Aksentijevic's Filmat the P21, May 17 examines the Role
of Zionism during the Holocaust as
well as my journey from Zionist Youth to Prominent anti-Zionist
It was about 6 months ago that I was approached by Helena Aksentijevic
as to whether I would agree to her making a half hour film about my role in the
Palestine solidarity and anti-Zionist movement.
Tony Greenstein ‘An Ordinary Rebel’
Confrontation with the Police on Demonstration Against Israel's Invasion of Lebanon in 20026 in Brighton
Helena
had already made a number of similar films about people in Palestine solidarity
and in opposition to Zionism such as Moshe Machover, Sabby Sagall, Ghada Karmi,
Naomi Wimborne Idrissi, Bernard Regan and Stephen Kapos.
I
was more than happy to cooperate as it a way of explaining why I have been
active on the issue of Palestine and Zionism for over 50 years and how I became
an anti-Zionist.
Tickets
will cost £5 to defray the costs to P21 Theatre who have kindly allowed us to
use the venue. There will be light refreshments and I am also happy to reduce
the price of a signed copy of my book from £12 to £10.
In younger days
The
evening will start off with the film and then I will have a discussion with Luca
Salice, who is a translator and visiting lecturer at the University of
Westminster, as well as co-chair of Camden PSC, before opening up to the
audience for a Q&A.
Below
are some of the more recent talks and interviews I have given on the subject of
my book or relatedtopics.
Even Nazi Germany Spared
the Jewish Hospital in Berlin Which was Liberated in May 1945 with 800 Patients
Still Alive
Berlin's Jewish Hospital
This is What Happened at
Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza
Before Israel's Attacks on Al Shifa
It is instructive to compare Israel’s systematic
destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and health system with Nazi Germany. When
Soviet troops liberated Berlin and entered
the Jewish hospital on April 24 they were amazed to find that 800 patients,
mainly Jews, were still alive.
In Budapest, between January 12 and 15, just before
the Soviet Union liberated the city, The fascist Arrow Cross/Nyilas killing
squads murdered around 240 patients at the Jewish hospitals in Maros and Városmajor
Streets. Eugene Levai described this as ‘one
of the blackest deeds of the Nyilas terrorism.’ [The Black Book of
Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry]
The Garden at the Back of the Hospital
American
Values – John Stewart
Israel’s massacres at Al
Shifa and Al
Nasser hospitals exceeds even the foul deeds of the Hungarian Nazis. Biden,
Sunak and Cameron have nonetheless continued to supply Israel with the means with
which to carry out further massacres. We are ruled by war criminals.
The perpetrators of the Budapest massacres were
quickly rounded up and from February 3 1945 onwards were hanged
by the Peoples’ Courts. Unfortunately Biden, Sunak and Cameron, to say nothing
of that worthy successor to the Nazis, Olaf Scholz, are unlikely to face a
similar fate.
Gaza and Hatikvah
Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals began
with the attack
on Al-Ahli hospital on October 17 when 500 people were killed. Israel blamed it
on a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad, which Biden of course rushed to corroborate.
The West were happy to accept Israel’s denial of
responsibility despite the fact that the evidence
pointed to Israel being responsible. Israel supplied a digitally
manipulated version of an alleged conversation between two Hamas operatives
admitting responsibility, but the ‘conversation’ was clearly a fake. The
overwhelming evidence was that it was an Israeli missile that had struck the
hospital.
Berlin's Jewish Hospital
CNN's @clarissaward reports from inside Gaza with a first-hand look at the humanitarian catastrophe and the dire living conditions for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped inside: pic.twitter.com/Am2i5YM7ZH
Channel 4 Investigation into Who
Bombed Al Ahli Hospital
Next came the attack on Gaza’s main hospital Al
Shifa. The pretext this time was that it contained Hamas’s Command and Control
Centre. Even BBC Verify
refused to accept the ludicrous ‘evidence’ that Israel provided included a bag
of weapons that Israel claimed was stored by an MRI scanning machine. The
contents of the bag kept changing throughout the day.
The IDF released
a video of a ‘Hamas laptop’ they found with a standardised IDF numbered
charger and a Hebrew keyboard. They soon deleted the video from Twitter and uploaded
it again with a blurred screen!
