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.
ANALYSIS: HOW THE UK AND US MEDIA DEHUMANISE PALESTINIANS
BY CLAIRE LAUTERBACH AND NAMIR SHABIBI | DECLASSIFIED UK | NOVEMBER 22, 2023
Nazis. Beneath animals.
This is a small sample of what Palestinians have been called by commentators speaking to Western media outlets in the last month of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – examples of the bestiary of zoological terms natural to a coloniser’s view of the colonised.
Political philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote during France’s colonial war in Algeria of “hordes of vital statistics”, “hysterical masses”, “faces bereft of all humanity”, and “children who seem to belong to nobody”.
These are all terms that could describe how western media covers the suffering of Palestinians — “a tide of humanity… a teeming mass of Gazans”, as the BBC put it (15 October). This is all sharply in focus since Hamas’ October offensive, and Israel’s genocidal razing of the Gaza strip.
We analysed the front page coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza by five major US and UK news media — the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC (the news landing page at 7am daily) between 7-26 October.
Over these three weeks following Hamas’ offensive, the mechanics of the Western press’ dehumanisation of Palestinians in death and life are revealed as clinical and routine.
Israelis are murdered, Palestinians die
The dehumanisation process begins (or ends) with questioning who counts in death, and how the killer and the victim are portrayed.
In the UK-US mainstream media, Israelis die actively. They are either killed or murdered by Hamas, or “after a surprise Palestinian attack”. “The Palestinians” stands in for “Hamas” for sloppy or ideological editors, for example in the Guardian on 8 October.
Palestinian civilians, by contrast, die passively – and yet it is they who have done most of the dying since 7 October; over ten times the number of Israelis killed.
Gazans aren’t killed by Israeli forces or Israeli government policies. They “dehydrate to death as clean water runs out” (Guardian, 18 October) while Israeli airstrikes “continue to pound the Palestinian territory”.
On 9 October, the BBC ran with “700 people have been killed on the Israeli side with more than 400 also dead in Gaza”, presumably succumbing to shock or an act of God.
On 8 November, the Times of London noted: “Israelis marked a month since Hamas killed 1,400 people and kidnapped 240, starting a war in which 10,300 Palestinians are said to have died”, which is of course qualified.
Palestinian deaths are natural, undifferentiated. This is only possible because the media treat Israel’s blockade of Gaza as wholly logical, proportionate and even restrained.
Violations of international law
Collective punishment, which is essentially what Israel is doing by striking civilian “targets” and totally blockading the “open prison” (in former prime minister David Cameron’s words), is also illegal. This is the view of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, UN human rights chief Volker Türk and Human Rights Watch, among others.
When UN chief António Guterres noted Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine and called for an end to the siege, Israel’s UN representative demanded he resign. At least one of Guterres’ colleagues, the head of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Craig Mokhiber, resigned of his own accord, protesting Israel’s “genocide unfolding before our eyes” in Palestine.
However, in none of the three weeks’ of front-page headlines and lead paragraphs for the five UK-US media analysed for this article are Israel’s serial violations of international law mentioned.
The exclusion of this important context on Israel’s crimes is important. As journalists we’re trained to account for the fact that most people don’t read beyond the headlines or first paragraphs.
Off the front page, some media published separate analysis pieces, such as the New York Times’ “Israel, Gaza and the laws of war” (12 October). This unsurprisingly goes nowhere near calling Israel’s crimes what they are: crimes.
Despite discussing at length how civilians cannot be targeted or disproportionately harmed for military purposes, the closest the New York Times gets to criticising the action of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is quoting the opinion of an expert on siege law.
This was that Israel’s siege is “an unusually clear-cut example of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is considered a violation of international humanitarian law, a crime against humanity and a war crime” (emphasis added).
A swift qualifier follows: “Jurisdiction over some war crimes would depend on whether the conflict is considered inter-state.” So some crimes are not a crime as long as Palestine or Palestinians don’t exist, as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir asserted over 50 years ago, repeated by current Israeli politicians.
By contrast, Hamas’ actions are, to the same cited expert, “not close calls”.
Preventable deaths
Moving on from, or ignoring completely, both the illegality of Israel’s total siege of Gaza, the UK-US media portray the starvation and preventable deaths resulting directly from it in almost entirely passive, naturalistic language.
