Israeli sniper kills in ‘cold blood’ mother, daughter in Gaza church
Press TV – December 17, 2023
An Israeli military sniper has shot dead a Christian mother and daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in the Gaza Strip sheltering displaced Palestinian families.
The fatal shooting took place inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza City at around noon on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of al-Quds, which oversees Catholic Churches across Cyprus, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement.
“Nahida and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety,” it added.
The patriarchate also said that no warning was given before the shooting and that the victims “were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”
Seven more Palestinians were also wounded by gunfire as they tried to protect others at the church, according to the statement.
The patriarchate further said that an Israeli tank fired three projectiles, destroying a convent’s generator and fuel supplies, and rendering a building housing 54 disabled people uninhabitable.
“The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive,” it noted.
Meanwhile, the Vatican press agency said the Israeli strikes wounded three people.
Israeli air raid kills nearly two dozen Palestinians in Jabalia
In another development, at least 20 Palestinians were killed and some 100 others injured following an Israeli aerial assault on a residential block in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The attack targeted the home of the Shehab family, causing extensive damage to neighboring houses.
Israel waged the brutal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the onslaught on Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,088 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 54,450 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
Israeli bulldozers demolish tents, bury Palestinians alive: Report
The Cradle | December 16, 2023
Israeli bulldozers have killed dozens of Palestinians by running over and crushing the tents in which they were taking shelter outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Al-Jazeera reported on 16 December.
“Dozens of displaced, sick and wounded people were buried alive. The occupation [Israeli] bulldozers trampled the tents of the displaced people in the hospital yard and brutally crushed them,” Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Gaza Anas al-Sharif reported.
“A terrifying massacre and unspeakable scenes. What the Israeli occupation did inside Kamal Adwan Hospital is a horrific crime against citizens and medical staff,” Sharif said in a post on X.
Some 3,000 Palestinians have been sheltering on the grounds of the hospital, which has been under siege by the Israeli army for eight days.
According to the Gaza health ministry, 12 Palestinian babies are still trapped within incubators at the hospital. The statement added that Israeli forces “are gathering men, including medical staff, in the hospital courtyard.”
The ministry called on “the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Red Cross to take immediate action to save the lives of those in the hospital.”
After Israeli forces occupied the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza City in early November, forcing the staff to evacuate, five babies on incubators died as they were left behind. Their decomposed bodies were discovered two weeks later when Emirati journalist Mohammad Balousha was able to visit the hospital when a 7-day-truce temporarily halted the fighting.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza hospitals appear to be a deliberate effort to collapse the health system in the bombed and besieged enclave.
“Since the beginning of the war, Israel has been strategically attacking healthcare facilities,” Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for Red Crescent, told The New Arab.
Israeli attacks have targeted the Al-Shifa hospital, the Al-Quds hospital, the Al-Ahli hospital, the Al-Nasr and Al-Rantisi hospitals for children, and the Indonesian hospital, among others.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 18,800 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, and more than 51,000 wounded since the beginning of Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza began on 7 October.
Israeli ex-detainee: Hamas fighters treated me and my kids with respect
Palestine Information Center – December 16, 2023
NAZARETH – Israeli ex-detainee in Gaza, Chen Goldstein-Almog, said that she and her three children were treated respectfully and not physically harmed or maltreated during their detention by Hamas fighters.
According to The New York Times, Goldstein-Almog had long conversations with her captors, sometimes for hours. “We talked about our families and the extreme danger we all faced.”
She explained that they were mostly detained in an apartment in Gaza, but she and her children were transferred during their detention period — which lasted 7 weeks — to different apartments, tunnels, a mosque, and even a destroyed supermarket, adding that during their movement between those places, the situation was terrifying due to the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
She also said that the commander of the guards appeared educated and spoke Hebrew, pointing out that the guards taught her son 250 words in Arabic to keep him busy, brought him a notebook for study, regularly discussed with them what to eat and invited them to participate in cooking meals in kitchens.
She said that a Hamas fighter apologized to her for the killing of her husband and one of her daughters by other individuals, telling her that what had happened was wrong.
Goldstein-Almog affirmed that before her release, a guard told her “don’t go back to the Gaza envelope because we are coming back” and told her to go further.
Goldstein-Almog, 48, and her three children were captured on the first day of Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7.
They were released in late November as part of a prisoner exchange between the Hamas Movement and the Israeli occupation during the temporary humanitarian truce.
Flooding Gaza’s Tunnels Is Proof the Final Solution Has Begun
By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023
Asking an engineering friend of mine with almost 50 years’ experience of handling water what obstacles Israel would face with flooding Gaza’s tunnels (and drowning all therein), he said there were three main issues to consider.
The first of these is that the total head of water or height water has to be pumped above sea level but, as Gaza is fairly flat, he did not see that as being particularly problematic. The second issue he drew my attention to was the distance to be pumped from the sea. He imagines this can be overcome by arranging a series of pumps in a line with holding tanks spaced over the total distance, though a canal system might also work. Given that the Gaza strip is narrow, approximately 9 km wide on average, he did not see any big issues there. The third issue he drew attention to was the volume of water needed, which is obtained by multiplying the diameter of tunnels by their total lengths, and perhaps adding something extra “for luck”. That total volume would determine the number and size of pumps needed for the volume of the tunnels and the duration of the exercise.
Thus, once Israel secures the Gazan shoreline and installs the appropriate pumping material, it is game on, all the more so as such engineering feats should be well within the capabilities of the Israeli/American alliance. As Egypt previously flooded the tunnels to stop ISIS attacks in the Sinai, we can rest assured Israel and America will be more than competent for the job in hand.
As Al Mayadeen, Al Jazeera and other outlets have reported that the Israelis have already begun flooding some of the tunnels, we can regard that as a done deal. Because Israel and its American sidekick have had years to plan all this and they don’t give a damn for either the human or ecological damage they will cause, we can expect Christmas 2023 in Gaza to be literally hell on earth.
Although you can read more here, here, here, here, here and here from these military, academic, and media sites on the technical and tactical issues involved in flooding the tunnels, let me just draw your attention to these articles here and here about the various laws on genocide Israel is blatantly violating to state that none of that matters a damn, as Israel has made it plain time and again that it is not constricted by any laws of either God or man.
The scenes from Gaza are already post-apocalyptic, with Israel parading naked men about as human shields, whilst shell shocked children have limbs amputated with no anaesthetic by heroic surgeons Israeli snipers shoot at through hospital windows and other innocent children, who dreamed childish dreams about being doctors, vets or gamers are now gone, their lives expunged like cigarette butts under Israeli jackboots.
In a previous article about these war crimes, I compared the Israeli army to Hitler’s doomed Sixth Army, which found itself marooned in Stalingrad, fighting the wrong war in what infamously turned out to be the wrong place.
Another friend wrote to me that: I would have thought that the most obvious comparable situation would have been the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, with Israel’s ‘defence’ minister Gallant playing the role of Jürgen Stroop, the Ordnungspolizei commandant, who boasted about clearing Warsaw of the ‘Jews and bandits,’ like Gallant speaking of ridding Gaza of ‘human animals’. In position papers, and in the public utterances of leading Israeli figures, it looks like the sheer violence of the Israeli response to the Oct’ 7th events, is to affect the ‘Final Solution,’ to the problem of Gaza. Not my words, but those of a Jewish member of the Knesset, critical of state policy towards the Palestinians. It now seems obvious that this ‘Final Solution’ will involve the forced expulsion of the entire Gaza population to the Egyptian controlled Sinai, with or without the cooperation of the client military regime in Cairo. I strongly suspect that plans drawn up years ago are now being put into effect, and notwithstanding world wide pro-Palestinian protests, it seems to me that this abominable plan will succeed, for it appears to have the tacit support of the U.S. and Western powers. What we may soon see is the largest forced exodus of people in either Europe or the Near East since 1945, since the forced departure of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. The numbers from Gaza alone will be three times those of the original Nabka in 1948.
My friend, sadly, makes his case well. Gaza’s final solution will soon be in full throttle and, as with the original Nakba, no one of consequence can or will do a thing about it. No one but Hezbollah perhaps?
Hezbollah are currently engaged in taking potshots at Israel’s Northern District, which is the only district of Israel, where the majority of inhabitants are Arabs. As the Lebanese border becomes more volatile, the Druze, who form 8% of the area’s population and who are the attack dogs of the Israelis, might have to reconsider their options.
Certainly, Hezbollah’s ability to hold the line in Southern Lebanon will give the Druze of Northern Israel and Southern Syria food for thought as I, for one, would not like Hezbollah gunning for me if I lived in the area and was vulnerable to attack from them. Although Hezbollah gave the ‘Christian’ militias a pass when they defeated those Israeli proxies in the Lebanese civil war, fools’ pardons can only be dished out so many times.
Hezbollah long ago decided that its main regional enemy was Israel and it was not going to allow itself to be unduly distracted by others sniping at its heels. The Druze of Northern Israel, now that they are fully within range of Hezbollah’s entire arsenal, might really want to reconsider how long more they should be the bitch of Israel, which has the same sort of moral standing Jürgen Stroop had following the Warsaw Uprising.
As regards East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the final solution is only a matter of time. As I type this, Israeli drones are terrorising the village of Taybeh, the last Christian town on the West Bank. Elsewhere, in towns like Jenin, the Israelis continue to kill and plunder as they please. Christians continue to get beaten up in Jerusalem’s Old City and it is only a matter of time before the Al Aqsa mosque falls, just as the mosque in Hebron was transformed at gunpoint into a synagogue.
Although truly legendary rock stars like Roger Waters are to be admired for calling all this out, it will take much more than an octogenarian guitarist to stop this ongoing carnage. If we are to use Stalingrad, Stroop and Waters’ father (martyred at Anzio) as our templates, then the answer can only be found in military resistance, coupled with an unbending consensus that Gallant, Biden, Netanyahu and all like them must go the way of Stroop and his leather-clad chums.
But dreaming for such a consensus is as childish as the dreams of being doctors, surgeons or vets that once sustained those martyred Gazan children. If there is to be peace this Christmas or any Christmas in the Holy Land, then it must be a case of out with the old and in with the new. Or, to put it more prosaically, the military, economic and diplomatic dominance of the United States and Israel must be shattered by forces that can accommodate the dreams of a life with dignity of whatever Gazan children beat the odds and survive their genocide.
And, though that might sound as childish as anything those martyred children might have said, it is the only way. Not only must Israel and the United States be upended but so too must every Hollywood spun narrative, bought, bribed or bullied politician, media hack or parasitic NGO or charity that ever helped sustain them, their endless lies and their serial racketeering.
US Has No Plans to Restrict Military Aid to Israel Despite Biden Calling Gaza Bombing ‘Indiscriminate’
By Dave DeCamp | The Libertarian Institute | December 15, 2023
The US has no plans to restrict military aid to Israel or draw any red lines on Israel’s use of US-provided munitions despite President Biden labeling Israel’s bombing of Gaza “indiscriminate” and the massive civilian death toll, US officials told CNN.
One official said the US does not consider the death of civilians a violation of the laws of war unless they are purposefully targeted. A report from +972 Magazine revealed that Israel is intentionally targeting civilians as part of a strategy to put pressure on Hamas, but the Biden administration is still claiming Israel is taking steps to mitigate civilian casualties.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed on Wednesday that Israel “stated their intent to reduce civilian casualties. And they have acted on that.” When pressed on President Biden’s comments calling Israel’s bombing campaign “indiscriminate,” Kirby refused to say if that was the US government’s official position.
“The President was expressing concerns — again, as I said — about the civilian casualties that we’ve seen. And, again, it’s reflective of our constant efforts to urge the Israelis to be as precise and careful as possible,” Kirby said.
In the same speech where Biden called the Israeli bombing “indiscriminate,” he vowed to continue supporting the campaign.
While US officials have been expressing “concern” about civilian casualties, the administration is not using any leverage it has over Israel to force them to change their tactics. Israel dropped more than 22,000 US-provided bombs on Gaza in just the first month and a half of the operation, demonstrating how reliant the Israeli military is on US support.
The US officials speaking to CNN also said the US was not conducting real-time assessments of each Israeli strike to see what weapons were used and how many civilians were killed. They said doing so would be “nearly impossible” due to the sheer number of Israeli bombings.
So far, the US-backed slaughter in Gaza has killed over 18,000 Palestinians, including over 7,000 children. The White House has previously acknowledged “many, many thousands of innocent people” were being killed by Israel in Gaza.
Sons of Salah Al-Din: Shuja’iyya is not just a neighbourhood, it’s a legacy
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 14, 2023
‘Difficult event’
‘What’s in a name?’
Gate to Gaza
Secret of Shuja’iyya
Britain secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel
By Matt Kennard | Declassified UK | December 12, 2023
Britain secretly deployed 500 additional troops to its bases on Cyprus after Israel began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed.
The UK government has said previously that it deployed 1,000 troops to the East Mediterranean to support Israel but it did not reveal how these troops were distributed.
But in a letter to Alba MP Kenny MacAskill, seen by Declassified, defence minister James Heappey wrote that on 27 November half these troops were in Cyprus.
Britain now has “approximately 500 additional service personnel deployed to Cyprus,” Heappey wrote in a surprising admission.
Britain has two “Sovereign Base Areas” on Cyprus – known as Dhekelia in the east of the island and Akrotiri in the west – which are large, highly secretive military and intelligence installations comprising 3% of the island’s land area.
The major UK air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns in the Middle East, and sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv. The flight time is 40 minutes.
The extra UK troops takes the number of British military personnel deployed on the island to 2,717. The UK bases also host 273 British civil servants.
The US military has also had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size was kept secret from the public before Declassified recently revealed that 129 US airmen are permanently deployed to RAF Akrotiri.
It is not known if additional US personnel have also been deployed to Britain’s Cyprus bases to help support Israel’s bombing of Gaza, as the British government refuses to make public any information about American activities on the UK territory.
Defence minister James Heappey also revealed in his letter that Britain has sent extra troops to Egypt, Israel and Lebanon, but he refused to say at what levels. “I have withheld specific numbers for these countries for operational security reasons,” he wrote.
The UK military personnel were said to be deployed “to support contingency planning and UK humanitarian aid efforts”.
The 500 extra UK troops deployed to Cyprus do not include British special forces, which operate completely outside of democratic oversight.
The Sun reported on 27 October that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS), the army’s elite special force, was on “standby” in Cyprus to – it was claimed – rescue British hostages held captive by Hamas and Britons who are trapped in Gaza.
The UK military’s “D-Notice” committee, which seeks to stop the media publishing information it claims would damage national security, requested on 28 October all media editors to not publish information relating to SAS operations in Gaza.
There has been no further reporting on the SAS’s role in Gaza, while the UK military refuses to confirm or deny if the SAS has been on the ground in Gaza since Israel began bombing the territory.
It is unclear if the Cypriot government has been told of the SAS deployment—or the extra UK troops.
Declassified recently revealed that over 30 military transport flights, operated by the RAF, had flown from RAF Akrotiri to Tel Aviv since the bombing of Gaza began.
But Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told the Cyprus Mail he had received no information about the flights. The UK, meanwhile, denied it is sending “lethal aid” or “military equipment” to Israel from RAF Akrotiri.
Declassified then reported the US was using RAF Akrotiri to transfer weapons to Israel. Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that over 40 US transport aircraft have flown to RAF Akrotiri carrying equipment, arms and forces.
The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported, with around half the US flights said to be “delivering military aid”.
The Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides was asked about the US deliveries in a press conference, and said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
Kenny MacAskill, the MP who asked the questions in parliament, told Declassified: “We require openness and accountability about what is happening at Britain’s bases on Cyprus and the role they are playing in Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza. 500 additional military personnel to Cyprus is a huge deployment given the large contingent already based there. What is their role?”
He added: “It’s 20 years since the UK was taken into a war in Iraq based on lies and deceit. That cost the lives of millions and still causes harm today as refugees and terrorism testify to. Iraq wasn’t in my name and neither are these actions. We need to be told what is being done by our government.”
Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt
Israeli military abducts Gaza hospital director after he decries siege
Press TV – December 12, 2023
The Israeli military has abducted the director of a main hospital in the northern Gaza Strip after he decried the occupying regime’s days-long siege of the facility and its draconian and deadly repercussions.
Ahmed al-Kahlout, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahiya, was arrested and taken to an “unknown destination outside the hospital,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
The hospital has been under siege by Israeli tanks for the past four days. Earlier on Tuesday, health officials reported that Israeli forces had stormed the hospital, rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation.
Before his abduction, Kahlout had strongly criticized the siege laid on the hospital, saying it had caused the situation at the facility to become “very difficult.”
“No electricity, water, or food at the hospital,” Kahlout had bemoaned, and noted that “three children at the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen.”
“Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital,” he had also said, announcing that the Israeli military had shelled the facility’s maternity ward and water system, forcing the staff to rely on groundwater.
The Israeli military was sustaining its siege and attacks on the hospital, while the facility was accommodating “65 injuries, including 12 children in intensive care, six children with serious injuries, and 3,000 displaced people,” the hospital director had said.
The remarks came amid an ongoing war by the Israeli regime against the entire Gaza, which Tel Aviv began on October 7 in response to an operation staged by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.
Nearly 18,500 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of the Israeli attacks, most of them women and children.
Also on Tuesday, the UN said only 13 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were partially functional as Israeli occupation forces were targeting medical centers and staff amid heavy bombardment of the besieged territory.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report that the services provided to patients at operational hospitals were “limited” as the facilities had run out of bed capacity.
Euro-Med Monitor: “In Gaza, Israel’s Army Replicates the Crimes Committed by Zionist Gangs in 1948”
IMEMC | December 12, 2023
An urgent international investigation must be opened into horrific crimes committed by the Israeli army during its land incursions into the Gaza Strip, including field executions, torture, and rape threats, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, citing testimonies collected from newly-released civilians.
Euro-Med Monitor said that Israeli army forces are reenacting the same crimes committed by Zionist gangs during the 1948 Nakba, which resulted in the collective displacement of Palestinians.
These crimes include premeditated murder, setting fire to Palestinian homes and properties, torture, and insulting and humiliating detained civilians.
The human rights organisation highlighted the Israeli forces’ brutal storming of civilian homes in crowded residential neighbourhoods during the ongoing genocide.
Members of Israel’s military terrorized and beat residents, plus arrested hundreds of them, including women, children, and sick people.
According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor from several detainees who were newly released, the Israeli forces took the detainees from their homes, stripped them naked, and attacked them with machine guns, electric cables, and cold water.
Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Mahmoud Aslim told the Euro-Med team that the Israeli forces stormed his family’s home in Al-Shuja’iya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, after they were trapped for an entire week without food and water.
He stated that over the past few days, Israeli forces killed everyone in his neighbourhood who tried to leave their home, including Aslim’s brother.
Israeli forces later stormed his family’s house, said Aslim, and destroyed its contents with heavy gunfire. His family members were gathered naked and handcuffed before being violently assaulted and beaten.
Aslim still does not know what happened to his mother and sisters, who were captured and kidnapped by the Israeli army.
The Euro-Med Monitor team has gathered statements and testimonies about Israeli special forces raiding refugee centres in Gaza City and its northern areas, which housed thousands of displaced Palestinians.
These raids have involved the execution of young men who were shot with live ammunition at point-blank range.
Displaced people at the Cairo School, which houses hundreds of displaced people west of Gaza City, told Euro-Med Monitor’s team that several civilian cars carrying Israeli special forces stormed the school yard on Friday December 8, killing and wounding a number of unarmed young men.
According to the testimonies, the Israeli special forces ordered all of the men in the school to quickly gather and line up opposite them. Four of the men were executed, and the others were arrested after a brief interrogation.
Muhammad Abu Mustafa said that three individuals—two from the Abdul Ghafour and Abu Zaid families and one from his own family—were shot and killed by Israeli snipers after they went to assist a neighbour in Al-Shuja’iya neighbourhood. The victims were left bleeding to death.
Similar violations were reported on Saturday by other internally displaced people at the UNRWA-run Khalifa Bin Zayed School, in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia.
They reported that the Israeli forces arrested dozens of men and minors in the school. The detainees were stripped of their clothes, bound, and taken to another location, where they were interrogated and tortured. Some of them were released, while the rest were kept in custody.
One of the released men, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that they were ordered to take off their clothes after being handcuffed and blindfolded.
They were then put in trucks and taken to the seashore, where they were kept shackled for about 19 hours.
According to the young man, they were subjected to insults, severe beatings, threats of being shot in the head, and had numbers written on their hands. They were also deprived of drinking water for many hours.
Upon their release, they were transferred naked to Salah al-Din Street, south of Gaza City, where the soldiers ordered them to walk on foot towards the central areas of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli random arrests also targeted a young disabled man who suffers from hemiplegia.
The young man had been displaced from Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City to a relative’s apartment in the city centre before he and his brother were arrested; their fate remains unknown.
Ms. M.Z., a resident of Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood who was displaced to Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the southern part of the Strip, said that an Israeli soldier pointed his gun at her head and threatened to kill her even though she had told him she was five months pregnant.
The soldier ordered her to take off her clothes and threatened to rape her.
As it continues to document testimonies from victims of the Israeli army’s crimes and random arrests, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renewed its call for an urgent international investigation into Israel’s violations and crimes against civilians, and called on the United Nations to assume its responsibilities and provide a safe passage for the displaced to use to evacuate.
Israel is required by international humanitarian law to take all reasonable steps to prevent harm civilians and to guarantee their safe shelter.
The Geneva-based rights organization emphasized, however, that civilians who choose to stay in areas designated for evacuation do not forfeit their protection, and cannot be singled out or targeted for any reason.
Mocking their army, Israel commentators call out fake ‘Hamas surrender images’
MEMO | December 11, 2023
Israeli observers and journalists accused the occupation army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, of lying by fabricating pictures and videos showing alleged members of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ Elite Forces surrendering.
Most highlighted that many of those shown in the pictures were elderly men in their 60s and not young fighters in their prime who would normally make Elite Forces.
Ori Goldberg, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre- Herzliya, said in a series of posts on X yesterday: “After reports of terrorists who turned themselves in, it turned out that these were groups of men who were arrested and taken from compounds where hundreds of Gazans were seeking refuge, together” to escape the bombing by the occupation army.
According to Goldberg: “To win a guerrilla war, you need clear goals and clear political guidance. Otherwise, the war breaks down into endless incidents and explosions and operations and assaults and does not come together for a decision. The IDF can fight for 18 years in Gaza, as in Lebanon, and the war will not end until the political echelon calls for its end. There are no clear goals and no clear guidance.”
In one video, an older gentleman can be seen following the instructions of an Israeli occupation soldier who is directing him where to go and where to place the weapon he is holding. The man had been stripped to his underwear. Commenting on a picture, military reporter at MAKO website, Hai Levy, said: “You can consider him an elite fighter if you’d consider me a frog.”
Others questioned how the men were stripped to their underwear before their weapons were taken from them.
While others said these images brought “shame” to Israel as they were so obviously fake.
Israeli army fires on 6 Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances escorted by UN vehicles
MEMO | December 10, 2023
The Israeli army opened fire on six ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, escorted by UN vehicles, carrying 11 patients with critical injuries, including amputations and head wounds, in Gaza, the Red Crescent said on Sunday, adding that one of the injured died before receiving any treatment, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The Palestine Red Crescent Society coordinated with the United Nations to evacuate 11 casualties in critical condition last night from Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City to the hospital in the south of the Strip,” the Red Crescent said in a statement on X.
A convoy of six Red Crescent ambulances, accompanied by UN vehicles, set off from Khan Younis after waiting about four hours for the first green light to move towards the military checkpoint that separates the north from south in the Gaza Strip, it added.
“The convoy then waited a full hour to get a second green light to cross the checkpoint,” the Red Crescent explained, noting that “It was then subjected to a thorough inspection that lasted for about two hours, during which two paramedics were detained and released as soon as the convoy was allowed to pass.”
As soon as the convoy left the checkpoint and arrived near the Kuwait Roundabout, the statement said, “The occupation soldiers opened fire on one of the ambulances.”
One of the side windows was hit, and the bullet damaged the ambulance, the Red Crescent said.
“After the convoy returned from the Baptist Hospital and upon reaching the checkpoint on the way back, the convoy’s path was deliberately obstructed and paramedic Rami Al-Qatawi was detained again,” it said.
The Red Crescent said the Israeli military repeated its thorough inspection procedures, obstructing the convoy’s passage, and “interrogation at the checkpoint for more than two hours led to the martyrdom of one of the wounded.”
“After a detention that lasted for more than four hours during which he was subjected to beatings, abuse, and blackmail while being interrogated, paramedic Rami Al-Qatawi was released,” according to the statement.
He arrived at the other side of the checkpoint in a deplorable state after being forced to walk more than 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) on a rough road in cold weather while “naked and handcuffed,” the Red Crescent said.
Israel resumed its military offensive on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 1 after the end of a week-long humanitarian pause with Hamas.
At least 17,700 Palestinians have been killed and more than 48,780 others injured in relentless air and ground attacks on the enclave since Oct. 7 following the cross-border attack by Hamas.
The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stood at 1,200, according to official figures.
Doha Summit: US Risks Alienating Muslim World by Vetoing Gaza Ceasefire Resolutions
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 10.12.2023
A DC think tank has pointed out that Washington could lose influence in the Arab and Muslim world by killing off the UN ceasefire resolutions.
The US was the only country that vetoed a UN Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolution on Friday. The 15-member gathering voted 13-1 in favor of the initiative – with the United Kingdom abstaining.
Israel’s military operation in the strip has already claimed the lives of more than 17,700 people with 70% of them estimated to be women and children, per Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Judging from the opening remarks at the 21st Doha Forum in Qatar on Sunday, the Arab world is deeply frustrated by Washington’s veto, DC think tank The Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft pointed out.
In particular, Foreign Minister of Qatar Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that Washington’s move to kill the resolution exposed the “great gap between East and West… and double standards in the international community.”
He placed emphasis on the necessity to create a new multipolar world order that “respects justice and equality between the people where no people are more powerful than the other.” The Qatari leadership vowed to continue exerting pressure on Tel Aviv and Hamas to implement a new truce despite “narrowing” chances.
Palestine Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh argued that the US gave the “greenest of green lights” to Israel’s brutal methods of waging war in Gaza. Per him, Washington should be held responsible for Israel’s attacks and the loss of Palestinian lives.
For his part, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Tel Aviv of implementing a policy of expelling Palestinians out of Gaza by military actions.
Addressing the forum, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that the humanitarian system is currently under threat: “We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region.”
“Last week, I delivered a letter to the President of the UN Security Council invoking Article 99 of the Charter of the UN for the first time since I became Secretary General in 2017,” said Guterres. “I wrote that there is no effective protection of civilians in Gaza. As a matter of fact, during my mandate, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza in such a short period is totally unprecedented.”
Article 99 of the UN Charter states: “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Meanwhile, DC think tank The Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft highlighted that humanitarian advocates repeatedly called the situation in Gaza “unprecedented”, adding that UN agencies are continuing to lose people in the war zone. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has lost 134 relief workers in Gaza since Tel Aviv’s military operation began.
The Quincy scholars also warn about the growing anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, as Washington is seen as the major obstacle on the way to peace in Gaza due to its repeated vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the UN.
Khaled Saffuri, executive director of the National Interest Foundation in Washington, told the think tank that he was “struck by the backlash against American brands” during his travels in Kuwait and Qatar over the last week. Per him, Arab customers and restaurants are boycotting Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. Saffuri called Washington’s latest veto in the UNSC “horrible.” “America is losing a lot in the Muslim world,” he told the think tank.
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From the Archives
The US: The Century of Lost Wars
By James Petras | Global Research | September 12, 2018
Introduction
Despite having the biggest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases – over 180 – in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21st century.
In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures. … continue
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