Moody’s Downgrades Israel, Warns That Weaker US Backing for Israel, War with Hezbollah Would Trigger Crash
By John Helmer – Dances with Bears – February 11, 2024
Twice already the warning of the obvious has been posted in the money markets — Israel cannot survive a long war with the Arabs and Iran.
In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People, it was reported on October 27, three weeks after the Hamas offensive began. The decline in Israel’s export earnings from tourism and diamonds; the loss of imported supplies for manufacturing and consumption from the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea; and increasing risk to both imports and exports at the Mediterranean ports within range of Hamas and Hezbollah strikes were identified at that time.
The international ratings agencies, Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poors, postponed announcing the obvious for as long as they could.
In attrition war, on the economic front just like the Gaza and other fire fronts, the Axis of Resistance wins by maintaining its offensive capacities and operations for longer than the US and US-backed Israeli forces can defend. Like troops, tanks, and artillery pieces, the operational goal is to grind the enemy slowly but surely into retreat, then capitulation. Last week, Moody’s had already decided in-house to downgrade Israel; for several days senior management fended off a ferocious attack from Israeli officials and their supporters in the US trying to compel postponement of the downgrade and the analytical report substantiating it.
On February 6, in a review of the shekel, bond, credit default swaps (CDS), budget deficit, and other indicators, the conclusion was there could be no stopping the money markets from moving against Israel. Negative ratings from the agencies raise the cost of servicing Israel’s state and corporate bonds, and put pressure on the state budget. A ratings downgrade is a signal to the markets to go negative against the issuer – this usually comes after the smart money has changed its mind and direction. In Israel’s case, however, there has been an exceptional delay between negative outlook and downgrade. The last Fitch report on Israel was dated October 17; Moody’s followed on October 19; Standard & Poors (S&P) on October 24.
That Israeli and US tactics had forced postponement of new reports from the troika was obvious. A fresh warning was published on this website: as real estate and other tax collections collapse, Israel will have to make a large cash call on the US. This is going to come in the near future, just as the government in Kiev has been forced into calling on Congress as the Ukraine war is being lost. The longer both wars are protracted, the more obviously the loss of confidence expresses itself in Washington.
Moody’s has now caught up. According to the Israeli press, this is the first credit and currency downgrade in their country’s history.
In a report dated last Friday but not issued until Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, the agency officially reduced Israel’s rating from A1 to A2, and added pointers of further downgrading to come. The Anglo-American press immediately reacted against Moody’s. “Israel hits back”, the Financial Times headlined. The newspaper added: “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in a rare statement over the Jewish Sabbath, said: ‘The rating downgrade is not connected to the economy, it is entirely due to the fact that we are in a war. The rating will go back up the moment we win the war — and we will win the war.’” In the Associated Press report, “Israel’s finance minister blasts Moody’s downgrade”. Rupert Murdoch’s platform Fox claimed: “Israel has a strong, open economy despite Moody’s downgrade”. “Israel’s creditworthiness remains high,” according to the New York Times, “but the rating agency noted that the outlook for the country was negative… A rating of A2 is still a high rating.”
The press release version of Moody’s report is republished verbatim so that its meaning can be understood without the propaganda.
Three points have been missed in the Anglo-American counterattack and Israeli government’s bluster. The first is the warning that Israel will soon have to request enormous cash backing from the US, and if there is any sign of weakening on that in Washington, the collapse of the Israeli economy and its capacity to continue its war is inevitable. The Moody’s report camouflaged the point this way: “The related issuances benefit from an irrevocable, on-demand guarantee provided by the Government of the United States of America (Aaa negative) with the government acting through USAID. The notes benefit explicitly from ‘the full faith and credit of the US’ and as per prospectus, USAID is obligated to pay within three business days if the guarantee is called upon.”
The second point strikes at announcements from Israel Defence Forces (IDF) generals and Netanyahu of their plan to expand their operations on the northern front – the Litani River ultimatum they called it in December. According to Moody’s report, “downside risks remain at the A2 rating level. In particular, the risk of an escalation involving Hezbollah in the North of Israel remains, which would have a potentially much more negative impact on the economy than currently assumed under Moody’s baseline scenario. Government finances would also be under more intense pressure in such a scenario.”
The third point is the most explosive. After cutting Israel’s rating to A2, Moody’s warned that further and deeper downgrades may follow, but that there is presently no way the ratings agency can predict what will happen next. “The ongoing military conflict with Hamas, its aftermath and wider consequences materially raise political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future.”
In flagging those last four words – “for the foreseeable future” — Moody’s has told the markets that the strategic initiative in this war has now passed to the Axis of Resistance. Of course, the Arabs and Iranians already know. … Full article
Joe Biden Acts Like the Defender of Gazans, But He is the Destroyer
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | February 13, 2024
This week President Joe Biden was again talking about his ideas of how the Israel government should exercise more restraint in its war in Gaza. But, he remains all talk and no action on this count.
It is tedious to repeatedly hear the man who is, in the absence of congressional action to provide special assistance to Israel for its war, unilaterally providing the key aid including weapons and intelligence for prosecuting Israel’s war continue to insist he supports restraint while the Israel government keeps pursuing relentless devastation.
Biden, in a Monday statement he made at the White House after meeting with Jordan King Abdullah, said the following regarding impending Israel military action:
As I said yesterday, our military operation in Rafah — their — the major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan — a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than one million people sheltering there. Many people there have been displaced — displaced multiple times, fleeing the violence to the north, and now they’re packed into Rafah — exposed and vulnerable. They need to be protected.
This schtick is way past its expiration date. The Israel war, now in its fifth month, continues to rack up destruction of life, health, and the physical manifestations of civilization in Gaza at an astounding pace, with the brunt of the suffering imposed on civilians. Israel is taking the actions. But, the US is the key accomplice to the atrocities because of the aid it provides.
This is Biden’s war as much as it is Israel’s war.
Biden is notoriously prone to make blunders in his public presentations. The blunder he made in his comment in his Monday White House statement is different than many. Biden quickly corrected his mention of “our military operation in Rafah” to clarify that the military operation is Israel’s. The slipup here was not that Biden had stated something false. Instead, it was that Biden had stated the truth that he and his administration are trying their best to hide.
GMO denounces targeting two members of Al-Jazeera team in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza

Palestinian Information Center – February 13, 2024
GAZA – The Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli targeting of the Al-Jazeera Arabic news crew for the fifth time, leading to the serious injury of the channel’s correspondent and cameraman in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza Strip.
The GMO said, in a statement on Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes targeted Al-Jazeera’s reporter Ismail Abu Omar and cameraman Ahmed Matar, stressing that “the Israeli occupation army has deliberately targeted the channel’s teams for the fifth time in a row in a complete crime in violation of the international law.”
Journalist Abu Omar has had his right leg and some fingers amputated, in addition to other various wounds. His colleague Matar sustained various injuries, as well.
The GMO pointed out that since October 7, the Israeli occupation army has killed 128 journalists, arrested 10, and injured many others, stressing that this indicates that journalists have become targets of the Israeli occupation army.
The GMO called on press unions, media agencies, and human rights groups to denounce this crime and to pressure Israel to stop targeting journalists and to halt its genocidal war against civilians.
Hamas: Israel’s ceasefire proposal is not a serious offer
MEMO | February 13, 2024
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Lebanon, said that the Israeli proposal in the context of the talks to release prisoners of war held in Gaza is a “withdrawal from the proposal that was formulated in Paris” and proves that Israel “is not serious about moving forward with the release of the captives.”
According to Hamdan, the Hamas delegation in Cairo discussed Israel’s responses to the proposal put forward in Paris. Hamdan added that Israel “is placing obstacles that make it impossible to reach an agreement.” Israel’s proposal, he explained, “does not guarantee freedom of movement, the return of refugees, or the withdrawal of its forces from the Gaza Strip and does not address the issue of opening the crossings to provide medical treatment to the wounded.”
“[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s behaviour and positions confirm that he is continuing the policy of evasion and procrastination, is not interested in reaching an agreement, and is trying to prolong the war and buy time for personal considerations related to his political future.”
He stressed that “the Hamas movement is committing to its position and was and is still keen to reach an agreement that achieves the cessation of the aggression against our people, the withdrawal of the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, relief for our people, the return of the people to their areas, reconstruction, lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and completing the prisoner exchange.”
“Netanyahu is continuing his policy of escaping reality and lying to his audience,” Hamdan said. “The truth that the whole world can see is that he is still stuck in the streets of Khan Yunis, haemorrhaging dead and wounded on a daily basis, and withdrawing destroyed vehicles.”
Made-in-India ‘killer’ drones fly in Gaza sky as Israeli genocide rages on: Report
Press TV – February 13, 2024
An Indian conglomerate has dispatched Hermes 900 killer drones to Israel as the UAVS are extensively used in the regime’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in the Gaza strip amid the genocidal war, a report says.
The sale of more of than 20 Hermes 900 medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAVs delivered by Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Ltd to Israel was first reported on February 2 by Neelam Mathews for the defense-related website Shephard Media.
The Wire report said it has not yet been publicly acknowledged by either Tel Aviv or New Delhi.
In 2018, Israel’s Elbit Systems entered into a joint venture with Adani group with a 49% share and opened a $15-million facility in Hyderabad to manufacture UAVs for the first time outside of Israel.
The Wire said when it contacted Israel’s Elbit Systems a spokesperson responded that they could “confirm that Elbit Systems collaborates with Adani, which is a supplier to our UAS [Unmanned Aerial Systems] supply chain.”
Haaretz reported last February that the vice president of UAV systems in the Aerospace Division at Elbit Systems, Vered Haimovich, said the Hermes 900 has been Elbit System’s flagship drone, which has been operationally used by the Israeli Air Force since 2015. It has also taken part “in all rounds of conflict in recent years.”
Indian activists have criticized the Indian government for its double standards against Palestine, as on one hand, New Delhi backs the Palestinian cause while advocating for a free Palestinian state, but on the other, its actions suggest it supported Israel’s actions in Gaza.
After Israel unleashed a war on Gaza on October 7 following Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Strom into the occupied territories, India initially expressed unconditional solidarity with Israel.
New Delhi had even abstained on a resolution in the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian pause in October 2023. However, two months later, it voted in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The role of an Indian conglomerate in supplying drones, which are extensively used by the IOF for attacks in densely populated urban areas in Gaza, came as the prime minister Narendra Modi government’s official position is seeking an immediate ceasefire.
Shir Hever, the coordinator responsible for enforcing the military embargo on behalf of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, expressed his disapproval of India’s current alliance with Israel, deeming it disgraceful considering India’s extensive past under colonial domination.
“This moment is a test of the international law system, and instead of siding with Israel’s genocide and its enabling of Western powers, India should take inspiration from South Africa’s global-south leadership and end its complicity with genocide,” Hever told Middle East Eye.
He also said that ever since the International Court of Justice said it’s “plausible” Israel committed genocide in Gaza, two Japanese firms ended their MoUs with Elbit, while, a Dutch high court banned the Netherlands from continuing its export of F-35 parts to Israel, “citing a clear risk of violations of international law.”
In another such instance, on Monday, the European Union foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell called on the US to cut arms supplies to Israel due to high civilian casualties in its war in Gaza.
Adani, a 60-year-old multi billionaire and one of the richest persons in the world, was accused in a report by a US investment research firm, Hindenburg’s Research LLC, of stock manipulation and accounting fraud last year, and is seen by many as someone very close to Modi and his government.
Magical Thinking
By Karen Kwiatkowski | LewRockwell | February 13, 2024
In 2005, Joan Didion published “The Year of Magical Thinking” that about grieving the loss of her husband, the unavoidable instant reduction of a rich marriage to aimless solitude.
Beyond the obvious arena of modern imperial foreign policy, magical thinking is a well-known psychological concept. It is “the belief that wishes can impose their own order on the material world.” It is driven by human goals of fulfillment “without consideration of the constraints of the external world.”
We’ve been reminded of this concept in many different ways over the past few weeks. The befuddled fumbling old man in the White House insulting reporters who ask him about his memory lapses, then demonstrating his disability several times later in the press conference.
He wishes to remain President, yet he is incapable of being President. He wants that particular fulfillment regardless of its fundamental impossibility.
We see the same in many modern political leaders, no doubt Canada’s Trudeau, who was upset that Putin, in a wide ranging interview last week, mentioned the Canadian Parliament’s celebration of World War II Ukrainian Nazi Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old surviving member of the Waffen SS Galicia Division. Zelensky had just spoken, and all present sincerely wished that killing Russians was great Western tradition, habitual and just. Instead we saw the impossibility of wishes making their own reality, their own order; the impossibility of changing fact to fantasy, and fantasy to fact.
Access to the most casual and shallow history of World War II should have revealed to any one of the hundreds of educated and cosmopolitan MPs, and the media covering the event, that those killing Russians in WWII were either part of Nazi Germany, or allied with Nazi Germany. It is modern Russian intolerance for Nazis that we find to be traditional, habitual and just. The propagandized West seeks a better world through magical thinking, not through the embrace of reality.
We see magical thinking in Kiev, but somehow I suspect Ukrainians have a far better understanding of reality than do Zelensky’s American and British advisors – who seem permanently afflicted with lies becoming truth if only we all wished for it hard enough. The best example of this is our puppet in Kiev who insists on no negotiations with Russia until the popular and extremely rational “history buff” President Putin, steps down to face the Ukrainian music for his war crimes.
Yet when Tucker Carlson asked Putin what it was all about – we found simply that the protection of Russia and Russian people are a cause for which Putin is willing to fight. It is a concept that shocks the Western empire circa 2024.
We also learned that years of western actions, like withdrawing from nuclear treaties and pursuing first strike capabilities, drove Russian development of hypersonic missiles and a whole range of capabilities to survive and defeat such extreme threats coming from an increasingly unpredictable West. Meanwhile, US and NATO naval capability is underwhelming, recruitment abysmal, technology plateaued and inappropriate for offense or defense, and funds are dwindling.
We learned that while politicians and academics continue to push for ever more massive sanctions against Russia – new markets materialized and Russia’s economy adapted and thrived, as the economy of the western allies shrank and struggled.
We learned that western cultural fetishes of magic energy replacing hydrocarbons, 72 genders, modern monetary theory and unlimited immigration without cultural integration have all been rejected – rationally and straightforwardly – by Russia. The former Communist empire has become a sanctuary for Orthodox Christianity, while the West bans and abandons Christian churches and principles in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Europe and in America. It sounds unbelievable, unpredictable, a rabbit from a hat and a lady cut in half all in one show – but it’s true.
A key advisor to Zelensky on US-UK-EU proxy war, and former UK PM Boris Johnson is an exemplar of magical thinking. He was outraged that Putin explained with evidence how the last 18 months of war in Ukraine could have been prevented, and ended peacefully, as peace talks in Turkey produced a draft treaty acceptable to both Ukrainian and Russian teams. This was abruptly canned after Boris rushed to Kiev, where he demanded the Ukrainians reject the nascent agreement. Boris, bobbing in the flotsam of magical thinking, is a liar, and yet, one marvels at the power of believing that your desires and wishes can create a new world order.
We see this in the US, in both its obsession with Julian Assange despite the utter irrationality of its pursuit of a man who exposed US lawbreaking and evil – something top politicians in the US should always be eager to correct in the name of American heroism and honor.
We see this in the continued fantasy of electoral honesty in the US, in the imperial two-tiered system of law, in the incomprehensible funding and moral support provided to Israel as it directly and systematically exterminates 2 million people, destroys their homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses, and takes their land. We see it in Israel, as it imagines what it is doing will save rather than destroy her. Magical thinking.
Joan Didion popularized the term, documenting her grief at the sudden end of a life, marriage, meaning, and purpose. Magical thinking may be part of a process by which people and institutions cope with the innate realization of irretrievable loss.
The US government, and its very federalism, is undergoing an imperial metamorphosis from rapacious caterpillar, to life in a rapidly decaying cocoon, to something entirely different and unrecognizable – life in the air, with little baggage, free, vulnerable and alive. It will own nothing and be happy. Dissolution and death of empire is a story told many times, a pattern of nature, and it cannot be stopped. Magical thinking is simultaneously necessary and futile, and Washington and many of the European capitols are deeply engaged in this phase. They are ending, ungracefully, ungratefully, undeniably.
But for the people, who live with feet on the ground, and eyes wide open, who bear the costs of the magical thinking of their governments, and the lies of their propagandists, and the waste of their wars, and the contamination of everything that was good – for us the only value is seeing the reality of things. Recognizing reality, acting upon it, rejecting even the most subtle suggestions of magical thinking and fantasy and imaginations of world orders – in this way imperial error can be stopped, and reversed.
Peace, transparency, prosperity, exchanges of goods, ideas, and many charming conversations with partners and friends around the planet – none of this is fantasy, and it doesn’t require magic. Let’s get on with it.
Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012, is a Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, and an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.
Copyright © Karen Kwiatkowski
Zionists lead the charge to a more authoritarian Canada

By Yves Engler | February 12, 2024
Israel supporters have become a leading fascist force in Canada. They are pushing to restrict civil liberties, dismantle democratic organizations and increase policing.
Since I wrote about the phenomenon a month ago Zionist groups and journalists have deepened their ties to fascist groups and escalated their anti-democratic rhetoric in a bid to defend the genocide in Gaza. Israel lobby groups and commentators have repeatedly taken their cues from the former head of the thuggish and racist Jewish Defence League (JDL). They’ve repeatedly circulated long-time JDL head Meir Weinstein’s videos depicting anti-genocidal protesters as a threat and in a sign of this deepening alignment arch-Israeli nationalist reporter Joe Warmington recently quoted Weinstein in a story tarring protesters. In a Toronto Sun article spurred by the former JDL head’s X post headlined “Security threat against Trudeau all of Canada’s concern”, Warmington quotes Weinstein labelling Palestine solidarity protesters a “risk.”
As they deepen their ties to Khanist fascists, Zionist lobby groups have repeatedly called for marches to be banned, individuals to be fired and talks canceled. To suppress criticism of Canada’s contribution to Israel’s genocide Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather, Marco Mendicino and Ya’ara Saks have repeatedly taken up the call to suspend democratic rights. A month ago Saks posted, “As I stated last week, & will repeat again – protests within largely Jewish neighbourhoods like the ones in our riding of #YorkCentre is completely unacceptable. Targeting an overpass in an area that is known to be local Jewish community is a form of intimidation.”
In response to pressure from Saks, Weinstein, B’nai Brith, CIJA and others, the Toronto police barred protests on an overpass of Highway 401. They then arrested three people for asserting their right to assemble. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) condemned the police’s move and CCLA executive director Noa Mendelsohn Aviv pleaded in the Canadian Jewish News against the Zionists’ push to suppress civil liberties. (A B’nai Brith suit to expand the anti-protest zone was rejected.)
As part of this push to supress demonstrations, Israeli nationalist city councillor James Pasternak pushed Toronto representatives to develop a “policy and framework for the management and monitoring of rallies and protests.” In mid-January Pasternak declared, “It does not take much to see the [Palestinian] gatherings taking place downtown are not Charter-protected.”
In a similar bid to shut down basic democratic rights B’nai Brith called for suppressing the public’s rights to ask questions at city council meetings. Reportedly, on December 21 a handful of members of the public showed up at a meeting of the Agglomeration Council of Montreal in response to Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi telling me he would support Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”. Apparently, they asked about Levi’s genocidal apologia and a Hampstead law to send money raised from fines for ripping down posters of hostages to Israel, which led B’nai Brith to file a complaint with the Quebec Municipal Commission (The Commission rejected it). When members of the public asked questions at the January meeting B’nai Brith filed a second complaint (also rejected). The arch Zionist Suburban newspaper/website has published three stories on the matter and a week ago the Montreal Gazette put the Zionists complaints on its front page in a story headlined “Agglomeration council won’t act on antisemitism complaint, Montreal mayor says”.
CIJA and B’nai Brith recently succeeded in pressuring Concordia and Carleton universities to cancel their stops on a national speaking tour with British commentator Sami Hamdi, organized by the Canadian Muslim Political Affairs Council. A recent Zionist sponsored lawsuit also called for the Concordia administration to block students from funding their union. In a similar vein, Conrad Black penned a commentary last week headlined “SHUT CUPE DOWN” due to their Palestine solidarity and in the same National Post newspaper lawyer Howard Levitt called on Zionist members to decertify the Canadian Union Public Employees union.
Fascists have long targeted labour unions. Ditto for books. Montreal’s Jewish Public Library recently pulled the books of Quebec’s most prominent children’s author, Elise Gravel, from their displays because she posted against genocide. A councillor in Côte-St-Luc, Mike Cohen, called for his municipality to do the same.
On X Israel supporters regularly respond to videos of large numbers protesting Canadian complicity in genocide by calling for protesters to be deported. In a similar vein, JSpace board chair Joe Roberts recently called protesters “fifth columnists” whose “real enemy has always been the liberal democracies of the west.”
To supress the “fifth column”, the establishment Jewish groups are campaigning for increased police funding. On January 18 CIJA instigated a letter writing campaign demanding “Reverse the police cuts” in Toronto. Two weeks later, the advocacy agent for Canada’s Jewish Federations wrote, “We continue to urge Council to take action to prevent any shortfall in funding for the Toronto Police Service, so that our police have the tools they need to enforce the law and safeguard the Jewish community and all Torontonians from the threat of hate-motivated and all other types of crime.”
B’nai Brith recently called for increased funding to Montreal police and a slew of Zionist voices have called for the provincial government to allow security guards at schools to carry guns. City councillor Sonny Moroz, who previously worked for arch Zionist federal MP Anthony Housefather, submitted a motion calling for greater police presence in part of Montreal.
CIJA, B’nai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center have extensive ties to police forces across the country. Recently it was reported that the RCMP’s controversial Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), which has spied on indigenous and pipeline protests, has been targeting Palestine solidarity protests. In internal budgetary documents C-IRG labelled one protest a “Hamas Day of Action”.
Zionists have long sought to criminalize support for Palestinians. In a bid to promote the slaughter in Gaza, they’ve become cheerleaders for authoritarianism, cancel culture and other forms of intimidation historically associated with fascism.
Israeli Army Exiles A Female Palestinian Journalist To Gaza
IMEMC | FEBRUARY 12, 2024
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) confirmed, Sunday, that the Israeli army exiled a Palestinian female journalist from the occupied West Bank to the devastated and destroyed Gaza Strip, after abducting her earlier this month.
The PPS said the army abducted the journalist, Seeqal Yousef Qaddoum, 51, after stopping her at a military roadblock near Ramallah, in the central West Bank, on February 1st.
While the detained journalist was born in the Gaza Strip, she has been living for many years in the Shiokh Palestinian town, east of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The PPS added that the army transferred the detained journalist from one of its prisons to the Kerem Shalom Crossing, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, before exiling her to the devastated and destroyed coastal enclave.
Seeqal works for the official, government-run Palestine TV, and was abducted by the soldiers on February 1st after they stopped her at a military roadblock near Ramallah.
She was first taken to HaSharon Israeli prison and then to the Damoun prison, and was interrogated but was never facing charges.
The PPS said the number of female Palestinian detainees in Damoun Israeli prison is more than 45, and added that it doesn’t have any available data on the number of detainees, who were abducted in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, due to Israel’s restrictions on such information, even to international human rights groups, and added that many detainees are subject to “forced disappearances.”
On Sunday morning, the PPS said the number of Palestinian political prisoners has exceeded 6,950 Palestinians, including many elders, women, and children, mostly from their homes, and the dozens who were taken prisoner at military roadblocks, across the occupied West Bank.
Since October 7, the Israeli army began a massive abduction campaign in the West Bank, targeting women, men, and children, and dozens of Palestinians, including laborers from the Gaza Strip who have been living and working in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Detainees’ Committee said the abductions have seriously escalated, and include massive searches and destruction of homes and property across the West Bank, including in and around occupied Jerusalem.
It added that while not all of the abductees remain imprisoned, most are either in interrogation facilities, and various prisons and detention camps and dozens were slapped with arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, held without charges or trial for renewable periods that generally vary between three and six months each time.
On February 5, 2024, the Ad-Dameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said the number of political prisoners held by Israel reached 9,000, including 70 women and 200 children, in addition to 3,484 Palestinians held under Administrative Detention orders.
The World’s Gyre
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 12, 2024
The U.S. is edging closer to war with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, a state security agency composed of armed groups, some of which are close to Iran, but which for the main are Iraqi nationalists. The U.S. carried out a drone strike in Baghdad, Wednesday that killed three members of the Kataeb Hizbullah forces, including a senior commander. One of the assassinated, al-Saadi, is the most senior figure to have been assassinated in Iraq since the 2020 drone strike that killed senior Iraqi Commander al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani.
The target is puzzling as Kataeb more than a week ago suspended its military operations against the U.S. (at the request of the Iraqi government). The stand down was widely published. So why was this senior figure assassinated?
Tectonic twitches often are sparked by a single egregious action: the one final grain of sand which – on top of the others – triggers the slide, capsizing the sandpile. Iraqis are angry. They feel that the U.S. wantonly violates their sovereignty – showing contempt and disdain for Iraq, a once great civilisation, now brought low in the wake of U.S. wars. Swift and collective retaliation has been promised.
One act, and a gyre can begin. The Iraqi government may not be able to hold the line.
The U.S. tries to separate and compartmentalise issues: AnsarAllah’s Red Sea blockade is ‘one thing’; attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, an unrelated ‘another’. But all know that such separateness is artificial – the ‘red’ thread woven through all these ‘issues’ is Gaza. The White House (and Israel) however, insists the connecting thread instead to be Iran.
Did the White House think this through properly, or was its latest assassination viewed as a ‘sacrifice’ to appease the ‘gods of war’ in the Beltway, clamouring to bomb Iran?
Whatever the motive, the Gyre turns. Other dynamics are running that will be fuelled by the attack.
The Cradle highlights one significant shift:
“by successfully obstructing Israeli vessels from traversing the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance in defence of the Palestinian people – a cause deeply popular across Yemen’s many demographics. Sanaa’s position stands in stark contrast to that of the Saudi and Emirati-backed government in Aden, which, to the horror of Yemenis, welcomed attacks by U.S. and British forces on 12 January”.
“The U.S.–UK airstrikes have prompted some heavyweight internal defections … a number of Yemeni militias previously aligned with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, consequently switched allegiance to Ansarallah … Disillusionment with the coalition will have profound political and military implications for Yemen, reshaping alliances, and casting the UAE and Saudi Arabia as national adversaries. Palestine continues to serve as a revealing litmus test throughout West Asia – and now in Yemen too – exposing those who only-rhetorically claim the mantle of justice and Arab solidarity”.
Yemen military defections – How does this matter?
Well, the Houthis and AnsarAllah have become heroes across the Islamic World. Look at social media. The Houthis are now the ‘stuff of myth’: Standing up for Palestinians whilst others don’t. A following is taking hold. AnsarAllah’s ‘heroic’ stance may lead to the ousting of western proxies, and so to dominate that ‘rest of Yemen’ they presently do not control. It seizes too, the Islamic world’s imagination (to the concern of the Arab Establishment).
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of al-Saadi, Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad chanting: “God is Great, America is the Great Satan”.
Do not imagine this ‘turn’ is lost on others – on the Iraqi Hashd al-Sha’abi, for example; or on the (Palestinians) of Jordan; or on the mass foot-soldiers of the Egyptian army; or indeed in the Gulf. There are 5 billion smartphones extant today. The ruling class do watch the Arabic channels, and view (nervously) social media. They worry that anger against the western flouting of international law may boil over, and they will be unable to contain it: What price the ‘Rules Order’ now since the International Court of Justice upended the notion of a moral content to western culture?
The wrongheadedness of U.S. policy is astonishing – and now has claimed the most central tenet in the ‘Biden strategy’ for resolving the crisis in Gaza. The ‘dangle’ of Saudi normalisation with Israel was viewed in the West as the pivot – around which Netanyahu would either be forced to give up on his maximalist security control from the River to the Sea mantra, or see himself pushed aside by a rival for whom the ‘normalisation bait’ held the allure of likely victory in the next Israeli elections.
Biden’s spokesperson was flagrant in this respect:
“[We] … are having discussions with Israel and Saudi Arabia … about trying to move forward with a normalization arrangement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So those discussions are ongoing as well. We certainly received positive feedback from both sides that they’re willing to continue to have those discussions”.
The Saudi Government – possibly angry at the U.S. recourse to such deceptive language – duly kicked the plank out from beneath the Biden platform: It issued a written statement confirming unequivocally that: “there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops – and all Israeli occupation forces are withdraw from the Gaza Strip”. The Kingdom stands by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in other words.
Of course, no Israeli could campaign on that platform in Israeli elections!
Recall how Tom Friedman set out how the ‘Biden Doctrine’ was supposed to fit together as a interlinked whole: First, through taking a “strong and resolute stand on Iran” the U.S. would signal to “our Arab and Muslim allies, that it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner … that we can no longer allow Iran to try to drive us out of the region; Israel into extinction and our Arab allies into intimidation by acting through proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq — while Tehran blithely sits back and pays no price”.
The second strand was the Saudi dangle that would inevitably pave the path into the (third) element which was the “building of a credible legitimate Palestinian Authority as … a good neighbour to Israel …”. This “bold U.S. commitment to a Palestinian state would give us [Team Biden] legitimacy to act against Iran”, Friedman foresaw.
Let us be plain: this trifecta of policies, rather than gel into a single doctrine, are falling like dominoes. Their collapse owes to one thing: The original decision to back Israel’s use of overwhelming violence across Gaza’s civil society – ostensibly to defeat Hamas. It has turned the region and much of the World against the U.S. and Europe.
How did this happen? Because nothing changed by way of U.S. policies. It was the same old western bromides from decades ago: financial threats, bombing and violence. And the insistence on one mandatory ‘stand with Israel’ narrative (with no discussion).
The rest of the world has grown tired of it; even defiant towards it.
So to put it bluntly: Israel has now come face-to-face with the (self-destructive) inconsistency within Zionism: How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews? The old answer has been discredited.
The Israeli Right argues that Israel then must go for broke: All or nothing. Take the risk of wider war (in which Israel, may or may not, be ‘victorious’); tell Arabs to move elsewhere; or abandon Zionism and themselves move on.
The Biden Administration, rather than help Israel look truth in the eye, has discarded the task of obliging Israel to face up to the contradictions in Zionism, in favour of restoring the broken status quo ante. Some 75 years after the founding of the Israeli state, as former Israeli negotiator, Daniel Levy, has. noted:
‘[We are back to] “the “banal debate” between the U.S. and Israel over “whether the bantustan shall be repackaged and marketed as a ‘state’”.
Could it have been different? Probably not. The reaction comes from deep in Biden’s nature.
The trifecta of U.S. failed responses paradoxically has nonetheless facilitated Israel’s slide to the Right (as evidenced by all recent polling). And has – absent a hostage deal; absent a Saudi credible ‘dangle’; or any credible path to a Palestinian State – precisely opened the path for the Netanyahu government to pursue his maximalist exit from collapsed deterrence through securing a ‘grand victory’ over the Palestinian resistance, Hizbullah, and even – he hopes – Iran.
None of these objectives can be achieved without U.S. help. Yet, where is Biden’s limit: Support for Israel in a Hizbullah war? And were it to widen, support for Israel in an Iran war too? Where is the limit?
The incongruity, coming as it does, at a moment when the West’s Ukraine Project is imploding, suggests that Biden may see himself needing some ‘grand victory’, as much as does Netanyahu.






