%20was%20killed%20by%20Israel%20in%20Gaza..jpg) |
| She dreamed of becoming a journalist. Yaqeen (12) was killed by Israel in Gaza. |
Saturday, June 21, 2025
She dreamed of becoming a journalist. Yaqeen (12 years old) was killed by Israel in Gaza.
Friday, June 20, 2025
Dear Israel, When you get bombed after bombing 5 other countries YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM ! Hands off the Middle East !
Since October 7, Israel has been responsible for more than 17,000 attacks in the Middle East.
Israel's attacks in the Middle East
Israel has carried out more than 17,000 of attacks since October 7 on the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Nearly 41,000 people have been killed by Israel's attacks.
The Guardian view on Israel, the US and Iran: you can’t bomb your way out of nuclear proliferation- The age of disarmament is over. But military action only increases the dangers instead of ending the threat
....The 2003 US invasion of Iraq, coupled with the survival of North Korea, sent the message that the safest course is not to shun weapons of mass destruction but to pursue and cling to them at all costs. Attacking Iran, which limited its programme in exchange for sanctions relief, will only fuel that conviction. It may set back Tehran’s nuclear progress somewhat, but makes it more likely to rush for the bomb – and avoid the international scrutiny it previously accepted. Saudi Arabia and others would surely follow fast. Arab and Muslim countries have rightly denounced Israel’s strikes and called for disarmament “without selectivity”. The current crisis makes that look a more hopeless cause than ever – but is the clearest evidence of why it is needed in place of a nuclear race which can have no winners.
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| Smoke rises after an Israeli attack on Tehran. ‘Israel does not appear to be striking Iran because US nuclear diplomacy has failed, but because it fears it might succeed.’ Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters |
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]
God protect us all from all the idiocy and murderous propaganda...
It’s so important for folks in the West to watch media from other parts of the world.
The brainwashing colonial era tropes are so potent, especially with populations that have never traveled beyond their borders.
God protect us all from all the idiocy and murderous propaganda.
Red line after red line has been crossed in Gaza [by Israel]. Schools bombed [by Israel]. Children killed [by Israel]. Aid centres turned into killing grounds [by Israel].... STOP SUPPORTING WAR CRIMES Red Line for Palestine
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Red line after red line has been crossed in Gaza. Schools bombed. Children killed. Aid centres turned into killing grounds. More than half of Britons oppose Israel's merciless war. So we’re drawing a red line - and we won’t stop until the atrocities end. SHARE. #RedLineForGaza |
"Now, with the genocide in Palestine, we’re faced with a reality in which tens of thousands of Americans are actively involved in war crimes. They are part of an army responsible for the murder of more than 20,000 children in Gaza, where the Economist estimates that Israeli soldiers have killed between 77,000 and 109,000 people, or 4-5% of the territory’s population in 2023."
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| ‘We’re faced with a reality in which tens of thousands of Americans are actively involved in war crimes.’ Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters |
Why do so many Americans join the Israeli military?
Tens of thousands of Americans serve in the country’s ranks amid genocide, investing in and propagating occupation
In his 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth renders a rich plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, the French president. The conspirators are pied-noirs, the term used to describe Frenchmen born in Algeria during the colonial occupation there. They grieve De Gaulle’s exit from north Africa, which they regard as a betrayal. Unable to remain in the former colony, they return home – dejected and emasculated – and murderous. In many ways, the pied-noirs regard themselves as being more French than the French.
The novel derives some of its appeal from the fact that it’s rooted in history – revanchist Frenchmen made at least six attempts to assassinate De Gaulle in the 1960s. Yigal Amir, the Israeli settler who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, reportedly devoured the book, and drew inspiration from it.
I
began to reflect on the novel after reading about the recent Hamas-US
prisoner deal. Edan Alexander, the American Israeli soldier who was held
captive by Hamas for a year and a half, “grew up in New Jersey and
moved to Israel after high school to join the military”, as reported
by the New York Times. When I read that line I wondered what drove his
radicalization – what leads an American teenager to travel to a foreign
country to join an army whose primary occupation is apartheid?... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/29/americans-israeli-military
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]
In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their towns and villages. 77 years later, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced. Since the war in #Gaza began, around 1.9 million people have been forced to flee their homes. #WorldRefugeeDay
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In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their towns and villages. 77 years later, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced. Since the war in #Gaza began, around 1.9 million people have been forced to flee their homes. |
On #WorldRefugeeDay, we @UNRWA renew our commitment to #Palestine Refugees.
We continue providing services & assistance against all odds despite massive adversity especially in #Gaza & the West Bank.
I salute our teams serving the communities across the region with courage & dedication.
We will continue until a just solution is found to the plight of Palestine Refugees.
-> It's our mission.
-> It's our commitment.
-> It's our mandate entrusted to UNRWA by the UN General Assembly
"The West Bank is on lockdown. This means that the gates Israel spent the last ten years erecting at every village and town entrance are closed— effectively caging Palestinians in their own homes. For years Palestinians protested these practices, non violently, and yet nothing changed. The world still normalized Israel and told Palestinians “it’s not a big deal.” As Palestinians are caged in, Israel has also spent the past two years ensuring agricultural destruction. This means in the West Bank, people don’t have access to lands or farms. It means Palestinians must purchase food from Israel, and everything has become more expensive. Palestinian homes are being rampaged, ransacked, and turned to military bases. Israel has also mass destroyed and demolished thousands of Palestinian homes, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians in the last few years. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements are expanding deeper into Palestinian towns and cities, drying water sources, destroying lands, killing & maiming people. What is happening to Palestinians as a whole population is extermination." Mariam Barghouti
Mariam Barghouti مريم البرغوثي
The only reason, Palestinians in the West Bank seem to be enduring is because there is GZ—a place where our people are being mass executed and so in comparison, the West Bank endures.
However when not compared to a mass execution site, the West Bank is facing cruel and inhumane conditions.
The West Bank is on lockdown. This means that the gates Israel spent the last ten years erecting at every village and town entrance are closed— effectively caging Palestinians in their own homes.
For years Palestinians protested these practices, non violently, and yet nothing changed.
The world still normalized Israel and told Palestinians “it’s not a big deal.”
As Palestinians are caged in, Israel has also spent the past two years ensuring agricultural destruction.
This means in the West Bank, people don’t have access to lands or farms.
It means Palestinians must purchase food from Israel, and everything has become more expensive.
Palestinian homes are being rampaged, ransacked, and turned to military bases.
Israel has also mass destroyed and demolished thousands of Palestinian homes, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians in the last few years.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlements are expanding deeper into Palestinian towns and cities, drying water sources, destroying lands, killing & maiming people.
What is happening to Palestinians as a whole population is extermination.
It is an unbinding of any structures of life to live as a collective people.
This is colonialism, it’s not just the mass slaughter. It is the fragmentation of people, the separation, the creating of a battlefield of survival so each focuses on surviving just one day.
It is the erasure of a collective population, and the annihilation of all capacity to live as a collective.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Mosab Abu Toha: This young man who was killed yesterday while seeking aid on the Rasheed Street in Gaza was put on a pallet as others carried him to the hospital. That same pallet that had sacks of flour before other people managed to get them.
This is one of the most heartbreaking photos to see.
This young man who was killed yesterday while seeking aid on the Rasheed Street in Gaza was put on a pallet as others carried him to the hospital.
That same pallet that had sacks of flour before other people managed to get them.
Last year I wrote a poem about a young man who was carried on a broken door.
They could not find a stretcher
to carry your body. They put
you on a wooden door they found
under the rubble:
Your neighbors: a moving wall.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Dear America- Stand up for international law and Human Rights, not the weapons industry.
letter I just sent to my elected leaders
Dear America,
Israel with all its pretty propaganda enriches some, but impoverishes
many many more, triggering injustice and suffering every where it can
reach, including right into America, robbing US blind.
Robbing US of real democracy and equality- robbing US of free speech
and our fourth estate, robbing US of civilized and well informed
dialogue, robbing US of funds needed for human beings, for our children
and schools and the environment... robbing US of goodness and grace. Robbing US of respect and a decent future.
Zionism inspires religious extremism & corruption worldwide. No one is safe. No one is secure.
For every one's sake please stop trusting Israel. Stop funding
Israel. Stop arming Israel. Stop excusing Israel. AND stop duplicating
the propaganda of a very foreign country that is in flagrant and long
term violation of international law.
STOP ignoring racist Israel's intentional and systematic destruction of Palestinian families, homes, communities and jobs. Start a better way forward towards a just and lasting peace & progress by saying NO to trigger-happy Israel and NO TO WAR!
Fund UNRWA and true compassion, not the killing zone scheme of Israel's "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation."
Because as Volker Turk warns, “The current trajectory of escalating conflict and disregard for human rights is indefensible.”
Stand up for international law and Human Rights, not the weapons industry.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes
Israel VS Iran ... Israel's nuclear weapons - up to 400* VS Iran's nuclear weapons 0 [ZERO!]
"The Iraq playbook is back & the media won't question it. Iraq has no nuclear weapons. Israel- on trial for genocide- does. Iran signed the NPT & allows IAEA inspections. Israel hasn't- & its leaders face ICC arrest warrants.... BEWARE OF POLITICIANS BEATING THE DRUMS OF WAR
"Israel is a nuclear-armed state, with one of the most advanced military’s in the world, funded and armed by the U.S., that started a war of aggression with Iran and is committing genocide in Gaza… And the BBC makes it sound like they’re William Wallace resisting the English." Assal Rad
"Dekel also credits Abdoh with helping spark her interest in the larger story surrounding the Tehran children, including the Jewish community's ancient roots in Iran and the remarkable humanitarianism of a Muslim nation accepting Jewish refugees in the Nazi era, when so many countries were turning them away."
NEW YORK, 15 June 2025 – “This weekend’s surge in violence across the Middle East signals a dangerous escalation. Children are once again paying the ultimate price. Since Friday, an intense military escalation in the region has seen strikes on Iran and Israel hit residential areas, killing and injuring civilians – including children – and causing damage to civilian infrastructure. Beyond the death toll, this alarming escalation creates widespread fear and trauma among children in all communities. UNICEF strongly condemns all forms of violence against children. Our thoughts are with all the families and communities mourning this tragic loss of life. We reiterate the Secretary-General's call for all sides to show maximum restraint, avoiding at all costs a descent into deeper conflict, a situation the region and its children cannot afford. UNICEF urgently calls on all parties to uphold their obligations under international law and to ensure the protection of civilians, in particular children. All children have the right to live without the threat of war and violence...." UNICEF for every child
The United Nations 2025 ACT NOW for a peaceful world: Did you know that the world spent $2.4 trillion on its militaries or that the global economic cost of violence was nearly $20 trillion in 2023?
"There are no bomb shelters in Gaza. There are no sirens. And there is no emergency alert app on our phones. And if there was one, there is no phone signal or internet connect most of the time. And there is hardly any electricity to charge our phones. The only shelters we have been running into and living in are schools and hospitals. But even those have been bombed constantly and our families were burnt alive in front of our eyes. Even the areas that were designated as "non-combat zones" got bombed. We live there in tents without access to water or food or clothes." Mosab Abu Toha
‘They just see you as an Arab’: Israel’s Palestinian citizens given cursory protection from attack. Deaths of four family members sheltering in supposed ‘safe rooms’ in Tamra highlight racial inequality of Israel’s defence of its citizens
Israel's attack on Iran: "It’s all looking very Gaza-like: escalation with no end; or regime change with no plan." Nesrine Malik in The Guardian
"Killings & wars will breed more wars & bloodshed. Civilians will always suffer first & suffer most. Political will, leadership & courage are overdue & needed more than ever. It's time for long lasting peace in Gaza & across the region." Philippe Lazzarini
In Tel Aviv, rescue teams use advanced equipment, sniffer dogs, and heavy machinery to save those trapped under rubble. In Gaza, civil defense workers and neighbors dig with bare hands, without fuel or tools, because Israel blocks the entry of life-saving equipment. Many victims in Gaza die slowly, not from the initial bombing, but from suffocation, hunger, or thirst beneath the ruins.
It Being Sunday ... a 2025 poem by Anne Selden Annab
It being Sunday
in a land with many churches
I pray that prayers for peace
rise up, rise up to sway
people away from war.
Away from bombing children,
pulverizing families,
Away from generating enemies.
Away from creating poverty, starvation, suffering...
Might does not make right
nor does armed resistance.
Scorn violence!
We live in an age of computers- the internet
an endless feed of personal truths at our fingertips
with the power of fair and just laws
able to shape a better way forward
for all of humankind.
***
Laila El-Haddad & Mosab Abu Toha both win the JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD 2025 for their essays on Gaza ... "We Palestinians win, with or without recipes..."
CSM: In Gaza, Palestinians wonder: Is it worth braving bullets to find food?
Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, UN Commission says
Reporter: “Why do you think so many countries and governments around the world are just ignoring what’s happening in Gaza?” Greta Thunberg: “Because of racism.”
Antisemitic and Islamophobic violence is rising in the United States. Both must stop: We have a duty to call out antisemitism when we see it. We also have an equal duty to remember that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are also being targeted
Let's use the best tool we have: EDUCATION against ignorance, prejudice, hatred, genocide
More journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza than in most major wars combined.
The MATH of modern GENOCIDE & the US weapons industry.
"The Holocaust did not start with gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes, and prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanisation and escalatin violence" Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau
Building a Culture of Peace ...
"The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell." ~Dag Hammarskjöld, second Secretary-General of the United Nations
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..." https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
"Israel is a nuclear-armed state, with one of the most advanced military’s in the world, funded and armed by the U.S., that started a war of aggression with Iran and is committing genocide in Gaza… And the BBC makes it sound like they’re William Wallace resisting the English." Assal Rad
Assal Rad
Israel is a nuclear-armed state, with one of the most advanced military’s in the world, funded and armed by the U.S., that started a war of aggression with Iran and is committing genocide in Gaza…
And the BBC makes it sound like they’re William Wallace resisting the English.
"Dekel also credits Abdoh with helping spark her interest in the larger story surrounding the Tehran children, including the Jewish community's ancient roots in Iran and the remarkable humanitarianism of a Muslim nation accepting Jewish refugees in the Nazi era, when so many countries were turning them away."
How Iran Gave Refuge to Nearly 1,000 Jewish Children During the Holocaust
Monday, June 16, 2025
NEW YORK, 15 June 2025 – “This weekend’s surge in violence across the Middle East signals a dangerous escalation. Children are once again paying the ultimate price. Since Friday, an intense military escalation in the region has seen strikes on Iran and Israel hit residential areas, killing and injuring civilians – including children – and causing damage to civilian infrastructure. Beyond the death toll, this alarming escalation creates widespread fear and trauma among children in all communities. UNICEF strongly condemns all forms of violence against children. Our thoughts are with all the families and communities mourning this tragic loss of life. We reiterate the Secretary-General's call for all sides to show maximum restraint, avoiding at all costs a descent into deeper conflict, a situation the region and its children cannot afford. UNICEF urgently calls on all parties to uphold their obligations under international law and to ensure the protection of civilians, in particular children. All children have the right to live without the threat of war and violence...." UNICEF for every child
NEW YORK, 15 June 2025 – “This weekend’s surge in violence across the Middle East signals a dangerous escalation. Children are once again paying the ultimate price.
“Since Friday, an intense military escalation in the region has seen strikes on Iran and Israel hit residential areas, killing and injuring civilians – including children – and causing damage to civilian infrastructure.
“Beyond the death toll, this alarming escalation creates widespread fear and trauma among children in all communities.
“UNICEF strongly condemns all forms of violence against children. Our thoughts are with all the families and communities mourning this tragic loss of life.
“We reiterate the Secretary-General's call for all sides to show maximum restraint, avoiding at all costs a descent into deeper conflict, a situation the region and its children cannot afford.
“UNICEF urgently calls on all parties to uphold their obligations under international law and to ensure the protection of civilians, in particular children. All children have the right to live without the threat of war and violence.
“UNICEF, together with other UN agencies and humanitarian partners, is actively assessing the situation and remains ready to scale up support to affected children and their families as needed and requested.”
The United Nations 2025 ACT NOW for a peaceful world: Did you know that the world spent $2.4 trillion on its militaries or that the global economic cost of violence was nearly $20 trillion in 2023?
Each of us can heal divisions and embrace peace & understanding.
Encourage families & communities to speak up, learn, respect, embrace diversity, and protest injustice.
Be the change you want to see! #ActNow for Peace.
buff.ly/4AGOhrR
Building a movement for peace
The future is young. Today, half the world’s population is under 30, and this generation is emerging as a powerful force for peace in a world marred by conflict and injustice.
Across the globe, young people are organizing protests, sparking global movements, and forging bonds of solidarity. In communities ravaged by violence, they serve as peacekeepers and peacebuilders, laying the groundwork for a resilient tomorrow.
Learn more about how young people contribute to peace, and join them in building a movement for a more peaceful and just world.
Know your facts
Empower yourself with knowledge
Get inspired
Read peacebuilder stories
Speak up
Become an advocate for peace
"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”
ActNow for peace
From ending violence against women and girls to empowering youth and building peace, we can do more to create a better world. Here are ten more actions you can take to contribute to a more peaceful future.
Know your facts
Did you know that the world spent $2.4 trillion on its militaries or that the global economic cost of violence was nearly $20 trillion in 2023? Learn the facts in your campaign against violence.
Fast facts
Did you know that that wars cost the world $20 trillion in 2023 or that one in three victims of trafficking is a child?
Fortify your campaign against violence with hard facts on issues that matter.