Israel’s Plan for Postwar Gaza Ignores Will of Palestinians
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 04.05.2024
Israeli government officials have been quietly discussing a scheme to rule Gaza once the war is over, according to the New York Times.
Citing individuals familiar with the talks, the newspaper wrote that Israel appears to be ready to share oversight of the strip with a number of Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as with the US.
Under the plan, the coalition of nations would govern the strip for about 7-10 years and then allow Palestinians residing in Gaza to vote on whether to become subordinate to the united Palestinian administration. The Israeli military would maintain its presence in Gaza in the meantime, as per the proposal. The NYT emphasized that Tel Aviv would agree to the scenario in exchange for normalization of relations with Riyadh.
According to the newspaper, Arab officials and analysts have largely denounced the plan since it does not contain provisions opening the door to legalizing the Palestine state.
“I don’t see the possibility for this plan to become a reality,” Dr. Mehmet Rakipoglu, assistant professor at Mardin Artuklu University and researcher at the Dimensions for Strategic Studies London-based think tank, told Sputnik. “Even if it’s implemented, I don’t see any concrete solution for the problem, because the problem is all about the US and Israel.”
Rakipoglu argued that the proposal directly contradicts a two state solution, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1947 and then upheld by the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. The expert noted that the peace solution formulated by King Abdullah in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002, 2007 and 2017 appears unacceptable to Tel Aviv.
The Abdullah plan envisaged a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights and the establishment of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem in exchange for normalization of relations between Israel and Arab nations.
“Netanyahu has no intention not only to end the [Gaza] war but also they don’t have any intention to withdraw,” Rakipoglu said.
Eyal Pinko, an Israeli military expert, is similarly skeptical about the proposal described by the NYT. According to Pinko, Washington is interested in finding a quick solution ahead of the US presidential elections in November. According to the expert, the challenge lies in the impossibility of reaching a swift resolution due to the conflicting interests of various state and non-state actors regarding the future of the Gaza Strip.
Similarly, Palestinians residing in Gaza are unlikely to accept the plan: almost 85% of the Gaza population supports Hamas and doesn’t want the Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern the strip, according to the military expert.
What’s more, most Israeli politicians would have preferred to stay out of Gaza and not solve this tricky dilemma. Per Pinko, just a small group of conservative hardliners in the Israeli government want to maintain total control of the strip in a bid to overhaul it and eradicate Hamas.
“The majority of Israeli public opinion – from the right, from the center, from the left, – the majority of the Israeli people want to stay out of Gaza like it was in the last 17 years. Not going back over there. Not to put any kind of civilian authority over there. Nobody wants it, really. We understand this is like a hornet nest.”
Even though Arab states want to normalize with Israel to ensure regional stability, they cannot do this without solving the Palestine dilemma first, Rakipoglu highlighted. The only way to start untying the Gordian knot is to bring Iran, Russia, Turkiye and Qatar along with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the negotiating table in order to work out a balanced solution, according to the analyst.
“Hamas has announced that four countries must be at the negotiation table: one of them is Turkiye, the second one is Russia, as well as Qatar and Egypt. Without bringing these countries to the negotiation table, Hamas and other resistance movements will not accept any plan. It will only empower the anger for Hamas to be against the Western countries,” the analyst concluded.
Columbia crackdown led by university prof doubling as NYPD spook
BY WYATT REED AND MAX BLUMENTHAL · GRAYZONE · MAY 2, 2024
The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.
During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.
“She was the one that was monitoring the situation,” Adams explained, adding that the crackdown was carried out after “she was able to — her team was able to conduct an investigation.”
On April 30, dozens of police in riot gear descended on Columbia’s Hamilton Hall after students seized the building earlier in the day, citing a request from the administration. Several hours later, officers used a heavily armored NYPD BearCat vehicle to enter the building through the window on the second floor and arrested those inside, while another team swept up members of the encampment outside.
Starting on April 17, students at Columbia escalated their ongoing protest against Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. They encamped on school grounds, stating their refusal to leave until the university fully divested from its Israeli-related investments. That protest model has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Just a few hundred meters from the Gaza protest encampment, Weiner maintained an office at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an “Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs” who simultaneously serves as the “civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau.”
In that role, according to SIPA, Weiner “develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.”
The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York.
A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called “Demographics Unit” operated secretly within the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area, and even on students at campuses outside the state who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA, which has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division.
The “Demographics Unit” appears to have been inspired by Israeli intelligence as well. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to “map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”
A lawyer by training, Weiner oversaw negotiations between the NYPD and lawyers for local Muslims who had their civil liberties violated by its “Demographics Unit.”
Weiner is the granddaughter of Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish Jewish mathematician who helped conceive the hydrogen bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. “I’m very proud of that legacy,” Weiner said of her grandfather’s work upon being appointed as NYPD intelligence chief.
NYPD/Columbia’s Weiner: militarized raid was response to student “rhetoric associated with terrorism,” Tiktok posts
During the NYPD’s triumphant May 1 post-raid press conference, Weiner blamed “outside agitators” for triggering the military-style police crackdown at Columbia. However, she refused to name the outsiders supposedly on the scene.
