And who is Trent Horn? Dr. E. Michael Jones, arguably America’s leading Catholic intellectual, explains:
Trent Horn is a guy who works for something called Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers got started in the 90s by a guy named Carl Keating, who basically was going to defend the Catholic Church against fundamentalists who would say that the church was the whore of Babylon—fever swamp stuff like that. And it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He made a lot of money. He retired. He got replaced by Chris Check, a guy I knew from the Rockford Institute and Chronicles Magazine, a guy I always liked.
And now the world has changed. And so Trent Horn (took over Catholic Answers)… Some people said he was trying to apply for a job with the Daily Wire. He wanted to get Candace Owens’ slot.
So he’s going to be the Catholic guy who’s going to take up the Jewish cause. Well, it didn’t work. This guy singlehandedly resurrected an idea that really needs to be taken up, which is basically: What exactly is the status of the Jews and the Catholics? What is exactly the Catholic position?
And he took it to the extreme where he said basically it’s a sin to deny the Holocaust. And then he’s got “quotes” from people like Pope Benedict, which don’t say what he said they said. The Pope would never say (that Holocaust denial is a sin). The Pope, responding to the Williamson affair when Bishop Williamson got attacked across the world, said that basically “this is not decent. Decent people don’t do this.” Well, no one ever said Catholicism was just reserved for people who are fit for polite company.
So Trent Horn’s trying to up the ante by saying Catholics commit a sin if they contest Jewish fables. Well, it’s not going to work. And it bombed. There were hundreds of people who wrote in after this “Holocaust Denial Is a Sin” video, including people who noticed, as I did, there was fraud, academic fraud, going on here.
He flashes this image for two seconds, supposedly a letter from Himmler talking about the extermination of the Jews. Wait a minute. I have a pause button, Trent. And I put it on there. It turns out the beginning of this is Latin. It’s the Lorem Ipsum text generator. And then plopped in the middle is some statement—I guess he doesn’t think that anybody can read German because he apparently can’t—that says “the extermination of the Jewish people.”
But the real quote that follows is in a completely different typeset. The real quote is “die Evakuierung des deutschen Volkes,” which means the evacuation of the German people.
So I can’t tell you how angry I was. It’s been a long time since I got that angry. And I said that my friend Chris should either take the video down or stop claiming that he’ speaking for Catholics, because this is not Catholic theology. And you’re putting burdens on Catholics that they do not need to bear.
Catholic Holocaust Denial: A Confession
If crypto-Jew Trent Horn gets his way, Catholics the world over will be filing into confessionals every Sunday to whisper to their priests:
“Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have doubted the existence of the gas chambers.”
“Why would you do that, my son?”
“It has been six months since my last confession, and during that time I have been studying the issue.”
“ّWhy would you ‘study’ such rubbish, my son?”
“I was curious, father.”
“Have you not heard the old saying, my son, that ‘curiosity killed the catamite’”?
“No, I never heard that one, father. (Pause.) What’s a catamite?”
“That, my son, is another of those things you shouldn’t be curious about.”
“But why shouldn’t I ask questions about the Holocaust, father?”
“Because it is an article of faith, my son. If a Catholic denies OR doubts any article of faith determined by the Catholic Church, they are a sinful heretic. To be a Catholic is to be believe everything that the Catholic Church teaches. To doubt or deny ANY dogma is to proclaim oneself a Protestant – even if one continues to attend Mass and, God forbid, receive Holy Communion.”
“But father, is the Holocaust really an article of faith?”
“Of course it is, my son. There is no convincing evidence that it ever happened. That means we must accept it on faith. As Tertullian writes in his De Carne Christi: ‘I believe it because it is absurd.’ That certainly applies to the Holocaust.”
“I’m confused, father. What must I believe about the Holocaust?”
“It’s quite simple, son. Holocaustianity is the new Christianity. Instead of Jesus, we worship the Jewish people and their sacred six million. Instead of the Crucifixion, we have the gas chambers. And instead of the Resurrection, we have the state of Israel. That is the new Holy Trinity.”
“Is there a creed I should recite?”
