EU may become complicit in ‘genocide’ – Spanish official
RT | October 30, 2023
Spanish Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra has urged European leaders to take immediate action against Israel, including severing diplomatic ties and imposing economic sanctions, amid the intensified bombing and expanded ground operations against Hamas militants in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
She also called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be prosecuted for the alleged war crimes committed against civilians in Gaza.
“After this hellish night in Gaza, I have a very simple but very important message for European leaders. Do not make us complicit in genocide. Act. Not in our name,” Belarra said in a passionate video message on X on Saturday.
More than 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,342 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s air campaign began, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. The unprecedented Hamas raid into Israel, as well as hundreds of rocket strikes on Israeli territory earlier this month, left around 1,400 people dead, while 230 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Addressing the severity of the current situation in Gaza and Israel’s disproportionate retaliation, the minister highlighted the termination of internet and telephone services in the strip, claiming that the move “has a very clear objective” of guaranteeing that “Israel commits crimes against humanity without consequences.”
“Our inaction is turning us into accomplices,” the minister stressed, arguing that “Israel believes that its international alliances guarantee its impunity.”
“We have to act now, tomorrow will be too late,” she continued, voicing her message to the EU leaders: “Cut diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. Carry out exemplary economic sanctions against those responsible for this genocide. And without a doubt, let’s take Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court, so that he can be tried for what he is, a war criminal.”
She also appealed to EU citizens to take to the streets and raise their voice so that “this genocide” comes to an end.
The IDF escalated air and ground attack on Gaza on Friday, causing a near-total communication blackout. Connectivity was partially restored over the weekend, but the Israeli blockade of Gaza continues; Netanyahu announced the “second stage” of the war against Hamas on Saturday.
‘Israel’s plan is to crush you and your people,’ Hezbollah warns Arab states
Press TV – October 29, 2023
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem has lauded the steadfastness of the resistance front in the face of the Israeli occupation.
Sheikh Qassem warned certain Arab states in the region that they will not be spared from Israeli brutality if they do not throw their weight behind the Palestinians in Gaza.
The high-ranking official with the Lebanese resistance movement made the remarks in a statement on his X social media account on Sunday, the 23 day of Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza.
“Let the Arab rulers know the resistance is strong, steadfast and victorious, God Almighty willing, and the days will prove that,” Sheikh Qassem said.
“You should know that Israel’s plan is to crush you and your people. What is happening in Gaza is a model for you and your role after it unless you are slaves and subject to it. And remember that the Israeli slogan is ‘From the Euphrates to the Nile.”
“Get together and threaten, do what will deter them, boycott, make way for your people to express freely, declare your support for Palestine and al-Quds; this is an opportunity to break the brutality,” Sheikh Qassem said.
“The Palestinian people and their resistance are paying the price for the pride of the nation and future generations, so be with them so that you can be with yourselves and your peoples, and victory comes only from God.”
Sheikh Qassem also censured the unflinching support the United States and Western governments provided to the Israeli onslaught.
“The brutality of the US, France, Britain and Germany in their absolute support of Israeli criminality and genocide against civilians in Gaza has exceeded the lowest levels of humanity.”
Israel has been waging a barbaric war on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups launched their biggest operation against Israel in years. The sneak Operation Al-Aqsa Storm came in response to the regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli war has so far claimed the lives of over 8,000 innocent Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, and left upwards of 20,500 others wounded.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Friday, calling for the implementation of an immediate “humanitarian truce” in Gaza. The vote came after the United Nations Security Council failed four times in the past two weeks to take action due to Washington’s veto against relevant resolutions.
The assembly stressed the “importance of preventing further destabilization and escalation of violence in the region,” urging “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and upon all those with influence on them to work toward this objective.”
Israel has rejected all calls for a ceasefire, claiming it would benefit Hamas.
Warrant for Genocide: Netanyahu urges Israeli troops to regard the Palestinians as “Amalek”
In the Old Testament the Amalekites were exterminated: “man, woman and infant”
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | October 29, 2023
It’s Sunday, not normally a good day for gaining people’s attention on news or analytical current events’ columns. The ongoing emergency—the massacre of children and other civilians in Gaza however—trumps all other considerations, at least for this writer, so here goes.
Part One: Netanyahu Channels Amalek
In their ignorance (or malice), Old Testament haters will have a field day with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu having channeled “Amalek” as he ordered the Israeli army to invade Gaza on October 28.
This fact is so incendiary that a quick search of the New York Times today reveals that the “newspaper of record” hasn’t dared to mention it thus far.
The Israeli Prime Minister stated: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you says our Holy Bible, and we do remember and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that started 3,000 years ago—from Joshua to the heroes of 1948—the Six Day War, the 1973 October war—and all other wars of this country—are hero troops. They have one supreme main goal, to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”
In 1 Samuel 15:3 we find the judgment of God on the Amalekites, in the form of the divine command to Saul, the first King of Israel: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
These are patently the marching orders Netanyahu is giving to the Israeli military (“the most moral in the world”): Slay all the civilians of Gaza and spare them not.
Not even Clarence Darrow could parse it otherwise. There’s no lawyer’s loophole here; no moderating clause, which is why, as of Sunday, October 29, the New York Times and other major media have not dared to report Netanyahu’s genocidal directive.
They’ll get around to it after they have concocted a defense of the indefensible, which is their job. The delay is due to the fact that even the skilled spin doctors at the Times are having difficulty coming up with an explanation that has plausibility: the Israeli Prime Minister’s insinuation to the Israeli Army to commit genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, by invoking the Biblical war with Amalek, is not a warrant for genocide because…
Because what?
A day later and the corporate media haven’t managed to cook up a cosmetic exculpation.
Juan Cole got it partially right: “Netanyahu may have gestured to, and defiled the Bible by excusing his genocide against the civilians of Gaza with reference to 1 Samuel. But his real bible is… Zionism with its Fascist and explicitly colonial ideology.”
I say “partially,” because Mr. Cole succumbs to the humdrum of Leftspeak when he ends his summation of Zionism by describing it as a colonial ideology, which it is, but that is not the most accurate summation of its inspiration and motivation. Zionism is Talmudic.
True, a distinction has to be made between Talmudism in and of itself, as practiced before the ascendance of Zionism in the 19th century, and Talmudism as weaponized by Zionism, a task we undertook in our October 17 column, “The Disaster of Israeli Zionism.”
Only a Biblical illiterate would tell the Israelis, “You must remember… Amalek,” and then ascribe that memory to the Hebrew Old Testament.
To remember Amalek is to nullify the Old Testament!
Yahweh not only ordered the complete extirpation of the Amalekites; that’s only half the story. He ordered every faithful Israelite to blot out the memory of Amalek, so that the name of Amalek would never again be mentioned:
“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under Heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
Netanyahu “forgot.”
Kindling the memory of Amalek is in express defiance of the command of Yahweh, and as such it is Talmudic, not Biblical. It is of a piece with the Pharisee Hillel’s prozbul-nullification of Yahweh’s Sabbatical year.
The Pharisee Talmud destroys the meaning of the Old Testament, rips it to shreds and stomps it into the gutter.
Rabbi Jacob Neusner, translator of the Yale University Press edition of the unredacted Mishnah (the sacred Pharisee text which comprises the supreme halacha (law) of Orthodox rabbinic Judaism), stated:
“We have already seen substantial evidence that any notion of Pharisaism (or later rabbinic Judaism), as the true and direct descendants of the Old Testament, is contradicted by the most fundamental assumption of one Mishnah-tractate after another. These stand wholly separate from the Priestly Code… And generally contradict it!” (A History of the Mishnaic Law [Brill Academic, 1974], p. 7).
As for why Yahweh ordered Amalek destroyed three millennia ago, that’s a hermeneutic for another day.
Part Two: The Gaza Massacre in 40 Words of Power
Our critics in Europe opine that Americans are slogan-mad, seeking in our haste and frenzied pace to reduce everything sublime to a bumper sticker.
There’s some truth in the observation. On the other hand, compared to our loquacious kindred in the Old World, we occasionally exhibit the laconic virtue of conveying the most meaning with the least amount of words.
Some of the head-scratching over the whys and wherefores of the dehumanization of the thousands of Palestinian children butchered in Gaza with American tax dollars this month of October — the sheer shoulder-shrugging indifference in the face of the carnage, by everyone from John Kirby to Joe Biden and their legion of epigones—can be understood with a few dozen words of power which compel obedience from the Department of Defense to the White House and most of the Western world.
Neither the Neocon Right nor the progressive Left will traverse this territory. Hence, the obligation to utter a proscribed truth which is the key to grasping why the massacre in Gaza is not being opposed by the Biden administration, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, NATO, or the European Union— falls to us, in this obscure column of ours.
From the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 57a, we read:
“Regarding bloodshed, the following distinction applies: if a non-Jew killed another non-Jew, or a non-Jew killed a Jew, the killer is liable for execution; if a Jew killed a non-Jew, he is exempt from punishment.”
My dear kiddies, you who have been infantalized by the refusal on the part of every major news source, whether Muslim, Christian, atheist, Marxist, Conservative or Liberal, to cite this halacha—now you know the real reason why the International Court in The Hague will not be prosecuting Netanyahu or his generals for war crimes. Now you know why the children of Gaza have been murdered, are being murdered and will be murdered in this annus horribilis.
