White House Ignored Warning from Pentagon, State Dept that Israel Was Creating a Catastrophe in Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 7, 2024
Recently released emails from Reuters show that officials in the White House ignored warnings from their counterparts at the Defense and State Department warning that Israel was committing war crimes and creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Reuters reviewed emails from the Departments of Defense and State from last October, showing that high-ranking officials warned about supporting Israel as it committed war crimes in Gaza.
“As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House, the outlet reported. “The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel.”
The warning came from Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in an Oct. 13 email sent to senior White House aides. She explained an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone.”
Stroul and other officials were pushing the White House to take a more sympathetic position on the suffering of Palestinians and ask Israel to give Gazans more time to comply with Tel Aviv’s evacuation orders.
While the Biden administration claims that it did pressure Israel early in the onslaught and that did make a difference, Reuters reports that the White House had little impact on Tel Aviv’s military operations.
“But Washington was slow to address the suffering of Palestinians, said three senior U.S. officials involved in the decision-making process,” the article explains. “And while the ground invasion was ultimately delayed by about 10 days, the three officials attributed the pause more to operational preparations by the Israeli military than U.S. pressure.”
In one concerning email exchange, officials asked the White House to pressure Israel to extend the deadline for one million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza beyond 24 hours. A top Biden official, Brett McGurk responded by telling Egypt to prepare to receive refugees from Gaza.
“In an email replying to Stroul, McGurk said Washington might be able to persuade Israel to extend the deadline for Palestinians to evacuate beyond 24 hours,” saying the administration “can buy some time.” “But the Red Cross, the UN and aid agencies should work with Egypt and Israel to prepare for the evacuation, he wrote,” according to Reuters.
When the request for a more sympathetic position towards the Palestinians was relayed to the White House, it was also rejected.
Reuters reports the State Department’s top Middle East diplomat, Barbara Leaf, sent an email to White House officials including Brett McGurk, Biden’s top Mid East aide. Her main concern was the damage Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, along with US support, was doing to Washington’s relationship with its Mid East Arab partners.
McGurk interpreted the email as a request for a ceasefire and replied, “no.”
66-yr-old Palestinian beaten, killed by Israeli occupation forces

MEMO | October 7, 2024
Sixty-six-year-old Palestinian activist, Ziad Abu Ehlayyel, was killed after being brutally beaten by Israeli occupation forces during a raid on his home in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, south-west of Hebron.
According to security sources, Israeli forces stormed Abu Ehlayyel’s home this morning and violently assaulted him until he lost consciousness. Despite being rushed to Dura Hospital, medical staff were unable to save him and he was pronounced dead due to the extent of his injuries.
Abu Ehlayyel was a respected community figure who had been subjected to multiple assaults by Israeli occupation forces during past raids into the town.
Quds News Network shared an archival video showing Abu Ehlayyel confronting Israeli soldiers, pleading with them to stop firing at Palestinian children. In the footage, he can be heard saying: “We don’t want you to shoot anyone, we don’t want you to kill anyone; this is a nonviolent procession, why do you keep shooting at them? Why don’t you stop your settlers from attacking us?”
Tensions have been running high across the occupied West Bank amid a brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 41,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since 7 October last year.
Today marks one year since the Israeli offensive began, leaving over 97,300 wounded and more than 10,000 people still missing, presumed dead under the rubble.
In the occupied West Bank, the violence has also escalated. Since 7 October 2023, at least 742 Palestinians have been killed, more than 6,200 injured and over 11,100 others detained in the occupied territory, according to Palestinian figures.
The Israeli escalation follows a landmark opinion by the International Court of Justice last July that declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land unlawful and demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Misinformation Bill will harm Australians and protect bad governments
JoNova | September 30, 2024
The Misinformation Bill is not just wholly unnecessary, it’s an abject travesty. How did such a preposterous overbearing, undemocratic, anti-science and dangerous piece of legislation get past the first focus group? It wouldn’t survive a high-school debate, and yet, here it is?
Misinformation is easy to correct when you own a billion dollar news agency, most academics, institutions, expert committees and 25% of the economy. The really hard thing, even with all that power and money is to defend an absurd lie and stop people pointing it out, which is surely the main purpose of the Misinformation Bill amendments. The government can already correct any misinformation that really matters, so these amendments curtail our freedom of speech for no benefit at all.
Guilty until proven innocent?
The amendments turn free speech on its head — instead of having the implicit right to criticize the government, everyone now needs to prove to some judge that their views are “reasonably” satire, or reasonable dissemination for an “academic, scientific or religious” purpose, and that their “motive” is honest and their behaviour is “authentic”.
When it comes to reasonableness in a democracy the highest court should be the court of public opinion, but how can the people decide if they are not allowed to hear it?
How is it even a democracy still if the government is allowed to take our money to force feed us the government’s view on the ABC and in every captured university (dependent on government funds), but the people cannot even reply through sheer unfunded creative wit?
This legislation puts a very unfree cloud over all groups, forums, blogs, and social media.
The fines (and all legal fees today) are so obscenely, disproportionately harmful to Australians that few will risk going to court, instead the platforms will be preemptively second guessing what a judge might say is reasonable, and people with serious social media accounts will be second guessing the second-guesses of their platform controllers in fear that they might be thrown off, and lose years of work if they guess wrongly.
Worse, the big platforms, supposedly so “independent” will become unaccountable but de facto arms of the government. The platforms will know if they don’t perform as expected and favorably to the incumbent masters, that the rules will get more onerous, the fines bigger. And thus and verily the unholy alliance of Big-Tech and Big-Government will become Big-Brother in your conversations, and Big Bankrupter in your nightmares.
The government claim they are not censoring anyone, but it’s just done at arms length with “implausible” deniability. Obviously the laws will censor all of us who are not already controlled by ACMA or the government through a public salary, a grant, or a Code of Practice written into the the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act.
Who silences the government misinformation, then?
We were there when the government experts told us margarine with hydrogenated fake vegetable fat would be great for our hearts. We heard them when they told us an ice age was coming, and antibiotics were useless against stomach ulcers. We noticed they told us to hold off on the peanut butter for babies to prevent allergies, only to find out that all these things were misinformation.
What happens when the experts are wrong, but the people who are unconvinced can’t speak up because they might “harm… the efficacy of a preventative health measure”? These health measures may take a … lifetime… to even measure the efficacy. Does the government get a free pass for 40 years?
It was estimated dietary trans fats (found in margarine) were killing 82,000 people a year in the US. (Danaei et al 2009). Should we have fined all the people who talked about this, and perhaps delayed things, and killed a half a million more? Someone speaking against hydrogenated margarine could have been deemed to be spreading “misinformation causing harm to public health in Australia”. So 20 years later, they turn out to be right — will the government compensate the families of the dead who might have chosen a different sandwich spread had they heard another opinion and been able to make up their own mind?
Will Facebook and Twitter need to block the accounts of experts who were wrong? Or, are there two kinds of citizens in Australia — one sort that work for the government, who can give their opinions and get things wrong without losing their right to speak, and the Untermenschen, who cannot speak, even if they are right?
Confidence has to be earned, not ordered
Apparently the citizens of Australia are not allowed to say anything that might harm the confidence in the banking system or the financial markets. But if our banking system is so fragile, or our currency so fake, that it needs a law to force people to “feel confident” then we are in a trouble already.
Nothing damages confidence like making a law to silence critics.
As adults, we filter misinformation our whole lives, it’s our job
We are all adults in this room, and we have lived our whole lives filtering out advertising spin, ignoring political lies, and reading books telling us we can stop storms if we just ride a bike. Since the stone-age we’ve spent our lives climbing from one misinformation-swamp to another, but as adults, it’s our job to figure it out. Free will and all. How dare you treat us like children.
And even the children about to enter the room have to learn how to deal with misinformation. How exactly can we teach them, if the government serves up one permitted line to protect us from accidentally hearing something “wrong”?
It’s not just that this misinformation bill is egregiously wrong, it’s that we shouldn’t have one at all in the first place.
REFERENCES
Danaei et al (2009) The preventable causes of death in the United States: comparative risk assessment of dietary, lifestyle, and metabolic risk factors, PLoS Med, . 2009 Apr 28;6(4):e1000058. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000058. Epub 2009 Apr 28.
Melania Trump Reveals She Was Debanked and Banned From Her Business Email Provider
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 6, 2024
In a Sunday interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, former First Lady Melania Trump revealed the challenges she faced post-White House, highlighting how her political affiliations led to punitive measures from various service providers, including her bank and an email service provider. This issue casts a light on the increasing trend of “debanking” and “deplatforming”—a form of censorship that has seen individuals and entities cut off from essential financial and communication services for non-criminal reasons.
“You know, this pushback from so many areas of your life that you never saw before, but suddenly the powers that be wanted to cancel you,” stated Bartiromo, probing into the unexpected hurdles encountered by Trump.
Melania Trump detailed several instances of this cancellation, noting, “the bank suddenly informed me they will not be able to do business with me anymore.” Moreover, she described how an “email distribution service provider just rapidly terminated my agreement.” These cancellations, according to Trump, were due to her political beliefs and affiliations, revealing a troubling trend of service denial as a political weapon.
This has not only affected Trump but also extended its impact to philanthropic efforts. She recounted an incident involving a university that initially accepted her donations for foster students’ scholarships but later reneged upon realizing her involvement. “They didn’t want to do business with me because of political affiliation, my political beliefs,” Trump said, pointing out the real victims of this decision—”children from the foster community.”
The phenomenon of debanking is increasingly recognized as a tool of exclusion and censorship, impacting individuals and organizations worldwide. While traditionally associated with financial crimes or risk management, it is now frequently weaponized against those a provider believes have controversial or unpopular political views. This growing form of censorship raises significant concerns about the neutrality of service providers and the broader implications for free speech and political engagement in a highly polarized era.
Despite facing significant setbacks, Trump remains optimistic about changing attitudes towards this suppressive trend. “I think some people got the courage and they said, like, they see it, what’s going on. They are not afraid to speak, but it’s still going on,” she acknowledged, showing a mix of resistance and ongoing challenges.
EU Uses Digital Services Act to Probe YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat Algorithms for Censorship Compliance
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 6, 2024
“Illegal drugs” is a very well-defined category in the EU. “Hate speech,” on the other hand, is not. Yet, the bloc is lumping these together as it builds another case for putting even more pressure on major social platforms and demands more data from them.
The EU is doing this via the censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and is this time targeting YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. In the tone and nature of the demands, the EU puts them in two groups here: two companies from the US, and one from China.
Previously, the EU launched DSA non-compliance proceedings against TikTok, AliExpress, but also Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.
The EU Commission this week announced that the “request for information” pertains to these tech platforms’ (algorithmic)recommendations, specifically, their design and functioning.
These companies are reminded that the DSA obligates them to “adequately mitigate risks stemming from their recommender systems” – and here we go into the usual list, starting with how recommendations might influence users’ mental health, risks to the electoral process, endanger minors, all the way to what the EU says is illegal content – “such as promoting illegal drugs and hate speech.”
Here, the demand is also to explain what is being done to “mitigate” the harm, as the EU chooses to understand it.
This last demand is addressed to YouTube and Snapchat, which must give the EU “detailed” information regarding algorithmic parameters that decide what is recommended to users.
The emphasis of the pressure being put on TikTok is a little different. Brussels wants to know what the video platform is doing to stop manipulation of elections, media, etc. – again, in terms of the recommendations system.
An EU Commission press release said the deadline to provide this information is November 15, and warns the three companies they might – depending on how the EU likes the answers – become subject to proceedings under the DSA.
The Commission wasted no opportunity to remind YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok that one of the DSA articles means possible fines if they respond to a request for information (RFI) in a manner that is “incorrect, incomplete, or misleading.”
Cheerleaders of EU policies on these matters hope that something of the sort will take root in the US as well, despite the fact that “hate speech,” for example, is not criminalized there.
American Killed By Israeli Bombardment of Lebanon

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 6, 2024
A Michigan man is one of more than one thousand people in southern Lebanon killed by Israel over the past two weeks. Israel has conducted massive bombardments of its northern neighbor, often using American weapons to perform the operations.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad was killed in southern Lebanon Tuesday morning, according to his family. He frequently made trips where he provided financial support and other assistance to the people of southern Lebanon.
Israel has ramped up its attacks in Lebanon over the past several weeks. Last month, Tel Aviv conducted multiple widespread terror attacks by planting explosives in small electric devices. Then, Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after he accepted a ceasefire deal.
The assassination of Nasrallah kicked off a large-scale bombing campaign and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel has hit a number of civilian targets, often claiming some kind of Hezbollah assets were hidden in homes and other structures.
The State Department said it was “aware and alarmed” regarding Jawad’s death, but did not go on to condemn or threaten Tel Aviv for the murder.
Throughout the Joe Biden administration, there has been a distinct difference in reaction compared to when Americans are killed by Israel or if they are killed by a militant in a resistance group.
For example, the State Department regularly mentions the Americans who were killed and captured by Hamas on October 7 to justify the unlimited US support for Israel. However, when Israeli forces kill Americans, the White House allows Tel Aviv to investigate itself and accepts the often dubious results of the inquiry that absolves Israeli forces of any wrongdoing.
Gaza: Israeli army kills another journalist, raising the toll to 175 martyrs

Palestinian Information Center – October 6, 2024
GAZA – Another Palestinian journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, bringing the death toll of martyred media workers since last October 7, 2023 to 175, Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) said on Sunday.
In a statement, GMO identified the new slain journalist as Hasan Hamad, who works for Media Town, saying he was martyred following an Israeli airstrike on his house in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
GMO strongly denounced the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation forces, calling on the international community and its organizations to “deter the occupation and prosecute it at international courts for its ongoing crimes.”
Germany’s Green Minister Targets Algorithms: Baerbock’s Latest Bid to Suppress Populist Rise
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2024
Even in the world of the EU’s often perplexing politics, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (of the Greens) stands out. And while she may “excel” at political gaffes – a passion for protecting free speech doesn’t seem to be among her strong suits.
Instead, with a seemingly straight face, Baerbock is now joining the legion of politicians urging for even more social media censorship, as a distinctly counter-intuitive way to “protect” democracy.
Baerbock wants the EU to do the heavy lifting on behalf of Germany’s current authorities this time as well, and one of the arguments the minister uses is that what she considers to be “disinformation” is allowing what she calls populist parties to grow in – popularity.
It should be a basic democratic principle that no party or political grouping can stay in power forever, so this kind of underlying “argument” smacks of authoritarian, rather than democratic traditions.
When one strips away Baerbock’s latest rant about fake news, disinformation, and attacks that are “disintegrating our democratic reality” (whatever that may mean) – what is left is the “problem” of the success of the opposition AfD party, and the German authorities’ inability to counter it with meaningful policies, therefore resorting to anything from name-calling, to open censorship.
On Monday, Baerbock turned to the European Commission to ask for “new rules” around what she and her political comrades consider to be disinformation. At this point, even the Commission – the enforcer of the infamous censorship law, the DSA, might have been thinking – “but what more can we do?”
If that was the case, it didn’t last long. As soon as on Wednesday, the EC “summoned” three major social media companies and demanded information about their algorithmic recommendations.
It might just be a coincidence, but algorithms were on Baerbock’s brain the day before, too. Reports say she suggested that Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution team up with the EC, against “algorithms that work against democracy.”
‘Crimes beyond comprehension’: US doctors recount horrors of Israeli war on Gaza
Press TV – October 5, 2024
A group of 99 American physicians, who volunteered to work in Gaza, rejected Israeli allegations of military activity in the territory’s hospitals, calling on the Biden administration to immediately halt all military, economic, and diplomatic support for the Tel Aviv regime.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the volunteers, who collectively dedicated 254 weeks to Gaza’s healthcare facilities, recounted dire humanitarian conditions amid ongoing Israeli offensives, describing their experiences as witnessing “crimes beyond comprehension.”
“We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian military activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities,” they stated in the letter.
Previously, Hamas had dismissed Israeli claims regarding the al-Shifa hospital, once the largest medical facility in Gaza.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the political bureau of Hamas, stated that the Israeli allegations that the Gaza-based resistance group is using the hospital for military purposes lack credibility.
The physicians called attention to Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, stating that their colleagues were targeted with “torture, disappearance, and murder” in the besieged area.
The letter detailed the suffering faced by Gazan women and children in hospitals, highlighting severe malnutrition and a critical shortage of medical supplies.
The doctors referenced a July study from the medical journal Lancet that said the death toll in Gaza has already surpassed 118,000, marking more than 5% of its population.
“Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved,” Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse practitioner, recounted.
“Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many,” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, reflected in the letter.
The doctors condemned “Israel’s continued, repeated” displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, particularly children, into areas devoid of basic necessities like water and sanitation, calling it “absolutely shocking.”
“It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year, is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities,” they said.
The doctors urged the Biden administration to support an international arms embargo on Israel until a permanent ceasefire is established.
They also requested a meeting with Biden and Harris to discuss their observations and advocate for a fundamental shift in American policy regarding West Asia.
Additionally, the signatories reiterated their earlier calls from their July 25 letter, including reopening the Rafah crossing to allow humanitarian aid, including water and medical supplies, into Gaza.
“Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets,” they said.
Israel has killed at least 41,825 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since October 2023.
The Israeli war machine ignited its genocidal campaign by targeting helpless Palestinians trapped in the coastal territory.
It was after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas conducted surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against the Palestinians.
IS EUGENICS MAKING A COMEBACK?
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 3, 2024
From loss of life for the greater good to sterilizations to medically assisted suicide, world government’s role in population control has become a matter for humanity. Is eugenics no longer being hidden in western culture?
‘Biggest West Bank massacre in decades’: Israel bombs crowded Tulkarem café

(Photo credit: AFP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh)
The Cradle | October 4, 2024
Israel bombed a café in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem late on 3 October, killing at least 20 in what is being described as the worst massacre in the territory since the Second Intifada.
Among those killed were a woman, her husband, and their child.
A Quds Brigades commander, Ghaith Radwan, and a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Zahi al-Aoufi, were killed in the indiscriminate attack on Tulkarem.
“In the attack, a number of key operatives who were also active in the terrorist infrastructure in Tulkarem were eliminated,” the Israeli army and Shin Bet security service said in a joint statement.
Aoufi was reportedly the head of Hamas’ organization structure in Tulkarem. “He provided weapons to terrorist operatives in the area and planned to carry out numerous attacks on settlements in the West Bank and deep inside Israel,” according to Yedioth Ahronoth.
Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at the café in Tulkarem’s Hamam neighborhood on Thursday night as it was packed with civilians, according to WAFA news agency’s correspondent.
Civil defense teams and ambulances immediately rushed to transport the casualties to the city’s Thabet Thabet Government Hospital.
WAFA news agency referred to it as the biggest massacre in the occupied West Bank in over 24 years.
The Israeli army launched a massive operation against several West Bank cities on 28 August. The camps of the West Bank witnessed numerous military incursions, indiscriminate airstrikes and massacres, and assassinations.
Abu Shujaa, the late commander of the Quds Brigades’ Tulkarem branch, was assassinated by Israel on 29 August.
The latest massacre in Tulkarem comes as Israel continues its brutal assault across Lebanon, which has killed around 2,000 and displaced over a million.
Hours before the attack, the US State Department warned that Israeli escalation in Lebanon could lead to a tense situation in the occupied West Bank.
