The Ukraine-Russia-USA Conflict, Part 14b: Western Hypocrisy and Double Standards in Israel and Palestine — Israel’s Al Aqsa Mosque Provocations and Murder of Al Jazeera Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
In this article about Western hypocrisy and double standards, I will apply the previously introduced distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims” to the situation in Israel and Palestine. The focus will Israel’s repeated violent incursions into and provocations at the Al Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem in general as well as Israel’s May 11 2022 murder of the prominent Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was doing her job.
16.2 Western Hypocrisy and Double Standards in Israel and Palestine
Israel keeps demonstrating that it is indeed a part of the Western world by having adopted the very same insane hypocrisy and double standards, including the one about worthy and unworthy victims.
But Israel is even worse than others in this respect due to its Orwellian reversal of perpetrator- and victimhood: Due to its Zionist extremist logic and cult(ure) of Jewish victimhood (see part 4), the ‘victims’ are generally supposed to be the settler-colonialist Jewish Zionist oppressors, just like it is the native and in various ways eliminated or yet to be eliminated Palestinians who are generally supposed to be the ‘perpetrators’ in that conflict.
It is due to that even more perverse hypocrisy of Israel as well as due to the long-lasting nature of this conflict that it deserves more of our attention. I accordingly already wrote an eight part series about Zionist “Israel’s Genocidal, Human Rights Violating and War Criminal Answer to the Palestinian Question” in 2021 to cover that. But due to recent events in 2022, it is unfortunately necessary to write an inofficial ninth part in which we will see many criminal and morally repugnant actions of Israel against Palestinians be repeated and the overall eliminative and genocidal attitude of a Western-allied Israel against Palestinians confirmed.
16.2.1 Zionist Israel’s 2022 Al Aqsa Mosque Provocations
The unrest in May 2021 largely began with Israel’s provocations at and invasion of the Al Aqsa Mosque shortly after the for Muslims holy month of Ramadan — later repeated in July (see part 1 of my 2021 series). In 2022, the Israeli regime did the same thing once again, but this time and to make matters even worse during Ramadan on April 15:
The Israeli apartheid terrorist regime was understandably not too keen on journalists creating evidence of their crimes. That is why, for instance, their occupation forces or ‘thugs’ beat and kicked a Palestinian photojournalist unconscious and why they kicked and potentially damaged his equipment:
That is also why they shot the female Palestinian journalist Nasreen Salem in the head with a potentially lethal rubber-coated steel bullet (see part 6 of my 2021 series for earlier reporting on such attacks on journalists and media organisations which document the Israeli regime’s crimes)…
…or why the Israeli regime’ contacts at Facebook saw to it that the media site al-Qastal for which she Nasreen Salem works was removed from the platform in yet another instance of blatant censorship (see part 5 of my 2021 series for earlier reporting on precisely such censorship):
As noted by Jennifer Robinson, the legal counsel for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) at the UN Human Rights Council:
To get a general idea of the damage that a single rubber coated steel bullet can do, here is what it did to a younger Palestinian man who was also (I would assume intentionally) shot in the face while he was trying to help up an elderly man in the Al Aqsa mosque while Israeli Zionazi troopers raided it:
Furthermore, it was likewise civilians who were filming the crimes of Zionazis who were attacked by them, such as this girl who was hit in the thigh by a baton and who has trouble walking after that unnecessary assault:
Here is the footage from the girl’s phone:
Israel also attacked or detained other children or youths:
And it just gets worse and worse, because a few days before the Al Aqsa provocations, Israel murdered the Palestinian lawyer and family father Mohammad Assaf who did something against their fundamental settler-colonialist land-grabbing:
Their often used excuse for which I did not notice any hard evidence: Mohammad Assaf was supposedly armed and attacking Israelis, so they had to fear for their life and kill him:
And he was not the only one who was murdered by the settler-colonialist land-grabbers:
It is interesting to note that Israeli attacks occur in places such as Jenin or Khan Younis — i.e. places in which Israel tries to displace and disown Palestinians:
Attacking disabled people is also something that Israeli thugs can be observed doing:
And the Israeli regime routinely lies about these crimes of theirs to cover them up, for instance as follows:
There are also plenty of non-Israeli Zionist liars who use the usual smears, such as the British actress Tracy-Ann Oberman who was forced to retract one of her absurd anti-Semitism smears (also note how many of these nutcases fly the Ukrainian flag which is fitting in light of the Ukrainian right-wing regime’s oppression of ethnic Russians in Ukraine):
The mention of Tracy-Ann Oberman is also fitting since she was a regular contributor for the Jewish Chronicle from 2009 to 2017 (her wikipedia) which is a well-known rightwing Zionist propaganda outlet run by key people like Stephen Pollard or Lee Harpin which were repeatedly forced to pay damages for libel and which were and are responsible for smearing anyone on the left — including above all Jeremy Corbyn — as antisemites as per their usual “trick” (see part 13b, section 15.4):
From that 2020 Electronic Intifada article:
The Jewish Chronicle on Thursday apologized to a Labour activist for libeling her over “anti-Semitism.”
The UK newspaper admitted on its website it had published “allegations about Mrs Audrey White” which were “untrue.”
It said it had agreed to pay White a sum in damages plus her legal costs.
[…]
The libel settlement comes after a UK press regulator in December ruled that the paper’s four articles about White had been “significantly misleading” and that the paper had engaged in “unacceptable” obstruction of their investigation.
As part of the settlement, White said, the paper had agreed to delete all four articles from their website. They had all been removed as of Friday morning.