For example, the Washington Post’s print version front page: “Civilian harm in Gaza looms over Biden’s visit; Rising human toll from attacks could threaten Israel’s global backing” (harm arising of course from Israel’s battering).
On 13 October, from the New York Times : “300,000 homeless in battered Gaza as food runs low” (because Israel is blocking food from entering Gaza). It continues: “Hospitals overwhelmed and fuel scarce” (because Israel is blocking medical supplies and fuel from reaching Gaza) “as Israel strikes back at Hamas.”
That’s fine then – the reader should feel at ease since Israel’s crushing of hospitals is merely an act of “self-defence”.
The Israeli military is not much a fan of Gazan hospitals – it regularly bombs them. It ordered 23 hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate on 13 October, and seems to have been picking them off, with patients inside, ever since.
When Israel might have gone too far, as it did in almost certainly bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October, most outlets covered the strike by repeating both Israel’s and Hamas’ “he said-she said” accusations against the other.
Nevertheless, the New York Times gave the IDF’s denial more weight with “Hamas fails to make case that Israel struck hospital” (23 October, emphasis added), which is a catchier headline than “We don’t know, and don’t want to work it out ourselves”.
Meanwhile, the Times ran with “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”, swiftly adding that “Israel denies responsibility and blames jihadis”, with no comment from a Palestinian voice.
Mirroring the discrepancy between how Palestinians have died (passively, often with no mention of Israeli actions) and Israelis have died (actively, directly attributed to Hamas or “Palestinian” actions) is how the media describes child victims of both sides.
Discussing a prisoner exchange, a Washington Post columnist described Israel’s “children hostages” while referring to Palestinian children as “young people”. Under Military Order 1591, the Israeli government can hold minors as young as 12 without trial and potentially indefinitely in “administrative detention”, UNICEF reports.
When Gazan civilian deaths from siege and strikes against civilian infrastructure are shown as authorless natural disasters rather than as war crimes, any access Gazans get to essential goods becomes “aid” or “relief”, and every tiny amount allowed to reach them is an act of Israeli mercy.
For example, the New York Times (19 October): “Deal lays groundwork for aid to reach desperate Gazans”. Or the Washington Post (12 October): “Closed borders, falling bombs choke Gaza; thousands injured as supplies wane”, adding “humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens” (due to Israeli siege, let’s not forget).
Also in the Washington Post is the incredible headline (16 October) “As Palestinian death toll rises, aid stuck in Egypt”, as if it couldn’t physically fit through the door, which ignores the fact that Israel prevented aid from entering Israel via Rafah, demanding proof it would not be diverted to Hamas.
The numbers
Having reduced Palestinians to numbers, the work then becomes to cast doubt on these numbers.
When Israel’s flattening of Gaza began raising international alarm, Biden said he didn’t trust that “Palestinians” (or the Hamas government, since to him the distinction is irrelevant) “are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
His statement was the latest in a time-honoured tradition of US administrations disputing the number of deaths wreaked by their allies abroad, from Suharto’s Indonesia, to Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s and Saudi Arabia today, as historian Bradely Simpson notes.
No one seriously disputes the Gazan Ministry of Health’s numbers as too high. If anything, they are likely a serious undercount given how many bodies are trapped under rubble.
Nevertheless, the attribution of figures to the “Gaza Ministry of Health” is now almost always prefaced by “Hamas-government” or followed by “controlled by Hamas”. This would seem an odd waste of words, considering that everyone from the UN to the US State Department cites Gazan health ministry casualty data, and Gaza’s government is run by Hamas.
Dead Palestinians are simply irrelevant for some media. The first mention of Palestinian deaths in Times headlines occurred 11 days after Hamas’ assault: “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”. It had by then run several front page pieces about specific, named Israeli victims, including an in-depth profile (with portrait) of a kibbutz family horrifically killed by the Hamas-led offensive [or not].
Unsurprisingly, on 12 October, the Telegraph published the number of Israelis killed in factors of “9/11s” in a striking infographic which didn’t even bother to include an estimate of Palestinian deaths.
Double standards
Once a people are truly dehumanised, it becomes logical – necessary, even – to apply a wholly different standard of (in)decency to them.
