The Israeli army has unleashed its soldiers in the Gaza Strip to not only kill, but to engage in immoral activities such as property theft and looting during raids on Palestinian civilian homes, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement issued Friday.
Euro-Med Monitor reported on a number of cases that show Israeli soldiers participating in and witnessing the deliberate theft of the assets and money of Palestinian civilians, including laptop computers, gold, and large quantities of cash. Israel’s army has been conducting ground military operations in the Gaza Strip since October, the rights group said. These operations have included raiding homes, storming residential areas, and conducting arbitrary arrest campaigns against civilians.
According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army’s crimes extend beyond arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and field executions. They also involve the intentional destruction of property, the theft of personal belongings, and the looting and burning of homes—all part of a systematic strategy that is evidently based on collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Based on the testimonies it has been documenting, the Euro-Med Monitor team stated that its preliminary estimates suggest that the Israeli army may have looted valuable possessions worth tens of millions of dollars, in addition to stealing personal belongings from Palestinian civilians.
Palestinian Thabet Salim, 40, told Euro-Med Monitor’s team that he and his two sons were taken into custody by the Israeli army from their house in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, in the south of Gaza City, and that members of the army had pilfered all of the gold and cash that was on hand. Salim said that he had been released alone two days ago, while his sons’ fate remains unknown.
“The amount of money the soldiers took from my house is worth more than 10,000 US dollars,” Salim declared, “plus nearly the same amount of gold from my wife, and the wife of my eldest son.”
A woman named Umm Muhammad Gharbiyya, who lives in the Al-Shuja’iya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that the Israeli forces forcibly took her gold jewellery after violently breaking into her family’s house earlier this month. Her husband and oldest son were also arrested during the raid.
Hussein Al-Tanani, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in the north of Gaza City, said that they were surprised to find their house had been raided by the Israeli army following their escape to a nearby United Nations school in order to seek shelter from Israeli attacks. A computer and large amounts of cash had been stolen, while a big mess was left inside the house.
The testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor teams confirm reports by the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate’s so-called “intelligence collection and technical spoils” unit that were published by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on 15 December. The reports say that the Israeli army “seized” sums of money exceeding five million Israeli shekels (about $1,351,350 USD).
Euro-Med Monitor reported that the aforementioned amount of money is likely only a small portion of the unreported thefts carried out by Israeli forces. At the same time, footage swept social media (its date as well as the precise context of the incident could not be verified by the time of this publication) showing three Israeli soldiers personally selling gold jewellery in a West Bank store after stealing it from a house in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s soldiers themselves have published videos on social media platforms documenting their deliberate sabotage of civilian homes in the Gaza Strip, Euro-Med Monitor pointed out, or their spraying of racist Zionist slogans on walls, in addition to bragging about seizing Palestinians’ money and valuable possessions.
Alia Al-Najjar, 34, affirmed in press statements that she recognised some of her own gold jewellery, which she had previously kept with her mother’s belongings, in one of the videos published by Israeli soldiers. Among the items Al-Najjar saw in the video was a bracelet she had purchased with her first teaching salary, which was a unique 24-carat gold leaf-shaped piece.
She said that in the video clip, an Israeli soldier displays her bracelet inside Al-Najjar’s mother’s cloth purse, which also holds other gold pieces and cherished items. She made a comment on the video, calling the soldiers “thieves” before the poster removed the video.
Another Israeli soldier appears in a video clip showing off a silver necklace that says “Made in Gaza” and promising to give it to his girlfriend, while additional footage shows a different soldier carrying a guitar and singing above the debris of demolished homes in the Gaza Strip.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called for a comprehensive and impartial international investigation to be launched into the grave Israeli violations against the residents of the Gaza Strip and their property, and for the international community to take urgent measures to ensure that Israel is held legally accountable.
Palestinians taken hostage by Israeli soldiers during a ground operation in the Ez-Zeytun neighborhood to the east of the besieged Gaza Strip, have alleged that they were subjected to various forms of torture by military personnel, Anadolu Agency reports.
Those detained during Israel’s Oct. 27 ground operation in the neighborhood spoke to Anadolu after their release.
They described enduring threats and brutal torture, including severe beatings, electric shocks and hanging by their legs for hours, during the time they were detained.
Blindfolded, taken to unknown locations
Cihad Yasin, 43, said his detention was terrifying and brutal.
Yasin told Anadolu that the Israeli army detained him for 11 days and he was tortured with electric shocks.
He was chained and endured severe and lasting torture.
Yasin stated that Israeli forces blindfolded and transported Palestinians to unknown locations.
Israeli soldiers detained people, keeping them bound without food for two days, he said.
Yasin said Israeli soldiers sprayed unknown substances on them that attracted insects.
Emphasizing that the soldiers took them to different unknown places, he said: “Later, they left us naked outdoors in the cold.”
Yasin revealed that due to torture, including electric shocks, the detainees could not sleep and were forced to remain on their knees until midnight.
He mentioned being woken up by soldiers in the early morning after they managed to sleep for a few hours.
Stressing that Israeli soldiers gave them bad food with mold, he said, they were forced to ingest hallucination-inducing pills.
“I still suffer headaches and dizziness from beatings and pills. No news about my family in Gaza; worried about their safety,” he added.
Israeli soldiers were given spoiled and moldy food
Mahmud el-Alul, another detainee who was released in the Ez-Zeytun neighborhood, said soldiers gave them spoiled food.
Al-Alul said soldiers brought three pieces of spoiled bread for each detainee. Despite having their hands and feet tied, they would place the bread in front of them.
“We couldn’t take and eat it. During my week of detention, I refused to eat due to the spoiled food and remained hungry,” he said.