[…]
The Jewish Chronicle has been at the forefront of reporting on exaggerated and fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party over the last five years.
It also has a long record of anti-Palestinian reporting.
In August last year, it was forced to pay $60,000 in libel damages to InterPal, a British charity which aids Palestinians.
A liar-in-chief is of course also the Israeli regime’s murderous rightwing extremist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who is infamous for having stated in 2013 that “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there is no problem with that” (see part 4 of my 2021 series for earlier reporting about the religious nutcase Bennett) but whom we are now supposed to believe, despite utterly clear counterevidence, that Israel is somehow not murdering Palestinians — and regularly at that:
The general strategy of Zionist Israel towards Palestinians is probably the same one which the USA uses against Russia in Ukraine:
- First provoke Palestinians (or Russians in their sphere of influence and at their border) again and again until you draw a hostile reaction,
2. then reverse responsibility by claiming “Palestinian (or Russian) aggression, terrorism, etc.”,
3. before continuing with further aggression under the false claim of “right to self-defense” or “national security” which, in true Western hypocrisy and double standards fashion, of course totally ignores the Palestinians’ (or Russians’) right to self-defense or security concerns.
So similar to the previous year and to further provoke Palestinians, there were further Israeli invasions of the Al-Aqsa mosque, but this time by extremist Israeli settlers on the occasion of their provocative May 29 flag march — all of course supported by the Israeli regime which is of a fundamentally identical nature:
Hundreds of extremist Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem under the protection of armed occupation troops on 29 May.
Israeli troops trapped Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Qibli Mosque, blocking its doors with iron chains. They also set up barriers in the Old City of Jerusalem to prevent Palestinians from reaching Al-Aqsa.
Palestinian protesters were met with rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas, leaving at least 10 injured. Israeli forces also prevented Palestinian journalists and photographers from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque and threatened them with arrest.
Settlers also attacked an ambulance affiliated with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society as the emergency medical crew were attempting to reach the injured.
This incursion into the holy grounds was led by far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also joined Jewish supremacists in storming the compound.
In another article from June 2022, the flag march was aptly described as a Zionist “terror” and “hate parade”:
Anyone who has witnessed the Dance of Flags firsthand in Jerusalem can attest to the fact that this is, without a doubt, a parade of terror. The thousands of young Israelis get excited for the moment when they enter the Old City of Jerusalem through the Damascus Gate so that they can pound on the doors of Palestinian businesses and terrorize the Palestinians who reside in the Old City.
Each year the organizers of this racist hate parade go through the formality of negotiating with the Jerusalem police regarding the specific route of the march. Every year the police and other government agencies charged with security say that the request to enter the Old City via Damascus Gate is a dangerous idea. And every year the March proceeds as planned through Damascus Gate. Being the masters of the land and wielding a great deal of political power, the organizers of the Dance of Flags always get their way.
[…]
When entering from Damascus Gate, one sees fewer tourists. Mostly Palestinians walk through it and the shops sell things that people actually need for their daily lives. Vegetables, bread, sweets, clothes and shoes. The shops that do carry items for tourists carry mostly kaffiyas and items like t-shirts that emphasize Palestine and show the Palestinian colors. The non-Palestinians walking the street down from Damascus Gate are usually hardcore Israeli settlers, who have taken over some of the homes along the road, and soldiers.
The purpose of that flag march boils down to the most fundamental characteristic of settler-colonialism: Eliminating the natives, in this case by displacement, to take their lands and possessions for the ‘chosen people’:
Taking over
It is a straight shot walking from Damascus Gate to the al-Aqsa Mosque, and to the Western Wall — or the Kotel — plaza. The plaza used to be the Mughrabi neighborhood of the Old City. Palestinians live and have businesses in that part of the city, but settlers are targeting and taking homes there at an alarming rate. The homes that have already been taken by settlers are clearly marked and easy to spot. First, a heavy door with a bolt is placed at the front of the home. You don’t see the Palestinian homes with doors like that. An intercom is put in place and very often an armed security guard stands regularly by the door.
A large Israeli flag is displayed on the building, usually hanging from the second story balcony. It is very often that these apartments are right above shops that are still owned and operated by Palestinian merchants who suffer greatly from the settlers’ presence. As one shopkeeper whose store I frequent often said to me once, “Ma fi awsakh minhum” — no one is worse than them.
16.2.2 Israel’s Murder of Palestinian Al Jazeera Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
Being of such an overall nature and due to blind support by the USA and Europe, the Israeli settler-colonialist apartheid terrorist regime of course also had little to no qualms about murdering the legendary Palestinian-US American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11th and when it suited them. Such acts of impunity and moral outrage are simply in line with the Israeli regime’s agenda of murdering all those who stand in the way of their Palestinian land-grab plans or who truthfully report about this regime’s great and long-lasting crimes against humanity:
The following is footage from Shireen Abu Akleh’s lifeless body and shortly after she was murdered by Israelis with a precision shot, with her colleague Shatha Hanaysha still hiding in a corner to protect herself from Israeli fire and being unable to get to Shireen:
A few minutes later and after Israeli ‘gunmen’ stopped firing, Shireen’s body was hauled off by another one of her colleagues:
The journalist and witness Ali Al-Samudi who was shot a short time before Shireen Al-Akleh gave the following testimony:
Ali Al-Samudi: “We were going to film the (Israeli) army raid. Then they started shooting at us. They didn’t ask us to leave or to stop. They shot at us. One bullet hit me, and another hit Shireen. And they killed her in cold blood because they are killers and only specialise in the killing of Palestinians.”
Interviewer: “They are claiming Palestinians shot her.”
