Palestine

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 26, 2024 10:55 am

Hezbollah Paralyzes the North: Two Million “Israeli” Settlers in Firing Zone
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 24, 2024
Al-Ahed News

Image

Hezbollah Paralyzes the North – Two Million “Israeli” Settlers in Firing ZoneThe “Israeli” enemy media confirmed, commenting on the missile fire executed by the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon on Sunday, September 22, 2024, that Hezbollah has effectively “paralyzed the north”.

The enemy’s media acknowledged the death of a settler in a “traffic accident” while fleeing from a missile fired by Hezbollah in one of the northern settlements. Four other settlers were reported injured due to Hezbollah’s fire, and “Rambam” Hospital in occupied Haifa announced the arrival of five casualties.

Additionally, two buildings in “Kiryat Bialik” were damaged, and an “Israeli” media platform reported that entire homes in the settlement and surrounding areas were ablaze. The enemy also admitted that a missile fell in the “Krayot” region, north of Haifa, resulting in fires breaking out in the city and its surroundings due to the missile barrages launched by Hezbollah.

“Israeli” media reported that Hezbollah launched over 120 missiles toward the north in recent hours, with approximately 30 of those aimed at the “Krayot” region since morning. Sirens were continuously sounding across the north, particularly in several industrial areas.

“Israeli” Army Radio emphasized that Hezbollah “carefully chose the targets it aimed at and the counter-message it intended to convey.”

Hezbollah Expands Missile Launch Range

In light of recent developments, “Israeli” media confirmed that Hezbollah has “expanded the range of missile launches to 60 km,” putting two million settlers within the range of Resistance fire. “Israeli” Channel 13 noted that areas targeted by Hezbollah missiles, such as Nasiriyah, Afula and “Migdal HaEmek”, were not included in the guidelines provided to settlers as a precaution against Hezbollah strikes. This indicates that “Israel’s” estimates had ruled out those areas as potential targets.

“Israeli” media also reported that the occupation military may impose tighter restrictions on Haifa and its surroundings due to the expanded range of missile barrages from Lebanon. It was announced that school sessions would be suspended in Akka [“Akko”], Tabariyya [“Tiberias”], “Nahariya”, and Safad [“Safed”] following the missile strikes on the north.

These reports followed the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon’s operation, which targeted the “Ramat David” base and airport twice early on Sunday, firing dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles in support of Gaza and in response to the “Israeli” recurring attacks on various Lebanese regions, which resulted in civilian casualties.

The Resistance also targeted the “Israeli” Rafael military-industrial complex, known for its electronic means and equipment, located in the “Zvolen” region north of the occupied city of Haifa, using dozens of Fadi 1, Fadi 2 and Katyusha rockets.

The Resistance emphasized that this operation was conducted in support of Gaza and as an initial response to the brutal massacre committed by the occupation in various Lebanese regions on Tuesday and Wednesday, targeting pagers and wireless devices.

Field sources confirmed that the “Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles are being used for the first time” since the onset of confrontations on October 8, 2023. Notably, the support front that “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to halt “is expanding in terms of range and targets”.

Yemen Warns of “Surprises” Deep Inside Zionist “Settlers’ Den”

Image

Yemen Warns of “Surprises” Deep Inside Zionist Entity, Says Will Pound “Settlers’ Den”Yemen’s Defense Minister, Mohammed Nasser Al-Atafi, announced that the country’s armed forces have prepared surprises for enemy forces, affirming that they will persist in striking targets within “Israeli”-occupied territories using various types of weaponry.

“Military institutions responsible for the preparation, training and renovation of our military-industrial systems in order to create new readiness for changing developments are speedily underway,” he said, speaking on Sunday at the graduation ceremony at officers’ college.

“We are aiming to train a military-defense force capable of imposing its political and military equations [on the enemy] and defend the sovereignty of the Republic of Yemen all across its realm,” He added.

“We are aiming to continuously strike painful blows deep inside the Zionist enemy’s [military formations].”

“This way, before the enemy conducts more strikes, it will think about the many repercussions of its stupidity,” Al-Atafi noted.

He went on to say that Yemenis were monitoring the details of the political, military and geopolitical variables in the region, adding that the armed forces of the country were now ready to face all challenges.

The Yemeni defense minister said the country’s armed forces had already “knocked on the doors of occupied ‘Jaffa’ [Yafa] and Umm al-Rashrash [port of ‘Eilat’]” and were now ready to destroy the Zionists’ “den.”

He also said, “We will not hesitate to attack the enemy with ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, in addition to drones. We are prepared for any sort of confrontation.”

Al-Atafi said, “We vow that more surprises are in store for the criminal Zionist enemy that will cool the hearts of the true believers.”

The minister concluded by warning that “those who have kept the [Yemeni] nation under siege for the 10th year, and are hostile towards them” that they “must understand that our strategic patience has decreased and this is dangerous for them.”

He called on the enemy aggressors and attackers in Yemen to make plans to exit Yemen without more ado. “We warn them that they will taste the bitterness of our military forces preparations.”

In similar remarks, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Field Marshal Mahdi Mohammad Al-Mashat said on Friday that Yemen’s enemies are to be shocked in coming days.

Al-Mashat praised the Yemeni armed forces’ success in striking “Israeli” military targets inside “Tel Aviv”.

He noted the recently launched Palestine 2 hypersonic missile had bypassed and penetrated all layers of American, British and “Israeli” aerial systems.

“Our operations will continue as long as the aggression and siege on Gaza persist,” he said.

Al-Mashat also reiterated Yemen’s unwavering and principled stance in support of the oppressed Palestinian people until the occupied land is liberated from “Israeli” occupation.

“No power in the world will deter us from this decision, regardless of the cost or the challenges,” he added.

Al-Mashat also emphasized Yemen’s full commitment to achieving a just and honorable peace.

“The only solution is to approach peace with sincere intentions,” he concluded.

Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement’s leader, Sayyed Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, blamed the United States on Saturday for “Israeli” crimes in Palestine.

He said Washington offers its full support to the “Israeli” entity and is willing to act against any Arab country.

The Yemeni nation has voiced its full support for Palestine’s struggle against the “Israeli” occupation.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/ ... ring-zone/

Human Rights Lawyers Renew Calls for the Release of 10,000 Palestinian Prisoners of War
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 23, 2024
Ana Vračar

Image
Khalida Jarrar is one of 10,000 Palestinians that has been arrested by Israel in the last year as part of a massive crackdown.

Legal experts and human rights advocates renew their call for solidarity with Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel since October 2023.


Since October 7, 2023, approximately 10,000 Palestinians from across the West Bank and other occupied territories have been imprisoned by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in what human rights lawyers describe as an unprecedented assault on all branches of the resistance movement. Thousands more have been forcibly disappeared from the Gaza Strip, with little information available about their whereabouts.

Amid the increased use of torture and detention of the Palestinian people by Israel, international solidarity movements have intensified campaigns calling for their release.

Among those recently detained from the occupied West Bank is Khalida Jarrar, a prominent human and women’s rights activist, who has faced persecution by Israel on multiple occasions, and is now being held in Neve Tirza prison.

At a briefing on Palestinian political prisoners, organized by the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), Tala Nasir from Addameer Association for Prisoner Support and Human Rights, along with human rights lawyer Bilal Naammeh, highlighted the IOF’s violations of basic human rights among prisoners. Nasir pointed out that many arrests in the past year have targeted specific groups of professionals who play an important role in building the material basis of the community, including engineers and health workers. However, anyone can face arrest for something as minor as posting on social media, which occupation forces often manipulate into allegations of supporting resistance groups, including Hamas.

Israel is attempting to practically ban all political participation by Palestinians, Naammeh noted, a threat reinforced through military courts and remote trials designed to instill fear in the population. Since October 2023, these practices have become even more severe than before. Naammeh described how, in court, Israeli lawyers often accuse defendants of being involved in the resistance. When defense lawyers challenge these accusations due to insufficient evidence, they can be sanctioned or temporarily barred from representing clients.

As lawyers are currently the only point of contact between prisoners and the outside world, restricting their access—whether through sanctions or lengthy delays—has profound consequences.

Conditions inside Israeli prisons have also worsened significantly. Access to prisoners is limited, even for representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Prisoners face severe shortages of food and water, which has led to weight loss of up to 30 kilograms per person, and are allowed only one hour outside their cells each day, leaving them isolated for the rest of the time, according to Nasir.

The lack of water and hygiene has led to mass outbreaks of disease and infection, including scabies. According to Naammeh, some prisoners with scabies have been tied to their beds to prevent them from scratching. Other reports indicate that the IOF moves prisoners with scabies between sections in order to purposely exacerbate the contagion. Despite the widespread health crisis, medical care remains out of reach for most. Naammeh highlighted that even the most pressing health issues can take up to two months to receive basic medical attention, leaving prisoners in prolonged suffering.

Conditions in the camps where Palestinians from Gaza are held are even worse, the two advocates suggested, but up-to-date information is nearly impossible to obtain. The only reports come from Israeli media or the testimonies of those who have been released. Nasir recounted stories of prisoners enduring extreme torture, including rape. Witnesses described prisoners being forced to bark for food and given only thin mattresses for six hours a day, making proper rest impossible. This treatment extends even to those who are supposed to enjoy specific protection under international law, such as health workers. Nasir explained that dozens of health workers abducted from Gaza are being held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, meaning they could remain imprisoned until the end of the conflict under such conditions.

In response to Israel’s blatant disregard for human rights and international law, Addameer and the IPA renewed their call for the immediate release of all political prisoners and urged international activists to escalate solidarity efforts, including by insisting on adherence to recent International Court of Justice rulings. The organizers reminded participants that even the simplest acts of solidarity can contribute meaningfully to the broader struggle for liberation.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/F04XUG2KJlQ?list=PLjdRD ... APO9FFeyyX[/youtube]

Episode 1, with Baraa Odeh, of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. Ms Odeh worked as a human rights defender for the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) when she was abducted by the Zionist military on March 3rd, 2024, while crossing back into Palestine from Jordan’s King Hussein bridge, and held in captivity without trial or charges until her release on June 4th, 2024.

Episode 2, with Sumoud Mtair of Dura, al-Khalil (watch on Rumble) , speaks about the martyrdom of her sister Ahed in January 2024, her detention in March, the conditions in the infamous Damon prison where she was detained, the situation of Gaza’s female prisoners she met, and more.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/v0TqWXLPA_c?list=PLjdRD ... APO9FFeyyX[/youtube]

Episode 3, with Abdul-Majeed Hassan, former President of the Bir Zeit University Student Council, who was detained four times by the Zionist regime as well as once by the Palestinian Authority under its “security coordination,” on his experience and the targeting of the student movement.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/ ... rs-of-war/

******

Israeli settlers publish map of south Lebanon with Hebrew names

Jewish settlers in Israel advocate conquering, stealing, and settling territory in southern Lebanon as Israel now does in the West Bank and Gaza

News Desk

SEP 25, 2024

Image
An Israeli Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank (Photo credit: WAFA)

The Movement for Settlement in Southern Lebanon has published a map with “the new Hebrew names for the settlements of Southern Lebanon,” based on the current names of the Lebanese towns and villages.

The Israeli movement seeks to promote the conquest, ethnic cleansing, and settlement of southern Lebanon by Israeli Jews, just as Israel has been doing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The map was published amid the Israeli army's massive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon that has killed over 500 people in just three days and displaced tens of thousands more who have fled north toward Beirut.

The Movement for Settlement in Southern Lebanon published this map, featuring "The new Hebrew names for the settlements of Southern Lebanon" based on the current names of the Lebanese towns and villages.
Image

Jewish Currents reports that in the movement's worldview, “the Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon will begin with a war with Hezbollah – which they view not as a last resort barring a diplomatic solution, but as the only reasonable path forward.”

Political analyst James Dorsey notes that the movement claims a Biblical justification for the conquest of Lebanon in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 3, verse 25. As Moses appeals to God to allow him to enter the Promised Land, he asks, “Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan – that fine hill country and Lebanon.”

Uri Tzafon (“Awaken North”), an Israeli group demanding the conquest and Jewish settlement of Lebanon, sent drones and balloons into southern Lebanon in June carrying eviction notices to the region's residents.

“The announcements make clear to the residents that they are in the Land of Israel, which belongs to the Jewish people, and that they are required to evacuate immediately,” the group said in a statement.


Dorsey notes further that “Uri Tzafon echoes a principle that is becoming more prominent among Israelis, including soldiers serving in Gaza.”

In November 2023, as the bombing and invasion of Gaza was well underway, Captain Amichai Friedman, the rabbi of the Nahal brigade's military base, stated Israel's intention to not only take Gaza but Lebanon as well. “This land is ours. All of it. Including Gaza. Including Lebanon. The entire Promised Land,” he told a group of soldiers.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-s ... brew-names

Settlers injured by Hezbollah rockets as Israeli army readies Lebanon ground invasion

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said last week that a ground invasion would heavily backfire and turn into ‘hell’ for Israel

News Desk

SEP 25, 2024

Image
Damage resulting from Hezbollah rockets fired at Safad. 25 September, 2024. (Photo credit: X)

At least two Israeli settlers were wounded on 25 September, with one in serious condition, during a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Saar settlement in western Galilee.


Hebrew news outlet Channel 12 reported that two Israeli settlers were doing renovation work when sirens began sounding.

The Israeli army said 30 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward the western Galilee.


“In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, in support of their valiant and honorable resistance, and in defense of Lebanon and its people, the Islamic Resistance fighters bombed the Sa'ar settlement with a barrage of rockets on Wednesday 09/25/2024,” Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon, marking its fifth operation of the day.

Hezbollah announced minutes later a rocket attack on the Kiryat Motzkin settlement in the Haifa area.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Lebanese resistance group fired heavy barrages of rockets at the Galilee and Haifa areas.


The operation came as Israeli jets continued indiscriminate attacks across Lebanon on 25 September and as Tel Aviv warned that a ground operation in southern Lebanon was imminent.

“We have entered another phase of the campaign, we need to be very strongly prepared for an entry ground maneuver and action,” said the Israeli army’s Northern Command, headed by Ori Gordin, on Wednesday.

Gordin has previously called for a ground incursion into Lebanon aimed at establishing a buffer zone in the country, pushing Hezbollah to behind the Litani river, and securing the return of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from Israel’s northern settlements since the start of the war.

The Economist reported on 22 September, citing military sources, that Israel is planning a ground invasion of Lebanon but is still not ready, as Tel Aviv currently does not have the forces for such an operation despite recent redeployments.

“I say to Netanyahu and Gallant, you will not be able to return the [settlers] to the north,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech last week. Trying to enter Lebanon with ground troops and attempting to create a buffer zone will be “hell” for Tel Aviv’s forces, Nasrallah added.

Referring to Israel’s Northern Command, Nasrallah said, “This idiot, the commander of the northern region in the enemy’s army, suggested establishing a security belt … We hope that they will enter our lands, we welcome this … because … we will have a historic opportunity that … will have major effects on this battle.”

“What you will be doing will increase the displacement of these people,” he said.

https://thecradle.co/articles/settlers- ... d-invasion

******

Fog of (Dis)Information in Escalating Israel-Lebanon Conflict
Posted on September 24, 2024 by Yves Smith

As many commentators have noted, Israel’s exploding pager/walkie-talkie attacks, followed by air strikes on a Hezbollah command post and then broadly across Lebanon are a gambit to try to get Lebanon to respond in a manner that would get the US to come in more formally on Israel’s side as the Axis of Resistance is inflicting costs on Israel over its Gaza genocide.

However, the reporting on the large scale terrorist act of the communication-devices-turned-bombs illustrates how corrupted this information environment is. Israel and its cheerleaders have attempted to justify this act as part of an intended military operation, to disrupt Hezbollah’s operations. The only “bad” thing was they executed prematurely.

In fact, as we’ll unpack further below, this tech-bombing was even worse than you imagined. The military wing of Hezbollah does not use pager or walkie talkies. They’ve used their own fiber optic network since 2006, and otherwise rely on couriers. These devices were in the hands of civilian Hezbollah workers, such as members of its large social services effort. Yes, military members may have been hurt too, but that was dumb luck, like being in proximity to blown-up pager-user or picking up a ringing device on behalf of someone else.

Needless to say, this also means that the device attacks were pure terrorism, with no remotely colorable military purpose whatsoever. Remember, the press has brayed that Israel has been working on this caper for 15 years. But Hezbollah moved its military comms to fiber optic before that. And Israel surely knew that. So that means this entire enterprise was from its outset a terrorist scheme and never a military operation.

But why should that be a surprise? This is how Israel has rolled since its Stern Gang days.

Because we are in what Lambert would call an overly-dynamic situation, rather than attempt a state-of-play account, it seemed more productive to alert readers to how the deeply polluted state of Anglosphere reporting. It should be no surprise that it is coming to resemble Western reporting on the Ukraine conflict, as overstating Israeli successes and underplaying or ignoring Hezbollah/Axis of Resistance wins.

This matters because if Israel’s efforts to subdue the Axis of Resistance fall short, which seems likely, the campaign to get the US committed to the conflict will only intensify. Mind you, in reality, it’s not as if we could do all that much even if we wanted to, ex possibly commit more air power. As Associated Press pointed out yesterday, the US has only 40,000 men in the entire theater. They presumably already have things to do. It takes 6+ months to move more men and the needed logistical support in were we to deploy more than say some Special Forces types. And the US is low on materiel world-wide, thanks to having drained our stockpiles to back Ukraine. For instance, one thing the US is short on globally is Patriot air defense missiles, and at least as of now, we are prioritizing Ukraine.

The general tendency for Western reporting to favor our allies dovetails with Israeli press censorship. The Israeli government finds it important to restore if at all possible the image of the IDF as formidable, both to restore its citizens’ once central belief that Israel was safe place for Jews, and to project power in the region.

Yours truly in now finding it necessary to listen to Alastair Crooke’s Monday morning talks on Judge Napolitano to sanity check Israeli claims. Readers may recall that a few weeks ago, we showcased one of these interviews immediately after some much-ballyhooed Israel air strikes into Lebanon. The claim was that Israel had sent in 100 planes and destroyed Hezbollah rocket launchers right before a planned Hezbollah attack, defanging it.

This is what Crooke reported:

Whatever you’ve read is almost certainly wrong. It’s a narrative…..First of all, it all happened at around 4 o’clock in the morning on Sunday. The Israelis started to see people moving in Lebanon and moving towards platforms. Hezbollah was planning the operation to fire drones and rockets at 5:15 on Sunday morning. And Israel started to, an attack, a direct attack. It involved I think about a hundred aircraft.

But contrary to what the Israeli propagandists at the IDF are saying, and I know this not from Hezbollah but I know this from inside Lebanon, people who are on the ground there, it was chaotic twenty minutes. Israel just bombed various valleys where they imagined the ballistic missiles were. But they’d been cleared out of there some time ago. There were no ballistic missiles. You can check that, there are people on the ground who know what’s happened. There are no missiles. So when they said they destroyed thousands of missile launchers, this is a complete lie. Because first of all, there are no missiles, no ballistic missiles, no large missiles south of the Litani River. What you have is drones and small rockets. And none of these have launchers. And they destroyed none of them. It was just a show, a show of force and it only lasted about twenty minutes…..

On top of that, the Hezbollah attack that Sunday morning, in retaliation for the assassination of senior Hezbollah military official Fuad Shukr in Beirut, did take place. Israel immediately clamped down on all reports. At first, Israel claimed the Hezbollah strikes were ineffective (there was Twitter fun about Hezbollah striking a chicken coop, which does seem to have occurred). However, it finally came out that Hezbollah was successful in striking a building in the military airport near Tel Avis that housed Unit 8200, which is akin to our NSA. Hezbollah believed Unit 8200 planned the killing of Fuad Shukr. “Successful” as in some Unit 8200 members died (there is speculation that Hezbollah got a very top level official; I’ve not seen anything convincing either way).

Now let us turn to the series of exchanges that started with barbarism-by-pager. Per Moon of Alabama:

Last week Israel launched a terror attack on Hizbullah operatives who were using pagers to receive alarms and orders. These people were part of the civil administration side of Hizbullah and not its armed fighters.

But since a new trope coming out of the bogus claim that the Hezbollah militia used pagers and didn’t even inspect them is (just like Russians!) that this proves that they are incompetent. So let’s again turn to Alastair Crooke:

The notion that Hizbullah’s communications are crippled is wishful thinking that fails to distinguish between what may be called civil-society Hizbullah, and its military arm.

Hizbullah is a civil movement, as well as a military power. It is the Authority over a significant slice of Beirut and a country – a responsibility that requires the Movement to provide civil order and security. The pagers and radios were used primarily by its civil security forces (effectively a civil police managing security and order in Hizbullah-controlled parts of Lebanon), as well as used by its logistics and support branches. Since these personnel are not combat forces, they were not seen to require truly secure communications.

Even before the 2006 war, Hizbullah ended all cellphone and landline communications in favour of their own dedicated optic cable system and hand-courier messaging for the military cadres. In short, Hizbullah’s communications at the civil level took a major hit, but this will not unduly impact upon its military forces. For years, the Movement has operated on the basis that units could continue with combat, even in the event of a complete rupture of optic communications, or the loss of a HQ.

So again in a close parallel to Ukraine, the real reason for this attack appears to be to try to break the will of the long-suffering Lebanese people and turn them against Hezbollah, just as some collective Ukraine officials fantasize that if they cause enough pain to Russian civilians, they will turn on Putin. At least so far, Lebanese citizens instead appear to be pulling together. Journalist Laith Marouf, now in Beirut, told Rachel Blevins that thousands of citizens came to hospitals offering to donate one of their eyes to a victim of the cyber attack (starting at 9:20). Even though that’s beyond current medical technology, it’s an indication of the depth of public support. Marouf also contends that the Lebanese know what they are up against, that wars of decolonization take years.

A second leg of the attack, coming shortly after the device carnage, was an assassination attempt via precision air strike in Beirut against Hezbollah paramilitary leader Ali Karaki, reportedly one of the top three on Israel’s kill list. The press cheered his death. That turns out to have been premature. From Military Watch:

A senior commander for the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, Ali Karaki, has survived an Israeli assassination attempt, after a precision strike on a military headquarters in the capital Beirut was launched to eliminate him… Confirmation of his survival follows multiple reports from Western media outlets, citing Lebanese military sources, that the commander was eliminated during an Israeli attack on Beirut’s Madi neighbourhood.

It was a nice touch for Military Watch to point out that the initial Anglosphere accounts cited (or made up) “Lebanese military sources”. Admittedly, it is possible this was disinfo while Karaki was being moved to safety.

Now to the next Israel move, widespread air strikes that extended into Syria. The claim was that they were targeting rocket launchers, So far, they have killed nearly 500. But as for the rockets, we again turn to Alastair Crooke, here on Judge Napolitano. Starting at 9:00:



But for the moment, they have bet on escalation dominance, “escalating to de-escalate,” first the pagers, then the assassination on its heels, and then they’re banking on intelligence and firepower to push Hezbollah into an agreement. But first of all, there was no agreement. Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon but he was acting more for the Israelis and for the Americans, but it was a complete failure, the attempt for some sort of diplomatic route. I mean there isn’t one. It’s been talked about, but there was no agreement, Americans know that, Israelis know that too. So this is really what they are betting on is they can either push Hezbollah in. And to this extent, we’re seeing this massive air attacks taking place in the south and in the Bekka, that you just spoke about. But really what we’re talking about is ineffectiveness of air firepower in these circumstances, when put against deep, deep buried rockets and missiles. In the beginning, in ’23, Hezbollah was looking at losing about 10 men a day. Now they’re not really losing any. There were about 2 Hezbollah who were supposed to be killed but they were religious figures, they din’t have to do with Hezbollah per se, they sadly will be civilian losses.

They are heavily bombing the area, and although it’s being presented as being by intelligence as if they’re knocking out rocket launchers, that too is pretty much bunk. Because they too basically try and find launchers by combing the forest, because this is mountain area, forest area. Very difficult terrain. Deep valleys, little nooks and crannies. So they film all of this, looking for movements, and then they use artificial intelligence detection methodology to try to find where someone has moved. It’s not done by spies or intelligence per se. It is done by using AI, again, to spot some sort of movement. And Hezbollah for years, since 2006, have been adept at putting up ghosts and fake missile launchers, fake men, moving them around, fooling the Israelis who are basically bombing every spot in the forest, hills and valleys where it thinks possibly going to be a rocket launcher….

Crooke also stressed that even the death of a senior commander would only be a tactical loss. As 7:40, he explains that every top Hezbollah officer trains his successor.

Crooke turned to the Hezbollah response, which is to increase the range of territory in Israel that they consider to be fair game for attack. At 14:20:

Hezbollah has escalated too, just to be clear. Because one of the things they are facing again is Israel has put another big blackout notice on everything, no filming, no photos, no reporting at all from anywhere north of Haifa, which is in the center, right on the coast of Israel. No news is allowed to be presented. But you do get some because there are Israelis in the settlements that are sending videos. The point here is there is major destruction in Haifa, a major port. Hezbollah’s reported an attack on an airbase, there are attacks going on, there are rocket continuing. So with all this bombing, all this so-called carpet bombing, it’s actually quite ineffective. It’s not stopping Hezbollah. I emphasize here htat we are seeing rockets, [not sure of name] 1 and 2, which are probably similar to a HIMARS. They’re not guided, they’re not smart. Hezbollah hasn’t even begun to use its smart missiles. They’re using the rockets to create destruction of houses. Nearly a million Israelis were in the shelters last night [Sunday].

Dmitry Liscaris claims in this interview (at 15:13) that Hezbollah attacks took out one of Israel’s three airbases, the Ramat David airbase in the Golan Heights, and a major arms making plant, Rafael Military Industries complex, which makes air defense equipment, as well as hitting targets near Tel Aviv. He also said waves of drones were coming from Iraq.

It has not gotten as much mention in the (far from comprehensive) press I follow, but Twitter does confirm the drone attack:



Without trying to give a comprehensive account of the latest strikes and counter-strikes, Arab News reports a new attack on Beirut killed a different top Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Qubaisi. With the news blackout in Israel, we don’t (and won’t for a while) have much news on damage and deaths there. Even though Crooke depicted Hezbollah as making a discrete, as opposed to open-ended escalation, such niceties may not count for much. A new update from Laith Malouf at Garland Nixon troubling points out that in 36 hours, Israel has killed more Lebanese than it did in the 33 days of its 2006 war with Lebanon. And it seems to be targeting hospitals as well as other civilian infrastructure. Are they attempting Gaza on a bigger scale?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09 ... flict.html

*****

Media Complicit in the Crimes of Israel
September 25, 2024

The pro-Israel bias in Western reporting makes the media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, writes Jonathan Cook, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank town of Qabatiya — it’s unclear whether the men are dead or near-dead — is being barely reported by the Western media, even though it was videoed from at least three different angles and a reporter from the main U.S. news agency Associated Press witnessed it.

AP’s news feed is accessed by all Western establishment media, so they all know.

The Israeli soldiers killed, mutilated and humiliated the bodies of three Palestinians in Qabatia ( Jenin area) today and threw their bodies from a high building to the ground in a savage and inhuman manner. pic.twitter.com/0umG45ZhPH

— Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti (@MustafaBarghou1) September 19, 2024


[AP’s report includes a video of a fourth body thrown by three Israeli soldiers from an adjacent rooftop.]

Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, [or refrain from describing them as “war crimes” even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately — even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)

Remember, that same media never fails to highlight — or simply makes up — any crime Palestinians are accused of, such as those non-existent “beheaded babies.”

AP itself treats this latest atrocity in the West Bank as no big deal. It reports simply that it may be part of a “pattern of excessive force” by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.

That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP’s preferred characterisation of the group’s reference to a pattern not of “excessive force” but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

AP makes sure to give Israel’s pretext for why it is committing war crimes: “Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy.”

But it forgets yet again to mention why that “militancy” exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it — once again illegally — has drafted in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.

AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel’s occupying soldiers, including “militantly.”

Western governments might characterise Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as “terrorism,” but that’s not how it is seen in the international law codes that Western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.

It’s also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by “Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem.”

As is true with many other Western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.

Image
AP headquarters in One World Financial Center in lower Manhattan. (Ken Lund, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 )

With little doubt, Western news outlets privately rationalise this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure copy is “sensitive” to Israel’s perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.

Which is precisely the problem. The bias in Western reporting is baked in. It is designed not to upset Israel — in the midst of a “plausible genocide,” according to the World Court — which means it’s entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.

It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

UPDATE:

Very belatedly, the BBC has reported this on one of its news channels. Note, it adds an entirely unnecessary disclaimer that the footage hasn’t been “independently verified” – whatever that means.

There are now at least three separate videos, all taken from different angles, showing the same war crime. Even the Israeli military has confirmed the incident happened.

The BBC runs a report on Israeli soldiers pushing Palestinian bodies off the roof of a building & the presenter then remarks that the footage is an example of the many fronts Israel is fighting on

No, its an example of the IDF committing war crimes. pic.twitter.com/9GHtbNNXXh

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) September 20, 2024



The BBC also assumes the three Palestinians are dead. There is absolutely no reason to make that assumption: it violates the most basic rules of reporting.

And the anchor, clearly nervous about how she should refer to the men being pushed off a roof, ends by observing that the footage is “another example of the tensions and the many fronts on which we see Israel fighting.”

No, it’s another example of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, and the media trying to deflect attention from that fact.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/25/m ... of-israel/

Hezbollah Warns Israel Dropping Leaflets With ‘Very Dangerous’ Barcodes in Bekaa
September 24, 2024

The Lebanese resistance group urged anyone in Lebanon who comes across a leaflet to “destroy it immediately.”

Image
The Israeli IDF headquarters in the Kirya compound in Tel Aviv. (DoD)

By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams

As the death toll from the Israeli bombing of Lebanon topped 550 on Tuesday, Hezbollah warned that Israel is dropping leaflets with barcodes allegedly designed to extract information from electronic devices in the Bekaa Valley.

“The Zionist enemy is dropping leaflets with a barcode on them in the Bekaa region, and may drop them in other places,” Hezbollah’s media office said in a statement. “Please do not open or circulate the barcode.”

The Lebanese political party and paramilitary group urged anyone in Lebanon who comes across a leaflet to “destroy it immediately because it is very dangerous and withdraws all the information you have.”

Hezbollah warns Lebanese public not to scan "very dangerous" QR codes on leaflets dropped by Israeli warplanes in various areas across Lebanon. "This code can extract all the information on your devices and poses a threat to your safety"

Just before launching this bombing campaign, Israel detonated thousands of pagers and other electronic devices across Lebanon, an operation that rights experts characterized as terrorism.

Reuters noted Tuesday that “Hezbollah’s media office did not say if anything else was written on the flyers” and “there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.”

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday social media post directed at Lebanese citizens that “our war is not with you, our war is with Hezbollah,” according to a translation from The Independent.

Hezbollah is “leading you to the brink of the abyss… Rid yourself from Nasrallah’s grip, for your own good,” he added, referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader. “Anyone who has a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home.”

In a similar message posted later in English, Netanyahu said, “Get out of harm’s way, now.”

Drop Site News reported Monday that residents of southern Lebanon “began receiving text messages and calls with audio recordings warning them to leave their homes and villages,” and the Israel Defense Forces “Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee also posted several ominous messages” on social media.

Image
Avichay Adraee, head of of the Israeli military’s Arab media division. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said Tuesday that at least 50 children and 95 women are among the 558 people who have been killed in Israeli attacks since Monday morning, according to Middle East Monitor. Another 1,835 have been injured.

“The majority of the victims in the Israeli attacks since Monday morning are defenseless civilians in their homes,” the minister said, refuting Israel’s claims that it is targeting Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on social media Monday that

“the escalating crisis in Lebanon is frightening… The toll on civilians is unacceptable. Political leaders must bring solutions. An end to the hostilities is urgently needed.”

Grandi added Tuesday that “Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon are now relentlessly claiming hundreds of civilian lives,” including at least two of his colleagues.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said that “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest” and despite the recent escalation in Lebanon, “a diplomatic solution is still possible — in fact, it remains the only path to lasting security.”

The United States is Israel’s most significant ally, and Biden has faced global criticism — including charges of complicity in genocide in the Gaza Strip — for continuing to send weapons to the Israeli forces over the past year.

As Common Dreams reported Monday, the bombing campaign in Lebanon has elevated calls for the U.S. to impose an arms embargo.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/24/h ... -in-bekaa/

*****

How Political Corruption Allows Antony Blinken To Break The Law

ProPublica headlines:

Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.

The selected formulation is unfortunately not covering the real issue at hand.

U.S. law prohibits military aid to countries which are hindering U.S. humanitarian aid.

Two government entities subordinated to the State Department concluded, in writing, that Israel was blocking their humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, reported to Congress the opposite conclusion because he intended to deliver more military aid to Gaza.

By misleading Congress on humanitarian aid to Gaza Blinken deliberated broke the law.

That should have been the headline:

The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.
The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”


This case should be sufficient for Congress to open an inquiry and to demand under oath witness statements from Blinken and others involved in the affair. It could be a great instrument during the current election campaign to damage the position of Democratic candidates.

However that is unlikely to happen.

Unfortunately Blinken lied to Congress about Israeli war crimes because he knew that he would get away with it.

The uni-state, the foreign policy conglomerate which resides in both parties and the bureaucracy, will not allow that U.S. war-crimes or those of its associated forces will ever be prosecuted. The Bush administration did get away with lying about weapons of mass destruction. The CIA and the Pentagon got away with torturing hundreds of innocent people.

Would the Republicans prosecuted Blinken as they should they would have to break with their own support and commitment to Zionist supremacy. With their own candidate's campaign depending on donations from Zionist billionaires there is no chance that the Republicans will break away from their previous policies.

The will of the people, as enacted in laws, gets ignored in favor of monies that allow established politicians to continue their games.

Posted by b on September 25, 2024 at 9:58 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/09/h ... l#comments
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 26, 2024 11:50 pm

Israel’s top brass rejects western ceasefire initiative for Lebanon

Hezbollah has repeatedly refused any discussion on ceasing its operations or discussing the Lebanese border situation until Israel stops its war on Gaza

News Desk

SEP 26, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AFP/Shaul Golan)

Top Israeli officials rejected all talk of western-sponsored ceasefire plans for Lebanon on 26 September, vowing to continue Tel Aviv’s brutal aerial assault across the Levantine nation.


“There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the terrorist organization Hezbollah with all our might until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said via social media on 26 September.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on Wednesday that “reports about the possibility of reaching a ceasefire in the north today are incorrect.”

The US and its western and Arab allies released a statement on 25 September calling for a three-week ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, following another night of heavy Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon.

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, the UK, and Qatar signed the statement, which they say will allow for negotiations to pressure Hezbollah to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

During the three-week period, the hope is that stalemated Gaza prisoner exchange and ceasefire talks can resume, a US official told reporters on Wednesday.

Netanyahu’s office also doubled down on its claim that “fighting in Gaza will continue until all war goals are achieved.”

The office of Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati rejected on 26 September reports that the Lebanese state has signed a ceasefire agreement following a meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and White House envoy Amos Hochstein.


“This talk is absolutely untrue, and we remind you of what the Lebanese Prime Minister announced immediately after the joint appeal was issued, initiated by America and France, and supported by the European Union, and a number of Western and Arab countries, to establish a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon … We welcome the statement, and the lesson remains in the implementation through Israel's commitment to implementing international resolutions.”

Washington and France have been pushing a “de-escalation” proposal since the start of the war, aiming to force Hezbollah to withdraw behind the Litani River – within the framework of Resolution 1701 drafted at the end of the 2006 war – and return evacuated Israelis to the northern settlements, without demanding any significant concessions from Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah has refused any discussion on the border situation or on stopping its operations until the war in Gaza is brought to an end.

The Lebanese resistance group has expanded its range of fire into the Haifa area and cities deeper north and fired its first ballistic missile at the outskirts of Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning – as Israel’s attacks have killed over 600 and injured around 2,000 in Lebanon since Monday.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-t ... or-lebanon

Ansarallah chief hails Hezbollah as ‘strongest support front’

Abdul Malik al-Houthi said Israel will fail to achieve its goals in Lebanon and must ‘remember what happened’ to its forces in 2006

News Desk

SEP 26, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: EFE)

The leader of Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, Abdel Malik al-Houthi, denounced Israel’s “criminal” assault against Lebanon in a speech on 26 September.

“The Zionist enemy has moved towards escalation in Lebanon, adopting its criminal approach of comprehensive targeting, killing civilians and destroying their homes, just as it does in the Gaza Strip,” Houthi said.

The Ansarallah leader praised Hezbollah’s confrontation against Israel. “Hezbollah's role in supporting Gaza, since the beginning of the aggression, is the strongest and most influential of the support fronts,” he added.

“The Israeli goal of the escalation in Lebanon is to prevent Hezbollah from supporting Gaza and the Palestinian people, a goal that will not be achieved … Hezbollah’s position on supporting Gaza … is in Lebanon's interest. If the enemy were able to achieve its goals in the Palestinian arena and become free to focus on what comes after Palestine, Lebanon would be at the forefront,” he added.

Houthi warned that any Israeli ground operation in Lebanon would “inflict heavy losses on the enemy and its inevitable result will be a great defeat for them.”

He added that “[the Israelis] remember what happened to them in 2006, and what will happen this time may be much worse.” Houthi also said that Israel will fail to achieve all its goals, including returning the tens of thousands of settlers who have been evacuated since the start of the Gaza war due to Hezbollah’s operations.

Hezbollah has the capability to reach “all parts of occupied Palestine” with its weapons, Houthi went on to say, confirming that “Hezbollah is in complete cohesion, and in reality, is stronger than ever before.”

Over 600 people have been killed and at least 2,000 wounded in Lebanon in less than a week as a result of Israel’s wide-scale aerial assault across the southern and eastern parts of the country, as well as on its capital Beirut. Tel Aviv has also been threatening a ground invasion aimed at establishing a buffer zone, pushing Hezbollah behind the Litani River, and returning evacuated settlers to their northern settlements.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said last week that his organization “hopes” Israel enters on the ground, saying it would change the course of the battle. Nasrallah also warned that an attempt to establish a buffer zone in Lebanon would be “hell” for Israeli forces.

Houthi also praised the operations carried out by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq (IRI) during his speech on Thursday.

Ansarallah and the Armed Forces of Yemen’s Sanaa government have imposed a naval blockade on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean since November, targeting Israeli-linked ships or those en route to Israeli ports.

Their operations have devastated the Israeli economy. On Sunday, the Yemeni army fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at Israel.

https://thecradle.co/articles/ansaralla ... port-front

Israeli bulldozers tear up 'mile after mile' of roads, sewage lines in West Bank towns

Residents in Tulkarem and Jenin, hotbeds of resistance to Israel's occupation, feel that 'Gaza is coming' to them

News Desk

SEP 25, 2024

Image
Israeli bulldozers destroy streets and shops on the fifth day of an Israeli military operation in Jenin, 1 September (Photo credit: EPA/Alaa Badarneh)

Israeli military bulldozers destroyed roads, sewage systems, and businesses in two cities in the occupied West Bank in a manner never before experienced by residents, a report published on 25 September by the New York Times (NYT) shows.

Israeli military bulldozers operating in Tulkarem and Jenin during two weeks of brutal raids starting in late August “tore up mile after mile of their streets and alleys, sewage seeping into the dusty ruts left behind,” the report stated.

Residents of the two cities said they had “never before experienced such a scale of destruction.”

Videos filmed by residents show bulldozers destroying infrastructure and businesses, and soldiers blocking local emergency responders from reaching victims and taking them to hospitals.

“We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field and a tree in the middle of a road,” said Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin. “What was the point of all of this?”


Residents in Jenin and Tulkarem, towns with a history of resistance to Israeli occupation, had long been accustomed to Israeli troops invading their cities and refugee camps. However, residents who spoke to the NYT said the extent of the recent damage to roads and infrastructure was unprecedented.

Israeli forces have also increased their use of airstrikes to destroy homes in the West Bank cities, a tactic typically saved for leveling homes, buildings, and hospitals in Gaza.

“They are imposing conditions, materially and psychologically, that make people feel: Gaza is coming to you,” said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al Haq, a rights group based in the West Bank. “There is a feeling among Palestinians across the West Bank that what is coming is very bad – that it will be a plan to kill and expel us.”