“Indeed there is, my son. It goes like this:
‘I believe in the Holy Jewish People, the only chosen sons of Yahweh, masters of all things visible and invisible.
‘I believe in the sacred six million.
‘I believe in the gas chambers.
‘I support the holy state of Israel.
‘I will bow down to Antichrist, the Jewish messiah, when he comes.
‘And above all, I condemn Hamas.’
“But father, what you’re saying doesn’t sound like what I learned in Sunday school.”
“That was the old church, son. Today’s church is different. It’s new and fresh and irreverent about everything except the Holocaust and above all it’s no longer antisemitic. By the way, have you considered having a sex change?”
The parishioner hastily leaves the confessional, exits the church, and finds himself in the middle of a Hollywood studio lot. The church he just left, he discovers, was a paper maché mock-up, and the priest and parishioners were actors. (Was that Trent Horn playing the priest?) Discombobulated, he tries to find an exit from the studio lot, but it just seems to go on and on forever…
Genocide Denial IS a Sin
The notion of denial involves willful refusal to face an obvious truth. It does not apply to those who ask questions about matters that are far from obvious, including: Were six million Jews really murdered in German concentration camps? How many, if any, died in gas chambers? Were the deaths of German concentration camp inmates part of a preconceived bureaucratic plan to kill all Jews within reach of the German government?
The Jewish father of Holocaust Studies, Raul Hilberg, denied that six million Jews died. The more plausible number, he said, was 5.1 million. Was he “in denial”? Should he have been imprisoned along with others who offer even lower figures? What number is the cutoff, below which one goes to jail or commits a sin?
Mainstream historians have all sorts of different views about the alleged gas chambers and who may have died in them. Should those who hold less than maximalist views be imprisoned, or condemned for sinfulness, alongside those who see no convincing evidence for gas chambers at all?
Mainstream historians also hold widely varying views on whether there was a preconceived bureaucratic plan to kill all Jews within reach of the German government. Should those who argue for a more ad hoc Holocaust be incarcerated (or deemed guilty of mortal sin) alongside those who think that most of the roughly half-million Jews who died in the camps were victims of starvation and deprivation, not gas or bullets?
There is a plausible case that the German government committed genocide against Jews and gypsies during World War II. But all sorts of reasonable positions on the details of that genocide, if indeed it was one, have been criminalized. Though it is a crime in several European countries to discuss those details, calling it a sin seems a bit of a stretch.
Is Denying the Palestinian Genocide a Sin?
The genocide that is currently taking place in Occupied Palestine is one of the most fully-documented events in human history. It is being broadcast on social media and independent media (despite Israel’s relentless slaughter of journalists) 24/7/365. No reasonable person can doubt that the state of Israel is deliberately slaughtering Palestinian civilians en masse in order to facilitate its theft of their land and resources.
According to official body counts, Israel has killed about 42,000 people in Gaza during the past year. More than two-thirds of the dead are women and children, and most of the rest are noncombatants.
But the official body count is unrealistically low. It only includes identified bodies killed directly by the Israeli military. Thousands of other bodies remain buried in rubble, while others are excavated but not identified. And then there tens of thousands more whom Israel kills through starvation or deprivation. The Lancet, a leading medical journal, has estimated the real number of deaths in Gaza as over 186,000. Dr. Gideon Polya, an expert on avoidable mortality, thinks the total is even higher:
On 5 September 2024 Professor Devi Sridhar (chair, global health, University of Edinburgh) reported: “Total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total” or 30,500 per month and 366,000 per year. Of these “first year” deaths about 55,000 were violent (from “bullets and bombs”) and 311,000 from horrific imposed deprivation.
By “horrific deprivation” Professor Sridhar is referring to Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gazans, its destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, and its obliteration of almost all of Gaza’s hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities.
The USA and the West are indeed mired in what might be accurately called “genocide denial.” Most Americans and Westerners prefer to look the other way, deliberately averting their gaze from the sniper-murdered babies and whole families dying slowly beneath rubble created by American tax dollars.
That genocide denial is indeed a sin that puts them not only outside of all faith, but outside of all humanity.
Alison Morrow (formally Westover), an accomplished journalist, found herself in the throes of a legal battle over her right to free speech. Represented by the Silent Majority Foundation, Morrow has filed a lawsuit against the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and its top officials, citing wrongful termination after she was dismissed for airing an interview on her YouTube channel. The channel, a personal project crafted during her tenure as an environmental reporter at KING 5 in Seattle, became the subject of controversy following her post featuring a highly censored doctor, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, and his views on COVID-19.
Morrow’s career at KING 5, which spanned from 2013 to 2019, was marked by significant accolades, including two Emmy awards. Recognized for her independent journalism, DNR was fully aware of her YouTube activities when they recruited her as a communications specialist. Initially, her independent media pursuits were supported by DNR, but the tide turned with her decision to feature Dr. Kheriaty. DNR’s leadership warned Morrow that her continued interviews could lead to termination, a threat she met with a staunch refusal to abandon her First Amendment protections.
Determined to uphold her freedoms of speech, press, and association, Morrow chose to defy DNR’s directive to adhere to approved narratives. This act of resistance ultimately led to her dismissal, prompting her to seek legal assistance from the Silent Majority Foundation, which took up her case to safeguard these fundamental rights.
“The 1st Amendment is one of the most sacred rights of Americans. It is what differentiates our country from most others, that we have the freedom to question our government. It is also central to a free press. I was willing to lose my job – and all that it provided for our family – in order to stand up against the encroaching erosion of this right that I was witnessing at the time, not just in my case but in thousands of others across the country during the pandemic,” Morrow stated. “There was no way to do science or journalism, in the culture of censorship that was driven by our government at the time. That meant millions of people made decisions without informed consent. Given my commitment to seeking truth wherever it leads, I was unwilling to acquiesce to a demand that I remain silent.”
I am suing @waDNR @Hilary_FranzCPL and other Washington state executives for 1st & 14th Amendment violations, demanding I censor doctors and scientists on my personal podcast during Covid in order to keep my job. I refused and was fired in 2021. My case was filed by @smfjb_org on… pic.twitter.com/uUZY04HqHb
NEW YORK – The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has accused the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Belgium of suppressing the right to protest in support of the Palestinian cause. She also condemned Israeli authorities for carrying out dangerous attacks on media personnel in Palestinian territories, criticizing the assassination of journalists.
In a report submitted to the UN General Assembly and the press on Friday, the special rapporteur, Irene Khan—an “independent” expert with the UN since 2020—accused several European countries of imposing measures to restrict freedom of expression and suppress protests against the massacre in Gaza, as well as banning pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Khan, a Bangladeshi lawyer working in human rights, referred to “demonstrations at universities in the United States that were violently suppressed,” mentioning the intervention of riot police in New York at the end of April to disperse dozens of pro-Palestinian activists occupying part of Columbia University.
Regarding European countries, Khan specifically mentioned “Germany, which has imposed a complete ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations since October of last year, along with restrictions on such protests in various regions of Germany since then.” She added that these restrictions have never been imposed on demonstrations in support of Israel, but always on those supporting Palestinians.
She continued that “France attempted to take similar measures, but the courts rejected them, and evaluations are now made on a case-by-case basis,” noting that “Belgium and Canada have adopted similar stances.”
At the beginning of the Israeli extermination war on Gaza over a year ago, the French Interior Ministry called for a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations for fear of public disorder. However, the Council of State, the highest administrative court, urged the French government to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Khan also criticized Israel for “assaults on media in the occupied Palestinian territories—Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem—targeted assassinations of journalists, arbitrary arrests, and numerous cases of destruction of infrastructure and journalistic equipment in Gaza, as well as refusing to allow international press access.”
The independent rapporteur concluded that “the tightening of censorship in Israel and the occupied territories indicates that Israeli authorities have a strategy to silence critical journalism.”
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation, with unlimited American support, has been waging an extermination war on Gaza, resulting in over 142,000 dead and injured, the majority of whom are women and children, 10,000 missing, massive destruction of infrastructure, and a deadly famine.
The level of calmness of the Palestinians has cast doubt on what once seemed like the predestined fate of the Palestinian struggle.
A year has passed since Netanyahu, who considered himself the dictator of the entire Middle East, began to destroy its peoples first in Gaza and then in Lebanon, engaging periodic murderous operations against Syria, Yemen and Iran. No one expected that one year would be sufficient in returning to the Palestinian cause its priority on the world stage and that millions of people globally would unite again in the struggle for Palestinian freedom.
The past year has seen the Israeli genocide in Gaza and unprecedented violence in the West Bank, as well as legendary displays of Palestinian ‘sumud’ (Arabic for ‘resilience’). It is not the scale of the Israeli bloodbath, but the degree of Palestinian resilience that has called into question what once seemed the predestined fate of the Palestinian struggle. However, it turned out that the last chapter on Palestine was not yet ready to be written and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be its author.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israeli military capabilities. The typical policy of Israel’s relations with the occupied Palestinians was based on unhindered Israeli violence, unconditional Western assistance and the ’deafening silence’ of the international community. To a large extent, only Netanyahu determined the timing and objectives of the war. Until recently, his opponents seemed to have no say in the matter. This is, though, not the case anymore. Israel’s war crimes are now being met by Palestinian unity, Arab, Muslim and international solidarity and the first – and quite serious –signs of legal responsibility.
This is not likely what Netanyahu had hoped for. Just a few days before the aggression against Lebanon began, he stood in the UN General Assembly hall with a map of the ‘New Middle East’, a map on which Palestine and Palestinians were completely erased. “We should not give the Palestinians the right to veto new peace agreements with Arab states”, he said, “since Palestinians make up only 2% of the Arab world”. His arrogance was not long-lasting, as this ‘triumphant’ moment was brief.
Battered by numerous troubles inside and outside Israel and being unsuccessful in the war against the Arab world, Netanyahu is now most concerned about his own political survival. He is waging war to avoid humiliating his army in Gaza, and he is terrified by the prospect of an arrest warrant being issued by the International Criminal Court. While the International Court of Justice continues to examine the ever-growing dossier accusing Israel of deliberate genocide in the Gaza Strip, the UN General Assembly has decided that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year.
Netanyahu, who has worked tirelessly to normalise the Israeli occupation of Palestine, must be extremely disappointed that he has faced complete and deafening international rejection of his plans. The advisory opinion of the UN International Court of Justice, issued in July, stating that the Israeli occupation is illegal, was another blow to Tel Aviv, which, despite the unlimited support of the United States, could not change the international consensus on the illegality of the occupation.
What awaits the Palestinians?
In addition to relentless Israeli violence, the Palestinian people have also found themselves on the side-lines of political life. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, their fate has largely been entrusted to the generally unelected Palestinian leadership, which has over time monopolised the Palestinian cause for its own financial and political gain. The resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killings, deliberate starvation and the total destruction of all aspects of life, helps in confirming the political significance of the long-marginalised nation. This shift is fundamental, as it contradicts everything Netanyahu has tried to achieve. In the years leading up to the war, Israel seemed to be writing the final chapter of its colonial project on Palestine. It subdued or co-opted the Palestinian leadership, tightened the blockade of Gaza, and was ready to annex most of the West Bank.
Gaza was the least of Israel’s problems; any discussions about it were limited to the hermetic Israeli blockade and the humanitarian – but not political – crisis caused by it.
While the Palestinians in Gaza relentlessly called on the world to pressure Israel into ending the protracted siege that began in 2007, in the Gaza Strip Tel Aviv continued to pursue a policy in accordance with the infamous logic of former senior Israeli official Dov Waisglass, who explained the purpose of the blockade as putting the Palestinians on a diet, but not letting them starve to death.
But a year after the start of the war, the Palestinians, thanks to their resilience, have become the centre of any serious discussion about the peaceful future of the Middle East. The collective courage and strength of the Palestinians have neutralised the ability of the Israeli military to achieve political results through violence. However, the number of dead, missing or wounded in Gaza has likely already exceeded 150,000 people. The Gaza Strip, which was already poor and dilapidated, lies in ruins. All mosques, churches and hospitals have been destroyed or severely damaged. Most of the educational infrastructure has been destroyed. However, Israel has not achieved any of its strategic objectives, which ultimately fall under one goal: to permanently silence the Palestinians in their quest for freedom.
Despite the incredible pain and loss, there is now a powerful force uniting the Palestinians around achieving their freedom, also uniting Arabs and the whole world around Palestine. The consequences of this will last for many years, even after Netanyahu and like-minded extremists have left. Here a difficult question arises: in the future, how will the Israelis be able to peacefully coexist with the Palestinians, when, previously, the essence of the Israeli leadership’s policy was aimed at seizing the entirety of Palestine, killing or at least expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland?
The Disinformation Project, launched in early 2020 in New Zealand as a “disinformation research” group, but slammed by critics as seeking to usher in ideological censorship, is no more.
The project is the product of the Covid era, initially focused on what was at the time considered “disinformation” but then branching out to things like vaccine skepticism in general, climate change – and, apparently, even local politics.
The group, which coordinated with the New Zealand government, described its activities as research and analyses of all manner of “extreme conspiratorial beliefs” as well as their compatriots’ “descent” into those.
Critics, however, point out that silencing the opposition, including by supporting “hate speech” laws, was among the activities of the now-shut-down endeavor that was led by Kate Hannah.
These critics accuse the Disinformation Project of moving from being a handy tool for the New Zealand government to spread its narratives promoting COVID-19 measures (some of the most restrictive in the world), to becoming a political weapon promoting a certain agenda.
Back in April, some commentators were concerned about where the Disinformation Project’s shift from the “abandoned pandemic” to political influencing might lead.
We now know that it has led to the group’s demise – but it is only one of the many similar efforts that appeared during the Covid era around the world.
A specific accusation against this one comes from New Zealand-based journalist Chris Lynch, who claims that Hannah, along with Sanjana Hattotuwa, attempted to effectively manipulate the 2023 election in the country by influencing the media via “secretive briefings.”
This didn’t succeed in this instance because they got “called out” – but over the past four years, the Disinformation Project has been accused of getting increasingly desperate to stay relevant, and finding ways to do that, with the policies it pushed accepted without critical examination by the legacy media.
Lynch is optimistic that the demise of this project and the rise of some that challenge the established media-political narratives means that New Zealand has turned the corner when it comes to censorship disguised as concern for democracy and the fight against “disinformation.”
However, it’s equally possible that where one such outfit exits the scene, another, under a different name and leadership but with the same purpose, might take its place.
The US Special Operations Command is allegedly looking for contractors to create deepfake internet users that neither humans nor computers could detect, media reported.
In particular, the command is interested in solving the problem of verifying users on social networks, so it is looking for technology that can create selfies and official documentation to bypass these checks, the report read. Special operations troops “will use this capability to gather information from public online forums,” the media reported on Thursday, citing the command’s plan.
“Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content … [users must] appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” the report added.
However, these plans ran counter to the official position of the US government, since the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Security Agency have previously called deepfakes a threat.
Israeli sharpshooters shot and critically injured Al-Jazeera cameraman, Fadi Al-Wahidi, and injured another journalist, while two others were killed while they were covering occupation forces’ assault in and around the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 9, 2024.
The occupation army snipers targeted a group of journalists in the Jabalia refugee camp while they were performing their duties, shooting Al-Wahidi in the neck with live ammunition, causing permanent paralysis.
Al-Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif posted on his X account that “Israeli forces shot at the Al Jazeera crew, and the network’s photographer, our beloved colleague Fadi al-Wahidi, was injured by a sniper’s bullet in the neck during our coverage.”
On the same day, Israeli forces killed the photojournalist, Mohammad Al-Tanani and the journalist, Omar al-Balawi after targeting a group of journalists documenting the occupation’s massacres in Jabalia.
Tamer Labad, Al-Aqsa TV journalist was also shot by Israeli fire during the same incident, while covering the bombardment and ground invasion of the Jabalia refugee camp.
Al-Jazeera, in a statement affirmed that the targeting of journalists is a violation of international laws protecting the press and humanitarian workers in war zones.
The UK government and police – the British state – made clear today they are waging a war of intimidation against the country’s independent journalists in a desperate attempt to silence them.
Ten Metropolitan police officers made a dawn raid on the home of investigative journalist Asa Winstanley and seized his electronic devices under the UK’s draconian Terrorism Act. A letter from the Met indicates that the associate editor of the Electronic Intifada is being investigated by the force for “encouraging terrorism”.
The raid isn’t about terrorism – except the UK government’s. It’s about scaring us into staying silent on Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide.
Winstanley is the latest – and most high profile – independent journalist to be targeted by counter-terrorism police in recent weeks. Earlier, Richard Medhurst was arrested at Heathrow airport on returning to the UK from a trip abroad. Then Sarah Wilkinson was arrested and her home ransacked.
Winstanley has repeatedly embarrassed the British establishment by exposing its covert and deep ties to Israel and its collusion with the Israeli lobby.
In his book Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, Winstanley exposed in shocking detail how antisemitism was weaponised against the former Labour leader.
The book would have made uncomfortable reading for his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, now Britain’s prime minister, because it documents his role in the smear campaign.
While in opposition, Starmer’s Labour party threatened to expel Winstanley as a member – he resigned in protest instead – and have made legal threats against him.
As the Electronic Intifada website notes: “Now that Labour is the UK’s ruling party, it has the potential to use the apparatus of the state against those it views as its own – or Israel’s – political enemies.”
There is precisely no reason for police to raid Winstanley’s home or seize his electronic devices. The preposterous accusation of “encouraging terrorism” clearly relates to his online work, which is fully in the public domain.
The British state wants to insinuate through the dawn raid and confiscation of his devices that he is somehow harbouring secret or classified information, or in illicit contact with terror groups, and that incriminating evidence will be forthcoming from searches of those devices.
It won’t. If there were any real suspicion that Winstanley had such information, the police would have arrested him rather than making a public show of a 6am raid and search they knew beforehand would turn up nothing.
This isn’t about terrorism at all. It is about frightening those opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the West’s collusion in it, into silence. If the British state is going after someone like Winstanley, you are supposed to conclude, they will surely soon come for me too.
Even the name of the “counter-terrorism” raid is performative: “Operation Incessantness”. The message the state wants to send is that it will not rest till it has us all behind bars.
Don’t believe this nonsense. The police have nothing on Winstanley. Exposing information about Israel and its genocide, and the British government’s culpability, is not a crime. At least not yet.
They want you to think it is, of course. They want you scared and mute. Because every time you go out and protest, you remind the world that the British government, and their bully-boys in blue, are the real criminals – for enabling genocide.
Dockworkers in Greece have blocked the shipment of an ammunition-filled container destined for Israel, refusing to load the cargo onto a vessel at the Port of Piraeus, Anadolu Agency reports.
The container, reportedly transported to Greece via North Macedonia, was meant to be shipped to Israel’s Haifa Port.
However, in response to calls from local labour unions, dockworkers at the Piraeus Port gathered and took a firm stance, preventing the shipment from proceeding.
According to Greek State Television, ERT, the workers had written “Murderers, get out of the port” on the container and voiced their solidarity with the Palestinian people, chanting slogans such as “Freedom for Palestine”.
Markos Bekris, the president of the Piraeus Port Trade Union, released a statement condemning the shipment of ammunition intended for the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
“We have decided not to allow the shipment of war ammunition from the Port of Piraeus that will continue the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Bekris said, emphasizing that the workers would not stain their hands “with the blood of the Palestinian people”.
Bekris also urged Greece to halt any involvement in the conflict, calling for an immediate cessation of the country’s participation. “We demand that our country immediately stop engaging in the war,” he added.
Israel has continued a brutal offensive on Gaza following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, on 7 October last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
More than 42,400 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 99,100 injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
Israeli settlers today attacked vehicles belonging to Palestinian residents of Yatma village, south of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank.
According to the Wafa news agency, the settlers attempted to assault passengers, escalating tensions in the area. Although no injuries have been confirmed, the atmosphere remains tense as residents fear further violence from Israeli settlers.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident in Al-Khader, near Bethlehem, an Israeli settler assaulted a local Palestinian family while they were harvesting olives. The settler forced the family to leave their land threatening them with a weapon, warning they would be arrested if they returned.
This olive harvesting season in the West Bank has seen repeated settler attacks, including violence against farmers, restricted land access and damage or theft of olive trees and crops.
According to UN OCHA figures released this week, since the beginning of October 2024, 51 settler-related attacks on Palestinians and their properties have been recorded, including 32 that led to casualties, property damage or both, which took place in 57 communities across the occupied West Bank. The majority of the incidents were related to the olive harvest season whereby Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians or prevented them from gaining access to their lands and damaged trees, stole crops and harvesting tools.
It added that since 1 October 2024, 54 Palestinians were injured within the context of settler attacks against Palestinians, including 44 by Israeli settlers and ten by Israeli occupation forces. Furthermore, about 600 (mainly olive) trees and saplings were burnt, sawed off, had their crops stolen, or otherwise vandalised, affecting Palestinian farmers in about 15 communities across the West Bank.
Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, addressed parliament yesterday and justified Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza.
‘Self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them. When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools… civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it.’
This, however, is not true, according to human rights lawyer, Craig Mokhiber. The former senior UN human rights official told MEMO claims that Israel has a right to ‘self-defence’ in Gaza don’t have a standing in international law.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, strongly condemned the statements made by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday, in which she claimed that “Israel” can target civilians in Gaza for “self-defense.”
In a statement, Hamas said the “German government is unashamed of the targeting of civilians and hospitals as long as it provides security for Israel, and this is part of its commitments.”
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contemplated implementing the Generals’ Plan in Gaza, backed by former Israeli Defence Forces planning and operations chief General Giora Eiland who has described the siege as “compliant with international law”. The plan, Eiland explained, would give Palestinians a week to evacuate and anyone who remains becomes a legitimate military target.
This week, Axiosreported that Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant assured US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that the Generals’ Plan would not be implemented. Presumably, the US is now reassured that Palestinians in Gaza will not be starved by Israel, nor considered legitimate military targets.
Can we consider for just a few seconds that Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to lay siege to and starve Palestinians, and encourage its soldiers to kill them? As macabre as the plan might sound, it is also another weapon of alienation used by governments to silence the cries of genocide, even as Israel is still committing genocide.
Palestinians are being starved already. That’s a fact.
Besieging, forcibly displacing and crowding them into increasingly smaller pockets of land makes it easier for Israel to kill more civilians with a single air strike. That’s a fact too. Burning them to death in tents? Fact. Does Israel really need to bring up the Generals’ Plan?
“What matters to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is land and dignity, and with this manoeuvre, you take away both land and dignity,” is how Eiland summed up the plan. Yahya Sinwar does not constitute the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, and Israel has been stealing Palestinian land since its inception and before; the early Zionist colonial settlers were laying the foundations of land appropriation for the settler-colonial, genocidal project. Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to remove land and dignity. It has been stealing land for decades but, despite colonising Palestine, Israel can never strip Palestinians of their dignity. It is Israel that is entirely without dignity; a grubby monstrosity that needs to stand in front of a mirror and terrify itself with its own image.
Last month, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that 83 per cent of food aid is not allowed by the occupation state to enter Gaza. The US is not concerned with the ongoing starvation, which is already tangible, but with the possible implementation of the Generals’ Plan. Likewise, the US is not concerned about stating that a military campaign cannot defeat an ideology, with reference to Hamas, but can still make itself complicit in a military campaign to kill thousands of Palestinians in a genocide that world leaders are conveniently ignoring. Sickeningly, the US Department of State has claimed that it cannot say whether burning Palestinians to death can be considered to be another war crime committed by Israel.
In the midst of all this doublespeak, what are the assurances for Palestinians?
The Generals’ Plan may or may not be implemented, but the genocide continues as Israel picks and chooses how it empties Gaza of Palestinians.
Instead of getting caught up in speculation, why not focus on the fact that Israel is carrying out a livestreamed genocide in Gaza which world leaders are still reluctant to call out? The psychological manipulation of Israel mulling over the Generals’ Plan needs to be exposed and challenged. Starvation is no less terrifying if it lacks a grandiose name. The truth is that Israel no longer needs a plan when it is allowed to act with apparently endless impunity.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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Al Mayadeen | October 16, 2024
