nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Armed by Washington, Israel Trashes the Genocide Convention

Stop treating Gaza like a natural disaster.

SCHEERPOST, By Stan Cox and Priti Gulati Cox / TomDispatch 20 Mar 24

It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its “orders,” and (2) how hard the Biden administration has pushed Israel to abide by those orders. Spoiler alert: the short answers are (1) not well and (2) not very.

The American government has provided most of the armaments and targeting technologies being used to kill Gazans by the thousands while turning many of the rest of them into refugees by destroying their homes, offices, schools, and hospitals. Nor did the Biden administration threaten to withdraw that support when Israel blocked shipments of crucial food and fuel to the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip. It also keeps vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions that would hold Israel accountable. And President Biden, despite an increasing amount of rhetorical shuffling, continues to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), even though they have ignored the International Court’s orders and continue committing atrocities.

Flouting the Order to Stop the Killing

On January 26th, the International Court of Justice handed down a ruling in a case brought by the Republic of South Africa accusing Israel of genocide. It ordered that Israel must “ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described” in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The court’s first order prohibited “killing members” of the Palestinian population or “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to them. How did Israel respond? Consider that, between late December 2023 and January 21st of this year, the IDF had killed about 5,000 Palestinians, already pushing the death toll in the Gaza Strip past 25,000. The court’s order, issued days later, would have essentially zero effect. Another 5,000-plus Palestinians would be killed by late February, raising the death toll to more than 30,000.

During the month after the ruling, Israeli troops repeatedly killed or injured civilians fleeing to, or taking shelter in, areas the IDF had advertised as “safe zones.” Typically, when, on February 12th, Israeli aircraft attacked 14 homes and three mosques in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 67 Palestinians, some of the survivors told reporters that they’d been inside tents in a refugee camp. Similarly, on February 22nd, Israeli warplanes struck a residential area in central Gaza, killing 40 civilians, mostly women and children, and wounding more than 100.

Worse yet, the Biden administration has enabled that ongoing killing spree by approving 100 separate military sales to Israel since the conflict began in October. As a former administration official told the Washington Post, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.”

In other words, the backbone of the war on Gaza comes with a label: “Made in USA.” In the decade leading up to October 7th, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported, two-thirds of Israel’s arms imports came from the United States. (From 1950 to 2020, the U.S. share was a whopping 83%!)

In just the first couple of months of the war, the Biden administration sent 230 cargo planes and 20 ships full of military goods to Israel, a trove that included 100 BLU-109 bombs (2,000-pounders designed to penetrate hardened structures before exploding), 5,400 MK84 and 5,000 MK82 bunker-busters, 1,000 GBU-39 bombs, 3,000 JDAM bomb-guidance kits, and 200 “kamikaze drones.”

Such powerful bombs, reported Al Jazeera, “have been used in some of the deadliest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, including a strike that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people.” And yes, such bunker-busters were widely used in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in places as densely populated as Gaza’s cities. Israeli sources tried to justify that particular death toll by insisting it was necessary to kill one of Hamas’s leaders. If so, we’re talking about a 100-to-1 ratio, or a kind of collective punishment being supported by our tax dollars………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/20/armed-by-washington-israel-trashes-the-genocide-convention/

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel Will Steal 16% of Gaza’s Land By Establishing ‘Buffer Zone’

Israel is destroying homes and agricultural land to create the zone

by Dave DeCamp March 18, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/18/israel-will-steal-16-of-gazas-land-by-establishing-buffer-zone/

Israel’s plan to create a “buffer zone” inside Gaza along its border with Israel will take 16% of the Strip’s territory, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an analysis of the operation by Adi Ben Nun, a Hebrew University geography professor.

Israel has begun the process of constructing the zone, which involves demolishing Palestinian homes and agricultural land that are in the way. The buffer will be about 1 kilometer (.6 miles) in width.

Israeli media reported in January that Israel had destroyed 1,100 of the 2,800 buildings in the border areas. In that same month, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed while working to demolish a building after a Hamas rocket detonated explosives IDF soldiers had planted.

The Israeli military insists it needs to create the buffer zone to prevent future October 7-style attacks. But the plan also advances Israel’s seizure of Gaza’s territory, and many ministers in the Israeli government favor re-establishing Jewish settlements in the Strip.