UK-US media report Palestinian deaths passively, as if through apparent acts of God, often couching the deaths in language suggesting that they were mostly Hamas or Hamas-adjacent, or at least that they inconveniently stood in missiles’ way.
For still-breathing Palestinians, it is not enough to have somehow escaped being killed by the almost 6,000 bombs Israel launched in its first six days punishing the densely populated territory. This is more than the US, not usually known for its restraint, deployed in any single year of its war in Afghanistan.
A living Palestinian must justify his or her continued aliveness by disavowing Hamas. A viral example of this can be seen in BBC Newsnight’s interview of the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot.
Presenter Kirsty Wark barely flinched upon hearing Zomlot describe in detail how members of his family had been killed by Israeli strikes in the previous days before repeatedly demanding Zomlot condemn Hamas’ actions.
To reverse this, in other words, to ask every Israeli who had lost a family member in this conflict to first begin by condemning Israel’s murders and collective punishment of civilian Gazans would be rightly seen as outrageous. Unsurprisingly, we have not seen any examples of such in the Western press.
The UK-US press also tells us that to support Palestinians is to support Hamas, in case anyone doubted the conflation.
The BBC declared London’s peaceful pro-Palestine protesters as providing “backing for Hamas.” It later retracted its “poorly phrased” comments.
Sky News did no better in using images of peaceful protesters bearing Palestinian flags to accompany its discussion of efforts by the London Metropolitan Police to “tackle extremism”.
These “slips” pale in comparison with the virulently offensive terms guests on BBC programmes have called Palestinians, completely unchallenged by their hosts.
For example, BBC Arabic hosted former Israeli intelligence veteran-turned academic, Mordechai Kedar who refused to recognise popular Israeli racism towards Palestinians, claiming that bestial comparisons of Palestinians are “denigrating to animals.”
Tellingly, the BBC Arabic host neither ejected Kedar from the interview, nor did she admonish him and demand an apology. Instead, the host pivoted away from Kedar’s genocidal language with the comment “that’s your opinion”.
Platforming Israeli justifications
UK-US media have also taken to running pieces platforming Israeli justifications for the IDF’s actions when the staggering number of dead Gazan civilians was becoming harder to write around.
“How Israelis justify scale of airstrikes” ran the New York version front page of the New York Times on 26 October. It was later rewritten as “Israel’s strikes on Gaza are some of the most intense this century”.
It is unthinkable that a Western newspaper would carry a piece platforming in the same benign-to-neutral terms Palestinian rage, or worse, justifications for Hamas’ crimes.
Another trend is to normalise Israel’s actions by focusing not on its costs in Gazan lives, but its intentions which, of course, are shown as benign. (Note: intentions don’t matter in the laws of war.)
Three days into Israel’s illegal total blockade of Gaza, the BBC asked: “Could an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza meet its aims?” (14 October). Charitably characterising Netanyahu as “risk-averse” (for Israelis, not Palestinians), the New York Times ran with “All-out war is untried ground”, comforting readers that “limited strikes in past were safe politically”.
Dissenting voices: harder to hear
Journalists at the BBC and Agence France Presse (AFP) who have been critical of their agencies’ bias against Palestinian lives and minimisation of Israeli war crimes told Declassified that there is no space to discuss editorial concerns.
Palestinian commentators have seen their segments edited out of mainstream news programmes. Palestinian Americans report their events are being cancelled while they’re called Hamas supporters.
Meanwhile, a senior editor at US publication Newsweek called for Gaza to be flattened to resemble a parking lot, apparently without censure.
Elsewhere in the media ecosystem, an official of the UK’s communications regulator OFCOM, Fadzai Madzingira, was suspended for a social media post criticising UK support for “ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians” and “this vile colonial alliance”.
None of these points – that Israel may be committing genocide, that it continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinian land or that Israel was founded as a colonial project which still uses settler outposts to consolidate territorial control – is outside of reasonable analysis of historical facts.
It’s looking an awful lot like the beginning (or end, depending on your starting point) of a genocide.
The IDF has instructed all Palestinians to flee south of the Wadi Gaza area “for their safety” from Israeli strikes. Some were struck as they were evacuating, and Palestinians are still being shelled by the IDF in southern refuge areas.
Soldiers plant Israeli flags on Gazan beaches, while Israel’s intelligence agency floats the idea of permanently expelling Gazans to Egyptian Sinai as a preferred solution. Netanyahu invokes a Bible passage where God orders the Israelites “to put to death men and women, children and infants” of a rival kingdom.
Still, the New York Times uncritically presents Netanyahu as “seeking [a] permanent end to threat but not a reoccupation” (13 October).
That last bastion of dissent, gallows humour, is also at grave risk. Michael Eisen, editor of science journal eLife, was sacked for posting on Twitter an article from humour site the Onion, with the headline “Dying Gazans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas”.
The Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell’s contract was not renewed after his sketch of Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach with an outline of Gaza was deemed too reminiscent of the “pound of flesh” anti-semitic trope.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a cartoon of a Hamas official with Gazan children and women strapped to him saying “How dare Israel attack civilians”. It’s since been deleted following racism complaints.
Yet the cartoonist is still drawing for mainstream media. Last week he published another cartoon in the Las Vegas Review showing a (fat, black) woman with a Black Lives Matter t-shirt holding up a sign saying “Terrorist Lives Matter: Blame Israel, Support Hamas”.
How dare Israel attack civilians indeed.
Claire Lauterbach is an independent investigative journalist and producer. She is the former Head of Investigations at Privacy International where she investigated the use and abuse of surveillance and military technologies, and a former Senior Investigator at Global Witness. Claire previously investigated war crimes in Goma, DR Congo for Human Rights Watch.
Namir Shabibi is an independent investigative journalist, visiting lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Westminster, and PhD candidate researching covert paramilitary action in the ‘War on Terror’. He is a former International Committee of the Red Cross delegate investigating breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Darfur and Guantanamo Bay.
Spain blasts Israeli accusations after criticizing Gaza genocide
Press TV – November 25, 2023
Spain has lashed out at Israel for “terror” accusations, calling them “false and out of place” after Madrid criticized Tel Aviv for killing more than 14,000 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares condemned Israel’s allegations against prime ministers of Spain and Belgium as “unacceptable”, vowing “a response.”
Albares’ comments came hours after Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo were “giving support to terrorism,” and summoned both nations’ ambassadors in Tel Aviv for a “harsh rebuke.”
Albares stressed that Israel’s “false” accusations were “especially serious” given the fact that Spain is representing the European Union as the current president of the EU Council, a position that will be handed over to Belgium on January 1, 2024.
Speaking with Spanish media, Albares had criticized “unbearable number of Palestinian victims, including children” killed by Israeli attacks during a tour of West Asia.
“This is not incompatible with the message we’ve been repeating since day one … the right to defend itself must be with the scrupulous respect toward international humanitarian law,” he had said.
Sanchez is visiting Israel, Palestine and Egypt in a bid to put an end to Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians.
“Violence will only lead to more violence. We need to replace violence with hope and peace,” said Sanchez on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Friday.
His tour, however, ended in a diplomatic blow-up with Israel.
On Friday, Barcelona City Council suspended the city’s relations with the Israeli regime as long as the latter continues its ongoing deadly war against the Gaza Strip.
Spanish PM ‘whitewashing war criminal Netanyahu,’ outspoken ex-minister suggests
Ione Belarra, Spain’s former minister for social rights
Press TV – November 24, 2023
A former Spanish minister, who has been openly censuring the West’s silence over the Israeli regime’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, persists with her outspoken criticism.
Ione Belarra was Spain’s minister for social rights until she was removed from her post by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday over her targeting of the “deafening silence” of her country and the regime’s other Western allies on Tel Aviv’s ferocious ongoing warfare against Gaza.
Belarra, currently secretary-general of Spain’s ruling left-wing Podemos Party, fired her latest jab at Madrid on Thursday.
Posting on X she said she and her colleagues were “concerned” that a trip made by Sánchez to the occupied territories earlier in the day “could be used to whitewash [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who is a war criminal.”
Sánchez should be instead traveling to Brussels, where decisions were made that could “truly exert pressure on Israel and Netanyahu to achieve a permanent ceasefire.”
The Israeli regime launched the war on October 7 following an operation, dubbed al-Aqsa Storm, by Gaza’s resistance groups.
More than 14,800 Palestinians, including over 6,150 children, have been killed in the war so far.
Belarra said, “In Brussels, exemplary economic sanctions against Netanyahu and his political leadership could be agreed upon…”
Sánchez should be working with European leaders in Brussels towards suspension of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, she added.
“From our point of view, people are exhausted, tired of the EU (European Union)’s doing absolutely nothing while a genocide against the people of Palestine is taking place, and we need concrete actions.”
Health Ministry stops coordination with WHO until detainees released
Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra
Palestine Information Center – November 23, 2023
GAZA – The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza on Thursday held the Israeli occupation forces fully responsible for the lives and safety of the doctors, who were detained on Wednesday.
It announced that it will stop coordinating with World Health Organization (WHO) on the rest of evacuations until the international agency submits a report on the Israeli detention of medical personnel and until they are all released.
The spokesman of the Ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a press conference at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, “The United Nations bears full responsibility for this event, and we await appropriate and urgent measures on their part to address this situation”.
He pointed out that they were informed by the United Nations about coordination with WHO to evacuate those who were present in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, which is subject to Israeli siege, raids, and destruction, and were stranded inside the hospital with no food, water, medicine, electricity, or security.
Al-Qudra explained that a convoy from the United Nations, represented by WHO, moved on Wednesday to evacuate some of the patients and medical staff who were subjected to the most horrific Nazi practices in addition to starvation.
“We were surprised that this convoy was stopped by the Israeli checkpoint separating the north from south of Gaza, for about seven hours, during which Israeli occupation forces maltreated the patients, their companions, and the medical staff, before arresting a number of them, including Director General of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya,” Al-Qudra said.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (By AFP)
He pointed out that WHO has not yet submitted any report to the ministry to clarify what happened, including the numbers and names of detainees, stressing that the inability to communicate with Al-Shifa Medical Complex made them unable to know who was arrested.
The Ministry’s spokesman expressed his concerns over potential liquidation of those detainees.
Russian journalist dies after Ukrainian drone attack – media
RT | November 23, 2023
Boris Maksudov, a Russian journalist from Russia 24 TV who was injured on Wednesday in a Ukrainian drone attack, has died in hospital, several news outlets reported on Thursday morning.
Maksudov was injured during a working trip to Zaporozhye Region, through which the front line of the Ukraine conflict passes. He was among a group of reporters who were targeted by a swarm of Ukrainian drones.
The Defense Ministry said at the time that the fragmentation injury he sustained was not deemed life-threatening. He had been evacuated to a military hospital, the statement added.
Russia 24 reported the crew was hit by two quadcopters, which targeted them with grenades. In a grim foreshadowing earlier in the day, Maksudov recorded a video in which he remarked that drones pose a threat in the area despite the poor weather conditions offering some degree of safety.
Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, suggested that Ukrainian forces deliberately attack journalists. Reacting to Maksudov’s reported death on Thursday, he told RIA Novosti : “Unfortunately, the journalistic profession today is increasingly colored in khaki, and too often covered with blood on top.”
Arguably, the first notable incident in which Ukrainian forces were accused of targeting media professionals occurred in 2014, when a volunteer fighter, Nadezhda Savchenko, directed artillery fire at a group of reporters. Two of them, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed.
Savchenko was taken into Russian custody and tried, while Kiev turned her into an international celebrity, claiming to be a victim of persecution. She was sentenced to 22 years in jail in 2016, but was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin and returned to Ukraine, where she was later elected to parliament.
The conflict has claimed the lives of many Russian media professionals. In July, RIA Novosti war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev was killed by shelling in Zaporozhye Region.
RT holds an annual international photography competition in honor of Andrey Stenin, a Russian photojournalist who was killed by Ukrainian small arms fire in Donetsk Region in 2014.
UK GOVERNMENT BLOCKS MP QUESTIONS ABOUT GAZA-RELATED ACTIVITY AT ITS CYPRUS BASE
BY MATT KENNARD AND MARK CURTIS | DECLASSIFIED UK | NOVEMBER 20, 2023
The British government has blocked MPs asking any questions about activity at RAF Akrotiri, its vast air base on Cyprus, Declassified can reveal.
Blocking all parliamentary questions from MPs is a highly unusual move.
Government departments routinely refuse to answer specific questions about military operations for reasons of “national security”, but blocking all questions by elected parliamentarians goes far beyond the usual level of Whitehall secrecy.
