Well, Israeli aggression against Palestinians has not gotten any better.
Israel has launched a strike in the Gaza Strip and
the Israeli defense forces are claiming that they did it
specifically to target a weapons manufacturing site in the area.
Now luckily no one is reported to be injured, no fatalities in this specific
attack, but you can't take that story on its own as an isolated incident.
This is a continuation of the ongoing violence toward the Palestinians,
especially during this time of the year,
where you have all these religions converging.
TYT had reported earlier last week.
In fact that the Al-Aqsa mosque was targeted yet again by Israeli forces and
the attacks continued throughout the weekend.
Now I want to give you some more details on that, before we do,
why don't we take a look at this report first,
which describes how the al Aqsa mosque was attacked.
>> Thousands of Muslims gathered at the Al-Aqsa mosque site in Jerusalem for
Friday prayers,
witnesses say a small group of them started throwing rocks at Israeli police.
Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets entering
the mosque grounds and making hundreds of arrests.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Emergency Service said it treated more than
150 people for injuries.
Israeli forces said three of their officers were wounded in the exchange.
Neighboring Jordan and the Palestinian authority blamed Israel for
escalating the situation.
[FOREIGN].
This oppression in this barbarism by the occupation, repressed our people and empty
the Al-Aqsa mosque compound while all the world was watching, we condemn this.
>> Now before the attacks toward the al Aqsa mosque and
those who were worshiping their.
Hamas had warned that any incidents at the mosque,
a site revered by Muslims and Jews would be a red line.
After Israeli forces raided the site in occupied East Jerusalem several times in
recent days arresting hundreds of Palestinians and leaving dozens injured.
And from the report that we showed you, I just wanna emphasize if we
take the IDFs account of things at face value, they're claiming.
Well there were some people who threw rocks at us.
So we responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.
It's just the same thing over and over again,
we cannot ignore the fact that this is an asymmetrical situation.
Okay, the military capability, the weaponry on one side is very different
from what Palestinians are using to fight back.
Citing rocks as justification for
using rubber bullets toward individuals who are praying at this mosque.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
But the Al-Aqsa mosque assaults left 158 people injured
as Israeli police arrested over 450 Palestinians.
And I do wanna just emphasize that all these religious holidays have
converged including Ramadan for Muslims of course Passover for
Jewish people and it's also holy week for Christians.
And it's just a recipe for disaster, but
I also wanna emphasize at the end of the day, this is not just about religion.
This is a point that Francesca made on the show recently?
This is really about power.
This is about land, that's what this is really about.
And citing religion is a way of turning Palestinians into the dangerous others.
>> Yeah.
All right, so first off you notice a couple of people threw rocks,
they arrested 450 people.
Were they all throwing rocks?
No, of course not.
But were they all Palestinians?
Yeah.
So if you're a Muslim Palestinian, who cares if you were throwing a rock or not?
We're just gonna arrest you.
Why? Because you're our prisoners and
we get to do anything we want to our prisoners.
So look, they've had this occupation now for decades, over 50 years now.
So you're never gonna let them go.
Let's be honest about what it is.
The Palestinians are your hostages and every once in a while a hostage
gets restless and then you go kick the living crap out of them.
You imprison them, you bulldoze their house.
No, you don't get to complain that the hostages
are not cooperating with their own kidnapping.
Let them go.
When are you ever going to end the occupation?
If you say no, no, no, we can't end it now because Muslims are too dangerous.
You're a bigot and you just don't know it.
Why can't you end the occupation?
Why? No, they'll attack us for sure.
You know how they are.
Do you think 1.6 billion people are all the same way by the way I don't know if
you know that that's exactly what the bad guys said about you guys.
Okay.
They're all that way.
You can't trust them.
Let them go.
Millions of people held hostage.
And then every time one of them complains yeah they made us do it.
They made us crack their skulls.
They made us kill them.
They made us invade their sacred places because they wouldn't just sit down and
be good little hostages.
So and the goddamn occupation.
Now look despite the fact that I'm living over the occupation and
how long it's lasted and how criminal it is.
It is literally criminal.
Okay I'm still gonna do our jobs and do it right.
I'll give credit to one thing that the IDF is doing.
They have been making attempts in recent months to clamp down on illegal building
of settlements.
And they're trying to return the settlement moving to the days
of the 2005 disengagement according to press reports.
That is good.
And of course that has riled up the settlers who are religious fanatics and
who thinks no no no the mythical creature gave it to me gave that land to me
thousands of years ago.
How do you know?
I don't know I spoke to the mythical creature and he says it's my land and
I'm chosen.
And so I'm gonna ruin the lives of the people that already lived there and
I'm gonna commit violence against them.
The fact that the idea of has gone 1% towards reeling them back in is good news,
but you've got 99% of the way to go and
what Israel has done so far is not remotely good enough.
And by the way, they replaced the los right wing
Tyrant Benjamin Netanyahu with another right winger.
>> Naftali Bennett.
>> Naftali Bennett doing very similar things that Netanyahu did.
And Neftali Bennett of course has always been a right winger and
has said low something's about Palestinians because he's also a bigot.
>> I also wanted to just provide the reporting
that you were alluding to Jake Deutsch Vella had reported that
the IDF is trying to clamp down on the illegal settlements.
They write also on Tuesday,
further clashes erupted when a group of Israeli settlers were allowed to march
in protest through the West Bank over the destruction of a settlement.
The IDF has been making some attempts in recent months to clamp down
on illegal building and
returned the settlement movement to the days of the 2005 disengagement.
But I also want to talk about the reality on the ground,
especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
So you can understand like the severity of this occupation and
the impact it's having on innocent people.
Because of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories
and this has been ongoing for quite some time now.
Which is considered to be in violation of international law as well as Israeli
blockades and security buffer zones.
People in Gaza and
the West Bank have been crowded into increasingly small pieces of land.
This has resulted in major shortages of medicine, water and
other critical supplies, a situation exacerbated by the pandemic.
Which is why again, going back to how I originally started talking about this
story, you can't take one isolated incident and have a thought just on that.
You have to take the entire story and all the context,
all of the brutality that comes along with this type of occupation into account to
understand any individual incident that takes place.
>> Okay, and let's keep it real.
So I love the Ukrainian people and I love their fighting back against
the Russians and good, the west agrees with me and
they hate the occupation of Eastern Ukraine by the Russians.
Tell me how that's different than what Israel is doing.
They're occupying Palestinian territories and saying we're not gonna give it to you,
even though everyone living there is Palestinian, we're gonna keep it and
we're gonna keep that occupation forever.
Tell me how it's different, it's not different, even if it's about you,
it doesn't make it different and it doesn't make it right.
Okay. So look if you love Israel making it
an international pariah isn't helping your cause,
being morally wrong isn't helping your cause.
Keeping millions of hostages for decade after decade after decade and
saying we're never going to release them.
Because we think they are too violent by nature and
we're going to be racist against them isn't helping your cause,
it's not getting a lot of love for Israel across the world.
And look there's real deep anti-semitism in the world and
in America right now and I'm incredibly scared of it.
It's rising up, it's bubbling up and it's from the right wing and and
they've lost their minds in the midst of all that.
It doesn't help Israel or anyone else to be like yeah let's just
brutalize millions of people and say they're beneath us,
they need to be occupied as prisoners because they're beneath us.
It doesn't help you, for God's sake turn around.