Wednesday 14th of May 2025
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killing watermelons....

A single, small, low-quality do-it-yourself poster recently displayed in the center of Germany’s capital Berlin has caused a minor scandal that has gone against the grain of the country’s usually unshakable support for Israel while the latter is committing genocide.

 

Friends of genocide: Has Germany learned nothing from the Holocaust?
A prominent Jewish restaurant in Berlin chose to celebrate Israel Day with a joke about the slaughter of Palestinians

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

 

The essence of the incident is simple: in late April, the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (DIG) – “German-Israeli Society” – held one of its “Israel Days”in Berlin. In Germany, the DIG is a prominent and powerful organization. Its main source of funding, according to the country’s official lobbying registerfor 2023, is the German state. The latter’s Federal Agency for Civic Education – in essence, Germany’s office of Centrist ideological orthodoxy and indoctrination – describes it as the country’s “central organization […] where friends of Israel come together in non-partisan cooperation.”   

“Israel Day” in Berlin was a largely informal event, really a street party with speeches. To make things even more fun, there was catering by the restaurant Feinberg’s. In particular, Feinberg’s, specializing in what it calls Israeli cuisine – Palestinians recognize many dishes as plagiarized from their tradition – offered a very special melon smoothie.

The poster advertising the drink showed a lion (used by Israelis as a national symbol) wearing an apron emblazoned with the Israeli flag (just to make sure). The lion held two large glass tumblers, one with pieces of melon (an already traditional and well-known symbol of Palestine and its resistance), the other with the finished smoothie and a small Israeli flag.

The background consisted of a pile of melons, often cut open, many featuring instantly recognizable baby faces. The poster’s text said (partly in English and partly in German): “Watermelon meets Zion. Israeli-style watermelon, shredded, mashed, and hacked to pieces.”

The watermelons evoked what is known as “Kindchenschema” or “cuteness” (in the scientific sense): an almost universally recognized pattern of features that signals babies and children and – with psychologically normal individuals – stirring deep hormonal and neurological responses of sympathy and care or at least restraint.

The message was obvious and not at all funny: The Israeli “lion” was crushing the Palestinian “watermelons” into an enjoyably refreshing ice-cold and blood-red pulp, available with a “shot” of – presumably celebratory – vodka, too. That the faces on the anthropomorphized “melons” were childlike made everything even more repulsive: clearly, whoever felt this picture was a good idea is not normal enough for the Kindchenschema to work on them.

Those who study genocide have long agreed that the deliberate dehumanizing of the victims by propaganda and indoctrination is one of its elementary methods and signs. Those who pretend to fail to recognize a textbook case of such dehumanization in this poster are deliberately obtuse.

The poster was, of course, an unmistakable allusion to Israel’s ongoing combined genocide-ethnic cleansingoperation, with its main (though not sole) target the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That is the place where the majority of Israel’s victims, many of them babies and children, have literally been “shredded” and “cut to pieces”by air raids and bombing as well as systematically starvedand deprived of housing and vital infrastructure, especially medical institutions, and, not to forget, their caretakers: it is Gaza under Israeli assault for which doctors had to invent a new abbreviation: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.

In the words of Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN humanitarian office responsible for Gaza, Israel is practicing “deprivation by design” and the “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life.”

The latest - de facto minimum - death toll among the Palestinians is approaching 63,000. Almost 112,000 victims have been injured, often severely, leading to lifelong consequences, such as amputated limbs. Horrifying as they are, these figures, generated by Gaza’s health ministry – which, contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda, is conservative in its counting – are only the tip of the iceberg. For one thing, a study in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet has long maintained that the real figures are likely to be substantially higher.

Killing, injuring, and maiming are, of course, only one part of Israeli violence. Mass displacement and the literal razing of the Gaza Strip, much of which has been pounded into toxic dust, and deep and pervasive psychological trauma are others. There is no room here to even sketch all the vicious methods of Israel’s genocide or all its horrendous consequences. And as with genocides before, there is also a limit to language: It is hard to even accommodate in ordinary words both what the Israeli perpetrators have been doing, together with their Western accomplices, and the vicious sadism that not a few but many Israelis, in and out of uniform, are proudly displaying.

