Father of British student killed by Israel urges Tel Aviv to change ‘inhuman’ military tactics
Tom Hurndall was volunteering at a refugee camp in Gaza when he was shot by an Israeli sniper in the Gaza Strip in 2003.
Press TV – November 29, 2023
Father of a British student killed by Israeli soldiers has urged the occupying regime to change its “unethical and inhuman” military tactics, warning Tel Aviv that it will lose support from the West by continuing such policies.
Anthony Hurndall, whose 22-year-old son was killed by Israeli snipers in 2004, denounced Israel’s “fundamentally unethical and inhuman attitudes,” in an interview with The Times published on Wednesday.
Tom Hurndall, who was a photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in the Gaza Strip in April 2003 and lost his life in January 2004 after spending some nine months in a coma.
He was shot when he was assisting Palestinian children caught in the crossfire in the impoverished Palestinian enclave.
Soroka Hospital’s medical staff initially claimed that the critical injuries to his head were caused by a baseball bat but an investigation later revealed that the staff had removed bullet fragments from Tom’s brain before making up the baseball bat story.
When the fabricated account was refuted, Tel Aviv claimed that the young photographer was allegedly carrying a weapon and was a gunman.
“The investigation further revealed that, as standard practice,” the Israeli military “routinely falsely misrepresent civilians and children as militants, or as armed, and fabricate accounts of events as a pretext for their killing,” Hurndall, who is director of the Center for Justice, told The Times.
“These claims appear similar to the claims that” the Israeli military is “currently making to justify their bombing, missile and other attacks on civilian targets and hospitals in Gaza. It was the view of those in diplomatic circles, expressed to us at the time, that” the Israeli military “appeared to consider themselves immune from accountability and free to misrepresent innocent civilians as legitimate military targets and to target them, as a form of intimidation or collective punishment,” he added.
Hurndall denounced the narrative portrayed by the media and the governments in the West as “one-sided” that ignores the facts.
“If Israel does not change fundamentally unethical and inhuman attitudes and policies and stop committing war crimes, it will build up even greater resistance from the Palestinian people and lose the sympathy and support of the West,” he stressed.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry, over 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed in Israeli strikes, during the 49 days of war. Many more dead are feared to be under the rubble.
The Middle East at an inflection point
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 28, 2023
It has been a perennial hope and expectation that Israel would abandon the path of repression, colonisation and apartheid as state policies and instead accept a negotiated settlement of the Palestine problem under pressure from its patron, mentor, guide and guardian — the United States. But that proved delusional and the remains of the day is a chronicle of dashed hopes and hypocrisy. The big question today is whether a paradigm shift is possible. That is also the dilemma facing US President Joe Biden at 80.
History shows that while catastrophic events have myriad negative effects, positive effects are also possible, especially in the long term. The French-German reconciliation after two world wars is, perhaps, the finest example in modern history, and it planted the germane seeds of the European integration project. Certainly, the collapse of the Soviet Union gave impetus to the Sino-Russian rapprochement, which morphed into a “no limit” partnership.
However, for such miracles to happen, visionary leadership is needed. Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer were indeed political visionaries — and, in a different sort of way, the two consummate pragmatists Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin were as well.
Does it look as if Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu belong to that pantheon? When Biden met with Netanyahu and his war cabinet in Tel Aviv on October 18, he assured them: “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” Therein lies the paradox. For, how could you possibly be an Irish Catholic and a Zionist at the same time? Sinn Féin, which is on course to top Ireland’s next election, is embracing Palestinians and condemning Israel. Of course, there are no surprises here.
Biden is torn between conflicting faiths. Suffice to say, when Biden speaks about a two-state solution, it becomes hard to believe him. On Netanyahu’s part, at least, he doesn’t even feel the need to pay lip service to a two-state solution, after having systematically buried the Oslo Accord and embarked on the journey towards a Jewish theocracy in what was once the state of Israel. Make no mistake, Greater Israel is here to stay and the world opinion regards it as an apartheid state.
There is a great misconception that Biden is under pressure from American opinion on the conflict in Gaza. But the fact of the matter is that support for Israel has all along been rather thin in America and had it not been for the Israel Lobby, it would have probably ceased a long time ago. Curiously, something like one third of American Jews, especially the youth, don’t even care for the Israel Lobby.
That said, it is also a fact that Americans have generally a favourable opinion about Israel. Their problem is really about Israel’s aggressive policies — this is despite the absence of any open media or academic discussion in the US regarding the state repression of Palestinians or the colonisation of West Bank.
A defining moment came when Netanyahu taunted and humiliated President Barack Obama on the Iran nuclear deal by consorting with the Congress against the presidency in an audacious attempt to derail the negotiations with Tehran.
