Let Israel’s Leaders Get Arrested for War Crimes
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Sun, 05 May 2024 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-05-05/ty-article-opinion/.premium/let-them-get-arrested/0000018f-44af-d17f-adcf-fdef576b0000
All decent Israelis must ask themselves the following questions: Is their country committing war crimes in Gaza? If so, how should they be stopped?
How should the culprits be punished? Who can punish them? Is it reasonable for crimes to go unprosecuted and criminals to be exculpated?
One may, of course, reply in the negative to the first question – Israel is not committing any war crimes in Gaza – thereby rendering the rest of the questions superfluous.
But how can one answer in the negative in the face of the facts and the situation in Gaza:
about 35,000 people killed and another 10,000 missing, about two-thirds of them innocent civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces;
among the dead are around 13,000 children, nearly 400 medical workers and more than 200 journalists; 70 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged;
30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition;
two people in 10,000 die each day from starvation and disease. (All figures are from the United Nations and international organizations.)
Is it possible that these horrific figures came to be without the commission of war crimes?
There are wars whose cause is just and whose means are criminal; the justice of the war does not justify its crimes. Killing and destruction, starvation and displacement on this scale could not have occurred without the commission of war crimes. Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice.
Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, does not try to deny the reality in Gaza. It only makes the claim of antisemitism: Why pick on us? What about Sudan and Yemen?
The logic doesn’t hold: A driver who is stopped for speeding won’t get off by arguing that he’s not the only one. The crimes and the criminals remain. Israel will never prosecute anyone for these offenses. It never has, neither for its wars nor its occupation. On a good day, it will prosecute a soldier who stole some Palestinian’s credit card.
But the human sense of justice wants to see criminals brought to justice and prevented from committing crimes in the future. By this logic, we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will do its job.
Every Israeli patriot and everyone who cares about the good of the state should wish for this. This is the only way that Israel’s moral standard, according to which it is permitted everything, will change. It is not easy to hope for the arrest of the heads of your state and your army, and even more difficult to admit it publicly, but is there any other way to stop them?
The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.
Someone must stand trial for this.
Just as many Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to be punished for the corruption of which he is accused, so should they wish for him and the perpetrators subordinate to him to be punished for much more serious crimes, the crimes of Gaza.
They cannot be allowed to go unpunished.
Nor is it possible to blame only Hamas, even if it has a part in the crimes.
We are the ones who killed, starved, displaced, and destroyed on such a massive scale. Someone must be brought to justice for this.
Netanyahu is the head, of course. The picture of him imprisoned in The Hague together with the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff is the stuff of nightmares to every Israeli.
And yet, it is probably warranted.
It is highly unlikely, however. The pressure being exerted on the court by Israel and the United States are enormous (and wrong). But scare tactics can be important.
If the officials actually refrain from traveling abroad in the next few years, if they actually live in fear of what may come, we can be sure that in the next war, they’ll think twice before sending the military on campaigns of death and destruction of such insane proportions. We can find a little comfort in that, at least.
Israeli Invasion of Rafah Appears Imminent After Evacuation Order
Israel dropped leaflets on eastern Rafah warning ‘extreme force’ will be used in the area
by Dave DeCamp, May 6, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/06/israeli-invasion-of-rafah-appears-imminent-after-evacuation-order/
The Israeli invasion of Rafah appears to be imminent as Israeli forces dropped leaflets on the eastern part of the city, warning that “extreme force” will be used in the area.
The Israeli military said it ordered the evacuation of about 100,000 people and suggested they go to the al-Mawasi refugee camp on the coast. Aid groups have warned that an evacuation of civilians from Rafah, which is sheltering an estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians, is not possible because there’s nowhere to go due to the sheer destruction in Gaza.
In response to Israel’s evacuation order, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said al-Mawasi did not have the resources to take in the evacuees. The NRC warned that the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order could lead to “the deadliest phase of this conflict.”
The international charity Oxfam also strongly condemned the Israeli evacuation order and noted that Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it claimed were safe. “Oxfam condemns this forced evacuation order, the potential Rafah offensive, and the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel that has helped bring us to this point,” said Abby Maxman, CEO of Oxfam America.