It comes after Declassified revealed the RAF has made over 30 military transport flights to Tel Aviv since Israel began bombing Gaza. The Ministry of Defence refused to provide us any detail of the cargo or personnel on the flights.
Just this morning an A400M Atlas military transport aircraft operated by the RAF landed in Tel Aviv from Akrotiri. The aircraft can carry 116 soldiers, a Chinook helicopter or a payload of 37 tonnes.
RAF Akrotiri sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv with a flight time of 40 minutes.
Declassified has also reported that the US is moving arms to Israel using RAF Akrotiri, which has become an international military hub supporting Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza. Half of US planes flying from British Cyprus are said to be carrying weapons for Israel.
Kenny MacAskill, Alba MP for East Lothian, told Declassified he put down a number of parliamentary questions concerning what military support the UK is providing to Israel and the role of RAF Akrotiri in the supply of military equipment.
“Your question has been queried because it is subject to a block by Government,” he was told in an email. “The Department [Ministry of Defence] has stated that it will not comment on operational matters at this base.”
MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary, told Declassified: “This is totally unacceptable in a democracy. Genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza and we have a right to know what our Government is doing about it.”
MacAskill said he had never experienced such a ‘block’ on asking parliamentary questions before.
He added: “The failure to call for an immediate ceasefire is bad enough but any complicity raises issues of participating in war crimes. We need openness and transparency by our government. This is not in our name.”
Secrecy
The UK military-run Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee – better known as the ‘D-Notice’ committee – has also sent out an ‘advisory’ to all British media to suppress reporting on UK special forces’ activity related to Gaza. The SAS was previously reported to have deployed a force to Cyprus.
No British mainstream media outlets have reported on Declassified’s recent findings about RAF Akrotiri and Gaza despite the President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides having to defend his government from accusations of complicity in Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
In answer to questions about the use of RAF Akrotiri by Cypriot journalists over the weekend, Christodoulides said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
However, RAF Akrotiri has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns across the Middle East. Declassified also recently revealed that 129 US airmen are also permanently deployed at the base.
The censorship of information requests from MPs makes it all but certain that RAF Akrotiri is being used for covert military purposes that the government does not want the public to know about.
It is likely the UK is sending material military aid to Israel during its bombing of Gaza, which has now killed over 12,000 Palestinians, although it previously told Declassified it was not providing “lethal aid”.
US to continue supplying Israel with artillery shells, guided missiles
MEMO | November 22, 2023
The Pentagon said it continues to supply Israel with 155mm artillery shells, precision-guided munition, M and air defence systems, despite international concern over Israel’s disregard for civilian lives in Gaza.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Pentagon added that it “provides military aid to the [Israeli] forces from the American base’s stockpiles inside [Israel] and from other places.”
The administration of President Joe Biden has pledged $14.3 billion in military aid to Israel, in addition to the traditional annual aid of $3.4 billion. Unwavering military support to Israel is one of the rare issues that brings together Democrats and Republicans in the Congress and Senate.
A report by the Congressional Research Service revealed that since 7 October, the Biden administration has accelerated the provision of military and security aid to Israel, including “small diameter bombs (250 pounds), interceptor missiles, joint direct attack munitions, and 155mm artillery shells.”
More than 30 relief organisations have sent a letter to US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin urging him “not to send 155 mm shells in particular, as they are indiscriminate shells in nature which are being used in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that some lawmakers are wondering whether the proposed $34 million worth of direct commercial sale of 24,000 assault rifles to Israel might end up in the hands of illegal settlers, wreaking havoc in the occupied West Bank.
For the 46th day in a row, the Israeli occupation forces, with support from the United States and mercenaries, have been launching a devastating aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 14,128 Palestinians, 5,840 of them children, with nearly 6,800 others still reported missing, in addition to over 30,000 wounded persons.
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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
Blog Roll
Aletho News- From Unipolar Universalism to Multipolar Civilizational Distinctiveness
- RSF military group defects, joins Sudanese army: State media
- Ireland goalkeeper refuses to play ‘Israel’ as squad weighs boycott
- China pushes back against US on Cuba, Iran
- Ukrainian Soldiers, Potential Mercenaries: Have Gun, Will Travel!
- Burnham’s UN debut… A masterclass in British disinformation
- 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
