tearsintherain

Spain has refused permission for a ship carrying arms to Israel to dock at a Spanish port, its foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said on Thursday.

“This is the first time we have done this because it is the first time we have detected a ship carrying a shipment of arms to Israel that wants to call at a Spanish port,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“This will be a consistent policy with any ship carrying arms to Israel that wants to call at Spanish ports. The foreign ministry will systematically reject such stopovers for one obvious reason: the Middle East does not need more weapons, it needs more peace.”

Feb. 2023 New Yorker profile unknowingly giving a prelude of what was to come.

...Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and, during a single term in the Knesset, tested the moral limits of the country. Israeli politicians strive to reconcile Israel’s identities as a Jewish state and a democracy. Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.” To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.” His rhetoric was so virulent that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle used to walk out of the Knesset when he spoke. His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.”

Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me. As recently as last October, Netanyahu refused to share a stage with him, or even to be seen with him in photographs. But a series of disappointing elections persuaded Netanyahu to change his mind. ...

He wrote that the justifications for Israel’s war in Gaza became “difficult to defend” and that “whatever the justification you’re either advancing a policy that enables the mass starvation of children, or you’re not.” The post received an outpouring of support with hundreds of likes and comments in just a few hours. ...

In his letter, Mann also says that he’s the descendant of European Jews and “was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment.”

“When it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing — my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany — where the paramount importance of ‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following orders’ were oft repeated. I’m haunted by the knowledge that I failed those principles,” Mann wrote.

Mann went on to say that he held off sharing the reason for his resignation because he was afraid of violating professional norms and disappointing officers that he respects.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population

The threat, we are told here this weekend, is existential, biological, epoch-defining. Economies will fail, civilizations will fall, and it will all happen because people aren’t having enough babies.

“The entire global financial system, the value of your money, and every asset you might buy with money is defined by leverage, which means its value depends on growth,” Kevin Dolan, a 37-year-old father of six from Virginia, tells the crowd that has gathered to hear him speak. “Every country in the developed world and most countries in the developing world face long-term population decline at a level that makes growth impossible to maintain,” Dolan says, “which means we are sitting on the bubble of all bubbles.” ...

.... In the previously unreported civil rights complaint, 18 students said that they have “been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance, actually being assaulted.” The result, the students said, was a hostile environment for all Arab and Palestinian students, those perceived to be Palestinian, and their allies on campus. Among the most chilling allegations involves a student yelling “kill all Arabs” at fellow students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.

... The student, whose name is redacted in the copy of the complaint reviewed by The Intercept, also allegedly attempted to intimidate an elderly woman among other people, “while also being extremely racist towards Arabs and Palestinians, stating ‘level Gaza’ and ‘Kill all Arabs.’”

The complainants also report receiving vicious messages and threats online, also allegedly by a student and student-run accounts with names like “@amherstzionwarroom, @UMass_amherst_sjp_watch, @UMass_amherst_zionists and @UMass_zionists.”

Some of the posts called the students “classic Islamic barbarism supporters [who] love raping and killing,” and “genocidal barbarian baby decapitator supporters.” One account, named “palisranimals,” reportedly targeted two students, making comments like “where is the best beach in Gaza to build a house next to?! I’ve heard Pali bones make great foundation!” and “every ‘Palestinian’ child in Gaza is actually a terrorist.”

“These accounts would target SJP students and comment on their meeting times, eventually bragged about the doxing on Canary Mission,” reads the complaint, referring to a website that targets and doxxes students and professors who criticize the Israeli government.

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