In recent years, Israel’s image has been tarnished in liberal opinion following the ascendance of right-wing forces and the overtones of racist attitudes including among Israeli youth. Indeed, Israel has been an increasingly illiberal country even toward its own citizens. Due to such factors, Americans no longer take an idealised view of Israel as a morally upright country battling for existence.
Meanwhile, there has been a marked erosion of support for Israel within the Democratic Party. But this needs to be put in perspective, for, there has been a countervailing rise in support for Israel among Republicans. Thus, although “bilateral consensus” on Israel is dissipating, paradoxically, the Israel Lobby still wields influence.
That is because the Israel Lobby traditionally didn’t much pay attention to rank and file Americans but instead focused on the power brokers and indeed worked hard to shore up their support. Therefore, it must be understood that what Biden cannot but factor in is that the elites in the Democratic Party establishment remain deeply committed to relations with Israel although the support within the party for Israeli policies may have waned and American opinion finds the bestiality of Israeli conduct in Gaza revolting.
The elites fear that the Lobby will target them if there are any signs of them wavering in their support for Israel. Put differently, the political elites do not place American national interests above their own personal or career interests. Thus, the Israel Lobby always wins on the Palestinian issue and in extracting generous financial support for Israel with no strings attached. Make no mistake that the Lobby will go to any extent to have its way whenever the crunch time comes, such as today.
Biden is hardly in a position to displease or annoy the Israel Lobby on a day of reckoning. So, why is he making big promises to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi of Egypt that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, or the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza”?
The answer is simple: these are fait accompli that have been forced upon the US and Israel by the Arab States in their finest hour of collective security, none of whom is willing to legitimise Israel’s genocide or its roadmap of ethnic cleansing. Didn’t even little Jordan say ‘no’ to Biden?
Biden is making hollow promises. In reality, what matters is that the Israel Lobby will go to extraordinary lengths to protect the emerging Greater Israel. Again, it costs Biden nothing by affirming support for a two-state solution. He knows it will be aeons before such a vision takes life, if at all, and if South Africa’s experience is anything to go by, the journey will be fraught with much bloodshed.
Most important, Biden knows that Israel will not accept a two-state solution as per the Arab Initiative crafted by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, which is a finely balanced matrix of mutual interests with an historical and long term perspective. In an historic speech addressing the Arab League on the day of its adoption, then Crown Prince Abdullah said with great prescience: “In spite of all that has happened and what still may happen, the primary issue in the heart and mind of every person in our Arab Islamic nation is the restoration of legitimate rights in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.”
The high probability is that Israel will hunker down with the help of its Lobby in the US and would rather prefer to be a Pariah in the world community, to a two-state solution that demands abandonment of the Zionist state built around Greater Israel. The only game changer could be if Biden is willing to make the US force its will on Israel — through coercive means, if necessary.
But that requires the courage of conviction and a rare ingredient in politics — compassion. Biden’s hugely successful half century in public life was almost entirely devoted to realpolitik and there are no traces of conviction or compassion in it. A legacy cannot be built on ephemeral considerations and expediency.
Israel must stand trial for committing ‘4 core international crimes’ in Gaza: Iran deputy FM
Press TV – November 27, 2023
An Iranian deputy foreign minister says the Israeli regime should be brought to justice for all four core international crimes it committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip during its latest large-scale military operation.
Reza Najafi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, made the remarks in the 28th session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Monday.
“During the past eight weeks, the Israeli regime has committed all four core international crimes, namely genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression repeatedly and concurrently,” he said.
“This entails the international responsibility of the Israeli regime and its supporters as well as the individual criminal responsibility of all those who ordered and committed such crimes or facilitated, aided and abetted their commission, including by providing the required means,” he added.
The senior Iranian diplomat emphasized that all those responsible for the crimes against the Gazans shall be held to account and be brought to justice.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7, more than 15,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed only in Gaza while over 6,000 are still missing and more than 36,000 are wounded, Najafi said, adding that over 70 percent of those killed, missing or wounded are women and children.
He reiterated that in addition to these figures, the “horrifying” reports and “heart-breaking” images of Israel’s barbaric invasion once again revealed, clearly and undeniably, the very “murderous” nature of the regime which possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including chemical weapons in its stockpiles.
Najafi emphasized that Israel’s crimes along with a call by a regime’s minister for dropping even a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip once again proved the serious danger of the Israeli chemical weapons for the regional and international peace and security.
He stressed the importance of making every effort for the speedy universalization of the Chemical Weapons Convention, particularly by compelling the Israeli regime to join it without any precondition or further delay.
Israel is the sole possessor of nukes in the Middle East. The regime, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to possess 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.
Unlike Iran, Israel has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and continues its unsupervised nuclear activities with the support of the United States and European countries.
Palestinian surgeon recounts ordeal following Israel’s use of white phosphorus, incendiary bombs in Gaza
Press TV – November 27, 2023
A British-Palestinian surgeon has recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians went through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, which was initiated after Palestinian resistance groups launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity, the largest retaliatory attack in decades.
Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta, who traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon, said in a press conference in London on Monday that he had seen evidence of war crimes, including the use of white phosphorus on civilians.
Sitta, who worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza, said fragmentary missiles were used by the Israeli occupation army to attack Gaza, causing unique injury patterns and amputations.
At the burns unit in al-Shifa Hospital, he said, some 40 to 45 percent of the wounded were children and the primary target of the Israeli bombing was residential homes.
Stressing that incendiary bombs were used against Palestinian civilians, Sitta said he treated 100 patients with 40% of their body surface area burnt but no other injuries.
“Phosphorus burns burn through to the inner core of the body and only stop when they have no exposure to oxygen,” he added. “So the patient would be puckered with burns that bore right into the ribs, the bones.”
The British-Palestinian surgeon said he “increasingly” saw white phosphorous burn wounds while he worked in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“When the land invasion happened, we started getting patients increasingly from the north with white phosphorous burns,” Sitta told reporters. “Once you’ve seen them you know what they are. The flesh of these patients turns to Swiss cheese, with black burns from phosphorous pellets.”
Sitta underlined that a 15-year-old boy was “showered” with pellets of white phosphorous while running away which left his back with chemical burns.
Israel ‘deliberately’ targets civilians
Speaking at the press conference, the surgeon said the Israeli military “deliberately” targeted civilians in schools, hospitals and places of worship.
“Patients reported the wiping out of entire families and have described them as massacres,” he said, adding that there were between 700 and 900 children with amputations by day five of their visit to Gaza.
Sitta said he had witnessed Palestinian casualties shot by snipers in Gaza and that necessity had forced them to conduct several surgeries without anesthesia, including one on a nine-year-old girl.
At a hospital in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Sitta also said he witnessed a phone call by the Israeli army to the director of the hospital, who was informed that unless he evacuated within two hours, the hospital would be targeted.
“One of the most horrific scenes I witnessed was when, after an air raid, the dead and the wounded were brought in, members of the staff would be running frantically in the emergency department, looking at the faces of the wounded and the dead to see whether their relatives had been among the dead and the wounded,” he said.
“In many cases their children had been among the dead and the wounded.”
Sitta also said there was a “huge explosion” in another day and “the ceiling in the operating room fell on top of us, luckily I wasn’t injured.”
He added, “The ambulances were on fire, some of the cars were on fire, and the forecourt, which had been lit by fire, was full of bodies and parts of bodies.”
The British-Palestinian surgeon said 160 doctors and nurses lost their lives during the occupation’s aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas conducted Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and left vast swathes of the coastal enclave in ruins.
It has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
The Magician’s Hat, and the Great Simulacrum of Palliative Balm
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 27, 2023
The Magician steps onto the stage, his black cloak swirling about him. Centre stage, he flourishes his hat: It is empty. He punches it lightly to demonstrate its solidity. The Magician then picks up certain objects and places them into his hat. Into it goes AnsarAllah’s seizure of an Israeli-owned vessel (the situation is being ‘monitored’); into it goes the Iraqi strikes on U.S. bases (barely noticed by the main-stream media); into it too go the 1,000 missiles fired into northern Israel by Hizbullah; into it goes the hot war in the West Bank. The Magician turns to the audience – the hat is empty. But the audience knows those objects have a physical reality, but somehow they are magically obfuscated.
It is in this way that the western main-stream media maintains deterrence by playing down the state of war through what Malcom Kyeyune describes as “a simulacrum of peace” – of a gently subsiding conflict and the quieting deployment of (paraphrasing Kyeyune) a very “post-modern question”: What exactly is the meaning of civilian ‘non-combatant’ anyway?
One aspect to the image of easing conflict is the hostage exchange that has been agreed. It is both real, and at the same time it underpins the simulacrum that once Hamas is annihilated, and the hostages released, then the problem of 2.3 million Palestinians can go into the magician’s hat, and be eased from sight. For some, the hope is sincere and well intentioned – that once the fighting ceases, it will stay ceased, and that an end to the bombardment in Gaza might open a window to some political ‘solution’ – if it can be extended sine dei.
‘Solution’ being here but a polite word for the EU’s attempted bribery of Egypt and Jordan. Reportedly, the EU President, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Egypt and Israel to present them with financial offers ($10bn for Egypt and $5bn for Jordan), in exchange for the dispersal of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip elsewhere – effectively to facilitate the evacuation of the Palestinian population from the Strip in line with Israel’s aims of ethnically-cleansing Gaza.
However, former minister Ayalet Shaked’s tweet – “After we turn Khan Yunis into a soccer field, we need to tell the countries that each of them take a quota: We need all 2 million to leave. That’s the solution to Gaza” – is but one by senior Israeli political and security figures extoling what Israel increasingly sees as the “solution” for Gaza.
But by being so explicit, Shaked likely has torpedoed Von der Leyen’s initiative – for no Arab state wants to be complicit in a new Nakba.
A Hudna or ‘time out’ inevitably is highly precarious. In the 2014 fighting, when IDF forces initiated military sweeps in Gaza after a ceasefire had begun, it led to a fire-fight and the collapse of the cease-fire. The fighting continued for another full month.
Two key lessons that I learnt from trying to initiate truces on behalf of the EU during the Second Intifada were that a ‘truce is a truce’ and only that – both sides use it to reposition themselves for the next round of fighting. And secondly, that ‘quiet’ in one confined locality does not spread de-escalation to another geographically separate locality; but rather, that one outbreak of egregious violence is virally contagious, and spreads geographically instantly.
The present hostage exchange is centred on Gaza. However, Israel has three fronts of hot conflict open (Gaza, its northern border with Lebanon, and in the West Bank). An incident occurring in any one of the three fronts may be enough to collapse confidence in the Gaza understandings and re-launch Israel’s assault on Gaza.
On the eve of the truce, by way of example, Israeli forces heavily bombed both Syria and Lebanon. Seven Hizbullah fighters were killed.
The point here, plainly said, is that the historical precedents of Hudnas leading to political openings are not that great. A hostage release, per se, resolves nothing. The issue in the present crisis runs far deeper. When, ‘once upon a time’, Britain promised the Jews a homeland, western powers also (in 1947) promised Palestinians a state, but never took it to implementation. This lacuna ultimately is culminating in a head-on train crash.
The Israeli Cabinet’s ambition for a Jewish State on the biblical lands of Israel simply is intended to block any Palestinian State from emerging either in part of Jerusalem, or elsewhere in historic Palestine. In this context, Hamas’ actions were precisely intended to break this impasse and the endless paradigm of fruitless ‘negotiations’.
Unsurprisingly, Israel’s Defence Minister already has announced Israel’s intention to renew fighting immediately after the end of the cease-fire. Israeli officials have been telling their U.S. counterparts that they anticipate several more weeks of operations in the north of the Strip, before shifting focus to the south.
Thus far, the IDF has been operating in areas close to the shoreline in Gaza, and in places, such as the Wadi, south of Gaza City, where the subsoil does not facilitate the building of tunnels. These are the areas, therefore, where Hamas does not have significant defensive capabilities. Should military action be renewed, the IDF is likely to move away from the northern coastline towards the Gaza City epicentre, allowing Hamas to manoeuvre more easily, and inflict greater losses on the IDF and their armoured vehicles. In this sense – away from the simulacra – the war is just beginning.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has been described both in Israel and in the western MSM as a ‘dead man walking’ in political terms. Be that as it may, Netanyahu has his strategy: He has openly defied the Biden Team on every war-related issue, except that of eradicating Hamas.
During a press conference last Sunday, Netanyahu touted a “diplomatic Iron Dome”, saying he would not give in to “increasingly heavy pressure … used against us in recent weeks … I reject these pressures and say to the world: We will continue to fight until victory — until we destroy Hamas and bring our hostages back home”.
Yonatan Freeman, from the Hebrew University, perceives the gambit in Netanyahu’s vague statements: He defies Team Biden, yet takes care to leave sufficient ‘wiggle room’ so that he can always blame Biden, whenever he is ‘forced’ by America into some reversal.
The Israeli Cabinet’s strategy, therefore, rests on the big bet that Israeli public opinion will hold – despite Netayahu’s personal disapproval ratings – due to the overwhelming public support at this point for the two declared objects set by the War Cabinet: Destroying the ‘Hamas regime’ and its capabilities, and the release of all Israeli hostages.
At its core, ‘the bet’ lies in the conviction that public sentiment – contextualised deliberately by the Israeli cabinet in absolute Manichean terms (light versus the dark; civilisation versus barbarism; all Gazans being complicit with ‘Hamas’ evil’) – will ultimately arouse a wave of support for the further move of taking “the fiction” of a Palestinian state off the table “once and for all”. The table is being set for a long war against ‘cosmic evil’.
The ‘solution’, as National Security Minister Smotrich and his allies underline, is to offer Palestinians a choice – ‘to renounce their national aspirations and continue living on their land in an inferior status’, or to emigrate abroad. Put bluntly, the ‘solution’ is the removal of all non-subservient Palestinians from the lands of Greater Israel.
Turning now to the contending perspective:
The ‘united axis’ supporting Palestinians observe that Israel continues to adhere to its initial military goals of destroying Gaza to the point where there is nothing left – no civilian infrastructure at all – by which Gazans might live, were they even to try to return to their collapsed homes.
They see this Israeli objective fully supported by Biden when his spokesman said:
“We believe that they have the right to [embark on further combat operations in Gaza]; but [such actions] … should include greater and enhanced protections for civilian life”.
Regional security commentator, Hasan Illaik, notes,
“Axis officials also believe that conciliatory-sounding U.S. statements, which sometimes suggest that a de-escalation phase is imminent, are nothing but an effort to repair a public image heavily damaged by unstinting U.S. support for Israel’s continuing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza”.
So, is Israel, supported by Team Biden and some EU leaders, winning?
Tom Friedman – an intimate of Team Biden – wrote in the New York Times on 9 November – after traveling around Israel and the West Bank:
“I now understand why so much has changed. It is crystal clear to me that Israel is in real danger — more danger than at any other time since its War of Independence in 1948”.
Far-fetched? Possibly not.
Back in 2012, U.S. author Michael Greer wrote that Israel was founded at a particular propitious time, despite being surrounded by hostile neighbours:
“Several of the major Western powers supported the new state with significant financial and military aid; of at least equal importance, members of the religious community responsible for creating the new state, who remained back in those same Western nations, engaged in vigorous fundraising efforts to support the new state, and equally vigorous political efforts to get existing governmental support maintained or increased. The resources thus made available to the new state gave it a substantial military edge against its hostile neighbours, and its existence became enough of a fait accompli that some of its neighbours backed away from a wholly confrontational stance”.
“Still, the state’s survival depended on three things. The first, and by far the most crucial, was the ongoing flow of support from the Western powers to pay for a military establishment far larger than the economic and natural resources of the territory in question would permit. The second was the continued fragmentation and relative weakness of the surrounding states. The third was the maintenance of internal peace within the state and of collective assent to a clear sense of priorities, so that it could respond with its full force to threats from outside – instead of squandering its limited resources on civil strife or popular projects that contributed nothing to its survival”.
“In the long run, none of these three conditions could be met indefinitely … When it happens that these early patterns of support break down, Israel may find itself backed into a corner”.
Last week, a leading Israeli commentator noted:
“You might think a Presidential visit, presidential speech, three Secretary of State visits, two Secretary of Defence visits, the dispatching of two aircraft carrier groups, a nuclear submarine and Marine expeditionary unit, and the pledge of $14.3 billion in emergency military aid, are testament to the unwavering support the U.S. is extending to Israel” …
“Think again”.
“Underneath the full and robust backing of the Biden administration, there are dangerous and treacherous currents that are chipping away and encroaching on public sympathy for Israel across the United States. Polls released last week contained the most alarming and telling data: Public support for Israel is cratering – particularly amongst the 18 – 34 age group. Another poll shows that 36% of Americans say they oppose additional funding for Ukraine and Israel: Support for funding Israel, only – was at 14%”.
What is truly remarkable is that the leaders of the new narratives are the youth of Generation Z, Y, and Alpha. Leveraging social media, and speaking directly to their peer groups, they have conveyed the grievances of the Palestinians to the world. Many had limited knowledge of Palestine, but their unfiltered sense of justice fuelled their collective anger against Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Greer’s second and third conditions for Israel’s survival also are metastasizing as the global tectonic plates grind and move: Non-western powers are not siding with Israel. They are coalescing in opposition to the Israeli Cabinet’s aspiration to end the notion of a Palestinian State, once and for all. And today, Israel is bitterly divided on the vision for its future; what it is exactly that constitutes ‘Israel’ and even that very post-modern question, ‘what it is to be Jewish’.
Region ‘let down’ by West’s reaction to Israeli crimes in Gaza: Qatar
Press TV – November 27, 2023
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has slammed the West’s support for Israel’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip, warning against the risk of a regional spillover.
“There’s a big disappointment in the region from the West’s reaction… We were expecting from the West the killing of Palestinian people is something to be condemned,” the Financial Times quoted al-Thani as saying on Sunday.
“And what we expect at least is [the West] to step up to the same standards, the same principles that they stood up to with other wars,” al-Thani added.
Noting that the war on Gaza was not treated like other conflicts, Sheikh Mohammed said “calling for a ceasefire after this destruction and killing [in Gaza] and displacement is a duty on everyone.”
Destruction of Hamas ‘not realistic’
Al-Thani emphasized that Israel’s declared aim of eliminating Hamas resistance movement was not realistic.
“At the end of the day, Hamas’s destruction by the continuation of this war will never happen,” he said, calling for a political solution to the conflict.
He stressed that Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank needed to have a “political horizon” for a viable state of their own and to be able to choose their own leadership, adding “Other than that . . . there won’t be a solution.”
The minister noted that Qatar now focuses on stopping the war. “Our only plan is to stop the war.”
“Talking about the day after as the killing and the massacres is ongoing is just like endorsing this war,” he said.
“The amount of anger and agitation in the Arab population in the region is unprecedented when they see these images, and nobody is stepping up to stop it.”
Al-Thani also warned that the failure to secure an extended ceasefire would risk the war spilling over and destabilizing “the entire region.”
He slammed Western powers for not exerting more pressure on Israel to end the war.
Referring to the underway temporary ceasefire in Gaza, al-Thani said it could be extended if Hamas managed to locate women and children captives who are held in Gaza and secure their release.
“If they get additional women and children, there will be an extension,” he said, adding “We don’t yet have any clear information how many they can find because . . . one of the purposes [of the pause] is they [Hamas] will have time to search for the rest of the missing people.”
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Nearly 15,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the Israeli strikes.
Israel dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, says media office
MEMO |November 26, 2023
The Gaza government’s media office said on Sunday that the Israeli army has dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, with the apparent goal of rendering the enclave uninhabitable.
Salama Maarouf, the head of the media office, issued a statement on Telegram on the third day of the temporary humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas, which came into effect on Friday morning.
“The Israeli occupation forces have dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on the Strip (since Oct. 7), and the atrocities of the occupation (forces) have unfolded away from the scrutiny of cameras,” Marouf said.
He explained that “the bombs recently used by the occupation (forces) have never been used before, and hundreds of martyrs are buried in the places where they died. The devastation by the occupation (forces) reflects its intent to make Gaza uninhabitable.”
In the statement, Maarouf also discussed the temporary pause, emphasizing that “the days of respite have laid bare the enormity of the significant massacre, resulting in substantial destruction to infrastructure and residences.”
“One-third of the Gaza Strip’s population has yet to receive essential supplies, and the absence of all international institutions is evident,” he stated, calling on the international community to act.
“There is a pressing need for the establishment of a sizable field hospital,” he added.
Biden moves to lift all restrictions on Israel’s access to US weapons stockpile: US media
Press TV – November 26, 2023
US President Joe Biden has requested the removal of nearly every restriction on Israel’s use of the stockpiles of weapons and ammunition stored by the United States in Israel, according to an American report.
The Intercept said on Saturday that Biden is seeking to remove all restrictions on the usage of the little-known US weapons stockpiles in Israel that the Pentagon established for use in regional conflicts, to which the Israeli regime had been previously permitted to have access in limited circumstances.
The move was included in the White House’s supplemental budget request, sent to the Senate on October 20, according to the report.
“This request would allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles,” the proposed budget says.
The War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) was created in the 1980s to supply the United States with equipment in the case of a regional war, which is the largest node in a network of de facto US foreign arms stockpiles. These warehouses are controlled by a set of strict requirements.
Under the conditions outlined in these requirements, the Israeli regime has been able to tap into these stockpiles and purchase weapons at low costs if effective subsidization of US military aid is used.
The report notes that with WRSA-I, Biden seeks to remove nearly all meaningful restrictions on the stockpile and arms transfer to Israel, with plans to lift restrictions on obsolete or surplus weapons, waive an annual spending cap on replenishing the stockpile, remove weapon-specific restrictions, and curtail congressional oversight.
All of the changes in the Biden budget plan would be permanent, except for lifting the spending cap, which is limited to the 2024 fiscal year. The changes would come in an arms-trade relationship that is already shrouded in secrecy.
The House has already passed legislation reflecting the White House’s request last month, and it now stands before the Senate.
“By dropping the requirement that such articles be declared excess, it would also increase the existing strain on US military readiness in order to provide more arms to Israel,” said Josh Paul, who was the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, for over 11 years.
Paul, whose resignation last month due to US military aid to Israel caused a stir in Washington, admitted that “the President’s emergency supplemental funding request, would essentially create a free-flowing pipeline to provide any defense articles to Israel by the simple act of placing them in the WRSA-I stockpile, or other stockpiles intended for Israel.”
According to experts, the White House request would make it much harder for Congress or the public to monitor US arms transfers to Israel.
Under US law, there must be 30 days prior notice to Congress before arms transfer, but the Biden budget request would allow this to be shortened in “extraordinary” circumstances.
In a report last January, The New York Times, citing US and Israeli officials, revealed that the Pentagon sent hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine from the so-called American emergency stockpile in Israel to help meet Ukraine’s need for artillery shells in the war with Russia.
The US has been a steadfast supporter of Israel for decades, both diplomatically and militarily. Each year, the US provides around $4bn of military support to the regime.
In early November, the American news outlet Bloomberg stated that the Pentagon has secretly increased its military aid to Israel, including more sophisticated missiles and equipment such as thousands of Hellfire missiles, which have been used extensively by Israel in Gaza war.
On Saturday in a phone call with Israeli minister of military affairs, Yoav Gallant, Pentagon chief Lloyd J. Austin underscored the US’s unwavering support for Israel and received updates as a temporary ceasefire continues across the besieged Gaza Strip following nearly seven weeks of Israeli genocidal war.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry, nearly 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli strikes, most of them women and children, and injured around 36,000 others. 7,000 Palestinians are still missing.
Hamas delays release of captives over Israel’s violation of ceasefire
Press TV – November 25, 2023
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says it has decided to delay the release of a second batch of Israeli captives under a ceasefire in Gaza over Israel’s lack of commitment to the agreement which came into effect on Friday.
Hamas’ military wing, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Saturday it had suspended the release under the ceasefire deal with Israel while it was communicating with mediators to address the regime’s violations of the agreement.
It said Israel was not holding up its part of the deal on issues like easing the delivery of humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza as well as halting gunfire that it said has led to more deaths and injuries among civilians.
Osama Hamdan, a senior political official of Hamas, also said that Israel had started violating the terms of the agreement on Friday and continued its violations on Saturday.
Israel denied the claims with a military spokesperson telling French television channel BFM that the regime had fully respected the truce.
Hamas and Israel agreed as part of a ceasefire deal that was mediated by Qatar earlier this week to exchange prisoners and to stop fighting for four days.
The two sides carried out a first round of prisoner swaps on the first day of the deal on Friday.
Under the deal, Hamas will release a total of 50 Israeli captives taken during a blitz into Israeli-occupied Palestine in early October in return for the release of 150 Palestinians from Israeli jails.
Hamas has said it is ready to extend the deal to put an end to an Israeli aggression that has killed nearly 15,000 people in Gaza over the past 50 days.
Silenced: Journalists in Gaza, south Lebanon killed for exposing Zionist crimes
By Humaira Ahad | Press TV | November 25, 2023
“Life will not last, hug those you love.” This was a post the 25-year-old Lebanese journalist Farah Omar had pinned on her X account, formerly Twitter, days before her killing.
Omar and her colleague Rabih al-Maamari, Beirut-based journalists, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday while reporting from the outskirts of the town of Tayr Harfa – about 3.5 kilometers from the Lebanese border with occupied territories.
A video clip of the location where they were targeted showed bodies strewn in an open field, a camera mounted on a tripod and press vests scattered all around the place.
Omar had been working as an editor and correspondent for the Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen news network since 2021.
The intrepid journalist had covered important events for the channel, including the Turkish presidential elections in May and the Lebanese parliamentary elections in 2022.
“Farah is gone, but there will be a million more like her… What happened is an offering for the sake of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group), and the resistance will live on,” the grieving father said at his daughter’s funeral.
In her last tweet, the young war reporter had lauded Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement for seizing an Israeli ship, calling it “a heroic and honorable act.”
“Known for her bravery, Farah insisted on covering the unfolding events in southern Lebanon, conveying the truth, and giving the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of her message,” her employers said in a statement after her tragic death.
A senior Al Mayadeen photojournalist Maamari, also killed in the attack, was working with the Beirut-based news network since 2012. Father of two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively, he was an important member of Al Mayadeen’s news team.
The 44-year-old photojournalist was in the field since October 7, covering all developments in southern Lebanon amid the Israeli regime’s indiscriminate shelling.
In its condolence message, the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah condemned the heinous crime, extending its commiserations to the Al Mayadeen channel and the families of the two martyrs, asserting that the Israeli aggression “will not go unanswered.”
In his statement, the Lebanese caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati said the attack “proves once again that there are no limits to Israeli crimes, and that its only goal is to silence the media that exposes its crimes.”
Al Mayadeen’s director Ghassan Bin Jeddou, in his statement, said “Every correspondent in Lebanon today feels like Farah and every cameraman in Lebanon also feels like Rabih.”
Shooting the messenger
The killing of two Lebanese journalists came amid a spate of murderous attacks by the Israeli regime on journalists in both southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip since October 7.
As of November 25, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 53 journalists and media workers are among more than 14,000 Palestinians killed in the besieged Gaza Strip since the no-holds-barred onslaught was launched seven weeks ago.
Independent Palestinian groups have put the number of fatalities of journalists much higher.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, in a statement on Saturday, said 66 journalists and media professionals have been killed in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7.
A day before the killing of Omar and Maamari, a Palestinian freelance journalist Ayat Khadoura was killed along with her family members in an Israeli strike on her home in Beit Lahya, northern Gaza.
On November 6, Khadoura shared a video called “my last message to the world”, in which she said: “We had big dreams but our dream now is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”
On the same day that Khadoura was killed, Alaa Taher Al-Hassanat, a Palestinian journalist and presenter at AlMajedat Media Network, was also killed with her family members.
A day before their killing, on November 19, Jadallah, a prominent Palestinian journalist and director of Press House-Palestine was killed in his car in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike.
On November 18, Abdelhalim Awad, a media worker and driver for the Al-Aqsa TV was killed in an Israeli airstrike. His killing came hours after Mansour, director of the Quds News Network, and his colleague Hassouneh Salim were killed in an airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Hassouneh Salim, a Palestinian freelance photojournalist, was also killed in the same airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp. Mostafa El Sawaf, a Gaza-based writer and analyst was also killed on the same day with his wife and two sons in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City.
Amro Salah Abu Hayah, a media worker with Al-Aqsa TV, and Ashour, a photojournalist, were also killed the same day in separate attacks. Ashour’s killing reportedly has taken place before.
Ahmed Fatima, a photojournalist for Al Qahera TV and a worker with Press House Palestine, was killed on November 13. The same day, Yaacoub Al-Barsh, a director of the Namaa Radio, succumbed to his injuries sustained in an attack a November 12.
On November 10, Ahmed Al-Qara, a photojournalist who worked for Al-Aqsa University and was a freelance journalist, was killed in an Israeli airstrike near Khan Yunis.
Three days before that, Yahya Abu Manih, a journalist with A-Aqsa radio station, was killed in a strike in Gaza City. Mohamed Abu Hassira, who worked for Wafa news agency, was also killed on the same day along with 42 members of his extended family.
Mohamed Al Jaja, a consultant at Press House Palestine, was killed in an airstrike with his wife and two daughters on November 5 in the Al-Naser neighborhood in northern Gaza.
On November 2, Mohammed Abu Hatab, a journalist and correspondent for Palestine TV was killed along with 11 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Yunis.
A day before that, Majd Fadl Arandas, a member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, was killed in an airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Iyad Matar, an Al-Aqsa TV journalist, was also killed earlier that day with his mother in the Gaza Strip.
Gaza – cemetery of journalists
It was the continuation of the killing spree of journalists in the Gaza Strip, occupied West Bank and southern Lebanon that started on October 7.
In the last seven weeks, hundreds of other journalists have also been reported missing, detained, or injured or their media offices and homes have been damaged in Israeli strikes.
The attack on Omar and Maamari was not an isolated incident in southern Lebanon. Israeli regime attacked a group of journalists there on 13 October as well, killing Essam Abdullah of Reuters and wounding three other journalists working for AFP and Al Jazeera.
CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg has dubbed the Israeli aggression since October 7 as the “deadliest period for journalists covering conflicts that CPJ has ever documented”, adding that they have been recording attacks on journalists for more than thirty years worldwide.
In a statement, an organization for journalists in the Middle East and North Africa, CPJ MENA called for an “independent investigation” into the killing of journalists and emphasized that “journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties.”
Describing Gaza as the “cemetery of journalists,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also voiced its concerns over journalism being eradicated in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s aggression and a refusal to heed calls to protect media personnel.
“This rate of attrition among media workers has deeply shocked journalists the world over. No one can watch the growing tally of fallen colleagues without mounting horror,” Anthony Bellanger, the secretary-general for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said in a statement on November 2.
RSF asserted that journalists were clearly identifiable by the virtue of wearing press vests and that missiles that struck them came from occupied Palestinian territories.
The Paris-based organization also submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on October 31, saying the Israeli regime perpetrated war crimes against journalists in Gaza.
On Wednesday, Jonathan Dagher, the head of RSF’s West Asia desk said this is “one of the deadliest tolls in a century”, adding that “reporters there have no safe refuge and no way of leaving.”
“They are being killed one after another. Since 7 October, the Palestinian territory has been subjected to a veritable eradication of journalism,” he said.
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