The flaw in the Israeli government stance is that we are not living in 1943. After World War II, the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and other international instruments were enacted by the nations of the world to prevent the atrocities of WW II from being repeated. It was to this “rules-based international order” that the Biden administration appealed when it tried to rally the world to oppose Russian war crimes in Ukraine. In a gob-smacking act of supreme hypocrisy, the Biden administration has decided to throw the same rules-based international order on the garbage heap of special pleading when it comes to Israel.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In one of the biggest massacres it has so far committed, the Israeli Air Force on Tuesday bombed the Jabaliyaa refugee camp in Gaza, killing or wounding at least 400 persons and destroying the Block Six residential complex, felling 20 buildings. More victims are believed to be under the rubble.
An Israeli military spokesman said that the strike was directed at Hamas leader Ibrahim Biari, a mastermind of the October 7 attack on Israel. Although Israeli authorities proclaimed that they had succeeded in killing Biari, Hamas announced that he was still very much alive.
Killing and wounding 400 noncombatants and destroying 20 residential buildings to get at one target, even if the target is a wanted terrorist, is strictly forbidden under the post-World War II laws of war and International Humanitarian law. These laws are codified in the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court.
For instance, Rome Statute:
Art. 8 (2) (b) (iv) Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated. (4th Geneva Convention Art. 85 (3) (b) of AP I.)
Art. 8 (2) (a) (iv) Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly (mirrored from Geneva Conventions Art. 50/51/147 of GC I, II and IV).
Art. 8 (2) (b) (i) Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities (4th Geneva Convention Art. 85 (3) (a), plus Art. 51(2) AP I).
Art. 8 (2) (b) (v) Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives. (4th Geneva Convention, Art. 85 (3) (d) of AP I).
The presence of one senior Hamas commander, or even a platoon of them, among hundreds of noncombatants clearly would not justify recklessly endangering innocent civilians on the scale of Jabaliyaa. This is a war crime pure and simple.
In a CNN interview by Wolf Blitzer of an Israeli military spokesman, Blitzer is clearly astonished that he straightforwardly admitted that the Israelis knew that the strike would kill the refugees in the camp, but did it anyway.
The complete disregard of Israeli authorities for the laws of war and International Humanitarian Law enacted after World War II — intended to prevent atrocities of the sort committed during that war — was manifest in remarks to the New York Times, reported Monday:
“It became evident to US officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign. In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II – including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to try to defeat those countries.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
this claim, of killing noncombatants in self-defense, which the German officers resorted to, is precisely the claim some Israeli officials are making today, that all Palestinians in Gaza are terrorists, all are dangerous to the survival of Israel, and therefore slaughtering them en masse is permissible. These arguments were rejected by the war crimes tribunal after WW II, and they should be rejected today. Of course, extremist Israelis really mind being compared to Nazis. But there is an easy way to avoid that: don’t act like Nazis.
The flaw in the Israeli government stance is that we are not living in 1943. After World War II, the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and other international instruments were enacted by the nations of the world to prevent the atrocities of WW II from being repeated. It was to this “rules-based international order” that the Biden administration appealed when it tried to rally the world to oppose Russian war crimes in Ukraine. In a gob-smacking act of supreme hypocrisy, the Biden administration has decided to throw the same rules-based international order on the garbage heap of special pleading when it comes to Israel.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration is letting the fascist government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu get away with mass murder. As a result, no one in the global South will ever listen to Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken say the words “rules-based international order” again without falling down laughing. The US attempt to cut Russia off from the world economy will now completely fail. https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/01/israel-in-search-of-its-hiroshima-massive-bomb-wipes-out-20-apt-buildings-kills-wounds-400-civilians/ #Israel #Palestine #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes —
TWO MONTHS BEFORE Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
On October 7, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.
The U.S. Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a “life support facility”: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.
Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing.
The $35.8 million U.S. troop facility, not publicly announced or previously reported, was obliquely referenced in an August 2 contract announcement by the Pentagon. Though the Defense Department has taken pains to obscure the site’s true nature — describing it in other records merely as a “classified worldwide” project — budget documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512. (The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)…………………….
Rare acknowledgment of the U.S. military presence in Israel came in 2017, when the two countries inaugurated a military site that the U.S. government-funded Voice of America deemed “the first American military base on Israeli soil.” Israeli Air Force’s Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch called it “historic.” He said, “We established an American base in the State of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time.”
A day later, the U.S. military denied that it was an American base, insisting that it was merely a “living facility” for U.S. service members working at an Israeli base
The U.S. military employs similar euphemistic language to characterize the new facility in Israel, which its procurement records describe as a “life support area.” Such obfuscation is typical of U.S. military sites the Pentagon wants to conceal. Site 512 has previously been referred to as a “cooperative security location”: a designation that is intended to confer a low-cost, light footprint presence but has been applied to bases that, as The Intercept has previously reported, can house as many as 1,000 troops.
Site 512, however, wasn’t established to contend with a threat to Israel from Palestinian militants but the danger posed by Iranian mid-range missiles.
The overwhelming focus on Iran continues to play out in the U.S. government’s response to the Hamas attack. In an attempt to counter Iran — which aids both Hamas and Israel’s rival to the north, Hezbollah, a Lebanese political group with a robust military wing, both of which are considered terror groups by the U.S. — the Pentagon has vastly expanded its presence in the Middle East. Following the attack, the U.S. doubled the number of fighter jets in the region and deployed two aircraft carriers off the coast of Israel…………………………………………………. more https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/
The plan advocates the forced transfer of the population of the Gaza Strip to Sinai permanently, and calls for the international community to be leveraged to assist the move
Israeli culture magazine Mekovitpublished on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The document, issued on 13 October, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance.
The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.
The existence of the document does not necessarily indicate that its recommendations are being implemented by Israel’s security establishment.
The Ministry of Intelligence, headed by Gila Gamliel of the Likud party, does not control any of Israel’s intelligence agencies, but independently prepares studies and policy papers, which are distributed for consideration by the government and its security bodies.
However, recent statements by Israeli government officials and actions by the Israeli army in Gaza suggest the plan is indeed being implemented. Since 7 October, Israeli officials have repeatedly issued warnings to Palestinians to move to southern Gaza in advance of a looming ground invasion.
Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. The siege, combined with intense Israeli bombing that has killed over 8,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, threatens to make Gaza uninhabitable.
An official at the Ministry of Intelligence confirmed that the ten-page document is authentic but “was not supposed to reach the media,” Mekovit noted.
According to a right-wing activist, the document from the Ministry of Intelligence was leaked by a member of Likud. Leaking the document was an attempt to find out whether “the public in Israel is ready to accept ideas of a transfer from Gaza.”
The document unequivocally and explicitly recommends carrying out a transfer of civilians from Gaza as the desired outcome of the war.
The transfer plan is divided into several phases: in the first phase, the population in Gaza must be forced to move to southern Gaza, while Israeli air strikes will focus on targets in northern Gaza.
In the second phase, the Israeli army’s ground entry into Gaza will begin, which will lead to the occupation of the entire strip, from north to south, and the “cleansing of the underground bunkers from Hamas fighters.”
At the same time as the Gaza Strip is occupied, the citizens of Gaza will move to Egyptian territory and will be prevented from returning permanently.
“It is important to leave the traffic lanes towards the south usable, to allow the evacuation of the civilian population towards Rafah,” the document states.
The document recommends beginning a dedicated campaign that will “motivate” Gazans “to agree to the plan,” and make them give up their land.
Gazan should be convinced that “Allah made sure that you lost this land because of the leadership of Hamas – there is no choice but to move to another place with the help of Your Muslim brothers,” the document reads.
Further, the plan states the government must launch a public relations campaign that will promote the transfer program to western states in a way that does not promote hostility to Israel or damage its reputation. The deportation of the population from Gaza must be presented as a necessary humanitarian measure to receive international support. Such a deportation could be justified if it will lead to “fewer casualties among the civilian population compared to the expected number of casualties if they remain,” the document says.
The document also states that the US should be leveraged to pressure Egypt to take in the residents of Gaza, and to encourage other European countries, and in particular Greece, Spain and Canada, to help take in and settle the refugees who will be evacuated from Gaza.
Finally, the document claims that if the population of Gaza remains, there will be “many Arab deaths” during the expected occupation of Gaza by the Israeli army, and this will damage Israel’s international image even more than the deportation of the population. For all these reasons, the recommendation of the Ministry of Intelligence is to promote the transfer of all Palestinians in Gaza to Sinai permanently. #Israel #Palestine
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands, the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”
Ever since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was initiated on October 7th, the Western media has been monomaniacally focused on events in Israel and Gaza. Remarkably, none of this relentless coverage has provided Western audiences with any information relevant to even vaguely understanding what has been happening, and why. Even more egregiously, the deluge distorts, obfuscates, and even justifies Zionist atrocities against innocent civilians. Sometimes, preemptively.
Given the pace at which events are moving, it is all but impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of misleading or outright false propaganda and whitewashing that has spewed from the mouths and social media accounts of Zionist officials, pundits, and think tank “experts”, duly regurgitated unquestioningly and uncritically by major news outlets and the alleged “journalists” they employ.
Nonetheless, at the core of all this misreporting and malfeasance is a total lack of any context whatsoever. Readers, viewers and social media users are provided no understanding of the causes of the current crisis, or the paths to its resolution. Countless reporters, pundits and editorials in prominent agenda-setting newspapers have claimed that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was completely without provocation, some even implying it was motivated purely by the virulent anti-Semitic hatred of Hamas.
On October 9th, the New York Times boldly declared Hamas had “burst through border fences without warning or any immediate provocation.” In reality, that “border” is a weaponized, lethal fence of an open-air concentration camp, equipped with motion-sensor-activated automatic guns, barbed wire, and cameras usually meaning death for any Palestinian who dares tread nearby. This dishonest sleight of hand is nonetheless not quite as shocking as the obfuscatory insertion of “immediate” before “provocation”.
In August, the UN issued an updated analysis on the plight of Gaza. It ruled that Palestinians “have been living under collective punishment” as a result of Israel’s blockade, which results in 95% of the population lacking access to clean drinking water, among other horrors. UN secretary general António Guterres concludes the measures “contravene international humanitarian law, as they target and impose hardship on the civilian population, effectively penalizing them for acts they have not committed.”
In late September, Israel bombed Gaza for several days, then on October 4th, Zionist settlers attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. From January 1st this year until that date, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) murdered 234 Palestinians, and made 821 homeless by demolishing their houses.
‘Kill and Kill and Kill’
The closest a mainstream outlet has come to acknowledging a rationale for Hamas’ attack on Israel was the Washington Post in its first editorial on the strike, October 7th. The article parenthetically referenced “legitimate Palestinian grievances,” albeit in the context of Hamas “exploiting” them for its own cynical purposes. Even more egregiously, there was no detail provided on what those “grievances” might be.
No mention of the Nakba. No mention of Palestinians being illegally prevented from returning to their stolen homes and lands stolen, in contravention of UN resolutions. No mention of the peaceful Great March of Return March 2018 – December 2019, during which over 200 unarmed civilians were killed, and 9,200 injured. Many were shot by IOF snipers in their knees, crippling them for life – horrific, wanton mutilation about which the perpetrators openly boasted to Zionist media.
All of these facts are urgently relevant to consider in the context of any modern day Palestinian violence directed towards their Zionist occupiers. So too that systematic, industrial scale slaughter of Palestinians was hardwired into Israel’s plan to blockade Gaza and the West Bank from the outside world, from the very beginning. In 2004, Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed proposals for how this genocidal strategy would work directly to Ariel Sharon’s government.
Israeli forces would be withdrawn from the area entirely, and a stringent surveillance and security system constructed to ensure nothing and no one entered or exited without Zionist proviso. Anyone attempting to flee would be murdered. Sofer forecast – and eagerly welcomed – absolutely dire results:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
‘Evade Detection’
As this journalist revealed on September 21st, declassified files show as far back as the 1960s, British intelligence was well-versed in surreptitiously packaging weaponized information serving specific psychological warfare objectives as innocuous, “unemphasised news items” for broadcast via the BBC, and other “organs of publicity” London’s spies “control or influence.” This way, British spooks recorded, their brazen propaganda campaigns were “far more likely to be believed” by unsuspecting target audiences.
(excerpt here on original)
Such revealing excerpts resonate ominously today, given the British state broadcaster has repeatedly laid justificatory foundations for genocidal Zionist attacks before they happen. In the most egregious example to date, on October 16th the BBC investigated whether Hamas constructs tunnels “under hospitals in schools,” reportedly in response to a question from an “anonymous reader.”
The British state broadcaster declared that Hamas did, contending based on uncorroborated “reports” and a graphic map supplied by the IOF, that “some passages have entrances located on the bottom floors of houses, mosques, schools and other public buildings to allow militants to evade detection,” therefore “effectively using them as human shields.”
On cue, the very next day, Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital, brimming with hundreds of injured patients, and thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge from the inexorable onslaught of Zionist airstrikes, was struck from the sky. The damage was absolutely cataclysmic, and fatality estimates range from 300 – 800.
Even at the lower end of the scale, this represents the largest single loss of life in Gaza since Israel sealed the area off from the outside world almost two decades ago. Before the dust had settled at the hospital, Hananya Naftali, an IOF operative “recently called up from the frontline to another front – the digital war,” took to Twitter to boast about the carnage:
“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number [sic] of terrorists are dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields.”
‘Nakba 2.0’
The echo in these words of the BBC’s “unemphasised news item” from 24 hours earlier is palpable. Conspicuously though, Naftali deleted this within hours. A post on Netanyahu’s official Twitter account, which perversely branded the IOF assault on Gaza “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle” was almost promptly purged. Hurriedly, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a video purporting to show a Palestinian rocket striking the hospital.
Almost instantly though, online sleuths determined the clip to be fraudulent, and it was retracted. Despite such suspicious retractions and falsification being unambiguous signifiers of guilt, mainstream journalists not only persist in refusing to attribute the hospital strike to either “side”, but urge their audiences to avoid jumping to conclusions, and/or blaming Zionist forces. Veteran Sky News editor Adam Boulton went to the extent of declaring, “Israel had nothing to gain from this.”
Yet, the Zionists absolutely did have much to gain from destroying the hospital, just as they do from it wholesale destruction of the Occupied Territories, and all who live there. The current blitz on Gaza is concerned with completing their founding objective of purging Palestine of its entire indigenous population, and leaving what remains a monoethnic state forever. In the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s launch, multiple Israeli lawmakers and officials openly called for a “Nakba 2.0”.
Translated from the Hebrew by Google
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands – the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid“
Those horrific proposals remain extant today. So too does a heinous statement from Israeli National Security minister Itamar Ben-Givr, issued not long after the destruction of al-Ahli Arab Hospital:
Those horrific proposals remain extant today. So too does a heinous statement from Israeli National Security minister Itamar Ben-Givr, issued not long after the destruction of al-Ahli Arab Hospital:
“As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands, the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”
Zionists over many, many years have made their genocidal intentions towards the Palestinian people abundantly clear. It is therefore urgently incumbent upon us all to do what Western journalists refuse to do. Namely, take them at their word, and act accordingly. #Israel #Palestine
Last week the American ‘president’, Joe Biden, gave a TV address in which he declared that he was sending half of America’s sea power to ‘protect Israel’, part of Washington’s plan to usher in a “new, new world order.” While it’s scarily obvious what Israel’s attempting to do – ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians – it’s not so obvious what the USA is trying to do.
This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall sketch how ‘Armageddon’ might play out in the coming months, with the US-led West apparently seeking to start a ‘controlled burn’ in the Middle East with a ‘limited war’ that would disrupt global energy supplies just enough to hinder its rivals and thus maintain American global hegemony. You know what they say about wishful thinking… #Israel #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
They can talk about the killings on October 7 till they’re blue in the face, but people are going to object that nothing Hamas did makes it moral or acceptable to murder children by the thousands.
The thing is there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.
With other imperial military actions the propagandists had an easier time spinning things. Oh no those evil communists are taking over South Vietnam, we need to stop them! Oh no Saddam’s got WMDs, we need to get him! Oh no Gaddafi’s gonna rape and kill all those Libyans, we have a responsibility to protect them!
There’s only so much a propagandist can do with that.
They can talk about the killings on October 7 til they’re blue in the face, but people are going to object that nothing Hamas did makes it moral or acceptable to murder children by the thousands.
They can say “Israel has a right to defend itself” as much as they want, but people are going to object that murdering children by the thousands is not actually defending anything from anyone.
They can bleat the phrase “human shields” over and over again, but eventually people are going to start saying “Okay but even if they are human shields, could we please stop murdering children by the thousands? I know I wouldn’t want my children to be murdered just because they were being used as human shields.”
They can say every death is the fault of Hamas, but more and more people are going to start saying “Okay blame whoever you want, but can we please stop murdering children by the thousands right this very instant?”
They can say “Well what do you expect Israel to do?”, and people will respond “Stop murdering children by the thousands for starters, please and thank you.
Imagine you’re a mass media propagandist trying to frame all this in a positive light. How would you do it? Would you be able to make it believable?
Propagandists are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this. They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.
Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation — as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.
The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.
The longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.
By murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see. #Israel #Palestine
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara are hiding in a luxury mansion
It is owned by US billionaire Simon Falic, and comes with high security
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have decamped to the luxury mansion with a deep nuclear bunker, amid growing public anger towards the country’s leaders.
The gated mansion in a Jerusalem mansion, owned by US billionaire Simon Falic, comes with high-level security.
He said the staff are being moved there, including their personal chef, with the preparations suggesting future meetings with world leaders will also be relocated there.
The decision to move into a residence with a deep nuclear bunker is not a common one in Israel, even among the super-rich.
But with the looming threat from Iran, a handful of the PM’s inner circle have built them……………………………………….
“……… First, settler colonial movements are distinguished from standard colonialism – like British rule in India – by the fact that the settler population wishes not just to steal the native population’s resources but to replace the native population itself.
There are lots of examples of this: European settlers dispossessed native peoples in what we today call the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example.
The definition of genocide in international law exactly describes what those Europeans did to the local population: mass killings; inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of all or part of the native community; preventing births within the local population; and forcibly transferring native children to the settler population.
European settlers who today call themselves Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders never had to account for their crimes against those native peoples. Which possibly explains why European countries and their settler colonial outgrowths are today lining up against the rest of the world to support Israel as it intensifies industrial genocide in Gaza.
The truth is the “western” world order was built on genocide. Israel is just following in a long tradition…………………………………………………
The final model for a settler colonial population is to drive the native population over the border, in an act of ethnic cleansing. This was Israel’s preferred option in 1948 and again in 1967, when it decided to expand its borders by occupying the remaining Palestinian lands in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The Palestinians in Gaza are an object lesson in the various ways a native population can be abused by a settler colonial movement……………………………..
Unlike white South Africa, Israel is not looking for peace and reconciliation. It is revisiting other settler colonial options.
In the current attack on Gaza, it is implementing a mixed model: genocide for those who remain in Gaza, ethnic cleansing for those who can get out (assuming Egypt finally relents and opens its borders).
None of that has anything to do with Hamas. The most one can say is that Hamas’ resistance has forced Israel’s hand. It has had to abandon its siege-apartheid model – the long term imprisonment of a population with no resources, no freedom of movement, no clean water, no jobs.
Instead, it has returned to the tried-and-tested formulas of genocide and ethnic cleansing……………………….
Palestinians overthrowing Hamas, or Hamas surrendering, would not turn Gaza into a Dubai-on-the-Mediterranean. Palestinians there would still be prisoners, though possibly allowed slightly better conditions.
If you doubt that, look to the West Bank, which is ruled not by Hamas but by the supine Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. He calls security cooperation with Israel – suppressing on Israel’s behalf the Palestinians’ craving for freedom – a “sacred” duty. His biggest aspiration is a diplomatic solution that creates a severely circumscribed Palestinian mini-state.
If Israel can’t allow freedom to the West Bank under Abbas, how is it ever going to give freedom to tiny Gaza, even without Hamas, especially after the United Nations declared the enclave as fundamentally “uninhabitable” in 2020?
Israel could never allow the Palestinians out of their Gaza prison because their rapid growth in numbers is seen as a threat to Israel’s Jewish majority.
Remember: settler colonial populations are there to replace the native population, not to make peace with them, not to shares resources, not to give them their freedom.
Israel and its allies get away with a lot by marketing this as a “war”. It’s not a war. Israel launches high-tech military explosives at civilian buildings in a huge concentration camp while Hamas fires back with glorified fireworks which do light property damage. That’s not a war, it’s a massacre.
❖
I was upset when I saw that Israel has killed seven thousand people in its Gaza bombing campaign but then a really smart Israel apologist told me Hamas might be exaggerating those numbers and maybe it’s more like four thousand, so now I think it’s fine…..
Look it’s very simple: if your words say “we’re not targeting civilians we’re targeting Hamas” but your actions say you’re inflicting siege warfare on the civilian population and carpet bombing entire city blocks into rubble, then you’re not really targeting Hamas.
❖
Israel-Palestine is a very complicated, confusing, highly nuanced debate between those who think murdering thousands of children is fine and those who do not.
This is a very complicated genocidal massacre. Most complicated genocidal massacre in the history of genocidal massacres. There’s two sides to this genocidal massacre. This genocidal massacre requires nuance……………………………………..
It keeps surprising me that Israel apologists still expect to be taken seriously. Israel is massacring children by the thousands and turning Gaza into rubble and they still expect you to listen to them receptively when they defend its actions. It’s actually starting to get morbidly fascinating.
❖
Israel has lost the argument. Permanently. There’s no coming back from this.
One of the bakeries that Israel bombed in Nuseirat refugee camp had just received a shipment of flour from UNRWA meant to cover the food needs of the entire camp. Israel waited to bomb it once all the flour was unloaded.
The following report is a consolidation of voice recordings sent by Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj on October 25.
The situation is more terrifying than any previous day. People have been standing in long lines outside bakeries to get a small bag of bread for hours — six hours, seven hours, every day. But in the last few days, over ten bakeries have been targeted in the south, the so-called “safe zone” where the Israeli army told us to go. But it was a trap. They wanted to cram us into one place and start bombing us again. They’re targeting bakeries, and we don’t even hear reports of Hamas members among the dead.
One of the bakeries targeted in Nuseirat refugee camp had just received a huge shipment of flour from UNRWA, which had agreed with the bakery to sell the bread from the flour at half-price for the camp residents. UNRWA had just finished unloading the shipment, which was meant to cover the needs of the entire Nuseirat area, when the bakery was bombed and completely destroyed. They aren’t only targeting people and homes. They’re letting in aid, and then they destroy it before it reaches the people who need it. It’s calculated and deliberate. It’s meant to exterminate the civilian population.
By now, we know what kinds of missiles are being used to target us. There are kinds whose sole purpose is destruction, and there are other kinds that are designed to kill and are launched at crowds — people are calling them “killing missiles” because they’re designed to kill every living thing within a wide radius. People have started congregating at barber shops and hair salons to charge their cell phones because most of those salons use solar energy to charge the batteries that provide those shops with electricity, so now those shops are also being targeted by these kinds of “killing” missiles. The Israeli army bombed two of the salons, one in Khan Younis and one in Nuseirat refugee camp. They hit the salons only, not the areas near them. It wasn’t collateral damage; it was a deliberate strike on civilians.
These missiles explode inside the salon and killed everyone inside, but the building is left standing. Those who don’t die are ripped into pieces, their wounds critical in almost every case. A person can lose half their body. The sounds of these missiles are the scariest because the missile relies on the force of the explosion itself to kill its target. The other day, I started hearing other bombs being dropped that I’ve never heard before in Gaza. The bomb would be preceded by a long pronounced whistle, but when it explodes, its sound is lower than the other bombs. Artillery strikes have also become routine in the south, coming from the eastern side of the Gaza Strip. But the most prevalent missiles are the ones that are designed to destroy wide areas and level buildings. It depends on where the targeted areas are, but you can see the evidence of their use by looking at the scale of the destruction in Gaza.
All of this means that people are afraid to leave their homes even for basic necessities. When people stand in line for bread, they’re terrified. When they move in the streets, they’re terrified. The missiles target the markets, places where there are a lot of people, and they are all killed. We never hear that a Hamas operative was killed in these strikes. It’s always women, children, random people walking through the market. People aren’t leaving their homes anymore for any reason. In the house where I’m staying, not one of us is prepared to go stand in line at a bakery because we know that, at any moment, the bakery might be targeted. It doesn’t matter if you’re a civilian or not. But I have to venture out on many days, whether it’s to get baby formula for my son, diapers, or medicine. And every moment, I keep thinking that this is the day I’m going to die.
As Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza entered its third week, leaving over 5000 dead and at least one million residents displaced, a Tel Aviv-based think tank published a blueprint for self-proclaimed Jewish state’s final solution.
In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.
Published in Hebrew on the organization’s website, the paper was authored by Amir Weitman, “an investment manager and visiting researcher” at the Institute who also leads the libertarian caucus of Israel’s ruling Likud Party. The document began by noting that there are 10 million vacant housing units in neighboring Egypt that could be “immediately” filled with Palestinians. Weitman then assured readers that the “sustainable plan…aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”
Weitman’s ethnic cleansing proposal echoes forced transfer plans advanced in recent days by former Israeli officials while capitalizing on evacuation orders delivered to the entire civilian population of northern Gaza by the Israeli military.
Weitman’s sinister blueprint imagined Israel purchasing these properties at a cost of $5 – 8 billion dollars, a whopping price-tag that reflects just 1 – 1.5 percent of Israel’s GDP.
“These sums of money [required to cleanse Gaza] in relation to the Israeli economy, are minimal,” Weitman posits. “Investing individual billions of dollars to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and sustainable solution.”
Weitman acknowledged that his plan virtually amounts to Israel “buying the Gaza Strip,” arguing the move would be “a very worthwhile investment” for Zionists because it would “add a lot of value over time.” He asserted local “land conditions” in the area would provide “many” Israeli settlers a high standard of living, therefore allowing for an expansion of settlements in Gush Dan near the Egyptian border, giving “a tremendous impetus to settlement in the Negev.”
In December 2021, Tel Aviv approved plans to establish four settlements in the Negev to house 3,000 settler families.
A genocidal war to end all wars
Though Egypt has so far rejected Israeli pressure for a mass exodus of Gaza residents through the southern Rafah crossing, Weitman argued Cairo will welcome the mass exodus of Palestinian refugees as “an immediate stimulus” that will “provide a tremendous and immediate benefit to al-Sisi’s regime.”
Weitman claimed that Cairo’s major creditors — including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — are likely to welcome a revitalized Egyptian economy, courtesy of “Israeli investment” in the Palestinians’ permanent removal. He surmizes that Western Europe will welcome “the transfer of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,” because it will significantly “reduce the risk of illegal immigration…a tremendous advantage.” Meanwhile, he expects Riyadh to embrace the move because the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.”
The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would mean an end to “ceaseless, repeated rounds of fighting, which inflame the fires of hatred against Israel.” Moreover, “closing the Gaza issue will ensure a stable and increased supply of Israeli gas to Egypt and its liquefaction,” from the vast reserves seized by Israel near Gaza’s shores.
Palestinians in turn are expected to jump at the chance to be forcibly transferred from their homes rather than “living in poverty under the rule of Hamas.” It is therefore necessary for Israel to “create the right conditions” for them to “immigrate” from Gaza to Cairo. Weitman noted that Gaza’s two million inhabitants “constitute less than 2% of the total Egyptian population, which today already includes 9 million refugees. A drop in the ocean.”
The paper ominously concluded: “There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.”
“If we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill”
As barbarous as these proposals might seem, they reflect what many Israeli officials appear to be murmuring in private, and what at least one former government spinmeister has openly pushed as an altruistic solution to the Palestinian “problem.”
“There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai Desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, echoed the genocidal Zionist logic behind Weitman’s proposal in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Marc Lamont Hill. “The idea is—and this is not the first time it will be done—for them to leave over to the open areas where we and the international community will prepare the infrastructure — you know, 10 cities with food and water — just like for the refugees of Syria.”
In 2004, Zionist demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to Ariel Sharon’s government. This entailed withdrawing Israeli forces from the area entirely and constructing a stringent system of surveillance and security to ensure nothing and no one went in or out without Zionist proviso. He predicted a perpetual bloodbath:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
The Institute has put forward a clean and easy fantasy of achieving the same goal put forward by Sofer. For it to succeed, all Palestinians have to do is put down their weapons and head toward the desert of permanent exile. #Israel #Palestine
An army of pro-Israel trolls has invaded the Community Notes function on X/Twitter, attempting to influence the online debate around the ongoing crisis.
SCHEERPOST, By Alan MacLeod / MintPress News, October 25, 2023
Almost as important as its military campaign for Israel is its battle to control its public image. Even as it kills thousands of people in Gaza, the small Middle Eastern nation is spending millions of dollars on a propaganda war, purchasing ads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other online apps. At the same time, an army of pro-Israel trolls has invaded the Community Notes function on X/Twitter, attempting to influence the online debate around the ongoing crisis.
Spending Millions to Whitewash Massacres
Since October 7, Israel has inundated YouTube with advertisements, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs spending nearly $7.1 million on ads in the two weeks following Hamas’ incursion. According to journalist Sophia Smith Galer, this equates to almost one billion impressions.
With its campaign, the Israeli government overwhelmingly focused on rich Western nations, its top targets being France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. In France alone, the ministry spent $3.8 million. Other branches of the Israeli government undoubtedly also spent money on ads. The overwhelming message of the campaign was that Hamas are terrorists linked with ISIS and that Israel – a modern, secular democracy – is defending itself from foreign aggression.
Much of the content blatantly violated YouTube’s terms of service, including a number of ads featuring gory shots of dead bodies. Another ad that piqued public attention was played before videos aimed at babies. Amid a scene of pink rainbows and soothing music, text appears reading:
We know that your child cannot read this. We have an important message to tell you as parents. 40 infants were murdered in Israel by the terrorists Hamas (ISIS). Just as you would do everything for your child, we will do everything to protect ours. Now hug your baby and stand with us.”
Nearly all the Ministry of Foreign Affairs views are inorganic. Most of their YouTube uploads garner only a few hundred views. But the ones selected as advertisements have hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.
Israel’s YouTube campaign has been matched by expansive attempts to control the public debate on other social media platforms. In barely a week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ran 30 ads seen over 4 million times on Twitter. Like with YouTube, analytics data shows they were inordinately targeting adults in Western Europe.
One ad contained the words “ISIS” and “Hamas,” showing disturbing imagery that gradually sped up until the names of the two groups blended into one. In case the message was not clear enough, it ended with the message, “The world defeated ISIS. The world will defeat Hamas.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also bought large numbers of advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, mobile games and apps such as language trainer Duolingo.
Taking Notes
The Community Notes function on Twitter is an attempt to fight false information. Contributors who sign up for the feature can leave notes on any post, adding context to potentially misleading statements. The community then votes on these notes, and if enough people consider the note useful, it is presented below the original tweet.
While it has its advantages, the system is ripe for abuse and infiltration. Since October 7, an army of pro-Israel trolls has brigaded the function and is attempting to undermine and attack as many posts as possible showing Israel in a negative light or Palestine in a positive one. This has often been done in an attempt to hide Israeli war crimes.
“If you’re not a Community Notes contributor, then you may be unaware that any tweet about Gaza that poses an inconvenience to Israeli information interests is being mobbed by Israel apologists working to manipulate the narrative, including on tweets just voicing an opinion,” wrote journalist Caitlin Johnstone.
A case in point is the attack on the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Under a tweet from journalist Dan Cohen noting that Hananya Naftali (an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) had boasted that Israel carried out the attack before deleting his message, Community Notes wrote that “Naftali has openly retracted his statement, as conclusive evidence has since shown the explosion was fired from a misfired rocket from Gaza.” The “conclusive evidence” offered was a statement from the Pentagon and a tweet from a former Israeli Air Force squad commander.
Meanwhile, a tweet from Lebanese political commentator Sara Abdallah breaking the news that Israel had just bombed the St. Porphyrius Church in Gaza was flagged by Community Notes. This meant that all users saw a note added reading, “False. Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza has posted they are untouched and operating as of October 9, 2023.” The problem was this was breaking news related to October 19, so any statement before that time was meaningless in assessing the news. Further undermining the community note was that Israel almost immediately accepted responsibility for the destruction.
Pro-Israel trolls have also not been above blatant smears. On a popular post from myself where I shared a picture of Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu embracing with the words, “In the future, this image will be looked upon as one of the most shameful moments in history,” Community Notes added the message: “Alan MacLeod is a Senior Staff Writer at MintPress News. MintPress is renowned for publishing far-left disinformation and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” Other MintPress staff, such as Lowkey and Mnar Adley, have also been consistently targeted with smears and arguments dressed up as clarifications.
Seeing What Sticks
In the fog of war, the Middle Eastern network Al-Jazeera has been a consistent source of live reporting. The well-funded network has a large team of reporters in Palestine and the wider region and has a long history of covering the conflict.
Therefore, when Al-Jazeera released an investigation that found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that a failed Palestinian rocket launch was to blame for the damage at the Al-Ahli Hospital, the story went viral.
This was a major blow to Israel and its apologists, who did not want the blood of hundreds of innocent doctors and patients on their hands. And so, pro-Israel users attempted to get community notes plastered all over the Al-Jazeera story……………………………………………………….
Wiki Wars
This is not the first time that Israel and its supporters have attempted to hijack and manipulate public highways of information. For over a decade, well-organized and well-funded Israeli groups have infiltrated Wikipedia and attempted to rewrite the encyclopedia to defend Israeli actions and demonize voices who speak out against them.
One of the most well-known of these is the Yesha Council, which, as far back as 2010, claimed to have 12,000 active members. Yesha members painstakingly police Wikipedia, removing troublesome facts and framing articles in a manner more favorable to Israel…………………………………………………
Spies Among Us
One of the reasons that social media companies have not cracked down on disingenuous pro-Israeli activities could be that former Israeli government and military officials hold top positions at a great number of the world’s most important platforms.
Emi Palmor, for example, is one of 22 individuals who sit on Facebook’s Oversight Board. Palmor was formerly the General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In this role, she directly oversaw the stripping away of Palestinian rights. She created a so-called “Internet Referral Unit,” which would push Facebook to delete Palestinian content that the Israeli government objected to. In her new role at the Oversight Board, she effectively writes Facebook’s rules, deciding what content to promote to the platform’s 3 billion users and what to censor, delete or suppress.
Palmor is also a veteran of Unit 8200, perhaps the most controversial unit in the Israeli military. Described as “Israel’s NSA,” Unit 8200 is the centerpiece of the country’s high-tech surveillance industry. Unit 8200 spies on the Palestinian population, compiling vast dossiers on millions of people, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, to be used for extortion later. ………………………………………………….
A MintPress News investigation unearthed a network of hundreds of Unit 8200 veterans working in influential positions at some of the planet’s most important tech and social media companies, including Google, Amazon and Meta (Facebook).
For example, Google’s Head of Strategy and Operations for Research, Gavriel Goidel, was previously a senior officer in Unit 8200, rising to become Head of Learning. Facebook Messenger’s Head of Data Science, Eyal Klein, served for six years in Unit 8200, rising to the rank of captain. And after serving in the controversial unit, Ayelet Steinitz became Microsoft’s Head of Global Strategic Alliances…………………………………………………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/25/propaganda-war-pro-israel-trolls-are-mobbing-twitters-community-notes/ #Israel #Palestine
October 18, 2023, Geneva, Switzerland – On the heels of President Biden’s visit to Israel and as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passes 3,300, expert attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity in this grave international law violation. The emergency briefing paper comes soon after the U.S veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza. It also comes as President Biden seeks to secure additional, unconditional military support for Israel.
According to the emergency briefing paper, there is a credible case, based on powerful evidence, that Israel is attempting to commit or committing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The United States has a duty under Article 1 of the 1948 Genocide Convention to prevent acts of genocide, an obligation that has been domestically implemented through U.S. criminal law. The legal and factual analysis provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights describes how, through its ongoing unconditional military, diplomatic, and political support to Israel, the United States is not only failing to prevent genocide, but is complicit. Under international law, the United States – and responsible U.S. citizens, including and up to the President – can be held accountable for their role in furthering genocide.
According to the International Court of Justice, “a State’s obligation to prevent [genocide], and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.” States are required to take all measures “reasonably available to them” to prevent this risk from that moment onward, “if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent.”
As scholars and observers increasingly warn of genocide, and as protestors rise up against Israel’s gravest atrocities against Palestinians since 1948, the Center for Consitutional Rights has been asked by Palestinian partners on the ground to offer this analysis as we strengthen our collective efforts towards accountability and freedom. The emergency briefing paper calls on the United States to take all necessary measures to secure a ceasefire, pressure Israel to end all military operations, end all U.S. military aid to Israel, and ensure the provision to Palestinians in Gaza of urgently needed basic necessities for life. The experts also stress in the briefing paper the urgent need to address the root causes of the current catastrophe, especially the 16-year closure of Gaza, the 56-year illegal occupation, and the apartheid regime across all of historic Palestine.
The emergency briefing paper will be submitted to national and international stakeholders, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It will also be sent to President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and other U.S. officials and relevant agencies. Read the emergency legal briefing paper here. For more information, see our resource page. #USA #Israel #Palestine
The United Nations has revised its grim figure of the rising death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, saying that it has surpassed 5,000 as of Monday. It stands at 5,087.Separately, over 90 Palestinians have been killed in escalating West Bank violence, which over the weekend included Israel launching a rare airstrike on Jenin. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are still holding at least 222 Israeli and foreign captives – a number which has again been revised upward.
European Union foreign ministers are meanwhile gathered in Brussels for an urgent meeting to take up the contentious issue of a ceasefire. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has been calling on world bodies to back a ceasefire. In response, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said:
“Personally, I think that a humanitarian pause is needed in order to allow the humanitarian support to come in and be distributed, seeing that half of the population of Gaza has been moving from their houses.”
Bloomberg is reporting Monday morning that EU leaders are set to endorse a call for a “humanitarian pause”. “The European Council supports the call of UNSG (U.N. Secretary-General Antonio) Guterres for a humanitarian pause in order to allow for safe humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need,” a draft statement of the summit reads.
But Washington, Israel’s staunchest supporter, isnot expected to back a ceasefire – despite reports President Biden has sought for Israel’s military delay the expected imminent ground invasion, in order to buy more time to negotiate the freedom of more hostages.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Sunday news shows made this clear. Margaret Brennan, the host of CBS News’ Face the Nation, asked him:
“UNICEF says 1,524 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip during these bombings. Why isn’t the US calling for at least a temporary ceasefire?“
Blinken then claimed that children dying on either side has hit him “right in the heart” – but he stopped short of directing any criticism at Israel’s indiscriminate and unrelenting bombing campaign.Instead, he defended it.
Blinken said in reference to October 7 Hamas cross-border attack:
“Israel has to do everything it can to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Freezing things in place where they are now would allow Hamas to remain where it is and to repeat what it’s done some time in the future. No country could accept that.”
He then cited unverified reports that Hamas has actively blocked Palestinians who are also American citizens from leaving the Gaza Strip.
“We’ve had people come to Rafah, the crossing with Egypt. And to date, at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving, showing once again, its total disregard for civilians of any kind who are — who are stuck in Gaza. So really, the ball is in Hamas’ court, in terms of letting people who want to leave, civilians from third countries, including Americans get out of Gaza.”
There are a reported up to 600 Americans stuck in Gaza, with one Palestinian-American telling NBC that “America’s not helping us, Biden’s not helping us, the embassy is not helping us.”
The United States is still bolstering its military presence in Middle East waters, readying for any contingency, even as it’s said to be pressing for furthering back-channel negotiations and delaying an all-out Israeli assault:
It was becoming increasingly clear Monday that the U.S. wants Israel to not only allow more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, but for the country to let ongoing negotiations over the release of hostages held by Hamas to continue before it launches a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory. Israel said Monday that Hamas was still holding 222 people captive.
Two sources told CBS News the U.S. has sought to slow Israel’s plans for a ground invasion in order to prioritize the release of hostages and the distribution of aid, a message Washington is said to have been conveying primarily through defense channels.
The Pentagon is calling its moving two aircraft carrier strike groups into regional waters an act of “deterrence”.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had announcedSaturday:
“Following detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East Region, today I directed a series of additional steps to further strengthen the Department of Defense posture in the region. These steps will bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.”
The White House has Iran in mind, and its proxies Hezbollah and Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, the latter who days ago tried to fire missiles on Israel, but which were intercepted by a US warship off Yemen’s coast. US THAAD and Patriot missile batteries have been sent to Israel.
Blinken said:
“This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation. We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire. But if that happens, we’re ready for it.”
And Austin simultaneously affirmed the statements, saying:
“What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region.”
It’s clear Hezbollah has held off committing itself to a major war with Israel, which could very well happen the moment the IDF mounts a major ground assault into Gaza. Hezbollah’s arsenal, with the help of Iran, is far superior to that of Hamas’, and is said to include tens of thousands of rockets of varying sizes.
There’s still been regular exchange of rocket and mortar fire, with Israeli sources reporting Monday that the Iron Dome intercepted an inbound drone from Lebanon via the sea. It was intercepted over Ein Hamifratz, south of Acre. At this point, several dozens of Israeli towns and communities have been evacuated from near the northern border. #Israel #Palestine #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
The ability of reporters to cover Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began.
he Israeli communications minister’s attempt to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Jerusalem—on the grounds that the Qatari news outlet is biased in favor of Hamas and is actively endangering Israeli troops (Reuters, 10/15/23)—should inspire some déjà vu. In the last war in Gaza, an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building housing both Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices (AP, 5/15/21). And just months ago, Al Jazeera (5/18/23) reported that “the family of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a Palestinian-American AJ journalist killed by Israeli fire while on assignment, “has rebuked Israel for saying it is ‘sorry’ for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death without providing accountability or even acknowledging that its forces killed her.”
Since the launch of the network’s English service, Americans interested in Middle East news beyond what can be found in US broadcasting have often turned to Al Jazeera, and even more so as the BBC’s foreign service has declined (Guardian, 9/29/22).
But the ability of Al Jazeera and other Arab reporters to cover the assault on Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began. The Committee to Protect Journalists (10/18/23) has counted 13 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since the crisis began, with two more missing or detained. Three Israeli journalists were also killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, with another taken prisoner.
While the primary focus of this conflict is Gaza, journalists have wondered if a second northern front would open between Israel and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, creating a multifaceted regional war (New York Times, 10/17/23; CNN, 10/17/23). Israeli fire in southern Lebanon injured Al Jazeera staffers, along with Agence France-Presse personnel, and killed a Reuters journalist (Reuters, 10/14/23). Lebanon has planned to file a complaint with the United Nations over the incident (TRT World, 10/14/23), calling the attack deliberate (Telegraph, 10/14/23).
Press advocates fear those numbers will rise, and it is all happening as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens (UN News, 10/13/23).
The BBC (10/15/23) reported that its own journalists “were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by police in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv,” and that they were “dragged from the vehicle—marked ‘TV’ in red tape—searched and pushed against a wall.”
In addition, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement that the Israeli military caused “severe damage to 48 centers of press institutions,” including “the Palestine and Watan towers, and other buildings that include media institutions,” including the AFP office. It said that the army had also “completely or partially demolished the homes of dozens of journalists.”
‘Terror attack against democracy’
War reporting always carries risk. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the deaths of media workers in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Middle East conflicts have always been dangerous places for journalists; it’s hard to ignore high-profile deaths of journalists like Marie Colvin of London’s SundayTimes in Syria (CNN, 2/1/19), or freelance photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in Libya (Washington Post, 4/21/11). In that sense, the war in Gaza and a possible war in southern Lebanon are no exceptions.
But as FAIR (5/19/21) documented during the previous Israeli military operation against Gaza, Israel has a long history of targeting Palestinian journalists, as well as harassing foreign journalists and human rights activists entering the country. Over the summer, the International Federation of Journalists (7/4/23) reported that “several journalists have been directly targeted by Israeli snipers as they were reporting on Israel’s large-scale military operation in Jenin.”
Inside Israel, the situation for journalists is relatively safer, but the far-right government has—like authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary—attacked journalists and the ability to critically cover institutions in power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019 accused the owners of Israel’s Channel 12 of committing a “terror attack against democracy” for reporting on the corruption charges against him (Times of Israel, 9/1/19).
In 2020, Netanyahu (Ha’aretz, 6/11/20) indicated that “Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker should be arrested and jailed” for airing “recordings of Netanyahu crony Shaul Elovich and his wife, which demonstrated how they sought to tilt news coverage in the prime minister’s favor.”
Galit Distel-Atbaryan, who recently resigned from her role as public diplomacy minister (Jerusalem Post, 10/14/23), reportedly said this summer that she wanted the “authority to deny press credentials to foreign journalists critical of Israel” (Ha’aretz, 8/30/23).
‘You better be saying good things’
The threat to journalism has only become more explicit as Israel’s assault on Gaza escalates. An Israeli security officer interrupted a live report by Ahmed Darawsha, correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Araby news (Arab News, 10/15/23):
The officer then shouted at the camera: “Detestable! We’ll turn Gaza to dust. Dust, dust, dust.”
Israel’s siege of Gaza becomes more nightmarish as the days go on, and as that happens, the ability of journalists to document the horror becomes next to impossible. Palestinian journalist Sami Abu Salem told the International Federation of Journalists (10/12/23) about working in Gaza: “We have no internet service, there is a lack of electricity, no transportation, and even the streets are damaged. That’s why we cannot tell lots of stories—thousands of stories.”
Because audiences in the US and the Anglosphere depend on Al Jazeera, as well as local journalists in Israel and the Occupied Territories, to receive news from the region, these attacks do act as filters through which the truth is diluted. In many ways, Americans can see in real time how the powers that be attempt to control information coming out of the region. #Israel #Palestine
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
nuclear-news 