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Senior U.S. Diplomats, Journalists, Academics and Secretaries of Defense Say: the U.S. Provoked Russia in Ukraine

by Donald A. Smith, PhD, The Ukraine Papers, 14 Oct 24

It took some years for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about the war in Vietnam. Thanks to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and thanks to the antiwar movement, Americans eventually learned about the injustices and failures of that war.

Likewise, it took several years after the starts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about those wars as well.

Americans are just now starting to realize that they’ve been lied to about the war in Ukraine. (The propaganda effort has been quite effective, with the New York Times, in particular, acting as a mouthpiece for the government’s position.) More and more mainstream publications are exposing the lies, and a majority of Americans now oppose further arming of Ukraine.

This essay is a summary of what the U.S. government has been hiding about the war in Ukraine, with links to sources for further information

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, U.S. military actions since 9/11 directly killed over 900,000 people, with an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects. The wars cost Americans at least $8 trillion and displaced over 38 million people from their homes. The U.S. spends over a trillion dollars a year on its military, if you count all expenditures.

If we go back to the 1960s, the number killed by U.S. wars includes the several million killed in the Vietnam war, the approximately 1 million killed by U.S. support for Indonesian military’s attacks on left wing groups, and the hundreds of thousands, at least, killed in proxy wars and government overthrows in Latin America.

The wars, overthrows, and associated sanctions caused mass migrations worldwide — particularly in Europe and at the southern U.S. border — and destabilized politics. Yet almost nobody (except for whistleblowers) was held accountable for these disasters; indeed, many of the same people are in Congress or work for the government or the weapons industry.

Moreover, the U.S. government lied about almost all the wars — in particular, about the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also about the war in Yugoslovia, as documented in Harper’s Magazine, here (Chapter 3), and here. (In short, the Kosovo Liberation Army that the U.S. supported was, basically, a terrorist organization funded by the CIA, and U.S. propaganda greatly overstated the nobility of the U.S. intervention.)

So, it should come as no surprise that our government is lying now about the war in Ukraine. Specifically, claims by President Biden and others that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked” are greatly exaggerated.

Read what these diplomats, secretaries of Defense, journalists, academics, politicians, and others have to say:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://theukrainepapers.org/senior-US-diplomats-academics-journalists-and-secretaries-of-defense-say-the-US-provoked-Russia-in-Ukraine.html

October 16, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Under the shadow of a NATO-Russia nuclear war, Hibakusha awarded Nobel Peace Prize

By John Hallam, Oct 15, 2024, https://johnmenadue.com/under-the-shadow-of-a-nato-russia-nuclear-war-hibakusha-awarded-nobel-peace-prize

As Vladimir Putin deploys mobile missile launchers throughout the Siberian Taiga armed with Yars heavy duty ICBMs, while making nuclear threats and claiming that these forces have been placed on a higher level of alert (though this isn’t necessarily so), NATO seems intent on compounding what seems already threatening and dangerous enough with the performance of the annual Steadfast Noon nuclear exercises, in which NATO literally rehearses for the apocalypse. It seems that this year the exercise is more ‘real’ than previously.

Meanwhile – and highly appropriately given the level of the threat and the danger the world faces – the Hibakusha (Bomb Victims) group Nihon Hidankyo has been awarded this years Nobel Peace Prize for its work in spreading the word on the effects of nuclear weapons and in working for their abolition. A more appropriate and timely award is hard to imagine.

Newsweek reported on 7 Oct that Putin had ordered Russian missiles placed on higher alert. Video of mobile missile launchers rumbling out into the Siberian Taiga over remote roads from their garages was posted on Telegram.

An item in Pearls and Irritations Oct 11, by this author noted that placing Russian nuclear missiles on high alert (if indeed their alert status really has changed) is ‘a dangerous game’.

If the deployment of Yars missiles on mobile launchers in the Siberian Taiga (threatening enough if we also take account of the accompanying rhetoric) inches us toward an event sequence that would, if it should take place, end what we call ‘civilisation’ in its first milliseconds of EMP, kill up to 50% of all humans in about 90 minutes, and leave most of those who somehow survive to starve and freeze in the twilight of a nuclear winter – then the pursuit of a NATO nuclear exercise in which the dropping and the targeting of nuclear weapons is actively practiced, surely compounds the risk.

Russia’s deployment of its mobile YARS ICBMs was bad enough. 2 weeks worth of NATO nuclear exercises, in which NATO actively practices for the apocalypse, surely compounds that risk.

Colonel Daniel Bunch, director of NATO nuclear weapons operations, adds point to the potential risk, saying in a Finnish publication that this year’s exercise also has another clear difference from last years’ nuclear weapons exercises.

“- This year, the planes will deliver the weapon to the target”. “We’re looking at how to integrate that and what we can learn about maximising the performance of a very powerful aircraft,”

One can imagine how this reads in the Kremlin. About as cheerfully as the deployment of YARS mobile missiles reputedly on ‘high alert’ reads to NATO.

Back in 1983, NATO also practiced for the apocalypse, in an exercise known as ‘Able Archer’, in which commanders went through the procedures they would have had to go through to order the release of nuclear weapons. There was one slight glitch – The KGB was convinced it wasn’t an exercise but the real thing. Only the leakage of NATOs real battle plans to the Kremlin (showing it was indeed an exercise) and a last minute substitution of heads of state for underlings saved the world from nuclear war.

Russia’s deployment of an important segment of its nuclear forces, (assuming a real change of status has taken place which it may not have) combined with NATO’s nuclear exercises which will go on for a week starting Monday put the world closer to the brink.

The need for nuclear risk reduction measures such as No First Use, de-alerting and enhanced or resumed military to military communication has never been clearer, and the need for abolition never clearer.

Australia could do much both by vigorous advocacy of risk reduction and by joining the TPNW (Ban Treaty). Much has been promised and little or nothing achieved in this department.

Meanwhile, the well-deserved award of the Nobel Peace prize to the Hibakusha both puts the spotlight on nuclear weapons and their abolition, and on the suffering of nuclear victims, where it needs to be.

J

October 16, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hibakusha group receives Nobel Peace Prize for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”

Bulletin, By François Diaz-Maurin, Thomas Gaulkin | October 11, 2024

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement formed by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings and nuclear weapons testing (or Hibakusha), “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

“The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement presented by its chair, Jergen Watne Frydnes. “It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure. The nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare. At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.”

“One day, the Hibakusha will no longer be among us as witnesses to history. But with a strong culture of remembrance and continued commitment, new generations in Japan are carrying forward the experience and the message of the witnesses. They are inspiring and educating people around the world. In this way they are helping to maintain the nuclear taboo—a precondition of a peaceful future for humanity.”

In an interview with the Nobel Prize organization, Masako Wada, a representative of Nihon Hidankyo and survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, said, “The world is currently moving backward on nuclear disarmament. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/hibakusha-group-receives-nobel-peace-prize-for-demonstrating-through-witness-testimony-that-nuclear-weapons-must-never-be-used-again/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter10142024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NobelPeacePrizeNihonHidankyo_10112024

October 16, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel intensifies genocide in Gaza and deepens killings in Lebanon

Mike Head @MikeHeadWSWS, 12 October 202, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/10/12/qbdw-o12.html

Armed to the teeth by the Biden-Harris administration in the US, the Israeli regime is re-intensifying its slaughter in refugee camps, schools and hospitals in northern and central Gaza, even as it expands its invasion and bombardments in Lebanon, including the centre of Beirut.

In the most recent attacks in Gaza, at least 22 people were killed yesterday in an air strike in Jabalia—the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps—in northern Gaza. Dozens were injured, with some ambulances unable to help rescue efforts due to fuel shortages.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued virtually impossible orders for residents, hospitals and healthcare centres across the area to evacuate, placing thousands of people, including healthcare workers and their maimed patients, directly in danger.

A strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah also killed at least 28 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where bodies were taken. It said several other people were wounded.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 61 Palestinians were killed and 231 were wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

Thousands of people are trapped in Jabalia as Israeli forces continue to attack the area, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said. “Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot,” Sarah Vuylsteke, MSF project coordinator, said in a post on X.

The Israeli army issued evacuation orders for residents in the camp on October 7, “while carrying out attacks at the same time, preventing people from leaving the area safely,” MSF said.

Forced evacuations and bombing of neighbourhoods are turning Gaza’s north into “unhabitable ruins,” MSF added.

Haydar, an MSF driver inside the camp, said: “We were staying at the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, but they bombed it. About 20 people were killed. I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave.”

United Nations officials voiced concerns yesterday that the Israeli offensive, as well as evacuation orders in northern Gaza, might affect the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.

Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the Type 2 polio virus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

“I am, of course, concerned about the developments in the north, and specifically with these evacuation orders,” the World Health Organization’s representative in occupied Palestinian territory, Rik Peeperkorn, told reporters in Geneva.

Peeperkorn said three attempts by the UN health agency and its partners to assist and evacuate patients from northern Gaza hospitals under evacuation orders have been thwarted this week.

This renewed Israeli offensive, combined with systematic starvation and denial of medical access, underscores the genocidal intent of the Netanyahu government. By the official Gaza health statistics, the IDF has killed more than 42,000 people, mostly women and children over the past 12 months, but the true toll may be closer to 200,000, counting the unrecovered bodies beneath the rubble.

Israel’s assault on Lebanon is widening and deepening at the same time. On Thursday night, 22 people were killed and 139 wounded in strikes in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Makati.

Videos published by local news channels showed chaotic scenes following the attacks on Ras el-Nabaa and al-Nuweiri in Beirut. The strikes hit densely-populated residential areas. Many residents left their apartments in the high-rise blocks in the area and gathered in courtyards as emergency services rushed to the scene.

Israel did not issue evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, which were the deadliest on central Beirut since the IDF offensive began last month. The area is outside the city’s southern suburbs, which Israeli forces have already pulverised.

The bombardments allegedly targeted Wafiq Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit working with the Lebanese government, and is therefore considered a political figure rather than a military one. That marks a heightening of the Israeli aggression.

A US-made munition was used in the strikes, the Guardian reported. The newspaper found remnants of a US-manufactured joint direct attack munition (JDAM) amid the debris of a building that was reduced to rubble.

According to the report, “JDAMs are guidance kits built by the US aerospace company Boeing that attach to large ‘dumb bombs’ ranging up to 2,000 lbs (900kg), converting them into GPS-guided bombs.”

Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese civilians not to return to their homes in the south of the country. The IDF soldiers were pushing on with their ground “incursion” inside Lebanon, as its fighter jets attacked more than 110 targets in the country in a single day.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,169 people, wounded more than 10,000 and displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon over the past year, the Lebanese government said in its daily update.

Israel’s flagrant assault on Lebanon, which it last invaded in 2006, was further demonstrated when an Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three others. That was just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, for the second time in as many days.

Two UNIFIL soldiers were also injured on Friday by an Israeli strike near their monitoring watchtower.

In the statement posted to X, UNIFIL also said an IDF bulldozer knocked over barriers at a UN position near the “Blue Line,” the unofficial demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon. 

“Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” the statement concluded.

UNIFIL has some 10,000 personnel, with Italy, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India among the biggest contributors. It was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion and was expanded after the 2006 Israeli invasion, allowing its troops to deploy along the Israeli border.

Various imperialist governments, including the US, UK, France, Italy and Spain, issued statements condemning the attacks on UNIFIL as serious violations of humanitarian international law and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ruled that UNIFIL personnel would replace the Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon.

But the same governments are continuing to facilitate and arm Israel’s barbarism.

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “ironclad” support for Israel during a 30-minute phone call with Netanyahu on Wednesday, the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, joined the call, which reportedly discussed Israel’s plans to strike Iran.

“The president affirmed Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, while emphasizing the need to minimize harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut,” the White House said.

The latter phrase is another desperate bid, in the face of widespread opposition among workers and youth in the US and globally, to cover up US imperialism’s responsibility for the ongoing slaughter in Lebanon, as well as Palestine. The US provides Israel at least $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and the Biden-Harris administration has authorised $14 billion in further assistance to its proxy to help fund the genocide and a wider war for domination over the resource-rich and strategic Middle East, directed against Iran, Russia and China.

On Wednesday, the Socialist Equality Party in the US hosted a live-streamed discussion to mark the one-year anniversary of the Gaza genocide, analysing the historical roots of the US-Israeli rampage in the Middle East and advancing a socialist strategy to stop it. 

The event, featuring SEP National Secretary Joseph Kishore, WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North, referenced the centuries of colonial rule in the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, and the brutal US wars throughout the region since 1991.

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

U.S. to Deploy Missile Defense System and About 100 Troops to Israel

The Pentagon announced it would send the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and its crew as Israel considered retaliatory attacks against Iran.


NY Times, By Helene Cooper, Reporting from Washington, Oct. 13, 2024

The United States is sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. It is the first deployment of U.S. forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there on Oct. 7, 2023.

President Biden directed Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and its crew, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement on Sunday.

The move will put American troops operating the ground-based interceptor, which is designed to defend against ballistic missiles, closer to the widening war in the Middle East. It comes after Iran launched about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 and as Israel plans its retaliatory attack.

The THAAD battery, a mobile defense system, will give the Israel Defense Forces another layer of protection to defend cities, troops and installations from short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles like those deployed by Iran in its last attack…………………………………………………………………………………

 late last month, the Pentagon said that it would send a “few thousand” American troops to the Middle East as Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, with one official putting the figure between 2,000 and 3,000. The United States also sent a THAAD battery along with other air defense systems to the region weeks after the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/us/politics/us-missile-defense-iran-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.R04.e14E.qqRr91Mg9WWs&smid=em-share—

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: Truths That Come Out Like the Sun

This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.  

l it makes you conclude there is simply no lower limit to the Zionists’ depravity while you wonder—as many of us have this past year—what it means to be human. 

 October 13, 2024 , https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/13/patrick-lawrence-truths-that-come-out-like-the-sun/

I read the other day the latest paper put out by those good people who run the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute. It is called “United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and Related U.S. Operations in the Region, October 7, 2023–September 30, 2024” and has all sorts of information in it. Since the Zionist state began its latest assault on the Palestinians of Gaza a year ago, the Biden regime has spent $22.76 billion financing it, and this is a very conservative figure even by the three authors’ reckoning. 

That same paper has a remarkable graph showing the growth of U.S. military aid to Israel (grants and loans, in constant 2024 dollars) during the 65 years from 1959, when it was zero, to this year, when it reached $18 billion. There was a sharp spike in the years following the 1967 war, when the policy cliques in Washington began to consider the Zionist state a strategic asset in the region. 

And then I read a related paper the people at Watson finished recently. “The Human Toll: Indirect Deaths from War in Gaza and the West Bank, October 7, 2023 Forward” measures and analyzes, as the introduction explains, “the impact on population health of the destruction of public infrastructure, livelihood sources, reduced access to healthcare, water, and sanitation, and environmental damage.”  Then, beginning with the next sentence, the paper starts to hit you hard:

For instance, 96 percent of Gaza’s population (2.15 million people) faces acute levels of food insecurity. According to an October 2, 2024, letter to President Biden from a group of U.S. physicians, 62,413 people in Gaza have died of starvation.

As it happens I had already read the letter the Watson report mentions, an open letter that 99 physicians and other American medical professionals wrote to President Biden and Vice–President Harris after serving in Gaza this past year. It reads in part:

This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908…. 

With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.

The physicians’ letter seems to be one of numerous put out by this group under the title, “Gaza Healthcare Letters.” Among the organizers is Feroze Sidhwa, a West Coast trauma surgeon who has been energetically getting out the truth of the Gaza crisis for some time. This newest letter arrived (and my thanks to both) via John Whitbeck, an American attorney who puts out an informative blog from his home in Paris, and Dave DeCamp’s excellent piece in Antiwar.com. 

Well, right after I read the physicians’ letter and the DeCamp piece and the Costs of War material, I watched the documentary Al Jazeera’s investigative unit put out Oct. 3 as a sort of one-year-on project. “Investigating war crimes in Gaza” is an hour and 20 minutes of gut-turning footage so powerful it makes you conclude there is simply no lower limit to the Zionists’ depravity while you wonder—as many of us have this past year—what it means to be human. 

My advisory: The Al Jazeera documentary is very difficult to watch but we must, as a matter of conscience and, for those who have spent the year flinching, as a rite of passage. We must let the truth push itself in our faces. My partner’s advisory: Don’t watch it before you go to bed. 

Read more: Patrick Lawrence: Truths That Come Out Like the Sun

A day or so after I saw the Al Jazeera film, having already read the Watson reports, the open letter, and the DeCamp commentary, I read Brett Murphy’s latest piece in ProPublica. “Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel” lays out the whole awful tale: Here, by way of leaked diplomatic cables, email, and Murphy’s interview work, we see how obsessed all those corrupt flunkies at State were (and are) to get weapons and more weapons to terrorist Israel, at times under pressure from the arms lobbies, while ignoring vast accretions of evidence that these supplies should have been blocked by law because of the Israelis’ genocidal crimes. By the time I read of this I had already seen Murphys’ earlier report that Secretary of State Blinken had suppressed and then lied to Congress about two State Department reports on some of these derelictions.   

This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.  

You have to admire Brett Murphy for his perspicacity in delivering these truths to us. Even a few years ago I would have said I hope The New York Times picks this guy up. No more of that. I hope for Murphy’s sake, and the sake of his readers, The Times keeps its befouled hands off a fine journalist—and for the sake, I will add, of his fineness. 

A day or so after I saw the Al Jazeera film, having already read the Watson reports, the open letter, and the DeCamp commentary, I read Brett Murphy’s latest piece in ProPublica. “Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel” lays out the whole awful tale: Here, by way of leaked diplomatic cables, email, and Murphy’s interview work, we see how obsessed all those corrupt flunkies at State were (and are) to get weapons and more weapons to terrorist Israel, at times under pressure from the arms lobbies, while ignoring vast accretions of evidence that these supplies should have been blocked by law because of the Israelis’ genocidal crimes. By the time I read of this I had already seen Murphys’ earlier report that Secretary of State Blinken had suppressed and then lied to Congress about two State Department reports on some of these derelictions.   

This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.  

You have to admire Brett Murphy for his perspicacity in delivering these truths to us. Even a few years ago I would have said I hope The New York Times picks this guy up. No more of that. I hope for Murphy’s sake, and the sake of his readers, The Times keeps its befouled hands off a fine journalist—and for the sake, I will add, of his fineness. 

On Friday morning I awakened to a report in Middle East Monitor—again courtesy of John Whitbeck, who likes to make sure we get off to a bushy-tailed start—that one Matthew Brodsky, a former adviser to the White House, has just called for the Israelis to carpet-bomb an Irish contingent of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon “and then drop napalm over it.” Altogether sound. And in keeping, too: The day of the Middle East Monitor’s report the Israelis shelled—knowingly, with intent—buildings in southern Lebanon from which U.N. peacekeepers operate. 

Matthew Brodsky now survives in the Zionist reaches of Think Tank Land in Washington. He is said no longer to advise the White House. Whether he still briefs Congress, the State and Defense Departments and the National Security Council, as he has in the past, is unclear. Either way, as Chas Freeman, the distinguished former ambassador, points out, this is the kind of person who climbs through the bureaucratic scene in Washington and ends up in advisory roles by dint of extremism dressed up as expertise. 

After thinking about all this reading and viewing in so short a time I didn’t want to think about anything for a while. Then I thought of a famous adage of Aeschylus that I used to keep on my desk: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Suffering, pain, despair. Then I thought of something else. Failing in my recall, I thought of whoever it was who said “The truth is like the sun.. It always comes out.” 

The Israelis are not at war with the Palestinians of Gaza, just as the Reich was not at war with the Jews of Europe. Genocide is something different, and it is always important to name things properly if we are to understand them as they are. But there has indeed been a war raging this past year. It is not as bloody as what Palestinians now endure, and what the Lebanese now seem to be in for, but it is arguably just as consequential. This is our war for the truth against those who would bury it in the cause of distorting events, burying reality itself and, specifically, of shielding those who conduct the genocide in Gaza. It is a war in the cause of lifting a heavy lid so that the truth can do its work, the work it always does, its work in defense of the human cause. 

