Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Israeli truce offer ‘fails to address’ Hamas’ main terms: Report

The Cradle | May 1, 2024

Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar published on 1 May what it says is the document detailing the latest Egyptian–Israeli proposal for a truce and prisoner exchange in the Gaza Strip.

The Al-Akhbar report details the “basic principles for an agreement between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side in Gaza on the exchange of detainees and prisoners between the two sides and the return of sustainable calm.”

The initiative is made up of three stages.

The first stage lasts 40 days and calls for a temporary cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Israeli troops “eastward and away from densely populated areas” towards the border in all areas of Gaza. Israel would cease aerial surveillance of the strip for eight hours a day, and 10 hours on days when prisoners are released.

It also calls for the return of some of the displaced civilians to their homes. Israeli troops would withdraw from Al-Rashid Street to the east near Salah al-Din Street, and the Netzarim Corridor in a manner that allows the delivery of aid and the return of the displaced to their homes.

Israel would allow 500 aid trucks to enter the strip each day, including 250 for the north and 50 fuel trucks. The fuel will be used to operate power stations and equipment for clearing rubble. Efforts to renovate hospitals and bakeries will be ongoing throughout the three stages of the initiative.

Hamas must release at least 33 living Israeli prisoners, including female soldiers, children under the age of 19, the elderly, the sick, and the injured.

For every Israeli female or child released by Hamas, Israel should release 20 minors and female Palestinian prisoners. For every elderly, sick, and injured prisoner, Israel would have to release 20 prisoners over 50 years of age who are also sick and injured, as long as they are not serving a sentence of over 10 years.

For every female soldier released by Hamas, Israel would have to release 20 prisoners serving a life sentence, and another 20 serving up to 10 years, who could be released to Gaza or abroad.

Hamas would provide a list of up to 20 prisoners it wants to be released.

After 16 days, indirect negotiations on a deal to restore “sustainable calm” will take place.

The second stage, lasting 42 days, will see the arrangements for “sustainable calm,“ along with the remaining prisoner exchanges. It also calls for preparation for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the reconstruction of the strip.

The third stage calls for exchanges of bodies from both sides, a five-year reconstruction plan, and a Palestinian vow to refrain from “reconstructing military infrastructure and facilities, and not importing any equipment, raw materials, or other components used for military purposes.”

Al-Akhbar notes in another report released the same day that the initiative falls short of Hamas’ demand for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip. Israeli forces are already not present in residential and densely populated areas, where the truce paper says Israel must withdraw from.

The initiative also fails to guarantee a full and permanent ceasefire, another of the resistance group’s main terms.

“The problem with the mediators in the file of negotiations with the resistance in Gaza is that they act from the position that the enemy is the victor, and that the resistance is in a weak position that requires it to concede and accept whatever is offered to it,” Al-Akhbar writes.

Hamas has not yet issued a formal response to the proposal.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli settlers attack Jordanian aid convoys heading to Gaza

Israelis block trucks carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, in the coastal city of Ashdod, February 1, 2024. (AFP photo)
Press TV – May 1, 2024

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has said two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food and flour have been attacked by Israeli settlers on their way into the besieged Gaza Strip.

The convoys, one taking the Beit Hanoon crossing and another taking the Karem Abu Salem crossing into Gaza, were targeted by the settlers on Wednesday morning.

The assailants dumped some of their cargo and damaged the trucks.

The Jordanian ministry strongly condemned the assault and held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the crime.

Jordan News Agency (Petra) reported that the “failure of the Israeli authorities to provide protection” for the convoys undermine the regime’s “claims and commitments to allowing aid to enter Gaza.”

Israeli settlers have been repeatedly blocking the humanitarian aid trucks heading to Gaza.

The settlers are calling on the regime to prevent the flow of aid supplies to the besieged strip, despite signs of famine across the territory.

People in Gaza are dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition.

The vast majority of humanitarian convoys have been inspected by the Israeli military in order to guarantee that there is no kind of material that can be smuggled into the besieged Palestinian territory.

A senior Hamas official has said any ceasefire in Gaza needs to be permanent. The senior official said reaching a ceasefire deal could not be at any cost.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the invasion of the southernmost city of Rafah would go ahead as planned.

