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Washington blocks UNSC statement condemning Israel for ‘Flour Massacre’

The Cradle | March 1, 2024

The US, on 29 February, vetoed a UN Security Council (UNSC) statement that would have condemned Israel for the mass murder of over 100 Palestinian civilians who were awaiting the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza City.

“We don’t have all the facts on the ground – that’s the problem,” US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told reporters on Thursday.

He then claimed there are “contradictory reports” about the Israeli army’s latest massacre and highlighted that Washington was focused on finding “some language that everyone can agree on.”

Thursday’s veto is the fifth time Washington has blocked a UNSC statement or ceasefire resolution that would hold Israel accountable for the atrocities it has committed in Gaza.

According to Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, 14 of the 15 council members supported the statement advanced by Algeria.

At least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 wounded after Israeli troops opened heavy machine gun and artillery fire on thousands waiting for food on Gaza’s Al-Rashid Street, in what marked the first delivery of food to northern Gaza in several weeks.

“After opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies,” Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul reported from the scene.

“We had come here to get our hands on some aid. I have been waiting since noon yesterday. At about 4:30 in the early morning, trucks started to trickle in. The Israelis just opened random fire on us as if it was a trap. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing on us,” a witness at the scene told Al Jazeera.

The Israeli aggression triggered a stampede, adding to the chaos.

“We were going to bring flour … then Israeli snipers shot at us,” another person in the area told the Qatari news outlet. “They shot me in the leg. I’m unable to stand up,” he added.

Tel Aviv changed its story multiple times on Thursday, first claiming the majority of victims were killed by the stampede and later saying that soldiers opened fire only after feeling “threatened.” Officials have yet to explain how the crowds of underfed and displaced civilians posed any threat to them.

March 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Colombia suspends Israeli arms purchases following attack on Palestinian crowd

The Cradle – March 1, 2024

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on 29 February announced the country would suspend all arms purchases from Israel in protest against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Asking for food, more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Netanyahu. This is called genocide and is reminiscent of the [Holocaust] even if the world powers do not like to recognize it. The world must block Netanyahu. Colombia suspends all purchases of weapons from Israel,” Petro said via social media after the latest massacre of civilians by Israel in Gaza.

Israel has killed at least 30,035 and injured 70,457 others in Gaza while inflicting mass destruction and shortages of basic necessities on the strip.

Colombia is among the countries that fully supported South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Petro has also continuously condemned Tel Aviv for its indiscriminate attacks against Palestinians since 7 October, taking a similar stance as the leaders of other Latin American nations like Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

“If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we suspend them. We do not support genocides,” Petro said via social media on 15 October.

His comments came after Israel suspended all security exports to the South American country in response to Petro’s public stance on the genocide unfolding in Gaza.

Petro drew the ire of Israel after posting on social media: “Neither the Yair Kleins nor the Raifal Eithans will be able to say what the history of peace in Colombia is. They unleashed the massacre and genocide in Colombia.”

Former Israeli army colonel and mercenary Yair Klein in the 1980s was responsible for training fighters from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group responsible for multiple war crimes during Colombia’s internal war. Klein was later brought to Colombia to train the National Police.

Raifal Eithan, the former chief of staff of the Israeli army, served as an advisor to former Colombian president Virgilio Barco and once proposed killing the members of the Patriotic Union political party, which was born from the failed peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 1984.

Far-right Colombian paramilitaries are responsible for killing tens of thousands of civilians, including social leaders, environmental activists, and campesinos, and forcing millions more out of their homes. Furthermore, all branches of the Colombian armed forces use Israeli weaponry as standard, and all have been trained by Tel Aviv in combat techniques.

March 1, 2024 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Time’s ‘New Antisemitism’ is More Woke Garbage

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity | February 29, 2024

We’ve all heard the “woke” assertion that some people cannot be considered racist no matter how they act or what they say while other people are destined to live their entire lives as racists no matter how they act or what they say. The key difference between the two groups of people is whether their ancestry dictates they be labeled among the oppressors or the oppressed.

People exercising rationality see through this nonsense. They can judge people’s actions and statements with no investigation of family trees required.

