Washington Digs In Deeper on Its Support for Israel
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 23, 2024
Judging by developments over the past several weeks, it would appear that nothing going on in Washington matters quite as much as defending Israel no matter what the Jewish state does. The White House and its befuddled leader President Joe Biden are obsessed with every twist and turn of the Israel and media shaped narrative, basing it on two key words “terrorism” and “antisemitism.” It plays out like this: Israel is a victim of terrorism from enemies seeking to destroy it and those who criticize the Israeli “self-defense” response are motivated by nothing less than antisemitism. It is also being claimed ludicrously in Washington that Israel is fully capable of investigating itself if war crimes actually were committed, something that it never has done, note particularly the lack of any follow-up in cases involving the recent killing of American citizens.
The necessity to support what are obviously parts of a suspect exculpatory narrative has administration clowns like Karine Jean-Pierre, Matthew Miller, John Kirby and Antony Blinken falling over themselves trying to explain developments using arguments which are frequently clearly based on lies. Sometimes the lies are huge, like the Blinken claims that the US foreign policy does not favor Israel and treats everyone the same, or that a thorough State Department investigation has failed to sustain the claims that Israel is engaging in war crimes to possibly include genocide.
The United States is also reflexively turning on any institution or government that has managed to anger Israel and its vitriolic psychopath leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The recent decision by Norway, Ireland and Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood brings to 145 the number of countries now taking that step. The move infuriated Netanyahu who summoned those countries’ ambassadors and called it a “reward for terror.” One wonders if the US will follow suit and either break diplomatic relations with those three otherwise friendly and even allied countries or in some other fashion punish or sanction them. That terrorism often operates in two directions and Israel has been a cruel, racist and capricious occupying power seems to have escaped the attention of the Washington punditry which is only engaged in finding in Israel a perpetual victim innocent of all charges.
And then there is the recent declaration by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague that it would be seeking warrants relating to possible war crimes for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as the leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar, plus his deputies Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. This produced a scream of anguish from the White House which first argued that the ICC has no jurisdiction as Israel, like the US, is not a signatory to the Rome Treaty that founded the court in 2002 even though Palestine is. Joe Biden also said on Monday that “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas.” He backed up this legally irrelevant statement with the usual assertion that “we will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” The court, in fact, was created to address war crimes and genocides that had escaped normal investigation and prosecution and the 124 signatory nations to it are empowered to arrest those named individuals who have outstanding warrants if they should happen to enter their jurisdictions.
The second argument being made both by Netanyahu and the Biden squeakers is that Netanyahu and Gallant are demonstrably government officials, not terrorists, while Sinwar and his colleagues are, meaning that different standards must be used to judge their actions. Of course, the Jewish state’s mass murder of 40,000 civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its deliberate use of starvation just might fit most people’s definition of terror, but apparently is not convincing to Israel, the US Congress, White House and the Zionist controlled mainstream media.
Interestingly, as a side issue, since the United States is complicit in the war crimes being committed by Israel due to its funding and arming Netanyahu’s war, it too might wind up charged by the ICC. It would be a real wake-up call and might make many Americans, including myself, very happy to see Biden and Blinken in a prison cell! And by implication the ICC’s charges are also an indictment of Israel’s other Western allies. If Netanyahu is guilty of murder, extermination and deliberate starvation of civilians, so are those who arm and fund Israel while giving it political protection. That includes not only Joe Biden, but also Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer in Britain and other Western European leaders who are sitting on the fence and regretting the death rates while also providing arms to Netanyahu. For Washington, however, unlike its European allies, given that there is a real potential threat against the US political leadership, a very sharp response has been triggered. Twelve GOP Senators have issued a threat letter to the court that stated that the US would sanction justices and other staff working for ICC as well as their families, including blocking their ability to travel to or through the United States and going after their assets. It ended with “You have been warned!” Several other bills are also currently moving through Congress that will directly challenge the authority and mission of the court, all being done to protect Israel.
