Israel has continued its war on journalism with another attack on Al Jazeera, this time with a raid on the outlet’s office in the West Bank and an order to shut down for 45 days. The shuttering occurred despite the office being legally under Palestinian control per the Oslo Accords.

This move comes as Israel and Hezbollah exchange heavy fire and step closer to the brink of full-scale war, and as Israel continues its daily massacres in Gaza and keeps ramping up its brutality toward Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel keeps attacking Al Jazeera, assassinating journalists and bombing press offices for the same reason the mafia kills witnesses. They want to commit their crimes in the dark.

Journalist Jonathan Cook writes of the news:

Having destroyed Al Jazeera’s office in Gaza, and killed much of its staff there, having outlawed Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel, having admitted executing Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh (after lying that Palestinians did it),

Israeli troops have now invaded Al Jazeera’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and shuttered the channel’s operations.

This is the latest attack on journalism by Israel: over the past year, it has killed more than 170 journalists, most of them Palestinians, and barred all foreign correspondents from reporting from Gaza.

When will the US and UK proscribe Israel as a terrorist state?

When will western media organisations and western journalists speak up in solidarity with their terrorised colleagues in occupied Palestine?

Israel hates truth.

Israel hates truth for the same reason anyone has ever hated truth: because the truth about them is ugly.

The more I live and learn, the more convinced I am that everything ultimately comes down to seeing. Clear perception is what moves things toward health, and the lack of clear perception is what keeps things in dysfunction. The more clear perception there is, the more things move out of dysfunction and toward health. This is true whether you’re talking about your own personal psychology, or the largest power dynamics in the world.

This is why profoundly ugly governments like Israel and the United States constantly attack the press, churn out propaganda, manipulate narratives, participate in online information ops, use censorship, and obstruct visibility via government secrecy. The truth about them is ugly, so they work to prevent the truth from being clearly seen.

You will see this same dynamic happening in your personal life with the nastier individuals you interact with. They pour a tremendous amount of energy into pushing and pulling at the way you see them, the way you see others in your circle, and the way you see yourself. They speak maliciously about others in private conversations and present a different face out in the open. They manipulate perception to make themselves seem big and shiny and make others seem small and unworthy. They work to inflate your view of them and devalue your view of yourself.

Even within yourself you’ll see this same dynamic. All our psychological dysfunctionality is driven by subconscious wounds, trauma and coping mechanisms that we have not yet coaxed out into the light of consciousness, and if we are really honest with ourselves the reason we have not done so is because some ugly truths are hidden within our inner darkness that we’d prefer not to look at. It takes a lot of courage and a fierce dedication to truth to bring all those inner demons out into the light where they can be healed, but it’s the only way to become an authentic person.

Everything ugly in our species clings to the darkness and avoids being seen, whether it’s experiences in early childhood that we’d rather not examine, unhealthy interpersonal relationships, or the most murderous and depraved impulses of the most powerful empire in human history.

And in all cases the treatment is the same: do everything we can every day to expand seeing at every opportunity. On the level of the personal this looks like rigorously honest and courageous inner work. On the level of the interpersonal this looks like paying attention to the ways abuse and manipulation play out in yourself and the people you know, and cultivating truth-based relationships with truth-driven people. On the level of the collective this looks like using every means at your disposal to help spread awareness of the abuses of our rulers and the abusive nature of the systems we live under, using your own unique gifts and abilities.

Seeing is the first step toward health, which is why every unhealthy aspect of humanity does everything it can to avoid it. We will not have a healthy world until we become a conscious species, and we will not become a conscious species until we all have unrestricted perception, both inwardly and outwardly.

https://johnmenadue.com/israel-hates-truth/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

After exhausting the great opportunity in Gaza, Israel is turning to exhausting the next great opportunity, a war in Lebanon. When it comes to war, Israel is the land of unlimited opportunities. Every war is an opportunity and every opportunity brings a war.

Is there a problem in Gaza? War. Is there one on the northern border? Another one. Many Israelis are excited. After all, they've been waiting for such an opportunity for years. Others support it silently, under an oppressive cloud, and nearly all of them are convinced that there is no other option.

• Don't believe the 'no choice' lie. Israel does not need a war in Lebanon
• Israel's war has gone on long enough. Let's not go like sheep to the slaughter
• Israel has one last chance to sign a deal before everything goes up in flames

It's one thing to regard war as a horrific necessity, but it's something else when seen as an opportunity: an opportunity to shape a new world, a new reality, a better one. Hamas will be eradicated, the hostages released and Hezbollah will be ridiculed. The evacuated residents of the north will return to their homes, the Galilee will flourish and its flowers will bloom. The same will happen in communities along the Gaza border. What a wonderful opportunity war provides. 

The fact that throughout its history, Israel has not yet embarked on a single war that has bettered its situation or solved its problems, with some of them, such as the 1967 war even unadmittedly worsening its situation, has not convinced a single person. Just wait for the next war. It will solve all our problems once and for all.

"Once and for all" is the "total victory" of yesteryear. After supposedly defeating Hamas – once and for all –Israel will also defeat Hezbollah, once and for all. The problem is that this always ends in a few years of quiet followed by a war that is worse than its forerunners. The supporters of a big war in Lebanon now explain their lust for seeing the IDF on the outskirts of Beirut again by calling it a great opportunity.

Over the weekend, they exhorted decision-makers to act. After all, they argued, the 500 newly blinded people in Lebanon, a result of exploding pagers, provides a golden opportunity that will not return anytime soon. So, what the hell are you waiting for to start the war?

The very concept of war as an opportunity points to a sick mindset. Viewing war as a sole and primary means of solving problems suggests a mental distortion. But in a country in which Karni Eldad, a columnist in the daily Israel Hayom, calls the dozens of people killed, the thousands of people wounded and the hundreds blinded by exploding pagers in Lebanon "an immense gift to our nation, which greatly deserves it ahead of the new year," one is not surprised by anything. 

"The amazing blows the enemy in the north has sustained was exactly what our nation needed: the elegance, the precision, the humiliation, the thinking one million steps ahead," she waxed lyrical. A million steps ahead. However, for sane people, war is an opportunity for nothing whatsoever other than bloodshed, destruction and loss.

The school embracing the "once and for all" concept seems particularly foolish after the war in Gaza. After all, the war there was meant to solve our problems once and for all. Not one of them has been solved after a year of bitter combat, with tens of thousands of fatalities and total destruction. Israel will emerge from the war in Gaza in a much worse situation than it entered it. 

How can one even think that a war against a much stronger enemy, in much more difficult terrain, with an exhausted army, facing global revulsion, will bring about a better result than the fiasco in Gaza? It can only mean that most Israelis have not yet internalized the extent of the failure in Gaza. They have not yet reached the obvious conclusion that it would have been better if Israel had not embarked on a war there, then proceeding in a rush toward Sidon. Just as in the case of Rafah, there is no. There are protests, but not against a war.

It's hard to think of such a conjunction of inconceivable developments: while soldiers are still killing, being killed and sowing ruin in Gaza, futilely and with no purpose, other forces are making their way to the north for an even more accursed war, it too designed to solve problems once and for all. And everyone sees the voices and buys the lies. And after Lebanon we'll tackle Iran. There too we'll have an opportunity, there too we'll solve our problems once and for all.

https://archive.md/CO4Kv#selection-1163.0-1191.478

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.