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FBI director warns of Hamas copycat threat

RT | October 15, 2023

Americans face a heightened threat from “lone wolf” terrorists inspired to replicate aspects of Hamas’ recent assault on Israel on US soil, FBI Director Christopher Wray told an audience of law enforcement officers at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference in San Diego on Saturday.

Claiming there was “no question we’re seeing an increase in reported threats,” Wray warned his law enforcement colleagues, “We’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own” – a reference to Hamas’ attack on Israel last Saturday.

“History has been witness to antisemitic and other forms of violent extremism for too long,” the FBI director continued, vowing to “continue confronting those threats.”

The responsibility for that confrontation was also on conference attendees, Wray added, urging them to “stay vigilant” and notify the FBI and other authorities if they saw any “signs that someone may be mobilizing towards violence.”

The FBI chief did not give any specific examples of domestic threats, copycat or otherwise, that had emerged since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel. Instead, he made a generalized reference to “foreign terrorist organizations, or those inspired by them, or domestic violent extremists motivated by their own racial animus” as a vaguely equivalent menace likely to target individuals because of their (presumably Jewish) faith.

Wray’s FBI was caught earlier this year targeting Christian groups in a sprawling probe that presented traditionalist Catholics as potential domestic terrorists with “antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”

Saturday’s speech was one of the few public references Wray had made since the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, to an extremist threat with possible origins outside the US. The FBI director has insisted for years that the primary menace imperiling Americans is “white supremacy.” The concept has become increasingly nebulous under the presidential administration of Joe Biden, expanding to include not only the so-called “radical Catholics” but also parents who speak out at school board meetings, many of whom were investigated by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division for speaking out against Covid-19 policies, LGBTQ material inserted into their children’s curricula, and other controversial issues following a directive from the Department of Justice deeming them a threat to school officials.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have highlighted “claims of government overreach” as a motivating factor for these “domestic violent extremists.”

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

LAWLESS IN GAZA: WHY BRITAIN AND THE WEST BACK ISRAEL’S CRIMES

As Western politicians line up to cheer on Israel as it starves Gaza’s civilians and plunges them into darkness to soften them up before the coming Israeli ground invasion, it is important to understand how we reached this point – and what it portends for the future.

BY JONATHAN COOK | DECLASSIFIED UK | OCTOBER 13, 2023

More than a decade ago, Israel started to understand that its occupation of Gaza through siege could be to its advantage. It began transforming the tiny coastal enclave from an albatross around its neck into a valuable portfolio in the trading game of international power politics.

The first benefit for Israel, and its Western allies, is more discussed than the second.

The tiny strip of land hugging the eastern Mediterranean coast was turned into a mix of testing ground and shop window.

Israel could use Gaza to develop all sorts of new technologies and strategies associated with the homeland security industries burgeoning across the West, as officials there grew increasingly worried about domestic unrest, sometimes referred to as populism.

The siege of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, imposed by Israel in 2007 following the election of Hamas to rule the enclave, allowed for all sorts of experiments.

How could the population best be contained? What restrictions could be placed on their diet and lifestyle? How were networks of informers and collaborators to be recruited from afar? What effect did the population’s entrapment and repeated bombardment have on social and political relations?

And ultimately how were Gaza’s inhabitants to be kept subjugated and an uprising prevented?

The answers to those questions were made available to Western allies through Israel’s shopping portal. Items available included interception rocket systems, electronic sensors, surveillance systems, drones, facial recognition, automated gun towers, and much more. All tested in real-life situations in Gaza.

Israel’s standing took a severe dent from the fact that Palestinians managed to bypass this infrastructure of confinement last weekend – at least for a few days – with a rusty bulldozer, some hang-gliders and a sense of nothing-to-lose.

Which is part of the reason why Israel now needs to go back into Gaza with ground troops to show it still has the means to keep the Palestinians crushed.

Collective punishment

Which brings us to the second purpose served by Gaza.

As Western states have grown increasingly unnerved by signs of popular unrest at home, they have started to think more carefully about how to sidestep the restrictions placed on them by international law.

The term refers to a body of laws that were formalised in the aftermath of the second world war, when both sides treated civilians on the other side of the battle lines as little more than pawns on a chessboard.

The aim of those drafting international law was to make it unconscionable for there to be a repeat of Nazi atrocities in Europe, as well as other crimes such as Britain’s fire bombing of German cities like Dresden or the United States’ dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

One of the fundamentals of international law – at the heart of the Geneva Conventions – is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts of their leaders and armies.

Very obviously, Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be found. Even in “quiet” times, its inhabitants – one million of them children – are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care because medicines and equipment cannot be brought in; access to drinkable water; and the use of electricity for much of the day because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.

Israel has never made any bones of the fact that it is punishing the people of Gaza for being ruled by Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to have dispossessed the Palestinians of their homeland in 1948 and imprisoned them in overcrowded ghettos like Gaza.

What Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment. It is a war crime: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of every year, for 16 years.

And yet no one in the so-called international community seems to have noticed.

Rules of war rewritten

But the trickiest legal situation – for Israel and the West – is when Israel bombs Gaza, as it is doing now, or sends in soldiers, as it soon will do.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the problem when he told the people of Gaza: “Leave now”. But, as he and Western leaders know, Gaza’s inhabitants have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the bombs. So any Israeli attack is, by definition, on the civilian population too. It is the modern equivalent of the Dresden fire bombings.

Israel has been working on strategies to overcome this difficulty since its first major bombardment of Gaza in late 2008, after the siege was introduced.