“There is nowhere safe to go: for over six months, Israel has routinely killed civilians and aid workers, including in clearly marked ‘safe zones’ and ‘evacuation routes.’ The notion that the 100,000 civilians being evacuated by Israel will be safe and protected is simply not credible,” Maxman added.
US officials have claimed they’re opposed to Israel invading Rafah without a clear plan to protect civilians. But there’s no sign the Biden administration is putting any real pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel appears to be going ahead with the attack and US weapons shipments to Israel continue to flow.
Israeli bombs pounded Rafah before the evacuation order was issued, with reports of at least 22 civilians, including eight children, being killed in the strikes. Rafah residents said fresh Israeli strikes hit the city after the evacuation order as well.
Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich calls for ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza
Julia Conley. Common Dreams, Wed, 01 May 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/491110-Israels-Finance-Minister-Smotrich-calls-for-total-annihilation-of-Gaza
In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of cities and refugee camps in the blockaded enclave.
“There are no half measures,” said Smotrich at a government meeting. “Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat — total annihilation.”
“‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven,'” he added, quoting the biblical story of the nation of Amalek, whose people God commanded the Israelites to exterminate and which right-wing Israeli leaders have long invoked to justify the killing of Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also referenced Amalek in the first weeks of Israel’s current escalation against Gaza; Smotrich’s comments came as he and other government officials pushed Netanyahu to forge ahead with a planned attack on the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million people have been displaced as other cities across Gaza have been decimated by Israeli forces.
Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called on President Joe Biden to stop condemning thousands of U.S. college students who have demanded a cease-fire and an end to military aid for Israel and direct his ire toward the Israeli government, which he has repeatedly insisted is targeting Hamas despite its genocidal statements and indiscriminate attacks.
“In case the Israeli government’s genocidal intent in Gaza was unclear to anyone despite its daily war crimes against the Palestinian people, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s words should serve as another wake-up call,” said Hooper. “The intent of the Netanyahu government has always been Palestinian land without Palestinians, and violence has always been the route to achieve that heinous goal. Instead of condemning college students, President Biden must condemn Israeli leaders for making and acting on their genocidal threats.”
In recent months, Israeli officials have stated that the “migration” of Gaza residents is their ultimate goal in relentlessly attacking the enclave, that all Palestinians in Gaza are “responsible” for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October and are legitimate targets, that the enclave should be “flattened,” and that the Israel Defense Forces is fighting “human animals.”
Comment: And total annihilation seems to be Israel’s final solution.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan sardonically suggested that Smotrich’s comments will be deemed acceptable by the Biden administration, members of Congress, and the U.S. corporate media because he didn’t “say it on a college campus.”
“Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the security cabinet, ought to be fired immediately over his latest remarks,” read an editorial in Haaretz Tuesday night that was published as police in New York were storming Columbia University to arrest students.
Comment: It’s notable that Haaretz published that editorial, however the majority of Israelis still support their government’s genocide, and a significant minority claim it is not being aggressive enough.
“That’s how any properly run country would act, and all the more so a country against which the International Court of Justice in The Hague has issued provisional measures requiring it to refrain from genocide, including one requiring it to deal properly with incitement to genocide.”
Smotrich and others have objected to what National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Tuesday called a “reckless” deal that would allow for the release of scores of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners who have long been detained in Israeli jails. The deal would include a 40-day halt in fighting.
CAIR also pointed out Tuesday that five units of Israel’s security forces have been accused of committing a “gross violation of human rights,” according to a U.S. State Department analysis.
“Our nation’s repeated claim that it supports international law and human rights,” said national executive director Nihad Awad, “is a cruel illusion.”
Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day
“To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy,” said one expert.
Common dreams JESSICA CORBETT, May 03, 2024
As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.
Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. “Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitorreports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.
RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:
Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem……………………………………………………..
The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.
“Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances,” said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization’s director-general. “Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate.”…………………………………….
While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,” members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.
“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022,” Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.
Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, “to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy.”…………………………… more https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-journalists
The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face
The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance
JONATHAN COOK, APR 30, 2024, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
How Israel violates International Law in Gaza: expert report
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/how-israel-violates-international-law-in-gaza-expert-report/
The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.
An independent expert report lays out how Israel systematically violated U.S. and International Law in Gaza, concluding that Israel launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas due to “extremely relaxed rules of engagement.”
BY STEVE FRANCE
Just days after the Biden administration showered the Israeli military with billions of dollars more in lethal aid, still with no apparent effort to restrict its use on non-military populations and structures, Palestinian solidarity activists were gifted with powerful ammunition to challenge Israel’s genocidal disregard for the International and U.S. laws and norms that protect civilians in war situations.
In a sober but scathing 76-page report, publicly released on April 24, the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20), details “multiple credible incidents constituting violations of international humanitarian law, military best practices, and [improper] restrictions on humanitarian assistance.”
The volunteer and unaffiliated task force of prominent experts — including two recently departed senior State Department officials, legal scholar Noura Erekat, and a former senior “joint terminal attack controller,” Wes Bryant — was rapidly formed after President Biden signed NSM-20 on February 8, 2024. The memorandum tasked the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress by May 8 on the compliance of Israel (and, nominally, other U.S. allies) with International Humanitarian Law and military best practices, as well as on whether it has impeded humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Co-chair Noura Erekat said at a briefing that the task force report has two main goals: first, to “inform” State and Defense officials’ review with a selection of well-documented and assessed incidents of misuse of aid, and second, to put pressure on the agencies and the White House to act vigorously to curb the abuses. The pressure will depend on the report’s ability to focus the understanding of the media, the relevant experts, and activists on specific illustrative cases and to clearly explain the legal framework and standards that are supposed to apply.
The panel reported that its
“aggregate analysis of credible reports involving U.S-provided weapons by Israeli forces indicates a context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians…and attacks against civilian objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.”
The experts further reported:
“Israeli intelligence sources cited by credible media reports indicate that these patterns of unlawful attacks reflect reliance on an unyielding and unconditioned supply of U.S. weapons, relaxed rules of engagement, application of collective punishment, and the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate thousands of targets (including civilian police and civil defense personnel), at maximum speed and with minimal human oversight.”
The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.
Just as important for non-experts is the report’s outline of exactly how the U.S. and international legal systems are supposed to protect civilians from harm — and how they are flouted. Thus, the experts point to three “fundamental rules [that] govern targeting decisions in armed conflict”:
1 Distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives, with a presumption that persons or objects are protected from attack unless the information available at the time indicates that they are military objectives.
2. Take all feasible “precautions” in planning and conducting attacks to avoid or at least minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects.
3. Respect “proportionality,” i.e., conduct no attacks that are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The greater the foreseeable harm to civilians and civilian objects, the greater the foreseeable military advantage necessary to justify a particular attack. International humanitarian law (IHL) gives special protection to hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, as well as to humanitarian relief operations, and UN premises.
The report outlines the basics of “civilian harm mitigation practices,” including U.S. Defense Department practices. A key concept is “no-strike entities” (NSEs), which DOD says “may include, but are not limited to, medical, educational, diplomatic, cultural, religious, and historical sites, or other objects that do not, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, effectively contribute to the enemy’s war-fighting or war-sustaining capability.” The task force charges that Israel has “routinely and repeatedly” targeted six fundamental categories of NSEs, plus a broad array of slightly less protected entities.
Proportionality ‘rendered meaningless’
A common excuse the Israelis advance for the death and wounding of civilians is that they are being used by Hamas as “human shields.” The report notes that “taking advantage of the presence of civilians or other protected persons with intent to shield a military objective from attack constitutes a war crime.” However, U.S. military rules “affirm that an attacker shares responsibility for civilian harm with its enemies if it fails to take feasible precautions” to avoid killing shields.
NSM-20 itself spells out that its allies must “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede . . . the transport or delivery of [U.S.] humanitarian assistance and U.S. Government-supported international…humanitarian assistance.”
