This snapshotter got there late, and missed what people said was the biggest surge of arrivals, but there was still a huge crowd. One of the largest I've seen in a while. I'd guess 1,500, but that's just the momentary number, not the cumulative. People were on all four corners, and two of the corner's sidewalks were filled along Wilshire.

Answer called the demo, and while there were a good number of leftist activists, and a pretty good showing of peace signs and peace messages, the vast majority of messages and chants were for a free Palestine, and to stop the carnage in Gaza, and there were a lot of flags, almost all the Palestinian flag, but also the old Iraq flag (three stars), and several American flags (stars and stripes). There were also a couple peace sign flags! That's what I was there for.

The Muslim turnout was huge and totally outnumbered the leftist turnout. They also brought their kids, which is why the counts are going to be divergent. I've never seen so many children at a political rally.

I was told that many nationalities were there. I saw some Koreans, many FIlipinos (Affirm was there), some Jews, but surprising to me was not many Asian Muslims.

This first photo shows a guy with a Thom. Jefferson quote. It helps if you ignore the fact that Jefferson made is living off the labor of slaves.

A few lunatics came by, yelling at the protesters, or, in this case, flipping the bird to the protest.

They brought it home with peace signs and chants to stop the killing.

Obligatory peace flag photo. Yes, peace folks were there, but this time, many other people were there.

And a good statement on the blue sign.

This represents a dead child. It recalled the protests in Gaza, where parents would march with the corpses of their chidren.

There were many different "positions" taken on the signs. This is my personal bias.

Again - more peace.

The collective punishment and retribution against Gaza has united many people against the US and Israel.

Palestinian Christians in Solidarity with Israel. Imagine what kind of courage this takes?

More photos

More photos from solidarity rallies across the country

More photos from peace rallys throughout the country

notice how the hasbara troll tries to dominate and reframe horrible war criminals into 'peace'

boy injured by israeli shelling

boy injured by israeli shelling - 2

the war criminals the hasbara troll supports and the zionists are rallying for - this is their idea of 'peace'

RACIST TROLL SHOWS A CARTOON AND CALLS IT REALITY

By Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian
Thursday, July 24, 2014 8:20 EDT


The Israeli Broadcasting Authority has banned a radio advertisement from a human rights organisation which listed the names of some of the scores of children killed in Gaza since the conflict began 17 days ago.

B’Tselem‘s appeal against the decision was rejected on Wednesday. It intends to petition Israel’s supreme court on Sunday in an effort to get the ban overturned.

The IBA said the ad’s content was “politically controversial”. The broadcast refers to child deaths in Gaza and reads out some of the victims’ names.

In its appeal, B’Tselem demanded to know what was controversial about the item. “Is it controversial that the children [aren't] alive? That they’re children? That those are their names? These are facts that we wish to bring to the public’s knowledge.”

In a statement, the human rights group said: “So far more than 600 people have been killed in bombings in Gaza, more than 150 of them children. But apart from a brief report on the number of fatalities, the Israeli media refrains from covering them.” By Thursday morning, the death toll in Gaza had exceeded 700.

B’Tselem went on: “IBA says broadcasting the children’s names is politically controversial. But refusing to do so is in itself a far-reaching statement – it says the huge price being paid by civilians in Gaza, many of them children, must be censored.”

Aid agencies said on Wednesday that a child had been killed in Gaza on average every hour for the preceding two days, and more than 70,000 children had been forced to flee their homes. There has also been a spike in the number of premature births.

“The shocking number of children being killed, injured, or displaced in Gaza demands an unequivocal international response to stop the bloodshed,” Save the Children said. “Entire families are being wiped out in seconds as a result of the targeting of homes.”

Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 25 July 2014 01:09



1.
It is simply a lie that Israel's slaughter in Gaza is a response to an "unprovoked attack" by Hamas. Not only is it a lie, it is a transparent, brazen lie, whose falsehood is glaringly apparent to anyone who had given even a cursory look at coverage of the Israeli government's response to the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June.

At that time, we were told in many news reports about an Israeli "crackdown" in Gaza, including mass arrests, military operations and, finally, the killing of six Hamas members. It was after these operations and these killings -- which were clear breaches of a ceasefire which Hamas had been honoring for 19 months -- that Hamas began its retaliation against Israel's unprovoked attacks.

(And no, the murder of the teenagers was not a "provocation" by Hamas, which disclaimed all connection to the crime. It was almost certainly carried out a rogue clan which has often -- conveniently -- staged provocations whenever it seems that some small movement toward peace might be made, and has been a thorn in Hamas' side for a long time. What's more, as Max Blumenthal reported, the Israeli government knew the teenagers had been murdered almost immediately, and who the likely culprits were; but the Netanyahu regime chose to wage a worldwide campaign of mendacity -- and torment the boys' parents -- by claiming they might still be alive, and launching "search" missions for them.)