In Tulkarem, videos showed water gushing down a street from what appeared to be a destroyed water main.

Muhanad Matar, the head of general relations for the municipality of Tulkarem, told NYT that more than 90 percent of water and sewage lines had been destroyed during the recent Israeli invasions.

The Mayor of Jenin, Nidal Obeidi, explained that some 70 percent of roads in the city have been damaged or destroyed by the recent raids.

Internet, electricity, and phone lines were shut down in some areas. Sewage and water lines were also cut, leaving about 80 percent of Jenin without running water.

Matar said the “unending string of raids” made it impossible to fix infrastructure as it was destroyed at a faster rate.


Israeli bulldozers have also damaged and destroyed businesses in Tulkarem and Jenin.

Rami Kmail, 35, told NYT his store had been damaged in 10 separate Israeli raids since 7 October, costing him up to $20,000 in repairs each time.

Mr. Kmail insisted he had run out of money to repair the damage over and over.

“It felt like we were targeted. That was very clear — there was an intentional effort to destroy businesses,” he said. “They think they’re teaching people a lesson. The army’s message is: No one is getting out of this without being punished.”

Israeli bulldozers also destroyed the facade of a jewelry shop.

“I think we lost everything,” the owner, who wished to remain anonymous, said. Asked if he would reopen, he said, “I don’t know if we are going to be able to. For now, only God knows.”

Israeli soldiers also rigged and detonated explosives in the shop on the ground floor of the home of the Kinwa family, who had a business selling gas canisters.

“Every other night, we move and find someone else to stay with,” said Ayman Al-Kinwa, who ran the family’s business. “We were a big home, and now we are scattered.”

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-b ... bank-towns

The UN won’t protect Gaza, but can adopt a ‘Pact for the Future?’

The United Nations has become a parody of itself. As world leaders gathered in New York this week, Gaza, Lebanon, and Palestine were nowhere on the agenda, but a rammed-through US Pact designed to protect the ‘rules-based order’ was right at the top.


Pepe Escobar

SEP 26, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

The United Nations and its Security Council’s inability – and unwillingness – to stop a live-streamed genocide has discredited it beyond any possible redemption. Any serious resolution inflicting serious consequences to Israel’s deadly psychopathology was, is, and will be blocked at the UN Security Council.

Cue to a surrealist spectacle this past Sunday and Monday in New York right before the 79th annual General Assembly, where heads of state convened to deliver their lofty speeches at the GA podium.

UN member-states adopted a Pact for the Future, with 143 votes in favor, only seven against, and 15 abstentions. The devil is in the details, of course: who actually designed it and approved it; how did it make its way to the top of the agenda while the world is burning; and why do we smell a (giant) rat?

The UN public relations machine announced, cheerfully, that the “key outcome of the Summit of the Future is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to steer humanity on a new course towards our common future.”

Nice language, but to be clear, this is nothing like the Chinese, inclusive, philosophical concept of “community of a shared future for mankind.” It’s more like the common future envisaged by the Atlanticist plutocracy that rules the so-called “garden,” which only produces diktats for the “jungle.”

How China, Russia, and Iran voted

Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, summed up the initiative aptly:

The United Nations infringed upon its own principles to pander to a group of delegations from the ‘beautiful garden,’ who have usurped the talks from the very beginning. And the majority from the ‘jungle,’ like a herd, could not find courage enough to protest and defend their rights. They will bear responsibility for the consequences.

A number of diplomats, speaking off the record in quite bewildered tones, confirmed there were actually no serious prior negotiations and that the Pact was adopted by consensus with a minimalistic group of only seven nations – all from the “jungle” – trying to put up a Resistance, dismissing the prepared text and failing to add last-minute amendments.

Even brand-new UN General Assembly President Philemon Yang tried to do something. The resisters proposed that Yang should postpone the voting until all provisions were agreed – specifically the ones on disarmament and the interfering role of NGOs in the work of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

But the “garden” applied Full Pressure to ram the Pact through, and the resisters came up with too little, too late.

A few African diplomats complained, off the record, that their countries were contrary to the Pact but were voting “out of solidarity.” That’s code for being bullied or actually bribed by the “garden.”

And now comes the clincher. Both Russia and Iran voted “No.” And China abstained.

In short, the three key civilization-states, which happen to be the key drivers of Eurasia integration and arguably the three most important BRICS members, rejected the garden-manufactured Pact. The key unstated reason is that this Pact is ultimately against the BRICS and the rise of a second global pole.

A dead giveaway is the several direct references in the Pact to the “rules-based international order,” the Hegemon’s mantra. The Pact was deftly engineered to isolate the top civilization-states and to split BRICS from the inside: classic Divide and Rule.

As for the real pact for the Global Majority’s future, it will soon start to be seriously discussed – not at the UN, but at the BRICS annual summit in Kazan next month.

Gaza who?

Despite the fact that the UN building is hosting the biggest group of world leaders seen together in a year, absolutely nothing is being done about the Gaza genocide and Israel’s expansion of war into Lebanon. This startling inactivity on the globe’s most pressing humanitarian crisis has stunned even “garden”-feeders in the Persian Gulf, who typically cling to US diktats on most things.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs & Negotiation, Dr Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, even penned an editorial that points to the delusion of US President Joe Biden “asserting that the international system is working and that the US in particular is holding it together” – the only head of state to make this claim at the podium this year.

In his column entitled “Biden’s final flawed speech at the UN General Assembly,” Aluwaisheg reveals: “In high-level gatherings held in New York these days, such as the “Summit of the Future,” participants agree that the UN system is broken and in need of reform, or even an overhaul.” He adds:

Looked at from the point of view of a veto-wielding superpower, the system is working. It can stop any action it does not like and go along with the decisions of which it approves. What could be better? But the world looks different from the perspective of defenseless refugees in Gaza, huddled by the ruins of their homes, having lost numerous family members and who could get killed at any minute by a far superior military force unchecked by the UN and supported by its most powerful members.

The UN devolves into an annex of Davos

The whole UN building in New York City has now been reduced to a monolith celebrating Dejection and Cynicism, as it becomes crystal clear to any diplomatic corps that the Gaza genocide and now its extension to Lebanon are fully supported by the western criminal syndicate, led by Anglo-American Zionism.

In this aspect, any vote at the UN should be considered irrelevant. The whole UN structure should be considered irrelevant.

The Pact should be read at one’s own peril. It’s a cliché word salad mixing unrestrained virtual signaling with a rehash of old policies from dead deals such as the Obama-era TPP trade agreement, plus a Global Digitization drive originally redacted, in thesis, by the governments of Germany and Namibia.

Yet the real redactors were the usual suspects: Big Tech and Big Finance, enforcers of the “rules-based international order.”

This future envisaged for mankind – unlike the Chinese communitarian spirit – is an apotheosis of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, coming straight from the Davos gang, personified by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

These are the actors who supervised the previous, non-existing “negotiations,” harking back to the fateful cooperation agreement between the UN and the World Economic Forum (WEF) signed in July 2019, a few months before the Covid era.

This agreement, as analyst Peter Koenig has remarked, is “illegal,” as “the UN may not enter into agreements with NGOs, but de facto irrelevant in a rules-based-ordered world.” In real life, it configures the UN as merely an annex to Davos.

So, welcome to your dystopian future, which is now even set on paper. No paper, sorry, that’s so old-fashioned: in digital script.

Is there a way out? Yes. The Global Resistance, incrementally, is being sculpted into a cohesive, transcontinental force, much of its reach and depth due to an increasingly more assertive China. The BRICS are dead-set on developing powerful interconnected nodes capable of steering the Global Majority towards an equitable, livable, non-dystopian future. All eyes on Kazan in October.

https://thecradle.co/articles/the-un-wo ... the-future

******

Analyst Laith Marouf: The War Has Entered a New Stage (Interview with Orinoco Tribune)
September 25, 2024

Image
Poster for Orinoco Tribune's interview with Beirut-based political analyst and journalist Laith Marouf. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.

Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—The Zionist entity crossed the red lines of cyber warfare when it blew up thousands of electronic devices, including pagers, walkie talkies, phones, biometric scanners, and even solar power systems in Lebanon, killing dozens and injuring some 3,000 people, said Beirut-based political analyst and journalist Laith Marouf in an interview with Orinoco Tribune. The war has entered a new stage, commented Marouf.

“This is definitely a new form of warfare that we haven’t seen before, and even cyber warfare had its red lines, its rules of engagement, and in fact, there are UN resolutions about targeting civilian electronics, which is defined as terrorism—as a war crime—since the ‘70s,” Marouf said, commenting on the planned detonation of electronic devices in Lebanon carried out by the occupation entity during September 17-18 that shook the world. “You cannot even disguise a bomb, let us say as a radio or whatever, even before we talk about cell phones and pagers and walkie talkies.”

“The Zionists wanted to blow up 3,000 pagers, meaning to kill 3,000 human beings,” he continued. “And they wanted to blow up 2,000 walkie talkies, meaning they wanted to kill another 2,000 human beings at least, all in a moment or two. As [Hezbollah General Secretary] Hasan Nasrallah asserted in his speech, the entity tried to carry out this mass direct ethnic cleansing, and the West cheered it on. The Western media cheered on this genocidal action. They considered it the highest example of intelligence and electronic and military prowess and brilliance… If the Zionists put the Palestinian people in ovens and broadcast it live, the Western media would cheer it as the most successful action on the battlefield. This is the age we live in.”



Laith Marouf is an award-winning journalist and political commentator based in Beirut, Lebanon, who has been working in media since 1999. He regularly appears on television and radio, including The Critical Hour, Press TV, Al Mayadeen, and many other news outlets. He is one of the creators and producers of the new and important volunteer TV station and news outlet Free Palestine TV, which is based in Lebanon. On September 20, Marouf gave an interview to Orinoco Tribune in which he discussed several topics, including the current war situation in Lebanon, the work of the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, the role of the Axis of Resistance in confronting the Zionist entity, and the role of Resistance media in the age of information warfare.

Lebanese people’s mindset towards the Palestinian Resistance
Marouf explained that the Gaza war has brought about seismic shifts in the opinion of the Lebanese population towards the Palestinian Resistance and the Palestinian cause. “There was decades of Western imperial propaganda pumped into huge sectors of the Lebanese population to blame the Palestinian Resistance for the civil war in the 1970s and the destruction of Lebanon at the hands of the Zionists in the 1980s … So, some sectors of the population didn’t want Lebanon to have anything to do with the liberation of Palestine,” he said. “But right now, we have seen a huge shift … Multiple surveys done on the Lebanese population in the last month or two showed that close to 75% of the population supports the Palestinian people against the genocide, and something like 70% of the population says that Hezbollah is acting in the most rational way, that Hezbollah is trying to protect the Lebanese population from the genocidal actions of the Zionist colony.”

According to Marouf, the inability of the Zionists to mobilize compradors in Lebanon against the Resistance is one of the main reasons behind the recent Zionist military escalation against Lebanon. “What is the main strategic goal of the Zionist colony? It is the permanency of the colony, right?” he commented. “And what is the strategic goal of the United States? It is to remain as the hegemon, the sole empire in this world … So, if the Zionists want to maintain their colony, they have only two options: one, complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and two, to have a one Palestinian State solution and stay if they want to stay there. And what we clearly see is that Zionists do not want option two. They only want option one.”

Pro- and anti- Palestine axes
Marouf criticized the hypocritical role of Qatar in West Asia, as it presents itself as a “mediator” in Gaza and, at the same time, acts as a vassal of the Zionist entity. “Qatar is the propaganda arm that keeps everybody in check,” he commented. “This allowed it a space to be kind of pitiful towards the Palestinian people but not supportive of the Resistance.”

In this regard, he highlighted the role that Qatari state media Al Jazeera is playing, especially among Western populations. “It is keeping the population within the limitations of what is acceptable speech on every issue other than Palestine. It is pro-Ukraine, it is anti-Syria, it is anti-Venezuela. It is anti anybody and everybody that the Empire hates,” he said.

In contrast, he highlighted the role of Syria in assisting the Palestinian liberation cause, calling the country “the backbone of the Resistance.”

“Without Syria, there will be no weapons delivered in Gaza, there will be no weapons delivered to Lebanon,” Marouf explained. “Without Syria, the weapons that are being used in Gaza—those weapons that are made in Gaza—would not be manufactured because the Syrian military and the Syrian state smuggled whole factories and machineries into Gaza for it to be able to manufacture these weapons that can sustain the Resistance in a ground war… Weapons and machineries continue to be smuggled in right now from Syria.”

Nevertheless, Syria itself has not responded militarily “because it is under direct occupation by three arms of the Empire,” he continued. “The Syrian Golan is directly occupied by the Zionist entity, overlooking Damascus, and the US is occupying the north-east and Turkey the north-west. That’s a pincer… The whole Axis of Resistance knows that the West wants to turn Syria into a battlefield, because they know that if you destroy Syria, and you take out the Syrian government and the Syrian military, then you cut off the whole supply line of Hezbollah, and then it will be a much easier war to fight Hezbollah. So we should all be blessing Syria and counting the half a million Syrians who died in the last decade [in the Syrian proxy war] as martyrs on the road to Jerusalem, on the road to the liberation of Palestine.”

Rise of Resistance media
When asked about his opinion on the precipitous growth and expansion of the Resistance media amid the war, Marouf commented that there would be no pro-Palestine media without Resistance media, without “Palestinians filming on the ground the truth as it happens and showing us those horrible genocide images. If it was not for the brilliant Resistance media producers, and I mean the military medias of Hamas, Hezbollah, and others that are packaging for us those amazing images of destruction and of resilience,” then the hegemonic Western media power could have carried on its propaganda unchecked.

However, Marouf criticized the lack of “innovation” by mainstream media based in West Asia, such as PressTV, as well as of “progressive media based in the West.” In his opinion, these media outlets have failed in reaching a broader audience in their reporting and disseminating the truth on the ground to the global population.



Decolonization struggle
In conclusion, Marouf reflected on the widely prevalent narrative that the Axis of Resistance is not achieving success because it has not declared all-out war with the Zionist entity and the West. “The gist of the matter is that the Palestinian struggle is a decolonization struggle, and decolonization struggles are long. They require huge amounts of sacrifice,” he stated. “Given that decolonization struggles usually are by an indigenous population that cannot match its imperial or colonial occupier in power and financing, the only path forward is to carry out a war of attrition whose main goal is not to win at the moment, but to frustrate the goal of its occupiers by not letting them win, by dragging on the war.”

“We are not the Empire of white supremacy that spans this planet and that can print money at will and rain a nuclear holocaust down on you in a minute,” he continued. “So, rationally, in order not to have the Empire rain a nuclear holocaust on you, you have to avoid going all out, starting an all-at-once attack on the Zionist colony from all sides… All of us are emotional because we’re watching this genocide, but that should not frustrate us and make us think that we’re losing this war. No, we are winning it. There has not been one tactical, let alone strategic, goal that the Zionists have achieved since October 7. Instead, day after day, it is the Resistance that is scoring tactical achievements.”

https://orinocotribune.com/analyst-lait ... interview/

The Sabra and Shatila Massacre of 1982 and ‘Israel’s’ Aggression in 2024
September 25, 2024

Image
"Israel's" Sabra and Shatila Massacre in 1982 and "Israel's" aggression in 2024. Photo: Ali al-Hadi Shmeiss/Al Mayadeen English.

By Hamzah Rifaat – Sep 22, 2024

On its 42nd anniversary, the Sabra and Shatila massacre should remain part of global collective consciousness, as “Israel’s” actions in 2024 are putting innocent Palestinian and Lebanese lives at risk.

The 42nd anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 is a glaring reminder of “Israel’s” historical ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Lebanese. Back then, the Zionist regime invaded Lebanon and massacred Palestinians and Muslims in the capital city Beirut. The brutality and scale of the massacre classify it as a genocide and remain etched in the Palestinian collective consciousness as they continue to endure daily bombardments, extrajudicial killings, and violence by the very same Zionist entity.

Examined closely, there exist parallels between the 1982 genocide in Sabra and Shatila and “Israel’s” relentless attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon which is concomitant with its killing sprees in Gaza.

These parallels are exactly why the Sabra and Shatila massacre by “Israel” should never be forgotten.

The massacre of 1982
“Israel’s” creation in 1948 and its subsequent occupation of Palestinian territories resulted in a massive exodus of Palestinians migrating and seeking refuge in Lebanon. However, ethnic and religious tensions were brewing in Lebanon in 1975, partly due to the country’s unique demographic composition, which consists of Christians, Druze, Shia, and Sunni Muslims. Moreover, the country’s parliamentary structure favored Lebanese Christians at the expense of other religious groups, which resulted in the widening of religious cleavages after 1975, the year Lebanon plunged into a Civil War, which further worsened as different foreign powers got involved in the conflict that lasted for approximately 15 years.

It is within this context that “Israel” decided to pursue its opportunistic and expansionist agendas. This included foreign interference, aggression against an ethnic population on foreign territory, and brazen meddling in Lebanon’s internal affairs. After attacking and massacring PLO freedom fighters in Lebanon throughout the 1970s, “Israel” cited the attempted assassination of its ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, as a pretext to invade Lebanon and attack PLO freedom fighters. However, Israeli historians, including those advocating for the genocide of Palestinians such as Benny Morris, contested such claims and stated that the attempted assassination of Argov was by Abu Nidal, a defector from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction within the PLO who had previously killed many PLO members.



Yet, despite the lack of evidence and subsequent PLO condemnation of the assassination attempt, “Israel” invaded Lebanon in 1982 and was supported by rogue Lebanese politicians such as Bachir Pierre Gemayel who headed the Lebanese Forces, a Christian right-wing militia fighting against Lebanese Muslims during the civil war. Gemayel was eventually assassinated by fellow Maronite Christian, Habib Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. His assassination, however, prompted then-Zionist Security Minister, Ariel Sharon, to call for the Israeli occupation of West Beirut in violation of “Israel’s” previous agreement with the United States to not occupy the capital of Lebanon. With anger brimming over the assassination of the Kataeb’s Gemayel, Ariel Sharon fomented negative sentiments and leveraged Christian anger by calling for the invasion of Sabra and Shatila by propagating a fallacy that the PLO was responsible for Gemayel’s death.

Sharon also notoriously stated:

“We’ll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them. You are not going to save these groups of international terrorists. If you don’t want the Lebanese to kill them, we will kill them.”

After the invasion of Lebanon and Sharon’s siege of Beirut, a brutal genocide of 3,500 civilians, the majority of whom were Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims, unfolded in Sabra and Shatila. This included the Israeli and Kataeb mutilating bodies and mass raping women and children, which prompted the United Nations General Assembly to declare the massacre as a genocide. Lawsuits and proceedings were also initiated against Ariel Sharon, which eventually resulted in him forfeiting the post of Security Minister.

The scale of the massacre constituted “state-sponsored” terrorism. Fast forward to 2024, one notices that “Israel’s” strategic calculus remains the same.

The 2024 Hezbollah pager attacks and ‘Israel’s’ penchant for destruction
“Israel’s” ruthless electronic terrorism attack against Hezbollah’s fighters and civilians in Beirut in 2024 demonstrates the Zionist regime’s penchant for the destruction of Lebanon and Palestine as witnessed in 1982. The pager attacks resulted in thousands of casualties in Lebanon and are the latest example of “Israel” employing asymmetrical warfare, violating state sovereignty, and disregarding international law to achieve its narrow, parochial goal of eliminating resistance against occupation in both Lebanon and Palestine. The urge to turn Beirut into Gaza as expressed by Netanyahu himself comes in the form of dismembering Hezbollah, an entity born out of “Israel’s” occupation of Lebanon in 1982 and its horrendous attacks of Sabra and Shatila. In many ways, Hezbollah represents the resistance of the Lebanese people, its support base, and its Palestinian brethren who have otherwise endured “Israel’s” occupation and “state-sponsored terrorism” since 1948.

In fact, in 1982 the objective of Ariel Sharon was to eliminate the PLO and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, whereas in 2024, attention has shifted to attacking Hezbollah along with Hamas. It should be noted that both entities are liberation movements and both have suffered collateral damage from Israeli terrorism. Massacres in refugee camps in 1982 mirror similar instances of attacks against the al-Maghazi camp in Gaza and the Rafah tent camp in 2023-24 which is evidence of “Israel’s” nefarious attempts to eliminate populations.

In truth, if the 1948 Nakba symbolizes Palestinian genocide, then the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 is evidence of “Israel’s” genocide against the Lebanese people, its aversion to Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance, and its penchant for “state terrorism”.

On its 42nd anniversary, the Sabra and Shatila massacre should remain part of global collective consciousness, as “Israel’s” actions in 2024 are putting innocent Palestinian and Lebanese lives at risk.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-sabra-an ... n-in-2024/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 07, 2024 12:00 pm

Nasrallah as a martyr and legend
Pepe Escobar

3 Oct 2024 , 3:44 pm .


Image
A Lebanese man holds a poster of Hassan Nasrallah amid rubble in Beirut (Photo: Joao Relvas / EPA)

A symbol has been shattered. A legend has been born. The Resistance, now more than ever, will not back down.

This was framed not by a Shiite but by a Lebanese Christian leader, and encapsulated how a true icon of political Islam is able to transcend all — artificial — boundaries.

This decade, which I defined as the angry decade , began with an assassination: the entirely American assassination of the leader of the Quds Force, General Soleimani, and the commander of the Popular Mobilization Units, Abu Mohandis, outside Baghdad airport.

General Soleimani, more than a symbol, was the conceptualizer of the Axis of Resistance. Despite all its setbacks, especially in recent weeks, the Axis of Resistance is much stronger now than it was in January 2000. Soleimani – the martyr, the legend – left an unparalleled legacy that will never cease to inspire the nodes of resistance in West Asia.

The same will happen with Seyed Hassan Nasrallah. More than a symbol, he was the face of the Axis of Resistance, extraordinarily popular and respected throughout the Arab world and in the lands of Islam. Despite all its setbacks, especially in recent weeks, the Axis of Resistance will be stronger in the coming years than it was in September 2024.

Nasrallah — the martyr, the legend — leaves a legacy comparable to that of Soleimani, whom, by the way, he was always astonishing in military matters, and always learning. As a politician, however, as well as a fatherly fount of spiritual wisdom, Nasrallah is without equal.

Now let us descend from the stars to the sewer.

An unrepentant serial war criminal and psychopathic genocidal maniac, in violation of a number of UN resolutions, appears at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and then orders, from within the headquarters, a new war crime: annihilating an entire block of southern Beirut with a dozen bunker-busting bombs, including the BLU-109 JDAM precision-guided system, an action that left countless civilians still missing under the rubble, including Seyyed Nasrallah himself.

As the war criminal addressed the General Assembly, more than half of the delegates staged a mass walkout: the room was de facto close to being completely empty of diplomats from the Global South. The remaining audience was presented with another trademark display of “maps” for the disabled with low IQs, on which he illustrated the “blessing” – Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, the Emirates – and the “curse” – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen.

A low, angry busybody of Polish extraction—a total fake —judging ancient civilizations doesn't even qualify as sewage-level trash.

History is replete with examples of entities that cannot really be called nation-states per se. They are more like severe bacterial infections. All they specialize in is killing, killing, killing. Preferably unarmed civilians, a terrorist tactic. Terribly dangerous, of course, history also shows us the only way to deal with them.

The silk gloves are over
Israel killed Seyyed Nasrallah for two main reasons: 1) because he explicitly reaffirmed that Hezbollah will never abandon Gaza for any "deal" that would allow the genocide and total ethnic cleansing to continue; 2) because the Talmudic psychopathological fanatics want to invade and reoccupy Lebanon.

Israel did manage to find serious breaches in the security of Lebanon and Iran. In the case of Beirut, the entire city is infested with infiltrators, fifth columnists of all stripes who run around doing whatever they want. Iran is a much more serious idea. Even while Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was also killed alongside Nasrallah in Beirut, the security of the IRGC itself in Tehran may be compromised.

While a serious rethinking of internal security from Tehran to Beirut becomes imperative, Hezbollah's carefully constructed structure will not collapse over Nasrallah's assassination, regardless of the tsunami of sordid psyops from the usual suspects.

Hezbollah is independent of its personalities. Its structure is a labyrinth, a rhizome, so other nodes, properly trained, as well as a new leadership, will emerge like the Vietcong during the "American war."

Of course, it is always an American war, because the foundation of the Empire of Chaos is the Eternal War.

In 1982, Israel's war on Lebanon was so brutal that even Ronald Reagan—who once threatened to pave over Vietnam and paint parking lot lines on it—was shocked. He told Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who rose to notoriety as an Irgun terrorist: "Menachem, this is a holocaust."

Still, a low-level con man like Joe Biden, then a senator bought and paid for by the Zionist lobby , called Begin on the phone to assure him that "if all the civilians die," it was no big deal.

Predictably, the then senator and now White House zombie puppet fully approved the killing of Nasrallah.

The ball is now moving towards public opinion in all the lands of Islam. Nearly two billion Muslims will also largely be mobilized towards the new phase of the Axis of Resistance.

Nothing now prevents the Axis from rising to the next level. There is simply no diplomacy, compromise, ceasefire, "two-state solution" or any other procrastination tactic on the horizon. Only existential combat, kill or be killed, against the relentless killing machine that displays, to quote Yeats invertedly, "a vacant and pitiful stare like the sun."

For all practical purposes, the real angry decade now begins.

And the wrath of the lands of Islam will be concentrated not only on the killing machine but on the she-wolf that suckles it: the Empire of Eternal Wars.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, Pakistan and a number of actors from the global majority must be preparing for a historic first: the maximum coordination of diplomacy, geoeconomics and military potential to finally confront, and head on, the bacteriological infection.

An auspicious scenario now becomes quite plausible: the BRICS assuming the role of diplomatic channel leading to the lands of Islam. The next logical step should be to remove the UN from American/Israeli territory and establish the headquarters in a nation that truly respects international humanitarian law.

The politically emerging global majority will then establish its true and global organization of united nations, and thus leave the racists to gloat and rot within their own walls. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the silk gloves must come off: the time has come to kill with a thousand stabs.

https://misionverdad.com/traducciones/n ... -y-leyenda

How we should think and talk about this issue
15 rules for discussing Israel's warmongering
Caitlin Johnstone

3 Oct 2024 , 10:18 am .

Rule 1: Recorded history began on October 7, 2023. Some things may have happened before then, but no one remembers that.

Rule 2: Anything bad Israel does is justified by Rule 1. This is true even if it does things that would be considered totally unjustifiable if done by a nation like Russia or Iran.

Rule 3: Israel has the right to defend itself, but no one else does.

Rule 4: Israel never bombs civilians, but terrorists. If an outrageous number of civilians are killed, it is because they were actually terrorists, or because terrorists killed them, or because a terrorist got too close to them. If none of those reasons apply, then it is for some other mysterious reason that we are still waiting for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to investigate.

Rule 5: Criticizing anything Israel does means you hate the Jewish people. There is no other reason why anyone would object to military explosives being dropped on areas full of children other than a seething, obsessive hatred of a small Abrahamic faith.

Rule 6: Nothing Israel does is ever as bad as the hateful criticisms described in Rule 5. Criticizing its actions is always worse than your own, because those critics hate Jews and want to commit another Holocaust. Preventing this should consume 100% of our political energy and attention.

Rule 7: Israel can never be the perpetrator, it can only be the victim. If it attacks Lebanon, it is because Hezbollah attacked it without provocation while it was innocently going about its business trying to commit a little genocide in peace. If people protest against its bombing of entire cities into dust, then Israel is the victim because the protests made its supporters sad.

Rule 8: The fact that Israel is literally always in a state of war with its neighbors and displaced indigenous populations should be interpreted as proof that Rule 7 is true, rather than proof that Rule 7 is ridiculous nonsense.

Rule 9: Arab lives are much, much less important to us than Western or Israeli lives. No one is allowed to think too much about why this might be so.

Rule 10: The media always tells the truth about Israel and its various conflicts. If you doubt this, you are probably violating Rule 5.

Rule 11: Unfounded claims that portray Israel's enemies in a negative light can be reported as objective news without any fact-checking or qualifications, while widely proven records of Israeli criminality must be reported with extreme skepticism and dubious qualifications such as "Lebanon says" or "according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry." This is important because otherwise you can be accused of being a propagandist.

Rule 12: Israel must continue to exist in its current form, no matter the cost and no matter how many people die. There is no need to present any logical or morally sound reason as to why this is so. If you do not agree with this, you are most likely in violation of Rule 5.

Rule 13: The United States government has never lied about anything and is always on the right side of every conflict.

Rule 14 (for Americans only): Nothing happening in West Asia is as urgent or significant as ensuring that the right person wins the U.S. presidential election. Ignore any inconvenient facts that distract you from this mission of unprecedented importance.

Rule 15: Israel must be protected because it is the last bastion of freedom and democracy in West Asia, no matter how many journalists it has to kill, no matter how many media institutions it has to close, no matter how many protests its supporters have to dismantle, no matter how much free speech it has to suppress, no matter how many civil rights it has to erase, and no matter how many elections its lobbyists have to buy.

This article was published on Caitlin Johnstone's blog on September 23, 2024 , the translation for Misión Verdad was done by Spoiler.

https://misionverdad.com/traducciones/1 ... -de-israel

Google Translator

******

The 'Birth Pangs' Of The New Middle East May Not Be The Ones The U.S. Has Wished For
Edward Luce for the FT:

How Netanyahu is ‘running rings’ around Biden (archived)
The US president had hoped to disentangle from the Middle East. But the turbulence in the region could influence the election and define his legacy

“Netanyahu knows how to play the Washington game better than most US politicians,” says Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, now columnist for the Haaretz newspaper. “And he has been running rings around Biden.”
...
On countless occasions over the past year, Netanyahu has appeared to agree to one thing with Washington and done the opposite in practice. Whether it is wranglings over the terms of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, or the more recent attempt at a 21-day ceasefire with Hizbollah, each time Biden is left looking impotent. “The Biden administration seems to be saying, ‘We’re suffering from a bit of autumn damp,’ ” says Pinkas. “No, this isn’t seasonal damp, it’s Netanyahu urinating all over you.”


This has been the general theme of a media campaign for a while. "Natanyahoo is steamrolling Biden and the poor guy can do nothing about it."

I do not buy it. One phone call from the White House to the Pentagon would hold resupply flights from the U.S. to Israel. Without constant supply renewal the Israeli Air Force would have to stop its bombing campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen within days if not within hours.

But instead of calling the Pentagon the whole Middle East team around Biden, Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk and IDF soldier Amos Hochstein, has been urging Israel to extend its campaign.

They are hoping, like the neoconservatives in 2006 during the Bush administration, for the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East', which will forever change the strategic situation on the ground.

Behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk and other top U.S. national security officials are describing Israel’s Lebanon operations as a history-defining moment — one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.
The thinking goes: Israel has obliterated Hezbollah’s top command structure in Lebanon, severely undercutting the group’s capabilities and weakened Iran, which used Hezbollah as a proxy and power projector.

The internal administration division seems to have dissipated somewhat in recent days, with top U.S. officials convening Monday at the White House with President Joe Biden to discuss the situation on the ground. Most agreed that the conflict, while fragile, could offer an opportunity to reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the region.


The conclusion from this is that Netanyahoo is largely doing exactly what the Biden administration wants him to do.

The strategic situation may well change. But it is not going to be the way Biden and Netanyahoo may hope for.

Most of the 200 missiles Iran fired on Israel two days ago passed through the Israeli air defenses and hit their targets with good precision. Some expensive air planes got damaged but no one was hurt. A similar strike on Israeli energy facilities could easily disable the country for months of years to come. A strike on IDF barracks or Israeli population centers could easily cause mass casualties.

Shortly after the strike President Masoud Pezeshkian met with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Doha, Qatar:

The Saudi minister voiced his country's determination to develop relations with Iran, Xinhua news agency reported.
"We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states," he said.

He highlighted the "very sensitive and critical" situation in West Asia due to Israel's "aggressions" against Gaza and Lebanon and its attempts to expand the conflict in the region. He said Saudi Arabia trusted Iran's wisdom and discernment in managing the situation and contributing to the restoration of calm and peace in the region.


Yesterday the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held Friday prayers in Tehran. Little remarked in western media was the fact that he sermon was largely voiced in Arabic and that the whole event was seen on Arabic live TV through AlJazeerah.

This already is a new Middle East in which the Gulf states are no longer hostile to Iran and which the religious schisms between Sunni and Shia has largely lost its power.

Who then is left of the former U.S. allies? On whom can it call for support in the region when it plans to attack Iran?

Has this whole U.S.-Israeli campaign really helped to "reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and the region"? Will continuing it ever do so?

My impression for one is that it has strengthened the front against Israel and the positions of Iran in and beyond the Middle East.

Posted by b on October 5, 2024 at 16:11 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/10/t ... .html#more

******

Qassam rockets strike Tel Aviv on first anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood

The Israeli army confirmed the attack was launched from Khan Yunis in Gaza, an area that has been raided multiple times by the invading troops over the past year

News Desk

OCT 7, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: X)

A rocket barrage launched from Gaza by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, hit the south of Tel Aviv on 7 October, injuring at least two on the first anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

BREAKING | Injuries and damage reported by direct impacts south of Tel Aviv following a rocket barrage by Hamas' Qassam Brigades. pic.twitter.com/h2GQvAiYOh

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) October 7, 2024
Qassam said in a statement that its fighters targeted Tel Aviv “with a barrage of Maqadma M90 rockets as part of the ongoing battle of attrition and in response to the zionist massacres against civilians and the deliberate displacement of our people.”

BREAKING | On the one year anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and one year into Israel's genocide in Gaza, Hamas' Qassam Brigades launches rockets towards south of Tel Aviv and makes direct impact in Holon. pic.twitter.com/t6toQaq0U3

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) October 7, 2024
Following the attack, the Israeli army said in a brief statement that the rockets were fired from the Khan Yunis area in southern Gaza, indicating that the Palestinian resistance has yet again rehabilitated its fighting capabilities in an area that has seen multiple raids by the invading army.

The rocket attack came on the first anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which saw thousands of Palestinian resistance fighters break out of Gaza by air, sea, and land, cutting through Israeli army bases and taking more than 240 captives.

“The crossing of the glorious 7th of October shattered the illusions the enemy had created for itself, convincing the world and the region of its supposed superiority and capabilities,” Khalil al-Hayya, a senior member of Hamas' politburo, said in a video statement on Sunday.

“Performing the operation, Palestinian fighters carried out heroic acts that have changed the balance of power. Our objective is clear: we seek the complete liberation of our land and holy sites, the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, and the return of refugees to their homeland,” Hayya added.

In response to the resistance operation, Israel launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign inside Gaza, killing more than 40,000 Palestinians.

In total, 149,036 Palestinians have either been killed, wounded, or missing, of which 69 percent are women and children, according to statistics reported by the Civil Defense Directorate in the Gaza Strip.

Tel Aviv also recently expanded its genocidal war to neighboring Lebanon, killing hundreds in less than two weeks and dropping more bombs in two days than the US army dropped in an entire year during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.

https://thecradle.co/articles/qassam-ro ... aqsa-flood

Khamenei’s Lebanese red line

The importance of Iran’s special relationship with Hezbollah and Lebanon became clear after its unprecedented salvo of missiles hit targets across Israel. The country’s supreme leader made that even more apparent in his rare public speech on Friday.


Ali Rizk

OCT 6, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

Friday’s commemoration of Hezbollah’s late leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in Iran was no ordinary event and provides an indication of how far Tehran is willing to go to preserve the Axis of Resistance in the face of Israeli escalation.

Thousands reportedly turned out for the commemoration ceremony, in which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers before addressing the gathered masses. Khamenei’s public appearance can itself be seen as both an act of defiance directed at the Axis’ enemies and a message of reassurance to its supporters, who are no doubt looking to Iran for leadership following Nasrallah’s assassination.

The Iranian leader’s public appearance comes after foreign media reports that he had been moved to an undisclosed location for safety reasons in the immediate aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination. Perhaps more importantly, it comes on the heels of Operation True Promise 2, in which Iran launched a heavy barrage of missiles on Israel, which, according to the Iranians, hit 90 percent of their intended targets.

That operation was notably heavier-handed than the first True Promise, which came in response to Israel’s attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus last April and marked the first direct military action by Tehran on Israel. In an article for Foreign Policy, Vali Nasr notes how Iran’s second direct attack on Israel was carried out with far less advanced warning compared to the April operation. Nasr – considered an authoritative voice in Washington on issues related to West Asia – also explained how the latest missile salvo “signaled Iran’s will and ability to attack Israel – and penetrate its defense systems in potentially damaging ways.”

True Promise 2 came in response to the assassination of Nasrallah, Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismael Haniyeh, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Abbas Nilforushan, conveying a clear message that Iran, contrary to many assessments, was ready to escalate. This message was reinforced by Khamenei on Friday, as he delivered some fiery remarks with a rifle by his side.

“What our armed forces did was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” said Khamenei in reference to Iran’s latest offensive, while warning that Tehran was ready to conduct more direct military action against Israel should the need arise.

These warnings come amid much speculation on Israel’s likely response to True Promise 2, as senior officials in Tel Aviv have pledged that Iran’s attack will not go unanswered, and the Israeli military appears to be readying a large-scale operation against Iran, with US support.

In turn, senior Iranian military officials have warned that any Israeli operations targeting Iranian soil would be met with devastating blows, far exceeding the strikes Tehran has conducted in both its previous operations.

As IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi said in a statement published by Iranian state-affiliated media:

If the occupiers make such a mistake [attack Iran], we will target all their energy sources, installations, and all refineries and gas fields.

That Iran has upped the ante dramatically in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination speaks to how determined it is to demonstrate that this setback will not weaken the Axis of Resistance. Perhaps even more importantly, these latest developments speak to the special relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah.

This is reflected in the fact that Khamenei’s speech was the first time in which Iran’s supreme leader publicly addressed a mass crowd since the US assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, further highlighting the special status of Nasrallah throughout Iran, and with Khamenei, at a personal level.

A significant part of the supreme leader’s speech, however, was not directed at the crowds physically amassed for the unusual speech but rather at the regional and international supporters of the Axis of Resistance outside Iran.

Khamenei devoted half of his address to the Muslim world, naming Lebanon and Palestine specifically. It was Lebanon, however, that featured most prominently in the section of his speech delivered in Arabic. This shift in language was notable, marking the first time Iran’s supreme leader spoke publicly in Arabic since the ‘Arab Spring’ a decade ago.

Urging the supporters of the resistance not to despair, Khamenei addressed not only Hezbollah but also its close and powerful domestic ally, the Amal movement, whose leader is long-time Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri. He also directed his message of reassurance specifically to the younger generation, whom he described as his “children” and with whom hopes lie in preserving and potentially strengthening the Axis of Resistance.

Khamenei’s remarks served to reinforce the notion of the special relationship between Iran and Hezbollah but also extended to the historic relationship between the Islamic Republic and Lebanon as a whole:

It is our duty and the responsibility of all Muslims to repay our debt to the wounded, bloodied Lebanon.

In another sign of the special status of this relationship, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made a surprise visit to Beirut on Friday.

Hezbollah, and by extension, Lebanon’s status as a special ally for Iran, owes largely to the integral role the Lebanese resistance plays within the Axis of Resistance. An example of this is Hezbollah’s roles in places like Syria and Iraq, where the Lebanese movement was Tehran’s major partner in the fight against extremist Takfiri groups like ISIS and Al-Nusra.

Importantly, the confrontations that have taken place in Syria since 2011 can also be seen as part of the Axis’ ongoing struggle with Israel. Senior Israeli officials at the time made no secret of their desire to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lose power to the extremists, with Israel providing secret aid to some of those groups that were fighting the Syrian government.

The special relationship between Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah puts Washington in a dilemma. While the White House has publicly declared its opposition to wider regional war and its reluctance to be party to one, it can no longer rely on Iranian restraint to avoid that scenario. This owes to the fact that the stakes have become simply too high for Tehran following the recent unprecedented Israeli escalation on the Lebanese front.