Outlining the “context” of Israel’s “systematic disregard for IHL,” the report cites “recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide-area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians or otherwise protected persons…and attacks against civilians objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.” A high-ranking former IDF officer is quoted as condemning Israel’s “reckless conduct,” which he says “reflects an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance it.”
“Extremely relaxed rules of engagement” inconsistent with IHL also explain much of the harm done to civilians. Thus, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omar Tishler, has stated that neighborhoods have been attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner.”
Such attacks are facilitated by an expansion of the concept of “military advantage” in its proportionality assessments to weigh civilian harms against the advantages of “an operation as a whole,” rather than against each individual attack. That move “renders the proportionality rule meaningless,” the report says, as it’s impossible to compare the harms of a single specific attack with all the military advantages allegedly achieved or sought by the whole Gaza operation, which has lasted more than six months.
Similarly, former U.S. Air Force drone controller Bryant noted how Israel blurs the requirement of taking precautions to protect civilians “by employing precautions it knows are ineffective,” such as texting populations whose phones are not functional.
Also “relaxed” is Israel’s use of the term terrorist. Thus, a reserve officer told Ha’aretz, “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” The extensive, open-ended imposition of “kill zones” is another way to disguise genocide, an Israeli intelligence officer has explained. With a “kill zone” lasting a month or two, “you could stick with an order that anyone approaching should be shot…But we’ve been there for six months, and people have to start coming out; they are trying to survive, and that leads to very serious incidents.”
Lastly, Israel asserts it can block humanitarian aid, if it has “serious reasons for fearing” that relief consignments “will be diverted from their civilian destination or otherwise provide a definite advantage to the enemy’s military efforts” — a position the task force says relies on a “defective rule” from 1949 that was modified in 1977 and superseded by a rule of customary international law. Recent UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions confirm that Israel “must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief and may not deny such relief based on fears that a small portion of aid may be seized by armed groups.”
In conclusion, the report warns that “the Task Force’s findings raise grave concerns regarding the Administration’s compliance with both U.S. and international law, particularly with respect to security assistance and arms transfers.” It then identifies the laws in question, as well as citing “obligations under customary international law to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and to cooperate to bring serious violations of peremptory norms of general international law to an end through lawful means.”
Biden Wanted To Sanction An Israeli Battalion But He Didn’t Because Israel Said No
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 27, 2024
The Biden administration has reportedly canned its plans to issue sanctions on an extremist IDF unit for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank, following backlash from Israel and its high-powered supporters within the US government.
The State Department has put on hold its intention to impose sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces “Netzah Yehuda” battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank and is reviewing the issue in light of information Israel provided in recent days, U.S. sources familiar with the issue said.
Why it matters: The review is part of a consultation process outlined in an agreement between the U.S. and Israel. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also been under extensive pressure from the Israeli government, members of Congress and some senior Biden administration officials to reconsider the possible sanctions.
The big picture: The Biden administration had intended to withhold U.S. military aid and training from the Netzah Yehuda battalion — an unprecedented move in the history of relations between the countries.
As Dr Assal Rad has highlighted on Twitter, this decision follows a sequence of events in which ProPublica revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was ignoring his own State Department’s recommendation to sanction Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses like rape and torture, after which Blinken announced that he was preparing to issue sanctions after all. This announcement was met with outrage from Israel and its apologists, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu penning a furious screed calling the planned sanctions “the height of absurdity and a moral low”. Those planned sanctions are now canceled.
Or to put it more simply, the Biden administration had planned to sanction an IDF battalion, but it didn’t because Israel said no………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-wanted-to-sanction-an-idf-unit?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144069670&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
UK troops could be sent into Gaza to help with aid deliveries
Suggestion comes after US announces none of its own troops would be sent to the enclave
Middle East Eye, By MEE staff, 27 April 2024
British troops could be deployed in Gaza to assist with aid deliveries, after the US said it would not be sending any of its own ground forces.
The US previously said a “third party” would be responsible for driving trucks along a floating causeway onto the beach, a role the BBC has learned could be filled by British forces.
The BBC on Saturday quoted Whitehall as saying no decision had yet been made and that the issue had not yet been raised with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
US President Joe Biden first announced the plans for a floating pier in Gaza to deliver aid in March.
