Palestine

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blindpig
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 28, 2023 12:00 am

Two Middle East Outlooks

Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor and dimwit, had written a laudation of his own and his bosses foreign policy for the November print edition of Foreign Affairs. The piece was finalized before the war in Palestine had begun.

The Sources of American Power
A Foreign Policy for a Changed World


Excerpts:

Indeed, although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.
The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident.
...
[The president's] approach returns discipline to U.S. policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And it is bearing fruit.
...
This disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that U.S. interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis. Challenges remain. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.


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Alastair Crooke, who has personally negotiated prisoner exchanges between Hamas and Israel, has published a rather bleak outlook.

Escalations Cannot Be Stopped – The White House Is Rattled; Escalations Might All Fuse Into ‘One’
The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.

...
It is no coincidence that Netanyahu flourished a map of Israel during his General Assembly address last month in which Israel dominated from the River to the Sea – and Palestine (indeed any Palestinian territory) was non-existent.
Tom Friedman in his NYT reflections may fear that just as NATO’s impaired performance in Ukraine has ruptured ‘the NATO myth’, so too the 7 October Israeli military and intelligence collapse and what happens in its wake in Gaza ‘might explode the entire pro-American alliance structure’ in the Middle East.

The confluence of two such humiliations might break the spine of western primacy. This seems to be the gist to Friedman’s analysis. (He likely is correct).

Hamas has succeeded in smashing the Israel deterrence paradigm: They were not afraid, the IDF proved far from invincible, and the Arab street mobilised as never before (confounding western cynics who laugh at the very notion of there being an ‘Arab Street’).

Well, that is where we are – and the White House is rattled.
...
This is what worries the White House Team. They are deeply unconfident that an Israeli invasion of Gaza will put ‘Humpty’ together again. Rather, they fear that events may go badly for the IDF, and further, that the images relayed across the Middle East of Israel using overwhelming force in a civilian urban setting will revolt the Islamic sphere.

In spite of western scepticism, there are signs that this insurrection in the Arab sphere is different, and resembles more the 1916 Arab Revolt that overthrew the Ottoman Empire. It is taking on a distinct ‘edge’ as both Shi’a and Sunni religious authorities state the duty of Muslims to stand with Palestinians. In other words, as the Israeli polity becomes plainly ‘Prophetical’, so the Islamic mood is turning eschatological, in its turn.

That the White House should be floating kites about ‘moderate’ Arab leaders pressing ‘moderate’ Palestinians to form an Israeli-friendly government in Gaza that would displace Hamas and impose security and order shows just how severed is the West from reality. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, General Sisi and the King of Jordan (some of the region’s most pliable leaders) pointedly refused even to meet with Biden after the latter’s Israel trip.

The anger across the region is real and threatens ‘moderate’ Arab leaders, whose room for manoeuvre is now circumscribed.

So hotspots are proliferating, as are attacks on U.S. deployments around the region. Some in Washington claim to perceive an Iranian hand, and are hoping to expand a window for war with Iran.
...
Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.

In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.


Posted by b on October 27, 2023 at 13:44 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/t ... .html#more

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IRAN WARNS ISRAEL ABOUT WAR CRIMES COMMITTED IN GAZA
Oct 26, 2023 , 3:08 pm .

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The 10th Special Emergency Session on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Photo: UN)

This Thursday, October 26, the tenth Special Emergency Session of the UN Assembly began, whose extraordinary agenda focuses on the indiscriminate bombing that Israel is carrying out on Gaza. The 193 member countries are expected to vote on a resolution being prepared by Arab states.

During the meeting, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, stated his position and offered an assessment of the crimes that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.

Below is part of what the Iranian foreign minister said:

We have been witnessing war crimes committed by Israel for three weeks.
The genocide in Gaza and forced displacement must stop immediately.
The United States and some European countries support the Israeli occupation regime.
The United States and some European countries support the massacre of some 7,000 civilians in less than three weeks in Gaza and the West Bank.
The United States must end the genocide and crimes in Palestine.
With the war in Gaza continuing, we will not be able to ceasefire, and West Asia is our region, and we will not be complacent or conservative when it comes to our security.
The efforts being made to consider Palestinian actions terrorist will not deceive free nations or the world conscience.
According to international law, what Hamas did is legitimate and has a deep-rooted right to self-defense against the occupation regime.
We have to see the reality as it is, which is that the barbaric occupation has become a chronic barbaric apartheid regime.
We tell the United States that if genocide operations continue, we will not stand by.
If the genocide continues in Gaza, the United States will not be spared from this fire.

https://misionverdad.com/iran-advierte- ... os-en-gaza

Google Translator

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Guantánamo in Palestine: Israel Declares War on Palestinian Prisoners
OCTOBER 26, 2023

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Israeli repression forces raid Palestinian prisoners’ sections in Ofer Israeli Prison. Photo: WAFA/File photo.

The Israeli campaign of massacres and terrorism against the Gaza Strip has now extended to murdering Palestinian prisoners. The first martyr was a leader in the Hamas movement, Omar Hamza Daraghmeh, age 58, from the city of Tubas. On October 24, another prisoner was martyred. He was Arafat Yasser Hamdan, age 25, from the town of Beit Sira in Ramallah district, imprisoned in Ofer prison.

The occupation forces had arrested Daraghmeh, along with his son Hamza, on October 9, the third day of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle. Omar participated remotely in a court session held in Ofer camp on Monday, October 23. At that time, his lawyer confirmed that he was in good health. However, later that evening, the occupation prison department announced that he had died due to a “heart attack” in Megiddo prison.

Hamdan, on the other hand, was arrested on October 22 during a wave of arrests by the occupation forces.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission and the Prisoners’ Club commented on Daraghmeh’s martyrdom in a joint statement: “the martyrdom of any prisoner, in light of the comprehensive aggression against our people and the genocide of our people in Gaza, is tantamount to a deliberate assassination.” The statement emphasized that “the occupation’s narrative has always been and continues to be a deception. Each time, the occupation creates stories about the circumstances of prisoners’ martyrdom, attempting to absolve itself of the crime.”

In this context, they pointed out that “based on the numerous testimonies of newly released prisoners, who spoke about torture and beatings during their transfer to the courtroom or the room dedicated to court video conferencing, and in light of all the information we receive about torture operations against the prisoners, we are not merely voicing concerns about the possible martyrdom of other detainees, but we are announcing that one has already been martyred.”

After Hamdan’s martyrdom, a second statement was issued highlighting that “the occupation has begun a systematic assassination campaign against the prisoners as part of the all-round aggression against our people and our prisoners.”

While the occupation maintains secrecy about the prisoners, including the number of people detained and the conditions for detention, it has significantly ratcheted up its repression in the prisons. It seeks revenge and death. The occupation prison agency is using the monstrous aggression against Gaza as an opportunity to target the prisoners with torture, assassination, execution, and stricter detention conditions.

After the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israeli prison authorities imposed several sanctions against the prisoners:

Removal of all electrical devices, including televisions, food heating plates, and water heating jugs.
Cutting off electricity to the prisoners from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Limited access to the courtyard for only 20 minutes, and sometimes completely depriving prisoners of it.
Destruction of all sports equipment.
Cutting off hot water supply to the bathing sections, forcing the prisoners to shower in cold water.
Closure of the kitchen and providing only two modest meals.
Regular and daily room searches.
Increasing the number of prisoners in each room from five prisoners to nine.
Converting the sentences of some prisoners whose terms have ended into indefinite administrative detention.
In conjunction with this, the occupation forces arrested more than 50 people, including former prisoners, on the night of October 23. The occupation has arrested more than 1,265 Palestinians since October 7, and this does not include workers or detainees from the Gaza Strip because the occupation authorities have imposed an information blackout on this information. Despite the prisoners’ support organizations’ demands to meet with the International Red Cross, there is no clear data from the human rights institutions or the Red Cross about the numbers or identities of the workers detained by the occupation, nor the places of their detention.

The Israeli barbarism and terrorism against prisoners is not confined to the prisons; it begins at the first moment of arrest, starting with violently storming their homes. According to documentation from the Prisoners’ Club, the arrests are particularly brutal and include using families as hostages, vandalizing and destroying homes, subjecting the detainees to severe beatings causing injuries, and, sometimes, on-the-spot executions.

This campaign coincides with the implementation of strict military orders by the occupation authorities to facilitate arrest operations, torture of detainees, and restrictions on the work of legal teams. The most prominent example of this is the increasing use of “administrative detention”, as a significant portion of those arrested after the start of Al-Aqsa Flood were placed under administrative detention. The occupation has issued more than 300 administrative detention orders during this time. The occupation has also instituted temporary amendments to the administrative detention policies, including raising the initial detention period for warrantless detention (when the occupation determines the possibility of issuing an administrative detention order against them) from 72 hours to six days. Moreover, the time period before administrative detainees receive a hearing has been increased from eight days to 12 days. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, these amendments are designed “to escalate arrest campaigns, increase the ease of issuing administrative detention orders, and control the growing number of prisoners, including administrative detainees.”

On October 22, the prisoners’ families held a press conference in Ramallah, expressing their profound concern for the fate of their imprisoned family members, while the occupation isolates them and escalates its systematic crimes against them. The families stated that over the last two weeks the occupation’s prisons have become as savage and brutal as Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib prison. “The occupation has deprived the prisoners of visits, including visits by lawyers and legal staff; halted medical treatment; cut off water and electricity; and today, our children are facing hunger after the occupation confiscated food from them and reduced their meals.”

The wife of prisoner Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh said: “Since October 7, our loved ones have been subjected to attacks by severe beatings inside their cells, and to acts of abuse and torture that greatly exceed the abuse and torture that the occupation has previously pursued. [Meanwhile] the world is only speaking about the hostages held in Gaza for two weeks and ignoring the thousands of prisoners in the occupation’s prisons who were, and still are, just numbers to them!”

Since 1967, there have been 238 martyred prisoners, and the occupation still holds the bodies of 11 martyrs.

(Al-Akhbar) by Ahmed Al-Abed

https://orinocotribune.com/guantanamo-i ... prisoners/

USA: The Most Hated Country in the World
OCTOBER 26, 2023

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By Janna Kadri – Oct 25, 2023

By dismantling the moral veneer of Zionism, the US manifested that it now holds the reins of decision-making.

October 17, 2023. A day that will eternally etch as the most somber chapter in human history. The aggression on al-Ahli Hospital has exposed a never-seen-before degree of malevolence on the part of the Israeli regime. On October 17, a medical establishment meant to be a sanctuary for the ill, the wounded, and the displaced was blown off with the utmost brutality, extinguishing the lives of almost 500 beating hearts with just one single rocket. The perpetrators of this massacre swiftly emerged on social media, only to later erase their digital traces. After the fact, Biden portrayed the attack as a result of Palestinians’ actions. One may ponder, how can anyone on earth be so evil? And as world leaders remain silent in the face of such an atrocity, one can’t help but wonder: has the world gone mad?

“Israel” ceased to exist
The moment the genocide was sparked, “Israel” had already ceased to exist. As a regime that struggled to maintain its credibility on the world stage, it no longer retains any semblance of legitimacy. Carrying out a massacre of such magnitude would not only spell disaster for the Israeli working class but also exposes the extent to which Western morals and values are fragile.

The ruling settler classes have historically expanded their capacity for accumulation via means of expropriation and depopulation. However, in this specific instance, they no longer appear to wield this power. By dismantling the moral veneer of Zionism, the US manifested that it now holds the reins of decision-making. This is evidenced by the fact that the war in Gaza is not primarily aimed at exerting psychological pressure on Hamas fighters but rather at sending a clear message of war to Iran.

Why Iran?
The Iranian revolution has faced continuous sanctions since its inception, leading to economic challenges and a strong sense of self-reliance and resentment towards the West. Over the years, the Iranian government has gained wide popular support but the true achievement of the revolution lies in Iran’s autonomy, which challenges imperialism. Iran has also shown a willingness to reform on social issues, particularly concerning women’s rights, and its stability can lead to social progress.

For quite some time now, the US has been itching to wage a war against Iran. Since the start of the genocide, Iran has issued several warnings to the regime that it would be compelled to intervene should the war on Gaza prolong. However, in its attempt to incite a response, the US failed to anticipate that Iran would refrain from launching a military response. Consequently, the US shot itself in the foot by revealing on the world stage the extent of its actions’ unparalleled brutality and injustice. But so far, it seems that the US remains oblivious to the magnitude of the self-inflicted damage.


Understanding Israeli aggressions
The regime has a history of perpetrating similar acts of atrocity, with a pattern of constant disregard for human rights and international law. We have seen similar episodes in the Qana massacre in 1996 when the IOF bombed a UNIFIL shelter housing women, children, and UN staffers in southern Lebanon. Syria is neither a stranger to Israeli crimes as it has over the years been the target of multiple aggressions via airstrikes. Despite constant appeals to put a halt to Israeli aggressions, no concrete steps were ever taken to act in defense of international law.

When the regime was first conceived under Resolution 181, its primary objective was to establish a Western foothold in the Arab region. At that time, the pan-Arab movement posed a substantial threat to Western interests and was gaining momentum throughout the region. Through the defeat of pan-Arabism, “Israel” effectively isolated the Arab masses from the fallout of development in the productive forces. The effort was one where the US and several EU countries had joined forces to arm the Zionists, and thus, contrary to Zionist claims, the regime’s actions against Arab states were never primarily driven by existential threats but rather served to act on the behest of imperialism.

But this time, the West no longer has the capacity to exonerate “Israel’s” war crimes. The warning signs were evidenced by the fact that the regime had been embroiled in political upheaval over the past ten months. Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet and the proposed judicial overhaul plan had weakened the liberal basis of the Zionist regime which would have opted for a more strategic approach to negotiate superficial concessions with the Palestinians and to ensure the regime’s credibility and durability.

Moral decay
Anti-US sentiment initially pervaded countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen which endured the harshest consequences of US intervention and policies. Anti-US sentiment has also been steadily growing over the past decade throughout the Gulf region, including by key allies like Saudi Arabia, which has sought to establish greater autonomy in matters of national defense. But since the genocide began, this sentiment has grown immensely out of proportion among the Arab masses. Videos circulated all across social media of protesters attacking US embassies, as well as resistance groups resorting to attacking military posts and warships. Likewise, numerous protests erupted across the West, but the silence of Western leaders implies a desire for more massacres to occur.

Western amorality is explained by the fact that the commodification of labor under capitalism not only objectifies labor but also establishes the moral framework for how capital treats human resources. Eurocentric perspectives tend to focus on partial facts as absolute truths, emphasizing class-desirable information to guide moral actions. The rejection of the categorical imperative, due to its lack of alignment with ruling class interests, leads to various shortcuts and eclectic approaches to ethics, which erode the universality of moral conduct. In some cases, morality is reduced to a form of lifeboat ethics, justifying actions like shooting refugees at sea to protect Europe or provide benefits to the majority white population. This perspective is also reflected in the justifications provided by US presidents for war, where the focus is on protecting a way of life that perpetuates profit rates and imperialist exploitation, rather than safeguarding life itself. In this particular context, the US capitalizes immensely through the dehumanization of both Palestinians and Jews.

Panic begets panic
There was a time when the US had the ability to implement wars similar to those in Libya and Iraq. However, the changing global balance of forces no longer allowed for such scenarios to be repeated. With the rise of China and Russia on the global stage, there seemed less of a free hand to engage in direct military intervention. Russia forged alliances with Iran and the DPRK, de-dollarized its own economy, and gained new territory by defying NATO’s expansion to the East. China, on the other hand, supports the sovereignty of developing states and recognizes the national rights of the Palestinian people in Al-Quds, which poses a challenge to “Israel”, seen as a spearhead of US-led imperialism. The US felt it could not keep up with China as it offered a more compelling offer for peace: While the US promoted a version of peace based on the unchallenged supremacy of the US military, China promoted peace via trade and development projects.

For the US to get directly involved through the monstrous dispatch of arms and carriers speaks volumes about the deteriorating state of US influence in the Arab region. With an awareness that attempts to drive a wedge between China and Russia have failed, the US is taking actions that continue to erode its global reputation. It brings to mind the adage that “panic begets panic,” that is, the US is increasingly losing its strategic composure on the international stage and resorting to a full-scale destruction of anything in sight amid despair to reaffirm dominance.

Could this be cause for concern? Quite so, since the reconfiguration of power structures could potentially lead to a nuclear conflict.

(Al Mayadeen – English)

https://orinocotribune.com/usa-the-most ... the-world/

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The resistance fighters of Gaza have signalled the end of the zionist project

Cast about as it may, there is no way for Israel now to free itself from a hook that it baited itself.
Proletarian writers

Thursday 26 October 2023

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While the world looks on aghast at the atrocities being carried out daily by the US-backed Israeli fascists, it is becoming increasingly clear that none of the options available to it offers the chance of a real victory. By refusing to come to terms with the Palestinians years ago when they had the chance, the Israelis have made themselves ‘secure’ of only one thing: Israel as a supremacist ‘jewish’ state is doomed – and sooner rather than later.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood has delivered a body blow to the fascist Israeli state, humiliating the Israeli army (IDF) and throwing down a challenge to Tel Aviv’s imperialist backers.

The operation has sent shock waves throughout and beyond the middle east, uniting millions of the oppressed around the world, who have come onto the streets to denounce the genocidal Israeli regime and pour forth their passionate support for the heroic and self-sacrificing resistance forces of Palestine.

Let traitors in the UAE, Jordan, Egypt and beyond who flirted with “normalisation” of relations with Israel now hide their faces from their own countrymen in shame, as their weasel words are drowned out by the anti-imperialist voice of the masses.

The liberation fighters were indeed a human flood that poured unstoppably across the Gaza border, brushing aside all obstacles in their way. They came in by land, sea and air, wave after wave, some even on foot.

In the streets and squares of Iran, Lebanon Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Pakistan, thousands upon thousands are pledging support for the resistance forces and denouncing the war criminals of the zionist criminals. Be they from Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP or other fraternal forces that have united to serve the people, these fighters are fighting for the future, sacrificing their own lives for the sake of generations to come.

The IDF has failed to make any headway getting to grips with the resistance fighters. Like their US counterparts a half-century ago in Vietnam, they were outfoxed by an enemy who knew how to fight guerrilla-style, and how to profit from constructing a deep network of tunnels for defence, storage, communication and flexibility of engagement.

Targeting civilians, committing war crimes
In the words of one resident, as posted by Nur Alsalibi on the @voenkorKotenok Telegram channel: “The situation in the city is very difficult. The intensity of the strikes is growing every day. Rockets can fly anywhere at any time. Even if they don’t hit your house, but the neighbouring one, blast fragments will fly into your house …

“Israel says Hamas was there, but that’s a lie – they weren’t there. Hamas fighters have gone into the tunnels under the city; Israeli missiles cannot even reach them. More than 90 percent of the dead were civilians. The figure of 4,385 dead is only those who could be found under the rubble.”

Thwarted by their inability to engage the resistance on the ground, the IDF, doubtless acting under Pentagon orders, resorted to the carpet-bombing Gaza’s civilian population, including schools, medical facilities and housing blocks. Just like the Italian and German fascists before them, the Israeli fascists administered collective punishment in retaliation for the heroic deeds of the partisans, hoping that by this means that they would drive a wedge between the partisans and the people.

But this policy is failing. The claim that “the population is allegedly leaving Gaza is an Israeli lie. Most remained in their homes. People are not leaving even under the threat of death. At the same time, phones are constantly receiving threatening messages from Israeli numbers. You may also receive a notification that ‘your house will be bombed’ so that people feel in danger every minute.”

But Palestinians will not tolerate a second Nakba and are refusing to budge. In this resolve, they are backed up by Russia: “We know that Russia opposes the west and does not support Israeli crimes. In Gaza they love Russia and the Russian people very much.

“Among the Arab countries, there is a very good attitude towards Qatar, Algeria and Yemen. Among non-Arab ones – towards Iran. We believe that Iran and Hezbollah will intervene and prevent the genocide of Gaza.”

According to the Jerusalem Post there is “growing concern that Hezbollah is waiting for the moment that most IDF ground forces are committed to Gaza to open a full front with the IDF in the north”.

Lie machine in overdrive but failing to convince
On the propaganda front, the mainstream press has been the faithful servant of the Tel Aviv lie machine, churning out demonic and outlandish headlines about decapitated babies and barbaric “terrorists”, but enforcing silence over any story that tells the truth about what the real terrorists and their imperialist backers are up to.

But enforcing that silence is proving difficult when the facts on the ground run so obviously counter to Tel Aviv’s desperate fabrications. The Israeli missile attack on the Al Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza, murdering and maiming hundreds of patients and staff, is one such fact.

At first, the IDF brazenly asserted that the hospital was a legitimate target because it was occupied by Hamas. When the surviving hospital workers denied the occupation story, the IDF changed tack, claiming that the culprit was a misfiring Hamas rocket, later deciding it was in fact an Islamic Jihad rocket.

With IDF lying its head off and constantly changing its story, even the BBC had in the end to distance itself from Tel Aviv’s transparent mendacity, admitting that the Al-Ahli hospital bombing was in fact carried out by none other than (US-supplied) Israeli missiles.

To invade or not to invade? Either way Israel is damned
Rumours and statements abound about the Israelis’ intentions at this time. On the one hand, the most demented section of the zionist body politic is desperate to raze Gaza from the map, expel all its two million citizens into the Sinai desert for Egypt to worry about and fill the resistance tunnels with poison gas – and is expressing all these heinous desires quite openly before the eyes of an incredulous world.

On the other hand, cooler heads are aware that the IDF, made up in the main by part-time soldiers whose only real military experience has been in harassing civilians in the occupied territories, is no match for the professionalism and self-sacrificing dedication of the resistance, even with all its supposedly insurmountable technological wizardry – a paraphernalia of gadgetry that Palestine’s fighters have shown themselves to be remarkably adept at finding the weaknesses in and getting around by various means.

As the delay continues, laughably justified by a vacillating government as owing to ‘bad weather’, the strident calls to ethnically cleanse two million civilians from the tiny stamp of land that remains recognised by Israelis as ‘Palestine’ is not winning Israel or its backers any friends. Quite the reverse.

Across the region and across the world, the demonstrations in support of Palestine are huge and growing. In the West Bank and across the 1948 Palestinian territories, intifada is spreading. And in the wide middle east, the determination to evict the hated imperialists and their stooges for good is growing too, inspired by the heroic feats of a few thousand Palestinian fighters, who have already inflicted huge damage on the structures of the occupation, on the confidence of the enemy, and on the fighting strength of the IDF.

The longer the zionist maniacs pursue their genocidal plans, the more united will become the forces of the resistance, and the entire Arab and progressive world will be lined up behind them. Already, steeled anti-imperialist warriors from Yemen to Afghanistan have stated their intention to come to the aid of their Palestinian brothers-in-arms.

In the end, it is going to take more than a couple of American aircraft carriers to face down the growing wrath of half a billion citizens in the middle east, backed up as they are by all of progressive humanity.

Victory to the intifada!

https://thecommunists.org/2023/10/26/ne ... t-project/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 28, 2023 11:16 am

The situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone for October 27, 2023
October 27, 2023
Rybar

By evening, rumors began to spread online that the Israel Defense Forces had launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. In reality, this turned out to be a little different: we are talking about expanding ground operations (read: raids) in the enclave (for the past two days the Israelis have been conducting forays into the Gaza Strip with varying degrees of success).

The intensity of airstrikes by the Israel Defense Forces increased significantly, and the Internet and mobile communications were completely cut off in the enclave. Even if this is not the beginning of a full-fledged ground operation, the Israelis always have the opportunity to say, “We haven’t even started yet,” if suddenly there are still claims against them. One way or another, all the conditions for the ground operation have been created, but the coming hours will show whether it has actually begun.

Against this background, Palestinian groups have also become more active: Hamas and its allies are launching attacks on Ashkelon , Tel Aviv and settlements bordering the Gaza Strip.

As for the raids, the latter turned out to be a failure for the Israelis. In the morning, Israeli special forces attempted to enter the enclave at Magazi and Breij , where the Palestinians said they were ambushed. In addition, Israeli troops landed on the beach near Rafah , engaged the Palestinians and were forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, on the Israeli-Lebanese border, Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces continue to exchange blows. The latter are actively burning the undergrowth in southern Lebanon to make it difficult for their opponents to move covertly near the borders.

Journalists from the Lebanese publication Al Mayadeen also reported an attack on the Israeli Dahlak military base in Eritrea , but did not provide details of what happened.

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Progress of hostilities
South direction

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In the morning, an explosion occurred in the Egyptian border village of Taba on the Sinai Peninsula. According to media reports, the ammunition fell near a local hospital, injuring five people. It is highly likely that the Yemeni Shiite movement Ansarallah was behind the attack , which was targeting the nearby Israeli resort city of Eilat . However, the missile lacked accuracy, which is why it failed to reach its target and crashed on the territory of a neighboring state.

This is not the first such launch: last week, the American destroyer USS Carney intercepted several missiles flying towards Israel from Yemen over the Red Sea . With the start of the IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip (and at this stage it still looks inevitable), the number of such attempts to strike Israeli territory from the south will clearly increase - Iran will hardly miss the opportunity to make targeted injections at Israel with the forces of its allies and proxies, directly into the conflict as without interfering.

In addition, militants again shelled Ashkelon , Tel Aviv , Shoham and Rehovot . By the evening, the intensity of attacks on Israeli cities increased, becoming a response to the evening massive strikes by the IDF Air Force on the Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip

By evening, the intensity of IDF airstrikes on the Gaza Strip increased sharply, and at the same time, the Internet and mobile communications stopped working in the Palestinian enclave. Unconfirmed rumors began to spread online that Israeli tanks were allegedly attacking the sector from the east and north. At the same time, the IDF spokesman said that they were “expanding ground operations,” which can be interpreted both as the beginning of a ground operation and an expansion of the sorties that the Israelis have already carried out recently. However, in general, the conditions have been created to begin clearing the enclave. But the words “we are starting” did not sound exactly in this formulation.

The United States did not want to comment on the expansion of Israel's ground operation in the Gaza Strip, as reported in the White House. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia warned the US that an Israeli ground operation in the Gaza Strip could have disastrous consequences for the Middle East.

Earlier in the day, Palestinian sources reported that IDF special forces attempted to infiltrate the enclave near Magazi and Bureij , where they were allegedly ambushed. The results of the battle are unknown, but militants report captured military personnel. In addition, on Friday morning the Israelis attempted to land on the beach of Rafah , where the Palestinians engaged in combat. With air support, the fighters retreated. In addition, an Israeli drone was shot down in the Az-Zeitun area .

Border with Lebanon

Along the border with Lebanon, Hezbollah and the IDF carry out mutual strikes at Menara , Avivim and Mitzgav Am. The Israelis, in turn, strike and burn forests along the border to make it difficult for their enemy to move covertly. At night, Lebanese sources reported the interception of an Israeli UAV over Sur .

West Bank

The Israelis again carried out massive nighttime assaults and detentions in major Arab settlements in the West Bank . The most violent clashes occurred in Jenin , where unmanned aircraft and heavy equipment were involved. Violent clashes also occurred in Nablus , Tubas , Askar camp and East Jerusalem .

Eritrea
Journalists from the Lebanese publication Al Mayadeen , citing their sources, reported an attack on the Israeli Dahlak military base in Eritrea . According to them, one of the Israeli Defense Forces officers was allegedly killed as a result of the attack.

Political-diplomatic background
On the transfer of American air defense and missile defense systems to the Middle East

Against the background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Internet is discussing the transfer of 12 air and missile defense systems to the Middle East as part of strengthening the American group. One battery of THAAD missile defense systems will go to Saudi Arabia (probably to the Al-Kharj and King Abdul Aziz bases , where American aviation is based). MIM-104 Patriot systems will be transported to Kuwait, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Syria and also to Saudi Arabia. Like THAAD, they will be located at American military facilities.

There is a practical sense in distributing air defense and missile defense systems across different countries: looking at the map, you can see that in this way a vast area is covered from potentially dangerous areas of activity of Iranian proxies and Iran itself . Protection from pro-Iranian forces has become a convenient pretext for increasing the US military presence in the region and justifying increased military spending to protect the American military contingent in the Middle East. Strikes by two or three UAVs on US military bases do not have a significant impact on the situation. But this allows the Americans to justify the enormous costs of maintaining large forces in the region and to keep a large group at the ready in case the situation really worsens.

Netanyahu's political ratings

Against the backdrop of the conflict, poll results are being circulated in the Israeli media, according to which the ratings of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party have almost halved.

Meetings between Hamas and the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Moscow

In Moscow, the deputy head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry held a meeting with members of the Hamas Politburo , its agenda is unknown.

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-zone-izra ... 2023-goda/

The situation in Syria for October 20-27, 2023
October 27, 2023
Rybar

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"Greater Idlib"
The Russian Aerospace Forces, together with the Syrian Arab Army, attacked the positions of illegal armed groups in Greater Idlib. During the attacks, government forces used FPV drones. The militants suffered heavy losses in manpower, equipment and weapons.

One of the blows hit the location of the “Islamic Party of Turkestan” in the village. Al-Hamam in the vicinity of Jisr al-Shughur. The White Helmets quickly arrived on the scene and played the card of shelling civilians.

In addition, the Russian Armed Forces strengthened their positions near the contact lines: a column of fifteen military vehicles arrived in the city of Kafr Nabel in the south of Idlib, and several more were distributed in the area of ​​the Abu ad-Duhur military airport.

Northwestern Syria
In the north of the country there is again the threat of inter-rebel war . In the village Avlan, a conflict broke out between the pro-Turkish “Military Police” and the loyal “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” association “Tajamua al-Shahba”.

The security services of the Syrian National Army, under the pretext of searching for sleeper cells of the Islamic State, tried to detain Ahrar al-Sham militants, but were rebuffed and were forced to retreat.

Also, SNA supporters are not giving up attempts to get the blessing of curators in Ankara to fight Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, warning of another infiltration of terrorists from Idlib into the area of ​​the Euphrates Shield operation.

In this regard, opposition resources reported that a meeting would be held in the village. Khavar Kilis. At it, a Turkish intelligence official once again assured the SNA leadership of Turkey’s rejection of the expansion of the influence of HTS and the presence of groups allied to it.

Border areas
The Turkish Armed Forces carried out a series of regular artillery and mortar strikes on the positions of the pro-Kurdish “Syrian Democratic Forces” in the border areas in northern Syria, in particular, the settlements of Ain al-Arab, Menbij, and al-Qamishli.

During the shelling of the city of Ain Issa, civilian infrastructure and a granary were damaged, and one civilian was wounded. In response, Kurdish forces fired at Turkish army positions in the border areas.

Activities of the IDF and pro-Iranian formations in the Syrian Arab Republic
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israel Defense Forces and pro-Iranian forces in the Syrian Arab Republic launched mutual attacks on each other's positions in the south of the country and in the Golan Heights.

Meanwhile, attacks by the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” using homemade MLRS and UAVs on American military bases located in the Syrian Trans-Euphrates region and the Republic of Iraq have become commonplace .

One of the frequent targets of such attacks is the air base in the village. Khurab al-Jair in northeast Al-Hasakah, which is a former agricultural airfield and has been converted into a military facility by US troops.

Today, the airbase serves as a connection point between the territories of Syria and Iraq, through which US military convoys enter from the Iraqi border crossing of Rabiyah in the direction of the Syrian Al-Yarubiya checkpoint.

Deir ez-Zor Province
In Deir ez-Zor, the conflict between Arab tribal militias and the SDF continues. The former increasingly used motorcycles in their attacks, which led to the introduction of a ban on their use.

However, despite promises from one of the leaders of the uprising, Sheikh of the Al-Aqaidat tribe, Ibrahim al-Hafel, to intensify the escalation and take control of part of the province in the coming days, the intensity of the clashes has decreased.

Such harsh statements from the sheikh were the result of unsuccessful negotiations between the tribal delegation and representatives of pro-Kurdish forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil, organized through the mediation of the Americans.

Suwayda Province
Anti-government demonstrations against the dire socio-economic situation continue unabated in Es-Suwayda .

Local activists announced the formation of a “National Bloc”, which should play the role of a civil body and resolve certain issues through consultation and coordination.

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-sirii-za- ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

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October 7 Testimonies Reveal Israel’s Military ‘Shelling’ Israeli Citizens with Tanks, Missiles
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 27, 2023
Max Blumenthal

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Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire?

Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.

These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives.

An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.

As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described “very, very heavy crossfire” and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis.

While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.”

She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.”

According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled. “Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”

Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.”

Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.

Video filmed by uniformed Hamas gunmen makes it clear they intentionally shot many Israelis with Kalashnikov rifles on October 7. However, the Israeli government has not been content to rely on verified video evidence. Instead, it continues to push discredited claims of “beheaded babies” while distributing photographs of “bodies burned beyond recognition” to insist that militants sadistically immolated their captives, and even raped some before torching them alive.

The objective behind Tel Aviv’s atrocity exhibition is clear: to paint Hamas as “worse than ISIS” while cultivating support for the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has left over 7000 dead, including at least 2500 children at the time of publication. While hundreds of wounded children in Gaza have been treated for what a surgeon described as “fourth degree burns” caused by novel weapons, the Western media’s focus remains trained on Israeli citizens supposedly “burned alive” on October 7.

Yet the mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.

Indeed, it appears that on October 7, Israel’s military resorted to the same tactics it has employed against civilians in Gaza, driving up the death toll of its own citizens with the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons.

Israel bombs its own base, nerve center of the Gaza siege

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood at 6 AM on October 7, quickly overwhelming the military bases from which Israel maintain its siege of the Gaza Strip. Chief among the objectives outlined by Hamas and PIJ was the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including as many as 700 children and 1117 Palestinians held without charges.

The 2011 swap for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured five years prior and released in exchange for 1027 prisoners, provided clear inspiration for Al-Aqsa Flood. By storming military bases and kibbutzes, the Palestinian militants aimed to capture as many Israeli soldiers and civilians as possible, and bring them back to Gaza alive.

The lighting assault immediately overwhelmed Israel’s Gaza Division. Video recorded from GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets of Palestinian fighters shows Israeli soldiers cut down in rapid succession, many still dressed in underwear and caught off guard. At least 340 active soldiers and intelligence officers were killed on October 7, accounting for close to 50% of confirmed Israeli deaths. The casualties included high ranking officers like Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of Israel’s Nahal Brigade. (Many first responders and armed Israeli civilians were also killed).

The Erez Crossing is the home of a massive military and Coordination of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) facility which functions as the nerve center of Israel’s siege on Gaza. When it was overrun by Palestinian fighters on October 7 with droves of army bureaucrats inside, the Israeli military flew into a panic.

According to Haaretz, the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, “entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the [Erez Crossing] base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”

Video released by Israel’s COGAT ten days after the battle – and the Israeli airstrike – shows severe structural damage to the roof of the Erez Crossing facility.

