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By Craig Murray | May 13, 2024

Incredibly the Israeli genocide in Gaza is now reaching new heights of violence. Casualty figures are not coming in, as the attacks are so bad that bodies cannot be recovered, medics cannot travel and there are almost no medical facilities operational now anyway.

We now see that the Western injunctions not to attack Rafah were a smokescreen of lies to mask complicity. The final pocket of Gaza is being ruthlessly ethnically cleansed and its infrastructure will be destroyed like all the rest.

It is striking that this is accompanied by an absolutely shameless doubling down of support for Israel by the Western political and media classes. Any thought that their isolation from the vast breadth of public opinion would give them pause, must be abandoned. Their Zionist lobby paymasters have jerked the chain, and rather than rowing back, we are seeing a redoubling of their efforts to suppress dissent and obscure the truth.

Some of this shameless distortion is so dissonant with the alleged norms of Western society it is almost impossible to believe it is happening. Here are a few examples.

1) Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta is a highly respected reconstructive surgeon who continued to work heroically and tirelessly in Al Shifa hospital, carrying out operation after operation, mostly on women and children, as the hospital was shelled, strafed and machine gunned around him.

He was already a surgeon of great distinction, based in Glasgow where he is now Rector of Glasgow University.

When Germany banned him from entering to address the conference on Palestine from which Yanis Varoufakis and others were also barred, it appeared perhaps as a one-off action as part of Germany’s extreme and panicked reaction to pro-Palestinian expression.

We have come to understand that Germany has a vicious hatred of Palestinians, remarkably based on the psychological trauma of inherited guilt from the Holocaust. While this is a muddled national psychosis that is plainly immoral and wrongheaded, at least it is possible to have some understanding of how it occurred.

But it then turned out that the travel ban slapped on Dr Abu Sitta by Germany has a Schengen-wide effect as he was also banned from France. That appeared again something that was almost a technical accident as regards the rest of Europe.

But the Western political establishment has now doubled down again by banning him from the Netherlands, and this time the Dutch government has made it clear that it supports the ban, and is not just caught by a Schengen restriction.

So the major governments of the European Union are forbidding a distinguished surgeon from giving first-hand medical evidence of the genocide taking place. I cannot think of anything that more sharply exposes the willingness of the Western political class to abandon the most basic tenets of supposed “Western democracy” in the interests of Israel.

2) The willingness of the United States to use extreme violence against pro-Palestinian students on college campuses is another demonstration of the same abandonment of the pretence of democracy when it comes to Israel. It also illustrates what has come to be a serious generational divide in Western public opinion, with young people very strongly motivated to oppose the genocide (which is not to say that older people are pro-genocide, just that they are more split, particularly in the USA).

This is being followed up with yet more crazed pro-Israeli legislation in the United States, seeking to designate anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian expression on campuses as anti-semitic and thus illegal.

In many ways this typifies the reaction of the ruling class across the West. Their reaction to suddenly being exposed as the paid servants of an Israel which no longer has popular support and now causes public revulsion, is simply to attempt to ban free expression and make it specifically illegal to disagree with them.

3) The British Labour Party has gone even madder. Keir Starmer’s Genocide Party is an outstanding example of the success of the Israeli lobby in buying up both sides of the aisle and controlling the entire neoliberal uniparty that poses as the repository of democratic “choice” in the West.

Starmer had been doing his best to conceal his explicitly expressed “unequivocal support for Israel” lately, and to row back from his straightforward assertion that Israel has the right to cut off food and water from the population of Gaza. There had been a fake shift, from refusing to countenance the word “ceasefire” to supporting a temporary ceasefire or a “sustainable” ceasefire – the latter being code for a ceasefire after Israel had achieved all its ethnic cleansing objectives.

But then David Lammy blew this out of the water with an address to US Republican senators in which he made the totally bonkers assertion that Nelson Mandela would have opposed the college protests for Palestine. Lammy is a truly despicable individual, one of the ultimate examples of the corrupt politician whose voice is bought. But this was a move far beyond the pale.

4) Even today, the Western media continues to spout out Israeli propaganda at mains pressure. The Guardian, despite the thousands and thousands of dead women and children we have seen on our mobile phones this past seven months, continues to pretend that the genocidal attack is on “Hamas militants”.

The bombing and shelling of civilians in tents is still described as “clashes”. This propaganda really does not wash any more, though it may reinforce the morale of hardened Zionists. Everybody else has seen through it months ago. Yet still they persist.

5) The endgame is becoming very apparent. The United States is completing its floating harbour for Gaza, and Israel has gained control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, giving the US and Israel total control of entry points into Gaza. Israel has announced that the Rafah crossing is to be handed over to a US mercenary force. The US can then say it is complying with Biden’s pledge not to put US forces’ boots on the ground in Gaza, while actually taking control.

The Israeli attack on Rafah has been justified by the USA as a “limited military operation”, thus claiming it does not violate Biden’s purported “red line”, even though Israel has ordered over a million displaced people in Rafah to evacuate again, to nowhere.

Conclusion:

The only possible conclusion from all of the above is to reinforce my analysis that the Zionist political and media classes in the West, including Biden, Blinken, Trudeau, Macron, Sunak, Starmer, Scholtz, von der Leyen and all, are active and willing participants in a programme of genocide.

They had numerous opportunities to turn back. We all saw what is happening months ago. They did not take the opportunities.

The endgame remains the processing of the remaining Palestinian population out of Gaza through the US-controlled points of the Rafah crossing and the floating harbour, primarily into camps in the Sinai desert. The Western powers are doubling down on their genocide and on their colonial project.

I see nothing whatsoever that indicates they can have any other long-term objective in mind than the complete Israeli annexation of Gaza minus its civilian population. What do you see?

May 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Only one power could stop Israel’s Rafah invasion – but it dropped the ball

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | May 13, 2024

Israel has been threatening a full-scale invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah for months, with the US government belatedly warning against the move and calling for a ceasefire. However, the Biden administration has consistently flip-flopped on the issue and refused to take serious measures to pressure Israel into reaching a deal.

