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Genocide is Israel’s Strategy

By Paul Larudee | Syria Support Movement | November 12, 2023

Israel is losing the battle. They cannot afford to remain fully mobilized this long, even with unlimited US financial support. It is estimated that despite limited commercial flights, more than a quarter million Israelis have left the country. This is also the number that have evacuated settlements in both the south, in a large radius around Gaza, and in a wide ribbon along the northern border with Lebanon.

Israel is not used to this, and despite its sophisticated military equipment, it depends upon concluding its combat quickly and overwhelmingly. The problem is that it can’t. Hamas is too well dug in, and Hezbollah is too strong. Both have their own sophisticated equipment, despite an absence of navy and air force. Their strategy has been to make air and naval forces largely useless against them by means of a vast and well equipped underground network of reinforced, sealed and well defended tunnels. Their strategy is attrition: to draw out the conflict longer than Israelis are willing or able to endure.

It appears to be effective. Israelis are taking casualties at a rate to which they are not accustomed. This is making them slower and more cautious, except in the air, and it is disrupting civilian life to an unprecedented extent. The resistance forces of the Palestinians and their allies have planned for a confrontation of unlimited duration, while Israel plans only short, massive attacks designed for a quick, decisive victory, which in this case is illusive.

This is the main reason they have chosen genocide as a tactic. They reason that massive, horrible deaths of vulnerable civil Palestinians, mainly women and children, will force Hamas, Hezbollah and their allies to take risks and expose themselves. But genocide is not working. And when it doesn’t, Israel’s answer is to use more genocide.

Gaza is largely without food, medicine, electricity, fuel or potable water. Israel is trying to force a panicking population to leave or die. If they leave, it is to the Sinai, never to return to their own country. That suits Israel, but not Egypt, which has arrayed a solid row of tanks and other equipment along the border to prevent being forced to admit the Palestinian population.

This is why Israel is resorting to bombing hospitals, schools, mosques and even the few churches of the tiny Christian community that opened their doors to their Muslim brothers and sisters seeking refuge. The Israeli strategy seems to be that when pictures of gaunt living skeletons of children and mounds of corpses begin to be estimated in the hundreds of thousands, or more, the fighters will become desperate and/or the international community will compel Egypt to open its doors.

The strategy could backfire. The international community could become so horrified that no amount of hasbara [friendly media] will cover such epic crimes. Instead, their staunchest allies may be forced to abandon them, and other powers may enter the fray on the side of the Palestinians. At that point, the consequences become unpredictable. Demonstrations by the millions are already beginning to occur around the globe. At least one prominent voice in Israel has suggested the nuclear option.

The call for a ceasefire is becoming louder, but Israel sees that as a Palestinian win, and the Palestinian factions have little stomach for returning to the status quo ante, which means little more than confinement to destitute concentration camps or “reservations”. Caring people from around the globe are beginning to mobilize near the conflict zone, to try to, at minimum, allow the resumption of humanitarian aid, fuel, electricity and water to the besieged, starving, sick, parched and dying people of Gaza.

This is just the beginning. Things could change very quickly, for good or bad.

Paul Larudee is a board member and key supporter of Syria Support Movement. He is currently in Egypt with a group of activists attempting to deliver aid to the people of Gaza.

November 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Finance Minister Demands Security Zones Around Illegal West Bank Settlements

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute  | November 9, 2023

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party in the ruling right-wing coalition, demanded Tel Aviv impose security zones around illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank on Monday. The letter Smotrich has sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant includes an insistence that Palestinians be kept away during the ongoing olive harvest season.

This follows a pattern of occupying forces and settlers exploiting the war on Gaza as an opportunity to further cut Palestinian towns, cities, and villages off from each other via more military checkpoints, cement blocks, iron gates, and earth mounds.

“I demand that a written directive be issued immediately by the political echelon to the Israel Forces to create those wide security zones around the settlements and roads and to prevent Arabs from approaching them… including for the olive harvest,” Smotrich’s letter reads.

Murders of Palestinians by settlers and soldiers alike in the West Bank are concurrently soaring while apartheid Israel concurrently wages its unprecedented bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip, killing thousands of civilians and children.

At least 175 Palestinians have been killed, and thousands injured, in the West Bank since the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel. According to UNICEF, dozens of children have been killed and injured in the West Bank during the past month.

On October 28th, Bilal Mohammad Saleh, the 40-year-old wild herbs vendor, was shot in the chest by a settler and murdered in front of his wife, children, and other relatives while the Israeli military stood by and watched.

Bilal and his family were harvesting olives on land he inherited from his father, just less than a dozen miles south of Nablus, in the village of al-Sawiya. The village is encircled by Jewish-only colonies, or illegal settlements, Palestinian residents are only able to build and work on five percent of the 12,000 dunums that they own.

The area has been terrorized for years by the settlers. Nihad Arar, the village council head, told Al Jazeera, “[They] cut down our trees, burn our farms, steal our olives, and are known to assault Palestinians inside their homes and on their own property.”

As the war on Gaza rages, settler attacks and murders on Palestinians, including those working their olive groves during the prime harvest month of October have significantly escalated.

Mohammed Wadi, whose father and brother were shot dead by settlers during a funeral procession for three Palestinian olive growers killed by settlers a day earlier, told Reuters that although the settlers used to aim low at Palestinians in the past, “[n]ow, they shoot to kill.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that, since the October 7th Hamas attack and the war on Gaza began, settler attacks on Palestinians have more than doubled.

For Palestinians, prior to this month, this year was already one of the deadliest on record. Before the end of September, more than 220 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces, including over three dozen children. That figure included 187 people who were murdered in the occupied territories and another 37 killed – mostly amidst a smaller bombing campaign – in the Gaza Strip.

In March, Smotrich proclaimed that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people.” His party, along with National Security Minister Itmar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, support massive settlement expansion and ultimately the complete annexation of the West Bank. Additionally, Smotrich has endorsed illegal collective punishment policies and called for “wiping out” the entire Palestinian village of Huwwara earlier this year.

With Smotrich at the helm, approving new settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes, the Netanyahu coalition has set records for illegal settlement construction this year.

As Mondoweiss explains, “Smotrich holds sway over two ministries — the first is the Finance Ministry, for which he is directly responsible given his role as Finance Minister, and the other is a new position in the Defense Ministry, essentially making him the governor of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and most crucially making him responsible for settlement in the West Bank.”

Ben-Gvir announced last month that Tel Aviv would purchase and distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli citizens including within the West Bank’s illegal settlements. According to Axios, the US State Department is set to approve a $34 million sale of 24,000 M-16 semiautomatic and automatic rifles after reportedly receiving assurances from Tel Aviv that the weapons will not be provided to settlers.

