Thread by @althecat

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by, whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs..a llot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”

- Israel is claiming this ^^ as an antisemitic attack.
middleeastmonitor.com/20220801-israe…

The remarks were made by a member of a UN inquiry team looking into the Gaza war of May 2021 in which 250 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed - and a lot of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed.

Tactically speaking that the challenge was made by Israel’s newly appointed interim PM Yair Lapid is far from surprising. And nor is the response of Western Powers.

“The US and other Western countries, including Germany, Britain and Austria, denounced — very predictably — Kothari's comments as ‘anti-Semitic’.”

That said ^^ this is very disappointing - and completely gutless.

If this world has learned anything over the 8 decades since WWII and the Holocausts, one lesson must surely be that systemic impunity to violence against civilians has a deeply dangerous impact on everyone’s security.

“The fight against anti-Semitism cannot be waged with words alone, it requires action. This is the time for action; it is time to disband the Commission. This Commission does not just endorse antisemitism — it fuels it." Yair Lapid said in his letter.

The remarks by Kothari were arguably a tone deaf, and certainly unfortunate. But they are not grounds to end a commission of inquiry into the series of serious war crimes committed by a Israel in Gaza May 2021.

Israel’s obvious sense of impunity displayed in numerous recent events in the occupied territories must not be allowed to be further bolstered by poorly phrased remark in a podcast.

At this point in the Israel/Palestinian conflict what peace there is in Israel is being delivered primarily via the virtue of Palestinian restraint in the face of continuous provocations - including the apparent assassination of a journalist.

This commission of inquiry needs to complete its work and publish its findings. And the ICC needs to also complete its inquiries into illegal settlements and the killing/maiming of unarmed young people in #GreatReturnMarch

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%8…

One would think that as victims of systemic oppression themselves, Israelis ought to be more cognisant than most of the importance of maintaining a rules based intl. order with effective sanctions against perpetrators of systemic violence against civilians.

/ends

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