“Israeli soldiers refused to untie our hands and feet when we needed to use the restroom,” he said.
Detainees faced torture for talking among themselves
Alul said soldiers subjected him and others to severe beatings and described being forced to stay on their knees with hands tied for six hours at the beginning of the detention.
He recounted being marched to different areas in Israel for at least six hours, during which soldiers brutally beat those who could not recall their ID numbers and punished detainees who spoke among themselves by hanging them by their feet for hours.
Severe attacks launched on Ez-Zeytun neighborhood
Due to the attacks on the Ez-Zeytun neighborhood, forcibly displaced Palestinian Hanan Avde told Anadolu that Israeli forces suddenly attacked homes in the early morning, even though there were people inside.
“We thought our house would collapse on us. Later, women and children started screaming in fear. We heard Israeli soldiers instructing us to come out of the house one by one. Israeli soldiers didn’t allow us to take any bags or belongings with us,” said Avde, adding that the soldiers separated women and children from the men.
Despite the cold weather, they told men to remove their clothes, confiscated their IDs, phones and money, then took them outside, said Avde.
Later they heard gunshots but they have no information about the fate of the men, he said.
Avde pointed out that Israeli soldiers detained children, including a 16-year-old, and she was threatened with death when she tried to resist.
Detainees forcibly displaced
Avde revealed that Israeli forces forced women and children with white flags to move to the southern Gaza Strip.
Blindfolded, they were taken to the Al-Kuwait intersection near the checkpoint, where Israeli military vehicles and bulldozers were present.
One of the soldiers at the checkpoint randomly selected women for interrogation while instructing others to quickly leave the area. He left the women as late-night conflict sounds echoed from everywhere, she said.
Avde mentioned that her husband was released after being detained in the attack on Ez-Zeytun neighborhood, but she still does not know the fate of her child.
“My husband had some health issues before the attacks. His health deteriorated further due to the brutal torture during detention. He is currently hospitalized at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital,” she added.
Closing days of the book I am writing for and with Dr. James Thorp, I tackled, this evening, the persona, the figure, the puppet, the vaccine “brand ambassador” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who kicked off—as you know—a mass die off event of American babies at every stage of gestation, and after birth.
Once they branded the shots as “safe and effective” in pregnancy, they were able to psychologically roll in and colonize the whole world.
Naturally, Walensky came from the AIDS cabal.
I listened to this exchange between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Walensky, and felt the familiar despair of watching corporate public health murderers wriggle free because they do not recognize language. Rather, they deploy their own. They answer something not asked. They answer concrete questions about mass death with goal-post moving deflections about how great their apparatus is.
This is the stuff of very advanced narcissists. Or maybe “public health officials” are their own category of narcissists. (Presumptuous, false, no soul, no empathy, very busy cleaning up the world of all that lives.)
Still, I don’t know how to write about this person, Rochelle Walensky. It’s impossible to know anything about her.
When you watch this, if you watch it, consider my (forthcoming in 2024) new direction, which is to analyze how Monarch programming operates.
The two women sound very different. How does Walensky manage to not break a sweat, manage to say so sanguine?
Also, why didn’t she “have any plans” for a new position after leaving the CD? And why did she leave? Or why was she fired? She performed perfectly.
Here she speaks to the CDC’s desire to “vaccinate” perfectly healthy children.
Kevin Barrett is editor at Veterans Today who joins us. Welcome to the program, Kevin Barrett. I’m not too sure whether I should talk about the reference that the Osama Hamdan, the senior Hamas leader there, made to the Israeli regime force who wanted to kill children or to the other aspect of this war. But let’s start with that one in particular, which is pretty gruesome and pretty shocking. Why do you think the Israeli soldiers are acting in that way unless they’re being maybe instructed to kill babies? But then again, isn’t that part of their psyche in terms of the training that they received in the past in their military?
Yes, the Israeli military is notorious for deliberately targeting and murdering children. Chris Hedges wrote about that in his famous article “A Gaza Diary” from 15 years ago, maybe 20, I think, actually. And he described how he had been in war zones and witnessed atrocities before, but until he went to Gaza, he had never seen soldiers barking out obscene insults over their bullhorns in order to lure Palestinian children within range of their gun sights so that they could be shot for sport. And he witnessed that happen to several Palestinian children. It’s a common occurrence. The sport shooting of children is a regular part of what the Israeli Defense Forces do. And they never face any kind of justice. Because it’s open season on Palestinian childfen.
The Israeli Defense Forces hand out t-shirts that say, “one shot, two kills,” and they show a pregnant Palestinian woman with a target on her belly.
They are proud of killing children. Ayelet Shaked, the former Justice Minister, is notorious for calling for the mass murder of Palestinian children. She called them “little snakes.” And she said Israel should also kill their mothers. So there is something deep in the Israeli psyche that is twisted, mentally ill. They hate Palestinian children and want to kill them.
In this current war in Gaza there are mainstream Western reports attesting to the fact that Israel soldiers have been lured into ambushes by the resistance fighters broadcasting recorded sounds of children. The Israelis are always going to want to kill the children. That lures them into the ambush. And the Israeli military even admitted to this. So these are psychotic, genocidal child killers. And they are terrorists.
The Palestinian side is rationally calculating a military operation and trying to diplomatically negotiate a solution. The Israeli side is just psychotic and genocidal and they want to exterminate Amalek, as Netanyahu said, referring to the Hebrew Bible ordering the complete extermination of every man, woman, child and baby and even animal.
So there’s something deeply wrong with the Israeli psyche.
So when you take a look at the future here, what are we looking at? At this point we are hearing about the losses that the Israeli regime forces are suffering on the ground, but it’s not to the point where I don’t think they’re going to throw the white flag in. So are we looking at a war of attrition here? Are we looking at a long ways to go when it comes to this genocidal war?
It’s really just a matter of how long the world puts up with genocide. And the longer it waits, the worse it will look in the eyes of history.
I have no idea at what point the proverbial straw will break the camel’s back and the relevant forces in the world will shift enough to the point that the Zionists feel that they have no choice but to stop the genocide.
It could be a combination of things: Pressure from the Ansarullah forces of Yemen, who have been heroically targeting Israeli shipping and imposing their own blockade on the Israelis, who are of course themselves imposing a genocidal blockade on food, water, and medicine and fuel in Gaza. So that’s the biggest factor that’s got the Americans concerned about the possibility of a wider war. Naturally Netanyahu wants a wider war, because his whole political career, and maybe his staying out of jail, depends on his keeping the war going, and seeing how much mass murder of civilians he can get away with.
The resistance forces have been good at managing things to avoid the escalation that could lead to something utterly disastrous for the region. At this point Yemen is the only country meaningfully pressuring the US to put an end to this genocide.
South Africa has filed an appeal before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, alleging that Israeli actions in Gaza amount to “genocide” and asking for “provisional measures” to stop it, the top UN court announced on Friday.
The application claims “acts and omissions by Israel… are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group,” the ICJ said in a statement.
Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians in Gaza “is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention,” the government in Pretoria said. They also accused Israel of having “failed to prevent genocide” and “failed to prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide” since October 7.
“Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
South Africa also asked the ICJ to “indicate provisional measures” in order to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm” to Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. The ICJ also published the 84-page document that lists these measures in detail, first of which is for Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza.”
Pretoria also demands of West Jerusalem to stop any and all attacks on Palestinians, and to revoke any orders whose goal is “the expulsion and forced displacement from their homes” or deprivation of access to food, water, fuel, shelter, medical supplies and other humanitarian needs.
Anyone who engages in “direct and public incitement” to genocide or conspiracy to commit it must be brought to justice, the appeal insists. South Africa demanded Israel submit a report on complying with all these demands within one week.
Under the ICJ’s rules, South Africa’s application has priority over all other cases, because of the request for provisional measures.
South Africa has previously sought to charge Israel with war crimes before the International Criminal Court (ICC). West Jerusalem is not a signatory party to the ICC, but the court – also based in The Hague – has previously declared it had jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank.
On the other hand, both South Africa and Israel are signatories of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was first adopted in 1948, in response to the Nazi mass murder of Jews during WWII.
The Director of the UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, Thomas White, announced on 29 December that the Israeli army had targeted one of the organization’s aid convoys as it was returning from north Gaza on a route designated by Tel Aviv itself.
“Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from Northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli Army,” White said via social media.
“Our international convoy leader and his team were not injured, but one vehicle sustained damage – aid workers should never be a target,” he added.
Israel has shown blatant disregard for humanitarian aid workers during its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing which began on 7 October.
As of 28 December, 142 UNRWA employees have been killed as a result of the Israeli assault on Gaza, according to the organization’s 57thsituation report on the besieged enclave. According to the report, 125 UNRWA installations have also been damaged.
“At least 308 internally displaced peoples (IDPs) sheltering in UNRWA premises have been killed and 1,095 injured since 7 October,” the situation report adds.
It is worth noting that a large majority of the over 30,000 employed by UNRWA are Palestinians.
This is not the first time Palestinians and aid workers have been targeted on humanitarian routes designated specifically by Israel.
Upon resuming the assault after the seven-day truce that ended at the very start of this month, Israel published a map of so-called ‘safe zones’ for Gazans to flee to, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza do not have electricity or internet to access the map. Many Gazans reported airstrikes on a number of the zones designated by Israel.
“The so-called safe zones … are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this,” a UNICEF spokesman told Al-Jazeera on 5 December.
Gazans are suffering due to a severe lack of humanitarian aid, which since the start of the war has trickled into Gaza at a pace nowhere near fast enough to address the dire situation.
Israel continues to bombard the civilian population indiscriminately, while actively pursuing plans for forced displacement.
Tel Aviv recently issued more evacuation orders for Gazans in Khan Yunis to evacuate further south, as tens of thousands of displaced Gazans are already stranded in the southern border city of Rafah.
“People forced to move once again. More people in less space. Rafah in the south is now bursting at the seams. No respite. Time for a humanitarian ceasefire,” Thomas White wrote on social media on 26 December.
I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish state in all its manifestations. They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is “America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.” In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that now legally defines itself as Jewish.
I sometimes ask the friends of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party, which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis both objectives.
So the big question has to be “Why does the United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid… and I don’t even call it aid… our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
The delusional Pelosi, who appears to have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza. The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb, thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle while also killing hundreds more civilians.
To be sure, it was the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths toothless. Israel demonstrated just how highly it regarded Joe Biden when it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that, saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s holiday in the American Virgin Islands.
Allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden! You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated, compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary. On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244 cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”
The total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of Israeli deaths on October 7th should probably be attributed to so-called “friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and churches where people are trying to find shelter.
The genocide and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany: “Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.”
And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Right before the recent Christmas holiday, I received a call from a friend and colleague named Louis Conte regarding a “contact” of his with knowledge of the inner workings of Emergency Medical Services in Westchester County, New York.
Louis’s contact had been monitoring EMS dispatches in Westchester County and saw, subsequent to the jab rollout in early 2021, what he felt was a frightening number of calls from vaccine clinics or homes where general or specific “vaccine reactions” were cited as the cause of the need for an ambulance.
Last year, the contact decided to submit a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request—similar to a FOIA—to the Westchester County EMS (and the adjoining Dutchess County EMS) asking for a record of all calls whose transcripts mentioned either the word “vaccine” or “Covid-19 vaccine” in 2021.
Louis asked me to look at the documents. As difficult as it is at this point to further distress me with data on the toxicity and lethality of the mRNA platform, this dataset still managed to do this.
Before I review the data, let’s review what we know about ambulance calls timed with the roll-out of the vaccination campaign, because this issue is NOT new.
For instance, we already know from ICAN and Aaron Siri’s FOIA request of the CDC’s V-Safe data that 7.9% of all 10.1 million vaccine recipients reported requiring medical care to treat a vaccine adverse effect. Of those requiring medical care, almost 11% (87,700 people) visited the emergency room or hospital. How many travelled for this high level of urgent /emergent care by ambulance is unknown, but historically, about 15% of ER patients arrive by ambulance, so this would come out to about 13,000 patients among a population of 10 million vaccinated.
Further, an article published in the journal Nature reported:
There was an increase of more than 25% in the number of ambulance calls in response to cardiac arrests (CA) and acute coronary syndromes (ACS or “heart attacks”) for young people in the 16–39 age group during the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Israel (January–May, 2021) compared with the same period of time in prior years (2019 and 2020).
They also found a robust and statistically significant association between the weekly CA and ACS call counts and the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group. Note they found no observed statistically significant association between COVID-19 infection rates and the CA and ACS call counts.
They report that their findings aligned with previous studies showing that increases in overall CA incidence were not always associated with higher COVID-19 infection rates at a population level, and that the stability of hospitalization rates related to myocardial infarction throughout the initial COVID-19 wave compared to pre-pandemic baselines in Israel.
Their findings above also mirrored reports of increased emergency department visits with cardiovascular complaints during the vaccination rollout in Germany as well as increased EMS calls for cardiac incidents in Scotland.
In line with the above, anecdotal data from social media described the following:
The import of the above data/anecdotes was further supported by new, massive demands for ambulances across the world, evidenced by this compilation of TV news and print reports of shortages, compiled in another favorite substack of mine by Marc Crispin Miller. Note that although some reports blame the issue on shortages of staff and ambulance parts, the vast majority also mention… increases in the number of calls for ambulances.
And then there’s even more anecdotal data by someone who has earned my deep trust in regards to accuracy of events on the “inside of the system” (recall she is a nurse colleague of mine that works at a major academic medical center who I referred to as “My Spy On The Inside” [MSOTI] in my prior multi-part series of posts called “Nursing Reports From the Front Lines of The Vaccine Catastrophe”).
During one of her shifts referring to the ambulance/emergency services issue:
So, with the above publications and observations in mind, let’s review this new “data dump.” Maybe what it reveals is not as statistically damning as what the New Zealand Whistleblower exposed but you will see that it is equally, if not even more alarming. To me, the most shocking discovery I made when reviewing the documents, is that I found evidence of 5 different occasions where calls were made to Westchester County EMS dispatch to have ambulances “on standby”:
1. 2021-02-21 07:38:16.000 E2105940 NOTIF EMS 355 PELHAM RD NE _ROCHELLE: @WILLOW TOWERS NEW_ROCHELLE ‘WILL BE ADMINISTERING THE COVID-19 VACCINE TODAY TO 220 PEOPLE’
2. 2021-03-20 08:19:58.000 E2108926 STAND-BY EMS 210 N BROADWAY SLEEPY HOLOW: @HIGH SCHOOL- SLEEPY HOLLOW “‘73B2 & 36M3 ON STANDBY FOR VACCINE DETAIL
3. 2021-03-20 08:46:43.000 E2108930 STAND-BY EMS 168 W BOSTON POST RD MAMARONECK_V : @STT HOMAS EPISCOPALC HURCH MAMARONECK_V “‘VACCINE STANDBY UNTIL APPROX 1300HRS’
4. 2021-05-20 09:07:15.000 E2115997 STAND-BY EMS 950 PALMER A MAMARONECK_V: @MAMARONECK HIGH SCHOOL-PALMER AVE MAMARONECK_V “‘EMS STAND-BY FOR VACCINE CLINIC
5. 2021-05-20 14:09:41.000 E2116032 ALS 950 PALMER AVE MAMAR @MAMARONECK HIGH SCHOOL-PALMER AVE SIDE MAMARONEC _V “‘EMS STANDBY FOR VACCINE CLINIC
Are you kidding me? Employees at vaccine clinics in Westchester County, as early as Feb 21, 2021, were calling EMS “to be on standby?” For “vaccine detail?” One caller informed EMS dispatch that they “will be administering vaccines to 220 people today?” Note they did that as early as February 21, 2021. That is how fast some front-line workers knew how dangerous the vaccines were.
Also note how, on 5/20/21, two calls from the Mamaroneck High School clinic asked for ambulances to be on standby, the first call was made at 9:07 AM and a later one was made at 2:09 PM. For a “safe and effective” vaccine?
Again, calls with requests of this nature were being made from clinics in New Rochelle, Sleepy Hollow, and two different ones in Mamaroneck? If I was living in Westchester County at the time, I damn well would have wanted to know these calls were being made (as an aside, I lived in that county from 2008-2015 and still have lots of friends with children there).
My sense is that these calls were made by employees who were secretly, or at least, somewhat anonymously, trying to alert authorities as to how dangerous the vaccines were but without doing so in a way that would make them a target as an “anti-vaxxer” or cause them to lose their job. They were clearly smart enough to know the consequences of a more public call-out of vaccine toxicity. So instead, they called EMS to have them “on standby.” Although the attempt was well-intentioned, should they be absolved of responsibility for any subsequent injuries which occurred on their watch at that clinic? They were actively injecting people with an experimental vaccine… after calling EMS to have them “on standby”?
After I shared this article with A Midwestern Doctor, he sent me this commentary:
One of the biggest challenges people have had throughout the vaccine rollout has been coming to terms with the fact that so many people could have been complicit in letting a bad vaccine be pushed on the world (which hence leads many of them to believe the only possible explanation is that the vaccine was not in fact dangerous).
Sadly, I’ve seen numerous tragic cases of the same thing that has happened in the past. Much of this is explained by an effect in psychology known as the bystander effect:
The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation, against a bully, or during an assault or other crime. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is for any one of them to provide help to a person in distress. People are more likely to take action in a crisis when there are few or no other witnesses present.
In turn, throughout my life, I’ve found that if something is happening I know is wrong and no one is speaking out about it (e.g., because its not politically correct to do so), I can reliably predict that if I don’t speak out against it, no one will. So for this reason, I often “break” the bystander effect (once one person speaks out, others will often feel safe to do so as well) as I know otherwise it won’t happen. Likewise, I’ve seen this same thing occur again and again within organizations, especially when people’s financial livelihoods are on the line for speaking out.
One of the best illustrations of the point Kory is making here can be found within the data of vaccination deaths leaked by the brave New Zealand whistleblower Barry Young (who now faces a seven year prison sentence for his leaking). Within that data, Young noticed that there were about a dozen vaccinating doctors and a dozen vaccination sites which had a very high rate of deaths in those they vaccinated.
Barry, in turn, raised a very simple question—how could something like this happen?
Sadly, as this summary of EMS calls shows, the bystander effect can be a very real thing, especially when everyone else in a large institution going along with something makes those who want to challenge it feel even more powerless to speak out.
I believe the vaccine clinic employees who called EMS in Westchester should get some credit for, in my interpretation, trying to blow a whistle, but they did so too “softly.” Instead, as per the bystander effect, they simply hoped that “someone else,” i.e. EMS personnel or leadership would take note of these calls, and “do something” about them.
Remember, May 2021 (the day of the two calls from Mamaroneck High School) was nearing the height of the global “psy-ops” propaganda campaign where the unvaccinated and/or the vaccine hesitant were demonized and attacked widely across all mainstream media and social media. Even those who already got the vaccine and were trying to share the horrible stuff happening to them were being attacked. Never, ever forget that occurred, and more importantly, never forget just how successful that propaganda was. So, while I get the clinic employee’s hesitation, I cannot forgive their ultimate behavior.
Walking off the job would have been another option, but if there is anything I have learned in Covid and the immense, multi-faceted fraud that has occurred and keeps occurring, is that there were and are far too few real whistleblowers. The desire to remain employed is paramount to the concern for the welfare of others. Period.
Anyway, these data points above are beyond shocking, even to me at this point in my research journey. If anyone has a different or more benign interpretation of these five EMS transcripts above than I do, I am all ears. If I find such an interpretation more compelling or corrective, I will do a follow-up post.
Now, let’s review the rest of the transcripts from EMS dispatch. One set of data is from Westchester County EMS. First, know that Westchester County has a population of about 1 million, but these EMS calls do not include the City of Yonkers which has a population of about 200,000. So, for 800,000 people, the total EMS calls which specifically mentioned the vaccine as a cause of distress in 2021 was 165 calls. For Dutchess County, population of 295,000, the number of calls was an almost equally proportionate 55 calls.
However, these 220 calls across these two counties likely represent a small subset of the severe, ambulance requiring vaccine reactions because sudden death was likely never reported as a vaccine reaction and many people calling ambulances may not have initially related their medical issue with the vaccine or, even if suspected, may not have mentioned it to dispatch – thus, this dataset represents only the most tightly “temporally associated” events, ones where it was more than 100% obvious the vaccine was causative, like when it happened within minutes or hours or 1-2 days of the vaccine being administered.
What was the nature of these “reactions” which triggered calls for an ambulance? Well, from the transcript log posted at the end of this post, most simply say “reaction to Covid-19 vaccine” or “vaccine reaction” but there are also many disturbingly detailed reactions such as seizures, inability to ambulate, unresponsiveness, altered mental status, etc.
