Israel targeting Gaza’s history, destroying ancient mosques, churches
MEMO | December 8, 2023
Israel has deliberately destroyed dozens of archaeological sites and ancient sites in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October, in a blatant attempt to target Palestinian cultural heritage.
Yesterday Israeli warplanes bombed the ancient Othman Bin Qashqar Mosque in the Old City of Gaza, killing a number of Palestinians and causing damage to nearby homes.
The mosque was built in 620AH in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, and is considered one of the oldest mosques and archaeological sites in the Gaza Strip.
According to Palestinian sources, the Ministry of Culture recorded that Israeli warplanes have bombed eight museums since the beginning of the war, including the Rafah Museum, Al-Qarara Museum and the Khan Yunis Museum, in addition to destroying most parts of Gaza’s Old City, including dozens of historical buildings i.e. churches, mosques, museums and archaeological sites.
Israel has also destroyed nine publishing houses and libraries and destroyed or partially damaged at least 21 cultural centres.
The Great Omari Mosque, located in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza, is considered one of the most important and oldest mosques in Palestine and the first mosque in the Gaza Strip. It was destroyed in an air strike.
The mosque was named after the second Muslim Caliph, Omar Bin Khattab, and which was later described as “the beautiful mosque” by traveller Ibn Battuta.
The Israeli bombardment also targeted the Church of Saint Porfirio, located in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, which was built in 425AD and was renovated in 1856.
The Sayyed Al-Hashim Mosque, considered one of the most important mosques in the Old City of Gaza because it is thought to hold the tomb of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him)’s grandfather, Hashim Bin Abd Manaf, was also destroyed.
The Byzantine church in Jabalia, a prominent landmark in the Levant, was also levelled, along with Al-Khader Shrine in the city of Deir Al-Balah, which is the first and oldest Christian monastery built in Palestine by Saint Hilarius during the Byzantine era.
Toothless body: Why has International Criminal Court failed Palestinians?
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | December 8, 2023
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan’s recent visit to the occupied West Bank and Ramallah once again laid bare the Hague-based international tribunal’s strong pro-Israel bias.
It was his first-ever visit to the occupied Palestinian territories and came amid the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, with the backing of the United States.
Even though the Tel Aviv regime does not recognize ICC’s jurisdiction and refuses to cooperate with it, Khan told the Israeli authorities that his office would be happy to cooperate with the regime.
Amid the Israeli regime’s war against Palestinians in Gaza, which started on October 7, many world leaders, activists, and commentators have raised questions over the submissiveness of the ICC.
The first reaction of Khan, a British lawyer who has been serving as the ICC prosecutor since June 2021, came three days after the Israeli regime launched bombings on Gaza in October.
In a statement issued on October 10, Khan confirmed that the ICC’s mandate applies to the latest confrontation between the Israeli regime and Palestinians, adding they are continuously gathering information in support of an investigation about what happened on October 7.
Palestine joined the international court in 2015, while the regime in Tel Aviv is still not a member of the ICC and has repeatedly rejected its jurisdiction and does not formally engage with it.
ICC’s Rome Statute gives it legal authority to investigate crimes committed on the territory of its 123 member states or by their nationals on other territories when domestic authorities are “unwilling or unable” to do so.
Continued indifference of ICC
Toward the end of October, Khan visited the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, when he criticized Israel for denying food and medicine to Palestinians at a Cairo conference.
He warned that curtailment of these rights could give rise to criminal responsibility under the Rome Statute, adding that the ICC has active investigations about war crimes committed there since 2014.
His statements, however, were characterized as vague as he wittingly tried to equate Israeli and Palestinian “crimes”, even though one side is an aggressor and the other side is a victim.
There has also been no sense of urgency in the ICC investigation, for which the court has been regularly criticized and cajoled by Palestinian politicians and human rights activists.
