Rogue State of Israel XXV : Licenced to Lie Cheat Kill?

Palestinians death tolltoday:  1.951 killed.  Including  469 children and 243 women.
Palestinians injured: 10.193. Including 3.084 children and 1.970 women.
Medics and hospitals need all the help they can get.

Número de mortos palestinos em Gaza até hoje: 1.951.  Destes, 469 crianças e 243 mulheres.
Palestinos feridos: 10.193. Destes, 3.084 crianças e 1.970 mulheres.
Os hospitais precisam de remédios, aparelhos, enfim, de toda ajuda médico-hospitalar que o mundo, que nós, pudermos dar. E também de roupas e alimentos.

AT 21:00 GMT this evening the cesefire in Gaza ends. The negotiations in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority are tackling the end of the blockade.

Egypt has urged both sides to use the new lull to reach "a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire," after efforts to extend a similar truce last week collapsed into a firestorm of violence.
Israel insists that the security of its citizens subject to "constant fear" from Palestinian rocket attacks be guaranteed.
Hamas has said its acceptance of any permanent agreement is conditional on Israel lifting its eight-year blockade on the enclave, which is the reasonable position of all Palestinians.
Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli intelligence minister, chose to threat the PNA on the army radio: "Either there will be a 'reasonable' resolution of the situation in Gaza, or, if the fire resumes, we will have to consider a broadening of the operation, including an expansion on the ground, overthrowing the Hamas authorities and the demilitarisation of Gaza by ourselves." Blood thirsty Israelis.
This morning an Israeli drone fired a rocket in the south of Gaza strip and Israeli gunship navy fired at the sea shore of Rafah, just to keep the population under terror while negotiations go on in Cairo. No casualties were reported. Hamas didn't respond, although it's a clear breach on the ceasefire. 
Nevertheless, Hamas is committed to the ceasefire and its spokesperon says: "This time at least it is a real negotiation. There is talking and discussion about all our points and hopefully we will have an agreement. I'm optimistic there will be something."
One key Palestinian demand is the construction of a sea port and reopening of an airport (there was one bombarded twice), as agreed in the Oslo agreements more than 20 years ago.

O cessa-fogo de 72h termina esta noite às 21:00 GMT (17:00 de Brasília) e nas negociaçõs no Cairo, Israel e a Autoridade Nacional Palestina estão abordando o fim do bloqueio.
O Egito pediu para ambas as partes chegarem "a um acordo de cessar-fogo compreensível e permanente", temendo que estas discussões sejam tão vãs quanto as precedentes.
Israel insiste em seu mantra que tem de proteger seus cidadãos do "medo constante" do foguetório do Hamas, que, "portanto, tem de ser desarmado" - porém, a IDF vai continuar adquirindo as armas mais sofisticadas do mercado.
A condição sine qua non do Hamas é o fim do bloqueio da Faixa de Gaza. Exigência unânime dos palestinos e da opinião pública internacional.
Então o ministro da inteligência militar israelense Yuval Steinitz resolveu ameaçar os palestinos na rádio militar (pois é, a IDF tem rádio!): "Ou há uma resolução 'razoável' para a situação em Gaza, ou, se retormarmos a luta, teremos de considerar uma operação mais vasta, incluindo expansão terrestre, derrubar o Hamas e desmilitarizar Gaza nós mesmos". Sedentos de sangue, estes israelenses. O pior é que a maioria da população apoia os fascistas que estão no poder. E o mundo, vai ficar de braços cruzados?
Enquanto isso, um navio israelense atirou no mar perto de Rafah, no sul da Faixa de Gaza. Não houve feridos, mas é uma quebra de cessar-fogo à qual o Hamas não respondeu porque quer dar uma chance aos negociadores no Cairo. Seu porta-voz esta manhã pareceu otimista dizendo que "Desta vez pelo menos está havendo uma negociação real. Conversas e discussões sobre todos os pontos. Tomara que cheguemos a um acordo. Estou otimista."

Noam Chomsky responde perguntas de jovens estadunidenses, 12/08/14

Noam Chomsky talks to young Americans, August 12   

Meanwhile, the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo is coming to Tel Aviv with top US legislators to "express solidarity to Israel". So the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations sent him a letter saying that "to express solidarity only with Israel will encourage Israelis' belief that their military aggression in Gaza and illegal denial of basic freedoms to the Palestinians are justified. The responsible action would be to visit the Palestinian people and its leadership too and to see first-hand the wider context of this conflict, and the heavy toll it's taking in Palestinian civilians across the occupîed territories". I coundn't agree more. 

Enquanto isso, o governador de Nova York está visitando Tel Aviv com outras autoridades estadunidenses para "exprimir solidariedade com Israel". O Embaixador palestino na ONU reagiu escrevendo-lhe uma carta onde diz "exprimir solidariedade só com Israel vai encorajar sua vrença que sua agressão militar em Gaza e sua negação ilegal de liberdades palestinas básicas são justificadas. O ato responsável seria visitar também o povo e os líderes plaestinos para ver pessoalmente o contexto amplo do conflito e suas consequências na população civil em todo o território palestino ocupado.

An Italien Associated Press video journalist, Simone Camilli, 34 years old, has been killed in an ordnance explosion in Beit Lahyia, together with her Palestinian translator and three members of the Gaza police. Gaza police engineers were dismantling an israeli unexploded missile.
The US must send experts do disarm the amunition that they sold to Israel. At least.  

No blog do dia 10 de agosto postei um vídeo sobre o perigo da quantidade de munição que Israel jogou em Gaza e que não explodiu na queda. Elas podem explodir a qualquer momento, como foi o caso hoje. Um míssil explodiu quando três policiais palestinos o estavam desarmando. Morreram, e com eles morreram uma colega jornalista da Associated Press, a italiana Simone Camili e seu intérprete Ali Shehda Abu Afash. Os Estados Unidos, que venderam as bombas para Israel (que pagou com parte dos 3 bilhões que recebe anualmente dos EUA) têm de pelo menos mandar especialistas desarmar as munições que fabricaram. Não é possível que eles não façam nem isso pelos sobreviventes do massacre que eles co-patrocinaram.

Under pressure of Brazilian prominent Jews and to preserve comercial trades, the Israel president Reuven Rivlin - who has no power whatsoever in Israel's governement - called Brazil's President Dilma yesterday to apologize for the remark of "Diplomatic Dwarf"'. He said it "does not correspond to the sentiment of Israel population". What is behind this apology? The "Free Trade Agreement" between Mercosul and Israel, which Brazil has suspended.
Sob pressão de judeus brasileiros influentes e por razões econômico-comerciais, o presidente de Israel REuven Rivlin - que não tem nenhum poder no governo israelense - ligou para a Dilma ontem a fim de desculpar-se pelo comentário de "Anão Diplomático". O Presidente sem poderes disse que este sentimento "não corresponde com o sentimento da população de Israel". Será que a Dilma engoliu essa? Eles querem mesmo é que o Mercosul assine o tal Tratado de Livre Comércio que o Planalto está segurando.

Chris Hedges, on Gaza Rally in NYC: God's Covenant in the Promised Land

"All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.

I saw small boys baited and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others. 
I was present more than once as Israeli troops drew out and shot Palestinian children in this way. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become "children caught in crossfire". 
I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became "a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory". 
I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes "the demolition of the homes of terrorists". 
I have stood in the remains of schools—Israel struck two United Nations schools in the last six days, causing at least 10 fatalities at one in Rafah on Sunday and at least 19 at one in the Jebaliya refugee camp Wednesday—as well as medical clinics and mosques. 
I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the attacked spots were being used as arms depots or launching sites. I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields.”
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use of the Big Lie—Große Lüge—the lie favored by tyrants from Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin to Saddam Hussein. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit—racism among its supporters and terror among its victims.
By painting a picture of an army that never attacks civilians, that indeed goes out of its way to protect them, the Big Lie says Israelis are civilized and humane, and their Palestinian opponents are inhuman monsters. 
The Big Lie serves the idea that the slaughter in Gaza is a clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and Islamic barbarism on the other. And in the uncommon cases when news of atrocities penetrates to the wider public, Israel blames the destruction and casualties on Hamas.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called this form of propaganda doublethink. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and “repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” 
The Big Lie does not allow for the nuances and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is a state-orchestrated response to the dilemma of cognitive dissonance. 
The Big Lie permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous. 
he Big Lie allows believers to take comfort—a comfort they are desperately seeking—in their own moral superiority at the very moment they have abrogated all morality.
The Big Lie, as the father of American public relations, Edward Bernays, wrote, is limited only by the propagandist’s capacity to fathom and harness the undercurrents of individual and mass psychology. And since most supporters of Israel do not have a desire to know the truth, a truth that would force them to examine their own racism and self-delusions about Zionist and Western moral superiority, like packs of famished dogs they lap up the lies fed to them by the Israeli government. 
The Big Lie always finds fertile soil in what Bernays called the “logic-proof compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All effective propaganda, Bernays wrote, targets and builds upon these irrational “psychological habits.”
This is the world Franz Kafka envisioned, a world where the irrational becomes rational. It is one where, as Gustave Le Bon noted in “The Crowd: A Study of the Public Mind,” those who supply the masses with the illusions they crave become their master, and “whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” This irrationality explains why the reaction of Israeli supporters to those who have the courage to speak the truth—Uri Avnery, Max Blumenthal, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Cook, Norman Finkelstein, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappé, Henry Siegman and Philip Weiss—is so rabid. That so many of these voices are Jewish, and therefore have more credibility than non-Jews who are among Israel’s cheerleaders, only ratchets up the level of hate.

But the Big Lie is also consciously designed to send a chilling message to Gaza’s Palestinians, who have lost large numbers of their dwellings, clinics, mosques, and power, water and sewage facilities, along with schools and hospitals, who have suffered some 1,650 deaths since this assault began—most of the victims women and children—and who have seen 400,000 people displaced from their homes. 

The Big Lie makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will continue to wage a campaign of state terror and will never admit its atrocities or its intentions. The vast disparity between what Israel says and what Israel does tells the Palestinians that there is no hope. Israel will do and say whatever it wants. International law, like the truth, will always be irrelevant. There will never, the Palestinians understand from the Big Lie, be an acknowledgement of reality by the Israeli leadership.

The Israel Defense Forces website is replete with this black propaganda. 

The Big Lie destroys any possibility of history and therefore any hope for a dialogue between antagonistic parties that can be grounded in truth and reality. While, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, the ancient and modern sophists sought to win an argument at the expense of the truth, those who wield the Big Lie “want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality.” The old sophists, she said, “destroyed the dignity of human thought.” Those who resort to the Big Lie “destroy the dignity of human action.” The result, Arendt warned, is that “history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility.” And when facts no longer matter, when there is no shared history grounded in the truth, when people foolishly believe their own lies, there can be no useful exchange of information. 

The Big Lie, used like a bludgeon by Israel, as perhaps it is designed to be, ultimately reduces all problems in the world to the brutish language of violence. And when oppressed people are addressed only through violence they will answer only through violence."

Chris Hedges. American international political journalist and author, Chris has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto. He currently teaches prisoners at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey.

Phil Monsour: Song for Gaza