Iran’s missile attacks on 1 October have shown that the Iran–Hezbollah special relationship is something Tehran’s leadership is not willing to forgo, whatever the costs. What remains to be seen is how far the United States is willing to go in its own special relationship with Israel.

https://thecradle.co/articles/khameneis ... e-red-line

Hezbollah confronts invasion of Lebanon as Israel claims over 400 'terrorists' killed

The Lebanese resistance says it has killed over 25 Israeli soldiers and officers and wounded over 130 since the start of the ground operation

News Desk

OCT 6, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: Inkstick)

Israeli troops are continuing their incursions into southern Lebanon and are taking heavy losses, as Tel Aviv claims to have killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives since the start of its ground operation.

Hezbollah announced via its media page on 6 October that it carried out several operations against troops infiltrating south Lebanon and targeted Israeli positions along military sites facing the Lebanese border.

“While the Israeli enemy forces were trying to evacuate their wounded and dead soldiers in the Manara settlement at 12:45 a.m. on Sunday 10-6-2024, the Islamic Resistance fighters targeted them with a rocket salvo,” Hezbollah said, shortly after targeting soldiers in Manara with two separate rocket attacks and “hitting them accurately.”

“When a force of Israeli enemy soldiers attempted to infiltrate towards Khallet Shuaib in the town of Blida, the Islamic Resistance fighters targeted it at 12:10 noon on Sunday 10-6-2024 with artillery shells, forcing it to retreat and inflicting confirmed casualties on it,” the Lebanese resistance announced earlier, marking its first statement of the day.

Tel Aviv has admitted to the deaths of nine of its soldiers since the Israeli ground operation in Lebanon began on 2 October.

A Hezbollah field officer cited by the Lebanese resistance group’s media page on 5 October detailed an operation which, according to the officer, killed and injured 15 Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah fighters opened fire at an “infiltrating force, which resulted in the explosion of mines that the enemy force had in its possession, with the aim of booby-trapping the municipality building. This resulted in the deaths and injuries of approximately 15 soldiers, and their screams and wails were heard clearly,” the officer said. The operation took place on Friday.

Numerous ambushes of a similar nature have been announced over the past few days as battles rage in south Lebanon, and as Israeli military censorship continues to obscure the rising number of casualties among the army’s ranks.

The field source added that since the Israeli ground operation began, Hezbollah has killed over 25 soldiers and officers and injured more than 130.

Israel’s Ziv Hospital in the city of Safad said on 5 October that it received 110 wounded in the past few days due to operations in south Lebanon and on the northern front.

The Israeli army said on Saturday that it has killed at least 440 Hezbollah operatives since the ground operation began.

It released footage via X that day showing its forces moving through what it said was a tunnel used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. “250 meters of a terrorist tunnel in southern Lebanon” was “dismantled,” according to the Israeli army. “This tunnel was designated to be used in an invasion by Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces into Israel.”

Israeli army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said on Saturday that Israel “must continue exerting pressure on Hezbollah and creating additional and lasting damage to the enemy. Without relief and without allowing a respite for the organization.”

It is unclear whether the tunnel found by Israeli forces was recently in use, or if it is among the several inactive tunnels no longer needed by Hezbollah. The Israeli army launched an operation in December 2018 aimed at destroying Hezbollah tunnels along the border.

Late Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah ridiculed the operation in 2019. He said at the time that many of the tunnels predate the 2006 war.

The Israeli army released on 1 October images of its soldiers walking around in what it called Hezbollah tunnels.

“These pictures and videos are very old and have no relation to any current military operations at the Lebanese border,” Hezbollah said on Tuesday.

https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah ... sts-killed
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 07, 2024 9:05 pm

The Meaning of October 7
October 6, 2024

The Hamas incursion was less Israel’s 9/11 and more a Palestinian Tet Offensive, says John Wight. No ugly oppression has ever given rise to a pretty resistance.


Image
Frantz Fanon during a press conference of the Writers Congress in Tunis in 1959. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

By John Wight
Special to Consortium News

“When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.”

— Frantz Fanon

Israel’s murderous assault on the people of Gaza — over this past year — with the material, diplomatic and political support of the collective West — has been tantamount to witnessing a rabid dog ripping the flesh from the bones of what many had allowed themselves to believe was a world worth living in. At this point, it is not.

Israel’s ongoing exercise in mad slaughter is of a piece with the rage unleashed by the slaveowner in response to recalcitrant slaves daring to break out of the plantation. And it is here where we understand the real “crime” of the Palestinians of Gaza – refusal to remain in the place accorded them by their colonizer and oppressor. That is, on their metaphoric knees, defeated and broken in mind, body and spirit.

This is the true significance of Oct. 7 2023. It proved to the Israelis and their Western backers that despite their condition as a people confined to a latter-day reservation, that despite the racist disregard for their humanity, the Palestinians remain defiant. It also revealed a level of planning and ingenuity that no colonized people is ever supposed to be able to achieve.

Nobody understood or articulated the psychology of the oppressed better than legendary anti-colonialist militant and thinker, Frantz Fanon: “Violence,” he once wrote,

“frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

Fanon may have died in 1961, but his analysis of Western colonialism, its brutality and the dehumanizing impact it has on its victims — forging psychological chains of oppression and self-hatred which can only be broken via a “murderous and decisive struggle” against the colonizer — remains apposite over five decades since it appeared in his classic work, The Wretched of the Earth.

Fanon wrote the book in the midst of the epic struggle for national liberation that was taking place between the Algerian people and their French colonial masters, pitting the might of a first world European power against a poorly armed, but popularly supported anti-colonial insurgency. It was a fierce and bitter conflict which raged over eight long years, between 1954 and 1962.

Ultimately, the Algerian people’s quest for national liberation proved stronger than France’s ability to retain a North African colony it had possessed since the 1830s. By the time the conflict ended, marked by French President Charles De Gaulle’s pronouncement that the Algerian people had the right to determine their own future, 1.5 million had perished, of whom the vast majority were Algerian.

Oct. 7 was less Israel’s 9/11 and more a Palestinian Tet Offensive. It was a scream from the bowels of structural oppression, a reassertion of the self-respect Fanon recognized in the violence of a colonized and oppressed people. It was, in sum, the killing rage of those who refuse to accept the status of an unpeople.

In the spirit of Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In the spirit of the Mau Mau, the spirit of Irish revolutionary leader James Connolly of Easter Rising 1916 fame. In the spirit of Bobby Sands and the other Irish Hunger Strikers who gave their lives for freedom in 1981. In the spirit of every anti-colonial resistance movement and struggle there has ever been, the Palestinians of Gaza on Oct.7, 2023, dared to say ”No!”

Image
Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Oct. 17, 2023. (Fars Media Corporation, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The resulting wave of total violence unleashed upon the Palestinian people since is not that of a just cause. It is precisely the opposite. As with the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, and the British in Ireland, this Zionist settler-colonial project has failed on its own terms. It can only be sustained by extreme violence and slaughter, such is its unsustainability on the basis of its supremacist idea.

The simple and unvarnished truth is you cannot keep 2.2 million people confined to a latter-day Indian reservation for 17 years, control their access to electricity, clean drinking water, and all the necessities of life, while also denying them freedom of movement, dignity, hope and a future. No, you can’t do all that and expect next-to-no resistance.

This is the context in which Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, launched by Palestinians in Gaza one year ago today, must be understood. No ugly oppression has ever given rise to a pretty resistance. History leaves no doubt of it.

The pretext for this audacious Palestinian operation was the repeated violation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem — Islam’s third holiest site, during Ramadan in 2023. It was also predicated on the unrelenting refusal to accept the normalization of their condition as a colonized and dispossessed people across the Arab and Muslim world.

Gaza today lies in ruins. Over 40,000 have been killed so far in Israel’s orgy of revenge. There will be those, understandably, who will question the rationale behind Oct. 7, given the extent of the suffering that has been visited on the people of Gaza in its wake. But there is a marked difference between chronological and historical time. And with the latter in mind, it is still too soon to tell if it was worth it.

But thinking about this particular question on a deeper level, this would impose the norms of the uncolonized onto the colonized. In truth, the real question we should be asking ourselves one year on is this: What choice did they have? When the choice is between living on your knees or dying on your feet, is there really any choice involved at all?

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/06/t ... october-7/

******

How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October
Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada 7 October 2024

Image
A woman takes a selfie in front of a stack of crushed cars and an Israeli flag

Taking a selfie at the Tekuma “car cemetery.” Israel says that more than 1,000 vehicles were destroyed — often with Israeli captives inside — on and soon after 7 October 2023. But the evidence shows that many of these bombings were carried out by Israel itself, under its deadly “Hannibal Directive.” Jim HollanderUPI
One year ago today Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip.

The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s army bases and militarized settlements which have besieged Gaza’s inhabitants for decades – all of which are built on land that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.

The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for liberation back to the forefront of world attention.

“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.

It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present later recalled to Israeli journalists. “These words still give me the chills.”

Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched a lightening raid over the Gaza boundary line.

The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.

The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.

Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.



Caught completely unprepared, most of the soldiers manning the bases were either killed or captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners of war.
A reported 255 Israelis were captured, including soldiers and civilians. Since then, 154 of them have been released, mostly by Hamas in November’s prisoner exchange.

However, the figure of those released also includes some bodies of dead captives, mostly killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Of the remaining 101 prisoners, 35 have been officially declared dead by Israel. The real number is likely much higher.

Many have been killed by Israeli carpet bombing, and three escaped prisoners were shot dead by Israeli ground troops in Gaza City in December.

Al-Aqsa Flood was the first time in history that Palestinian armed groups were able to retake Palestinian territories lost since 1948, however briefly.

Israel’s response was also unprecedented, if not in its nature then undoubtedly in its scale – an undisguised genocide against the population of Gaza.

One “conservative” estimate published by the British medical journal The Lancet in July stated that as many as 186,000 Palestinians are likely to have been killed by Israel so far – almost 10 percent of Gaza’s population.

The UN says that 90 percent of people in Gaza have been driven out of their homes by Israel and that about a quarter of all structures in the strip have been destroyed.

The Western press took its lead from official Israeli disinformation. It was soon awash with lurid atrocity propaganda.



These lies about rape and beheaded babies were swiftly debunked by The Electronic Intifada and a small group of other independent media – often at the cost of being smeared by mainstream media and banned or censored by social media giants like YouTube.
Trying to paper over the cracks of its military and intelligence defeat, Israel has also been desperate to cover up another major scandal.

That Israel killed hundreds of its own people between 7 and 9 October 2023.

The regime ideologically justified this within Israeli society using a well-established national murder-suicide pact known in Israel as the “Hannibal Directive.”

The Electronic Intifada today presents a full overview of how Israel killed so many of its own people during the Palestinian offensive.

This article is based on a year’s worth of The Electronic Intifada’s investigative reporting, extensive monitoring and translation of the Hebrew-language Israeli media, independent examination of hundreds of videos, a recent pro-Israel film broadcast by the BBC and Paramount+ about the Supernova rave, official Israeli figures of the dead and a little-read UN Human Rights Council report.

We can conclude that during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive:

Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” – designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians.
The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June.
Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive began.
By midday, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit” headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv) to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”
This bombing of Israeli captives by Israel continues in Gaza even today.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a December meeting with released captives and families of captives that they had been “under our bombardments” in Gaza.
Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire.
Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.
Killing their own people
If Hamas made a miscalculation in the planning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, it was perhaps to overestimate the value Israeli planners assigned to the lives of their own people.

In 2006, Hamas successfully captured Israeli occupation soldier Gilad Shalit, exchanging him for 1,024 Palestinian prisoners in 2011 – including the current leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar. A similar exchange was made with the Lebanese resistance in 2008.

Although exchanging prisoners is a common element of conflict, Israeli leaders felt weakened and embarrassed by what they saw as compromises. So they secretly modified their policies, preparing to strike with lethal force against their own people in the event of future captures.

At the heart of these plans was the Hannibal Directive, established in secret by Israeli generals in 1986, and named after an ancient Carthaginian general who killed himself rather than be captured alive by the Roman Empire.



Initially, the doctrine was targeted at soldiers.

In 2014, captured Israeli soldier Hadar Goldin was killed in a deliberate artillery strike during Israel’s August invasion of the Gaza Strip. Up to 200 Palestinian civilians were killed in the bombardment on Rafah, including 75 children.

As a result, the secretive military doctrine was forced into the light. Despite continued obfuscation, the Israeli military admitted that the directive existed and may have been used on an Israeli solider.

Two years later, the Israeli military distanced itself from the directive, claiming that “the order as it is understood today” would be canceled. “This move was not necessarily a full change in policy but a clarification,” The Times of Israel reported in 2016.

Yet multiple Israeli press reports have now confirmed that Hannibal was not only reactivated on 7 October – if it ever truly went away – but was actually extended to captured Israeli civilians on their way to Gaza.

Bombing Israelis on the road to Gaza
Overestimating Israel’s humanity, Hamas may have been ignorant of this possibility in its two-year preparation and training for the offensive. Over the past year, the group has repeatedly agreed to exchange Israeli prisoners for Palestinian prisoners.

But aside from the Israeli captives released during the four-day pause in November (including the children and noncombatant captives) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adamantly refused to make a deal.

Instead, Israel has systematically bombed every part of the Gaza Strip – including areas where the Israeli captives are being held.

Israelis released in the November prisoner exchange have told the media that the main threat to their lives while they were held in Gaza was not Hamas, but Israeli attacks.

Chen Almog-Goldstein and three of her children were at one point held in a Gazan supermarket which was bombed by Israel.

Image
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December admitted in a meeting with the relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza that they had been “under our bombardments”. (Ynet)

“It was atrocious,” she told The Guardian. “It was the first time we really felt like our lives were in danger.”

The bombing “was closing up on us to the point where the Hamas guards put mattresses over us on the floor to cover us, and then they covered us with their bodies to protect us from our own forces’ shooting.”

In a town hall-style meeting with relatives of the captives, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that captives had been “under our bombardments and our [military] activity there,” Hebrew news site Ynet reported in December.

“Every day in captivity was very hard,” one former detainee said at the angry meeting. “I was in a house when there were bombardments all around. We were sitting in tunnels and we were very afraid that, not Hamas, but Israel would kill us, and then they’ll say: ‘Hamas killed you.’”

Another released detainee said: “The fact is that I was in a hideaway that was bombed, and we had to be smuggled away, and we were injured. Not to mention that we were shot at by a helicopter when we were on our way to Gaza … You are bombing the tunnel routes exactly in the area where they [the other captives] are.”

As the second released detainee’s testimony about being shot at by a helicopter on the way to Gaza proves, the captives were also killed and attacked by Israel while Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was still happening.

Within the first hour of the offensive, Israeli forces began shooting and bombing Israeli captives on their way to Gaza.

“Hannibal at Erez”
An investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz based on documents and testimonies of soldiers found evidence that these Hannibal attacks came at least as early as 7:18 am – only 52 minutes after the start of the offensive.

The Haaretz piece was published in English in July.

But the paper lagged six months behind its competitor, Yedioth Ahronoth. In January, Yedioth’s weekend supplement 7 Days ran a landmark investigative piece laying out a timeline of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive from the Israeli military perspective.

The paper has never published an official English translation of the article. The Electronic Intifada remains the only publication in the world to release a full professional translation, which you can read here.



The 7 Days investigation found that “at midday of October 7th, the IDF [Israeli military] instructed all its fighting units to perform the Hannibal Directive in practice, although it did so without stating that name explicitly.”
Well-sourced Israeli military and intelligence reporters Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun explained in the long piece that “the instruction was to stop ‘at any cost’ any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, using language very similar to that of the original Hannibal Directive.”

In contrast to the 7 Days investigation, the more recent Haaretz piece found that the name of the doctrine was explicitly invoked – and very early on: “One of these decisions was made at 7:18 am … ‘Hannibal at Erez.’”

Erez is the massive Israeli military checkpoint and base caging Palestinians into the north of the Gaza Strip. It had been totally overrun by Palestinian fighters and besieged Israeli troops seem to have called for an airstrike on their own position.

That the 7 Days investigation reached the conclusion Hannibal was invoked from the top of Israel’s military hierarchy is crucial.

It shows that the reactivation and expansion of the Hannibal Directive that day was not a matter of rogue individual troops or of simple chaos and confusion.

It was a matter of policy.

Orders and chaos
Hannibal was ordered from the top after the generals under the Hakirya building in Tel Aviv realized that Israeli soldiers and settlers all over the Gaza frontier region were being captured en masse.

They wanted the captives dead as soon as possible.

Israeli troops in the field had been trained in the procedure for years and immediately understood what they had to do.

A report by a UN commission quotes one tank commander who opened fire at Israeli captives coming from the settlement of Nir Oz.

“Something in my gut feeling made me think that they [his soldiers] could be on them [the vehicles heading to Gaza],” he said. “Yes, I could have killed them, but I decided that this is the right decision. I prefer stopping the abduction so they won’t be taken.”

Ending Israelis’ captivity by killing them is the Hannibal doctrine in a nutshell.



In November last year, Nof Erez, an Israeli Air Force colonel, admitted to a Hebrew-language podcast that the response to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood “was a mass Hannibal.”
There was also an incredibly chaotic situation that day. In a separate article by Yoav Zitun, the Israeli military admitted to an “immense and complex quantity” of what it called “friendly fire” incidents.

Caught entirely off guard over a Jewish holiday weekend, Israeli forces found themselves unable to communicate with each other after the Palestinians destroyed the communications infrastructure.

The 7 Days investigation found that “40 percent of the communication sites such as towers with relay antennas … near the Gaza Strip … were destroyed by Hamas” that morning.

Even the Palestinian resistance was caught off guard by the sheer scope of its own success. And, to an extent, there was a degree of chaos in the Palestinian fighters’ assault.

Collateral damage?
Soon after the initial wave of Hamas’ vanguard commandos (known as the Nukhba force, Arabic for “elite”) breached the fence in almost 50 locations, smaller armed groups – including Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – joined in.

About an hour after the offensive started, a wave of Palestinian civilians began to flow through the breaches in the fence and managed to enter their homeland. Some of these people seem to have attacked or captured Israeli noncombatants in the militarized settlements that surround Gaza.

The chaotic situation, combined with Israel’s use of its own civilians as human shields to besiege and occupy Gaza also meant that not all the Israeli casualties of the Palestinian resistance that day were combatants.

Despite efforts by the Western media and politicians to paint a picture of evil, baby-killing Palestinian “terrorists” rampaging around southern Israel slaughtering as many civilians as possible, it is clear that Israeli noncombatants were often caught in the crossfire between armed Israeli forces and the Palestinian fighters.



Pitched battles broke out all over the region. Roughly 1,000-3,000 Palestinian fighters are estimated to have been involved.
Despite the common misconception that the Israeli army was nowhere to be found that day, the UN report and the 7 Days investigation concluded that Israeli combatants were present all over the region, and from very early on.

Within the first 24 minutes of the assault, the Israeli military scrambled at least six armed aircraft: two F-16 bombers, two F-35 bombers and two of the lethal Hermes 450 drones made by Elbit Systems.

Two more aircraft – Apache attack helicopters – also arrived at the Be’eri settlement within one hour.

The UN report says that it “confirmed that at least eight Apache helicopters were dispatched to the area around the Gaza border on 7 October” and that “some 23 tanks were stationed throughout the whole border area with Gaza” (Editor’s note: in fact, Israel has no declared borders).

Human shields
But there is also no doubt that the Israelis were overwhelmed, briefly outgunned and often outsmarted by the Palestinian fighters. The battle for Kibbutz Be’eri, for example, continued over the course of three days.

Nonetheless, the presence of armed Israeli combatants embedded throughout the civilian population – often using the latter as effective human shields – speaks to the operational challenges faced by Hamas on the ground that day.

The UN report even documents some cases of Israeli “civilians” picking up weapons to engage in clashes with the Palestinian fighters.

Hamas’ deputy political leader Khalil al-Hayya said in an interview with the BBC last week that its fighters had been told not to target civilians during the assault, but that there were individual failings in sticking to that plan.

He also alluded to the military difficulties faced by Palestinians trying to distinguish who was who: “Fighters may have felt that they were in danger.”

Image
In a video released by Hamas’ armed wing on 10 October 2023, the Al Qassam Brigades showed how they had swiftly taken over the Nahal Oz military base three days earlier, supported from the air by sophisticaled but inexpensive drone technology. The base straddles the boundary line with Gaza.

In “Our Narrative,” a document Hamas released in January, the group admitted, “Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.”

One such “fault” was the fact that Hamas’ intelligence branch seems not to have anticipated the presence of the all-night “Supernova” trance music rave.

This event took place in open fields less than three miles from the Re’im military base.

Re’im was the headquarters of the Israeli army’s Gaza Division – the number one target of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive.

But the separation between Israeli settler “civilians” and Israeli combatants is not always clear cut.

Planted around the Gaza region mostly after the forced expulsion of the Palestinians by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army between 1947 and 1949, the settlements besieging Gaza were conceived by Israeli military doctrine as a belt of human shields to protect Israel’s occupation and suppress the far bigger population of Gaza.

The population of the Gaza Strip is more than 80 percent refugees – those expelled from their homes in order to make room for the new state of Israel in 1948 and after, along with their descendants.

One of these so-called “Gaza Envelope” settlements, founded in 1951, is even called “Magen” – literally the Hebrew for “shield.” Another, Nahal Oz, was established as an explicitly military settlement.

According to the Jewish National Fund, a colonial arm of the Israeli state, Nahal Oz was intended to “supply the IDF with soldiers.” It was also intended to “become a civilian center and serve as the first line of defense against potential future Arab invasions while providing a base of operations and resources for military forces operating in peripheral regions.”

UN laundering of Israeli propaganda
In June this year, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a report: “Detailed findings on attacks carried out on and after 7 October 2023 in Israel.”

What little media attention it received tended to focus on how the report (along with an accompanying document focusing on Gaza) had concluded that “Israel and Hamas have both committed war crimes,” as The Guardian put it.

The report’s authors described themselves as an “independent international commission of inquiry” into the offensive.

For the most part, the report does not disclose its sources. The authors say that this is due to unspecified “protection concerns.”

Nonetheless, it is clear from the instances where the report does disclose its sources that they relied almost entirely on Israeli claims. Where it does cite Palestinian sources, they are for the most part bodycam videos from killed or captured fighters. These were released by the Israeli occupation authorities and are highly likely to have been subjected to selective editing.

Therefore it is unsurprising to find that the document ends up, for the most part, siding with the debunked Israeli narrative about Palestinian atrocities. It does this to the point of absurdity at times.

In one instance, the commission of inquiry reverses the chronology of events to give the impression that a Palestinian fighter deliberately executed an Israeli baby at Kibbutz Be’eri, after they had broken into a room.



Yet, according to press reports, the death was actually the tragic result of a stray bullet. Milla Cohen, a 10-month-old baby, died when a Palestinian fighter shot through a door before he broke into a room in a settlement house to take captives.
Even worse, the UN report appears to rely heavily on the discredited Jewish extremist group ZAKA as a source, citing it once explicitly, and frequently citing it obliquely as unnamed “first responders.”

These “first responders” then tell lurid stories about supposed Palestinian “war crimes.”

And yet even the report admits that ZAKA is “not trained or equipped to manage large, complex crime scenes and may have also tainted, or even tampered with, evidence” (emphasis added).

“One first responder working for ZAKA” – who the report does not name – “provided inaccurate and exaggerated accounts of findings in media interviews.”

This may have been a reference to senior ZAKA leader Yossi Landau.

Landau was forced by Al Jazeera journalists to admit on camera – for a documentary broadcast in March – that his initial story about Palestinian fighters executing 10 Israeli children by burning them alive was a fiction.

Confronted with his own lack of evidence, Landau admitted: “When you look at them and they’re burned you don’t know exactly the ages. So you’re talking about 18 years old, 20 years old … you just don’t look on the spot … to see the ages or something like that.”

Landau was later forced to step back from his position in the group after internal disputes over money and power.

Hannibal strikes confirmed by UN
Despite the report’s authors apparently trying their best to launder Israeli atrocity propaganda into the UN system, the document does nevertheless contain an astonishing collection of evidence confirming The Electronic Intifada’s reporting over the last year that Israel itself killed many, if not most, of the Israelis that day.

Some of the evidence in the UN report is only oblique, and requires cross referencing with Hebrew-language media reports about the Hannibal doctrine and the unprecedented way it was used on 7 October 2023.

But some of it is explicit.

Over the course of three pages, the report details some of what is known about “the application of the ‘Hannibal Directive’” that day.

The commission wrote that it “documented strong indications that the ‘Hannibal Directive’ was used in several instances on 7 October, harming Israelis at the same time as striking Palestinian militants.”

In its section on the Hannibal Directive, the UN report even states that “Israeli helicopters were present at the Nova site and may have shot at targets on the ground, including civilian vehicles.” It states that “one or two helicopters” were “present over the Nova festival site in the mid-morning hours.”

This is something The Electronic Intifada first reported in November.

The UN report cites the testimony of two unnamed witnesses to back this up, including an Israeli army “reserve brigadier general, who fought against militants near a parked tank close to the Nova site” and explained that “he called the Gaza Battalion to request an attack helicopter.”

The presence of attack helicopters – and of at least one tank – in the battle for the Supernova rave site could also go some way towards explaining the high number of noncombatant casualties among the fleeing rave attendees that morning.

The Supernova rave
Held in a location less than four miles away from the massive open-air prison camp that is the Gaza Strip, Supernova was put on by an event management company calling itself the “Tribe of Nova.”

Its defenders have condemned the Palestinian fighters for attacking a “peace festival,” while the event’s critics have decried it as akin to German civilians dancing outside the gates of Auschwitz during the Nazi Holocaust.

Often referred to as the “Nova music festival” by Western media, the event on its official webpage actually named itself the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering.” A recent film about the event showed that it was more akin to the illegal raves often organized in secret locations in many Western countries.

Supernova was not illegal and was coordinated with the local Israeli police force (which was armed and present in advance to guard the event). But for reasons that are not entirely clear, the rave’s location was not announced until 6 October.

Participants in the high profile Israeli film We Will Dance Again confirmed that the Supernova location was kept secret from ticket holders until the last minute.

This (rather than any confusion about the days of the event or extension of the time, as is sometimes erroneously said online) explains why Hamas had no clue about the presence of the rave in the fields between Gaza and the biggest military base in the area – the regional headquarters at Re’im.

The Supernova deaths
The rave is often reported to be the largest single site of deaths that took place on 7 October. The UN report said that 364 out of the 3,000 total ravers were “killed either at the site, near Kibbutz Re’im or in adjacent locations.”

But a detailed breakdown of the deaths recently published by The Times of Israel (based on an Israeli TV channel’s investigation) shows that more than 60 percent of this figure actually died outside of the designated grounds of the rave.

This is important for two reasons.

Firstly, despite the fact that the film We Will Dance Again tries to paint a picture of villainous Palestinian terrorists deliberately attacking civilians, it is clear from all available evidence that the rave was not a planned target of the Hamas offensive that day.

Indeed, the secret location of the event meant that a few Palestinian fighters – perhaps some from armed factions and probably some armed civilians – stumbled on the event in the course of their assault on the military bases.

Armed clashes with the Israeli forces – including police, soldiers and at least one tank, as well as armed Israeli “civilians” present – swiftly ensued.

Israeli intelligence has concluded that the Palestinians had no prior knowledge of the rave.



Secondly, the breakdown published by The Times of Israel places the deaths of ravers outside the rave grounds as far away as Sderot (11 miles north of the Supernova site) and the Re’im military base (only 2.3 miles south)
Plotting these sites of death onto Google Earth and cross referencing them with the sites of ambushes set up by Hamas’ elite commando force – as detailed by the 7 Days investigation – shows the two often coincide.

It is therefore likely that the deaths of some of these fleeing ravers were the unintended consequences of Palestinian ambushes set up to intercept Israeli army reinforcements headed to the region.

“While many reinforcements were flowing south,” Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun wrote in the 7 Days investigation, Hamas’ commando force “had foreseen these reinforcements and took over the strategic junctions … where they awaited the forces … a lot of blood was shed at those junctions, both of soldiers and of civilians.”

The 7 Days piece also relates instances of Israeli soldiers rushing south to join the fight on their own initiative – including in their own civilian vehicles.

“Commanders who had already learned from the media or from friends that something was going on … scrambled to get to the Gaza Envelope,” Bergman and Zitun explained.

One brigade commander told the journalists that, “I came with my private vehicle to the Yad Mordechai junction [2.3 miles north of the Erez checkpoint] after I saw [the attack] on the news at home.”

Exploding houses in the settlements
Evidence of deliberate Israeli “mass Hannibal” killings of Israeli civilians at the kibbutzim and other settlements surrounding Gaza is clear and undeniable.

Video footage and press reports of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive show that many buildings in the settlements were completely destroyed, in a manner consistent with heavy weaponry only known by military experts to be in the possession of the Israeli military, and not in the possession of Palestinian fighters.

While some buildings and cars did show signs of being burned, many others were clearly bombed from the air by Israeli drones and attack helicopters or shelled by Israeli tanks.



Nof Erez, the Israeli Air Force colonel who admitted that 7 October was a “mass Hannibal” event, answered positively when asked by the interviewer if they “exploded all kinds of houses inside the settlements.”
Erez insisted that his pilots only did so with “permission” from their superior officers. “I saw numerous drones above every settlement on a computer image, which we can see in every IDF [Israeli military] command,” he explained.

Footage on Israeli TV has shown Israeli tanks present and firing in the settlement of Kibbutz Be’eri.

Most infamously, Brigadier General Barak Hiram admitted to ordering his tanks to fire at Pessi Cohen’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri – “even at the cost of the civilians,” as he told The New York Times.

Palestinian fighters from Hamas had taken 15 people captive and held them at the home, while they attempted to negotiate their exit to Gaza.

Investigations by The Electronic Intifada have concluded that most of the dead were highly likely to have been killed by Hiram’s assault.

The Electronic Intifada was the first to publish in English the eyewitness account of survivor Yasmin Porat who said that the Israeli troops arrived at the scene and “eliminated everyone” with heavy gunfire and tank shelling.



Porat, Palestinian commander Hasan Hamduna (who surrendered) and one other captive – Hadas Dagan – were the only three survivors of Barak Hiram’s massacre.
Dagan insisted in testimony to Porat – which The Electronic Intifada first reported in November last year – that everyone else in and around the building was either shot or “burned completely” by the Israeli tank fire.

The victims of this apocalypse included 12-year-old Israeli twins, Liel and Yanai Hatsroni.

Sickeningly, Liel’s photo was later used in official Israeli propaganda which falsely claimed that Hamas had massacred and burned the girl to death.

“Murdered in her home by Hamas monsters … just because she’s Jewish,” former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett lied.



Hannibal at Supernova?
What is still unclear about the Supernova rave is how many of the dead were killed by Palestinians, and whether any were killed in “Hannibal” attacks by Israel.

Unlike in the more built-up areas such as the military bases and the kibbutzim – where there is clear visual evidence of bombed buildings and conclusive eyewitness accounts – the visual situation in and around the Supernova site was more chaotic.

There were few built-up structures for Israeli aircraft or tanks to explode, as they did in the settlements.

Video and other photographic evidence does show that the fields around the exit of the site next to the armed Israeli checkpoint were intensively burned and blackened.

It is unclear whether this was the result of the helicopter or tank attacks, or the result of fires which may have caught alight after Palestinian rocket-propelled grenade strikes.

What is known is that Israeli armed forces on site set up a roadblock at the main exit, causing a massive backlog of cars waiting to leave the site. Many ravers ended up fleeing on foot, east across the fields as the firefight broke out.

While the We Will Dance Again film conspicuously fails to mention the roadblock set up by Israeli forces, an early CNN report does show the roadblock on its map of the scene, and The Times of Israel report states that it was probably set up as early as 7:00 am.

Journalist William Van Wagenen has detailed in a report for The Cradle that the roadblock likely led to Israeli forces unintentionally trapping some escaping ravers in a firefight between them and Palestinian fighters advancing on the Re’im military base from the north.

Psychoactive drugs
One thing that is clear from both We Will Dance Again and a Haaretz interview with an Israeli psychologist who has treated survivors is that the use of psychoactive drugs at the rave was widespread.

As participants arrived at the site on the night of 6 October, “everyone’s saying that they’re going to get so high,” one participant in the film recalled.

According to the Haaretz interview and to the film, ravers used ecstasy, acid, cocaine, magic mushrooms and possibly ketamine. Worse, many of the ravers had deliberately timed their dosages to kick in at sunrise – which turned out to be just before the Palestinian offensive began – with rocket salvos from Gaza starting at 6:26 am.

“This sucks so much! Everyone is high,” one participant in the film recalled feeling as the rockets soared overhead. Acid, another explained, “can make things seem much worse.”

Psychedelic drugs, the Israeli psychologist explained, can lead to a situation in which “parts of the unconscious also rise to consciousness.”

All of this makes it unlikely that many ravers were in a fit state to discern whether they were being shot at by Israelis, Palestinians or both as they ran for their lives.

Although the existence of the Hannibal Directive is an open secret inside Israel, its use on Israeli civilian targets was – as far as we know – unprecedented before 7 October 2023.

Hannibal attacks all over the south
About 105 residents were killed at Kibbutz Be’eri.

It is currently unknown how many of those were killed by Palestinians and how many by Israelis. The UN report states that “at least 57 structures in the kibbutz were destroyed or sustained damage, amounting to more than one third of all residential buildings.”

Many of these appear from the visual evidence to have been destroyed by Israel.

But one important fact to bear in mind is that Israel’s “Hannibal” massacre of Israelis at Be’eri was repeated all over the region.

We only know so much about the Pessi Cohen house massacre because two civilians survived to tell their story.

Similar incidents happened elsewhere. But in most places, there were few survivors, especially of the aerial bombardments.

An all-female tank unit commandeered a military vehicle it was untrained to use and stormed through the gates of Holit, an Israeli settlement near the boundary with Egypt and the frontier with Gaza, more than 14 miles south of the Supernova rave.

“We break into the community, crash the gate,” one of the soldiers told Israeli Channel 12. “The soldier points and tells me, ‘Shoot there, the terrorists are there.’ I ask him, ‘Are there civilians there?’ He says, ‘I don’t know, just shoot.’”

The tank commander then claims she decided not to shoot – but immediately contradicts herself: “I fire with my machine gun at a house.”

Similar to the visual evidence of Hannibal attacks on Israelis by Israel at Kibbutz Be’eri, an investigation by The Electronic Intifada last year also concluded that the same sort of house explosions took place at Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
The UN report lists a surprisingly high number of places where Hannibal attacks possibly or certainly took place.

Outside the Israeli settlement of Nirim (which lies on the path between the Palestinian city of Khan Younis and the Gaza Division’s Re’im military headquarters) one Israeli tank crew departed to Nir Oz, another nearby settlement.

Once there, the UN report states, “they noticed hundreds of people crossing into Israel and back to Gaza and they shot at them, including at vehicles laden with people, some of whom may have been hostages” (emphasis added).

The next paragraph of the report hints at the possibility of similar incidents at Nitzana, Kissufim and Holit.

How many were killed by Israel?
Despite initially claiming that 1,400 people were “murdered by Hamas” on 7 October last year, Israel soon began revising the figure downwards.

In November, the Israeli government announced that 200 out of this figure were in fact Hamas fighters. They had been so badly burned by Israeli bombings they were completely unidentifiable.

This demonstrates how indiscriminate much of Israel’s fire was that day.

The Israeli death count now stands at 1,154, according to Al Jazeera.

Of these, at least 314 are said in the UN report to have been “Israeli military personnel.”

In March, a comprehensive survey of three Israeli death tolls in Hebrew by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit put the number of armed combatants higher, totaling 372.

As well as soldiers, the Al Jazeera figure includes police, security guards (i.e. armed settlement militias) and “security personnel.”

The 7 Days investigation concluded that officers from the Shin Bet – the undercover Israeli “internal security” agency – were also sent to join the battle in the south: “In the course of the fighting, 10 of the organization’s people were killed.”

The English edition of the Haaretz database of the dead revealed the names of three of these people – Yossi Tahar, Smadar Mor Idan and ​​Omer Gvera.

None of the three are listed in the database as combatants. It is therefore likely that the other seven dead Shin Bet combatants are also secretly listed as “civilians” on the database.

Al Jazeera’s raw data – provided by the investigative unit to The Electronic Intifada for this article – reveals that its figures of “security personnel” does indeed name eight Shin Bet officers among the dead.

The 372 declared combatants plus the two undeclared Shin Bet officers gives us 374 dead combatants – almost a third of the total dead Israelis.

Taking those away from the 1,154 total dead leaves us with a maximum of 780 dead Israeli civilians.

This means that at least 41 percent of the initial (erroneous) figure of 1,400 dead were actually combatants – mostly Israelis, but including 200 of the dead Palestinian fighters.

“Everyone in the vehicle was killed”
If a maximum of 780 unarmed Israelis died during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive, how many of these were killed by Israel and how many by Palestinians?

The current answer to this question is that it is impossible to know without a truly independent international investigation.

And, as the UN report makes clear, Israel is blocking just such an investigation. “The commission considers that Israel is obstructing its investigations into events on and since 7 October 2023, both in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

But it is possible for us to reach some tentative conclusions.

Al Jazeera’s investigative film found that “at least 18” of the noncombatant dead were definitely killed by Israeli ground troops and that at least 27 of the Israelis in Palestinian captivity “died somewhere between their home and the Gaza fence in circumstances that have not been explained.”

But Al Jazeera’s raw data shows that these are very well-attested and deliberate Hannibal killings, such as the infamous Pessi Cohen house massacre carried out by Barak Hiram.

This doesn’t take account of several other key figures, from which we can extrapolate a possible rough idea of the order of magnitude of the overall Hannibal and unintentional “friendly fire” deaths.

Image
A video released by Israel in October last year unintentionally gave away some very strong evidence that the Hannibal Directive was used on Israeli captives on the road to Gaza. Israel MFA

The 7 Days investigation states that Israeli military investigators “examined some 70 vehicles that … did not reach Gaza because on their way they had been hit by fire from a helicopter gunship, a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] or a tank, and at least in some of the cases, everyone in the vehicle was killed” (emphasis added).

It is unknown how many Israelis those 70 vehicles contained, but given what is known about other incidents, some cars probably contained several. These vehicles alone may have accounted for a very large number of Israeli civilian deaths.

Palestinian captors often packed multiple Israeli prisoners into pickup trucks, expropriated cars and even in some cases trailers dragged by tractors.

Fleeing Israelis did likewise.

One raver in the We Will Dance Again film describes desperately packing into cars to escape the Supernova site.

There were “a million people inside” the car, he recalled. “Half my body is outside,” he added, explaining that he was hanging out of the window.

Israeli combat helicopter footage released online and compiled in the Al Jazeera film shows one video of about a dozen people fleeing a packed car as they are fired on by the Israelis. Their fates are unknown.

The film shows many similar videos. It’s unclear where exactly near Gaza these incidents took place. You can watch the full film on Al Jazeera’s website or in the YouTube video embedded below (due to the platform’s age restrictions, you will need an appropriate YouTube account).


A November news report on the Israeli website *Ynet* quoted a helicopter pilot as saying that “in the first four hours from the start of the battles” alone, Israeli aircraft “attacked about 300 targets, most in Israeli territory.”
The report stated that they were commanded to “shoot at everything” near the fence with Gaza.

The reporter of the Hebrew piece was Yoav Zitun, the co-author of the 7 Days investigation, a well-sourced Israeli military reporter close to the intelligence and military establishment.

The drone operators seem to have been even more deadly than the helicopter pilots. The 7 Days piece says they often “took decisions to attack” by themselves and that by the end of the day on 7 October, “the squadron performed no fewer than 110 attacks on some 1,000 targets, most of which were inside Israel.”

If “targets” includes individual persons, it’s hard to know how many would have been Israelis. The pilots probably often did not know themselves. If a hit “target” also includes individual cars, the 1,000 targets hit could have easily resulted in hundreds of dead people.

The car “cemetery”
In November hundreds of the vehicles blown up during the Palestinian offensive were collected by Israeli troops and piled up in a scrapyard near the settlements of Tekuma and Netivot.



Photos and drone footage of the scrapyard clearly showed many of the cars were completely flattened and twisted in a manner consistent with Israeli bombing from the air.
In short, the cars looked very similar to the Palestinian cars (of both civilians and fighters) habitually bombed by Israel from the air in Gaza over the years.

Today, it seems the scrapyard has become something of a tourist attraction for Israel and its supporters – a site they refer to as a “car burial ground.” In one video shot there this past summer, an Israeli army tour guide says that the scrapyard contains “1,650 vehicles that were brought here.”

