More claims of ‘Hamas mass rape’ proven false
The Cradle | April 20, 2024
A report by Haaretz published on 18 April acknowledges that key allegations claiming Hamas committed mass rape on 7 October are false, including the shocking claim made by the New York Times that nails were driven into a woman’s groin.
On 28 December, the Times published an article claiming it had “viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.”
The authors of the article, Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, cited the photograph as evidence that “attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.”
However, Haaretz stated in its 18 April report that its journalists had seen the photo in question but that it does not appear to show what the Times claimed.
The photo was shown to Haaretz by Chaim Otmazgin, who is both a commander in the ZAKA rescue service and a reservist in the Israeli army.
ZAKA volunteers were allowed by the Israeli army to collect corpses at various sites on 7 October, including in Kibbutz Be’eri and at the Nova festival, where many were killed during the Hamas attack, including many by Israeli forces, per the Hannibal Directive.
The Israeli paper reported that “Otmazgin showed several of the photographs in his possession to Haaretz, including the one said to show nails having been inserted into the groin. The photograph was taken almost a week after the massacre and is definitely of poor quality. The possibility that what is depicted is indeed nails seems reasonable, certainly in combination with his testimony, but it’s impossible to determine this unequivocally.”
Haaretz added that its journalists “saw part of the documentation in Otmazgin’s possession during an in-person meeting – but he said he did not want to share the rest of out of respect for the dead and their families.”
Another key rape claim by Otmazgin has already been shown to be false. Haaretz reports further that in one of the kibbutzim near Gaza, Otmazgin found “the bodies of a mother and her two daughters, with one of the daughters found in a separate room, her clothes pulled down. He concluded, mistakenly, that the girl had been raped.”
Before Otmazgin entered the room, the bodies had already been photographed fully clothed by army explosives experts (sappers) who were combing the home to ensure it was safe to enter. It was only later that the clothes of one of the two daughters had been pulled down.
Haaretz reports, “Although the bodies were clothed when the sappers had photographed them, the clothes of one of the daughters had been pulled down while her body was being dragged to another room. The discovery of this mistake led to a correction in the report of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers and the publication of a clarification on the subject in Haaretz as well.”
It in unclear why the body was dragged, rather than carried, and by whom. This raises questions of whether Otmazgin or someone else sought to stage a rape scene by pulling the daughter’s clothes down after the sappers had photographed the bodies.
Haaretz also cited its reporting in December that Yossi Landau of ZAKA spread two false stories about alleged Hamas atrocities on 7 October. Landau falsely claimed that about 20 bound and burned bodies of children were supposedly found on a kibbutz and that he found the body of a pregnant woman whose belly had been slit open.
The story of the pregnant woman, which included the distribution of a false video that had been shot at a different time and a different place, was repeated by Israeli spokespersons.
In the 18 April report, Haaretz also notes the case of the Secret Forest project in Cyprus, which provided psychological support to more than 1,000 survivors of 7 October by telephone.
The organization claimed that when its interviewers asked survivors if they had witnessed sexual violence, eight said they had been eyewitnesses to such assaults, five said they had been earwitnesses, and two others replied in vague terms.
However, Haaretz notes, “The project is not in possession of details about these cases because the interviewers were instructed not to pursue the subject,” calling the Secret Forest project’s claims into question.
Haaretz does not say why the interviewers were instructed not to pursue the subject further.
The 18 April Haaretz report made another important acknowledgment. It added that Israeli police do not have video evidence of any cases of sexual assault from 7 October.
On 23 October, the Israeli army showed a 43-minute video to selected journalists, claiming it showed Hamas atrocities.
The Times of Israel reported that Israeli Army Major Gen. Mickey Edelstein, who briefed reporters after the viewing, said that “we have evidence” of rape but “we cannot share it,” declining to elaborate further.
However, Haaretz reported that “it emerges that the intelligence material collected by the police and the intelligence bodies, including footage from terrorists’ body cameras, does not contain visual documentation of any acts of rape themselves.”
Haaretz noted its previous reporting from November, which showed “the police had not collected any forensic evidence of the perpetration of sex crimes during the massacre.”
Haaretz added as well that forensic pathologists who examined completely or partially naked bodies for the possibility of rape at the Shura military base found “no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia.”
At the same time, the pathologists only had time to examine roughly 25 percent of the corpses brought to the Shura base.
The 18 April Haaretz report also refuted the claim made by senior Israeli officials and representatives that Hamas fighters received explicit orders from the Hamas leadership to rape Israelis during the 7 October attack. “The sex crimes were planned in advance,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, claimed in December.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made the same claim, as reported by the Washington Post.
But a spokeswoman for Gallant told Haaretz that the quote had been “distorted and that Gallant had never said that.”
Haaretz reported that after checking with several security bodies, “Israel has no proof that the terrorists of Hamas or other organizations received explicit orders to commit acts of rape.”
Finally, Haaretz reports that although Pramila Patten, the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, “urged Israel to sign a cooperation framework with her office” to properly investigate claims Hamas fighters committed mass rape, Israeli politicians refused to do so.
Haaretz writes, “The politicians in Israel did exactly the opposite.” Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz accused the UN of “the silencing of the sex crimes” immediately after Patten’s report was made public, even though the report was sympathetic to Israeli claims.
Hamas politburo considers Qatar exit
The Cradle | April 20, 2024
The political leadership of Hamas is considering moving its headquarters outside Qatar amid increasing criticism from members of the US Congress for the Gulf nation’s support for the Palestinian resistance movement, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 20 April.
The US financial newspaper quoted Arab officials as saying that Hamas had recently communicated with at least two countries in the region, including the Sultanate of Oman, about the possibility of its political leaders moving to their capitals.
The WSJ indicated that Hamas’s departure from Qatar could disrupt talks to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement to release dozens of Israelis held captive in Gaza, and hundreds of the many thousands of Palestinians held captive in Israel. Such a departure may also make it difficult for Israel and the US to convey messages to Hamas, which Washington classifies as a terrorist organization, the WSJ added.
A well-informed Arab mediator told the newspaper: “The talks have already stopped again, with little sign or possibility of resuming them anytime soon, and the lack of trust is growing between Hamas and the negotiators.”
Another Arab mediator said: “The possibility of the ceasefire talks collapsing completely has become very possible.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the religious settler ministers in his coalition government have shown little interest in winning the release of the Israelis held captive by Hamas since 7 October.
Netanyahu has instead prioritized continuing the bombing of Gaza, which has killed not only over 33,000 Palestinians but also many of Hamas’ Israeli captives as well.
Israel says more than 130 captives remain in Hamas custody, and about a quarter of those are believed dead.
Qatar is under fire from US lawmakers for its support of Hamas, although this was fully coordinated with the US and Israel.
Prominent US Congressman from the Democratic Party, Steny Hoyer, said recently that Qatar should pressure Hamas to release its Israeli captives by cutting off funding to the group or kicking its political leaders out of Doha. “If Qatar fails to apply this pressure, the United States must re-evaluate its relationship with Qatar,” he said in a statement.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, recently said the Gulf state was considering withdrawing as a mediator between Israel and Hamas in the face of what he says is unfair US and Israeli criticism.
“There are limits to this role and limits to the ability to which we can contribute to these negotiations in a constructive way,” the Qatari leader said at a news conference. “The state of Qatar will make the appropriate decision at the right time.”
Qatar is home to a large US air base and was named a “major non-NATO ally” by President Joe Biden in 2022.
A Qatari official told AFP that Hamas’s political office was opened in Qatar in 2012 in coordination with the US government “following a US request to open a communication channel.”
AFP added that West Asia analyst Andreas Krieg stated that US officials wanted to ensure “complete oversight and control over them.”
Qatar then provided financial aid to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip for years, which was also “fully coordinated with Israel, the UN, and the US.”
Qatar’s funding of Hamas enjoyed the specific blessing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. As journalist Scott Horton detailed, Netanyahu boasted to members of his party in the Knesset that he could reliably control the potential blowback that might result from his strategy should Hamas decide to wage a war against Israel.
Netanyahu claimed, “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank … It’s impossible to reach an agreement with them [Hamas] … Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames.”
Iran’s new deterrence equation with ‘Israel’ was decades in the making
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 20, 2024
On April 13, the Islamic Republic of Iran changed the deterrence equation with the Zionist entity by striking it directly. While the success of this operation can be judged, in the short term, through the monitoring of the US and Israeli responses, it is important to understand that Iran’s retaliatory operation was in fact the culmination of decades of Israeli attacks on its territory and citizens.
Immediately after Iran’s retaliatory operation, dubbed True Promise, was concluded, the Western and Israeli establishments began working hard to concoct their own narrative as to what occurred. Interestingly, they couldn’t quite stick to a singular script and adopted two contradictory takes: The first was to pretend that the Israelis were the victim and that Iran’s attack was much larger in scope than expected; hence demonstrating Tehran’s ‘evil’ intent. The second was to argue that the Israelis, along with their UK, US, French, and Jordanian air defense alliance, pulled off one of the most successful defensive military campaigns in history and that Iran did basically no damage.
The two narratives make the Israelis both the victim and the hero of the story. Yet, they greatly contradict each other by arguing both that nothing happened and that the Iranian retaliation went way beyond what is allegedly acceptable. What these two stories also do is allow us the ability to debunk both independently and tell the real story behind what occurred.
Debunking Iran’s so-called ‘evil intent’
As is typical for the Western corporate media, they conveniently begin every story on the day that fits their desired framework, pushing the same propaganda narratives as their leadership. In this instance, they take the same approach as was adopted on October 7, 2023, when it came to the battles between the Palestinian Resistance and the occupying entity. We were all supposed to believe two lines of argument, which, if violated, would be treated as treasonous and immoral: The first was that all history prior to October 7 was invalid and could not explain or justify the military operation of Hamas. The second was to pretend that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was a “terrorist” attack with no military goals.
Not only was the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, blown up by Israeli strikes, in what constituted an egregious violation of international law, diplomatic norms, and both Iranian and Syrian sovereignty, but this was not the first time. On the April 1 consulate attack, 7 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed, along with Syrian and Lebanese nationals. When asked on Sky News what the UK would have done in the event that one of its consulates were attacked, British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, admitted that London would have too responded harshly, contradicting his own narrative that was espoused moments prior.
The Iran-Israeli struggle didn’t originate with this strike on the consulate, which the US and its allies prevented a condemnation for in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). It’s been ongoing for decades. While Iran has periodically carried out retaliatory and defensive operations, in the Gulf and northern Iraq, against Israeli targets, no direct action was ever taken against targets inside occupied Palestine.
When looking critically at what is often called the Iran-Israeli “shadow war”, we will find that Tehran has repeatedly shown extreme levels of restraint. Since 2010, the Israeli regime has been carrying out direct action inside Iranian territory, beginning with its bloody assassinations of civilian nuclear scientists. These assassinations have utilized Mossad agents to gun down scientists in the streets and plant bombs in civilian areas. The Zionists have also repeatedly used members of terrorist organizations, such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), training and recruiting them to murder civilians inside Iranian territory.
Acts of sabotage, espionage, and even a raid on a facility in Tehran, which resulted in the theft of documents pertaining to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, were all carried out under the supervision of the Mossad. In 2020, The New York Times and The Washington Post both reported that the Israelis were behind the planting of a bomb at the Natanz Nuclear Facility. It was later also revealed through NYT that the Israelis had been responsible for the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran on November 27 of that same year. Then, the following year, the Israelis were again accused of another explosion that occurred at the Natanz Nuclear Facility.
In addition to this, in early 2023, it was revealed that the Israelis were behind an attack, using suicide drones, which attempted to strike a factory in the Iranian city of Isfahan. Keeping all of this in mind, the Israelis have been one of the biggest proponents of the West’s sanctions against Iran, which have sought to collectively punish the Iranian civilian population. AIPAC and specifically Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, mounted a huge effort to prevent the 2015 Nuclear Deal, undermining its implementation, before pushing the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw and then working to ensure that the current American President, Joe Biden, would not fulfill his campaign promise to revive it. “Tel Aviv” was even allegedly involved in the US Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, of the IRGC’s Quds Force in 2020.
Countless strikes that have assassinated Iranian citizens inside Syria have been carried out by the Zionist regime throughout the years, none of which have ever received a single condemnation from any Western nation. More recently, in late December the Israeli regime assassinated IRGC official, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in airstrikes conducted against his location in Damascus. In this case, the IRGC launched a retaliatory series of strikes against Mossad facilities in northern Iraq and fired ballistic missiles into Syria’s Idlib province, working to warn the Zionists not to commit further attacks.
Despite this clear warning, the Zionist entity decided in January to strike Damascus again and murdered 5 IRGC members, along with Syrian civilians and soldiers. Then, in February, the Zionists were reportedly behind explosions that partially destroyed gas pipelines in Iran. At this point, no direct strikes against the Zionists occurred, despite the long list of provocations.
It was only on April 1, after the consulate attack, that the Iranians decided that enough was enough and that they would change the equation once and for all, in order to prevent the Israelis from committing their heinous crimes against Iran at will.
Debunking the West’s air defense ‘victory’
The Islamic Republic of Iran allegedly gave a 72-hour notice to neighboring and allied nations, in addition to immediately arguing its right to respond, in the way it did, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN charter; also making all parties aware that the response would be limited.
When the attack began, the Iranians launched a batch of older model drones, which were slow and easy to identify. This gave ample time to the broad coalition of Israeli allies, including the US, UK, France, and Jordan, to use their fighter jets and air defense capabilities throughout the region, to combat the incoming attack. All flights were grounded, and the Zionists were given the time to move assets and prepare, while the only targets in the sky were Iranian drones and missiles for an incident that lasted 5 hours in total.
If we look at this with an open mind and simply observe the obvious, what happened was no achievement at all to the Israelis, but rather, an absolute embarrassment. The Iranians used old munitions and models of their drones, gave the enemy hours to shoot down the slow-moving targets across Iraq, Jordan, and then finally occupied Palestine. In an operation that cost Tehran in the tens of millions, the Israelis were forced to spend upward of a billion dollars in their attempt to combat the volley of drones and missiles.
Despite the broad Western-Arab-Zionist coalition having hours to combat the attack, in addition to days to set up and prepare, Iran hit its intended military targets with ballistic missiles and those missiles were not even its newest models. While the Zionists claim to have shot down “99%” of the incoming missiles and drones, we have now received the admission that over a dozen missiles have hit their targets, which debunks this statistic.
On the other hand, many of the munitions fired by the Islamic Republic managed to reach the skies of occupied Palestine and set off nearly 800 sirens across the territory, instilling fear in the settler population and causing them to flee populated areas to bunkers. In an attack that drew the full concentration of the Zionist regime and its allies, depleting large reserves of interceptor missiles, the allies of Iran were much more reserved than had been expected. It was anticipated by many that the likes of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, and the Iraqi Resistance would launch large volleys of projectiles to distract the air defenses, yet the missiles, rockets, and drones fired from these fronts ranged from nothing – in the case of Gaza – to limited fire at best. What the limited aid of the regional resistance forces demonstrated was that they were not even needed to enable older-model Iranian missiles to hit their targets.
Despite this obviously being the case and that Tehran did not seek to strike anything beyond military targets, the Israelis and their Western allies managed to concoct a laughable narrative of triumph. As this was the first time the Iranian military had ever launched a direct attack against the Zionist regime, it also managed to test the Israeli capacity to fend off strikes from Iran; under the most favorable circumstances possible.
While the Western corporate media are now promoting the idea of an amazing victory for their air defense capabilities, it is obvious that these rather pathetic distortions of the truth are rooted in upholding the image of the weapons systems used and saving face after receiving a slap from Iran. The military-industrial complex cannot be ignored in analyzing the Western media narrative here, because there is a direct interest in upholding the image of their weapons being the most effective on earth. This is in order to boost, or, at least maintain sales.
An admission of the truth would be a major blow to the military-industrial complex in the West and would also instill even greater fear in the Israeli population. The Zionist regime cannot admit how vulnerable it is in the face of a large regional confrontation with the Islamic Republic and so it has worked to deceive its people, using this incident as a means of attempting to prove defensive competence; something that was greatly undermined on October 7 by the Palestinian resistance.
The Israelis were neither the victims nor were they the victors, they made a stupid mistake and found themselves faced with a difficult situation, prompting their Western allies to urge them not to immediately strike Iran directly. Although the coming weeks and months will provide us with the ability to properly analyze all the effects of Iran’s retaliatory operation, in the meantime, we can assess that a totally new equation has been reached and the governments of the collective West are not happy about it.
Informed Dissent
Medical Dissidents, Agency Capture, and Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s Battle with the FDA over Ivermectin
BY M.C. ARMSTRONG | HONEST MEDIA | APRIL 18, 2024
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden recently sued the FDA for stepping beyond their charter, defaming Ivermectin prescribers, and, thereby, interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. Last month, Dr. Bowden resolved her suit, receiving a substantial undisclosed settlement from the government agency.
Dr. Pierre Kory has been an early and staunch defender of the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 in humans. Kory believes the FDA settled this case with Bowden because they had likely hired the PR firm Weber Shandwick to create the now infamous “horse dewormer” campaign (detailed below) to smear Ivermectin and its proponents. If true, once Bowden’s lawsuit went into the phase of discovery then this information would have been revealed, but we will never know since the case is now settled. Weber Shandwick lists the CDC, Pfizer, and Moderna as their clients.
Honest Media covered Ivermectin and the “horse dewormer” controversy in a letter sent to the Associated Press documenting the lies the AP published about the drug. We have also recently received a trove of emails between Dr. Bowden and the Arizona Mirror, an outlet that smeared Dr. Bowden and her colleague, Dr. Peter McCullough. After reviewing them, we can say that these documents illustrate the media’s contempt for medical dissidents.
But why this fear of letting dissenting doctors speak? There has been virtually no coverage of Dr. Bowden’s case. Where there is documentation, like with Jen Christensen’s reporting for CNN, nobody gives voice to the victor and victim, Dr. Bowden. Why?
Dr. Bowden, a Stanford-trained ear, nose, and throat doctor from Houston, has treated more than 6,000 patients suffering from COVID. She is a strong and intelligent woman of science speaking truth to power. Here, in Dr. Bowden, is that “gutsy woman” who Americans were told to admire by leaders like Hillary Clinton. But there’s an implicit caveat in the cult of Clinton’s “gutsy woman:” Such women are to be ignored (and even pilloried and censored) if they challenge the orthodoxies of the Democratic Party or the DNC-aligned Big Pharma industry.
For prescribing Ivermectin and dissenting against the dominant COVID narratives, Dr. Bowden was forced to resign from Houston Methodist Hospital. And she wasn’t the only doctor to face such consequences. Dr. Robert Apter and Dr. Paul Marik, two other Ivermectin physician-advocates, joined Dr. Bowden in her suit against the FDA. Marik, for his part, was forced to resign from Eastern Virginia Medical School as well as Sentara Norfolk General.
Last month, Dr. Bowden traveled to the Supreme Court to stand in solidarity with activists as SCOTUS listened to Murthy v. Missouri. The Murthy case concerns the suppression of medical dissidents, specifically, and online censorship, more broadly. Dr. Bowden addressed the crowd of protesters about her four-year battle with the captured government agency:
How many COVID patients did they examine? How many histories did they take? How many prescriptions did they write? Zero. None of them have cared for a single COVID patient, but because they had the full support of Big Pharma, the government, and, most importantly, the media, they became the scientific authority on a novel disease they had zero first-hand experience in treating.
Bowden has a point. The FDA’s campaign against doctors such as herself gained purchase with the public, in part, because the agency’s claims were amplified by a mainstream media that is shaped and funded – captured – by Big Pharma. Due to the massive influx of advertising dollars and the perfect storm of misinformation and disinformation summoned by Russiagate, the 2020 election, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public’s trust in the mainstream media has reached record lows. Bowden’s case reveals another example of why the public is justified in its skepticism.
Let the Doctors Speak
I recently spoke with Dr. Bowden about her fight with the government.
“This was a war on Ivermectin,” she said. “But it was also a war on the doctor-patient relationship.”
I asked her what precipitated the suit against the FDA. Dr. Bowden told me that never before in her career had she witnessed interference with the doctor-patient relationship from the FDA or her local pharmacies. When I asked about prescribing a drug that wasn’t FDA-approved, she told me that she’d often prescribed off-label in the past, with no problems, and that she approached Ivermectin, initially, with hesitancy and skepticism. She said she preferred prescribing monoclonal antibodies at the beginning of the pandemic, but sought new options when access to these treatments became restricted.
“I was nervous to start using it,” she said. “Before I started, I looked at the FDA’s website and the toxicity data. Once I was assured that it worked (maybe not as quickly as monoclonal antibodies), I started offering it to patients.”
Not only did Dr. Bowden prescribe Ivermectin to her patients and witness positive results, but she used it herself. She’s had COVID three times. And in every instance of Ivermectin treatment, both with herself and her patients, she observed either efficacy or minimal side effects.
“I haven’t lost one patient due to Ivermectin,” she said.
In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology honored the discovery of Ivermectin with a Nobel Prize. The NIH lauded this “multifaceted drug,” which was largely unknown in American public discourse prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then, suddenly everyone and their grandmother was an expert on the dangers of Ivermectin. Seemingly overnight, the American people absorbed a viral propaganda campaign from the very government agency (the FDA) that they supported with tax dollars. And if you were a doctor or patient seeking this low-cost, award-winning therapeutic treatment, you were suddenly in the crosshairs of the “war on Ivermectin.” This policing of the poor and the independent all started, according to Dr. Bowden, “with the horse tweet.”
On August 8, 2021, the FDA weaponized its social media account to stigmatize physicians like Dr. Bowden and skeptical and underprivileged patients seeking affordable alternative care. The agency issued a tweet with two images: a veterinarian outdoors caring for a horse, coupled with a physician in an office caring for a masked human. The text for the tweet reads: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” This tweet, with its careful use of the colloquial and the second person, supplemented with a juvenile binary logic, became the most popular tweet in FDA history.
Hate wins clicks. Fear creates fog. Shortly after the tweet’s publication and viral propagation, Dr. Bowden’s life came undone.
“I never had a pharmacy deny a prescription before,” she said.
Dr. Bowden’s struggle with the pharmacy was just the tip of the iceberg, revealing the stranglehold Big Pharma now has on health care in America. Dr. Bowden suffered (and still suffers) from vicious attacks online, as well as alienation from her peers. She was forced to resign from her workplace, Houston Methodist Hospital. She explained to me that the “war on Ivermectin” was more vitriolic than anything she’d ever seen before in the discourse on public health. And whereas most doctors bent the knee, stayed silent, and complied with government mandates, Dr. Bowden (and others) fought back. Her case represents what one might call a scientific profile in courage.
What does fighting back look like? Well, for starters, perhaps it begins with telling the truth in public and revealing the whole story of Dr. Bowden’s struggle, along with that of fellow medical dissidents like Dr. Kory, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration), and Dr. Peter McCullough.
In Dr. Bowden’s and Dr. McCullough’s recent email exchanges with the Arizona Mirror, one can see, firsthand, a publication that ignores the opportunity to correct factual errors. The Mirror instead willfully litters its reporting on Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough with misinformation, ad hominem attacks, bizarre references to Qanon, constant allusions to shadowy conspiracy theories, and the slanderous insinuation that Dr. McCullough is antisemitic.
The Association Fallacy
One of the most recurrent disinformation patterns we have witnessed in studying the defamation of populist voices, broadly, and Dr. Bowden’s case, specifically, is what scholars of rhetoric call the association fallacy. In short, the association fallacy describes claims where even oblique social connection to a stigmatized individual or organization (like QAnon) is used to poison the claims of the targeted speaker. Simply associating the terrifying name of the poisonous organization with the speaker scares the reader and creates an irrational – fallacious – connection.
What’s troubling, in the case of the Arizona Mirror reporting, is that Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough have no ties to QAnon. Furthermore, Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough both reached out to Jim Small, the paper’s editor, and politely asked that these fallacies be removed from the Mirror’s articles.
For example, Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough called attention to the Mirror’s repeated use of the ad hominem “anti-vaxxer” to label Dr. McCullough and associate the doctor with the world of “anti-vaxxers.” In their email exchange, Dr. McCullough confides in Small that he has “accepted dozens of vaccines during the course of my life.”
But the Mirror refused to mirror the truth and remove the slur. The Mirror refused to interview these doctors, refused to correct their reporter’s mistakes when alerted by the victims, and, furthermore, sought to defame the doctors through ad hominem attacks and the association fallacy.
To witness how the association fallacy works, consider the following sentence about Dr. Bowden’s colleague, Dr. McCullough, from the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod Macdonald-Evoy: “McCullough has become a darling to those in both Qanon and the broader conspiracy world, appearing regularly on shows like the one hosted by antisemite Stew Peters, who said the COVID vaccine is a bioweapon.”
In one sentence, the reporter has accused the doctor (without directly accusing him) of antisemitism and conspiracy theory simply by virtue of association with other human beings, mostly unnamed, who populate “the broader conspiracy world.”
What is happening to people like Dr. McCullough and Dr. Bowden rarely happens to those in power. It happens to those who challenge power.
The Arizona Mirror and CNN should be ashamed. They punished informed dissent. They refused to contextualize Dr. Bowden’s struggle as part of a subculture of dignified scientists and physicians. They erased and defamed Dr. Bowden and her colleagues. They published fear porn and called it journalism. They left out this gutsy woman’s voice. Honest Media has chosen a different path. We let the doctor speak.
US house speaker announces ‘new axis of evil’
RT | April 19, 2024
In a dramatic break from his party’s hardline conservative base, US House Speaker MIke Johnson this week praised the country’s deep state, named Russia, China, and Iran as an “axis of evil,” and vowed to put his job on the line to funnel more than $60 billion to Kiev.
For months, Johnson has resisted bringing a $95 billion foreign aid bill to a vote, arguing that neither he nor his fellow Republicans could support such a bill – which would give $14 billion in military aid to Israel and $60 billion to Ukraine – without it being tied to an overhaul of US border security.
However, after a series of recent meetings with US intelligence chiefs, Johnson has changed his tune.
“This is a critical time right now, a critical time on the world stage,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten.”
“I believe [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil,” he continued. “I think they’re in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed.”
Johnson’s comments represented a break with the Republican Party’s pro-Trump wing. These supporters of the former president – most prominent among them Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz – view the country’s intelligence agencies as arms of the anti-Trump “deep state,” and have called for the flow of money to Kiev to be halted.
“Fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which is a non-NATO member nation, is not protecting America’s national security interests, it doesn’t protect the United States of America, as a matter of fact, it pushes us closer and closer to world war three,” Greene told journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this month.
Johnson’s reference to an “axis of evil,” however, invokes the more interventionist GOP of the past. Coined by speechwriter David Frum, the phrase was first used by George W. Bush to refer to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton later added Cuba, Libya and Syria to the list.
Despite resistance from some of its Republican members, the House Rules Committee agreed on Thursday to split the foreign aid bill into three separate bills – one each for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The house voted in favor of this move on Friday, leaving Johnson free to schedule a vote on each bill for Saturday, even as Greene filed a motion to remove him from the speakership.
Johnson said on Wednesday that he anticipated such a move, telling reporters that he was willing to “take personal risk” to pass the bills.
‘Tacit Admission of Guilt’: Two Top Journal Editors Decline to Testify Before Congress on Scientific Censorship
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 17, 2024
Only 1 of 3 science journal editors invited to testify before Congress on government interference in the peer-reviewed publication process accepted the invitation this week.
Holden Thorp, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, on Tuesday testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Magdalena Skipper, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of Nature, and Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, “declined to participate,” according to the subcommittee’s website.
“We invited the editors-in-chief of The Lancet, Nature and Science. Only the editor of Science had the courage to come and help us be better,” Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said.
In his opening remarks Tuesday, Wenstrup said, “This subcommittee was established so we can collectively take a look back on the pandemic and see what we can do better for the next time.”
But experts who spoke with The Defender said they were disappointed with the editors who declined to testify — but also with the members of the subcommittee, who they argued failed to address key issues during the hearing.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender, “The committee and Thorp disappointed academic researchers and the public alike.”
McCullough, author of more than 1,000 science journal articles, added:
“Thorp was silent on harmful retractions of fully published papers … This has happened repeatedly for manuscripts describing early treatment(s) and protocols for ambulatory acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and for reports of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, disabilities and deaths.
“Who is behind these retractions? Why are they working to suppress early therapeutic options for patients and scrub any concerns over vaccine safety?”
Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead told The Defender, “It seems very telling” that Skipper and Horton skipped Tuesday’s hearing.
“In the context of SARS-CoV-2 origins, these two journals have been accused of being unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and government agencies,” Mead said. “Such conflicts can impede unbiased scientific reporting and commentaries.”
“Skipper and Horton’s absence would seem to be a tacit admission of guilt on the part of the two journals they represent,” said Mead, who wrote a peer-reviewed paper that was retracted by the journal Cureus after publication.
McCullough said two papers for which he was senior author were retracted. “In both instances, the public and the practicing community were harmed by the intentional omission of critical side effects from the knowledge base on these products.”
Independent journalist Paul D. Thacker has investigated scientific censorship for The Disinformation Chronicle. He told The Defender, “The science and medical journals did not publish the best research available during the pandemic. They just served as gatekeepers to protect people, institutions and corporations in power.”
Thacker added:
“Holden Thorp should resign. He oversaw a news section that ran several fake stories about the pandemic to misinform the scientific community. And Science published studies that have been noted in the peer-reviewed literature for poor statistics to deny a possible lab accident. It’s a historical low point for this publication.
“Nothing will change from these hearings. My only hope is that some researchers will understand how corrupt the scientific process has become and this hearing will spur them to make change.”
‘No place for politics’ or government influence over journals
During his opening remarks, Wenstrup said the hearing was not intended “to see how the government can be more involved in the journal editorial process, but to make sure that the government does not involve itself or influence this process.”
“There’s no denying the awesome power these periodicals as well as their editors hold over the medical and scientific communities,” Wenstrup said. As a result, “there can be no place for politics or inappropriate government influence of journals.”
But Wenstrup accused the journals and their editors of not always being “arbiters of truth.” Instead, he said, they “provide a forum where scientific claims are made, defended, and debated by peer review.” Wenstrup added, “We saw a breakdown of that during the pandemic.”
“Rather than the journals being a wealth of information and opinions about this novel virus of which we knew so little, they helped establish a party line that literally put a chilling effect on scientific research regarding the origins of COVID-19,” Wenstrup said.
Wenstrup cited the “Proximal Origin” paper — published by Nature in March 2020 — as an example, saying that it helped “set a precedent … that the natural origin of COVID-19 was the only plausible theory.”
“Anyone else who had even the inkling of another plausible scientific thought was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist … How is that acceptable in the scientific community when the entire crux of the field is open for debate?” Wenstrup said.
During his opening remarks, Ranking Member Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) contradicted Wenstrup’s statements, claiming the subcommittee has not proven that top government public health officials such as Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins orchestrated the publication of the “Proximal Origin” paper.
‘Clear evidence of malfeasance and dishonesty’
Thorp told members of the subcommittee that he is “extraordinarily proud of the Science journals’ work” and “of the role that the scientific enterprise plays in society.”
He said the Science journals “abide by a rigorous multi-step peer-review process” and “a careful process to ensure that the reviewers do not have a conflict of interest.” This “well-established process,” he said, “was applied consistently to the nearly 9,000 research papers submitted to the Science family of journals related to SARS-CoV-2.”
Thorp referred to a May 2021 letter by virologist Jesse D. Bloom that Science published in its commentary section. “This letter called for a thorough investigation of a lab origin of COVID-19,” Thorp said, citing the commentary as evidence the journal did not conduct viewpoint censorship.
“Publication of this letter turned the tide in the discussion of COVID origins toward considering the possibility of a lab origin,” Thorp said.
Thorp also referred to two papers, by virologists Michael Worobey and Jonathan E. Pekar, published in Science’s research section 2022 that supported but “[did] not conclusively prove the theory of natural origin.” He said the government did not influence the publication of these papers.
“To be clear and to state upfront, no government officials from the White House or the NIH [National Institutes of Health] prompted or participated in the review or editing of [these] papers by us,” Thorp said.
Upon questioning by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) about communications between Fauci, Collins and Thorp in May 2021, Thorp said they supported an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 at the time and did not dissuade Science from publishing the Bloom letter.
Responding to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Thorp acknowledged that opinion pieces “go to 8,000 reporters four days before they’re published.” Because some of these pieces mention government figures, he “from time to time let[s] them know ahead of time that there’s an opinion piece coming that they might get asked about.”
“Scientists are not and never will be perfect,” Thorp said. “We are human, but the scientific method enables us to reach beyond our individual limitations by requiring evidence and constant self-correction. It helped us end the pandemic.”
Referring to the Worobey and Pekar papers, Wenstrup said, “It seems that these studies, much like ‘Proximal Origin’ … were used to stifle debate.”
Similarly, Mead told The Defender that, in recent years, “It seems clear that prestigious high-impact journals like Nature and The Lancet were inclined to prioritize certain narratives or findings that align with the interests of their influential stakeholders.”
“The result has been a suppression of alternative theories or evidence that diverges from these interests, undermining the integrity and objectivity of scientific inquiry,” Mead said, adding that this obstructed the “open exchange of information critical for understanding how this pandemic got created in the first place.”
“The more insidious fundamental issue concerns the biases of the editors themselves and the behind-the-scenes communications they receive from industry and government sources that want them to uphold a specific narrative,” Mead said.
Noting that Democrat members of the subcommittee appeared to defend former government officials like Fauci and Collins during the hearing, Mead said, “It seems fairly clear … that the mega financial relationships between biopharmaceutical companies and the Democratic Party have tainted the conversation around the politicization of science.”
“Why are Fauci and Collins being so assiduously protected by the Democrats when there is clear evidence of malfeasance and dishonesty on their parts?” Mead asked. “This seems to be yet another attempt to whitewash what happened during the pandemic.”
Deleted Thorp tweet contradicts his congressional testimony
Wenstrup questioned Thorp about a now-deleted March 2023 tweet referring to the origins of COVID-19, in which Thorp said, “One side has scientific evidence, the other has a mediocre episode of Homeland,” noting that “the tweet appears to contradict your testimony today.”
“I was not as careful expressing my personal opinions on my personal Twitter page as I should have,” Thorp said. “That does happen on social media. From time to time, I’ve gotten off Twitter and I highly recommend that.”
Wenstrup also asked Thorp about a November 2021 editorial in which he claimed that research allegedly conducted by the University of North Carolina, the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses did not occur.
Thorp said he is under pressure to write a 720-word editorial “every two weeks” and, at the time, he “was going from what was reported in news stories” about the issue.
Mead told The Defender that Thorp’s admission that he was basing his editorials on information reported in news stories “is quite alarming.”
“Relying solely on mainstream news reports rather than direct investigation through primary sources and interviews with Ralph Baric and other researchers risks perpetuating misinformation and totally undermines the integrity of scientific inquiry,” Mead said.
‘Redactions were never mentioned’ during the hearing
“The government will never earn the trust back from the Americans by deeming all information that it doesn’t like as misinformation, nor will it deserve that trust if that’s what our government is doing,” Wenstrup said in his closing remarks.
But experts told The Defender that there was much that Wenstrup and other members of the subcommittee left out of Tuesday’s hearing.
“Congress needs to explore ways to cut off taxpayer funding for journals that do not want to be accountable to taxpayers,” Thacker said.
“The behavior of Nature has been atrocious, both in terms of the biased news they ran during the pandemic and the corrupt studies they published, such as the ‘Proximal Origin’ paper, which has all the hallmarks of ghostwriting that I looked into while leading congressional investigations,” Thacker added.
Mead said the relationships of key virologists with Fauci and the Wuhan Institute of Virology “should have been discussed openly” during the hearing.
“Retractions were never mentioned in the context of scientific journals and censorship by those journals,” Mead added. “Problems with the peer review process need to be more fully fleshed out, such as how to avoid overly biased reviewers being skewed in a particular direction to suit the editors’ own biases.”
“It would be interesting to find out how much of Science’s revenue depends on pharmaceutical advertising,” he added.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Australia’s Communications Minister Tells People To Report Social Media Posts to the Chief Censor
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2024
Australia’s Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has urged citizens to report content posted on social sites to what’s known as the country’s “chief censor,” the eSafety commissioner.
Appearing on the ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast, Rowland explained to host Craig Reucassel what the current government thinks should be done about “misinformation.”
Often-repeated assertions were heard that there is dangerous misinformation on social media along with exposure to “reactions and rumors” that traumatize users – because, for example, they are able to view breaking news videos “with no censorship.”
(This last bit is what rubs Reucassel the wrong way, and it has to do with the recent Sydney stabbing attacks that he would evidently like “nicely packaged” first, in that way controlling how the public learns about an event and reacts to it.)
And so, clearly, both the minister and the host agree that the government should step in (even more) and intervene, the only question is, how?
One of the ideas is to come up with yet another “voluntary” (voluntary as in, “or else…”) code of conduct for tech companies, probably along the lines of what is already happening in the EU.
The purpose would be to get platforms to remove even more content that’s labeled as “misinformation.”
Right now, the eCommissioner is the official who can order comments removed, but a “voluntary code” would obviously expedite things.
In the meantime, since according to the minister, platforms aren’t “doing enough,” she encouraged citizens to report content to the eSafety commissioner, turning themselves into some sort of “government censorship helpers.”
Reucassel exhibited quite the zeal for censorship, remarking during the conversation that ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast flagged content on TikTok (also related to one of the Sydney stabbings), but accused the platform of not removing it.
The host revealed that the media outlet told TikTok, “We’re taking down all this footage that’s happened in the Wakeley stabbing, we’re trying to regulate that kind of stuff.”
But apparently this effort, joined by the eSafety commissioner, did not produce results – or as Reucassel said, social platforms are not sufficiently “proactive.”
Even if videos have a sensitive content warning and people have to click and choose to still watch it – Rowland doesn’t think that’s “enough.”
Rowland agreed.
“They need to do more. Keeping Australians safe online, protecting particularly children and vulnerable people from being exposed to this content is a collective responsibility.”
And that’s when listeners got “encouraged” to report content to eSafety.
NATO ‘one step away’ from sending troops to Ukraine – Orban
RT | April 19, 2024
The leaders of the EU and NATO are potentially ready to deploy forces to Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed on Friday. Brussels sees the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as its “own” and is failing to consider the risks arising from its ever-deeper involvement, he warned.
The mood of EU leaders is “one of war,” Orban told a gathering of his Fidesz Party ahead of the EU Parliament elections. “There is a pro-war majority in Brussels today,” he said, adding that the bloc’s politics “are dominated by the logic of war.” EU politicians are already so invested in the conflict that they fail to see the flaws in their strategy, the prime minister argued.
Despite all the “money and weapons, the situation is not improving [for Kiev], in fact, it is getting worse… We are one step away from the West sending troops to Ukraine,” Orban warned. “This is a vortex of war that can drag Europe into its depths. Brussels is playing with fire.”
Budapest will not let itself be dragged into the hostilities, and “will not enter… the war on either side,” the prime minister pledged, adding that his country “must stand for peace” everywhere, including in “Brussels, Washington, the UN and NATO.”
“We don’t want war, and we don’t want Hungary to become a toy of great powers again,” Orban stated.
The idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine has been repeatedly floated by Western leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron first raised it in February, saying “all options are possible.”
Macron has since doubled down, stating that there are “no limits” to support for Kiev. His words initially alarmed some NATO allies, who quickly denied having such plans. However, the French leader did receive backing from certain members of the US-led military bloc.
In March, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Russia’s military operation in Ukraine requires an “asymmetric escalation” on the part of the West. Warsaw’s top diplomat also called the idea of a NATO presence in Ukraine “not unthinkable.”
Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said earlier in April that every NATO member already has military personnel in Ukraine operating as advisers or instructors. Last week, former British minister of state for the armed forces James Heappey told Sky News that sending NATO forces to Ukraine did “deserve consideration.”
Moscow has repeatedly warned that deploying NATO troops in Ukraine would bring the US-led bloc to the brink of a full-blown conflict with Russia. President Vladimir Putin stated in March that it would be “one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”
There’s bad news from Brussels for Polish homeowners
BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | APRIL 19, 2024
Every new-build home in Poland must be net-zero compliant on carbon emissions from 2030 onwards, thanks to a new law from Brussels.
All other buildings are expected to achieve this status by 2050; by 2040, there will also be a ban on heating homes with coal and gas, and in just three years these fuels will become more expensive to use in homes.
Deputy Minister of Finance Paweł Karbownik, representing Poland at the Council of the European Union, abstained from voting. Last week, the Council adopted the directive on the energy efficiency of buildings, imposing the obligation to renovate and universally install solar panels, as well the removal of coal and gas furnaces.
Four others also abstained, including those from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while ministers from Italy and Hungary expressed their opposition. The regulations were supported by 20 countries in all.
Now, Donald Tusk’s government has two years to develop detailed legislation that will implement one of the most controversial and expensive EU directives.
It’s not only a problem of the huge cost of the renovations for old houses, apartment blocks, and public buildings, but also about the stringent deadlines for implementing the regulations and the requirements to install heat pumps and solar panels.
Former Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska noted that the former conservative government in Warsaw led by Mateusz Morawiecki appealed against the draft directive to the European Court of Justice. But the left-liberal Tusk government’s representative did not dare to vote against it, so the question arises whether the government is even aware of what is happening and what the consequences of implementing all these measures will be for the economy and society.
These regulations are unenforceable, unrealistic, and very expensive. I am only afraid that before we realize that it is impossible to implement them, we will have spent hundreds of billions of zlotys anyway.
The implications are that Poland only has nine years to renovate its oldest and most emissive housing. The challenge is enormous, since even in Polish metropolises there are entire estates of uninsulated houses, and in smaller towns and villages, many houses date back to the 1950s and 1960s and are heated by coal.
A similar scale of challenges and the requirement to reduce energy consumption apply to non-residential buildings, such as offices and schools, cinemas and theaters, but also health centers.
Taking into account the rising costs of building materials, thoroughly modernizing a house or block of flats will be expensive. Installing a heat pump in a single-family house, depending on its type, costs at least 40-70,000 zlotys (approximately €9,300-16,300), and solar panels at least 20-30,000 zlotys (approximately €4,600-7000). Therefore, the owners of a house now heated with coal or gas will have to spend well over 100,000 zlotys (over €23,200) to comply with the directive.
US to Allocate $40Mln in Defense Aid to Argentina Wishing to Be NATO’s Partner – Embassy
Sputnik – 19.04.2024
The United States will allocate $40 million to support defense modernization of Argentina, which has declared its intention to become NATO’s global partner, the US Embassy in Buenos Aires said.
On Thursday, Argentine Defense Minister Luis Alfonso Petri said that Buenos Aires wanted to become NATO’s global partner and had already submitted a corresponding request. NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana welcomed the request, saying that closer political and practical cooperation could benefit both parties.
“The United States is proud to announce that it is providing $40 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to support Argentina’s defense modernization,” the embassy said in a statement released on Thursday.
The diplomatic mission noted that such support is provided only to the US’s important partners.
Argentina will be able to purchase defense products, training services, and improve interaction thanks to US military aid. The funds will also contribute to Argentina’s purchase of F-16 fighter jets, the statement read.
In November 2023, Javier Milei won the runoff presidential election in Argentina. During the presidential campaign, Milei spoke against joining BRICS and cooperating with China, Brazil and Russia, and advocated a foreign policy oriented toward Israel and the United States.
Operation True Promise
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | April 19, 2024
In what CNN reported was the largest drone attack in world history, the Islamic Republic of Iran struck at the Zionist entity on Saturday, April 13. It was in response to the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus carried out a fortnight before. CNN also noted it was an operation which “seemed planned to minimize casualties”, in stark contrast to the previous six months of the Zionist genocide in Gaza.
According to the Zionists, the operation was ineffective in that 99% of the drones and missiles launched were intercepted. But of course, as the experience of the Resistance Axis shows, the most efficient way to defeat the Iron Dome system is to overwhelm and confuse it.
In addition, however, it is plain that the missiles which did strike home – in particular at the Nevatim air base near Bir Al-Sabe’ and at the Ramon base some 90 km to the south – caused significant damage to the base as satellite imagery showed. F35 aircraft departed from here to bomb the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Western media are very reluctant to even mention the other major target – an intelligence base for Israeli military intelligence, known as Unit 8200. The Zionists tried their best to suppress all mention of the attack on the top secret base, which as the Israeli press has previously noted, is the “first line of defense in preventing surprise attacks” and is an outpost that has been labeled “the eyes of the nation.”
The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammed Bagheri noted that it was from there that the operation against Iran in Damascus was directed. The outpost ”is located literally inside the mountain, in tunnels dug in the 1980s” in the illegally occupied Golan Heights. It’s not only the Palestinian Resistance that has tunnels.
The Islamic Republic quoted the right to self-defence from Article 51 of the UN Charter. The Russian Foreign Ministry cited Article 51 in its own response, failing to accede to Zionist demands to condemn Iran. China too did not condemn Iran, calling its response “restrained”.
Though it was condemned by the West, some Western figures conceded its legitimacy, albeit grudgingly. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was asked what the UK government would do if a hostile nation flattened one of Britain’s consulates. He answered, “We would take very strong action”. He also appeared to simply take issue with the proportionality of the strike, saying, “Countries have a right to respond when they feel they have suffered an aggression. Of course they do.”
Operation True Promise was the first direct military strike on “Israel” by the Iran. It’s unlikely to be the last. It utilised a tiny fraction of the available armaments and it showed that it can successfully penetrate the much vaunted air defence systems of the Zionist entity.
The Iranian operation was widely welcomed in the region. In Tehran, crowds gathered in Palestine Square to celebrate. They lit flares and set off fireworks. The Iranian Parliament stood as one to cheer the strike.
Meanwhile, Palestinians gathered in the West Bank chanting “God is Great” as Iranian missiles soared overhead. In Jordan, while the government collaborated with the Zionist entity, the citizens were out on the streets.
In Gaza, there were relieved observations that for the first time in months there were no drones overhead, and bombing in Rafah and the rest of Gaza was suspended.
The next day, three bakeries opened their doors in Gaza for the first time in six months.
These had reportedly been authorised by the Zionist regime, itself a scandalous indication that they had been forcibly closed by the Zionists. In the West Bank, Palestinians took matters into their own hands and tore down sections of the apartheid wall.
Unfortunately, genocidal Jewish settlers also launched a mass pogrom against the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. The sooner the settlers are driven out, the sooner peace can come. But the Iranian retaliation has certainly given confidence and increased morale to Palestinians all over the world.
Overall, it is clear that the Iranian response was a major strategic defeat for the Zionists. While they crowed about 99% of the drones and missiles being intercepted, it is clear that the main targets were hit. But the degree of destruction caused was also not the point of this demonstration. The point was to indicate that despite the much-vaunted air defence systems and the direct military support given by the US, UK, and Jordan, with indirect help from France and Saudi Arabia, among others, the Islamic Republic can evade the defences of the Zionist entity at will. As a result, a “new equation” of deterrence is being spoken of. It was reported that Iran “decided to create a new equation,” said the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, in a television interview on Sunday. “From now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, figures, and citizens anywhere, we will retaliate from Iran.”
An immediate indication of the new equation is that it was reported that the planned invasion of Rafah had been postponed. Amos Yadlin, a former director of Israeli military intelligence who advises opposition leader and war cabinet member Benny Gantz, reportedly said, “Last night’s attack could lead to a strategic change in the war and even to its end,”
Another sign was that the US let it be known that it “is privately telling officials there: If Israel strikes back militarily, it will do so alone.” The goal for Iran, as British commentator Batool Subeiti has argued, was to strike back but not to provoke a regional war, as that will simply take attention away from Gaza, where it needs to remain.
From the river to the sea – a call for rightful decolonisation
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | April 19, 2024
Israeli media is celebrating another win for its narrative, as the US Congress passed a resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, as anti-Semitic. The resolution’s text reads like a series of snippets that supposedly justify the anti-Semitic nature of the slogan but, instead, comes across as Israel’s exhausting propaganda that shields it from accountability for colonialism, war crimes and even genocide.
The text is typical of the usual conflation between Jews and Israel, purporting that the slogan promotes violence “against the state of Israel and the Jewish community globally”. It also partially states, “Whereas the slogan ‘‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’’ is an anti-Semitic call to arms with the goal of the eradication of the State of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” In political terms, this would mean decolonisation – the dissolution of a colonial structure which the international community legitimised and recognised, despite it being built upon the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. There is no anti-Semitism in decolonisation – only a political right.
To allegedly prove a point, the resolution brings in Iraq’s former President, Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and several Hamas members, besides peddling several allegations that have since been proven false, such as Hamas beheading babies on 7 October. The resolution would only be taken seriously by Israel’s allies, who do not question the Zionist manipulation of anti-Semitism to suit its expansionist agenda. Even with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
How come a slogan – a resistance call that is not backed up with any tangible resistance support for Palestine – prove to be dangerous in the bigger scheme of things, when Israel is eliminating the Palestinian people from Gaza?
“Hateful rhetoric obstructs peace efforts”, the resolution partly states. And genocide does not? Or is US Congress now advocating for genocide for peace, in much the same way Israel would prefer peace – without Palestinians?
The slogan has been used by allegedly “violent protestors” – where is the proof? Or is the Zionist construction of violence one where the colonised and their supporters are calling upon political rights to be recognised? The resolution claims that the slogan “perpetuates hatred against the state of Israel and the Jewish people”. Another false claim – Israel has perpetuated hatred against itself and any hate spilling over for Jewish people is a result of Israel equating Judaism and Zionism together, despite the difference. To put it simply, Jews are objects in the eyes of Israel – tools for colonial expansion to be used and exploited. Jews who are not Zionist recognise this fact, just as Christians who are Zionist do not, for example.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” speaks of Palestine without Zionism, of Palestine with roots in a history that Israel is frantically trying to eradicate. There is no violence in Palestinians remembering their land. No incitement but an assertion of what rightfully belongs to Palestinians. Colonialism breeds the need for anti-colonial struggle, and that is where the focus should shift – on the anomaly of a European colonial ideology thieving land that is not theirs, and committing genocide to retain it.
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Book Review & Summary
Calling of an Angel: The True Story of Rene Caisse and an Indian Herbal Medicine Called Essiac (1988)
Dr. Gary L. Glum – 30 Q&As – Book Review & Summary
Lies are Unbekoming | October 17, 2026
On June 10, 1975, Dr. Chester Stock, a vice president at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, wrote to a Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse: “Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated with Essiac.” The sentence sat in a letter from one of the world’s largest private cancer research centers, concerning an herbal tea an elderly English woman had learned from an Ojibwa medicine man at a northern Ontario mining camp in the 1890s. The tests were terminated the following year after Sloan-Kettering admitted, in sworn affidavit three years later, that they had prepared the injectable solution improperly from the dried material supplied — freezing and thawing the herb rather than boiling it as Rene had instructed. By the time Calling of an Angel was published in 1988, Rene Caisse had been dead for a decade, having treated thousands of cancer patients across fifty-six years in her Bracebridge, Ontario kitchen, never charging a fee, and refusing every offer — from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the National Cancer Institute, Merck, Parke Davis, and private corporations dangling contracts up to $1 million — to release her formula before the medical establishment admitted her remedy had merit. … continue
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