BRASIL
Far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro will be given the keys to Brazil's presidential palace on January 1.
The 63-year-old neofascist former army captain, who vanquished rival Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers' Party (PT) in a runoff vote on Sunday, has pledged to radically change my country... for the worst, that's for sure.
An outspoken advocate of Brazil's 1964 to 1985 military dictatorship, Bolsonaro's rise from a fringe Rio de Janeiro congressman to president-elect has stunned observers, many of whom until very recently had scoffed at his chances of winning Brazil's highest office.For years, he was best known for his offensive comments about LGBT people, women and minorities.
But amid widespread anger over corruption scandals, economic downturn and rising violence, Bolsonaro managed to position himself as the outsider candidate in an election defined by anti-establishment sentiment and the control of social media with fake news.
He had promised his Zionist sponsors he would move our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and he intends to keep his promise, he says.
Shamefully, Brazil would be the second major country to do so, after the USA. Bozo (as we call Bolsonaro after a famous Brazilian clown) is damaged goods, and dangerous. He is close to Trump and to Netanyahu, who will attend his buddy's inauguration ceremony in January. Donald Trump might join them.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, is a conman. And like all conmen, he knows his audience. He profitted from the diabolization of Lula's party PT by a Judge, Moro, who will be his Minister of Justice (!), and from mainstream media.
Actually, they are all on the same page: Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Saoudi Arabia Prince MBS, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, or their counterparts in Slovakia, Poland, and elsewhere in what Donald Rumsfeld famously called “the new Europe.” From his “bully pulpit,” the Trump persona is an inspiration for neo-fascists in “the old Europe” too and indeed throughout the world.
I say “persona” because I don’t think that temperamentally or ideologically Trump actually is, ideologically, a fascist like Bolsonaro. I say this not to his credit, but because I think that the American clown is too much a narcissist to be anything that other-regarding. He is a conman, and playing the fascist card is part of the con he is working. Part of the reason why his opposition is still relatively free is that getting rid of them would require a revolution — against a Constitution that, for all its shortcomings, enjoys nearly universal support in the US. I hope my fellow Brazilian citizens love ours as much and don't let Bolsonaro destroy it.I keep remembering that in Germany, in the midst of the great Depression, ruling elites and the politicians who served them, having survived a revolutionary uprising in the aftermath of their country’s defeat in World War I, were engulfed by similar fears that pushed people to vote for Bolsonaro.
Being less Constitutionally encumbered than Trump, they had the political means to fight back – and so, they empowered Adolph Hitler, the Nazi leader, to rule by decree. I'm afraid that fascism can happen in Brazil that way and in a worse shape, considering that opposite to fascists in general, Bolsonaro is not a nationalist.
Paradoxally, only Sérgio Moro's high ambitions to power would get on Bolsonaro's way to dictatorship (although not to the big matter of protecting our national patrimony). The Judge wants to become President after his accomplice and may defend our Constitution in order to ensure his chances to get to the Planalto Palace.
The difference between Brasil and the US is that American economic elites are fine with either duopoly party in power. Some prefer Republicans, of course, but they all know that Democrats are biddable too. In Brazil it is not the same.
In ruling circles in the United States today, there is neither any need nor any liking for the kind of thuggishness Trump inspires. There is nothing unusual in this; as a general rule, capitalists back fascist and fascist-like movements only when other more respectable options are unavailable. Even in the final days of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis were a last resort. This is a large part of the reason why Republican grandees were for anybody but Trump not long ago. In Brazil it was one Evangelical-Zionist branch that went for Bolsonaro with a lot of money to spend. And these fanatics's under the spell of the greedy Edir Macedo represent a real danger. This man and Brazilian selfish middle-upper class lack of principle and their many other human failings explain why they are content to let Bolsonaro have his way, no matter how vile his words and deeds are, as far as he serves their purpose to make money without constraints; Macedo wants to rise and dominate.
