by Stephen Lendman

Netanyahu’s premeditated state terror against defenseless Palestinians continues. Multiple Israeli provocations began things. Palestinians responded in self-defense as expected and justified. Israel calls it terrorism.

The latest incident involved murdering six Gazan youths on Friday, wounding 60 others, 10 in serious condition.

Scores of Palestinians protested Israeli West Bank violence by throwing stones across the heavily guarded barbed wire fencing, separating Gaza from Israel. Israeli soldiers responded with live fire, committing cold-blooded murder. Clashes continued Friday throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported 1,640 Palestinians injured so far - 101 from live fire, hundreds more from rubber-coated steel bullets, many from toxic tear gas inhalation. Another 31 bystanders were brutally beaten by soldiers.

Separately, Israeli border police murdered a Palestinian youth. Hours earlier, soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian woman. Israel claimed it foiled an attempted stabbing incident. Video footage showed she threatened no one.

At an emergency Thursday evening press conference, Netanyahu declared war on Palestine, vowing tougher tactics than already against “inciters and attackers,” blaming Palestinians for Israeli crimes.

Saying Hamas and PA officials instigated “wild and mendacious incitement,” ignoring his own mandate, ordering state terror unleashed throughout the Occupied Territories.

Palestinian Stop the Wall activists said “rebellion unfolding in the West Bank and increasingly across the Green Line is a direct response to Israel’s intensified ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and its almost seven decades old regime of occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism.”

“(M)urderous attacks by Israeli forces and settlers” continue. On Friday, tens of thousands of Palestinians filled Ramallah’s entire city center for Muhannad Halabi’s funeral - murdered by Israeli soldiers in cold blood.

Slogans were shouted condemning Oslo and urging a third intifada - Palestinians saying they’ll sacrifice and march in millions for justice. Palestinian women joined the fight with their male counterparts.

Justifiable Palestinian anger is more intense than any time since the early days of the Second Intifada. It’s too early to know if a third began.

No known leadership is directing ongoing resistance. Lacking it may cause activist energy to wane. For now, it remains intense, thousands of Palestinians involved throughout the Territories. Many more thousands may join them. A bloodbath may follow. Israel is notoriously merciless, like its US paymaster.

The New York Times is notoriously pro-Israeli, disdainful of Palestinian rights. Its latest headline shows it, saying “Israeli Officials Struggle to Contain Spate of Violent Attacks” - instead of accurately accusing Israel of inciting violence, murdering and brutalizing Palestinians responding in self-defense.

Jodi Rudoren reports from Jerusalem, blaming Palestinians for Israeli crimes, substituting government and IDF press releases for legitimate journalism, accusing Palestinians of “a spate of…stabbings” instead of saying they threatened no one. Israeli soldiers and police murdered them in cold blood, using live fire on defenseless civilians.

She quoted Israeli officials calling for tougher crackdowns than already - at the same time, citing a Friday Yediot Aharonot propaganda piece, claiming 17 Jews were detained on suspicion of involvement in terrorist attacks.

Rubbish! Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon admitted knowing which settlers killed three Dawabsha family members by immolation but refuses to arrest them.

They’re free to kill again like many other Zionist zealots infesting Israel’s illegal settlements, protected by soldiers and police, allowed to commit near-daily violence and vandalism against defenseless Palestinians including young children, virtually never arrested or held accountable for their crimes.

B’Tselem has video footage documenting Israeli soldiers accompanying Yitzhar settlement zealots rampaging violently - attacking Palestinians freely, vandalizing their property.

Soldiers protecting them “used crowd-control weapons against” victimized Palestinians, said B’Tselem, calling the incident “(t)he most blatant example of the tacit support of the settler rampage by forces on the ground, as well as the shirking of the military’s obligation to provide protection (for) Palestinians…”

It filmed another “large scale settler attack,” involving setting Palestinian agricultural land ablaze and vandalizing olive trees. Soldiers witnessing the crime did nothing to stop it - instead “fired tear gas and rubber coated bullets at the Palestinian youths who came to the olive groves to defend their property.”

Western media largely ignore Israeli violence, blaming Palestinians instead for instigating it - instead of explaining they respond in self-defense. They’re not militants or terrorist. They’re viciously persecuted people fighting for the lives and welfare.

In a separate article, Rudoren disgracefully accused “Hamas Islamists (of) egg(ing) on the attackers.” They’re viciously persecuted human beings courageously fighting for their rights against one of the world’s most ruthless regimes - fully supported by fascist neocons running America.

Rudoren quoted IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner’s Big Lie, claiming “(o)nly after firing warning shots in the air (do) we fire at the main instigators to get them to stop.”

Fact: Israel uses live fire indiscriminately against unarmed Palestinian civilians - aiming for upper body areas with intent to kill or seriously injure. Through Friday, over 100 Palestinians sustained bullet wounds, many in serious condition.

At least 14 Palestinians were killed, including women and children. Video evidence showed soldiers viciously beating Palestinian youths.

Teenager Shrouk Dowiyyat is one of many Palestinian victims - shot by an Israeli settler, now in a coma, required surgery to try saving her. She remains in critical condition.

Israel outrageously blames her for the incident, saying she’ll be tried in military court when out of coma. Palestinians are unjustly accused of terrorist attacks - Israel’s invented pretext for violent rampaging and murdering them in cold blood.

Obama’s silence is deafening, his full support for Israeli viciousness a high crime against humanity.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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