Paul Haeder, Author

…that is the nefarious power of pink washing, and Isra-Hell is famous for that song and dance

The high school dictionary definition ain’t going to cut it — as a way to say all those Americans are so tired of all of us calling what Isra—Hell is doing is genocide.

I understand contradictory thinking, so-called counterintuitive thinking.

Yes, Joe McCarthy was coached by Roy Cohn, and gay and AIDS expiring Cohn coached Trump.

Jesus was a Palestinian, and here you go, genocide is genocide, and forget about the pocket dictionary.

William A. Schabas is a Professor of International Law at Middlesex University, London. He is also a Professor Emeritus at Leiden University and the University of Galway, and an invited visiting scholar at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po. Recognized as a leading expert on international human rights law, international criminal law, genocide and capital punishment, he is the author of more than 20 books and 400 journal articles on these issues.

He is also Editor Emeritus of Criminal Law Forum, the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He also worked as a consultant on capital punishment for the UN Office of Drugs and Crime and drafted the 2010, 2015 and 202 reports of the UN Secretary-General on the status of the death penalty.

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Top UN official in New York steps down citing ‘genocide’ of Palestinian civilians

Craig Mokhiber, director of human rights body, accuses the US, UK and much of Europe as ‘wholly complicit in the horrific assault’

The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York.

Mokhiber, who was stepping down having reached retirement age, wrote: “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

Ethnic cleansing. Leads to genocide.

Fuck, leave it to RAND, that CIA motherfucking outfit, to run the numbers: 2015 Health Related Behaviors Survey: Sexual Orientation, Transgender Identity, and Health Among U.S. Active-Duty Service Members

The Pink Washing lies of Isra-Hell, oh what a new LGBTQA+ Uniformed USA Services we have — blast them all to kingdom come!

Pinkwashing is an Israeli government propaganda strategy that cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image while concealing Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians. 

For decades, Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime has robbed, oppressed, ethnically cleansed, impoverished, imprisoned and killed Palestinians, queer and non-queer alike.

As Israel’s far-right government allies itself with homophobic, intolerant and racist leaders around the world, including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) leader, pastor John Hagee, who combines anti-Semitism with Islamophobia, sexism, and homophobia, LGBTQIA+ communities are seeing through the pink smokescreen. There is growing awareness that queer and trans liberation cannot be separated from Palestinian liberation.

Anti-pinkwashing activists and groups have pushed Palestinian rights to the forefront of Pride events across the world. More than 100 LGBTQIA+ groups supported the call from Palestinian queers to boycott Eurovision 2019 in apartheid Tel Aviv. Dozens of queer filmmakers have withdrawn or opposed screenings of their films at TLVFest, the Israeli government-sponsored LGBT film festival in Tel Aviv.

While LGBT personnel obtained routine medical care in percentages similar to non-LGBT personnel, they reported more smoking, binge drinking, risky sexual behavior, and adverse sexual health outcomes. The percentages of LGBT personnel experiencing mental health issues and those with a history of physical abuse and sexual assault were particularly high. These observed differences were similar to those observed for LGBT people in the general U.S. population.

Although these individuals are a small portion of the force, these disparities warrant close attention and tracking by DoD and the Coast Guard so that the specific needs of this subgroup can be addressed. This is particularly important for the Navy, which has the highest percentage of gay men serving and of LGBT service members overall, and in the Marine Corps, which has the highest percentage of bisexual women serving. Policies that enhance, for example, efforts to prevent substance use and sexual risk behaviors may address LGBT health disparities. Although one option is to target the LGBT population with clinical and population efforts, such an approach may stigmatize LGBT service members.

The Kiss of Death.

The four-star general had just wrapped up a high-octane keynote speech at the Air Force and Space Force Association’s 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference, where he gave an address titled the “Mobility Manifesto.” While shouting into a wireless microphone away from the podium, he underscored two main points: “Lethality matters most” and China’s military is “tailor-making an air force to kill you.”

Months later, in a memo dated Feb. 1, Minihan took it a step further. He told his command that war with China was right around the corner, and he called on airmen with weapons qualifications to “fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.” He also advised airmen to update their virtual Record of Emergency Data, essentially their dependents’ contact information and wills.

Xi is a hero, and he has to prepare for these Neo-Con Christian Freaks and Neo-liberal Jewish Freaks.

Ahh, Russia has a right to preventative self-defense!

Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression

Putin’s government has offered a series of justifications for Russia’s use of force on Ukraine on different legal fronts. Chief among them is the claim that the eastward expansion of NATO is a direct threat to the security of Russia and therefore triggers Russia’s right of self-defense. There might be some merit to the first part of this claim on the political and military front, bearing in mind that NATO was born -basically- to keep the USSR (now Russia) in check; however, down law alley, this is an abuse of right. Ukraine is free to join whatever collective security arrangements it deems appropriate (without prejudice to the ability of Russia to attempt to deter or dissuade them by diplomatic and legal means) as a function of its sovereignty. Attempting to coerce Ukraine by force into abandoning its bid for NATO membership is the functional equivalent of claiming preventive self-defense. This is, in many ways, a destiny of NATO and friends’ own making. The claims for preventive self-defense put forth by the US and Israel, among others, seeking to justify their aggressions have sowed the land so that Russia may try and reap it.

Russia’s representative in the UN Security Council invoked the right of self-defence and attached the speech by President Putin announcing the “special military operation” as justification for its action immediately following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. In that statement Putin referred to various reasons for its claim of self-defence. These included past allegedly unlawful uses of force by Western nations in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yugoslavia, the “threatening expansion” of nato towards Russia’s borders, the alleged plight of persons of Russian ethnicity in Ukraine, especially the Donbas region and the “ genocide” supposedly being perpetrated against them, and the “request for assistance” by the breakaway enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk, which had been recognized as independent States by Russia only days before the invasion commenced. All of this made it in his words imperative to take action to rid Ukraine of supposedly “anti-Russian” and “Nazi” elements and enforce its “demilitarization and neutrality”

Shock and Awe, USA Style:

On Aug. 26, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney specifically linked Bush’s embryonic doctrine of pre-emption to Iraq, declaring at a convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars that:

“What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness…deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.”

So what’s the new new abonormal abnormal uniformed services going to say about this,or at least what’s the queer female feminists going to say? Against the pinkwashing of Israel: Why supporting Palestinians is a queer and feminist issue.

[Ashley Bohrer is a queer feminist Jewish activist and academic based in Chicago. She is a founding member of Jews for Justice in Palestine.]