Google fires more employees protesting giant deal with Israel
Press TV – April 23, 2024
Google has fired about 20 more employees over recent protests against a deal between the US technology giant and Israel.
The activist group No Tech for Apartheid said on Monday that the new layoffs bring to more than 50 the total number of Google workers dismissed in the past week.
“The corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers and reassert its power over them,” said Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid.
Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company had sacked more employees after continuing its investigation into the April 16 anti-Israel demonstrations, which included sit-ins at offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.
The protesters held posters reading, “No More Genocide For Profit,” “No cloud apartheid,” “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers” and “Don’t be evil, stop retaliation”.
They denounced Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon to supply the Israeli regime with cloud computing services.
The contract dates back to 2021. However, the protests followed a report in Time magazine earlier this month, citing an internal company document, that the Israeli ministry of military affairs is a Google Cloud customer.
No Tech for Apartheid said the report showed that Google had “built custom tools” for the Israeli ministry of military affairs and had “doubled down on contracting” with the regime’s army after the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip began.
Israel waged its brutal war on the besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 34,183 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 77,143 others.
Since the start of the onslaught, the US, Israel’s most dedicated ally, has fast-tracked arms shipments to the occupying regime and blocked UN resolutions that called for a Gaza truce.
US Will Blacklist Israeli Military Unit Accused of Killing an American
“Largely symbolic and easy for Israel to bypass”
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | April 21, 2024
The State Department will place an ultra-Orthodox Israeli military unit on a blacklist preventing US weapons from reaching its soldiers. The sanctions, expected to be announced on Monday, have angered Tel Aviv. The move by Washington follows officials speaking with ProPublica about the White House failing to act even after the State Department determined Israel was in violation of US law.
Axios was the first outlet to report the pending sanctions on Saturday. The US is expected to blacklist the Netzah Yehuda battalion of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The battalion of about 1,000 soldiers makes significant accommodations for ultra-Orthodox Jews who enlist in the IDF.
The White House appears to have made the decision to sanction Netzah Yehuda after ProPublica reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was provided with a report that the Israeli military was committing war crimes in December but has failed to act. It is unclear if Netzah Yehuda was named in that report.
Netzah Yehuda will be placed on a blacklist under the Leahy Laws. Named for former Senator Patrick Leahy, the laws bar US military assistance to foreign militaries that commit war crimes. The sanctions will prevent any US training or weapons from being given to the soldiers in Netzah Yehuda.
Officials speaking with ProPublica said the sanctions could be largely symbolic and easy for Israel to bypass. “Even if Blinken were to approve the sanctions, officials said, Israel could blunt their impact,” the outlet reports. “One approach would be for the country to buy American arms with its own funds and give them to the units that had been sanctioned.”
The US is Israel’s largest arms supplier and gives Tel Aviv $3.8 billion in military aid every year. The White House has remained steadfast in its “ironclad” commitment to provide the IDF with all the weapons it needs to conduct its brutal onslaught in Gaza. On Saturday, the House overwhelmingly voted for an additional $26 billion in military assistance for Tel Aviv.
Soldiers in Netzah Yehuda are likely responsible for the death of Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian man. Assad was traveling in the West Bank in 2022 when IDF troops pulled him over, handcuffed him, and left him in a field lying face-down. When paramedics were finally allowed to reach Assad, he was already dead. Doctors determined he died as a result of a stress-induced heart attack.
The sanctions were recommended to Blinken by the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF). According to State Department officials and an investigative report by the Guardian, the ILVF set up “extraordinary policies” to “benefit” Israel. The ILVF process gives Tel Aviv unprecedented sway over any report the board issues.
Still, Israeli officials were outraged over the impending sanctions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, this is the “height of absurdity and a moral low point” at a time when Israeli soldiers “[are] fighting the terrorist monsters.” Member of the war cabinet Benny Gantz, who is portrayed as Netanyahu’s moderate opposition, stated, “I have great appreciation for our American friends, but the decision to impose sanctions on an IDF unit . . . sets a dangerous precedent.”
Israeli forces kill 14 Palestinians during refugee camp siege in West Bank
Press TV – April 20, 2024
The Israeli regime’s forces have gunned down at least 14 Palestinians, including 10 fighters, during their ongoing days-long siege on Nour Shams, a refugee camp located in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
“So far, our crews have evacuated 14 martyrs from Nour Shams camp to the hospital,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday.