Amid pressure, in mid-November, Khan announced that five countries had sent him a referral of the situation of Palestine, specifically South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa noted that his country, together with many other countries across the world, referred the Israeli regime’s action to the ICC.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also appealed to the ICC president and prosecutor through letters, emphasizing the need for the international court to initiate judicial proceedings.
He urged the ICC not to allow the perpetrators of serious international crimes to escape punishment, highlighting the importance of adhering to the court’s main duty outlined in the Rome Statute by avoiding double standards, selectivity, and politicization.
However, there has been no headway in the ICC probe so far even though the war continues.
Khan’s visit to Tel Aviv
Despite growing international calls for accountability and professionalism, blatant duplicity and hypocrisy reached a new high after Khan’s recent visit to the occupied West Bank and Tel Aviv.
His trip was initiated by a group that represents families of victims of the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation (Al-Aqsa Flood), despite evidence revealing that the Israeli regime killed their own on Oct 7.
The Israeli regime made a major propaganda effort to portray the Oct 7 spectacular military operation and its humiliating defeat as a “massacre,” using the group as the regime’s front-line trumpeters.
For weeks now, they have been bombarding the media with propaganda, also meeting with world leaders, seeking an emotional reaction which the Israeli regime then uses to smear Palestinians.
It ranges from the widely promoted propaganda about 40 “murdered babies” to individual stories like that of Emily Hand, whose father gleefully trumpeted to the media that he was happy that she was dead, only to be declared alive later, and eventually freed.
Hamas’ humane treatment of recently freed Israeli captives prompted the regime to ban their families from speaking to the media, suggesting that they tried to manipulate public opinion.
Khan has been accused of taking the forged Zionist narratives as indisputable facts, commenting in an official statement that the Hamas operation was an “attack on civilians” and that it represents “one of the most serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity.”
He called Hamas a “terrorist” organization, which is not an international position and demanded the release of Israeli captives while ignoring that over 6,000 Palestinian civilians are in Israeli captivity, without any charges.
Palestinians criticize Khan
Khan also met with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, including President Mahmoud Abbas.
But he was snubbed by Palestinian political parties and human rights groups who rightly accused him of parroting Israeli accusations of rights abuses over longstanding Palestinian charges.
In a statement, Hamas condemned his visit and his claims regarding alleged atrocities committed on October 7, accusing Khan of bias toward Israel’s “false and misleading narrative” while not conducting “a professional and fair investigation.”
“As Palestinian human rights organizations, we decided not to meet him,” said Ammar Al-Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR).
“I think the way this visit has been handled shows that Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner,” he said, emphasizing his unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian cases.
The BDS movement also voiced criticism, noting that the ICC has failed the Palestinian people for years and now it’s failing to stop the Israeli regime’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, undermining the court’s legitimacy.
On the X platform the movement described Khan’s trip to occupied territories as biased and Israeli-sponsored, adding that the visit compounds the court’s failure.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, led by Ramy Abdu, has also criticized the ICC prosecutor for failure to act on the situation in occupied Palestine, including the Gaza Strip.
“In light of the extraordinarily high level of documentation, unparalleled in history, of the Israeli wars on Gaza, which fit the definition of a genocide in the making under international law, Khan’s selective vision is a shameful affront to justice,” its statement noted.
They accused Khan of “clear double standards” for not taking “a practical action,” on developments in occupied Palestinian territories, highlighting the fact he did not meet with victims of Israel’s occupation and settler terrorism or their families.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, also expressed deep concern over what they said was a “prolonged delay” in Khan’s direct engagement with victims, especially in Gaza.
Triestino Mariniello, a legal representative of Palestinian victims before the ICC, said Khan has “always failed to meet with victim representatives or victims themselves.”
Mariniello noted that since Khan took office, his mandate has been characterized by “double standards” in relation to the situation in Palestine.
“The Prosecutor has not put in place any effective investigation and allocated very minimal and largely insufficient funding to the investigation since it opened,” he said.
