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Army Demolishes Commercial Facility In Jerusalem

IMEMC | October 15, 2024

On Tuesday, Israeli forces demolished a commercial facility in the Wadi al-Jouz neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem, in the West Bank.

Media sources reported that many military vehicles and bulldozers invaded the neighborhood after isolating it.

They added that the soldiers demolished a commercial facility used for selling and filling medical oxygen, owned by the Badriyya family in the Industrial Zone of Wadi al-Jouz.

It is worth mentioning that the demolition is part of the plan to implement the so-called “Silicon Valley” colonial project on the ruins of Palestinian property and stolen lands.

The colonialist project poses a direct demolition threat to all Palestinian industrial and commercial facilities, which would be replaced by “high-tech” companies, hotels, and commercial spaces on the stolen Palestinian lands and in place of the destroyed Palestinian homes and buildings.

A report issued by the Wall and Colonization Resistance Commission revealed that Israeli authorities demolished 21 facilities in Jerusalem governorate during September.

All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.

states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

My sister was the 166th doctor to be murdered in Gaza

Dr Soma Baroud, was killed on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans near Bani Suhaila roundabout, Khan Yunis.
By Dr Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2024

“Your lives will continue. With new events and new faces. They are the faces of your children, who will fill your homes with noise and laughter.”

These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters.

Dr Soma Baroud was murdered on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

I still don’t know whether she was on her way to the hospital where she worked, or leaving the hospital to go home. Does it even matter?

The news of her assassination — which was a political murder; Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 986 medical workers, including 166 doctors — arrived through a screenshot copied from a Facebook page: “Update: these are the names of the martyrs of the latest Israeli bombing of two taxis in the Khan Yunis area…” It was followed by a list of names. “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” was the fifth name on the list, number 42,010 on Gaza’s ever-growing list of martyrs.

I refused to believe the news, even when more posts began popping up everywhere on social media, listing her as number five, and sometimes six in the list of martyrs of the Khan Yunis air strike.

I kept calling her, over and over again, hoping that the line would crackle a bit, followed by a brief silence, and then her kind, motherly voice would say, “Marhaba Abu Sammy. How are you, brother?” But she never answered the call.

I had told her repeatedly that she does not need to bother with elaborate text or audio messages due to the unreliable internet connection and electricity.

“Every morning,” I said, “just type: ‘We are fine’.” That’s all I asked of her.

But she would skip several days without writing, often due to the lack of an internet connection. Then, a message would arrive, although never brief. She wrote with a torrent of thoughts, linking up her daily struggle to survive, to her fears for her children, to poetry, to a Qur’anic verse, to one of her favourite novels, and so on.

“You know, what you said last time reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she told me on more than one occasion, before she would take the conversation into the most complex philosophical spins. I would listen, and just repeat, “Yes… totally… I agree… one hundred per cent.”

For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, although grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.

I wrote about Soma as a central character in my book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, because she was indeed central to our lives, and to our very survival in a Gaza refugee camp.

The first born, and only daughter, she had to carry a much greater share of work and expectations than the rest of us. She was just a child when my eldest brother, Anwar, still a toddler, died in an UNRWA clinic at the Nuseirat refugee camp due to the lack of medicine. Then, she was introduced to pain, the kind of pain that with time turned into a permanent state of grief that would never abandon her until her murder by a US-supplied Israeli bomb in Khan Yunis.

Two years after the death of Anwar, another boy was born. They also called him Anwar, so that the legacy of the first boy could carry on. Soma cherished the newcomer, maintaining a special friendship with him for decades to come.

My father began his life as a child labourer, then a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Army, then a police officer during the Egyptian administration of Gaza, then, once again, a labourer, because he refused to join the Israeli-funded Gaza police force after the 1967 Naksa (the Six Day War).

A clever, principled man, and a self-taught intellectual, my Dad did everything he could to provide a measure of dignity for his small family; and Soma, a child, often barefoot, stood by him every step of the way. When he decided to become a merchant, as in buying discarded and odd items in Israel and repackaging them to sell in the refugee camp, Soma was his main helper. Although her skin healed, cuts on her fingers due to wrapping thousands of razors individually, remained as a testament to the difficult life she lived.

“Soma’s little finger is worth more than a thousand men,” my father would often repeat, to remind us, eventually five boys, that our sister will always be the main heroine in the family’s story. Now that she is a martyr, that legacy has been secured for eternity.

Years later, my parents sent her to Aleppo to obtain a medical degree. She returned to Gaza, where she spent over three decades healing the pain of others, although never her own.

She worked at Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital among other medical centres. Later, she obtained another certificate in family medicine, and opened a clinic of her own. She did not charge the poor, and did all she could to heal those victimised by war.

Soma was a member of a generation of female doctors in Gaza who truly changed the face of medicine.

Collectively, they put great emphasis on the rights of women to medical care and expanding the understanding of family medicine to include psychological trauma with particular emphasis on the centrality as well as the vulnerability of women in a war-torn society.

When my daughter Zarefah managed to visit her in Gaza shortly before the ongoing war, she told me that, “When aunt Soma walked into the hospital, an entourage of women — doctors, nurses and other medical staff — would surround her in total adoration.”

At one point, it felt that all of Soma’s suffering was finally paying off: a nice family home in Khan Yunis, with a small olive orchard, and a few palm trees; a loving husband, a professor of law and eventually the dean of law school at a reputable Gaza university; three daughters and two sons, whose educational specialties ranged from dentistry to pharmacy, to law to engineering.

Even under siege, life — at least for Soma and her family — seemed manageable. True, she was not allowed to leave the Strip for many years due to the blockade, and thus we were denied the chance to see her for years on end. True, she was tormented by loneliness and seclusion, hence her love affair with and constant citation of García Márquez’s seminal novel. But at least her husband was not killed or missing. Her beautiful house and clinic were still standing. And she was living and breathing, communicating her philosophical nuggets about life, death, memories and hope. And then…

“If I could only find the remains of Hamdi, so that we can give him a proper burial,” she wrote to me last January, when the news circulated that her husband had been executed by an Israeli quadcopter in Khan Yunis. Because his body was missing, she held on to some faint hope that he was still alive. Her boys, on the other hand, kept digging in the wreckage and debris of the area where Hamdi was shot, hoping to find him and give him a proper burial. They would often be attacked by Israeli drones in the process of trying to unearth their father’s body. They would run away, and return with their shovels to carry on with the grim task.

To maximise their chances of survival, my sister’s family decided to split up between displacement camps and other family homes in southern Gaza. This meant that Soma had to be in a constant state of moving, travelling, often long distances on foot, between towns, villages and refugee camps, just to check on her children, following every incursion, and every massacre.

“I am exhausted,” she kept telling me. “All I want from life is for this war to end, for cosy new pyjamas, my favourite book, and a comfortable bed.”

These simple and reasonable expectations looked like a mirage, especially when her home in the Qarara area, in Khan Yunis, was demolished by the Israeli army last month. “My heart aches,” she wrote. “Everything is gone. Three decades of life, of memories, of achievement, all turned into rubble.”

She pointed out that this is not a story about stones and concrete. “It is much bigger. It is a story that cannot be fully told, however long I write or speak. Seven souls had lived here. We ate, drank, laughed, quarrelled, and despite all the challenges of living in Gaza, we managed to carve out a happy life for our family.”

A few days before she was killed, she told me that she had been sleeping in a half-destroyed building belonging to her neighbours in Qarara. She sent me a photo taken by her son, as she sat on a makeshift chair, on which she also slept amidst the ruins. She looked tired, so very tired.

There was nothing I could say or do to convince her to leave. She insisted that she wanted to keep an eye on the rubble of what remained of her home. Her logic made no sense to me. I pleaded with her to leave. She ignored me, and instead kept sending me photos of what she had salvaged from the rubble, an old photo, a small olive tree, a birth certificate…

My last message to her, hours before she was killed, was a promise that when the war is over, I would do everything in my power to compensate her for all of this. That the whole family would meet in Egypt, or Turkiye, and that we would shower her with gifts, and boundless family love. I finished with, “Let’s start planning now. Whatever you want. You just say it. Awaiting your instructions…” She never saw the message.

Even when her name, as yet another casualty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza was mentioned in local Palestinian news, I refused to believe it. I continued to call. “Please pick up, Soma, please pick up,” I pleaded.

Only when a video emerged of white body bags arriving at Nasser Hospital in the back of an ambulance did I think that maybe my sister was indeed gone.

Some of the bags had the names of the others mentioned in the social media posts. Each bag was pulled out separately and placed on the ground. A group of mourners, bereaved men, women and children would rush to hug the body, screaming the same shouts of agony and despair that have accompanied this ongoing genocide from the first day.

Then, another bag, with “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” written across the thick white plastic.

Her colleagues carried her body and laid it gently on the ground. They were about to zip the bag open to confirm her identity. I looked away.

I refuse to see her in any way but the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom; someone whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”

But why do I continue to check my messages with the hope that she will text me to tell me that the whole thing was a major, cruel misunderstanding and that she is okay?

My sister Soma was buried under a small mound of dirt, somewhere in Khan Yunis.

No more messages from her.

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Americans Must End Israel’s Serial Slaughter of Gaza’s Children

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | October 14, 2024

It’s time for the American people to stand up to Washington and demand an immediate end to the endless support the United States has provided to apartheid Israel for its killing spree during the past year.

For fifty-seven years, Israel has subjected millions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians to a totalitarian, foreign military occupation. The Palestinian people have been systematically deprived of the ability to vote as well as their natural rights to life, liberty, freedom of movement, and property. With Israeli army protection and participation, for decades, the illegal Jewish settler movement has been stealing Palestinian property, demolishing homes, seizing agricultural land, terrorizing towns, villages, and refugee camps. This process has been mercilessly accelerated in the occupied West Bank during the last two years.

Concurrently, with full backing from the U.S. government, the Israeli military has now seized at least 26% of Gaza, comprehensively demolishing the Strip’s infrastructure, slaughtering Palestinians en masse, and making the enclave uninhabitable. It is no longer in doubt that under the rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his radical Jewish supremacist ministers, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Occupation Governor Bezalel Smotrich, of the Jewish Power and Religious Zionism parties respectively, Tel Aviv is implementing its final solution regarding historic Palestine’s indigenous population.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, Tel Aviv has murdered, mutilated, and maimed roughly 215,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Those figures do not include countless thousands of Palestinians missing or presumed dead beneath the 40 million tons of rubble Israel’s war has generated.

With Washington’s support—including over 50,000 tons of weapons and artificial intelligence platforms reportedly furnished by military-industrial complex giants like Palantir—Israel is openly exterminating an entire nation.

Last month, the Gaza Health Ministry published a 649-page document providing information regarding 34,344 murdered Palestinians identified thus far.

Antiwar.com news editor Dave DeCamp reported that, “The document lists 11,355 children, including 710 infants under the age of one, as Palestinian babies have been killed throughout the genocidal campaign. The infants are listed on the first 14 pages of the document…Out of the 34,344 people who have been identified, 60% are children, women, and elderly. The remaining 40% are men ranging in age from 18 to 59.” Currently, the total number of Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza is approximately 16,800.

Vice president of the International College of Surgeons, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon based in North Carolina, volunteered his services in Gaza between April and May this year. In July, he lamented to CBS News unequivocally that “[of] all of the disasters I’ve seen, combined—40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined—doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.”

He bluntly described Tel Aviv killing children on an unprecedented scale, warning Israeli military snipers were deliberately shooting children and murdering toddlers:

“I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week…missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.”

After being asked to clarify his statement, Perlmutter said, “I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”

CBS noted that over twenty doctors had recounted similar child slayings. One American doctor reportedly felt compelled to review CT scans to confirm what he saw with his own eyes because he “didn’t believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.”

In April, Dr. Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician, described her experience treating two children shot in the brain by Israeli snipers during her last day volunteering at southern Gaza’s European hospital. Alvi told The Guardian, “I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old.”

She elaborated, “They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct sniper shot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children.”

Scores of American doctors, surgeons, nurses, and emergency room physicians have confirmed these accounts, writing multiple open letters to the White House urging the Joe Biden administration to cease support for the Israeli genocide and warning that the true death toll already includes more than 118,000 Palestinians, vastly exceeding Palestinian Health Ministry estimates.

One July letter features Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse practitioner based in Oregon, describing the nightmare of living as a pregnant mother, newborn infant, or fetus trapped and under siege in the Gaza death camp. “Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved,” she wrote.

Another open letter sent to the White House was signed this month by ninety-nine American physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, surgeons, and midwives who’ve spent a combined 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza. “This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” it reads.

The medics continue, describing the devastating toll that the genocidal campaign has taken on the entire civilian population:

“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.”

Israel’s brutal siege warfare, combined with constant bombing of civilian infrastructure including water systems, is designed to spread diseases by systematically liquidating and infecting Palestinian children, newborns, and babies.

As the American medical volunteers have thoroughly detailed:

“Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea. We found cases of jaundice (indicating hepatitis A infection under such conditions) in nearly every room of the hospitals in which we served, and in many of our healthcare colleagues in Gaza. An astonishingly high percentage of our surgical incisions became infected from the combination of malnutrition, impossible operating conditions, lack of basic sanitation supplies such as soap, and lack of surgical supplies and medications, including antibiotics.

“Malnutrition led to widespread spontaneous abortions, underweight newborns, and an inability of new mothers to breastfeed. This left their newborns at high risk of death given the lack of access to potable water anywhere in Gaza. Many of those infants died. In Gaza we watched malnourished mothers feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water. We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies…

We urge you to realize that epidemics are raging in Gaza. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas without running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking. It was and remains guaranteed to result in widespread death from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonias, particularly in children under the age of five. Indeed, even the dreaded polio virus has reemerged in Gaza due to a combination of systematic destruction of the sanitation infrastructure, widespread malnutrition weakening immune systems, and young children having missed routine vaccinations for nearly an entire year. We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months, especially with the onset of the winter rains in Gaza. Most of them will be young children.”

These doctors reaffirmed the claims from the previous letters and testimonies from medical volunteers that Israeli snipers are relentlessly targeting children as young as toddlers with head shots:

“Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis,” the letter states. The American medical professionals insist, “It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.”

Perlmutter is quoted again, emphasizing, “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”

It is absolutely clear that supporting Israel, quite literally, means mass murdering children every day in our name and on our dime. Since October 2023, the AIPAC-owned Congress has robbed over $22 billion of Americans’ hard-earned money, amidst crippling inflation, to facilitate and underwrite this genocide. Now, Tel Aviv wants to take our kids to war with Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine simultaneously.

Americans are lectured incessantly, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that this is all obligatory and essential. We are told Americans must fight and die on the side of Israeli “civilization” against Middle Eastern “barbarism.” This author defies anyone to try to make a case for our “shared values” with the Israelis after reading these American doctors’ testimonies.

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Do They Want American Troops to Die?

By Dan McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | October 14, 2024

Biden administration mismanagement—or worse—from day one of the latest Israeli multi-front war in the Middle East has led us to where we are today, at the brink of an all-out regional war with some 40,000 U.S. troops and multiple U.S. military bases in the region with targets on their back.

Biden’s blank check to Israel after the attacks of October 7, 2023, to launch multiple wars against its neighbors and carry out the mass murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza has drawn the U.S. right into the middle of a bubbling cauldron of [World War III]. And rather than take a sober look at actual U.S. national security interests, Biden and his neocon incompetents are busy adding fuel to the fire hanging on to the pipe dream that they could do what they failed to do so many times before: remake the Middle East in their neocon image.

According to an article in Politico this past week, while Biden administration officials publicly urged restraint and a reduction in violence, they privately were working with the Israeli government to encourage a widening of Israel’s military operations to include its northern neighbor, Lebanon. Two top Biden administration officials, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shift Israel’s military focus from the already-flattened Gaza northward to Lebanon.

As Politico reports:

“Behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk and other top U.S. national security officials are describing Israel’s Lebanon operations as a history-defining moment—one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.”

Where have we heard this kind of “let’s do war to re-shape the Middle East” argument before? As Wikileaks reminds us, appearing before the U.S. Congress in 2002 and urging the U.S. to attack Iraq, Netanyahu himself promised that “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

Yeah, Bibi. How’d that work out for us?

So why is it that 22 years later senior U.S. officials are echoing Netanyahu’s bogus 2002 lies to draw the U.S. into another “history-defining” catastrophe in the Middle East? For Hochstein it might be that he is not the unbiased “honest broker” we need to keep us out of unnecessary war. After all, as The New York Times reminds us, Hochstein was born in Israel, had/has Israeli citizenship, and even served in the Israeli Defense Forces!

Now he is serving as President Biden’s top advisor for the Middle East—a position where it is critical to bring no personal biases to the table.

This should not automatically disqualify him from the position, of course, but just as with concerns over Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken’s Ukrainian background, neocons pushing for war in the “old country” from which they should have left old allegiances behind should raise a few eyebrows.

McGurk is similarly compromised, as he is another Victoria Nuland/Zelig-like character [creature] who has spent his career weaseling into Republican and Democratic administrations as an “expert,” while his actual expertise comprises solely his adherence to the neocon ideology of all war all the time. He was on board for [George W.] Bush’s “remaking of the Middle East” to [Barack] Obama’s fake “Arab Spring to remake the Middle East” to [Donald] Trump’s “trash the Iran deal to remake the Middle East.”

The guy is a loser who has been wrong his whole career, with a trail of failures that would sink a normal person. But like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps on ticking and ticking toward yet another disaster.

As Politico goes on to note, the Hochstein/McGurk plan to urge Israeli attacks on Lebanon was not widely accepted among actual experts in the administration:

“The decision to focus on Hezbollah sparked division within the U.S. government, drawing opposition from people inside the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community who believed Israel’s move against the Iran-backed militia could drag American forces into yet another Middle East conflict.”

Of course there is built into the Politico article the assumption that Hochstein and McGurk were at all concerned about “dragging American forces” into Israel’s regional war. In fact, their intent was the opposite. They no doubt yearned to draw the U.S. government into Israel’s regional war.

Which brings us to where we are today, with the Biden Administration committing more U.S. weapons systems and more U.S. military personnel to serve on the ground in Israel in its war against Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. All at once. How’s that for neocon ambition?

As Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder announced [yesterday]: “At the direction of the President, @SecDef authorized the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and associated crew of U.S. military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel’s air defenses.”

With today’s [October 13] news that Lebanon successfully counter-attacked Israel—hitting an Israeli military base and taking out dozens of IDF soldiers—it appears certain that President Biden and his neocon-dominated foreign policy team are setting up U.S. military members to be killed in Israel to manufacture consent for a full-on US war against all of Israel’s enemies in the region.

They want American soldiers killed in Israel because they know the enormous propaganda value, particularly among a U.S. population that is increasingly against U.S. involvement in Israel’s wars and in favor of ending them instead.

With Kamala tanking in the eyes of a voting public increasingly unappetized by wilted word salads, an old-fashioned war might be just what the Biden brigades are cooking up to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

With their track record of failure, it is time for those of us who are sane to be very, very worried.

This is going to get really bad really fast if we cannot get the attention of a slumbering—or worse—Congress.

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel considers plan to starve Gaza’s civilians to death

Press TV – October 13, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.

Under the proposed plan, seen by the Associated Press, civilians who remain in northern Gaza would be classified as combatants, allowing Israeli troops to kill them. They would be denied access to food, water, medicine, and fuel.

The plan proposed to Netanyahu by a group of retired generals, calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.

Israeli media reported that Netanyahu told a closed parliamentary committee session that he was considering the plan.

Israeli authorities with knowledge of the matter said parts of the plan are already being implemented.

The plan gave Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.

Israel has issued many evacuation orders for the north throughout the yearlong campaign of death and destruction, the most recent of which was Sunday.

Israeli forces widened their brutal military offensive on north Gaza early on Sunday, after killing 300 people over nine days in a ramped-up ground offensive targeting the Jabalia refugee camp.

Israeli tanks made their way to the north edge of Gaza City, while airstrikes from above continued.

Residents say they have been isolated from the rest of Gaza, with Israeli forces not allowing anyone to enter or exit the north.

No trucks of food, water, or medicine have entered the north since Sept. 30, according to the UN.

So far, very few Palestinians have heeded the latest evacuation order. Much fear there’s nowhere safe to go and that they will never be allowed back. Israel has prevented those who fled earlier in the war from returning.

“All Gazans are afraid of the plan,” said Jomana Elkhalili, a 26-year-old Palestinian aid worker for Oxfam living in Gaza City with her family.

“Still, they will not flee. They will not make the mistake again … We know the place there is not safe,” she said. “That’s why people in the north say it’s better to die than to leave.”

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on X Thursday that only about 100 Palestinians have fled the north since Sunday.

“At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area,” the UN official said “With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading.”

Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers.

The fact that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza is central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice.

Israeli authorities say that if the strategy is successful in northern Gaza it could then be replicated in other areas, including tent camps further to the south sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

When asked about the plan Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US, Israel’s main benefactor, was going to “make absolutely clear that it’s not just the United States that opposes any occupation of Gaza, any reduction in the size of Gaza, but it is the virtually unanimous opinion of the international community.”

The Israeli military presses ahead with its relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip now more than one year into the genocidal war.

The Israeli aggression on Gaza began in October last year, claiming the lives of more than 42,000 so far. Over 98,000 d others have also been injured since then.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

US troops will deploy to Israel – Pentagon

RT | October 13, 2024

The US has ordered the deployment of a THAAD air defense system to Israel, along with a crew of American service members to operate it, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced on Sunday. The move marks the first deployment of US combat troops on Israeli soil since the Israel-Hamas war began last year.

According to Ryder, the THAAD battery “and associated crew of US military personnel” will be stationed in Israel “to help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s unprecedented attacks against Israel on April 13 and again on October 1.”

US President Joe Biden, who the White House previously said had “no plans or intentions to put US boots on the ground in combat,” ordered the deployment, Ryder stated.

The THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is a mobile anti-ballistic missile system designed to detect and intercept ballistic missiles during their descent stage. It fires a non-explosive projectile at eight times the speed of sound, relying on kinetic energy to destroy incoming missiles.

A THAAD battery consists of 95 soldiers and six truck-mounted launchers capable of firing a total of 48 interceptors.

The US deployed a THAAD battery to Saudi Arabia after the Israel-Hamas war began last October, and to Israel on a training exercise in 2019. However, neither the system nor the American troops who operate it have been sent to Israel since the current conflict began.

While American soldiers took part in a brief aid mission off the coast of Gaza earlier this year, they did not set foot in the Palestinian enclave.

The deployment comes as Israel prepares its response to an Iranian missile attack on October 1, in which around 200 ballistic missiles were fired at Israeli military targets. Tehran maintains that the strike was a “legitimate” response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian general in Beirut.

Israel is widely expected to target Iran’s oil or nuclear infrastructure, although the US has advised West Jerusalem against either choice. Whatever form the Israeli response takes, Iran has vowed to retaliate. Earlier this week, a source in Tehran told RT that this retaliation would be “proportionate.” Should West Jerusalem target Iran’s oil infrastructure, Tehran will respond by striking Israel’s oil refineries. Attacks on other infrastructure, such as power plants or nuclear facilities, will likewise prompt retaliatory strikes on corresponding installations in Israel, the source explained.

Hours before Ryder’s announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi warned that the US is putting the “lives of its troops at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel.”

“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” Araghchi added.”

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli Military and Police Raid International Home in Qusra

International Solidarity Movement | October 13, 2024

At about 20:00 Friday night, the Israeli army and police raided the international volunteers’ home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. This raid was conducted at gunpoint by a heavily armed force.

Leading the raid was the same military officer who had commanded a squadron that forced Palestinian harvesters out of their land in the village of Duma earlier in the day. During the raid, he pointed out specific volunteers to the police, saying he recognized them from earlier in the day.

The police broke into the house by destroying the door using a pneumatic hammer, and proceeded to search the premises without a search warrant, as well as the car of a Palestinian resident of Qusra who was there at the time. They demanded all the international activists present to show their passports, and photographed them.

Israeli law and police regulations only allow for police to require identification on the basis of suspicion of having broken the law, or for several specific reasons, which must be stated to those identified. The police had refused to state their grounds for either the search or identification, even declaring before they left, “You have done nothing wrong; we were only here to see who you are.”

The raid on the international volunteer quarters directly followed the forced removal of harvesters from their lands in the village of Duma earlier in the day, under the claim that it is forbidden for Palestinians to access their lands anywhere in Area C – which comprises around 60% of the West Bank – without prior coordination.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Smotrich: Israel’s future is ‘to expand to Damascus’

MEMO | October 13, 2024

Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has acknowledged his aim for a Jewish state that not only encompasses all Palestinian territories but also extends to Syria, in the latest such open statement referring to Tel Aviv’s potential pursuit of a ‘Greater Israel’ project.

In an interview for a documentary produced and aired by the French-language channel Arte, titled ‘Israel: Extremists in Power’, Smotrich stated that “I want a Jewish state… that operates according to the values of the Jewish people”.

He was then posed the question of whether Israel aims to extend its sovereignty which currently “starts at the [Mediterranean] sea and ends at the [Jordan] river”, to which he smiled and said “okay, bit by bit”.

Smotrich stated that “it is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus”, adding ominously “only Jerusalem, until Damascus”. The documentary then detailed the Israeli finance minister’s plan – and that of other extremist and right-wing Israelis – to have Israeli statehood extend into Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

His comments come at a time when Israel continues to bombard Lebanon and launch its ground invasion, with many illegal Jewish settler groups advocating for Israeli forces to remain in Lebanon and settle the country. Efforts have steadily been made on that front, an example being a childrens’ book which was recently published on the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.

Although the Israeli government itself has kept the scope of its aims on defeating the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, and has not formally announced any plans to occupy Lebanon and settle Jewish immigrants on newly-conquered territory.

The views of government figures such as Smotrich, however, as well as their significant support base, increasingly ignite concerns that Tel Aviv could potentially possess the goal of expanding Israeli territory in the Middle East via conquest of surrounding Arab states.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | 3 Comments

Stock depletion prompts ‘Israel’ to restrict arms use

Al Mayadeen | October 13, 2024

The Israeli military has adopted a policy of “strict weapons economy” regarding the use of shells and other arms in response to the depletion of ammunition stocks and the global embargo on arms exports to “Israel”, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

According to Haaretz sources, the Israeli military is now operating under “tight weapons management,” with the authorization for using certain weapons being elevated in some cases to brigade commanders who hold the rank of colonel.

This policy is designed to ensure that senior commanders prioritize weapon usage based on their operational objectives, a responsibility previously handled by lower-ranking officers.

The Israeli military also mentioned that its “ammunition economy” for Iron Dome interceptions began in the second week of the war. However, the current state of ammunition stocks has necessitated further restrictions.

This comes as “Israel” is facing relentless military operations involving rocket, missile, and drone launches by the factions of the Axis of Resistance, namely Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and the Yemeni Armed Forces, since the onset of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

In light of these developments, countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada have recently imposed restrictions on arms exports to “Israel”, raising concerns that Israeli-owned companies may not be able to offset these losses.

The devastating number of Palestinian civilians killed due to Israeli attacks on Gaza sparked widespread pressure on several countries to limit their weapons exports to “Israel”, especially after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling called on the occupation entity to do everything possible to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.

In a related context, the Israeli security establishment has expressed concern over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to delay Security Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to the United States.

Senior officials indicated that Gallant’s planned meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other top officials in Washington were intended to discuss “Israel’s” arms requirements and shipments, as well as the potential for an attack on Iran.

Netanyahu postponed Gallant’s trip, insisting on speaking directly with US President Joe Biden before the visit.

A couple of days ago, Netanyahu and Biden held a 30-minute phone call—their first in seven weeks—during which they discussed the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, with the Israeli premier seeking to gauge US support and understanding of the situation.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

The Zionist regime cannot fight Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | October 12, 2024

The war that the Israeli regime has opened will not close until it is dealt a strategic defeat, one from which it will not likely recover.

After all of its gloating, the Zionist entity appears to have fallen for its own propagandistic bravado and is sleepwalking into the abyss. Having failed to defeat Hamas in Gaza, the Israelis appear to have lulled themselves into a belief that they had already crushed Hezbollah with their initial blows of the war.

When the Israelis detonated thousands of pagers on September 17, a day later detonating walkie-talkie devices, inflicting dozens of deaths and hundreds of serious injuries, this represented a momentary tactical victory for the settler project. What followed, with the assassination of countless Hezbollah officials, culminating in the martyrdom of the party’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, made the Israelis appear as if they were then in the driver’s seat of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu grew so confident and emboldened that he decided to record a video message to the people of Iran, indicating that he would soon aid in carrying out a regime change. The Zionist leaders ordered large-scale airstrikes against thousands of targets across Lebanon, devastating civilian infrastructure and inflicting over 2,000 deaths. The Israelis repeatedly pounded the Southern Suburb of Beirut with hundreds of tons of explosives, while expanding the nature of their strikes against Syrian territory too.

While the Arab and Muslim World entered a stage of collective mourning over the repeated attacks on Lebanon, processing the loss of one of its most cherished leaders in recent memory, the Israelis also decided to declare a ground incursion into South Lebanon. Terrorist tactics and assassinations have served as propaganda victory in the media battle of the optics, in addition to a temporary tactical victory, which certainly inflicted a blow.

Yet, the strategic initiative was suddenly recovered on October 1, with the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC)’s unprecedented response to the repeated assassinations – including the murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran – firing 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli military sites. Despite countless attempts to deflect, cover up, and downplay the effectiveness of the Iranian response, dubbed “Operation True Promise II,” the impact was felt throughout the entire region.

What also happened following this, with the repeated successful strikes against Israeli targets by Yemen’s Ansar Allah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, combined with repeated Hezbollah’s successes in repelling the Zionist forces’ attempts at penetrating Lebanese land, all worked at changing the direction of the tide. On October 7, Hamas demonstrated its ability to hit “Tel Aviv” with M90 rockets, which was followed by strikes on “Tel Aviv” by Ansar Allah and then Hezbollah.

After repeated costly failures along the Lebanese border, the Israelis then decided to invade Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza and begin a terror bombing campaign across northern Gaza, also carrying on its assassinations of journalists and educators in the besieged territory. However, despite the terror that they inflicted, when their forces entered on the ground and besieged Jabalia Refugee Camp, the Palestinian Resistance factions began executing sophisticated and daring ambush operations, exacting a significant price on their soldiers.

The al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of Hamas – then began firing drones at troop formations and even one toward Israeli settlements, indicating that their capabilities were much greater than they were previously believed to be by the enemy. Suddenly, the Israelis were in a position where the Palestinian Resistance was killing and injuring their soldiers in Gaza, while Hezbollah was doing the same from South Lebanon.

Although the Israelis dealt significant blows to the Axis of Resistance, it is now in an even more difficult position than it previously found itself in prior to its assaults on Lebanon. Hezbollah has replaced its military leadership and has had the time to plan, rid itself of potential security breaches, and take the initiative on the battlefield. We see that Hezbollah is today intensifying its rocket strikes against the Israelis, dealing significant blows and putting the Zionist entity in a position of embarrassment before its own public once again.

The Israelis now must mount significant offensive actions across all fronts and fight on, managing a battle with Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, and even Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu envisioned himself as the Israeli Prime Minister to inflict a 1967-style defeat on the regional resistance, yet he has dragged the entire entity into something very different. We are no longer in the days of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser or the PLO in the 1980s, Hezbollah and the regional Axis of Resistance axis are not an alliance that can be broken through assassinations of senior leaders, in addition to this, they are ready for the fight.

Hezbollah undoubtedly enjoys superiority on the ground, in face-to-face combat, while the Zionist military has only proven capable of pulling off sophisticated terrorist plots and assassinations, in combination with their elite video-game warriors who specialize in using advanced weapons from a distance. The reality is that typing on a keyboard or commanding controllers, while sitting in a fortified position, may deliver some tactical victories, but it will not win a war that requires immense physical courage, which the Israelis simply do not possess.

Even in the West Bank, where the Israelis frequently raid refugee camps and face off against poorly trained teenagers and men in their young twenties, armed with no more than light weapons, their special forces units have to call in backup and end up using air support. Even against the weakest link in the chain of Resistance groups, they struggle to hold ground in confrontations and never do so in a fair way. In Lebanon, they face committed, well-trained, and well-prepared fighters who do not fear death and crave the opportunity to confront them.

The Israeli regime may well pull off more trickery and terrorism on a grand scale, as it will turn to more assassinations, attempts to stir unrest, and perhaps special force operations deep into Lebanese or Syrian territory. There cannot be any doubt that there will be more challenges ahead, that the Israelis have many more tricks up their sleeves, and that the terror they plan to inflict will be painful, primarily to civilians. Yet, they do not possess the capability to win a multi-front confrontation and will be bled to death, so long as the Axis of Resistance continues to seize the initiative and respond forcefully to each escalatory violation of international law that the Israelis commit.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in his first speech issued during the Gaza Genocide, spoke of “scoring points” and that the “knockout blow” had not yet been delivered against the Israeli regime. What has happened during the past month is that the Israelis were being beaten on points and decided to begin throwing haymaker punches with the intent of ending the fight abruptly, taking a chance at victory. Some of those punches landed and knocked down the Axis of Resistance, yet they got back on their feet, dealt blows back to the Israelis, and are now fighting with even more intensity. Both sides have been hit and hurt, so this fight now looks like it will end with a KO.

The war that the Israeli regime has opened will not close until it is dealt a strategic defeat, one from which it will not likely recover. It is also a war that the United States has enabled and backed in every way. In today’s world, the Palestinians and Lebanese people are taking on not only the Zionists, but the US too.

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Rights group files ICC complaint against 1,000 Israel soldiers for war crimes in Gaza

MEMO | October 11, 2024

A European rights group has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli occupation soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.

In a statement released on its website on Tuesday, the Hind Rajab Foundation, a branch of the March 30 Movement,  said the complaint is “supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence – including videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media documentation – demonstrates the soldiers’ direct involvement in these atrocities.”

It added that soldiers were named and were all “located in Gaza during the genocidal assault, and the evidence reveals their participation in violations of international law.”

It added that it provided evidence that they had taken part in the “destruction of civilian infrastructure … Illegal occupation and looting … Participation in the Gaza blockade … Targeting civilians … Use of inhumane warfare tactics,” which are violations under international law.

The soldiers named include “high-ranking officers and commanders responsible for planning and executing military operations in Gaza,” individuals with dual citizenship, “including 12 from France, 12 from the United States, 4 from Canada, 3 from the United Kingdom, and 2 from the Netherlands,” and soldiers “who have openly boasted about their war crimes on social media,” the statement explained.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

Iran condemns strike on makeshift hospital on Syria-Lebanon border

Press TV – October 11, 2024

Iran has strongly condemned Israel’s strike on a medical facility on the Syria-Lebanon border, calling it “a clear example of war crimes.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Thursday that frequent Israeli attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria show the regime’s disregard for all international rules and regulations.

Baghaei called for unequivocal condemnation of Israel’s attack by all relevant international bodies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

He also highlighted the need for global action to help thousands of Lebanese people who have been displaced in the past two weeks following Israel’s aggression against Lebanon.

The Israeli strike on Iran’s 56-bed field hospital on Wednesday destroyed ambulances and all medical equipment inside the facility.

The hospital was established to aid Lebanese displaced people on the Syrian-Lebanese border.

The hospital housed food supplies, medical equipment, and medicines.

The hospital was clearly marked with the flag and symbols of the Red Crescent. The ambulances, the field hospital, and all the hospital’s supplies were destroyed in the attack by Israel.

Since the start of the offensive on October 7 last year Israeli occupation forces have particularly targeted Gaza’s education and health sectors. It has bombed most of the hospitals, schools, colleges and universities.

Hundreds of educational institutions, including 65 run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), were also bombed and vandalized.

Despite the UN Security Council demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli regime continues its genocidal war against the Palestinian people trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, aiming for the complete eradication of its people.

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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