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

Workers, trade unionists mobilise to block arms supply sites in the UK

MEMO | May 1, 2024

Workers and trade unionists shut down major UK sites involved in arms supplies to Israel this morning in response to a call to mobilise from Palestinian trade unions for workers to take action.

United under the banner “Workers for a Free Palestine” (WFFP), over 1,000 staffers and trade unionists blockaded the UK Department for Business and Trade in London and three BAE Systems’ arms factories in Wales, Scotland and North-West England to mark International Workers’ Day.

Today marks the 208th day of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza, which has seen over 35,000 Palestinians killed. The British Government has not implemented an arms embargo on Israel, in contrast to actions taken by its allies, including Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium. In response, British workers are engaging in direct action by initiating their own embargo against arms supplies to Israel.

A trade unionist and organiser for WFFP taking part in the London blockade, Tania, said: “If arms company bosses and Britain’s political elite won’t impose an arms embargo, we, the workers, will enforce it from below.”

“In our most disruptive action yet, a wave of People’s Arms Embargoes is sweeping across England, Scotland and Wales on May Day, as workers and trade unionists shut down arms factories and a government which enables this genocide profiteering and makes the UK directly complicit in these crimes against humanity.”

The blockade at the Department for Business and Trade was organised in support of civil servants who have urged the government to “cease work immediately” on arms export licences to Israel, citing concerns that the administration is complicit in war crimes being committed in Gaza. Their union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), is considering legal measures to protect its members from being compelled to engage in unlawful acts.

The establishment of these “People’s Arms Embargoes” across the UK coincides with a recent decision by a High Court judge to allow a legal challenge against UK arms exports to Israel to proceed, with a hearing scheduled for later this year.

This surge of activism also comes in the wake of a letter signed by 600 lawyers, academics,and retired senior judges, including former Supreme Court justices, which cautions that the UK government’s ongoing arms sales to Israel may violate international law, referencing the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s finding that Israel’s actions in Gaza could constitute genocide.

“When Israel massacres entire families and razes cities to the ground, companies like Elbit Systems, BAE, Leonardo, Thales and Raytheon make vast profits. When we see hospitals turned into mass graves of over 300 people and many of those killed having been stripped of their clothes and had their hands and feet tied, the knowledge that British-made weapons which enable such atrocities are being manufactured on my doorstep makes me feel complicit,” said Aisha, a community worker blockading the arms factory in the north of England.

Aisha added: “I’m taking this action because I simply can’t stomach arms to Israel’s murderous regime being supplied in our name by companies which are subsidised by our taxes – if the company bosses and the government continue to refuse to listen to us, we will keep shutting them down and impose our own arms embargoes.”

Three British aid workers were killed in early April in an Israeli drone strike, parts of which were manufactured in the UK, highlighting the significant impact of UK-made arms in the attacks on Gaza. Since 2015, the UK has authorised arms sales to Israel totalling £487 million ($608 million), a figure that excludes weapons exported under open licences. Additionally, a considerable amount of US military aid is funnelled to Israel via a British air force base in Cyprus, while British military forces have conducted surveillance flights over Gaza to assist Israel’s ongoing military offensive.

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

Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that ‘turn victims to ash’

The Cradle | May 1, 2024

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) released a report on 30 April urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal weapons.

“An international committee of experts must be established to look into the weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip … including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate,” the Euro-Med report said.

The rights group cites testimonies received from Gaza which revealed a “horrific new level of killing in the Strip.” The bodies of Palestinian victims appear to have been vaporized by the weapons Israel used against residential buildings.

“Thousands of victims remain missing, either because it was impossible to recover them from under the debris in light of insufficient equipment and technical know-how, or because their bodies were either hidden by the Israeli army or no longer exist,” the Euro-Med report reads.

The report continues to say, “A number of the victims killed in these horrifying Israeli raids on residential buildings have vanished and may have turned to ashes, raising questions about the type of bombs used in the attacks.”

Thermobaric weapons, also referred to as vacuum bombs, are two-stage munitions. The first charge disperses a fine aerosol cloud of materials ranging from carbon-based fuel to metal particles. The second charge ignites the materials used, creating a fireball, shock wave, and vacuum as it sucks up the surrounding oxygen.

The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies.

