This entire massacre ( I hesitate to call it a "war" ) has served to highlight the conditions that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank live under constantly. Ultimately , a ceasefire isn't enough, and going "back to normal" is unacceptable. Can there be a two state solution while israel controls the resources, borders, and financial dealings of Gaza and the West Bank ? Fuck no.
A ceasefire in a time of genocide
The people of Gaza will not settle for anything short of the end of the siege, the occupation and apartheid.
Haidar Eid is an associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.
Published On 27 Nov 202327 Nov 2023
The bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardment and fire are buried in a mass grave, after they were transported from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023 [Reuters/Mohammed Salem]
The bitter reality for us, Palestinians in Gaza, is that we are alone, beleaguered, under siege, and are seen as undesirables even by some of those who are supposed to be our brethren. Forty-five days of barbaric massacres have claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people, including more than 6,000 children and 3,500 women.
Among the thousands of men who have been killed are university students, doctors, nurses, shop owners and youth who were sent out by their families to search for food or water.
More than 7,000 are still missing, including 4,000 children – most of them are dead, buried under the rubble of their homes.
More are dying in bombed-out hospitals rendered unoperational and in the few that are still working but cannot cope with the tens of thousands wounded due to the lack of staff and medical supplies. Soon even more will be dying of disease, hunger and the winter cold.
Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian homes has completely wiped out hundreds of families from the population register. Some 1.7 million people have been displaced.
For 45 days, Palestinians have been left alone to face the onslaught of the world’s fourth strongest army, which possesses 200 nuclear weapons, hundreds of F-16 jets, attack helicopters, gunboats, battle tanks and armoured vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists.
As the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels, some Arab regimes have done nothing more than issue timid statements, denouncing and condemning. Nothing more.
In fact, Arab regimes have let down the Palestinians since 1948, and to this day, official Arab positions are a combination of cowardice and hypocrisy. They have failed to bring an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza for 17 years now and are now failing to stop Israel’s genocide.
We in Gaza are now wondering how the timid expressions of support coming out of the streets and capitals of the Arab nations can be turned into concrete action in the absence of democracy. We wonder whether the Arabs living under the rule of authoritarian, oligarchical regimes can change them in non-violent ways.
We exhaust ourselves trying to figure out the possible means available to achieve democratic political change, because with the genocide in Gaza and the apartheid regime in the rest of Palestine, we have not seen any practical translation for the solidarity shown by some Arab peoples with Palestine.
Last night I saw Dead Bob, John Wright of NoMeansNo's new band, and it was fucking incredible. All the members are multi-instrumentalists , and their passion for what they do is electric. Sunday night shows are usually low energy affairs , but this one was enough to make me stay right until the very end, resulting in getting two hours of sleep before work this morning, but it was all worth it.
See them. Get their LP.
Dead Bob proves that punk is still alive and kicking
Former NoMeansNo drummer John Wright causes fans to rejoice with new band and new album
The Dead Bob bandmates tour Vancouver Island this week before hitting the mainland for shows next weekend. Photo submitted by John Wright
For those who were around the nascent Vancouver Island-based punk scene of the 1980s and 1990s, there are few bands as iconic or as long-running as NoMeansNo.
Started in a Victoria basement by brothers John and Rob Wright in 1979, the band released 12 full-length records, toured for decades, found a strong following in Europe and was inducted into the Western Canadian Music Hall of Fame before officially retiring in 2016.
Throughout the years, drummer John Wright has been busy with other musical endeavours, including The Hanson Brothers, and a post-NoMeansNo project that involved writing an album for a Berlin-based band called Compressorhead — who performed with robots.
However this spring — to the joy of NoMeansNo fans — Wright emerged from relative obscurity to announce he had formed a new band called Dead Bob, and released Life Like, a full album of new music.
Now at the age of 62, Wright has formed a band and will tour the album to Nanaimo with a gig at the Terminal Bar on Nov. 25 at 9 p.m. before moving on to shows in Victoria, Vancouver, Robert’s Creek and Powell River.
I sat down with Wright to hear about what the Vancouver Island and West Coast punk rock scene was like in the 1970s and 1980s, how this new album came into being, what it’s like living in the remote village of Lund (pop. 287) and what it feels like to hit the road again after a long hiatus.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Julie Chadwick: So were you up late last night playing music?
John Wright: Not last night, but it was the first three shows of this whole project over the weekend [in Kamloops, Nelson and Kelowna] and then Sunday was about a 12 hour drive home. I suppose my voice is a little bit scratchy because it’s the first time singing like that in about 10 years or so.
JC: So how was the reception? Did people seem pretty excited?
JW: Oh, yeah. Very excited folks (laughs). The show had been moved from Vernon to Kelowna, and we were on the floor in this place where there was no stage. But apparently, there was some fellow behind me weeping. So the crowd was very, very excited, which is great, it’s very gratifying.
JC: What kind of audience ages are you seeing at the shows?
JW: We’re playing in bars so not super young but I’m kind of curious. We’ll see how this goes in terms of what age group and what the crowds are like, because I don’t really have any desire to be a punk rock nostalgia act.
Dead Bob is, of course, born out of NoMeansNo and that’s where I come from, that’s my pedigree, my reputation, which is all awesome. And not to disregard that, but at the same time, it’s new music. It’s a new thing. And I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t new music and a new project for myself. That said, we still throw in some NoMeansNo songs in there because 90 per cent of these audiences are because they’re NoMeansNo fans.
NoMeansNo play a gig in Victoria in 1984. This photo is included in NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion, a new book by Jason Lamb, out next month. Photo by Graham-Caverhill
We play to the punk rock crowd, and what inspired us to be a band back in 1979 was all the punk rock music coming out in the States and England and Canada. My first show was D.O.A., it was a big inspiration to play.
We were certainly not into the strict genre, we were all over the place musically. But it was all very intense and very loud. And non-commercial. The punk rock crowd in Victoria was a total mixed bag, it was really — anything goes. That’s what I really liked as well, it was very inclusive in that respect. There wasn’t a rock and roll hierarchy, which was always incredibly ridiculous.
JC: Was it inclusive and diverse in terms of sound? And do you think that was because it was a smaller scene, so it kind of had to be more accepting?
JW: Oh, yeah, it was. When I say inclusive, it was also, paradoxically, exclusive. In the sense that it was very small and like, ‘Hey, we know a secret and no one else knows about it.’ Punk rock was kind of like that.
Victoria was a small insular town, always has been, always will be, the center of the universe. It’s what drove me out of there actually, the idea that the whole world revolves around Victoria. But like a lot of small towns, it produced really good music, because it was DIY as well.
It’s not just a group of people getting into diverse music, you had to create your own scene, because nightclubs weren’t ever going to have you play. So in that sense, it developed a community of people. Punk rock is kind of like that.
A friend of mine Jason Schreurs just wrote a book, Scream Therapy. He’s from the Island and he hits the nail on the head, that punk rock is more than just a new style of music, it was born out of this community.
It became political, and is fairly lefty, but there’s the aspect that the people who put on the shows are just as important as the people who were playing in the shows. And people coming to the shows were the ones that everyone knew. The show only happens because people come, as a community and it grew and evolved out of that.
I think hip-hop is kind of the same way, though in some ways it became far more commercial. Punk rock did a little bit as well — grunge kind of changed things and it became more like pop music — but that communal feeling still remains. People look out for each other.
NoMeansNo back in the heady days of punk, with John Wright on drums and his brother Rob Wright on bass. Photo by Derek Sheplawy
JC: One of the things [CBC music host] Grant Lawrence said, when he recently did a bit of a retrospective on you, was that this new album takes a bunch of the different genres that you’ve explored over the years and kind of mashes them all together. Would you say that that’s accurate?
JW: Yeah, for sure. This project was born out of just a whole pile of back catalogue of songs and ideas, half-finished, in various forms and stages of completion.
After retiring it wasn’t like I didn’t write or think about music or do musical stuff. I was, and with COVID, like a lot of people, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands and [decided] to revisit some of these songs I’ve been working on over the years.
I had a place to put my drum set up where I live, which hadn’t happened for three years, so I started recording live drums to a lot of demos and songs. It was just kind of a vanity project to fill my time, so it started falling together that way. I was pleased with what was coming up, and started finishing the songs.
I became more engaged in getting an album together, and decided that Bob was going to be a good name and thought, I’ll just make an announcement: ‘Hey, I recorded an album and I’m going to put it out on Bandcamp.’ And Facebook lit up. It was like, ‘Holy shit, people are excited.’ So that’s what I did, and it was released on April 21.
John Wright says he involved a number of other musicians in the recording of Dead Bob’s first album Life Like, and the touring band includes (from left) Colin MacRae, John Wright, Ford Pier, Kristy Lee Audette and Byron Slack. Photo by R.D. Cane
JC: So is there a reason you didn’t bring your brother Rob into the project? You guys often collaborate.
JW: My brother’s 100 per cent retired, he doesn’t play music anymore and takes no interest in it. Actually, he recently picked up a guitar and was teaching himself how to fingerpick, listening to a lot of John Fahey. But music is in his past, and he has a young family, he’s gonna turn seventy and his daughter’s like, 11 (laughs).
JC: When it comes to continuing to write new material, where does your creativity come from, is it part of living in a remote community like Lund?
JW: To some degree, that plays a part I think. Just because I didn’t play in NoMeansNo for 10 years, it wasn’t as though I wanted to retire and get out of music. It was more like, okay, this project has come to an end. And then I immediately got involved with [animatronic robot band] Compressorhead, and started to write a lot of music.
What happened is, I had a marriage that dissolved in 2013. I had two children, and they were getting to be teenagers, and I found myself unable to afford to live in Vancouver, and have room for two kids. So I made that decision to move out of the Lower Mainland and come up to Lund, and found myself living alone for the first time in my life. I’ve never lived in my own place, so I had a lot of time on my hands and I just started to write. Some of the stuff that’s on the album like One of You, for instance, was written at that time.
Shortly thereafter I was contacted by the robots, which I worked on for the next three years. So there was a huge creative burst, and it was partly being out in a beautiful, somewhat isolated place by myself. But also the circumstances of my life put me in that position. And then I guess COVID really was another little burst where I felt the same way.
JC: How is it for you, touring again?
JW: At 62, it’s getting a little late in the game to be a touring musician. I just did this weekend and it’s like, holy fuck, okay, I remember this — no sleep. Oh and guess what, there’s no monitors so I can’t hear a thing. So I know what this grind is. I’m extremely familiar with this world, and there is no fucking way in hell I would do this if I was starting from square one (laughs).
But I’m not — and I’ve got a built-in audience out there that’s waiting to hear it. It’s not huge, but it’s there. I have all this old network of people who are excited to work with me and get things rolling again, so I’m not starting from scratch by any stretch. It’s not taking over from where NoMeanNo left off, when you’re starting a band you’ve got to be out there and you’ve got to be something, you’ve gotta be great.
But so far so good. People are super stoked, and like I said earlier, it’s obviously born out of NoMeansNo but the whole sound is different. The lineup is different, these are different new songs, which I think are strong and stand up on their own. The next album’s already done and I’ve got a third one already sketched out.
JC: No way, that’s amazing.
JW: I just had so much music. And now I’m working with other prolific, great songwriters, so we haven’t even begun to see what, organically, we can do together.
Is this seriously the lesson that genocide joe biden has gotten from events happening since October the 7th ? Does israel need easier access to the weapons that they already have an abundance of, so they can bury another 6000 children in the rubble of destroyed family dwellings , and kill another 15000 ? And it's not over, just ask adolf netanyahu. Fuck biden and netanyahu , and their fucked up ideologies.
Biden seeks to expand Israeli access to US weapons stockpile
If White House request granted, it would enable Israel to access US weapons with less congressional oversight.
Israeli troops aim their weapons as they clash with Palestinians during a raid in Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank [Ammar Awad/Reuters]
Published On 26 Nov 202326 Nov 2023
The White House aims to lift nearly all restrictions on Israel’s access to weapons from a crucial US stockpile, enabling a smoother weapons pipeline to Israel, which has paused weeks of its devastating bombing of the Gaza Strip.
The White House asked the United States Senate to scrap the restrictions in its latest supplementary budget request on October 20. If granted, the request would enable Israel to access more high-powered US weapons at a reduced cost, with less congressional oversight.
The request proposes changes to policies governing the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), an Israel-based US weapons stockpile that has smart bombs, missiles, military vehicles, and other ammunition and equipment.
The stockpile, set up in the 1980s, gives the Pentagon a strong weapons cache to tap into in the event of regional conflicts.
Israel, the US’s principal ally in the Middle East, has also been able to pull some weapons from the reserve in emergency cases and buy them at a reduced cost. However, it has been able to access only certain classes of weapons deemed “obsolete or surplus”.
The White House’s request would eliminate such conditions, enabling the US to transfer all “defence articles” from its stockpile to Israel. It would also waive a yearly limit on the amount Washington spends refilling the cache, and curb congressional oversight on the transfers.
‘Free-flowing pipeline’
Josh Paul, a former director in the Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, told The Intercept the request “would essentially create a free-flowing pipeline to provide any defense articles to Israel by the simple act of placing them in the WRSA-I stockpile, or other stockpiles intended for Israel”.
Worth $3.8bn per year, the US already sends more military aid to Israel than any other country.
Since Israel’s military assault on Gaza on October 7, the US has moved to up this number, with the House of Representatives approving a $14.3bn emergency military aid package to Israel.
However, there are signs that the US public’s support for military aid to Israel is waning amid the Gaza war, in which Israeli attacks have killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 children.
The temporary truce is giving the Gazan population a minute to breathe, but asshole netanyahu wants everyone to know that his killing machine isn't done with their courageous work of killing children and fleeing civilians just yet. Or in his words, "self-defense".
Israel-Hamas war live: Mixed feelings for Gaza residents as truce starts
After seven weeks of war, Palestinians in bombarded Gaza welcome first truce agreed by Hamas and Israel with mixed feelings.
Israel says northern Gaza is out of bounds as displaced Palestinians attempt to use the pause in fighting to return to their homes.
Under the Qatar-mediated deal for a four-day pause, 39 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and 13 captives in Gaza expected to be released in the coming hours, with aid trucks also crossing into Gaza.
Gaza endures another night of heavy bombardment from air, land, and sea ahead of the start of the truce, while Israeli military raids continue across the occupied West Bank.
More than 14,800 people killed in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.
The truce is set to start, but be warned, the fascist netanyahu says " the war is not over", even though it's more of a case of a military funded by billions of u.s. dollars slaughtering civilians. He wants you to know he's not done with killing Palestinian children yet.....
Gaza truce due to start; release of Hamas captives, detained Palestinians to follow
After prolonged negotiations and a delay of at least 24 hours, a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas is due to begin shortly, with captives held in Gaza to be released in exchange for Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons.
The pause in fighting is due to begin at 7am (05:00 GMT) in the Palestinian territories and Israel, silencing weapons that have raged since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7.
More than 14,800 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.
Palestinian children wait in a line with containers to collect water, amid drinking water shortages, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, just a day before the start of a four-day truce [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
In the days leading up to the temporary ceasefire, many Palestinians are just waiting for a break in the genocide against them. Of course the fascist israeli military are bombing the shit out of Gaza at an increased rate before they have to stop for a while. The people of Gaza deserve peace. The fascist netanyahu does not.
‘Can regain our soul’: Relief and fear in Gaza ahead of Israel truce
Some hope to find missing loved ones, return home and grieve for killed relatives. Others just want to get some sleep.
Palestinians gather in front of a building hit by an Israeli strike in Nuseirat refugee camp, the central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, November 21, 2023 [Adel Hana/AP Photo]
Deir el-Balah and Fukhari, Gaza Strip — After more than six weeks of war, Khaled Loz knows what he wants to do when the truce announced on Wednesday by Israel and Hamas finally comes into effect.
“It’s the first thing I want to do. I’m tired of all the continuous bombing,” he says.
Since the attack by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on October 7, in which they killed 1,200 people, Israeli aerial bombing and artillery shelling has killed more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 5,600 children. An estimated 1.7 million people out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced, with many moving from the northern part of the Gaza Strip to the south following warnings from the Israeli military.
But Israel’s bombing has extended to central and southern Gaza too, leaving no part of the enclave safe, with refugee camps, schools and hospitals also attacked.
Now, the declaration of a four-day truce that could come into effect soon is promising the first hope of some respite for Gaza’s people.
“We can regain our soul a little,” says Loz. “We want to provide water for our homes, we want goods to enter instead of empty shops where we cannot find what we need.”
But it is also the first opportunity for thousands of families to finally grieve loved ones lost in the bombing. Others are hoping that the pause in fighting allows them to search for missing relatives and friends.
Loz says the home of his mother’s family in Gaza City was bombed. “I don’t know who is left of them, and I don’t know who was martyred. I want to check on my uncle,” he says. “Where are they, where have they fled to?”
“We want to grieve for those we lost. They [Israel] did not give us a chance to express our feelings, even to cry for our friends.”
Sign up for Al Jazeera
Week in the Middle East
protected by reCAPTCHA
According to Hamas, the truce will enable the free movement of people from the north of Gaza to the south along Salah al-Din Road, the territory’s main highway. But there is no such guarantee of movement towards the north, where Gaza City is based, so it is unclear whether those like Loz who want to search for missing relatives in the north will be able to make their way there.
Etaf Hussien Musataf al-Jamalan, a father of five children, was displaced from Sheikh Radwan, a district of Gaza City, and was hoping to return to check on his house during the pause in fighting. He says he has “mixed feelings” about the truce.
“We wanted to check our houses. Maybe grab some supplies or anything,” he says, adding that he is “sad” that the truce terms might not allow that. He doesn’t know if his house is still standing — the United Nations estimates that half of north Gaza’s homes have been damaged or destroyed in the bombing — but he says he would prefer to “live in a tent in our neighbourhood” than as a displaced person.
Enas al-Jamalah, 12, is also from Sheikh Radwan. Displaced to Deir el-Balah, he and thousands of others sleep outdoors as winter sneaks up on Gaza, with temperatures dropping at night to 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). His reason to go back home — if it still stands — is simple. “We just want to be warm,” he says.
That longing for home pulls at Fatima Qudayh, too. The 37-year-old from the town of Khuza’a fled to nearby Khan Younis in southern Gaza two days into the war.
Her home in Khuza’a had been damaged in the 2021 war, but she and her family had lovingly rebuilt it. Now, she doesn’t know if it’s still fine, damaged or destroyed. She hopes to visit once the truce comes into effect.
Her six children have barely slept since the war started, she says. “Every night, there is bombing everywhere. Every day, they ask me about the house. Is it OK? Are their toys OK and their rooms OK?”
“I tell them I pray that they are OK — but that the most important thing is that you are OK.”
