Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Reuters journalist killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire – media

RT | October 13, 2023

A Reuters videographer has been killed in southern Lebanon, the news agency said on Friday. Six other journalists were injured in the incident. The group was hit by Israeli artillery, Al Jazeera and Lebanese security sources said.

“We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” Reuters said in a statement. Abdallah was providing a live video feed from near the Israeli border at the time of his death, the agency continued, adding that it is “urgently seeking more information” from authorities in the region.

Reuters journalists Thaier Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh were wounded in the same incident, while Al Jazeera’s Elie Brakhya and Carmen Joukhadar and Agence France-Presse’s Christina Assi and Dylan Collins were also injured. It is unclear whether all six were hit by the same shell or by different projectiles.

A Lebanese security source told AFP that Israeli forces were responsible, and Al Jazeera blamed the incident on “Israeli bombing.”

Around the time of the incident, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that its troops were responding with tank and artillery fire to shooting from Lebanese territory.

Earlier on Friday, the IDF said that an explosion had occurred at a barrier along the border near Alma al-Shaab, a Lebanese village where the news crews were reporting from. The IDF said that its forces responded to the explosion with artillery fire.

Abdallah’s death brings the number of journalists killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday to 11, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Of the other ten, nine died in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, while one Israeli photographer was killed by Hamas militants at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Weaponizing Salt Water: An American Tradition

Deprivation and Destruction in the Spirit of ‘73

BY N. JOSEPH POTTS • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 12, 2023

It all ends up in salt water. The tea in 1773 Boston’s harbor, the Russian natural gas in 2022’s Baltic Sea. Of course, the tea would have drifted away and eventually sunk, while the gas bubbled to the surface and from there dissipated into the atmosphere, but either way, nobody got to buy, much less drink, the East India Company’s tea, and nobody in Europe got to buy or burn Russia’s gas, which was the American perpetrators’ purpose—in a word, deprivation.

Both times, and many of the times in between, the Americans either flew a false flag (“Mohawk Indians” in Boston) or were totally concealed underwater (the Baltic), emerging first to let Russia to take the rap for destroying its own pipeline, then to foment a rumor about a gang of incredibly intrepid Ukrainians on a sailing yacht. The East India Company was going to distribute (sell) the duty-free or -privileged tea to thirsty Bostoners, while Russia’s Gazprom proposed to sell natural gas cheaply to cold, energy-hungry Germans. The fact that 1773’s gangsters (Benjamin Franklin deplored their act) destroyed the actual goods while the US Navy’s unseen marauders destroyed the means of delivery does not change the character of the deeds, nor does the fact that the victims in Boston included the perpetrators’ own countrymen and the victims in Germany were foreign allies conquered by the USA over 70 years ago.

In both cases, the American perpetrators stood ready to “make good” their victims’ losses—at higher prices, to be sure, and certainly in 2022’s case in insufficient quantity. That is, the 1773 hooligans were professional smugglers of tea and other goods subject to duties levied by the British government on imports, and the infusion of “government tea” wrecked the market for their illicit goods, inspiring the famous raid in the first place—pretty much a turf war, viewed in its essence. That disruption would surely have petered out as the shipment of tea was exhausted, but the patriots were never a patient lot, as oppressed populaces sometimes are not (and other times such as the present apparently, are). The 2022 caper, on the other hand, promised to have far-more-nearly permanent effects on its hapless European victims, despite the rapid diversion of gas supplies from America via tankers loaded with liquified natural gas (LNG) in quantities far too small to make up for the destroyed pipelines’ capacity, never mind the higher costs that have to be borne by the sacrificial lambs of America’s brutal, covert foreign policy.

And speaking of prices, the draining of America’s supplies of natural gas to fill the tankers bound for Germany, however inadequate to make up for what the Russians would have delivered if only they were allowed to, cannot but drive up the prices paid for what is left by … Americans, the benighted dupes of their very own clandestine, vicious government. If they only knew these undeniable, practically obvious facts, it surely would warm the cockles of their ever-patriotic hearts as we head into the second of many, many winters made colder and more-costly by the greatest destruction of energy infrastructure so far this century. And they think the tea-bearing British of the Eighteenth Century were tyrannical brutes!