These are all undisputed facts. The narrative that dominates the Washington media and political discourse -- "plucky Israel attacked without motive by demonic foes" -- is, again, an obvious lie. But that has not stopped it from being repeated endlessly, all across the political spectrum and in every form of media, day after day after day.

It is impossible that Barack Obama does not know these undisputed facts. Standing at the apex of history's most all-pervasive intelligence system -- and receiving daily digests of news reports on volatile areas like the Middle East -- he of all people knows that the Hamas rocket fire was a response to an Israeli military action, an Israeli violation of a long ceasefire.

It is also impossible that a majority, if not all, of the 100 U.S. Senators who voted to endorse the Israeli slaughter in Gaza -- including stalwart "progressives" like Al Franken and "socialist" Bernie Sanders -- did not know the truth when they cast their ballots. It is impossible that the editors and reporters of the nation's leading media organizations do not know these facts -- which they themselves reported only a few weeks ago.

Yet day after day after day, from the commanding heights of our "culture" (if the debased goon show of our public discourse deserves such a word), the Big Lie thunders forth. What's more, Obama is putting his money (or rather, our money) where his mendacious mouth is, tacking $225 million for Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system into a bill ostensibly meant to deal with the influx of child immigrants. Obama and the Senate Democrats are making political pawns out of these children -- most of whom are fleeing Central American hellholes created in no small part by decades of bipartisan military and political backing for repressive oligarchs. (Including, of course, Obama's support for an oligarch-militarist "regime change" coup in Honduras early in his presidency.) With the new money for Israel's military, the Democrats hope to sucker the Republicans into voting for the emergency immigration bill (from which they cut $1 billion -- hey, you don't want to coddle those kids!), or else put them in a political bind if the immigrant-hating GOP votes against the bill: "You aren't supporting plucky little Israel!"

A very cynical ploy, yes, but no matter: even if it fails and the children are left to languish, some other way will be found to get the money to Israel and, most importantly, show the world that America fully supports the massacre -- more than 800 Palestinians killed so far, including whole families, refugees at a UN shelter, patients in hospitals and other prime military targets.

Eight hundred dead -- and Obama gives the IDF a $225 million bounty. Maybe when the death count reaches a thousand, he'll buy Netanyahu a pony or something.

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NOTE: the death toll now exceeds 1,000

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2.
James Marc Leas lays out the timeline leading up to the operation in this succinct marshaling of the facts in CounterPunch. You should read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:

The July 8 ITIC report also divulged why Hamas launched its first rocket fire at Israel in more than 19 months on July 7: On that night Israeli forces had bombed and killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza. The ITIC report includes a picture of the six Hamas members. Thus, a report from an authoritative Israeli source described the provocation for the resumption of rocket fire: Hamas rocket fire began only after Israeli forces had engaged in nearly a month of military operations in violation of the ceasefire agreement and had killed 6 Hamas members in Gaza. ...

The facts show that Israeli forces had to work quite hard to get Hamas to end its cease-fire. The killing of the six Hamas members was not an isolated event. Israeli forces and settlers had gone wild on the West Bank starting on June 12 after the kidnaping of three Israeli teens. Israeli forces had also attacked 60 targets in Gaza during those three weeks of June. Then, on the night of July 7, 2014, the Israeli Air Force had attacked approximately 50 more “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip, as described in the ITIC report.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on July 3:

Israel’s military operations in the West Bank following the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers have amounted to collective punishment. The military operations included unlawful use of force, arbitrary arrests, and illegal home demolitions. ... Giving more details, several of the weekly reports from the Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR) indicate that Israeli forces and settlers killed 11 Palestinians and wounded 51 during 369 incursions into the West Bank between June 12 and July 2 and that Israeli forces raided hundreds of houses on the West Bank each week.

110 bombing raids, a military incursion, 17 killings, mass arrests -- all before Hamas fired a single rocket. This is what Obama -- and every single member of the United States Senate -- call an "unprovoked attack." They say it with a straight face -- nay, with long, somber, pious faces -- but they know it's a lie.

3.
But let us imagine, just for a moment, that their deceitful narrative was true. What if Hamas just woke up one fine, clear peaceful morning and said, "Hey, let's start firing missiles at Israel, fellas! Won't that be a hoot?" The fact is that even in that scenario, it would not be an "unprovoked attack," but a legitimate act of self-defense.

How do we know this? Because one of Israel's most honored statesmen told us so. As Jonathan Schwarz notes, Abba Eban, one of the founding fathers of Israel, used his renowned eloquence to defend Israel in the UN from charges of aggression for striking first in the 1967 Six-Day War. Rising to address the global body -- where he had once served as vice-president of the General Assembly -- Eban put forth his case. The surprise attack was justified, he said, because Egypt had blockaded an Israeli port:

The blockade is by definition an act of war, imposed and enforced through armed violence. Never in history have blockade and peace existed side by side. From May 24 onward, the question who started the war or who fired the first shot became momentously irrelevant. There is no difference in civil law between murdering a man by slow strangulation or killing him by a shot in the bead. From the moment at which the blockade was imposed, active hostilities had commenced and Israel owed Egypt nothing of her Charter rights. If a foreign power sought to close Odessa or Copenhagen or Marseilles or New York harbour by the use of force, what would happen? Would there be any discussion about who had fired the first shot? Would anyone ask whether aggression had begun?

As Schwarz points out -- and which the entirety of the American political-media establishment perpetually fails to point out -- Gaza has been subject to a stringent and ruinous blockade by Israel since 2007. As noted here the other day:

Israel has imprisoned the people of Gaza in a stateless limbo while carefully controlling almost every aspect of their lives, including what medicines they can have, what manufacturing and building materials they are allowed and even, at times, how much food they are allowed to eat to keep the population weakened but just above malnutrition levels. This brutal regimen in daily life is of course punctuated with regular night raids, bombings, kidnappings, “disappearings” and almost weekly civilians deaths at the hands of Israeli overseers. This has gone on year after year.

Eban said Israel was justified in retaliating with military force when Egypt had blockaded a port for a few weeks. How much more justified would the Palestinians be in retaliating against a total blockade -- by land, sea and air -- that has lasted almost eight years?

I don't agree with lobbing missiles into cities. I believe it's wrong. But I also realize that I have the great luxury of pondering these moral and legal and philosophical questions at my leisure, in comfort and safety. I haven't seen my family half-starved, my children's growth stunted, my friends and relatives blown to bits. I haven't been trapped in stateless limbo, with no passport, no freedom, no opportunity, under threat of violent death or arbitrary arrest every moment of my life. I don't know what I would do if that was my reality. I don't know what I'd do if I saw my loved ones suffer that way, year after year. I might somehow hold on to the ideal of non-violent resistance -- or I very well might not.

But I do know that by the terms of the world's great and good -- who speak portentously of the "laws of war" and analyze in great detail the "justifications" for violent conflict -- the Palestinians have a right to resist the "slow strangulation" of the blockade ... and the "shot in the head" (and the missile in the crib) that they are now being subjected to. By Abba Eban's own reasoning, from the very first day of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, "the question who started the war or who fired the first shot became momentously irrelevant."

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Israel Grants First Golan Heights Oil Drilling licence To Dick Cheney-Linked Company

Israel has granted a U.S. company the first licence to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights.

A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. Its administration of the area is not recognised by international law.

pic.twitter.com/p0hGEvbG5N

As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.

Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.

We know it works -- when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.

This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace. Sign the petition on the right and call on 6 key banks, pension funds and businesses to pull out -- If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down.

The media makes out like this is an intractable conflict between two equal warring parties, but it is not. Palestinian extremists' attacks on innocent civilians are never justified and Hamas’ anti-semitism is disgusting. But these extremists claim legitimacy by fighting the grotesque, decades-long oppression by the Israeli state. Israel currently occupies, colonises, bombs, raids, and controls the water, trade and the borders of a legally free nation that has been recognised by the United Nations. In Gaza, Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and then blockaded it. Now as bombs fall, the families literally have no way to get out.

To many, particularly in Europe and North America, calling for companies to withdraw investments from financing or taking part in Israel's occupation of Palestine sounds completely biased. But this campaign is not anti-Israel -- this is the most potent non-violent strategy to end the ritual violence, ensure Israelis' security and achieve Palestinian freedom. Although Hamas deserves much pressure too, it is already under crippling sanctions and facing every kind of pressure. Israel's power and wealth dwarfs Palestine, and if it refuses to end its illegal occupation, the world must act to make the cost unbearable.

Dutch pension fund ABP invests in Israeli banks that help fund the colonisation of Palestine. Massive banks like Barclays invest in suppliers of Israeli arms and other occupation businesses. British G4S provides extensive security equipment used by the Israeli Defence Force in the occupation. France's Veolia operates transport for Israeli settlers illegally living on Palestinian lands. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard supplies sophisticated surveillance to control the movement of Palestinians. And Caterpillar provides bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian homes and farms.

If we can create the biggest global call ever to get these companies to pull out, we will show clearly that the world will no longer be complicit in this bloodshed. The Palestinian people are calling on the world to support this path and progressive Israelis support it too. Let’s join them.

SIGN THE PETITION:
To the CEOs of ABP, HP, Veolia, Barclays, Caterpillar, and G4S:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/israel_palestine_this_is_how_it_ends_loc/?copy

So it's settled. We're all going to send Hamas a candygram asking them to stop firing rockets

So it's settled. We're all going to send Hamas a candygram asking them to stop firing rockets!

..as much as the o'bomba and illegally occupied Palestine regimes would love for you to forget that fact

the illegally occupied Palestine regime steals it's water and oil from invaded and occupied nations, and depends on US foreign aid to survive

thier entire technology sector is based on extensive spy networks stealing other nations and companies secrets

they are nothing but war mongers, thieves and lairs

their main export is PR - paid professional lairs