News agencies, meanwhile, reported sighting Israeli drones loitering overhead and armored vehicles roaming throughout the camp.
Earlier, the Palestinian health ministry said it had confirmed that as many as 11 people had been injured by the troops. Seven of those injured had been “wounded by live gunshots,” it said, adding that among the wounded was a paramedic shot while trying to get to the wounded.
Medics had been alerted to “a number of killed and injured” inside the camp, but the army was “denying them access to tend to the wounded,” the ministry noted.
Minister Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, said residents were suffering from the “destruction of homes, shops, the electricity grid, the sewerage, the water network, and infrastructure.”
The Israeli military began its siege on the camp on Thursday, rolling bulldozers into the area, and deploying military vehicles on all routes leading to the camp.
The military began destroying main streets, alleyways, water, and wastewater networks inside the camp.
Reporting on Friday, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency said, “They (Israeli forces) turned some houses into military outposts, deployed snipers and prevented ambulances from entering the camp to evacuate patients.”
Also on Friday, the Israeli military killed Muhammad Samer Jaber, commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, a Palestinian resistance group affiliated with Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Gaza Strip-based Islamic Jihad movement, and a number of resistance fighters.
The Israeli regime has notably escalated its aggression against Palestinians across the West Bank since October 7, when it began an all-out genocidal war on Gaza.
Around 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank ever since the onset of the war that has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 people so far.
US Pumping Ukraine With Weapons to Protract War ‘Up Till Last Ukrainian’ – Moscow
Sputnik – 21.04.2024
MOSCOW – The United States is prepared to pour weapons into Ukraine as long as necessary and spare no Ukrainian lives to make sure that its proxy continues fighting Russia, including via terrorist attacks and killings of journalists, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.
“The ruling elites in the US, regardless of party affiliation, are ready to arm the regime in Kiev so that it will be able to fight up till the last Ukrainian and continue, among other things, terrorist attacks on civilian targets on Russian territory, sabotage attacks and killing journalists,” the ministry said in a statement.
The White House is no longer counting on a “mythical Ukrainian victory,” but wants the Ukrainian army to hold out at least until the presidential election in the US, in order not to ruin the image of US President Joe Biden, the ministry noted.
“The actions of the US, as a de facto party to the conflict, will be unconditionally and decisively rebuffed, and Washington’s ever-deeper plunge into hybrid warfare against Russia will turn out to be as loud and humiliating of a fiasco for the United States as it was in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In any case, the feverish attempts to save [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s neo-Nazi regime are doomed to failure. The goals and objectives of the special military operation will be fully achieved,” the ministry added.
On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would unlock $60.84 billion in Ukraine-related aid, if approved by the Senate.
‘Pariah’ Israel Dragging US ‘Into Garbage Bin of History’
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 20.04.2024
On Friday, the US vetoed granting Palestine full membership in the UN, which was promised to the Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. The US has been Israel’s strongest supporter in the UN, previously vetoing three ceasefire resolutions before finally allowing a fourth to pass through abstention last month.
Earlier, Israel struck Iran in response to Iran’s attack last week, which was itself a response to Israel attacking Iran’s consulate in Damascus earlier this month. The attack, which was described by both sides as minor, came after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not respond until after Passover, which runs from April 22 to April 30.
Israel’s apparent insistence on launching a regional war in the Middle East is dragging the United States with it “Into the garbage bin of history,” and US lawmakers seem willing to watch it happen, journalist Esteban Carrillo, the head of news at The Cradle, told Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday.
While discussing the recent US vote against Palestinian statehood in the UN, Carrillo explained that it is working against US interests.
“It’s completely a case of the tail wagging the dog. And US politicians just seem so content to just go along with it,” he explained. “What does Netanyahu have over the heads of these people? Because it doesn’t seem like they are even willing to consider at this point stepping away from this pariah that is just dragging them down into the garbage bin of history.”
Tensions between Iran and Israel seem to have cooled somewhat after Israel’s attack was so minor. Explosions were heard near an Iranian base outside of Isfahan, but Iran claimed there was no damage or injuries. A second attack against the city of Tabriz was likewise thwarted.
The attack, which Iran claims came from within its own territory, seemed designed to make Israel not appear “as weak as they are,” Carrillo explained. “After six months of flattening Gaza and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, they have failed to achieve a single strategic objective against Hamas.”
However, the small scope of the attack also seemed designed to allow Israel to “play tough guy” without igniting a larger conflict.