Depriving other countries of critical imports of energy as well as other resources has long been a staple of the American playbook of aggression and an immediate cause of war, including the one pitting Japan against the US and the British Empire that began in 1941. In this instance, the US at least operated in the open, teaming up with the UK, China and the Netherlands to deprive Japan of 80 percent of its petroleum consumption in the nefarious ABCD (American, British, Chinese, and Dutch) Pact. Since the Japanese attack on the US Fleet at anchor in Hawaii in 1941, Americans in particular have remained little aware that Japan attacked the colonial holdings of both Britain and Holland in Malaya and the East Indies at the very same moment, although the date in those places at the same instant was December 8, 1941 instead of the infamous December 7 date of Pearl Harbor. The role of the Pact in triggering Japanese military actions would seem obvious in the light of this fact.

Perhaps the most-wanton American act of spiteful destruction took place on the Pacific island of Espiritu Santo in the aftermath of World War II and, as in the Nord Stream case, made a European ally (France) its victim. Its scale dwarfed that of the Boston Tea Party, but still had nothing approaching the impact of destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline, which already after the mild winter of 2022-2023 is credited with having led to 68,000 excess deaths in Europe.

In 1947, the US Navy was preparing to pull out of its huge base on Espiritu Santo, which at that time was brimming over with supplies and equipment costing untold millions of (big, 1947) dollars staged for the invasion of Japan two years earlier that had never transpired. Having decided not to ship all this matériel back to the US, the Americans invited France (the colonial overlord of the island) to pay 6 cents on the dollar of its cost in order to inherit the massive trove. Noting that the US was indeed “stuck” with a great deal of material that it would be difficult and uneconomical to move, the French cannily chose to decline this seemingly generous offer.

The French had correctly figured that the US would be abandoning the haul in any case, so why pay anything at all for it? But the French had forgotten about the American tradition that began in Boston Harbor in 1773 involving the deliberate destruction of goods by immersion in salt water, plenty of which happened to surround Espiritu Santo. True to their tradition, the spurned Americans built a long jetty out from the island to nearby deep water, and drove, dragged and rolled hundreds of trucks, tractors and even tanks out to the end of the jetty along with thousands of cases of Coca Cola (1947’s equivalent of tea), bale upon bale of brand-new clothing and countless other treasures, and deep-sixed it all, creating an underwater junkyard that draws SCUBA-diving tourists to the island to this day, to a destination since named “Million-Dollar Point.” For good measure, the ungenerous Americans even blew up the jetty after they had completed their exercise in wanton destruction. At least, uniquely in this case, the Americans actually owned what they destroyed. And they performed their misdeed very much in the public eye, for all to see.

Doing this sort of thing after a major war might be dismissed as merely a materialistic tantrum little worse than that of the piqued child who gathers up his marbles and runs off home.

But doing this sort of thing before a major war could incline the thoughtful observer to see cause and effect.

This is much more serious than marbles. America could greatly improve the lot of humanity by desisting from such behavior. If it isn’t already too late.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

AfD NEEDLE ATTACK UPDATE

The Banana Republic of Germany has become a very absurd and extreme place

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | October 13, 2023

Last week, I posted about allegations of a needle attack on Alternative für Deutschland co-chair Tino Chrupalla. On 4 October, at a rally in Ingolstadt ahead of the Bavarian state elections this past Sunday, Chrupalla was posing for selfies with supporters when two fans hugged him. His right arm suddenly felt heavy and within minutes he was near collapse. An ambulance rushed him to hospital and he spent several days under medical observation in intensive care.

There have now been important developments in this case.

In the days after the attack, Ingolstadt prosecutors acknowledged that police were investigating, but insisted they had “no evidence … that Mr. Chrupalla was approached or attacked.” As intended, this gave the right-thinking press space to jeer that the AfD were “exaggerating shamelessly” for political gain ahead of the elections, and for the Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) to deplore “how perfidiously and deceitfully the AfD is trying to capitalise on these incidents … in the state elections.”

Amid Herrmann’s bizarre fulminations, AfD-adjacent newsweekly Junge Freiheit (JF) reported that Chrupalla’s own doctor had diagnosed an “intramuscular injection” with an unknown substance in Chrupalla’s deltoid. Police immediately summoned the doctor for interrogation, after which he mysteriously distanced himself from the diagnosis, pleading that in his assessment he had merely provided “a description of the injury based on Chrupalla’s statements and not an actual determination of an injection.” Public prosecutors again said that allegations of an attack had “no basis in witnesses statements … including the testimony of Mr. Chrupalla and his bodyguards.”

Only this Wednesday did Chrupalla feel well enough to give his first public statements on the attack. Because the police would do nothing, he said he was forced to enlist a Dresden pathologist to investigate his needle injury. The doctor took a skin sample from the injection site on his arm, confirming that an injection had occurred. Chrupalla also said that he still felt unwell and that he’d lost 3.5 kg in the days since the Ingolstadt rally, and he added an additional detail that the press had not yet reported: Immediately after the attack, federal police had noticed a blood-stain on his right shirt sleeve, corresponding to the injection site. All those official claims that police had no evidence of a needle attack were lies, in other words; they had clear indications from the first moment.

Hours after Chrupalla’s statements, Ingolstadt prosecutors suddenly reversed themselves, finally acknowledging the obvious:

… Expert opinion has confirmed that the blood stain on MdB Chrupall’s clothes is his own blood. According to our current assessments, this blood stain probably corresponds to the diagnosed puncture wound. The investigations of the Ingolstadt public prosecutor’s office continue to focus on the open question of when and how Chrupalla’s diagnosed puncture wound … occurred during the campaign rally … in Ingolstadt, and who caused it. In order to clarify these matters, we are identifying and questioning further witnesses, evaluating video recordings and seeking out expert assessments.

What happened here could not be clearer:

Chrupalla suffered a needle attack less than two weeks after a serious “security incident” against his co-chair Alice Weidel on 23 September. Worried that these possibly coordinated efforts against AfD leadership might have consequences for the elections in Hesse and Bavaria, the German press played down the Weidel incident, suggesting that she was just seeking any excuse for a holiday on Mallorca. In the case of Chrupalla, police and prosecutors collaborated towards the same ends, denying the attack until the elections were over and mounting evidence, procured by Chrupalla himself, stripped their stupid efforts of all credibility.

Aside from the Federal Republic of Germany, is there any other developed Western nation where the police, the press and the political establishment react with such obviously calculated indifference to serious assaults on leading opposition party officials? [Yes, USA for example.]

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

EU Opens Investigation Into X After Making Censorship Demands

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 13, 2023

Sparking serious concerns over severe censorship and free speech restrictions, the European Union has initiated a formal investigation into X, due to perceived misinformation related to the recent Hamas attack on Israel.

The potential risk of such probes is that they could lead to a world where a centralized authority determines the validity of opinions and controls information flow.

From the perspective of anti-censorship advocates, this move by the EU is a slippery slope.

The imperative question that arises is who gets to define “misinformation,” and how can it be ensured that bias or interests of the few do not influence these definitions?

This investigation marks the inaugural application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a controversial legislative effort purportedly aimed at policing Big Tech.

However, free speech advocates argue that this aggressive stance strays dangerously close to infringing on foundational rights to free expression.

In the wake of recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas, there’s been a substantial uptick in digital content related to the conflict, some containing graphic imagery. While the EU’s initiative is purportedly to quell misinformation, it raises the age-old question: where does one draw the line between censoring misinformation and infringing upon free speech?

Elon Musk, now at the helm of X, received a letter from EU commissioner Thierry Breton, signaling unease that the platform could be a conduit for what the EU deems “illegal content and disinformation.” In response, Musk advocated for transparency, inviting the EU to make public the alleged violations, thereby allowing the public to form their opinions. “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that that [sic] the public can see them. Merci beaucoup,” Musk wrote.

Yet, Breton’s rejoinder was less than satisfactory for proponents of free discourse. He retorted, “You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence. Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk.” This statement underscores a problematic vagueness and subjectivity in determining what constitutes a gray area that poses a potential threat to free speech.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | 1 Comment

West Bank death toll surges as Israeli soldiers, settlers carry on attacks

The Cradle | October 13, 2023 

Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed thirty-six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced on 12 October. 

