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Israeli settler, who called for Palestinians to be ‘wiped out’, behind ‘beheaded babies’ fake news

Israeli reserve soldier David Ben Zion (file photo)
Press TV – October 12, 2023

The source behind the claim that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas beheaded babies during its large-scale operation against the Israeli regime is an extremist settler leader who called for a Palestinian town to be “wiped out” earlier this year, according to a report.

Investigative news website, The Grayzone, identified Israeli reserve soldier David Ben Zion as the key source behind the fake news, saying he has a history of inciting violent riots in the occupied West Bank by demanding that the Palestinian town of Huwara be “wiped out.”

“Enough talk about building and strengthening the settlements,” Ben David said in a Twitter post on February 26, 2023. “The deterrence that was lost must return now, there’s no room for mercy.”

Ben alleged in an interview with Israeli outlet i24 News on Tuesday that Hamas fighters “cut heads of children” in the village of Kfar Az near the Gaza Strip.

The allegation quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design, while Western media reported it without a shred of critical scrutiny.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated.”

US President Joe Biden also repeated the inflammatory claim, saying he had seen “confirmed pictures” of Hamas fighters beheading children.

However, the White House later clarified that Biden and other US officials have not seen or independently confirmed those claims, adding that the US president’s remarks were based on media reports and on claims from Netanyahu’s spokesperson.

In a statement on Thursday, Hamas categorically denied the allegations, saying the group does not attack civilians.

“Give us one picture that Hamas killed civilians, that Hamas killed children, that Hamas killed women. We don’t kill civilians,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the political bureau of Hamas said.

On Saturday, Hamas waged the largest military operation against the occupying entity in decades, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

The resistance movement said that its operation came in response to Israel’s violations at al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East al-Quds and growing settler violence.

Israeli media outlets report that more than 1,300 settlers and troops have been killed, while the number of those injured exceeds 3,300.

Following Hamas’ surprise attack, Israel launched deadly strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials also ordered a total blockade of Gaza to compensate for heavy losses suffered during Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 1,203 Palestinians have been killed and 5,763 wounded since Israel began its bombardment of the already besieged enclave.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel shells mosque in Lebanon’s Dhahira

MEMO | October 12, 2023

Israel has shelled the Ahl Al-Qur’an Mosque in the town of Al-Dhahira in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, Anadolu news agency reported.

Anadolu’s correspondent in southern Lebanon reported that the mosque and dozens of nearby homes were directly hit by the Israeli artillery shelling.

Lebanese army patrols are inspecting damage caused by the Israeli bombing.

Ali Al-Suwaid, a local resident, said the town was exposed to random Israeli bombing, forcing its people to flee to safer neighbouring villages. Al-Suwaid added that the Israeli shelling had hit his house while he and his family were inside the house, causing material damage to the building.

Three civilians were injured, he added, and were taken to hospital for treatment.

Earlier yesterday, three people were injured as a result of Israeli bombing on border villages and towns in the western sector of southern Lebanon, according to government media.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Biden, US politicians greenlighting ‘potential genocide’ of Palestinians: Analysts

The ruins of houses destroyed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, October 10, 2023.
Press TV – October 12, 2023

Political analysts have warned that US President Joe Biden’s unflinching backing of Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip could give the Tel Aviv regime the greenlight to commit mass atrocities and genocide against the people of Palestine.

And while the US has always supported Israel in previous incursions and attacks on Palestinians, a number of concerned experts say this time is completely different.

“What’s different now is that the president and Congress have provided the greenest of possible green lights to enable Israel to do anything that it wants to do up to and including genocide,” Josh Ruebner, a political analyst, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.

“Make no mistake about it, by providing 100 percent backing for any action that Israel takes in the Gaza Strip, President Biden is complicit in Israel’s commission of war crimes, and potentially much, much worse,” said Ruebner, who is also the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

“As of this point, I do not believe that President Biden will stop Israel at any point,” Ruebner added.

“It’s unclear how long this green light will last. It’s unclear to what extent mass murder would need to be committed by Israel before it’s reined in by the United States,” he said.

In his public address on Tuesday, Biden described the actions of Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group against the Israeli regime, as “sheer evil,” and said that the US stands behind Israel and will provide it whatever it needs to attack Gaza.

“We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack,” Biden said. “Let there be no doubt. The United States has Israel’s back. We’ll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.”

No mention of concern for Palestinians

Yet none of Israel’s actions against the civilian population of Gaza received a mention in Biden’s speech on Tuesday.

“Biden’s address to the nation, was horrifying in that he didn’t express one iota of concern for the loss of Palestinian civilian life, the war crimes that are being committed currently by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, and the widescale incitement to genocide that we’ve heard in recent days from Israeli political and military leaders,” Ruebner said.

Instead, Biden said with confidence that “we uphold the law of war.”

However, experts said the US and Israel both have an extensive history of violating international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

“The United States has been the most fervent violator of the laws of war and international law in general on a global scale ever since it played a leading role in establishing the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order during the post-WWII years,” Kenney-Shawa said.

“I want to be clear with my words right now. It’s rich that the US would claim to abide by the laws of war. Anyone who still believes that the US would uphold the laws of war or respect the international laws it wrote is deluding themselves.”

“In the past, the US may have been counted on to go through the motions of parroting the usual de-escalatory talking points, like calling for ‘both sides’ to avoid civilian casualties or for Israel to exercise a modicum of restraint,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow for al-Shabaka think tank.

“But today, Biden and the rest of the American political establishment are fervently united in giving Israel carte blanche to completely devastate Gaza.”

Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said that rather than calling for a ceasefire and end to the hostilities, the US is “cheerleading” the latest Israeli assault.

“The Israeli forces are murdering entire families in Gaza while supplying arms to their violent settlers in the West Bank to carry out attacks. The situation in Gaza was already devastating and again the people of Gaza are facing attacks from the most powerful military force in the region, with no Iron Dome, no military, and no US government valuing their lives,” Abuznaid said.

