November 15, 2023
Rybar
In the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces' operation to take control of the enclave's capital continues. Clashes are taking place in several areas ( Ar-Rimal , Al-Sheikh Radwan , Tell al-Hawa and Al-Sheikh Ijlin ). The mechanized IDF units are opposed by scattered groups of lightly armed Palestinians.
During the day, Ashkelon and Tel Aviv were shelled . In both cases, civilians and city infrastructure were damaged, but there were no fatalities. In the Gaza Strip the situation is much worse. Massive Israeli strikes continue, dozens of civilians are dying, some are being buried right in hospitals.
The traditional exchange of blows between Hezbollah and the IDF continues on the border with Lebanon . The former are burning cameras and other border infrastructure with anti-tank systems, and the latter are burning forests and plantings with tanks and artillery. From time to time the Israelis deploy UAVs.
In the south the situation is stable. Palestinian groups are shelling kibbutzim and military bases that they can reach. In Eilat, air defense shot down a ballistic missile from Yemen in the evening , and in the afternoon an unknown explosion occurred.
Progress of hostilities
Gaza Strip
Israeli units continue their offensive in western Gaza . According to multiple reports from pro-Palestinian sources, the Al-Hilu hospital is surrounded , and fighting is taking place in the areas of Ar-Rimal , An-Nasr , and Al-Sheikh Ijlin . After advancing towards Al-Wafa Hospital last day, clashes began in neighboring neighborhoods. Palestinians report sounds of fighting in the area of Yarmouk Stadium and the Gaza Municipal Garden. The width of the breakthrough does not exceed 250-300 meters: the Israelis are advancing in the very “media” area with a large number of objects of social significance that can be considered an asset.
IDF units continue to hold the humanitarian corridor in the area of the Salah ed-Din highway , suspending attacks on the Old City , At-Tuffah and Al-Judaida areas for a couple of hours a day . When time runs out, non-humanitarian strikes resume in the areas.
The overall efforts are concentrated on a PR victory (a large number of photographs from one breakthrough site) and informational and psychological pressure on the Palestinians. Theses are being circulated about the collapse of Hamas and the destruction of military infrastructure, while the Israelis themselves cannot boast of military successes either south or north of Gaza.
During the day, Palestinian forces shelled Ashkelon , and two rockets were able to penetrate the Iron Dome. Two victims received minor injuries, two more required medical attention due to shock. The injured were taken to Barzilai Hospital . Several more rockets were able to reach Tel Aviv , where three people were hit, one of whom was seriously injured.
The humanitarian situation in the enclave is getting worse. At Al-Shifa Hospital , 179 people were forced to be buried in the courtyard because there was no way to remove the bodies and there were not enough refrigerators or electricity. In the evening, a thunderstorm broke out over Gaza and showers came. This, of course, will partly solve the problem with drinking water, but it will increase the number of people suffering from colds.
South direction
Several bases and kibbutzim in the south of the country were traditionally fired from the Gaza Strip. Once again, Kissufim , Nirim , Miftahim , Amitai and the Kerem Shalom border crossing were covered with mortar and rocket fire .
An explosion of unknown origin was heard in the Eilat area during the day, and in the evening air defense systems were activated several times. According to preliminary information, a ballistic missile from the Ansarallah movement from Yemen was shot down .
Border with Lebanon
The situation on the border with Lebanon remains relatively tense. Hezbollah occasionally strikes at various military targets and border infrastructure, and the IDF regularly strikes back (and often just like that). By evening, the number of such shellings, just included in the reports, exceeded two dozen, but no one is in a hurry to stop. 1Hezbollah, spending a moderate amount of ammunition and personnel, holds an impressive IDF group at the northern borders and forces them to waste ammunition, while incurring, in general, not such large losses.
Theses about the possible creation of a four-kilometer buffer zone on Lebanese territory in order to secure Israel’s northern border have begun to be circulated in the information space.
West Bank
Everything is stable in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Israeli security forces are conducting mass arrests in various localities - both in cities and refugee camps. This is often accompanied by large-scale destruction. In Tulkarm , the IDF operation lasted about fifteen hours. Despite the desperate, but partly senseless resistance of Palestinian youth, several streets were destroyed, as well as monuments to fallen resisters and Yasser Arafat .
