"It is obviously un-American for the government to develop a ‘hit list’ of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies."

This Country Can't Afford A SCOTUS Weak On Internet Censorship
Joy Pullmann
The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans’ speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday. It sounded like several justices followed the feds’ waving red flag.

“The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers,” said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks. He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.

The government doesn’t have constitutional rights. Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government. The people’s right to speak may not be abridged. Government officials’ speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged. Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state’s monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.

It is obviously un-American and unconstitutional for the government to develop a “hit list” of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies beholden to the government for their monopoly powers. There is simply no way it’s “protected speech” for the feds to use intermediaries to silence anyone who disagrees with them on internet forums where the majority of the nation’s political organizing and information dissemination occurs.

Bullying, Not the Bully Pulpit

What’s happening is not government expressing its views to media, or “encouraging press to suppress their own speech,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. This is government bullying third parties to suppress Americans’ speech that officials dislike.

In the newspaper analogy, it would be like government threatening an IRS audit or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation, or pulling the business license of The Washington Post if the Post published an op-ed from Jay Bhattacharya. As Norwood v. Harrison established in 1973, that’s blatantly unconstitutional. Government cannot “induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

Yet, notes Matt Taibbi, some justices and Fletcher “re-framed the outing of extravagantly funded, ongoing content-flagging programs, designed by veterans of foreign counterterrorism operations and targeting the domestic population, as a debate about what Fletcher called ‘classic bully pulpit exhortations.’”

Every Fake Excuse for Censorship Is Already Illegal

We have laws against all the harms the government and several justices put forth as excuses for government censorship. Terrorism is illegal. Promoting terrorism is illegal, as an incitement to treason and violence. Inciting children to injure or murder themselves by jumping out windows — a “hypothetical” brought up by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and discussed at length in oral arguments — is illegal.

If someone is spreading terrorist incitements to violence on Facebook, law enforcement needs to go after the terrorist plotters, not Facebook. Just like it’s unjust to punish gun, knife, and tire iron manufacturers for the people who use their products to murder, it’s unjust and unconstitutional for government to effectively commandeer Facebook under the pretext of all the evils people use it to spread. If they have a problem with those evils, they should address those evils directly, not pressure Facebook to do what they can’t get through Congress like it’s some kind of substitute legislature.

It’s also ridiculous to, as Jackson and Fletcher did in oral argument, assume that the government is the only possible solution to every social ill. Do these hypothetically window-jumping children not have parents? Teachers? Older siblings? Neighbors? Would the social media companies not have an interest in preventing their products from being used to promote death, and wouldn’t that be an easy thing to explain publicly? Apparently, Jackson couldn’t conceive of any other solution to problems like these than government censorship, when our society has handled far bigger problems like war, pandemics, and foreign invasion without government censorship for 250 years!

Voters Auditing Government Is Exactly How Our System Should Work

Fletcher described it as a “problem” that in this case, “two states and five individuals are trying to use the Article III courts to audit all of the executive branch’s communications with and about social media platforms.” That’s called transparency, and it’s only a problem if the government is trying to escape accountability to voters for its actions.

The people have a fundamental right to audit what their government is doing with public positions, institutions, and funds! How do we have government by consent of the governed if the people can have no idea what their government is doing?

Under federal laws, all communications like those this lawsuit uncovered are public records. Yet these public records are really hard to get. The executive branch has been effectively nullifying open records laws by absurdly lengthening disclosure times — to as long as 636 days — increasingly forcing citizens to wage expensive lawsuits to get federal agencies to cough up records years beyond the legal deadline.

Congress should pass a law forcing the automatic disclosure of all government communications with tech monopolies that don’t concern actual classified information and “national security” designations, which the government expands unlawfully to avoid transparency. No justice should support government secrecy about its speech pressure efforts outside of legitimate national security actions.

Government Is So Big, It’s Always Coercive

Fletcher’s argument also claimed to draw a line between government persuasion and government coercion. The size and minute harassment powers of our government long ago obliterated any such line, if it ever existed. Federal agencies now have the power to try citizens in non-Article III courts, outside constitutional protections for due process. Citizens can be bankrupted long before they finally get to appeal to a real court. That’s why most of them just do whatever the agencies say, even when it’s clearly unlawful.

Federal agencies demand power over almost every facet of life, from puddles in people’s backyards to the temperature of cheese served in a tiny restaurant. If they put a target on any normal citizen’s back, he goes bankrupt after regulatory torture.

As Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” planned, government is now the “senior partner” of every business, giving every “request” from government officials automatic coercion power. Federal agencies have six ways from Sunday of getting back at a noncompliant company, from the EEOC to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency to Health and Human Services to Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and more. Use an accurate pronoun? Investigation. Hire “one too many” white guys? Investigation.

TikTok legislation going through Congress right now would codify federal power to seize social media companies accused of being owned by foreign interests. Shortly after he acquired X, Elon Musk faced a regulatory shakedown costing him tens of millions, and more on the way. He has money like that, but the rest of us don’t.

Speech from a private citizen does not have the threat of violence behind it. Speech from a government official, on the other hand, absolutely does and always has. Government officials have powers that other people don’t, and those powers are easily abused, which is exactly why we have a Constitution. SCOTUS needs to take this crucial context into account, making constitutional protections stronger because the government is far, far outside its constitutional bounds.

Big tech companies’ very business model depends on government regulators and can be destroyed — or kneecapped — at the stroke of an activist president’s pen. Or, at least, that’s what the president said when Facebook and Twitter didn’t do what he wanted: Section 230 should “immediately be revoked.” This is a president who claims the executive power to unilaterally rewrite laws, ignore laws, and ignore Supreme Court decisions. It’s a president who issues orders as press releases so they go into effect months before they can even begin to be challenged in court.

Constitutionally Protected Speech Isn’t Terrorism

If justices buy the administration’s nice-guy pretenses of “concern about terrorism,” and “once in a lifetime pandemic measures,” they didn’t read the briefs in this case and see that is simply a cover for the U.S. government turning counterterrorism tools on its own citizens in an attempt to control election outcomes. This is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to check, and we Americans need our Supreme Court to understand that and act to protect us. Elections mean nothing when the government is secretly keeping voters from talking to each other.

The Supreme Court may not be able to return the country to full constitutional government by eradicating the almost entirely unconstitutional administrative state. But it should enforce as many constitutional boundaries as possible on such agencies. That clearly includes prohibiting all of government from outsourcing to allegedly “private” organizations actions that would be illegal for the government to take.

That includes not just coercive instructions to social media companies, but also developing social media censorship tools and organizations as cutouts for the rogue security state that is targeting peaceful citizens instead of actual terrorists. Even false speech is not domestic terrorism, and no clearheaded Supreme Court justice looking at the evidence could let the Biden administration weaponize antiterrorism measures to strip law-abiding Americans of our fundamental human rights.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include "Classic Books For Young Children," and "101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation." An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.


https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/21/this-country-cannot-afford-a-weak-supreme-court-decision-on-internet-censorship/

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The story of Toby and the Wendels is an equally fascinating one. He was the fourth (or fifth, accounts vary) of his name, and the beloved pet of one of the wealthiest women in New York City.

Ella, along with her six siblings, had inherited a property portfolio that would be worth billions of dollars today.

Their father was a daring speculator, whose grand 5th Avenue home was a hub for Gilded-Age high society, but his children seemed unwilling to take any risks, financial or personal.

They never sold property or borrowed money to make investments; they stuck mostly to the same tenants in the same increasingly dilapidated and old buildings.

Distrustful of fortune seeking strangers, they never married and had few friends. By the start of the 1930s, Ella was the sole survivor of the Wendel clan, living in the family home with Toby and a handful of servants.

The Year that Expertise Collapsed
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Getting sick and getting well is part of the human experience at all times in all places. As with other phenomena of human existence, that suggests there is a great deal of embedded knowledge on the topic woven into the fabric of our lives. We aren’t born knowing but we come to know: from our moms and dads, experience of siblings and others, from our own experience, and from medical professionals who deal with the problem daily.

In a healthy and functioning society, the path toward maintaining personal and public health becomes embedded in the cultural firmament, just like manners, belief systems, and value preferences. It’s not necessary that we think about it constantly; instead it becomes a habit, with much of the knowledge tacit; that is, deployed daily but rarely with full cognizance.

We could know for certain that there had been a change in the matrix in March 2020 because, seemingly out of nowhere, all of this knowledge was deemed wrong. A new gaggle of experts was in charge, one day to the next. Suddenly, they were everywhere. They were on TV, quoted by all the newspapers, amplified on social media, and on the phone constantly with local officials instructing them on how they must shut down the schools, businesses, playgrounds, churches, and civic gatherings.

The message was always the same. This time is completely different from anything in our experience or in any previous experience. This time we must adopt a totally new and completely untested paradigm. It comes from models that high-level scientists have deemed correct. It comes from labs. It comes from “germ games” of which none of us are part. If we dare to reject the new teachings for the old, we are doing it wrong. We are the malicious ones. We deserve ridicule, cancellation, silencing, exclusion, and worse.

It felt like a coup d’etat of sorts. It certainly was an intellectual coup. All wisdom of the past, even that known by public health only months earlier, was deleted from public spaces. Dissent was silenced. Corporate media was absolutely united in celebrating the greatness of people like Fauci, who spoke in strangely circuitous ways that contradicted everything we thought we knew.

It was exceedingly strange because the people we thought might have stood up to the flash imposition of tyranny somehow vanished. We could hardly meet with others at all, if only to share intuitions that something was wrong. “Social distancing” was more than a method to “slow the spread;” it amounted to comprehensive control of the public mind too.

The experts instructing us spoke with astonishing certainty about precisely how society should be managed in a pandemic. There were scientific papers, tens of thousands of them, and the storm of credentials was everywhere and out of control. Unless you had a university or lab affiliation and unless you had multiple high-level degrees attached to your name, you could not get a hearing. Folk wisdom was out of the question, even basic things like “sun and outdoors are good for respiratory infections.” Even popular understanding of natural immunity came in for hard ridicule.

Later it turned out that even top credentialed experts would not be taken seriously if they had the wrong views. This is when the racket became incredibly obvious. It was never really about genuine knowledge. It was about compliance and echoing the approved line. It’s astonishing how many people went along, even with the stupidest of the mandates, such as the distancing stickers everywhere, the ubiquity of Plexiglas, and the dirty masks on every face which were somehow believed to keep people healthy.

Once the contrary studies started coming out, we would share them and get shouted down. The comment sections of the studies started to be raided by partisan experts who would hone in on small issues and problems and demand and obtain takedowns. Then the contrarian expert would get doxxed, his dean notified, and the faculty turned against the person, lest the department risk funding from Big Pharma or Fauci in the future.

All the while, we kept thinking that there must be some rationale behind all this madness. It never emerged. It was all intimidation and belligerence and nothing more – arbitrary diktat by big shots who were pretending the entire time.

The lockdowners and shot mandators were never intellectually serious people. They never much thought about the implications or ramifications of what they were doing. They were just wrecking things mostly for pecuniary gain, job protection, and career advancement, plus it was fun to be in charge. It’s not much more complicated than that.

In other words, we’ve gradually come to realize that our worst fears were true. All these experts were and are fakes. There have been some hints along the way, such as when North Carolina Health Director Mandy Cohen (now head of the CDC) reported that she and her colleagues were burning up the phone lines to decide whether people should be allowed to participate in sports.

“She was like, are you gonna let them have professional football?” she said. “And I was like, no. And she’s like, OK neither are we.”

Another candid moment came five months ago, only recently unearthed by X, when NIH head Francis Collins admitted that he and his colleagues attached “zero value” to whether and to what extent they were disrupting lives, wrecking the economy, and destroying education for kids. He actually said this.

As it turns out, these experts who ruled our lives, and still do to a great extent, were never what they claimed to be, and never actually possessed knowledge that was superior to what existed within the cultural firmament of society. Instead, all they really had was power and a grand opportunity to play dictator.

It’s astonishing, truly, and worthy of deep study, when you consider the extent to which and for how long this class of people were able to maintain the illusion of consensus within their ranks. They bamboozled the media all over the world. They tricked vast swaths of the population. They bent all social media algorithms to reflect their views and priorities.

One explanation comes down to the money trail. That’s a powerful explanation. But it is not the whole of it. Behind the illusion was a terrifying intellectual isolation in which all these people found themselves. They never really encountered people who disagreed. Indeed, part of the way these people had come to conceive of their jobs was to master the art of knowing what to think and when and how. It’s part of the job training to enter the class of experts: mastering the skill of echoing the opinions of others.

Discovering this to be true is alarming for anyone who holds to older ideals of how intellectual society should conduct itself. We like to imagine that there is a constant clash of ideas, a burning desire to get to the truth, a love of knowledge and data, a passion for gaining a better understanding. That requires, above all else, an openness of mind and a willingness to listen. All of this was overtly and explicitly shut down in March 2020 but it was made easier because all the mechanisms were already in place.

One of the best books of our time is Tom Harrington’s The Treason of the Experts, published by Brownstone. There is simply not in the present era a more insightful investigation and deconstruction of the sociological sickness of the expert class. Every page is on fire with insight and observation about the intellectual juntas that attempt to rule the public mind in today’s world. It’s a terrifying look at how wildly wrong everything has gone in the world of ideas. A great followup volume is Ramesh Thakur’s Our Enemy, the Government, which reveals all the ways in which the new scientists who were ruling the world weren’t scientific at all.

Brownstone was born in the midst of the worst of this world. We set out to create something different, not a bubble of ideological/partisan attachment or an enforcement organ of the proper way to think about all issues. Instead, we sought to become a genuine society of thinkers united in a principled attachment to freedom but hugely diverse in specialization and philosophical outlook. It’s one of the few centers where there is genuine interdisciplinary engagement and openness to new perspectives and outlook. All of this is essential to the life of the mind and yet nearly absent in academia, media, and government today.

We’ve put together a fascinating model for retreats. We choose a comfortable venue where the food and drink are provided and the living quarters are excellent, and bring together 40 or so top experts to present a set of ideas to the whole group. Each speaker gets 15 minutes and that is followed by 15 minutes of engagement from everyone present. Then we go to the next speaker. This goes on all day and the evenings are spent in casual conversation. As the organizer, Brownstone does not pick topics or speakers but rather allows the flow of ideas to emerge organically. This goes on for two and a half days. There is no set agenda, no mandated takeaways, no required action items. There is only unconstrained idea generation and sharing.

There is a reason why there is such a clamor to attend. It’s the creation of something that all these wonderful people – each person a dissident in his own field – had hoped to encounter in professional life but the reality was always elusive. It’s only three days so hardly Ancient Greece or Vienna in the interwar years but it is an excellent start, and hugely productive and uplifting. It’s amazing what can happen when you combine intelligence, erudition, open minds, and sincere sharing of ideas. From the point of view of government, huge corporations, academia, and all the architects of today’s world of ideas, this is precisely what they do not want.

The difference between 2023 and, say, five years ago, is that the expertise racket is now out in the open. Vast swaths of society decided to trust the experts for a time. They deployed every power of the state, along with all affiliated institutions in the pseudo-private sector, to browbeat and manipulate the people into panicked compliance with preposterous antics that never had any hope of mitigating disease.

Look where that got us. The experts have been fully discredited. Is it any wonder that ever more people are skeptical of the same gang’s claims about climate change, diversity, immigration, inflation, education, gender transitions, or anything else pushed today by elite minds? Mass compliance has been replaced by mass incredulity. Trust will not likely return in our lifetimes.

There is, further, a reason why hardly anyone is surprised that the president of Harvard stands accused of rampant plagiarism or that election officials are deploying sneaky forms of lawfare to keep political renegades off the ballot or that money launderers for the administrative state are getting away with rampant fraud. Graft, kickbacks, bribery, misappropriation, nepotism, favoritism, and outright corruption rule the day in all elite circles.

In a few weeks, we are going to hear from Anthony Fauci, who will be grilled by a House of Representatives committee on exactly how he claimed to be so sure that there was no lab leak stemming from gain-of-function research being done at a US-baked lab in Wuhan. We’ll see how much attention this testimony gets but, truly, does anyone really believe that he is going to be honest and forthcoming? It is pretty much a consensus these days that he has been up to no good. If he is “the science,” science itself is in grave trouble.

What a contrast to just a few years ago when Fauci-themed shirts and coffee mugs were big-selling items. He claimed to be the science, and science did rally behind him as if he had all the answers, even though what he advocated contradicted every bit of common wisdom that has always been practiced in every civilized society.

Three years ago, the expert class went out on the farthest limb one can imagine, daring to replace all social knowledge and embedded cultural experience with their off-the-cuff rationalism and scientistic razzmatazz that ended up serving the industrial interests of large-scale exploiters in tech, media, and pharma. We live in the midst of the rubble they created. It’s no wonder they have been completely discredited.

To replace them – and this is a long-term strategy and one that unfolds gradually with bold efforts such as that undertaken by Brownstone Institute – we need a new and serious effort to rebuild serious thought based on honesty, sincere engagement across ideological lines, and a genuine commitment to truth and freedom. We have that opportunity right now, and we dare not decline to take up the task with every sense of urgency and passion. As always, your support of our work is greatly appreciated.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.

Author

Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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Your financial backing of Brownstone Institute goes to support writers, lawyers, scientists, economists, and other people of courage who have been professionally purged and displaced during the upheaval of our times. You can help get the truth out through their ongoing work.

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-year-that-expertise-collapsed/

We have had Enough! Stop Murdering Children NOW!
Aed Abu Amro palestinian with flag
© Mustafa Hassona
When Mustafa Hassona took this picture on October 22 2018, then 20 year-old Aeb Abu Amro was participating in the Great March of Return protest in Gaza against the Israeli blockade of the Strip.
Enough!

I need to say this, because I don't know what else to do. The only thing I have is my voice, my words, and I don't want to live through this time in history feeling I did nothing, even though I know it's so little.

When I watch image after image, video after video of the complete and utter destruction in the tiny strip of Gaza, when I see the injured, the maimed, the dead bodies of men, women and children, when I watch the wordless and screaming pain of these humans who have to dig through rubble to find their loved ones or what remains of them, who take their little belongings and their children on their backs to move (for a second, a third time?) somewhere safer... I feel caught in an unbearable nightmare with no end. Yet I am only a far-away witness, safe in the comfort of my home.

For them, it's all real.

The homes of so many people, who actually experience daily what I merely watch, are now acres upon acres of leveled rubble. Those houses that they probably worked hard to afford, so many of them family homes, full of memories of first steps, first words, meals around the table, celebrations of everyday life, even arguments and maybe even abusive unhealthy relationships. But isn't that what life is about? What hubris and deranged, god-complex gives Israel the right to annihilate so many lives and livelihoods?

Enough!

Every day I see men unable to provide the most basic means of safety or normal living to their children and wives, men who plough through the rubble hoping that the ones they love might still be alive, men who carry the dead bodies of their family members, or their injured children to hospitals that are barely safe or operational anymore. These men, who grew up with the label of "terrorist" on their backs, just because they were born in a land that was mythically promised to another group of people thousands of years ago. We should always talk about the women and the children, but let's not forget about the men, as they keep everything moving as much as possible amidst a terrible war waged against their bodies and minds.

Enough!

Every day I see mothers watching their children die, holding them injured, maimed, dead in their arms, Madonnas over the body of their offspring so unjustly murdered for the sins of others. While they mourn the loss of their own parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, friends, relatives... Women covered in sod and dust, with no water for their basic needs, and the bare minimum of medical assistance when they are about to bring new life into the world. Women who probably learned early to tend to all different types of war, captivity, and deprivation wounds, as soon as they were able to, wounds of the body and wounds of the soul alike.

Enough!

Every day I see children. I see so many children every day! But instead of them playing happily on the playground or at the beach, they are lying cut up, broken up, injured, maimed, lifeless among the rubble, on hospital beds, in their parents' or siblings' arms. I've never seen so many dead children before in such a short time, or probably ever, and I have been watching dead Palestinians at the hands of the IDF all of my life.

I ask you, all of you: what could possibly be a reason to ever murder children?

Haven't we had enough?

I won't even try to bring up historical facts or inaccuracies, or the reality that this captivity and slaughter has been going on for 48 days and 75 years (thus Muhammad Smiry, a teacher who lives in Gaza, counts the days). You can hear all that first hand from actual Jewish Israelis like Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon, Ilan Pappé, Miko Peled, and Gideon Levy among others. I won't even argue against the official Israeli stance on how and why it all started on October 7. I am not going to mention dull and dusty United Nations charters about the rights and responsibilities of every human being during times of peace and times of war, or the world-wide agreed upon roles of occupiers and those under their occupation. All of the above is information that, in our day and age, is just a mouse click (or a phone touch) away. Ignorance is inexcusable. Lastly, I won't even engage in any socioeconomic, political, religious, philosophical or scientific discussions, I will even put aside West Bank or the murder of innocent men and women (God help me!) and simply ask again:

What could ever be a reason to murder children?

What would ever be a reason to support the murder of children?

What would ever be a reason to justify or excuse the murder of thousands of children?

Can there ever be one?

Enough already!

How could any thinking, feeling, sensing human being in possession of a conscience answer yes to any of the above? And those who can and do, what does it say about them?

How come no one is doing anything to stop this holocaust? In the year 2023, the most hideous genocide is taking place in front of our eyes and most of our governmental "representatives" are silent, if not promoting and financing it. The cries of desperation of the Palestinian people don't move them, nor do the written or actual protests of millions of people across the globe, who are just as horrified and overcome by grief, some even putting their careers and livelihoods on the line to support the people of Gaza.

It's not the first time that political and financial power interests come before the lives of human beings, but the evil that is perpetrated right now is so extremely transparent, so unjustifiable EVEN IF one believes the official stories, that consciously or unconsciously as humanity we feel the chill of certainty that our "representatives" don't give a damn about our own lives either, just as much as they don't give a damn about the lives of the Palestinians. They would sacrifice us on a whim as we become mere disposable objects once we get in their way.

Therefore, never stop supporting the Palestinians, never stop talking about their plight, never suppress your conscience for any reason, because you are not only standing up for truth, justice and humanity, you are fighting for your family's life and your very own! Witnessing the suffering and sacrifice of the people in Gaza has taught us as much. And we've all had enough!

Dear Palestinians,

The price you are paying every day is high; you pay with your lives, and worst in some cases, the lives of your beloved. I hope that our collective prayers and support reach your hearts, I hope that the hellish conditions that you endure in this lifetime guarantees you a place in heaven for the next one. I wish I could bring you Yarrow to stop your bleeding and make you a tea of Jasmin and Rose blooms to sooth your heart. I hope you know freedom and peace in your own cherished land before long, inshallah.

I wish I could write beautiful words to honor your martyrdom, but Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan was representing all of you when she penned the following, probably as an answer to the unsympathetic question, "Why don't they just up and leave?":

Enough for Me
Enough for me to die on her earth
be buried in her
to melt and vanish into her soil
then sprout forth as a flower
played with by a child from my country.
Enough for me to remain
in my country's embrace
to be in her close as a handful of dust
a sprig of grass
a flower.



https://www.sott.net/article/486261-We-have-had-Enough-Stop-Murdering-Children-NOW

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 41: Israel ignores legally binding UNSC resolution, saying ‘it will not happen.’
Leila WarahNovember 16, 2023
Displaced Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and UNRWA schools in Khan Yunis, November 14, 2023. (Photo: © Mohammed Talatene/dpa via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Displaced Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and UNRWA schools in Khan Yunis, November 14, 2023. (Photo: © Mohammed Talatene/dpa via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Casualties

11,255 killed*, including 4,630 children, and 29,000 wounded in Gaza

196 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200

*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 14.

Key Developments

Israeli airstrikes have targeted the perimeter of the Ahli Arab Hospital on Thursday afternoon, reports Al Jazeera, who believes the attacks could be seen as an indicator of preparation to storm the hospital.
Israeli forces violently stormed Al-Shifa Hospital twice within 24 hours, destroying the inside of the medical complex despite finding no Palestinian fighters inside.
The UN Security Council passed a legally binding resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses,” unrestricted aid delivery, including fuel and medical evacuations, and the release of captives inside Gaza; however, Israel says “it will not happen.”
UNOCHA: Those fleeing to the South using the Israeli force’s “so-called safe corridors” face arrest, and the UN has received reports of “beatings and people being stripped of their clothes by Israeli soldiers.”
According to a police statement, Israeli security forces killed three people who arrived in a “suspicious vehicle and opened fire towards our forces,” shooting and injuring four people at a checkpoint near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank on Thursday morning, according to Israeli media.
Israeli forces have detained 69 Palestinians during overnight military raids on Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, including four siblings in Kufr Rai village near Jenin in an effort to force their brother to turn himself in, reported Wafa,
UNOCHA: The Palestinian Red Cross is no longer able to respond to the hundreds of calls from people seeking assistance in evacuating people wounded or trapped under the rubble.
As of November 10, about 2,700 people, including some 1,500 children, remain missing and presumed to be trapped or dead under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza
The Red Cross and UNRWA are calling for the evacuation of the 650 patients trapped by the Israeli military in al-Shifa Hospital to other facilities, including in Egypt, as the patients are beyond the capability of Gaza’s already collapsed healthcare system, reports Al Jazeera.
On Wednesday, Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel warned that Gaza is expected to enter a communications blackout as the company’s data centers and equipment will shut down due to the lack of fuel.
At least seven staff members at the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza were injured at the ER entrance as they tried “to tend to Palestinians who themselves had been injured in Israeli air strikes,” said a spokesperson for the Jordanian army, adding that Jordan is investigating the incident and holds Israel responsible for the protection of their faculty and staff.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has shared a distressing video showing Israeli forces targeting the organization’s paramedics as they shell the vicinity of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza last Friday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, is publicly calling on the Prime Minister to resign because the public has lost trust in him.
Bombing, shooting, detaining, and strip searching Palestinains

Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, has been stormed twice by Israeli forces in the last 24 hours, even though they have only found civilians, including medical staff, patients, and displaced persons. Evidence of an alleged Hamas command center is also absent.

The first military incursion started at dawn on Wednesday before soldiers withdrew in the evening, maintaining their siege on the medical complex as “the smell of death wafts everywhere,” Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.

According to the Gaza government’s media office, Israeli forces expelled several children and patients, “depriving them of treatment and leaving them to face the threats of bombings, snipers and deadly drones” and even attacked several medical staff inside al-Shifa hospital during the incursion.

“They forced them to take off their clothes, insulted and cursed at them. They asked medical staff to leave their stations so they could interrogate them under the threat of weapons,” the office said.

Similarly, Wafa news reported that eyewitnesses saw Israeli forces forcing displaced people to strip naked and detaining and interrogating doctors, patients, and civilians.

The Palestinian news outlet added that Israeli forces were also seen installing facial recognition cameras and electronic gates in the courtyard of the medical complex.

As Israeli forces stormed Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on X, “There is no place in Gaza that we cannot reach.”

“We will arrive, we will eliminate Hamas, and we will return the hostages. These two goals are sacred…Yesterday, I spoke with President Biden again. We will be relentless. We will eliminate Hamas, achieve victory, and return the hostages,” he continued.

After finding little to no verifiable evidence of al-Shifa Hospital being used as the central operations headquarters for Hamas, Israeli forces launched a second raid on the hospital in the early hours of Thursday, less than 24 hours later.

Al Jazeera reported that the entire building had been damaged from the inside, stating that the Israeli military tore apart the walls and partitions between rooms and destroyed all the medical equipment.

Israeli bombardment has also caused “material damage to the specialized surgeries department at the hospital,” the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Telegram.

The World Health Organization described Israel’s assault on Al-Shifa hospital as “totally unacceptable.”

“Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” the statement said.

“Health workers have endured weeks of bombardment and siege and yet continue doing all they can to save lives. The international community must act now to end Israel’s systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system and secure an immediate ceasefire,” Melanie Ward, the CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said in a statement.

“Apparently, no crime, no matter how grave, is enough for the international community, including the Security Council, to say to Israel: Stop,” said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer.

“Calls for restraint are clearly not working,” he added. “The demands for respect of international law must be backed by immediate, serious, collective efforts to enforce the law.”

According to Al Jazeera, Israeli forces have complete control of the medical complex, and civilians are trapped inside the hospital and detained under Israeli custody. Israeli forces have taken some Palestinians to unknown locations, and their fate is still unknown.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for anybody to reach any of the medical staff, patients, and displaced people still stuck inside the hospital.

“I cannot even imagine … the panic among the patients, the panic among doctors and nurses. What they’re [going] through is really something that is unbelievable,” Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Al Jazeera on Wednesday evening.

Longa added that hospitals being forced to shut down due to the lack of fuel, among other essentials, is “something that is not acceptable” as thousands of Palestinians trapped in the besieged enclave no longer have access to healthcare.

In a publicity stunt on Thursday, Israel gave UNRWA just over 23,000 liters of fuel to be used inside the Gaza Strip, which is about 9% of what the agency needs to provide support to Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

“Much more fuel is needed. We need 160,000 liters of fuel every day for basic humanitarian operations,” he said, calling on Israel to “immediately authorize the delivery of the needed amount of fuel as is required under international humanitarian law.”

Even worse, Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini says Israeli Authorities “restricted the use of this fuel “only to transport the little aid coming via Egypt,” meaning it cannot be used in hospitals or for water purification.

“It is appalling that fuel continues to be used as a weapon of war,” he added in a statement on X.

Meanwhile, Israeli politicians continue pushing back on allowing basic humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave, collectively punishing the 2.3 million people living in Gaza because of the possibility that Hamas will use the fuel.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that “Diesel = weapon,” on Wednesday.

Similarly, transportation Minister Miri Regev said that “fuel for UNRWA is fuel for Hamas.”

However, the UN reiterated that “Fuel underpins access to and provision of all humanitarian services in Gaza. Without it, access by the people of Gaza to life-saving humanitarian assistance will all but cease.”

“We are already seeing a cascading collapse in water, sewage, and sanitation services, telecoms, food shortages, and healthcare,” they added.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, highlighted that “Gaza is ‘occupied’ given Israel’s effective control, regardless of Hamas’ existence,” and that Israel “has a right to protect itself but not to wage war” on the Palestinian people who have been kept under Israel’s “belligerent occupation” since 1967.

Meanwhile, in the South of Gaza, the Israeli army is once again demanding Palestinians to evacuate “immediately,” this time from eastern Khan Younis, including Al-Qarara, Khuza’a, Bani Suhaila, and Abasan.

It is crucial to note that Israel has been gradually pushing Gaza’s inhabitants farther south, claiming it is for their safety, despite every area being as deadly as the other.

Notches were dropped from the sky asking people to go to “known shelters,” Yousef Hammash, who works with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), tweeted. “Can someone tell me where these known shelters are?” Hammash stated.

While most civilians have evacuated from Gaza City, those left in homes surrounding the al-Shifa hospital have been told by the Israeli military to leave, reported al Jazeera.

However, there have been reports of families being targeted by snipers if they try to evacuate and are not being afforded safe passage.

Questionable evidence

As Israel’s operation in the hospital expands, the military has been releasing unverified claims about what its forces found within the medical complex.

“The army is in the hospital and no one knows what they’re doing or what weapons they brought with them to claim they found them inside the complex,” the Palestinian foreign ministry said on Wednesday evening as Israel released videos claiming they have confirmed that Hamas used al-Shifa Hospital as an operational command center.

Similarly, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, questioned Israel’s “evidence.”

“It’s kind of baffling. Why would Hamas leave the guns and not anything else?” said Bishara.

The Israeli military “doesn’t have anything to show as justification for the genocide that they’ve carried out against Gaza and for the bombings of the hospitals and other facilities and for the collective punishments,” he added.

Hamas official Bassem Naim also told Al Jazeera the evidence presented by the army is “ridiculous” and “worthless.”

Israel has previously claimed to uncover a Hamas tunnel underneath another medical facility in Gaza, which Al Jazeera quickly debunked.

On Thursday, Israeli media reported the military taking down a video of Israeli spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus claiming to show proof of weapons being held inside al-Shifa Hospital.

While the army has not commented on the deleted post, online commentators have pointed out various consistencies in the images posted by the military with reports from Fox News, who had a correspondent with them during the raid.

The Israeli army later reposted the video with parts being blurred out, leading to even more public speculation on the authenticity of the clips.

Calls for Netanyahu to resign

As these military operations take place, captives are still being held in Gaza and subject to Israel’s ruthless bombardment of the area, which has led to an outcry among Israelis as Netanyahu puts off negotiations with Hamas.

While Qatar has reportedly continued mediating negotiation efforts for a deal between Hamas and Israel, nothing has been agreed upon.

“Israel is still delaying the release of 50 women and children from the captives in exchange for a humanitarian truce, the release of a number of women and children detainees in prisons, and the entry of relief aid to all areas in the Gaza Strip,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said on Telegram.

Israel is not serious about reaching an agreement “but is stalling to continue its aggression and war against defenseless civilians,” Izzat al-Risheq continued.

As Israel’s poorly woven narrative about Hamas unravels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, is calling on the Prime Minister to resign because the public has lost trust in him.

“We need a government that can be trusted,” said Lapid, suggesting that his own party could form a government with Netanyahu’s Likud and other political parties.

The Times of Israel reported that Likud, Israel’s major right-wing political party, accused Lapid of “play[ing] politics in a time of war.”

Lapid said, “This government isn’t functioning, we need change, Netanyahu cannot continue to be prime minister, we cannot allow ourselves to conduct a prolonged [military] campaign with a prime minister that the public has no faith in,” reported Al Jazeera, commenting that this is a significant shift in Israeli politics and the first time the opposition has publicly called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.

According to Israeli media, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, believes that replacing the prime minister at this time is “nothing less than crazy.”

“I hear the voices saying this is not the time. We waited 40 days, there is no more time. What we need right now is a government that will deal with nothing but security and the economy. We cannot afford another election in the coming year,” Lapid continued.

UN Security Council Resolution passed: Israel does not care

On Wednesday evening, the UN Security Council finally passed a resolution after four failed attempts to respond to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Drafted by Malta, the resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses,” unrestricted aid delivery, including fuel and medical evacuations, and the release of captives inside Gaza passed with 12 votes in favor and 0 against.

Three countries abstained from voting: Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The text also stressed the need to safeguard civilians, especially children, and called for “corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days,” yet it made no mention of a ceasefire.

Malta’s ambassador to the UN said the resolution “aims to ensure respite from the current nightmare in Gaza and give hope to the families of all victims.”

The fact that Washington “finally stopped paralyzing the Security Council on Israel and Palestine” demonstrates to Israel that “global concern, even among its allies, is strong,” said the UN director at Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau.

In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said the resolution is “disconnected from reality” and has “no meaning.”

Erdan said point blank, “It will not happen.”

“Israel will continue to act until Hamas is destroyed and the hostages are returned,” he continued, maintaining that Israel’s assault on Gaza is in keeping with international law despite the repudiation of several experts.

Although Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays says the resolution is “binding under international law,” there have been “many” other binding Security Council resolutions “that Israel does not comply with.”

“Israeli authorities, who have already lost their legitimacy in the conscience of humanity, will not be able to conceal the crimes they committed by bombing hospitals and killing women and children in front of the whole world,” the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

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https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-41-israel-ignores-legally-binding-unsc-resolution-saying-it-will-not-happen/

4 year old Reham, killed by Israeli bombing in November 2012 as she stood just outside her Nusseirat camp home.

Nader, 14, killed by an Israeli precision drone missile as he walked to get food for his siblings… just two hours before the ceasefire.

-Killing before the Calm: Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Civilians Escalated before Cease-fire

-The hardest thing: Palestinian parents speak of their children killed by Israeli bombings

Welcome to Hadar: A Village Under Siege by al-Qaeda and Israeli Forces Alike
Eva BartlettJune 27, 2018
The village of Hadar, in Southern Syria, is buttressed on one side by Israeli watchtowers and walls – and endures deadly attacks from jihadist Syrian rebels from the other three.



June 22, 2018, Mint Press News


HADAR, SYRIA — Situated in the northern part of Quneitra governorate, with the towering Jabal al-Sheikh (Mt. Hermon) overlooking it and the region, Hadar is in both a beautiful area of Syria and a dangerous one.

The roughly 10,000 defiant villagers of Hadar are isolated and under constant threat of attack. Until December 2017, Hadar was surrounded on three sides by terrorists and was attacked many times.

The southwestern Syrian village of Hadar is next to the 1974 ceasefire line

Positioned in a valley, with the al-Qaeda alliance until December 2017 occupying Beit Jinn and other villages to the east, Hadar also borders the ceasefire line of the occupied Syrian Golan, an area teeming with still more al-Qaeda terrorists. From their positions inside the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) zone of the occupied Syrian Golan, terrorists in Jubata al-Khashab (roughly 6 kilometers directly south of Hadar), Turunjah (roughly 5 kilometers south of Hadar), and Ufaniyah (further south than Jubata al-Khashab), have fired mortars, missiles, and other explosives on Hadar, something acknowledged even by the UN Secretary-General.

Distance between Hadar and Jubata al Khashab which is occupied by al Qaeda terrorists

In his December 6, 2017 report, the Secretary-General noted that terrorist groups fighting in the UNDOF area of operation include “the listed terrorist group Jabhat Fath al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front) and Jaysh Khalid Ibn al-Walid, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”

The same report noted the attacks from the three villages towards Hadar were preceded by a “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” which killed nine people. In Hadar, I would learn that the car bomb didn’t just target “a pro-Syrian forces checkpoint in Hadar,” as per the UN report, but was headed towards the heart of the village when shot at by Hadar defenders. The vehicle exploded less than 100 meters from a school, at 9 a.m., according to Hadar resident Mahmoud Taweel. Had the village not been on alert, and families staying at home, the number killed would have surely been higher and included many children.

Road of Nov 2017 suicide car bomb Israeli observation post above
The road leading to the site of the deadly, Nov 2017 suicide car bomb. An Israeli observation post is visible atop in the mountain in the background. Eva Bartlett | MintPress News
Most recently, on June 16, Syrian state media, SANA, reported that terrorists in Jubata al Khashab, “set fire once again to a large area of agricultural lands in the vicinity of Hadar village,” burning acres of fruit orchards south of the village. SANA further reported that firefighters were unable to reach the area to quell the fire, devastating the farmland and depriving landowners of their prime source of income.

The support of Hadar villagers for their army and president is unsurprising, given these are the two bodies that have protected them and supported them against attacks from al-Qaeda and Israel, next door to Hadar.

According to a report by Syrian journalist Alaa Ebrahim, the last attack on Hadar was on November 3, 2017, “… a ground offensive in three different directions, in an attempt to take the last few kilometers the government still controls along the border with Israel.” The Syrian army, Ebrahim noted, controls only five kilometers of the border with Israel and is limited in the number of military units it can move to the area, under the disengagement agreement reached following the 1973 war with Israel.

Mr. Taweel explained that people of his town view Jabal al-Sheikh as a symbol of blessings. On top of that same mountain, Israeli observation posts oversee all activity. Hadar residents and Syrian soldiers believe that Israel has been coordinating with terrorist groups in their attacks on the village. Given that UNDOF forces themselves have documented Israeli soldiers interacting with terrorists in the occupied Syrian Golan, and given that Israel has attacked Syria on numerous occasions, the belief that the Israelis are aiding al-Qaeda terrorists in attacks on Hadar is more than reasonable.

The corporate media silence on Hadar, in spite of what the villagers have endured and continue to face, would be surprising if it wasn’t already clear that corporate media isn’t interested in highlighting these kinds of Syrians. Just as they dismiss narratives of Syrians who do not support any of the terrorist factions, so have they corporate media dismissed narratives of Syrians who are proud supporters of the Syrian army and the democratically-elected president and Syrians whose experiences defy outside claims of a “civil war,” “revolution,” or “sectarian conflict.”

“Our farmers can’t reach their land”

On May 4, in a hired taxi and with a translator, I headed for Hadar to meet with Mahmoud Taweel, an English teacher, who would also introduce me to other Hadar residents, to hear from them on the attacks they’ve endured and the threats they’ve fought off, along with the Syrian army — largely to the silence of corporate media.

Along the way, our taxi was joined by a car of four Syrian soldiers, who accompanied us both to show us the safest route to Hadar and also to protect us should terrorists in surrounding areas attack.

We drove along a road flanking a heavily fortified UN base for a brief period, then followed another road cutting through open fields, Jabal al-Sheikh in the distance, finally descending along a narrow road winding its way through endless fruit-tree orchards before entering Hadar.

In hired taxi en route to Hadar with Jabal al Sheikh in background20180504_112417

In the town square, I chatted with a woman and man in a small shop until Mr. Taweel arrived. After a five minute walk, we reached his stone house, surrounded by fruit and other trees and adorned with yellow rose bushes.

Watch | Hadar resident Mahmoud Taweel on life under threat from terrorism



I asked Mahmoud Taweel to speak about life in Hadar over the past years. He said, of the terrorists south of Hadar and those formerly east of the town:

They have been terrorizing us, by shelling, mortars. The most important thing is that they are depriving us of reaching our fertile farms. Ninety percent of our civilians depend on farming for their living. But our farmers can’t reach their land.”

I was struck by the similarity of the situation of Palestinian farmers and these Hadar villagers. In the case of Palestinians, it is Israeli illegal colonists and soldiers who violently prevent them from accessing their lands, whether in West Bank areas of occupied Palestine or in the tiny and all too familiar Gaza Strip.

Having worked for years with farmers in Gaza and also in the West Bank, with the violent Israeli tactics of shooting live ammunition to harass farmers off their land. This harassment has killed dozens of farmers and maimed many more. The situation in Hadar isn’t much different, except al-Qaeda and other terrorists do the attacking, bombing and burning of farmland and killing of villagers.

Many maimed, many martyrs

Hadar has a population of around 10,000, according to Mahmoud Taweel. I asked him about those injured and killed by terrorist attacks. He replied:

Too many people were killed. At least 130 martyrs, and around 400 injuries and casualties. Some of them are hopeless cases: they can’t walk, speak, talk, and they need a very intensive health care on a daily basis.”

So I asked him whether there is a hospital in the town to provide the needed health care to the injured:

No hospital in Hadar, just a small mobile clinic with insufficient equipment. Ambulances took injured to Damascus, always under the threat of sniping from terrorists on either side.”

Additionally, Hadar has suffered periods of no electricity. “Three months with no power at all,” Mr. Taweel said. “And the moment that the government restores power, the terrorists shell and destroy it…to make us live in darkness.”

Mr. Taweel said Hadar village has two high schools, two primary, two intermediate, and one kindergarten. We drove to one of the schools, the one near to the site of the November 3, 2017, suicide car bombing just at the northern edge of Hadar. Mr. Taweel pointed to a deep rut in the road, now filled in with gravel, saying that was where the suicide bomber had detonated the explosives. Some meters away, the ruins of a small shop.

Zooming in on the Israeli observatories overlooking Hadar, I asked whether they believed Israel had a role in the attacks that day.

One of two Israeli observation posts overlooking the village and region
One of the two Israeli observation posts overlooking Hadar, Syria. Eva Bartlett | MintPress News
“For sure,” Mr. Taweel replied, “The final battle on November 3 was schemed, planned, and supported by Israel.”

In his November 5, 2017 report, Alaa Ebrahim interviewed a Syrian army official who said: “Militants and Israel prepared this assault for three months and were thwarted in two hours.”

By mid-December, Syrian army units recaptured areas to Hadar’s northeast that had been occupied by al-Nusra. By the end of December, following military operations by the Syrian army and local defenders, terrorists were evacuated from Beit Jinn (to Hadar’s east), part of a deal to restore peace to that area. By January 2018, families who had been displaced from Beit Jinn and surrounding areas were returning. The restoration of security to Beit Jinn and surrounding areas also, importantly, meant one less front from which terrorists could attack Hadar. Terrorists remain in areas south of the village, and continue their attacks.

Facing occupied land

Israeli road cutting through Syrian land at occupied Syrian Golan Heights
An Israeli road, heavily fortified, cuts through Syrian land on both sides in the occupied Golan Heights. Eva Bartlett | MintPress News
Descending the winding road a few kilometers to the west of Hadar, the hills of Majdal Shams, in the occupied Syrian Golan, appeared. Between the hill I stood on and Majdal Shams, an Israeli road fortified by a fence sliced the two Syrian lands, securing the land Israel has stolen and illegally occupies.

The Syrian mission to the UN post on the occupied Syrian Golan reads:

…[T]he Golan was home to over 140,000 Syrians, most of whom were driven out of their homeland and into Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) status. Till this day, almost 40 years later, the Syrian inhabitants of the Golan are still unable to return to their homes, towns and cities. Today these Syrians exceed 500,000 people. Some Syrians remained in the Occupied Syrian Golan and continue to live in small villages amounting to approximately 20,000 Syrians.

Most of the Syrian cities, towns and villages in the Golan were destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, who in turn have built over 40 illegal settlements despite all international condemnation. Israel continues not only to occupy the Syrian Golan but to also destroy its ancient ruins and geopolitical atmosphere for the sole purpose of cleansing the Golan of its Syrian people and their history.”

DSCN2890
White Building is on “Shouting Hill”, when Syrians on Hadar side communicated with Syrians in occupied Golan’s Majdal Shams. -Eva Bartlett
The hill I stood on, far lower than surrounding hills, was known as the Shouting Valley, because shouting by megaphones was for many years the sole means of communication between Syrians from Hadar and those in Israeli-occupied Majdal Shams.

A February 2014 article in al-Akhbar by Firas Choufi noted:

After the 1973 War, residents of liberated Hadar and occupied Majdal Shams were separated into ‘two banks,’ and since then, they would meet, converse, and share news and concerns by shouting in megaphones, giving the area its name.

…The villages of Majdal Shams, Baqaatha, Masaada, Ain Qanya, and al-Ghajar are in truth the only villages in the Golan still inhabited by their native residents. In the 1967 War, the Israeli occupation ethnically cleansed two cities and more than 300 villages and farms in the Golan, using systematic massacres, bombardment, demolition of homes, and arrests, completely leveling existing villages.

Today, around 23,000 Syrians live in the Golan Heights, and reject Israeli citizenship. They inhabit an area that is no bigger that 7 percent of the total area of the Golan Heights, which represents the primary source of water for occupied Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee).

Meanwhile, 10,000 Jewish Israeli settlers live in 45 settlements built atop the ruins of Syrian villages, the largest of which is the settlement of Katzrin, which was built on the ruins of the Syrian town of Qisrin. Recently, the Israeli government officially declared the settlement an Israeli city.”

In the valley to my right, between Jabal al-Sheikh and the hill I stood on, lay farmland belonging to residents living in occupied Majdal Shams. Mahmoud Taweel explained that since the owners can’t cross from occupied Majdal Shams, relatives tend the land for them. He also noted that the lush land roughly two hundred meters from the fence is not workable; it is prohibited. Yet, on the side occupied by Israel, houses and worked farmland extend right up to the fence.

Farmland which owners in occupied Majdal Shams can not accessAccording to Hadar resident Mahmoud Taweel farmers are prohibited from farming near the fence

I was again reminded of Gaza, where farmers can’t access fertile land within up to a kilometer along the fence with Israeli-occupied Palestine. This land, the former breadbasket of Gaza, has been forcibly rendered dry and wasted. Israel has systematically destroyed wells and cisterns to ensure that those brave farmers who try to work their land regardless of Israel’s unilaterally and illegally imposed restrictions will find it nearly impossible to grow wheat and vegetables. On the Israeli-occupied side of that Gaza fence, the land is lushly green, irrigated with modern equipment. The same Israeli double-standards apply around the occupied Syrian Golan.

UN condemns then collaborates

The United Nations’ Security Council and General Assembly have long-condemned Israel’s many violations of international law with respect to its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, including Israel’s “failure to comply with Security Council resolution 497 (1981)…” That resolution included demanding that Israel rescind its “decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.”

The UN General Assembly declared:

Israel’s decision of 14 December, 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights constitutes an act of aggression under the provisions of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 3314 … Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and has no legal validity and/or effect whatsoever.”

The UN rightly views Israel’s occupation and annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights as a “continuing threat to international peace and security.”

That Israel essentially has gotten a carte blanche from most Western nations to illegally annex further Palestinian land, occupy Syrian and Lebanese land, and continue murdering Palestinians and attacking Syria is not terribly surprising given the Israeli-UN collaboration in the occupied Syrian Golan, a collaboration notably including al-Qaeda terrorists.

image_650_365
A photo from the Israel, Syrian border along the Golan Heights shows IDF soldiers conversing with al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra fighters.
On December 22, 2014 Al Akhbar reported:

Observers from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) confirmed in a report cooperation and coordination between the Israeli army and militant groups in Syria.

The UNDOF report said that observers witnessed several meetings between rebel leaders and Israeli army forces between December 2013 and March 2014, in addition to witnessing the transportation of hundreds of injured militants to Israeli hospitals following confrontations between the militants and the Syrian army near the occupied Golan border.”

Regarding the November 3, 2017 terrorist attacks on Hadar and surrounding Syrian areas, a UNSC report noted:

Armed groups launched an attack involving heavy machine gun, small arms and indirect fire from the tri-village area of Jubbata al-Khashab, Turunjah and Ufaniyah in the area of separation against pro-Government forces in the vicinity of Hadar, which is largely inhabited by members of the Druze community.

…Preceding the attack, open sources reported that a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device targeted a pro-Syrian forces checkpoint in Hadar, killing nine people.”

But the role of the UN regarding Israel’s interaction with, and support of, terrorists doesn’t end with merely reporting on these facts. The UN also whitewashes the Israeli-al-Qaeda coordination and puts the blame on Syria for defending itself.

As I wrote previously:

In a November 2014 report, the Secretary-General mentioned the presence of al-Nusra and other terrorists in the ceasefire area ‘unloading weapons from a truck,’ as well as a ‘vehicle with a mounted anti-aircraft gun’ and Israeli ‘interactions’ with ‘armed gangs.’ Nonetheless, he went on to condemn strongly the Syrian army’s presence, offering no alternative solution to how to fight against those who fire on Syrian army and civilians from within the UNDOF-deserted area.”

The Syrian Mandela



al-Maket-arrested-under-gag-1-001
Sedqi al-Maqt was arrested by Israel’s Shin Bet for exposing collaboration between Syrian rebels and Israel.
In April 2017, Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari, speaking on Israel’s occupation of Syrian territory, also said:

We have to call on Israel to free Sedqi al-Maqt—who we call the Syrian Mandela—and others who are in Israeli prisons for taking pictures, taking photos that prove that Israel is cooperating with the al-Nusra Front in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

Maqt is a Syrian in his early 50s from the occupied Syrian Golan who was imprisoned 27 years in Israeli prisons for his resistance to the Israeli occupation of Syrian land. He was released in 2012. Later, Maqt began filming the “joint cooperation between,” as he stated, Israeli soldiers and al-Qaeda terrorists near the Quneitra crossing. He was re-arrested by Israeli secret police in February 2015.



Maqt also reported seeing Israeli forces supplying terrorists with weapons and munitions, and conveyed his feeling that the crossing had been turned into an operations room and safe shelter for terrorists attacking Syria, with the support and knowledge of the Israelis and the UN.

In one of his reports, Maqt noted that, “the terrorists would move with complete freedom,” from the areas they occupied in the Syrian Golan to areas where UN and Israeli forces were present. He noted that when the Syrian army shelled them, al-Qaeda and other terrorists took cover in areas where the Israeli and UN forces were present.

Prior to his 2015 arrest, Maqt also reported on the Israeli field hospitals that are treating terrorists, and reported that residents of the occupied Syrian Golan daily see Israeli ambulances transporting terrorists, and Israeli forces interacting with terrorists:

There’s no way you could bring these terrorists to this field hospital if there wasn’t a joint operations room and daily communication and coordination..between Israeli forces and terrorist commanders.”



Ironically, when Sedqi al-Maqt was arrested, Israel charged him with “terrorism offences.”

When I visited the last couple hundred meters of Syrian land before occupied Majdal Shams, the sight of the vacated UN post, just to my left and before the illegally annexed Majdal Shams, was a visible reminder that Israel — with over 70 UN resolutions condemning it for its genocidal, land-thieving, war-criminal behavior against Palestinians, also including attacks on Syria and Lebanon — continues to evade facing any proper justice, making a farce of the UN and international law.

Hadar villagers speak through tears of terrorism they’ve faced

Just before the main square in Hadar, I met Atef Nakkour, sitting in his small shop. He welcomed me and spoke of Hadar’s defiance:

You are very welcome in Hadar, this resistant village that has provided the invaluable to defend its dignity and freedom, and the dignity of the motherland. We are clinging to our land regardless of who agrees or disagrees.”

Atef Nakkour defiantly proud of Syrian army and leadership
Hadar resident Atef Nakkour, proud supporter of Syrian army and leadership. -Eva Bartlett
He too mentioned at least 130 martyrs from the village, and spoke of Hadar’s gratitude to the Syrian army:

We wholeheartedly endorse our army and our leadership.”

Hadar’s former mukthar (mayor), Jawdat al-Taweel, “Abu Abdu,” is a towering, charismatic man. He is still a popular figure in Hadar, and now runs a clothes shop in town.

He gave me a tour of the destruction from terrorist attacks. We stopped first at an internally-gutted, one-level shop that used to sell dairy and other food products. The shop, run by a family of women, was shelled and its equipment and goods destroyed in September 2017. The women now have no income.

Watch | Jawdat al-Taweel, Hadar’s former mayor, shows damage to homes after terrorist’ shelling



We continued, Abu Abdu pointing out scars of the shellings, in walls and roofs on either side. From around a corner, Atef Nakkour shouted for Abu Abdu to show me his own damaged home. We climbed onto a rooftop and walked to its edge. The former mayor pointed out more damage, the remnants of shelling, and called down to Nakkour, “Where were you standing when it happened?”

Nakkour, standing on the street below us, replied that he’d been standing in the same spot, that a shell landed on a car parked nearby, shrapnel exploding towards the second level, damaging his home. Largely repaired, pockets in the roof overhang evidence the shelling.

Walking down from the square and to a small home surrounded by a stone wall, bushes and flowers, an elderly man and his wife spoke of their murdered son and relative. Mr. Hassoun spoke slowly, and as he described losing his son, Minhal Ahmed Hassoun, both he and his wife next to him began to cry. Through tears, he began:

Yes we lost young men, but we invaded no one, and we had no intention to kill anyone. They came to us on our land, and wanted to kill us and to humiliate us, but our youth and our heroic men preferred martyrdom to humiliation.”

Mahmoud Taweel added that the village men had fought alongside the Syrian army, fighting the terrorists who attack Hadar.

Mr. Hassoun continued:

They [terrorists] came in large numbers, and Israel backed them with artillery, but our men refused to withdraw a meter from their trenches. When the hero Minhal was martyred, his brother was next to him. He closed Minhal’s eyes, and said to him: ‘Your blood is invaluable, and they will pay for what they did.’”

Minhal had been studying law at Damascus University, Mr. Hassoun said:

I told him, ‘My son, finish your studies and get your degree, these battles are long.’ He answered me, ‘My father, the degree dies the moment its holder dies, but martyrdom for the motherland never dies, it lasts for generations.’

He took his wife to Jaramana, to the hospital so that she could give birth. They told him that there were still three or four days until it was her time, but he left his wife with his siblings, and said to her: ‘I want to go, the elders [his parents] are there and I won’t leave them alone.’

He came back in the evening, left for the battle next morning, and was martyred at 8 a.m.”

The newborn baby was named after his martyred father, Minhal.

Watch | Abu Minhal speaks of his son, who was killed defending Hadar



Minhal’s mother, who had been quietly wiping away her tears, listed their losses:

My grandson was the first martyr, his name was Anas. Then after him my son was martyred, his name was Minhal. After him my nephew was martyred, his name was Ismaeel. After that two more nephews of mine were martyred: one was called Hamed and the other one Hasan.”

She finished with a stoic comment reflecting the resilience not only of Hadar but of Syrians in general:

Losing a feather wouldn’t make a bird nude. No matter how many we lose, it’s better than those dogs come here.”

Before leaving, Mr. Hassoun brought out his old rifle and said:

We are following our ancestors’ steps and will never give up our motherland as long as we are alive.”

The terrorist attacks on Hadar and its farmland continue to the shrugs of Western corporate media precisely because reporting on such devastation by what the same media sells us as “rebels” would once again shatter the myth of “moderates,” the myth of a “revolution,” and of a “civil war.”

In addition to Hadar’s strategic position, the people of Hadar are being attacked because they stand with their army and president. But after years of such attacks, and after over 130 martyrs, it is clear Hadar villagers have no intention of changing their stance, much like defiant Syrians throughout Syria.

Now unemployed Hadar resident outside her former food and dairy shop destroyed in terrorist shelling in September 2017
Now unemployed Hadar resident outside her former food and dairy shop destroyed in terrorist shelling in September 2017 -Eva Bartlett
Hadar resident outside of his shrapnel damaged home
A Hadar resident stands outside of his shrapnel damaged home. Eva Bartlett | MintPress News
Looking south from Hadar2
The author. To the left of this frame, some kilometres south, al-Qaeda occupied Jubata al-Khashab and attacks Hadar.
The author with Mahmoud Taweel taxi driver and Syria army protection just near occupied Majdal Shams
At occupied Majdal Shams, with Hadar resident Mahmoud Taweel, my hired taxi driver, and two Syrian soldiers who accompanied me to ensure my safety from al-Qaeda terrorists off the road to Hadar.
Related articles:

–Absurdities of Syrian war propaganda

–Scoundrels & gangsters at UN: Silencing the Syrian narrative

–Interview: Syrian Ambassador to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari on Sovereignty, Terrorism, and the Failure of the UN

…, a big reunion with my sis @shay.sights
#sisterlove #sibling #loveu #missedu

Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918 - 1940) was the tallest person in recorded history. Sometimes known as the Alton Giant and the Giant of Illinois, he reached a height of 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m).
Here he stands alongside his parents Harold Sr and Addie, and his four siblings Eugene, Betty, Harold Jr. and Helen.

Siblings Recreated Their Childhood Photos And It’s Hilarious #siblings #childhood

Hey guys hope you all are well<i class="twa twa-smiling-face-with-smiling-eyes"></i><br />
New "DC" movie 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' is scheduled to be released in the United States on March 17, 2023.<br />
Upcoming superhero sequel "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" with Zachary Levi, directed by David F. Sandberg, has Billy Batson and his foster siblings fighting the Daughters of Atlas.<br />
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<a href="https://somee.social/search/hashtag/ShazamfuryoftheGOd">#ShazamfuryoftheGOd</a><br/>Hey guys hope you all are well????
New "DC" movie 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods
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#SisterLove Me & my Siblings Had dinner together along with our Dad,We don't do this to Often, I enjoyed it so much!❤️????

Hey guys hope you all are well????
New "DC" movie 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' is scheduled to be released in the United States on March 17, 2023.
Upcoming superhero sequel "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" with Zachary Levi, directed by David F. Sandberg, has Billy Batson and his foster siblings fighting the Daughters of Atlas.







#somee #awsme #movielover #movies #Netflixmovies #newmovie #DCmovie
#ShazamfuryoftheGOd

Good morning #somee fam it's last Saturday in the month of January how time flies, I'm grateful for life and good health I'm finally home back from school my parents and siblings are in good condition.

Do have a fun filled weekend #awesme

Much love to you all!