I list the more specific and disturbing ones below (or you can also just read through the actual EMS transcripts that are at the end of this post):
2-16-21 92 YO F abnormal breathing from 2nd covid-19 vaccine
2-17-21 69 YO M unable to ambulate secondary to covid vaccine
2-21-21 73 YO unable to ambulate, reaction to Covid-19 vaccine
2-17-21 female reaction to vaccine – altered mental status (AMS)
2-22-21 88 YO F low oxygen saturation, possible reaction to Covid vaccine
3-10-21 unresponsive, reaction to vaccine
3-19-21 fever and confusion post covid vaccine
3-27-21 56 YO M cancer patient possible reaction to vaccine, altered mental status (AMS)
3-27-21 2nd vaccine, sudden hypertension (HTN), back and abdominal pain
4-2-21 46 YO M disoriented, recent covid vaccine
3-24-21 56 YO F abnormal breathing from 2nd Covid vaccine
6-18-21 12 YO F experiencing chest pain after 2nd vaccine
7-11-21 13 YO F feeling weak, reaction to vaccine
4-7-21 27 YO M possible seizure
4-2-21 passed out/ reaction to Covid vaccine
4-22-21 38 Y.O female not breathing secondary to recent vaccination
4-32-21 50 YO F passing out/covid vaccine
5-13-21 49 YO M labored breathing/reaction to recent vaccination
5-19-21 89 YO M weak/speech problems
5/24/21 27 YO F fell by pharmacy
6-17-21 39 YO F difficulty breathing from 2nd vaccine
8-31-21 31 YO difficulty breathing
11-19-21 18 YO M anxiety attack, difficulty breathing from a covid vaccination
46 YO F chest pain/labored breathing, body numbness/covid-19 vaccine booster yesterday
11-19-21 18 YO F leg numbness
12-21-21 46 YO F chest pain, labored breathing, body numbness – covid 19 booster
86 YO F low 02, chest pain radiating to the left arm post 2nd covid vaccine shot
4-11-21 50 YO M syncope (passing out)
4-18-21 57 YO F severe edema (i.e swelling, water retention) possible reaction to vaccine
5-22-21 16 YO reaction to vaccine shot, semi-responsive
5-31-21 48 YO M reaction to the 2nd vaccine, difficulty breathing, right sided numbness
6-2-21 passed out after receiving Covid vaccine
6-2-21 29 YO F reaction to vaccine, unconscious
6-18-21 12 YO F experiencing chest pain after 2nd vaccine
9-24-21 44 YO M seizures after vaccine
9-25-21 Male unconscious after getting covid vaccine
11-6-21 5 YO M difficulty breathing post vaccine
11-13-21 58 YO M reaction to covid vaccine, syncope and difficulty breathing
11-3-21 81 YO M Unable to ambulate post vaccine
12-8-21 syncope (passing out) post covid shot
2-11-21 73 YO M, reaction to Covid vaccine, unable to ambulate
4-21-21 reaction to vaccine AMS (altered mental status)
Again, these were just a subset of the 220 calls in 2021 amongst a population of approximately 900,000. I am reasonably certain that there is no data to accurately estimate what a “safe” ambulance call rate per number of vaccines administered should be but that is also because I have never even heard of a threshold being established for a “safe” ambulance call rate per number of vaccines administered.
I would instead simply argue that the ambulance call rate per vaccination should be no more than one in a million or if I were generous in estimating its ability to protect people from severe disease, maybe even one per 100,000, but in reality should be zero.
I say this because vaccines are not a treatment for someone suffering from an active disease, it is an intervention given to generally healthy, functional people to theoretically protect them from becoming ill (i.e. I don’t think the dying need vaccines). An intervention which causes a generally healthy, functional person to need an ambulance directly contradicts any belief of utility or safety in this regard.
These data, to me, are simply another outrageous Covid era example of the deplorable failure of a Public Health Agency to protect the population whose literal mission it is to protect. Obtaining the data by FOIA means that no one in Westchester EMS or Dutchess County EMS leadership acted in response to paramedics or EMTs reporting repeated calls for urgent medical attention to those recently vaccinated?
Don’t you think that you, the average citizen, would have wanted to be informed if this was happening in your community? That vaccine clinics were asking for ambulances to be “on standby?” What other kinds of events request ambulances “on standby” or to be present? I have heard of having them on-site for judo tournaments, Evil Knievel stunts, American football games, (which require two on site), but never for an alleged preventative health measure.
From the webpage of a company that provides ambulance coverage for sports events:
So, apparently, vaccine clinic employees in Westchester quickly came to the perception that vaccinating people was more dangerous than a charity walk or fun run.
Here is the thing though: to many of us who are deeply studied on the data showing immense toxicity and lethality of the mRNA vaccine platform, this changes nothing about what we already know. To those still in the “safe and effective” camp, I ask how you can explain away the above in a way that can somehow still support that position. Happy to read your comments.
Finally, before we get to the EMS transcripts, for any of you who are as troubled by these data as I am, I suggest you FOIA the same from your local EMS service. I promise you that my colleagues and I are interested in studying this further.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi held a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Cairo on 27 December, where they once again rejected Israel’s plans for forced displacement of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In a joint statement, the two leaders announced their “complete rejection of all attempts to liquidate the Palestinian issue and forcibly displace Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The statement also urged the international community to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and called for “uninterrupted delivery of sufficient humanitarian aid to Gaza” to alleviate the “tragic situation and the suffering of the people in the Strip.”
“The two leaders note the international community’s immense political and ethical responsibility towards implementing UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions to maintain the integrity of these international entities,” the statement read.
Since the start of the war, aid has trickled into Gaza at a pace nowhere near fast enough to address the dire humanitarian situation. The US has also vetoed two UN resolutions urging for an immediate truce.
A resolution was passed on 22 December, after having been held up for days and watered down significantly at Washington’s insistence. The resolution made no mention of a ceasefire.
King Abdullah’s visit to Egypt comes days after Cairo proposed a ceasefire plan to reform Gaza’s government on a technocratic basis and gradually release Israeli prisoners in exchange for detained Palestinians and a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
However, Hamas has rejected the proposal, which also failed to gain traction on the Israeli side.
Tel Aviv continues to push for a mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Israel recently ordered more Palestinians to evacuate from Khan Yunis to areas further south, as tens of thousands of displaced are already stranded in the southern border city of Rafah.
The Cradle’s William Van Wagenen details in his recent analysis Israel’s longstanding goals to forcibly displace Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula, occupy the Gaza Strip, and re-establish the Jewish settlement bloc that was evacuated in 2005.
In the occupied West Bank, violent Israeli settlers with Israeli government backing also continue to drive Palestinians from their homes in attempts to expel them to Jordan, a practice which has been ongoing for years.
A decades-old Israeli initiative known as the ‘Transfer Plan’ – originally formulated by the Zionist militias operating in Palestine, and then endorsed by the government of Israel post-1948 – calls for mass expulsion of Palestinians to the Sinai desert.
After Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the idea of pushing Palestinians towards Jordan became included in the ‘Transfer Plan.’
Israel forced many Palestinians to migrate to Jordan over the years, particularly after 1967 and with the rapid expansion of illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank.
The ‘Transfer Plan’ was never officially implemented, and is a violation of UN Resolution 194, which was issued in 1948 and which legitimizes the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes.
A joint Egyptian-Jordanian statement issued in late October this year rejected the transfer plan.
Israel has killed six more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The six were targeted by an Israeli drone in Nour Shams Camp, located east of Tulkarm. They were confirmed dead at the Martyr Thabet Thabet Government Hospital in the city.
Hospital officials noted that Israeli occupation forces delayed ambulances trying to reach the victims of the attack. After a delay of 65 minutes, the Israelis released an ambulance carrying three seriously injured individuals from Nour Shams camp, reported the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The head of the Tulkarm Doctors’ Syndicate, Radwan Balibla, reported that an Israeli soldier stabbed one of the injured Palestinians inside the ambulance. He added that other wounded Palestinians were also assaulted with kicks, punches and rifle beatings as Israeli soldiers threatened to kill them.
The Palestinians killed were identified as 19-year-old Ahmed Anwar Hamarsha; Ahmed Abdel Rahman Issa, 19; Adham Muhammad Fahmawi, 19; Yazan Ahmed Wahid Fahmawi, 23; Fares Hossam Fahmawi, 29; and Hamza Ahmed Mustafa Fahmawi, 17. A 24-year-old Palestinian sustained serious head injuries. His condition was described as critical.
According to Wafa news agency, the occupation forces used artillery to target an abandoned house in the Aktaba suburb, east of Tulkarm, near the refugee camp. Palestinian homes in different areas of the camp, including Al-Manshiya, Al-Mahjar, Al-Joura, Al-Damj and Jabal Al-Nasr, were also targeted by the occupation forces. They conducted extensive raids inside these homes, interrogated the occupants and destroyed their belongings.
Furthermore, Israeli troops used high-rise buildings in and around the camp as observation posts. Bulldozers were employed to demolish infrastructure in the camp’s main streets, square and Al-Manshiya neighbourhood. This destruction included the demolition of public and private property.
At least 320 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, according to the local Palestinian authorities. More than 3,200 others have been wounded.
Israel is a terrorist state committing genocide in Gaza, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on social media on Tuesday. He was commenting on the ongoing military operation that West Jerusalem launched against Hamas in retaliation following the militant group’s deadly October 7 surprise attack, in which approximately 1,200 were killed in the south of the country.
The Caribbean nation, which has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel, has been highly critical of Israel’s war on the militants, which maintain de facto rule over Gaza. During the military operation, large swathes of the enclave have been devastated and more than 20,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to local officials.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Diaz-Canel called Israel’s actions “a humiliation for all humanity” and lamented that the nation was getting away with it.
“Cuba, which will never be among the indifferent, raises its voice for Palestine again and again,” he added.
Last week, the Cuban parliament passed a declaration expressing support for the Palestinian people and its aspiration for statehood. The document branded Israel’s conduct “genocide,” condemning its “barbaric acts” that highlight the failures of international diplomacy.
“We denounce in the strongest terms the responsibility and complicity of the government of the United States in this genocide,” the declaration said, referring to Washington’s use of its veto power at the UN Security Council on Israel’s behalf.
“The impunity with which Israel has historically acted can only be explained by its confidence that there will be no consequences due to the backing of the US government,” the lawmakers stated.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has expressed discontent due to the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza and claims that behind closed doors it is pressuring Israel to correct its approach.
Senior Israeli officials have repeatedly denied being under US pressure. Tal Heinrich, the spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC last Friday that the two nations are “in lockstep.”
Israel claims that it is doing everything possible to minimize risks for civilians and argues that Hamas is ultimately responsible for every such death.
A report published by the Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine in late November claimed that the Israeli military is purposefully bombing “power targets” in Gaza, such as public buildings and high-rise blocks, in order to “create a shock” in the general population. The rationale is that it will somehow turn Palestinians against Hamas.
In a significant development, a group of Palestine Action activists, known as the ‘Elbit Eight’, have been acquitted for their role in shutting down UK Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms producer, whose lethal weapons are being used against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Elbit Systems’ weaponry prompted the Palestine Action activists to face a total of 12 charges, including criminal damage, burglary, blackmail, and encouraging criminal damage.
The charges were related to anti-Israel protests held between July 2020 and January 2021, immediately after the pro-Palestinian network was founded in early 2020.
The trial, which commenced on November 13, saw the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) amending the indictment, eventually bringing thirteen counts against the activists: seven counts of damaging property (criminal damage), three counts of burglary with intent to commit criminal damage, one count of possessing articles with intent to damage property, one count of threatening to damage property, and one count of encouraging others to commit the offense of criminal damage.
Since the group’s inception in 2020, and in protest against the Israeli regime’s atrocities against the Palestinians, they have led several mobilizations in the UK as well as in the US, targeting the factories and offices of firms that supply munitions used in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Their protest methods have included sit-ins, blockades and paint jobs.
The group’s actions, including occupying Elbit Systems’ drone and weaponry factories in Shenstone and Oldham, aimed to challenge Elbit’s operations in Britain and prevent the manufacturing of weapons destined for the Israeli regime.
The defense case
At the beginning of the trial that lasted six weeks, the eight activists received a plea deal: if Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard pleaded guilty, others would be acquitted.
