Palestine Tet – 83 – Update from Arabic Media Sources.

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Reports of the growing mass hunger in Gaza – itself, according to the U.N Convention on Genocide – a form of genocide are being increasingly reported in the press worldwide. Mass hunger was a tactic used by the Nazis during the blockade, the siege of Leningrad which lasted 900 days. As with Gaza today, the Leningrad blockade by the Nazis included a massive bombing campaign with enforced starvation. Of a population of 3 million, 1.5 million Lenigraders (now St. Petersburg) died resisting. Like Gazans, they refused to leave their city and resisted up until death. Despite their efforts, the Nazis were unable to capture Leningrad, their simple existence in the city a form of resistance, sacrifice.

Here an extract from “The Book of the Blockade” by Alex Adamovich and Daniil Granin. p. 34. The selection compares Kurt Hamsen’s “Hunger” which deals with the stages of hunger on an individual with the weaponizing of hunger and starvation in war – the Nazis in Leningrad. The parallels between the Israeli blockade are striking:

“… the hunger of the blockade (of Leningrad), like that of the camps (Auschwitz and other crematoriums) was part of the arsenal of the principle weapons the fascists were using to carry out their plans to exterminate peoples, to depopulate whole countries”

“The psychological difference between mass, blockade hunger and Hamsun’s type (individual hunger) is fundamental. Although the author (Hamsun) writes of what he himself  knows very well, has himself experienced, he has not experienced mass hunger (my emphasis). Here the experience of a journalist’s memoir during wartime comes to mind. The journalist visited the frontline, came under heavy fire, facing death, like the soldiers themselves. The difference in their experiences (individual versus mass), in their comprehension of life at the front is nevertheless vast, even fundamental. The journalist came there, sat in a trench, knowing that he could walk away from it all. But the soldier knows that he cannot leave, he cannot walk away even if he wants to. 

That is the difference – a gigantic difference.

It is the same difference as exists between the hunger of Knut Hamsen’s hero and the hunger of beleaguered Leningraders. For the most blockaded Leningraders there was no place to which they could run from letha, unbearable hunger. It was all round the bullet-riddled, shell-pocked city pressing the whole of it to the gulf, to the lake. It held human beings in its iron grip.

A Book of the Blockade by Ales Adamovich and Daniel Granin. Raduga Publishers, Moscow: 1983. p.34.

So it is with Gaza today … the perpetrators of this genocide not German Nazis but Israeli Zionists.

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(Note: the article below is translated from the Arabic on-line media source – something of a clearning house of Arabic articles – Rai Al Youm – which I try to read daily. As my understanding of written Arabic is poor to non-existent [most unfortunately – consider it one of my major intellectual failings not have learned to read and speak Arabic] I put the articles into Google Translate which provides an immediate, if somewhat clumsy, translation. Clumsy perhaps, but the general sense comes through and as of today, none of these translations have proven to be “false news” or anything close. The difference between what Americans are reading about the Middle East, and how Middle Easterners view events in their region,  Could not be greater as the article below, essentially capsulized pieces of news indicates. Note how Arabic sources of all political orientations exist with Western sources like Bloomberg, Reuters. Link to original article in Arabic included. RJP)

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Rai el Youm – January 20, 2024

Gaza.. What are the leaders of the Guard and Hezbollah doing in Yemen? Egyptian media describes Cairo’s approval of Israel’s occupation of the Philadelphia axis as a “daily ritual”! The occupation “hopes” the Gazans will find its captives, and is the talk of establishing a Palestinian state “aimed at normalization”? The entity is stealing the skin of the Palestinians, and Biden is worried about the Arabs?!

Amman – “Opinion of the Day” – Khaled Al-Jayousi:
“Net favorability decreased by an average of 18.5 percentage points between September and December, and support declined in 42 of the 43 countries included in the study.” A new Morning Consult poll shows Israel’s loss of popularity globally, in favor of supporting the Palestinian narrative.

“Bloomberg”
According to informed sources: America and Britain are studying forms of military operations to obstruct Iran’s efforts to resupply and support the Ansar Allah movement.
“Tyrants must be careful about what they wish for.” British writer David Hirst says that the failure of Arab tyrants to resist the Israeli occupation may represent fuel for a coming explosion, pointing out that the hearts of the Arab peoples are boiling with anger. Because of what is happening in Gaza

Israeli newspaper Maariv:
The military arm of “Hamas” has an unlimited ability to strengthen its ranks with new people.
Turkish Galatasaray club player Khalil Darwish Oglu shows solidarity with Palestine with a gesture he made after scoring the fourth goal for his team against Ümraniyeşpor from a penalty kick in his team’s match in the Turkish Football Cup. Darwish posted the photo on his Instagram account accompanied by the following comment: “I did not celebrate, just “I expressed the face of the world.” He accompanied his post with an emoji of the Palestinian flag and preceded it with the word “Freedom.”

High-level Egyptian sources denied Israeli media reports that Egypt had agreed to an Israeli proposal that would allow Israel to control the Salah al-Din (Philadelphia) axis, between Gaza and Egypt, in exchange for involving the Palestinian Authority in the plan for the day after the war in Gaza. The sources said in statements reported by the “Cairo” channel. The Egyptian News Agency, through its official account on the “X” platform, said, “Such media lies have become a daily ritual aimed at diverting attention from Egypt’s declared positions on the necessity of immediately stopping this aggression.”

The Israeli army dropped thousands of paper leaflets on the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, containing pictures of Israeli detainees in the Strip, asking the city’s residents to contact it if they found any of them. Israeli planes dropped thousands of paper leaflets on the southern and eastern neighborhoods of the city of Rafah, and placed pictures in them. 68 Israeli detainees, with the words: “If you want to return to your home, please report if you see any of them,” including a contact phone number.

A broadcaster asked US President Joe Biden:
Are you concerned that Arabs will not vote for you in the elections because of your position on the war in Gaza? Biden replied: Trump wants to impose a ban on Arabs entering America. Let us make sure who cares about the Arab population first

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
The Arab League has become a burden on the nation, and our Palestinian people are counting on the free and proud Arab peoples.
“Israel itself said, for example, that they have the largest skin bank in the entire world.” British doctor Ranjit Brar confirms that there is conclusive evidence that the Israeli occupation army is stealing organs from Palestinian corpses in Gaza, or from prisoners.

Reuters:
According to sources: Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are in Yemen to direct Houthi attacks on ships, and Tehran intensified its arms supplies to them after the start of the Gaza war.

Mustafa Barghouti to Al Jazeera:
Talking about establishing a Palestinian state from America now may be a hypocritical game to mislead people and keep them busy with something that will not happen, and I fear that this will open the path of normalization with the Arab environment at the expense of the issue under the pretext that in the end there will be a state.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory:
said that it documented the killing by Israeli army forces of 94 Palestinian university professors, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, as part of the comprehensive crime of genocide it has launched on the Gaza Strip, since last October 7.

A report issued by UN Women:
stated that the number of displaced women and girls reached one million out of 1.9 million people who were forced to leave their places as a result of the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip for about 3 and a half months.

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