Mass graves in Gaza hospitals previously raided by Israel show that civil defense staff found “bodies without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

According to the Euro-Med report, “The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”

Israel has also illegally deployed white phosphorus weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to a Washington Post analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were supplied to Israel by the US.

Palestine’s Agricultural Work Committees Union said that Israel intentionally uses chemical weapons on farmlands in the Gaza Strip to contaminate its soil, posing an increased cancer risk to farmers.

The agricultural union’s lobbying director, Moayyad Bsharat, also points to Washington as the supplier of such munitions to Tel Aviv in an interview with Anadolu Agency.

Bsharat stressed how chemical attacks render Gaza’s soil unusable for five years, and effectively harm its food security and public health.

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

Report of the Independent Task Force on National Security Memorandum-20 Regarding Israel

By Noura Erakat and Josh Paul | Just Security | April 24, 2024

In early February, we formed the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, whose report we provided to the Biden Administration on April 18. The National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), adopted by President Joe Biden, directs the Department of State to seek assurances from partners involved in conflict and receiving U.S. military grant assistance that they would abide by U.S. and international law and also requires the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress within 90 days on the extent to which such partners are abiding by their assurances.

Though delegated as a task to the Executive Branch, the administration’s disregard for credible media reporting as well as recommendations from its own experts within the State Department, alleging Israeli abuses, catalyzed us to act.

The Task Force, which has worked on a voluntary basis, consists of experts on U.S. and international law, U.S. security assistance, and U.S. military best practices. For the past two months, we have combed through thousands of lines of data from credible nongovernmental organizations, ranging from human rights watchdogs to aid organizations working on the ground in Gaza.

The final report features sixteen clear, credible, and compelling incidents that should certainly be included in the administration’s upcoming reporting to Congress as well as an 18-page appendix of additional incidents worthy of examination. It also identifies multiple restrictions on humanitarian assistance, including strikes by the IDF, that trigger Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (which bars military assistance to states impeding U.S. humanitarian aid) and should be reportable to Congress by the Departments of State and/or Defense under the terms of NSM-20.

Our findings were striking. Though Israel has attributed the 34,000 Palestinian casualties, 70 percent of whom are women and children, to alleged human shielding by Hamas, we found that in 11 out of the 16 incidents we analyzed, Israel did not even publicly identity a military target or attempt to justify the strike. Of the remaining five incidents, Israel publicly named targets with verification in two incidents, but no precautionary warning was given and we assess the anticipated civilian harm was known and excessive.

In one of the worst incidents in a strike on Gaza City on October 25, 2023, Israel nearly flattened the entire neighborhood of Al Yarmouk, including seven residential towers. In just the Al Taj residential tower, the bombing killed 91 Palestinians, including 28 women and 39 children. Israel’s only explanation was that a Hamas tunnel ran beneath the neighborhood. Not only did this attack disregard the duty to take precautionary measures and the duty to refrain from an attack where the civilian harm exceeds the military objective to be achieved, it suggests that Israel had the authority to bomb nearly all of Gaza in similar fashion which lay above 350 miles of subterranean tunnels.

Aware of the controversial terrain of international humanitarian law in asymmetric warfare, two-thirds of our report documents violations under applicable U.S. law or policy, including civilian harm mitigation in U.S. military best practices and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act mandating no military support be given to states restricting access to humanitarian aid. In his analysis, our expert on U.S. targeting came to the same conclusion as did Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said that the U.S. military would “absolutely not” systematically conduct strikes with a well understood high risk of civilian casualties, as the IDF have continuously.   

Our aggregate data demonstrates a broader context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of U.S. and international law, due to reliance on the steady and sure flow of U.S. armaments. According to a high ranking former IDF officer, Israel’s combat could have achieved similar military outcomes “with 10 percent of the destruction [Israel has] caused.” He attributes this “reckless conduct” to” an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance [Israel’s military operations].” Indeed, since October 7, the United States has approved over 100 Foreign Military Sales arms transfers to Israel, two of them using an emergency authority to bypass Congressional review, and none of them accompanied by any conditions or “red lines” on usage despite conditionality inherent in U.S. laws and policies.