Ali Al-Samudi: “There were no resistance fighters around us. When there are Palestinian fighters shooting, we don’t go.”
Another witness is the journalist Shatha Hanaysha, the woman who could be seen hiding behind the tree, trying to check Shireen’s pulse and who also came under fire:
We made ourselves visible to the soldiers who were stationed hundreds of metres away from us. We remained still for around 10 minutes to make sure they knew we were there as journalists.
When no warning shots were fired at us, we moved uphill towards the camp.
Out of nowhere, we heard the first gunshot.
I turned around and saw my colleague Ali al-Sammoudi on the floor. A bullet hit him in the back but his wound was not serious and he managed to move away from the fire.
A scene of chaos followed.
My colleague Mujahed jumped over a small fence nearby to stay away from the bullets.
“Come over here,” he told me and Shireen, but we were on the other side of the street and couldn’t risk crossing.
“Al-Sammoudi is hit,” Shireen shouted, standing right behind me, as we both stood with our backs to a wall to take cover.
Right then, another bullet pierced Shireen’s neck, and she fell to the ground right next to me.
I called her name but she didn’t move. When I tried to extend my arm to reach her, another bullet was fired, and I had to stay hiding behind a tree.
That tree saved my life, as it was the only thing obstructing the soldiers’ view of me.
“Stay back, stay back!” my colleagues shouted, as bullets flew every time I tried to check Shireen’s pulse.
Out of nowhere a camp resident managed to get to us with a car from an alleyway out of range from the Israeli soldiers. He quickly pulled me and Shireen’s body in and drove us to the hospital.
I am still in shock.
What happened was a deliberate attempt to kill us. Whoever shot at us aimed to kill.
And it was an Israeli sniper that shot at us. We were not caught up in crossfire with Palestinian fighters like the Israeli army claimed.
There was no fighting at the time. The location of the incident was in a relatively open area, away from the camp where Palestinian fighters can’t operate because they would be at a disadvantage there.
The type of gunfire is another indication. Palestinian fighters normally use semi-automatic rifles that spray bullets continuously.
These bullets were different. They were sporadic and precise. They were only shot when one of us moved. One bullet at a time.
So basically the Israeli gunmen knew that the journalists were there, knew that they were journalists and could see that they were no threat. The well-marked journalists then slowly walked towards their direction which is when one or more Zionazi psychopaths suddently began shooting to kill marked journalists, succeeding in one case (Abu Akleh), wounding another (Al-Samudi), and missing a third (Hanaysha).
A third journalist and witness confirms the above line of events:
From a comparison with sniper fire sounds from the border fence where Israeli Zionazis also killed plenty of Palestinians during the 2018–19 Great March of Return, I can confirm that the sounds of the shots fired at those three journalists generally did sound like (somewhat subdued) sniper fire.
Francesca Albanese, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, referred to the murder of Shireen as a potential “war crime”:
Note that the murder of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli regime was not an isolated incident but simply one in a long list of such events:
From the Palestine News Director of Mondoweiss, another useful alternative media outlet about Palestine, Israel and the USA:
And this also follows a long series of such events of extreme “impunity”: In the following video, you can see Israeli snipers killing a Palestinian child at the ‘border’/open air prison fence, apparently also in order to create a cool Zionazi video for social media:
Zionazi 1 (apparently the spotter): “You’re on him?”
Zionazi 2 (the shooter and killer): “Yes”
Z1: “He stopped.”
Z2: “I can’t shoot because of the rolls [of barbed wire]. *To Palestinians* Come here, come here, come here.”
Z1: “There is a little kid over there.”
Z2: “Give it to him?”
Z1: “No.”
Z2: *clearly eager to murder and getting frustrated* “But he’s ducking all the time!”
Z1: “Take out the one in the pink.”
Z2: “Not pink. I’m on the one in blue.” *shoots and the one in blue climbing the fence drops*
Z1 or Z2: *excited and happy scream* “Wow, what a video! Yes! That son of a bitch! They are running to evacuate him. Yeah, of course I filmed it.”
presumably Z1: “Wow, hit him in the head.”
presumably Z2: *whispers* “Film that… *normal voice* Wow… *someone whistles casually in the background* What a legendary video.”
a presumably third Z3: “What? I didn’t see it.”
Presumably Z2: “He flew into the air and his leg was […]”
Someone: “Sons of bitches”
16.2.3 Israel Attacks the Funeral Procession of Shireen Abu Akleh
But murdering Palestinians is apparently not enough yet. After the deed, the grieving family and friends of the victims of Israel’s murderous settler-colonialist oppression can also get harrassed:
Incredibly, Israeli harrassment and brutality even continued at the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh:
From a different and closer angle one could clearly see the Israeli blackshirts beating and kicking the coffinbearers (especially the man in the grey t-shirt):
An impression from a third angle and camera which shows further beating and kicking by the Israeli blackshirts:
A fitting commentary which garnered 10k likes so far:
Israeli Police later came up with the following wild excuse which is typical for their Orwellian style of blaming the victims of their settler-colonialist oppression:
Despite Israeli attempts to prevent it which included religious segregation…
…the public funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh went ahead anyway at some point:
16.2.4 Western and Israeli Propaganda About the Murder of Abu Akleh
Disinforming, lying and propagandizing Western MSM attempted to manufacture consent about Israel’s murder and its attack on the funeral procession by using two in that conflict common propaganda techniques that I already exposed in part 1 of my 2021 series. The first of these techniques is 1) pretending that it’s all very complicated. This was for instance done in the following NYT editorial board article from June 3 whose authors understandably wanted to remain anonymous for offering the total bullshit opinion that “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death” (because it’s all very complicated, you know?):
But it is really quite simple since “settler-colonialists are eliminating natives” are the four to five key words that are required to describe is what the Israel-Palestine conflict is fundamentally all about and what the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by Zionazi pigs was likewise all about.
The other Western propaganda technique that is often used to cover up Israeli crimes and culpability is “bothsidesing,” i.e. falsely attributing about equal blame when it is really just or mainly one side — i.e. Israel — that carries the responsibility:
Her coffin was jostled as Israeli police and Palestinians clashed as it left a hospital in East Jerusalem.
[…]
The Israeli military released interim findings on Thursday, which said it was not possible to determine the source of the fatal shot.
The report said it could have come from “massive fire from Palestinian gunmen”, or possibly from “a few bullets” fired by a soldier “at a terrorist who was firing at his vehicle”.
[…]
As Abu Aqla’s coffin was carried aloft from a hospital at the start of her funeral, violence erupted causing it to almost topple. Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and “were forced to use riot dispersal means”.
One of the manipulative means these propagandists love to use for the purpose of bothsidesing and that is also contained in the above passage is “to clash” or “clashes” since that term falsely suggests a confrontation of about equal forces:
The intentionally misleading use of “clashes” in the Israel-Palestine conflict is so obvious that it was even registered as a to be avoided propaganda term:
A third propagandistic means which Western propagandists use to provide cover for the Israeli regime’s crimes against Palestinians is the passive voice. This makes for absurd results such as that Shireen Abu Akleh “was killed by gunfire” — gunfire which seemingly has its own agency or which is perhaps due to the ‘invisible hand’ of that conflict:
As also noted by another Tweeter:
Most obviously, in combination with the use of the passive tense and as the fourth commonly used means of Western MSM about Israel, the settler-colonialist, state-terrorist apartheid regime of “Israel” is never mentioned as the perpetrator of the crimes which it committed:
A fifth manipulative means of propaganda that I already listed in part 11, section 13.4.10, are “half-admissions” and furthermore half-concessions, backpedalling, or playing the situation down — the lies of propaganda are after all best served with some truth from which the lies gain their credibility.
On the occasion of Abu-Akleh’s murder, one such a half-concession that covers an outrageous lie was served by the Israeli-American(!) Mairav Zonszein, a Senior ‘Analyst’ on Israel-Palestine for lying MSM outlets such as the WaPo or the NYT(!!) (those items in her biography should be treated as huge red flags):
Official Israeli propaganda (“hasbara”) about Shireen Abu Akleh is even worse and more blatant than Zsonzein’s. James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute (1985-) and a Palestinian human rights advocate, describes its general outlines as follows:
Zogby also draws the to be drawn connections to the US empire and what this entails for being a worthy or, in Shireen Abu Akleh’s case, yet another unworthy victim:
The Times of Israel brought an interview with the Israeli occupation forces spokesperson Ran Kochav who gave the insane excuse but at the same time 100% accurate reason for murdering Abu Akleh and other journalists — them being “armed with cameras” which can capture other crimes of the Israeli regime:
P.S.: Did you know that “Israel is the only democracy is the Middle East?” Sooo amazing.
It is also interesting to see how the propagandists of the Israeli occupation forces initially tried to spin their in all likehood intentional murder of the marked journalist Abu Akleh on Twitter:
So after shooting to kill and killing a legendary journalist, they a) “look into the possibility that journalists were hit” — and of course only by b) “Palestinian gunmen”. It is after all not as if the Israeli settler-colonialist apartheid regime had a track record of intentionally murdering journalists which cover the Palestinian occupation, right?
Israel’s murder spree is not limited to Palestinian journalists, by the way (Abu Akleh also had a US citizenship):
A more specific attempt of how the Israeli occupation forces tried to pin the blame for their murder of Abu Akleh on Palestinians is the following Tweet where they showed an allegedly “Palestinian gunman” with suspicially and unusually white (European Jewish?) skin popping some shots down an alley, thereby trying to create the impression of Palestinian culpability.
Also note how Israeli propaganda intentionally does not use the positively connotated terms of “freedom fighter” or “resistance fighter,” thereby also censoring the obvious motive for why some Palestians use arms against the colonizing settler-colonialist oppressors. According to Israeli and Western propaganda, they are just ‘gunmen’ who randomly, purposelessly and senselessly shoot their guns:
This propagandistic nonsense was meticulously refuted by B’Tselem (“The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories”) though:
B’Tselem instead managed to show that the location of Abu Akleh’s murder was somewhere else entirely and that this (judging by his skintone Israeli shooter pretending to be a) Palestinian ‘gunman’ could not possibly have been the person who shot and killed Abu Akleh:
A long time after that (by journalistic standards) and in what could easily have been the use of the propagandistic method of intentionally delayed reporting at a time when it no longer mattered (in terms of informing and influencing politicial decision-makers), the ‘great white discoverers’ at the mainstream medium CNN discovered what others had understood from day one:
Even later to the party were the likewise US empire affiliated Bellingcat:
An even later bullet analysis confirmed that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces:
The UN Human Rights Office under Michelle Bachelet also confirms:
Predictably, the US still is and will remain silent. Their usual strategy in this case is to make empty promises and to keep stalling until people hopefully get busy with other things:
16.2.4 On the Insane Zionist Ideology and Psychology Behind Israel’s Criminal and Genocidal Behavior
The criminal and genocidal Israeli settler-colonialist apartheid regime itself did what it usually does in such situations, which is a) to sadistically blame the unworthy victims of Israel’s oppression…
while b) trying to cover up the evidence of its own crimes against and genocidal murders of the colonized and oppressed “others” such as in the following case (I reported about those “violent May 2021 events” in an eight-part series, starting here):
Female Investigator 1: “The head of the weapons lab told me he won’t check the weapons unless charges are filed. Listen, he’s crazy. I told him ‘Don’t you understand that in order to decide whether or not to file charges, we need to know who fired the lethal shot?’ He said ‘You have the suspects’ testimonies.’”
Male Investigator 2: “Is he serious?”
Female Investigator 1: “I just had a huge argument with him.”
Male Investigator 2: “I must be dreaming. People have gone completely insane.”
Female Investigator 1: “[…] and he says ‘We pay a lot of money for these tests. The tests in this case are my last priority.’”
Male Investigator 2: “Oh really? He should tell that to the minister who is calling every 10 minutes, asking for updates on the case.”
Female Investigator 1: “I told him that some of the detained suspects claim that they fired their weapons into the air. We need to check their testimonies, and we need to finally know the bullet removed from the body, from which weapon it was fired.”
Judging by those standards and coverups and the overall omnipresent “impunity” with which Israel acts against Palestinians, the likely consequences for the murderer of Shireen Abu Akleh are next to none:
This was confirmed on May 19 when the IDF announced that, contrary to what they stated earlier, there wont even be an investigation into the(ir) murder of Abu Akleh:
From that Al Jazeera article:
The Abu Akleh family received reassurances from the US government that her killing would be investigated.
[…]
Israel […] said it would open an investigation into the killing.
Previous investigations into the killings of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers have led to controversy within Israel — many Israelis believe soldiers should not be prosecuted for such acts.
“The reason for this is that you would actually have to open a criminal investigation into a serving Israeli army officer or soldier on an active military operation. That’s something that Israeli politics in this current climate finds absolutely untenable,” Al Jazeera’s reporter Imran Khan said from West Jerusalem.
“The government would be attacked if that investigation took place. The opposition would use it to make political ground.”
“Also, generally with Israelis itself, they see the army as being untouchable, as being defenders of Israel and therefore anything that they do on a military operation is untouchable,” he said.
The Ha’aretz report also said there was “no suspicion” of a criminal act, with the soldiers questioned saying they thought they were firing at a Palestinian fighter, despite witnesses and Al Jazeera journalists reporting that there was no shooting in Abu Akleh’s vicinity.
Bullet fragments were retrieved from Abu Akleh’s body but the Palestinian Authority has declined to give the evidence to Israel, saying the latter has a long history of not investigating the deaths of Palestinians properly and merely issuing light sentences or warnings to its soldiers who have carried out killings.
There may be some partially genuine attempts, even from within the USA, to launch an investigation into the murder of Abu Akleh:
But there wont be any of that: Israel is simply going to block or ignore any such attempts like the following EU delegation to Palestine:
And Israel can afford to do so since it has the backing of the USA to continue to act with impunity and complete unaccountability:
But in the end, none of the above behavior of Israel is or should be surprising. That’s because Israel is a “settler-colonialist” (and also apartheid, criminal, oppressor, racist, terrorist, etc.) state which does what all settler-colonialist states routinely do.
First and in terms of the respective Zionist ideology, there are the “nationalist myths” (part 12, section 14.2) or simply lies about why these ‘chosen people’ supposedly can be and even are supposedly morally justified in being there and in doing to Palestinians what they do to them. As already explained in part 13b, section 15.4, the leading respective nationalist myths of settler-colonialist Israel are the following:
NM1: Israel is supposedly built on “a land without people for a people without land.” But
NM2: “The land was promised or given to the Jews by God/Jahwe/YHWH”
NM3: The already discussed “cult(ure) of Jewish victimhood” (part 4; also part 7 of the Israel-Palestine series) whereby, as a supposedly permanent consequence of the Holocaust, “Jews are always victims, never perpetrators.”
NM4: The denial or omission of Israel’s fundamental “settler-colonialist” nature and the denial or omission of the inherently “eliminative” consequences of that settler-colonialism for the native population:
Settler colonialism is a structure that perpetuates the elimination of indigenous people and cultures to replace them with a settler society.[1][2] According to Patrick Wolfe, “settler colonialism is inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal,” and can be enacted by a variety of means ranging from violent depopulation of the previous inhabitants to less deadly means such as assimilation or recognition of indigenous identity within a colonial framework.[3]
Based on these nationalist myths and lies which Israeli Zionists are happy to believe in in their naive wishful thinking, groupthink, greed for land or simply insanity — both cognitive/epistemic and moral — , these settler-colonialists then proceed to “eliminating” the native population whose very existence runs contrary to the Israeli Zionists’ nationalist myths in various ways. The ultimate aim of that elimination is to take the native Palestinians’ land (and property) for themselves just like white settler-colonialists did in North America or Australia. The rest are the details of how they go about that, which I have outlined in my eight-part series from 2021. Here is yet another excuse for and tactic of Israeli land-grabbing:
There may be some question about whether the intended Jewish Zionist Israeli settler-colonialist elimination of Palestinians is genocidal. My opinion on that is that it fairly obviously is genocidal and, ironically, in ways that are reminiscent of Nazi mobs in Nazi Germany terrorizing or hunting Jews:
Israeli security/occupation forces who are largely on board with the settler-colonialist genocide program played deaf and blind:
Female Arab student to Israeli policeman: “Haven’t you heard them?”
Israeli policeman: “Who?”
Female Arab student: “The ones who have just passed from here”
Israeli policeman: “No, I haven’t see them”
Female Arab student: “You haven’t seen them. Didn’t they just shout ‘Death to Arabs?’”
Israeli policeman: “People shout lots of things. We don’t hear everything. I don’t know what they shouted.”
The Electronic Intifada reported on those genocidally motivated incidents:
By contrast, Western mainstream media such as the BBC simply rewrite these events and facts in true Orwellian fashion:
Note how the BBC’s own on the ground journalist contradicts the BBC’s Orwellian rewriting of what supposedly happened or did not happen:
In terms of a much-needed psychological explanation for the severe mental trauma and sickness that underlies Zionism and the insane, criminal and oftentimes murderous and genocidal deeds that follow from all that, I can not only recommend my own already offered respective psychological takes — see part 4, section 6.2.3 on the “cult(ure) of Jewish victimhood” and more so part 7 of the 2021 series for a ten-factor analysis of the insane rightwing psychopathological nature of contemporary Zionism.
I can furthermore recommend the following article from Steve Salaita which offers a highly plausible and agreeable psychological explanation for why settler-colonialist Israel murdered the Palestinian journalist Shireen:
It’s natural to seek rational explanations for what appear to be mindless acts of violence. Explanation is contingent on material conditions, though, and so we have to understand the situation in context of Zionist settler colonization. Using the humanistic logic prevalent in most civil societies, Israel’s conduct was baffling. Its soldiers murdered a civilian in full view of people whose job is to report news. Those soldiers had to know that they couldn’t keep their act a secret, that targeting journalists would result in worldwide outrage. And yet they did it anyway.
Why?
To arrive at an answer, we have to discern the colonizer’s psyche. We’re not dealing with normal civil society standards, first of all. The relevant context is military occupation. In such a context, gratuitous state violence is normal. Obviously, killing Abu-Akleh has the immediate benefit of silencing a prominent voice of Palestinian resistance, one that had long exposed Israeli crimes of aggression.
There is more to the story, however.
We also have to explore the assumptions underlying a desire for simple explanations. By asking for reasons over and over again, observers seek answers to incongruous questions. In so doing they’re apt to tacitly implicate the victims in their own suffering. The journalists must have done something. There had to be a provocation. Israeli soldiers don’t just shoot innocent people for the hell of it.
But that’s exactly what Israeli soldiers do. Israel has murdered around fifty journalists over the past two decades. One or two might be an aberration. Fifty is a policy.
We needn’t turn to the victim’s behavior for answers to the colonizer’s violence. He is violent because of colonization.
So there’s no need to seek legible reasons for Abu-Akleh’s murder according the rationale of civic decency. The settler doesn’t need a “reason” to kill the native. The settler kills because deracinating the native is a precondition of his social identity. It is a function of his legal status and class position. Israeli forces viciously attacked a crowd carrying Abu-Akleh’s coffin — abusing our beloved martyr even in death — which only affirms the fact that the settler kills precisely when confronted by the native’s vulnerability. There is a higher purpose to his violence. The settler doesn’t kill simply to produce death; he kills to negate the native’s existence.
Israeli forces attacked Abu-Akleh’s corpse because killing her wasn’t enough. They needed to expunge her from a land they claim by divine mandate. Her body impedes a mythological birthright underlying the settler’s entire sense of self. She has to be rendered nonexistent in order for the settler to survive. Such is the logic of desecrating ancient Muslim cemeteries and planting flora over the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
The same forces attacked hundreds of mourners not because they were unruly, but because they weren’t also in the casket.
The settler’s violence, in short, is endless. It is the only way he knows how to be a good citizen. And it is the only way, in the end, he can imagine a meaningful existence.
16.2.5 Systematic Murders: Israel Kills Another Female Journalist
In case you still had any doubts about Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialist nature, maybe Israel’s murder of the aspiring female Palestinian journalist Ghufran Warasneh less than a month after its murder of the legendary Palestinian-US American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh will convince you that such killings are systematic and routine and an inherent part of what settler-colonialist entities like Israel have done for the longest time in terms of eliminating the natives:
On 1 June, Israeli occupation troops shot and killed Palestinian journalist Ghufran Warasneh in Al-Arroub refugee camp north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Eye-witnesses told Palestinian media that Warasneh was shot while standing at an approximately two-meter distance from an Israeli soldier.
Later in the day, Israeli soldiers also attacked the funeral procession of Warasneh, firing tear gas canisters at mourners and trying to block them from entering the refugee camp.
Israeli officials claimed Warasneh approached them with a knife before being shot. No evidence of this was provided.
“An assailant armed with a knife advanced toward an IDF soldier who was conducting routine security activity … The soldiers responded with live fire,” the occupation army said in a statement.
Ghufran Warasneh’s cousin Abdel Rahman Warasneh, however, told The New Arab that the journalist was headed for her first day at work when she was killed.
“Ghufran was going to work at around 7:40 in the morning through the entrance of the refugee camp, where Israeli forces are usually stationed.”
“A few minutes later, we heard the news that somebody was shot and I rushed with other people to the camp entrance, to find that it was Ghufran,” he said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that occupation troops obstructed paramedics for about half an hour before they were able to transfer her to a hospital in Hebron.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the victim had been incarcerated by Israel in January and was released on 1 April.
Note that there are no visible signs of a knife lying around in the above picture and that Zionist hasbara trolls providing a picture of *some* knife on similarly looking ground from whereever and whenever…
…does not amount to evidence which links the knife to being in the possession of Ghufran Warasneh or of being wielded by her against Israeli occupation forces. The term of “terrorist” — as opposed to resistance fighter — furthermore suggests a possibly Israeli or Zionist background of the above tweeter.
After her body was removed — you can still see the urine leaks on the street in the following frame — someone with a camera confronted the heroic settler-colonialist soldiers:
And similar to the events at the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, here we then have some footage of Israeli occupation forces attacking the funeral procession of Ghufran Warasneh and native Palestinians with clearly perceivable tear gas and sound grenades:
Here is yet another such case where the Israeli Zionist settler-colonialist insanity does not even stop after they have murdered yet another native Palestinian:
This demonstrates that these cases are not just rare exceptions and but rather the ugly highlights of a highly systematic and ongoing campaign of Israeli Zionist settler-colonialists eliminating the native Palestinians, including their history and memory, and including by genocidally murdering them in increments.
16.2.6 Germany Is Once Again on the Wrong Side of History
Among many other Western states in the US sphere of influence, it is also official Germany which fails to regard Israel and its actions from a settler-colonialist perspective. This in turn explains why it is also official Germany that does not make sense on Israel and Palestine and why Germany is once again on the wrong side of history — on the side of the oppressors — just it was back in the days of Nazi Germany.
What is responsible for that are the amazing Western and also European ‘values’ of hypocrisy and double standardizing everything as well as Orwellian doublethink such as the following:
But there were many who refuted von der Leyen’s propagandistic bullshit as follows:
Comments on the actually “shared beliefs”:
Corresponding impressions from Berlin, Germany, on May 15, the official Nakba Day
(Arabic: ذكرى النكبة, romanized: Dhikra an-Nakba, lit. ‘Memory of the Catastrophe’) is the day of commemoration for the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, which comprised the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people.
The underlying Western hypocrisy, double standards, and Orwellian morality are: ‘Denying the Holocaust of the Jews is superbad, but denying the Holocaust-equivalent of the Nakba which was committed by Zionist Jews against Palestinians in the same decade is unproblematic or inconsequential.’ ‘The International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and respective ceremonies are superimportant, but Nakba Day on May 15 and respective ceremonies can or ought to be suppressed.’ Can you imagine the outcry if people got arrested for Holocaust Day ceremonies? But arresting people for Nakba day activities and ceremonies, yeah, that is just fine in the disgustingly hypocritical and immoral West where seemingly everything is subjected to double standards.
By contrast, here are some impressions of how Nakba Day was commemorated by Palestinians in Tel Aviv:
Ali Abunimah from the Electronic Intifada reported on that crackdown in Berlin and drew a fitting comparison to Germany not having learned certain important lessons from its Nazi past:
“They held us for one and a half hours in the heat, until they took our ID info to sue all of us for an allegedly illegal assembly, even though we did not stage a demo, but were just present in Palestinian colors or kuffiyehs,” Kilani added.
Kilani’s father and five siblings — German citizens — were killed in an Israeli air attack on Gaza in 2014.
Setback on road to democracy
Over the last year, the intensifying effort to erase Israel’s persecution of Palestinians from public view in Germany has included a purge of Palestinian and other Arab journalists by public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
Despite the censorship and repression by police and politicians, supporters of Palestinian rights have recently won several court victories reaffirming the right to free speech.
Nonetheless, the sweeping and violently enforced Berlin ban, which was upheld by a local court, is a severe setback along the former Nazi state’s long and rocky road towards democracy.
[…]
Though it may be intensifying, this repression is nothing new. German elites have long conspired to silence criticism of Israel.
They consider unconditional support for Israel’s brutality against Palestinians a form of atonement for the German government’s systematic murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
A film that will premiere on YouTube on 22 May will highlight German repression of free speech, thought and activism about Palestine, and Germany’s complicit relationship with Israel.
The new documentary, The Time of Slanderers, by Dror Dayan and Susann Witt-Stahl, jumps off from a 2018 conference that brought together Jewish and Palestinian critics of Israel and Zionism in Berlin.
“The rightward drift of the Western world manifests itself in bizarre ways,” the conference organizers had observed, “Left-wingers are vilified as ‘Nazis,’” and “Jewish anti-fascists as ‘traitors.’”
“The majority of the German left are at best silent on these alarming developments, thus committing a betrayal that amounts to a capitulation to German great power aspirations, NATO’s bellicose regime change policy and murderous aggression against refugees and other migrants,” the filmmakers say.
Another instance of Germany being on the wrong side of history in the Israel-Palestine conflict was the Goethe Institute’s disinvitation of the prominent Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd whose family is itself under threat of displacement and dispossession by the Israeli land-grabbers:
Mohammed El-Kurd’s ‘crime’ consisted in making comments about the genocidal apartheid terrorist regime of Israel which were too much for the sensitive ears of some backward Germans from the Goethe Institute:
These comments alone already show that Germany has not learned anything from its Nazi past since it is once again on the side of the genocidal oppressor:
The Goethe Institute could not even be bothered to give any examples of El-Kurd’s supposedly unacceptable comments:
On top of that, it is also pretty sick to expect that he should or would “word his criticism in a way that his oppressors [and their useful idiots in the West] find acceptable”:
The curators Sinthujan Varatharajah and Moshtari Hilal explain the incident in greater detail:
I will repeat this again so as to better let the Western hypocrisy, double standards and total insanity of that decision sink in: The Goethe Institute which organized a workshop on the “Dynamics of the Global Right” cancelled a talk from a victim of that global right out of a fear of backlash from the Israeli Zionist far right which is an integral part of the global right! But, in allusion to the Zionist smear of ‘not the right kind of Jew,’ I guess that the Jewish Israeli Zionist extreme right is ‘not the right kind of global right.’
The Goethe Institute’s insane decision can be somewhat better understood if we factor in that it is “funded by the German Foreign Office” and that Germany is notoriously subservient to the USA as well as to Israel:
And the Mohammed El-Kurd incident does not appear to be the first of such incidents:
A probable explanation of that imperialist behavior:
On the Ramallah institute and their comments:
On the Goethe Institute being conspicuously silent since then on social media:
Participants of the Berlin conference quit in protest over the treatment of Mohammed El-Kurd. One of them was Mohammed Hanif:
Some supportive replies to Mohammed Hanif’s tweets, including one with the story and footage of how Mohammed and Muna El-Kurd’s grandmother Rifka/Rifqa — also the title of Mohammed El-Kurd’s book — was assaulted by settlers when they occupied and stole their property:
Grandmother Rifka (1:40–2:35): “I walked outside the door to find more than 60 settlers standing in my garden. I approached a settler who was carrying a television. I yelled at him ‘This is my son’s furniture!’ He hit me and I fell to the ground. I passed out and woke up in the hospital. [pause] I couldn’t understand what they were doing to me and my house. I couldn’t process what was happening. [pause] I was in hospital for four days. I had no awareness.”
Another writer who cancelled her talk at the Goethe Institute’s conference in light of its rampant Western hypocrisy and double standards was Ijeoma Oluo:
The Goethe Institute meanwhile engages in even more Western hypocrisy and double standards about “protest”:
Sinthujan Varatharajah and Moshtari Hilal on German media and academia likewise being an integral part of that moral perversion:
What all of that illustrates is that official Germany is suffering from the opposite but also quite insane mental afflication as many Jews, Zionists and Israel: Whereas the latter suffer from the already discussed “cult(ure) of Jewish victimhood” (part 4) whereby Jews are supposedly always the victims and even when they are clearly the perpetrators, Germany in turn collectively suffers from a(n in parts Horkheimer-Adorno-Habermasian Frankfurt school critical theory-style) “cult(ure) of German perpetratorhood” whereby Germans (and also Austrians like myself) are supposedly always the perpetrators and even when they are not — such as when criticizing settler-colonialist Israel’s insane actions towards Palestinians. But I guess ‘that’s the wrong kind of critique or criticism’ in the eyes of the morally insane West and according to their Western hypocrisy, double standards and pseudo-critical theory.
The fact remains though that Germany cannot right a historic wrong by inflicting even more wrongs on even more oppressed people. “Two wrongs do not make a right”, as the saying goes. But unfortunately, that is precisely what insane official Germany is futilely attempting to do, together with obeying its masters from the Israel-allied USA.
Another journalist also elaborated on that German insanity:
This is how the Goethe Institut, a German state-funded cultural association, justified its decision to disinvite prominent Palestinian writer and journalist Mohammed el-Kurd from speaking at its conference “Beyond the Lone Offender”.
“Appropriate” and “acceptable” are not random here — they reflect a deeply enshrined approach in Germany towards the Palestinian cause. It’s patronising: “We, the Germans, can teach you, the victims, from our comfort zone, what should or should not be said about your oppressor.”
But it also shows how Germans are subject to a ministry of thought when it comes to Israel. The “appropriate” and “acceptable” is not according to German criteria, it’s what Israel considers appropriate and acceptable.
Being haunted by their past, Germans are trying to export their feelings of guilt onto the shoulders of Palestinians. Antisemitism is not their problem anymore — it is the Palestinians’. Palestinians who are not going to bear this responsibility and apologise are not appropriate and acceptable voices.
Instead, the morally right thing for Germany to do would be to stop being guilt-tripped by today’s settler-colonialist oppressor Israel into oppressing Palestinians and to instead side with the oppressed Palestinians against the Jewish Israeli Zionist settler-colonialist. That way, Germany could also signal that it has finally learned its lessons from its own Nazi and likewise settler-colonialist history. The same of course also applies to Austria.
Conclusion
So much for the particularly disgusting Western and Israeli hypocrisy and double standards about the in their sick minds highly unworthy Palestinian victims. The context and specific examples that I used to explain that were mainly Israel’s repeated Al Aqsa mosque provocations and Israel’s murder of the Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in April and May 2022.
Not very suprisingly, the insane Western hypocrisy and double standards about a) Palestinians who are never allowed victimhood despite being highly deserving and about b) Jewish Israelis who are always granted victimhood despite being highly undeserving is noticed especially outside of the Western bubble and community of ‘Western values’ where a universalist and fair understanding of morality exists:
But there are too many in the the West who are still relatively clueless — or lying — about how their value-system is based on hypocrisy and double standards and about how those perverse metavalues determine their insane and largely unwitting distinction between supposedly highly worthy Ukrainian or Jewish victims and supposedly highly unworthy Palestinian victims:
But having raised awareness about this problem and deep-lying sickness of and in the West, it can be hoped that this increased awareness will be a first step towards a respective solution which will need to include 1) sanctions against and punishment of Israeli and other Western perpetrators — especially the US empire — as well as 2) reparations for especially those victims which were very unjustly treated as unworthy such as the Palestinians.
Other or more specific measures that should be implemented are getting organized…
…refusing to be bullied…
…and showing solidarity:
In Europe, an important first step was undertaken by the Parliament of Catalonia, a region known for wanting independence from Spain:
Not very surprisingly, it is especially other colonized people such as the Irish (see part 14a) or native Americans who show solidarity with the colonized Palestinians:
