Hezbollah confirms Hassan Nasrallah assassinated by Israel
The Cradle | September 28, 2024
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah confirmed on 28 September the assassination of its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah during intense Israeli airstrikes that hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday.
“His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great and immortal martyred comrades, whose path he led for nearly thirty years, during which he led them from victory to victory, succeeding the Master of the Martyrs of the Islamic Resistance in 1992 until the liberation of Lebanon in 2000 and to the glorious divine victory in 2006 and all the battles of honor and sacrifice, arriving at the battle of support and heroism in support of Palestine, Gaza, and the oppressed Palestinian people,” the statement released by the Lebanese resistance reads.
“The leadership of Hezbollah pledges to the highest, most sacred, and most precious martyr in our journey full of sacrifices and martyrs that it will continue its jihad in confronting the enemy, in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defense of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people,” the statement adds.
Hezbollah also stressed that its leader “is still among us with his thought, spirit, line, and sacred approach, and you are committed to the pledge of loyalty and commitment to resistance and sacrifice until victory.”
Nasrallah was killed during an Israeli carpet bombing campaign on the Lebanese capital that destroyed several residential buildings and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. The attack reportedly targeted the main headquarters of the Lebanese resistance movement.
Earlier on Saturday the Israeli army confirmed Nasrallah’s assassination alongside other top resistance leaders. Israeli authorities told the New York Times (NYT) that they had been tracking Nasrallah “for months,” adding that “more than 80 bombs were dropped over a period of several minutes to kill him.”
Born in 1960 to a Shia Muslim family in a poor area of east Beirut, Nasrallah briefly joined the Amal Movement as a young man, inspired by its leader Sayyed Musa Sadr.
In late 1976 Nasrallah left for Najaf in Iraq to study at the city’s religious seminary, where he met Lebanese scholar Abbas Mussawi. After the 1978 Baathist crackdown on Shia Muslims Nasrallah and Mussawi returned to Lebanon where he continued his studies.
Nasrallah became head of Hezbollah’s executive council and a member of its shura council in 1985. Seven years later, Mussawi, serving as Hezbollah’s secretary general, was assassinated along with his wife and child in an Israeli airstrike.
Speaking at his funeral, Nasrallah said, “By murdering … Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, they sought to kill our spirit of resistance and destroy our will for jihad. But his blood will continue to simmer in our veins, only strengthening our determination to move forward and intensifying our enthusiasm to pursue the path.”
“America will remain the primary enemy of this nation and the greatest Satan of all. Israel will forever be, in our eyes, a cancerous growth that must be eradicated, an artificial entity that should be removed, even if all the rulers of the world recognize it. Palestine—all of Palestine—will remain part of this nation, and we shall not relinquish a single grain of its sand.”
According to Iranian General Hossein Hamedani, following the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the US in 2020, Tehran tasked Nasrallah with uniting its armed allies in Iraq. He also supervised the overall policy for the Resistance Axis during the US-backed Syrian war.
One day after the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Nasrallah declared the opening of a “front in southern Lebanon to support Palestinian resistance,” vowing over the past year that the effort would remain active until the war in Gaza ends.
“Our commanders, fighters, women, and children will be martyred; we are united in sacrifice – this is the reality of resistance, and this is our path until the day of judgment,” Nasrallah said during a televised speech earlier this year following the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr.
At the UN, Netanyahu blames Israel’s isolation on ‘anti-Semitism’
The Cradle | September 27, 2024
Speaking at the UN General Assembly on 27 September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the condemnation of Israel at the UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) on anti-Semitism, saying allegations of war crimes have nothing to do with Israel’s actions, including its slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
“It’s not about Gaza,” he claimed. “It’s about Israel” and its very existence.
“[U]ntil this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” Netanyahu claimed.
“What hypocrisy. What a double standard. What a joke,” he said to applause from Israel supporters.
The assembly hall was otherwise almost empty after several delegations walked out as Netanyahu reached the podium.
On 27 September, the UN member states voted overwhelmingly in the General Assembly to adopt a resolution calling on Israel to comply with international law, withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.
In May, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
However, four months later, ICC judges have still not approved or denied the applications. There is no deadline for judges to come to a decision.
In his UN speech, Netanyahu signaled there would be no immediate end to the Israeli army’s ongoing assault on Lebanon, which has killed over 700 people in less than a week, despite calls from US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron for a ceasefire.
Netanyahu said his military would keep striking Hezbollah in Lebanon with “all our might.”
‘We’re at war with Hezbollah,’ he said. ‘As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice. And Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely.”
His speech comes as Israeli officials said they were preparing for a potential ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israel secures $8.7bn military aid package from Washington
The Cradle | September 26, 2024
Israel said on 26 September it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the US government to support its ongoing military assaults on Lebanon and Gaza and to maintain a “qualitative military edge in the region,” Reuters reported on 26 September.
The package includes $3.5 billion for critical military purchases and $5.2 billion for air defense systems, including the Iron Dome anti-missile system, David’s Sling, and an advanced laser system.
US support for Israel’s missile defense systems is crucial to shield Israeli military installations and infrastructure from Hezbollah’s large missile and rocket stocks.
While Israeli warplanes have devastated south and east Lebanon with airstrikes since Monday, killing over 600 Lebanese and Syrians, Hezbollah has hit numerous targets in the vicinity of the city of the Israeli city of Haifa, as well as an Israeli intelligence base on the outskirts of Tel Avi in central Israel.
Israel also needs US munitions and financial support to continue its horrific bombing campaign of Gaza, which is nearing its twelfth month and has killed over 40,000 people and destroyed large swathes of the crowded strip.
The aid announcement came after a meeting at the Pentagon between Eyal Zamir, the director general of Israel’s defense ministry, and US defense officials, including acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Amanda Dory.
“This substantial investment will significantly strengthen critical systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling while supporting the continued development of an advanced high-powered laser defense system currently in its later stages of development,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The deal illustrates the “strong and enduring strategic partnership between Israel and the United States and the ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” the statement added.
Reuters reported in late June that Tel Aviv’s allies in Washington had sent more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the war in Gaza last October.
The news agency added that Washington had transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.
Since 7 October of last year, news channels and social media sites have shown a steady stream of videos and images of Palestinian men, women, and children who have been torn apart by US bombs.
Israel systematically destroys Gaza farmland to starve the population: Euro-Med
Palestinian Information Center – September 26,2024
GAZA – The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said that Israel’s destruction of hundreds of dunums of vegetable farmland in the northern Gaza Strip reflects its insistence on the mass extermination of Palestinians.
In a statement on Thursday, Euro-Med accused the Israeli army of seeking to deprive the Palestinians in Gaza of agricultural production and food supplies and destroy the resources vital for their survival in order to create living conditions that lead to their starvation and death.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has been imposing an illegal siege on Gaza and severely restricting the entry of aid to its areas for almost a year, Euro-Med added.
Israel’s destruction of farmland in northern Gaza is part of the systematic plan it has been pursuing against the Gaza population since October 2023, Euro-Med said.
“The occupation forces have taken about 80 percent of the agricultural land out of service in the Gaza Strip, either through isolating it as a prelude to illegally annexing it by force to the buffer zone in violation of international law or destroying and bulldozing it,” Euro-Med explained.
Euro-Med said that its field team documented “the incursion of Israeli forces accompanied by bulldozers on Tuesday morning, September 25, into ash-Shima area in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, and the bulldozing of over 500 dunums of land that had been recently replanted by Palestinians with vegetables to meet the needs of the citizens living in northern Gaza, who are facing systematic starvation and an arbitrary blockade.”
“The Israeli army’s destruction of these swaths of agricultural land, mostly planted with eggplants, reflects Israel’s insistence on depriving the population of relying on the local agricultural food basket, while blocking the access of adequate quantities of vegetables and food supplies to the northern Gaza Strip, which has led to the outbreak of severe famine to the point that a large part of the population was forced to eat tree leaves and grind animal feed before turning it into bread in order to stay alive,” Euro-Med said.
USAID memo exposes Blinken’s involvement in starving Palestinians
Al Mayadeen | September 25, 2024
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration have said that “Israel” is blocking humanitarian aid heading to the Gaza Strip.
In a 17-page memo sent to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in April, USAID told top US diplomats that US law requires the administration to cut off weapons shipments to governments that prevent the delivery of US-backed humanitarian aid. The refugees bureau also delivered a similar evaluation.
