Israel's death squads - #43
Killed 86 Palestinian children last year.
Israeli army thugs shot two Palestinian teens dead in the West Bank last week.
Nihad al-Barghouti, 19, was killed in the village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, and Muhammad Abu Salah, 16, was killed in the village of Silat al-Harithiya, near Jenin.
In both villages there had been protests against Israeli army invasions. In Silat al-Harithiya, the army was there to demolish the family home of a Palestinian accused of carrying out an attack on an Israeli settler in December.
Israel habitually carries out such home demolitions as a form of collective punishment against Palestinians — a war crime under international law.
One Palestinian responded to the raid with an act of armed self defence, then fleeing away from the area. The Israelis then essentially shot at everything that moved, including unarmed protesters in the area, leading to the killing of Muhammad Abu Salah.
Only one week before, Israel’s specialist “Yamam” militarised police unit invaded the northern West Bank city of Nablus and murdered three young men, riddling their car with a reported 80 bullets.
The dead were identified as Ashraf Mbaslat, 21, Muhammad Dakheel, 22 and Adham al-Shishani, 21, all reportedly members of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the largely defunct armed wing of the Fatah movement, the political party belonging to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Videos circulated on Palestinian social media and news reports show that the armed Israeli assassins infiltrated Nablus using Palestinian civilian public transport — the West Bank’s distinct yellow “service” mini-vans.
Eyewitnesses said that the shooters aimed for the victims’ heads and made no attempt at arrest.
Much like the Israeli army troops who killed the unarmed teens last week, the “Yamam” killers were clearly a death squad. Israel will keep on killing with impunity until it is forced to suffer consequences for its violence and racism against Palestinians.
The fake left
Here’s a really great discussion from the Complaints on a Plate YouTube channel. It’s former Labour activist Heather Mendick. In it she explains so articulately what tepid Corbynites like Novara Media, Owen Jones and Momentum got so very wrong about the “Labour anti-Semitism crisis” smear campaign.
Not only did they not fight the smear campaign, but they actually took part in it! It’s a topic I explored in issue #38, check out my take on it in the article below. I called them the “fake left” or the media leftists. Heather and Daniel are far more polite than me, but no less scathing.
Britain loves Ukraine’s Nazis too
In issue #40, I explained how and why Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine. As I mentioned in that article, also supporting the far-right racists are the US, the UK and Canada.
My friend Matt Kennard over at Declassified UK last week published this great scoop. British army commanders in September met with Ukraine’s Nazi-linked National Guard and — according to the latter — promised them training and to “deepen military cooperation with the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom.”
The Ministry of Defence denies the Declassified report.
The thousand-strong neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard.