Our findings echo the concerns recently articulated by forty House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who have demanded that Biden halt weapons transfers to Israel. As their letter noted, “it is critical to ensure that the U.S. government is fully utilizing the expertise of State Department and DoD officials and legal experts, [including] important intelligence community assessments and data, in thoroughly assessing Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

It is our hope the Task Force’s work facilitates the drafting efforts currently under way within the administration to meet the reporting requirements of NSM-20, resulting in the overdue enforcement of applicable U.S. law as it relates to arms transfers and security assistance, and using all available means to remove all restrictions on the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The mounting evidence before the Biden administration now pales only in comparison to the humanitarian crisis afflicting Palestinians in Gaza. As the Task Force’s work demonstrates, the facts could not be more clear. It is now up to the Biden administration to act on them.

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

Several Western Countries Propose Cutting Weapon, Technology Transfers to Israel

Sputnik – 30.04.2024

ANKARA – Several Western countries have proposed introducing cuts in weapons sales and impose restrictions on delivering technologies to Israel in a package of measures discussed during a two-day meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and a number of European countries discussed measures that may be applied against Israel and countries supporting the Jewish state in the Gaza conflict at the meeting in Riyadh on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, the newspaper reported.

The discussion aimed to involve as many countries as possible in the package of “pressure elements” that contains a proposal on airspace restrictions, among other things, the report said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Politico reported that a group of more than 90 US lawyers, including at least 20 from the presidential administration, called on US President Joe Biden to stop military aid to Israel because of its actions in the Gaza Strip, which they said contradict US and international humanitarian law.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale rocket attack against Israel and breached the border, attacking both civilian neighborhoods and military bases. Nearly 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 240 others abducted during the attack. Israel launched retaliatory strikes, ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, and started a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages. Over 34,400 people have been killed so far by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, according to local authorities.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen raps US for obstructing peace, blocking efforts to halt Gaza genocide

Press TV – April 30, 2024

The Yemeni Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has denounced the United States over its role in scuttling UN-brokered peace efforts in the impoverished Arab nation, and its failure to stop the Israeli military’s onslaught against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“The United States constitutes an obstacle to peace in Yemen, and prevents the ongoing criminal massacre in Gaza from coming to an end,” the ministry said in a statement released on Monday.

Pointing to the Yemeni pro-Palestine maritime operations in the Red Sea, the ministry said they “have humanitarian objectives, and are meant to pressure the Zionist regime into stopping its vicious aggression and lifting its all-out blockade on Gaza.”

The ministry went on to note that the resolution of the Yemen conflict will not stop the country’s naval units from carrying out anti-Israeli operations, emphasizing that the United Nations has been reminded that the agreement with Saudi Arabia for the Yemeni peace roadmap has nothing to do with unfolding developments in Gaza, and that neither Americans nor Britons should be involved in it.

The statement added that the latest remarks by Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, about Yemeni attacks on Israeli-affiliated commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in response to the war on Gaza show that the US is preventing the establishment of peace in Yemen, and is blocking an end to the killings in Gaza and the removal of the siege.

Lenderking told Saudi English-language daily newspaper Arab News in an interview published on April 25 that “the onus (is) on the Houthis to stop the Red Sea attacks, adding, “That can prompt us all to begin to dial back, to de-escalate, to return the situation in Yemen to where it was on Oct. 6, which had considerably more promise and possibility than what exists now, and that’s where we want to return the focus.”

On the Gaza war, Lenderking said, “We cannot escape what’s happening in Gaza,” adding, “Not one single day goes by when the people I talk to about Yemen don’t also talk about Gaza. So we know this is a searing and very, very important situation that must be dealt with.”

The Yemeni foreign ministry statement further criticized Washington for standing “against the will of all world nations, including its own people who are expressing fierce opposition to the involvement of the Biden administration in the heinous crimes that Zionists are committing against Gazans.”

“The US has rather resorted to the brutal suppression of pro-Palestine protests at its own university campuses than to respond to global demands [for an end to Gaza war]. Such conduct has exposed the hollowness of its slogans about democracy,” the ministry pointed out.

The Yemeni Armed Forces have staged numerous pro-Palestinian strikes since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the Gaza war.

American and British warships have been carrying out attacks against the Arab Peninsula nation as means of trying to halt strikes that it has been conducting against Israeli vessels or those heading towards the ports lying in the occupied Palestinian territories.