Actions of pro-Iranian formations in the Middle East
Pro-Iranian forces continue sporadic attacks on US military targets in Syria , launching missiles and UAVs.
The “kamikaze” drone was used at a base at the Al-Omar oil field and at a location for American military personnel in the neighboring village of Green Village . Several missiles were launched at the Konoko plant, also located in Trans-Euphrates.
The Yemeni Houthis made several interesting statements that compare favorably with the theses of the Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General. So, according to them, the Yemenis are constantly looking for Israeli ships in the Red Sea. But the Israelis, according to Abdul Malik al-Houthi, rely on shadow smuggling and secretive movement across the Red Sea from the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, “not daring to raise Israeli flags.”
Of course, this is the usual interpretation of events in the interests of the Yemenis, but the remark is amusing considering that the Israelis do rely on a shadow supply fleet.
The Ansarallah movement has vowed to traditionally attack any “Zionist targets” in Palestine and anywhere else it can reach, and has expressed a desire to send “hundreds of thousands” of volunteers to defend the Gaza Strip. A request was officially made to countries that geographically separate Yemen from Palestine to open a land crossing through which Yemenis can reach Palestine. This puts both Saudi Arabia and Jordan , who verbally care for Palestine, in a rather awkward position: so they were asked to prove it with deeds.
In addition, there was information that the Americans were trying to bribe the Yemenis so that they would refuse to support Palestine, like other countries. But the Houthis rejected the offer.
Political-diplomatic background
On the lawsuit against Netanyahu at the ICC
The Prosecutor General's Office of Istanbul sent a criminal case against Netanyahu to the Turkish Ministry of Justice with a demand that the ICC try him for genocide in the Gaza Strip. The move, of course, is beautiful, but meaningless. The International Criminal Court as an organization is nothing, and neither Israel nor Turkey itself are parties to the Rome Statute, and the ICC cannot do anything about them.
On the evacuation of Russian citizens from the Gaza Strip
The second special plane of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations with 98 fellow citizens is heading from Egypt to Domodedovo. The previous one, which carried 70 Russians, landed in Moscow on November 13.
In addition, the special representative of the Russian President for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Mikhail Bogdanov met with the Egyptian ambassador in Moscow. The Egyptian side expressed gratitude for the assistance provided in ensuring the rescue of Russian citizens from the combat zone and also touched upon other issues of cooperation, including the situation in the Gaza Strip. The Presidents of Egypt and the Russian Federation themselves also discussed by telephone the latest developments in the Gaza Strip.
https://rybar.ru/chto-proishodit-v-pale ... -noyabrya/
Google Translator
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Israeli War Crimes and Propaganda Follow US Blueprint
Posted on November 14, 2023 by Yves Smith
Yves here. It may seem disheartening to see so many chronicle the deliberate extermination of Palestinians as part of a purported Hamas clearing operation in Gaza yet see no change in its apparent trajectory. But as some observers who are watching the action closely (see for instance Alastair Crooke’s latest talk on Judge Napolitano), various Arab interests are increasing their attacks on Israel. And military experts (Douglas Macgregor, and informed commentators like Larry Johnson) point out, Israel cannot afford a long war, geopolitically or economically, and is not very far along at all with rooting out Hamas. It may be flattening Gaza but has yet to engage meaningfully on the ground, which is necessary to meet the aim of “defeating Hamas.”
This is a long winded way of saying that Israel is turning itself into a world pariah in a war it cannot win on its own terms. Relentlessly focusing on that could save at least some Palestinians by increasing the cost to Israel of continuing the carnage. So the continued documentation and criticism is productive, even if it does not feel like it (and is deeply distressing, to seem so unable to force a halt to the slaughter).
This article focuses on the propaganda war and minimization of Israel’s brazen behavior. I wish it used the word censorship more, because that is a key part of this US/Israel media strategy. Likely due to the editorial choice of making a concise case, it omitted a key point that I believe bears repeating:
And Israel’s pretext for the destruction of the Rantisi hospital comes up short. No Hamas bunkers or weapons caches:International Law and treaties are clearly In favour of the occupied Palestinians’ “right to defend itself” not the occupier Israel. It’s clear as day…
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of IraqThe Israeli army has failed to find tunnels or weapons stockpiled in Rantisi hospital. Instead, it has turned up a pack of diapers and a calendar listing the days of the week. The presentation has become a laughingstock, except among the cretinous and narrowing base of support…
We have both been reporting on and protesting against U.S. war crimes for many years, and against identical crimes committed by U.S. allies and proxies like Israel and Saudi Arabia: illegal uses of military force to try to remove enemy governments or “regimes”; hostile military occupations; disproportionate military violence justified by claims of “terrorism”; the bombing and killing of civilians; and the mass destruction of whole cities.
Most Americans share a general aversion to war, but tend to accept this militarized foreign policy because we are tragically susceptible to propaganda, the machinery of public manipulation that works hand in hand with the machinery of killing to justify otherwise unthinkable horrors.
This process of “manufacturing consent” works in a number of ways. One of the most effective forms of propaganda is silence, simply not telling us, and certainly not showing us, what war is really doing to the people whose homes and communities have been turned into America’s latest battlefield.
The most devastating campaign the U.S. military has waged in recent years dropped over 100,000 bombs and missiles on Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, and other areas occupied by ISIS or Da’esh. An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that more than 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul, while Raqqa was even more totally destroyed.
The shelling of Raqqa was the heaviest U.S. artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War, yet it was barely reported in the U.S. corporate media. A recent New York Times article about the traumatic brain injuries and PTSD suffered by U.S. artillerymen operating 155 mm howitzers, which each fired up to 10,000 shells into Raqqa, was appropriately titled A Secret War, Strange New Wounds and Silence from the Pentagon.
Shrouding such mass death and destruction in secrecy is a remarkable achievement. When British playwright Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, in the midst of the Iraq War, he titled his Nobel speech “Art, Truth and Politics,” and used it to shine a light on this diabolical aspect of U.S. war-making.
After talking about the hundreds of thousands of killings in Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua, Pinter asked: “Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy,”
“But you wouldn’t know it,” he went on.”It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
But the wars and the killing go on, day after day, year after year, out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. Did you know that the United States and its allies have dropped more than 350,000 bombs and missiles on 9 countries since 2001 (including 14,000 in the current war on Gaza)? That’s an average of 44 airstrikes per day, day in, day out, for 22 years.
Israel, in its present war on Gaza, with children making up more than 40% of the more than 11,000 people killed to date, would surely like to mimic the extraordinary U.S. ability to hide its brutality. But despite Israel’s efforts to impose a media blackout, the massacre is taking place in a small, enclosed, densely-populated urban area, often called an open-air prison, where the world can see a great deal more than usual of how it impacts real people.
Israel has killed a record number of journalists in Gaza, and this appears to be a deliberate strategy, as when U.S. forces targeted journalists in Iraq. But we are still seeing horrifying video and photos of daily new atrocities: dead and wounded children; hospitals struggling to treat the injured; and desperate people fleeing from one place to another through the rubble of their destroyed homes.
Another reason this war is not so well hidden is because Israel is waging it, not the United States. The U.S. is supplying most of the weapons, has sent aircraft carriers to the region, and dispatched U.S. Marine General James Glynn to provide tactical advice based on his experience conducting similar massacres in Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq. But Israeli leaders seem to have overestimated the extent to which the U.S. information warfare machine would shield them from public scrutiny and political accountability.
Unlike in Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa, people all over the world are seeing video of the unfolding catastrophe on their computers, phones and TVs. Netanyahu, Biden and the corrupt “defense analysts” on cable TV are no longer the ones creating the narrative, as they try to tack self-serving narratives onto the horrifying reality we can all see for ourselves.
With the reality of war and genocide staring the world in the face, people everywhere are challenging the impunity with which Israel is systematically violating international humanitarian law.
Michael Crowley and Edward Wong have reported in the New York Times that Israeli officials are defending their actions in Gaza by pointing to U.S. war crimes, insisting that they are simply interpreting the laws of war the same way that the United States has interpreted them in Iraq and other U.S. war zones. They compare Gaza to Fallujah, Mosul and even Hiroshima.
But copying U.S. war crimes is precisely what makes Israel’s actions illegal. And it is the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable that has emboldened Israel to believe it too can kill with impunity.
The United States systematically violates the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force, manufacturing political justifications to suit each case and using its Security Council veto to evade international accountability. Its military lawyers employ unique, exceptional interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which the universal protections the Convention guarantees to civilians are treated as secondary to U.S. military objectives.
The United States fiercely resists the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), to ensure that its exceptional interpretations of international law are never subjected to impartial judicial scrutiny.
When the United States did allow the ICJ to rule on its war against Nicaragua in 1986, the ICJ ruled that its deployment of the “Contras” to invade and attack Nicaragua and its mining of Nicaragua’s ports were acts of aggression in violation of international law, and ordered the United States to pay war reparations to Nicaragua. When the United States declared that it would no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ and failed to pay up, Nicaragua asked the UN Security Council to enforce the reparations, but the U.S. vetoed the resolution.
Atrocities like Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bombing of German and Japanese cities to “unhouse” the civilian population, as Winston Churchill called it, together with the horrors of Germany’s Nazi holocaust, led to the adoption of the new Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, to protect civilians in war zones and under military occupation.
On the 50th anniversary of the Convention in 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is responsible for monitoring international compliance with the Geneva Conventions, conducted a survey to see how well people in different countries understood the protections the Convention provides.
They surveyed people in twelve countries that had been victims of war, in four countries (France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.) that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and in Switzerland where the ICRC is based. The ICRC published the results of the survey in 2000, in a report titled, People on War – Civilians in the Line of Fire.
The survey asked people to choose between a correct understanding of the Convention’s civilian protections and a watered-down interpretation of them that closely resembles that of U.S. and Israeli military lawyers.
The correct understanding was defined by a statement that combatants “must attack only other combatants and leave civilians alone.” The weaker, incorrect statement was that “combatants should avoid civilians as much as possible” as they conduct military operations.
Between 72% and 77% of the people in the other UNSC countries and Switzerland agreed with the correct statement, but the United States was an outlier, with only 52% agreeing. In fact 42% of Americans agreed with the weaker statement, twice as many as in the other countries. There were similar disparities between the United States and the others on questions about torture and the treatment of prisoners of war.
In U.S.-occupied Iraq, the United States’ exceptionally weak interpretations of the Geneva Conventions led to endless disputes with the ICRC and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), which issued damning quarterly human rights reports. UNAMI consistently maintained that U.S. airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas were violations of international law.
For instance, its human rights report for the 2nd quarter of 2007 documented UNAMI’s investigations of 15 incidents in which U.S. occupation forces killed 103 Iraqi civilians, including 27 killed in airstrikes in Khalidiya, near Ramadi, on April 3rd, and 7 children killed in a helicopter attack on an elementary school in Diyala province on May 8th.
UNAMI demanded that “all credible allegations of unlawful killings by MNF (Multi-National Force) forces be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”
A footnote explained, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”
UNAMI also rejected U.S. claims that its widespread killing of civilians was the result of the Iraqi Resistance using civilians as “human shields,” another U.S. propaganda trope that Israel is mimicking today. Israeli accusations of human shielding are even more absurd in the densely populated, confined space of Gaza, where the whole world can see that it is Israel that is placing civilians in the line of fire as they desperately seek safety from Israeli bombardment.
Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are echoing around the world: through the halls of the United Nations; from the governments of traditional U.S. allies like France, Spain and Norway; from a newly united front of previously divided Middle Eastern leaders; and in the streets of London and Washington. The world is withdrawing its consent for a genocidal “two-state solution” in which Israel and the United States are the only two states that can settle the fate of Palestine.
If U.S. and Israeli leaders are hoping that they can squeak through this crisis, and that the public’s habitually short attention span will wash away the world’s horror at the crimes we are all witnessing, that may be yet another serious misjudgment. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1950 in the preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism.
“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/11 ... print.html
Huh, when I saw the title I thought it would be about the US ethnic cleansing/genocide of Native Americans. All of a piece....
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Chris Hedges: The War According to Hamas
November 14, 2023
The Palestinian resistance understands its enemy. It has learned through experience how to fight it. This is not good news for Israel.
Blood Meal – by Mr. Fish.
By Chris Hedges
in Cairo
Original to ScheerPost
Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian resistance leader, shortly before Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, laid down the fundamental rules for warfare against Israel.
The rules by al-Araj, not a member of Hamas, provide the Palestinian lens for the incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza. While Israel’s superior firepower — its air force, missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, naval forces, mechanized units and artillery — make it possible to inflict huge numbers of Palestinian casualties, most of them civilians, while Israel can level whole neighborhoods and turn hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment plants, bakeries, mosques and churches into piles of concrete, this does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.
Al-Araj argued that the fight with Israel cannot be measured with body counts. The Israelis will be able to kill far greater numbers of Palestinians.
Resistant movements, he wrote, always suffer disproportionate losses. In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.”
“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote.
Al-Araj, who led hunger strikes while in Palestine Authority prisons, was long a target for Israel. Israel’s counter-terrorism unit, Yamam, pursued him for months before raiding his home on March 6, 2017, in el-Bireh. After a two-hour gun battle, Israeli forces, which fired rockets into the building, burst inside and executed him at close range. He was 31.
Bassel al-Araj, photographer unknown. (Wikimedia Commons, Fair use)
The fight with Israel, al-Araj reminded Palestinians, must “follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza.” Never defend “fixed points and borders.” Draw the enemy into an ambush, accomplished by light resistance and tactical withdrawals. Strike the flanks and the rear.
The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter. The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.
Al-Qassam Brigades
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, says it partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza, including more than 27 tanks and vehicles in the past two days.
On Nov. 11, the Al-Qassam Brigade says it lured Israeli soldiers to a burning car in the West Bank and blew up their vehicles with an IED.
On Nov. 10 the Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, say they allowed the Israelis to advance without significant opposition during the day.
In the evening they ambushed the Israeli forces west of Tal al-Hawa, in the areas around Al-Shifa Hospital, west of the Al-Shati refugee camp and west of Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza strip. Israel unleashed a heavy bombardment, the Palestinian fighters said, in an attempt to rescue its soldiers. Israel reportedly suffered high numbers of casualties.
On Nov. 9, Al-Qassam Brigades say they ambushed Israeli soldiers in Juhr al-Dik, targeting them with an anti-personnel rocket. The Israeli soldiers were killed, they said, at “point blank range.”
On Nov. 6, the Al-Qassam Brigades say they destroyed five Israeli tanks with Yassin 105 rockets in northwest Gaza City.
On Nov. 2 Al-Qassam Brigades claimed they destroyed six tanks and two military vehicles in one hour northwest of Gaza City. “The number of casualties is significantly higher than what the enemy’s leadership has announced,” said Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Members of Al-Quds brigades parade through the Gaza, January 2022. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Israel has banned the foreign press from reporting from Gaza. It has killed over 40 Palestinian journalists and media workers. It also has instituted prolonged blockages of the internet and cell phone service. No doubt, this heavy handed censorship is done to limit the horrific images of civilian casualties. But I suspect it is also intended to block images of a ground offensive that is tougher, more protracted and more costly than Israel anticipated.
Israel invests tremendous resources in its propaganda campaign, getting networks such as CNN to repeat back its talking points. Jake Tapper should be an honorary Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman.
Al-Araj warned about the attempt by Israel to demoralize fighters by posting photos and videos of Israelis occupying landmarks and public spaces.
A video being shared on social media shows the raising of the Israeli flag on a beach in Gaza. A group of soldiers surround the flag and sing the Israeli national anthem.
In October last year, Jewish settlers occupied the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, where a Jewish settler, Barach Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians in 1994 as they prayed. The settlers held a music festival and dance party in the mosque. They hung an Israeli flag from the roof. Videos have circulated that denigrate and ridicule Palestinians.
Al-Araj wrote that Israel’s propaganda is designed to instill panic, demonize Palestinians and spread defeatism.
“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” said Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in 1948, facilitated by massacres, the raping of Palestinian women and girls, and the razing of entire villages by Zionist militias.
“From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.” “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end,” he concluded.
Israel equates the Palestinians with the Nazis. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, in an interview on Sky News on Oct. 12 said, “We’re fighting Nazis.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas in a press conference with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as “the new Nazis.”
The IDF posted a tweet that read: “Never again is NOW. IDF forces discovered a copy of Hitler’s infamous book ‘Mein Kampf’ — translated into Arabic — in a child’s bedroom used as a Hamas terrorist base in Gaza. The book was discovered among the personal belongings of one of the terrorists, featuring annotations and highlights. Hamas embraces the ideology of Hitler, the one responsible for the annihilation of the Jewish people.”
The message is clear. Palestinians embody absolute evil.
Israel releases images that show Palestinians and Palestinian prisoners being denigrated and abused by Israelis. At the same time, Israel presents itself as compassionate.
A video titled “IDF Soldiers Give Gazan Civilians Water After Hamas Refused,” was recently circulated. The video, clearly staged, reminded me of the footage of the Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic who handed out candy to children in Srebrenica in 1995 before overseeing the execution of 8,000 men and boys.
“The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate some symbols [of resistance], and all of this is part of psychological warfare,” al-Araj wrote.
“Those who have died and those who will die will never affect the resistance’s system and cohesion because the structure and formations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. Their goal is to influence the resistance’s support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance.”
In every war, information is weaponized. But to rely exclusively on the Israeli narrative is to be deceived, not only about the war crimes Israel carries out but the nature of the war itself. The Palestinians understand their foe. They have had a lot of experience. They knew this was coming. I suspect the fighting in Gaza will continue for a long time. Israel paid a high price on Oct. 7 when Palestinian fighters breached its borders. It will pay an even higher price in
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/14/c ... -to-hamas/
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Gaza. 11/14/2023
November 14, 11:19
Israel will soon be able to achieve the goal of completely encircling Gaza, moving along the coast and completely cutting off the city along the surface from the rest of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, Hamas retains certain capabilities to connect Gaza with the rest of the enclave through underground tunnels.
Talk that Hamas is fleeing Gaza somewhere is of a propaganda nature, since the very nature of the city’s encirclement excludes a serious retreat of the main forces of Hamas and Islamic Jihad anywhere. Therefore, the fighting in Gaza and Beit Hanoun continues.
Hamas's calculations, as before, will be based on defense, relying on tunnels and residential buildings in order to maximally delay the resistance and inflict the maximum possible losses on the IDF in the face of increasing external pressure on Israel. It is therefore no coincidence that a number of Israeli officials have stated that the IDF's time for operations in the Gaza Strip is limited.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8764239.html
Google Translator
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Israelis Keep Hurting Their Own PR Interests By Talking
As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Caitlin Johnstone
November 14, 2023
One problem Israel keeps running into is how the institutionalized dehumanization of Palestinians which keeps the apartheid state operational also causes Israelis to say things that non-Israelis will find extremely shocking, which hurts Israel’s PR interests.
We saw this illustrated in a recent New Yorker interview with Daniella Weiss, a leader of the push to build illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Weiss stated frankly and unapologetically that she supports apartheid, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have any sovereignty anywhere, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have voting rights, that she wants the population of Gaza to be replaced by Israeli settlements, and that she is untroubled by the killing of children in Gaza because she feels it’s being done in the interests of Israeli children.
Asked where the Palestinians in Gaza should go, Weiss replied, “To Sinai, to Egypt, to Turkey.” When the interviewer said the Palestinians are not Egyptian or Turkish, she contended that “The Ukrainians are not French, but when the war started they went to many countries.”
To the question “When you see Palestinian children dying, what’s your emotional reaction as a human being?”, Weiss answered, “I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.”
Asked if she believes human rights are not universal and should not apply equally to everyone, Weiss replied “That’s right.”
But perhaps the most revealing statement Weiss made was her entirely truthful explanation of what drives the Israeli push to colonize Palestinian land:
“In Israel, there’s a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years. The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”
That one paragraph right there will teach you more about the present-day realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict than an entire year of watching CNN. It’s horrid, and it’s jarring to hear it spoken out loud in a favorable way… but it’s true.
This sort of thing has been happening for years. Israelis who’ve been marinating in a self-validating echo chamber of Zionist ideology which dehumanizes Palestinians and normalizes oppression and abuse don’t think twice about saying things that make Israel look bad on the world stage, because to them it’s just the standard status quo way of looking at things.
In 2021 a settler from New York named Yaakov Fauci made headlines around the world with his candid statements to a Palestinian family whose Sheikh Jarrah home he was squatting in.
Fauci, apparently fully aware that he was being filmed, famously replied to the family’s complaints that he was stealing their home by shamelessly telling them, “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it.”
And the thing is, he wasn’t lying. He was truthfully describing an abusive dynamic in apartheid Israel where Palestinians are being forced out of their homes in order to control ethnic demographics and advance the agenda outlined above by Daniella Weiss. If he’d been a trained propagandist for the Israeli state he never would have made such comments on camera, but because he was just a Zionism-indocrinated member of the Israeli public he saw no reason to hold his tongue.
Some years ago The Empire Files’ Abby Martin put together a devastating critique of the Zionist ideology just by going around the streets of Jerusalem with a camera and a microphone and talking to Jewish Israelis about their views on Palestinians. Over and over and over again they shared their support for tyranny, murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing in their own words and without hesitation, never thinking that their words could be used to harm Israel’s image, because to them these were just normal things that they said all the time in their day to day life.
You see the same sort of thing when Israelis are filmed sitting in lawn chairs to watch and cheer IDF bombing operations on Palestinian neighborhoods, during which a woman once told the press “I’m just a little bit fascist” after advocating the total destruction of Gaza City.
Every time this happens it sends viral video footage around the internet and does real damage to the world’s perception of Israel. That’s a big part of why Israel is struggling to control the narrative about the Gaza massacre today, which is in turn being exacerbated by more incendiary statements by Israelis, not just from the general public but from within the Israeli government itself.
On Saturday Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter casually referred to the violent forced expulsion of Palestinians from the northern half of the Gaza Strip as “Nakba 2023”, a reference to the violent forced expulsion which was inflicted on Palestinians at the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.
Haaretz reports:
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter — a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director — said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip — half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”
Dichter’s comments are surprising not only because Israel has been publicly framing the mass displacement in Gaza as a measure taken solely to protect civilians, but also because the Israeli government has long officially denied that the Nakba ever happened, even passing laws forbidding its history to be taught in schools.
[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1723538810221338973[/youtube]
Even as western officials hasten to frame Israel’s actions as a defensive and measured response to the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli officials have been falling all over themselves in a mad rush to make those western officials look like liars.
When talking about the Gaza assault Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made headlines by invoking the biblical nation of Amalek, whose people God instructed the Israelites to commit total genocide against. The first book of Samuel contains the instructions, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
President Isaac Herzog insinuated last month that all civilians in Gaza are legitimate military targets because they failed to overthrow Hamas, saying, “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When announcing the total siege on Gaza which would see the enclave cut off from electricity, food, water and fuel, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant stated that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel would turn Gaza into a “city of tents” and that Israel’s “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in its bombing campaign.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said last month that “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world is showing for the Palestinian people and is actually showing for these horrible, inhuman animals who have done the worst atrocities that this century has seen.”
“Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified,” The Economist cites an Israeli general saying last month. “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly.”
“Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal,” a major general named Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli newspaper, adding, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
Israel’s allies keep trying to portray it as a rational actor and a positive force in the world, but if you listen to Israelis themselves you get a very different understanding of what this murderous apartheid state is actually about.
As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/11 ... y-talking/
Nobody else wants to say it, but I'm a nobody, and I will. These Zionists are Nazis, just like the so-called 'Ukrainian nationalist'. The targets of their genocidal fury are different, but that's all. May they all reap what they have sown.
THE FIRST EVER PRIDE FLAG RAISED IN GAZA!