On top of the buffer zone on the border, Israel is also constructing a road that will cut the Gaza Strip in two. Israel claims that it doesn’t seek to occupy Gaza but wants to maintain open-ended security control of the Strip, which is not possible without some form of occupation.

The Biden administration claims it’s opposed to any Israeli plans that will shrink Gaza’s territory. But the US continues to provide Israel with unconditional military aid as it’s enacting a plan to steal 16% of Gaza.

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The last stammering of Jewish fascism

In Israel, the Jewish democratic opposition organized anti-Zionist demonstrations, which were not very well attended. Speakers emphasized the betrayal of the Prime Minister, who used the shock of October 7 not to save the hostages, but to realize his colonial dream.

Washington then decided to radically change its policy. Until then, it had considered that it could not afford to let Israel lose. It had therefore supported its crime. Now, it could no longer afford to let the Jewish fascists win. It’s important to understand that Washington didn’t change its mind when it saw the suffering of the Gazans, nor because of a sudden outburst of anti-fascism, but because of the threats of the “revisionist Zionists”. Its positions are dictated exclusively by its desire to maintain its domination of the world. It could not contemplate another defeat for its Israeli allies, this time after those in Syria and Ukraine. But it could even less envisage losing to the “revisionist Zionists”.

Victoria Nuland’s dismissal demonstrates the Biden Administration’s desire to clean up its own house, while doing the same for Israel.

 https://www.voltairenet.org/article220564.html VOLTAIRE NETWORK | PARIS (FRANCE) | 12 MARCH 2024, by Thierry Meyssan

Anyone acting in good faith understands that murdering 30,000 innocent people has nothing to do with eliminating Hamas. Operation Iron Glaive appears for what it is: a cover to realize the old dream pursued by Jewish fascists from Jabotinsky to Netanyahu: to expel the Arab population from Palestine. From then on, this mass crime, committed for the first time live on television, turned the world’s political chessboard upside down. Feeling threatened, the Jewish supremacists themselves threatened the United States. Anxious to remain masters of the “free world”, the United States is preparing to topple the Jewish supremacists.

The Biden administration watched with bated breath as Israel reacted to the attack by the Palestinian Resistance, including Hamas, known as the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” (October 7). Operation Iron Glaive began with a massive pounding of Gaza City on a scale unprecedented anywhere in the world, including the World Wars. From October 27 onwards, this was followed by ground intervention, looting and the torture of thousands of Gazan civilians. In five months, 37,534 civilians were killed or disappeared, including 13,430 children and 8,900 women, 364 medical personnel and 132 journalists. [1].

At first, Washington reacted by unwaveringly supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself”, threatening to veto any ceasefire request and supplying as many bombs as necessary for the widespread destruction of the Palestinian enclave. It was unthinkable, in its eyes, to suffer yet another defeat, after those in Syria and Ukraine. However, Americans were watching the horrors live on their cell phones. Many high-ranking State Department officials wrote and spoke of their shame at supporting this butchery. Petitions were circulated. Prominent figures, both Jewish and Muslim, resigned.

In the midst of a presidential election campaign, Joe Biden’s team could no longer stain its hands with blood. It therefore began to put pressure on the Israeli war cabinet to negotiate the release of the hostages and conclude a ceasefire. However, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition refused, playing on the trauma of its citizens to ensure that peace would only return once Hamas had been eradicated. Washington eventually realized that the events of October 7 were merely a pretext for Jabotinsky’s followers to do what they had always wanted to do: expel the Arabs from Palestine. He became more insistent, stressing that the Palestinians had a right to live, that the colonization of their land was illegal under international law, and that the Israeli-Palestinian question would be resolved by a “two-state solution” (and not by the binational state envisaged by Resolution 181 of 1947).

Revisionist Zionists” (i.e., followers of Jabotinsky [2]) responded by organizing the “Conference for the Victory of Israel” [3] on January 28, 2024. Headlining the event was Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf, sentenced in Israel to life imprisonment for his racist crimes against Arabs, but pardoned by his friends. Sharbaf did not hesitate to proclaim himself heir to the Lehi and Stern groups who fought against the Allies alongside duce Benito Mussolini.

The message was perfectly received in Washington and London: this tiny group intended to impose its will on the Anglo-Saxons and would not hesitate to attack them if they tried to prevent ethnic cleansing.

