What really happened on 7th October?
Evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for some of their own civilian deaths; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories to justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By Robert Inlakesh | The Cradle | October 24, 2023
Two weeks after the Hamas breakout assault on Israel on 7 October, a clearer picture of what happened – who died, and who killed – is now beginning to emerge.
Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the Israelis killed that day were in fact combatants – soldiers or police.
In the interim, two weeks of blanket western media reporting that Hamas allegedly killed around 1,400 Israeli civilians during its 7 October military attack has served to inflame emotions and create the climate for Israel’s unconstrained destruction of the Gaza Strip and its civilian population.
Accounts of the Israeli death toll have been filtered and shaped to suggest that a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day, with babies, children, and women the main targets of a terror attack.
Now, detailed statistics on the casualties released by the Israeli daily Haaretz paint a starkly different picture. As of 23 October, the news outlet has released information on 683 Israelis killed during the Hamas-led offensive, including their names and locations of their deaths on 7 October.
Of these, 331 casualties – or 48.4 percent – have been confirmed to be soldiers and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as rescue service members, and the remaining 339 are ostensibly considered to be civilians.
While this list is not comprehensive and only accounts for roughly half of Israel’s stated death toll, almost half of those killed in the melee are clearly identified as Israeli combatants.
There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three, which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far, seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and 17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults.
Age distribution of the Israelis killed during Hamas’ October 7 operation (as of 23 October).
The numbers and proportion of Palestinian civilians and children among those killed by Israeli bombardment over the past two weeks – over 5,791 killed, including 2,360 children and 1,292 women, and more than 18,000 injured – are far higher than any of these Israeli figures from the events of 7 October.
Revisiting the scene
The daring Hamas-led military operation, codenamed Al-Aqsa Flood, unfolded with a dramatic dawn raid at approximately 6:30 AM (Palestine time) on 7 October. This was accompanied by a cacophony of sirens breaking the silence of occupied Jerusalem, signaling the start of what became an extraordinary event in the occupation state’s 75-year history.
As per the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, around 1,500 Palestinian fighters crossed the formidable Gaza-Israel separation barrier.
However, this breakout was not limited to Hamas forces alone; numerous armed fighters belonging to other factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) later breached the armistice line, along with some Palestinians unaffiliated with any organized militia.
As it became apparent this was no ordinary resistance operation, hundreds of videos quickly flooded social media, most of which have been viewed by The Cradle, depicting dead Israeli troops and settlers, fierce gunfire battles between various parties, and Israelis being taken captive into Gaza.
These videos were either taken on the phones of Israelis, or were released by Palestinian fighters filming their own operation. It wasn’t until hours later that more gruesome and downright dubious allegations began to surface.
Unsubstantiated allegations of ‘Hamas atrocities’
Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the UN, was the first Israeli of note to spread the claim that there were reports of “Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street.”
She posted this on X at 9:18 PM (Palestine time), on 7 October, although an op-ed Klompa published with Newsweek at 12:28 AM (Palestine time), on 8 October, made no mention of any sexual violence.
Klompas is also the co-founder of Boundless Israel, a “think-action tank” that works “to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat Jew-hatred.” An “unapologetically Zionist” charitable group that works to promote Israeli narratives on social media.
The one case touted as proof of rape was that of a young German-Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was filmed face down in the back of a pickup truck and was widely assumed dead.
It was unclear whether the fighters filmed with Louk in the Gaza-bound vehicle were members of Hamas, as they do not sport the uniforms or insignia of the Al-Qassam troops identifiable in other Hamas videos – some even wore casual civilian clothing and sandals.
Later, her mother claimed to have evidence that her daughter was still alive, but had suffered a severe head wound. This rings true with information released by Hamas that indicated Louk was being treated for her injuries at an unspecified Gaza hospital.
Complicating matters further, on the day these rape allegations arose, Israelis would not have had access to this information. Their armed forces had not yet entered many, if not most, of the areas liberated by the resistance and were still engaged in armed clashes with them on multiple fronts.
Nevertheless, these rape claims took on a life of their own, with even US President Joe Biden alleging, during a speech days later, that Israeli women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies” by Hamas fighters. It is important to note that The Forward’s article on 11 October reported that the Israeli military acknowledged they had no evidence of such allegations at that point.
When the army later made its own allegations of decapitations, foot amputations, and rape, Reuters pointed out that “the military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.” To date, there is no credible evidence of these atrocities that has been presented.
Other outrageous allegations, such as the story of Hamas “beheading 40 babies‘ made headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. Even Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies.” The claims trace back to Israeli reserve settler and soldier David Ben Zion, who has previously incited violent riots against Palestinians and called for the West Bank town of Huwara to be wiped out. No evidence was ever produced to support these claims and the White House itself confirmed later that Joe Biden had never seen such photos.
The Hamas plan
There is little to no credible evidence that Palestinian fighters had a plan to – or deliberately sought to – kill or harm unarmed Israeli civilians on 7 October. From the available footage, we witness them engaging primarily with armed Israeli forces, accounting for the deaths of hundreds of occupation soldiers. As Qassam Brigades’ Spokesman Abu Obeida made clear on 12 October:
“Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to destroy the Gaza Division (an Israeli army unit on Gaza’s borders) which was attacked at 15 points, followed by attacking 10 further military intervention points. We attacked the Zikim site and several other settlements outside the Gaza Division headquarters.”
