Israel’s documented torture and abuse of Palestinians may evoke comparisons to US tactics employed during the Iraqi occupation, but a closer look reveals their distinct origins rooted in the Zionist entity.
Just five days after the start of the war on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers detained three Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank village of Wadi al-Seeq. Stripped down to their underwear, they were then blindfolded, savagely beaten with an iron pipe, photographed in their humiliation, and subjected to the ultimate indignity of being urinated upon.
One victim, Mohammad Matar, recounting the ordeal to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, likened the barbarity to the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. “It’s exactly like what happened there,” he stated. “Abu Ghraib with the [Israeli] army.”
The sexual humiliation and torture of Palestinians continued – and expanded – following Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza two weeks later. Soon, Israeli soldiers were detaining and humiliating large groups of Palestinian men and women, subjecting them to sexual abuse across various detention facilities.
On 21 February, Khaled al-Shawish became the ninth Palestinian to die while in Israeli prisons since 7 October, likely due to torture.
However, similarities between the torture perpetrated against Palestinians now and against Iraqis 20 years before in Iraq come as no surprise. Israel and the torture techniques its intelligence services pioneered over decades of occupation played an important and largely overlooked role in the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, most notably through the use of sexual humiliation and rape.
Civilian contractors
In the chaotic aftermath of the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had no prior experience in prison management, found herself overseeing Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities – 15 in total, in southern and central Iraq. Though military police (MPs) under her command were ill-equipped for interrogation, Major General Geoffrey Miller, infamous for his tenure at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray, advocated for their involvement in the process.
Karpinski stated that after Miller’s visit, large numbers of civilian contractors began arriving at Abu Ghraib to conduct interrogations. These civilian contractors then gave orders to the low-level reservist MPs who carried out the torture depicted in the notorious torture photos that were later leaked to the media.
She notes further that the MPs seen torturing and humiliating Iraqis in the leaked images were deployed to Abu Ghraib just before the first photographs were taken. This means they began torturing Iraqi prisoners in sophisticated ways immediately upon arrival at the prison:
They replaced the national guard unit serving there because they had been deployed for a year. Soldiers don’t just decide one morning, ‘hey, let’s go to abuse some prisoners’ … The date-stamp on some of the photographs is late October, November. So what happened?
Among the contractors interrogating prisoners were employees of the private security firm CACI. One of the interrogators, Eric Fair, was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in the restive city of Fallujah in 2004. He said interrogators in Iraq were taught to use a torture device known as the “Palestinian chair” by the Israeli military during a joint training exercise.
In January of that year, CACI president Jack London traveled to Israel as part of a high-level delegation of US Congressmen, defense contractors, and pro-Israel lobbyists.
During the visit, then-Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented London with an award at a gala dinner for “achievements in the field of defense and national security.”
The trip included a visit to Beit Horon, “the central training camp for the anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and the border police,” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Brigadier General Karpinski also noted the presence of Israeli interrogators in Iraq. She explained that at a Baghdad intelligence facility, “I saw an individual there that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there.” He answered, “Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic, but I’m not an Arab; I’m from Israel.”
Who is Stephen Cambone?
In November, roughly the time the first photos depicting torture at Abu Ghraib were taken, US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, signed an order to transfer command of Abu Ghraib from Karpinski to Colonel Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
US military intelligence at that time was under the control of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. The post was created for him in March 2003, just as the Iraq invasion was underway.
Journalist Jason Vest reported for The Nation that Cambone’s post was originally conceived by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a “centralizing measure,” a way to give him “one dog to kick” rather than a “whole kennel” of individual civilian and uniformed defense intelligence agencies.
Although Cambone had no intelligence experience, Rumsfeld viewed him as a protégé and loyal partisan. Under Rumsfeld’s patronage, Cambone rose from his position as principal deputy to Under Secretary Doug Feith, another architect of the Iraq war.
Vest added that a memo from Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Cambone’s immediate superior, indicated that Cambone had the authority to provide oversight and policy guidance for intelligence activities in all organizations within the US Department of Defense.
In other words, Cambone controlled US military intelligence, which controlled Abu Ghraib by November 2003 when the first torture photos were shot.
Like Feith, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, Cambone was a pro-Israel neoconservative who had worked for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a US think tank that hosted Republican neocons out of government during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.
In 1998, PNAC famously advocated a shift toward a more assertive US foreign policy, including toppling Saddam Hussein, which would only come following “some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Striking similarities
A November 2003 report in the Los Angeles Times described the close relationship between Israeli and US military intelligence under Cambone.
“Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can,” he was quoted as saying. A senior US Army official also told the newspaper:
[The Israelis] certainly have a wealth of experience from a military standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban terror, military operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of intelligence and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes sense … We are certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do in these kinds of situations.
The torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib came to light two months later, in January 2004, after an MP at the prison, Joseph Darby, passed a CD with photos depicting the torture to the military’s Criminal Investigations Division (CID).
The tactics used to torture the detainees were summarized in an email that circulated in the Defense Department. The email said 10 soldiers were shown, involved in acts including:
Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.
These tactics were further described by Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who was tasked with investigating events at Abu Ghraib.
In May 2004, Taguba was summoned to a meeting with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cambone, and other Defense Department officials, who all professed ignorance of what happened at Abu Ghraib.
Taguba said, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”
Taguba said elsewhere that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee” as well as “photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties.” As he explains it:
From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups.
But Taguba was only allowed to investigate the military police, not the military intelligence brigade in control of the prison after November, nor any higher officials overseeing military intelligence, such as Cambone, or other top Defense Department officials with strong links to Israel, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
These MP troops were not that creative … Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.
The most infamous of the torture photos showed an Iraqi man, Saad, standing on a box, wearing a black blanket and hood, with electric wires attached to his hands, feet, and penis.
Facility 1391
But the “creative” torture techniques focusing on sexual humiliation and rape have a clear origin.
Israeli interrogators were teaching US contractors and MPs torture techniques that Israel has long used against Palestinians and other Arabs.
In November 2003, as Cambone was lauding Israel for its assistance in Iraq, the Guardian published a report detailing the torture Israel subjected prisoners to at a secret prison known as ‘Facility 1391.’
“I was barefoot in my pajamas when they arrested me, and it was really cold,” says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. “When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack,” for his head.
Other former prisoners at Facility 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded, handcuffed, and threatened with rape.
The Guardian report details how torture took place at the facility for decades. The first prisoners at the facility were Lebanese kidnapped by Israeli forces during their 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon starting in 1982.
Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader in the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, was abducted in 1989 and taken to Facility 1391. Obeid had been involved in guerilla operations to expel Israeli forces occupying the country. He was kidnapped from his home in the village of Jibchit in southern Lebanon by Israeli commandos arriving by helicopter.
During the raid to take Obeid, Israeli forces also kidnapped a young man, Hashem Fahaf, who was visiting the sheikh to seek religious guidance. Fahaf was never charged with a crime but was held in Israeli prisons, including Facility 1391, for the next 11 years.
Israel held Fahaf and 18 other Lebanese as hostages, or bargaining chips, to win the return of Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose plane crash-landed in Lebanon while bombing PLO targets.
Haaretz reports that a reserve army colonel from Unit 504, known as “Het,” recounted how one interrogator at the facility “stripped a suspect naked and forced him to drink tea or coffee from an ashtray full of cigarette ashes and then forced shaving cream or toothpaste into the suspect’s mouth.”
Het recalled another instance in which the interrogator, known as “Major George,” inserted “a baton into a suspect’s rectum and asked him to sit on the baton unless the suspect was willing to speak.”
Rather than prosecuting Major George, Israeli authorities opened a criminal case against Het for revealing the torture taking place at Facility 1391.
Dividing Iraq for Israel’s interests
The anger created by the Abu Ghraib revelations is widely viewed as having stoked the Iraqi insurgency seeking to expel US forces. The insurgency itself began after the same pro-Israel conservatives in the Bush administration made the fateful decision to disband the Iraqi army.
This blunder left hundreds of thousands of trained military personnel without employment, many of whom subsequently joined the ranks of the insurgency. With their intimate knowledge of Iraqi army weaponry and tactics, these former soldiers became formidable adversaries in the campaign against US occupation forces.
The violence soon spiraled out of control and evolved into a sectarian civil war, dividing Iraq’s Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed as the country was nearly torn apart.
Wired noted years later that although a consensus eventually emerged in the US defense establishment that “the choice to invade Iraq was ill-considered and that the initial plan to stabilize the country was even worse,” Stephen Cambone had another view.
For Donald Rumsfeld’s one-time intelligence chief, the Iraq war and the chaos it created was “one of the great strategic decisions of the first half of the 21st century, if it proves not to be the greatest.”
In the eyes of the Zionist neocons, the cost of human lives and suffering was a necessary sacrifice to achieve their long-standing objectives in West Asia. The architects of the Iraq war, including Cambone, Rumsfeld, Feith, and Wolfowitz, viewed the devastation they wrought as a means to an end – neutralizing potential threats to Israel.
Yet it’s clear, in light of the actions taken by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, that their grand designs have ultimately floundered.
March 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Human rights, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Palestinian group, Hamas, on Tuesday rejected accusations by a UN Special envoy for its fighters of sexually assaulting Israeli women during its 7 October cross-border attack into Israel, Anadolu Agency reports.
Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said in a report on Monday that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the Hamas attack.
Hamas dismissed the accusations by the UN envoy as “false” and “baseless”.
The report “came out after failed Israeli attempts to prove this false accusation to demonise the Palestinian Resistance and cover up … horrific human rights violations committed by Israeli Occupation forces against Palestinian women and girls,” it said in a statement.
Last month, UN experts expressed alarm over “credible allegations” of egregious human rights violations that Palestinian women and girls continue to face in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Hamas said the allegations “clearly contradict with testimonies of freed Israeli hostages of good treatment by Hamas fighters while in captivity.”
“This false accusation will not succeed in erasing the ugliness and horror of the Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip,” the Palestinian group said.
Israel has launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a 7 October, 2023 Hamas attack, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.
However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.
More than 30,600 Palestinians have since been killed and over 72,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.
The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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The wreckage of an ambulance after an Israeli attack on Wednesday in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on January 11, 2024 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
A spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, has said that the Israeli occupation forces have killed 364 health personnel since 7 October. At least 269 others, including hospital directors in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza, have been detained by the occupation forces, Quds Press reported on Monday.
Al-Qudra added that the Israeli forces have destroyed 155 health institutions and put 32 hospitals and 53 health centres out of service. The occupation state has targeted 126 ambulances, and put them out of service as well, while the infrastructure of hospitals in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza has been destroyed. They are now basically just triage points.
He noted that the health situation in Gaza is catastrophic and is getting worse due to the lack of essential medical aid.
“The [Israeli] occupation has deliberately caused an unspeakable humanitarian and health catastrophe that contributed to the spread of epidemics and infectious diseases,” said Al-Qudra. He pointed out that the health ministry has recorded around one million cases of infectious diseases for which the necessary treatment is not available.
The residents of northern Gaza, he warned, are struggling with the famine arising from the scarcity of drinking water and food. This has claimed the lives of dozens of children, women and the elderly.
The Palestinian official called on the UN to activate international humanitarian law to protect civilians, institutions and health teams, and prevent the humanitarian catastrophe from getting much worse.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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UK’s century-long commitment to Zionism and collaboration with Israel today plays an often overlooked role in perpetuating oppression and genocide
Britain’s role in sustaining the Zionist entity
On 9 February, British Defense Minister James Heappey informed parliament that Israeli military operatives are “currently … posted in the UK,” both within Tel Aviv’s diplomatic mission “and as participants in UK defense-led training courses.” This hitherto unacknowledged arrangement amply demonstrates how, despite recent calls from officials in London for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to exercise restraint in its genocide of Gaza – if not institute a ceasefire – the UK remains international Zionism’s covert nerve center.
Mere days earlier, Heappey likewise admitted that nine Israeli military aircraft landed in Britain since Operation Al Aqsa Flood on 7 October last year. Investigations by independent investigative website Declassified UK show that Royal Air Force aircraft have flown to and from Israel in the same period, along with 65 spy plane missions launched from the UK’s vast, little-known military and intelligence base in Cyprus.
The purpose of those flights and who and/or what they carried are a state secret. Freedom of Information requests have been denied, Britain’s Ministry of Defense has refused to comment, and local media is by and large silent.
Nonetheless, in July 2023, British ministers admitted that the UK’s training of Israeli military personnel includes battlefield medical assistance, “organizational design and concepts,” and “defense education.” It is unknown if that “education” has in any way informed the slaughter of more than 30,000 Palestinians since 7 October.
British military presence in occupied Palestine
Yet, indications that London has long provided a highly influential guiding hand to Tel Aviv in its oppression and mass murder of Palestinians are unambiguous, even if hidden in plain sight. For example, in September 2019, the Israeli air force participated in a joint combat exercise with its British, German, and Italian counterparts.
The Israelis deployed F-15 warplanes for the purpose, which have been blitzing Gaza on a virtually daily basis since 7 October, indiscriminately flattening schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes and killing untold innocents.
A year earlier, in October 2022, it was quietly admitted in parliament that London maintains several “permanent military personnel in Israel,” all posted in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv:
“They carry out key activities in defense engagement and diplomacy. The Ministry of Defense supports the HMG Middle East Peace Process Programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The program aims to help protect the political and physical viability of a two-state solution. We would not disclose the location and numbers of military personnel for security reasons.”
‘Joint activity’
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have openly and repeatedly boasted of their personal role in blocking Palestinian statehood. We are thus left to ponder what these British operatives are truly concerned about – it certainly isn’t protecting “the political and physical viability of a two-state solution,” as that entire project was evidently never “viable,” by design. It could be those “permanent military personnel” who are present under the auspices of a highly confidential December 2020 military cooperation agreement inked by London and Tel Aviv.
British Ministry of Defense officials describe the agreement as an “important piece of defense diplomacy,” which “strengthens” military ties between the pair while providing “a mechanism for planning our joint activity.”
Its contents are nonetheless concealed not only from the public but also from elected lawmakers. Speculation can only abound that the agreement compels Britain to defend Israel in the event it is attacked. Such suspicions are only compounded by the visible presence of the UK’s elite SAS forces in Gaza today.
As a December 2023 investigation by The Cradle revealed, this apparent deployment is protected from media and public scrutiny by a dedicated Ministry of Defense-issued D-notice, as are other ominous indicators Britain is shaping the theater and setting the stage in West Asia for a full-blown, protracted region-wide war.
This included an as-yet-failed effort to pressure Beirut into allowing armed British soldiers total, unrestricted freedom of movement within Lebanon, along with immunity from arrest and prosecution for committing any crime.
The monarchy’s departure from neutrality
At countless protests the world over in solidarity with Palestinians since last October, demonstrators have brandished banners and signs imploring US President Joe Biden to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, if not order Netanyahu to seek peace. It is a noble demand, yet potentially misdirected. The true power to halt Tel Aviv’s current push to fulfill Zionism’s genocidal founding mission may not lie in Washington DC but in London – specifically, Buckingham Palace.
An extraordinary and largely unremarked upon development since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began has been the British monarchy’s shameless abandonment of “political neutrality” over Israel.
Queen Elizabeth II, publicly at least, refrained from commenting on current affairs or appearing to take “sides” on any issue throughout her 70-year reign. However, her recently coronated son has apparently, without fanfare, comprehensively shredded that longstanding convention.
King Charles the Zionist
Within hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s eruption, King Charles openly condemned Hamas, saying he was “profoundly distressed” and “appalled” by the “horrors inflicted” by the resistance group and its “barbaric acts of terrorism.” Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist entity by a majority of countries internationally, while the BBC – which has relentlessly manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza every step of the way – rejects the designation’s use.
In the years immediately prior to taking the throne, Charles made his Zionism abundantly clear, breaking with his mother’s unspoken policy of not visiting Israel, secretly attending the funerals of former Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In the latter instance, in 2016, he also visited the graves of his grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth, in a cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, near the world’s largest Jewish cemetery. Both were Christian Zionists.
The Jerusalem Post approvingly dubbed Charles’ Zionist sympathies and familial connection to the Mount “a problem for Palestinians,” arguing he has a clear view of “who the city and the country belong to.” Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has hailed him as “a friend” to Jewry “with special and historic ties to Israel.” One such “tie” was an intimate friendship with Britain’s former chief Rabbi and President of United Jewish Israel Appeal, Jonathan Sacks.
Educational indoctrination
Among other proselytizing acts, Sacks oversaw and advocated a number of operations intended to indoctrinate schoolchildren of all ages in Zionism, often under the bogus aegis of countering “antisemitism” in classrooms and on campuses. It may well be no coincidence then that the Department for Education has softly unveiled a multimillion-pound effort to train “staff and learners” at British schools, colleges, and universities to “identify and tackle incidents of antisemitism.”
A noble endeavor, one might argue. But it is evidently in keeping with Sacks’ pet projects. Among the program’s key stated objectives is “providing education staff with the necessary tools to hold and facilitate discussions on the historic and current conflicts [in West Asia] and tackling disinformation … including on the situation in Israel following the terrorist attacks on 7 October.” It also intends for universities to “demonstrate practical commitment to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.”
Manufacturing and maintaining the Zionist entity
Most British universities have accepted the highly controversial IHRA definition under direct government threat of funding cuts if they refused. The definition’s validity and legitimacy have been widely challenged, including by academic David Feldman, one of its authors. In 2017, he expressed grave concerns that “this definition is imprecise,” falsely equating Judaism and Israel with an overwhelming focus on the latter, producing “a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic.”
The initiative is unambiguously concerned with stifling criticism of Israel and its occupation while ensuring British youth are, from the earliest, most formative age, propagandized in its support.
His Majesty’s government clearly believes in Tel Aviv’s future endurance, and is in for the long haul, in terms of helping preserve the Mephistophelian project. There can surely be no greater proof that the current crisis in West Asia was made in London.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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A group of Canadian and Palestinian human rights lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government for “contributing” to the bombardment of the Gaza Strip through sending arms to Israel.
The coalition of the lawyers filed a complaint against Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly on Tuesday over issuing permits for export of military equipment to Israel.
The group includes Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and Al-Haq – Law in the Services of Man, an independent Palestinian NGO.
In the lawsuit, the group argued that Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act prevents the federal government from issuing permits for export of military goods and related technology to Israel because those exports can pose serious risks by undermining peace and security.
They said the weapons could be used to commit serious violations of international law and serious acts of violence against women and children in Palestine.
The lawyers said the government needs to stop contributing to Israel’s mass starvation of Palestinians and bombardment of Gaza.
Back in January, Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR), one of the groups involved in the case, urged the government to “immediately halt” all arms exports to Israel.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also stands accused of misleading the public over weapons sales to Israel.
Trudeau has repeatedly been urged to end arms exports to the Israeli regime. But his government has so far tried to downplay the country’s role in helping Israel build its arsenal.
On Friday, a group of more than 200 lawmakers from 12 countries, including the United States and Canada, signed a letter to call on their governments to impose a ban on arms sales to Israel.
Niki Ashton, a member of Canada’s Parliament was among the signatories of that letter.
Ashton said in a message on the X social media platform that the Canadian government has approved $28 million worth of weapons exports to Israel since the regime started its brutal military campaign in early October.
“That is horrifying,” Ashton said, adding, “Make no mistake. These weapons are directly used to kill and maim starving Palestinians.”
Countries supplying arms to Israel have been facing mounting pressure to halt weapons sale to Tel Aviv since the regime launched its military offensive against Gaza in early October. Israeli forces have so far killed more than 30,500 Palestinians, mostly children and women, in the besieged territory.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | Canada, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Iran’s foreign minister has condemned the “unprecedented” crimes Israel has committed in the besieged Gaza Strip over the past five months.
The Israeli hostilities prove the regime is “deliberately” pursuing the policy of destroying Palestine, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stated.
The Iranian minister was addressing an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)’s foreign ministers in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Tuesday.
The meeting, requested by Iran and some other Islamic countries, was held to review the latest developments in Gaza and to discuss effective measures to halt the Israeli campaign of death and destruction in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“In a situation where we are once again witnessing the inability of the UN Security Council to deal with the oldest and most bitter humanitarian crisis in contemporary history, the consensus of Islamic countries to find practical ways and take more serious measures to support the Palestinian people and help find a way out of the status quo is absolutely urgent and necessary,” Amir-Abdollahian told the OIC meeting.
Warning that the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza as well as atrocities in the occupied West Bank have reached an “unprecedented” level, Iran’s top diplomat said Washington, through its unwavering support for Israel, is practically giving the regime a “green light” to go ahead with a planned military invasion of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population is now crammed into the southern city bordering Egypt.
“It is unfortunate that senior officials of the United States, with their stances, are practically giving the Zionist regime a green light to launch a military attack on Rafah.”
The Iranian foreign minister said Washington’s blatant obstruction of UN Security Council measures to prevent the Israeli aggression in Gaza shows relying on the US to “prevent the ongoing genocide is an illusion and more of a diplomatic joke.”
The US is an accomplice and partner in the crimes of Israel, Amir-Abdollahian said, adding that the “crocodile tears” by certain US officials over the humanitarian situation in Gaza “do not change the reality.”
The foreign minister told the OIC that any economic and financial relations with the Israeli regime amounts to “facilitating the continuation of its heinous behavior” toward the Palestinians.
Calling for a broader boycott of products manufactured by Israeli companies, Amir-Abdollahian said under the current circumstances it is imperative for the OIC to “take decisive and effective practical measures to support the Palestinians.”
“This is our human and Islamic duty towards our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Preventing a new disaster against the Palestinian nation is an immediate necessity,” he said.
The Israeli regime launched the savage campaign in Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out a surprise operation against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s never-ending atrocities against Palestinians.
The regime has since killed at least 30,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Iran, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States, Zionism |
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A leading Establishment newspaper in Europe says that “what is driving European politics at present – is fear”. The headlines ring out with apprehension: “Germany’s élites run scared, as Putin rains down death on Ukraine”. The British Prime Minister calls an emergency press conference to warns of ‘democracy at risk’ from ‘extremism’ on the eve of a by-election win by George Galloway, an articulate, if somewhat unruly, ‘thorn’ in the side of conventional politics (but hardly any ‘extremist’).
In the US too the liberal sphere is in meltdown over the publication of a just-released book: White Rural Rage: The Threat To American Democracy, in which “rural whites are [described as] the most racist; xenophobic; anti-immigrant; anti-gay; and conspiracy-minded, anti-democratic” demography in America. They “don’t believe in an independent press or free speech”, and are “most likely to accept or excuse violence”.
Of course, the fear is being — in the first instance — diverted outwards towards the claim that this is somehow Russia’s ‘doing’ — a looming ‘menace’ further stoked by claims of President Putin’s ‘imperial aspirations’, way beyond Ukraine. There is however (to invert the usual MSM meme), absolutely no evidence for these claims (from anything Putin has said over the years).
What is spooking the West more immediately is the cascading defeats inflicted on Ukrainian forces, after the Avdeevka rout. The new Ukrainian commander, General Syrski, in the wake of the flight, announced a retreat to new defence lines, but as some had predicted, it turned out that the ‘more favourable lines’ Syrski promoted did not exist.
Ukrainian photographers Konstantin and Vlada Liberov who document the war from the ground demanded from Syrski: “So what is the next “fortetsia” – Pokrovsk? Or just Konstantinovka?”
“Where is this second line of defence?” Yuri Butusov, editor-in-chief of Censor— following his trip to this area – asks: “There are no words. Gap: here in Kiev – the supreme commander-in-chief says one thing, but at the front something completely different is happening. I want to say that no field lines of fortifications have been built beyond Avdeevka so far. I saw Russian drones attacking our soldiers in their burrows – in the middle of a field”.
There are no constructed defence lines – only hurried improvisations – whilst Ukraine resorts to simply throwing its reserves at the deficiency – so to prop up the incremental retreat. Did NATO leaders not spot this defence-line lacuna? Apparently not …
And so one leg to the current panic is just this: The EU has heavily over-invested in its Ukraine project, and now sees it fast crumbling. Hence President Macron’s hasty summons of EU states (at 24 hours’ notice) to the Elysée Palace to hear him warn that the situation on the ground in Ukraine was so critical, and the stakes for Europe so high, that: “We’re at a critical point in the conflict where we need to take the initiative: We’re determined to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes”.
What Macron in fact proposed however, shocked the gathered leaders. He advocated committing detachments of European special forces to Ukraine, not so much directly to fight the Russian forces, but to act as vulnerable strategic ‘tripwire’ deterrents to Russia – which, were they attacked, would ‘trip’ a full-throated NATO retaliation down onto the head of Russia.
These tripwire forces, Macron claimed, would form strategic deterrents to Moscow’s military room for manoeuvre — oases of ‘untouchable’ NATO, scattered through Ukraine. His colleagues, horrified, demurred; they saw the emplaced tripwires as the conveyor belt leading to WWIII: ‘Madness’, and ‘no thank you’.
The ‘other leg’ to European desperation was given away by PM Sunak’s rush to the microphone in the wake of the Rochdale by-election outcome to warn that democracy is in peril from extremism.
One commentator opined: ‘Rishi Sunak was right’: “This is not politics, not even of the radical kind … It is inchoate, incoherent rage which is ready to make common cause with anyone else, who is enraged even on contradictory grounds”.
If this reaction sounds a bit over the top – just because George Galloway overwhelmingly won in Rochdale – let us ‘join up the dots’ for you:
The same commentator (Janet Daley in the Telegraph ) avers: “To bring this right up to date, we now have an entity called the Workers Party – a name that summons up traditional Left-wing dedication to the interests of working class people – winning a by-election in Rochdale by somehow conflating the Palestinian cause in Gaza with local working class needs”.
Ouch! That is what hurts. Echoes here from the Michigan primary in the US, where a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups who had set a modest target of 10,000 ‘uncommitted’ votes — Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan in 2016 — to send a message to President Biden that voter frustration over the Gaza war could cost him dearly in the November election. In the event, however, the pro-Palestinian support blew past the 10,000 target and clocked in at nearly 101,400 votes.
Message sent — and as the electoral desperation in Democratic circles, indicates, ‘message received’.
Just to be plain: Events in Gaza and in Ukraine are unravelling long-standing political power control structures in the EU, in Europe and in the US. This is why there is panic and double-down.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia | European Union, France, Gaza, Israel, NATO, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine |
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A recent Israeli real estate sale in Toronto highlights Zionists’ racism and violence. Non-Jews were openly excluded from the event and Palestine solidarity activists were violently attacked.
On Sunday real estate firm Keller Williams hosted a sale for properties in Israel. After a city-owned venue canceled the event it was moved to Aish Hatorah Synagogue in Thornhill. Properties located in illegal Israeli settlements were listed, notably in the relatively new colony of Modi’in Illit, which was built on land from the Palestinian villages of Ni’lin, Kharbata, Saffa, Bil’in and Dir Qadis.
Organizers of the event openly blocked non-Jews from entering the venue. In the parking lot they told an Arab looking man, who printed his event registration, that he could not enter because he wasn’t Jewish.
While it is illegal in Canada to discriminate based on religion or race, the police on site failed to intervene.
In an exchange posted on X the Arab looking man who registered for the event is told that he wouldn’t be able to purchase any property anyway. That’s likely correct as land laws in Israel discriminate against non-Jews. In Canada the Supreme Court banned overt discrimination in property ownership seven decades ago.
Alongside their racism, the Israel supporters were violent. A resident of Vaughn named Ilan-Reuben Abramov attacked Palestine solidarity protesters in a parking lot. CTV reported that he shot two nails into a protester with a nail gun. He yelled “every Palestinian will die” and on video Abramov knocked the phone out of another individual’s hand and repeatedly pushed an older woman. He’s also caught on camera preparing to box with the woman. After an uproar on social media, the police arrested Abramov.
In another incident a car bumped into Palestine protesters. In a more troubling incident, an Israel supporter is caught on camera nearly hitting Palestine solidarity activists with their vehicle at high speed. The individual, who has yet to be identified despite their license plate number circulating online, came within inches of running over two people in an incident that could have been deadly.
Zionists have once again revealed their violence and supremacism. Claims of victimhood notwithstanding, one must hold a deeply racist and violent worldview to promote an apartheid state slaughtering tens of thousands.
And trying to sell stolen property as well as genocide in Canada.
March 5, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Canada, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Several key architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq 21 years ago are presenting a plan for rebuilding and “de-radicalizing” the surviving population of Gaza, while ensuring that Israel retains “freedom of action” to continue operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The plan, which was published as a report Thursday by the hard-line neo-conservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, or JINSA, and the Vandenberg Coalition, is calling for the creation of a private entity, the “International Trust for Gaza Relief and Reconstruction” to be led by “a group of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates” and “supported by the United States and other nations.”
With regard to Palestinian participation, the report by the “Gaza Futures Task Force,” envisages an advisory board “composed primarily of non-Hamas Gazans from Gaza, the West Bank, and diaspora.” In addition, the Palestinian Authority, which is based on the West Bank, “should be consulted in, and publicly bless,” the creation of the Trust while itself undergoing a process of “revamping.”
In addition to granting Israel license to intervene against Hamas and Islamic Jihad within Gaza, the plan calls for security to be provided by the Trust’s leaders and “capable forces from non-regional states with close ties to Israel,” as well as “vetted Gazans.” The Trust should also be empowered to “hire private security contractors with good reputations among Western militaries” in “close coordination with Israeli security forces,” according to the report.
The task force that produced the report consists of nine members, four of whom played key roles as Middle East policymakers under former President George W. Bush and in the run-up to and aftermath of the disastrous Iraq invasion in 2003.
The group is chaired by John Hannah, who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2001 to 2005 and then as Cheney’s national security advisor (2005-2009), replacing Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who resigned his position after being indicted for perjury. Libby, who was later given a full pardon by former President Donald Trump, is also a member of the Gaza task force.
Another prominent member of the task force is the founder and chairman of the hawkish Vandenberg Coalition, Elliott Abrams, who served as the senior director for Near East and North African Affairs in the National Security Council under Bush from 2002 to 2009 and more recently as the Special Envoy for Venezuela and Iran under Trump. Ironically, Abrams, who also served as the NSC’s Senior Director for Democracy under Bush, played a key role in supporting an attempted armed coup by Hamas’s chief rival, Fatah, in 2007 after Hamas swept the 2006 Palestinian elections. The coup attempt sparked a brief but bloody civil war in Gaza, which eventually resulted in Hamas’ consolidation of power in the Strip.
Amb. Eric Edelman (ret.), a fourth member of the task force, served as Cheney’s principal deputy national security adviser from 2001 to 2003 and then as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the number three position at the Pentagon, under Rumsfeld and his successor, Robert Gates, from 2005 to 2009, as U.S. troops struggled to contain the mainly Sunni resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq.
In addition to their collaboration during the Bush administration, the four men have long been associated with strongly pro-Israel neoconservative groups, having served on the boards or in advisory positions for such organizations and think tanks as the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the ultra-hawkish Center for Security Policy, as well as the Vandenberg Coalition and JINSA. Indeed, such groups have promoted policies that have been generally aligned with those of the Likud Party led by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Thus, the report’s “key findings” prioritize as considerations: [these are quotes]
- restoring the deterrence and security needs of Israel, both for its own people and its standing as a powerful regional ally and essential component of resisting Iran’s ambitions; and
- dismantling Hamas as a military and governing force and protecting against its reconstitution through Israel’s continued freedom of action against it and against Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and by de-militarizing, de-radicalizing, and improving conditions in Gaza such that major terrorist attacks like October 7 can’t and won’t happen again…
Its proposed Trust, according to the report, should involve the United States and concerned states that accept Israel’s role in the region” and “should provide the humanitarian assistance and help to restore essential services and rebuild civil society in Gaza as intense combat and over subsequent months. Its activities should be governed by an international board composed of 3 to 7 representatives from the key states supporting the Trust, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. At least one notable omission from the list is Qatar, which has provided tens billions of dollars in assistance to Gaza over the last decade.
In an echo of Washington’s disastrous de-Baathification campaign in occupied Iraq, the report puts special stress on “deradicalization” efforts. “The Trust, recognizing that years of radicalization by Hamas has complicated the task of reforming and restoring Gaza, should focus on a long-term program for deradicalizing the media, schools and mosques,” according to the report which adds that “Gazans and the Gazan diaspora should play an active role in developing and implementing these plans, alongside the Trust’s Arab members who have hands-on experience in successful deradicalization efforts in their own societies.” Such efforts in Gaza, it goes on, could “serve as a model to encourage a similar program there that will be essential if a credible two-state solution is to be revived.”
The task force urges the Trust to coordinate with other states’ efforts and with those of NGOs and international organizations, including the United Nations. But, in an echo of a key Likud talking point, “it should recognize that the activities of UNRWA serve to perpetuate and deepen the Palestinian crisis.”
The report said UNRWA’s immediate assistance in providing relief may be necessary, but “plans to replace it with local Palestinian institutions or other international organizations committed to peace should be developed and implemented.”
All of these efforts should be pursued within the more general context of countering “Iran’s aggressive campaign to derail regional peace efforts, including by constraining the threat posed by Hezbollah and resuming progress toward normalizing Israel and Saudi Arabia,” according to the report.
Jim Lobe is a Contributing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015.
March 4, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United States, Zionism |
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Palestinian territory – The Israeli army’s repeated killings of Palestinian civilians by deliberately running them over alive with military vehicles was vehemently denounced by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor on Sunday, as was the widespread destruction of civilian property. These crimes are part of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the rights group said, ongoing since 7 October 2023.
Euro-Med Monitor documented the Israeli army’s killing of a Palestinian man who was deliberately run over in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood on 29 February after he was arrested. The man was subjected to harsh interrogation by members of the Israeli army, who bound his hands with plastic zip-tie handcuffs before running him over with a military vehicle from the bottom to the top of his body.
The incident occurred on the main Salah al-Din Street in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to the Euro-Med Monitor team. Israeli soldiers restrained the victim’s hands before they crushed him, and tramped on his body from the legs up, confirming that he was alive during the incident. To guarantee thorough and complete crushing, the victim was placed on asphalt rather than in an adjacent sandy area.
The victim’s mutilated body and the surrounding area bear obvious signs that a military bulldozer or tank was present. It appears that the victim was purposefully stripped of his clothes, as he was seen wearing only his underpants at the time of his death.
The ramming operation occurred before the Israeli army withdrew to the outskirts of the Zaytoun neighbourhood two days ago, as evidenced by the condition of the entrails and other body parts, which had not yet decomposed when the case was documented.
Another documented incident took place on 23 January, when an Israeli tank ran over members of the Ghannam family while they were sleeping in a shelter caravan in the Taiba Towers area of Khan Younis. As a result, a man and his eldest daughter were killed, and his remaining three children and wife were injured. Amina, his 13-year-old daughter, confirmed that her father and older sister were killed when an Israeli tank unexpectedly and repeatedly ran over the caravan, where the family had been sleeping. While her mother and two other siblings survived the attack, Amina experienced extreme pressure in her eyes, nearly losing her sight.
Euro-Med Monitor also documented Israeli tanks and bulldozers running over and crushing displaced people inside their tents in Beit Lahia’s Kamal Adwan Hospital courtyard on 16 December 2023. Several people were killed during the incident, including individuals who were initially injured and did not ultimately survive. The corpses of those who had been previously buried in the courtyard were also crushed in the 16 December incident, stated the rights group.
More recently, a Palestinian family survived a 20 February running attack after Israeli tracks ran over their tent on the shore of the Khan Yunis Sea. A female civilian said that she was shocked by the tank suddenly running over her tent.
In addition, Euro-Med Monitor has documented numerous incidents of Israeli army tanks destroying civilian property, particularly cars, during Israel’s ground incursions into different parts of the Gaza Strip. Most of these tank attacks have targeted vehicles parked in the streets without any military affiliation, indicating the Israeli army’s deliberate and systematic destruction of Palestinian property.
Euro-Med Monitor affirmed that all of these violations are part of a larger Israeli effort to dehumanise every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip, in order to justifiy and normalise the crimes being committed against them. Crushing civilians with tanks is just one of the many cruel ways the Israeli army murders Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, disregarding their humanity, suffering, and dignity. These practices reflect the desire of Israel’s government and military to collectively punish the Palestinian people, with the aim of eliminating, intimidating, and/or harming them physically and psychologically. These crimes come alongside a public incitement campaign by Israeli officials, media figures, and settlers calling for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza, and are also a result of the total impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators—evident by the absence of any meaningful action being taken to hold them accountable by any party or at any level.
The human rights organisation warned that the Israeli army has escalated its premeditated murders, extrajudicial executions, and judicial killings against Palestinian civilians since 7 October through direct targeting with snipers, drones, and running operations in various regions of the Gaza Strip. According to Euro-Med Monitor, these actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute Basic Law of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
There is no justification for the Israeli army to commit these serious crimes, Euro-Med Monitor confirmed. Even its claim that some of the aforementioned acts were directed towards Palestinian fighters does not release Israel from criminal responsibility, seeing as international law protects both civilians and fighters who have given up or lost all means of defense, with the Rome Statute classifying their killing or wounding as war crimes. The Israeli army’s deliberate and widespread destruction of Palestinian property, carried out in an irresponsible manner and without military necessity, also qualifies as a war crime under the Rome Statute.
In parallel to taking all necessary steps to ensure Israel’s accountability for the crimes it commits against the Palestinian people, Euro-Med Monitor reiterated its call for the international community to immediately implement its international obligations to stop the genocide that Israel has been committing against all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for roughly five months now.
In light of the fact that the ICC has not yet taken any action or filed any charges in relation to the investigations it is supposed to be carrying out into the situation in the Gaza Strip, Euro-Med Monitor expressed deep concern about the ICC Prosecutor’s performance regarding the genocide taking place there. Genocide is one of the most serious international crimes, with catastrophic consequences for civilians. The Court has not said anything about the crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, even in the face of a plethora of evidence presented by Israeli officials and soldiers themselves, as well as warnings and documentary reports from international organisations, the United Nations and its experts, and the governments of many other nations. The ICC’s last update on the situation in Palestine was posted on 17 November 17 on its official website. This raises serious questions and concerns about its independence and integrity, as well as the extent to which it can perform its duties without becoming politicised or impacted by standards of duality and selective justice.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called for the formation of an independent international investigation committee specialising in Israel’s ongoing military attack on the Gaza Strip. It also urged the international community to enable the work of a separate independent international investigation committee concerned with the Occupied Palestinian Territory, formed in 2021, to carry out its work by ensuring its access to the Strip and opening the necessary investigations into all crimes and violations committed against Palestinians there, including the deliberate killing and extrajudicial execution of civilians.
The rights group also demanded that the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions visit the Gaza Strip as soon as feasible to look into the illegal killings that fall under the purview of his substantive mandate.
March 4, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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In the early hours of Thursday, in line with its genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli troops opened indiscriminate fire on people waiting for food aid in the southwest of Gaza City.
At least 116 people were killed and more than 760 others injured in what rights groups described as a textbook case of cold-blooded massacre on the Al Rashid street that stretches along the coast of Gaza.
The regime denied involvement in the massacre that came nearly five months into the Israeli genocide in the besieged territory, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 30,400 Palestinians.
The flawed Israeli narrative kept changing and evolving throughout the day, designed to shift the blame on victims, the desperate aid-seekers who were there to get some flour.
The Israeli army claimed they had nothing to do with the incident and blamed a stampede for it. Later, they said trucks carrying aid had run over civilians. Finally, they admitted to having fired at the crowd, but “only targeting the militants trying to sabotage the aid delivery.”
A report by Yediout Aharonot said, “Dozens of Gazans died during a stampede as large crowds descended on humanitarian aid trucks entering northern Gaza, attempting to loot supplies and sparking violent clashes, the IDF reported on Thursday.”
“An initial IDF probe into the incident found that Palestinian gunmen fired at the aid trucks, with most fatalities resulting from trampling and crowding,” the report noted.
Another report by the Times of Israel said it “acknowledged that troops opened fire on several Gazans who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, endangering soldiers, after they had rushed the last truck in the convoy further south.”
Reuters quoted an Israeli official as saying “there had been two incidents”, in one of which “dozens” were “trampled or run over” and in the second “some people” approached troops including a tank who “felt under threat and opened fire” in a “limited response”.
“The soldiers fired warning shots in the air and then fired towards those who posed a threat and did not move away,” Reuters quoted the official as saying.
“This is what we understand. We’re continuing to review the circumstances.”
In the broadest account, the Jerusalem Post, quoting Israeli army sources, said three incidents occurred.
The first one was the stampede that left most of the casualties, the second when the armed Palestinians fired on the trucks and stole supplies, and the third when a large group of Palestinians approached the Israeli forces nearby, who responded with live fire.
The Israeli newspaper, quoting its sources, claimed that “it was unclear if they had aggressive intentions or were civilians caught up in a chaotic moment.”
Later on Thursday, Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military had fired “a few warning shots” to try to disperse a “mob” who had “ambushed” the aid trucks.
“As these vital humanitarian supplies made their way toward Gazans in need, thousands of Gazans [rushed] the trucks, some began violently pushing and trampling other Gazans to death, looting the humanitarian supplies,” he said.
Some accounts identified those targeted as ordinary people and others identified them as a “mob”.
For example, Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Israeli soldiers “acted excellently against a Gazan mob that tried to harm them”.
In some versions, the victims were said to have trampled each other and in others, the trucks were believed to have mowed down people.
Israeli regime spokesman Eylon Levy blamed “Gaza truck drivers” for the massacre.
In this age of technology, it is interesting that Israeli accounts are never consistent and the regime officials are always “reviewing” things and struggling to find simple answers.
The regime offered no evidence to back its claims. It released a 100-second, heavily edited drone video as proof, which showed aid seekers surrounding trucks, but no trampling or trucks running over people.
If the Israeli drones recorded the situation, why did the regime not publish the scenes showing the moment when people were “trampled” or “run over”?
Holes in Israeli story
However, the strategy of ‘cover-up’ didn’t work this time. There are several glaring holes in the Israeli version of the incident that demand unraveling.
How did Gazan truck drivers start to kill their own people? Why hasn’t this ever happened before?
Or, why did Israeli troops kill 10 unarmed, starved Palestinians who had approached them? What kind of threat did these people pose to armed-to-the-teeth soldiers and tanks?
And, how scores of people were trampled? In any case, who is to blame for the desperate humanitarian situation that this regime claims was the cause of the incident?
These holes are filled by the Palestinian witness accounts that present a different chain of events.
Palestinians say most of the people present at the scene fell victim to Israeli gunfire, and the stampede occurred only after the Israeli troops started indiscriminately firing at them.
Local journalist Khadeer Al Za’anoun, a reporter for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, who witnessed the incident, said the chaos and confusion were sparked after Israeli forces opened fire, which led to people being hit by aid trucks.
Al-Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul reported that Israeli tanks “advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured people.”
The acting director of the Al-Awda Hospital said they received 161 wounded patients, most of whom appeared to have been shot.
Also, an initial probe by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor showed that the Israeli army gunfire was responsible for most deaths in a massacre of Palestinian civilians.
In a follow-up report, the rights group confirmed the regime’s “full involvement” in the massacre at the Nabulsi roundabout, calling for an “effective international investigation to hold Israeli officials accountable.”
Its field team – present at the time of the incident – “documented Israeli tanks firing heavily towards Palestinian civilians while trying to receive humanitarian aid,” the report noted.
Trying to get away with another massacre
The incident has been widely condemned by governments and organizations. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent probe into the killing of civilians.
Iran slammed “the barbaric attack by the Zionist regime”. Iranian foreign ministry in a statement said “The wound of Gaza will not be erased from the memory of the free people of the world.”
China said it was “shocked” while Colombia said, “This is called genocide and recalls The Holocaust.”
Even European allies of Israel, including France and Italy, denounced the massacre. Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, described the incident as a “totally unacceptable carnage”.
It wasn’t the first massacre of Palestinians though. There have been massacres every day in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
On January 26, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli fire struck a crowd of people waiting for humanitarian aid at a roundabout in Gaza City on Thursday, killing at least 20 and wounding 150.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on February 4, “a group of people a group of people waiting for humanitarian aid trucks near Al Kuwaiti roundabout in southern Gaza City were reportedly fired at.”
Another report referred to the February 5 attack on an aid convoy at the same place, Al-Rashid Street. That attack forced the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees to warn it could not carry out its mission and provide humanitarian relief if safety conditions were not met.
A day before the latest attack, on Wednesday, Wafa news agency reported that three Palestinians, who were waiting for aid near Gaza City, were killed after being hit by Israeli artillery fire on al-Rashid Street.
Israel has a long record of massacring Palestinians in cold blood and then trying to cover up their crimes and avoid accountability, say observers. A notable example is the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 when at least 107 Palestinians were slaughtered by Zionists.
The bloodthirst of the child-murdering regime has only increased over the years.
March 4, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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If war is politics by other means, Washington’s ongoing wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are meant to buttress its global influence on the one hand and undermine its competitors on the other. But the question is: how is this politics by other means working out for Washington? Not so good. Russia’s recent military victories in Ukraine and China’s expansive inroads into the Middle East alongside the growing anti-Americanism in the region (due to Washington’s support for Israel and its inability to prevent a genocide of the Palestinians) indicate an overall American inability to shape global geopolitics in unilateral ways to the exclusive advantage of Washington and its allies in Europe and elsewhere.
Russia’s recent military gains in Ukraine, for example, have very clearly established its military credentials as a power that has been able to withstand the combined military strength of the US and its European allies assembled in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). What does this mean for Washington’s policies in Central Asia? Most certainly, Washington cannot simply present Russia as a ‘weak’ military power that can be simply ‘isolated’. But more than that, Russia is utilising its victories over NATO in various ways.
For instance, when the NATO-backed Russia-Ukraine military conflict began, most reports in the mainstream US media began to spread false messaging about Central Asia potentially moving itself out of the so-called ‘Russian clout’. The US saw in it an opportunity to push itself into the region. But this has turned out to be a fiasco. When the US imposed sanctions on Russia, many Russian companies began to relocate their businesses to Central Asia, directly contributing to Central Asia’s impressive 4.8 percent growth rate in 2023. According to the findings of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the region is forecast to register an even more impressive level of growth at almost 5.7 percent in 2024-25.
In other words, thanks to Washington’s sanctions, the Russian political economy is now more deeply connected with Central Asia than it was before February 2022, which is also strengthening the Eurasian Economic Union. Now that this integration is working for the advantage of Central Asia means that the latter have little to no incentive to pay too much attention to Washington and/or the imperatives of moving decisively to Washington. It means that not only has the Biden administration’s policy of NATO expansion via Ukraine failed so far in Ukraine itself, but the ‘new’ Central Asia policy it inaugurated in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has also failed to make any impact on the ground. Russia defeated US design also by approaching relations with the Central Asian States in ways that gave them enough space to stay neutral in the conflict. While the West saw this neutrality as a sign of Russian weakness in the region and the Central Asian States’ growing assertiveness, it failed to read how this was part of Russia’s strategy to cultivate its ties in a more balanced way. This balance is also pretty evident in the ways Russia has not objected to, or even resisted, China’s growing footprint in the region, although reports in the Western media often see China’s role in Central Asia at the expense of Russia. But the West seems to have been misreading this region.
As far as Washington’s war in the Middle East is concerned, its military support for Israel plus its inability to stop genocide has eroded its credibility. Suppose Washington has been supporting Israel to maintain its dominance in the Middle East. In that case, Washington’s excessive support is now derailing its objectives, since the Middle East is now exercising a lot more strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Washington than was the case until a few years ago.
In the past few months, a flurry of Chinese activity indicates it much more clearly than anything else. China has convened leadership summits, met with Arab delegates, supported their stance vis-à-vis Israel, and held joint military exercises with one of the US’ most important allies in the region (Saudi Arabia). The UAE, otherwise a close US ally and one of the first states to sign the Abraham Accords to recognise Israel and establish diplomatic ties with it, actually withdrew from the US-led naval task force in May 2023, indicating policy and interest-based differences.
The UAE is also a country in the Middle East that has over 100,000 Chinese living there and involved in many businesses. But when it comes to the Middle East itself, and the fact that many countries in the region are involved in China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), we see the region’s trade with China registering an overall growth of almost 45 percent in 2021 and 27 percent in 2022.
Given the economic integration, the Middle East is turning out to be a region where Washington’s clout is receding fast, without any signs of recovery in the immediate future at least. Although US strikes in the Red Sea on the Houthis are meant to indicate Washington’s willingness to offer a security umbrella to the Gulf states (against Iran-backed groups), the region appears to be past the point where it must have the US on its side to ensure security. Gulf states’ perceptions of Iran as an enemy are changing, thanks to Beijing’s mediation.
As far as Washington’s support for Israel is concerned and as far as the threat of a wider war in the region it is posing, Gulf states are on the edge of a conflict that might directly undermine their modernization programmes – development projects that mainly involve China in various capacities.
Therefore, if Washington’s involvement in the Israel war was meant to bring back the era of US dominance, the exact opposite is happening, both in the Middle East and Central Asia, which happen to be two of the world’s most energy-rich regions.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
March 4, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | China, Israel, Middle East, Zionism |
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A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
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