Yet this is, after all, what Amnesty International – and many others – have rightly identified as a “live-streamed genocide.” Due to the stunning shamelessness of many Israeli perpetrators and the development of modern media and especially social media, this is a genocide in the global public eye as never before.

That is why it is entirely impossible to believe the silly attempts to obfuscate and backpedal now made by the clearly anything but “leonine” creators of the poster. Obviously stung by protests and afraid of possible legal consequences, Yorai Feinberg, owner of Feinberg’s, has retreated to claiming that the melons were meant to stand for – drum roll – “antisemitism,” and that the whole thing was just satire anyhow.

Both claims are offensively absurd: Everyone knows that watermelons stand for Palestine, Palestinians, and their resistance, not “antisemitism.” It may, of course, be that in the unwell minds of the poster’s creators those two things appear to be the same. That would be a classical Zionist delusion as well as a propaganda trick. And still, obviously, a lie.

Also, it is very, very hard to explain why things now allegedly representing merely “antisemitism” needed to be drawn with cute, childlike faces. No, this is, let’s print it, for-crying-out-loud bullshit, nonsense of the same evil, brazen sort as the Israeli genociders’ endless, daft lies about Hamas here and Hamas there, whenever they feel – which is often – like bombing yet another hospital, tent encampment, or residential building.

Regarding “satire” – a cop-out publicly endorsed by (surprise, surprise) the DIG – where to even start? If the makers of this revolting picture really felt that they were producing something akin to a “witty” or “edgy” statement, a kind of “joke,” then that simply means that they find “joking” about genocide and especially the mass murder of children “normal.” And there can’t be anything less normal and more morally rotten than such a sense of “humor.” Seriously boasting of mass murder or “just kidding”? You know what: It does not matter – either means you are a monster.

But this scandal involves more than the bloody bigotry of one German and Israeli restaurant. Consider that this was an official DIG event, attended by both its president Volker Beck and the Israeli ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor. They cannot have been unaware of the ‘lion-exterminates-melons’ poster: an Instagram picture showed both of them in front of the stand displaying it.

Beck is a major – if past his prime – politician from Germany’s Green Party, a fanatical supporter of Israel, and, as it happens, also a figure with a less than shining past. He has argued for the decriminalization of “pedosexuality,” that is, de facto the unpunished sexual abuse of minors, a fact he later tried to conceal without success; he has also been caught with serious drugs. Prosor is a veteran Israeli diplomat who does what Israeli diplomats do: Past highlights include attacking UNRWA, a signature move of Israeli aggression against Palestinians designed to cut them off from any support that might disturb Israeli siege and starvation operations. Indeed, Israeli assaults on UNRWA are currently the subject of yet another case against it at the International Court of Justice  (ICJ).

Recently, Prosor has sought to suppress critical voices in Germany, including  Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm, and, for good measure, police German universities by defaming resistance to Israeli crimes and German complicity as “new antisemitism.” How original.

It’s not hard to imagine that both gentlemen saw nothing wrong with that melon-shredding lion and may even have enjoyed a splash of genocide-’joke’ smoothie. And they won’t face any consequences, of course. For – and this is the widest and saddest context of this vile affair – Germany has chosen to side with Israel with a ‘to-the-bitter-end’ obstinacy reminiscent of that other very disappointing Germany that failed to ever stop being loyal to – and fighting for – Nazism until finally stopped by others, mostly the Soviets.

Berlin, the capital, has been at the forefront of this new, as it were, transferred nationalism-without-restraint and Nibelungentreue for pure, obvious evil. Its mayor Kai Wegner has acquired a reputation for genocide denial; its police for brutality against those showing solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims. And it is the city where an anti-genocide protester has just been convicted for “trivializing the Holocaust”simply for peacefully holding up a sign saying “Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust?” Clearly, that judge has not.

Against this background of pervasive, dominant ethical perversion, a poster viciously dehumanizing Palestinians came as no surprise. What is intriguing is that this time there has been some protest even, if all too faintly, in some mainstream media outlets. Maybe Germany is not entirely lost yet. Or is it, as before in German history, only a minority that shows decency but cannot change the deeply indecent course of the country’s morally and intellectually kaput elites and the majority still following them?

https://www.rt.com/news/617472-germany-israel-palestine-genocide/

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

crushing....