Abu Obeida and other resistance officials claim that the other key objective of their operation was to take Israeli prisoners that they could exchange for the approximately 5,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention centers, many of whom are women and children.
Hamas Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Saleh Al-Arouri, in an interview after the operation, stressed: “We have a large and qualitative number and senior officers. All we can say now is that the freedom of our prisoners is at the doorstep.”
Both sides play this game: Since the start of its military assault on Gaza, Israel has rounded up and imprisoned more than 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. To date there have been 38 prisoner exchange deals between the resistance factions and Tel Aviv – deals that Israelis often resist to the very last minute.
While these kinds of testimonies trickle out, reports are emerging that Israeli authorities have dialed up the mistreatment, torture, and even killing of Palestinian prisoners in their custody – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which ironically, a non-state actor like Hamas appears to have followed to the letter.
In relation to the events of 7 October, there are certainly some videos depicting possibly unarmed Israelis, killed in their vehicles or at entrances to facilities, so that Palestinian troops could gain access.
There are also videos which show the fighters engaging in shootouts with armed Israeli forces, where there were unarmed Israelis taking cover in between, in addition to videos of fighters shooting toward houses and throwing grenades into fortified areas. Eyewitness testimony also suggests grenades were thrown into bomb shelters, though by whom is unclear.
Even at the Israeli “peace rave”, which has been cited as the single deadliest attack committed by Palestinian fighters during their operation, videos emerged that appeared to show Israeli forces opening fire through a crowd of unarmed civilians, toward targets they believed to be Hamas members. ABC News also reported that an Israeli tank had headed to the site of the festival.
An Israeli massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri?
In its report on the events at Be’eri Kibbutz, ABC News photographed artillery pieces resembling Israeli munitions outside a bombed-out home. The reporter, David Muir, mentioned that Hamas fighters, covered in plastic bags, were found in the aftermath.
Additionally, videos of the scene show homes that appear to have been struck by munitions that Hamas fighters did not possess. Muir reported that about 14 people were held hostage in a building by Palestinian fighters.
A Hebrew-language Haaretz article published on 20 October, which only appears in English in a must-read Mondoweiss article, paints a very different story of what went down in Be’eri that day. A Kibbutz resident who had been away from his home – whose partner was killed in the melee – reveals stunning new details:
“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night (9 October) and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
Photo evidence of the destruction in Be’eri corroborates his account. Only the heavy munitions of the Israeli army could have destroyed residential homes in this manner.
Aftermath or Be’eri Kibbutz after the fire power of the two sides ceased
Hamas behaviors: Evidence vs allegations
Yasmin Porat, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri, said in an interview for an Israeli radio-show, hosted by state-broadcaster Kan, that Israeli forces “eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” going on to state that “there was very, very heavy crossfire” and even noted tank shelling.
Porat had attended the Nova rave and testified to the humane treatment throughout different interviews she conducted with Israeli media. She explained that when she was held prisoner, the Hamas fighters “guarded us”, telling her in Hebrew to “Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.” She also added the following:
“They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”
Increasingly, and to the horror of some Israeli officials and news outlets, Israeli eyewitnesses and survivors of the bloodshed are testifying that they were treated well by Palestinian fighters. On 24 October, Israeli state broadcaster Kan bemoaned the fact that prisoner Yocheved Lifshitz, released by Hamas the day before, was allowed to make statements live on air.
As she was handed over to Red Cross intermediaries, the elderly Israeli female captive was caught on camera turning back to squeeze the hand of her Hamas captor in her last goodbyes. Lifshitz’s live broadcast, in which she spoke about her two-week ordeal, “humanized” her Hamas captors even further as she recounted her daily life with the fighters:
“They were very friendly toward us. They took care of us. We were given medicine and were treated. One of the men with us was badly injured in a motorbike accident. Their (Hamas) paramedics looked after his wounds, he was given medicine and antibiotics. The people were friendly. They kept the place very clean. They were very concerned about us.”
More questions than answers
It is essential to recognize that in many reports by western journalists on the ground, the majority of information regarding the actions of Hamas fighters comes from the Israeli army – an active participant in the conflict.
Emerging evidence now indicates that there is a high probability, especially due to the scale of the infrastructural damage, that Israeli military forces could have deliberately killed captives, fired on incorrect targets, or mistaken Israelis for Palestinians in their firefights. If the only source of information for a serious claim made is the Israeli army, then it has to be taken into account that they have reason to conceal cases of friendly fire.
Israeli friendly fire was rampant, even in the days that followed, from an army with very little actual combat experience. In the city of Ashkelon (Askalan) on 8 October, Israeli soldiers shot dead and shouted insults at the body of a man they believed to have been a Hamas fighter, yet later realized they had executed a fellow Israeli. This is just one of three such examples of friendly fire in one day, resulting in the killing of Israelis by their own troops.
Amid the fog of war, parties to the conflict have different perspectives on what occurred during the initial raid and its aftermath. It’s not disputed that Palestinian armed groups inflicted significant losses on the Israeli military, but there will be plenty of ongoing debate regarding everything else in the weeks and months to come.
An independent, impartial, international investigation is urgently needed, one that has access to information from all sides involved in the conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans will agree to this, which itself suggests that Tel Aviv has much to conceal.
In the meantime, Palestinian civilians in Gaza endure ongoing, indiscriminate attacks with the most sophisticated heavy weapons in existence, living under the persistent threat of forced and potentially irreversible displacement. This Israeli air blitz was made possible only by the flood of unsubstantiated ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories that media began to circulate on and after 7 October.
Russia’s top lawmaker slams Biden’s ‘new world order’ plan
Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin © Sputnik / Vladimir Fedorenko
RT | October 24, 2023
Russia’s State Duma chairman has compared the US government to a company executive, who has run a business into the ground and now wants to try again with a new corporation.
Vyacheslav Volodin was reacting on Tuesday to remarks by US President Joe Biden, who said last week that a new international order was needed, and that Washington can “unite the world in ways that it never has been”.
The speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament said that just as a corporate manager with a bankruptcy on their hands would not be trusted with someone else’s money again, “nobody in the world will accept Biden and the US, who have destroyed the global security system, to build a new world order in their interests.”
The Russian official claimed the US has inflicted harm on the world “in attempting to save its hegemony,” causing a disruption of international commerce through trade wars, a deep crisis in the European Union, tensions over Taiwan, and hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“Attempts to reshape [the world] to fit the American mold will not lead to anything good and can only result in a global disaster,” Volodin warned, urging the US leader to be isolated “before he unleashes a world war”.
Biden’s “new world order” remark came on Friday, while he was meeting with donors as part of his re-election campaign. He touted the US as an indispensable nation and exemplified whipping up support of Washington-friendly governments for Ukraine as an example of his administration’s unifying endeavors.
He insisted that the US was up to the task of leading humanity, and that there has never been a crisis from which the country did not emerge stronger.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Biden was correct in saying that the old system of global governance has become obsolete, but that Moscow rejects the notion that another “American-centric world order” should replace it. Peskov stressed that Russia supports a multipolar world, in which the US would be one stakeholder among many equals.
Europe is suffering from ‘war psychosis’ in its unyielding military support for Ukraine: Hungary’s foreign minister
MAGYAR NEMZET | October 24, 2023
Instead of looking for ways to foster peace, the European Union’s current and planned actions only serve to extend the war, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said after a meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.
“It is all about war, there is no peace. Brussels is still pro-war, as shown by the fact that they would give €5 billion a year for arms over the next four years, which also shows that they expect the war to continue,” Szijjártó said. “No one in Western Europe is talking about peace, Europe is suffering from a war psychosis.”
He added that it is clear there will be no solution to the war on the battlefield. Europeans expect nothing but destruction and death, and the conditions for peace are getting worse.
“Taking arms production and training to Ukraine would drag the EU into an immediate war. We find this totally unacceptable. Nor should arms transfers be just about supplying the Ukrainians with as many weapons as possible, because the EU is not a security organization, and justifying a country’s future accession on security grounds is completely unacceptable,” Szijjártó added.
Energy sanctions are hurting Hungary, Szijjártó claimed
Speaking of the EU’s bans on Russian fossil fuels, Szijjártó said that Hungarians do not want to give up energy security in the name of some ill-defined ideals.
“On energy supplies: We didn’t talk nonsense by saying that it’s not a political issue, it’s a physical issue. We are not willing to risk the security of Hungary’s energy supply or the results of cuts in tariffs. Hungarians are not responsible for the war, we are not willing to make them pay for it,” he said.
The Hungarian foreign minister accused other member states of being covert about their dealings with Russia, unlike Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who has been honest and transparent through his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing.
“My colleague, the Lithuanian foreign minister was blunt. He said that he expected me to clarify whether what is being said here is our own position or the Kremlin’s position. This is unacceptable to me. I reassured him that Hungary is a sovereign country with a sovereign opinion,” Szijjártó explained.
“As long as this government is in power, we are not prepared to accept any opinion from anywhere, from any geographical direction, whether there is a lot of water between us or not. I said to my Lithuanian colleague that I hope he can say the same thing with his hand on his heart,” he added.
UK Government Caught Surveilling Social Media of Teaching Assistants and Librarians
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 23, 2023
A startling revelation indicates that the UK government has substantially amplified its surveillance of the online activity of educators. Ranging from leading education experts to teaching assistants and librarians earning modest salaries, the magnifying glass of surveillance closely monitors posts critiquing education policies. The discovery was made by The Observer, revealing that the Department for Education is keeping extensive records of such posts, something that we’ve previously covered.
This revelation highlights the burning issues of free speech and censorship, causing widespread disquiet among the educational community. The surveillance of educators’ online activity portrays a scenario where dissent or criticism of government policy is not only surveilled but also cataloged, potentially affecting the educators’ professional careers.
Educators across the UK have demonstrated a wave of shock and anger in response to the discovery. Many have submitted Subject Access Requests [SARs], a Right to Access provision within the General Data Protection Regulation, requiring the Department of Education to disclose the information it holds under their names. These educators found file lengths spanning up to 60 pages, documenting their tweets and comments opposing the government’s policies and criticizing the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Nikki Cleveland, a higher-level teaching assistant and primary school librarian, was astounded to find that even her tweets concerning issues such as inadequate funding for school libraries and criticisms of Ofsted had been flagged and stored by the Department. Her discovery has only raised her cynicism towards the government and the Department of Education, questioning their apathy towards the challenges schools face daily.
This disturbing surveillance operation extends to more than just educators. Jon Biddle, a primary school teacher and English lead, reported that “dozens of other teachers” he knew had also discovered their accounts were under scrutiny. The scope and depth of this surveillance has led to growing skepticism about the Department’s priorities and resource allocation.
Cases have also surfaced of the Department attempting to silence voices critical of government policy. Early years specialists Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury have previously faced attempts from the Department to cancel their conference due to their earlier critiques. Similarly, Dr. Mine Conkbayir, a renowned early childhood author, was allegedly threatened with funding withdrawal for a conference she was scheduled to keynote, due to her criticisms. As she recounts, the Department also attempted to curtail her talk duration and verify her speech contents, pulling the strings of academic dialogue.
In response to these revelations, the Department has chosen to remain largely opaque, stating that it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases.
Genocide Unfolding
By Craig Murray | October 23, 2023
Tonight has been the most violent bombardment of Gaza so far, notably concentrated on precisely the areas into which Israel ordered the population to evacuate. I find it almost impossible to believe that this genocide is under way with the active support of almost all western governments.
I want to look at two questions – what will happen internationally, and what is happening in western societies.
Israel plainly is on the course of further escalation and intends to kill many thousands more Palestinians. More than 2,000 Palestinian children alone have now been killed by Israeli aerial attack in the last fortnight.
Gaza has no defence from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment.
The population of Gaza are simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip still further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?
That appears to be the end game: expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza. That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance. This territorial ambition of course accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank which is currently under way, with the world paying almost no attention. It is very hard indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas at the moment.
Netanyahu’s political stock within Israel is so low, that the only way he can recover is by making a major step towards the complete genocide of the Palestinian people and the achievement of Greater Israel Netanyahu now knows that there is no violence against Palestinians so extreme that the western political elite will not support it under the mantra of “Israel’s right to self-defence”.
I do not see any salvation for Gaza coming from Hezbollah. If Hezbollah were to employ their vaunted missile strike capabilities, the moment to do it would be now when the Israeli armour is drawn up in massive parks outside Gaza, a perfect target even for longer range missiles of limited accuracy. Once dispersed into Gaza the armour would be far harder for Hezbollah to hit at range.
Hezbollah is even better equipped now to fight a defensive war in Lebanon than it was when it defeated the Israeli advance in 2006. But it is not configured or equipped to fight an aggressive ground war into Israel, which would be a disaster. It also has to worry about hostile militias in its rear. If Hezbollah can provoke an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, that would enable it to inflict substantial casualties, but Israel is not going to do that in a way that detracts from its capabilities in Gaza.
Iran has greatly improved its diplomatic position in the last year. The Chinese-brokered lessening of hostility with Saudi Arabia has potential to revolutionise Middle Eastern politics, and the benefits of this will not lightly be laid aside by Tehran. Iran had also made real progress with the Biden administration in overcoming the blind hostility of the Trump years.
Iran has no desire to throw away these gains. That is why it seems to me extremely improbable that Iran had endorsed the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Iran is now restraining Hezbollah. But there are limits to the patience of Iran. The extraordinary truth is that Iran is probably the only state under discussion here with a genuine humanitarian concern for the lives of Palestinians. If the genocide unfolds as horribly as I anticipate, Iran can be pushed too far.
That said, I offer just a cautionary footnote that Saudi Arabia is not, under MBS, quite the reliable US/Israeli puppet it has historically been. I do not have much time for MBS, as you know, but his high opinion of the importance of the Al Saud and their leadership role among arabs, makes him a different proposition to his predecessor.
Saudi Arabia has leverage. The Biden administration has gone all in on regional domination, sending two aircraft carrier groups into a situation which should it escalate, could send oil prices to highest-ever levels, with Russia blocked from the market. Biden is risking a huge gas price hike in an election year.
Biden’s calculation, or that of his security services, is that nobody can or will intervene to save the Palestinians. They judge the genocide as containable. That is an extraordinary gamble.
There has been an extraordinary amount of vitriol aimed at Qatar by pro-Israel commentators, for hosting the Hamas office and leadership. This is extraordinarily ignorant.
Qatar hosts Hamas, just as Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office, at the direct request of the United States. It provides a means of dialogue between the United States and Hamas (exactly as it did with the Taliban) both at deniable level, and through third parties, including of course the government of Qatar. Thus when Blinken arrived in Qatar one day and the Iranian foreign minister the next, these were in fact “proximity talks” involving Hamas.
How do I know? Well, at Julian’s request, I visited Qatar about five years ago to discuss whether Julian, and Wikileaks, might potentially relocate to Qatar, which Julian had described as “the new Switzerland” in terms of being a neutral diplomatic venue.
It was explained to me by the Qataris, at a very senior level, that Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office and Hamas because the United States government had asked them to do so. Qatar hosted a major US military base and depended on US support against a Saudi takeover. If I could generate a request from then President Trump for Qatar to host Wikileaks, then they would do so. Otherwise, no.
So I know what I am talking about.
One tiny but good result of this brokering in Qatar was the release of two American national hostages. British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have so far held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel really wished to do this yet. They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel.
Qatar has also been the origin of deals allowing in a tiny amount of aid to Gaza, but this is so small as to be almost irrelevant. It is performative humanitarianism by the West.
I have frequently praised China for the fact that their economic dominance has been unaccompanied by any aggressive desire for world hegemony, but this also has its downside. China sees no benefit in assisting the Palestinians in practice. Hopeful reports of China sending warships refer simply to pre-planned exercises, largely in the Gulf. That China is carrying out such joint exercises with Gulf states is indeed part of a long term increasing of influence, but is not relevant to the immediate reality.
Russia of course has its hands full in Ukraine. It is allowing its Syrian bases to be used as a conduit following increased Israeli bombing of Syrian airports, but there is not a great deal more that it can do. Erdoğan is genuinely furious at what is happening in Gaza, but Turkey is struggling to find any way to apply pressure, barring linkage to Ukraine shipping issues (which Erdoğan is considering).
That is a very rough and ready tour d’horizon, but the net effect is that I see no current hope for averting the atrocity which is unfolding before our horrified eyes.
Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous. Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel, they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defence” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population.
The western leadership glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the UN is astonishing.
Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal. In the UK people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure.
I have myself attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three different countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by, and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.
A wave of racism has been unleashed in the UK and elsewhere. I am astonished by the Islamophobia and racial hatred released online, with no apparent comeback. UK Ministers claim to be alarmed at the “terrorist sympathies” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, yet it is perfectly legal to call for Palestinians to be exterminated, to compare them to different types of animal and vermin, and suggest they should be driven into the sea. That does not horrify ministers at all.
I am personally now subject to a police investigation for “terrorism” merely for suggesting that the Palestinians too have a right to self-defence and may offer armed resistance to genocide – a right they enjoy beyond doubt in international law. Remember, Israel has formally declared war. Is it the position in British law that the only belief it is legal to hold and express, is that in this war the Palestinians must simply line up quietly to be killed?
The step change in western authoritarianism is likely to be met by blowback.
After 20 years, we had finally come through the vicious cycle of the “War on Terror”, where terrorism, repression and institutionalised Islamophobia all boosted each other across the western world. Outrage at the appalling genocide in Gaza is very likely to result in isolated incidences of, also appalling, Islamist-inspired violence in Western countries, including the UK, particularly because of the UK’s military support of Israel.
That consequential terrorism in itself will be cited by the political elite as justifying their stance. And so the vicious cycle will restart. This will of course be welcome to the agents of the security state, whose power, budgets and prestige will be boosted. Once again we have to be on the lookout for radicalisation and real terrorism, but also for agent-provocateur-led terrorism and for false flag terrorism.
If we descend back into that nightmare again, the direct cause will be elite support for the genocide of the Palestinian people and the Islamophobic narrative. The major cause of terrorism here is Israel, the terrorist apartheid state.
Israel’s Biblical Psychopathy
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 22, 2023
I am tired of reading that Netanyahu is a psychopath. He most certainly is not. I see no reason to consider him, or any other Israeli leader, as psychopaths in the psychiatric sense. They have a collective psychopathy, which is a very different thing.
The difference is the same as between a personal neurosis and a collective neurosis. According to Freud, religion (and he meant christianity) is a collective neurosis. Freud did not mean that religious people are neurotic. On the contrary, he observed that their collective neurosis tends to immunize religious people from personal neurosis.[1] I do not subscribe to Freud’s theory, I just need his backing to introduce my own theory: Zionists, even the most bloodthirsty of them, are not individual psychopaths; many of them are loving and even self-sacrificing persons within their own community. Rather, they are the vectors of a collective psychopathy, which means a special way (we may call it inhuman) by which they collectively see and interact with other human communities.
This is a crucial point, without which we can never understand Israel. Calling their leaders psychopaths is not helpful. What we need is to recognize Israel as a collective psychopath, and study the origin of this unique national character. It is a matter of survival for the world, just as it is a matter of survival for any group to recognize the psychopath among them and understand his patterns of thinking and of behavior.
What Is a Psychopath?
Psychopathy is a syndrome of psychological traits classified among the personality disorders. Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, in the wake of Hervey Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity (1941), has defined its diagnostic criteria on the basis of a cognitive model that is now widely adopted, though some psychiatrists prefer the term “sociopathy” because it really has to do with the inability to socialize in a genuine way.[2] In an effort to get everyone to agree, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders has suggested “antisocial personality disorder”; but the term “psychopathy” is still the most popular, and for that reason alone, I will adopt it.
The most characteristic trait of the psychopath is a complete absence of empathy and, as a result, of moral inhibition in harming others, combined with a thirst for power. Psychopathy also shares some traits with narcissism: psychopaths have a grand vision of their own importance. In their minds, everything is owed to them because they are exceptional. They are never wrong, and failures are always the fault of others.
Truth is of no value to the psychopath; truth is whatever is convenient for him at any given moment. He is a pathological liar, but he is hardly aware of it. Lying is so natural to him that the question of his “sincerity” is almost irrelevant: the psychopath beats the lie detector.
The psychopath feels only very superficial emotions and has no real feelings for anyone; but he has developed a great ability to deceive. He can be charming to the point of charismatic. He is unable to empathize, but learns to simulate it. His power is his extraordinary ability to feign, trick, trap, and capture. Although he himself is immunized against guilt, he becomes a master in making others feel guilty.
Because the psychopath is unable to put himself in the shoes of anyone else, he cannot look at himself critically. Confident in any circumstance of his right, he is genuinely surprised by the grudge of his victims—and will punish them for it. If he steals someone’s property, he will regard the resentment of the despoiled as irrational hatred.
Although the psychopath can be judged raving mad, he is not insane in the medical sense, since he does not suffer—psychopaths don’t visit psychiatrists unless forced to. In a certain sense, the psychopath is over-adjusted to social life, if the purpose of social life is to get by individually. That is why the real mystery, from a Darwinian point of view, is not the existence of psychopaths, but their low proportion in the population.
The most optimistic low-end estimate in the Western population is 1 percent. They should not be confused with the proverbial 1 percent who own half the world’s wealth, although a study among senior executives of large companies has shown that psychopathic traits are widespread among them.[3]
Israel as a Psychopathic State
The fact that Jews are today disproportionately represented among the elite (they form half of American billionaires, while representing only 2.4% of the population),[4] does not mean either that psychopathy is more prevalent among Jews. In a way, quite the opposite is the case: Jews demonstrate among themselves a high degree of empathy, or at least solidarity, often to the point of self-sacrifice. But the selective nature of this empathy suggests that it is addressed less to the humanity of others than to their Jewishness.
In fact, Jews tend to confuse Jewishness and humanity. So what is good for the Jews must necessarily be good for humanity. Conversely, a crime against the Jews is a “crime against humanity,” a concept they created in 1945. Confusing Jewishness with humanity is a sign of collective narcissism, but when it comes to regarding non-Jews as less than human, it becomes a sign of collective psychopathy.
Collectively, Jews consider themselves innocent of the charges brought against them. That is why Zionist pioneer Leo Pinsker, a medical doctor, regarded Judeophobia as “a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.” By way of consequence, the Jews are “the people chosen for universal hatred” (even atheist Jews cannot help defining Jewishness as chosenness).[5]
Israel, the Jewish State, is the psychopath among nations. It acts towards other nations in the way a psychopath acts towards his fellow men. “Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behavior,” wrote Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz in 2010. However, his diagnosis, including “paranoia, schizophrenia and megalomania,”[6] is mistaken. Considering Israel’s absolute self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians, and its extraordinary capacity to lie and manipulate, we are dealing with a psychopath.
By drawing a parallel between psychopathy and the attitude of Israel, I do not blame Israelis or Jews as individuals. They are part of this collective psychopathy only to the extent of their submission to the national ideology. We can make a comparison with another sort of collective entity. In The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan noted that large companies behave like psychopaths, insensitive to the suffering of those they crush in their pursuit of profit: “Corporate behavior is very similar to that of a psychopath.”[7] My analysis of Israel is based on the same reasoning. Except that Israel is much more dangerous than any giant company (even Pfizer), because the ideology that causes its personality disorder is much more insane than the liberal, social-darwinian ideology that rules the Stock Market. Israel’s ideology is biblical.
The Biblical Virus
Israel’s collective psychopathy is not genetic, it is cultural, but it was formed in very ancient times, and so it is embedded in the ancestral subconscious (whatever that is): it ultimately comes from the jealous god invented by the Levites to control the starving tribes they set out to conquer in Palestine some three thousand years ago. By birth, Israel is the nation of the psychopathic god.
Yahweh, “the god of Israel,” is an angry and lonely volcano god who manifests toward all other gods an implacable hatred, and ends up considering them as non-gods, him being, in fact, the only true god. This very clearly characterizes him as a psychopath among gods. By contrast, for the Egyptians, according to German Egyptologist Jan Assmann, “the gods are social beings,” and harmony between them guarantees harmony in the cosmos.[8] There was, moreover, a degree of translatability between the pantheons of various civilizations. But Yahweh taught the Hebrews contempt for the deities of their neighbors—making them, in the eyes of these neighbors, a threat to the cosmic and social order. Yahweh is essentially, says Assmann, a theoclastic god: “You must completely destroy all the places where the nations you dispossess have served their gods, on high mountains, on hills, under any spreading tree; you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, burn their sacred poles, hack to bits the statues of their gods and obliterate their name from that place” (Deuteronomy 12:2-3).
Yahweh may be a character of fiction, but his hold on the Jewish mind is nevertheless real. “To appeal to a crazy, violent father, and for three thousand years, that is what it is to be a crazy Jew!”[9] said Smilesburger in Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock. Jews have been taught by Yahweh to keep strictly separate from other people. Food prohibitions serve to prevent all socialization outside the tribe: “I shall set you apart from all these peoples, for you to be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).
The nature of the covenant is not moral. The sole criterion for approval by Yahweh is obedience to his arbitrary laws and commands. To slaughter treacherously hundreds of prophets of Baal is good, because it is the will of Yahweh (1Kings 18). To show mercy to the king of the Amalekites is bad, because when Yahweh says, “kill everyone,” he means “everyone” (1Samuel 15). In the biblical historiography, the fate of the Jewish people depends on them following Yahweh’s orders, no matter how insane. As well said by Kevin MacDonald:
The idea that Jewish suffering results from Jews straying from their own law occurs almost like a constant drumbeat throughout the Tanakh—a constant reminder that the persecution of Jews is not the result of their own behavior vis-à-vis Gentiles but rather the result of their behavior vis-à-vis God.[10]
If the Jews follow Yahweh’s command of alienating themselves from the rest of humankind, in return, Yahweh promises to make them rule over humankind: “follow his ways, keep his statutes, his commandments, his customs, and listen to his voice,” and Yahweh “will raise you higher than every other nation he has made”; “You will make many nations your subjects, yet you will be subject to none” (Deuteronomy 26:17-19 and 28:12). This sounds very much, actually, like the pact Satan proposed to Jesus: “the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all these, if you fall at my feet and do me homage.’” (Matthew 4:8-9).
If Israel follows scrupulously the Law, Yahweh promises to submit all nations to the domination of Israel, and destroy those that resist. “Kings will fall prostrate before you, faces to the ground, and lick the dust at your feet,” whereas “the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish” (Isaiah 49:23 and 60:12). Nations must either recognize Israel’s sovereignty, or be destroyed. Yahweh told Israel that he has identified “seven nations greater and stronger than yourself,” that “you must put under the curse of destruction,” and not “show them any pity.” As for their kings, “you will blot out their names under heaven” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 24).
The war code of Deuteronomy 20 commands to exterminate “any living thing” in the conquered cities of Canaan. In practice, the rule is extended to all people who resist the Israelites in their conquest. It was applied by Moses to the Midianites, although in this case Yahweh allowed his warriors to keep the young virgin girls (Numbers 31). It was applied by Joshua to the Canaanite city of Jericho, where the Israelites “enforced the curse of destruction on everyone in the city: men and women, young and old, including the oxen, the sheep and the donkeys, slaughtering them all” (Joshua 6:21). In the city of Ai, the inhabitants were all slaughtered, twelve thousand of them, “until not one was left alive and none to flee. … When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open ground, and in the desert where they had pursued them, and when every single one had fallen to the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and slaughtered its remaining population.” Women were not spared. “For booty, Israel took only the cattle and the spoils of this town” (Joshua 8:22-27). Then came the turns of the cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor. In the whole land, Joshua “left not one survivor and put every living thing under the curse of destruction, as Yahweh, god of Israel, had commanded” (10:40).
As wrote Avigail Abarbanel in “Why I left the Cult,” the Zionist conquerors of Palestine “have been following quite closely the biblical dictate to Joshua to just walk in and take everything. … For a supposedly non-religious movement it’s extraordinary how closely Zionism … has followed the Bible.”[11] Kim Chernin, another Israeli dissident, wrote in “The Seven Pillars of Jewish Denial”: “I can’t count the number of times I read the story of Joshua as a tale of our people coming into their rightful possession of their promised land without stopping to say to myself, ‘but this is a history of rape, plunder, slaughter, invasion, and destruction of other peoples.’”[12]
Yahweh offers only two possible paths to Israel: domination of other nations, if Israel keeps Yahweh’s covenant of separateness, or annihilation by these same nations, if Israel breaks the covenant:
“if you make friends with the remnant of these nations still living beside you, if you intermarry with them, if you mix with them and they with you, then know for certain that Yahweh your god will stop dispossessing these nations before you, and for you they will be a snare, a pitfall, thorns in your sides and thistles in your eyes, until you vanish from this fine country given you by Yahweh your god.” (Joshua 23:12-14)
Dispossess others or be dispossessed, dominate or be exterminated: Israel cannot think beyond that alternative.
Zionism is Biblical
What has it got to do with Zionism, you ask? Isn’t Zionism a secular ideology? I think it is high time to dispel this misunderstanding. Zionism is a product of Jewishness, and Jewishness is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. Whether he has read it or not, whether he judges it historical or mythical, every Jew ultimately bases his Jewishness on the Bible—or whatever he knows about the Bible. Jewishness is the internalization of the psychopathic god. It makes little difference whether Jews define their Jewishness in religious terms or in ethnic terms. From a religious viewpoint, the Bible preserves the memory and the essence of the Covenant with God, whereas from a secular viewpoint, the Bible is the foundational narrative of the Jewish people, and the pattern by which Jews interpret their whole subsequent history (the Dispersion, the Holocaust, the rebirth of Israel, and so on).
It is true that Theodor Herzl, the prophet of political Zionism, did not draw his inspiration from the Bible. Yet he termed his ideology Zionism, using a biblical name of Jerusalem. As for post-Herzl Zionists, and for the actual founders of the modern State of Israel, they were steeped in the Bible. “The Bible is our mandate,” declared Chaim Weizmann in 1919, and in 1948 he offered Truman a Torah scroll for his recognition of Israel. Thus begins the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel:
ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
There is no question that the State of Israel was founded on the biblical claim.
David Ben-Gurion, the author of this document and the father of the nation, had a biblical vision of the Jewish people. To him, according to his biographer Dan Kurzman, the rebirth of Israel in 1948 “paralleled the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of the land by Joshua, the Maccabean revolt.” Ben-Gurion had never been to a synagogue, and ate pork for breakfast, yet he was steeped in biblical history. “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible,” he used to say.[13] Tom Segev writes in his more recent biography:
He sponsored a Bible study class in his home and promoted two concepts to characterize the State of Israel’s moral character and its destiny and duty to itself and the world: the first was “chosen people,” a term coming from the covenant between God and the people of Israel (Exodus 19:5-6); the second was the Jewish people’s commitment to the principles of justice and peace that make it a “light to the nations,” in the spirit of the prophets (Isaiah 49:6). He frequently spoke and wrote about these concepts.[14]
Ben-Gurion’s biblical mindset became more and more apparent as he grew older. Consider for example the fact that, while he was begging Kennedy to let his people have the Bomb because the Egyptians wanted to exterminate them (as they had under Moses), he prophesied in the magazine Look (January 16, 1962) that within twenty-five years, Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[15] Ben-Gurion was not crazy, he was simply thinking biblically.
Almost every Israeli leader of Ben-Gurion’s generation and the next shared share the same biblical mindset. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978). Naftali Bennett, while Israeli minister of Education, has also justified the annexation of the West Bank by the Bible.[16] Zionists can find in the Bible all the justifications they need: for Gaza, they have Judges 1:18-19: “And Judah took Gaza with its territory … Now Yahweh was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country.” There are now overt Bible freaks in the Israeli government, like the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who shoot Bible quotes every day. “God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people” is the alpha and the omega of Zionism, not just for Israelis, but for the Christians who, since 1917, have supported the Jewish claim and support Israel today.
Even more than Ben-Gurion, Benjamin Netanyahu thinks biblically, and it is also getting clearer and clearer as he gets older. He also knows Christians cannot seriously argue against the biblical claim. On March 3, 2015, he dramatized in front of the American Congress his phobia of Iran by referring to the biblical book of Esther:
We’re an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies. The plot was foiled. Our people were saved. Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.[17]
Netanyahu scheduled his address on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy end of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persian men, women and children. In 2019, Netanyahu’s pronounced these words during a tour of the West Bank, “I believe in the book of books and I read it as a call to action that every generation must do what it can to ensure the eternity of Israel.” The Bible occupies such a large part of his brain that he wants to put a Bible on the Moon!
So please stop calling Netanyahu a psychopath. Or at least, call him a biblical psychopath, a worshipper of the psychopathic god. And while you are there, learn to see the Hebrew Bible for what it is: “a conspiracy against the rest of the world,” as said H. G. Wells. In the books of the Bible, “you have the conspiracy plain and clear, … an aggressive and vindictive conspiracy. … It is not tolerance but stupidity to shut our eyes to their quality.”[18]
Notes
[1] Freud developed this theory in three books: Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion.
[2] Robert Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, The Guilford Press, 1993.
[3] Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, HarperCollins, 2007.
[4] Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, University of Chicago Press, 1993; J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Basic Books , 1997.
[5] Leon Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew, 1882 , on www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/pinsker.html
[6] Gideon Levy, “Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behavior,” Haaretz, January 10, 2010, www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/only-psychiatrists-can-explain-israel-s-behavior-1.261115
[7] Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Free Press, 2005. Watch also the documentary of the same title.
[8] Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, p. 47.
[9] Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession, Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 110.
[10] Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, Praeger, 1998, kindle 2013, kindle l. 6187–89.
[11] Avigail Abarbanel, “Why I left the Cult,” Oct 8, 2016, on https://mondoweiss.net/author/avigail/
[12] Kim Chernin, “The Seven Pillars of Jewish Denial,” Tikkun, Sept. 2002, quoted in Kevin MacDonald, Cultural Insurrections: Essays on Western Civilization, Jewish Influence, and Anti-Semitism, Occidental Press, 2007, pp. 27-28.
[13] Dan Kurzman, Ben-Gurion, Prophet of Fire, Touchstone, 1983, pp. 17–18, 22, 26–28.
[14] Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, Apollo, 2019, kindle l. 286.
[15] David Ben-Gurion and Amram Ducovny, David Ben-Gurion, In His Own Words, Fleet Press Corp., 1969, p. 116.
[16] “Israeli minister: The Bible says West Bank is ours” on www.youtube.com/watch?v=Png17wB_omA
[17] “The Complete Transcript of Netanyahu’s Address to Congress,” on www.washing tonpost.com.
[18] Herbert George Wells, The Fate of Homo Sapiens, 1939 (archive.org), p. 128.
British site reveals Israel’s history of ‘lying’
Palestine Information Center – October 23, 2023
LONDON – The Middle East Eye has revealed, in a new report published this week, Israel’s history of making false claims after it blamed the attack on Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab hospital on Pales tinian Islamic Jihad.
Last Tuesday, close to 500 Palestinians were killed at al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City.
Alex MacDonald wrote that In the aftermath of the destruction, a blame game has begun. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the hospital had been targeted by an Israeli air strike.
Hananya Naftali, a digital aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted initially that the “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead.”
Naftali then changed his story, calling the explosion “mysterious” and saying it was “either a failed rocket” or “something that was done on purpose in order to get international support”.
When Israel responded officially, it denied responsibility for the attack and attempted to pin the blame on a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group.
A number of previous incidents have tarnished the Israeli army’s reputation for misinformation.
Perhaps the most notorious example in recent years was the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Abu Akleh, who was also a US citizen, was shot dead by Israeli forces on 11 May 2022 while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Her colleague Ali al-Samoudi was also shot and injured.
Israel first accused Palestinian gunmen of shooting her, but then conceded there was a “high possibility that Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF (Israeli army) gunfire that was fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen”.
The Israeli military advocate general’s office said it would not open an investigation into any soldiers involved in the incident, as “there is no suspicion that a criminal offence was committed”.
Another example was the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah in 2000, one of the pivotal events of the Second Intifada (2000-2005).
Footage of the boy cowering with his father in the middle of gunfire and then slumping down dead sparked international outrage and remains an iconic image of Israel’s repression of Palestinians.
Although the Israelis initially accepted responsibility for his death – and claimed he was being used as a human shield – they later retracted this in 2005.
Claims and counter-claims were thrown back and forth, with some claiming that France 2, which initially broadcast the footage, had staged the incident. The company issued a number of successful defamation lawsuits in response.
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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