Even the BBC's Verify Casts Doubt on Israeli Lies About Al Shifa
The real reasons for Israel’s attack on Gaza’s
hospitals are not hard to fathom. If the purpose of Israel’s attack on Gaza is
ethnic cleansing then it is necessary to destroy Palestinian civil society. The
health care system therefore has to go.
Dr Walter Lustig - Director of the Jewish Hospital
The same is true for the bombing of mosques and
churches. Christians and Muslims happily lived side by side under Hamas rule
but Israel bombed both religions’ institutions. The world’s third oldest
church, the Greek Orthodox St.
Porphyrius was bombed as have nearly all Gaza’s historical sites. But
perhaps that too was a Hamas command post! Or maybe the Catholic Church of the
Holy Family where Israeli
snipers killed worshippers, meriting a rare Vatican condemnation, was also
a Hamas command post?
Phosphorus
used in Gaza, British-Palestinian doctor says
Likewise the bombing
of the trade union centre of the PGFTU in Gaza City which housed a bakery and
kindergarten. It is obvious what Israel’s real game plan is and that explains
Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s universities and all aspects of civil
society.
Israeli Ministers have been open about their
intentions. Likud Minister Avi Dichter openly
talked about a second Nakba. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
last week called
for the ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza
without so much as a word of protest or condemnation by Netanyahu.
Death of Al
Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Dakka
But then there was no reaction from Genocide Joe
Biden or his lapdogs Sunak and Cameron either. If Hamas had called for the
wiping out of Israel then that would be front page news in the yellow press.
There are endless
calls from Israeli Ministers for the mass murder of Palestinians, not just
Hamas, including from Prime Minister Netanyahu with his invocation
of Amalek. Israel’s Labor President Herzog did the same when he held that all
of Gaza’s residents were legitimate targets. As the Guardian’s Chris McGreal noted,
the language used by Israel is reminiscent of the genocide in Rwanda.
"Exterminating the roaches."
"You won't believe the video we got! You can hear the crunch of their bones."
These posts from the IDF are full of hatred, dehumanization, and genocidal glee.
The West’s leaders are happy to justify any barbarity
because to them the main enemy is Hamas whereas to most civilised people it is
the Israeli state and its genocidiers who are the real criminals.
Western media outlets however either fail to report
what Israeli Ministers say or treat each quote in isolation. Just as they
refuse to see the context of Israel’s attacks as part of a strategy of ethnic
cleansing.
The
Destruction of Al Shifa Hospital
Before the International Court of Justice found a plausible
case for genocide the US’s National Security Council spokesman John Kirby termed
South Africa’s case as ‘meritless’.
When the ICJ ruled all the Western countries immediately froze their aid to
UNWRA whose job it was to prevent starvation in Gaza.
As
Craig Murray, Britain’s former Ambassador said,
the decision by Western states to stop funding to UNRWA, the UN agency charged
with feeding the population of Gaza, was not taken in a single day. It was a pre-planned
response to the ICJ. It was their way of showing their contempt for international
law being applied to western imperialism. The International Criminal Court was established
to judge tinpot African dictators not the West’s war criminals.
Israeli forces severely assault a Palestinian Journalist LIVE on CNN.
"SHOOT ME" the journalist screams.
They go on to punch, strangle, weapon butt, throw him to the floor, kick him in the face, and eventually hospitalise him. pic.twitter.com/TxGrsyzGDY
Israel
of course supplied no evidence about UNWRA’s involvement in October 7 but what
did that matter? The United States, Britain, Germany and the rest wanted to show
their displeasure with the idea that they should be held to account. They were
signalling their support for Israel’s policy of deliberately creating famine in
Gaza.
So when Israel proceeded to attack other hospitals –
Al Nasser, the Indonesian hospital etc., it didn’t even bother to offer any
excuses because they knew that the Western leaders would cover for them and
that the western media would say nothing and wouldn’t even bother to report it,
still less place it in context.
North American Medical Doctors
Statement
The bombing of ambulances, the murder of doctors,
the invasion of hospitals were all ignored because at the end of the day the
Western media reflects and amplifies the message of the West’s war criminal
leaders that Israel’s goal is the elimination of Hamas rather than the
elimination of the Palestinians.
What would have been condemned in an instant in
Ukraine did not cause any reaction in CNN, the BBC or the Guardian. They chose
not to join the dots because to do so would bring into question the imperialist
narrative that Israel is engaged in ‘self-defence’.
