Maung Zarni on Democracy Now talked about Gaza and the Occupied Palestine

 Here is the piece below from Dr Zarni. Below his piece, there is an article from Gideon Levy. - HS

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Dear Friends,  My 9-minutes interview on Israel and Myanmar genocides and human rights conditions.     

The link to view is below.     

Any mention of Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel in the same breath will get your account blocked on social media platforms.  But the late Israel scholar Professor Leibowitz  had, with great pains, publicly warned Israeli soldiers becoming "Judaeo-Nazi" 40 years ago, and Prof Chomsky amplified the sick parallel a decade or 2 later.                   

Last month, the well-known Israeli genocide scholar and historian Omar Bartov penned a long read in the Observer/Guardian (of UK), where he stated Israel is committing a genocide, and equally important, and equally important, he draws a parallel between ISRAEL today and Nazi Germany.       

He wrote his PhD thesis at Oxford on the socialisation of the Nazis in Hitler's military in the 1980's.  He now talks in societal terms.     

Bartov served as a company commander in the IDF and fought Israel's wars of choice.    

"As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel.

Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip in January. Photograph: IDF/GPO/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree

By Omer Bartov" -     read Bartov's essay here:    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov            

I took several photos of a demolished home in Silwuan neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which is spraypainted with a Star of David.  This is not an isolated incident.     All stolen land is now dotted with  the flag, and settlers (land thieves) fly the flag on their vehicles - as a sign of death and destruction to the indigenous Palestinians.

              I now view this originally sacred symbol as Israel's equivalent of Swastika.   Swastika was a sacred symbol across Indic religious cultures, from Tibet and Japan to its birthplace of Indian subcontinent.   The Nazi twisted the symbol literally and appropriated it for their nefarious purposes. Israeli's Judaeo-Nazis are using it now for their singularly genocidal  mission which has already united  both state and society at large.                          

So, I am going to tell it like it is.                                                            Zarni                            

  "Standing at Gaza Border Felt Like Visiting Auschwitz: Burmese Genocide Scholar" Maung Zarni 

StorySeptember 19, 2024

The United Nations is warning about widespread human rights abuses in Burma as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. A new report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says many of those detained by the Burmese military are children taken from their parents, with dozens of minors dying in custody. “What it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. If you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell,” says Burmese scholar, dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni. He also discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses. “Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level,” says Zarni.                                      Click the link here to watch the 9-minutes interview.  And also help spread the word.    https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/19/burma                       =====   

https://x.com/MustafaBarghou1/status/1836805570403180728?t=s5zMX3ZcEMF5-_c7SHDR9Q&s=19

Israelis Must Ask Themselves if They’re Willing to Live in a Country That Lives on Blood

By Gideon LevySeptember 16, 2024Z ArticleNo Comments4 Mins Read

Source: Haaretz

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants' surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages

Israel is turning, with alarming speed, into a country that lives on blood. The daily crimes of the occupation are already less relevant. Over the past year, a new reality of mass killing and crimes of an entirely different scale has emerged. We are in a genocidal reality; the blood of tens of thousands of people has flowed.

This is the time that all Israelis should ask themselves if they are willing to live in a country that lives on blood. Just don’t say that there is no choice – of course there is – but first we must ask whether we are even prepared to live like this.

Are we, the Israelis, willing to live in the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood? The only vision that is widespread in Israel now is to live from one war to another war, from one bloodletting to the next, from massacre to massacre, with intervals spaced as widely as possible.No other vision is on the table. Hopeful people promise long intervals, while the right promises a permanent blood-soaked reality: war, mass killing, systematic violation of international law, a pariah state, repeating in an endless cycle.

The Palestinians will continue to be massacred, and Israelis will continue to close their eyes to it? Hard to believe. A time will come when more Israelis will open their eyes and recognize that their country subsists on blood. Without bloodshed, we are told, we have no existence – and we make our peace with this horrific statement.

We not only believe that such a country can exist forever, we are convinced that without the blood offering, it has no existence. Every three years, a bloodletting in Gaza, every four years, in Lebanon. In between, there is the West Bank, and, occasionally, a blood sortie to additional targets. There is no other country like it in the world.

Blood cannot be the country’s fuel. Just as no one would imagine driving a car that is powered by blood, no matter how cheap, it is difficult to imagine 10 million residents willing to live in a country that runs on blood. The war in Gaza is a watershed. Is this how we will continue?

A Palestinian woman stands amidst the rubble, Khan Yunis, July.Credit: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

The media tries to sell us that this is a necessity. Through campaigns that demonize and dehumanize the Palestinians, a unified and monstrous chorus of commentators is successfully selling us the idea that we can live for eternity on blood. “We will mow the grass” in Gaza every two years – we will execute generation after generation of young regime opponents, imprison tens of thousands of people in concentration camps, we will expel, cull, expropriate and, of course, kill, and that is how we will live: in the country of blood.

We have already killed the Palestinian people. We began with the mass killing in Gaza, and now we have turned to the West Bank. Blood will be shed in gallons there too, if no one stops the battalion. The killing is both physical and emotional. Nothing is left of Gaza now.

The detainees, the orphans, the traumatized, the homeless, will never return to what they were. The dead certainly will not. It will take generations for Gaza to recover, if it even can. This is genocide, even if it does not meet the legal definition. A country cannot live on such an ideology, certainly not when it intends to continue doing so.

Let’s assume the world continues to allow it. The question is whether we, the Israelis, are willing to allow it. How long we can live with the knowledge that our existence depends on blood. When will we ask whether there genuinely is no alternative to a country of blood? After all, there is no other country like this.

Israel has never seriously tried another way. It was programmed and directed to behave as a country that lives off blood, even more so after October 7. As if that terrible day, after which everything is permissible, sealed its fate as a country of blood.

The fact is that no other possibility has been raised for discussion. But a country of blood is not an option, just as a blood-fueled car is not an option. When we realize this, we will begin looking for the alternatives, if only for lack of any other option. They are there, and they are waiting for a test drive. They may surprise us, but in the present reality, it is impossible even to suggest them.

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