Towards a Palestine Without Palestinians
Israel’s ethnic cleansing continues with no end in sight
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 7, 2023
On Friday December 1st active Israeli combat operations resumed directed against Gaza after a one week “pause” to exchange hostages and prisoners. It should surprise no one to learn that Israel’s ultimate objective in its sustained war crime directed against Gaza is to kill and/or drive out its 2.3 million Palestinian inhabitants. The adopted policy, which has been revealed through a top level Israeli intelligence document relating to options for operations in Gaza that was leaked to the media, “…recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. …” to include “the evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai.” And Israel should “Make It Clear [to the refugees that] there Is No Hope of Returning [home]” with the final objective being “wiping Gaza off the map.”
Less widely observed or even reported in the western media, however, is the associated campaign to drive out the Palestinians living in the other major Arab enclave the West Bank, where armed settlers and soldiers have been shooting to kill and imprisoning local residents, to include children, to set the stage for forcing the local population across the Jordan River into Jordan itself. Part of the program has been to destroy the livelihoods of the 3 million plus Palestinians who have resisted previous efforts to pressure them into leaving what remains of Palestine. It is the harvest season in Palestine and the major cash crop is olive oil, so settlers and soldiers have been destroying olive trees and closing off roads so that the olives cannot be harvested and brought to market. It is just one measure of the hardships being inflicted on the Palestinians by an Israeli government that clearly believes that the way to treat Arabs is to regularly force them to endure maximum pain and suffering. Many would also argue that it is precisely those policies that produced the armed incursion into Israel by Hamas.
The Israeli intelligence assessment also cites the need to keep “friends” in the US and NATO supportive, or at least not critical, of the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Palestinians while it is taking place. That would seem to be rather tricky as there have been large demonstrations in most European capitals as well as in American cities calling for a ceasefire and supporting the Palestinians. Against that, European leaders have been reluctant to directly criticize Israel and have repeatedly voiced their delusional view that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” a punchline that one often hears in the halls of the US Congress and coming from the White House.
UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese has dismissed the “defense” argument as “Israel cannot claim self-defense from a threat that emanates from a territory that it occupies – from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation.” Beyond that, defending oneself should not necessarily include the targeted killing of thousands of helpless civilians together with the wholesale destruction of infrastructure to include hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, churches and mosques, which never seems to occur to the Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers who unfortunately share our planet with us. Nor to Joe Biden, apparently, as he is dependent on Jewish donations and friendly media to support his next presidential campaign.
To help the ethnic cleansing succeed as smoothly as possible, the Israeli intelligence produced document encourages the Israel government to work through all its friendly media and lobbying groups to develop a publicity campaign in the Western world to promote the transfer plan by obtaining international support “in a way that does not incite or vilify Israel.” This would be done by presenting the expulsion of Gaza’s population in a positive light as a humanitarian necessity, arguing that relocation will lead to “fewer casualties among the civilian population compared to the expected casualties if the population remains.” The document also recommends that the United States should be enlisted in the process to exert pressure on Egypt to absorb the Palestinian residents of Gaza.
No doubt the gutless Mr. Biden will do whatever it takes to help his Zionist friends and it is interesting to note that the Israeli government is already heavily engaged in its propaganda blitz in the United States, where it helps to have a strongly Jewish Hollywood as an ally. A notorious video of a choir of Jewish children singing angelic praise for mass murder is being circulated both by the Israeli government and by Jewish Lobby groups. The production, entitled in Hebrew translated into English as “The Friendship Song 2023,” was produced by Israel’s Rosenbaum Communications and it could quite possibly represent a new low in manipulative war propaganda, even low for Israel. The video was so objectionable that it was removed from its biggest platform “for violating You Tube’s Terms of Service.” The children affirmed in their song that “we will show the world how we destroyed our enemy… within a year we will annihilate everyone.” “Everyone” was intended to mean all the Palestinians.
There is also a film entitled “Bearing Witness,” which was produced by the Israeli army’s so-called Spokespersons Unit, which has been making the rounds on the West Coast and also in private showings before members of congress. The film shows alleged “Hamas atrocities” and has been viewed at select gatherings for the past three weeks, with one showing in New York City hosted by actress Gal Gadot, an Israeli army veteran last seen playing Wonder Woman, causing a riot when protesters showed up. A recent showing to a group of Senators on Capitol Hill concluded with America’s Solons staggering out crying and otherwise expressing both their horror and their emotion as well as their love for Israel. Interestingly, the “evidence” presented in the film has been contradicted by a number of eyewitnesses and Jewish hostage/survivors of the October 7th attack by Hamas, who have stated that they were treated well and that most of the deaths came not from Hamas but from the counter-attack by the Israeli military.
But truly the biggest surprise in where the catastrophe of Gaza might be leading is coming from the Europeans. One would expect maneuvering to avoid too deep involvement in the Gaza conflict, but quite to the contrary some European leaders are eager to help Israel out in its search for a “final solution” for dealing with the Palestinians. Referring to the mass expulsion of millions of people as any kind of “solution” is apparently a polite expression for what has surfaced regarding the EU’s attempted bribery of Egypt and Jordan. Reportedly, the EU President, Ursula von der Leyen, has recently visited Egypt and Jordan to present them with financial inducements ($10bn for Egypt and $5bn for Jordan), in exchange for the transfer of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip to their territory – effectively to facilitate the evacuation of the Palestinian population from the Strip in line with Israel’s intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
And there should be no doubt that the Netanyahu government has clearly decided to use the Hamas attack as an excuse to finally put an end to what it sees as the Gaza problem. The Israeli view on the proper outcome has been several times outlined by government officials, one of whom is prepared to use his country’s nominally secret nuclear weapons to clear out the Gaza Strip completely. On the day after the Hamas attack, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant notoriously announced that the “human animals” in Gaza would be subjected to a “siege” including being cut off from all food, water, and electricity. Likud Knesset Member Ariel Kallner has elaborated how “the solution… to move the population to Egypt, is a logical and necessary solution.” Former minister Ayalet Shaked’s tweet “After we turn Khan Yunis into a soccer field, we need to tell the countries that each of them take a quota: We need all 2 million to leave.” That’s what Israel’s leadership increasingly sees as its own version of the “solution” for Gaza. And nobody is mentioning how there will, of course, be a payoff in getting rid of the Gazans when the oil and gas fields off the Gaza shoreline fall into Israel’s hands to be exploited.
Another Israeli leadership bright spark is not intimidated by words like “genocide” and is prepared to unleash plague to get rid of the Gazans. Major General Giora Eiland has been arguing that all Palestinians in Gaza are legitimate enemy terrorist targets and that even a “severe epidemic” in Gaza will only serve a good cause, i.e. to “bring victory closer.” And it does not end there. Government minister in charge of the West Bank Bezalel Smotrich wants to apply the Gaza solution to the remaining Palestinian territory that he oversees as the occupying power. Smotrich, a settler himself, has submitted a plan for Israel to annex the entire West Bank. He claims that Palestinian territories on the West Bank are “home” to two million nazis who will have to be forced to leave.
Is there no end to the carnage in sight? Not really, as even the Israelis are predicting a drawn-out months long campaign amidst the rubble of Gaza to completely destroy Hamas. The key to some kind of admittedly temporary resolution is for the United States to actually use its considerable leverage over Israel due to the money and weapons that it is supplying to keep the war going. A ceasefire driven by Washington would create some space to consider the damage that is being done to all sides involved while seeking a solution that gives Israel security and the Palestinians some kind of real sovereignty where they will not feel trapped and persecuted. Alas, however, such forward thinking is not about to come out of Washington and hopes for a European initiative are likely to be squashed by EU President Ursula von der Leyen and her advisers, all of whom seem intent on vindicating Israel’s actions. And, like the slaughtered Ukrainian soldier-victims in that other senseless and avoidable conflict, the ones who will be paying the biggest price will inevitably be the ordinary defenseless Palestinians who will wind up bereft of their homes, their jobs and, all too often, their very lives.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Military expert: Israel’s talk of flooding Gaza tunnels is ‘psychological warfare’
MEMO | December 6, 2023
Israel’s plans to flood the resistance’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip with seawater are part of its “psychological warfare” tactics and are unrealistic, retired Jordanian Colonel and military expert, Mohamed Al-Muqabla, has said.
During an interview with Quds Press yesterday, Al-Muqabla said Israeli occupation forces are “engaging in psychological warfare against the resistance and the people of Gaza. They are constantly discussing plans and tools that could be used to neutralise the effectiveness of the tunnels, weaken the resistance, and undermine its popular support.”
He added: “For the past two months, the Israeli occupation has been unable to discover the main tunnel entrances, despite having sensitive devices. All they have discovered are secondary tunnel entrances, which are often booby-trapped. The previous occupation’s talk about pumping gas into the tunnels to kill the resistance fighters was easier for them than using water, but for two months they have done nothing because they do not know the reality of the tunnels, which are not connected, and therefore the step of flooding the tunnels with water is unrealistic.
Palestinian surgeon slams HRW as unreliable source, says al-Ahli Hospital report ‘baseless’
Press TV – December 6, 2023
A British-Palestinian surgeon has denounced as “unfounded” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the deadly strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, saying it was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence, and that HRW is not a reliable source “as it serves the enemy.”
Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta made the remarks during a lecture titled “The destruction of Gaza’s health sector: confronting devastation and forced displacement” in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday.
Sitta highlighted that HRW neither communicated with the director of the hospital nor contacted the doctor who received Israeli orders for evacuation in its report.
He went on to say that HRW did not bother to talk to any of the witnesses of the crime as it unfolded, adding, “I always told you never use HRW as a reliable source because it served the enemy.”
On Sunday, HRW reported that evidence suggested a misfired Gaza rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, which left at least 417 people dead.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, As’ad Abdukhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, said Sitta’s verdict against HRW was “very damning.”
Sitta, traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon. He worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza.
He has already recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians have gone through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.
HRW said in its report that, “The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition,” such as those commonly used by Palestinian resistance groups.
It claimed that the findings of its investigation into the explosion were based on a review of photos and videos, satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and experts.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said all indications pointed to Israel’s responsibility, adding that the HRW report was biased towards Israel and was not “decisive”.
“HRW hasn’t come up with any evidence to support their findings nor eyewitness testimonies nor opinion of independent military exports,” he said, adding that Hamas received questions from HRW two weeks ago but asked it to delay its report until after the war had ended.
The explosion at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel claimed it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has pounded hospitals across the besieged enclave where thousands of displaced people and patients were sheltering.
The regime has falsely accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of using hospitals as bases, which Hamas has dismissed.
Hamas: Biden’s sexual violence claims “cheap Zionist propaganda”
Palestine Information Center – December 6, 2023
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced US president Joe Biden for adopting the Israeli narrative that accuses Palestinian resistance fighters of committing sexual assaults on October 7.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas said Biden’s sexual violence claims against its fighters reflected his moral decline and his adoption of Israeli propaganda.
Hamas said that Biden was “supposed to have a minimum level of objectivity and avoid repeating empty and baseless accusations and adopting cheap Zionist propaganda.”
“Repeating such a blatant lie is a Zionist behavior aimed at covering up the ethnic cleansing and genocidal crimes that are being committed by the criminal Nazi occupied army against our people, with American cover and weapons,” Hamas underscored.
Hamas also described Biden’s remarks as “an attempt to mislead the public opinion after the world has seen the good treatment the detainees received from the resistance.”
The Movement called on the international media outlets to side with the truth and debunk the new Zio-American claims against the Palestinian resistance, as they did before when they exposed the lies of beheading children and using Al-Shifa Hospital as a command and control center.
Israel revokes UN humanitarian coordinator’s visa for ‘not condemning Hamas’
The Cradle | December 6, 2023
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced on 5 December the state’s decision to revoke the resident visa of UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings.
“We will no longer be silent in the face of the bias of the UN!” the foreign minister said via social media. “I decided to revoke the residence visa to Israel of the UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings.”
“Someone who did not condemn Hamas for the brutal massacre of 1,200 Israelis, for the kidnapping of babies and the elderly and for the horrific acts of abuse and rape, and for using the residents of Gaza as human shields, but instead condemns Israel, a democratic country that protects its citizens, cannot serve in the UN and cannot enter Israel!” Cohen’s social media statement continued.
The Israeli foreign minister’s remarks came on the heels of comments made by Hastings, in which she voiced concern for the Palestinian people after Israel resumed indiscriminate attacks on residential neighborhoods, hospitals, and UN shelters.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, and there is nowhere left to go,” Hasting’s statement read. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist. If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond.”
Israel’s UN envoy, Gilad Erdan, had also voiced his condemnation of the organization’s view regarding the war between Israel and Palestinian resistance.
“There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words,” Erdan said on social media.
Cohen had also voiced his displeasure in October to a UN-fronted ceasefire despite Hamas being open to such a resolution.
“We reject outright the [UNGA]’s despicable call for a ceasefire,” Israel Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said. “Israel intends to eliminate Hamas just as the world dealt with the Nazis and ISIS.”
Google reinstates app that helps boycott Israel-linked companies
Press TV – December 5, 2023
Google has reinstated a mobile phone application that helps people identify and potentially avoid the products that have been made by companies that are linked to the Israeli regime.
The application, named “No Thanks,” was made available again on Google’s Play Store on Sunday, days after it was removed.
The app was launched last month amid a genocidal and yet-ongoing war by the Israeli regime against the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed more than 16,000 people.
The developer, named as Ahmad Bashbash, is a Hungary-based Palestinian from Gaza, who has lost his siblings to the regime’s campaign of bloodletting against the coastal sliver and its crippling siege of the territory.
“I made it (the app) on behalf of my brother and my sister who I lost because of this brutal occupation, and my goal is to try to prevent what happened to me from happening to another Palestinian,” he told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
“No Thanks” allows customers to scan products’ barcodes and be notified if they have been made by Israeli-linked companies.
It was taken off the Play Store on November 30 owing to its description that read, “Welcome to No Thanks, here you can see if the product in your hand supports killing children in Palestine or not.”
Before being removed, it was downloaded over 100,000 times.
The new version’s description says, “Our app simplifies the process of scanning barcodes and searching for products that are listed for the boycott movement.”
A version designed for Apple products has reportedly been developed and is currently under review.
Environmentalists: Gaza’s Water, Farmland ‘Will Be Unusable’ if Israel Floods Tunnels With Seawater
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 05.12.2023
Gaza’s fragile ecosystem could be permanently damaged by a huge influx of salty seawater like that which Israel is considering pumping into the city, experts said. Some of the deepest tunnels dug by Hamas and other militant groups could be near groundwater depths, souring the area’s drinking water.
According to reports in US media on Tuesday, Israel has pushed ahead with plans to flood Gaza City with seawater in an attempt to destroy the network of tunnels dug beneath the city by Palestinian militant groups.
According to the report, the IDF finished assembling five massive seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip in mid-November. The plan is reportedly to flood the tunnels slowly over several weeks, giving Palestinian fighters and their Israeli captives time to safely evacuate.
The report was unclear about the disposition of the White House toward the plan. The Biden administration has largely supported Israel’s actions in Gaza as self-defense against Hamas, but given rhetorical warning against violating Palestinian human rights. The warnings have had little effect, though, as nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by IDF bombing and ground operations since Hamas attacked several Israeli border towns in early October, killing some 1,200 people.
Andrey Frolov, co-chair of Moscow’s Environmental Organizations, told Sputnik on Tuesday that an influx of salty seawater could wreck Gaza’s fragile ecosystem, making it difficult to sustain life there.
“When water comes in, it all depends of course, depending on the scale of the disaster. That is, what kind of tunnels are they, where are they laid and what is their size. Because the first thing that immediately catches your eye is that if the tunnels are shallow, say, two to three meters deep, then this will simply undermine the foundations of buildings. When moisture enters, the stability of the soil changes, subsidence begins, and accordingly, it will just begin [to collapse]. Israel has already destroyed the entire city, so I think that for them it is not important.”
“There is information that these tunnels are hundreds of square kilometers in size and go to a depth of up to 80 meters,” he noted, adding that it was probably “a bit of an exaggeration.”
Frolov noted “it depends on the waters” how the influx of salty seawater would affect the fresh groundwater. Some of the deepest tunnels rumored to have been dug in Gaza could be near the depths of the aquifers.
“Because seawater can get into these aquifers it will make them salty. As a result, those wells that were used in Gaza will simply stop working. The territory was already short on water, Israel supplied water from the Sea of Galilee. If a large amount of sea water is pumped into it, it will simply become unusable.”
He noted the salt will also impact agriculture in Gaza, making it “so that any kind of farming or maintaining green spaces will simply be impossible.”
“Our nature lives in biocenosis. That is, it is a complex of living beings that adapt to a certain habitat. If the biocenosis is salted and the living conditions are changed, then some species simply will not be able to live there. And if one, two, three species stop living, then the entire biocenosis crumbles,” he explained.
Top Defense Official: US Can Handle Middle East, Russia and China All at Once
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 5, 2023
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady said the Pentagon was prepared to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, aid the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, and arm Taiwan for a potential war with China. The Admiral argued all the military efforts could be completed simultaneously and the Navy was not stretched thin.
At an Atlantic Council event, Grady said, “You look at what is required to support Ukraine, look at what might be required to support our partner in Israel, and then, of course, you put Taiwan on top of that—we have the construct that we do with combatant commanders and the rest that should allow us to command and control those three things all at one time.” He continued, “It’s part of our campaigning process, which is central to the national defense strategy. Is it challenging? Sure.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration pledged to give Ukraine the weapons needed to win the war. Over the past 19 months, Washington has sent Kiev tens of billions in arms.
Over the past two months, Washington has sent Tel Aviv 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. Israel has targeted civilian homes with American-made bombs. However, the White House has refused to place any conditions on the aid it sends to Tel Aviv.
The transfers have stretched American weapons depots to their redline levels. The shortage has led the White House to send cluster variants of artillery shells to both Ukraine and Israel.
In addition to arms transfers, the US has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops and facilitate weapons shipments to Kiev. In the Middle East region, the White House deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups.
Grady’s belief that the US could fight a three-front war is White House policy. President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to pass a $106 billion funding package to fund arming Ukraine, Israel, and a military buildup in the Asia-Pacific.
The Admiral also indicated that military-to-military talks between the US and China may start soon. “So we’re ready when they are and I suspect we’ll see that shortly, “he said.
During a meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, the two leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications. However, the US has engaged in a pair of provocative naval maneuvers in the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims.
Israel can’t defeat Hamas in battle, so what’s next?
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 5, 2023
After a seven-day lull in the war between Israel and the Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, the resumption of hostilities has been given another green light from Washington. Having failed to lead its Israeli allies towards military victory, the US is permitting a dangerous escalation and rejects a peaceful solution that will prevent further civilian suffering.
Just minutes after the departure of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, from Palestine/Israel, the war in Gaza resumed, with a large aerial onslaught on Palestinian civilian infrastructure resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 civilians. The White House spokesperson John Kirby announced continued support for Israel’s “right and responsibility to go after Hamas,” but to what end is unclear. As the likes of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admits that Hamas is far from falling apart, it begs the question: what really is the point of this war?
Following six weeks of war that resulted in likely over 20,000 Palestinian deaths, the Israeli military has failed to produce any evidence that it has made a significant dent on the military capabilities of Hamas and the other Palestinian armed groups in the besieged coastal enclave. While Israel forced its way into the major hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas was using the sites as bases and command-and-control centers, the evidence produced by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not support these allegations. The US government backed the idea that a command node had existed at the Shifa Hospital, and when the Israeli forces entered the hospital compound they presented weapons they claimed to have found there, as well as an empty tunnel. Any such images released to the public are curated and edited by the Israeli army, but if independently verified, they could serve as evidence of militant presence – still, not proof of a control center or node. Little of note was discovered in other hospitals, and American claims of having solid intel that confirms Israeli claims is dubious, considering previous public statements such as US President Joe Biden’s words about having seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children” which the White House later had to walk back.
At the start of this war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government was going to “crush Hamas,” a goal that the US government backed publicly. Yet, Hamas has managed to not only inflict the largest blow against Israel in its history, but has also defended Gaza on the ground with countless documented cases of success against Israeli forces. The whole world is now talking about the formation of a Palestinian State, an idea that had been all but abandoned in favor of unconditional normalization agreements between Arab States and Israel, prior to the war. In addition to this, one of the predictable outcomes of the Israeli war on Gaza, has been a tremendous uptick in support for Hamas throughout the occupied territories. In the Middle East and throughout the Muslim World, Hamas militants have become heroes and are widely viewed as a valiant national resistance.
The Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, which the Biden administration’s Middle East policy revolved around, is dead in the water at this time as Riyadh moves closer to Tehran. According to Israeli polling data, Benjamin Netanyahu is only trusted by 4% of Israelis, while the most trusted national figure was recorded to be Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Hagari, despite being trusted by Israelis, was turned into the “there is a list guy” and an online meme, after presenting a video in which he claimed a regular Arabic calendar named “terrorists”. That video, in which he referred to the list, was supposed to show evidence of Hamas keeping hostages at the Rantisi Children’s Hospital.
At least 10 countries have either withdrawn ambassadors from, or suspended ties with, Israel. All this as the largest pro-Palestinian protests to have ever taken place in the West continue to occur in capital cities like London and Washington DC. This, combined with a considerable drop in Joe Biden’s approval rating, all spell disaster for the US-supported war in Gaza.
The White House claims that it is putting certain restrictions on the Israeli army as it plans to invade the south of Gaza, but in the same breath offers unconditional support for Israel’s actions. At no point has the US government taken any responsibility for what has happened since October 7, there has been no apology for their lies, no change in strategy and no acknowledgement in the role that Washington has played in creating the situation on the ground in Gaza that facilitated the Hamas attack.
The real question now is: Where do we go from here? Israel aimlessly fights in Gaza and continues to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians, there is no sign of a Hamas defeat on the horizon and the humanitarian situation, which is described as “the worst ever” by UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths, is further deteriorating. While these elements are all to be taken seriously, there is also the specter of a regional war erupting in the event that the Israeli attack escalates against Gaza. Lebanese Hezbollah is currently engaged in frequent battles along the Lebanese border and has been expanding the scope of its attacks on Israeli military targets.
The prisoner exchanges which took place between Israel and Hamas proved that the Palestinian group was capable of being engaged diplomatically. The exchange also worked to expose to the world that Israel was also holding women and children captive without any charges. Israeli civilian captives who were released, the majority of whom were filmed smiling, shaking the hands of and thanking Hamas fighters upon their releases, have been blocked from speaking to the media about their experiences directly. On the other hand, Palestinian women and children recounted abuse, torture and humiliation that they had suffered at the hands of their Israeli jailers. This represented another public-relations debacle for the Israeli government, who came off looking more guilty than Hamas.
The US government is in the driver’s seat of the war. It has the power to end the conflict at any time but continues to prolong this disaster. During the seven-day pause in hostilities, nothing shifted in Israel’s favor to make its victory possible. There can be no military solution to the war in Gaza, the US must recognise that this conflict will never end until the Palestinian people are granted justice and freedom. For 75 years the governments of the collective West have ignored the suffering of the Palestinian people, they have never been objective peace-brokers. Violence begets violence and hate begets hate, it is not possible to simply murder the Palestinians into submission. Even if Hamas were to be defeated, there will be more groups that emerge to take revenge for their fallen and fight for statehood in the future. If the international community comes together, this cycle can be broken, but it is going to take courage.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Dying to be free: Releasing Palestinian captives is not a numbers game
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 5, 2023
Google removes Israel boycott app
MEMO | December 5, 2023
Google has removed a mobile app from its store that helps people boycott companies linked to Israel.
The @NoThanks boycott account on social media confirmed that its NoThanks app was temporarily removed because its description contained a sentence about determining if “your hand supports killing children in Palestine or not.”
“The app has been suspended from the Google store for this sentence, I have removed it in the new update and the store will review it and release it again.”
However the new version was also suspended, but the developer is in talks with Google Play to have it reinstated.
“This app,” NoThanks explained on X, “is a peaceful form of protest, and it’s essential to clarify that the app is not antisemitic, despite attempts by other certain news and reports to describe it as such.”
The creator of the NoThanks boycott app revealed on 7 November that it will assist individuals in identifying companies that support Israel by scanning product barcodes to obtain information about the product’s origins and the company selling it.
By 29 November, the app had been downloaded over 100,000 times on Google Play. Earlier today, the developer said emails had now been circulated calling for him to be sacked from his internship for trying to harm “businesses run by Jews”, according to the author of the email.
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Woolsey Fire started at Santa Susana Field Lab — where “radioactive materials released were never accurately measured”
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
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- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
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