The Covid Inquiry is an Embarrassment to the English Legal System
By Molly Kingsly, Arabella Skinner and Ben Kingsly | UsForThem | October 24, 2023
Of all the crass misappropriations of scientific principles during the pandemic, none did more harm than the corruption of the ‘precautionary principle’ — the notion that an action or an intervention is justified only once one is clear that the benefits exceed the harms and that, as one sociologist put it, “you have looked very hard for the harms”.
That principle came to be almost wholly inverted in the context of the pandemic: an intervention seemingly could be justified on the ‘precautionary’ basis that if it might have any beneficial effect in slowing the course of the pandemic, it would be worthwhile. This justified indiscriminate measures ranging from universal masking, mass testing (including of young children), 14-day isolated quarantines and even lockdown itself for entire healthy populations, on the basis that even though the evidence base was often weak or non-existent, the intervention just might achieve something, and opened the door to a slew of harms impacting almost all cohorts of the British population.
It was to be hoped that a core task for the Covid Inquiry in this key Module 2 would have been a dispassionate objective assessment of whether the costs (financial costs, direct harms, probable indirect harms, risk of unquantified future harms) of the Government’s population-wide interventions outweighed possible benefits. So, it was deeply disappointing last week to see not only key witnesses but the inquiry Chair herself repeat the same dangerous misconception of the precautionary principle.
In one of the most jaw-dropping interjections of the inquiry to date, Baroness Hallett revealed a prejudgement that if masking people could have had even the slightest of benefits, and seemingly without even contemplating that risks and known harms might need to be weighed too, she pressed Sir Peter Horby, an esteemed epidemiologist at Oxford University, who had indicated that he believed universal masking was not a straightforward decision: “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
Coming from the independent Chair of a public inquiry, this is an astonishing comment. It betrays a presumption, or at the very least a predisposition, to accept that it was better to act than not to act — the reverse of the precautionary principle. When a comment such as this, from the Chair of the Inquiry, goes unchallenged, it risks anchoring the entire frame of reference for the inquiry’s interrogation of this critical topic. In our view it was a surprising and serious error of judgement for an experienced Court of Appeal judge.
What made Baroness Hallett feel this to be an appropriate thing to think, let alone say out loud? We suggest the issue lies in the fact that the Chair and the official counsel to the inquiry seem already to have the storyline of the pandemic wrapped up.
The inquiry’s counsel has been at pains to paint a picture of the country facing an almost existential threat from the virus. From the outset, counsel has framed his questioning on the basis that it was indisputable a “highly dangerous fatal viral outbreak was surely coming”, and “by February this viral, severe pandemic, this viral pathogenic outbreak is coming, and it can’t be stopped”. Even hardened lawyers and epidemiologists, it has seemed, were bunkering down because “the virus was coming, it was a fatal pathogenic disease”.
And, with the precautionary principle inverted in the collective mind of this inquiry, almost anything the Government then did against that backdrop was justified.
With preference…
Worse still, it is now starkly evident that the witnesses whose opinions and perspectives support that proposition are being overtly praised and pedestaled, while those whose opinions and perspectives might cast doubt are treated with prejudice and hostility.
For those witnesses who were part of the ‘home team’ — Government-appointed advisers, and those who have already publicly ascribed to the inquiry’s apparently favoured storyline — impeccable credentials and impartiality have been assumed.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, for example, former Director of the Wellcome Trust, member of SAGE and currently Chief Scientist at the WHO gave oral evidence to the inquiry in June. One can almost picture counsel for the inquiry scattering rose petals as he sums up Farrar’s illustrious credentials:
You trained, I believe, in medicine, with postgraduate training in London, Chichester, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Oxford and San Francisco. You have a DPhil PhD from the University of Oxford. You were a director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Institute at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam from 1996 to 2013. From 2013 you were Director of the Wellcome Trust, and from May 2023 have you been the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation? Have you throughout your professional career served as a chair on a multitude of advisory bodies, for governments and global organisations? Have you received a plethora of honours from a number of governments, institutes and entities?
Farrar is then treated to counsel’s softest underarm bowls and allowed to give unchallenged testimony in favour of an intervention-heavy approach to pandemic management: “when you have the countermeasures you’re talking about, diagnostic tests, treatment and vaccines, together they create a Swiss cheese model of what our public health is”.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, and chief architect of the dramatic scientific modelling on which the global lockdown response was predicated, was warmly welcomed to the witness box by counsel last week “as a world leading specialist in this field”, and was later thanked profusely for his hard work by Baroness Hallett: “Thank you very much for all the work that you did during the pandemic.”
Gushing perhaps, but nothing compared to the farewell given to SAGE modeller Professor John Edmunds, who had been affirmed upfront by counsel as, “a de facto expert in epidemiology”, and one of “a number of brilliant scientists and advisers who assisted the Government and the country in the remarkable way that you did”. At the end of his evidence, Baroness Hallett delivered the eulogy:
Thank you very much indeed. If I may say so, professor, I think you were unduly harsh on yourself this morning. You had a job, and you described it yourself, your job was to provide expert advice to the policy and decision-makers, and if the system is working properly that advice is relayed to them, then they consider advice coming from other quarters about economics and social consequences and the like. I’m not sure you could have done more than you did, consistent with your role at the time, but you obviously did as much as you felt was appropriate. So I’m really grateful to you, I’m sure we all are.
This is a far departure from the rigorous testing of credentials and potential conflicts that one could expect as an expert witness in any court proceedings, and of the studious impartiality of the presiding judge. It is certainly far short of what the public should rightly expect for an exercise set to spend over £55m on lawyers alone.
None of these witnesses were asked whether their senior positions within organisations that rely on very valuable relationships with global pharmaceutical groups and private pharma-focused organisations could have had any bearing on their advice at the time or their evidence to the inquiry now.
Farrar was director of the Wellcome Trust throughout the pandemic. The Wellcome Trust is one of the institutions behind CEPI, a global vaccine development fund created in 2015 which partners with vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna. During the pandemic Farrar frequently and vocally promoted his view that vaccines would be the means for us to exit the pandemic. He is plainly someone whose professional success and credibility has become indelibly attached to the pharmaceutical industry and in particular the use of pharmaceutical interventions in public health, yet counsel and the inquiry Chair seemed uninterested in that colouring of Farrar’s evidence.
Likewise, Ferguson, of Imperial College London was not asked a single question about potential conflicts or risk of bias. Again, the inquiry seemed unaware, or at least uninterested, that a month after Ferguson’s seismic March 2020 paper had concluded that “epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time” and that “the major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available”, it was reported that Imperial College had received £22.5 million in funding from the U.K. Government for vaccine research and development; and that in that same year, 2020, Imperial received at least $108 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
BMGF is a private philanthropic organisation which has been open about its ideological commitment to vaccine-based solutions for global health issues and which itself has very significant financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
… and with prejudice
For witnesses such as Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, but not a member of SAGE, and (unhelpfully for the inquiry) not an enthusiastic supporter of lockdowns, the inquiry appeared to have made somewhat less glowing presumptions:
You are a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University. Could you explain what that discipline entails?
Heneghan’s explanation was swiftly followed with a presumptive conclusion as to the strength of his credentials:
As you know, because I think you have been following the inquiry, we have heard this week from a series of academics who have spent, in the main, their professional careers researching, analysing the spread of infectious diseases, developing models, to analyse how such diseases are spread and how they can be controlled, and considering large-scale public health issues relating to pandemic preparedness and so on. You don’t have a comparable type of expertise in this area, do you?
Not satisfied with having attempted his own disparagement of the man, counsel took the opportunity while having Heneghan in the witness box to ask for his perspective on two ‘home team’ scientists having described him in a private discussion as a “fuckwit” (Dame Angela McLean and Professor Edmunds) — to what ends, other than to rattle, rile or embarrass, was not clear. It was the cheapest shot of the inquiry so far.
