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The Mainstream Press Keep Slamming Israel’s Hospital Bombing Story

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 19, 2023  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-mainstream-press-keep-slamming?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138092278&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

A new report from the UK’s Channel 4 News adds to the surprising amount of opposition we’re seeing in the mainstream press to Israel’s narrative about the deadly explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this past Tuesday.

The report, led by Channel 4 chief correspondent Alex Thomson, spotlights glaring plot holes in Israel’s claim that a failed rocket by Palestinian Islamic Jihad was responsible for the blast, and in the supposed audio clip Israel published which it claims is an intercepted conversation between two Hamas fighters saying Israel was not responsible. It also presents an argument that will be inconvenient for Israel apologists who’ve been claiming photos of the damage to the hospital rule out the possibility of an Israeli airstrike.

“So what of Israel’s explanation?” says Thomson. “Sensing a major problem they worked through the night to get their version out. Press conference first thing. Conclusion: an Islamic Jihad rocked caused it all.”

“They present what they say is two Hamas operatives talking about the attack,” Thomson reports. “Hamas call this an obvious fabrication. Two independent Arab journalists told us the same thing, because of the language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone. None of which is, they say, credible.”

“Equally, Israel claims the Islamic Jihad failed missile was fired from here: a cemetery very close to the hospital,” Thomson continues. “But look again at the video of the event — the trajectory of the missile doesn’t line up with that location. Too high. Too horizontal. Confusingly, the Israelis’ presentation also says the missile was fired from a location down in the southwest; it can’t be both.”

Thomson also reports that while the photos of the blast site do appear to rule out a ground-detonating Israeli munition, they’re entirely in keeping with other munitions used by Israel which could easily have taken such a toll on human life.

“This is what you see at the hospital today — small craters you’d expect to see from a mortar strike or artillery round, not a missile,” says Thomson. “Surrounding buildings have only superficial damage, not structural collapse. Some of the windows of an adjoining church remain intact. This makes a ground-detonating Israeli missile strike unlikely, but it doesn’t rule out an airburst munition, which could cause major loss of life, but would produce far less structural damage.”

Thomson also notes that “Israel has form when it comes to war propaganda”, citing its false denials of the IDF killings of British filmmaker James Miller and Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

On Twitter (or whatever we’re calling it now), Thomson’s remarks on the Israeli audio file were even more pointed.

“Several experts confirm Hamas’ view to Channel 4 News that the audio tape of ‘Hamas’ operatives talking about the missile malfunction is a fake,” tweeted Thomson. “They say the tone, syntax, accent and idiom are absurd.”

This is a still developing story with much still to be revealed, but this to me might be the most damning evidence against Israel yet. If Israel didn’t bomb that hospital, then why is it publishing fake audio clips of people posing as Hamas fighters agreeing with each other that Israel definitely didn’t bomb that hospital?

I mean, if people were saying I bombed a hospital, and I knew I didn’t, the last thing I’d do is publish an audio file of me pretending to be two guys talking about how Caitlin definitely didn’t bomb the hospital.

Picture a recording of me doing two blokey-sounding voices going,

“Hello my evil friend!”

“Hello!”

“Did you hear that Caitlin definitely did not bomb that hospital?”

“She didn’t?”

“No! It turns out it was we, the Evil Bad Guys!”

“We did it?”

“Yes, it was us!”

That would look pretty silly, right?

If Israel is making itself look this ridiculous, then it’s no wonder the western press are not lining up to help it cover up this particular misdeed. They’ve got to maintain at least some credibility if they’re going to keep manufacturing consent for other wars, after all.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | media | 1 Comment

Israeli Politician Says “Children of Gaza Have Brought This Upon Themselves”

When children are explicitly framed as “not innocent,” all-out genocidal warfare is possible.

TruthOut, By Jonathan Ofir , MONDOWEISS, October 18, 2023

t really is hard to imagine a more malicious statement than “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves” when children in Gaza are now being massacred by the hundreds. But this was actually said in a recent Knesset session. And it wasn’t someone considered an extreme right-winger, but a liberal centrist – Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid.

The full, over-three-hour session from Monday can be seen here. Ben-Ari is evidently getting worked up as Palestinian lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman (around two hours into the session) bemoans the loss of civilian lives “both in the area surrounding Gaza and in Gaza,” imploring to make an effort to release hostages and to “get the civilians out of the circle of blood.” “Jews as well as Arabs, Israelis as well as Palestinians.” “A child is a child,” Touma-Sliman reminds everyone, pointing out that at that point, over 900 children had been killed from Israel’s bombing of Gaza (a day later, that number swelled to well over a thousand).

All this humanity was just too much for Ben-Ari. She started shouting and heckling Touma-Sliman, saying, “There is not symmetry, there is no symmetry!”