The White House immediately issued a ban on fundraising and transfers to them [4]. This ban was extended to all Western banks under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

In addition, on February 8, President Joe Biden signed a Memorandum on the conditions of US arms transfers [5]. Israel has until March 25 to guarantee in writing that it will not violate either International Humanitarian Law (but not International Law itself) or Human Rights (in the sense of the US Constitution).

For their part, the parliaments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have begun debating the possibility of ceasing arms trading with Israel.

In Israel, the Jewish democratic opposition organized anti-Zionist demonstrations, which were not very well attended. Speakers emphasized the betrayal of the Prime Minister, who used the shock of October 7 not to save the hostages, but to realize his colonial dream.

The “revisionist Zionists” then launched a media offensive against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Since 1949, this UN agency has been providing education, food, healthcare and social services to 5.8 million stateless Palestinians in Palestine itself, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It has an annual budget of over $1 billion and employs over 30,000 people. Already in 2018, President Donald Trump had questioned the agency’s assistance to Palestinians and suspended US funding for it. His intention was to force the Palestinian factions back to the negotiating table. Five years on, the aim of the “revisionist Zionists” is very different. By attacking UNRWA, they intend to force Jordan, Lebanon and Syria to expel Palestinian refugees too. To this end, they accused 0.04% of its staff of having taken part in Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, and blocked their bank accounts in Israel. UNRWA Director Philippe Lazzarini of Switzerland immediately suspended the 12 accused employees and ordered an internal investigation.

Of course, he never received the proof the Israelis claimed to have, but one donor after another, led by the United States and the European Union, suspended funding. Within days in Gaza, and weeks in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the United Nations aid system collapsed.

Continue reading →

March 21, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, history, Israel, politics, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Without Extensive Narrative Manipulation, None Of This Would Be Consented To

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 20, 2024,

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/without-extensive-narrative-manipulation?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142778336&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
—

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that bombing Gaza into rubble is a reasonable response to a single Hamas attack.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and starving hundreds of thousands more is a reasonable response to a thousand Israelis being killed.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that criticizing the actions of the state of Israel is antisemitic.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that saying “from the river to the sea” is a call for genocide.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone to think about this onslaught and the discourse around it in terms of “Jews vs Jew haters”.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that it was fine and normal to keep an unwanted ethnic group in a walled-in area whose resources are tightly controlled by those in power.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that TikTok is a massive problem that needs to be eliminated.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that Israel should be able to inflict violence and abuse upon the Palestinian population for generations without ever receiving any violence in return.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that Israel using the Israeli army to murder civilians in an Israeli military campaign is something that can be blamed on Hamas.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that it is fine and acceptable for the IDF to be targeting healthcare workers, journalists and scholars and destroying hospitals, universities and mosques.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that dozens of Israeli hostages are more important than the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being starved and murdered.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the US war machine should be bombing people in Yemen, Iraq and Syria to stop their retaliations for the destruction of Gaza.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the governments who are backing a genocide are not personally responsible for it.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the unfathomable suffering that is taking place in Gaza right now should not be at the forefront of our attention.

Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the genocide in Gaza should be allowed to continue instead of being brought to an immediate end.

And that’s why we’ve been seeing such extensive narrative manipulation — from our news media, from our government officials, and from Israel apologists on social media.

It’s because without extensive narrative manipulation, none of this would be consented to.

March 21, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The Hidden Reasons Behind the War on Gaza

March 20, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel government continues to block aid response despite ICJ genocide court ruling, says Oxfam

March 18, 2024, by: The AIM Network

Oxfam Australia Media Release

International community resorts to sea routes and air drops rather than challenge Israel for systemically undermining unfettered access of relief

Israeli authorities have rejected a warehouse full of international aid including oxygen, incubators and Oxfam water and sanitation gear all of which is now stockpiled at Al Arish just 40 km away from the border of 2.3 million desperate Palestinians in Gaza.

The aid originates from many humanitarian organisations around the world and has been rejected over weeks and months as result of an unpredictable and chaotic regime of approval, scanning and inspection, ultimately controlled by Israeli authorities. The reasons for rejection are not clear, says Oxfam.

In a new report today, Oxfam said this rejected aid was just one example of an overall humanitarian response that Israel has made so dangerous and dysfunctional as to be impossible for aid agencies to work at the speed and scale necessary to save lives, despite best efforts.

Oxfam says that Israel’s government ultimately bears accountability for the breakdown of the international response to the crisis in Gaza. It is failing in its legal responsibilities to the people whose land it occupies and breaking one of the key provisions demanded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – to boost humanitarian aid in light of the risk of genocide in Gaza.