During Heneghan’s evidence session, and having seemingly felt entirely comfortable to rely on the expert opinions of Farrar, Ferguson, Edmunds et al. — the ‘good guy’ home team scientists — Baroness Hallett gives short shrift to the notion that Professor Heneghan’s opinion might be relied upon. When talking about the broad scope of evidence-based medicine Heneghan explains that “even my opinion” amounts to evidence, Baroness Hallett retorted dismissively: “Not in my world it doesn’t, I’m afraid.”
Spoiler alert
Here’s what the inquiry is going to conclude, after three to seven years and perhaps £200 million: the Government and its official scientific advisers mostly did their best in the face of what they rightly and fairly believed to be the most devastating viral threat the world had ever seen; those scientists gave the best advice they could, and were entitled to assume that the Government was taking account of other factors; if it hadn’t been for Brexit, we would have been better prepared; the Government perhaps could have thought a bit more about the impact of lockdowns on the economy, but ultimately lockdowns were unavoidable; if it had all been done faster and harder, the U.K. might have come out in a better place, clinically and economically; the sacrifices imposed on children, the isolated and those who missed diagnoses and treatments, were regrettable but had to be done (the ‘precautionary principle’); if we could have saved one more person who died of Covid we should have done; the NHS did a superb job in difficult circumstances. Oh, and COVID-19 vaccines saved us so we should devote more public funds to partnerships with heroic pharmaceutical groups and irreproachable public scientists such as Jeremy Farrar at the WHO.
The inquiry is now hopelessly compromised by the partisan and presumptive words of its own Chair and leading lawyers which are setting us up for a doom-loop of catastrophic errors we cannot afford to repeat. It has become an embarrassment to the legal profession and is jeopardising the reputation of the English legal system. Its exorbitant costs already cannot be justified, and there is only worse to come. It should be abandoned.
CIA-backed spies shot former Ukrainian MP – BBC
Former Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev © Sputnik / Maksim Blinov
RT | October 27, 2023
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was behind the assassination attempt on Oleg Tsarev, the BBC and several Ukrainian outlets reported on Friday citing a source from the agency.
“Tsarev is an absolutely legitimate target. He is not just a fanatic of the ‘Russian world’, but personally came together with Russian tanks to seize Kiev,” the SBU source told the BBC’s Ukrainian service.
Ukrainian outlets Babel, Ukrinform and Ukrayinska Pravda have also reported that the SBU was behind the attack on Tsarev, likewise quoting an anonymous agency official.
Tsarev was attacked on Thursday night at the sanatorium he runs in Yalta, Crimea. He was reportedly shot two times and had lost a lot of blood before being taken to hospital, where he remains in critical condition.
Russian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the attack on Tsarev but have yet to attribute blame.
The 53-year-old former Ukrainian lawmaker had retired from politics and settled in the Russian peninsula several years ago. He had served as a deputy from the now-banned ‘Party of Regions’ in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada from 2002 to 2014. Following the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev, Tsarev endorsed the rebellion in Donetsk and Lugansk and eventually became the speaker of the parliament of ‘Novorossiya’ – as the two Donbass republics dubbed their union at the time.
The BBC’s source in the SBU described Tsarev as “on the list of traitors who must answer for their crimes,” presumably referring to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets (Peacekeeper) database. As a number of prominent journalists and other public figures featured on the website as “enemies of Ukraine” have been murdered over the years, it has been dubbed Kiev’s “kill list.”
The Mirotvorets page for Tsarev has been updated to blame Thursday’s attempt on his life on “Russian security services.” The site has made the same claim about the assassinations of journalist Darya Dugina and blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, which US spies later said were the work of Ukrainian intelligence.
Valentin Nalivaichenko, former head of the SBU, admitted to the existence of a secret assassination unit last month, in an interview with The Economist. The Washington Post published a lengthy feature last week about the CIA support for the SBU, admitting that the US invested “tens of millions” of dollars into the Ukrainian intelligence and its military counterpart GUR, but insisting it had nothing to do with the “dozens of assassinations” that Kiev’s spies have undertaken.
Canadian Lawmakers Want to Punish Online Platforms For Allowing “Misinformation” Spread
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 27, 2023
The Canadian Parliament has become the latest global player in a widening tug-of-war geared towards constraining the tide of “misinformation” seeping into the digital landscape.
The House Ethics Committee in the North American province of Ottawa is calling for the imposing of stringent repercussions on tech giants whom they claim are complicit in disseminating “unverified” or “deceptive” content online.
The Committee’s directives come after an exhaustive ten-month investigation focused primarily on the mounting concern of foreign interference, particularly from powerhouse nations such as China and Russia. It held eight separate public consultation sessions throughout its investigatory period, featuring input from 23 key witnesses.
Vice-chair of the Committee, Bloc Quebecois MP Rene Villemure, emphasized the urgent need for decisive action, mirroring similar controversial legislative combat seen by the European Union, which has imposed significant online regulations to control the spread of digital falsehoods.
“At some point companies will have to understand that they’re actors and they’re not the government,” Villemure said.
“What happens online is basically shaping society, and if we’re not acting in a decisive manner, they will shape society to the bottom.”
Villemure refrains from laying down a specific strategy but looks to the European Union as a potential model. He refers to the European Commission’s recent judicious testing of its new digital laws during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
New ‘antisemitism’ envoy’s record of anti-Palestinian bigotry
Deborah Lyons celebrating Canadians in IDF
By Yves Engler | October 26, 2023
Who is Canada’s new antisemitism envoy?
At a big apartheid lobby convention in Ottawa last week Justin Trudeau’s government announced its new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. Deborah Lyons will replace Irwin Cotler in a position the Liberals created three years ago.
Cotler used the platform and public funds allocated to the envoy to defend Israeli apartheid and said he sought out Lyons to replace him. Apparently, Cotler wanted an anti-Palestinian non-Jew to take over in a position designed to entrench apartheid.
Canada’s Ambassador to Israel from 2016 to 2020, Lyons has an anti-Palestinian track record. In January 2020 Lyons held an event at the embassy in Tel Aviv to celebrate Canadians fighting for Israel. They invited all 78 Canadians in the Israeli military to an event to demonstrate the embassy’s appreciation. Referring to non-Israelis who join the IDF, Lyons told the Jerusalem Post, “Canadian lone soldiers are a particularly special group … This is something we want to do on a yearly basis to show our support.” At the event Lyons’ said, “we both share a love of Canada and a love of Israel. We at the embassy are very proud of what you’re doing.”
Through an access to information request Karen Rodman of Just Peace Advocates received 150 pages of email messages between Lyons and other Canadian officials who organized the pizza party for lone soldiers. The diplomats under Lyons supervision worked on it for months and said their objective was to boost the morale of Canadians in Israel’s occupation force after a lone soldier committed suicide.
It’s outrageous that Canadian diplomats celebrated those humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints in the West Bank, firing on protesters in Gaza and bombing Syria in violation of international law.
That a Canadian ambassador instigated a pizza party for Canadians fighting in another country’s military is outrageous. But it reflects Lyons’ anti-Palestinian tenure.