On May 6, Hamas publicly announced that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal, triggering celebrations throughout Gaza. The rejoicing was short-lived though, as the Israeli government reiterated its refusal to accept a deal and pledged instead to launch a ground operation in Gaza’s southernmost city, despite US government objections.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even stated that “the day after is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” meaning there is no ceasefire deal he will accept.

Despite the Israeli military capturing the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt, in addition to killing dozens of civilians after bombing 100 targets throughout Rafah, Israel announced that a delegation had been sent to Cairo to “exhaust” all possibilities of reaching a ceasefire. As it would later turn out, the ceasefire proposal that Hamas accepted was almost identical to one drafted by the CIA and Israeli intelligence, and lauded by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a “strong proposal”.

Meanwhile, in cities like Haifa and Tel Aviv, Israeli protesters – led by the families of captives held in Gaza – had taken to the streets to demand their government accept the ceasefire terms, which included the release of all Israeli prisoners. Clashing with the police and labeling the Netanyahu government liars, the demonstrators threatened to burn the country if their prisoners were not freed.

The US response the very next day was to gaslight reporters by telling them that the whole world was wrong and that Hamas had not accepted any ceasefire proposal. It was not long before US President Joe Biden was to sit down for an interview with CNN and state that he would not supply Israel with offensive weaponry to be used in a “major invasion” of Rafah. What he refused to do, however, was define what a major invasion means – and where the red line is.

This unclear approach comes after the Israeli military violated the terms of the 1979 Camp David agreement, which normalized ties between Egypt and Israel, by invading what is known as the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza. Not only did the Israeli army send in its Givati Brigades, who published videos of themselves recklessly crushing the border crossing for fun, they also sealed off the key aid route to Gaza’s civilian population, who are on the brink of famine.

A weak and confusing American approach

The Israeli government has been threatening to invade Rafah since the start of the year, with Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly asserting, since the beginning of February, that Israel will “lose the war” if there is no invasion. it’s a move that the US not only says will mean defeat militarily, but more importantly, threatens the lives of over a million civilians, most of whom have nowhere else to go.

In early March, Biden gave a confusing interview to MSNBC, where he repeatedly contradicted himself when addressing the issue of an Israeli invasion of Rafah.

While claiming that entering Rafah is a “red line,” he then said that “there’s no red line [where] I’m going to cut off all weapons… but there’s red lines that if he crosses them”, before he seemed to lose his train of thought.

The sudden changes in the stance of policymakers in Washington are not limited to Biden’s MSNBC interview. In early February, the US said it would oppose an invasion of Rafah, calling it a “disaster,” to which the Israeli prime minister responded that he was preparing his forces to invade – and ramped up aerial attacks on the area. Yet, in mid-February the US government prepared a $14 billion military aid package for Israel and would go on to say that it could only support a limited invasion of Rafah.

Then there were reports that emerged, citing unnamed US officials, alleging that Biden was growing frustrated with Netanyahu and that he had even sworn at him. There was then the American push towards a “six-week ceasefire” in March, which the US president publicly said he hoped would happen prior to the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan. Even now, the Biden administration is still talking about an alleged “six-week ceasefire”, despite its own proposal to Hamas being a detailed agreement designed to end the war or at least to last for several months.

Silently, the US approved over 100 weapons transfers to assist the war effort against Gaza, in which they used loopholes to avoid Washington’s own new laws on weapons sales. Then, with two weeks left until the end of Ramadan, the US finally abstained in a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote, which called on Israel to implement a ceasefire until the end of the Muslim Holy month. In response, Israel immediately canceled the pre-planned visit of a high-level American delegation to Tel Aviv.

However, the very next morning, following the passing of the UN Security Council resolution, the US State Department announced that the resolution was non-binding. This not only meant that Washington was denying the reality of the internationally understood consensus that all UNSC votes are by their nature binding, but also that it would allow Israel to violate the resolution. So, even though Washington technically took a measure to pressure its ally temporarily, the very next day it gave an informal veto of the resolution, signaling to the Israeli government that it would retain American support no matter what.

While admitting that an invasion of Rafah will inevitably lead to the mass killing of Palestinian civilians, and block humanitarian aid transfers during an impending famine, and that it will not lead to the collapse of Hamas or the return of Israeli prisoners, the US government is effectively twiddling its thumbs.

The US has had nearly seven months to formulate a coherent policy when it comes to its goals and red lines in the Gaza-Israel war, yet it cannot articulate what its red lines are – and what ceasefire it even desires – without constantly contradicting itself. Western corporate media are now pointing to the postponing of a singular weapons shipment to Israel by the Biden administration, as if this constitutes pressure. But the US has done nothing to force Israel to allow aid to pass through the Rafah Crossing, which it immediately called upon Israel to do.

At this point, the US government is not helping to achieve Israel’s publicly stated war aims, it is not helping the families of Israeli prisoners, and it has failed to achieve a ceasefire or the sufficient transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Instead, Joe Biden appears to be doing one thing – helping Benjamin Netanyahu prolong the conflict, with no end goal, no exit strategy, and no political solution or even the most basic idea of a post-war situation on the horizon. If anything, the US government has proven itself to be incapable of playing any constructive role to any side’s benefit. In fact, it is detrimental to the situation. If there were any people of conscience left in Washington, they would be urging their colleagues to step aside and hand the issue over to nations with coherent foreign policy platforms and intelligent diplomats.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

May 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israelis use Palestinian kids as human shields: Rights group

Press TV – May 12, 2024

A Geneva-based rights group has condemned the Israeli regime forces for using children as human shields in their assaults on Palestinians.

The Defense for Children International (DCI) said it heard testimonies of three children who described how they were used as human shields by occupying Israeli forces during a recent search and assault operation in the West Bank’s Tulkarm refugee camp, the Middle East Eye on Sunday reported.

The DCI said the Palestinian children said on May 5 and May 6 Israeli soldiers had forced them to walk ahead of them as they searched through the refugee camp, describing two instances in which the Israeli regime forces had placed their rifles on their shoulders.

One teen named Kareem recounted how Israeli forces stormed his family’s apartment on May 6 and then forced him to lead them through the apartment block as they carried out a search operation in the building. The teen said the soldiers had placed a loaded rifle on his shoulders and fired two shots toward one of the apartment’s entrances.

