Stephen Lendman

Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine. Israeli security forces attack, brutalize, murder or injure nonviolent Palestinians with impunity. They're ruthless. They're lawless. It's standard practice. Crimes too grave to ignore occur multiple times daily. Soldiers, border guards and police harass, intimidate and terrorize Palestinians ruthlessly. They hold an entire population hostage.

Fear is constant. It's pervasive. Collective punishment is official Israeli policy. Peaceful public demonstrations are prohibited.

So are free expression and movement. Population centers are isolated. Borders are closed. Occupation harshness denies Palestinians control over their own land. Normal daily life is nonexistent. Economic strangulation is imposed. Institutionalized racism reflects official Israeli policy. Curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, separation walls, electric fences, and other barriers are standard practice.

Neighborhood incursions, land, sea and air attacks, bulldozed homes, land theft, ethnic cleansing, slow-motion genocide, targeted killings, political assassinations, mass arrests, torture, and gulag imprisonment reflect daily life. Fundamental human and civil rights are verboten. Crimes of war and against humanity repeat without redress. Wanting to live free in sovereign Palestine is called terrorism. So is legitimate self-defense.

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Bill Van Auken

Meet Svoboda, an up-and-coming party in Ukraine. It's nationalist,
pro-Nazi, and poised for the parliament. (Caption: Salo-Forum)

With just days before presidential and municipal elections are to be staged in Ukraine by the Western-backed, right-wing “interim government,” the regime’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that its so-called “antiterrorist operations” against dissident populations in the east and south of the country are proceeding at full strength.

“The active phase of the antiterrorist operations is currently continuing,” ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said Wednesday. “Residents in the eastern regions of Ukraine can observe this. There is currently a planned rotation of troops and forces included in the antiterrorist operation.”

Washington and its Western European allies are promoting Sunday’s election as a means of legitimizing the Western-backed, neo-fascist-led coup which toppled Ukraine’s elected president and installed an illegal regime whose leaders were handpicked by US officials.

The idea that a legitimate election could be held, as the army employs tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships to suppress political opposition in large portions of the country, is ludicrous. This fraudulent exercise is being staged, with unconditional US support, just two weeks after the May 11 referenda on autonomy in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that the State Department denounced as illegitimate. The Ukraine crisis has provided a unique window into the cynicism and hypocrisy of American imperialist foreign policy.

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