A ceasefire is supposed to mean no more shooting

But corporate media has been desperate for a reason, no matter how spurious, to heap praise on Trump.

On October 10, a ceasefire was declared in the Gaza Strip, where more than 67,000 Palestinians were officially killed in just over two years of Israel’s United States-backed genocide. With an estimated 10,000 bodies still buried under the all-consuming rubble, and indirect deaths unaccounted for, this number is almost certainly a drastic underestimate. Shortly after the ceasefire took effect, US President Donald Trump pronounced the war in Gaza “over,” proclaiming that “at long last we have peace in the Middle East.”

In the ten days following the implementation of the ostensible truce, the Israeli military reportedly killed at least 97 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 230, violating the ceasefire agreement no fewer than 80 times. One might have expected, then, to see a headline or two along the lines of, I dunno, “Israel Violates Ceasefire”—or maybe “So Much for ‘Peace’ in Gaza.”

No such headlines turned up in the Western corporate media—not that there weren’t some pretty spectacular violations to choose from. - FAIR

Israeli violence against Palestinians sets a new record

This horrific new mark could well be broken next year, the year after, and so on, unless something changes.

The UN Officer of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a press release detailing the views of its experts on the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians during the past year, which they say has seen the worst death rate among the Occupied population since the organization began systematically tracking fatalities in 2005.

The experts rebuked Israel for the excessive use of force deployed by Israeli forces against Palestinians and the unbridled violence of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which have left 150 Palestinians dead this year in the Occupied West Bank, including 33 children...

Fanatical Israeli squatters who have built on land owned by Palestinian families and walk around armed are a particular concern for the UN human rights experts. They say that:

“Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity.”

Each year has seen more Israeli squatter attacks than the year before since 2016. Ironically, it was in 2016 that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution demanding an end to such Israeli squatting. - Informed Comment

Israeli assassination of journalist gets the standard U.S. corporate media treatment

Most U.S. Jews don't support Israeli extremism. You'd never know that based on the behavior of our corporate "journalism."

Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank...

The context of escalating Israeli attacks on freedom of the press and on journalists in the Occupied Territories did not enter the frame of most US news coverage. Instead, many used a back-and-forth blame frame for reporting the murder of a veteran war correspondent who knew well how to negotiate crossfire in the field of battle. This was acknowledged by Ali Samoudi, who said from his hospital bed, if there had been crossfire, they wouldn’t have been there.

Amidst the debunking of the Israeli messaging, by late Wednesday some news outlets, including NBC (5/11/22), noted that Israel “appeared to step back from that claim” that Abu Akleh may have been killed by Palestinian gunmen.

Yet most big media would continue to include Israeli messaging in their reporting, while failing to disclose any of the factchecking done on the Israeli video. They “balanced” on-the-ground testimony with Israeli statements, keeping the propaganda story alive. - FAIR

Biden's Middle East policy shows little, if any, improvement

The demonizing of China is really bad, too. But this is even worse, for now.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shaping up to be as much of a disaster as secretary of state as Mike Pompeo. He appears to have nothing to say about Israel’s outrageous new plans to steal more Palestinian land and to further divide Palestinians into Bantustans as was done by Apartheid South Africa to the Bantu population.

He is hobnobbing with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Israel, celebrating the “Abraham Accords” that marginalized the Palestinians, and rattling sabers against Iran. He won’t give Iran guarantees of an end to the crippling US financial and trade blockade on Tehran, then blames Iran for declining to give up its civilian nuclear enrichment program in return for nothing. As for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, that bit of proliferation goes unmentioned and never has attracted any sanctions. - Informed Comment

MN-04: Rep. McCollum is taking a lot of crap for being right

Comes with the territory, I suppose, for any public figure who supports an honest, humane, intelligent approach to this issue.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum is not backing down from her criticism of AIPAC. 

After issuing a daring statement lambasting the pro-Israel group, the US legislator vowed to continue advocating for the human rights of Palestinian children and push against attempts to silence her.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, McCollum said AIPAC's attacks on Israel's Democratic critics in Congress prove that the organisation is not "inclusive or non-partisan" as it claims to be. - Middle East Eye

This, too:

 Congresswoman McCollum (MN-04) released the following statement:

“I’m proud to represent the largest Hmong community in the U.S. The remarkable contributions of our Hmong and Lao neighbors keep our community strong and successful. Many Hmong and Lao people arrived as refugees and resettled in Minnesota after fleeing their homeland because of their help and support of the U.S. government during the Vietnam War. It is a betrayal of the courage and sacrifice of our Hmong and Lao veterans and their families for the Trump administration to deport anyone to Laos. I completely reject efforts by the State Department to pressure the Lao government into signing a repatriation agreement. Such an agreement would result in a green light for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and deport individuals in our community with orders for removal to a country they fled decades ago. This is a dangerous policy that will tear Hmong and Lao families apart, and I will do everything I can to stop it.” - mccollum.house.gov

MN-05: How dare Rep. Omar tell it like it is!

Perhaps you saw the headline across the top of the Minneapolis Star Tribune this morning, assuring its ornery old subscriber base that someone is being put in her place. The following is quoted from the sort of reality-based item that, in a better world, would be the stock-in-trade of corporate media like the Strib as well.

It should be pointed out that Rep. (Ilhan) Omar (D-MN) has been relentlessly hazed because she is a Somali Muslim and critical of Israeli policy toward their Palestinian semi-chattel. One of her critics is close to the hate figure Frank Gaffney, purveyor of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories of the sort the Nazis used to circulate about Jews...

She may be wrong about the motives of some of her opponents. The anti-Palestinian politicians in the United States may have come by their determination to keep millions of displaced people stateless and without basic human rights honestly. That is, many may just be racists who believe that brown people should be kept down.

Nor should consideration of the Israel lobbies only focus on money. Their propaganda techniques, for instance of equating any criticism of Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank to terrorism, are also extremely effective. - Informed Comment

I get that it's not just Republicans who are spouting off about this. That fact is a big part of the real problem, here.