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Israel Uses US Weapons To Blow Up US Humanitarian Projects in Gaza

Palestinians return to a devastated Gaza neighborhood in May 2021 (Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty)
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 3, 2022

In its May 2021 war with Gaza militants, Israel used American weapons to destroy U.S. humanitarian projects and damage an American-owned Coca-Cola bottling plant, according to a report by The Intercept.

Damaged or destroyed facilities included:

  • Hospitals, water treatment and sanitation facilities funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • A dozen factories built with USAID money
  • Dozens of schools operated by the U.S. State Department-backed United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
  • More than a hundred UNRWA facilities were struck, causing more than a million dollars in damage.

The impact is far more than financial. As The Intercept‘s Daniel Boguslaw elaborates:

In Khan Yunis, Rafa, and Beit Lahia, wastewater treatment infrastructure and water reservoirs funded by USAID, which the U.S. government spent millions to construct, were destroyed by aerial attacks that affected more than 300,000 civilians. Ninety-seven percent of the water in Gaza is contaminated, resulting in a widespread public health crisis, rendered even worse by the destruction of U.S.-funded water infrastructure.

The May 2021 war took a steep toll on Gaza, with more than 240 Palestinians killed and nearly 2,000 wounded. Four thousand rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel killed 12.

Israel’s periodic devastation of Gaza is often characterized as “mowing the grass.” Yoav Galant, a former Israeli military commander, embraced the philosophy in a radio interview: “This sort of maintenance needs to be carried out from time to time, perhaps even more often.”

Though Galant and others would suggest such “mowing” is focused on Palestinian military power, Israel’s routine destruction of hospitals, water treatment facilities and other civilian infrastructure suggests Israel strives to keep Gaza in a state of perpetual economic devastation.

A Coca-Cola factory also came under 2021 Israeli bombardment. Its owner, U.S. citizen Zahi Khouri, said, “We had thousands of pallets burned, and there was damage to the logistics area. There was damage in the industrial estate, but what was also damaged was the investment of Coca-Cola in a project through Mercy Corps where we built a water purification station for a refugee camp.”

In a dark twist, the destruction of U.S.-funded civilian infrastructure is accomplished with American-made and/or -funded weapons. The United States and Israel are currently operating within a memorandum of understanding by which Americans are on the hook for $38 billion in military aid over a 10-year period ending in 2028.

That’s just a minimum. Congress is free to throw more money at Israel along the way—such as the $1 billion for Iron Dome missile defense it approved in March by a 420-9 vote in the House.

Per The Intercept, there’s more to the “special relationship”:

The aid system also provides cash-flow financing, a system resembling layaway, that allows Israel to purchase weapons in the present using money from the future. And it contains an offshore procurement exemption—offered to no other country—that allows Israel to spend U.S. tax dollars on its own weapons industry without disclosing how it spent the money to Congress or the American public.

June 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

AFRICA INTERCEPTS W.H.O. TAKEOVER

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 2, 2022

COVID SHOTS FLAGGED FOR PARALYTIC SYNDROME

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 2, 2022

AUTHORITIES WERE WRONG ABOUT ASYMPTOMATIC SPREAD

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 2, 2022

June 4, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev accused of mass kidnappings

Samizdat | June 3, 2022

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) officials have accused Ukrainian special forces of conducting mass kidnappings against relatives of the Donbass and pro-Russian activists and politicians since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

The accusations were made by DPR Human Rights Commissioner Daria Morozova during a briefing on Friday, in which she stated that the daughter of a DPR people’s militia officer had been abducted by Ukrainian Special Operation Forces in Kharkov.

According to the ombudsman, on April 16, Aleksandr Demchenko, the officer, was contacted by an unknown group of people who offered him “cooperation in exchange for cooperation,” warning him that if he refused then “anything could happen to his daughter.”

Demchenko says that the people, who claimed they were members of the Ukrainian Special Operation Forces, demanded that he become a traitor and provide them with lists of captured soldiers, prisoner exchange plans, and other documents with which the officer says he has nothing to do with.

An investigation into the matter has reportedly revealed there was no official arrest of Demchenko’s daughter Ekaterina, and that she was abducted along with her husband by Ukrainian special forces and is currently being held at a secret prison.

Ekaterina has since sent her father a video saying she is being treated fairly. She asked him to cooperate with the abductors in “a calm fashion.”

The ombudsman said that the only way to save the lives of the woman and her husband was to bring this situation to public attention, since any country in the world defines such actions as kidnapping and the illegal detention of people, and is punishable by law.

Morozova noted that such actions by Kiev have become more widespread since Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine and are being carried out under guidelines coming from the US and the UK. She claims there are currently dozens of confirmed cases of people, including children, being abducted by Ukrainian special forces and subsequently being held in secret prisons, tortured both physically and mentally, and stripped of their human dignity.

Vasily Prozorov, the head of the UkrLeaks research project and a former member of Ukraine’s Security Service, noted that such practices by Kiev’s special services, intelligence service, and the Ministry of Defense are part of the methodology the US and UK have been implanting in Kiev since the mid 2000s.

He added that Kiev’s secret services, with the tacit consent of the West, have been playing by the methodology used by terrorist organizations. “Kidnapping, torture, murder – for all this they are given carte blanche by their visiting curators. There are dozens of secret prisons all over Ukraine, where the people they kidnapped have been kept for years.”

The DPR Prosecutor General’s office has officially launched several criminal investigations into the kidnappings, promising all the perpetrators will be found, identified, and put before a tribunal after the military operation is completed.

June 3, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | | Leave a comment

1,287,595 Injuries Reported After COVID Shots, Vaccine Injury Compensation Programs ‘Overwhelmed’

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | June 3, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,287,595 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 27, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). That’s an increase of 9,615 adverse events over the previous week.

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 28,532 reports of deaths — an increase of 220 over the previous week — and 235,041 serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 2,347compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 825,454 adverse events, including 13,150 deaths and 83,454 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 27, 2022.

Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 13,150 U.S. deaths reported as of May 27, 16% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 20% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 59% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 586 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered as of May 27, including 346 million doses of Pfizer, 221 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 27, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

  • 22 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).The CDC uses a narrowed case definition of “myocarditis,” which excludes cases of cardiac arrest, ischemic strokes and deaths due to heart problems that occur before one has the chance to go to the emergency department.The Defender has noticed over previous weeks that reports of myocarditis and pericarditis have been removed by the CDC from the VAERS system in this age group. No explanation was provided.
  • 43 reports of blood clotting disorders.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 27, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

  • 62 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine. VAERS reported 63 reports in the 12- to 17-year-old age group last week.
  • 654 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 642 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 167 reports of blood clotting disorders with all cases attributed to Pfizer. VAERS reported 168 cases of blood clotting disorders in the 12- to 17-year-old age group last week.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to May 27, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:

COVID-19 shots for kids under 5 could begin by June 21, White House says

COVID-19 vaccines could be available for children younger than 5 as early as June 21 if U.S. health regulators clear the shots, White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha said Thursday.

According to The Washington Post, states can start ordering vaccines today, with 10 million initially available. The FDA vaccine advisors are scheduled to meet June 14 and 15 to discuss pediatric vaccines. The CDC will meet shortly after to sign off on the decision.

Pfizer and BioNTech on Wednesday submitted their request for emergency authorization of a three-shot regimen for children 6 months to 4 years old. Moderna submitted its request in April for a two-shot regimen for children 6 months to under 6 years old.

There are about 19 million children under 5 in the U.S.

Young males have highest risk of heart damage from COVID vaccines

Young males are more likely to report heart damage following vaccination with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and the damage is more likely to be reported after the second dose, according to researchers who reviewed the scientific literature and vaccine injury databases in the U.K., EU and U.S.

Research published May 25 in The BMJ showed 18,204 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis were submitted to U.K., U.S. and EU regulators during the study period, beginning when the mRNA vaccines first rolled out until mid-March 2022.

In the U.S., 2,986 events following Pfizer’s vaccine and 1,640 events following Moderna’s vaccine were reported to VAERS.

According to the CDC, 124.12 million people were fully vaccinated with Pfizer and 75.57 million people fully vaccinated with Moderna during the study period.

For Pfizer, the reporting rate was 14.70 cases of myocarditis and 9.36 cases of pericarditis per 1 million fully vaccinated individuals. The combined rate of myocarditis and pericarditis is 12.03 cases reported per 1 million fully vaccinated individuals.

For Moderna, there were 12.35 cases of myocarditis and 9.36 cases of pericarditis reported per 1 million fully vaccinated recipients. The combined reporting rate of both myocarditis and pericarditis is 10.86 per 1 million.

There were 13,573 events of myocarditis and/or pericarditis reported in observational studies included in the systematic review of the literature, but these cannot help to calculate the overall rate of these adverse events.

Vaccine injury compensation programs overwhelmed by thousands of reports

Federal programs compensating people who suffered injuries from vaccines or COVID-19 pandemic treatment are facing so many claims that thousands of people may not receive payment for their injuries for a long time, Politico reported.

The first program, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), has too little staff to handle the number of reported injuries resulting from pediatric vaccines such as polio and MMR, leaving thousands of patients waiting years for their cases to be heard.

The second program, the Countermeasure Injuries Compensation Program (CICP), designed to compensate people for injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures, has seen unsustainable growth.

Between 2010 and 2020, the CICP received only 500 complaints. Since the start of the pandemic, it has received more than 8,000 complaints — 5,000 of which are related to COVID-19 vaccines.

To date, the CICP has paid zero claims, although it did approve one in December 2021.

Should COVID-19 vaccines become routine, any injuries would be handled by the already overwhelmed VICP. There are fears the public will mistake the situation for “too many injuries flooding the program,” which will lead to vaccine hesitancy.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

June 3, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Three French weapons makers complicit in war crimes in conflict-hit Yemen, three rights groups say

Press TV – June 2, 2022

Three human rights groups have filed a complaint against three top French weapons manufacturers for their complicity in gross war crimes after selling various types of ammunition to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the major members of the Saudi-led coalition of aggression.

The complaint was lodged by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the Mwatana for Human Rights as well as Sherpa International at a Paris court on Thursday.

The non-governmental organizations targeted French aerospace company Dassault Aviation, Thales Group and MBDA France, hoping that the legal action will further enlighten the world public opinion about the acts of aggression by the Saudi-led coalition at a time when the United States and its Western allies are seeking to improve ties with the Riyadh regime.

“The [Saudi-led] coalition’s airstrikes have caused terrible destruction in Yemen. Weapons produced and exported by European countries, and in particular France, have enabled these crimes,” Abdulrasheed al-Faqih, Executive Director of Yemeni organization Mwatana for Human Rights, said.

“Seven years into this war, the countless Yemeni victims deserve credible investigations into all perpetrators of crimes, including those potentially complicit,” he added.

Rights groups in France have repeatedly argued that the Paris government’s tacit support for the Saudi-led coalition has prolonged and worsened the Yemen conflict.

French prosecutors are already studying similar complaints filed against UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the French customs authority.

The complaint filed by rights groups against French arms makers comes as the United Nations announced that a truce between warring Yemeni sides had been extended for two months.

The initial two-month truce started at the beginning of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on April 2, and was set to expire on Thursday.

“I would like to announce that the parties to the conflict have agreed to the United Nations’ proposal to renew the current truce in Yemen for two additional months,” UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said.

Grundberg added that the truce extension would come into effect “when the current truce period expires, today June 2, 2022 at 19:00 Yemen time (1600 GMT)”.

The Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Yemen Country Director, Erin Hutchinson, said in a statement after Grundberg’s announcement, “The announcement of the truce extension today shows a serious commitment from all parties to end the senseless suffering of millions of Yemenis.”

She added, “The last two months have shown that peaceful solutions to the conflict are a real option.”

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

June 2, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia

By Declan Hayes |  Strategic Culture Foundation | June 1, 2022

Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia (OEAUR) is a freely accessible 2019 Rand Corporation policy paper that posits how the United States and her satellites can most efficiently destroy Russia mainly, as it happens, through militarizing Ukraine and escalating sanctions. Rand’s objective is to strangle Russia by throttling her at her choke points, a vulnerability Russia’s own policy advisors have long been aware of, just as they have been aware of Rand’s well entrenched Russophobia.

Because Rand knows they have been rumbled, OEAUR now begins that readers should first visit their two related sites which explain how Rand defends truth and combats Russia’s Firehouse of Falsehood. Alas for the truth seekers, those two further pages are, like OEAUR itself, repetitive swill, roughly equivalent to a very bad first year university essay. This can be seen in the bibliographies’ over reliance on Michael Weiss, a rabidly pro Israeli member of the far right Henry Jackson Society who was long located in Beirut, from where he shilled ceaselessly for Syria’s CIA sectarian rebels and for the destruction of the Syrian people.

Though OEAUR might very well fail as a first year essay, OEAUR was not geared at university tutors but at NATO policy makers, weapons’ procurers and the media and think thank parasites like Michael Weiss who feed off them and, in that, OEAUR did as good a job as their paymasters needed.

The sheer volume of these think tanks and of the Qatari funded parrots who prattle their tune create their own false narrative that NATO is a benign force. It is within that over arching narrative that Raytheon can have the brass neck to say that its depleted uranium missiles benefit the environment and that media creations like Greta Thunberg, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Bono and Clown Prince (Z)elensky can be wheeled out to do NATO’s bidding.

In those respects, Rand positing Russia as “the firehose of falsehood” because of her apparently “high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions” seem to be Rand externalizing NATO’s internal, where we see, time and again, each and every one of its affiliated media and think tank outlets hammering home the same message of Moscuam dēlenda est, Moscow must be destroyed.

Because OEAUR has long ago made no secret of NATO’s desire to emasculate Russia by fair means or foul, by escalating or depressing global prices as needed, look no further than the Pentagon to round up the usual suspects who are behind the Putin Price Hike and the terrible events unfolding in Sri Lanka, Nigeria and elsewhere.

The Brookings Institution is another key think tank for hire, with significant links to the CIA and the Pentagon. It includes such notorious war hawks as Robert Kagan, who repackaged himself for Hillary Clinton as an Orwellian named “liberal interventionist”. Kagan is married to Victoria Fuck the EU Nuland, another Clinton favorite and the chief architect of the Ukrainian war.

The 2009 Brookings Institution paper The Path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran spelled out America’s plans to destroy the Middle East in sufficient clarity and detail any war crimes court worth its salt would accept. In detailing every under handed and duplicitous means from economic sanctions and U.S.-backed political upheaval, to the use of terrorism and proxy wars to undermining and destroying Iranian and Syrian sociopolitical stability and eventually the Syrian and Iranian states themselves, that seminal paper became the blueprint not only for all the CIA and NATO driven carnage and associated mass murders that followed but also for Rand’s pathetic OEAUR opus as well.

Given OEAUR’s two Russian focused caveats, it is also noteworthy that this subversive Brookings document also detailed the need to manipulate, corral and emasculate public opinion so that Iran and Syria could follow Iraq and Libya into the abyss. It stressed the use of false and duplicitous negotiations with Iran to make them an offer they could neither refuse nor accept over nuclear weapons and to use Iran’s apparent refusal to capitulate to what the West’s embedded media would paint as a reasonable American offer as an excuse to wage a full scale war of sectarian extermination on Iran, much like that currently being played out in Yemen. Under this scenario, the American President could paint himself as a reluctant mass murderer, not unlike what Obama managed to do with his Drone assassination campaigns in Yemen, in Syria and in other countries on the CIA’s hit list.

Studying Rand, Brookings and similar think tanks for hire is far from an academic exercise. These groups help NATO develop, hone and implement their war plans and they also bestow an underserved sheen of academic respectability to them. Brookings, Rand, their employees, apologists and collaborators are very much a part of the Ukrainian, Yemeni, Syrian and related problems and they should answer in a war crimes’ court for it.

June 2, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

What is the jab risk to children? Why aren’t we being told?

TCW Defending Freedom | June 1, 2022

Gillian Dymond is determined to find out what the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is doing to investigate the enormous number of adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines that have been reported under the Yellow Card scheme and what risk/benefit analysis was carried out to justify rolling out the experimental gene therapy to under-18s.

We published her letters to MHRA chief executive officer Dame June Raine, first sent in November last year, here and here.

At the end of April, after an unsatisfactory response from the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer Dr Alison Cave, Gillian returned to the fray, to ask Dame June for a copy of the risk assessment carried out by the MHRA before it decided to approve experimental Covid medications for use on children. After 20 working days, having still received no reply, she emailed her the following:

Dear Dame June,

Open letter:  Your failure to produce a risk assessment justifying the approval of injections against SARS-CoV-2 for people under 18 years of age

On April 28 I wrote to you requesting a copy of the risk assessment which I assumed you must certainly have carried out prior to approving the incompletely tested medications against SARS-CoV-2 for children as young as five years of age.

I asked you to send this information within 20 working days. That period has now elapsed without a response to my request or an acknowledgement of my email.

It seems that you are either unable or unwilling to provide me with a copy of the document requested.

We parents and grandparents must therefore conclude that:

1. You have approved an experimental treatment for our young families without carrying out and recording a thorough risk/benefit analysis for the age group in question; or

2. You did carry out such an analysis, but are reluctant to make it public because its conclusions do not support approval of the medications in question.

Where you have remained silent, however, others have stepped in to fill the gap. Doctors for Covid Ethics have now produced a risk/benefit analysis for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, in relation to children and adolescents: exactly the kind of analysis that we had every right to expect from your own organisation.

This analysis concludes that the medications under investigation are neither necessary, nor effective, nor safe for prescription to the age group in question.  It also ‘addresses the risk of genotoxicity of the mRNA vaccines, which according to recent experimental evidence of their integration into host cell genomes must be considered urgent’.

I note from your public meeting in February this year that the MHRA, in its headlong rush to become a ‘world-class regulatory agency’, is planning to build on the ‘success’ of the Covid injection roll-out by fast-tracking a succession of ‘100-day vaccines’ tweaked into being on computers, shortening the time necessary for approval by using the public as ‘real-time’ guinea pigs. Any checks on medium to long-term safety, it seems, are to be thrown to the winds.

The steadily accumulating numbers of serious adverse reactions to the present experimental treatments argue against these foolhardy proposals.

As the numbers of deaths and injuries following injection grow, it is becoming clear that the genuine successes against Covid have come not from pharmaceutical innovations or top-down diktats by centralised bureaucracies kow-towing to the World Health Organisation, but from the cross-border co-operation of dedicated doctors all over the world who have faced censorship, smears, and even loss of their livelihoods, as they relied on tried and trusted medicines and years of solid experience to devise the early-treatment protocols which have saved so many lives and which, but for the intervention of those charged with assuring our safety, might have saved so many more.

The facts could not be clearer. In future, the MHRA should respect the precautionary principle. Meanwhile, you should lose no time in withdrawing approval for the injection of our children with unnecessary, ineffective and unsafe experimental substances whose long-term effects on young people with their lives before them will for many years remain unknown.

Yours sincerely, etc

Gillian Dymond

June 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Greek Opposition Demands Legal Clarification for Confiscation of Iranian Oil at US Behest

Samizdat | May 31, 2022

ATHENS – Greek largest opposition party, Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA), on Tuesday asked the Greek government to clarify the legal grounds for the confiscation of Iranian oil from a former Russian-flagged tanker at the request of the United States.

“What was the legal basis for the US request for legal assistance in confiscating oil from the tanker? Was the proposal of the [Greek] anti-money laundering authority to continue the detention of the Russian ship contrary [to the US request]? On what legal basis did the ship remain detained during the time between the cancellation of the original decision about its arrest by the anti-money laundering authority and the decision of the one-judge trial court of Chalcis to grant the US request?” the party said in a statement.

The party added that initially, the anti-money laundering authority decided not to confiscate Iranian oil or detain the tanker. US sanctions against Iran are not considered legal by the EU and Greece, the party noted.

The party also asked what actions had been taken for the immediate release of the crew, and why Greece did not receive significant support from the US, which initiated the process of confiscation.

Last Friday, Iran’s armed forces captured two Greek-flagged oil tankers — the Delta Poseidon and the Prudent Warrior — in Persian Gulf waters, reportedly in response to the seizure of the Iranian-flagged tanker Lana in Greek waters in mid-April on suspicion that it was avoiding EU sanctions. The US claimed that the vessel was carrying Iranian crude, subject to US sanctions, and requested that the cargo be handed over to it, despite later reports that it was a Russian-flagged tanker Pegas that had changed its ownership before entering Greek waters.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

This is how Israel plans to annex the occupied West Bank

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 30, 2022

Israel’s Supreme Court has decided that the Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta in the southern hills of Hebron is to be appropriated entirely by the Israeli military and that the local population of more than 1,000 Palestinians is to be expelled. The court’s decision on 4 May was hardly surprising. Israel’s military occupation is not only enforced by soldiers with guns, but also elaborate political, military, economic and legal structures, all of which are dedicated to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and the slow — and sometimes not-so-slow — expulsion of the Palestinians.

When Palestinians say that the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), which led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins, is an ongoing unfinished project, they mean exactly that. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the endless torment of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab, and now in Masafer Yatta, are all testament to this reality.

However, Masafer Yatta is particularly unique. In the case of occupied East Jerusalem, for example, Israel has made a fallacious, ahistorical claim that the city is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people. It combined its unsubstantiated narrative with military action on the ground, followed by a systematic process to increase the Jewish population and eject the native inhabitants of the city. Such notions as ‘Greater Jerusalem‘ and legal and political structures, like that of the Jerusalem Master Plan 2000, have all contributed towards turning the once absolute Palestinian majority in Jerusalem into a constantly shrinking minority.

In the Naqab, Israel’s objectives were put into motion as early as 1948, and again in 1951. The process of ethnically cleansing the natives remains in effect to this day.

Although Masafer Yatta is part of the same colonial scheme, its uniqueness stems from the fact that it is situated in Area C of the occupied West Bank. In July 2020, Israel purportedly decided to postpone its plan to annex nearly 40 per cent of the West Bank, perhaps fearing a Palestinian rebellion and unwanted international condemnation. However, the plan went ahead in all but name.

The wholesale annexation of large swathes of the West Bank would mean that Israel would become responsible for the welfare of entire Palestinian communities living therein. As a settler-colonial state, though, Israel wants the land, but not the people. In Tel Aviv’s calculation, annexation without the expulsion of the population could lead to a demographic nightmare, hence Israel’s need to reinvent its annexation plan. De jure annexation may have been “postponed”, but it has continued in de facto terms, which has attracted very little international political and media attention.

The Israeli court’s decision regarding Masafer Yatta, which is already being carried out with the expulsion of the Najjar family on 11 May, is an important step towards the annexation of Area C. If Israel can evict the Palestinian residents of twelve villages, more than 1,000 people, unhindered, more such expulsions can be expected, not only south of Hebron, but across the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian villagers of Masafer Yatta and their legal representation know very well that no real “justice” can be obtained from the Israeli court system. Nevertheless, they continue to fight the legal war in the hope that a combination of factors, including solidarity in Palestine and pressure from outside, can ultimately succeed in compelling Israel to delay its planned destruction and Judaisation of the whole region.

However, it seems that Palestinian efforts, which have been underway since 1997, are failing. The Israeli Supreme Court decision is predicated on the erroneous and utterly bizarre notion that the Palestinians of that area could not demonstrate that they belonged there prior to 1980, when the Israeli government decided to turn the area into “Firing Zone 918”.

Sadly, the Palestinian defence was based partly on documents from the Jordanian era and official UN records that reported on Israeli attacks on several Masafer Yatta villages in 1966. The Jordanian government, which administered the West Bank until 1967, compensated some of the residents for the loss of their “stone houses” — not tents — animals and other properties that were destroyed by the Israeli military. Palestinians tried to use this evidence to show that they have existed, not as nomadic people but as rooted communities. This was unconvincing to the Israeli court, which favoured the occupation army’s argument over the rights of the native population.

Israeli firing zones occupy nearly 18 per cent of the total area of the West Bank. It is one of several ploys used by the Israeli government to lay a pseudo-legal claim on Palestinian land and, eventually, to claim legal ownership as well. Many of these firing zones exist in Area C, and are one way that Israel appropriates Palestinian land officially with the support of the courts.

Now that the Israeli military has managed to acquire Masafer Yatta — a region covering 32 to 56km2 — based on completely flimsy excuses, it will become much easier to ensure the ethnic cleansing of many similar communities in various parts of occupied Palestine.

While discussions and media coverage of Israel’s annexation scheme in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley have largely subsided, the settler-colonial state is now preparing for gradual annexation. Instead of taking 40 per cent of the West Bank all at once, Israel is now annexing smaller tracts of land and regions, like Masafer Yatta, separately. Tel Aviv will eventually connect all these annexed areas through Jewish settler-only bypass roads to larger Jewish settlement infrastructures in the West Bank.

Not only does this alternative strategy allow Israel to avoid international criticism, but it will also permit the settler-colonial state to annex Palestinian land while incrementally expelling Palestinians. Thus, demographic imbalances will be prevented before they can even occur.

What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move should also be considered as the first step in a much larger scheme of illegal land misappropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass annexation.

Israel must not be allowed to succeed in Masafer Yatta. If it does, its original, mass annexation scheme will become a reality in no time at all.

May 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Shelling of Khudair Warehouse: Chemical Warfare by Indirect Means

Al-Haq | May 27, 2022

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Press TV – May 30, 2022

Israel’s bombardment of the biggest agrochemical warehouse in the besieged Gaza Strip by incendiary artillery shells last year amounts to chemical warfare, a rights group report finds.

On May 15, 2021, the Israeli military launched an artillery attack on the Khudair Pharmaceuticals and Agricultural Tools Company, considered as the largest agrochemical warehouse in the north of the blockaded enclave, setting fire to tons of pesticides, fertilizers, plastics and nylons.

The shelling attack occurred in the midst of the 11-day Israeli war against Gaza Strip, after weeks of violence against Palestinians in Al-Quds and a brutal crackdown on worshipers at the al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as attempts to steal their land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The results of a new investigation in the attack and its consequences by the West Bank-based Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq showed that Israel deliberately employed highly flammable munitions in the targeted attack, which burned tons of dangerous pesticides and set off an unfolding environmental disaster.

The FAI Unit built a 3D model of the warehouse after interviewing the locals, consulting international experts and analyzing data obtained from dozens of videos, including CCTV and drone footage, in a bid to establish the circumstances of the blaze, and determine the effects of the release of toxic chemicals.

“Our findings reveal that Israeli forces illegally employed highly flammable munitions in a targeted attack on the warehouse, whose location and contents are known to Israel, setting on fire over 50 tons of hazardous chemicals stored on the site,” said al-Haq.

The report is the first publication by Al-Haq’s newly-established Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit (FAI Unit), a first-of-its-kind collaboration in the Middle East with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which conducts spatial and media analysis for NGOs and in international human rights cases.

The shelling created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of nearly six sq km, leaving local residents struggling with health problems.

“Within the first hour, the toxic plume had affected an area of approximately 5.7 square kilometers — spanning Beit Lahiya and its agricultural zones, as well as the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp — placing approximately 3,000 homes in its shadow,” the report said, adding that the six-hour-long fire at the warehouse destroyed most of the facility and consuming the majority of its contents.

Al-Haq said that a toxic plume produced by the attack is tantamount to the indirect deploying of chemical weapons.

“Israeli occupation forces’ shelling of the Khudair Agrochemical Warehouse, with knowledge of the presence of toxic chemicals stored therein, is tantamount to chemical weapons through indirect means. Such acts are clearly prohibited… and prosecutable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” the group said in a legal report based on the findings of the investigation.

The probe determined that the Israeli military used several M150 Smoke HC 155mm shells in its attack against the warehouse.

“The dimensions and the smoke tail match the M150 Smoke HC 155mm ammunition developed by the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems: an ‘advanced smoke projectile’ and a new type of shell designed to splinter into five separate canisters, all of which emit high-density smoke,” the report said.

It also stressed that the attack on the Khudair agrochemical warehouse was the first in an apparent string of similar attacks by the Tel Aviv regime, intentionally hitting civilian economic infrastructure and the industrial sector.

“On 17 May, two days after the Khudair Warehouse was destroyed, the Fomco Sponge Factory near Jabaliya camp was attacked in a similar manner, causing a large-scale fire. On the same day, over half a dozen other factories and warehouses, located in the industrial zone east of Gaza’s Shejaiyyeh neighborhood, were also bombed,” it stated.

In the latest bombardment campaign of Gaza by Israel in May last year, at least 260 Palestinians, including over 60 children, were killed in a time span of 11 days that began on May 10. The Gaza-based resistance movements retaliated.

The regime was eventually forced to announce a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, which came into force in the early hours of May 21.

The Gaza Strip, home to some two million people, has been under a blockade imposed by Israel since June 2007.

May 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Five killed by Ukrainian shelling of schools and residential buildings – Donetsk authorities

Samizdat | May 30, 2022

Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk has left at least five people dead, and 18 others injured, local authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Monday. According to local officials, a teenage girl is among the fatalities. The strikes damaged several civilian facilities in the city, including schools and residential buildings.

Preliminary reports allege that US-supplied artillery may have been used in the attacks. In one home, two 14-year-old girls were hurt, Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said. One of them died while the other one was taken to hospital.

Three civilians were killed, and a dozen others injured at two schools, the mayor claimed. Two people were in serious condition, he added.

The headmistress of one of the schools, Olga Rachinskaya, told the media that many of the teachers “were lacerated with shrapnel”. She said the two workers who were killed were elderly.

“This is just an ordinary school. There is nothing military here, nothing,” she said. Luckily, Donetsk schools teach remotely, so students were not in the classrooms when the shells hit, according to the educator.

The DPR defense HQ said Ukrainian troops fired at least two Smerch rockets armed with cluster munitions and also used 155mm artillery in the shelling.

On Monday, Mayor Kulemzin speculated that the Ukrainian troops may have used US-supplied 155mm M777 howitzers in the assault. “This is heavy weaponry, most likely the American delivery,” he told Russian television when describing the attacks. He claimed some of the shell fragments discovered on the ground had markings in English.

The US and its allies have reportedly supplied about 100 towed artillery guns to Ukraine, ramping up their military aid with heavier kinds of weapons. Kiev may soon receive US-made multiple launch rocket systems too, adding them to the weapons from Soviet stockpiles that it currently possesses, according to media reports.

Commenting on the news coming from Donetsk on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure in DPR were “outrageous.”

“This is exactly what our warriors are fighting against. To make such things stop,” he said, branding the perpetrators “neo-Nazis”.

Russia attacked Ukraine state in late February, following its failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

May 30, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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