Journalist Benjamin Norton commented that although the US and the Israeli regime are not even members, they lobbied for Khan to become the ICC prosecutor, and as a result, he immediately dropped investigations into US and Israeli war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine.
’Rome Statute should be null and void’: Why is it so easy to accuse Russia but not Israel?
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 8, 2023
In the first weeks of the Gaza-Israel war, the ICC’s prosecutor issued a statement in which he said that impeding aid to Gaza could be a crime, but was later revealed to have traveled to Israel and is being accused of stalling the courts investigation into war crimes. “If this is not a case that calls for an international tribunal, then the Rome Statute should be null and void,” says American attorney Stanley Cohen, speaking to RT.
On October 29, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Karim Khan, issued a warning to the Israeli government that impeding the transfer of aid into Gaza could give rise to “criminal responsibility” under the Rome Statute. However, during his speech delivered in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Karim Khan notably placed much greater focus on the Hamas-led attack of October 7 than on anything the Israeli military had committed in the Gaza Strip. Following the ICC prosecutor’s remarks, there have been questions raised as to whether the court will prove useful in addressing crimes committed across Palestine-Israel.
Renowned American attorney Stanley Cohen addressed Karim Khan’s remarks in Cairo. Cohen said that Khan “made rather affirmative declaratory arguments about what Hamas, what the Qassam brigades, did do, how, when, where, what happened. In the absence of any independent examination, in the absence of any independent evidence, based upon, to some degree, propaganda distortion, alternative intelligence information, which was put out there.” Cohen went on to state that “if I were one of the attorneys representing Palestinians in front of the ICC, given the commentary that the prosecutor made, I might ask him to recuse himself.”
In March of 2021, the ICC officially opened a probe into what it says are war crimes that may have been committed in Palestine – by all parties involved – since June 13, 2014. This would technically mean that crimes recently committed could be subject to an investigation and those responsible may, in theory, be prosecuted. Also, in 2021, Israel’s top human rights group, B’tselem, along with Human Rights Watch, declared that the Israeli government was operating a regime of Apartheid against the Palestinians. In 2022, Amnesty International followed suit, issuing its own lengthy report that demonstrated why it also had decided to accuse Israel of the crime of Apartheid. The ICC has the right, under the Rome Statute, to prosecute those who commit the crime of Apartheid.
However, as the US-based think tank Arab Center Washington DC noted in September, “little has been done” over the past two years by the ICC, despite the prosecutors’ “professed desire to improve the credibility of the court and his private protestations that he cares about the question of Palestine.” Despite Israel having stated that it “will not cooperate” with the ICC, protesting its announced probe into war crimes in 2021, the families of Israelis killed on October 7 have urged the court to launch an investigation into alleged crimes committed by Hamas. This puts the Israeli government in a tough position, as it has repeatedly stated that the ICC has no jurisdiction in their territory. Hamas, on the other hand, welcomed the ICC probe into war crimes, while defending its own actions.
Commenting on the question of why the ICC has yet to move towards indicting those responsible for crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories, Stanley Cohen replied:
“They returned an indictment against Putin on the basis of ex parte claims, certainly probable cause, within four days. In the case of Israel you’ve had nine years to find, investigate and corroborate systemic violations of international law, the violation of the law of war, human rights violations, collective punishment, violations of the humanitarian code, crimes against humanity. War crimes.”
Cohen also added the following: “I don’t know why it’s taken two years… There should be an ongoing investigation right now. I was involved in the preliminary applications for the ICC. There have been, just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of declarations, of affidavits, of videos, of films, of admissions, of statements over the last nine years now, that the ICC has. The cynic in me imagines or wonders whether this, the same piece would’ve taken the speed if the targets were African, if they were black, because the ICC has a history of moving with deliberate speed when it involves African defendants or targets, or people of color.”
Since the child death toll in Gaza alone, as a result of Israel’s war on the besieged coastal enclave, is more than six times times higher than the total Israeli civilian death toll from October 7, it begs the question as to whether the ICC is viewing crimes committed against Palestinians with the same seriousness. If that case goes forward, and investigates the never ending list of war crimes committed across Palestine-Israel, it could perhaps rescue some of the legitimacy of the court, which has been repeatedly accused by African leaders of wrongful targeting. In fact, due to the majority of the ICC’s indictments having been handed out to those on the continent of Africa, some have even suggested that the ICC should be renamed the African Criminal Court.
To make matters worse, once it was revealed that ICC prosecutor Karim Khan had traveled to Israel, he quickly made plans to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian human rights groups. However, human rights groups based in the occupied territories rejected his request to meet. Ammar Al-Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) said that “the way this visit has been handled shows that Mr Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner.”
According to Stanley Cohen, “there are lots of options” beyond the International Criminal Court when it comes to the prosecution of war crimes, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ). “You also then have the situation of courts with universal jurisdiction such as South Africa and Spain and about a dozen or so other countries, which I have no doubt will also be initiating investigations under universal jurisdiction,” he said.
Whether the ICC acts now will either be its saving grace, or irreparably stain the reputation of the court forever. The sheer scale of the atrocities that are now being committed in Gaza is difficult to even describe, with more tonnage of explosives being dropped on the besieged territory than the nuclear bomb used by the United States against Hiroshima. Meanwhile, food, water, medical aid, fuel and electricity are being prevented from entering, or in other cases are being severely limited. Some 1.5 million civilians have been displaced and around 20,000 people killed, while upwards of 30,000 have been injured.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Protesters flock to UK arms factories to block deliveries to Israel
The Cradle | December 7, 2023
Hundreds of demonstrators and workers closed off four weapons manufacturing facilities in the UK that produce parts for the F-35 stealth fighter jet, which Tel Aviv utilizes in its ethnic cleansing campaign of the Gaza Strip.
Videos shared on social media show dozens on 7 December barricading the entry points to the four arms factories from early morning, hindering employees from accessing the sites.
Earlier this week, human rights organizations took the Dutch government to court for permitting the delivery of F-35 components to Israel.
US arms and aerospace company Lockheed Martin produced the fighter jet parts. Before their shipment to Israel, these components were stored in a warehouse located in the Netherlands.
In another similar case, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied at the Port of Tacoma in Washington State in an attempt to block a supply vessel suspected of transporting weapons and military equipment to Israel.
Starbucks loses $11bn in value from pro-Palestine action
The Cradle | December 7, 2023
Seatle-based Starbucks Corp has lost over $11 billion in value this last quarter due to Palestinian solidarity boycotts and employee strikes since the beginning of the war in Gaza on 7 October.
The coffee giant tried to bounce back on losses with their holiday season “Red Cup Day” gimmick that would allow consumers to receive a free reusable holiday cup with every purchase.
Since the announcement of Starbucks’ scheme in mid-November, the company has seen its market share crash by 8.96 percent, accounting for $11 billion in losses, the lowest it has experienced since 1992.
The primary factor for the losses of other western corporations, like McDonald’s and KFC, is due to an international boycott action launched against Israel-supporting firms in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The financial hit by Starbucks jumped borders as its franchises in Egypt have turned to downsizing their workforce due to the boycott’s effects.
Starbucks turned to sue their union, Starbucks Workers United, in October after objecting to the latter’s social media post in solidarity with Palestine, citing intellectual property theft and harassment of baristas at Starbucks cafe locations.
“Workers United posted a statement with an image of a bulldozer tearing down part of the Israel and Gaza border, reflecting their support for violence perpetrated by Hamas,” the company note obtained by The Intercept read. “Starbucks unequivocally condemns acts of terrorism, hate, and violence committed by Hamas, and we strongly disagree with the views expressed by Workers United.”
The boycotting impact in West Asia, where pro-Palestine sentiment has been historically strong, has multiple western brands feeling the heat from Morrocco, Kuwait, Jordan, and others.
“The scale of the aggression against the Gaza Strip is unprecedented. Therefore, the reaction, whether on the Arab street or even internationally, is unprecedented,” said Hossam Mahmoud, a member of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) in Egypt.
Military expert: Israel’s talk of flooding Gaza tunnels is ‘psychological warfare’
MEMO | December 6, 2023
Israel’s plans to flood the resistance’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater are part of its “psychological warfare” tactics and are unrealistic, retired Jordanian Colonel and military expert, Mohamed Al-Muqabla, has said.
During an interview with Quds Press yesterday, Al-Muqabla said Israeli occupation forces are “engaging in psychological warfare against the resistance and the people of Gaza. They are constantly discussing plans and tools that could be used to neutralise the effectiveness of the tunnels, weaken the resistance, and undermine its popular support.”
He added: “For the past two months, the Israeli occupation has been unable to discover the main tunnel entrances, despite having sensitive devices. All they have discovered are secondary tunnel entrances, which are often booby-trapped. The previous occupation’s talk about pumping gas into the tunnels to kill the resistance fighters was easier for them than using water, but for two months they have done nothing because they do not know the reality of the tunnels, which are not connected, and therefore the step of flooding the tunnels with water is unrealistic.
Palestinian surgeon slams HRW as unreliable source, says al-Ahli Hospital report ‘baseless’
Press TV – December 6, 2023
A British-Palestinian surgeon has denounced as “unfounded” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the deadly strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, saying it was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence, and that HRW is not a reliable source “as it serves the enemy.”
Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta made the remarks during a lecture titled “The destruction of Gaza’s health sector: confronting devastation and forced displacement” in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday.
Sitta highlighted that HRW neither communicated with the director of the hospital nor contacted the doctor who received Israeli orders for evacuation in its report.
He went on to say that HRW did not bother to talk to any of the witnesses of the crime as it unfolded, adding, “I always told you never use HRW as a reliable source because it served the enemy.”
On Sunday, HRW reported that evidence suggested a misfired Gaza rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, which left at least 417 people dead.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, As’ad Abdukhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, said Sitta’s verdict against HRW was “very damning.”
Sitta, traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon. He worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza.
He has already recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians have gone through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.
HRW said in its report that, “The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition,” such as those commonly used by Palestinian resistance groups.
It claimed that the findings of its investigation into the explosion were based on a review of photos and videos, satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and experts.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said all indications pointed to Israel’s responsibility, adding that the HRW report was biased towards Israel and was not “decisive”.
“HRW hasn’t come up with any evidence to support their findings nor eyewitness testimonies nor opinion of independent military exports,” he said, adding that Hamas received questions from HRW two weeks ago but asked it to delay its report until after the war had ended.
The explosion at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel claimed it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has pounded hospitals across the besieged enclave where thousands of displaced people and patients were sheltering.
The regime has falsely accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of using hospitals as bases, which Hamas has dismissed.
Expert: Washington is Zionist-Controlled Territory
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 06.12.2023
Speaking to Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Tuesday, scientist, author and activist for Palestinian Human Rights, Mazin Qumsiyeh said Israel’s actions in Gaza are a genocide that has been ignored by the world, and that Zionists in Israel want to dominate the Middle East and potentially beyond.
Asked what comes next in the conflict, Qumsiyeh said that soon disease, malnutrition and a lack of water and medicine will lead to a civilian death toll that will “quickly overtake the number of civilians killed by bombings.”
He then moved onto discussing what he believes to be Israel’s plans after Gaza.
“That is the long-term plan of Israel, a newly dominated Middle East, in which Israel holds hegemony. But I don’t think they will stop with the Middle East, they will continue because that is what colonialist powers do,” Qumsiyeh warned. “I think China and Russia and other countries need to pay attention very closely to what Israeli plans have been.”
