Antiwar.com Blog

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby advised Gazans Tuesday that their destruction and ethnic cleansing will continue relentlessly. “This is war. It is combat. It is bloody, ugly and it’s going to be messy and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”

No spokesman Kirby, not just hurt. Innocent civilians in Gaza are dying every day, every hour, every minute under thousands of bombs but no food, no water, no medicine; not even electricity to run their overwhelmed hospitals.

Continue reading “Ghoulish White House Response to Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza”

As the death toll from Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza approached 5,800 Palestinians—including over 2,300 children—a group of around 40 faith leaders calling for an immediate cease-fire led a Tuesday afternoon pray-in at the Washington, D.C. office of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith leaders and activists occupied the New York Democrat’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, where demonstrators opened their action with prayers for the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed since October 7.

Continue reading “40 Faith Leaders Lead Gaza Pray-In at House Minority Leader Jeffries’ DC Office”

On COI #489, Kyle Anzalone discusses the latest news from the war on Gaza.

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I wonder if there’s a number that demarcates the upper limit of acceptable civilian casualties in Gaza. Is it ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? And how about dead children? How many children is Israel free to kill in trade for the children killed by Hamas, and how many non-combatants total can it kill in exchange for the elusive goal of “wiping Hamas from the face of the Earth”? Is there a number? Or is the acceptable number of non-combatants and children killed simply an as-yet undetermined statistic that will eventually be entered into a column on a spreadsheet in a soon-to-be dusty after-action report?

Of course, I ask these questions within the context of the Global War On Terror. The US piled-up hundreds of thousands of deaths in the wake of 9/11 … and even went to a country with no demonstrable connection to 9/11 to collectively punish them for something they didn’t do. The US also collectively punished the Afghan people with bombs and drones and a grinding occupation because of their geographical proximity to al-Qaeda. In the process, the US added the deaths of hundreds of thousands of bystanders to its own spreadsheet of vengeance. There really wasn’t an upper limit on the non-American casualties in any of Uncle Sam’s post-9/11 punitive pursuits, which is important because what the US did after 9/11 has become a model of contemporary war-making … that is, if the enemy is “terrorism” or “terrorists” or, in a stroke of marketing genius, if you are fighting the amorphous specter of “terror.”

Continue reading “The Foghorn of War: The Magic Word of War”

On October 12, Veterans For Peace issued this statement about the conflict between Hamas and Israel, in which we condemned the horrific violence on both sides, particularly the killing of civilians. We added our voice to the many calls for a ceasefire and negotiations toward a political solution because there is no military one.

Since then, conditions have worsened – terribly.  If a ceasefire isn’t declared, the killing and wounding in Gaza will increase dramatically, given announced plans to intensify bombing and conduct what is likely to be a months-long ground invasion.

Continue reading “Veterans For Peace Statement on Gaza”

As people got off work on Thursday evening, October 19, the street in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco swelled with a spirited crowd chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” An ocean of demonstrators stopped traffic as Homeland Security police looked on and a helicopter hovered overhead.

With less than 24 hours’ notice, the “All Out for Gaza” emergency protest amassed two to three thousand demanding an end to the siege on Gaza and an immediate cessation of US aid to Israel. Organizers included Al-Awada, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Workers World Party.

Two Palestinian students from San Francisco’s Lowell High School spoke eloquently and movingly to the enthusiastic crowd. Earlier they led a Bay Area wide student strike.

Continue reading “Palestine Protests Temporarily Shut Down San Francisco Federal Building”