what has been happening lately..... not to mention over the past 17 years or so is a 280 degree Dark turn from our reaction to Sharpeville 58 years ago!!!

I am glad that you brought up Sharpeville in this piece, because that is what crossed my mind too.

and now we have to add marikana.

Very very strong, Andre.

"Fifty-eight years ago, on March 21, 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, in which forces of the apartheid regime shot dead 69 unarmed demonstrators, was met with international outrage and revulsion."

Thirty some years ago 100,000 Israelis protested Sharon over Sabra, Shatila; during current slaughters, as many gathered (same place!) to chicken dance w Euro Songs winner.

Thirty years ago, news that someone connected to the president hired a quasi-private (Israeli) intelligence firm to dig up dirt on a past president's staff members to derail an international arms control treaty .... it would have made more than one news cycle. Now it barely makes that -- the NYT waited three days from story breaking to report on it, waiting to see if they'd have to at all.

"After all, if Israel’s actions are justified, would not US forces deployed on the Mexican border be justified in opening fire on refugees walking toward US territory? Would the European border police not be justified in sinking boats of migrants fleeing to Europe?"

Yes! Exactly. Brilliant insight.

{May 14, 2018, the day the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out the systematic massacre of over 60 unarmed men, women, and children, will live in infamy. For hours on end, Israeli forces fired thousands of rounds of live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, injuring more than 3,000 people and killing eight children, the youngest of whom was just eight months old.}

this lead is without attribution, is not supported by any evidence, and is a pack of lies. as to the eight month old child, a gazan doctor said she had a pre-existing condition, and did not succumb to the tear gas, that it was alleged by the hamas health ministry she had died from. what normal person would, in any case, take a child, much less an infant, to a violent riot?

{As Palestinians buried their dead Tuesday . . .}

and how many videos of the funerals have been produced and seen? one or two? cbs reported two, and although without visual accompaniment, the report appeared credible.

{Over that period, some 109 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli sharpshooters, who have been filmed cheering at every headshot.}

oh really? filmed? then you must have the urls. may your readership be informed where to find them?

{worthy of the Nazis . . . the open language of genocide.}

{Both the language and actions of Tel Aviv give the distinct impression that large sections of the Israeli state and military would not hesitate to implement, in the language of the 1930s, a "final solution" to the Palestinian question.}

{. . . the shameless and blatant lying that characterized international relations in the Nazi period. . .}

the nazi comparisons are flying thick & fast. as for "shameless and blatant lying", the pot calls the kettle black.

{. . .the mowing down of unarmed Palestinian civilians . . .}

a shameless & blatant lie.

{The mass murder of unarmed Palestinians . . .}

another lying trope or refrain or mantra.

{After all, if Israel’s actions are justified, would not US forces deployed on the Mexican border be justified in opening fire on refugees walking toward US territory?}

is that what the gazans were doing: just "walking toward" the border? all those videos of burning tires, black smoke thick as a san francisco fog bank, rocks hurled by sling, were created on a hollywood back lot with extras playing the roles of the palestinians? and the kites with tails of burning fuel landing on fields of israeli wheat and starting some serious-looking fires - cgi tricks from the hollywood fantasy factory?

{. . . the mass murder of unarmed civilians . . .}

the following credible news sources tell a different story:

https://www.timesofisrael.c...

https://www.timesofisrael.c...

There's apparently been several thousand palestinians injured by the israeli army and over a hundred killed in the last few months and only one israeli injured, I don't really think it looks like this massacre was in anyway necessary for defense. The israeli army are responsible for that regardless of if there were people there that shouldn't have taken their children there. Doctors were also shot at and either killed or injured.

Also it is israel that took palestinian land and had palestinians turfed out their homes not vice versa, and it's them that are making life impossible for them today.