“Our war,” “we.” I am wary of these words. Who are “we” in any given case? But there is a “we” now, a very big, crowded “we.” And we are getting there. We are winning our war. This is what I draw from the past week’s journalism as I have reviewed it. A solidly documented true story takes shape out of all the day-to-day reporting of the past year. It is all in the record now, or will be, a coherent whole—this while all the official lies and the corporate media lies are exposed. Let us not miss the significance here. Can we not conclude the truth is proving once again as persistent as the sun?

A case in point: On Oct. 10, The Times published a piece I found reviving of the spirit under the headline, ‘Relentless’ Israeli Attacks on Gaza Medical Workers Are War Crime, U.N. Panel Says. Beneath this was an account of a U.N. commission’s report that found Israel guilty of “relentless and deliberate attacks” on hospitals and other medical facilities, on doctors and other medical professionals, and on civilian patients. The pithy passage in the statement of Navi Pillay, formerly the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights and the director of the commission:

Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s health care 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.

This is the truth rising to the surface. Do you think Pillay’s commission would have studied conditions in Gaza and drawn its conclusions without the prompt of the medical people now speaking out, chiefly via independent media? Do you think The Times would have published this piece if circumstances, an accumulation of truths too large to inter or ignore, had not forced it to do so?  

At the end of Atrocity Inc., Max Blumenthal urges those who viewed the footage to speak out and to continue doing so as long as this is possible—until the law, he means to say, prohibits free speech. Implicit in this, if I read him correctly, is the conclusion I have just suggested: It matters, our war is going well,  and it is no use waiting for The Times to tell us so. 

Will the truths now emerging at an increasing and encouraging rate reach some critical mass such that either Israel or the U.S. will change policy? It may seem bitter to ask this question, given Israel’s escalating barbarities and Washington’s indifference even to common decency. But we must not miss the extent to which Israel is destroying itself before our eyes and dragging the U.S. down with it—both in large part because the truth of this crisis has turned world opinion  against these two rogue states. 

There are the yet-to-be-written histories of our time to be considered. We all know George Orwell’s line in  “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” It is essential, then, to get the record of our time set down accurately, truthfully, such that the way can open to proceeding in a new direction. Let us appreciate the power of the truthful work being done now, some of which I have reviewed, with this in mind.  

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities | Leave a comment

Biden, Netanyahu Closer to Consensus on Attacking Iran

Netanyahu convened his war cabinet on Thursday to approve plans

by Dave DeCamp October 10, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/10/biden-netanyahu-closer-to-consensus-on-attacking-iran/#gsc.tab=0

President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer to an understanding on Israel’s plans to attack Iran during their phone call on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday.

The report, which cited US and Israeli officials, said that the US had accepted Israel is going to launch a major attack on Iran soon and is only concerned that striking certain types of targets could dramatically escalate things. However, Iran has vowed it will respond to any type of Israeli attack, and the situation could easily turn into a full-blown war that would involve the US.

An Israeli official told Axios that the Israeli plans are still a bit more aggressive than the US would like. The US has been warning against striking nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, and recent media reports have said Israel will likely target military infrastructure.

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday to brief them on the situation with the US and is expected to get approval for him and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to set a timeline for the Israeli attack. The Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel will continue conversations on the plans in the coming days, signaling the attack is not imminent.

NBC News reported on Tuesday that the US was considering supporting Israel’s attack with direct airstrikes of its own, although US officials said intelligence support was more likely.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was offering Israel a “compensation package” of military aid and full diplomatic support if it only hits US-approved targets in Iran. The US has also committed to defending Israel from any Iranian response.

Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in response to a string of Israeli escalations, including the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Immediately after the attack, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran suffers “severe consequences.”

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK and Ireland partners congratulate 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner

Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 11 Oct 24,

On hearing the news that the Japanese Hibakusha survivor network Nihon Hidankyo (No More Hibakusha) has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, NFLA and Mayors for Peace Chapter Secretary Richard Outram lost no time in sending the worthy winners our congratulations.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee made their customary announcement on 11 October, two months before the formal award ceremony takes place in Oslo.

Founded on August 10, 1956, Nihon Hidankyo is the only Japanese national organisation of A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha). It has branches in all 47 Japanese prefectures, thus representing almost all organized Hibakusha. Impressively, its officials and members are all Hibakusha. Although most Hibakusha live in Japan, several thousand more live in Korea and in other parts of the world.

The website states that the organisation’s main objectives are:


1) The prevention of nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the signing of an international agreement for a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons. The convening of an international conference to reach this goal is also part of Hidankyo’s basic demand.

2) State compensation for the A-bomb damages. The state responsibility of having launched the war, which led to the damage by the atomic bombing, should be acknowledged, and the state compensation provided.

3) Improvement of the current policies and measures on the protection and assistance for the Hibakusha.

Although the Nihon Hidankyo website records that in March 2016 there were 174,080 Hibakusha living in Japan, since that time these numbers are fast dwindling as many are in their eighties or above. Doubtless this factor, and the fact that the organisation will be the holder of the current Nobel Peace Prize throughout 2025 when the world remembers and commemorates the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, have played their part in their worthy selection as this year’s winners.