It is not at all clear if Ben-Gvir will hold to that promise, as he has personally distributed hundreds of rifles to settlers in recent weeks.

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Israeli strikes kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza as Netanyahu rejects ceasefire calls

Israeli bombardment on Gaza on November 12, 2023
Press TV – November 12, 2023

Relentless Israeli air and ground attacks have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians over the last few hours, as the Israeli regime’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has rejected mounting international calls for a ceasefire.

Rescue and civil defense teams retrieved the bodies of four civilians from the Hamdan family home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, which was targeted by an Israeli missile strike in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Israeli warplanes also targeted a house belonging to Abdullah al-Adini, a local Palestinian resident in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in the murder of three civilians.

Separately, at least 10 civilians lost their lives and more than 20 others were injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting the Najjar family’s house east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, three infants and five critically ill patients in the Shifa Medical Complex died Sunday morning due to oxygen shortage, while others are on the verge of death due to the continuous Israeli siege.

At least five infants died in less than 48 hours due to the cessation of medical services at the Shifa Complex.

Israeli tanks are currently stationed outside the maternity ward of the Shifa Complex, and that Israeli artillery have targeted the intensive care unit, resulting in multiple injuries.

Dozens of dead bodies remained across the compound and in its surroundings, and rescue teams have been unable to reach them for evacuation due to the intensity of the Israeli bombardment and gunfire targeting anyone moving.

The headquarters of the United Nations Development Programme in Gaza was also hit by Israeli airstrikes, leading to the death of five displaced persons and the injury of 15 others.

Gaza’s embattled hospitals face total collapse as bombardments continue and Israeli tanks and troops surround medical facilities, with patients and staff trapped inside.

In Gaza City, operations have been suspended at Al-Shifa Hospital after it completely ran out of fuel.

The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted this hospital and other medical facilities over the past five weeks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently said that 20 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are now out of action, and the largest hospital in the Palestinian territory was that day coming under bombardment.

Netanyahu rejects growing international pressure over ceasefire

In a televised address on Saturday night, the Israeli prime minister rejected growing international calls for a ceasefire.

Netanyahu also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which currently administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza.

He said that Israelis shouldn’t cave into any pressure from such statements or the protests taking place worldwide and said he would stand firm against the world if necessary.

So according to Netanyahu, the Israeli regime has its own agenda and will push it through regardless of what other countries say.

His primetime address came hours after Arab and Muslim leaders at a summit in Riyadh called for an immediate ceasefire as major hospitals in Gaza were on the front line of Israel’s ground offensive.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians are facing an unmatched genocidal war by the Israeli regime.

Abbas said Israeli actions in the besieged Gaza Strip and across the occupied territories amount to a clear violation of international and humanitarian law.

The president said Palestinians need international protection in the face of Israeli attacks including the desecration of Muslims’ holy sites. He also noted that Palestinians will not negotiate when it comes to their inalienable rights.

Erdogan calls for US to stop Israel’s attack

The United States must use its influence to halt Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Turkey’s leader says.

“The US should increase its pressure on Israel. The West should increase pressure on Israel… It’s vital for us to secure a ceasefire,” said Erdogan. “The most important country that needs to be involved is the United States, which has influence on Israel.”

Erdogan said the US must accept Gaza as Palestinian land. “We cannot agree with Biden if he approaches [the war] by seeing Gaza as the land of occupying settlers or Israel, rather than the land of the Palestinian people.”

Palestinians are enduring relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure including residential buildings, schools, medical facilities, everywhere in the besieged territory.

The total death toll from the war is now at over 11,000. The majority of victims are women and children. Hundreds of people are also missing under the rubble of bombed-out buildings.

According to reports, more than half of the housing units in Gaza were destroyed or damaged by the Israeli bombings.

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

By Edward J. Curtin, Jr. | Behind The Curtain | November 10, 2023 

Dear Bobby,

As you know, I have supported your bid for the presidency even before you declared last spring.  I have admired and believed in you for years, and when you entered the race I felt hope for the first time in decades that your non-violent impulses, honed by your tragic family history and a deep revulsion for our country’s imperial wars and violent history, would triumph and usher in a new era of peace.  Despite the naysayers who dismissed you from the start, I said Yes, that you would shock those who ridiculed and maligned you and that you would be the man to carry out President Kennedy’s American University speech and fulfill his and your father’s legacy of “not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women” because “we all breathe the same air” and “we all cherish our children’s futures” and “we are all mortal.”

I suggested that you would heal the divide and not expand it.  Seeing you stumble on your way by throwing your full support to the Zionist leaders of Israel has been a body blow to me.  At first I thought it might be explained by your reaction to the false antisemitic accusations that were hurled your way once word emerged that you might enter the presidential race.  But as time went on it dawned on me that I was wrong and that you were in sync with the powerful Israel Lobby.  So now, I feel as if we are in the tenth round of fight for your soul’s compassion.  That you have not defended the children of Gaza and condemned their massacre by the thousands has shocked and sickened me.

As a scholar of religion and its intersection with politics, I have been meditating on current events.

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings.  So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant.  You, however, as a self-styled anti-war candidate are a great surprise to me, although I may be naïve and shouldn’t be since you gave your unequivocal support to the Israel government a month ago, following the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into Israel that killed innocent Israelis (many of whom were also probably killed by the IDF as Jonathan Cooke has reported).  Despite that, I still expected your conscience would surely prompt you to condemn what can only be described as genocide, the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza that is ongoing.

You have undermined your claim to “end the forever wars” and to defend children.  Why you have done (or not done) this is a question that so many of your supporters and former supporters are asking.  Only you can say.  Perhaps we might only know if you unequivocally condemned Israel’s actions and faced whatever might come your way as a result.  This is unlikely, I now realize, but one can still hope. I think it would take a spiritual miracle of moral courage, because of your claim that your historical analysis that you say is sincere and true that Israel now and always has been the just and innocent party and the Palestinians the evil ones. I find your analysis unbelievable and your silence as innocents are being slaughtered indefensible, even as I applaud so many of your other positions, as you know.  Everyone knows that running for the U.S. presidency creates strange bedfellows, but your touting of the Israeli propaganda in which you conflate the Palestinian people with Hamas to justify massacring civilians is beyond strange – it is immoral.

I know how much you respect Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and you no doubt have heard his words before.

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

Conscience calls to you, Bobby.  Be true to that voice within.  Politic as it may be, there is a heavy burden of guilt for abandoning the Palestinians to slaughter by silence.  King learned this when he saw those photos of the napalmed and dead Vietnamese children and was conscience-stricken to come to Riverside Church in New York to give his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.”  You can do the same.  The pictures of dead Palestinian children, victims of U.S. support for Israeli bombs, are there to see.  Martin quoted your uncle, John, that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  He said that we can no longer worship the God of hate and retribution.  He said, “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

You too, Bobby, can break your silence, step up high and let your conscience also leave you no other choice but to condemn the genocide in Gaza.  As Martin said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

You say you are making “a moral case for Israel” as the justified party in its seventy-five year long war with the Palestinians.  In doing so you have reneged on your campaign promise to emulate President John Kennedy, who would be appalled by your silence. Your website, Kennedy 24, declares that “[you] Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist.”  In genuflecting to the Israel genocide while touting your connection to JFK and your father, Senator Robert Kennedy, you have in fact taken a position toward Israel diametrically opposed to theirs.  One could sense this coming when under pressure this past summer, you withdrew your support for Roger Waters, a strong Palestinian supporter who was falsely accused of being anti-Jewish, and you then allowed your “friend” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, killed your father in 1968 when you knew that was a lie and was part of a sophisticated intelligence conspiracy to blame the patsy who was said to hate Israel.  To allow Shmuley to audaciously and heartlessly repeat a CIA trope about your father’s assassination was a telltale sign of worse to come.

For both the U.S. and Israel, the Bible has been used to cover up the crimes of their foundings.  They have analogous histories rooted in religious myths.  In both cases, the indigenous peoples were considered less than human – savages, infidels – or in the description of Palestinians by the current Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, “human animals.”  Such racist, dehumanizing language has been repeated time and again throughout the American and Israeli narratives used to justify their crimes against those they killed and whose land they stole.  The gloss of civilized hypocrisy has been unmasked by such language, just as it was when Hitler repeatedly called Jews “vermin.”  Irony aside, the Nazi rhetoric of denigration and racial superiority to justify exterminating Jewish people has been repeatedly mirrored by American and Israeli leaders, whether it was against the Original Free Peoples of North America, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc. or the Palestinians.  It is the master/slave mentality deeply rooted in U.S. and Israel history.

Bobby, you have said that you hope to be the second independent candidate to become president, the first being George Washington.  Yet Washington was a racist and slave owner who supported the extermination of the Indian natives so the white settlers could take their land.  He himself did so, speculating in Native lands together with most of the other prominent politicians from the early days of the Republic, including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, et al.  For the governors and legislators of the thirteen states it was also open sesame on the seizure of Indian land which required their slaughter in turn.

One can learn this in Peter P. d’Errico’s important recent book, Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples, where he makes clear how U.S. law was used to codify such “legal” theft and killing.  Such federal law was, as d’Errico writes, a claim of unlimited U.S. power and not really law at all but the suspension of law as it granted the U.S. government complete authority over Native peoples, their lives, and their land.  Legal theft, in other words.  Like the English justification for their claim to their colonies – the “right of discovery” proclaimed in Henry VII’s commission to John Cabot: “to subdue and take possession of any lands unoccupied by any Christian Power” – a series of three Supreme Court rulings in the 1830s by Chief Justice John Marshall were based on the claim of “Christian discovery,” which in turn was based on a papal grant from Pope Alexander the Sixth in 1493 that gave to Christopher Columbus’s sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella, ownership of any land Columbus might discover.  This divine right required the killing and subjugation of non-Christian infidels and heathens who were considered brute animals, just as the Palestinians are today.

Similar justifications have been used by Zionists for the killing of Palestinians and the seizure of their land in the name of the Biblical Jewish God and his instructions to them.  This myth claims that God gave them the ancestral Palestinians’ land, therefore, like native peoples of North America who, according to the non-law U.S. Indian law, only had the right of occupancy, the Palestinians could be killed and dispossessed by the God-given rightful owners, which they were in 1948.  Netanyahu has made such claims many times, as have his predecessors.  He calls for a holy war of annihilation against the Palestinians, based on the Hebrew Bible.  This is widely known and has a long history in the Zionist propaganda narrative that has allowed for seventy-five years of killing and the systematic shrinking of Palestinian land to its pitiful size today.

It is interesting to note that the three primary countries that intersect in the use of religious justification for colonial and imperial policies are England, the U.S., and Israel – together with the Papacy and its May 4, 1493 bull Inter Caetera issued by Pope Alexander the Sixth to declare Christian discovery.  I mention this since I am an Irish-American Catholic, and it was the Irish uprising against the English colonial occupiers that has become a key inspiration for anti-colonial rebels throughout the twentieth century and beyond.  I have taken inspiration from my Irish ancestors.  This is your heritage also, Bobby, so it becomes even more surprising that you, even as you tout the American Revolutionary War rebel fighters against the English colonialists, would support the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.  As a lawyer, you must be aware of Federal Indian Law and how it, like all law, is rooted in a metaphysics of being human; has presuppositions that are brought to the bar, and in the case of federal Indian law, a Christian nomos at odds with that of Native peoples’.

You surely know that the Israeli assault on Gaza is a massive war crime according to international law, and even within the moderate Catholic just war theory, is, by its distorted proportionality, evil and must be rejected as immoral and a terrible sin.  You claim to want to end all wars but support the ongoing slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including so many children and women.  Nor have you said a word against Biden’s saber rattling with aircraft carriers, U.S. drones, and assistance for Israel’s bloodthirsty assault that raises the threat of a much wider war that could turn nuclear.

Yes, the question is why such silence, which you can break now.  I beg you to speak out.  You are a man of conscience.  MLK, Jr. speaks to us all still.

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.

Pax tibi,

Ed

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Immoral’ US Warfare ‘Never Sought to Minimize Civilian Deaths’ – Scholar

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 12.11.2023

Amid the growing global outcry over the Palestinian death toll and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the US has offered Israel its wholehearted support and refrained from joining calls for a ceasefire in the enclave. It has also remained highly opaque regarding the specific military assistance it has pledged Tel Aviv.

Throughout its history, the United States has never allowed concerns about the civilian death toll to impact its warfare strategy, and current developments in Gaza are yet another glaring example of this, scholar, educator and journalist K.J. Noh told Sputnik.

“The fundamental immorality of US warfare… is that it has never sought to minimize the deaths of civilians. We know that US wars recently have been somewhere in the range of 90 percent civilian deaths,” the scholar underscored.

Recalling US doctrine implemented in countries like Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, it has been “simply to kill anything that moves. You create a free fire zone, you kill anything that moves, and the murder is indiscriminate,” the pundit said. Afterwards, they may use mainstream media to “paste it over” with “PR means and releases.”

US Business ‘is War’

Whether it is weapons to fuel the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, or sending military assistance to Israel in its fight against Hamas, “fundamentally, the business of the US is war,” K.J. Noh emphasized.

“You know, the US is number one supplier of arms to the world. It’s 40 percent of all arms sales… and it sells them to quisling governments and to governments that are involved in the Pacific pivot – this escalation to war against China,” underscored the scholar, adding that Washington is “turning the entire planet into an armed madhouse” using taxpayers’ dollars.

Ever since the Hamas attack of October 7, Israel’s strong response, with its relentless strikes and then ground operation in Gaza that has been driving up the civilian death toll in the enclave has boosted sympathy for the Palestinian issue across the globe. And yet, we see how Washington has doubled down on its determination to offer “unwavering” support for Israel. As Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue their onslaught on Gaza, the Palestinian death toll in the enclave since 7 October has exceeded 11,000, according to local health officials. US President Joe Biden, however, has rejected calls for a ceasefire, with Washington floating the suggestion for a brief “humanitarian pause” in Israel’s assault to allow aid to enter Gaza or permit civilians to leave the enclave.

After the Biden administration asked for an additional $14 billion for Israel from Congress, Washington committed to delivering to Tel Aviv Iron Dome air defense missiles, small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits, besides the earlier agreed weapons deals, as per US media reports. At the same time, unlike the case with Ukraine, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged that Washington’s military supplies to Israel were shrouded in secrecy. During an October 23 press briefing, Kirby said that “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.”

“Transparency in war is largely an illusion or at best, selective. You know, war is always deception. Both the published lists and the unpublished lists. The published lists are designed to intimidate, or message, or signal, or posture. And the unpublished lists are… often hiding dirty criminal tactics.”

As far as the ongoing developments in besieged Gaza, which is being pounded by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), “the US is providing the weapons,” K.J. Noh pointed out, adding:
“It is now the accomplice, or it has always been the accomplice to this genocide of which we know 99.6 percent have been civilians so far by any tabulation that we can see. And so because the US is accomplice to this genocide, it has said there are no restrictions on how the weapons are used. So then it makes sense that it would obscure the weapons that it provided.”

“The use of war by the US has been a constant, certainly at least since the 1990s, and certainly… the use of proxies as well… We know that ISIS itself was cultivated by the US until it started to blow back,” the expert recalled.

Furthermore, now Israel has reportedly requested several hundred expendable switchblade kamikaze drones, K.J. Noh pointed out, which signals “that there is going to be intense urban warfare with intense casualties.”

“And it just speaks to the constant escalation, and the fact that there is the ‘no holds barred’ [approach] as this war continues to move forward,” he said.

‘Real Costs of War’

From the Biden administration’s opaque arms deals with Israel, and lack of concern for the civilian death toll in Gaza, the educator weiged in on the American establishment’s attitude towards its own soldiers.

“We don’t understand or we choose not to understand the real costs of war,” K.J. Noh said.

A recent report in The New York Times appeared to shed light on strange new physical and psychic wounds discerned among military gun crews, dating back to a “secret US offensive during 2016 and 2017″ seeking to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. At the time, a plan to put a minimal number of American boots on the ground to target the enemy with artillery fire backfired in the sense that the US soldiers returned plagued by nightmares, panic attacks, depression, etc. Many, as per the report, have died by suicide. The Marine Corps in 2019 issued findings of an investigation that showed these gun crews were likely injured by having to fire a huge number of rounds daily. And yet, the military appeared to dismiss these concerns.

“What this article does, in my opinion, is it takes what looks to me like a description of war trauma, PTSD, moral injury, and then tries to shoehorn it into a kind of biophysical symptom that is blast exposure or blast shock. Now, this is not new. This type of thinking goes all the way back to World War II,” claimed the expert.

According to K.J. Noh, its “part of an ideological crusade that wants to distract from the moral costs, and to turn moral damage into a medical phenomenon which that you can then treat with medical procedures.”

“The simple fact is that when you seek to snuff out another human’s life, you have to silence your own conscience. And sometimes that doesn’t work, and so then this conscience returns with a vengeance… And I think these types of hauntings and hallucinations are part of that phenomenon,” K.J. Noh underscored.

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

California school suspends student for saying ‘Free Palestine’

Press TV – November 12, 2023

A US school has suspended a student for his pro-Palestine remarks amid the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip by Israeli occupant forces.

The school in Newport Beach, southern California, which has a history of scandals, suspended the 7th-grade Palestinian student for his remarks to a schoolmate that included the words “Free Palestine.”

Corona del Mar High School (CdM) officials and social media posts cited by US media on Saturday reported that the student was suspended for allegedly violating school codes prohibiting students from harassing and threatening other students amid increasing hate crimes.

A spokesperson for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which owns CdM, confirmed the suspension of the student but declined to provide any details.

“While we cannot share specifics of the situation, due to student privacy, we assure you that appropriate action was taken based on the facts of what occurred,” Annette Franco wrote in a statement.

“We value students’ freedom of speech, but we will not tolerate hateful speech in our schools, especially not hate speech that incites others to engage in this negative behavior.”

The family of the student, who has been suspended for three days, could not be reached for comments.

However, a woman named ‘Zeina’ who claimed to be the student’s aunt, posted details about the incident with a photo of the suspension letter written by Jacob Haley, the principal at Corona Del Mar Middle and High School on Instagram.

In the post, she explained how her 13-year-old nephew had been called a “terrorist” by a female student.

Zeina said that her nephew had responded by saying to her several times, “Free Palestine.”

She also pointed out that the recent incident was not the first time that her nephew had been harassed by kids in school.

“Two weeks ago [he] was threatened with hate and racism comments by two Israeli students,” she wrote in her post. “The Israeli students told him to go back to your country which is [Palestine] and started laughing, saying oh too bad you don’t have a country it’s getting bombed.”

Zeina said her sister had reported the incident to the principal who told her he would speak to the two boys and that neither of them got suspended.

She also posted a video and photos of a book about the Israeli entity that had been placed on Haley’s desk, noting that it was biased.

In the suspension letter, Haley accused the student of allegedly violating two education codes that prohibit students from harassing and threatening other students.

“The incident that caused this suspension follows: [the student] said threatening remarks to a young lady in class. He said ‘Free Palestine’,” the suspension letter signed by Haley and posted by Zeina on Instagram reads.

CdM, a combination of a middle school (7th and 8th grades) and a high school (9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades), has been cited by US media for the school administration’s involvement in several scandals involving sexism and academic dishonesty.

The California school incident takes place as the Israeli regime forces have been relentlessly killing, bombing, and shelling defenseless Palestinians in the besieged Gaza strip for almost 40 days, cut off completely from water, food, medicine, and power.

The international community, in general, Arabs and Muslims, in particular, has expressed outrage over the ongoing genocide of the Gazans by the occupant forces, calling for an immediate ceasefire in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

November 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Will Lose. Here’s Why.

Western media are getting it wrong, just like in Ukraine

BY KEVIN BARRETT | NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Ever since February 2022, Western mainstream media has been telling us that Russia cannot possibly win its war in Ukraine. Zelensky, with his hundreds of billions of dollars’ backing from the West, would surely prevail. Russia has always been taking unbearably heavy losses. Putin is always about to keel over dead. A fresh shipment of US wonder-weapons will turn the tide. A crushing Ukrainian victory is always at hand.

Because they could not imagine Ukraine losing, Western pundits could not see that it was losing. They missed the fact that from the moment the non-Western world majority refused to accept US sanctions on Russia, it was effectively over. Virtually the entire war has been fought under the shadow of an inevitable Russian victory. It has always been just a matter of time.

Might a similar situation prevail in the war for Palestine? The non-Western world majority has turned sharply against Israel—even more sharply than it turned against the US in its war on Russia through Ukraine. Yet Western media continue to manufacture and inhabit a bubble completely divorced from moral and strategic reality. They can’t even imagine Israel being in the wrong, even though it obviously is. They can’t imagine Hamas being noble and chivalrous fighters, and Israelis being cowardly child-killing terrorists, though such is obviously the case. They can’t acknowledge that the vast majority of the world disagrees with them for very good reasons, not because of “anti-Semitism.” And above all they can’t imagine that Israel, despite (or because of) its genocidal assault on civilians, is losing the war.

Just as you had to read “pro-Russian” sources (like Col. Douglas MacGregor) to get the truth about the war in Ukraine, you need to stay abreast of the pro-Resistance global majority view to get an accurate picture of the war for Palestine. To that end, check out my quick, Google-translate-assisted rendition of an enlightening article published yesterday by Al-Jazeera.

–Kevin Barrett

The shock that produced the predicament… Israel between an “image of victory” and defeat

Zuhair Hamdani and Talal Mushati for Al-Jazeera

Israeli leaders are preparing a tense and frustrated Israeli public for unforeseen surprises in their war on Gaza, by talking about a long, costly, and cruel war. The high expectations they have set for their war will be difficult to achieve, lacking as they do a clear military or political plan.

Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy says, “We are waging a war with a cruel enemy, and this war has a painful and heavy price,” while Defense Minister Benny Gantz sums up the difficulty of the ground war: “The images coming from the ground battle are painful, and our tears are falling when we see our soldiers falling.”

The Israeli leadership has launched its war on Gaza at a time when it has the confidence of only 27% of the Israeli public, while only about 51% trust the Israeli army. Added to this are the burdens of 250,000 people seeking refuge from the Gaza region and the northern areas near Lebanon, as well as the more than 240 Israelis held prisoner by the resistance in Gaza.

Accordingly, for Israel, this war is not like previous wars. Israel is suffering huge daily losses and erosion of resources, including soldiers, equipment, time, money, and legitimacy (internal and external support). The cost will continue to rise as the war lengthens or expands.

Maariv newspaper comments on the conditions of the ground war taking place on the outskirts of Gaza, saying, “The resistance forces are very far from being broken. Despite the liquidations and assassinations, Hamas is succeeding in most cases in maintaining an organized method of fighting, based mainly on tunnel fighting, exiting from hiding places, and launching missiles at our armoured vehicles.”

Two overriding factors drive the fierce Israeli war on Gaza: the shock of the resounding military defeat and the security and intelligence failure that resulted from the Palestinian resistance’s launch of Operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” on October 7; and the predicament of the huge number of prisoners being held by the Al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian factions. Therefore, military action revolves around these two goals.

Under the psychological  influence of the “Black Saturday” events, the Israelis went directly to the ultimate goal of any war, which is “to destroy the enemy.” This was a high ceiling that they probably knew, by virtue of previous experience, could not be achieved. It cannot happen except at a price they could not afford to pay.

In this context, Defense Minister Yoav Galant said, “There is no place for Hamas in Gaza. At the end of our battle, there will be no Hamas.” That is an unrealistic goal based on past experience and the current realities on the ground.

Considering previous wars including 2008 and 2014, we find that “destroying Hamas” was always a basic goal that was never achievable. There is no reason to believe that it will be achievable this time, especially since the movement is now much stronger, with much deeper roots in the Gaza Strip, than before. Its military defenses and arsenal have been strengthened to the point of being difficult to penetrate, and in the end it is not a state or a regular army that can announce its surrender, but rather an extended popular resistance movement in the path of a protracted Palestinian struggle.

The war that Israel does not want

If war consists of combat operations that require mobilizing the resources and capabilities of the state to carry out a specific military campaign in order to implement military and political objectives, ranging from moving a front to achieving tactical successes and imposing certain conditions or carrying out a decisive battle that breaks the will of the “enemy,” then it requires an agreed-upon leadership that enjoys a degree of consensus. It requires a military apparatus that is trained, equipped, and at least minimally psychologically mobilized for combat; an appropriate confrontation plan; and a unified, cohesive internal political and social front directed toward that goal.

It also requires an economic mobilization that comprehends the circumstances and course of the war and its surprises, and an understanding or supportive international and regional front. Victory is difficult to achieve if any or all of these conditions are absent, especially in the case of long battles that require continuous mobilization. The results are also linked to the enemy’s reaction, the extent of its strength, and the tactics it chooses.

Was Israel ready?

In terms of military capabilities, Israel always seems prepared for war on several fronts. But technical military capabilities and weapons alone do not resolve wars, especially if they are not the kind of lighting wars that Israel favors. In practice Israel suffers from significant defects in almost all of the above-mentioned ingredients for winning a war.

At the leadership level: There is no agreed-upon leadership in Israel that enjoys consensus or the necessary charisma. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as polls show, is extremely unpopular. In a recent Israeli public opinion survey conducted by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, it was found that only 27% of Israelis support his political survival, and his political and military decisions are not accepted and are subject to widespread criticism. The course of the war has also proven that he is indecisive and does not have a clear and convincing plan for military or political action.

Netanyahu also refuses to accept responsibility for the security failure on October 7, which exposed him to severe internal criticism. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, for example, warned that Netanyahu’s attempts to evade responsibility and blame the security establishment, thereby weakening the Israeli army, amounted to “crossing red lines.”

The Home Front: The home front appears to have disintegrated. Israelis are living in a state of severe division at the partisan, popular and political levels. Especially controversial is how to deal with the issue of prisoners held by the resistance, in light of the dangers of a ground war and the major losses it would entail.

Netanyahu and the extremist members of his government stand accused of dividing Israeli society. The leader of the opposition Labor Party, Merav Michaeli, has charged the Prime Minister with “fighting the army and the people of Israel.” The issue of prisoners held by the resistance has also sparked internal divisions, especially after Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu called for bombing Gaza with a nuclear weapon, saying, “What does hostage mean? In war, the price is paid. Why are the lives of hostages more precious than the lives of soldiers?” This was considered by Israelis to be “an abandonment by the government of its commitment to returning the hostages.”

Military front: The events of “Al-Aqsa Flood”, especially the first six hours of October 7, demonstrated that the Israeli army suffers from severe deficiencies, as do its many security services. Now the daily losses it is suffering in its ongoing ground operation have made it the object of suspicion within Israeli society, which was relying upon it to maintain an aura of safety and stability.

Economic situation: The Israeli economic situation is at its worst, with major sectors such as tourism paralyzed, travel declining, and the agricultural sector suffering damage. With the mobilization of about 360,000 reserve soldiers, most of them suddenly removed from the labor force, and the evacuation of about 250,000 settlers, the economy is witnessing a severe labor shortage in various fields. Israel recently announced that the last three weeks of war have cost about 7 billion dollars, without taking into account the direct and indirect damages. While this damage may cost about 3 billion dollars per month, preliminary estimates show that the war on Gaza will cost Israel’s budget 200 billion shekels ($51 billion), or about 10% of the gross domestic product, and as the war continues for a long period, the Israeli economy may be crippled according to Israeli estimates.

Diplomatic front: After last October 7, Western countries that were historically biased towards Israel rushed to support it, but this support quickly began to erode due to the impact of Israeli crimes and doubts about the ability of the Israeli army to resolve the war. Many countries condemned Israel or cut off their diplomatic relations with it (Colombia, Bolivia), while other countries recalled their ambassadors (Chile, Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey, Honduras…) Ever-increasing global popular pressure is pushing governments to take boycott measures, exposing Israel to isolation that has begun to worsen.

US Support for Israel Eroding?

In contrast to the direct support at the beginning, the administration of President Joe Biden began to re-assess its absolute support for Netanyahu for fear that things would spiral into a wider regional war. Washington fears the crazy scenarios that Netanyahu may create in an attempt to save his future at America expense.

After about a month, the Americans realized that the only constant in the Israeli plan was the use of massive destructive force targeting civilians and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. It seemed Netanyahu was waiting for a solution to save himself from a harsh predicament in the sands of Gaza—and waiting for the illusion of the resistance’s surrender that wasn’t going to happen. They began to have doubts about Israel’s management of the war and its results.

CNN has indicated that US President Joe Biden and senior US administration officials have warned Israel that support is eroding as global anger intensifies over the extent of human suffering resulting from its crimes in Gaza.

What’s happening in the field?

Over the course of about a month of war, it does not appear that Israel has achieved any serious gains on the ground. Contradictory statements indicate confusion about how to manage the battle and set final goals in the face of severe resistance. The shock of the mismanaged October 7 battle, and the psychological scars it left on the entire Israeli military establishment, still haunt the course of the war.

This psychological atmosphere also looms over the soldiers, as they realize that their return from the sands of Gaza would require a miracle. They recall the experiences of their colleagues and their bitter memories of the 2014 war as they witness the elite of the Givati Brigade drowning in the sands of Gaza in a battle that is still in its infancy. In effect, the Israeli army advanced a few meters into open lands in the northern Gaza Strip and lost 30 soldiers—according to reports—meaning that it is possible that hundreds of soldiers would be lost if the army advanced a few kilometers, amid a complex network of tunnels and fortifications, minefields, snipers, explosive devices, and hand-to-hand combat in the streets facing the unlimited fighting will of the resistance.

Since Israel does not have a clear plan for the war, it has inclined toward slow, calculated progress inside Gaza. Thus, achieving the dubious final goal may take a long period and unbearably heavy losses. In the meantime, important military or political transformations may occur that will ravage the entire plan.

In its current operations, Israel is losing up to 5 soldiers every day on the outskirts of Gaza without a clear and effective military advance. Nahum Barnea, the Israeli journalist in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, says, “A war of attrition on the outskirts of Gaza is the last thing the Israelis want to experience.”

Israeli military officials realize that it is impossible to liberate the prisoners militarily, but they are proceeding nonetheless under political pressure, despite the fact that the families of the prisoners, as well as the countries that have nationals among the prisoners, want an exchange deal. Netanyahu believes that such a deal would be a final acknowledgment of defeat and a victory for Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

The cohesion of the resistance and the Israeli non-plan

Israeli public opinion fears that the war will be lost on two or more fronts, by failing to liberate or release the prisoners (about 60 of them have already been killed in Israeli raids) and by failure to dismantle the capabilities of the Hamas movement and the Palestinian resistance. Worse, a large number of soldiers will be killed, perhaps in the hundreds.

In contrast to the Israeli non-plan, following the painful military blow directed at Israel on the morning of October 7, the plan of Hamas and the resistance seems clear: stop the war, carry out a comprehensive prisoner exchange, and lift the siege of Gaza. The resistance is waging a war of attrition on the Israeli army, inflicting ever-increasing daily losses, and appears prepared for a long war to erode the elements of Israeli power.

Time is not on Israel’s side, as it loses more money, men, and legitimacy, its internal crisis worsens, and the pressures and doubts surrounding it increase, with the possibility of the situation exploding regionally. Instead it is on the side of the Palestinian resistance, which believes that all of these internal and external military and political pressures will ultimately make Israel yield and accept its terms.

In that case, the war would not only end with the defeat of Netanyahu, but also with the defeat of the far-right government and its racist program. Israeli society has increasingly rejected this government’s policies at all levels, and the war has proven that it cannot impose surrender on the Palestinian people despite the tragedies caused by Israeli crimes in Gaza, whose repercussions have made the international community wary and inclined to reject Israeli narratives.

Netanyahu’s predicament

The international community has begun to realize that the campaign launched by Benjamin Netanyahu on Gaza is nothing more than a series of horrific daily massacres against civilians that has not achieved any significant military breakthrough. The prognosis: Israel will be forced to submit to defeat under internal and external pressures. Already serious movements have begun from the international community to stop the war in the wake of the horror of ongoing Israeli massacres.

Nadav Eyal asserts in his article in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the Israeli army cannot be satisfied with the “image of victory” in its war on Gaza, and that the era of the policy of “mowing the grass” (reducing threats to an acceptable level) has ended. Instead, Israel needs a “real victory.” But this leaves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a deeply distressing predicament

The main dilemma concerns Netanyahu himself, who does not want to come down from the heights of the tree into which he scrambled on the morning of October 7. He realizes that he is finished politically (due to Al-Aqsa Storm) yet dreams of a resurrection linked to the results of his campaign in Gaza.

Netanyahu and his war cabinet are acting impulsively under the influence of the shock of October 7, without a clear military plan for the war, which is mainly being fought as a mindless emotional reaction to the well-prepared resistance in Gaza. Israel lacks a clear plan to liberate or recover the prisoners, or to confront the huge and ever-escalating international protests, to the point that Netanyahu began addressing Israeli soldiers in Gaza with quotes from the Bible, telling them to “remember what Amalek did to you.” (Amalek represents the height of evil in Jewish tradition.) Netanyahu has used the Amalek reference more than once to motivate the Israeli army in its war against Gaza.

Netanyahu is accumulating losses on all fronts, trying to write off “Black Saturday,” ignoring that his leadership does not enjoy popular acceptance, and pretending not to notice Israel’s broken army, eroding economy, undermined international reputation, disintegrated home front, large daily military losses, and the United Nations’ condemnation of his crimes.

November 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Video | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US House Speaker Johnson Proposes Funding Government Without Aid to Ukraine and Israel

Sputnik – 12.11.2023

The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), has introduced a bill to temporarily fund the federal government. His proposal does not to include aid to Ukraine or Israel but does include funds for the defense of the US southern border.

According to the bill, part of the government programmes also related to transport, energy and military construction will be financed by 19 January, which would be the funding deadline for those programs and agencies which are covered under regular appropriations bills pertaining to agriculture, rural development, and Food and Drug Administration.

Funds for energy and water development, military construction and Veterans Affairs together with Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development will also be ceased.

The allocation of money for the rest of the government sectors will be calculated until 2 February.

Johnson expects some Republicans to vote against his bill, but in that case he expects Democrats to support it, Politico reports. However, even if approved in the House, the bill may not pass in the Senate.

“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories… Separating out the CR from the supplemental funding debates places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border,” Johnson said in a statement on Saturday.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre called the proposal “a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns”, claiming that Republicans were “wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties”. The statement urged Republicans to “work in a bipartisan way to prevent a shutdown”.

“My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker … cannot be overstated. Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days — for future ‘promises,'” House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote on X, opposing the legislation.

Earlier this year, US President Joe Biden’s request to Congress for $24bln in aid to Ukraine almost caused a government shutdown after Republican congressmen refused to approve a budget that included those funds. As a result, a temporary budget was adopted without a clause on support for Ukraine.

Biden has already said that he would not sign the bill on allocating aid to Israel without Ukraine if it is approved by Congress.

November 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Violent Pro-Israel Counter-Protesters Clash With Police At Palestine Solidarity March In London

RT | November 11, 2023

At least 300,000 people marched in the British capital on Saturday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. London Metropolitan Police reported at least 126 arrests amid clashes with counter protesters in which nice officers were injured.

The largely peaceful crowds were chanting “free Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as they marched through the streets of London. The largest to date demonstration coincided with the annual Armistice Day commemorations.

Ahead of the pro-Palestinian march, a group of right-wing protesters, mainly consisting of football hooligans from across the UK, arrived in central London on a pretense of protecting monuments, but “were already intoxicated, aggressive and clearly looking for confrontation,” assistant commissioner Matt Twist said in a statement.

The violent crowd, chanting “you’re not English any more” hailed abuses at the officers, who were protecting the Cenotaph and preventing them from confronting the pro-Palestinian activists.

“Nine officers were injured during the day, two requiring hospital treatment with a fractured elbow and a suspected dislocated hip. Those officers were injured on Whitehall as they prevented a violent crowd getting to the Cenotaph while a remembrance service was taking place,” police said, adding that “the extreme violence from the right wing protestors towards the police today was extraordinary and deeply concerning.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) march, which the organizers themselves estimated to be at least 500,000 strong, “did not see the sort of physical violence carried out by the right wing,” according to police, although a fringe group of some 150 masked people was intercepted while firing fireworks. Several arrests were made “after some of the fireworks struck officers in the face,” police said.

The unrest follows the debate earlier this week whether the pro-Palenstian protest should be permitted on Armistice day, that is traditionally observed in the UK by a two-minute silence during the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th marking the end of WWI in 1918.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman was accused of fuelling the tensions by branding pro-Palestinian demonstrations as “hate marches,” while accusing the police of bias for letting the rally go ahead.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that the clashes were “encouraged and emboldened” by senior politicians “like the Home Secretary” and were a “direct result” of her words.

The Prime Minister, Rich Sunak condemned the violence and hatred from both sides and called for the nations “to come together” to remember “those who fought and died for our freedom.”

November 11, 2023 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli army shoots whoever tries to leave Al-Shifa Hospital: Doctor tells Anadolu

MEMO | November 11, 2023

A doctor at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said on Saturday that the Israeli army opens fire on those who want to flee the hospital, Anadolu reports.

The Israeli army has surrounded the hospital area and they are “not even a meter away, they are at the door,” Fadia Malhis, a gynecologist at the hospital, told an Anadolu correspondent in frequently interrupted phone conversations.

“They shoot anyone who wants to go out of the hospital. If anyone moves between units, they shoot them. There are many martyrs in the yard in front of the emergency room, the situation is very bad and dangerous, it is indescribable,” she said.

“It is like a prison without water, electricity, or food. There were more than 100 martyrs in the garden. They opened fire at those who tried to bury the martyrs in the hospital yard. The hospital garden is full of martyrs. Some tried to escape from the hospital, and they also killed them. They fired at me too,” she added.

Citing a power outage in the hospital and underlining the deteriorating condition of infants in the incubators in the intensive care unit, she said: “There are 60 babies in the intensive care unit, 39 of them are intubated, one baby died in the afternoon. These (infants) will die one after the other.”

She called for immediate action to cease hostilities around the hospital, saying: “Please, save us, stop this war, otherwise we will die. There are dead people everywhere. Save us, the situation is very bad.”

November 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkiye halts energy projects with Israel in the absence of a ceasefire: Minister

MEMO | November 8, 2023

Turkiye will not discuss any energy-related projects with Israel without a ceasefire in Gaza, as it would be disrespectful to Palestinians who are experiencing great brutality, a senior official said late Tuesday, local Turkish media outlets reports.

According to the report, Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, told a private broadcaster that “in such an atmosphere, in an environment of such great brutality, human drama, it would be disrespectful to humanity, to our humanity, to our siblings there (in Palestine) to talk about any project.”

“The only thing we will talk about at this time is how we can meet Gaza’s electricity, water and food needs. This could happen. That would be the only project,” he said.

Israel has launched air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Resistance group, Hamas, on 7 October.

Pointing out that life has stopped in the region after the Gaza attacks, Bayraktar said: “After the great brutality and cruelty experienced there, the only project we can talk about right now is how we can get Gaza’s electricity back on its feet again.”

“We have sent generators. They are waiting at the Rafah border crossing,” he added.

“We are considering how we can contribute there with floating power plants and mobile power plants, which we call power ships,” the Minister said, reiterating it is impossible to talk about anything without a ceasefire.

November 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Arab-Iran amity is a geopolitical reality

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 9, 2023 

The forthcoming first visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia on November 13 marks a milestone in the rapprochement between the two countries mediated by China in March. The relationship is fast acquiring a qualitatively new level of solidarity in the context of the Palestine-Israel conflict. 

This marks a shift in the tectonic plates in regional politics, which has long been dominated by the United States but no longer so. The latest China-UAE initiative on Monday to promote a ceasefire in Gaza was rounded off with an extraordinary spectacle of diplomacy at the UN headquarters in New York as the two countries’ envoys read out together a joint statement to the media. The US was nowhere to be seen. 

The events since October 7 make it abundantly clear that the US attempts to integrate Israel into its Muslim neighbourhood on its terms is a pipe dream — ie., unless and until Israel is willing to turn its sword into plowshares. The ferocity of the Israeli revenge attacks on the people of Gaza — “animals” —  smacks of racism and genocide.  

Iran knew all along the bestiality of the Zionist regime. Saudi Arabia too must be in a chastened mood following the wake-up call that it must first and foremost learn to live in its region. 

Raisi is heading for Saudi Arabia against the backdrop of a historic shift in the power dynamic. King Salman invited Raisi to speak on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza at a special summit of Arab states, which he is hosting in Riyadh. This signifies a profound Saudi realisation that even its willingness to be involved in the Abraham Accords under American persuasion has alienated the Arab public.  

There is a fallacy in the western discourse about a Russia-China-Iran axis in West Asia. This is a nonsensical misinterpretation. A consistent three-fold foreign policy principle that Iran pursued right from the Islamic Revolution in 1979 is that, one, its strategic autonomy is sacred; two, the countries of the region must take their destiny into their own hands and solve regional issues themselves without involving extra-regional powers, and, three, foster Muslim unity howsoever long and winding that road might seem. 

This principle had severe limitations due to force of circumstances — principally, in the conditions engendered by the colonial policy of divide and rule pursued by the US. Circumstances were even deliberately engineered, such as the Iraq-Iran war, where the US encouraged the regional states to collaborate with Saddam Hussein to launch an aggression against Iran to stymie the Islamic revolution in its infancy. 

Another painful episode was the Syrian conflict. There, again, the US actively canvassed among regional states for a regime change in Damascus with the ultimate objective of targeting Iran by using the terrorist groups that Washington incubated in Occupied Iraq. 

In Syria, the US brilliantly succeeded in pitting the regional states against each other and the result is plain to see in the ruins of what used to be the throbbing heart of Islamic civilisation . At the peak of the conflict, several western intelligence agencies were freely operating in Syria assisting the terrorist groups to rampage the country whose cardinal sin was that, like Iran, it too consistently put primacy on its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policies through the cold war and post-cold war eras alike. 

Suffice to say, the US and Israel met with great success in fragmenting the Muslim Middle East by exaggerating the threat perceptions and convincing several Gulf Arab states that they faced direct threats or even attacks by Iranian proxies, as well as alleged Iranian support for dissident movements.

Of course, the US capitalised on it by selling huge volumes of weapons and more importantly, to finesse the petrodollar as a key pillar of the western banking system. As for Israel, it directly benefitted from demonising Iran in order to draw attention away from the Palestine issue, which has all along been the core issue in the Middle East crisis.

Suffice to say, the rollout of the Iran-Saudi-China agreement has reduced the hostility that existed between Riyadh and Tehran for the better part of the recent decades. Both countries sought to build on the momentum generated by the success of the secret Beijing talks with regard to their commitment to non-interference. It must be noted, however, that the relations between Gulf Arab countries and Iran had already improved significantly over the last two years.  

What western analysts miss is that the wealthy Gulf states are fed up with their subaltern life as sidekicks of the US. They want to prioritise their national life in directions they choose and with partners who respect them, eschewing any zero-sum mindset, unlike in the Cold War era, for reasons of ideology or power dynamic. 

That is why, the Biden Administration cannot accept that the Saudis today work with Russia on the OPEC+ platform to fulfil their commitment to extra voluntary oil supply cuts, while also negotiating with the US on nuclear technology, and at the same time moving on the diplomatic track with Beijing to douse the fire set ablaze in the Levant a month ago from spreading to the rest of the West Asian region. 

Evidently, the Saudis are no longer rolling with pleasure at the prospect of a US-Iran confrontation. On the other hand, Saudis and Iranians have a shared concern that their new thinking with primacy on development will dissipate unless there is regional stability and security.

Thus, it is sheer naïveté on the part of Washington to bracket Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran as one grouping — as Blinken did during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Monday — and juxtapose it with the rest of the region. The canard that Hezbollah and Hamas are “terrorist” movements is about to be exposed. Truth be told, how are they any different from Sinn Féin, which was historically associated with the IRA?  

Such naïveté underlines the absurd US-Israeli-Indian venture to create a West Asian QUAD 2 (“I2U2”), which today looks laughable — or the quixotic plot hatched in New Delhi recently during the G20 summit to get the Saudis on board the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor project, with the fond hope that it “integrates” Israel and creates business for Haifa Port, isolates Iran and Turkey, rubbishes Russia-led International North-South Corridor and shows the middle finger to Beijing’s Belt and Road. Whereas, life is real. 

Taking all things into account, it is the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s regional tour to Israel and his summit with a select group of Arab states in Amman over the last weekend that has turned into a defining moment in the Gaza crisis.

The Arab foreign ministers point blank refused to buy into any of the invidious proposals put forward by Blinken with malicious intentions to preserve Jewish interests —  “humanitarian pause” instead of ceasefire; refugee camps for the people from Gaza escaping from Israel’s horrific, brutal attacks that would be funded with Arab money but would eventually lead to Jewish settlements in Gaza; contours of a post-war arrangement for Gaza that will leave the debris to be handled by the Palestinian Authority and reconstruction to be financed by the Gulf states while Israel continues to dominate it in the all-important security sphere; preventing Iran from going to the rescue of Hezbollah and Hamas as they are put into Israeli meat grinders of American make. 

It was rank hypocrisy. The Arab foreign ministers spoke up in one voice to articulate their counter proposal to Blinken’s — immediate ceasefire. President Biden seems to see the writing on the wall, finally — although,  intrinsically, he continues to be the world’s number one Zionist, as someone once called him, and his motivations are largely borne out of his own political survival as the 2024 election draws closer. 

Be that as it may, the high probability is that it is now a matter of time before the global community insists on stopping the Israeli apartheid state in its tracks. For, when Muslim countries unite, they call the shots in the emerging multipolar world order. Their demand that a settlement of the Palestine problem brooks no further delay has gained resonance, including in the Western Hemisphere. 

November 10, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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