“Iran’s response over [Friday morning’s] attack is essentially summed up in ‘what strike? What happened? Our air defenses took everything down,’” said Carrillo.
But that doesn’t mean Israel is finished. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still determined to keep the war going to ward off political and legal challenges facing him. “I don’t think that we’re out of the water yet in terms of [Israel] dragging the United States into a regional war,” Carrillo explained, adding earlier that it isn’t hard to convince US lawmakers to join fights. “The United States government for so long now, hasn’t seen a war they didn’t want to be a part of.”
“The Israeli government currently, I don’t see them having an exit. They retaliated in such a small way overnight against Iran. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to try to do something in Lebanon, and that doesn’t mean at all that they’re not going to try to do something in Gaza,” Carrillo said, noting reports that the US is now on board with an Israeli plan to invade the southern Gazan city of Rafa, where roughly 1.5 million Palestinians fled to after being forcibly displaced by Israel.
Ukraine strikes hospital in Donbass, injuring eight – authorities
RT | April 18, 2024
Ukrainian troops have struck a hospital and blood donation center in the Donbass town of Gorlovka, the head of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, has said. Eight civilians including a child were injured in the attack.
The victims sustained non-life-threatening injuries in the strike, Pushilin wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
The Ukrainian forces “deliberately” targeted the town center where healthcare facilities are located, he claimed. Both the hospital and the donation center were damaged in the strike.
Gorlovka Mayor Ivan Prikhodko published photos and videos from the scene showing damaged buildings, including the hospital and the blood donor center. The images show smashed windows and the area nearby littered with debris. One clip also showed destroyed and damaged furniture in a room at the healthcare facility.
Kiev’s troops used the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) in the attack, according to preliminary data gathered by the Russian authorities.
Washington has sent dozens of these multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine since mid-2022. The systems provided to Kiev have a range of up to 160km (100 miles) when equipped with longer-range ATACMS missiles. Other projectiles launched by HIMARS and available to the Ukrainian military have a range of around 70km.
According to Pushilin, Kiev’s forces carried out a total of 12 attacks on Thursday – missile and drone strikes – targeting Gorlovka as well as Donetsk and some other Donbass settlements. Cluster munitions were used in some of these attacks, the official said.
Last week, Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike targeting a machinery plant in the city of Lugansk. Nine people were injured, including seven machinery plant workers and two local residents, the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, said at that time. UK-supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles were used in that assault, according to Russian law enforcement.
The collapse of the concept of a rules-based international order
By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – 18.04.2024
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States believed that a unipolar world would last forever: year after year, day after day, it became increasingly blatant in its disregard for the interests of others and the opinions of the rest of the world.
Then the concept of an international “rules-based order” was born: a group of American scholars, former and future officials, presented a paper at Princeton in 2006 entitled “A World of Freedom Under Law”. They framed this as a response to the weaknesses of international law, suggesting that when international institutions fail to produce the outcomes preferred by the “world of freedom”, there is “an alternative forum for liberal democracies to authorise collective action”. In practice, this forum has most often been the White House.
During the Libyan crisis of 2011, the United States and its allies used Security Council authorisation for a no-fly zone to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
American troops have now been operating in eastern Syria for more than eight years – yet there is no justification in international law for their presence.
Even American political scientists describe this concept as a kind of asterisk placed over international law. The “rules-based order” absolves the US and its allies of responsibility and fundamentally undermines the concept of international law. US policymakers use this theory to entrench US advantages as a global power. When the prerogatives and rules of international law coincide with the canons they establish, Washington calls them synonymous. Thus, on the eve of February 2022, i.e. the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, Secretary Blinken warned of a moment of danger for “the foundations of the United Nations Charter and the rules-based international order that preserves stability around the world”, but when US prerogatives diverge from international law, the concept of a “rules-based order” comes into play, which “should ultimately benefit global stability”.
A prime example is the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which the George W. Bush administration cynically justified as a means of enforcing UN disarmament mandates. Iraq was declared an invader, it survived the military occupation, the death toll of Iraqis is approaching 1 million, and the country is still reeling from America’s brazen attack.
Washington’s military and economic might at the time ensured that America would face few consequences for invading without UN authorisation.
The very concept of a “rules-based order” set America at odds with the rest of the world, which recognised that international relations were becoming multipolar. Many leaders of developing countries, especially Russia, China, India and Brazil, talked about the same thing. Even American allies tried to show the flaws in the concept. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warned of the “undeniable danger of US unilateralism”, and former French Minister Hubert Védrine once said that “France’s entire foreign policy … is aimed at making tomorrow’s world consist of several poles, not just one”.
According to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, the US was carried away by a show of force, disregarding the opinions of even its allies and international organisations, and then went off on its own to gain the advantage.
The Gaza war drew a final line under the concept of the “rules-based order”: on 25 March, 14 members of the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza, with the US abstaining. The resolution became a legally enforceable document, but Israel, unwilling to accept UN mandates, continued to bomb the southern town of Rafah and besiege Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, a spokesman for the Biden administration called Resolution No. 2728 “non-binding”, in a clear attempt to deny its status as international law. At a State Department press briefing, the spokesman said the measure would not lead to an immediate ceasefire or affect the complex hostage negotiations.
International law is clearly against what Israel is doing in Gaza. 2 months before Resolution No. 2728 was adopted, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s ongoing campaign could plausibly be considered genocide and called on Israel to take measures to prevent genocide.
On the eve of the passage of Bill 2728, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion to halt new arms transfers to Israel. On the day the Security Council adopted the resolution, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recommended that member states “immediately” impose an arms embargo on Israel for failing to comply with mandatory measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
After the above resolution was passed, White House national security spokesman John Kirby clarified that American arms shipments and sales to Israel would not be affected, while the State Department stated, and the White House later confirmed, that “there are no incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.
All of this comes after Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced and permanently starved two million people in Gaza. In addition, the Israeli military bombed a convoy of aid workers from the World Central Kitchen.
The crux of the matter is that Washington is arming a country that has been ordered by the Security Council to cease hostilities. Washington’s actions are at odds with reality: the massacre in Gaza has made many foreign figures and organisations reluctant to listen to American officials on other issues. According to US press reports, Annelle Sheline, a State Department human rights official who recently resigned, said that some activist groups in North Africa have simply stopped meeting with her and her colleagues: “Trying to defend human rights has simply become impossible as long as the US is helping Israel,” she said.
Two years ago, US diplomats seeking support for Ukraine faced “a very clear negative reaction to America’s penchant for defining the global order and forcing countries to take sides”. In this regard, the New York Times concluded on 10 April this year that “Resolution No. 2728, which passed without result, may well be remembered as a watershed moment in the decline of the ‘rules-based international order’ – that is, the world the United States seeks to build and preserve… Gaza is a chilling reminder that in a world of exceptions to international law, it is the least powerful who suffer the most.
All these developments were accurately characterised by China’s Permanent Representative to the UN, who described the US statements and actions as incompatible with the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and said that Washington was undermining the authority of the Security Council.
West’s backing of Israel after Iran’s retaliation ‘reckless, irresponsible’: Legal analyst
By Alireza Hashemi – Press TV – April 2024
A legal analyst has criticized Western countries for mischaracterizing Iran’s defensive military action in response to Israel’s attack on the country’s diplomatic mission in Syria, warning that the “reckless” and “irresponsible” position could embolden the regime to launch more attacks.
In an interview with the Press TV website on Wednesday, three days after Iran’s retaliatory military action, Reza Nasri touched on the legality of the Iranian response to the Israeli aggression.
“By misrepresenting Iran’s act of self-defense as an act of aggression, Western countries are effectively paving the ground for Benjamin Netanyahu to justify yet another attack on Iran,” he said.
Nasri was referring to Western leaders rallying behind Israel following Iran’s retaliation on Sunday.
He said the irony is these Western countries call for de-escalation on one hand and at the same time – by misrepresenting Iran’s legitimate act of self-defense – give Netanyahu the pretext to justify yet another attack on Iran and to consequently expand the war to the entire region.
“I believe those Western countries’ position is not only inconsistent with international law but it is reckless and highly irresponsible,” the political analyst and international lawyer stressed.
The pattern of Israeli aggression
Nasri emphasized that Iran’s military operation was not an unprovoked attack but a legitimate response to a series of unauthorized acts of aggression by the Israeli regime targeting Iranian interests.
“Iran’s military operation was not an ‘attack’ that occurred in a vacuum but a ‘response’ to an illegal armed attack by Israel that followed a series of previous acts of aggression against Iranian interests in the region,” the analyst asserted.
Nasri, whose expertise lies in international law, explained that Iran’s action was justified under the right of self-defense as outlined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
Referring to allegations that Iran’s attack endangered and harmed civilians, the analyst pointed out that Iran’s operation targeted only Israeli military bases and avoided civilian infrastructure and hence it was compliant with the principle of proportionality in international humanitarian law (IHL).
“Unlike Israel, Iran did not target any civilian residence, hospital, school, synagogue, bakery, water storage, journalist, ambulance, or nursery! It conducted a spectacular attack in which only the military bases from which Israel conducted its initial aggression were hit and damaged,” he remarked.
“Had Iran intended to inflict significant damage to Israeli towns and infrastructure, it would have used more of the same supersonic missiles it used to target Israel’s military bases or launched a third or fourth wave of attacks after Israel’s air defense system was exhausted. So, Iran’s response was proportionate and in compliance with norms and principles of IHL.”
Nasri said Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian consulate, unlike Iran’s military operation in response, was an illegal act of aggression violating the UN Charter and the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic relations.
“The Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy constituted an illegal act of aggression in violation of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter and blatant breach of the principle of “inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises” as enshrined in the 1961 and 1963 Vienna conventions,” he noted.
Iran’s response was deemed necessary due to a series of lethal strikes by Israel against Iranian interests in the region, which had resulted in the assassinations of prominent Iranian officials and military commanders, Nasri explained.
“The armed attack against the Iranian embassy – coupled with the pattern of Israeli acts of aggression on previous occasions – led Iran to the assessment that further military attacks were looming large and that it was necessary to mitigate the threat through military action, as any other country would have in similar circumstances,” he hastened to add.
“Even the UK foreign minister – Mr. David Cameron – stated in a recent interview that the UK would have taken ‘very strong action’ had any country conducted an attack against his country’s diplomatic and consular premises abroad.”
UNSC must protect international peace
The analyst underscored the responsibilities of international bodies in preventing further escalation, urging the UN Security Council to fulfill its duties by recognizing Iran’s right to self-defense in the face of aggression and condemning Israel’s threat to use force against Iran, which violates the UN Charter.
“In principle, it should at this point condemn Israel’s current threat to use force against Iran – which constitutes a violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter – and take the necessary measures to prevent further escalation,” he said. “Normally, the Security Council should endorse an act of self-defense against an act of aggression, not the other way around,” Nasri stated.
“Israel must understand that it cannot conduct an unlawful armed attack against a sovereign country’s embassy in a third country, then pledge to militarily attack that state again once the latter takes legitimate measures of self-defense.”
Kiev regime promotes terror in liberated Donbass’ regions
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 16, 2024
The Kiev regime continues to promote terror in peaceful regions of the Russian Federation to disguise its defeat on the front lines. On April 13, several Western missiles were launched by Ukraine against the capital of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), destroying civilian structures. The absolute absence of any military objective makes the attack terrorist according to international law.
Although there are still hostilities in LPR, the oblast’s capital and surrounding cities are almost completely pacified. The city of Lugansk – capital of the LRP – is a region quite far from the front lines, which is why civilian life is gradually returning to normal, with ordinary people moving freely through the streets even under circumstances of martial law. In December I was in LPR as a correspondent and wrote important reports about the situation on the ground. At the time, I emphasized the advanced pacification process in Lugansk.
However, the Kiev regime does not seem willing to allow peace to prevail in the New Regions of Russia. Recently, neo-Nazi forces launched missile attacks against the capital of LPR, hitting a machinery factory that was about to be opened. As expected, this was another attack against civilian targets, without any military relevance. The reason for the incursion appears to be related to the Ukrainian objective of preventing life from returning to normal in Donbass, as this factory would employ dozens of people and accelerate the process of economic stabilization in Lugansk.
The attack injured at least three civilians, according to data published by the Coordination Council of Reintegration of New Regions. This was the first Ukrainian attack on Lugansk City in ten months. The region is one of the safest in Donbass, considering the distance from the “zero line” – where infantry troops fight. The people of Lugansk have long lived peacefully, but Kiev clearly wants to prevent security from prevailing.
It must be emphasized that it is not easy for Kiev to reach the capital of LPR, with most of the missiles launched being neutralized by Russian defense artillery. The attack on the 13th was successful because Kiev used long-range British missiles, the well-known Storm Shadow projectiles – capable of reaching more than 250km. At least two of these missiles were launched against LPR, which made the attack successful. The last successful attack against the city of Lugansk was in May 2023, also using Storm Shadow projectiles. At the time, neo-Nazi forces attacked a food factory and a home goods store, injuring dozens of people.
As we can see, Ukrainian attacks use lethal Western weapons to destroy civilian facilities and harm ordinary people, without any strategic purpose. The bombings in LPR come amid a recent wave of terrorist raids against civilian areas, including Zaparozhye, where, in addition to constant attacks on the nuclear power plant, three children were murdered in an artillery attack in the city of Tokmak on April 13. It is also necessary to remember that terror continues to spread on Russian borders, with Belgorod and Kursk being attacked by missiles and drones in terrorist operations that constantly generate civilian casualties.
Losing on the battlefield, the neo-Nazi regime uses terror to divert the attention of the global media and pretend that it still has some kind of chance to cause damage to the Russian Federation. The deliberate murder of civilians has become commonplace for Ukrainian troops, who frequently target non-military targets in peaceful regions to make it appear that they are having some strategic success – thus justifying the delivery of more weapons from NATO.
Moscow has already shown that it will not respond to terror with terror. While Russian civilians are killed, retaliations are only carried out against legitimate targets (military and critical infrastructure facilities). For Ukraine it would be very advantageous if Moscow attacked Ukrainian civilian targets, as this would generate arguments to boost the NATO war machine against Russia, but for its part Russia continues to understand this war as a conflict against the neo-Nazi regime and its sponsors, not against the Ukrainian people.
However, the constant use of Western weapons in these terrorist incursions tends to generate a serious escalation not only in the conflict, but also in the diplomatic sphere. Ties between Russia and the West will become increasingly unfriendly as Russian civilians are targeted by Western missiles.
Over 350 Humanitarian Sites and Convoys Have Been Attacked in Gaza
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | April 16, 2024
Prior to the Israeli military’s slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza this month, Middle East Eye (MEE) reports that at least 357 humanitarian-run sites and convoys had been attacked.
As with the incident involving the slain WCK workers which included an American citizen, the humanitarian orgs shared their coordinates in advance of operations with the warring parties. Israel hit them anyway and UN officials have warned of great difficulty in repairing the broken humanitarian notification system.
Current data shows that at least 216 aid workers have been killed during Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and relentless war on the Palestinian people trapped in the besieged, highly dense, coastal enclave. Aid workers told MEE the “scale of the incidents was unprecedented, even compared to the most dangerous war zones and emergencies they have experienced.” The vast majority of aid workers slaughtered have been employed by UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees.
Nearly 34,000 people have been confirmed killed so far amidst Israel’s genocidal campaign, including more than 20,000 women and children. Brice de la Vingne, the head of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency unit said “To be frank, every single day we are discussing internally whether to leave Gaza. We should not be there.” He added, “The level of risk we are taking, I’ve never seen.”
He explained that aid operations in other wars are conducted outside the areas of actual fighting but the entire Strip has become a war zone. “In Gaza, we are in this nightmarish hell scenario where we are working in an environment where people are not supposed to be,” Vingne lamented.
According to the report, “The majority of the hits to deconfliction humanitarian sites – 352 – were to locations run by UNRWA, the largest aid organization operating in Gaza, including a food distribution center and schools sheltering thousands of civilians.”
MEE also found there were at least five other occasions where humanitarian sites or convoys were attacked including “a compound in Al-Mawasi housing staff working for the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine, the Gaza City offices of Doctors of the World, a [MSF] convoy in Gaza City and an MSF shelter in Al-Mawasi, and an American Near East Refugee (ANERA) shelter in Deir al-Balah.”
Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement of a new deconfliction cell for humanitarian aid groups, Jamie McGoldrick, the outgoing top UN aid official in Gaza, told the outlet “nothing substantive” has changed. Two weeks after the high-profile massacre of the WCK employees, communication between aid workers and the Israeli military regarding their location remains broken down or non-existent.
McGoldrick, whose final day at the post was last Friday, maintains that aid workers in the Gaza Strip require not only a hotline to correspond directly with the IDF but also must be provided with satellite phones and two-way radios. In other conflict zones, this is standard operating procedure. Not so amid Israel’s onslaught in the Strip, however, these devices are not furnished to aid workers ostensibly because the IDF fears they will fall into the hands of Hamas.
As Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war, the entire population in Gaza is on the brink of famine. Officials from the State Department and USAID have admitted that famine is already taking place in the northern parts of the Strip, where McGoldrick has warned that despite Israeli assurances the aid distribution system has seen no improvement.