“Between children there is symmetry,” she said.

Ben Ari went livid: “There is no symmetry!!”

Touma-Sliman emphasized: “A child is a child is a child.”

Twenty-five minutes after this unbearable episode, Ben-Ari came up to speak, admittedly unplanned. This is precisely 2.5 hours into the session video:

“I did not plan to speak, of course, but I have to say one thing that should be clear: There is no symmetry. There is no symmetry. Me, my friends, ok, were on the way to the synagogue on the day of Simchat Torah, and they were shot at, only because they were Jews in this state. That’s it. And friends of mine – their children went to the party, to celebrate – seculars, religious, doesn’t matter who, only because they were Jewish, they were murdered. So there is no symmetry! And the children in Gaza – the children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves! We are a peace-seeking nation, a life-loving nation. There is no symmetry – our children are kidnapped over there!” (My emphasis)……………………………………………………………………..

Ben-Ari’s genocidal rhetoric was actually echoing a comment just made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is also known as a liberal, even from further left. At a recent press conference on October 13, Herzog answered a question by Rageh Omar from ITV, who asked him what Israel can do to alleviate the impact on the over two million civilians in Gaza, many of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. Herzog answered:

“We are working, operating militarily in terms according to rules of international law, period. Unequivocally. It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. …………………………………..

This is really unmistakable – Herzog is really implying that an “entire nation is responsible,” and the implication is that they are legitimate targets. However, he later denied that this is what he meant.

This rhetoric has a long history among Israeli politicians. In 2018, when Avigdor Lieberman was Defense Minister, he declared that “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip” because “everyone has a connection to Hamas.” This was in April 2018, when Israel was beginning to turkey-shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Great March of Return. When a video filmed by Israeli snipers, where they celebrate their shooting of a motionless, unarmed Palestinian, surfaced on social media around that same time, Lieberman commented that they deserved a medal for their shots. I could just as well mention that Lieberman has advocateddecapitating “disloyal” Palestinian citizens with an axe and the drowning of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. Lieberman is now regarded as a Netanyahu critic who is considering joining the “unity government” so as to “join the war cabinet in order to bring about the fastest possible victory.”

You may say this is just rhetoric, but these words also lead to actions. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s comments referred to Palestinians as “human animals” as Israel closed all the water taps to Gaza, making the already unlivable living conditions there a genocidal nightmare. The relationship between words to actions is obvious. ……. more https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-politician-says-children-of-gaza-have-brought-this-upon-themselves/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=431d0bc2ba-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-431d0bc2ba-650192793&mc_cid=431d0bc2ba&mc_eid=73e1cd43d0 #Israel #Palestine

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Mass Media Reporters Aren’t Buying Israel’s Hospital Bombing Story

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 18, 2023  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/mass-media-reporters-arent-buying?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138065016&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

A huge blast in Gaza has destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. The exact death toll is still unknown.

Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot of details yet to be revealed. But what I’d like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit.

After noting that Israel is blaming the blast on a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), MSNBC foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez quickly pointed out that PIJ rockets don’t tend to do that kind of damage, but Israeli missiles do. He also noted that Israel has an extensive history of lying about this sort of thing.

“The Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims that this was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket; they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public,” Sanchez said. “We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly, they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives — especially these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City — do have the potential to kill hundreds of people.”

“And we should say finally that there are instances in the past where the Israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run,” Sanchez added. “And the one example I’ll give you is that when the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military initially said that she was killed by Palestinian gunmen, and it was only months and months later that they admitted that it was likely an Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot.”

CNN’s Clarissa Ward said essentially the same thing.

“I will say, just based on seeing these rocket attacks many times over the years, that they don’t usually have an impact like that in terms of the size of the blast, in terms of the scale of the death toll and the scale of the damage,” Ward said. “It’s also not the first time, it’s important to add, that we have seen the IDF categorically deny something before being forced to kind of do an about-face after an extensive investigation.”

BBC foreign correspondent Jon Donnison gave basically the same opinion.

“It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes,” Donnison said from Jerusalem. “Because, you know, when we’ve seen rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale. We might see half a dozen, maybe a few more people being killed in such rocket attacks, but we’ve never seen anything on the scale of the sort of explosion on the video I was watching earlier.”

That’s three mass media reporters that I’ve seen just in my random information-gathering meanderings — not on their personal social media accounts, but live on air. 

It’s highly unusual to see this degree of skepticism in the western press right off the bat when it goes against the information interests of Israel specifically or the US power alliance more generally. Typically we’ve been seeing the media uncritically report unverified claims about Palestinian militants while expressing rigorous skepticism solely toward any information which might benefit the Palestinian resistance, so there’s clearly something about this particular story which makes mass media reporters remarkably reluctant to push the Israeli narrative.