Another child, Mohammad, said during a raid on his home, he was forcibly separated from his family by the Israeli forces.

“I remained alone with the soldiers after they instructed my mother and siblings to climb to the fourth floor of the building. I started crying and trembling with fear because I didn’t know what they would do to me. They were armed, masked, and their appearance was terrifying, accompanied by a large police dog making frightening noises,” Mohammad said.

He said they told him to knock on each apartment door in the building and tell the residents in the apartments to leave their homes.

Mohammad said if an apartment was empty and no one answered, the armed men would enter by force.

“When we reached the door of one of the apartments and found it empty, the soldiers blew up the door and forced me to enter alone to inspect it,” said the Palestinian child.

Ibrahim, another Palestinian teen, recounted how on the morning of May 6, Israeli forces stormed his family’s home in the Tulkarm refugee camp in a “brutal and terrifying manner,” searching and vandalizing their belongings.

He said, “A group of soldiers took me to one of the rooms and began interrogating me. When I told them I knew nothing, one of them threatened me in Arabic and said (I’ll smash you if you don’t talk). Then he physically assaulted me for several minutes before handcuffing my hands behind my back with a plastic tie. They then took me outside and asked me to walk in front of the soldiers.”

“I was trembling with fear and terror. At first, I thought they wanted to arrest me, but they asked me to walk in front of them in the alleys of the Al-Sawalme neighborhood in the camp. They would hide in the alley and ask me to show the way. After that, they released my hands, and every time we passed by a house or building, they would ask me to enter and ask the residents to leave and head towards the soldiers, after which they would raid those homes. During the raids, they would ask me to open the internal doors of the houses and apartments.”

Ibrahim said after about two hours of searching the camp, the Israelis took him to a house in the camp where he was detained alongside others until the Israeli forces withdrew from the camp.

In the meantime, the use of Palestinians as human shields by Israeli regime forces in numerous cases has been well documented by multiple human rights organizations.

Israeli regime forces put Palestinian civilians in front of them or otherwise put civilians in the line of fire, and force them to open doors that could be booby-trapped or remove suspicious objects that might be bombs. They also force them to walk through suspected booby-trapped buildings.

The Zionist forces also often employ the “neighbor procedure” in which Palestinian civilians are forced to attempt to persuade individuals to leave or surrender themselves.

“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at the DCIP, adding, “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”

For decades, both Palestinian children as well as adults have been used by the Israeli forces during operations as human shields.

The use of civilians as human shields is one of many war crimes committed by the Israeli regime forces.

May 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Unremarkable peer recruited by Zionist lobby to stop Palestine Action

By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | May 13, 2024

I have written many times about the heroic activities of Palestine Action, the protest group which burst onto the scene around four years ago using a blend of unrivalled direct action, anarchy and good, old-fashioned peaceful resistance to disrupt and wreck Israel’s war machine factories in the UK.

Despite numerous arrests, very few PA members have been prosecuted successfully, largely because the arms dealers they target do not want to be subject to probing questions under oath in a British court. What are they trying to hide?

Let us suppose that these giants of the arms industry fear going to court. If so, it is impossible for them to give evidence in the same courts as the Palestine Action protestors arrested by the police for causing criminal damage which has run into millions of pounds. Who knew that red paint could be so costly?

Nothing disturbs warmongering Zionists more than peaceful resistance supported by the law of the land, which in Britain gives people the legal right to protest against injustice.

Demonstrations, mass rallies and sit-ins have been around for as long as anyone can remember. The freedom and right to protest are a defining cornerstone of any European democracy.

Palestine Action describes itself as a pro-Palestinian protest network that uses direct action to shut down and disrupt multinational arms manufacturers and dealers. In particular, the group targets UK-based operations that provide weapons, or parts of weapons, used by Israel against the Palestinians.

At arms fairs, companies like Israel’s Elbit Systems are constantly ridiculed and humiliated for being unable to protect their factories from the eclectic group of Palestine Action activists. After all, Elbit boasts that it is a company which: “Specialises in surveillance and reconnaissance systems, optimised for all range applications – from short-range to extremely long-range. Installed on mobile platforms, as well as on stationary towers and turrets, these surveillance and reconnaissance systems enable high-quality tactical level intelligence gathering for infantry, artillery and other ground forces.”

Let’s face it, being outwitted on an almost daily basis by today’s would-be rebels and unarmed revolutionaries wearing slack jogging bottoms and hoodies must be humiliating for the Elbit executives and its subsidiaries. Little wonder that they are the butt of so many jokes.

It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Israel wants Palestine Action shut down for good. It’s a tall order, but this is where the pro-Israel, Zionist lobby becomes a useful tool in Tel Aviv’s many conflicts. All the lobby has to do is call to heel the politicians and parties it funds and tell them to ban the group.

This is where the likes of Britain’s Lord Walney comes in, an unremarkable, modest little man with not much to be modest about. To be blunt, this peer, described laughingly as an “independent” government advisor, is nothing but an Israeli lackey who has, in an otherwise bland 100,000-word report, criminalised protest groups active in the UK today.

Rarely a headline-maker for political strategy, as plain old John Woodcock he resigned as a Labour Party MP in 2018, hitting out at “manipulation” of an internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment, but continued to sit in the House of Commons as an independent member. Ahead of the 2019 election, he chose not to stand again as he announced he was expecting a baby with his partner Isabel Hardman, an assistant editor at the right-wing Spectator magazine.

Naturally, Woodcock was a fervent critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. The political turncoat even urged people to vote Conservative to stop Corbyn from “getting his hands on the levers of national security and defence.”

Perhaps more significantly, in the not-too-distant past, Woodcock was the chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

Now “The” Lord Walney since 2021, and sitting as an independent (“crossbencher”) in the House of Lords upper chamber of parliament, his report recommends that the government should impose new measures to deter Palestine Action’s direct campaign against Elbit, Israel’s largest arms company. Whilst acknowledging the “enormous damage” that the activists have inflicted on the arms industry, he suggests a series of moves to restrict Palestine Action’s ability to meet and raise funds. He is also calling for “buffer zones” around factories of death like those owned by Elbit in Britain to protect the company from further protests.