The US said it would coordinate the security of the temporary pier with Israel and that the temporary port would increase the amount of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the war-battered enclave by “hundreds of additional truckloads” per day.
A British defence source told AFP that a UK ship to house hundreds of US army personnel building the pier had set sail from Cyprus.
According to the Pentagon, Royal Navy support ship Cardigan Bay will help to support the international effort to construct the pier, which is set to be completed in May…………………………………………. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-troops-could-be-sent-gaza-help-aid-deliveries
Israeli Strikes in Rafah Kill 22, Including 18 Children
The bombardment came after the House approved $26 billion in spending to support the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians
by Dave DeCamp April 21, 2024 https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/21/israeli-strikes-kill-22-in-rafah-including-18-children/
Israeli strikes hit the southern Gaza city of Rafah Saturday night into Sunday morning, killing 22 people, including 18 children, The Associated Press reported.
The bombardment came just hours after the US House of Representatives passed a $26 billion bill that includes about $17 billion in military aid for Israel to support the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
According to AP, one of the overnight strikes killed a man, his wife, and their three-year-old child. The woman was 30 weeks pregnant, and medical staff at the nearby Kuwaiti hospital were able to save the baby. The second strike killed two women and 17 children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that the number of Palestinians killed in the Strip has reached 34,097, and 76,980 more have been wounded. The death toll is considered a low estimate since it doesn’t take into account people who are dead under the rubble.
Rafah is packed with over 1 million Palestinian civilians and has been getting hit with near-daily Israeli strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to launch a full-scale invasion of the city.
The US has claimed that it’s concerned about Netanyahu’s plans to invade Rafah but is not putting any real pressure on Israel since it continues to provide military aid and political support. US and Israeli officials discussed the potential assault last week, and the White House said the two sides had a “shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah.”
On Sunday, Netanyahu thanked the US for the new aid being passed through Congress and vowed to escalate in Gaza. “In the coming days, we will increase the military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to free our hostages and achieve our victory,” he said.
Israel Is Turning Hospitals Into Mass Graves While The West Fixates On ‘Antisemitism’
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 22, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-is-turning-hospitals-into?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143854121&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
—
A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre.
“Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.”
No no, that’s a different mass grave from a different IDF massacre at a completely different Gaza hospital. The now completely destroyed al-Shifa Hospital was in Gaza City; I’m talking about the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where some 210 bodies have reportedly been discovered in a mass grave after Israeli forces withdrew from the city earlier this month. Two different massacres, two different hospitals, two different mass graves full of Palestinian civilians.
The IDF are just attacking hospitals and mowing down civilians and trying to bury the evidence of their crimes, so naturally we’re seeing the western political-media class focus very hard on the problem of antisemitism allegations on college campuses.
“Biden denounces antisemitism on college campuses amid Columbia protests,” reads a new headline from The Washington Post.
“As Protests Continue at Columbia, Some Jewish Students Feel Targeted,” The New York Times urgently warns us.
“White House condemns ‘blatantly antisemitic’ protests as agitators engulf Columbia University,” blares Fox News.
“Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’,” says CNN.
“Columbia University: White House condemns antisemitism at college protests,” the BBC reports.
Getting far less attention than the fact that some Zionist university students are feeling uncomfortable feelings because other students say Palestinians are human beings is the fact that Israel is establishing a pattern of massacring civilians and burying them in mass graves outside hospitals in Gaza, or the fact that the IDF has been butchering children in Rafah, or the fact that the International Criminal Court is reportedly considering charging Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials for war crimes.
Those matters are important, just not nearly as important as how some western Jews feel emotionally upset about pro-Palestine protests. For that, the world must stop spinning on its axis until this extremely egregious problem has been addressed.
All the western spin and distortion around Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza these last six months have revolved around centering feelings over human lives. How western Jewish Zionists are feeling about pro-Palestine sentiments. How Joe Biden’s feelings secretly feel about Netanyahu. How Israelis feel about October 7.
Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus the narrative on what feelings are being felt by a politically convenient population, the western press fall all over themselves to do so with tumescent enthusiasm. Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus on Israeli atrocities, the western press are nowhere to be found.