And there’s more. Israel, which is frequently described as a “great US ally,” which it is not, and a “democracy,” which it is also not, is currently ranked in opinion polls as the most despised country in the world followed by the United States, which is rated as the country most likely to start a major war. The US, through direct Treasury transfers and various other “charity” gimmicks and trade subsidies, gives Israel, a tiny country, a huge $10 billion or so per year. This year, to fund the war, the flow has been closer to $30 billion and Biden has vowed that his mission is to keep Israel “secure” even if it means having to ignore the Constitution of the United States by engaging in a war that is not declared and which did not develop from a demonstrable threat to the United States or its vital interests. Israel, hardly a vital US interest in the real world, was completely capable of destroying Gaza without US help, it just would have had to spend its own money to do so.
The power of the Israel Lobby is such that, not only are Americans denied the truth by a twisted war narrative, critters in Congress are coming out of the woodwork to see what they can do to help “America’s greatest ally!” Bills in Congress include one particularly bizarre one that would legalize deporting to Gaza student-protesters who are arrested or detained while out demonstrating “pro-Hamas,” which is inevitably described as the felony referred to as “material support of terrorism!” The Republicans in Congress are currently taking the lead in launching legislation to benefit the Israelis, including some schemes that are so strange (or illegal) that they are worth noting. On May 17, legislation was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Cosponsored by two Republicans, Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Ohio Representative Max Miller, H.R. 8445 went largely under the radar to provide direct support for those wishing to serve in the Israeli army. Miller is Jewish and Reschenthaler appears to be a Christian Zionist.
The Congressmen are proud of what they have done. “Over 20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” said Reschenthaler in a recent statement. “This legislation will ensure we do everything possible to support these heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating terrorism in the Middle East.”
“As our closest ally in the Middle East continues to defend itself against terror, many brave Americans have decided to lend a hand,” added Miller. “I’m proud that this legislation extends important protections to those Americans who chose to risk their lives in the fight against terror.”
What H.R. 8445 aims to do is make a series of amendments to programs that ordinarily have only been available to active duty, reserve or National Guard members of the US military — the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). These amendments would do something absolutely unprecedented in extending the benefits provided by these programs to American citizens serving in a foreign military, in this case that of Israel.
The SCRA grants American servicemembers “legal and financial protections against default judgments in civil legal cases, reduces interest rates on any pre-service loans to a maximum of 6 percent, and provides protections against home foreclosures. USERRA ensures US servicemembers are covered by relevant “civilian job rights and benefits for veterans, members of reserve components, and even individuals activated by the President of the United States to provide Federal Response for National Emergencies.”
In effect, H.R. 8445 is a measure designed to provide federal government legal and financial protections to US citizens serving with the Israeli military in both Gaza and on the West Bank. Mostly consisting of dual national settlers from the United States, there are more than 23,000 US citizens serving in the IDF as of February 2024. Some Israeli army reservists living in the US have also been summoned back to Israel to fight. Twenty-one Americans in IDF units have been killed inside Gaza, another one died along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and another was killed in Jerusalem while serving in Israel’s border police.
This number of American-Israeli soldiers is in part fed by the presence of an estimated 600,000 Americans living in areas that are under Israeli control, prior to October 7th. These settlers tend to be political hardliners supportive of the Netanyahu government’s war crimes and they often commit war crimes themselves directed against the local Palestinian population.
Pro-Israel sentiment runs deep in the White House but seemingly even more so in the GOP. Some Americans were rightly shocked when Representative Brian Mast of Florida shortly after the Hamas attacks on October 7th, arrived on the floor of the House of Representatives wearing his Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uniform. “As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” Mast wrote in a post on X, alongside several photos of him wearing the uniform.
Mast is a bit confused since as a US Congressman he is supposed to “always stand with America.” He should be impeached and shown the door, but, alas, there is little or no patriotic spirit in the federal legislature, which only asks itself “What have I done today for our good friend and ally Israel.” And worse might be coming. It is reported that “House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday that he’s ready to move forward with formally inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress but he’s waiting on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to sign on.” Another Bibi victory parade in front of a cheering US Congress could be coming right up! It is the ultimate tragedy for our times that a war criminal should be thus glorified and many are beginning to think that the “wag the dog” relationship will inevitably lead to nuclear war triggered by the reckless Jewish state that will inter alia destroy the United States of America. It is definitely something worth thinking about it!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The thorn of Palestine: Re-invading Jabalia was a Fatal Israeli mistake
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024
Around a week ago, the Israeli military decided to launch a sudden series of offensives against eastern Rafah, along with the Zeitoun neighborhood and Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip. Despite claiming to have already dismantled the Resistance in northern Gaza months ago, what they have experienced there recently has been death and embarrassment.
On May 6, after Hamas announced it had accepted a ceasefire proposal that would have led to a comprehensive prisoner exchange and the end of the war, the Zionist entity freaked out and decided to push ahead with its planned incursion into the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah. It began by pushing forward around three kilometers to reach the Rafah Crossing, before expanding its operation further in the eastern areas of Rafah.
What the Zionists also committed themselves to was the re-invasion of the Zeitoun neighborhood, later launching another incursion into Jabalia town and refugee camp. While the Israeli military was surprised by the performance and qualitative leap in the tactics of the Resistance, compared to previous months, in all areas of Gaza, the Jabalia Resistance battalions had something new in store.
The Israeli military decided that a re-invasion of Jabalia was their next primary focus, but have failed to produce any viable justification for its actions, especially when the Zionist leadership claimed to have already defeated the Resistance there months ago. When entering the densely populated area, it is likely that they believed it to be easier than the times before and conducted the offensive in a very similar manner to how it had done throughout the war.
While the Resistance had previously waited for the Zionists to invade an area, before launching their guerrilla-style counterattacks, there was a change in strategy on the part of the Resistance battalions this time. The Palestinian Resistance opted to confront the Israelis head-on and to try to hold them back for as long as possible, in an effort to see whether they could successfully kick them out. The Resistance battalions in the Jabalia refugee camp, the area known in Gaza as “the Thorn of Palestine”, adopted the attitude of the previous generations of al-Qassam brigades fighters during the Second Intifada and adopted the phrase of the people: “You will not enter our camp.” This embodies the frequently repeated line of al-Qassam’s spokesperson, Abu Obeida, who states that “this is a resistance of victory or martyrdom.”
The Jabalia refugee camp is famous for having started The Intifada in 1987 and is considered by many to be to Gaza what the Jenin refugee camp is to the West Bank, a hotbed and stronghold of Resistance. After several attempts by the Israeli military to take over the Jabalia refugee camp during the early 2000s, the Zionist entity launched an invasion of northern Gaza in October of 2004, with a special focus on the Jabalia camp. Yet after killing over 130 Palestinians – most of whom were civilians – they were forced to retreat. Their primary stated goal at the time was to prevent the firing of rockets, which had just killed two Israelis, but failed to prevent the Resistance from continuing its rocket attacks shortly afterward.
This time around, the Resistance is not the same as the Resistance in 2004 and doesnt resemble the Resistance in previous battles. In the earlier days of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the casualties inflicted on the Zionist forces were surprisingly high. Nobody expected that the Resistance, after eight months of war, would have become stronger and capable of implementing more complex operations than before. The Resistance managed to carry out dozens of ambushes, fire over 100 RPG warheads at Israeli military vehicles, plant explosive charges under tanks, use drones to drop anti-personnel munitions, carry out sniper operations, and engage in various gunbattles. The Jabalia battalions also managed to cut off the supply line to the invading army, forcing them to change it multiple times.
On top of all of this, the Israeli military and political leadership have been shown to be liars before their own population. Their soldiers are growing tired and ill-motivated, they return to their families in body bags or with serious injuries, in a location that their regime claims was pacified and that the Resistance there was already defeated. Even the rocket fire from the northern Gaza Strip has increased over the past weeks, while the dozens of videos published by the Resistance factions prove that the tunnel systems are still intact and effective at launching attacks.
As is always the case, the Zionist entity has inflicted mass murder against Jabalia’s civilian population, callously blowing up civilian infrastructure and committing a litany of war crimes. While the impacts of these cruel practices cannot be diminished by the effectiveness of the Palestinian Resistance, it demonstrates that murdering innocent people does not equal a military victory. What the effectiveness of the Resistance does do, however, is to inspire steadfastness in the people and to grant solace to those afflicted as the result of the Zionist crimes against their families.
Although it is not completely clear why the Resistance suddenly decided to alter its tactics in Jabalia, there are a few factors that could have contributed to making this decision. The first is the scale of the atrocities committed against civilians in places like al-Shifa Hospital, during the more recent Israeli incursions into populated areas. When the Zionist invaders enter areas and seize control of civilians, they imprison, torture, execute, sexually abuse, and use them as human shields. It is likely that the Resistance may have sought to change tactics in Jabalia in order to prevent a repeat of the ways in which the Zionist militants treated civilians elsewhere.
Another reason could have been to learn from the enemies’ reactions to such tactics, this could be especially useful for the Resistance fighters in Rafah, who will likely use a wide variation of tactics themselves and will benefit in attaining new knowledge from what has occurred in Jabalia. Unlike the Zionists, who continue to make amateurish mistakes that are laughable when comparing them to other nations’ armed forces, the Palestinian Resistance is constantly evolving and learning from battle experience. This is not to say that the temporary entity does not learn at all, or adapt in different ways, but it is clearly still failing to correct basic issues and failures in the field.
Once again, the Israelis have been pricked by the Thorn of Palestine and are losing more confidence in the face of an unrelenting, motivated, and focused Resistance. What we are seeing from the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza is unprecedented and will be studied for years to come. With limited tools and while their people are subjected to starvation and genocide, the Resistance continues to write epics through some of the most astounding battles in Urban Warfare history.
Itamar Ben-Gvir promotes future Israeli settlements in Gaza
Press TV – May 21, 2024
An Israeli minister has once again called for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and an expansion of settlements in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Itamar Ben-Gvir in comments carried by Israel’s Maariv news site on Tuesday advocated a full military takeover of Gaza.
The far-right minister said Israel should push the Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave to make way for settlements.
“Israel should be the one that controls the Gaza Strip, unequivocally, and no one else,” Ben-Gvir said.
Most important, he said, is “encouraging voluntary emigration of Palestinians” from the territory. “I would love to live in Gaza if possible.”
Last week, the minister said the settlements called for by far-right attendees were the “true solution.”
“We must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza. It is moral!”
The minister has repeatedly called for the mass expulsion of Gazans and urged settlers to move into the besieged territory since Israel launched the savage military campaign across the region in early October.
Ben-Gvir has also said he “opposes transferring humanitarian aid” to the Gaza Strip, where basic necessities are scarce and a famine is looming.
Since early October, Ben-Gvir has encouraged shooting Palestinian women and children in Gaza, execution of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails “to free prison space.” He has threatened to quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet if the genocidal campaign ends.
Washington has ‘no objections’ to Israel’s brutal assault on Rafah
The Cradle | May 21, 2024
Israel has decided to “limit” its ongoing operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah and forgo a major offensive there, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius said in an opinion piece.
According to Ignatius, the decision comes after discussions with Washington on the matter.
Following conversations with unnamed officials, he claims that a plan to send two more divisions into Rafah will not commence and that operations will be restrained.
“Israeli leaders have reached a consensus about a final assault on Hamas’s four remaining battalions in Rafah. Instead of the heavy attack with two divisions that Israel contemplated several weeks ago, government and military leaders foresee a more limited assault that U.S. officials think will result in fewer civilian casualties and, for that reason, Biden won’t oppose,” Ignatius wrote.
He says Israel “plans to conduct regular raids against [Hamas] insurgents [in Rafah], much as it does now in the West Bank. Indeed, the West Bank might be a model for how Gaza evolves going forward.”
The report came the same day that Israeli officials reaffirmed their intention to fully invade Rafah.
US media has reported in previous months that Washington was aiming to mold Israel’s Rafah operation into a more limited campaign focused on surgical raids and “counterterrorism” operations rather than a full-scale assault.
The US has since repeatedly warned that it would refuse to support Israel’s assault against Rafah without a plan to safely evacuate the besieged population there, something that has not happened.
Since the operation began on 7 May, Israel has instead forcibly displaced over 810,000 of the at least one million civilians sheltering in Rafah – most of whom had already been displaced from other parts of Gaza.
“The exodus continues in Gaza. UNRWA estimates over 810,000 people have fled Rafah in the past two weeks. Every time families are displaced; their lives are at serious risk. People are forced to leave everything behind looking for safety. But there’s no safe zone,” the UN refugee agency said on 20 May.
Relentless Israeli bombardment of the city continues as troops continue to push forward into Rafah.
“At least five civilians today were killed and others were injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting a group of citizens near Awadallah Junction in the Yabna refugee camp in the center of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip,” WAFA news agency reported on 21 May.
Al Jazeera reported on 20 May that Israeli forces have reached the depths of Rafah’s Brazil neighborhood.
The Palestinian resistance continues to fiercely confront Israeli troops in Rafah, as well as in the north of Gaza as battles remain ongoing.
Israel army is floundering in Gaza, ex-commander says
MEMO | May 20, 2024
Reserve Commander General Gadi Shamni has warned that the Israeli army is “floundering” in Gaza, adding that Israel “clearly” will not achieve the goals it has set for its bombing campaign.
In an interview with Maariv newspaper, Shamni said, “It is difficult to see how all the Israeli detainees will be returned from the Gaza Strip,” adding that he believes Hamas will suffer losses due to the war, but will not be “eliminated militarily”.
According to Shamni, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned Israel to “years of confusion, isolation, and severe damage to the economy.”
“The most dangerous thing is the dramatic erosion of the status of Israel, which was a regional power until the Hamas attack on the Gaza envelope settlements on October 7,” he added.
Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation army has continued its aggression against the Gaza Strip, with American and European support, as its planes bomb hospitals, resident buildings, towers and Palestinian civilian homes, destroying them over the heads of their residents, and preventing the entry of water, food, medicine and fuel. More than 35,450 Palestinians have been killed as a result, while over 79,470 have been injured. A further 1.7 million have been forcibly displaced from their homes and neighbourhoods, according to UN data, many numerous times.
Another Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza, death toll climbs to 145 since Oct. 7
Press TV – May 19, 2024
The government media office in the Gaza Strip says one more Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the blockaded coastal territory, taking the death toll to 145 since last October when resistance fighters launched a large-scale operation against the occupying regime.
Journalist Abdullah al-Najjar lost his life on Saturday when Israeli fighter jets carried out an airstrike against a neighborhood in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Earlier in the day, Palestinian medical sources said at least 28 people, including women and children, were killed in Israeli continuous raids on the camp.
Palestinian security sources added that Israeli warplanes targeted several residential houses and a shelter center for displaced people in the area with missiles.
The raids caused large explosions in the Jabalia refugee camp, which had been witnessing a ground invasion for several days.
Israeli forces in Gaza killed Palestinian journalist Mahmoud Juhjouh along with his wife and children on Thursday.
Local Palestinian media reported that Juhjouh was killed in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, when a bomb struck his family home.
The journalist worked for the Palestine Post Network.
According to reports, Jahjouh had been forcibly displaced several times due to Israeli bombardment, and had finally returned to his home after Israeli forces withdrew from areas in northern Gaza.
The United Nations has raised concern over the “extraordinarily high numbers of journalists and media workers who have been killed, attacked, injured and detained” in recent months.
“We pay special tribute to the courage and resilience of journalists and media workers in Gaza who continue to put their own lives on the line every day in the course of duty, while also enduring enormous hardship and tragic loss of colleagues, friends and families in one of the bloodiest, most ruthless conflicts of our time,” UN experts said in a statement.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.
Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.
So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 35,386 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 79,366 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.
Over 600 mosques destroyed in Israeli onslaught on Gaza since Oct. 7
Press TV – May 18, 2024
The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in the Gaza Strip says Israeli military forces have fully destroyed or damaged hundreds of mosques in the besieged coastal territory ever since the Tel Aviv regime started its bloody onslaught in early October last year.
The ministry announced in a statement that the total number of mosques completely destroyed in the current conflict stands at 604, while another 200 have been partially destroyed.
The statement said Israeli troops have also desecrated at least 60 cemeteries during their ground invasion of Gaza, and used bulldozers to dig up graves and steal the bodies of more than 1,000 people.
It said 15 buildings belonging to the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs were destroyed during the Israeli aggression, among them the headquarters of the ministry, the main office of the Holy Quran Radio in Gaza City, the Endowment Management office in Khan Younis, and a repository for documents and manuscripts.
The statement said that 91 employees of the ministry have been killed in the Israeli attacks.
Israel launched its onslaught against the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals, residences, and houses of worship, after Palestinian resistance movements launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the usurping entity on October 7 last year.
At least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the latest health ministry update in Gaza on Saturday. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced during the war as well.
Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli air strike in northern Gaza
Palestinian Information Center – May 16, 2024
GAZA – An Israeli air strike on Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday night killed the journalist Ha’el al-Najjar and a number of his family members.
Local sources said that at least one missile was fired at the journalist’s house.
Thus, the number of journalists killed in the Israeli aggression on Gaza, ongoing since October 7 last year, rose to 144, according to data provided by the Government Media Office.
The Office had also documented the arrest of at least 20 journalists in Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces in the same period.
Israeli troops lament return to north Gaza months after ‘dismantling’ Hamas
The Cradle | May 15, 2024
Israeli troops say they are facing significant difficulty in battles with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza’s northern city of Jabalia, an area that Tel Aviv said months ago was “cleared” of Hamas fighters.
“Renewed operations in Jabalia and other parts of northern Gaza, like Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, point to two lessons learned: that the IDF failed to fully assess the scale of Hamas’ military infrastructure in Gaza [during the first rounds of fighting in the city months earlier],” Haaretz newspaper reported on 14 May.
“When Israeli forces left the area, [Hamas] quickly reestablished itself in the vacuum created by the lack of a ‘day after’ strategy.”
Tel Aviv claimed in early January that all of Hamas’ battalions were dismantled in northern Gaza, including Jabalia. Several Israeli army brigades are now back in the north, with the army’s 98th division operating in Jabalia after being diverted there instead of Rafah, according to Haaretz.
“We are in a learning contest with Hamas. You can see they’ve changed tactics and are now focusing more on setting explosive devices in buildings,” the commander of the Israeli army’s 196th Battalion is cited as saying.
The fighters of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and other groups like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Quds Brigades have increasingly used the tactic of booby-trapping and detonating buildings with Israeli forces inside.
Traditional tactics, including RPG attacks on tanks and vehicles, sniping operations, and mortar attacks on troop concentrations, continue to be deployed. The Qassam Brigades released several videos over the past few days showcasing their operations against troops in Jabalia.
The Haaretz report notes that despite wide-scale operations across Jabalia months earlier, the resistance’s military capabilities remain intact. On 14 May, Israeli forces watched a barrage of rockets fly overhead, fired from nearby them in Jabalia northwards to Ashkelon.
“It’s frustrating to see this, seven and a half months after the war began,” a commander of the 196th battalion says.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli soldiers fighting in Jabalia have all used a single word to describe their presence in the city: “Sisyphean.” The word refers to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who the gods punished by forcing him to roll a giant boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down each time he neared the top.
Reservists are also increasingly frustrated, as they are being deployed to combat areas with no knowledge of when they could return.
“We were told that, in principle, we’re coming for a month, but the bottom line is that we’re here with open-ended orders,” the Israeli outlet cites a reservist as saying, adding that some are not reporting for service.
Israel Stopping All Aid To Gaza, Journalist Tells Sputnik
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 13.05.2024
Last week, Israel seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, the only entry point into Gaza not controlled by Israel and where the largest amount of aid was entering the Gaza Strip. Israel has halted all shipments entering through the Rafah border crossings and the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, citing nearby fighting.
Israel has completely stopped all aid shipments going into Gaza, Lebanon-based journalist and geopolitical analyst Leila Hatoum told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday.
“They control the whole area and… they have shut down all border crossings. Nothing has entered Rafah or Gaza for the past eight days. Israelis have shut down all borders,” Hatoum explained, citing her sources on the ground in Gaza.
“Nothing has entered Gaza, not even water, flour, medicine, children’s needs, baby formula, hygienic products. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever,” she emphasized.
On Monday, videos emerged on social media showing Israeli citizens destroying aid intended for Gaza on trucks waiting to cross the Tarqumiya checkpoint. There doesn’t appear to be any police presence attempting to stop the looters in the videos. According to media reports, four individuals were arrested at the scene.
“The aid that the State of Israel transfers goes directly into the hands of Hamas,” the organization that organized the blockade, Order 9, said in a statement.
It was only the latest in a string of videos showing Israelis sabotaging aid trucks on their way to Gaza, another video released late last month showed Israelis destroying bags of flour, again without visible police resistance.
Israelis destroying the flour that was meant to feed starving people in Gaza.
Also on Monday, Israeli forces opened fire on an officially marked UN vehicle, killing one UN employee and injuring another. Later in the day, according to Israeli Rights group HaMoked, a group of young Israelis set fire to the perimeter of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters in East Jerusalem. It was the second incident of arson at the headquarters this week.
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres called for an investigation and condemned the attack on the UN vehicle. As of May 1, at least 182 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza.
At least 370,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah ahead of Israel’s promised ground war and continued bombardment of the last remaining refuge in Gaza, but many complain that there is no safe place to go.
“Every single place in Gaza, across [the] north all the way down to the south, is being bombarded by the Israelis,” Hatoum relayed. “Back in January and February we were warning that famine is going to hit north Gaza, people will die of starvation and nobody believed us, and then we started seeing people dying of starvation – children first and then others.”
At least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, though that number is presumed to be a low-count as thousands of bodies are believed to remain under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Shameless
By Craig Murray | May 13, 2024
Incredibly the Israeli genocide in Gaza is now reaching new heights of violence. Casualty figures are not coming in, as the attacks are so bad that bodies cannot be recovered, medics cannot travel and there are almost no medical facilities operational now anyway.
We now see that the Western injunctions not to attack Rafah were a smokescreen of lies to mask complicity. The final pocket of Gaza is being ruthlessly ethnically cleansed and its infrastructure will be destroyed like all the rest.
It is striking that this is accompanied by an absolutely shameless doubling down of support for Israel by the Western political and media classes. Any thought that their isolation from the vast breadth of public opinion would give them pause, must be abandoned. Their Zionist lobby paymasters have jerked the chain, and rather than rowing back, we are seeing a redoubling of their efforts to suppress dissent and obscure the truth.
Some of this shameless distortion is so dissonant with the alleged norms of Western society it is almost impossible to believe it is happening. Here are a few examples.
1) Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta is a highly respected reconstructive surgeon who continued to work heroically and tirelessly in Al Shifa hospital, carrying out operation after operation, mostly on women and children, as the hospital was shelled, strafed and machine gunned around him.
He was already a surgeon of great distinction, based in Glasgow where he is now Rector of Glasgow University.
When Germany banned him from entering to address the conference on Palestine from which Yanis Varoufakis and others were also barred, it appeared perhaps as a one-off action as part of Germany’s extreme and panicked reaction to pro-Palestinian expression.
We have come to understand that Germany has a vicious hatred of Palestinians, remarkably based on the psychological trauma of inherited guilt from the Holocaust. While this is a muddled national psychosis that is plainly immoral and wrongheaded, at least it is possible to have some understanding of how it occurred.
But it then turned out that the travel ban slapped on Dr Abu Sitta by Germany has a Schengen-wide effect as he was also banned from France. That appeared again something that was almost a technical accident as regards the rest of Europe.
But the Western political establishment has now doubled down again by banning him from the Netherlands, and this time the Dutch government has made it clear that it supports the ban, and is not just caught by a Schengen restriction.
So the major governments of the European Union are forbidding a distinguished surgeon from giving first-hand medical evidence of the genocide taking place. I cannot think of anything that more sharply exposes the willingness of the Western political class to abandon the most basic tenets of supposed “Western democracy” in the interests of Israel.
2) The willingness of the United States to use extreme violence against pro-Palestinian students on college campuses is another demonstration of the same abandonment of the pretence of democracy when it comes to Israel. It also illustrates what has come to be a serious generational divide in Western public opinion, with young people very strongly motivated to oppose the genocide (which is not to say that older people are pro-genocide, just that they are more split, particularly in the USA).
This is being followed up with yet more crazed pro-Israeli legislation in the United States, seeking to designate anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian expression on campuses as anti-semitic and thus illegal.
In many ways this typifies the reaction of the ruling class across the West. Their reaction to suddenly being exposed as the paid servants of an Israel which no longer has popular support and now causes public revulsion, is simply to attempt to ban free expression and make it specifically illegal to disagree with them.
3) The British Labour Party has gone even madder. Keir Starmer’s Genocide Party is an outstanding example of the success of the Israeli lobby in buying up both sides of the aisle and controlling the entire neoliberal uniparty that poses as the repository of democratic “choice” in the West.
Starmer had been doing his best to conceal his explicitly expressed “unequivocal support for Israel” lately, and to row back from his straightforward assertion that Israel has the right to cut off food and water from the population of Gaza. There had been a fake shift, from refusing to countenance the word “ceasefire” to supporting a temporary ceasefire or a “sustainable” ceasefire – the latter being code for a ceasefire after Israel had achieved all its ethnic cleansing objectives.
But then David Lammy blew this out of the water with an address to US Republican senators in which he made the totally bonkers assertion that Nelson Mandela would have opposed the college protests for Palestine. Lammy is a truly despicable individual, one of the ultimate examples of the corrupt politician whose voice is bought. But this was a move far beyond the pale.
4) Even today, the Western media continues to spout out Israeli propaganda at mains pressure. The Guardian, despite the thousands and thousands of dead women and children we have seen on our mobile phones this past seven months, continues to pretend that the genocidal attack is on “Hamas militants”.
The bombing and shelling of civilians in tents is still described as “clashes”. This propaganda really does not wash any more, though it may reinforce the morale of hardened Zionists. Everybody else has seen through it months ago. Yet still they persist.
5) The endgame is becoming very apparent. The United States is completing its floating harbour for Gaza, and Israel has gained control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, giving the US and Israel total control of entry points into Gaza. Israel has announced that the Rafah crossing is to be handed over to a US mercenary force. The US can then say it is complying with Biden’s pledge not to put US forces’ boots on the ground in Gaza, while actually taking control.
The Israeli attack on Rafah has been justified by the USA as a “limited military operation”, thus claiming it does not violate Biden’s purported “red line”, even though Israel has ordered over a million displaced people in Rafah to evacuate again, to nowhere.
Conclusion:
The only possible conclusion from all of the above is to reinforce my analysis that the Zionist political and media classes in the West, including Biden, Blinken, Trudeau, Macron, Sunak, Starmer, Scholtz, von der Leyen and all, are active and willing participants in a programme of genocide.
They had numerous opportunities to turn back. We all saw what is happening months ago. They did not take the opportunities.
The endgame remains the processing of the remaining Palestinian population out of Gaza through the US-controlled points of the Rafah crossing and the floating harbour, primarily into camps in the Sinai desert. The Western powers are doubling down on their genocide and on their colonial project.
I see nothing whatsoever that indicates they can have any other long-term objective in mind than the complete Israeli annexation of Gaza minus its civilian population. What do you see?
Featured Video
“Trump’s presidency is at risk of being destroyed” Col Douglas Macgregor
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- “Trump’s presidency is at risk of being destroyed” Col Douglas Macgregor
- Iran has legal right to act in Hormuz, holds US responsible for disruptions: UN mission
- Sudan’s RSF leaders build Dubai property empire with UAE backing: Investigative group
- West losing leadership position to Global South: Russia’s president
- How Cognitive Science Explains Our Looming Nuclear Crisis
- Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?
- Moscow, Tehran to support each other amid US aggression: Russia’s defense minister
- Iran says EU’s insistence on sanctions hastens its ‘embarrassing descent into irrelevance’
- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- If Americans Knew
- By Week’s End, Trump’s War Will Be Plainly Illegal
- CBS News Reportedly Ousts London Bureau Chief Over Differences With Bari Weiss Over Gaza Coverage
- State Department Says US Is in Conflict With Iran ‘At the Request’ of Israel
- What ceasefire? Israel won’t stop killing in Gaza, Lebanon – Daily Update
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 