Woodcock is quoted in the Sunday Times as saying that he wants to “make it an offence to belong to a protest group judged to be ‘extreme’ and which routinely uses criminal methods to campaign.” If the same twisted, Zionist logic had been applied in the early twentieth century, British women would not have been given the right to vote because the “extremists” in the Suffragettes — who definitely broke the law on occasion — would have been banned outright.

Despite posing as an “independent” government advisor, Woodcock is affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby and the arms industry. He is also the chair of the Defence Purpose Coalition, which brings together senior figures within the arms industry to promote its deadly products. Since 2011, he’s travelled to Israel on numerous occasions on trips paid for by the Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups, according to a recent investigation by Declassified UK.

Palestine Action released a statement about the new proposals this week. “During our nearly four-year direct-action campaign, we’ve faced arrests, raids, imprisonment, beatings, convictions and more by a state desperate to protect the Zionist war machine, over the freedom of their own citizens,” it said. “Despite this, our movement’s determination and resilience have resulted in Elbit permanently closing two factories plus being dumped by several partners and losing hundreds of millions [of pounds] in contracts with the Ministry of Defence.”

The success of the group, almost always vehemently denied by Israel, is a testament to its peaceful but direct action. However, nearly eight months into the Gaza genocide, it is clear that the arms industry is reaching breaking point with the British judicial system, which has abandoned or dismissed most trials of activists who are taken to court.

If the Zionist lobby and Lord Walney think that this scare tactic is going to force the action group to surrender, though, I’m afraid they’ve seriously underestimated it.

“When Palestine Action began we were under no illusion that the route to victory would be an easy ride,” it pointed out. “As a movement, we understand that every obstacle we face and overcome is a step closer to ending Israel’s weapons trade with Britain. For years the political class repressed us behind closed doors but refused to show their frustration at our growing campaign publicly. Now, they’re showing their hand which means we are winning.”

They accused the British peer of being more interested in “protecting the military interests of a foreign genocidal entity over the will of the British people, who overwhelmingly support imposing an arms embargo on Israel. His alliance is with the hugely profitable Elbit Systems who use Gaza as a laboratory to develop their battle-tested weaponry and are crucial to arming the ongoing genocide. Our alliance will always be with the Palestinian people.”

The Palestine Action campaigners say that they will “Shut Elbit down”.

And, I have to say, I am more convinced by their commitment to the people of Palestine than that of Lord Walney who has compromised himself by his closeness to the Israeli arms industry and the Zionist lobby. He and his report are far from independent in this matter. The UK is, for all its faults, still a democratic state whose citizens have rights and freedoms won after centuries of dissent and popular protests. Now the likes of Walney and his Zionist friends want to curtail those rights to serve the interests of the alien, apartheid state of Israel. This cannot be allowed to happen.

May 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

360,000 flee Rafah due to Israel strikes: UNRWA

MEMO | May 13, 2024

The number of Palestinians who were forced to leave Rafah due to attacks by Israeli forces rose to 360,000, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said today.

“Nearly 360,000 people have fled #Rafah since the first evacuation order a week ago,” UNRWA stated on X.

“Meanwhile, in north #Gaza bombardments & other evacuation orders have created more displacement & fear for thousands of families,” it added.

The agency further underlined: “There’s nowhere to go. There’s NO safety without a #ceasefire.”

Israel has waged an unrelenting offensive on the Gaza Strip since 7 October. More than 35,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and 78,400 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Over seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, forcibly displacing 85 per cent of the enclave’s population amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

However since then Israel has taken over the Rafah Crossing, through which almost all humanitarian aid was entering Gaza. No aid has been allowed into the Strip since Israel raised its flag over the crossing.

May 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Calling out UK for its brazen protection of pro-occupation forces

By Hannan Hussain | Al Mayadeen | May 12, 2024

The protests are spreading.

From Oxford University to Edinburgh, students in considerable numbers are pushing academic institutions in the United Kingdom to end ties to the Israeli occupation. As the genocide reaches devastating highs in Gaza, many faculty and staff members are on-board to push for divestment demands and are calling out the Israeli systemic campaign of mass slaughter and starvation.

But that same sense of aversion to Israeli genocide and war crimes appears absent among UK policymakers, who quietly cheerlead Israeli belligerence. According to damning new revelations, the Conservative Party of the UK has consistently catered to the pro-genocide occupation by protecting Israeli politicians, spy agents, and other officials from glaring war crimes. These developments reveal the extent of London’s complicity in the Israeli-led genocide, and illustrate the use of “special” immunity to protect war criminals that have Palestinian blood on their hands.

Consider Israeli war criminal General Herzi Halevi, among the chief architects of a planned Israeli onslaught on Rafah. Rather than joining international momentum to support prosecution of Halevi and his allies, the UK granted the war criminal a visiting permit without fear of arrest. These are glaring examples of Britain deluding the public on legal rights, and twisting its own laws to enable support and protections for a genocidal regime.

London is thus unqualified to offer rhetoric against Israeli offensives when it consciously sustains its partisan support for the same occupation. Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s deputy foreign minister, put on a false show of morality this week, claiming that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would ‘break international humanitarian law.’ Lets be clear: the UK doesn’t care about international law or the astounding scale of Palestinian suffering and mayhem. Mitchell even refused to spell out any meaningful consequences for the occupation in the event of a full-scale invasion, exposing the cosmetic nature of British rhetoric on Gaza.

The British government is also wrong to give the benefit of the doubt to a genocidal regime by claiming that international humanitarian law was about to come under threat. Britain’s stance on Gaza should be condemned for deluding the public because “Israel” has been breaking international law from the outset and for decades. It is evident in a process of systemic Israeli annihilation, mass slaughter and glaring war crimes that London’s own diplomacy justifies in practice.

At a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) has occupation premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies fearing arrests and isolation, Britain appears determined to obstruct justice and do “Israel’s” pro-genocide bidding. After all, it is a country that Amnesty International has declared a  “deliberately destabilising” force for human rights on the world stage, and proves that point by allowing Israeli war criminals to visit without fearing arrest. Make no mistake: Britain is seriously unqualified to speak to any semblance of democratic values because its pro-occupation tilt signals violation of British commitments to universal jurisdiction laws. That includes the Rome Statute which holds that the most serious crimes are tried regardless of where they occurred.

