Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists.
The fallout from December 5 House Committe on Antisemitism hearings has already cost University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill her job, while demands by billionaire pro-Israel donors and politicians for the firing of Harvard’s Claudine Gay have grown by the day. Both stand accused of refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews, even though no such calls have taken place on their campuses.
Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the forces orchestrating the carefully choreographed, heavily-funded campaign to crush Palestine solidarity activism on campus.
The law firm leading the assault on the universities has included David Friedman, the former ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, among its partners. Until 2021, this firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, was registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent on behalf of an Israeli principal.
The firm’s clients include associates of a jailed Ukrainian billionaire who bankrolled neo-Nazi militias, along with a who’s who of corporations accused of defrauding and even killing consumers.
Meanwhile, the “Jewish student” witnesses who set the stage for the attacks on Magill and her fellow university presidents at the House Antisemitism Committee were employed on at least a semi-professional basis by Israeli lobbying cutouts.
They included Jonathan Frieden, a Harvard Law student who moonlights as president of Alliance for Israel; MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the president of MIT Israel Alliance; and Bella Ingber, co-president of NYU’s Students Supporting Israel.
Israel lobbyist moonlighting as UPenn student calls for Covid-style lockdowns on Palestine protests
The most harrowing — and clearly questionable — claims furnished during the December 5 congressional hearings came courtesy of Eyal Yakoby, an Israeli-American senior at UPenn.
“Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve… read the statement, ‘Ninety-percent of pigs are gas chambered!’ on the pavement as I walked to class,” Yakoby moaned.
The most likely explanation for the appearance of this phrase on UPenn’s Locust Walk was not the presence of chalk-wielding neo-Nazis but rather, that of animal welfare advocates, who were presumably calling attention to the fact that most pigs are killed by slaughterhouses which employ a grotesque method of gas inhalation exposed by activists in late 2022.
“‘You’re a dirty little Jew and you deserve to die’ are not words said by Hamas, but by my classmates and my professors,” Yakoby claimed during a December 5 press conference convened by the House GOP leadership. Oddly, he neglected to name a single student or UPenn employee responsible for such inflammatory remarks.
Conjuring up images of a campus overwhelmed by Hamas-linked hatemongers, Yakoby seemed to call for imposing Covid-era lockdowns on students protesting Israel’s blood-drenched assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
“During Covid, strict guidelines governed everything from class attendance and graduation walks,” he said. “But now, when students and faculty defy policies to intimidate Jewish students, where is the same resolute enforcement?”
Lawsuits target top US campuses with flimsy, unprovable allegations
Just hours after his appearance alongside members of Congress, Yakoby filed a lawsuit against UPenn, claiming the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to respond to antisemitism.
Yakoby’s lawsuit was filled with dubious, highly politicized accusations, including complaints about the chanting of “antisemitic slurs” such as “Intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea.”
A closer examination of other incidents described in the lawsuit against Penn reveals a great number of them appear to have been seriously exaggerated or manufactured out of whole cloth.
The most ‘threatening’ episode described by the Yakoby, for example, consists of a man who “threateningly approached him” and “yelled ‘fuck you.’” As a result of this experience — and the agony apparently endured when the plaintiff observed other students removing posters showing Israeli captives — the suit claims that “Yakoby missed his next two classes” because he was “shaken by these escalating acts of hate.”
The vast majority of claims of overt antisemitism appear to consist of statements by students and professors who criticized the state of Israel but generally took pains to distinguish between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism.
Elsewhere, the lawsuit accuses professors of antisemitism because they questioned now-debunked Israeli atrocity propaganda about the October 7 attacks, including a demonstrably false claim by Yakoby that the “killing of 40 [Israeli] babies” by Palestinian militants had been “confirmed.”
Many of the alleged incidents described as “assaults” fail to meet basic evidentiary standards, leaving the court with no option but to take the plaintiffs’ word that the contents of the complaint happened as described.
Claims that a Jewish student was taunted with exhortations to “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” for instance, are typical of the highly suspect claims found throughout the lawsuit.