🔴 Israeli officials returned to the Erez Crossing on Israel’s border with Gaza today for the time since the war’s outbreak

Ministry of Defense personnel assessed the damage caused by Hamas terrorists to the crossing’s infrastructure pic.twitter.com/Ax5t0UDGNR

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 17, 2023


Israeli Apache helicopters attack inside Israel: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at”

By 10:30 AM, according to an account the military gave to the Israeli news outlet Mako, “most of the [Palestinian] forces from the original invasion wave had already left the area for Gaza.” But with the rapid collapse of the Israeli military’s Gaza Division, looters, common onlookers and low-level guerrillas not necessarily under the command of Hamas flowed freely into Israel.

By this point, Israel’s two Apache helicopter squadrons had 8 choppers in the air, “and there was almost no intelligence to help make fateful decisions,” Mako reported. The squadrons did not reach full strength until noon.

As the wave of infiltrations from Gaza drove chaos on the ground, discombobulated Israeli pilots unleashed a frenzy of missile and machine gun salvos: “The Apache pilots testify that they fired a huge amount of munitions, emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again. But it didn’t help and they understand it,” Mako reported.

The Apache helicopters appear to have focused on vehicles streaming back into Gaza from the Nova electronic music festival and nearby kibbutzes, attacked cars with apparent knowledge that Israeli captives could be inside. They also fired on unarmed people exiting cars or walking on foot through the fields on the periphery of Gaza.

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸Israeli AH-64 Apache attacking Hamas fighters with it’s cannon and missiles. pic.twitter.com/flzwHYP7dg

— Heyman_101 (@SU_57R) October 9, 2023


In an interview with Israel’s Mako news outlet, one Apache pilot reflected on the tortuous dilemma of whether to shoot at people and cars returning to Gaza. He knew that many of those vehicles may have contained Israeli captives. But he chose to open fire anyway. “I choose targets like that,” the pilot reflected, “where I tell myself that the chance that I am shooting here on hostages as well is low.” However, he admitted that his judgment “was not 100%.”

“I understand that we have to shoot here and quickly,” the commander of the Apache unit, Lt. Col. E., told Mako in a separate report. “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.”

Lt. Col. A., a reserve pilot in the same unit, described a fog of confusion: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them.”

A report on the Apache squadrons by the Israeli outlet Yedioth Aharanoth noted that “the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”

A squadron commander explained to Mako how he nearly attacked the home of an Israeli family occupied by Hamas militants, and wound up firing next to it with cannon rounds. “Our forces hadn’t had time to reach this settlement yet,” the pilot recalled, “and I’ve already run out of missiles there, which is the more accurate weaponry.”

With the family inside a fortified bomb shelter, the pilot “decided to shoot a cannon 30 meters from this house, a very difficult decision. I shoot so that if they are currently there, they will hear the bombs inside the house, that they understand that it is known they are there, and with the hope that they will leave that house. I am also telling you the truth, it crossed my mind that I was shooting at the house.”

Ultimately, the Israeli helicopter pilots blamed clever Hamas tactics for their inability to distinguish between the armed militants and Israeli non-combatants. “The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs,” Yedioth Aharanoth claimed.

According to the Israeli paper, “it became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis. This deception worked for a considerable time , until the Apache pilots realized that they had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.”

And so, without any intelligence or ability to distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli, the pilots let loose a fury of cannon and missile fire onto Israeli areas below.

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One of many homes in Kibbutz Be’eri which appears to have been shelled with heavy weapons

Israel’s military “eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” firing tank shells into kibbutz homes

Photos of the aftermath of the fighting inside kibbutzes like Be’eri – and of the Israeli bombardment of these communities – show rubble and charred homes that resemble the aftermath of Israeli tank and artillery attacks inside Gaza. As Tuval Escapa, the security coordinator at Kibbutz Be’eri, told Haaretz, Israeli army commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

Yasmin Porat, an attendee of the Nova music festival who fled into Kibbutz Be’eri, told Israeli Radio that when Israeli special forces arrived during a hostage standoff, “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”

“After insane crossfire,” Porat continued, “two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big.”

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Destroyed homes in Kibbutz Be’eri following the fighting on October 7, which included Israeli tank shelling of residences

A video posted by the Telegram account of Israel’s South Responders shows the bodies of Israelis discovered below the rubble of a home destroyed by a powerful explosive blast – likely a tank shell. The right-wing New York Post ran a report on a similar incident about a boy’s body found scorched beneath the ruins of his home in Be’eri.

The phenomenon of charred corpses whose hands and ankles had been tied, and who were found in groups beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, also raises questions about “friendly” tank fire.

Yasmin Porat, the hostage who survived a standoff at Be’eri, described how Hamas militants tied her partner’s hands behind his back. After one militant commander surrendered, using her as a human shield to ensure his safety, she saw her partner lying on the ground, still alive. She stated that Israeli security forces “undoubtedly” killed him and the other hostages as they opened fire on the remaining militants inside, including with tank shells.

Israeli security forces also opened fire on fleeing Israelis whom they mistook for Hamas gunmen. A resident of Ashkelon named Danielle Rachiel described nearly being killed after escaping from the Nova music festival when it was attacked by militants from Gaza. “As we reached the roundabout [at a kibbutz], we saw Israeli security forces!” Rachiel recalled. “We held our heads down [because] we automatically knew they’d be suspicious of us, in a small beat-up car… from the same direction the terrorists were coming from. Our forces began shooting at us!”

“When our forces fired at us, our windows shattered,” she continued. It was only when they shouted in Hebrew, “We’re Israelis!” that the shooting stopped, and they were taken to safety.

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Did Israel’s now-disappeared “Hamas atrocity” photos depict dead Hamas fighters?

During an angry tirade on October 26 at the United Nations, Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan whipped out a paper displaying a QR code beside the caption, “Scan to see Hamas’ atrocities.”

When I scanned the code that day at noon, I found around 8 grisly images of burned bodies and blackened body parts. One showed a pile of completely charred male corpses piled into a dumpster. Would Israeli rescuers and medics have disposed of dead Jewish Israelis in such a fashion?

All Israelis killed on October 7 appear to have been collected in individual body bags and transported to morgues. Meanwhile, numerous videos recorded by Israelis showed them defiling the corpses of Hamas gunmen killed by security forces – stripping them naked, urinating on them, and mutilating their bodies. Throwing their bodies in a dumpster would seem to be a part of the de facto policy of corpse abuse.

Just over twelve hours after Ambassador Erdan promoted the supposed Hamas atrocity photos at the UN, the Google Drive file contained only one brief video. Among the mysteriously disappeared photos was the image of the dumpster filled with burned bodies. Had it been deleted because it showed Hamas fighters torched by a Hellfire missile, and not Israelis “burned to death” by Hamas?

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Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan at the UN, October 26. The QR code he displayed currently leads to a 404 notice.

Destruction reminiscent of Israeli attacks on Gaza

Some rescuers who arrived at sites of carnage in southern Israel after October 7 said they had never seen such destruction. For those who have borne witness to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, however, the images of bombed-out homes and burned cars should have been familiar.

While reporting on Israel’s 51 day-long assault on Gaza in 2014, I came across a destroyed vehicle in central Gaza City belonging to a young taxi driver named Fadel Alawan who had been assassinated by an Israeli drone after he unwittingly dropped a wounded Hamas fighter off at a nearby hospital. Inside the car, the remains of Alawan’s sandal could still be seen melted into the gas pedal.

By the afternoon of October 7, placid settlements and desert roads across southern Israel were charred and lined with bombed-out cars that looked much like Alawan’s. Were the lightly-armed Hamas fighters actually capable of exacting destruction on such a comprehensive scale?

Fadel Alawah drove a wounded man to a hospital, not knowing he was a fighter. Here’s what a drone did to his car: pic.twitter.com/84GTpgPxSo

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 16, 2014


Is the Israeli government distributing photos of friendly fire casualties?

This October 23, Israel’s government gathered members of the international press for an off-the-record propaganda session. Inside a closed military base, officials bombarded the press with snuff films and a collection of lurid allegations of “harrowing scenes of murder, torture and decapitation from Hamas’s October 7 onslaught,” according to the Times of Israel.

Hundreds of journalists and photographers from media companies all over the world attended today the screening of a film of assorted footage showing the extent of the horrors committed by Hamas.

Footage was taken from numerous sources, including from bodycams worn by the… pic.twitter.com/c2HRdI98Lh

— (((Emanuel Miller))) 🌻 (@emanumiller) October 23, 2023


In perhaps the most unsettling document presented by the Israeli government, reporters were treated to video showing “a partially burned woman’s corpse, with a mutilated head… The dead woman’s dress is pulled up to her waist and her underpants have been removed,” according to the Times of Israel.

Daniel Amram, the most popular private news blogger in Israel, tweeted the video of the woman’s burned corpse, claiming that “she was raped and burned alive.”

Dear @GretaThunberg, please watch this family who just found her sister after she was raped and burned alive,
they can’t even recognize her. their own sister.
They do it in the name of “free palestine” today you gave them a reason and justification to continue. Be proud. pic.twitter.com/UDh1a1pz9g

— daniel amram – דניאל עמרם (@danielamram3) October 20, 2023


In fact, the young woman appeared to have been killed instantly by a powerful blast. And she seemed to have been removed from the car in which she was seated – and which may have belonged to a captor from Gaza. The vehicle was comprehensively destroyed and situated on a dirt field, as many others attacked by Apache helicopters were. She was scantily clad with her legs spread apart.

Though she had attended the Nova electronic music festival, where many female attendees dressed in skimpy attire, and her parted limbs were typical of bodies with rigor mortis, Israeli pundits and officials ran with the claim she had been raped.

But the allegations of sexual assault have so far proven baseless. Israeli army spokesman Mickey Edelstein insisted to reporters at the October 23 press briefing that “we have evidence” of rape, but when asked for proof, he told the Times of Israel, “we cannot share it.”

Was this young woman yet another casualty of the Israeli military’s friendly fire orders? Only an independent investigation can determine the truth.

Israel’s military kills Israeli captives inside Gaza, grumbles about their release

Inside Gaza, where some 200 Israeli citizens are held hostage, there is little doubt about who is killing the captives. On October 26, the Hamas armed wing known as the Al-Qassam Brigades announced that Israel had killed “almost 50 captives” in missile strikes.

If Israel’s military had intentionally targeted areas where it knew the captives were held, its actions would have been consistent with Israel’s Hannibal Directive. The military procedure was established in 1986 following the Jibril Agreement, a deal in which Israel traded 1150 Palestinian prisoners for three Israeli soldiers. Following heavy political backlash, the Israeli military drafted a secret field order to prevent future kidnappings. The proposed operation drew its name from the Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than be held captive by the enemy.

The last confirmed application of the Hannibal Directive took place on August 1, 2014 in Rafah, Gaza, when Hamas fighters captured an Israeli officer, Col. Hadar Goldin, prompting the military to unleash more than 2000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area, killing the soldier along with over 100 Palestinian civilians.

Whether or not Israel is intentionally killing its captive citizens in Gaza, it has proven strangely allergic to their immediate release. On October 22, after refusing an offer from Hamas to release 50 hostages in exchange for fuel, Israel rejected an offer from Hamas to free Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old Israeli peace activist, and her 79-year-old friend, Nurit Cooper.

When Israel agreed to their release a day later, video showed Liftshitz clasping hands with a Hamas militant and intoning “Shalom” to him as he escorted her out of Gaza. During a press conference that day, she recounted the humane treatment she received from her captors.

Following her release from Gaza by Hamas, 85 year old Yosheved Lifshitz is interviewed about her experience in captivity. pic.twitter.com/MOTEJ82BmB

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) October 24, 2023


The spectacle of Lifshitz’s release was treated as a propaganda disaster by the Israeli government’s spinmeisters, with officials grumbling that allowing her to speak publicly was a grave “mistake.”

The Israeli military was no less displeased by her sudden freedom. As the Times of Israel reported, “The army is concerned that further hostage releases by Hamas could lead the political leadership to delay a ground incursion or even halt it midway.”



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... -missiles/

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Deaths in Gaza cross 7,000 on third week of non-stop Israeli bombing

Israel cuts all communications in Gaza and continues bombarding the Strip for the 21st day on Friday, starvation and diseases loom over 2.3 million besieged Palestinians

October 27, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Photo: Quds News Network

As of October 27, the Israeli forces have cut off all landline, cellular, and internet communications in the Gaza Strip. “We are deeply concerned about the ability of our teams to continue providing their emergency medical services, especially since this disruption affects the central emergency number ‘101’ and hinders the arrival of ambulance vehicles to the wounded and injured,” writes the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 2,913 children, at an average rate of more than 145 a day over 20 consecutive days. 1,700 women have also been killed in the bombardment as of Thursday, October 26.

Together, women and children amount to more than 65% of the 7,028 Palestinians Israel has killed since October 7, when it began the ongoing bombardment of this 365 sq. km strip of land where it has held 2.3 million Palestinians under siege for nearly 17 years.

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is a growing stain on our collective conscience,” said Adele Khodr, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “The rate of death and injuries of children [is] simply staggering.”

Those with serious injuries face a grim situation as the healthcare system has all but collapsed. Israel has killed health workers and bombed multiple healthcare facilities, including the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on October 17, causing global outrage by killing nearly 500 in one strike. Several other main hospitals have been forced to evacuate.

15 of the 35 hospitals in Gaza and about two-thirds of the 72 primary health care clinics have shut down, either due to damage caused by the bombardment or due to lack of fuel, whose supply has been cut off in the total blockade Israel has imposed since October 7.

The only power station in Gaza stopped producing electricity after running out of fuel on October 11, and a blackout continues to this day. Unable to fuel the water pumps, wastewater treatment plants and desalination tanks, which have also suffered damage in the bombing, the water production capacity in Gaza has reduced to five percent of the usual output, according to UNICEF.

“Vulnerable population groups are resorting to non-potable water sources, including high-salinity and brackish-quality water from agricultural wells,” added its statement.

Amid the increasing likelihood of outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases, hospitals are forced to stop treating patients except in emergency cases as the last liters of stocked fuel to power generators near exhaustion.

“Neonatal intensive care units house over 100 newborns, some of whom are in incubators and rely on mechanical ventilation, making an uninterrupted power supply a matter of life and death,” Khodr has warned.

“We have no fuel to run the standby generators, and those… affected first are the operation rooms, the intensive care units and emergency rooms,” said Gaza health ministry’s director general, Medhat Abbass.

“We are operating on some patients in the corridors of the hospitals. We are operating on them on the ground by the light of the mobile phones, and some of them were operated on without anesthesia.”

The few dozen trucks of medicines and food Israel has allowed through the Egyptian border are of a quantity the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described as “a drop of aid in an ocean of need.” Israel has refused to permit fuel in this aid convoy.

“If fuel is not received into Gaza”, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that it “will be forced to significantly reduce and in some cases bring its humanitarian operations across the Gaza Strip to a halt.”

Over 613,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) are sheltering in 150 facilities of this agency, 38 of whose staff members have also been killed in the bombardment.

Israel maintains that this bombardment is an exercise of its right to self-defense against Hamas, whose fighters broke out of the besieged Gaza strip on October 7 and launched an unprecedented attack, reportedly killing 1,400 Israelis, of those, hundreds of soldiers.

‘Clear violations of international humanitarian law’
“It is important to… recognize that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said in his remarks to the UN Security Council earlier on October 24.

“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Labeling Guteress’ remarks as “a pure blood libel”, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called for his resignation. Although Guterres had unequivocally stated that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” he had gone on to add that “those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

He referred to the “relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods” as “clear violations of international humanitarian law.”

The obligation to protect civilians during armed conflict “does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself,” he said.

“I fully support the principled position and leadership of Antonio Guterres,” African Union (AU) Chairperson Moussa Mahamat said on Thursday. “It is in line with International law and with the African Union position and relevant United Nations Resolutions.”

Foreign Ministers of nine Arab league countries in the region have also said in a joint statement on Thursday: “We emphasize that the right to self-defense… does not justify flagrant violations of international law and international humanitarian law, or the deliberate neglect of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Signed by UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco, the statement called for the establishment of “an independent, sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian state on the pre-June 4, 1967, lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/10/27/ ... i-bombing/

Massive mobilizations continue across Europe in solidarity with Palestine

Large sections of people across Europe including progressive, working-class, and anti-imperialist groups continue to mobilize in solidarity with Palestine

October 24, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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40,000 people mobilized in Brussels, Belgium on Sunday October 22. Photo: Rodrigo Suñé

While many governments across Europe continue to support Israel and impose restrictions on pro-Palestine demonstrations, more and more people flock to the streets in solidarity with Palestine. Major mobilizations have already taken place in the cities of Dublin, Amsterdam, Athens, Madrid, Oslo, and Lisbon, and in various cities across Italy, and Sweden.

As the death toll in Gaza has crossed 5,700, including over 2,000 children, mobilizations are set to grow and intensify, especially as European officials double down on their position in support of Israel.

On October 21, around 300,000 people joined a massive demonstration in London as part of the National March for Palestine called by various groups, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK. Earlier, on October 14, more than 100,000 people turned up for pro-Palestine demonstrations in various cities across the UK, denouncing Israeli war crimes in Gaza and demanding immediate cessation of Israeli bombings and freedom for Palestine from Israeli occupation.

Read more: Germany bans public grieving and solidarity with Palestine
On October 22, the Belgian capital city of Brussels also witnessed a massive mobilization in support of the Palestine cause called by a coalition of trade unions, human rights groups, and political parties including the Workers Party of Belgium (PTB/PVDA). Organizers estimated that around 40,000 people participated.

On October 22, the Workers’ Party of Belgium called a demonstration to “Stop the massacres in Gaza,” stating, “We were 40,000 people in the streets of Brussels and in front of the European institutions in Schuman Square in Sunday, at the call of a wide platform of Belgian organizations and the Palestinian organizations. As everywhere in the world, the demands are clear: an end to the Gaza siege, an immediate ceasefire, respect for international law, and an end to the occupation. Our governments and the European Union must stop standing behind Israel and the United States.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/10/24/ ... palestine/

Thousands march in Paris demanding immediate ceasefire in Gaza

As over 30,000 people marched in Paris calling for peace, Palestinians responded to French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the West Bank with protests and condemnation

October 26, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Thousands rallied in Paris on October 22, condemning Israeli siege of Gaza. (Photo: CGT/Facebook)

On October 22, a massive rally of around 30,000 people in solidarity with Palestine was held in the French capital, Paris. The mobilization was organized by a coalition of progressive activists calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and an end to the “massacre in Gaza.”

The march was led by the National Collective for a Just and Lasting Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis (CNPJDPI), consisting of members of about 40 progressive movements including trade unions like the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), youth and student groups, anti-imperialist and anti-war advocates, and progressive political parties including La France Insoumise (LFI).

The rally was held under tight state surveillance as the French government continues to be hostile towards pro-Palestine demonstrations. Earlier this month, France’s interior minister ordered a nationwide ban on pro-Palestine demonstrations, courting widespread criticism from vast sections of society. Last week the police also detained several protesters under the ban.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank on October 24, was met with protests by Palestinians. Macron, who was meeting both Israeli and Palestinian authorities, was called out for the French government’s continued support for Netanyahu and the crimes against civilians in Gaza.

As of now, the death toll in Gaza inflicted by the continuing bombardment by Israel has reached 6,600. In the West Bank, more than 100 people have been killed in violent repression by the occupation forces during the conflict.

During his visit, Macron extended support to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the fight against Hamas and also called for expanding the coalition against the Islamic State in order to fight Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Earlier, on the eve of Macron’s trip to Israel, Manuel Bompard, a left-wing legislator of the La France Insoumise (LFI), sent an open letter to the prime minister and other delegates calling to restore a strong French voice for peace.

“We urgently ask the President of the Republic to cease his unconditional support for Israeli policy,” the CNPJDPI demanded in its call for protest, which also called for the French government to demand an end to the siege and hostilities. “France should carry the voice of peace.”

“A just and lasting peace will only be possible within the framework of the recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

On October 22, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) demanded an immediate ceasefire, an essential first step to initiate a fair and sustainable peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian region.

Earlier, the Young Communist Movement of France (MJCF) condemned the massacres and attacks on all civilians and called to securing a rapid ceasefire, the end of colonization in Palestine, the end of Israel’s apartheid policy, the release of Palestinian political prisoners, and recognition of Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/10/26/ ... e-in-gaza/

University students across the US walk out of classes for Gaza

Students at dozens of campuses across North America staged walkouts demanding an end to Israel’s siege against Gaza

October 26, 2023 by Natalia Marques

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University of Virginia students walkout (Photo: Dissenters via X)

On Wednesday, October 25, students across dozens of campuses in North America staged walkouts in protest of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza. The walkout, taking place at university campuses in the United States and Canada, was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement. Dissenters, and Students for Justice in Palestine. The students demand an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza, an end to US funding of Israel, and that their universities divest from weapons corporations which supply the Israeli occupation.

Campuses participating in the walkout included Brown University, several City College of New York campuses, Florida State University, Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGill University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.

Students at the historically Black Howard University, located in Washington, DC, staged a walkout. As one student stated at the demonstration, “Our message to Joe Biden is that Howard University students, HBCU students, do not support the drastic and violent escalations that are happening now in Gaza. We want Biden to implement an immediate ceasefire, and we want Biden to stop giving unconditional military aid to apartheid Israel every year.”

At the Columbia campus in upper Manhattan, at least 500 students walked out of classes at 1 pm in a walkout organized by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, despite the intimidation tactics of zionists. Earlier in the day, a TV truck paid for by the far-right wing group Accuracy in Media circled the campus, broadcasting the names of students who have stood up against Israel’s siege on Gaza in some capacity with the label “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites”. Accuracy in Media is the same group that circulated a similar truck around Harvard’s campus, also doxxing pro-Palestine students.


Speaking from where students had gathered at the heart of the campus, a Palestinian student organizer with Columbia SJP said, “We’ve been getting death threats. There has been a truck going around with students’ faces and names, and people have been facing doxxing simply for speaking out in support of Palestinian rights. So that’s why I’m fully covered from head to toe.”

Earlier in the month, a self-identified Columbia University officer of administration had said about students protesting in solidarity with Palestine, “I hope every one of these people die.”

“We have yet to hear any concrete action about this, any statements [from Columbia],” said the Palestinian student, who wished to remain anonymous. “No concrete action has been taken to protect students. So until that happens, we have to keep covering ourselves.”

“I was too scared to come to class last week. People have been taking pictures of me,” said the student.

Assistant Columbia Professor Shai Davidai went viral for claims that pro-Palestinian student groups were threatening the safety of Jewish people on campus. After giving a tearful speech at a pro-Israel vigil on campus, Davidai took to X, claiming that, “I pleaded with my employer to help me protect the lives of thousands of Jewish students from pro-terror student organizations who openly laud Hamas—an internationally recognized terrorist organization.”

“There are student organizations on my own campus who see my beautiful children as legitimate targets,” he continued.

Brooklyn College students also staged a walkout. “[Israel claims that] bombing hospitals and destroying mosques on the holiest days in Islam, killing little kids and maintaining an open air concentration camp is somehow keeping Jewish people safe,” said a student speaker and self-identifying anti-Zionist Jew at the demonstration, in front of dozens of students.

“British colonialists created the apartheid state to keep Jews as far away from them as possible,” he continued. “American imperialists send billions of bombs per year for the same reason. Do we really think these countries give a sh-t about Jewish people? The United States has never cared about the Jewish people. They sent ships full of Jewish refugees back to Germany during the Holocaust. Netanyahu shakes hands with neo-Nazis like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/10/26/ ... -for-gaza/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 28, 2023 5:22 pm

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A mourner reacts amidst the bodies as people attend funeral for Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 24 October 2023 (Reuters)

Israel-Palestine: Names released of 7,028 Palestinians killed after Biden questions death toll
Originally published: Middle East Eye on October 26, 2023 by MEE Staff (more by Middle East Eye) | (Posted Oct 28, 2023)

The Palestinian health ministry on Thursday released the names of 7,028 people killed by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden questioned the death toll since the war began on 7 October.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he has “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth” about the number of people killed by Israel so far. “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” he added.

In response, the health ministry published a 210-page report, detailing the names, ages, genders, and ID numbers of every person killed in the enclave. The ministry said an English version of the report will be published soon.

Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said the U.S. administration was “devoid of human standards, morals and basic human rights values” for “shamelessly” questioning the validity of the death toll.

“We decided to go out and announce, with details and names, and in front of the entire world, the truth about the genocidal war committed by the Israeli occupation against our people,” he said.

Between 7 October and 3pm local time on 26 October, 7,028 Palestinians were killed, including 2,913 children, the report stated.

A total of 3,129 females and 3,899 males were killed. The number of unidentified people killed stands at 218, but they are not included in the final death toll.

The report also excludes those buried without being brought to hospital, those for whom hospitals were unable to complete registration procedures, and people missing under the rubble, who number around 1,600, with many of them feared dead.

As such, the ministry said the actual death toll is likely to be much higher than the report stated.

“We confirm that the doors of the Ministry of Health are open for all institutions to have access,” Qudra said in a statement.

Let the world know that behind every number is the story of a person whose name and identity are known. Our people are not nobodies who can be ignored.

Despite Biden questioning the accuracy of the death toll, the HuffPost revealed that the State Department recently cited the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza in nearly 20 “situation reports”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Biden’s remarks were “shocking and dehumanising” and urged him to apologise.

“Countless videos coming out of Gaza every day show mangled bodies of Palestinian women and children—and entire city blocks levelled to the ground,” Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, said.

President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war. They are neither.

Many experts consider figures provided by the Palestinian ministry reliable, given its access, sources, and accuracy in past statements.

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Post earlier this week the ministry’s figures are “generally proven to be reliable”.

“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” he said.

In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time in which there’s been some major discrepancy.

The ongoing Israeli war on Gaza erupted on 7 October after Hamas led a Palestinian attack into southern Israel. According to Israeli officials, around 1,400 people were killed in Israel during the assault, the majority of them believed to be civilians.

At least another 220 people have been taken as prisoners in Gaza, including soldiers and civilians. Hamas has released four prisoners so far and said 50 others have been killed in Israeli air strikes.

Israel responded to the Hamas-led assault by waging a relentless bombing campaign on Gaza, and a complete siege of the territory.

The bombardement has killed dozens of journalists, doctors, first responders, writers, artists, and footballers—among others.

It has targeted residential buildings, hospitals, ambulances, schools, universities, media offices, mosques, a church, and banks—among other civilian infrastructure.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/28/israel- ... eath-toll/

******

OCTOBER 27, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
US diplomacy lost traction in Middle East. Isolating Iran no longer possible.

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Russia’s Dy Foreign Minister & Special Envoy Mikhail Bogdanov (C) held talks with Iran’s Dy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani and Hamas’ head of International Relations Mousa Marzouk, Moscow, Oct. 26, 2023

The US President Joe Biden is convinced that one of the reasons why Hamas launched the attack on Israel was because of the announcement during the G20 Summit in New Delhi on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor . But he also admitted that this reading was based purely on his instinct and he did not have any proof for it.

Biden’s motivation in saying so lies in the US’ desperate need to reclaim its leadership role in the Muslim Middle East. The two most compelling realities rejecting the American leadership are: one, a strong united regional solidarity cutting across sectarian divides to seek a settlement on Palestine, like at no time before, and, two, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement.

The latest developments involving Hamas and Israel undermined the US efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel. No doubt, the Saudi stance on the Palestine problem has hardened. Biden reached out to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday in an attempt to create as much convergence as possible between Washington and Riyadh.

But the White House readout shows that a critical mass remained elusive; even as the two leaders agreed on generalities, they couldn’t agree on the all-important specific issue of an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

This profound disagreement is also reflected in the UN Security Council where the United Arab Emirates supported the Russian draft resolution, which called for “an immediate, durable and fully respected humanitarian ceasefire”, but opposed the US draft resolution, which was evasive on ending the fighting and instead harped on Israel’s right to self-defence.

A joint statement on Thursday signed by the Foreign Ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Morocco called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza Strip. In an admonition to the US and Israel, the statement stated, “The right to self-defence by the United Nations Charter does not justify blatant violations of humanitarian and international law.”

Looking ahead, the big question is about American intention. Is it muscle-flexing or a hidden plot to create facts on the ground that can be seized as casus belli to launch an offensive against Iran, which has been a longstanding project of the neoconservatives dominating the US foreign policy discourses?

Biden declared at a press conference in the White House on Wednesday that he had warned Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that if Tehran continued to “move against” US forces in the region, Washington would respond.

To quote Biden, “My warning to the Ayatollah was that if they continue to move against those troops, we will respond. And he should be prepared. It has nothing to do with Israel.” (Biden was referring to growing attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria.)

The political deputy at the Iranian president’s office, Mohammad Jamshidi has since countered Biden’s remark, saying, “The US messages were neither directed to the leader of the Islamic Revolution nor were they anything but requests from the Iranian side. If Biden thinks he has warned Iran, he should ask his team to show him the text of the messages.”

Hours later, when asked to clarify, the US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby parried, “There was a direct message relayed. That’s as far as I’m going to go.” Conceivably, the recent attacks by militant groups in Syria and Iraq pose a headache to Biden in domestic politics. Reportedly, some two dozen US servicemen have been injured and one military contractor killed so far. There are roughly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria.

Possibly, Biden was grandstanding. That is not something unusual in US-Iran standoffs. But more likely, the US hopes to nudge Iran to rein in the free-wheeling militia groups in Syria and Iraq from exacerbating the situation.

Iran is on the same page as China and Russia and the Arab States in calling for an immediate ceasefire so that conditions are available for diplomacy to meaningfully tackle the Palestine problem. They stand for a 2-state solution. Ironically, the US also claims it supports a two-state solution.

This is what Biden stated at a press conference in the White House yesterday, reading out of a prepared text: “Israel has the right and, I would add, responsibility to respond to the slaughter of their people. And we will ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself against these terrorists. That’s a guarantee…

“But that does not lessen the need for — to operate and align with the laws of war for Israeli — it has to do everything in its power — Israel has to do everything in its power, as difficult as it is, to protect innocent civilians …

“I also want to take a moment to look ahead toward the future that we seek. Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity, and peace. And there’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on October the 6th …

“It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution. It means a concentrated effort from all the parties — Israelis, Palestinians, regional partners, global leaders — to put us on a path toward peace.”

Do these words sound as if Biden is preparing for a war with Iran? For the first time, perhaps, there is a ray of hope that the US will no longer work around the Palestine problem. The bottom line, as the deliberations at the UN Security Council also testify, is that all responsible powers understand that the Middle East continues to be the centre of gravity in world politics and a conflagration in the region could easily turn into a world war. And none of the big powers wants such an apocalyptic outcome.

That said, while the US still has unrivalled power in the Middle East, its influence has diminished, as new realities emerged:

Israel has grown more powerful militarily and economically vis-a-vis Palestinians, but no longer enjoys regional dominance.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two dominant powers in the Middle East, are increasingly asserting their own interests.
China, although a relatively new player, is no longer confining itself to economic diplomacy.
US has lost the capacity to leverage the world oil market, as Russia works closely with Saudi Arabia within the ambit of OPEC+ to calibrate oil production level and prices.
Consequently, petrodollar is weakening.
The Abraham Accords have been shelved practically.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has assumed new dimensions in the recent years, thanks to the ascendance of the axis of resistance, which require new postures and operational thinking on the part of the US.
Israeli politics has swung sharply to extreme right.
The global environment is highly complicated; the peace process can no longer be under US mentorship. On Thursday, Russia hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow with Iran’s deputy foreign minister and a Hamas delegation. Later, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East and Africa, announced that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas “will soon arrive on an official visit” to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In an all-out war with Iran, the US will take heavy casualties and the state of Israel may face destruction. Indeed, Iran may opt for nuclear deterrent capability. It is a near-certainty that a US-Iran war will turn into a world war. Clearly, war is not an option.

There is high risk, therefore, in an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. If Israel gets bogged down in Gaza, which by no means cannot be ruled out, there is a high possibility that Hezbollah may open a second front. And that, in turn, can trigger a chain reaction that may spin out of control. Herein lies the danger if a ceasefire is not agreed upon early enough in the conflict.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/us-dipl ... -possible/

*******

UN vote for a truce in Palestine
colonelcassad
October 28, 4:37

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The result of a vote at the UN demanding an immediate truce in Palestine.
Israel said after the vote that "the UN has lost all legitimacy."

PS. At night, Israel's ground invasion of Gaza began. The Palestinian genocide continues.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8732631.html

Russia is sending troops to Syria and Africa
colonelcassad
October 27, 18:50

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Russia is moving troops to Syria and Africa

A thousand Russian troops arrived in Syria in the second ten days of October. Russian military bases in the Arab republic remain Russia's gateway to Africa.

The transfer was not prevented by Israeli strikes on the runways of the airports of Damascus and Aleppo (Syria). This suggests that Moscow is not going to weaken the fight against Islamic terrorism either because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or because of the war in Ukraine. And also that the Russian armed forces have enough resources to replace the PMCs that were once present in Syria. The Russian Ministry of Defense, headed by General Sergei Shoigu, quickly and effectively took control of the portion of Wagner's military assistance to Syria, focusing not on protecting the business interests of companies in Syria, but on maximum effectiveness in the fight against terrorism and further stabilization in the country.

Terrorist groups in the Idlib de-escalation zone are preparing attacks on civilians and locations of Russian and Syrian troops, Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties (CPVS) in Syria, said with reference to intelligence data. “The command of the Russian group of forces and the leadership of the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Republic will take the necessary proactive measures,” the rear admiral emphasized.

He also said that the aviation of the Western anti-terrorist coalition led by the United States continues to create dangerous situations in the skies of Syria, flying in violation of deconfliction protocols and Syrian airspace. This is not the first time that NATO aircraft have provided de facto air support to ground operations of bandits and terrorists.

The US Department of Defense continues to insist that there are several hundred fighters from the Russian private military company Wagner in Syria and that their numbers are not changing. This was stated at a meeting with the Washington group of military observers (Defense Writers Group), the commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) Air Force, Lieutenant General Alexus Grinkevich. “What I see is a relatively stable number of Wagner forces in Syria over the last several months,” the US military commander said. When asked to clarify what number he was talking about, he replied: “I’ll say this. Several hundred,” Grinkevich repeated. But it is difficult to say what facts the general is based on, perhaps on data from the media that needs verification.

Western media claim that it is difficult for Russia to keep the situation in Syria under control due to the progress of the military operation in Ukraine. But the Russian Armed Forces are advancing faster and better along the entire front line, increasingly seizing the initiative from the Ukrainian military, which over the past months has suffered huge losses in attempts to counteroffensive. “The Ukrainian Armed Forces have run out of time for a counteroffensive,” writes Newsweek. As the article notes, Ukraine no longer has a chance to achieve significant results, since the winter thaw will complicate logistics and the advancement of Ukrainian troops.

But theses about the change of seasons look like an excuse for an urgently needed respite. The counteroffensive, which was spectacularly presented in the Western media, never materialized. The Zelensky regime, pumped up with Western weapons, could not boast of success at the front. Because weapons alone are not enough, tactics, knowledge of military science and much more are needed, which his team does not possess. At the same time, the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense, led by Sergei Shoigu, despite skeptics, managed to effectively adjust planning over the summer in order to strengthen positions for destroying advancing enemy groups in some directions and confident, coordinated advance in others. At the same time, Russia is also strengthening its military presence in Syria and African countries.

https://afrinz.ru/2023/10/rossiya-usili ... e-v-sirii/ - zinc

Apparently in the coming months we should expect further intensification of the decolonization processes of Africa.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8732359.html

Google Translator

*****

Iran-Russia set a western trap in Palestine

The only country that could possibly distract the west from Ukraine is Israel. But the US and its allies are walking into an existential trap if they think a West Asian victory will be more easily won than a European one.


Pepe Escobar

OCT 27, 2023

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

The Russia-Iran strategic partnership - with China in the wings - is laying an elaborate, Sun Tzu-tinged trap for the Hegemon in West Asia.

Apart from Israel, there is no entity on the planet capable of switching the focus, in a flash, away from the west's spectacular debacle in Ukraine.

The warmongers in charge of US foreign policy, not exactly Bismarckian stalwarts, believe that if Project Ukraine is unattainable, Project Final Solution in Palestine could instead be a - ethnic cleansing - cakewalk.

A more plausible scenario, though is that Iran-Russia – and the new “axis of evil” Russia-China-Iran – have all it takes to drag the Hegemon into a second quagmire. It’s all about using the enemy’s own, discombobulated flip-flapping to unbalance him and disorient him to oblivion.

The White House’s wishful thinking that the Forever Wars in Ukraine and Israel are inscribed in the same lofty “democracy” drive and essential to US national interests, has already backfired – even among American public opinion.

That does not prevent cries and whispers along the Beltway revealing Israel-allied US neocons increasing the tempo to provoke Iran – via a proverbial false flag that would lead to an American attack. That Armageddon scenario neatly fits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical psychopathy.

Vassals would be forced to meekly comply. NATO heads of state have made a beeline to visit Israel to demonstrate their unconditional support for Tel Aviv - including Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Rishi Sunak, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, the senile lodger at the White House, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

Avenging the Arab “century of humiliation”

So far, Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has shown extraordinary restraint by not taking any bait. Hezbollah supports the Palestinian resistance as a whole – and until a few years back, had serious issues with Hamas, with which it clashed in Syria. Hamas, incidentally, while partially funded by Iran, is not run by Iran. As much as Tehran supports the Palestinian cause, Palestinian resistance groups make their own decisions.

The big news is that all these issues are now dissolving. Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) went to Lebanon to visit Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in person this week. That spells out unity of purpose – or what the region's Axis of Resistance calls the “Unity of Fronts.”

Even more eye-opening was Hamas' visit to Moscow this week, which was met with impotent Israeli fury. The Hamas delegation was headed by a member of its Politburo, Abu Marzouk. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri came especially from Tehran and met two of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s key deputies, Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin.

That spells out Hamas, Iran, and Russia negotiating at the same table.

Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam - be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping?

Beijing, via its sophisticated diplomacy, is certainly hinting at it to key players, even before the ground-breaking, Russia-China brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement was struck earlier this year.

That by itself won’t thwart the perpetual US neocon obsession to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran. Worth less than zero when it comes to military science, these neocons ignore how Iranian retaliation would - accurately – target each and every US base in Iraq and Syria, with the Persian Gulf an open case.

Peerless Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov has shown what could happen to those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean in case of an Israeli-threatened attack on Iran.

Moreover, there are at least 1,000 US troops in northern Syria stealing the country's oil – which would also become an instant target.

Ali Fadavi, IRGC’s deputy commander-in-chief, cut to the chase: “We have technologies in the military field that no one knows about, and the Americans will know about them when we use them.”

Cue to Iranian hypersonic Fattah missiles – cousins to the Khinzal and the DF-27 - traveling at Mach 15, and able to reach any target in Israel in 400 seconds.

And add to it sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW). As confirmed in Moscow six months ago, when it comes to military interconnection, the Iranians told the Russians at the same table, “whatever you need, just ask.” The same applies vice-versa, because the mutual enemy is one and the same.

It’s all about the Strait of Hormuz

The heart of the matter in any Russian-Iran strategy is the Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day.

Iran is able to block the Strait of Hormuz in a flash. For starters, that would be some sort of poetic justice retribution for Israel aiming to gobble up, illegally, all the multibillion-dollar natural gas discovered offshore Gaza: this is, incidentally, one of the absolutely key reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Yet the real deal will be to bring down the Wall Street-engineered $618 trillion derivative structure, as confirmed for years by analysts at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as independent Persian Gulf energy traders.

So when push comes to shove - and way beyond the defense of Palestine and in a scenario of Total War - not only Russia-Iran but key players of the Arab world about to become members of BRICS 11 - such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE - do have what it takes to bring down the US financial system anytime they choose.

As an old school Deep State higher up, now in business in Central Europe, stresses:

“The Islamic nations have the economic advantage. They can blow up the international financial system by cutting off the oil. They do not have to fire a single shot. Iran and Saudi Arabia are allying together. The 2008 crisis took 29 trillion dollars to solve but this one, should it happen, could not be solved even with 100 trillion dollars of fiat instruments.”

As Persian Gulf traders told me, one possible scenario is OPEC starting to sanction Europe, first from Kuwait and then spreading from one OPEC country to another and to all countries that are treating the Muslim world as enemies and war fodder.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has already warned that oil to western markets could be put off because of what Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has already called, on the record, for a total oil and gas embargo by Islamic countries against nations – essentially NATO vassals - that support Israel.

So Christian Zionists in the US allied with neocon asset Netanyahu threatening to attack Iran have the potential to pull down the entire world financial system.

Forever War on Syria, remixed

Under the current volcano, the Russia-China strategic partnership has been extremely cautious. To the outside world, their mutual official position is to refuse to side with either Palestine or Israel; call for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds; call for a two-state solution; and respect international law. All their initiatives at the UN have been duly sabotaged by the Hegemon.

As it stands, Washington has refused the green light for the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. The main reason is the immediate US priority: buy some time to expand the war to Syria, “accused” of being the key transit point for Iranian weapons to Hezbollah. That also doubles as re-opening the same old war front against Russia.

There are no illusions in Moscow. The intel apparatus knows well that Israeli Mossad agents have been advising Kiev while Tel Aviv was supplying weapons to Ukraine under serious US pressure. That infuriated the siloviki, and may have constituted a fatal Israeli mistake.

The neocons, for their part, never stop. They are advancing a parallel threat: if Hezbollah attacks Israel with something else than a few sparse rockets – and that simply won’t happen - the Hmeimim Russian Air Base in Latakia will be “eliminated” as a “warning” to Iran.

This does not even qualify as children playing in the sandbox. After the serial Israeli attacks on the civilian Damascus and Aleppo airports, Moscow did not even blink before offering its Hmeimim facilities to Syria – complete with clearance for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cargo flights, according to some Russian intel sources. Netanyahu will not exactly harbor a death wish by bombing a fully A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) Russian Air Base.

Moscow also clearly sees what those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean might be up to. The response has been swift: Mig-31Ks are patrolling neutral air space over the Black Sea 24/7, equipped with hypersonic Khinzals, which would take only six minutes to visit the Mediterranean.

Amidst all this neocon-drenched madness, with the Pentagon deploying a formidable array of weaponry plus “undisclosed” assets to the Eastern Mediterranean, whether the target is Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Russia, or all of the above, both China and North Korea – part of the new American-concocted “axis of evil” - have indicated they will not be mere bystanders.

The Chinese Navy is for all practical purposes shielding Iran from a distance. Yet even more forceful has been a statement by Premier Li Qiang - something unusually blunt and rare in Chinese diplomacy:

"China will continue to firmly support Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity, and will strongly oppose any external forces interfering in Iran's internal affairs.”

Never forget that China and Iran are linked by a comprehensive strategic partnership. Meanwhile, Russian Premier Mikhail Mishustin has reinforced the Russia-Iran strategic partnership in a meeting with Iran's First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber.

Remember those rice eaters from Korea

Pro-Iran militias across the Axis of Resistance, are keeping a carefully tempered degree of confrontation against Israel, close to guerrilla hit-and-run. They won’t be engaged in massive attacks yet. But all bets are off if Israel invades Gaza. It’s clear the Arab world, for all its massive internal contradictions, will simply not tolerate the civilian massacre.

Bluntly, at the current incendiary juncture, the Hegemon has found the offramp from its Project Ukraine humiliation. They erroneously believe that the same old Forever War rekindled in West Asia can be “modulated” at will. And if two wars turn into an immense political albatross, as they will, what else is new? They will simply start a new war in the “Indo-Pacific.”

None of that fools Russia-Iran and their ice-cold monitoring of the flipping and flapping Hegemon every step of the way. It’s enlightening to remember what Malcolm X was already predicting in 1964:

“Some rice eaters ran him out of Korea. Yes, they ran him out of Korea. Rice eaters with nothing but gym shoes, and a rifle, and a bowl of rice took him and his tanks and his napalm, and all that other action he’s supposed to have and ran him across the Yalu. Why? Cause the day that he can win on the ground has passed.”

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/iran- ... -palestine

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Hezbollah Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s ‘Strategic Silence’ Unnerves Zionists
OCTOBER 27, 2023

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By Julia Kassem – Oct 26, 2023

Amid the ear-splitting sound of air raid sirens and the relentless barrage of rockets pounding Palestinian homes in the densely-populated Gaza Strip, only the sound of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s silence is the most deafening.

Since the Lebanese resistance movement warned to join the war in the event of the Israeli regime moving ahead with its ambitious plan of ‘ground invasion’, both Israelis and Americans have been forced to sit back and consider different scenarios and consequences of the foolhardy, risky adventure.

US President Joe Biden, according to a report in Axios, was “particularly concerned” in his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv that Hezbollah “would decide to join the war”, which would “increase the odds of a broader conflict” in the West Asia region.

Amid the war rhetoric in the power corridors of Tel Aviv and Washington, one question everyone seems to be asking is: how would the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement react if the war expands?

Headlines in the Western and Zionist media in recent weeks point to the importance of Hezbollah and how the movement can damage the calculations of the Zionist enemy in the event of ground offensive.

“Where’s Nasrallah? Hezbollah leader silent among Gaza attacks,” asked Middle East Eye. “Nasrallah remains silent while thousands flee South Lebanon,” wrote Israeli Ynetnews. “Hassan Nasrallah’s ominous silence in Lebanon,” wrote Jewish News Syndicate.

What these headlines reveal is the desperation in the occupying regime to come out of the confusion it finds itself in and to get a sense of what lies ahead for it from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech.

The US has been urging Tel Aviv to hold back and delay the ground offensive, and the regime has so far obliged, primarily due to its own compulsions and the need for US reinforcements.

The Palestinian resistance, already gaining the upper hand in terms of strategy, strength, and might, has demonstrated that the ground offensive will be a costly proposition. It has prevented the much-hyped Merkava tanks from even entering the Gaza borders at Khan Yunus and Rafah – destroying them.

On October 25, Hezbollah leader announced that 41 soldiers of the group who were martyred in post-October 7 battles with the Zionist enemy were ‘Martyrs in the path of Al-Quds’, setting the tone for what lies ahead – the complete liberation of the Al-Quds from the Zionist occupation.

Hinting at the ultimate endgame of the current battle as the liberation of Palestine, the announcement has opened a new stage in the objectives of the Resistance Axis with greater conviction and resolve.

Though a speech is yet to be made, Hassan Nasrallah’s actions have been louder than any speech – desecuritizing the border, causing 40+ settlements within 5 km of the Lebanese border to evacuate, hitting every target with 20 mortar attacks, more than 70 AGTM launches, and over a dozen tanked Merkavas. These actions have spoken louder than words, but much more is yet to come.

The discourse around Hezbollah’s involvement in the war misses the point that all weaponry of the Axis of Resistance is employed with careful coordination and strategy.

On October 18, Biden warned Hezbollah against joining the war, terrified of the existential threat Hezbollah poses to the regime that is in reality a tinder box. This existential threat to the occupation prompted Biden to also advise his allies in Tel Aviv to not make any hasty, imprudent move.

While Hezbollah has engaged in limited battles against the Zionist entity from the North in recent weeks, basically aimed at distracting and confusing the enemy that is weaker than Spider’s Web, it has so far allowed the Palestinian resistance to manage the overall situation on the frontline.

Hezbollah has spun the Zionist entity around in a knot from the threads of its own weak web in the North – enough to increase the confusion and distraction without creating an escalation.

What the Zionist entity seems to be begging for is a response on its quickly ticking watch, a sign, an answer, a step in its plan to be watched, observed, and recorded.

The tactic of strategic patience, which US think tank The Washington Institute described as an “Enduring Challenge for the Biden Administration” – is derived from its Islamic root concept (patience) to be just as much of a political strategy in struggle as it is a personal struggle through one’s personal trials.

Considering this, Washington-based war hawks are far from being good planners. The resistance, with his strategy and patience, holds the key here. And this battle will also end as the resistance plans.

https://orinocotribune.com/hezbollah-le ... -zionists/

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Israel Cut Off Gaza’s Communications Because Murderers Don’t Like Witnesses
Israel is perhaps more acutely aware than any other government on earth of how disadvantageous it is to have your crimes recorded in the light of day and shared with the world.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 28, 2023

Israeli ground forces have ramped up activities in Gaza in what anonymous US officials are reportedly telling the press is a “rolling start” to the long-anticipated ground invasion.

Israel has also concurrently crippled Gaza’s largest telecommunications service, which had been the enclave’s last remaining contact with the outside world after Israel knocked out all the others. Humanitarian organizations and mainstream press outlets now say they have lost communication with their contacts in Gaza in a level of information blackout we’re unaccustomed to seeing in modern times.

“This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch correctly notes.

And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably not just a convenient coincidence for Israel. A genocidal massacre in total darkness works very much to the advantage of those doing the massacring.


As Israeli siege warfare cuts Gazans off from both electricity and communications, we’re seeing the lights go out in Gaza in more ways than one.

The light has been further dimmed by the rampant killing of journalists by the Israeli military. Wikipedia, whose notoriously rigged editing system tends to skew information in the favor of US information interests, still currently lists 17 journalists killed by the IDF in Gaza and another one in southern Lebanon in this current onslaught. NPR lists the numbers a bit higher, while conveniently declining to say who did the killing.

An Al Jazeera reporter named Wael Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter and baby grandson to a single Israeli airstrike in Gaza, saying “They’re taking their revenge by killing our children!” on the air while kneeling over the body of his dead son. He had reportedly moved them south of Gaza City following an Israeli evacuation order, believing it would keep them safe.

According to Reuters, the IDF is now telling both the Reuters and AFP news agencies that it cannot guarantee the safety of their reporters if they continue operating in the Gaza Strip. After Israel’s historically unparallelled assault on journalists these past three weeks, this can only be interpreted as a threat.


As we have discussed previously, Israel has been suffering for years from an increasingly worsening PR crisis as the ability to share and circulate raw video footage of its abuses emerged with the arrival of smartphones and widespread social media access.

During a 2021 video appearance for the International Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent and Accountability, Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook made some remarks that I find myself contemplating frequently as Israel scrambles to shut all the lights off in Gaza. Cook described the changes he’s seen as smartphones and internet access made Palestinians less dependent on the work of sympathetic western activists and gave them the ability to directly share footage of their own abuse.

Here’s a quote:

“Sadly most corporate journalists paid little attention to the work of these activists. In any case, their role was quickly snuffed out. That was partly because Israel learnt that shooting a few of them served as a very effective deterrent, warning others to keep away.

“But it was also because as technology became cheaper and more accessible — eventually ending up in mobile phones that everyone was expected to have — Palestinians could record their own suffering more immediately and without mediation.

“Israel’s dismissal of the early, grainy images of the abuse of Palestinians by soldiers and settlers — as ‘Pallywood’ (Palestinian Hollywood) — became ever less plausible, even to its own supporters. Soon Palestinians were recording their mistreatment in high definition and posting it directly to YouTube.”

Israel is perhaps more acutely aware than any other government on earth of how disadvantageous it is to have your crimes recorded in the light of day and shared with the world. That’s why it shut the lights off in Gaza: because murderers don’t like witnesses.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... witnesses/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 29, 2023 12:21 pm

The situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone for October 28, 2023
October 28, 2023
Rybar

Last night, after massive artillery and air preparation, the Israel Defense Forces switched to “active” ground operations in the Gaza Strip. True, the IDF operation for the most part took place only on the Internet.

Judging by the footage published by Israeli troops, a tank column essentially entered the region and opened fire on abandoned buildings in open areas. At the moment, this is not much different from previous IDF forays into the enclave.

Palestinian groups continue to attack populated areas in Israel. In addition to border shelling, Hamas militants launched rockets at Tel Aviv and its suburbs: three residents were injured, and fires broke out at the landing sites . In addition, the city of Dimona , where the country's largest nuclear center is located, came under fire.

Against the backdrop of aggravation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone, protests were held in many countries in support of the residents of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people took to the streets of London , Paris , Rome and other cities. In Istanbul , the rally was joined by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , who in a speech called Israel an "occupier" and a "war criminal" and justified Hamas' actions in the region.

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Progress of hostilities
Northern and eastern directions

Palestinian factions launched rockets at Zikim , Ashkelon , Kissufim , Miftachim and Kibbutz Nir Oz . In addition, Hamas launched strikes on Tel Aviv and nearby settlements: most of the rockets were intercepted by air defense systems, however, the remaining ones damaged several buildings and injured three civilians . Baer Sheva was also subjected to massive shelling : several residential buildings were damaged . The city of Dimon also came under fire , where shells fell near a nuclear research center.

Gaza Strip

At night, after conducting large-scale artillery and air preparations throughout the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces switched to active ground forces. However, the “expansion of ground operations” into the territory of the enclave has not yet happened, and the result of the night raid is still to be assessed. Given the huge number of fakes on both sides and the lack of stable communications, it is extremely difficult to obtain confirmation of losses on the part of Hamas or the IDF. In the Arab media, for example, reports are circulating about the alleged destruction of more than 20 tanks, as well as the penetration of about five thousand American troops into the region. At the moment, all the results of the raid are the movement of tank columns and the shooting of lonely abandoned buildings in an open field, in the best traditions of military exercises.


In addition, Israeli forces carried out one of the most powerful attacks on the enclave, with several shells landing near the Indonesian hospital . At the same time, the IDF reported on the liquidation of the head of the Hamas Air Force, Asemu Abu Rakabe , and the commander of the naval brigade, Ratab Abu Tsayban .

A difficult humanitarian situation remains in the region: most hospitals are overcrowded, there are problems with communication, there is an acute shortage of medicines and all other primary goods. Despite constant attacks on the south of the region , including Rafah and Khan Yunis , 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid passed through the Rafah checkpoint this afternoon . However, they are not enough to at least partially cover the needs of the region.

Border with Lebanon
The exchange of blows between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces continues along the Israeli-Lebanese border . The group's fighters use drones, and also strike with ATGMs and mortars against the positions of Israeli border guards, including near Al - Abad , Al - Jarda and Zarit . In turn, the IDF attacked Alma al - Shaab , Labun , Jal al - Alam , Blida and other populated areas. In addition, due to the use of incendiary shells by the Israelis, border forests continue to burn.

The continued tension on the border also led to another call from the US Embassy for American citizens to immediately leave Lebanese territory.

West Bank

Clashes between the Arab population and Israeli security forces continue in the region. The most violent unrest took place in Tulkarm and Jenin , where residents held several demonstrations and went on strike. Shootings and casualties were also reported. Mass detentions of both the most radical representatives of the dissatisfied and those suspected of connections with Hamas do not stop: several dozen people were arrested, including the president of the student council of the Palestinian National University, Mahmoud Ahmed al - Maghrabi . Despite the constant protests and tension in the region, escalation is unlikely without direct external intervention that can coordinate the dissatisfied and provide them with weapons

Political-diplomatic background
On the dissatisfaction of the Israeli authorities with the UN decision


120 countries voted for the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. There are 14 countries against it, including the USA , Israel , Czech Republic , Austria , Croatia . Israel's permanent representative to the UN, Gilad Erdan , said that the organization lost its legitimacy after the adoption of the Middle East resolution: “ Why are you protecting murderers?! Why do you protect terrorists who behead children and kidnap babies?! What is the purpose of this decision? Tie Israel's hands? It won't help. We will continue the operation until Hamas is defeated . " Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen indicated that Israel rejects the UN General Assembly resolution calling for a truce in the Gaza Strip and intends to completely eliminate Hamas. Newly elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson , who in a telephone conversation with Netanyahu emphasized “strong support” for Israel, also supported the IDF’s actions.

About actions in support of residents of the Gaza Strip around the world


Rallies were held in Iraq , Jordan , Morocco , South Korea , France , Germany and other countries in support of the residents of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people gathered on the streets of Istanbul and London , calling for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid for the population of the enclave. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also attended the Istanbul demonstration , giving a speech in which he called Israel an “occupier” and a “war criminal,” and also justified Hamas’s actions in the region. In response to the Turkish president's harsh statements, the head of Israeli diplomacy, Eli Cohen , proposed recalling diplomatic representatives from Turkey to reassess Israeli-Turkish relations.

Erdogan is trying to ride the wave of dissatisfaction with Israel's actions and become the “protector” of all Muslims. Given how resonant his words were today, he will certainly receive the support of a large number of people. Judging by the harshness and enthusiasm of the Turkish leader, he imagines himself to be none other than the reincarnation of Sultan Mehmed II , who is called the “conqueror.” In his speech, he simultaneously spoke out against both the West and Russia (the reference to Karabakh is indicative). And now the question is how far he is willing to go. Will his speech be simply an attempt to raise his ratings against the backdrop of the fighting in the Gaza Strip, or will it be the starting point of a new, larger war.

About statements and actions of Russia in the context of the conflict

Hamas announced that it had begun a search among the hostages for eight people from the list provided by Russia ; they plan to release them.

In addition, the Russian Foreign Ministry called for the consolidation of collective steps to restart the negotiation process between the parties to the Middle East conflict. It was noted that Russia is making its contribution to achieving a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including through mediation functions. Nevertheless, Russian diplomats emphasized that the Russian Federation warns against adventurous decisions of those who are tempted to spark another big war in the Middle East.

About statements by the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said today that "the Air Force is currently using only a small part of its capabilities, and is ready to carry out any other mission." Such rhetoric fits into the tactics of the Israeli leadership in recent days. On the one hand, the IDF is trying not to reduce the degree of bellicose statements and stir up excitement around the “ground operation”; on the other hand, the authorities refuse to clearly announce the start of the operation and maintain room for maneuver in case the fighting drags on and they have to justify military failures.

Another motive behind Galant’s statement is a signal to pro-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq, as well as Hezbollah, that the Israeli Air Force’s resources are enough for everyone, regardless of the course of hostilities in the Gaza Strip. This approach makes it possible to slow down the decline in the trust rating of the Israeli authorities against the backdrop of inflated expectations of the population, as well as to gain the necessary time to prepare the IDF for a possible escalation of the conflict to the regional level. In one case or another, the Israeli leadership is in a very narrow corridor for decision-making, so a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip is only a matter of time and requires tactical preparation, including through occasional raids.

In addition, he announced his intention to meet tomorrow with representatives of the families of those abducted by Hamas. This meeting will be held for the first time; previously , the Israeli authorities refused such events, which led to several rallies on the streets of Tel Aviv . However, this evening Netanyahu announced that he had met with the families of Hamas prisoners and promised to use all opportunities for their return.

On Elon Musk's generosity


Elon Musk wants to provide Internet access to the Gaza Strip through Starlink. According to him, it will be received by international and humanitarian organizations. This decision was largely influenced by the almost complete shutdown of telephone communications and the Internet as a result of IDF strikes. Thus, the Palestinian Red Cross yesterday announced a complete loss of communication with teams in Gaza after the blockade of communications and the Internet.

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-zone-izra ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

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Erdogan’s deafening silence on Palestine

A lot has changed since Erdogan’s 'one minute' moment at Davos in 2009. Once celebrated for championing pro-Palestinian rhetoric and action in the region, Turkiye today, at best, aims for a backroom mediation role.


Ceyda Karan

OCT 26, 2023

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

Turkiye has long since lost its 'championship of the Palestinian cause' under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While globally, and from the very start, there has been an outpouring of horrified outrage over Israel's indiscriminate air bombing of Gaza, it took the Turkish president 20 days to 'get tough' on Tel Aviv.

Despite strong reactions from his public, and especially his Islamist base, Erdogan waited an inexplicably long time before delivering a message at his party's parliamentary group meeting this week:

"Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a group of mujahideen fighting to protect its citizens", he said. Reminding the crowd of 'the good old' Ottomans, he added, "When the powers on whose backs Israel leans today are gone tomorrow, the first place the Israeli people will look for reassurance will be Turkiye, as it was 500 years ago." Erdogan said that contrary to the west, Turkiye owed Israel nothing.

And then he balanced his stance by saying, "We have no problem with Israel, but we have never and will never approve of the way it acts like an organization instead of a state."

If anything, his message can be interpreted as a direct embrace of Hamas, rather than criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza. Importantly, while underlining the 'guarantor' offer that Ankara has been offering both sides for more than two weeks, he stated that Turkiye is not seeking this role alone but 'with other participants'.

But even this relatively balanced exit drew a reaction from the markets. The Turkish stock market dropped by 5 percent, forcing a halt in trading. This announcement is sure to complicate the job of Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek, who is busy trying to attract western capital to Turkiye.

From Davos to Mavi Marmara

Turkiye's behavior in the recent Gaza crisis provides a peek into its West Asian policies, vis a vis its post-election pivot to the west.

On 29 January, 2009, at the Davos Summit of the World Economic Forum, then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres' speech with a stern: "One minute," stating, "You know very well how to kill. I know very well how you kill children on the beaches," before abruptly storming off stage.

This unexpected outburst, contravening Ankara’s decades-long amicable stance towards the occupation state, sent shockwaves through the audience and beyond. It was seen as a watershed moment that thrust Erdogan into the global spotlight, instantly making him a pro-Palestinian icon not only in the Arab and Islamic world but also at home in Turkiye, where he received a hero’s welcome.

At the time, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) were widely viewed as a symbol of "moderate Islam" and enjoyed the backing of the US and its western allies. As a result, the “One minute” crisis in Davos was quickly defused. However, tensions reached a boiling point a year later when the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla aiming to deliver aid to besieged Palestinians, attempted to break through Israel's blockade of Gaza.

On 31 May, 2010 Israeli commandos conducted a lethal raid on the Mavi Marmara, whose journey was sponsored by the Turkish charity IHH Relief Foundation and the Free Gaza Movement. This infamous operation resulted in the deaths of 10 Turkish citizens, injuries to 50 others, and the detention of the remaining passengers.

This time, the rift could not be resolved amicably. Diplomatic ties between Israel and Turkiye were downgraded, military relations were suspended, and trade relations suffered a temporary disruption.

Legal cases against four Israelis, including Israel's then-Chief of Staff Gabriel Ashkenazi, were initiated in Turkish courts, but were dropped in 2016 when Tel Aviv agreed to a $20 million victim compensation payout, three years after an official apology was issued.

Nevertheless, Erdogan continued to emerge as a prominent advocate for the Palestinian cause and a vocal figure in the Arab and Islamic world, just as West Asia was undergoing a seismic transformation. Turkiye found itself playing a pivotal role during and after the Arab Spring, throwing its weight behind Islamist parties and factions.

Turkish-Israeli trade surge

Yet as the unrest spilled into neighboring Syria – the strongest Arab state supporter of the Palestinian cause - many were surprised at Erdogan’s “regime change” posture, particularly given the strength of Damascus’ ties with Ankara and the Turkish government’s "zero problem with neighbors" policy.

Erdogan's Arab romance came to a screeching halt when he made a startling sectarian accusation, calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule a "Nusayri dictatorship" (a derogatory term for followers of the Alawi sect, to which the Assad family, along with political and military elites belong), and claiming the state was persecuting Syria's Sunni-majority populace.

When Syria descended into war and chaos, sharp divisions emerged among sponsors of the armed opposition groups, including Turkiye, Persian Gulf states, the US, and Europe. Erdogan soon found himself increasingly isolated in the region - with the notable exception of Qatar, a staunch Arab ally similarly sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today, Erdogan's “one minute” at Davos and the “Mavi Marmara" incident are relics of the past. Despite Erdogan's previous anti-Israel rhetoric and diplomatic posturing, a lot has changed on the ground, most notably, thriving trade relations between Turkiye and Israel.

Turkish-Israeli trade volume has seen an astonishing 532 percent increase over the past two decades, reaching a staggering $8.91 billion in 2022. According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) private trade system data, Turkiye's exports to Israel in 2002 - the year the AKP came to power - were $861.4 million, while imports from Israel were $544.5 million.

Meeting in New York during the UN General Assembly sessions for the first time in person since the warming of ties, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Erdogan, discussed the potential for Israel to use Turkiye as an energy transit hub to Europe.

Erdogan's shifting Palestinian support

Throughout his career, Erdogan has maintained support for the Palestinian cause, employing varying tones to balance his alliances with western countries while enhancing his reputation in West Asia and the wider Muslim world.

Erdogan strongly objected to the widely condemned relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem during the Trump era and supported Palestine's “non-member observer state” status at the UN. Over the years, he has shown a remarkable ability to opportunistically adjust his rhetoric to suit his evolving interests and alliances.

While many Arab countries' support for the Palestinian statehood cause has waned due to repeated defeats against Israel and their re-alignment with US interests, Erdogan has remained, at least vocally, as a steadfast advocate for the Palestinian struggle.

After the Palestinian resistance's 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood breakthrough operation inside occupied areas, in the absence of an immediate Israeli response, the Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement urging restraint and strongly condemning the loss of civilian lives. It emphasized that acts of violence would be detrimental and called for avoiding impulsive actions while advocating for an end to the use of force and a two-state solution.

Ankara quickly expressed its readiness to contribute to mediation efforts. This measured tone was unusual considering Erdogan's typically more flamboyant rhetoric. At the time of Al-Aqsa Flood, however, the Turkish president was preparing to host Netanyahu and planning a return visit to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

That is not to say that Ankara isn't raising the Palestinian issue on all appropriate platforms. Erdogan is engaged in diplomatic phone calls while Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has advanced a proposal that somehow makes Turkiye a guarantor for Hamas.

In spite of these gestures, Ankara's tone remains muted. All it could do was declare a three-day period of mourning for Palestinians. Fidan's words summarize the situation:

"I wish patience to the Gazans. I want them to know that we are doing everything we can. God willing, these days will pass. Turkiye will continue to stand by them. We see this pain and sorrow as our own pain and sorrow. They are not alone."

What is clear, however, is that Turkiye and Erodgan are not at the forefront of the discourse today. The absence of a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Ankara during his recent shuttle diplomacy in the region symbolizes this shift.

At this juncture, Turkiye’s stance on the Palestinian issue lags behind that of many Arab states. Israel, with the backing of the US, is pushing for the “evacuation” of Gaza's civilian population to facilitate its ground military operation, forcing Egypt and Jordan, key regional players, to reject plans for this forced and seemingly permanent displacement of Palestinians.

Jordan's King Abdullah II and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have explicitly rejected this demand, deeming it a red line.

Qatar, a financial powerhouse for the Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkiye, once seen as its political representative, now play more static roles in regional affairs.

Erdogan's involvement in Syria, while eroding Turkiye’s historically supportive position for both Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian struggle, has contributed to a regional realignment in which Iran has grown stronger. Erdogan, once known for his vocal opposition to Israel, is now positioned as a “peace mediator.”

Erdogan’s shift from idealism to hard interests

Several geopolitical, political, and economic factors underlie this transformation.

The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood has significantly declined after a tragic decade of “Arab Spring-ing,” and Erdogan now needs the support and cooperation of Egypt and the Persian Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. He also aims to strike a delicate balance with the US and the EU.

His foreign policy motto now revolves around mediation, which has been evident in various conflicts, such as Libya and Ukraine — where Turkiye played a key role in grain distribution.

Domestically, Erdogan faces challenges too. Public discontent is growing due to the influx of refugees, as anti-Arab sentiments deepen in Turkish society.

Erdogan's failed Ottomanist aspirations have given rise to a resurgence of secular Turkish nationalism among the younger generation. The Turkish left, with its history of supporting the Palestinian struggle for a nation-state, protests against religious-based policies, now positioning itself against Islamist perspectives.

In these circumstances, Ahmet Davutoglu, the former architect of the disastrous West Asian foreign policy, and now the leader of the opposition Future Party, said the following:

"I knew a leader, a leader I was proud to be with, a leader who made my heart flutter when he said 'One minute' and when everyone was threatening him, I said 'Mr. Prime Minister, don't worry. You made history today. We will do what is necessary’ and I made him apologize to Shimon Peres. Today, my heart cannot accept that that leader has been silent for 10 days. My heart does not accept that he did not come out and shout, 'O Israel'."

This reflects the sentiments of many AKP supporters when Davutoglu expressed disappointment in Erdogan's relatively muted response to the Gaza war. Ironically, the Islamist Turkish president's policy approach today is more realpolitik than the idealism inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood.

While some of his supporters at home and abroad may yearn for the fiery rhetoric of the past, Erdogan's current approach seems to prioritize stability, economic interests, and a balanced foreign policy over Palestine.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/erdog ... -palestine

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Human Animals: The Sordid Language Behind Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
OCTOBER 27, 2023

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A wounded woman cries as she holds the hand of her dead relative outside her home following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City, Oct. 23, 2023. Photo: Abed Khaled/AP.

By Ramzy Baroud – Oct 26, 2023

Tutsis are cockroaches. We will kill you.”

Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

The first quote was a line repeated frequently by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio station, which is largely blamed for inciting hatred towards the Tutsi people.

The second is by former Israeli army Chief-of-Staff, Gen. Rafael Eitan, in 1983, speaking at an Israeli parliament’s committee.

Rwanda’s hate-filled radio station operated for only one year (1993-94), yet the outcome of its incitement resulted in one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in modern human history: the genocide of the Tutsis.

Compare ‘Radio Genocide’ to the massive Israeli-US-Western propaganda, dehumanizing Palestinians almost with identical language to that used by Hutus media.

Many seem to forget that, long before the Gaza war on October 7, and even long before the establishment of Israel itself in 1948, the Zionist-Israeli discourse has always been that of racism, dehumanization, erasure and, at times, outright genocide.

If one is to randomly select any period of Israeli history to examine the political discourse emanating from Israeli officials, institutions and even intellectuals, one is to draw the same conclusion: Israel has always built a narrative of incitement and hatred, thus making a constant case for the genocide of Palestinians.

Only recently, this genocidal intent has become obvious to many people.

“There is (..) a risk of genocide against the Palestinian People,” the UN experts said in a statement on October 19. But this ‘risk of genocide’ is not born out of recent events.

Indeed, effective political or military actions anywhere in the world hardly take place without an edifice of text and language that facilitates, rationalizes, and justifies those actions. Israel’s perception of Palestinians is a perfect illustration of this claim.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, Zionists denied the very existence of the Palestinians. Many still do.

When that is the case, it becomes only logical to draw a conclusion that Israel, in its own collective mind, cannot be morally culpable of killing those who have never existed in the first place.

Even when Palestinians factor into the Israeli political discourse, they become “bloodthirsty animals,” “terrorists,” or “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

It would be too convenient to label this as just ‘racist.’ Though racism is at work here, this sense of racial supremacy does not exist merely to maintain a socio-political order in which Israelis are masters and Palestinians are serfs. It is far more complex.

As soon as Palestinian fighters from Gaza crossed into the southern border of Israel, killing hundreds, not a single Israeli politician, analyst or mainstream intellectual seemed interested in the context of the daring act.

The post-October 7 language used by Israelis, but also many Americans, created the atmosphere necessary for the savage Israeli response that followed.

The number of Palestinians killed in the first eight days of the Israeli war against Gaza has reportedly exceeded the number of casualties who were killed during the longest and most destructive Israeli war on the Strip, dubbed “Protective Edge,” in 2014.

According to DCI–Palestine, a Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes and according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 70% of all of Gaza’s casualties are women and children.

For Israel, none of these facts matter. In the mind of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, often perceived as a ‘moderate,’ the “rhetoric about civilians not (being) involved (is) absolutely not true.” They are legitimate targets simply because they “could’ve risen up, and they could have fought against that evil regime,” he said, referring to Hamas.

Therefore, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” according to Herzog, who promised payback.

Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, explained Israel’s goal behind the Gaza war. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948,” he said.

The same sentiment was conveyed by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the man responsible for translating Israel’s declaration of war into an action plan: “We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly,” he said on October 9. ‘Accordingly,’ here, meant that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” And, of course, thousands of dead civilians.


Since Israel’s top political authorities have already declared that all Palestinians are collectively responsible for the October 7 events, this means that all Palestinians are, per Gallant’s assessment, ‘human animals’ deserving no mercy.

Expectedly, Israel’s supporters in the US and other Western countries joined the chorus, also using the most violent and dehumanizing language, thus cementing mainstream Israeli political discourse among ordinary people.

U.S. presidential hopeful Nikki Haley told Fox News on October 10 that the Hamas attack was not just on Israel but “is an attack on America.” It was then that she made her sinister declaration while looking directly at the camera, “Netanyahu, finish them, finish them (..) finish them!”


Though US President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not use the exact same words, they both made comparisons between the October 7 events and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The meaning behind this requires no elaboration.

For his part, US Senator Lindsey Graham rallied American conservative and religious supporters, declaring on October 11, also on Fox News, “We are in a religious war here. (…) Do whatever the hell you have to do. (..) Level the place.”


Much more, equally sinister language was – and continues – to be uttered. The outcome is being broadcast around the clock. Israel is ‘finishing off’ the Gaza civilian population. It is ‘leveling’ thousands of homes, mosques, hospitals, churches and schools. Indeed, it is producing another painful episode of the Nakba.

From Golda Meir’s “Palestinians did not exist” (1969) to Menachem Begin’s Palestinians are “beasts walking on two legs” (1982) to Eli Ben Dahan’s “Palestinians are like animals, they aren’t human” (2013), to numerous other racist and dehumanizing references, the Zionist discourse remains unchanged.

Now, it is all coming together. The language and the action are in perfect alignment. Perhaps it is time to start paying attention to how Israel’s genocidal language is translated to an actual genocide on the ground. Sadly, for thousands of Palestinian civilians, this awareness is simply too late.

https://orinocotribune.com/human-animal ... e-in-gaza/

Nikki Haley, Lindsay Graham, how is it South Carolina breeds such monsters? Something to do with the heritage of slavery...that and opportunism that knows no bounds.

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If True...

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... a very promising fact, New York Jews threatening to capture NYC Central Station while demonstrating against Israel's ground operation and "genocide of Palestinians".

Update: It is true and they make their voices heard.



There is a hope for humanity.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/10/if-true.html

******

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Israel Has Permanently Lost The Argument

Israel has lost the argument. Permanently. There’s no coming back from this.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 27, 2023

I’m sorry if this makes me an evil terrorist-loving baby-raping sieg-heiling Nazi, but in my humble opinion genocidal massacres are bad.



Israel and its allies get away with a lot by marketing this as a “war”. It’s not a war. Israel launches high-tech military explosives at civilian buildings in a huge concentration camp while Hamas fires back with glorified fireworks which do light property damage. That’s not a war, it’s a massacre.



I was upset when I saw that Israel has killed seven thousand people in its Gaza bombing campaign but then a really smart Israel apologist told me Hamas might be exaggerating those numbers and maybe it’s more like four thousand, so now I think it’s fine.



What kind of drooling, knuckle-dragging, tapioca-brained moron can look at the satellite images of the damage caused by Israeli airstrikes and believe Gaza is lying about its death toll?




Look it’s very simple: if your words say “we’re not targeting civilians we’re targeting Hamas” but your actions say you’re inflicting siege warfare on the civilian population and carpet bombing entire city blocks into rubble, then you’re not really targeting Hamas.



Israel-Palestine is a very complicated, confusing, highly nuanced debate between those who think murdering thousands of children is fine and those who do not.

This is a very complicated genocidal massacre. Most complicated genocidal massacre in the history of genocidal massacres. There’s two sides to this genocidal massacre. This genocidal massacre requires nuance.



Normal person: Israel is killing children by the thousands as we speak

Crazy person: WHY AREN’T YOU CONDEMNING HAMAS??



Israel apologists are the worst. The absolute worst. I’ve sparred with countless political factions over the years, and I’ve never encountered a group so profoundly morally bankrupt and psychologically malformed. They’re so awful that their apologia actually hurts Israel’s image. Nothing will reassure you of the moral correctness of your opposition to Israel faster than interacting with Israel apologists online.



It keeps surprising me that Israel apologists still expect to be taken seriously. Israel is massacring children by the thousands and turning Gaza into rubble and they still expect you to listen to them receptively when they defend its actions. It’s actually starting to get morbidly fascinating.



In the old days murderous thugs just grabbed whatever land they wanted and killed anyone who tried to stop them. That still happens today too, but now the thugs have to make up liberal-sounding, sympathy-pulling justifications for it, like “spreading freedom and democracy” or “Israel has a right to defend itself.”



Israel has lost the argument. Permanently. There’s no coming back from this.



I cannot adequately express the immensity of my respect for the many, many, many Jewish voices I’ve seen taking a firm and forceful stand against the Gaza massacre. I’m just over here getting yelled at by strangers online and I find it pretty intense; you’re having much harder arguments with family, with friends, with people you’ve known your whole lives, about something that probably feels a lot more personal for you. You’re out there protesting, taking action and moving the needle, typically with far more skill and incisiveness than anyone else in the world.

Big, big, big-hearted love to all of you. You amaze me.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... -argument/

***********

Recep Erdogan and the Last Crusade
colonelcassad
October 28, 20:44
Recep Erdogan and the last crusade

Hey West, I am addressing you! Do you want a war between the cross and the crescent?
Every country has the right to self-defense, but where is the justice? There is a massacre in Gaza!
We will declare Israel a war criminal, we are already working on this.
These ill-mannered ones tell the residents of Gaza: leave these lands, when they are asked “Where?”, they say “To the desert.” And when the wounded are forced to leave, they bomb them. Because all they know is to kill. The massacre in Gaza is entirely the brainchild of the West!

And so on.
Friend Recep continues to compete with Iran for the role of chief defender of the Palestinians.
These attacks will not necessarily lead to a complete break with the West, but it is a fact that they will cool down. Especially with further prolongation of the fighting in Gaza, where Erdogan will be a hostage to his rhetoric.

The resumption in public rhetoric of the theme of the clash of religions and civilizations, as well as the theme of crusades and the fight against them, reflects the degree of degradation of the current model of the world order.

PS. Israel recalls diplomats from Turkey. Earlier, the departure of Jews from there began on the recommendation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Also, relations with StarLink were severed due to Musk’s statements about the supply of his system to Gaza for international organizations.
Meanwhile, the genocide in Gaza continues routinely. This is the mug of a “rules-based world order,” when a huge number of women and children can be systematically, consciously and deliberately killed online.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8733019.html

Google Translator

*******

Hamas Defeats Israeli Ground Incursions into Gaza and Inflicts Significant Losses on the Occupation
OCTOBER 28, 2023

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Israeli soldiers ride an armored vehicle along a road on the outskirts of the Gaza strip in occupied Palestine on October 28th. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP.

The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement announced that it successfully repelled the Zionist occupation army’s most recent attempts to advance into Gaza. On the evening of October 27th, the Israeli occupation forces attacked Gaza on three different fronts, and they failed to gain a foothold in the city.

In a statement released this morning, Hamas stated “the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian resistance heroically and steadfastly responded to attempts at a ground advance, clashed forcefully with the occupation army, and inflicted heavy losses on its soldiers and equipment.”

The statement continued by saying that “Gaza has been and will remain a graveyard for invaders… the era of arrogance and recklessness without accountability has ended. They will not be able to erase the impact of the strategic defeat they suffered on October 7.”

Expecting the enemy to continue attempting ground incursions, Hamas officials noted that “the Israeli occupation used helicopters to evacuate the wounded and the dead from the battlefield.”

On the other hand, the occupation army claimed that it hit 150 underground targets, including tunnels and other facilities, in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday night and Saturday morning.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement announced that it was responding to ground incursions in Beit Hanoun and east of the Bureij camp and that it was engaged in intense clashes with the enemy.

Last night October 27th, the occupation forces cut off communications and the internet from the Gaza Strip, in conjunction with heavy shelling by air and sea with dozens of raids throughout the Strip. Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli occupation army, announced that the army will expand its ground operations in the Gaza Strip, claiming that this does not mean a ground invasion has begun.

(Al-Akhbar) with Orinoco Tribune content

https://orinocotribune.com/hamas-defeat ... ccupation/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 29, 2023 5:33 pm

October 7th: The Permanent Death of the Oslo Accords
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 28, 2023
Ameed Faleh

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'Operation Al-Aqsa Flood' proceeding according to plan: Palestinian group

Destroy them, destroy them, this time, Israel must destroy Hamas, otherwise we’re done.

– An unnamed Palestinian Authority official to an Israeli researcher after Israel announced its post-October 7th siege of the Gaza Strip1


Hamas’ surprise military assault on the settlements of the so-called ‘Gaza Envelope’ on October 7th shocked everyone by the scale, ingenuity, and speed of which it was conducted. From paramotors to bulldozers, Hamas, even for a few hours, forcefully broke Gaza’s 16-year siege. Its fighters arrested Israeli settlers for a potential prisoner swap and put Israel’s Gaza Division effectively out of service. This victory should not be viewed only in a military sense; its political connotations threaten the neoliberal peace paradigm that Israel, the US, and the EU pushed, often through a combination of soft and hard power tactics.

This paradigm, upon which the 1993 Oslo Accords are hinged, forced the creation of a ‘peace dividend,’ an incentive for the still-nascent Palestinian Authority (hereafter PA) to uphold its end of the bargain – that is, security and economic obligations towards Israel and maintaining the PA’s control over the scattered towns and refugee camps that it controls. This dividend is described by Palestinian researcher Toufic Haddad as ‘rents … ultimately enforced by Israel, in the hopes that a workable social, political and economic order in favor of Israel could be forged across the OPT.’2 The term ‘subcontractor’ is often used to describe the PA’s subservience to Western and Israeli interests in favor of keeping the steady supply of the ‘peace dividends’ flowing. A subcontractor, however, has contractual obligations as well as rights; meanwhile, the PA, in Israeli eyes, does not have any rights which extend past nourishing its role as a perpetual ‘interim’ self-governing authority relieving the occupation from its obligations vis-a-vis directly ruling the colonized. As such, the term ‘proxy’ is more apt in the case of the PA.

Capitalist neoliberal development in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was encouraged by the UN, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. This mirage of development, dubbed by political economist Sara Roy as ‘de-development,’3 uprooted any hopes for genuine national development in the 1967 territories, steering it towards further erosion of Palestinian agriculture and small-scale industry in favor of certain facades of autonomy. Gaza International Airport, which served flights exclusively within the Arab World, could simply be put out of operation via an Israeli order or an artillery strike, as was done permanently in 2002. Rawabi, the first Palestinian-planned city which is built on the land of nearby expropriated villages and is inspired by the Israeli settlement of Modi’in,4 shows the grotesque intersection of the PLO’s nationalist discourse with the neoliberal peace paradigm pushed onto Palestinians. Amir Dajani, the project manager of Rawabi, described the position of the Palestinian bourgeoisie under Oslo: ‘we are in the business of moderation, building harmony, coexistence, supporting the visionary two-state solution that is hoping to be the way forward under the circumstances … We are not in the business of politics, we are in the business of job creation.’5 As such, job creation, real estate, and extravagant multi-million dollar projects adopt a faux-liberatory aspect that is depoliticised by its enablers and creators. They nevertheless serve a political purpose of creating a certain strata of Palestinian society that benefits directly from the status-quo. Individualist progress is thus portrayed as a step towards securing statehood.

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Touching upon the security side, the peace dividend put forth by ‘the international community’ in order to subdue the PLO rests purely on guaranteeing the status-quo at all costs and on the creation of patrimonial networks within Palestinian society, irrespective of what their views on the PA might be, to cement that society’s reliance on Oslo despite constant Israeli settler colonial expansion. It is not a surprise to see that with the signing of the Declaration of Principles6 (DOP) in 1993, many hardline members of Fatah7 in Gaza and the West Bank swiftly adopted the peace process discourse: it materially benefitted them, despite many of them still being in Israeli crosshairs. A statement put forth by Fatah Hawks in the Gaza Strip, the armed wing of Fatah during the First Intifada, after the signing of the DOP and the discovery of an Israeli hit list that targeted them, unveiled the new discourse that prevailed using the patrimonial networks of the PA/PLO: ‘Israel wants our sole representative, the PLO, to condemn terrorism, but it exercises terrorism against those who defend the agreement that was signed between Israel and the PLO.’8 This statement effectively embodied the role of the patrimonial networks of the PA/PLO as defenders and upholders of the newly-created status quo. The assassination of Ahmad Abu Rish, a local Fatah Hawks leader, after he was supposedly granted amnesty by the Occupation through the PA, highlighted the fragility of the state-building narrative. In addition, the 1996 torture and killing of prominent Nablus-based Fatah Hawks leader, Mahmoud Ejemayyel, in PA custody for his refusal to give up his arms, underscores the PA’s desire to guarantee total adherence to its statebuilding narrative – even at the expense of killing other Fatah leaders for disobedience.

In recent times, the PA’s role as the upholder of the Oslo status-quo was shaken by Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip and the growth of the resistance factions there. The PA, barely surviving the Second Intifada intact, aimed to contrast its supposed economic growth and tightened security grip with the Israeli-engineered institutionalised impoverishment9 of the Gaza Strip. In essence, both Israel and the PA were working with each other to demonise and criminalise resistance in the eyes of the population of the West Bank, while facilitating the influx of foreign investment in real estate and luxury projects. This carrot was accompanied by the stick: the torture of Palestinians detained in Jericho Prison has become notorious, as has the continued aggressions against and the increasingly cruel blockade of the Gaza Strip. This alliance to thwart the Palestinian Resistance is made even clearer in the recent statements of a PA official calling for the continued bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza following the Al Aqsa Flood operation.

The types of discourse of which the PA, and by extension Fatah, used to demonise Hamas varied, but have mainly rested upon the Islamist nature of the movement. Fatah is juxtaposed as the more ‘rational’ actor when it comes to taking socio-political decisions. In addition, the PA used the alliance between Iran, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as alleged proof that both factions were simply Iranian ‘pawns’, disregarding its own infamous Dayton battalions10 and continued reliance on politically-motivated foreign donor aid. The ‘Iranian puppet’ card is malicious in how it props up the American and Gulf-sponsored demonisation campaign of resistance movements across the Arab World. A common talking point, for example, is to paint Hezbollah as taking orders directly from Tehran with no agency. It is also a projection by the PA: its elites and patrons cannot imagine genuine state allyship with any political project without Palestinians being at the weak end of the bargain.

These sentiments did not start with Iran. In the late 1960s, Ghassan Kanafani wrote an article under the pseudonym of Faris Faris criticising this very phenomenon: an Arab liberal attacked Gamal Abdel Nasser and accused him of being a Soviet puppet, describing the Fedayeen as ‘janissaries aligned with the Soviet Empire.’11 This removal of agency is also dehumanisation. Again, for the PA and the US, the ‘bad’ Palestinians are never rational actors acting in their own interests.

How does this tie into today? October 7th, and the rise of resistance groups in the West Bank before it, exposed the futility of the statebuilding process that the PA espouses. Settlements expand, settler attacks in the West Bank increase exponentially, hope for any political solution with the PA is crushed time and time again. In the heyday of Yasser Arafat and Salam Fayyad, increased securitisation and the PA’s role as a security proxy were justified on the basis of a political settlement: the Interim period, Camp David, and Annapolis.

Today, the PA lacks any political legitimacy to mask its role as a second South Lebanon Army12 for Israel. The continued theft of land and the denial of rights of the refugees of the Gaza Strip, as well as the rest of the Palestinians, bestowed a duty upon Hamas and the resistance factions to launch the attack to break the status-quo. Oslo failed to free the Palestinian prisoners as promised by PLO officials, and the right of return was similarly sidelined; the Great March of Return in 2018 was crushed by the kneecapping of protestors in their hundreds. The international community cheered on, hoping to trap both Gaza and the West Bank with its own standards of passive resistance, statebuilding, and individualist economic prosperity that hides itself behind the veil of a collective effort to produce the New Palestinian13 to the world.

The significance of the October 7th assault thus becomes clearer: it was an attack not only against Israeli settler colonialism, but also against the fundamental discourse that underlies the PA. It broke the taboo on centering Palestinian rights through the lens of decolonial and revolutionary armed struggle. More importantly, it scathed the colonial hubris of a nuclear-armed beast that boasts of its weaponry and supposed military superiority to the world when ‘mowing the lawn’ in Gaza. No wonder, then, why the international community is cheering on the destruction of Gaza and the elimination of resistance. Out of fear that Hamas would break the perpetual stalemate that the PLO signed on to in 1993, the US wants to quench the Zionist bloodthirst that ensued after October 7th through JDAMS,14 Delta Force squadrons, and a media clergy15 that parrots every Israeli army claim that demonises not only the Resistance, but the entire population of Gaza. The entire Israeli political spectrum is united around portraying Palestinians as Nazis, ISIS members, ‘children of darkness’, as well as human animals in order to manufacture worldwide consent for the continuous bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

It is already clear that October 7th will become a landmark moment in the history of Palestinian resistance against Zionism, its benefactors, and its local agents. The PA, US, and Europe are encouraging the massacre and total siege of the Gaza Strip, not only because of their inherent interest in the continued existence of Israel on Arab land, but also because of their frenzied desire to try and restore the status quo, an imagined reality that existed before October 7th. Attempts to soften Hamas’ position on liberation via the Quartet and Qatar never bore fruit, as evidenced by what has transpired since. The failure of the peace dividends to thwart the Palestinian people, the collapse of the political discourse that masks securitisation behind a national goal, and the continued will of the resistance groups in Gaza to fight despite an international siege and soft power tactics to entice them to stay silent – all of this will pave the way for a more revolutionary discourse with regards to liberation. The era of pseudo-state building is finally behind us, and an age of liberation is coming.

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References

1 Kottasová, Ivana. ‘As a Ground Incursion Looms, the Big Question Remains: What Is Israel’s Plan for Gaza?’ CNN, October 21, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/21/middleea ... index.html.

2 Haddad, Toufic. Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory. (London: I.B. Taurus, 2018), p. 147

3 For a thorough explanation of de-development pre-Oslo: Roy, Sara. ‘The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 17, no. 1 (1987): 56–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/2536651. For an explanation on what de-development entailed Post-Oslo: Roy, Sara. ‘De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 3 (1999): 64–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/2538308

4 For references to the Rawabi-Modi’in connection: Rabie, Kareem. Palestine is throwing a party and the whole world is invited: Capital and state building in the West Bank. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), p. 60-62.

5 Rabie, Kareem. Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), p. 56

6 The Declaration of Principles was signed on September 13th, 1993, between the PLO and Israel in Washington, D.C. As per the agreement, the PLO recognised Israel’s existence. The Declaration of Principles laid the groundwork for future interim period agreements and institutionalised the Palestinian Authority’s existence.

7 The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) is the largest faction that governs both the Palestine Liberation Organisation as well as the Palestinian Authority. It cemented its hegemony over the PLO after the resignation of Ahmad al-Shuqeiri, its founder, in 1969.

8 Mreish, Azmi. Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani al-Filastini: Al-Shurta al-Filastiniyya The Palestinian National Security Forces: the Palestinian Police. (Jerusalem: Abu Arafeh Publishing, 1993), p. 165

9 The term ‘institutionalized impoverishment’ was adopted by Trude Strand as a theoretical framework to describe Israel’s siege on Gaza since 2007. See: Strand, Trude. ‘Tightening the Noose: The Institutionalized Impoverishment of Gaza, 2005–2010.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 43, no. 2 (2014): 6–23. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2014.43.2.6

10 Dayton’s Battalions refer to the PA forces that were trained under the auspices of the United States Security Coordinator, Keith Dayton.

11 Kanafani, Ghassan. Faris Faris: Kitabat Sakhira Faris Faris: Satirical Writings. (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1996), p. 52-53

12 The South Lebanon Army (known locally in Lebanon as Lahd’s Army) was a proxy militia founded by Saad Haddad that governed parts of South Lebanon. Armed and trained by Israel, it protected Israel’s occupation of South Lebanon through brutal force. It saw its end with the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000 with Antoine Lahd, its leader, fleeing to Tel Aviv and living the last of his days in France.

13 Keith Dayton, the United States Security Coordinator responsible for training the forces of the PA after the Second Intifada infamously dubbed this term. See: ‘D2. U.S. Security Coordinator Keith Dayton, Address Detailing the Mission and Accomplishments of the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Washington, 7 May 2009 (Excerpts).’ Journal of Palestine Studies 38, no. 4 (2009): 223–29. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2009.38.4.223

14 JDAMS are kits designed to transform unguided fighter jet bombs into high-precision missiles. The US routinely supplies Israel with these kits.

15 Samir Amin dubbed the term ‘media clergy’ to describe the stranglehold that media has on Western society and its role as the sole arbiter of truth via its class character. See: Amin, Samir. The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013), p. 34-39

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... o-accords/

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Israel pounds Gaza with U.S. “heavy” bunker-busting bombs. Erdogan speaks of a Cross vs Crescent war.
October 29, 2023

As Israel marches further into Gaza and crosses all the “red lines” of the rules of war by its callous disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, its principal backer, the United States, condemns itself to pariah status in the global community of peoples and nations. In the UN General Assembly vote Friday on a Jordanian tabled resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, the United States was in a 10% minority of member states that voted against, while 120 voted for and 45, mostly EU members, abstained. This was a remarkable turning of the tables from the vote in February of this year on a resolution calling for Russian withdrawal from Ukraine in which the U.S. bribed, cajoled and threatened a large majority of UN member states to censure Russia.

To their credit, major Western media continue to provide extensive coverage of the humanitarian catastrophe that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian population of Gaza. The intensity of destruction in Gaza City from bombardment by air, sea and ground in the past 48 hours leave no doubt that an attack described as anti-Hamas, to flush out their fighters from underground tunnels, is in fact a replay of the 1948 nakba which drove Palestinians from their homes into refugee camps. Gaza residential quarters and infrastructure are being ground into dust, while the population is instructed to withdraw to the south of the enclave. Next stop, Sinai? What Netanyahu and Company are doing makes the ethnic cleanser Milosevic look like a boy scout.

The single truth in Netanyahu’s address to relatives of the hostages yesterday was that Israel is fighting its “second war of independence.” That first one was not available for viewing on television in households around the world. The sheer ugliness of this one is in the living rooms of 7 billion viewers daily. As for the rest of his speech, in particular his lauding the Israeli armed forces as being “the most moral” in the world, it was a pack of lies. Cynical lies that promote his political agenda in the Middle East have been the man’s signature on the world stage ever since he sold George Bush Jr on the notion that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction posed a dire threat to international peace, thereby encouraging what became the disastrous 2003 U.S. invasion there. And the invasion of Iraq, which cost hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths officially described as “collateral damage” by the U.S. invaders, set the model for what Netanyahu is now perpetrating in Palestine.

To their discredit, major Western media have been less forthcoming about the demonstrations in support of the Palestinians around the world. Perhaps the editorial committees fear giving encouragement to domestic forces of opposition, in particular their own substantial Muslim minority populations.

From among the many demonstrations yesterday in Europe and around the world, surely the most important as indicator of a changing world political and military balance was the one held at Istanbul airport, which is said to have numbered between 500,000 and 1,500,000 depending on your news provider. The lead speaker was Turkish president Erdogan. He denounced the West and especially the United States as being the ones truly responsible for the tragedy being played out in Gaza today. He asked rhetorically if the West was not seeking a new war between the Crescent and the Cross. He labeled the State of Israel as a War Criminal. It is not surprising that shortly afterwards Israel withdrew its diplomats from Turkey. One can easily imagine that Turkey will break diplomatic relations with the Israeli state, thereby putting enormous pressure on Jordan and other Sunni Muslim states in the region to do the same.

I note parenthetically that Erdogan’s balancing act over his country’s continued membership in NATO and his repeated denunciations of the United States may be untenable. If so, NATO stands to lose its single largest military contingent, with a consequential impact on European security architecture that puts in the shadows any imagined boosting of NATO by the recent addition of Sweden and Finland.

Going back eight hundred years, there were two “eyes” in the known world: Turkey (then the Ottoman empire) as the head of the Sunni Muslims and Iran (then Persia of the Safavid dynasty), as the head of the Shiite Muslims. That religious overlay to political competition in the region holds true to this day. And in that light, it is noteworthy that today Ankara and Teheran are speaking with one voice about the utter unacceptability of what Israel is doing in Gaza.

Let us remember the well known rules of drama established by Anton Chekhov: if a rifle is mentioned in Act One, it will go off with deadly effect in Act Three. It seems that Netanyahu and his war cabinet have forgotten, or more likely never read Chekhov.

A number of the issues set out in the above constituted the material of a five-minute interview that I gave to WION. Note the very balanced presentation by WION in the introductory section to this interview..

[youtube]http://youtu.be/nLFhjBPX5ng[youtube]

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/10/29/ ... scent-war/

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Iran is approaching American bases
colonelcassad
October 29, 11:03

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In essence, of course, it’s correct, but the picture is already somewhat outdated. After the US fled Afghanistan, US flags on Iran's eastern borders are no longer relevant.
The number of American flags in Iraq also decreased after the closure of some American bases in Iraq (the remaining ones are now being destroyed by drones).
So the dynamic picture shows, among other things, the exhaustion of American hegemony.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8733792.html

Google Translator

Broken clock.....

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Hezbollah Says To Stand With Gaza Even ‘If World Armies Line Up Against It’
OCTOBER 28, 2023

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A Palestinian man walks on building rubble following Israeli strikes on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on October 25, 2023. Photo: AFP.

Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah will not relent in supporting the Gaza Strip even if armies from around the world line up against the besieged Palestinian territory, says a senior official.

Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, deputy head of the executive council of Hezbollah, said Thursday Hezbollah’s latest operations near the border have proven that Gaza is not alone.

Resistance fighters in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, he said, will continue backing the blockaded Palestinian territory “with their weapons and blood.”

He said despite the enemy’s maritime military buildup, Hezbollah has not abandoned its duty to support Gaza. If all the fleets of the world’s armies gather, he added, Hezbollah will neither stop supporting Gaza, nor will it stop protecting the Lebanese nation.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah targeted the Branit barracks and another Israeli post facing the town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon. Resistance fighters also successfully targeted an Israeli battle tank in the area of Avivim, killing and wounding a number of soldiers onboard the armored fighting vehicle.

Israel has been bombarding Gaza since October 7, following the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’ surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying regime.

The Lebanese resistance movement has praised the Hamas operation, saying armed resistance is the only way to confront Israel.

Hezbollah has already warned it will join Hamas and its allies in the fight against Israel if the regime escalates its aggression on Gaza and in case foreign military forces intervene to help the regime.

Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem also stated on October 24 that the Lebanese movement is at the core of the regional resistance campaign to defend the Gaza Strip against the occupiers.

https://orinocotribune.com/hezbollah-sa ... gainst-it/

Ceasefire as a Means of Blackmail
OCTOBER 28, 2023


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Demonstrators demand a ceasefire in Gaza, during a protest in the US Congress building. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Wisam Rafeedie – Oct, 26, 2023

Can Washington’s rejection of a ceasefire, as stated by its foreign minister, Anthony Blinken, be understood as anything other than approval for and an open declaration of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip? Certainly not. However, this statement can also be understood in another way: it is a form of “exerting pressure,” aimed at achieving two goals. The first goal is to break the connection between the resistance and our people, especially in the Gaza Strip, which is grieving the massacres and thousands of victims. This has not been achieved, and I believe it will not be, as resilience has become a core value of our people under colonial rule, and history bears witness to that. However, the colonizers’ delusions are well-known in history, and one of those delusions is that they believe it possible to sever the relationship between the resistance and the people.

The second goal is to use bloodshed, massacres, and genocide to blackmail and “pressure” the resistance, under the formula announced by the elderly fascist Biden: a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages, meaning prisoners in our terminology. Take note: for the US and its European lackeys in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Canada, all forms of violence, including killing over 7,000, including more than 2,000 children, the destruction of nearly 15,000 homes to date, cutting off water, medicine, and food, can be categorized euphemistically as “exerting pressure.” Is there anything more bloodthirsty and fascist than the brutality of these imperialists and their lackeys?

Nevertheless, all estimates, based on the statements of the resistance forces, their spokespersons, and analysts, and based on simple logic, say: do not negotiate for the release of detainees or engage in a prisoner exchange without a cessation of aggression. Who would be foolish enough to think that the resistance will hand over hundreds of its prisoners for nothing, especially since they declared from day one, through the words of Ismail Haniyeh and others, that the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood is for the sake of the prisoners and detainees? Therefore, the resistance will not forfeit what it achieved on October seventh, and it will not turn its back on the sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip over 19 days for nothing.

[Freeing] the prisoners, [securing] the Al-Aqsa Mosque, [ending] the siege, and nothing less, are what I believe to be the goals that the resistance seeks to achieve in the foreseeable future. I say the foreseeable future because the developments of the conflict are pushing towards the boundaries of a regional war, which will present the resistance and its allies with more strategic goals. It is not far from the truth to say that the most important of these strategic goals is the goal of return and liberation. The battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, with its achievements and its sacrifices, and the new realities it imposed on regional and international levels, has put the Palestinian issue back on the right track, the track of the national struggle until return and liberation.

To conclude, it is only logical to consider the imperialist European countries and United States as partners in aggression, not only from the perspective of granting permission, support, and approval of genocide but also from the perspective of direct military support. For Washington, it has gone beyond logistical support and is preparing to participate in the aggression, summoning experts from various fields, as well as special forces for a potential hostage rescue operation. However, Washington should be reminded of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and what a coincidence that it happened on a day just like this, on October 23, 1983. The Axis of Resistance is sending a clear message: the Middle East is not a playground for imperialism. And the bombing of US bases in Iraq is clear proof that they will deliver this message in blood.

As for the imperialists spilling the blood of the masses, their history proves their fascism and barbarism. The history of the United States in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, the French in Algeria and African countries, the British in their colonies in Palestine, India, and elsewhere, their entire history as white people in Africa and the Americas all share a history of annihilating entire populations in the name of trade, exploitation, and capitalist production.

It is not surprising that Biden and Blinken are adamant in rejecting a ceasefire, for in their eyes, we are the Jungle surrounding the European Garden, as explicitly stated by Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs. He failed to clarify his statement when he was universally criticized, which means there is no harm in uprooting the Jungle to provide the Garden’s residents with safety, even if this uprooting means an entire people. This is the pure logic of their racist capitalist civilization.

(Al-Hadf News)

https://orinocotribune.com/ceasefire-as ... blackmail/

he Palestinian Homeland Is Not Up For Negotiations
OCTOBER 29, 2023

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Compilation image showing a historical photo of the Nakba over the Palestinian flag. Photo: Hady Dbouk/Al Mayadeen English.

By Susana Khalil – Oct 23, 2023

Today we all take to the streets, we have a date with history and it is the liberation of the native Palestinian Semitic people

What does my life matter when what is in danger is Humanity.

-Ernesto Che Guevara

Revolutions are born in dead ends.

-Bertolt Brecht


Part I
The Palestinian cause is the cause of a native Semitic people that today, in the 21st century, is fighting against a Eurocentric colonial anachronism called “Israel”. That is all, I reiterate, that is all. Yet, so much fear inhabits us in our repressive Western world.

In 1948, from Europe and by Europeans, a colonial regime was imposed in Palestine through a fascist movement called Zionism. The Zionist movement, among other things, consists of the fabrication of a segregationist nation-state.

Now, we are facing a classic colonialism, which, unlike historical colonialism, is a colonialism that does not come from a nation but from a Eurocentric movement that aims toward the fabrication of a nation-state. This particularity of not being a people also forces them to steal the history of the native people. Now, the Jews do not constitute a nation (in the same way that Christians and Muslims are not ‘nations’ either). They disguise themselves as Hebrews, Israelites, etc. The Israelite is not the “Israelite described in the bible”. They claim it is the land God promised them. Others argue a return to the ancestral land after 2,000 years and all the aromatic lie loaded with epic and epopee, all a hallucinating aesthetic mantle that facilitates the falsification of history.

In classic colonialism, the colonizer plunders the soil of the native and in many cases destroys the history and culture of the native, considering it sinful and savage. In some cases, however, the colonizer does not appropriate the history and culture of the natives, as the colonizer is a nation with its own history and culture.

Thus, when the colonial regime of “Israel” presents the falafel as a typical dish of “Israel”, this is proof that it is not a nation and that is why it is forced to appropriate not only the history but also the gastronomy and other expressions of the Palestinian cultural heritage.

The colonizers are not only trying to expel the native people from their land, but they are also trying to expel them from history.

It is urgent to point out that the monotheistic Jewish-Christian-Muslim trilogy is an inheritance, not European but Semitic, and constitutes what today is considered the Arab ancestor. Yet, it is rather difficult or scandalous for Eurocentrism to accept this fact, even the left-wing itself can’t digest this fact.

The ideologues of Zionism are well aware of its colonial particularity, that it is a colonialism that does not come from a nation, and therefore they know well that the day the native Palestinians achieve their independence, the colonizer does not have a place to return to since it is a classic colonialism. Here, I would like to pinpoint the following: They do have a point of return, though it is not commonplace, they would return to their respective lands of origin: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, England, Morocco, Argentina, etc.)

Part II
After the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon, the organization lost coordination, and it was in 1987 that a genuine popular uprising broke out inside Palestine called Intifada. “Israel’s” colonial regime was lost, disarticulated, and for the first time massively discredited.

The great and criminal mistake was that the uprising stopped; to have mutilated the Intifada. The Intifada should have been allowed to continue. It was a historic opportunity for liberation. The Intifada was hijacked and the Palestinian leadership entered into negotiations with colonialism.

Three decades ago, a Palestinian copula entered into negotiations with the colonial regime of “Israel”.

Semantically, to speak in terms of negotiations is a vulgarity, although it is true. Yet, there were negotiations, and Palestine was being negotiated.

There are no people without heroes and no people without traitors.

The negotiations are leading the native Palestinian people to the slaughterhouse. The negotiations are contributing to the end of the existence and continuity of the 11,000-year-old native Semitic people. Colonial Zionism is advancing in its expansionist and criminal extermination enterprise.

The peaceful struggle has also become censored. For example, the Boycott, which is a Gandhian heritage and South African praxis against Apartheid, was even practiced by the Jews in the United States against the Nazi Regime. Today, to speak of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) can be a reason for imprisonment. Colonial Zionist expansionist fascism is advancing.

Already some traitorous Arab tyrannies are openly normalizing their relations with that colonial genocidal regime, on the blood of their own Arab brothers and sisters, thus jeopardizing the sovereignty of their own people. Let us remember that this colonialism is expansionist, the project of “Greater Israel” is not limited to Palestine, but also to other Arab peoples. Zionist colonial expansionist fascism is advancing.

The Persian government of Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement are some of the great moral, political, and military reserves resisting for the liberation of the Palestinian people, in the face of “Israel’s” colonial and expansionist anachronism.

The engine, the brain of the colonial regime of “Israel” is the international fascist Zionist movement. Zionism is the most powerful fascist power of our time. International Zionism is imperialism itself.

The existence of the colonial regime of “Israel” leads to the conclusion that Zionism today is the most powerful fascist power of our time.

The liberation of Palestine is the liberation of the world, since we would be abolishing a colonial anachronism, and at the same time, organically, we would be weakening the most powerful fascism of our time.

Despite so much betrayal by the leaders of some Arab States, the current juncture makes the liberation of Palestine viable. We are at the dawn of a multipolar world and the imperial hegemony, where Zionist fascism dwells, is in decline. Europe suffocated in its own toxic NATO, by supporting Nazism in Ukraine. Simultaneously, we are witnessing the rise of BRICS, the awakening of Mother Africa, and a less submissive Latin America.

Today, the Palestinian people are united in support of the military operation carried out by Hamas. It is time for struggle and not for negotiations. The mistake of stopping the Intifada must not be repeated.

There are no people without heroes and no people without traitors.

Historically, native peoples have been fighting their colonizers, and the native Palestinian Semitic people should not be the exception.

Today we all take to the streets, we have a date with history and it is the liberation of the native Palestinian Semitic people. We owe a debt to humanity, and it is the abolition of the most powerful fascism of our time, Zionism.

For those who have not yet been born, let us be the sons and daughters of our time, a time of light, not of obscurantism.

(Al Mayadeen English)

https://orinocotribune.com/the-palestin ... otiations/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:04 pm

The situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone for October 29, 2023
October 30, 2023
Rybar

This afternoon there was fighting at the Erez checkpoint on the northern borders of the Gaza Strip , where Hamas militants allegedly attacked IDF soldiers from the rear, passing through underground tunnels. Photos and videos of Israeli armored vehicles in the northwestern part deep inside the enclave were also circulated online. Whether this was another raid or whether they managed to gain a foothold there is still unknown.

Clashes with Hezbollah continue on the border with Lebanon : the group’s fighters attacked an IDF stronghold at Mitzgav Am , Israeli artillery, as before, responded with strikes on the Lebanese border. During one of the shootings, two UN peacekeepers from Nepal were wounded.

But the most striking event in the context of the conflict were the protests in the Republic of Dagestan, where, under the influence of channels from the TsIPsO network, groups of young men have been rallying and looking for Israelis for two days as a sign of “solidarity with the Palestinians.” Yesterday, after one of the channels was leaked, they tried to find Jews at the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt , but they were not there.

Today the story has gained momentum: protests have reached Makhachkala airport , where a plane from Israel landed . Those gathered broke through to the runway, breaking down the fence and doors at the security facility. Ultimately, the Israelis were taken to a safe place, and the rioters began throwing stones at the law enforcement officers trying to disperse them.

How all this mob action helped the Palestinians remains a mystery. Meanwhile, TsIPsOsh channels are inciting residents of the North Caucasus Federal District to scale up their protests.

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Progress of hostilities
South direction
This afternoon, clashes took place in the area of ​​the Erez checkpoint , where the Palestinians allegedly managed to lure the Israelis into a trap. According to some reports, Hamas militants struck from the rear, emerging from underground tunnels. Clashes also took place near the separation fence north of Beit Lahiya in the Al-Amiriya area. According to open sources, Hamas was lured into a trap by the IDF forces attempting to advance.


In addition, a photograph was published online that likely confirms either an incursion or an IDF presence in the northwestern part of the Gaza Strip off the coast. However, there is no exact data on what is happening there now.

However, despite the fact that the Israel Defense Forces continue to report hundreds of destroyed targets in the Gaza Strip, and large-scale bombing continues, there has been no start to the ground operation. Yes, the Israelis are conducting raids on the territory of the enclave, but to put it mildly, the results are controversial: for every textual report from the IDF there are similar statements from the Palestinians who claim successful ambushes. A version has already begun to circulate on Israeli social networks that Benjamin Netanyahu’s office is artificially delaying the process of starting the operation in the hope that society will get tired of the war and the bloody operation can be “slowed down.” In fact, this is not entirely true: it’s just that until the bargaining over the fate of the Gaza Strip ends, and the parties participating in this process finish skimming all the cream and calculating options for the development of the situation, the operation will not begin.


In addition, the Kataib Izz ad-Din al-Qassam group (the military wing of Hamas) published a video of the defeat of an Israeli MRAP anti-tank missile system . The video clearly shows that IDF equipment moves in the evening and at night in a convoy with its headlights on. Needless to say, this is an obvious mistake that resulted in a blow from the Palestinians.

And it would also be possible to understand the fact of such a movement if there had not been the strongest aggravation in the entire history of Gaza. But taking into account the speed of publication of footage, it can be assumed that the incident occurred yesterday or the day before yesterday. That is, 20 days after the start of a full-fledged war, IDF soldiers are still moving in columns with their headlights on in direct reach of the enemy.

Gaza Strip

Massive artillery and air strikes by the IDF continue on the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Dozens of houses were destroyed in Gaza , Jabaliya , Beit Lahia , Rafah , Nuseirat and other populated areas.

Border with Lebanon

No significant events occurred in this area. Hezbollah fighters attacked a military facility near Kibbutz Mitzgav Am. The IDF responded with artillery fire on Lebanese villages across the border. Additionally, two UN peacekeepers from Nepal were injured at UN Peacekeepers Border Post 33-8 in the border area between Lebanon and Israel .

West Bank

Israeli security forces, as before, are massively detaining Palestinians and protest participants suspected of having links with Hamas. In Jenin , the IDF operation again escalated into street fighting. The situation is similar in Nablus , where operations took place in the Askar and Balata camps , as well as Tulkarm .

The Republic of Dagestan
Anti-Israeli protests, fueled by the Ukrainian TsIPsO, broke out in Dagestan . Young people took active action yesterday, gathering near the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt , where the Israelis were allegedly hiding. It would seem, where did the Jews come from in Khasavyurt and what was all this all about?


Information about Israelis in the hotel was planted by the administrators of the well-known channel “Morning Dagestan” (part of the network of Ukrainian TsIPsO). Ukrainian mercenaries called for solidarity with the people of Palestine and riots. As “proof”, a screenshot of anonymous correspondence of certain persons on WhatsApp without any adequate information is provided. Last year, the channel’s editors actively incited protest sentiments in Dagestan against the backdrop of the partial mobilization announced in the Russian Federation. The resource includes the network of fugitive ex-deputy Ilya Ponomarev. And judging by the fact that the search for Jews also began in Karachay-Cherkessia , the number of resources controlled by Ukrainians has only grown.

It is surprising that no one was embarrassed by the open incitement to block the federal highway on a flimsy pretext. No one was surprised by the ridiculous use of Islamic rhetoric by administrators in the spirit of “give more TAKBIR” along with other terminology every word, which is more likely to be used by comic characters than by serious, spiritualized Muslims. However, it still worked. The young people were unable to find a single Jew in the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt, as in Karachay-Cherkessia.

But the Ukrainian TsIPsO managed to create a false picture, for some time increase pressure on Russian law enforcement agencies and at the same time make some Russians look like fools. By the way, back in 2013 they wrote that in the Russian Southern Federal District and North Caucasian Federal District combined there are only about 3.5 thousand Jews left, and their outflow continues. How many of them are left there today? A couple hundred? And it’s certainly unlikely that all of them were hiding in Khasavyurt.


But the story didn't end there. The protests , inspired by the Ukrainian TsIPsO, eventually reached Makhachkala airport . As correctly noted , the Russian Armed Forces did not storm the Gostomel airfield like the Dagestanis stormed the Makhachkala airport in search of Jews. Those gathered tried to find them on the plane that arrived in the city from Israel . They eventually managed to break through to the landing strip, but the Israelis were able to be moved to safety. By nightfall, the situation had reached the point where those gathered began throwing stones at the law enforcement officers trying to disperse them; one of them, according to preliminary data, was injured.

Jokes aside, but the event that took place is clear evidence of how wisely using available tools you can organize a resonant riot in a short time. There are many reasons why this happened: flirting with various diasporas at the federal level (both ethnic and religious groups have gained good weight), and the excessive involvement of regional officials in local dark affairs, and, of course, the desire of Russia’s opponents to shake up the situation. Yes, as a mitigating factor, it would be appropriate to mention that the actions of the ultra-Orthodox government of Israel have greatly charged the people with negativity. Anti-Russian elements did not fail to take advantage of this.

Such pockets of instability need to be extinguished as quickly as possible, cutting off all emotional appeals from local leaders at the root. Because there are plenty of regions that could explode - Tatarstan, for example. And only then, of course, you need to deal with connivance on the ground.

By the way, Israel responded to the unrest: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope that “law enforcement will protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews, wherever they are.”

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-zone-izra ... 2023-goda/

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*******

Palestine: History Will Not Forgive the Indifferent, and We Will Not be Among Them
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 29, 2023
Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

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Flames and smoke billow out from bombarded buildings during Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on 9 October.

Sixty-three years ago, in a historic speech before the United Nations General Assembly, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, said and I quote:

“Wars, since the beginning of humanity, have arisen, fundamentally, for one reason: the desire of some to dispossess others of their wealth. Disappear the philosophy of dispossession, and the philosophy of war will have disappeared! Disappear the colonies, disappear the exploitation of countries by monopolies, and then humanity will have reached a true stage of progress!”. End of quote.

In this broad and profound idea is summed up the reason for the horror that the Palestinian people live today, confined by a new Apartheid to a minimal strip of land.

It is the philosophy of dispossession that today is causing a humanitarian catastrophe of Dantesque proportions.

But it is not just a strip of land that suffers the impact of Israeli missiles. It is the Palestinian people who are the target of the bombs. More than 3,000 children and 1,700 women have been killed in recent weeks, while thousands of people remain trapped under the rubble, waiting for rescuers to come and save or bury them.

More than 40% of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed and hospitals have been turned into morgues.

Cuba condemns in the strongest terms the bombardments against the population in Gaza and the destruction of their homes, hospitals and civilian infrastructure.

We repudiate the murders of innocent people as a result of the current escalation, which attacks with viciousness, without distinction of ethnicity, origin, nationality or religious faith.

We also share the pain for the suffering of the Israeli civilian victims of the conflict, but we do not accept a certain selective indignation that pretends to ignore the seriousness of the genocide that is being perpetrated today against the Palestinians, presenting the Israeli side as the victim and ignoring 75 years of attacks, occupation, abuses and exclusion.

Nothing can justify what your army is doing against Gaza. Nothing can justify the grave violations of International Humanitarian Law they are committing.

Israel is violating each and every UN resolution and each and every one of its obligations as an Occupying Power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, fully confident that the paralysis of the Security Council on this issue will ensure its continued evasion of responsibility.

Even at the present grave juncture, the Security Council has not been able to call on Israel to stop the ongoing massacre.

The United States vetoed in that body a proposal that simply called for humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow aid access to Gaza and ensure the protection of civilians.

Those who today oppose the cessation of violence in Gaza as a matter of the highest priority will have to take responsibility for the grave consequences this entails.

But the position of the U.S. government, which has historically acted as an accomplice of Zionist barbarism by repeatedly obstructing Security Council action on Palestine, undermining peace and stability in the Middle East with its offensive exercise of the veto, is not surprising.

A comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the conflict requires, inexorably, the real exercise of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to build their own independent and sovereign state, within the pre-1967 borders and with its capital in East Jerusalem.

There is no other effective way to stop this spiral of violence once and for all, save human lives and chart a viable course for peace.

Will the international community allow this untenable situation to continue, or will it remain hostage to an arbitrary exercise such as the right of veto that prevents it from acting as it should to stop the crime?

A group of countries, including Cuba, proposed to the United Nations General Assembly a draft resolution, which was finally approved, demanding an immediate ceasefire, the urgent establishment of a mechanism to protect the Palestinian civilian population, rejecting the forced displacement of civilians and advocating the sending of emergency humanitarian aid.

Every moment of inaction and passivity will cost more innocent lives. We must act immediately. We will continue to contribute as much as possible to legitimate international efforts aimed at putting an end to this barbarism.

History will not forgive the indifferent. And we will not be among them. It is time to put an end to the philosophy of dispossession so that the philosophy of war may die for lack of incentives.

{youtube]http://youtu.be/8_0XfTJ-kh8[youtube]

Translation by Resumen Latinoamericano

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... mong-them/

“Option C” – Israeli Government Policy Paper Lays Out Plan for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 29, 2023
Dan Cohen

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Israeli social media depicts a military bulldozer demolishing the Gaza Strip and pushing it into the sea Source: Twitter

The paper calls for “intensive action to harness the US and other countries in support of this goal.”

Author’s Note: An Israeli citizen participated in writing this article, however, they have chosen to remain anonymous for their own safety.


Uncaptured News has received an internal Israeli government document that explicitly calls for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

Titled ‘Policy paper: Options for a political directive for the civilian population in Gaza’, the document was composed by the Israeli government Intelligence office and published on October 13, 2023, 6 days after the Hamas attack in southern Israel. The paper lays out three options for the subjugation of the Gaza Strip, including a scenario to carry out a full ethnic cleansing – “Option C”. Its author makes clear that this is the preferred option, noting that it “would yield positive and long-term strategic results for Israel, and is a feasible option.”

The following is the executive summary of the paper:

1.The State of Israel is required to bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the “Iron Swords” war. To this end, it must decide what the political goal is in relation to the civilian population in Gaza that must be pursued in parallel to the overthrow of the Hamas regime.
2.The goal that will be defined by the government requires intensive action to harness the US and other countries in support of this goal.
3.Basic working assumptions in any directive:
*Toppling of Hamas rule.
*The evacuation of the population outside the combat zone is in the interest of the residents of the Gaza Strip.
*It is required to plan and channel international aid that will reach the region in accordance with the selected directive.
*In any directive it is required to carry out a deep process of assimilating an ideological change (de-Nazification).
*A selected directive will support the political goal regarding the future of the Gaza Strip and an “end picture” of the war.
4.This document presents three possible options for a directive of the political level in Israel in relation to the future of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, each directive was examined in light of the following characteristics:
*Operative – the ability to realize operationally.
*Legitimacy – international / internal / legal.
*The ability to make an ideological and perceptual change among the population in relation to Jews and Israel.
*Broad strategic implications.
5.The three options examined are:
*Option A: The population remaining in Gaza and the importation of PA rule.
*Option B: The population remaining in Gaza and the upbringing of local Arab rule.
*Option C: Evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai.
6.From an in-depth look at the options, the following insights can be obtained:
*Option C – the option that would yield positive and long-term strategic results for Israel, and is a feasible option.
*Options A and B suffer from significant deficiencies, mainly in terms of their strategic implications and long-term infeasibility. Both will not provide the necessary deterrent effect, will not allow a change of mindset, and may lead within a few years to the same problems and threats that the State of Israel faced from 2007 until today.
*Option A is the option with the most risks, the division in the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza is one of the main factors that make it difficult to establish a Palestinian state. Choosing this option means an unprecedented victory for the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will come at the cost of thousands of Israeli citizens and soldiers and does not guarantee Israel’s security.

The emergence of this paper is strikingly similar to the infamous Plan Dalet, the fourth and most aggressive option conceived in the 1940s, which was put in action in the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine – known as the Nakba -– and the founding of the State of Israel.

The paper includes descriptions and analyses of all three options, along with their respective benefits and drawbacks, but primarily focuses on why Option C – a forced transfer of the population of Gaza Strip into the Egypt Sinai desert – is preferable.

Option C is described in more operational detail compared to the other options, along with explanations of why its perceived drawbacks, in particular the damage of Israel’s international legitimacy, will be disproven in the aftermath.

The paper admits that Option C “At first look, … seems to be complicated from international legitimacy perspective”, but then argues that it is actually better than the alternatives because it would not require the Israeli military to maintain a presence among the civilian population, and would therefore reduce the number number of civilian casualties, and therefore is actually the best option even from the perspective of international legitimacy.

Furthermore, the paper claims that “Massive migration from fighting zones (Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine) and population movement is a natural and necessary result in light of the dangers of staying in the battlefield”. In essence, the claim is that transferring the Gaza population out of the strip can be “sold” to the international community as a natural migration of refugees fleeing out of war zones, rather than the deliberate ethnic cleansing operation that they propose.

While Option C is presented in terms of its advantages, Options A and B are described in terms of their disadvantages.

Option A – toppling Hamas and imposing Palestinian Authority (PA) rule in Gaza – is presented as a dangerous alternative because it would undermine Israel’s strategy of divide-and-conquer, and ultimately “does not guarantee Israel’s security.”

“The division between the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza is one of the main obstacles today to the establishment of a Palestinian state. It is impossible for the result of this attack to be an unprecedented victory for the Palestinian national movement and to pave the way for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” the paper explains.

This argument implicitly reveals that Israel’s de-facto policy is to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, even by the PA, which is funded by the European Union and the United States, and operates on Israel’s behalf.

It also reveals the historic role of Hamas, in Israel’s view, in dividing the Palestinian people and thwarting their ability to join forces in a united national struggle. This is precisely why Israel allowed Hamas to flourish in the 1980s, and why it covertly worked to retain its power as the ruling party of Gaza while actively enforcing PA rule in the West Bank.

Overall, the paper’s lack of operational detail, shallow reasoning and half-baked analysis, amounts to an attempt to justify the depopulation of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents, with two other nearly identical options listed only to convince readers of their impracticability.

Whichever option Israel adopts, its planners view unbridled U.S. support as key to achieving its plans for Gaza. The paper notes that “The goal that will be defined by the government requires intensive action to harness the US and other countries in support of this goal.”

‘A day will come when we will return’

The depopulation paper comes amid a widespread perception among Israelis, from top political figures to ordinary citizens, that the Hamas attack on October 7 provided Israel with a unique and rare opportunity to re-conquer Gaza, wipe out the Palestinian population and settle it with Israeli Jews.

The surprising failure of the massive and technology-advanced defense system controlling the Gaza fence to prevent the attack, followed by relentless carpet bombing of Gaza, and an extraordinary order of 1.1 million Palestinians living in the northern half of the Gaza strip to flee to the south within 24 hours, have raised the suspicion of an Israeli conspiracy to provoke an attack that would create the conditions that would enable Israel to realize its long-sought ambition to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex it once and for all.

Indeed, on October 9, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Israel’s response to the Hamas attack “will change the Middle East.”

The fact that the policy paper that was generated by the intelligence ministry just six days after the shocking attack only reinforces this belief. If not intentionally provoked by Israel, the October 7 attack is undoubtedly perceived as a historic opportunity by many Israeli politicians and citizens alike.

Israeli governments have perceived the Gaza strip as within its natural borders ever since it was conquered in 1967. Soon after that war, the Israeli government discussed its terms and positions regarding the upcoming post-war negotiations, and concluded that “the Gaza Strip will be included in the State of Israel, according to the international border.”

Plans to expel Gaza’s population began at the same time. In the early years, the intentions were to compel Palestinians to leave by creating miserable conditions in Gaza, and providing incentives like money, transportation and professional education.

Clandestine military units executed plans to transfer Gaza’s population to Jordan, Persian Gulf countries, and countries in South America that agreed to accept them. These plans were so secretive that even Israeli military commanders that ruled the area were not made aware of them. Very few shared the secrets, and took most of the details with them to their graves.

Despite decades of efforts, Israel’s attempts to empty Gaza of the Palestinian people ultimately failed. It’s estimated that only a few tens of thousands left Gaza in the years following the 1967 occupation.

However, over the years, Israeli efforts to pressure Gaza’s population to flee became increasingly aggressive, violent and lethal. Israel launched repeated military assaults on Gaza, unprecedented in scale, beginning in 2008 with Operation Protective Edge. These continued up to the present day, with the intention of depopulating Gaza and taking over settlements.

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In May, Orit Struck, Israel’s Minister of Settlements and member of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, made Israel’s long-term goals for Gaza clear. “We are in the process of a different national insight. I don’t know how many years it will take. Unfortunately, a return to the Gaza Strip will also involve many sacrifices […] but there is no doubt that at the end of the day this is a part of the Land of Israel, and a day will come when we will return to it.”

The efforts to depopulate the Gaza Strip and transfer its population to Egypt began shortly after Hamas came to power after Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” and evacuation of Israeli settlements and military bases from the enclave. As early as 2007, Washington began to pressure Egypt to accept the resettlement of the Gaza population in the Sinai desert.

With massive demonstrations rocking western cities, shocking images of the human toll turning public opinion against Israel and favor of the Palestinian struggle, and a plucky armed resistance group awaiting Israeli military incursions, it appears that the government authors of the Israel’s vicious plans have miscalculated and Plan C is doomed to fail.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... g-of-gaza/

*******

WHO: It is Impossible to Evacuate Gaza's Al Quds Hospital

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A child at the rubble of his home bombed by Israeli airstrikes, Oct. 29, 2023. | Photo: X/ @OnlinePalEng

Published 29 October 2023 (5 hours 43 minutes ago)

The World Health Organization managed to regain communication with its workers inside Gaza.


On Sunday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that Israel’s evacuation order of a Gaza hospital cannot be carried out without endangering the lives of patients.

"We reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives," Tedros said, referring to threats from the Zionist state, which were previously denounced by the Red Crescent.

On Sunday morning, the WHO managed to regain communication with its workers inside Gaza, a Palestinian territory that Israel deliberately kept incommunicado for over 24 hours while it implemented a ground offensive.

The WHO director insisted that Gazan hospitals continue to operate in very precarious conditions, with excessive overcrowding, and without adequate medical supplies.

"We call once again for a humanitarian ceasefire to be initiated, and health facilities and their workers to be protected," Tedros said.


Meanwhile, at least four Palestinians were killed by gunfire from Israeli security forces on Sunday during clashes in various areas on the West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Red, two of them were killed respectively in the Askar and Balata refugee camps in Nablus, one was killed in the city of Tubas, and one in Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah city.

Palestinian medical sources said that dozens of Palestinians were injured by live bullets during the clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers during raids on the West Bank.

On early Sunday, the Israeli occupation forces confirmed that they destroyed a home, arrested 23 persons and confiscated "many weapons."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/WHO ... -0015.html

********

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*****

There’s Only So Much Propaganda Spin You Can Put On The Murder Of Thousands Of Children

The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 30, 2023

The thing is there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.

With other imperial military actions the propagandists had an easier time spinning things. Oh no those evil communists are taking over South Vietnam, we need to stop them! Oh no Saddam’s got WMDs, we need to get him! Oh no Gaddafi’s gonna rape and kill all those Libyans, we have a responsibility to protect them!

In Gaza, Israel and its western backers are massacring children by the thousands with a shockingly vicious bombing campaign that is turning entire neighborhoods into gravel. They’re raining down military explosives on a giant concentration camp that is densely populated by children.

There’s only so much a propagandist can do with that.


They can talk about the killings on October 7 til they’re blue in the face, but people are going to object that nothing Hamas did makes it moral or acceptable to murder children by the thousands.

They can say “Israel has a right to defend itself” as much as they want, but people are going to object that murdering children by the thousands is not actually defending anything from anyone.

They can bleat the phrase “human shields” over and over again, but eventually people are going to start saying “Okay but even if they are human shields, could we please stop murdering children by the thousands? I know I wouldn’t want my children to be murdered just because they were being used as human shields.”

They can say every death is the fault of Hamas, but more and more people are going to start saying “Okay blame whoever you want, but can we please stop murdering children by the thousands right this very instant?”

They can say “Well what do you expect Israel to do?”, and people will respond “Stop murdering children by the thousands for starters, please and thank you.”


Imagine you’re a mass media propagandist trying to frame all this in a positive light. How would you do it? Would you be able to make it believable?

Propagandists are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this. They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.

Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation — as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.

Propagandists are able to control civilization so effectively because they understand that humans are storytelling creatures whose lives are dominated by mental narrative, so if you can control the narratives the humans are telling each other, you can control the humans. A globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States depends heavily on its ability to indoctrinate us with subtle mass media messaging from a very early age.


The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.

The longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.

By murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see.

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1718301599531954370[/youtube]

Eyes are opening everywhere. People are being radicalized in record numbers. The streets are being flooded with protesters. Very inconvenient questions are being asked. Rigorous scrutiny is being applied in places it was seldom applied before. Light is shining in through cracks that weren’t there before.

This is all so, so horrible and so, so painful to watch day in and day out. But something is moving underneath it all. Something big. The empire has done irreparable harm to its ability to keep everyone sleeping and complacent going forward. A healthy world may be in our future yet.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... -children/

******

Update: Israel-Hamas war

With a gentle nudge from WION, the Indian global broadcaster, who requested an interview early this morning, I found several of the latest developments in the Mideast conflict worthy of the close attention of Russia watchers and of the wider international community. I used the interview to mention these as you will find once the link is posted below.

In particular, I pointed to the number one news item in Russia today: the restoration of air services at the Makhachkala airport in Dagestan, a region of the Russian Federation just north of the Caucasus which has an overwhelmingly Muslim population, but also a noteworthy minority of some 30,000 Jews, mostly concentrated in the ancient city of Derbent where a Jewish community has existed since the early days of the diaspora many centuries ago. The airport was closed following a mob attack on a just landed plane from Tel Aviv, with which Dagestan has regular direct flights. They were looking for Israeli passport holders and Jews, whom they wrongly believed would be settled in Dagestan, against their wishes. The mob clashed with airport workers and law enforcement officers before being arrested and taken away.

This ugly development underscored the importance of an unrelated meeting by President Putin yesterday with the heads of all the officially recognized religions in the Russian Federation. He issued a call for mutual respect and for multi-national, multi-confessional solidarity of Russia today in the face of the provocations coming from the Middle East. For reasons of domestic peace, Russia is observing neutrality in the Hamas-Israel conflict.

As I mention in the interview, the tensions generated by Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza may inflame ethnic and religious disturbances in all countries where there are mixed populations. That concerns Europe, which with a couple of exceptions chose to abstain on the UN General Assembly vote last Friday calling for an immediate cease-fire, and also India, which did the same. And those European exceptions, regrettably, voted with the United States against the draft resolution.

As for the situation on the ground in the Middle East, little has changed in the past 24 hours. On the Lebanese border, Hezbollah makes only token strikes on Israeli reconnaissance towers. On the Syrian border, there also is no significant increase in violence.

Israel continues its intense bombardment of Gaza, with emphasis on Gaza City, and its ground forces are said to be advancing into the enclave. The latest alarms over pending war crimes and humanitarian catastrophe are focused on the Al Quds hospital in North Gaza, which the Israelis have ordered to evacuate ahead of a planned bombing raid but which hospital authorities claim is impossible due to the large numbers of patients in critical condition on life support devices who cannot be moved as well as the thousands of homeless civilians who have taken refuge there.

We read that President Biden has strongly urged the Israelis to allow humanitarian aid into the enclave and there is talk of raising the daily passage of trucks into Gaza to 100. So far this is just talk.

On the subject of talk, I use this occasion to praise UN General Secretary Antonio Gutteres for his bold criticism directed against the Israeli authorities for the suffering they inflicted on the Palestinians during their decades-long occupation of their lands, and for repeat calls to restore deliveries of food, water and fuel to the Gaza. We have not witnessed such a stand against the United States-led Collective West since the days of Dag Hammarskjold and we all know where Hammarskjold’s courage got him. It is a pity that Gutteres has been utterly mealy-mouthed with respect to the Donbas civilians killed in the run-up to the Russia-Ukraine war and in particular with respect to Ukrainian attacks this past year on the nuclear power station in Zaporozhie.

I have mentioned above the present Russian wish not to be drawn into the Middle East conflict. Notwithstanding Iran’s open hostility to Israel, Teheran is also standing back for the time being. Of course, this restraint is predicated upon the war’s not escalating further but instead grinding to a halt under the pressure of China, Russia and the Global South. For the moment, no one can say with confidence what comes next.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/10/30/ ... hamas-war/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 30, 2023 5:07 pm

Biden Forced To Call Off His Plans For Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza

The U.S. government under Joe Biden had developed plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza by moving all of its 2.3 million people into Egypt:

Harry Sisson @harryjsisson - 2:44 UTC · Oct 11, 2023
Amazing: President Biden is working on a plan with other countries that would allow civilians to safely leave Gaza and cross the border into Egypt. This is great news. President Biden is making sure that innocent people don’t die due to the actions of Hamas. That’s leadership.


The NSC spokesperson had confirmed that plan:

US 'actively working' to establish safe corridor for Gaza civilians: White House - Yeni Safak - Oct 12, 2023

The US is in active talks with Israel and Egypt to establish "safe passage" corridors for civilians in Gaza to flee ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the White House said Wednesday amid an expected ground offensive in the besieged enclave.
"We're actively discussing this with our Israeli and our Egyptian counterparts, we support safe passions for civilians. Civilians are not to blame for what Hamas has done. They didn't do anything wrong," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House.

"We are actively working on this with Egyptian and our Israeli counterparts. Civilians are protected under the laws of armed conflict, and they should be given every opportunity to avoid the fighting," he added.


This all was based on a plan originally developed by radical Zionist within the government of Israel:

Leaked: Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza - The Cradle - Oct 29, 2023

Israeli culture magazine Mekovit published on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The document, issued on 13 October, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance.

The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.


Egypt of course rejected any such plans. As I had explained:

Netanyahoo's Strategic Dilemma - Moon of Alabama - Oct 21, 2023

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has tried to push the population of Gaza into Egypt. From Egypt's standpoint that would be a humanitarian solution, at least as long as others pay for it. But it would cause a serious strategic problem. Resistance by Hamas and others against Israel would continue indefinitely, but Egypt would be held responsible for it. It can not and will not take on that burden.


Despite that logic the White House continued to proceed with its plan. Its request to Congress to finance the wars in the Ukraine and Gaza with up to $106 billion included these lines (pg 40):

Letter regarding critical national security funding needs for FY 2024 - White House - Oct 20, 2023

These resources would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries. This would include food and non- food items, healthcare, emergency shelter support, water and sanitation assistance, and emergency protection. This would also include potential critical humanitarian infrastructure costs needed for the refugee population to provide access to basic, life-sustaining support. This crisis could well result in displacement across border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.


Russia had called out the plan for the nonsense it is:

Middle East and Central Asia. Lavrov on the interests of the USA and the West, parallels with Ukraine - Belta - Oct 28, 2023

“It is clear that such an approach is disastrous, because if the Gaza Strip is destroyed, if two million residents are driven out, as some politicians in Israel and abroad are implying, this will create a catastrophe that will last for many decades, if not centuries,” Sergey Lavrov noted.


Backed by Russia the Egyptian resistance against the plan continued. A phone call held yesterday finally buried it:

Sisi, Biden probe developments of Gaza escalation, reject displacement of Palestinians - Ahram Online - Oct 29, 2023

During the call, El-Sisi reiterated Egypt’s firm rejection of policies that collectively punish and displace the Palestinian people.
Biden, for his part, affirmed to El-Sisi that the US likewise rejects the displacement of Palestinians outside their homeland, expressing his appreciation for the positive role played by Egypt in this crisis, said Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Ahmed Fahmy.

The call touched upon the importance of preventing the expansion of the conflict into the region, added Fahmy.

During the call, El-Sisi reiterated Egypt’s firm rejection of policies that collectively punish and displace the Palestinian people. Biden, for his part, affirmed to El-Sisi that the US likewise rejects the displacement of Palestinians outside their homeland, expressing his appreciation for the positive role played by Egypt in this crisis, said Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Ahmed Fahmy.


Biden was forced to publicly declare that his plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza were called off:

President Biden @POTUS - 21:23 UTC · Oct 29, 2023
I also spoke with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to share my appreciation for Egypt facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

We reaffirmed our commitment to work together and discussed the importance of protecting civilian lives, respect for international humanitarian law, and ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.


This is another failure of the dimwit policies cooked up by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and SecState Anthony Blinken as directed by their Zionist puppeteers.

I for one support all plans that would allow them to safely leave Washington DC. They can move to Antarctica or to wherever the climate is severe enough to cool their genocidal moods.

Posted by b on October 30, 2023 at 9:35 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/b ... .html#more

*******

World Plummets into Eschatological Frenzy: Unraveling the Implications
OCT 29, 2023

The eschatological fervor of the Palestine crisis is reaching a deafening peak. Officials worldwide are dropping their masks, and inadvertently revealing the Biblical strain of the conflict.

At every turn, political figures now soak their proclamations in Biblical reference and allegory. The foremost of which was Netanyahu, who has now invoked an assortment of Biblical prophecies as dogwhistles to stir his people into an eschatological frenzy.

Here he not only invokes the prophecy of Isaiah, but frames the conflict as that of “light” versus “darkness” and good versus evil, painting the Palestinians as the Children of Darkness to be vanquished by the Chosen Ones: (Video at link.)


The Isaiah prophecy he appears to speak of is the following:

Isaiah 60:18 ESV

Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation,
and your gates Praise.


But then, more controversially, he invoked the Biblical blood-enemy of Amalek: (Video at link.)


One commentator’s interpretation:

◾️ Netanyahu keeps referring to biblical prophecies on his press conferences:

- " You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible, and we do remember and we are fighting. Our heroes who fight in Gaza continue a dynasty of heroes that goes back 3000 years in history - from Joshua to the heroes of 1948, from the Six Day War to the Yom Kippur War and all other wars."

◾️The words about Amalek are taken from the 1st Book of Samuel: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have remembered what Amalek did to Israel, how he opposed him on the way when he came out of Egypt” (15:2). The Lord ordered King Saul to destroy the enemy and all his people: “Now go and defeat Amalek and destroy all that he has; and give him no mercy; but put to death both husband and wife; from youth to infant; from ox to sheep; from camel to donkey" (15:3).

◾️ Netanyahu feels himself a new Messiah with the divine right of exterminating all enemies of the chosen people... A genocidal maniac.


This is indeed the threatening mien with which many Arab observers are interpreting his words:

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And another:

◾️ Israel has finally reached reactionary peak, a religious ethno-state with a bellicose and messianic leader that is carrying the liquidation of the Gaza ghetto:

- ...is a test for all of humanity, is a struggle between the forces of evil... and the axis of freedom and progress. We are the people of the light, they are the people of darkness and light should triumph over darkness. Now my role is to lead all Israelis to an overpowering victory... We shall realise the prophecy of Isaiah... together we will win.

◾️The prophecy of Isaiah, to which Netanyahu refers, is a prophecy of Israel's victory over its enemies. It is often used by Israelis to justify their dominance over the Palestinians.


Of course, to some extent, we shouldn’t be surprised. Israel, after all, is one of the world’s only states founded almost exclusively on ‘Biblical Right’—which means that it’s only natural that much of its ensuing policy—whether right or wrong—will be rooted in Biblical determination.

So it’s not the sheer act of Biblical invocation itself that is troubling, but rather the implication that Netanyahu appears to conceive of himself as a messianic figure leading his nation to an eschatological fulfillment, a sort of Judgment Day or Rapture. Naturally, it’s incredibly dangerous for a nation led by a self-styled end-times messiah to be leashing the rest of the somnambulant world along toward WW3.

And who are those dew-eyed sleep-walkers? The very establishment figures of the West, particularly the evangelical U.S., though there are even some outlier surprises. For instance, many were shocked to see the Hindu Vivek Ramaswamy bizarrely and sycophantically parroting the Biblical ‘chosen ones’ premise, couched in its ‘divine nation’ conceits:

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He further angered followers with the sudden bellicose tone-switch in his latest speech, making people wonder what it is about establishment figures that invariably leads them to so officiously melt like putty in Israel’s hands: (Video at link.)


Not so shocking was new House Speaker Mike Johnson, immediately pivoting into full Christian Zionist mode:

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The fact of the matter is, the American political elite are hardcore Zionists because many of them come from the Southern Baptist and evangelical strain of Christianity which preaches devotion to Israel on account of perceived Biblical rapport.

Independent journalist Lee Fang has trailblazed coverage of this aspect during the current crisis. Here he interviews members of U.S. Congress, one of which states outright that he takes Biblical scripture on Israel very “literally”—those who bless Israel will themselves be blessed:


In particular, Fang pushes the angle that many of these people do believe in the Rapture, where a final ‘Armageddon’ battle will be fought over Jerusalem, which will prefigure the Second Coming of Christ.

Watch more: (Video at link.)


You can see more of his coverage here: (Video at link.)
Lee Fang
Televangelists Invoke Holy War to Push for Weapons for Israel, Strikes on Iran
Pastor John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel advocacy group and head of the Cornerstone Church, brought a focused message to his congregation and millions of viewers around the world. Hagee discussed the horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel, then quickly turned his attention. “The righteous rage of America must be focused on Iran,” he thundered, flanked by Israeli diplomatic officials and joined by several members of Congress, who recorded pretaped messages of support for his cause…
Read more
4 days ago · 189 likes · 116 comments · Lee Fang
From the above:

Pastor John Hagee, joined by Israeli diplomats and lawmakers, cited End Times prophecy to call for military support for Israel, U.S. strikes on Iran.

In fact, Fang points out how “Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan and other Israeli diplomats flew to Texas to hold a Christian right prayer rally w/ Pastor John Hagee, [who] cites the prophet Isaiah — a dog whistle for End Times — & calls on evangelicals to help lobby the US gov to back Israel as a religious war.”

Gilad Erdan addressing the Texan congregation: (Video at link.)


There, pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, even preached further End Times prophecy, openly calling for war against Iran: (Video at link.)


Lee Fang adds:

For many of these evangelical Christians, the modern founding of Israel was the beginning of this prophecy, which they argue states that Jews must control Jerusalem before a war between the evil empires of “Gog and Magog.” Televangelists such as Hagee have said that various Arab nations, as well as China, Russia, and Iran, correspond to these biblical enemies of Israel, and he believes a war is necessary to fulfill the prophecy.

According to this belief, the End Times conclude with faithful Christians raptured to heaven and Christ returning to slay or convert nonbelievers, including Jews, before ruling over the world in a final era of humankind.


It’s plain to see that a large portion of America’s political elite and intelligentsia do envision Israel as being central to the long awaited, culminating ‘Rapture’ event. They view their support of Israel as being absolutely necessary for their ascension and the salvation of their souls. This inherently puts them in a subservient position to Israel’s geopolitical machinations, and allows Israel to easily manipulate and puppeteer them through grassroots evangelical capture and religious control into supporting whatever initiatives are needed, no matter how belligerent or harmful to America’s own national interests.

Erdogan picked up on these dimensions in his latest speech, emphasizing the global eschatological rift between the people of the Cross and those of the Crescent while invoking the Crusades: (Video at link.)


Which even caused Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen to announce the immediate withdrawal of diplomats from Turkey and a ‘reassessment’ of Israeli-Turkish relations:

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Of course, many rightly suspect that Erdogan is merely paying lip service to the Palestinian issue in order to present himself as a ‘strongman’ and ‘leader of the Muslim world’:

As we have already noted, Erdogan is attempting to capitalize on the dissatisfaction with Israel’s actions and position himself as the “protector” of all Muslims. Given the impact of his words today, he will undoubtedly garner significant support.

Judging by the Turkish leader's strong rhetoric and enthusiasm, he envisions himself as the reincarnation of Sultan Mehmed II, known as the “conqueror.” In his speech, he criticized both the West and Russia (the reference to Karabakh is indicative).

Now the question is how far he is willing to go. Will his speech simply be an attempt to boost his popularity amidst the fighting in the Gaza Strip, or will it mark the beginning of a new, larger conflict?


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💰Erdogan, Israel, and Gaza: "It's the Gas, Stupid!"⛽️

The satirical yet piercing imagery of Erdogan seated on a gas line, extending warm hearts to Netanyahu while vitriol spews from his mouth against Israel's “barbarism”, reveals the stark hypocrisy that dances at the heart of Erdogan's political theatre. His vociferous condemnations in the daylight seem to conveniently fade under the moonlit negotiations over gas.

The cartoon captures the essence of Erdogan's grandstanding—a leader who "doth protest too much" - literally - on the stage of pro-Palestinian rallies, only to bow to the tune of cynical interests when the curtains are drawn. The ludicrous display of affection towards Netanyahu, juxtaposed against his fiery rhetoric, underlines a clear narrative: Erdogan's allegiance tilts towards the alluring scent of gas rather than the principles he so loudly professes.

Erdogan's moral high ground seemingly crumbles when the whispers of 'business is business' echo through the chambers of Turkish-Israeli gas deals. (https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/e ... -to-turkey)

The stark contrast between Erdogan’s day-time rallies against Israeli aggression and his behind-the-scenes cuddling with Israeli leadership over lucrative gas lines is laughably tragic. It brings to light a veiled reality, one where the cries of solidarity with Palestine are drowned by the clinking of economic agreements with Israel.

This artful depiction prompts a biting question: When will Erdogan's theatrical rage translate into genuine action, if ever? Or will the allure of gas continue to fuel the warm embers of Israeli-Turkish relations, while the cries of Palestinians are lost in the cold shadows?


How much genuine impetus exists beneath Erdogan’s agitation is up for debate, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that not only is a global schism being ruptured open, but that everyone is beginning to pick up on the historical, Biblical, and eschatological dimensions of these events.

Even Russia’s Medvedev added his barbs yesterday with an invocation of Moloch, a pagan Canaanite god known for child sacrifice—a clear reference to Israel’s heedless slaughter of Palestinian children:

⚔️Dmitry Medvedev:

Israel keeps delaying its ground operation in Gaza. Mainly under US pressure and fearing world wrath.

But don't delude yourself. The operation will take place, and with the most serious and bloody consequences. Moloch always demands more and more victims, and the machine of mutual violence will now work for years.

In addition, the West is very tired of Ukraine. And has enthusiastically took up the support of Israel. Even the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Michael Jackson (sorry, Mike Johnson, but who cares) named helping Tel Aviv as his first priority.

Or maybe it would be better to resume the Middle East settlement process and finally try to implement UN Security Council Resolution No. 242 of November 22, 1967? Or even the original Partition Plan for Palestine adopted on November 29, 1947 by UNGA Resolution 181?

The questions are, of course, rhetorical. After all, dividing the money from someone else’s war far from the United States is much more interesting.

The war must go on…


But one of the most important pieces on this topic comes this week from Alastair Crooke. Fully grasping the dimensions of the brewing conflict, Crooke writes:

Rather, Israel under the Netanyahu government has been moving closer and closer to an eschatological founding of Israel on the (Biblical) ‘Land of Israel’ – a move that expunges Palestine totally.

It is no coincidence that Netanyahu flourished a map of Israel during his General Assembly address last month in which Israel dominated from the River to the Sea – and Palestine (indeed any Palestinian territory) was non-existent.


In fact, more and more the above continues to be proven true. For instance, a new leak of internal Israeli documents claims to show a government plan explicitly calling for the total relocation—i.e. ethnic cleansing—of Palestinians to the Sinai:

Image

Anyone who doubts this any further, or believes it to be some unfounded conspiracy theory, need only watch a lesser seen segment of the recent Marc Lamont Hill interview of Israeli former deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon, who in no uncertain language, explicitly lays out the plan. Many of you have seen the clip doing the rounds where he calls for Gaza civilians to be pushed down into the Rafah crossing, but you likely haven’t seen this extended portion.

Please watch just the first minute below: (Video at link.)


He clearly states that the Palestinians are to be filtered into tent cities in the Sinai. This fully corroborates the “leaks” about the total forcible relocation of the Gaza population into Egypt, and further supports Crooke’s statement on the creation of the Biblical ‘Land of Israel.’

Other Israeli politicians likewise have invoked Biblical scripture to support their stance on totally cleansing Palestine. For instance, here’s Moshe Feiglin, one of the most powerful members of the Likud Party, outright calling for a Biblical punishment unto Gaza in the form of total Dresden-like destruction of all Palestinians, and to turn all of Gaza “to ash”: (Videos at link.)



Here he calls for the outright indiscriminate genocide of all Palestinians to teach them a lesson: (Video at link.)


But Crooke goes on:

In spite of western scepticism, there are signs that this insurrection in the Arab sphere is different, and resembles more the 1916 Arab Revolt that overthrew the Ottoman Empire. It is taking on a distinct ‘edge’ as both Shi’a and Sunni religious authorities state the duty of Muslims to stand with Palestinians. In other words, as the Israeli polity becomes plainly ‘Prophetical’, so the Islamic mood is turning eschatological, in its turn.

Indeed the events currently precipitating around the Levant appear to be Biblical in scale. The latest reports on the NATO armada currently assembling around Israel leave one breathless:

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Not to mention a monumental airbridge of over 50 U.S. C-17 transport planes carrying ungodly amounts of weaponry toward the Middle East in what appears to many like war preparations:

🇺🇸🏴‍☠⚔️🇵🇸 About 50 US military transport planes have taken off for the Middle East in the past 24 hours.

97% of them are giant C-17 cargo planes, capable of transporting 77 tons of equipment and weapons.


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And shattering any delusions that this is all some coincidence, Biden himself seemed to imply understanding of the eschatological proportions to this conflict when he openly declared:

“We are in an inflection point…in the world, which occurs every 3 or 4 generations.”

He goes on to ominously recount that “60 million people died between 1900 and 1946” in establishing a ‘Liberal World Order’ which he appears to believe has led to a sort of golden age, which others would characterize as the unipolar world model.

But now, he states, things are shifting again towards a ‘new world order’: (Video at link.)


Forget the conspiratorial temptation to glom onto the low hanging fruit of the NWO invocation. Focus more on the fact that Biden is acknowledging that what is happening now is an unprecedented inflection point that threatens to shake up the globe in a way that hasn’t been done since the post-WW2 era realignment. The fact that he references tens of millions dying only adds to the foreboding aspect of the elites’ clear grasp of current eschatological ramifications.

Interestingly though, the seemingly apocalyptic direction has gotten insiders extremely worried, creating rifts within the establishment itself. For instance, the apparatchik in charge of U.S. arms transfers to foreign nations just publicly resigned on account of moral and ethical grounds vis a vis supplying the genocidal terror regime of Israel:

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The Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Josh Paul who is in Charge of U.S. Arms Transfers to Foreign Nations has just Resigned with a Resignation Letter being Posted on his LinkedIn stating his Reason is due to Pending-U.S. Arms Shipments for Israel, who he claims “Abuses Human Rights”

Now, Congressional staffers on Capitol Hill are even secretly turning against Israel. Journalist Kei Pritsker spoke to an anonymous staffer “who describes the growing discontent with Israel’s massacre in Congress”: (Video can be seen in yesterday's post.)


In short: it’s a mutiny of sorts, deep within the bowels of the establishment itself, which points to a growing rift as people begin to grasp the true dimensions of the escalating conflict.

Alastair Crooke, for one, leaves with a pessimistic outlook on things:

Should Israel enter Gaza (and Israel may decide it has no choice but to launch a ground operation, given the domestic political dynamics and public sentiment), it is likely that Hizbullah will incrementally be drawn further in, leaving the U.S. with the binary option of seeing Israel defeated, or launching a major war in which all the hotspots become fused ‘as one’.

In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.


As a final key piece in understanding where things are heading, we have this week’s interview with former Prime Minister of France, Dominique De Villepin, as translated by Arnaud Bertrand.

Arnaud commends De Villepin for his extremely insightful deconstruction of the conflict, with which I agree. I highly recommend reading the interview in its entirety, but I’ll highlight the single most important point made therein.

Its chief idea is epitomized in the following essential exchange:

"Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question.

There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community.


[Presenter: What is Occidentalism?]

Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage.

This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America.

The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them.


In short, he’s explaining that the West finds itself trapped in a fatal Sunk Cost Fallacy. They’ve gone “all in” on a certain moral and ethical framework of the world, and faced with a situation where the West’s moral fabric has been openly exposed and refuted, they find it extremely difficult—and perhaps fatally impossible—to withdraw, admit guilt or wrongdoing, and correct course. Instead, the hubristic, psychopathic leaders of the West may instead choose to “take it to the end” and force the imposition of their now falsified ontology onto the rest of the world.

Coming full circle, De Villepin too limns the conflict in eschatological hues:

You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it.

Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue... The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas.

Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today.

This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble. Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey.


He recognizes that the conflict is coming to a head—the classical unstoppable force vs. immovable object. Now that things have taken on Biblical, messianic, eschatological dimensions, there are very few ways to defuse things.

But there is some hope, as evidenced by the growing rifts within the Western establishments themselves. It can even be seen reverberating up the spine of the U.S. political hierarchy like a jolting fear, adding an uncharacteristically tremulous step to their typically unequivocal approach. Now they seem uncertain as to how to proceed; despite sending a massive armada to the region, their signals to Israel are mixed.

There continue to be reports that Biden’s administration is completely split on how to proceed. Interestingly, Bush, too, was once conflicted on the eve of the Iraq war. What finally facilitated his ‘sound-minded’ decision to invade? Apparently, the same eschatological framing:

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So—will the Biden administration follow suit in accordance with voices of a ‘higher calling’, cleaving to their Biblical obligations of protecting sacred Zion? The problem is, unlike Iraq and Saddam, Iran and its protectorate are much more attuned to the eschatological purpose of ongoing events, as are many of the satellite powers which now threaten to enter the conflict—like that of Turkey, whose radical opposition figures have already threatened war against Israel should they fully invade Gaza.

The ultimate danger of the situation rests on the fact that Netanyahu and his most fervent right-wing lackeys see this as potentially the one and only opportunity to enact a decades-long plan to fully erase ‘Palestine’ once and for all. If this conflict was only actually about Hamas itself, then there wouldn’t be much to worry about.

But given that all indications prove that this has been an internal Israeli plan long in the making, that the events of October 7 were in fact a Pearl Harbor-esque falseflag tasked with generating the needed outrage which would allow the execution of the ‘Final Palestinian Solution’, this tells us that the Netanyahu government means to go “all the way” in the first step towards fulfilling messianic prophecy.

And if that’s the case, then as De Villepin implied, the West may be trapped in following Israel into the throes of darkness—basically risking their own total destruction for someone else’s Biblical madness and vanity.

In the end, the conflict could merely schism the world heavily, rather than lead to a total kinetic WW3 confrontation. But even so, it would similarly lead to the West’s complete downfall as it would only accelerate the global rifts and harden the newly-formed oppositional blocs, which favors the East rather than the dependent West.

Given that energy giants like Iran and KSA are not only technically on the same side in this conflict, but even moreso given recent developments like KSA’s accession to the BRICS (not to mention Egypt), the conflict will only ‘isolate’ the West from everything it needs to thrive, leaving China and its constellation of friendly powers to develop and grow and pull away from the terminally declining, necrotic European powers.

If I had to make a prediction, that’s how I see things unfolding. Though there’s still a strong chance for a major kinetic outbreak, I slightly favor the outcome of the Western powers stepping off from the ledge on account of the strong internal opposition and fraying disagreement, discussed earlier. This conflict will continue to simmer for many months, with perhaps some ‘close calls’ flaring up, but will ultimately lead to even deeper global realignments as the world sees the bared, naked face of the West’s moralizing hypocrisy and double standards. The West will simply continue to lose their moral exclusivity and righteousness as the entire global south solidifies under China, Russia, and Iran’s leadership.

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Sensing the West’s hesitancy and weakness, Israel may attempt to desperately spark a wider conflagration by increasing the amplitude of their falseflags—perhaps another USS Liberty-like incident or unilateral strikes on Iran meant to goad them into a response that would necessarily trigger a U.S. intervention. It’s my belief that this will be the chief danger to watch as, gripped by the terminal phase of its eschatological madness, Israel will be at its most unpredictable and dangerous to humanity at large.

In the end, they may succeed in establishing a new kingdom on the ashes of the old one, just perhaps not in the way they expected.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/wor ... atological

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Before They Launch Missiles, They Launch Propaganda Campaigns

Before they launch missiles, they launch propaganda campaigns. Before they roll out tanks, they roll out narratives. Everyone who helps manufacture consent for the killing in Gaza is just as culpable for the murder of those thousands of children as the people dropping the bombs.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 30, 2023

Before they launch missiles, they launch propaganda campaigns. Before they roll out tanks, they roll out narratives. Everyone who helps manufacture consent for the killing in Gaza is just as culpable for the murder of those thousands of children as the people dropping the bombs.



In case you missed it there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that many of the horrific acts Hamas is accused of committing on October 7 (burning people alive, burning babies, mowing down concertgoers, etc) were actually the result of indiscriminate fire by Israeli forces. Here’s a link to a Grayzone article and a link to a video presentation by Propaganda & Co, both citing Israeli media reports as their evidence.

To be clear none of this means Israel killed everyone who died on October 7 or that Hamas didn’t kill noncombatants, it just means the narrative is wrong.





Remember that murderer who took a US elementary school classroom hostage, and the US air force dropped a MOAB on the school and killed all the children, and everyone was cool with it because they needed to kill the guy and he was using the kids as human shields?

No?

Me neither.



Israel apologists don’t seem to get that we’ve seen every part of their tired schtick before.

“Anti-semite”? Saw it with Jeremy Corbyn.

“Terrorist supporter”? Saw it with Bush’s wars.

“Unprovoked attack”? Saw it with Ukraine.

If you want to fool people, get an original routine.



Every once in a while I remember that a significant percentage of the Israel apologists yelling at me on social media are American Christians who support Israel because they want Jesus to come back and cast all the unrepentant Jews into Hell.



Western officials: Israel is defending itself.

Israeli officials: We’re doing genocide.

Western officials: They’re following the laws of war.

Israeli officials: We’re gonna do way more genocide.

Western officials: It’s a measured response to October 7.

Israeli officials: Kill their babies.




I see people saying the US gets nothing out of its alliance with Israel and it’s all one way, which is inaccurate. The interests of the US empire are massively advanced by having a nuclear-armed intelligence proxy in a strategically crucial resource-rich region constantly inflicting violence and chaos on non-US-aligned nations. Perhaps more importantly, Israel’s existence serves as the ultimate argument against ever removing US troops from the middle east, which it doesn’t want to do because of its interest in controlling the world’s fossil fuel supply.

As Joe Biden said, “If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.”

People often point to Israel’s aggressive lobbying efforts in Washington to argue that the alliance is not mutually beneficial, but lobbying is just one of the adhesives which holds an unofficial, unacknowledged empire together. You may be certain that if Washington didn’t want Israel manipulating US politics in its own interests, it wouldn’t be happening; the US government has plenty of laws at its disposal to shut that down if it wants.

Israel has no qualms about pushing the US to give it the most it can get for the smallest possible return because it understands, quite correctly, that in the end Israel is still just an ally of convenience and the US will throw it under the bus the moment it’s in the empire’s interests to do so. Israel has an extensive history of aligning with hostile and unpredictable powers to advance its own interests, like the anti-semitic Christian Zionists and supporting the rise of Hamas. So the two power structures use each other for whatever they can get in exchange, and because of the way Israel was set up from the beginning their interests are aligned far more often than not.



Remember everyone, before you criticize an ongoing genocidal massacre that’s being supported by your own country you must first condemn a small foreign militant group who has spotty internet access, doesn’t speak your language, and will never hear anything you say to them.



They tell you Israel is defending itself when you can see it’s mostly killing women and children.

They tell you they’re targeting Hamas when you can see them flattening whole city blocks.

They tell you you’re an anti-semite when you know you’re not.

All they’ve got is gaslighting.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... campaigns/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 31, 2023 11:09 am

The situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone for October 30, 2023
October 30, 2023
Rybar

Israeli troops continue to strike the Gaza Strip : the building of a Turkish hospital and the warehouses of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society came under fire.

Today, the IDF armored group was able to advance deep into the enclave south of Gaza, reaching the Netzerim intersection on the Salah ed - Din highway . From this area, footage was actively disseminated of one of the Israeli tanks opening fire on a civilian vehicle trying to hastily escape. At the same time, a video of a Yassin anti-tank missile hitting a tank, presumably not far from the highway, was later circulated in the Arab media.

Palestinian forces carried out massive attacks on both border settlements and Tel Aviv , Jerusalem and Beersheba , damaging several residential buildings . In addition, the Yemeni Houthis from the Ansarallah movement again tried to strike southern Israel, but the missile was intercepted over the Red Sea.

A dire humanitarian situation continues to exist in the Gaza Strip. Today, a convoy of 26 trucks with humanitarian aid passed through the Rafah checkpoint , and information was disseminated in the Western media about Israel’s readiness to increase the daily entry into the region to 100 trucks. However, the IDF said that the possibility of fuel entering the region would not be considered, despite requests from humanitarian organizations and the UN.

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Progress of hostilities
South direction
Palestinian forces carried out attacks on Nirim , Ba'eri , Ashdod , Ashkelon , Ein Hazor , Netivot , Miftahim , Avshilom and Be'er Sheva : several buildings were damaged . IDF concentrations near Nirim and east of Khan Yunis also came under fire . In addition, Hamas militants again launched rockets at Tel Aviv and nearby settlements: most of the rockets were intercepted by air defense systems, the rest fell in open areas .

Gaza Strip

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After massive attacks on the Gaza Strip and several days of fighting in the border zone, the armored groups of the Israel Defense Forces managed to advance deeper into the enclave. One of the IDF tanks was spotted on the Salah ad - Din highway near the Netzerim intersection south of Gaza . In the video, the crew shoots at a civilian car that was trying to turn around and leave the road section.


Salah ed-Din is the main highway connecting the northern and southern parts of the enclave. In addition to it, the supply route can also pass through the Al - Rashid coastal road . With the establishment of control over them, the IDF will be able to completely cut off Gaza from the south of the region, where the Israeli authorities previously called for civilians to evacuate. At the same time, the Arab media reported that as a result of a counterattack by Hamas militants, the tank nevertheless left the Salah ed-Din highway. And later, a video was circulated of a Yasin anti-tank missile hitting a tank, presumably not far from the highway. Yesterday, footage also emerged showing a Merkava and the raising of the Israeli flag over a residential building in the As - Siafa area on the Mediterranean coast north of the city. The progress in this section is approximately three km.


The IDF's attempts to completely isolate northern Gaza through regular raids constitute the theater's preparation for a full-fledged ground operation. It is noteworthy that from shooting up lonely abandoned buildings in open areas, Israeli tanks moved on to attacks on peacefully passing civilian vehicles. If the Salah ed-Din highway is cut, the next target of Israeli troops will be the Al-Rashid coastal road. At the same time, blocking both routes of communication will further aggravate humanitarian problems in the enclave.

If Israeli troops continue to advance south of Gaza, they will be able to completely isolate the entire northern part of the enclave. However, the Arab media has already rushed to reassure the population by reporting the restoration of control over the Salah ed-Din highway. At the moment, each side is trying to inflate its successes, alternately reporting on the destruction of enemy forces, then on successful advances / suppression of attacks. Against the backdrop of ongoing bargaining over the fate of the Gaza Strip, no significant changes in the situation should be expected.


In addition, the IDF continues to launch massive attacks on the Gaza Strip: buildings in the area of ​​the Indonesian Hospital were also damaged . In the evening, information was received about damage to the Turkish hospital building : according to some information, the third floor of the building was destroyed. It was also reported that one of the strikes hit the territory of the warehouses of the Palestine Red Crescent Society .

At the same time, the IDF announced the killing of four senior Hamas militants: naval commander Jamil Baba , anti-tank missile unit commander Muhammad Safadi , anti-tank missile unit fighter Muwaman Hijazi and senior production department employee Muhammad Awdallah .

The region still faces a dire humanitarian situation. Representatives of the local Ministry of Health reported a high threat of the spread of epidemics due to lack of water and food. Meanwhile, another convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid passed through the Rafah checkpoint . Over the past three days, 70 similar vehicles have crossed the border. However, Gaza authorities noted that 60 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were supposed to enter the Gaza Strip, but only 26 vehicles were allowed entry. At the same time, according to The Washington Post , Israel agreed to speed up inspections of trucks carrying humanitarian aid, bringing the daily entry to 100 trucks. However, the IDF said that the possibility of fuel entering the region would not be considered, despite requests from humanitarian organizations and the UN.

Border with Lebanon
The IDF and Hezbollah fighters continue to exchange blows along the Lebanese-Israeli border. The latter carried out attacks on Kiryat Shmona and Kibbutz Iftah , while Israeli troops targeted the forested area between Naqura and Labuna , as well as the areas of Alma al - Shaaba , Yarina , Blida and Kafr Qila . In addition, a shootout occurred between a pro-Palestinian group and Israeli soldiers at the border near Hanitha , leaving two Palestinians injured.

West Bank

Clashes between the Arab population and Israeli law enforcement continue in the region: about 60 people were detained overnight . The most violent clashes occurred in Jenin , where armored vehicles and aircraft were involved. According to the latest data, at least four Palestinians were killed. In addition, it was reported that rockets launched from the Gaza Strip fell near Jerusalem and Efrat .

Border with Syria
The Israeli Air Force launched a strike from the Golan Heights against Iranian weapons depots and a gas station in the Syrian cities of Nawa and Daraa .

Southern border
Air defense systems intercepted a missile launched by the Yemeni Shiite movement Ansarallah over the Red Sea .

Political-diplomatic background
On the impact of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the course of Joe Biden's presidential campaign

Even pro-democratic American media have recently been forced to admit that Joe Biden’s main mistake during the election race was his decision not to take a neutral position regarding the conflict in the Middle East. Despite the fact that the presidential administration's rhetoric towards Palestine is gradually softening, and Biden has condemned Islamophobia and expressed sympathy for the victims of Palestinian civilians, he has already angered a significant number of Muslims living in the United States.

And while Muslim voters don't make up a large portion of the American electorate, they could be a key bloc in closely contested states like Michigan and Pennsylvania . Yes, these voters will not go over to Donald Trump , who ardently supports Israel. However, they will either not take part in the elections at all, or, more likely, will vote for a third party candidate. It is also noteworthy that among the donors of the Democratic Party there were Muslims - some of them have already announced the cessation of financial support for the Democrats. One of these was Hala Hijazi , who lost relatives in Gaza and said that she felt betrayed by Biden. The situation for the president's rating is not the most rosy. He's caught between two fires - no matter what Biden says, he's guaranteed to anger one of these groups and lose precious votes.

Key statements on the situation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office has called a video of three Israeli hostages accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to protect civilians and calling for an exchange of prisoners captured by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli prisons "cruel psychological propaganda. " However, Israeli authorities said the video was filmed under duress. At the same time, in his evening address, Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that the call for a ceasefire is a call for surrender. In addition, he stated that Hamas must immediately and unconditionally release the hostages.

Coordinator of Strategic Communications at the US National Security Council John Kirby expressed support for the idea of ​​a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley called for a temporary pause in the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered to those in need.

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-zone-izra ... 2023-goda/

.Google Translator

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WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES, WHAT NEEDS COME FIRST? THE GORILLA RADIO PODCAST ANSWERS

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

In the war at this stage, the Israeli-American force for genocidal killing and displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza appears to be winning. Not on the ground so much as in the consent of their western allies to supply the logistics, pay the bills, and endorse the morality of the crimes.

By the time William Shakespeare picked up the idea that force can compel consent, the maxim he made popular had already been expressed in English for two hundred years. In All’s Well That Ends Well, he has the Countess ask her clown why he wants to marry. He replies: “My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.” Usually left out of this famous exchange is that the jester explained he had “other holy reasons”. The Countess liked hearing them even less, so she sent him off stage.

In the Gaza operations so far, and in the ideology which Israeli officials and journalists are repeating to the western media, the devil aims to drive every Palestinian, the born and the as yet unborn, to death. In such a war the first need for Hamas and the Arabs is to survive in order to keep fighting. Nothing is more sure than the “holy reasons” Shakespeare put into the mouth of Lavatch the Clown, that surviving to fight the long war will defeat this devil’s needs in the end.

In practical politics, Israel and the US either win their genocidal war swiftly now, or else they will lose the long war. Russian military sources are reporting the US is resupplying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at a rate of two US Air Force (USAF) transports every hour, moving from the continental US through bases in the UK, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. US sources have acknowledged the logistical effort is too great to continue for long. Right now the US Navy and USAF cannot continue delivering on the promised resupply of the Ukrainian forces in their war against Russia, while at US bases in Syria and Iraq the Pentagon is privately evacuating troops while publicly striking at their Arab attackers.

The Arab, Iranian, and Russian media are reporting that in response, Hamas and Hezbollah are maintaining a frequent rate of fire against IDF and Israeli territorial targets. They are not yet attacking Israel’s offshore gas production platforms, which provide most of the fuel for the country’s electricity generating plants. They are not yet disabling Israel’s ports and airfields. The Russian military assessment is that for the time being the Hamas and Hezbollah capacity remains intact and in reserve. The Arab side is exercising restraint.

What then are the needs which must now be addressed by the allies of the Palestinians, the Arab states, Iran, and then Russia?

On Sunday, Russia officially called this war “the American project”. This followed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote last Friday, October 27, when the US and Israel led a tiny minority in favour of their short war, including a half-dozen island states sinking slowly into the Pacific Ocean.

A Moscow source confirms the US is the priority Russian target because the IDF cannot continue in Gaza as the US capabilities exhaust themselves. He believes that US over-exertion in the Middle East will accelerate the Russian military’s move on to the offensive on the Ukrainian battlefield, and shorten thereby that war. The public statements for mediation between the warring parties issued by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his ministry are not the full Russian story, the source believes. The first need in Lavrov’s mediation, he says, is between the General Staff and the Kremlin. The second priority is to let the Americans demonstrate their weakness across the region by conserving the Palestinians in place, deterring Egyptian and Jordanian concessions, and preventing a direct attack on Iran. “The real Russian position , not the public statements , ultimately comes down to what level of military cooperation the Ministry of Defense has with Teheran. The Syrian and Ukrainian wars have made this very deep. I expect the Foreign Ministry’s public line will change when the Palestinian casualties reach 20,000. As the official Israeli statements against the Russian government already make clear, they know what is going on behind the scenes. It’s not just the Caucasian Muslims now but most Russians feel there’s been enough crying support for Israel. Lavrov will catch up.”

“I would say the real work now in Moscow is on ensuring the Americans do not directly attack Iran. The rest is going to play out according to the General Staff’s road map Lavrov could and should have in front of him. Call it the long war for short.”

Listen to the hour-long discussion with Chris Cook:

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Source: https://gorilla-radio.com/

Chris Cook’s Gorilla Radio originates from Victoria, British Columbia. Follow the full broadcast archive of Gorilla Radio interviews and discussions by clicking here. https://gorilla-radio.com/author/chris/

https://johnhelmer.net/when-the-devil-d ... more-88772

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Palestine: “Women and Children” and the Politics of Appeal
Originally published: Haymarket Books Youtube Channel on October 26, 2023 by Mohammed El-Kurd (more by Haymarket Books Youtube Channel) (Posted Oct 30, 2023)



For nearly twenty years the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series has worked with the University of Vermont to bring writers, activists, and public intellectuals to Burlington, Vermont to lead timely, politically engaged conversations. In a chilling move that echoes similar decisions by right-wing Republican governors across the country, the UVM administration has canceled the fall lecture, which was to feature Palestinian poet, Mohammed El-Kurd, less than a week before the event was scheduled to take place. Haymarket Books is proud to join the lecture series and their other co-sponsors and to provide a virtual platform for this important talk.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/30/palesti ... of-appeal/

Wait for it: any day now, out of the mouth of an Israeli general(or US politician), "Nits breed lice."

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OVER 300 JEWISH NEW YORKERS WERE ARRESTED AT GRAND CENTRAL CALLING FOR A CEASEFIRE IN THE LARGEST CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE NYC HAS SEEN IN 20 YEARS. (PHOTO: JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE)

Mainstream media ignores massive civil disobedience for Palestine that shut down New York’s Grand Central Station
Originally published: Mondoweiss on October 28, 2023 by James North (more by Mondoweiss) | (Posted Oct 30, 2023)

The huge protest last night at New York’s Grand Central Station, sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, is exactly the sort of event that the mainstream U.S. media normally likes to cover. A thousand protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza actually closed down the terminal for a time, and then 300 of them got peacefully arrested, in what was arguably the biggest act of nonviolent civil disobedience in New York in many years. Most of the protesters wore photogenic black t-shirts with white lettering: “Jews Say Ceasefire Now,” and “Not in Our Name.”

There were striking photographs and video footage: hundreds of demonstrators blocking the railroad terminal’s main concourse; banners unfurled above, from a balcony; long lines of people waiting to be arrested and taken away. The protesters emphasized that many, probably most, of them were Jewish, and that they were challenging a mainstream narrative that protesting the killing in Gaza is somehow antisemitic.

You would expect huge media coverage. But you would be wrong, as the mainstream continued its policy of downplaying or ignoring what is easily the biggest wave of nationwide antiwar protest in the U.S. since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Let’s start with America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times; the protest actually took place on its home turf. In this morning’s print edition: not a word. Online, a short, 14-paragraph report, which is already hard to find on the Timeshome page. (Update: by 10:20 a.m., the Times had removed from the home page its direct link to the report.) Instead, the print edition had a bizarre front-page article about how the comedian Dave Chappelle is allegedly flirting with antisemitism as he includes Gaza in his live performances. The Times report on Grand Central did include tantalizing quotes from only three demonstrators, including 81-year-old Rosalind Petchesky, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace who was later arrested. “I don’t believe in this war,” was all the Times allowed her to say. You can bet that Ms. Petchesky had more opinions than that.

At least the Times did run a report. Over at the Washington Post, there was only a one-paragraph summary and a single photo. So far, absolutely nothing at National Public Radio. Quick searches at both cable news networks CNN and MSNBC turned up no coverage yet either.

The failure to report the Grand Central Station protest is only the latest example of the mainstream news blackout.

This site’s Michael Arria has just documented a string of examples over the past three weeks:

Thousands have hit the streets in NYC, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and dozens of other cities. A D.C. protest organized by Jewish activist groups drew thousands, and hundreds were later arrested, including two dozen Rabbis. An estimated 25,000 people showed up to a rally in Chicago.

(Here’s another example: a big protest in Philadelphia on October 20 that was also nearly ignored.)https://iacenter.org/2023/10/22/thousan ... palestine/

Canceling coverage of last night’s Grand Central protest is actually extraordinary. Both CNN and MSNBC have sent quite a few reporters to Israel (although not Gaza), to cover the war. Why couldn’t they find correspondents to report from the heart of New York City?

https://mronline.org/2023/10/30/mainstr ... l-station/

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Germany Has a Historic Debt to the Palestinian People
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 30, 2023
Marcel Cartier

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A woman shows a poster reading ‘Israel fights against terror in Gaza’ during a demonstration against antisemitism and to show solidarity with Israel in Berlin, Germany, October 22, 2023

The crimes of German fascism are of a magnitude so enormous that they are almost difficult to comprehend. Without question the most heinous in its breadth was the Holocaust, the systematic attempt by the Nazi regime to annihilate the Jewish people that ultimately led to the mass murder of around two-thirds of the European Jewish population. It is only correct that today’s German state would see itself as having a historic responsibility towards Jews, both at home and abroad. This point should be indisputable. However, there are divergent positions on what the nature of this responsibility should entail.

For the modern German state, being responsible means seeing the State of Israel as the primary representative of the Jewish people. It means muting any serious criticism towards Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Germany refuses to retrospectively assess how the country was established through ethnic cleansing, and certainly doesn’t actively challenge today’s status quo in which an system of occupation and apartheid prevails.

That solidarity with the self-professed Jewish state today goes beyond placing Israeli flags outside of official government buildings, where they have flown in the aftermath of October 7. It also explains why it was inevitable that Chancellor Olaf Scholz would end up in Tel Aviv just over a week later to express his condolences and offer an increase in military support, saying Germany’s place in hard times was “by Israel’s side”. The German state’s notion of “Never Again Ever” means ensuring Israel’s stability and security as a Jewish homeland. It sees expressions of anti-Zionism as inherently anti-Semitic.

Contrary to this view espoused by the German government is that Israel does not necessarily represent the Jewish people. This perspective either holds that Zionism as an ideology is inherently racist and rooted in settler-colonialism, or at the very least that the State of Israel today is an entity that engages in dispossession and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. This view places a distinction between critique of the Israeli state and anti-Semitism.

This position allows Jews themselves a sense of agency in being able to choose to either support Israel’s actions, or to stand firmly against the crimes that are carried out in their name. For those who agree with the latter, it means “Never Again Ever” applies equally to all scenarios that take on genocidal proportions, not merely to those claiming to safeguard the Jewish people.

Tough Times Opposing War Crimes in Berlin

These are difficult times in Berlin if standing up for Palestinian liberation – or even simply international law – are on your agenda.

Just after the bombs began being rained down on Gaza, Bernie Sanders visited Berlin to great fanfare. However, not pleased with his presence was the Social Democratic Party’s co-leader Saskia Esken, who cancelled an appearance alongside him. Why? Because he had the nerve to make a simple, humanitarian statement: “The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter who does it.” Apparently, Sanders – perhaps the most famous Jewish political figure in the western world – was displaying anti-Semitism by aligning with the Geneva Convention.

Demonstrations in support of Palestine, or those merely calling for a humanitarian pause or ceasefire, have been banned. In the German mainstream media, these protests have been billed as the work of “Hamas lovers” or “Jew haters.” In some cases, protests are literally banned minutes before they are set to begin, when hundreds have already assembled. When it comes to calling out war crimes, the German state has decided that the right to assembly that is enshrined in the country’s Basic Law can simply be ignored.

A cursory look at these illegal demonstrations over the last two weeks reveals that many Jewish organisations have also endorsed and actively participated in them, among them the Jewish Bund and Juedische Stimme. In fact, police have hauled off Jewish activists and arrested them, because Jews are not granted the agency to espouse their positions.

For those who are Palestinian, the ban on demonstrations by Berlin’s authorities means a complete targeting of their identity. When a German police officer arrests somebody for wearing a kuffiyeh, or schools in the capital ban the Palestinian scarf, they are saying the Palestinian identity is that of a terrorist.

Palestinians are being threatened with deportation if they are proven to be supporters of Hamas, but also Samidoun – the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network associated with the Palestinian left (both organisations have now been banned). This means the possibility of Palestinians being uprooted not once (from their historic homeland), but twice (now from Germany).

The Other Germany and the Palestine Liberation Organisation

Although Germany’s post-war history has been shaped by attempts to deal with the crimes of the Nazi regime, this hasn’t always meant that German state entities have taken the view that the current state does towards Israel. The history of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, offers a very different perspective.

First off, it’s necessary to understand that the GDR was created principally as an anti-fascist state, something that was considered even more important than the construction of socialism. Its top priority was indeed “Never Again Ever,” which is why a much more robust de-Nazification process happened there than it did in the western part of the country.

The new Federal Republic of Germany set up by the U.S., Britain and France became a country where Nazi ideologues were not only allowed to join the government, but were actively sought out for participation in the Cold War. On the other side, much of East Germany’s leadership knew first-hand what is felt like to be hounded and targeted by the Nazis – we should remember that the first concentration camps, after all, were set up for communists, and that they were accused of being part of the global “Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy”.

In 1948, the newly created Socialist Unity Party that was operating in the Soviet occupation zone that would become East Germany the next year, backed the creation of Israel, saying “We consider the foundation of a Jewish state an essential contribution enabling thousands of people who suffered greatly under Hitler’s fascism to build a new life”.

Once it became clear that the new Israeli state was actually a reactionary entity that refused the right of return for the 700,000 refugees it had created, and enacted martial law against the Palestinians who remained, the SED leadership changed its tune. It reverted to the position long-held by the communist movement in regards to Zionism, which is that it was an expression of a reactionary, bourgeois nationalism that always sought the patronage of colonial and imperialism powers.

In 1973, the GDR set up official relations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Yasser Arafar. That same year, it had supplied Syria with weaponry for use in the Yom Kippur War against Israel. In 1975, East Germany voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination.

It is not merely coincidental that the PLO was supported by East Germany at the same time that another crucial liberation movement against minority rule, that of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, was also being given support from East Germany. The battle against apartheid was inextricably linked by the East German leadership to that of opposing settler colonialism in Palestine. This was all happening at the same time that West Germany held deep relations with the racist South African government, branding those who rebelled against this rule as “terrorists” – just as the Palestinians are referred to today. Given the similarities in their struggles, it’s no small wonder why Nelson Mandela once proclaimed upon the end of apartheid that, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

This history of the rival German states that existed for 40 years shows that there was no consensus on the question of whether Zionism could be seen as representing the legitimate aspirations of Jews as a whole.

Germany’s Dual Responsibility

It should be evident that today’s Germany has in fact not learned the lessons of history. It’s selective application of “Never Again Ever” is symbolic, but ultimately meaningless. It is complicit in Israeli war crimes, and those who espouse anti-fascist politics have a responsibility to stand against it. To fight against anti-Semitism should also mean fighting against imperialism, colonialism, and all forms of racial discrimination.

As the creation of Israel was agreed to by world powers against the backdrop of Nazi Germany’s attempt at exterminating the Jewish people, this means that the consequences – including the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab masses from what became Israel – should also be laid at Germany’s feet. It means that not only does Germany have a responsibility to the Jewish people – it also has a responsibility towards the Palestinian people. Simply put, Palestinians should not have to suffer for the crimes of Hitlerite fascism, whether at home or here in Germany.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... an-people/

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ON GLOBAL OIL DYNAMICS WITH THE ISRAELI GENOCIDE IN THE BACKGROUND
Oct 30, 2023 , 10:04 am .

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The global oil market shows uncertainty and volatility in the face of geopolitical conflicts (Photo: Getty Images)

Given the current geopolitical scenarios that arise from the escalation of genocidal violence perpetrated by Israel against Palestine, the Western Asia region is experiencing bouts of instability after taking significant steps to consolidate cooperation between the countries that comprise it.

The oil market becomes a crucial variable in this international equation. After three weeks of conflict, hydrocarbon prices have not yet increased considerably as happened on past occasions when there were clashes in that region. 20 years ago, with the United States invasion of Iraq, the value of crude oil rose by more than $30 per barrel, before reaching a maximum of $147 per unit in 2008.

Although each event has had its particularity, the common denominator is that it is an area that, as a whole, has the largest oil reservoirs in the world and represents more than a third of global maritime trade in the sector, so At the slightest misalignment of any part, the impact on the market will be felt at any time.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in the October 2023 Oil Market Report , noted that "the conflict between Israel and Hamas has not had any direct impact on oil flows" and has been evident when reviewing prices, which have not exceeded the threshold of $90 per barrel, for now. But it is worth noting that the conflict has had an impact on gas markets, although a potentially greater risk is associated with oil.

It is known that the international market is immersed in an environment of uncertainty and fluctuations in crude oil prices have been marked by caution. Furthermore, every movement in current events drives volatility on the markers.

Related to this, John Kilduff, partner at hedge fund Again Capital, commented that "no oil trader knows where this is going and everyone is running from one news headline to another." On the other hand, StanChart states that changes in positioning in hydrocarbon futures markets have been modest despite a significant increase in volatility.


It is appropriate to mention that these events recall the great oil supply crisis of the 1970s, but the market is totally different. Broadly speaking, the energy sector currently has large inventories and more players with the capacity to sell and resell oil.

It is also decisive to add the sanctioning factor in the new market dynamics. The oversaturation of this type of practices in international oil trade has led to gray exchange being the predominant conventional method today since, through traditional means, US and European coercive measures have prevented the oil dynamic as it was known until then. few years ago.

The real price shock could occur if the conflict lasts longer and, also, if other countries, such as Iran, become involved in that battlefield. In that case, for security reasons, a decision could be made to close the important Strait of Hormuz, which would put the global supply of crude oil at risk. Or even that Saudi Arabia decides to raise production and guarantee the supply of oil to contain an abrupt jump in prices.

At least 20% of the world's oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz —almost 17 million barrels per day—plus 18% of liquefied natural gas (LNG), equivalent to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet per day.
Any conflict in West Asia typically causes oil prices to rise as the threat of production cuts in the region increases. Meanwhile, the oil market will remain in suspense, watching the development of these events and awaiting the decisions of the next meeting at the end of November of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of OPEC+.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/so ... i-de-fondo

THE US IS EXPANDING ITS SECRET MILITARY BASE IN ISRAEL
Oct 30, 2023 , 4:09 pm .

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"Site 512" did not notice the missile attack on October 7 because the base is focused on Iran (Photo: File)

Government documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the United States is building a secret military base in Israel. The presence of US troops in the Negev desert, just 32 kilometers from Gaza, has been increasing.

The base is identified by the code name "Site 512" and is located on a former US base from which the sky was monitored. A few months before the Hamas incursion, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build facilities at that site.

"Site 512" was unaware of the missile attack on October 7 because the base is focused on Iran, which is more than 1,200 kilometers away and has long-range missiles. According to data obtained, it has structures similar to barracks for personnel and there has been no public information about the nature of the military installation for which the Department of Defense spent 35.8 million dollars.

Former CIA counterterrorism center chief analyst Paul Pillar told The Intercept that the base is being kept secret for political-diplomatic reasons and could be used to support operations in other parts of West Asia.

Everything indicates that the military installation pays special attention to Iran, which is considered by the United States to be the support base for Hamas and Hezbollah. Since October 7, the number of US combat aircraft in the region has doubled, as has the deployment of aircraft carriers off the coast of Israel.

https://misionverdad.com/eeuu-esta-ampl ... -en-israel

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 31, 2023 5:49 pm

The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war

When Washington began orchestrating Israel's assault on Gaza, it became the magnet drawing together a constellation of regional and western armies, militias, navies and weapons systems that risk tipping West Asia into war.

Hasan Illaik

OCT 30, 2023

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

Israeli ground operations in the Gaza Strip have begun. The Financial Times says Israel will not reveal much about these military operations in order to avoid Hezbollah and Iran entering the war.

The Americans are now orchestrating Israel's military campaign against the Gaza Strip. Washington believes this will maximize the potential of achieving both US and Israeli goals, without the conflict leading to a major regional conflagration - but it cannot guarantee that. The Israeli war on Gaza - managed, funded, and armed by the US - has a high possibility of turning into a regional war.

Impossible goals

Since 7 October, after Israel awoke to a nightmare called “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Tel Aviv has set itself goals so high that they are impossible to implement:

Israel's first stated goal is the total elimination of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, as announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and other military and civilian officials in Tel Aviv.

They know that achieving this is next to impossible. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak - also a former defense minister and army chief of staff - has said that eliminating Hamas is impossible because it (resistance) is an ideology that exists in people’s minds and hearts.

The only way this goal can be achieved practically is by getting rid of the entire population of the Gaza Strip. This matter was put on the table in Tel Aviv - and first came to our attention when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi announced he was rejecting an Israeli proposal to allow Gaza residents to flood into the Sinai Peninsula.

The Kingdom of Jordan - adjacent to the occupied West Bank, which has no physical connection to Gaza - also rejected a similar Israeli proposal to allow Palestinians to flood into Jordan, via its Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi.

These Israeli proposals to uproot and displace millions of Palestinians were not just an idea flitted about casually. Hebrew media outlet Mekovit has leaked an official Israeli Ministry of Intelligence document that proposed the displacement of more than 2.4 million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt.

Just these two Israeli goals - in addition to being nigh impossible to achieve - could ignite all of West Asia and beyond. The region's Axis of Resistance has sent several clear messages expressing its readiness to enter the war if Israel and its allies either threaten the existence and capabilities of the Palestinian resistance, and/or implement the project to displace Palestinians.

Resistance factions in Lebanon - including Hezbollah and allies such as Al-Fajr Forces, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - have been carrying out operations against Israeli army positions along the Lebanese-Palestinian border, on a daily basis, since 8 October.

US occupation military bases in Iraq and Syria have been subjected to more than 20 attacks by missiles and drones to date. From Syria, missiles are launched from time to time towards Israeli army positions in the occupied Golan Heights.

From Yemen, the Ansarallah resistance movement has launched three batches of missiles and drones, which have reportedly been intercepted by US and Israeli air defense systems.

On the Iraqi-Jordanian border, thousands of resistance supporters have gathered, hinting at the possibility of crossing the border to head toward occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. In general, the Axis has loudly proclaimed that it is not afraid to enter the war if the Palestinian resistance forces need that help.

Washington, leading Israel's Gaza war

On the other side of this conflict, Washington has weighed in to offer full support to the occupation army in its military campaign against Palestinians. To date, the US has deployed two aircraft carriers and dozens of naval vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Its air defenses (Patriot and THAAD systems) have been strengthened in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition, the Americans have deployed 2,000 special forces soldiers in Palestine, strengthened their forces and increased the number of combat aircraft in all their military bases in West Asia, and added military advisors to “assist” the Israeli army in its war on Gaza.

Both in practice, and publicly, the US government and military are running this Israeli war.

Washington has convinced Israel to dial down its objectives, firstly, by reversing plans for a large-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, and replacing those with smaller, targeted operations with specific objectives.

These goals notably include: controlling uninhabited areas on the northern and central edges of the Gaza Strip; carrying out raids to kill the largest possible number of resistance fighters and destroy as much of the resistance's infrastructure as possible; and launching operations to find or rescue Israeli captives held by the resistance.

Moreover, Washington is working hard to whitewash its right-wing Israeli ally's genocidal assault on Gaza by introducing humanitarian aid in small quantities. At the same time, the US seeks to get rid, even if only partially, of the burden of Israeli captives, via Qatari-mediated negotiations to release a number of Israeli and foreign prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance since 7 October.

Although Tel Aviv prefers to wrap up the prisoner file in one go, the resistance refuses to do so: it seeks to maintain this power card, whether for the purpose of negotiating the release of more than 7,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli detention centers, to negotiate Gaza's reconstruction after the war - or to lift Israel's siege over the beleaguered territory.

What can the ground war achieve?

On the night of 27-28 October, the Israeli army began to occupy agricultural lands in northern Gaza, and penetrated - from its eastern borders - into a sparsely built-up area in the center of the Strip.

Tel Aviv's goal was to cut off the northern part of Gaza - which includes the heavily populated Gaza City - from the south, and to continue to apply fierce pressure on the city and its surroundings in a protracted battle to wear down its inhabitants. This operation was flanked with air and ground bombardment, the likes of which Palestine has never, ever witnessed before.

In the past two days, Palestinian resistance forces have managed to confront the enemy with anti-armor missiles, carried out an operation behind enemy lines near the Erez crossing, continued to fire missiles toward Israeli cities and military sites, and confronted an infiltration by Israeli armored vehicles into Wadi Gaza, an area in the middle of the Strip.

In the meantime, the US is working overtime to ensure that Israel's enemies do not interfere in the war by threatening them with diplomatic messages, fleets, planes, and soldiers - which has de facto transformed this armed conflict from a broad and rapid operation into a low-boil, long-term war.

Washington has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Israel: military cover, weapons, operations management, and even engineering the theater of operations to bolster the restoration of Israel's image of deterrence. The US is betting that the military pressure on Hamas, in addition to the humanitarian burden it has placed on it, will eventually lead to political concessions by the Palestinian resistance. So far, Israel has killed nearly 10,000 civilians in Gaza, and has either damaged or partially or completely destroyed most civilian buildings In the Gaza Strip.

'Israel lost the war'

Despite the oversized US assistance, Israel's military position is more fragile than it has been in decades. As former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces General Yair Golan strikingly tweeted on October 27: “We lost the war. No step, no matter how strong or successful, is able to erase the defeat of October 7. However, from this failure, there must be a political victory that will ultimately lead to the disarmament of the Gaza Strip."

This is Washington's ultimate political goal too. But to reach this end, the US must juggle an infinite number of variables, any of which could set the region afire. Without even offering a light at the end of the tunnel - i.e., a political solution to the Palestinian plight - the US, and its unconditional, early war support for Israel, has attracted an improbable number of regional armies and militias to the conflict in Gaza: the Israeli army, US fleets, marines, and special forces in the eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, 50,000 resistance fighters in Gaza, tens of thousands of resistance fighters in Lebanon, tens of thousands of resistance fighters in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of fighters in Yemen, naval vessels from Britain and other western nations deployed to ensure Israel security.

This, without even considering the game-changing arrival of Iran's armed forces and missile batteries into the war.

Amidst this huge number of troops exchanging fire, any one error could lead to the outbreak of a regional war that would, in reality, be a global war, since the US is the conflict's main actor. This is akin to bringing a herd of elephants into a china shop, and remaining convinced all the while that there is a force capable of keeping them calm.

The bottom line? The US is presenting itself as a guarantor that Israel's assault on Gaza will remain territorially limited, but is, in reality, adding every possible ingredient to this conflict that could transform it into a regional war.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/the-u ... gional-war

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What Gives Israel the Right to Annihilate Gaza?
Posted on October 31, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post gives a sober look at the power and resource imbalance in Israel’s long-standing policies towards Palestinians and now in the conflict in Gaza.

By Caitlin Procter, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development and a Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and a part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute whose research addresses the experiences of children and youth in contexts of conflict and forced displacement in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine, Syria and Tunisia and Luigi Achilli, senior researcher at the European University Institute in Florence and the CMI in Bergen. His research and writing focus on irregular migration, forced displacement and refugee studies, smuggling networks and transnational crime, agency and moral economy. Originally published at openDemocracy

It has been three weeks since the Israeli army launched a full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip, popularly termed a war between Israel and Hamas. Following an assault by the military wing of Hamas on Israeli soldiers and civilians, the Israeli government declared its intention to eliminate the group. In its efforts to do so, Israel has pummelled the Palestinian population in Gaza with airstrikes. It has cut civilians’ access to water, food and power. And it has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops for a ground invasion, which has now begun.


According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the United Nations, over 8000 Palestinians have already been killed, some 40% of whom were children, and more than half of Gaza’s residents are now displaced. It has also disappeared thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, doubling the number of Palestinian prisoners in just two weeks. They are now believed to be held in inhumane detention conditions. And, in the West Bank, it has violently invaded Palestinian towns and refugee camps, killing more than 100 people.

Meanwhile, another campaign is raging on the airwaves and across social media. Waged by both volunteers and professional pundits, Tiktok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook are all overflowing with content aimed at influencing public opinion on the crisis. Some posts make light of Palestinian death with memefied, casual cruelty. Others sex up the Israeli Defence Forces. Still others cheerlead genocide.

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Tiktok screenshots by authors. Fair use

Talking heads promising wisdom, hard truths or explanations for the conflict from across the political spectrum are also everywhere. As researchers both specialising on Palestine, we’ve taken a keen interest in what they’ve been saying. And on the side of Israel’s apologists, we’ve seen two main narratives at work.

Both are deeply flawed. The first ignores all context to portray Israel as the undeniable victim of a brutish neighbour. The second draws selectively on context to portray Hamas and Israel as more or less equal adversaries tragically unable to come to an accord. This narrative, designed to appeal to moderates and confound pro-Palestinian messaging, argues that everyone has blood on their hands in this endless cycle of violence – meaning no easy condemnation of Israel is possible.

Standing with Israel

While the glaring narrow-mindedness of the first narrative should be self-evident in the face of Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza, many American, British and European officials and pundits have openly embraced it. Prominent Christian evangelical media figures have also voiced their support, calling for unwavering solidarity with Israel.

Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, put the 7 October attack in a vacuum at the recent peace summit in Cairo: “The reason for all the pain in the past weeks – the pain that has brought us here today – has a name. It was Hamas that brought horrible terror to Israel on 7 October and perpetrated abominable crimes.”

Joe Biden, the US president, was equally one-sided in his speech in Tel Aviv:

Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world. There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period. … The State of Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people of the world. … And I promise you: We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that it will be.

The US has since voted against a UN security council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to allow the delivery of life-saving aid to Gaza. As US Secretary of State Blinken put it, “We’re not in the business of second-guessing what [Israel] are doing.”

This guiding thought has led some Western politicians to explicitly endorse Israel’s crimes against humanity. Keir Starmer, the head of the opposition in the UK, unequivocally endorsed collective punishment for the Palestinian people when he said that Israel had the right to cut off food, water and power from 2.4 million people in response to Hamas’ attack. This blatantly disregards Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which binds Israel to certain obligations under the law of occupation, notably ensuring that the population of Gaza has access to food, medicines, and other essential goods. Yet, for Starmer, a trained human right lawyer, and many others like him, it appears that threatening mass starvation and dehydration is deemed a valid tool of self-defense for Israel.

Neutered in the Middle

As the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza quickly rises, we are hearing more of the second narrative of equally shared responsibility. A call for peace and recognition has been echoed by Hollywood stars and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry. The United Nations’ human rights agency recently issued a press release condemning both parties:

We strongly condemn the horrific crimes committed by Hamas, the deliberate and widespread killing and hostage-taking of innocent civilians, including older persons and children. These actions constitute heinous violations of international law and international crimes, for which there must be urgent accountability [..] We also strongly condemn Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for.

In the past days we’ve seen reminders that all civilian life has equal value (Baerbock), commitments of humanitarian aid (Biden), and acknowledgments of Palestinian suffering (British PM Rishi Sunak). But we’ve yet to see a national leader in the West, apart from UN Secretary General António Guterres, suggest that stopping the indiscriminate attack would save more lives than a humanitarian corridor.

The crux of the problem, we are told by political leaders and much of the media, is that Israelis and Palestinians are caught in a loop. Yes, the Israeli government can be a bit heavy-handed and makes mistakes. But the Palestinians too have their share of blame. All parties, we hear, should respect international law.

To the subscribers of this narrative, the fact that Israel has for decades maintained an occupation of Palestine that is illegal under international law pales into insignificance considering the war crimes committed by Hamas. Their conclusion is that, in a tragedy of such unimaginable pain on all sides, chasing after the one who threw the first punch, and pinning it all on them, is a fool’s errand. Both are to blame.

We oppose violence too. But one might ask: why focus on condemning both parties equally? If the crux of the issue is rooted in historical and contextual injustice, does equating the violence of both parties not divert from understanding this context? Doesn’t this approach potentially ensnare the discourse in a quagmire of mutual blame and perceived equal suffering?

Never Balanced

When the capacity of one side to exert violence over the other is so overwhelmingly disproportionate, surely even to the most moderate of moderates, something rings discordant here.

At the start of the invasion, Israel’s defence minister said that “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”. Hundreds are now being killed every day, and when Palestinians in the north obeyed Israel’s order to travel south they were bombed anyway. The tired metaphor of ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ has never been so apt. Every message we have received from colleagues and friends in Gaza is the same: Israel’s bombardment is like nothing they have ever experienced before.

The balance metaphor only works if weights of equal measure are distributed on both plates. If power were equally distributed, so too would be responsibility. But with Israel-Palestine these two weights are in no way equivalent.

Israel was built on the mass expulsion of Palestinians, many of whom became refugees in the Gaza Strip. Since 1948 Israel has steadily expelled Palestinians from the remaining land they have left, imposing a regime of apartheid in doing so. It has held the entire population of Gaza under blockade since 2007, militarily occupies the West Bank, and operates punitive systems of control that result in Palestinian death, detention and suffering with mundane regularity. It actively uses settlers to solidify its control over occupied territory, undermining the possibility of a two-state solution. And it possesses some of the world’s most advanced weaponry, all while the United States and other Western governments watch its back.

Israel wields infinitely more power here, it calls the tune. The military wing of Hamas must be held to account for its war crimes, but Israel is primarily responsible for the context in which those crimes have been committed.

The belief that the truth lies somewhere in the middle justifies apathy and cloaks moral remorse. Somehow failing to take a stand is seen as a virtue. It allows for this to be erroneously labelled as a war between Israel and Hamas. In reality, what is unfolding in Gaza has been described by the UN Office of Human Rights as ethnic cleansing – a situation that neither the persecutions suffered by the Jewish people over centuries, nor the war crimes committed on and around 7 October can downplay.

The extensive documentation of Israel’s attack on civilians in Gaza, primarily by Palestinians journalists but also by health workers, NGO staff and civilians is widely available. Nobody can say they did not know, and the role of the general public has never been more important.

People are taking to the streets in protest of Israel’s actions like never before in Sanaa, Amman, Cairo, Beirut and Tunis. In European cities, protests have continued despite being prohibited by police; in London, 100,000 peopledemonstrated last weekend; while in Washington DC, hundreds of Jewish protestors were arrested for occupying a congress building and demanding a ceasefire. Much of the general public, it would seem, are on the right side of history. The task now is to convince our political leaders to take a stand.

The violence of resistance and the violence of oppression are often equated to give the latter more legitimacy, and to maintain an existing order. Genuine hope for change only comes when public opinion rejects that equivalence. ALL the atrocities committed by the Israeli state – both during the past three weeks and as an occupying power in general – must be condemned every bit as harshly as the actions of Hamas, and by as many people as possible. It is the only way that we can compel Western powers to intervene in this encroaching genocide of Palestinians.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... -gaza.html

Reports Expose US Billionaires and Corporate Profiteers Enabling Israel’s War on Gaza
Posted on October 30, 2023 by Conor Gallagher

By Jessica Corbett, a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams.

With more than 7,300 Palestinians killed so far in Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza, a series of reports this week have exposed how U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors are enabling what legal scholars say could amount to genocide.

After Israel declared war in response to Hamas killing over 1,400 Israelis and taking around 200 hostages, the stocks of major American and European war profiteers soared. A Thursday report from Eyes on the Ties—the news site of LittleSis and Public Accountability Initiative—targets five U.S. firms with a record of providing weaponry to Israel.


The outlet stressed that while announcing a supplemental funding request that includes $14.3 billion for Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden last week “invoked ‘patriotic American workers’ who are ‘building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom,’ but it’s the defense company CEOs who rake in tens of millions a year, and Wall Street shareholders, who are the real beneficiaries of warmongering.”

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The five targeted industry giants collectively recorded $196.5 billion in military-related revenue last year, Eyes on the Tiesreported. They are Boeing ($30.8 billion), General Dynamics ($30.4 billion), Lockheed Martin ($63.3 billion), Northrop Grumman ($32.4 billion), and RTX, formerly Raytheon ($39.6 billion).

“The top shareholders in these five defense companies largely consist of big asset managers, or big banks with asset management wings, that include BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, Wellington, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Newport Trust Company, Longview Asset Management, Massachusetts Financial Services Company, Geode Capital, and Bank of America,” the news outlet noted.

Eyes on the Ties also highlighted how chief executives are handsomely compensated—and the CEOs’ ties to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, and foreign policy think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies.

According to the report:

*Boeing CEO David Calhoun took in over $64 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 193,247 shares;
*General Dynamics CEO Phebe N. Novakovic took in over $64 million in total compensation from 202-22 and as of March held 1,616,279 shares;
*Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet took in over $66 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 56,054 shares;
*Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy J. Warden took in over $61 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of March held 161,231 shares; and
*RTX CEO Gregory J. Hayes took in over $63 million in total compensation from 2020-22 and as of February held 801,339 shares.

Other reporting this week has taken aim at those CEOs for their suggestions that Israel’s assault on Gaza is good for business.

During Lockheed Martin’s latest earnings call, Taiclet correctly predicted Biden’s request last week, saying that “there continues to be the option… for supplemental requests related to support Ukraine, Israel, and potentially Taiwan.”

In addition to the request for Israel—which already gets nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid—Biden asked for $4 billion to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and $61.4 billion more for Ukraine, which is battling a Russian invasion.

“We are all witnessing significant geopolitical tensions across the globe, including the ongoing war in Ukraine and the horrific attacks in Israel,” Warden said during Northrop Grumman’s Thursday earnings call, according toVICE. “As we saw last week, the [Biden] administration continues to make supplemental requests for urgent needs, including those in Ukraine and Israel, to include investments in weapons systems and defense industrial base readiness.”

As The Lever reported:

“The Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that’s just evolving as we speak,” said Jason Aiken, chief financial officer and executive vice president at General Dynamics, on Wednesday. “But I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

He continued: “Obviously that’s been a big pressure point up to now with Ukraine, one that we’ve been doing everything we can to support our Army customer. We’ve gone from 14,000 rounds per month to 20,000 very quickly. We’re working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity up to 85,000, even as high as 100,000 rounds per month, and I think the Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand.”

Last week, roughly 100 activists gathered outside of General Dynamics’ weapons plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to protest the Israeli war, holding signs with slogans like, “Genocide: Brought To You By General Dynamics.”

Both The Lever and VICE also pointed out that during RTX’s Tuesday call, Hayes started by “acknowledging the tragic situation playing out in Israel” before turning to “an update on our end markets.”

If Congress approves Biden’s request for Israel, VICE explained, “some of the money would be used to restock Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system, which RTX manufactured.” Hayes said: “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in [U.S. Department of Defense] top line.”

Image

It’s not just defense executives enabling Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. As Eyes on the Ties reported, “Lobbying groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Democratic Majority for Israel have been active in Washington, calling on lawmakers to send money and weapons to Israel.”

The report names some billionaire donors to the lobbying groups, including New England Patriots and the Kraft Group CEO Robert Kraft, private equity investor Marc Rowan, venture capitalist Gary Lauder, hedge fund managers Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer, and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who is also the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Wednesday that Americans “know that funneling billions more dollars into arms dealers’ pockets won’t keep our children safe from weapons of war at home or across the world. It won’t keep our loved ones safe from toxins in our air and drinking water. They know that lining the pockets of weapons manufacturers won’t help families struggling to afford housing, medicine, or grocery costs. They know defense contractors won’t safeguard Medicare and Social Security or shield our communities against the climate crisis.”

Unlike the CEOs of firms like Lockheed Martin and RTX, “moms who can’t afford childcare, young folks who can’t pay off their debt, veterans who can’t keep up with housing costs, and children who go to school hungry don’t have million-dollar lobbying budgets,” added Lee, one of the few members of Congress pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza. “So it’s up to us to stand up for their needs.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... -gaza.html

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China Calls for Cessation of Hostilities in Gaza

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Israeli tank in Gaza, Oct. 2023. X/ @Marinquire

Published 31 October 2023 (2 hours 42 minutes ago)

Absolute security cannot be achieved by imposing collective punishment on civilians, Ambassador Zhang said.


On Monday, Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday adopted by an overwhelming majority a resolution calling for an immediate and durable humanitarian truce, which has pointed in the right direction, said Zhang.

China solemnly calls on the parties to the conflict to cease all hostilities, disengage immediately, put in place a humanitarian truce, and make every effort to prevent the situation from escalating further, he said.

China solemnly calls on Israel, as the occupying power, to fulfill its obligations under international humanitarian law, lift its full siege on Gaza, immediately rescind its emergency evacuation order, and expeditiously restore the supply of basic necessities to prevent an even larger humanitarian disaster, the envoy added.


China also calls for greater diplomatic efforts to facilitate the release of hostages without delay and to work on this basis to open space for dialogue, so as to return to the track of a political settlement, he said.

China calls on a certain major country with special influence on the parties concerned to put aside its self-interests and geopolitical considerations and make every effort to stop the war and restore peace, he said.

The decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shown that military means is not the solution. Absolute security cannot be achieved by imposing collective punishment on civilians, said Zhang.

"We call on the parties to the conflict to abandon their blind faith in the use of force and to commit themselves to breaking the cycle of violence and achieving common security," he added.

The council has so far held several meetings on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he said, adding China once again calls on the council to strengthen unity, build consensus, and take responsible and meaningful actions as soon as possible.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0001.html

Egypt Not to End the Palestinian Cause by Accepting Refugees

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Palestinians bury victims of Israeli bombing, Oct. 31, 2023. | Photo: X/ @AssounSimon

Published 31 October 2023 (2 hours 4 minutes ago)

President Al Sisi expressed his rejection of Israeli pressures to have the populations of Gaza or the West Bank relocate to Egypt.


On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbuli insisted that Egypt would never allow the Palestinian cause to be undermined. He was referring to Israeli pressures for Cairo to accept the relocation of Palestinian refugees to its territory.

"As President Abdelfatah Al Sisi has stated, Egypt will not accept the imposition of anything on us or the settlement of regional issues at our expense," Madbuli declared during a speech in Al Arish, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, near the border with Gaza.

He also affirmed that Cairo would expand its development and reconstruction plans for the arid Sinai region, investing billions of Egyptian pounds in the coming years, "so that no one entertains the idea that Egypt will abandon Sinai."

Egyp would commence with a project encompassing the construction of a 500-kilometer-long railway line, a network of roads, logistics corridors, and the expansion and modernization of the Al Arish airport and port to transform it into a "world-class port," alongside numerous other tourism, economic, and social development projects.


"The aim is to connect Sinai with the rest of Egypt's provinces to address the urban neglect of the peninsula, which has attracted the desires of others," Madbuli emphasized.

The Sinai Peninsula is a triangular desert region located in the northeast of Egypt. It was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War but was reclaimed following the 1973 war and the peace agreement in 1979, which normalized Egyptian-Israeli relations.

"We will implement projects that will transform this region, especially northern Sinai, into a global attraction that will provide thousands of job opportunities," Madbuli stressed and estimated the value of a five-year Sinai development plan at around US$12 billion.

Both President Al Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II have repeatedly expressed their strong rejection of Israeli pressures to have the populations of Gaza or the West Bank relocate to Egyptian or Jordanian territory.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Egy ... -0003.html

The UN is Ineffective but There Are No Alternatives: Russia

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Palestinian man mourns a victim of the Israeli bombing, Oct. 31, 2023. | Photo: X/ @sajakill

Published 31 October 2023 (2 hours 3 minutes ago)

Ankara's proposal to create alternative mechanisms for resolving tensions in the Middle East requires at least the same level of consensus.


On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that the United Nations (UN) is ineffective and fails to resolve major global conflicts, but it remains the only mechanism currently in existence.

"We believe that the UN system, despite its significant inefficiency in addressing crucial and vital issues on the global agenda, is the only international mechanism, and there are no alternatives," he asserted.

Peskov's comments came in response to the criticisms expressed last week by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Erdogan accused the UNSC of being ineffective and failing to fulfill its obligations by not preventing the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


The Russian presidential spokesperson noted that the United Nations "was established as a result of very difficult negotiations and highly complex international consensus."

Peskov added that Ankara's proposal to create alternative mechanisms for resolving tensions in the Middle East "requires at least the same level of consensus."

"Is it possible in this complex time, during this challenging period of critical contradictions and conceptual shifts that are taking place? Only the future can answer that question," he concluded.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The ... -0002.html

******

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We Are Ruled By Sociopaths And Morons

The response to the Gaza crisis from western leaders and media outlets and celebrities shows very clearly that we really are led by the least among us. The least wise. The least intelligent. The least compassionate. The least insightful. We are ruled by sociopaths and morons.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 31, 2023

The response to the Gaza crisis from western leaders and media outlets and celebrities shows very clearly that we really are led by the least among us. The least wise. The least intelligent. The least compassionate. The least insightful. We are ruled by sociopaths and morons.



You are being offered two narratives to choose from:

Palestinians in Gaza are evil orc-like savages who just want to murder Jews and must therefore be caged and killed.
Palestinians in Gaza are thinking human beings who are reacting to intolerable abuses inflicted upon them.
Which is more believable?



We’re being told that Israel needs to wage a relentless bombing campaign which is killing civilians by the thousands in order to eliminate Hamas, because Hamas must be destroyed to achieve a lasting peace. Every part of this is transparently false.

Firstly the premise that Hamas must be eliminated to achieve peace is fallacious; peace can be achieved by eliminating the abuses and righting the wrongs which gave rise to Hamas in the first place. There’s no rational reason to believe Hamas would continue to exist in its current iteration or keep waging violent resistance if the theft and injustice from 1948 onward were rolled back, refugees had the right to return, apartheid abuses were ended, and people were no longer kept in a giant concentration camp where they are deprived of basic human needs.

Secondly the premise that you can bomb people into accepting an abusive status quo is self-evidently absurd. Even if Israel kills every single member of Hamas, there will be hundreds of thousands of survivors of this onslaught who see the depravity of Israel and refuse to accept it. You think all these orphaned boys and all these men who saw their loved ones ripped apart by military explosives are just going to be cool with the status quo from here on out? Of course not.

And Israel knows this, which is why its preferred solution is to kick all survivors of this onslaught out of Gaza and into refugee camps in the Sinai Peninsula. It knows that nothing it’s doing will actually work and it refuses to make the reparations that will work, so its only other option is the elimination of Gazans one way or the other. Ethnic cleansing and mass displacement is not “peace” by any stretch of the imagination, but it might allow Israel to keep its abusive status quo intact.

Those are Israel’s only real options for sustainable stability: either right all the wrongs which led to this, or go the opposite direction and inflict far more wrongs to answer the Palestinian question once and for all. It’s pretty clear watching all this that Israel has opted for the latter.



The narrative managers are still struggling with the problem that when they announced that Palestinians had escaped from their concentration camp and killed a bunch of Israelis, an inconvenient number of people started asking “Wait, what were they doing in a concentration camp?”



I find nothing less morally or philosophically interesting than pontificating on how the traumatized prisoners of a horrible concentration camp should have conducted themselves once they broke free of its confines. As far as I’m concerned everything that happened on October 7 was the result of generations of Israeli abuse, the British decisions which made it all possible, and the American backing which has kept it going.

Israeli policies created Hamas. I don’t mean this in the usual “Netanyahu boosted Hamas to sabotage peace and undermine its more moderate rivals” sense, I mean it in the “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” sense. If you stomp out every possible peaceful avenue of resistance, naturally you’re going to see the rise of factions which favor violent resistance.

One of my most formative experiences in understanding this conflict happened in 2018 when I watched Israeli soldiers firing on protesters with sniper rifles and live ammo. B’Tselem explicitly denounced this as unlawful. There’s nothing that could possibly make such a thing okay, and it was a very clear illustration of the way Israel has cut Palestinians off from all the normal pathways toward peaceful resolution.

I said when all this started that I believe the Hamas attack will ultimately be a net negative for Palestinians, but that I can’t in good conscience “condemn Hamas” because nobody can articulate a positive direction that Palestinians should be taking. The fact that all peaceful avenues of resistance have been cut off is not the fault of the Palestinians, and it’s not the fault of Hamas. It’s the fault of the Israeli government.

Hamas is just what you get when you create an intolerably abusive apartheid state which keeps millions of people in a concentration camp whose inhabitants are cut off from basic human needs and make peaceful revolution impossible. Hamas isn’t the disease, it’s a symptom of the disease. The disease is an apartheid settler-colonialist project which cannot exist without endless violence, warfare and abuse.



I refuse to be shamed and demonized for supporting peace by people who support the murder of thousands of children.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... nd-morons/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 01, 2023 11:29 am

The situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone for October 31, 2023
October 31, 2023
Rybar

Over the past few days, units of the Israel Defense Forces , with the support of armored vehicles and aircraft, have been able to make little progress in the Gaza Strip. From the north , Israeli troops advance in the direction of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun , as well as along the coast. South of Gaza, the Israelis reached the Salah ad - Din highway .

The Israeli leadership is trying to present the promotion as an undoubted success. It is noteworthy that the IDF reported the death of two fighters and two more wounded, while announcing the elimination of 300 militants. Hamas reported the destruction of 22 armored vehicles that entered the enclave.

In addition, footage of the consequences of an Israeli air strike on a residential area in Jabaliya , one of the largest refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, was actively circulated today. According to the local Ministry of Health, more than 400 civilians were injured or killed, and debris removal is currently ongoing. The IDF said that as a result of this strike, one of the Hamas commanders, Ibrahim Biari , was eliminated, while the deaths of civilians were explained by the “tragedy of war.”

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Progress of hostilities
South direction

Palestinian forces attacked IDF installations and gathering places near Netiv - Hasar , Erez checkpoint , Sderot , Kissufima , Nirim , Sufa and Nir Yitzhak . Air defense systems also intercepted missiles over Be'er Sheva and Ashdod , settlements near Tel Aviv : some of the ammunition hit civilian targets, and fires broke out at the incident sites. In Ashdod, at least four seriously injured residents were reported.

Gaza Strip

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For two days, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units, supported by armored vehicles, have been trying to advance deep into the enclave both north and south of Gaza . Today, Hamas representatives said that the new raids by Israeli troops actually marked the beginning of a ground operation, but the IDF, as before, refuses to clearly announce this, maintaining room for maneuver.


At the moment, Israeli troops are attacking in an area that has practically been reduced to ruins as a result of massive attacks. This is evidenced, in particular, by footage of IDF tanks against the backdrop of destroyed houses. According to scattered reports from both sides , Israeli troops to the north were able to approach the outskirts of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun . And south of Gaza, IDF units again tried to advance to the Salah ad - Din highway . Hamas confirms the fighting in these areas, but in the usual manner they report the destruction of several units of Israeli armored vehicles, both by Yassin anti-tank missiles and artillery.


Later, according to a representative of the Hamas Ministry of Internal Affairs, Israeli soldiers managed to enter the coastal region of al - Karama . Since the beginning of the escalation, this area has been subjected to massive shelling by the IDF, which virtually turned it into lifeless ruins. Currently, the Palestinians are striking at the advancing enemy without engaging in fierce fighting. South of Gaza, Israeli units were seen near the Salah ad-Din highway . If the information is confirmed, then the IDF’s most likely goal in this area is to advance to the Al - Rashid road to block the land routes of communication between the north and south of the enclave. However, their loss will not affect the logistics capabilities of Hamas militants, who have dug tens of kilometers of tunnels. But this will affect the civilian population remaining in the north of the enclave, whose living conditions will become even more catastrophic.


The IDF continues to carry out massive attacks on the Gaza Strip: residential buildings and buildings in the area of ​​​​the Indonesian hospital were damaged . In Jabaliya, more than 400 people were injured or killed in a series of attacks on a residential area .

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Footage of both victims of Israeli shelling and destroyed civilian objects was actively distributed online. It was also reported that 14 hospitals were closed as a result of the bombing of Gaza.

In addition, a convoy of 60 trucks carrying humanitarian cargo passed through the Rafah checkpoint. However, representatives of the local Ministry of Health accused Israel of refusing to allow medicines into the enclave, which further increases the number of victims. At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a temporary humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip.

Border with Lebanon

The IDF and Hezbollah fighters continue to exchange blows along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Israeli troops carried out strikes including Al - Salkhani , Yater and Baraashit , while the group shelled Bayad Blida and Metula .

West Bank

Protests and clashes between the Arab population and Israeli security forces continue in the region, including in the areas of Qabatiya , Tubas , Tulkarm , Hebron and Beyta . Overnight, more than 40 local residents were detained, about half of whom were students and journalists. To the northwest of Ramallah, security forces blew up the empty house of the deputy head of the Hamas politburo, Saleh al - Arouri . In addition, amid a significant number of casualties as a result of the IDF strike on a residential area in Jabaliya, protests against Israel's actions were held in several cities in the West Bank.

Southern border
Not far from Eilat, air defense crews intercepted a missile and a drone launched by the Yemeni Ansarallah movement over the Red Sea .

Use of new weapons

Hamas said it developed and first used its own Al - Assef guided torpedo. It is currently unknown whether the torpedo hit one of the Israeli fleet ships that are firing at the Gaza Strip.

Political-diplomatic background
Yemen declared war on Israel?

The Ansarallah movement released a militant statement today: “ Our armed forces launched a powerful salvo of ballistic and cruise missiles...at various targets in Israel. We will continue to conduct better attacks using missiles and drones until Israeli aggression stops .” Many were quick to interpret this statement as an official declaration of war, but it is certainly not worth expecting that the Yemeni group will enter into a full-fledged conflict before Hezbollah.

Nothing stopped the Houthis from launching missiles at Israel and declaring a fight in the interests of the Palestinian people. Other pro-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq are doing the same thing . Therefore, the next speech should not be perceived as anything other than an attempt to maintain the desired degree of confrontation. Hezbollah is still waiting for a qualitatively new round of escalation in the form of a large-scale ground operation to clear Gaza and is in no hurry to start hostilities, although the group has every opportunity to do so.

About protests against Israel in the USA


In the United States, protesters against support for the IDF broke into the Congress building during a speech by Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding an end to Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. This is the third such action in the country: previously, dissatisfied people blocked New York 's Central Station and one of the Congress buildings.

Solving the refugee issue with the help of Egypt

Against the backdrop of Israeli army raids, preparations for a ground invasion and the bombing of Gaza, another scandal unfolded in the media. First, the Associated Press wrote that the Israeli government had prepared a plan to resettle 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Then the Financial Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to convince European leaders to put pressure on Egypt to accept refugees. Soon after, the Israeli Prime Minister's office tried to downplay the situation, calling the plan a "concept document" that meant nothing. However, the story has already caused a reaction from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al - Sisi , who stated that his country is not going to accept Palestinian refugees, and the problem of their resettlement lies on the shoulders of Israel.

As our Egyptian colleague The Mediterranean Man points out , this is not the first time Israel has planned the forced relocation of Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula . Back in 2010, Netanyahu, who was already prime minister at that time, proposed a similar scenario during a conversation with former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak , but was refused. Since 2013, the current President of Egypt Al-Sisi and the President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas have repeatedly stated that there will be no resettlement of Palestinians to the territory of the Sinai Peninsula, but they will live on their own territory.

Netanyahu's plan to resettle residents of the Gaza Strip, in development for more than a decade, would make life easier for the ultra-Orthodox authorities in Israel, but would significantly complicate the situation in the neighboring country. However, Egypt is not ready to make concessions and destabilize the already difficult internal political situation, given that the Palestinians themselves reject such a scenario.

About the disappearance of Israel on Chinese online maps

News has appeared on several Telegram channels - the Chinese map service Baidu no longer shows Israel on the map. Of course, this would not be surprising, especially against the background of the rhetoric of Chinese officials about the creation of an independent Palestinian state. But it's not that simple. Attached to this post are two screenshots - one from October 31, 2023, and the other from November 3, 2022. There is actually no difference, because the word 以色列, which means “Israel” in Chinese, does not exist. Bottom line: the thesis that Baidu no longer shows Israel is fundamentally wrong. It is also incorrect to link the absence of a country’s name on the map with the escalation of the conflict. Israel, by the way, can still be found in Baidu (at least from the mobile application) - just type the corresponding hieroglyphs into the search.

https://rybar.ru/obstanovka-v-zone-izra ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

******

The World Continues to Raise its Voice for Palestine in Massive Demonstrations (+Videos)
OCTOBER 30, 2023

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People hold Palestinian flags in front of the Colosseum during a demonstration in support of Palestinians, in Rome, Italy. Photo: Yara Nardi/Reuters.

Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Millions of protesters have taken to the streets worldwide to condemn the Israeli aggression against Gaza and to show support for Palestinians.

Footage posted online reveals protesters holding Palestinian flags while chanting slogans denouncing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and expressing solidarity with Palestinians. Protesters expressed their unwavering support for Gaza, the Palestinians, and their right to resist the occupation.

Israel began an unprecedented and brutal campaign of aggression against Gaza on October 7th, after Palestinian resistance groups launched Operation al-Aqsa flood, a surprise attack into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people. The Israeli attacks on Gaza have targeted places of gathering, including homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, displacing more than one million in the densely-populated region, which is home to more than 2 million people.

This weekend, cities around the world such as London, Madrid, Paris, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and Caracas were full of people supporting the Palestinian cause.

Telesur reports that this Sunday hundreds of people also took to the streets of the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne raising their voices to call for an end to the war. According to local media, the most important rally was in Sydney’s Hyde Park where 10,000 people expressed their rejection of the Zionist bombings in Gaza.

Below are videos and images of the massive demonstrations, the images speak for themselves and are an evidence that US and Zionist propaganda are not enough to hide the crimes against humanity committed by Israel, the US and its European lackeys.

Caracas (Venezuela):

Image

Image

Istanbul (Türkiye) and London (UK):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718302037224403062

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718301599531954370

France:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718398821191872546

Los Angeles (US):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718923731651948585

Kerala (India):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718646391164014832

Sanaa, Yemen

Image

Buenos Aires (Argentina):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1717478933208187197

Berlin (Germany):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718627106412707938

New York (US):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718623469200679285

Chicago (US):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718397486740517015.

Bilbao (Spain):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718406890546192719

Madrid (Spain):

Image

Sydney (Australia):

Image

Melbourne (Australia):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718583405070237798

Porto Alegre (Brazil):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1717667801912025589]

Johannesburg (South Africa):

Image

Alger (Algeria):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1716489032111214700

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia):

Image

Jakarta (Indonesia):

Image

Rome (Italy):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718568674271916156

San Francisco (US):

http:s//twitter.com/i/status/1718410419273163220

São Paulo (Brazil):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718691939468382653

The Hague (Netherlands):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718937954150646168

Dallas (US):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718696750007906765

Quetta (Pakistan):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718727031423148251

Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff

http://orinocotribune.com/the-world-con ... ns-videos/

(Attributions and more at link.)

Guess all them people are anti-Semitic, huh?

goddamn twitter

UN Votes for Gaza Truce as Israel Intensifies Strikes
OCTOBER 30, 2023

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Palestinians mourn over the bodies of their loved ones who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, October 27. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” in Gaza.

The resolution, which is non-binding but reflects a more global view than the Security Council, calls for a ceasefire that would permit “continuous, sufficient and unhindered” provision of essential supplies and services to the blockaded territory.

Jordan proposed the resolution that passed with 120 countries voting in favor, 14 against and 45 countries abstaining. A handful of countries and American colonies in the Pacific joined the United States and Israel in opposing the resolution. The vast majority of EU countries, including Germany, abstained.

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The vote came just hours after Israel announced that it was expanding its military operations in Gaza and as it escalated its bombardment of the territory and knocked out its communications systems.

The UN Security Council has so far failed to vote in favor of a ceasefire or even a humanitarian pause to deliver urgently needed aid.

Israel, which had thrown a tantrum after the UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed to the “suffocating occupation” during a meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday, rejected the UN resolution on Friday.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the world body, said that “this is a dark day for the UN and for mankind.” He added that “the UN no longer holds even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

Hamas welcomed the General Assembly resolution and called on all relevant parties to implement it immediately so that life essentials including fuel would reach the civilian population in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ politburo, stated Friday night that Israel’s “escalation of its horrific massacres and genocidal war under the cover of darkness” amounted to “a true expression of its abject failure” to undermine the capabilities of the resistance.

Al-Rishq affirmed that the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and all Palestinian resistance forces “are fully prepared to confront the aggression with full force and thwart the incursions.”

“Netanyahu and his defeated army will not be able to gain any military achievement,” al-Rishq added.

He said that “the enemy army’s escalation of its terrorism, massacres and war of extermination against civilians and their homes is only evidence of bankruptcy, not evidence of strength.”

The Qassam Brigades said late Friday night that its fighters were confronting Israeli ground incursions east of Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya in northern Gaza, and Bureij in the center of the territory.

Earlier, the group said Israeli naval commandos attempted to land on the beach near Rafah, at Gaza’s southern end, around dawn Friday. Qassam said its fighters engaged the Israelis and forced the attackers to call in air support.

The Israelis “fled towards the sea, leaving behind a quantity of ammunition,” according to the Palestinian resistance group.

Palestinian groups in Gaza continued to fire rockets toward Israel on Friday, with a residential building in Tel Aviv taking a direct hit. The Israeli outlet Ynet reported that “rockets also fell in the city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv and in Ashkelon, in the south.”

UN secretary-general’s warning

While the UN General Assembly held the second day of an emergency session leading up to Friday’s vote, Guterres reiterated his call for a ceasefire on Friday. He warned that “the humanitarian system in Gaza is facing a total collapse with unimaginable consequences for more than 2 million civilians.”

He said that “the supplies that have trickled in do not include fuel for United Nations operations – fuel which is also essential to power hospitals, water desalination plants, food production and aid distribution.”

Israel has banned the entry of fuel to Gaza as part of its total siege on the territory. Fewer than 100 trucks carrying aid have entered Gaza in recent days.

The UK charity Oxfam warned earlier this week that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinian civilians.

Guterres alluded to Israeli inspections delaying the entry of aid, saying that “the verification system for the movement of goods through the Rafah crossing must be adjusted to allow many more trucks to enter Gaza without delay.”

“Without a fundamental change, the people of Gaza will face an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering,” Guterres said.

As of Friday evening local time, more than 7,300 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since Israel began its military campaign in the territory following a deadly attack led by Hamas on 7 October.

The true death toll is all but certainly much higher, with around 1,700 people, including at least 940 children, reported missing and likely under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people are internally displaced within Gaza and nearly half of the housing stock in the territory has been destroyed, rendered uninhabitable, or moderately to lightly damaged since 7 October.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said on Friday that in addition to those killed by “bombs and strikes,” many more will soon die as a result of Israel’s siege on Gaza.

With the erosion of basic services and lack of food and safe water, and while Gaza’s streets “have started overflowing with sewage,” Lazzarini warned of “a massive health hazard as the risks of diseases are looming.”

Meanwhile, UNRWA, the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza, “will not be able to continue our humanitarian operations if we do not get fuel supply,” Lazzarini said.

“The siege means that food, water and fuel – basic commodities – are being used to collectively punish more than 2 million people, among them, a majority of children and women,” he added.

Lazzarini said that the “crumbs” of aid that had entered Gaza via Rafah on the border with Egypt over the past week were a distraction and that “the current system in place is geared to fail.”

The head of UNRWA said that more than 50 of the agency’s staff in Gaza have been killed since 7 October, including a father of six children who “died while on his way to pick up bread from a bakery.”

Hamas calls for uprising in West Bank

Hamas called on Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up and “confront the Zionist enemy at all points in support of Gaza and its resistance.”

On Friday, The New York Times reported that Saudi officials have repeatedly warned their American counterparts “that an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza could be catastrophic for the Middle East.”

Earlier in the day, media reported that diplomatic sources said that “significant progress” had been made in negotiations for a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas.

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The US has reportedly pressed Israel to delay a ground invasion until it has secured the release of its nationals being held captive in Gaza.

On Friday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby declined to comment on the intensified bombardment in Gaza under the cover of darkness and cut off from communication.

Kirby said the Israelis “have to make the decisions that they’re going to make on the battlefield,” The New York Times reported.

Ali Abunimah contributed reporting.

https://orinocotribune.com/un-votes-for ... s-strikes/

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Israel Threatens to Assassinate Syrian President Assad
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 31, 2023
Vanessa Beeley

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Israel has recently made a series of unprecedented threats against the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance party and Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad.

Speaking through French negotiators Israel informed Hezbollah that “it is not interested in the war, but ready to wage it if it is imposed on [Israel]”. This was recounted by Israeli political sources to Hebrew media outlet Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israel has stated that it will not wage war “according to Hezbollah’s agenda and [the region] will witness strategic shocks”.

According to the message passed to Hezbollah by France – if Hezbollah fully commits to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Resistance factions, Israel will “resort to American power to suppress Hezbollah”. A clear admission that Israel is incapable of suppressing Hezbollah alone without US help. Added to which Israel knows that virtually the entire region is poised to intervene also.

Even states like Jordan who have good relations historically with the British neocolonialists and Israel have one of the largest diaspora Palestinian populations in the region that have been protesting in vast numbers to open the borders with Palestine to enter the conflict.

Israel also threatened the security of President Assad were Hezbollah to enter the war. In this scenario, Israel would confront and overthrow the Syrian government – a veiled threat was conveyed that there would be an assassination attempt on President Assad personally.

From the Aawsat article:

Military sources told the newspaper that the decision announced by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to bring the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford closer to the region was part of this threat.

The huge modern battleship carries 38 F-35, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, and has a stockpile of 1,000 tons of weapons. It is accompanied by four small warships, a ship carrying missiles, and four nuclear war submarines, and is ready for combat.


The same military sources claimed that Israel had held talks with the Biden administration to request Congress’ approval to allow US forces to participate in an escalated conflict that would include Hezbollah.

According to a report in Sputnik Global on the 29th October, US Special Forces are already involved on the ground in Gaza:

A total of 5,000 US servicepeople took part in Israel’s overnight ground operation in northern Gaza, Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The Israeli operation reportedly involved three divisions and several brigades of the US Armed Forces, according to the news agency.


There was also the scandal of Biden shaking hands with US Delta Force operatives in the Israeli-occupied territories and the photo being published without hiding their identity.

According to media leaks, a number of extremist ministers in the Israeli government are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to wait for Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to make a move. Rather he must exploit the war to launch a preemptive strike on the party. Netanyahu has been cautious and thrown the ball in the Israeli army’s court.

Army officials believe it was not wise for Israel to open the northern front, but they have stressed that if Hezbollah provocations persist, then “we will respond to them appropriately.”


The ramping up of anti-Iran rhetoric has been seen in the UK, US and by Israel:

On Saturday, an Israeli minister warned that the Hamas attack was just a ruse by Iran and would be followed by a surprise assault by Hezbollah.

“Iran is behind everything that is happening in our region… It pushed [Hamas] into war, and… will push [Hezbollah] to launch a second war,” the minister was quoted as saying.


The Israeli army announced on Oct. 5 that it was preparing “to conduct the largest massive training exercises to train on launching a broad, multi-front war” next November.

It added that these exercises will focus on the air force, with the unusual participation of the German, American, Italian, Greek and French air forces. Britain canceled its participation at the last minute and decided to send observers.[/i]

In 2018 Yoav Gallant, Israeli Minister of Defence since 2022, called for the assassination of President Assad – “[Assad] does not have a place in this world”

According to a report in Haaretz, Gallant made his threat very clear:

“In my view, we are crossing a red line. And in my view, the time has come to assassinate Assad. It’s as simple as that,” said Galant, who previously served as the head of the IDF’s Southern Command.

Galant likened the assassination of Assad to cutting off the “tail of the snake.” After that, he said, “we can focus on the head, which is in Tehran.”


President Trump, often portrayed as the deep-state-swamp-drainer, also said that the US should have assassinated President Assad in 2017. Instead he limited his response to yet another UK/White Helmet orchestrated “chemical weapon” event in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria – to a largely cosmetic launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles against Syria from the Mediterranean Sea.

I have always considered it not coincidental that the staged chemical weapon attack occurred AFTER Trump had wanted to withdraw US military from Syrian territory – an act of good sense roundly criticised by the UK regime who have primary control over the MI6-midwived White Helmet organisation embedded with Al Qaeda in Syria.

Syrian journalist Kevork Almassian has analysed the Israeli threat against the personal security of President Assad in this report:



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... ent-assad/

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JEWISH ANTI-SEMITISM TOWARDS ARABS WAS HAMAS’S STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITY ON OCTOBER 7 — STILL IS*

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

The Semites, the Semitic peoples, and speakers of the Semitic languages started as a figment of the German imagination in the late 18th century and early 19th century.

It quickly became a German racial epithet, used in contrast to Aryan. By the time Adolf Hitler came along, this was the pseudo-scientific doctrine in which the Germans lumped both the Jews and the Arabs into a single category – the inferiors of the Aryans.

That is one of the reasons Hitler refused to listen to the advice of his general staff on aiding the Arab nationalist forces in Iraq, Syria and Palestine in the Wehrmacht’s war plans against the British and the Soviet Union. The pseudo-science of Semitism and Aryanism, and the idea of anti-Semitism which the Germans, together with the British and Americans, adopted in the run-up to World War II was spelled out at Harvard University by an anthropologist called Carleton Coon; he cribbed directly from German academics, turning out papers on the Berbers of Morocco and advancing his racial superiority-inferiority ideas between 1925 and 1939. When the war began, Coon joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where he demonstrated his keenness for pistol shooting, hare-brained sabotage missions, and homicidal mania. Among his wartime schemes he proposed to remove the Arabs of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) as unfit to rule; replace them with the restoration of the French empire; and kill those French officials whom Coon judged to get his way. He was one of the planners of the assassination of Admiral Francois Darlan, the French military commander, in Algiers on December 24, 1942; Coon’s pistol was the murder weapon.**

American murderers of the Arabs like Coon then — like Israeli murderers of Arabs now — have succeeded in establishing their doctrine of exceptionalism and racial superiority in state policy as the successor to the doctrines of Aryanism and Nazism which were interrupted by Hitler’s suicide in 1945, then the Nuremberg trials concluding in 1946. The crime of racial and cultural genocide became international law in 1948. It was then modified by the new Israeli state doctrine of anti-Semitism: this decriminalised the genocide of the Palestinian people; and outlawed instead media criticism, political opposition, even science for threatening the legitimacy of Israel’s Basic Law of Arab exclusion, and Israeli military operations to enforce it.

In the present war between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas on the Gaza battlefield – “the American project”, as the Russian Foreign Ministry called it in a statement on October 29 *** – the doctrine of anti-Semitism as a race hatred crime is being applied to protect the race hatred crime being perpetrated against the other Semites, the Palestinians.

This doctrine, however, has had a negative impact on the ability of the Israelis and the Americans to wage their war. A fresh Russian analysis of the military intelligence failures exposed by Hamas in its offensive of October 7, illustrates how and why the Israelis failed to anticipate because they underestimated their Arab adversary; and because they regarded him as a racial inferior.

This assessment appeared on October 29 in the Telegram channel of a Russian analyst named Alexander Hoffmann, a senior member of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). Hoffmann sets out in brief the causes of the Israeli intelligence and military failures preceding the start of the Hamas operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.

It has been immediately republished by Boris Rozhin, editor and writer of the influential Colonel Cassad military blog; and by Yevgeny Krutikov, Moscow security analyst, historian, and former GRU military intelligence staff officer.

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Left: Alexander Hoffmann and the name of his Telegram account, @thehegemonist. Right: Yevgeny Krutikov and his Telegram account, Mudraya Ptitsa (“Wise Bird”).


If we abstract from the versions about the eschatological motives of the parties to the conflict and various hypotheses about the scenario of how events developed, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation exposed three vulnerabilities of the Israelis of a military intelligence nature:

— a failure in strategic intelligence regarding the plans and intentions of Hamas. Although, based on the received HUMINT [human intelligence] data, there were warnings from the Egyptian intelligence services. The Israelis position their technical intelligence capabilities as dominant [above their human intelligence].

— the discrepancy between the capabilities of the advanced, expensive Iron Dome missile defense system and the requirements for repelling the direct and asymmetric threats [employed by Hamas].


— strategic miscalculation in the use of a complex, high-tech, expensive security barrier around the perimeter of the Gaza Strip. The construction of the barrier strategically set restrictions on offensive manoeuvre for the IDF and the ability of the Israelis to anticipate. Hamas has gained thereby the operational initiative – the mobility of their forces against the static dispersion of the Israelis. Considering the barrier impenetrable before the operation, the Israelis had relocated most of their regular forces to northern-sector control of the territories near the borders of Lebanon and Syria,and to the West Bank.

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Hoffmann illustrates his report (right) with heavy IDF armour in fixed position above ground and below ground Hamas forces on the move.

The “great Israeli wall” has appeared to be almost totally useless. Hamas overcame it in a short time, which allowed it to operate almost unhindered in the adjacent territories. The disabling of [the IDF’s] technological means demonstrated the lack of the human resources to respond. In terms of communications, the dependence of the Israeli forces on wireless data transmission has become a critical vulnerability.


As in the case of Iron Dome, the Israelis relied on technological solutions, methods, and thinking, neglecting the principle of war being waged by people, not by machines (yet). To this is added a doctrinal and strategic discrepancy with the actual conditions of combat. Technological superiority was placed at the forefront, but the complex systems showed vulnerability to a cascade of failures, leading the system to collapse. A regional conflict would make this catastrophic.


[*] The lead cartoons are, left, by Carlos Latuff in Brazil in 2006 and, right, by Mr Fish in the US (Harper’s Magazine) also in 2006. They have been reproduced by Evan Jones in a collection of western media cartoons on the meaning of anti-Semitism as an information warfare weapon in US-Israeli military operations against the Arabs until editorial censorship was imposed in both the UK and US. Click to read.


[**] Read the 80-year old story of the German General Staff plans for the Arab states and Hitler’s failure to implement them, followed by the plans of Coon, the OSS, and the CIA homicidalists against the Arabs, which are still being followed in Washington and Tel Aviv. Click. On Saturday night, October 28, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed his intelligence services and military staff for failing to warn him of the Hamas war plan. Under counter-attack from the services and the military, Netanyahu then apologised and retracted his claims. The Israeli press record of the episode reveals that the entire Israeli political and military leadership shares the same racial superiority doctrine.

[***] In a special session of security officials called to discuss the Makhachkala airport incidents, President Vladimir Putin said: “We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of the peoples of the Middle East and other regions of the world, who organizes deadly chaos, who benefits from it. Today, in my opinion, it has already become obvious and understandable for everyone – customers act openly and brazenly. It is the current ruling elites of the United States and their satellites that are the main beneficiaries of global instability. They extract their bloody rent from it. Their strategy is also obvious. The United States as a global superpower – everyone sees it, understands it, even according to trends in the global economy – is weakening, losing its position. The American-style world, with one hegemon, is being destroyed, is leaving, gradually but steadily going into the past…The events in Makhachkala last night were inspired, including through social networks, not least from the territory of Ukraine, by the hands of agents of Western special services. I want to ask myself in this regard: is it possible to help Palestine by trying to attack the Tats and their families? Tats, by the way, are the titular nation in Dagestan. Palestine can only be helped in the fight against those who are behind this tragedy. We, Russia, are fighting them as part of a special military operation, it is with them – both for ourselves and for those who strive for real, true freedom.”

https://johnhelmer.net/jewish-anti-semi ... more-88784
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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