Reading the Tuesday editorial “The New Antisemitism” at Time one comes across a fair amount of interesting commentary. But, in the end, the editorial just ends up applying a variation of the now familiar woke garbage assertions to Israel’s ongoing war. The Israel government cannot be engaging in genocide in its war because Israel is “the Jewish state” and Jewish people have a long history of being much oppressed, plus people who say otherwise are antisemitic. That is how the author Noah Feldman wraps up the editorial.

Here is the Time editorial’s presentation of its conclusions on genocide and antisemitism:

There is something specifically noteworthy about leveling the [genocide] charge at the Jewish state—something intertwined with the new narrative of the Jews as archetypal oppressors rather than archetypal victims. Call it the genocide sleight of hand: if the Jews are depicted as genocidal—if Israel becomes the very archetype of a genocidal state—then Jews are much less likely to be conceived as a historically oppressed people engaged in self-defense.

The new narrative of Jews as oppressors is, in the end, far too close for comfort to the antisemitic tradition of singling out Jews as uniquely deserving of condemnation and punishment, whether in its old religious form or its Nazi iteration. Like those earlier forms of antisemitism, the new kind is not ultimately about the Jews, but about the human impulse to point the finger at someone who can be made to carry the weight of our social ills.

The Time editorial says people seeking to hold the Israel government to account for its actions and statements are applying a “genocide sleight of hand” rooted in antisemitism. However, critical readers will recognize that real sleight of hand is the rhetorical sleight of hand whereby the clever wording of the editorial is used in an attempt to absolve a government for its horrendous actions by defining that government as a perpetual victim and its accusers as inescapably antisemites.

February 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US, pushed by Israel, involved in widening war despite consequences: Iran FM

Press TV – February 28, 2024

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says the United States is involved in the expansion of the scope of the Israeli war on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip to other fronts across the West Asia region.

Amir-Abdollahian stressed that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to widen the Gaza war and involve the United States in a way that goes beyond the all-out support Washington and some of its allies have already provided for Tel Aviv.

“The Americans do not yet have the necessary will to stop the war, but at the same time, they are sending messages expressing their unwillingness to expand its scope because they are well aware of the danger of expanding its scope,” the top Iranian diplomat said.

“On the other hand, they are expanding the scope of the war through their joint aggression with the UK against Yemen.Today in Europe, everyone talks about the necessity of stopping the war, but Britain is playing a double game.”

He made the statement in an interview with Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday,

Amir-Abdollahian added that Washington’s talk of reducing the intensity of the Gaza war, rather than stopping it, is a “mistake and malicious behavior that means giving the green light to Netanyahu” to press ahead with its months-long brutal aggression.

“I told the British foreign minister that the joint British-American aggression against Yemen is a strategic mistake that you are committing,” he said. Yemen has “proven that they do not trifle with any party regarding the security of their lands. They have been able to convey this message and clearly warned that ships carrying military cargo to Israel will be stopped.”

US hypocrisy on Gaza

The Iranian foreign minister also pointed to the US administration’s unswerving support to Israel in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian territory and its continued supply of weapons and logistics to the occupying regime.

“Our information has it that the process of sending weapons from all American bases in the region and its warships to Tel Aviv is continuing,” he said, adding, “Islamic countries should not be turned into a place to supply weapons to the Israeli entity.”

Denouncing the US hypocrisy in dealing with the Gaza war, Amir-Abdollahian said, “Everyone agrees that if the United States abandons its military support for the occupying entity, Netanyahu will not be able to continue the war against Gaza for even an hour.”

The top Iranian diplomat also stressed that Israel did not achieve any of its declared goals in the war on Gaza, including the elimination of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, the group’s disarmament and the arrest of its Gaza-based leader Yahya Sinwar.

“The Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements are at their best despite all the challenges and difficulties, and that they have the material and human resources and capabilities necessary to continue to withstand a longer war than what we have seen so far,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

Praising the morale and steadfastness of the residents of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, he underlined that the Israeli plans in Rafah “will not translate into reality and the occupation will not be able to forcibly displace people to the Egyptian Sinai.”

