Israel murders Palestinian children as a matter of state policy. This claim can be demonstrated easily and is supported by the latest findings of a Human Rights Watch report. The question is: why?
When the police or army shoot a child anywhere in the world, it can usually be argued, at least in theory, that the killing was an unfortunate and tragic mistake. But when thousands of children are killed and wounded in a systematic, “routine” and comparable method within a relatively short period of time, there has to be something very deliberate about it.
In a recent report — “West Bank: Spike in Israeli Killings of Palestinian Children” — HRW reaches a strong conclusion based on an exhaustive examination of medical data, eyewitness accounts, video footage and field research, the latter pertaining to four specific cases.
One is the case of Mahmoud Al-Sadi, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy from the Jenin Refugee Camp. He was killed last November, 320 metres away from fighting between invading Israeli forces and Jenin resistance fighters. Mahmoud was on his way to school and carried nothing that could be seen, from the soldiers’ point of view, as threatening or suspicious.
The story of the Jenin boy is typical and is repeated often throughout the occupied West Bank, sometimes daily. The predictable outcome, as HRW puts it, is that these killings are followed with “virtually no recourse for accountability”.
As of 22 August, 34 Palestinian children in the West Bank have been killed in 2023, adding yet more tragic numbers to a foreboding year that promises to be the most violent since 2005. This year “already surpasses 2022 annual figures, and the highest figure since 2005,” in terms of casualties, reported Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East, during a UN briefing on 21 August.
These statistics, among other factors — including the expansion of illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank — “threatens to worsen the plight of the most vulnerable Palestinians,” according to Wennesland.
Those “most vulnerable Palestinians”, however, exist beyond the realm of statistics. When Israeli soldiers killed 2-year-old toddler Mohammed Tamimi on 5 June, the little boy’s name was added to an ever-expanding roll call of shame. The memory of the infant, however, like the memory of all other Palestinian children, is etched into the collective consciousness of all Palestinians. It deepens their pain, but also compels their struggle and their resistance.
For Palestinians, the killing of their children is not a random act of a military that lacks discipline and fears no repercussions. Palestinians know that the Israeli war on children is an intrinsic component of the larger Israeli war on every single one of them.
Of course, Israel does not declare officially that it is targeting Palestinian children on purpose. That would be a public relations disaster. Some Israeli officials in the past, however, have let their guard down, offering a strange and troubling logic.
Palestinian children are “little snakes”, wrote Israeli politician Ayelet Shaked in 2015. In a Facebook post, published in the Washington Post, Shaked called for the killing of “the mothers of the [Palestinian] martyrs.” In doing so, she declared war on all Palestinians. “They should follow their sons,” she wrote, “nothing could be more just.” Shortly afterwards, Shaked rather ironically became Israel’s justice minister.
But not all Israeli officials are candid about the killing of Palestinian children, and even their mothers. Data collected by international rights groups, however, leaves no doubt that the nature of the killings is part of a comprehensive strategy developed by the Israeli military. “In all cases,” recently investigated by HRW, “Israeli forces shot the children’s upper bodies.” This was done without the “issuing of warnings or using common, less lethal measures.”
Specifically, the killing of Palestinian children is a centralised and deliberate Israeli military strategy. The same twisted logic, now applied to the West Bank, has already been used in the besieged Gaza Strip. UN figures show that, in the Israeli war against the Palestinians in Gaza in 2008-9, 333 Palestinian children were killed; other estimates put the figure at 410. In the 2012 Israeli offensive against Gaza, 47 children were killed; in 2014, there were 578 killed; in 2021 it was 66; and in 2022 17 children were killed in the besieged territory by Israeli soldiers.
Between 2018 and 2020, 59 Palestinian children were killed in what was known as the “March of Return” protests that took place at the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip. All the children were killed from a distance by Israeli snipers.
When the numbers of dead and wounded children are tallied, they are in the thousands. According to the UN, there were precisely 8,700 Palestinian child casualties between 2015 and 2022.
Even the callous and often dehumanising term “collateral damage” cannot justify such statistics. And although the war on Palestinian children is clearly intentional, protracted and ongoing, not a single Israeli military or government official has ever been held accountable in an international court. Moreover, the UN “List of Shame for Killing Children” has never branded Israel, although other countries have been “named and shamed” for far fewer crimes against children.
As the killing of children is perceived — according to the twisted logic of the likes of Shaked — to be functional for Israel, given the absence of any accountability, the occupation state finds no reason or urgency to end its war on Palestinian children. And with the constant loosening of the rules of military engagement in Israel, and the terrifyingly genocidal language used by its extreme far-right ministers and their massive constituency, more Palestinian children are likely to lose their lives in the near future.
Despite this, the most that UN officials and rights groups seem to be able to do now is to count the alarming number of child casualties. Alas, no number is large enough to dissuade Israel from killing Palestinians, including children.
The problem for Palestinians is not just that of Israel’s violence, but also the lack of international will to hold Israel accountable. Accountability requires unity, decisiveness of will and action. This task should be a priority for all countries that genuinely care about Palestinians and universal human rights. Without such collective action, Palestinian children will continue to be killed in large numbers and in the most brutal ways, a tragedy that will continue to pain, in fact, shame, us all.
In the first 2024 Republican presidential debate last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted his time in Iraq. “I learned in the military, I was assigned with U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq, that you focus on the mission above all else, you can’t get distracted,” he declared. Later in the debate he stated, “I’m somebody that volunteered to serve, inspired by September 11 and I deployed to Iraq alongside U.S. Navy SEALs in places like Fallujah, Ramadi…”
Some viewers had the impression that DeSantis was a Seal, but he was actually a Harvard Law School graduate who was a Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) alongside the Seals. DeSantis was deployed to Iraq in 2007 and 2008, during President George W. Bush’s “surge” (intended to postpone the obvious failure of the war until after Bush’s second term ended).
The American troops that Bush sent to Iraq were injected into a conflict where it was often nearly impossible to distinguish friend from foe—what author Robert Jay Lifton labeled “atrocity-producing situations.” Invoking his time in Fallujah, DeSantis may be confident that few Americans recall the carnage that preceded his time there.
Fallujah was hammered by two U.S. assaults in 2004. The first attack was launched in April 2004 in retaliation for the killings of four contractors for Blackwater, a company that became renowned for killing innocent Iraqis.After their corpses were dragged through the street, the Bush administration demanded vengeance.
President Bush reportedly gave the order: “I want heads to roll.” He raved at Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez during a video conference,“If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!…Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out!”
U.S. forces quickly placed the entire city under siege. The British Guardian reported;
“The U.S. soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or they would be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were stopped at the U.S. military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.”
The city was blasted by artillery barrages, F–16 jets, and AC–130 Spectre planes which pumped 4,000 rounds a minute into selected targets. Adam Kokesh, who fought in Fallujah as a Marine Corps sergeant, later commented: “During the siege of Fallujah, we changed rules of engagement more often than we changed our underwear. At one point, we imposed a curfew on the city, and were told to fire at anything that moved in the dark.”
The Bush administration decided to crush the city—but not until after Bush was safely reelected. In the weeks after Election Day, U.S. Army soldiers and Marines smashed the city of Fallujah, Iraq, killing an unknown number of civilians and leaving the city a burnt-out ruin. Marine Col. Gary Brandl explained the U.S. holy mission: “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Fallujah and we’re going to destroy him.”
Up to 50,000 civilians remained in Fallujah at the time of the second U.S. assault. At a November 8, 2004 press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that “Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers said three days later that Fallujah “looks like a ghost town [because] the Iraqi government gave instructions to the citizens of Fallujah to stay indoors.”
Supposedly, Iraqi civilians would be safe even if when American troops went house to house “clearing” insurgents out. However, three years later, during the trials for killings elsewhere in Iraq, Marines continually invoked the Fallujah Rules of Engagement to justify their actions. Marine Corporal Justin Sharratt, who was indicted for murdering three civilians in Haditha (the charges were later dropped), explained in a 2007 interview with PBS:
“For the push of Fallujah, there [were no civilians]. We were told before we went in that if it moved, it dies… About a month before we went into the city of Fallujah, we sent out flyers… We let the population know that we were coming in on this date, and if you were left in the city, you were going to die.”
The interviewer asked, “Was the procedure for clearing a house in Fallujah different from other house clearing in Iraq?” Sharratt replied, “Yes. The difference between clearing houses in Fallujah was that the entire city was deemed hostile. So every house we went into, we prepped with frags and we went in shooting.” Thus, the Marines were preemptively justified in killing everyone inside—no questions asked. Former Congressman Duncan Hunter admitted in 2019, “I was an artillery officer, and we fired hundreds of rounds into Fallujah, killed probably hundreds of civilians…probably killed women and children.”
The U.S. attack left much of Fallujah looking like a lunar landscape, with near-total destruction as far as the eye could see. Yet, regardless of how many rows of houses the United States flattened in the city, accusations that the United States killed noncombatants were false by definition. Because the U.S. government refused to count civilian casualties, they did not exist. And anyone who claimed to count them was slandering the United States and aiding the terrorists.
The carnage the U.S. forces inflicted on Fallujah was supposedly not massive retaliation but the well-disguised triumph of hope and freedom. Bush announced on December 1, “In Fallujah and elsewhere, our coalition and Iraqi forces are on the offensive, and we are delivering a message: Freedom, not oppression, is the future of Iraq… A long night of terror and tyranny in that region is ending, and a new day of freedom and hope and self-government is on the way.” But it is tricky for corpses to be hopeful.
During DeSantis’ first campaign to become Florida’s governor in 2018, his first words in his first televised advertisement were, “Ron DeSantis, Iraq War veteran.” TheSt. Augustine Record noted in 2018, “DeSantis was responsible for helping ensure that the missions of Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets in that wide swath of the Western Euphrates River Valley were planned according to the rule of law and that captured detainees were humanely treated.”
Most of the details of DeSantis’ time in Iraq have not been disclosed. But he was deployed into an area where stunning detainee abuses by the U.S. Army had previously been reported. In September 2005, Americans learned that three 82nd Airborne Division soldiers complained about Army cooks and other off-duty troops, for amusement and sport, routinely physically beating Iraqi detainees being held near Fallujah. One sergeant explained, “We would give [detainees] blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.” The sergeant said that there were no problems as long as no detainees “came up dead… We kept it to broken arms and legs.” Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne repeatedly sought to get guidance from superiors on the standards for lawful and humane treatment of detainees. He, like other officers, never received clear guidelines. Fishback publicly complained, “I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment.”
It would be most helpful to American voters to learn more about what exactly Ron DeSantis did during his time in Iraq. Prior to his time in Iraq, he volunteered to be a legal advisor at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In a 2018 interview for CBS Miami, he stated that one of his tasks was to clarify “the rules for force feeding detainees.” He also stated, “What I learned from [Gitmo] and I took to Iraq—they are using things like [false charges of] detainee abuse offensively against us—it was a tactic, technique, and procedure.”A Vice documentary that covered DeSantis’ role at Gitmo was scheduled for broadcast on Showtime but the May 28 air date was canceled on the day after DeSantis announced his presidential campaign.
The Pentagon’s records on DeSantis’ years as a JAG could help voters judge his candidacy for the presidency. But Americans would be damn fools to expect transparency from the feds or from most political candidates.
Last year, it seemed that masks were gone for good. US District Judge Kathryn Kimball held that Biden’s national mask mandate on airplanes was “illegal.” Airlines and airports immediately revoked their mask requirements. Flight attendants sang in celebration, passengers cheered, and companies welcomed the change in policy.
While Americans rejoiced, the Biden Administration worked behind the scenes to ensure that it could reimplement mask mandates at any time, in any place, for any reason.
The humiliation exercise never had a scientific basis. Existing air filtration systems made the threat of viral transmission on aircraft negligible. Studies found that there was “no direct evidence” of Covid-19 being transmitted aboard aircraft.
Despite the data, President Biden issued nationwide mask mandates in his first hours in office. His administration appealed Judge Kimball’s decision last April. “Our focus here was seeing what power we had to preserve,” explained White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
The case was dismissed as moot because the court found, “there is not a grain of evidence that the CDC has any plans to promulgate an identical mandate.”
Recent news suggests that prediction may have been wrong. The Covid regime appears to be revamping for a resurgence of mandates and potential lockdowns. CNN ran a headline Wednesday urging readers to “break out the masks against Covid.” The federal government has entered into Covid-related contracts with consultants and medical equipment providers to enforce “safety protocols” beginning in the next two months.
The return of Covid hysteria begs the question: what “power” did Jen Psaki and the White House want to preserve? Their legal briefs appealing Judge Kimball’s decision offer clues.
In court, the Biden Administration argued that mask mandates should be permissible even if there is no evidence to support them. Further, government lawyers wrote that these mandates should be permissible to any extent that bureaucrats deem necessary, even if the risk of Covid is nonexistent.
That is not hyperbole. Opponents of the mandates argued that the government should have “controlled trials” to provide evidence of efficacy and potential negative side effects before implementing universal masking.
The Biden Administration responded that the government did not need to provide any evidence or rational basis for its orders. Instead, “the CDC’s determination that there was good cause” should be sufficient. Government edicts should not be subject to judicial scrutiny, according to the government’s brief.
Further, there should be no limit to that authority, according to the Biden Administration. “It was equally permissible for the CDC,” the brief argued, “to make the masking requirement applicable to all passengers… regardless of whether there is any indication that the plane is diseased or dirtied.”
It’s not difficult to discern what we might call the Biden Doctrine of administrative rule-making. It means that the agencies can order whatever they want, whether or not there is any plausible basis in law or whether or not there is any rational basis for it at all. It is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.
The Mayor of New York City is looking to potentially incorporate Israeli drone technology and methods to aid in law enforcement and emergency efforts, in the latest example of cooperation between American and Israeli police forces.
Eric Adams, the New York City Mayor, visited Israel this week in order to assess the country’s law enforcement technology and the possibility of incorporating it into the New York Police Department (NYPD), telling reporters during an online briefing in the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, yesterday that the Israeli police forces “are a little bit more advanced”.
Adams praised the drones used by Israeli law enforcement as being more durable and being able to fly for much longer than NYC’s current technological devices, clarifying that “the method in which they’re using them, the methods in which they are training to use them, is what caught my interest”.
Referring to himself as “a great fan of technology and all it can do to make our lives easier and safer”, the Mayor proclaimed that “Israel is on the cutting edge of exciting developments in technology that will benefit all of us.”
He also referred to Israeli police’s use of drones in coordination with police motorcycles, saying it could potentially be a tactic utilised by the NYPD to help response times for accidents or other emergencies.
The utilisation of drone technology by Israeli police and wider authorities has increased throughout the past year, with officials in the central Israeli city of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut having begun deploying drones as first responders in traffic accidents last October.
Despite his praise for the NYPD’s Israeli counterparts, Adams acknowledged that a significant part of the drone technologies’ utilisation is directly opposed to laws practiced within the United States, making full implementation an issue. The NYPD “will not use any tool that is not in alignment with the laws of our city, in our state and in our country.”
One such method it will reportedly refrain from using is the facial recognition technology which is notoriously used by Israeli authorities to identify Palestinians. “So many police forces across the globe, they use various methods that are not suitable in our city, and we’re not going to use any methods that do not conform with our rights and the laws of our country”.
The Mayor praised some aspects of Israeli policing tactics, however, such as their ability to “strategically and successfully deal with a large crowd”. He claimed that “some methods we may not use, but there are other methods that they use that they’re really humane in nature.”
Such tactics like crowd control may be incorporated by the NYPD, he said, seemingly referring to recent riots that rocked the city last month. “As when we had a similar incident in our city, how do we do it in the correct way? And they’ve [Israelis] learned how to do it correctly. And we walked away with some of those tactics.”
A US military judge has rejected a “confession” coerced out of a young Guantanamo Bay captive through torture following the September 11, 2001 highly suspicious terror attacks in Washington and New York that led to military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The judge in the military tribunals held for captives still held in the Cuba-based US Guantanamo Bay military prison and torture facility ruled that the “confession” obtained from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, was tainted by years of abuse and torture inflicted on him at the hands of the CIA and FBI intelligence agents and operatives.
“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” wrote the judge, Col. Lanny Acosta, in handing down his ruling.
“However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs.” Acosta further emphasized.
Attorneys for both Nashiri and five other suspects — accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks and held captive and tortured for decades without trial or legal representation — have struggled for over 10 years now in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them that was coerced through torture.
The six were captured separately after the 2001 attacks and shuttled through CIA-run “black sites” in numerous US-allied countries across the globe, such as Thailand and Poland, where they were subjected to intense torture techniques, including waterboarding, physical beatings and sleep deprivation.
Following the arrival of the captives at the Guantanamo military prison, some of them, including Nashiri were again subjected to intense interrogation and torture by FBI agents in early 2007 and other instances.
The judge’s decision comes as obtaining confession from prisoners through torture remains a major violation of international law.
The US military has accused Nashiri of being an al-Qaeda recruiter that plotted various attacks on American interests in the Arabian Peninsula.
US forces captured Nashiri in 2002 and transferred him to the Guantanamo prison in 2006 after he remained for four years in the custody of CIA interrogators and repeatedly tortured.
In September 2011, he was charged by a US military commission on nine counts related to his alleged involvement in planning al-Qaeda attacks.
His military trial showcased by the very entity that captured and tortured him has repeatedly faced delays, due to insistence by his assigned military lawyers that he suffered repeated torture while under detention of the CIA spy agency collaborating with US military forces occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
America’s 9th/10th March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo was the single most destructive air raid in military history, with over 100,000 murdered and more than a million made homeless. Along with the Americans’ carpet bombing campaigns in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, it remains one of the most egregious war crimes in human history, not least because Imperial Japan was already a beaten docket.
Even as the last of their kamikaze fighters prepared to repel the Americans from the Japanese mainland in those first days of August 1945, Japan’s government was frantically searching for a way out of the morass. Knowing that the Soviet Red Army would soon descend on Manchuria, they knew that time was of the essence if the Americans were to be stopped raping and slaughtering yet more defenceless Japanese women and children, like they had previously done in Guam, Saipan and Okinawa.
Though the Japanese were at a loss to understand why the Americans would not accept their surrender, that answer came shortly afterwards in the form of two mushroom clouds, one in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki, the centre of Catholicism in The Land of the Rising Sun. Those two war crimes were accompanied by the Red Army cutting a swathe through the remnants of Japan’s once-mighty but now much-depleted Kmantung Army.
With McArthur gloating on the USS Missouri that Japan was defeated, the Yanks colonised not only Japan and the Pacific Basin, but also South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan before setting their sights on ridding South East Asia of the Dutch and especially the French. The Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bomb war crimes were done to tell the Soviets that all of Asia was now under the Yankee jackboot and that, in contravention to the Yalta and other treaties, only the Yanks would rule there.
America’s Pacific War was a racist war of annihilation both before and after Japan’s surrender. The American and British media — the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, Time, and Life being among the more prominent — painted their Japanese foes out as subhumans, as monkey men fit only for extermination. Buoyed by such propaganda, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) went on monkey hunts; in the main, they took no prisoners. Even Percival’s craven capitulation in Singapore was depicted as being the work of armed monkeys, not of a hopelessly outnumbered foe that deserved respect for the most pragmatic of self-survival reasons.
The Marines, America’s greatest generation mutilated, as a matter of course, Japanese war dead for souvenirs, they attacked and sank hospital ships, they shot, tortured and executed their prisoners. They harvested gold teeth from both the living and the dead, they urinated both on their prisoners and on the corpses of those they had killed. In their idle moments, they carved the bones of their Japanese prisoners into little forget-me-nots and sent them home to their loved ones. President Roosevelt got a letter opener made from the bones of a captured Japanese officer but returned it to the sender — if not the rightful owner — for his own reasons.
Rationality in the Pacific was so rare during WWII that, ironically, it required as a mouthpiece none other than prominent racist Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. to blow the whistle on the barbarities America’s greatest generation were routinely committing. Repelled by what he saw and heard of U.S. treatment of the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, the aviator spoke out. His sentiments are summed up in the following journal entry: “It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone. We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be civilized.” When Lindbergh left the Pacific and arrived at customs in Hawaii, he was asked if he had any Japanese bones in his baggage. It was, by then, a routine question.
Eugene B. Sledge, author of With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, wrote of his comrades harvesting gold teeth from the enemy dead. In Okinawa, Sledge witnessed a Marine officer, one of America’s greatest generation of Goodfellas, stand over a Japanese corpse and urinate into its mouth.
Perhaps Edgar L. Jones, a former war correspondent in the Pacific, put it best when he asked in the February 1946 Atlantic Monthly, “What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers.”
Churchill and MacArthur ordered their troops to summarily execute any Japanese combatants who tried to surrender. They spread rumours of the Kyoto ear mound, where the Japanese, cannibal fashion, supposedly stored 40,000 pickled ears and noses that they collected following the 1598 Japanese invasion of Korea. Kyoto, for some perverse humanitarian desire on behalf of America’s leaders to preserve Japan’s imperial culture, her mounds of Korean noses included, was spared the blanket bombing Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka suffered. Kyoto was, unlike the good, human people of Nagasaki and Tokyo, of cultural importance and both its architecture and its ear mound had therefore to be preservedi. Meanwhile, the marines made their own inhumane mound. They spliced off the ears and noses of their captives and engaged in wide scale scalping as well. In Okinawa, America’s Greatest Generation also proved themselves to be the world’s most accomplished serial rapists.
Although John Pilger’s excellent documentaries tell us how the 4th Psychological Operations Group and the 101st Airborne (Tiger Force) made their own ear necklaces in Vietnam where they routinely beheaded Vietnamese babies to teach the locals who ruled the roost, Pilger, for a good half century now, has been a bad man, as he doesn’t sing from the NATO hymn sheet.
Pilger looks for shades of grey. He incorporates into his analysis the psychological insights of sociopaths like Edward Bernays, who taught the Yanks how to sell their self-serving wars more effectively than Goebbels or his pale Japanese imitators ever could. As he also always makes sure to mention the collateral damage of Yankee war crimes in places like Falluja, Vietnam, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not least because civilians now form far in excess of 90% of all American kills, and as he seldom goes easy on the media’s hypocrites he is, to repeat, a bad man.
To see how bad, just read this FBI inspired EU notice lambasting Russia Today and Sputnik because they “gravely distorted and manipulated facts and have repeatedly and consistently targeted European political parties, especially during election periods, as well as civil society, asylum seekers, Russian ethnic minorities, gender minorities, and the functioning of democratic institutions in the [European] Union and its Member States”. Because such outlets would be as harmful to us as would have been regarding the “Simian” Japanese or Vietnamese as humans when the USMC was exterminating them, our fragile minds must be protected by the Google search engines of today’s Edward Bernays, who are here to tell us that only unelected war-mongers like Ursula von der Leyen or her morally challenged minions can spout the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Because John Pilger is now in his 80s, he is given a pass, as long as he does not stray into the rump Zelensky Reich or into rebel-held Syria, where he would be quickly dispatched. But woe betide anyone younger like Gonzalo Lira, Julian Assange, Gary Webb or Alina Lipp who might try to divine the truth about the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, MI6 agent Zelensky, the Bidens, Obamas, Clintons or any of America’s other organised crime families for, in their regurgitating of Russian propaganda, they are playing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette and that, as countless corpses attest, never ends well for NATO’ beleaguered truth tellers.
Chilean-American reporter Gonzalo Lira, who claimed to be about to attempt to flee Ukraine after being subjected to physical abuse and extortion in custody, has gone missing, a source confirmed to RT.
Lira, a vocal critic of the Ukrainian government, resurfaced this week, months after being arrested by the nation’s security service, the SBU. In a series of posts on Twitter and YouTube, he stated his intention to cross the border into Hungary and apply for political asylum there.
He claimed that since early May he had been kept incommunicado in pre-trial detention. He said he was deprived of sleep as well and beaten and tortured by other inmates on instructions from the prison authorities.
Lira apparently never made it to the other side of the border. Mark Sleboda, a political expert and frequent guest at RT, confirmed to the channel that Lira was stopped on the Ukrainian side and has not been heard from since.
Lira said that he had been released on bail and told not to leave the city of Kharkov. However he added he was given his passport back and an electronic shackle was not put on him, contrary to the formal terms of his conditional release.
“Maybe I’m being set up by them so they can justify putting me away in a labor camp – so no one will ever know about their sordid extortion scheme,” he said. “I simply don’t know.”
If he made it across the border, he said he expected Ukraine to issue an international arrest warrant for him for skipping bail and that he hoped that Hungary would be willing to defy Kiev and not hand him over, unlike other EU nations.
“If you don’t hear from me in the next 12 hours—whelp! I’m on my way to a labor camp!” he concluded. There have been no further updates on his social media since.
Lira has been accused by Ukraine of “publicly justifying” the Russian military operation and “disseminating fakes [false stories] about the war in Ukraine”. He said the charges were bogus and that he did nothing but explain his opinions about Kiev’s policies and report what was happening in Ukraine.
Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.
Palestinian Authority (PA) forces arrested journalist Aqil Awawdeh on 13 July after he refuted a statement from PA officials claiming there are no political arrests in the occupied West Bank.
“There is no case of arrest on the basis of political affiliation in the West Bank, and all that is being circulated about its existence are baseless rumors,” the PA statement released on Thursday reads.
Moments later, Awawdeh took to social media to refute this claim, highlighting that students and journalists are arrested regularly for supporting the resistance.
Hours after posting this video, PA troops took Awawdeh from his workplace in Ramallah under charges of “insulting the security services and leaders of Fatah.” Officials have yet to issue a statement on his arrest.
At least 54 political prisoners are currently being held in PA prisons, as the PA regularly hands over detainees directly to the Israeli army, Resistance News Network reported via Telegram.
Two years ago, Awawdeh was severely beaten inside a police station after covering a protest against the PA.
As discontent with PA rule in the occupied West Bank continues to grow exponentially, officials have maintained their grip on power by violently silencing dissent and crushing popular mobilizations.
In June 2021, Palestinian activist Nizar Banat was beaten to death by PA troops for accusing the PA of corruption and criticizing Ramallah’s security cooperation with the Israeli military. Last December, Banat’s family took the case to the International Criminal Court, accusing the PA of alleged war crimes and torture.
Last month, the repressive tactics of the PA once again made headlines following the violent arrest of student leader Abdul Majeed Hassan from his home in Ramallah.
“From the scene of the arrest, we thought that the kidnappers were Israeli undercover units since they have arrested many university students in this brutal way. Beating, dragging, undressing, and screaming were all Israeli means of arrest, but unfortunately, they were mimicked by the Palestinian security services against Abdul Majeed,” Ibrahim Bani Odeh told Middle East Eye about Hassan’s arrest.
According to information given by an ex-prisoner, Russian soldiers who surrendered to the Ukrainian military were being used as a human shield during demining operations on the battlefield. As well known, prisoners of war (POWs) are protected under international law, which makes the Ukrainian attitude absolutely illegal.
The report was made by a Russian volunteer using the alias “Topaz”. He says that after being captured by the enemy, he was repeatedly humiliated, beaten, tortured, and forced to do work that endangered his life. The same situation happened to other POWs who were with him.
Among these works was the mission to conduct demining operations, clearing the ground for the transit of Ukrainian troops. The “demining” however was not done correctly. There was no appropriate equipment, protection or military technology being applied. POWs were simply sent out to the front lines to walk on the ground with nothing but their own luck. If there were any mine, the POWs would explode along with it.
Topaz told journalists about a specific case that happened to him in the Zaporozhye region, where there is a large minefield. He was forced along with other POWs to march into a danger zone during the night in order to clear the way for Ukrainian troops, who wanted to reach some Russian positions in the area.
“They woke me up at night, at three o’clock in the morning, and another prisoner was forced to get up. They sent a group of Ukrainian servicemen on a mission, and they took two of us as deminers. Demining how? We were compelled to march ahead of the crew, so if suddenly someone [steps on a mine and] gets blown up, I would too and so would the other POW behind me”, Topaz said.
He also said that these demining missions using POWs in Zaporozhye took place for at least eight nights. However, at one of these occasions, Ukrainian units were seen by Russian forces, and the following shooting resulted in the death of several neo-Nazi soldiers and the liberation of the POWs.
As well known, the use of human shields has become commonplace among Ukrainian forces. Kiev’s soldiers always try to avoid casualties among their troops by taking advantage of the vulnerability of civilians and POWs. Since the start of the special military operation, Moscow has repeatedly reported this illegal attitude on the part of enemy forces, but the Western sponsors of the regime remain silent.
Even non-Russian, Western-biased international organizations have recognized since last year Ukraine’s constant use of human shields. For example, in late 2022, Amnesty International admitted that Kiev troops “have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals”.
“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas (…) Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law”, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said at the time.
In addition, also last year, a UN report exposed that Kiev “took up positions either in residential areas or near civilian objects, from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present”.
In the same vein, Ukrainian crimes against Russian POWs occurred many times throughout the conflict. There are many videos circulating on the internet showing scenes of execution of Russian citizens surrendered by Ukrainian forces, in clear violation of international norms. Russia has reacted to these attitudes through legal measures, such as urging the UN to formally condemn Kiev. Also, according to Moscow’s authorities, the Western powers would also be responsible for the crimes, considering their unrestricted support for the neo-Nazi regime.
There is enough evidence for Kiev to be accused of violating international law and subjecting POWs to forced work that puts their lives at risk. By sending POWs to minefields, the regime is mixing two of its main practices, using human shields and torturing prisoners. Both attitudes clearly violate what is established by the Geneva Convention, which regulates the treatment of POWs prohibiting “violence to life and person, outrages upon personal dignity, (…) cruel treatment and torture (…) humiliating and degrading treatment”.
On the other hand, the Russians have consistently shown goodwill towards enemies, and there are several indications that Ukrainian POWs are indeed treated with dignity. For example, in the first week of July, the authorities of the People’s Republic of Lugansk promoted a collective meeting between POWs and members of their families, providing moments of happiness to the captured soldiers, despite all the suffering of the conflict.
This clearly shows the different attitudes on each side. While Kiev tortures POWs and civilians and uses them as human shields, on the part of Moscow there are constant efforts to alleviate the effects of the conflict with humanitarian measures. International organizations should be attentive to these reports, publicly condemning the neo-Nazi regime with sanctions as well as pressuring to stop Western military assistance.
Lucas Leiroz,journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
A delegation of the United Nations has expressed shock at the level of destruction left as a result of Israel’s largest operation in Jenin in two decades.
Officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) visited the Jenin refugee camp on Sunday.
“The destruction I saw was shocking. Some houses were completely burned down; cars had been crushed against walls; roads were damaged. The UNRWA health center was destroyed. But more than the physical damage, I saw the trauma in the eyes of camp residents who had witnessed the violence. I heard them speak about their exhaustion and fear,” said Leni Stenseth, the UNRWA deputy commissioner-general.
The two-day deadly Israeli onslaught of July 3 was the fiercest of its kind in over 20 years, according to UNRWA, which is tasked with assisting Palestine refugees.
Twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed. 140 were injured. Virtually 900 houses were damaged. Many are now uninhabitable. Also, at least 3,500 Palestinians were forced from homes. The UNRWA health center was so badly damaged it can no longer be used.
Some parents said children are too scared to go out.
“Children were shaken and shocked… many of them are too afraid to leave their homes. In one classroom we visited, students shared with us that just 10 days ago, they had buried a classmate who was killed in an incursion,” said Adam Bouloukos, the director of UNRWA West Bank.
“It is very hard for children to walk to school as the main roads are still unusable. When trying to find alternative ways to school, some younger children lost their way. We truly feared for their safety due to the risk of unexploded ordinance. A priority now is to provide mental and psychosocial support to help children cope with their fear and anxiety.”
Bouloukos said the refugee camp, home to nearly 24,000 people, now has no access to electricity and water. “The camp is now partially without access to electricity and water.”
“Nearly eight kilometers of water piping and three kilometers of sewage lines were destroyed due to the use of heavy machinery that ripped up large sections of the roads.”
On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above all, an apology. Rome, as is the case with all former colonial powers, tried for years to close the matter without offering anything. The treaty, a success for Libya, might have ended the political and diplomatic struggle over the colonial past, but it will not wipe it out from history and people’s memories.
The idea of invading Libya came during the colonial rush that saw major colonial powers like France, United Kingdom and others divide the dying Ottoman Empire possessions in North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe itself. Libya was part of that empire, very close to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea and, above all, Libyans lacked effective means to fight back after the Ottoman military garrison left the country.
The rise to power of the Republican Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini in 1922, gave the occupation of Libya another nostalgic dimension as the fascists strongly believed in the deceptive idea that modern Italy was the rightful heir to the Roman Empire and, therefore, they were responsible for recovering the possessions of the bygone empire. Another reason that made Libya more attractive to fascist Italy is the fact that Italy, united just 50 years earlier, became overcrowded and its farmers, particularly in the south, were eager to own land of which Libya has plenty. Mussolini used to call Libya the “fourth shore of Rome”.
Italians thought that the taking over of Libya would not be more than a few days’ sea trip and the entire country would be conquered. However, once the first amphibious forces tried to land on Tripoli shores in 1911, they were faced with stiff resistance from the locals, who rushed to defend their country with the little means they had.
As the invaders increased their numbers and widened their presence, the resistance shifted to new tactics, using the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run. Outnumbered and out-gunned, the Libyans, mostly nomads and shepherds, figured out that direct confrontation with one of the most modern armies at the time was suicidal and destructive.
Instead of facing the Italian army directly, they waged rather small battles, mostly at night time. Benefitting from their detailed knowledge of the land and its geography, the Mujahidin, as they were called, managed to make life really difficult for the Italian army wherever it went. Facing a ghost enemy fighting on horseback, the Italian army started to use unheard of methods of war, scoring many firsts.
For instance, Italy was the first country to use air war and Libya became the first country to be bombed from the air. An Italian pilot named Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, in a letter to his father, described how he threw the first bomb at an Arab [Libyan] camp in November 1911, just a month into the invasion. The young pilot wrote “today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane”, before pointing out that it was “the first time that we [Italian army] will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it.”
Pilot Gavotti, indeed, succeeded in throwing the first ever bomb from an aeroplane, ushering in the age of air war for the first time in the history of mankind. He wrote “and after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment” in Ain Zara, today a town, but at the time just an oasis south-east of Tripoli. Ain Zara became the first place on earth to be bombed from the air. The Italian pilot did not realise what he had just done and had no idea what his bomb had done to people, mostly civilians, below. He returned to base, overwhelmed by his success in hitting “the target” and went straight to report to General Caneva that he just registered his name in history as the first person to bomb a target from the air. Carlo Caneva was the first Italian commander to announce that “Tripoli will be Italian”, as his forces launched the first attacks on Libya. He led the earlier brutal stages of the invasion before being replaced later by another, crueler General Rodolfo Graziani in 1930.
In the same year, the Italian army scored another world first when Benito Mussolini authorised, for the first time, the use of sulphur mustard to subdue Libyans. Bombing formations of fighters and civilian villages suspected of supporting the Mujahidin from the air but, this time, using poisonous gas, besides explosives.
In the 1920s, Libyan resistance intensified, particularly in eastern Libya with the rise of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a septuagenarian who suffered old age and chronic back pain, who became the national leader of the Mujahidin against fascist Italian occupation.
This forced General Graziani to revert to using collective punishment against entire civilian communities by forcing them into concentration camps across Eastern Libya. At one point, there were some 16 different camps in the Sirte desert and further east in which thousands of civilians including women, children, the elderly and young men were forced to live with their animals in desert plots surrounded by barbed wire and guarded, around the clock, by armed soldiers.
Despite this brutality, Al-Mukhtar and his colleagues fought for 20 years, until he was captured on 11 September 1931, after suffering an injury in a village called Slonta, south of Al-Bayda town in Libya’s eastern Green Mountain region.
After a quick trial, he was sentenced to death by hanging on 16 September. Hundreds of civilians, including women and children were forced to watch as Al-Mukhtar was hanged in Suluq concentration camp, one of the most infamous, south-west of Benghazi. By staging such a gruesome show, the Italian authorities wanted to terrify Libyans who might think of following in his footsteps and fight them.
Modern Libya, before the NATO invasion of 2011, used to commemorate 16 of September as a national day of mourning to remember Al-Mukhtar and remind younger generations of what happened in Libya, decades before. New Libya, however, has forgotten the mourning day, while fascist concentration camps are never really mentioned outside academic circles.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – 10th part of the series “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 9, 2016
… In Among The Truthers Kay repeats the core idea of The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad. As Kay would have it, 9/11 confirms the role of Israel as the West’s primary bulwark against Islamic savagery. In making this case Kay repeats the assertion of Benjamin Netanyahu that 9/11 was good for Israel.
Kay asserts, “Following the attacks supporters of Israel spoke of a silver lining. The war against militant Islam suddenly was a global one. Now the whole world would see and understand the sort of nihilistic hatred that Israelis confront every day.” As Kay sees it, Jews are being enlisted en masse to serve as primary soldiers in a war of civilizations.
He writes, “The Jew was the perfect anti-Islamist, whose zeal and reliability was hard-wired into his political DNA thanks to six decades of Israeli warfare against Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.” … Read full article
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