At least 34,488 Palestinians have been killed and 77,643 others wounded in the brutal Israeli military onslaught that was launched following Al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation staged by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The US has been the main supporter of Israel, proving it with munitions and political support in its brutal war on Gaza. Washington has also used its veto power to protect Israel against UN resolutions.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

$3.5 Billion Slipped Into Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill To ‘Supercharge Mass Migration From The Middle East’

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 30, 2024

Tucked away in the $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a $3.5 billion slush fund to open new processing centers for Muslim migrants, in what Sen. Eric Schmitt described as a bid to “supercharge mass migration from the Middle East.”

And as Breitbart points out, the $95 billion package does not include any funds to help rebuild America’s border defenses against illegal migration – but it does contain $481 million to settle migrants in US cities, and of course, the $3.5 billion to expand migration programs worldwide.

The $3.5 billion was granted to the Department of State, which works with many international groups that feed and transport migrants on their way to the United States.

Biden’s deputies are now using the refugee programs as an adjunct to their diversity-expanding “equity” migration policy. For example, Biden’s deputies used the program in March to import 3,009 migrants from the safe and democratic countries of El Salvador and Guatemala.

They are also using the refugee funds to expand migration routes from many African and Muslim countries. In March, they pulled in 12,018 people from the Congo, plus 16,732 migrants from the Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Eritrea, according to a report by Stacker.com.

According to an April 23 release from the Biden DHS visa-granting agency, “The Biden-Harris administration set the refugee admissions ceiling for fiscal year 2024 at 125,000 refugees,” adding “With the opening of the Doha Field Office on May 7, 2024, and the Ankara Field Office on May 9, 2024, USCIS will have 11 international field offices. Other international field offices include Beijing; Guangzhou, China; Guatemala City; Havana; Mexico City; Nairobi, Kenya; New Delhi; San Salvador, El Salvador; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.”

So – we have the US government encouraging migration, both legal and illegal – which hurts low-income Americans the most, while neglecting to [secure] the borders. Seems we’ve learned nothing from Europe.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadians Promoting Genocide

By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | April 29, 2024

In the name of protecting Canadian Jews many are promoting the cultural and physical erasure of a faraway people.

Recently there’s been a push to suppress a traditional Palestinian garment. To the delight of many, the speaker of the Ontario legislature banned kaffiyehs from the provincial assembly. In a sign of support for this racist policy, prominent ‘progressive’ doctor and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee, Nili Kaplan-Myrth, recently bemoaned a fellow trustee who “put on a keffiyeh”, making it “not safe for Jews”. Similarly, author Dahlia Kurtz posted about a friend who panicked when a worker at her child’s daycare had on a kaffiyeh and a similar thing happened when the president of a Canadian Union of Public Employees local wore the garment while addressing members. In a particularly odious expression of this thinking, right-wing X account Love My 7 Wood quote tweeted a picture of a member of the Alberta legislature wearing a kaffiyeh noting, “She and her NDP colleagues wear that for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.” (To which I replied “All Palestinian culture exists for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.”)

Others have sought to erase Palestinian poetry. B’nai Brith recently gloated that they got a Toronto library branch to remove prominent poet Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” from a display. Four months ago Alareer and five family members were wiped out by the Israeli military and on Friday they killed his daugher, her husband and their infant child.

Not content with suppressing Palestinian poetry and garments, many express their ethnicity/religion by seeking to suppress Palestinian history. Recently, there was a push to stop the Peel District School Board from marking the Palestinian catastrophe, which saw over 700,000 ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1947/48. To the chagrin of some, the suburban Toronto school board adopted Nakba Remembrance Day’ as one of over 20 similar historic or cultural days. A Canadian Jewish News headline explained “Peel school board’s move to add ‘Nakba Remembrance Day’ to its calendar spurs objections from Jewish parents—and the Ontario education ministry”. The story reported that the Jewish Educators and Family Association of Canada “launched an online campaign from within the Jewish community, encouraging people to write to [education minister Stephen] Lecce protesting the addition of Naqba (or Nakba) Remembrance Day.”

A similar campaign was instigated after the British Columbia Teachers Federation called for education on the Nakba last month. The founder of Nonviolent Opposition Against Hate, Masha Kleiner, instigated a petition to oppose it.

Alongside the push to erase Palestinian history and art, there’s a bid to starve Palestinians. The advocacy agent of Canada’s Jewish Federations, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), is boasting that they filed suit against Ottawa for funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. They want the Federal Court to order the government to block assistance to refugees in Gaza even though the International Court of Justice has twice ruled that humanitarian assistance must be delivered to Gaza.

The federations, CIJA, B’nai Brith, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Honest Reporting Canada and other organizations have supported the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians over the past six months. CIJA’s director in Israel David M. Weinberg calls Palestinians in Gaza “the enemy population” and pushed “to reduce Gaza neighborhoods from which Hamas operated to rubble (as a matter of principle and not just for military advantage – and no, this is not a war crime).” In December the mayor of Hampstead, who boasts about leading “one of the most concentrated Jewish populations outside of Israel”, expressed his support for wiping out all Palestinian children. Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 or more Palestinian kids since “good needs to prevail over evil”.

Many within the Jewish community are, of course, appalled by this supremacist, genocidal thinking. Jews Say No to Genocide has become an important organizing force in Toronto and in Montreal a contingent of Hasidic Jews have participated in many anti-genocide demonstrations in recent months. Independent Jewish Voices has also organized a slew of events against genocide.

Still, it’s remarkable how many Canadians’ religious/ethnic identity is expressed by seeking to erase a people 8,000 kilometers away. As I’ve detailed, the political forces at play are multifaceted, but part of it is a network of Jewish Zionist organizations that actively promote this type of thinking. There are numerous private schools, summer camps, community centres, synagogues and other organizations that push people into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions.

This elaborate genocidal network is rarely scrutinized. But, for those of us who believe in human rights for all it’s necessary to disrupt the institutions seeking to erase Palestinians.


Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military .

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The Interlocking of Strategic Paradigms

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2024

Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT, has provided a forensic analysis of the videos and evidence emerging from Iran’s 13th April swarm drone and missile ‘demonstation’ attack into Israel: A ‘message’, rather than an ‘assault’.

The leading Israeli daily, Yediot Ahoronot, has estimated the cost of attempting to down this Iranian flotilla at between $2-3 billion dollars. The implications of this single number are substantial.

Professor Postol writes:

“This indicates that the cost of defending against waves of attacks of this type is very likely to be unsustainable against an adequately armed and determined adversary”.
“The videos show an extremely important fact: All of the targets, whether drones or not, are shot down by air-to-air missiles”, [fired from mostly U.S. aircraft. Some 154 aircraft reportedly were aloft at the time] likely firing AIM-9x Sidewinder air to air missiles. The cost of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000”.

Furthermore:

“The fact that a very large number of unengaged ballistic missiles could be seen glowing as they reenter the atmosphere to lower altitudes [an indication of hyper-speed], indicates that whatever the effects of [Israel’s] David’s Sling and the Arrow missile defenses, they were not especially effective. Thus, the evidence at this point shows that essentially all or most of the arriving long-range ballistic missiles were not intercepted by any of the Israeli air and missile-defense systems”.

Postel adds, “I have analyzed the situation, and have concluded that commercially available optical and computational technology is more than capable of being adapted to a cruise missile guidance system to give it very high precision homing capability … it is my conclusion that the Iranians have already developed precision guided cruise missiles and drones”.

“The implications of this are clear. The cost of shooting down cruise missiles and drones will be very high and might well be unsustainable unless extremely inexpensive and effective anti-air systems can be implemented. At this time, no one has demonstrated a cost-effective defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability”.

Just to be clear, Postol is saying that neither the U.S. nor Israel has more than a partial defence to a potential attack of this nature – especially as Iran has dispersed and buried its ballistic missile silos across the entire terrain of Iran under the control of autonomous units which are capable of continuing a war, even were central command and communications to be completely lost.

This amounts to paradigm change – clearly for Israel, for one. The huge physical expenditure on air defence ordinance – 2-3 billion dollars worth – will not be repeated willy-nilly by the U.S. Netanyahu will not easily persuade the U.S. to engage with Israel in any joint venture against Iran, given these unsustainable air-defence costs.

But also, as a second important implication, these Air Defence assets are not just expensive in dollar terms, they simply are not there: i.e. the store cupboard is near empty! And the U.S. lacks the manufacturing capacity to replace these not particularly effective, high cost platforms speedily.

‘Yes, Ukraine’ … the Middle East paradigm interlinks directly with the Ukraine paradigm where Russia has succeeded in destroying so much of the western supplied, air-defence capabilities in Ukraine, giving Russia near complete air dominance over the skies.

Positioning scarce air defence ‘to save Israel’ therefore, exposes Ukraine (and slows the U.S. pivot to China, too). And given the recent passage of the funding Bill for Ukraine in Congress, clearly air defence assets are a priority for sending to Kiev – where the West looks increasingly trapped and rummaging for a way out that does not lead to humiliation.

But before leaving the Middle East paradigm shift, the implications for Netanyahu are already evident: He must therefore focus back to the ‘near enemy’ – the Palestinian sphere or to Lebanon – to provide Israel with the ‘Great Victory’ that his government craves.

In short, the ‘cost’ for Biden of saving Israel from the Iranian flotilla which had been pre-announced by Iran to be demonstrative and not destructive nor lethal is that the White House must put-up with the corollary – an attack on Rafah. But this implies a different form of cost – an electoral erosion through exacerbating domestic tensions arising from the on-going blatant slaughter of Palestinians.

It is not just Israel that bears the weight of the Iranian paradigm shift. Consider the Sunni Arab States that have been working in various forms of collaboration (normalisation) with Israel.

In the event of wider conflict embracing Iran, clearly Israel cannot protect them – as Professor Postol so clearly shows. And can they count on the U.S.? The U.S. faces competing demands for its scarce Air Defences and (for now) Ukraine, and the pivot to China, are higher on the White House priority ladder.

In September 2019, the Saudi Abqaiq oil facility was hit by cruise missiles, which Postol notes, “had an effective accuracy of perhaps a few feet, much more precise than could be achieved with GPS guidance (suggesting an optical and computational guidance system, giving a very precise homing capability)”.

So, after the Iranian active deterrence paradigm shift, and the subsequent Air Defence depletion paradigm shock, the putative coming western paradigm shift (the Third Paradigm) is similarly interlinked with Ukraine.

For the western proxy war with Russia centred on Ukraine has made one thing abundantly clear: this is that the West’s off-shoring of its manufacturing base has left it uncompetitive, both in simple trade terms, and secondly, in limiting western defence manufacturing capacity. It finds (post-13 April) that it does not have the Air Defence assets to go round: ‘saving Israel’; ‘saving Ukraine’ and preparing for war with China.

The western maximalisation of shareholder returns model has not adapted readily to the logistical needs of the present ‘limited’ Ukraine/Russia war, let alone provided positioning for future wars – with Iran and China.

Put plainly, this ‘late stage’ global imperialism has been living a ‘false dawn’: With the economy shifting from manufacturing ‘things’, to the more lucrative sphere of imagining new financial products (such as derivatives) that make a lot of money quickly, but which destabilise society (through increasing disparities of wealth); and which ultimately, de-stabilise the global system itself (as the World Majority states recoil from the loss of sovereignty and autonomy that financialism entails).

More broadly, the global system is close to massive structural change. As the Financial Times warns,

“the U.S. and EU cannot embrace national-security “infant industry” arguments, seize key value chains to narrow inequality, and break the fiscal and monetary ‘rules’, while also using the IMF and World Bank – and the economics profession– to preach free-market best practice to EM ex-China. And China can’t expect others not to copy what it does”. As the FT concludes, “the shift to a new economic paradigm has begun. Where it will end is very much up for grabs.”

‘Up for grabs’: Well, for the FT the answer may be opaque, but for the Global Majority is plain enough – “We’re going back to basics”: A simpler, largely national economy, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers. Call it ‘old- fashioned’ (the concepts have been written about for the last 200 years); yet it is nothing extreme. The notions simply reflect the flip side of the coin to Adam Smith’s doctrines, and that which Friedrich List advanced in his critique of the laissez-faire individualist approach of the Anglo-Americans.