More information can be found on the organisation’s website:

The text of the letter of congratulation follows…………………………………………….more https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/uk-and-ireland-partners-congratulate-2024-nobel-peace-prize-winner/

October 14, 2024 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japanese anti-nuclear organisation awarded 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

ABC News, By Aoife Hilton with wires, 11 Oct 24

In short:

Japanese Hibakusha organisation Nihon Hidankyo has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

Hibakusha is the grassroots movement for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945.

Norwegian Nobel Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the organisation was chosen for its efforts to establish a worldwide “nuclear taboo”.

The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Japanese Hibakusha organisation Nihon Hidankyo, the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced at a press conference in Oslo.

Hibakusha is the grassroots movement for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945.

Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said Nihon Hidankyo had become “the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan” and had made efforts for “a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating … that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.

He said the Nobel committee “wishes to honour all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace”.

The ‘nuclear taboo’

He credited the organisation with contributing to the “nuclear taboo”, referring to the status quo wherein world powers avoid nuclear weapon use.

“Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” he said.

“Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power.”

Mr Fryndes stressed it was “alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure” with new countries acquiring nuclear weapons and others bolstering their arsenals………………………………………………………………………………….

United Nations spokesperson in Geneva, Alessandra Vellucci, said the movement for Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors “fights against … even the idea that such a war can be fought again”.

“We’ve seen the effects of the bomb in the Second World War. We have got now weapons that are so many more times more powerful than those that we use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Peace Prize winner compares post-war Japan to Gaza

Nihon Hidankyo’s co-head Toshiyuki Mimaki, a survivor himself, was standing by at the Hiroshima City Hall for the announcement.

He said the prize would give a major boost towards efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible.

“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved.”

“Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished.”

He added the situation for children in Gaza is similar to the situation in Japan at the end of World War II.

“In Gaza, children in blood are being held. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Mr Mimaki said……………………………………………

Prize will be presented in December

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has regularly put focus on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently with its award to the the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), who won the award in 2017.

“The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said in a statement.

The Peace Prize is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.57 million.

It is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will………………………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/nobel-peace-prize/104464170

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US arms dealers witness ‘record profits’ from Israel’s year-long genocide in Gaza, war on Lebanon

The US and Israel’s ongoing military escalation across West Asia has helped the aerospace and defense industry outperform expectations

News Desk, OCT 10, 2024,  https://thecradle.co/articles/us-arms-dealers-witness-record-profits-from-israels-year-long-genocide-in-gaza-war-on-lebanon

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.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Jails US Journalist, Fires On UN Peacekeepers, Bombs Beirut, Kills More Kids, Etc

If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 11, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-jails-us-journalist-fires?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150080118&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I used to be able to write individual articles about the individual bad things the US empire is involved in around the world. These days I’m increasingly finding it necessary to cram a bunch of them into a single daily write-up to touch on as many of them as I can, just to stay on top of things.

Israel has arrested The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, an American journalist who had recently done some on the ground reporting on last week’s Iranian missile strikes in Israel. 

Israeli news outlet Ynet reports that the charges against Loffredo “include aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy,” which, as his fellow Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg notes, can be punished by the death penalty in Israel.

The Grayzone has further clarified in a statement that officially Israeli police are holding the reporter “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 and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”

Loffredo’s report on the missile strikes features footage of explosions at the IDF’s Nevatim Airbase, as well as shots of the location where a missile landed near the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Imagine if an Iranian missile landed right next to the CIA headquarters and the US said was forbidden on pain of death to report anything about this major news story, even for foreign journalists.

Interestingly, these same things have been reported on by other foreign news outlets without any arrests being made. As journalist Dan Cohen noted on Twitter, a report from Nick Schifrin of PBS News also featured footage of the blast site near Mossad headquarters, but Schifrin has not been arrested. Perhaps Loffredo is being singled out more because The Grayzone has been reporting on Israel’s lies and criminality than because of his work in this specific instance.

As of this writing, Loffredo is still jailed. 

In other news, Axios reports that the US and Israeli governments have moved closer to a consensus on Israel’s coming “major attack” on Iran, with the Biden administration accepting that this enormous escalation is going to happen despite fears that it will spark a large-scale war.

“The Biden administration accepts that Israel will soon launch a major attack on Iran, but it fears that strikes on certain targets could dramatically escalate the regional war,” writes Axios’ Barak Ravid.

A UN inquiry has accused Israel of “extermination” because of its systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system via “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

“The report found that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment,” a UN press release reads. “These actions constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination.”

If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.

Israeli forces repeatedly fired on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, injuring two UN workers by causing them to fall from a tower that was struck. Israel has killed hundreds of UN humanitarian workers in Gaza over the past year, but extending these attacks to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon is a significant new addition to the list of Israeli criminality.

Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated residential area of central Beirut have reportedly killed at least 22 people, injuring at least 117.

Israel killed at least 28 people in an airstrike on a school where civilians have been sheltering in Gaza, reportedly including many women and children as per usual. Al Jazeera reports that they’re having trouble identifying and counting the dead because the bodies are so unrecognizably shredded. Dozens more were killed elsewhere in Gaza over the last 24 hours.

And then there’s the New York Times report we discussed yesterday adding to the mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israeli forces are routinely, deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip. There is too much evidence that this is happening for anyone to legitimately deny it at this point.

Today the US State Department did not hold a press briefing, which is understandable. If I were in charge of justifying the behavior of the US government and its allies, I wouldn’t want to face the press today either.

UPDATE: The Grayzone reports that Jeremy Loffredo has been released after three days in jail. Israeli police are still holding his passport and forbidding him to leave the country until October 20th while they look through his phone. Further updates to follow.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Slaughter In Gaza And Lebanon As War With Iran Approaches

And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.

Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell. 

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 09, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/slaughter-in-gaza-and-lebanon-as?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=149992165&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Israel appears to have begun its long-planned ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, with the IDF dropping bombs, issuing evacuation orders for multiple hospitals, attacking civilians with sniper drones, and besieging civilian populations in order to force tens of thousands of people to either move south or die. Israel has reportedly been dropping leaflets on the Jabalia refugee camp ordering people to leave, and then shooting anyone who tries to.

Since the seventh of October last year Israel has committed roughly 100 October sevenths in Gaza; scores of American medical workers who volunteered in the enclave signed an open letter to president Biden estimating the real death toll from Israel’s onslaught at over 118,000. Israel has also committed about two October sevenths in Lebanon during that time, with the majority of the 2,100 Israeli killings in that country coming just in the last few weeks.

As Israeli murderousness ramps up in both Gaza and Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese people telling them that they need to somehow defeat Hezbollah in order to “save Lebanon before it plunges into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

Israeli officials have been saying they’re going to destroy Lebanon like they destroyed Gaza for months. Back in December Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said, “Every person in Lebanon can take the map, the aerial photograph of Gaza, place it on an aerial photograph of Beirut, and ask themselves if this is what they want to happen there.” Now Netanyahu himself is saying this.

Notably, Netanyahu’s statement was delivered in English, with English subtitles. This wasn’t actually a plea made to the people of Lebanon, it was propaganda made for western consumption. Netanyahu does not actually believe the Lebanese people are going to take up arms against Hezbollah to stop their country from being destroyed, he’s just creating a narrative to justify what he already plans on doing to Lebanon.

And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.

And we haven’t even talked about Iran yet. NBC News reports that US military officials have been discussing directly joining in Israel’s planned attack on Iran, potentially launching their own airstrikes on the Iranian military whenever Israel begins its attack. 

Whether the US joins with Israel in its coming attack or not, Iran has already made it clear that it will retaliate against any further aggressions by Israel, and Israel has made it clear that if Iran strikes back it’s going to ramp up its aggressions and perhaps start attacking Iranian energy infrastructure. If this blows up into full-scale war, as looks increasingly likely, it’s inevitable that the US will come to Israel’s defense.

Axios and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid have a new report out on how super duper frustrated the Biden administration is becoming with Israeli warmongering. In typical Axios fashion the outlet reports that the White House is becoming “increasingly distrustful” of Israel’s planned military operations against Iran and Lebanon, but that, in typical Biden administration fashion, its American sources admit that the US “would very likely help Israel defend itself regardless” of whatever happens.

Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell. 

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s genocidal support for Israel, saying the weapons it has been giving them “allow Israel to defend itself.” She also named Iran as the number one enemy of the United States.

In an appearance on The View, Harris was asked what she would have done differently from President Biden, and she said “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Then later she added, “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me, that will be one of the differences: I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet.”

And lest you make the mistake of thinking Trump would be any better, last week the former president said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and criticized the Biden administration for not being sufficiently aggressive on this front.

“They asked [Biden], what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran?” Trump said at a campaign event on Friday. “And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I said I think he’s got that one wrong.”

Anyone who still says Trump is a peacemaker is a damn fool. Statements like this are in full alignment with the absolute worst warmongers in Washington like John Bolton or Lindsey Graham.

Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s the trajectory the US empire has us on. An active genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the threat of another extermination campaign in Lebanon, and acceleration toward a direct war of unimaginable horror with Iran.

These psychos must be stopped.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Greater Israel:” Cabinet Minister Plots Seizure of Territory from 6 Neighbors, including Lebanon

Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.

Juan Cole, 10/11/2024,  https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/territory-neighbors-including.html—

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday that Israel has no designs on Turkey, denying charges by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that “the Israeli government, which has gone mad in the Holy Land, will possibly target our homeland with its religious fanaticism after Palestine and Lebanon.”

Unfortunately for Herzog, on the same day, remarks surfaced from 2016 by Minister of Finance and Civil Administrator of the Palestinian West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, which gave credence to Erdogan’s fears of Israeli expansionism. Smotrich belongs to the Kahanaist, Religious Zionism Party, the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazism.

Herzog is a member of the center-left Labor Party, which at some points has been willing to accept a Palestinian state. Labor itself, however, has attempted to expand Israeli territory at the expense of its neighbors on some occasions, as with its seizure of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian Gaza in 1956, and again in 1967 with its seizure of the Palestine territories of Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights.

The Jordanian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the remarks by Smotrich as a “reflection of religious fanaticism.” In a television interview that has resurfaced on social media, Smotrich said that a prophecy predicted that Jerusalem would extend to Damascus. He also said that Israel would extend to the east of the Jordan River into the country of Jordan, and would have parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It goes without saying that he wanted, as well, Gaza and the West Bank. Smotrich in 2016 was a member of parliament for the Jewish Home Party (HaBayit HaYehudi), one of the components of his present Religious Zionism Party.

Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.

Smotrich is allied with Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security. Although the two are often underestimated, they appear to have a hold on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and have been central to the prosecution of the total war on Gaza and now Lebanon.

The two are advocating an Israeli military occupation of Gaza like that in the Palestinian West Bank, as well as the establishment of Israelis squatter-settlements in Gaza. They also want the Israeli army to take over the task of the distribution of food aid, though they advocate limiting daily calories available to Palestinians to what is sufficient to keep them from starvation.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Report: US Considers Launching Airstrikes Against Iran To Support Israeli Attack

US officials say Israel hasn’t briefed the US on its specific plans to attack Iran,

by Dave DeCamp October 8, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/08/report-us-considers-launching-airstrikes-against-iran-to-support-israeli-attack/#gsc.tab=0


The US has discussed the idea of supporting Israel’s expected attack on Iran with intelligence or with airstrikes of its own, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing two unnamed US officials.

The report said senior US military officials have discussed launching “very limited” airstrikes against Iranian targets inside Iran or outside of the country, though the US officials said intelligence support for Israel was more likely.

So far, no final decision on US action has been made, according to the report, and the US officials said Israel has not briefed the US on its specific plans to strike Iran in response to the Iranian missile barrage that hit Israel last week.

Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel in response to multiple Israeli escalations in the region, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. In the aftermath, the US said it would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for the attack.

The NBC report said US officials were worried that Israel could launch its attack while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Wednesday. However, after the report was published, Gallant’s trip to the US has been canceled.

Israeli media said the trip was postponed because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to speak with President Biden and wants the Israeli security cabinet to agree on a plan to attack Iran before Gallant heads to Washington.

The Israelis are considering several types of targets to hit in Iran: military and intelligence infrastructure, air defenses, and energy facilities. Based on media reports, Israel does not plan to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in its first attack, but could if Iran hits back and the situation turns into a full-blown war, which Israeli officials think is likely to happen.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israeli retaliation threat sparks call in Iran for nuclear weapons

any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

By Afp, 11 October 2024 ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-13946359/Israeli-retaliation-threat-sparks-call-Iran-nuclear-weapons.html

With the prospect of Israeli retaliation for Iran’s missile attack looming, some Iranian hardliners want their government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue atomic weapons.

Israel has vowed to launch a “deadly, precise, and surprising” attack on Iran in retaliation for its second-ever direct strike on Israeli territory.

On October 1, Iran launched 200 missiles on Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed militant leaders and a general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

More than three dozen hardline lawmakers have submitted a letter to Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, urging it to revisit the Islamic republic’s nuclear doctrine, local media said on Wednesday.

The parliamentarians also called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

“Today, neither the international organisations nor… European countries or America can control the Zionist regime which commits crimes at will,” lawmaker Hassan Ali Akhalghi Amiri said, citing this as his reason for supporting the call.

Another lawmaker, Mohammad Reza Sabaghian, said “building nuclear weapons is Iran’s option to create deterrence”, according to the Ham Mihan daily.

On Tuesday, state media reported that parliament had received a bill on “the expansion of the country’s nuclear industry”, without elaborating.

The Islamic republic has maintained its policy against acquiring nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.

– ‘Red line’ –

Iran has been drawn into the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, with Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militants on the front lines of two wars with Israel………………………………………………….

US President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposed striking oil installations.

Iran has warned that any attack on its “infrastructure” would provoke an “even stronger response”, while Revolutionary Guards General Rassul Sanairad has said an attack on nuclear or energy sites would cross a “red line”.

– Message to the West –

Iranian political commentator Maziar Khosravi said the lawmakers’ letter is “rather a strong message addressed to Western supporters” of Israel “so that they try to control” it.

Ultimately, he said, any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader, and “is not linked to the will of the MPs”.

It is far from the first time that Iran has seen debate over whether it should revisit its nuclear doctrine.

Shortly after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel in April, Kamal Kharazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said the Islamic republic was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

But “if Israel dares to threaten Iran with a nuclear weapon, we may reconsider our nuclear doctrine”, he said in an interview with Al Jazeera at the time.

For Khosravi, it remains unlikely for Iran to change its doctrine in the meantime.

But “if Israel attacks the nuclear facilities, what seems likely to me at this stage is the withdrawal of Iran from the NPT”, he said, referring to the United Nations treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian who took office in July has sought to revive a landmark 2015 nuclear deal to ease the country’s isolation and offset the economic impact of US sanctions.

The deal granted Iran sanctions relief in return for accepting curbs and monitoring that were designed to ensure it could not develop an atomic weapon covertly — a goal Iran has always denied having.

The accord has been hanging by a thread since the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.

Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities.

“We want to tell the world that we are not after a nuclear bomb,” said Pezeshkian in an interview with CNN in New York last month.

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” he said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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