If you belong to a group that isn’t supported by the western empire, you can see your entire family murdered right in front of you and the western political-media class still won’t consider you a victim. If you belong to a group that the empire regards as human, then even someone offending your feelings will be viewed as an unforgivable hate crime.
As Support For Gaza Goes Mainstream, Don’t Let The Empire Co-Opt The Movement
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 06, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/as-support-for-gaza-goes-mainstream?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143329859&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Opposition to the slaughter in Gaza appears to be getting more mainstream, which is obviously great, but when political impulses go mainstream it means there’s going to be a massive and concerted effort to funnel public sentiment in a direction that doesn’t damage the interests of the empire.
They’re going to try to blame this all on Netanyahu.
They’re going to insist that Israel itself is fine and the only thing that went wrong was a fluke incident in which an aberrational right wing faction briefly got into power.
They’re going to try to wash the western empire’s hands of the mass atrocities it directly facilitated in Gaza.
They’re going to try to frame Biden as a basically decent politician who found himself trapped in an impossible situation.
They’re going to keep pretending a two-state solution is right around the corner and doing everything they can to stall out meaningful change on Palestinian rights, while blaming any obstacles to peace on the Palestinian resistance.
They’re going to pollute the information ecosystem with a deluge of messaging which is all designed to counter the notion that Gaza means the entire status quo needs to be overhauled — with regard to Israel-Palestine, with regard to US foreign policy, with regard to the US government itself, and with regard to the western power structure in general.
They’re going to say everything they need to say to ensure that everyone understands that the basic status quo in Israel, the United States and the western world is working perfectly fine, and this was all just an innocent little oopsie poopsie caused by a few bad apples.
They’ll justify, they’ll excuse, they’ll exonerate, and then they’ll distract, moving public attention on to the next big thing and allowing the amnesia of the daily news churn to wash Gaza from our attention — all while pretending to be on our side.
This messaging will need to be fought tooth and claw. We cannot allow them to neuter this political moment with spin and propaganda. We need to make sure their criminality remains front and center of public awareness, and we need to push for the real revolutionary changes that Gaza plainly proves are needed.
Let mainstream sentiment turn against the current Israeli regime and bring an end to the butchery in Gaza, but don’t let the imperial narrative managers co-opt anything. Don’t let them hijack the zeitgeist that’s been building.
View all words and actions of the western political-media class with aggressive skepticism, and push back forcefully every time they try to push public sentiment in a direction that advantages the empire.
Israel targeted aid convoy ‘car by car’ – charity founder
https://www.rt.com/news/595400-israel-targeted-aid-convoy-car-by-car/ 7 Apr 24
Jose Andres has dismissed the IDF’s claim that the deadly attack on the World Central Kitchen aid workers was a ‘mistake’
The Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity group in Gaza was not a mistake, as the convoy was targeted “systematically, car by car,” the group’s founder and celebrity chef Jose Andres told Reuters on Wednesday.
Three Britons, a Polish national, an Australian, a Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen were killed in the incident, which has sparked international condemnation.
Israel’s military, the IDF, knew the aid convoy’s movements as there had been clear communication between the WCK and IDF, Andres said.
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” the chef told Reuters.
The convoy was made up of three cars, including two armored vehicles, which clearly displayed the WCK logo. All three were hit during the strike.
According to the chef, after the IDF attacked the first armored car, the team was able to escape and move to the second armored vehicle. The second car was then attacked, forcing the volunteers to move to the third.
The aid workers tried to communicate to make clear who they were, Reuters cites Andres, but the third car was then hit, “and we saw the consequences of that,” he concluded.
Andres’ account of the events echoes Tuesday’s report in the Haaretz newspaper that said that the IDF bombed the convoy three times intentionally, as it suspected that there was a Hamas operative among the aid workers.
The Israeli leadership apologized for the incident. IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi called the incident a “grave mistake” and said the military had no intention of harming WCK aid workers. The general blamed the strike on misidentification. Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed “deep sorrow and sincere apologies” to Andres. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that such “tragic” and “unintended” incidents happen “in wartime.”
The air strike was condemned by Israel’s staunchest allies the US, UK, and other countries, including those whose nationals were among the dead.
According to the UN, at least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s offensive six months ago. Hamas has previously accused Israel of targeting aid distribution sites, Reuters notes.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Palestinian militants carried out a surprise cross-border raid on October 7 last year, killing some 1,100 people and taking more than 200 hostages. The Israeli military campaign has since left nearly 33,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Israel Lets Some Aid Into Gaza So The US Will Keep Giving It Weapons To Kill People In Gaza
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 06, 2024
Israel has generously and compassionately reopened the Erez crossing to allow aid into Gaza, as it is the only way to ensure that the US will keep sending them weapons to kill the people in Gaza.
Biden sent Netanyahu one warning about a failure to protect civilians possibly costing Israel its US support and the crossing opened immediately, which proves (A) that Israel has been intentionally starving Gazans by closing entrances off from aid and (B) that Biden could have ordered this to stop at any time.
The Biden administration approved another weapons package for Israel on the same day Israel killed a bunch of international aid workers in Gaza and bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. But please, tell me more about how frustrated and angry and outraged and upset Biden’s feelings are feeling toward Israel.
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The huge amount of western outrage and sympathy we’re seeing over the IDF assassination of an international aid convoy compared to the systematic extermination of Palestinians we’ve seen over the last six months confirms the west only regards white people as full human beings, which is a point we’d already seen driven home by the disproportionate amount of outrage and sympathy we saw over Ukraine.
But you know what? We’ll take it. Things are that desperate that if you can only support an end to the Gaza genocide if you see six westerners get killed, I say welcome aboard anyway. Hopefully this is the beginning of the formation of an actual conscience that’s worth a damn.
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The mass media are reporting that the preliminary IDF debrief into the killing of several World Central Kitchen employees in Gaza has found that the multiple strikes were not carried out with the intention of killing those workers, a report which if you ask me has big “CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade” energy.
Haaretz has a new article out titled “At Singapore Airshow, the Gaza War Was a Selling Point for Israeli Weapon Manufacturers,” which is exactly what it sounds like. One of the ugliest things about this dystopia is that acts of mass military slaughter are always immensely profitable for a specific industry. They’re profitable in and of themselves, even before you add in things like land and resource grabs, just by helping to market and sell more weapons.
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Stop calling this a “war”. A war doesn’t involve conversations about whether or not a walled-in population should be allowed to have food, medicine and electricity. If you have that much control over a population, you can’t be at war with it. You’re just killing a bunch of prisoners.
Biden and his cohorts aren’t mad at Netanyahu for committing a genocide, they’re mad at Netanyahu for not hiding a genocide………………………………………..more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-lets-some-aid-into-gaza-so?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143320632&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous
In the span of just a few hours we learned that Israel committed a horrific massacre at al-Shifa hospital, struck an Iranian consulate in Syria killing multiple Iranian military officers, and killed a vehicle full of international aid workers in an airstrike. This murderous regime is out of control.
Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. Haaretz reports that the IDF has set up “kill zones” in Gaza where they just shoot anything that moves, with an IDF reserve officer saying the number of Hamas members Israel claims to have killed is massively inflated because “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” Haaretz notes that the three escaped Israeli hostages the IDF gunned down in December had wandered into one of these kill zones.
A Doctors Without Borders physician went on Sky News to talk about Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and the Murdoch shill anchor who was interviewing her asked her if Hamas was active in al-Shifa hospital fighting Israelis. The doctor, Tanya Haj-Hassan, told him “I am just shocked that we’re still having this conversation” and went on to describe how Israel’s assault on Gazan healthcare workers is so methodical that Gazan hospital staff have been changing out of their scrubs before leaving work because Israeli troops are picking off anyone in scrubs.
At the beginning of the year I tweeted, “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.” Since then we’ve learned that the IDF has been experimenting with new military robots in its Gaza assault, and that Israeli startups are now looking to start exporting new AI-powered war machinery marketed as having been “battle-tested” in Gaza………………………………………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-getting-more-murderous?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143187375&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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