The American government’s refusal to condemn Israel for the carnage being inflicted  upon the citizens of Gaza is obscene.

Only with unwavering support of the Israel by the American administration can Bibi Netanyahu continue to unleash the destructive power of  US supplied armaments resulting in massive death and destruction.

World wide public opinion does not support the Israeli military actions. Right here in San Francisco (see photo above) and cities around the world thousands took to the streets to condemn the brutal Israeli actions against the Palestinian people.

Al Jazeera 5.17.2021

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the deadly bombing of the Gaza Strip would continue despite an international outcry and efforts to broker a ceasefire.

In a televised address on Sunday, Netanyahu said the Israeli air raids were continuing at “full-force” and would “take time”, adding that his country “wants to levy a heavy price” from Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Israeli air raids on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people early on Sunday, health authorities in Gaza said.

The violence marked the worst fighting since the devastating 2014 war in Gaza.

The air raids hit a busy downtown street of residential buildings and storefronts over the course of five minutes just after midnight, destroying two adjacent buildings and one about 50 metres down the road.

At one point, a rescuer shouted, “Can you hear me?” into a hole in the rubble. “Are you OK?” Minutes later, first responders pulled a survivor out and carried him off on an orange stretcher.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 16 women and 10 children were among those killed, with more than 50 people wounded, and rescue efforts were still under way.

Earlier, the Israeli military said it destroyed the home of Gaza’s top Hamas leader, Yahiyeh Sinwar, in a separate raid in the southern town of Khan Younis.

Israel appears to have stepped up air raids in recent days to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas as international mediators work to end the fighting.

At least 192 people have been killed and 1,200 injured there so far, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Rockets fired at Israel by Palestinian groups in Gaza, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have killed 10 Israelis.

Netanyahu rejected a barrage of criticism of Israel’s bombing of a high-rise building housing foreign media offices, including Al Jazeera’s, in Gaza.

Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, the prime minister claimed the building hosted an “intelligence office for the Palestinian terrorist organisation [Hamas]” which “plots and organises the terror attacks against Israeli civilians”.

He did not present any evidence of his claim but said it was “a perfectly legitimate target”, nonetheless. Asked if he had provided any evidence of Hamas presence in the building in a call with US President Joe Biden, Netanyahu said, “We pass it through our intelligence people.”

“We are targeting a terrorist organisation that is targeting our civilians and hiding behind them, using them as human shields,” he added.

The al-Jalaa tower, which also housed offices of the US news agency Associated Press (AP) and other outlets, was destroyed by an Israeli air force attack on Saturday.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/16/netanyahu-says-gaza-bombing-to-continue-in-full-force

Lee Heidhues 5.17.2021 at The Great Walkway March and Rally

Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF) made an impassioned plea to designate both The Great Walkway and JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park permanent pedestrian and cyclist thoroughfares. The Senator implored the crowd to stay strong and work until the goal is achieved.  In stark terms he said emphatically San Francisco cannot return to the pre Pandemic way of life where cars dictated public policy.

San Franciscans have been advocating for decades to have open space where the all encroaching automobile cannot enter. Thousands who have been pushing this goal to make San Francisco an acknowledged World leader in fighting climate change are close to victory.

The effort will continue until  entrenched political interests designate The Great Walkway a pedestrian and cyclist thoroughfare by the Pacific Ocean.

Sunday a large crowd of all ages rallied, cycled and walked down The Great Walkway to express their resolve and determination.

Photos – Lee Heidhues

Not only is the State of Israel killing men, women and children its military is also attempting to destroy the media as it attempts to cover this assault on the people of Palestine.

Al Jazeera 5.15.2021

An Israeli air raid flattened a building housing residential apartments and the offices of news organisations, including Al Jazeera and AP, in Gaza.

Youmna al-Sayed had less than an hour to get to safety.

But with just one elevator working in al-Jalaa tower, an 11-storey building in Gaza City housing some 60 residential apartments and a number of offices, including those of Al Jazeera Media Network and The Associated Press, al-Sayed made a dash for the stairs.

“We left the elevator for the elderly and for the children to evacuate,” the Palestinian freelance journalist said. “And we were all running down the stairs and whoever could help children took them down,” she added. “I myself helped two children of the residents there and I took them downstairs – everyone was just running quickly.”

Moments earlier, the Israeli army, which has been bombarding Gaza for six straight days, had given a telephone warning that residents had just an hour to evacuate the building before its fighter jets attacked it.

