The Free

Appeal for Robert Kennedy to drop insane hypocritical support for Israeli Genocide in Gaza

from thefreeonline by Edward Curtin on 12th Nov 2023 at Off-Guardian

An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy Jr

from Edward Curtin

Dear Bobby,

As you know, I have supported your bid for the presidency even before you declared last spring. I have admired and believed in you for years, and when you entered the race I felt hope for the first time in decades that your non-violent impulses, honed by your tragic family history and a deep revulsion for our country’s imperial wars and violent history, would triumph and usher in a new era of peace.

Despite the naysayers who dismissed you from the start, I said Yes, that you would shock those who ridiculed and maligned you and that you would be the man to carry out President Kennedy’s American University speech and fulfill his and your father’s legacy of “not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women” because “we all breathe the same air” and “we all cherish our children’s futures” and “we are all mortal.”

I suggested that you would heal the divide and not expand it. Seeing you stumble on your way by throwing your full support to the Zionist leaders of Israel has been a body blow to me. At first I thought it might be explained by your reaction to the false antisemitic accusations that were hurled your way once word emerged that you might enter the presidential race. But as time went on it dawned on me that I was wrong and that you were in sync with the powerful Israel Lobby.

So now, I feel as if we are in the tenth round of fight for your soul’s compassion. That you have not defended the children of Gaza and condemned their massacre by the thousands has shocked and sickened me.

As a scholar of religion and its intersection with politics, I have been meditating on current events.

@RobertKennedyJr

“This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now. As President, I’ll make sure that our policy is unambiguous so that the enemies of Israel will think long and hard before attempting aggression of any kind.“

@RealScottRitter

I like RFKJr. I think he’s the best choice for POTUS. He’s positioned himself as the peace candidate. And this is the tweet I fear may have sunk his chances. Israel’s policies regarding Palestine are indefensible. Bobby should be promoting an equitable peace settlement. Not war.

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings. So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant.

You, however, as a self-styled anti-war candidate are a great surprise to me, although I may be naïve and shouldn’t be since you gave your unequivocal support to the Israel government a month ago, following the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into Israel that killed innocent Israelis (many of whom were also probably killed by the IDF as Jonathan Cooke has reported). Despite that, I still expected your conscience would surely prompt you to condemn what can only be described as genocide, the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza that is ongoing.

US plans to murder Kennedy? – Repeated Denial of Protection after Assassination attempts!

You have undermined your claim to “end the forever wars” and to defend children. Why you have done (or not done) this is a question that so many of your supporters and former supporters are asking. Only you can say. Perhaps we might only know if you unequivocally condemned Israel’s actions and faced whatever might come your way as a result. This is unlikely, I now realize, but one can still hope. I think it would take a spiritual miracle of moral courage, because of your claim that your historical analysis that you say is sincere and true that Israel now and always has been the just and innocent party and the Palestinians the evil ones.

I find your analysis unbelievable and your silence as innocents are being slaughtered indefensible, even as I applaud so many of your other positions, as you know. Everyone knows that running for the U.S. presidency creates strange bedfellows, but your touting of the Israeli propaganda in which you conflate the Palestinian people with Hamas to justify massacring civilians is beyond strange – it is immoral.

Israeli Blitz- Critical Patients expelled on streets at Rantisi and Turkish hospitals: Al-Shifa patients face expulsion as tanks arrive

from thefreeonline by Mersiha Gadzo, Virginia Pietromarchi, Priyanka Shankar, Lyndal Rowlands and John Power On 12 Nov 2023 at Al Jazeera.liveblog

WHO loses contact with Gaza’s largest hospital

The director general of hospitals in Gaza warns the lives of hundreds of patients are at risk because of the catastrophic situation at al-Shifa Hospital.
Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila says Israeli forces “are not evacuating people from hospitals; instead they are forcibly evicting the wounded onto the streets, leaving them to face inevitable death”.

Child killed every 10 minutes in Gaza – WHO

Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital has been caught in Israel’s ground offensive and health officials say its cardiac ward has been destroyed.

More than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. In Israel, after a downward revision, the death toll now stands at more than 1,200.
At least 192 medical staff have been killed according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Of them, at least 16 medical staff were killed on duty, according to the World Health Organization.

More than half of Gaza’s hospitals and nearly two-thirds of primary healthcare centres are now out of service and 53 ambulances damaged.

Game Over: US, European Officials Quietly Nudge Ukraine To Seek Peace

from thefreeonline by Tyler Durden Saturday, Nov 12 2023 at ZeroHedge

US and European officials have started quietly conferring with Ukraine on potential concessions that could bring the war to an end

With the world’s attention squarely fixed on the Israel-Gaza war — while baseless hope for a Ukrainian expulsion of the Russian army has evaporated — , NBC News was first to report Friday evening.

These discussions aren’t about a new counteroffensive — they’re about what concessions Ukraine could live with pursuant to a peace agreement. Some of the conversations, which officials describe as delicate, happened during an October meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an affiliation of more than 50 governments siding with Ukraine.

In eyebrow-raising comments to the The Economist this week, Ukraine’s top commander admitted there will be no breakthrough and the battlefield situation is in a stalemate. The New York Times characterized his remarks as “the first time a top Ukrainian commander said the fighting had reached an impasse.”

In September, the Times itself splashed cold water on anyone who still believed Ukraine had any hope of pushing the Russian army out of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, much less Crimea. Its detailed analysis found that, in the wake of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, “Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.”

**ISW‘s assessed control of terrain in Ukraine as of November 3 2023**

Russia’s territorial gains are close to matching the goals President Vladimir Putin outlined at the start of what he calls a “special military operation.” He said Russia sought to secure Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), which he recognized as republics shortly before the invasion. Russian forces now control nearly all of those areas, which are together called the Donbas.

Russia also controls most of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, giving Russia a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014 after a Western-aided overthrow of a democratically elected president and the installation of an anti-Russia government in Kiev. Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine have heavily ethnic-Russian populations.

The front lines have moved little in recent months. In anticipation of Ukraine’s highly-hyped 2023 counteroffensive, Russia was content to install formidable defensive fortifications and allow the Ukrainian army to degrade itself and achieve nothing.

In its match-up with a far larger country, Ukraine’s ability to refresh its military ranks is vanishing fast. “Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” an official told NBC.