The broken deconfliction system for aid workers in the Strip will only spell more deaths of deprivation, experts estimate that the death toll will surpass 100,000 by August if the situation remains unchanged. Moreover, Gaza’s medical system and infrastructure has been decimated by the Israeli campaign. Last month, the World Health Organization released statistics exposing that in excess of 400 medical facilities have been hit, killing nearly 700 people.
The Israeli air, land, and sea blockade imposed on the illegally occupied enclave 17 years ago was severely tightened after the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel. Gallant announced days later that the “human animals” living in the Strip, which includes more than a million children, will be indefinitely cut off from food, water, fuel, and medicine.
After the WCK massacre, the group ended its operations in Gaza along with ANERA. WCK had been providing more hot meals in Gaza than UNRWA and the World Food Program combined. In January, Israel launched a propaganda war against UNWRA by accusing some of their employees of having ties to Hamas and the October 7th attack.
More than a dozen Western countries including the United States stripped funding for the vital agency, over Tel Aviv’s claims which were supported by no evidence. UNRWA has since revealed that its aid workers were subjected to rape and waterboarding at the hands of the IDF seeking to extract just such spurious confessions.
During previous Israeli wars against Lebanon and Gaza, there was significant communication between the UN and COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing the occupied territories, as well as its ancillary the Civilian Liaison Administration which is focused on the Strip. This is now not taking place.
If aid workers experience a security risk or incident, when they are enroute to a destination or attempting to pass through a checkpoint, it is not possible to communicate with the IDF.
McGoldrick explained to MEE, the UN “should have pushed harder earlier in the conflict to get closer to the Israeli military, if not physically embedding someone in a joint operations room, then at least being able to have a face-to-face conversation online, in real time.” This is imperative for two reasons, he said, “First, they understand better what you do and how you do it. Secondly, you can build trust in terms of what your expectations are on both sides.”
According to Grisha Yakubovich, the former chief of COGAT until 2016, previous Israeli bombing sprees against the open-air concentration camp saw UN and COGAT officials meet on a virtually daily basis to share plans for the next 24 hours. Yakubovich told the Washington Post this is not the case anymore because Israel’s military practically refuses to work with the UN. The IDF cites their lies about UN employees’ alleged ties with Hamas to justify the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe the Israeli war has wrought.
Other aid agencies besides the UN have expressed great frustration over the lack of a clear response, if any, when their sites are bombed by Israeli pilots. For instance, the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine says the Israeli authorities gave six different explanations for why an F-16 jet targeted one of their stand-alone compounds with a 1,000 pound “smart bomb” in January, weeks after their coordinates had been shared.
“It is clear from this experience that the Israeli military and government are either unable or unwilling to properly investigate this serious incident,” the group stated.
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New Book
New Book: No Autoimmunity The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
Lies are Unbekoming | September 24, 2026
The label for Humira, once the best-selling drug in the world, lists its risks in plain print. One of them, in the label’s own words, is new “autoimmune” disease.
A drug prescribed for a condition labelled autoimmune carries a warning that it can cause a condition labelled autoimmune. That contradiction sits in every box, on a folded paper almost nobody reads.
My new book starts there.
No Autoimmunity: The Body Doesn’t Attack Itself
For seventy years, “your body is attacking itself, and we don’t know why” has ended the conversation for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s, Type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s and psoriasis. More than eighty conditions now carry the autoimmune label. The diagnosis comes with a prescription for life. It almost never comes with a question about cause.
This book asks the question and answers it from the framework’s own records: its drug labels, its journals, its regulatory filings, and its own experiments. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Turkish parliament to review Saudi-Pakistan defense pact next month
- DEATH SPIKES & RISING CANCER IN OUR YOUTH EXPLAINED
- Iran offers Trump deal before US election
- Merz regime wants ‘secret police’ – opposition
- Israeli settlers terrorize West Bank Palestinians with state-provided drones: Report
- They see them, then kill them: Israeli quadcopters track, deliberately target civilians in Gaza
- Debunked: Trump’s egregious UNGA claims on war against Iran crumble under scrutiny
- Europe was part of the infrastructure of US aggression against Iran: Deputy FM
- New evidence on the Bucha Massacre
- Italy and France debunk reports CIA issued ‘Russian drone threat’ warning
- If Americans Knew
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- Israel displaces hundreds of Palestinians amid wave of demolitions in West Bank
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