UN performance ‘unacceptable’

Elsewhere in his interview, the Iranian foreign minister censured as “unacceptable” the United Nations’ performance regarding the situation on the ground in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, saying the UN Security Council has not fulfilled its duty in light of the United States’ use of its veto.

“The Security Council did not fulfill its duty as the US continuously and unilaterally exploited its veto power. Every prospect and proposal of a Gaza ceasefire has been rejected by the American veto, exhibiting a contradictory behavior to the banners of primary human rights. Even at the UN Human Rights Council, we still have not seen any adequate mobilization in this regard,” he said.

“Does the UNHRC not want to create a special committee that relays the facts and investigations into war crimes, genocide, and human rights violations being committed in Gaza? So far, we have not witnessed a singular decisive measure taken by any of the organizations that fall under the UN.”

Amir-Abdollahian said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had so far taken some good measures but had not been able to help the people of Gaza “in an effective and real way” through the existing mechanisms of the United Nations.

“In the Human Rights Council, we clearly see that everything is subject to the control of politicians and false human rights advocates,” he said.

Israel launched the campaign of death and destruction on October 7, after Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups conducted the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s decades-long atrocities.

Israel has killed nearly 30,000 people and injured more than 70,000 others in Gaza since that October day.

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US senators slam Biden’s strategy against Red Sea operations

Press TV – February 28, 2024

A bipartisan group of US senators has slammed President Joe Biden’s handling of the Yemeni army’s attacks against Israeli-linked vessels, as well as American and British ships in the Red Sea.

The senators on Tuesday contended Biden should seek congressional authorization for ongoing military action against the Yemen-based movement.

The United States has been carrying out near-daily strikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who have said their attacks on shipping are in solidarity with Palestinians.

The Houthi Ansarullah movement said Yemen’s attacks against shipping in the Red Sea will only stop after the Israeli regime ends its aggression and blockade on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The American strikes have so far failed to halt the Yemeni attacks, which have upset global trade and raised shipping rates.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said during a congressional hearing with Pentagon and State Department officials that he had serious concerns about the legal authority the Biden administration was relying on for the strikes but also what impact they were having.

“Trying to re-establish deterrence, I don’t think you’re going to do it if the 200 strikes become 400 strikes, 800 strikes, 1,200 strikes,” Kaine said.

“I think you will re-establish deterrence when we get a hostage deal that leads us to a truce, that leads us to humanitarian aid into Gaza, that leads us to the ability to discuss, whatever that truce period is, can be extended,” he added.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that its strikes have so far destroyed or degraded 150 missiles and launchers along with radars, weapons storage areas and drones.

Yemen’s Red Sea operations would end in case a ceasefire is reached between the Israeli regime and the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement, said Mohammed Abdul-Salam, who is also the chief negotiator of the Ansarullah movement.

He added that the situation would be reassessed if Israel ended its siege on Gaza and allowed humanitarian aid to enter the Palestinian territory.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after resistance movements in the territory carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on Israeli settlers and military forces in occupied Palestine.

The Yemeni Armed Forces have said they will not stop retaliatory strikes until unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza, which have killed nearly 30,000 people and wounded around 70,000, come to a complete end.

The maritime attacks have forced some of the biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.

“The Constitution requires Congress to authorize acts of war. … We swore an oath to follow the Constitution. If we believe this is a just military action and I do, then we should authorize it,” Senator Chris Murphy, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East subcommittee.

Murphy, a Democrat, said he would be in talks with his colleagues to introduce such an authorization.

Senator Todd Young, the subcommittee’s senior Republican, also questioned the Biden administration’s strategy.

“It’s imperative that the administration respond to these actions while demonstrating it is both a strategy for deterring aggression and appropriate legal doctrine,” said Young. “To date, I have not seen such a strategy put forward.”

The US Constitution gives Congress the right to authorize war, but US law gives the White House the authority to launch limited foreign military action.

The United States and the United Kingdom have been carrying out strikes against Yemen since early January after Washington and its allies offered Israel their full support amid attacks by Yemeni forces on Israeli-linked ships sailing to and from the occupied territories through the Red Sea.

Separately on Tuesday, the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that US “preemptive” strikes on Yemen on Monday had destroyed two anti-ship cruise missiles, three unmanned surface vessels and a drone in the Arab country.

It claimed that the destroyed missiles were being prepared to launch toward the Red Sea.

Two days earlier, the US and the UK said that they had targeted at least 18 military sites in eight locations across Yemen. The attacks included strikes against underground weapons and missile storage facilities, air defense systems, radars and a helicopter, they added.

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine ‘Fiasco’ Likely Driving West to Seek Victory Against Houthis

Sputnik – 28.02.2024

Efforts of the US-led coalition to thwart Houthi attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Gulf of Aden have been recently backed by Germany which deployed one of its warships, frigate Hessen, to aid Washington’s effort.

The frigate’s deployment came as part of an “EU-wide operation that includes other countries as well,” said Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, assistant professor of public policy and international affairs at the American University of Beirut.

“I know that my country, Greece, also sent off frigates only a few days ago. So this is a major escalation. This is a very dangerous major escalation,” he told Sputnik. “[It is] A decision that’s made by the EU to interfere in the conflict that has been raging in the Sea of Aden and the coast of Yemen.”

According to Kosmatopoulos, this a “very worrisome development” as the European Union’s decision to join the US conflict with the Houthis leads to “extreme militarization of the waters” in the region, not to mention the EU becoming a “party to the regional war waging in Israel –Palestine.”

He also suggested that it is hard to tell whether the Hessen’s deployment came as a result of US pressure on Germany or as part of an EU effort to unblock the waterway in question.

On one hand, Kosmatopoulos noted, the US does seek to have other NATO members “share the burdens of the collective security under the NATO alliance,” including all of the associated costs and risks.

On the other hand, “the current European governance and current European leadership seems to be willingly going in this direction.”

“We saw it also in the case of the Ukraine-Russia conflict that it has been more or less unified front, consolidated front that makes it difficult to decide whether it’s just the US pressure or is also a collective decision of the West to close ranks and show strength in multiple fronts,” Kosmatopoulos said.

Regarding the reason why the US seeks to drag more of its NATO allies into the confrontation with the Houthis, the scholar postulated that Washington “wants to share the responsibility, wants to make others partake in this, wants them to dirty their hands and to show what they got,” just like they did by compelling European nations to back Kiev.

The ensuing escalation in the Middle East, he reasoned, “allows the US and its allies to ask for more and more intensive engagement that might also mean active military action against the Ansar Allah and Houthis in Yemen” as the West seeks to “reestablish its hegemony.”

“Perhaps the Ukraine fiasco made it necessary to have victory somewhere else,” Kosmatopoulos. “I hope that this is not understood as a zero-sum game in the Western elites. But it might look like that from the outset. So in that case, we’re in for a regional flare-up, if not – bigger than that. And this is an extremely worrisome development.”

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Houthis Refute Claims They’ve Sabotaged Underwater Cables in Red Sea

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.02.2024

Israeli media reported on Monday that the Yemeni militia had targeted “four submarine communication cables” in the area between Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Djibouti.

The Houthis’ Telecommunications Ministry has denied reports by “Zionist-linked media” claiming that they have sabotaged major underwater telecommunications cables connection, Europe, Africa and Asia.

“The Ministry of Telecoms and Information Technology denies what has been published by the Zionist-linked media outlets and also what has been published by other media outlets and the social networks, on allegations as to what [has] been caused to Red Sea submarine cables,” the militia said in an English-language statement Tuesday, a day after an Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper reported that the militia had caused “serious disruption” to internet cables between Europe and Asia.

“Yemen Telecom affirms its pivotal role to continue and build up and develop the international and regional telecom and internet networks which are provided by the submarine cables running within the Yemeni territorial waters and will keep up to facilitate the passage and implementation of the submarine cables projects through the Yemeni territorial waters, inclusive the projects into which the Yemen Republic participated, by Yemen International Telecom Co – TeleYemen,” the statement added.

The Ministry pointed to recent statements by Houthi movement leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi committing the militia to keeping underwater cables and its relevant services “away from any possible risks,” and said the militia’s campaign “to ban the passage of Israeli ships” through Red Sea waters “does not pertain [to] the other international ships which have been licensed to execute submarine works within the Yemeni territorial waters.”