 

Israel plans on forcibly deporting Arabs from Gaza

Alexandr Svaranc, May 13, 2025
Israel is not abandoning the idea of ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. The idea of peacefully displacing civilians is unacceptable to the Arabs and most of the international community. Tel Aviv is counting on solving this issue militarily.

 

For Israel, an end to the war in Gaza means crushing Hamas and deporting the Arab population 

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu does not consider the war with Hamas in Gaza to be over. The ceasefire agreement did not become a precursor to establishing peace.

In any war, the conflicting parties often enter into temporary truces to resolve local and tactical issues (e.g. getting a breather to replenish arsenals, accumulating and redeploying forces, solving higher-priority tasks that ultimately contribute to achieving a complete victory etc.).

The late Pope Francis was also opposed to the deportation of Arabs from the Gaza Strip, which caused a critical reaction in Israel 

Israel used the ceasefire to concentrate its forces in the northern (Lebanese) direction and defeat (destroy the military infrastructure and arsenal of) Hezbollah (the IDF’s Operation ‘Northern Arrows’, October 1-November 27, 2024), as well as improving their positions in the eastern (Syrian) direction (from December, 2024) with a change in the emphasis of pro-Palestinian forces on other likely theatres of military operations. As a result, Iran suffered significant losses in Lebanon and Syria. Türkiye, which has constantly been raising its level of anti-Israeli rhetoric with initiatives to resolve the Palestinian issue, has been dragged into the Syrian crisis. For Erdogan today, the preservation of the puppet regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus is much more relevant than resolving the Palestinian issue with the support of Hamas.

Despite the fact that Israel is one of the most economically and technologically advanced countries in the Middle East and ranks 29th in the world in terms of GDP, in a situation of prolonged war, the military-industrial complex of the Jewish State cannot provide its army with sufficient weapons and military equipment. Thus, after the start of Hamas’ aggression from October 7, 2023, until the autumn of 2024, the United States spent almost $18 bn on military aid to Israel, a record amount in the history of US-Israeli military and technical cooperation.

In other words, the war in the Gaza Strip consumed significant Israeli resources. In order to manage a ‘second front’ in the Lebanese or Syrian directions, Tel Aviv needed a respite (ceasefire) in the south of the country. Otherwise, the dispersion of forces in all areas of hostilities (the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, not to mention the Houthis in Yemen) could lead to serious consequences for Israel itself.

In addition, the tactic of ‘small victorious wars’ always remains an option for the Israeli General Staff and serves the interests of the ruling circles. Netanyahu understood that the unfinished war with Hamas, the lack of a full release of Israeli hostages from Palestinian captivity and the security problems of his own population in the north of the country caused protests by Israelis and negatively affected both the reputation of the prime minister and the ruling Likud bloc in the Knesset. Accordingly, the military successes of the Israeli army in Lebanon and the subsequent occupation of the security zone of the Golan Heights in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime allowed Netanyahu and his party to restore their shaky ratings and gain 25 seats in parliament.

With US President Donald Trump back at the White House, Israel not only expects to increase US military assistance, but also to involve Washington in a joint campaign against Tehran under the guise of shutting down the Iranian nuclear file and resolving the crisis in Israeli-Turkish relations in Syria. However, since Trump tends to combine populism with pragmatism, the United States is still focused on a political settlement of relations with Iran and Türkiye via negotiations.

At this stage, the United States is not interested in a hot war between Israel and Iran, much less with NATO member Türkiye. Tel Aviv is shifting the confrontation with Tehran to subversive activities of foreign intelligence agencies to provoke the Islamic Republic to retaliate so as to disrupt negotiations with the United States. In the case of Türkiye, Israel does not recognise the al-Sharaa regime, continues targeted military strikes against Syrian military facilities (allegedly to secure its territory from the unpredictable actions of Sunni extremists) and also tries to present its aggressive actions in Syria as protecting local national minorities (particularly the Druze) from the tyranny of the pro-Turkish regime.

