by Stephen Lendman

Abbas is a longtime Israeli collaborator. Washington one-sidedly supports Israeli interests, including decades of ruthless occupation harshness.

Whenever Kerry shows up anywhere, especially in the Middle East, he’s always up to no good. His current trip took him to Berlin (meeting with Netanyahu while there) and Amman, meeting with Jordanian officials and Abbas, plotting ways to betray Palestinians again, urging calm at the expense of their interests.

On Saturday, he “strongly condemn(ed) (Palestinian) terrorist attacks against innocent civilians,” ignoring Washington’s full support for ongoing Israeli instigated violence.

He’ll conclude his trip in Riyadh for talks with King Salman, likely plotting how to counter Russia’s effective intervention in Syria, stymied on ways to do it.

Meanwhile, the death and injury toll in Palestine keeps rising, getting short shrift or none in major media reports. Headlines stress Israeli deaths, a handful compared to overwhelming Palestinian pain and suffering at the hands of a brutal occupier.

Since Israel unleashed its killing machine on October 1, at least 57 Palestinians died (including 13 children), over 2,000 others injured (including 450 women and children) along with around 5,000 more from toxic tear gas exposure.

Physician, political analyst, human rights champion Mustafa Barghouti commented on Israel’s ongoing reign of terror, saying its “rules of engagement…violate every international law.”

It’s using live fire, including banned internally exploding dum-dum bullets and high velocity ones, causing serious damage to body parts struck. Ballistics expert Dr. JM DiMaio explained, saying:

They differ greatly from ordinary bullets. “As (they) enter the body, there is a ‘tail splash,’ or the backward hurling of injured tissue. The bullet passes through the target, creating a large temporary cavity whose maximum diameter may be up to 30 times the diameter of the original bullet (penetration)…capable of doing severe damage…to blood vessels, nerves, (bones) or organs that are a considerable distance from the path of the bullet.”

Barghouti explained a great misconception about so-called rubber bullets. They’re “not rubber bullets at all,” he said.

Two types are used. “One is a cylinder, but inside it you have a very heavy metal. Usually when it is shot from a close distance it penetrates the body, and frequently it penetrates the brain and becomes fatal.”

“Many Palestinians have lost eyes because of these kinds of bullets. The other type of bullet they call ‘rubber’ is not rubber at all but a very heavy shard, and this shard is covered with a very thin piece of plastic.”

“Again, this is very dangerous and responsible for very serious injuries, and it is misleading to keep saying that it is ‘rubber.’ “

The BDS Movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality said “(a) new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up against Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”

It is another phase of the popular struggle against Israel’s state terrorism.” A courageous groundswell of opposition shows no signs of backing down.

“Palestinian refugee communities in neighboring Arab countries are mobilizing” in solidarity with a just cause for long denied justice.

Some demonstrations attracted over 20,000 people. Resistance is led by courageous youths, children and young women, unwilling to accept endless occupation harshness.

They’re confronting Israeli ethnic cleansing, racism, fascist brutality, state-sponsored terrorism, collective punishment, settlement construction on stolen Palestinian land, home demolitions, ruthless dehumanization, as well as the most fanatical, settler-dominated regime in Israeli history.

Its so-called rules of engagement permit cold-blood, indiscriminate murder, along with supporting extremist settler violence and vandalism.

Josh Ruebner is policy director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He correctly said:

“No example exists in the historical record of a colonized, brutalized people accepting their fate without meting out in small measure a taste of the overwhelming violence inflicted upon them by the colonizer.”

It’s inconceivable to “demand that Palestinians eschew (their legitimate right to resist) while Israel continues to trample over them…illegitimately (denying) their right to freedom, to (assure) Israel’s drive to permanently control all of historic Palestine and do everything (possible) to erase the Palestinians’ irrefutable existence and resiliency.”

Peace is impossible while occupation continues, while the international community supports Israeli brutality, while Palestinians remain isolated on their own with no outside help against a ruthless, racist, tyrannical regime.

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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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