Israel started heavily bombing Gaza days after a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, which killed around 1,200 Israelis according to official numbers. It has since launched a ground campaign in Gaza, promising to eliminate Hamas. More than 16,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including over 7,000 children.
Multiple human rights organizations have described Israel’s actions as genocidal. Israel has targeted UN schools, refugee camps and hospitals, claiming that Hamas militants are hiding in those areas or using them as a base of operation.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why so many countries are silent on this, on an ongoing holocaust, an ongoing genocide,” Qumsiyeh said, adding that he believes it is “not [just] a Palestinian problem, it’s a global problem.”
“The State Department now basically works 95% of its time for Israel,” Qumsiyeh said, pointing to a recent resignation by State Department official Josh Paul, who said in media interviews that there “has been no space allowed for debate” on the transfer of arms to Israel.
“… since Washington is a superpower, with the tails of Washington being the UK and many other countries like Canada and Australia follow suit. So we have a major global problem that could lead to world war,” Qumsiyeh said. “It also already led to the destruction of international law and order and already the UN has become a totally useless organization.”
Political Misfits co-host John Kiriakou asked Qumsiyeh if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could lose his position and if it would matter if he did.
“They need to be stopped as a collective, not as Netanyahu, let’s not make it personal about Netanyahu,” he added.
Israel has maintained that it is doing all that it can to protect civilians in Gaza while attempting to eliminate Hamas. It has repeatedly dismissed claims that has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Environmentalists: Gaza’s Water, Farmland ‘Will Be Unusable’ if Israel Floods Tunnels With Seawater
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 05.12.2023
Gaza’s fragile ecosystem could be permanently damaged by a huge influx of salty seawater like that which Israel is considering pumping into the city, experts said. Some of the deepest tunnels dug by Hamas and other militant groups could be near groundwater depths, souring the area’s drinking water.
According to reports in US media on Tuesday, Israel has pushed ahead with plans to flood Gaza City with seawater in an attempt to destroy the network of tunnels dug beneath the city by Palestinian militant groups.
According to the report, the IDF finished assembling five massive seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip in mid-November. The plan is reportedly to flood the tunnels slowly over several weeks, giving Palestinian fighters and their Israeli captives time to safely evacuate.
The report was unclear about the disposition of the White House toward the plan. The Biden administration has largely supported Israel’s actions in Gaza as self-defense against Hamas, but given rhetorical warning against violating Palestinian human rights. The warnings have had little effect, though, as nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by IDF bombing and ground operations since Hamas attacked several Israeli border towns in early October, killing some 1,200 people.
Andrey Frolov, co-chair of Moscow’s Environmental Organizations, told Sputnik on Tuesday that an influx of salty seawater could wreck Gaza’s fragile ecosystem, making it difficult to sustain life there.
“When water comes in, it all depends of course, depending on the scale of the disaster. That is, what kind of tunnels are they, where are they laid and what is their size. Because the first thing that immediately catches your eye is that if the tunnels are shallow, say, two to three meters deep, then this will simply undermine the foundations of buildings. When moisture enters, the stability of the soil changes, subsidence begins, and accordingly, it will just begin [to collapse]. Israel has already destroyed the entire city, so I think that for them it is not important.”
“There is information that these tunnels are hundreds of square kilometers in size and go to a depth of up to 80 meters,” he noted, adding that it was probably “a bit of an exaggeration.”
Frolov noted “it depends on the waters” how the influx of salty seawater would affect the fresh groundwater. Some of the deepest tunnels rumored to have been dug in Gaza could be near the depths of the aquifers.
“Because seawater can get into these aquifers it will make them salty. As a result, those wells that were used in Gaza will simply stop working. The territory was already short on water, Israel supplied water from the Sea of Galilee. If a large amount of sea water is pumped into it, it will simply become unusable.”
He noted the salt will also impact agriculture in Gaza, making it “so that any kind of farming or maintaining green spaces will simply be impossible.”
“Our nature lives in biocenosis. That is, it is a complex of living beings that adapt to a certain habitat. If the biocenosis is salted and the living conditions are changed, then some species simply will not be able to live there. And if one, two, three species stop living, then the entire biocenosis crumbles,” he explained.
Top Defense Official: US Can Handle Middle East, Russia and China All at Once
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 5, 2023
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady said the Pentagon was prepared to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, aid the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, and arm Taiwan for a potential war with China. The Admiral argued all the military efforts could be completed simultaneously and the Navy was not stretched thin.
At an Atlantic Council event, Grady said, “You look at what is required to support Ukraine, look at what might be required to support our partner in Israel, and then, of course, you put Taiwan on top of that—we have the construct that we do with combatant commanders and the rest that should allow us to command and control those three things all at one time.” He continued, “It’s part of our campaigning process, which is central to the national defense strategy. Is it challenging? Sure.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration pledged to give Ukraine the weapons needed to win the war. Over the past 19 months, Washington has sent Kiev tens of billions in arms.
Over the past two months, Washington has sent Tel Aviv 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. Israel has targeted civilian homes with American-made bombs. However, the White House has refused to place any conditions on the aid it sends to Tel Aviv.
The transfers have stretched American weapons depots to their redline levels. The shortage has led the White House to send cluster variants of artillery shells to both Ukraine and Israel.
In addition to arms transfers, the US has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops and facilitate weapons shipments to Kiev. In the Middle East region, the White House deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups.
Grady’s belief that the US could fight a three-front war is White House policy. President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to pass a $106 billion funding package to fund arming Ukraine, Israel, and a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific.
The Admiral also indicated that military-to-military talks between the US and China may start soon. “So we’re ready when they are and I suspect we’ll see that shortly, “he said.
During a meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, the two leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications. However, the US has engaged in a pair of provocative naval maneuvers in the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims.
Workers worldwide urged to block Israeli ships as Gaza genocide escalates
Press TV – December 5, 2023
The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) has urged all labor activists, trade unionists, and workers’ organizations to block Israeli ships over the genocide committed by the occupying regime against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Masar Badil called on the international global working class to “block and reject the appearance or docking of any Israeli ship in any global port; to refuse to load or unload any Israeli ship” and to refuse to transport weapons of war to the Israeli entity.
“The hands of the workers should not be sullied with the cargo of genocide,” it added.
According to Masar Badil, the action is “a material means of besieging the occupation and supporting the colonized, occupied people of Palestine.”
The group also hailed Yemen for “blocking the use of Yemeni seas for the transportation and passage of Zionist ships and cargo.”
“All states should follow the Yemeni example and prohibit the use of their ports and seas to arm this genocidal regime!”
Last month, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, announced that the military units would target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or carrying the Israeli flag.
Masar Badil also said that Israel is not alone in carrying out its genocide and warned that every port and company that allows Israeli ships to dock at its port is “a full partner in war crimes and genocide.”
“[Israel] is backed, armed, and funded by the imperialist powers – first and foremost, the United States, together with its partners in Canada, France, Germany, and Britain,” it said.
“Every port and company that allows Israeli ships of any kind to dock at its port is a full partner in war crimes and genocide with the blood of the Palestinian people on their hands and must be held accountable,” it added.
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.
Tel Aviv also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
Nearly 16,000 Palestinians have been killed and approximately 1.9 million others have been internally displaced as a result of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.
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From the Archives
Politicians lie
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
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- Iran flights continue despite US aviation sanctions
- Global Tipping Points Lead the World Into a State of Entropy
- The day-after at the White House: USA and Xi Jinping
- The Geopolitical Balance in the Red Sea: The UAE Being Displaced by New Players
- If Americans Knew
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- In UN Speech, Iran’s President Displays Pictures of Children Killed by US, Brings Attention to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
