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.
Over 350 Humanitarian Sites and Convoys Have Been Attacked in Gaza
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | April 16, 2024
Prior to the Israeli military’s slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza this month, Middle East Eye (MEE) reports that at least 357 humanitarian-run sites and convoys had been attacked.
As with the incident involving the slain WCK workers which included an American citizen, the humanitarian orgs shared their coordinates in advance of operations with the warring parties. Israel hit them anyway and UN officials have warned of great difficulty in repairing the broken humanitarian notification system.
Current data shows that at least 216 aid workers have been killed during Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and relentless war on the Palestinian people trapped in the besieged, highly dense, coastal enclave. Aid workers told MEE the “scale of the incidents was unprecedented, even compared to the most dangerous war zones and emergencies they have experienced.” The vast majority of aid workers slaughtered have been employed by UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees.
Nearly 34,000 people have been confirmed killed so far amidst Israel’s genocidal campaign, including more than 20,000 women and children. Brice de la Vingne, the head of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency unit said “To be frank, every single day we are discussing internally whether to leave Gaza. We should not be there.” He added, “The level of risk we are taking, I’ve never seen.”
He explained that aid operations in other wars are conducted outside the areas of actual fighting but the entire Strip has become a war zone. “In Gaza, we are in this nightmarish hell scenario where we are working in an environment where people are not supposed to be,” Vingne lamented.
According to the report, “The majority of the hits to deconfliction humanitarian sites – 352 – were to locations run by UNRWA, the largest aid organization operating in Gaza, including a food distribution center and schools sheltering thousands of civilians.”
MEE also found there were at least five other occasions where humanitarian sites or convoys were attacked including “a compound in Al-Mawasi housing staff working for the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine, the Gaza City offices of Doctors of the World, a [MSF] convoy in Gaza City and an MSF shelter in Al-Mawasi, and an American Near East Refugee (ANERA) shelter in Deir al-Balah.”
Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement of a new deconfliction cell for humanitarian aid groups, Jamie McGoldrick, the outgoing top UN aid official in Gaza, told the outlet “nothing substantive” has changed. Two weeks after the high-profile massacre of the WCK employees, communication between aid workers and the Israeli military regarding their location remains broken down or non-existent.
McGoldrick, whose final day at the post was last Friday, maintains that aid workers in the Gaza Strip require not only a hotline to correspond directly with the IDF but also must be provided with satellite phones and two-way radios. In other conflict zones, this is standard operating procedure. Not so amid Israel’s onslaught in the Strip, however, these devices are not furnished to aid workers ostensibly because the IDF fears they will fall into the hands of Hamas.
As Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war, the entire population in Gaza is on the brink of famine. Officials from the State Department and USAID have admitted that famine is already taking place in the northern parts of the Strip, where McGoldrick has warned that despite Israeli assurances the aid distribution system has seen no improvement.
The broken deconfliction system for aid workers in the Strip will only spell more deaths of deprivation, experts estimate that the death toll will surpass 100,000 by August if the situation remains unchanged. Moreover, Gaza’s medical system and infrastructure has been decimated by the Israeli campaign. Last month, the World Health Organization released statistics exposing that in excess of 400 medical facilities have been hit, killing nearly 700 people.
The Israeli air, land, and sea blockade imposed on the illegally occupied enclave 17 years ago was severely tightened after the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel. Gallant announced days later that the “human animals” living in the Strip, which includes more than a million children, will be indefinitely cut off from food, water, fuel, and medicine.
After the WCK massacre, the group ended its operations in Gaza along with ANERA. WCK had been providing more hot meals in Gaza than UNRWA and the World Food Program combined. In January, Israel launched a propaganda war against UNWRA by accusing some of their employees of having ties to Hamas and the October 7th attack.
More than a dozen Western countries including the United States stripped funding for the vital agency, over Tel Aviv’s claims which were supported by no evidence. UNRWA has since revealed that its aid workers were subjected to rape and waterboarding at the hands of the IDF seeking to extract just such spurious confessions.
During previous Israeli wars against Lebanon and Gaza, there was significant communication between the UN and COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing the occupied territories, as well as its ancillary the Civilian Liaison Administration which is focused on the Strip. This is now not taking place.
If aid workers experience a security risk or incident, when they are enroute to a destination or attempting to pass through a checkpoint, it is not possible to communicate with the IDF.
McGoldrick explained to MEE, the UN “should have pushed harder earlier in the conflict to get closer to the Israeli military, if not physically embedding someone in a joint operations room, then at least being able to have a face-to-face conversation online, in real time.” This is imperative for two reasons, he said, “First, they understand better what you do and how you do it. Secondly, you can build trust in terms of what your expectations are on both sides.”
According to Grisha Yakubovich, the former chief of COGAT until 2016, previous Israeli bombing sprees against the open-air concentration camp saw UN and COGAT officials meet on a virtually daily basis to share plans for the next 24 hours. Yakubovich told the Washington Post this is not the case anymore because Israel’s military practically refuses to work with the UN. The IDF cites their lies about UN employees’ alleged ties with Hamas to justify the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe the Israeli war has wrought.
Other aid agencies besides the UN have expressed great frustration over the lack of a clear response, if any, when their sites are bombed by Israeli pilots. For instance, the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine says the Israeli authorities gave six different explanations for why an F-16 jet targeted one of their stand-alone compounds with a 1,000 pound “smart bomb” in January, weeks after their coordinates had been shared.
“It is clear from this experience that the Israeli military and government are either unable or unwilling to properly investigate this serious incident,” the group stated.
Gaza authorities slam Israel for torturing Palestinian children
Press TV – April 16, 2024
Authorities in the besieged Gaza Strip say the Palestinian children the Israeli regime recently freed have recounted instances of physical abuse, torture, and deliberate starvation.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Gaza’s Government Media Office said the testimonies include accounts from children younger than 12.
The accounts underscore “extreme torture, mistreatment and cases of medical neglect.”
The office called on rights groups and the international community to take action in respect of the “horrifying” testimonies.
“These testimonies from the affected individuals prove yet again the monstrosity of this criminal army.”
“It is yet another example of how it violates international and humanitarian laws as it continues committing war crimes and genocide against our people in Gaza,” the office stated.
According to multiple reports, corroborated by the Palestinian Health Ministry as well as the Defense for Children International (DCI) NGO, one child is being killed in Gaza every 10 minutes.
Aid agencies have warned that “nowhere and no one is safe” under Israel’s relentless onslaught.
Israeli forces have been denounced for mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields during the savage campaign in the besieged territory.
The death toll from the regime’s genocidal campaign in Gaza now tops 33,800.
The Save the Children organization is deeply alarmed by the toll and sufferings being exacted on children in the Gaza Strip.
According to the charity, more than 14,500 of Gaza’s 1.1 million children have been killed since October 7, 2023. And thousands more are missing, presumed buried under the rubble, their deaths unmarked.
The life-saving aid which families rely on has either been drip-fed or denied by Israeli authorities – while essential services have been decimated by ongoing Israeli hostilities.
The Global Education Cluster estimates that as of March 30, 87.7% of all school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
Abu Ghraib survivors to get their day in court
RT | April 12, 2024
Twenty years on from reports that the US military was torturing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, three survivors will finally get a chance to bring their claims before an American jury.
A trial in the civil lawsuit filed by former Abu Ghraib inmates against the US military contractor that they blame for their suffering is scheduled to begin on Monday in a federal court near Washington. The private security contractor, CACI International, has strung the case along for 16 years by making over 20 unsuccessful attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed.
CACI, which supplied the interrogators who worked at Abu Ghraib, has insisted that its employees weren’t accused of abusing detainees. The Virginia-based company also has argued that as a Pentagon contractor, it should be protected by the government’s sovereign immunity against the torture allegations.
However, the plaintiffs claimed that CACI set the conditions for their torture by directing or encouraging abuses by military guards, at least partly to “soften up” prisoners for interrogations. All three of the former detainees are Iraqi civilians who were held at Abu Ghraib until eventually being released without charges.
The trial will be “an exceedingly rare opportunity for accountability for the egregious harms suffered by Iraqis after the US invasion in 2003,” according to a statement earlier this month by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a US group that is representing the plaintiffs. “In fact, this is the first lawsuit where victims of US post-9/11 torture will get their day in court.”
The Abu Ghraib scandal first came to public attention in April 2004, when photos of abused prisoners and their smiling US guards were published. At the time, CBS News aired a report describing the abuse and showing American soldiers taunting naked prisoners. The abuses included stacking nude prisoners in pyramids or dragging them by leashes around their necks. Others were threatened by dogs or hooded and attached to electrical wires.
One of the plaintiffs, former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili, claimed he was forced to wear women’s underwear, terrorized by dogs, deprived of sleep, and put in stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. Another survivor, Suhail Al-Shimari, has claimed that he suffered beatings, electrical shocks, and sexual assaults.
CACI has argued that its employees weren’t in a position to give orders to military police and that the US government was responsible for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib. The company has continued to receive lucrative US government contracts for the past two decades, and only low-level soldiers were criminally prosecuted for the abuses.
A Pentagon investigation found that acts of “brutality and purposeless sadism” occurred at the prison at the hands of military police and US intelligence agency personnel. Retired US Army General Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation, concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for directing military police to set the conditions that led to abuses. Taguba will reportedly testify at the Abu Ghraib trial.
Israel kills over 400 during Al-Shifa Hospital siege
The Cradle | March 31, 2024
Israeli forces have killed more than 400 people, including patients, the displaced, and medical workers during their 13-day siege of Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s government media office reported on 31 March.
The ministry added that during the siege on Gaza’s largest medical facility, where thousands of patients and displaced people are sheltering, Israeli troops have detained and tortured hundreds while destroying and or setting fire to 1,050 nearby houses.
On 27 March, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that Israeli forces had killed 13 children between the ages of 4 and 16 during operations in and around Al-Shifa in the previous week.
“Some of the fatal shootings occurred during an Israeli army siege while the victims’ families were inside their homes; others occurred when the victims attempted to escape via routes that the Israeli army had designated as ‘safe’ after forcibly evacuating them from their homes and places of residence,” the report stated.
Islam Ali Salouha, who lives close to Al-Shifa, told Euro-Med that Israeli forces killed his sons Ali, nine, and Saeed Muhammad Sheikha, six, while the family fled the area after being expelled from their home. Israeli forces specifically targeted the children with live bullets, he said.
Euro-Med reports that according to Salouha, on the afternoon of Sunday, 24 March, the Israeli army ordered everyone in the vicinity, through loudspeakers, to leave their homes or their homes would be bombed. He and his family fled on a corpse-strewn road that the Israeli army had designated for travel.
After walking only 10s of meters, Israeli forces opened fire on the family, killing the two children.
Salouha said that as they attempted to pull his two children off the ground, Israeli forces opened fire on them again, forcing them to leave Ali and Saeed on the ground and flee.
Safa Hassouna, a Palestinian woman living near Al-Shifa, told The National how she was forced to leave her home near the hospital when Israeli forces “broke in and forced them to leave.”
When Israeli forces began launching repeated raids on Al Shifa almost two weeks ago, Ms. Hassouna had decided to remain in her home to avoid shelling. However, Israeli forces later raided her home.
“They bombed the door and forced us out,” she said.
Hassouna said Israeli forces abducted her husband and two sons and told her to flee south with her daughter.
“They forced my husband and my sons to take off their clothes. They took them, and me and my daughter left,” she said.
Hassouna said her husband and one son have been released, but the fate of her other son is unknown. As he was escorted away, Israeli troops used him as a human shield for their tank.
“I don’t know anything about him, and I am worried,” she told The National from southern Gaza, where she is now staying.
“We are experiencing all the sorrow and sadness. Enough is enough.”
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Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire
Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj
By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025
In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.
But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.
China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.
So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue
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