Israeli State Terror — Killing Palestinians with Impunity
By Stephen Lendman | May 31, 2021
Throughout Jewish state history, its ruling regimes treated Occupied Palestinians and Arab citizens ruthlessly.
Terrorizing them is longstanding Israeli policy, including daily arrests throughout the Occupied Territories, torture, beatings and other forms of abuse, targeted killings, and justice nearly always denied.
Last week, Al Jazeera reported about “grief and anger (in the al-Amari refugee camp) as women wept, young men chanted with raised fists, and masked gunmen fired into the air during” Ahmed Fahd’s funeral.
According to his family, he was extrajudicially arrested by Israeli undercover agents — then assassinated by multiple shots in the back and legs.
Mortally wounded and bleeding to death in public pre-dawn, he was left to die in Ramallah’s Um al-Shayaret neighborhood last Tuesday.
What happened to Fahd repeats time and again throughout the Occupied Territories, accountability virtually never forthcoming.
Weeping at her son’s funeral, Fahd’s mother mother said he “was shot without mercy.”
According to a Palestinian health ministry spokesman, he was shot multiple times at close range, adding:
“Doctors reported that one of the bullets that entered his back made a 2.5cm entry hole, but when it exited his stomach the hole was 7cm, proving that he’d been shot at close range.”
Israeli soldiers, security forces, and undercover agents use dumdum “butterfly bullets,” Palestinian doctors explained.
They explode on impact, cause severe internal injuries, and make large exit wounds.
Palestinian human rights group Al Haq’s general director Shawan Jabarin said Fahd’s state-sponsored murder was no accident, adding:
His “killing is part of a deliberate Israeli policy of assassinating Palestinians at close range by undercover units known as Musta’ribeen as well as regular troops.”
“The(se) (elements) come into Ramallah nearly every night after 2:00 AM to carry out arrests.”
“There have been a number of cases where Shin Bet intelligence officers phoned the families of Palestinians they killed after shooting them at close range and blocking ambulances from evacuating those critically wounded – young men whom they accused of armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers – saying that ‘the account had now been settled.’ ”
Al Haq documented numerous cases of Israeli state-sponsored assassinations of Palestinians for invented reasons.
Musta’ribeen are ruthless. Arabic speaking, they pose as Arabs to seek out, abduct, and assassinate targeted Palestinians.
According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), undercover Israelis “pos(e) as protesters and incit(e) the situation.”
They “attack civilians very violently and make severe threats, especially against minors.”
“There have been cases when undercover officers pulled people, including minors, off the street without identifying themselves, which made the arrests look like kidnappings.”
In May alone, Palestinians threatening no one were killed almost daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — with impunity.
B’Tselem explained that when Israeli security forces kill or otherwise harm Palestinians, “none of those responsible have faced charges.”
Most often, probes aren’t conducted. When initiated, whitewash nearly always follows.
The Israeli Yesh Din human rights group denounced targeted killings of Palestinians, saying:
“The combination of permissive rules of engagement, regarding firing at unarmed protesters and a law enforcement system that prevents genuine, effective investigation of protester deaths, is a lethal one,” adding:
“The result is the unfortunate, unnecessary loss of many lives, a lack of accountability for harming innocents, and the abandonment of (Palestinians) who remain defenseless against the specter of losing their lives.”
A Final Comment
Countless thousands Gazan children were terrorized, traumatized, and severely damaged emotionally from days of Israeli aggression in May.
During round-the-clock IDF terror-bombing and shelling, children endured nightmares.
When bombs detonated overnight, many woke up screaming.
The effects of what happened left permanent scars.
Parents tried to stay strong for their children, but devastation in much of the Strip took a toll on most all its residents.
According to Palestinian psychotherapist Ghada Redwan:
“There are a number of cases suffering from severe panic and intense fear.”
“There are also children whose psychological symptoms are showing up in strong emotions and vomiting.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) explained that Palestinian children who survived the trauma of war likely relive what they endured for some time after it ended.
For some, trauma never ends.
As a boy and adolescent in the 1940s, my next door neighbor was a WW II survivor around my own age.
I was too young at the time to understand why he was different from other neighborhood kids, largely keeping to himself, not playing with me and my other friends.
The trauma of war took its toll on countless numbers who survived the ordeal, developing young children likely affected most of all.
‘My youngest son has seen nothing but violence’ – Palestinian activist on life in West Bank village where Israelis killed a child
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | May 28, 2021
Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old boy, Islam Burnat, from the West Bank village of Bil’in earlier in May and have since “terrorized” local families by raiding their homes and arresting children.
“Two of my sons are now imprisoned and [the Israeli authorities] haven’t even explained why,” Iyad Burnat, a Palestinian non-violent resistance activist, told me in an interview about current events taking place in his village, Bil’in, 12km west of Ramallah.
Burnat, the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall, is a well-known activist who I met during my stays in the occupied Palestinian territories. I lived in his family home for two months in 2017 and have since visited him upon returning to the West Bank.
Iyad’s family, as I have personally witnessed on the ground, are routinely targeted by the Israeli forces, most likely due to his active participation in leading international delegations and touring them around Bil’in.
As Israeli-Palestinian tensions escalated earlier this month, large-scale protests took place throughout the West Bank, which triggered a mass campaign of arrests by the Israeli military. During the recent 11-day conflict, at least three Palestinian children were killed in the West Bank, as well as 66 in Gaza.
I asked Iyad how the protests in his village had taken shape and whether he was surprised by the Israeli response.
“In Bil’in, we have had ongoing demonstrations since 2005 – at first, it was everyday and after a while once per week – to protest against the wall and settlements. You know, everyone from Bil’in would join this non-violent demonstration, men, women, children and many internationals even attended,” he explained.
I have covered many of the demonstrations in Bil’in and although violence was regularly used by the Israelis to put down protests, this time it was different. “They were going crazy,” as Hamde Abu Rahma, a local photojournalist covering the protests, put it.
Following these protests, the early morning arrest campaigns began, of which Iyad’s family was one of the primary targets. Israeli forces stormed his home three times recently.
“The first time the Israelis came was on May 17, to arrest Abdul-Khaliq (Iyad’s 21-year-old son), but he wasn’t at home at the time. They came at 3am and destroyed everything in our house, they told me that if I didn’t give him to them they would shoot and kill him, then return to my home every single night,” said Iyad.
“They destroyed the chairs, they destroyed the televisions, they destroyed anything they put their hands on and were searching the entire house, they destroyed the kitchen, tables and threw our clothes everywhere. Later my son Abdul-Khaliq was forced to surrender himself to the Israeli military.
“On the same night my son Mohammed was home, the soldiers took him to a separate room and beat him everywhere on his body, the blood was streaming down his face after the beating,” Iyad added.
I asked him whether the Israeli military had told him what they were searching for, and he said that they gave no reply when he asked them.
“We’ve had many of these invasions of our home, all are similar and we are used to it,” Iyad said.
The very next day, at a demonstration in the village, young Islam Burnat was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. Islam was a close relative of Iyad’s. I asked him about what he had witnessed that day.
“The demonstration was to stand with the people of Gaza and demand an end to the killing, to support Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah. Islam was one of the children who were peacefully protesting. Then, suddenly, one angry soldier came and started shooting live ammunition, the soldier took aim and shot him in his head,” Iyad said.
“We all knew Islam and my children grew up with him, I remember him as a baby and I remember him from very young going to the non-violent demonstrations,” he said, holding back tears.
The soldiers later returned twice to Iyad’s family home, again raiding it, arresting his 17-year-old son Mohammed during the early hours of May 18.
“Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed are now in al-Moskobiya prison in Jerusalem, we didn’t hear anything from him until now, the lawyer can’t even visit him and neither can our family,” he said.
Al-Moskobiya detention facility in West Jerusalem is infamous for its alleged underground holding cells and has a reputation for being the worst Israeli prison in terms of the level of torture allegedly used there during interrogations.
“After they took Abdul-Khaliq and Mohammed, my wife and my daughter don’t sleep, the tears haven’t left my wife’s eyes,” says Iyad. “My youngest son Mohyaldeen is growing up seeing nothing but violence. He knows his eldest brother Majd was shot and almost died, his second-eldest brother Abdul-Khaliq was also shot many times and imprisoned when he was only 17-years-old for 13 months. He has seen nothing but violence and even though it’s normal for these things to happen now, he still gets scared, he’s just a little child.”
For both of his sons and three others who have been arrested in the village of Bil’in, Iyad said that the Israeli authorities are asking for a $1,500 fine each. However, even if this is paid in full, there is no way of telling how long they will be kept in administrative detention where they are being held without charge.
Israel’s military court system is well known to be comprised of kangaroo courts, as they have a near 100% conviction rate, meaning that whatever they charge a Palestinian with, they may be sent to jail regardless of whether they are truly guilty or not.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV.
Israel Rejects Cooperation With UN Human Rights Council Commission, Foreign Ministry Says
Sputnik – 27.05.2021
Israel refuses to cooperate with the commission on Gaza and Israel, the creation of which is envisaged by a UN Human Rights Council resolution, and rejects the resolution itself, claiming that it acted in accordance with international law and ethical standards, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for the creation of a commission of inquiry to investigate violations in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
“Israel rejects outright the resolution adopted today (Thursday, 27 May 2021) by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body with a built-in anti-Israel majority, guided by hypocrisy and absurdity. Any resolution that fails to condemn the firing of over 4,300 rockets by a terror organization at Israeli civilians, or even to mention the terror organization Hamas, is nothing more than a moral failure and a stain on the international community and the UN,” the statement says.
The ministry noted that Israeli security forces had acted in accordance with the highest ethical standards and in accordance with international law, protecting their citizens from Hamas attacks.
“Israel cannot and will not cooperate with such an investigation,” the statement says.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution a mockery of international law.
“Today’s shameful decision is yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council’s blatant anti-Israel obsession. Once again, an immoral automatic majority at the Council whitewashes a genocidal terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians while turning Gaza’s civilians into human shields. This while depicting as the “guilty party” a democracy acting legitimately to protect its citizens from thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks. This travesty makes a mockery of international law and encourages terrorists worldwide,” Netanyahu said.
The resolution adopted on Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council, inter alia, calls for the urgent creation of a permanent independent international commission of inquiry, to be appointed by the president of the UN Human Rights Council, to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel before and after April 13, 2021, as well as all root causes of recurring tension, instability and protracted conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression on the basis of national, ethnic, racial or religious affiliation.
Brits protest outside BAE Systems for weapons sales to Israel
By Ahmed Kaballo – Press TV – May 28, 2021
London – Hundreds of pro-Palestine protestors gathered outside the BAE Systems factory in Blackburn in the north of England, to call upon the weapons manufacturer to stop supplying components for F-35 fighter jets that have been used in the recent bombardment of Gaza.
The protest came on the back of one the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations in British history on Saturday and similar demonstrations throughout the week led by Palestine action groups who have been protesting outside the Israeli-owned Elbit Systems factory that provides drones, weapons, and military hardware to the Israeli army.
We have seen protests in Leicester, Tamworth, Oldham, and today in Blackburn as the anger amongst the British public begins to swell at the thought that UK weapons have been used by the Israeli army to kill Palestinian children.
It has become increasingly clear that the British government’s unwavering support for Israel is not representative of the feeling on the ground with more than 383,000 Brits calling on their government to sanction the Israeli regime for their crimes against the Palestinian people.
But while the UK remains complicit through the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of weapons sold to the Israeli army. Some might wonder if the UK should also be held accountable.
From Here On, Palestine Calls the Shots
By Taxi | Plato’s Guns | May 27, 2021
From rocks to rockets. This is now the recorded evolution of the armed Palestinian Resistance. From throwing Intifada rocks that barely scratched occupation tanks, to lobbing rockets that can now reach anywhere in Israel: this is presently the undeniable status of the Palestinian Resistance. Hard, therefore, not to deduce that some impressive progress has been achieved by the armed Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, despite Gaza being under a severe land, sea and air siege. Right under the very noses of the bulky Israeli military and its lauded hi-tech Intel, the Palestinian Resistance has managed to arm itself in a significant way – and indeed, it continues to improve its arsenal, undetected. Of course, Israel’s weaponry remains by far more superior to that of the Palestinians, but this superiority in arms became meaningless during the recent ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ combat: a small war that found the Israeli forces unilaterally withdrawing from the battlefield after only some ten days. In normal military parlance, this would be defined as a defeat, yet this defeat is being referred to in the West as a ‘ceasefire’. Well, semantics aside, the simple takeaway is that Israel’s mighty military lost to pitiful Gaza rockets. The biblical story of David and Goliath repeated itself right before our modern eyes. And from here on, the hulking Israeli military will be powerless to protect Israeli Jews and their properties in the holy land.
In 1948, Zionism had promised the Jews of Israel two vital services: security and prosperity. Indeed, it had kept good on its promise for some 73 years. But now, in 2021 and post the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ war, it can no longer provide either. From here on, Zionism cannot guarantee either security or prosperity for its Jewish population – not with Gaza rockets now permanently looming and ready to disrupt daily Jewish life in the holy land. It used to be that the Israeli military was the one capriciously disrupting the security and prosperity of Palestinians, but overnight, the success of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has turned the tables on Israel. From here on, Palestine calls the shots. From here on, Israel will pay a very heavy price for any significant aggression against the suffering, occupied Palestinian people. This equation is now fixed; immovable. This is the new status quo.
Moreover, Zionism, appealing specifically to Jewish zealots, had also promised the total Judeofication of Jerusalem. A project that is contrary to International Law. A project that entails illegal land theft and the total ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their ancestral homes. Now, this project has come to a total standstill, with Hassan Nasrallah announcing recently that his resistance army, Hezbollah, as well as the armies of other members of the Axis of Resistance, will from here on militarily involve themselves in defending Jerusalem from this Judeofication project. Therefore, what we have now is Gaza’s improved rocketry checking Israel from within, and from without, we have several million Axis of Resistance fighters and their immense arsenal standing by, all ready to liberate Jerusalem at a moment’s notice. “Jerusalem for regional war,” was Nasrallah’s succinct warning to Israel. A regional war that will in fact be an existential war for Israel. A regional war that even the staunchest Israeli supporters are deathly fearful of because it will completely destroy modern Israel and cost tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
With Israel’s Zionism now unable to fulfill any of its fundamental promises, where does all this leave Zionism but collapsing before the very eyes of Jews themselves.
It is now simply impossible for Israel to reverse its sinking fortune without igniting a suicidal, regional war. No power on earth, not even mighty US powers can reverse this track. All the US and other Western friends of Israel can do now is delay the inevitable destruction of Israel with the use of a proverbial band aid here and a band aid there. Blinken, who is currently visiting the holy land is offering nothing but band aids to both sides. Other Western leaders will soon enough also come to Tel Aviv and to Ramallah with offers of more band aid. In reality, no one has anything else to offer Israel but band aid, because everything else has already been gifted to Israel in the past, and Israel appears to have squandered and abused, instead of used these gifts wisely for its longevity’s sake. There is no more that the West can do for Israel, save for actually sending their troops to the holy land to die for the Jews. An unlikely and most controversial move to now send democratic Western troops to die for ‘Apartheid Israel’, especially in the current depressive economic state that the whole world finds itself in. And Even if some Western nation was foolish enough to send its troops to fight for Tel Aviv, these troops will not be able to stop the intensive waves of Resistance precision missiles and rockets already poised to saturate Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel proper. Here, even geography is against Israel.
The ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has irreversibly weakened Israel, not just on the home front, but the world over too. Overnight, Israel’s universal image went from its traditional ‘victim State’, straight to ‘Apartheid state’. Now, in the minds of the majority of the world, Israel is believed to be an Apartheid state. And in this new Apartheid definition of Israel, the so-called holocaust violin and begging bowl are nowhere to be found. The world is no longer interested in considering the sentimental holocaust when it comes to Israel. All the world can see now are the numerous and unconscionable Crimes Against Humanity that Israel has wantonly engaged in against the Palestinians – numerous crimes that israel has committed without a single instance of accountability. The world is no longer prepared to remain silent on this, or to accept the status of Israel as eternal victim.
So very much has been shattered within the Zionist machinery by the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’. And there are no spare parts to be found anywhere to replace them. Not even a false flag operation by Israel will return it to the victim chair. The whole gaggle and cackle of Jewish deceptions are by now also known and exposed to global populations. What in the past used to work in favor of Israel, is no longer working. The apple has lost its shine.
And another major victim of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ is the Deal of the Century. At this stage of the game, with Jerusalem currently being a focal and highly emotive topic deluging Arab world medias, it is impossible for any corrupt Arab leader to now sign up anew to the Deal of the Century. And who in their right mind would sign a highly controversial deal with a sinking nation that can offer nothing in return? Mindful here too that two out of the four Arab nations that have already normalized with Israel under the Deal of the Century, did so purely for personal and not ideological reasons. These two nations are Sudan that signed the Deal in exchange for the removal of its name from the US’s terrorism list; and Morocco that signed the Deal in exchange for US support in Morocco’s illegal land claims over the Western Sahara. We can therefore safely say that out of 22 Arab nations, only two despotic Arab dictatorships are ideologically aligned with Israel: the UAE and Bahrain. These petite Zioninst-Arab nations cannot save Israel from even a single Gaza rocket, let alone from the combined weapons of the Axis of Resistance that now surround Israel: all coiled and waiting for Israel to miscalculate. Kushner’s attempt at wiping out the Palestine cause from the Arab world by creating a normalization program has utterly and completely failed. The Palestine cause has never been stronger in the Arab mind than it is now. The Deal of the Century has become the Tomb of the Century.
Moreover, an even more important pro Israel project has also collapsed at the swipe of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’: The Oslo Agreement. No longer are the Palestinians happy with just a pitiful ‘crumb of land with no autonomy’ offered to them by Israel under Oslo, they are now unanimously demanding the return of all their land ‘from the river to the sea’. Their supporters worldwide are backing this notion by loudly chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ at all their mass protests. The ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has veritably stabbed Oslo in the heart. The Two State Solution is dead. The One State Palestine Solution has grown massive wings.
Indeed, with Palestine now demanding all its land back ‘from the river to the sea’, Zionism appears to have symbolically lost all the land it acquired by force of arms since 1948. This symbolism will now become a reality in the next war between Israel and the Axis of Resistance. And war is coming. Plans and maps for the final War 0f Liberation remain very much on the table. Over the past 7 decades, Israel had stridently rejected numerous calls by friend and foe alike to surrender to the Levant’s historic culture of equitable coexistence between religions; rejected blending into the local scenery, opting instead to war against all its neighbors so as to assert itself as a vastly dominant power beyond reproach. Now it finds itself with many missed opportunities for peace and with its jugular bleeding: cut by no less than an over-zealous, blunt Zionist knife. War is coming to the holy land because Zionism has relentlessly expressed itself as a supremacist ideology that is fundamentally incapable of compromise, incapable of equality and justice, incapable of making real and genuine peace with any of its non Jewish neighbors. Through unchecked savagery, through arrogance and overreach since its inception, Israel has now become impotent in the face of the real existential threat it faces today. Apartheid policies and land-kleptomania will only get you so far. The Jews should have learned this lesson from the now defunct Apartheid South Africa.
Israel and its Jewish population now find themselves in an unsustainable and untenable position. They have now but two choices: depart from the Jewish colony in peace and physically intact, or from here on face a daily life of fear of Palestinian rockets and whatnot, followed eventually by a violent death when the big war breaks out.
Addressing Israeli Jews in his speech yesterday, Nasrallah stated: “We see how Muslim and Christian holy places are these days under dangerous attacks by you. When you destroy homes and people in Palestine: we leave this to the internal Palestinian Resistance to address. But we as the Axis of Resistance cannot stand idly by when you violate the sanctity of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. Any further violations of Jerusalem by you will lead to regional war.”
Will Israeli civilian and military societies listen to Nasrallah’s warning, or will they, in their traditional arrogance, dismiss his words as being mere empty threats?
The Axis of Resistance now has all its war ducks lined up. The much longed for and necessary Palestinian unity is now a reality. All the needed weapons for victory are a reality. Global moral support for Palestinian liberation is now a reality. The War of Liberation is but one single step away. And the timing of this war will be triggered when Israel foolishly violates Jerusalem again. And violate it will, in its attempt to put oxygen back in the collapsing lung of Zionism. After all, violation is the only method that Israel knows. Violation is the definitive Israeli MO.
Will the Jews of Israel now risk life and limb and continue clinging to and supporting a shattered Zionism that can no longer deliver them its promised goods? Or will their survival instinct kick in and have them packing suitcases and returning back to their European, Russian and American origins?
A combination of both, I suspect. Some Jews will leave Israel. Some won’t. The die-hard Zionists are pathologically deluded enough to remain: believing that present conditions are militarily reversible. They’re not. Not anymore. Not ever. All that the Zionist Israeli government can do now in the aftermath of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ is ease up a small measure of pressure on the Palestinians and on the city of Jerusalem: buying itself time to come up with a solution that would be acceptable to both Israeli Jews on one hand, and Palestinian Muslims and Christians on the other. But Zionism, by its own definition does not allow for equitable co-existence with non-Jews. Sober minds on both sides do not believe that a win-win solution is available, or feasible. They estimate that this too-little-too-late path of Israel releasing some pressure on Jerusalem will lead to nowhere, and at some point en route, the Israeli government will become insensible with frustration to the point of miscalculation. Indeed, it will be Israel’s very last miscalculation.
We shall soon enough see a costly but heroic and historic return of the nation of Palestine: from the river to the sea.
No stopping now the winds of change that favor the suffering Palestinians.
Coexistence in Israel’s ‘mixed cities’ was always an illusion
By Jonathan Cook | Axis of Logic | May 26, 2021
Last weekend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “terrorists” those Palestinian citizens who have been protesting decades of state-sponsored discrimination. Vowing that “anyone who acts like a terrorist will be handled like one”, he said: “Arab law-breakers are attacking Jews, burning synagogues and Jewish homes.”
Netanyahu has been far from alone in his denunciations of nearly two weeks of protests inside Israel by the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian by origin. They are the remnants of the Palestinian people, most of whom were ethnically cleansed at Israel’s founding in 1948.
Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, who is usually seen as far more moderate than Netanyahu, has called Palestinian protesters inside Israel a “bloodthirsty Arab mob” and described their actions as a “pogrom” against the Jewish community.
Both have remained largely silent about the wave of even greater violence against Israel’s Palestinian minority, both from the police and armed Jewish far-right gangs.
General strike
On Tuesday the Palestinian minority observed a general strike in protest at the wave of violence being directed at Palestinians in the region, most especially in Gaza. There, more than 200 people – and more than 60 children – have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
At the same time, the minority’s main political body, the Follow-Up Committee, called on international organizations to protect Israel’s 1.8 million Palestinian citizens from the combined – and seemingly coordinated – backlash by Israel police and mob Jewish mobs.
Adalah, a leading legal organization for the minority, echoed the Follow-Up Committee, saying the Israeli government was “giving a free hand to racist and violent oppression” Arab citizens have been left with no alternative except to appeal to the nations of the world to force Israel to protect them”.
In the main sites of confrontation, in a handful of what Israel misleadingly terms “mixed cities”, it is Palestinian citizens who have been paying the steepest price.
These cities, several of them close to Tel Aviv, are historic Palestinian communities most of whose inhabitants were expelled in 1948. Even since, the small ghettoized Palestinian populations left behind have been aggressively “Judaized” – in what amounts to a long-term process of Jewish ethnic and religious gentrification to erase their presence.
Danger of pogroms
The first death from the clashes in the “mixed cities” was a Palestinian citizen who was shot in Lod, near Tel Aviv, by a group of Jewish residents. All the suspects in the murder are reported to have been released after the police minister, Amir Ohana, was among the senior politicians expressing outrage at the arrests.
Another early incident involved a Palestinian taxi driver being dragged from his car south of Tel Aviv by hordes of masked Jews who beat him savagely in front of Israeli TV cameras and hundreds of onlookers, with police nowhere in sight. Earlier, the same mob rampaged through the town of Bat Yam smashing any stores that looked like they were owned by Palestinian citizens.
Despite Netanyahu and Rivlin’s claims, it is Palestinian communities inside Israel that have been in far more danger of pogroms than the Jewish majority.
In the balance of power, the state’s security forces are tribally Jewish, the government and policy-makers are all Jews, a large proportion of the Jewish citizenry own weapons, and the media speaks for its Jewish population, not its 1.8 million Palestinians.
In a sign of the growing dangers, the Israeli media reported this week that applications for gun licenses – usually available only to Jewish citizens – had risen seven-fold.
Ohana, the police minister, has suggested Jewish citizens act as a “force multiplier” for the police – that is, they should be allowed to take the law into their own hands. And footage has shown police and armed far-right Jewish gangs cooperating in attacks on Palestinian communities in the mixed cities, even as those cities were supposed to be under curfew.
‘Reload the gun magazine’
Like Netanyahu, leading Israeli media figures have been openly inciting vigilante-style violence against Israel’s Palestinian minority.
In one example, a senior TV anchor, Dov Gil-Har, equated the protests by Palestinian citizens against state-sponsored discrimination with historic pogroms against Jews. Earlier, he had suggested to his Jewish viewers – 80 per cent of the country’s population – that the solution to the protests was to “reload the gun magazines”. When challenged by a Palestinian interviewee, he added that he might use his own weapon on the protesters.
The constant message to the Jewish majority has been the Palestinian public are a menace and that it may be necessary for Jews to take the law into their own hands.
And this has been happening just after the violent far-right – Jewish fascists – made unprecedented ground in March’s election, securing six seats in the 120-member parliament and possibly a place in government if Netanyahu can engineer a coalition.
Liberal incitement
But worrying as the direct incitement by Israeli politicians and the media against the Palestinian minority is, it is being strongly reinforced by a much more subtle “othering” by Israeli Jewish liberals. They have masked their own incitement in the more refined language of archeological preservation, Jewish-Arab coexistence, and religious tolerance.
In official Israeli discourse, the “mixed cities” – with Haifa the showroom – have long been presented as rare places where Jewish and Palestinian citizens live in close proximity, offering a potential model for greater understanding and cooperation between the two populations.
The flip side is less often highlighted: the “mixed cities” are just about the only communities where Jewish and Palestinian citizens have some sort of daily interaction.
In the rest of the country, Israel has imposed strict residential segregation. Palestinian citizens are confined to some 120 overcrowded, communities where they are starved of land, planning permits, industrial areas and classrooms for their children.
Herded together
But even in the “mixed cities”, there is no real mixing.
Before Israel’s creation on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948, cities like Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Lod (Lydd), and Ramle were some of the most important in Palestine.
Israel’s leaders made it a priority to drive almost all of the Palestinian residents out of these cities during the Nakba and into exile, as part of a policy of making sure there was no educated, urban elite to organise political or diplomatic resistance to its ethnic cleansing campaign.
Today, most of the Palestinians in the “mixed cities” are descended not from the original families living there but from refugees who got trapped in them as they were trying to flee to safety in 1948. The Israeli army often herded the refugees together into the poorest areas of these historic Palestinian cities – neighborhoods Jews did not want to inhabit – while Israel decided what to do with them.
The descendants of the refugees still live in these deprived neighborhoods, typically renting from Amidar, an Israeli state-run property company. For decades, Amidar has denied them permission to renovate or improve their homes. It is usually only too ready to evict them if a state agency or Jewish investors decide these Palestinian families are in the way of a “Judaization” project.
Which is the necessary background for understanding the way the Israeli media, including a respected liberal newspaper like Haaretz, has been engaging in its own covert incitement when covering the latest events in the “mixed cities”.
Much attention has been given to the torching by Palestinian protesters of synagogues and yeshivas, or Jewish seminaries. The sight of Torah scrolls being evacuated from charred buildings has encouraged the Jewish public to conclude that these attacks were driven by antisemitism – a variation of the fear that Palestinians want to push the Jews into the sea.
Preposterously, Lod’s mayor compared these scenes to Kristallnacht – the notorious night of Nazi pogroms against German Jews in 1938 – as if Israel’s Jewish majority were not protected by one of the strongest armies in the world.
But there are practical, far more mundane reasons why synagogues and yeshivas were among the first buildings attacked in Lod.
Settler outposts in Israel
Over the past three decades, Israel’s main effort to “Judaize” the “mixed cities” has been waged through a religious war of attrition. A section of the settler population has been encouraged to “redirect” their attention from the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel. They have slowly encroached into the “mixed cities” as local municipalities and state agencies have lured them with special funding for their extremist seminaries and synagogues.
Homes and land are being taken over in Palestinian neighborhoods to house these new fanatical outposts of the main West Bank settlements inside Israel.
That has had very damaging consequences. The religious extremists have tried to whip up more nationalist sentiments among the local Jewish population of the mixed cities, increasing tensions with Palestinian neighbors. Just as is happening in East Jerusalem’s Old City, these Jewish religious fanatics are seeking to drive Palestinian families out of their own communities.
For years there has been especial anger in Jaffa about the takeover by Jewish religious extremists of the Palestinian parts of the city. That culminated weeks before the current clashes with an attack by two brothers on the head of a yeshivathere.
Even the Israeli court that examined the indictment against the brothers ultimately rejected police claims that the attack was antisemitic. Like many other families, the brothers have been fighting eviction from their home by a government agency. The attack reflected their anger that religious extremists are seeking out, and being offered, new properties in their neighborhood.
Following the incident, Palestinian families held a demonstration chanting: “Jaffa for Jaffans, settlers out.”
The huge resentment among Palestinians in the “mixed cities” towards these new religious occupiers can be explained by the urgent desire for self-preservation, not antisemitism.
‘Barbarians at the gate’
Similarly, the Israeli media have been aghast at the attacks on important archeological sites in places like Acre and Lod. The media’s barely veiled thesis is that these attacks have revealed Palestinian citizens to be, as Israeli Jews long suspected, barbarians at the gate. The impression has been cultivated that the minority’s behavior is little different from the Taliban blowing up the Buddhist Bamiyan statues.
Last week the Israel Antiquities Authority’s chief scientist, Gideon Avni, told Haaretz : “In Acre, an entire life’s work, meant to capture world attention through its archaeological value, went down the drain. In Lod, they [Palestinian residents] tried to destroy the attempt to empower and lift up the city as a center of antiquities.”
But again, there are good practical reasons why Palestinian residents of the “mixed cities”, especially in Lod and Acre, would be targeting archeological sites.
The Palestinian cities now defined as “mixed” are mostly located next to or over Roman, Crusader and Mumlak ruins.
Israel destroyed the Palestinian character of these communities from 1948 onward by expelling most of the Palestinian population, and then gradually Judaized their [environs] as public spaces. Archeology, like religion, has been weaponized against the Palestinian inhabitants of the “mixed cities” to assist in their erasure.
Archeology theme parks
Israel’s politicization of archeology has focused on layers of history unrelated to, and meant to overshadow, its recent Arab Palestinian past. Further, archeological preservation and related tourism ventures have become the pretext for yet again ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their historic cities.
The clearest example has occurred in occupied East Jerusalem, where the Israel Antiquities Authority has allied with a settler organization, Elad. Together, using highly dubious archeological evidence, they have been creating a Disney-style “Kingdom of David” theme park within and below a Palestinian neighborhood called Silwan.
The City of David site has been expanding for more than three decades, aided by the government and Jerusalem municipality. Dozens of armed Jewish settler families have moved into the neighborhood in violation of international law.
In the latest development, Israel is preparing to evict many dozens of Palestinians in the coming weeks as it expands the City of David.
It was these moves that in part fueled the tensions that sparked the current Palestinian protests inside Israel and the rocket fire from Gaza.
Lod mosaic attacked
Watching Silwan’s long-running oppression through archeology, Palestinians in the “mixed cities” have seen a strong echo of their own experiences. The main difference is that the archeological assault inside Israel focuses not only on Jewish history but embraces any historical period that distracts from Palestinian heritage.
Israel has misleadingly sold these archeological projects as “tourism development” and “urban renewal”, often claiming they are designed to improve “Jewish-Arab relations”.
One of the targets of the current protests was a soon-to-be-opened museum for the Lod Mosaic, a world-renowned, almost complete Roman mosaic found in 1996. It had been traveling the world until belated funding meant it could be housed in a poor Palestinian-majority neighborhood next to the old city where it was unearthed.
Although the mosaic was unharmed in last week’s attack, the new building’s glass frontage was smashed.
The residents’ resentment towards the new Lod Museum needs to be understood in two contexts: decades of obscuring the Palestinian heritage of Lod, as well as the visibility of its current Palestinian population; and the investment by Israeli authorities in projects to bring tourists to Lod, even as they continue to neglect local Palestinian residents, who suffer from high levels of poverty.
Lod’s old city was mostly destroyed in the 1950s to erase its Palestinian character. The streets, even in Palestinian neighborhoods, have been given Hebrew names.
Lod municipality recently unveiled plans to renovate another historic site, a Mamluk khan that was used as the city’s main market until 1948. Over the heads of the local population, it is due to be turned into a Judaized cultural space, housing cafes and arts and crafts shops.
And as with Silwan, Lod is developing local tour programs – sometimes in coordination with incoming settler populations – that highlight an ancient Jewish heritage and ignore the city’s Palestinian past and present.
Or as a report from Emek Shaveh, an Israeli organization of dissident archeologists, recently concluded: “The city of Lod thus erases once again the city’s glorious heritage and views its Arab residents as a nuisance.”
Families face eviction
In Acre, archeology has become an even more overt weapon to be used against the local Palestinian population. Since 1948, they have been largely confined to the seafront old city, where they were long ignored and mired in poverty.
But while the United Nations’ decision to designate the old city a World Heritage Site 20 years ago came to the rescue of the ancient buildings there, it did little to help the local inhabitants. In fact, their situation has become even more precarious as Israel, Jewish investors and foreign countries have poured money into the old city’s “development”.
Overseeing these projects are the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Acre Development Corporation, neither of which have consulted with the local or national Palestinian leaderships in Israel.
Gideon Avni, of the Antiquities Authority, told the Haaretz newspaper: “These symbols [in Acre] are being destroyed in front of our eyes.” Another unnamed expert echoed him: “Gangs of looters have systematically destroyed property after property.”
One of the main targets in Acre was the Antiquities Authority’s conservation center, supported by the Italian government.
The old city of Acre was built in the 18th century by a Palestinian ruler, Daher el-Omar, atop the ruins of an earlier Crusader city. But the Israeli authorities have been sidelining this important Palestinian layer – just as it has excluded the local Palestinian population – to encourage tourists to head into the underground, Crusader Acre.
Even when Palestinian heritage is being preserved in Acre, it has been repackaged as “Ottoman” – presented to Israeli Jews and tourists as a legacy of Turkish colonial influence rather than as the cultural and architectural artifacts of local Palestinians who lived under Ottoman rule.
One of the most visible Palestinian buildings is the well-preserved Khan al-Umdan, once the city’s main market, located in the harbor.
It has been sealed off for years as the Development Corporation has been finding investors to turn it into a luxury hotel. Palestinian families living in the warrens of alleys around the khan are facing eviction so as not to detract from the new ambience the Israeli authorities hope to create for tourists.
Disneyfication of Acre
Aiding this process have been wealthy Jewish investors, such as Uri Jeremias. They have been the driving force behind the gentrification of Acre’s old city above ground to take advantage of the new tourism. Jeremias’s small empire started with a fish restaurant on the seafront and has expanded to include a popular ice cream parlor and an ambitious hotel called the Efendi.
As the name suggests, the Efendi has contributed to the Disneyfication of Acre, remaking some of the old city’s most impressive Palestinian buildings into a hotel where tourists can experience generic “Ottoman” splendor, shielded from the poverty outside and from any trace of meaningful Palestinian heritage.
It is not surprising that Jeremias’s properties were also attacked, as was another hotel, the Arabesque.
In a fawning portrait in the Haaretz newspaper, Evan Fallenberg, owner of the Arabesque, was able to present his hotel as simply a site of cultural and economic renewal, and a symbol of “Jewish-Arab coexistence”. He called it “a labor of love shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike”.
Referring to his assumptions about Acre as a “model of successful coexistence”, Fallenberg added: “What gave me hope over the past few years is that this was some kind of microcosm of what could happen in this country, and it’s in danger of being lost now.”
Illusion of coexistence
But that coexistence model in the “mixed cities” was always an illusion, one that the protests finally served to smash. Coexistence worked for one ethnic group only, Jews. It was built on the continuing Judaization of these historic Palestinian communities to erase their Palestinian heritage and drive out their Palestinian populations.
Tourism and archeological preservation were simply more convenient, image-conscious ways to go about Judaization in the 21st century. They attracted less attention and international opposition than Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations and wholesale community demolitions of the previous century.
By stripping out this context – of Israel’s ongoing Judaization of Palestinian communities inside Israel – Israeli liberals have only deepened the incitement against Palestinian citizens. They have confirmed the picture presented by the right, whether it be President Rivlin’s “bloodthirsty mob”, Netanyahu’s “terrorists”, or the mayor of Lod’s “Kristallnacht”.
In doing so, Israeli liberals have offered their own form of legitimacy to the rationalizations by Jewish far-right gangs for their violence against Palestinian citizens: that they are protecting Jews and Jewish honor, that they are averting pogroms.
In defense of a non-existent coexistence, Israeli liberals have thrown their hand in with the far-right, exposing the Palestinian minority to the very real threat of Jewish pogroms.
The author lives in Nazareth, Israel.
Biden Regime Support for Palestinian Unity and Conflict Resolution with Israel?
By Stephen Lendman | May 27, 2021
Since Hamas won the last democratically held Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, the US and Israel pursued a divide and control strategy.
In January 2005, Israel installed Mahmoud Abbas as puppet Palestinian Authority (PA) president.
A figure with no legitimacy, he serves Israeli/Western interests and his own at the expense of millions of Palestinians he long ago betrayed for special benefits afforded him.
Despite his term of office expiring in 2009, he remains in office, refusing to hold new elections for one invented reason after another, none legitimate.
Throughout at least most of his illegitimate tenure, he’s been hostile toward Hamas and indifferent toward millions of Palestinians he doesn’t give a damn about and it shows.
He’s a quisling leader hostile to what democratic rule is all about.
A former aide once called him the “sultan of Ramallah” — thin-skinned and vengeful, tolerating no opposition, remaining in power as long as Israel considers him useful.
In 1993, he was part of the Oslo team that negotiated unilateral Palestinian surrender to Israeli interests, his signature on the capitulation.
In office over 16 years, he did nothing to interfere with Israeli theft of Palestinian land — nothing to contest their dispossession, nothing to support their rights beyond meaningless lip service.
Collaborating with the enemy is treason — the highest of high political crimes.
Abbas has been guilty at least since abandoning Palestinian liberation efforts in September 1993.
In service to Israeli interests, he prevented Palestinian unity by supporting Israeli opposition to what’s important in pursuing their liberating struggle.
On Monday, Haaretz dubiously reported that “a new US approach to Hamas could be in the making (sic).”
It cited a 2018 report by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in cahoots with the Brookings Institution. See below.
According to former Congressman Ron Paul, CNAS is the “neocon wing of the” undemocratic Dem party, adding:
It “argu(es) against US troops ever leaving Iraq and has endorsed the…doctrine of preventative warfare” — aka naked aggression against invented enemies.
“The Center is perhaps best known for pushing the failed counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
It supports US global dominance by brute force — no matter the cost — if less extreme methods don’t work.
The CNAS/Brookings report expressed support for “pursu(ing) the political and physical reintegration of Gaza and the West Bank, in a manner that promotes a two-state solution and avoids the permanent separation of the two territories,” adding:
It also called for “stabiliz(ation) (of) Gaza, address(ing) the dire humanitarian and economic conditions, and prevent(ing), or if necessary shorten(ing), any future conflicts between Hamas and Israel.”
CNAS and Brookings one-sidedly support all things Israel, what’s always been at the expense of long-suffering Palestinians.
CNAS supported Hillary’s presidential ambitions because of her rage for military solutions in pursuit of Washington’s hegemonic aims
In October 1997, the Clinton co-presidency falsely designated Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as foreign terrorist organizations in deference to Israeli interests.
Hamas is historic Palestine’s legitimate government.
In 2018 legislative elections, Hezbollah candidates and allies won a 67-seat majority.
They’re not terrorist organizations, not earlier or now.
It’s inconceivable that Israel would go along with supporting or at least permitting Palestinian unity to include an end to its Gaza blockade — in place since 2007.
Given US/Israeli rage for endless wars and instability to advance their hegemonic agendas, it’s also inconceivable that they’d go another way on what relates to over half a century of Occupied Palestine.
The Jewish state has longstanding rock-solid bipartisan support in Washington that’s highly unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
The CNAS report also expressed concerns about Palestinian unity. Contradicting what it appeared to endorse, it said:
Unity “could partially legitimize Hamas or, worse, give it an opening to gain power in, or even seize control of, the West Bank.”
“Reintegration could also lead to a model like that of Lebanese Hezbollah, in which Hamas remains a heavily armed militia, free from the burdens of civilian governance but wielding veto power in government.”
Hamas and Hezbollah maintain military wings for self-defense, their UN Charter right — what the CNAS report left unexplained.
Both Israel and the US have always opposed a legitimate peace process and Palestinian self-determination — while pretending otherwise.
It’s why over half a century of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations on these issues always failed.
With dominant hardline US/Israeli regimes in power, a sea-change from longstanding support by both nations for divide, control, and perpetual war by hot and/or other means to endorsing Palestinian unity, self-determination and conflict resolution sounds more like Hollywood fiction than reality.
A Final Comment
During 11 days of Israeli terror-bombing and shelling of Gazan residential areas — causing large-scale mass slaughter and destruction — the Biden regime blocked four Security Council statements that expressed mild criticism of Israel.
One-sided US support for the Jewish state and indifference toward Palestinian rights reflect longstanding bipartisan policy in Washington.
It remains unchanged.
Palestine: Hamas Defeats Israel
Just like in 2006, when both Ehud Olmert and George Bush declared that the “invincible IDF” had, yet again, achieved a “glorious victory” and the entire Middle-East almost died laughing hearing this ridiculous claim, today both the US and Israeli propaganda machine have declared another “glorious” victory for the “Jewish state of Israel” cum “sole democracy in the Middle-East”. And, just like in 2006, everybody in the region (and in Zone B) knows that the truth is that the Zionist entity suffered a huge, humiliated, defeat. Let’s try to unpack this.
First, a few numbers. The combat operations lasted two weeks. All other missile numbers are in dispute. Rather than trust this or that source, I will simply say that Hamas fired many thousands of missiles into Israel. Some, probably less than 50%, were truly intercepted by the Israeli air defenses, others hit in no man’s land, and some actually landed and caused plenty of destruction and at least 12 deaths. The Israelis executed hundreds of artillery and airstrikes causing massive destruction in the Gaza strip and killing about 250 Palestinians. Again, these numbers are guesstimates and they don’t really tell the full story. To understand the story, we need to forget about these numbers and look at what each side was hoping for and what each side achieved. Let’s begin with the Israelis:
The Israeli scorecard
To understand Israel’s goals in this war, we first need to place this latest war in its context, and that context is that Israel was comprehensively defeated in Syria. To substantiate this thesis, let’s remember the goals of the Zionists when they unleashed a major international war against Syria. These objectives, as listed in my July 2019 article “Debunking the Rumors About Russia Caving in to Israel” were:
The initial AngloZionist plan was to overthrow Assad and replace him with the Takfiri crazies (Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS – call them whatever you want). Doing this would achieve the following goals:
- Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces, and security services.
- Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan but further north.
- Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
- Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone,” but this time in Lebanon.
- Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
- Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
- Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
- Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
- Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional coalition of forces.
- Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.
As we all know, this is what actually happened:
- The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally “plugging holes” in the Syrian frontlines and “extinguishing fires” on local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria).
- Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
- Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge)
- Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced refugees are returning home.
- Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.
Seeing their defeat in Syria, the Zionists did what they always do: they used their propaganda machine to list an apparently never-ending victorious strikes on supposed “Iranian targets” in Syria. While a few civilian simpletons with zero military experience did buy into this nonsense, the truth about Israeli operations in Syria is simple: the Syrian air defenses have successfully prevented the Israelis from striking at important, sensitive, targets, and the Israelis have been forced to declare as major victories the destruction of empty barns as “destruction of important IRGC headquarters” thereby “proving” to a few naive folks in Zone A and to themselves (!) that the IDF is still as “invincible” as it “always was”. As for the Neocons, they doubled-up on that and declared that 1) Russian air defenses are useless 2) that Russia and Israel work hand in hand and 3) that the Israelis are still invincible. Yet if any of that was true, why has Israel failed to achieve a single one of its goals? And why are both the Russians and the Iranians still in Syria where the Russians just finished a 2nd runway at Khmeimim and they have just deployed a group of Tu-22M3 at that air base from where they can now threaten any ship sailing in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. In their otherwise “free time” they can drop tons of bombs and missiles on the remaining Takfiri forces in Syria.
As I have been saying for many years now, the truth is that the IDF is a poor fighting force. Why? First, they have the exact same problem as the USA (and the KSA, for that matter): they rely on expensive technology, but don’t have good combat-capable “boots on the ground”. That is now how modern wars are won (see here for a list of popular misconceptions about modern wars).
In its recent history, the entire gamut of Israeli “elite” forces (including the air force, the navy, the artillery and even the Golani Brigade) got its collective butt handed to them by about 1000 and only lightly armed regular Hezbollah fighters in 2006: keep in mind that the elite Hezbollah forces were deployed only north of the Litani river to protect Beirut against a possible land invasion by Israel. Instead of taking Beirut or “disarming Hezbollah” (that was an official goal!), the Israelis could not even control the small town of Bint Jbeil located right across the official Israeli border! So much for being “invincible”!
What the IDF is very experienced at is terrorising Palestinian civilians and executing what could be called a slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people. The problem with Gaza now is the same that the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 has revealed: just like the Lebanese in 2006, the Palestinians of 2021 are not afraid of the Zionists anymore. Furthermore, with a great deal of help from Iran and others, Hamas in Gaza is now much, much better armed than in the past. True, some of its missiles are decidedly low tech and not very effective (low accuracy, small warheads, simple trajectory, limited range), but Hamas also has shown some pretty decent UAVs too. Most importantly, from now on for Hamas it is only one way: up the “quality ladder” (just like the Houthis did in Yemen, starting with modest drones but eventually getting very capable ones).
The other major goal of the Israelis in this war was to prove to the world (and, even more importantly for the always narcissistic self-worshipping Israeli cowards, to themselves!) that their “Iron Dome” air defense network was the “super-dooper most bestest” in the world (no doubt, due to the famed “Jewish genius”!). It now appears that at best, the Israelis intercepted somewhere around 30-40% of the Hamas missiles. The way the Israeli hid this is by claiming that their fancy shmancy Iron Drone did not even try to engage missiles which were not deemed dangerous. But in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, that kind of silly nonsense can easily be debunked (including by showing the total chaos in the Israeli skies or, for that matter, the missile strikes on Israeli military objectives). While the full Iron Dome air defense system probably works marginally better than the quasi-useless US Patriot, the Israeli air defenses are clearly at least a generation behind the Russian ones, including the S-300s the Russians sold to Syria (again, in the age of of the ubiquitous smartphone, this is not hard to prove).
It is crucial to remember that Hamas’ missiles are much inferior to those of the Houthis and the Syrians, and even more inferior when compared to Hezbollah or Iranian drones and missiles! In other words, the “invincible” IDF can’t deal with even its weakest, least sophisticated enemies (Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the grotesquely expensive Iron Done cannot protect the Zionists from any determined missile attacks by the Resistance coalition (Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia).
In their utter despair, the Zionist entity did what the AngloZionists always do when they fail to defeat a military force: they will turn their wrath on the civilian infrastructure and murder as many as they can. They will also strike highly symbolic targets such as the International Press Center in Gaza or a Red Crescent hospital (under the pretext that Hamas, which is the democratically elected local government) has offices there (this is clearly a F-you to those who condemn Israel for violating international law). To a normal human being, this sounds both obscene and ridiculous. But remember, the Israelis are first and foremost narcissists and they have no means of imagining how normal human beings think or feel. All these guys can feel is self-worship and hatred for all “others”.
We could say that in this war, the Palestinians defeated both military high tech and truly medieval type of genocidal hatred.
In other words, far from showing how “invincible” the Zionist entity is, this latest war against the Palestinians has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the IDF cannot deal with any of its enemies.
Besides missiles and bombs, the Israelis love to use terror, as their ideology has convinced them of two things: the Arabs only understand force and we, the Israelis, are invincible. But this begs the question of why the Israelis did not dare to move into Gaza, not even symbolically. Yeah, I know, the official doxa of Zone A is that “Biden called Netanyahu and told him to stop”. As if “Biden” could give orders to the Israelis!
The truth is that even with a casualty rate of 10:1 in the IDF’s advantage and no armor or artillery, the Palestinians are much more willing to engage in street battles than the IDF. Would the IDF eventually win a ground battle against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Maybe, probably, the objective advantages in everything (except courage!) for the Israelis is so huge that no amount of skills and courage can forever negate the immense superiority in means of the Israelis.
However, as most people in the West tend to forget, wars are but means towards a political goal. If the IDF decided to basically flatten Gaza and kill many thousands of Palestinians at the cost of casualties probably in the hundereds, then this would be politically suicidal for the Zionist regime. This is why I offer this very basic conclusion:
During the latest Gaza war, deterrence did work. But only in the sense that the Palestinians successfully deterred the Israelis from launching a ground attack against Gaza.
There is another crucial political development which should also be noted: while both Iran and Hezbollah did give their full political support to Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the latter did not request any assistance. In other words, not only did the Palestinians defeat the Israelis, but they did so absolutely alone, with no help from the other Resistance members.
Again, those Zone A civilians who believe that Israel is scoring huge victories in Syria on a quasi daily basis won’t get it, which is par for the course. But you can be darn sure that at least most of the IDF top commanders know the true score and for them it is yet another huge disaster.
There is also a political factor to consider. While there have been coordination resistance actions by the Palestinians in Israel (proper, as defined by the UN), this is the first time when the Palestinians from Gaza, those from the Occupied Territories and those in “Israel” truly fought, if not side by side (yet!), then at least at the same time and in a common cause. This is a major political victory for Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a major problem for Fatah and the Zionists. Now let’s look at the rest of the Palestinian scorecard:
The Palestinian scorecard:
Let’s start by the obvious one: the Palestinians were not defeated. This victory can be further subdivided in the following:
- The Palestinian leadership has mostly physically survived, it still exists as a local authority. Plenty of Palestinians were murdered, but that did not affect the operational capabilities of the Palestinian forces (any more than the IDF succeeded in affecting Iranian operational capabilities in Syria).
- The Palestinian leadership has also survived politically. It was not blamed by the “Palestinian street” for starting the war, nor was it blamed for how it executed it. As for Fatah, it is now, by all accounts, lost somewhere in a political no man’s land which, admittedly, it richly deserves for its incompetence, corruption and subservience to Israel and the USA.
- Militarily speaking, the Palestinian missile strikes were not nearly as effective as, say, Hezbollah (nevermind Iranian!) strikes would have been, but, hey, they made huge progress and we can all rest assured that the Palestinians of Gaza will, sooner or later, catch up with the Houthis and, further down the road, maybe even Hezbollah.
- By many accounts, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made major political inroads into the Palestinian political scene outside Gaza. Even in spite of a truly immense hasbara effort by the Israelis, the international public opinion was blaming Israel for the orgy of violence.
It is interesting to note here that the famous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has written an article for Ha’aretz entitled “Israeli Propaganda Isn’t Fooling Anyone – Except Israelis” which was further subtitled “’Hasbara’ is the Israeli euphemism for propaganda, and there are some things, said the late ambassador Yohanan Meroz, that are not ‘hasbarable.’ One of them is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.” This is how Levy’s article began:
And propaganda shall cover for everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite the Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that “there’s no one to talk to.” We’ll wail that the whole world is against us and wants to destroy us, no less.
Now comes the best part: Levy wrote this on Jun. 4, 2015 and updated it on Apr. 10, 2018 – years before the current disaster! Since then, things have only gone south for the IDF and the Israelis in general. Just the blowback from the war in Syria is, for the IDF, a true disaster.
Of course, “Israel” is still worshipped and faithfully served by many ruling classes worldwide (that is one of the functions of the Empire, to enforce this), but that officially lauded Israel is viewed with disgust and revulsion on most of the planet. Hence the inevitable failure of the truly galactic PR effort to brainwash the regular people into believing that Israeli is a polyyanish country, a “place without people for a people without country”, etc. etc. etc. This “Ziolatry”, if you wish, was effective when the PLO was blowing up Jewish grade schools in Western Europe, but today it has lost almost all of its traction, especially amongst thinking people.
The sad and disgusting reality about the Zionist entity is truly coming out, seeping under the propaganda walls of the Empire, and slowly but inevitably resulting in a common reaction of outrage and utter disgust for what is nothing else but the last officially racist country on the planet, the only country with an open air concentration camp it surrounds on all sides, the only country which truly, openly and sincerely does not give a damn about international law or about the lives of non-Jews (while calling their own lives sacred, of course!). This is a state which constantly repeats the mantra about the supposedly “sacred” blood of Jews while, at the same time, committing a slow motion (but very real) genocide of the Palestinian people while using non-stop terrorist attacks against any country daring to defy the order of the latest, and hopefully last, wannabe “superior race” in human history. This is also why the “crime of crimes” for politically correct and successfully brainwashed people is to declare that Israel has no right to exist. This is such a major crimethink that I want to conclude by committing it right now and asking others to join me in this “crimethink”!
Israel has no right to exist whatsoever first and foremost because it is an artificial creation of West European imperialist powers. Second, it is a country which has always engaged in atrocities and massive violations of international laws and norms. Instead, Israel is based on a racist ideology which is, for all practical purpose, indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazi ideology (both National Socialism and Zionism have the same roots in both time, space and culture, both being products of European secularism and nationalism). For these reasons, Israel, and the Zionist ideology which supports it, are both a clear and present danger for international peace and stability (for details on Zionism as an ideology and its toxicity, please see here). Furthermore, the only possible way for the Palestinian people to ever recover their land and their rights under international law is that the Zionist “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (to quote the often mistranslated sentence by Ayatollah Komenei). By the way, this awareness also presupposes a clear understanding that the so-called “Two State Solution” (2SS) is an impossibility. Yes, I know, the 2SS is currently the only one under international law, but that is hardly surprising since the state of Israel was created with not only many of the trappings of “being an internationally recognized state” but also with the shameful complicity of the country which won WWII. There is one thing which Israel has in common with the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”: they will be the very first to be liberated as soon as the AngloZionist Empire finally crashes visibly (of course, it has already crashed, hence the many disastrous outcomes for the USA and Israel on the international scene, but that is still denied officially in Zone A and, of course, by the AngloZionist propaganda and those who pay attention to it.
In truth, there is only one true “solution” to this war: the so-called “One State Solution”, meaning that those who live in this land will get to choose their leaders and lifestyles according to the old “one person, one vote” principle. All other “solutions” simply perpetuate the current genocide!
As for those Jews who still want an ethnically pure state of Israel, they can either grow up and get real, or they can choose to colonize some other planet. As long as they don’t persecute local lifeforms, that might work. But if they do this will all happen again, over and over.
Conclusion: “Gaza” and the future of the Zionist entity
I want to end here with what I believe is a glance at the future (or lack thereof!) of Israel. The website Islamic World News Analysis Group (which I highly recommend!) recently posted what it claims to be a video of a new Iranian combat drone named “Gaza” described as so: “The Gaza drone, capable of carrying 13 bombs and 500 kilograms of equipment, as well as 35 hours of flight up to a radius of 2,000 kilometers, is capable of carrying out a variety of combat and intelligence operations. According to the published images, it seems that the Gaza drone uses the Rotary Bomb Launcher mechanism under its fuselage, which can carry up to 5 bombs. This is the first Iranian drone to use this mechanism. 8 bombs are also installed under the wings and in total this drone is capable of carrying 13 bombs”. Here is the footage of this new drone. Take a look for yourself and imagine what the next round of this campaign to liberate Palestine might look like.
Israel carries out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, robs them of their homes, yet pretends it’s the victim
By Richard Medhurst | RT | May 25, 2021
The Israelis are seeking to reframe their occupation of Palestine as something else, in order to hide their inhumane oppression. What’s happening in Gaza is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, but a brutal military colonization.
Israel launched its latest offensive against the Gaza strip on May 10, bombing the Palestinian enclave by land and air. For several weeks prior, tensions had swelled in occupied Palestine, as Israeli forces cracked down on Palestinian protesters. At the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, protests began against restrictions that Israel imposed on gatherings during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Palestinians also marched against Israel’s plans to evict families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the protests became intertwined.
While Israeli mobs marched through the streets unimpeded, damaging Palestinian-owned stores and chanting “Death to Arabs,” Palestinians were met with a brutal backlash from Israeli police, culminating in Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and rubber coated bullets at people as they prayed, injuring more than 90.
Israel’s desecration of the third holiest site in Islam drew international condemnation and Hamas, which runs Gaza, demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the mosque. This was ignored, so Hamas responded with rockets. Israel then began its offensive, which continued for eleven days. Thousands of reservists were also called up, prompting fears of a ground invasion.
Israel’s Dahiya doctrine: ‘punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population’
Like previous wars against Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Israel purposely targeted public and health infrastructure – a hallmark of its military strategy, and a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
Israel put a desalination plant out of action which provided water to hundreds of thousands. Electricity lines were cut leaving barely five hours of power a day. Water mains were damaged so that sewage overflowed onto streets. The main road leading to al-Shifa hospital, the enclave’s biggest, was bombed, and other clinics were damaged. The only laboratory able to do Covid-19 tests was rendered inoperable.
Health workers and residents described horrific scenes of loved ones and neighbors buried alive under rubble, and of having to dig out dead bodies. By the end of the assault, 12 Israelis had died; while 242 Palestinians were killed, among them 23 girls and 43 boys. Around half were women and children.
Several Palestinian families were entirely wiped out. Dr Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of Gaza’s most renowned medical specialists, was killed in an airstrike on his home, alongside 12 members of his family.
The IDF’s twitter account proudly tweeted a graphic saying, “200+ terrorists neutralized.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, almost 2,000 Palestinians were wounded. It was reported that at least 2,000 housing units were destroyed and an additional 15,000 homes damaged.
Several residential buildings were completely leveled by airstrikes. On May 15, Israel bombed the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza. This was met by silence and feigned concern by Western liberal democracies, whose appreciation of a free press did not extend to Palestine that day.
Disproportionate force has always been a core pillar of Israel’s military, known as the Dahiya doctrine, which dates back to the 2006 war against Lebanon, and which was ruthlessly implemented against Gaza in 2009 and onwards.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with two million Palestinians living on a tiny strip of land under blockade from Egypt and Israel since 2007. Its residents live at the mercy of a military occupation that bombs them with impunity, shielded by Western nations who whitewash its crimes.
On several occasions at the United Nations Security Council, the Biden administration blocked the release of a statement calling for a ceasefire because the language condemned Israel – which Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz thanked the US for in a tweet.
The animosity between Benjamin Netanyahu, whose 12-year tenure as Israel’s prime minister had been at risk, and his political rivals vanished once the strikes began. The attack on Gaza and Hamas bought him a little more time in office.
Protests in support of Palestine erupted worldwide. In London, 100,000 people took to the streets in solidarity. Palestinians themselves held a general strike on May 18. Shops closed as people marched in record numbers against Israel’s crimes. Two people were killed and over 100 were wounded by Israeli occupation forces who fired water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets at them.
After 11 days of incessant air strikes from Israel and rocket fire from Hamas, a ceasefire was finally brokered by Egypt, entering into effect on May 21, 2am local time. Israel continued its bombings until the last minute. In the days after, Israeli police again entered the compound of Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and providing armed escorts to Jewish settlers who showed up in an act of provocation.
While the shelling may have stopped for now, the blockade and occupation have not. Gaza remains the world’s largest open-air prison, its residents unable to leave or rebuild, as generations continue to live in the ruins of one conflict after the other.
‘Israel’s right to defend itself’
A point often raised in Western political discourse is “Israel’s right to defend itself.” What of the Palestinian people? Do they not have a right to defend themselves? Are they expected to just tolerate apartheid, occupation and violence? How can a colonizer speak of defending themselves, when their very presence and occupation is an act of oppression? When one speaks of defense, then it is surely the unequivocal right of Palestinians to defend themselves, as millions of them remain stateless on their own land, dispossessed of their homes and human rights.
Israel claims to only target “terrorists” and “militants,” yet half the casualties, if not more, are always civilians. Decimating infrastructure and residential buildings is not defense. Leveling schools, hospitals, UN buildings and the offices of the international press is not defense. One of the most advanced militaries in the world unleashing its wrath on a civilian population without an army, let alone an air force or navy, is not defense. This is offense; it is cruel, barbaric aggression in its most violent form.
In a recent conversation I had with Palestinian Ambassador to Austria Salah Abdel-Shafi, he eloquently summarized how the Palestinian issue poses a fundamental problem for so-called Western liberal democracies who claim to champion human rights and equality, while giving Israel carte blanche as it denies Palestinians their human rights and levels their homes with no repercussion.
Israel is never held to account and sits above international and humanitarian law, annexing, colonizing and killing with impunity.
Its entire existence depends on ethnically cleansing Palestine and robbing Palestinians of their homes to make way for settlers from around the world. Israel wants to control the narrative around its actions, pretending that it is a victim and that this is all about Hamas.
This is naught but an attempt to reframe the occupation of Palestine and Israeli apartheid as something else in order to hide the oppression and inhumane behavior. What’s happening in Palestine is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, it is a brutal military occupation which seeks to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to make way for Jewish settlers. It’s colonization. The Palestinian cause is fundamentally rooted in human rights; in anti-imperialism and anti-racism. It is and always has been the story of resistance against colonizers.
Richard Medhurst is a British journalist born in Damascus. Owing to his coverage of international relations, US politics, the Middle East and Julian Assange extradition he has built a successful YouTube channel and hosts a program on Press TV.
Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 25, 2021
Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about “protecting” Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing “deep concern” and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out “anti-Semitic” comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out “anti-Semitism” in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.
In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.
That many American Jewish groups are collaborating directly with the Israeli Embassy raises two concerns. First, it is ipso facto a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which should require registration and complete transparency regarding one’s sources of income and interactions with the foreign embassy. And second, as many of the groups are in tax exempt status with the IRS as either charitable or educational foundations, that status should be rescinded given their foreign affiliation. Of course, the reality is that the Treasury Department has known all that and more for many years and has never taken any action relating to deceptive behavior by pro-Israel groups.
Elsewhere in Europe, “Holocaust denial” even if it only consists of challenging clearly fabricated “factual” details of the event can also land you in jail in Germany and France while criticizing the state of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism, a hate crime. Jewish groups have, in fact, promoted an official “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes any criticism of Israel as a defining characteristic. The United States Department of State has accepted that definition and language.
Yes, the United States has an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and it is always headed by a Jew, as has been also the office in the Justice Department that continues to be dedicated to rooting out 90 year old Nazis. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, most particularly in its Trump version, is so close to Israel that it might reasonably be regarded as part of the Israel Lobby. And the Democrats are not much better, though there has been some dissent from progressives, which has led to the creation of a Zionist pressure group within the party called the Democratic Majority for Israel. It exists to defend Israel against any and all criticism while also protecting the billions of dollars and other benefits that the Jewish state receives from the US Treasury and government annually.
One might speculate that there is a whole federal government infrastructure devoted to Jewish and Israeli issues. How did that develop? Well, of course, money is what has made it happen. American politicians have notoriously always been easily corruptible, all it takes is a little cash. But no one is allowed to point out that obvious truth as linking Jews to money is regarded, by Jews and their captive media of course, as some kind of “anti-Semitic trope.”
Now it appears that a ceasefire is more-or-less in place but Israel’s ethnic cleansing that preceded its high-tech slaughter of Palestinian civilians who were being deliberately targeted has been perceived by the world, including many Americans, as particularly brutal. Which means the Zionist propaganda plus coercion machine has been working full time. Capitol Hill offices and the White House have no doubt been inundated with calls, emails and visits from constituents, are now all singing the same song that was also being repeated by the President and Congress. It goes like this: “Israel is being attacked by Hamas terrorists and has a right to defend itself!” Sometimes there is a second verse which includes “The only democracy in the Middle East and America’s best friend and ally.”
Too bad that none of it is true, but the media also did its best to support the narrative by reporting how Hamas was launching “swarms” of rockets against Israel, making it appear as if a beleaguered Israel was valiantly defending itself against terrorist hordes. But the actual numbers told a different tale with only 12 Israelis killed after the violence erupted versus 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. Considerable infrastructure was also deliberately targeted and destroyed in Gaza versus limited damage in Israel while the calculated destruction of the building housing Associated Press (AP) and al-Jazeera should be seen as an attempt to eliminate any independent media observers on the ground in Gaza, even though AP predictably has hardly been critical of the Jewish state.
The Israel Lobby is, to be sure, expert at promoting and marketing its product. It is currently engaged in attacking celebrities and others who expressed any sympathy with the Palestinians while they were being slaughtered by the Israelis as anti-Semites. The larger and more openly combative Lobby groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) have supporters in virtually every congressional district in the United States who can be called upon to get on the phone and start pouring out emails as needed. So every congress critter hears the call and knows what it means. And no one wants to have a hostile Israel Lobby on one’s back if there is any thought of being re-elected. In some cases, approaches include suggestions that significant donations to support one’s political campaign will either increase or be denied depending on what the legislator chooses to do or say.
And then there are the personal visits on Capitol Hill from the Israel lobbyists. The door is always open for the man or woman from AIPAC. Sometimes the Congressman is actually urged to sign a statement on his or her view of the conflict, a document carefully prepared in advance by The Lobby, of course. And the work by the Israel Firsters is almost always effective. Witness for example what took place concerning the assault on Gaza, where Congress and the White House tried to outdo each other in declaring how much they love Israel even though they don’t necessarily have to say or do anything as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what he wanted anyway. Biden reportedly spoke with Netanyahu six times urging teethlessly “de-escalation” of the fighting but the Israeli each time insisted that he would continue the operation “mowing the grass” in Gaza until “its aim is met.”
The Israeli grip on the US government is and should be astonishing and one has to ask why the American people put up with it. They likely endure because they are unaware of the extent of it. If anyone still doubts the degree to which Jewish power is a major force in the United States it is only necessary as a test case to look at the Congressional and White House comments on Gaza, which served absolutely no American interest and which will only make the world even more anti-US due to the Administration’s enablement of the slaughter of the Palestinians. Washington’s UN Ambassador vetoed three Security Council resolutions calling for a cease fire, as is often the case, the only country to vote “no.”
Several aspects of the US role in the fighting particularly demonstrate the ability of Israel and its domestic lobby to get what they want from Washington even when it seems counterintuitive for the Administration and Congress to be falling in line. To be sure, 138 Congressmen and 29 Senators eventually signed onto letters urging a cease fire, but the texts tended to be generic, lacking any context, which means the recommendations were basically useless and not intended to go anywhere.
A highly partisan approach, in line with many of the comments by other government spokesmen, was reflected in a letter from Kevin McCarthy, the “leading Republican” (sic) in Congress, who released a statement confirming his allegiance to Israel. Part of it read:
“The ongoing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians show why America must act immediately to support Israel, condemn Hamas, and sanction those who fund terrorism. Instead of pressuring Israel to compromise with this terrorist group, Democrats should join Republicans in voting to cut off international funding for terrorists.
“That is why today, Rep. Brian Mast, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served alongside the Israel Defense Force (IDF), will push for a vote on the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021.
“This bipartisan bill, which passed the House last Congress, would sanction foreign governments and individuals who fund Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Iran.”
For starters, how exactly is it that a US Army combat veteran served alongside the Israeli Army? And now this great admirer of Israel is in Congress? Once upon a time one would lose US citizenship for serving in a foreign army. Mast must have missed something about swearing an oath to uphold the US Constitution, not Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs and war criminals. And why are McCarthy and Mast including Iran in their indictment? Possibly because Tehran support of the Palestinian cause would be a pretext for another war? And what are McCarthy and Mast doing pledging anything at all to a foreign country which at the time was engaged in genocide?
Bad enough, but what is really appalling is the role of Joe Biden “the peacemaker” in hurriedly pushing through approval to provide the Israelis with $735 million dollars-worth of precision guided missiles, exactly the kind of weapon being used by Israel currently to kill Gazans. One might reasonably ask “What was Joe thinking?” but that raises the second question of “Was he thinking at all, apart from exercising knee jerk loyalty to Israel and its psychotic leader?” He did not have to provide more weapons to the Jewish state, which apparently was not running out of weapons of its own, but he did it anyway.
The United States already pays one fifth of Israel’s so-called “defense” budget and this extra contribution, as well as the funds provided annually to pay for Iron Dome defense, is on top of that. If there was any question whether the US was enabling the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians the question was surely answered by the decision made by the president, who knowingly provided US made weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US Arms Control Export Act and the existing Arms Supply Agreement between the US and Israel. He also was providing advanced tactical weapons to a country which is in violation of the Leahy Law due to its uninspected nuclear arsenal and is therefore ineligible for US government military assistance of any kind.
To be sure, some in Congress introduced a resolution to stop the weapons “sale” (a euphemism as Israel never pays for anything). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have proposed blocking the presidential authorization based on its one-sidedness and unsuitability when fighting is actually going on, but it was a futile gesture as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will surely let the bill die in committee. It will never reach the House floor for a vote. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate which will likely suffer the same fate.
Tlaib has argued that “The US cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons. To read the statements [from the Biden Administration] you’d hardly know Palestinians existed at all. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will fall from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israel? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?”
So it is all same old, same old. Biden, who boasts that American ties to Israel are “unbreakable,” has welcomed the cease fire in Gaza but it is at best a pause in what has become generational intercommunal warfare based on Israeli intentions to eliminate the Palestinians. And Biden will even be seen as having provided the weapons to further that process. Americans, who have no compelling interest in being involved at all apart from their domination by a ruthless Israel Lobby on foreign policy issues relating to the Middle East, will pay the piper as they rearm the Israelis and enable the next round of killing. Some believe that the tide of public opinion is turning against Israel due to its brutality, but I have my doubts as the Lobby has been in control for so long and knows exactly which buttons to push to get what it wants. That, the subversion and corruption of American democracy, is the real tragedy.
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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Countering the American Way of War – Proof of Concept
By Patrick Armstrong | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 23, 2021
The American Way of War is founded on three assumptions. Ever since 1945 the USA has assumed that it would have air superiority: it knew that it would have to fight for it against the Soviets but assumed that it would be able to gain it, at least in the areas where needed (local air superiority). In Korea there was some resistance but the USAF was able to bomb pretty freely. Wikipedia informs us that it dropped more bombs on Korea than it did in the entire Pacific Theatre and about half as many as it did in the European Theatre in 1941-1945. North Korea was obliterated: “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.” Which, of course, is the principal reason why North Korea has nuclear weapons today.
Bombing became the American Way of War par excellence with ever greater tonnages dropped: Cambodia received about the same amount as Korea, Laos about three times as much, Vietnam about six times as much. And the bombing continues today throughout Washington’s forever wars. Officially it is precise, surgical, carefully selected: “The targets I’m assigned to destroy have been vetted through the most professional members of our armed services, and (I know) that others are taking their jobs as seriously as I am“. But U.S. Precision Bombing is a “Persistent Myth” and the reality is quite different:
Since World War II, the U.S. Air Force has loosened its definition of “accuracy” from 25 feet to 10 meters (39 feet), but that is still less than the blast radius of even its smallest 500 lb. bombs. [Here’s one.] So the impression that these weapons can be used to surgically “zap” a single house or small building in an urban area without inflicting casualties and deaths throughout the surrounding area is certainly contrived.
In the end, there is no difference from random carpet bombing: “precision strike” after “precision strike” after “precision strike” – even assuming the intelligence that guides the “precision” is accurate, which it isn’t – leaves nothing but rubble:
If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble. It’s been a painfully apt term since Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, to catch the essence of such war in this century, two new words might be useful — rubblize and rubblization.
Here are pictures from Raqqa in Syria. Amnesty International calculates that 30,000 artillery rounds were fired and the New Yorker estimates 10,000 bombs dropped; given an assumed population of 300,000 that’s one for every seven or eight people; “precision” or not, what would your neighbourhood look like after that?
Doing war from the air is pretty cost-free especially if your targets have weak air defence. The 1998 NATO operation in Kosovo had two accidental NATO deaths and two aircraft shot down. The 2011 NATO operation in Libya cost one soldier and two aircraft from accidents and one helicopter captured. It’s engagingly technical and allows much talk of precision. To say nothing of the opportunity to smugly accuse others of just tossing bombs around: “Putin’s modern Air Force choosing devastating dumb bombs over precision strikes“. (In this puff piece the authors do not understand that the Russians actually have figured out a cheap way to make “dumb” bombs “precise”. The process is explained here. Also note the familiar American boast “We’re able to do very precise weaponeering in order to strike and then also minimize civilian casualty”.)
The second assumption of the American Way of War is a prerequisite of the first – assured communications. The American way of precision bombing requires that the bomb or missile “talk” continually to its guide, whether that be a laser designator, a signal to the target and back or GPS satellites. This “talking” must be free, unrestricted and continuous – if it is stopped, the “smart” missile or bomb immediately becomes “stupid”. (Another advantage of the Russian way, incidentally, is that the “talking” is unnecessary once the bomb is dropped.)
U.S. warfighting doctrine depends on air power operating and communicating freely.
The countries on Washington’s target list are well aware of this and that is why they are continually improving their air defence and electronic warfare capabilities. Conversely, the reason why NATO members have feeble air defence and limited EW capability is that they’ve never thought they needed to have them. Years of beating up countries with trivial air defence and EW has left them complacent. (Even a wake-up call like the shooting down of the F-117 is soon sent down the Memory Hole.)
Great strategists have always known that victory is found in avoiding the enemy’s strength and attacking his weakness and that one should “fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks.” Russia, China and Iran cannot expect to win a naval battle in the South Pacific against the U.S. Navy: there will be no second Battles of Leyte Gulf, Midway or Coral Sea. That would be to attack U.S. strengths. Missiles to take out aircraft carriers are the answer: do not attack the enemy’s strength, fight him with the weapons he lacks. Neither would they attempt to invade and conquer the USA itself. Defence is what they want and these are the principles that guide them.
But there is a third assumption of the American Way of War and that is simply this:
the air raid sirens will sound somewhere else.
Everything that I have said above applies to Israel. Just like the USA, Israel has grown accustomed to using air power, “precision strikes” and all the rest of it. In 1973 it had a hard ground fight but since its 2006 repulse by Hezbollah in Lebanon it has relied ever more on air strikes. Like the U.S., it is confident that it has air superiority and secure communications. Being so much closer to its enemies, it is not as confident that the air raid sirens will always scream somewhere else, but confident that it can inflict, via its air power, unacceptable damage on its enemy, Israel proceeds. Hezbollah and Hamas would be fools to try – even if they could – to build an air force to fight Israel, neither can they expect to have air defence and electronic warfare assets to seriously challenge Israel’s air superiority. Because they cannot attack the two assumptions of air superiority and communications, they must therefore attack the third assumption of invulnerability. Not the enemy’s strength but his weakness.
The last big U.S. ground operations, the Iraq wars of 1990 and 2003, were preceded by months of unimpeded transportation of immense quantities of supplies across the Atlantic. Baghdad never interfered and the complacent supposition that the air raid sirens would sound only in the enemy’s skies was further strengthened. But, should NATO be so suicidal as to provoke Russia to war, this will not be the case: the Iskanders will come calling and there will be no uninterrupted buildup. NATO bases will not be safe sanctuaries and the convoys will have to fight their way through.
We see, today, the proof of concept. In May Gaza fired hundreds of simple, cheap rockets at Israel. The Israeli air defence system, Iron Dome, was reasonably effective but it will run out of missiles long before Gaza, to say nothing of Hezbollah, will. Iron Dome suffers from the weakness that it is far more expensive than the simple rockets Hamas is using. Debris rained down on Israeli cities, the odd rocket got through (probably more than we were told). The air raid sirens were continuous and Israelis were in bomb shelters. It’s true that Israel’s air force obliterated buildings in Gaza but that’s not the point: everyone knew they could do that, it’s the continuous rockets that are new. This went on for eleven days with no diminution of fire from Gaza. A piece in the NYT, not a noticeably Israel-hostile outlet, quotes an estimate of 30,000 rockets in Gaza; only about ten percent were fired. Hezbollah has at least four times as many. The myth of Israel’s invincibility has been broken: gravely diminished in 2006 on land, its skies are no longer safe. Fight the enemy’s weakness (its home morale – how many dual citizens are already packing their suitcases?) and use weapons it does not have.
A ceasefire was announced after eleven days; we’ll see if it holds: Israeli police have again stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque which was the trigger in the first place. The Jerusalem Post attempts a summing up; and a very pro-Israeli one it is: so many commanders, headquarters, launching sites claimed destroyed. Most important though is its recognition that Hamas “increased its volume and range” of rocket launches. And “Hamas took credit for redrawing the equation of power in the region in its battle with Israel, asserting that Israel is now in a state of decline”. A claim to be sure. But one with some reality. Hamas struck with greater numbers and deeper into Israel than ever before and there were also disturbances in the Arab population in Israel proper. Hamas is claiming a victory and it is not wrong to do so.
Air superiority, assured immediate communications and security of the home front. Gaza and Hezbollah present the poor man’s solution to the problem – lots of cheap rockets to challenge the assumption of a secure home front: Israel’s “illusion of normality” is gone.
Richer and more industrially-based entities can counter the first two assumptions and challenge the third with more sophisticated answers. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the complacency that other countries will be the amphitheatres for American wars is the Russian Poseidon; this weapon, a sort of giant autonomous underwater cruise missile, is designed to create a tsunami to wipe out U.S. ports and coastal areas. Iran, in its retaliatory attack on the U.S. base in Iraq last year, showed that U.S. forces were not safe in their bases. China and Russia are both creating weapons systems to attack the USA where it is weak using weapons it does not have. U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups, rather than projections of mighty power, are mere targets to hypersonic missiles. Russian EW capability has been described by at least one U.S. general as “eye-watering“, able to turn off U.S. systems; and one may be sure that the Russians are saving their best for later. (Can they blind an entire warship? Not at all! Disinformation! Nonsense! Information Warfare! A little too much protesting?) Russia and China can do this because they are not lost to fantasies of “power projection” or “full spectrum superiority“; they defend themselves with weapons the aggressor does not have that are directed at his weakness. Enough and not too much is their guide.
Gaza vs Israel represents the proof of the concept.
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Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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Aletho News- A Palantir Manifesto
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
- Palantir’s Technological Republic is a blueprint for digital tyranny
- Israeli-backed armed gang kidnaps 25 Palestinians in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighbourhood
- No war crimes in Gaza, says Nigel Farage’s Israel tsar
- IDF Gives Order To Fire On Civilians In Southern Lebanon
- Islamabad’s post-war push: A new Gulf security order takes shape
- IRGC seizes Israeli ship, second vessel for violations in Strait of Hormuz
- US Embargo on Iran Undermined as 34 Tankers Slip Through, Vortexa Says
- Trump’s erratic behavior signals US deadlock: Ansarullah
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- Eyes on Gaza, as trends reveal increased Israeli violence – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- Replay: Israel’s slow ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Holy Land
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- 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
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