A 24-year-old Palestinian was shot by Israeli forces near Ramallah on Thursday, succumbing to injuries later that evening. 

“With the killing of Suleiman Malsa, the toll from the Israeli aggression against our people in the West Bank since last Saturday has now reached 36, with over 650 wounded,” WAFA news agency said, citing the health ministry. 

A 17-year-old Palestinian in the town of Qusra near Nablus was shot and killed a day earlier by Israeli settlers under the army’s protection. Several others were killed and injured in the attack. 

Settlers also shot and killed a father and son at a funeral on 12 October. 

Violence has surged dramatically in the occupied West Bank since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s indiscriminate air raids against Gaza’s civilian population. 

Palestinians across the West Bank carried out several protests and marches in solidarity with Gaza. West Bank resistance groups have also stepped up armed confrontation against Israeli troops and settlers, particularly after a call by Hamas for a mass Palestinian uprising in all occupied territory. 

Intense clashes between Israeli troops and groups affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have been ongoing since Saturday. Dozens of individuals have also been detained over links to Hamas and its affiliates in the West Bank.

Two Israeli police officers were wounded, one critically, in a shooting attack on a police station in occupied east Jerusalem on Thursday. The attacker was killed. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Residents across the West Bank have also reported facing significantly higher levels of violence since Hamas’ surprise operation against Israel on 7 October, reinforcing accusations that Israel employs a policy of collective punishment against Palestinians. 

More videos

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu and Biden lie to justify their crimes against the Palestinians

By Motasem A Dalloul | MEMO | October 13, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Palestinian fighters from the besieged Gaza Strip who entered the occupation state at the weekend as “savages” who “celebrate the murder of women, children and the elderly.” He made his claim when trying to justify the ongoing campaign of Israeli air strikes that have so far killed 900 Palestinians, including 260 children and 230 women, and wounded more than 4,500 others.

Netanyahu used the same words to mobilise international support for his massive ground offensive planned for the coastal enclave. “We are on the third day of the operation,” he said in a televised speech on Monday. “We are in an operation for our home, a war to ensure our existence, a war that we will win.” He told viewers that the war was “imposed upon us by a despicable enemy.”

He went on to liken the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, to Daesh/ISIS: “The atrocities carried out by Hamas have not been seen since the atrocities of ISIS. Children bound and executed with the rest of their families, young girls and boys shot in the back, executed… We have always known what Hamas is. Now the whole world knows. Hamas is ISIS. We will defeat [Hamas] precisely as the enlightened world defeated ISIS.”

US President Joe Biden joined in this hate-fest on Tuesday: “There are moments in his life… when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world… This was an act of sheer evil. More than 1,000 civilians slaughtered… babies being killed, entire families slain… and young women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”

He also likened Hamas to ISIS. “This is terrorism, which sadly for the Jewish people, it’s not new. This attack has brought to the surface painful memories. The scars led by a millennium of anti-Semitism and genocide.” And where was this anti-Semitism most prevalent, Mr President? Yes, in Europe and the US.

Biden then reverted to the familiar script: “We must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel, and we will make sure it has what it needs to take care of its citizens to defend itself and respond to this attack. There’s no justification for terrorism.”

According to Biden, Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. “Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people. It uses Palestinian civilians as human shields and offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.”

Both Netanyahu and Biden lied.

Both ignored the fact that resistance against a military occupation is legitimate under international law. In this case, the Palestinians are struggling against the longest occupation in history and, some would argue, the worst. They are not “terrorists” by doing so. Both of them insisted that all of the Israelis killed by the resistance were civilians, when hundreds were serving soldiers, men and women. Both claimed that Israelis were beheaded, including women and children, but no evidence has been produced for this allegation. Both claimed that women were raped, although Muslims in an Islamic movement are unlikely to do such a thing.

Israelis who did not challenge the Palestinian fighters were not “slaughtered”. One woman told Israeli TV i24 that the Palestinian fighters told her not to worry when she told them that she had children. While the fighters were in her house, she said that the children were playing on their mobile phones. She also noted that the fighters did not eat bananas from her counter before asking for and getting permission from her.

“I’m getting a lot of questions about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village [settlement of Kfar Azza],” wrote Israeli journalist Oren Ziv on X. “During the tour [there] we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

The claim that Hamas is the same as Daesh/ISIS is ludicrous. Hamas is a resistance movement that has never operated outside historic Palestine. It participated in democratic elections in 2006, the last time that the US and Israel-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (whose own mandate expired in 2009) allowed them to be held. Moreover, it won the elections and formed the government of the Palestinian Authority, a result which neither Abbas nor the US and Israel accepted, despite international monitors describing the polls as “free and fair”. What’s more, there are claims that ISIS was a black ops creation of the US in order to sow mayhem and cruelty in the Middle East and discredit Islam and Islamic resistance against US hegemony in Muslim countries.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu used the same ISIS claim in 2014 to justify the apartheid state of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people. “Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. They act in the same way. They are branches of the same poisonous tree. They are two extremist Islamic terrorist movements that abduct and murder innocents, that execute their own people, that shrink at nothing including the wilful murder of children.”

Such deceptions are par for the course for both Netanyahu and Biden; it’s in the job description. Likewise, for other Western governments and their compliant media outlets. Anyone who opposes their twisted narrative is discredited as “anti-Semitic”, a terrorist sympathiser or worse. Look at what happened to Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, hounded out of office by the pro-Israel lobby. The West is governed by double standards and hypocrisy, and the Hamas operation at the weekend has exposed that. Victim-blaming is what they excel at in order to allow Israel to act with impunity. They expect the Palestinians to just roll over and accept being oppressed and killed by Israel. We won’t play their evil game by their rules.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel sets deadline for 1.1 million to flee northern Gaza as ethnic cleansing campaign worsens

(Photo Credit: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The Cradle | October 13, 2023

Over one million Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip have until midnight on 13 October to make their way south as hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops are expected to storm the besieged enclave.

The order was relayed to UN officials in New York late on Thursday, as Tel Aviv has said fleeing Palestinians will not be allowed to return “until we say so.” Almost half a million Palestinians have already been displaced by the Israeli onslaught.

“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said about the order.

“This is chaos; no one understands what to do,” Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza City, told AP.

“Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if … you’re going to live,” said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), adding that there is no way to mobilize wounded and elderly patients inside hospitals.

Hamas officials dismissed the orders, calling on Palestinians to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation.”

“We affirm that all governorates of the Gaza Strip, whether north or south, are [active targets]. The process of displacement or departure from the north to the south is illogical and constitutes a threat to the lives of our honorable citizens,” officials in Gaza stressed.

Tel Aviv made the announcement as warplanes pounded the world’s largest open-air prison for the seventh consecutive night, destroying 750 targets and killing about 250 Palestinians in a single day in what is described as “collective punishment” for the historic Al-Aqsa Flood resistance operation.

As of Friday, the death toll of the Israeli blitz stands at over 1,500 Palestinians – a third of whom were children.

Although Israeli officials claim their indiscriminate bombing campaign hits only “terrorist” targets, the reality inside Gaza is the opposite: the bombs have destroyed entire residential neighborhoods, dozens of high-rise apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, and even Gaza’s complete stock of solar panels.

Furthermore, the attacks have failed to make any significant dent on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) forces, who have operated underground for years.

Israel has also completely cut off electricity, water, food, and fuel for Gaza, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped inside.

Human rights organizations on Thursday confirmed that the Israeli air force has also been using internationally banned white phosphorous bombs on Gaza’s civilian population.

“White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects, has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

“The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk,” it added.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UN rapporteur slams EU support for Israeli aggression on Gaza

Palestinians mourn after 8 members of Shamlah family killed in Israeli airstrikes (Mustafa Hassona – Anadolu Agency)
Press TV – October 13, 2023

A United Nations special rapporteur has slammed the European Union’s unwavering support for Israel in its aggression on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and its double standards regarding Palestine and Ukraine.

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said “Political action is lacking and double standards tarnish the values and the rule of law principle upon which our international order is premised.”

Albanese made the remarks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed the EU’s unwavering support for Israel in recent days, saying that “Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel.”

After von der Leyen’s tweet, Israel has intensified its strikes on Gaza and cut off fuel, water, energy, and food supplies to the coastal strip, which is home to over two million Palestinians and has already been suffering under a 16-year-old Israeli blockade.

Von der Leyen’s recent remarks drew widespread criticism, especially after her previous comments on Russia’s alleged targeting of such utilities.

Last year, Von der Leyen said Russian “attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes.”

“Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity, and heating with winter coming – these are acts of pure terror,” she said back then.

The UN rapporteur urged Von der Leyen on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to make the “same declaration” she did against Russia towards the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

“If not, people could think that European institutions do not value the protection of Palestinian children, women and men as much as that of Ukrainians,” said Albanese.

Albanese said it was important to make such a statement because it meant “giving full meaning to the universality of human rights and equality of all human beings, to enable Israelis and Palestinians to live in dignity and freedom.”

“I do not understand the lack of commensurate empathy with the Palestinian people, as well as the lack of accountability for Israel’s protracted occupation and crimes perpetrated for over 56 years,” Albanese said.

While Tel Aviv was backed by its staunch Western allies, the US and the EU, over the past week, the reaction among Latin American leaders was more varied.

The most vocal commentator among Latin American leaders has been Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, who took to X to decry Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza, widely sharing photos and footage of Palestinian victims. In his tweets, Petro also likened the Israeli military to Nazis.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government stressed that the escalating tensions “is the result of the inability of the Palestinian people to find a space in international law to assert their historical rights”.

In Bolivia, former President Evo Morales reiterated his support for Palestine and broke with the leftist government’s more diplomatic statement.

“The statement from the Bolivian Foreign Ministry does not reflect the feeling of solidarity of the Bolivian people towards Palestine. The Bolivian people will always condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories,” Morales, who is once again running for office, said on X.

On Saturday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched the al-Aqsa Storm operation against Israel in response to the occupying regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The military operation killed around 1,300 Israeli forces, and injured thousands more. Nearly 150 others were also captured by the resistance forces.

Meanwhile, the Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza killed more than 1,500 people, nearly half of whom were children and women, and injured over 6,600 others.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

EU issues civilizational ultimatum to Türkiye

RT | October 13, 2023

European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas has demanded that Türkiye either openly declare its support for NATO, the EU and the “ethos of the West,” or side with Russia and an assortment of Muslim states and militant groups.

Speaking at an event in Brussels on Wednesday, Schinas weighed in on the recent violent flare-up between Israel and Palestinian fighters in Gaza, noting that all 27 EU member states supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” and denounced terrorism following a deadly Hamas attack last weekend.

Addressing Türkiye, the official declared that the country must “choose which side of history it wants to be on,” suggesting it could not seek a middle ground between world powers or remain neutral.

“[Türkiye will be] with us – the European Union, NATO, our values, the ethos of the West – or with Moscow, Tehran, Hamas, and Hezbollah,” Schinas said, as cited by Greek newspaper Ekathimerini, adding that “the answer needs to be clear.”

While the vice president did not elaborate on what Ankara should do to prove its allegiance to the West, his comments came just days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government was prepared to coordinate peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Türkiye … is ready for all kinds of mediation, including prisoner exchange, if the parties request it,” the president said in a lengthy statement, which was issued following separate discussions with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

However, Ankara has been highly critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in the past, and Erdogan has slammed Israel’s latest military operations in Gaza as “shameful” and “a massacre.”

Although Schinas implied that Russia had sided with Palestinian militants, Moscow has urged for a peaceful resolution to the conflict and stressed that civilians were suffering on all sides. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated calls to implement past UN resolutions and create a Palestinian state – commonly known as the “two-state solution.”

“All of us had the same opinion… that this confrontation must be stopped immediately, that the parties should respect international humanitarian law, prevent any terrorist actions and the indiscriminate use of force,” Lavrov said.

The surprise attack by Hamas last Saturday marked one of Israel’s greatest national security breaches in decades, with local officials reporting some 1,300 fatalities in the aftermath. The Israeli military has launched days of airstrikes in retaliation, with around 1,500 reportedly killed in Gaza and thousands more wounded on both sides.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

US in a quandary over Israel’s war on Gaza

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 13, 2023 

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One, the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone. 

Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.) 

Three, the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains unconvinced.

Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand. Most important, even as  Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent. 

That is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel, with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.

Even as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”

Shortly after McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office. 

These disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time for war.”    

This failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”

“Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added, vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.

Make no mistake, the Israeli objective will be to use overwhelming force with its most advanced weapons, including powerful bunker-busting bombs, to inflict crippling losses on Hamas formations so that the movement cannot wage an armed struggle for many years. A ground operation is to be expected any day. 

It is improbable that Blinken would have even tried to dissuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from going ahead with a brutal operation. He told the media that the US would rather leave it to Israel to do what needed to be done. Meanwhile, the US deployment will not only aim to enhance surveillance, intercept communications, and prevent Hamas from acquiring more weapons, but also act as deterrent. 

That said, the US cannot afford to watch passively. Washington has no choice but to limit the expected fighting in the coming days and weeks in Gaza  to ensure that it does not spread to other areas. Thus, the US force projection specifically serves as a deterrent to Hezbollah, which possesses a vast armoury of 150,000 missiles that can be launched at major cities in Israel, potentially leading to a broader war not only in Gaza but also in Lebanon, drawing others into the conflict. 

Israel knocked out of service the airports in Damascus and Aleppo in Syria in missile strikes simultaneously on Thursday, presumably to prevent reinforcements reaching Lebanon. Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was due to travel to Syria and Lebanon in the weekend.

Through the past four decades, the US and Iran have made a fine art of communicating with each other in dangerous times to set ground rules to avoid confrontation. This time around too, it is happening.

Certainly, the speech by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday on the conflict situation, which was translated into Hebrew by the Iranians and disseminated in an unprecedented move, conveyed a subtle message in three parts to both Israel and the US, signalling essentially that Tehran does not intend to get involved in the conflict. (See my blog Iran warns Israel against its apocalyptic war.) 

In turn, the US has signalled that it has intelligence showing that key Iranian leaders were surprised by the Hamas  attacks on Israel. Equally, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday — their first ever conversation which Tehran initiated — harped on efforts to “halt the ongoing escalation.” 

The ‘known unknown’ scenario

Yet, the big question is, how far the Biden Administration would be confident about the success of any Israeli military incursion into Gaza. During the press conference in Tel Aviv, Blinken underscored in a subtle way the importance of “lessons” learnt from past experiences. The point is, Israel will be involved in urban warfare in a densely populated area with a population of 2.1 million people.

Gaza has an average of 5,500 people per sq. km, and there are bound to be heavy civilian casualties caused by Israel’s advanced American weaponry, which would lead to an international outcry, including in Europe, and lead to condemnation of not only Israel but the US as well. However, Israel is in a defiant mood and Netanyahu needs at least some of the operation’s goals achieved before agreeing to a ceasefire.

More importantly, Israel needs an exit strategy, if past experiences in Lebanon and Gaza gave any lessons. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule comes into play — ‘You break it, you own it.’

An extended occupation of Gaza will be an extremely dangerous outcome fraught with great risks, given the deep economic, religious, and social roots that Hamas enjoys. Suffice to say, the Israeli military will be hard-pressed to show “success” and head for the exit door.

Besides, if other Palestinian groups and organisations in the West Bank make decisions that advance Hamas’s strategic goals, all bets are off, as Israeli military will face a two-front war. In fact, the conditions for a third intifada do exist in the West Bank.

And in such a scenario, the advantage goes to Hamas, which would position itself as potentially the appropriate and perhaps the sole alternative after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is now 87 years old. 

Again, in a worst case scenario, it cannot be ruled out that the Arab Israeli population may draw inspiration from Hamas, and if their violent eruption in 2021 is anything to go by, the long-term viability of the state of Israel will be put to test. 

Suffice to say, the best solution lies in a paradigm shift in the Israeli statecraft away from its primacy on coercion and brutal force. Blinken’s remarks suggested that the US hopes that when the dust settles down, with the helping hand of friendly Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, a turnaround to calm the situation and reach a ceasefire might be possible. 

Of course, the longer that takes, the greater the strain it will put on the US-Israeli ties and the harder it will become for the Biden Administration to maintain an equilibrium in what is already a troubled relationship with Netanyahu. Fundamentally, Israel needs to come terms with the new reality that they are no longer invincible or the dominant power in the West Asian region.  

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

S. Korea Considers Suspension of Deconfliction Agreement with N. Korea Because of Hamas Attack

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 12, 2023

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-shik is pushing Seoul to abandon a 2018 agreement that reduced the military presence along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The military official believes North Korea could use tactics similar to Hamas to attack South Korea. The potential for Seoul to walk away from the deal meant to reduce tension on the peninsula comes as the chances for military confrontation between the US and North Korea has skyrocketed under the Joe Biden administration.

Shin, who was appointed as Defense Minister on Saturday, argued that withdrawing from the agreement was necessary. “Hamas has attacked Israel, and the Republic of Korea is under a much stronger threat,” he said. “To counter (that threat), we need to be observing (North Korean military movements) with our surveillance assets, to gain prior knowledge of whether they are preparing provocations or not. If Israel had flown aircraft and drones to maintain continuous monitoring, I think they might have not been hit like that.”

It is unclear why Shin believes North Korea, a nuclear power, would utilize the same tactics as Hamas, a stateless militia.

The 2018 agreement signed between then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un created a buffer zone along the DMZ that prevents military confrontations. The deal was inked during a period of warming relations on the Korean Peninsula that was driven by Moon, and fostered by then-President Donald Trump’s willingness to reduce the American military presence and war games in South Korea.

However, President Biden and Yoon have taken a more aggressive approach. Washington and Seoul have conducted several rounds of provocative military drills. Additionally, the White House has committed to deploying more weapons that can launch nuclear weapons to South Korea.

On Thursday, the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, and the fleet of warships in its strike group, arrived in South Korea. The ships will conduct trilateral war games with Japan and South Korea.

North Korea sees trilateral military operations between Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul as the White House attempting to create an “Asian NATO.” Officials in Pyongyang have repeatedly warned that the US-led military activity on the Korean Peninsula is pushing the region towards a nuclear war.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US must prepare for war with China and Russia – Congress

RT | October 13, 2023

Washington needs to urgently update and expand both its nuclear arsenal and the conventional military in order to face the combined might of Moscow and Beijing, the congressional Strategic Posture Commission argued in its final report published on Thursday.

“The United States and its allies must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously,” the commission said. “The US-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes.”

While the commission has not identified any specific evidence of Russia and China working together, “we worry… there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war construct,” a senior official involved in the report told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. The current US national security strategy calls for defeating one major adversary while deterring another.

The commission argued that the combined threat from China and Russia will become acute as early as 2027 so “decisions need to be made now in order for the nation to be prepared.” The 131 findings and 81 recommendations in the report amount to the need for massive expansion of both the conventional armed forces and the Nuclear Triad.

The report demands more of the B-21 stealth bombers and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. The B-21 is still in development and is expected to enter service by 2027 at the earliest. The first two Columbia-class subs are under construction and are expected in 2030. The US Navy has planned to order 12, to replace the 18 Ohio-class boats currently in service.

“Amid all of the Commission’s recommendations to increase the number of strategic and tactical nuclear systems, there is almost no mention of cost in the entire report,” which “does not seem to acknowledge any limits to defense spending,” the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has said in response.

At a press event announcing the report, the commission’s vice-chair, retired Republican Senator Jon Kyl, argued that higher military spending is a small price to “hopefully preclude” a possible nuclear war and that President Joe Biden and Congress need to “take the case to the American people” to spend more money.

According to FAS, however, the commission’s recommendations are “likely to exacerbate the arms race, further constrict the window for engaging with Russia and China on arms control, and redirect funding away from more proximate priorities.”

The only reason the commission did not argue for an immediate expansion of the US nuclear stockpile “is that the weapons production complex currently does not have the capacity to do so,” FAS noted, adding that there is no need for a nuclear arms race so long as the US has enough submarines to present a credible deterrent to a first strike by an adversary.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries