By Dr Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 19, 2023
By Zoran Kusovac | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 19, 2023
Dramatic news reports, claims and videos have emerged from both sides involved in the Gaza fighting throughout the past week.
The week started with the Israeli army releasing several videos of Palestinians stripped to their underwear being marched through urban ruins. Israel’s PR machine disregarded the Palestinian outcry that followed. Israel staunchly asserted that the men were Hamas fighters and that their alleged mass surrenders signified that the end of the Palestinian group was close, even as many Palestinians and independent observers insisted that the men were civilians who had been treated against the laws of war by being publicly humiliated.
For its part, Hamas stuck to its usual practice of pushing its cause through video releases – skilfully edited to enhance the desired effects – purporting to confirm its constant and numerous successes against Israeli invaders, mostly showing hits scored against armoured vehicles.
Then came the news that stunned Israel and put a big question mark on its official line of Hamas being on the verge of collapse. First, nine soldiers were killed in a single operation in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday. That shock was followed by another one on Friday, with the Israeli army admitting that it killed three Israeli captives, having mistaken them for enemies – even though they held white flags.
So what is really happening on the ground in Gaza?
Nothing we did not predict weeks ago: The war has entered a difficult, unpredictable and bloody phase of full-scale urban warfare where gains are small and slow, and losses can be huge.
Combat in narrow and cramped streets of old cities is known to be one of the most difficult ways to fight a war. Classic military theory calls for defended cities to be surrounded and blockaded by units just strong enough to prevent the defenders from breaking out, while the main force continues advancing and taking territory.
But the fight in Gaza is not about conquering fields and beaches – Israel’s proclaimed goal is to destroy Hamas. To do that, the first step is to control the ground where the enemy operates: the cities.
In the old days, cities needed strong walls to defend themselves, but in the last 100 years, weapons have advanced at a rapid rate, causing a change in tactics. Successful resistance against enemy attacks no longer depends on huge, expensive static bastions. Nowadays, small but potent man-portable weapons whose destructive power is hugely disproportionate to their size, such as anti-tank rocket launchers, grenade throwers, small mortars, assault rifles and many others, allow the defenders to turn each house and every street into a formidable defensive position.
From the 1940s to this day, almost all attempts to conquer cities held by determined defenders have ended in failure. The few victories attackers achieved were so costly that they often ended the offensive capabilities of those armies pushing into cities.
In their own ways, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Dien Bien Phu, Vukovar, Sarajevo, Grozny and Fallujah – some successfully defended, others eventually succumbing to attacks – all confirmed the military wisdom that urban warfare should be avoided whenever possible.
Israel could not avoid urban warfare in Gaza. To have a chance of destroying Hamas, it has to deny it its operating ground, the three biggest urban agglomerations in the strip: Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The second phase started with Israeli forces reaching the suburbs, first of Gaza City and then, after the temporary ceasefire expired, of Khan Younis. Treading slowly and carefully in expectation of a concentrated Hamas response, the Israeli military completed the encirclement of those two urban areas.
It would be naive to assume that Israel’s generals hoped that by isolating the two biggest built-up areas in the Gaza Strip, they would seriously impair the ability of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, to fight back.
In reality, the encirclement of the two city centres is not a classic one where troops within the blockade cannot be reinforced nor receive any supplies. Hamas still has an unknown but probably major part of its tunnel network intact and can move in and out. They have some difficulties in doing so but Hamas fighters are not locked in.
Aware of the menace that tunnels present but also of the grave hazard of taking the fight into them, Israel has tried several approaches. It has destroyed as many tunnel entrances as it has found, mostly in the areas under its control, but many others that remain keep the danger acute.
After several attempts to send troops underground that ended in disaster, with troops falling casualty to Hamas booby traps, the high command abandoned that approach. It then reportedly mulled the idea of filling tunnels with seawater, claiming that the test-flooding was successful but it has not yet decided to mount a full-scale deluge operation.
This week’s Israeli actions on the ground strongly suggest that the Israeli army leadership realises that the only way towards achieving its proclaimed goal of annihilating Hamas is by taking, holding and controlling the ground throughout the currently surrounded centres of Gaza City and Khan Younis.
That in itself would not guarantee victory but could create conditions to squeeze Hamas fighters into tunnels, after which Israeli forces could block and destroy all entrances.
Flushing Hamas out would probably take weeks of heavy urban warfare with many more instances of massive losses – on both sides.
The more Israeli soldiers get killed in inner cities of Gaza, without still being able to claim the destruction of Hamas, the more the support for the continuation of the military operation would ebb. At some point, calls from Israel to stop the war could become louder than those encouraging it to continue.
Press TV – December 19, 2023
A Geneva-based rights group has called for an urgent international investigation into torture and murder of Palestinian abductees held in Israel’s “Guantanamo-like” jails.
In a statement released on Monday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it had gathered testimonies confirming recent reports in Israeli media about the regime’s field execution of the Gaza abductees.
The Sde Teman Israeli army camp has been turned into “a new Guantanamo-like prison,” where detainees lose their lives after being subjected to extreme torture and mistreatment, it added.
The Israeli army uses open-air chicken coops to house the inmates and withhold food or drink for long periods of time.
The rights group also noted that the Palestinians held in Sde Teman are caged in inhumane conditions, blindfolded and subjected to harsh interrogations with their hands tied.
It further said that turning on lights at night, as well as barring the abductees from using phones and meeting lawyers and representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are among the torture tactics being used at the Israeli jail.
The testimonies affirm that multiple elderly abductees endured cruel beatings and humiliating treatment, Euro-Med said.
One of the released detainees, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he witnessed Israeli soldiers directly shooting and killing five abductees in separate incidents.
Earlier, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the deaths of six Palestinians in Israeli prisons since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing bloody war on Gaza.
Despite evidence of violence preceding the inmates’ death or medical neglect – their cause of death was not established, according to the report.
It added that Just 71 out of 500 Palestinians arrested during the Gaza war have been brought before Israeli courts, and that the remaining detainees have been moved to prisons run by the Israeli Prison Service or to detention facilities run by the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet.
Previously, the Euro-Med field teams documented the detention of more than 1,200 Palestinian civilians in random Israeli arrest campaigns across Gaza during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged territory.
The abductees were subjected to all forms of beatings and ill-treatment during their detention and purposefully left blindfolded, nearly nude, and kneeling on the ground upon their release.
Israel waged the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression against Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,453 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 52,286 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
RT | December 18, 2023
The European Union announced on Monday that it was taking “formal infringement proceedings” against Elon Musk’s X social media platform over a recently implemented law intended to crack down on illegal content and disinformation online.
The announcement of the probe comes weeks after X (formerly Twitter) was asked to provide assurances that it was complying with the terms of the European bloc’s Digital Service Act. Under the law, which came into effect in August, a company can be fined up to 6% of its annual global income or banned from operating in the EU if it is found to have breached the sweeping legislation.
“Today we open formal infringement proceedings against X,” Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner responsible for the law’s enforcement, wrote in a post on the social network on Monday.
Breton added that the move had been taken in response to a “suspected breach of obligations to counter illegal content and disinformation; suspected breach of transparency obligations,” and “suspected deceptive design of user interface.”
The probe will also look at the effectiveness of X’s ‘community notes,’ in which users can fact-check or provide comments on the accuracy of certain posts.
Responding to the charge on Monday, X said it was “cooperating with the regulatory process,” and added that it was “important that this process remains free of political influence and follows the law.”
The platform, which was subject to a multi-billion-dollar takeover by Elon Musk last year, said it was focused on “creating a safe and inclusive environment” for its users, which it said it balances against “protecting freedom of expression.” At the time of the takeover, Musk branded himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
On October 10, the EU warned X in a formal letter that it had received “indications” that the social media platform was “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU” related to Hamas’ attack in Israel on October 7.
In a letter to Breton, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino responded to say the firm was “working to address the operational needs of this fast-moving and evolving conflict.” She added that X had removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the service.