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv has obtained US President Trump’s public support for the idea of mass resettlement (realistically the deportation of two million indigenous people) of Arabs from the Gaza Strip, followed by the transformation of this territory into a kind of world tourism centre under a US protectorate and the restoration of a ‘prosperous paradise’ in the land of Israel with the participation of US business.

In the ceasefire reached with Hamas, Israel reserved the right to resume military operations in the Gaza Strip if the other party does not release all Israeli hostages and Hamas does not stop provocations. In fact, Tel Aviv still has formal reasons to resume military operations in the Gaza Strip.

Citing Israeli media, the Voice of Türkiye newspaper reported that the Netanyahu government has approved a plan to expand its operation and fully occupy the Gaza Strip. At the same time, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the need to occupy the Gaza Strip, expelling the entire population of the exclave.

Thus, Israel is preparing to expand its offensive in the Gaza Strip. The government has approved such a ground operation by the IDF, which may begin after the end of US President Trump’s Middle East tour at the end of May.

In this regard, public demands for the return of hostages from the Gaza Strip have recently increased in Israel, and the army has been replenished with tens of thousands of reservists. In the event of an offensive ground operation, Israel, under the guise of ensuring security, will try to oust the civilian population from the Gaza Strip to the border with Egypt, close humanitarian aid access to the exclave, carry out massive strikes on militant infrastructure and command posts and finish off the remnants of Hamas.

It is no coincidence that, 12 years later, Türkiye and Egypt resumed their partnership and began to conduct joint military exercises (for example, within the framework of the Pakistani Air Force’s exercises in October, 2024, and special forces units in Ankara in May, 2025). Türkiye will try to prevent Arab refugees from crossing the Israeli-Egyptian border and prevent the very fact of the deportation of civilians.

How will the world react to the Israeli policy of the mass deportation of Arabs?

Israeli radicals’ idea of organising the ethnic deportation of the indigenous population from the Gaza Strip has not found widespread support in the international community. Iran, Türkiye, Arab countries and other representatives of the Islamic world are clear opponents of such a prospect of resolving the Palestinian issue in the Gaza Strip. A mass ethnic deportation in the 21stcentury was not only ill received in the Islamic world, but also in many Christian countries (Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil etc.) and international organisations (including the UN). The late Pope Francis was also opposed to the deportation of Arabs from the Gaza Strip, which caused a critical reaction in Israel.

Meanwhile, it cannot be said that the international community is showing determination to prevent the expulsion of the indigenous population from the Gaza Strip. For example, Egypt is afraid to oppose US President Trump’s plan to deport Arabs. Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar have a similar position.

None of these Arab states really want to accept Palestinian refugees en masse for economic and domestic political reasons. This forced migration will have a severe impact on the burdened socio-economic local budgets, and the emergence of a critical masses can undermine confidence in the government itself. At the same time, there is an understanding that the exodus of Arabs from the Gaza Strip will lead to the final Israeli occupation of this part of Palestine.

Azerbaijan, being a strategic partner of Israel and interested in continuing to receive Israeli military supplies, is unlikely to ‘rebel’ against the policy of deporting fellow Muslims from the Gaza Strip and will limit itself to a declarative statement calling for compliance with international law. Baku is most likely interested in obtaining permits from Tel Aviv and Washington to participate in a business project to rebuild the destroyed Gaza Strip in the post-war period.

The UK will not repeat France’s condemnation of Israel for deporting Arabs, and together with the United States will stop anti-Israel meetings and resolutions in international organisations (primarily the UN).

It is difficult to imagine that any country would launch military operations against Israel for its operation in the Gaza Strip, followed by the displacement of local Palestinians. Iran is currently unable to defeat Israel alone, which enjoys the unconditional support of the United States. Türkiye is most notable for its vocal threats against Israel and warnings from its fighter jets, but it will not cross any red lines because of the United States.

All of this gives Israel reason to believe that beyond public denials, statements, protests and resolutions, the international community will do nothing against the Jewish State. Accordingly, the elimination of Hamas in the Gaza Strip with the following forcible expulsion of the civilian population may become a fait accompli.

 

Alexander Svarants – Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Turkologist, expert on the Middle East

 

https://journal-neo.su/2025/05/13/israel-plans-on-forcibly-deporting-arabs-from-gaza/

 

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.