Houthi Politburo member Khuzam al-Assad told Sputnik that the militia undertook “no actions… aimed at damaging internet cables, and we have repeatedly confirmed this.”

Al-Assad said the claims of Houthi attacks on the cables were insinuations being pushed by Tel Aviv, Washington and London to try to turn global public opinion against the Houthis instead of “stopping the crimes of genocide committed by the Israeli Army with the support of the United States and the West against Gaza residents.”

The Israeli media report said four major cables, including AAE-1 (connecting East Asia to Europe via Egypt), Seacom (linking Europe, Africa and India), EIG (linking India and the Gulf to Africa and Europe) and TGN (linking France to India) had been hit, with most of the immediate damage expected to be felt by India and the Gulf States.

Western reporting on possible Houthi operations to sabotage underwater internet cables began to surface in January, with the BBC running a story in early February saying the Houthis “almost certainly would” target the cables “if they could,” while admitting that “the fiber cables, which carry 17% of the world’s internet traffic, lie on the seabed mostly hundreds of meters below the surface – well below the reach of divers.” Only a handful of countries, including the US and Russia, have the capability to sabotage this infrastructure using deep sea submersibles, the outlet said.

The Houthis began a months-long maritime campaign of ship hijackings, drone strikes and missile launches targeting Israel-affiliated commercial vessels in the Red Sea in November in solidarity with Gaza amid Israel’s ground assault into the enclave. The US announced the creation of a naval ‘coalition of the willing’ against Yemen in December, and started bombing the country in January to try to degrade the militia’s missile and drone capabilities. The Houthis responded by banning all American and British ships from passing through the strategic waterway, and launching attacks on US and British warships operating in the area.

The Yemeni militia has effectively shut the Red Sea down to up to 40 percent of its normal commercial traffic, adding tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to global shipping costs and disrupting supply chains worldwide.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Official Admits Only 85 Aid Trucks Entering Gaza Per Day

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 27, 2024

The head of USAID said on Monday that only around 85 aid trucks were able to enter Gaza each day, under 10% of the prewar number. The White House has touted that it has leveraged US influence to get Israel to provide more aid to the Strip. However, Tel Aviv is deploying a myriad of tactics to strangle aid shipments in Gaza.

“More than 500 trucks should be entering Gaza daily. In the past week, only ~85/day managed to get through,” Samantha Power, the head of USAID, posted on X. Power, who considers herself an expert on genocide prevention, has not called for a ceasefire or an end to US weapons shipments to Israel even as the International Court of Justice concluded Tel Aviv was plausibly waging a genocide in Gaza.

Before October 7, about 500 trucks entered Gaza daily to sustain the people. The number of Palestinians in the Strip needing aid has skyrocketed over the past four months. Nearly all 2.3 million Palestinians are displaced and do not have access to clean water or food.

Since Israel went to war in Gaza, Tel Aviv has used a multitude of methods to stifle aid deliveries, including attacking shipments. CNN reports that the Israeli military attacked a UN aid shipment in Gaza on February 5 after approving the trucks to travel through the Strip.

Additionally, Israel is preventing a US-funded food shipment from being unloaded at the port. Tel Aviv has enacted an onerous inspection regime that slows deliveries and prevents lifesaving medication from reaching the Strip. Israeli government agencies have denied visas to international aid workers, limiting the activities of dozens of organizations.

Israeli civilian protesters are also interfering with shipments by blocking and delaying trucks carrying the aid. Once convoys enter Gaza, they are mobbed by starving Palestinians. Recently, Israeli forces began targeting the police force in the Strip, making it harder for the trucks to move through Gaza.

Jordan has airdropped aid in Gaza 16 times since October 7 to bypass the backup at the border inspection checkpoint.

The Israeli onslaught in Gaza has thrown the Palestinian people into a horrific humanitarian crisis. Most of the medical facilities have been destroyed or shut down, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have suffered serious burns, cuts, and amputations.

In the northern half of the Strip, one in six children are suffering from acute malnutrition, meaning they could soon die of starvation or other deprivation. A two-month-old child succumbed to starvation in central Gaza last week. Palestinians are eating animal feed, grass, and rotten food.

The Biden administration has faced increasing pressure over its support for Tel Aviv as Israeli forces killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and annihilated most of the Strip. President Biden has touted that he has successfully pressed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to allow more assistance into Gaza. As with aid, Tel Aviv has ignored nearly all of Washington’s requests with no impact on US weapons shipments to Tel Aviv.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Leaked Gaza ceasefire proposal US ‘psychological warfare’: Hamas

The Cradle | February 27, 2024

Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi stated on 27 February that a leaked proposal for a ceasefire deal in Gaza is part of a “psychological warfare” campaign being carried out by the US.

Details of the alleged proposal were leaked to Reuters on Monday, the same day US President Joe Biden said he hoped a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could be reached by 4 March.

“My national security adviser tells me that they’re close. They’re close. They’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden claimed during an appearance on a late-night US talk show.

But Abdul Hadi, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, stated that the resistance movement is not satisfied with the proposal and will not compromise on any of its demands, particularly “on a ceasefire and reaching an honorable, serious deal.”

Hamas is seeking a permanent end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel is seeking the release of the 136 captives held by Hamas in Gaza and a temporary ceasefire that would allow it to resume the war after a pause.

“We are open to any ideas posed by mediators but are also keen on preserving our key demands,” Abdul Hadi told Al-Mayadeen, adding that Israel is “seeking to hold Hamas accountable for any later failures in talks, planning to use this as an excuse to pave the way for the invasion of Rafah.”

He said the leaks were not part of the Paris negotiations but a US and Israeli attempt to give the public an illusion that Hamas had approved of them. He reiterated that “everything being shared is not serious, but a ploy to maneuver and press on the Resistance.”

The proposal leaked to Reuters outlined plans for a 40-day truce during which Hamas would free around 40 captives – including female soldiers, those under 19 or over 50 years old, and the sick – in return for about 400 Palestinians held captive in Israel.

Israel would withdraw its troops from populated areas of Gaza. Displaced Gaza residents, excluding men of fighting age, would be permitted to return to their homes. Israel would be required to allow additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip are on the verge of starvation.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also responded to leaked Paris proposal.

“The leaks are an attempt to pressure the Palestinians and incite them against the resistance.

They are pushing for a ceasefire before Ramadan in anticipation of what might happen in Al-Quds.

The enemy believes that it can deceive the resistance with different methods in order to achieve a victory it has failed to achieve on the ground,” PIJ Political Bureau member Ihsan Ataya told Al-Mayadeen.

In Gaza, residents speaking to Reuters expressed mixed feelings about possible outcomes.

“We don’t want a pause, we want a permanent ceasefire, we want an end to the killing,” said Mustafa Basel, a father of five from Gaza City, now displaced in Rafah.

“Unfortunately, people’s conditions are so grim that some may accept a pause, even [just] during Ramadan,” he said. “They want a permanent end to the war, but the dire conditions make them want a pause even for a month or 40 days in the hope it becomes permanent.”

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

United against Israel: Time to end the world’s longest occupation

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | February 27, 2024

Left to its own devices, Israel would never grant Palestinians their freedom. In the past, though, some people, whether in ignorance or otherwise, claimed that peace in Palestine can only be achieved through “unconditional negotiations”. This mantra was also championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he cared enough to pay lip service to the “peace process” and other US fantasies. Back then, he spoke about his readiness to hold unconditional negotiations, while arguing constantly that Israel does not have a partner for peace.

All of this, of course, was “doublespeak”. What Netanyahu and other Israelis were actually saying was that Israel should be freed from any commitment to international law, let alone international pressure. Worse, by declaring that Israel has no Palestinian partner for peace, the Israeli government has essentially cancelled the hypothetical and “unconditional negotiations” before they have even taken place.

For years — in fact, for decades — Israel has been allowed to perpetuate such nonsense, empowered, of course, by the total and unconditional support of Washington and its other Western allies. In an environment where Israel receives billions of dollars of US-Western aid, and where it has grown to become a thriving technological hub, as well as one of the world’s largest weapons exporters, Tel Aviv simply had no reason to end its occupation or dismantle its racist apartheid in Palestine.

But things must change now. The genocidal Israeli war in Gaza should completely alter our understanding, not only of the tragic reality in occupied Palestine, but of past misunderstanding as well. It should be made clear that Israel has never had any intention of achieving a just peace, ending its colonisation of Palestine — that is, the expansion of illegal settlements — or granting Palestinians an iota of rights. On the contrary, Israel has been planning to carry out genocide against the Palestinians all along.

It is a fact that Israel has already carried out many terrible war crimes against Palestinians, starting with the 1947/48 Nakba and in successive wars ever since. Such crimes, large or small, have always been accompanied by ethnic cleansing. Over 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, for example, when Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine 76 years ago. An additional 300,000 were ethnically cleansed during the Naksa, the war and “setback” of 1967.

Throughout the years, mainstream Western media outlets did their best to hide Israeli crimes, or minimise their impact; or even blame someone else for them.

This process of shielding Israel remains in place to this day, even when tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since 7 October and most of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, homes and shelters, has been destroyed by the occupation state.

Considering all of this, anyone who still speaks of “unconditional negotiations” — especially those conducted under the auspices of Washington — is, frankly, only doing so to help Israel escape international legal and political accountability. Fortunately, the world is waking up to this fact and, hopefully, this awakening will mature sooner rather than later, as Israeli massacres in Gaza continue to claim hundreds of innocent lives every single day.

This collective realisation that Israel must be stopped through international measures is also accompanied by an equally critical realisation that the US is not an honest broker for peace. Indeed, that it never was.

To appreciate the ruinous role of the US in this so-called conflict, just marvel at this fact. While practically every country that participated with a legal opinion and a political position in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) public hearings from 19 to 26 February formulated its position based on international law, the US did not.

“The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory,” the acting legal adviser for the US State Department, Richard Visek, said embarrassingly on 21 February. That’s right: 76 years after the Nakba and following 57 years of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the position of the US — even in the ICJ — remains committed to defending the illegality of Israel’s conduct throughout Palestine.

Compare this US stance with the rounded, courageous and legally grounded position of almost every country in the world, especially the 50-plus countries which asked to speak at the ICJ hearings. Take China, for example. Its words and actions seem far more consistent with international law than many Western nations, especially now, and it went even further: “In pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is [an] inalienable right well founded in international law,” Chinese representative Ma Xinmin told the ICJ on 22 February.

Unlike the cliched and non-committal position of the likes of UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron on the need to start “irreversible progress” towards an independent Palestinian state, the Chinese position is arguably the most comprehensive and realistic articulation. Ma linked self-determination to liberation struggle, to sovereignty, to the inalienable rights of people, which are all consistent with international laws and norms. In fact, it is these very principles that have led to the liberation of numerous countries in the Global South.

Given that Israel has no intention of freeing Palestinians from the grip of apartheid and military occupation, the Palestinian people have had no other option but to resist that occupation. According to the Geneva Conventions, resistance is an entirely legitimate response.

The question now is whether or not the international community will continue to defy the US position in words only, or if it will formulate a new approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, thus bringing it to an end by any means necessary.

In his statement to the ICJ on 19 February, British barrister Philippe Sands, who is a member of Team Palestine, offered a roadmap on how the international community can force Israel to end its occupation: “The right of self-determination requires that UN Member States bring Israel’s occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money. No arms. No trade. No nothing.”

Indeed. Now is the time to turn words into actions, especially when thousands of children are being killed for no other reason than that they were born Palestinian. It’s time to end the world’s longest military occupation.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces stop UN convoy, detain and strip-search paramedics

Press TV – February 27, 2024

Israeli regime forces in the Gaza Strip have stopped a UN ambulance convoy that was evacuating critically-ill patients from a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younes before detaining and strip-searching the paramedics in the convoy.

In a statement on Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israeli regime forces had stalled the UN convoy on Sunday detaining a paramedic and forcing others to remove their clothes.

The incident occurred during the evacuation of 24 critical patients from the city’s al-Amal Hospital, which has been under the continuous siege of Israeli regime forces, it said, adding that one pregnant woman and one mother and a newborn were among the patients.

“Despite prior coordination for all staff members and vehicles with the Israeli side, the Israeli forces blocked the WHO-led [World Health Organization] convoy for many hours the moment it left the hospital,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.

“The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and stripped all paramedics of their clothes,” Laerke added.

He added that Israeli forces had subsequently detained three Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics, “although their personal details had been shared with the Israeli forces in advance,” while the rest of the convoy stayed in place for “over seven hours.”

One paramedic was released, said the OCHA spokesman as he appealed for the immediate release of the other two, and all other detained health workers in Gaza.

OCHA’s statement said that the UN relief agencies operating in war-torn Gaza face “unacceptable security conditions” for humanitarian aid delivery.

“This is not an isolated incident. Aid convoys have come under fire and are systematically denied access to people in need,” it said.

“Humanitarian workers have been harassed, intimidated or detained by Israeli forces, and humanitarian infrastructure has been hit.”

That comes as the US-Israeli genocidal war against the defenseless Palestinians in Gaza continues unabated.

Nearly 30,000 people, including 14,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its aggression on Gaza in early October.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

From Bouazizi to Bushnell

By Ashraf W. Nubani | The Libertarian Institute | February 27, 2024

Twenty-five-year-old Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, died on Sunday after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC as an act of protest against the slaughter in Gaza. Unfortunately, the act is noteworthy not because of the resulting suicide but for the underlying motivation behind it. That underlying motivation—and his last words, “Free Palestine”—was initially missing in American media coverage of the tragic incident until social media prompted mainstream coverage.

There is a growing sense that corporate America and our politicians just don’t care about our youth, especially those who serve in the military. This extreme form of protest took the life of a serviceman, not in combat abroad, but here at home in defiance of American foreign policy.

For those politicians who profess to genuinely care about our men and women in the armed services, answer this: How many active-duty personnel and veterans took their own lives since 1980 when the U.S. started documenting military suicides? Some estimate it’s in the six figures. That’s double the fifty-eight thousand killed in combat in Vietnam. America’s enemies don’t have to go to war to kill American soldiers. We are doing it to ourselves when we send our boys and girls to go fight in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan under false pretenses. They come back with PTSD, moral quandaries, and a host of other issues that prevent them from successfully reintegrating into society. Urinating on dead Taliban bodies doesn’t make America great.

If things are not bad enough with growing economic disparities between the rich and the poor, the opioid epidemic, the $34 trillion national debt, mass shootings, a growing divide in American society that are turning into battle lines, our best and brightest are killing themselves over a failed foreign policy that is polarizing the world against us. And Aaron is not the first to set himself on fire over the carnage in Gaza. Last December, a woman did something similar in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.

It’s almost thirteen years to the date that Tunisian vendor Tarek Bouazizi self-immolated, igniting the “Arab Spring” in March 2011. He was harassed and humiliated, and had his wares confiscated by municipal officials. Many Arabs and Muslims live under corrupt authoritarian regimes that oppress their people. Those same broken promises of wealth, freedom, and democracy are robbing Americans of their dignity.

Before engaging in such an extreme act of protest documented on social media, Aaron said, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people are experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” Indeed, AIPAC-bought politicians have decided death and destruction, even at home, is the new norm.

All these acts are born of desperation. If young American men are willing to die in their pursuit of freedom and justice, our politicians should take heed. Yet the Joe Biden administration and Congress continue to green light Israel’s atrocities as it fails to achieve any of its stated goals like destroying Hamas, returning the captives, or bringing security to Israelis.

The entire world is fearful of a wider regional conflict. The worse it gets for Israel the more it will want the United States to get involved militarily on its behalf. Israel is drowning, and it has no problem in taking us down with it. America cannot afford more wars, especially in the Middle East.

All too often our elected officials have been hearing from their constituents, “How many Palestinians have to die before you call for a ceasefire?” The question now is, “How many Americans have to die before you call for a ceasefire?”

Ashraf W. Nubani is a Palestinian-American attorney based in the Washington DC area. He holds a Master’s degree in history and writes on Muslim issues and the West.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

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