If acted upon, the assessment would cause tremulous changes to the Israeli regime’s supply of weapons, as the US delivers the majority of weapons through which the regime carries out its aggression.
According to ProPublica, both Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden refused to accept the conclusions reached by the two US agencies.
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” Blinken said on May 10 to Congress, after receiving the reports.
Crimes, recommendations ignored
USAID’s memo also highlighted a series of grave actions by the Israeli regime, including the killing of aid workers, the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, the bombing of ambulances and hospitals, the occupation of supply depots, and the frequent rejection of trucks carrying vital food and medical supplies.
Moreover, the head of the State Department’s refugees bureau determined that the Israeli regime was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to stop nearly $830 million in taxpayer dollars allocated for military aid to the Israeli occupation, according to ProPublica, which cited emails it had obtained.
Stacy Gilbert, a former senior civil-military advisor in the Refugees Bureau, resigned in protest over the wording of Blinken’s report to Congress, which she had been helping to draft. In a statement released shortly after her departure, and reported by The Washington Post and other outlets, she wrote, “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid. To deny this is absurd and shameful.”
Hamas: Blinken, Biden’s actions are shameful
Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas released a statement, commenting on ProPublica‘s report on Wednesday.
Hamas condemned Bliken and Biden’s deliberate concealment of evidence of “Israel’s” non-compliance with US aid missions during his addresses to Congress.
The movement said that Blinken did so, in complicity with Biden, “Out of fear that it would impact weapons supplies to the occupation’s military.”
It said that the revelations serve as evidence of Washington’s involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
“This criminal conduct by Blinken demands that honorable members of the US Congress and American judicial bodies investigate his actions, which have led to the deaths of thousands of our people,” Hamas underlined.
“We call on international judicial institutions, foremost among them the International Criminal Court, to take these reports seriously and take the necessary legal action against Blinken,” the movement urged.
Hamas stressed that Blinken had participated in the deliberate starvation and the genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip through his actions.
Will Israel “recklessly” seize the day? “Have the doors to a war without limits been opened?”
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 23, 2024
“After today [the day of the pager simultaneous explosions], there can be no talk about settlement and solutions”, writes Ibrahim Amine, Editor of Al-Akhbar, known for his close contacts with the Hizbullah leadership:
“In just one minute, the enemy succeeded in delivering its harshest blows to the body of the Islamic Resistance … [Furthermore] through yesterday’s operation, the enemy confirmed that it doesn’t want to abide by the rules of engagement. Have the doors to a war [then] been opened: a war without any limits, ceilings, or borders”?
“After today, it [i.e. the Israeli enemy] will make no distinction between a fighter operating on the front and an individual working in some distant office”, Amine noted.
For the last year, both Israel and Hizbullah have avoided major escalation by observing unwritten rules of engagement or ‘equations’ between the parties, such as not targeting civilians. That is now over.
In his first speech since the devices blew up on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sayed Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, conceded that his group had “endured a severe and cruel blow”. He accused Israel of breaking “all conventions and laws” and said that it would “face just retribution and a bitter reckoning”. But he did not describe how Hezbollah might retaliate; “nor did he discuss the time, nor manner, nor place” of it ocurring.
Nasrallah warned:
“The enemy declares as its official goal to return the settlers to the North. We accept the challenge: You will not be able to return to the North. In fact, we will displace more Israelis from their homes. We hope Israel enters Lebanon, we are waiting for their tanks day and night: We say, ‘welcome!’”.
There is some point to this remark. From the outset, Hizbullah was configured militarily more for all-out war with Israel, than the limited tit-for-tat, calibrated war – which never played best to Hizbullah’s strengths.
Clearly, a new phase of war has begun, and to underline this point, Israel began one of its heaviest strikes on Israel after Nasrallah’s speech on Thursday night. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin reportedly informed leaders of Congress that evening about his fear of an imminent Israeli offensive into Lebanon.
Nasrallah’s assessment of coming war is fully shared by at least some senior Israeli military commanders, albeit by no means all. Several profess the belief that war with Hizbullah could extend into a regional war – and lead to the collapse of Israel.
However … “You don’t do something like that, hit thousands of people, and think war is not coming”, said retired Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, who leads the Israel Defence and Security Forum, a group of hawkish former military commanders. “Why didn’t we do it for 11 months? Because we were not willing to go to war yet. What’s happening now? Israel is ready for war”.
“There’s a lot of pressure from the society to go to war and win”, said Avivi, the retired general. “Unless Hezbollah tomorrow morning says, ‘OK, we got the message. We’re pulling out of south Lebanon’ – war is imminent”.
A poll in late August by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, found that 67% of Jewish respondents thought Israel should intensify its response to Hizbullah. That includes 46% who believed that Israel should launch a deep offensive striking Lebanese infrastructure, and 21% who seek an intensified response that only strikes on Hezbollah’s infrastructure.
General Avivi’s remarks likely reflect an underlying reality that had become only too clear: Amos Hochstein, the U.S. Envoy, has failed to achieve any ‘diplomatic’ progress towards a Hizbullah withdrawal from the south of Lebanon. In parallel, U.S. officials, (according to the WSJ ) now concede that a Gaza ceasefire is ‘out of reach’ for Biden; and that, equally, Israel’s military attrition on southern Lebanon that had resulted in the displacement of 80% of its inhabitants had achieved nothing. Israel’s northern residents also remain displaced.
It seems, therefore, that Israel is set on a path to wider conflict. A taster has already been given: On 17 September, the Houthis fired a missile at a target close to Ben Gurion airport. The missile covered 1,300 miles in less than 12 min, which is to say, it flew at hypersonic speed, approaching Mach 9 – untouchable by air defences – and struck its target.
It is probable that we shall see more such hypersonic missiles flying – immune to air defences – should this war escalate, and Iran intervene.
What is paradoxical (as so often in conflict) is that the exploding pager operation seemingly was entirely fortuitous in terms of the timing. It was not planned specifically to move Israel to a new phase in the Lebanese conflict:
“High-level regional intelligence sources told Al-Monitor that the decision to carry out the operation was “forced” on Israel following an intelligence lapse … The Israeli military’s original plan was to explode the devices in the event of a full-blown war with Hezbollah in order to gain a strategic edge – but not to detonate them on Tuesday”, the sources added.
“However suspicions from at least two Hezbollah members caused the Israeli security establishment to agree to a premature execution of the plan. After a Hezbollah member in Lebanon suspected foul play with the pagers several days ago – that person was killed, the sources said … [and the plan was] ultimately executed. The subsequent decision to trigger the radios to explode was said to be driven by the expectation that after the pager detonations the radios would fall under suspicion”.
With the weather due to change within a few weeks, curtailing – or even halting – air operations, Israel was faced with having to choose between two alternative courses: Military action within weeks, or to wait until next Spring to exert more pressure on Hizbullah to shift its stance. The political future in Israel going into next year however, is extremely opaque. (Netayahu’s court appearances are due to resume in December).
The Hizbullah member’s unforeseen suspicions about the pagers ‘cast the die’ – taking us to a new level of war.
Unsurprisingly, the chatter in Israel is that the pager operation has resulted in a major blow to Hizbullah’s communication system that will cripple the movement’s military capability, offering Israel the ‘window’ to press home an invasion to establish a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Lebanon – one that might facilitate the return of Israeli residents to the north. Nasrallah promises the opposite: More Israelis will be displaced from their homes in northern Israel.
The notion that Hizbullah’s communications are crippled is wishful thinking that fails to distinguish between what may be called civil-society Hizbullah, and its military arm.
Hizbullah is a civil movement, as well as a military power. It is the Authority over a significant slice of Beirut and a country – a responsibility that requires the Movement to provide civil order and security. The pagers and radios were used primarily by its civil security forces (effectively a civil police managing security and order in Hizbullah-controlled parts of Lebanon), as well as used by its logistics and support branches. Since these personnel are not combat forces, they were not seen to require truly secure communications.
Even before the 2006 war, Hizbullah ended all cellphone and landline communications in favour of their own dedicated optic cable system and hand-courier messaging for the military cadres. In short, Hizbullah’s communications at the civil level took a major hit, but this will not unduly impact upon its military forces. For years, the Movement has operated on the basis that units could continue with combat, even in the event of a complete rupture of optic communications, or the loss of a HQ.
What comes next? Several scenarios are possible: The key is that Netanyahu is now back in “his comfort zone”. The talk about hostages has subsided, and the plans for the stealth, calibrated expulsion of the Palestinian population are unfolding under the supervision of ministers Ben Gvir, Smotrich and others on the Right. Defence Minister Gallant has even declared military ‘victory’ in Gaza.
And it seems that Gallant too, has bowed to the inevitable: Netanyahu, it would seem, has got his way – bypassing Gallant and senior IDF officers’ objections to escalation versus Hizbullah, without having to sack the popular Gallant as defence minister, and without having to take in the troublesome Gideon Saar into his government!
Defence Minister Gallant, IDF chief Halevi and other IDF officials all issued statements on Wednesday evening which appeared to suggest a full-on war with Hizbullah was brewing, hours after the wave of explosions of communications devices across Lebanon.
From Netanyahu’s perspective, the U.S. – however grudgingly – is committed to supporting Israel in this war, and in a wider war, should Iran enter the fray. The U.S. hints its support is not open-ended, but Netanyahu probably counts on its engagement inexorably ratchetting up as events unfold, pulling the U.S. further in. (The Israel-supporting power-structures would never countenance any abandonment of an Israel in danger, in any case).
Judging by the statements out of Israel, the consensus is that Hizbullah will retaliate, but in a way that is different from the way it has responded until now. Will it make do with a limited response? That is unclear. But anything it does do could lead to an exchange of blows that, in turn, will precipitate a large-scale war.
Senior officials in the IDF and in other parts of the security establishment warn openly against ‘reckless steps being planned by their government in the north’. On the one hand, these steps carry a very tangible danger of flaring up a general state of war, not only on the border with Lebanon, but in the entire region; and on the other hand, they do not promise a solution that will allow the residents of the north to return to their homes, or that the Gaza hostages will ever be released.
What does Putin have to do with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon?
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | September 23, 2024
On September 17, Israel launched one of the largest and cruelest terrorist attacks in modern history. For Lebanon and Syria, the victim countries, 9/17 will now have a meaning akin to that of 9/11 in the US. That date will be remembered for a very long time, and beyond those two states, as the start of two waves of explosions, mostly affecting pagers on the first day and walkie-talkies the following day. There have been reports of other everyday objects, such as laptops and tablets as well as solar energy systems blowing up as well.
While some details are still murky, we already know that the attacks were devastating: According to an Amnesty International summary from September 20, more than 2,931 victims were injured and at least 37 were killed. Amnesty International tends to be cautious and conservative with its figures, and it is still too early for a full assessment of casualties and damage. It is certain that the final count will be worse.
Events are moving fast. The onslaught seems to have served to either provoke or start a larger war; UN General Secretary António Guterres quickly – and plausibly – suspected that 9/17 was meant as a preventive strike and prelude to a larger escalation. It has been followed by more and increasingly brutal bombings and massacres, in the manner that we know so well from the rogue state Israel. For now, it is already clear that after a horrific scene of mass terror in shops, streets, and homes, many of the victims of 9/17 have been injured severely, often leaving them with “life-changing injuries.”
An ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut told us 60 to 70 percent of his patients “had to have at least one eye removed. [For] some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years of practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes.”
Israel, the perpetrator regime, has done what it always does, namely release a barrage of lies. The first step, as so often, has been to boast of its crime without, however, officially admitting it. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a chief genocidaire in the Gaza slaughter, has spoken of a “new era” of war with Lebanon and extolled the “excellent achievements” of the Israeli intelligence services. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Get it, get it? By the way, that is a technique that Western propagandists just love to ascribe to Russia. Yet it’s as Israeli as (stolen) shakshuka and (authentically Zionist) ethnic cleansing. But that’s okay in the West. Because – Israel.
Israeli politicians, propagandists, and many cut-outs and useful idiots in the West claim that this was a legitimate intelligence operation to strike at Hezbollah, the resistance organization and political party based in Lebanon with which Israel is, in effect, at war. In reality, things are as clear as can be: Using civilian devices in this manner is a war crime.
Legally, two points are decisive as well as incontrovertible: First, Hezbollah is both a military and a civilian organization. Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which applies here without a doubt, only those Hezbollah members serving in a military capacity are combatants. All others are and remain civilians, who have and retain a right to protection – obviously also during armed conflict because (duh…) armed conflict is what IHL is all about. Amnesty International has found evidence that the exploding devices of 9/17 had indeed been distributed to members of Hezbollah’s civilian offices, too, as was perfectly expectable for the Israeli perpetrators.
Second, 9/17 was, in any case, fundamentally criminal because, as Amnesty International has explained, it was “indiscriminate […] according to” IHL as “those who planned and carried out these attacks could not verify who would be harmed when the devices exploded, or even if only fighters had been given them.” Indeed, booby-traps spread throughout a civilian population – yes, even while perhaps in immediate possession of a Hezbollah member – are “inherently indiscriminate,” as one expert has put it. That is also why booby-trapping things that are generally associated with civilian use – such as pagers, which are not, obviously, tanks or trenches – is explicitly forbidden by the 1996 Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps, and Other Devices, a United Nations treaty.
Against this background, Western Israel apologists have bent over backwards to spin 9/17. Indeed, this time they are doing overtime, not only downplaying and justifying brazen Israeli criminality as usual but also celebrating it as exemplary and clever (Ironically, dwelling on the stereotypical “cleverness” of Jews is a classic anti-Semitic prejudice, but let’s not dwell on that.) The Wall Street Journal editorial board has framed 9/17 as an example of Israel’s “remarkable” abilities. As if being bankrolled and protected by the US is a skill set. For the reliably warmongering British outlet The Telegraph, the attack was “audacious.” Interesting: how? Did the perpetrators show their face for an open fight? The Bild, a powerful, ultra-Zionist German yellow press outlet from the right-wing Springer group, admired the “almost movie-like spy thriller” behind the operation, that is, the criminal infiltration of civilian supply chains to plant explosives.
If you think that such comments are ever appropriate for a terror attack, try using them for the 9/11 assault on the US in 2001 instead of the 9/17 one on Lebanon and Syria now. See? Not funny, right?
Then there’s the more sophisticated and yet still completely misguided take. Writing for the Daily Mail, Mark Almond, not a stupid man, also felt he had to acknowledge how “spectacular” the “operation was on its own merits” and dwell on Israel’s “excelling” at this kind of “warfare.” That kind of “warfare” is criminal, and if Hezbollah had used it against Israel, Mark Almond would have found the correct word for it: terrorism. It is a principally wrong step to avoid facing or naming the true legal and ethical nature of an act of violence by focusing on how well it was executed, or, in Almond’s words, its “brutal ingeniousness.”
It’s also, frankly, immature. It’s what young bro’ish boys do, when they admire a war criminal such as Nazi Otto Skorzeny because his glider landing on Gran Sasso mountain to snatch washed-out Mussolini must have looked just so damn commando cool. But a world of Israeli genocide and mass murder forbids such infantilism. In a sadly fitting manner, and quite perversely, Almond has not one word for civilians, except Israeli ones.
Almond, however, does see a real downside to Israel’s “sophisticated” attack nevertheless: He fears that its perpetrators may have miscalculated this time and, in essence, bitten off more than they can chew, inviting a backlash he compares with what happened to Japan after its – by the way, non-terrorist – attack on Pearl Harbor. Again, not a thought about Israel’s victims.
What’s the worst that could happen, according to Almond’s unfortunately typical Western mind? That the Israeli terrorists get some pain in return for the suffering of their victims which he has painstakingly made sure not to even mention. Not a word, either, about Lebanon’s or Syria’s right not to be attacked by a terrorist rogue regime next door. Not a word about their sovereignty or their governments’ right and duty to protect their citizens. If this isn’t a racist bias, I don’t know what is.
And then, finally, it’s time for – you must see this coming by now – RUSSIA! Yes, Russia. Not that Almond has any factual reason to bring it up in this context. None at all. Strictly zero. But you see, when we talk about a horrific crime committed by, actually, Israel, but we can’t actually say that, then we talk about Russia. To be on the safe side, let’s add China, too. “How long before Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping,” Almond dramatically asks, “works out how to make millions of iPhones around the world burst into flames in the pockets of their foes?”
Holy Sigmund Freud! Displacement is a powerful force indeed. Yet here’s the thing: If Moscow or Beijing wanted to do the same horrible things Israel routinely does, they easily could. There’s no issue of “working out” here. What Almond can’t face is that they simply are not like that. Israel is like that, criminal to the core, completely spoiled by decades of US-sponsored impunity, and addicted to underhanded violence and lying. It’s Israel that he supports with the absurd propaganda trick of talking about Russia and China instead of the state that has actually committed the crime and set the precedent he wants to warn about. The West is delusional. Clinically speaking.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Witness to Tragedy: ‘Huge’ Financial Incentives Led Hospitals to Use COVID Treatments That Killed Patients
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 19, 2024
Zowe Smith had a fairly mundane job. As a medical coder at an Arizona hospital, her job was to take information from patient records and “translate that into diagnosis and procedure codes.”
But when the COVID-19 shots and COVID-19 hospital protocols were introduced, Smith began to see things she’d never before seen in her career.
“We all believe that this is where people are supposed to go to get better … the hospital is supposed to help you,” Smith told “The Defender In-Depth” this week. “That’s not what was happening.”
Smith resigned and started speaking out about the suffering she saw recorded on patient medical records. She is the author of “The COVID Code: My Life in the Thrill Kill Medical Cult.” She also writes regularly on Substack.
Patients were ‘circling the drain’ soon after administration of COVID protocols
Smith said that medical coding, aside from being used for insurance purposes, is used to track the number of cases of diseases and illnesses regionally and nationwide.
Her job was to expose “the patterns of disease going on” in the population — and she said what she observed during the pandemic led her to begin questioning.
“Even when I was experiencing what I saw, it was almost unbelievable that this could even happen in a hospital,” said Smith, who first noticed abnormalities when the hospital started implementing COVID-19 protocols.
“I started noticing … patients trying to escape the hospital, like unplugging things, pulling out vent tubes and escaping … then I started to hear rumors about the ventilators and I knew that there was a bonus for [giving] remdesivir,” Smith said.
Smith said patients coming in with cold and flu symptoms were treated differently than they had been before the COVID-19 outbreak. “Before COVID, a cold, flu or pneumonia case, you would normally be home within three days, maybe a week, unless you had other major conditions.”
Before the pandemic, patients were rarely placed on ventilators. Smith said:
“Before the pandemic and the hospital protocols began, we did not connect patients to ventilators right away. It wasn’t until they were in dire straits and we had tried every other method that they would be put on a ventilator, and then they would be coming off those ventilators as soon as possible.”
But under the COVID-19 hospital protocols, patients “would be on the ventilators for 30 days or more sometimes, which was incredibly rare,” Smith said. “On top of that, they weren’t talking about disconnecting these patients from the ventilator, which should be something they’re talking about within 24 hours, because the longer you’re on, the less likely you are to come off the ventilator.”
Under the COVID-19 protocols, doctors “went straight to the ventilator” even if patient oxygen levels had not reached “the threshold where we would normally ventilate a person.”
Patients who were given remdesivir developed kidney failure within a few days. “I could see the lab values … they were getting worse almost immediately after the administration of remdesivir,” she said.
Smith described the pattern she observed: “Patient comes in, patient gets COVID diagnosis, patient [is] given a dose of remdesivir,” Smith said. “Pretty soon, they’re on vents. Pretty soon they have kidney failure and then they’re circling the drain and nothing that we could do would save them.”
Visits by loved ones were limited or prohibited due to pandemic restrictions and the hospital protocols — and this took a “horrific” toll on patients, Smith said.
According to Smith, patient records showed instances of “the police getting called to the hospitals” to eject “people that were trying to visit … dying loved ones or loved ones that were … being harmed by the hospital protocols.”
Smith said these patterns were evident to her as a medical coder. “Every note that happens between a nurse and a patient is documented. There’s social information that’s documented. There’s information from ambulance documentation that gets added to the medical record.”
‘Huge incentive’ for ‘financially kneecapped’ hospitals to implement protocols
According to Smith, at the start of the pandemic, hospitals were placed under financial pressure — which later incentivized them to accept payments for implementing the COVID-19 hospital protocols.
“When the world was asked to lock down … hospitals were also issued mandates … that they needed to shut down their OR [operating rooms], which is their bread and butter. That’s where most of their money is made,” she said.
Hospitals also had to “increase their ICU [intensive care unit] bed capacity” and “reduce the number of patients in the ICU beds,” Smith said.
This “financially kneecapped hospitals for many months, from about March [2020] to May, when we were told we had to make room for this expected wave of COVID patients, which never came,” Smith said.
In the summer of 2020, after Congress passed the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act), the COVID-19 protocols “came down to us from the NIH” — the National Institutes of Health. The protocols prescribed the use of remdesivir and ventilators for suspected COVID-19 patients and financially incentivized struggling hospitals to use them.
Hospitals “got 20% for every single dose of remdesivir they gave to a patient … they got the bonus for it being a COVID patient to begin with. And then if the patient goes on a ventilator … they got the maximum payment,” she said.
Hospitals hid vaccine injuries by not inquiring about vaccination status
Smith said medical records also contained evidence of patient injuries following administration of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“I began seeing some incredibly crazy cases,” Smith said. “I began to notice more cases … of near-instant death, like within an hour of multi-organ failure. Massive inflammation, brain death, things that we had never, ever seen before. In my 11 years of medical coding, I had never seen a case like that.”
She added:
“Most of those patients that had sepsis and the massive, whole-body inflammation did not make it. There were a lot of cases of seizures that were uncontrollable … and then people started to arrive with brain inflammation, encephalitis … some of them suffering from stroke-like symptoms. All of a sudden, massive blood clots coming in. And these were in young people. These were not elderly people with comorbidities.”
Yet, according to Smith, hospitals would not inquire about patients’ vaccination status, making it impossible to diagnose these conditions as vaccine injuries. “They weren’t asking the right questions [and] weren’t writing it in the medical record.”
Smith said she felt the need to turn her experience “into something positive.”
“Maybe I can take this information and put it out there so that people can be warned and they can know what’s going on,” Smith said. “To me, it’s about saving lives and it’s about helping us figure out what happened.”
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The more definitive the proof of Israeli atrocities, the less they get reported
By Jonathan Cook | September 20, 2024
The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank town of Qabatiya – it’s unclear whether the men are dead or near-dead – is being barely reported by the western media, even though it was videoed from at least three different angles and a reporter from the main US news agency Associated Press witnessed it.
AP reported on this incident some nine hours ago. Its news feed is accessed by all western establishment media, so they all know.
Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately: even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)
Remember, that same media never fails to highlight – or simply makes up – any crime Palestinians are accused of, such as those non-existent “beheaded babies”.
AP itself treats this latest atrocity in the West Bank as no big deal. It reports simply that it may be part of a “pattern of excessive force” by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.
That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP’s preferred characterisation of the group’s reference to a pattern not of “excessive force” but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
AP makes sure to give Israel’s pretext for why it is committing war crimes: “Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy.”
But it forgets yet again to mention why that “militancy” exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it – once again illegally – has drafted in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.
AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel’s occupying soldiers, including “militantly”.
Western governments might characterise Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as “terrorism”, but that’s not how it is seen in the international law codes that western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.
It’s also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by “Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem”.
As is true with many other western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.
Western news outlets doubtless privately rationalise this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure copy is “sensitive” to Israel’s perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.
Which is precisely the problem. The bias in western reporting is baked in. It is designed not to upset Israel – in the midst of a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court – which means it’s entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.
It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.
UPDATE:
Very belatedly, the BBC has reported this on one of its news channels. Note, it adds an entirely unnecessary disclaimer that the footage hasn’t been “independently verified” – whatever that means. There are now at least three separate videos, all taken from different angles, showing the same war crime. Even the Israeli military has confirmed the incident happened.
The BBC also assumes the three Palestinians are dead. There is absolutely no reason to make that assumption: it violates the most basic rules of reporting.
And the anchor, clearly nervous about how she should refer to the men being pushed off a roof, ends by observing that the footage is “another example of the tensions and the many fronts on which we see Israel fighting”. No, it’s another example of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, and the media trying to deflect attention from that fact.
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From the Archives
Examples of hate speech by Israel against Palestine
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
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