White Phosphorous Used by Israel
Thus it was that when Britain’s pathetic Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak rushed out of Downing Street to condemn the electors of
Rochdale for electing George Galloway, warning of mobs on the street and Jewish
children afraid to put their school uniforms on, he harkened back to the
breakout from Gaza on October 7 when 1139 Israelis were killed, a third of them
soldiers and over half the rest by Israel itself. Sunak ‘forgot’ to mention the
20,000 Palestinians, including 10,000 children who Israel had already murdered.
To him they had never existed.
Popular Israeli Car Bumper Sticker
That Sunak, Starmer and Biden make no mention of the
thousands of Palestinian victims, the deliberate targeting of people’s homes,
ambulances etc. is no accident. Only Israeli lives matter. It took the murder
of 7 aid workers of the World Food Kitchen before Western leaders found their
tongues and condemned Israeli war crimes.
Please by Doctors in Gaza
But even then they failed to draw any conclusions
viz. that Israel’s targeting of aid workers was an essential part of a strategy
of creating famine as an ‘incentive’ to the Palestinians to leave Gaza.
Biden was perfectly happy for Israel to investigate
itself and blame a couple of junior officers who, when the dust dies down, will
be reinstated into the Israeli military. It is as if it were usual, when someone
commits murder for them to be tasked with the investigation! Perhaps if we
extend this to burglary and rape and have the burglars and rapists investigate
themselves we can dispense with the police entirely!
When
Russia targeted
a hospital in Mariupul that the neo-Nazi Azov battalion had occupied, having
evicted the staff and patients beforehand, the Western press was united in
condemnation. ‘Three dead as maternity
hospital hit by Russian air strike’reported the BBC,
yet the same BBC has consistently failed to report the death of thousands of Palestinians
from Israeli air strikes. Racism? Perish the thought.
The words of a Palestinian child in Gaza to his dead, 4-year-old younger brother
When Israel, in the case of Al Shifa hospital, cut
off the power and left
babies to die as their incubators failed, the press said next to nothing. Israel
forced the doctors and medical personnel out and the babies bodies were then eaten
by wild animals.
Israel’s actions are clearly illegal yet, as we have
seen, international law has effectively been scrapped. The ICJ was too timorous
to call what Israel was doing a genocide or indeed to order western states not
to supply arms.
Article
18 of the Geneva Convention relative to the
Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is quite clear:
Civilian
hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and
maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at
all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.
Below
I document the destruction of Gaza’s health system and also accounts from
various doctors and health personnel of the situation on the ground.
Ø25 hospitals out of service, 2 functioning at minimum level
Ø24% of primary care facilities functioning
Ø500,000 cases of acute
respiratory infections
Ø290,000 cases of diarrhea
Ø17 operational medical emergency teams
Ø8 out of 24 UNRWA medical centers functioning
ØSource: OCHA OPT, Data updated as of 03.29.2024
Ø311 healthcare workers arrested
Ø484 healthcare workers* killed of which:
Ø153 doctors*, dentists*, medical students
Ø124 nurses* and midwives
Ø181 paramedics*, pharmacists*, physiotherapists*, opticians* and
administrative staff
Source: HEALTH WORKERS
WATCH, Data updated as of 11.03.2024
This Egyptian song is so powerful that Israel has apparently threatened to kill the singer. Telk Qadeya' is the Egyptian rock group Cairokee 's latest single, 'with a twist' as they put it. It was issued on 30 November 2023, nearly two months after the start of the genocidal war… pic.twitter.com/n2mAxyZcjj
On March 25 the two of us, an
orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip to
work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. Our limited sleep was constantly
interrupted by explosions that shook the hospital’s walls and popped our ears,
even well after the United Nations Security Council declared a cease-fire must
be implemented. When warplanes screamed overhead, everyone braced for a
particularly loud and powerful explosion. The timing of these attacks always
coincided with “iftar,” when families in this overwhelmingly Muslim county
broke the daily fast of Ramadan and were most vulnerable.
We as Americans must acknowledge
that we are responsible for this crime against humanity, now in its seventh
month and unfolding in full view of the entire world.
We walked through the wards and
immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at
civilians and even children. A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a
12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen,
all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world. Every square inch of the
hospital’s floor is taken up with makeshift tents where displaced families
live, desperate to find some semblance of safety. They are the lucky several
hundred who get to live indoors, unlike the tens of thousands sheltering
outside on the hospital’s grounds.
As we got to work we were shocked
by the violence inflicted on people. Incredibly powerful explosives ripped
apart rock, floors, and walls and threw them through human bodies, penetrating
skin with waves of dirt and debris. With the environment literally embedded in
our patients’ bodies we have found infection control to be impossible. No
amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here.
As humanitarian trauma surgeons
we have both seen incredible suffering. Collectively, we were present at Ground
Zero on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2010
earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters. We have worked in the
deprivation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of the war in Ukraine.
Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing
countries on three continents in our combined 57 years of volunteering. This
long experience taught us that there was no greater pain as a humanitarian
surgeon than being unable to provide needed care to a patient.
But that was before coming to
Gaza. Now we know the pain of being unable to treat a child who will slowly
die, but also alone, because she is the only surviving member of an entire
extended family. We have not had the heart to tell these children how their
families died: burned until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human
beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or
simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia
and sepsis.
The United States has heavily
funded and overwhelmingly armed what is called “the occupation” of Palestine,
but the term is misleading. Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, declared
that the existence of
the Palestinians was simply “a matter of no consequence.” Thirty
years later, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told
the Israeli cabinet that the Palestinians “would
continue to live like dogs…and we will see where this process leads.”
Now we know: This is where it
leads. It leads to Gaza European Hospital, and to two surgeons realizing that
the blood on the floor of the trauma bay and the operating room is dripping
from our own hands. We Americans provide the crucial funding, weapons, and
diplomatic support for a genocidal assault on a helpless population.
NORWEGIAN TV EXPOSE ISRAELI SPOKESMAN DAVID MENDER
During the massacre at al-Shifa
Hospital, the Israeli army shot patients in their beds and doctors who refused
to abandon the sick, separated people into groups with differently-colored
bracelets, and executed hundreds of civil government employees.
Human
heads eaten by crows, unidentified and decomposing body parts, and hundreds of
corpses piled up and buried in mass graves are all that remained of the victims
of the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital. The grim scene was something out of a
dystopian movie, the product of the two-week
siege of Gaza’s largest hospital that ended in its total destruction.
Following
the completion of al-Shifa’s decimation, the Israeli army announced that it had
been one of the most successful operations since the start of the war, claiming
that it had arrested hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members in
the medical compound. But the question that no one seemed to ask is how such a
massive number of so-called “operatives” from Hamas and PIJ had gathered at
al-Shifa with the full knowledge that the place had already been combed by the
army once before and that Gaza City had been occupied by the army ever since.
It is with heavy hearts that we share the devastating news of the loss of our dedicated Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Dakka during the recent coverage in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike. His unwavering commitment to truth and storytelling has left an indelible mark on our team.… pic.twitter.com/hdLlhG7IUg
JERUSALEM
— Weeks before Israel sent troops into al-Shifa Hospital, its spokesman began
building a public case.
The claims were remarkably
specific — that five hospital buildings were directly involved in Hamas
activities; that the buildings sat atop underground tunnels that were used by
militants to direct rocket attacks and command fighters; and that the tunnels
could be accessed from inside hospital wards. The assertions were backed by
“concrete evidence,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said as he
laid out the case in an Oct. 27 briefing.
After storming the complex on Nov.
15, the IDF released a series of photographs and videos that it said proved its
central point.
“Terrorists came here to command their operations,” Hagari said in a
video published Nov. 22, guiding viewers through an underground tunnel,
illuminating dark and empty rooms beneath al-Shifa.
But the evidence presented by the
Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the
hospital as a command and control center, according to a Washington Post
analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and all of the publicly
released IDF materials. That raises critical questions, legal and humanitarian
experts say, about whether the civilian harm caused by Israel’s military
operations against the hospital — encircling, besieging and ultimately raiding
the facility and the tunnel beneath it — were proportionate to the assessed threat.
The Post’s analysis shows:
The rooms connected to the tunnel network
discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by
Hamas.
None of the five hospital buildings identified
by Hagari appeared to be connected to the tunnel network.
There is no evidence that the tunnels could be
accessed from inside hospital wards.