If Mr. Netanyahu wishes to quote ancient passages from holy books, let him quote from Sanhedrin 57 in the Talmud of Babylon, the holiest book of Israeli theology. [BT Eruvin 21b: “Be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah”].
Copyright ©2023 by Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE CONTRA CANCEL CUTLURE
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press. He earns his living as a professional historian. His books are published in the USA, and in translation in Japan and France. His textbook, Judaism Discovered (1,102 pages) is banned by almost all major booksellers and libraries.
Website: www.RevisionistHistory.org
Israeli ground troops face fierce resistance inside Gaza
The Cradle | October 29, 2023
The Palestinian resistance has continued to confront Israeli ground troops penetrating the Gaza border, after Tel Aviv announced an expansion of limited ground incursions into the besieged strip on Friday.
The Qassam Brigades launched a surprise attack on Israeli forces on Sunday “after infiltrating behind their lines and clashing with enemy forces” who were making an incursion northwest of Beit Lahia, their Telegram channel said.
In a statement released earlier on 29 October, Hamas’ Qassam Brigades announced that they “continue to confront the Zionist forces penetrating the Al-Amiriyya area northwest of Beit Lahia, where they engaged in armed clashes with them and targeted enemy vehicles with … mortar shells.”
The Qassam Brigades “carried out several sniping operations. The enemy admitted that a number of its soldiers were wounded in the clashes with our Mujahideen who … are still targeting enemy forces.”
They also targeted on Sunday morning a “gathering of enemy vehicles” with a suicide drone, according to the resistance group’s Telegram channel.
The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, the Quds Brigades, also announced on 29 October targeting Israeli forces attempting to enter the northern Gaza Strip with rockets and mortar shells.
Israel’s military announced earlier on 29 October that one of its officers was seriously hurt and another soldier moderately injured “in the northern Gaza Strip overnight.”
The Qassam Brigades released a video on Saturday evening, 28 October, showing their destruction of an Israeli armored vehicle believed to be carrying over a dozen soldiers. The attack took place near the Gaza Strip’s Shujaiya area.
Over the past week, Israel has carried out “limited” ground incursions into northern Gaza aimed at testing the waters for the planned invasion. The Israeli army said it struck several Hamas targets during small-scale incursions on 25 and 26 October.
Israeli troops took heavy losses the week before that while attempting to enter the Gaza Strip on land.
Tel Aviv announced on 27 October that it is “expanding” its limited ground activity in Gaza.
However, an army spokesman told ABC News that day that “the expanded operations taking place in Gaza are not an official ground invasion.”
So far, Israel has delayed fully invading Gaza and attempting to carry out its stated goal of “eradicating” Hamas, who are well prepared for an Israeli ground invasion.
Many experts, including The Cradle’s Hasan Illaik, have said recently that Israel will be unable to bear the cost of launching a full ground assault on the Gaza Strip. Such an invasion could also instigate the opening of several new fronts and the outbreak of regional war.
“We want to convey to our enemy that we are impatiently awaiting the opportunity to introduce [its forces] to new forms of demise,” Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida, said on 28 October.
Israel Faces ‘Near Impossible Task’ in Gaza
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 29.10.2023
Israel has conducted a series of ground incursions into Gaza over the course of the past week, each one building on the other, increasing in scope and scale. This appears to be part of an Israeli strategy to lean gradually into an operation that, when finished, falls just short of a general assault on Gaza.
At the end of the day, however, Israel will most likely not be able to defeat the military forces of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance forces defending Gaza. Israel will have to either seek to defeat Hamas by laying siege to the Gaza Strip or commit to a full-scale attack on Gaza designed to clear the territory of all Hamas fighters.
History suggests that any such assault will be extremely difficult to accomplish.
The example of Operation Hubertus, the final German assault on Stalingrad, stands out. The Germans brought in elements of seven elite “Pioneer” battalions — combat engineers with extensive experience in urban warfare, having paved the way for prior German victories in Rostov and Voronezh. The Pioneers were the masters of military demolition, highly trained specialists in house-to-house fighting and the use of explosives and flame throwers. Around 1,800 of these elite assault engineers were assembled for the final drive to push the defending Soviet soldiers from Stalingrad.
On the first day of operations, the Pioneers suffered nearly 30% casualties. After several days of fierce fighting, the Pioneers were stopped less than 100 meters from their objective. However, their forces suffered between 60-70% casualties, and could not proceed further.
Operation Hubertus was doomed to fail from the beginning. According to an account of the fighting, “The constant bombardment and artillery shelling created a battlefield in which the Soviet defenders largely held the advantage over the assaulting Germans. The fields of rubble and craters were perfectly designed for defensive actions and could be improved with relatively little effort. This also provided ample hunting ground for the ever-present Soviet snipers.”
A similar observation can be made regarding the Allied attacks on Monte Casino, in Italy, in early 1944. A massive aerial bombardment destroyed a 6th century abbey. Elite German paratroopers dug into the rubble, and for months successfully held off repeated attacks. There can be no doubt that the excessive bombardment of Monte Casino ended up strengthening the positions of the German defenders.
In the battle of Iwo Jima, it took US Marines more than a month to secure the tiny island, largely because the Japanese had dug some 18 kilometers of tunnels into the 21-square kilometer island, some of which were more than 70 meters underground, from which they rode out heavy bombing and shelling, only to emerge and ambush the advancing Marines.
If one combined the above ground rubble of Monte Casino with the below-ground tunnel network of Iwo Jima, you might approximate the hellish scenario awaiting Israel in Gaza.
Over 500 kilometers of tunnels dug in under the 360 square kilometers that comprise the Gaza Strip, these tunnels are purpose built, designed to serve as transportation corridors, command centers, supply depots, dormitories and hospitals, defensive positions, and in support of offensive action. Simply put, there has never been a military operation against a target such as the one presented by Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has trained a small number of its elite special forces to carry out limited-scope operations in an underground environment. These operations, typically involving hostage rescue or direct action (i.e., eliminating a high value target), are conducted under very controlled circumstances, with the attacking forces proceeding only when the circumstances support a favorable outcome. As such, the experiences of these troops are counterproductive when it comes to transferring knowledge to the conventional forces that would bear the brunt of any Israeli assault on Gaza.
Simply trying to navigate the rubble-strewn streets of Gaza will be a nearly impossible task for the Israeli troops. The going will be slow, and the Israeli infantry will have to operate dismounted, exposing themselves to sniper fire and ambushes. Israeli vehicles will find themselves hemmed in without the ability to maneuver, making themselves vulnerable to mines, improvised explosive devices, and anti-tank weaponry. Close air support under these circumstances will be very difficult, effectively neutralizing Israel’s greatest advantage.
If Israel does not sync its above-ground actions with a simultaneous effort to defeat Hamas’ underground tunnel-based defenses, then the situation above ground will become even more precarious, with Hamas emerging from tunnels behind the Israeli forces, cutting them off and inflicting heavy casualties. But Israel is going to be operating largely blind underground, probing into a tunnel network designed by Hamas to protect against any such effort. Israel’s best bet would be to simply locate tunnel entrances and seal them off, leaving the Hamas forces underground to die of thirst, hunger, oxygen deprivation, or disease. But this will require the physical occupation of every square meter of the city, an immensely difficult problem from both a logistical and operational standpoint. It will also expose more Israeli forces to harm, resulting in a dramatic increase in casualties.
By reacting to the Hamas attack of October 7 in the way it has, Israel has literally walked into a trap designed by Hamas to defeat any Israeli incursion. Israeli forces are neither trained, equipped, organized, nor motivated to carry out the kind of brutal, bloody, and physically demanding combat that will be required to defeat Hamas above and below the ground in Gaza. Israeli political and military leaders have boxed themselves into a corner with their aggressive winner-take-all rhetoric. But now that the time has come to pay the price of their collective verbiage, the question becomes is this a price Israel is willing and able to pay?
The answer is probably no. Israel has defined victory as being predicated on the total defeat of Hamas as a military organization. This is most probably a mission impossible. Hamas, therefore, emerges victorious simply by surviving. Given the strong defensive position Hamas finds itself in, through a combination of its immense tunnel network and the destroyed urban environment brought on by Israeli bombardment, it is highly likely that Hamas will be able to hold off a concerted Israeli assault until which time the Israel Defense Forces, like the German Pioneer battalions in Stalingrad, exhaust themselves on the field of battle.
Russia: Israel’s bombardment of Gaza unlawful
Press TV – October 28, 2023
Russia has shown its strongest reaction to the Israeli regime’s nonstop bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip by labeling the three-week campaign targeting the civilians in the Palestinian territory “unlawful.”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published by the Belarusian state news agency Belta on Saturday that the carnage is against international law and could create a decades-long catastrophe in the region.
Lavrov said Israel has been “indiscriminately using force against targets where civilians are known to be present.”
He warned that Israel’s stated goal of seeking to eradicate the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas would require a total destruction of Gaza, an enclave of over 2.3 million people located on the Mediterranean.
“If Gaza is destroyed and 2 million inhabitants are expelled, as some politicians in Israel and abroad propose, this will create a catastrophe for many decades, if not centuries,” said the Russian foreign minister.
“It is necessary to stop, and to announce humanitarian programs to save the population under blockade.”
Israel’s savagery began on October 7 in response to a Hamas operation in the occupied territories which led to over 1,400 deaths among settlers and regime troops.
Israelis were already angered by Moscow’s decision to host a Hamas delegation in the midst of the conflict in Palestine.
Russian authorities have defended the move while Hamas leaders say they have received a request from Moscow to look for eight people identified by Russia as possibly being among hostages taken by the group’s fighters during the blitz into the occupied territories.
Figures released by Gaza’s health officials on Saturday showed the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 7,700 Palestinians, including over 5,000 women and children.
Hamas resists Israeli offensive in Gaza after violent night of airstrikes
Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on 8 October, 2023. (Photo Credit: MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)
The Cradle | October 28, 2023
Gaza-based Palestinian resistance faction Hamas announced on 28 October that its forces successfully held back invading Israeli troops who overnight launched large-scale ground operations into the coastal enclave under the cover of intense air raids.
Hamas says its forces dealt “heavy losses to the enemy’s ranks” as they repelled the ground incursion. Nonetheless, heavy clashes continue in several points of the northern Gaza Strip.
“The enemy fell into ambushes set up by the Palestinian resistance on several fronts. Kornet missiles and Yasin shells were used to repel the attack, and we expect the enemy to try again. The Israeli regime used helicopters to evacuate the wounded and the dead from the battlefield,” the Hamas statement reads.
For their part, Israeli media claims there are “no reports of Israeli casualties” and that “ground forces, including infantry, combat engineering forces, and tanks, remained inside Gaza […] operating deeper into the Hamas-run territory than previous limited incursions.”
On Friday night, the Israeli army began what officials described as an “expansion” of their ground operations into Gaza after several nights of “limited incursions” that were also repelled by the Palestinian resistance.
According to local reports, the elite US Delta Force has been accompanying Israeli troops into the besieged territory. However, Washington maintains that its forces only provide logistical advice to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli ground offensive was launched under the cover of a violent campaign of airstrikes by the Israeli air force, which decimated the northern Gaza Strip with hundreds of bombs, including internationally banned white phosphorous and cluster munitions.
Despite the intensity of the Israeli offensive, the Gaza resistance continued to launch rocket attacks toward the occupied territories, setting off alarms in several settlements.
As the clashes continue, Gaza remains unreachable to the outside world after Israel cut off all phone and internet services to provide cover for the genocide being committed against Palestinian civilians.
“This communications blackout means that it will be even more difficult to obtain critical information and evidence about human rights violations and war crimes being committed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and to hear directly from those experiencing the violations,” Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said in a statement on Friday.
UN agencies and human rights organizations say they can still not reach their staff and health facilities inside Gaza.
Gaza suffers near-total information blackout
RT | October 27, 2023
Internet and cell phone services stopped working in Gaza on Friday night, after Israel “expanded” its military operation against Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The largest telecommunications provider in Gaza, Paltel, has announced “a complete severance of all communications and Internet services” due to intensified Israeli strikes.
“The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” the company said.
Netblocks, a company that tracks internet connectivity globally, confirmed the information blackout, calling it “the largest single disruption to internet connectivity in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict and will be perceived by many as a total or near-total internet blackout.”
International media outlets, including RT, have partially lost contact with their crews and stringers on the ground. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told news organizations that Israel “cannot guarantee your employees’ safety, and strongly urge you to take all necessary measures for their safety,” according to a letter sent to Reuters and AFP.
The head of RT Arabic, Maya Manna, said there was no contact with correspondents and photographers operating in the Palestinian enclave as of Friday evening. The sole message came from an RT stringer in the area, describing a “very violent bombing.”
“I don’t know what to do with my children and my family. Everyone is afraid, everyone is terrified, and there is screaming everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Masoud Abu Jarash, a local reporter, told RT.
According to an NBC News crew member, who was also able to message colleagues, “all internet, electricity and everything” has been cut off. “The situation we’re in is difficult, so difficult and very dangerous. We’re being extensively shelled by artillery and by air,” the unnamed staffer said.
The UN children’s agency also lost contact with their colleagues in Gaza, with UNICEF chief Catherine Russel saying she was “extremely concerned about their safety and another night of unspeakable horror for 1 million children in Gaza.”
The international healthcare charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said there was no contact with some of their Palestinian colleagues.
“We are particularly worried for the patients, medical staff and thousands of families taking shelter at Al Shifa hospital and other health facilities,” MSF said, expressing deep concern over the situation regarding one of Gaza’s biggest medical centers.
Israel has accused Hamas of turning hospitals into “headquarters for their terror,” referring specifically to Al Shifa, and even published an “illustrative video” which supposedly points out the “different locations in and under the hospital which are being used to plan and implement terrorist activities.”
Hamas claims that by cutting off communications from Gaza, Israel is attempting to “cover up the crimes of the occupation without any oversight or accountability,” and tries to “create an image of victory,” a senior official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera.
The Gods Are Going Against the Chosen People – Mammon Against Israel, Mars Against the Pentagon
By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | October 27, 2023
The Palestinian strategy against Israel is aimed at destroying Israel’s capacity to survive in its present state in a long war.
This means attacking the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their so-called Iron Dome defence; this began with the cross-border offensive on October 7, and continues with daily drone and artillery attacks on targets inside Israel, as well as resistance to IDF incursions in Gaza.
The plan also means exposing the weakness of the state’s infrastructure and economy; extending the battlefield across all of Israel’s territory – the ports, power plants and electricity grid, communications, and financial markets — making the cost of occupation of the Arab territories unendurable. In a long war, two of Israel’s leading exports earning more than 40% of the state’s trade — diamonds and tourism — face ruin.*
“The Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war,” Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein told his general staff in 1983 during a discussion of planning for a regional war of the Arabs against Israel.** In the forty years since then, the evolution of military technology and tactics has expanded the power of small national liberation armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, of proxy principals like Iran, and of the strategic balancing role of Russia and China. Their combination now has shortened the Zionist state’s endurance in a long war, and that of its proxy principal, the US.
The Israelis and the Jewish diaspora comprehend this reluctantly. For them, the short war must be correspondingly shorter. This means the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement.
The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain. As a Pentagon insider said publicly this week, “because there are so many draws on the logistics and support infrastructure of the Pentagon, we’re not prepared to go in in a concerted way. What we are seeing right now is death by a thousand cuts. Our adversaries know we are stretched so they are going to make us stretch even more, so we can respond even less.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, acknowledged the point in Moscow on Thursday: US naval, air force, and marine reinforcements deployed around Israel and Gaza are “American tactics to strengthen their own security (this is how it should be interpreted) at someone else’s expense.” They are backfiring on Washington’s capacity to defend US forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and in land bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. “On the contrary,” Zakharova added, the US military deployment “will further rock the situation in the Middle East, create additional tension that can spill out beyond the region.”
Zakharova’s warning came in the Moscow afternoon. By then Russian Foreign Ministry officials had held meetings with a Hamas delegation, and officials from Iran, Egypt, and Kuwait. Across the city at the same time, President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Kremlin communiqué reported: “Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions.”
Israeli and US-led media censorship and propaganda are concealing the breadth of impact of the Palestine warfighting plan, and the deepening military and economic weaknesses of the Israeli state.
The longer the war continues, the plainer the evidence is on the battlefield that the single-state scheme of Israel and the US is no longer possible. Whether Israel and the US can be compelled to withdraw to the 1967 borders and a new Palestinian state created with partition, demilitarisation, and international security guarantees – the basis of the Russian position announced again on Thursday in Moscow — remains to be fought over.
In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People.
Following with precision the battlefield action is impossible in the Israeli and Anglo-American press. Reporting of operations, and of Israeli and US casualties, is being suppressed entirely or delayed for days, if not weeks.
According to this NBC television report, broadcast on October 24, there were at least 24 US combat casualties following drone attacks on or about October 18 at the Al-Tanf base in Syria and the Al-Asad base in Iraq. Reporting of naval action in the Red Sea, when the USS Carney reportedly engaged Houthi missiles over several hours, has been changing since the initial news flashes of October 19. Read more here. In a new report of October 24, Israeli and US casualties in a joint raid inside Gaza were revealed: “in the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it. I think that is where we are headed and I don’t see that as a win for Israel in any way, shape, or form. And I certainly think it is very dangerous for us”. In current reporting by Al Mayadeen, daily strikes against US bases in Iraq and northeastern Syria are documented.
Tracking the electric war and infrastructure strikes by Hamas and Hezbollah is also difficult. They commenced with cyber attacks on Israel’s electricity generation plants and power grids; these have been followed by missile and drone strikes. “The ground has been laid for attacks on the Israeli grid,” a US military source claims. “I believe drones will come first, then missiles. We may even see commando raids.”
Israel’s seaports are also under constant attack. Ashkelon, which is closest in range to Gaza, has been closed. Eilat may have been the target of the Houthi missile strike which was engaged last week by the USS Carney. Ashdod, which accounts for about 40% of incoming and outgoing Israeli seaborne trade, and Tel Aviv port have been targeted. The result is a tenfold surge in war risk insurance for vessels and cargoes, and the curtailment of international vessel movement in and out of the Israeli ports; there are reports that shipping is down 30% in Ashdod compared to the pre-war volume. Evergreen, the Taiwanese container shipping company, declared force majeure for Ashdod on October 17, diverted one vessel to Haifa, and halted future shipping into both ports. “We advise evaluating each port visit in Israel on a case by case basis and implementing appropriate precautions in ship contingency plans,” recommends a maritime industry alert bulletin.
Chevron’s offshore Tamar gas field has been shut down. The source produces 70% of the gas required to fuel Israel’s electricity generation needs. Not a single Anglo-American media source has noticed that Israel is at risk of losing its principal energy source to drone or missile attack. “After what the Americans and Germans did to blow up the Nordstream pipelines,” comments a Moscow industry source, “what is holding Hamas back from hitting Tamar, or Hezbollah from the other Israeli gas fields?”
Left: Chevron’s Tamar gas production platform is located at sea 24 kilometres west of Ashkelon. Right: click to enlarge map of Israel’s offshore gas sources.
A Moscow source comments that “in Israel, the US and the UK will be able to bring in supplies without a very big risk of US ships being attacked. The risk is to the ports and bases, not to supplies from the Med[iterranean]. The Greek and Cyprus bases will come in very useful. Israel will not face severe logistical issues as long as it is on the offensive. If its settlements start getting cut off, encircled or penetrated then it is a different matter.”
The indirect economic impacts of the war have also not been calculated or discussed in the mainstream media or international business newspapers. The leading export revenue earners are diamonds at above $9 billion per annum, and tourism which had been peaking at $8.5 billion in 2019. Counted together, diamonds and tourism amount to more than 40% of the state’s export earnings.
The Covid-19 pandemic and worldwide travel restrictions cut Israel’s tourism revenue fourfold, and this had been recovering over 2022 and the tourist season this year. This has now stopped, although for the time being Hamas rocket launches on Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv have been intercepted.
October 12, 2023 — source: https://www.youtube.com/.
ISRAEL TOURISM REVENUE TRAJECTORY, 1999-2022
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/
Israel’s high-tech machine exports and pharmaceuticals may also be affected if electricity supply, internet networks, and transportation are damaged.
The cumulative effect will be the outcome which the international ratings agencies have been warning the international banks and financial markets to prepare for. “In our view,” Fitch reported to clients on October 17, “the combination of Israel’s dynamic, high-value added economy, the record of resilience to regional conflict, [and] preparedness for military confrontations… make it unlikely a relatively short conflict largely confined to Gaza will affect Israel’s rating…. the risk that other actors hostile to Israel, such as Iran and Hezbollah, could join the conflict at scale has risen significantly… a major escalation could result in negative rating action. This could take the form of a wider and longer conflict, resulting in a sustained fiscal drain, both from higher spending and lower tax collection, as well as loss of human and material capital and severe economic disruption.”
How short, and also how long, Israel’s warfighting plan will take depends on American and international acceptance, not only of the genocide intended for the Palestinians of Gaza, but of the Novichok-type chemical warfare planned by the IDF and the Pentagon for the Hamas tunnel system in Gaza City. After several years in which the US and UK have fabricated claims that Syria and Russia were using prohibited gas warfare weapons, the Israelis have reportedly persuaded the US to participate in the tunnel attack operation. The Pentagon is denying the reports.
Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net
Russian and US military sources are already confirming the logistical supply problems facing Israeli and US forces at present, when the war is just three weeks long. Greek sources are reporting the Souda Bay, Crete, base has already reached its capacity for incoming US navy and air force supply and support operations; the spillover is facing growing Greek protest at the Elefsina air base near Athens.
A Cyprus source says the movement of US and British aircraft into and out of the Dekhelia and Akrotiri airbases is accelerating, and there is an air and seaborne shuttle between the Cypriot ports of Larnaca and Limassol and the USS Gerald Ford carrier group at sea to the southwest of the island.
The lengthening of the supply lines required to support the USS Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and the shore bases needed to support it are politically sensitive already; and the risks of Houthi and other attacks, along with domestic Arab crowd protests, will intensify for these bases in the Arab sheikhdoms the longer the war against Israel reveals Arab and Iranian warfighting skill and resistance.
Converting these gains into a negotiating framework for Israeli-American retreat is the task Russian officials are attempting in silent coordination with the Chinese, and in semi-open negotiations in Moscow this week. In its first move outside the region since the war began, Hamas has visited Moscow for negotiations, led by US-educated Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq.
Left: Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq; centre: Husam Badran; right, Ali Bagheri Kyani.
Zakharova confirmed the start of the talks with Hamas on Thursday. She said: “I can also say and confirm that representatives of the relevant Palestinian movement are in Moscow. As for contacts, we will inform you additionally.” She has also disclosed that since the war began, nine thousand Russian passport holders have returned to Russia from Israel; and that at least fifteen Russian passport holders among the Hamas hostages have been killed in the IDF airstrikes.
At the same time as Marzouq’s meetings, Husam Badran issued a statement to the Russian state news medium, Sputnik. “Russia,” Badran said, “is able to play an important role in ending the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and delivering aid to the Palestinian exclave. Hamas values Russia’s role on the international stage, especially use of veto in the UN Security Council against the United States. But Russia can play a greater role in ending the aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip and applying international pressure to deliver urgent aid to our people in the Gaza Strip.”
What Hamas means by “greater role” for Russia has not been disclosed publicly yet. It is known that Hamas is willing to negotiate the release of “non-military” hostages, including Israelis holding Russian passports, through Iran. This is conditional on the IDF lifting its siege on Gaza and allowing sufficient supplies into all parts of the territory.
The “military hostages” are being held in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There are more than 6,000 of the latter; there may be fewer than 200 hostages in Gaza, as up to 50 have been killed by Israeli bombing.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks with Hamas is less revealing. According to the Sputnik release, “Russia has discussed release of hostages and evacuation of Russians from the Gaza Strip during a meeting with a delegation of Hamas in Moscow on Thursday.” A member of the political office of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, Abu Marzouq, is in Moscow. Contacts took place with him in continuation of the Russian line for the immediate release of foreign hostages located in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were also discussed.”
At the same time on Thursday – unnoticed and unreported by the western media – Russian officials held several negotiating sessions with an Iranian emissary, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kyani. In three separate Foreign Ministry releases, meeting communiqués were issued for Kyani’s meetings with deputy ministers Mikhail Bogdanov, Sergei Ryabkov, and Mikhail Galuzin. “The need for the cessation of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip and the prompt provision of humanitarian assistance to the affected Palestinian population was confirmed,” Bogdanov’s communiqué said. “It was stated that Moscow and Tehran are determined to continue close coordination of efforts in the interests of stabilizing the situation in the Middle East.”
It is unclear if the talks also included the Hamas officials in a three-party format. During the day there were also Foreign Ministry negotiations in Moscow with Kuwaiti and Egyptian officials.
At the Kremlin it has been announced that President Putin spoke with Turkish President Erdogan to discuss the war. According to the Kremlin release, “the presidents reviewed the active efforts undertaken by Russia at the UN Security Council, as well as the corresponding political and diplomatic steps taken by Turkiye to stop the bloodshed and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need. It was emphasised that Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions, focused on implementing the well-known two-state solution, which provides for the creation of an independent Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security.”
In her briefing for the press, Zakharova dismissed the US moves so far. “We do not consider the US presence in the Middle East as contributing to the stability of the situation in the region. Exactly the opposite. Washington’s earlier attempts to monopolise the Middle East settlement process, ignoring the true causes of the protracted conflict, have largely led to the current catastrophic consequences… This situation has an absolutely clear and understandable road, a ‘road map’ for settlement. It is not simple, but complex, painful, but leading to the solution of the issue, not its aggravation.”
“Of course, no air defence systems, arms supplies, materiel injections into some ‘security complexes’ will help resolve this situation. Today’s lesson must be learned. How many Americans have deployed there (their bases, experts, satellites), nothing has worked to prevent a bloody scenario, of which both Palestinians and Israelis are victims.”
[*] With support from Israel and influential Jewish diamantaires in New York and Tel Aviv, a scheme of sanctions is being prepared by the US Government to stop Russian raw diamonds, produced by Alrosa, from being sold into the Belgian, Israeli, and US markets. The Russian goods are to be tagged “blood diamonds” because of the war in the Ukraine. However, now that Israel is destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza, the “blood” tag can be applied to the Israeli diamond cutting industry and to the Jewish diamond trade abroad. Support for the anti-Russian sanction, and also for the IDF operations against the Palestinians can be found in Rapaport.com news reports. “Rapaport stands with Israel”, the publication and its owner Martin Rapaport declared on October 26, “and has undertaken all the necessary effort and costs for the October Single Stone Auction to help the Israeli market continue to conduct business as best as possible during this difficult time. Rapaport believes that continuing to do business in Israel during the war is a victory over the brutal Hamas terrorists, and will help Israel win the war.” In another editorial for the diamond trade, Rapaport proposes “to boycott Iran and all other supporters of the Hamas terrorist organization.” Rapaport also cites religious authority for liquidation. “In the words of G-d (Exodus 17:14): ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’May the words of G-d be done, here and now.” Quietly, Russia’s state diamond interests dictate a strategy for protecting against this double-edged Israeli policy.
[**] Saddam Hussein is quoted in the chapter on US plots against him in Iraq – see The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab Revolt, Ch. 6.
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The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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