Gaza Testimonies; Destruction in Al-Maghazi Camp
Al-Haq | January 22, 2024
“The entire Al-Maghazi Camp is destroyed. No homes are left, no column left. The corpses are thrown around on the ground in front of us.”
The home of the largest steel industry in Europe, Germany is facing a continuous crisis over sky-high electricity prices
By John Cody | Remix News | January 24, 2024
Steel production in Germany is cratering, reaching a low point last seen during the 2008 global economic crisis. Steel production dropped to 35.4 million tons in 2022, a decrease of 3.9 percent from 2021.
The hardest hit segment of steelworks was the electrical steel industry, which saw its production sink by almost 9 percent to 9.8 million tons, a figure even lower than the 2009 low. Overall, all segments of the steelworks industry in Germany saw declines.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, there has seen a continuous downward trend in the German steel sector, in large part due to soaring electricity prices.
Kerstin Maria Rippel, managing director of the German Steel Federation, cited “weak demand” and “intentionally uncompetitive” electricity prices as being factors behind the crisis.
“The annual balance of steel production in Germany clearly shows that the situation for the steel industry (…) is very serious,” she added.
In what appears to be a shot at the ruling left-liberal government, Rippel says that her association notes an “urgent need for political action” regarding transmission grid fees, which have doubled since the beginning of 2023.
She is calling for state subsidies from the “Climate Transformation Fund” to help the sector finance a turnaround.
“We need a clear political concept on how the path to climate neutrality is to be sustainably financed,” said Rippel.
Soaring energy and material costs have hit German industry particularly hard, and the role of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in pushing for the phasing out of nuclear power — a move also supported by the Greens — has also played a role.
The Alternative for Germany party has pointed to the current left-liberal government, along with the previous CDU-led government, as being behind the long-term decline in Germany’s industrial sectors. However, the situation has grown especially dire under Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Only on Monday, the pharmaceutical and chemical giant Bayer announced a ‘significant workforce reduction’ by the end of 2025. The tire manufacturer Continental is terminating the 40-hour contracts of thousands of employees, and the gear factory Friedrichshafen (ZF) apparently wants to cut 12,000 jobs. However, the traffic light government doesn’t care about any of this,” wrote the AfD in a statement.
The AfD says it will reverse the green “energy transition” and repair the Nord Stream pipelines in order to return cheap Russian energy to German industry. The party also promises to reduce the tax burden and bureaucracy to jumpstart the German economy.
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 23.01.2024
Germany must take into account the possibility of a military conflict with Russia and prepare for it over the next three-five years, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told ZDF on January 22.
He insisted that the German Bundeswehr armed forces should become “a credible deterrent,” and that a German combat brigade would be deployed in the Baltics to become “fully combat-ready” by 2027.
In December, Pistorius signed an agreement for the permanent deployment of a Bundeswehr brigade to Lithuania and announced that the reintroduction of compulsory military service in Germany is now on the table.
Does Russia really present an imminent threat to German national security?
“If you ask me, and if you ask most people in my party, the answer is unequivocally no,” Gunnar Beck, Member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who is currently Vice-President of the Identity & Democracy Group in the Parliament, told Sputnik. “Ever since 1990, at the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian government has gone out of its way to intensify economic relations between Russia and Germany. We had extremely favorable energy contracts with Russia. And Russia was a growing export market for our agricultural and industrial goods. It’s due to our government’s policy, vis-a-vis Ukraine conflict that relations with Russia are now almost at an all time low. So, on the one hand, I think, German policy and EU policy has been a provocation. Nonetheless, I think that the Russian reaction to the sanctions in particular has been tough, but at the same time measured. So in my view, Russia is no immediate security threat to Germany. Categorically not.”
Germany Cannot Afford Rearmament
Not only is Germany’s justification for rearmament in question but also the nation’s ability to afford it, according to Beck. German industry is in a dire state as a result of the government’s policies, he stressed.
“Germany currently finds itself in what is probably the most serious economic crisis since the Second World War,” Beck said. “The government’s policies (…) are affecting all leading branches of German industry, which is suffering from high inflation, lack of qualified labor, bureaucracy and high tax levels. As a result, our exports have declined significantly. So we are in crisis, and German industry, which has always been the backbone of German prosperity, in particular, is in crisis.”
He listed three major reasons for the new talk of militarization:
Berlin’s decision to follow Washington’s lead and slap sweeping sanctions on Russia has backfired on Germans on a much greater scale than on any of their Russian counterparts, according to the politician.
“In my view, Germany is in no fit state economically and financially to embark upon a massive rearmament program,” Beck said. “If the German government seriously did so, the consequence would be a further significant worsening of the economic crisis. The only way to finance such rearmament would be through a complete reversal of all the other policies and massive remigration of migrants from Germany. The government has given no indication that it is prepared to do so. In other words, I think these declarations are probably largely symbolic. Germany simply cannot afford it.”
Europeans Don’t Want to Fight Against Russia
The majority of Germans are not worried about a military threat from Russia, according to Beck, raising doubts as to whether Pistorius’ militarization plan would gain any popular traction in Germany and other European states.
“Diplomacy should be the West’s weapons of choice in its relations with Russia, not more armaments,” Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork, Ireland and a leading British scholar on Soviet diplomatic and military history, told Sputnik, stressing that Europeans have zero appetite for a major war with Russia.
