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How big does Palestine rally need to be for honest reporting?

By Yves Engler | November 7, 2023

On Saturday over 50,000 marched in Montréal against Justin Trudeau’s role in enabling Israel’s genocidal siege and slaughter in Gaza. I say this confidently having walked from one end of the march to the other and watched overhead drone footage. This was the largest antiwar/international solidarity mobilization in Montréal since the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq.

The largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in Canadian history concluded in front of CBC’s office to highlight pro-Israel media bias. Proving the point, Global News reported that “hundreds gathered”.

While Global’s Farah Nasser described how “hundreds gathered in Montreal” the images on the screen showed at least ten thousand rallying. The jarring juxtaposition between lived reality and the “journalism” that is supposed to report the truth puts into context why some protestors put fake blood on the building’s glass doors and wrote “call it genocide” and “justice for journalists in Gaza” on the ground in front of the CBC.

At the end of the march, I was asked to speak outside the CBC/Radio-Canada offices as part of protesting Canadian media coverage of the 10,000 Palestinians killed in recent weeks.

Below is a portion of my prepared remarks:

“The Canadian media is enabling Israel’s genocidal siege and violence in Gaza. CTV and Global both recently fired Palestinian/Arab reporters for opposing the genocide on their social media.

“The media humanizes Israelis and dehumanize Palestinians. For instance, a young Vancouverite who travelled 10,000 kilometers from their home to join the Israeli military is lauded and mourned, but any Palestinian killed fighting Israel isn’t even considered.

“On multiple occasions Canadian outlets have directly manufactured consent for Israel’s war crimes. As an example, yesterday the National Post and other Postmedia outlets published “How Hamas uses hospitals as shields during war against Israel”.

“The media have been promoting the narrative that Israel has a right to defend itself. But Israel is the occupying power that has been oppressing Palestinians for more than 75 years and it always kills many times more Palestinians during every flare up in violence.

“Two weeks ago a leftist journalist began a list of prominent commentators supporting Israel’s genocidal violence. A few days ago he began asking them how many more thousands of Palestinian children would have to be killed before they supported a ceasefire. They mostly refused to respond.

“Media bias against Palestinians is not new and there are innumerable examples to point to. CBC English has mandated its reporters not to use the word “Palestine”. In 2019 they even forced a radio host to apologize for using the word Palestine when interviewing an author who published a graphic novel titled Palestine!

“When I published Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid in 2010 a Montreal Gazette reporter told me he enjoyed the book and would’ve sought to review it if the title hadn’t included the word apartheid. When a (single) daily paper reviewed my book it prompted a counter review. In the lead-up to the London launch, University of Western Ontario professor David Heap submitted a positive review to his local paper. But two weeks later, the London Free Press published Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) head Mike Fegelman’s response claiming it was “professionally unethical for Heap to not disclose his highly partisan stance on the Mideast file” when reviewing Canada and Israel.

Of course, the HRC did not disclose it is a well-resourced ‘flack’ organization that criticizes media for not towing their pro-genocide and apartheid line. They write replies, submit complaints and instigate email campaigns to media outlets when they publish something deemed objectionable.

But the HRC does nothing more than reinforce the dominant media’s broader structural bias towards power. On Palestine they largely echo the position of the Israel lobby, Canadian government and US empire.

Still, it was shocking to witness the media crassly downplay such a large demonstration. As thousands chanted in front of CBC “every time the media lies another family in Gaza dies”.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Gospel of Gaza

What we must learn from Netanyahu’s Bible lessons

BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 6, 2023

In a speech in Hebrew on October 28, Netanyahu justified the Israeli slaughter of civilians in Gaza with a biblical reference to Amalek.

You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we fight. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining the chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun, until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the October 73 War, and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy, and to guarantee our existence in this country.

In Netanyahu’s Holy Bible, God gives his chosen people Palestine, and the same God commands them to exterminate the Amalekites, an Arab people that stands in their way. Yahweh asks Moses to not only exterminate the Amalekites, but to “blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven” (Deuteronomy 25:19).

