Dehumanization, Lack of Empathy for Palestinians Is Alarming—and Dangerous’

The scale and brutality of Hamas’s grisly attack on Israel last Saturday, in which at least 1,300 Israeli men, women, and children were brutally murdered, has understandably triggered a massive outpouring of sympathy and solidarity with Israel from around the world, particularly in the United States, Europe and other western nations.

Dehumanization, Lack of Empathy for Palestinians Is Alarming—and Dangerous’ (archive)

RFK Jr vows unconditional support for Israel as IDF massacres Palestinians!

RFK Jr’s hasbara makes me want to vomit! 🤮 He thinks children are legitimate military target!! 🤬

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – Major Israel Booster

Before that discussion, Kennedy addressed in the interview his views in regard to the nation of Israel, making clear that he is a major Israel booster. Kennedy started off his comments in the interview by stating, “There’s nobody who’s running for president right now in either party who will be a better friend to Israel than me as president, and nobody who will articulate the moral case for Israel with the same erudition, the same persuasive power as me, because I believe it in my heart, it’s core to the values that I was raised with.” Later in his opening comment of the interview, Kennedy declared, “That friendship with Israel and making the moral case for Israel will be a key part of my presidency.”

Kennedy also declared in his opening comment of the interview that he will try as a candidate “to bring the Democratic Party back to its traditional support of Israel and to explain to my children’s generation the historical context and the moral case for Israel.” At least among the top Democratic Congress leaders — and the top Republican Congress leaders as well, though, devotion to the Israel government seems to be running very high already.

Further argued Kennedy in his opening comment, Israel expends great effort at the risk of its own soldiers to “avoid civilian casualties” in dealing with threats from its adversaries and is not an apartheid state. Later in the interview, Kennedy further asserted that a Palestinian has “much more rights in Israel than in any of the neighboring countries” and that “the best place” and “the safest place” in the Middle East for a Palestinian dissident to criticize his government is in Israel.

Related:

Kennedy: ‘As President, my support of Israel will be unconditional.’

Israeli forces kill two Palestinian teens in occupied West Bank

The shootings bring the number of Palestinians killed this year in the occupied Palestinian territories, which includes East Jerusalem and Gaza, to 202, with 165 of those in the occupied West Bank, said Khan.

31 of those killed are under the age of 18, she added.

War in Eastern Ukraine Looks a Lot Different in Person Than It Does on CNN + Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned

I had just left the Lugansk People’s Republic, making my way to an interview in Moscow, when I saw a May 11 CNN story claiming Russia had targeted civilians in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. This was after the bombing of a hotel and shopping center there. When such structures are bombed, one assumes that they were filled with civilians.

Fact-finding trip to Donbass: A front-line shelter in Rubizhne

Related:

Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned (archived):

In a rare interview, a Ukrainian military commander and his top lieutenant describe disillusionment, deprivations and a sense of certain death among their troops on the front lines in Donbas.

— Washington Post

Doubling Down On Double Standards – The Ukraine Propaganda Blitz

‘The American population was bombarded the way the Iraqi population was bombarded. It was a war against us, a war of lies and disinformation and omission of history. That kind of war, overwhelming and devastating, waged here in the US while the Gulf War was waged over there.’ (Howard Zinn, ‘Power, History and Warfare’, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, No. 8, 1991, p.12)

Doubling Down On Double Standards – The Ukraine Propaganda Blitz