Why are the globalists calling “Climate Change” a “Public Health Crisis”?
The answer is all to do with the pandemic treaty and climate lockdowns
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 30, 2023
The global elite plan to introduce a near-permanent “global state of emergency” by re-branding climate change as a “public health crisis” that is “worse than covid”.
This is not news. But the ongoing campaign has been accelerating in recent weeks.
I have written about this a lot over the last few years – see here and here and here. It started almost as soon as Covid started, and has been steadily progressing ever since, with some reports calling climate change “worse than covid”.
But if they keep talking about it, I’ll keep writing. And hopefully the awareness will spread.
Anyway, there’s a renewed push on the “climate = public health crisis” front. It started, as so many things do, with Bill Gates, stating in an interview with MSNBC in late September:
We have to put it all together; it’s not just climate’s over here and health is over here, the two are interacting
Since then there’s been a LOT of “climate change is a public health crisis” in the papers, likely part of the build-up to the UN’s COP28 summit later this year.
Following Gate’s lead, what was once a slow-burn propaganda drive has become a dash for the finish line, with that phrase repeated in articles all over the world as a feverish catechism.
It was an editorial in the October edition of the British Medical Journal that got the ball rolling, claiming to speak for over 200 medical journals, it declares it’s…
Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency”
Everyone from the Guardian to the CBC to the Weather Channel picked up this ball and ran with it.
Other publications get more specific, but the message is the same. Climate change is bad for the health of women, and children, and poor people, and Kenyans, and workers and…you get the idea.
And that’s all from just the last few days.
It’s not only the press, but governments and NGOs too. The “One Earth” non-profit reported, two days ago:
Why climate change is a public health issue
Again, based entirely on that letter to the BMJ. The UN’s “climate champions” are naturally all over it, alongside the UK’s “Health Alliance on Climate Change”, whoever they are.
Both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have published (or updated) articles on their website in the last few days using variations on the phrase “The climate crisis is a health crisis.”
Local public health officials from as far apart as Western Australia and Arkansas are busy “discussing the health effects of climate change”
Tellingly, the Wikipedia article on “effects of climate change on human health” has received more edits in the last 3 weeks than the previous 3 months combined.
All of this is, of course, presided over by the World Health Organization.
On October 12th the WHO updated its climate change fact sheet, making it much longer than the previous version and including some telling new claims:
WHO data indicates 2 billion people lack safe drinking water and 600 million suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with children under 5 bearing 30% of foodborne fatalities. Climate stressors heighten waterborne and foodborne disease risks. In 2020, 770 million faced hunger, predominantly in Africa and Asia. Climate change affects food availability, quality and diversity, exacerbating food and nutrition crises.
Temperature and precipitation changes enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases. Without preventive actions, deaths from such diseases, currently over 700,000 annually, may rise. Climate change induces both immediate mental health issues, like anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and long-term disorders due to factors like displacement and disrupted social cohesion.
They are tying “climate change” to anyone who is malnourished, has intestinal parasites or contaminated drinking water. As well as anyone who dies from heat, cold, fire or flood. Even mental health disorders.
We’ve already seen the world’s first “diagnosis of climate change”. With parameters set this wide, we will see more in no time.
Just as a “Covid death” was anybody who died “of any cause after testing positive for Covid”, they are putting language in place that can redefine almost any illness or accident as a “climate change-related health issue”.
Two days ago, the Director General of the World Health Organization, the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and COP28 President co-authored an opinion piece for the Telegraph, headlined:
Climate change is one of our biggest health threats – humanity faces a staggering toll unless we act
The WHO Director went on to repeat the claim almost word for word on Twitter yesterday:
At the same time, the Pandemic Treaty is busily working its way through the bureaucratic maze, destined to become law sometime in the next year or so.
We’ve written about that a lot too.
Consider, the WHO is the only body on Earth empowered to declare a “pandemic”.
Consider, the official term is not “pandemic”, but rather “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.
Consider, a “public health emergency of international concern”, does not necessarily mean a disease.
It could mean, and I’m just spit-balling here, oh, I don’t know – maybe… climate change?
Consider, finally, that one clause in the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” would empower the WHO to declare a PHEIC on “precautionary principle” [my emphasis]:
Future declarations of a PHEIC by the WHO Director-General should be based on the precautionary principle where warranted
Essentially, once the new legislation is in place, the plan writes itself:
- Put new laws in place enabling global “emergency measures” in the event of a future “public health emergency”
- Declare climate change a public health emergency, or maybe a “potential public health emergency”
- Activate emergency measures – like climate lockdowns – until climate change is “fixed”
See the end game here? It’s just that simple.
Oh, and we won’t be able to complain, because “climate denial” is going to be illegal. At least, if prominent climate activists like this one get their way.
That’s only a whisper in the background right now, but it will get louder after COP28, just wait.
Until then, like I said, I’m stuck here writing forever.
Warrant for Genocide: Netanyahu urges Israeli troops to regard the Palestinians as “Amalek”
In the Old Testament the Amalekites were exterminated: “man, woman and infant”
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | October 29, 2023
It’s Sunday, not normally a good day for gaining people’s attention on news or analytical current events’ columns. The ongoing emergency—the massacre of children and other civilians in Gaza however—trumps all other considerations, at least for this writer, so here goes.
Part One: Netanyahu Channels Amalek
In their ignorance (or malice), Old Testament haters will have a field day with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu having channeled “Amalek” as he ordered the Israeli army to invade Gaza on October 28.
This fact is so incendiary that a quick search of the New York Times today reveals that the “newspaper of record” hasn’t dared to mention it thus far.
The Israeli Prime Minister stated: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you says our Holy Bible, and we do remember and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that started 3,000 years ago—from Joshua to the heroes of 1948—the Six Day War, the 1973 October war—and all other wars of this country—are hero troops. They have one supreme main goal, to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”
In 1 Samuel 15:3 we find the judgment of God on the Amalekites, in the form of the divine command to Saul, the first King of Israel: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
These are patently the marching orders Netanyahu is giving to the Israeli military (“the most moral in the world”): Slay all the civilians of Gaza and spare them not.
Not even Clarence Darrow could parse it otherwise. There’s no lawyer’s loophole here; no moderating clause, which is why, as of Sunday, October 29, the New York Times and other major media have not dared to report Netanyahu’s genocidal directive.
They’ll get around to it after they have concocted a defense of the indefensible, which is their job. The delay is due to the fact that even the skilled spin doctors at the Times are having difficulty coming up with an explanation that has plausibility: the Israeli Prime Minister’s insinuation to the Israeli Army to commit genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, by invoking the Biblical war with Amalek, is not a warrant for genocide because…
Because what?
A day later and the corporate media haven’t managed to cook up a cosmetic exculpation.
Juan Cole got it partially right: “Netanyahu may have gestured to, and defiled the Bible by excusing his genocide against the civilians of Gaza with reference to 1 Samuel. But his real bible is… Zionism with its Fascist and explicitly colonial ideology.”
I say “partially,” because Mr. Cole succumbs to the humdrum of Leftspeak when he ends his summation of Zionism by describing it as a colonial ideology, which it is, but that is not the most accurate summation of its inspiration and motivation. Zionism is Talmudic.
True, a distinction has to be made between Talmudism in and of itself, as practiced before the ascendance of Zionism in the 19th century, and Talmudism as weaponized by Zionism, a task we undertook in our October 17 column, “The Disaster of Israeli Zionism.”
Only a Biblical illiterate would tell the Israelis, “You must remember… Amalek,” and then ascribe that memory to the Hebrew Old Testament.
To remember Amalek is to nullify the Old Testament!
Yahweh not only ordered the complete extirpation of the Amalekites; that’s only half the story. He ordered every faithful Israelite to blot out the memory of Amalek, so that the name of Amalek would never again be mentioned:
“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under Heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
Netanyahu “forgot.”
Kindling the memory of Amalek is in express defiance of the command of Yahweh, and as such it is Talmudic, not Biblical. It is of a piece with the Pharisee Hillel’s prozbul-nullification of Yahweh’s Sabbatical year.
The Pharisee Talmud destroys the meaning of the Old Testament, rips it to shreds and stomps it into the gutter.
Rabbi Jacob Neusner, translator of the Yale University Press edition of the unredacted Mishnah (the sacred Pharisee text which comprises the supreme halacha (law) of Orthodox rabbinic Judaism), stated:
“We have already seen substantial evidence that any notion of Pharisaism (or later rabbinic Judaism), as the true and direct descendants of the Old Testament, is contradicted by the most fundamental assumption of one Mishnah-tractate after another. These stand wholly separate from the Priestly Code… And generally contradict it!” (A History of the Mishnaic Law [Brill Academic, 1974], p. 7).
As for why Yahweh ordered Amalek destroyed three millennia ago, that’s a hermeneutic for another day.
Part Two: The Gaza Massacre in 40 Words of Power
Our critics in Europe opine that Americans are slogan-mad, seeking in our haste and frenzied pace to reduce everything sublime to a bumper sticker.
There’s some truth in the observation. On the other hand, compared to our loquacious kindred in the Old World, we occasionally exhibit the laconic virtue of conveying the most meaning with the least amount of words.
Some of the head-scratching over the whys and wherefores of the dehumanization of the thousands of Palestinian children butchered in Gaza with American tax dollars this month of October — the sheer shoulder-shrugging indifference in the face of the carnage, by everyone from John Kirby to Joe Biden and their legion of epigones—can be understood with a few dozen words of power which compel obedience from the Department of Defense to the White House and most of the Western world.
Neither the Neocon Right nor the progressive Left will traverse this territory. Hence, the obligation to utter a proscribed truth which is the key to grasping why the massacre in Gaza is not being opposed by the Biden administration, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, NATO, or the European Union— falls to us, in this obscure column of ours.
From the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 57a, we read:
“Regarding bloodshed, the following distinction applies: if a non-Jew killed another non-Jew, or a non-Jew killed a Jew, the killer is liable for execution; if a Jew killed a non-Jew, he is exempt from punishment.”
My dear kiddies, you who have been infantalized by the refusal on the part of every major news source, whether Muslim, Christian, atheist, Marxist, Conservative or Liberal, to cite this halacha—now you know the real reason why the International Court in The Hague will not be prosecuting Netanyahu or his generals for war crimes. Now you know why the children of Gaza have been murdered, are being murdered and will be murdered in this annus horribilis.
If Mr. Netanyahu wishes to quote ancient passages from holy books, let him quote from Sanhedrin 57 in the Talmud of Babylon, the holiest book of Israeli theology. [BT Eruvin 21b: “Be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah”].
Copyright ©2023 by Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE CONTRA CANCEL CUTLURE
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press. He earns his living as a professional historian. His books are published in the USA, and in translation in Japan and France. His textbook, Judaism Discovered (1,102 pages) is banned by almost all major booksellers and libraries.
Website: www.RevisionistHistory.org
Western Media ‘Cancel’ the Ukraine Conflict as Palestinian Genocide Exposes Their Lies and Fake News
Strategic Culture Foundation | October 27, 2023
The horrendous violence and suffering in Gaza have dominated the global news cycle. That is not untoward given the dreadful scale of disaster where over 7,000 people, mainly civilians and nearly half of them children, have been killed over the past three weeks by Israeli bombardment and siege.
Death toll numbers are obsolete within a day, such is the wanton murderous destruction by the Israeli regime. And yet Joe Biden and other Western politicians minimize this criminality by trying to cast doubt on the casualty numbers. How utterly despicable of Biden and his Western accomplices to this genocide.
But what is also notable is the abrupt cancellation of Ukraine as a story by Western media. The wholesale relegation of interest in Ukraine is truly astounding. The precipitous fall-off in Western media coverage reflects how the proxy war in Ukraine was always a contrived geopolitical agenda devoid of any purported principle of Western democracy.
For nearly 19 months the hostilities in Ukraine have been plastered all over Western news media. The conflict was described as the biggest in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Western governments and media outlets roundly condemned Russia for alleged aggression towards Ukraine and it was hysterically proclaimed that the whole of Europe was under threat from a would-be Russian invasion if Ukraine was not defended.
The violence in Ukraine was portrayed as a bloody manifestation of U.S. President Joe Biden’s “grand narrative” about a global Manichean struggle between “democracy and autocracy”. The Western public was lectured that it was vitally imperative that hundreds of billions of dollars and euros were spent to support Ukraine against alleged Russian belligerence because this conflict was a line in the sand for supposed Western democratic values and civilization.
This narrative was always a travesty of Hollywood proportions. As many informed people rightly discerned (those who do not rely on Western news media propaganda), the conflict in Ukraine was and is a proxy war against Russia ordained by the United States and its NATO military vehicle. The war is part of a wider geopolitical struggle by the U.S.-led Western imperialist bloc against Russia, China, and other nations of an emerging multipolar world that repudiates American-dominated hegemony.
Lamentably, the proof of that analysis is evinced by the obscene genocidal violence in the Middle East. For the past three weeks, the Western-backed Israeli regime has been slaughtering Palestinian civilians with impunity. The United States and the European Union have effectively endorsed this criminality under the fraud of Israel’s “right to self-defense”, and Western media have amplified and reinforced this fraud with their distorted reporting.
Of course, this shockingly criminal aggression has dominated the global news cycle. Every media outlet around the world has been transfixed by the barbarity, albeit differing in their perspective on how much blame to apportion to the Israeli regime or to the Hamas Palestinian militant group that triggered the escalation in violence with its mass killings of 1,400 Israelis on October 7. (It is now becoming clear that many of those deaths were actually caused by the Israeli military using indiscriminate excessive lethal force.)
In any case, the point here is how remarkable is the sudden cessation in Western media coverage of the war in Ukraine. For the past three weeks, there has hardly been any mention of that conflict. This peremptory absence is phenomenal. For months on end, the war in Ukraine was given non-stop, saturation coverage – albeit with an anti-Russian propaganda spin – and then just like that there is a void in any attention to what had been previously billed as an existential crisis for Europe and Western democratic civilization.
It’s not as if the hostilities in Ukraine have really diminished. Far from it, the battling between the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces and the Russian military has been as fierce as in previous months. Over the past week alone, it is estimated that more than 2,000 Ukrainian troops were killed by Russian forces on the frontlines in the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
How is that absence in Western media explained? Part of the “cancelling” of the Ukraine conflict in Western media coverage is due to the failure of the NATO-backed counteroffensive that was launched in early June. That military venture was hyped as the expected breakthrough against Russian forces after months of heavy weapons supply from NATO leading up to the counteroffensive. The gambit has been a disastrous anti-climax in NATO terms. Up to 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been lost in four months adding to a total of 400,000 Ukrainian military deaths over the entire conflict so far. The great NATO surge has been an abject calamity. Russian defense lines all along a swathe of former Eastern Ukrainian territory (now part of the Russian Federation) reaching down to Crimea and the Black Sea remain formidably intact and invulnerable.
The expenditure of $200 billion in military and other aid by the United States and the European Union for propping up a corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev can now be seen as the biggest farce and scandal of modern times. The Western governments and their servile media must therefore not let the Western public see this grotesque waste of money and human life. Public attention must somehow be diverted to avoid the resounding political repercussions.
The slaughter of Palestinians going on in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank territory is a global shame that certainly deserves priority attention. A ceasefire must be called immediately and the mass murder and siege must end. Palestinian rights must be defended and a proper peace settlement to the conflict must be pursued urgently in a genuinely brokered legal and diplomatic framework – not the disingenuous process that Washington and the European Union have been peddling for decades.
However, even the extensive Western media focus on the violence in Gaza is not out of a genuine concern for facts, let alone truth or justice. It is, as usual, a cover-up for the Israeli regime’s crimes and the complicity of Western states in the decades-long genocide against the Palestinians. A genocide that has going on for 75 years since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 by British and American subterfuge as our columnist Finian Cunningham contended this week.
No, the Western media saturation coverage of terrible events in Gaza over the past three weeks is driven in large part by the onerous need to divert attention from the scandal and debacle of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.
The quickness and expedience of canceling Ukraine as a story by Western media and their governments is a powerful demonstration. The purported concerns about Ukraine were never about principle or the alleged narrative of defending democracy. If there was any credible substance to that narrative then how is it dispensed with so readily? It is something to behold how Western media have simply dumped Ukraine as if it were damaged goods of no longer any use, or, worse, a soiled rag.
It is a further diabolical tragedy in the long-suffering of the Palestinian people. Not only are they being annihilated, starved and denied their basic human rights by the Western-backed Israeli regime. Their suffering is also poignant proof of the callous deception and criminality of the United States and its Western partners in Ukraine.
Why are the Israelis massacring civilians in Gaza? Because they can get away with it
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | October 23, 2023
Israeli forces terror-bombed Beirut throughout the summer of 1982. In the West in English there is exactly one book about it: God Cried by Catherine Leroy and Tony Clifton. The Lebanese have almost no memorial and certainly no museum devoted to the bombing of hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, just like now, in Gaza. The Israeli government is well aware of this forgetfulness and they calculate their atrocities and war crimes accordingly.
If the Palestinians were bombing Tel Aviv to the extent the Israelis have bombed Gaza (5,000 deaths thus far), in the aftermath there would be books, movies, diaries, poems, plays, museums, and annual, solemn commemorations throughout the West.
Gaza was heavily bombed in 2009 and 2014. The Arab and Muslim world do not engage in the same level of memory and commemoration, other than personal recollection. There are a few exceptions, but they are comparatively minuscule.
Furthermore, if, as in Gaza, day-in and day-out Tel Aviv’s civilian centers were being blown to bits, and its food, fuel and even its water (!) were shut down, the International Court in The Hague and the European Union would be charging the Palestinian leadership responsible, with war crimes. The US would be heavily sanctioning those leaders and humanitarian supplies would be dropped by parachute if necessary to sustain the Israeli civilians.
Instead, the Court and the EU are frozen in mute assent to crimes against Arab children committed as I write these words, by the Israelis who suffered a holocaust in Europe and have been granted by Europe and Britain a license to perpetrate atrocities in Palestine. Hamas terrorists copied this perverse victims-have-the-right-to-be executioners “logic” on Oct. 7.
As for the casual, business-as-usual aspect of the atrocities against Palestinian civilians, it is rooted in the Zionist weaponization of the Talmudic halacha which few in the West, on the Left or the Right, care to learn about – http://talmudical.blogspot.com – and without which they will have no key to comprehending the depth of contempt for Palestinian life.
There are hundreds of books in English harshly critiquing the Quran. Meanwhile this writer’s two banned books [Judaism Discovered and Judaism’s Strange Gods] containing a sustained critique of Talmudism, which in English are among the only credible and charitable texts compassionately documenting Talmudic hate speech, which causes real world harm to Palestinian children, women, elderly and non-combatant men, in the form of their relentless mass murder.
The hate speech is real: on Oct. 9 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to the Palestinian people as “human animals.”
Israeli Prime Minister Meachem Begin termed them “two-legged animals.”
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan called the Palestinians: “cockroaches in a bottle.”
The Allied incineration by more than 800 bombers leveled the German city and burned alive tens of thousands of civilians.
The murder of civilians, including by Hamas, is always wrong. Murder is murder. Dressing it up with alibis and platitudes does not make the heinous war crimes any less criminal.
Wounded Palestinian child and man receiving medical treatment at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli bombing, Oct. 11, 2023
How can the daily Israeli massacre of kids and their mothers be parsed, justified or mitigated? It is right, but abortion is wrong? The bipolar nature of such thinking is depraved.
(Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism are no less innocent. They are extensively mourned in the West however, and rightly so; that’s not the case for the Palestinian civilian dead, not in any sustained memorial).
How can the Israeli mass murder of kids and their mothers be justified? I will answer my own question:
The record shows that bombing civilians in cities is the default method of Allied warfare: Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden, Hamburg, Hanoi, Baghdad.
As noted previously, Israelis terror-bombed Beirut throughout the summer of 1982 and Gaza in 2009 and 2014. These war crimes are justified by media ghouls in America, ensuring more of the same, as in Gaza now.
The bombing of Afghan villages and weddings contributed to the defeat of US forces, after the people became fed-up with the transparently lame excuses for the massacres by the likes of David Petraeus, who is now being touted by the media ghouls as a master of statecraft and generalship.
President Biden’s last act in Afghanistan was to approve a missile attack on an SUV that was transporting a large family. Seven children and three adults were incinerated; that’s how the US will be remembered in that nation.
Adolf Hitler was responsible for the brutal, mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Judaic people from Germany. For the past 20 years conservative wunderkind Ben Shapiro has advocated the forced extrusion (“transfer”) of the Palestinian people from Palestine. In his own words: “Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.”
Each of us must bear witness and do what we can to document, teach and remember.
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
On the Palestine issue, Amy Goodwin’s podcast today, Oct. 23, is recommended. It can be accessed here at her Democracy Now! website.
A righteous Jew and an extraordinary human being, the brilliant Israeli journalist Amira Hass, is interviewed in two parts.
Take the time to listen to Amira:
If you’re in haste, at least listen to the interview in part two.
All of these broadcasts should be saved and conserved by citizen-journalists (like you), for posterity, and compiled into a permanent data base. I propose the following title for the proposed repository: Witness of War Crimes in Gaza.
History Lesson: Leftist Daniel Denvir conducts a “Palestine Teach-In“ on his podcast, which is accessible at The Dig website: the first hour contains a generally excellent history of the rise of Zionism in Palestine. Too many people don’t know how it all started. The historical context has been missing. Caveat : Mr. Denvir’s guests are mostly of the Left and their analysis of Britain’s role in the ascendance of Zionism in Palestine is limited to a perspective of British colonialism as the root cause. The influence of Freemasonry on the British government, and the masonic objective of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, is missing from their analysis. However, don’t let that omission keep you from accessing the history offered.
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press and the author of ten books of history and literature, including Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017) , Twilight Language (2021), as well as a textbook (Judaism Discovered), and five other books published in the United States, as well as overseas in Japanese and French translation; and 122 issues of Revisionist History® newsletter, 1997-2022. His truth mission is made possible by donations, paid Substack subscriptions, and the sale of his books, newsletters and recordings. Podcast: here. X (Twitter): here. Rumble here.
What really happened on 7th October?
Evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for some of their own civilian deaths; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories to justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By Robert Inlakesh | The Cradle | October 24, 2023
Two weeks after the Hamas breakout assault on Israel on 7 October, a clearer picture of what happened – who died, and who killed – is now beginning to emerge.
Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the Israelis killed that day were in fact combatants – soldiers or police.
In the interim, two weeks of blanket western media reporting that Hamas allegedly killed around 1,400 Israeli civilians during its 7 October military attack has served to inflame emotions and create the climate for Israel’s unconstrained destruction of the Gaza Strip and its civilian population.
Accounts of the Israeli death toll have been filtered and shaped to suggest that a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day, with babies, children, and women the main targets of a terror attack.
Now, detailed statistics on the casualties released by the Israeli daily Haaretz paint a starkly different picture. As of 23 October, the news outlet has released information on 683 Israelis killed during the Hamas-led offensive, including their names and locations of their deaths on 7 October.
Of these, 331 casualties – or 48.4 percent – have been confirmed to be soldiers and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as rescue service members, and the remaining 339 are ostensibly considered to be civilians.
While this list is not comprehensive and only accounts for roughly half of Israel’s stated death toll, almost half of those killed in the melee are clearly identified as Israeli combatants.
There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three, which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far, seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and 17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults.
Age distribution of the Israelis killed during Hamas’ October 7 operation (as of 23 October).
The numbers and proportion of Palestinian civilians and children among those killed by Israeli bombardment over the past two weeks – over 5,791 killed, including 2,360 children and 1,292 women, and more than 18,000 injured – are far higher than any of these Israeli figures from the events of 7 October.
Revisiting the scene
The daring Hamas-led military operation, codenamed Al-Aqsa Flood, unfolded with a dramatic dawn raid at approximately 6:30 AM (Palestine time) on 7 October. This was accompanied by a cacophony of sirens breaking the silence of occupied Jerusalem, signaling the start of what became an extraordinary event in the occupation state’s 75-year history.
As per the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, around 1,500 Palestinian fighters crossed the formidable Gaza-Israel separation barrier.
However, this breakout was not limited to Hamas forces alone; numerous armed fighters belonging to other factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) later breached the armistice line, along with some Palestinians unaffiliated with any organized militia.
As it became apparent this was no ordinary resistance operation, hundreds of videos quickly flooded social media, most of which have been viewed by The Cradle, depicting dead Israeli troops and settlers, fierce gunfire battles between various parties, and Israelis being taken captive into Gaza.
These videos were either taken on the phones of Israelis, or were released by Palestinian fighters filming their own operation. It wasn’t until hours later that more gruesome and downright dubious allegations began to surface.
Unsubstantiated allegations of ‘Hamas atrocities’
Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the UN, was the first Israeli of note to spread the claim that there were reports of “Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street.”
She posted this on X at 9:18 PM (Palestine time), on 7 October, although an op-ed Klompa published with Newsweek at 12:28 AM (Palestine time), on 8 October, made no mention of any sexual violence.
Klompas is also the co-founder of Boundless Israel, a “think-action tank” that works “to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat Jew-hatred.” An “unapologetically Zionist” charitable group that works to promote Israeli narratives on social media.
The one case touted as proof of rape was that of a young German-Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was filmed face down in the back of a pickup truck and was widely assumed dead.
It was unclear whether the fighters filmed with Louk in the Gaza-bound vehicle were members of Hamas, as they do not sport the uniforms or insignia of the Al-Qassam troops identifiable in other Hamas videos – some even wore casual civilian clothing and sandals.
Later, her mother claimed to have evidence that her daughter was still alive, but had suffered a severe head wound. This rings true with information released by Hamas that indicated Louk was being treated for her injuries at an unspecified Gaza hospital.
Complicating matters further, on the day these rape allegations arose, Israelis would not have had access to this information. Their armed forces had not yet entered many, if not most, of the areas liberated by the resistance and were still engaged in armed clashes with them on multiple fronts.
Nevertheless, these rape claims took on a life of their own, with even US President Joe Biden alleging, during a speech days later, that Israeli women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies” by Hamas fighters. It is important to note that The Forward’s article on 11 October reported that the Israeli military acknowledged they had no evidence of such allegations at that point.
When the army later made its own allegations of decapitations, foot amputations, and rape, Reuters pointed out that “the military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.” To date, there is no credible evidence of these atrocities that has been presented.
Other outrageous allegations, such as the story of Hamas “beheading 40 babies‘ made headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. Even Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies.” The claims trace back to Israeli reserve settler and soldier David Ben Zion, who has previously incited violent riots against Palestinians and called for the West Bank town of Huwara to be wiped out. No evidence was ever produced to support these claims and the White House itself confirmed later that Joe Biden had never seen such photos.
The Hamas plan
There is little to no credible evidence that Palestinian fighters had a plan to – or deliberately sought to – kill or harm unarmed Israeli civilians on 7 October. From the available footage, we witness them engaging primarily with armed Israeli forces, accounting for the deaths of hundreds of occupation soldiers. As Qassam Brigades’ Spokesman Abu Obeida made clear on 12 October:
“Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to destroy the Gaza Division (an Israeli army unit on Gaza’s borders) which was attacked at 15 points, followed by attacking 10 further military intervention points. We attacked the Zikim site and several other settlements outside the Gaza Division headquarters.”
Abu Obeida and other resistance officials claim that the other key objective of their operation was to take Israeli prisoners that they could exchange for the approximately 5,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention centers, many of whom are women and children.
Hamas Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Saleh Al-Arouri, in an interview after the operation, stressed: “We have a large and qualitative number and senior officers. All we can say now is that the freedom of our prisoners is at the doorstep.”
Both sides play this game: Since the start of its military assault on Gaza, Israel has rounded up and imprisoned more than 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. To date there have been 38 prisoner exchange deals between the resistance factions and Tel Aviv – deals that Israelis often resist to the very last minute.
While these kinds of testimonies trickle out, reports are emerging that Israeli authorities have dialed up the mistreatment, torture, and even killing of Palestinian prisoners in their custody – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which ironically, a non-state actor like Hamas appears to have followed to the letter.
In relation to the events of 7 October, there are certainly some videos depicting possibly unarmed Israelis, killed in their vehicles or at entrances to facilities, so that Palestinian troops could gain access.
There are also videos which show the fighters engaging in shootouts with armed Israeli forces, where there were unarmed Israelis taking cover in between, in addition to videos of fighters shooting toward houses and throwing grenades into fortified areas. Eyewitness testimony also suggests grenades were thrown into bomb shelters, though by whom is unclear.
Even at the Israeli “peace rave”, which has been cited as the single deadliest attack committed by Palestinian fighters during their operation, videos emerged that appeared to show Israeli forces opening fire through a crowd of unarmed civilians, toward targets they believed to be Hamas members. ABC News also reported that an Israeli tank had headed to the site of the festival.
An Israeli massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri?
In its report on the events at Be’eri Kibbutz, ABC News photographed artillery pieces resembling Israeli munitions outside a bombed-out home. The reporter, David Muir, mentioned that Hamas fighters, covered in plastic bags, were found in the aftermath.
Additionally, videos of the scene show homes that appear to have been struck by munitions that Hamas fighters did not possess. Muir reported that about 14 people were held hostage in a building by Palestinian fighters.
A Hebrew-language Haaretz article published on 20 October, which only appears in English in a must-read Mondoweiss article, paints a very different story of what went down in Be’eri that day. A Kibbutz resident who had been away from his home – whose partner was killed in the melee – reveals stunning new details:
“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night (9 October) and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
Photo evidence of the destruction in Be’eri corroborates his account. Only the heavy munitions of the Israeli army could have destroyed residential homes in this manner.
Aftermath or Be’eri Kibbutz after the fire power of the two sides ceased
Hamas behaviors: Evidence vs allegations
Yasmin Porat, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri, said in an interview for an Israeli radio-show, hosted by state-broadcaster Kan, that Israeli forces “eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” going on to state that “there was very, very heavy crossfire” and even noted tank shelling.
Porat had attended the Nova rave and testified to the humane treatment throughout different interviews she conducted with Israeli media. She explained that when she was held prisoner, the Hamas fighters “guarded us”, telling her in Hebrew to “Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.” She also added the following:
“They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”
Increasingly, and to the horror of some Israeli officials and news outlets, Israeli eyewitnesses and survivors of the bloodshed are testifying that they were treated well by Palestinian fighters. On 24 October, Israeli state broadcaster Kan bemoaned the fact that prisoner Yocheved Lifshitz, released by Hamas the day before, was allowed to make statements live on air.
As she was handed over to Red Cross intermediaries, the elderly Israeli female captive was caught on camera turning back to squeeze the hand of her Hamas captor in her last goodbyes. Lifshitz’s live broadcast, in which she spoke about her two-week ordeal, “humanized” her Hamas captors even further as she recounted her daily life with the fighters:
“They were very friendly toward us. They took care of us. We were given medicine and were treated. One of the men with us was badly injured in a motorbike accident. Their (Hamas) paramedics looked after his wounds, he was given medicine and antibiotics. The people were friendly. They kept the place very clean. They were very concerned about us.”
More questions than answers
It is essential to recognize that in many reports by western journalists on the ground, the majority of information regarding the actions of Hamas fighters comes from the Israeli army – an active participant in the conflict.
Emerging evidence now indicates that there is a high probability, especially due to the scale of the infrastructural damage, that Israeli military forces could have deliberately killed captives, fired on incorrect targets, or mistaken Israelis for Palestinians in their firefights. If the only source of information for a serious claim made is the Israeli army, then it has to be taken into account that they have reason to conceal cases of friendly fire.
Israeli friendly fire was rampant, even in the days that followed, from an army with very little actual combat experience. In the city of Ashkelon (Askalan) on 8 October, Israeli soldiers shot dead and shouted insults at the body of a man they believed to have been a Hamas fighter, yet later realized they had executed a fellow Israeli. This is just one of three such examples of friendly fire in one day, resulting in the killing of Israelis by their own troops.
Amid the fog of war, parties to the conflict have different perspectives on what occurred during the initial raid and its aftermath. It’s not disputed that Palestinian armed groups inflicted significant losses on the Israeli military, but there will be plenty of ongoing debate regarding everything else in the weeks and months to come.
An independent, impartial, international investigation is urgently needed, one that has access to information from all sides involved in the conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans will agree to this, which itself suggests that Tel Aviv has much to conceal.
In the meantime, Palestinian civilians in Gaza endure ongoing, indiscriminate attacks with the most sophisticated heavy weapons in existence, living under the persistent threat of forced and potentially irreversible displacement. This Israeli air blitz was made possible only by the flood of unsubstantiated ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories that media began to circulate on and after 7 October.
Yes, there is an Israel lobby, as any decent journalist knows
By Yves Engler | October 18, 2023
Is the idea of a “highly organized Israel lobby” antisemitic? An apartheid-promoting Globe and Mail columnist claims as much.
In attacking the Canadian Union of Public Employees for standing in solidarity with Palestinians Robyn Urback tweeted, “Points for alleging a Jewish conspiracy, but if CUPE really wanted to go full antisemitic trope, they should have mentioned something about poisoning the wells.” Below her message Urback quote tweeted a colleague stating, “CUPE Ontario says it’s targeted by ‘trolls’ – ‘a highly organized pro-Israel lobby,’ which targeted [Union president] Fred Hahn and CUPE 3906 for ‘recognition of Palestinians’ rights under international law to resist occupation through armed struggle.’”
But Urback knows full well there are many organizations backed by substantial wealth promoting Israel. This is not a trope. This is reality that is easily fact checked and should have been by any honest journalist.
In a sign of her dishonesty, Urback previously wrote about a lobby sponsored trip to Israel she participated in. Urback went on BirthRight, a program that pays for young Jews to go Israel to become “intellectual ambassadors” for the country.
The preeminent force in the “highly organized Israel lobby” is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. CIJA has over 40 staff and a $10 million budget. In addition, B’nai B’rith has a handful of offices across the country. For its part, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Canada’s budget is $7-10 million annually. These groups work closely with StandWithUs Canada, CAMERA, Allied Voices for Israel, Israel on Campus, Honest Reporting Canada and other Israeli nationalist political organizations. Additionally, more than 200 registered Canadian charities assist projects in Israel and engage in at least some pro-Israel campaigning domestically. There are also numerous Jewish private schools, summer camps and community centres that actively promote Israel.
All these groups are backed by substantial wealth. Patron of CIJA, the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada raise $200 million annually and have over $1 billion in assets.
A large amount of private wealth strengthens Israel lobby groups’ influence. Since 2013 the chief fundraiser for the Trudeau Liberals has been Stephen Bronfman, scion of an arch Israeli nationalist family. Bronfman has millions invested in Israeli technology companies and over the years the Bronfman clan has secured arms for Israeli forces and supported its military in other ways. Bronfman openly linked his fundraising for Trudeau to Israel. In 2013 the Globe and Mail reported: “Justin Trudeau is banking on multimillionaire Stephen Bronfman to turn around the Liberal Party’s financial fortunes in order to take on the formidable Conservative fundraising machine…. Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’”
Other notable Canadian moguls have long histories of ensuring ties between Israel and Canada. Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli was among the richest Canadians. In his youth he served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the 1948 war. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. Azrieli was also a real estate developer in Israel and in 2011 he made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, a hardline Israeli-nationalist organization (deemed a “fascist” group by an Israeli court).
Worth $1.6 billion, Gerald Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides millions of dollars annually for non-Israelis who fight in the IDF.
In recent years Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into various sports and cultural initiatives to rebrand Israel.
Other Canadian billionaires Larry Tanenbaum, Mark Scheinberg, David Cheriton, Mitch Garber, Daryl Katz, Seymour Schulich, as well as the Zekelman, Reichmann and Sherman families, all back Israel. Again, none of this a conspiracy theory or antisemitic trope. It is simple reality and easily fact-checked if one is interested.
It is good, not bad, that a union leader mentions powerful lobbyists influencing Canadian politicians to take certain policy positions. Democracy requires shining a light on such lobbying. Is Urback against this very common practice of good journalists?
Canadians politicians express unmatched fidelity to a state all leading human rights groups say is committing the crime of apartheid. Trudeau’s government organized a pizza party for Canadians fighting in the Israeli military, sued to block proper labels on wines from illegal settlements and announced that should Canada win a seat on the United Nations Security Council it would act as an “asset for Israel” on the council. In recent days Canadian politicians have fallen over themselves to express support for Israel as that country obliterates Gaza, kills dozens in the West Bank and bombs Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.
There’s nothing conspiratorial or untoward about citing the role of a “highly organized Israel lobby”. In fact, there would be nothing conspiratorial or untoward to describe it as a “highly organized Jewish Israel lobby”. A slew of self-described Jewish organizations are deeply involved in anti-Palestinian campaigning and no other lobby focused on a country/ethnicity/religion is near as well-resourced or organized as the above mentioned Canadian Jewish groups.
That’s not to say there aren’t other political and cultural forces shaping Canadian backing for Israel. Zionism began in Canada in the latter half of the 1800s as a Christian movement and there’s still Christian Zionist forces. At the turn of the 20th century Canada became staunchly pro-Zionist due to its close ties to the British empire and Washington’s perspective has significant influence today. There’s also a European ‘settler solidarity’ element to Canadian Zionism and Israel advocates wield a unique and powerful stick: The ability to play victim and smear those advocating for justice as racist.
Robyn Urback knows full well there’s a “highly organized Israel lobby”. Her claim that CUPE is anti-Jewish to mention this is ridiculous. It is also bad journalism and most likely a projection of her (perhaps unintentional) anti-Palestinian racism.
US needs ‘Department of Offense, not Defense’ – presidential candidate
US presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event on Saturday in Pella, Iowa. © Getty Images / Scott Olson
RT | October 22, 2023
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has called for instilling fear in Washington’s foreign enemies by transforming the US Department of Defense into the “Department of Offense.”
Speaking at a campaign event on Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Haley demanded that the US respond to the Israel-Hamas war by providing the Israeli government and military with “whatever they need whenever they need it.” She added that Washington’s goal must be to “eliminate Hamas, not weaken them,” and she called for cutting off government funding to colleges whose students or employees hold protests in support of the Palestinians.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as US ambassador to the UN under then-President Donald Trump, suggested that the administration of US President Joe Biden must not be fooled by Friday’s release of two American hostages by Hamas. “They are doing this to earn favor with America because they want to try and look good in the eyes of America,” she said. “Don’t fall for it.”
Having a stronger military and strong leadership in the White House could have prevented the war in Israel, as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Haley argued. Biden’s botched withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and his administration’s recent prisoner-swap agreement with Iran emboldened America’s enemies, she claimed, adding that only a stronger military can restore US credibility.
“We’ve got to be smart, and we’ve got to be ready,” Haley said. “I’m tired of talking about a ‘department of defense’. I want a ‘department of offense’. Every enemy needs to fear us.”
Haley is calling for a bigger and apparently more aggressive military despite the fact that the Pentagon already boasts annual spending of nearly $832 billion – exceeding the world’s nine next largest defense budgets combined. The US has about 750 bases in 80 countries, and it has a long history of regime-change programs and military interventions around the world.
“This woman is a crazed warmonger,” US podcast host Joey Mannarino said in an X (formerly Twitter) post. “Don’t let the sweet Southern accent fool you. She’d have us in every war she could find.”
Haley has reportedly been enriched by the US military industrial complex since resigning as Trump’s UN ambassador in October 2018. She was hired as a board member with US defense contractor Boeing in 2019. Although she left the company the following year, she still owned as much as $250,000 in Boeing stock as of a financial disclosure filing in May.
Haley has earned six-figure fees for speaking engagements, including over $230,000 from the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and she was paid $127,500 for her work as a consultant to an advocacy group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, which has lobbied for military strikes against Tehran. She also netted more than $708,000 in consulting fees from Prism Global Management LLC, an investment fund, and her husband holds stakes in two firms with ties to the defense industry.
Who’s to blame for the massacre at Gaza’s Baptist Hospital?
MEMO | October 18, 2023
Since Al-Ahli Baptist Church was struck yesterday evening and over 500 people were killed, social media has been abuzz with claims of who carried out this war crime. For Palestinians and reporters with knowledge of Israel’s rules of law – or lack there of – the answer was obvious; Israel hit the hospital. While officials in Tel Aviv first acknowledged the strike as an Israeli attack, they then backtracked and blamed the Palestinian resistance. However reporters covering the ongoing assault on Gaza and the resistance’s rocket fire into Israel have made it clear; the resistance’s rockets cause damage, they have been known to kill people, but they are not powerful enough to cause the amount of death and destruction caused by this one strike.
Looking through social media after the strike, a number of facts were clear to see. If Israel didn’t bomb the Gaza Baptist Hospital, why did the occupation army warn the Gaza Baptist Hospital to evacuate the premises before the bombing occurred?
Israel claims it didn’t hit the hospital, claiming a rocket being shot by Islamic Jihad misfired and caused the damage. To “prove” this, occupation forces have used a video which aired an hour before the strike – at 18:59 local time – when the strike took place around 19:50.
Israel’s newly appointed Digital Spokesperson Hananya Naftali then admitted that occupation forces bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The post has since been deleted.
Israel also deleted a video posted as “evidence” that the Palestinian resistance struck the hospital.
Meanwhile, the Western media prepared the world for the strike. With the BBC posting a question ‘Does Hamas build tunnels under hospitals and schools?’ a day earlier, in a manner that almost justifies Israel’s targeting of innocent civilians receiving treatment.
While the reporting of events following the massacre simply claimed that an “Israeli air strike killed hundreds of people at a Gaza hospital”, without condemnation of the obvious violations of international law and the possible war crimes once again committed by the occupation and it’s forces.
US warmonger Senator threatens Iran
By Lucas Leiroz | October 17, 2023
Once again, the pro-war sectors of American politics seem to want to foment a conflict situation with US involvement. A prominent public figure in the US Senate has made very serious threats to Iran, promising that Washington “will not hesitate” to take actions against Tehran if the conflict in the region continues to escalate.
The threats were made by the highly known Senator Lindsey Graham, who is notorious for his bellicose and irresponsible positions regarding American foreign policy. Graham issued a warning to Iranian authorities, stating that if there is any military action by Hezbollah against Israel, Washington will act to protect its ally, which could have serious consequences for Iran, both in military and economic terms.
“Here’s my message. If Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I would consider that a threat to the — to the State of Israel, existential in nature. I will introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business,” Graham said.
Hezbollah was not the only topic in the Senator’s speech. Graham also stated that he does not believe in the Iranian government’s official narrative that the Hamas operation was carried out autonomously. For him, believing this is “laughable”, with total confidence on his part that Hamas’ actions were previously discussed with Iran.
“The idea that Iran read about this operation in the paper, or on television is laughable. 93% of Hezbollah and Hamas’ money comes from Iran (…) They’re the source of the problem. They’re the great evil. So, if Hezbollah escalates against Israel, it will be because Iran told them to. Then Iran, you’re in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel,” Graham added.
Graham’s stance is extremely complicated, as the current tense situation in the Middle East favors risks of escalation and internationalization, and there is therefore a considerable possibility of Iran becoming involved in hostilities. This involvement can be direct or indirect, with Tehran sending regular troops or mobilizing its allied groups – which are not limited to Hezbollah. In either scenario, the risks would be enormous for Israel, which, despite its large military strength, is a small and vulnerable country in situations of war of attrition.
Furthermore, it must be emphasized that Iran is doing everything possible not to enter the war. By warning Israel not to continue collectively punishing Gaza, Tehran is offering alternatives to armed confrontation. But Tel Aviv, despite being afraid of invading on the ground, continues to bomb Gaza and kill thousands of civilians, causing Iran’s patience to progressively run out.
It has also been informed by the Persian country’s authorities that the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – a Theran-led coalition of anti-Zionist armed movements – could act at any time in defense of the Palestinians. Iranian politicians clarified that, despite Tehran leading the coalition, the member groups have high decision-making autonomy, and there is no full Iranian control over how these movements will react to Israel. In other words, the risks of escalation are great, and Iran is not capable of preventing it alone.
The only way to truly de-escalate is through a commitment on the part of Israel to stop the attacks. Without this, the situation will go out of control and there will inevitably be intervention – if not direct from Iran, at least from some Iranian-allied group. Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that Hezbollah is already de facto involved in hostilities, with bombings being exchanged between the IDF and the Shiite militia every day. Obviously, if nothing is done to stop these hostilities, at some point Hezbollah will choose to launch a more effective incursion.
With all these factors, Graham’s words sound like a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. He points to an imminent scenario as a “red line” and issues direct threats, making real de-escalation actions virtually impossible. However, this type of behavior is in fact expected from Graham, who is a known “hawk” of American foreign policy. Months ago, the Senator became embroiled in a controversy after saying that the US was investing money in “killing Russians” in Ukraine – praising such an “investment”. In the same vein, on another occasion, he also suggested that Kiev should kill Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It remains to be seen whether these pro-war tendencies will prevail in the American public debate. For now, the US stance has been extremely bellicose, with the country sending aircraft carriers to “help” Israel. However, it is necessary to remember that the American military-industrial complex is not able to work on two different fronts at the same time – in addition to the possibility of escalation in the Pacific in the near future. Washington needs to act rationally and discourage war in the Middle East.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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Guaido’s true colors: “President” to fix Venezuelan relations with Israel
By Jim Carey | Geopolitics Alert | February 13, 2019
Caracas – In an interview over the weekend, “interim President” of Venezuela Juan Guaido promised he would work on restoring relations with Israel.
Despite not actually having a government or being in any type of official position of power within Venezuela Juan Guaido is still somehow making big promises. Last week it was the promise to sell oil he doesn’t control to the US and this week he is setting foreign policy for a state, a military, and a diplomatic core that he doesn’t have.
Regardless of Juan Guaido’s material position, Israel has been more than willing to indulge in the US fantasy in Venezuela and was one of the early states to recognize the fraud as “interim President.” Now it seems Guaido is more than willing to repay the favor should he ever actually hold office.
Guaido made this promise in a recent interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper where he told the interviewer that he was “very happy to announce that the process of stabilizing relations with Israel is in full swing.” While what exactly that means when you’re a President with no power is rather ambiguous, for some reason Guaido has said restoring relations “is very important for us.”
Regardless of all these factors, there are still several reasons the new President has made this a high priority. Even without any actual diplomatic staff recognized by the state, Guaidó has still been in contact with Israel and has even discussed opening a new Venezuelan embassy in Israel, saying it “is one of the subjects we are talking about.”
Another reason Guaidó claims he wants to restore relations with the Zionists is due to the fact that there “are many Venezuelans in Israel and many Jews in Venezuela.”
According to Guaidó, this Venezuelan Jewish community “is very active and prosperous”… continue
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