Maybe they’re getting information in their group chats which has caused them to keep Israel’s claims about the hospital bombing at arm’s length, or maybe they’re just looking at the facts and deciding this narrative is too flimsy to get behind. If it looks like Israel’s version of events will fall apart after investigation, they’re not going to want to stake their reputation and their pride on pushing it with their usual gusto during an Israeli military operation that is facing unusually intense scrutiny from the entire world.

Israel does after all have an extensive history of attacking hospitals and healthcare facilities, including in this current operation in Gaza, including apparently bombing this exact same hospital just a few days ago. ReliefWeb, which is run by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently published a report on the numerous Israeli strikes that have hit hospitals, ambulances and healthcare workers between October 12 and October 15, and listed among the hospitals hit is the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City — the same hospital that was just destroyed a few days later.

Citing “Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication,” ReliefWeb reports the following:

“14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured.”

It’s also probably worth noting that according to the World Health Organization this hospital was one of the twenty hospitals which the IDF had ordered to evacuate because of the aggressions it was planning to inflict on that part of Gaza. 

Again, information is still coming in and this developing story could possibly wind up looking very different from what it looks like right now. But if I was an Israel apologist, I don’t think I’d find the current winds in the mass media very encouraging. #Israel #Palestine

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Can the UN Help the Nuclear Victims, At Last?

A new resolution in the General Assembly aims to address the devastating legacy of testing and use.

The Nation, IVANA NIKOLIĆ HUGHES and CHRISTIAN N. CIOBANU 18 Oct 23

The very first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, titled “Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy,” was adopted in January of 1946, less than three months after the founding of the United Nations (UN). 

Recognizing the devastating humanitarian consequences of the United States atomic bombings on Japan half a year earlier, the resolution called for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.” The states that had just come together in a new international forum were clear about the need to prevent the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from ever happening again.

More than 77 years later, a new resolution aims to address the destruction and harm that nuclear weapons have caused in the intervening decades.

In 1946, the United States was the only country with a nuclear weapons program capable of actually making atomic bombs. The previous year, the US built three weapons—and only three weapons—and used the first in a nuclear test called Trinity in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, recently depicted in graphic terms in the year’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, and then two more in Japan on August 6 and 9. Not only did the US not cease its nuclear program in 1946 in response to the first UN resolution, we would go on to build an arsenal containing over 32 thousand warheads (at its peak in 1967), to develop weapons thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb (called hydrogen bombs), and to test not just at home but also near those whose protection we were entrusted with, such as the people of the Marshall Islands.

Nor did the first resolution prevent other countries from establishing their own nuclear weapons programs, with the Soviet Union reaching the status of a nuclear weapon possessor in 1949 and the United Kingdom, France, and China, all joining the nuclear club by 1964. Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons, including Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Although far fewer than the peak numbers in the mid-1980s, when there were more than 60 thousand warheads in the world, today there are still more than 12 thousand, enough to destroy human civilization and potentially even all of life, as a result of nuclear winter.

And yet, the symbolic importance of the first resolution cannot be overstated. Through the decades, it continued to inspire hundreds of resolutions, calling for nuclear disarmament and for a world free of nuclear weapons. As time passed, internationally binding treaties became a part of the picture, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970 and is currently one of the largest agreements amongst states, and more recently, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021, with elimination goals perfectly aligned with those of the very first resolution.

While one can certainly conclude that success has eluded us, given the existential threat that nuclear weapons still pose today, the bleak picture may have been far worse had the international community not been as serious about this threat from the very beginning of the nuclear age. We might not have been here to tell the tale.

The Devastating Legacy of Nuclear Testing

hat we have avoided a repeat of Hiroshima or Nagasaki is of course good news, but what we have not done is avoided having victims of nuclear weapons. Rather than from direct attacks, the nuclear development and testing programs of all of the nuclear possessors have created millions of victims around the world. This includes the people who suffered radiation exposure from working in or living near uranium mines or nuclear weapon laboratories and the so-called atomic veterans, who were involved in nuclear testing and cleanup programs as part of their military duties. The largest affected groups, however, were and still are the people living downwind from nuclear tests, who, in addition to radiation exposure, in some cases were also forced to relocate, losing their homes. These communities are found around the globe…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The New Resolution

Two of these affected states—Kazakhstan and Kiribati—have been leading recent efforts to address the devastating legacy of nuclear testing comprehensively, fairly, and with support of the international community.

One such effort has been through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which not only aims to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the world but also provides humanitarian provisions for those who have suffered due to nuclear weapons use and testing. Articles 6 and 7 of the treaty specifically address the need for victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation, and Kazakhstan and Kiribati are cochairing the working group on these humanitarian provisions. There are currently 97 states that have either signed or ratified the treaty, and soon more than half of all states at the UN will have done so.