Al Jazeera’s Safwat al-Kahlout also had to move quickly. He and his colleagues “started to collect as much as they could, from the personal and equipment of the office – especially the cameras”, al-Kahlout said.

But more time was needed.

“Just give me 15 minutes,” an AP journalist pleaded over the phone with an Israeli intelligence officer. “We have a lot of equipment, including the cameras, other things,” he added from outside the building. “I can bring all of it out.”

 

“All I’m asking is to let four people … to go inside and get their cameras,” he told the officer. “We respect your wishes, we will not do it if you don’t allow it, but give us 10 minutes.”

“There will be no 10 minutes,” the officer replied. “No one is allowed to enter the building, we already gave you an hour to evacuate.”

When the request was rejected, Mahdi said: “You have destroyed our life’s work, memories, life. I will hang up, do what you want. There is a God.”

The Israeli army claimed there were “military interests of the Hamas intelligence” in the building, a standard line used after bombing buildings in Gaza, and it accused the group running the territory of using journalists as human shields. However, it provided no evidence to back up its claims.

“I have been working in this office for more than 10 years and I have never seen anything [suspicious],” al-Kahlout said.

“I even asked my colleagues if they’ve seen anything suspicious and they all confirmed to me that they have never seen any military aspects or the fighters even coming in and out,” he added.

“In our building, we have lots of families that we know for more than 10 years, we meet each other every day on our way in and out to the office.”

Gary Pruitt, president and CEO of AP, also told Al Jazeera: “I can tell you that we’ve been in that building for about 15 years for our bureau. We certainly had no sense that Hamas was there.”

AP journalist Fares Akram said he had been sleeping in the office after a long night of reporting when his colleagues began shouting, “Evacuation! Evacuation!” Akram grabbed what he could – a laptop, some electronics, and a few things from his desk – before running down the stairs and jumping into his car, he wrote in a written piece after the attack.

When he was far enough away, Akram stopped the car and got out to look back at the tower. He said he witnessed drone strikes hit the building, followed by three more powerful strikes from F-16s.

“At first, it looked like layers of something collapsing. I thought of a bowl of potato chips, and what might happen if you slammed a fist into them. Then the smoke and dust enveloped everything. The sky rumbled. And the building that was home to some people, an office to others and both to me disappeared in a shroud of dust,” Akram wrote.

Al-Sayed, who has been covering Israel’s bombardment for Al Jazeera and has worked for AP, said she could not understand what threat a building housing families and offices for lawyers, doctors and media workers could pose.

“Where is the alarm from this? Where are the Hamas or any military members that could be in this building?” the Gaza resident asked.

“The people here, the residents, all know each other. The first five floors are for offices that are [closed] during this time of escalation. So basically what is [still here] are the two media offices of Al Jazeera and AP and the residential apartments.”

Still, at 3:12pm (12:12 GMT), the first Israeli strike came. Five minutes later, al-Jalaa tower crashed to the ground after being hit by three missiles that sent a dark cloud of dust and debris into the air. There have been no immediate reports of casualties.

“Years of memories, years of work in this building, suddenly, everything is rubble,” said al-Kahlout, about the tower from whose roof he often broadcast from. “Just vanished.”

Islam az-Zaeem, a lawyer who worked in the building, was at home when his cousin – the owner of the Johara building that was flattened overnight on May 13 – knocked on his door and told him al-Jalaa was about to be destroyed.

“I ran to the building and saw the residents and other employees gathered outside,” az-Zaeem told Al Jazeera.

“I went inside and took the stairs since the electricity was out and the elevators weren’t working. I was hysterical, and fell down several times in the dark, shouting and crying.”

Az-Zaeem, who said nine legal associates and four interns worked on his floor, left the building five minutes before it was levelled.

“Even after the building fell, I kept shouting that I’d forgotten to lock the door to my office,” he said. “Imagine that.”

The building, built in the mid-1990s, was one of Gaza City’s oldest high-rises.

Fares al-Ghoul, the executive director for the Mayadeen Media Group, said his company was previously based in the Shorouq building, which was destroyed by Israeli missiles on May 13.

“The upper floors of Shorouq were targeted in the 2014 war,” he said. “In 2019, we moved the company to al-Jalaa building because we thought it would be safer, since it accommodated the offices of international media agencies.”

“Now both have been destroyed,” he said.

The bombing of al-Jalaa, widely condemned as an attempt to “silence” journalists covering Israel’s offensive, came just hours after an Israeli air raid at Shati refugee camp killed 10 members of the same family – eight children, two women – celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the religious festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

At least 145 Palestinians, including 39 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israeli air raids on the coastal Palestinian territory began on Monday. About 950 others have been wounded.

With additional reporting by @LinahAlsaafin.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/15/give-us-10-minutes-how-israel-bombed-gaza-media-tower

May 15, 2021

Every Picture Tells a Story – Gaza Destruction by State of Israel edition 

The photos in this post were found at the Site #PALESTINEUNDERATTACK

Liz Heidhues – Blog contributor-and Lee Heidhues 5.15.2021

To Shamann Walton – President San Francisco Board of Supervisors

What is your incentive for the lie that advocates of Car Free JFK practice the enforced separation of racial groups?

Concentrating on the systemic exclusion of blacks and people of color from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) staff and as exhibitors would be a most constructive use of your role as an elected official.

75% of San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museum’s staff is white. That’s in today’s accounting and not in the past’s.

The entire history of the De Young Museum not showing Black artists, its outrageous admission prices, its lack of people of color in its leadership positions, and its high priced 800 car parking garage must be held to account.

You allege that “JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park most definitely looks like the segregated South in the 1950s.”

To appropriate the pain and suffering of the civil rights movement as an argument to open up Car Free JFK to cars parks us on the slippery slope of ethics.

It is an argument that will lead San Francisco to major and ludicrous consequences.

The segment of JFK closed to cars serves the monied interests of the FAMSF. If the FAMSF is serious about the inclusion of people of color it would open its parking garage to all visitors for free.

The movement to allow runners, pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, roller skaters, skateboarders, dog-walkers, wheelchair users, meditators, and the underrepresented to use a part of JFK Drive as a car-free haven has been going on for decades.

• Have you ever been doored when riding a bike by someone getting out of a parked car on JFK Drive?
• Or had to weave in and out of cars in a traffic jam on JFK Drive and almost been hit by someone backing up?
• JFK Drive is open to cars from Transverse Drive down to Ocean Beach.
• You are way out of your league in opposing the tortuous baby steps of San Francisco in meeting its designation as a Transit First city!

I teach Citizenship to international students.

I need to convey to them abstract concepts embedded in the American civil rights movement. I use photos which we have attached.

Preserving a Park road for the freedom and joy of exercising and sociability instead of as a parking lot for cars fulfills the purpose of a “Park”.

When a decision-maker tries to deceive others by lying about the past, we can be led to bigger lies and increased rates of unethical behavior.

In the end, we are judged not by our behavior nor by what we intended to do, but by the impact of our behavior.

Top photo – Charles Moore (1931-2010) – Birmingham, Alabama. Notorious police chief Bull Connor’s cops turning fire hoses on black protestors.

As the Muslim holiday Ramadan comes to a close the World is witnessing yet another brutal assault on the Palestinian territory.

The American mainstream media is predictably taking the side of The State of Israel. America is paying lip service to the Palestinian grievances while ignoring the trauma and suffering the Palestinians are undergoing again as the State of Israel with its military might, funded by the American government, lays waste to the Gaza Strip.

Reading the mainstream American press is an extremely disconcerting experience when it comes to the State of Israel and its relationship to Palestine, the territory which was ceded to it following the Holocaust.

The native inhabitants of Palestine have been subject to 73 years of State displacement and terror by the occupiers of the State of Israel.  The American government has uniformly stood at the side of the State of Israel since its inception in May 1948. 

Nothing changes while the talk continues and the suffering continues in the State of Israel occupied Palestinian territories.

Excerpted from The Nation 5.13.2021 Yousef Munayyer

I have been trying to think of a moment since 1948 when so broad a range of Palestinians have been exposed to as great a level of Israeli violence as they have been these last few days—and I don’t think I can.

In towns throughout Israel, Palestinians have been beaten and terrorized by rampaging mobs; one man was dragged from his car and brutalized in what many are describing as a lynching. In the West Bank, Palestinians have been shot and killed in raids by the Israeli military.

In Jerusalem, Palestinian families, facing the ongoing threat of expulsion, have been harassed by settlers and military alike. And across Gaza, Israeli war planes have dropped bomb after bomb, destroying entire apartment buildings. Many have died, many more have been injured. If they manage to survive, they will witness their society shattered when the smoke clears.

To understand how we’ve arrived at this moment, it is essential to start with the story of Sheikh Jarrah. That small Jerusalem enclave, from which several Palestinian families have been under threat of expulsion, is perhaps, the most immediate proximate cause of this latest crisis. It is also just the latest targeted dispossession of Palestinians by Israel, which has been part of a more than 70–year process.

Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli government has pursued various policies aimed at demographically engineering the city of Jerusalem—again, all with an eye toward ensuring its perpetual dominance over the city. Among such policies are the building of illegal settlements around the city to cut it off from the rest of the Palestinian population in the West Bank; the restriction of movement to deny Palestinians access to and within the municipality itself; the revocation of Palestinian residency status, which is tantamount to expulsion; and the demolition of Palestinian homes. The Israelis also expel Palestinians from their homes, as we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah, so that they can be handed to Israeli settlers.

If this story is true, a lucky California woman just took herself to the cleaners and has become the unluckiest woman in the Golden State.

Several weeks ago I posted about the sale of a $1,800,000 lottery ticket in my own San Francisco neighborhood. (4.21.2021 –Someone is happy in San Francisco $1.8MM lottery ticket. Where’s the winner?)

Now we have a pricier and sadder lottery tale. A woman bought a California lottery ticket six months ago, left the ticket in her pants and ran it through the wash).

Talk about Down the Drain.

The Guardian 5.14.2021

The winner of a $26m California lottery prize may have literally washed the chance of a fortune down the drain.The winning SuperLotto Plus ticket for the 14 November drawing was sold at an Arco AM/PM convenience store in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk. Thursday was the last day to redeem it.

Nobody did.

Four prizes of $20m or more haven’t been claimed since 1997, including a $63m prize from 2015, a lottery spokesman, Jorge De La Cruz, told the Los Angeles Times.

Store employee Esperanza Hernandez told the Whittier Daily News that a woman came in on Wednesday and told workers that she had put the ticket in her pants and it was destroyed in the laundry.

The store’s manager told KTLA-TV that surveillance video showed the woman who bought the ticket, and she is known to store workers.

A copy of the surveillance video was turned over to California lottery officials, the manager said.

The claim will be investigated, a lottery spokeswoman, Cathy Johnston, said.

Lottery officials say someone who believes he or she is a winner must complete a claim form. But if someone loses a ticket, they must provide evidence that they owned it, such as a photograph of the front and back of the ticket, the officials said.

The winning numbers were: 23, 36, 12, 31, 13, with the mega number of 10. The $26m prize can be taken in annual installments or as a $19.7m cash option.

If the prize isn’t claimed, the $19.7m will go to California public schools.

The store that sold the ticket will receive a $130,000 bonus.

It’s uncommon for large jackpots to go unclaimed, officials said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/14/california-lottery-ticket-winner-laundry

Message to Thomas Campbell, Director and CEO – Fine Arts Museums SF

San Francisco Chronicle 5.12.2021

“Thomas Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said JFK Drive should be reopened to cars ‘as soon as possible’ while the city studies the issue, saying its closure has limited visitors’ and staff’s access to the de Young Museum and hampered its logistical operations.

‘Advocates for closure of JFK have taken advantage of COVID and the temporary Safe Streets closure of JFK to push their agenda for permanent closure in part by creating a false sense of crisis that is based on distorted statistics and unsubstantiated emotional rhetoric,’ Campbell said.”

Attn:  Thomas Campbell – Director and CEO FAMSF

Mr. Campbell,

My wife has been a long time member of the FAMSF. She teaches English to international students.  She introduces a private student to the DeYoung collections when she brings them on public transit to the DeYoung as her guest.  Her student often returns to do a more thorough visit to the DeYoung paying the steep admission price of a non San Francisco resident.

I carefully read your comments re Car Free JFK Drive and am all the more shocked after reading the attached article published in Hyperallergic, particularly the following,

As New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Director, “Campbell faced accusations of poor money management. Toward the end of his tenure, the Met faced a steep $40 million deficit that caused retirement buyouts, hiring freezes, and a postponement of the heralded $600 million expansion of its modern and contemporary wing. News of the deficit came on the heels of the Met’s high attendance numbers and its decision to sign an expensive eight-year lease on the Breuer building. (Now, years later, the Frick Collection is said to be taking over the last three years of the lease in 2020, and the Met has begun charging a mandatory ticket fee to non-New Yorker visitors in order to manage its deficit threat.)”

https://hyperallergic.com/468793/thomas-campbell-new-director-of-san-francisco-museums/

Are you serious?  How can you, having a dubious history of museum management, speak seriously about a car free JFK Drive and the DeYoung having its logistical operations “hampered?”

It is not a problem.  You know it, too. Your entire statement is misleading. The loading docks just off JFK have been used continuously during the Pandemic. I cycle by them frequently and see large trucks and vehicles parked in the loading docks and on JFK Drive.  “Visitors and staff’s access” has not been “hampered.”

I agree that the people about whom you speak admittedly have to walk a short distance. It truly isn’t that great a hindrance.

Most importantly you fail to mention the 800 car garage which sits directly underneath the Concourse.  It was before your time in San Francisco that this garage was built at the behest of Dede Wilsey; expressly to accommodate the concerns of those who feel they need easy access to the Museum.

As a newcomer to San Francisco you need to support San Francisco’s Transit First program and an environmentally friendly JFK Drive.  Do not use your specious, untrue and ridiculous comments unbefitting a person who is  leading the Fine Arts Muesums into the 21st century.

Thoughtfully,

Liz and Lee Heidhues

Native San Franciscans

Photos on JFK Drive – Liz and Lee Heidhues

The sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell appears to have a long reach. Now that Melinda and Bill Gates are in divorce court the relationship Mr. Gates had with Jeffrey Epstein is coming under scrutiny.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019.  Suicide was given as the official cause. Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested  in July 2020 and is awaiting trial. She has been denied bail and is in a Manhattan jail.

Some hypothesize that Melinda Gates started down the divorce track over her dismay about her husband’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

More tabloid fodder which will undoubtedly continue to make its way into the august pages of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Vanity Fair 5.10.2021

In the fall of 2019, just a couple months after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell, the New York Times ran a report on the relationship between the wealthy sexual predator and Bill Gates, which was more extensive than the Microsoft founder had previously acknowledged.

That September, Gates confirmed having met with Epstein, but said he “didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him.” The Times report in October, though, detailed a number of meetings over the course of several years, including several at Epstein’s New York mansion, all of them after the financier was already a convicted sex offender.

“Bill Gates regrets ever meeting with Epstein,” a spokesperson for the philanthropist, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, told the Times in 2019, “and recognizes it was an error in judgment to do so.”

Around the time of that report, Melinda Gates reportedly began talking to divorce lawyers, setting off a roughly two-year separation process that culminated last week with the power couple’s announced split—and, according to the Wall Street Journal, the timing was not accidental. Per the Journal, Melinda Gates was “uncomfortable” with Epstein after she and her husband met with him in 2013 and expressed concerns about him. But Bill Gates and members of the Gates Foundation continued their dealings with Epstein anyway, a matter that “still haunts” her, according to the Daily Beast, which first reported the 2013 meeting.

The extent to which the relationship between Bill Gates and Epstein weighed on the marriage is not clear. But according to the Journal, it factored into the couple’s split after 27 years of marriage, which was negotiated over the course of 2020. The Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist did not comment to the Journal on Sunday, but a spokesperson said he stands by his initial statement about Epstein. Melinda Gates did not comment to the Journal. 

Publicly, the couple has said little about the reasons for their separation, writing in a statement May 3 that “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.” The couple said they will continue to work together at their charitable foundation. Reporting in 2019 about the association between Gates and Epstein drew significant scrutiny for Gates at the time. The role it appears to have played in Bill and Melinda Gates’ divorce is sure to renew that scrutiny—and intensify it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/the-jeffrey-epstein-question-hanging-over-bill-and-melinda-gates-divorce#intcid=recommendations_vf-trending-legacy_dbcb3efd-62be-4110-8454-a4b94059dedf_popular4-1

Lee Heidhues – 5.11.2021

I am no fan of Liz Cheney.  

She is a hard core Republican conservative who has consistently spread the Fox News talking points for decades.  Her staunch conservative record has been discussed in frank fashion in recent days by such publications as The New York Times and The Nation.

It makes it all the more surprising that Liz Cheney, amongst her spineless and gutless fellow Republicans is taking down Donald Trump in the most frank and stark fashion. For her act of standing up to the Republican mob she is going to lose her leadership role in Congress, soon to be voted out.  

It’s obvious listening to her statement on the floor of Congress that Liz Cheney thinks it a small price to pay. For this act of defiance and politcal courage she deserves a shout out.

Video of statement on floor of Congress attached.  Watch and listen.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?511538-1/rep-liz-cheney-our-freedom-survives-protect-it