According to Weiner, the police response was not necessitated by any criminal behavior, but by the radical language and symbols of the students. “This is not about students expressing ideas,” she claimed. The real problem, Weiner maintained, was the alleged “change in tactics” by protesters, which she said represented “a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism.”
Proof of this dynamic, Weiner suggested, could be seen in what she claimed was the “common” trend of wearing of “headbands associated with foreign terrorist organizations” on college campuses; the “reissuing of Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 letter to America” on TikTok; and a brief visit to Columbia by Nahla Al-Arian, who Weiner incorrectly described as “the wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism.”
“That’s not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia,” Weiner commented.
Nahla’s husband, Palestinian academic Sami Al-Arian, had been indicted on flimsy terrorism charges in 2003, but a jury refused to convict him. Nevertheless, her brief stop at the Columbia encampment — where she says she did not even interact with any demonstrators — was cited by Adams during three separate media engagements to justify the police repression.
Throughout the press conference, Mayor Adams repeatedly cast the city’s crackdown on student speech as the only possible solution to ongoing campus encampments, citing undefined threats to the minds of impressionable youth.
“There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not gonna wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,” Adams proclaimed.
“Young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children,” he insisted, without specifying. “And I’m not gonna allow that to happen as the mayor of the city of New York.”
After angrily proclaiming that his “uncle died defending this country,” Adams declared: “It’s despicable that schools will allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.”
However, as an enthusiastic participant in New York City’s annual Celebrate Israel parade, Adams is no stranger to waving another country’s flag.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams waves Israel’s flag during the Celebrate Israel parade on June 4, 2023
Israel gives extremist settler ‘absolute’ control of occupied West Bank
The Cradle | May 3, 2024
Brigadier General Avi Bluth, an extremist religious settler, has been appointed to the position of Central Command commander of the Israeli army, Israeli media reported on 2 May.
Bluth has previously served as commander of the Army’s Judea and Samaria Division and as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Military Secretary.
According to Muhammad Shehada of Euro Med Human Rights, Bluth will now have absolute powers over the West Bank, including the ability to demolish homes and conduct army raids.
Bluth contributed to pogroms against Palestinians in the towns of Huwara and Burqa by standing by as Jewish settlers lynched civilians and burned and destroyed homes, shops, and vehicles.
He also played a role in incorporating extremists from a religious settler group called the Hilltop Youth into units of the Israeli army.
Bluth pushed for Operation Break the Wave in 2022, in which the army killed 149 Palestinians in the West Bank and abducted 2000 others in a series of raids, and Operation Bayit Vagan in July 2023, in which the army carried out a massive assault on Jenin, killing 12 Palestinians and leaving widespread destruction in its wake.
Bluth is a signatory to the army’s 2015 policy change, which loosened the conditions for using live fire against Palestinians throwing stones and carrying out ramming operations.
Shehada adds that Bluth has links to the Religious Zionism Party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which is committed to stealing and annexing Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Bluth was raised in Neve Tzuf, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. He earned a BS in philosophy, economy, and political science from Hebrew University and an MA in strategic thinking from the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Delivering a ‘True Promise’: an insider account of Iran’s strikes on Israel
The Cradle | May 3, 2024
Following the strategic success of Iran’s ‘True Promise’ retaliatory drone and missile operation in response to last month’s Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, The Cradle presents an exclusive insider‘s narrative provided by Iranian Member of Parliament Mahmoud Nabavian, a principalist who won the most votes in Tehran during the country’s March elections.
His account of the retaliatory strikes against the occupation state offers unparalleled insights into the 13–14 April events. With access to military sources, Nabavian’s testimony serves as the most detailed view to date by an Iranian government official on Iran’s response, one that has sorely exposed the vulnerabilities of Israel’s air defense systems.
In a closed Telegram posting, Nabavian explained that Israel’s “cowardly” attack, which led to the martyrdom of prominent leaders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), occurred “on our soil” – a reference to the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus:
“As the Imam [Ali Khamenei] said, the enemies made a mistake.” Iran’s full-on retaliatory strikes, he thus maintains, were justified and legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Below is a transcript (edited for length) from Nabavian’s important revelations about Iran’s military strikes on Israel and the flurry of international deal-making attempts that preceded them:
Two hours after the attack on the consulate in Damascus, the Iranian National Security Council convened and affirmed the inevitability of a response and gave a 10-day deadline to take the necessary diplomatic measures and for the armed forces to prepare their plan to respond.
Diplomatically, the first step was to go to the Security Council, even though we knew that this would be futile. But it was necessary to file a complaint about the attack on our land, assert our natural right to self-defense, and request a Security Council session. Because we are not members of the Council, we had to talk to member states to request that the session be held.
China, Russia, and Algeria agreed. Russia submitted the request, and the session was held, but the US, Germany, Britain, and France did not allow a statement to be issued condemning Israel. The heads of our missions abroad were also active in informing the concerned countries that we would respond to the Zionist entity.
Due to these pressures, Israel denied it had attacked a diplomatic building and that those who were targeted were not diplomats. The consulate building, four of its five floors, were purchased 45 years ago and were designated for diplomatic work. It was indeed a diplomatic building.
