The hunger killing Gaza’s children has a clear cause that few are willing to name out loud
By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 10, 2024
Following the February 29 Israeli slaughter of at least 115 starving Palestinians lined up for food aid, there was little or no outrage by the same Western media which would have howled if the perpetrator were Russia or Syria.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, early morning on Thursday, February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting just southwest of Gaza City for desperately needed food aid. As a result, 115 civilians were killed and over 750 wounded.
Popular US commenter Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with award-winning analyst Professor Jeffery Sachs, “Innocent Gaza civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down, by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they’ve engaged in.”
The official Israeli version of events, unsurprisingly, puts the blame on the Palestinians themselves. The deaths and injuries were supposedly caused by a stampede, and the Israeli soldiers only fired when they felt they were endangered by the crowd. The BBC even cited one army lieutenant as saying that troops had “cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots.” Mark Regev, a special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, went as far as to tell CNN that Israeli troops had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from “Palestinian armed groups.”
Testimonies from survivors and doctors tell a different story, though, saying the majority of those treated after the incident had been shot by Israeli forces. Legacy media reports, however, use characteristically neutral wording when evidence starts to stack up against Israel. “112 dead in chaotic scenes as Israeli troops open fire near aid trucks, say Gaza officials,” a Guardian headline reads. Palestinians always seem to just “die,” not get killed, and Israeli troops seem to have just “opened fire” nearby. The skewed wording conventions persist even despite the attribution to Palestinian officials present in that same headline – officials like the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which was quite clear in accusing Israel of perpetrating a ”massacre” as part of a “genocidal war.”
The article does eventually cite the acting Director of al-Awda hospital as saying most of the 161 casualties treated appeared to have been shot. The confusing headline was likely intentional, counting on most people not bothering to read the article in full.
In a report published on March 3, Euro-Med stated members of its field team were present at the time of the incident and “documented Israeli tanks firing heavily towards Palestinian civilians while trying to receive humanitarian aid.” The report goes on to cite Dr Jadallah Al-Shafi’i, head of nursing at Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, saying, “paramedics and rescue workers were among the victims,” and that at Shifa “they observed dozens of dead and injured, hit by Israeli gunfire.”
The report also cites Dr Amjad Aliwa, an emergency specialist at Shifa who was also on site when Israel opened fire. According to Aliwa, the Israeli fire began, “as soon as the trucks arrived on Thursday at 4 am”
But the February 29 massacre, tragic as it is, is only a part of the current stage of Israel’s war on Gaza: the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. And like the massacre itself, the whole issue is being subjected to the hands-off wording treatment by establishment media.
On February 29, the New York Times published an article whose headline, “Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children,” suggests starvation is a mysterious malicious force with a will of its own, skirting the mention of the Israeli siege as its obvious cause.
Again, as with the Guardian article, a few paragraphs in, the NYT piece does state that the “hunger is a man-made catastrophe,” describing how Israeli forces prevent food delivery and how Israeli bombardments make aid distribution dangerous.
As Professor Sachs stated, ”… Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved! I’m not using an exaggeration, I’m talking literally starving a population. Israel is a criminal, is in non-stop, war crime, status now. I believe in genocidal status.”
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the February 29 massacre was not the first such incident, and likely not the last. A thread on Twitter/X outlines this, noting, ”Before yesterday’s “Flour Massacre”, the IDF has been shooting indiscriminately for WEEKS at starved Gazans awaiting aid trucks at the exact same spot, virtually every single day!”
The thread (warning: graphic images!), compiled by Gazan analyst and Euro-Med chief of communications Muhammad Shehada, gives examples of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinians every single day in the week prior to February 29.
You can bet that, were these Syrian or Russian soldiers firing on starving civilians, the outrage would be front page, 24/7, for weeks. Scratch that, they wouldn’t even have to do it – just a hint of an accusation would have been enough to get the presses going.
Starvation in Syria was another matter
The NYT article mentioned above notes that “Reports of death by starvation are difficult to verify from a distance.” But ‘verifying from a distance’ is precisely what the NYT and other Western media did repeatedly in Syria over the years.
In areas occupied by (then) al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam, and the other extremist terrorist gangs which the West and corporate media dubbed “rebels,” food aid was always taken by the respective terrorists and withheld from the civilian population, causing starvation in some districts. Madaya, to the west of Damascus, eastern Aleppo, and later eastern Ghouta were districts most loudly campaigned over in legacy media, providing covering fire for the broader US-led campaign to overthrow the Syrian government.
Backing the claims that the government was starving civilians were mostly “unnamed activists” or activists whose allegiance to Nusra, or even ISIS, was very overt.
As I would see and hear whenever one of these regions was liberated, ample food and medicine had been sent in, but civilians never saw it. Time and again, in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, al-Waer, eastern Ghouta, to name key areas, civilians complained that terrorist factions hoarded food and medicine, and if they sold it to the population, it was at extortionist prices people couldn’t afford.
In the old city of Homs in 2014, back then dubbed by legacy media as the “capital of the revolution,” starved residents I met told me the West’s precious “rebels” had stolen every morsel of food from them, stealing anything of value as well.
Yet, media headlines about these regions screamed about starvation, outright blaming the Syrian government, and were accompanied by disturbing images of emaciated civilians (some of which were not even from Syria) meant to evoke strong emotions among readers and viewers. The same media largely opts not to show you gaunt, starving, Palestinians in Gaza.
Tellingly, Syrian towns surrounded by terrorist forces, besieged, bombed, sniped and starved, got virtually no media coverage. It didn’t fit NATO’s narrative of “rebels”=good, Assad=bad.
But in Gaza the world watches in real time as Palestinians die from the ongoing, preventable, starvation.
Some days ago, the CEO of Medical aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, in an interview with CNN, named Israel as the cause of starvation in Gaza.
“It’s very simple: it’s because the Israeli military won’t let it in. We could end this starvation tomorrow very simply if they would just let us have access to people there. But it’s not being allowed. This is what they said [on October 9], ‘Nothing will go in’,” Ward said.
She described the starvation as “the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded. What that means is that children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen. And we could finish it tomorrow, we could save them all. But we’re not being able to.”
This is echoed by UNICEF. The press-release for its February 2024 report notes that 15.6 % (one in six children) under two years of age are “acutely malnourished” in Gaza’s north. “Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment,” UNICEF notes.
Even worse, “since the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today,” UNICEF warns, likewise noting the rapid increase of malnutrition is “dangerous and entirely preventable.”
Professor Sachs made an important point: “This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self control in Israel, there is none… They believe in ethnic cleansing or worse. And it is the United States which is the sole support… that is not stopping this slaughter.”
Air-dropping paltry amounts of food aid into Gaza is not the answer. It both legitimizes Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza and also makes those Palestinians who run toward the aid sitting ducks for the Israeli army to maim or kill. The only solution is to immediately open the borders and allow in the hundreds of aid trucks parked in Egypt. And end the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Zionist Jews in Biden administration calling the shots on Israeli war on Gaza
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | March 10, 2024
One of the key but underreported factors of the unwavering US support for the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza is the overwhelming presence of Zionist Jews in the Joe Biden administration.
These Zionist Jews exert enormous influence in the American power corridors and enjoy unconditional support from the US president who has on numerous occasions boasted of being a “Zionist” himself.
The presence and influence of Zionist Jews in the White House has always been a point of discussion, however, since the events of October 7, it has manifested itself in many ways.
Biden administration’s vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council, which drew widespread condemnation from pro-Palestine groups, rekindled the debate about the Zionist influence.
Raising the issue of the dominance of Zionist Jews in the US administration and policy circles is often seen through the prism of “anti-Semitism” in the West, even though the same people paradoxically like to boast about the disproportionate number of Jews in other fields.
The Zionist Jewishness of Biden’s cabinet was pointed out recently by The Forward, a progressive media for a Jewish American audience, as well as the Israeli right-wing newspaper Times of Israel.
Being a Jew should not be seen as a problem, but those in the Biden administration have clearly exhibited the tendencies of Zionism – not only justifying the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza but also lobbying for more financial and military aid to the occupying regime.
There are also non-Jewish Zionists whose support is motivated by Christian Zionism or belonging to pro-Israel lobbies, a common case in the ranks of the Republican Party.
The problem lies in the fact that everyone in the Biden administration is a radical Zionist who will uncompromisingly justify Israeli war crimes, with slight disagreements over relatively minor issues, such as illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In the American mainstream media, voting in the UN Security Council and supporting the genocidal destruction of Gaza is treated as common sense and a natural course of action.
Biden made no secret of his Zionist inclinations, uttering the words “I am a Zionist”. And he has proved it through numerous pro-Israeli activities in his decades-long political career.
One of them is the placement of Jewish Zionists in top positions in his administration, which at the beginning of 2021 evoked a popular joke on social networks that the West Wing would have a “minyan.”
The Hebrew term “minyan” means the minimum number of males (10) required to constitute a representative “community of Israel” for liturgical purposes.
Biden’s initial lineup includes Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Merrick Garland as Attorney General, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Ronald Klain as White House Chief of Staff, Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary for Health, Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, and Janet Yellen as Secretary of the Treasury.
One level down are David Cohen as Deputy CIA Director, Eric Lander as science and technology adviser, Ann Neuberger as Deputy National Security Adviser, and Wendy Sherman as Deputy Secretary of State.
In the meantime, Victoria Nuland took the position of Undersecretary of State for political affairs, Ed Siskel as White House counsel, and Klain was replaced by Jeff Zients as chief of staff.
Others appointed by Biden include Daniel Shapiro as a special liaison to Israel on Iran, Ned Price as spokesman for the Department of State, Jennifer Klein as executive director of the White House Gender Policy Council, as well as a large number of ambassadors.
The Zionist envoys include Michael Adler, David Cohen, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Garcetti, Mark Gitenstein, Amy Gutmann, Jonathan Kaplan, Yael Lempert, Alan Leventhal, Randi Levine, Jack Lew, Jack Markell, Constance Milstein, Marc Nathanson, Marc Ostfield, David Pressman, Daniel Rosenblum, and Marc Stanley, among others.
Blinken, the top American diplomat, comes from a Zionist family. His grandfather Maurice was one of the early American Zionists and the founder of the American Palestine Institute, in the years before the declaration of the Zionist entity.
His institute funded economists to prepare a report on the economic viability of such an entity and lobbied Washington to politically support its creation.
Following Blinken’s appointment as the top US diplomat, replacing Mike Pompeo, the Israeli media praised his and Biden’s close relations with Tel Aviv during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, noting their “lifelong support for Israel and its security.”
During the Obama administration, Blinken often justified Israeli aggressions in the region with the hackneyed phrase “the right to self-defense” and praised Trump for strengthening Israel’s regional alliances.
He was a close confidant of the Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer who could call him in the middle of the night for pro-Israeli services, such as lobbying hard to have Israel’s Iron Dome air military system financed with American taxpayer money.
In his first days in office, he also made it known that the new Biden administration would support earlier Trump’s decision and keep the American embassy to the occupied territories in occupied al-Quds.
Last year, during the bickering between Biden and Netanyahu, Blinken pledged enduring US ties with Israel, seeing it as a far more important ally than NATO member Turkey.
As for Mayorkas, even the Israeli media boasted of his strong family ties to Tel Aviv and praised him for the data-sharing pact between the United States and the Zionist regime.
Even greater Zionist credit for intelligence sharing goes to CIA deputy chief David Cohen, whose career under Obama focused on sanctioning Israel’s enemies.
Thus, it is no surprise that Americans are bankrolling the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza while harping about ceasefire and aid airdrops to hoodwink the international community.
The ICC: A Tool of Western Aggression
By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 09.03.2024
The new charges made by the International Criminal Court against two Russian military officers, Sergey Kobylash, commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ Long-Range Aviation, and Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Viktor Sokolov, reinforces the role of the ICC as a tool of Western propaganda and aggression and makes a mockery of its claimed role as an international court.
Mr. Khan, the latest iteration of ICC prosecutor, is a British lawyer who apparently never learned about the role of justice when he attended law school. His March 5th statement claims that the ICC has jurisdiction over Ukraine and Russia and that the officers charged directed attacks on civilian infrastructure, all of which is false. His political bias is established with the following statement,
“In our application for these warrants, my Office again underlined that these acts were carried out in the context of the acts of aggression committed by Russian military forces against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which began in 2014.”
That statement is a bald-faced lie. It was not Russia that committed aggression against Ukraine in 2014. It was the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, France and the other NATO allies who committed aggression against Ukraine and its people by staging a coup d’état in 2014; overthrowing the elected government and installing in its place a NATO puppet regime riddled with Nazis. That alone should shock the world. Yet in the West, nothing is said about it. Many do not even know it took place. The facts have been suppressed and distorted by the propaganda they concocted to cover their crime of aggression, so they have labelled the brave resistance to the NATO-Nazi coup by the citizens of Ukraine located in the eastern provinces, as “Russian” aggression. Only a charlatan, having regard of all the facts, could come to that conclusion. It is the war begun by the Kiev regime against the Ukrainian people that Russia was finally forced to step in order to stop it.
But Mr. Khan seems undismayed that he will be labelled a charlatan, since this is the second set of charges he has filed against Russians, the first set being against President Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Ombudswoman for Children’s Rights, some months ago.
The rapidity with which Mr. Khan has acted against Russia stands in stark contrast to the complete refusal by the ICC to lay charges against Israeli leaders and military officers for the genocide they are committing against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, despite the fact on November 17, 2023 Mr. Khan, on receipt of referrals from South Africa and other states that Israel was committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity in the Occupied territories, as far back as 2006, stated that his office was investigating the matter. Yet, despite the International Court of Justice ruling that there is plausible evidence that Israel is committing genocide, despite the referrals from other nation states since then, as well as many individual complaints by world citizens and groups demanding charges be laid, he has done absolutely nothing. In effect, by his refusal to charge Israel leaders and officials, he aids and abets their actions by granting them immunity from prosecution.
Yet, in the case of Russia, over which the ICC has no jurisdiction, he acts with the utmost speed, ever ready to please his masters in the West, who need something, anything to pull the wool over the eyes of their citizens in the face of the great defeat they are suffering in their war against Russia in Ukraine. He is always ready to oblige them.
The fundamental problem of the ICC is that it is not a world court. It only claims to be, while representing the interests of the nations that promoted it, even the USA, which refuses to subject its citizens to its jurisdiction. It is a “court” to be used for western interests, no other. It was not created by a world government. It was created by a treaty drafted by representatives of a group of nations referred to as the Assembly of States Parties. The process of drafting the treaty was long and complex; however, it is necessary to point out that it is recognised that no single nation could purport to create such a court claiming to have international jurisdiction, and what a single nation cannot do, no group of nations, however composed, has the authority to create such an entity either.
The claim of the ICC to universal jurisdiction is a consequence of its ability to assume jurisdiction even in matters concerning individuals who are citizens of nation states that are not parties to the treaty. We have seen this with the charges laid against Russians for crimes allegedly committed in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a Party to the Treaty of Rome, and therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction over the citizens of either state. However, the Ukrainian government, established by the NATO coup-d’état of 2014, invoked the Acceptance of Jurisdiction clause in the ICC Statute to afford the ICC with jurisdiction over Russia. Article 12 of the Statute states,
“Article 12
Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction
3. If the acceptance of a State, which is not a Party to this Statute, is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with respect to the crime in question. The accepting State shall cooperate with the Court without any delay or exception in accordance with Part 9.”
This has two effects. Firstly, the phrase “crime in question” means that, in the case of Ukraine, for example, the ICC accepted a letter from the regime installed by the coup-d’état, granting the ICC limited jurisdiction-only over the alleged crime that was referred to the ICC by Ukraine. The crimes of Ukraine in the conflict, committed for ten years against the peoples of the Donbass and against civilians in Russia, are conveniently ignored. The Kiev regime states the ICC has no jurisdiction to consider them, and the ICC accepts this farce.
The result of accepting a letter of limited jurisdiction, that is a letter purporting to grant jurisdiction to the ICC over Russian “crimes,” while refusing to grant the ICC jurisdiction over Ukrainian crimes, is the selective prosecution of citizens of one state while granting immunity from prosecution of the other state. This is a legal and moral absurdity. The very idea of justice, in the sense of equality before the law, is negated, but more, it affords the Ukrainian regime an immunity from prosecution which provides encouragement to commit further crimes of its own on its claimed territories and in Russia. Once again, as in the Israeli case, we see that the ICC is acting as an enabler of war crimes instead of bringing to justice those committing them.
On May 21, 2023, the Russians charged the prosecutor and judges of the ICC for crimes involved in the issuance of the ICC warrants against Russians. The Russian Investigative Committee stated that,
“The ICC prosecutor is charged under part 2 of article 299, part 1 of article 30, and part of article 360 of the Russian Criminal Court (criminal prosecution of a person known to be innocent, as well as preparation for an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations). The judge is charged under part 2 of article 301, part 1 of article 30, and part 2 of article 360 of the Russian Criminal Court (knowingly illegal detention and preparation for an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations).”
“Both have been put on a wanted list.”
We can expect further charges to be laid against Mr. Khan and the judges concerned.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events.
Israeli rabbi calls for genocide of all Palestinians in Gaza
Al Mayadeen | March 8, 2024
The mass killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “is permissible according to the halakhic principles,” the head of a Jewish religious school in occupied Yafa, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, stated according to Israeli news website Ynet.
A recording of the extremist’s answers to questions on the Gaza Strip was published a few hours ago on YouTube and is available for the public.
Halakha or Jewish Law, which also translates to “the way to behave or act,” is held as divine law among Orthodox Jews such as Mali, who called for the extermination of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
When asked about what should be done to infants and the elderly, Mali simply answered, “The same.”
Mali founded the religious school Shirat Moshe and has called upon his students to strictly follow the orders of the Israeli occupation forces, saying that if IOF soldiers do not kill Palestinians, then Palestinians will kill them. It is worth noting that Shirat Moshe students serve in the IOF, despite other schools of Orthodox Judaism refusing military service.
The extremist stressed that the main principle of the war on Gaza is that “no soul remains alive,” urging Israelis to carry on the genocide against Palestinians.
Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing
By Jonathan Cook | March 8, 2024
A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:
1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.
Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.
2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.
The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather than the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.
With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business as usual in Gaza afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.
3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.
4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.
5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.
And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.
No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.
He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
China’s foreign minister calls Israeli war on Gaza “disgrace for civilization”
Palestinian Information Center – March 7, 2024
BEIJING – China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has condemned Israel’s war in Gaza as a “disgrace for civilization” and reiterated Beijing’s calls for an “immediate ceasefire.”
“It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped,” Wang told journalists at a press conference on Wednesday.
“No reason can justify the continuation of the conflict, and no excuse can justify the killing of a civilian population,” Wang said.
“The international community must act urgently, making an immediate ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities an overriding priority, and ensuring humanitarian relief an urgent moral responsibility.”
Beijing’s top diplomat also said China supports “full” UN membership for a Palestinian state. “We support Palestine becoming a formal UN member,” Wang said.
“The catastrophe in Gaza once again reminds the world that the fact that the Palestinian territories have been occupied for a long time can no longer be ignored,” he said.
“The long-cherished wish of the Palestinian people to establish an independent country can no longer be evaded, and the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people cannot continue for generations without being corrected,” he added.
Beijing has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since the start of the current Israel war on Gaza in October 2023.
China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Iran: A New US-Israeli Provocation
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 07.03.2024
In an exclusive interview with Tehran Times, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Pejman Shirmardi, rejected claims that his country’s nuclear program is not fully transparent. “From day one, we have made it clear that our nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful. Every time the IAEA has asked us for clarification, we have given them answers. Nothing has changed. Tell us what part of our nuclear program isn’t transparent, and we will prove that it is. As the leader of the Islamic Revolution once said, ‘The West knows very well that it is lying about our nuclear activities,’” the Iranian said.
Condoning Israel’s Nuclear Policy
Pejman Shirmardi made the remark after IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, during a summit earlier this month, accused Iran of not being fully transparent about Iran’s relationship with his agency. Even the Western press, however, has picked up on the background to this opinion, writing that the IAEA director general’s reaction is most likely that he chose to ignore Israel’s alarming nuclear threats against the Palestinians in recent months and to shift the focus, as usual, to Iran. Israeli National Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu has twice since the beginning of the Gaza war proposed destroying the Strip and the Palestinian civilians living there with nuclear weapons. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the Israeli minister’s statements clearly confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons.
“Against the background of Israel’s historical policy of uncertainty about possessing nuclear weapons, these statements not only explicitly confirm the country’s possession of such weapons, but also demonstrate a willingness to seriously consider their use in completely inadequate scenarios,” the diplomat said.
“This is a very serious reason to think about where the extremist representatives of Israel may be led by the realization of their permissiveness in the conditions of virtually unlimited patronage from the West,” she stressed. In this regard, many noted that IAEA inspectors have never attempted to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities, despite repeated calls from countries in the region that do not feel safe because of the warmongering policies of the Israeli regime and the West behind it.
It should be noted that experts estimate that the Israeli regime has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal because of its deliberate ambiguity regarding its nuclear policy. It has repeatedly refused inspections of its military nuclear facilities, not to mention its refusal to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Yet Iran, as a decent and responsible member of the global community, is a party to the NPT and has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively civilian in nature and subject to the strictest UN oversight in the world. The policy of double standards is crystal clear. When it comes to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel is absolved of responsibility. As a signatory to the NPT, Iran has a peaceful program for energy and medical purposes, yet it is subject to the most stringent inspection program in IAEA history. And it is against the Islamic Republic, not its counterpart, that the West has imposed the most painful sanctions regime. Israel, with hundreds of nuclear warheads, is not subject to any punitive measures. On the contrary, the regime is endlessly rewarded with more military weapons (paid for by US taxpayers), more money, and more diplomatic and political support.
Grossi’s Hypocritical Policy
The policy of hypocrisy and double standards is clearly seen in the behavior of the Western proxy, IAEA Director General Grossi, which was clearly manifested in his repeated statements on inspections of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. Anytime inspections were conducted in Iran and official reports confirmed Iran’s compliance with its obligations, Grossi spoke in Tehran and said that everything was going on normally, giving no cause for concern. However, upon his return from Iran and after accusations were made against Iran by the West and especially the US, he consistently changed his viewpoint without proper explanation. He began proclaiming Iran to be a violator, accusing it of not following rules that no one seemed to know. A number of media publications, especially Israeli media, mentioned Grossi’s changing narrative after his return from Iran, noting that he suddenly started criticizing the Iranian side, contrary to previous statements, accusing them of violating international rules.
Thus, based on relevant publications in media all over the world, it is clear that Grossi has repeatedly changed his point of view after the inspections in Iran. He, being a supporter of dialog and cooperation, suddenly started accusing Iran of violating the rules without explaining his position in sufficient detail. This raises serious questions about his integrity and objectivity.
This ambivalent behavior has its own underlying causes, which can be interpreted in various ways. Perhaps political or economic factors influenced Grossi to change his position on Iran. He may have been subjected to pressure or manipulation, causing him to change his point of view. In general, Grossi’s dislike of Iranian inspections is based more on political bias than on facts. However, the change in his position after his visit to Tehran raises questions about his true motives and possible reasons for his ambivalent attitude.
The complicated state of relations between the IAEA and Grossi personally with Iran is a relevant and complex issue in today’s geopolitical arena. Although Grossi, as a professional, is supposed to be objective in his assessments, his harsh bias against Iran can be explained by several factors. First, Grossi, as a security and political expert, is aware of the many factors negatively affecting the stability and security of the region. Iran, in his opinion, is playing an active role in the Syrian conflict by supporting the Assad government and engaging in hostilities. In addition, Iran is suspected by the West of developing nuclear weapons, although there is no evidence to that effect. In light of these circumstances, Grossi probably sees Iran as a potential threat to stability in the region. Second, Grossi may likely be influenced by a number of domestic factors that affect his personal beliefs and interests. For example, he may have strong ties to states and regions that have strained relations with Iran. This connection is extremely personal and may be for historical, religious, or commercial reasons. Such ties may make him more likely to deny or exaggerate Iran’s vulnerability. Finally, Grossi, as the person responsible for communicating information and analysis, may face public and political pressures that may affect his objectivity.
However, despite these factors, as a professional, Grossi must constantly strive for objectivity and carefully weigh all facts and arguments. As a result, Grossi’s subsequent analyses and assessments should be based on facts, taking into account a variety of viewpoints and striving for objectivity as an international UN official serving the interests of the world, not just the whims of the United States.
Provocations of the United States and Israel
With the Israeli regime bogged down in Gaza, the Israeli and US intelligence communities are busy planning a new nuclear crisis with Iran that will overshadow the catastrophic humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in the Palestinian enclave. It has been a relatively long time since Iran’s nuclear program last made global headlines. The last instance of constructive diplomacy between Tehran and Washington occurred when the two sides successfully negotiated a deal to exchange prisoners and release Iranian assets frozen in South Korean bank accounts. The deal was a kind of temporary détente, partly aimed at preserving the status quo and preventing escalation. The unexpected operation by Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip on October 7 and the Israeli atrocities that followed seemed to further set back the already stagnant nuclear diplomacy.
Now things are changing again, but not in the direction of problem-solving, but towards creating a new nuclear crisis, the consequences of which are expected to make the whole drama in Gaza trivial. While there is nothing new in Iran’s nuclear activities, there is a growing trend on Israel’s part to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran ahead of the next meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency scheduled for March 6. Articles are appearing in the Western media suggesting that Israel, together with the US, is pushing the world toward a new nuclear crisis, this time accusing Iran of enriching uranium to 90 percent, the weapons-grade purity level. By making such dangerous accusations against Tehran, they seek to create a hostile atmosphere with the ultimate goal of censuring Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting.
According to information obtained by the Tehran Times, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has personally approached the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about the matter, saying he will advance the planned crisis through hype and convince the CIA at some point in the future. Mired in the quagmire of Gaza, Netanyahu feels increasingly isolated domestically and internationally given his disastrous war in the Strip. As the turmoil over Rafah continues to plague Tel Aviv, Netanyahu has floated the idea of igniting a nuclear crisis with Iran, a scheme designed to divert world attention away from Gaza and undermine the Biden administration by portraying it as weak and unable to deal with Iran’s nuclear program.
Whether the Israeli regime will succeed in provoking a global crisis with Iran through machinations remains to be seen. Iran has so far refrained from any strong negative initiatives and, most recently, even expressed hope that the now defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would come back to life. In addition, Iran has begun preparations for the upcoming visit of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran, during which a number of issues of mutual interest are expected to be addressed. The planned escalation of tensions at the next IAEA Board of Governors meeting, however, could derail ongoing efforts to strengthen nuclear de-escalation.
Biden Regime Exploited ‘Loophole’ to Sell Weapons to Israel – Report
By Mary Manley – Sputnik – 07.03.2024
The US has reportedly made more than 100 “quiet” weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. Despite half-baked calls from the administration for Israel to spare civilian lives, the US has continued to restock their supply of weapons, helping to create one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.
The sales were reportedly made in silence—as they escaped congressional oversight—meaning they were processed without any public debate because they each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to notify Congress, according to a Washington, DC newspaper, which first reported the story.
But altogether, the weapons sales make up a massive amount of arms for a country that has been accused of committing a genocide.
The sales reportedly included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. Public sales to Israel already included: $320 million in precision bomb kits in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106 million and $147.5 million of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December. The deliveries made in December were made under an emergency authority.
“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.
Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden Administration’s response to the conflict, said that the “arms transfer process lacks transparency by design”. He argued that foreign military sales—which is largely financed by more than $3.3 billion in US taxpayer funds—is something that US citizens deserve to know.
Matt Miller, the US State Department Spokesperson, said the Biden Administration has “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.” He also said that US officials have “engaged Congress” on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since the conflict in Gaza first began.
But some US lawmakers, particularly those who belong to the same political party as US President Joe Biden, are fed up with the administration’s decisions.
“You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like, ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” said Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, during an interview.
“These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” Castro added, in reference to Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah where nearly 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are now seeking refuge.
Castro and other House Democrats have also spearheaded a group that sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday, telling him that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could violate the administration’s requirement that US military aid be used in accordance with international law.
And Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who is also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide details on the shared intelligence between Israel and the US including an “explanation of any restrictions the US has place on the Israeli government’s use of the intelligence we share”.
“I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” added Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank.
In January, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Israel to take immediate measures to reduce the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, and to prevent the genocide of Palestinians after South Africa brought the case to their attention. At the same time, The Defense for Children International-Palestine, an international NGO, also claimed that the Biden Administration violated the Genocide Convention by supplying weapons and other military equipment to Israel’s military.
The war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023 has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians as a famine now looms over the region. Reports of Israeli soldiers targeting civilians and preventing them from being able to access aid has led many experts to accuse Israel of committing a genocide against the Palestinians.
Featured Video
Col Douglas Macgregor: If We Go Back To BOMBING IRAN
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Russia says disputes over Iran, Greenland and Canada distract from Palestine
- Russia Not Ruling Out West’s Preparing Another ‘Bloody Hoax’ in Ukraine – Diplomat
- Iraq, Pakistan ink Hormuz safe passage deals with Iran: Report
- CIA Waging Covert War Against Drug Cartels in Mexico – Reports
- ‘Utterly baseless’: Iran rejects Kuwait’s claim of hostile plot on its island
- Hidden deep in an NPR story about a man who threatened to kill Jews at Cornell… He admits he did it to benefit Israel
- Col Douglas Macgregor: If We Go Back To BOMBING IRAN
- Trump admits US sent weapons to fuel riots, terrorism inside Iran
- Iran sues US at Hague tribunal, demands war reparations for June 2025 aggression
- In letter to UN, Yemen calls for end to blockade, sabotage by US, allies
- If Americans Knew
- Nakba Day is almost here, but every day is also Nakba Day – Daily Update
- Gaza: ‘Doctors Under Attack’ Wins Top Award After Being Shelved by the BBC
- The Nakba at 78: A statistical snapshot of Palestine
- Israel Expels Father Louis Salman from Palestine
- How Israel Turned Eurovision’s Stage Into a Soft Power Tool
- Palestinians in Jerusalem receive only 7% of housing units
- If not stopped, Israel will wipe out Christians from Palestine by 2050: Bethlehem pastor
- Hidden Deep in an NPR Story About a Man Who Threatened to Kill Jews at Cornell… He Admits He Did It to Make People Love Israel
- Peter Mandelson: the untold Israel connection
- Epstein Advised U.S. Treasury on Crypto During Obama’s Iran Sanctions Push
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: “No Climate Crisis” …”Warming Generally Better For Humanity”
- New Paleo Research: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns
- 90% Subsidized… Bielefeld Germany’s €7 Million Hydrogen Garbage Truck Fleet Sits Idle
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 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
Aletho News 