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Continue Escalating

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“Never in my life did I expect to see my people getting killed over flour.” — Plestia Alaquad, a Palestinian journalist and poet.

Don’t look away.

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14 Princeton University students have begun an open-ended hunger strike in solidarity with Gaza, which they will only end once their demands of the administration are met.

Using their bodies as a weapons and inspired by the long tradition of Palestinian prisoners and fighters, they declare: "We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We commit our bodies to their liberation."

This comes as the administration refuses to engage with student demands to divest from the zionist entity. "We refuse to be silenced by the university administration's intimidation and repression tactics."

Their demands from the administration are:

- To meet with students to discuss their demands for disclosure and divestment of investments, as well as a full academic and cultural boycott of the zionist entity.

- Complete amnesty from all criminal and disciplinary charges for students.

- Reverse all campus bans and evictions of students.

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[image ID: a tweet from America The Ghetto 🇵🇸🇨🇺, @LizzMurr56, which reads: "You don't have to be nice or civil about ending a genocide. The idea that people who are actively funding a genocide have any moral authority to demand civility is ridiculous. Civil people don't create mass graves! Civil people don't give weapons to those creating mass graves!" end ID.]

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Right before the Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, was supposed to speak at the graduation, a large group of students walked out on him. Youngkin says he ‘fully supports’ how police handled (which was by assault) pro-Palestinian protests on Virginia college campuses just a few days ago.

Video: X: BradKutner

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“I had a Zionist grandmother who grew up, she grew up in Poland, she was supposed to go to Israel to study. Her father had paid for her for the first year of tuition. And then in 1939, when she was in her last year of high school, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.

She ended up for a couple of years in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, which was how she ended up in Moscow. And by the time Germany occupied all of Poland. So then she spent the rest of her life living in Moscow.

And 45 years after the end of the war, dreaming of being able to go to Israel, but not being able to because she was now stuck in the Soviet Union. And so I think I was very infected by, infected in a non-derogatory sense by my grandmother's dream of Israel. And I had my own dream of Israel growing up as a, as a Jewish kid who was bullied and beaten up and teased.

I just wanted to live in a country that, that was majority Jewish. I could not understand why my parents would want to go to the United States and live in another country where Jews are in the minority. My parents on the other hand just didn't want to be Jewish.

Like their only experience of being Jewish was being systematically discriminated against. They were both born during the Second World War, so they were second generation, utterly non-religious and separated from any Jewish tradition, except the tradition of being a targeted minority. So they just, they just wanted to go somewhere where they wouldn't be Jewish.

And so when I was 15, a year after we moved to the United States, I actually went to Israel planning to stay there and didn't. For a variety of reasons, but one of them was being confronted with, with what I found at the age of 15, a shockingly racist society.

So the first time I went to Israel was when I was 15, it was 1982. And then there was like an 18, 17 or 18 year gap.

And I started traveling to Israel regularly from 1999, 2000. And the first time I went back was to actually complete the research on the book about my grandmother's. So it's been a good 25 years that I've been coming back.

And I think Israel has undergone a lot of changes in that time. But no, I don't think that like the kind of Ashkenazi Sephardic racism that shocked me in 1982 has found subtler expressions. But politics of settlement have only been exacerbated.

And I still find them extremely painful to observe, especially because some of my beloved relatives are settlers.

I did visit them this last time I was in Israel, because I really wanted to see what it looked like for them.

I was compelled to go visit them because of a Facebook post that my cousin made. And just to give you an idea, I really hold these people very, very dear. But for years, I would go to Israel, Palestine and not tell them that I was there, because I kind of couldn't face them.

So it's been a number of years since I last saw them, a number of years since I went to that settlement. But my cousin had posted something on Facebook. It was a picture of her son playing the violin.

And she wrote, in one of the houses where they stayed in Gaza, there was a violin. He played for his soldiers and then put the violin back. And I found that post-heart trending and eye-opening, the picture of him playing the violin was not from Gaza.

It was from earlier, but he had apparently told her about playing the violin in Gaza. And obviously she was worried about her son serving in Gaza and so she's posting about it. And she wants to assert that he is a good boy.

But also, entirely missing from that post and from her world view is that somebody lived in that house in Gaza. That violin belonged to somebody. Like, it was such an extraordinary example of the blindness that we were talking about a little bit earlier that I wanted to go visit them and kind of engage with that blindness more.

And I got a really good dose of blindness to the point where, and we had this incredible moment when we went walking around the settlement after Shabbat lunch. And we sort of got to this hilltop where there's a swing and there's a little free library.

And we're looking out on a Palestinian village. And I said, what are we looking at, to my cousin? And she was trying to get her bearings.

And she said, where are we looking? And she named another settlement, which was kind of, which was not on our line of sight. It was like this literal example of looking at an actual Palestinian village that she drives past every day.

And before the village was sealed off after October 7th, she used to get gas there. And she knows it exists. But somehow she also it also doesn't enter her geography.

It is nameless.”

—Masha Gessen, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, discusses the dehumanization of Palestinians (part 2 of 3)

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Just a minute of what are citizens of GAZA living at any time any where they go .

#A Genocide not a war

#palestine #gaza #war criminals #free gaza #war crimes

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Was hesitant to share a rare W by Piers Morgan, but the Israeli spokesperson’s dumbfoundedness at the tiniest bit of journalistic integrity is worth the watch

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I cannot stand liberal zionist reporters.

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In Newcastle, while Eurovision offered its usual flair, Eric Clapton captivated his audience with a powerful gesture, opening his concert with a guitar adorned with the Palestinian flag. Clapton, a legendary guitarist known for his profound influence on rock and blues, continues to inspire with both his timeless music and his impactful statements. #palestine #justice

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A US SITTING Senator Lindsey Graham is openly advocating for Gaza to be nuked on national television. War mongers. Genocide mongers.

Source: MSNBC

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It was always a land grab. It was never about the hostages. And our tax dollars are paying for it.

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