Israel fighting religious war, hellbent on exterminating Palestinians

US Senator Lindsey Graham has said clearly and unequivocally in an interview aired on right-wing channel Fox News that “we are fighting a religious war, and I am on Israel’s side”.

Graham’s message to Israel was: “Do whatever it takes. Raze this place to the ground.”

And nearly 400 members of US Congress signed a measure introduced on Tuesday, in which it condemned the Hamas resistance group for its attack on Israel and gave complete support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

“Lawmakers on the left and on the right, from Lindsey Graham to Ritchie Torres, are using this opportunity to viciously demonize Palestinians in order to drum up anti-Palestinian hatred that will give Israel cover to commit unspeakable crimes right in front of our eyes,” said Kenney-Shawa.

“Israel is hellbent on exterminating Palestinians in Gaza, and it knows no one will get in between them and what they see as their divine objective.”

Deadly Israeli bombing campaign

Israeli air strikes have so far targeted hospitals, mosques, and residential buildings across Gaza. Entire families have been wiped out by the bombing campaign.

The Israeli violence has also once again made its way into the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed 28 Palestinians.

So far, in addition to about 1,500 Palestinians that have been killed, at least 6,268 have been injured. It is unclear how many buildings have been razed, as the number continues to rise by the hour.

Israel has imposed a full siege on the already blockaded enclave, cutting off electricity and water and also refusing requests to allow the entry of food and medical supplies. It also threatened to bomb aid trucks trying to enter from the Egyptian border with Gaza.

The UN Refugee Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that it has about 12 days of supplies of food and water for the nearly 200,000 people taking shelter in its school buildings. While a blockade is not necessarily a war crime, the intentional starvation of a civilian population as a war tactic is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In previous Israeli incursions on Palestinians, the US had called for Israel to use restraint. However, in the past few days, there have been no such calls coming from Washington, at least in public.

The attack on Israel from Hamas and Palestinian resistance groups has been dubbed by Israelis as their own 9/11.

The rhetoric around it has caused even more concern about the fallout for Palestinian civilians, as well as Palestinians across the Western diaspora, as Western governments have begun using the rhetoric aimed at cracking down on pro-Palestinian sentiment by equating it with support for Hamas.

“The mass attack on Israeli civilians on Saturday was not only unprecedented in its scope, in terms of Israeli civilians being impacted by Palestinian attacks. That’s obvious. What hasn’t been discussed so much yet, is that what Hamas did on Saturday is the deepest, darkest fear of every settler colonial society,” Ruebner said.

He added that in looking throughout history, settler-colonial states have often responded in “an overwhelming perhaps eliminatory response.”

“And I gravely fear that Israel’s response will pale in comparison to anything that it has inflicted on innocent Palestinians up to this point, including 1948. That’s how dire I think the situation is.”

The Israeli regime launched its onslaught on Saturday after Gaza-based resistance groups carried out a multi-front operation in response to Israeli crimes.

According to media, the Hamas operation has left 1,200 Israelis dead and nearly 3,000 others injured.

UN Chief Antonio Guterres has already expressed concern over the situation in Gaza, saying the clashes will deteriorate the situation exponentially. He said he was “deeply distressed” by an announcement that Israel will initiate a complete siege of Gaza.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Peculiarities of Russian television reporting on the Hamas-Israeli war

By Gilbert Doctorow | October 11, 2023

A couple of days ago, I mentioned how Russian state television news was providing viewers with information about aspects of the ongoing armed conflict between Hamas and Israeli armed forces that you would not find in Western media during the first days of reporting. In particular, it was immediately evident from the news briefings on Vesti that Russian emphasis was on the military side rather than on the humanitarian catastrophe side.

BBC, Euronews, CNN have all focused attention on the slaughtered Israeli citizens and the apparent savagery of the Hamas fighters including today’s revelations about the hundred or more men, women and children who were killed in a Hamas raid on a kibbutz in the South of Israel.  Russian news from day one showed pictures of the latest generation Israeli tank destroyed by a grenade dropped by a drone and of Hamas fighters approaching Israeli shores from the sea on paragliders. On two successive Evening with Vladimir Solovyov shows, images of the destruction to Israel’s billion dollar wall around Gaza and similar engineering feats by the insurgents as they moved deep into Israel proper. Solovyov’s panelists also provided expert analysis of the military threats Israel faces from the neighborhood if the war in Gaza escalates.

Why is this difference in what is reported important?  Because coverage of the slaughter of civilians by Hamas fighters and interviews with relatives of those taken captive to Gaza as hostages plays into the hands of the Hamas strategists: it places enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to proceed with a land invasion of Gaza which will result in many thousands of deaths among Israeli Defense Force soldiers as well as deaths of civilians in Gaza that may be an order of magnitude higher.  The violence of an Israeli invasion may be so shocking as to justify outside Palestinian forces, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon and Arab fighters in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen to send contingents of armed men to join the battle on the side of Hamas in Gaza.

The Western reporting has provided a wealth of material for those who would denounce the Hamas fighters as “sub-human.”  However, considering the great sophistication of the Hamas methods to overcome Israeli technical devices at the border and the wall itself intended to prevent such a raid from the enclave, considering the 5,000 or more missiles sent by Hamas into Israel that overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” Israeli defenses, it is unreasonable to speak of the executions and hostage taking as spontaneous or expressions of raw anger by Arab youths.  No, it had to be planned in advance and handed over to disciplined fighters for implementation with a certain military objective in mind: namely to provoke the Israeli government and draw it into the lair of urban, guerilla warfare in Gaza.

A couple of days ago, in my geopolitical analysis of the conflict, I mentioned that the dispatch of a U.S. naval force led by the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the waters adjacent to Israel was likely intended to intimidate Iran and possibly to prepare for an American attack on Iran under accusations that Teheran had aided and guided the Hamas attack.  However, the Biden administration has now stated clearly that it has no evidence Iran was involved in preparing the Hamas action. This confirms what the supreme religious leader of Iran said yesterday in a public speech, namely that the Palestinians themselves are fiercely independent and that they alone prepared the assault on Israel.  He insisted that in the West people under-appreciate the skills and determination of Palestinians.  It is only individual American politicians like would-be Republican candidate for the presidency Nikki Haley and the ever saber rattling Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who are calling for Iran to be attacked now.

Based on the information about the military capabilities of pro-Hamas forces in the neighborhood aired on the Solovyov show last night by first quality Russian experts, it is far more likely that the United States military presence is intended for use against Hezbollah in Lebanon than against Iran.  This organization is now said to be the strongest pro-Palestinian force in the region with tens of thousands of fighters, with advanced military equipment including perhaps one hundred thousand missiles ready for use against Israel at any time. Israel’s last incursion into Lebanon to crush Hezbollah in 2006 ran into serious difficulties when enemy strength surprised them. Some fifty Israeli tanks were said to have been destroyed then. There is no question that Hezbollah has become more powerful since. Its war hardened forces received battlefield experience very relevant to the present Hamas-Israel conflict when they fought in the civil war in Syria.

One of the Russian experts who spoke at length about the situation in Israel on Sunday night was Yevgeny Satanovsky, who is a professor attached to two centers of Near East studies in Moscow. He appeared in the past on Russian television talk shows when the subject was Russian-Turkish relations but his core specialty is in fact Israeli politics and the economy. It was difficult to follow Satanovsky’s remarks in detail because he was speaking as if to academic friends over a cup of coffee and there was a lot of jargon. But his appraisal of the Israeli military’s degraded state was clear enough. The deplorable discipline within their army compounded the initial problems from the intelligence failures of Mossad. The common denominator both in intelligence and in military command was hubris, undeserved self-confidence, lulled by technological superiority over the enemy. But just as Hamas outfoxed Israeli intelligence by returning to 19th century methods of communications, couriers and face to face meetings in place of electronic means that Israel can intercept, so fairly rudimentary bulldozers were sufficient to break through the Israeli wall and a combination of firearms and drones neutralized the sensors and cameras protecting Israel from Gaza raids.

Said Satanovsky, the Israeli military has suffered an additional debilitating flaw, namely the succession of second quality generals who rose to the premiership of Israel over the past thirty years and the politicization of military ranks. He blamed in particular the 2005 decision by then prime minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw all Israeli presence from inside Gaza and to secure the enclave from its perimeter.

For those who want to know more about who Satanovsky is, he has a large entry in the Russian language edition of Wikipedia. Suffice it here to say that he calls himself an atheist as well as a “Russian Jew,” and for several years at the start of the new millennium he helped to create the Russian Jewish Congress and served as its president for three years. He has a teaching affiliation with the International Center of University Instruction on Jewish Civilization in the Jewish University of Jerusalem.

I mention this aspect of the man’s past and present because it brings us to the special relationship that Russia has with Israel. More than one million Soviet and Russian Federation Jews emigrated to Israel. These included people from every walk of life, including some scandalously wealthy crooks who evaded Russian justice for crimes including murder and are not extradited. Since the start of the Special Military Operation, their numbers have risen with the arrival in Israel of Russia’s ‘fifth column’ personalities in the entertainment industry, in finance, in government. With the Hamas attack some of those, like the billionaire banker Mikhail Fridman, took the first plane out of Israel for Moscow this past Sunday, as reported in a feature article of The Financial Times. The scoundrel who assisted Yeltsin’s fraudulent election in 1996 and then stayed on in power to enrich himself, serving in a succession of high positions, Anatoly Chubais, also slithered out of Israel the same day, but not to Moscow, where he would face arrest. Their compatriots in Russia snigger over the cowardice and selfishness of these high visibility characters.

Of course the vast majority of Russian settlers in Israel are normal, hard working folks and it is they to whom the Vesti journalists turn now for first-hand accounts of the impact of the Hamas attack. They can be doctors receiving the wounded at hospitals or officials in the mayor’s office of one or another Israeli city. You will not see them on CNN.

On the other side of the coin, Russia has and needs excellent relations with the Arab world. Fifteen per cent of the Russian population is Muslim, with their cultural and religious center in Kazan, some 860 km southeast of Moscow, in a wealthy oil-producing region.  Chechnya is also a Muslim center in the Russian Federation and its leader Ramzan Kadyrov is well known in the Middle East. More to the point, Russia is a highly valuable partner of Saudi Arabia in Opec+ in which they jointly set production targets and price targets for the global oil industry.  And Russia has close relations with the United Arab Emirates, particularly financial arrangements. The UAE dirham is now used as a currency for settling import-export transactions by Russia. Of course, Russia is closely aligned with Iran as a fellow member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, as from 1 January 2024, BRICS. The close ties to Syria need no explanation, since Russia singlehandedly saved the government of Bashar Assad from the radical fundamentalist fighters that Washington was arming. The closeness of Russian ties with Iraq was in full evidence yesterday during the state visit of the Iraqi prime minister to Moscow. Russian companies Lukoil, Gazpromneft and others have already invested $16 billion in production assets in Iraq.

The official position with respect to the war now raging between Israel and Hamas was stated yesterday on television by President Putin: it can be solved only with implementation of the UN resolution on creation of a fully sovereign Palestine state, i.e. the “two state solution” that has been so long discussed but never brought to fruition.  However, what will follow the creation of such a state is equally important and remains terra incognita:  which world powers will guarantee the security of these two states?

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Invokes Mystery Evil to Cover Up U.S. Criminal Responsibility

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 12, 2023

In a nationwide televised address, U.S. President Joe Biden did his best to sound righteous and angered by the eruption of violence in the Middle East.

“There are moments in this life − I mean this literally − when pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” Biden intoned with phony gravitas. “The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend.”

This American duplicity is nauseating. Slurring his words, Biden has no idea what he is talking about or how culpable he and his nation are in the violence.

Then we have White House spokesman John Kirby breaking down and crying on live TV, overcome with emotion about Israeli deaths. Meanwhile, this same person advocates pumping arms into Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, without a tear shed for those deaths.

This American disconnect is equally nauseating.

Biden promised the immediate supply of advanced weapons to Israel to defend itself against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, even while hundreds of Palestinian civilians are being slaughtered in revenge by the Israeli military in Gaza.

A U.S. aircraft carrier, missile destroyers and squadrons of fighter jets are also being deployed to the region, in the words of Washington, “deter” any wider violence.

How sickening is this knee-jerk recourse to more militarism and inevitably more violence?

Biden’s invocation of a mysterious “pure evil” to account for the surge in deadly violence may sound righteous and indignant, but the truth is the appalling destruction of life and ongoing war is the result of something more mundane and deliberate – the failure of criminal U.S. policy.

As a long-time Senator, as well as two-time U.S. Vice President and for the past three years incumbent President, Joe Biden must take a sizable share of the blame for this systematic failure and the concomitant bloodshed.

First of all, there is the abject failure of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Decades of neglect and indifference from Washington towards the rights of Palestinians for statehood have created a dead-end that has exploded in violence. Furthermore, successive American administrations have relentlessly and unconscionably green-lighted the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and despicable oppression. Biden has been a particularly slavish booster for Israel’s apartheid regime, saying previously on several occasions in his smart-ass cloying way that if “Israel didn’t exist then the United States would have to have invented it”.

Washington’s cynical pretence of being a neutral peace broker between Israel and Palestinians has served to prolong the historic injustice that makes violence a recurring cycle. Western media have highlighted the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis during the past week while many more Palestinian victims over the years hardly register any coverage. That hypocritical double standard is fomented by U.S. policy.

The chronic diseased state of the Middle East, with its toxic tensions and seething conflicts largely stems from the deliberate failure of U.S. policy.

Added to this are the countless illegal wars and proxy interventions sponsored by Washington, including the covert manipulation of terror groups like Islamic State (ISIS, Daesh) for regime-change objectives.

The rampant militarism and arms dealing that underpin U.S. foreign policy and its hegemonic ambitions are further fuel for the maelstrom of violence.

The devastating attacks launched by Hamas against Israel have apparently been enabled by the acquisition of American weaponry from stockpiles abandoned in Afghanistan.

Two decades of illegal occupation in Afghanistan were brought to a chaotic end by President Biden in 2021 when he hurriedly pulled U.S. troops out, finally realizing that the endless war was a lost cause.

America’s imperialist warmongering all over the planet leaves a trail of weapons and black market vice.

Ukraine is the latest U.S. killing field along with NATO allies who have pumped that country with up to $100 billion worth of weapons in a proxy war against Russia (cynically under the pretext of “defending democracy and Europe”). The hopelessly corrupt NeoNazi regime in Kiev has siphoned off up to 70 per cent of weapons for lucrative black market business.

Russia and other observers have repeatedly warned with evidence that the American and NATO arsenals supplied to Ukraine were making their way to other continents and conflict zones.

It appears that as well as obtaining American weaponry from Afghanistan, the Hamas militants also stocked up with NATO arms sourced from Ukraine.

Yet the Ukrainian comedian President Vladimir Zelensky who is implicated in the massive Kiev corruption has the brass neck to accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of triggering the violence towards Israel.

The wicked absurdity of it all is that American weapons plied to supposed allies and proxies are being deployed to kill civilians in Washington’s top foreign ally Israel.

Among the victims of the latest violence are dozens of U.S. citizens, as acknowledged by Biden in his nationwide address this week. The U.S. president also admitted that several American citizens remain unaccounted for in Israel, some of them feared to have been taken hostage. Washington’s support for Israeli revenge is putting its own citizens at risk of being killed.

It is no wonder that Biden and other U.S. politicians and their news media would prefer to invoke mysterious “pure evil” when they talk about the horrific suffering in the Middle East.

Such meaningless, vacuous talk serves to obscure and mystify what is the reprehensible truth.

Washington’s criminal warmongering, reckless militarism and double-dealing foreign policy are the fountainhead for violence and the enemy of peace in the Middle East and beyond.

Sending more aircraft carriers, warplanes, troops and munitions is the wretched response of a failed policy begetting more violence, death and ultimately more failure.

Biden is a warmonger. Trump is no less a warmonger as was evident from his shameless support for Israeli state violence and oppression of Palestinians while he was in the White House. So-called “independent” presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. has also declared his fulsome support for Israel in recent days.

America’s problem is way beyond individual politicians. It is rooted in its systematic criminal policy that sows and breeds violence across the world.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran and Saudi Arabia say Israel, its supporters inviting ‘destructive insecurity’

Press TV – October 11, 2023

Iran and Saudi Arabia have said that the Israeli regime’s crimes and the United States’ green light for the atrocities stand to invite “destructive insecurity” for the occupying regime and its supporters.

The remarks were made on Wednesday in the first phone call to take place between President Ebrahim Raeisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian chief executive’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, wrote on a message on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The comments came after the Gaza Strip’s resistance movements initiated their biggest operation against Israel in years on Saturday in response to the occupying regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodshed and destruction against Palestinians.

Codenamed the al-Aqsa Storm Operation, the campaign killed at least 1,000 Israeli forces and settlers, and led to many others among them being taken hostage by the resistance groups.

Shedding further light on the contents of the conversation between Raeisi and bin Salman, Jamshidi said, “…the 2 agreed on the need to end war crimes against Palestine.”

Israel has responded to the Palestinian operation by waging a “long” war against Gaza, for which it has called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists.

The Israeli war has killed at least 1,100 Palestinians, including 326 children, and injured 5,339 others.

The military campaign has seen the regime leveling entire districts and featured its use of banned white phosphorous munitions against densely populated neighborhoods.

Earlier this week, Israeli Minister for Military Affairs Yoav Gallant announced a “total blockade” to stop food and fuel from reaching Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said he was “deeply distressed” by Israel’s announcement of the complete siege.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely dire before these hostilities; now it will only deteriorate exponentially,” Guterres said.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Support not ‘indefinite’, White House tells Ukraine

RT | October 12, 2023

The US is running out of money for Ukraine unless Congress approves additional funding, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

“In the near term, we’ve got appropriations and authorities for both Ukraine and for Israel,” Kirby said during the daily press briefing. “But you don’t want to be trying to bake in long-term support when you’re at the end of the rope.”

“And in Ukraine, on the Ukraine funding, we’re coming near to the end of the rope,” he added. “Today we announced $200 million, and we’ll keep that aid going as long as we can, but it’s not going to be indefinite.”

Asked to define “near term,” Kirby said he could not point to a specific date, because that depended on how quickly Ukraine and Israel expended their equipment and ammunition “or what the need is and what our ability to do it is.”

On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesperson assured reporters that the US had the ability to “continue our support both to Ukraine, Israel, and maintain our own global readiness.”

Kirby, however, admitted that the money previously appropriated for Ukraine by Congress is “not going to last forever” and that the lawmakers needed to approve more and soon.

“The sooner there’s a speaker of the House, obviously, the more comfortable we’ll all be in terms of being able to support Israel and Ukraine,” he said.

The House of Representatives has not had a speaker since last Tuesday, when Kevin McCarthy  became the first-ever speaker to be ousted in a House vote, over an alleged secret deal with the White House to approve more Ukraine funding. Several Republicans led the charge against their California colleague, backed by all of the minority Democrats. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican nominee to succeed McCarthy, has been supportive of funding Ukraine in the past.

Since February 2022, when the conflict with Russia escalated, the US has channeled almost $44 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine, as well as billions more in cash, humanitarian and economic assistance.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

326 Palestinian children killed as Israel plunges Gaza into darkness

Defense for Children International – Palestine | October 11, 2023

Israeli authorities prohibit food, fuel, electricity, and water into the Gaza Strip as Defense for Children International – Palestine has so far confirmed the killing of at least 105 Palestinian children since Saturday, with the total now surpassing 300.

DCIP has confirmed the killing of at least 105 Palestinian children in direct Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip between October 7 and 11, while the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced today that over 326 children have been killed. DCIP staff in Gaza and the West Bank continue to document and confirm Palestinian child fatalities as hostilities continue between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces. Intensive Israeli bombardment throughout the Gaza Strip, lack of electricity, Israeli airstrikes on telecommunications infrastructure, and the unprecedented rate of daily child fatalities has resulted in a lag between confirmed fatalities by DCIP and the overall total child fatalities published regularly by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

“Israeli forces are destroying entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip as an apparent full-scale ground assault is imminent,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Immediate humanitarian relief is necessary to protect civilians as Israeli forces prepare to intensify attacks and Israeli officials declare their intention to commit further war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Around 6 p.m. on October 9, Israeli warplanes targeted, without prior warning, a two-story building behind the Golden Hall in the Americana area west of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, killing at least 14 Palestinians, including at least six children: siblings Karam, three, Akram, 10, Watan, one, Mahmoud, nine, Amani, four, and Fatima Mohammad Abdulrahim Al-Madhoon, seven, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Rescue teams were able to recover seven bodies.

An Israeli airstrike targeted without prior warning a residential building in Jabalia refugee camp around 9 a.m. on October 10, killing four Palestinians, including three children: Mohammad, two, Karam, three, and Naheda Mousa Yousef Al-Hesi, 11, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Other children were also injured in the attack.

Israeli warplanes targeted a residential building without prior warning around 11 a.m. on October 10 in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 14 Palestinians, including seven children, according to documentation collected by DCIP. The airstrike killed seven children from the Ahmad family: siblings Mustafa, nine, and Elayn Tamer Mohammad Ahmad, four, their cousins Sidra, five, Haidy, one, Linda, seven, and Qusai Mohammad Aladdin Ahmad, three, as well as another cousin, two-year-old Obaida Rafat Aladdin Ahmad.

Israeli warplanes completely destroyed a three-story residential building without warning in the Tal Al-Zaatar area of Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip around 9:25 p.m. on October 10, killing everyone inside, including at least one child, 10-year-old Mohammad Baraa Taysir Shahin, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Palestinian civil defense teams have recovered two bodies from the building, while an estimated 10 Palestinians were inside during the bombing.

In addition to these incidents, DCIP has verified the killing of an additional 11 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip in other attacks, though DCIP field researchers are still gathering and verifying details of the incidents. Those killed include:

  • Ali Omar Mousa Al-Qatnani, four, from Jabalia
  • Siblings Layan, two and Majd Mohammad Ismail Salah, two, from Beit Lahia
  • Haitham Khaled Abdulazeem Asayleh, 17, from Jabalia
  • Hassan Mohammad Ismail Salah, nine, from Jabalia
  • Malak Mohammad Majed Al-Daqs, two, from Jabalia
  • Kenan Mohammad Mahmoud Farhat, two, from Jabalia
  • Cousins Nadeen Mohammad Abdulati Salah, 13, and Diaa’ Ahmad Abdulati Salah, six months, from Jabalia
  • Mohammad Hassan Ali Al-Zain, seven, from Khan Younis
  • Sham Mohammad Saleh Al-Sawalha, eight months, from Jabalia

Israeli forces unleashed a massive military offensive on the Gaza Strip on Saturday after Palestinian armed groups fired rockets toward Israel and breached the Israeli perimeter fence surrounding Gaza early on October 7, launching attacks inside Israel. Israeli forces initiated a large-scale military operation dubbed Operation Iron Swords.

At least 1,100 Palestinians, including at least 326 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. DCIP is working to document additional attacks and killings. Israeli forces have shot and killed six Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank since October 7, including 12-year-old Ahmad Abdulnaser Adnan Rabi.

DCIP previously confirmed the killing of at least 74 Palestinian children in direct Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip between October 7 and 10, 2023, in a report issued yesterday.

Over 263,934 people in the Gaza strip have fled their homes as mass displacement escalates with intensifying Israeli attacks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). More than 175,486 internally displaced Palestinians are sheltering in 88 United Nations schools throughout the Gaza Strip, while over 73,900 Palestinians, whose homes have been destroyed or damaged, are hosted by relatives and neighbors, according to UN OCHA.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu wants US involved in war – ex-Pentagon official

RT | October 11, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, former senior security policy analyst at the US Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told RT on Wednesday.

On Monday, the US ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and five guided missile destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Maloof, this “meets Netanyahu’s wildest dreams.”

“He wanted the US involved in this conflict,” the former Pentagon official told RT.

Netanyahu “wants to open up the war with Lebanon, by attacking Hezbollah” in pursuit of his ultimate objective, “to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Maloof added. For that to happen, “he has to have a Gulf of Tonkin moment, if you will.”

Maloof recalled how US President Lyndon Johnson essentially started the Vietnam War by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two US destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement.

The US has also pledged to help Israel with deliveries of weapons and ammunition, with the Pentagon insisting it has enough to do so and continue supplying Ukraine. Maloof is skeptical of that assertion, however.

He also told RT it was “not surprising” that some of the weapons Washington had sent Kiev ended up in the hands of Hamas.

That accusation was first made by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Ukraine’s military intelligence, the GUR, responded on Monday by accusing Russia of sending captured Western weapons to Hamas militants in a “false flag” operation designed to make Kiev look bad to its backers.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the weapons claim, but rejected the Ukrainian insinuations of Russian involvement in the Hamas attack as “complete nonsense.”

October 11, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Western media, social media influencers peddle lies to vilify Palestinians

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | October 11, 2023

Since the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance operation “Al Aqsa Storm” on Saturday, mainstream Western media and social media influencers have been aggressively pushing Zionist narratives as part of a murky disinformation campaign against the resistance.

The multi-front information war is designed to control the narrative around anything surrounding the Palestinian issue and the latest military operation that has shaken the foundation of the regime.

Now more than ever, it is becoming clear that Western governments and their ruling class, which have a tight grip on media and information control, are losing the battle of ideas.

Palestinian support in the West is at an all-time high, despite Western leaders coming out in the open in defense of the Zionist regime and its relentless and indiscriminate aggression against Palestinians.

Western leaders came out in unison on Saturday to tow the same false narrative: That the Hamas operation is “unprovoked,” that the Israeli regime is “just” in its decades-long ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and that the Palestinian resistance is “terrorism.”

However, the world saw past these imperialist lies. Millions of people in the West, from New York to London to Paris, poured into the streets to pledge their support to Palestine and the Palestinian resistance, despite their own governments denouncing the Palestinian cause.

In fact, the rallies themselves began to be denounced by Western officials, who despite their aggressive rhetoric against the Palestinian cause saw no end to the outpouring of support for Al Aqsa Storm.

Now, the West and its media apparatuses have turned to their usual assortment of disinformation campaigns to muddy the line between fact and reality.

Perhaps the most egregious claim came from Zionist outlet “i24 News.” Nicole Zedeck, a reporter, falsely claimed that “40 Israeli babies” were killed, and that some were “decapitated.”

Obviously a jarring claim, many netizens pushed back asking for more details or any source that could corroborate this claim, which is part of the disinformation campaign.

Zedeck walked back the claim, saying Zionist soldiers told her this was happening –  but the post, which still has not been deleted – or retracted – has been proven categorically false by media outlets.

The multiple high-profile accounts on X (formerly Twitter) shared Zedeck’s baseless claim, disseminating the proven lie to millions of people across the world.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is that while this claim of Israeli babies being killed was spread with no source or proof, very real footage of martyred Palestinian babies being pulled from the Gaza rubble was also being shared – but without the solidarity of any Western influencer accounts.

Another similar example was shared of a woman, Shani Louk, allegedly being held hostage by Hamas.

Zionist influencers claimed she was sexually assaulted and murdered. Later, the woman’s own mother confirmed she was safe and that Hamas had taken her to a hospital in the Gaza Strip – the same hospital targeted multiple times by Israeli warplanes.

This is a very intentional strategy of the Zionist regime, and the West – when their narrative is being challenged by reality itself, they will not be above spreading lies and refusing to apologize or issue a real retraction when they are caught.

The claims are instead echoed by official Zionist accounts as reality without citation, leading media outlets in the West to print the story verbatim.

Even the celebrity apparatus of the West plays a significant role in disseminating false claims – and then quietly walking them back after millions of people were exposed to flagrant lies.

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis published a photo on Instagram of terrified children looking at the sky, with a caption expressing solidarity with the Zionist State. When netizens correctly identified the children in the photo as children of Gaza, fleeing from a Zionist airstrike, she quickly deleted the photo.

The strategy of publishing lies and issuing a whimper of a retraction (if any at all) has been an imperialist strategy for decades.

The US entry into Vietnam was sparked by a false report of an attack on a US warship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was due to a made-up claim of weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Afghanistan before that was also based on false assumptions.

Iran’s foreign-plotted riots were caused by a categorical lie peddled by accounts known to be on the payroll of the United States intelligence agencies – then were spread using a vast network of online bots and influencer accounts.

Western celebrities and influencers then picked up the story to smear the Islamic Republic, despite multiple witnesses and CCTV footage proving the tragic death of Mahsa Amini was of natural causes.

More recently, after a 16-year-old Iranian girl Armita Geravand fell unconscious at the Tehran subway, social media accounts and news media in the West jumped on the bandwagon, claiming “torture.”

Western media apparatus and celebrity apparatus are intertwined. They are part of a sophisticated system that is forced into place by the US ruling class and further strengthened by the Zionist lobby.

Any deviation – meaning support for Palestine – is met with categorically false claims of anti-semitism, racism, or outlandish smear campaigns.

Western outlets will never publish about the true carnage unleashed upon the people of Gaza – the women and children who were martyred.

They will never publish, for example, the video of Israeli soldiers shutting off the water to Gaza – already contaminated – despite it being a human rights violation and a war crime. The imperialist media will never document reality, because reality would condemn the West for its barbarism.

Furthermore, if the West cannot win a war of information, then it seeks to outright ban inconvenient facts altogether. Take for example the shutdown of Press TV in the United States – or the deplatforming of Russia Today or Sputnik after the February 2022 Russian military operation in Ukraine.

Lebanon’s Al-Maydeen was also briefly banned on Meta platforms for its coverage of Al Aqsa Storm. According to the network, no reason was provided for it, nor was any prior notice given.

The fact of the matter is the imperialist media does not shy away from playing dirty to ensure only its pro-imperialist outlets and narratives dominate public perception.

It understands it is in a losing battle against the truth and is aggressively conducting widespread disinformation and information stifling in a final bid to control its narratives.

An age-old saying is that in war, the first casualty is truth. The imperialist West has been imposing war on the entire globe for over a century. The truth has been “killed” in this sense many times – leading to racism, Islamophobia, and more rot within society – but it can also be salvaged.

As growing contradictions sharpen within our world, the imperialist West will intensify its disinformation campaigns. Based on what we already know about its unethical conduct, the world cannot look to the West for the truth.

The West’s truth is a false reality based on the vision created by the US ruling class and its partners, who are committed to defiling the world for their own greed.

If the West fears the narrative of the Palestinians so much then it must know that the truth is with Palestine – and that Palestine is the truth.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel-Hamas “war” – another excuse to shut down free speech

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 11, 2023

As a brand new war-narrative unfolds, there’s already efforts underway to parlay the conflict into tighter controls on free speech and freedom of expression, both in person and on the internet.

The headlines have been filled with nothing but Israel and Hamas since the “surprise attack” on Saturday, with the predictable back and forth of historical grievances and accusations of racism, punctuated by unsubstantiated claims of atrocities.

“Atrocity Propaganda” is nothing new. It is the opening salvo of every war as state combatants try to win the public to their side.

For example, the totally unsubstantiated claim that Hamas “threw forty Jewish babies out of their cribs and beheaded them”, which was doing the rounds yesterday. As far as atrocity propaganda goes the claim is startling in its unoriginality (Nayirah anyone?)

There’s a lot of that right now, lurid claims of graphic and pointless violence directed against the innocent, most of which survives just long enough to cause some outrage before being “debunked” or walked-back.

Part of that is the general “fog of war”, heightened by the advent of social media. When a lot of people can talk a lot more is said (good and bad).

But there’s another interpretation: That fake war stories are being intentionally seeded onto social media and then “debunked” to discredit platforms and appear to justify digital censorship.

Within the past twenty-four hours Reuters, NBC, YahooNews, The Guardian and the AP have run stories criticising the proliferation of “fake war news” on social media. Al Jazeera joined in too.

Almost all of those accusations have been directed solely at Twitter/X – increasingly the media’s anti-free speech strawman.

Governments have not been quiet on the issue either, with the European Union reportedly “warning” Elon Musk there would be “penalties” for the spread of war-related “misinformation” on his platform.

It’s not just “misinformation” either, but also “hate”. In an unusually subtle headline, NBCNews warns of the “increasingly fraught nature of online speech”. USA Today is more on the nose, claiming “online hate” is “surging”.

Oh, and there are the “unregulated” sites to worry about, where terrorists allegedly upload violent videos, at least so the New York Times says:

“Hamas Seeds Violent Videos on Sites With Little Moderation”

It’s not hard to see where this leads.

And while “misinformation” is used to justify social media censorship, “safety” is used to justify shutting down freedom of assembly.

In the UK and US pro-Palestinian rallies were met with calls for the police to get involved, citing laws that outlaw the public support of “listed terrorist organizations”.

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has told the police that waving a Palestinian flag could be considered a crime. Metropolitan police are engaging in “reassurance patrols”.

In France the police are already more directly involved, shutting down a pro-Palestine demonstration.

… and people applauded.

Many of them the same voices who railed against tyranny in defending the Canadian truckers or anti-lockdown protests. It is disheartening to see.

In short, the “war” is four days old and is already being used to suppress dissent on the streets and argue against free-speech on the internet.

However the war narrative evolves over there, over here it’s just more of the same.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Fact Check: Hamas ‘Beheading Babies’ Story Based on Weak Evidence

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.10.2023

Amid the fresh escalation of violence in the Middle East, a story by Israeli i24NEWS reporter Nicole Zedeck from Kfar Aza, in which she reported that Israeli soldiers claimed they had found babies with heads severed by Hamas militants, was seized upon by the Western mainstream press, despite a lack of official confirmation.

The Western mainstream press has yet again dipped into its playbook of hawking unproven claims and peddling what are often false narratives. Gut-wrenching headlines like “Hamas cut the throats of babies,” “An act of sheer evil,” and “Massacre of innocents” were emblazoned across a plethora of media outlets after an Israeli reporter claimed that bodies of babies, including some with their heads cut off, had been stumbled upon by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza.

Amid the latest spiral of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, an i24NEWS reporter was among the journalists invited to survey the aftermath of the infiltration of southern Israel by Hamas fighters. As IDF soldiers went from house to house removing the bodies of victims in the kibbutz near the Gaza border, the reporter, Nicole Zedeck, said:

“Talking to some of the soldiers here, they say what they witnessed as they’ve been walking through these communities is bodies of babies with their heads cut off and families gunned down in their beds… We can see some of these soldiers right now, comforting each other.”

Sputnik fact-checked the media hype around the swirling Hamas “beheadings” story, and found it to be based on weak evidence.

The unverified news of Hamas fighters reportedly beheading 40 Israeli babies swiftly took off on social media platforms, shared and retweeted despite not being verified by any news outlet.

The Israeli military does not have any data confirming the alleged massacre of women, elderly people, and children in Kfar Aza, an army representative told Sputnik.

The Israel Defense Forces, alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym Tzahal, is not in possession of any information regarding allegations that “Hamas beheaded babies,” Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency reported, after requesting a comment from the IDF. “We have seen the news, but we do not have any details or confirmation about that,” an IDF spokesperson was cited as saying.

Palestinian militants based in the Gaza Strip launched an offensive against Israel dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, launching thousands of missiles while other groups breached the border and advanced into Israeli territory. The Israel Defense Forces retaliated with airstrikes against the Gaza Strip. The attack prompted Israel to declare a state of war, and put the Gaza Strip under full blockade, cutting off food, gas, and electricity supplies. Israeli and Palestinian authorities have reported that hundreds of people have died and thousands have been injured in the flare-up.

The Palestinian movement Hamas has also vehemently dismissed reports that Gazan fighters allegedly attacked civilians and killed children during the operation near the Gaza Strip.

“The [Hamas] movement categorically rejects the false accusations fabricated by certain Western media outlets, most recently of the alleged killings of children, their beheadings and attacks on civilians,” it stated on its Telegram account. Hamas added that such false claims are “aimed at covering up war crimes and [Israel’s] genocide against the Palestinian people.”

The movement noted that it exclusively targets “[Israel’s] military machine and the security system built [by the Israeli authorities],” calling on Western media to “be objective and professional in reporting the latest events around the Gaza Strip.”

Incidentally, the correspondent who eagerly spread the “Hamas beheaded 40 children” news, without any images or official statements to buttress them, later retracted her claim, and was quoted in media reports as saying:

“I just wanted to clarify that I did not tweet 40 babies had been beheaded. I tweeted that foreign media had been told women and children had been decapitated but we had not been shown bodies – which was my response to reports which had gone viral about the 40 babies. I realized the way my tweet was written was too short to explain the full context, so deleted it. My headline of my story references that toddlers were killed.”

However, the reporter’s words fell on deaf ears, as the media frenzy had already caught fire.

There is no shortage of similar instances when the mainstream press has devoured deliberate distortions of facts to fit the Western narrative.

Bucha Frame-Up

Amid Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, in early April, 2022, the Kiev regime’s media and social networks published graphic photos and videos of allegedly dead bodies strewn in the streets of Bucha. Russian troops had withdrawn from the Ukrainian town on March 30 as Ukrainian forces shelled it with artillery, tanks, and multiple launch rocket systems. After Ukrainian forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, entered the city, they did not report any casualties among the locals. On April 2, Ukraine’s National Police, which also entered the town, filmed a video showing the city’s streets and damaged buildings. Shortly after, Kiev claimed that Bucha was full of corpses, accusing Russia of war crimes and providing a video showing numerous alleged bodies lying in the streets – while the previous clip had failed to show any.

Ukrainian authorities blamed the alleged killings on Russia, despite many corpses in the videos wearing white armbands, which may have been considered Russian insignia by Ukrainian troops. Moscow denounced the allegations, with the Russian Ministry of Defense saying that this was yet another provocation, and stressing that not a single Bucha resident had been harmed by the Russian military while the city was under its control. It underscored that Ukrainian forces shelled the city after Russian troops had already withdrawn from the area. It should be noted that before reports of the mass killings surfaced, the Ukrainian police announced an operation in the settlement to “clear the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops,” which also raises questions about possible preparations for a false flag operation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on the international community to conduct an impartial investigation into the provocation in Bucha. While Moscow demanded that international leaders should not rush to make sweeping accusations, but listen to Russia’s arguments, the Western mainstream media wasted no time in jumping on the graphic footage and peddling the uncorroborated “Bucha massacre” story, while branding Russia as the culprit.

Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma, Syria

On April 7, 2018, a number of NGOs, including the White Helmets, alleged that chemical weapons were used in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, by the Syrian government. Chlorine bombs were allegedly dropped on the city, killing dozens and poisoning many locals, who were rushed to hospitals. Russia dismissed the report as fake news, with its Defense Ministry pointing out that the White Helmets were notorious for spreading falsehoods. On April 9, 2018, Russian military chemists visited the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, including the health facility shown in the White Helmets’ footage, but found neither cases of exposure to chemical weapons nor traces of toxic agents. Yet the Donald Trump administration used the frame-up to justify massive US and allied strikes on Syrian government targets.

Both Moscow and Damascus lambasted the US attacks, citing the fact that Syria had joined the OPCW agreement in 2013 and destroyed its chemical stockpiles by 2014.

However, the US narrative was supported by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in its 2019 report. Soon after, both a WikiLeaks release and whistleblower accounts revealed that the organization had suppressed evidence confirming that the Douma incident was a staged provocation.

Kuwaiti Incubator Hoax

The so-called “Kuwaiti incubator hoax” in 1990 was based on unverified reports and a testimony given to the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus by a 15-year-old girl named Nayirah. She claimed that during the August 1990 invasion, Iraqi soldiers took Kuwaiti babies out of hospital incubators and left them to die. The horrendous story was resorted to by then-US President George H.W. Bush as a rationale behind supporting Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. However, when the war was over, it turned out that the story lacked any evidence.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

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