Indeed, no proof of this alleged interaction was provided, nor did the plaintiff’s provide even a vague sketch of the assailant’s identity. Instead, the entire emphasis is placed on the supposed lack of “sympathy” subsequently shown to the student by a professor who decided not to award her an “extension on her class lecture note assignment.”
The plaintiffs also took aim at Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, who had been invited to a literary festival at Penn before being murdered in a December 6 Israeli strike described by human rights monitors as a “targeted assassination.”
The demands of the pro-Israel activists include “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees” who they say are “responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it; suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct… the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” and “compensatory, consequential, and punitive [financial] damages.”
Israel lobbyists are also targeting America’s most expensive campus, New York University, leveling a litany of flimsy and unprovable antisemitism allegations to extract heavy financial damages, including a full refund of tuition. Bella Ingber, who also featured prominently at the House Republican press conference, is a leading face of the NYU lawsuit.
During the Republican presser, Ingber compared conditions at NYU to life under the German Nazi Reich.
“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the unmistakable anti-Semitism that I have experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”
The plaintiffs of the Israel lobby-led lawsuit “request that a judgment be entered in each of their favor, and against NYU” which would see the university “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it… suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct,” and “compensatory and punitive damages.”
In other words, the lawsuit seeks campus-wide regime change, replacing any and all administrators with those willing to take instructions from the Israel lobby.
“Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House” lead legal assault on campus speech
If the language of the NYU lawsuit sounds familiar, that is because it was brought by the same high-powered corporate legal firm presiding over the legal action against UPenn: Kasowitz Benson Torres, best known for its work on behalf of former President Donald Trump. The firm’s leadership has been aptly described as “Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House.”
The law firm was known as Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman until 2017, when its partner, David Friedman left to become US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman has been credited with working alongside former presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to pressure Trump into adopting more radically anti-Palestinian positions.
The firm was founded in 1993 by attorney Marc Kasowitz, who gained national notoriety for his work representing Big Tobacco, describing himself as one of the “most feared lawyers in the United States.” Though reports describe him as a strong Trump ally and a go-to source for the former president, financial disclosures show Kasowitz and his wife have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians as well, including former President Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Also employed by the firm is former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a hardcore neoconservative who now serves as chairman of the pro-war United Against a Nuclear Iran. While in Congress, Lieberman advocated for moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as far back as 1995.
A quick glance at Kasowitz Benson Torres’ recent handiwork reveals a lengthy track record of defending Goliath from David. For example, its website boasts of successfully defending Comcast against a class-action lawsuit by angry customers. Other high-profile clients include Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, best known for causing the ongoing worldwide shortage of a vincristine — a crucial drug in treating most types of childhood cancers with no known substitute — after it deemed production insufficiently profitable.
In 2019, the firm signed on to represent the US-based co-defendants of notoriously-corrupt Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who now languishes in a Kiev prison and is known for bankrolling current president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi Azov Regiment. Ukrainian financial giant Privatbank maintains that Kolomoisky and his associates defrauded the bank out of billions of dollars.
A year later, Kasowitz Benson Torres was required to register as a foreign agent with the US Justice Department after agreeing to represent an Israeli real estate developer specializing in building luxury condos for ulra-Orthodox Jews living in illegal settlements.
This November, The Grayzonerevealed a leaked letter signed by David Friedman and delivered to NYU administrators in advance of the lawsuit. The letter demanded NYU establish a position dedicated to “combating antisemitism,” and disband student clubs dedicated to Palestine activism.
Now, the law firm’s crusade to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists is spreading across the country. This November, two of the firm’s partners revealed that the legal team plans similar suits for Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley, accusing them all of “deliberate indifference” to the supposed plight of Jewish students.
The Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Commission has warned that Israel is subjecting Palestinian female prisoners held in Damoun Prison, especially those randomly arrested from the besieged Gaza Strip, to “inhumane” treatment and “horrific” detention conditions including severe punishments on a daily basis.
In a report issued yesterday, the rights group quoted its lawyer saying that since 7 October, Israeli occupation forces have launched a massive arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, inside Israel and in Gaza, specifically targeting female prisoners, who were tortured and abused from the moment of their arrest.
“The female prisoners were subjected to degrading treatment including beating and insults, strip searches, isolation and deprivation of the most basic rights,” the lawyer said.
The prison administration deliberately singled out female detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip for the worst type of torture, according to one female prisoner.
In her testimony, the prisoner said: “A few days ago, an elderly woman [80 years old] from Gaza arrived at the department, walking on a crutch and without a cover on her head. Her body and clothes were covered with blood and she appeared to suffer from Alzheimer’s.”
According to the report, all the female prisoners from the Gaza Strip had their clothes taken away and replaced with summer clothes, and had been tortured before arriving at Damoun Prison and were subjected to physical and verbal abuse.
“Some of them had spent seven days outdoors in the rain and in the cold, and all of them arrived at the prison in a deplorable condition both physically and psychologically.”
The report lists the case of a female prisoner from Gaza who is a mother of four children and who was forced to hand her children to an unknown man in the street when she was detained.
“Other female prisoners were also forced to leave their children in the street when they were arrested by the Israeli army forces,” the detainee said.
The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.
According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world’s poorest country for eight years.
“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.
Despite the pressure from Washington, the kingdom is reportedly “continuing on the path to peace” and is working to “speed up” the completion of the peace agreements to avoid “further obstruction by the Emiratis or local agents.”
Saudi and Yemeni negotiators have given their final comments on the agreement. The revised version was recently delivered to UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who has started coordinating an official peace ceremony.
According to Al-Akhbar’s sources in Riyadh and Sanaa, the peace deal includes the complete lifting of a land, sea, and air blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, a “consensual mechanism” to pay the salaries of public employees, and the free export of oil from Saudi-controlled regions.
“The ball is in Riyadh’s court, which is under US pressure to delay the signing and enter into a war alliance against Yemen in the Red Sea,” Al-Akhbar highlights, adding that UAE-backed forces are also looking to derail the peace process.
A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen would significantly hamper US efforts to deploy an international naval task force to the Red Sea to protect Israel’s maritime trade.
“The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits [West Asia],” UK daily The Guardian reported on 17 December.
The US war chief is set to visit Israel later this week to meet with senior officials. According to the British outlet, western officials believe Washington has secured the involvement of Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain.
For the past several weeks, the Yemeni armed forces have been launching attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels attempting to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait south of the Suez Canal.
In response, five of the world’s largest shipping companies have announced a complete cessation of activities in the vital sea route. These are Hong Kong-based OOCL, France’s CMA CGM, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd, and the Italian-Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Co.
DCIP estimates an average of 165 Palestinian children were held in Israeli military detention each month in 2023. Each year, Israeli forces detain between 500 and 700 Palestinian children and prosecute them in military courts.
Children typically arrive at interrogation bound, blindfolded, frightened, and sleep-deprived. Children often give confessions after verbal abuse, threats, physical and psychological violence that in some cases amounts to torture.
Israeli military law provides no right to legal counsel during interrogation, and Israeli military court judges seldom exclude confessions obtained by coercion or torture.
From testimonies of 75 Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, DCIP found that:
61 percent experienced physical violence following arrest
96 percent were hand-tied
88 percent were blindfolded
47 percent were detained from their homes in the middle of the night
69 percent faced verbal abuse, humiliation, or intimidation
65 percent were subject to at least one strip search
71 percent were denied adequate food and water
65 percent of children were not properly informed of their rights
97 percent were interrogated without the presence of a family member
95 percent were not informed of the reason for their arrest
37 percent were subject to stress positions
43 percent were shown or signed documents in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children don’t understand
24 percent were isolated in solitary confinement for two or more days
The average amount of time that a Palestinian child detainee was isolated in solitary confinement in 2023 was 26 days, according to evidence collected by DCIP. The longest period of solitary confinement documented by DCIP was 40 days in 2023.
Israeli authorities held at least 36 Palestinian children in administrative detention in 2023, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Administrative detention is a form of imprisonment without charge or trial regularly used by Israeli authorities to arbitrarily detain Palestinians, including children. Palestinian children held under administrative detention orders are not presented with charges, and their detention is based on secret evidence that is neither disclosed to the child nor their attorney, preventing them from preparing a legal challenge to the detention and its alleged basis.
Israeli forces escalated arrest operations throughout the occupied West Bank after October 7, arresting more than 200 Palestinian children to interrogate, prosecute, and imprison in the Israeli military detention system, according to estimates by DCIP.
DCIP estimates that 130 Palestinian child prisoners were released by Israeli forces as part of a truce agreement with Hamas in November, including 17 children in administrative detention.
DCIP published a report on May 31, 2023, titled “Arbitrary by Default,” asserting that Israeli authorities’ systematic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank and prosecuted in Israeli military courts constitutes arbitrary detention.
In June 2023, Israeli forces shot 14-year-old Ihab in the leg in Balata refugee camp, near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank. Then, Israeli forces deliberately blocked an ambulance from reaching him to provide medical care.
Jewish Anti Zionists are occasionally irritated by the ‘conflation’ of ‘Zionism and Judaism’ but the terms are inherently related.
Conflation is usually understood as the merging of two or more distinct sets of information, texts, ideas, etc. into one. Does this concept apply to Zionism and Judaism? Are Zionism and Judaism distinct terms? Are Jews and Zionism categorically different from each other?
For example, can Americanism and exceptionalism be conflated? Can round and circular be conflated? The distinction between terms that are related can be confusing. But the relationship between Jews and Zionism is clear. This is also true of the relationship among Zionism, Jews and Judaism. These terms are intrinsically related politically, culturally, religiously and at times they form a metaphysical continuum.
Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, probably the most eloquent Torah Jew spokesperson, has repeatedly argued that those who ‘conflate’ Judaism and Zionism are “either Zionists or anti-Semites.” But Zionism and Judaism, as we will see next, are integrally related.
The vast majority of Rabbinical Jews see Judaism and Zionism as correlated precepts. This is not a recent phenomenon. As early as 1942, at the peak of WWII, 818 orthodox American rabbis signed a document reaffirming the essential bond between Zionism and Judaism. The Rabbis’ document reads, “the overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regard Zionism not only as fully consistent with Judaism but as a logical expression and implementation of it.” We can also look to the Judaic teaching of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Kook, who died in 1935, was the chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. He is considered one of the fathers of religious Zionism. For Kook, Eretz Yisrael was the spatial centre of holiness in the world. Like other Zionist agitators, Kook rejected the galut (Jewish Diaspora). The messianic Zionist settler movement is largely inspired by Kook’s teaching.
The Rabbis who subscribe to the Zionist enterprise clearly do not differentiate between Judaism and Zionism. For them, Zionism and Judaism are at the core of the contemporaneous Judaic call. These Rabbis do not conflate Zionism with Judaism: they simply do not differentiate the two.
But what about the so-called ‘anti Semites,’ do they ‘conflate’ Judaism and Zionism? Some critics of Israel argue that Zionist criminality is the outcome of Judaic dismissal of otherness. They point at some problematic segments within the Talmud and argue that Israeli brutality is a continuation of those inhumane teachings. Whether or not this argument is valid, the suggestion that Zionism inherited its brutality from Judaism suggests that the so called anti Semite’s understanding of Zionism and the Talmud are linked by a chain of causality, and is not a case of conflation.
So the rabbinical Zionists and the ‘anti Semites’ do not conflate Zionism and Judaism, but what about Israel and the Israelis? Israel is invested in a dialectical battle with the merger of Judaism and Zionism. Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish’ State not the ‘Judaic’ State. Secular Zionism has, since its inception, had an ambivalent relationship with Rabbinical institutes. Though the rabbinical institutions in Israel have managed to dictate halakha law, Israeli political institutions have, at least until now, compartmentalised religious and civil matters.
While in Judaism (as in Islam), there is no dichotomy between the religio and the civil, Zionism promised to make Jews into‘people like all other people.’ This promise was inspired by Christian civilisation — a social environment that endeavored to maintain a dichotomy between religion and civil laws. Zionism’s original promise to civilise the Jews was intended to liberate the newly invented Jewish ‘nation’ from its ‘reactionary’ religious heritage. This indicates that even the Israelis do not conflate Judaism and Zionism. They, somehow, differentiate between the two, although they probably admit to themselves that they often overlap.
But if Judaism and Zionism are not distinct notions and, as a result, conflation is not possible, it would also be wrong to argue, as many commentators do, that ‘Judaism was hijacked by Zionism.’ If anything, the facts suggest the opposite. It was Zionism that was hijacked by Judaism. Zionism began as an anti Judaic movement. It promised to emancipate the Jews from their ‘reactionary’ past by means of a ‘homecoming’. It promised to civilise diaspora Jews and make them a part of a productive, functional and autonomous nation. Many early Zionist texts read like anti-Semitic tracts. They spew anti Jewish rants. But it didn’t take long for Judaism to contain the emerging tsunami of Early-Zionist ferocity and teach the Jews to love themselves once again. It is important to note that when Zionism was anti Judaic, universalist and humanist, it was a marginal movement. Hardly any Jews followed the few early Zionist idealists. However, as soon as Zionism became tribal, expansionist and even militant, its popularity amongst Jews grew rapidly. It is reasonable to argue that it was Rabbis like Kook and later the Chabbad sect that skillfully and wittingly integrated Zionism into their Judaic teaching. By doing so, they killed Zionist anti Judaic ferocity. They reunited the tribe.
It seems that no one conflates Judaism and Zionism, not the Rabbinical Zionist who see Judaism and Zionism as one, nor the anti-Semite who sees Judaism and Zionism in causal terms. Even the Israelis do not conflate the two. Those who reference to conflation may do so in order to sustain the confusion relating to Jews and their politics.
Kosher Trinity And Jewish Quantum Mechanics
While pre-emancipated Jews where at ease with their ethno-religious identity, the French revolution, emancipation and secularisation introduced complexity to identity issues for European Jews. Since then, secular Jews have found it difficult or even impossible to consolidate their tribal identity within the emerging universal discourse around them. They find it impossible to fuse their cultural racial orientation with their anti racist progressive political rants. Zionism offered a solution. It promised to take the Jews away, to remove the problem. But Zionism only managed to move the problem to a new place.
Diaspora Jews have developed different tactics to deal with their identity crises. Contemporary Jewish identity is shaped like a tri-polar magnetic field in which one pole is religion, another is race and the third is politics.
When Jewish politics is subject to criticism (Israel, Zionism, the Lobby, etc.) some Jews claim to be ‘racially offended’ in spite of the fact that race, biology, blood or ethnicity was never mentioned. When Jewish racism is subject to criticism (choseness, Israel race laws, etc.) some Jews are affronted by a perceived attack on their religion. When the religion or some obscene Jewish religious teaching is disparaged, many Jews are quick to assert that they are hardly religious anymore (which is true by the way). We are confronting a quantum leap–an evasive identity that is morphing constantly. It moves rapidly within its kosher trinity field, it is everywhere and nowhere. The reason for this is that the Kosher Trinity makes it very difficult, or even impossible to criticise Jewish politics, ideology and religion. The Kosher Trinity allows Jews to boast about their cultural symptoms and great achievements while claiming offense when any of these symptoms are discussed by others. This quantum model is set to suppress any possible dissent and avoid Jewish self-reflection. As much as you may find it hard to grasp what Jews are, Jews share the struggle to address who they are and what they are up to.
The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.
Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.
“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.
Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”
On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.
After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
It’s really no surprise that Israel’s military is killing its own people after reports of three hostages shot dead by “friendly fire”.
The Israeli authorities said the three Israeli men were “mistakenly identified as threats” during close combat with Palestinian militants and were fired on by troops.
There are reports of the bodies of three other hostages having been recovered. However, the Israeli regime is not disclosing the circumstances of their deaths. Or rather they haven’t come up with a good cover story yet.
There are also reports that up to 20 per cent of the 117 Israeli soldiers killed so far in action in Gaza have been by “friendly fire”.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has stated that several Israeli hostages have been killed during eight weeks of Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the latest three hostage deaths as an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed that there would be a full investigation into the circumstances to avoid repeating the error.
There are believed to be around 130 Israeli hostages still remaining in Gaza after they were taken there by Hamas and other Palestinian militants during the daring attacks on Israel on October 7. More than 100 captives have already been released during an earlier prisoner exchange truce.
The latest deaths of hostages sparked public protests in Tel Aviv demanding Netanyahu to end hostilities and bring all captives home. Israeli families and supporters have been furious at Netanyahu’s war cabinet for not prioritizing the release of all captives by calling a ceasefire.
Netanyahu and his ministers have rejected domestic and international calls for a ceasefire. Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said that Israel’s attacks on Gaza will continue “with or without international support”.
The U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a visit to Israel on Friday consented to the continuation of military operations for months to come, although no doubt for public relations benefit the American envoy urged a “transition” to minimize civilian casualties.
The intransigent Israeli leaders have said the military operations in Gaza will continue for “several months”. That means the death toll of civilians and hostages will inevitably escalate beyond what is already an unprecedented aggression and litany of war crimes. Already there have been 20,000 Palestinian civilians killed during 70 days of bombing and ground invasion by Israeli troops in Gaza.
Nearly 30,000 bombs have been dropped on Gaza and half of them are “unguided” munitions or so-called “dumb bombs”. That’s over 50 tonnes in high explosive ordnance, or three times the lethal force that was dropped on Hiroshima by the Americans in 1945.
The wanton murder of women and children by the Israeli regime shows that it has no regard for international law nor the commission of crimes against humanity.
Given the barbarity of Israel’s onslaught, it is not surprising that its forces are killing its own people. This is not merely due to “error” or what is called “friendly fire”.
The Israeli military is bombing civilian targets with deliberate genocidal intent. Its snipers are shooting medics and patients through hospital windows.
There are reports of Israeli commandos raiding shelters and executing women and children at close range.
In this unbridled slaughter of innocents and orgy of mass murder it is to be expected that the Israeli forces are killing Israeli hostages because these forces are killing everyone. Anyone that appears in the gun sights of Israeli forces is to be obliterated.
And the Israeli regime and its American apologists have the gall to call the Israeli killers-in-uniform “the most moral army in history”.
During the Hamas attacks on Kibbutzim and other Israeli sites on October 7, it is now well-documented that many of the deaths that day out of the 1,200 victims were caused by Israeli military violence. Israeli witnesses have testified that troops opened fired with tanks and heavy machine guns on houses where Palestinian fighters were holding residents.
Israeli soldiers have also expressed dismay and disbelief that their forces used such indiscriminate firepower in situations where Israeli citizens would be knowingly killed.
The destruction of houses as well as numerous cars at the open air dance festival where several Israeli partygoers were killed could not have been carried out by lightly armed Palestinian fighters. The latter claimed to have killed nearly 400 Israeli soldiers on October 7. Hamas say their primary targets were military. No doubt the militants killed civilians too. However, the emerging evidence indicates that most of the deaths of Israeli civilians were by their own security forces.
This would account for images that purport to show that Hamas fighters incinerated and mutilated victims. Such images have been cited by Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden as evidence of Palestinian “terrorism” and justification for the Israeli offensive on Gaza.
But the deliberate killing of Israelis by their military in situations of close combat as a means to destroy the enemy is known as the Hannibal Doctrine. It is Israeli state policy, albeit not openly acknowledged.
The latest Israeli plan reported this week to flood underground tunnels in Gaza with seawater is also risking the drowning of Israeli hostages. Just like the carpet bombing of Gaza, the lives of the hostages are of little value to Netanyahu and the psychopaths in his cabinet.
If it weren’t for the genocidal offensive on Gaza, Netanyahu would be in court facing prosecution for long-time charges of personal corruption. He wants this murderous war to continue for as long as possible to keep himself out of jail. His cabinet of Zionist fascists also want to wipe Palestinians off the map in a Final Solution of ethnic cleansing.
For the fascist Israeli regime who have gotten away with mass murder and theft for so long with absolutely no compunction, well… why not kill a few of their own for good measure?
Their perennial cover story of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews is just an added sickening depravity. The Neo-Nazis are in Tel Aviv, sponsored and weaponised by Washington.
The Hamas Movement has accused the Israeli occupation army of using different types of internationally prohibited ammunition and bombs in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and persisting in its indiscriminate bombardment of homes, shelter centers, tents and hospitals.
“All this is happening in full view of the world, with support from the US, Britain and some European countries,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut on Saturday.
Hamdan criticized the failure of the international community and the UN to stop the brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza as a result of the US use of its veto power to support what he called the “neo-Nazis” in their crimes and massacres.
“About 19,000 citizens of our people have been martyred and about 52,000 others have been injured, while there are approximately 800 missing persons — 70 percent of them children and women,” Hamdan pointed out.
Hamdan said that a staggering 45 percent of the martyrs in southern Gaza are displaced persons, which contradicts the Israeli occupation’s claims about the presence of safe zones.
“There is no safe place or safe passages in the Gaza Strip. These are lies the occupation keeps repeating and every official of the US administration keeps parroting. The entirety of Gaza, from its northernmost to southernmost areas, is targeted by the Zio-American weaponry,” Hamdan underscored.
“The war trio and losers, Netanyahu, Gantz and Gallant, achieved nothing of their aggressive goals and their ongoing Nazi war against the Gaza Strip … Their dreams and illusions will be shattered on the land of proud Gaza,” he said.
An Israeli military sniper has shot dead a Christian mother and daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in the Gaza Strip sheltering displaced Palestinian families.
The fatal shooting took place inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza City at around noon on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of al-Quds, which oversees Catholic Churches across Cyprus, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement.
“Nahida and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety,” it added.
The patriarchate also said that no warning was given before the shooting and that the victims “were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”
Seven more Palestinians were also wounded by gunfire as they tried to protect others at the church, according to the statement.
The patriarchate further said that an Israeli tank fired three projectiles, destroying a convent’s generator and fuel supplies, and rendering a building housing 54 disabled people uninhabitable.
“The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive,” it noted.
Meanwhile, the Vatican press agency said the Israeli strikes wounded three people.
Israeli air raid kills nearly two dozen Palestinians in Jabalia
In another development, at least 20 Palestinians were killed and some 100 others injured following an Israeli aerial assault on a residential block in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The attack targeted the home of the Shehab family, causing extensive damage to neighboring houses.
Israel waged the brutal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the onslaught on Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,088 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 54,450 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
Over half of US adults from ages 18 to 24 believe the ongoing crisis in Gaza should be resolved by abolishing the state of Israel and turning it over to Hamas and the Palestinian people, a new poll has found.
The Harvard-Harris poll, conducted this week and released on Friday, showed that 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended,” compared with 32% who favor a two-state solution. Just 17% said Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians to resolve the conflict. Among all age groups, six in ten Americans call for a two-state deal, while only 19% want Israel to be given to the Palestinians.
The survey marked the latest poll showing a dramatic divide between Americans young and old on issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people amid the ongoing war between West Jerusalem and Hamas. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that nearly half of US adults under age 30 either believe the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is a myth or are not sure that it happened.
Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the Harvard-Harris poll said they agree that “Jews as a class … should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 73% of Americans in all age groups – and 91% of respondents ages 65 and older – disagreed with the anti-Jewish statement. Similarly, half of the youngest respondents said they support Hamas in the war, while 81% of overall participants favor Israel. Six in ten young adults – but only 37% of overall respondents – believe Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza.