A unit in its attorney general’s office was charged with finding ways to rewrite the rules of war in Israel’s favour.

At the time, the unit was concerned that Israel would be criticised for blowing up a police graduation ceremony in Gaza, killing many young cadets. Police are civilians in international law, not soldiers, and therefore not a legitimate target. Israeli lawyers were also worried that Israel had destroyed government offices, the infrastructure of Gaza’s civilian administration.

Israel’s concerns seem quaint now – a sign of how far it has already shifted the dial on international law. For some time, anyone connected with Hamas, however tangentially, is considered a legitimate target, not just by Israel but by every Western government.

Western officials have joined Israel in treating Hamas as simply a terrorist organisation, ignoring that it is also a government with people doing humdrum tasks like making sure bins are collected and schools kept open.

Or as Orna Ben-Naftali, a law faculty dean, told the Haaretz newspaper back in 2009: “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head.”

Back at that time, David Reisner, who had previously headed the unit, explained Israel’s philosophy to Haaretz: “What we are seeing now is a revision of international law. If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it.

“The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.”

Israel’s meddling to change international law goes back many decades.

Referring to Israel’s attack on Iraq’s fledgling nuclear reactor in 1981, an act of war condemned by the UN Security Council, Reisner said: “The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defence. International law progresses through violations.”

He added that his team had travelled to the US four times in 2001 to persuade US officials of Israel’s ever-more flexible interpretation of international law towards subjugating Palestinians.

“Had it not been for those four planes, I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale,” he said.

Those redefinitions of the rules of war proved invaluable when the US chose to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘Human animals’

In recent years, Israel has continued to “evolve” international law. It has introduced the concept of “prior warning” – sometimes giving a few minutes’ notice of a building or neighbourhood’s destruction. Vulnerable civilians still in the area, like the elderly, children and the disabled, are then recast as legitimate targets for failing to leave in time.

And it is using the current assault on Gaza to change the rules still further.

The 2009 Haaretz article includes references by law officials to Yoav Gallant, who was then the military commander in charge of Gaza. He was described as a “wild man”, a “cowboy” with no time for legal niceties.

Gallant is now defence minister and the man responsible for instituting this week a “complete siege” of Gaza: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed.” In language that blurred any distinction between Hamas and Gaza’s civilians, he described Palestinians as “human animals”.

That takes collective punishment into a whole different realm. In terms of international law, it skirts into the territory of genocide, both rhetorically and substantively.

But the dial has shifted so completely that even centrist Western politicians are cheering Israel on – often not even calling for “restraint” or “proportionality”, the weasel terms they usually use to obscure their support for law breaking.

Britain has been leading the way in helping Israel to rewrite the rulebook on international law.

Listen to Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour opposition and the man almost certain to be Britain’s next prime minister. This week he supported the “complete siege” of Gaza, a crime against humanity, refashioning it as Israel’s “right to defend itself”.

Starmer has not failed to grasp the legal implications of Israel’s actions, even if he seems personally immune to the moral implications. He is trained as a human rights lawyer.

His approach even appears to be taking aback journalists not known for being sympathetic to the Palestinian case. When asked by Kay Burley of Sky News if he had any sympathy for the civilians in Gaza being treated like “human animals”, Starmer could not find a single thing to say in support.

Instead, he deflected to an outright deception: blaming Hamas for sabotaging a “peace process” that Israel both practically and declaratively buried years ago.

Confirming that the Labour party now condones war crimes by Israel, his shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, has been sticking to the same script. On BBC’s Newsnight, she evaded questions about whether cutting off power and supplies to Gaza is in line with international law.

It is no coincidence that Starmer’s position contrasts so dramatically with that of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. The latter was driven out of office by a sustained campaign of antisemitism smears fomented by Israel’s most fervent supporters in the UK.

Starmer does not dare to be seen on the wrong side of this issue. And that is exactly the outcome Israeli officials wanted and expected.

Israeli flag on No 10

Starmer is, of course, far from alone. Grant Shapps, Britain’s defence secretary, has also expressed trenchant support for Israel’s policy of starving two million Palestinians in Gaza.

Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, has emblazoned the Israeli flag on the front of his official residence, 10 Downing Street, apparently unconcerned at how he is giving visual form to what would normally be considered an antisemitic trope: that Israel controls the UK’s foreign policy.

Starmer, not wishing to be outdone, has called for Wembley stadium’s arch to be adorned with the colours of the Israeli flag.

“The media is playing its part, dependably as ever“

However much this schoolboy cheerleading of Israel is sold as an act of solidarity following Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians at the weekend, the subtext is unmistakeable: Britain has Israel’s back as it starts its retributive campaign of war crimes in Gaza.

That is also the purpose of home secretary Suella Braverman’s advice to the police to treat the waving of Palestinian flags and chants for Palestine’s liberation at protests in support of Gaza as criminal acts.

The media is playing its part, dependably as ever. A Channel 4 TV crew pursued Corbyn through London’s streets this week, demanding he “condemn” Hamas. They insinuated through the framing of those demands that anything less fulsome – such as Corbyn’s additional concerns for the welfare of Gaza’s civilians – was confirmation of the former Labour leader’s antisemitism.

The clear implication from politicians and the establishment media is that any support for Palestinian rights, any demurral from Israel’s “unquestionable right” to commit war crimes, equates to antisemitism.

Europe’s hypocrisy

This double approach, of cheering on genocidal Israeli policies towards Gaza while stifling any dissent, or characterising it as antisemitism, is not confined to the UK.

Across Europe, from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Bulgarian parliament, official buildings have been lit up with the Israeli flag.

Europe’s top official, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, celebrated the Israeli flag smothering the EU parliament this week.

She has repeatedly stated that “Europe stands with Israel”, even as Israeli war crimes start to mount.

The Israeli air force boasted on Thursday it had dropped some 6,000 bombs on Gaza. At the same time, human rights groups reported Israel was firing the incendiary chemical weapon white phosphorus into Gaza, a war crime when used in urban areas. And Defence for Children International noted that more than 500 Palestinian children had been killed so far by Israeli bombs.

It was left to Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied territories, to point out that Von Der Leyen was applying the principles of international law entirely inconsistently.

Almost exactly a year ago, the European Commission president denounced Russia’s strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as war crimes. “Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming – these are acts of pure terror,” she wrote. “And we have to call it as such.”

Albanese noted Von der Leyen had said nothing equivalent about Israel’s even worse attacks on Palestinian infrastructure.

Sending in the heavies

Meanwhile, France has already started breaking up and banning demonstrations against the bombing of Gaza. Its justice minister has echoed Braverman in suggesting solidarity with Palestinians risks offending Jewish communities and should be treated as “hate speech”.

Naturally, Washington is unwavering in its support for whatever Israel decides to do to Gaza, as secretary of state Anthony Blinken made clear during his visit this week.

President Joe Biden has promised weapons and funding, and sent in the military equivalent of “the heavies” to make sure no one disturbs Israel as it carries out those war crimes. An aircraft carrier has been dispatched to the region to ensure quiet from Israel’s neighbours as the ground invasion is launched.

Even those officials whose chief role is to promote international law, such as Antonio Gutteres, secretary general of the UN, have started to move with the shifting ground.

Like most Western officials, he has emphasised Gaza’s “humanitarian needs” above the rules of war Israel is obliged to honour.

This is Israel’s success. The language of international law that should apply to Gaza – of rules and norms Israel must obey – has given way to, at best, the principles of humanitarianism: acts of international charity to patch up the suffering of those whose rights are being systematically trampled on, and those whose lives are being obliterated.

Western officials are more than happy with the direction of travel. Not just for Israel’s sake but for their own too. Because one day in the future, their own populations may be as much trouble to them as Palestinians in Gaza are to Israel right now.

Supporting Israel’s right to defend itself is their downpayment.

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Not Hamas-Israeli conflict: The Palestinian cause belongs to the world

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2023

At one time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was Arab and Israeli. Over the course of many years, however, it was rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli conflict’.

But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful.

The supposedly astounding Israeli victories over the years against Arab armies have emboldened Israel to the extent that it came to view itself, not as a regional superpower, but as a global power as well. Israel, per its own definition, became ‘invincible’.

Such terminology was not a mere scare tactic aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians and Arabs alike. Israel believed this.

The ‘Israeli miracle victory’ against Arab armies in 1967 was a watershed moment. Then, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, declared in a speech that “from the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem.”

This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”

The sentiment in Eban’s words echoed throughout Israel. Even those who doubted their government’s ability to completely prevail over the Arabs, joined the chorus: Israel is unvanquishable.

Little rational discussion took place back then, about the actual reasons why Israel had won, and if that victory would have been possible without Washington’s complete backing and the West’s willingness to support Israel at any cost.

Israel was never a graceful winner. As the size of territories controlled by the triumphant little state increased by three-fold, Israel began entrenching its military occupation over whatever remained of historic Palestine. It even began building settlements in newly occupied Arab territories, in Sinai, the Golan Heights and all the rest.

Fifty years ago, in October 1973, Arab armies attempted to reverse Israel’s massive gains by launching a surprise attack. They initially succeeded, then failed when the US moved quickly to bolster Israeli defenses and intelligence.

It was not a complete victory for the Arabs, nor a total defeat for Israel. The latter was badly bruised, though. But Tel Aviv remained convinced that the fundamental relationship it had established with the Arabs in 1967 had not been altered.

And, with time, the ‘conflict’ became less Arab-Israeli and more Palestinian-Israeli. Other Arab countries, like Lebanon, paid a heavy price for the fragmentation of the Arab front.

This changing reality meant that Israel could invade South Lebanon in March 1978, and then sign the Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt, six months later.

While the Israeli occupation of Palestine grew more violent, with an insatiable appetite for more land, the west turned the Palestinian struggle for freedom into a ‘conflict’ to be managed by words, never by deeds.

Many Palestinian intellectuals make a point of arguing that “this is not a conflict”, that military occupation is not a political dispute, but governed by clearly defined international laws and boundaries. And that it must be resolved according to international justice.

That is yet to happen. Neither was justice delivered, nor an inch of Palestine was retrieved, despite the countless international conferences, resolutions, statements, investigations, recommendations, and special reports. Without real enforcement, international law is mere ink.

But did the Arab people abandon Palestine? The anger, the anguish, and the passionate chants by endless streams of people who took to the streets throughout the Middle East to protest the annihilation of Gaza by the Israeli army, did not seem to think that Palestine is alone – or, at least, should be left fighting on its own.

The isolation of Palestine from its regional context has proven disastrous.

When the ‘conflict’ is only with the Palestinians, then Israel determines the context and scope of the so-called conflict, what is allowed at the ‘negotiations table’, and what is to be excluded. This is how the Oslo Accords squandered Palestinian rights.

The more Israel succeeds in isolating Palestinians from their regional environs, the more it invests in their division.

It is even more dangerous when the conflict becomes between Hamas and Israel. The outcome is a whole different conversation that is superimposed on the truly urgent understanding of what is taking place in Gaza, in the whole of Palestine at the moment.

In Israel’s version of events, the war began on October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli military bases, settlements, and towns in the south of Israel.

No other date or event prior to the Hamas attack seems to matter to Israel, to the West and to corporate media covering the war with so much concern for the plight of Israelis, and complete disregard to the Gaza inferno.

No other context is allowed to spoil the perfect Israeli narrative of Daesh-like Palestinians disturbing the peace and tranquility of Israel and its people.

Palestinian voices that insist on discussing the Gaza war within proper historical contexts – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the siege on Gaza in 2007, all the bloody wars before and after – are simply denied platforms.

The pro-Israel media simply does not want to listen. Even if Israel did not go as far as making unfounded claims about decapitated babies, the media would have remained committed to the Israeli narrative, anyway.

Yet, if Israel continues to define the narratives of war, historical contexts of ‘conflicts’, and the political discourses that shape the West’s view of Palestine and the Middle East, it will continue to obtain all the blank checks necessary to remain committed to its military occupation of Palestine.

In turn, this will fuel yet more conflicts, more wars and more deception regarding the roots of the violence.

For this vicious cycle to break, Palestine must, once more, become an issue that concerns all Arabs, the whole region. The Israeli narrative must be countered, western bias confronted, and a new, collective strategy formed.

In other words, Palestine cannot be left alone anymore.

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

The “Israel-Has-No-Alternative” Myth

BY SAM HUSSEINI | OCTOBER 13, 2023

Many are claiming that Israel has no choice.

It has to bomb Gaza, there is no alternative.

In fact, Israel has a choice.

A clear choice.

To reflexively react and bomb Gaza amid massive propaganda before assessing the facts is deranged.

One clear fact is that Netanyahu promised security and he failed. Israelis of every political stripe should be fuming at him, as some are. Never mind for the moment that he had warning of the Hamas attacks and almost certainly wanted conflict.

The choice facing Israel is highlighted by this:

In 2004, bombings on commuter trains in Madrid killed over 190 people. The government was immediately voted out and a new government came in, swiftly got Spain out of Iraq and nothing like that has happened in Spain since.

But the lessons of the train bombings is memory holed and even falsified.

NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reversed what happened, claiming after the Orlando shooting — which was also followed by a flood of lies — that after the bombings in Spain, “the more conservative candidate ended up winning.” (In NPR-speak, “conservative” means more pro-war.) Total propaganda.

The lesson is clear.

Netanyahu isn’t out to protect Israelis.

If he was, he would embrace peace.

You want to stop a group like Hamas from attacking you?

Solve the conflict.

Abide by international law.

Stop bombing people.

Repent for having expelled nonviolent activists.

Withdraw.

Agree to peace.

—

I’ve been suspended by X/twitter, but you can now see my past material there. I’m also now posting on Gab. 

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Army Kills A Palestinian Child In Tulkarem

IMEMC | OCTOBER 14, 2023

On Saturday, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian child in Zeita town, north of Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank’s northwestern part.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that the soldiers killed Omar Ahmad Abdul-Rahman Asmar, 15, after shooting him with live fire.

The child was among many wounded Palestinians during protests that took place after several Israeli army vehicles invaded the town.

His death brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli army fire in Tulkarem on Friday and Saturday to six, in addition to dozens of injuries.


On Saturday dawn, Israeli soldiers killed Mahmoud Shehada, 27, injured three, including one who suffered serious wounds, and abducted six in Jericho, in the northeastern part of the occupied West Bank.

Also at dawn, Israeli soldiers killed a young Palestinian man, Abdul-Rahman Ribhi Al-Ammouri, in a car near Al-Isawiya town junction, northeast of the occupied Palestinian capital Jerusalem, in the West Bank.

On Saturday dawn, as the Israeli army continued to fire hundreds of missiles and shells at homes and buildings in the Gaza Strip, including a busy marker in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The Health Ministry has confirmed that the extensive Israeli bombing Saturday has killed 315 Palestinians, including 90 children, and injured 1788, mainly women and children.

It added that 2215 Palestinians, including 724 children and 458 women, have been killed, and 8714 Palestinians, including 2450 children and 1536 women, have been injured as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza entered its eighth day.

On Friday, the soldiers killed fifteen Palestinians, including two children, in several parts of the occupied West Bank Friday.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Day 8: Death toll from Israeli war on Gaza climbs to 2,269, including over 700 children

A Palestinian man carries a wounded girl at the site of Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 14, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)
Press TV – October 14, 2023

At least 2,269 people, including over 700 Palestinian children, have been killed as the Israeli war on the besieged Gaza rages on.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced in a statement on Saturday that 2,269 Palestinians lost their lives and another 9,814 were injured ever since the Israeli strikes began on October 7. More than 700 children are among the fatalities.

This comes as more than 420,000 people are displaced within the Gaza Strip. A total of 270,374 out of 423,378 internally displaced people are now in UN shelters and schools.

At least 15 hospitals have been damaged by Israeli shelling and air raids.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says its shelters in the enclave “are not safe anymore” and warns that water is running out for the 2.3 million residents of the blockaded territory.

Israeli strike at school in Jabalia kills at least 27 Palestinians

Renewed Israeli airstrikes near a school on Saturday afternoon have killed more than 20 Palestinians.

According the media office of the Gaza-based Interior Ministry, The attack targeted areas adjacent to al-Fakhura School in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, leaving at least 27 civilians, including children, dead.

The Israeli air raids also resulted in the injury of more than 80 people.

Gaza hospitals given final warning to be evacuated or bombed

Furthermore, a Palestinian doctor said the Israeli military has given them a final notice to leave hospitals in northern Gaza before they start bombing them.

Sohaib al-Hems said staff of al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia and the General Services Hospital in Gaza City are refusing to leave.

“We will die in the hospitals. More than 27 ambulances have been targeted just now, and dozens of medical staff and patients have been killed,” Hems said. “Do not stay silent over what’s happening in Gaza. We will not forgive you.”

UN: Water runs out in Gaza

The United Nations also said more than two million people are risk in Gaza as water runs out.

It has become a matter of “life and death,” Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, said.

According the UNRWA, no humanitarian supplies have been allowed into Gaza since last Saturday.

“Fuel needs to be delivered now into Gaza to make water available for 2 million people,” Lazzarini said.

“If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly and women. Water is now the last remaining lifeline. I appeal for the siege on humanitarian assistance to be lifted now,” he added.

Clean and drinking water is running out, forcing people to use dirty water from wells and increasing risks of waterborne diseases, the UNRWA noted.

Water supply has also been impacted by the total electricity blackout imposed by Israel since October 11.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

MSNBC Muslim anchors sidelined despite being Israeli apologists

By Mohammad Hashim | Press TV | October 14, 2023

In an interesting revelation, it has been reported on Saturday that three high-profile Muslim anchors of the American news television channel MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal, have been sidelined.

The Semafor report said Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have been “quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair” amid the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The network reportedly did not air the Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on its streaming platform Peacock and also reversed its plan to replace Joy Reid with Mohyeldin this week for the channel’s 7 p.m. show.

The report, citing “two network sources with knowledge of the plans”, said Velshi will also be replaced by Alicia Menendez this weekend. Menendez hosts American Coices on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hasan is a British-American television journalist of Indian descent who has anchored the popular The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC since February 2021.

Mohyeldin is an Egypt-born, New York-based journalist for NBC News and MSNBC who currently hosts the weekly prime-time show ‘Ayman’ on MSNBC.

Velshi is a US-based Canadian journalist, who has been reporting for NBC News since October 2016 and also serves as a news host for MSNBC channel.

NBC has termed the schedule changes as “coincidental,” refuting claims that the high-profile Muslim broadcasters are being snubbed amid the Israeli hostilities against Palestinians.

However, the Semafor report stressed that staff members at MSNBC have been “concerned by the moves”, feeling all three hosts have “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”

It said the move to sideline the three anchors comes as the MSNBC network, which is aligned closely with the Democratic Party, has “swung into intense solidarity” with the Israeli regime.

“That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi,” the report stated.

Following the Hamas operation, US politicians, including President Joe Biden, quickly jumped in defense of the occupying regime and peddled blatant lies about children beheaded and women raped.

Interestingly, the three MSNBC journalists, including Hasan, have been vocal against the operation launched by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on the occupied territories last week.

Hasan, who has a massive social media following and is known for his argumentative style of on-air debating, took to his X handle on October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, lecturing his 1.3 million followers on “morality” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“This conflict for me has always been about morality. Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism. But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation,” he wrote.

It was a conscious and concerted attempt on the part of the British-American journalist to play both sides, to advocate the case of Palestinians, and also to be apologetic for the Israeli occupation.

He somehow tried to question the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance group to launch the Al-Aqsa Storm operation even if they were occupied, subjugated, humiliated and mercilessly killed every day.

Hasan also fell for the hoax that hundreds of people were “massacred” at a music festival.

“Israel says 260 dead at music festival attacked by Hamas. I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking,” he wrote on X.

It was part of the bigger misinformation campaign against the Palestinian resistance movement, which took the music festival participants as prisoners and treated them in a dignified manner as seen in videos circulating widely online.

To put his case as a neutral journalist who cares for Israelis, the MSNBC anchor reacted strangely to a photo of a demonstration by pro-Palestine activists outside the Israeli regime’s consulate in New York.

“These people are an embarrassment and their cheering is reprehensible,” Hasan wrote.

Mohyeldin, much like his MSNBC colleague, has been very consciously trying to appease his employers by being soft on the Israeli apartheid regime and amplifying voices against the resistance.

On October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, he shared a series of posts on X that were circulated to vilify the Gaza-based resistance group and to portray Israeli soldiers and settlers as victims.

He even shared an article that claimed Iran helped in plotting the attack on the Israeli regime.

Velsh, like the other two, has also used his social media platforms, including X, to make a case for himself as someone who despises the Palestinian resistance movement.

On October 10, he shared an article about Hamas, calling it an “important read to understand what you need to know about the group behind the deadly terror attack in Israel.”

He clearly sees the Hamas operation as a “terror attack”, not a legitimate military action against the occupying regime. He also conveniently dismissed the fact that the attack targeted occupiers.

On Saturday, he posted on X that he was leaving the occupied territories, adding to speculation that he has been sidelined from his job despite extra effort to take the hypocritical position on the conflict.

All three of them – Hasan, Mohyeldin and Velshi – despite trying to present themselves as “good boys” have received a bad report card from their bosses. That’s how much Americans value free speech.

Mohammad Hashim is a political and media analyst with a focus on West Asia.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Move to Send Warships to Gaza Coast More Dangerous Than We Thought

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 13, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is banking all he has on a single bet: that the U.S. will go the full nine yards in his madcap idea of a regional war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in the region.

For Netanyahu, this was always the plan from the very beginning. But it will take a series of stepping stones to get to this objective. First off is that he has to convince the Biden administration to join the IDF in its war within the Gaza Strip. And even that’s not going to be easy.

He would ideally like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, a former senior security policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told Russia Today recently. Maloof is certainly right but the move by Biden to send an armada of battle ships to the eastern Mediterranean coast is a dangerous move on so many levels. It’s easy to see that Biden wants to show support to Israel and to also show a physical presence in the region for Hezbollah, to make Nasrallah thinks twice about taking advantage of the IDF’s work being cut out in Gaza to launch a surprise attack. The problem with this mindset is that Hezbollah is not easily threatened by such moves and more than likely will be forced to think in a bigger and bolder way about carrying out such an attack with the U.S. ships ready to pound southern Lebanon, than if they were not there. This is definitely an own goal.

But secondly, the temptation by Netanyahu to arrange a false flag attack on the Americans is too great if and when he sees the conflict not going his way.

The other concern to consider is the Americans themselves making a tactical error. Miscalculation in this situation is fever-pitched and the Americans have a history of doing this in the region. One such error would plunge the entire region into the war with Iran which Netanyahu has dreamed of all his life. And there would be no easy “off ramp” for the Americans.

On Monday October 9th, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.”

Some will remember U.S. President Lyndon Johnson kickstarting the Vietnam war with a neat little piece of fake news by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two U.S. destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement. In those days all the LBJ government had to do was to simply announce that these ships had been attacked by North Vietnam forces. That’s all it took to justify the Vietnam war starting, a war, like so many U.S. interventions that not only Americans lost but one which redefined U.S. foreign policy for decades to come.

The U.S. 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.

And so, all the ingredients are there for the caldron to boil over. If Netanyahu is satisfied that the assault on Gaza is going to plan – a military strategy based on starving the enemy first before sending in second-rate IDF infantry (the worst secret in the Middle East is how poor Israeli infantry is on the battlefield) – then he may decide not to turn to the Americans for the big plan. But if the going gets tougher, he may well open up direct talks with Biden and his advisers about the level of support he could hope to get in a bigger, wider war. It is unlikely Biden will support him though, as the last thing he needs leading up to a re-election bid is a world war in the Middle East and American body bags. And so the natural progression is that Netanyahu’s people will conclude that the only way to draw America in is if it was no choice. The only real way to guarantee this is if those U.S. battleships are supposedly attacked by Hezbollah’s missiles in southern Lebanon.

Getting the Lebanese Shia group to do this might be harder that Netanyahu might reckon. Hezbollah understands only too well the ruse and is careful not to be pulled into a provocation. And there is always the possibility that Hamas itself fires a missile at one of them and this is conveniently seen as an attack from Lebanon. It actually won’t matter where it comes from. The Americans will fake all the forensic audio visuals later on and hand it out to journalists happy to file a good story just as they are lying to U.S. journalists about having enough ammunition to supply any such war, when the whole world and his dog knows that stocks are running very low.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US diplomats told to avoid calls for Gaza ‘ceasefire’

RT | October 14, 2023

The US State Department has advised diplomats to avoid calling for “de-escalation” or a “ceasefire” in Gaza amid continued fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants, multiple media outlets have reported. US officials have voiced loud support for the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense” in the wake of a deadly Hamas raid last week.

In an email addressed to a small group of officials on Friday, the State Department said US press materials should steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” unnamed administration officials told NBC News and other outlets.

The Huffington Post, which obtained a copy of the email, called the missive a “stunning signal” and an indication of the White House’s “reluctance to push for Israeli restraint.” The email was sent amid a new round of airstrikes on Gaza in response to a Hamas-led terrorist attack last Saturday.

Asked about the directive, an unnamed State Department official told HuffPo that they would not comment on internal communications.

Despite the discussions behind the scenes, at a press event in Qatar later on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Washington had stressed to Israel the “importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians” in Gaza. He added, “We recognize that many Palestinian families in Gaza are suffering through no fault of their own and that Palestinian civilians have lost their lives.”

President Joe Biden described last weekend’s Hamas attack as “pure evil” and insisted that Israel has the right to respond. However, in recent remarks, he claimed that Washington and its allies “uphold the laws of war,” and reportedly asked his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza during private discussions, according to NBC.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin relayed a similar message to IDF officials during meetings in Israel on Friday, the outlet added, noting that he urged them to “observe international rules of warfare.”

Since last Saturday, at least 1,300 Israelis and nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in hostilities, with thousands more injured on both sides, according to local officials. IDF bombing raids have continued into Saturday morning, leveling whole apartment blocks in some strikes, while Israeli ground troops have begun their initial thrust into Gaza.

The Israeli government has ordered more than 1 million residents in northern Gaza to evacuate the area for their own safety, though the United Nations and other rights groups have slammed the directive, saying it would be impossible to accomplish without a massive humanitarian toll. Asked about the policy on Friday, White House spokesman John Kirby declined to endorse or condemn it, merely calling it “a tall order.”

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin compares ‘unacceptable’ Gaza blockade to Nazi siege of Leningrad

Press TV – October 13, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip as “unacceptable,” comparing it to the Nazi blockade of Leningrad during World War II.

Israel is now about to do something that is “comparable to the siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War,” Putin told journalists in Kyrgyzstan on Friday. “In my opinion, this is unacceptable.”

Putin also warned the regime against hurting civilians in Gaza, stressing that “hardly anyone will agree” with Israel’s siege of Gaza due to the civilian casualties incurred in it.

“By the way, all of us hear – we will discuss this informally – we hear about preparations for a ground operation in Gaza. But you and I understand how it is, quite semi-professionally speaking, the use of heavy equipment in residential areas is a complicated matter fraught with serious consequences for all sides. And it is even more difficult to carry out these operations without equipment in residential areas. But the most important thing is that civilian casualties will be absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

“More than two million people live there, and not all of them support Hamas, by the way,” the Russian leader said.

“We proceed from the fact that there is no alternative to a negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Their goal should be the realization of the UN two-state formula, which envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, existing in peace and security with Israel,” he said.

He also said Israel has responded to Hamas operation with “quite brutal methods.”

Israel has been constantly bombing Gaza since Saturday, when Hamas launched a surprise operation in response to the regime’s atrocities.

Israel used banned white phosphorus munitions against desperate people in Gaza, a human rights monitor said.

The Health Ministry in Gaza announced on Friday that at least 1,799 Palestinians, including 583 children, and 351 women have been martyred so far. More than 7,000 Palestinians have also been wounded in the bombardment.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have also been displaced as a result of the regime’s relentless and indiscriminate attacks.

At least 423,000 people have now been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said.

The coastal territory remains under Israel’s complete siege with no access to electricity, water, food, and medicines.

Various governments have warned over Israel’s indiscriminate bombings targeting Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped in what is described as the world’s biggest open-air prison.

Iran has called for global action to halt attacks by the apartheid regime against Gazans and prevent a genocide of innocent people there.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Israel is committing a massacre in the besieged strip. Erdogan said Israel is trying to portray its bombing civilians as proof of its skills.

China’s envoy to the Middle East Zhai Jun called for “an immediate ceasefire” to the conflict during a phone call with a Palestinian official, the Chinese foreign ministry said Wednesday.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel faces hopeless situation in Gaza’: Kevin Barrett

Press TV – October 13, 2023

The Israeli regime faces a “hopeless” situation in its war of aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza, an American scholar and commentator has said.

Dr. Kevin Barrett, an Islamic scholar and former American academic made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the Press TV website on Friday.

Gaza has been a target of Israel’s continuous bombardment since Saturday when it was caught flat-footed by a multi-pronged operation by resistance groups that involved massive missile strikes and ground incursions into settlements near the blockaded territory.

The Health Ministry in Gaza announced on Friday that at least 1,799 Palestinians, including 583 children and 351 women have been martyred in six days of incessant Israeli bombardment of the blockaded territory.

More than 7,000 Palestinians have also been wounded in the bombardment.

“Like the Americans in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Israel faces an impossible, hopeless situation. The more violence it uses, the more it is hated. Kill an enemy, and ten new ones spring up in his place,” said Dr. Barrett, who is now based in Morocco. He previously lived in the US.

On the possibility of an Israeli ground offensive against the strip, Barrett said that “a limited ground invasion” is likely but if Israel decides to go further than that, a wider conflict may break out leading to Israel’s destruction.

“A limited ground invasion of Gaza is likely unavoidable. But if the Zionists continue to take heavy losses, which seems probable given the Palestinians’ stellar military performance (not to mention courage), a genocidal escalation cannot be discounted,” he said.

Fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD)

Barrett said Palestinians would resist the Israeli regime’s ground invasion, as they have nothing to lose and are ready to die for their cause, unlike Israelis who can move to other countries and live a comfortable life.

“The Palestinians have long since reached the point where they really have nothing to lose. Like Putin, who says ‘What’s the point of a world without Russia;’ they see no point in living in a world without Palestine. And of course, Muslims will never accept a world without al-Aqsa. So the Palestinians and their supporters are fully prepared to die for their cause,” he stated.

“Not so the Zionists. Most have dual citizenship and can live quite comfortably in Western or Eastern Europe, Russia, North America, or even South America,” he explained.

Dr. Barrett said the Israeli regime is willing to expel or even kill all the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but he hopes fears of a “mutually assured destruction (MAD)” would deter the regime from taking that option.

He added, “Netanyahu has openly proclaimed his genocidal intentions: ‘We will turn Gaza into a deserted island. To the citizens of Gaza, I say: You must leave now. We will target each and every corner of the strip.’”

“In other words, Netanyahu is threatening to murder the 2.3 million people penned up in the open-air concentration camp known as the Gaza Strip if they refuse to leave. And they will refuse,” he said.

“But will Netanyahu really exterminate 2.3 million concentration camp inmates? Is he planning to load them into boxcars and ship them to gas chambers? Even if he thought world public opinion would allow it, does he really believe that Hezbollah and Iran, and quite possibly other regional nations and organizations, would stand by and allow the Gazans to be completely exterminated?” he asked.

“While it is true that the Zionist entity commands enough firepower to obliterate Gaza, supporters of the Palestinians likewise command enough firepower to obliterate the Zionist entity. I hope and pray that this mutually assured destruction deters the Zionists from implementing Netanyahu’s final solution to the Palestinian problem,” Barrett stated.

‘Slow-motion genocide’

Elaborating on the root of Hamas’s surprise operation, Barrett said it was the natural outcome of what he calls “the ongoing slow-motion genocide of Palestine.”

He said that as a people living under occupation, the Palestinians have the right, under international law, to use military force to try to remove the occupation. Considering the horrific treatment they continue to receive, it is not surprising that they are willing to avail themselves of that right.

“The Palestinians have been massacred, blockaded and starved, penned up in de facto concentration camps like the Gaza Strip, and subjected to endless indignities. Their children are shot for sport by Israeli soldiers. Their neighborhoods are broken up with Orwellian checkpoints and illegal settlers steal more and more of their land,” he stated.

“Their homes are invaded and demolished. Their women are assaulted, their holy places defiled, their olive trees uprooted, their water, sewage and electricity systems destroyed,” he said.

“Their schools and ambulances are bombed, their teenagers are mowed down from aircraft while they play soccer on the beach, and their bodies are burned away with white phosphorus. Experimental weaponry is tested on them. Their bravest leaders are targeted and killed. And anyone caught resisting who isn’t killed is imprisoned and tortured.”

Barrett said the Zionist regime’s escalating series of desecrations of the Al-Aqsa mosque, which are meant to prepare the ground for the eventual destruction of the Islamic world’s oldest and greatest architectural monument, is what pushed Palestinians over the brink.

“Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was primarily launched in defense of the holy mosque. Al-Aqsa is the pre-eminent symbol of Islamic spirituality and monotheistic ecumenism. It is as important to Muslims as the Vatican is to Catholics. For Muslims, allowing al-Aqsa to be invaded, desecrated, and destroyed is not an option, any more than Catholics would allow the Vatican to be invaded, desecrated, and destroyed,” he said.

Dr. Barrett explained that during recent months, and even more so in recent weeks, the Zionists have been invading the mosque and attacking worshippers including women and the elderly while being protected by the Israeli police.

“The Zionist settlers who invade the mosque under police protection are not just trespassers and bullies. They intend to destroy Al-Aqsa, and their invasions are meant to gradually erode Muslim control of the mosque and assert Zionist control,” he said.

“Once Muslims have been fully dispossessed of their greatest spiritual and architectural treasure, the Zionists intend to destroy it so they can ‘rebuild’ a blood sacrifice temple,” he observed.

Dr. Barrett said Hamas is now not only representing Palestinians but the whole Muslim world, as it is defending the Al-Aqsa mosque.

“Hamas, in its heroic defense of al-Aqsa, does not just represent Palestinians. It represents the entire Islamic world. Every Muslim leader on earth needs to let the world know, clearly and unmistakably, that we all have the Palestinians’ back.”

Hamas operation disrupted Israeli-Saudi normalization

Barrett said Hamas was probably also worried that Saudi leaders may soon start befriending the Israeli regime and this would embolden the regime to accelerate its drive to basically uproot Palestinians.

“They were concerned that the Saudis, those self-appointed custodians of the Islamic world’s other two great shrines, were getting ready to stand back and allow the al-Aqsa Mosque to be destroyed while the Palestinian people suffered gradual extermination. That seems to be the Saudi leadership’s policy,” he said.

“So Hamas was faced with a difficult situation: The extremist-led Zionists had bought off much of the regional leadership and were clearing the way for an even bigger attack on Palestine,” he said.

“As Sam Husseini says: … the chessboard was basically set for Israel to pummel the Palestinians. This was especially driven by the US government’s drive for ‘normalization’ between Arab states with Israel.”

“This and other things—Turkish president Erdogan meeting Netanyahu for the first time recently—made it apparent that Israel was positioned to inflict massive violence against the Palestinians. I don’t know but suspect that Hamas came to the same conclusion and decided to strike first,” he said.

By striking first and scoring a big victory, Palestinians have rallied and roused the people of the region, including Saudi Arabia, making it impossible for the Saudi leadership to pursue its deeply unpopular “normalization” project, Barrett said.

‘Zionist project was always doomed’

Commenting on the long-term future course of the conflict, Barrett said Zionists are their own biggest enemy, as their project of occupying the Palestinian land was always doomed to failure.

“The Zionist project recalls Walt Kelly’s famous Vietnam-era ‘Pogo’ comic strip: ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’ The Israelis are their own worst enemies. Their invasion, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, in a region where hundreds of millions of people share the language, culture, and/or religion of their victims, was always bound to fail,” he stated.

“Ten million Jewish tribalists, no matter how rich and powerful and connected, cannot permanently defeat four hundred million Arabs and two billion Muslims,” he explained.

He said the only realistic course that was ever open to the Zionists was peaceful integration into the region on the basis of friendship and equality, but their “insufferable arrogance” precluded that from the very beginning.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reuters journalist killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire – media

RT | October 13, 2023

A Reuters videographer has been killed in southern Lebanon, the news agency said on Friday. Six other journalists were injured in the incident. The group was hit by Israeli artillery, Al Jazeera and Lebanese security sources said.

“We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” Reuters said in a statement. Abdallah was providing a live video feed from near the Israeli border at the time of his death, the agency continued, adding that it is “urgently seeking more information” from authorities in the region.

Reuters journalists Thaier Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh were wounded in the same incident, while Al Jazeera’s Elie Brakhya and Carmen Joukhadar and Agence France-Presse’s Christina Assi and Dylan Collins were also injured. It is unclear whether all six were hit by the same shell or by different projectiles.

A Lebanese security source told AFP that Israeli forces were responsible, and Al Jazeera blamed the incident on “Israeli bombing.”

Around the time of the incident, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that its troops were responding with tank and artillery fire to shooting from Lebanese territory.

Earlier on Friday, the IDF said that an explosion had occurred at a barrier along the border near Alma al-Shaab, a Lebanese village where the news crews were reporting from. The IDF said that its forces responded to the explosion with artillery fire.

Abdallah’s death brings the number of journalists killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Saturday to 11, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Of the other ten, nine died in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, while one Israeli photographer was killed by Hamas militants at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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