Palestinian rights groups are absolutely correct to turn the heat on London and hold it accountable for its own breaches of international law in Gaza. This includes the West Bank-based Al-Haq, which is taking Britain to court over arms exports funding the genocide. As UK’s diplomatic “immunity” becomes the latest weapon to shield Israeli war criminals, it is in the interests of Britain-based activists and their international counterparts to form a legal challenge of their own. This is imperative to hold the government accountable for sponsoring pro-genocidal forces under the garb of diplomacy.

London’s denial would carry zero weight because its support for Israeli war criminals is rooted in history. Look back to 2011 when Labour chief Keir Starmer blocked arrest warrant prospects for occupation foreign minister and suspected war criminal Tzipi Livni. A government so deeply in cahoots with a decades-old Israeli military occupation cannot be trusted to drive accountability from within. London’s contribution to more Palestinian bloodshed thus demands that the government is tried with the full force of the law.

There is also a common thread that binds escalating anti-genocide protests across Britain: the truly urgent situation for besieged Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli occupation continues to launch airstrikes in Rafah and pursues a systemic campaign of civilian massacres that is now centered around the southernmost Gaza city. And yet, Britain played a principal role in aiding “Israel’s” genocide capacities on the intelligence front ahead of time. That includes 50 British espionage missions that were conducted since the start of December with the principal goal of aiding the occupation.

With these realities in mind, how can Britain even stand up to the international community and tout the occupation’s so-called “truce” proposal as generous? There are striking double standards in the way UK plays up public rhetoric on peace and prosperity over Gaza, while profiting from its bloodshed.

Its broader occupation support through information-gathering, espionage, diplomatic immunity, and weapon supplies firmly establish complicity in the ongoing genocide.

The Declassified UK revelations are only the tip of the iceberg.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel carpet bombs Gaza with no goal in sight

The Cradle | May 12, 2024

Dozens of Palestinian civilians have been killed and injured over the past 24 hours by intense Israeli bombardment across the Gaza Strip.

Israeli airstrikes have continued to relentlessly bomb northern, central, and southern Gaza.

“18 martyrs and six wounded were admitted to the Kuwait Hospital” in the southern city of Rafah, medical sources told WAFA news agency on 12 May. Children were among those killed by Israeli strikes on Rafah.

“Israeli tanks opened fire on civilian homes in the eastern areas of Deir al-Balah and Maghazi,” WAFA added.

Israeli artillery shelling pounded Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, in the north. Over a dozen civilians remain trapped under the rubble there, according to WAFA. Several civilians were also killed in bombing of northern Gaza’s Jabalia.

An Israeli quadcopter opened fire at UNRWA clinic in the Jabalia refugee camp.

“Our emergency crews are receiving many calls for help,” said civil defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, adding that it is “gravely difficult and dangerous for the civil defense crews to aid civilians because they themselves have no immunity and are targeted by Israeli occupation forces.”

The intensified bombardment comes as Israeli troops are engaged in fierce clashes with the Palestinian resistance in northern Gaza.

Hamas’ Qassam Brigades struck Israeli forces with heavy-caliber mortar shells in Al-Zaytoun neighborhood on 12 May, the group said in a statement.

On 11 May, intense clashes reignited in Al-Zaytoun, months after Tel Aviv claimed Hamas had been defeated in the north of the enclave. The Israeli army has also deployed to the city of Jabalia north of Gaza City, where it now says fighters from Hamas’ armed wing have regrouped.

The Qassam Brigades have also continued to fiercely confront Israeli forces operating in the southern city of Rafah, where the army launched a recent operation to seize the border crossing with Egypt. Tel Aviv had been claiming for months that Rafah is Hamas’ final stronghold, despite its continued presence, along with other factions, across the strip.

Rocket barrages have been flying out of Rafah toward the positions of Tel Aviv’s forces and nearby settlements over the past two days.

“Hamas has military capability and it will remain, and we will not end it if we continue fighting,” former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland, said on Saturday.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev conducts ‘terrorist attack’ against Belgorod – MoD

RT | May 12, 2024

Kiev conducted a cross-border “terrorist attack” on residential buildings in the Russian city of Belgorod using Tochka-U ballistic missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The capital of Belgorod Region was targeted with Tochka-U ballistic missiles and rockets from Olkha and Vampire multiple rocket launchers, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Six Soviet-era Tochka-U missiles, four Vampire rockets and two Olkha projectiles have been intercepted by Russian air defenses, it stressed.

“Fragments of one of the downed Tochka-U missiles damaged a residential building in Belgorod,” the ministry said.

The Tochka-U is a mobile launch system developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Russia has phased out its use in favor of more advanced Iskander ballistic missiles, which were introduced in the mid-2000s. However, Kiev still has Tochka-Us in its arsenal and has used them repeatedly during the conflict with Moscow.

Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier that “an entire section of an apartment building – from the tenth to the first floor – collapsed as a result of a direct hit” during the Ukrainian bombardment of the city.

According to Russia’s acting health minister, Mikhail Murashko, 17 people have been hospitalized as a result of the incident.

There has so far been no official data on the number of fatalities. According to Mash, a Telegram channel, at least seven people have been killed. The rescuers have been able to recover 12 residents from the debris, but another ten could still be trapped inside, it said.

At some point, the roof of the damaged building collapsed while the rescuers were clearing the rubble underneath. A source in the governor’s office told Mash that no one was hurt, but Shot reported that one of the emergency workers suffered a leg fracture and two others were lightly wounded.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has said that a criminal terrorism case was launched following the strike on the apartment block.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israeli military not a professional army; its ground incursions look like Daesh attacks

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

The Israeli military’s ground assaults in the Gaza Strip have been punctuated by the discovery of mass graves, the publicizing of war crimes of occupation soldiers for fun, and a record of mass slaughter, human shield taking, and widespread torture. Although most modern armies have committed war crimes, the Israeli military does not operate like a professional force, but rather a collection of ill-disciplined racist militia groups.

On May 6, following the announcement by Hamas that they had accepted a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli leadership immediately struck down any prospect of a viable agreement being reached and its military began sending tanks toward Rafah, under a massive airstrike campaign. The first objective that the Israeli regime’s military sought to achieve was the capturing of the Rafah Crossing, situated roughly 3 kilometers from the separation barrier between Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.

While immediately shutting off Gaza completely, preventing aid trucks and civilian passage through to the Egyptian side of the border, the conduct of the Israeli soldiers was also important to pay attention to. According to the Zionist military, it was the Givati Brigade that was responsible for the storming of the Rafah Crossing. Instead of professionally carrying out their very simple task – driving tanks into an area that was not defended – they decided to film videos of themselves using their military vehicles to crush and demolish areas throughout the border crossing, which were shared online in order to brag about it. The crossing was desecrated, Israeli flags were flown in place of Palestinian ones, and, according to reports, around 20 workers at the crossing were either slaughtered or kidnapped.

The Givati Brigade is supposed to be some of the most well-trained in the Israeli army and is not like the reservists. They are also one of the two brigades that make up the Israeli Southern Command, which collapsed within an hour of the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. What these forces were sent to do on May 6 was to violate the terms of the 1978 Camp David agreement, which normalized ties between Cairo and Tel Aviv, as they had entered the Philadelphia Corridor. Although the Egyptian client regime was not willing to declare this act of war a reason to throw away the Camp David agreement, the callous way in which the Zionist forces went about their de facto act of war against Egypt was telling.

The clear provocations by Israeli soldiers who decided to pull out their iPhones and film themselves destroying property for laughs at the Rafah Crossing are nothing new, however. Throughout the ground war in Gaza, Zionist soldiers have filmed themselves humiliating, beating, and posing with Palestinian civilians they have kidnapped. They also filmed themselves stealing property, smashing stores and homes, and defecating and urinating inside Palestinian houses, in addition to randomly blowing up buildings for fun. Israeli soldiers have also filmed themselves playing with women’s lingerie, even wearing it and dancing in it for videos, while hurling insults at Palestinian women. These soldiers then post these videos on social media to brag about their war crimes and sexually motivated actions. Perhaps the most voluminous archive of these videos has been compiled on the Twitter account of Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi.

Another common theme for the Israeli military’s forces is to go on their phones and film themselves for Tiktok Livestreams, which has even aided the Palestinian Resistance in pinpointing their locations on occasion so that they can carry out operations using short-range rockets and mortar attacks.

If it was just a few instances of Israeli soldiers doing this sort of thing, followed by strong disciplining action from their superiors, then it could be put down to individual actions. This is clearly not the case. Instead, this fits into a trend within the Israeli military that has been ongoing for years. The issue came to a head in 2018 in fact, during the non-violent protest movement in Gaza called ‘The Great Return March’, where Israeli soldiers would publish videos of themselves shooting unarmed civilians and breaking out into laughter, and then posting the video on social media. At that time, by observing the Israeli media’s commentary on it, it became clear that their soldiers do not listen to orders and will even help companies test their weapons on the battlefield, putting aside their standard-issue weapons.

The issue of whether an Israeli soldier has the right to do as he/she pleases emerged in a major way back in 2016. A soldier operating in al-Khalil for the occupation forces, named Elor Azaria, decided to pull out his rifle and shoot a Palestinian man in the head after he was already severely injured and lay on the ground. The incident was filmed, causing an international backlash and forcing the Israeli military to act. In the end, a large group of Israeli society rallied behind Azaria and supported him in his alleged “right” to slaughter Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, even protesting and creating a fundraiser for him. In the end, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. He only served 9 months and exited to a demotion in his rank in the army, yet he was not kicked out of the military.

From Elor Azaria until now, this problem has only grown inside the Israeli military. The issue is that the Israeli military is composed of ill-disciplined soldiers who feel that they can behave in any way they choose. What the war in Gaza has revealed is that this issue is not just a growing problem, but is the culture of the Israeli armed forces. Even the ease with which Israeli soldiers are given high ranks is embarrassing and has created an environment for its soldiers of “participation awards”, enabling soldiers who are ill-prepared to be promoted and get to rule over other soldiers who have no idea what they are doing.

When you have a military force of this nature, formed of entitled ethnic-supremacists who feel like they can behave however they choose, it is a recipe for disaster when you send them into an urban warfare combat zone, densely populated by a civilian population they are indoctrinated to believe are inferior to them. Now add on top of this the religious supremacist element to it, where even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling the people of Gaza “Amalek”, and it becomes clear why these ill-disciplined, entitled, racist, and ill-trained soldiers are carrying out a violent crusade against civilians.

This is why we see the Israeli military looting homes and businesses. This is why we see such mass scale torture, sexual humiliation, and even the rape of Palestinian women. It also explains why the Israeli military committed its series of what has been dubbed ‘Flour Massacres’, murdering over a thousand people who are waiting for food aid in various areas of Gaza, the worst cases being in the North of the besieged coastal enclave.

We have seen the evidence, presented at the International Court of Justice, showing Israeli soldiers chanting on films about their intention to kill “Amelek” arguing that there are no innocent civilians. The whole world has also seen drone footage of Israeli forces using their unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to launch targeted strikes on groups of civilians walking in open areas, in addition to drone footage clearly showing Israeli soldiers using human shields. The Zionist military even shot dead their own prisoners in the al-Shujaiyah neighborhood, while waving their shirts as white flags.

The mass graves that are being uncovered throughout the Gaza Strip produce evidence that civilians were buried alive, stripped naked, and tied up before being executed, with many even showing signs of torture and that they were chucked in black bags among garbage. There are also the two most prominent mass grave cases, revealed after the Israeli army withdrew from the Al-Shifa Hospital and the Nasser Hospital complex.

Women, children, elderly individuals, journalists, UN employees, doctors, civil defense teams, disabled people, and even foreign aid workers were all carelessly slaughtered in the most inhumane ways possible and even with precision weapons.

It is not only the case in Gaza, as in southern Lebanon there is the case of 7 volunteer healthcare workers who were murdered with a precision weapon that completely destroyed the ambulance center they were stationed at.

This is the method of the Israeli military, chaos and insane precision strikes on civilian targets. While many of the killings were clearly ordered up the chain of command when such war crimes are carried out at a pre-approved level, why would soldiers on the ground care about the laws of war? They clearly see that no law applies to them. They don’t even bother changing their tactics often either, an example of this being that the Palestinian Resistance has filmed its operations targeting soldiers who stand in the windows of occupied buildings. Throughout the entire ground war, we see videos of Israeli soldiers making this obvious and stupid mistake. In one case, it appears that an Israeli soldier was smoking marijuana out of a bong when he was killed by a Yassin warhead.

All the abovementioned is meant to say that an invasion of Rafah’s population center, where some 1.4 million displaced civilians are packed into a densely populated area, is understood to be such a major catastrophe because of the nature of what the Israeli military is. This is not a professional army, for the most part, the soldiers are unprepared for what they are sent to face. They are cowardly and trigger-happy, knowing that no consequences will come for opening fire randomly when they freak out. They also have the space to freely carry out their racially and religiously motivated desires by inflicting any pain on civilians that they see fit. The Israeli soldiers know that they will never be held accountable, maybe receiving a slap on the wrist being the worst-case scenario, so they commit unspeakable acts on a daily basis.

Instead of the Israeli military being referred to as an army, it would be more appropriate to call them a collection of ethno-supremacist militias. They do whatever they like and will never be held accountable, serving a population that also believes in their genocidal mentality. There are only three discernable differences between the Israeli militia forces and their Daesh counterparts: Daesh are more willing to die for their sectarian cause, the Israelis inflict much higher civilian death tolls, and they do it with the latest in modern military equipment that is in endless supply from their Western backers.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US contradictory report on Israeli arms: credibility vs. inconsistency

Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

Between “credible and reliable” Israeli assurances that it will use US weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, thus allowing for the further transfer of American arms to “Israel” amid its war on Gaza, and saying it was “reasonable” to assess that “Israel” did use US-supplied weapons that were “inconsistent” with its international humanitarian law obligations, the US seems lost for words when it comes to “Israel’s” use of its arms.

According to the American administration, the Israeli occupation has most likely violated international standards when it came to the protection of civilians in Gaza, the United States Department of State told Congress on Friday, as reported by The New York Times.

While the Israeli occupation is violating international standards, the US argued that there was no justification for withholding military aid.

The State Department report said the Israeli occupation “has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.” However, “Israel” is still not being held accountable for not doing so.

“The results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israeli occupation forces are making sufficient use of said tools, the report acknowledged.

Still, the report, in one of its many contradictions, said the US had no hard proof of Israeli violations in Gaza.

It underlined difficulties faced by Washington in collecting reliable information from Gaza, especially since the Israeli occupation was yet to share complete information to verify whether weapons it had been given by the US were used in specific incidents involving human rights violations.

Finally, somehow, the report differentiates between the broader potential for the Israeli occupation to have breached international law and drawing conclusions based on specific incidents that could substantiate what has been proven as factual time and time again.

For now, it seems that the Biden administration finds assurances given by “Israel”, i.e., mere word of mouth, that it would use US arms consistently with international law, sufficient.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

How Britain Sabotaged Ukraine Peace

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

On April 16th, Foreign Affairs published an investigation, documenting in forensic detail how in May 2022 Kiev was a signature away from a peace deal with Russia “that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees,” which was scuppered by Western powers. The outlet attributes the failure of negotiations to “a number of reasons” – although it’s unambiguously clear the biggest was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson offering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.

For two years, claims and counterclaims have abounded about these peace talks, initiated almost immediately after the conflict began, and why they collapsed. Independent journalists and researchers, the Kremlin, and some foreign officials involved, assert that a favorable settlement was within reach, only to be scuttled at the 11th hour by Western actors. By contrast, Kiev, its supporters, and proxy sponsors have strenuously denied that negotiations were ever taken seriously by either party, while claiming Moscow’s terms were completely unacceptable.

Foreign Affairs has now validated what anti-imperialists have consistently contended. Amicable peace could’ve been achieved in Ukraine at the earliest stages of the proxy conflict, on terms favourable to both parties. Western powers responsible for sabotaging negotiations in service of weakening Russia knew that all along. Yet, they kept this inconvenient reality consciously concealed until now, when the war is unambiguously an unwinnable lost cause for all concerned, bar Moscow.

Still, to have the truth confirmed by Foreign Affairs – an elite US journal published by the notorious, highly influential Council on Foreign Relations – is hugely significant, and the narrative threat posed is evident. Within hours of release, Polish think tank operative Daniel Szeligowski took to X to rubbish the investigation at length, reinforcing the established Western fable that negotiations could never have succeeded, due to Kremlin intransigence, and Ukrainian resolve, in the face of industrial scale Russian war crimes.

Such pushback is only to be expected. After all, Foreign Affairs has raised a number of troublesome questions about the proxy war. In particular, why it continues to grind on today at unsustainable human and financial cost for Kiev and its foreign sponsors. The investigation also confirms Western governments that pushed Ukraine into conflict with its neighbor and historic ally were completely unwilling to come to the country’s rescue, in the event Russia responded to their provocations.

Talks begin, major concessions offered

Foreign Affairs bases its investigation on multiple “draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously,” and interviews “with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments.” It offers a granular timeline of events, “from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down.”

Before then, Vladimir Putin and Zelensky reportedly “surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war.” This included peacefully resolving “their dispute over Crimea during the next 10 to 15 years.” Talks began four days after the invasion in Belarus, with President Aleksandr Lukashenko playing mediator.

Putin appointed a negotiating team led by Vladimir Medinsky, a senior adviser to the Russian president who previously served as culture minister. By his side were deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs, among others. Kiev dispatched Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s political party, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and other senior officials. The individuals involved amply underlines how seriously negotiations were taken by both sides.

By the third round of talks, drafts of a peace treaty began to circulate. Many more materialized over subsequent weeks, as the two sides sought to overcome “substantial disagreements”, refining details face-to-face in a variety of international venues, and via Zoom. In brief, Kiev would accept various limits on the size of its Armed Forces, striking range of any missiles sited on its territory, and number of tanks and armored vehicles it could maintain.

Most crucially, Ukraine would implement the Minsk Accords, “renounce its NATO aspirations and never host NATO forces on its territory,” accepting permanent neutrality. In return for ensuring Russia’s “most basic security interests”, Kiev was free to pursue EU membership, and “security guarantees that would oblige other states to come to Ukraine’s defense if Russia attacked again in the future.”

