by Stephen Lendman<\/p>\n
What\u2019s going on in Gaza and throughout the Occupied Territories is all about inflicting maximum pain, suffering, misery, mass slaughter and destruction \u2014 with no end of it in prospect.<\/p>\n
Like its predecessors, the Netanyahu regime is guilty of high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Through around midday May 15, over 150 Palestinians have been massacred in cold blood, including around a dozen in the West Bank and East Jerusalem \u2014 women and children among them.<\/p>\n
Around 3,300 others were wounded, many seriously, throughout the Territories, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.<\/p>\n
The destruction, death and injury toll continues to rise exponentially as long Israeli terror-bombing, shelling, and rampaging on the ground go on unchecked.<\/p>\n
Numbers of missing Palestinians are believed buried beneath rubble from Israeli terror-bombing.<\/p>\n
So far, most world community nations largely looked the other way \u2014 effectively supporting Israel\u2019s reign of terror by not condemning it and demanding accountability.<\/p>\n
In besieged Gaza, humanitarian crisis conditions worsened.<\/p>\n
Thousands of terrified and traumatized families fled their homes in search of safety in too few UN shelters to accommodate them.<\/p>\n
A BDS Freedom, Justice, and Equality statement urged the following in response to \u201capartheid Israeli\u2019s crimes\u201d against (long-suffering) Palestinians:<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve stressed time and again, the BDS National Committee (BNC) slammed most nations, their ruling authorities, and corporate interests for \u201ccomplicit(y) with Israel\u2019s decades-old regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, just as they were complicit in the apartheid regime in South Africa.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Jewish state can only sustain its reign of terror because the world community of nations fails to demand accountability \u2014 nor intervene on behalf of its victims.<\/p>\n It\u2019s for ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to act on their own. The BNC recommends five ways.<\/p>\n \u201c1. Push for a military embargo on Israel now.<\/p>\n 2. Declare your institutions (and private spaces) apartheid-free zones.<\/p>\n 3. Boycott all things Israel, including brands supporting its apartheid rule.<\/p>\n 4. Cancel academic, cultural and sporting events in the Jewish state.<\/p>\n 5. Join a BDS campaign in your area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Expanding on the above, the BNC urged working with progressive networks to pressure\u2026governments, community groups, trade unions, social and religious groups, students and others to boycott all things Israel.<\/p>\n Join a campaign or group in solidarity with long-suffering Palestinians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Express opposition to apartheid viciousness to others and publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cGet off Israel\u2019s apartheid train.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to ongoing Israeli state terror against Palestinians throughout the Territories, the BNC slammed Western media for largely \u201cwhitewash(ing)\u201d its crimes of war and against humanity.<\/p>\n Brazilian philosopher\/educator Paulo Freire explained the following:<\/p>\n \u201cNever in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow could they be the initiators if they themselves are the result of violence?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cViolence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons\u2014not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOppression is the root cause of violence,\u201d the BNC stressed.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most strategic, ethical, moral, and effective way to challenge and check apartheid Israel is by denouncing complicit governments, their officials, handmaidens and media press agents \u2014 along with supporting BDS activism.<\/p>\n The US above all is guilty of supporting, financing, and otherwise allying with the worst of Israeli high crimes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been this way from Truman to Biden.<\/p>\n The same goes for other Western nations \u2014 partnering with Israeli oppression like the US, shielding its regimes from accountability, maintaining silence about their high crimes, and blaming victims for Jewish state crimes against them.<\/p>\n History shows that they won\u2019t change their wicked ways.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s up to ordinary people throughout the West and elsewhere for equity and justice to support Palestinians and other oppressed people on their own.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how great struggles are won \u2014 always from the bottom up, never from the top down.<\/p>\n