Jamal Kanj
Al Mayadeen TV

Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It's dinner time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the propane cooking cylinder empty, no food, no electricity, or drinking water.

Your youngest child, Manar, cries, "I'm hungry. We haven't had food for the last four days." She rubs her dry bluish hands together, "Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf, … I'm cold." The words escape her chattering teeth.

You, let's say your name is Nader, look at Manar's feeble body, her pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a month.

Ahmad asks his wife, "Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for the dry food?"

Noora took a deep breath, "More than ten times, our kitchen is as empty as our stomachs." She looked at the cold floor in despair, her face twisted into a sorrowful mask.

"Press this against Manar's stomach," he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. "It'll help her sleep, again."

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Jamal Kanj
Al Mayadeen TV

Over three years, the Japanese killed nearly an equivalent number of civilians as those murdered in Gaza in the past two months.

"Israel" resumed its genocidal war on Gaza following a brief pause, insufficient to address the plight of the thousands of missing children trapped beneath the rubble. Personally, I've been trying, since October 27, to reach a former colleague in the Bureij refugee camp. The unnerving lack of response echoes as ominous as a silent stone. I hesitated to contact others, afraid I might get the same silent treatment, or worse yet, discover the dreaded truth.

Then, it came from an unexpected corner. On November 23, I received the news of the tragic death of my relative, Mariam (Mary), her daughter and grandchildren in Nuseirat refugee camp. A day earlier, news outlets had covered a drone attack that obliterated a car, leaving charred bodies of women and children beyond recognition. Little did I know I had been watching the very car Mariam and her family had taken to escape their camp in a desperate attempt to find a "safer" shelter for her grandchildren.

Mariam, who was born in Palestine in the year of the Nakba in 1948, and grew up in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. In the 1970s, she married a member of the PLO and was displaced in 1982, again, now from Lebanon. Subsequently, following the Oslo Accord, her family resettled in Gaza.

The last time I saw Mariam was more than a decade ago during my visit to our old camp, which happened to coincide with hers. She complained that I had been to Gaza without stopping by to see her. I explained that I was unaware she had relocated to Gaza. In reality, I had been to Nuseirat camp, and we could have crossed paths in an alley or at the small market. Nevertheless, the thought didn't occur to me that she could be there, and it was likely that after more than 20 years since our previous meeting, we wouldn't have easily recognized each other.

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Jamal Kanj
Al Mayadeen TV

"Rolling out" the Nakba, or human-made catastrophe, can neither be achieved without inducing flight and instill fear among the civilian population, nor without a cover-up and Israeli exception to international law.

In the battle of his political life, Benjamin Netanyahu has nothing to lose. He could, however, gain vainglory and self-exaltation by murdering as many Palestinians as possible to satisfy the unquenchable vengeful Israeli culture. A crime catapulted by Western leaders who rallied behind Netanyahu in the aftermath of the prisoners’ revolt against the posts guarding the largest open-air prison on earth.

The embrace of Netanyahu by Western leaders has granted the bona fide pathological liar unchecked authority to carpet-bomb civilian centers, target hospitals, and orchestrate the evacuation of northern Gaza to complete the ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine.

In a disturbing parallel to the 1948 Zionist-led massacres that marked the initial ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israeli forces committed further atrocities in northern Gaza this week. Two of which targeted thousands of displaced refugees seeking protection at the al-Fakhura UN school, and another at an evacuation center in Tel al-Zataar neighborhood.

The deliberate targeting of evacuation centers and hospitals where civilians sought shelter in northern Gaza is part of "Israel’s" terror strategy to intensify the forceful evacuation of residents from their neighborhoods. Let’s not forget that those who heeded Israeli directions and moved south found themselves facing the same danger. Dozens lost their lives on the highways, and others were killed upon reaching the ostensibly "safer" shelters.

"Israel" is ensuring that no place in all of Gaza remains safe, a troubling reality reflected in the fact that 43% of civilians killed in the Strip are in the so-called "safer" south.

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Jamal Kanj

In memory of my cousin Saleh and for all those people he massacred throughout his murderous career, I will forever remember Sharon as a decorated butcher.

My friend and I were on a cross-country flight from San Diego to Washington, DC on Saturday, September 18, 1982. We arrived at our friends’ home with gleaming smiles, but were received with dejected expressions.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” they asked. “What news?” we replied. “The massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in and around Sabra and Shatila camps,” was their wretched response.

Needless to say we were glued to the TV listening to trickling reports from inside the camps and watching bloated bodies of women and children paraded on TV screens. Starting at 6pm on September 16 until 8am on September 18, the Israeli-armed Lebanese Phalange militia went on a killing spree while the Israeli army besieged the camps – stopping anyone from fleeing the massacre.

American reporter Janet Lee Stevens, who was one of the first foreign journalists to enter the camps, described the scene and documented:

“Children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles”

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Jamal Kanj

The Zionist lobby keeps complaining about Chuck Hagel
not being sufficiently in favor of sanctions against Iran...

Ironically, American patriots are shoved aside by the Zionist lobby’s “thought police” while individuals with dual Israeli citizenship, ex-Israeli soldiers or even suspected spies are appointed unchallenged to the highest offices in US administrations.

The Zionist lobby is flexing its muscle against Barack Obama’s potential nominee for secretary of defence.

The frontrunner, Chuck Hagel, is co-chairman of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Hagel was a Republican senator representing Nebraska from 1996 until his retirement in 2008. He was one of few senators who crossed party lines on issues most important to the American people.

Despite his Republican credentials and the fact that he is being considered by a Democratic president, Israel firsters from both parties are united in their effort to pre-empt Hagel’s nomination – not because he is ill-equipped for the position of defence secretary, but for not being adequately submissive to the Zionist lobby while in the Senate.

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