After we assured the international community of our right to respond, some countries, such as the US, Germany, England, France, Canada, and Egypt, tried to convince us not to do so, and they confirmed their readiness to meet Iran’s requests. For example, some of these countries that were not previously willing to grant entry visas to our diplomats or officials suddenly decided to do so immediately.
When the US realized that we were serious, it sent a threat that if the response was launched from Iranian territory, it might attack Iran. Our response was that the US is not among our targets, but if it decides to involve itself in defense of Israel, we will respond by targeting it as well, and as you know, there are many American bases around us.
Despite this, the US, Britain, France, and Germany insisted on the same message, yet our answer was that Israel crossed a red line. Then, they said, if we must respond, let it be from outside Iranian territory.
Why did they insist that the strike not be from inside Iran? Because for a long time, they have been assassinating our nuclear scientists and carrying out sabotage operations at the Natanz nuclear reactor. In the last six months alone, they have assassinated 18 members of our armed forces, and we have always responded through our allies [in the Axis of Resistance], but if we did that this time, we would lose face.
If Lebanese Hezbollah had responded to Israel, it could have bombed Beirut, and western powers would have seized upon this to say, ‘If this is a war between Iran and Israel, why did Hezbollah involve itself in it?’ They would also hold it responsible for the subsequent unrest in Lebanon.
Therefore, the insistence that the Iranian response should be through Iran’s allies was meant to distort Hezbollah’s reputation and unleash Israel to target it and other resistance forces in the region and to portray them as mercenaries of Iran. We read these western intentions well, and accordingly, the decision was taken to respond from within Iranian territory.
On the night of Eid al-Fitr, a meeting was held with the heads of diplomatic missions of the countries of the region, and we informed them that we are keen on good neighborliness, but if the US uses any of your countries to carry out action against us, we will strike the US bases on your lands.
This message was conveyed to Washington, and they realized that Iran was serious. They asked us to exercise restraint. The US, Germany, England, France, and Canada – these countries that support brutality and crime in the world and provide the weapons with which the people of Gaza are bombed – ask us to exercise restraint.
[UK Foreign Secretary] David Cameron called the night after the Iranian attack and said he couldn’t sleep last night. This is the malicious British foreign secretary. Why? Because we sent 300 drones and missiles over the heads of the Israelis. The Iranian official who spoke to him said, ‘For six months, rockets have been falling on the people of Gaza, and you slept well every night.’ This is the same malicious Britain that encouraged the US to launch attacks on Yemen.
The important thing is coordination at all levels before responding, politically, diplomatically, and in the media. After the Leader [Ali Khamenei] affirmed in his Eid al-Fitr sermon that we will certainly discipline the enemy, messages came to us requesting that the response be proportionate and not forceful.
Our answer was clear: that first, we would definitely strike Israel; second, that the attack would be direct from Iranian territory; and third, that the National Security Council decided that the response would be a deterrent.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan informed us that it had information that we would bomb the Israeli embassy in Baku, and they asked us not to carry out any action on their territory. I think this was a message that they could turn a blind eye to striking Israeli targets in a neighboring country, but we were already aware of that.
The messages we received were not limited to the US and European countries, but we also received messages from some countries in the region. We tried to take advantage of the matter to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, and we told everyone that this might be a solution to the problem.
They asked us whether a ceasefire in Gaza meant that we would refrain from responding. We answered that we would strike Israel in any case, but perhaps a decision like this would help reduce the severity of the attack. They asked that we give them a few days.
We asked our military forces to postpone the response for 24 hours and gave the countries of the world the opportunity to adhere to their obligations stipulated in international laws and for Israel to pledge not to attack Iranian forces and interests in the region and the world.
Regarding the Iranian request to conclude a permanent, complete, and immediate truce in the Gaza Strip: US President Joe Biden sent a message stating that he would work to achieve it himself, but he set a malicious condition, which is that the Palestinian resistance releases all Israeli prisoners in exchange for Israel releasing 900 Palestinian prisoners, after which the implementation of the truce begins.
Of course, Hamas did not agree to the matter, and this was the correct decision. We understood that they [the Americans] are not serious about reaching a truce and that they are only looking to achieve their malign goals.
Everyone realized that we would attack Israel. The US, France, Britain, and even Italy harnessed all their military capabilities in Qatar, alongside the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
They equipped six missile launchers in the region’s waters with a range of between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers. They harnessed all modern satellites and radars, moved 103 aircraft into the region’s airspace to strike our missiles, and placed all air defense systems under unified command under the supervision of the US to confront Iranian missiles in several stages.
That is, if the Iranian missiles were able to pass any defense line, they would be targeted and shot down in the next.
What is interesting is that the German foreign minister, 24 hours before the Iranian operation was carried out, called us and was pleading that we not target Israel from inside Iranian territory. He said that our missiles would not be able to pass the obstacles and defense lines that they had prepared to intercept our missiles and that the US was using 70 drones in Iraq for that, and it would increase the number to 700.
They were monitoring the movements of our soldiers, missiles, and drones, and they believed that none of the Iranian missiles would reach Israel. They were confident that the missiles would not be able to penetrate air defense systems.
At the Turkish Incirlik base, which includes 5,000 soldiers, a large number of AWACS planes and 15 jamming planes were harnessed to repel our attack.
As such, they were astonished at how Iran was able to evade the huge layers of defense they had activated, and what surprised them even more was that it took five and a half to seven hours for the drones to reach the Zionist entity, and their speed was not great, which meant that they were easy to shoot down.
Twenty-four hours before the operation, Washington sent a firm message stating that if we decided to attack Israel from our territory, they will respond militarily against Iran. This time, they did not talk about possibilities but rather said that they would definitely attack Iranian territory. Our answer was decisive, that we will definitely strike Israel from within our territories, and if you commit any mistake, we will target all your bases in the region.
We informed Saudi Arabia and the countries of the region that if Iranian territory is targeted from within your territory, we will definitely respond. Saudi Arabia announced that it would not allow any operation against Iran to be carried out from its territory, and the authorities in Cyprus also informed us of a similar message.
We knew that the Iraqi and Jordanian airspace was completely under US control. We thought about the Israeli targets that we were going to hit, and we faced two obstacles: the first was that their air defenses were very strong, and we had to find a way for our drones and missiles to pass them, and the second was not to take action that will lead to us being condemned.
The decision was to strike two military targets: the first was the [Nevatim] airport from which the F-35 plane that bombed the Iranian consulate took off, and the second was an Israeli intelligence center in the Golan. By coincidence, the fighter jet that targeted the consulate fired its missiles from above this intelligence headquarters.
Our drones, numbering about 130, were launched, the majority of which belonged to us, and between two and three were sent by our allied forces. We also launched missiles carrying explosive warheads, a large number of which deflected the air defenses from their path.
I will not talk much about the number of hits we targeted, but out of 17 missiles, 15 hit their targets, meaning 89 percent. The whole west was there, and we delivered an important message to the world.
In the aftermath of the operation, 15 countries contacted and said that they were seeking a ceasefire in Gaza and asked Israel not to respond.
The British and German foreign ministers contacted us and said that international law does not include the term “punishment.” We answered them: If that does not exist in international law, why did you propose punishing Hamas after 7 October? The calls continued to ask whether we would attack Israel again. We said that if we were attacked, we would respond tenfold.
The countries of the region have now understood Iran’s capabilities and it seems that they will seek to significantly improve their relations with Iran. The Israelis realized that when the spirit of despair takes hold, as Ben Gurion says, ‘we will begin to fall down the slope that leads to the abyss,’ and this has become clear to the world.
As the master of the resistance [Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah] expresses, ‘Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,’ and, God willing, this operation will be a deterrent against the assassinations that were occurring against us. Now, this is the only thing that Israel can do, and we must be more vigilant, and we must instill hope in the peoples of the region and not care about the rulers.
Mahmoud Nabavian’s account not only exposes the meticulous planning behind the Islamic Republic’s response but also reveals a resolve to defend sovereignty and impose a credible deterrence against future violations – at all costs.
Tehran’s military response should be interpreted beyond the current regional war centered on Gaza and signals a broad recalibration of power dynamics in West Asia. As western and neighboring states assess the implications of Iran’s new assertive military posture, alliances, and strategies will require careful reconsideration.
The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face
The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance
By Jonathan Cook | April 30, 2024
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
Anti-Semitic Awareness Bill Direct Attack on Free Speech
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.05.2024
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed the HR 6090 Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would encode the definition of anti-Semitism defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance into the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin.
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act would legally define criticism of the government or state of Israel as an act of anti-Semitism, and should concern every American, regardless of their views on Israel.
“It would be as if you could not criticize US capitalism, and if you were to do so, you would be considered to be a bigot,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “Indeed, I think that you should correctly sense a whiff of what befell the United States in the 1950s with the so-called ‘House un-American Activities Committee’.”
Speech that the bill would define as anti-Semitic includes “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel [than the US], or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
In October, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) wore an Israeli Defense Force uniform, the same uniform he wore while serving in Israel’s military. That led some to question where his loyalties lie, an accusation that would be deemed anti-Semitic under this law.
It also would define “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” as anti-Semitic. Many pro-Palestinian advocates argue that having a country specifically designed for a group of people, in this case, Jews, is in itself a racist act, just as a country only for white people, Christians or any other group of people would be.
The bill would also ban “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy of that of the Nazis,” which is a comparison many are making after seeing the images coming out of Gaza which has been described as a Genocide by multiple human rights organizations, heads of state and protesters.
It would also ban the “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” a definition so broad, that it could be used to shut down any criticism of Israel that the government determines the speaker has not applied to another country.
Similar laws have been enacted in Europe and have had a chilling effect.
In France, two individuals were arrested for wearing shirts to a grocery store that read “Boycott Israel, Free Palestine” and handing out pro-Palestine flyers on the bus.
In Germany, a German-Israeli activist was arrested for holding a sign that read “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.”
“Europe’s experience with similar laws shows why this [bill] would be a mistake.” Jacob Mchangama, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression posted on X on Thursday.