In an October 2019 story titled “Is Canada’s Ambassador to Israel an Anti-Palestinian Racist?” Dimitri Lascaris reported on 423 tweets and retweets issued by Lyons: “In those tweets: Lyons has disseminated fifteen condemnations of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, but not once has she condemned or expressed a modicum of concern about an attack by Israelis on Palestinians; On only one occasion did Lyons tweet or retweet a comment that was remotely critical of Israel; On September 19, Lyons praised Israel’s former President Shimon Peres — a war criminal — as a ‘great man;’ Lyons tweeted or retweeted 24 tweets by or about CIJA and/or the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC), whose core function is to promote the Israeli government’s agenda in Canada; By contrast, Lyons has tweeted or retweeted only one tweet from a pro-Palestinian organization; that tweet was issued by Jewish Voice for Peace, but it related to a terrorist attack in New Zealand and had nothing to do with Israel’s relentless abuse of Palestinian human rights; and Lyons retweeted a tweet praising Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, a racist ideology. Yet Lyons’ one tweet that was modestly critical of Israel’s government did not relate to the settlements, annexation or Israel’s wanton murder and maiming of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Rather, that tweet was an expression of the Canadian government’s purported ‘regret’ that Israel had unilaterally terminated the mandate of a temporary observer force in the Palestinian city of Hebron, where Israel is brazenly committing the crime of apartheid.”
Based on her record as ambassador to Israel it appears Canada’s new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism is an anti-Palestinian racist.
Intruder Arrested Twice at RFK, Jr’s Home
LA police and judiciary apparently not interested in the presidential candidate’s safety
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | OCTOBER 26, 2023
About ten days ago I wrote about the Los Angeles DA’s office indifference to a heavily armed man, disguised as a U.S. Marshall, who attended an event for presidential candidate RFK, Jr. and—with the authority conveyed by his disguise—demanded a personal meeting with the candidate. In spite of the man’s violation of two state gun laws and one federal law (against impersonating a federal agent), the DA’s office showed no interest in the case, downgraded it to a misdemeanor and referred it the the LA City attorney’s office. The armed man posted $10,000 bail, was released, and the criminal proceedings were suspended when his attorney raised doubts about his mental capacity.
Now comes the news that an intruder was arrested at the Kennedy’s home yesterday not once, but twice. After his initial detainment, he was released from custody and returned to the Kennedy residence, where he was arrested a second time in the same day.
The following is the Kennedy Campaign’s press release about the incident.
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Intruder Arrested Twice Wednesday at RFK, Jr.’s Home
LOS ANGELES, CA—OCT. 26, 2023—On Wednesday an intruder was arrested after climbing a fence at the residence of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Protectors from Gavin de Becker & Associates (GDBA) detected and detained the intruder, who asked to see the candidate. The intruder was turned over to the LAPD.
After being released from police custody, the man immediately returned to Kennedy’s residence and was arrested again. The candidate was home at the time of both arrests.
GDBA had notified the Secret Service about this specific obsessed individual several times in recent months and shared alarming communications he has sent to the candidate.
Over several months, the campaign submitted formal requests for Secret Service protection, yet U.S. Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has refused to approve the protection. Every presidential administration for 55 years has afforded early protection to candidates who requested it. The Biden administration is the sole outlier.
Here is the third formal request sent to Sec. Mayorkas.
For further details on the arrest, reach out to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Learn more at Kennedy24.com. Visit our press page here.
The Gods Are Going Against the Chosen People – Mammon Against Israel, Mars Against the Pentagon
By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | October 27, 2023
The Palestinian strategy against Israel is aimed at destroying Israel’s capacity to survive in its present state in a long war.
This means attacking the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their so-called Iron Dome defence; this began with the cross-border offensive on October 7, and continues with daily drone and artillery attacks on targets inside Israel, as well as resistance to IDF incursions in Gaza.
The plan also means exposing the weakness of the state’s infrastructure and economy; extending the battlefield across all of Israel’s territory – the ports, power plants and electricity grid, communications, and financial markets — making the cost of occupation of the Arab territories unendurable. In a long war, two of Israel’s leading exports earning more than 40% of the state’s trade — diamonds and tourism — face ruin.*
“The Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war,” Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein told his general staff in 1983 during a discussion of planning for a regional war of the Arabs against Israel.** In the forty years since then, the evolution of military technology and tactics has expanded the power of small national liberation armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, of proxy principals like Iran, and of the strategic balancing role of Russia and China. Their combination now has shortened the Zionist state’s endurance in a long war, and that of its proxy principal, the US.
The Israelis and the Jewish diaspora comprehend this reluctantly. For them, the short war must be correspondingly shorter. This means the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement.
The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain. As a Pentagon insider said publicly this week, “because there are so many draws on the logistics and support infrastructure of the Pentagon, we’re not prepared to go in in a concerted way. What we are seeing right now is death by a thousand cuts. Our adversaries know we are stretched so they are going to make us stretch even more, so we can respond even less.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, acknowledged the point in Moscow on Thursday: US naval, air force, and marine reinforcements deployed around Israel and Gaza are “American tactics to strengthen their own security (this is how it should be interpreted) at someone else’s expense.” They are backfiring on Washington’s capacity to defend US forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and in land bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. “On the contrary,” Zakharova added, the US military deployment “will further rock the situation in the Middle East, create additional tension that can spill out beyond the region.”
Zakharova’s warning came in the Moscow afternoon. By then Russian Foreign Ministry officials had held meetings with a Hamas delegation, and officials from Iran, Egypt, and Kuwait. Across the city at the same time, President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Kremlin communiqué reported: “Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions.”
Israeli and US-led media censorship and propaganda are concealing the breadth of impact of the Palestine warfighting plan, and the deepening military and economic weaknesses of the Israeli state.
The longer the war continues, the plainer the evidence is on the battlefield that the single-state scheme of Israel and the US is no longer possible. Whether Israel and the US can be compelled to withdraw to the 1967 borders and a new Palestinian state created with partition, demilitarisation, and international security guarantees – the basis of the Russian position announced again on Thursday in Moscow — remains to be fought over.
In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People.
Following with precision the battlefield action is impossible in the Israeli and Anglo-American press. Reporting of operations, and of Israeli and US casualties, is being suppressed entirely or delayed for days, if not weeks.
According to this NBC television report, broadcast on October 24, there were at least 24 US combat casualties following drone attacks on or about October 18 at the Al-Tanf base in Syria and the Al-Asad base in Iraq. Reporting of naval action in the Red Sea, when the USS Carney reportedly engaged Houthi missiles over several hours, has been changing since the initial news flashes of October 19. Read more here. In a new report of October 24, Israeli and US casualties in a joint raid inside Gaza were revealed: “in the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it. I think that is where we are headed and I don’t see that as a win for Israel in any way, shape, or form. And I certainly think it is very dangerous for us”. In current reporting by Al Mayadeen, daily strikes against US bases in Iraq and northeastern Syria are documented.
Tracking the electric war and infrastructure strikes by Hamas and Hezbollah is also difficult. They commenced with cyber attacks on Israel’s electricity generation plants and power grids; these have been followed by missile and drone strikes. “The ground has been laid for attacks on the Israeli grid,” a US military source claims. “I believe drones will come first, then missiles. We may even see commando raids.”
Israel’s seaports are also under constant attack. Ashkelon, which is closest in range to Gaza, has been closed. Eilat may have been the target of the Houthi missile strike which was engaged last week by the USS Carney. Ashdod, which accounts for about 40% of incoming and outgoing Israeli seaborne trade, and Tel Aviv port have been targeted. The result is a tenfold surge in war risk insurance for vessels and cargoes, and the curtailment of international vessel movement in and out of the Israeli ports; there are reports that shipping is down 30% in Ashdod compared to the pre-war volume. Evergreen, the Taiwanese container shipping company, declared force majeure for Ashdod on October 17, diverted one vessel to Haifa, and halted future shipping into both ports. “We advise evaluating each port visit in Israel on a case by case basis and implementing appropriate precautions in ship contingency plans,” recommends a maritime industry alert bulletin.
Chevron’s offshore Tamar gas field has been shut down. The source produces 70% of the gas required to fuel Israel’s electricity generation needs. Not a single Anglo-American media source has noticed that Israel is at risk of losing its principal energy source to drone or missile attack. “After what the Americans and Germans did to blow up the Nordstream pipelines,” comments a Moscow industry source, “what is holding Hamas back from hitting Tamar, or Hezbollah from the other Israeli gas fields?”
Left: Chevron’s Tamar gas production platform is located at sea 24 kilometres west of Ashkelon. Right: click to enlarge map of Israel’s offshore gas sources.
A Moscow source comments that “in Israel, the US and the UK will be able to bring in supplies without a very big risk of US ships being attacked. The risk is to the ports and bases, not to supplies from the Med[iterranean]. The Greek and Cyprus bases will come in very useful. Israel will not face severe logistical issues as long as it is on the offensive. If its settlements start getting cut off, encircled or penetrated then it is a different matter.”
The indirect economic impacts of the war have also not been calculated or discussed in the mainstream media or international business newspapers. The leading export revenue earners are diamonds at above $9 billion per annum, and tourism which had been peaking at $8.5 billion in 2019. Counted together, diamonds and tourism amount to more than 40% of the state’s export earnings.
The Covid-19 pandemic and worldwide travel restrictions cut Israel’s tourism revenue fourfold, and this had been recovering over 2022 and the tourist season this year. This has now stopped, although for the time being Hamas rocket launches on Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv have been intercepted.
October 12, 2023 — source: https://www.youtube.com/.
ISRAEL TOURISM REVENUE TRAJECTORY, 1999-2022
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/
Israel’s high-tech machine exports and pharmaceuticals may also be affected if electricity supply, internet networks, and transportation are damaged.
The cumulative effect will be the outcome which the international ratings agencies have been warning the international banks and financial markets to prepare for. “In our view,” Fitch reported to clients on October 17, “the combination of Israel’s dynamic, high-value added economy, the record of resilience to regional conflict, [and] preparedness for military confrontations… make it unlikely a relatively short conflict largely confined to Gaza will affect Israel’s rating…. the risk that other actors hostile to Israel, such as Iran and Hezbollah, could join the conflict at scale has risen significantly… a major escalation could result in negative rating action. This could take the form of a wider and longer conflict, resulting in a sustained fiscal drain, both from higher spending and lower tax collection, as well as loss of human and material capital and severe economic disruption.”
How short, and also how long, Israel’s warfighting plan will take depends on American and international acceptance, not only of the genocide intended for the Palestinians of Gaza, but of the Novichok-type chemical warfare planned by the IDF and the Pentagon for the Hamas tunnel system in Gaza City. After several years in which the US and UK have fabricated claims that Syria and Russia were using prohibited gas warfare weapons, the Israelis have reportedly persuaded the US to participate in the tunnel attack operation. The Pentagon is denying the reports.
Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net
Russian and US military sources are already confirming the logistical supply problems facing Israeli and US forces at present, when the war is just three weeks long. Greek sources are reporting the Souda Bay, Crete, base has already reached its capacity for incoming US navy and air force supply and support operations; the spillover is facing growing Greek protest at the Elefsina air base near Athens.
A Cyprus source says the movement of US and British aircraft into and out of the Dekhelia and Akrotiri airbases is accelerating, and there is an air and seaborne shuttle between the Cypriot ports of Larnaca and Limassol and the USS Gerald Ford carrier group at sea to the southwest of the island.
The lengthening of the supply lines required to support the USS Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and the shore bases needed to support it are politically sensitive already; and the risks of Houthi and other attacks, along with domestic Arab crowd protests, will intensify for these bases in the Arab sheikhdoms the longer the war against Israel reveals Arab and Iranian warfighting skill and resistance.
Converting these gains into a negotiating framework for Israeli-American retreat is the task Russian officials are attempting in silent coordination with the Chinese, and in semi-open negotiations in Moscow this week. In its first move outside the region since the war began, Hamas has visited Moscow for negotiations, led by US-educated Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq.
Left: Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq; centre: Husam Badran; right, Ali Bagheri Kyani.
Zakharova confirmed the start of the talks with Hamas on Thursday. She said: “I can also say and confirm that representatives of the relevant Palestinian movement are in Moscow. As for contacts, we will inform you additionally.” She has also disclosed that since the war began, nine thousand Russian passport holders have returned to Russia from Israel; and that at least fifteen Russian passport holders among the Hamas hostages have been killed in the IDF airstrikes.
At the same time as Marzouq’s meetings, Husam Badran issued a statement to the Russian state news medium, Sputnik. “Russia,” Badran said, “is able to play an important role in ending the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and delivering aid to the Palestinian exclave. Hamas values Russia’s role on the international stage, especially use of veto in the UN Security Council against the United States. But Russia can play a greater role in ending the aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip and applying international pressure to deliver urgent aid to our people in the Gaza Strip.”
What Hamas means by “greater role” for Russia has not been disclosed publicly yet. It is known that Hamas is willing to negotiate the release of “non-military” hostages, including Israelis holding Russian passports, through Iran. This is conditional on the IDF lifting its siege on Gaza and allowing sufficient supplies into all parts of the territory.
The “military hostages” are being held in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There are more than 6,000 of the latter; there may be fewer than 200 hostages in Gaza, as up to 50 have been killed by Israeli bombing.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks with Hamas is less revealing. According to the Sputnik release, “Russia has discussed release of hostages and evacuation of Russians from the Gaza Strip during a meeting with a delegation of Hamas in Moscow on Thursday.” A member of the political office of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, Abu Marzouq, is in Moscow. Contacts took place with him in continuation of the Russian line for the immediate release of foreign hostages located in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were also discussed.”
At the same time on Thursday – unnoticed and unreported by the western media – Russian officials held several negotiating sessions with an Iranian emissary, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kyani. In three separate Foreign Ministry releases, meeting communiqués were issued for Kyani’s meetings with deputy ministers Mikhail Bogdanov, Sergei Ryabkov, and Mikhail Galuzin. “The need for the cessation of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip and the prompt provision of humanitarian assistance to the affected Palestinian population was confirmed,” Bogdanov’s communiqué said. “It was stated that Moscow and Tehran are determined to continue close coordination of efforts in the interests of stabilizing the situation in the Middle East.”
It is unclear if the talks also included the Hamas officials in a three-party format. During the day there were also Foreign Ministry negotiations in Moscow with Kuwaiti and Egyptian officials.
At the Kremlin it has been announced that President Putin spoke with Turkish President Erdogan to discuss the war. According to the Kremlin release, “the presidents reviewed the active efforts undertaken by Russia at the UN Security Council, as well as the corresponding political and diplomatic steps taken by Turkiye to stop the bloodshed and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need. It was emphasised that Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions, focused on implementing the well-known two-state solution, which provides for the creation of an independent Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security.”
In her briefing for the press, Zakharova dismissed the US moves so far. “We do not consider the US presence in the Middle East as contributing to the stability of the situation in the region. Exactly the opposite. Washington’s earlier attempts to monopolise the Middle East settlement process, ignoring the true causes of the protracted conflict, have largely led to the current catastrophic consequences… This situation has an absolutely clear and understandable road, a ‘road map’ for settlement. It is not simple, but complex, painful, but leading to the solution of the issue, not its aggravation.”
“Of course, no air defence systems, arms supplies, materiel injections into some ‘security complexes’ will help resolve this situation. Today’s lesson must be learned. How many Americans have deployed there (their bases, experts, satellites), nothing has worked to prevent a bloody scenario, of which both Palestinians and Israelis are victims.”
[*] With support from Israel and influential Jewish diamantaires in New York and Tel Aviv, a scheme of sanctions is being prepared by the US Government to stop Russian raw diamonds, produced by Alrosa, from being sold into the Belgian, Israeli, and US markets. The Russian goods are to be tagged “blood diamonds” because of the war in the Ukraine. However, now that Israel is destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza, the “blood” tag can be applied to the Israeli diamond cutting industry and to the Jewish diamond trade abroad. Support for the anti-Russian sanction, and also for the IDF operations against the Palestinians can be found in Rapaport.com news reports. “Rapaport stands with Israel”, the publication and its owner Martin Rapaport declared on October 26, “and has undertaken all the necessary effort and costs for the October Single Stone Auction to help the Israeli market continue to conduct business as best as possible during this difficult time. Rapaport believes that continuing to do business in Israel during the war is a victory over the brutal Hamas terrorists, and will help Israel win the war.” In another editorial for the diamond trade, Rapaport proposes “to boycott Iran and all other supporters of the Hamas terrorist organization.” Rapaport also cites religious authority for liquidation. “In the words of G-d (Exodus 17:14): ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’May the words of G-d be done, here and now.” Quietly, Russia’s state diamond interests dictate a strategy for protecting against this double-edged Israeli policy.
[**] Saddam Hussein is quoted in the chapter on US plots against him in Iraq – see The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab Revolt, Ch. 6.
Why are the Israelis massacring civilians in Gaza? Because they can get away with it
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | October 23, 2023
Israeli forces terror-bombed Beirut throughout the summer of 1982. In the West in English there is exactly one book about it: God Cried by Catherine Leroy and Tony Clifton. The Lebanese have almost no memorial and certainly no museum devoted to the bombing of hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, just like now, in Gaza. The Israeli government is well aware of this forgetfulness and they calculate their atrocities and war crimes accordingly.
If the Palestinians were bombing Tel Aviv to the extent the Israelis have bombed Gaza (5,000 deaths thus far), in the aftermath there would be books, movies, diaries, poems, plays, museums, and annual, solemn commemorations throughout the West.
Gaza was heavily bombed in 2009 and 2014. The Arab and Muslim world do not engage in the same level of memory and commemoration, other than personal recollection. There are a few exceptions, but they are comparatively minuscule.
Furthermore, if, as in Gaza, day-in and day-out Tel Aviv’s civilian centers were being blown to bits, and its food, fuel and even its water (!) were shut down, the International Court in The Hague and the European Union would be charging the Palestinian leadership responsible, with war crimes. The US would be heavily sanctioning those leaders and humanitarian supplies would be dropped by parachute if necessary to sustain the Israeli civilians.
Instead, the Court and the EU are frozen in mute assent to crimes against Arab children committed as I write these words, by the Israelis who suffered a holocaust in Europe and have been granted by Europe and Britain a license to perpetrate atrocities in Palestine. Hamas terrorists copied this perverse victims-have-the-right-to-be executioners “logic” on Oct. 7.
As for the casual, business-as-usual aspect of the atrocities against Palestinian civilians, it is rooted in the Zionist weaponization of the Talmudic halacha which few in the West, on the Left or the Right, care to learn about – http://talmudical.blogspot.com – and without which they will have no key to comprehending the depth of contempt for Palestinian life.
There are hundreds of books in English harshly critiquing the Quran. Meanwhile this writer’s two banned books [Judaism Discovered and Judaism’s Strange Gods] containing a sustained critique of Talmudism, which in English are among the only credible and charitable texts compassionately documenting Talmudic hate speech, which causes real world harm to Palestinian children, women, elderly and non-combatant men, in the form of their relentless mass murder.
The hate speech is real: on Oct. 9 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to the Palestinian people as “human animals.”
Israeli Prime Minister Meachem Begin termed them “two-legged animals.”
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan called the Palestinians: “cockroaches in a bottle.”
The Allied incineration by more than 800 bombers leveled the German city and burned alive tens of thousands of civilians.
The murder of civilians, including by Hamas, is always wrong. Murder is murder. Dressing it up with alibis and platitudes does not make the heinous war crimes any less criminal.
Wounded Palestinian child and man receiving medical treatment at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli bombing, Oct. 11, 2023
How can the daily Israeli massacre of kids and their mothers be parsed, justified or mitigated? It is right, but abortion is wrong? The bipolar nature of such thinking is depraved.
(Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism are no less innocent. They are extensively mourned in the West however, and rightly so; that’s not the case for the Palestinian civilian dead, not in any sustained memorial).
How can the Israeli mass murder of kids and their mothers be justified? I will answer my own question:
The record shows that bombing civilians in cities is the default method of Allied warfare: Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden, Hamburg, Hanoi, Baghdad.
As noted previously, Israelis terror-bombed Beirut throughout the summer of 1982 and Gaza in 2009 and 2014. These war crimes are justified by media ghouls in America, ensuring more of the same, as in Gaza now.
The bombing of Afghan villages and weddings contributed to the defeat of US forces, after the people became fed-up with the transparently lame excuses for the massacres by the likes of David Petraeus, who is now being touted by the media ghouls as a master of statecraft and generalship.
President Biden’s last act in Afghanistan was to approve a missile attack on an SUV that was transporting a large family. Seven children and three adults were incinerated; that’s how the US will be remembered in that nation.
Adolf Hitler was responsible for the brutal, mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Judaic people from Germany. For the past 20 years conservative wunderkind Ben Shapiro has advocated the forced extrusion (“transfer”) of the Palestinian people from Palestine. In his own words: “Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.”
Each of us must bear witness and do what we can to document, teach and remember.
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
On the Palestine issue, Amy Goodwin’s podcast today, Oct. 23, is recommended. It can be accessed here at her Democracy Now! website.
A righteous Jew and an extraordinary human being, the brilliant Israeli journalist Amira Hass, is interviewed in two parts.
Take the time to listen to Amira:
If you’re in haste, at least listen to the interview in part two.
All of these broadcasts should be saved and conserved by citizen-journalists (like you), for posterity, and compiled into a permanent data base. I propose the following title for the proposed repository: Witness of War Crimes in Gaza.
History Lesson: Leftist Daniel Denvir conducts a “Palestine Teach-In“ on his podcast, which is accessible at The Dig website: the first hour contains a generally excellent history of the rise of Zionism in Palestine. Too many people don’t know how it all started. The historical context has been missing. Caveat : Mr. Denvir’s guests are mostly of the Left and their analysis of Britain’s role in the ascendance of Zionism in Palestine is limited to a perspective of British colonialism as the root cause. The influence of Freemasonry on the British government, and the masonic objective of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, is missing from their analysis. However, don’t let that omission keep you from accessing the history offered.
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press and the author of ten books of history and literature, including Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017) , Twilight Language (2021), as well as a textbook (Judaism Discovered), and five other books published in the United States, as well as overseas in Japanese and French translation; and 122 issues of Revisionist History® newsletter, 1997-2022. His truth mission is made possible by donations, paid Substack subscriptions, and the sale of his books, newsletters and recordings. Podcast: here. X (Twitter): here. Rumble here.
October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles
BY MAX BLUMENTHAL · THE GRAYZONE · OCTOBER 27, 2023
Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire?
Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.
These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives.
An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.
As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described “very, very heavy crossfire” and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis.
While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.”
She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.”
According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled. “Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.”
Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.
Video filmed by uniformed Hamas gunmen makes it clear they intentionally shot many Israelis with Kalashnikov rifles on October 7. However, the Israeli government has not been content to rely on verified video evidence. Instead, it continues to push discredited claims of “beheaded babies” while distributing photographs of “bodies burned beyond recognition” to insist that militants sadistically immolated their captives, and even raped some before torching them alive.
The objective behind Tel Aviv’s atrocity exhibition is clear: to paint Hamas as “worse than ISIS” while cultivating support for the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has left over 7000 dead, including at least 2500 children at the time of publication. While hundreds of wounded children in Gaza have been treated for what a surgeon described as “fourth degree burns” caused by novel weapons, the Western media’s focus remains trained on Israeli citizens supposedly “burned alive” on October 7.