Brazil's situation is unstable. If Bolsonaro isn’t hobbled, the demons he has conjured into being or otherwise stirred up will grow and threaten us, maybe even him sooner than later.
There are three main reasons to worry about Bolsonaro: he is truly what he shows, he is unbalanced and he has a mean godfather, the Evangelical leader Edir Macedo. But so far, however, we, his opposition, are holding on – leftists, liberals, rank-and-file democrats, “purples,” intelectuals, artists, all of us are holding each other's hands against Bozo's threats and to protect Brazil's riches he wants to sell to American companies and for human rights.
The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump’s election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western “analysts” and “experts” are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.
Social media and fake news are certainly two main reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. But social media was not the only factor. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the “free press” – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry. But mainstream media also is to blame. And a lot.
Here is Simon Jenkins – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro: “The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes.”
This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian and Folha de São Paulo. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity’s id.
There is a kind of truth in Jenkins’ argument. Social media was manipulated in Britain's Brexit vote and Trump's and Bolsonaro's elections. Nevertheless, social media also liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they are not simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They are not only spoken down to by their betters, they can answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media class expects.
Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much to lose.
But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.
The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction; the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary austerity; and so on.
A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.
Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer far-right populists like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite’s power.
The true left – whether in Brazil, France, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US.
Former socialist leaders like Brazil’s Lula or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election.
Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.
The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence.
Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula and Dilma Roussef needed to overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his “reforms”. No one will stop him creaming off Brazil’s wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet’s Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism. May God save us from him some way.
If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro’s political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social democratic leader of Britain’s Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years – since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep someone like him from power.
The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.
Within days of Corbyn’s election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it refused to name, warning that the British army’s commanders had agreed they would sabotage a Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.
We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like Corbyn much earlier.
Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even treasonous.
But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success, the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right’s defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left’s Achille’s heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.
Why are Lula, Dilma and Haddad in Brazil and Corbyn in Britain so dangerous?
Because they support the right of workers to a dignified life, because they refuse to accept the might of the corporations, because they implys that a different way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme Haddad and Corbyn articulate, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.
The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep sabotaging the programmes of a Lula, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.
It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.
In a way, social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite’s enrichment requires their poverty. They have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against our well-being and against the planet, our only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.
In Brazil, the middle and upper classes voted for Bolsonaro thinking he would keep their privileges and the lower classes seeing him as a Messiah. Are they choosing wisely in electing a Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of the status quo are in no position to judge them. For years, all parts of the corporate media have helped to undermine Dilma Roussef's administration although she offered real solutions, that could have taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate and disillusioned public. In Brazil it was Folha de São Paulo, a "liberal" newspaper that played a crucial role on her impeachment, along with conservative mainstream media such as Globo and Estado de São Paulo. They are all regreting already. Mostly Folha de São Paulo.
Jenkins and some Brazilian journalists want to lecture PT about its bad actions and the masses about their depraved choices while they, their mates and their papers steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer society, who prioritises mending what is broken.
Understandably, the western elites belittle Brazilian voters and are decrying Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him. Bolsonaro is their monster.
A friend insisted that we should analyse the root of emergency of rulers like Bolsonaro. I thought about it and found an answer, which may not be the one he expected: Global Economy. I agree with Noam Chomsky when he says that Globalization has been designed to set working people throughout the world in competition with one another while private capital is lavished with benefits. In this system, democratic institutions are bound to erode. Because this has led to anger, bitterness, often desperation.
In this context come the far-right candidates with their "infalible" plans. The first one is to divide people by articulating that one segment of people are a cause of the misery of another segment of people. Mostly, these segments are divided on the basis of identity that can be rooted in different notions like that of color, wealth, race, gender, religion, etc.. This step is crucial in the agenda of far-right candidates because it afford public a physical object that they can make a scapegoat of. It takes the attention off the system itself and makes the recipient of whatever the system has to offer fight with each other blaming each other for the fallacies that should attributed only to the systemic structuring. In this whole process, those who designed the system or use it to serve their own interests escape easily. Therefore, it is important for the society to not focus on individuals like Trump or Bolsonaro because it limits the public discourse in terms of its scope and effectiveness. Rather, the discussion should shift to the systemic attributes that have led to people like these come to power in order to continue the status quo but under a different mask.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, returned to Hitler's old formula of lies and hatred, which are rather common in every country. These monsters can emerge anywhere because Capitalism is hurting badly. Beware.
Senador Roberto Requião destrincha Bozonaro em plenário
Nosso país encontra-se à deriva. À beira do naufrágio constitucional, se o Sérgio Moro cumprir sua agenda escondida. O cara é o rei da dissimulação. Tem de ganhar Oscar de interpretação. A mim, nunca enganou; pois sou bem informada e conheço o cara que o inspirou na Itália e sei no que deu sua suposta cruzada anti-corrupção e o que visava. O Moro aprendeu a lição direitinho e visava mais alto. Primeiro um super Ministério da Justiça, depois quem sabe o Supremo, depois a presidência da República após o/s mandato/s de seu padrinho. O narcisista inveterado percorreu um longo caminho em tempo só menos recorde do que o do desequilibrado que vai dirigir o Brasil a partir do dia 1° de janeiro de 2019 e já está tolhendo a liberdade de imprensa desde agora. Eis sua história.
Março de 2017. Em trânsito pelo aeroporto de Brasília, Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) tenta cumprimentar Sérgio Moro, estrela principal da Operação Lava Jato. Sua mão fica no ar. O deputado é ignorado pelo juiz, que explicou depois que não queria que imagens do momento fossem exploradas politicamente. Um ano e meio depois, a esnobada ficou para trás. É a vez de Moro se dirigir até a casa de Bolsonaro, não mais um mero deputado, mas o presidente eleito. Ao sair do encontro nesta quinta-feira (01/11), Moro também deixou de ser um juiz. É o novo ministro da Justiça e Segurança do futuro governo Bozonaro.
Ao aceitar o convite, Moro deve assumir um superministério, e não meramente a atual pasta esvaziada pelo governo Michel Temer. Além das atribuições da Justiça, ele terá sob seu guarda-chuva as estruturas dos atuais ministérios da Segurança Pública e da Transparência (antiga Controladoria-Geral da União) e o Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras (Coaf), que hoje faz parte da pasta da Fazenda. Ao comentar a decisão de Moro, Bolsonaro disse que o juiz aceitou o convite como "um jovem universitário recebendo um diploma, com muita vontade de realmente levar adiante a sua agenda".
Só ele e os bozonaristas m íopes não acham que seu comportamento é anti-ético. Aliás, ético, Moro nunca foi. Por que começaria a ser agora, quando tem a oportunidade que queria para subir na vida jogando o Brasil no lixo?
Aliados de Bozonaro afirmaram ao jornal Folha de S.Paulo que enxergam Moro como um potencial sucessor de Bolsonaro à Presidência em 2022 ou 2026. Como plano B, ainda há a possibilidade de usar a "promoção" para o ministério para habilitar Moro a uma indicação no Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), já que uma vaga deve ser aberta na Corte em 2020.
A intenção de Moro de assumir o ministério também já está alimentando ainda mais as polêmicas que passaram a envolver o juiz desde 2016, época em que sua atuação pessoal começou a ser alvo de questionamentos, e deu fôlego para os críticos que o acusam de agir de maneira política em processos. Após atuar em casos que revelaram uma imensa estrutura de corrupção na Petrobras que alimentava partidos e figuras destacadas da política, Moro também passou a se envolver diretamente em episódios como a divulgação dos grampos do ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, que acelerou a derrocada do governo Dilma Rousseff.
A uma semana do primeiro turno, Moro também ajudou a desgastar ainda mais a campanha petista ao retirar o sigilo da delação do ex-ministro Antônio Palocci, que implicou mais uma vez Lula. Era uma delação firmada pela Polícia Federal, a contragosto do Ministério Público, que considerou as provas apresentadas por Palocci como fracas. Para alimentar ainda mais a controvérsia, o vice de Bolsonaro, Hamilton Mourão, disse que a aproximação com Moro já havia começado durante a campanha. "Isso já faz tempo, durante a campanha foi feito um contato", afirmou.
Só quem ainda não entendeu que a cruzada de Moro é uma fraude total e que o Ministério é uma recompensa são os bozonaristas ignorante demais, apesar de estudados e endinheirados, ou os seguidores do pseudo-bispo Edir Macedo que só acreditam no que ouvem no templo das fake news.
Os outros brasileiros, que amam o Brasil acima de tudo e de todos os ogros que ameaçaml nossa liberdade e soberania, enxergam o que está na cara deles, pensam e têm bom-senso, sabem que esse trio Macedo&Bozo&Moro é perigosíssimo e só tem compromisso com eles mesmos. Estão prontos para sucatear nossos recursos naturais e nossa soberania aos gringos. Por que será?
À porta do local onde a entrevista iria se realizar, a coordenação da equipe de comunicação de Jair Bozonaro chamou uma dúzia de veículos que ali estavam, menos os jornais O Globo, Folha de S Paulo e O Estado de S. Paulo. O constrangimento entre os profissionais foi tanto que na coletiva um deles pergunta o porquê da exclusão sem justificativa.
Diante da questão, Bozonaro anunciou o que será o seu relacionamento com esse veículos. Ele disse "não saber" sobre os critérios, que não foi ele "quem fez a triagem".
Não é trivial para esses veículos saberem que o presidente eleito lhes dedica profundo e inédito desprezo. A relação entre governo e imprensa nunca foi fácil, mas sempre foi respeitosa e republicana.
A aposta reincidente em apostar no "tudo, menos o PT" se mostrou uma catástrofe também para a imprensa tradicional. Mas, parece que eles ainda terão um imenso caminho pela frente até entenderem isso.
PALESTINA
A top Palestinian body the PCC - The Palestinian Central Council - authorised the PLO - Palestine Liberation Organization to suspend recognition of Israel and stop security coordination with Tel Aviv.
The suspensions should be in place until Israel recognises the Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.
Following a two-day meeting in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the council said the PLO and Palestinian Authority will also end security coordination and suspend economic agreements as set out under the 1994 Paris Economic Protocol. It also decided to revoke the validity of the Oslo Accords.
The council said the decision was made "in light of Israel's continued denial of the signed agreements".
The decision must be approved by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO Executive Council.
Speaking on Sunday, Abbas again vowed to block any peace plan led by US President Donald Trump.
Abbas compared the expected Trump peace plan to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which saw the British government commit to the creation of a state for Jews in historic Palestine.
"If the Balfour Declaration is passed, this deal will not pass," he said.
In December, Trump decided to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jérusalem.
Breaking with decades of US policy that favoured a two-state solution, Trump's declaration dealt a blow to the Palestinian leadership, which for more than two decades has unsuccessfully attempted to establish a state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Their calls for Israeli authorities to lift their 11-year illegal blockade on Gaza and to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their villages and towns have not been met.
According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, since the start of the protests, over 150 Palestinians have been killed in the demonstrations. At least 10,000 others have been injured, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition. According to Israeli media, one soldier was moderately injured due to shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a Palestinian from inside Gaza and one Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian sniper fire near the fence that separates Gaza and Israel outside of the context of the protests.
WHY ARE PALESTINIANS DEMONSTRATING?
This year has marked 11 years since Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip. The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), among others, have characterized Israel’s closure policy as “collective punishment” and called for Israel to lift its closure. Under Israel’s illegal blockade, movement of people and goods is severely restricted and the majority of exports and imports of raw materials have been banned. Travel through the Erez Crossing, Gaza’s passenger crossing to Israel, the West Bank, and the outside world, is limited to what the Israeli military calls “exceptional humanitarian cases”, meaning mainly those with significant health issues and their companions, and prominent businesspeople. Meanwhile, since 2013, Egypt has imposed tight restrictions on the Rafah crossing, keeping it closed most of this time.
Over the last 11 years, civilians in the Gaza Strip, 70% of whom are registered refugees from areas that now constitute Israel, have suffered the devastating consequences of Israel’s illegal blockade in addition to three wars that have also taken a heavy toll on essential infrastructure and further debilitated Gaza’s health system and economy. As a result, Gaza’s economy has sharply declined, leaving its population almost entirely dependent on international aid. Gaza now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world at 44%. Four years after the 2014 conflict, some 22,000 people remain internally displaced, and thousands suffer from significant health problems that require urgent medical treatment outside of the Gaza Strip. However, Israel often denies or delays issuing permits to those seeking vital medical care outside Gaza, while hospitals inside the Strip lack adequate resources and face chronic shortages of fuel, electricity and medical supplies caused mainly by Israel’s illegal blockade.
The protests were launched to demand the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns in what is now Israel, and to call for an end to Israel’s blockade. They culminated on 14 May, on the day of the US embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians commemorate the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands in 1948-9 during the conflict following the creation of the state of Israel. On that day alone, Israeli forces killed 59 Palestinians, in a horrifying example of use of excessive force and live ammunition against protesters who did not pose an imminent threat to life.
The organizers of the “Great March of Return” have repeatedly stated that the protests are intended to be peaceful, and they have largely involved demonstrators protesting near the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel. Despite this, the Israeli army reinforced its forces – deploying tanks, military vehicles and soldiers, including snipers, along the Gaza/Israel fence – and gave orders to shoot anyone within several hundred metres of the fence.
While some protesters have engaged in some forms of violence including by burning tyres, flying incendiary kites or throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in the direction of Israeli soldiers, social media videos, as well as eyewitness testimonies gathered by Amnesty International, Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups show that Israeli soldiers shot unarmed protesters, bystanders, journalists and medical staff approximately 150-400m from the fence, where they did not pose any threat.
Nature of injuries
The devastating toll on civilian lives in Gaza should not be measured solely by the number of Palestinians killed, but also by the number of injuries. Doctors in Gaza have told Amnesty International that many of the serious injuries they have witnessed are to the lower limbs, including the knees, which are typical of war wounds that they have not observed since the 2014 Gaza conflict. Many have suffered extreme bone and tissue damage, as well as large exit wounds measuring between 10 and 15mm, and will likely face further complications, infections and some form of physical disability, such as paralysis or amputation. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, during the six months of demonstrations at least 76 Palestinian demonstrators have had their lower or upper limbs amputated. Reports of the high number of injuries to the knees, which increase the probability of bullet fragmentation, are particularly disturbing. If true, they would suggest that the Israeli army is intentionally intending to inflict life-changing injuries.
According to military experts as well as a forensic pathologist who reviewed photographs of injuries obtained by Amnesty International, many of the wounds observed by doctors in Gaza are consistent with those caused by high-velocity Israeli-manufactured Tavor rifles using 5.56mm military ammunition. Other wounds bear the hallmarks of US-manufactured M24 Remington sniper rifles shooting 7.62mm hunting ammunition, which expand and mushroom inside the body.
The nature of these injuries shows that Israeli soldiers are using high-velocity military weapons designed to cause maximum harm to Palestinian protesters who do not pose an imminent threat to them. These apparently deliberate attempts to kill and maim are deeply disturbing, not to mention completely illegal. Some of these cases appear to amount to wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.
Paramedics
Three medical workers have been shot and killed while working during the demonstrations. At least 115 paramedics and medical workers have been injured by live ammunition or tear gas inhalation.
On 1 June, 21-year-old Razan al-Najjar, Palestinian paramedic, was shot in the chest and killed by Israeli sniper fire while providing first aid to injured protesters at the Gaza/Israel fence east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Razan was wearing her white coat, clearly identifiable as a medic.
On 10 August, Israeli forces fired live ammunition towards the protesters east of Rafah, fatally injuring a volunteer paramedic Abdallah Sabri al-Qatati, 22, who was shot in the back while he was about 100m away from the fence, and was pronounced dead in hospital less than an hour after being shot.
Children
According to local Palestinian human rights organizations in Gaza, at least 31 children have been killed while protesting during the six months of demonstrations.
Several videos posted on social media have shown unarmed protesters – men, women and children – being shot by the Israeli army. In some cases, people were shot while waving the Palestinian flag or running away from the fence. For example, video footage widely circulated on social media showed Ahmed Masabah Abu Tuyur, aged 16, being shot on 7 September as he was waving his hands at a great distance from the Gaza/Israel fence, east of Rafah. He was shot in the chest and died. On Friday 14 September, 12-year-old Shadi Abdul Aal was also killed by a gunshot wound to in the head.
On Friday 28 September, Mohamed Naiyf al-Houm, 14, was shot and killed by Israeli live ammunition, which struck him from behind in the abdomen, east of al-Boreij refugee camp while attending the 27th “Great March of Return” demonstration.
On the same day, Nasser Azmi Mosbeh, 12, was shot in the head and killed by Israeli live ammunition in eastern Khan Younis. He was immediately taken to the European Gaza Hospital where he was pronounced dead an hour later. Nasser had been attending the “Great March of Return” demonstrations since they started on 30 March. Both of his sisters are volunteer paramedics in Khan Younis and were colleagues of Razan al-Najjar.
Amnesty International spoke to Nasser’s mother, who said, “I wish I could grieve but I’ll forever know Nasser was killed unjustly. There needs to be accountability. If not, who will stop the killing of other children? How can this stop?
Women
One woman has been killed and at least 424 have sustained injuries from live ammunition and tear gas inhalation since 30 March.
Asmaa Abu Daqqa, 24, a Palestinian mother of three, was injured by live ammunition by Israeli forces when she approached the Gaza/Israel fence near Khan Younis to help a young girl during the “Great March of Return” protest on 14 May. The bullet that injured Asmaa entered and exited her right leg, which caused multiple fractures and damaged the blood vessels as well.
Journalists
Two journalists have been shot dead, despite both wearing protective vests that clearly identified them as members of the press, while at least 115 others have been injured during the six months of démonstrations.
In one case documented by Amnesty International, 20-year-old journalist Yousef al-Kronz was shot by an Israeli sniper bullet that penetrated both of his legs while he was covering the demonstrations east of al-Boreij refugee camp. Yousef had his left leg amputated after Israeli authorities denied him permission to travel to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank for urgent medical treatment. He was eventually allowed to leave for an operation to save his other leg following legal intervention by human rights groups."
#StopTheWar is a hashtag coming from many activists in #Gaza who urge the international community to hinder Israel’s attempts to launch another large-scale aggression against the occupied, blockaded, unlivable, and exhausted Gaza Strip. #GazaUnderAttack.
The people of Gaza have been subjected to decades of expulsion, occupation, siege and massacre. They have now seized control of their Fate. They are risking life and limb as they protest nonviolently to reclaim their basic rights. It takes just one minute to send a video showing your support for Gaza in its moment of truth. Do it now! Send your videos to METOOGAZA.COM.
Renowned scientists urge cientific Community to consider the facts before engaging in activities with Israeli colonial-based Ariel University, and not engage any attemps to use science to normalise Israel(s occupation of the Palestinian territory. Check it out here.
Hagai El-Ad, BT'selem Executive Director Hagai El-Ad addressed the United Nations Security Council at the quarterly session scheduled in accordance with Resolution 2334
BRASIL
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