hostages have been released during ceasefires, not as a result of IDF operations. It’s hard not to conclude that Israel’s actions amounted to slaughter for its own sake.

Most of the western media has played a pivotal role in normalising these obscenities. From October 2023 to January 2025, 1,091 babies were killed in Gaza, more than the total number of Israeli civilians killed on 7 October. A total of 17,400 children have been killed – the equivalent of one every 30 minutes. A recent study in the Lancet reported the total number of deaths in Gaza were probably an underestimate.

The Times newspaper splashed on a story about lurid and unverified allegations of Hamas cutting babies’ throats; two days later, it followed up with another story about the allegedly “mutilated” babies. The unevidenced allegations were later found to be rumours. More than 1,000 Palestinian dead babies aren’t rumours – they really have been killed by Israeli forces. As far as I’m aware, no equivalent Times front page exists.

The horror is not limited to the massacre of children. Early in the conflict, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. Two US government agencies then concluded last spring that the Israeli state was deliberately blocking shipments of essentials from entering Gaza. All 36 hospitals in Gaza have been repeatedly attacked; only 17 are still partly operational. Amputations and caesarian sections are taking place without anaesthetics, and more than 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed. By the summer of 2024, nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, were imprisoned. The United Nations has catalogued horrific reports of torture and sexual assault: men and women kept in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds in diapers and blindfolded, stripped naked, deprived of food, water and sleep, and tortured with cigarette burns, waterboarding, electrocutions and even rape and allegations of gang rape.

None of this should come as a surprise. Israeli general Ghassan Alian, charged with civilian affairs in Israel’s occupied territories, described Gaza’s civilians as “human beasts”, promising to punish them with a total blockade and subject them to “hell”. An unnamed Israeli defence official said that Gaza would “eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings.”

Unlike Guernica, the crimes committed in Gaza have been documented in real time. Israeli soldiers gleefully posted evidence on social media and survivors took to the internet to share footage of what they were enduring. Many of those survivors were, in the words of the Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, “broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something”.

Yet the UK government has continued to arm Israel, and only paused 30 of 350 arms licences after significant public and legal pressure. Meanwhile, most of the British media defended or whitewashed Israel’s atrocities, and failed to link its criminal intent with its murderous actions. Faced with the potential of a reckoning over their own complicity, political leaders and media outlets have sought to portray the opponents of Israel’s genocide as dangerous extremists. The former home secretary Suella Braverman called protests “hate marches”; the Sun labelled them “hate demos”. The police crackdown on protests in London this weekend was merely the latest example of this tendency.

The destruction of Guernica provoked widespread shock, but it’s worth remembering that after the attack, far more cataclysmic aerial bombardment became a new norm. An estimated 1,650 were killed there; in Gaza, the official figure of 47,283 Palestinians is likely a drastic underestimate, but the greater atrocity of Gaza does not trigger anything like the same establishment outrage today.

There must be a reckoning. Those who continued supplying weapons to Israel ought to be put on trial for helping to facilitate it. Those who used their media platforms to justify it should see their reputations in tatters. Without that accountability, even more depraved violence will become normal, even acceptable.

This risk is particularly acute in an era when the far right is forming governments and when the climate emergency threatens even greater global turmoil. The complicit know that the only way to defend themselves is by demonising those who stood against genocide, and turning the world upside down. But if they get their way, that world will burn.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Julian_AV: Heartbreaking:
Today afternoon in Rafah, the Israeli forces opened fire at a child and killed him. He apparently was riding his donkey heading back “home.”
When a man tried to drag him away, he was shot at.
Why why why why !!!!!??????!????
Trump: enjoy your inauguration, mr. Peacemaker.
I’m sick.

Julian_AV: "This is why Israel’s summation of what it thinks it has inflicted upon Hamas over the past 15 months is not relevant here. What really matters is what the people of Palestine, and their supporters around the region and the world, believe.

There is no question that Hamas is emerging from the recent war scarred and wounded, and throughout the past 15 months it has lost some of its most senior leaders, and perhaps a number of its affiliates. But the movement has never stopped recruiting, and it is believed to have compensated for many of its losses.

Neither the war nor the siege, nor having been let down or conspired against by Arab regimes in the neighbourhood, nor still being designated as a terrorist organisation by many western governments, has weakened the resolve of the Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza." : Azzam Tamim

Julian_AV: USA under Trump - 2025

Julian_AV: Why Populists Are Winning: The Broken Promise of Liberal Democracy

JAN ZIELONKA 20th January 2025

As democracy falters, voters turn to populists. Can innovation save democracy from its outdated frameworks?

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who lived to the age of 96, reminds us that extreme right populism has been a persistent feature of European politics since the rise of liberal democracy after World War II. First elected to the French parliament in 1956, Le Pen never attained the level of influence that his daughter commands today. This is because, during the golden years of European democracy, there was limited demand for populists.
However, this dynamic has shifted dramatically in recent years. Nativist populists have emerged victorious at the ballot box not only in Central and Eastern Europe but also in Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, and France. With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, it appears that populists are poised to dominate the political landscape across the Western world for some time to come.
What went wrong?
Many have their own lists of individuals or factors they hold responsible for the rise of populists to power. Some point to capitalism, neoliberalism, migration, or globalisation. Others identify China, Russia, the United States, or the European Union as culprits. There is also a roster of liberal centre-left and centre-right politicians blamed for the populist surge. For some, the fault lies with Margaret Thatcher; for others, Tony Blair. Some criticise Gerhard Schröder or Angela Merkel, while others point to Nicolas Sarkozy or Emmanuel Macron.
While this list could go on, one cannot ignore the argument put forth by the renowned populism expert Cas Mudde. In his 2019 Leonard Schapiro Lecture, later published in The Government and Opposition journal, Mudde argued that as liberal democracy erodes, the demand for populist politicians rises: “populism is essentially an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.”
A recent Ipsos Knowledge Panel survey revealed that nearly half of respondents are dissatisfied with the way democracy functions in their country. Another credible poll showed that over sixty percent of Europeans admitted they “tend not to trust” their democratically elected national governments and parliaments. Numerous other studies corroborate the precarious state of democracy and highlight how populists are exploiting this vulnerability.
It is not that the new generation of populist leaders is inherently more skilled or charismatic than their predecessors. Matteo Salvini is no more adept than Umberto Bossi; Geert Wilders lacks the charisma of Pim Fortuyn; Marine Le Pen is not a better orator than her father; and Herbert Kickl does not possess the local roots of Jörg Haider (incidentally, Kickl began his career as Haider’s ghostwriter). The current success of populists stems from the distortion of liberal democracy, which drives voters to embrace illiberal, undemocratic alternatives. The pressing question is: how can unhappy voters be won back?
Misguided responses
One might expect liberals to acknowledge their mistakes and work to reduce the demand for populism by restoring democracy’s legitimacy. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Some argue that the best antidote to populism is a liberal version of populism. Others advocate for technocracy as a bulwark against the populist post-truth era. Both camps have mounted vigorous public campaigns against populist parties and leaders, with meagre results at best—a situation that is not difficult to understand.
While individual populist politicians and parties can be discredited and removed from power, this does not address the underlying demand for populism. Figures like Le Pen, Wilders, or Kaczyński will simply be replaced by other populists as long as democracy remains in disrepair. The goal should be to reduce the demand for populism, not merely to oust specific populist figures or parties.
The technocratic solutions favoured by the anti-populist camp may resolve practical issues such as financial instability, public deficits, or health crises. However, technocracy has little in common with democracy, as it diminishes the role of parliaments, limits citizen participation, and reduces transparency in decision-making. While democracy must be both effective and representative, delegating decisions to unelected experts or institutions only frustrates citizens, especially during difficult times. What is the point of democratic elections if decisions are made by technocrats, courts, or banks?
Combatting populism with populism is an even worse strategy, as it legitimises lawlessness, demagoguery, and racism. The concept of “liberal populism” is fundamentally flawed, as populism embodies everything the intellectual founders of liberalism opposed. If a liberal adopts the rhetoric and tactics of a populist, they cease to be a liberal. Full stop.

The way forward
In 2021, researchers asked Europeans how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians and replacing them with Artificial Intelligence (AI) equipped with access to citizen data. Surprisingly, half of the respondents, particularly younger individuals, expressed enthusiasm. It is unclear whether this reflects trust in AI or distrust in the political class. Nonetheless, it underscores the need for democratic reforms that extend beyond traditional agendas of elections, parliaments, constitutions, and parties. Democracy must also address the new challenges posed by technological advances, including AI.
The national framework in which democracy operates is ill-suited to the global digital landscape of interconnected communications and transactions. Moreover, democracy’s current pace is too slow for a world operating at the speed of the internet, 24/7.
Populists propose dismantling the rule of law, checks and balances, independent media, and minority rights in their bid to “fix” democracy. This rebranded autocracy, misleadingly termed illiberal democracy, allows for swift decision-making without public consultation or parliamentary deliberation. However, quick decisions are not always wise or legitimate, which explains why autocracies frequently falter. Furthermore, populists’ sovereigntist tendencies clash with the transnational connectivity fostered by the internet.
Liberals rightly criticise populists for dismantling the traditional pillars of the democratic order. However, this critique often veers into nostalgia for a bygone era when political parties were deeply rooted in civil society, parliaments were forums for genuine public debate, and ministers trusted experienced civil servants. Today, power resides with informal networks that have capitalised on the digital revolution. These networks treat voters as consumers, while national governments wield authority over vulnerable citizens or migrants but are powerless against multinational corporations controlling communication, finance, and labour flows.
In this context, the notions of a social contract or national interest have become almost virtual. Existing democratic institutions struggle to mediate conflicts and forge meaningful compromises because “sovereignty and power are becoming separated from the politics of the territorial nation-state.” Consider the weak and hesitant responses of Europe’s liberal governments to Elon Musk’s provocations.
Turning back the clock is impossible, as the digital and AI revolutions will continue to advance. Democracy must therefore adapt to a world where people think, desire, and interact differently than they did during its golden era decades ago. While there is no blueprint for democratic transformation, we must have the courage to experiment. Can you name any significant democratic reforms introduced since the advent of the

World Wide Web over three decades ago?
Businesses have adapted to the digital age, as has organised crime; yet democracy remains stuck in a framework more suited to the era of Alexis de Tocqueville. It is time to explore new forms of e-democracy that empower ordinary citizens. We should embrace multi-level governance, compelling states to share resources and decision-making with local and transnational actors. Informal networks should also be harnessed to deliver public goods. Experiments carry risks, but if we adhere to liberal values while innovating, we might navigate our way out of the populist labyrinth.

Jan Zielonka
Jan Zielonka is professor of politics and international relations at the University of Venice, Cá Foscari, and at the University of Oxford. His latest book is The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It (Yale University Press, 2023).

Julian_AV: An American Catastrophe
JAN T. GROSS 20th January 2025

Trump’s second term will devastate democracy, erode global norms, and deepen the consequences of America’s collective folly.

We just got a foretaste of the bizarre stream of consciousness that will be emanating from the White House over the next four years: the United States might start expanding territorially by taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and maybe Canada as well. Perhaps Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, should warn his boss that such brilliant geopolitical musings could get the Russians thinking about taking Alaska back.
Trump is a profoundly ignorant man whose knowledge about the world seems to be limited to what he has gleaned from watching television. During his first presidency, world leaders, especially many of the European politicians he met, were transfixed by his mental tabula rasa. The one time he was caught with a book in hand – the Bible, no less – was in the notorious photo-op at St. John’s Church during the George Floyd protests in Washington.
As if ignorance were not bad enough, America’s president-elect has been held liable for sexual assault and is a convicted felon, a friend to nativists and racists, a coup plotter and rabble-rouser, and a serial liar who touts the virtues of fictional cannibals. He is a classic con man – and more than half of America’s voters can’t seem to get enough of him.
Long before the 2024 presidential election, the American political class knew all there was to know about Trump’s unfitness for the job, and they, too, didn’t flinch. Impeached twice during his first term, Trump was twice pronounced fit by his party’s senators to be the leader of the largest democracy in the West. By voting twice to acquit Trump, Republican senators refused to disqualify Trump from the US presidency permanently – and thereby deliberately and directly enabled his return.
The ripple effects of this catastrophe go well beyond putting an ugly face on the American Dream. They undermine the foundations of political order worldwide. What standing do Western democracies have now to demand that any regime or politician abide by international rules and norms? How do we shame with a straight face the Aleksandr Lukashenkos and Nicolás Maduros of this world when they deny the results of elections they lost? What credibility and effect can we expect to have in calling out Vladimir Putin’s lies about his murderous war in Ukraine, when the US has a president who spins alternative facts?
Lenin famously said that the capitalists, out of self-interest, would sell the Bolsheviks the rope with which the Bolsheviks would later hang them. The American political class exceeded Lenin’s expectations. Trump’s enablers wove the rope of lawlessness, tied the noose, put our collective head inside, and hanged the American Republic – all without any assistance from the Bolsheviks.
One day, wise students will show how all this was a consequence of the current information revolution, which is probably having a greater impact on social relations and public discourse than the invention of print once had. Before we attempt to understand why existing institutions seem unable to process these revolutionary changes while safeguarding a liberal democratic order, we should note that this would not be the first time grand and elaborate common endeavors go out with a whimper.
America’s founders, an exceptionally talented group of subtle political thinkers and talented writers, thought through many of the pitfalls that could derail their proposed system of government, defending it brilliantly in The Federalist Papers. But for all their awareness of human folly and personal hubris, they could not erect institutional ramparts to protect the US Constitution from the one-time host of a reality television show and owner of the Miss Universe pageant. A man who reportedly strolled unannounced into a dressing room full of half-naked teenage pageant contestants is pushing the founders’ intricate and inspiring Enlightenment project over the brink.
Trump is not doing this alone, of course. His enablers included not only the American political class but also some extremely wealthy people (including the world’s richest person), and, most importantly, 77 million American voters. The last time a great nation whose weight in world affairs reached far beyond its borders fell for a hatred-spewing demagogue, it took 12 years and 70 million dead before the West could start picking up the pieces.
Building and maintaining a liberal institutional order requires years, if not generations, of hard work, as well as visionary public servants and an occasional miracle. How long will it take to rebuild what Trump will destroy? Under the best circumstances we must wait four years to get an answer. In the meantime – even though a good psychologist friend opined that my sentiment is but a sign of senility – I am not optimistic.

Jan T. Gross
Jan T. Gross, Emeritus Professor of War and Society and Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of Golden Harvest (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Julian_AV: Hope for the people of Gaza 🇵🇸 … even if it seems all very bleak 🫶🏻

Julian_AV: Israel defeated in Gaza, declares the US, as ceasefire declared

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken casually declares Hamas has recruited almost as many militants as it lost, destroying the entire rationale for mass murder
Owen Jones
Jan 16, 2025

As a ceasefire due to begin this Sunday is finally announced, a basic truth: Israel has lost in Gaza. That is according to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has played a pivotal role in facilitating one of the worst crimes of our age. Now he hasn’t said ‘Israel has lost in Gaza’ in those words, but what he says means the same thing.

Instead, on Tuesday, he casually announced:

"Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost. That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war."

OK, let’s just take stock. It is 16th January 2025. Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza began 467 days ago. Gaza is a tiny strip of land no bigger than east London, it is 360 square kilometres, and about 25 miles long. Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries on the face of the earth. It is armed to the teeth and aided in multiple ways by the United States, the last superpower on earth. It has spent 467 days razing Gaza from the face of the earth, exterminating tens of thousands of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, whilst engaging in multiple war crimes such as deliberate starvation, the destruction of the healthcare system, mass enforced disappearance, rape, torture, you name it.

Israel stated that it had two war aims at the beginning of this genocidal frenzy. That was to bring the Israeli hostages captured on 7th October 2023 back by military means, but the absolute overriding key aim that was articulated over and over again in public was to completely eliminate Hamas.

On the first count, that’s clearly a failure: the Israeli state has killed far more hostages than it has rescued by military means, with the only mass hostage release taking place because of a previous ceasefire and an exchange of detainees. That includes so many Palestinians who are de facto hostages, who are in many cases detained at length without any charge, subjected to hideous torture and indeed sexual violence, and that includes children - that is, hostages in all but name.

Now Antony Blinken has just declared that Israel has not only failed to defeat Hamas, but that after 467 days of utter carnage and death, he has said that Hamas “has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.”

So almost in passing, he tells the world that Hamas’ armed wing is essentially no smaller than it was when Israel’s genocide began. The key driving rationale to justify what a study in The Lancet medical journal recently estimated was 64,260 violent deaths by last June - excluding what may be far greater numbers of indirect deaths - that key driving rationale is a total failure, according to the administration which more than any other facilitated this crime of biblical proportions.

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Well let’s go back to what President Joe Biden, Blinken’s boss, said back in October 2023. Biden was asked if he thought Hamas must be eliminated entirely, and he said - “yes I do”.

So let’s be clear, that was official US policy. Biden’s administration facilitated the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza on the grounds Hamas must be eliminated entirely. And now, after giving Israel $22billion worth of weapons since October 2023 alone, which have been used to incinerate, slowly cook and suffocate under rubble thousands of Palestinians, including children, including toddlers, including newborn babies - the US just casually comes out and says - the key so-called war aim is a total indisputable failure.

Who could possibly have predicted this would happen? Oh: we did. We predicted this. We said this would happen.

Let’s go back to a video which I recorded on the 2nd November 2023, that is 26 days into this genocidal onslaught, and 440 days ago. It was entitled ‘The Argument Against A Ceasefire Torn Apart’. Here’s a relevant clip:

In that video, I said the idea that Hamas could be defeated by military means was “lunacy”. I noted how Palestinians on a daily basis watching their loved ones being murdered, picking up the charred limbs of their children, would create endless new militant recruits.

I wasn’t a genius. I wasn’t a prophet. I was stating the obvious. And many many others said the same. How did we know? Because it was obvious. We had a basic grasp of history, context and human nature. And yet apparently the rulers of the world’s only superpower, with its vast, state of the art intelligence services couldn’t predict what we knew to be true.

It was obvious and predictable and indeed predicted. You cannot defeat an idea by military means. If you unleash utter depravity against entire people, then you will create an endless pool of recruits determined to fight you to the death.

As it happens, the US and its leaders do not have the excuse of ignorance. They knew what was happening all along. On 9th February 2024, nearly a year ago, the New York Times reported that US intelligence officials told members of Congress that Israel was “not close” to defeating Hamas.

The New York Times went on to say

“American officials have also raised doubts about whether the destruction or elimination of Hamas is a realistic objective, given it operates like a guerrilla force, hidden in a network of tunnels that are difficult to penetrate. Weakening the combat strength of the group may be a far more achievable goal, U.S. officials have said.”

This really is crucial. It goes to the heart of all of this, and specifically the naked criminality. The rationale given by the US for the onslaught was - look, this suffering and death is all very sad and unfortunate, cue some empty meaningless handwringing about the need to protect civilian life, but it is all for a purpose - to defeat Hamas, so there can be “peace”.

The US government was told by its intelligence agencies that wasn’t going to happen - they instead talked about weakening the combat strength of Hamas as a more realistic goal. That hasn’t happened either.

So the Palestinian people are subjected to unimaginable murderous mayhem - and then the entire justification for this slaughter is then casually tossed aside, as though it’s no big deal.

All we are left with is mass murder for its own sake. That’s literally what this means. What other interpretation is there? If the justification for murder on an industrial scale is null and void, what is left? Industrial scale murder - for its own sake!

As I have said throughout, no crime in history has been so confessed to on so many occasions, so shamelessly and so unapologetically.

Both Antony Blinken and Joe Biden belong in jail. They belong in the same category as any other monster. And indeed at this press conference, a heckler was there to remind Blinken of who he really is, calling him “bloody Blinken” and “Secretary of Genocide.”

A genocide committed in plain sight. That is a fact which must never be forgotten - this has not been subtle, it has not been disguised, there is infinitely more evidence than is needed to establish the depth and gravity of this crime. No excuses - nowhere to hide.

Julian_AV: This Gaza ceasefire deal is tainted by Trump, Netanyahu and their disregard for peace

From these beginnings must come a just and lasting settlement for Palestinians and Israelis alike – and a reckoning

At last! The yearned for Israel-Hamas ceasefire-for-hostages deal is finally happening. It is welcome. Like thin ice covering deep waters, it is scarily fragile, prone to crack under the slightest pressure. And it is desperately, lethally overdue. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, and many Israelis, have died since last May, when the US president, Joe Biden, first set out the parameters of this agreement. Civilians are still being killed in Israeli airstrikes that have actually intensified since the two sides grudgingly initialled the deal in Qatar.

Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere are naturally relieved that these merciless Israeli bombardments will soon stop. But celebrations are tempered by fears about the future, and by deep grief and anger over the still terrifying present and immediate past. According to Gaza health ministry figures, more than 46,000 people have died there since the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks killed over 1,200 people. The true Palestinian death toll may be even higher.

Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population is displaced. Most of their homes and neighbourhoods are in ruins. Most are short of food and water. Hunger, bordering on famine, is a daily menace. Hospitals and the healthcare system have been smashed. Tent cities have sprung up where real cities once stood. Gangs roam and steal. Children are perhaps the biggest victims. Those who survive are traumatised. The world’s abject failure to halt this slaughter of innocents will not be forgiven or forgotten.

Exactly why the deal took so long to reach is, like so much else, a matter of dispute. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is accused by political foes, and the hostages’ families, of blocking a follow-up to the limited ceasefire-hostage deal in November 2023 in order to stay in power. Others blame Hamas, its recalcitrant leadership killed or dispersed, for the delay – and for consequent hostage deaths in captivity. A last-minute dispute delayed an Israeli cabinet vote approving the deal. Even now, it’s still not entirely cut and dried.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, bragged this week that he had previously blocked the deal, which he believes is treasonous. “We succeeded in the past year through our political power in preventing this deal from going through,” Ben-Gvir boasted. He and a fellow hardliner, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have much to answer for. Despite them, Netanyahu is said to have sufficient support to push the agreement through.

Various actors are queueing up to claim credit for the deal, with Donald Trump, the US president-elect, at the fore. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly applied heavy pressure on Israel to compromise on key aspects, such as troop withdrawals along the Gaza-Egypt border. Trump warned Hamas that “all hell will break out” if there were no hostage releases before he takes office on Monday. Despite his long-running, disastrous failure to rein in Netanyahu, Biden sees the agreement as a feather in his legacy cap. Meanwhile, the Arab Gulf states and Turkey leaned on Hamas. Qatari and Egyptian mediators deserve credit for persevering.

Yet how bizarre, and how repellent, that Trump, arch foe of Palestinian rights, squatting smugly in Florida, poses as peacemaker. That mantle is unlikely to last long. Now that Netanyahu has done Trump’s bidding, he and his extremist religious-nationalist allies will expect US support over future control of Gaza and West Bank annexations. Netanyahu may also seek backing for his prized project – the destruction of Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons-making installations.

The families and supporters of the remaining Israeli hostages also have reason for muted celebration – muted because it is as yet unclear how many hostages are alive, and exactly how many, and who, will be released on Sunday in the first stage of the deal, assuming there are no sudden setbacks. The hostages’ mental and physical state, and their accounts of their ordeal and their treatment by their captors, will be closely scrutinised – and could reignite public fury against Hamas, thereby imperilling the truce.

If one thing is certain, it is that this complex agreement may unravel at any moment. Israeli commentators are already predicting that, after the initial six-week phase, the war could resume. To avoid that dire prospect, a full cessation of armed conflict, delicate hostage releases, the reciprocal freeing of Palestinian security prisoners, the gradual, part withdrawal of Israeli troops, the unhindered resumption of full-scale international aid deliveries and the return of displaced civilians to northern Gaza must be successfully coordinated and synchronised. Any one of these moving parts could break, sending the whole flimsy edifice crashing through the ice.

The long-term future governance of Gaza is not addressed in this deal – principally because there is zero agreement. Speaking this week, the departing US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, talked of forging a “new reality” in an integrated Middle East. In Gaza, the White House has proposed an interim administration run by a reformed Palestinian Authority, united with the West Bank, and secured and underwritten by regional partners and reconstruction funding.

In this scenario, Hamas would never again be allowed to hold power, Blinken said, and Israel would not be allowed to militarily occupy or permanently annex parts of Gaza. This would enable the creation of a “pathway towards Israelis and Palestinians living side by side, in states of their own with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity”.

At last knockings, Blinken did not hold back. Israel’s actions in Gaza had recruited as many new Hamas fighters as they had killed, he said. Most Israelis did not know what “dehumanising” things their government and army were doing in their name. More occupation and annexation would guarantee perpetual war; Israel would never find safety that way. “Israelis must decide what relationship they want with the Palestinians. That cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights,” Blinken warned.

These home truths are anathema to the present Israeli leadership and Netanyahu in particular, who fiercely opposes a two-state solution. And yet it may be largely academic. Blinken and Biden are heading for the door. Trump has made no similar commitments, has no such vision for a just and permanent settlement. Trump sees the Palestinians as losers – and there is no place in his cruel and twisted world for such people. For him, ending the Middle East war is a business opportunity.

The ceasefire is welcome. Let’s hope it holds. But it’s hard to imagine a lasting peace while Netanyahu remains in power. If and when this war definitively ends, there must be elections and a reckoning, in Israel and in the international courts. For Netanyahu, facing war crimes charges, it will never be over until he stands in the dock in The Hague and answers for the terrible, terrible things he has done.

Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator

Julian_AV:

Western journalists must be held to account for complicity in genocide

Palestinian journalists risked their lives to tell the world the truth about Israel's genocide - and were treated like dirt by their Western colleagues.
Owen Jones Jan 15

They will never be forgiven. By ‘they’, I mean the Western governments who have armed and facilitated Israel’s genocide, for 466 days, knowing full well the horrors being inflicted every single day.

By ‘they’ I mean the Western media outlets who have legitimised Israel’s war crimes, who have failed to frame their coverage around the explicitly and repeatedly stated genocidal intent of Israeli leaders, who have airbrushed atrocities, failed to hold their governments account for their criminal complicity - and failed to even show a modicum of solidarity for the Palestinian journalists who have suffered the biggest slaughter of media workers in the history of human civilisation as they risk their lives every single day to bring the world the depraved, hideous truth of what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people.

Which brings us to this devastating speech. It was delivered by the Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, who is from Deir al-Balah. He is only 22 year old, and he has already done more important work than countless Western journalists combined will ever do in their whole lives, and he has done so whilst risking his life every day, every hour, every minute.

In his speech, he speaks of how Palestinian journalists have “reported tirelessly, extensively and thoroughly” on what he rightly describes as “the most well documented and first lived streamed genocide in history.” He says they reported this horror in “makeshift tented camps”, as they wept over “loved ones, colleagues, friends and family members”, while Gaza’s journalists have been “killed in every possible way”. In impossible circumstances, he says, “we never stopped - to tell you the truth” whilst trying to “move your dead consciences to help a population that has seen every sort of torture and tasted every type of death.”

As well as being let down by the “international community”, Abed specifically mentions the role of the international media. “We haven’t seen any sort of support, a single word of support,” he says, suggesting that if Palestinians had “blonde hair and blue eyes,” attitudes may have been different, “but because we are Palestinians, we have only one right, which is to die and be maimed.” Journalism, he concludes, “is not a crime. We are not a target.”

That is a speech which should trigger an overwhelming sense of shame amongst Western journalists. But it won’t, because the vast majority of them won’t even listen. For many of them, courage is defined by writing terrible things about marginalised minorities in the rags they work for, and then getting criticised about it by teenagers on social media: where they claim to be the victims who are suffering the horror of being scrutinised by members of the public for what they believe is the brave act of making life that little bit harder for people whose lives are already too hard.

These Western journalists like to think of themselves as noble truth tellers, speaking out without fear or favour. And some of them are: that there are courageous journalists in the West is without question. There are just too few, not least in positions of prominence and influence.

Well, Israel’s genocide has certainly exposed the ugly truth about the vast majority of the Western media. They knew from the beginning that Israeli leaders and officials repeatedly declared that civilians in Gaza were “human animals”, that they would illegally cut off all the essentials of life to them, that all civilians had collective guilt - that there was no such thing as civilians who were “not aware, not involved” as Israel’s President put it, as they bragged they would flatten Gaza, that as one Israeli minister put it after the first few weeks: “The North of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes.”

They know Israeli ministers boasted they were doing another Nakba, that is, a repeat of the murderous ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel in 1948.

They may not have heard every statement, like Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declaring at the start variously that he had “lifted the restraints” and “every restriction” on Israeli soldiers - but my goodness did they hear enough.

They saw with their own eyes the ever more apocalyptic footage of Gaza as its buildings were so comprehensively destroyed that it now has a completely different colour and texture when looked at from space.

They may not have used a tape measure to work out how small Gaza is, which is no bigger than East London, but they knew it was a tiny territory, and they may not have known that several times the explosive power of Hiroshima was detonated there, but they knew it was a vast amount.

They knew that thousands upon thousands of civilians were being slaughtered, that included entire bloodlines wiped from the face of the earth over and over again, that so many of the slaughtered were children and babies, but they showed more outrage over the false claims of Israeli babies being beheaded on 7th October than they did about literally hundreds of Palestinian newborns being incinerated by explosives, crushed to death under destroyed buildings, and literally suffocated to death in besieged and attacked hospitals as they were taken off ventilators.

They may not know the name of practically any Palestinian child, but even they must have heard about Hind Rajab, a 5 year old little girl with a beautiful smile, whose family - her aunt, uncle and four other cousins - tried to flee their home for safety. Most of them were killed, leaving just her and 15 year old cousin Layan alive, Layan desperately ringing the Palestine Red Crescent pleading for help, before you hear here slaughtered on air by a tank. An ambulance sent to save little Hind, now on the phone, terrified, in a car full of the bloodied corpses of her family, begging for help, scared of the dark. The paramedics sent to save her who coordinated their journey with the Israeli defence forces, who were then blown up by the Israeli army, barely anything remaining of their corpses, and then days later, the decomposing bodies of Hind and her family were discovered.

Western journalists may not have known that every aid agency, as well as two US government departments, concluded over and over again that Israel was deliberately starving the Palestinian people - but they knew enough.

They may have tried to avoid hearing the endless stories of Israeli soldiers torturing and raping Palestinians, including to death - but even some of them must have heard about a riot in support of the right to rape Palestinian detainees on the streets of Tel Aviv attended by Israeli ministers.

Did they really think there was some legitimate moral or military end which justified unleashing this level of death and destruction, killing so many more times the number of Israelis killed on 7th October, day after day after day for 466 days?

They knew enough. They knew enough and yet many of them carried on justifying this barbarism. They knew enough and yet many of them refused to speak out, apart from empty handwriting and platitudes.

Let’s be generous. Maybe some were scared. I know for a fact that some are scared. Maybe they feared being smeared as racists or terrorist supporters because they happen to object to the mass slaughter of innocent people. Maybe they feared their careers would be menaced, that they’d be deplatformed. None of these are irrational fears. But none of these fears are worth even a thousandth or a millionth of the fears of Palestinian journalists spending every day fearing that this may not only be their last day, but the last day of everyone they love.

They knew. They knew enough. And they helped drown the Palestinian people in blood, because if the Western media actually did its job, and made clear the gravity of this crime, then it would all have been stopped a long, long time go.

Well remember this. It wasn’t just the politicians and executioners of the Rwandan Genocide who ended up in the dock, it was journalists, too.

We must not let them get away with this. No crime in history was so confessed to so publicly, so proudly, so repeatedly. No crime in history was documented as it actually happened. There are no excuses. There is nowhere to hide. And everyone who has their fingerprints over the crime scene must be held to account.

And yet with noble exceptions, as the Palestinian journalists who actually did their work, knowing that any moment they could be exterminated alongside their entire families, these same Western journalists couldn’t even bring themselves to type or mutter a word of solidarity.

They do not think Palestinians are humans. That’s not hyperbole, it’s a statement of the obvious, because nobody - nobody who really think Palestinians are of equal worth would ever tolerate what has been inflicted on them in this genocide. Even if you thought Palestinians were worth a fraction of the worth of people you considered your own, you wouldn’t tolerate this.

We owe it to journalists like Abubaker Abed to speak out, and we owe to them to hold to account the media outlets and politicians who enabled a genocide in plain sight.

And that accountability might take years, it might even take decades. But we must never ever give up on holding all of the guilty to account.

Julian_AV: That fact was never in doubt. Mass murder. We all know, we can all see, we all voice but it carries on ... the US and many other governments are all complicit.