By Yuriy Zinin – New Eastern Outlook – 09.03.2024
The name Avdeyevka, which is known to few in the Arab world, has featured prominently in the Middle Eastern media in recent weeks. Media commentators have examined the battle to liberate this city, its significance, and discussed the opinions of political analysts and observers on the future course of military operations in the conflict, including its international impact.
A number of military observers quoted in the media have referred to this event as “a turning point in the course of the war,” similar in significance to the conquest of Bakhmut by Russian forces last year, with both cities being of similar strategic and symbolic value.
For example, Rizk Al-Hawalda, a retired brigadier general and military expert from Jordan, believes that the capture of Avdeyevka will allow Russian forces to further strengthen their position in Ukraine, and increase their combat capability to defend the territories under their control. For the Ukrainian forces, however, the capture means that their ability to retake what they have lost has been thwarted, leaving them to face the fact that this land has now become Russian territory, and that this loss is irreversible.
Other authors believe that the capture of this city will allow Russian forces to control the space around Donetsk and create logistical corridors to expand the scope of their operations.
The Egyptian Al Qahera News edition sees the capture of Avdeyevka as an “important victory” achieved by Russian troops just before the second anniversary of the start of the special military operation. They outnumber the enemy on the battlefield, both in terms of troop numbers and equipment, giving them an advantage when attacking Ukrainian formations, which are short on weapons and soldiers amid cracks in the West’s military support for Kiev.
These changes are also evident in the range of media responses from the Middle East. In general, they adopt a balanced tone when discussing the results of fighting after two years of the special military operation, and the political and economic consequences of the combat.
For example, the influential Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat opines that Washington and its allies have miscalculated. It is referring to the West’s imposition of anti-Russian sanctions, its attempts to undermine Russia’s economy, deprive it of revenues from hydrocarbon exports, and isolate it in the international arena, etc.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations, it suggests, are based on common sense and are absolutely correct. He has carefully avoided the traps laid out for him and been able, with skill and step by step, to dismantle the economic blockade declared against his country, and the authors also admire the undeniable victories of Russian troops on the military frontlines.
A number of other Arab publications take a similar line. A review of the events in Ukraine, as they see it, teaches a number of lessons. One is that a state’s policy should not be based on promises of support from outside, and should be founded first and foremost on its own interests. Now, the West’s promises of support have failed. The former media rhetoric that Ukraine is bulwark for Europe is on the wane.
Europeans are suffering from interruptions to the supply of Russian gas, supply chain disruption, inflation and interest rate hikes, etc. The European countries see resolving their own economic crises as their priority, and do not wish to suffer because of Ukraine. In short, the credibility of the Western coalition supporting Ukraine has fallen, and, as the present author notes, it looks as if Ukraine will have to go into the third year of the war alone.
Significantly, such assessments are increasingly being reflected in public opinion in the Middle East. Recently, Akhbar Al Aan, a leading news platform in Dubai (UAE) conducted a poll among its readers about Western military aid for Ukraine. To the question: would this help rescue Kiev, 85% of respondents answered “no” and just 15% answered “yes”.
Today, a number of political observers in the Middle East are drawing parallels between the conflict in Ukraine and the war in Gaza and reaching their own conclusions. In particular, they note the similarity of behavior styles of the leaders of the two countries: Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu. They conclude that both are characterized by a pathological desire to deny reality and are stubbornly following their chosen courses, despite the obvious failures of their strategies….
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed no sympathy for the Palestinian victims of the war in Gaza. He did not hesitate for a second, but supported the Israeli war machine, Akhbar Al Aan claims.
Other authors criticize the “blindness” of those countries that oppose Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine but are unable to see what Israel has been doing in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
In their view, one of the lessons of the Gaza conflict involves the issue of trust in the West. It promotes and continues to proclaim its values and principles as universal, applying to all people regardless of religion, race or nationality. But these trumpeted values have not been applied in Gaza.
Many political observers share this view. The disillusionment with Western values that has emerged in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip has left a deep wound in the hearts and minds of Arab elites who had placed their hopes in an engagement with Western civilization. This will push the Arab nations’ Islamic civilization, and the civilization of the Global South in general, further away from the West, Arab media commentators predict.
Yuri Zinin, senior researcher at the Center for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Al Mayadeen | March 8, 2024
The mass killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “is permissible according to the halakhic principles,” the head of a Jewish religious school in occupied Yafa, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, stated according to Israeli news website Ynet.
A recording of the extremist’s answers to questions on the Gaza Strip was published a few hours ago on YouTube and is available for the public.
Halakha or Jewish Law, which also translates to “the way to behave or act,” is held as divine law among Orthodox Jews such as Mali, who called for the extermination of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
When asked about what should be done to infants and the elderly, Mali simply answered, “The same.”
Mali founded the religious school Shirat Moshe and has called upon his students to strictly follow the orders of the Israeli occupation forces, saying that if IOF soldiers do not kill Palestinians, then Palestinians will kill them. It is worth noting that Shirat Moshe students serve in the IOF, despite other schools of Orthodox Judaism refusing military service.
The extremist stressed that the main principle of the war on Gaza is that “no soul remains alive,” urging Israelis to carry on the genocide against Palestinians.
By Jonathan Cook | March 8, 2024
A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:
1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.
Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.
2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.
The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather than the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.
With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business as usual in Gaza afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.
3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.
4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.
5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.
And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.
No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.
He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Press TV – March 7, 2024
UK news chiefs have defended their biased coverage of Israel’s brutalities in Gaza even as a new report has exposed significant distortions in the Western coverage of the war.
The report, Media Bias Gaza 2023-24, by Center for Media Monitoring (CFMM) was launched on Wednesday and analyzed data from 28 UK online media websites for a period of one month starting from October 7, 2023.
The study that examined more than 200,000 articles and TV reports said the British media had failed to represent the conflict in Gaza in a fair manner.
Speaking at the event hosted by CFMM in the House of Parliament, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, said it was unlikely that there would be no mistakes made by a 24-hour news channel.
“It’s impossible not to make mistakes, we will make mistakes,” Burgess said while justifying their coverage.
The CFMM report, however, found that “many prominent media personalities, senior editors and journalists regurgitated Islamophobic tropes about Muslim belief and identity, with the aim of undermining the Palestinian cause and/or Palestinian advocates.”
The study also found “how some media outlets and commentators have framed the conflict as being between Muslims and Jews.”
“Muslim opposition to Israel has been framed as anti-Semitic by some publications and commentators,” the study said
Defending the distortion of facts while reporting the war, Jonathan Levy, managing director and executive editor at Sky News, disputed criticism of a number of points made in the report, including reducing the conflict to “Israel-Hamas” war.
The study showed Israelis were 11 times more likely to be referred to as “victims of attacks” compared to the Palestinians, while 76 percent of online articles framed the conflict as an “Israel-Hamas war.” Only 24 percent mentioned “Palestine/Palestinian,” which they said indicated a lack of context.
Marwan Yaghi, a Palestinian diplomat in the UK, described the media coverage as “appallingly biased.”
Right wing news channels and right-wing British publications were at the forefront of misrepresenting pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic, the report said.
It also mentioned that pro-Palestinian voices faced misrepresentation and vilification by media outlets, with allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism weaponized to discredit legitimate advocacy efforts.
It highlighted the lack of scrutiny around a number of stories perpetuated in the press, noting 361 mentions of the false “beheaded babies” story.
Palestinian Information Center – March 7, 2024
BEIJING – China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has condemned Israel’s war in Gaza as a “disgrace for civilization” and reiterated Beijing’s calls for an “immediate ceasefire.”
“It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped,” Wang told journalists at a press conference on Wednesday.
“No reason can justify the continuation of the conflict, and no excuse can justify the killing of a civilian population,” Wang said.
“The international community must act urgently, making an immediate ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities an overriding priority, and ensuring humanitarian relief an urgent moral responsibility.”
Beijing’s top diplomat also said China supports “full” UN membership for a Palestinian state. “We support Palestine becoming a formal UN member,” Wang said.
“The catastrophe in Gaza once again reminds the world that the fact that the Palestinian territories have been occupied for a long time can no longer be ignored,” he said.
“The long-cherished wish of the Palestinian people to establish an independent country can no longer be evaded, and the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people cannot continue for generations without being corrected,” he added.
Beijing has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since the start of the current Israel war on Gaza in October 2023.
China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 07.03.2024
In an exclusive interview with Tehran Times, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Pejman Shirmardi, rejected claims that his country’s nuclear program is not fully transparent. “From day one, we have made it clear that our nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful. Every time the IAEA has asked us for clarification, we have given them answers. Nothing has changed. Tell us what part of our nuclear program isn’t transparent, and we will prove that it is. As the leader of the Islamic Revolution once said, ‘The West knows very well that it is lying about our nuclear activities,’” the Iranian said.
Condoning Israel’s Nuclear Policy
Pejman Shirmardi made the remark after IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, during a summit earlier this month, accused Iran of not being fully transparent about Iran’s relationship with his agency. Even the Western press, however, has picked up on the background to this opinion, writing that the IAEA director general’s reaction is most likely that he chose to ignore Israel’s alarming nuclear threats against the Palestinians in recent months and to shift the focus, as usual, to Iran. Israeli National Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu has twice since the beginning of the Gaza war proposed destroying the Strip and the Palestinian civilians living there with nuclear weapons. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the Israeli minister’s statements clearly confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons.
“Against the background of Israel’s historical policy of uncertainty about possessing nuclear weapons, these statements not only explicitly confirm the country’s possession of such weapons, but also demonstrate a willingness to seriously consider their use in completely inadequate scenarios,” the diplomat said.
“This is a very serious reason to think about where the extremist representatives of Israel may be led by the realization of their permissiveness in the conditions of virtually unlimited patronage from the West,” she stressed. In this regard, many noted that IAEA inspectors have never attempted to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities, despite repeated calls from countries in the region that do not feel safe because of the warmongering policies of the Israeli regime and the West behind it.
It should be noted that experts estimate that the Israeli regime has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal because of its deliberate ambiguity regarding its nuclear policy. It has repeatedly refused inspections of its military nuclear facilities, not to mention its refusal to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Yet Iran, as a decent and responsible member of the global community, is a party to the NPT and has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively civilian in nature and subject to the strictest UN oversight in the world. The policy of double standards is crystal clear. When it comes to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel is absolved of responsibility. As a signatory to the NPT, Iran has a peaceful program for energy and medical purposes, yet it is subject to the most stringent inspection program in IAEA history. And it is against the Islamic Republic, not its counterpart, that the West has imposed the most painful sanctions regime. Israel, with hundreds of nuclear warheads, is not subject to any punitive measures. On the contrary, the regime is endlessly rewarded with more military weapons (paid for by US taxpayers), more money, and more diplomatic and political support.
Grossi’s Hypocritical Policy
The policy of hypocrisy and double standards is clearly seen in the behavior of the Western proxy, IAEA Director General Grossi, which was clearly manifested in his repeated statements on inspections of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. Anytime inspections were conducted in Iran and official reports confirmed Iran’s compliance with its obligations, Grossi spoke in Tehran and said that everything was going on normally, giving no cause for concern. However, upon his return from Iran and after accusations were made against Iran by the West and especially the US, he consistently changed his viewpoint without proper explanation. He began proclaiming Iran to be a violator, accusing it of not following rules that no one seemed to know. A number of media publications, especially Israeli media, mentioned Grossi’s changing narrative after his return from Iran, noting that he suddenly started criticizing the Iranian side, contrary to previous statements, accusing them of violating international rules.
Thus, based on relevant publications in media all over the world, it is clear that Grossi has repeatedly changed his point of view after the inspections in Iran. He, being a supporter of dialog and cooperation, suddenly started accusing Iran of violating the rules without explaining his position in sufficient detail. This raises serious questions about his integrity and objectivity.
This ambivalent behavior has its own underlying causes, which can be interpreted in various ways. Perhaps political or economic factors influenced Grossi to change his position on Iran. He may have been subjected to pressure or manipulation, causing him to change his point of view. In general, Grossi’s dislike of Iranian inspections is based more on political bias than on facts. However, the change in his position after his visit to Tehran raises questions about his true motives and possible reasons for his ambivalent attitude.
The complicated state of relations between the IAEA and Grossi personally with Iran is a relevant and complex issue in today’s geopolitical arena. Although Grossi, as a professional, is supposed to be objective in his assessments, his harsh bias against Iran can be explained by several factors. First, Grossi, as a security and political expert, is aware of the many factors negatively affecting the stability and security of the region. Iran, in his opinion, is playing an active role in the Syrian conflict by supporting the Assad government and engaging in hostilities. In addition, Iran is suspected by the West of developing nuclear weapons, although there is no evidence to that effect. In light of these circumstances, Grossi probably sees Iran as a potential threat to stability in the region. Second, Grossi may likely be influenced by a number of domestic factors that affect his personal beliefs and interests. For example, he may have strong ties to states and regions that have strained relations with Iran. This connection is extremely personal and may be for historical, religious, or commercial reasons. Such ties may make him more likely to deny or exaggerate Iran’s vulnerability. Finally, Grossi, as the person responsible for communicating information and analysis, may face public and political pressures that may affect his objectivity.
However, despite these factors, as a professional, Grossi must constantly strive for objectivity and carefully weigh all facts and arguments. As a result, Grossi’s subsequent analyses and assessments should be based on facts, taking into account a variety of viewpoints and striving for objectivity as an international UN official serving the interests of the world, not just the whims of the United States.
Provocations of the United States and Israel
With the Israeli regime bogged down in Gaza, the Israeli and US intelligence communities are busy planning a new nuclear crisis with Iran that will overshadow the catastrophic humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in the Palestinian enclave. It has been a relatively long time since Iran’s nuclear program last made global headlines. The last instance of constructive diplomacy between Tehran and Washington occurred when the two sides successfully negotiated a deal to exchange prisoners and release Iranian assets frozen in South Korean bank accounts. The deal was a kind of temporary détente, partly aimed at preserving the status quo and preventing escalation. The unexpected operation by Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip on October 7 and the Israeli atrocities that followed seemed to further set back the already stagnant nuclear diplomacy.
Now things are changing again, but not in the direction of problem-solving, but towards creating a new nuclear crisis, the consequences of which are expected to make the whole drama in Gaza trivial. While there is nothing new in Iran’s nuclear activities, there is a growing trend on Israel’s part to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran ahead of the next meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency scheduled for March 6. Articles are appearing in the Western media suggesting that Israel, together with the US, is pushing the world toward a new nuclear crisis, this time accusing Iran of enriching uranium to 90 percent, the weapons-grade purity level. By making such dangerous accusations against Tehran, they seek to create a hostile atmosphere with the ultimate goal of censuring Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting.
According to information obtained by the Tehran Times, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has personally approached the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about the matter, saying he will advance the planned crisis through hype and convince the CIA at some point in the future. Mired in the quagmire of Gaza, Netanyahu feels increasingly isolated domestically and internationally given his disastrous war in the Strip. As the turmoil over Rafah continues to plague Tel Aviv, Netanyahu has floated the idea of igniting a nuclear crisis with Iran, a scheme designed to divert world attention away from Gaza and undermine the Biden administration by portraying it as weak and unable to deal with Iran’s nuclear program.
Whether the Israeli regime will succeed in provoking a global crisis with Iran through machinations remains to be seen. Iran has so far refrained from any strong negative initiatives and, most recently, even expressed hope that the now defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would come back to life. In addition, Iran has begun preparations for the upcoming visit of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran, during which a number of issues of mutual interest are expected to be addressed. The planned escalation of tensions at the next IAEA Board of Governors meeting, however, could derail ongoing efforts to strengthen nuclear de-escalation.
By Mary Manley – Sputnik – 07.03.2024
The US has reportedly made more than 100 “quiet” weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. Despite half-baked calls from the administration for Israel to spare civilian lives, the US has continued to restock their supply of weapons, helping to create one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.
The sales were reportedly made in silence—as they escaped congressional oversight—meaning they were processed without any public debate because they each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to notify Congress, according to a Washington, DC newspaper, which first reported the story.
But altogether, the weapons sales make up a massive amount of arms for a country that has been accused of committing a genocide.
The sales reportedly included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. Public sales to Israel already included: $320 million in precision bomb kits in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106 million and $147.5 million of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December. The deliveries made in December were made under an emergency authority.
“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.
Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden Administration’s response to the conflict, said that the “arms transfer process lacks transparency by design”. He argued that foreign military sales—which is largely financed by more than $3.3 billion in US taxpayer funds—is something that US citizens deserve to know.
Matt Miller, the US State Department Spokesperson, said the Biden Administration has “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.” He also said that US officials have “engaged Congress” on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since the conflict in Gaza first began.
But some US lawmakers, particularly those who belong to the same political party as US President Joe Biden, are fed up with the administration’s decisions.
“You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like, ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” said Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, during an interview.
“These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” Castro added, in reference to Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah where nearly 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are now seeking refuge.
Castro and other House Democrats have also spearheaded a group that sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday, telling him that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could violate the administration’s requirement that US military aid be used in accordance with international law.
And Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who is also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide details on the shared intelligence between Israel and the US including an “explanation of any restrictions the US has place on the Israeli government’s use of the intelligence we share”.
“I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” added Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank.
In January, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Israel to take immediate measures to reduce the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, and to prevent the genocide of Palestinians after South Africa brought the case to their attention. At the same time, The Defense for Children International-Palestine, an international NGO, also claimed that the Biden Administration violated the Genocide Convention by supplying weapons and other military equipment to Israel’s military.
The war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023 has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians as a famine now looms over the region. Reports of Israeli soldiers targeting civilians and preventing them from being able to access aid has led many experts to accuse Israel of committing a genocide against the Palestinians.
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | March 7, 2024
President Joe Biden, better known as Genocide Joe, in cooperation with a perfunctory legislative branch has mired the American people in savage, reckless, costly, and unpopular wars. The White House’s catastrophic foreign policy may force American society to a breaking point.
The American public is increasingly rejecting Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has already cost well over $100 billion, put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and seen Ukrainians killed or injured by the hundreds of thousands.
As Americans are more concerned with simultaneous crises of inflation, healthcare, immigration, and crime, according to the latest Harris poll, 70% of Americans oppose Biden’s policy of unending military aid going to the Ukrainian meat grinder and instead want a diplomatic settlement.
The disconnect between those living in the country and those in Washington DC is highlighted by members of the U.S. Senate openly salivating about drawing Russian blood and funneling tens of billions of dollars into the military-industrial complex.
Arch-neocon and top State Department official Victoria Nuland is threatening Moscow that the United States will assist Ukraine to “accelerate [its] asymmetric warfare” and provide “nasty surprises on the battlefield.” At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron says deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to fight Russia should not be off the table.
Subsequent to a meeting with other leaders in Europe concerning the effort to weaken Russia with the Ukrainian battering ram, Macron declared, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.”
In response to Macron’s bluster, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in a speech to the Federal Assembly “[our] strategic nuclear forces are on full combat alert, and the ability to use them is assured.” The Russian leader continued, “Now they have started talking about the possibility of deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine…They must grasp that we also have weapons—yes, they know this, as I have just said—capable of striking targets on their territory.”
Concurrently, the head of the German Air Force has been caught on a leaked tape discussing with his officers plans to provide Taurus missiles to Kiev, weapons which have a range of roughly 300 miles, in hopes of carrying out attacks against Russia. London confirmed last week that “a small number” of British troops are on the ground “supporting the armed forces of Ukraine.”
On numerous occasions last year, neo-Nazis armed with NATO weaponry and ties to Ukrainian military intelligence attacked civilian areas across the border in Russia. Using Western intelligence, Kiev has already waged drone warfare deep inside Russia.
Despite Putin’s ominous remarks and the sentiments of the American people, NATO is launching massive war games, including on Russia’s borders, in preparation for war with Moscow. As the Libertarian Institute’s News Editor Kyle Anzalone reports, “[These] latest drills are a part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender military exercises—the bloc’s largest series of war games, which will see over 90,000 troops participate in about a dozen maneuvers from January through August.”
Biden’s unpopular war with Russia has brought humanity closer to a nuclear holocaust than ever before. But perhaps more widely despised and devastating to the American soul is the genocidal campaign unleashed by Israel against the Palestinian Muslims and Christians inhabiting the besieged Gaza Strip.
Per a recent Data For Progress poll, two-thirds of the American population oppose the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel and instead want the White House to back a permanent ceasefire. 77% of Democrats, 69% of Independents, and a staggering 56% of Republicans agree regarding this issue.
However, Israel’s globally livestreamed mass killing spree—primarily against women and children—is fully supported by the White House. The same government which practically every member of America’s political class swears is “our greatest ally” has cut Gaza off from food, water, fuel, and electricity. Israel is destroying Gaza, making it uninhabitable by bombing cities, neighborhoods, apartments, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances, UN shelters, mosques, churches, greenhouses, orchards, and refugee camps.
So far, the Israeli apartheid army has butchered over 30,000 people, including more than 12,000 children. Unfortunately, these confirmed figures paint a picture less macabre than reality, as thousands of men, women, and children are buried beneath rubble and presumed dead. One can only imagine what the final death toll and excess death rate will be.
Often using dystopian AI programs to select targets, the United States and Israel have leveled a greater percentage of infrastructure in Gaza than the Allied bombings in Dresden during World War II. The Guardian recently reported, “As of 17 January, analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University reveals that between 50% and 62% of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.”
Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, approximately half of which are children, have been bombed everywhere. At times, this has included 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the Israeli-designated safe zones. Virtually every city in Gaza has been eradicated except Rafah, where 1.5 million refugees have fled to and which the Israeli war cabinet plans to hit with a blitzkrieg this month.
Social media feeds in every American household have been flooded with graphic videos and images showing countless Palestinian babies, children, women, elderly people, and men being blown to bits, killed, shot, mutilated, or permanently disfigured with our weaponry.
Last week, in what is known now as the “Flour Massacre,” the Israeli occupation opened fire killing over a hundred Palestinians and injuring hundreds more near Gaza City as they desperately attempted to obtain what they could from a trickle of aid that was allowed into the Strip.
Biden, previously known as “Israel’s man in Washington,” is fond of reciting his assertion that “If Israel didn’t exist, [the United States] would have to invent it.” But each day, new horrors and atrocities are unearthed, revealing Israel to be nothing more than a rogue state (incidentally armed with dozens, if not hundreds, of nuclear weapons).
Caitlin Johnstone perfectly sums up the reaction of normal people with a conscience to the unending stream of Israeli barbarism reported daily:
So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.
This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”
However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.
Palestinians are being subjected to inhumane torture as well. After The New York Times analyzed a report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the paper reported, “Detainees said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused, and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.”
The Times article continues, “Some detainees, according to the report, told UNRWA investigators that they had often been beaten on open wounds, had been held for hours in painful stress positions, and had been attacked by military dogs.”
One prisoner was “beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and that there was still blood present in his urine… guards made him sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and played music so loudly that his ear bled.”
This coincides with numerous Israeli media reports of torture inflicted against the occupied Palestinians at the hands of their Zionist army captors. In January, +972 Magazine reported on the hellish scenes inside Israeli detention centers holding untold numbers of civilians rounded up in Gaza:
“Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day… Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.”
Israel has the population of Gaza trapped in an open-air concentration camp, with 75% of Palestinians crammed into a single city. More than 90% of the Palestinians living in the Strip have been internally displaced amidst the Israeli onslaught.
Tens of thousands of bombs have been dropped in Gaza, as the United States has delivered Israel some 25,000 tons of weapons including thousands of 2,000 pound bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells.
It is a repudiation of every treasured American value for our government to make all of us a party to such atrocities under any conditions.
The whole world sees this for what it is. Half of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 believe he is complicit in genocide. Indeed, the International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary ruling that Israel’s actions may plausibly constitute genocide. Nevertheless, our Congress is committed to financing this systematic destruction of Gaza with another $14 billion of the American people’s hard-earned money.
Palestinians are not only being ripped apart with American bombs and shells, they are being starved to death by the hundreds of thousands. As Antiwar.com News Editor Dave DeCamp reports:
At least 16 Palestinian children have starved to death in the Gaza Strip over the past few days due to the US-backed Israeli siege, and the UN’s child relief agency is warning that the number of child deaths will “rapidly increase” if conditions don’t immediately change.
“Last week, we warned that an explosion in child deaths was imminent if the burgeoning nutrition crisis wasn’t resolved,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved.”
The latest Palestinian child reported to die of hunger was Yazan al-Kafarna, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy who was in the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. Fifteen children have also died of malnutrition and dehydration at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
The UN has previously warned that Gaza’s entire population of about 2.2 million people is facing “crisis” levels of food insecurity, and at least 576,000 Palestinians in Gaza are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.”
Despite the dire situation, the State Department reaffirmed on Monday that it will continue to provide military assistance for Israel’s genocidal war.
The last vestiges of our deluded American exceptionalism burned up in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. with Aaron Bushnell last month. As the former member of the U.S. Air Force stated before his self-immolation in protest of the genocide in Gaza, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
But regardless of what excuses White House spokespeople are able to conjure up in an attempt to hide the blood on their hands, this is not normal and the American people will never accept it. As evidenced by the public opinion polls and protest movements across the country, Biden will pay dearly in the coming election for his role in the mass murder ongoing in Palestine.
NBC News revealed the Biden reelection team has taken “extraordinary steps” to avoid antiwar protesters including “by making [their events] smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, and avoiding college campuses.”
Additionally, the more than 100,000 “uncommitted” protest votes in the Michigan Democratic primary last week foreshadows things to come for Genocide Joe and the Democratic Party establishment. Demonstrators camped out daily in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s residence chant “Blinken! Blinken! We see you and all the war crimes that you do!”
In his last words, Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His message was one that resonates with perhaps a majority of Americans. But in Washington, his message could not be more alien.
Americans have witnessed the true nature of the U.S. empire, its allies, partners, and proxies. They have voiced their abhorrence to their government and have been shocked at the abject lack of empathy for the Palestinian women and children being slaughtered, tortured, and deprived to death on an industrial scale.
In a video last month, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was told by a peace activist on Capitol Hill, “I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids.” Ogles responded proudly, “I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better.”
An American antiwar populace cannot be ruled by unrepentant and unAmerican warmongers in perpetuity; a breaking point cannot come soon enough.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
Aletho News 