In one ambulance alone, he says, from the ash and “human dust” they recovered, the remains of 18 people were found.

Whatever the true figure of the Israelis dead from “Hannibal” attacks by Israel, it does seem entirely plausible that Israel killed hundreds of the Israelis who died during the course of the offensive.

The whitewash
For the last year, there has been a systematic cover-up by Israel.

Most of the Israeli reporting on this has been in Hebrew only. And not due to lack of access to English language media.

The lead author of the 7 Days investigation was Ronen Bergman – who is also a high profile New York Times reporter and bestselling author of several hagiographies of the Mossad and other Israeli spy agencies.

Bergman has yet to write about the Hannibal Directive in English in The New York Times or elsewhere.

Very few autopsies were carried out – not on the dead at Pessi Cohen’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri at any rate.

In the case of that particular crime, it would have likely been impossible anyway. Barak Hiram’s tank shelling meant most of his Israeli victims were burned to cinders – including 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni.



Many bodies were prematurely buried. Israeli cars destroyed in apparent “Hannibal” killings were crushed by Israeli authorities before being buried in the “cemetery” on a religious pretext.
The UN commission’s report criticizes Israel for barring them access to the country. “Israeli officials not only refused to cooperate with the commission’s investigation but also reportedly barred medical professionals and others from being in contact,” the report states.

In a whitewash “investigation” of the killings at Pessi Cohen’s house, the army in July largely cleared Barak Hiram of any wrongdoing.

The remains of the house have now been demolished by the army.

Last month, Hiram was promoted – appointed head of the humbled Gaza Division.

His predecessor, Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld had quit over his failure to prevent the 7 October 2023 offensive.

Comparing the assault with Egypt’s surprise October 1973 offensive to regain territories occupied by Israel, one high-level source who was in the “Pit” military headquarters deep under Tel Aviv that day, recalled to Bergman and Zitun the following words that were intoned.

“It is unimaginable. It’s like the Old City of Jerusalem in the War of Independence or the outposts along the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. We thought that this could never happen again.”

“This will remain a scar burnt into our flesh forever.”

https://electronicintifada.net/content/ ... ober/49216

******

In numbers: One year since Al-Aqsa Flood and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians

Gaza's Civil Defense Directorate provides statistics showing the horrific destruction and killing by Israeli forces over the past year

News Desk

OCT 7, 2024

Image
A protester holds a symbolic shrouded, deceased Palestinian child while attending a march calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, in central London on 9 December 2023 (Photo credit: Henry Nicholls/AFP)

The Civil Defense Directorate in the Gaza Strip published statistics on 6 October summarizing the effects of the first year of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

In the year since Hamas' Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Israeli attacks have targeted all aspects of life in Gaza, including housing, medical care, education, houses of religious worship, electricity, and water infrastructure, in an effort to make Gaza uninhabitable.

The Civil Defense Directorate reports that in the past year, Israeli forces have carried out 3,654 massacres, killing 41,870 people and leaving another 10,000 missing.

Israeli airstrikes have wiped out 902 entire families, while 36 people have starved to death due to the Israeli siege.

Among those killed, 986 were medical staff, or about one in every 40 people killed.


Israeli bombs and soldiers have killed 175 journalists and 85 civil defense officers who worked to save people from under the rubble after Israeli airstrikes.

Israel troops stole 2,300 bodies from 19 out of the 60 cemeteries in Gaza.

In total, 149,036 Palestinians have either been killed, wounded, or missing, of which 69 percent are children and women.

Israeli forces have bombed 187 displacement shelters, including 27 in the last two days.

Israeli troops have destroyed 462 schools and universities. Israeli attacks throughout the strip have killed 12,700 students, 750 teachers, and 130 scientists and academics.

Thirty-four hospitals and 162 health centers have been destroyed or damaged to the point they are out of service, while 131 ambulances have been targeted.


Of the 1,245 mosques in Gaza, 815 have been destroyed, in addition to three churches.

Some 200,000 housing units were destroyed, using 85,000 tons of explosives, an amount equivalent to six of the atom bombs used in Hiroshima during World War II.

Israeli forces have destroyed 3,130 kilometers of electricity networks, 330,000 meters of water networks, 655,000 meters of sewage networks, and 2,835,000 meters of road and street networks.

In total, 86 percent of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, the Civil Defense Directorate determined.

On 7 October last year, the Islamic resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Fighters from the Hamas armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, broke out of Gaza to attack Israeli military bases and settlements besieging the enclave.

The goal of Hamas was to capture soldiers in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and put the issue of Israel’s occupation of Palestine back on the international agenda.

Israel responded to the attack by dispatching attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, killing both Hamas fighters and Israelis being taken captive by the group back to Gaza under the Hannibal Directive.


Roughly 1,139 Israelis were killed on 7 October. Some were killed by Hamas, while many were burned alive by missiles and large caliber ammunition fired from the Israeli tanks, helicopters, and drones, including at the Nova music festival, on the Gaza–Israel border, and in Israeli settlements (kibbutz).

Israel claimed all the victims on 7 October were killed by Hamas while inventing stories about Hamas fighters committing atrocities, such as beheading babies and carrying out mass rape.

Israel then used these fabricated atrocities as a pretext for genocide, including tightening the siege on Gaza further, unleashing a horrific bombing campaign with a near-unlimited flow of US bombs, and launching a ground invasion into the enclave.

https://thecradle.co/articles/in-number ... lestinians
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 08, 2024 12:22 pm

George Habash on Martyrdom, Revolution and Resistance: ‘We Will Overcome’
07/10/2024
By George Habash

On Saturday, March 17, 1973 in Beirut, Lebanon, George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, delivered a speech to commemorate the martyrdom of his revolutionary comrades Mohamed El-Aswad (who was known as ‘the Guevara of Gaza’), Abdel Aziz Amassy, and Abdulhady Hayek. All three men had been killed a few days before while battling the Zionist entity in Gaza.

Habash begins by asking what we owe these martyrs, and indeed, all our martyrs. He immediately dismisses the impulse to despair over those martyred in Gaza. Far from despair, the figure of the martyr provides Habash with a renewed and deepened commitment to never lay down arms against imperialism, such that each martyr directly resurrects a revolutionary spirit. Habash never mourns the death of his comrades without immediately expressing that grief as a passion for militant resistance along with all the technical, strategic, and scientific organisation it requires for victory.

It is perhaps true that America and Israel have a certain technical superiority displayed in their ability to create guns, bombs, and other technologies of death. What they will never understand however is that the resistance forces they are incapable of defeating were never built on weaponry alone. The resistance movement depends not just on guns, but rather on a deep companionship with death. As Habash’s dear comrade Ghassan Kanafani put it just weeks before his own martyrdom: “Of course, death means a lot. The important thing is to know why. Self-sacrifice, within the context of revolutionary action, is an expression of the very highest understanding of life, and of the struggle to make life worthy of a human being”. We witness this sentiment in Habash’s speech below, but also in the words of the martyr and former Secretary General of Hizbullah, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, when in 1997 he commemorated the martyrdom of his own son, Hadi Nasrallah as follows: “Before being a battle with guns and weapons, it is a battle of ideology, faith, loyalty, truth, reliance on God, aspiration to martyrdom, renunciation of worldly pleasures, the love of others, and the desire to serve them.”

Those that have divorced their thought from that of the resistance only see the martyr as a failure, since to them death and victory cannot be reconciled. This commonsense thinking is mistaken. It fails to grasp the meanings and relationships between death, the armed resistance vitalised and fortified by those that have died, and the life of dignity realised through that armed resistance. When the ‘failure’ of each and every death is immediately reinscribed as a source of renewed commitment to political organisation and armed resistance, then the ultimate success of the revolution is all but guaranteed. Habash can then declare with certainty, ‘We will overcome’. The path of the martyr is thereby the path to life.

At a critical moment, Habash’s speech reminds us that a resistance movement grounded in an oath to the martyr can never die.

– Mary Saad

“We Will Overcome”

This is the complete transcript [translated from French] of a speech given by Dr. George Habash on March 17 1973 at the Beirut Arab University. Alongside representatives from the Lebanese national movement, Fatah, and thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians, Habash pays homage to PFLP martyrs who fell in Gaza: Mohamed El-Aswad (the Guevara of Gaza), Abdel Aziz Amassy, and Abdulhady Hayik.

Brothers,

What is our duty toward our courageous martyr, Guevara of Gaza, and his two comrades, Kamel and Abdel Adi? What is our duty and what is our responsibility toward all our martyrs, including Abu Ali Aya, Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Hamshari, and all those who died for the Palestinian revolution? What are our responsibilities toward their parents, their families, and their wives and children who are now deprived of their affection? What are our duties to The Cause that was their cause, the revolution, the masses, and the cause of the oppressed against their oppressors? What are our duties toward the oppressed populations that have been chased from their country and abandoned? What are our duties toward our masses that have not stopped sacrificing for the last 50 years, combatting their imperialist enemies, the enemies of humanity and liberty?

Comrades, our duty toward these martyrs is to clearly discern things, see our cause clearly, proclaim it, and decide to act in the light of clear evidence that our revolution will continue to endure and exist in this way, and that no force in the world is capable of dominating the masses of our Palestinian and Arab people.

The central and essential point in the enemy’s plans during this particular phase (leaving to the side its political movements and conspiracies) is to sow seeds of doubt in our ranks and spread despair among us and among the people. That the masses, seized by doubt, might question their revolution, its efficacy, and the strategy of the peoples’ war for liberation is the central point of the enemy’s plans. And our duty consists in foiling this plan through scientific awareness.

We will tell the imperialist enemy that, just as the Vietnamese peoples’ liberatory military strategy demonstrated its effectiveness and success in their victory, in the same way it will prove its success in its application on Palestinian and Arab land.

The Vietnamese revolution that made imperialism bow to the land has elucidated the first fact of revolution that should guide our revolutionary action against our imperialist enemies. What is the basic essential reality of the Vietnamese revolution? It is that a people who lead a just revolutionary war, through one revolutionary organisation, one national united front, based on the mobilisation of as many people as possible, and an adroit knowledge of the art of war, pushing its alliances to an international level - such a people is capable of achieving victory and crushing imperialism.

This is the essential fact of the Vietnamese revolution. It is an example for honest people, for revolutionaries, for organisations, and for those who lead revolutions.

How did the Vietnamese people behave in the face of all the crises of their revolution that unfolded just before their victory? In December and January, Nixon wanted to prove to the world that the Vietnamese revolution had not obtained all its goals. He wanted to claim that the retreat of American troops from Vietnamese territory had been honorable. He rejected the accord previously signed in Paris and at that very moment hundreds of bombs fell on Vietnam; Haiphong and, above all, Hanoi. If I am not mistaken, during this period (around 2 weeks) the same quantity of bombs and other destructive machinery were launched against Vietnam as were launched against England during the entire Second World War. What was the Vietnamese command’s attitude in this situation…? Did he stop fighting on the borders? Did he make humiliating demands to New York through the intermediary of messengers? What did he do? How did he comport himself? Did he say that the Vietcong were saboteurs that must be destroyed…? No, General Giap said to the imperialists, “You can completely destroy Haiphong, you can destroy all of Hanoi, you can raze everything, every last stone, but you can never destroy our will to fight.”

Today, our obligation to ‘the Guevara of Gaza’ is to take an oath, first of all among ourselves and then with the people, to never lay down arms against the Zionist-imperialist-reactionary enemy in spite of its massive force, its weaponry, its Phantoms, and its superior technology that it can direct against us with all its might, killing Guevara, Abdel Adi, Abu Ali, Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Hamshari, and many others. The enemy will be able to carry out new unexpected attacks against us, but it will never destroy our will to fight.

How will we achieve victory in this way?

How will millions of Palestinian children find success?
We will be successful when, after 50 years of experience, a hundred million children of our Arab nation are determined to continue the armed struggle and are guided by the revolutionary doctrine and combat strategy of the people’s war for liberation.

Our first obligation toward our martyrs is to establish this fact. The second is to be fully conscious of the revolution’s recent progress (after a general evaluation), in spite of all its mistakes and the punches we have taken.

The last step in these final years is to lead the Palestinian and Arab people to take a giant step toward the final goals of the Palestinian and Arab revolution. This fact is recognised by the enemy himself insofar as one of the Zionist leaders stated, “The Palestinian resistance is the most difficult obstacle to establishing a settlement”…

In spite of its faults, the Palestinian revolution has been capable of proving to the world that there exists a cause, the cause of a people who do not want to surrender at any price, in spite of all the conspiracies fomented against it over the last 50 years. Even the enemy recognises this.

Our third most fundamental and important duty to our martyrs is to consider our future with total lucidity and to go forth and act in the light of a clear agenda.

So that our speech is not just hollow words, so that our speech might bring about a real force that is capable of leading us to victory, we must have a complete understanding of our political program. Following this path, if the principal Palestinian organisations and our leaders truly want to continue their revolution, then it is essential that they reexamine the totality of their structures at the level of theory, politics, and organisational infrastructure. This is necessary in order to reinforce these structures and raise them to the level where they can confront all the enemy’s conspiracies.

It would be unacceptable if our past experiences did not at least teach us a lesson. We need an immediate investigation into the nature of our organisational structure, considering each organisation separately, as well as the bulk of the resistance activists in general. Additionally, the executives and leaders of guerilla organisations must lead an educational operation at the level of theory, politics, and organisation that will become a true example for the masses.

One cannot achieve victory with only emotions and words. Organisations facing a historic task must construct themselves on this foundation. They must cast off any form of weakness that enfeebles the mission - be it theoretical, political, organisational, or practical. In a resistance movement, the combatant must be an example for the people, devoting his or her time to enlightening them, and affirming his or her faith in their cause. During important events, crises, and difficult moments, he or she must be found at the head of the masses putting him or herself in the service of the people. This image has not existed in the past and does not exist now. Our first obligation then is to wage a battle against ourselves at the heart of our own organisations with the aim of casting off any forms of weakness within the resistance.

It is therefore necessary that every organisation find new forces which must be awakened by the members and leaders. These forces must be affirmed while rebelling against all the habits acquired when we operated openly and publicly. Let us get rid of all our bureaucratic characteristics and return to the source of the revolution, to the people, living with them, serving them, giving them a political conscience, and creating a historic force capable of undertaking historic tasks.

Such is our first objective, but it is not sufficient in itself. It is totally unacceptable, a crime from now on, for an organisation to limit its vision of the future to itself alone.

The Palestinian national front, composed of Palestinian organisations, must become the central and fundamental objective. It must become the principal point in the direction of all movements. After some experimentation, once the resistance has clearly and decisively defined its revolutionary positions, the relations between Palestinian organisations will not remain how they were before.

The Popular Front declares honestly and candidly here before you that, in conjunction with all our sincere comrades from different organisations, it will devote all its authority and efforts to pushing forward bit by bit the question of national unity. This is the obligation that presents itself to us.

It is now part of the reactionary enemy’s plans to destroy the PLO and substitute it with Palestinian traitors so that they can say these latter individuals represent the Palestinian people.

In such a situation, it is our obligation to support the PLO by striving to enhance its political standards, and particularly its administrative and military apparatus. Moreover, we must fight within this organisation to endow it with the quality needed to face such a task. The politics of national unity must also be accompanied by fundamental alliances between the organisations so that their alliance and especially their cooperation can have a positive effect on the progress of the Revolution in occupied Palestine, in Jordan, or in Arab countries.

After we have rid ourselves of the weakness that we currently live with, after having reinforced our structures at the level of theory, politics, and that of the organisation, after every organisation is prepared for a new more punishing and difficult phase, after having acted in the interest of the permanent cause of national unity and not from the sectarian standpoint of individual organisations, our third objective after all that is to constantly keep in mind that only the people (not just the organisations or the national front composed of these organisations) and the people themselves have the strength that alone can deliver victory and make history. By ‘the people’, I do not mean figures like Jaabari or Anwar Nusaibeh, since they do not belong to the masses of our Palestinian people. They are part of the 4% that comprises the dominant class in every underdeveloped country. The masses of our Palestinian people are the 96%. The masses are the poor among our people, those working class people in the camps, the peasants, the students, revolutionary intellectuals, doctors and medics, and all the honorable and patriotic people. Without exception, all these people – women and children, old and young, everyone regardless of their actual situation – must provide the continuous efforts and work that, thanks to these individuals, will allow us to create the force that will overcome. We do not forget that this politics, the politics of the masses, is the fundamental politics that will be able to confront all the difficulties the revolutionary movement will now have to deal with.

The particular circumstances in which the Palestinian people live obliges us to make a distinction between each concentration of this population scattered around the world. In this regard, our people have some advantages. One part lives always on our sacred land, our beloved occupied Palestine. In many ways, this portion of our population is most important. It must receive the largest share of the resistance’s efforts. More than 1.25 million Palestinians still live in occupied Palestine, and 400,000 are in the heroic region of Gaza. 400,000 others are in the regions occupied since 1948. They continue to oppose every Israeli effort to destroy their Palestinian character and refuse to submit to the overwhelming racial and social persecutions Israel has imposed on them for the past 25 years. Another 700,000 of our people live in the West Bank, which means that we have between 1.25 and 1.5 million – between 40% and 50% of our Palestinian people – in occupied Palestine.

Our obligation as a resistance movement is to turn toward this portion on the inside, which is the most important and essential. The second characteristic of these people is that they find themselves in direct confrontation, face-to-face with the Zionist enemy occupying the Palestinian land. Accordingly, we must undertake a study of all our previous activities in occupied Palestine. The purpose of this review is to discover the various lacunae that we must repair as quickly as possible. We must not limit our vision of the masses’ actions against the Israeli occupation to military operations. The masses also endure a quotidian persecution. The Israeli occupation, despite all its efforts, remains committed to exploitation. In spite of all the Israeli allegations, every study clearly indicates that occupied Palestine has become the second largest market for Israeli products and the Arab workforce is actually exploited by Israeli industry. Our people truly resent this exploitation. Consequently, our military attacks against the Israeli enemy in occupied Palestine must be accompanied by the people’s quotidian battle against the enemy. Such a battle cannot be waged in a comprehensive and rational manner without there being an authentic unity between the principal organisations working there. When the cause becomes a question of life or death, when the revolution finds itself at a crossroads, there is no longer room for a narrow-minded individualism.

We must bring together all our strengths and apply them in such a way that the Palestinian national front that we are seeking to establish over there can be effective on occupied Palestinian territory. Its establishment must be followed by political action from the masses, punctuated by occasional severe blows against the Israeli enemy. This activity must conform to a fundamental principle: we must be cool-headed and not engage in misadventures that would cost lives. We must care for the life of every revolutionary. That is how we will achieve final victory.

Our action in occupied Palestine demands that we completely and radically reexamine our thought, account for the enemy’s new plans, consider our past actions, and research all the circumstances of the Palestinian revolution in its current phase.

Let’s get to the second division of Palestinian masses. The second significant concentration of our people currently lives on the East Bank of the Jordan River. More than 700,000-800,000 Palestinians are currently on the East Bank. They comprise between 67% and 70% of the inhabitants. After they were prohibited from fighting the Israeli enemy and its occupation, these people now have the right and the duty to fight side-by-side with our people in Jordan to bring about the destruction of this traitorous and fraudulent regime that still prevents them from attacking the Israeli enemy.

As it appears in Churchill’s memoirs, this regime was established in 1920 when the Trans-Jordanian principality was created with the specific goal of ending the Palestinian people’s struggle against the colonialist and Zionist plot in Palestine. Since its formation, this artificial puppet has never ceased acting against the Palestinian people, their struggle, and their revolution. That is the role the Jordanian regime played in 1936 and 1948. And during Black September in 1970 you know all about the role this fraudulent regime played against our people’s revolution and our just and legitimate struggle against the Zionist occupation.Our duty toward our cause demands that our people on the East Bank become an integral part of the Jordanian national liberation movement that works day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, to destroy this fraudulent regime and crush it under the foot of the masses.

I declare this with complete knowledge of the difficult situation the resistance movements currently find themselves in. I am absolutely aware of the blows we have taken and will receive again today. I am fully aware of the current manoeuvres that consist in reducing the dimensions and impact of the resistance movement. I am fully aware of the quasi-dichotomy between the resistance movement’s organisations and the masses. I am fully aware of the resistance movement’s mistakes, but I equally know that, in spite of all its errors and all the obstacles, our people’s revolution will secure victory in the end.

These lines of action I have spoken of cannot be applied immediately. They will not be applied tomorrow, nor in a week or in a month. They will be applied when we all believe in them, and as a consequence we will act and struggle. This is our duty to everyone. The obligation of the rank and file is to apply real pressure on all the resistance movement’s leaders so that we can benefit from our past experiences, draw lessons from those experiences, and make progress.

In the study of our Palestinian people we must also take into consideration the special characteristics of the third current concentration of Palestinian people. This concentration of Palestinian people is here on the beloved Lebanese soil. If I am not mistaken, there are between 300,000 and 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon. At the current hour, this concentration carries a special historical responsibility for the Palestinian revolution and its future. When the children, women, youth, adults, and elderly of this population of around 400,000 are recruited and organised, they can temporarily serve as a solid platform upon which the resistance movement will be able to depend upon in its difficult and decisive moments as it completes the work it has begun restructuring the land occupied in Palestinian and Jordan. This obligation demands a complete understanding of the present variables. We can only successfully satisfy this demand when we have become a party in solidarity and fraternity with the Arab masses in Lebanon and the Lebanese patriotic movement. It is our duty, the duty of the Palestinian people, to give thanks and recognition to the people of Lebanon and to the Lebanese patriotic movement that has undertaken its own resistance movement. Thanks to the masses and their patriotic movement, they showed themselves capable of staving off a massacre, at least until now, even though America works day and night paying its agents to exterminate the resistance.

There are also concentrations of our Palestinian people throughout the Arab countries and around the world. Our fourth concentration of Palestinian people is in Syria as well as the Arab Gulf and other locations in the Arab homeland. There are also those in Latin America and other parts of the world. It is therefore necessary to recruit them all in the service of the Palestinian revolution. At this stage in particular, they must mobilise themselves and be aware of their responsibilities vis-a-vis the difficulties the resistance movement has to face in Palestine and Jordan due to the circumstances of Arab politics. All of this, my brothers, must constitute a complete plan so that the Palestinian revolution might truly achieve victory.

Even if the Palestinian revolution is reconstructed theoretically, politically, and practically, even if a unified Palestinian national front is realised, even if this front manages to truly mobilise the Palestinian people, this alone will not be enough to assure victory.

There is something particular about the Palestinian revolution. And there is also something particular about the occupying Zionist enemy and its involvement in imperialism. There is a peculiarity specific to imperialism’s oil interests in this part of our Arab world. Equally, there is a particular relation between the Palestinian cause and the Arab cause. And therefore, the great lesson we must draw from what has happened between 1967 and today, the first and fundamental lesson, is that the Palestinian revolution cannot be victorious if it is not integrated with the revolution of the Arab masses in every part of our Arab world. The strength of the Arab nation, the masses of the Arab nation mobilised in support of the Palestinian revolution, holds the strength capable of victory. And if we want to show our loyalty toward our comrade ‘Guevara’ and all those who have sacrificed their lives, we cannot in any way ignore the importance of our alliances with all the revolutionary forces in the new international order. Nor can we ignore the necessity of maintaining relations with all the socialist states. The revolution must establish very solid relationships with the great Soviet Union, the great Chinese revolution, and all the socialist states and national liberation movements around the world. This alliance must become a reality in the effective plans that will truly help our revolution through the crisis it currently endures. With these guidelines we will truly achieve victory.

If our enemy is strong, it also has weaknesses we will be able to exploit once we have solidified our strength. The State of Israel and its foundations are artificial. It is a state that consumes four times what it produces. If it enjoys this military and economic strength, it is because it is at this point $4 billion in debt. A state this poor with such an artificial power can only exercise its power on cowards and defeatists, but under no circumstances can it do so with our comrades ‘Guevara’ and ‘Abu Ali Ayad’ and the Palestinian revolution and its people.

Our revolution will continue to blaze its path toward victory in spite of the obstacles. This, comrades, is our duty to the comrade and martyr ‘Guevara’ and to everyone. Peace be with you.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/geo ... l-overcome

*******

Perfidy in Tehran

Alastair Crooke

October 7, 2024

The West is in the throes of at least one, potentially two, crushing defeats at the moment – and so the question arises: Will lessons be learned?

John Kerry, just last week at the World Economic Forum, so clearly blurting out the truth: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to our ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence”.

Translated: Governing is all about narrative control. Kerry articulates the ‘International Order’s’ solution to the unwelcome phenomenon of an uncontrolled populism and of a potential leader who speaks for the people: Simply, ‘freedom to speak’ is unacceptable to the prescriptions agreed by the ‘inter-agency’ – the institutionalised distillation of the ‘International Order’.

Eric Weinstein calls this The Unburdening: The first Amendment; gender; merit; sovereignty; privacy; ethics; investigative journalism; borders; freedom … the Constitution? Gone?

Today’s reality unhinged narration is that Iran’s launch on Tuesday of 200 ballistic missiles – of which 181 reached Israel – were overwhelmingly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow missile defence systems. and with no deaths to show for the assault. It was “defeated and ineffective”, Biden pronounced.

Will Schryver however, a technical engineer and security commentator, writes: “I don’t understand how anyone who has seen the many video clips of the Iranian missile strikes on Israel cannot recognize and acknowledge that it was a stunning demonstration of Iranian capabilities. Iran’s ballistic missiles smashed through U.S./Israeli air defences and delivered several large-warhead strikes to Israeli military targets”.

The effect and the substance then lies in ‘proven capacity’ – the capacity to select other targets, the capacity to do more. It was in fact a restrained demonstrative exercise, not a full attack.

But the message has been erased from sight.

How is it that the U.S. Administration refuses to look truth in the eye and acknowledge what occurred, and prefers instead to ask the entire world, who saw the videos of missiles impacting in Israel, to ‘move along’ – as the authorities advise, pretending that there was ‘nothing substantive to see here’. Was ‘the affair’ just a nuisance to system governance and ‘consensus’, as Kerry so branded free speech? It seems so.

The structural problem, essayist Aurelien writes is not simply that the western professional class holds to an ideology – one that is the opposite to how ordinary people experience the world. That certainly is one aspect. But the bigger problem lies rather, with a technocratic conception of politics that is not ‘about’ anything. It is not really politics at all (as Tony Blair once said), but is nihilistic and absent of moral considerations.

Having no real culture of its own, the western professional class views religion as outdated and sees history as dangerous since it contains components that can be misused by ‘extremists’. It prefers therefore not to know history.

This produces the mixture of the conviction of superiority, yet deep insecurity, which typifies western leadership. The ignorance and fear of events and ideas that fall outside the confines of their rigid zeitgeist, they perceive, almost invariably, as innately inimical to their interests. And rather than seek to discuss and understand, that which is outside their capabilities, they use disparagement and character assassination instead to remove the nuisance.

It must be clear to all that Iran falls into all the categories that excite most western insecurity: Iran is the apex of everything that is unsettling: It has a profound culture and intellectual legacy that stands explicitly ‘different’ (albeit, not at odds) with western tradition. These qualities however, relegate Iran to being unreflectively categorised as inimical to ‘International Order’ management; not because it is a ‘threat’, but because it ‘unsettles’ message alignment.

Does this matter?

Yes, it matters, because it makes Iran’s ability to communicate effectively with the International Order’s ideological alignment highly problematic.

The West sought and pressured for a mitigated response from Iran – firstly after Israel’s April assassination of an Iranian General and his colleagues at the Iranian Consulate in Damascus.

Iran obliged. It launched drones and missiles towards Israel on 13 April in such a manner that sent a short (pre-warned) concerted message of capability, yet did not invite all-out war (as requested by the West).

Subsequent to the Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh (a guest of Tehran participating in the inauguration of the new Iranian President), western states once again pleaded with Iran that it should again refrain from any military retaliation against Israel.

The new President has said publicly, that European and American officials offered Iran the removal of substantive sanctions on the Iranian Republic and a guaranteed ceasefire in Gaza in line with Hamas’ terms – if Israel was not attacked.

Iran held fire, accepting to appear weak to the outside world (for which it was harshly criticised). Yet western action shocked the inexperienced new President, Pezeshkian:

“They (the western states) lied”, he said. None of the promises were kept.

To be fair to the new Reformist President, Iran did face a real dilemma: It hoped to pursue a policy of restraint in order to avoid a damaging war. That is one side to the dilemma; but the other side is that this restraint could be misinterpreted (perhaps maliciously), and used as pretext for escalation. In short the flip side is that, ‘want it or not; war is coming to Iran’.

Then followed the ‘pager assault’ and assassinations of the Hizbullah leadership, including the iconic figure of its leader, Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, amidst huge civilian collateral deaths. The U.S. Administration (President Biden) said simply that this was ‘justice’ being done.

And once again, the West importuned, and threatened Iran against any retaliation towards Israel. But on this occasion, Iran launched a more effective ballistic missile attack, though one which deliberately omitted targeting Israel’s economic and industrial infrastructure, or the Israeli people, focusing instead on key military and intelligence sites. It was, in short, a demonstrative signal – albeit one with an effective component of inflicting damage on air bases and military and intelligence sites. It was yet again, a limited response.

And for what?

Open sneering from the West that Iran was deterred/ too frightened/ too divided to fully respond. In fact, the U.S. – knowing well that Netanyahu is looking for the pretext for war with Iran – offered Israel full support of the U.S. for a major retribution against Iran: “There will be severe consequences for this attack and we will work with Israel to make that the case”, Jake Sullivan said. “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel”, Biden said.

The moral of the story is plain: President Pezeshkian was ‘played’ by the West – shades of the West’s deliberate ‘Minsk deceit’ of President Putin; shades too, of the Istanbul II Accord’s knife in the back. Restraint that the International Order insists upon, invariably is broadcast as ‘weakness’.

The ‘professional permanent class’ (the western deep state) eschews any moral underpinning. It makes a virtue of its nihilism. Perhaps the last leader capable of real diplomacy that springs to mind was JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis and in his subsequent dealings with the Soviet leaders. And what happened? … He was killed by the system.

Of course, many are angry in Iran. They ask whether Iran projected weakness too readily, and question whether that manifestation in some way contributed to Israel’s readiness to strike Lebanon so ruthlessly and without limitations, as in the Gaza model. Later reports suggest that the U.S. has new technological intel (not available to Israel) that pinpointed Sayyed Nasrallah’s whereabouts, and was supplied to Israel, which led to his assassination.

If the West insists to so demean Iranian restraint – wrongly attributing restraint to impotence – is the European and U.S. world order ‘uni-party’ ever capable of cold realism? Can they make a sound assessment of the consequences should Israel launch war on Iran? Netanyahu has made it clear that this is the Israeli government’s aim – war with Iran.

Hubristic misperception of an adversary, and the misperception of his hidden strengths, is so often the precursor to wider war (WW1). And Israel is awash with fervour for war to establish its ‘New Order’ for the Middle East.

The Biden Administration is ‘more than willing’ – laying the ‘revolver on the table’ – for Netanyahu to pick it up and discharge it, whilst Washington pretends to stand aloof from the act. Washington’s ultimate target is of course Russia.

That in diplomacy the West is not to be trusted is understood. The story’s moral, however, has wider implications. How exactly, in such circumstances, can Russia bring an end to the Ukraine conflict? It would appear that many more will needlessly die, simply because of the uni-party’s rigidity and its incapacity to ‘do’ diplomacy.

Just as many more Ukrainians have perished since the Istanbul II process was trashed.

The West is in the throes of at least one, potentially two, crushing defeats at the moment – and so the question arises: Will lessons be learned? Can the right lessons be learned? Does the professional world order class even accept that there are lessons to be learned?

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... in-tehran/

******

How Will Türkiye Respond to War in Lebanon (and Renewed Destabilization of Syria)?
Posted on October 7, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

As Israel — with US support — continues its rampage across the Middle East, Türkiye is assessing the shifting landscape and weighing costs and opportunities, including economic and security concerns, ties with NATO on one hand and BRICS countries on the other, and its own regional aspirations.

Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus emphasized the country’s position over the weekend, saying that Türkiye follows its own “national axis” in foreign policy and rejects the idea that it must align with any power or bloc. Where is that “national axis” going to take the country as the Middle East goes up in flames and Türkiye is positioned to play a key role?

One route it appears certain not to take is concrete opposition to Israel. Despite all Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rhetoric against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and company, goods from Türkiye continue to make their way to Israel. Oil continues to flow through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to Türkiye’s Ceyhan port where it is shipped to Haifa — constituting roughly 40 percent of Israel’s supply.

In early May, Türkiye said it was halting exports to Israel due to the “worsening humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories. Yet goods, including critical minerals and chemicals used by the Israeli military get around the export ban by simply going through third countries, such as Greece. And the US is still using Incirlik Air Base in southern Türkiye to assist Israel.

This is unsurprising as In some ways the US/Israel current rampage through the Middle East fits with Turkish goals. Here are six issues confronting the Turkish government as it decides how to proceed:

1. There are suggestions that the US and Israel are after regime change in Lebanon. Here’s the executive director of the influential neocon Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

But this is also a moment for the Biden administration to shift focus from its Sisyphean pursuit of a Gaza cease-fire to taking advantage of the opportunities presented by Israel’s seismic shock to Hezbollah.

With assertive, engaged diplomacy, the Biden administration can help engineer a new security regime that allows civilians to return to their homes along the Israel-Lebanon border and work with local and international partners to help build a new political architecture for Lebanon.

This isn’t the Saudi-Israel peace and normalization accord that the Biden administration hoped to leave as a legacy — though there might be one last bite at this apple during the presidential transition — nor even the Gaza cease-fire for which the White House has labored for months. But after a year of tragedy and sadness, this would be real progress. At the same time, it is essential for Washington to warn Tehran about the high price it will suffer if it decides to make a dash for a nuclear-weapons capability. By building on Israel’s killing of Nasrallah, President Biden has the opportunity to leave the Middle East better today than it was on Oct. 8, which is no small achievement.

Türkiye would support such a goal as it is no fan of Hezbollah, and any weakening of the latter’s influence in Syria, could allow Türkiye to increase its footprint.

“If it translates into a longer-term weakening of Iran and allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah, that will really pave the way for Türkiye to play a more dominant role” in Syria and Iraq, said Gönül Tol, Türkiye director for the Middle East Institute, a research center in Washington.

During the Syrian Civil War, Türkiye and Hezbollah fought on opposing sides. Hezbollah supports the Assad government, while Türkiye supported Syrian opposition groups like the Free Syrian Army seeking to overthrow Assad — although it now focuses primarily on fighting (US-backed) Kurdish groups in Syria and has sought to improve ties with Assad at the behest of Moscow and Tehran. Progress has been slow, however.

While the Turkish government offers statements of support for the Lebanese people, pro-government media in Türkiye lambast Hezbollah:

On a program aired by A Haber, retired Colonel and security pundit Coşkun Başbuğ claimed that Nasrallah was working for Mossad and that Hezbollah’s leadership was “sold out.” Başbuğ argued that Hezbollah could have turned the Israeli border into a “hell” but did not due to its compromised leadership. Başbuğ stated that Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders were discarded by those who used them. Additionally, he referred to Hezbollah’s missile attacks as mere “firework displays.”

Yeni Şafak columnist and a former Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Aydın Ünal said the assassination of Nasrallah was met with joy and excitement by the oppressed Syrians. Ünal said that Nasrallah, following orders from Iran, had brutally and mercilessly carried out massacres of Muslims.

There are now growing calls in Türkiye for the country to abandon its more conciliatory approach of the past few years and return to one of trying to expand its influence by whatever means necessary. Those efforts mostly ended in disaster and left Türkiye more isolated, but memories are short when opportunity comes calling. Dr. Samir Salha, the founding dean of the Law Faculty at Gaziantep University in Türkiye and a professor of law and international relations there, argues that “the region’s escalating violence contradicts Ankara’s strategy of resolving disputes with neighboring countries.”

Not sure how that makes sense, but it is representative of a popular rationale among the more interventionist faction of the Turkish elite.

There are now reports (although not the most reliable) that Ankara is planning “limited” ground operations in Northwestern Syria. To what end is unclear. Türkiye’s military presence in Idlib is now mostly observation posts, support for the area’s Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and an entente with Russia. Any operation would likely be to close off borders or reinforce HTS — although the latter option could bring Türkiye into direct conflict with Russia.

The Erdogan government, however, is facing increasing calls to do something because of our next point.

2. Syrian and Now Lebanese Refugee Crisis.

Türkiye is already struggling with inflation and economic stagnation, and it could face additional economic shocks if the conflicts intensify disrupting energy supplies and trade routes.

Türkiye is also currently hosting millions of Syrian refugees. Many more are likely to be on the way soon.

Since Israel began its destruction of Lebanon in earnest, roughly 220,000 people have fled into Syria (many are Syrians who had left during the country’s conflicts). That number is expected to grow considerably should the bombing campaign continue and many will attempt to make their way to Türkiye.

The refugee situation along with the economy were the two biggest issues in the presidential and parliamentary elections last year — a vote Erdogan barely survived. Nationalists arguing for the expulsion of Syrian refugees were some of the biggest winners. A major influx of new refugees is going to be problematic for the Erdogan government, and he faces pressure to secure the country’s borders, particularly given the economic situation.

3. Conflict Spillover into Syria.

The Syrian War never officially ended. It’s just slowed to a simmer, but that looks to be changing. Israeli airstrikes in Syria, refugees from Lebanon, and Iran and Hezbollah’s focus on Israel, could all contribute to the destabilization of the fragile ceasefires in various parts of country. Here’s current lay of land:

Image

Israel has carried out regular airstrikes on Syria in recent years, but they are now ratcheting up in frequency and severity — including two this week alone on Damascus.

Now the US/Israel is saying they’re trying to stop the flow of weapons from Iran through Syria to Lebanon.

Israeli military alleges Hizbullah smuggling arms from Syria through al-Masna’a crossing, “urges” Lebanese authorities to inspect cargoes and turn back trucks with arms, otherwise threatens Israeli action.

This is the main crossing through which civilians have fled to Syria. https://t.co/7QtYiGm26y

— Sam Heller | سام هيلر (@AbuJamajem) October 3, 2024


Then they bombed the alleged smuggling tunnel. The damage now means refugees now must largely trek into Syria on foot.

Early on Friday morning, Israel bombed the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, along with its vicinity, forcing the closure of the international highway.

The Israeli army claims it struck a 3.5 kilometer underground tunnel crossing from Lebanon into Syria.… pic.twitter.com/Ee09WyIgOy

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) October 4, 2024


According to some reports, Hezbollah has withdrawn many of its fighters from Syria in order to join the conflict in Lebanon. A reduced Iranian and Hezbollah presence potentially opens the door for Sunni extremist groups in the region, which Türkiye and the US often support in an effort to bring down Assad.

4. ISIS Being Prepped for a Comeback Tour?

Here’s the Middle East Institute on the group’s resurgence:

In an unusual public statement late on July 16, United States Armed Forces’ Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that after six months of 2024, “ISIS is on pace to more than double” the number of attacks in Syria and Iraq it claimed in 2023. According to CENTCOM, ISIS has so far conducted 153 attacks across both countries from January through June, noting that “the increase in attacks indicates ISIS is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.” CENTCOM’s commander, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, insisted that achieving an enduring defeat of ISIS still relies on the “combined efforts of the Coalition and partners”

4. Multiple US Proxies Versus Russia in Syria?

Among recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria was likely one that targeted an ammunition warehouse near the largest Russian air base in Syria.

BREAKING:

🇮🇱🇷🇺 Israel strikes a Russian weapons depot in Syria.

Israel has finally poked the Bear.

The Israeli military is targeting sites in western Syria coastal cities

Large scale airstrikes in the Syrian city of Jableh, near Russia’s Hmeimim Airbase in western Syria on… pic.twitter.com/QELX8vjzcG

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) October 3, 2024


Russia successfully protected Syria during the Western-instigated “civil war” led by its jihadist fanatics. Are we about to get another round with additional players? The US’s favorite neo-Nazis from Ukraine mixing it up with Turkish-backed Islamisists with support from the genocidal Israel Defense Forces ? What could go wrong?

Here’s where things get interesting regarding Türkiye. Moscow is alleging that Kiev and Washington are training militants from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS – the group in Idlib along Türkiye’s border with Turkish support). Here’s Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week:

“Vladimir Zelensky’s regime, in coordination with the Americans, is training terrorists from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, using new UAV production technologies for combat operations against Russian forces in the republic.”

A September 9 report in the Turkish newspaper Aydinlik backs up Lavrov’s claim. It reported that Ukraine is offering drones and training in return for individuals in HTS prisons to fight Russia. Earlier in September Ukrainian special forces allegedly launched an attack on a Russian military facility on the outskirts of Aleppo. From Military Watch:

According to Western sources, the attack saw powerful explosion followed by secondary detonations causing serious damage to the site. Aleppo has long been on the frontier of attacks from jihadist groups due to its close proximity to the Turkish border, with Türkiye being the primary state sponsor of Islamist anti government militants in the country and placing the Syrian governate of Idlib, currently run by the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front, under its protection. Ukraine has escalated efforts to provide armaments and training to Islamist groups targeting Russian forces, and alongside Türkiye has for several months deployed special forces to northwestern Syria specifically to support militant groups based there.

Moscow is also now warning that the US and UK are planning to use Ukraine to unleash a chemical weapons false flag provocation in Syria — although this could also be being released by Russia in order to justify coming operations in Northwestern Syria to root out Ukrainian and HTS operations there.

What role will Türkiye play?

6. The US and the Kurds

In many areas, Türkiye and Russia have been increasingly cooperating in Syria while Türkiye and the US frequently come close to direct conflict. Importantly, Turkish and Iranian interests have also aligned:

Iranian and Turkish interests seem to be increasingly aligning, particularly in their united front against Israel’s actions toward Hamas and in opposing the resurgence of a U.S.-led regional order. However, their historical competition for strategic dominance in areas like Iraq and Syria, coupled with the distinct forms of revisionism that the AKP and Iranian leadership champion on the global stage, suggests that any emerging alliance between them might remain tenuous and susceptible to strains in the mid to long term.

The question is if Türkiye’s calculus changes due to the potential weakening of Hezbollah and Iranian positions in Syria. There exists the possibility that Türkiye might trade its support for Islamists in Northwestern Syria for a green light from Russia to go on the offensive against Kurds in Northeastern Syria, but we’ll see.

Elsewhere Turkish ties with both Russia and China have been steadily improving, which is helping Erdogan slowly rebuild the Turkish economy. Would he potentially throw away that progress on another chance to increase Turkish influence in Syria? At the same time, Turkiye’s economic ties with the West — primarily the EU of which it is a member of the customs union — still dwarf those of Russia and China. And we know loads of economic pressure is constantly on Ankara to toe the NATO line, as evidenced by the increasing number of US sanctions on Turkish entities.

One last consideration for Ankara is the prospect of an increasingly powerful Russian-Iranian presence surrounding Türkiye should the US/Israel be soundly defeated in the current conflicts and the Americans booted from many of their Middle East outposts.

While Türkiye is wholeheartedly opposed to US support for Kurdish groups in Iraq and Syria, it has also long tried to balance Russia and the US off one another in the region. Either one with an overwhelming advantage is cause for concern in Ankara, which might help explain the recent talk of Türkiye potentially handing over its Russian S-400s to the US and assisting US/Israel efforts in the region.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10 ... syria.html

*******

Qassam rockets strike Tel Aviv on first anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood

The Israeli army confirmed the attack was launched from Khan Yunis in Gaza, an area that has been raided multiple times by the invading troops over the past year

News Desk

OCT 7, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: X)

A rocket barrage launched from Gaza by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, hit the south of Tel Aviv on 7 October, injuring at least two on the first anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.


Qassam said in a statement that its fighters targeted Tel Aviv “with a barrage of Maqadma M90 rockets as part of the ongoing battle of attrition and in response to the zionist massacres against civilians and the deliberate displacement of our people.”


Following the attack, the Israeli army said in a brief statement that the rockets were fired from the Khan Yunis area in southern Gaza, indicating that the Palestinian resistance has yet again rehabilitated its fighting capabilities in an area that has seen multiple raids by the invading army.

The rocket attack came on the first anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which saw thousands of Palestinian resistance fighters break out of Gaza by air, sea, and land, cutting through Israeli army bases and taking more than 240 captives.

“The crossing of the glorious 7th of October shattered the illusions the enemy had created for itself, convincing the world and the region of its supposed superiority and capabilities,” Khalil al-Hayya, a senior member of Hamas' politburo, said in a video statement on Sunday.

“Performing the operation, Palestinian fighters carried out heroic acts that have changed the balance of power. Our objective is clear: we seek the complete liberation of our land and holy sites, the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, and the return of refugees to their homeland,” Hayya added.

In response to the resistance operation, Israel launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign inside Gaza, killing more than 40,000 Palestinians.

In total, 149,036 Palestinians have either been killed, wounded, or missing, of which 69 percent are women and children, according to statistics reported by the Civil Defense Directorate in the Gaza Strip.

Tel Aviv also recently expanded its genocidal war to neighboring Lebanon, killing hundreds in less than two weeks and dropping more bombs in two days than the US army dropped in an entire year during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.

https://thecradle.co/articles/qassam-ro ... aqsa-flood

Iranian missiles 'overwhelmed' Israel's air defenses: Report

Satellite imagery revealed details of 'one of the largest ballistic missile strikes in the history of warfare,' the Wall Street Journal reports

News Desk

OCT 6, 2024

Image
In this picture released by the official website of the Iranian Army on Jan. 19, 2024, a missile is launched during a military drill in southern Iran (Photo credit: Iranian Army via AP)

Satellite imagery shows that Iran’s barrage of ballistic missiles earlier this week was successful in overwhelming Israel’s air defenses despite causing only limited damage, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 6 October.

As a result, any future Iranian strikes against Israel “could have much more serious consequences if they target civilian infrastructure or heavily populated residential areas,” the WSJ concluded.

Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on 1 October in response to a series of aggressions committed by Israel, including the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in September, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan.

The Iranian attack on Israel did not lead to any fatalities but demonstrated Iran’s advanced missile capabilities and caused major damage to three Israeli airbases.

Israel is now reportedly preparing to launch a massive attack on Iran, possibly including strikes on its oil or nuclear infrastructure, with US assistance.


Tehran has, in turn, threatened to strike Israeli power plants and oil refineries if Israel moves forward with the attack.

The WSJ reports that, unlike an earlier attack in April, “when Iran fired a large number of slower cruise missiles and drones, Tuesday’s barrage was made up exclusively of some 180 much faster ballistic missiles, one of the largest such strikes in the history of warfare. Analysts say that most of these projectiles were Iran’s most modern ballistic missiles, the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan.”

“The faster the missile, the harder it is to intercept it; that’s simple physics,” said Ulrich Kühn, head of research for arms control at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg, Germany. “It’s certainly much harder to defend against ballistic missiles, and even more so if there is a bulk of them coming in on a certain target because then you have the ability to overwhelm the antimissile defenses—which is exactly what happened in Israel.”

Satellite images of the Nevatim air base in southern Israel, home to its F-35 jet fighters, show that as many as 32 Iranian missiles successfully hit within the base’s perimeter, according to analysis by professor Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies.


“Thirty-two missiles is a lot of missiles,” Lewis said. “We have exaggerated ideas about the effectiveness of air defenses. We have this pop-culture idea that missile defenses are much more effective or available than they actually are.”

The Iranian armed forces’ general staff, meanwhile, has promised “widespread and comprehensive destruction” of infrastructure within Israel should Iranian territory be attacked. Adm. Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has pledged to hit Israeli power stations, gas fields, and oil refineries, according to Iranian state media, the WSJ added..

https://thecradle.co/articles/iranian-m ... ses-report
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 09, 2024 11:23 am

Zionist Think Tank Publishes Blueprint for Resistance Victory
October 5, 2024

Image
"It is hard to escape the conclusion that our current basing structure is poorly postured for the most likely fight that is about to emerge." Photo: Zeinab El-Hajj/Al Mayadeen English.

By Kit Klarenberg – Oct 3, 2024

A little-noticed report published September 19th by JINSA laid out how the Empire will be on the defence, and at grave disadvantage, in all-out hot war with Iran.

On October 1st, Iran launched scores of missiles at the Zionist entity, in response to the murder of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, among many brazen provocations and escalations targeting the Resistance in recent months. Voluminous footage of key Israeli infrastructure, including military and intelligence sites, being comprehensively flattened by the Islamic Republic’s inexorable onslaught has circulated widely, amply contradicting predictable claims emanating from Tel Aviv and Washington that the blitzkrieg was successfully repelled by Western air defence systems.

It is the largest, most devastating attack on the Zionist entity in its 76-year history. The full impact is not yet apparent. While US officials worriedly warned hours in advance they possessed “indications” Iran was preparing to attack “Israel”, the incursion’s timing, scale, and severity caught all concerned by surprise. Washington dispatching thousands more troops across West Asia in the days prior, explicitly in “Israel’s” defence, was evidently no deterrent to Tehran.

That deployment came replete with a supposedly rock-solid Pentagon pledge to come to the rescue should the Islamic Republic seek to repeat the historic, wide-ranging drone and rocket barrage to which it subjected the Zionist entity in April. Department of Defense apparatchiks boldly declared they and Tel Aviv alike were “even better prepared for a new Iranian attack” than last time round. The ease with which “Israel’s” purportedly impregnable Iron Dome was bested exposes this braggadocio as hopeless hubris at best, dangerous delusion at worst.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is ever-cautious, and has acted with extraordinary restraint since the 21st century Holocaust erupted in Gaza. Some analysts have interpreted this implacable self-control, and Tehran’s lack of immediate backlash against acts such as the audacious assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as not merely rigid reluctance to escalate into all-out war with “Israel” and its Western backers, but an inability to respond at all. Tel Aviv’s unprecedented October 1st battering should dispel any such inference.

Senior Israeli politician Yaiv Golan, who returned to Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) service following October 7th, has branded Iran’s latest assault a “declaration of war” against the Zionist entity. Notorious Benny Gantz boasts Tel Aviv “has capabilities that were developed for years to strike Iran, and the government has [our] full backing to act with force and determination.” Meanwhile, IOF spokesperson Daniel Hagari declares, “There was a serious attack on us and there will be serious consequences.”

The IRGC appears to have calculated such threats and pronouncements are as empty and meaningless as the Pentagon’s pledge to be “better prepared” for a future Iranian strike. At the very least, the Islamic Republic fears no Anglo-Israeli retaliation to its latest broadside. That may mean Tehran has grounds to believe the balance of power in the region, and in any future large-scale conflict with the Zionist entity and West, has irrevocably tipped in favour of the Resistance.

Eerily, a little-noticed report published September 19th by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a powerful and shadowy Zionist lobby organisation, inadvertently reached this same conclusion. It laid out in forensic detail how the Empire will be on the defence, and at grave disadvantage, in all-out hot war with Iran. Along the way, a blueprint for Resistance victory was plainly sketched. With Tehran having thrown down a gauntlet on October 1st, we could now be seeing that plan being put into action.

‘Gaining Overmatch’
Titled U.S. Bases in the Middle East: Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography, JINSA’s report was authored by former CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie, who oversaw the Empire’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It appraises the viability, value, and force projection capabilities of current US military installations throughout West Asia, focusing on Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. The findings are stark, calling for an immediate overhaul of American basing across the region:

“Our current basing structure, inherited from years of haphazard decision-making, and driven by divergent operational and political principles, has yielded installations that are not optimally situated for the most likely threats of today and the future in the region.”

Despite mentioning “threats” in plural, JINSA’s sole focus is the Islamic Republic. While a myriad of issues with the Empire’s modern day positioning throughout West Asia are identified, the “most important” conclusion drawn is that Washington’s “current basing array detracts from our ability to deter Iran and fight them effectively in a high-intensity scenario.” McKenzie is nonetheless at pains to portray Tehran as somewhat feeble and vulnerable:

“The Iranians have no army that can be deployed as an invading force. They have a small and ineffective navy, and in practical terms, no air force. Their missile and drone force, though, is capable of gaining overmatch against many of its neighbors…they can deploy more attacking missiles and drones than can be defended against.”

As such, JINSA notes, “a theater-level war with Iran would be a war of missiles and drones,” and Tehran’s April 13th attack on “Israel” was a “comprehensive demonstration of Iranian operational design.” The IRGC sought to overwhelm the Zionist entity’s air defences and radar systems with waves of low-cost drones and cruise missiles, to “make it difficult for Iron Dome or Patriot to engage the ballistic missiles that followed.”

Given what went down on October 1st, McKenzie correctly forecast that the April strike would “probably remain the basic template for large-scale Iranian attacks.” He appraised the effort – “at least conceptually” – as “a sound one,” from which “there are lessons for all to learn.” The most pressing and “obvious” takeout for JINSA was that, “for the defenders of the Gulf, it will be a war of strike aircraft, tankers, and air and missile defense…and here is the problem”:

“These aircraft are largely based at locations along the southern coast of the Arabian Gulf…an artifact of planning against Russian incursions in the 1970s, and the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns of the early decades of this century. They are close to Iran, which means they have a short trip to the fight…but that is also their great vulnerability. They are so close to Iran that it takes but five minutes or less for missiles launched from Iran to reach their bases.”

The “thousands of short-range missiles” Iran possesses are also a key negative “factor”, offering “no strategic depth.” While an F-35 fighter jet “is very hard to hit in the air…on the ground it is nothing more than a very expensive and vulnerable chunk of metal sitting in the sun.” Refuelling and rearming facilities on US bases in West Asia “are also vulnerable, and they cannot be moved.” Most damagingly of all:

“These bases are all defended by Patriot and other defensive systems. Unfortunately, at such close range to Iran, the ability of the attacker to mass fires and overwhelm the defense is very real.”

In closing his roadmap to Tehran’s victory, McKenzie bitterly laments, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that our current basing structure is poorly postured for the most likely fight that will emerge.” The Empire “will not be able to maintain these bases in a full-throated conflict, because they will be rendered unusable by sustained Iranian attack.” Imperial overreach in West Asia has now fallen victim to “the simple tyranny of geography.” And all along, the Islamic Republic has been taking rigorous notes:

“The Iranians can see this problem just as clearly as we do, and that is one of the reasons why they have created their large and highly capable missile and drone force.”

‘Nothing but force’

For all the JINSA report’s doom and gloom, McKenzie does express some optimism – of the most fantastical, self-deceived kind. For one, he suggests Iran cannot threaten the Empire’s “carrier-based aviation” capabilities. Still, he concedes “there aren’t enough carriers, and therefore naval aviation will probably not be the central weapon in a fires war with Iran.” The former CENTCOM chief also conveniently overlooks AnsarAllah’s recent crushing defeat of the US Navy during Operation Prosperity Guardian, which unambiguously exposed the redundancy of US aircraft carriers altogether.

Elsewhere, McKenzie declares that the Empire “needs to move aggressively to develop basing alternatives that demonstrate that it is prepared to fight and prevail in a sustained high-intensity war” with Tehran, and therefore “overcome unfavorable basing geography.” One radical solution proposed by the JINSA report is to “consider basing in Israel”. US military presence in Tel Aviv has already been slowly growing over recent years. While largely unacknowledged and downplayed, it has proven incredibly controversial every step of the way.

In September 2017, the IOF announced the arrival of America’s first permanent military installation in the Zionist entity. Such was the backlash domestically and regionally, that officials in Washington raced to deny this was the case, prompting a major cleanup of IOF websites referencing the site. Any move to create a fully-fledged US base in “Israel”, explicitly for war-fighting purposes, would inevitably spark even greater outcry, and be seen as a major escalation by the Resistance, demanding a drastic response.

Such an eventuality undoubtedly didn’t occur to the former CENTCOM chief. His analysis is hazardously unsound and fallacious in other areas too. On top of “Israel’s” “geographic advantages”, he praises Tel Aviv’s “powerful, proven air and missile defense capability.” It was this “competence”, combined with “US and allied assistance, and the cooperation and assistance of Arab neighbors”, that ensured Iran’s April strike on the Zionist entity was a “failure”, McKenzie muses.

He appraises this group effort, which supposedly prevented Iran from delivering decapitation strikes against the Zionist entity’s military and intelligence structure, as “in every measurable way…a remarkable success story.” If McKenzie’s view was shared by the Pentagon, this may explain why the US was so caught off guard by, and ill-prepared for, Tehran’s recent bludgeoning of “Israel”. Far from an embarrassing cataclysm, the April effort was a spectacular success, which exposed “Israel’s” fatal weaknesses, and reshaped West Asia forever.

Far from wanting too deliver a death blow, the Islamic Republic sought to deescalate via a measured, well-advertised show of strength, while avoiding a wider response. In the process, the IRGC demonstrated that if it wished, in future it could successfully bypass the Iron Dome, and would wreak immense destruction. Then, a “new equation” was spelled out by a Corps Commander:

“If from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”

This message was evidently not received in corridors of power in Brussels, London, Tel Aviv, and Washington. Whether it will finally be comprehended now that Tehran has struck once again deep into the Zionist entity’s putrid heart remains to be seen. As Russian military strategist Igor Korotchenko once observed, “this Anglo-Saxon breed understands nothing but force.”

https://orinocotribune.com/zionist-thin ... e-victory/

******

For Doubters - Hizbullah Reports That It Is Back

The Zionists had hoped that their terror tactics of exploding pagers and the bombing of Hizbullah's leadership in Lebanon would hinder or decrease its enemy's ability to fight.

That hope however was in vane. Hizbullah, like its Hamas ally in Gaza, was build to sustain its efforts despite such incidents.

Today, Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of Hizbullah appeared in a broadcast and declared that Hizbullah remained fully operational:

In his address, Qassem stated, “We are firing hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones. A large number of settlements and cities are under the fire of the resistance.” He emphasised that Hezbollah's top leadership remains active and that the posts of the slain commanders have been filled, asserting, “We have no vacant posts.”

How useless it is to kill an enemy's leadership was also shown in Gaza:

[A]n insight into what is actually going on in Gaza was offered by Israel's latest announcement that it had killed three senior Hamas officials - Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of government and de facto prime minister; Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio on Hamas’s political bureau; and Sami Oudeh, commander of Hamas’s General Security Mechanism.

The air strike happened three months ago, and no one had noticed their absence. This is because Hamas continued to function regardless of which leaders were alive or dead.


In the past, assassinations had led to a period of uncertainty for Hamas. This happened after the killing of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004. But it does not work today and nor does it work with this generation of fighters.

Yesterday Hizbullah fired five missiles on the harbor city of Haifa. Today 100 more missiles followed.

These are in response to Israel's bombing of Beirut's suburbs.

Israel has committed several division to invading the south of Lebanon. The distance they have managed to intrude from the border is still measured in mere meter.

Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 @ejmalrai - 16:07 UTC · Oct 8, 2024
#Hezbollah's media warfare department is back: command and control is fully operational. Missiles and drones are filmed as they are launched. This means that the Ridwan ops will be filmed as it confronts the Israelis, in order to restore the morale of resistance supporters against the invaders.


Yesterday missiles from Gaza, Iraq and Yemen were aiming at Tel Aviv. Today Hizbullah also sent missiles towards it. Each such attack will cause an air alarm. People will interrupt their work and go into bunkers. Israel's air defense will exhausts it supplies while at least some missiles get through and hit their targets.

How long will the Israeli society sustain such stress?

The IDF Home Front Command is issuing stricter guidelines in several cities near Haifa, which prevent schools from operating.
Schools will not be able to open in Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Yam and Kiryat Motzkin, under the latest guidelines. Schools will stay open in Haifa itself, provided that a bomb shelter can be reached quickly enough.

The change comes after Hezbollah fired 105 rockets at the Haifa area this morning.


The Zionist prime minister Benjamin Natanyhoo urged the people of Lebanon to raise against Hizbullah. For him to do so must mean that the war is not going the way he hoped. There is zero chance that such an uprising will happen.

On October 1 some 200 missiles from Iran hit military targets in Israel. The publicly available videos show dozens of hits on an air base with hangers and planes affected. Damage at the other targets is still kept under censorship. But is is obvious that most of the Iranian missiles passed through Israeli air defenses and hit their intended targets.

While Israel has said that it will hit back in revenge for the strike is has yet to do so. It is likely that it fears the response that Iran would unleash on it.

There are thousands of missiles hidden in well protected Iranian sites that are aimed at elements Israel needs to function. Its electricity networks, refineries, harbors and airports are all targeted and would be hit.

This will be a long war and Israel, which had expanded and escalated it whenever possible, is not prepared for it.

Posted by b on October 8, 2024 at 17:07 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/10/f ... .html#more

*****

Atrocity Inc: How Israel Sells Its Destruction of Gaza
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 7, 2024

Image

Watch Uncensored on Rumble>> https://rumble.com/v5htsth-atrocity-inc ... src_v1_upp



The Grayzone

In an exclusive new documentary, Max Blumenthal rips the cover off the media deceptions and atrocity hoaxes Israel pushed after October 7 to create political space for its gruesome assault on the Gaza Strip.

Blumenthal exposes the US mainstream media’s role as a megaphone for the Israeli government, introducing new lies even after their initial ones were debunked. Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel’s army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing.

Directed & Edited by Sut Jhally

Written by Max Blumenthal and Sut Jhally

Executive Producer, Sut Jhally

Produced by Max Blumenthal and Ahmad Hussam

Videography and Sound Recording by Robbie Leppzer

Additional Editing, Robbie Leppzer & Ahmad Hussam

Graphics by Ahmad Hassam

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... n-of-gaza/

Greater Israel Explained: The Israeli Plan to Conquer the Arab World
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 5, 2024



BreakThrough News

The idea of “Greater Israel” has resurfaced following a viral Jerusalem Post article. Rooted in biblical and Zionist aspirations, it envisions Israel expanding its borders, a concept gaining traction within right-wing Israeli politics. This video explores its history and implications.

What is Greater Israel?

The concept of “Greater Israel” has recently gained attention after an article in The Jerusalem Post titled “Is Lebanon Part of Israel’s Promised Territory?” went viral. This idea, which refers to the biblical boundaries of Israel as promised to the Jewish people in religious texts, has deep roots in Zionist ideology. While interpretations of “Greater Israel” vary—ranging from symbolic aspirations to literal geographic claims—the term is often associated with expanding Israel’s borders to those mentioned in biblical covenants.

Origins and Early Zionist Thought

Greater Israel has been a part of Zionist discourse since the movement’s inception. One of the first mentions of it is in the diary of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, in 1898. Herzl’s vision of a future Jewish state extended from the Nile to the Euphrates. This idea was presented during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where the borders of future states were being drawn after World War I. Zionist leaders, like David Ben-Gurion, advocated for a Jewish state that included parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

Biblical Roots and Religious Ideology

The concept of Greater Israel originates from promises made in the Torah. The land described in the covenant with Abraham includes territory stretching from Egypt to the Euphrates River. Religious Zionists, particularly Messianic Zionists, interpret these boundaries as an idealized version of Israel’s future borders. This belief has influenced Israeli politics, particularly among right-wing groups.

Colonialism and the Sykes-Picot Agreement

After World War I, the British and French colonial powers carved up the Middle East into arbitrary states, leading to a legacy of ethnic and sectarian conflict. This division, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, played a significant role in shaping modern-day Arab countries and further complicated efforts toward Arab unity. The Zionist movement benefited from these divisions, particularly in Palestine, where British colonial policies favored Zionist settlement.

Israel’s Expanding Borders

Israel’s borders have changed multiple times since its establishment in 1948. The country has engaged in several wars and territorial expansions, notably during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula, more than doubling its territory. Although Israel eventually returned the Sinai to Egypt, it continues to occupy other territories, including the Golan Heights and parts of the West Bank.

Israel’s Lebanon Invasion and Regional Strategy

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, marking its first attempt to extend influence beyond historic Palestine. The invasion was part of a larger strategy outlined in a 1980s paper titled A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s. This strategy, written by an advisor to then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, emphasized exploiting sectarian divisions in Arab countries to weaken them from within. The goal was to ensure Israel’s dominance in the region by promoting civil wars and internal strife in neighboring Arab states.

Zionist Ideology and The Iron Wall

One of the most influential figures in Zionist ideology was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. His famous essay, The Iron Wall, written in 1923, argued that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine could only be achieved through force. Jabotinsky believed that there would never be voluntary consent from the native Arab population, so a “wall of iron” was needed to protect Jewish settlers and ensure the success of the Zionist project.

The Ongoing Relevance of Pan-Arabism

While the Israeli strategy has focused on exploiting divisions in the Arab world, the Palestinian cause continues to unite many Arabs. The recent normalization of relations between Israel and certain Arab states, known as the Abraham Accords, has not diminished the centrality of Palestine in Arab political consciousness. Despite the challenges to Arab unity, pan-Arabism remains a potent force in the region, particularly concerning the question of Palestine.

Conclusion: The Future of Greater Israel

The idea of Greater Israel remains a controversial and divisive topic, deeply rooted in religious, political, and colonial history. As Israel continues to engage in territorial expansion and influence in the region, questions about its borders and its long-term strategy remain critical. The notion of Arab unity, which Israel’s strategy seeks to undermine, still holds significant relevance today, particularly as new generations of Arabs rally around the Palestinian cause. The future of the Middle East will likely continue to be shaped by these competing visions.

Image
During a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a map that shows Israel stretching “from the river to the sea.”

Image
Benjamin Netanyahu brandishes two maps during his address at the UN General AssemblySeptember, 2024: Benjamin Netanyahu brandishes two maps during his address at the UN General Assembly

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... rab-world/

******

Fierce clashes in Gaza's Jabalia as Qassam, Quds Brigades repel Israeli invasion

Israel seeks to implement reservist general Giora Eiland's plan to forcibly expel all Palestinians from northern Gaza

News Desk

OCT 7, 2024

Image
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said it received "horrific reports" from Jabalia camp (Photo credit: Reuters)
The Palestinian resistance continues to battle Israeli troops in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza on 7 October, as Israel continues its massacre and ethnic cleansing of the remaining 300,000 Palestinians in the north of the enclave.

On Monday, at least 10 Palestinians were killed and several wounded after Israeli artillery shelled a group of people near Abu Qamar station in Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip.


قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي ترتكب سلسلة من المجازر بحق المدنيين في مخيم جباليا ومدينة جباليا البلد، حيث تنتشر جثث الشهداء والمصابين في الشوارع، فيما تعجز فرق الإسعاف والطوارئ عن إجلائهم بسبب الاستهداف المتكرر من الطائرات المُسيرة. pic.twitter.com/qEgFsY3GZO

— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) October 7, 2024
The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday that the Israeli army seeks to expel tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza amid the Jabalia invasion, its fourth invasion of the camp since the start of the Israel–Hamas War.

A group of hundreds of mid-level reservist officers, led by former National Security Council chief Giora Eiland, have been pushing in recent months for a “complete evacuation of northern Gaza” to achieve the desired pressure on Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar to surrender.

The Post said that “Sunday's move by the IDF appeared to be an in-between position of moving a significant portion of the 150,000–250,000 Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza without going 'all the way' with the Eiland plan.”

“Alternatively, the move could be a prelude toward a gradual and creeping evacuation of all of northern Gaza, but in a slower motion in order to reduce global opposition, especially by the US,” the Post added.

Members of Israel's Jewish settler community have been pushing for years for a war on Gaza to ethnically cleanse the strip of its 2.3 Palestinian inhabitants, annex it to Israel, and build Jewish settlements on the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian homes and cities.


The Israeli occupation army killed 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad in a targeted drone strike at his home in Jabalya refugee camp on Sunday morning.

According to Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini, Hamad had received threats in the days that led to his death.… pic.twitter.com/qgFgU8sQzp

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2024
Meanwhile, Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), announced its fighters were engaged in armed clashes with an Israeli infantry unit that attempted to infiltrate the Block 2 area in the Jabalia camp.

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said its fighters were engaged in “fierce clashes at zero distance with enemy forces penetrating west of Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, killing and wounding many of them.”

The group announced it had targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with an artillery shell in the Al-Qassasib area in the middle of Jabalia camp and had launched rockets at Israeli settlements surrounding Gaza, including Sderot, Nir Am, and others.

The Israeli army began its renewed assault on Jabalia Saturday evening by encircling the camp and issuing evacuation orders for all Palestinians in northern Gaza, including Gaza City.

On Sunday, an Israeli strike killed 19 people in a Mosque in Jabalia, as well as 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad, in a targeted drone strike on his home. According to Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini, Hamad had received threats from the Israeli military in the days before his death.


The Israeli occupation army killed 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad in a targeted drone strike at his home in Jabalya refugee camp on Sunday morning.

According to Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini, Hamad had received threats in the days that led to his death.… pic.twitter.com/qgFgU8sQzp

Image

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) October 7, 2024


https://thecradle.co/articles/fierce-cl ... i-invasion

Israel drops 'depleted uranium bombs' inside Beirut: Official

Radioactive dust emitted by depleted uranium munitions has been linked to rises in cancer and congenital defects in babies following the US bombing of Iraq

News Desk

OCT 8, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)

On October 6, the head of the president of the Lebanese Association of Social Medicine said Israel has been bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut using banned bombs with uranium warheads and called for collecting samples from the bombed sites to send to the UN as part of an international investigation.

President of the Lebanese Association of Social Medicine Raif Reda called for “collecting samples from the bombing sites and sending reports to the United Nations so the world can witness the bloody, criminal history of the Zionist enemy,” according to statements reported by the National News Agency (NNA).

Warheads made with depleted uranium casings are designed to penetrate deep fortifications, causing significant destruction and releasing toxic gases. They are also radioactive and have been linked to massive increases in cancer rates in Iraq following the US wars on that country in 1991 and 2003.

Lebanese newspaper L'Orient Today reports that Israeli air forces may have used depleted uranium bombs when its air force dropped 80 one-ton (2,000lb) bombs on at least four residential buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 27 to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The New York Times notes that a video released by the Israeli army showed that the warplanes that flew the mission to assassinate Nasrallah were each equipped with six US-made BLU-109 missiles.

L'Orient Today notes that according to a report from the US Naval Institute, the most common type of explosives inside these missiles are bombs classified as GBU-31.

“These guided munitions are known for their ability to penetrate heavily reinforced concrete or steel structures thanks to a casing made of depleted uranium (DU), used for its high density, which enhances the bombs' resistance upon ground impact,” the Lebanese newspaper added.

The Israeli air force has already been known to use these bombs in Gaza. A report submitted to the UN Human Rights Commission documented the drop of GBU-31, GBU-32, and GBU-39 bombs documented airstrikes by the Israeli air force carried out on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps, and a market between October 9 and December 2, 2023.

Depleted uranium munitions pose a risk to civilians years after a site is bombed because they release radioactive particles upon impact and contaminate the soil and surrounding environment.

It is well known that the US Air Force used depleted uranium warheads during both its wars in Iraq.

Researcher Souad al-Azzawi, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Canadian University Dubai and former director of the doctoral program in environmental engineering at the University of Baghdad, cites studies showing that children's leukemia cases increased by 60 percent between 1990 and 1997 and that birth defects tripled between 1990 and 1998 in Basra, Iraq.

The US Air Force bombed Basra in response to Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Al-Azzawi says that depleted uranium used during such conflicts is responsible for the rise in cancer and birth defects in the area.

Depleted uranium is one of the most widely discussed contaminants in relation to birth defects. The World Health Organization released a report in 2003 titled “Potential Impact of Conflict on Health in Iraq,” which suggested that depleted uranium might be related to reports of increased cancers, birth defects, reproductive health problems, and renal diseases in the Iraqi population since 2003.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) reported that depleted uranium may be among the causes of a massive spike in birth defects among children in Falluja, which US forces bombed heavily during battles with insurgents in April and November 2004.

MERIP noted that the Falluja Hospital's birth defects Facebook page, where medical staff cataloged cases, revealed numerous different congenital anomalies. Babies in Falluja are regularly born with hydrocephaly, cleft palates, tumors, elongated heads, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses, and spines.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-dr ... t-official

Israel looking at $66bn war bill as economic woes deepen

Columbia University professor Adam Tooze says Israel is fighting an expensive war of choice to make Gaza 'unlivable'

News Desk

OCT 8, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AFP/ Said Khatib)

The total bill for Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon over several years will be some $66 billion, about 11 to 12 percent of Israel’s pre-war GDP, according to the Israeli Central Bank.

The number was revealed by Adam Tooze, a history professor and director of the European Institute at Columbia University in New York, who has written extensively about financial crises.

He stated in a 7 October interview with Foreign Policy that Israel is fighting a war of choice, which includes the goal of unleashing mass violence to make Gaza “unlivable” and “deal” with Hezbollah.

Israel “is in a deliberate way escalating the destruction in Gaza and the effort to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon. So this is expensive,” Tooze observed.

Even with US aid, which Tooze estimates at roughly $14 billion to $15 billion per year, the cost of the war is a strain on the Israeli government and society, he added.

Separately, a report published by Brown University’s Costs of War project said the US has given Israel $17.9 billion in military aid in the past year, and spent at least $22.76 billion assisting Israel, the highest amount in the two countries’ histories.

Tooze noted further that as a result of the war, Israeli tourism has collapsed by 75 percent, and hundreds of thousands of workers have been taken out of the economy at times while serving as reservists in the army.

“This is obviously disruptive to Israel, with a population of 10 million. If you take that number out of the workforce, prime-age, working young people, this is going to hurt.”

Tooze says that the Israeli economy, in particular the construction sector, has further suffered after imposing a ban on some 80,000 to 150,000 migrant Palestinian workers from the West Bank.

Estimates of Israeli GDP growth have fallen from three or four percent to roughly zero in the near future. At the same time, it faces a large surge in government spending.

In contrast, the relatively small economy of the West Bank, with a GDP of as little as $18 billion, has plunged roughly 20 to 25 percent.

While the war is costly for Israel, Tooze says it is a wealthy country, enjoying a pre-war per capita GDP higher than that of Germany.

Israel started the war with a debt-to-GDP level of 60 percent, which by some measures is just half the debt-to-GDP level in the US. This allows Israel to continue to borrow on international credit markets at reasonable rates despite recent credit downgrades by Moody’s and S&P.

“And so the net effect of this extraordinary escalation of military violence against its neighbors is that its credit rating falls to several points within the investment grade zone, so Israel is at no risk of becoming junk, and its borrowing costs are now fractionally above those of the United States. That’s as much financial pressure as it’s actually under,” Tooze said.

Israel enjoys a GDP of roughly $500 billion for a population of 10 million, compared to Iran’s GDP of just $380 billion for 88 million people.

This allows Israel to spend four times as much on its military than Iran can.

“The consequences for Iran of ramping up would be correspondingly much more severe than they are for Israel because if you were waging war as a surplus kind of activity, and there’s a much smaller margin of surplus in the Iranian economy than there is in the extremely affluent Israeli economy at this moment,” Tooze observed.


Regarding Gaza, Tooze expressed the view that it will be extremely difficult for the enclave to recover from the massive destruction Israel has wrought on it over the past year.

“I mean, whether or not we want to use the ‘genocide’ word, it’s clear that Israel’s intent is to, in its struggle against Hamas, render Gaza unlivable. That, at this point, is clearly an undeniable war aim—to permanently alter the circumstances of life and, social organization and politics in that strip. And, you know, what does recovery mean against that backdrop?”

Tooze did not discuss Gaza’s GDP numbers, but a recent report by UNCTAD shows the war wiped out more than 86 percent of Gaza’s economy in the first six months of the war. Gaza’s GDP dropped from $672 million before the war to a meager $92 million at the end of March, while at least $40 billion may be needed to rebuild the strip.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-lo ... oes-deepen

Netanyahu bars war chief from traveling to US, demands call with Biden first

The Israeli premier insists on speaking with US President Biden before Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visits Washington for Iran war planning

News Desk

OCT 9, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: Noam Revkin Fenton/ Flash90)

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has postponed his trip to Washington, which was scheduled for 8 October, due to opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly first wants cabinet approval for a plan to attack Iran and to speak with US President Joe Biden.

“We were just informed that Minister Gallant will be postponing his trip to Washington, DC. Secretary Austin looks forward to seeing him soon,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said during a briefing on Tuesday evening.

The Pentagon had announced on Sunday that Gallant would visit the US to “discuss developments in the region.”

Haaretz reported on Wednesday that according to sources familiar with the matter, Netanyahu wanted the security cabinet to approve plans for an attack on Iran prior to Gallant’s departure.

Israel seeks to respond to the recent Iranian attack on its military bases.

On 1 October, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at military targets in Israel in response to multiple Israeli aggressions, including the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that “Gallant’s main goal in his trip was to project a show of power from Washington in a play to deter possible Iranian attacks against Jerusalem following a possible retaliation.”

Netanyahu also insists that Gallant not travel to Washington before Biden speaks with him by phone.

Biden had stated he would speak with Netanyahu following the missile attacks from Iran but has yet to do so.

Netanyahu has been trying unsuccessfully to reach Biden directly, an anonymous Israeli official said, while a US official denied that Biden had rejected outreach from Netanyahu, the Washington Post reported.

Seven weeks have passed since the two last spoke.

In March, Netanyahu tried to prevent Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet and a political rival, from traveling to Washington for talks with top US officials.

During Gallant’s last visit to Washington in June, he met with US envoy Amos Hochstein and other top US officials to discuss the war on Lebanon.

Gallant noted after the meetings that “Israel is preparing for every scenario both militarily and diplomatically.”

One goal of his June trip was to resolve what Jerusalem considered to be an “insufficient flow of arms from the United States to Israel,” the Times of Israel reported.

“During the meetings, we made significant progress. Obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed [regarding] munition supply,” Gallant said in a video statement from Washington.

Israel massively escalated its attacks on Lebanon in late September. In just one day, 23 September, Israeli attacks killed 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women.

https://thecradle.co/articles/netanyahu ... iden-first
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:06 am

Euro-Med Monitor Report: 10% of Gaza Population Killed, Injured, Missing, or Detained in Zionist Genocide
October 9, 2024

Image
Front page of Euro-Med Monitor's report on one year of the Zionist regime's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Photo: X/@EuroMedHR.

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has released a comprehensive report detailing one year of genocidal crimes committed by the Zionist regime in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Titled De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order, the report details the most prominent crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces over the past 12 months across the besieged Palestinian territory.

During this period, the Zionist entity has committed grave war crimes, with the explicit complicity of the international community, the report noted.

Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the occupation forces, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health. In addition, around 100,000 have been injured.

Out of the 50,292 Palestinians killed, including those still buried under the rubble, 33% were women and 21% were children.

According to the report, an estimated 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of the Zionist military aggression in the last 12 months.

The report details the systematic acts of genocide committed in Gaza, such as the targeted killing of civilians in homes, shelters, displacement camps, and declared humanitarian zones.

Civilians were also killed by military vehicles and tanks, in field executions, through drone strikes, in crowded markets, and even while waiting for aid at relief trucks, the Geneva-based group reported.

Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centers.

The report sheds light on the appalling conditions and systematic atrocities that the occupation regime has inflicted upon the occupied Palestinian territory, with a particular focus on the Gaza Strip.

“These long-standing crimes include the illegal blockade, the deliberate isolation of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territory and the world, the systematic deprivation of basic human rights to the Strip’s residents, and the deliberate destruction of essential services,” the report condemned.

The report also condemned the Israeli military’s “starvation tactics, the deliberate killing of prisoners and detainees, and the assassination of humanitarian workers, qualified professionals, and Palestinian elites.”

The report traces the clear elements of genocide perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces and explores the legal frameworks defining the crime of genocide.

The regime forces employ explicit methods designed to inflict severe physical and psychological trauma on the population, the group said.

“These include launching thousands of systematic military assaults on civilians, dramatically increasing deaths among people of reproductive age, separating families, targeting the healthcare system, and imposing brutal living conditions marked by starvation and malnutrition.”

The obstruction of humanitarian aid further exacerbates these atrocities, creating life-threatening situations for thousands, it noted.

The report also addresses the international judicial response, and, significantly, the global community’s complicit role in allowing the genocide to continue.

“The root cause of this persecution—the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967—has created conditions for the ongoing genocide, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, on the legal consequences arising from Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory,” the Euro-Med Monitor stated.

Both the West Bank, including East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip are recognized by the United Nations as Palestinian territories illegally occupied by the Zionist entity.

The ICJ upheld this position in a recent advisory opinion, reflecting the near-universal international consensus on the continued occupation.

“Following the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel declared a state of war, with its President, Prime Minister, and other political and military leaders at the forefront,” the report stated. “The declared aim was to eliminate Hamas, secure the release of hostages, and restore security. Thus began Operation Iron Swords, a brutal military offensive that intensified the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.”

Euro-Med Monitor concluded with a set of recommendations after a year of genocide in Gaza.

It called for the imposition of a total arms embargo on “Israel,” the termination of all licenses and agreements related to arms imports and exports (including dual-use materials and technology that could be used against Palestinians), and an end to all military and intelligence cooperation.

In addition to imposing travel restrictions and freezing Israeli regime assets, the Geneva-based group calls for political and economic sanctions on the Zionist entity and its accomplice states.

“These measures are intended to pressure the responsible parties into upholding international law, ensuring non-recurrence of crimes against Palestinians, and compensating the victims of these atrocities,” the report commented.

The organization further calls for the halting of all forms of support to the entity in connection with its genocide and other crimes against Palestinians.

This includes withholding investments, canceling or suspending political, diplomatic, economic, commercial, and academic ties, and curtailing support from the media, legal, and other sectors that might contribute to the continuation of these crimes.

“Key measures include ensuring the Israeli occupation army’s full withdrawal from Gaza, dismantling all military installations, barricades, and checkpoints, and guaranteeing the safe and swift return of forcibly displaced individuals to their homes,” the group recommended.

Furthermore, the recommendations call for the protection of freedom of movement, travel, and access for all citizens of Gaza.

The Zionist regime unleashed its genocidal onslaught on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against Palestinians in the occupied territories and in Gaza.

https://orinocotribune.com/euro-med-mon ... -genocide/

Lebanese Health Official: Zionist Regime Is Bombing Beirut With Depleted Uranium
October 9, 2024

Image
Destruction in a Beirut neighborhood caused by Zionist airstrikes. Photo: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images.

The head of the president of the Lebanese Association of Social Medicine decried that the Zionist entity has been bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut using banned bombs with depleted uranium warheads and called for collecting samples from the bombed sites to send them to the United Nations as part of an international investigation.

On October 6, Raif Reda, president of the Lebanese Association of Social Medicine, called for “collecting samples from the bombed sites and sending reports to the United Nations so the world can witness the bloody, criminal history of the Zionist enemy,” as reported by the National News Agency (NNA).

Warheads made with depleted uranium casings are designed to penetrate deep fortifications, causing significant destruction and releasing toxic gases. They are radioactive and have been linked to massive increases in cancer rates in Iraq following the US wars on that country in 1991 and 2003.

Lebanese newspaper L’Orient Today reported that Zionist air forces may have used depleted uranium bombs when its air force dropped 80 one-ton (2,000lb) bombs on at least four residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 27 to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The New York Times noted that a video released by the occupation army showed that the warplanes that flew the mission to assassinate Nasrallah were each equipped with six US-made BLU-109 missiles.

L’Orient Today notes that according to a report from the US Naval Institute, the most common type of explosives inside these missiles are bombs classified as GBU-31.

“These guided munitions are known for their ability to penetrate heavily reinforced concrete or steel structures due to a casing made of depleted uranium (DU), used for its high density, which enhances the bombs’ resistance upon ground impact,” the Lebanese newspaper added.

The occupation air force has already been known to use these bombs in Gaza. A report submitted to the UN Human Rights Commission documented the use of GBU-31, GBU-32, and GBU-39 bombs in airstrikes by the Israeli air force on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps, and a market between October 9 and December 2, 2023.

Depleted uranium munitions pose a risk to people years after a site is bombed because they release radioactive particles upon impact and contaminate the soil and surrounding environment.

It is well known that the US Air Force used depleted uranium warheads during both its wars in Iraq.

Researcher Souad al-Azzawi, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Canadian University Dubai and former director of the doctoral program in environmental engineering at the University of Baghdad, cites studies showing that children’s leukemia cases increased by 60 percent between 1990 and 1997 and that birth defects tripled between 1990 and 1998 in Basra, Iraq.

The US Air Force bombed Basra after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Al-Azzawi reported that depleted uranium used during this conflict is responsible for the rise in cancer and birth defects in the area.

Depleted uranium is one of the most widely discussed contaminants in relation to birth defects. The World Health Organization released a report in 2003 titled “Potential Impact of Conflict on Health in Iraq,” which suggested that depleted uranium might be related to reports of increased cancers, birth defects, reproductive health problems, and renal diseases in the Iraqi population since 2003.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) reported that depleted uranium may be among the causes of a massive spike in birth defects among children in Falluja, which US forces bombed heavily during battles with insurgents in April and November 2004.

MERIP noted that the Falluja Hospital’s birth defects Facebook page, where medical staff cataloged cases, revealed numerous different congenital anomalies. Babies in Falluja are regularly born with hydrocephaly, cleft palates, tumors, elongated heads, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses, and spines.

Serbia has accused NATO of using depleted uranium in airstrikes on Belgrade during the 1999 NATO invasion of former Yugoslavia. Serbian Health Minister Daniča Grujičić, a renowned neurosurgeon who co-authored a book titled The Truth About the Aftermath of the 1999 Bombing of Serbia, revealed that although NATO never admitted to having bombed Serbia with depleted uranium warheads, cancer incidence and mortality rates in the country, as well as in neighboring Hungary and Croatia, are on the rise even after 25 years.

“We and our neighbors—the Croats and the Hungarians—have been rotating for years at the top of mortality rates of oncological diseases in Europe,” the health minister said on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in March this year. “Thus, according to ECIS [European Cancer Information System] data for 2020, Serbia was in first place with an index of 150.6 [cancer deaths] per 100,000, while the European average was 108.7 points. We have tumors of respiratory systems, mammary glands, central nervous systems, thyroids, circulatory and digestive systems leading in terms of mortality.”

https://orinocotribune.com/lebanese-hea ... d-uranuim/

Ayatollah Khamenei’s Lebanese Red Line
October 8, 2024

Image
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (left), Ismail Haniyeh (middle), and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right). Photo: The Cradle.

By Ali Rizk – Oct 6, 2024

The importance of Iran’s special relationship with Hezbollah and Lebanon became clear after Iran’s unprecedented salvo of missiles hit targets across Israel. Iran’s supreme leader made that even more apparent in his rare public speech on Friday, October 4.

Friday’s commemoration of Hezbollah’s late leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Iran was no ordinary event and provides an indication of how far Tehran is willing to go to preserve the Axis of Resistance in the face of “Israeli” escalation.

Thousands reportedly turned out for the commemoration ceremony, in which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers before addressing the gathered masses. Khamenei’s public appearance can itself be seen as both an act of defiance directed at the Axis’ enemies and a message of reassurance to its supporters, who are no doubt looking to Iran for leadership following Nasrallah’s assassination.

The Iranian leader’s public appearance comes after foreign media reports that he had been moved to an undisclosed location for safety reasons in the immediate aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination. Perhaps more importantly, it comes on the heels of Operation True Promise 2, in which Iran launched a heavy barrage of missiles on the Israeli colony, which, according to the Iranians, hit 90% of their intended targets.

That operation was notably heavier-handed than the first True Promise, which came in response to the Israelis attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus last April and marked the first direct military action by Tehran on Israel. In an article for Foreign Policy, Vali Nasr notes how Iran’s second direct attack on the Israeli colony was carried out with far less advance warning compared to the April operation. Nasr—considered an authoritative voice in Washington on issues related to West Asia—also explained how the latest missile salvo “signaled Iran’s will and ability to attack Israel and penetrate its defense systems in potentially damaging ways.”

Operation True Promise 2 came in response to the assassinations of Nasrallah, Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Abbas Nilforushan, conveying a clear message that Iran, contrary to many assessments, was ready to escalate. This message was reinforced by Khamenei on Friday, as he delivered some fiery remarks with a rifle by his side.

“What our armed forces did was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” said Khamenei in reference to Iran’s latest offensive, while warning that Tehran was ready to conduct more direct military action against “Israel” should the need arise.

These warnings come amid much speculation on the Zionist colony’s likely response to True Promise 2, as senior officials in Tel Aviv have pledged that Iran’s attack will not go unanswered, and the Israeli military appears to be readying a large-scale operation against Iran, with US support.

In turn, senior Iranian military officials have warned that any Israeli operations targeting Iranian soil would be met with devastating blows, far exceeding the strikes Tehran has conducted in both its previous operations.

As IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi said in a statement published by Iranian state-affiliated media, “If the occupiers make such a mistake [attack Iran], we will target all their energy sources, installations, and all refineries and gas fields.”

That Iran has upped the ante dramatically in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination speaks to how determined it is to demonstrate that this setback will not weaken the Axis of Resistance. Perhaps even more importantly, these latest developments speak to the special relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah.

This is reflected in the fact that Khamenei’s speech was the first time in which Iran’s supreme leader publicly addressed a mass crowd since the US assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, further highlighting the special status of Nasrallah throughout Iran, and with Khamenei, at a personal level.

A significant part of the supreme leader’s speech, however, was not directed at the crowds physically amassed for the unusual speech but rather at the regional and international supporters of the Axis of Resistance outside Iran.

Khamenei devoted half of his address to the Muslim world, naming Lebanon and Palestine specifically. It was Lebanon, however, that featured most prominently in the section of his speech delivered in Arabic. This shift in language was notable, marking the first time Iran’s supreme leader spoke publicly in Arabic since the “Arab Spring” a decade ago.

Urging the supporters of the Resistance not to despair, Khamenei addressed not only Hezbollah, but also its close and powerful domestic ally, the Amal Movement, whose leader is long-time Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri. He also directed his message of reassurance specifically to the younger generation, whom he described as his “children” and with whom hopes lie in preserving and potentially strengthening the Axis of Resistance.

Khamenei’s remarks served to reinforce the notion of the special relationship between Iran and Hezbollah but also extended to the historic relationship between the Islamic Republic and Lebanon as a whole, “It is our duty and the responsibility of all Muslims to repay our debt to the wounded, bloodied Lebanon.”

In another sign of the special status of this relationship, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made a surprise visit to Beirut on Friday.

Hezbollah’s status, and by extension, Lebanon’s status as a special ally of Iran, is owed largely to the integral role the Lebanese resistance plays within the Axis of Resistance. An example of this is Hezbollah’s roles in places like Syria and Iraq, where the Lebanese movement was Tehran’s major partner in the fight against extremist takfiri groups such as ISIS and Al-Nusra.

Importantly, the confrontations that have taken place in Syria since 2011 can also be seen as part of the Axis’ ongoing struggle with the Israelis. Senior Israeli officials, at the time, made no secret of their desire to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lose power to the extremists, with the Zionist regime providing secret aid to some of those groups that were fighting the Syrian government.

The special relationship between Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah puts Washington in a dilemma. While the White House has publicly declared its opposition to wider regional war and its reluctance to be party to one, it can no longer rely on Iranian restraint to avoid that scenario. This owes to the fact that the stakes have become simply too high for Tehran following the recent unprecedented Israeli escalation on the Lebanese front.

Iran’s missile strikes on 1 October have shown that the Iran–Hezbollah special relationship is something Tehran’s leadership is not willing to forgo, whatever the costs. What remains to be seen is how far the United States is willing to go in its own special relationship with “Israel.”

https://orinocotribune.com/khameneis-lebanese-red-line/

******

SCOTT RITTER: The Fall of Israel
October 8, 2024

A year ago, Israel was sitting in the catbird seat. Today, it stares into the face of its demise.

Image
Arrival ceremony, Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, July 13, 2022, for U.S. President Joe Biden. (White House/Adam Schultz)

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

I have previously written about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, calling it “the most successful military raid of this century.”

I have described the Hamas action as a military operation, while Israel and its allies have called it a terrorist action on the scale of what transpired against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The difference between the two terms,” I noted,

“is night and day — by labeling the events of October 7 as acts of terrorism, Israel transfers blame for the huge losses away from its military, security, and intelligence services, and onto Hamas. If Israel were, however, to acknowledge that what Hamas did was in fact a raid — a military operation — then the competency of the Israeli military, security, and intelligence services would be called into question, as would the political leadership responsible for overseeing and directing their operations.”

Terrorism employs strategies that seek victory through attrition and intimidation — to wear an enemy down and create a sense of helplessness on the part of the enemy. Terrorists by nature avoid decisive existential conflict, but rather pursue asymmetrical battle which pits their strengths against the weaknesses of their enemies.

The war that has gripped the Levant since Oct. 7, 2023, is not your traditional anti-terrorism operation. The Hamas-Israeli conflict has morphed into a conflict between Israel and the so-called axis of resistance involving Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarullah (the Houthi of Yemen), the Popular Mobilization Forces, i.e. militias of Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is a regional war in every way, shape, or form that must be assessed as such.

The Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic work, On War, that “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.”

From a purely military perspective, the Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a relatively minor engagement, involving a few thousand combatants from each side.

As a global geopolitical event, however, it has no contemporary counterpart.

The Hamas raid triggered a number of varied responses, some of which were by design, such as luring the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, where they would become trapped in a forever war they could not win, triggering the dual Israeli doctrines governing military response to hostage taking of the “Hannibal Doctrine” and the Israeli practice of collective punishment, the “Dahiya Doctrine.”

Image
“Bring Them Home” — a giant lights sign by artist Nadav Barnea at Charles Bronfman Auditorium, Heichal Hatarbut, Tel Aviv, Jan. 3, 2024. (Yossipik, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Both of these doctrines put the IDF on display to the world as the antithesis of the “world’s most moral military” by exposing the murderous intent ingrained into the DNA of the IDF, a propensity for violence against innocents which defines the Israeli way of war and, by extension, the Israeli nation.

Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was able to disguise its true character to the outside world, convincing all but a handful of activists that its actions in targeting “terrorists” were proportional and humane.

Today the world knows Israel as the genocidal apartheid state it really is.

The consequences of this new global enlightenment are manifest.

Changing the ‘Face of the Middle East’

Image
President Joe Biden greets India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sept. 9, 2023, at the G20 summit in New Delhi. (White House/Adam Schultz)

President Joe Biden, on Sept. 9, 2023, during the G20 summit in India, announced a major policy initiative, the India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor, or IMEC, a proposed rail, ship, pipeline and digital cable corridor connecting Europe, the Middle East and India.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, commenting on Biden’s announcement, called the IMEC “a cooperation project that is the greatest in our history” that “takes us to a new era of regional and global integration and cooperation, unprecedented and unique in its scope” adding that it “will bring to fruition a years-long vision that will change the face of the Middle East and of Israel.”

Image
India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor Founder States And Location Map. (Bourenane Chahine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

But because the world now sees Israel as a criminal enterprise, the IMEC looks for all intents and purposes to be no more — the greatest cooperation project in Israeli history that would have changed the Middle East likely will never reach fruition.

For one thing, Saudi Arabia, a key player in the scheme, having invested $20 billion in it, says it will not normalize relations with Israel, necessary for the project, until the wars end and a Palestinian state is recognized by Israel, something the Knesset voted earlier this year would never happen.

The demise of the IMEC is just part of the $67 billion economic hit Israel has taken since the Gaza conflict began.

Tourism is down 80 percent. The southern port of Eilat no longer functions because of the anti-shipping campaign run by the Houthi in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Workforce stability has been disrupted by the displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes because of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks as well as the mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists. All this combine to create a perfect storm of economy-killing issues, which will plague Israel so long as the current conflict continues.

The bottom line is that, left unchecked, Israel is looking at economic collapse. Investments are down, the economy is shrinking, and confidence in an economic future has evaporated. In short, Israel is no longer an ideal place to retire, raise a family, work…or live. The biblical “land flowing with milk and honey,” if it ever existed, is no more.

This is an existential problem for Israel.

For there to be a viable “Jewish homeland,” demographics dictate there must be a discernable Jewish majority in Israel. There are just short of 10 million people living in Israel. About 7.3 million are Jews; another 2.1 million are Arabs (Druze and other non-Arab minorities comprise the reminder.)

There are some 5.1 million Palestinians under occupation, leaving a roughly 50-50 split when looking at the combined totals between Arab and Jew. An estimated 350,000 Israelis hold dual citizenship with an EU country, while more than 200,000 hold dual citizenship with the United States.

Likewise, many Israelis of European descent can easily apply for a passport simply by showing that either they, their parents, or even their grandparents resided in a European country. Another 1.5 million Israelis are of Russian descent, with many of those holding valid Russian passports.

While the main reasons for maintaining this dual-citizen status are convenience and economic, many view the second passport as “an insurance policy” — a place to run to if life in Israel becomes untenable.

Life in Israel is about to become untenable.

Escape From Israel

Image
Departures area of Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod, Israel, 2014. (Adam Fagen, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Israel had already suffered from a growing emigration problem derived from dissatisfaction with the policies of the Netanyahu government — some 34,000 Israelis permanently left Israel between July and October 2023, primarily in protest over the judicial reforms being enacted by Netanyahu.

While there was a spike in emigration immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks (some 12,300 Israelis permanently emigrated in the month following the Hamas attack), the number of permanent emigrants in 2024 was around 30,000, a drop from the previous year.

But now Israel is being bombarded on a near-daily basis by long-range drones, rockets, and missiles fired from Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, and the Houthi in Yemen. The Iranian ballistic missile attack of Oct. 1 vividly demonstrated to all Israelis the reality that there is no viable defense against these attacks.

Moreover, if the Israel-Iran conflict continues to escalate (and Israel has promised a retaliation of immense proportions), Iran has indicated it will destroy Israel’s critical infrastructure — power plants, water desalinization plants, energy production and distribution centers — in short, Israel will cease being able to function as a modern nation state.

At that point, insurance policies will be cashed in as hundreds of thousands of Israelis holding dual passports vote with their feet. Russia has already told its citizens to leave. And if millions of other Israelis who qualify for European passports opt to exercise that option, Israel will face its ultimate nightmare — a precipitous drop in the Jewish population that skews the demographic balance decisively toward non-Jews, making moot the notion of an exclusive homeland for the Jews.

Israel is rapidly becoming unsustainable, both as a concept (the world is rapidly tiring of the genocidal reality of Zionism) and in practice (i.e., economic and demographic collapse.)

The Changing View From the US

Image
Demonstration outside the The Watergate Hotel in Washington when Netanyahu was staying there on July 22, 2024. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

This is the current reality of Israel — in one year’s time, it went from “changing the face of the Middle East” to being an unsustainable pariah whose only salvation is the fact that it has the continued support of the United States to prop it up militarily, economically, and diplomatically.

And herein lies the rub.

That which made Israel attractive to the United States — the strategic advantage of a pro-American Jewish enclave in a sea of Arab uncertainty — no longer holds as firmly as it previously did. The Cold War is long gone, and the geopolitical benefits accrued in the U.S.-Israeli relationship are no longer evident.

The era of American unilateralism is fading, rapidly being replaced by a multi-polarity with a center of gravity in Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi. As the United States adapts to this new reality, it finds itself engaged in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the “global south” — the rest of the world outside the EU, NATO, and a handful of pro-Western Pacific nations.

The moral clarity that American leadership seeks to bring to the global stage is significantly clouded over by its ongoing unquestioned support for Israel.

Israel has, in its post-Oct. 7, 2023, actions, self-identified as a genocidal state totally incompatible with any notion of international law or the basic precepts of humanity.

Even some Holocaust survivors recognize that modern-day Israel has become the living manifestation of the very evil that served as the justification for its creation — the brutally racist ideology of Nazi Germany.

Israel is anathema for everything modern civilization stands for.

The world is gradually awakening to this reality.

So, to, is the United States.

For the moment the pro-Israeli lobby is mounting a rear-guard action, throwing its weight behind political candidates in a desperate attempt to buy the continued support of their American benefactors.

But geopolitical reality dictates that the United States, in the end, will not commit suicide on behalf of an Israeli state that has lost all moral legitimacy in the eyes of most of the world.

There are economic consequences attached to American support for Israel, especially in the increased gravitational pull of the BRICS forum, whose growing list of members and those who are seeking membership reads as a who’s who of nations fundamentally opposed to the Israeli state.

The deepening social and economic crisis in America today will create a new political reality where American leaders will be compelled by electoral realities to address problems which manifest on American soil.

The day when Congress can allocate billions of dollars without question to oversees wars, including those involving Israel, is coming to an end.

Political operative James Carville’s famous adage, “It’s the economy, stupid” resonates as strongly today as it did when he penned it back in 1992. To survive economically, America will have to adjust its domestic and international priorities, requiring conformity not only with the will of the American people, but a new, law-based international order which largely rejects the ongoing Israeli genocide.

Apart from die-hard Zionists who will hold out in the unelected “establishment” of government civil service, academia, and mass media, Americans will gravitate toward a new policy reality where unquestioned support for Israel is no longer accepted.

This will be the final straw for Israel.

The perfect storm of global rejection of genocide, sustained resistance on the part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance,” economic collapse and realignment of American priorities will result in the nullification of Israel as a viable political entity. The timeline for this nullification is dictated by the pace of collapse of Israeli society — it could happen in a year, or it could unfold over the course of the next decade.

But it will happen.

The end of Israel.

And it all began on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day that changed the world.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/08/s ... of-israel/

******

Israel Seeks to Ban UNRWA Presence in Gaza

Image
Palestinian victims of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Oct. 2024. X/ @UNRWA


October 9, 2024 Hour: 8:52 am

The departure of the UNWRA from Gaza would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster, UN Secretary stated.

On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed “profound concern” over Israel’s draft legislation that could prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from continuing its work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“In the midst of all the upheaval, UNRWA — more than ever — is indispensable,” Guterres said, adding that he has written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express his concern about the draft legislation.

“Such a measure would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory. It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster,” Guterres pointed out.

Operationally, the legislation would likely deal a terrible blow to the international humanitarian response in Gaza, as UNRWA’s activities are integral to that response. “It is not feasible to isolate one UN agency from the others,” the UN Secretary stated.


The text reads, “Zionist army snipers shot a 10-year-old Palestinian girl in the neck as she was fleeing bombs with her family in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. There have been few more sadistic criminals in history than the Zionists. What kind of sociopathic monster shoots refugee girls fleeing war.”

Warning that the measure would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people, Guterres said that without UNRWA, the delivery of food, shelter and health care to most of Gaza’s population would grind to a halt; Gaza’s 660,000 children would lose the only entity that is able to re-start education, risking the fate of an entire generation; and many health, education and social services would also end in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

If approved, such legislation would be diametrically opposed to the UN Charter and in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law, the UN chief pointed out, adding that national legislation cannot alter those obligations. “And politically, such legislation would be an enormous setback to sustainable peace efforts and to a two-state solution — fanning even more instability and insecurity,” he said.

The UNRWA was established in December 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees. When the agency began operations in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees, and today, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/israel-s ... e-in-gaza/

******

October 9, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Russia aligns with Iran, war clouds scatter

Image
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Tehran, July 19, 2022

Israel has apparently shelved its planned attack on Iran. A combination of circumstances can be attributed to this retreat, which rubbishes Israel’s own high-pitched rhetoric that it was raring to go.

Despite Israel’s brilliant media management, reports have surfaced that the Iranian missile attack on October 1 was a spectacular success. It was a display of Iran’s deterrence capability to crush Israel, if need arises. The failure of the US to intercept Iranian hypersonic missiles carried its own message. Iran claims that 90 percent of its missiles penetrated Israel’s air defence system.

Will Schryver, a technical engineer and security commentator, wrote on X: “I don’t understand how anyone who has seen the many video clips of the Iranian missile strikes on Israel cannot recognise and acknowledge that it was a stunning demonstration of Iranian capabilities. Iran’s ballistic missiles smashed through US/Israeli air defences and delivered several large-warhead strikes to Israeli military targets.”

Evidently, in the ensuing panic situation in Israel, as the US president Joe Biden put it, as of October 4, there had been no decision yet on what type of response Israel should mount against Iran. “If I were in their [Israeli] shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden said in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room a day after Israeli officials were saying that a “significant retaliation” was imminent.

Biden added that Israelis “have not concluded how they’re — what they’re going to do” in retaliation. Biden also told reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should remember US support for Israel when deciding on next steps. He claimed that he was trying to rally the world to avoid all-out war in West Asia.

In this pantomime, it is safer to believe Biden, as the honest truth is that without US inputs and practical help, and money — and direct intervention — Israel simply lacks the stamina to take on Iran. Israel’s regional dominance narrows down to executing assassination plots and attacking unarmed civilians.

But here too, it is debatable how self-sufficient Israel is vis-a-vis Iran. Reports have appeared that the US’ new technological intel pinpointed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Nasrallah’s whereabouts, which were passed on to Israel, leading to his assassination.

Interestingly, CIA Director William Burns stepped in to refute the rumours that Iran conducted a nuclear test on Saturday. Speaking at a security conference on Monday, Burns stated that the US has closely monitored Iran’s nuclear activity for any sign of rushing toward a nuclear bomb.

“We don’t see evidence today that such a decision has been made. We watch it very carefully,” he said. Burns gently erased another alibi to attack Iran.

One critical factor that has compelled Israel / US to defer any attack on Iran is the stern warning by Tehran that any attack on its infrastructure by Israel will be met with an even harsher response. “In responding, we neither hesitate nor rush,” to quote Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, who, by the way, made a trip to Lebanon and Syria over the weekend by way of giving Israel a defiant “message” — as he put it — that “Iran has strongly backed the resistance and will always support it.”

Earlier on October 4, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had used a rare public sermon to defend Iran’s missile attack against Israel, saying it was “legitimate and legal” and that “if needed,” Tehran will do it again. Speaking in both Persian and Arabic during Friday Prayers in Tehran, Khamenei said Iran and the Axis of Resistance won’t back down from Israel. Iran will not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in confronting Israel, Khamenei declared.

However, what deters the Israelis and causes uneasiness in the American mind is something else — Russia’s lengthening shadows on the West Asian tapestry.

American military analysts have disclosed that certain highly advanced Russian weaponry have been transferred to Iran in the recent weeks backed up by the deployment of Russian military personnel to operate these systems, including S-400 missiles. There is speculation that the secretary of Russia’s Security Council (former Defence Minister) Sergei Shoigu paid two secret visits to Iran in the recent period.

Apparently, Moscow also responded to the Iranian request for satellite data on Israeli targets for its missile strike on October 1. Russia also supplied Iran with the long-range electronic warfare system “Murmansk-BN”.

The “Murmansk-BN” system is a powerful EW system, which can jam and intercept enemy radio signals, GPS, communications, satellites, and other electronic systems up to 5,000 kms away and neutralise “smart” munitions and drone systems — and is capable of disrupting high-frequency satellite communication systems owned by the US and NATO.

To be sure, the Russian involvement in Iran’s standoff with Israel is potentially a game changer. From the US perspective, it raises the worrisome spectre of a direct confrontation with Russia, which it doesn’t want.

It is in this scenario that official Russian news agencies have quoted presidential aide Yury Ushakov on Sunday that Putin plans to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Masud Pezeshkian in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, on October 11.

Ushakov did not elaborate on the meeting. Indeed, this comes as a surprise since the two leaders are scheduled to meet again at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan that runs on October 22-24.

Of course, Iranians are also playing coy. Both Moscow and Tehran announced that their presidents were visiting Ashgabat on October 11 to attend a ceremony marking the 300th birth anniversary of the Turkmen poet and thinker Magtymguly Pyragy. Smoke and mirrors! (here and here)

It is entirely conceivable that amidst the cascading regional tensions, Moscow and Tehran may have thought of bringing forward the formal signing of the Russian-Iranian defence pact, which was originally scheduled to take place in Kazan.

If so, the event on Thursday will be reminiscent of the unscheduled visit by the then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to New Delhi for the signing of the historic Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation Between India and the USSR on 9th August 1971.

Interestingly, Ushakov added that Putin has no plans to meet Netanyahu. Putin is yet to respond to a request by Netanyahu for a phone conversation, made five days ago. A legend that Netanyahu created, typically, in the recent years to impress his domestic audience (and confuse the Arab street) — that he had a special relationship with Putin — is falling apart.

On the other hand, by chalking up an urgent meeting in Ashgabat — in fact, Turkmen president Serdar Berdimuhamedov was in Moscow only on Monday/Tuesday on a working visit — Kremlin is making it clear to Washington and Tel Aviv that Moscow is irrevocably aligned with Tehran and will help the latter no matter what it takes. (See my blog West Asian crisis prompts Biden to break ice with Putin, Indian Punchline, October 5, 2024)

Isn’t history repeating? The 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty was the most consequential international treaty entered into by India since Independence. It was not a military alliance. But the Soviet Union boosted India’s military capability for an upcoming war and created space for India to strengthen the basis for its strategic autonomy, and its capacity for independent action.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/russia- ... s-scatter/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 11, 2024 11:53 am

'Jewish state will extend from Jerusalem to Damascus': Israeli finance minister

In a new documentary, Bezalel Smotrich says the Zionist goal of conquering parts of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia is part of Israeli public discourse

News Desk

OCT 10, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)

In a new documentary, Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich detailed his desire to conquer not only all Palestinian territory to the Jordan River but also the Syrian capital of Damascus and territories extending as far as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Smotrich, the Finance Minister in the Israeli cabinet and head of the Religious Zionism party, made the comments in a recently released documentary entitled Israel: Extremists in Power. The documentary was produced by Arte Reportage, a Franco-German broadcast news magazine.

When asked about his goal, Smotrich tells the interviewer, “I want a Jewish state … It is a country run according to the values of the Jewish people.”


Israel currently controls territory from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, which have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

Israel has been building illegal Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank ever since.

The interviewer then asked Smotrich whether he thought the borders of the Jewish state should extend past the Jordan River.

Smotrich responded by saying, “Absolutely, but slowly … Our great religious elders used to say that the future of Jerusalem was to extend as far as Damascus.”

The documentary narrator then added, “Bezalel Smotrich has a maximalist vision of the promised land. And it includes all Palestinian lands, but also territories in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Even in Saudi Arabia. A radical vision admittedly, but one that is accepted in public debate in Israel.”

Since the beginning of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, many Israeli soldiers, media personalities, and politicians have made it clear they are fighting to conquer the enclave for the sake of building Jewish settlements there.


They say that Gaza must be destroyed and the 2.3 million Palestinian inhabitants of the strip forcibly expelled, whether to Egypt by land or Europe by boat, to allow for Jewish settlement.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza is now underway, according to the so-called “general’s plan.”

Some soldiers make clear the additional goal of conquering Arab territory as far as Syria and Iraq as well by the patches they wear on their uniforms.


Many in Israeli society also look forward to conquering southern Lebanon and bulding Jewish settlements there. On 25 September, the Movement for Settlement in Southern Lebanon published a map with “the new Hebrew names for the settlements of Southern Lebanon,” based on the current names of the Lebanese towns and villages.

Jewish Currents reports that in the movement's worldview, “the Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon will begin with a war with Hezbollah – which they view not as a last resort barring a diplomatic solution, but as the only reasonable path forward.”

Political analyst James Dorsey notes that the movement claims a Biblical justification for the conquest of Lebanon in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 3, verse 25. As Moses appeals to God to allow him to enter the Promised Land, he asks, “Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan – that fine hill country and Lebanon.”

https://thecradle.co/articles/jewish-st ... e-minister

*****

Netanyahu pauses and reflects on how America has betrayed him. What now?

Martin Jay

October 9, 2024

An endearing idea that all Israeli leaders have deep in their hearts is that one day Israel could colonize Lebanon.

There has always been a fatal attraction that Israel has harboured towards Lebanon. An endearing idea that all Israeli leaders have deep in their hearts is that one day Israel could colonize this tiny country. It was certainly Ariel Sharon’s view in 1982 when Israel’s army went all the way to Beirut to kill Palestinian fighters – who had fled earlier to Tunisia – and had to commiserate themselves with slaughtering thousands of civilians in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. What is rarely reported correctly though about that massacre, is that it was mostly women, many of whom were Lebanese.

At that precise moment in September 1982, the Israeli thinking was to install in Lebanon a Christian president who would act on Israel’s behalf. That man were to be the leader who carried out the massacres in those two very camps, Bachir Gemayel who had just been elected President – not without the help of Israel. Yet it was not to be. Syria, then a regional super power, assassinated the young leader and Israel’s plans of colonizing Lebanon were dashed.

Is Israel seeking to do the same thing in Lebanon today? It’s certainly thinking big. Barely a few days after crossing the border its troops are not winning against Hezbollah forces, many of whom have killed at least 20 IDF soldiers and destroying three tanks in just one day. Concurrent to this failed operation which sent helicopters in to ship the soldiers to hospitals in Haifa, Israel’s bombardment in Beirut does however wipe out many Hezbollah fighters and their families in the southern suburb where they are living. And yet, in recent days we have seen this bombing shift to Sunni areas of Beirut whose communities support Palestinians and where Hamas and Fatah leaders may well be living. This strategy on its own is interesting as it shows that Netanyahu now thinks of Lebanon as an enemy, whose borders are not limited to Hezbollah’s demographics and his video message to Lebanon “the Lebanese people are not our enemy, only Hezbollah” is of course a lie.

Rockets fired right into Palestinian refugee camps – one in Saida in the south – show that its intentions to wipe out Palestinians are not limited to Israel’s borders. Did the Israelis get an intelligence tip off that Hezbollah was about to recruit thousands of these young Palestinians to fight the IDF in the south? Possibly.

This strategy though to hit Palestinians or even just Sunni communities in Beirut is just one component of Netanyahu’s overall suicide strategy. If Hezbollah finds itself low in numbers on the battlefield, it will no doubt draw fighters from Lebanon’s huge Sunni community which could well be a game changer in a conventional guerrilla war.

Netanyahu has fallen into the trap that snares nearly all Israeli leaders. The belief that Lebanon is ripe to be taken and within days such a victory gives Israel a new level of leverage in the region against those who are angered by its power grab. If Israel’s poor infantry and tank divisions couldn’t hold Lebanon in 2006 without considerable losses, then one has to ask how would they expect to do it now, given that Hezbollah is a much more disciplined and experienced fighting force that in 06? Moreover, how could it dream of taking on Lebanon and taking control of the region south of the Litani river when Hezbollah fighters will be in their element? While it is true that Hezbollah has been hit hard by both the assassination of its leader and a number of commanders, it would be unwise to underestimate its strength on the battlefield, especially given that Israel’s bombing campaign and its genocide in Gaza has united more Lebanese than ever before. Israel had the upper hand before it crossed the border, but now that gamble is showing signs of being a bad bet for Netanyahu.

But given the constellation of miscalculation and feral strategizing, one could say it is overshadowed by Israel’s predicament where the whole world watched with jaw ajar as its own ‘iron dome’ defence system spectacularly failed to stop at least 200 missiles from Iran, many hypersonic. While the average blue colour worker in the UK who gets his international news from Sky might swallow the British government’s hilarious narrative that none of the missile struck anything, Netanyahu’s hands will be trembling like they’ve never shaken before. His biggest and most riskiest gamble has just flopped. Not only has the Biden administration not fallen for the ruse of being drawn into a war with Iran, but now, as hours become days, his own strategies now all look like those of a madman. A number of strategic military sites were hit inside Israel although western media so-called journalists don’t go and film them, allowing Netanyahu to play down the attack.

It’s hard of course to determine what strength Israel has now as its resources are stretched to breaking point and the half wits at Sky News are lying to us about the real situation on the ground. But Iran’s targeted strike of military infrastructure was as cunning as a fox on a moped. Not only is your Iron Dome useless against many of our missiles, but we can hit your military bases, is the message. Even Netanyahu must be in a state of shock now, which explains the pause. He must be having frantic backchannel talks with Washington while talking to his generals about what is the wise move now. To retaliate or to leave the battlefield with the men and equipment which you will surely lose with the next strike and to concentrate now on Lebanon? Or to try and strike Iran’s infrastructure, perhaps its oil refineries which are sitting ducks? Yet to do this without America, alone, means to also deal with what would come back to Israel, perhaps twice as much as before, and for the U.S. to wag its finger with ‘we warned you’ condescension.

Netanyahu has to choose between the hot oil of the pan, or the flames beneath it. And he not only has to worry about being drawn into the trap of Lebanon, he has to think of the role of other allies to Hezbollah like Syria and Russia. Some analysts at this point might be patting themselves on the back, if they predicted the demise now of Netanyahu. He has failed in Iran as his massive gamble has backfired. Not even his wisest generals could have guessed the reaction of Tehran; and he is failing in Lebanon with his ground invasion, which he really didn’t need to do. The game is up.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -what-now/

*****

The multiple internal crises that weaken Israel are deepening
Oct 9, 2024 , 4:15 pm .

Image
Protesters against Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reform in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 18, 2023 (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg / AP Photo)

After a year of continuous genocide against the Palestinian population, internal problems have deepened in Israel due to its perpetual state of war. The Israeli leaders decided to launch an offensive against Hezbollah and Lebanon while continuing their attacks against Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is at a high point in its administration, well aligned with local political and religious currents of the extreme right and Talmudic fundamentalism, reflecting the multiplication of military fronts where it is located on a regional scale.

The current situation is conditioned by three interrelated crises, which will probably determine the coming months in that country and, therefore, have repercussions on military actions against the countries and groups of the Axis of Resistance.

Social crisis
Earlier this year, there were days of social protests and labor strikes in Israel that directly targeted the government leadership, especially due to the way the army has carried out its offensive against Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations.

In particular, the Israeli population has not liked the way the Netanyahu government is handling the situation of compatriot hostages in Gaza and the attempts to sign a ceasefire.

Similarly, a member of the military cabinet, General Gadi Eisenkot, criticised the Prime Minister's approach on both issues. The existing disagreement over the army's strategic approach has become public.

The blame game surrounding Netanyahu has only intensified since then, both from local officials and from the population directly affected by the war.

But the public is not protesting against the war, only about the strategy employed. A January poll found that 88 percent believe the rising number of Palestinian deaths is justified, and a large majority think the IDF is using adequate, or even too little, force in Gaza.

Another poll in February found that 63 percent of Israelis opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israeli society itself is thus committed to the policy of continuing the war, even if it believes that the military leaders are on the wrong track. This perception contributes to the idea that Israel is no longer a safe and economically strong state.

Undoubtedly, one of the most illustrative data of this social crisis is the mass migration that the country has experienced since October 7, 2023. An article in The Jewish Independent reports : "Migration statistics show that 42,185 Israelis left the country between October 2023 and March 2024 without having returned until July of this year."

In October 2023 alone, 12,300 Israelis left the country "and had not returned by June 2024, compared with just 3,200 who left permanently the previous year, an increase of 285%," The Times of Israel reports .

The Jewish Independent also states that “a comparison of total immigration to Israel during the first eight months of 2024, compared to the first eight months of the previous year, shows a drop of 42%.”

There are no more recent figures to date, however, the medium and long-term consequences of emigration are yet to be seen, especially on the economic level, where the country would be most affected.

Economic crisis
There are many reports of the Israeli economy's decline as a result of the war. On September 28, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who believes that "it may be just and moral" to use hunger as a weapon of war against 2 million Palestinians, said that "Israel's economy is bearing the weight of the longest and most expensive war in the country's history."

An academic paper by Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies states that Israel's gross domestic product will at best fall into negative territory between 2024 and 2025, with the maximum projected growth being just 1%, not counting a budget deficit of around 15%.

The Bank of Israel also estimates that war-related costs for the 2023-2025 period could reach $55.6 billion, funds likely to be raised through a combination of increased public borrowing and budget cuts.

Israeli economists have spoken out on the situation. The Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency reported that, according to experts in the field, "the Gaza war has cost the Israeli economy more than 67.3 billion dollars."

"The defense establishment wants an annual increase of at least NIS 20 billion ($5.39 billion)," said Rakefet Russak-Aminoach, former chief executive of Israel's Bank Leumi.

Jacob Frenkel, former governor of the Central Bank of Israel, said that "Israel started 2023 without a deficit and since then the situation has deteriorated. At the end of July, the deficit reached 8.1%, or about NIS 155 billion ($41.8 billion). It needs to be covered."

Uri Levin, former CEO of the Discount Bank of Israel, said the country will not be able to rehabilitate its economy without regaining the confidence of international investors.

Added to this are the outlook of credit rating agencies, which have downgraded Israel's credit rating due to factors such as the continuation of the genocide in Gaza and the associated geopolitical risks. A paper by British economic historian Adam Tooze concludes that the geopolitics of the occupied Palestinian territories and the political economy of Tel Aviv are causing the collapse of the national security neoliberalism that serves as Israel's model, a product of the Netanyahu administration's colonial expansion policies over the past decade.

Of course, this is directly connected to the image that Israel is projecting to the world, and which finds a correlation in the political destabilization that the Netanyahu government itself is experiencing behind closed doors.

Political crisis ( and Netanyahu )
The contradictions within the war cabinet led to its division and public chaos.

Recall that the body was initially composed of the Prime Minister, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, as well as Netanyahu's political rivals Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who came together as part of a national emergency government a few days after the war broke out in October 2023.

But on July 9, Gantz resigned from his ministerial post and demanded that Netanyahu call new elections, an objection that has not been met so far.

In January, Gantz and Eisenkot's public criticism of the current military strategy had shown a government weak in the face of the situation. Gallant did the same, while continuing to support Netanyahu.

The truth is that the nomenklatura of the current war cabinet only has the use of even greater force and "total victory" as a central part of military strategy. And it all revolves around the prerogatives of the prime minister.

A Crisis Group report , signed by Mairav ​​Zonszein, analyses the political crisis in Israel and points out two important elements:

"The military wants a clear vision and direction from the war cabinet, but that depends on a political decision on a plan for the day after, which they are still waiting for. Many believe this is mainly due to Netanyahu's own political interests: staying in power by prolonging the war and pleasing his far-right base, which rejects Palestinian governance or statehood."

"Military leaders have other issues with Netanyahu as well. They hold him responsible for undermining Israel's military readiness through his judicial reforms and his generally polarizing and incendiary approach, and accuse him of deflecting all blame for the ongoing disaster onto the military, while maneuvering to evade personal responsibility in a future state investigation. The display of enmity between the military and the Prime Minister is unparalleled in Israeli history."

Netanyahu will face trial on corruption charges starting next December, another factor that puts him on the ropes.

All of this suggests that the prime minister is in the midst of a political crisis that is leading Israel towards a catastrophic scenario for its survival as a state, according to several analysts. The Times of Israel reported in September, with the byline of neoconservative columnist David Horovitz, that under his rule the country " is in existential danger ."

However, despite Netanyahu and his government's historically low approval ratings , opposition parties have been unable to capitalise politically on the situation, something that could change if elections are called soon.

After three decades of dominating Israeli politics, with obvious international repercussions, Netanyahu is still convinced that he is the only leader who can achieve total security for Israel.

His view that he can only escalate the regional scenario, which he is stoking to attack the "Iranian axis", has been publicly rejected. However, he claims to be waging an existential war, a risk he acknowledges but is willing to take.

"I'd rather have bad press than a good obituary," he said in an interview with the American magazine Time.

For Netanyahu, international pressure for Israel to become a pariah state is only a collateral consequence of a larger policy based on racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestine and all other countries in the West Asian region that oppose the perennial wars that the United States supports with no objections.

It is true that the three crises described above all represent scenarios of destabilization rather than of the conclusion of a period or phase, since it is risky to say that the occupation regime is in a state of collapse. But it is also possible that any of these aspects could deepen and its influence could spread to the rest of society and to the State of Israel in such a way that, together, they could generate a crisis that threatens its very existence.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/se ... tan-israel

Google Translator

*****

Image

Israeli Snipers Routinely, Deliberately Shoot Palestinian Kids In The Head

The evidence is undeniable, and the sourcing is as solid as it gets. There are mountains upon mountains of rock solid proof that Israeli forces routinely, deliberately shoot Palestinian children in the head in Gaza.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 10, 2024

There’s yet another doctors’ testimony about Israeli forces constantly shooting Palestinian children in the head, this one published in The New York Times.

The report, titled “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza,” begins as follows:

“I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.

“At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. ‘I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,’ I told him. To my surprise, he responded: ‘Yeah, me, too. Every single day.’”


Numerous named medical staff who worked in Gaza then testify in the report about routine encounters with children who’d been shot in the head and chest by Israeli forces, as well as children and infants suffering from severe malnutrition and easily preventable infections.

Image

Such reports have been coming out all year. Because Israel has not been allowing foreign press into Gaza, medical staff have in many ways become the de facto western journalists on the ground in the enclave — and they are all saying the same thing.

Back in July a group of 45 doctors and nurses who’d been working in Gaza signed an open letter to President Biden testifying that “every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them.”

“Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest,” the letter continues.

Also in July, Politico published an article by two American surgeons named Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa titled “‘Nothing Prepared Us for What We Saw’: Two Weeks Inside a Gaza Hospital,” which contains the following passage:

“We started seeing a series of children, preteens mostly, who’d been shot in the head. They’d go on to slowly die, only to be replaced by new victims who’d also been shot in the head, and who would also go on to slowly die. Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing inside when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.”

Image

In April an article titled “‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza” was published in The Guardian, citing nine doctors who’d worked in Gaza after October 7 who “reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest.”

Forensic pathologists were able to identify bullets used by the Israeli military in these attacks on children:

“The Guardian shared descriptions and images of gunshot wounds suffered by eight children with military experts and forensic pathologists. They said it was difficult to conclusively determine the circumstances of the shootings based on the descriptions and photos alone, although in some of the cases they were able to identify ammunition used by the Israeli military.”

In February the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation”. The author, a reconstructive surgeon named Irfan Galaria, writes as follows:

“On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.”

Image

So this is happening. The evidence is undeniable, and the sourcing is as solid as it gets. There are mountains upon mountains of rock solid proof that Israeli forces routinely, deliberately shoot Palestinian children in the head in Gaza.

The only reason this isn’t being treated as an established fact by the western political-media class is because the Israeli military denies it, telling The Guardian in response to the aforementioned report that “The IDF only targets terrorists and military targets. In stark contrast to Hamas’s deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, including men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

“Doctors say otherwise,” The Guardian wrote.

Indeed, there is no longer any fact-based reason to deny that Israel is deliberately targeting children with sniper fire. The facts are in and the case is closed. The only basis anyone can have for denying this established fact is their own personal loyalty to the state of Israel and its military, and/or their own personal disdain for Palestinian lives.

This fact punches holes in so many of the narratives used to defend Israel over the past year. That Israel is conducting itself in a more ethical way than Hamas. That Israel is waging a war against Hamas and not the Palestinian people. That the IDF are “the most moral army in the world” and are taking extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties. That civilians are being killed in Gaza because Hamas uses them as “human shields”. That this is a war fought for Israel’s self-defense, and not a campaign of extermination driven by racism and hate.

There is simply no way to believe any of these things are true when you acknowledge the extensively-documented fact that Israeli forces are routinely shooting children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/10 ... -the-head/

Like the genocidal US Calvary general said when asked about the killing of native children, "Nits breed lice."

******

Netanyahu Goes Even More Rogue, Announces Intent to Turn Lebanon into Gaza, Refuses to Inform US of Iran Strike Plans [Update]
Posted on October 9, 2024 by Yves Smith

Netanyahu seems determined to lash out at any and all opponents, as if Yahweh or the US can bail him out of whatever mess results. We’ll turn first, and briefly, to Netanyahu making official his new genocidal campaign against Lebanon, and then to his open defiance of the US on Israel’s expected counterstrike on Iran.

The fact that Netanyahu is out to flatten Lebanon is no surprise; UN officials were warning that it was on its way to becoming the next Gaza weeks ago. Some of the sorry details, first from Aljazeera:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Lebanon could face destruction “like Gaza” and claimed Israel has killed slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s “replacement, and the replacement of his replacement”….

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said in his address, referring to the besieged enclave that has been under a relentless and bloody Israeli bombardment campaign for one year.

And the State Department confirmed that the Biden Administration is all in with more war crimes like collective punishment, and the extension of the Gaza genocide plan:

So the answer to your question is yes, we do support Israel launching these incursions to degrade Hizballah’s infrastructure so ultimately we can get a diplomatic resolution that allows 1701 to finally be fully implemented.

Needless to say, the assertion that Israel is attacking “Hizbollah’s infrastructure” when it destroys hospitals and apartments is an insult to intelligence.

While the US and Israel are on the same page regarding the destruction of Lebanon, they appear to be at odds over what exactly Israel will do in its planned counterattack on Iran. I do not believe that this is clever spin-doctoring to make the US look not involved. First, Israel has form. Biden and other officials repeatedly saying they would back Israel no matter what, combined with the failure to exert any meaningful curbs like withholding weapons (the one-week denial of certain heavy bombs was a lame charade), means that the Administration has made itself culpable for Israel’s actions. That is clear most of all to Muslim voters and pretty much anyone not in the mainstream media bubble. So the Administration and 12 other nations garnering front-page headline about their 21 day ceasefire scheme, only to have Israel assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, made all these leaders look like fools. There would have been reputationally much cheaper ways to try to distance the US from the assassination were that the intent.

Second, too much is being made public about the particulars of US and Israel arm-wrestling. The centerpiece is the sudden cancellation of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s trip to the Pentagon. The Financial Times had an early account:

Israel has told the US that defence minister Yoav Gallant will no longer travel to Washington this week, prompting fears the cancellation could jeopardise co-ordination with Israel over its response to Iran’s missile attack.

“We were just informed that minister Gallant will be postponing his trip to Washington, DC,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said on Tuesday, hours before he was due to fly to the US.

The visit, which had been scheduled at Gallant’s request, was seen as a crucial chance for the US and Israel to discuss Israel’s planned retaliation against Iran for its ballistic missile attack last week and its expanding conflict in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Gallant to postpone his visit to Washington, said a person familiar with the matter.

The prime minister did not want Gallant to go until his cabinet votes on the country’s response to Iran’s ballistic missile strike and Netanyahu speaks with US President Joe Biden on the phone, the person said.

A call between Netanyahu and Biden has been in the works for “many days” but has not taken place, they added.

A few hours later, Axios and the Wall Street Journal, both based on one source, said the call was on for Wednesday.

Gallant reportedly talks regularly to US Defense chief LLoyd Austin and is seen as the Israeli official most responsive to Pentagon concerns. I have the impression that like the IDF generally, he has been trying to constrain the prosecution of the war, if nothing else, out of an understanding of Israel’s limitations.

Reading between the lines of the Financial Times account, it looks as if Netanyahu was trying to force a call with Biden that Biden had been trying to put off, as in really put off. That might have been a wet-noodle-lashing level attempt to tell Netanyahu he was in the doghouse. I don’t buy the Knesset vote part of the excuse for one second; that would have perilous little bearing on the strike package details that Gallant was to discuss with the Pentagon. And this bloodthirsty Knesset would approve whatever self-destructive scheme was put before them regardless.

Aside from reasserting primacy over Biden, a second reason for Netanyahu insisting on a Biden talk before Gallant went to the US would be to curb Gallant’s freedom of action. If Gallant were worried about the political leaders being unrealistic about Iran’s defenses (particularly of its nuclear operations) and Iran’s ability to retaliate, it would be logical for him to scheme work with the Pentagon to revise whatever plans he was supposed to get agreed (or at least assented to) into something less perilous.

The Wall Street Journal had more detail in U.S. Frustrated by Israel’s Reluctance to Share Iran Retaliation Plans:

Israel has so far refused to divulge to the Biden administration details of its plans to retaliate against Tehran, U.S. officials said, even as the White House is urging its closest Middle East ally not to hit Iran’s oil facilities or nuclear sites amid fears of a widening regional war.

To remind readers: Iran’s nuclear sites related to its enrichment program are buried very deeply underground. All sorts of experts have opined that the most Israel and the US could do to them, ex a nuclear attack, would be “cosmetic” damage; it’s doubtful that even a nuclear blast could do much harm. However, as far as I can tell, Iran also has one nuclear reactor which is for generating power,. I am not certain as to how far inside Iran it is and whether it is as well hardened as the other sites.

The Financial Times confirmed this established view in Can Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities by itself? The first part of the article gives a drift of the gist:

But without US support, a solo Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be highly risky and at best only delay rather than destroy its programme, according to analysts.

Why would an Israeli operation be difficult?

The first reason is distance. It is more than a thousand miles from Israel to Iran’s main nuclear bases, and to reach them Israeli planes would have to cross the sovereign airspace of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and potentially Turkey.

The next is fuel. Flying to the targets and back would take all of Israel’s aerial refuelling capability and leave little or no margin for error, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service.

The third is Iranian air defence. The country’s main nuclear sites are heavily guarded, and the Israeli bombers would need to be protected by fighter jets.

That would require a strike package totalling about 100 aircraft, according to the CRS report — equivalent to almost a third of the Israeli air force’s 340 combat-capable aircraft

We’ll return to the Journal:

U.S. officials are frustrated that they have been repeatedly caught off guard by Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Lebanon, and are seeking to head off further escalation…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blocked Gallant from departing to the U.S. on Tuesday night as Israel continued planning its Iran operation, an Israeli official said. U.S. officials said they don’t yet have either the timing of the strike or what Israel might target….

Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, who heads U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, traveled to Israel on Sunday where he met with Gallant and top Israeli military commanders, in part, to warn against striking Iran’s nuclear sites or oil facilities….

But U.S. officials won’t say if they have gotten assurances from Israel that Washington would be notified ahead of Israel’s expected strike on Iran…During the Washington meeting that was supposed to take place Wednesday, Gallant was expected to bring some details of the strike plan, including potential targets, U.S. officials said.

The fact that Kurilla met with Gallant and IDF officials Sunday could point to the Pentagon and the IDF were negotiating over the strike package, and Netanyahu deciding to kick that table over. It seems clear that Netanyahu is making very clear that the insanely destructive pols are in charge, not the professionals.

So why is Netanyahu insisting on talking to Biden? One can infer he either intends to make a one-way communication, like “Gallant will brief the Pentagon, but only at a high level and we may still revise our plans” or extract something, like “We won’t hit energy assets if join us in hitting XYZ other target.”

The bottom line is that Netanyahu would not be keeping the idea of an Iran attack so much in the press if he were trying to find a way out. So I would severely discount cheery takes like those of M.K. Bhadrakumar.

Given Israel’s fondness for civilian targets and humiliation, Israel may entirely avoid Iran’s military installations (which Iran has been trying to protect with Russia’s help) and strike important public infrastructure, like water purification or electricity generation or dams.

As many have pointed out, Iran’s success in repeatedly penetrating Israel air defenses plus its huge missile arsenal means it can choose how to prostrate Israel on a counterstrike. Iran has threatened to attack civilian infrastructure but I personally like the idea of completely destroying all its military airbases (Ben Gurion is also used for some military flights, so it might need to be roughed up a lot too). That would have the bonus of stopping the attacks on Lebanon.

However, if Israel really understands that (as opposed to continuing to live in the fantasy of its and the US’ superiority), that means the odds favor that it launch a nuclear attack, and not waste them on well bunkered nuclear installations but strike “decision centers.” That sort of disproportionate response would be entirely within character for them. It would best explain Netanyahu’s determination in light of the weakness of his conventional forces, even the vaunted air force, against Iran I am under the impression that Iran also has very secure bunkers for its leadership, but would all they key people actually go there? And how many critically important people (think the equivalent of senior and next level line managers) would perish?

We can only hope that the Israel is wildly overestimating the effectiveness of its conventional weapons. We’ll find out soon enough.

UPDATE: I am so dumb. I had even discussed this idea yesterday in comments apropos Iran’s possible use of its weapons-grade nuclear material.

The highest and best use for both Iran and Israel of a nuclear weapons capability is not a ground strike but an EMP. And if Israel fries Iran electronics, it destroys air defenses as well as the functioning of just about everything (save perhaps below ground equipment). So if it is going to go the nuke use route, this seems like the highest payoff.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/10 ... plans.html

******

Biden's Intent Is To Sow Chaos - Netanyahoo And Zelensky Are Working For Him

There is a great believe peddled by main stream media that the Biden administration is trying to hold the Zionists back from their devastating action in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, but unfortunately fails to do so. Some commentators argue that this is the case because the Israel lobby has a very strong position in U.S. policies and can direct the U.S. government into any direction of its liking.

My hunch is that this is putting the cart before the horse.

It is in fact the Biden administration which is using the Israeli (and Ukrainian) government to serve its foreign policy purposes. As I remarked:

This has been the general theme of a media campaign for a while. "Natanyahoo is steamrolling Biden and the poor guy can do nothing about it."
I do not buy it. One phone call from the White House to the Pentagon would hold resupply flights from the U.S. to Israel. Without constant supply renewal the Israeli Air Force would have to stop its bombing campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen within days if not within hours.

But instead of calling the Pentagon, the whole Middle East team around Biden, Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk and IDF soldier Amos Hochstein, has been urging Israel to extend its campaign.

They are hoping, like the neoconservatives in 2006 during the Bush administration, for the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East', which will forever change the strategic situation on the ground.
...
The conclusion from this is that Netanyahoo is largely doing exactly what the Biden administration wants him to do.


Gilbert Doctorow, the well known historian and journalist, is of similar opinion:

More on tails wagging dogs and vice versa https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/10/06/ ... ice-versa/

Some viewers/readers support my contention that the United States is using Israel as its proxy in the Middle East and is not just enabling but even directing Israel’s rampage in the region to ‘kick ass’ generally and to reinforce American dominance there in line with American global hegemony. Far from being outraged by the Israeli atrocities, the U.S. government is satisfied to see Israel take revenge for the many humiliations that the United States has suffered in the Middle East, most recently in the disorderly and disgraceful pull-out from Afghanistan but going back, say, 40 years to the hostage taking at the American embassy in Teheran by the new revolutionary Iranian leadership there that overthrew the American backed Shah.
Others in my audience have not hesitated to say that they think I am wrong, and that indeed Prime Minister Netanyahu is leading Joe Biden & Company around by the nose, which just happens to be the consensus view in mainstream media.

Most of this discussion is not visible to the broad public. However, the ‘Judging Freedom’ channel which has 450,000 subscribers and its host, Judge Andrew Napolitano put my proposition on the dog (USA) wagging the tail (Israel) to several of his best-known panelists in the 24 hours following my interview with him. To be sure, my idea seemed so ‘contrarian’ that it demanded a response from the mightiest minds in the alternative media camp. They obliged. With one exception, the mightiest minds were dismissive of my interpretation in more respectful, less respectful ways.
...

Professor John Mearsheimer and Larry Johnson are two of the guest on the Napolitano show who reject Doctorow's thesis.

However, Doctorow and I are not the only ones delving into this conundrum. Professor of history at Columbia University Adam Tooze, a rather famous commentator, joined us with his current Guardian comment:

Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act?

There is one school of thought that says the Biden administration is muddling through. It has no grand plan. It lacks the will or the means to discipline or direct either the Ukrainians or the Israelis. As a result, it is mainly focused on avoiding a third world war.
...
But what if that interpretation is too benign? What if it underestimates the intentionality on Washington’s part? What if key figures in the administration actually see this as a history-defining moment and an opportunity to reshape the balance of world power? What if what we are witnessing is the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension?
Revisionist powers are those that want to overturn the existing state of things. In an extended sense, this can also mean a desire to alter the flow of events; for instance, to redirect or halt the process of globalisation. Revisionism is often associated with resentment or nostalgia for an earlier, better age.


Tooze digs down into the various action the Biden administration has taken against Russia, China and in the Middle East. He concludes:

In all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000s.
...
[T]here is more going on here than simply muddling through. First the Trump and now the Biden presidencies are willing contributors to the controlled demolition of the 1990s post-cold war order.


People seem to have forgotten that Biden was never a liberal in the progressive sense. Since being a freshman in Congress Biden has always been on the conservative side of things:

Alliances With Segregationists
1975: Mr. Biden joined Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican segregationist from North Carolina, in supporting an anti-busing amendment to an education spending bill. When the amendment failed, Mr. Biden wrote a narrower measure that prevented schools from using federal dollars to assign teachers or students by race. It passed, 50-43.

In a television interview, Mr. Biden called busing an “asinine concept” and said he had “gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.”


In 2002 Biden was joined at the hip with the neoconservatives when he, as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, feverishly argued for launching the war on Iraq:

In a speech days before the 2002 [Iraq war] vote, Bush did say approving the resolution “does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable,” but he also laid out in detail why military action “may” be needed. And on the day the war broke out, Biden acknowledged, “We voted to give him the authority to wage that war. We should step back and be supportive.”

When the Biden administration is sowing global chaos the way it currently does, it is acting along a path which Biden has long favored and with the intent to sow chaos, not because this or that outside power is pressing him to do so.

Posted by b on October 10, 2024 at 13:28 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/10/b ... .html#more

******

UN troops come under renewed shelling by Israeli army in south Lebanon

At least four UNIFIL soldiers have been injured by deliberate Israeli attacks on their positions

News Desk

OCT 11, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: Reuters)

Two soldiers from the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were injured, one of them critically, after an Israeli tank opened fire at one of the international mission's observation towers in Naqoura, south Lebanon.

Friday's attack marks the third day in a row that UNIFIL forces have been deliberately targeted by the invading army. On Thursday, at least two other UN soldiers were injured by an Israeli attack.

“UN peacekeeping forces have also become targets of Israeli attacks ... This, as we all understand, is a war crime and deserves our most decisive response,” Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, said during a session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday.

“Two Blue Helmets have been wounded and this is unacceptable. Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law and of the UNSC Resolution 1701: Israel has an obligation to respect both. Full accountability is needed,” EU Foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said via social media.

UNSC resolution 1701 gives UNIFIL a mandate to keep Lebanon's southern border with Israel free of weapons or armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.

Tel Aviv acknowledged opening fire at a UN base in Naqoura on Thursday and said it had “ordered” the UN troops to “remain in protected spaces.”

Hezbollah said earlier this week that Israel is using the UN troops as human shields and vowed not to target the invading troops for fear of injuring UNIFIL personnel.

“After the failure of US attempts, more than once, to modify the tasks of the international emergency forces operating in southern Lebanon to serve Israeli interests, pressures are increasing on UNIFIL,” Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported this week, adding that Israeli threats have prompted a number of these countries to “reconsider” their presence in Lebanon and potentially withdraw to avoid incidents that may affect their soldiers.

During the UNSC session on Thursday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix told authorities that 300 UN troops in frontline positions in south Lebanon have been temporarily moved to larger bases.

With complete support from the US government, Israel has been laying siege to Lebanon for the past several weeks, relentlessly bombing the capital Beirut, and other areas in the south and east of the country. Israeli troops have also been attempting to invade the south of Lebanon, but have been unable to push back against the fierce resistance presented by Hezbollah.

https://thecradle.co/articles/un-troops ... th-lebanon
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 12, 2024 2:03 pm

Israel Releases American Journalist Jeremy Loffredo, Pending Investigation
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 11, 2024
Wyatt Reed

Image

The criminal case against the American reporter fell apart after an Israeli journalist testified that his own article containing Loffredo’s full video report had cleared military censorship. Yet Israel refuses to let Loffredo leave the country.

On October 11, journalist Jeremy Loffredo was ordered released from Israeli jail.

Israeli soldiers arrested the Jewish-American reporter and three other journalists at a checkpoint in the West Bank on October 8. According to one of the jailed reporters, @the_andrey_x, the soldiers blindfolded them tightly, roughed them up, drawing guns on them at one point, and hauled them off to detention in Jerusalem.

“The soldiers… illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items,” said @the_andrey_x.

Andrey recalled that in the course of abusing the journalists, “The soldiers told the female Israeli photographer that she should have been raped by Hamas.”

Jeremy Loffredo remains in Israeli jail.

Officially, police are holding him "on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing… the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy…

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) October 11, 2024


While Loffredo’s colleagues were released after 11 hours, the “Judea and Samaria” division of the Israeli police opened an investigation into Loffredo for supposedly “aiding the enemy in a time of war.”

The Israeli police’s accusation related to Loffredo’s video report for The Grayzone covering the aftermath of Iranian missile strikes aimed at Israeli military installations. According to the police, Jeremy had revealed “the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy, and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”

Watch Jeremy Loffredo’s report, “On the ground investigating Iran’s strikes on Israel” here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu0zptW49eM

On October 9, an Israeli court declared it had “reasonable suspicion” to extend the journalist’s imprisonment. At a hearing the next day, the police insisted to Magistrate’s Court Judge Zion Sahrai that Loffredo was not an actual journalist, but did not present any evidence that he was pursuing a hostile ulterior agenda.

A journalist from the Israeli publication YNet countered the allegation that Loffredo violated Israeli censorship laws by pointing out that the military censor approved his own article in which a tweet containing Loffredo’s full video report for The Grayzone was embedded.

Judge Sahrai ordered Loffredo’s release, stating that since Israeli military censors agreed to allow Ynet to publish both “word of [Jeremy’s] arrest and the publications that led to his arrest,” Israel could “no longer justify his continued detention.”

However, the police appealed Sahrai’s decision, protesting that the censor only approved the YNet article retroactively, and would have never done so if it had been submitted in advance.

That police also complained that Loffredo had refused to unlock his phone for them, insisting they needed more time to crack the device. “We believe that we will find things on the phone and we will be able to link him [to the alleged crime],” a police representative stated.

That argument did not hold water with Jerusalem District Court Judge Hana Miriam Lomp, however. “The Court of First Instance did not err when it ordered the release of the respondent,” Judge Lomp stated during the October 11 appeal. “From the detailed investigative actions there is no fear of disruption [from Jeremy], and in light of the reasons stated above, the cause of the danger is also not clear.”

Though Lomp ordered the journalist be released, she gave police until October 20 to continue their digital strip search. Until then, Loffredo will remain without his passport and will not be permitted to return home to his family in the US.

Just what Israeli officials hope to uncover in their search of Loffredo’s cell phone remains a mystery. Also unclear is why the investigation focuses exclusively on Loffredo, and not on any of the numerous other reporters who reported the locations of the Iranian strikes.

After Iran launched several hundred ballistic missiles at Israeli military targets on October 1, several international journalists broadcast reports from the scene of blasts, including ABC News’ Matt Gutman and PBS Newshour’s Nick Schifrin.

Outside Mossad HQ, 1050p local: pic.twitter.com/r0iiN6E9O8

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) October 1, 2024


The Grayzone published a statement on October 10 unequivocally rejecting the Israeli police’s outrageous accusations against Loffredo. We repeat that we stand by Jeremy’s report. The claim that Loffredo and The Grayzone represent Israel’s enemy in wartime merely suggests that the Israeli government views the American people and free press as a legitimate target. Indeed, we are an independent outlet with no relationship, financial or otherwise, with any foreign country or political organization.

As we fight the fraudulent charges against Jeremy, we ask readers to contact the US State Department and urge them to act in his defense. The US has an obligation to defend its journalists without political prejudice, particularly when they are fulfilling the vital task of providing the public with facts on the ground.

Share this to help Jeremy Loffredo. He’s a journalist for @TheGrayzoneNews who has been detained by Israel for exposing war crimes. #FreeJeremy pic.twitter.com/w9lIZ07Yd5

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 10, 2024

UPDATE: Jeremy Loffredo Arrested in Israel for Reporting on Iranian Missile Strike Charged with “AIDING THE ENEMY”

Independent American journalist Jeremy Loffredo, known for his work with The Grayzone, was arrested by Israeli authorities after reporting on Iranian missile strikes that targeted key Israeli locations, including Nevatim Airbase and a site near Mossad headquarters. His arrest came after he revealed precise details of the damage caused by the missile strike, which was censored by Israeli media.

“He published the information openly and fully, without attempting to hide anything. If this information constitutes aiding the enemy, many other journalists in Israel, including Israeli reporters, should also be arrested, said Attorney Leah Tsemel who is representing him in his defense. “A spy would not have acted so publicly and transparently.”

Loffredo has been charged with “aiding the enemy during wartime” for documenting missile impact sites. His arrest came on the same day that Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi was shot in the neck by IOF forces.

The U.S. Embassy claims to be monitoring the situation closely.

His Report:
pic.twitter.com/0ODH5XzJsM

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) October 10, 2024


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... stigation/

Lessons from Gaza: What Have We Learned?
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 10, 2024



Frank Barat

In this conversation, Frank Barat and Diana Buttu discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the broader implications of the conflict, including the role of international institutions, the nature of Zionism, and the impact of anti-Palestinian racism. They reflect on the lessons learned over the past year, the complicity of the United States, and the societal mindset that justifies violence. The discussion culminates in a contemplation of the unsustainable nature of Israel’s actions and the future of the region.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... e-learned/

How Israel Functions as an Extension of US Interests
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 7, 2024



Middle East Eye

“It’s not just that the US is complicit in this genocide, the US itself is responsible for this genocide”.

It’s been one year since Israel launched its war on Gaza, where at least 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.

The conflict escalated hours after fighters led by Hamas stormed the barrier fence separating Gaza from Israel in response to provocations by far-right Israelis at the al-Aqsa Mosque complex.

In the attacks, some 1,140 Israelis died and around 240 were taken as captives.

A year after the events of 7 October, Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University and author of several books, discusses Israel’s response and what it has meant for the region.

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Massad also speaks about how Israel acts as an extension of US imperial policy and how it is an “absurd argument” that Washington is being dragged into wars it does not want.

Massad also speaks about the prospects of a regional war and how Arab countries, which support Israel, will react.

UNAPOLOGETIC is a show that unapologetically looks at the life, times and views of some unapologetic and not so unapologetic humans. Hosted by Ashfaaq Carim

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... interests/

US Blocks Ceasefire in Lebanon
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 11, 2024



‘Washington is doing nothing to stop the war’

The Cradle
Image

With one-fourth of Lebanon under forced evacuation orders and over 2,000 killed by Israel, reports say the White House is exploiting the calamity for political gain

Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri accused the US government of “doing nothing” to stop the Israeli war on Lebanon during an interview with Saudi news outlet Asharq al-Awsat on 9 October.

“[The US] say they are in favor of stopping the war but are doing nothing to achieve that,” Berri told the Arabic daily.

“The French are still with us in this position, as are the British. As for the Americans, they say they are with us, but they are doing nothing to stop the aggression,” he stressed.

His comments follow a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar that revealed US and German officials “shut the door” on any diplomatic negotiations that could put an end to the Israeli onslaught, and instead giving Tel Aviv “ample time to eliminate Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon.”

As long-time speaker of parliament and leader of the Shia Muslim Amal Movement party, Berri has often served as a mediator between western powers and Hezbollah. “During the 2006 war, I was in charge of the political negotiations, and today I am doing the same thing,” Berri told Asharq al-Awsat.

He added that Thursday’s session of the UN Security Council “will carry indications on the path of political movement” for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

As the US–Israeli war machine rolls on inside Lebanon, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed on Wednesday that one-fourth of the country’s territory is under forced evacuation orders.

“Lebanon’s humanitarian crisis is deteriorating at an alarming rate. Israeli airstrikes have not only intensified but also expanded into previously unaffected areas and increasingly targeted critical civilian infrastructure,” OCHA said in a situation update.

Over 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon over the past year by the Israeli army, a large majority of them since the expansion of the war late last month, including at least 100 children and 300 women. Moreover, around 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes.

As the situation in the country worsens, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the White House is exploiting the war as an opportunity to sideline Hezbollah politically. To this end, US State Secretary Anthony Blinken has been lobbying “the leaders of Qatar, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia” to support US efforts to install their preferred choice for president.

Since 2022, Lebanon has been without a president, as the country’s political parties have been unable to overcome a deadlock over who should take the post. The two frontrunners are Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) commander Joseph Aoun, who enjoys the support of Washington and its Lebanese allies, and Suleiman Franjieh, the leader of the Marada Movement, who has the support of the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc – including Hezbollah.

Following the 2022 elections, the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc won the largest number of parliament seats. However, neither the Hezbollah and Amal-led bloc nor western-backed parties won enough seats to form a majority government.

With US support, Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with ‘destruction and suffering like Gaza’
The Cradle

Image

US and EU officials have ‘shut the door’ on ceasefire talks for Lebanon, hoping that the multiplying crises can ignite an upheaval against the Lebanese resistance and its allies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 8 October called on the people of Lebanon to “free [their] country from Hezbollah,” threatening them with “destruction and suffering” if they refused to do so.

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Netanyahu said as his country’s air force continued to launch non-stop raids across Lebanon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a message to the people of Lebanon:

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”https://t.co/s16fxeZtju pic.twitter.com/vdYnqyrdib

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 8, 2024


“We have degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities; we took out thousands of terrorists, including [Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan] Nasrallah himself, and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of his replacement,” the Israeli premier added before calling on the people of Lebanon to “take back your country, and return it to a path of peace and prosperity.”

Netanyahu’s speech came on the same day Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh confirmed that Washington supports Israel’s brutal war campaign inside Lebanon.

“We’re supportive of Israel targeting Lebanese Hezbollah,” the US official said, adding that Israel “has a right to respond and target Lebanese Hezbollah … in a way that, of course, takes into account civilians in the area.”

Singh’s comments came a day after CNN reported that the White House “is not actively trying to revive [a ceasefire] deal and has resigned itself to trying to shape and limit Israeli operations in Lebanon and against Iran rather than halting hostilities.”

Similarly, a report published by Lebanese daily Al Akhbar on Tuesday reveals that US and EU officials have “shut the door” on any diplomatic negotiations that could put an end to the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon, and are actively working to inflame social tensions.

“Recently, France attempted to initiate a ceasefire initiative but encountered a European veto, which was secured by Germany under the pretext that ‘no one wants to talk to Lebanon,’” the Arabic news site reports, adding that sources close to caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri “assert that the international community has resolved to give Israel ample time to eliminate Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon.”

Western efforts to ignite civil strife inside the country include neglecting to provide the embattled government with aid to meet the needs of over one million displaced Lebanese and ordering Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) chief General Joseph Aoun not to reopen the country’s main border crossing with Syria, which Israel destroyed early in its war campaign.

“Observers claim that Aoun is prioritizing personal interests over the country’s critical needs, submitting to US demands more than ever before,” Al Akhbar reports.

For the past several years, Aoun has been the preferred choice of western powers to be installed as president of Lebanon, a position that has remained vacant since 2022.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... n-lebanon/

******

'Prepare for post-Hezbollah phase' US envoy tells Lebanon as Israeli massacres intensify

The US is seeking to install a new government in Beirut friendly to Washington and Tel Aviv amid Israel's ongoing massacres

News Desk

OCT 11, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: CNN)

US Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson has asked political forces in the country to “prepare for the post-Hezbollah phase, where its control over the state and its institutions and the state’s border crossings is no longer permitted.” Al-Akhbar reported on 11 October.

She reiterated that “Hezbollah has become very weak after the strikes that were directed at it, targeting its leaders and killing its Secretary-General, and therefore, it can no longer impose what it wants, and there is a new political phase that the country will witness soon in which the party has no place.”

On 23 September, Israel began a massive bombing campaign that has now lasted over two weeks and killed hundreds of Lebanese and Syrian civilians, as well as many Hezbollah commanders and the resistance movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Al-Akhbar commented, “Johnson’s words confirm that America does not want a ceasefire in Lebanon, but rather continues to support the Israeli aggression until its project is achieved domestically, which explains the absence of any diplomatic initiatives towards Lebanon.”

US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a three-week ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on 25 September. On 27 September, the Israeli Air Force dropped 80 one-ton bombs on the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib claimed that Nasrallah had agreed to the ceasefire as a step to end Israel’s aggression on both Lebanon and Gaza shortly before Israel assassinated him.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price stated in a press briefing on 9 October that the US no longer supports such a ceasefire. He said the US supports Israeli efforts to continue the war and that Hezbollah must comply with UN Resolution 1701, which says the resistance movement should withdraw from the Israeli border area to positions behind the Litani River.

On Friday, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati claimed that efforts for a ceasefire continue.

During a cabinet meeting, he stated, “I received a call from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, within the framework of the ongoing coordination and serious efforts to cease fire, and I found through the call full solidarity with Lebanon at all levels, and that they are striving with all their might to complete the ceasefire, and this was my demand, and at least to stop the bombing of civilians and this damage to civilians.”

Mikati noted that on Thursday evening, Israeli forces bombed and completely destroyed a residential building in central Beirut, killing 22 people.

“Hitting civilians in this way, harming them and causing more martyrs is absolutely impermissible, this is forbidden, so have we abandoned our humanity? It is not permissible for our voice not to be loud, that this matter should not happen,” he stated.

On Wednesday, US and Arab officials told the Wall Street Journal the US is aiming to use Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah as an opportunity to push the resistance movement aside and install a new Lebanese government, including electing a pro-US president.

Lebanon has been without a president since the previous leader, Michel Aoun, ended his term in 2022.

https://thecradle.co/articles/prepare-f ... -intensify

UN finds Israel committing 'war of extermination' by destroying Gaza's health system

The report documented 'relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities' in Gaza

News Desk

OCT 11, 2024

Image
(Photo credti: AFP via Getty Images)

The UN Commission of Inquiry for the occupied Palestinian territories issued a report on 10 October, finding that Israel has sought to destroy Gaza’s health care system as part of a war of extermination on Palestinians.

“Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” a statement issued by the UN inquiry said.

“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles” while preventing injured Palestinians from escaping Gaza to receive treatment abroad, the statement added.

“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” a statement by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said.

The 24-page report covered the first 10 months of the war and will be presented to the UN General Assembly at the end of October.

The report cited Israel’s killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and several of her family members by tank fire in late January.

Hind’s killing was widely publicized after an audio recording was released of her calling Palestinian rescuers by phone, begging for help after other members of her family had been killed by Israeli fire as they tried to flee in their car.


The report “determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division,” which operated in the area at the time, was “responsible for killing the family of seven” trapped in their car and “shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside” trying to rescue them.

The report noted that an Israeli tank driver opened fire on the ambulance while within 50 meters of Hind and her family, even though the paramedics had notified Israeli forces in advance of their rescue effort.

The UN report documented Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals, stating, “Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties.”

The report found that Israeli forces also “surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.”

In December, infants were found dead and decomposing in an evacuated hospital ICU in Gaza after Israeli troops forced the hospital staff to evacuate.

The Commission of Inquiry has a broad mandate to collect evidence and identify suspected perpetrators of international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. It bases its findings on a range of sources, including interviews with victims and witnesses, submissions, and satellite imagery.

The commission has accused Israel of obstructing the inquiry and preventing investigators from accessing both Israel and Gaza.
The UN Commission of Inquiry for the occupied Palestinian territories issued a report on 10 October, finding that Israel has sought to destroy Gaza’s health care system as part of a war of extermination on Palestinians.

“Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” a statement issued by the UN inquiry said.

“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles” while preventing injured Palestinians from escaping Gaza to receive treatment abroad, the statement added.

“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” a statement by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said.

The 24-page report covered the first 10 months of the war and will be presented to the UN General Assembly at the end of October.

The report cited Israel’s killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and several of her family members by tank fire in late January.

Hind’s killing was widely publicized after an audio recording was released of her calling Palestinian rescuers by phone, begging for help after other members of her family had been killed by Israeli fire as they tried to flee in their car.


The report “determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division,” which operated in the area at the time, was “responsible for killing the family of seven” trapped in their car and “shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside” trying to rescue them.

The report noted that an Israeli tank driver opened fire on the ambulance while within 50 meters of Hind and her family, even though the paramedics had notified Israeli forces in advance of their rescue effort.

The UN report documented Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals, stating, “Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties.”

The report found that Israeli forces also “surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.”

In December, infants were found dead and decomposing in an evacuated hospital ICU in Gaza after Israeli troops forced the hospital staff to evacuate.

The Commission of Inquiry has a broad mandate to collect evidence and identify suspected perpetrators of international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. It bases its findings on a range of sources, including interviews with victims and witnesses, submissions, and satellite imagery.

The commission has accused Israel of obstructing the inquiry and preventing investigators from accessing both Israel and Gaza.

https://thecradle.co/articles/un-finds- ... lth-system

Yemen’s answer to Israeli aggression: Military strikes and strategic Red Sea control

Yemen’s military response to Israeli aggression, including missile strikes and imposing a blockade in the Red Sea, delivers a powerful message in the only language Tel Aviv understands, putting on full display Sanaa’s unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.


Saqr Abo Hasan

OCT 12, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

Over the past year, as the war on Gaza escalated and the regional conflict spread, Israel has targeted Yemen twice – first on 20 July and again on 29 September – in an effort to curb Yemeni missile and drone attacks, both times hitting the port city of Hodeidah.

However, these efforts came too late. On 3 October, the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces announced that they had once again struck Tel Aviv, hitting “vital targets” using the aptly named Yaffa drones.

According to Yemeni blogger and journalist Abdul Salam al-Nahari, “The Yemeni hand has reached Israel, and what followed is just a passing talk.” He informs The Cradle:

For a Yemeni plane to reach Israel and travel all this distance and for Yemeni missiles to reach the depth of Israel without being repelled by the Iron Dome and at this sensitive time of the war on Gaza and Lebanon is not easy.

Sanaa steps up

Yemeni drones and ballistic missiles had already been launched toward Israel in previous months, with Tel Aviv reportedly identifying “200 missiles and drones” launched from Yemen since 7 October, culminating in the unprecedented 20 July attack. Nahari describes this as a significant accomplishment, given Sanaa’s limited military resources and the great distance between the two countries.

The strongest Yemeni slap – as Nahari puts it – came with the arrival of Yemeni hypersonic missiles to the Israeli depth after they exceeded in their strike the areas of Umm al-Rashrash, currently known as the port city of ‘Eilat.’

With the martyrdom of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah and the expansion of the war in Lebanon, Yemen’s operations will continue to support the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon, regardless of the consequences, Nahari stresses.

Yemen’s decision to escalate against the occupation state was deliberate, aimed at supporting the Palestinian cause and ending the aggression on Gaza, at all costs.

A senior Yemeni army official, speaking to The Cradle, reveals that:

All formations of the Yemeni army have raised the level of readiness since the first Yemeni missile to reach Israel and before the launch of the first phase of closing the Red Sea to Israeli navigation.

The official also highlights that Israel’s assassination of resistance leaders, such as Ismail Haniyeh and Nasrallah, has only strengthened Yemen’s resolve to confront Israel. Since last year, voluntary training programs have been initiated across Yemen under the banner of “General Mobilization Forces.” These civilian forces undergo intensive military training to raise awareness and prepare for war.

Yemen always answers back

In January, when US naval forces targeted Yemeni soldiers in the Red Sea, killing 10, the Ansarallah movement vowed to retaliate. This promise was reiterated when Israeli aircraft struck the port of Hodeidah. In a televised speech, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi emphasized the inevitability of a response, stating that the delay was strategic to ensure a more effective strike on the occupation state.

Bandar Sarhan, a public policy researcher at Dhamar University, tells The Cradle that the delay in the Yemeni response comes in accordance with the requirements of the war.

Sarhan explains that the opportunity for a Yemeni response is always open. While Gaza remains under Israeli fire and Lebanon is being targeted, the moment for Yemen’s retaliation is still forthcoming. “The Yemeni response will be strong enough for the world to hear Israel’s moaning,” Sarhan says.

Public discourse facilitates the Israeli narrative that Yemen’s vital military infrastructure was targeted, but in reality, the targets are often civilian. Speaking to The Cradle, writer Amin al-Nahmi criticized the targeting of Hodeidah’s civilian infrastructure, calling it an attempt to stir discontent against Ansarallah. However, the opposite has occurred, with popular support for the Yemeni resistance growing even stronger.

Nahmi confirms that the raids in the first and second operations in Hodeidah were aimed at hitting civilian and media targets rather than military sites.

Israel avoids Yemeni military sites

On 20 July, Israeli aircraft targeted fuel tanks in the port of Hodeidah, causing damages exceeding $20 million. The recent attack late last month targeted the port of Ras Isa near the city of Hodeidah, fuel storage tanks, as well as the power plant of the city of Hodeidah, causing four deaths and 29 injuries, according to the Yemeni Ministry of Health in the Sanaa government.

Yemeni writer and economic analyst Rashid al-Haddad tells The Cradle that the systematic targeting of the infrastructure for storing oil derivatives in the port of Hodeidah will have repercussions in the future in the event of the return of the blockade or war on Yemen again.

This targeting affected 38 oil tanks the first time, which used to accommodate very large quantities of oil derivatives and are some of the country’s most important reserve oil tanks, especially since the port of Hodeidah serves about 24 million people.

On the size of the material losses, Haddad says:

The losses do not exceed $20 million, but the infrastructure and storage have been greatly affected and will need years to restore. This will reduce the country’s ability to store more oil derivatives, especially in light of the state of war. These reservoirs, as well as the port of Hodeidah, are civilian infrastructures whose targeting is prohibited under international humanitarian law.

Yemen’s security is still at stake

A senior official at the Yemen Petroleum Company reveals to The Cradle that the company had anticipated hostile actions against Yemen and emptied the fuel tanks in Hodeidah and Ras Isa prior to the strikes. This precautionary measure ensured that Yemen maintained a sufficient supply of oil derivatives, preventing a fuel crisis despite the attacks.

With the war widening, Hodeidah remains a crucial gateway for Yemen’s food, medicine, and fuel imports. Over 70 percent of its trade passes through this port, making it the “only marine lung through which Yemen breathes,” according to Haddad.

Since its construction in 1961, in cooperation with the former Soviet Union, the port has played a central role in Yemen’s economy, second only to Aden.

However, it has suffered extensive damage from sustained airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition during the war. Despite this, the port has continued to function, serving millions of Yemenis daily.

Closing the Red Sea to Israel

This was not the first time Israeli strikes have targeted Yemen. In 1976, Yemen was subjected to raids by unidentified aircraft, later confirmed to be Israeli in a 2022 documentary, “The Unknown Aggression.” Furthermore, in 1973, Yemen played a pivotal role in closing the Red Sea to Israeli navigation in cooperation with Egypt during the Arab–Israeli war.

Then, like now, despite Yemen’s limited military capabilities, its coordination with Egypt successfully blocked Israeli access to this key waterway. Today, Yemen’s strategic location continues to pose a challenge for Israel, especially with Yemeni forces gaining strength and influence in the region.

In sum, Yemen’s involvement in the broader regional conflict has grown increasingly significant, with its military capabilities surprising both allies and enemies alike. As the war continues, Yemen’s actions, along with its support for the resistance, will undoubtedly shape the region’s future.

https://thecradle.co/articles/yemens-an ... ea-control
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 12209
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 13, 2024 12:06 pm

US Arms Dealers Witness ‘Record Profits’ From Israel’s Year-Long Genocide in Gaza, War on Lebanon
October 11, 2024

Image

The US and Israel’s ongoing military escalation across West Asia has helped the aerospace and defense industry outperform expectations

US arms manufacturers have outperformed major stock indexes this year in a rally fueled by Israel’s year-long genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the expansion of its war against Lebanon.

Stock funds with holdings in the US aerospace and defense industry – including companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris – saw their profits soar past expectations this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index.

“That handout of taxpayer funds to Israel coupled with Israel’s, and global, demand increasing for weapons in a period of instability, has been jet fuel for stock prices,” reports Responsible Statecraft.

Lockheed Martin, makers of the F-35 aircraft that Israel has used to relentlessly bomb Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, produced a 54.86 percent total return from 7 October 2023 to the same date in 2024, outperforming S&P 500 by about 18 percent.

RTX, the makers of 2,000-pound ‘bunker buster‘ bombs that turned most of Gaza to rubble and are currently being dropped inside the Lebanese capital, saw its total return for investors in the past year reach 82.69 percent, outperforming S&P 500 by about 46 percent.

General Dynamics, which also manufactures bunker busters and is behind the BLU-109 bombs that Israel used to level several apartment buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut during the assassination of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a 37 percent total return for investors, outperforming the S&P 500 by just over 3 percent.

On 1 October, as Israel pushed forward with its ground invasion of Lebanon and Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles in retaliation for the bombing of its capital, Forbes reported that the stocks of most US arms makers gained over 2.6 percent in value.

“Both Lockheed Martin and RTX shares booked all-time highs Tuesday, while L3Harris and Northrop Grumman tallied their top share price since 2022,” the US financial publication reported.

Furthermore, the BlackRock-managed iShares US Aerospace and Defense fund indexing the aerospace and defense sector hit a new all-time high last week, extending its 12-month gain to 43 percent and outperforming the S&P 500 by 33 percent.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2019 and 2023, Israel accounted for 2.1 percent of all global arms imports. During the same period, the US accounted for 69 percent of Israel’s arms imports, while Germany accounted for 30 percent.

As Washington retains its long-standing hold as the world’s largest arms dealer – controlling 42 percent of the global arms market – the country has also significantly boosted its military spending to assist Israel, blowing through at least $23 billion in one year.

https://orinocotribune.com/us-arms-deal ... n-lebanon/

*****

October 12, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
The Arabs are transparently displaying their crossover to multi-alignment in a US-led Middle Eastern war

Image
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince, (R), received Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, Riyadh, Oct. 9, 2024

Reuters reported on Friday quoting three sources in the Persian Gulf that the regional states are lobbying Washington to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s oil sites as “part of their attempts to avoid being caught in the crossfire.” The exclusive Reuters report singled out Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as also refusing to let Israel fly over their airspace for any attack on Iran.

These moves come after a diplomatic push by Iran to persuade its Sunni Gulf neighbours to use their influence with Washington. Saudi Arabia has drawn the bottom line to the Biden Administration that it is determined to pursue the track of normalisation with Iran that began with the rapprochement brokered by China in March 2023. This affirmation, well into the Iranian-Saudi détente’s second year, puts paid to any residual hope that Arab states may eventually join a ‘coalition of the willing’ against Iran.

The big picture here is that the Gulf states are positioning themselves to be among the key contributors to the ongoing power diffusion in their region — and globally. Tehran and Riyadh have found ways to responsibly share the neighbourhood. Suffice to say, the Arab world is already in the post-US and post-West era.

Now, this also signals Riyadh’s unease about Israel continuing its war on Gaza and Saudi frustration with the US for refusing to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government into accepting a ceasefire.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was in Riyadh on Wednesday and was received by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi readout said they discussed bilateral relations and regional developments as well as the “efforts exerted towards them.” The meeting was attended by Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah and Minister of State and National Security Advisor Dr. Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban.

Araqchi also held talks with Prince Faisal. “Discussions focused on relations and explored ways to strengthen them across various fields,” the Saudi report said. Only the previous day, Prince Khalid had spoken with his American counterpart Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The Saudi Press Agency reported Tuesday that the two defence ministers “discussed the latest regional and international developments, efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, and ways to ensure regional security and stability.”

Clearly, the Saudis are on the ball, quite aware that they can assume a pivotal role in restoring calm and preventing the spillover of the conflict into the region. The ground beneath the Israel-Iran standoff is shifting in systemic terms.

The military implications are profound when the Gulf States close their airspace to Israel (and the US) for operations against Iran. The Israeli jets will now have to take a circuitous route via the Red Sea and circumvent Arabian Peninsula to approach Iranian airspace, which of course will necessitate mid-air refuelling and all that it entails in such a sensitive operation that may have to be undertaken repeatedly. In a ‘missile war,’ Iran may prevail.

How far the coordinated move by the Persian Gulf States to get the US to de-escalate the situation will work remains to be seen, as it depends largely on Netanyahu mellowing, of which there are no signs. Nonetheless, President Joe Biden did his part by calling Netanyahu on Wednesday. But the White House readout neatly sidestepped the main talking point between them.

It stands to reason, though, that the call from Biden did have some effect on Netanyahu. The New York Times reported that Israel’s security cabinet convened on Thursday during which Netanyahu discussed with senior ministers “the overall plan for Israel’s retaliation.”

The results of the meeting were not released. And Times concluded its report by taking note that “analysts still say neither side appears interested in all-out war.” Indeed, the Gulf states’ anxiety has become a key talking point between the US officials and Israeli counterparts.

After the call from Biden, Netanyahu asked Defence Minister Gallant who was scheduled to visit Washington to stand down. Meanwhile, the US Central Command chief General Michael Kurilla came to Israel for “a situational assessment.” Lloyd Austin followed through on Thursday with a call to with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant but the focus was on Lebanon. No doubt, the Biden administration is pulling many strings in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu is known to be a realist himself. The point is, Tehran is explicit that Tel Aviv will pay a heavy price for any further hostile action. The warning will be taken seriously as Israeli military and intelligence — indeed, Netanyahu himself — have just had a preview of Iran’s deterrent capability.

Second, the price of oil has already begun going up and that is something Candidate Kamala Harris wouldn’t want to see happening.

Third, as for nuclear facilities, Iran has dispersed them to all parts of the country and the critical infrastructure is buried deep in the bowels of mountains that are hard to reach.

To be sure, Iran’s missile strike on October 1 carried also showed that it has superb intelligence to know what to target, where and when. In a tiny country like Israel, it is difficult to hide — although Tehran may not stoop so low as to decapitate opponents.

Suffice to say, all things taken into account, a terrible beauty is born in the Middle East: How far will the US go to rescue Israel?

The beginning of an alignment of the Arab states, as evident this week, refusing to be part of any form of attack on Iran and the signs of ‘Islamic solidarity’ bridging sectarian divides — these are, quintessentially, to be seen as tipping points. This is the first thing.

Secondly, this isn’t going to be a short, crisp war. Colonel Doug Macgregor, an astute US combat veteran in the Gulf War and former advisor to the Pentagon during the Trump administration and a noted military historian, aptly drew the analogy of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-1648), which began as a battle among the Catholic and Protestant states that formed the Holy Roman Empire but evolved in time and became less about religion and turned into a political struggle, more about which group would ultimately govern Europe, and ultimately changing the geopolitical face of Europe.

To quote from a 2017 essay by Pascal Daudin, an ICRC veteran who was deployed in major conflict situations such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Caucasus, Saudi Arabia and the Balkans, the Thirty Years’ War turned into “a complex, protracted conflict between many different parties –- known in modern parlance as State and non-State actors. In practice, it was a series of separate yet connected international and internal conflicts waged by regular and irregular military forces, partisan groups, private armies and conscripts.” (here)

True, a Middle Eastern War in the current setting already has combatants, bystanders and onlookers who, as the conflict evolves into a latter-day Crusade, are bound to jump in — such as Turkey and Egypt.

It will most certainly exhaust Israel — and vanquish the US presence in the Middle East — although a protracted war may prompt an intellectual upheaval that would ultimately bring about the Enlightenment to the region, as the Thirty Years’ War did to Europe.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/the-ara ... stern-war/

*****

Image
Why an Iran Deal Won’t Lead to Nuclear Proliferation. (Photo: Geostrategic Media)

CIA says no evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon
Originally published: Defend Democracy on October 8, 2024 by Defend Democracy Press Staff (more by Defend Democracy) | (Posted Oct 12, 2024)

CIA Director William Burns said Monday that there’s no evidence Iran has decided to build nuclear weapons, comments that come amid calls in the U.S. and Israel for strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

“No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program,” Burns told the Cipher Brief security conference, according to NBC News.

In 2003, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. His predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also rejected the idea of starting a WMD program while facing chemical attacks from a U.S.-backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

Burns said that if Iran did move to make a nuclear weapon, U.S. intelligence would likely be aware of the decision. “I think we are reasonably confident that–working with our friends and allies–we will be able to see it relatively early on,” he said.

The CIA chief noted that Iran has increased uranium enrichment levels since the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, in 2018. Iran is enriching some uranium at 60%, which is still below the 90% needed for weapons-grade.

Iran increased uranium enrichment to 60% in 2021 following an Israeli sabotage attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, which was timed to sabotage indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran..

Burns claimed Iran would only need one week to “produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade material,” but the NBC report noted most experts say it would take at least one year to build an actual nuclear warhead.

https://mronline.org/2024/10/12/cia-say ... ar-weapon/

******

They Now Know What Real Bombing Means: The Forty-First Newsletter (2024)

Over the past year, the United States has provided Israel with a record $17.9 billion in military aid as it commits genocide against Palestinians.

10 October 2024

Image
Ayman Baalbaki (Lebanon), Untitled, 2020.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 1 October, US Representative Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a statement urging US President Joe Biden to ‘place maximum pressure on Iran and its proxies, rather than pressure Israel for a ceasefire. We need to expedite arms transfers to Israel that this administration has delayed for months, including 2,000-pound bombs, to ensure Israel has all the tools to deter these threats’. McCaul’s belligerent call came days after Israel used over eighty US-made 2,000-pound bombs and other munitions on 27 September, to strike a residential neighbourhood in Beirut and kill – amongst hundreds of civilians – Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (1960–2024), the leader of Hezbollah. In this one bombing raid, Israel dropped more of these ‘bunker buster’ bombs than the United States military used in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A former US aviator, Commander Graham Scarbro of the US Navy, reviewed the evidence of the Israeli strikes for the US Naval Institute. In a very revealing article, Scarbro notes that Israel ‘seems to have taken a notably different approach to collateral damage than US forces over the past few decades’. While the US has never demonstrated any significant concern for civilian casualties or ‘collateral damage’, it is worth noting that even senior US military officials have raised their eyebrows at the degree of Israel’s disregard for human life. Israel’s military, Scarbro writes, ‘seems to have a higher threshold for collateral damage… meaning they strike even when chances are higher for civilian casualties’.

Image
Bassim al-Shaker (Iraq), Symphony of Death 1, 2019.

Despite Washington’s knowledge that the Israelis have been bombing Gaza, and now Lebanon, with complete abandon – and even after the International Court of Justice ruled that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza – the United States has continued to arm the Israelis with deadly weaponry. On 10 October 2023, Biden said, ‘We’re surging additional military assistance’, which has amounted to a record-level of at least $17.9 billion during the past year of genocide. In March 2024, The Washington Post reported that the US had ‘quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel that amounted to ‘thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid’. These ‘small’ sales fell below the minimum threshold under US law which requires the president to approach Congress for approval (which anyway would not have been denied). These sales amounted to the transfer of at least 14,000 of the 2,000 pound MK-84 bombs and 6,500 500-pound bombs that Israel has used in both Gaza and Lebanon.

In Gaza, the Israelis have routinely used the 2,000-pound bombs to strike areas populated by civilians – who had been told to take refuge at these locations by the Israeli authorities themselves. ‘In the first two weeks of the war’, The New York Times reported, ‘roughly 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were satellite-guided bombs of 1,000 or 2,000 pounds’. In March 2024, US Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, ‘The US cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000 lb. bombs that can level entire city blocks. This is obscene’. A 2016 report by Action on Armed Violence offered the following assessment of these weapons of mass destruction:

These are extremely powerful bombs, with a large destructive capacity when used in populated areas. They can blow apart buildings and kill and injure people hundreds of metres from the point of detonation. The fragmentation pattern and range of a 2,000lb MK 84 bomb are difficult to predict, but it is generally said that this weapon has a ‘lethal radius’ (i.e. the distance in which it is likely to kill people in the vicinity) of up to 360m. The blast waves of such a weapon can create a great concussive effect; a 2,000lb bomb can be expected to cause severe injury and damage as far as 800 metres from the point of impact.

Image
Ismail Shammout (Palestine), Guardian of the Fire, 1988.

I have several times walked around the Beirut neighbourhood of Haret Hreik in Dahiyeh, which was struck by Israeli bombs in the attack on the Hezbollah leadership. This is a highly congested area, with barely a few metres between high-rise residential buildings. To strike a complex of these buildings with over eighty of these powerful bombs cannot be called ‘precise’. Israel’s bombing of Beirut mirrors its harsh attacks on Gaza and symbolises the disdain for human life that characterises both Israeli and US warfare. On 23 September, Israel bombarded Lebanon at a rate of more than one airstrike per minute. In days, Israel’s ‘intense airstrikes’ displaced over a million people, a fifth of the entire population of Lebanon.

The first bomb to ever fall from an aircraft was a Haasen hand grenade (Denmark) dropped by Lieutenant Giulio Cavotti of the Italian Air Force on 1 November 1911 onto the town of Tagiura, near Tripoli, Libya. A hundred years later, in a grotesque commemoration of sorts, French and US aircraft bombed Libya once more as part of their war to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi. The ferocity of aerial bombing was understood from the very outset, as Sven Lindqvist documented in his book, A History of Bombing (2003). In March 1924, UK Squadron Leader Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris authored a report (later expunged) about his bombings in Iraq and the ‘real’ meaning of aerial bombardment:

Where the Arab and Kurd had just begun to realise that if they could stand a little noise, they could stand bombing… they now know what real bombing means, in casualties and damage; they now know that within forty-five minutes a full-sized village … can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape.

A hundred years later, these words of ‘Bomber’ Harris aptly describe the kind of ruthlessness inflicted on both Palestine and Lebanon.

Image
André Masson (France), There Is No Finished World, 1942

You might ask: what about the rockets fired on Israel by Hezbollah and Iran? Are they not part of the brutality of war? Certainly, these are part of the ugliness of warfare, but an easy parallel cannot be drawn. Iran’s ballistic missiles followed Israel’s attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria (April 2024), the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran following the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (July 2024), the assassination of Nasrallah in Beirut (September 2024), and the killing of several Iranian military officials. Significantly, whereas Israel has launched countless strikes targeting civilians, medical personnel, journalists, and aid workers, Iran’s missiles exclusively targeted Israeli military and intelligence facilities and not civilian areas. Hezbollah, meanwhile, targeted Israel’s Ramat David Airbase, east of Haifa, in September 2024. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah have fired their munitions into congested neighbourhoods of Israeli cities. Since 8 October 2023, Israeli airstrikes against Lebanon have far outnumbered Hezbollah’s strikes against Israel. Before the current wave of hostilities, by 10 September, Israel had killed 137 Lebanese civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes; meanwhile, Hezbollah rockets had by then killed 14 Israeli civilians, with their rockets leading to the evacuation of 63,000 Israeli civilians. There has been not only a quantitative difference in the number of strikes and death toll, but a qualitative difference in the use of violence. Violence that is directed largely at military targets, is permissible in certain conditions under international law; violence that is indiscriminate, such as when massive bombs are used against civilians, violates the laws of war.

Image
Etel Adnan (Lebanon), Untitled, 2017.

Etel Adnan (1925–2021), a Lebanese poet and artist, grew up in Beirut after her parents fled the collapsing Ottoman Empire that became modern day Turkey. She dug deep into the soil of conflict and pain, the ingredients for her poetry. Her voice resonated from the balcony of her apartment in Ashrafieh, the ‘little mountain’, from where she could see the ships come in and out of the port. When Etel Adnan died, the novelist Elias Khoury (1948–2024), who himself died just before Beirut was again bombarded, wrote that he mourned a woman who would not die, but he feared for his city which was suffering alone. Here are a few extracts from Etel’s poem, ‘Beirut, 1982’, to remind us that we are as angry as a storm.

I never believed
that vengeance
would be a tree
growing in my garden

*

Trees grow in all directions
So do Palestinians:

uprooted
and unlike butterflies
wingless,
earthbound,
heavy with love
for their borders and their
misery,

no people can go forever behind
bars
or under the rain.



We shall never cry with tears
but with blood.



It is not on cemeteries that we shall
plant grain
nor in the palm of my hand
We are as angry as a storm.


Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... ing-means/

******

The War Front: Week of 7 October, 2024

In the past week, signs have emerged that Hezbollah has revived from Israel's relentless blows to its leadership and ranks, and that the resistance maintains command and control over the battle. This is the first in The Cradle's series of war updates for the duration of the Israel-Axis battle.


The Cradle's Military Correspondent

OCT 12, 2024

Image
Photo Credit: The Cradle

The scene in southern Lebanon has recurred daily for about ten days. Israeli bombs target Lebanese villages, kill civilians, and enemy land forces fail to penetrate territory. Hezbollah fighters remain vigilant to prevent any invasion of the border areas, galvanized by both grief and anger over the Israeli assassinations of their late Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and other top military and political leaders.

Since the announcement of the ground operation, dubbed “Arrows of the North” and described as “limited” in scope by Tel Aviv in an attempt to downplay its objectives, Israel's stated goals are to “strike the military infrastructure” of Hezbollah - a task it found difficult during similar battles in southern Lebanon during the July 2006 war.

This time around, on just the second day of the Israeli operation, the occupation army announced the killing of 8 officers and soldiers from its "Egoz" commando unit during a clash with resistance fighters.

Israel's concern about the ground battle becomes clear when examining the number of divisions it flung into the battle and the quality of their training. Each of these divisions has been tasked with a battalion area of ​​responsibility in terms of tactical penetration of Lebanese territory.

What teams does Israel rely on?

36th Division (Al-Barkan): The largest armored division in regular service in the Armored Corps In the Israeli army, this division has participated in all Israeli wars against Palestinians and Arabs.
91st Division (Galilee): Responsible for the entire Lebanese front from Ras Naqoura in the west to the occupied Shebaa Farms in the east.
Division 146 (Cosmic Explosion): A reserve division affiliated with the Northern Command of the Israeli army. It was the first reserve division to join Operation “Northern Arrows” and participated in both the First and Second Lebanon Wars.
98th Division (Fire League): An infantry division consisting of paratroopers and commando brigades, specialized in encirclement via parachute drops, assault landings using attack helicopters and transport aircraft, and fighting deep into its opponent's territory.
99th Infantry Division (Al-Wameed): Trained to move on foot and not in armored personnel carriers and tasked to operate drones on the battlefield, these troops deal with electronic and cyber attacks - via air and land.
Division 210 (Bashan): Established in the midst of the October 1973 War, this division was assigned the task of attacking Syria via Lebanon through a strategic encirclement operation aimed at weakening the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Despite this buildup, Israeli forces are still operating in the border strip, which has been subjected to thousands of raids and shells since October 8, 2023, that is, for more than a year. For example, the border village of Yaroun encountered 650 raids in a year, and 200 raids just last week.

The Israeli army adopts the method of rapid close-in raids with infantry, supported by heavy artillery and air cover, so that its forces infiltrate - about 700 meters at the maximum depth - and then return. These raids are mostly conducted for propaganda reasons, to secure footage of reassuring ground scenes to convince displaced Israeli settlers that there are military achievements that can establish safety for their return to settlements. For example, the Israeli army published a video that it claims depicts the storming of the Lebanese village of Kafr Kila. It later transpired that the footage dates back to 2006.

Has Israel advanced in the south?

Some of the front-line villages in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel are considered “militarily defeated,” largely because their geographical features do not allow for defending forces to repel the enemy.

Yaron, one of these villages, has been destroyed and abandoned for months. It is relatively low in elevation (780 meters above sea level), and represents a kind of protrusion inside occupied Israeli territories.

Yaroun is therefore not considered a defensive base, but is more suitable for offensive operations as a starting base. The Israeli army entered it after its complete destruction to take photos and to destroy a mosque 150 meters from the border.

The same applies to Lebanon's Maroun al-Ras area, where occupation troops published pictures of raising an Israeli flag in a garden of the destroyed village months ago. This area is one of the first points to be bombed after 8 October, faces the Palestinian border, and is an advanced point from Lebanese territory.

Last week, t occupation army took advantage of the presence of a UN peacekeeping troop (UNIFIL) position at the foot of the park’s hill to advance to it and take propaganda photos, then quickly withdrew for fear of being targeted.

Israeli forces were also able to advance toward the two Lebanese Christian villages of Rmeish and Ain Ebel. Hezbollah's operations room took the decision to avoid targeting these villages since their residents were still within, and to preserve their lives and national cohesion, which Israel exploited to position itself in the vicinity of the two villages.

Hezbollah waits...and takes the initiative

The geography of the south plays an important role in aiding defending forces to take cover and conceal themselves from the enemy, as well as to set up ambushes. The Israeli army knows this well, and is forever reminded of how its tanks fell into a bold resistance trap in what was known in the 2006 war as the “tank massacre.”

Today, Tel Aviv is limiting its objectives to control a group of sensitive border areas. It believes this approach will help it secure its border settlements, on the one hand, and facilitate its future operations deep into Lebanese territory - such as the Balat area, Jabal al-Bat, Al-Awaidah, Tal Al-Nahhas, and others - on the other.

Hezbollah has already shown Tel Aviv what it could be up against. In the Al-Bat area, the resistance struck a tank that was on its way uphill - terrain that requires bulldozers, tanks, and great engineering efforts to climb these heights, which are preferred targets for anti-armor weapons to hit Israeli military vehicles accurately. Importantly, these strikes can be conducted effectively from remote and relatively safe places.

But Hezbollah isn't waiting for Israeli forces to advance. Rather, it takes the initiative to bomb the attacking enemy concentrations at border sites without interruption, to create a kind of confusion and disarray that prevents occupation forces from organizing or forming, forcing them into “busying” diversions like taking cover and transporting their wounded to deplete their morale.

These are what are called “spoilage attacks” because they spoil the enemy’s intentions. What recently took place in Ras al-Naqoura offers a clear example of the quality of the resistance measures that struck enemy forces, and vehicles gathered at the site and hit them before they moved. Hezbollah offered a sample to the Israelis: “Here's what will happen when you position your armor in an elevated position.”

Given the strikes it expected to receive, causing deaths and injuries among its ranks, the Israeli army has employed its elite Unit 669 for air medical evacuation, at the border only. This begs the question of what occupation forces plan to do if their troops manage to penetrate a little deeper into Lebanese territory. Will there be stretcher drones for their casualties, as Tel Aviv may not want to deliberately bring helicopters deeper into the south for fear of being shot down? Israeli medevac operations will become more difficult and dangerous both to the lives of injured troops and those working to evacuate them.

Military zones increase displacement … of Israelis too

While the occupation army seeks to exert pressure on Hezbollah by displacing its constituents and supporters from their homes in the south, the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut - and even displacement areas such as Byblos, the north, and Beirut - in order to return its northern settlers to their settlements, Tel Aviv took a counterproductive step when it announced more closed military zones on the border, which practically amounts to expulsion for Israeli residents remaining in other, as-yet-undisturbed northern settlements.

On 6 October, the Israeli army announced that it was establishing a closed military zone, including the areas of Manara, Yiftah, and Al-Malikiyah.

Has Hezbollah lost command and control?

There is no doubt that the blow Hezbollah suffered from the assassination of Nasrallah and most of its top military commanders was painful, confusing, and had a “strategic” dimension. The late secretary-general was not just a political leader and symbol for the millions who support the resistance, but was essentially also the executive director of West Asia's Axis of Resistance, led by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Nasrallah enjoyed wide influence in the region and strong relations with all the Axis powers. His assassination shook not only Hezbollah, but the entire Axis. In his eulogy for Nasrallah, Khamenei revealed the importance of his role and the impact of this loss by describing the late Hezbollah leaders as “the apple of my eye.”

The assassinations were not limited to Nasrallah, but included key military commanders such as Fuad Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, and Ahmad Wehbi. These arrived amidst Israel's “pager and radio massacre” that shook Hezbollah's community and filled hospitals with party members who suffered severe injuries to their eyes and hands. These rapid, successive strikes were enough to divide the Lebanese resistance, destroy it morally, and cut off communication between its leaders.

In the subsequent few weeks, however, there are several field indicators that the movement is recovering rapidly and regaining its ability to control the battlefield, its units, and forces.

These indicators can be summarized in the following points:

Consistency in the daily number of missiles, up to 200 projectiles, indicates discipline among the missile crews, taking into account the needs of the battle and the expected time periods in order to maintain continuity and momentum and keep the Israel front under constant pressure.
Consistency in the objectives, their nature and quality, as several types of objectives are adopted (concentrations in border sites and settlements, the main population centers in the north, Safad, Tiberias, Karmiel, the Krayot, Haifa, and as of recently, Tel Aviv).
The distribution of firepower - in proportion to the availability of targets - indicates that Hezbollah's intelligence capabilities remain intact, as they are producing, discovering, and delivering daily targets through a functioning command and control system to the firing forces in real-time - such as targeting the house in which the EGOZ was stationed in Al-Adaysah.
Planting explosives and deploying innovative ambushes on the front lines and routes adopted by Israeli forces is an indication of the presence of a field command capable of making sound assessments, anticipating the enemy’s movements, and issuing orders to take proportionate and effective measures.
Directing a large and unprecedented missile strike on the Krayot (a cluster of cities and neighborhoods in Haifa), in conjunction with Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem’s televised speech, is an indication that there are those who planned, decided, implemented, and controlled, and this cannot be implemented without an effective command and control system.
Directing a missile strike against Tel Aviv on 7 October specifically indicates the existence of a decision and intention to strike this city on this specific date.
The way Hezbollah dealt with Israeli troops was by taking UNIFIL soldiers as human shields (positioning themselves behind them) at a critical moment. The resistance gave orders not to engage with enemy forces in order to protect the lives of UNIFIL personnel, which confirms the existence of a high level of control.
Throughout its history, Hezbollah has been able to overcome many existential tribulations, some we have seen already in this war, but evidence and field data in the south indicate that the resistance is capable of overcoming the blow, restructuring its leadership, and adjusting its ground forces to adapt to the needs of the battle.

https://thecradle.co/articles/the-war-f ... tober-2024

******

Hizbullah, Iran Put More Pressure On Israel
Two weeks ago, after successful Zionist attacks on Hizbullah's leadership, I asserted that Hizbullah would be back:

However, Israel can not kill its way to peace.

Hizbullah is a social movement deeply ingrained into the people and society of Lebanon.

Hizbullah has a social society side which takes care for and aliments large parts of its constituency.

It also has a military side which is very well organized, disciplined and which has many hidden assets ready to be activated when needed. Following the Shia creed Hizbullah's soldiers are ready and willing to die for their cause.

In 1982 Israel assassinated Hizbullah chief Musawi. His replacement, Hassan Nasrallah, proved to be the more formidable enemy who organized resistance movements that span the whole region. Anyone following Nasrallah will also be younger, less risk avers and a more formidable enemy.

The same holds for the replacements of lower level casualties.

The Zionist colonist will rue the consequences of their deeds.


Today Hizbullah's operation room warned the Zionists in Haifa to empty the city:

Ali Hashem @alihashem_tv - 9:44 UTC · Oct 12, 2024
Hezbollah’s operations room statement, warning residents of Haifa and several other northern cities up to Tiberias to evacuate homes near military installations, signals an expansion of the displacement zone for Israel from 5 km to over 30 km.

This could force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to evacuate at least 250,000 people, rather than the initial 100,000. While predicting new rules of engagement is difficult, this could create a new dynamic, where more attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs triggers more Hezbollah rocket strikes deep into northern Israel.
...
Nearly three weeks after the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the party has absorbed the blow and elevated its operations to a new level. Its leadership has gone unseen, likely utilizing alternative communication methods that have enabled a seamless transition. Despite the loss, Hezbollah continues to launch attacks and maintain supply lines to the front, allowing for further escalation, all while seeking a diplomatic solution to the conflict through the Speaker of Parliament.


and

Sina Toossi @SinaToossi - 15:37 UTC · Oct 12, 2024
🧵Hezbollah has intensified rocket and missile strikes on northern Israel over the past week.

Today, it called for civilians to evacuate Haifa, Tiberias, & other areas, claiming that Israeli military operations in residential zones make them legitimate targets.

2/ Significantly, Hezbollah’s statement also said, "Northern occupied Palestine will remain empty of settlers until the war against Gaza and Lebanon ends."


This reflects its original position of rejecting a ceasefire with Israel that is not linked to ending the Gaza war.
...
8/ The head of Hezbollah's media office Mohammad Afif also asserted today:

"To the enemy, I say: You have only seen a fraction of our strikes.
"On the ground, especially on the southern front, the resistance is in good shape.
"It manages its firing fields and the timing of its volleys in accordance with its field assessment and the objective conditions.
"Its strategic reserves are intact.
"Thousands of Karbala-inspired martyrdom fighters are in peak readiness and fully prepared to fight fiercely in revenge for our sacred martyr.
"...The resistance will not engage in static defense but rather a flexible defense that adapts to the requirements of the front and the conditions of each area.
"It will set ambushes, plant explosives, carry out flanking maneuvers, and shift flexibly from defense to offense, inflicting heavy losses, which the enemy has begun to acknowledge gradually, forcing them repeatedly to retreat and reassess the front, contrary to their calculations and estimates.
"...We are not in 1982 when Israeli tanks reached Beirut, altering the political equations and tearing the social fabric of Lebanon. We are more in the early days of the July War, when the same people rushed to declare Hezbollah’s defeat, only to later realize their mistake and return to their senses by the end of the war, with Hezbollah emerging victorious.
"Our absolute priority now is to defeat the enemy and force it to cease its aggression by force."


That is part of the recent news from which Elijah Magnier, who knows Hizbullah better than any other western journalist, concludes:

I am beginning to think that #Israel is reluctant to invade #Lebanon.
Hezbollah has lost 80% of the first line of command, the operations room and the secretary general, yet it has managed to regain control beautifully. No army in the world can withstand the first blow.

Now Hezbollah has regained control, it has replenished its positions, its logistics are in top condition, it has prevented four divisions from entering Lebanon, it has absorbed the displaced persons, it has discovered the source of the leakage, and it is threatening to force more Israeli displaced persons. With every day that passes, Hezbollah shows that it has regained its professionalism in directing the war and taking the initiative.


The Zionists are reluctant to go further than a few meter into Lebanon because their ground forces are taking high losses. A full ground attack would be extremely costly.

The Zionist entity is also reluctant to attack Iran. Its security cabinet could not agree on an appropriate way to hit back for Iran's recent missile attack with some 180 ballistic missiles. That attack did real damage on two military air ports. It also hit other strategic assets.

Last night the Islamic Republic Iran Boradcasting [IRIB] organization announced:

iranmilitaryvlog @irmilitaryvlog - 9:06 UTC · Oct 12, 2024
IRIB yesterday revealed that Iran's armed forces managed to knock out a transportable Raytheon long-range, very high-altitude X-band radar positioned near the 'Nevatim' airbase belonging to the THAAD system without detection before raining down ballistic missiles on their target.

Quote: H. E. Mehr | حمید ابراهیمی مهر @Hemehr ... Embedded video


The THAAD AN/TPY-2 transportable radar directs high attitude missile defenses. There is, as far as is known, only one in Israel. such a radar system, if bought now, costs about $300 million. The one in the Negev desert is under U.S. control.

If, as IRIB claims, that radar was indeed hit, the strike has blown a huge hole into Israel's missile defenses. This would explain the reluctance in the security cabinet to go for on all out attack on Iran. Any Iranian response, which would come as assured as tomorrows sun rise, would hit Israel extremely hard.

Posted by b on October 12, 2024 at 17:00 UTC | Permalink

posting.php?mode=reply&f=4&t=110

******

On the strategic meaning of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm
colonelcassad
October 12, 9:00

Image

On the strategic meaning of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm

The goal of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in simple terms

The US sought to connect the West and East of the world through this route. The traditional way of traveling in the world is the blue route in the photo, which goes through Yemen.

The new route goes through "India, Arab countries, Israel, Europe", which is marked in red and is called IMAC. The

most important effect of the new route was that Israel would become the world's transportation gateway, in addition to economic profit, this route would make other countries dependent on Israel. Naturally, if Israel became the gateway to world trade, other countries would have to recognize it. And this meant strengthening the Israeli regime and weakening Palestine.

And the Palestinians had two choices, either submission and destruction forever, or an action that disrupts the plan, and the Palestinians courageously decided to stand and fight, as always. This is how Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was conceived.


@parstodayrussian - zinc

The strategic goal in this interpretation has already been achieved. In fact, Iran, through its proxies, has thwarted the long-term plans of the US and Israel to reorganize the Middle East to their advantage. Everything that followed is the aftermath of the collapse of these plans. The most interesting thing is that these plans could have been realized if Israel had pursued a more flexible policy towards Palestine, but instead of economic growth, it is now reaping losses, population outflow, and growing isolation.

It is worth noting that this was done primarily by Hamas. There are two ironic moments here. On the one hand, Hamas was created with the actual assistance of Israel to split the Palestinian cause. On the other hand, Hamas was hostile to Iran until the mid-2010s and sided with Assad's enemies during the Syrian war.
But underestimating Hamas's capabilities has already led Israel to failure in the 2021 war and the fall of the then Netanyahu cabinet.

And Iran in 2016-2017 was able to settle its conflicts with Hamas and make friends between Sunni Hamas and Shiite Hezbollah, drawing Hamas into its Axis of Resistance. This became possible thanks to the efforts of General Qassem Soleimani to expand the Axis of Resistance. And now, Soleimani has been dead for 4 years, but his cause lives on and wins. It is also worth noting that Iran's support for the Houthis is also his doing. As are the agreements with Russia on its participation in the Syrian war. As is the creation of a huge Shiite militia integrated into the Iraqi state. And this strategy is now beating the American-Israeli plans to create transport corridors through Israel and normalize relations with part of the Arab world.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9434450.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply