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UN Rapporteur Says Received Threats since She Started Mission on Palestine

Al-Manar | March 27, 2024

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine Francesca Albanese said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that ‘Israel’ is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

She was speaking at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, where she presented her latest report, entitled ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’, during an interactive dialogue with Member States.

“Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my findings,” she said.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met.”

Citing international law, Albanese explained that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

“Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent, causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group,” she said.

Albanese said denial of the reality and the continuation of Israeli impunity and exceptionalism is no longer viable, especially in light of the binding UN Security Council resolution, adopted on Monday, which called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Meanwhile the UN special rapporteur revealed that she has been attacked and received numerous threats since she began her mission.

March 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

China says Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolution binding on Israel

MEMO | March 27, 2024

China yesterday reiterated that “UN Security Council resolutions are binding” on Israel, rejecting US claims to the contrary, Anadolu reported.

China “calls on the parties concerned to fulfil their obligations under the UN Charter and to take due action as required by the resolution,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in response to a question about comments by the top US envoy to the UN who claimed the resolution passed on Monday was “non-binding” on parties to the conflict in Gaza, which has been under an onslaught by Israel since 7 October.

More than 32,333 Palestinians have since been killed and over 74,694 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The UN Charter stipulates that all Security Council resolutions are legally binding under international law.

The Council passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for the remainder of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began on 11 March and is set to end on 9 April.

Fourteen countries on the 15-member Council voted in favour of the resolution. The US abstained.

The resolution demanded an “immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire.”

It also insisted on the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs.” No mention was made of the thousands of Palestinians disappeared by Israel from the Gaza Strip since it launched its ground offensive at the end of October. After the resolution passed, the Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, told the Council: “If fully and effectively implemented, [the resolution] could still bring long-awaited hope. Security Council resolutions are binding.”

Lin said Beijing “expects the state with significant influence to play a positive role on the party concerned, including by using all necessary and effective means at their disposal to support the implementation of the resolution.”

The Council “must continue to closely follow the situation in Gaza and get ready for further actions when necessary to ensure the timely and full implementation of the resolution,” said Lin.

March 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza: Israeli army uses Palestinian civilians as human shields in its operation in Shifa Medical Complex and vicinity

Euro-Med Monitor | March 23, 2024

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli military continues to use Palestinian civilians as human shields in its military operation inside the al-Shifa Medical Complex and its vicinity in Gaza City.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented several consistent testimonies regarding the Israeli army’s deliberate use of Palestinian civilians as human shields against their will, and forcing them into dangerous situations to secure and protect its forces and military operations inside the Shifa Medical Complex in. This has been ongoing since early Monday morning.

Testimonies reveal that Israeli forces used civilians, including patients and displaced individuals inside the Shifa Medical Complex, as human shields, exploiting them to protect their military operations within the hospital, form barriers behind their forces and military vehicles, or send them under threat to residential homes and buildings surrounding the medical complex to evacuate them before the Israeli army raids, arrests some of the residents, and subsequently destroys many of these buildings.

One Palestinian, identified as K.F (requesting anonymity), who was sheltering in the Shifa Medical Complex, stated that Israeli forces ordered him and three other young men to enter several rooms inside the Shifa Medical Complex after cameras were attached to their heads. They were then forced to move by remote orders issued by the Israeli army towards specific locations for inspection.

He added that he was forced by the Israeli army to move through orders in the General Surgery building inside the Shifa Medical Complex for several continuous hours before being forcibly evacuated with his wife and daughter, while knowing nothing about the fate of the other young men used by the Israeli army as human shields in the same incident.

M.N, an elderly man in his sixties, stated that the Israeli army forced his eldest son to enter the basements of the Shifa Medical Complex and sewage areas, while he witnessed other detainees being placed inside armored vehicles during the fighting. Others were forced to stand behind the army forces and military vehicles stationed at the entrances of the complex to fortify and prevent any targeting of them.

In another testimony, the wife of a nurse forced by the Israeli army to evacuate the complex towards the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza Strip, witnessed the Israeli forces using her husband as a human shield to open doors to sections in the Shifa Medical Complex for several consecutive hours. She stated that her husband’s fate remains unknown, and she fears for his safety.

Furthermore, several families residing near the Shifa Medical Complex reported that Israeli forces used young men, who were arrested from inside the complex, to enter their homes and demand immediate evacuation to central and southern Gaza Strip.

A woman from the “Arafat” family informed the Euro-Med Monitor team that they were surprised by the entry of a man in his late thirties, stripped of his clothes except for his underwear. He informed them that the Israeli army sent him to evacuate their home within 30 minutes, threatening to bomb it over their heads. Upon their evacuation, as ordered, they witnessed several other Palestinian youths in similar conditions, as the army forced them to enter neighbouring homes to warn their residents.

Last Monday morning, the Israeli army raided the Shifa Medical Complex in the western city of Gaza amid heavy gunfire and the buzzing of drones, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, and the arrest of hundreds more. Additionally, dozens of residential homes surrounding the complex were destroyed and set ablaze after being raided.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor expresses deep concern about the current situation in the Shifa Medical Complex and the risks facing civilians, including patients, healthcare workers, and displaced individuals inside it, who are protected under international humanitarian law. Medical facilities and civilians must be protected and attacks against them must be halted immediately.

Euro-Med Monitor calls on the international community to fulfill its international responsibilities in stopping the genocide being perpetrated against all residents of the Gaza Strip, and to take immediate and serious action to halt all Israeli army crimes committed against civilians and civilian objects protected under international law.

March 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Physicians Describe ‘Most Appalling Atrocities’ in Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | The Libertarian Institute | March 20, 2024

A group of four critical-care doctors who were recently in Gaza spoke on a UN panel about the horrors they witnessed in the besieged Strip. The doctors described multiple war crimes, horrendous injuries to children, kids dying of treatable wounds, and a shortage of supplies so severe that young patients die on the floors of hospitals without anesthetic to ease their suffering.

Addressing the UN on Tuesday, four physicians from France, the US, and Britain described the dire conditions in Gaza. “I saw the most appalling atrocities, and I saw things that I never would have expected to have seen in any healthcare setting,” Dr. Nick Maynard told the panel.

Maynard said that Israeli forces were bombing Gaza indiscriminately and intentionally attacking healthcare facilities, noting that some media outlets had uncritically repeated Tel Aviv’s assertion that it was carefully targeting Hamas. “I want to just dispel some of the narratives coming from the Israelis, [and] from some of the media,” which claimed the bombs were “only targeting Hamas.”

“I can certainly bear witness, as can any medic who’s been on the ground in Gaza in recent months, [and] dispel that notion with absolute certainty,” he continued. “There is mass indiscriminate bombing killing many, many thousands of civilians and a very clear targeting of healthcare facilities and healthcare workers.”

Maynard’s first-hand account is backed by Israeli and US sources. The White House has known for several months that Tel Aviv is bombing targets in Gaza without “solid intelligence” indicating any military value. President Biden himself previously described the Israeli onslaught as “indiscriminate,” while the Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine detailed Israel’s intentional strikes on civilian “power targets” in what it dubbed an “assassination factory.”

Dr. Zaher Sahloul explained the toll the indiscriminate bombing has taken on the civilians in Gaza. “The number of children killed is 13,000 or so or more. Which means, one out of 100 children in Gaza has been killed and this is an astronomical number; the equivalent of that in the US would be half a million children,” he said.

“Of the 70,000 people who were injured, half of them have moderate to severe injuries. That means they will have some type of disability for the rest of their lives,” Sahloul continued before adding the numbers are likely an undercount.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad stated he was providing care to wounded Palestinians at the Nassar Hospital in Khan Younis before Israeli forces surrounded, raided, and disabled the medical center. He said aid could not enter the Strip and that doctors did not have the medicines needed to treat patients.

Extreme supply shortages have forced doctors to make “impossible decisions” at Gaza’s overwhelmed healthcare facilities, Dr. Amber Alayyan told the UN panel. Hospital officials “have to choose between whether to fully stock the operating theater, ICU, or emergency room.” She continued, “This is where you have doctors faced with horrific decisions of having to intubate and amputate children and adults without anesthetics in emergency rooms. Part of the reason for this is the lack of medications.”

At times, shortages are so severe that hospitals do not have morphine or antibiotics while doctors rewash surgical gloves.

Maynard explained the impact of the limited aid for one Palestinian girl. “One child that I’ll never forget had burned so bad you could see her facial bones. We knew there was no chance of her surviving that,” he said. “But there was no morphine to give her. So, not only was she going to die, but she would die in agony.”

The doctor continued, “And what made it even worse was that there was nowhere for her to go and die, so she was just left on the floor of the emergency department to die. And that’s just one story; we’ve all seen multiple stories like that.”

Israel has imposed tight restrictions on aid deliveries into Gaza since October 7. While the Biden administration claims it is pressuring Tel Aviv to ease its blockade, fewer than 100 aid trucks have entered Gaza each day in recent weeks – down from 200 in January and 500 in September. The White House has refused to use its considerable leverage over Tel Aviv to persuade Israel to allow more aid into the Strip and has declined to condition future US military aid on that request.

The physicians explained that Washington’s efforts to relieve the humanitarian crisis would be ineffective, saying the real issue was distribution problems that could only be solved with an end to the fighting. Additionally, they pointed to multiple Israeli attacks on aid deliveries in Gaza, including a February 29 massacre that left more than 100 Palestinians dead.

Dr. Maynard went on to warn that an attack on Rafah would have devastating consequences for the 1.5 million people in the city. “It’ll be apocalyptic, really, the number of deaths that we’re going to see,” he said. “And of course, as we’re seeing, they’ll be told to evacuate and move somewhere safe, and there is, as we’ve heard, there is nowhere safe for them to go.”

March 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel commits new ‘premeditated massacre’ against Gaza aid seekers

The Cradle | March 15, 2024

Israeli forces committed a new massacre against Palestinians late on 14 March as they were waiting for aid near Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout, marking the second attack of its kind in the last 24 hours.

Footage on social media shows dead Palestinians laid out across the ground, covered in dust and rubble.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday night that at least 20 corpses and 155 injured Palestinians arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital following the attack, calling it a “new premeditated massacre.”

Gaza’s government media office said in a statement that the Israeli army targeted “a gathering of citizens while they were waiting for relief aid at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City.” Israeli troops opened fire at the aid seekers with tanks and helicopters, killing and wounding at least 100, it said.

The attack is “to be added to the series of massacres and brutal attacks against the defenseless civilians who face the Zionist starvation policy,” the media office added, calling the attack “deliberate.”

“The occupation targeted aid recipients for the 20th consecutive day,” the government media office continued.

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked aid seekers at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City and elsewhere.

Israeli forces shot and killed six Palestinians waiting for aid at the roundabout late on 13 March. Hours earlier, at least five Palestinians were killed and several injured by Israeli army shelling on a UNRWA aid distribution center in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah.

The Rafah attack came a day after Israeli forces opened fire at dozens of Palestinians lined up for food aid near the Kuwait Roundabout.

Israeli troops committed a massacre against Palestinians seeking aid in northern Gaza’s Al-Rashid Street near the Kuwait Roundabout on 29 February. The brutal attack, which killed over a hundred Palestinians, has come to be known as the Flour Massacre.

Due to the several attacks on hungry Gazans near the Kuwait Roundabout and Al-Rashid Street, Al-Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said on 14 March that the area “is now known as a death trap.”

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu to promote army officer who ordered demolition of Gaza university

MEMO | March 12, 2024

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to promote Brigadier General Barak Hiram, the Israeli army officer who ordered the shelling of a house in Kibbutz Be’eri on 7 October, resulting in the killing of 13 Israeli civilians, say Israeli sources. He also ordered the demolition of a university in Gaza. The move comes as a surprise to many, considering the controversial nature of Hiram’s military record.

The incident in Kibbutz Be’eri, saw Hiram apparently following the Israeli army’s Hannibal directive, a controversial policy to use maximum force in order to prevent the taking of Israeli citizens as hostages. The charred bodies of dozens of Israeli civilians recovered after the 7 October attack are believed to be the victims of the apartheid state implementing the Hannibal directive.