Rejecting the plea deal, the activists spent six weeks in Snaresbrook Crown Court pleading not guilty, asserting that Elbit and Israel bear responsibility for the offenses, not Palestine Action.
Echoing the defense’s narrative presented during the trial, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, underscored the group’s primary goal to terminate British complicity in the Israeli apartheid regime’s crimes against Palestinians.
Barnard was convicted by a 10-2 majority of one count of criminal damage, for an action at the now-closed Elbit Ferranti factory in Oldham. The jury failed to reach a majority decision regarding the remaining 23 charges.
“The idea was – and the idea still is – to end the British complicity in the Israeli apartheid regime,” he told the jury. “I am trying to prevent war crimes … I am trying to stop bombings and trying to stop drones [in Palestine].”
Meanwhile, two of the Elbit Eight activists, Genevieve Scherer and Jocelyn Cooney, were unanimously acquitted on all charges faced.
Other activists highlighted their personal experiences and the urgency driving their direct actions, contending that conventional means, such as divestment campaigns, were insufficient in addressing the ongoing human rights violations in Gaza.
Huda Ammori, charged with six counts including damaging property and burglary, stressed her Palestinian-Iraqi background, narrating formative experiences such as the Iraq War and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians in Gaza.
She stressed that direct action was the only viable solution to end such atrocities perpetrated by the occupying regime, given the ineffectiveness of legal avenues and divestment campaigns.
“All other attempts fell short. Our exports to Israel are against our own license rules and against international law, but they can’t be stopped by the courts,” Ammori said.
“Divestment campaigns, after years of work, were taking way too long; it wasn’t matching the reality of the urgency of the situation. Every day, Palestinians were being killed, imprisoned – surveilled under these drones 24/7.”
Direct action is the only option
Ammori, a co-founder of the Palestine Action network, hastened to add that if the UK government continues to ignore facts and violate rules, then the only option is “direct action”, which means to “stop weapons from going there.”
“After pushing back our case for two years, the state has failed again to deter an ever-growing global direct-action movement. Every day we’ve been on trial, more Palestinians have been massacred using Elbit’s weaponry,” she asserted.
“The duty of the people is clear – to take all direct action possible to Shut Elbit Down wherever you are. Justice will be complete when Palestine is free.”
Robin Refualu, another activist of the group, charged with burglary and damaging the drone factory UAV Engines, shared his experiences from Palestine and spoke of the direct action he was involved in there to stop home demolitions and illegal settlements and emphasizing the trial’s relevance to the broader Palestinian struggle over the past 75 years.
“This trial is not about us, it’s not even about Palestine Action, in my opinion,” Refualu said. “It’s about what’s happening in Gaza at the moment and what’s been happening in Palestine for the last 75 years.”
Genevieve Scherer, drawing on her upbringing in Uganda, criticized the futility of criminal damage charges when Elbit Systems and those they arm cause havoc in Gaza.
She underscored how British law prioritizes property over human lives.
Caroline Brouard emphasized the obligation to prevent an ongoing genocide and stated that when governments fail to uphold duties, it falls on the people to act. She believed that actions at UAV Engines in Shenstone could immediately impact stopping bombings in Gaza.
“The drones malfunction all the time, needing replacement parts, and UAV Engines has a 24hr dispatch policy – we stopped these engines getting to Israel and so stopped the drones from flying,” Brouard asserted.
Urgency of stopping crimes
Jocelyn Cooney, a frontline social worker, joined Palestine Action to address the urgency of stopping crimes. She referred to Elbit Systems as the “muscle” enabling genocide in Palestine.
“So I think we all have a responsibility as humans to step up and take direct action to stop this company from producing weapons to murder people,” she said.
Emily Arnott, charged with damaging property and burglary, spoke about her time in Palestine, highlighting the impact of apartheid and the Israeli regime’s brutal domination over Palestinian lives.
Nicola Stickells, charged with criminal damage, emphasized the necessity of action when other efforts were ineffective. She pointed to ongoing war crimes in Gaza and questioned why activists faced legal consequences while those responsible for genocide profited freely.
The Israeli regime forces are “rounding up men.. and taking them to undisclosed places, stripped, kneeling blindfolded, this genocide is occurring as we speak,” said Stickells, a mother of two who was raised in a working-class family in the English county of Kent.
“How can we be the criminals when the perpetrators of… [what] we now know is a genocide … are free to profit and we have to spend weeks and weeks in court for an action that we took three years ago?” she asked.
“When you try and stand for human rights, you become the criminal. This is not right.”
Palestine Action UK has escalated actions against Elbit Systems since October 7, including activists climbing factory roofs in various cities.
“Palestine Action activists occupy the roof of the Israeli weapons factory Elbit Systems in the town of Shenstone, England, in protest of its production of equipment used in Israel’s murder of innocent Palestinians,” Palestine Action UK said in a statement on October 31.
UK complicity in Israeli crimes
The trial comes on the heels of nationwide protests in the UK in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the genocide in Gaza. These demonstrations have been met with intensive state monitoring, harassment, and muzzling of pro-Palestinian voices and actions.
The trial also draws attention to the broader issue of the UK’s arms sales to the Israeli regime, given Elbit Systems’ significant role as a major supplier to the Israeli military.
The weapons company is Israel’s largest private arms company in the UK that supplies the Israeli military with 85 percent of the drones used against Palestinians. The British government has been criticized for being “complicit in Israeli crimes” due to its relations with this company.
Two of Israel’s biggest weapons factories, Elbit and Rafael, both have operations in the UK.
Declassified UK recently revealed that the British government has approved at least £472m in arms sales to the Israeli regime in the past eight years, ignoring the genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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