The Occupation is Forever

The ‘two-state solution’ is perennially misunderstood. The solution envisaged has nothing to do with a possible spatio-political division of Israel-Palestine and the ending of the Occupation. Rather it is a public relations device to quell…

"A Hideous Atrocity": Noam Chomsky on Israel’s Assault on Gaza

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To talk more about the crisis in Gaza, we go now to Boston, where we are joined by Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than 50 years. He has written extensively about the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades. AMY GOODMAN: Forty years ago this month, Noam Chomsky published Peace in the Middle East?: Reflections on Justice and Nationhood. His 1983 book, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, is known as one of the definitive works on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Professor Chomsky joins us from Boston. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Noam. Please first just comment, since we haven’t spoken to you throughout the Israeli assault on Gaza. Your comments on what has just taken place? NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call “mowing the lawn.” That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them, after which you go to a period of what’s called “ceasefire,” which means that Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, while Israel continues to violate it. Then it’s broken by an Israeli escalation, Hamas reaction. Then you have period of “mowing the lawn.” This one is, in many ways, more sadistic and vicious even than the earlier ones.

Gaza Genocide and Arab Fratricide

Let’s not mince words. Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza. But the United Nations is loath to use the “G” word and it us using the “C” (condemn) word instead. Why?  Money talks. The top…

A Zionist Demanding Genocide

One would think that a sad, sorry history of ones own people would create some sensitivity towards other people. But it does not. At least some people rather seem to take the horrors their ancestors…

In Order To Destroy Gaza Ceasefire, Did Israel KILL ITS OWN Captured Soldier?

Injured Palestinian children at al-Najar hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, following an Israeli military strike on 1 August. (Eyad Al Baba / APA images) Friday turned into yet another day of horror for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel committed massacres and atrocities claiming the lives of at least 100 people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Friday was meant to be the first day of a three-day “humanitarian ceasefire” announced on Thursday evening by the United Nations and the United States. The short-lived ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 8am local time on Friday morning. Predictably, the United States has blamed Hamas for violating the ceasefire by killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing a third, whom Israel named as Hadar Goldin. Hamas and its military wing the Qassam Brigades deny any knowledge of the missing soldier. Who really broke the ceasefire? And why did Israeli forces shell the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah so indiscriminately on Friday, slaughtering dozens of people? Could it have been in order to kill the captured soldier to prevent him becoming a valuable bargaining chip in the hands of the Palestinian resistance? Israel has long had a murky procedure called the Hannibal Directive that some interpret as an order to do whatever it takes to prevent a soldier’s capture, even if it means killing him in the process.