South Africa Files 750 Pages of ‘Overwhelming’ Evidence in ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel
“The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see.”
By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams, 30 Oct 24
South Africa filed 750 pages of “overwhelming” proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document—known as a memorial—to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court’s rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a “comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza.”
The office said the document “contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”
South Africa filed 750 pages of “overwhelming” proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document—known as a memorial—to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court’s rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a “comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza.”
The office said the document “contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”
“The evidence will show that undergirding Israel’s genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide,” Ramaphosa’s office added.
South Africa’s filing comes amid Israel’s ongoing 387-day assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian and international agencies has killed at least 43,020 people—most of them women and children. At least 101,110 others have been wounded and over 10,000 Gazans are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed homes and other structures. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened by Israel’s invasion and “complete siege” of Gaza.
The filing also comes one week after senior members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet and national lawmakers spoke at a conference advocating the ethnic cleansing and recolonization of Gaza.
Ramaphosa’s office lamented that “Israel has been granted unprecedented impunity to breach international law and norms for as long as the United Nations Charter has been in existence.”………………………………………………………………https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-africa-icj-genocide-israel
Israeli Knesset Passes Bill To Ban UN Palestinian Relief Agency
The collapse of UNRWA’s aid efforts in Gaza would ensure the starvation of more Palestinian civilians
by Dave DeCamp October 28, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/28/israeli-knesset-passes-bill-to-ban-un-palestinian-relief-agency/#gsc.tab=0
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed a bill banning the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNWRA, from operating inside Israel and another that will severely limit its ability to operate in Gaza and the West Bank. The legislation is expected to take effect in 90 days.
The first bill banning UNWRA in Israel passed in a vote of 92-10. The second bill aimed at ending UNWRA’s operations in the Israeli-occupied territories passed in a vote of 97-9.
The second bill prohibits Israeli authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, making it impossible for the relief agency to coordinate with the Israeli military on aid deliveries. The legislation does not outline any plan to replace UNRWA’s relief efforts in Gaza, which millions of Palestinian civilians rely on to survive.
Israel has waged war against UNWRA over the past year, killing over 200 of its staff members in Gaza. Israel has claimed a significant number of UNWRA’s staff are members of Hamas but has offered no evidence for the allegations, which have been strongly rejected by the UN agency.
The US took Israel’s claims at face value and cut off funding to UNWRA at the beginning of the year. Now, the US is warning Israel against implementing the bills banning UNRWA since it would starve Palestinian civilians.
“If UNRWA goes away, you will see civilians — including children, including babies — not be able to get access to food and water and medicine that they need to live. We find that unacceptable,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said ahead of the Knesset vote.
“We continue to urge the government of Israel to pause the implementation of this legislation. We urge them not to pass it at all, and we will consider next steps based on what happens in the days ahead,” Miller added.
UNWRA was formed in 1949 to provide aid to about 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, an ethnic cleansing known to the Palestinians as the “Nakba.” Today, Israeli ministers are calling for a new Nakba in Gaza to pave the way for Jewish settlements, and the Israeli military is currently imposing a starvation siege on northern Gaza to forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Oxfam reaction to Knesset decision
October 29, 2024, by: The AIM Network, https://theaimn.com/oxfam-reaction-to-knesset-decision/—
Oxfam Australia
In reaction to the Knesset passing bills banning UNRWA from operating in areas under Israel’s control, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam Regional Director in the Middle East and North Africa said:
“Israel has bombed Palestinians to death, maimed them, starved them, and is now ridding them of their biggest lifeline of aid. Piece by piece, Israel is systemically dismantling Gaza as a land that is autonomous and liveable for Palestinians. Its banning of UNRWA today is condemnable and another step in this crime.
“The decision will further undermine the ability of the international community to provide sufficient humanitarian aid and to save lives in any safe, independent and impartial way.
“UNRWA was not only the biggest and most established agency that has been delivering aid and sustenance to the people of Gaza for years, it was also a thread that connected them in some hope of solidarity and security to the United Nations.
“We are in no doubt that Israel and its allies are fully aware of the terrible consequences that this decision will have on Palestinians living in Gaza, many of whom are already starving. We join others in warning again that this will result in more death, more suffering, and more forced displacement of people from their besieged homeland. It is impossible not to believe that this is their aim.”
Biden to Bibi: ‘OK to continue Gaza genocide till after election’
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coaliton, Glen Ellyn IL, 27 Oct 24
On October 14, President Biden sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving Israel 30 days to allow more aid of food, water and medicine into Gaza’s 139 square miles being utterly destroyed by Israel for the past year. It’s noteworthy that the 30 day time limit ends 9 days after the US election. Biden’s letter is brilliant politics and grotesque governance. Biden, who has been funding, supporting and enabling the yearlong genocide in Gaza, desperately needs to appear peace loving ahead of the election. He knows a majority of his Democratic voters are horrified by his genocide enabling. They want him to end the so far 50,000 tons of weapons he’s already given Israel to demolish Gaza.
The letter, designed to promote his concern for the devastation he’s enabled, will do nothing to end the genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu has ignored every one of Biden’s pleas for supplying life sustaining aid there. The letter doesn’t even state Biden will cut off aid to Israel. It merely implies that if US demands aren’t met, the US might consider enforcing foreign assistance laws. Those laws forbid the US from sending weapons to any nation committing wholesale destruction of civilian populations. But not one word about actually cutting off those weapons destroying Gaza.
Every day dozens, hundreds, even a thousand or more Palestinians die in Gaza, obliterated by Biden’s 2,000 lb. bombs, or killed more slowly from disease or starvation. Biden does not care. His toothless letter begging for more aid to the 2,300,000 Palestinians will do nothing to alleviate their suffering. But it may mollify his antiwar critics enough to help achieve Democratic victory Election Day.
Win or lose November 5, Biden is unlikely to do anything substantive to end the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It goes against everything he’s believed in and supported about Israeli colonial domination of Palestine for his entire 52 year governmental career. But it will ensure he descends into historical infamy for enabling the worst genocide of the 21st century.
Media Hawks Make Case for War Against Iran
This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).
What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment.
Gregory Shupak, FAIR, 25 Oct 24
The media hawks are flying high, pushing out bellicose rhetoric on the op-ed pages that seems calculated to whip the public into a war-ready frenzy.
Just as they have done with Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 10/10/24), prominent conservative media opinionators misrepresent Iran as the aggressor against an Israel that practices admirable restraint.
Under the headline, “Iran Opens the Door to Retaliation,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/1/24) wrote that Iran’s October 1 operation against Israel “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets. This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal.”
The editors wrote:
After April’s attack, the Biden administration pressured Israel for a token response, and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.
‘We need to escalate’
The New York Times‘ self-described “warmongering neocon” columnist Bret Stephens (10/1/24), in a piece headlined “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” similarly filed Iran’s April and October strikes on Israel under “aggression” that requires a US/Israeli military “response.” And a Boston Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that Iran “launched a brazen attack,” arguing that the incident illustrated why US students are wrong to oppose American firms making or investing in Israeli weapons.
All of these pieces conveniently neglected to mention that Iran announced that its October 1 missile barrage was “a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah and Hamas” (Responsible Statecraft, 10/1/24). One of these assassinations was carried out by a bombing in Tehran, the Iranian capital. But we can only guess as to whether the Globe thinks those killings are “brazen,” Stephens thinks they qualify as “aggression,” or if the Journal believes any country can let such assassinations “become a new normal.”
Likewise, Iran’s April strikes came after Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (CBS, 4/14/24). At the time, Iran reportedly said that it would refrain from striking back against Israel if the latter agreed to end its mass murder campaign in Gaza (Responsible Statecraft, 4/8/24).
‘Axis of Aggression’
A second Stephens piece (New York Times, 10/8/24) claimed that “the American people had better hope Israel wins” in its war against “the Axis of Aggression led from Tehran.” The latter is his term for the coalition of forces resisting the US and Israel from Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, which refers to itself as the “axis of resistance.” Stephens’ reasoning is that, since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran; the diplomatsand Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons used against commercial shipping.
The war Israelis are fighting now—the one the news media often mislabels the “Gaza war,” but is really between Israel and Iran—is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.
This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).
Given this background, suggesting—as the Journal, the Globe and Stephens do—that Iran is the aggressor against the US is not only untenable but laughable. Furthermore, as I’ve previously shown (FAIR.org, 1/21/20), it’s hardly a settled fact that Iran is responsible for Iraqi attacks on US occupation forces in the country. Stephens’ description of the Navy SEALs who died in the Red Sea is vague enough that one might be left with the impression that Iran or Ansar Allah killed them, but the SEALs died when one of them fell overboard and the other jumped into the water to try to save him (BBC, 1/22/24).
Stephens went on:
Those who care about the future of freedom had better hope Israel wins.
We are living in a world that increasingly resembles the 1930s, when cunning and aggressive dictatorships united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships also know how to smell weakness. We would all be safer if, in the Middle East, they finally learned the taste of defeat.
What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment. More realistically, the “future of freedom” is jeopardized by the US/Israeli alliance’s invading the lands of Palestinian and Lebanese people and massacring them. These crimes suggest that, in the Journal’s parlance, it’s the US/Israeli partnership that is the “regional and global menace.” Or, to borrow another phrase from the Journal’s editorial, it’s Israel and the US who are the “dangerous regime[s]” from which “the civilized world” must be defended.
‘A global menace’
Corporate media commentators didn’t stop at Iran’s direct strikes on Israel, casting Iran as, in the Journal‘s words (10/1/24), “a regional and global menace”:…………………………………………………………………
Painting Iran as the mastermind behind unprovoked worldwide aggression helps prop up the hawks’ demands for escalation. But the US State Department said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, “either in planning it or carrying it out” (NBC, 10/12/23)…………………………………………………………………………………..
Propaganda goes nuclear
As usual, those who are itching for a war on Iran invoke the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) wrote:
This year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.
Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.
That someone will probably be Israel.
By “something,” Stephens said he also meant that “Biden should order” military strikes to destroy the “Isfahan missile complex.” “There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too,” Stephens wrote suggestively.
The LA Times published two guest op-eds in less than two weeks urging attacks on Iran based on its alleged nuclear threat. Yossi Klein Halevi (10/7/24) wrote:…………………………………..
‘Threshold’ is a ways away…………………………………………………….
Recent history shows that Iran has been willing to “stop itself” from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran abided by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, under which Iran limited its nuclear development in exchange for a partial easing of US sanctions. It stuck to the deal for some time even after the United States unilaterally abandoned it.
Just before President Donald Trump ripped up the agreement in 2018, the IAEA reported that Iran was “implementing its nuclear-related commitments” under the accord. The year after the US abrogated the agreement, Iran was still keeping up its end of the bargain.
‘Provocative actions’ from US/Israel
Iran subsequently stopped adhering to the by then nonexistent deal—often advancing its nuclear program, as Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24) noted, “in response to provocative actions from the US and Israel”:
In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.
In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.
However, situating Iranian policies in relation to US/Israeli actions like these would get in the way of the Journal’s campaign, which it articulated in another editorial (10/2/24), to convince the public that “If Mr. Biden won’t take this opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the least he can do is not stop Israel from doing the job for its own self-preservation.”
Of course, the crucial, unstated assumption in the articles by Stephens, Halevi, Heilman and the Journal’s editors is that Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons are emergencies that need to be immediately addressed by bombing the country—while Washington and Tel Aviv’s vast, actually existing nuclear arsenals warrant no concern. https://fair.org/home/media-hawks-make-case-for-war-against-iran/
Israel’s Iran reprisal, Middle East destabilized.
By Dan Steinbock, 27 Oct 24,
On Saturday, Israel’s retaliatory attack was framed as “carefully
calibrated.” But in the absence of ceasefire, regional turmoil is
simmering close to an edge, thanks to the escalation ladder.
Early on Saturday, Israel hit Iran with a set of airstrikes, stating it was targeting
military sites in retaliation for the 180 missiles that Iran fired into Israel over 3
weeks ago (which itself was a reprisal against a prior Israeli offensive).
Officially, it was a “carefully orchestrated, underwhelming retaliation” that was
preceded by Israel’s message to Iran ahead of the impending attack. But not
everything is what it seems to be in the Middle East.
The stories behind the stories
The Israeli retaliation was designed to be underwhelming; not by the
Netanyahu cabinet, but by the White House and the Pentagon.
Presumably, portions of Iranian military sites in three provinces – Tehran, Ilam
and Khuzestan – were hit. Iran said its air defenses successful and damage
was estimated as “limited.”
Yet later, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated Israel targeted “missile
manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state
of Israel over the last year.” It also hit surface-to-air missile sites and
“additional Iranian aerial capabilities.”
To stress that the retaliation was more effective, the Israeli Air Force later
claimed that these attacks had destroyed “the backbone of Iran’s missile
industry”, a critical component of its ballistic missile program. The targets
struck were sophisticated equipment that Iran could not produce on its own
and had to be purchased from China. Subsequent reports claim Israel
destroyed air defense systems near oil refineries in retaliatory strike on Iran.
If that’s the case, Netanyahu government was trying to minimize the damage
it caused in Iran, to appease the White House and defuse a potential Iranian
response. By the same token, Netanyahu struggled to deflect international
attention away from atrocities in northern Gaza and southern Lebanon.
The Netanyahu cabinet was playing with fire.
Retaliation scenarios and repercussions
Since early October, I had argued that there were basically three basic
scenarios for an Israeli retaliation:
- First, a proportionate Israeli retaliation would signal might without
causing widespread economic and human costs. - A disproportionate escalation would also target vulnerable
infrastructure. - Finally, if the aim is to seek regime change, the retaliation would
additionally target Iranian nuclear sites and critical military
infrastructure, hoping to destabilize Iran for a US-style regime change.
In the first case, Iran would likely contain its further response. In the second,
Iran would escalate. In the third, all bets would be off in the Middle East and
global reverberations would ensue.
Israel’s Saturday attack seems to have been positioned within the scenario 1
(unless critical infrastructure was, indeed, destroyed which takes us into
scenario 2 and more lethal consequences). This was a surprise to many who
expected a massive Israeli reprisal, as President Netanyahu and his defense
minister Gallant had pledged and the cabinet’s far-right had urged.
Reaction in Israel
The net effects in Israel? PM Netanyahu lost political capital. In part, he will
suffer heavy criticism by the Messianic far-right. It seeks a war with Iran and
would like to drag the U.S. administration into a regional conflict.
At the same time, the opposition blames Netanyahu for the failure to better
sync Israeli responses with Washington (the argument of center-right Benny
Gantz). Another part of the opposition says Israel should have deployed a
stronger response against Iran (the argument of the centrist Yair Lapid)
The fact that a pure scenario 2-like retaliation did not happen – if that proves
to be the case – is likely a direct outcome of hard American pressure. After all,
the initial Israeli retaliation plan was leaked, which undermined the expected
scenario 2 attack.
Most likely, Israel’s initial plans were far more aggressive and offensive. Most
probably, those plans were buried after U.S. pressure. If the Biden
administration and/or its stakeholders were behind the leak, it would not be
surprising.
A regionwide war in the Middle East is the last thing the Democratic White
House needs just two weeks before the U.S. presidential election –
particularly as the fragile lead of Vice-President Kamala Harris is softening.
Israel, Iran and US presidential race
The way the Israeli response was constrained may contain the ongoing
destabilization in the Middle East in the short-term; until the U.S. election day.
That, however, is predicated on the assumption that the impending attack by
Hezbollah against more than two dozen Jewish settlements in northern Israel
will not further escalate the status quo.
Nonetheless, during the U.S. presidential transition – between November and
mid-January – there is another vacuum when much can still happen.
It is not in the interest of Iran to attack. But it is very much in the interest of the
Netanyahu cabinet and particularly PM Netanyahu to retaliate harder. To
retain his immunity and avoid prosecution for corruption, Netanyahu depends on the far-right support.
The bottom line: If Harris wins the US election, Netanyahu will face some
constraints. If Trump emerges as the winner, Netanyahu is likely to see it as a
carte blanche for a broad-scale Iran attack.
Currently, both Israel and the U.S. share the strategic objective of
destabilizing Iran and undermining its government. As I show in my book The
Fall of Israel, these goals were developed in the US already two decades ago.
The question is not “what” and “why”, but “when” and “how.”
The Middle East crisis is far from over. Tragically, the future of the Middle East
is effectively a hostage of the U.S. presidential race.
Regional uncertainty
There are many possible scenarios, as long as Israel is able and willing to
execute offensive actions in multiple fronts, thanks to the incessant flow of
U.S. weapons to Israel, American bases in Israel and the region at large, and
massive financial inflows of U.S. military aid.
In the past, U.S. military aid to Israel amounted to $3.8 billion per year; last
year, it soared to $18 billion. It is not transparent aid. The Biden administration
has not disclosed its true extent. Financially, it contributes to the soaring U.S.
debt, which already exceeds the size of the American economy. In the Gaza
Strip and possibly in southern Lebanon, this aid has made U.S. complicit to
genocidal atrocities.
Thanks to the continued destabilization, the turmoil in the Middle East is
simmering close to an edge. Worse, the uncertainty is likely to prevail as long
as:
- Israel’s genocidal atrocities, backed by U.S. weapons and funds,
continue in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in Israel’s proximate
neighborhood; - there is no ceasefire between Israel and Hamas;
- the Israeli hostages are ignored by the Netanyahu cabinet;
- the anti-Arab pogroms prevail in the West Bank which is effectively
being annexed into Israel; - the IDF keeps pushing deeper into southern Lebanon;
- Iran’s government and critical civilian and military infrastructure remain
Netanyahu cabinet’s ultimate targets, with intelligence and logistical
support by the United States.
The worst is not behind. It has only been deferred, for now.
On the new book, The Fall of Israel, see
https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-fall-of-israel/
Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar
world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China
and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see
https://www.differencegroup.net
Israel’s War on Journalism
Israel, with the fulsome support of the U.S. government, is eviscerating the last shreds of freedom of the press.
All CNN journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the network’s Jerusalem bureau prior to publication, a bureau that is required to abide by rules set down by Israeli military censors.
To the powerful, the war makers and the domesticated media, these real journalists are the enemy. This is the reason Julian Assange was mercilessly hounded and persecuted for 14 years………..What is new is the scale of Israel’s assault on journalism.
Chris Hedges, October 25, 2024, https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/25/chris-hedges-israels-war-on-journalism/
Israel has not defeated Hamas. It has not defeated Hezbollah. It will not defeat Iran. But it must convince its own public, and the rest of the world, it is winning. Censorship and the silencing of journalists who expose Israel’s war crimes and the suffering Israel inflicts on civilians is an Israeli priority.
It would be reassuring to call Israel an outlier, a nation that did not share our values, a nation that we support in spite of its atrocities. But of course, Israel is an extension of ourselves.
As the playwright Harold Pinter said:
US foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that. What is interesting about it is that it is so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.
In accepting the Nobel prize for literature, Pinter said: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
The most important impediment to Israel’s mass hypnosis are the Palestinian journalists in Gaza. This is why the kill rate is so high. It is why U.S. officials say nothing. They, too, hate real journalists. They, too, demand reporters domesticate themselves to scurry like rats from one choreographed press event to the next.
The U.S. government says and does nothing to protect the press because it endorses Israel’s campaign against the media, as it endorses Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Journalists, along with the Palestinians, are to be extinguished.
There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.
The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. They are targeted, along with their families, for assassination. At least 128 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.
Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists from Al Mayadeen and Al Manar and injuring 15 others. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed 11 journalists in Lebanon.
Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who was shot in the neck in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza by an Israeli sniper earlier this month, is in a coma. Israel has refused permission for him to seek medical care outside of Gaza. Like most of the targeted journalists, including his murdered colleague Shireen Abu Akleh, he was wearing a helmet and flak jacket that identified him as press.
The Israeli military has branded as “terrorists” six Palestinian journalists in Gaza who work for Al Jazeera.
“These 6 Palestinians are among the last journalists surviving Israel’s onslaught in Gaza,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said. “Declaring them ‘terrorists’ sounds like a death sentence.”
The scale and savagery of the Israeli assault on the media dwarfs anything I witnessed during my two decades as a war correspondent, including in Sarajevo where Serb snipers regularly took aim at reporters. Twenty-three journalists were killed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars between 1991 and 1995. Twenty-two were killed when I covered the war in El Salvador. Sixty-eight journalists were killed in World War II and 63 were killed in Vietnam. But unlike in Gaza, Bosnia and El Salvador, journalists were usually not targeted.
Israel’s assault on press freedom is unlike anything we have experienced since William Howard Russell, the godfather of modern war reporting, sent back dispatches from the Crimean War. Its onslaught against journalists is in a category by itself.
Representative James P. McGovern and 64 House members sent a letter to President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for the United States to push for Israel to allow unimpeded access for U.S. and international journalists. In July, over 70 media and civil society organizations signed an open letter calling on Israel to permit foreign reporters into Gaza.
Israel has not budged. Its ban on international journalists in Gaza remains in place. Its genocide grinds forward. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians are killed and wounded daily. During October, Israel killed at least 770 Palestinians in northern Gaza. Israel spins out its lies and fabrications, from Hamas using Palestinians as human shields, to mass rape and beheaded babies, to a captive press that slavishly amplifies them. By the time the lies are exposed, often weeks or months later, the media cycle has moved on and few notice.
Israel’s wholesale censorship and assassination of journalists will have ominous consequences. It further erodes what few protections we once had as war correspondents. It sends an unequivocal message to any government, despot or dictator that seeks to mask its crimes. It heralds, like the genocide itself, a new world order, where mass murder is normalized, totalitarian censorship is permissible and journalists who try and expose the truth have very short life expectancies.
Israel, with the fulsome support of the U.S. government, is eviscerating the last shreds of freedom of the press.
Those who wage war, any war, seek to shape public opinion. They court the reporters they can domesticate, the ones who prostrate themselves before generals and, although they do not openly admit it, seek to stay as far away from combat as possible. These are the “good” journalists. They like to “play” at being a soldier. They enthusiastically assist in disseminating propaganda in the guise of reporting. They want to do their part for the war effort, to be part of the club. Sadly, they constitute the majority of the media in the wars I covered.
All CNN journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the network’s Jerusalem bureau prior to publication, a bureau that is required to abide by rules set down by Israeli military censors.
These domesticated journalists and news organizations are, as Robert Fisk pointed out, “prisoners of the language of power.” They dutifully parrot the official lexicon — “terrorists,” “peace process,” “two state solution” and “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
The New York Times, The Intercept writes, “instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and to ‘avoid’ using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.”
“The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine ‘except in very rare cases’ and to steer clear of the term ‘refugee camps’ to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars,” The Intercept notes. “The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.”
“There is no battle between power and the media,” Fisk noted. “Through language, we have become them.
Retired general David Petraeus, one of the authors of the 2006 U.S. Counterinsurgency Manual used by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, argues that persuading the public that you are winning — even if, as in Afghanistan, you are trapped in a quagmire — is more important than military superiority. The domesticated media is vital in perpetrating this deception.
Then there are the real journalists. They shine a light into the machinery of power. They tell the truth, for as the poet Seamus Heaney said, “There’s such a thing as truth and it can be told.” They make public the cruelty, mendacity and criminality of the powerful. They expose the collaboration of the domesticated media.
To the powerful, the war makers and the domesticated media, these real journalists are the enemy. This is the reason Julian Assange was mercilessly hounded and persecuted for 14 years. WikiLeaks published a 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document where British government officials equated investigative journalists with terrorists. The animosity is not new. What is new is the scale of Israel’s assault on journalism.
Crippling The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA): The Knesset’s Collective Punishment of Palestinians
UN Secretary-General Guterres was aghast at the two bills. “It would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.”
October 26, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/crippling-unrwa-the-knessets-collective-punishment-of-palestinians/—
The man has a cheek. Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks of the Palestinians), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keeping busy on further depriving access and assistance to those in Gaza and the West Bank. This comes in draft legislation that would prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from pursuing its valuable functions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli state has been relentless and pathological. Even before last year’s October 7 attacks by Hamas, much was made of the fact that the body seemed intent on keeping the horrors of the 1948 displacements current. Victimhood, complained the amnesiac enforcers of the Israeli state, was being encouraged by treating the descendants of displaced Palestinians as refugees. Nasty memories were being kept alive.
Since then, Israel has been further libelling and blackening the organisation as a terrorist frontbest abolished. (Labels are effortlessly swapped – “Hamas supporter”; “activist”; “terrorist”.) Initially came that infamous dossier pointing the finger at 12 individuals said to be Hamas participants in the October 7 attacks. With swiftness, the UN commenced internal investigations. Some individuals were sacked on suspicion of being linked to the attacks. Unfortunately, some US$450 million worth of donor funding from sixteen countries was suspended.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was always at pains to explain that he had “never been informed” nor received evidence substantiating Israel’s accusations. It was also all the more curious given that staff lists for the agency were provided to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in advance. At no point had he ever “received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”
In April, Lazzarini told the UN Security Council that “an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is under way, with serious implications for peace and security.” Repeatedly, requests by the agency to deliver aid to northern Gaza had been refused, staff barred from coordinating meetings between humanitarian actors and Israel, and UNRWA premises and staff targeted.
Israel’s campaign to dissuade donor states from restoring funding proved a mixed one. Even the United Kingdom, long sympathetic to Israel’s accusations, announced in July that funding would be restored. In the view of UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, UNRWA had taken steps to ensure that it was meeting “the highest standards of neutrality.”
In August, the findings of a review of the allegations by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, instigated at the request of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres,were released. It confirmed UNRWA’s role as “irreplaceable and indispensable” in the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, a “pivotal” body that provided “life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”
In identifying eight areas for immediate improvement on the subject of neutrality (for instance, engaging donors, neutrality of staff, installations, education and staff unions), it was noted that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” that the agency’s employees had been “members of terrorist organizations.”
On October 24, UNRWA confirmed that one of its staffers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza,Muhammad Abu Attawi, had been in the agency’s employ since July 2022 while serving as a Nukhba commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion. Attawi is alleged to have participated in the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im in October last year. His name had featured in a July letter from Israel to the agency listing 100 names allegedly connected with terrorist groups. But no action was taken against Attawi as the Israelis failed to supply UNRWA with evidence. Lazzarini’s letter urging, in the words of Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications, “to cooperate … by providing more information so he could take action” did not receive “any response”.
Having been foiled on various fronts in its quest to terminate UNRWA’s viable existence, Israeli lawmakers are now taking the legislative route to entrench the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Two bills are in train in the Knesset. The first, sponsored by such figures as Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, would bar state authorities from having contact with UNRWA. The second, sponsored by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would critically prevent the agency from operating in Israeli territory through revoking a 1967 exchange of notes justifying such activities.
Even proclaimed moderates – the term is relative – such as former defence minister Benny Gantz support the measures, accusing the UN body of making “itself an inseparable component of Hamas’s mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it.” It did not improve the lot of refugees, but merely perpetuated “their victimisation.” Evidently for Gantz, Israel had no central role in creating Palestinian victims in the first place.
By barring cooperation between any Israeli authorities and UNRWA, work in Gaza and the West Bank would become effectively impossible, largely because Jerusalem would no longer issue entrance permits to the territories or permit any coordination with the Israeli DefenseForces.
UN Secretary-General Guterres was aghast at the two bills. “It would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.” Ambassadors from 123 UN member states have echoed the same views, while the Biden administration has, impotently, warned that the proposed “restrictions would devastate the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment” while also denying educational and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In their October 23 statement, the Nordic countries also expressed concern that UNRWA’s mandate “to carry out […] direct relief and works programmes” for millions of Palestinian refugees as determined by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) would be jettisoned. “In the midst of an ongoing catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, a halt to any of the organisation’s activities would have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of civilians served by UNRWA.”
The statement goes on to make a warning. To impair the refugee agency would create a vacuum that “may well destabilise the situation in [Gaza, and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem], in Israel and in the region as a whole, and may fundamentally jeopardize the prospects of a two-state solution.”
These are concerns that hardly matter before the rationale of murderous collective punishment, one used against a people seen more as mute serfs and submissive animals than sovereign beings entitled to rights and protections. Israel’s efforts to malign and cripple UNRWA remains a vital part of that agenda. In that organisation exists a repository of deep and troubling memories the forces of oppression long to erase.
Lying Western Press Scramble To Frame Israel’s Attack On Iran As Self Defense.
26 Oct 2024 JOHNSTONE radio, Israel has launched a round of airstrikes on Iran which the western news media are falling all over themselves to falsely frame as “retaliatory” strikes against an unprovoked missile attack by Iran.
Space Tech Is How Israel Targets Doctors’ & Journalists’ Homes For Bombing
The U.S. and Israel have been blocking a space weapons ban treaty (PAROS) at the United Nations for more than 25 years………. Space technology is playing a major role in the Gaza genocide.
The current wars in both Ukraine and Gaza are experimental laboratories for arms developers and showcases for their products
Resistance to building a rocket launch site in Maine
Lisa Savage, Oct 26, 2024, https://went2thebridge.substack.com/p/space-tech-is-how-israel-targets?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1580975&post_id=150711847&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I hustled down to the Maine Space Conference yesterday morning in time to meet with a tv reporter but alas her story seems to have fallen by the wayside (if I find it later I’ll edit to include it.) I told her satellite technology is what enables Israel to target residential buildings where they know doctors and journalists live.
Similarly, an interview of Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space by a reporter from Space News is nowhere to be found this morning. Or as Jonathan Cook put it, “Israel kills the journalists, Western media kills the truth.”
If you search for Maine Space Conference you’ll find plenty of adulatory articles about how exciting the space industry is and how each step toward turning our beautiful state into a militarized rocket launch site is to be applauded.
Folks in Kodiak, Alaska who had this experience continue to suffer the consequences. Though their launch site was built with assurances that all uses would be civilian in nature, that turned out to be a huge lie as even the Israeli military uses the launch site in Kodiak.
A recent report from a local resident highlights the pollution risks of hosting launch sites:
the Alaska DEC is keeping on top of a rocket fuel spill accident at the Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska that happened the end of July. ABL Space was suppose to launch a rocket back in January and for 6 months all ABL did was ‘testing’ on the launch pad, no launch and closing off the state road to the public off and on during that time.
The end of July the rocket was setting on the pad for engine testing once again when the engine caught on fire, tipping the rocket over and spilled 1,800 gallons of fuel on the pad and surrounding soil. The soil is now in the process of being dug up, stored and covered until it can be shipped off island to a land fill in Washington state.
There was a Astra Space rocket accident last year and it took 6 months to dig up all the contaminated soil and ship it off island, which took until December. Rocket fuel also seeped into the ground water.
Yesterday in Maine we heard from Gagnon during the protest:
The Maine Space Conference is promoting the militarization of space. Efforts are being made to test hypersonic missiles at the former Loring Air Force Base. bluShit Aerospace is receiving funding from the U.S. Air Force and Space Force to launch ‘dual use’ (military/civilian) mini-satellites into dangerously congested Lower Earth Orbit.
Promises of lots of jobs, little to no environmental impacts, and peaceful exploration of space are the standard claims made at a myriad of potential sites the U.S. military is exploring around the world.
The U.S. and Israel have been blocking a space weapons ban treaty (PAROS) at the United Nations for more than 25 years.
Our nation cannot afford to pay for a new expensive arms race in outer space.
And we heard from Mary Beth Sullivan specifically about current wars that already depend on space-based technology:
Space technology is playing a major role in the Gaza genocide.
The current wars in both Ukraine and Gaza are experimental laboratories for arms developers and showcases for their products
Space is now an essential technical area being used in war fighting
Space is now an essential technical area being used in war fighting
BY FAR: the US is biggest spender on space programs, and the US launches more objects into space than any other nation
SpaceX developed the Starlight Satellite constellations to bring the internet and broadband to the world to connect us all to the internet, right? A commercial product to benefit the masses, right?
Did you know that SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are used by Israel in its genocide against Gaza, and its bombing campaign against Lebanon? It’s a primary enabler of the use of drones.
Militaries have developed a dependency on space systems to coordinate, command, and control activity at all levels over wide areas.
Israel also has it’s own space launch capability, and its own military satellites which are part of what’s called the Eros NG constellation. One of the most powerful intelligence collection systems in the world. They have satellites in constant orbit downloading info.
GPS Jamming by Israel being used in Gaza and Lebanon.
Also, the US and the UK use spy plane flights for Israel to aid in surveillance, facilitate propaganda, and much more
Australia has a spy base in Pine Gap which is downloading info from Gaza. Pine Gap sends the info to the US’s National Security Agency, who then sends to Israel. This clearly implicates Australia – and the US — in Israel’s genocide.
Same can be said for a spy base called Menwith Hill in the UK.
Reports show that Artificial Intelligence is enabling decision-making systems in Israel against the people of Palestine. Programs called Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy are trained to recognize features of people who might be affiliated with Hamas. The program tracks individuals and groups.
Techniques using AI and message interception are joined together.
Many nations in the region are developing their own space technology.
There have been no physical attack on a satellite as yet in this war but, if such an attack happens, new replacement satellites will need to be launched quickly. To that end, the US is operationalizing a “rapid response.”
For more information on resistance to the construction of a launch site in Maine visit NoToxicRockets4ME.org.
‘This is an extermination’: Israel’s assault on north Gaza’s last functioning hospital
Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.
Israel is emptying northern Gaza of its inhabitants during its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. One of the key strategies it is using to achieve this is by hospitals, and the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia has become a primary target.
By Qassam Muaddi October 23, 2024, https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/this-is-an-extermination-israels-assault-on-north-gazas-last-functioning-hospital/
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians across northern Gaza have been forced on a death march by the Israeli army since Monday, October 21. Northern Gaza is being emptied of its inhabitants, and one of Israel’s strategies in achieving this goal is to take out the area’s few remaining social institutions: hospitals.
As part of its ongoing offensive on northern Gaza, the Israeli army has been trying to clear out the entire area north of Gaza City for the past 18 days. At least 200,000 people continue to stay there, many of them fearing, according to local testimonies, that they will be targeted on the way south or in Israeli-designated “safe zones,” which have been consistently bombarded over recent months. The ongoing siege includes a second siege-within-the-siege on the Jabalia refugee camp, accompanied by a massive bombing and shelling campaign that is forcing tens of thousands of people to leave their homes. Many of them have headed to Beit Lahia, and particularly to Kamal Adwan Hospital. Over the past 18 days, the hospital has been issuing daily calls for help, warning of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia is one of three functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza governorate. The hospital is the only fully functional medical center in the north, with a specialized neonatal section for newborns.
The two other hospitals in Gaza are barely functional. The Indonesian Hospital in the town of Sheikh Zayed went out of services last week after Israeli troops besieged it and invaded its surroundings. Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, smaller in size, has suspended most of its services and only functions at a limited capacity. On Tuesday, October 22, the al-Awda Hospital’s director, Bakr Abu Safiyeh, told al-Ghad TV that Israeli quadcopter drones were opening fire directly on the hospital.
Dr. Baker said that Israeli quadcopters were also opening fire on anybody moving in the streets, including ambulances. According to the hospital director, an Israeli strike targeted an ambulance carrying a mother who had just given birth. The mother was killed, Dr. Baker said, and the baby was later found alive by rescue teams and was taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital’s neonatal section.
Why targeting hospitals is the key to emptying northern Gaza
Named after Kamal Adwan, a Palestinian resistance leader assassinated by Israel in Beirut in 1973, the hospital has become a central destination for the wounded and the displaced. Like most other hospitals in Gaza over the past year of genocidal war, Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only remaining public space in northern Gaza that offers services and provides shelter, representing the backbone of Gazan civil society and social cohesion. That is why Israel is targeting it, with the aim of forcibly expelling the population in service of the Israeli plan to empty the north. This has now come to be called “the Generals’ Plan.”
Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.
The plan is an enhanced version of what Israel has already been doing for the past year, including targeting and forcibly evacuating hospitals. Israeli forces raided al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for the first time in November, when the compound and its surroundings were crowded with displaced families, and forced medics, patients, and displaced people to leave. But in February, when Israeli forces began to withdraw from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City, Palestinians returned to al-Shifa and began to operate parts of it again as displaced families began to take over its spaces once more.
Then, in April, Israeli forces invaded al-Shifa a second time in a raid that lasted several weeks with the purpose of accelerating social collapse in Gaza City. The Israeli army combed the hospital building by building and floor by floor, destroying equipment and, according to survivor testimonies gathered by Mondoweiss at the time, executing hundreds of civil government employees and separating people into differently-colored bracelet. At the end of the operation, Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, Deputy Director of al-Shifa, told UN News that the destruction of al-Shifa “took out the heart of the health system in the Gaza Strip,” adding that “al-Shifa is finished forever.”
In December 2023, two months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan hospital and forced medical staff, patients, and displaced civilians to evacuate. The hospital resumed partial services in July after joint efforts by the World Health Organization and other international parties, coupled with pressure on Israel to allow limited quantities of humanitarian aid into the north.
As Israel set its eyes on Gaza’s northernmost governorate to execute Eiland’s plan, Kamal Adwan Hospital is now the last bastion of Palestinian steadfastness in the north. This makes it a prime target in the ongoing Israeli offensive. Kamal Adwan came close to completely shutting down multiple times, mainly due to the lack of fuel for power generators, saved every time by intensified pressure by international parties on Israel to allow limited quantities of fuel to pass through
Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity
“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.
The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.
Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity
“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.
The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.
“This baby girl here arrived after her family was targeted by [an Israeli] strike,” said Abu Safiyeh while filming one particular newborn. “Her mother and father were martyred, as well as her grandmother, and she is now alone with a wound to the head and a secondary inflammation,” he explained. “If fuel doesn’t arrive [for power generators] there will be a humanitarian catastrophe for these children,” he warned.
In the hospital’s sections, the medical staff described their working conditions. “There are cases of burning, internal bleeding, skull fractures, and limb amputations,” Dr. Ameen Abu Amshah, serving at Kamal Adwan, told Mondoweiss. “Out of every 10 to 15 wounded we receive at once, an average of seven are urgent cases for surgery. We just don’t have the capacity for all this, and we are forced to prioritize the cases that can be saved” said Dr. Abu Amshah.
“The occupation army has been ordering doctors to leave, including through phone calls,” said Abu Amshah. “This is an extermination. Northern Gaza is being exterminated, Jabalia is being exterminated, and Kamal Adwan hospital is being exterminated, but we will not leave.”
Forced death march
On Tuesday, October 23, Israeli drones dropped leaflets and aired voice messages at Palestinians who remained in the surroundings of Kamal Adwan and inside its premises, ordering them to leave. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians were being gathered and forced to move out of other shelters after arresting men among them. Thousands were left stranded in the street far away from the last standing public facilities and forced to take the road yet again at gunpoint, as shown by footage aired by the Israeli army.
Israel strikes Iran military targets amid fears of a wider war
The Age, October 26, 2024
Israel said it struck military sites in Iran early on Saturday in retaliation for Tehran’s attacks on Israel earlier this month, the latest step in the escalating conflict between the heavily armed rivals.
Iranian media reported multiple explosions over several hours in the capital and at nearby military bases, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
Before dawn, Israel’s public broadcaster said three waves of strikes had been completed and that the operation was over.
The Middle East has been on edge awaiting Israel’s retaliation for a ballistic-missile barrage carried out by Iran on October 1, in which around 200 missiles were fired at Israel and one person was killed in the West Bank.
Tensions between arch-rivals Israel and Iran have escalated since Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group based in Gaza, attacked Israel on October 7 last year. Hamas has been supported by Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants, also backed by Iran.
Fears that Iran and the United States would be drawn into a regional war have risen with Israel’s intensifying assault on Hezbollah since last month, including airstrikes on the Lebanese capital Beirut and a ground operation, as well as its year-old conflict in the Gaza Strip………………………………………………………….
US President Joe Biden had warned that Washington, Israel’s main backer and supplier of arms, would not support a strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites and has said Israel should consider alternatives to attacking Iran’s oil fields.
Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned Israel against any attack.
“Iran reserves the right to respond to any aggression, and there is no doubt that Israel will face a proportional reaction for any action it takes,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Saturday, quoting sources…………………………………………..
Videos carried by Iranian media showed air defences continuously firing at apparently incoming projectiles in central Tehran, without saying which sites were coming under attack.
The semi-official Iranian Fars news agency said several military bases in the west and southwest of Tehran had also been targeted…………………………………………………………………….
US informed ahead of strikes
……………………………..The US was notified by Israel ahead of its strikes on targets in Iran but was not involved in the operation, another US official told Reuters.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the Middle East for another attempt to broker a peace deal, said on Wednesday that Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
Even as it sought to convince Israel to calibrate its strikes, the US moved to reassure its closest ally in the Middle East that it would aid in its defence should Tehran decide to stage a counter-attack.
This included Biden’s decision to move the US military’s THAAD anti-missile defences to Israel, along with about 100 US soldiers to operate them. …………………………….. more https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/israel-raids-gaza-hospital-strike-on-a-home-kills-13-children-20241026-p5kli5.html
Let’s talk about…Mainstream Media (MSM) Coverage of Israeli War Crimes
Truth is irrelevant, narrative is all. That’s how the media works.
Kit Knightly, Off-Guardian Thu, 24 Oct 2024 https://www.sott.net/article/495700-Lets-talk-about-MSM-coverage-of-Israeli-War-Crimes
Two weeks ago, it was widely reported across all the Western legacy media that Israel had fire-bombed a hospital leaving patients to burn to death in their beds.
A few days later, we were told by the same Western legacy media that Israeli strikes inside Lebanon had destroyed a 2000-year-old village.
Today, CNN’s front page hosts an IDF soldier describing Israel’s practice of using civilians as human shields in Gaza, while the Guardian details an Israeli strike on school-turned-bomb shelter in Gaza.
Now, it’s not at all unusual that Israel should be committing war crimes, they’ve been doing so unchecked for decades.
But what is less usual is seeing these war crimes appearing on front pages and in headlines in the controlled media.
We’ve all been doing this long to have dispelled any idea the MSM cares about truth.
They don’t care about truth. Not at all. In fact these days their internal structures barely permit them to recognize truth as a concept.
Nothing – nothing – is so true the media have to report it, no crimes are so brutal they can’t be ignored.
Case in point, in Odessa in 2014 civilians protesting the NATO-backed coup in Ukraine were chased inside the Trade Union building by pro-coup neo-Nazis.
The building was barricaded and set on fire. People climbing out of the windows to escape the flames were shot at.
Forty people died, shot or burned to death. The neo-Nazis responsible celebrated by showing pictures of beetles being set alight (their disparaging term for ethnic Russians was “Colorado beetles” in reference to the orange and black ribbon of St George they wore).
How did the legacy media respond to this murder?
Well, they just lied.
They claimed the protesters set the fire by accident when they were throwing Molotov cocktails off the roof. This was a complete fabrication, contradicted by CCTV evidence, blaming the victims and covering for the fascists, but so what? They media didn’t care, they just kept repeating the lie and are still doing so today
Truth is irrelevant, narrative is all. That’s how the media works.
They’ve done the same in the past for Israel , the US, Saudi Arabia, NATO…whoever…countless times over the years.
And yet here we are, in 2024, with these Israeli crimes all over the controlled news.
They could lie if they wanted, as they usually do.
But they aren’t.
It prompts the eternal question: “Why this? Why now?”
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
Israel Continues Its War On Journalism
Caitlin Johnstone, 24 Oct 24, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-continues-its-war-on-journalism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150646353&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
An Israeli airstrike destroyed the press office of the Lebanese news broadcaster Al Mayadeen on Wednesday night, continuing Israel’s historically unprecedented military assault on the press.
Also in continuation of Israel’s war on journalism, the IDF has published the names of six Al Jazeera reporters who it claims are actually members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing as evidence documents which it claims Israeli forces found in Gaza. These allegations would mark these journalists as legitimate military targets.
Al Jazeera has denounced these claims as unfounded, saying in a statement, “The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide.”
There is of course no reason to ever believe any claim Israel makes about anything whatsoever absent mountains of independently verifiable evidence, after the mountains of lies it has churned out over the last year. The fact that western news outlets are treating these allegations as plausible is evidence of their propagandistic nature.
Israel claims everyone it wants to kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the aid trucks are Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the mosques are Hamas, the water infrastructure is Hamas, the civilian homes are all Hamas, and Hamas is hiding behind every woman and child in Gaza. The only exception to this rule is in Lebanon, in which case everyone Israel wants to kill is Hezbollah.
Israel hates truth, which is why it kills journalists at every opportunity and blocks them from entering Gaza. This is because truth tends to have a marked anti-Israel bias.
We saw this illustrated recently when Israel announced that there’s a secret Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, so the press simply sent a bunch of reporters to go investigate because Israel can’t block the press from entering Lebanon like it can in Gaza. Even western outlets like the BBC and Sky News entered the hospital and interviewed medical staff, reporting that they found no trace of evidence supporting Israel’s claims and that the hospital staff all denied the existence of any Hezbollah bunker on the premises. And you may be sure those outlets would have eagerly reported any sign of Hezbollah if they were given the opportunity.
Criminal institutions need to function in the dark. They cannot function in the light of visibility and critical journalism and inconvenient video footage. That’s why the mafia murders witnesses. That’s why the inner workings of the US war machine are shrouded in government secrecy. That’s why Julian Assange spent five years in a maximum security prison. And that’s why Israel does everything it can to kill and obstruct journalists who tell the truth about its crimes.
Iran complains to IAEA about possible Israeli attack on nuclear sites
Iran International, Oct 21, 2024,
Iran has written to the UN nuclear watchdog to complain about Israel’s threats against its nuclear sites in a possible retaliatory strike, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Monday.
“Any acts of aggression towards nuclear sites are condemned under international law,” Baghaei said during his weekly news conference.
He added that Tehran had officially communicated its position to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying, “we have sent a letter about it to… the UN nuclear watchdog.”
Israel has vowed to attack Iran in retaliation for a volley of Iranian missiles launched on October 1, leading to widespread speculation that Iran’s nuclear sites could be among Israel’s targets.
On October 1, Iran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel, a move described as retaliation for the killings of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. It was the second Iranian attack on Israel this year. Israel responded to the first missile volley in April with an air strike on an air defense site in central Iran.
After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Tehran had made a “big mistake tonight” and vowed that “it will pay for it.” Later, the Biden administration revealed that it told Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.
Last week, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would listen to key ally the United States regarding a response to Iran’s missile attack but would decide its actions according to its own national interest.
His statement was attached to a Washington Post article which said Netanyahu had told President Joe Biden’s administration that Israel would strike Iranian military targets, not nuclear or oil sites.
Baghaei, responding to a question about the possibility of Iran changing its official nuclear doctrine, said “weapons of mass destruction have no place in our policy”. Tehran would decide on how and when to respond to any Israeli attack.
Israel, which has long accused Tehran of plans to develop nuclear weapons, regards Iran’s nuclear activities as a threat. Tehran denies these accusations, insisting that its program is entirely peaceful.
Additionally, Israel’s former premier Naftali Bennett called for the country’s leaders to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as the Jewish state weighs its response to the barrage of 181 ballistic missiles.
Bennet slammed Biden who had called for a “proportionate” response, saying, “President Biden has said that Israel can retaliate against Iran, but must keep the response ‘proportionate’. The president also urged Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear program.”
Moreover, prominent Israeli opposition lawmaker and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman also called on the government to use “all the tools” at its disposal to confront the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, tacitly suggesting that Israel should use a nuclear weapon against the Islamic Republic.
“In order to stop the Iranian nuclear program, which is already at weaponization stages, we must use all the tools at our disposal… It must be clear that, at this stage, it is impossible to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons via conventional means.”……………………………………………………………………………………https://www.iranintl.com/en/202410210736
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