“This bellicose rhetoric is part of a campaign by Western hardliners to further militarize Western states and societies, their aim being to prolong the Ukraine war for as long as possible and to create a permanent confrontation with Russia. Predictions of future war with Russia heighten existing tensions and solidify a mindset in which military power is seen as the solution to political problems,” Roberts continued.
Confrontation between Russia and NATO is fraught with serious risks and is “far more dangerous than anything that happened during the Cold war,” according to the professor.
“During the Soviet-Western Cold war there were many proxy wars and conflicts but nothing comparable in scope, scale and intensity to what is happening in Ukraine,” Roberts noted, referring to the West’s ongoing proxy conflict in Eastern Europe which involves NATO’s Special Forces, weapons, intelligence, military training and sabotage techniques.
“Western hardliners have whipped up an atmosphere of hysteria that could spread violence to other sections of the front-line between NATO and Russia. There is an urgent need for Western governments to heed popular calls for peace and a security settlement with Russia that will avert this new cold war – a conflict that could lead to catastrophe,” the professor concluded.
Moscow is closely observing the tone of European political discourse, warning against provocative rhetoric. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted on Tuesday that many other European countries than Germany have made statements about a “threat” posed by Russia. Earlier in January, Pistorius claimed that Russia could attack a NATO country “one day.”
“Now all European capitals are racing to declare an ephemeral danger that allegedly comes from Russia,” Peskov told reporters. He added that Europe has already invested heavily in the Ukraine conflict, but now see that their plan “failed” and the economic situation was “getting difficult.”
RT | January 24, 2024
A Russian IL-76 heavy transport plane was carrying 65 captured Ukrainian military personnel when it crashed in Belgorod Region some 90km (55 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The Russian Defense Ministry has claimed that the aircraft was brought down by Kiev’s forces.
Here is what we know so far about what happened.
The plane crash On Wednesday at 11:15 Moscow time, reports came in that an IL-76 military transport plane carrying Ukrainian POWs had crashed and exploded in a field near the village of Yablonovo in the Korochansky district of Belgorod Region, which neighbors Ukraine.
Several people captured footage of the crash and shared videos of the incident on social media.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the plane was flying from the Chkalovsky airfield to Belgorod and was transporting the Ukrainian personnel for a prisoner swap with Kiev. Aside from the POWs, there were also six crew members and three accompanying personnel.
All those on board the aircraft were killed in the crash, according to the governor of Belgorod Region, Vyacheslav Gladkov. However, the crash did not cause any damage to structures or people on the ground, landing five to six kilometers from the nearest village.
According to Russian officials, another plane carrying an additional 80 Ukrainian POWs was also in the air at the time of the incident. After the first plane crashed, the second aircraft was diverted, according to MP Andrey Kartapolov.
What was the cause? Following the incident, the Russian Defense Ministry released a statement accusing Kiev’s forces of shooting down the plane using an anti-aircraft missile system. The ministry claimed that the radars of Russia’s Aerospace Forces recorded the launch of two Ukrainian missiles from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov Region.
The ministry has also stated that the Ukrainian side was informed of the flight ahead of time and was aware that it was carrying POWs, noting that the prisoner exchange was supposed to take place later in the afternoon at the Kolotilovka checkpoint.
Ukrainian media reports Shortly after the crash, the Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainskaya Pravda released a report claiming that it had received confirmation from the Ukrainian military that the plane was shot down by Kiev’s forces, but was told that the aircraft was believed to be carrying S-300 missiles.
Shortly after, however, the outlet redacted that statement, stating only that Kiev had confirmed that it was aware of the plane crash but could not confirm it was carrying Ukrainian POWs.
Meanwhile, other Western media outlets such as Radio Liberty have confirmed from sources within the Kiev government that a prisoner exchange with Russia was indeed scheduled for Wednesday, but no further comments have been provided.
Kiev’s intelligence A representative of the Ukrainian Intelligence Service, Andrey Yusov, has also confirmed the scheduled prisoner exchange.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Coordinations Headquarters for matters regarding prisoners of war has refused to confirm the planned swap, only stating that it was “collecting and analyzing all the necessary information” while urging the media and its citizens to refrain from speculating on the incident. The body also noted that Russia is “actively carrying out special information operations” aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society.
Russia’s reaction The head of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has suggested that the IL-76 was shot down using Western Patriot or Iris-T air defense missiles. He has also proposed calling off any further prisoner swap negotiations with Kiev and insisted that Ukraine should officially be branded a terrorist state and its government a terrorist cell.
State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has called on Russian lawmakers to make a formal address to the US and Germany, urging them to stop actively supporting the “Nazi regime” in Kiev, which has stooped to killing its own POWs.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that Kiev had once again “shown its true colors” by committing this “terrorist act” against its own citizens in an attempt to slander Russia’s forces.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that this act of “mindless barbarism” puts into question the possibility of reaching future agreements with Kiev, noting that “there is no doubt” that the Ukrainian authorities will eventually violate any guarantees that they give.
The ministry also stressed that the regime of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which was propped up by the US and its NATO allies, has once again proven to be a threat not only to Russia, but to “Ukraine itself, its citizens and the whole world.”
Former Russian President and current deputy chairman of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that the downing of the IL-76 may have been the result of internal political turmoil between “neo-Nazi elites in Kiev.” He suggested that “it’ll be even worse in the future” as the Ukrainian government will continue slaughtering its own troops and POWs and bombing its own cities to protect its power and money.
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 24, 2024
Four national institutions have failed to model the 2050 energy system correctly, and all of them in ways that lead to understatement of the costs of Net Zero.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Climate Change Committee has got its energy system modelling wrong. The revelation was made by Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith, the lead author of the recent Royal Society report on electricity storage, in remarks made at a seminar at Oxford.
According to Sir Christopher, the Climate Change Committee’s estimates of the costs of Net Zero are fundamentally flawed because they have only modelled isolated years. As he pointed out in the seminar, low-wind years can happen back to back, which means that the Climate Change Committee need twice as much storage capacity as they thought. As a result, they have underestimated the costs.
However, the Sunday Telegraph didn’t mention that it’s not just the Climate Change Committee that has made this mistake. In the same seminar, Sir Christopher pointed out that the National Infrastructure Commission has done the same thing, despite being warned of the problem of clusters of low-wind years. So they too will have underestimated the costs.
The National Infrastructure Assessment… is also based on one year…they were told by the Met Office ‘you can get extreme events’…it’s not enough to look at one. They looked at one, so they got the answer wrong. The Met Office are really angry, because they told them ‘don’t do it’, but they did it.
I can also reveal that National Grid ESO, in its Future Energy Scenarios, has done the same thing. I wrote to the NGESO team to ask how they did things, and was told that their models are prepared using weather conditions in 2013, which they describe as an “average year”. They are starting to run tests against low-wind conditions (so-called ‘dunkelflautes’), but back-to-back wind droughts don’t seem to be on their radar yet:
The generation provided from renewables, as well as the demand profile, is typically based on an average weather year (2013).
For FES23, we also conducted an initial piece of analysis looking at abnormal weather conditions (resulting in abnormal supply and demand patterns), the results of which can be found in our FES23 publication under the title Dunkelflaute Period. We took a period of extreme weather, in this case between Jan-Feb 1985, and applied it to our Consumer Transformation scenario in 2050, to look at how the system would respond to a sustained period low renewable output…
We are planning on looking at abnormal supply and exceptional demand in more detail going forward as well as the effects of more extreme weather.
That means that they too will have underestimated the cost of Net Zero.
The Royal Society is to be congratulated for clarifying the problem. However, it turns out that their own modelling is fundamentally flawed too. That’s because, while they model 37 years of different wind speeds, they assume that electricity demand is always the same. Sir Christopher has admitted that this is not correct, in a podcast broadcast last year. As he put it then:
And now I confess something that is a bit of a weakness in our report. We’ve got this model of one year of demand… based in the weather in 2018…We simply repeat that 37 times.
This is clearly wrong, because in 2050 it is imagined that we will all heat our homes with electric heat pumps. Electricity demand will therefore be much higher in cold years than in mild ones, and if we have back to back cold years, we are going to need much more storage.
So, four well funded national institutions have failed to model the 2050 correctly, and all of them in ways that low-balls the cost of Net Zero. That’s a remarkable coincidence, and one that should probably raise alarm bells about the extent of the rot in the British establishment.
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 24, 2024
In October the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper written for the Royal Society led by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University that concluded batteries were not the answer to the huge storage requirements of intermittent ‘green’ electricity power. Despite the prestigious academic fire power on parade, the paper died a death in the popular prints, presumably because of its unwelcome message about the much-touted battery solution. But recent revelations suggest the report could act as a loose thread that helps unravel the collectivist Net Zero agenda in the U.K. The Royal Society analysed decades of local wind speeds and found the electricity system needed the equivalent of at least a third of green energy to be stored as backup. Such a cost would be astronomical. Now it appears that the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) fudged the issue by using just one year of high wind data in persuading Members of Parliament in 2019 to donkey-nod through Theresa May’s insane legislative rush to Net Zero by 2050.
Sir Chris’s report showed that wind could fall away for days at a time during periods of intense cold dominated by high atmospheric pressure. It also found wind speeds varied between years, all of which is in fact known and has been studied widely by other scientists. The Telegraph has reported on remarks made by Sir Chris after the paper was published in which he noted that the CCC has “conceded privately” that reliance on one year’s data was a “mistake”. It appears that the information given to MPs committing to 2050 Net Zero assumed there would be just seven days when wind turbines would produce less than 10% of their potential electricity output. According to Net Zero Watch that compares with 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018.
In reporting that the CCC has conceded the “mistake”, the Telegraph noted that Sir Chris said the committee was still saying it doesn’t differ much from Sir Chris’s calculations. “Well that’s not quite true,” observed the Oxford Emeritus Professor. Asked by the newspaper if it disputed the account of Sir Chris, a CCC spokesman said it had “nothing further to add”.
Of course the ‘Noble Lie’ that Net Zero must be foisted on an unwilling population whatever the economic and societal cost will need to be preserved. Nothing to see here, move along please, is likely to guide most mainstream media in covering these latest revelations. The investigative science and Net Zero writer Paul Homewood is less inclined to ignore the serious matter. “It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.” He goes further and states that current and past members of the CCC must be held to account, and “excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy”.
In general, nobody wants to talk about the lack of wind and solar backup, so there is a widespread pretence that the problem will somehow be solved in the future. But having dismissed any role for batteries, the Royal Society suggested hydrogen as a solution, an idea, alas, only slightly less dumb than batteries. Highly explosive, low kinetic energy compared with hydrocarbons, expensive to produce, difficult to store and move around – the disadvantages are all too obvious. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian saw the report as an “enormous improvement” on every other effort on the subject of large scale energy storage systems. But in the end, the authors still have a “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future, and this means that the report, despite containing much valuable information, “is actually useless for any public policy purpose”.
What is becoming clear is the level of statistical deception that is practised across climate science and the promotion of Net Zero. Surface temperature measurements are frequently adjusted upwards on a retrospective basis despite ignoring growing urban heat corruptions, activists use computer models to run up garbage-in, garbage-out scares on an almost daily basis, and bad weather is deliberately confused with long-term climate to suggest the latter is changing due to human caused carbon dioxide. All lapped up without a critical word between them by members of the mainstream media increasingly funded by elite billionaires.
The donkey-nodding politicians and the poodle media often hide behind the notion that they are just following the ‘science’. There is no such thing as the ‘science’, settled or otherwise, just the ongoing scientific process. The distinguished scientist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman captured the integrity of the process when he wrote: “If you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it. … Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.”
Renewable energy is not a low-cost substitute for fossil fuels, notes a forward in Rupert Darwall’s recently published report on Net Zero and Britain’s “disastrous” energy policies. High and rising energy costs have locked Britain into economic decline, a suggestion given weight by last week’s savage destruction of the steel economy of Port Talbot. Renewables are not cheap, nor can they provide the reliability that modern societies expect and on which they depend. His report is said to convincingly demonstrate “how Britain was conned into Net Zero by deceptive and illusory promises of cheap wind power”.
The CCC is a dedicated green activist group that sits at the heart of U.K. Government. It is a pernicious, untrustworthy force in British politics giving cover to policies that will lead to de-industrialisation and massive changes in future lifestyle including restriction on diet, transport and personal freedoms.
Here’s hoping the wind scandal blows the damn thing away.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
MEMO | January 23, 2024
A MEMO correspondent in Gaza City has reported that eight truck loads of aid arrived in the besieged city today with Palestinians rushing to collect the much needed food, however occupation forces quickly opened fire at them.
“The Israeli occupation allowed the entry of eight truckloads of humanitarian aid, then gave five minutes for starving people to collect them and then opened fire at them. People were forced to flee,” Motasem Dalloul said.
As little aid has trickled into northern Gaza over the past few months, people have been forced to walk long distances to reach the aid trucks and to carry the goods on foot back to their shelters.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said yesterday that Israel has prevented three out of every four humanitarian missions heading to the northern Gaza Strip.
It had earlier warned that since the beginning of 2024, Israel has doubled the restrictions imposed on the arrival of relief missions to the Gaza Strip.
Al-Haq | January 22, 2024
“The entire Al-Maghazi Camp is destroyed. No homes are left, no column left. The corpses are thrown around on the ground in front of us.”
Al-Haq | January 23, 2024
”As we approached the ambulance, we were surprised to see the bodies of people killed near the ambulance. Those killed included our dispatched crew of four paramedics, along with two injured individuals. Six people were killed in this attack.”

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | January 23, 2024
If what is currently happening in the Israeli-occupied West Bank took place before 7 October, our attention would have been fixated completely on that part of Palestine. The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, has distracted us from the important events underway in the West Bank, which is now a stage for the most violent Israeli military campaign since the Second Palestinian Uprising between 2000 and 2005.
At the time of writing, since 7 October more than 360 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis in the West Bank, while thousands have been wounded. Thousands more have been arrested. These numbers exceed, by far, the total number of Palestinians killed in 2022, which was already designated by the UN as the most violent year on record in the occupied territory since 2005.
How are we to understand the logic behind the Israeli violence in the West Bank, given that it is already under a brutal Israeli military occupation and the joint “security” control of the Israel “Defence” Forces and the Palestinian Authority? And if the Israelis are honest in their claim that their offensive in Gaza is not genocide against the Palestinian people per se, but a war against Hamas, why are they attacking the West Bank with such ferocity, killing people from all different political and ideological backgrounds, and many civilians, including children?
The answer lies in the growing political power of the Jewish settlers, whose presence is illegal under international law. Historically, there are two kinds of Israeli violence meted out routinely against Palestinians: violence carried out by the Israeli army; and violence carried out by Jewish settlers.
Palestinians understand fully that they are intrinsically linked. The settlers often attack Palestinians under the protection of the Israeli army, and the latter often launches violent raids on Palestinians for the sake of the illegal settlers.
In recent years, however, the relationship between these two violent entities has started to change, thanks to the rise of the far right in Israel, which is situated mostly within illegal settlements, and their supporters inside Israel. Hence, it should not be a surprise that both of the most far-right ministers in the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are themselves settlers.
As soon as Ben-Gvir became National Security Minister, he began promoting the idea of establishing a National Guard. After 7 October, he managed, with direct support from Netanyahu’s government, to establish so-called civilian security teams. Israeli officials like Yair Lapid, for example, have described Ben-Gvir’s new armed group as a “private militia”. And he is right.
Although Ben-Gvir insists that the war in Gaza must continue, his actual aim from this — aside from the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in the territory — is to use this rare opportunity to fulfil all of the wishes of Israel’s political extremists, all at once.
Remember, Ben-Gvir came to power based on the lofty promises of annexing the West Bank, expanding settlements and seizing control of Palestinian holy sites in East Jerusalem, among other extremist ideas. Al-Aqsa Mosque was a major target for him and his equally far-right followers, who believe that only by building a Third Temple on the ruins of Islam’s third holiest shrine would Israel be able to reclaim total control over the Holy Land.
Ben-Gvir’s bizarre political language could once have been dismissed as the extremism of a fringe politician.
Not any more, though. He is arguably the most powerful politician in Israel, due to his ability to use six seats in the Knesset to make or break Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
While Netanyahu is behaving largely out of desperation to save his own political skin, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is fighting to redeem the tattered reputation of the army. Others, like War Council Minister Benny Gantz, are walking a political fine line so as not to be perceived as the ones who have broken Israel’s fragile political unity during a most decisive war.
None of this applies to Ben-Gvir. The man sees himself as the political descendant of the likes of the notorious late Meir Kahane; he is a fervent advocate of religious war. And since religious wars can only be the outcome of chaotic social and political circumstances, he is keen to instigate these very events that could ultimately lead to the war that he covets most.
One of the prerequisites is unhinged violence, where people are killed based on the mere suspicion of being “terrorists”. For example, on 18 January, Ben-Gvir told Israeli border police officers during a visit to a base in the West Bank, “You have complete backing from me.” He urged them to shoot at every “terrorist” — for which read “Palestinian” — even if they do not pose a threat.
Ben-Gvir perceives all Palestinians in the West Bank to be potential terrorists, the same way that Israel’s “moderate” President Isaac Herzog perceives all in Gaza as being “responsible” for the actions of Hamas. This essentially means that the Israeli security forces — soldiers and police — in the West Bank have the green light to kill Palestinians there with the same impunity as those killing Palestinians in Gaza.
Even though security and intelligence officials in Israel have warned Netanyahu against launching war on another front in the West Bank, the Israeli army has no other option but to fight that supposed “war” anyway. Why? Because it is already seen by a large constituency in Israel as a failure for its inability to prevent or respond successfully to the 7 October attacks, even after over 100 days of war in Gaza. To redeem their tarnished honour, senior officers are happy to fight a less challenging “war” against isolated and under-equipped Palestinian fighters in small parts of the West Bank.
Ben-Gvir, of course, is ready to manipulate all of this in his favour. And he is getting precisely what he wants: expanding the war to the West Bank, ethnically-cleansing Palestinians; torturing prisoners; demolishing homes; torching properties; and all the rest.
Arguably his greatest achievement so far is his ability to create a perfect amalgamation between the political interests of the settlers, the government and the security apparatus. His aim, however, is not merely to steal yet more Palestinian land, or expand a few settlements. His wished-for religious war will, he believes, lead ultimately to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, not just from Gaza, but also from the West Bank.
The war in Gaza is a perfect opportunity for these sinister goals to be achieved. For now, this genocidal war continues to create opportunities for religious Zionism to acquire new followers, and to lay deeper roots within Israel’s political establishment. A sudden end to the war, however, could represent the marginalisation of religious Zionism for years to come.

The Cradle | January 23, 2024
Recent claims made by a senior Israeli army officer and police spokesperson regarding alleged atrocities committed by Hamas during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood are false, Haaretz newspaper reported on 21 January.
On 20 January, Lt. Col. Guy Basson, deputy commander of the Israeli army’s Kfir Brigade, claimed in an interview with Channel 14 that fighters from Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, murdered eight infants and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp on 7 October.
Speaking to Channel 14, Basson claimed: “We get to Kibbutz Be’eri, and I’m confronted with two main scenarios. One was from the children’s nursery… where [the eight infants] were simply slaughtered and murdered.” When the interviewer asked him in response,” Did you see the children inside…?” Basson responded: “A house. Eight babies, eight dead babies.”
Basson later added: “Another image that stuck with me is Genia, of blessed memory, an elderly woman from Kibbutz Be’eri. I see the number engraved on her arm, and you say to yourself, she went through the Holocaust in Auschwitz and ended up dying on Kibbutz Be’eri.”
However, Haaretz reported that the incidents described in the interview never took place.
Haaretz reported there is no survivor of Germany’s World War II concentration camps named Genia in Be’eri.
The liberal Israeli daily noted that “Regarding the claim that eight babies were murdered in a kibbutz nursery, to this day there is no known case in any of the surrounding communities where children from several families were murdered together.”
In Kibbutz Be’eri, one baby, Mila Cohen, 10 months old, was killed on 7 October, along with her father, Ohad, when Qassam fighters shot through the door of the safe room in their home, hitting both Ohad and Mila on the other side, in an apparent bid to take them captive to Gaza.
A Kibbutz Be’eri spokesperson rejected Lt. Col. Basson’s claims, stating, “Nearly one hundred people were murdered on Kibbutz Be’eri, and the community suffered hundreds of heartbreaking incidents on that Black Saturday and over the past months, especially regarding the hostages. However, incidents such as eight murdered babies and a murdered Holocaust survivor named Genia – did not happen.”
An Israeli army spokesperson said, “The events in question will be investigated and examined. There was no intention to describe a reality that didn’t happen, and we apologize if anyone was offended. We will set the record straight and clarify to all commanders involved in the media effort.”
Channel 14 declined to respond to an inquiry by Haaretz, and the interview still appears on the channel’s social media accounts.
Haaretz notes that in another recent incident, the Israel Police spokesman for foreign media, Sgt. Dean Elsdunne, made an incorrect claim that “pregnant women were sliced open” by Qassam fighters on 7 October. The police spokesman was echoing a previous incorrect claim made by a member of the Zaka rescue organization that collected bodies for burial according to Jewish custom.
A police source said that “after the matter was checked, the incident was clarified to the police officer.”
Following the 7 October Hamas attack, Israeli army soldiers and spokespersons made numerous false claims to portray Hamas as carrying out a massacre against Israeli civilians rather than a military operation to liberate Gaza from decades of Israeli siege, blockade, and bombardment.
The army has sought to hide its own role in killing many Israeli civilians when they responded to the Hamas attack with overwhelming firepower, including from Apache attack helicopters, Merkava tanks, and armed Zik drones. In some cases, Israeli civilians were killed by the army deliberately to prevent them being taken captive to Gaza by Hamas, per the controversial Israeli military doctrine known as the Hannibal Directive.
MEMO | January 23, 2024
Israeli TV Channel 7 reported far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying that his party will not agree to any deal with Hamas that includes a ceasefire.
The head of the Religious Zionism Party said: “We will not agree to a deal that includes a ceasefire.”
In response, Minister of Heritage Amihai Ben-Eliyahu stated that if the war stops, his far-right party, Otzma Yehudit, will withdraw from the government.
He added that he feels frustrated because Hamas has not been defeated yet.
Smotrich has previously called for encouraging the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza. Such an exodus of Palestinians from the besieged enclave would presumably be followed by the re-occupation of the Strip by Israeli authorities and its resettlement by illegal Jewish settlers.
By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | January 23, 2024
Since the beginning of the Israeli regime’s ground operation against Gaza in late October, the regime forces have been met with fierce resistance by Palestinian fighters, prompting military experts to predict that Israeli troops would not find it easy to meet any of their objectives.
Nearly three months into the ground assault, these military analysts have been proven correct.
In the latest, at least 24 Israeli troops were declared killed in less than 24 hours on Tuesday, laying bare the fragility of what many have described as the “TikTok occupation army.”
The Israeli regime has not met a single objective. Instead, it has attempted to cover up its losses, committed egregious war crimes resulting in a genocide case against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and spent nearly $246 million per day on sustaining its genocidal war on Gaza.
The Tel Aviv regime, which has launched a Western-focused campaign to have the hundred-some Israeli captives held by Hamas released, has not been able to secure the release of any of them so far.
In fact, the one opportunity Israeli forces had to secure their release, they instead shot them. Coupled with this embarrassment was the retreat of Israeli troops, including the infamous Golani brigade.
Facing pressure from the inevitability of military, political, and economic disaster, Zionist officials have been contradicting each other at every corner, smacking of frustration from their losses.
For example, an Israeli war minister admits that “Hamas is far from being defeated in Gaza,” while another spokesperson says that Hamas has been completely dismantled in the north.
These contradictory statements usher in more public distrust as to what is really happening on the battlefield. They also expose the dilemma the regime is facing in the face of indomitable resistance.
The Israeli regime is notorious for brazenly lying and covering up its losses while inflating its “successes.” So in order to find the truth, we must observe the battlefield itself.
Just over a week after Israeli forces announced the “dismantlement” of Hamas in the north, a barrage of 50 rockets launched from northern Gaza by the movement’s armed wing Qassam Brigades hit buildings in surrounding settlements in the occupied Gaza envelope.
The operations of Qassam Brigades are giving jitters to Israeli settlers still in the area, as Zionist forces again failed to ensure their safety, especially after downplaying the existence of threats in north Gaza.
Furthermore, thousands of Zionist settlers from the Gaza Envelope who flocked out of the occupied territories in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Storm (Al-Aqsa Flood) operation have yet to return home.
As one former settler told Israel’s Channel 13 recently, it is “not only due to the threat of rockets … no one knows if the Palestinians from Gaza can reach us. No one knows where their tunnels extend to.”
“I have been living in Sderot for years, and I cannot count the times they told us that Hamas is deterred,” he was quoted as saying, laying bare the hollow rhetoric of the Israeli military.
Meanwhile, the Al-Qassam Brigades and other resistance factions remain strong. This is through demonstrable proof – over 100 days after the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm (Al-Aqsa Flood), the resistance groups are able to launch rockets as far as Tel Aviv at will.
Al-Qassam Brigades routinely (nearly daily) upload videos of their fighters confronting Zionist tanks and personnel head-on and at point-blank range, posting the destruction of Israeli forces for the world to see.
Where just a few days ago Israeli military officials announced the withdrawal of Israeli forces to give them time to lick their wounds and regroup, the political pressure amassed on the Netanyahu regime has now forced some brigades from the Israeli regime back into Northern Gaza, where they continue to be met with fierce resistance.
Clearly, the claim of Hamas’ dismantlement has been proven false.
Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, says that Al Qassam is “smashing the Israeli army and will continue to do so,” and that Hamas “will not submit to the conditions of the occupation.”
Israel now faces the same resistance but with worn-out soldiers and less numbers.
Though thousands of soldiers still fight in Gaza, it is nowhere near as much quantity as it was just under a month ago. Thousands have backed out under “strategic withdrawal” while thousands more suffer injury and permanent disability.
To dilute the success of Palestinian resistance, the Israeli occupation has ordered hospitals not to cover the losses from Gaza. A spokesman declares that the order violates “press freedom, but claims that the logic behind the new procedure is the desire to maintain the dignity of the injured and their families.”
To date, Hamas has claimed the destruction of thousands of troops and over one thousand vehicles
The same battlefield ferocity cannot be said of Israeli forces. Resorting to aerial bombardments that only slaughter innocent civilians, the Israeli military has yet to claim a categorical battlefield win, instead filming themselves bullying and assaulting civilians and destroying their homes and neighborhoods.
The statements and videos from Al Qassam are not just demonstrations of Hamas’ battlefield skills. They also serve as a weapon against the Zionist entity itself, forcing Israeli settlers to reckon with the fact that the Israeli military cannot protect them, as they cannot even protect themselves.
Tamer Eidam, a settler and “head of the Sdot Negev regional council” has reported that the Netanyahu regime is going as far as bribing settlers to return to the Gaza envelope, without “removing the security threat.” The feelings among settlers are also the same in north-occupied Palestine, fearing Hezbollah strikes and lack of Israeli military protection.
Netanyahu insists on the return of settlers to the Gaza envelope while simultaneously asserting that the aggression on Gaza could last until 2025, as Western media and Israeli outlets report.
Meanwhile, sirens ring nearly daily due to incoming rockets from the besieged Gaza Strip.
Here lies the turbulent political landscape. Netanyahu and his officials are in direct contradiction with the assessment of the military, and within themselves, resulting in no certainty for their troops or their settlers.
Where Netanyahu promises safety and security, Al Qassam responds with barrages of rockets. And where the regime’s military affairs minister Yoav Gallant promises the elimination of Hamas, worn-out Israeli troops are met with ambushes and fierce resistance.
The scenes and reports of Israeli military withdrawal in Gaza succinctly underscore the fate of the Netanyahu regime.
The regime, which was already unpopular amongst settlers and routinely being protested against, now faces more heat from its own settlers, as facts surface from October 7 proving the usage of the infamous “Hannibal Directive.”
The directive was created to ensure civilians and soldiers are not captured by enemy fighters in order to force the Israeli regime into hostage negotiations. The directive purportedly says the capturing of any civilians or soldiers should be stopped by any means necessary – including killing them.
New details have emerged that Israeli forces not only deliberately opened fire on settlers and their own soldiers at the “Nova Festival,” but also within Israeli settlements, indiscriminately killing hundreds of Israelis.
The Tel Aviv regime lays the blame for these deaths on Hamas while destroying evidence that would tie the deaths to its own forces.
This directive comes into direct contradiction with the public occupation demand to free Israeli captives
Culminating failures of the security apparatuses of the occupation have resulted in heated war cabinet meetings that have resulted in further division within Israeli leadership, to the point of Netanyahu even demanding lie detector tests.
Zionist reports say that ministers have stormed out of meetings, or even turned meetings into nasty shouting matches where little “progress” was made.
The regime is torn between two demands: first, the demand for the return of Israeli captives with the restoration of settlements, and second, the destruction of Palestinian resistance.
Pursuing the latter risks the failure of the former as Israeli bombs have killed captives, and pursuing the former concedes defeat to the day one objective of “eliminating Hamas.”
The Zionist regime believes it can save face by conducting a flagrant genocide in front of the world. But this is a severe miscalculation. It has only brought them to the ICJ in the Hague and launched a worldwide campaign in support of Palestinian resistance. Through this horrific crime, they have crossed the point of no return.
Furthermore, other allies of the Palestinian cause – including Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iraqi resistance groups, now exert pressure on American forces in the region, with the potential to escalate into a regional war.
Hamas and the Palestinian resistance have put the Israeli occupation into a box. The very stability of the occupation is falling apart, as public distrust of the Netanyahu regime and the occupation forces itself flourishes.
While protests grow and ministers argue amongst themselves, Al Qassam taunts the occupation with rockets and videos of destroyed Merkava tanks.
Hence, the Zionist regime must reckon with the inevitability of its crushing defeat.
Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.
By Khalil Harb | The Cradle | January 23, 2024
Israel once reigned supreme on the back of some immovable narratives: widely spun myths of a “promised land,” a “land without a people,” the “only democracy in the Middle East,” and the “only secure place for Jews in the world.” Today, those lofty soundbites lie in tatters, with the occupation state reeling from an unprecedented blow to its foundational ideas.
This transformation has unfolded with unexpected intensity since the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood resistance operation and Israel’s devastating, genocidal war on Gaza.
But it is not just the challenge of narratives that has Israel on its back feet. For the first time in its 76-year history, Israel’s entire security calculations have been turned upside down: the occupation state is today grappling with buffer zones inside Israel. In past wars, it was Tel Aviv that established these “security zones” inside enemy territory — advancing Israel’s strategic geography, evacuating Arab populations near their state border areas, and fortifying its own borders.
This shift can be attributed to various factors, including vulnerabilities within the so-called “Arab Ring States” (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon). Throughout its history, Israel has consistently exerted military and political dominance, enforcing security measures on neighboring states, with the unconditional backing of allies like the US and Britain.
Israel’s new border realities
But in this current war, Tel Aviv is slowly understanding that the equations and calculations of military confrontation have fundamentally changed — a process that began in 2000 when the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah, forced Israel to withdraw from most occupied territories in southern Lebanon.
Today, Israel is horrified to find itself retreating from direct confrontation lines with its arch-enemies in Gaza and Lebanon. The formidable capabilities of the resistance now include drones, rockets, targeted projectiles, tunnels, and spanking new shock tactics, casting doubt on the feasibility of Israeli settlers remaining safe in any of Israel’s border perimeters.
There is now one common refrain among settlers in the north and south of occupied Palestine: “We will not return unless security is restored on the border.”
But prospects for their return appear elusive at present. The Israeli Defense Ministry, which pledged a swift and decisive war to safeguard its settlers over 100 days ago, is now actively devising plans to shelter approximately 100,000 people along the northern border, deeper inside its territory. This measure could involve evacuating settlements that may come under fire during any future military escalation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This situation implies three critical outcomes: any immediate return of settlers remains unlikely, additional evacuations are anticipated, and numerous Israeli families – in the interim – may establish permanent settlements in other, more secure locations at a much further distance from the borders with southern Lebanon and the Gaza envelope.
Failed objectives and the northern front
Preliminary reports from settler councils in the north assessed settler “displacement” to be around 70,000 in the initial weeks of the conflict. Subsequent reports, however, suggest a vastly higher figure of approximately 230,000.
Against this backdrop, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah emphasized a crucial point in his 3 January speech. He referenced Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s concern that Israelis are not only reluctant to reside in the border regions, but that their apprehension about remaining in any part of Israel will also likely rise if Tel Aviv’s war fails to achieve its stated objectives.
Indeed, since 7 October, a significant toll has been exacted on Israeli forces, with 13,572 “soldiers and civilians” wounded in the battles in Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, as reported by Yedioth Ahronoth.
One suspects those numbers may be underreported. Skepticism has recently grown over the accuracy of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s data, with various experts, independent sources, and media investigations suggesting a considerably higher casualty count. The IDF Handicapped Organization, for example, estimates that approximately 20,000 individuals have been disabled in the ongoing war — a number much higher than the health ministry’s findings.
The secrecy surrounding Israeli casualties is particularly evident on the Lebanese war front, where data is virtually nonexistent, and Tel Aviv’s military censorship tightly controls all information flows. This leads to a critical question regarding Israel’s ability to establish strategic “border” equations as a compensatory measure for what appears to be a military and political setback in achieving its stated war goals — which include the elimination of Hamas and the release of all captives.
Moreover, doubts arise about Israel’s capacity to wage a major war in the north given its clear shortcomings in its southern military campaign, in which it faced heavily besieged adversaries with multiple vulnerabilities. The Lebanese resistance, in comparison to its Gazan counterparts, boasts considerable and many unknown military capabilities, which it can exercise from within a sovereign state that is neither besieged nor landlocked. Furthermore, Hezbollah, which singlehandedly routed Israel from its territories in both 2000 and 2006 — makes it plain that it has thus far revealed and utilized only a fraction of its new military capabilities.
Decolonization in progress
In November, Hezbollah’s introduction of the Burkan missile, a domestically-made weapon with a range of up to 10 kilometers and destructive power of 500 kilograms of explosives, adds a potent dimension to the confrontation.
While Hezbollah has primarily targeted Israeli military barracks and troop gatherings with the Burkan, hundreds of guided missiles such as Kornet and Katyusha rockets have been employed with precision against specific targets within empty residential settlements, extending up to 10 kilometers in geographic depth from Lebanon’s border.
As of the onset of 2024, Hezbollah has conducted over 670 military operations against all 48 Israeli outposts, spanning from Naqoura in the west to the occupied-Shebaa Farms in the east, along with 11 rear military positions.
This is a major advancement in the Lebanese resistance’s border strategy. For 15 years — from 1985 to 2000 — Israel struggled to defend its “border strip” in southern Lebanon. Today, it faces many hundreds of attacks on its positions in northern Palestine, but fears opening a second war front that could complicate its already militarily draining Gaza campaign.
The so-called “defense” line along the border with Lebanon is now heavily compromised. Deemed insufficient for safeguarding the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the north, the recently displaced residents are demanding assurances about the future safety of that zone and their ability to return.
In December, the head of the Upper Galilee Regional Council revealed that the Israeli government had effectively created a buffer zone approximately 10 kilometers wide by evacuating towns in the north. This area, stretching from Mount Hermon in occupied Syria to Ras al-Naqoura, is reported to be nearly devoid of residents, with Israeli forces predominantly present.
At the so-called Kibbutz Manara border, a settler told Hebrew Radio North that 86 of the settlement’s 155 homes had been completely destroyed by Hezbollah rocket fire, raising the question of whether settlers would even have homes to return to.
Even if Israel dares to launch a full-scale aggression against Lebanon, just as it has faltered in besieged Gaza for 17 years, it will not be able to guarantee its success in achieving its objectives on the Lebanese front.
A land of false promises
The days when Israel could impose security arrangements on its Arab neighbors through military force and political machinations are gone.
Previously, Israel attempted to establish a security strip inside southern Lebanon through operations like the 1978 “Litani Operation.” This vision ultimately collapsed in 2000, with the occupation state’s humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon.
Israel now seems to be revisiting this approach — via American intermediaries — aiming to clear the southern Litani of resistance factions by brandishing the threat of war against all of Lebanon. This is a perilous strategy, particularly given the precarious position of its army in Gaza.
Israel’s tactics of bulldozing and bombing entire residential areas in the northern and eastern parts of the Gaza Strip, ostensibly to create a security strip with a depth of up to 2 kilometers, have hit a hard wall. Even its US ally has raised objections about the territorial delineation from Gaza, and the military efficacy of such measures. But more importantly, the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance appear prepped to mirror Tel Aviv’s ploys by eliminating Israeli habitation in the Gaza envelope and northern Palestine.
‘Destroy our neighborhoods, and we will destroy yours.’ This is surely not a response expected by Israel, whose military and political leadership are unaccustomed to repercussions for their aggressions. This new tit-for-tat that the occupation state appears unequipped to counter only further highlights Israel’s fragility and irreversible decline.