Earlier this year, X was among several tech giants to sign up to an EU code of conduct to prepare for the launch of the Digital Services Act in August. However, X withdrew from the agreement in May, prompting backlash from Breton. “You can run but you can’t hide,” he warned Musk and X.
By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists.
The fallout from December 5 House Committe on Antisemitism hearings has already cost University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill her job, while demands by billionaire pro-Israel donors and politicians for the firing of Harvard’s Claudine Gay have grown by the day. Both stand accused of refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews, even though no such calls have taken place on their campuses.
Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the forces orchestrating the carefully choreographed, heavily-funded campaign to crush Palestine solidarity activism on campus.
The law firm leading the assault on the universities has included David Friedman, the former ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, among its partners. Until 2021, this firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, was registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent on behalf of an Israeli principal.
The firm’s clients include associates of a jailed Ukrainian billionaire who bankrolled neo-Nazi militias, along with a who’s who of corporations accused of defrauding and even killing consumers.
Meanwhile, the “Jewish student” witnesses who set the stage for the attacks on Magill and her fellow university presidents at the House Antisemitism Committee were employed on at least a semi-professional basis by Israeli lobbying cutouts.
They included Jonathan Frieden, a Harvard Law student who moonlights as president of Alliance for Israel; MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the president of MIT Israel Alliance; and Bella Ingber, co-president of NYU’s Students Supporting Israel.
Israel lobbyist moonlighting as UPenn student calls for Covid-style lockdowns on Palestine protests
The most harrowing — and clearly questionable — claims furnished during the December 5 congressional hearings came courtesy of Eyal Yakoby, an Israeli-American senior at UPenn.
“Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve… read the statement, ‘Ninety-percent of pigs are gas chambered!’ on the pavement as I walked to class,” Yakoby moaned.
The most likely explanation for the appearance of this phrase on UPenn’s Locust Walk was not the presence of chalk-wielding neo-Nazis but rather, that of animal welfare advocates, who were presumably calling attention to the fact that most pigs are killed by slaughterhouses which employ a grotesque method of gas inhalation exposed by activists in late 2022.
“‘You’re a dirty little Jew and you deserve to die’ are not words said by Hamas, but by my classmates and my professors,” Yakoby claimed during a December 5 press conference convened by the House GOP leadership. Oddly, he neglected to name a single student or UPenn employee responsible for such inflammatory remarks.
Conjuring up images of a campus overwhelmed by Hamas-linked hatemongers, Yakoby seemed to call for imposing Covid-era lockdowns on students protesting Israel’s blood-drenched assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
“During Covid, strict guidelines governed everything from class attendance and graduation walks,” he said. “But now, when students and faculty defy policies to intimidate Jewish students, where is the same resolute enforcement?”
Lawsuits target top US campuses with flimsy, unprovable allegations
Just hours after his appearance alongside members of Congress, Yakoby filed a lawsuit against UPenn, claiming the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to respond to antisemitism.
Yakoby’s lawsuit was filled with dubious, highly politicized accusations, including complaints about the chanting of “antisemitic slurs” such as “Intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea.”
A closer examination of other incidents described in the lawsuit against Penn reveals a great number of them appear to have been seriously exaggerated or manufactured out of whole cloth.
The most ‘threatening’ episode described by the Yakoby, for example, consists of a man who “threateningly approached him” and “yelled ‘fuck you.’” As a result of this experience — and the agony apparently endured when the plaintiff observed other students removing posters showing Israeli captives — the suit claims that “Yakoby missed his next two classes” because he was “shaken by these escalating acts of hate.”
The vast majority of claims of overt antisemitism appear to consist of statements by students and professors who criticized the state of Israel but generally took pains to distinguish between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism.
Elsewhere, the lawsuit accuses professors of antisemitism because they questioned now-debunked Israeli atrocity propaganda about the October 7 attacks, including a demonstrably false claim by Yakoby that the “killing of 40 [Israeli] babies” by Palestinian militants had been “confirmed.”
Many of the alleged incidents described as “assaults” fail to meet basic evidentiary standards, leaving the court with no option but to take the plaintiffs’ word that the contents of the complaint happened as described.
Claims that a Jewish student was taunted with exhortations to “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” for instance, are typical of the highly suspect claims found throughout the lawsuit.
Indeed, no proof of this alleged interaction was provided, nor did the plaintiff’s provide even a vague sketch of the assailant’s identity. Instead, the entire emphasis is placed on the supposed lack of “sympathy” subsequently shown to the student by a professor who decided not to award her an “extension on her class lecture note assignment.”
The plaintiffs also took aim at Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, who had been invited to a literary festival at Penn before being murdered in a December 6 Israeli strike described by human rights monitors as a “targeted assassination.”
The demands of the pro-Israel activists include “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees” who they say are “responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it; suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct… the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” and “compensatory, consequential, and punitive [financial] damages.”
Israel lobbyists are also targeting America’s most expensive campus, New York University, leveling a litany of flimsy and unprovable antisemitism allegations to extract heavy financial damages, including a full refund of tuition. Bella Ingber, who also featured prominently at the House Republican press conference, is a leading face of the NYU lawsuit.
During the Republican presser, Ingber compared conditions at NYU to life under the German Nazi Reich.
“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the unmistakable anti-Semitism that I have experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”
The plaintiffs of the Israel lobby-led lawsuit “request that a judgment be entered in each of their favor, and against NYU” which would see the university “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it… suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct,” and “compensatory and punitive damages.”
In other words, the lawsuit seeks campus-wide regime change, replacing any and all administrators with those willing to take instructions from the Israel lobby.
“Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House” lead legal assault on campus speech
If the language of the NYU lawsuit sounds familiar, that is because it was brought by the same high-powered corporate legal firm presiding over the legal action against UPenn: Kasowitz Benson Torres, best known for its work on behalf of former President Donald Trump. The firm’s leadership has been aptly described as “Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House.”
The law firm was known as Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman until 2017, when its partner, David Friedman left to become US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman has been credited with working alongside former presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to pressure Trump into adopting more radically anti-Palestinian positions.
The firm was founded in 1993 by attorney Marc Kasowitz, who gained national notoriety for his work representing Big Tobacco, describing himself as one of the “most feared lawyers in the United States.” Though reports describe him as a strong Trump ally and a go-to source for the former president, financial disclosures show Kasowitz and his wife have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians as well, including former President Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Also employed by the firm is former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a hardcore neoconservative who now serves as chairman of the pro-war United Against a Nuclear Iran. While in Congress, Lieberman advocated for moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as far back as 1995.
A quick glance at Kasowitz Benson Torres’ recent handiwork reveals a lengthy track record of defending Goliath from David. For example, its website boasts of successfully defending Comcast against a class-action lawsuit by angry customers. Other high-profile clients include Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, best known for causing the ongoing worldwide shortage of a vincristine — a crucial drug in treating most types of childhood cancers with no known substitute — after it deemed production insufficiently profitable.
In 2019, the firm signed on to represent the US-based co-defendants of notoriously-corrupt Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who now languishes in a Kiev prison and is known for bankrolling current president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi Azov Regiment. Ukrainian financial giant Privatbank maintains that Kolomoisky and his associates defrauded the bank out of billions of dollars.
A year later, Kasowitz Benson Torres was required to register as a foreign agent with the US Justice Department after agreeing to represent an Israeli real estate developer specializing in building luxury condos for ulra-Orthodox Jews living in illegal settlements.
This November, The Grayzone revealed a leaked letter signed by David Friedman and delivered to NYU administrators in advance of the lawsuit. The letter demanded NYU establish a position dedicated to “combating antisemitism,” and disband student clubs dedicated to Palestine activism.
Now, the law firm’s crusade to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists is spreading across the country. This November, two of the firm’s partners revealed that the legal team plans similar suits for Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley, accusing them all of “deliberate indifference” to the supposed plight of Jewish students.
MEMO | December 18, 2023
The Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Commission has warned that Israel is subjecting Palestinian female prisoners held in Damoun Prison, especially those randomly arrested from the besieged Gaza Strip, to “inhumane” treatment and “horrific” detention conditions including severe punishments on a daily basis.
In a report issued yesterday, the rights group quoted its lawyer saying that since 7 October, Israeli occupation forces have launched a massive arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, inside Israel and in Gaza, specifically targeting female prisoners, who were tortured and abused from the moment of their arrest.
“The female prisoners were subjected to degrading treatment including beating and insults, strip searches, isolation and deprivation of the most basic rights,” the lawyer said.
The prison administration deliberately singled out female detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip for the worst type of torture, according to one female prisoner.
In her testimony, the prisoner said: “A few days ago, an elderly woman [80 years old] from Gaza arrived at the department, walking on a crutch and without a cover on her head. Her body and clothes were covered with blood and she appeared to suffer from Alzheimer’s.”
According to the report, all the female prisoners from the Gaza Strip had their clothes taken away and replaced with summer clothes, and had been tortured before arriving at Damoun Prison and were subjected to physical and verbal abuse.
“Some of them had spent seven days outdoors in the rain and in the cold, and all of them arrived at the prison in a deplorable condition both physically and psychologically.”
The report lists the case of a female prisoner from Gaza who is a mother of four children and who was forced to hand her children to an unknown man in the street when she was detained.
“Other female prisoners were also forced to leave their children in the street when they were arrested by the Israeli army forces,” the detainee said.
Sputnik – 17.12.2023
The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.
Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.
“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.
Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”
On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.
After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Palestine Information Center – December 17, 2023
The Hamas Movement has accused the Israeli occupation army of using different types of internationally prohibited ammunition and bombs in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and persisting in its indiscriminate bombardment of homes, shelter centers, tents and hospitals.
“All this is happening in full view of the world, with support from the US, Britain and some European countries,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut on Saturday.
Hamdan criticized the failure of the international community and the UN to stop the brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza as a result of the US use of its veto power to support what he called the “neo-Nazis” in their crimes and massacres.
“About 19,000 citizens of our people have been martyred and about 52,000 others have been injured, while there are approximately 800 missing persons — 70 percent of them children and women,” Hamdan pointed out.
Hamdan said that a staggering 45 percent of the martyrs in southern Gaza are displaced persons, which contradicts the Israeli occupation’s claims about the presence of safe zones.
“There is no safe place or safe passages in the Gaza Strip. These are lies the occupation keeps repeating and every official of the US administration keeps parroting. The entirety of Gaza, from its northernmost to southernmost areas, is targeted by the Zio-American weaponry,” Hamdan underscored.
“The war trio and losers, Netanyahu, Gantz and Gallant, achieved nothing of their aggressive goals and their ongoing Nazi war against the Gaza Strip … Their dreams and illusions will be shattered on the land of proud Gaza,” he said.
Press TV – December 17, 2023
An Israeli military sniper has shot dead a Christian mother and daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in the Gaza Strip sheltering displaced Palestinian families.
The fatal shooting took place inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza City at around noon on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of al-Quds, which oversees Catholic Churches across Cyprus, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement.
“Nahida and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety,” it added.
The patriarchate also said that no warning was given before the shooting and that the victims “were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”
Seven more Palestinians were also wounded by gunfire as they tried to protect others at the church, according to the statement.
The patriarchate further said that an Israeli tank fired three projectiles, destroying a convent’s generator and fuel supplies, and rendering a building housing 54 disabled people uninhabitable.
“The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive,” it noted.
Meanwhile, the Vatican press agency said the Israeli strikes wounded three people.
Israeli air raid kills nearly two dozen Palestinians in Jabalia
In another development, at least 20 Palestinians were killed and some 100 others injured following an Israeli aerial assault on a residential block in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The attack targeted the home of the Shehab family, causing extensive damage to neighboring houses.
Israel waged the brutal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the onslaught on Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,088 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 54,450 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
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By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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