Hamas adhering to its conditions for prisoner deal: Haniyeh
Al Mayadeen | April 12, 2024
The head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, told Al Mayadeen that the Palestinian Resistance group is adhering to its conditions in negotiations and will not engage in any deal with “Israel” without their fulfillment.
Haniyeh emphasized the Resistance’s insistence on the necessity of declaring a permanent and clear ceasefire in Gaza.
He made it clear that the Israeli occupation has not eliminated Hamas, and shall not eliminate it, pointing out that the Israeli government has not retrieved its captives held in Gaza and shall not retrieve them except through “an honorable deal.”
The Palestinian leader affirmed the Resistance’s insistence on the complete withdrawal and the return of the displaced people to Gaza without any conditions or barriers, in addition to the conditions regarding relief and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, leading to a prisoner exchange deal.
Haniyeh touched on Israeli media’s speculations that the Israeli assassination of his sons and grandchildren is aimed at pressuring Hamas to ease its demands during ceasefire negotiations, underlining that “this will not happen.”
The Hamas chief indicated that the massacres and crimes committed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza reflect its strategic failure after not achieving its declared goals of the war.
“Israel, the spoiled child of the West, is no longer as it once was, and its image has been shattered,” he told Al Mayadeen, adding that what is happening in the “corridors of diplomacy” indicates an unprecedented isolation for the Israeli occupation entity.
Addressing the entire nation, Haniyeh highlighted that the ongoing genocide in Gaza requires a different stance from the past six months.
‘Israel’ has conclusively lost the debate in Western popular culture
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 10, 2024
As the Israeli regime pursues a policy of inflicting mass starvation inside the Gaza Strip, after having failed to defeat any of the Palestinian Resistance factions in battle, it can now be stated with confidence that they have lost the public relations battle decisively.
At the beginning of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on the people of the Gaza Strip, a large portion of the Western public was in some way convinced by the Israeli propaganda. The Zionist entity worked overtime to ensure that all the context necessary to understanding why Hamas launched its offensive operation, on October 7, was irrelevant and that history started on that day. As the Israeli counterattack began to inflict much larger civilian death tolls in Gaza, compared to the initial Zionist claim that some 1,400 Israelis were killed on October 7 [later lowered to just under 1,200], they quickly realized that the reality of what happened on that day would pale in comparison to what the Israeli military was on route to inflicting in Gaza.
Hence, when Israeli spokespeople and government officials in the West spoke of October 7, they refused to even acknowledge the fact that the Israeli military in the south of occupied Palestine had collapsed. The Western media also joined in on attempting to frame Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as a “terrorist” attack that was aimed at targeting civilians solely, with no mention of any military goals. Up until this moment, Western corporate media and government officials call the ongoing genocide a Hamas-“Israel” war, refusing to acknowledge that all Palestinian factions from across the political spectrum are at war with the occupation, not just Hamas.
False Israeli atrocity propaganda, such as that “40 beheaded babies” were ruthlessly murdered by Hamas fighters, was spread even by US President Joe Biden himself. Other gruesome lies, which were quickly debunked, were also spread, with Israeli propaganda attempting to assert that October 7 was “Israel’s 9/11”. Ultimately, with the aid of activists and journalists on social media, these pernicious lies were revealed to be part of a disinformation campaign. In fact, the sheer volume of lies that continue to be spread about October 7 has only enraged the general public further and inspired them to work harder in a bid to fight back against what many see as sheer gas-lighting.
Whether it be the claim by Israeli President Isaac Herzog that Hamas was carrying Daesh/Al-Qaeda documents or that Al-Shifa Hospital was a “Hamas HQ”, the lies were ineffective, and, in some cases, led to popular internet memes mocking the Zionist propaganda. In the case of Israeli military spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, he was transformed into the “there is a list guy,” after attempting to say that a list written in Arabic, naming the days of the week, was actually the naming of “khamas terrorists”.
With the International Court of Justice (ICJ), having ruled in South Africa’s favor and accepting that the Zionist Entity is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, along with the insane levels of death and destruction that have been caused in the besieged territory, the general public in the West is clearly appalled at this point. People are seeing horrifying war crimes committed mainly against women and children, on a daily basis, and the most horrifying footage of children, elderly individuals, women, and other vulnerable groups, being murdered. The stream of videos, photos, and reports of Israeli crimes from human rights groups are being spread around the clock and are unignorable.
That being said, social apps like TikTok have played a crucial role in the dissemination of information to young people throughout the West. Countless young influencers have proven successful at spreading the facts surrounding the oppression of the Palestinian people, leading to the ADL chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, stating that “this is not a left-right gap” in support of “Israel”, instead, he continued, “it is young and old.” He also went on to say, “We have a major Tiktok problem”.
Earlier on during the war, various prominent actors, singers, and rappers spoke out in favor of a ceasefire and preached for there to be a free Palestine. We saw the likes of singer Kehlani and rapper Macklemore make their pro-Palestine sentiments clear. As time went on, it became abundantly clear that mainstream podcasters, news show hosts, and figures in independent media were all turning on the Israelis. While most prominent left-wing public figures were quick to side with the suffering people of Gaza, lately we have seen traditional Zionist allies and well-known right-wing commentators turn on the Israelis and their October 7 narrative. We are at the point where the likes of Candace Owens and Alex Jones have turned against the Israeli regime’s propaganda.
The world’s most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, also recently made a number of remarks on Gaza and called the Israeli military’s assault a genocide, comparing it to the Holocaust, and wondered how a people who suffered historically in a similar way could be doing the same thing to others.
It is not just that the Zionist entity has inflicted such a high child death toll in Gaza, for example, that has made it untenable for almost anyone to sustain their defense of their [Israeli] actions, it is rather the scale on which they have committed their unthinkable crimes. Whether we look at the numbers of hospitals destroyed, healthcare workers and UN employees killed, the scale of destruction to civilian infrastructure, or the speed at which mass famine has been manufactured, there is no conflict in recorded modern history that properly compares. Rape, torture, the deliberate shooting of children, the murder of women and children in front of their families, stuffing civilians’ bodies into garbage bags, blowing up homes for fun, destroying mosques, hospital massacres, school massacres, massacres committed against starving people attempting to reach food aid, and the release of snuff films by Israeli soldiers where they wear women’s clothing in invaded homes for fun or for humiliating civilians, pretty much any crime the mind can conjure up has been committed.
It is in this light that despite the Western corporate media having been staunch supporters of the Zionist narrative, even outlets like CNN and MSNBC have begun to change the style of their coverage and publish openly critical stories about the Israeli regime. Even Western government officials are having a difficult time defending the Zionist entity at this point, with various European nations cutting off arms sales and recognizing the State of Palestine at the United Nations. Even the staunchest allies of the Israelis, like the German, British, and American governments, are having to alter their language slowly on the issue and feign ignorance of well-known atrocities in order to limit the criticism, coming from an overwhelming public demand to force the Zionists to end their genocide.
The pro-Palestine anti-war movement is perhaps the biggest of any cause on earth, with mass demonstrations occurring on a weekly basis, while boycotts of pro-Israeli companies have not ceased. The resilience of the people of Gaza has even driven a new-found interest in the Islamic faith. In protest of his government’s policy on the Gaza war, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty Air Force service member, lit himself on fire while screaming “free Palestine” until his dying breath.
Whether on the left or the right, in the independent media or the mainstream media, the Israeli regime has completely lost the public relations war. The Western public, especially the young, are becoming more educated, more outraged, and less scared of speaking up in favor of Palestinian liberation. “Israel” has lost the media war and the world now sees this apartheid regime for what it truly is.
Brits should not be part of the genocide in Gaza
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 11, 2024
How likely is it that the Israeli air force jet which killed three British aid workers in Gaza took off from our base in Cyprus? How much longer can our own government deny that there is a genocide happening each day in Gaza with not only the tacit blessing of the government but in some cases it actually goes the distance and provides the full package of support to murder women and children?
The murky dividing line between the British so-called neutral position on Gaza and the reality of what even our own MPs recently admitted was a genocide which broke a tome of internal laws – seems to be getting more opaque by the day.
The Conservative party is very confused about where it is on the Gaza war and while David Cameron recently admitted that he was “worried” about international law being broken, it is the prime minister who is now in the firing line demanding enquiries about the death of the three nationals killed.
Three of the seven who were killed were British nationals named James Henderson, John Chapman and James Kirby. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak demanded a concrete investigation into the deaths from the Netanyahu government.
But he won’t get concrete investigations from the Netanyahu government as this body has shown the world in recent months that there is no level of depravity which it is not prepared to stoop to as it still continues to shock us each day with video clips on social media breaking new boundaries of poor taste.
Yet IDF soldiers playing with women’s underwear is one thing; it is quite another thing for us to imagine that Britain could be pulled into a massive international law black hole which could go on for years via the ICJ in the Hague.
Surely the deaths of these three should be the right moment to have a re-think on a government level if we can’t have one as a society. Israel has gone over a line on “defending itself” and Britain has been dragged into that quagmire which has made us look like the amateurs we are on the international diplomatic circuit.
But where to draw that line?
While it is commonly viewed as acceptable for British nationals to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or indeed, it was more than alright for young Libyans in our society to fight against the terror cell in Libya (MI6 officers at Heathrow airport wished them luck when they left and then welcomed them back into the country), it has become an unthinkable crime with the gravest of punishments for any UK subjects to be linked to ISIS – the recent appeal case of Shamima Begum losing her right to British citizenship as one good example.
But many of these incidents are illogical and often end up betraying their original ethos. In the case of the Libyans known to MI6 who fought ISIS in Libya, one such young man came back radicalised and carried out the appalling terror attack on the Manchester arena attack at the concert of Ariana Grande in May of 2017. The case was a major own goal for the security services but it did at least shed light on the tawdry subject of how the intelligence services pay terrorists around the world to do our dirty work. Some might argue that Shamima Begum should have a second chance as she was indoctrinated as a minor when she left for Syria to be an ISIS bride. Seems an excessive decision given there is no evidence against her of actual terrorist activities.
The real issue is that we can’t effectively navigate around international wars and decide each one on its merits, in terms of who we allow to get involved in them. If we are not in control of our own government getting too involved in the Gaza slaughter, not to mention citizens, then we can only expect having to pay a very high price for it which will make Boris Johnson’s 40bn euro divorce from the EU look like chicken feed. We will soon no doubt see British doctors shot in cold blood by British soldiers in IDF unforms.
Just recently an Oxford-educated Jewish Brit was fired from his job as working as a spokesperson for Israel’s army. What no one seemed to ask in the UK, is what on earth was Eylon Levy doing there in the first place? It’s a similar story with how British journalist Douglas Murray failed to even raise an eyebrow of disdain when he was planning to be part of a fundraiser on behalf of Israel. Astonishing that in overregulated Britain, a country where we have rules for even how we are allowed to think on social media, that these two gentlemen found no resistance to their wartime activism.
Recently, the French government announced that it would take legal action against French citizens who leave the country and go and fight for the Israeli army in Gaza. Currently it is believed there are almost 100 British subjects who have “volunteered” to fight in Gaza with an IDF uniform. I would argue that it is high time that we follow the French model and stop this practice altogether of allowing our citizens to fight in any overseas wars, anyway unless they are dual nationals and are prepared to surrender their British passports at Heathrow when they leave.
How Big a Factor is Iran in the War on Gaza?
By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | April 10, 2024
In both Ukraine and Gaza, the Joe Biden administration has adopted the dangerous doctrine of war management in which, while not stopping a war diplomatically, it attempts to contain it and prevent it from becoming a wider war into which the United States might get drawn.
This difficult to calibrate policy is being threatened in both theaters.
In the Middle East, two Israeli actions have escalated the calibrated strikes between Israel and Iran, up to the threshold that Iran could absorb without feeling the necessity to respond.
One was an airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed Ali Ahmad Hassin, an important Hezbollah commander. The more significant and volatile one was the April 1 attack on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the top Iranian Quds Force commander in Lebanon and Syria.
Zahedi is the most senior Iranian commander to be killed since war broke out on October 7. But what made this strike escalatory and dangerous is that it targeted an embassy compound under Iranian sovereignty. “When they attack our consulate,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech on April 10, “it is as if they have attacked our soil.” Khamenei called the decision to escalate to such an attack a “mistake” that “must be punished.”
A direct response by Iran against Israel could risk the nightmare scenario the United States has sought to avoid through its policy of managing wars. In that scenario, Iran retaliates in kind against Israel and Israel responds, drawing Iran and Hezbollah into the war in a manner that pulls in the Houthis as well as militias in Iraq and Syria. A Houthi source told Responsible Statecraft that “In case a full-scale war was to erupt between Hezbollah and Israel, Yemen and its leadership will stand with the party [Hezbollah] militarily, politically and economically” in a way that could even include “sending foot soldiers.” Such a force aligned against Israel could risk drawing the United States into the war.
In a speech on April 5, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called the attack on Iran’s Damascus embassy “a turning point” and said that it is “certain that the Iranian response to the [bombing] of the Iranian consulate is coming without a doubt.”
He said, perhaps clearly for the first time, that Hezbollah could intervene in the event of a full-scale Israel-Iran war. “Everyone must prepare themselves, arrange their matters and be careful,” he said, “when the Iranian side responds to the targeting of the Iranian consulate and to the Zionist enemy’s possible response to the Iranian response.”
Nasrallah said that an Iranian response is inevitable and seemed to caution against the size of the Israeli counter-response, saying, not only that “everyone must prepare themselves,” but reminding that Hezbollah has “not used the main weapons nor the main forces and we have not called in the reserves.”
Nasrallah may have been leveraging a fuller Hezbollah entrance into the war to caution Israel and the United States against an even more escalatory Israeli counter-response to the response Iran feels it must deliver. Iran may have gone one step further, leveraging its entrance into the war in an attempt to stop the war altogether.
As Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute first reported, an Arab diplomatic source told Jadeh Iran that Iran will respond to the Israeli attack on its embassy with a direct attack on Israel unless the United States orchestrates a ceasefire in Gaza. According to reporting in Jadeh Iran, “Iran has vowed to respond to the assassination of Zahedi.” However, in an “exchange of messages between Tehran and Washington” whose aim is “to contain escalation,” an Iranian proposal “stipulated a ceasefire in Gaza as a price” for not striking Israel in retaliation.
Though a causal line cannot be drawn, it is interesting that, in an interview recorded on April 3, President Joe Biden said, “I think what [Netanyahu’s] doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” and then said, “So what I’m calling for is the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, a total access to all food and medicine going into the country.”
It is also interesting that the United States is participating in the latest round of ceasefire negotiations in Cairo. In an April 8 press conference, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said that CIA Director Bill Burns was in Cairo for the talks. He said that the Biden administration “is doing everything possible to broker a deal that secures the release of all the hostages and leads to an immediate ceasefire. And there’s simply no higher priority.”
CNN went further, reporting that Burns wasn’t just present or participating, but that he “presented a new proposal to try to bridge the gaps in ongoing negotiations to broker a deal to bring about a ceasefire.”
Hezbollah may be responding to the killing of one of their commanders by leveraging the threat of its entering the war to prevent the war from entering an uncontrolled series of escalations. Iran may be responding to the airstrike on its embassy that killed a general by leveraging its entering the war to stop the war altogether. How big a factor Iran is, and how powerful its leverage, may help determine what comes next, how big the Israeli counter-response to Iran’s promised response is and even, perhaps, the prospects of a future ceasefire.
Israeli occupation forces kill three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haneyya and their children
Palestinian Information Center – April 10, 2024
GAZA – Israeli occupation forces (IOF) killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haneyya and three of their children in Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza, on Wednesday evening.
Local sources said that Amir, Mohammed, and Hazem, the sons of Haneyya, were killed in the IOF shelling of their car along with three of their offspring, while a fourth kid was injured and taken to hospital.
Haneyya, commenting on the incident, said that it was an honor for his family that his sons were martyred, adding that around 60 of his family members were killed in the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza.
“Such crimes will only boost our steadfastness and insistence on upholding our principles,” he added.
“The enemy is in big illusion if it thinks that killing my sons will make us change our positions,” Haneyya underlined.
For its part, the Government Media Office (GMO) said in a statement on Wednesday that the IOF committed yet another massacre on the first day of the holy Eid al-Fitr by targeting the car in which the sons of Haneyya and their children were aboard.
The GMO strongly condemned the continuing Israeli massacres, adding that 125 martyrs were transferred to hospitals over the past 24 hours.
Israel’s culture of rape and child abuse
By Vanessa Beeley | The Wall Will Fall | April 9, 2024
“We Israelis are the biggest Holocaust deniers – The Jewish state learned that it can commit its own Holocaust in Gaza and deny that it exists” – Jonathan Ofir for Mondoweiss.
Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa reports from her visit to Gaza:
The reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West.
People first resorted to eating horse and donkey feed, but that’s gone. Now they’re eating the donkeys and horses,” Abulhawa writes. “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.”
“What I see is a holocaust.” she summarizes. “The incomprehensible culmination of 75 years of Israeli impunity for persistent war crimes.”
What has underpinned this wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians and children in Gaza – the 7th October Hamas “atrocities” that include the media-amplified claims of “mass rape”?
Claims led by the discredited ZAKA organisation whose founder has a history of rape and pedophilia. ZAKA is reminiscent of the CIA/MI6 White Helmet propaganda productions in Syria from 2013 onwards, designed to criminalise the Syrian government. You can read my archive of investigative work exposing this organisation here.
I am not going to focus on the debunked claims made by the Zionist Hasbara industry. You can read and watch the multiple investigative reports that have dismantled the genocide-justifications here – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Two leading Palestinian media organizations, The Palestine Chronicle and Friends of Palestine Network, conducted a joint investigation, based on media reports, in addition to historical and political analyses.
I recommend following this X account to also have real-time updates on the collapse of the Zionist propaganda mill.
Journalist and researcher, William Van Wagenen, has also covered much of what actually took place on October 7th. Van Wagenen includes the “baked baby” narratives that were circulating shortly after the 7th October Resistance operations.
Eli Beer, founder and president of another rescue organization, United Hatzalah, made similar false claims.
While attending the Republican Jewish Coalitions’ Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas on 28 October, he claimed that “A little baby in the oven – These bastards put these babies in the oven and put on the oven … We found the kid a few hours later.”
Like all the other atrocity tales, this was also walked back and mocked on social media by the majority of independent media outlets who saw through the fabrication immediately.
2013 in Adra Industrial City, north of Damascus, Syria – extremist factions including Al Qaeda (Nusra Front) burned civilians alive in a bread furnace. The same extremist factions supported by Israel to overthrow a pro-Palestine Syrian government.
In 2014, a frail 16 year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was burned alive by Israeli extremist settlers amidst a number of Zionist settler kidnappings of young Palestinian boys.
… the preliminary autopsy report states that the remnants of a burned substance (soot) was present in Muhammad’s respiratory passages and lungs, indicating he had inhaled the substance while being burned alive.
Hussein Dawabshe with grandson Ahmad in 2016
In 2015 18-month old baby Ali Dawbsheh, was burnt alive by Jewish terrorists in the West Bank town of Duma. Ali’s mother Riham and father Saad died of their wounds a few weeks later. Of the family of four, only 5-year-old Ahmad survived the arson with severe burns.
At the preliminary court hearing in Lod, terrorist Zionist settlers chanted:
“Where’s Ali? There’s no Ali. Ali is burned. On the fire. Ali is on the grill”
From the article in Mondoweiss :
In December 2015, a video showing dozens of wedding guests celebrating the arson went public via Channel 10. The guests are seen dancing with Molotov cocktails, knives and guns, and stabbing a photo of baby Ali Dawabsheh.
Literally 24 hours after the October 7th Resistance operation, on various interviews I recommended avoiding the rush to judgement being rammed down our throats by a Zionist-partisan media crush. I was absolutely correct to have cautioned thus and consider myself vindicated by the last six months of investigation into the Zionist hysterical claims.
Claims that only the Palestinian Resistance was responsible for all deaths on the day that unleashed genocide upon Palestine – or rather the intensification of a genocide that began 100 years ago under a malign British Mandate.
The reality of thousands of children horrifically burned, eviscerated, incinerated, executed, abused and tortured by the sadistic IOF forces since October 7th is something that cannot be eclipsed by the lies peddled by the genocidal maniacs intent on the extinction of Palestinians.
Euromed Monitor – Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented the Israeli army’s field execution of 13 children near Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The majority of them were with their families, following the Israeli military’s instructions to evacuate their areas, when they were shot dead.
Israel’s Rape Culture
In the case of Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine, the goal of acquiring land led to the use of brutal tactics aimed at the dispossession and elimination of the indigenous population. Colonizers embraced sexual terrorization as an instrument for achieving this strategy. – Tamam Mohsen
The “only Democracy in the Middle East” is reported to be a hub of sexual abuse, rape and ritual pedophilia cases. According to the Berghahn Journals :
Sexual violence is a common phenomenon in Israeli society. Despite its frequency, it is still kept silent in the public sphere. The last few years have seen a rise in awareness on the topic of sexual abuse and harassment; however it is a crime with a very low percentage of incident reports. This is for a variety of reasons, the main reason being that we live in a society that tends to blame the victim, which causes them feelings of shame and humiliation preventing them from reporting the incident.
Israel is a Pedophile Haven
Israel is a haven for pedophiles escaping prosecution in other countries. Perhaps the best known case is that of Malka Leifer. A former ultra-Orthodox Jewish school Principal sentenced to fifteen years for child sex abuse.
Israeli author and public speaker Alon Mizrahi went on X to point out Israel’s harbouring of this criminal serial abuser of children:
This lovely lady, from a prestigious Hasidic family, was the principal of an ultra-orthodox Hewish school in Melbourne, Australia who in 2008 “faced trial on 70 sex offense charges laid by Victoria Police, with accusations from at least eight alleged victims” (from Wikipedia).
All victims were her former underage pupils.
To cut a long story short, lovely Malka fled to Israel in 2008, where she comfortably lived, thanks to generous help from senior politicians, psychiatrists, and extremely helpful judges, until 2021, when the scandal was making international news, with high-ranking Australian politicians intervening on behalf of the victims.
In March of 2023 Leifer was found guilty of 18 counts of sexual abuse, including rape, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
But for 13 years, Israel refused to extradite Leifer to Australia, and she was allowed to lead her normal life in a West Bank settlement. And that’s how much Israel cares for (Jewish!) victims of sexual abuse.
In 2020 Jerusalem Post ran the headline – Tens of Thousands of Pedophiles Operate in Israel every year.
Annually there are 100,000 victims of pedophilia in Israel according to one monitoring organisation.
While indigenous Palestinians are denied the right to return to their homeland, a number of pedophiles in Israel are “Jewish” immigrants who have exploited the law of return (whereby any Jewish person can move to Israel and automatically gain citizenship) to seek refuge from prosecution for their heinous crimes.
Mainstream media in the US is reporting on the Jewish American pedophiles who “hide from justice” in Israel after subjecting children to abuse and rape. Jewish Community Watch says the majority of its cases originate from modern Orthodox to Ultra-orthodox Jewish enclaves in the U.S., but that it happens across the wider Jewish community.
Even Hollywood’s accused sexual predators are seeking refuge in Israel. Hollywood filmmaker Brett Ratner fled to Israel after six women accused Ratner of sexual assault and sexual harassment in 2017. A report in Haaretz describes Israel as a “hot spot for foreign Jewish sexual predators”.
Another Haaretz report in 2016 cites Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v’Oz, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community:
“Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening,”
The same story was covered by the UK’s Independent. This phenomenon cannot be dismissed as “conspiracy theory”, it is fact.
More Haaretz investigations can be found at these links – 1, 2,
From the American Psychological Association:
This study explores thought patterns of Jewish Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox pedophiles in Israel and how they resolve the contradiction between their commitment to Jewish Law and having committed sexual offenses against minors.
In 2022 Haaretz reported that 100 rabbis, teachers and other figures who have been accused, charged or convicted of sexual abuse overseas have already found refuge in Israel.
Also in 2022 The Jerusalem Post reported that the rate of sexual abuse of kids is highest among religious Zionist sector. “A new study by the Ne’emanei Torah Va’avodah movement reveals dramatic data on sexual abuse victims from the religious Zionist (Tzioni Dati) sector.” The abused often become abusers. How many of these abused children (majority male) are the IOF forces of tomorrow?
More Jerusalem Post investigations (one Times of Israel ) can be found at these links – 1, 2, 3, 4.
A Haifa psychologist was arrested in 2021 for ‘indecent acts on children in his care’.
In March 2024 almost 6 months after October 7th, an Israeli male nurse, Oren Hananaiev, had his medical licence revoked after being ‘convicted of severe indecent acts without consent and possessing and publishing inappropriate content featuring underage children.’
From the analysis of Hananaiev’s correspondence, many conversations were found with Yaakov, in which he advised him to use sedatives to “prevent resistance” during sexual assault. Furthermore, the investigators found correspondence between the two where Hananaiev suggests certain children’s games where one might sexually exploit kids while they still think that it is part of the game.
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (2011):
The number of incarcerated sex offenders in Israeli prisons, which may be related to the total number of sex offenders, has been steadily increasing, from 350 offenders in 1997, to 1300 in 2009.
About 60 percent of convicted sex offenders in Israel have committed offenses against children under the age of 13.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is rife with accusations of sexual offences against minors. Pedophiles seek refuge in Israel for a good reason. They are in “good” company.
How many of the Brooklyn, New York, Haredi cult accused of sexual abuse have sought refuge from exposure and justice, in Israel?
A far-right Israeli lawmaker accused Israel of trying to normalise pedophilia as recently as May 2023, only a few months before Israel was accusing the Palestinian Resistance of “mass rape”. As many have stated on social media “an accusation is a confession”.
Israel has failed in almost every way in treating sexually abused children, says a report by a committee of experts aiming to change social norms, treatment and government policy on the issue. – Haaretz
Jerusalem Post reports that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, around 56,000 Israelis have been forced to flee their homes and live in hotels throughout the country.
These hotels are allegedly a “ticking time bomb of crime” – Cases included indecent exposure, crimes against children, and rape amongst other violent incidents. Even Israeli settlers are prey to the overt sexual predation that pervades their society.
The Limited Times :
Zion Vanuno, 64, is suspected of committing indecent acts against children in a hotel with evacuees in the center of the country. According to the suspicion, Vanuno lured the children with candies to go to different places in the hotel, where he committed indecent acts on them.
Israel – a history of rape as a weapon of terror
In his article “Israel and Rape” journalist Robert Inlakesh goes into some detail about the cases of rape and sexual harassment within the IOF armed forces.
There have also been credible claims by a female soldier that she was raped by a fellow serviceman during the ongoing brutal military assault on Gaza.
Sexual harassment and violence are nothing new among Israel’s armed forces. According to a Haaretz report, “a third of female conscripts in the military had suffered sexual harassment at least once in the previous year [2022].”
In 2020, the Israeli army’s sexual violence crisis was recognized after only 31 indictments were filed out of 1,542 sexual assault complaints registered within the military establishment.
It has been reported that a growing sector of Israeli society rape Israelis, they rape tourists, they abuse and rape children, they rape their own evacuees. How these predators (especially in the IOF) react to Palestinians that have routinely been dehumanised and reduced to legitimate targets for an inherent predatory sadism is naturally expected to be a hundred times worse. And it is.
The Tantura Massacre 22nd – 23rd May 1948.
On the night of 22-23 May 1948, a week after the declaration of the State of Israel, the Palestinian coastal village of Tantura (population 1,500) was attacked and occupied by units of the Israeli army’s Alexandroni Brigade. During the Nakba or the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 some 400 villages were razed and occupied by Zionist forces.
Tantura was one of the tens of Palestinian villages and towns inside and outside the boundaries of the UN-envisaged Jewish state specifically targeted for capture under the notorious Plan Dalet, the Haganah master plan for the military establishment of Israel on the largest area possible of Palestine.
Palestinians were caged in makeshift cages and mowed down by machine-gun fire. Schoolchildren were ruthlessly shot even if they had raised their hands in surrender. Civilians were burned alive, buried in communal graves. Young girls were raped.
How different is this to what the IOF are doing in Gaza for the last six months but on an unprecedented scale.
Sabra and Shatila in 1982 witnessed the massacre of an estimated 3,500 Palestinians by Christian militiamen enabled and presided over by the Zionist forces. As journalist Robert Fisk said:
They (Israel) had trained them, given them uniforms, handed them US army rations and Israeli medical equipment. Then they had watched the murderers in the camps, they had given them military assistance – the Israeli airforce had dropped all those flares to help the men who were murdering the inhabitants of Sabra and Chatila – and they had established military liason with the murderers in the camps
According to multiple reports rape was also a feature of the Phalange militia on their genocidal rampage through the Palestinian community.
Fisk’s horrifying description of what he saw is haunting – here were women lying in houses with their skirts torn torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies – blackened babies babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition – tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.
No different to the descriptions of decomposing bodies in and around Al Shifa Hospital or the corpses crushed beneath the tracks of a Zionist tank or bulldozer, children shot, their bodies left next to the white flag they were carrying. The terrified elderly man shot dead because he was dehydrated and couldn’t keep moving.
The merciless Zionist bloodlust has only grown in strength since the first days of dispossessing Palestinians of their lands and their lives.
Rape and the threat of rape is systematically used in Israeli prisons for Palestinian women, children and men. A web search will reveal countless reports on the degrading and inhumane treatment of female prisoners forced to endure humiliating body searches and threatened with rape if they do not comply.
The crimes committed by the IOF in Gaza since October 7th replicate the crimes committed during the Nakba and in the 75 years of Zionist occupation of Palestinian territory.
Female detainees were submitted to sexual violence, torture, inhuman treatment, strip searches, sexual harassment, and rape threats while being arrested and held by Israeli army forces according to testimonies collated by Euromed Monitor.
A UN report published in February 2024 said experts were appalled by reported (Israeli) human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls.
“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,”
Palestinian prisoners that had been stripped naked and were tortured allegedly became entertainment for the Israeli spectators that were brought in by the IOF to watch the sadistic process. They were given permission to film the torture on their mobile phones.
In 2010 a report was submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. It involved the Zionist sexual assault or threatened sexual assault of Palestinian children aged between 13 and 16. The torture was used to obtain confessions from the children, admitting to stone throwing. Read more here, here and here.
The depositions sent to the UN report direct attacks, including squeezing boys’ testicles, pushing a blunt object (a club or rifle stock) between the chair and a child’s buttocks, and repeated threats of “I’ll screw you if you don’t confess you threw stones.”
Of course the Zionist censorship machine moved to shut down the NGO, Defence for Children Palestine, that dared to expose the sexual abuse of minors by Israeli forces and security sectors. In October 2021, the DCIP was designated a terrorist organisation by Israeli authorities along with five other Palestinian NGOs.
Khan Younis in Gaza – History repeating itself?
An account (described by Zionists as fiction) from 1956 describes the slaughter and rape carried out by the Zionist forces in Gaza, in particular in Khan Younis.
According to the accepted Palestinian narrative, about 275 Palestinians were killed in the Khan Yunis massacre, while some 111 people were killed in Rafah. Rape was allegedly permitted to control the rebellious Palestinians.
The following letter was sent by a Golani Brigade soldier to his girlfriend on November 6, the day after the Sinai Campaign concluded, which is kept in the IDF archive. It is no different to the rhetoric we hear from IOF savages now inside Gaza or from the extremist Zionist settlers in West Bank:
Only the Arabs are to blame for all this and at every opportunity I take revenge on them,” he wrote. “I am not satisfied with the amount [of people] I have already killed; we killed hundreds but for me it is not enough. At every opportunity I take revenge on them, and opportunities are not lacking, especially these days when I am among thousands of Arabs. They are under curfew, and this is a great opportunity to do anything we want to them. And I’m doing just that, and I won’t stop until I am on my way home, I swear.
Palestinian memory holds years and dates close.
The Nakba was in 1948, the Naksa in 1967, Sabra and Shatila September 1982, the Intifada ‘87. November 3, 1956, however, does not live in infamy. Despite being one of the greatest massacres of Palestinians, the Khan Yunis massacre that brutally took the lives of hundreds of Palestinian men and boys, has only received a footnote in history- a mere few lines in a UN report. (Article in Palestine Chronicle )
The massacre of Khan Yunis in 1956 reached twice the number of the Dier Yassin massacre and lasted longer than the massacre that took place at Sabra and Shatila. Read more here.
Rape is a weapon of terrorists
In the case of Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has always been carried out with maximum brutality. The colonizers trained by the British relished sexual terrorism as one of their most potent instruments of power and subjugation of an unruly, justifiably resistant population.
It can be argued that rape or the threat of rape was a primary reason that many communities fled their villages and homes in 1948. The present day oppression of Palestinian women in the Resistance or political movements challenging the Zionist entity is dependent upon rape and sexual abuse to coerce female prisoners into confessions, sometimes even into collaboration.
The freed Palestinian prisoner, Rasmea Odeh, publicly spoke in an American court about how she was raped by Israeli intelligence interrogators. Odeh, who was arrested in 1969 at the age of 19, reported that during her interrogation, she was beaten with wooden sticks and metal bars, and was left naked in a blatant violation of her sexuality.
Odeh was sexually tortured with electric shocks. Wires were attached to her genitals, breasts, abdomen, arms, and legs, and in that disoriented state, she was raped with a stick while her father was forced to watch. (Mondoweiss )
Prominent Israeli Rabbis like Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu have advocated for rape in wartime. A leading Israeli professor, Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University, explicitly called for the rape of Palestinian women to deter the Palestinian resistance during the unrest of the summer of 2014.
Later, in 2016, Rabbi Colonel Eyal Qarim of the Israeli Military Rabbinate also echoed the same notion, making allowances for the rape of Palestinian women by Jewish Israeli soldiers “out of understanding for the hardship endured by the warriors.” (Mondoweiss )
The apartheid Zionist state passed a sexual terrorism law in July 2023. The law was condemned for allowing Jewish Israelis to have a far lesser punishment for rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment than Palestinian citizens.
The law directly targets Palestinian citizens of Israel who are accused of sexually assaulting or harassing Jewish women if authorities deem the motive as “nationalistic”.
The irony should not be lost on you.
Rape by the Zionist military, intelligence or police forces is not restricted to children and women. Men are also submitted to horrific torture practices including rape.
Mustafa Dirani was abducted by an Israeli “elite force” from inside Lebanon in 1994. He was finally released in 2004. Dirani claimed compensation for alleged rape by a Shin Bet interrogation expert.
The ritual humiliation of women is also not confined to within prison walls. Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada on September 28 2000 until July 2006, 68 pregnant women had to give birth at checkpoints, 34 infants and 4 pregnant women died on these checkpoints.
Israel and Abu Ghraib
When the images of prisoners taken by the IOF in Gaza emerged, men stripped down to their underwear in winter, beaten by metal pipes or guns, urinated on by their monstrous captors – it was likened to scenes from Abu Ghraib. As the inhumane abuse expanded across Gaza and included women, the comparisons increased.
Journalist W Van Wagenen wrote about the Israeli involvement in Abu Ghraib, in particular at Facility 1391:
But the “creative” torture techniques focusing on sexual humiliation and rape have a clear origin.
Israeli interrogators were teaching US contractors and MPs torture techniques that Israel has long used against Palestinians and other Arabs.
In November 2003, as Cambone was lauding Israel for its assistance in Iraq, the Guardian published a report detailing the torture Israel subjected prisoners to at a secret prison known as ‘Facility 1391.’
“I was barefoot in my pajamas when they arrested me, and it was really cold,” says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. “When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack,” for his head.
Other former prisoners at Facility 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded, handcuffed, and threatened with rape. (emphasis added)
There can be no denying that Israel has a culture of rape and abuse of those it considers ‘untermensch’. It is engrained in their psyche and has been for almost a century because they believe they are not only “chosen” but “untouchable”. The British spawned a Frankenstein’s monster and they have lost control of the rapacious entity that is committing crime after crime against Humanity, not only in Palestine.
Britain forced Zionism on the population by allowing mass ‘immigration’, by arming the zionists while disarming the Palestinians, and by using all other weapons available to an occupying power to crush resistance. Thousands of Palestinians were killed when they rebelled in the 1930s, all attempts to reason with the British having failed.
Executions and the collective punishment of whole villages were part of how Britain lived up to its ‘sacred trust of civilization.’ The leadership needed for the coming stages of confrontation with the zionists was largely decapitated. The British did their dirty work for them. (Jeremy Salt)
“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence [them] absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.” Judith Lewis Herman – Trauma and Recovery: the aftermath of violence, from domestic abuse to political terror.
An illegal settler colonial entity built on genocide, rape, torture, apartheid and oppression will always fail eventually. It is only a matter of time before the truly depraved and rotten Zionist core will surrender to its own internal moral decay and implode.
UK says will keep selling arms to Israel anyway
Press TV – April 9, 2024
Despite growing pressure on the United Kingdom to end its arms sales to Israel, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron says London’s position on exporting arms to the occupying regime remains “unchanged.”
At a press conference in Washington alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, the top British diplomat said the UK government would keep shipping arms to Israel after reviewing advice from the nation’s lawyers.
His remarks came as a majority of Britons have called on London to no longer give arms to Israel, whose military has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7.
They fear that Israel may be using British-made weapons in military actions that violate international law in the Palestinian territory, which has also been blocked by Israel from having access to water, food, and electricity.
“I have now reviewed the most recent advice about the situation in Gaza and Israel’s conduct of their military campaign. The latest assessment leaves our position on export licenses unchanged. This is consistent with the advice that I and other ministers have received,” Cameron said.
However, he refused to elaborate on what legal advice London was given when assessing whether or not to restrict arms sales to the Israeli regime.
Early this month, Israel’s deadly strikes on the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK) in central Gaza drew worldwide condemnation. Three of the WCK aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes were Britons, who were all UK military veterans working on its security team.
Last week, three former senior British judges joined over 600 members of the British legal profession in calling for London to stop arms export to Israel.
Britain supplied 42 million pounds ($53 million) of arms to Israel in 2022.
Killing humanitarian workers as a strategy: Israel’s endgame in Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | April 9, 2024
Israel described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza on 1 April as a “grave mistake”, a “tragic event” of a kind that “happens in war”. Obviously, Israel was lying. In fact, this entire so-called war in Gaza — which is in reality a genocide — has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel and its supporters continue to peddle.
For some in the mainstream media, it took months to accept the obvious fact that Israel has been lying about the events that led to its military offensive and the objectives of its constant targeting of hospitals, schools, shelters and other civilian facilities. As such, it was only logical for the occupation state to lie about killing the six internationals and their Palestinian driver working with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity. Notwithstanding an event as atrocious as this undoubtedly was, it is implausible for Israel to start telling the truth now.
Fortunately, few seem to believe Israel’s version of the WCK incident or, indeed, its ongoing massacres elsewhere in Gaza. The state “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” said the US-based NGO on 5 April.
The issue of targeting these internationals, however, has to be placed within a larger context.
Israel was hardly secretive about its intentions to deny Palestinians even the most basic necessities of survival in Gaza, epitomised in the words of Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant way back on 9 October: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water, everything is closed.”
This statement, like many others, was understood at the time to be due to Israel’s desire to punish Palestinians for the 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by resorting to its usual tactic of collective punishment. Based on statements made by other Israeli officials, though, it soon became clear that the occupation state wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the enclave altogether.
The Israeli stratagem was rejected immediately by Egypt, Jordan, other Arab countries and, eventually, governments around the world. Israel, however, persisted. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians in Gaza as the “right humanitarian solution”. Benjamin Netanyahu concurred. “Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans [sic], and we are working on it,” said the Israeli prime minister.
However, for ethnic cleansing to take place, several prerequisites had to be fulfilled. For a start, the bulk of Gaza’s 2.3 million people had to be forced to the south, as close to the Egyptian border as possible. This has been achieved. Then everything conducive to life had to be destroyed throughout Gaza, including all hospitals and clinics.
Thus, we saw the grisly massacre at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on 17 October, for example, and the bloodbath and eventual total destruction of Gaza’s largest medical complex, Al-Shifa, on 1 April. When the Israeli military pulled out of the Shifa area, troops left behind one of the most tragic scenes in the history of modern warfare. Hundreds of bodies were hurriedly buried in mass graves amid charred buildings and indescribable destruction. Limbs of children stuck out of the dirt, and whole families were tied together and executed; and there were other crimes that will take the world a long time to fathom, let alone explain. And yet former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed nonchalantly that “not one civilian” was killed in Al-Shifa. Another blatant lie.
Most civilian shelters, bakeries, markets, electricity grids and water generators also had to be targeted so that the hapless population, especially in northern Gaza, would understand that life there would simply be unsustainable. Becoming fully aware of Israel’s ultimate plan of inducing a famine in Gaza, though, the Palestinians fought back. Their counterstrategy was predicated on ensuring that as many of them as possible remained in northern Gaza, and that those concentrated in Rafah were not pushed into the Sinai desert.
Aside from the ongoing battle between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza, there was thus another deadly struggle taking place: Israel’s push for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the latter’s desire to survive and remain within the nominal borders of their land.
This is why Israel has killed countless Palestinians involved in the life-sustaining work in northern and central Gaza.
According to the UN, prior to the killing of the six internationals on 1 April, Israeli troops had already killed 196 humanitarian aid workers in the Palestinian territory. This figure does not include doctors, medical staff, civil defence workers, police chiefs and officers, and anyone else contributing to day-to-day life in areas that Israel wanted to empty of its inhabitants.
Even when, under international pressure, the rogue state allowed limited aid to enter northern Gaza, its army killed and wounded Palestinian civilians on a number of occasions as they gathered in desperation hoping to get some life-saving supplies. According to a 4 April report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has killed 563 Palestinians and injured 1,523 by bombing and shooting people waiting for aid at designated spots in northern Gaza, or when it bombed distribution centres and workers responsible for distributing the aid. The Kuwait roundabout area in Gaza City alone witnessed the murder of 256 starving refugees, while 230 others were killed on Al-Rashid Street elsewhere in the city.
Israel’s bombing was not random, as it also targeted and killed 41 police officers who had worked with volunteers from various Gaza clans to help the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to distribute aid among the famine-stricken population. Even the clans themselves were targeted in equally merciless bombardments.
On each occasion, just as happened after the attack on the WCK workers, the entity responsible for the aid would declare that it would no longer be involved in aid distribution. This is how Gaza’s hunger turned into famine. It was Israel’s very deliberate strategy.
The killing of the internationals in Gaza served the same goal of ensuring that no aid distribution mechanism was in place, because Israel would not allow it. Ironically, the involvement of World Central Kitchen was itself the outcome of a US-negotiated agreement that would deny the Gaza authorities and even UNRWA any role in the distribution of aid.
The apartheid state of Israel must be stopped at any cost. Moreover, that cost must include Israeli war criminals being held accountable for one of the worst genocides in modern history.
See also:
Drone footage shows Gaza turned to wasteland since start of Israeli offensive
Hundreds of corpses recovered from vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital
The Cradle | April 9, 2024
The bodies of hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel have been recovered from the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, in the north of the strip.
The medical facility was destroyed in a massive Israeli operation inside and around the hospital, which spanned two weeks.
“The bodies of 409 martyrs – some of them decomposed – have so far been recovered by civil defense teams from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings in Gaza City,” Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on 9 April.
Israeli troops raided Al-Shifa Hospital on 18 March – for the second time since the start of the war – carrying out what it said was an operation against Hamas leaders in the facility. During the onset of the attack, Brigadier General Fayeq al-Mabhouh, Gaza’s chief of police and overseer of aid distribution in the north of the strip, was assassinated by Israeli forces.
The army withdrew from Al-Shifa Medical Complex on 1 April. Following the withdrawal, videos on social media showed the full extent of the damage inflicted on the hospital by Israel’s army and aircraft.
The complex’s entire buildings were ravaged, and hundreds were killed in the two-week attack. The hospital has been sheltering thousands of displaced Gazans since the war began. Dozens of Palestinians, among them children, were executed by Israeli forces around the hospital throughout the operation.
Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza also reported massive damage and unprecedented numbers of dead bodies in the strip’s southern city of Khan Yunis on 9 April. Israel had been operating in Khan Yunis since early December in an attempt to dismantle the presence of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades – which it failed to do.
Following the army’s large-scale withdrawal from Gaza over the weekend – which has left a limited number of troops inside the enclave – families returning to Khan Yunis witnessed scores of bodies, many trapped under rubble.
Dozens of young men have also been reported missing, according to what returning families told the civil defense.
The city “smells of death,” one mother said as she was returning, adding: “We don’t have a city anymore – only rubble. There is absolutely nothing left.”
The civil defense has urged the international community to provide specialized equipment to remove the bodies from underneath the rubble.
Palestine’s Sacrifice
By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | April 8, 2024
Years ago, I made the statement that Palestinians had not sacrificed enough. It was meant to be a shocking statement, but it wasn’t a judgmental one. What I meant was that all of the terrible sacrifices that Palestinians had made up until that time had failed to liberate Palestine, and that we would know when adequate sacrifice had been made by the standard of whether liberation had been achieved.
I believe that we are reaching a vantage point where this accomplishment is now within view, or at least just over the horizon. If so, it is utterly astonishing, but the greatest part of the sacrifice is yet to come. We call it genocide, and although we are in the midst of it, we have not yet seen the worst.
Israel, which has spent its entire history building its image and cementing its relationships – security, technological, academic, economic and cultural – with the rest of the world, now perceives that it must allow itself to become a reviled international pariah in order to commit horrors that will preserve itself as a Zionist exclusivist enclave on stolen territory. Israel, in its desperation, has given up on all civilized pretenses and most links to the outside world, except its lifeline with the only superpower that can single-handedly transfuse enough arms and wealth to maintain its ability to wreak havoc upon its unwanted subjugated population and instill fear in its neighbors.
It has come down to this: From Israel’s perspective, it must commit genocide in order keep the Zionist dream of a Jewish state alive. There will be no de Klerk-Mandela moment, no integration, no truth commission, no mutual acceptance. The Israelis who believed in good will and mutual respect do not exist anymore, and their dream was a fantasy in any case, depending as it did upon tolerance in a society that required racist credentials for admission. Roughly a million of them emigrated in the decade prior to October 7th, 2023, and another million in the six months after. In the remaining Israeli population, fanaticism rules. It is the future of Israel, to the extent that it has any. Like the crusader castle at Acre, it will be a fortress that remains until it is no longer viable, losing its body of the faithful, unwilling to keep it going.
That is the future. At present, it is a fearful, enraged beast, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in order to resist the inevitable. As it makes no visible progress against its armed foes in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, it is now seeking to widen the war, with direct superpower military engagement. Although the US remains unlikely to take the bait, it is also ruled by a similar siege mentality, especially at the highest levels of government, which are impervious to popular will, and are wedded to interests that largely determine its composition, regardless of the party “in power”. One of those interests is the Israel lobby, which not surprisingly maintains especially strong control over US policy towards Israel. The practical implications are that, regardless how unpopular a government or its policy may be, it will not waver in its support for Israel – in effect a sock puppet with a teleprompter.
These factors will raise the cost of the Palestinian victory. Yet even those who are the victims of the greatest crime of this century refuse to accept a return to life in the concentration camp that was Gaza. Indeed, the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are swelling with more recruits than they can accept at present.
Will the crescendo of the world’s voices and actions prevent the worst from happening? Will the ships of aid and volunteers change the outcome? The demonstrations? The suspension of trade and exchange agreements? The isolation of Israel as a pariah? The alienation of Jewish youth from Zionism? I would like to think so, but as far as I can tell, none of this has any impact upon the thinking – much less the decisions – in Israel or the US. Our predictions for the future are projections of the past and present, and I see nothing in those projections that will avert the course of genocide. I would love to be wrong.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization.
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The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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