Israeli troops abduct injured civilians from Gaza hospitals: Report
The Cradle | May 24, 2024
The Israeli army has been abducting injured Palestinian civilians from hospitals in Gaza and transporting them to a detention camp in the Negev, where they are shackled to beds and undergo major surgeries, often without painkillers, the Guardian reported on 24 May.
A whistleblower from the Sde Teiman detention camp told the Guardian some patients had come from hospitals in Gaza after being abducted by Israeli forces. “These were patients who had been captured by the Israeli army while being treated in Gaza hospitals and brought here. They had [missing] limbs and infected wounds. They were moaning in pain,” the source said.
The source described how the field hospital in the detention camp consisted of tents, including an emergency room where patients underwent surgery on a stretcher as there was no operating table.
The patients were handcuffed to the beds, made to wear diapers, and blindfolded.
In one case, a detainee’s hand had been amputated “because the wrists had become gangrenous due to handcuffing wounds.”
A second whistleblower who spoke with the Guardian said, “There were about 15 patients in total, they were all handcuffed and blindfolded. They were naked, wearing diapers and were covered by blankets. Most of them appeared to have obvious war injuries; some had undergone amputations, and others underwent major abdominal or chest surgery. They were practically naked except for a diaper.”
The source said he witnessed a patient undergoing painful medical procedures without any painkillers.
In the other section of the camp, the whistleblowers said up to 200 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are being held in cages under severe physical restrictions.
“The prisoners are detained in a sort of cages, all blindfolded and handcuffed,” the source said. “If someone speaks or moves, they are immediately silenced or they are forced to stand with their hands raised above their head and handcuffed for up to one hour.”
“If they are unable to keep their hands raised, the soldiers attach the handcuffs to the bars of the cage. Many of the detainees had infected wounds that were not being properly treated.”
The source claimed the Israeli military had no proof that detainees were members of Hamas. Some inmates repeatedly asked why they were there. According to the whistleblower, most were considered suspects, and some were released. “But they had not been formally charged. It was a kind of filtering camp, a provisional detention,” he said.
Israeli soldier confesses to killing US elderly man in West Bank
Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024
A self-proclaimed soldier from “Israel’s” infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion has admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.
However, after announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration withdrew the decision without offering further explanation.
“Four of these units [Israeli units] have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do,” the US State Department claimed.
The fifth unit appears to be Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank and is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating at least three older men to death while they were lying on the ground while in custody.
Netzah Yehuda soldiers detained Asad and left him outdoors in harsh conditions, bound and blindfolded until he died. Instead of punishment, all the soldiers got was a slap on the wrist, and compensation was paid to Asad’s family.
A report by Washington DC-based human rights organization, DAWN, found that at the time of the killing, the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. Mati Shevach, was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees the Netzah Yehuda formation.
Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded during an April 29 State Department press briefing to questions regarding why the administration had hesitated to sanction the battalion.
“This is an ongoing process,” Patel said, further claiming, “I’m not going to speak to it more specifically, but consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel, we are engaging with them, consulting with them as it relates to not just this broader process but additional information that they’ve shared.”
The Grayzone obtained the glorified account of the killing of Asad, which according to the self-described soldier’s account, the unit brutalized Asad as punishment for supposedly interfering with a raid.
“This geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night,” the soldier said, as he called Arabs “murders, criminal animals” and boasted about killing and torturing Palestinians, likening himself to Americans who photographed themselves with dead Japanese soldiers during World War II, “doing funny things with their bodies.”
“Yeah, I enjoy it because they’re our enemy,” he expressed.
Read also: IOF units ‘remediated’ after rights violations, no Leahy sanctions
NGO updates complaint to Met Police on UK ministers’ complicity in Israel war crimes
MEMO | May 22, 2024
An NGO has submitted a complaint to the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard against Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon of war” and targeting of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, in what is the latest such complaint regarding war crimes in Gaza to be reported to British police.
According to the London-based International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), it submitted a complaint to Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Team regarding Israel’s suspected use of “starvation as a method of warfare” and for ‘wilfully causing great suffering’ to Palestinians.
Although filed in the UK, both crimes are illegal under British and international law, including under the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court Act 2001. Using starvation as a weapon of war also violates the Geneva Convention, a major keystone of contemporary international law.
The 60-page complaint – which was added to by a further 800 pages of evidence – includes accounts collected by ICJP’s investigation and legal teams, which include former British police detectives who collected the evidence to the standards of British police forces.
The evidence reportedly includes that collected from first-hand eyewitnesses, expert reports and expert evidence from nineteen medical professionals who have worked within the besieged Gaza Strip since October, when Israel began its ongoing offensive.
According to ICJP’s Director, Tayab Ali, “Complicity comes in many forms, whether that be providing political cover, encouraging criminal acts, supplying weapons or, as in the case of starvation, withholding funds from agencies that provide life sustaining humanitarian aid”.
The extensive complaint notably builds upon and expands an existing complaint issued by the ICJP back in January this year, which named four British government ministers for alleged complicity and criminal responsibility in Israeli war crimes. This latest update, however, further implicates a fifth senior government minister as an alleged perpetrator of those crimes.
Due to the war crimes’ illegality under British law and subsequent ability to be prosecuted in the UK, Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Investigation Team will now reportedly consider the complaints leading up to an ultimate decision on whether to open a formal criminal investigation on the matter. If that proceeds, there is the possibility that police will then question, arrest, and prosecute the alleged perpetrators and those complicit.
READ ALSO: Boris Johnson accused of obstructing investigations into war crimes in Gaza
Report: Israel systematically abuses jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti
MEMO | May 20, 2024
Jailed Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, has been subjected to violations and torture, and spends days in a narrow, dark cell in solitary confinement, without any means to treat wounds he sustained as a result of being dragged with his hands tied behind his back, the Guardian revealed on Saturday.
The newspaper pointed out that books, newspapers and a television that he used to be able to access have been confiscated since October.
“The lights that flicker in his cell each evening are intended to make sleep near impossible,” it said.
His lawyer Igal Dotan, who visited Barghouti in Israel’s Megiddo Prison two months ago, told the paper that “mentally he’s a very strong person, but physically his condition is deteriorating, you can see it. He’s struggling to see out of his right eye, as a result of one of the assaults.”
“He has lost weight – he doesn’t look good. You wouldn’t recognise him if you compare his current appearance with the famous photos of him,” he said.
Barghouti told his lawyers that in March he was dragged to an area of the prison without security cameras and assaulted. He recalled bleeding from the nose as he was dragged across the floor by his handcuffs, before he was beaten unconscious.
Dotan counted bruises in at least three places on Barghouti’s body when he visited weeks later, adding that he probably has a dislocated shoulder from the assault and is in constant pain, but prison officials have refused a full medical examination of his injuries.
Since October, he has been transferred to three different detention facilities, and held in solitary confinement in each.
In Ayalon Prison “he was beaten on several occasions,” said Dotan, including an incident where guards swore at him while Barghouti was “dragged on the floor naked in front of other prisoners.”
Israelis use Palestinian kids as human shields: Rights group
Press TV – May 12, 2024
A Geneva-based rights group has condemned the Israeli regime forces for using children as human shields in their assaults on Palestinians.
The Defense for Children International (DCI) said it heard testimonies of three children who described how they were used as human shields by occupying Israeli forces during a recent search and assault operation in the West Bank’s Tulkarm refugee camp, the Middle East Eye on Sunday reported.
The DCI said the Palestinian children said on May 5 and May 6 Israeli soldiers had forced them to walk ahead of them as they searched through the refugee camp, describing two instances in which the Israeli regime forces had placed their rifles on their shoulders.
One teen named Kareem recounted how Israeli forces stormed his family’s apartment on May 6 and then forced him to lead them through the apartment block as they carried out a search operation in the building. The teen said the soldiers had placed a loaded rifle on his shoulders and fired two shots toward one of the apartment’s entrances.
Another child, Mohammad, said during a raid on his home, he was forcibly separated from his family by the Israeli forces.
“I remained alone with the soldiers after they instructed my mother and siblings to climb to the fourth floor of the building. I started crying and trembling with fear because I didn’t know what they would do to me. They were armed, masked, and their appearance was terrifying, accompanied by a large police dog making frightening noises,” Mohammad said.
He said they told him to knock on each apartment door in the building and tell the residents in the apartments to leave their homes.
Mohammad said if an apartment was empty and no one answered, the armed men would enter by force.
“When we reached the door of one of the apartments and found it empty, the soldiers blew up the door and forced me to enter alone to inspect it,” said the Palestinian child.
Ibrahim, another Palestinian teen, recounted how on the morning of May 6, Israeli forces stormed his family’s home in the Tulkarm refugee camp in a “brutal and terrifying manner,” searching and vandalizing their belongings.
He said, “A group of soldiers took me to one of the rooms and began interrogating me. When I told them I knew nothing, one of them threatened me in Arabic and said (I’ll smash you if you don’t talk). Then he physically assaulted me for several minutes before handcuffing my hands behind my back with a plastic tie. They then took me outside and asked me to walk in front of the soldiers.”
“I was trembling with fear and terror. At first, I thought they wanted to arrest me, but they asked me to walk in front of them in the alleys of the Al-Sawalme neighborhood in the camp. They would hide in the alley and ask me to show the way. After that, they released my hands, and every time we passed by a house or building, they would ask me to enter and ask the residents to leave and head towards the soldiers, after which they would raid those homes. During the raids, they would ask me to open the internal doors of the houses and apartments.”
Ibrahim said after about two hours of searching the camp, the Israelis took him to a house in the camp where he was detained alongside others until the Israeli forces withdrew from the camp.
In the meantime, the use of Palestinians as human shields by Israeli regime forces in numerous cases has been well documented by multiple human rights organizations.
Israeli regime forces put Palestinian civilians in front of them or otherwise put civilians in the line of fire, and force them to open doors that could be booby-trapped or remove suspicious objects that might be bombs. They also force them to walk through suspected booby-trapped buildings.
The Zionist forces also often employ the “neighbor procedure” in which Palestinian civilians are forced to attempt to persuade individuals to leave or surrender themselves.
“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at the DCIP, adding, “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”
For decades, both Palestinian children as well as adults have been used by the Israeli forces during operations as human shields.
The use of civilians as human shields is one of many war crimes committed by the Israeli regime forces.
Israeli military not a professional army; its ground incursions look like Daesh attacks
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024
The Israeli military’s ground assaults in the Gaza Strip have been punctuated by the discovery of mass graves, the publicizing of war crimes of occupation soldiers for fun, and a record of mass slaughter, human shield taking, and widespread torture. Although most modern armies have committed war crimes, the Israeli military does not operate like a professional force, but rather a collection of ill-disciplined racist militia groups.
On May 6, following the announcement by Hamas that they had accepted a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli leadership immediately struck down any prospect of a viable agreement being reached and its military began sending tanks toward Rafah, under a massive airstrike campaign. The first objective that the Israeli regime’s military sought to achieve was the capturing of the Rafah Crossing, situated roughly 3 kilometers from the separation barrier between Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.
While immediately shutting off Gaza completely, preventing aid trucks and civilian passage through to the Egyptian side of the border, the conduct of the Israeli soldiers was also important to pay attention to. According to the Zionist military, it was the Givati Brigade that was responsible for the storming of the Rafah Crossing. Instead of professionally carrying out their very simple task – driving tanks into an area that was not defended – they decided to film videos of themselves using their military vehicles to crush and demolish areas throughout the border crossing, which were shared online in order to brag about it. The crossing was desecrated, Israeli flags were flown in place of Palestinian ones, and, according to reports, around 20 workers at the crossing were either slaughtered or kidnapped.
The Givati Brigade is supposed to be some of the most well-trained in the Israeli army and is not like the reservists. They are also one of the two brigades that make up the Israeli Southern Command, which collapsed within an hour of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. What these forces were sent to do on May 6 was to violate the terms of the 1978 Camp David agreement, which normalized ties between Cairo and Tel Aviv, as they had entered the Philadelphia Corridor. Although the Egyptian client regime was not willing to declare this act of war a reason to throw away the Camp David agreement, the callous way in which the Zionist forces went about their de facto act of war against Egypt was telling.
The clear provocations by Israeli soldiers who decided to pull out their iPhones and film themselves destroying property for laughs at the Rafah Crossing are nothing new, however. Throughout the ground war in Gaza, Zionist soldiers have filmed themselves humiliating, beating, and posing with Palestinian civilians they have kidnapped. They also filmed themselves stealing property, smashing stores and homes, and defecating and urinating inside Palestinian houses, in addition to randomly blowing up buildings for fun. Israeli soldiers have also filmed themselves playing with women’s lingerie, even wearing it and dancing in it for videos, while hurling insults at Palestinian women. These soldiers then post these videos on social media to brag about their war crimes and sexually motivated actions. Perhaps the most voluminous archive of these videos has been compiled on the Twitter account of Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi.
Another common theme for the Israeli military’s forces is to go on their phones and film themselves for Tiktok Livestreams, which has even aided the Palestinian Resistance in pinpointing their locations on occasion so that they can carry out operations using short-range rockets and mortar attacks.
If it was just a few instances of Israeli soldiers doing this sort of thing, followed by strong disciplining action from their superiors, then it could be put down to individual actions. This is clearly not the case. Instead, this fits into a trend within the Israeli military that has been ongoing for years. The issue came to a head in 2018 in fact, during the non-violent protest movement in Gaza called ‘The Great Return March’, where Israeli soldiers would publish videos of themselves shooting unarmed civilians and breaking out into laughter, and then posting the video on social media. At that time, by observing the Israeli media’s commentary on it, it became clear that their soldiers do not listen to orders and will even help companies test their weapons on the battlefield, putting aside their standard-issue weapons.
The issue of whether an Israeli soldier has the right to do as he/she pleases emerged in a major way back in 2016. A soldier operating in al-Khalil for the occupation forces, named Elor Azaria, decided to pull out his rifle and shoot a Palestinian man in the head after he was already severely injured and lay on the ground. The incident was filmed, causing an international backlash and forcing the Israeli military to act. In the end, a large group of Israeli society rallied behind Azaria and supported him in his alleged “right” to slaughter Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, even protesting and creating a fundraiser for him. In the end, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. He only served 9 months and exited to a demotion in his rank in the army, yet he was not kicked out of the military.
From Elor Azaria until now, this problem has only grown inside the Israeli military. The issue is that the Israeli military is composed of ill-disciplined soldiers who feel that they can behave in any way they choose. What the war in Gaza has revealed is that this issue is not just a growing problem, but is the culture of the Israeli armed forces. Even the ease with which Israeli soldiers are given high ranks is embarrassing and has created an environment for its soldiers of “participation awards”, enabling soldiers who are ill-prepared to be promoted and get to rule over other soldiers who have no idea what they are doing.
When you have a military force of this nature, formed of entitled ethnic-supremacists who feel like they can behave however they choose, it is a recipe for disaster when you send them into an urban warfare combat zone, densely populated by a civilian population they are indoctrinated to believe are inferior to them. Now add on top of this the religious supremacist element to it, where even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling the people of Gaza “Amalek”, and it becomes clear why these ill-disciplined, entitled, racist, and ill-trained soldiers are carrying out a violent crusade against civilians.
This is why we see the Israeli military looting homes and businesses. This is why we see such mass scale torture, sexual humiliation, and even the rape of Palestinian women. It also explains why the Israeli military committed its series of what has been dubbed ‘Flour Massacres’, murdering over a thousand people who are waiting for food aid in various areas of Gaza, the worst cases being in the North of the besieged coastal enclave.
We have seen the evidence, presented at the International Court of Justice, showing Israeli soldiers chanting on films about their intention to kill “Amelek” arguing that there are no innocent civilians. The whole world has also seen drone footage of Israeli forces using their unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to launch targeted strikes on groups of civilians walking in open areas, in addition to drone footage clearly showing Israeli soldiers using human shields. The Zionist military even shot dead their own prisoners in the al-Shujaiyah neighborhood, while waving their shirts as white flags.
The mass graves that are being uncovered throughout the Gaza Strip produce evidence that civilians were buried alive, stripped naked, and tied up before being executed, with many even showing signs of torture and that they were chucked in black bags among garbage. There are also the two most prominent mass grave cases, revealed after the Israeli army withdrew from the Al-Shifa Hospital and the Nasser Hospital complex.
Women, children, elderly individuals, journalists, UN employees, doctors, civil defense teams, disabled people, and even foreign aid workers were all carelessly slaughtered in the most inhumane ways possible and even with precision weapons.
It is not only the case in Gaza, as in southern Lebanon there is the case of 7 volunteer healthcare workers who were murdered with a precision weapon that completely destroyed the ambulance center they were stationed at.
This is the method of the Israeli military, chaos and insane precision strikes on civilian targets. While many of the killings were clearly ordered up the chain of command when such war crimes are carried out at a pre-approved level, why would soldiers on the ground care about the laws of war? They clearly see that no law applies to them. They don’t even bother changing their tactics often either, an example of this being that the Palestinian Resistance has filmed its operations targeting soldiers who stand in the windows of occupied buildings. Throughout the entire ground war, we see videos of Israeli soldiers making this obvious and stupid mistake. In one case, it appears that an Israeli soldier was smoking marijuana out of a bong when he was killed by a Yassin warhead.
All the abovementioned is meant to say that an invasion of Rafah’s population center, where some 1.4 million displaced civilians are packed into a densely populated area, is understood to be such a major catastrophe because of the nature of what the Israeli military is. This is not a professional army, for the most part, the soldiers are unprepared for what they are sent to face. They are cowardly and trigger-happy, knowing that no consequences will come for opening fire randomly when they freak out. They also have the space to freely carry out their racially and religiously motivated desires by inflicting any pain on civilians that they see fit. The Israeli soldiers know that they will never be held accountable, maybe receiving a slap on the wrist being the worst-case scenario, so they commit unspeakable acts on a daily basis.
Instead of the Israeli military being referred to as an army, it would be more appropriate to call them a collection of ethno-supremacist militias. They do whatever they like and will never be held accountable, serving a population that also believes in their genocidal mentality. There are only three discernable differences between the Israeli militia forces and their Daesh counterparts: Daesh are more willing to die for their sectarian cause, the Israelis inflict much higher civilian death tolls, and they do it with the latest in modern military equipment that is in endless supply from their Western backers.
Israel gives extremist settler ‘absolute’ control of occupied West Bank
The Cradle | May 3, 2024
Brigadier General Avi Bluth, an extremist religious settler, has been appointed to the position of Central Command commander of the Israeli army, Israeli media reported on 2 May.
Bluth has previously served as commander of the Army’s Judea and Samaria Division and as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Military Secretary.
According to Muhammad Shehada of Euro Med Human Rights, Bluth will now have absolute powers over the West Bank, including the ability to demolish homes and conduct army raids.
Bluth contributed to pogroms against Palestinians in the towns of Huwara and Burqa by standing by as Jewish settlers lynched civilians and burned and destroyed homes, shops, and vehicles.
He also played a role in incorporating extremists from a religious settler group called the Hilltop Youth into units of the Israeli army.
Bluth pushed for Operation Break the Wave in 2022, in which the army killed 149 Palestinians in the West Bank and abducted 2000 others in a series of raids, and Operation Bayit Vagan in July 2023, in which the army carried out a massive assault on Jenin, killing 12 Palestinians and leaving widespread destruction in its wake.
Bluth is a signatory to the army’s 2015 policy change, which loosened the conditions for using live fire against Palestinians throwing stones and carrying out ramming operations.
Shehada adds that Bluth has links to the Religious Zionism Party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which is committed to stealing and annexing Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Bluth was raised in Neve Tzuf, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. He earned a BS in philosophy, economy, and political science from Hebrew University and an MA in strategic thinking from the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Odessa massacre 10 years on… Western media silence covers up NATO incrimination
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 3, 2024
Ten years ago this week, a shocking and brutal massacre was perpetrated by supporters of the NATO-backed Kiev regime in Odessa.
At least 42 men and women were murdered on May 2, 2014, when the Trade Unions House in the historic port city was set ablaze by a fascist mob.
Last year to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the atrocity, our weekly editorial provided a rationale for Western silence. We commented:
“In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.
However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.
This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.
The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.
For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.”
Now 10 years on, the Western media do not even make any mention of the atrocity. In earlier years, the Western media sought to distort the incident by claiming that it was a confused melee and the tragic result of a clash between unknown rival factions. There were even deplorable attempts by Western media to make out that claims of an atrocity were “Russian disinformation”.
The cover-up has given way to total silence as if the horrific event was consigned to an Orwellian “memory hole”.
Russia continues to call for an international independent investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Kiev regime persists in rebuffing any serious investigation for the simple reason that a thorough probe would probably show that the atrocity was carried out by the leadership of the Kiev regime in collusion with Western intelligence agencies.
What happened in Odessa on May 2, 2014, was not some random event of chaotic violence that got out of control. This is what the Western media initially reported.
No, it seems quite clear now that the massacre was a well-planned, deliberate act of mass murder to terrorize the Ukrainian opposition into complying with the NATO regime. It was an act of state terrorism.
The victims were all from Odessa who had been participating in a peaceful protest outside the landmark building in the city center. The building was closed due to the May Day holiday. As in several other southern and eastern regions of Ukraine at the time, there were many protests against the NATO-sponsored coup in Kiev that had taken place only weeks earlier in February of that year.
Many Ukrainians were not happy – indeed were appalled – that the so-called EuroMaidan coup in Kiev had brought to power ultranationalists and fascists who glorified NeoNazi figures and paramilitaries. Cities like Odessa suffered terribly under Nazi occupation during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Now they were seeing a regime exulting in those Nazi memories and wanting to banish all Russian cultural connections.
In those pivotal months of 2014, the CIA’s plan to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark was not a foregone conclusion due to the formidable opposition to the new regime in cities like Odessa, Kherson and Kharkov – as well as of course the Crimea Peninsula and the Donbass.
Former Odessa lawmaker Vasily Polishchuk who witnessed the violence that day testifies that senior figures in the Kiev regime were present in Odessa in the days before May 2. One of those was Andriy Parubiy who had been appointed head of national security. Parubiy is also implicated in the sniper shootings in Kiev on February 20 – a false flag provocation killing dozens of protesters and police officers – that precipitated the coup against the elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Two weeks before the Odessa massacre, the then CIA director John Brennan was in Kiev on an unannounced visit. Even some U.S. lawmakers complained at the time that it was not a good look for the United States to be seen collaborating with the Kiev regime. Brennan was not only giving the green light to the “anti-terror operation” (civil war) that the Kiev regime was about to launch against the Donbass. It seems plausible that the United States was also helping to formulate a scorched-earth policy of terror to quell any dissent across Ukraine.
The mass killings in Odessa on May 2 were the selected terror demonstration.
Eyewitnesses tell of how thousands of Kiev regime paramilitaries who had been instrumental in the coup in the capital weeks earlier were bussed into Odessa and put up in camps. Andriy Parubiy was seen inspecting their ranks and overseeing the supply of body armor.
When the anti-Maidan protesters were attacked on May 2, they were herded by baseball-bat-wielding thugs into the Trade Union House. The building was then assailed with incendiary devices.
People who jumped from the blazing building were bludgeoned to death by NeoNazi gangs shouting “Death to all Russians”.
The dereliction of duty by the police that day to protect the peaceful protesters and the subsequent quashing of any crime investigation is proof that the security forces were complicit. That could only have been enabled by senior orders most likely issued by those in Kiev.
This is essential background to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and why Russia decided to intervene on February 24, 2022. Moscow maintains that Ukraine is a proxy war orchestrated by the United States and its NATO allies as a geo-strategic confrontation to subjugate Russia. Western regimes and their propaganda media make out that Ukraine is a democracy under aggression from Russia.
Understanding how the Kiev regime was installed with CIA and NATO engineering and how it rapidly used its fascist violence to turn Ukraine into a terror state corroborates the analysis of the current conflict being a Western imperialist proxy war.
The Western-lionized “democracy” has repressed all opposition parties and media.
The United States and its NATO accomplices do not want the Western public to understand the truth about their criminal machinations in Ukraine. These powers want the bloodshed to continue to the last Ukrainian because the war racket is so damn lucrative.
Thus the Western powers must shove episodes like the Odessa massacre down the memory hole and keep a lid on it. It is imperative to keep the fiction going of a democracy under attack otherwise the West’s collusion with a NeoNazi regime would reveal the Western powers’ inherent fascism.
Several events and developments around the world – brutal police repression of peaceful protests in the U.S. and Europe, the enabling of genocide by a fascist Israeli regime, the unprovoked aggression toward China, and the nefarious involvement in Ukraine – all point to Western states degenerating into full-fledged fascism.
2014 Odessa Massacre Well Orchestrated, CIA Likely Involved – US Activist
Sputnik – 02.05.2024
WASHINGTON – The 2014 massacre in Odessa conducted by Ukrainian nationalists was well orchestrated and the CIA possibly played a role, US antiwar activist and Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space Coordinator Bruce Gagnon told Sputnik.
On May 2, 2014, Ukrainian nationalists locked pro-federalism protesters in Odessa’s Trade Unions House and set the building on fire. Almost 50 people died and 250 others were injured in the attack by the Ukrainian radicals, according to the United Nations.
“It was well orchestrated,” Gagnon said on Wednesday.
The CIA as well as other US agencies were likely involved in the planning and execution of the massacre, he said.
Gagnon pointed out that the perpetrators were well-equipped to carry out the massacre and Ukrainian law enforcement did practically nothing to prevent it.
“Molotov cocktails were on hand to firebomb the Trade Union House. Bats were on hand to beat those who jumped from windows trying to get away from fire and smoke. Back door was broken into, and Nazis moved inside to kill people hiding,” Gagnon said.
The police at the scene did nothing while the assault was underway and arrested those who had been inside the building but not those who attacked them, Gagnon said.
Fire trucks were blocked from arriving at the scene for quite some time and could not extinguish the fire in the very beginning, Gagnon added.
“It is obvious to me that decisions made at the highest level in Ukraine, and likely in the United States, determined that no prosecutions would happen to those who attacked,” Gagnon said.
The activist noted that he visited Odessa on May 2, 2016, and saw with his own eyes the neo-Nazi Azov battalion holding weapons and roping off the Trade Unions House from people who carried flowers to pay tribute to the victims of the attack.
“No one was allowed to approach the building. The Nazis threw stones at the bus carrying the mothers [of the victims] and the international guests as we approached the area,” Gagnon added.
The clashes in Odessa became one of the deadliest events during the so-called Maidan and anti-Maidan demonstrations in Ukraine that started in late 2013.
Moscow has repeatedly criticized the steps Kiev took to allegedly investigate the massacre and has urged the international community and human rights groups to conduct a probe.
Neglect, abuse, harassment: The West is ignoring the fate of Palestinians stuck in Israeli jails
By Eva Bartlett | RT | April 27, 2024
For over six months, the world has watched the devastating Israeli campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, which has killed over 34,000 people so far (including over 16,000 children).
Fewer are aware, however, of the nearly 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, many of whom have been repeatedly arrested and held for prolonged, indefinite periods. These include children, university students, medics, doctors, and journalists, among others.
While these numbers have increased dramatically in just over half a year, media coverage is scant, with the exception of some reporting on Layan Nasir, one of the Christian university students re-imprisoned earlier this month. She was taken by Israeli troops from her family’s home in the early morning, with her parents held at gunpoint. But this is not an isolated phenomenon, she’s just one of many Palestinian students similarly abducted, ostensibly in the name of security, for taking part in campus activism.
On April 7, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs condemned the latest kidnappings of Layan Kayed and Layan Naser, two young women who have previously been targeted and imprisoned, along with multiple others.
Justifying endless incarceration
The greater issue is that, as of April 17, which is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, over 9,500 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons – roughly one third of whom are imprisoned under what is termed ”administrative detetion” – a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold people based on secret evidence, indefinitely and without trial. It is justified by Israel’s Emergency Powers laws, under the constant state of emergency the country has been in since 1948.
Some 3,000 Gazan Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the current war on Gaza started last October – a number revealed by an investigation by Palestinian NGO Al Mezan Cetner for Human Rights. According to Al Mezan, this includes “women, children, elderly people, as well as professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and journalists.”
Out of the estimated 3,000 detainees, 1,650 Gazans are held under the Unlawful Combatants Law – a law similar to administrative detention but specific to Gazan Palestinians. They are also imprisoned without charge or legal representation, suspected of being “unlawful combatants.” They are, Al Mezan notes, “held in total isolation from the outside world” and “are neither granted the status of prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention, nor afforded the protections of civilian detainees under the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Another 300 (including ten children) not currently detained under the Unlawful Combatants Law are being imprisoned pending investigation.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, according to the Commission of Detainees Affairs, as of April 16 8,270 Palestinians have been arrested, including 275 women, 520 children, 66 journalists (with 45 still in custody, 23 of whom are in administrative detention).
Of these, 80 women (not including women from Gaza) and over 200 minors are imprisoned. The total number held under administrative detention is more than 3,660, including more than 40 children.
Since last October 7, 16 West Bank Palestinian captives have died in Israeli prison due to ”systematic measures of torture, medical crimes, the policy of starvation and many other violations and assaults conducted against male and female detainees, minors and elderly detainees,” according to a report by NGO the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
Israeli newspaper f reports 27 detained Palestinians from Gaza have died since October 7: “The detainees died at the Sde Teiman and Anatot facilities or during questioning in Israeli territory.” The same article refers to a UNRWA report published by The New York Times recently, which states that detainees released to Gaza testified that they were beaten, robbed, stripped and sexually assaulted, and had access to doctors and lawyers denied.
Israeli Guantanamos
Reports of torture of incarcerated Palestinians (including children) have been published over the years, with more emerging in recent months. Israeli rights group B’Tselem notes that “Every year, Israel arrests and detains hundreds of Palestinian minors, while routinely and systemically violating their rights: during the arrest [and] under interrogation.”
In March, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) expressed extreme concern, stating that the nearly 10,000 imprisoned Palestinians is, “a 200% increase from any normal year” and that, since last October, at least 27 Palestinians have died in Israeli prison camps inside Gaza. Prisoners include children and the elderly, including an 82-year-old grandmother.
These detention camps, from what I saw in January 2009 in Gaza, are large areas bulldozed flat, without tents or shelter. Former inmates describe them as “open-air cages,” where prisoners are “handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day.”
There are numerous new testimonies of Palestinians mistreated in Israeli detention. Examples include one elderly man from southern Gaza alleged to have been tortured so badly that his leg became infected and after seven days of medical negligence, had to be amputated. Another 60-year-old man is said to have been held for over 50 days, and beaten severely during that time. Human-rights groups continue to document such accounts and to speak out.
Already in February, organizations like Adalah, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, submitted a plea to the UN Special Rapporteur (SR) on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, “urging the SR to take immediate action to halt the systematic abuse, torture, and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.”
Al Mezan reports visiting 40 Palestinian detainees in Ashkelon and Ofer prisons, whose testimonies include being brutally beaten and deliberately starved as a form of torture and collective punishment. One 19-year-old told Al Mezan that “three of his fingernails were removed with pliers during interrogation” and he was, “handcuffed and bound in stress positions for long periods – three times over three days of interrogation.”
Al Mezan reports all detainees “suffer from acute emaciation, fatigue and back curvature due to being forced to bend their backs and heads while walking,” and that the NGO’s lawyer who spoke with these prisoners stated he had never seen such poor prison conditions in 20 years of working with detainees.
More recently, Haaretz reported on a doctor’s treatment of Palestinians in a field hospital in Israel and of horrific conditions: “Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.” According to him, all patients have all four limbs cuffed and are blindfolded and fed through a straw, meaning “even young and healthy patients lose weight after a week or two of hospitalization.”
Now, compare this situation to cases when similar reports or claims come from a state targeted by Washington for regime change or designated as “rogue” or as an “adversary.” In such cases, the claims are often taken at face value, extrapolated, amplified and widely broadcast. For example, in 2017 Western media latched onto claims of a “slaughterhouse” in the town of Saydnaya, Syria, where there were supposed “mass hangings” by the Syrian government. These accusations were uncritically endorsed by legacy media, despite having numerous fallacies and not being based on primary sources.
As noted at the time, Amnesty International admits that since no photos, videos or concrete testimony exist of Saydnaya Prison, they were forced to devise “unique ways with interactive 3D models and digital technology, animations and audio software” and liaised with West-based NGOs that support efforts to overthrow the Syrian government to craft their report, which gained media traction because it supported the NATO narrative on Syria.
When it comes to Palestinian prisoners and their reports of being tortured, starved, and denied urgently-needed medical care while in Israeli detention or prisons, such level of effort and media coverage is nowhere to be seen – likely because of the political inconvenience this would cause to Washington and its allies.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Israeli forces kill 14 Palestinians during refugee camp siege in West Bank
Press TV – April 20, 2024
The Israeli regime’s forces have gunned down at least 14 Palestinians, including 10 fighters, during their ongoing days-long siege on Nour Shams, a refugee camp located in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
“So far, our crews have evacuated 14 martyrs from Nour Shams camp to the hospital,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday.
News agencies, meanwhile, reported sighting Israeli drones loitering overhead and armored vehicles roaming throughout the camp.
Earlier, the Palestinian health ministry said it had confirmed that as many as 11 people had been injured by the troops. Seven of those injured had been “wounded by live gunshots,” it said, adding that among the wounded was a paramedic shot while trying to get to the wounded.
Medics had been alerted to “a number of killed and injured” inside the camp, but the army was “denying them access to tend to the wounded,” the ministry noted.
Minister Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, said residents were suffering from the “destruction of homes, shops, the electricity grid, the sewerage, the water network, and infrastructure.”
The Israeli military began its siege on the camp on Thursday, rolling bulldozers into the area, and deploying military vehicles on all routes leading to the camp.
The military began destroying main streets, alleyways, water, and wastewater networks inside the camp.
Reporting on Friday, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency said, “They (Israeli forces) turned some houses into military outposts, deployed snipers and prevented ambulances from entering the camp to evacuate patients.”
Also on Friday, the Israeli military killed Muhammad Samer Jaber, commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, a Palestinian resistance group affiliated with Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Gaza Strip-based Islamic Jihad movement, and a number of resistance fighters.
The Israeli regime has notably escalated its aggression against Palestinians across the West Bank since October 7, when it began an all-out genocidal war on Gaza.
Around 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank ever since the onset of the war that has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 people so far.
Featured Video
EPSTEIN FILES REVEAL POWER BROKERS IN SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
How the CIA hid their MKULTRA mind-control program
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | September 17, 2021
Back in the early 1990s, I spoke with John Marks, author of Search for the Manchurian Candidate. This was the book (1979) that helped expose the existence and range of the infamous CIA MKULTRA program.
Marks related the following facts to me. He had originally filed many Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests for documents connected to the CIA’s mind-control program. He got nothing back.
Finally, as if to play a joke on him, someone at the CIA sent Marks 10 boxes of financial and accounting records. The attitude was, “Here, see what you can do with this.”
I’ve seen some of those records. They’re very boring reading.
But Marks went through them, and lo and behold, he found he could piece together MKULTRA projects, based on the funding data.
Eventually, he assembled enough information to begin naming names. He conducted interviews. The shape of MKULTRA swam into view. And so he wrote his book, Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
He told me that three important books had been written about MKULTRA, and they all stemmed from those 10 boxes of CIA financial records. There was his own book; Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart; and The Mind Manipulators by Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Ukraine blocks EU mission to inspect Russian oil pipeline – FT
- Ukrainian drone attacked Russian LNG tanker in Mediterranean Sea
- Brazilian mercenaries say they learned ‘guerrilla warfare’ in Ukraine
- Security Researchers Warn Age Verification Laws Are Building a Global Surveillance System
- EPSTEIN FILES REVEAL POWER BROKERS IN SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
- Failing Solidarity: How Cultural Prejudice Shapes Leftist Narratives on the War Against Iran
- How Germany became Israel’s enabler-in-chief
- US commanders tell troops Iran war ‘God’s divine plan,’ Trump anointed to ‘ignite Armageddon’: Report
- Iran denies attacks on Oman as it warns of US-Israeli ‘false-flag’ ops
- Iran UN: Timing not suitable for any form of negotiation with US
- If Americans Knew
- Rubio Suggests Trump Joined Israel’s Planned Attack on Iran Instead of Stopping It
- CNN: Timing of attack on Iran bears symbolic meaning in Judaism
- How the New York Times paved the way for apocalyptic war
- Tucker Carlson says Saudi Arabia and Qatar arrested Mossad agents planning bombings
- How Maduro overthrow was key node in US-Israeli war on Iran
- The U.S. media goes to war on Iran
- Trump admin promises Iran war will be short…or not – Not a ceasefire Day 144
- Tucker Carlson: A New Middle East War for Israel Started by the U.S.
- Israel launches Bible study program targeting US evangelicals
- Israel’s lonely push for war with Iran
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: ‘Internal Noise’ And Volcanic Forcing Can Trigger 10-15°C Warming Within Decades
- Glaciers Worldwide Are Suddendly Surging, Experts Blame Warming!
- Surprising Discovery: Sahara Is Greening…Billions Of Trees Where Once Thought To Be Barren
- New Research Reaffirms Clouds, Aerosols, And Surface Solar Radiation Are ‘Driving The Climate System’
- Germany: Electric Car Catches Fire At Charging Station, Sets Off Local “Inferno”, Widespread Damage
- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
Aletho News 