It was left to Saul to finish them up: “kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” Yahweh instructs him (1Samuel 15:8). Because Saul spared the Amalekite king Agag, Yahweh withdrew the kingship from him and drove him mad: “I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders” (15:11). The holy prophet Samuel, who had a direct line of communication with Yahweh, had to butcher Agag himself (“hewed Agag in pieces,” in the Revised Standard Version). Yahweh then gave the kingship to David, who proved a more obedient exterminator, for example when he put the people of Rabba “under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:31).

Despite their complete genocide in the Bible, the Amalekites remain the eternal nightmare of Israel. Amalek came to be associated, like his grandfather Esau, with Rome and Christianity, but also with Iran, because the villain of the Book of Esther, Haman, is referred to as an Agagite, that is, a descendant of the Amalekite king Agag. That is why the hanging of Haman with his ten sons and the massacre of 75,000 Persians are often conflated in Jewish tradition with the extermination of the Amalekites and the brutal execution of their king. The Torah reading on the morning of Purim is taken from the account of the battle against the Amalekites, which ends with the conclusion that “Yahweh will be at war with Amalek generation after generation” (Exodus 17:16).[1]

In a 2009 New York Times piece called “Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal,” Jeffrey Goldberg reports that, when he asked one of Netanyahu’s adviser’s “to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s anxiety about Iran,” the answer he received was: “Think Amalek.”[2] Now Netanyahu is calling on Israelis to remember Amalek while their army shells Gaza, men, women, children, infants and livestock included.

Netanyahu has not gone insane, as I explained earlier. He is simply possessed by the Bible, because Israel and the Bible are one. Netanyahu’s insanity is rooted in the Bible. His obsession with Amalek is a collective one, shared by Zionist religious Jews around the world. Let us, for example, listen to this lecture by Rabbi Eliyahu Kin, delivered in 2009, on the question: “Why must Jews destroy Amalek?” Let me summarize it for you. The Amalekites deserved their fate because they opposed the will of God. The will of God is good, and opposing the will of God is evil. So exterminating Amalek is good, while saving just one Amalekite, as Saul did, is evil. In fact, since God is good, exterminating Amalek is the expression of his goodness. And since “the best way to love what Hashem (God) loves is to hate what Hashem hates,” hating Amalek is loving God. The reason why the Amalekites hate the Jews is not because the Jews want to exterminate them. “What bothers Amalek is that the Jew believes in mussar, morality, ethics, being good, being nice.” The Amalekites are also evil because they oppose the Torah — in which God orders them to be exterminated. Ultimately, Rabbi Kin summarizes, “we are cruel to Amalek because we need to be. Because that is exactly what they would do to us if they had the chance.” Why? Because Amalek “is a concentration of hatred.” And Jews must hate hatred — except the hatred of God for Amalek, which they must love as an expression of God’s love. How do you deal with such collective madness?

More to the point: what’s wrong with Netanyahu quoting the Bible? It is the Holy Bible, isn’t it? The Word of God! We, Christianized peoples, have been taught too that in ancient times God chose the Jews, gave them Palestine, and commanded them to exterminate the Amalekites (and the Midianites, and many other peoples, seven nations in all). What can Christians possibly object to the rabbi? That God was hot-blooded in those days, but has now cooled down? That the Amalekites are no longer around, or now have the right to oppose the biblical project? (Because, you know, we are Israel now). Enough with all this hand-wringing! After all, God, the creator of the universe, does order, in our Christian Bible, to exterminate Amalek, men, women, children and babies (and cattle, for Yahweh makes no difference). It is undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable.

Let us face it: the God of the Old Testament is a bloodthirsty devil. Some people have known that for a long time, and tried to warn us. Bakunin, for example, who saw the Jewishness in Marxism, stated in God and the State that of all the gods adored by men, Yahweh “was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.” To quote from John Kaminski, “Yahweh gave the Jews the right to steal the lands of others (Deuteronomy 6:10-13, 6:18-19, 7:1-2). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to commit genocide, to totally annihilate the peoples whose lands they had the God-given right to take as their own (Deuteronomy 7:16). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to ‘destroy them (other peoples) with a mighty destruction until they be destroyed’ (Deuteronomy 7:23). Yahweh gave the Israelites the right to murder and plunder other races of their property (Exodus 3:20-22). Yahweh has made the Israelites a ‘holy’ people, a master race among other races (Deuteronomy 7:6).”

Bakunin was among those insightful intellectuals who, in the nineteenth century, woke up to the realization that Israel had been the creation of the most evil deity from the beginning. But most people didn’t hear them, because Israel was, for Christians, an abstraction, a story, a holy legend from mythological times. But today, Israel is real, and its hellish character is plainly manifested for everyone to see. Never before has the realization of Israel’s evil soul been so accessible. We are living in a time of revelation, and we’d better not miss it.

“The Palestinians have unwittingly sacrificed themselves for the purposes of enlightening the entire planetary civilization to the profound evil and satanic nature of the Zionist State of Israel,” wrote the Armchair Prophet.[3] A profound statement. Gaza is Christ, and Israel is Israel.[4] But Gaza is also Amalek. Amalek was Christ from the beginning, but we didn’t see it, because we were told that Christ was Yahweh’s son, and one with him. Now we can begin to see our tragic mistake. This is our wake up call. Let us face the truth about Yahweh and the chosen people he created in his image (or the other way around).

Why have Christians never noticed that, when he promised Israel domination over the nations on the condition of exclusive worship, Yahweh was the very same devil that later appeared to Jesus and “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor [and] said to him, ‘I will give you all these, if you fall at my feet and do me homage’” (Matthew 4:8-10). After all, Satan is just an “angel of Yahweh” in the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 22 and 32), indistinguishable from Yahweh himself in 1Chronicles 21.

Netanyahu is opening our eyes, and I am eagerly awaiting his next Bible lesson. After mentioning Amalek, he referred to the biblical Joshua as a “Jewish hero”. Please read the Book of Joshua to understand what he means, and what all Israelis who applaud him mean. Joshua committed genocide after genocide on the order of Yahweh, killing “men and women, young and old” (6:21) In the whole land, he “left not one survivor and put every living thing under the curse of destruction, as Yahweh, god of Israel, had commanded” (10:40).

Three days before that speech, Netanyahu declared to his people: “We shall realize the prophecy of Isaiah.” You may recall from your Sunday school that Isaiah prophesied a time when all nations “will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into sickles” (Isaiah 2:4). But go back to your Bible, and read the full prophecy to understand what Netanyahu means. Isaiah is about a time when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples” (2:3-4). Here is more from Isaiah: “the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly destroyed” (60:12); “You will suck the milk of nations, you will suck the wealth of kings” (60:16); “You will feed on the wealth of nations, you will supplant them in their glory” (61:5-6). “Yahweh’s sword is gorged with blood, it is greasy with fat,” says Isaiah on the occasion of “a great slaughter in the land of Edom [Amalek’s grandfather]” (34:6).

One man, in the second century AD, saw clearly that Jesus could not possibly be the son of Yahweh, that he was instead his archenemy. His name was Marcion. Scholars call him a Gnostic, because he taught that Yahweh was an evil demiurge, and Christ the good god coming down from Heaven to save us from Yahweh. Most texts we call Gnostics promoted this view, in one form or another. In the Apocryphon of John, also from the second century, Yahweh (or Yaltabaoth) is the first of a series of demonic entities called archons, who usurps the position of God by proclaiming: “I am a jealous god, there is none other than me.” Yaltabaoth and the other archons attempt to imprison Adam in the Garden of Eden, a false paradise. But Christ, who is the first aeon, sends Eve to Adam to release the light trapped in him, and lead him to eat the liberating fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

Modern scholarship has established that Gnosticism arose within Judaism, probably in Samaria. In the highly regarded opinion of Gilles Quispel, Gnosticism was a Jewish heresy before it was a Christian heresy. During the first three centuries there were Christian Gnostics and anti-Christian Gnostics, but all are Jews.[5] As a Jewish heresy, Gnosticism can be seen as a rejection by spiritual Jews of the materialistic and sadistic nature of Yahweh. Gnostics, however, still took their Torah too seriously and accepted the premise that, before becoming the god of Israel, Yahweh had been “God”, the creator of the world. In that sense, they were still under a biblical delusion.

In the Jewish infancy of Christianity, there was a struggle between Gnostic Christians and anti-Gnostics Christians. Marcion wrote the first evangelium and established the first organized ekklesia. It was still very strong in the early third century, according to Tertullian, who also tells us that the Gnostic teacher Valentinus almost became bishop of Rome (Against Marcion). Gnostics, relying on Paul’s teaching, believed that Jesus’s new covenant freed them from Moses’s covenant, but their enemies insisted on continuity, and claimed that the New Covenant (or Testament) fulfilled rather than contradicted the Old one. The anti-Gnostics ultimately prevailed, and the Jewish Tanakh became part of the Christian canon. That might have been a wise political move as long as the purpose was to convert Jews. But as Christianity became a Gentile religion, it resulted in Gentiles worshipping Yahweh along with Christ.

Christianity has given us the powerful story of Christ, the man who wanted to free Jews from their evil, ethnocentric god, and was martyred for it. But Christianity also became Yahweh’s Trojan Horse into Gentile civilization. The spirit and the teaching of Christ came to us mixed with the spirit and the teaching of Yahweh. The spirit of Yahweh is the spirit of mass murder: “The spirit of Yahweh came upon him (Samson), and he went down to Ashkelon, where he killed thirty of their men and despoiled them” (Judges 14:19). The spirit of Yahweh is in all Israel, now, stronger than ever before, fed by a century of bloodbaths orchestrated by Zionists.

In a book written under the pen-name Seymour Light, The Marcion Thesis, Revisited, which I recommend, Nick Kollerstrom (also author of the memorable Terror on the Tube) points out that, if we had to draw Yahweh’s portrait, he would have to be a dragon: he “rides through the heavens” (Deuteronomy 33:22) with his wings (Psalm 17:8, 36:8, 91:4), while “smoke rises from his nostrils, and from his mouth devouring fire” (Psalms 18:8 and Samuel 22:9). Yahweh also shares with the evil dragons of lore his lust for gold which he hoards in his dwelling place: “Mine is the silver, mine the gold!” (Haggai 2:8). (According to 1Kings 10:14, the amount of gold hoarded each year into Salomon’s temple was “666 talents of gold”). Like dragons, Yahweh is also a consumer of young virgins: thirty-two of them were offered to him after the slaughter of the Midianites, presumably burnt as holocausts together with the oxen, donkeys and sheep that were also part of Yahweh’s share (Numbers 31).

In the episode of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal, Yahweh’s devouring fire is given as the definite proof that he is God: “You must call on the name of your god, and I shall call on the name of Yahweh; the god who answers with fire, is God indeed” (1Kings 18:24). How spiritual! It is Yahweh’s devouring fire that is now unleashed on Gaza.

You better realize it now: Yahweh, the god of Israel, is Satan.

For more evidence, read my other Unz Review articles:

Notes

[1] Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 122-125, 4.

[2] Jeffrey Goldberg, “Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal,” New York Times, May 16, 2009, on www.nytimes.com

[3] The Armchair Prophet, “What’s happening in Gaza right now is beyond biblical…beyond apocalyptic,” State of the Nation, November 2, 2023, on https://stateofthenation.co/?p=193985

[4] Watch Abby Martin’s 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom.

[5] Gilles Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, edited by Johannes Van Oort, Brill, 2008. Also Attilio Mastrocinque, From Jewish Magic to Gnosticism, Mohr Siebeck, 2005.

November 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US, Israel to open second front in Lebanon

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 6, 2023

The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of an Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.

It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East. 

Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.

In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.” 

Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which form part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad”, near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an Israeli escalation into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction. 

In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he warned the US explicitly of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon. 

Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu. 

The point is, after bombarding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does. 

Equally, the Biden administration’s clumsy attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc. has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers – from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said the US would not push for one. 

Blinken travelled to Ramallah from Amman where the head of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas apparently gave him short shrift saying that the PA would only be ready to shoulder full responsibility for the Gaza Strip in the framework of a “comprehensive political solution” that would include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — and, furthermore, that security and peace can only be achieved by ending the occupation of the territories of the “State of Palestine,” and by recognising East Jerusalem as its capital. The meeting lasted for less than an hour and ended without public statements. 

Meanwhile, China and the UAE (by the way, Israel’s Abraham Accords partner) have since called for a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in another attempt to seek an immediate ceasefire, which the Biden Administration will certainly oppose. Suffice to say, the Biden Administration feels boxed in and the only way out is for something to give way through the exercise of coercive means.

The US is watching with frustration as new regional equations are appearing among Muslim nations. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held another phone conversation today. The OIC later announced that an extraordinary summit will be held in Riyadh on November 12 at the request of the current chairman, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people. 

As the death toll in Gaza crosses 10,000, feelings are indeed running high in the Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said today that “all the evidence and indications show the direct involvement of the Americans in running the war” in Gaza. Khamenei added that as the war goes on, the reasons behind the US’s direct role would become more explicit.

The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also disclosed that Khamenei held a “recent meeting in Tehran” with the Head of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh where he told the latter that Tehran’s support for the resistance groups is its “permanent policy.”   

Evidently, Tehran no longer sees a problem in acknowledging its dealings with the resistance groups. This is a paradigm shift indicative of the shift in the power dynamic, which the US and Israel seem to have decided to counter through use of force where diplomacy failed to make headway to isolate Iran. 

The Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday during a meeting in the Northern Command, “We are ready to strike in the north at any moment. We understand that it can happen… We have a clear goal of restoring a significantly better security situation at the borders [with Lebanon], not only in the Gaza Strip.” 

No power on earth can stop Israel in its tracks now. Its existence is inextricably linked to this war which will ensure abiding US commitment to its security as a key template of American global strategies for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder to shoulder with the Americans. 

There is no question that the location of the US nuclear submarine to the east of Suez is an attempt to intimidate Iran from intervening, as Israel, with US backing, proceed to open a second front. The Israeli authorities have announced evacuation of people from settlements located in a zone up to five kms from the border with Lebanon. 

A prolonged war of indeterminate timeline is set to begin in the Middle East. The Middle East that emerged after World War II is breaking loose and drifting away into the chronicles of history. As the call of the jihad begins, there is no knowing how the 80-year old American president will respond. 

No, this won’t turn into a world war. It will be fought in the Middle East itself, but its outcome will decisively impact the making of a new world order.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Finance Minister calls for ban on Palestinians harvesting olives in occupied West Bank

MEMO | November 6, 2023

Israel’s extreme far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Galant to prohibit Palestinians in the West Bank from harvesting their olive crop. According to Smotrich, Israel needs to establish “sterile security zones” with no Palestinian presence around settlements and settler-only roads. The aim is to prevent Palestinian farmers from having access to their olive groves in the occupied territory.

The Zionist fanatic also criticised what he called, without a hint of irony, “the continued neglect of the security of the settlers in Judea and Samaria” and claimed that security has been undermined severely since the 7 October attack in the south of the occupation state.

“The concept of security must be shaken, emphasising the need to create sterile security zones around the settlements and roads and to prevent Arabs [sic] from entering them, including for harvesting,” said Smotrich. “The writing is on the wall and I am not ready to be a part of it. I will not agree to additional blood under my watch due to insistence on maintaining distorted perceptions.”

While the world’s attention has focused on the Israeli bombardment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, illegal Jewish settlers have been attacking Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank. Most attacks take place while the armed settlers are protected by the Israeli army. All of Israel’s settlements and the settlers who live in them are illegal under international law.

According to the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, since 7 October settlers have carried out at least 280 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, utilising terrorist tactics against the indigenous population and their farms and properties.

The Israeli army has also killed 151 Palestinians in the occupied territory in the same period, and arrested 2,080 others. The death toll in Gaza has now passed the 10,000 mark. Most of those killed were children and women.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli attack on south Lebanon kills three children, Hezbollah hits back

The Cradle | November 6, 2023

An Israeli drone strike on a civilian car in the village of Ainata in southern Lebanon on the evening of 5 November left four civilians dead – three of them children.

The precision munition strike was launched from a drone towards the car, reported Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent.

A woman and her three grandchildren were killed in the attack, and the mother of the children was seriously injured and is currently in critical condition.

The three girls, aged 10, 12, and 14, were killed instantly.

Earlier the same day, Israeli forces targeted two ambulances in Wadi al-Dabaa, resulting in the injury of four paramedics.

A spokesman for the Israeli army claimed in a statement that the targeted vehicle was “identified as a suspicious vehicle containing several terrorists” and that the event is currently “under review.”

In response to the targeting of civilians, Hezbollah launched grad rockets (Katyusha rockets) at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, dealing direct damage in several areas and setting a car ablaze.

In a statement, the Lebanese resistance movement said that it “will never tolerate harm and assault on civilians, and its response will be firm and strong.”

Hezbollah lawmaker and parliament member Hassan Fadlallah clarified that “the enemy will pay for its crimes against civilians.”

According to the Kiryat Shmona spokesperson, the first wave launched from Lebanon consisted of 6 rockets, one of which caused damage to property.

The second wave also saw six rockets launched, all falling inside Kiryat Shmona. Three impacted houses, and the other three fell in the surrounding areas, also causing damage.

He added that electricity lines were also damaged.

This exchange comes two days after Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s speech addressing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, during which he warned that if Israel targets civilians on Lebanese soil, the resistance movement will reciprocate the attacks against Israeli civilians.

Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been engaged in an ongoing exchange of fire on their shared border since 8 October – one day after the Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, launched its offensive on the Israeli settlements of the Gaza Envelope.

These clashes have gradually increased in intensity as the Israeli army continues with its ground incursion into the Gaza Strip as well as its incessant bombing of the besieged enclave – which has killed nearly 10,000 Palestinians.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran FM says Tehran received new message from Washington on Gaza

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
Press TV – November 6, 2023

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.

The minister, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Monday meeting between Iranian and Iraqi heads of governments in Tehran, said, however, that the message did not correspond to what the US has done in practice in Gaza where it has supported the Israeli crimes against the civilians.

“The Americans … delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard,” said Amir-Abdollahian, but “they, however, back mass killing and genocide” of people in Gaza.

“We hope that the US will soon change its policy and stop supporting the occupying party,” he said.

The US had sent similar messages to Iran, a country with influence over resistance groups in Palestine, since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7, according to statements by Amir-Abdollahian and other authorities.

Amir-Abdollahian also commented about reports suggesting that his US counterpart Antony Blinken had arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier on Monday while wearing a bullet-proof vest out of fears that he could be targeted because of his support for the Israeli carnage in Gaza.

“This is the reality about the US role in the region,” said the diplomat.

Resistance groups in Iraq have launched attacks on US military bases in the Arab country in response to Washington’s offering of direct and open support for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Those groups and peers in other countries of the region have warned that such attacks on US interests could expand if Israel does not stop its brutal aggression against Gaza.

Gaza health authorities said on Monday that the number of people killed in 31 days of Israel attacks had exceeded 10,000 with children accounting for nearly half of the death toll.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Message Does US Tomahawk-Carrying Submarine Send Amid Gaza War?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.11.2023

An Ohio-class guided missile submarine arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, as per a social media post by the US Central Command.

The Ohio-class guided missile submarine (SSGN) – depicted entering the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo by the US Central Command – is one of the four US underwater craft of this type converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

Per the US press, each SSGN sub can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is 50% more than a US guided-missile destroyer and nearly four times what the US Navy’s newest attack submarines are equipped with.

The Tomahawk cruise missile can strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away and has been used in combat more than 2,300 times by the US and its allies. Most recently, US Navy warships and subs fired 66 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government facilities in 2018.

According to the US press, the heavily armed submarine sends “a message of deterrence” to Israel’s “regional adversaries, as the Biden administration “tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.”

The deployment of the submarine is triggering concerns, as per the DC-based think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The crux of the matter is that the US has already amassed a huge military force in the Middle East over the unfolding Gaza war.

The think tank particularly refers to:

· two aircraft carrier strike groups, with roughly 7,500 personnel on each;
· two guided-missile destroyers;
· nine air squadrons (deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea region);
· 4,000 troops dispatched to the region, with another 2,000 on standby, in addition to roughly 30,000 troops already stationed in the region.

These figures do not include “several dozen” commandos deployed to Israel in order to “actively help the Israelis to do a number of things,” as per Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defense.

On top of that there are US top military advisers on the ground in Israel to work out strategies to defeat Hamas together with the Israel Defense Forces.

“The United States is barreling toward another war in the Middle East,” Jon Hoffman, a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, wrote for RS on Monday. “The conflict between Israel and Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the United States directly into the fray.”

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Soldiers Detain German Journalists in West Bank

Sputnik – 06.11.2023

The Israeli military detained a film crew from German broadcaster ARD in the West Bank and threatened journalists with weapons, the Tagesschau broadcaster, part of the ARD media group, reported on Sunday.

The journalists were detained after they filmed violence against Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers, the report said, adding that ARD in Tel Aviv sees this as a clear attack on press freedom.

“Soldiers threatened us with guns and asked if we were Jews. Our colleague was called a traitor … Journalists who want to cover events taking place in the West Bank in the shadow of the war in the Gaza Strip are apparently not allowed to do so,” ARD correspondent Jan-Christoph Kitzler said.

The situation was resolved only an hour later, after the arrival of additional Israeli military and police forces, the report added. ARD in Tel Aviv promised to hire a lawyer to determine the legal consequences of the incident.

Christian Limpert, the head of ARD-Studios Tel Aviv, said it was the second such incident this week. “For us it is the second incident within a week. Our team has clearly identified itself as an accredited press representative and was far away from military security areas. We cannot accept the actions of the Israeli military,” he said.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

I was tortured, evicted from home for my media, rights work: West Bank activist

By Syed Zafar Mehdi | Press TV | November 6, 2023

There is “an announced and official war” on the besieged Gaza Strip and “an unannounced and unofficial war” on the occupied West Bank, says a Palestinian human rights activist.

Issa Amro, a prominent human rights activist based in the occupied West Bank, in an interview with the Press TV website on Monday, said the Israeli military has laid crippling siege around the territory.

He said all checkpoints have been closed in the occupied West Bank, most of the roads have also been shut, and the majority of communities are not allowed to leave their respective areas.

The Israeli regime launched an indiscriminate aerial bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip early last month, which was followed by attacks and military raids in the occupied West Bank.

One more Palestinian man was killed by the Israeli army fire in the West Bank on Monday, taking the death toll to 154 since October 7, the Palestinian Authority-run health ministry said.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, at least 2,150 Palestinians have been detained in arbitrary military raids by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in the past four weeks.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, the death toll has risen to over 9,500, most of them children and women.

Amro described the detention of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “random and arbitrary”, saying over 2,000 people have been held under the controversial “administrative detention” policy.

The West Bank-based human rights activist who has been attacked by Israeli forces on multiple occasions said Israeli settlers dressed as soldiers have been “harassing” local Palestinians and carrying out “organized violence” towards Palestinians in different villages of the occupied region.

Israeli settlers, he maintained, have been on the rampage, warning Palestinian residents, attacking them, burning their houses, and beating them up despite any provocations.

In his village, Amro said, a strict lockdown has been imposed and local inhabitants are allowed to leave their homes only on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday “for one hour each to get food and return.”

“It is not a normal life, it’s a very very bad life, and it’s a really scary life,” he told the Press TV website, adding that he was ruthlessly beaten on October 7 “for ten hours continuously” and later evicted from his home as well.

“I returned home only yesterday (Sunday) after my lawyer intervened.”

On the relentless targeting of journalists in both the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Amro said journalists are not even allowed to film Israeli soldiers, cover their stories, or write anything on social media.

“Journalists here are afraid of their lives, about their freedom. Many journalists have been arrested in the West Bank in last month, they were beaten up and their cameras were broken.”

Amro is a prolific writer and contributes his articles to many reputed international publications.

He told the Press TV website that he is scared for his life, like other Palestinians, including journalists – “to be shot, to be arrested, to be tortured.”

“I was myself tortured (by the Israeli military) as I shot films and spoke to media on October 7. It was due to my journalism and human rights work,” he asserted.

Amro said the Israeli regime used the Hamas operation on October 7, ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ operation’, “to announce a war, to end what they started in 1948, the Nakba, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

“Without a real intervention of the international community and stopping the support for Israel, it will go on killing the civilians and targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” he remarked.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Thoughtcrime Arrests In Israel: “People Have Been Arrested For Saying Their Heart Was With The Children of Gaza”

It’s all following the algorithm—same as Canada, same as US—you MUST agree with your STATE

By Celia Farber | The Truth Barrier | November 5, 2023

“The police say that any slogans in favor of Gaza or against the war mean supporting terrorism… even if you say that you are, of course, against people being murdered,” Abeer Baker, a human rights lawyer representing some of the people who have been arrested, told CNN.

“The Israel Police said that as of October 25, it had arrested 110 people since the start of the war for allegedly inciting violence and terrorism, mostly on social media. Of these arrests, only 17 resulted in indictments. Most people were released without further charges, usually after a few days.

“Baker said the low number of indictments suggested that people were being arrested for making statements that are not illegal.

“People have been arrested for saying their heart was with the children in Gaza,” Baker told CNN, pointing to a widely-reported case of a comedian from northern Israel who was arrested after posting that phrase on his social media.

‘Not talking about the law’

“The Israel Police says it is acting under Israel’s Counter Terrorism Law. Article 24 of this legislation states that anyone who does anything to “empathize with a terror group” whether that’s by “publishing praises, support or encouraging, waving a flag, showing or publishing a symbol” can be arrested and jailed for up to three years.

“However, Adalah, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that advocates for Arab rights in Israel said in a statement that these arrests are arbitrary and target Palestinians only. It said that many are carried out with brutal force in the middle of the night, and without proper legal justification.

“The criteria is not whether it’s legal or not, the criteria is whether it makes people angry or whether it’s something that is against the mainstream, we are not talking about the law. We are talking about atmosphere,” Baker said, adding that discussing the context of the October 7 attacks is “forbidden.”

Article here.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story

Al Jazeera World Documentary | February 2, 2022

“A land without a people, and a people without a land” is how the relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people was described by Christian writers in the 1800s. And the 20th-century history of the Middle East has largely been written through these eyes.

But this film from Al Jazeera Arabic looks at Palestine from a different angle. It hears from historians and witness accounts, and features archive documents that show Palestine as a thriving province of Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the 20th century.

The evidence suggests that its cities had a developing trade and commercial sector, growing infrastructure, and embryonic culture that would enable it to meet the challenges of the decades ahead. However, the political ramifications of the Balfour Declaration, San Remo Conference and British Mandate set in motion a series of events that profoundly affected this vibrant, fledgeling society and led to the events of 1948 and beyond.

This film is the other side of the Palestinian story.

November 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas calls for an international committee to inspect Gaza hospitals

Palestine Information Center – November 5, 2023

GAZA – The Hamas Movement called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to form an international committee to visit Gaza hospitals and verify the Israeli false narrative about being used for resistance activities.

The Movement strongly condemned the Israeli army spokesman’s claims regarding Indonesian and Hamad hospitals in Gaza as media fabrications.

According to the Movement, the occupation is attempting to use the claim that Hamas constructed tunnels beneath the buildings as justification for its attacks on the Qatari and Indonesian hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.

“This is just a lie to cover up the Israeli crimes committed against injured people and civilians.”

The Movement also confirmed that the Israeli allegation about a tunnel entrance under the Indonesian hospital is, in fact, a fuel store for the facility, while the alleged tunnel beneath Hamad Hospital is just a room for pumps and electricity generators.

Targeting more than 100 hospitals and medical centers and putting about 16 hospitals out of service refutes the Israeli army spokesman’s allegations.

Additionally, Hamas refuted Israeli claims that it is stealing fuel, an accusation that UNRWA has categorically refuted.

November 5, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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