Cecile Pineda's blog : Palestine Redux

This week’s most startling Palestine news of all the startling news has the IDF (the Israeli “defense” forces) killing Yasir Murtaja, a reporter, the only reporter on the ground in Gaza, despite his wearing a flak jacket with the words PRESS written on it in bold white lettering. Israel followed this one up by its propaganda wing claiming that the reporter was with Hamas. View his last footage here. Since the start of The Great March of Return Common Dreams reports the IDF has shot and killed a total of 34 Palestinians.

Yasir Murtaja

HAMAS, by the way, is a legally recognized entity in the Middle East, regardless of the reporter’s independence from it, but unlike Israel, it does not murder civilians in cold blood.

Other most startling news is that the mainstream media failed to report on what is happening in Gaza. This newsletter is far from being mainstream news, but both it and Went 2 the Bridge have reported on this massacre just this past week. This issue is a follow-up.

YouTube censored Abby Martin and Max Blumenthal in a full 28 countries as they tried reporting on Israeli Militarism, but vimeo contains the broadcast. Watch it here,

Askiah Adam via Transcend.org has called for a program of total boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel given that the time of patience is long past, and that the recent initiative by the international community to censure Israel for its genocidal behavior was crushed by the U.S. veto in the U. N. Security Council which “now more than ever [is] nothing but an instrument for legitimising the interests of the powerful member states.” A horrifying video shows Israeli soldiers shouting with joy after sniping unarmed Palestinians in Gaza.

Read this Gaza fact sheet for background on the land conflict behind Palestinian protests. And for further refinement, read how the “news” is reshaped to tell the story in more palatable form.

But not all Israelis back the official national policy of genocide. Tamar Ze’evi, 19 years old, spent 115 days in jail for refusing to serve. This is her testimony: “I understood that my only way to stay true to myself, which was kind of the point of all this process, finding what it is my moral truth, and the way I want to face reality with it. I understood that if I will simply say what I believe in and the real reasons I’m not willing to enlist, it means I will have to go to jail…. 60 teenagers signed this letter saying that they refuse to enroll in the military because of their resistance to the occupation. I mean, formally we send this letter to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education and such, but its mainly for the media. The big success of this letter is that actually the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Education and the head of the IDF all replied to the letter. Of course, they oppose it very strongly but it got a very big [coverage] on the media and now we have already 100 people who signed this letter. Read the full interview here.

Tamar Ze’evi is willing to make a sacrifice, not of her life, but of 115 days of incarceration. Are we ready to make the same sacrifice?