In addition to the Kibbutz Be’eri incident, it is reported that Hiram was reprimanded by the Israeli army’s chief of staff recently for ordering the demolition of a building at Israa University in the south of Gaza City without proper authorisation.

Despite these controversies, Netanyahu has reportedly interviewed Hiram for the role of his military secretary. The Prime Minister’s Office has refused to comment on the matter, while the military maintains that it does not provide details on how appointments are made within the army.

The potential promotion of Hiram has raised eyebrows among observers, who question the wisdom of rewarding an officer responsible for such contentious decisions during the Gaza genocide.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian FM: ‘Western leaders are little puppets of the Zionist enemy’

Al Mayadeen | March 10, 2024

Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Faisal Mekdad, emphasized that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide perpetrated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has killed over 12,000 children and 8,000 women, and completely destroyed the Gaza Strip.

In a statement on the ministry’s X account, Mikdad said “What European Union strategists say about building a world based on rules and regulations has faded. The murderer Netanyahu has not left any rule unbroken: International law, international humanitarian law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter, children’s rights, women’s rights, democracy, disarmament, and peace.”

He continued to say what is more dangerous than Netanyahu and his ruling “gang’s” crimes, is the support he received from many EU leaders and the blind trust Washington has given him.

“Everyone knows that much of what the European Union leaders did before and after was a form of clowning, hypocrisy, and lies, and their defense of Netanyahu’s crimes led to pulling the rug from under all of their feet and showed them as they really are, little puppets in the hands of Zionism and enemies of peoples’ rights and aspirations,” he said, slamming the West.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zionist Jews in Biden administration calling the shots on Israeli war on Gaza

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | March 10, 2024

One of the key but underreported factors of the unwavering US support for the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza is the overwhelming presence of Zionist Jews in the Joe Biden administration.

These Zionist Jews exert enormous influence in the American power corridors and enjoy unconditional support from the US president who has on numerous occasions boasted of being a “Zionist” himself.

The presence and influence of Zionist Jews in the White House has always been a point of discussion, however, since the events of October 7, it has manifested itself in many ways.

Biden administration’s vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council, which drew widespread condemnation from pro-Palestine groups, rekindled the debate about the Zionist influence.

Raising the issue of the dominance of Zionist Jews in the US administration and policy circles is often seen through the prism of “anti-Semitism” in the West, even though the same people paradoxically like to boast about the disproportionate number of Jews in other fields.

The Zionist Jewishness of Biden’s cabinet was pointed out recently by The Forward, a progressive media for a Jewish American audience, as well as the Israeli right-wing newspaper Times of Israel.

Being a Jew should not be seen as a problem, but those in the Biden administration have clearly exhibited the tendencies of Zionism – not only justifying the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza but also lobbying for more financial and military aid to the occupying regime.

There are also non-Jewish Zionists whose support is motivated by Christian Zionism or belonging to pro-Israel lobbies, a common case in the ranks of the Republican Party.

The problem lies in the fact that everyone in the Biden administration is a radical Zionist who will uncompromisingly justify Israeli war crimes, with slight disagreements over relatively minor issues, such as illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In the American mainstream media, voting in the UN Security Council and supporting the genocidal destruction of Gaza is treated as common sense and a natural course of action.

Biden made no secret of his Zionist inclinations, uttering the words “I am a Zionist”. And he has proved it through numerous pro-Israeli activities in his decades-long political career.

One of them is the placement of Jewish Zionists in top positions in his administration, which at the beginning of 2021 evoked a popular joke on social networks that the West Wing would have a “minyan.”

The Hebrew term “minyan” means the minimum number of males (10) required to constitute a representative “community of Israel” for liturgical purposes.

Biden’s initial lineup includes Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Merrick Garland as Attorney General, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Ronald Klain as White House Chief of Staff, Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary for Health, Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, and Janet Yellen as Secretary of the Treasury.

One level down are David Cohen as Deputy CIA Director, Eric Lander as science and technology adviser, Ann Neuberger as Deputy National Security Adviser, and Wendy Sherman as Deputy Secretary of State.

In the meantime, Victoria Nuland took the position of Undersecretary of State for political affairs, Ed Siskel as White House counsel, and Klain was replaced by Jeff Zients as chief of staff.

Others appointed by Biden include Daniel Shapiro as a special liaison to Israel on Iran, Ned Price as spokesman for the Department of State, Jennifer Klein as executive director of the White House Gender Policy Council, as well as a large number of ambassadors.

The Zionist envoys include Michael Adler, David Cohen, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Garcetti, Mark Gitenstein, Amy Gutmann, Jonathan Kaplan, Yael Lempert, Alan Leventhal, Randi Levine, Jack Lew, Jack Markell, Constance Milstein, Marc Nathanson, Marc Ostfield, David Pressman, Daniel Rosenblum, and Marc Stanley, among others.

Blinken, the top American diplomat, comes from a Zionist family. His grandfather Maurice was one of the early American Zionists and the founder of the American Palestine Institute, in the years before the declaration of the Zionist entity.

His institute funded economists to prepare a report on the economic viability of such an entity and lobbied Washington to politically support its creation.

Following Blinken’s appointment as the top US diplomat, replacing Mike Pompeo, the Israeli media praised his and Biden’s close relations with Tel Aviv during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, noting their “lifelong support for Israel and its security.”

During the Obama administration, Blinken often justified Israeli aggressions in the region with the hackneyed phrase “the right to self-defense” and praised Trump for strengthening Israel’s regional alliances.

He was a close confidant of the Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer who could call him in the middle of the night for pro-Israeli services, such as lobbying hard to have Israel’s Iron Dome air military system financed with American taxpayer money.

In his first days in office, he also made it known that the new Biden administration would support earlier Trump’s decision and keep the American embassy to the occupied territories in occupied al-Quds.

Last year, during the bickering between Biden and Netanyahu, Blinken pledged enduring US ties with Israel, seeing it as a far more important ally than NATO member Turkey.

As for Mayorkas, even the Israeli media boasted of his strong family ties to Tel Aviv and praised him for the data-sharing pact between the United States and the Zionist regime.

Even greater Zionist credit for intelligence sharing goes to CIA deputy chief David Cohen, whose career under Obama focused on sanctioning Israel’s enemies.

Thus, it is no surprise that Americans are bankrolling the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza while harping about ceasefire and aid airdrops to hoodwink the international community.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Fearful Electioneering Turbo Charges Western Warmongering

Strategic Culture Foundation | March 8, 2024

Western states are facing an acute political crisis whereby their established governing parties and leaders are fighting for survival amid a grave loss in legitimacy in the eyes of their electorates.

In the United States, incumbent President Joe Biden is vying for reelection in November with historically lowest poll numbers ever for an occupant of the White House.

Meanwhile, across the European Union, governing parties and leaders are braced for a drubbing from parliamentary elections in June.

The roots of this unprecedented loss of legitimacy among Western political establishments are manifold. But surely one cause is the rank hypocrisy of Western leaders that has now been laid bare. How can political figures expect to have any moral authority when they are seen to be inveterate liars and shamelessly corrupt?

Western governments and their servile media lecture about “democracy”, “human rights” and upholding “law and order”. They claim to be motivated by such principles in their support of Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. Yet these same governments are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza through their unwavering support for the Israeli regime.

Western leaders have been fatally exposed and compromised by the conflict in Ukraine and Gaza. The contradiction is terminal.

That’s not just because of the blatant double standards and duplicity. Western voters are increasingly disgusted by the relentless financial and military support funneled into Ukraine to prop up a scamming regime comprised of NeoNazi ideologues. Under Joe Biden and the incumbent European politicians, the West has flooded Ukraine with weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars in what is the biggest war racket ever.

This is while Western populations, workers, farmers, and businesses are hard-pressed with numerous social and economic burdens.

Western governing parties are rightly seen as elitist and serving powerful minority oligarchic interests such as the military-industrial-corporate-financial nexus. Their declared vows about democracy are a contemptible joke.

The war in Ukraine is increasingly understood by voters to be a disastrous proxy war of choice that was pushed by U.S. and Western imperial objectives to confront Russia.

Despite the squandering of public money to propagate the war, the U.S.-led NATO axis has lost its “great game”. The proxy war has devastated Ukraine, causing up to 500,000 military deaths in two years, as well as destabilizing the rest of Europe from increased migration, fiscal impact, deindustrialization, and the shattering of agricultural industries.

Western populations are furious with their political leaders for having inflicted such chaos and waste of resources – as well as wantonly provoking tensions in international relations with Russia. Western politicians have pushed the world to the brink of an all-out war between nuclear powers. All this crazed folly is based on utter lies and deception – as the horror of Gaza and Western complicity illustrates.

In this cauldron of electoral revolt, Western political leaders are only digging a deeper hole for their eventual collapse.

American President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address this week made a disingenuous pitch to voters. He portrayed the world as facing an existential crisis from Russian “tyranny” and simultaneously claimed the fate of US democracy was under threat from his election rival Donald Trump.

In a dangerous and desperate move, Biden is conflating Trump with alleged Russian aggression. The Democrat president is fighting for political survival against Republican presumptive nominee Trump primarily because Biden is so deeply unpopular among American citizens. To boost his election prospects, Biden is making out that the country is facing an “inflection point” that requires rejection of Trump because he is “bowing down” to Russia.

Trump and many within the Republican Party are opposed to continuing the proxy war in Ukraine, recognizing that it is futile.

Biden and the Democrats, who are more aligned with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, are therefore trying to make the election about an existential “defense of world democracy and peace”. Biden claimed in his State of the Union address that if the U.S. does not supply Ukraine with another $60 billion more in military aid then Russia will overrun the rest of Europe. Biden even invoked the memory of Roosevelt supposedly facing down Nazi Germany in 1941.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the same warmongering high-stakes ruse is being pushed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron is calling for the deployment of NATO ground troops in Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory and an alleged threat to the rest of Europe.

The French head of state has become almost hysterical in recent weeks with war talk. He told other French political leaders this week that there would be “no limits” to France’s support for Ukraine against Russia.

What’s lying behind Macron’s belligerent rhetoric are his fears of political defeat from opposition parties in the forthcoming EU parliamentary elections. It is not just Macron who is anxious. All incumbent European leaders are dreading an expected widespread revolt by the electorate.

That is why the French president and his ruling-class ilk like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are seeking to dominate the public narrative with war talk and the alleged danger of Russian expansionism.

The irony is that the more the Western establishments pursue militarism and war in Ukraine the worse their states become from economic mismanagement and the more their legitimacy sinks into the gutter. They are seen more and more as a warmongering clique that has not a shred of ethical concern because of their reckless warmongering in Ukraine and their despicable complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

Elections in Western states are over-rated. As the saying goes, if voting changed anything, it would have been banned years ago. The array of current opposition figures and parties facing incumbents is not going to deliver any solutions to the endemic problems of Western systemic failure. Nevertheless, the forthcoming U.S. presidential election and the European parliamentary ballots are shaping up to deliver grievous blows of repudiation to the political establishments.

To offset the political doomsday, charlatan Western leaders like Biden, Macron, Scholz, and Von der Leyen are doing their last-ditch best to talk up war with Russia and the “threat to democracy” as a way to burnish their electioneering efforts. But such cynicism is not turbocharging their prospects. It will backfire.

The U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine is facing a historic debacle from defeat. But that makes the desperate reaction by Western incumbents scurrying for political survival a dangerous time in the next few months.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Offer for a 6-Week Pause in the Genocide in Gaza

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 8, 2024

The Hamas delegation left Cairo on Thursday and will resume negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza next week. Time is running out before the Holy month of Ramadan begins. Hamas wants an end to the war, but the U.S. is looking only for a 6-week pause, and Israel is willing to allow a pause but resume the genocide afterward.

UN experts, many world leaders, humanitarian organizations, and millions of civilians across the U.S., UK, Europe, Africa, and Asia agree on one point: the only way to prevent or end famine in Gaza is an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Israel’s unrelenting attack on 2.3 million people in Gaza, day and night for almost five months, has killed over 30,700. If the bombs and bullets don’t kill them all, then starvation will.

U.S. President Joe Biden, the one man in the world who holds the keys to a ceasefire in Gaza, refuses to demand the Israelis end the war. Biden has finally come up with a weak deal to offer Hamas to stop the slaughtering, but just for six weeks, not permanently.

Hamas proposal in Cairo

Hamas representatives have been meeting in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators. On Wednesday, March 6, Hamas said they were continuing their efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza even though Israel refused to participate in the negotiations.

Osama Hamdan, in Beirut, voiced the demands of the resistance group. They want a permanent end to Israeli attacks and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to allow the people to return to their homes. He stressed that a prisoner swap could only occur after a ceasefire.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said Hamas had presented its draft deal and was awaiting a response from Israel, and that “the ball now is in the Americans’ court”.

The U.S. proposal at the UN

On March 5, Biden said a ceasefire deal was in the hands of Hamas. He was referring to the U.S. deal offered to Hamas, and he never mentioned or referred to the deal Hamas offered to Israel.

Biden’s deal offered a six-week ceasefire in exchange for the release of all Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Israel is willing to pause the slaughter and genocide in Gaza for a few weeks, but Netanyahu and his radical right-wing partners insist they will never stop the bombardment until Hamas is exterminated.

“It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. Israelis have been cooperating. There’s been a rational offer,” Biden told reporters.

Getting the Israeli hostages out has never been a priority for Netanyahu, but it has been for the families and friends of the hostages. They have been holding protests and marches ever since the conflict began. The families of the hostages expected their government to negotiate for their release, but Netanyahu’s war room ignored their pleas, in favor of revenge killings in Gaza.

From the very beginning of the conflict which broke out October 7, 2023,  He is willing to use the phrase ‘humanitarian pause’, and his current deal offered to Hamas is only a pause, with an exact timetable attached to resume the butchery which has killed mainly women and children.

The U.S. is promoting its ‘pause’ deal at the UN, even though the U.S. has vetoed every UN resolution aimed at peace in Gaza, with the most recent U.S. veto on February 20.

Netanyahu says IDF will remain in Gaza for 10 years

The Times of Israel reported recently that Netanyahu has planned for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to remain in a military occupation of Gaza for at least 10 years. This is opposed by the U.S., EU, UN, and most world leaders. Israel may agree to a pause, but a ceasefire and withdrawal is out of the question. This means the Palestinian people and their supporters will remain resisting occupation, which is guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.

The Flour Massacre

On February 29, at least 112 people were killed and 760 were injured when Israeli tanks opened heavy fire on Palestinian civilians attempting to collect flour to make bread near Gaza City.

The attack was investigated by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The attack was captured on video in which gunshots and weapon fire were heard. The victims were examined and had gunshot injuries, the scene was strewn with blood on flour sacks and aid boxes, and survivors’ eyewitness testimony attested to the Israeli attack on starving Palestinians in search of food for their families. Many of the survivors stated they were shot in the back while running away from the scene.

Israel tried to blame the deaths and injuries on a stampede in the chaos of scrambling to get the flour. However, the aerial footage the IDF released of the scene proved there were IDF tanks present. The people running in the aerial footage were running from Israeli gunfire directed at them.

After the ‘Flour Massacre’ happened, the first response from the Biden White House, as parroted by CNN on the front lawn, was the Israeli version of events: people stampeded because of chaos while trying to get some food.

However, in the video accompanying the CNN report, sounds of weapons fire are heard over and over again.

Later, Christiane Amanpour of CNN reported on information relayed to her from trusted contacts on the ground in Gaza, humanitarian groups, that those killed at the ‘Flour Massacre’ had gunshot wounds. Amanpour has a career motto: don’t be neutral, be truthful.

“The attack came after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month,” said the UN experts, who described “a pattern of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians seeking aid”.

In a statement, a group of UN special rapporteurs accused Israel of “intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October,” adding: “Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.”

There is mounting evidence of famine in the Gaza Strip, and at least 14 similar incidents have been reported.

On Friday, March 1, the U.S. blocked a statement put forward by Algeria and backed by 15 UNSC members except the U.S. to condemn Israel for the killing of more than 100 Palestinians in the ‘Flour Massacre’. The U.S. claimed it was trying to verify how the people died in light of Israel’s denial of shooting the hungry people.

Biden doesn’t care about protests

Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, was asked on CNN about Biden’s reaction to being taunted by protesters demanding a ceasefire immediately in Gaza.

Landrieu replied that Biden respects their right to freedom of speech, and “he has no problem with it.”

Biden and his administration, view the call for a ceasefire in Gaza as just an exercise in the right of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Biden and his administration will gladly tolerate calls for a ceasefire because that is the right of every American.

However, the Biden administration misses the point. Millions of Americans are demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, carried out by the American weapons provided without any oversight or conditions by the U.S. State Department. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has faced resignations among his staff because of the unbridled flow of weapons to Israel, which have killed well over 30,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children as reported by the UN and humanitarian groups.

Blinken has the authority to hold up weapons transfers based on the State Department’s own rule, that no weapons can be sent to a country that may use them in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or in violation of humanitarian law. Blinken famously told Netanyahu, that he came to support Israel as a Jew. Blinken was not representing the rules and protocol of the U.S. State Department, but was instead representing his race, and his bloodline having been born of a Jewish mother. Blinken turned the secular system of the American government into a racist and sectarian system in one fell swoop.

The next big protest movement in the U.S. may well be a popular uprising against paying taxes. Americans may ask, “Why do I pay taxes, if Washington, DC. is throwing away money on wars I oppose?”

Gaza is starving

Deliberating starving people amounts to war crimes and genocide under international law. More than 15 children have died from malnutrition in Gaza. The deaths are due not only to hunger but also dehydration. The elderly and small children are very susceptible to dehydration which causes the major organs to shut down.

The humanitarian aid trucks sit parked and idle at the gate to Gaza. Israel has prevented aid from coming to over 2 million Palestinians. Biden has only to pick up a phone and order the gate to be open and the aid to flow in unimpeded, but instead, he has asked the air force to fly over Gaza and drop pallets of food.

Israel has blocked humanitarian supplies to Gaza. On January 26, the International Court of Justice recognized the plausibility of Israel committing genocide and ordered it to allow the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian services and aid to Palestinians. However, since the court’s ruling, the number of trucks Israel has allowed to enter Gaza has fallen to 57 a day – compared with an average of 147 a day before the ICJ ruling.

The hospitals are barely functioning with hundreds of wounded arriving each day, and now they are filling up with people in the last stages of starvation.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UNRWA staffers tortured by Israeli troops to falsely admit ‘Hamas links’

The Cradle | March 9, 2024

An unpublished report from UNRWA said some of its employees released from Israeli detention were tortured into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the 7 October attacks, Reuters reported on 9 March.

The testimonies are contained in a report by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reviewed by Reuters and dated February 2024.

“Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities,” the report says.

The report included allegations of abuse and torture in Israeli detention, including severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.

Though waterboarding is widely viewed as torture by human rights groups, the Reuters report described Israeli actions only as “coercion” and “pressure” to force detained Palestinians to make false statements.

In addition to describing the torture of UNRWA employees, the report stated that Israel has subjected Palestinian detainees more broadly to beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, and sexual violence. Some detainees have also died after Israel denied them medical treatment, the report added.

UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said the agency planned to hand the information in the 11-page, unpublished report to human rights investigators at UN agencies and outside rights groups.

“When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights,” she said.

Amid the torture and medical neglect, 27 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since the start of the war on 7 October.

Israel has accused UNRWA employees of participation in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israeli settlements and military bases. Israel provided no evidence for the claim, but 16 countries, including the US, paused $450 million in UNRWA funding in response, throwing its aid operations into crisis just as starvation was beginning to grip Gaza.

Israel’s campaign against UNRWA is part of a broader campaign started years ago to dismantle the agency, which helps keep the hope of Palestinian refugees returning to their stolen lands and homes in what is now Israel alive.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing

By Jonathan Cook | March 8, 2024

A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:

1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.

Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.

2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.

The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather than the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.

With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business as usual in Gaza afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.

3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.

4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.

5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.

And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.

No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.

He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.

March 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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