The Netanyahu Regime’s Diabolical Reign of Terror
What’s going on in Gaza and throughout the Occupied Territories is all about inflicting maximum pain, suffering, misery, mass slaughter and destruction — with no end of it in prospect.
Like its predecessors, the Netanyahu regime is guilty of high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians.
Through around midday May 15, over 150 Palestinians have been massacred in cold blood, including around a dozen in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — women and children among them.
Around 3,300 others were wounded, many seriously, throughout the Territories, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. The destruction, death and injury toll continues to rise exponentially as long Israeli terror-bombing, shelling, and rampaging on the ground go on unchecked. Numbers of missing Palestinians are believed buried beneath rubble from Israeli terror-bombing. So far, most world community nations largely looked the other way — effectively supporting Israel’s reign of terror by not condemning it and demanding accountability.
In besieged Gaza, humanitarian crisis conditions worsened. Thousands of terrified and traumatized families fled their homes in search of safety in too few UN shelters to accommodate them.
A BDS Freedom, Justice, and Equality statement urged the following in response to “apartheid Israeli’s crimes” against (long-suffering) Palestinians:
As I’ve stressed time and again, the BDS National Committee (BNC) slammed most nations, their ruling authorities, and corporate interests for “complicit(y) with Israel’s decades-old regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, just as they were complicit in the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
The Jewish state can only sustain its reign of terror because the world community of nations fails to demand accountability — nor intervene on behalf of its victims. It’s for ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to act on their own. The BNC recommends five ways.
1. Push for a military embargo on Israel now.
2. Declare your institutions (and private spaces) apartheid-free zones.
3. Boycott all things Israel, including brands supporting its apartheid rule.
4. Cancel academic, cultural and sporting events in the Jewish state.
5. Join a BDS campaign in your area.
Expanding on the above, the BNC urged working with progressive networks to pressure…governments, community groups, trade unions, social and religious groups, students and others to boycott all things Israel. Join a campaign or group in solidarity with long-suffering Palestinians. Express opposition to apartheid viciousness to others and publicly. “Get off Israel’s apartheid train.”
In response to ongoing Israeli state terror against Palestinians throughout the Territories, the BNC slammed Western media for largely “whitewash(ing)” its crimes of war and against humanity. Brazilian philosopher/educator Paulo Freire explained the following:
Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.
How could they be the initiators if they themselves are the result of violence?
There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized.
Oppression is the root cause of violence.
Perhaps the most strategic, ethical, moral, and effective way to challenge and check apartheid Israel is by denouncing complicit governments, their officials, handmaidens and media press agents — along with supporting BDS activism. The US above all is guilty of supporting, financing, and otherwise allying with the worst of Israeli high crimes. It’s been this way from Truman to Biden.
The same goes for other Western nations — partnering with Israeli oppression like the US, shielding its regimes from accountability, maintaining silence about their high crimes, and blaming victims for Jewish state crimes against them. History shows that they won’t change their wicked ways.
So it’s up to ordinary people throughout the West and elsewhere for equity and justice to support Palestinians and other oppressed people on their own. That’s how great struggles are won — always from the bottom up, never from the top down.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He has devoted his time and efforts to progressive causes and organizations, all involved in working for a more humane and just world for all people everywhere, but especially for the most needy, disadvantaged and oppressed. His efforts since summer 2005 have included writing on a broad range of vital topics ranging from war and peace; social, economic and political equity for all; and justice for all the oppressed peoples of the world like the long-suffering people of Haiti and the Palestinians. He also co-hosts The Global Research News Hour, gives occasional public talks, and appears frequently on radio and at times television. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His new book "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War" can be ordered here. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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Source: Stephen Lendman. Photo 1: Getty images. Photo 2: May 14, 2021: 109 Palestinians Killed, Including 31 Children, 15 Women, 621 Injured, in Gaza by Israeli Occupation Apartheid Regime Forces (IMEMC / Al Jazeera). AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2021/05/15/the-netanyahu-regime-s-diabolical