 Not yet among them are the nine nuclear weapons states. Other ways of making the nuclear weapons possessors confront the devastating legacy of nuclear weapons are needed before they all join the treaty.

Kazakhstan and Kiribati have now put forward a resolution for the UN General Assembly to address these long-standing injustices and give all states the opportunity to express their views. 

The resolution, entitled “Addressing the Legacy of Nuclear Weapons: Providing Victim Assistance and Environmental Remediation to Member States Affected by the Use or Testing of Nuclear Weapons” emphasizes the commonly shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and calls for greater cooperation amongst states on addressing the humanitarian consequences of past nuclear explosions. 

The two goals are inextricably linked. The harm and suffering tell us why nuclear weapons must be abolished. Getting rid of the weapons is the only way to ensure that similar or far worse catastrophes will never happen.  https://www.thenation.com/article/world/can-the-un-help-the-nuclear-victims-at-last/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

October 20, 2023 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

World may have crossed solar power ‘tipping point’

 The world may have crossed a “tipping point” that will inevitably make
solar power our main source of energy, new research suggests. The study,
based on a data-driven model of technology and economics, finds that solar
PV (photovoltaics) is likely to become the dominant power source before
2050 – even without support from more ambitious climate policies.


However, it warns four “barriers” could hamper this: creation of stable
power grids, financing solar in developing economies, capacity of supply
chains, and political resistance from regions that lose jobs.

The researchers say policies resolving these barriers may be more effective
than price instruments such as carbon taxes in accelerating the clean
energy transition. The study, led by the University of Exeter and
University College London, is part of the Economics of Energy Innovation
and System Transition (EEIST) project, funded by the UK Government’s
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Children’s Investment
Fund Foundation (CIFF).

“The recent progress of renewables means that
fossil fuel-dominated projections are no longer realistic,” Dr Femke
Nijsse, from Exeter’s Global Systems Institute.

 Exeter University 17th Oct 2023 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

World may have crossed solar power ‘tipping point’

October 20, 2023 Posted by | renewable | Leave a comment

Germany caves in to French demands for government subsidies to the nuclear industry in the EU electricity market

Germany has given leeway for France to use state subsidies to fund its
nuclear power plants, unblocking a long-stalled reform of the EU
electricity market in the face of vast state aid regimes in China and the
US.

The agreement reached on Tuesday among energy ministers in Luxembourg
will mean that France could use government support to finance its largely
state-owned nuclear plants, which generate about 70 per cent of its
electricity.

Such a move had been heavily contested by Germany, Austria and
Luxembourg, which have been historically opposed to nuclear power but also
feared that allowing Paris to subsidise its nuclear plants would provide
French industry with structurally lower energy prices, giving it a
competitive advantage.

As part of the new EU rules for the bloc’s
electricity market, France will be allowed to use funding structures known
as contracts for difference. These set a minimum price guarantee for power
providers, as well as a ceiling above which the state can recover any
revenue.

 FT 17th Oct 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/73629c7f-d8a8-4d31-9487-02301c9fe894 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

October 20, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Thousands of Jewish Americans and Allies Demand Cease-Fire in Gaza

“We as American Jews believe that ‘never again’ means never again for anyone, and that includes Palestinians,” said Jewish Voice for Peace.

Common Dreams JULIA CONLEY, Oct 14, 2023

As the Biden administration’s intent to silence dissent against the United States’ backing of the Israel Defense Forces’ onslaught in Gaza became increasingly clear Friday night, at least 80 Jewish Americans and other supporters of Palestinians’ human rights were arrested for protesting outside the homes and offices of a number of Democratic lawmakers, where they demanded the U.S. government join growing calls for a cease-fire.

The U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organized the mass action, along with calling on Americans to contact their representatives in Congress and demand that they speak out against the air assault Israel launched this week in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal attack last weekend.

At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed in airstrikes this week, and at least 8,714 people have been injured. The death toll in Israel has reached 1,300, according to Al Jazeera.

Human rights advocates have warned that a looming ground offensive by the IDF in Gaza could rapidly push civilian casualties far higher.

On Friday, JVP led more than 2,000 protesters in five U.S. cities—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle—in demanding that senators and members of the U.S. House act to halt the “genocide of Palestinians.”

“We as American Jews believe that ‘never again’ means never again for anyone, and that includes Palestinians,” said JVP, referring to the refrain repeated by the Jewish American community regarding the need to prevent genocide. “‘Never again’ is this very moment.”


Thousands of people gathered at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and marched to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) home, where they blocked the road. Approximately 60 people were “dragged away by police,” JVP said.

New York state Assemblymembers Zohran Mamdani (D-36) and Marcela Mitaynes (D-51) were among those arrested……………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.commondreams.org/news/jewish-americans-protest-gaza

October 20, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment