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US Official Says Gaza Death Toll Likely Higher Than Being Reported

President Biden previously cast doubt on the numbers coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry.

By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/11/us-official-says-gaza-death-toll-likely-higher-than-being-reported/

A senior US official said that the death toll caused by Israel’s assault on Gaza is likely far higher than the over 10,000 number being reported by Gaza’s Health Ministry, The Hill reported on Thursday.

The comments were made by Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and break from President Biden’s claim that the numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry can’t be trusted.

“In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are,” Leaf told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.”

“We’ll know only after the guns fall silent. We take in sourcing from a variety of folks who are on the ground,” she added. “I can’t stipulate to one figure or another, it’s very possible they’re even higher than is being reported.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Thursday that at least 10,569 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7. The total includes 4,324 children. Thousands of Palestinians are also missing and presumed to be under the rubble.

After Biden accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll, the UN and aid groups that have experience in Gaza backed the numbers coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry, saying they’re reliable. An Israeli security source told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that Israel has killed around 20,000 Palestinians, but the number has not been backed up by another source.

While casting doubt on the death toll, the White House has also acknowledged there is a massive civilian casualty rate in the US-backed onslaught. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged on Monday that the Israeli bombardment has killed “many, many thousands of innocent people.” The US is still providing Israel with unconditional military support, including near-daily weapons shipments.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

White House Fears Pause In Fighting Will Let Journalists See What’s Been Happening In Gaza

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, NOV 22 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/white-house-fears-pause-in-fighting?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=139072453&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

Israel and Hamas have reportedly agreed to a four-day ceasefire which will entail the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 150 hostages held by Israeli forces. 

In an article titled “Biden admin officials see proof their strategy is working in hostage deal,” Politico describes the deal as “the administration’s biggest diplomatic victory of the conflict” and reports that White House officials are calling it a “vindication” of Biden’s decision making. Which is an entirely inappropriate level of verbal fellatio for an achievement as minimal as not murdering children for a few days.

Tucked away many paragraphs into this report is a sentence which is getting a lot of attention on social media today saying that according to Politico’s sources there has been some resistance to the pause in fighting within the administration due to fears that it will allow journalists into Gaza to report on the devastation Israel has inflicted upon the enclave.

“And there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel,” Politico reports.

In other words, the White House is worried that a brief pause in the Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza will allow journalists to report the truth about the Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza, because it will hurt the information interests of the US and Israel. They are worried that the public will become more aware of facts and truth.

Needless to say, if you’re standing on the right side of history you’re not typically worried about journalists reporting true facts about current events and thereby damaging public support for your agendas. But that is the side that the US and Israel have always stood on, which is why the US empire is currently imprisoning Julian Assange for doing good journalism on US war crimes and why Israel has a decades-long history of threatening and targeting journalists.

During Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza in 2021 the IDF reportedly targeted more than 20 Palestinian press institutions in the enclave, as well as the tower hosting the international outlets AP and Al Jazeera. During this current onslaught Israel has been killing dozens of Palestinian journalists, sometimes by actively bombing their homes where they live with their families. The IDF’s campaign to wipe out inconvenient news reporters has resulted in the Committee to Protect Journalists calling this the deadliest conflict on record for journalists anywhere, ever.

Both the US and Israel have been attacking the press in this way because their governments understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world. They understand that while power is controlling what happens, ultimate power is controlling what people think about what happens. Human consciousness is dominated by mental narratives, so if you can control society’s dominant narratives, you can control the humans. 

This is why the powerful have been able to remain in power in our civilization — because they understand this, while we the public generally do not. That’s why they bombard us with nonstop mass media propaganda, that’s why they work to censor the internet, that’s why Julian Assange languishes in prison, that’s why Israel routinely murders journalists, and that’s why the White House is afraid of what will happen if worldwide news reporters are able to get their cameras into Gaza.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Gaza Massacre could lead to Nuclear War

 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/gaza-massacre-could-lead-to-nuclear-war 21 Nov 23

WASHINGTON – As military veterans who have experienced the deadly threat of nuclear weapons from the Cuban Missile Crisis onward, as well as being distraught and outraged by what is now going on in Gaza, we must warn against the potential of a wider war in the Middle East, one that could even lead to nuclear war.

The massive and relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza has been indiscriminate – if not actually targeting civilians. Over 10,000 Gazan residents have been killed to date, including at least 4,000 children. Many victims remain beneath the rubble. It is almost as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped.

A member of the Israeli Knesset has actually called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza– or as she calls it a “doomsday weapon.” It is an open secret that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960’s. Israeli leaders have smugly refused to acknowledge the possession of nuclear weapons, and have signed no nuclear treaties. However, they have implicitly threatened Iran with a nuclear attack. As Daniel Ellsberg pointed out, the US and other nuclear powers use nuclear weapons all the time – it’s like pointing “a gun at someone’s head without pulling the trigger.”

The US has recently deployed massive naval forces and thousands of troops to the eastern Mediterranean, covering Israel’s back while it carries out its genocidal slaughter in Gaza. The implicit US threat against Iran and Hezbollah, an Islamic militia and major political party in the government of Lebanon, has raised tensions in the region.

US and Israeli threats against Iran – coupled with the US withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) – could actually spur Iran to develop its own nuclear weapons. Pakistan, the only Muslim-majority country with nuclear weapons, has called on Israel to end its massacre in Israel

While nuclear war is not considered a “likely” result of Israel’s assault on Gaza, it is an all too real possibility. The US and Israel are playing with fire. This is another reason why we in Veterans For Peace join with people all over the world who are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as well as for an end to Israeli settler and soldier violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. We support Palestinian human rights, including the rights to dignity and self-determination.

As veterans of too many wars, we want to see an end to militarism, which if unchecked, will inevitably lead to nuclear war. We repeat our calls for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, and for an end to US war preparations against China. We want a peaceful world – free of racism, colonialism and imperialism – where the sovereign rights of all peoples are respected.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has brought the world to a critical juncture. As Martin Luther King warned, we must choose between “nonviolence and nonexistence.” We call on the US and all nuclear-armed nations to begin urgent diplomacy to rid the world of nuclear weapons. We call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for massive humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, and for an end to Israel’s inhumane occupation of the Palestinian people.

Veterans For Peace is a global organization of Military Veterans and allies whose collective efforts are to build a culture of peace by using our experiences and lifting our voices. We inform the public of the true causes of war and the enormous costs of wars, with an obligation to heal the wounds of wars. Our network is comprised of over 140 chapters worldwide whose work includes: educating the public, advocating for a dismantling of the war economy, providing services that assist veterans and victims of war, and most significantly, working to end all wars.

November 22, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

First Tel Aviv Anti-War Demonstration Reveals the Limits on Protest in Today’s Israel

The first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv since October 7 offered an important look at the current state of the protest movement in Israel, as well as how the government will seek to repress it.

SCHEERPOST, By Yoav Haifawi / Mondoweiss , November 20, 2023

Since October 7, Israeli police have implemented full dictatorship from the river to the sea. This has included preventing any anti-war protest within the Green Line and filling the prisons with ‘freedom-of-expression’ prisoners. Today, November 18, after a month and 11 days of massive bloodshed, there was the first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. I joined the protest mostly because I felt obliged to support the call for immediate ceasefire and call for an “all for all” captives and prisoners’ exchange. But I also wanted to assess what this demonstration teaches us about the current policies of the repressive Israeli regime and about the protest movement.

Court ruling allows demonstration

Hadash (“The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” organized around the Israeli Communist Party) applied for a license to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the war and for a prisoners’ exchange. Their initial application was refused by the police, which suggested they hold a meeting in a closed venue instead. Then Hadash, with the help of ACRI (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel), appealed to the Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), which finally forced the police to allow the demonstration.

…………………………………………………… Local Call‘s report about the demonstration was titled “At an anti-war demonstration, the police forbade the waving of anti-war signs.” They went on to report what banners were refused by the police: ……………………………..

Speakers call for ceasefire, prisoner exchange

If we could demonstrate safely in Palestinian towns and villages and Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, you would see tens of thousands coming out in solidarity with Gaza’s people. However, the police are terrorizing the Arab population, and many people believed that this demonstration in Tel Aviv would be attacked even though it was permitted. Besides, there is a real danger of lynch mobs in the Jewish areas, especially as the Ben-Gvir police distributed tens of thousands of weapons to local militias. The militia in Tel Aviv is headed by a right-wing rapper called “The Shade,” well known for organizing attacks against peace demonstrations during previous wars.

There were about five hundred brave demonstrators who dared to gather in the park. Haaretz, by the way, always under-reporting leftist protest, headlined their report “Tens demonstrated in Tel Aviv.” About 80% of the demonstrators were Jews. It was all held in Hebrew, and the content was adjusted to challenge but not break with the current awful mood in the Israeli Jewish society.

The main demands of the demonstration were immediate ceasefire and the return of all captives, POWS, and prisoners through a comprehensive exchange deal, “all for all.” These are the most essential demands in the current situation, and they made this demonstration important…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/20/first-tel-aviv-anti-war-demonstration-reveals-the-limits-on-protest-in-todays-israel/

November 22, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, Israel | Leave a comment

The Dangers Only Multiply: Could Israel’s War on Gaza Go Nuclear?

A cornered, nuclear-armed Benjamin Netanyahu would be the definition of a perilous situation in a war where nothing, not journalists, schools, or even hospitals, has proven off-limits.

By Joshua Frank / TomDispatch,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/20/the-dangers-only-multiply/

Israel’s robust military, the fourth-strongest in the world, is ravaging Gaza and, along with armed settlers, terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank following the brutal Hamas massacres of October 7th. Like so many other colonial projects, Israel was born of terror and has necessitated the use of violence to occupy Arab territory and segregate Palestinians ever since. The realization that its existence was dependent on a superior military in an unfriendly region also encouraged Israel to pursue a nuclear weapons program shortly after the state’s founding in 1948.

Even though Israel was a young nation, by the mid-1950s, with the aid of France, it had secretly begun the construction of a large nuclear reactor. That two allies had teamed up to launch a nuclear weapons program without the knowledge of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower turned out to be a colossal (and embarrassing) American intelligence failure.

Not until June 1960, the final year of Eisenhower’s presidency, did U.S. officials catch wind of what was already known as the Dimona project. Daniel Kimhi, an Israeli oil magnate, having undoubtedly had one too many cocktails at a late-night party at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, confessed to American diplomats that Israel was indeed constructing a large “power reactor” in the Negev desert — a startling revelation.

“This project has been described to [Kimhi] as a gas-cooled power reactor capable of producing approximately 60 megawatts of electric power,” read an embassy dispatch addressed to the State Department in August 1960. “[Kimhi] said he thought work had been underway for about two years and that a completion date was still about two years off.”

The Dimona reactor wasn’t, however, being built to deal with the country’s growing energy needs. As the U.S. would later discover, it was designed (with input from the French) to produce plutonium for a budding Israeli nuclear weapons program. In December 1960, as American officials grew more worried about the very idea of Israel’s nuclear aspirations, French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville admitted to U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter that France had, in fact, helped Israel get the project off the ground and would also provide the raw materials like uranium the reactor needed. As a result, it would get a share of any plutonium Dimona produced.

Israeli and French officials assured Eisenhower that Dimona was being built solely for peaceful purposes. Trying to further deflect attention, Israeli officials put forward several cover stories to back up that claim, asserting Dimona would become anything from a textile plant to a meteorological installation — anything but a nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Atomic Denials

In December 1960, after being tipped off by a British nuclear scientist concerned that Israel was constructing a dirty (that is, extremely radioactive) nuke, reporter Chapman Pincher wrote in London’s Daily Express: “British and American intelligence authorities believe that the Israelis are well on the way to building their first experimental nuclear bomb.”

Israeli officials issued a terse dispatch from their London embassy: “Israel is not building an atom bomb and has no intention of doing so.”

With Arab countries increasingly worried that Washington was aiding Israel’s nuclear endeavors, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission John McCone leaked a classified CIA document to John Finney of the New York Times, claiming that the U.S. had evidence Israel, with the help of France, was building a nuclear reactor — proof that Washington was none too pleased with that country’s nuclear aspirations.

President Eisenhower was stunned. Not only had his administration been left in the dark, but his officials feared a future nuclear-armed Israel would only further destabilize an already topsy-turvy region. “Reports from Arab countries confirm [the] gravity with which many view this possibility [of nuclear weapons in Israel],” read a State Department telegram sent to its Paris embassy in January 1961.

As that nuclear project began to make waves in the press, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion moved quickly to downplay the disclosure. He gave a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, admitting the country was developing a nuclear program. “The reports in the media are false,” he added. “The research reactor we are now building in the Negev is being constructed under the direction of Israeli experts and is designed for peaceful purposes. When it’s complete, it will be open to scientists from other countries.”

He was, of course, lying and the Americans knew it. There was nothing peaceful about it. Worse yet, there was a growing consensus among America’s allies that Eisenhower had been in on the ruse and that his administration had provided the know-how to get the program off the ground. It hadn’t, but American officials were now eager to prevent United Nations inspections of Dimona, fearful of what they might uncover.

By May 1961, with John F. Kennedy in the White House, things were changing. JFK even dispatched two Atomic Energy Commission scientists to inspect the Dimona site. Though he came to believe much of the Israeli hype, the experts pointed out that the plant’s reactor could potentially produce plutonium “suitable for weapons.” The Central Intelligence Agency, less assured by Israel’s claims, wrote in a now-declassified National Intelligence Estimate that the reactor’s construction indicated “Israel may have decided to undertake a nuclear weapons program. At a minimum, we believe it has decided to develop its nuclear facilities in such a way as to put it into a position to develop nuclear weapons promptly should it decide to do so.”

And, of course, that’s precisely what happened. In January 1967, NBC News confirmed that Israel was on the verge of a nuclear capability. By then, American officials knew it was close to developing a nuke and that Dimona was producing bomb-worthy plutonium. Decades later, in a 2013 report citing U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency figures, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists revealed that Israel possessed a minimum of 80 atomic weapons and was the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Pakistan wouldn’t acquire nukes until 1976 and is, in any case, normally considered part of South Asia.

To this day, Israel has never openly admitted possessing such weaponry and yet has consistently refused to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the secretive site. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that a “major project” at Dimona was underway in 2021 and that Israel was by then actively expanding its nuclear production facilities. The lack of U.N. or other inspections at Dimona has, however, meant that there has been no public Israeli acknowledgment of its nuclear warheads and no threat of accountability.

A Rogue Nuclear Power?

Following the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel seized large tracts of Arab land, including the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Not coincidently, that year was also the moment Israel crossed the nuclear threshold. (In 2017, it was revealed that, on the verge of the Six-Day War, the Israelis had even contemplated exploding a nuclear bomb in Egypt’s Sinai Desert as the ultimate threat to its neighbors.)

At that time, as human rights attorney Noura Erakat explained to Daniel Denvir on The Dig, President Lyndon Johnson’s administration came to see in Israel “a significant Cold War asset and [pivoted] very quickly and [established] this new policy of ensuring Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region whereby it can defeat singularly or collectively any Middle Eastern powers.” And that, she added, was done in those Cold War years “to ensure its sphere of influence across the Middle East in competition with the Soviet Union.”

As Israel and the U.S. remained the closest of allies, the thinking in Washington went, it could act as Washington’s military proxy in the Middle East. “From 1966 through 1970, average aid per year increased to about $102 million, and military loans increased to about 47% of the total,” the Congressional Research Service reported in 2014. “Israel became the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in 1974… From 1971 to the present, U.S. aid to Israel has averaged over $2.6 billion per year, two-thirds of which has been military assistance.”

Despite Washington’s wish for a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship, Israel wasn’t afraid to go rogue when its leaders believed it would serve their interests. In June 1981, for instance, with the assistance of France and Italy, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor, then under construction in Iraq.

Top officials in the administration of President Ronald Reagan weren’t pleased that the strike had been carried out with American F-16s, as Israel was legally required to utilize the fighter jets only in cases of “legitimate self-defense.” After some backroom wrangling, however, they decided to chalk the matter up as a diplomatic dispute, having come to believe that erasing Iraq’s nuclear program and maintaining Israel’s sole nuclear arsenal in the region justified the airstrike.

By the late 1980s, as the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Israel joined the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia in forming Operation Cyclone to supply arms to the anti-Soviet mujahideen resistance fighters. As the Cold War ended and the first Gulf War in Iraq began in 1990, Israel quietly assisted President George H.W. Bush’s administration from the sidelines, believing that directly entering the conflict would only embolden Arab countries to back Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Despite the once-tenuous nature of the U.S.-Israeli bond, it’s long been understood that Israel can, at times, play an impactful role in the service of American operations in the region by providing intelligence and other covert support.

A Developing Dangerous Situation

Following the 9/11 attacks, Israel counseled the George W. Bush administration on how best to handle Osama bin Laden (and apparently later provided intelligence for the ambush that would kill him). As the planes struck the World Trade Center, Israel was experiencing a new Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada. Its leaders came to believe that they could benefit from the “Global War on Terror” President Bush had just announced. When Benjamin Netanyahu, then a former prime minister, was asked what it meant for the U.S.-Israel relationship, he replied, “It’s very good.” Then, lest he sound too optimistic about 9/11, he added, ”Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy… [it will] strengthen the bond between our two peoples because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”

A year later, Israel became a booster of an American war on Iraq, helping spread the falsehood that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat not only to Israel and America but to the rest of the world as well.

“[Saddam] is a tyrant who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu declared to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform in September 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq. “And today, the United States must destroy [Saddam’s] regime because a nuclear-armed Saddam will place the security of our entire world at risk. And make no mistake about it: if and once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons. And once the terror network has nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before those weapons will be used.”

Israel would later use a similar line of reasoning to justify its 2007 strike on a suspected nuclear reactor under construction in Syria. Over the years, Israel has purportedly targeted Iran’s nuclear objectives in various ways as well, from cyberattacks to bombings. In 2010, Iran accused Israel of murdering physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi and engineer Majid Shariariby in two separate incidents, as well as other scientists believed to be integral to Iran’s nuclear program. In 2021, Iran also claimed that Israel had struck a facility in the city of Karaj that its officials believed was being used to build nuclear centrifuges.

Many are concerned that Israel’s cruel war on Gaza, if it were to expand regionally to include Hezbollah in Lebanon, would drag Iran, a prominent Hezbollah supporter, into the fray. And that, in turn, might be all the justification Netanyahu would need to strike Iran’s supposed nuclear sites. In fact, in response to drone and rocket attacks on American personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militants, the U.S. recently destroyed a weapons facility in Syria.

As for the situation in Gaza, right-wing Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition government, recently commented that “one way” to eliminate Hamas would be the nuclear option. “[T]here’s no such thing as innocents in Gaza,” he added. In response to those comments, Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu — a largely meaningless act — in an attempt to quiet criticisms at home and abroad that the war was harshly impacting innocent civilians. Or, perhaps, it had more to do with Eliyahu inadvertently admitting to Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

No doubt fearing a broader war in the Middle East, the Biden administration is committing itself heavily to Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas: not only by delivering interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system and upwards of 1,800 Boeing-made JDAMs (guidance kits for missiles) but also by replenishing stocks of weapons for Israel’s American-made F-35 fighter jets and CH-53 helicopters as well as KC046 aerial refueling tankers. In addition, two U.S. aircraft carrier task forces have been deployed to the Middle East, as has an Ohio-class nuclear submarine. To top it off, according to a New York Times investigation, the U.S. is providing commandos and drones to help locate Israeli (and American) hostages in Gaza.

While the Biden White House seems anything but eager for an expanded Middle Eastern war, it is nonetheless preparing for just such a scenario. Of course, any military escalation, especially one that leaves Israel fighting on multiple fronts, would only increase the chances that things could get much worse. A cornered, nuclear-armed Benjamin Netanyahu would be the definition of a perilous situation in a war where nothing, not journalists, schools, or even hospitals, has proven off-limits. Indeed, well over 25,000 tons of bombs had already been dropped on Gaza by early November, the equivalent of two Hiroshima-style nukes (without the radiation). Under such circumstances, a nuclear-capable Israel that blatantly flouts international law could prove a clear and present danger, not only to defenseless Palestinians but to a world already in ever more danger and disarray.

November 22, 2023 Posted by | history, Israel, Reference | Leave a comment

‘Burn Gaza now’ – top Israeli MP

Nissim Vaturi has argued his country is “too humane” towards Palestinians

A senior lawmaker in Israel has urged the military to “burn” Gaza and not allow any fuel into the Palestinian enclave unless all hostages held by Hamas are released. 

The comments made on Friday by Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Knesset, are the latest in a string of incendiary remarks by Israeli politicians on the deadly fighting with Hamas.

“All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane,” Vaturi, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“Burn Gaza now, nothing less! Don’t allow fuel in, don’t allow water in until the hostages are returned!” 

Earlier this month, Netanyahu suspended Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu from cabinet meetings after he suggested using nuclear weapons against the Palestinian enclave. 

Hamas took more than 200 hostages during its October 7 attack on Israel, in which it killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded by launching a bombing campaign and a ground invasion of Gaza. 

Israel has also imposed a near total blockade of the Palestinian enclave, which the UN and human rights groups say has only exacerbated the catastrophic humanitarian situation there.

Gazan Healthy Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told reporters on Friday that 24 patients at Al-Shifa hospital, the enclave’s largest medical facility, died during an Israeli raid on the compound. The IDF has accused Hamas of using Al-Shifa and other hospitals for military purposes.

More than 11,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7, according to local officials. After long debates, the UN Security Council passed a resolution on Wednesday calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting and the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.”

November 21, 2023 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘This Is Not a War, but a Mass Murder Tragedy,’ Says Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Charles Freeman

November 18, 2023

Chas Freeman chairs Projects International, Inc.

For more than four decades, Projects International has helped its partner enterprises and clients to create business ventures across borders. It facilitates their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation, capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other countries. The firm operates on five continents.

Ambassador Freeman is a career diplomat (retired) who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola. Ambassador Freeman worked as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon’s path-breaking visit to China in 1972. In addition to his Middle Eastern, African, East Asian and European diplomatic experience, he had a tour of duty in India.

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

Amnesty International Calls Israel’s War on Gaza a ‘Graveyard of Children’

By ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/18/amnesty-international-calls-israels-war-on-gaza-a-graveyard-of-children/

In an appeal to raise funds for Amnesty International, the human rights organization claimed that “Gaza is becoming ‘a graveyard for children,’” citing UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ comments from a press conference on the humanitarian crisis from November 6.

The advertisement goes on to list the myriad reasons why a ceasefire is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Gaza, such as “putting a stop to unlawful attacks by all parties, halting the mounting death toll in Gaza, and enabling aid agencies to get life-saving aid, water and medical supplies into Gaza to address the staggering levels of human suffering.”

The appeal is written below:

Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children.”

Attacks by the Israeli military are killing or injuring hundreds of girls and boys every day.

More than 2 million Palestinians — half of them children — are trapped, with nowhere safe to hide from Israeli military bombardments, and have little access to food, clean water and medical supplies. Civilian hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza remain in danger, and ongoing indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel puts civilians at risk.

The unfolding humanitarian catastrophe makes the need for an immediate ceasefire more and more urgent with every hour.

More than one million people — people like you — have already signed Amnesty’s global petition demanding a ceasefire to end bloodshed. We need to continue to raise our voices.

A ceasefire is crucial and has the potential to achieve many things, including: putting a stop to unlawful attacks by all parties, halting the mounting death toll in Gaza, and enabling aid agencies to get life-saving aid, water and medical supplies into Gaza to address the staggering levels of human suffering.

It would allow hospitals to receive life-saving medicines, fuel and equipment they desperately need, and to repair damaged wards.

It would provide an opportunity to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza and enable independent investigations into violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by all parties.

In this crisis and always, Amnesty International is relentlessly focused on protecting civilian lives and ensuring international humanitarian law and human rights law are respected. We have teams on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel working to expose war crimes and work towards accountability.

We are investigating mass summary killings, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, hostage taking and siege tactics. What is happening in Gaza, the wider Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Israel must be documented and those responsible must be held to account.

…like many of us, you might be feeling helpless right now — but I want you to know one powerful way you can make a difference for civilians caught in this escalating conflict is by joining our call for an immediate ceasefire.

Tonight, you and I will go to sleep in the safety of our homes. In Gaza, the bombardment is non-stop, nowhere is safe, and more blood is being shed. And it’s civilians — especially children — who are suffering the most.

Please, join us today. Sincerely,
Elizabeth Rghebi
Advocacy Director, Middle East North Africa
Amnesty International USA

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

Biden Admin Justifies Israel’s Assault on Gaza Hospitals With Recycled Israeli ‘Intelligence’

In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions

The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre”

As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.

By Wyatt Reed / The Grayzone,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/biden-admin-justifies-israels-assault-on-gaza-hospitals-with-recycled-israeli-intelligence/

With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.

“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”

On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.

“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.

Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12. Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”

But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been unable to find any presence of hostages inside or around the hospital. As Israeli Army Radio reported on November 15, “There is no indication of the presence of abductees inside the hospital.”

Systematic Israeli misinformation campaign dismissed by US as “fog of war”

Israeli and American officials have yet to produced any proof that Hamas operates a “command center” under Al-Shifa. Video published by the Israeli military purporting to prove Hamas kept hostages in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, Gaza’s last remaining medical center with a pediatric cancer ward, was less than convincing.

In that video performance, top Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claims that what appears to be a bomb shelter for young children is actually a Hamas torture chamber, citing objects as unlikely as a baby bottle and a woman’s clothes. In one particularly memorable and widely panned moment, Hagari insisted the days of the week written in Arabic on a calendar were actually the names of the “terrorists” meant to guard captive Israelis ostensibly being held there.

The Israeli military has since attempted to downplay the deception as a “mistake in translation.”

It was hardly the first round in Tel Aviv’s fake news campaign. In the weeks since Palestinian resistance groups launched their shock assault on October 7, native Arabic speakers have taken to social media to mock the audio recordings Israel regularly publishes which purport to show Hamas members gleefully discussing carrying out war crimes.

In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions. A video showing a crying woman describing how she retrieved her son’s decomposing body from the streets of Gaza was transformed by Israel’s embassy to the US, which used fake captions to falsely claim she was blaming Hamas for the siege. When questioned, the embassy subsequently deleted the post.

The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre” – a lie which the New York Times condemned as “reckless” and said put its journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza “at risk.”

Days later, Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account deleted footage of a woman dressed in nursing scrubs who claimed to work as a nurse in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital denounced Hamas for supposedly stealing fuel and medicine. Other doctors and nurses at the medical center reportedly told journalist Younis Tirawi: “We don’t know this woman; she has never worked here before & we’ve never seen her at the hospital.”

Social media users claimed the woman was Israeli actress Hannah Abutbul, who moonlights as a social media manager of an Israeli company named Aish International that works alongside the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abutbul denies appearing in the video.

On November 10, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed Hamas was “INSIDE the Indonesian hospital last night,” citing a video which appeared to show a firearm being displayed. An observer who pointed out that the object was actually a billy club had their reply ‘hidden’ by the official Israeli account.

Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.

During a November 14 press briefing, a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”

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

Netanyahu Says Israel ‘Not Successful’ in Minimizing Civilian Casualties in Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/netanyahu-claims-israel-not-successful-in-minimizing-civilian-casualties-in-gaza/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel was “trying to [minimize] civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.” The prime minister’s statement comes as the UN warns that the Israeli fuel embargo of Gaza could cause widespread starvation in the besieged enclave.

In an interview with CBS News on Thursday, the Israeli Prime Minister said Tel Aviv was trying to wipe out Hamas with minimal civilian casualties. He stated, “That’s what we’re trying to do: minimal civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.”

Netanyahu went on to blame Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza. “Any civilian death is a tragedy. And we shouldn’t have any because we’re doing everything we can to get the civilians out of harm’s way, while Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way,” he argued.

The Israeli leader says his forces have taken steps to warn civilians of upcoming strikes. “So, we send leaflets, [we] call them on their cell phones, and we say: ‘leave’. And many have left,” Netanyahu said.

In the first weeks of the Israeli military campaign, Tel Aviv instructed Gazans to move to the southern half of the strip. However, at least some who fled their homes were killed while trying to evacuate. After fleeing, numerous Gaza residents have been unable to locate basic resources and were forced to return to their homes.

On Wednesday, Israel began instructing Palestinians in southern Gaza to evacuate. It is unclear where the people could go.

Since Israel started bombing Gaza six weeks ago, at least 11,000 civilians, including 4,500 children, have been killed. The UN reports,  The UN reports “One in every 57 people living in the Gaza Strip has been killed or wounded.” Dozens of journalists and doctors are among the dead. Over 100 UN staff members have been killed.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the UN Security Council the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza has decimated the healthcare infrastructure. “WHO has recorded at least 137 attacks on health care in Gaza, with especially severe impact on Al-Shifa Hospital in recent days, where newborns on life support are dying due to power, oxygen, and water cuts, while many other patients of all ages are at risk – as well as medics, and people sheltering on the hospital grounds,” he said.

Netanyahu attempted to justify the two-day raid on the al-Shifa Hospital by claiming Israel believed it would find hostages in the facility and that Hamas was using the building as a headquarters. He told CBS News there were “strong indications” that Israeli hostages were being held there, and this was “one of the reasons we entered.” However, none were found.

The Israeli Prime Minister went on to say Tel Aviv had “concrete evidence” that there were “terrorist chieftains and terrorists” in the hospital, but that these fled as Israel’s forces advanced. Israeli forces who entered Al-Shifa found a small number of guns and uniforms.

After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv cut off all food, aid, water, and fuel into Gaza. The Israeli government has relaxed the embargo and allowed small amounts of food and water into the besieged enclave. However, the lack of fuel has now completely halted all aid shipments. While Netanyahu says he is attempting to take a moral path and save Palestinians’ lives when possible, the international aid agencies warn that there is now a risk of mass starvation in Gaza.

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

Smearing Photojournalists as Hamas Collaborators – Gets Them Added to a Hit List

Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars.

ARI PAUL 17 Nov 23,  https://fair.org/home/smearing-photojournalists-as-hamas-collaborators-gets-them-added-to-a-hit-list/

During Israeli military offensives in the Occupied Territories, it is common for the Israeli government and its supporters to claim media are biased in favor the Palestinians, often by invoking that there is “no moral equivalence” between the Israeli government and Palestinian militant organizations like Hamas (American Jewish Committee, 10/17/23). Akin to Alex Jones falsely smearing grieving parents of school shooting victims as “crisis actors,” pro-Israel advocates sometimes dismiss media images of Palestinian suffering as staged fakery they call “Pallywood” (France24, 10/27/23).

Now Israeli government officials are accusing major news media of coordinating with Hamas, essentially painting Palestinian stringers as terrorist operatives. At least one Israeli official threatened to “eliminate” anyone involved in the October 7 attacks, and indicated that some journalists were included included on that list.

The pro-Israel media advocacy organization HonestReporting (11/8/23) raised questions about the presence of AP, Reuters, New York Times and CNN photographers near the sites Hamas attacked in southern Israel on October 7:

“What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and the New York Times, notify these outlets?”

‘No different than terrorists’

Israeli officials are taking the group’s words seriously, going hard against these news agencies and individual Palestinian stringers. These accusations were featured throughout the corporate media.

The Financial Times (11/10/23) reported that Benny Gantz, who has held numerous Israeli military and ministerial roles, said “journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.” Knesset member Danny Danon (Twitter, 11/9/23), Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said that Israel would “eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre,” adding that “the ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.” Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu called these journalists “accomplices in crimes against humanity” (New York Post, 11/9/23).

Politico (11/9/23) reported that Israel’s “Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi accused the foreign media of employing contributors who were tipped off on the Hamas attacks.” It added that Nitzan Chen, director of Israel’s government press office, had asked the four media outlets “for clarifications regarding the behavior” of their photographers.

‘Mobilized by Hamas’

The affair was covered in many other outlets, including the New York Times (11/9/23), The Hill (11/9/23), Newsweek (11/9/23) and the Daily Beast (11/9/23). The Jerusalem Post (11/10/23) took the government and watchdog’s allegations as fact and said in an editorial:

“These so-called photojournalists made no effort to stop or distance themselves from the barbaric events. On the contrary: They were mobilized by the Hamas terrorists to glorify their acts, help promote their terrorism and spread fear among their enemies—Israel and the West. In this way, too, Hamas recalls ISIS, which deliberately recorded its beheadings and other barbaric murders.”

In a statement, Reuters (11/9/23) “categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on October 7.” Al Jazeera (11/9/23) reported that “AP also rejected allegations that its newsroom had prior knowledge of the attacks”; the agency said in a statement that the

“first pictures AP received from any freelancer show they were taken more than an hour after the attacks began…. No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time.”

Neither HonestReporting nor Israeli officials raising a stink about this have provided any evidence of unethical behavior by these media outlets or their stringers (Reuters, 11/11/23). HonestReporting has shrouded its rhetoric with the disclaimer of “just asking questions.” The AP (11/9/23) reported that “Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting and a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, admitted…the group had no evidence to back up” its suggestion that the photographers had “prior coordination with the terrorists.” Hoffman “said he was satisfied with subsequent explanations from several of these journalists that they did not know.”

Nevertheless, CNN and the AP stopped working with Hassan Eslaiah, one of the freelancers mentioned in the HonestReporting report, who in fact “got extra emphasis in the HonestReporting story, which resurfaced a several-years-old photo of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” according to the Washington Post (11/9/23).

Deadly time for journalists

Any journalist who read HonestReporting’s questions had to smirk a bit. Journalists all over the world are tipped off by all sorts of sources to get somewhere at a certain time, with the undetailed promise of some hot footage. This is just the nature of the job, and doesn’t mean that a journalist’s relationship with a source is the same as working together on a common message.

have already written at FAIR (10/19/23) that Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars. The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/15/23) said that 42 journalists have been killed in the month since fighting broke out, making that period “the deadliest for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992” (UPI, 11/8/23).

Now Israeli officials have insinuated that if you are too physically close to a Palestinian fighter and get a good photo in the process, their government may consider you an enemy combatant. That is another chilling escalation of a troubling trend in Israel’s relationship with the press.

Information stranglehold

It’s all part of the Israeli government’s attempt to keep a tight stranglehold on information coming out in the press. Recently, the government used the tried and true method of embedding journalists within military units; in exchange for on-the-ground access, the military gets to review the footage journalists’ obtain (New Arab, 11/8/23). Israel also moved to criminalize the “consumption of terrorist materials” (Al Jazeera, 11/8/23) and to shut down media deemed a threat to national security (International Federation of Journalists, 10/20/23). NBC (11/11/23) reported that the Israeli government has “cracked down on broadcasts, reports and social media posts that” are deemed “a threat to national security or in support of terror organizations since Hamas’ October 7 assault.”

As the Israeli publication +972 (9/18/23) pointed out, before the outbreak of the current war, Israeli government censorship had actually declined, but it still found that in 2022, the

Israeli military censor blocked the publication of 159 articles across various Israeli media outlets, and censored parts of a further 990. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of three times a day—on top of the chilling effect that the very existence of censorship imposes on independent journalism that seeks to uncover government failings.

While Israel likes to think of itself as a bastion of Western enlightenment in a sea of backward nations, this anti-media trend in the country makes it more like its neighbors than its supporters would like to believe.

In the case of the death of famous British correspondent Marie Colvin, a judge ruled that she was intentionally targeted by the Assad regime for giving a voice to opposition factions (BBC, 1/31/19). Egypt frequently detains journalists for the supposed crime of collaboration with subversive organizations and foreign powers (Reporters Without Borders, 6/30/23). The rate of the Turkish government’s jailing of journalists has accelerated (Voice of America, 12/15/22), and last year the government “detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media for their alleged links to Kurdish militants” (AP, 10/25/22).

This is the club Israel belongs to. And such hostility toward the free press makes it harder for journalists to deliver clear, fair reporting about the Middle East conflict. And that’s the point. The insinuation that media organizations who report freely on the Israel/Palestine conflict are anti-Zionist agents is meant to keep the situation shrouded in haze.

November 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, media | 1 Comment

How a hasbara group’s sham investigation put Gaza journalists in the firing line

Honest Reporting’s claims against Palestinian photographers were echoed by Israeli leaders and media. But they’re factually and journalistically unfounded.

+972 Magazine, ByOren Ziv, November 13, 2023

On Nov. 8, Honest Reporting, an organization that claims to monitor “anti-Israel” bias in the media, published an “investigation” accusing Palestinian photojournalists in the Gaza Strip of having advance knowledge about Hamas’ lethal October 7 attack on southern Israel. ……………………..

The report quickly gained traction, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office both sharing the report on their official X pages (the former has since deleted the post). Israeli leaders rushed to put out their own condemnations of the journalists, equating them with those responsible for the massacres…………………………………..

However, even a cursory examination of the investigation’s claims revealed major discrepancies……………………………………

Indeed, the allegations against the Palestinian journalists appear to be completely baseless. Gil Hoffman, Honest Reporting’s director and a former longtime correspondent at the Jerusalem Post, admitted as much two days after the report’s publication, in response to refutations issued by the four outlets implicated by the claims: Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and The New York Times.

…………………………………………………………………….. Claims debunked

In order to properly respond to the dangerous claims made by Honest Reporting, it is necessary to understand how both photo agencies and international media outlets work with photographers. 

 First, these organizations usually use staff photographers, independent photographers, and/or photographers who either approach agencies and outlets to sell their photos or are contacted by these bodies to buy their work.

On October 7, there were no international photographers in Gaza (who would require permits from the Israeli authorities to enter the Strip), and since Hamas’ attack and the start of Israel’s intensified siege and bombardment, none have been able to enter. Therefore, for the purpose of covering the events of that day, the media relied on their permanent local Palestinian staff as well as additional Palestinian photographers.

The Israeli media, which parroted Honest Reporting’s allegations unquestioningly, claimed that the Palestinian photographers “documented the massacre.” This is false: while one journalist photographed a mob attacking the body of a dead soldier that had been removed from an Israeli tank along the Gaza fence, none of them documented killing. The photographs mentioned in the report went online in real time, with full credit to the photographers, and Israeli media outlets themselves used these photos extensively. Some of them have become iconic, such as the image of a commandeered tank that was set on fire next to the Gaza fence.

Nonetheless, the international outlets mentioned in the report took Honest Reporting’s claims seriously, and conducted their own investigations. CNN, The New York Times, AP, and Reuters all looked into the allegations and offered responses. AP, for example, emphasized that it did not know in advance about the attack, and that the initial photographs — taken by freelancers — were taken more than an hour after the attack began. The other outlets published similar clarifying statements.

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Even after Honest Reporting admitted they had no proof that the photographers were complicit in the attack, most of the Israeli media that reported on the initial findings did not bother to publish anything about the organization’s sudden change in tune. The claim that Palestinian journalists were responsible for Hamas’ war crimes has already taken root and become just one more example in the wave of attacks by the Israeli public against Palestinian journalists.

A flawed logic

Like photojournalists all over the world, the Gaza-based photographers arrived to fulfill their journalistic duty and document a difficult, painful, and cruel event, of which they did not know all the details at the time………………………………………………………………………

The Palestinian photographers set out to document an event that took place near their homes. That same morning, Israeli photojournalists — myself included — set out to document the events in the south. We filmed the wounded, the bodies lying on the ground, and the gun battles at the Sderot police station between Palestinian fighters and Israeli security forces. Does this mean we had a hand in the events or could have helped? Of course not. 

………………………………………………………… It is difficult to accept that an unfounded investigation was accepted by large parts of the Israeli media as fact, went viral on social media, was quoted without reservation, and strengthened the incitement against those who are trying in impossible conditions to document the reality on the ground. Israel has killed at least 39 journalists in Gaza since the war began. The accusations made by Honest Reporting serve to legitimize their deaths and the bloodletting of others.

Had the organization bothered to contact the various media outlets for a response before publishing their claims, the damage could have been avoided. But as Hoffman told AP, Honest Reporting doesn’t “claim to be a news organization,” and thus, it seems, the traditional journalistic standards of asking for comment before publication does not apply to them. Honest Reporting is a right-wing, hasbara organization with a clear agenda, and should be treated as such by all who interact with it.

A version of this article was first published in  Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.  https://www.972mag.com/honest-reporting-gaza-journalists/

November 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Time’s Up for Netanyahu and Biden

The question for today is what the world will do to enable the Palestinian people to live in peace and security in a nation where their children enjoy the opportunities most Americans and Europeans take for granted.

By Dan Siegel ScheerPost 17 Nov 23  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/17/times-up-for-netanyahu-and-biden/

We can tell the world is changing when tens of thousands of Texans rally in the capital of America’s most important red state to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and freedom for Palestine. No longer can the Israeli government enforce its deadly calculus of 10 (or 50? or 100?) Palestinian lives for each Israeli killed in its futile effort to suppress Palestine’s struggle for self-determination. No longer can an American President assume that the public will support propping up an Israeli government whose constant, murderous violations of international law bring us daily exposure to the violence and deprivation imposed on the Palestinian population.

The issues are no longer whether Israel should survive and whether Hamas’ murders must be condemned. Those are the easy questions. Countless millions of us have moved on. 

The question for today is what the world will do to enable the Palestinian people to live in peace and security in a nation where their children enjoy the opportunities most Americans and Europeans take for granted. No one suggests that this challenge can be easily resolved, but the first step is for the U.S. to stop supporting the most right-wing government in Israel’s history from imposing unlimited violence and deprivation on Gaza while accelerating violent settler expansion in the West Bank.

Israel’s strategies to ensure its survival and the means it chooses to defend itself should no longer enjoy unquestioned American support. Netanyahu’s government has exhausted its legitimate right to defend itself against the Hamas attack. It has already killed 11,000 Palestinians and provided no evidence that any of them were responsible for Hamas’ violence.

Israel’s air campaign against Gaza relies on the “emergency” American appropriation of $14 billion in military aid. American weapons have been designated for Israeli settlers stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank. U.S. officials know that Israel’s actions will not lead to peace. So do Israeli leaders, including many in the military. Netanyahu and his government survive because they have American support, including Jews who continue to maintain that criticism of the Israeli government is the equivalent of antisemitism. Many of us disagree. Recent polling demonstrates that the American public is evenly divided on support for the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street represent ever growing numbers of American Jews. We are no longer cowed from describing Israel’s actions against the people of Gaza as genocide or its policies in the West Bank as apartheid. We are no longer intimidated by an American Jewish establishment that wields specious and exaggerated accusations of antisemitism and harassment to silence critics of the Netanyahu government.

America’s Jewish establishment does its best to suppress the contentious history of Zionism within the Jewish community worldwide. My grandfather grew up in the late 1800s in a small town in Belarus and became a student and political activist in Minsk. The intellectual life of his community focused on the debate about whether socialism or Zionism best served Jews’ long term interests.

Much public debate focuses on “who started it?,” and the simplistic answer given by Israel’s defenders points to the Hamas attack of October 7 as justification for Israel’s excesses. But the war between Israel and Palestine did not begin on Oct.  7, or even in 1979 or 1967 or 1948, and it was not created in the Holocaust. It makes more sense to say that the roots of the current conflict go back to the Crusades, a campaign that began around 1095 when Europe’s Christian kings raised and sent armies to the Middle East to overthrow its Muslim leaders and take their land. As they marched across Europe, the Crusaders attacked Jewish communities, murdering their populations and stealing their wealth. Almost 1,000 years later the descendants of those Arab and Jewish people contend for the land conquered by the Crusaders.

History will not tell us which side has right on its side. The search for peace must be forward-looking and requires a commitment to the welfare of both the Palestinian and Israeli people. American officials are far from powerless to stop the Netanyahu government. The problem is that they refuse to do so. The current crisis has created a demand for leadership with a vision of a world at peace.

This is Joe Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment, the time for him to follow LBJ’s 1968 decision to withdraw from the campaign for reelection. The issue is not that Biden is too old. His policies are too old. The American Empire is no more. We need leaders ready to engage the emerging multipolar world, who do not imagine that the U.S. is going to war over Taiwan, who welcome sharing power with the nations of Europe and the BRICS countries. The end of America’s uncritical support of the Israeli government can be the first step in creating leadership for a world at peace.

November 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Israel demolishes Gaza parliament (VIDEO)

Rt.com 17 Nov 23

IDF troops posed inside the Palestinian Legislative Council before blowing it up

Israeli troops destroyed the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza on Wednesday, describing the act as part of the war against Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Arabic-language spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, posted a minute-long video of the demolition on X (formerly Twitter). It showed the heavily damaged building exploding in a pillar of smoke and dust, as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops in nearby trenches laughed and cheered.

“Today, our ground forces blew up the headquarters of the Hamas Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip as part of destroying the Hamas regime of oppression and terrorism,” wrote Gendelman.

The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building was located on Omar al-Mukhtar Street in central Gaza City.

On Monday, soldiers of the IDF’s Golani Brigade posed inside with Israeli flags, “after conquering the area,” according to the Israeli news outlet i24NEWS.

The PLC has been largely inactive since 2007, when Hamas took power in Gaza and split from the Fatah movement in the West Bank……………………………more https://www.rt.com/news/587354-israel-demolishes-gaza-parliament/

November 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Herzog: Israel will maintain ‘very strong force’ in Gaza, Translation: We’re not leaving. Ever.


James Shotter and Andrew England, Financial Times, Thu, 16 Nov 2023  https://www.sott.net/article/486055-Herzog-Israel-will-maintain-very-strong-force-in-Gaza-Translation-We-re-not-leaving-Ever

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said that his country cannot leave a vacuum in Gaza and would have to maintain a “very strong force” in the coastal enclave for the near future to prevent Hamas re-emerging in the besieged strip.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Herzog said the government was discussing many ideas about how Gaza would be run once the war between Israel and Hamas ended, adding that he assumed the US and “our neighbours in the region” would have some involvement in the post-conflict order.

“If we pull back, then who will take over? We can’t leave a vacuum. We have to think about what will be the mechanism; there are many ideas that are thrown in the air,” Herzog said. “But no one will want to turn this place, Gaza, into a terror base again.”

Herzog’s comments come as international pressure mounts on Israel over the soaring death toll in Gaza and the deepening humanitarian crisis in the strip, which is home to 2.3mn people and has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.

Western officials are also concerned that Israel has no clear plan for what comes next in Gaza after vowing to eliminate Hamas, which is deeply embedded in Palestinian society and has political and military wings.

The Biden administration has said there might be a need for a transition period, but it has also warned Israel not to reoccupy the strip — from which it withdrew in 2005 — or to reduce the size of the territory with new security barriers or buffer zones.

Comment: Good luck with that. The Zionists are off the leash and they know it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said Israel would maintain indefinite “overall security responsibility” over Gaza.

Herzog, who has no executive powers but is briefed on the war effort, said: “In order to prevent terror from coming up again, we have to have a very strong force to make sure that it’s committed enough and it [the attack] doesn’t happen [again].”

Herzog was speaking hours before Israeli forces launched a raid on al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, which is home to patients and thousands of Palestinians who have sought sanctuary from Israel’s bombardment.

The Israel Defense Forces described its raid on al-Shifa as a “precise and targeted operation” in a “specified area” of the hospital. The IDF accuses Hamas of using hospitals for military operations, and the White House on Tuesday supported Israel’s claims that Palestinian militants stored weapons in medical facilities.

Comment: Precise and targeted means we won’t drop a missile right on your head, but bomb you right up to the front door:

Hamas has denied these claims. A spokesman for the government in Gaza described the raid on al-Shifa as a war crime.

The UN has said that the health system in Gaza has collapsed, with all but one of the hospitals in northern Gaza no longer functioning.

Asked about Israel’s military operations around hospitals, Herzog said: “We are doing it in a very, very cautious way.”

He also insisted that Israel was seeking to protect civilians.

Israeli forces launched an air and land offensive on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, in its most ferocious ever assault on the strip.

More than 11,200 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment, according to Palestinian health officials, and the UN says more than 1.5mn people have been displaced.

Israel has repeatedly ordered Palestinians to leave the densely populated north of Gaza, which is the focus of its military operations, and to move south.

“I care about the Palestinian deaths . . . it breaks my heart,” Herzog said. “But I always remember, I have first and foremost [to ensure] the security to defend our people.”

Even Israel’s staunchest allies have raised concerns about the death toll in Gaza, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken saying last week that “far too many Palestinians have been killed”.

This week, French President Emmanuel Macron told the BBC that Israel must “stop the bombing”.

Herzog said Israel respected its allies and listened to the US “very carefully”. But he added that “at the end of the day, we have a duty to protect our people”.

The president said “first and foremost” Israel wanted to secure the release of about 240 hostages that Hamas captured during its October 7 attack on southern Israel.

He said the international community understood that, and supported Israel’s right to defend itself. But he said: “How do I have the right to defend myself if I cannot eradicate the military capabilities of Hamas? It’s right there. It’s right there in the [Gaza] city.”

Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office, has been facilitating indirect talks between Israel and the militant group to secure a deal to release civilian hostages.

Herzog blamed Hamas for the lack of an agreement, saying “we haven’t even received one piece of information about our hostages”.

“So we have to fight and get them,” he said.

He said Israel, which has laid siege to Gaza and allowed only a limited amount of aid into the strip — triggering acute shortages of food, water and fuel — was working to allow more humanitarian assistance into the enclave.

Herzog added that the government was discussing “a major effort” with Cyprus to deliver aid via the sea, saying Cypriot officials would be visiting Israel on Thursday to follow up on the initiative.

“It’s under serious negotiations with the Cypriot government,” he said.

“It’s true there are areas in Gaza that are in a very dire situation. That’s because it’s a war zone,” he said. “But we are trying.”

November 19, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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