Americans are similarly divided on identity politics. For instance, 79% of young adults believe that “white people are oppressors” and that non-white people should therefore be shown favoritism in college admissions and employment, the poll found. Among all age groups, 65% of Americans oppose such anti-white discrimination.
Just 42% of Americans approve of how US President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war, down from 45% in November, the poll showed. Only 32% believe that the country is on the “right track,” and 33% see the nation’s economy as heading in the right direction.
Such perceptions may bode poorly for Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024. The president has a net favorability rating of minus 10%, the poll showed. By comparison, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest favorability rating among all political figures listed in the survey, at plus 18%.
The poll found that if the election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat Biden by a margin of 43% to 35%, while Kennedy would garner 17% of the votes. More than seven in ten Americans believe that a vote for Biden would essentially be a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because the 81-year-old incumbent wouldn’t likely complete a second term.
Israeli bulldozers have killed dozens of Palestinians by running over and crushing the tents in which they were taking shelter outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Al-Jazeerareported on 16 December.
“Dozens of displaced, sick and wounded people were buried alive. The occupation [Israeli] bulldozers trampled the tents of the displaced people in the hospital yard and brutally crushed them,” Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Gaza Anas al-Sharif reported.
“A terrifying massacre and unspeakable scenes. What the Israeli occupation did inside Kamal Adwan Hospital is a horrific crime against citizens and medical staff,” Sharif said in a post on X.
Some 3,000 Palestinians have been sheltering on the grounds of the hospital, which has been under siege by the Israeli army for eight days.
According to the Gaza health ministry, 12 Palestinian babies are still trapped within incubators at the hospital. The statement added that Israeli forces “are gathering men, including medical staff, in the hospital courtyard.”
The ministry called on “the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Red Cross to take immediate action to save the lives of those in the hospital.”
After Israeli forces occupied the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza City in early November, forcing the staff to evacuate, five babies on incubators died as they were left behind. Their decomposed bodies were discovered two weeks later when Emirati journalist Mohammad Balousha was able to visit the hospital when a 7-day-truce temporarily halted the fighting.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza hospitals appear to be a deliberate effort to collapse the health system in the bombed and besieged enclave.
“Since the beginning of the war, Israel has been strategically attacking healthcare facilities,” Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for Red Crescent, told The New Arab.
Israeli attacks have targeted the Al-Shifa hospital, the Al-Quds hospital, the Al-Ahli hospital, the Al-Nasr and Al-Rantisi hospitals for children, and the Indonesian hospital, among others.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 18,800 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, and more than 51,000 wounded since the beginning of Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza began on 7 October.
NAZARETH – Israeli ex-detainee in Gaza, Chen Goldstein-Almog, said that she and her three children were treated respectfully and not physically harmed or maltreated during their detention by Hamas fighters.
According to The New York Times, Goldstein-Almog had long conversations with her captors, sometimes for hours. “We talked about our families and the extreme danger we all faced.”
She explained that they were mostly detained in an apartment in Gaza, but she and her children were transferred during their detention period — which lasted 7 weeks — to different apartments, tunnels, a mosque, and even a destroyed supermarket, adding that during their movement between those places, the situation was terrifying due to the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
She also said that the commander of the guards appeared educated and spoke Hebrew, pointing out that the guards taught her son 250 words in Arabic to keep him busy, brought him a notebook for study, regularly discussed with them what to eat and invited them to participate in cooking meals in kitchens.
She said that a Hamas fighter apologized to her for the killing of her husband and one of her daughters by other individuals, telling her that what had happened was wrong.
Goldstein-Almog affirmed that before her release, a guard told her “don’t go back to the Gaza envelope because we are coming back” and told her to go further.
Goldstein-Almog, 48, and her three children were captured on the first day of Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7.
They were released in late November as part of a prisoner exchange between the Hamas Movement and the Israeli occupation during the temporary humanitarian truce.
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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