Those guarantees could extend to “imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force” – “obligations…spelled out with much greater precision than NATO’s Article 5,” Foreign Affairs observes. The outlet suggests this component was the undoing of negotiations, due to Kiev’s “risk-averse Western colleagues”:

“Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security.”

Whitewashing Johnson’s Kiev visit

Foreign Affairs notes that Naftali Bennett, Israeli premier while the talks were ongoing, who was “mediating between the two sides”, has said that he “attempted to dissuade Zelensky from getting stuck on the question of security guarantees.’ He explained, “There is this joke about a guy trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a passerby. I said, ‘America will give you guarantees? It will commit that in several years if Russia violates something, it will send soldiers? After leaving Afghanistan and all that?’ Volodymyr, it won’t happen.’”

Of course, several of Ukraine’s “Western patrons” have sent soldiers to assist in the proxy conflict – most prominently Britain, which in January signed a wide-ranging “security cooperation agreement” with Kiev. Foreign Affairs references Boris Johnson’s visit to the country in April 2022, and how Davyd Arakhamia has claimed the then-Prime Minister “said we won’t sign anything at all… let’s just keep fighting.”

The outlet adds that “already on March 30, Johnson seemed disinclined toward diplomacy, stating that instead ‘we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine.’” So it was that he arrived in Kiev on April 9, “the first foreign leader to visit after the Russian withdrawal from the capital.” Johnson reportedly told Zelensky:

“Any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid… some victory for him. If you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”

Yet, Foreign Affairs downplays Johnson’s intervention, claiming allegations the British premier sabotaged negotiations are “Putin’s manipulative spin.” In support, the outlet notes how despite Moscow’s withdrawal from the northern front resulting in “the gruesome discovery of atrocities that Russian forces had committed in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin,” talks continued thereafter. The two sides worked “around the clock on a treaty that Putin and Zelensky were supposed to sign during a summit to be held in the not-too-distant future”:

“The sides were actively exchanging drafts [and] beginning to share them with other parties… the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast… work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”

‘Bucha Effect’ leads to ‘frozen negotiations’

Bucha may have been a “secondary factor” in Ukrainian decision-making, but it wasn’t from the British government’s perspective. Unmentioned by Foreign Affairs, days before Johnson landed in Kiev, he boldly declared the alleged massacre of civilians in the town by Russian forces didn’t “look far short of genocide,” and “the international community – Britain very much in the front rank – will be moving again in lockstep to impose more sanctions and more penalties on Vladimir Putin’s regime.”

While a subsequent UN investigation failed to validate charges of genocide by Russia in Ukraine, once Johnson deployed the term, many Western officials followed suit. As a result, widespread public and state consent for keeping the proxy war going was very effectively manufactured across Europe and North America. To even speak of a negotiated settlement publicly became beyond the pale. Meanwhile, Britain’s shadowy, spook-infested Counter Disinformation Unit, which censors social media, began policing content related to Bucha online.

What happened in Bucha remains extremely murky. At the time, an anonymous US Defense Intelligence Agency official told Newsweek that civilian deaths could have resulted from “intense” ground combat over control of the town: “We forget two peer competitors fought over Bucha for 36 days, the town was occupied, Russian convoys and positions inside the town were attacked by the Ukrainians and vice versa.” They further warned the “Bucha Effect” had “led to frozen negotiations and a skewed view of the war”:

“I am not for a second excusing Russia’s war crimes nor forgetting that Russia invaded the country. But the number of actual deaths is hardly genocide. If Russia had that objective or was intentionally killing civilians, we’d see a lot more than less than .01 percent in places like Bucha.”

Such anxieties fell on deaf ears, although they reflect a broader resistance to escalating the proxy war on Washington’s part. In December 2022, the BBC reported that British officials were intensely worried about the “innate caution” of US President Joe Biden, “who is… concerned about provoking a wider global conflict.” A nameless state apparatchik revealed that London had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.”

Leaked material shows senior British military and intelligence officials leading London’s contribution to the proxy war are committed to challenging the “US position… firmly and at once.” One can only speculate whether incidents such as the Kerch Bridge bombing, which these officials secretly planned and helped Kiev execute – despite reported US opposition – were intended to escalate the conflict further, and keep Washington embroiled in the quagmire.

We are also left to ponder whether those officials played any role in the massacre of civilians in Bucha, whose names Ukraine refuses to release despite formal Russian requests. Kremlin apparatchiks, and Aleksandr Lukashenko, have claimed to possess evidence British special forces were responsible for the killings. None has emerged since, although why Britain prevented an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Bucha requested by Russia in April 2022 going ahead remains an open question.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ destroyed 53% of Gaza’s water treatment facilities: BBC

Al Mayadeen | May 9, 2024

A new BBC report based on obtained satellite images over Gaza showed that more than half of Gaza’s water sites have been destroyed and contaminated in targeted Israeli aggression.

Data revealed that 53% of the 603 examined water facilities were either destroyed or damaged. Water in the Gaza Strip was already a limited resource dependent on a network of water wells and desalination plants before “Israel” further exacerbated its scarcity.

The report further revealed that out of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment plants, which majorly contributed to the prevention of the accumulation of waste and contaminated waters to curb the spread of diseases, four were either damaged or completely destroyed.

The remaining two were forced to shut down due to the lack of supplies and fuel that kept operations running.

Most affected facilities, according to BBC, were located in northern Gaza, or the vicinity of southern Khan Younis.

It is worth noting that satellite images do not show the extent of Israeli damage and destruction of water facilities in Gaza, or those that stopped operating due to the lack of fuel amid the Israeli-imposed siege on the Strip.

Gaza is drinking unsafe, untreated water

In April, the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that the whole population of Gaza was drinking unsafe water “because of the closure of the public health laboratory and the inability to test drinking water… that puts their lives at risk.”

In its statement, the ministry attributed the disaster to “Israel’s” refusal to allow chlorine or any alternative for testing and treating drinking water.

In addition, the amount of waste accumulating is leading to the spread of disease, the ministry warned, as cases of meningitis and hepatitis have already been detected.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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