Yet the mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.
Indeed, it appears that on October 7, Israel’s military resorted to the same tactics it has employed against civilians in Gaza, driving up the death toll of its own citizens with the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons.
Israel bombs its own base, nerve center of the Gaza siege
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood at 6 AM on October 7, quickly overwhelming the military bases from which Israel maintains its siege of the Gaza Strip. Chief among the objectives outlined by Hamas and PIJ was the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including as many as 700 children and 1117 Palestinians held without charges.
The 2011 swap for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured five years prior and released in exchange for 1027 prisoners, provided clear inspiration for Al-Aqsa Flood. By storming military bases and kibbutzes, the Palestinian militants aimed to capture as many Israeli soldiers and civilians as possible, and bring them back to Gaza alive.
The lighting assault immediately overwhelmed Israel’s Gaza Division. Video recorded from GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets of Palestinian fighters shows Israeli soldiers cut down in rapid succession, many still dressed in underwear and caught off guard. At least 340 active soldiers and intelligence officers were killed on October 7, accounting for close to 50% of confirmed Israeli deaths. The casualties included high ranking officers like Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of Israel’s Nahal Brigade. (Many first responders and armed Israeli civilians were also killed).
The Erez Crossing is the home of a massive military and Coordination of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) facility which functions as the nerve center of Israel’s siege on Gaza. When it was overrun by Palestinian fighters on October 7 with droves of army bureaucrats inside, the Israeli military flew into a panic.
According to Haaretz, the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, “entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the [Erez Crossing] base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”
Video released by Israel’s COGAT ten days after the battle – and the Israeli airstrike – shows severe structural damage to the roof of the Erez Crossing facility.
Israeli Apache helicopters attack inside Israel: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at”
By 10:30 AM, according to an account the military gave to the Israeli news outlet Mako, “most of the [Palestinian] forces from the original invasion wave had already left the area for Gaza.” But with the rapid collapse of the Israeli military’s Gaza Division, looters, common onlookers and low-level guerrillas not necessarily under the command of Hamas flowed freely into Israel.
By this point, Israel’s two Apache helicopter squadrons had 8 choppers in the air, “and there was almost no intelligence to help make fateful decisions,” Mako reported. The squadrons did not reach full strength until noon.
As the wave of infiltrations from Gaza drove chaos on the ground, discombobulated Israeli pilots unleashed a frenzy of missile and machine gun salvos: “The Apache pilots testify that they fired a huge amount of munitions, emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again. But it didn’t help and they understand it,” Mako reported.
The Apache helicopters appear to have focused on vehicles streaming back into Gaza from the Nova electronic music festival and nearby kibbutzes, attacked cars with apparent knowledge that Israeli captives could be inside. They also fired on unarmed people exiting cars or walking on foot through the fields on the periphery of Gaza.
In an interview with Israel’s Mako news outlet, one Apache pilot reflected on the tortuous dilemma of whether to shoot at people and cars returning to Gaza. He knew that many of those vehicles may have contained Israeli captives. But he chose to open fire anyway. “I choose targets like that,” the pilot reflected, “where I tell myself that the chance that I am shooting here on hostages as well is low.” However, he admitted that his judgment “was not 100%.”
“I understand that we have to shoot here and quickly,” the commander of the Apache unit, Lt. Col. E., told Mako in a separate report. “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.”
Lt. Col. A., a reserve pilot in the same unit, described a fog of confusion: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them.”
A report on the Apache squadrons by the Israeli outlet Yedioth Aharanoth noted that “the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”
A squadron commander explained to Mako how he nearly attacked the home of an Israeli family occupied by Hamas militants, and wound up firing next to it with cannon rounds. “Our forces hadn’t had time to reach this settlement yet,” the pilot recalled, “and I’ve already run out of missiles there, which is the more accurate weaponry.”
With the family inside a fortified bomb shelter, the pilot “decided to shoot a cannon 30 meters from this house, a very difficult decision. I shoot so that if they are currently there, they will hear the bombs inside the house, that they understand that it is known they are there, and with the hope that they will leave that house. I am also telling you the truth, it crossed my mind that I was shooting at the house.”
Ultimately, the Israeli helicopter pilots blamed clever Hamas tactics for their inability to distinguish between the armed militants and Israeli non-combatants. “The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs,” Yedioth Aharanoth claimed.
According to the Israeli paper, “it became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis. This deception worked for a considerable time , until the Apache pilots realized that they had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.”
And so, without any intelligence or ability to distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli, the pilots let loose a fury of cannon and missile fire onto Israeli areas below.
One of many homes in Kibbutz Be’eri which appears to have been shelled with heavy weapons
Israel’s military “eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” firing tank shells into kibbutz homes
Photos of the aftermath of the fighting inside kibbutzes like Be’eri – and of the Israeli bombardment of these communities – show rubble and charred homes that resemble the aftermath of Israeli tank and artillery attacks inside Gaza. As Tuval Escapa, the security coordinator at Kibbutz Be’eri, told Haaretz, Israeli army commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
Yasmin Porat, an attendee of the Nova music festival who fled into Kibbutz Be’eri, told Israeli Radio that when Israeli special forces arrived during a hostage standoff, “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”
“After insane crossfire,” Porat continued, “two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big.”
Destroyed homes in Kibbutz Be’eri following the fighting on October 7, which included Israeli tank shelling of residences
A video posted by the Telegram account of Israel’s South Responders shows the bodies of Israelis discovered below the rubble of a home destroyed by a powerful explosive blast – likely a tank shell. The right-wing New York Post ran a report on a similar incident about a boy’s body found scorched beneath the ruins of his home in Be’eri.
The phenomenon of charred corpses whose hands and ankles had been tied, and who were found in groups beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, also raises questions about “friendly” tank fire.
Yasmin Porat, the hostage who survived a standoff at Be’eri, described how Hamas militants tied her partner’s hands behind his back. After one militant commander surrendered, using her as a human shield to ensure his safety, she saw her partner lying on the ground, still alive. She stated that Israeli security forces “undoubtedly” killed him and the other hostages as they opened fire on the remaining militants inside, including with tank shells.
Israeli security forces also opened fire on fleeing Israelis whom they mistook for Hamas gunmen. A resident of Ashkelon named Danielle Rachiel described nearly being killed after escaping from the Nova music festival when it was attacked by militants from Gaza. “As we reached the roundabout [at a kibbutz], we saw Israeli security forces!” Rachiel recalled. “We held our heads down [because] we automatically knew they’d be suspicious of us, in a small beat-up car… from the same direction the terrorists were coming from. Our forces began shooting at us!”
“When our forces fired at us, our windows shattered,” she continued. It was only when they shouted in Hebrew, “We’re Israelis!” that the shooting stopped, and they were taken to safety.
From Danielle Rachiel’s video testimony on October 7
Among the most gruesome videos of the aftermath of October 7, also published on the Telegram account of South Responders, shows a car full of charred corpses (below) at the entrance of Kibbutz Be’eri. The Israeli government has portrayed these casualties as Israeli victims of sadistic Hamas violence. However, the melted steel body and collapsed roof of the car, and the comprehensively scorched corpses inside, evidence a direct hit from a Hellfire missile.
It is also possible that the male occupants of the car were Hamas activists who had streamed in after the fences were breached. They may have also been returning to Gaza with Israeli captives inside their car.
Did Israel’s now-disappeared “Hamas atrocity” photos depict dead Hamas fighters?
During an angry tirade on October 26 at the United Nations, Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan whipped out a paper displaying a QR code beside the caption, “Scan to see Hamas’ atrocities.”
When I scanned the code that day at noon, I found around 8 grisly images of burned bodies and blackened body parts. One showed a pile of completely charred male corpses piled into a dumpster. Would Israeli rescuers and medics have disposed of dead Jewish Israelis in such a fashion?
All Israelis killed on October 7 appear to have been collected in individual body bags and transported to morgues. Meanwhile, numerous videos recorded by Israelis showed them defiling the corpses of Hamas gunmen killed by security forces – stripping them naked, urinating on them, and mutilating their bodies. Throwing their bodies in a dumpster would seem to be a part of the de facto policy of corpse abuse.
Just over twelve hours after Ambassador Erdan promoted the supposed Hamas atrocity photos at the UN, the Google Drive file contained only one brief video. Among the mysteriously disappeared photos was the image of the dumpster filled with burned bodies. Had it been deleted because it showed Hamas fighters torched by a Hellfire missile, and not Israelis “burned to death” by Hamas?
Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan at the UN, October 26. The QR code he displayed currently leads to a 404 notice.
Destruction reminiscent of Israeli attacks on Gaza
Some rescuers who arrived at sites of carnage in southern Israel after October 7 said they had never seen such destruction. For those who have borne witness to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, however, the images of bombed-out homes and burned cars should have been familiar.
While reporting on Israel’s 51 day-long assault on Gaza in 2014, I came across a destroyed vehicle in central Gaza City belonging to a young taxi driver named Fadel Alawan who had been assassinated by an Israeli drone after he unwittingly dropped a wounded Hamas fighter off at a nearby hospital. Inside the car, the remains of Alawan’s sandal could still be seen melted into the gas pedal.
By the afternoon of October 7, placid settlements and desert roads across southern Israel were charred and lined with bombed-out cars that looked much like Alawan’s. Were the lightly-armed Hamas fighters actually capable of exacting destruction on such a comprehensive scale?
Is the Israeli government distributing photos of friendly fire casualties?
This October 23, Israel’s government gathered members of the international press for an off-the-record propaganda session. Inside a closed military base, officials bombarded the press with snuff films and a collection of lurid allegations of “harrowing scenes of murder, torture and decapitation from Hamas’s October 7 onslaught,” according to the Times of Israel.
In perhaps the most unsettling document presented by the Israeli government, reporters were treated to video showing “a partially burned woman’s corpse, with a mutilated head… The dead woman’s dress is pulled up to her waist and her underpants have been removed,” according to the Times of Israel.
Daniel Amram, the most popular private news blogger in Israel, tweeted the video of the woman’s burned corpse, claiming that “she was raped and burned alive.”
In fact, the young woman appeared to have been killed instantly by a powerful blast. And she seemed to have been removed from the car in which she was seated – and which may have belonged to a captor from Gaza. The vehicle was comprehensively destroyed and situated on a dirt field, as many others attacked by Apache helicopters were. She was scantily clad with her legs spread apart.
Though she had attended the Nova electronic music festival, where many female attendees dressed in skimpy attire, and her parted limbs were typical of bodies with rigor mortis, Israeli pundits and officials ran with the claim she had been raped.
But the allegations of sexual assault have so far proven baseless. Israeli army spokesman Mickey Edelstein insisted to reporters at the October 23 press briefing that “we have evidence” of rape, but when asked for proof, he told the Times of Israel, “we cannot share it.”
Was this young woman yet another casualty of the Israeli military’s friendly fire orders? Only an independent investigation can determine the truth.
Israel’s military kills Israeli captives inside Gaza, grumbles about their release
Inside Gaza, where some 200 Israeli citizens are held hostage, there is little doubt about who is killing the captives. On October 26, the Hamas armed wing known as the Al-Qassam Brigades announced that Israel had killed “almost 50 captives” in missile strikes.
If Israel’s military had intentionally targeted areas where it knew the captives were held, its actions would have been consistent with Israel’s Hannibal Directive. The military procedure was established in 1986 following the Jibril Agreement, a deal in which Israel traded 1150 Palestinian prisoners for three Israeli soldiers. Following heavy political backlash, the Israeli military drafted a secret field order to prevent future kidnappings. The proposed operation drew its name from the Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than be held captive by the enemy.
The last confirmed application of the Hannibal Directive took place on August 1, 2014 in Rafah, Gaza, when Hamas fighters captured an Israeli officer, Col. Hadar Goldin, prompting the military to unleash more than 2000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area, killing the soldier along with over 100 Palestinian civilians.
Whether or not Israel is intentionally killing its captive citizens in Gaza, it has proven strangely allergic to their immediate release. On October 22, after refusing an offer from Hamas to release 50 hostages in exchange for fuel, Israel rejected an offer from Hamas to free Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old Israeli peace activist, and her 79-year-old friend, Nurit Cooper.
When Israel agreed to their release a day later, video showed Liftshitz clasping hands with a Hamas militant and intoning “Shalom” to him as he escorted her out of Gaza. During a press conference that day, she recounted the humane treatment she received from her captors.
The spectacle of Lifshitz’s release was treated as a propaganda disaster by the Israeli government’s spinmeisters, with officials grumbling that allowing her to speak publicly was a grave “mistake.”
The Israeli military was no less displeased by her sudden freedom. As the Times of Israel reported, “The army is concerned that further hostage releases by Hamas could lead the political leadership to delay a ground incursion or even halt it midway.”
Israeli troops launch new ‘limited incursion’ into Gaza
The Cradle | October 27, 2023
Israeli forces launched another limited ground incursion into the Gaza Strip overnight on Thursday, the second in a row following an incursion the night before.
The small-scale incursions carried out so far are meant to test the waters for the upcoming ground invasion Israel has announced.
“The IDF conducted strikes on Hamas terrorist targets over the last 24 hours. IDF ground troops, fighter jets, and UAVs struck: Anti-tank missile launch sites, Command and control centers, Hamas terrorist operatives,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
“The troops exited the area and no injuries were reported,” it added.
Israeli troops also carried out a limited incursion into Gaza the night before, on 25 October.
The incursion aimed to help prepare forces for the “next stages” of the war and the anticipated large-scale offensive on the besieged enclave.
“IDF tanks and infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure, and anti-tank missile launch posts. The soldiers have since exited the area and returned to Israeli territory,” a military statement said on 26 October.
A previous Israeli attempt to enter the strip last weekend was met with fierce resistance by Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades.
Israeli troops crossed the border fence by several meters for a preparatory incursion into the Gaza Strip. The Al-Qassam Brigades ambushed the troops, destroying two army bulldozers and a tank, leaving several soldiers seriously wounded, and forcing them to withdraw.
Retired US Army colonel Douglas Macgregor said this week that US special forces went into Gaza with the Israeli army to “reconnoiter” and plan for the release of prisoners.
“They were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand,” Macgregor added.
Israel announced plans to launch a full ground invasion of the Gaza Strip following the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October.
The stated goal is to “eradicate” Hamas. Israel says it intends to find and destroy the group’s extensive network of tunnels and wipe out its infrastructure while its army attacks from the air and sea.
However, Tel Aviv has continued to delay the operation, coinciding with reports that Washington is unconvinced of Israel’s readiness for a ground invasion. Nonetheless, US special forces have been advising and coordinating with the Israeli army to prepare.
“The military leadership has already finalized an invasion plan, but [Benjamin] Netanyahu has angered senior officers by refusing to sign off on it — in part because he wants unanimous approval from members of the war cabinet he formed after the Oct. 7 attack,” the New York Times (NYT) reported on 26 October, citing two anonymous sources who have been present at Israeli cabinet meetings.
“Analysts believe that Mr. Netanyahu is wary about unilaterally giving the go-ahead because, with public confidence in his leadership already decreasing, he fears being blamed if the operation fails,” NYT added.
According to a recent poll, a majority of Israelis believe that Netanyahu must bear the responsibility for the massive security and intelligence failure which led the success of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Israel announced on 25 October that it is waiting for further equipment deliveries from the US, but continues to maintain that the full ground invasion is imminent.
Analysts have said Israel’s goal of “eradicating” Hamas is overambitious.
According to The Cradle’s Hasan Illaik, such an operation will drag Israel into a massive multi-front war which it would not be able to bear the cost of.
Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades have heavily prepared themselves to face Israel on the ground.
Egyptians injured in bombing of ambulance facility in Taba
Al-Manar | October 27, 2023
Taba, Egypt, was hit by a rocket on Thursday night, injuring six individuals and leaving the source of the attack unknown.
The incident is said to have caused damage to a building serving as an ambulance facility and the administration block for the Taba hospital.
Images have emerged online, showing the extent of the carnage caused by the missile, including burnt-out vehicles and damaged buildings.
The origin of the rocket remains a mystery, and an investigation is currently underway to determine its source. A high-ranking source was quoted as saying, “once the source of the rocket in the Taba incident is identified, all options are available to deal with it.”
The attack comes just days after the Israeli occupation forces fired on an Egyptian army post, causing minor injuries to several Egyptian border guards. While ‘Israel’ expressed regret over the incident, tensions in the region are high, with Egypt reserving the right to respond to the attack at any future time.
As it stands, there have been no official statements from any known group claiming responsibility for the attack. It is also worth noting that no alert systems were activated in ‘Israel, no rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip was detected, and no alert of a missile launch from Yemen was reported.
The situation remains fluid, and more details are expected to emerge as the investigation into the attack continues.
Iran, Russia, Hamas officials discuss Gaza-Israel war in Moscow
The Cradle | October 27, 2023
Authorities from Iran, Russia, and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas met on 27 October at the Iranian Embassy in Moscow to discuss the Gaza-Israel war.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani was invited by his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Bogdanov, to discuss a potential ceasefire between Palestine and Israel with Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official.
“Inviting the movement’s leadership to visit Moscow is a message to the whole world that Russia considers Hamas a national liberation movement and not a terrorist movement,” Abu Marzouk told Russian media on Friday, noting that President Vladimir Putin “graciously did justice to the Hamas movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people and protected it politically in the Security Council and the UN.”
During Thursday’s meeting, Kani solidified Tehran’s “undoubtable” support for Palestine. “Tehran’s priorities in talks with foreign sides are declaring an immediate ceasefire, providing aid to people, and lifting the repressive blockade of Gaza,” the Iranian Embassy in Moscow quoted the Iranian official.
Iranian and Russian diplomats held separate talks and discussed the need for a ceasefire in the war between Palestine and Israel and the urgency of delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.
A member of Hamas’ political bureau revealed to Sputnik that the Hamas delegation discussed the region’s future and how this differs from the US narrative.
Israeli authorities were not pleased with the meeting held in Moscow, saying that this was a show of Russia’s support for Hamas.
“Israel condemns the invitation of senior Hamas officials to Moscow, which is an act of support of terrorism and legitimizes the atrocities of Hamas terrorists,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said on social media. “We call on the Russian government to expel the Hamas terrorists immediately.”
Russia has actively monitored the situation between Palestine and Israel, putting forward multiple draft resolutions in the UN Security Council to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the US and its allies have struck down these resolutions.
Israel reportedly planning to use banned chemical weapons in Gaza
By Lucas Leiroz | October 27, 2023
There seems to be no ethical limits to the IDF’s anti-humanitarian practices against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. According to local sources, the Israeli military is planning a chemical attack against Hamas’ underground tunnels. In addition to being illegal, the practice seems anti-strategic because with this maneuver the IDF could also kill Israeli citizens kept as prisoners of war by Hamas in the bunkers.
Rumors began to spread by local Palestinian correspondents, citing intelligence sources. According to the report, Israeli and American forces were working together to flood the bunkers with chemical weapons, mainly nerve gases. The objective would be to cause severe symptoms in Palestinian soldiers, facilitating an IDF invasion.
“The plan hinges on the element of surprise so as to decisively win the battle, using internationally forbidden gases, particularly nerve gas, and chemical weapons. Large quantities of nerve gas would be pumped into the tunnels (…) Inhaled or absorbed through the skin, most nerve gases can kill in anywhere between one to 10 minutes by crippling the respiratory centre of the central nervous system and paralysing the muscles around the lungs”, source said.
The sources also claim that Israel is postponing its incursion into the field to try to provoke an element of surprise when the invasion finally takes place. The objective is to deceive the enemy, in accordance with the elementary principles of military science, inducing the Palestinians to believe that the invasion will not occur at any time. So, when it happens, it will be something unexpected and capable of causing severe damage to the enemy.
Obviously, Israel and the US deny the accusations and claim that they are nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors. However, no solid argument is given to actually deny the “rumors”. On the contrary, Israeli military even used racist rhetoric to delegitimize the reports, stating that believing in an Arab official would be a sign of “ignorance.”
“It is utmost ignorance and naivety to rely on a chatter by some Arab official with regard to this matter and to take it seriously (…) Usually there should be logic [behind any military action]. What’s the point of releasing gas into these underground tunnels?”, Yaakov Kedmi, an Israeli military expert said. In the same sense, Sabrina Singh, a spokesperson for the US Department of Defense commented on the case stating: “This is not true and this reporting is inaccurate.”
However, it is important to emphasize that this is not the first time that journalistic reports citing sources familiar with Israeli military have suggested that Israel will use anti-humanitarian methods to attack Hamas’ tunnels. For example, a few days ago, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated that occupation forces plan to use seawater to flood bunkers in order to kill Hamas members. In this type of operation, as well as in the use of gas, there would be many risks to hostages and prisoners of war, but, according to Hersh and his sources, Israel’s only real objective is to kill Hamas soldiers, with little concern for hostages.
“A well-informed American official told me that the Israeli leadership is known to be considering flooding Hamas’s vast tunnel system before sending in its troops, many of whom have had only a few weeks of training in the maneuvers and coordination required for the invasion (…) Where the estimated 200-plus hostages are is an open question. Israel is only talking about the end of the Hamas regime”, Hersh said.
In fact, these rumors and reports suggest that something serious is probably actually being planned by the IDF. There does not yet appear to be a consensus among Israeli officials on what techniques should be used against Hamas, but they are evidently thinking about different strategies to overcome the challenge of confronting Hamas’ complex system of tunnels. Israel wants to prevent Gaza from becoming its “Vietnam” but cannot find an efficient combat strategy to achieve this goal.
It is necessary to remember that Israel has been spreading accusations against Hamas recently, alleging that the Palestinian organization plans to use chemical weapons. It is unlikely that Hamas has this type of weapon, as the group’s capabilities do not allow for the manufacture of sophisticated equipment. Furthermore, the only country that publicly has stocks of chemical weapons is precisely the US, which is Israel’s biggest ally. It is possible then that Tel Aviv will use these illegal weapons in Gaza, not only to launch them in the tunnels, but also to carry out a false flag operation against Hamas and legitimize further escalations.
The only thing that seems clear so far is that the Zionist government remains convinced in its objective of carrying out a process of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and actual massacre in Gaza. The possible use of chemical weapons will only worsen the international image of the Israeli regime, as this type of equipment is banned by international law.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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Noam Chomsky and Zionism
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – 7th part of the series “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 30, 2016
Understanding of the nature of the lies and crimes of 9/11 has moved quite far in the decade between the publication of Barrie Zwicker’s Towers of Deception in 2006 and Kevin Barrett’s 2016 presentation at the Left Forum. Where Zwicker emphasized Chomsky’s connection to the US deep state, Kevin Barrett views Chomsky as a Zionist with deep attachments to Israel where he lived and worked on a kibbutz in the early 1950s. … continue
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