Dialektikos, I'm returning a favor that you have done me a couple of times recently with your inflammatory replies. You are clearly a fascistic, zionist war monger. How much is the Israeli government paying you for your ridiculous remarks? Your logic falls apart within the first couple of lines of each one of your replies. Pure hasbara tactics from the zionist propaganda handbook: ignore the evidence and turn reality on its head, question the facts, ignore history, offense is defense, etc. Everyone on this site is wise to this pro-war propaganda. So run along now and join your IDF mates so you can run a book on what the best head shot into a Palestinian child has been to date and how much of their cranium was left afterwards. You make me and most of rest of the world sick. Working people will not put up with the Israeli state's antics for much longer, then your precious "homeland" really will be wiped off the map, at least as far as the zionist ruling elite are concerned.

And it never occurs to them: what other country does this -- has to do this? What does it say about who we are?? Who would want to confront that?

Of all the things that define Israel so precisely, perhaps nothing more than the fact Israel was the only country not welcome at Nelson Mandela's funeral. Even the dead hate Israelis.

the smoke gets in the way of the snipers (i.e. assassins). you'd be burning tires too if people were shooting at you.

dialektikos is a guy who is so determined to justify Israel's actions, that he is now resorting to talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he insists that a lack of films and videos casts doubt on the many news stories that have been reported, even in the mainstream media. On the other hand, burning tires (a defensive tactic) and slingshots demonstrate how bad the Palestinians really are.

In other words, regarding the massacre, he is saying both: "It didn't happen" and also "it happened, but it's justified".

{burning tires (a defensive tactic)}

a defense against what? getting shot for peacefully marching around in a circle or back & forth? you think the israelis care if people want to PEACEFULLY protest? they're charging the fence with rocks, molotov cocktails, and some with guns blazing, according to reports from the israeli side, which of course you do not accept, because the israelis are liars and the palestinians are truth tellers.

{he is saying both: "It didn't happen" and also "it happened, but it's justified".}

let's keep it straight now. a massacre is amritsar. a massacre is baby yar. this is not a massacre in that sense, which is the sense this lying propaganda is trying to make out that it is.

First, I would like to address the Israeli sniper cheering at shooting civilians: https://www.facebook.com/Mi...
"Wow! What a video!" can be heard, either from the sniper or a member of his spotter team.

The video can also be found from other sources, by a google search of 'israeli soldier praised for shooting protesters in video footage'. You do not need to take us at our word, and are free to do your own research, but I would recommend that you actually do it before implying that the WSWS has lied.

You quote the entirety of the first paragraph of Andre Damon's report, and say it "is not supported by any evidence". Even Times of Israel, in the first article you post, admits that more than 60 people were killed by the Israeli army. Further on, they attest "more than 2,700" injured. A baby did die, as Times of Israel acknowledges, though it is true that an anonymous doctor has said the child had a heart condition - which the family acknowledges, though they also claim that tear gas was a contributing factor.(http://www.latimes.com/worl... The question becomes, where is the lie? The facts from your own source support the entire paragraph.

You say "the following credible news sources", then list "Times of Israel". Are you suggesting that we should trust a mouthpiece for the Israeli ruling elite? To say the least, anything they say cannot be taken at face value. To expect them to print honestly about the crimes of their own class is like expecting The New York Times to write a vicious expose of the crimes of Gina Haspel as a CIA torturer.

On this same question, you say that these sources "tell a different story". In a way, they do. They focus on the claim that many of these people were members of Hamas, which perhaps is true. However, the article only attempts to put guns in the hands of 8 of 62. Even then, we come upon a fundamental difference: do we trust the Israeli army at its word? You seem to. The World Socialist Web Site does not, in the same way we do not take any military at its word. If it is true, then what about the 54 unarmed people? Their killings can best be described, in English, as 'mowing down', and 'mass murder', terms you claim are somehow dishonest.

Most of your other critiques are bound up in the same issues, the demonstrably false claim that Andre Damon has lied, contradicted first and foremost by your own sources. As for your demand for proof that more than 2 funerals have occurred - if your own source confirms the death toll, showing that the deaths were not faked, what difference does that make? As funerals are taking place, the phrase "As Palestinians buried their dead Tuesday..." is completely accurate.

Your criticism does not seem to be based in the facts. The Times of Israel presents the facts, which you conveniently ignore, followed a long rant about how they are all terrorists, which you parrot without question. Your own research has confirmed most of the "lies" as facts, and a few quick Google searches confirm the rest. It appears that you would disagree with the analysis of the facts presented here, which is the opposite of Times of Israel. If that is true, then I and other party members are happy to discuss those disagreements.

don't waste your time on dialektikos. I already gave him (I'll use that pronoun) a link to that video of the sniper shooting a Palestinian youth and then laughing about it. He said he couldn't view it, so I found him another one, thinking he might be sincere. He just ignored it. His "wanting evidence" is just an affectation.

I will admit that when I first submitted the comment, no one had replied (mine was detected as spam at first). It was also not quite as obvious that dialektikos is an anti-Muslim racist. The blatant lies in his original post do for sure point to him being an agent for some government, probably Israel.

However, for someone reading the WSWS for the first time, it is important that we point out exactly how we can make that analysis. This requires a detailed exposure of the lies, and the class interests which underlie them.

Also, dialektikos is on the front lines for falsifying history. I would argue that we never waste our time when we set the record straight, especially when the mainstream media is so dead-set on justifying Israel. Dialektikos' comment is one of the more crude attempts at this, but the exposure of this can at least serve as an important lesson to newer readers.

To Ivan Ivanovich, I say we let him. The more lies he is caught in, and the more he is driven to spew his racist, anti-Muslim propaganda, the more clearly we expose him as an agent of Israel. While this is clear to many of us long-time readers immediately, I maintain that it is important for perhaps less experienced readers to see how we draw that conclusion.

To conclude, I don't believe I have wasted any of my time.

"I would argue that we never waste our time when we set the record straight, especially when the mainstream media is so dead-set on justifying Israel. Dialektikos' comment is one of the more crude attempts at this, but the exposure of this can at least serve as an important lesson to newer readers."

I agree totally. The only wasted effort would be to seek to educate dialektikos, on the assumption that his questioning is genuine. Nor should we let him hijack the discussion, which is what Ivan Ivanovich is getting at, I think. Probably Ivan and I had already sized him up from his previous posts, which you had not seen.

I'm w Ivan. Ignore dialektikos. It feeds his evil, and he probably gets paid per response.

He just uses our replies to spew more of the immoral Israeli propaganda.

This is utter nonsense written by a morally depraved person. You should be ashamed.

maybe you can say what it is you have seen that supports the monumental claims of hamas. are the israelis not defending the border? borders exist for a reason. what do you think would happen if the mob was allowed into israel? are they not trying to violently enter israel? use your imagination, now. what do you think would happen?

Gaza is a prison. This is not a metaphor; it is the literal truth. For the Gazans, there is no way in and no way out. It is simply not permitted, by both Israel and Egypt. The borders are sealed on both sides. This alone makes Gazans different from most refugees throughout the world, who at least can try to go somewhere.

When Gazans even walk towards the bars of their jail – the borders, arbitrarily imposed by Israel – they get shot at and mowed down by the Israeli army. So then they get violent – some of them – and take up slingshots and flaming projectiles. Hardly a match for the IDF. They seek their freedom, and many are willing to die for it. The alternative is for them to stagnate forever in the world’s largest and longest-running open-air prison, while Israel tightens the screws as they please.

If “the mob” were to enter Israel, this is what I think would happen: the Gazans would be in an immense celebratory mood, and would be overcome with joy at their good fortune – release from prison – and the prospects of a new life as normal human beings. They would most likely put down their crummy weapons and start singing and dancing in the streets, just as militant, fundamentalist Israeli settlers have been known to do (videos exist). It would mark the beginning of the possibility for overcoming the hatred, the warfare, the misery and fear, which have tormented the populations of both Israel and the territories for the past 50 years.

the times of israel?? You're citing that as a credible news source? You're a massacre-denier and nobody need take you seriously.

You're going to have to try a lot harder than you have been doing so far mate. Your paymasters in Tel-Aviv won't be paying you much for that puny effort - you massacre-denier

Run along now

"This is a newspaper that has justified war after war on the grounds that civilians either were, or might be, in danger. What has happened to the principle, used to justify countless regime-change operations, bombings and wars, of the “responsibility to protect” civilian life?"

The above question is a prelude to the demonstration of the principle spelled out by Friedrich Engels and key to understanding how ideas such as justice, rights and morality etc., are for the petty bourgeoisie not anchored to any absolute but are relative to and change (in a shift to the right) with the bourgeoisie's material circumstances--primarily increasing inequality and imperialism.

"Israel forms the linchpin of the US-led offensive against Iran, and, as Haley argued, the defense of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza is inseparable from countering Iran’s “destabilizing presence” in the region."

Moral outrage, justice, rights etc. (subjective consciousness) are for the petty bourgeoisie deployed only in the service of the interests of the ruling elite.

"For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry, the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute." -comment by David North in: The suicide of Jill Messick: #MeToo campaign claims a victim

As for those with a working class perspective, material reality proves what we think and feel. That is, economic reality puts the ideas of moral outrage, justice, rights etc. into proper context:

"Marxists have always seen in foreign policy the concentrated expression of domestic class relations. The mass murder of unarmed Palestinians today will become the mass murder of striking American workers tomorrow."

It's social being determining consciousness.

" Both the language and actions of Tel Aviv give the distinct impression that large sections of the Israeli state and military would not hesitate to implement, in the language of the 1930s, a “final solution” to the Palestinian question."
This has been building up for decades. Without exaggeration, turn the radio channels at random and you will -all too frequently - hear some professional Zionist or passionate " friend of Israel " cogitating on the right imperialist war strategy for World War III or condemning even restrained criticism of Israel as deplorable " anti-Semitism ". And they sound all puffed up with arrogance and a feeling of superiority. As if they now want in on " white supremacy ".
I keep wanting to hear from courageous anti-Zionist Jews but I have been disappointed.
After World War II the famous scientist Albert Einstein - a socialist who believed in Spinoza's God- mentally traumatized by the Holocaust- condemned the German people as a whole for the Nazi-Hitler nightmare. Here, of course, he was wrong. The German working class and German socialists and communists were the very first victims of the Nazi regime.
Intellectual Jews in Israel are not fleeing from persecution in the United States or Europe. They are still free to speak out against Zionist fascism. A good conscience is worth much more than a false ,earthly paradise.

"I keep wanting to hear from courageous anti-Zionist Jews but I have been disappointed." Try these links:

http://www.jewishvoiceforla...

http://www.jewishvoiceforla...

Try Googling Max Blumenthal's comments on the current atrocity in Gaza. His book, "Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel", Nation Books (2013), is one of the best descriptions of the contemporary Israeli apartheid state. You might also peruse the works and lectures of Norman Finkelstein, a dauntless champion of the Palestinian cause.

Thank you for the information on a real life anti-Zionist. I will check this out . There is one great quote by Professor Howard Zinn on Zionism which I will post later.
Here it is :
: " I think the Jewish state was a mistake, yes it was probably the worst thing that the Jews could have done. What they did was join the nationalist frenzy, they became privy to all the evils that nationalism creates.
Jews were known as kindly, talented people. Now Israel is contributing to anti-Semitism " . [Howard Zinn, Jewish American historian ]

Viva Zinn!

{I keep wanting to hear from courageous anti-Zionist Jews but I have been disappointed.}

guess you missed the meeting that some of the guys from neturei karta had with erdogan in his london hotel room. they're about as anti-zionist as it gets, at least among jews. ultra religious. just your type. there are a couple of photos. sorry, don't have the url off-hand. but they're the real deal, alright.

{Albert Einstein . . . condemned the German people as a whole for the Nazi-Hitler nightmare.}

would be interested in that citation, if you can provide it. you may be thinking of ben hecht. would be surprised if einstein felt that way.

Thank you for the information. There are numerous sources telling about Einstein's attitude toward Germans and Germany after the war.
I have by me a biography of Albert Einstein authored by Walter Isaacson. The chapter titled
" One -Worlder", page 505 : " The Germans ,as a whole nation, are responsible for these mass killings and should be punished as a people "
This from a humanitarian socialist ! Of course, no humanitarian would condemn the great Einstein for his bitterness.
What was true for the Germans is not irrelevant to the fanatics of Zionism today.
Neither the Jews of Israel nor the oppressed Palestinians can wait for some miracle of global socialism to bring peace to the Middle East.
Can't the Jews of Israel and the Palestinians - without losing their precious cultural heritage - be united under one SECULAR , democratic state with no pariah class ?
Does any healthy young Jew or Palestinian choose to die for a huge hill heaping of long- dead people's bones ?

massacre-denier

Yes. holocaust-denier, massacre-denier, no diffference.

dialektikos the Zionist is a liar, there are some(!) anti-Zionist Jews like Ilan Pappe, but Zionists do anything to silence them.
Of course, Neturei Karta are not only religious Jews who are anti-Zionist too. They do not want to be colonizers in Palestine, unlike Zionist religious Jews, who want and do it. I bet dialektikos the Zionist admire "Yaadut ve tora" or "Shas" colonizers of Palestine.

An excellent article by Finian Cunningham on this vile atrocity is titled, "US Embassy Baptized in Blood". Exactly.

Interesting. We have a chemical gas attack in Syria, blamed on the government but carried out by terrorists, and howls of outrage by the US administration.(And missiles launched in retaliation.) Then Israel kills women, children and men killed and they're "defending" their land. No hows except from those that knows what's really going on. What hypocrisy!! The ruling class's will kill those that threaten their ill gotten gains. They could care less that citizens die for their relentless pursuit of resources regardless of what they are. i.e. Oil, land, minerals, etc.

Engels timeless truth that “morality has always been class morality” needs to be repeated- everyone here needs to be uttering that phrase in their everyday conversations so that it becomes part of the general lexicon.

The criminal state of Israel is only "protecting" what it has "rightfully" stolen- in the mode of it's protector Uncle Same who also has every "right"- no I deem it an obligation- to protect itself from those savages at the border who rattle the fences seeking to reclaim their stolen goods. This is what the"chosen people" must do- and it's no coincidence that these "most exceptional" of peoples have the most blood on their hands.

The disgust at the silence and/or complicity of the international community is beyond words.

Read "The Invention of the Jewish People" by Shlomo Sand on the subject of " the Chosen".

“Morality has always been class morality.”

Morality is "situation specific" and is invoked by the ruling class as a guise to justify militarism and to eliminate dissent. That's why the mainstream media news works with the intelligence agencies to carefully phrase each paragraph regarding the massacre in Gaza. State-run media outlets give the impression that unarmed children were a threat to the well-armed Israeli Defense Forces.

At the UN Security Council Meeting on Tuesday ignorant Nikki Haley couldn't say that the killing in Gaza was immoral, but changed the subject to give the impression that the murders were all justified. This is the same Nikki Haley who was outraged by the false flag gas attack in Douma, and said that Assad was a Brutal dictator who needed to be removed. However, Haley was not horrified by the 58 Palestinians (mostly children) who were shot dead by Israeli Gunfire, and the 1,113 who were wounded.

Israel, has become nothing more than another military base for the US in the Middle East. That is why Israel can possess more than 300 nuclear weapons. Israel's geostrategic significance is useful for the Western Imperialists who are intent on achieving unilateral hegemony. Israel and Saudi Arabia are more than willing to conduct proxy wars all supported by US arms manufacturers, private contractors, mercenary
forces, and paid terrorists.

So when Avi Dichter, a chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Knesset says: "The IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] has enough bullets for everyone" he's merely expressing what's in the hearts and minds of all Western imperialists he's conveying their true "morality." A morality which condones genocide and the elimination of all inconvenient indigenous populations.

NH is an embarrassment to the US commons. Our foreign policies congruent with those of the Zionists is also an embarrassment and high danger to the common US folk. But, most wander about in their hi tech haze and dream of things that aren't part of the real world. It's always good to remind the readers that 99.9% of the US commons are totally ignorant of their own country's role in the more than 100 year brutal theft of the lands of Palestine by the Zionists.

Just a day after this heinous Zionist massacre of innocent Palestinian people in the borders of Gaza the self moralist western bourgeois press are now saying Israel has the right to defend it's borders. What this means is that in the event of working class revolt in America or elsewhere the ruling classes have every right to suppress it by any means possible. So the imperialist logic is still the same whichever one looks at it.

Supremely written Andre. You have encapsulated and revealed the essence of this whole deeply tragic and troubling affair.

What you have written here needs to be circulated as widely as possible .

It is nothing less than an omen on the future ....

Actually, it is precisely massacres like this that opens the floodgates of hell on the oppressor, historically. There was Sharpeville, of course dooming Apartheid, and the 1905 massacre in St,Petersburg bringing the Soviet to birth and an armed working class ruling a city. You can catch on YouTube what I witnessed with my own eyes at the age of 10 in Budapest in 1956. There was a march of students holding up the signs of various universities and technical colleges. They were carrying demands written by the leftist Petofi Club under the political coward, mediocre philosopher and immortal literary critic, George Lukacs.

The YouTube will have a clip of the crowd fired upon. A woman emerges waving a white flag with some ambulance people running after her to pick up the wounded. I saw heroism like that daily.

Then there is a scene of the Hungarian Army hands over weapons, Soviet tanks get caught up in the narrow streets of the Old Jewish district outside my window (that's how you blow up a tank with a Molotov cocktail, in case you were wondering). That led to a reformist section of the Communist Party with Social Democrats running the government under Imre Nagy ( (sort of). On the streets, there was wonderful self-organization under the armed workers of the Workers Council ( to be sure, fascist elements beginning to emerge) .Poetry recited on street corners, intense political debate, various newspapers of political parties. Workers armed rule- lasted some weeks too.

Just one more. Back in the late Seventies, I was involved with recruiting what came to be called International Students. It was the beginning of that market. In any event, I was in Tehran between the time the Shah fled and the bearded ones took over, unexpectedly I thought then, and think still. The people came out on the street dressed in white shrouds and were shot, shot, and shot again. Then the Shah fled to Panama, and a government was cobbled together under a guy called Bazargan. The same scene, intense political debate, a joyful city under the armed rule of workers whose general strike overthrew the Shah.

The massacre is the last nail in the coffin of illegitimate regimes.

Great article! I especially agree with the last part about the implications of justifying the Israeli governments actions. Avi Dichters statement is beyond repulsive, it's hard to find words.

These Zionist crimes proved to be too much even for Prof Bomb Libya Cole who always whitewashs Zionism. He even posted an article with some(!) truth about it.
But, of course, NOT a word demanding sanctions or boycott! (Not mentioning bombing which Prof Bomb Libya Cole had demanded to "save civilians" in Libya)

In Russian social media Russian-language colonizers of Palestine and their supporters:
1) openly brag of mass-murdering unarmed Palestinians
2) lie that Palestinians were armed and dangerous for Zionist occupation army enforcing the ghetto Gaza
3) compare crimes of Zionist colonizers against colonized people with police dispersing against unlawful demonstration -esp Ukrainian Nazis in Kiev during "Maidan"
Of course, there some English-speaking Zionists are doing 2 and 3 too.

IDF - is a Zionist spin for the colonial occuation Zionist army. There is nothing "defensive" in it.

Rogue states with predatory, authoritarian governments are fond of using anodyne, sanitized euphemisms for their organs of wanton death and destruction, e.g. referring to the death and destruction of innocents during their military operations as "collateral damage". These rhetorical glosses are like individual tiles in a vast mosaic mural of Big Lies.

In 1949, the US government "rebranded" the Department of War as the "Department of Defense". See the pattern?

Of course, one doesn't expect the perpetually and wickedly mendacious government of Israel to proudly call their glorified death squads the "Israeli Genocide Forces". Or perhaps I should say that in the past, one wouldn't expect such truth in advertising.

Given the Western/Wahabi/Zionist Axis's increasing, shamelessly bloodthirsty hubris, it might just adopt that title, and dare the rest of the world and its pro forma "international law" to do something about it.

Anti-Zionists often call them IOF - O for occupation.