‘European leaders’, however, see the economic paradigm solution differently:

“The ECB’s Panetta gave a speech echoing Mario Draghi’s call for “radical change”: He stated for the EU to thrive it needs a de facto national-security focused POLITICAL economy centered around: reducing dependence on foreign demand; enhancing energy security (green protectionism); advancing production of technology (industrial policy); rethinking participation in global value chains (tariffs/subsidies); governing migration flows (so higher labour costs); enhancing external security (huge funds for defence); and joint investments in European public goods (via Eurobonds … to be bought by ECB QE)”.

The ‘false dawn’ boom in U.S. financial services began as its industrial base was rotting away, and as new wars began to be promoted.

It is easy to see that the U.S. economy now needs structural change. Its real economy has become globally uncompetitive – hence Yellen’s call on China to curb its over-capacity which is hurting western economies.

But is it realistic to think that Europe can manage a relaunch as a ‘defence and national security-led political economy’, as Draghi and Panetta advocate as a continuation of war with Russia? Launched from near ground zero?

Is it realistic to think that the American Security State will allow Europe to do this, having deliberately reduced Europe to economic vassalage through causing it to abandon its prior business model based on cheap energy and selling high-end engineering products to China?

This Draghi-ECB plan represents a huge structural change; one that would take a decade or two to implement and would cost trillions. It would occur too, at a time of inevitable European fiscal austerity. Is there evidence that ordinary Europeans support such radical structural change?

Why then is Europe pursuing a path that embraces huge risks – one that potentially could drag Europe into a whirlpool of tensions ending in war with Russia?

For one main reason: The EU leadership held hubristic ambitions to turn the EU into a ‘geo-political’ empire – a global actor with the heft to join the U.S. at Top Table. To this end, the EU unreservedly offered itself as the auxiliary of the White House Team for their Ukraine project, and acquiesced to the entry price of emptying their armouries and sanctioning the cheap energy on which the economy depended.

It was this decision that has been de-industrialising Europe; that has made what remains of a real economy uncompetitive and triggered the inflation that is undermining living standards. Falling into line with Washington’s failing Ukraine project has released a cascade of disastrous decisions by the EU.

Were this policy line to change, Europe could revert to what it was: a trading association formed of diverse sovereign states. Many Europeans would settle for that: Placing the focus on making Europe competitive again; making Europe a diplomatic actor, rather than as a military actor.

Do Europeans even want to be at the American ‘top table’?

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US military’s pier in Gaza to cost $320m

MEMO | April 29, 2024

The US military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a US defence official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The figure illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 US service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.

Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters.

“This dangerous effort with marginal benefit will now cost the American taxpayers at least $320 million to operate the pier for only 90 days.”

Democratic President Joe Biden announced the pier in March as aid officials implored Israel to ease access for relief supplies into Gaza over land routes. Biden opted for a sea route for the delivery of aid rather than press Israel to open land borders with Gaza and allow aid into the Strip which is experiencing a “man-made famine”.

Wicker and some other lawmakers have questioned whether the pier is a worthwhile endeavour, particularly given the risk that US military personnel could face if they were targeted during the war.

“For every day this mission continues, the price tag goes up and so does the level of risk for the 1,000 deployed troops within range of Hamas’ rockets,” Wicker said.

Biden has ordered US forces to not step foot on the Gaza shore.

The pier will initially handle 90 trucks a day, but that number could go up to 150 trucks daily when it is fully operational. The United Nations said last week that the daily average number of trucks entering Gaza during April was 200. They have also repeatedly warned that there can be no alternative to a land route for the delivery of aid, adding that though aid being delivered by sea may help Palestinians in Gaza, the amount arriving will be insufficient to stop the spread of famine.

A senior Biden administration official said last week that humanitarian aid coming off the pier will need to pass through Israeli checkpoints on land.

That is despite the aid having already been inspected by Israel in Cyprus before being shipped to Gaza.

The prospect of checkpoints raises questions about possible delays even after aid reaches shore. The United Nations has long complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the Internatinal Court of Justice (ICJ), which in an interim ruling in January, called on the occupation state to ensure no genocidal acts are carried out by its officials or army and to allow for the unhindered delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza.

Palestinians fear the US pier will be used to forcibly displaced civilians from Gaza or to commandeer the occupied territory’s offshore natural resources.

April 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment