Anti-Semitic Awareness Bill Direct Attack on Free Speech
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.05.2024
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed the HR 6090 Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would encode the definition of anti-Semitism defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance into the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin.
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act would legally define criticism of the government or state of Israel as an act of anti-Semitism, and should concern every American, regardless of their views on Israel.
“It would be as if you could not criticize US capitalism, and if you were to do so, you would be considered to be a bigot,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “Indeed, I think that you should correctly sense a whiff of what befell the United States in the 1950s with the so-called ‘House un-American Activities Committee’.”
Speech that the bill would define as anti-Semitic includes “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel [than the US], or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
In October, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) wore an Israeli Defense Force uniform, the same uniform he wore while serving in Israel’s military. That led some to question where his loyalties lie, an accusation that would be deemed anti-Semitic under this law.
It also would define “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” as anti-Semitic. Many pro-Palestinian advocates argue that having a country specifically designed for a group of people, in this case, Jews, is in itself a racist act, just as a country only for white people, Christians or any other group of people would be.
The bill would also ban “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy of that of the Nazis,” which is a comparison many are making after seeing the images coming out of Gaza which has been described as a Genocide by multiple human rights organizations, heads of state and protesters.
It would also ban the “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” a definition so broad, that it could be used to shut down any criticism of Israel that the government determines the speaker has not applied to another country.
Similar laws have been enacted in Europe and have had a chilling effect.
In France, two individuals were arrested for wearing shirts to a grocery store that read “Boycott Israel, Free Palestine” and handing out pro-Palestine flyers on the bus.
In Germany, a German-Israeli activist was arrested for holding a sign that read “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.”
“Europe’s experience with similar laws shows why this [bill] would be a mistake.” Jacob Mchangama, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression posted on X on Thursday.
“It’s part and parcel of what can fairly be considered [a] sort of thought crimes,” Horne warned. “There are going to be thought police who are going to ferret out these alleged offenders of these thought crimes.”
There have been several laws passed in states across the US that attempted to ban boycotting Israel, they have all been shot down by federal courts as unconstitutional, and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is sure to face a similar challenge if it passes but there is no guarantee how the courts will rule.
“Israel wields a great deal of power in the United States. All you have to do is look at the bill that passed today to see what opinions you are allowed to express and what opinions you are not allowed to express,” explained award-winning journalist and former lawyer Glenn Greenwald on his show on Wednesday. “Therein is the proof of the people and the countries who occupy and exert the greatest power and they have now used that power to formally attack the free speech rights of American citizens in some of the most glaring and explicit ways that I’ve ever seen.”
Later on Thursday, Senate leadership attempted to fast track the bill but were denied by members who oppose the bill, but that won’t be the end of it. “We’re going to look for the best way to move forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters.
Legal experts debunk Israeli, US claims challenging ICC jurisdiction
Anadolu Agency | May 3, 2024
For days now, there is growing speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is poised to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials for the ongoing war on Gaza.
Most of the hype has been fuelled by Israel itself, first with regular reports by Israeli news outlets about increasing apprehension among the top brass, followed by direct statements from Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacking the ICC and urging his Western allies to pressure the Court.
Another tactic employed by Israel and its supporters, particularly the US, has been to question the ICC’s power and jurisdiction to act against Israeli officials.
Spokespersons for the White House and US State Department have explicitly conveyed that the US does not believe the ICC has jurisdiction to move against Israel, specifically because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that forms the basis of the ICC.
Legal scholars, however, have refuted these assertions, stressing that Israel not recognising the ICC or not being a signatory to the Rome Statute does not have any impact on the Court’s powers.
The ICC has been leading an investigation since 2021 into potential war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian groups dating back to 2014. The probe has grown to include ongoing attacks in the war in Gaza.
“Palestine is a state party to the ICC, and the ICC has accepted that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Gerhard Kemp, a professor of criminal law at the University of the West of England Bristol Law School, told Anadolu.
The ICC also has jurisdiction over crimes committed by Palestinian nationals outside the Territory of Palestine, for example in Israel on 7 October, 2023, he said.
“The short answer is that there is not much that Israel can do to challenge the ICC jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed in Palestine,” he explained.
Another legal expert, Mark Kersten, asserted that the ICC is able to “very clearly, logically and legally exercise jurisdiction in this case.”
The ICC has territorial jurisdiction on Palestine, which it understands as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said.
First, this means it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed by citizens of Palestine, so it has the power to act against Hamas members for the 7 October attacks, even though most of it happened on the territory of a non-state party, Israel, he said.
“Second, it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed on the Territory of Palestine … which means it has jurisdiction over any Israeli authorities who have committed mass atrocities, international crimes in Gaza or the West Bank,” explained Kersten, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.
‘Attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten ICC’
In the current situation, Kersten said the ICC is facing immense pressure from various countries, including Israel and the US.
“There’s definitely ongoing political pressure … I think pressure is probably too soft of a term. I have no doubt that various states are effectively threatening the ICC with certain consequences,” he said.
“There are definitely ongoing attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten the ICC. It is up to the ICC Prosecutor and, indeed, to a certain extent the judges, to withstand that.”
On Friday, Prosecutor Karim Khan’s office issued a sharply worded statement asserting that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence (ICC) officials must cease immediately.”
“Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute,” read the statement, without mentioning any cases or countries.
Kersten pointed out that pressure tactics are “nothing new” for the ICC, with both the US and Israel having previously threatened the Court.
The administration of ex-President Donald Trump even “issued sanctions against the Prosecutor and certain other ICC staff, as well as threatening to sanction their families,” he recalled.
“We have seen US policymakers and lawmakers say the same, that they would support literally sanctioning the only independent permanent international criminal tribunal in the world,” Kersten added.
What happens if warrants are issued?
According to the swirling reports, the Israeli leaders who could soon be facing ICC warrants include Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli military chief, Herzi Halevi.
If warrants are issued, all 124 countries that are state parties to the ICC are obligated to act.
“If an arrest warrant is issued against Netanyahu, he cannot legally step onto the territory of Germany or the UK or Canada,” said Kersten.
Being ICC member states, these countries will be obligated under both their own laws and also international law “to arrest and surrender Netanyahu to the ICC”, he said.
Non-state parties, however, do not have that obligation, he added.
On a potential timeline, Kersten said the ICC has often released “some of its most important and most significant decisions … at around 4 p.m. Hague time on a Friday, when the media isn’t really covering these issues.”
As for the possible basis of the warrant, he said it could be “about the issues of starvation or the denial of aid to Gaza,” adding that these are points “the Prosecutor has spoken about repeatedly, especially since 7 October.”
Kersten also believes that any warrant against Netanyahu would be “unsealed” and publicly announced, citing past examples of warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
However, there have been instances in the past where ICC judges have accepted the Prosecutor’s request to issue sealed arrest warrants, he said.
These can then be unsealed in “a moment of vulnerability for the accused, for example, during travel to a member state of the ICC,” he added.
“Then, all of a sudden, that state has the obligation to catch the accused and surrender them to the ICC, in this massive kind of surprise moment,” said Kersten.
For someone as high-profile as Netanyahu, the expert reiterated that he does not believe a “sealed arrest warrant” is likely.
“It would be diplomatically inappropriate to issue a sealed arrest warrant for the head of a government … or a defence minister,” he said.
Complementarity challenge
While Israel has no standing when it comes to questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction, the one thing it can do is challenge the admissibility of any case in which warrants are issued on the basis of complementarity, according to Kemp, the Bristol Law School professor.
“This is because the ICC has complementary jurisdiction, meaning the ICC can only try a case if a national criminal justice system with jurisdiction over the matter is either unwilling or unable to try the case,” he said.
When Israeli nationals are accused of war crimes in Gaza, if Israel can show that its own courts will prosecute them “in a genuine prosecution and not a sham trial, then the ICC will stand back and will let Israel proceed with the case”, he explained.
“Of course, the ICC will evaluate the situation with reference to all the available facts,” Kemp added.
Inside story of mass graves at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser hospitals in Gaza
By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | May 3, 2024
“Everywhere you walk there are graves, decomposing bodies or potentially people buried under the rubble”, a resident of northern Gaza’s al-Rimal neighborhood told the Press TV website, describing mass graves at two of the largest medical complexes in the besieged coastal territory.
The discovery of hundreds of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa hospital complexes, where United Nations (UN) officials reported that bodies were “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste”, has led its officials to call for an international probe into the horrors being uncovered.
So far, some 400 bodies have been recovered at the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, while around 300 bodies have been discovered at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The deceased include “older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani.
While the Israeli military downplayed reports about mass graves as “baseless and unfounded”, it made the mistake of admitting to having dug up bodies that had been previously buried, in the process of trying to explain away the irrefutable evidence documented.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that “the presence of urinary catheters or splints, which were found to be still attached to some of the dead patients’ bodies during the exhumation process, as well as medical files that were buried with them in Al-Shifa Medical Complex, confirm the execution of ill and injured people.”
The Switzerland-based rights group also reported that some of the “victims’ decomposing bodies were found in several places, with some having been run over by Israeli bulldozers which left their bodies torn into pieces” and that Israeli forces had been using Palestinian civilians at al-Shifa Hospital as human shields.
Gaza’s civil defense also called for help in forensic examination to find out more about 20 bodies that they believe were buried alive.
First-person account of Al-Shifa horror
Palestinian journalist, Motasem A Dalloul, who is based in northern Gaza, was one of the first on the scene to witness the aftermath of al-Shifa Hospital and had to reach the area on bicycle as the roads were too severely damaged for vehicles.
Press TV website spoke to him around an hour after he finished documenting the horrifying scenes in and around the coastal territory’s largest hospital complex.
Describing the scene upon his arrival at the scene of the hospital, he said that “the Israeli invasion resulted in the destruction of an area of 1000 meters around al-Shifa Hospital.”
“Homes, schools, mosques, in addition to the actual hospital were all destroyed. I saw everything, I saw unprecedented destruction and as I arrived there, I went to the main gate of al-Shifa Hospital and as I walked forward I saw that it was blocked with the burned remains of two destroyed ambulances and so I entered through a hole in the wall beside it,” he told the Press TV website.
Dalloul then described the scenes of destruction upon entering the hospital’s grounds:
“I found all the buildings were affected. The main building, which included the reception and the surgery department, was completely destroyed. The special surgery building, which included the ICU and the operation rooms and the patient beds, was completely destroyed,” he narrated.
“It had not collapsed but was destroyed from the inside and completely burned. I then went through the other buildings, walking through the maternity ward and the cancer treatment facility which were, in addition to the administrative building, everything was either partially or completely destroyed, or burned out.”
The Palestinian journalist based in Gaza painted a graphic picture of mass graves that were discovered at the prominent hospital that is now lying in ruins due to Israeli bombings.
“If you enter the medical complex from the East to the West, on your right-hand side there is a mass grave. I saw parts of bodies on the surface of the soil. I saw decomposing hands and parts of heads. When I counted the number of bodies that were visible, I counted that around 15 people were visible in this mass grave,” he explained with unutterable grief and sorrow.
“I saw bodies of people who were either killed or executed inside the buildings and around the yards of the hospital.”
‘Hospital is gone forever’
Dalloul said that when he spoke to Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, the director of al-Shifa Hospital’s ICU department, he was told that it would take 10 years to rebuild such a facility and that the “hospital is gone forever”.
He added that Dr. Saada was in tears while he was explaining the extent of the unprecedented damage at the hospital that remained in the news for several weeks due to the military siege.
Since then, the ICU department director has publicly appealed to the international community to launch a probe into the Israeli military siege, death and destruction at the al-Shifa Hospital.
Press TV website was also told about the horrifying cases of children searching for the remains of their grandparents, parents and siblings – an unimaginable situation for anyone to go through.
Press TV website contacted Motassem again, around a week later, to update us on the work done by professional teams sent to exhume bodies that were lying in mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital.
He told us that there was an urgent need for supplies at the time in order to help identify the bodies.
On the day the Israeli military withdrew from al-Shifa after weeks of siege, there were bodies of children, women and men that were left in the streets, many of which were already decomposed or badly mutilated by tanks and bulldozers, so the only way to identify the dead was from their clothing.
A harrowing case reported by Mondoweiss, during the aftermath of the Al-Nasser Hospital invasion, confirmed that the process of identifying the bodies in mass graves was similar to what occurred at al-Shifa.
A 51-year-old man named Ayman, who visited the hospital with his wife and one of his sons, was left searching through “a pit of bodies buried, cut up” that were in pieces and left scattered amongst bags of garbage, stating that his son “was wearing the blue wool sweater.”
“I bought it for him. I know everything he wears and can identify him by his clothes,” he said.
A Palestinian man, pleading anonymous, who was seeking shelter at the Al-Nasser Hospital complex, but left before Israeli forces stormed and occupied it, said he wasn’t at all surprised.
“They used drones to shoot at us if we moved, many were killed like this every day and when the tanks came we chose to leave because it was not safe. Everyone knew that the Israelis would kill many, including many of the medical staff and they still stayed to perform their jobs,” he told the Press TV website.
“We remember the bravery of the doctors and medical staff, they were heroes and the Israelis don’t care for human lives. Look what they did at every hospital, at schools, at our homes. They killed people holding up white flags, the mass graves are not just at the hospitals, they are everywhere and the death toll is so much higher than we are told I am sure.”
13,000 still missing, likely buried
Important to note is that although two of the largest mass graves that have been discovered to date are those outlined here, yet there are around 13,000 Palestinians still missing and buried in the rubble throughout the Gaza Strip.
In January, 50 bodies were discovered at the Khalifa Bin Zayed elementary school in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, a school being used for shelter by displaced refugees, while another 30 bodies were discovered dumped in black bags amongst garbage at the Hamad School; the bodies were decomposing but showed signs of torture and many were found with their hands and feet bound.
Israel is also known for holding the dead bodies of slain Palestinians, with various reports stating that when they were returned to their families, their organs were missing.
This even prompted the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor to call for an international inquiry into the seizure of bodies and possible organ trafficking.
Amongst the abuses that have occurred at the Nasser Hospital and al-Shifa Hospital are the deprivation of food, water and medical care to the sick and injured; in addition to various forms of torture, arbitrary executions and even sexual violence.
The United Nations recorded at least two cases of Israeli soldiers raping Palestinians in February, yet, after countless allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence, again, there has been no international probe into these credible reports.
With the discovery of the mass graves at the al-Shifa and Nasser medical complexes, there is an urgent need for international, independent probes into the conduct of the Israeli regime’s ground forces, believe human rights experts.
The mass graves are only part of the gruesome series of massacres but should be a turning point due to the sheer scale of murdered and mutilated bodies found, they state.
Yemen expands front against Israel to include Mediterranean Sea
The Cradle | May 3, 2024
The Yemeni armed forces announced on 3 May the start of the “fourth phase” of escalation against Israel and in support of Palestine, threatening to target Israeli-linked ships “anywhere within our reach.”
Sanaa highlights in a statement that the attacks, which have successfully locked Israel out of the Red Sea, will expand to the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier this year, the Yemeni armed forces expanded the scope of their pro-Palestine operations to include the Indian Ocean, severely affecting the Israeli economy.
Friday’s statement from the Ansarallah-led government also warns Tel Aviv against launching their assault on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, saying that, with immediate effect, any ships “linked to the provision of supplies and entry into the Palestinian ports under occupation” would be subject to “severe penalties.”
The statement stresses that these ships will not be allowed to “sail through the area of military operations, regardless of their destination.”
The escalation by Yemen was made public by armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, who made the announcement in front of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who continue to gather in the capital every week to show their support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Since mid-November, Yemen has maintained a naval trade blockade against Israel. The armed forces’ operations remain mostly unaffected despite an illegal US bombing campaign and the heavy militarization of the Red Sea by NATO countries.
“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Jerome Henry, the commander of France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace, told Le Figaro last month.
Ansarallah leaders have repeatedly stated that the Yemeni operations will continue until Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza comes to a stop and a lasting ceasefire is implemented.
In the face of its failure to deter Yemen, Washington recently offered the country “an acknowledgment of its legitimacy” in exchange for its neutrality in the war on Gaza.
“[Washington] pledged to repair the damages, remove foreign forces from all occupied Yemeni lands and islands, and remove Ansarallah from the State Department’s ‘terrorism list’ – as soon as they stop their attacks in support of Gaza,” according to Yemeni sources who spoke exclusively with The Cradle.
The offer also included “severely reducing” the role of the Saudi-appointed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) and “accelerating the signing of a roadmap” with the Saudi-led coalition to end the nine-year war that has decimated Yemen.
Iran’s Israel Strike Reshapes West Asia Forever
By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | May 3, 2024
On April 13th, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s AnsarAllah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on the Zionist entity, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – in particular West Asia – will never be the same again.
Iran’s first ever strike on the entity, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ, and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. The entity claimed a 99% interception rate.
However, extensive photo and video material shows many missiles hit their targets, and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.
This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills scouring around Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message – Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature, but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s, to decide whether – and how – to retaliate. A response came on April 19, in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.
Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses, but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson subsequently referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced, following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, the Zionist entity now has little time remaining, and no good choices left to make.
‘New Equation’
Despite its astonishing optics, and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook the Islamic Republic’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historic parallel, and clearly concerned with eliciting a major escalation, in order to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred wider response, while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards the entity. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:
“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”
Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise plainly demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike the entity directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities, and vulnerabilities, not only of Israel, but the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.
Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13th, and the data yield was likely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:
“For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
If there’s a next time too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles fired at the entity during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) general.
“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous”, comparable to what Israel spent during the entire 1973 Arab/Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.
Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for the entity, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end AnsarAllah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea.
Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast that it was squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 AnsarAllah drones. “That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,” a CIA officer lamented. “We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.”
‘Israel Goes Under’
There is no sign publicly yet of Washington having rectified this concern, which may account for why US officials at the start of April offered AnsarAllah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade, which was rejected. But in the event of a subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, Tehran’s Shahed drones will not be used to deter shipping, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust the entity’s air defenses.
This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13th, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause a battlefield and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries, and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.
That conclusion is supported by an April 22nd Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end… of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.
On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st century Holocaust, the entity’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation of November 6th 2023 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself. “Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.
The race to escape Israel
One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, AnsarAllah and Hezbollah could completely paralyzse the entity economically, render entire areas of the entity uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a grand scale.
Resultantly, the entity’s “Samson Option”, under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “we have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, or chemical/biological payload of their own.
‘Whoever Moves’
The Zionist entity’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster, in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent of fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of Israeli Occupation Forces’ defeat is such that in an absolutely scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11th, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:
“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border… No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”
Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IOF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures”, and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:
“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound… Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left… Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.”
An Israeli Occupation Force psychopath
The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IOF operate. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:
“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalising Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20 the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”
That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far the Zionist entity has fallen since October 7th. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Its once-vaunted military is not feared by adversaries, and their ability to unilaterally strike Muslim countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.
Meanwhile, the entity has suffered population collapse, with concomitant mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs, as the trauma of perpetrating genocide, and living under the daily threat of attack as Palestinians have since 1948, ravages soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads, and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.
For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, they are unambiguous indicators that the Zionist entity is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls on October 7th 2023. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal”.
Refaat Alareer
Time is now and forever on the side of the indefatigable, undefeated Resistance – so too justice, and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanising words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IOF airstrike on December 6th 2023:
“If I must die, let it bring hope.”
Anti-genocide groups are being targeted by media and government
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 2, 2024
Well friends, the verdict is in! If you are opposed to Israel’s slaughter of something like forty thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, or the clearly enunciated plans by that nation’s government to ethnically cleanse the rest of historic Palestine, making the developing Eretz or Greater Israel a legally Jewish state, and are prepared to protest or speak up about it, then you are an antisemite Jew-hater and probably even a holocaust denier. If you are a student demonstrating against the slaughter you are increasingly being referred to by talking heads and the media as a pro-Hamas terrorist. That you must be condemned and sanctioned or even criminalized as a consequence of the labels is only fair in a country that apparently has come to believe that Jews and Israel, uniquely, cannot be criticized due to their cited ad nauseam victimhood and their anointment by God no matter what the First Amendment to the US Constitution relating to freedom of speech might say. After all, it’s just an old piece of paper though it might strike some as a bit odd that a group of people carrying out a genocide are being given a pass while those trying to stop it are being beaten, going to jail and, in some cases, being denied that degree they earned from four years at college.
That antisemites and even evil foreign governments like China are behind the recent student demonstrations over the atrocities in Gaza is gradually becoming part of the new Gospel, ritually endorsed by the cowering university administrators themselves as well as by a large majority in Congress, the White House and the mainstream media. Pro-Palestinian groups are being routinely shut down and their supporters clubbed, gassed and arrested while Jewish groups supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” are being allowed to express their rage violently, as occurred at the University of California in Los Angeles last Tuesday night with police standing by to let the pro-Israel attackers (who were mostly non-students) have access to beat on the pro-Palestinian campers. It was an alignment of hearts and minds that apparently serves both justice and God, who has declared Jews to be his “chosen.” The University of Southern California’s administration has labeled pro-Palestinian groups as “homegrown violent extremists” as an excuse to shut down graduation ceremonies later this month. Governors in Texas and Florida have declared war on those despicable antisemites, insisting that there will be no Jew haters in their states and expressing a willingness to use police and national guard to make sure that that is the case. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has vowed that any student who speaks up or demonstrates against Israel will be expelled from college. National Guard troops have also been called in to clear campuses in a number of other states, with more than a thousand demonstrators being arrested and removed on Tuesday alone.
Some jest how it is Israel that controls much of US foreign policy “wag the dog,” not to mention interfering in elections and dictating what must be taught about world i.e. Jewish history in public schools together with mandatory trips to taxpayer funded holocaust museums that are sprouting up like mushrooms throughout the land. The United States is pledging itself to become antisemitism free as quickly as possible, which is surely the right thing to do given all those holocaust survivors who are living down in Miami and apparently starving to death according to all those ads one sees on TV and hears over the radio featuring dispensationalist hucksters like Mike Huckabee, who should move to Israel immediately since he loves the place so much, taking those of a like mind in Congress with him when he goes.
America under Joe Biden and also undoubtedly under Donald Trump if re-elected is pledged to take the lead in protecting Jews worldwide and will sanction anyone who violates that trust. Who else, for example, is so uber sensitive to Jewish issues as to have a Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues and an Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism entrenched with ambassador status and full staffs and budgets in their Foreign Ministry? Not even the cringing Krauts who routinely let Israel lie to them and intimidate them while still sending millions to the apparently endless series of so-called holocaust survivors in Israel as they also are shipping arms to Tel Aviv to assist in killing more Palestinians. That’s what true friends and allies are for! Britain has Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel which together constitute a majority in Parliament. Both UK party leaders do their best to make love to Israel on a regular basis. And France, Canada and Australia? There is no space between them and Netanyahu. They are as “ironclad” on Israel as Joe Biden constantly professes himself to be!
Greater love hath no man nor no woman to compare to the love of American politicians for Israel! Look what Papa Joe Biden has done for Israel over the past four years out of appreciation for the more than $4 million in donations that he has received from the Israel Lobby in political donations in his career. The $26 billion in the pipeline for Netanyahu is certainly an appropriate reward for the great man who single handedly has prevented Iran from getting a nuclear arsenal, something he has been warning about for the past twenty-five years! Biden’s first rule in politics, which he has been observing for forty years, is always do what Israel wants no matter what the cost because the Jewish state and the Jewish US domestic lobby together with its media wing are crucial to getting nominated and elected!
Only American politicians have the gall to call in heads of major universities and berate them or even call for their firing if they are not doing enough about antisemitism! During an April 17th House hearing on antisemitism US Congressman Rick Allen asked Columbia University President Minouche Shafik if she was concerned that God might “curse” the university. Allen had first quoted a passage from the Bible that says God will curse those who curse Israel and added that he personally views Jerusalem as the “center of the universe”. He also suggested the university should create a course teaching students about the Bible so they can learn about “the wrath of God” and how “indoctrinating” professors fail to tell students that don’t know how they “will be cursed by God”.
If Israel is truly America’s greatest friend in the world and best ally there should be some positive evidence of that in the interaction of the two countries. So let’s take a look in terms of reciprocity relating to what has been happening over the past couple of weeks! First of all, at the macro level, i.e. continuing the fighting, Biden has warned the Israelis that if they invade Rafah they will not be supported. Netanyahu has responded, “We will enter Rafah and obliterate all the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal, to achieve total victory” lest there be any confusion about what he intends to do no matter whether a temporary ceasefire with a hostage exchange is arranged or not. Biden and his amazing talking horse Anthony Blinken did not respond apart from pushing even harder for a ceasefire on Israel’s terms, which would be bad for the Gazans in any event given the key word “temporary” in front of “ceasefire.” Israel will be free to resume killing even though more fighting will be bad for Biden’s electoral prospects in November and he knows it. So does Netanyahu.
Blinken has called for an impartial international investigation of the two mass graves recently discovered at the bombed hospital sites in Gaza, containing four hundred or more bodies, many of which were tortured and/or executed with their hands tied behind their backs or dragged out of hospital beds to be buried still alive in deep pits. Some bodies showed signs of hasty surgery indicating that their organs, a valuable commodity, were removed, a regular signature piece appearing on victims of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Most Moral Army in the World according to that strange looking Franco-Jewish so-called intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy. The Netanyahu and the IDF replied that Israel would do its own investigation saying “What is there to investigate?” Blinken did not object.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and two other senior Israeli officials in connection with war crimes. Netanyahu is reportedly wildly reaching out to his many “friends” to prevent such a development. He tweeted that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.” ICC deliberations are secret so it appears that an American or British jurist has leaked the story to enable Netanyahu to mount a campaign against it. The White House and Congress are already moving full speed ahead to make the warrants go away up to and including threats to directly take on and discredit the court if the Israelis are actually punished. Zionist Speaker Mike Johnson has pressured the White House and State Department to “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination.” The US has never before threatened the ICC and has nothing to gain and much to lose in so doing. Rule of Law anyone? There are reports that prosecutors from the ICC have interviewed medical staff at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals their investigation of other possible war crimes committed by Israel in connection with the mass graves.
To be sure some pushback from inside the US government as well as from voters is developing. Fully 92% of Israelis fully support the slaughter of the Palestinians by Netanyahu and his psychopaths but 72% of Americans do not approve of what is taking place in Gaza, for which Biden will likely pay a heavy electoral price. A group of American lawyers, at least 20 of whom work in the Biden administration, are also calling on the US government to stop selling arms to Israel and are, of course, being ignored. There have also been other lawsuits as well as resignations of senior government officials who have been shocked by the US support of the genocide being conducted against the Palestinians.
Congress has just passed by an overwhelming vote pf 320 to 91 the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which will, inter alia, place antisemitism monitors in American colleges and universities. Criticism of Israel, defined as ipso facto antisemitism, will be part of their brief. It is being pushed by groups like the infamous Anti-Defamation League (ADL) whose leader Jonathan Greenblatt has called pro-Palestinian demonstrators “Jew haters” and has demanded criminal charges. Several congressmen have likewise called for all Palestinians to be killed, but there seems to be no demand for an Anti-Palestinian Act to protect the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu has also called out the demonstrators saying “What’s happening on America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The response of several university presidents was shameful.” By shameful Netanyahu means that the presidents did not crawl enough and beg forgiveness from himself, Israel, and all diaspora Jews as well as from a Zionist Congress and White House.
Joe Biden intends to sign the anti-antisemitism legislation in spite of its direct assault on the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution. The new legislation will join the recently approved FISA renewal that will allow the US government to spy on citizens without a warrant. It should surprise no one to learn that the FISA bill was particularly pushed by Greenblatt and ADL to “protect Jews” by making it easier to spy on suspected antisemites. The US government ban on TikTok was also promoted by ADL due to the fact that the site includes too much information critical of Israeli behavior. Clearly, the US Congress does what Greenblatt wants.
Finally, a US pledge to determine responsibility and sanction perpetrators for the killing of American citizens in Israel, as well as the harassment and killing of Palestinian civilians on the West Bank, has not gone anywhere. The State Department investigation found that five IDF units had committed “individual incidents of gross violations of human rights” prior to October 7th, including the beating to death of an 80 year old Palestinian-American and the sniper execution of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh. The investigation determined that there was one particularly nasty extremist-fundamentalist Netzah Yehuda battalion which had killed the octogenarian and others whose capital offense consisted of walking in their town on the West Bank. They could have joined the roughly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held in “preventive” detention without any charges by the Israeli government, but instead they were picked up on the street, were not charged with anything, and were then beaten and killed. The killing should surprise no one. On Monday Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the death of Gaza saying “There are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. ‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven’ – there’s no place under heaven.” The reference to “Amalek” was from a line in the Hebrew Bible where Amalek was a nation that the Israelites were commanded to destroy, God telling them to “slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir came up with a similar genius solution to the country’s overcrowded prison problem – many of the Palestinians should be released and then killed to make more room.
Blinken, who has not commented on either the Smotrich or Ben-Gvir suggestions, has been sitting on the IDF report but was confronted with a challenge by House Speaker Mike Johnson who threatened to take steps to block any White House action directed against our best friend in the whole world Israel. As a result, the State Department will now neither restrict military aid nor in any way sanction the punishment of any of the units in question, even though it is actually illegal under US law to provide arms to governments committing human rights violations and war crimes. The US backdown also came after Netanyahu stated that the US would not be allowed to in any way punish or interfere with IDF units. Blinken then rolled over completely when confronted by the power of the Jewish state with a State Department spokesperson saying the units “have effectively remediated these violations,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
So killing Americans does not even merit a slap on the wrist if Israel is involved… That is where we Americans now find ourselves: fundamental rights are disappearing and our government and society are victims of Israel and its army of paid-up friends here in the US. Will Americans wake up in time to stop the rot? Not likely, as the mainstream party choices Biden and Trump will do whatever the Jewish state demands. That is our dilemma.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Iran Checkmates US Warmongers, Offers Scholarships for Students Expelled for Protesting Gaza War
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.05.2024
Over 1,200 students at universities across the US have been arrested to date as police moved to violently disperse campus protests calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The past week and a half has seen students put on probation, suspended, and in rare cases even expelled from some of America’s most prestigious educational institutions.
Iran’s Shiraz University is offering scholarships for American and European students facing expulsion for taking part in the wave of anti-war and pro-Palestine protests rocking Western universities.
“Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide similar conditions],” Shiraz University head Mohammad Moazzeni said at a gathering of university students and professors.
Expressing solidarity with students over the bravery they have displayed, Moazzeni blasted Western countries’ police forces’ harsh treatment of the protesters, saying it exposes the true nature of Western civilization.
“They exert a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement and have even threatened to expel the students from universities and hinder their employment in the future, and such autocratic methods show the decline of the global arrogance,” Moazzeni said, using the term Iranian officials and military commanders often use to refer to the US and Israel.
Situated in southern Iran, Shiraz University is recognized in rankings as one of the Islamic Republic’s top educational institutions. Its agricultural sciences and water resources programs presently rank among the top 100 in the world.
Nearly 100,000 foreign students from over 90 countries already study at Iranian universities each year. In 2022, Iranian Organization of Student Affairs deputy-head Mohammad Javad Salmanpour said Iran has the capacity to increase its contingent of foreign students to 250,000 by the year 2026.
Iran is home to over 170 public universities, and some 700 private schools, with its educational institutions boasting strong science, research and technology, health and medical education, engineering, agricultural and animal sciences, Persian literature, Islamic studies, and management programs.
Last year, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute ranked Iran among its top ten powers in critical technology research, with the Islamic Republic touted as a global leader in six of 44 critical technologies – making up between four and seven percent of publications in areas including nanoscale and advanced composite materials and manufacturing, smart materials, advanced aircraft engines, air-independent propulsion, novel antibiotics and antivirals, and biofuels.
Over 1,200 students, faculty and staff at universities across the United States have been arrested to date in anti-Gaza war protests, with police cracking down on protesters demanding a ceasefire, and an end to US military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s operations. Students are also calling on their schools to condemn Israel’s military campaign, to divest from companies linked to Israel, and to discontinue study abroad programs at Israeli universities.
Columbia University warned Tuesday that it would expel students who took over a building, barricaded its entrances and unfurled a Palestinian flag and a “Free Palestine” [banner] from a window. Elsewhere, including Yale, the University of Southern California, and the University of Minnesota, students and staff have faced arrests, suspensions and probation.
In an address on Iranian National Teacher’s Day Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that crackdown on pro-peace and pro-Palestine rallies in the US proves the correctness of Tehran’s policy vis-à-vis Washington. “This matter has revealed to everyone that the US is complicit in the crimes committed by the Zionists in the massacre of the Gazans, which is an unforgivable sin. [The US government] might say something that seems they are showing sympathy at times, but it’s all a lie. This has proven the [correctness of the] Islamic Republic’s stance, negative outlook and lack of trust in the US government,” he said.
Israeli truce offer ‘fails to address’ Hamas’ main terms: Report
The Cradle | May 1, 2024
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar published on 1 May what it says is the document detailing the latest Egyptian–Israeli proposal for a truce and prisoner exchange in the Gaza Strip.
The Al-Akhbar report details the “basic principles for an agreement between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side in Gaza on the exchange of detainees and prisoners between the two sides and the return of sustainable calm.”
The initiative is made up of three stages.
The first stage lasts 40 days and calls for a temporary cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Israeli troops “eastward and away from densely populated areas” towards the border in all areas of Gaza. Israel would cease aerial surveillance of the strip for eight hours a day, and 10 hours on days when prisoners are released.
It also calls for the return of some of the displaced civilians to their homes. Israeli troops would withdraw from Al-Rashid Street to the east near Salah al-Din Street, and the Netzarim Corridor in a manner that allows the delivery of aid and the return of the displaced to their homes.
Israel would allow 500 aid trucks to enter the strip each day, including 250 for the north and 50 fuel trucks. The fuel will be used to operate power stations and equipment for clearing rubble. Efforts to renovate hospitals and bakeries will be ongoing throughout the three stages of the initiative.
Hamas must release at least 33 living Israeli prisoners, including female soldiers, children under the age of 19, the elderly, the sick, and the injured.
For every Israeli female or child released by Hamas, Israel should release 20 minors and female Palestinian prisoners. For every elderly, sick, and injured prisoner, Israel would have to release 20 prisoners over 50 years of age who are also sick and injured, as long as they are not serving a sentence of over 10 years.
For every female soldier released by Hamas, Israel would have to release 20 prisoners serving a life sentence, and another 20 serving up to 10 years, who could be released to Gaza or abroad.
Hamas would provide a list of up to 20 prisoners it wants to be released.
After 16 days, indirect negotiations on a deal to restore “sustainable calm” will take place.
The second stage, lasting 42 days, will see the arrangements for “sustainable calm,“ along with the remaining prisoner exchanges. It also calls for preparation for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the reconstruction of the strip.
The third stage calls for exchanges of bodies from both sides, a five-year reconstruction plan, and a Palestinian vow to refrain from “reconstructing military infrastructure and facilities, and not importing any equipment, raw materials, or other components used for military purposes.”
Al-Akhbar notes in another report released the same day that the initiative falls short of Hamas’ demand for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip. Israeli forces are already not present in residential and densely populated areas, where the truce paper says Israel must withdraw from.
The initiative also fails to guarantee a full and permanent ceasefire, another of the resistance group’s main terms.
“The problem with the mediators in the file of negotiations with the resistance in Gaza is that they act from the position that the enemy is the victor, and that the resistance is in a weak position that requires it to concede and accept whatever is offered to it,” Al-Akhbar writes.
Hamas has not yet issued a formal response to the proposal.
Israeli settlers attack Jordanian aid convoys heading to Gaza
Israelis block trucks carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, in the coastal city of Ashdod, February 1, 2024. (AFP photo)
Press TV – May 1, 2024
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has said two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food and flour have been attacked by Israeli settlers on their way into the besieged Gaza Strip.
The convoys, one taking the Beit Hanoon crossing and another taking the Karem Abu Salem crossing into Gaza, were targeted by the settlers on Wednesday morning.
The assailants dumped some of their cargo and damaged the trucks.
The Jordanian ministry strongly condemned the assault and held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the crime.
Jordan News Agency (Petra) reported that the “failure of the Israeli authorities to provide protection” for the convoys undermine the regime’s “claims and commitments to allowing aid to enter Gaza.”
Israeli settlers have been repeatedly blocking the humanitarian aid trucks heading to Gaza.
The settlers are calling on the regime to prevent the flow of aid supplies to the besieged strip, despite signs of famine across the territory.
People in Gaza are dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition.
The vast majority of humanitarian convoys have been inspected by the Israeli military in order to guarantee that there is no kind of material that can be smuggled into the besieged Palestinian territory.
A senior Hamas official has said any ceasefire in Gaza needs to be permanent. The senior official said reaching a ceasefire deal could not be at any cost.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that the invasion of the southernmost city of Rafah would go ahead as planned.
Workers, trade unionists mobilise to block arms supply sites in the UK
MEMO | May 1, 2024
Workers and trade unionists shut down major UK sites involved in arms supplies to Israel this morning in response to a call to mobilise from Palestinian trade unions for workers to take action.
United under the banner “Workers for a Free Palestine” (WFFP), over 1,000 staffers and trade unionists blockaded the UK Department for Business and Trade in London and three BAE Systems’ arms factories in Wales, Scotland and North-West England to mark International Workers’ Day.
Today marks the 208th day of Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza, which has seen over 35,000 Palestinians killed. The British Government has not implemented an arms embargo on Israel, in contrast to actions taken by its allies, including Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium. In response, British workers are engaging in direct action by initiating their own embargo against arms supplies to Israel.
A trade unionist and organiser for WFFP taking part in the London blockade, Tania, said: “If arms company bosses and Britain’s political elite won’t impose an arms embargo, we, the workers, will enforce it from below.”
“In our most disruptive action yet, a wave of People’s Arms Embargoes is sweeping across England, Scotland and Wales on May Day, as workers and trade unionists shut down arms factories and a government which enables this genocide profiteering and makes the UK directly complicit in these crimes against humanity.”
The blockade at the Department for Business and Trade was organised in support of civil servants who have urged the government to “cease work immediately” on arms export licences to Israel, citing concerns that the administration is complicit in war crimes being committed in Gaza. Their union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), is considering legal measures to protect its members from being compelled to engage in unlawful acts.
The establishment of these “People’s Arms Embargoes” across the UK coincides with a recent decision by a High Court judge to allow a legal challenge against UK arms exports to Israel to proceed, with a hearing scheduled for later this year.
This surge of activism also comes in the wake of a letter signed by 600 lawyers, academics,and retired senior judges, including former Supreme Court justices, which cautions that the UK government’s ongoing arms sales to Israel may violate international law, referencing the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s finding that Israel’s actions in Gaza could constitute genocide.
“When Israel massacres entire families and razes cities to the ground, companies like Elbit Systems, BAE, Leonardo, Thales and Raytheon make vast profits. When we see hospitals turned into mass graves of over 300 people and many of those killed having been stripped of their clothes and had their hands and feet tied, the knowledge that British-made weapons which enable such atrocities are being manufactured on my doorstep makes me feel complicit,” said Aisha, a community worker blockading the arms factory in the north of England.
Aisha added: “I’m taking this action because I simply can’t stomach arms to Israel’s murderous regime being supplied in our name by companies which are subsidised by our taxes – if the company bosses and the government continue to refuse to listen to us, we will keep shutting them down and impose our own arms embargoes.”
Three British aid workers were killed in early April in an Israeli drone strike, parts of which were manufactured in the UK, highlighting the significant impact of UK-made arms in the attacks on Gaza. Since 2015, the UK has authorised arms sales to Israel totalling £487 million ($608 million), a figure that excludes weapons exported under open licences. Additionally, a considerable amount of US military aid is funnelled to Israel via a British air force base in Cyprus, while British military forces have conducted surveillance flights over Gaza to assist Israel’s ongoing military offensive.
Rights group urges probe into Israeli arms that ‘turn victims to ash’
The Cradle | May 1, 2024
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) released a report on 30 April urging an investigation into Israel’s potential use of illegal thermal weapons.
“An international committee of experts must be established to look into the weapons Israel has been using as part of its genocide in the Gaza Strip … including the potential use of bombs that produce such high heat that victims’ bodies evaporate,” the Euro-Med report said.
The rights group cites testimonies received from Gaza which revealed a “horrific new level of killing in the Strip.” The bodies of Palestinian victims appear to have been vaporized by the weapons Israel used against residential buildings.
“Thousands of victims remain missing, either because it was impossible to recover them from under the debris in light of insufficient equipment and technical know-how, or because their bodies were either hidden by the Israeli army or no longer exist,” the Euro-Med report reads.
The report continues to say, “A number of the victims killed in these horrifying Israeli raids on residential buildings have vanished and may have turned to ashes, raising questions about the type of bombs used in the attacks.”
Thermobaric weapons, also referred to as vacuum bombs, are two-stage munitions. The first charge disperses a fine aerosol cloud of materials ranging from carbon-based fuel to metal particles. The second charge ignites the materials used, creating a fireball, shock wave, and vacuum as it sucks up the surrounding oxygen.
The blast from these weapons can last significantly longer than conventional explosives, enabling it to vaporize human bodies.
Mass graves in Gaza hospitals previously raided by Israel show that civil defense staff found “bodies without skin,” according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
According to the Euro-Med report, “The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”
Israel has also illegally deployed white phosphorus weapons on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.
According to a Washington Post analysis, the white phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon’s south were supplied to Israel by the US.
Palestine’s Agricultural Work Committees Union said that Israel intentionally uses chemical weapons on farmlands in the Gaza Strip to contaminate its soil, posing an increased cancer risk to farmers.
The agricultural union’s lobbying director, Moayyad Bsharat, also points to Washington as the supplier of such munitions to Tel Aviv in an interview with Anadolu Agency.
Bsharat stressed how chemical attacks render Gaza’s soil unusable for five years, and effectively harm its food security and public health.
Report of the Independent Task Force on National Security Memorandum-20 Regarding Israel
By Noura Erakat and Josh Paul | Just Security | April 24, 2024
In early February, we formed the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, whose report we provided to the Biden Administration on April 18. The National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), adopted by President Joe Biden, directs the Department of State to seek assurances from partners involved in conflict and receiving U.S. military grant assistance that they would abide by U.S. and international law and also requires the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress within 90 days on the extent to which such partners are abiding by their assurances.
Though delegated as a task to the Executive Branch, the administration’s disregard for credible media reporting as well as recommendations from its own experts within the State Department, alleging Israeli abuses, catalyzed us to act.
The Task Force, which has worked on a voluntary basis, consists of experts on U.S. and international law, U.S. security assistance, and U.S. military best practices. For the past two months, we have combed through thousands of lines of data from credible nongovernmental organizations, ranging from human rights watchdogs to aid organizations working on the ground in Gaza.
The final report features sixteen clear, credible, and compelling incidents that should certainly be included in the administration’s upcoming reporting to Congress as well as an 18-page appendix of additional incidents worthy of examination. It also identifies multiple restrictions on humanitarian assistance, including strikes by the IDF, that trigger Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (which bars military assistance to states impeding U.S. humanitarian aid) and should be reportable to Congress by the Departments of State and/or Defense under the terms of NSM-20.
Our findings were striking. Though Israel has attributed the 34,000 Palestinian casualties, 70 percent of whom are women and children, to alleged human shielding by Hamas, we found that in 11 out of the 16 incidents we analyzed, Israel did not even publicly identity a military target or attempt to justify the strike. Of the remaining five incidents, Israel publicly named targets with verification in two incidents, but no precautionary warning was given and we assess the anticipated civilian harm was known and excessive.
In one of the worst incidents in a strike on Gaza City on October 25, 2023, Israel nearly flattened the entire neighborhood of Al Yarmouk, including seven residential towers. In just the Al Taj residential tower, the bombing killed 91 Palestinians, including 28 women and 39 children. Israel’s only explanation was that a Hamas tunnel ran beneath the neighborhood. Not only did this attack disregard the duty to take precautionary measures and the duty to refrain from an attack where the civilian harm exceeds the military objective to be achieved, it suggests that Israel had the authority to bomb nearly all of Gaza in similar fashion which lay above 350 miles of subterranean tunnels.
Aware of the controversial terrain of international humanitarian law in asymmetric warfare, two-thirds of our report documents violations under applicable U.S. law or policy, including civilian harm mitigation in U.S. military best practices and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act mandating no military support be given to states restricting access to humanitarian aid. In his analysis, our expert on U.S. targeting came to the same conclusion as did Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said that the U.S. military would “absolutely not” systematically conduct strikes with a well understood high risk of civilian casualties, as the IDF have continuously.
Our aggregate data demonstrates a broader context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of U.S. and international law, due to reliance on the steady and sure flow of U.S. armaments. According to a high ranking former IDF officer, Israel’s combat could have achieved similar military outcomes “with 10 percent of the destruction [Israel has] caused.” He attributes this “reckless conduct” to” an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance [Israel’s military operations].” Indeed, since October 7, the United States has approved over 100 Foreign Military Sales arms transfers to Israel, two of them using an emergency authority to bypass Congressional review, and none of them accompanied by any conditions or “red lines” on usage despite conditionality inherent in U.S. laws and policies.
Our findings echo the concerns recently articulated by forty House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who have demanded that Biden halt weapons transfers to Israel. As their letter noted, “it is critical to ensure that the U.S. government is fully utilizing the expertise of State Department and DoD officials and legal experts, [including] important intelligence community assessments and data, in thoroughly assessing Israel’s actions in Gaza.”
It is our hope the Task Force’s work facilitates the drafting efforts currently under way within the administration to meet the reporting requirements of NSM-20, resulting in the overdue enforcement of applicable U.S. law as it relates to arms transfers and security assistance, and using all available means to remove all restrictions on the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
The mounting evidence before the Biden administration now pales only in comparison to the humanitarian crisis afflicting Palestinians in Gaza. As the Task Force’s work demonstrates, the facts could not be more clear. It is now up to the Biden administration to act on them.
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From the Archives
Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran War Confusion & Mixed Messaging /Lt Col Daniel Davis
- Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction
- Met refuses to probe British nationals accused of war crimes in Gaza
- Hezbollah denies activity in Syria amid persistent and false claims
- Melkite bishops concerned over Israeli demolitions in South Lebanon
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
- UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report
- Wheels Down in Tbilisi: Was a Routine U.S. Military Stopover a Deliberate Signal to Iran?
- Trump’s second strike on Iran would be suicidal. But that’s not the reason why he won’t go ahead with it
- Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value
- If Americans Knew
- An All-American Retort to Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon
- How Dr. Adam Hamawy’s experience as a surgeon in Gaza inspired him to run for Congress
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- With World Distracted by War, Extremist Settlers Intensify Attacks in West Bank
- Israel’s brutality toward Gaza flotilla activists – 3 articles
- “Spitting and humiliation are daily. People are afraid to walk in Jerusalem with Christian symbols.”
- How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World
- 1 in 5 amputees in Gaza is a child, UN warns amid prosthetic care crisis
- 6,000 Gazans lack prosthetic and/or rehabilitation care – Daily Update
- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- No Tricks Zone
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- 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
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