“It’s part and parcel of what can fairly be considered [a] sort of thought crimes,” Horne warned. “There are going to be thought police who are going to ferret out these alleged offenders of these thought crimes.”
There have been several laws passed in states across the US that attempted to ban boycotting Israel, they have all been shot down by federal courts as unconstitutional, and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is sure to face a similar challenge if it passes but there is no guarantee how the courts will rule.
“Israel wields a great deal of power in the United States. All you have to do is look at the bill that passed today to see what opinions you are allowed to express and what opinions you are not allowed to express,” explained award-winning journalist and former lawyer Glenn Greenwald on his show on Wednesday. “Therein is the proof of the people and the countries who occupy and exert the greatest power and they have now used that power to formally attack the free speech rights of American citizens in some of the most glaring and explicit ways that I’ve ever seen.”
Later on Thursday, Senate leadership attempted to fast track the bill but were denied by members who oppose the bill, but that won’t be the end of it. “We’re going to look for the best way to move forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters.
Legal experts debunk Israeli, US claims challenging ICC jurisdiction
Anadolu Agency | May 3, 2024
For days now, there is growing speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is poised to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials for the ongoing war on Gaza.
Most of the hype has been fuelled by Israel itself, first with regular reports by Israeli news outlets about increasing apprehension among the top brass, followed by direct statements from Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacking the ICC and urging his Western allies to pressure the Court.
Another tactic employed by Israel and its supporters, particularly the US, has been to question the ICC’s power and jurisdiction to act against Israeli officials.
Spokespersons for the White House and US State Department have explicitly conveyed that the US does not believe the ICC has jurisdiction to move against Israel, specifically because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that forms the basis of the ICC.
Legal scholars, however, have refuted these assertions, stressing that Israel not recognising the ICC or not being a signatory to the Rome Statute does not have any impact on the Court’s powers.
The ICC has been leading an investigation since 2021 into potential war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian groups dating back to 2014. The probe has grown to include ongoing attacks in the war in Gaza.
“Palestine is a state party to the ICC, and the ICC has accepted that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Gerhard Kemp, a professor of criminal law at the University of the West of England Bristol Law School, told Anadolu.
The ICC also has jurisdiction over crimes committed by Palestinian nationals outside the Territory of Palestine, for example in Israel on 7 October, 2023, he said.
“The short answer is that there is not much that Israel can do to challenge the ICC jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed in Palestine,” he explained.
Another legal expert, Mark Kersten, asserted that the ICC is able to “very clearly, logically and legally exercise jurisdiction in this case.”
The ICC has territorial jurisdiction on Palestine, which it understands as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said.
First, this means it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed by citizens of Palestine, so it has the power to act against Hamas members for the 7 October attacks, even though most of it happened on the territory of a non-state party, Israel, he said.
“Second, it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed on the Territory of Palestine … which means it has jurisdiction over any Israeli authorities who have committed mass atrocities, international crimes in Gaza or the West Bank,” explained Kersten, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.
‘Attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten ICC’
In the current situation, Kersten said the ICC is facing immense pressure from various countries, including Israel and the US.
“There’s definitely ongoing political pressure … I think pressure is probably too soft of a term. I have no doubt that various states are effectively threatening the ICC with certain consequences,” he said.
“There are definitely ongoing attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten the ICC. It is up to the ICC Prosecutor and, indeed, to a certain extent the judges, to withstand that.”
On Friday, Prosecutor Karim Khan’s office issued a sharply worded statement asserting that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence (ICC) officials must cease immediately.”
“Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute,” read the statement, without mentioning any cases or countries.
Kersten pointed out that pressure tactics are “nothing new” for the ICC, with both the US and Israel having previously threatened the Court.
The administration of ex-President Donald Trump even “issued sanctions against the Prosecutor and certain other ICC staff, as well as threatening to sanction their families,” he recalled.
“We have seen US policymakers and lawmakers say the same, that they would support literally sanctioning the only independent permanent international criminal tribunal in the world,” Kersten added.
What happens if warrants are issued?
According to the swirling reports, the Israeli leaders who could soon be facing ICC warrants include Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli military chief, Herzi Halevi.
If warrants are issued, all 124 countries that are state parties to the ICC are obligated to act.
“If an arrest warrant is issued against Netanyahu, he cannot legally step onto the territory of Germany or the UK or Canada,” said Kersten.
Being ICC member states, these countries will be obligated under both their own laws and also international law “to arrest and surrender Netanyahu to the ICC”, he said.
Non-state parties, however, do not have that obligation, he added.
On a potential timeline, Kersten said the ICC has often released “some of its most important and most significant decisions … at around 4 p.m. Hague time on a Friday, when the media isn’t really covering these issues.”
As for the possible basis of the warrant, he said it could be “about the issues of starvation or the denial of aid to Gaza,” adding that these are points “the Prosecutor has spoken about repeatedly, especially since 7 October.”
Kersten also believes that any warrant against Netanyahu would be “unsealed” and publicly announced, citing past examples of warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
However, there have been instances in the past where ICC judges have accepted the Prosecutor’s request to issue sealed arrest warrants, he said.
These can then be unsealed in “a moment of vulnerability for the accused, for example, during travel to a member state of the ICC,” he added.
“Then, all of a sudden, that state has the obligation to catch the accused and surrender them to the ICC, in this massive kind of surprise moment,” said Kersten.
For someone as high-profile as Netanyahu, the expert reiterated that he does not believe a “sealed arrest warrant” is likely.
“It would be diplomatically inappropriate to issue a sealed arrest warrant for the head of a government … or a defence minister,” he said.
Complementarity challenge
While Israel has no standing when it comes to questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction, the one thing it can do is challenge the admissibility of any case in which warrants are issued on the basis of complementarity, according to Kemp, the Bristol Law School professor.
“This is because the ICC has complementary jurisdiction, meaning the ICC can only try a case if a national criminal justice system with jurisdiction over the matter is either unwilling or unable to try the case,” he said.
When Israeli nationals are accused of war crimes in Gaza, if Israel can show that its own courts will prosecute them “in a genuine prosecution and not a sham trial, then the ICC will stand back and will let Israel proceed with the case”, he explained.
“Of course, the ICC will evaluate the situation with reference to all the available facts,” Kemp added.
Inside story of mass graves at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser hospitals in Gaza
By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | May 3, 2024
“Everywhere you walk there are graves, decomposing bodies or potentially people buried under the rubble”, a resident of northern Gaza’s al-Rimal neighborhood told the Press TV website, describing mass graves at two of the largest medical complexes in the besieged coastal territory.
The discovery of hundreds of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa hospital complexes, where United Nations (UN) officials reported that bodies were “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste”, has led its officials to call for an international probe into the horrors being uncovered.
So far, some 400 bodies have been recovered at the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, while around 300 bodies have been discovered at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The deceased include “older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani.
While the Israeli military downplayed reports about mass graves as “baseless and unfounded”, it made the mistake of admitting to having dug up bodies that had been previously buried, in the process of trying to explain away the irrefutable evidence documented.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that “the presence of urinary catheters or splints, which were found to be still attached to some of the dead patients’ bodies during the exhumation process, as well as medical files that were buried with them in Al-Shifa Medical Complex, confirm the execution of ill and injured people.”
The Switzerland-based rights group also reported that some of the “victims’ decomposing bodies were found in several places, with some having been run over by Israeli bulldozers which left their bodies torn into pieces” and that Israeli forces had been using Palestinian civilians at al-Shifa Hospital as human shields.
Gaza’s civil defense also called for help in forensic examination to find out more about 20 bodies that they believe were buried alive.
First-person account of Al-Shifa horror
Palestinian journalist, Motasem A Dalloul, who is based in northern Gaza, was one of the first on the scene to witness the aftermath of al-Shifa Hospital and had to reach the area on bicycle as the roads were too severely damaged for vehicles.
Press TV website spoke to him around an hour after he finished documenting the horrifying scenes in and around the coastal territory’s largest hospital complex.
Describing the scene upon his arrival at the scene of the hospital, he said that “the Israeli invasion resulted in the destruction of an area of 1000 meters around al-Shifa Hospital.”
“Homes, schools, mosques, in addition to the actual hospital were all destroyed. I saw everything, I saw unprecedented destruction and as I arrived there, I went to the main gate of al-Shifa Hospital and as I walked forward I saw that it was blocked with the burned remains of two destroyed ambulances and so I entered through a hole in the wall beside it,” he told the Press TV website.
Dalloul then described the scenes of destruction upon entering the hospital’s grounds:
“I found all the buildings were affected. The main building, which included the reception and the surgery department, was completely destroyed. The special surgery building, which included the ICU and the operation rooms and the patient beds, was completely destroyed,” he narrated.
“It had not collapsed but was destroyed from the inside and completely burned. I then went through the other buildings, walking through the maternity ward and the cancer treatment facility which were, in addition to the administrative building, everything was either partially or completely destroyed, or burned out.”
The Palestinian journalist based in Gaza painted a graphic picture of mass graves that were discovered at the prominent hospital that is now lying in ruins due to Israeli bombings.
“If you enter the medical complex from the East to the West, on your right-hand side there is a mass grave. I saw parts of bodies on the surface of the soil. I saw decomposing hands and parts of heads. When I counted the number of bodies that were visible, I counted that around 15 people were visible in this mass grave,” he explained with unutterable grief and sorrow.
“I saw bodies of people who were either killed or executed inside the buildings and around the yards of the hospital.”
‘Hospital is gone forever’
Dalloul said that when he spoke to Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, the director of al-Shifa Hospital’s ICU department, he was told that it would take 10 years to rebuild such a facility and that the “hospital is gone forever”.
He added that Dr. Saada was in tears while he was explaining the extent of the unprecedented damage at the hospital that remained in the news for several weeks due to the military siege.
Since then, the ICU department director has publicly appealed to the international community to launch a probe into the Israeli military siege, death and destruction at the al-Shifa Hospital.
Press TV website was also told about the horrifying cases of children searching for the remains of their grandparents, parents and siblings – an unimaginable situation for anyone to go through.
Press TV website contacted Motassem again, around a week later, to update us on the work done by professional teams sent to exhume bodies that were lying in mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital.
He told us that there was an urgent need for supplies at the time in order to help identify the bodies.
On the day the Israeli military withdrew from al-Shifa after weeks of siege, there were bodies of children, women and men that were left in the streets, many of which were already decomposed or badly mutilated by tanks and bulldozers, so the only way to identify the dead was from their clothing.
A harrowing case reported by Mondoweiss, during the aftermath of the Al-Nasser Hospital invasion, confirmed that the process of identifying the bodies in mass graves was similar to what occurred at al-Shifa.
A 51-year-old man named Ayman, who visited the hospital with his wife and one of his sons, was left searching through “a pit of bodies buried, cut up” that were in pieces and left scattered amongst bags of garbage, stating that his son “was wearing the blue wool sweater.”
“I bought it for him. I know everything he wears and can identify him by his clothes,” he said.
A Palestinian man, pleading anonymous, who was seeking shelter at the Al-Nasser Hospital complex, but left before Israeli forces stormed and occupied it, said he wasn’t at all surprised.
“They used drones to shoot at us if we moved, many were killed like this every day and when the tanks came we chose to leave because it was not safe. Everyone knew that the Israelis would kill many, including many of the medical staff and they still stayed to perform their jobs,” he told the Press TV website.
“We remember the bravery of the doctors and medical staff, they were heroes and the Israelis don’t care for human lives. Look what they did at every hospital, at schools, at our homes. They killed people holding up white flags, the mass graves are not just at the hospitals, they are everywhere and the death toll is so much higher than we are told I am sure.”
13,000 still missing, likely buried
Important to note is that although two of the largest mass graves that have been discovered to date are those outlined here, yet there are around 13,000 Palestinians still missing and buried in the rubble throughout the Gaza Strip.
In January, 50 bodies were discovered at the Khalifa Bin Zayed elementary school in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, a school being used for shelter by displaced refugees, while another 30 bodies were discovered dumped in black bags amongst garbage at the Hamad School; the bodies were decomposing but showed signs of torture and many were found with their hands and feet bound.
Israel is also known for holding the dead bodies of slain Palestinians, with various reports stating that when they were returned to their families, their organs were missing.
This even prompted the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor to call for an international inquiry into the seizure of bodies and possible organ trafficking.
Amongst the abuses that have occurred at the Nasser Hospital and al-Shifa Hospital are the deprivation of food, water and medical care to the sick and injured; in addition to various forms of torture, arbitrary executions and even sexual violence.
The United Nations recorded at least two cases of Israeli soldiers raping Palestinians in February, yet, after countless allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence, again, there has been no international probe into these credible reports.
With the discovery of the mass graves at the al-Shifa and Nasser medical complexes, there is an urgent need for international, independent probes into the conduct of the Israeli regime’s ground forces, believe human rights experts.
The mass graves are only part of the gruesome series of massacres but should be a turning point due to the sheer scale of murdered and mutilated bodies found, they state.
Yemen expands front against Israel to include Mediterranean Sea
The Cradle | May 3, 2024
The Yemeni armed forces announced on 3 May the start of the “fourth phase” of escalation against Israel and in support of Palestine, threatening to target Israeli-linked ships “anywhere within our reach.”
Sanaa highlights in a statement that the attacks, which have successfully locked Israel out of the Red Sea, will expand to the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier this year, the Yemeni armed forces expanded the scope of their pro-Palestine operations to include the Indian Ocean, severely affecting the Israeli economy.
Friday’s statement from the Ansarallah-led government also warns Tel Aviv against launching their assault on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, saying that, with immediate effect, any ships “linked to the provision of supplies and entry into the Palestinian ports under occupation” would be subject to “severe penalties.”
The statement stresses that these ships will not be allowed to “sail through the area of military operations, regardless of their destination.”
The escalation by Yemen was made public by armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, who made the announcement in front of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who continue to gather in the capital every week to show their support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Since mid-November, Yemen has maintained a naval trade blockade against Israel. The armed forces’ operations remain mostly unaffected despite an illegal US bombing campaign and the heavy militarization of the Red Sea by NATO countries.
“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Jerome Henry, the commander of France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace, told Le Figaro last month.
Ansarallah leaders have repeatedly stated that the Yemeni operations will continue until Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza comes to a stop and a lasting ceasefire is implemented.
In the face of its failure to deter Yemen, Washington recently offered the country “an acknowledgment of its legitimacy” in exchange for its neutrality in the war on Gaza.
“[Washington] pledged to repair the damages, remove foreign forces from all occupied Yemeni lands and islands, and remove Ansarallah from the State Department’s ‘terrorism list’ – as soon as they stop their attacks in support of Gaza,” according to Yemeni sources who spoke exclusively with The Cradle.
The offer also included “severely reducing” the role of the Saudi-appointed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) and “accelerating the signing of a roadmap” with the Saudi-led coalition to end the nine-year war that has decimated Yemen.
Iran’s Israel Strike Reshapes West Asia Forever
By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | May 3, 2024
On April 13th, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s AnsarAllah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on the Zionist entity, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – in particular West Asia – will never be the same again.
Iran’s first ever strike on the entity, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ, and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. The entity claimed a 99% interception rate.
However, extensive photo and video material shows many missiles hit their targets, and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.
This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills scouring around Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message – Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature, but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s, to decide whether – and how – to retaliate. A response came on April 19, in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.
Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses, but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson subsequently referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced, following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, the Zionist entity now has little time remaining, and no good choices left to make.
‘New Equation’
Despite its astonishing optics, and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook the Islamic Republic’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historic parallel, and clearly concerned with eliciting a major escalation, in order to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred wider response, while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards the entity. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:
“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”
Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise plainly demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike the entity directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities, and vulnerabilities, not only of Israel, but the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.
Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13th, and the data yield was likely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:
“For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
If there’s a next time too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles fired at the entity during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) general.
“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous”, comparable to what Israel spent during the entire 1973 Arab/Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.
Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for the entity, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end AnsarAllah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea.
Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast that it was squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 AnsarAllah drones. “That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” a CIA officer lamented. “We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
‘Israel Goes Under’
There is no sign publicly yet of Washington having rectified this concern, which may account for why US officials at the start of April offered AnsarAllah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade, which was rejected. But in the event of a subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, Tehran’s Shahed drones will not be used to deter shipping, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust the entity’s air defenses.
This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13th, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause a battlefield and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries, and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.
That conclusion is supported by an April 22nd Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end… of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.
On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st century Holocaust, the entity’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation of November 6th 2023 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself. “Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.
The race to escape Israel
One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, AnsarAllah and Hezbollah could completely paralyzse the entity economically, render entire areas of the entity uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a grand scale.
Resultantly, the entity’s “Samson Option”, under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “we have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, or chemical/biological payload of their own.
‘Whoever Moves’
The Zionist entity’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster, in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent of fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of Israeli Occupation Forces’ defeat is such that in an absolutely scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11th, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:
“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border… No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”
Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IOF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures”, and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:
“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound… Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left… Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”
An Israeli Occupation Force psychopath
The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IOF operate. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:
“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalising Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20 the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”
That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far the Zionist entity has fallen since October 7th. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Its once-vaunted military is not feared by adversaries, and their ability to unilaterally strike Muslim countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.
Meanwhile, the entity has suffered population collapse, with concomitant mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs, as the trauma of perpetrating genocide, and living under the daily threat of attack as Palestinians have since 1948, ravages soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads, and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.
For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, they are unambiguous indicators that the Zionist entity is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on October 7th 2023. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal”.
Refaat Alareer
Time is now and forever on the side of the indefatigable, undefeated Resistance – so too justice, and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanising words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IOF airstrike on December 6th 2023:
“If I must die, let it bring hope.”
How Britain protects ‘Israel’ from war crimes charges: Declassified UK
Al Mayadeen | May 2, 2024
The Conservative Party of the UK has repeatedly protected Israeli politicians, spies, and forces from arrest on charges of committing war crimes when they visit Britain, Declassified UK reported.
According to the report, Benjamin Netanyahu and war cabinet member Benny Gantz were among 10 Israeli officials who “received special immunity from prosecution.”
On March 6, the Foreign Office issued a “special mission” certificate to Israeli war minister Benny Gantz, who was traveling to Britain to meet with UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
General Herzi Halevi, the current commander of the IOF who has authorized preparations for an attack on Rafah, was granted permission to visit the UK while serving as military intelligence director.
Israeli authorities have become more anxious in recent weeks since reportedly the names of Netanyahu, Security Minister Yoav Gallant, and Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi have been circled as suspects of war crimes that the ICC will look to prosecute.
The British government allowed dozens of Israeli diplomats “special mission” immunity, allowing them to visit the UK without fear of arrest for their accusations of serious violations of international law.
Then Foreign Secretary William Hague expressed that Britain could not be in a “position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country,” essentially proving the law was altered for Israeli officials.
According to Declassified, this might violate Britain’s commitment to universal jurisdiction laws such as the Rome Statute, which allows the most serious crimes to be tried regardless of where they occurred.
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From the Archives
‘Israel sees Iran as obstacle to its policies’
Press TV – August 25, 2017
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel felt threatened by Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East. Netanyahu expressed his Iranophobic view in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday. Press TV has asked Scott Rickard, former American intelligence linguist from Tampa, Florida, and Brent Budowsky, a columnist at The Hill from Washington, to give their thoughts on the issue.
Rickard said Tel Aviv is concerned about the fact that the regime could not carry out its old project to spread sectarian divisions and pave the way for dismemberment of the countries in the Middle East region because of the Iranian-led resistance against Israeli policies, not only in the occupied territories of Palestine but also in the whole region.
“Iran is not a threat to Israel whatsoever. The threat that Israel sees is the fact that their Oded Yinon Plan is being put to a hold by Iran,” the intelligence linguist said on Thursday night.
“They (the Israelis) look at Iran as a threat only because they have no influence on their governments and Iran is autonomous and is not under the Zionist influence,” he added.
Since the victory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Tehran has been critical of Israel’s policies in the region, whereas “no leaders [of other states] even dared to speak out against Zionism,” Rickard argued. … continue
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