Oxfam believes that people living in Gaza will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties unless Israel takes immediate steps to end its violations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://theaimn.com/israel-government-continues-to-block-aid-response-despite-icj-genocide-court-ruling-says-oxfam/

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Legal, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Netanyahu approves Rafah ground invasion, despite Biden opposition

Israeli Defense Force is reportedly planning a civilian evacuation before the invasion

By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi Fox News,  March 15, 2024 , https://www.foxnews.com/world/netanyahu-approves-rafah-ground-invasion-despite-biden-opposition—

Israel will commence an invasion into the Gaza city of Rafah, despite protests from the United States and other international powers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced approval of the operation via his office on Friday.

The Israeli Defense Force will invade the city in southern Gaza as part of its larger military operations in the region. 

NETANYAHU VOWS TO INVADE RAFAH REGARDLESS OF POTENTIAL CEASE-FIRE WITH HAMAS: ‘IT WILL HAPPEN’

The operation will reportedly include an evacuation of civilians, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The Prime Minister’s office also announced that an Israeli delegation would leave for Doha to continue negotiations for the release of hostages. 

The security cabinet must first arrive at a comprehensive position on the pressing issue.

ISRAELI STRIKES IN RAFAH LEAVES 31 PALESTINIANS DEAD AHEAD OF PLANNED GROUND INVASION

The U.S. government has repeatedly opposed Israeli plans to launch the Rafah ground invasion.

The administration is said to have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution, which in part would call for a temporary cease-fire and call on Israel not to go into Rafah in the Gaza Strip. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer went so far as to call for a change of leadership in Israel that is more willing to consider a cease-fire and abandon plans for further ground operations.

President Biden seemed to sign off on these remarks, saying on Friday from the Oval Office, “Senator Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staff. I’m not going to elaborate on the speech. He made a good speech, and I think he expressed a serious concern, shared not only by him but by many Americans.”

The Israeli government released its post-war plan for Gaza last month, a deal that was immediately rejected by Palestinian officials.

Under the plan, Israel would seek open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu’s government has flatly rejected calls for a two-state solution, which Biden’s administration continues to push for.

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

They’re Really Going To Try To Lay All The Blame For Gaza On Netanyahu

CAITLIN JOHNSTONEMAR 17, Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theyre-really-going-to-try-to-lay?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142679766&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

They’re really going to try to pin all the blame for the incineration of Gaza on Benjamin Netanyahu so that nothing has to change when this is over. The western empire has chosen a single scapegoat to carry away its sins so the status quo can march on unhindered by guilt or consequence. 

They want everyone to pin all the blame for the Gaza genocide on Netanyahu, but this is not all the fault of Netanyahu. It’s the fault of the entire Israeli state. It’s the fault of Joe Biden. It’s the fault of the Democrats. It’s the fault of all the Israel supporters on Capitol Hill. It’s the fault of the western press. It’s the fault of the Israel lobby. It’s the fault of the unelected empire managers in US government agencies. It’s the fault of the entire US empire and all its imperial member states like Australia, the UK, the EU, and Canada. 

By trying to make this mass atrocity solely the fault of Netanyahu and not the giant, sprawling network of immensely powerful institutions which made it possible, they’re working to ensure that no changes will need to be made to any of those institutions. It’s just like how they made a scapegoat of Judith Miller for the entire mass media’s war propaganda in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion and let all the blame for the war hang on Bush (before completely rehabilitating Bush’s image during the Trump administration and deciding he’s a pretty great guy after all). No meaningful changes were ever made to ensure that the US power alliance never repeats its horrible crimes after Iraq, which is why it keeps repeating horrible crimes.

The trouble with Israel apologia on Gaza is that at first glance its talking points sound legit if you don’t know much about Israel-Palestine. “Israel has a right to defend itself”, “They need to get rid Hamas because of October 7” etc would sound entirely reasonable if you didn’t know that Israel is a settler-colonialist apartheid state who has been murdering, abusing and stealing from the indigenous population of the land for generations.

The amount of energy needed to see through the talking points is far greater than the amount of energy needed to speak them — it’s one of those “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on” kind of deals. Which is why it’s miraculous that so many people around the world are getting educated enough to see through the lies and support the Palestinians.

How are they getting educated enough? Mostly through online content which sums up the situation quickly and concisely enough for them to understand easily. That’s the only way the truth can move quickly enough to catch up with the lies. And that’s the role TikTok has played here, which is why we’ve seen Israel lobbyists and the ADL shrieking their lungs out about it for months.

It would never have occurred to any American to think TikTok is a five-alarm foreign enemy threat until their government told them to think that, and then when they did the biggest bootlickers in the world started acting like it’s just a common sense fact they’ve always believed.

Americans who’d trust their own government to oversee their communications more than they’d trust China have missed all the most important lessons about the US government that have come out in their lives. Even if China really is getting data from TikTok (and there’s currently no evidence that it is), only a groveling empire simp would object to it.

Saying TikTok must be suppressing pro-Israel content because pro-Palestine content is more popular is like saying they’re suppressing flat earth content because round earth content is more popular. Pro-Israel content is just less popular in general, which is why the gap is the same on Facebook and Instagram.

❖

The US government is like “No no it’s not censorship, we’re just using state power to ensure that popular speech platforms are only allowed to exist if they can be controlled by US government agencies.”

Israel has done so much fucked up shit in the last few days we’ve already forgotten the news that they literally tortured UN staff to extract false statements about UNRWA having Hamas connections.

They. Tortured. UN. Staff. If we had anything remotely like objective news reporting in the western press, this would have been the top story everywhere for days.

❖

Once you see how evil Israel’s actions are you start to understand why its defenders need to resort to just calling anyone who criticizes Israel a Jew-hater.

❖When Israel apologists say “antisemite” it’s just a meaningless noise made to hurt the feelings of the person it’s said to. Once you realize this it starts to land in exactly the same way as any other infantile name-calling from anyone else who’s lost the argument.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

UN report finds Israel deliberately targeted journalists – Reuters

 https://www.rt.com/news/594254-israel-attack-journalists-lebanon/ 14 Mar 24

The news agency has obtained a copy of an investigation into the killing of one of its staff in Lebanon last October

An Israeli tank fired two shells at a group of international journalists clearly marked as such, in violation of international law, a UN investigation has reportedly found. The deadly incident happened in Lebanon in mid-October.

The conclusions, published by Reuters on Wednesday, are part of a seven-page report dated February 27, obtained by the news agency. They coincided with what it had found on its own while looking into the death of its employee Issam Abdallah and the injuries of six other journalists, including those working for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Al Jazeera.

The report was produced by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the peacekeeper mission deployed on the border between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 as part of a deal that ended the Israeli occupation of the southern part of its neighbor. Tracking and investigating presumed violations of the truce is part of its job.

The attack happened on October 13, in the early days of Israel’s siege of Gaza in retaliation for a large-scale incursion by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Tensions ramped up at the Lebanese border as well, with sporadic attacks launched by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah militants.

Abdallah, a Reuters photographer, was part of a group of journalists covering the situation from a hill in Lebanon. An IDF Merkava tank fired two shots at them, the UNIFIL report confirmed. It called the attack a violation of the truce it is mandated to uphold and of international law.

”It is assessed that there was no exchange of fire across the Blue Line at the time of the incident,” the report noted, referring to the de facto border. “The reason for the strikes on the journalists is not known.”

An IDF spokesperson told Reuters that Israeli forces do not target civilians on purpose, including journalists, when asked about the UN investigation. He added that the incident is being examined by the General Staff’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism – a body responsible for reviewing exceptional events.

Reuters released its findings in early December, based on eyewitness accounts, forensic analysis of evidence found at the scene and interviews with officials.

The UNIFIL report was sent to the UN on February 28 and shared with the Israeli and Lebanese governments, Reuters said citing a source. The mission’s investigations are normally not made public.

March 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

The ideology of war in Ukraine and Israel

by Thierry Meyssan,  https://www.voltairenet.org/article220527.html 14 Mar 24

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are more similar than you might think, at least if you know their histories. The Ukrainian war didn’t start with the Russian military operation, but with the massacres in the Donbass, while the Gaza war didn’t start with the Al-Aqsa deluge, but 75 years earlier with the Nakhba. In the long term, those responsible for both wars share the same ideology.

Generally speaking, every war defines who “we” are and who “they” are. “We” are Good, while “they” are Evil.

Western leaders, while declaring that war itself is bad, claim that it is indispensable today in the face of aggression from Russia and Hamas. According to them, Russia, or rather its president Vladimir Putin, dreams of seizing our property and destroying our political system. After invading Ukraine, he will invade Moldavia and the Baltic states, then continue westwards. Hamas, on the other hand, is a hate-filled sect that begins by raping and beheading Jews out of anti-Semitism, and will continue by invading the West in the name of its religion.

It’s worth noting that both Israel and the USA were founded by their armies, the Haganah and the Continental Army. Today, the vast majority of their political leaders have spent their careers in the armed forces or secret services. But they’re not the only ones, since Xi Jinping is a military man and Vladimir Putin is a former member of the Soviet secret service (KGB).

One wonders what feeds the phantasms of the political West and how they prevent us from grasping reality. Russia didn’t invade Ukraine any more than France invaded Rwanda. Moscow and Paris stopped the massacre of Ukrainians in the Donbass and Rwandan Tutsis. Both were driven by their “responsibility to protect” and implemented Security Council resolutions. Palestinians don’t rape and behead anyone for pleasure, even if some of them belong to a secret society that does. They don’t fight the Jews out of anti-Semitism, except for the historic branch of Hamas, but against the apartheid system of which they are victims.

Perhaps the first function of collective blindness is to erase our previous crimes: it was the “democracies” of the United States and members of the European Union who organized the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014. It was Germany and France that signed the Minsk Accords to guarantee peace for Ukrainians in Donbass (2015), but never intended to implement them and, according to the confessions of Chancellor Angela Merkel and President François Hollande, used them to arm Ukraine against Russia. This violation of our word and signature constitutes, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, the gravest of all crimes, that “against peace”.

Similarly, it is the “greatest democracy in the Middle East”, Israel, which has stolen, metre by metre, by occupation and nibbling, most of the Palestinian Territories established by Security Council resolution 181 (1947).

These conflicts are not about resources, but territories. Since 1917, Dmytro Dontsov’s Ukrainian integral nationalists have consistently claimed sovereignty over Nestor Makhno’s anarchist Novorossia and the Bolshevik Donbass and Crimea. Of course, these territories were merged into Soviet Ukraine by Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev, but Kiev cannot invoke recent history to claim them as its own. Similarly, since 1920, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionists have claimed sovereignty over the whole of Palestine, and eventually over the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria – in short, all the territories from the “Nile to the Euphrates”. Of course, the ancient kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of the city and its suburbs, but that doesn’t allow them to evoke history for all these conquests.

It is often said that the age pyramid determines the aggressiveness of states. States with a majority of young people between the ages of 15 and 30 would by nature be inclined to war. But this is neither the case in Ukraine, nor in Israel. What’s more, it’s Palestine, not Israel that the age pyramid could push towards war.

The ideological question is probably the most important. Dmytro Dontsov and his henchman Stepan Bandera glorified the Ukrainian fighters, heirs to the Swedish Vikings, the Varegues, who had to slaughter the “Muscovites” to be able to feast in Valhalla. Today, it’s the “White Führer”, Andriy Biletsky, who has commanded the troops of the Azov Division in Mariupol, the 3rd Assault Brigade in Bakhmut/Artiomovsk and most recently in Avdeyevka/Avdiyevka. Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu, son of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s private secretary, has not hesitated to compare the Palestinians to the ancient Amalekites. The implication is that they must all be exterminated as Yahweh commands, or else their race will re-emerge against the Hebrews. In the same way, the IDF has systematically destroyed all the universities and schools in the Gaza Strip and massacred 30,000 civilians under the pretext of fighting Hamas.

Dmytro Dontsov formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler as early as 1923, i.e. before he came to power, and became one of the administrators of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute, responsible for carrying out the Final Solution of the Jewish and Gypsy question. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had formed an alliance with Dontsov in 1922, founded the Betar cadre school in Civitavecchi (Italy) with the help of Duce Benito Mussolini in 1935. He was unable to play a major role in the Second World War, dying in August 1940. There can be no doubt about the adherence of Ukrainian integral nationalists to Nazism and revisionist Zionists to fascism.

Incidentally, we find the territorial logic of fascist and Nazi regimes in the current discourse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same time, the Russian and Palestinian presidents, Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Abbas, constantly claim to be defending their peoples.


 To find out more about Dmytro Dontsov’s integral nationalism, read:
“Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists?“, by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, November 15, 2022.
 For more on Volodymyr Jabotinsky’s revisionist Zionists read:
“The veil is being torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu“, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 23, 2024.
and “In Jerusalem, the ’Conference for the Victory of Israel’ threatens London and Washington“, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, February 13, 2024.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, history, Israel, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

March 12, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark  https://theaimn.com/aid-wars-over-gaza-resuming-funding-to-unrwa/

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Canada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Report Accuses Israel of Torturing Agency Staff

“The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated,” said Canadian lawmaker Salma Zahid. “It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

JON QUEALLY, Mar 09, 2024  https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/09/canada-sweden-restore-unrwa-funds-as-report-accuses-israel-of-torturing-agency-staff/

The governments of Canada and Sweden have announced they will resume funding for the United Nation’s agency that provides humanitarian aide and protection to Palestinians living in Gaza and elsewhere—a move that other powerful nations, including Israel’s most powerful ally the United States, continue to refuse.

Calling the lack of humanitarian relief inside Gaza “catastrophic,” Canadian Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen said Friday his nation would restore funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in order to help address the “dire” situation on the ground living.

Sweden made its announcement Saturday and said a $20 million disbursement would be made to help UNRWA regain its financial footing.

The restoration of funds follows weeks of global criticism and protest for the decision by many Western nations to withhold UNRWA funds after Israel claimed, without presenting evidence, that a few members of the agency—the largest employer in the Gaza Strip—had participated in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7.

As a result, UNRWA has said it’s ability to provide aid and services to Gaza—where over 100,000 people have been killed or wounded in five months of constant bombardment and blockade by the Israeli military—has been pushed to the “breaking point” as malnutrition and starvation has been documented among the displaced population of over 2 million people.

“Canada is resuming its funding to UNRWA so more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians,” Hussen said. “Canada will continue to take the allegations against some of UNRWA’s staff extremely seriously and we will remain closely engaged with UNRWA and the UN to pursue accountability and reforms.”

“I welcome Canada lifting the pause on funding for UNWRA,” said Canadian MP Salma Zahid, a member of the Liberal party representing Scarborough Centre in the House of Commons. “The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated. It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

Earlier this week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly the agency was “facing a deliberate and concerted campaign” by Israel “to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them.”

On Friday, Reutersreported on an internal UNRWA report that included testimony of employees who said they were tortured by Israeli officers while in detention to make false admissions about involvement in the October 7 attack.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Gaza, Israel, politics international, Sweden | Leave a comment

Saying “Hamas Just Needs To Surrender” Is Saying “We’ll Kill Kids Until We Get What We Want”

“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024

Of the many awful warmonger comments President Biden made in his State of the Union address Thursday night, arguably the worst was when he reiterated the US empire’s position that it is fine and good for the IDF to keep murdering Gazan civilians until Hamas bows to all of Israel’s demands.

Biden did this by lamenting the “heartbreaking” death and starvation of civilians in Gaza while in the same breath stating that Hamas could end all of this violence by laying down arms and surrendering those responsible for the October 7 attack.

“Israel has a right to go after Hamas,” Biden said. “Hamas ended this conflict by releasing the hostages, laying down arms — could end it by — by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.”

“This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined,” Biden went on to say. “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands of innocents — women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement. Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin. Families without food, water, medicine.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.

(Democrats love babbling about how “heartbreaking” Gaza is. It’s their favorite thing to do. They love nothing more than to weep publicly over the death and starvation and unfathomable human suffering they themselves are directly responsible for, as though it’s some kind of natural disaster and not a US-backed genocide that is only happening because this Democrat-run administration actively facilitates it.)

We don’t talk enough about how horrifyingly evil it is that the actual, stated position of Israel and its immensely powerful allies is that all of the killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is entirely the fault of Hamas, because Hamas has not acquiesced to the military demands made by Israel. In effect, it is saying “We will kill thousands and thousands of children until you give us everything we want.”

I mean, imagine if Russia did that. Imagine if Putin started raining military explosives on parts of Ukraine known to be densely packed with children, and then saying the mass-scale child-killing will continue until Ukraine surrenders and that all of the child deaths are actually the fault of the Ukrainians because they still haven’t given Putin everything he wants.

I think we all know that if such a thing were to happen it would be the subject of worldwide condemnation, and justifiably so. Such a tactic is not meaningfully different from lining up children on their knees on the battlefield and shooting them one by one in the back of the head until the enemy unconditionally surrenders.

They’re not just doing this with airstrikes and bullets — they’re doing it with food as well. Aaron Maté has a new article out titled “The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, deceive” which picks apart statements from White House officials about the temporary pier this administration is planning to build on Gaza’s coast over the next several weeks, ostensibly to allow for the arrival of more aid into the enclave………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Maté explains that Vice President Kamala Harris recently gave a speech in which she said Hamas needs to agree to a hostage deal in order to “get a significant amount of aid in,” which is the same as saying Israel and its allies will help starve Gazan civilians until Hamas capitulates to their demands.

“The very fact that the delivery of ‘a significant amount’ of aid is conditional on Hamas accepting Israeli demands underscores that Israel, with US backing, is using that aid as a tool of coercion,” Maté writes, noting that this directly contradicts Biden’s admonishment to Israeli leaders in his State of the Union address that “Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”

Washington’s role in the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza makes a lot more sense when you stop looking at it as a reluctant passive witness to Israel’s crimes and begin viewing it as an active participant. US officials will occasionally wag their fingers at the Netanyahu government and act like Israel’s worst atrocities are being carried out against the beneficent humanitarian wishes of the United States, but if you mentally mute all the narrative spin that’s being placed on this thing you just see a giant concentration camp packed full of children being murdered at mass scale by the most powerful empire that has ever existed. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saying-hamas-just-needs-to-surrender

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Accused Of Torturing UN Workers To Obtain False Testimony About UNRWA

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-accused-of-torturing-un-workers

A recent UNRWA document says its staff report having been tortured while detained by Israeli forces, who pressed them to provide false statements about ties between the agency and Hamas.

“The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members,” Reuters reports, saying UNRWA workers “reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.” 

This is another one of those stories about Israeli offenses that are so stunning that at first you can mistakenly believe you must not be reading it correctly — especially since the western political-media class haven’t been treating it like the jarring news that it is. If we had anything remotely like an objective news media in the western world, reports that Israel tortured United Nations staff to get them to make false statements against a UN aid agency would be the top story everywhere for days.

Many, including myself, speculated that torture was involved in obtaining the Israeli “intelligence” behind initial claims of UNRWA staff involvement in the October 7 attack when this narrative first surfaced back in January. A senior Israeli official told Axios at the time that Israeli intelligence agencies came upon the information about the UNRWA staffers largely through “interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.” Israel has an extensive history of using torture in its interrogations, and there’s no reason to believe such methods haven’t been used on captured Hamas fighters in recent months — but reports that it was actual UN staff being tortured are something new.

We may be certain that if it was Hamas being accused of torturing workers for international aid agencies in order to extract false confessions, we’d never hear the end of it. To this day unsubstantiated rumors of mass systemic sexual violence on October 7 continue to dominate the headlines resulting in scandalous instances of journalistic malpractice, despite the Israeli spinmeisters behind those reports having a much worse track record than UNRWA in the truth-telling department and UNRWA standing much less to gain than Israel by lying.

But that’s what the information ecosystem looks like in the shadow of the empire. The flimsiest allegations against enemies of the US-centralized power alliance are spun as gospel truth and kept in the headlines for months, while even the most damning evidence against the empire never gets anything better than a cursory nod from the mass media and is then promptly memory-holed as the daily news churn moves on.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Biden is building for Israel a super weapon to replace the Iron Dome

U.S. Department of Defense
Contracts For Feb. 10, 2023
MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY

InTSI LLC,* a Joint Venture, Huntsville, Alabama, is being awarded a competitive, cost-plus-fixed-fee, level-of-effort contract with a total value of $637,123,220. Under this new contract, the contractor will support the layered Missile Defense System (MDS) and help advance concepts for future MDS inclusion.

Activities will include supporting the government with: threat systems engineering; advanced technology; directed energy; hypersonic defense engineering; space systems engineering; U.S-Israeli Cooperative Program engineering; cybersecurity systems engineering; test analyses and reporting; lethality, hit assessment/kill assessment, and collateral effects and consequence management; and, concurrent test, training, and operations engineering.

The work will be performed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; Fort Belvoir, Virginia; Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. The performance period is from February 2023 to August 2030. This contract was competitively procured via publication on the SAM.gov website with two proposals received. Fiscal 2023 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $8,302,098.15 are being obligated at time of award. The Missile Defense Agency, Huntsville, Alabama, is the contracting activity (HQ0858-23-C-0001).

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »