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Israel’s War on the United Nations

October 15, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/israels-war-on-the-united-nations/

The United Nations is an easy body to hate. At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone. It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred briefly stemmed. Over the ruins of the Second World War, the builders were favoured over the destroyers and mischief makers – at least for a time.

On its establishment, the UN became a hostage to the political intrigues and power blocs that have continued to plague it for its duration. Of particular concern was the body’s pursuit of international law protocols – formulation, drafting and implementation. A central feature of this: resolutions passed by various bodies, the most significant being by the UN Security Council. Such measures are followed by nation states when convenient, ignored when not.

One such nation state in the mischief making class is Israel. Its relationship with the UN has often been tetchy. The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, admits that the body “played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Jewish State by passing UN Resolution 181 in 1947.” The resolution, with its hefty consequences, called for “the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.” The same organisation, however, goes on to note with satisfaction the remarks in April 2007 by then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: “Unfortunately, because of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, Israel’s been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias – and sometimes even discrimination.”

For various periods of its history, Israel has felt hard done by in the international forum. The folder of resolutions against it has burgeoned. Notable ones include UNSC Resolution 242 (1967) which asserts, in accordance with the UN Charter principles, that a “just and lasting peace in the Middle East” includes the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from territories occupied during the Six Day War and the termination of territorial claims and affirmation of sovereignty of all States in the area. UNSC Resolution 338 (1973), passed in response to the Yom Kippur War between Israel, Egypt and Syria, called on the parties to cease hostilities within 12 hours and implement Resolution 242 “in all its parts.”

UN Resolution 2334, passed in December 2016, particularly hurt, striking at the expansionist, displacing drive of the Jewish state through settlements in occupied territory that amount to de facto colonisation. It particularly condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.” This included, among other matters, the expansion of the settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land and the displacement of Palestinian civilians.

Instead of seeing such a measure as a clear assessment of predation in breach of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it an unnecessary reward to the Palestinians “to continue down a dangerous path they have chosen” in avoiding direct negotiations with Israel. That Israel cared not a jot on that score hardly mattered.

A number of recent incidents reveals the poor regard the United Nations is held in, notably within Israel’s warring circles. Its agency aiding Palestinians, UNRWA, is threatened by two bills before the Israeli parliament that will significantly hamper its operations by evicting the body from its premise in territories within Israel’s control. The proposed laws will also abolish any associated privileges and immunities. Having failed to convince all major donors to the organisation that it should be defunded for being packed with Hamas apologists and operatives (the evidence has always been paltry on that score), the Israeli government is using a legal sledgehammer fashioned by the Knesset.


The passage of the bills, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.” The provision of shelter, food and healthcare “would grind to a halt” without the agency. Some 600,000 children “would lose the only entity that is able to re-start education, risking the fate of an entire generation.”

With Israel’s broadening campaign against Hezbollah to the north, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is facing continuous harassment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Established in 1978 by the Security Council to confirm the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon and aid Lebanese authorities restore peace and security in the area, UNIFIL has been a source of endless irritation to the IDF’s operations.

In an October 13 statement, UNIFIL revealed that two IDF Merkava tanks at 4.30 that morning had gone about the business of destroying the main gate of their post in Ramyah, near the Israeli border. The tanks forcibly entered, after which Israeli personnel demanded that the base turn out its lights. “The tanks left about 45 minutes later after UNIFIL protested through our liaison mechanism, saying that IDF presence was putting peacekeepers in danger.”

At 6.40 am, peacekeepers at the same post reported the firing of several smoke emitting rounds 100 metres to the north. “Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp.”

On October 14, persisting in its approach of impeding and harrying the peacekeeping force, the IDF halted “a critical UNIFIL logistical movement near Meiss ej Jebel, denying it passage. The critical movement could not be completed.”

The statement goes on to remind the IDF about its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers and property. Breaching a UN position violated UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), while any deliberate attack on peacekeepers was aserious violation of international humanitarian law, in addition to breaching resolution 1701.

In an almost disdainful manner, the IDF suggested in a statement that the peacekeepers had entirely misunderstood the brutal encroachment. The actions had been motivated by goodwill to evacuate soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile. “For the sake of evacuating the wounded, two tanks drove backwards, in a place where they could not advance otherwise in light of the threat of shooting, a few metres towards the UNIFIL position.” The smokescreen had been created to aid the evacuation, while the entire operation was conducted throughout with continuous contact with the UN peacekeepers. After a time, the dressing of lies becomes tatty and banal.

Typically, it fell to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to shed some light on the mendacious fog. UNIFIL, he suggested, had to immediately withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. “It is time for you,” stated the PM in a pointed message to Guterres, “to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.” Yet again, international law which, in this case, provides legitimacy to the UN peacekeeping operations in the area, could be treated as a tissue easily torn.

October 16, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Exposed: How Israeli spies control your VPN (Virtual Private Network)

the high tech industry is inextricably linked to the Israeli military apparatus 

Mint Press News, September 11th, 2024, Alan Macleod

An estimated 1.6 billion people rely on VPNs to carry out the most sensitive tasks online, from watching illegal videos to engaging in sexual or political activities. But few people know that a considerable chunk of that market—including three of the six most popular VPNs—is quietly operated by an Israeli-owned company with close connections to that country’s national security state, including the elite Unit 8200 and Duvdevan Units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Previous MintPress News investigations into Israel’s growing control over the tech industry have outlined how those units have been involved in many of Israel’s most outrageous hacking, surveillance and assassination programs, acting as spies and death squads. Unit 8200, for example, has been the source of much of the world’s most infamous spying software, including Cellebrite and Pegasus, the program used to snoop on tens of thousands of the world’s top politicians and journalists, including by Saudi Arabia, who used it to help track down and kill Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Given this context, justifiable fears arise that control over a vast VPN empire could add to Israel’s influence over the online information and security world, creating backdoors for Israeli intelligence to carry out a vast kompromat operation on users around the globe.

This investigation is part of a series highlighting and detailing the power of Israel’s growing tech industry to access and control people’s data.

A Company Like No Other

Kape Technologies is a major player in the online privacy world, one of the three giants that collectively control the market. It owns many of the world’s top VPNs, including ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ZenMate, Intego Antivirus, and a host of tech websites that promote its products. Kape brands can be seen sponsoring a wide array of public figures, such as Tucker Carlson, Angry Video Game Nerd, Drew Gooden, Lex Fridman, Cody Ko, Uncle Roger, and Ben Shapiro.

“We are living in an era of tyranny,” Shapiro says in one video endorsing the company, adding:

“The Internet is at the frontier of a battle for control. When powerful interests want to push their agenda, they get big government and big tech to silence any voice that doesn’t fit the narrative. Americans are being forced to give up the very thing that makes Americans great: our freedom of speech. Well, I don’t like my voice being censored, I also don’t like being monitored by big Tech and big government, that’s why I use ExpressVPN [and] you should do the same.”

VPN stands for virtual private network and is a service that claims to protect your anonymity online. Instead of giving your information to an internet service provider, you provide it to the VPN company, who will scramble it, allowing users to get around government censorship and carry out activities online that they do not wish to be connected to themselves, such as purchasing banned products, partaking in certain activities, and communicating with others. Therefore, individuals trust VPNs to conceal their most sensitive activities.

Although it is headquartered in London and employs more than 1,000 people worldwide, Kape Technologies maintains a distinctly Israeli flavor. This begins with its owner, Teddy Sagi. Born in Tel Aviv, the tycoon, who previously spent time in prison for financial crimes,isestimatedto be worth $6.4 billion, making him among the top ten richest Israelis.

Sagi has a long history of working closely with the IDF and is rumored to be extremely close to Israeli intelligence. In 2019, he donated $3 million to fund hundreds of academic scholarships for discharged Israeli soldiers.

Sagi, at the Friends of the IDF Gala, said:

“It is a debt of honor for us and for me personally to express gratitude and appreciation that all of Israel’s citizens owe to you.”

………………………………Kape Technology’s connections to the Israeli security services do not end there. Indeed, the company is teeming with Israeli intelligence officials.………………………..

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Express VPN Executive, a Former Spy

When using a VPN service, users place a large amount of trust in the VPN company itself. They must trust that it is effectively encrypting users’ traffic, securing their data and the server network infrastructure, and not doing anything else with the vast amount of sensitive information they are given. As noted previously, individuals and organizations use VPNs to carry out all manner of highly compromising activities online.

Unfortunately, Daniel Gericke, ExpressVPN’s chief technology officer (CTO) from 2019-2023, was deeply involved in such questionable practices. A Reuters investigation series revealed that Gericke was a key member of a team of spies that hacked the devices of human rights activists, journalists and government officials, stealing their data and passing it on to the government of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE used this data to track down dissidents and torture them, according to the investigation.

ExpressVPN hired Gericke (a former manager for weapons firm Lockheed Martin) after the Reuters exposé and continued to back him, even after the U.S. Department of Justice fined him $335,000 for his role in the clandestine operation. “Our trust in Daniel remains strong,” the company said in a statement. Gericke left ExpressVPN last summer after nearly four years with the company.

A Unit Like No Other

With his background as a former spy, Gericke likely fits well with many of the other top Kape Technologies leaders. Ido Erlichman, Kape CEO between 2016 and 2023, is a veteran of the Duvdevan, an elite Israeli commando unit. Described by Middle East news outlet Electronic Intifada as Israel’s “death squad,” members are given special training to disguise themselves as Palestinians in order to infiltrate enemy groups and carry out extrajudicial killings. Both the selection process and the training are exceptionally rigorous, and Duvdevan commandos often spend months or even years undercover before being assigned a mission.

The life and work of Duvdevan agents were explored and promoted in the Netflix series Fauda.

Unit 8200, meanwhile, is no less prestigious.Described as Israel’s Harvard, parents spend fortunes on extra classes for their children, who know that selection into the unit will unlock a wealth of doors in Israel’s burgeoning hi-tech industry.

But Unit 8200 is also the centerpiece of the country’s repressive state apparatus. It has created a gigantic digital dragnet that is used to constantly monitor, surveil and harass the Palestinian population,whose calls, emails and every move are clocked by the group.

Unit 8200 uses this data to compile gigantic dossiers of information on Palestinians under their control, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, so that it could be used later for extortion. If a particular individual needs to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission can be suspended until they comply with Israeli requests for dirt on their peers. Information, such as if a person was cheating on their spouse or was homosexual, is also used as bait for blackmail. One former Unit 8200 soldier said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in conversations.

In 2014, 43 Unit 8200 reservists went public,revealing that the unit makes no distinction between ordinary Palestinians and those engaged in violence and that Palestinians as a whole are considered enemies of the state. They also claimed that their intelligence was passed on to powerful local politicians, who used it as they saw fit.

More recently, Unit 8200’s new project, Lavender, uses artificial intelligence to select targets for the Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza. A “conservative estimate” published by the medical journal The Lancet suggested that 186,000 people have died since October 7 due to Israeli bombing. Some two millionmore people have been displaced.

Unit 8200 agents have gone on to produce many of the world’s most downloaded apps, including the maps service Waze and the communications platform Viber.Perhaps the most consequential, however, is the spying software Pegasus.

Pegasus was used to spy on more than 50,000 prominent individuals around the world, including politicians such as President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, and President Barham Salih of Iraq. Journalists, human rights defenders and members of royal families were also targeted for surveillance. The Unit 8200 veterans sold Pegasus to some of the world’s most authoritarian governments. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, used the software to dig up dirt on his political opponents, while other members of his government hacked the phone of a woman who accused the Chief Justice of India of raping her.

Known purchasers of the software include the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the governments of the UAE, Panama, and Saudi Arabia, who used the software to surveil Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was assassinated by Saudi agents in Türkiye. All sales of Pegasus had to be approved by the Israeli government, who ostensibly had access to the data Pegasus’ foreign customers were accruing.

Unit 8200 veterans have even created spyware VPNs before. In 2013, Facebook purchased Onavo Protect and later heavily promoted its product to its billions of users. However, Those who downloaded it were unaware that, far from being a privacy app,Onavo was being used to surveil them to help Facebook understand the market and crush its competitors. After the scandal was made public, Facebook removed Onavo from the app store, and, as of 2019, the product is defunct.

The Spies Controlling Your Social Media

Facebook’s collaboration with Unit 8200 goes far deeper, however. This author’s 2022 MintPress News investigation found that a vast number of Unit 8200 veterans had gone on to work in senior positions at Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Chief among these is Emi Palmor, a longtime IDF veteran and former Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Justice.Palmor is one of 21 individuals sitting on Meta’s Oversight Board, the panel that ultimately controls the political direction of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, deciding what content is appropriate and what is unacceptable and should be suppressed. As such, a Unit 8200 veteran is influencing what content billions of users see – and don’t see – online, including, presumably, on Israel’s assault on Gaza, an issue on which Facebook has consistently favored Israel and silenced Palestinian voices.

The same investigation found at least 99 former Unit 8200 agents working at Google. These included Google’s head of strategy and operations, Gavriel Goidel; its head of insights, data and management, Jonathan Cohen; and Google Waze’s head of global self-service, Ori Daniel.

Microsoft, meanwhile, hired at least 166 Unit 8200 veterans to fill its ranks, including many that went straight from the military into the company, suggesting that it is actively recruiting from the regiment.

These numbers are certainly a serious underestimate, as, under Israeli law, revealing one’s current or previous affiliation to Unit 8200 is an offense. Therefore, those found were the ones brazen enough to defy Israeli law.

Is Your Identity Safe?

Internet secrecy is a serious business. Over a billion individuals trust VPNs to hide their identities online. However, the background of Kape Technologies, from its beginnings as an adware company spamming users with advertisements to its key figures’ close connections to Israeli intelligence, raises serious concerns about its clients’ privacy.

At best, a worrying set of conflicts of interest arises when giving your data to a company with such an ethical background. But given that many of the key figures highlighted here have close connections to groups such as the Duvdevan and Unit 8200, both of which carry out wide-scale spying operations, and ExpressVPN’s former CTO reportedly working to spy on users and pass that information on to foreign governments, one cannot rule out the possibility that this is a gigantic sting operation to gather data on vast amounts of individuals,akin to what Unit 8200 is already known to do.

While ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ZenMate and other Kape Technologies products may well be safe to use, activists and revolutionaries — particularly those who work on issues such as Palestine — should at least know the company’s history before reflexively trusting it. https://www.mintpressnews.com/exposed-how-israeli-spies-control-your-vpn/288259/

October 16, 2024 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Book: THE FALL OF ISRAEL: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military

“Israel is in deep trouble at home and abroad. It has become an apartheid state that is executing a genocide in Gaza. The Fall of Israel does an outstanding job explaining the causes and the evolution of the disastrous path that Israel is on.

Dan Steinbock,  https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-fall-of-israel/ 15 Oct 24

The path to the obliteration of Gaza was paved by the confluence of a set of longstanding forces. This great conjuncture has transformed Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories while driving the region to the edge. In The Fall of Israel, Dr Dan Steinbock connects the dots among these lethal headwinds. What makes The Fall of Israel unique is its comprehensive scope. It covers Israel’s political, economic, social and military changes, the shifts in the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, Israel’s degradation into apartheid rule, the attendant atrocities, the regional and global reverberations and the  human and economic costs, both prior and subsequent to Israel’s fatal war on Gaza. There, its nightmarish actions have led to the engagement of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, renewed international boycotts, and massive domestic and international protests.

“Israel is in deep trouble at home and abroad. It has become an apartheid state that is executing a genocide in Gaza. The Fall of Israel does an outstanding job explaining the causes and the evolution of the disastrous path that Israel is on. This book deserves to be widely read by anyone interested in understanding contemporary Israel.”—JOHN MEARSHEIMER, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

“This impressive book provides a comprehensive and incisive answer to the question how we got to where we are in Israel and Palestine today.  In a very accessible manner, Steinbock narrates the making of a messianic and theocratic Israel which is a menace for the Palestinians, the region and no less important, to itself. Its downfall as the book predicts is neigh, but on the way, it wreaks havoc and destruction. This is the picture world leaders must be aware of and challenge before it is too late.” —ILAN PAPPE, Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, Author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“Eight years ago I said that Israel would not be a state in 20 years; today I reaffirm that prognosis adding only that it won’t take 12 more years.  Many of my reasons for reaching that conclusion — and indeed far more  — are elaborated in The Fall of Israel.  Apparently, not many Americans want to know these truths — they’re too nuanced, complex, and damning; but if you happen to be in that group of us who believe strongly in the rule of law — U.S. domestic law and international humanitarian and criminal law in particular — and in democracy, then you need to read this book.  When you finish, I hope you will understand that our current national path leads us straight to hell. “—LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Col, USA (Ret) and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell

The Fall of Israel is one of the most comprehensive academic books on the Palestinian crisis. . .This book thoroughly and accurately explains significant facts about the objectives and crimes of Zionism, the likes of which are rarely found in previous academic works.”—SEYED HOSSEIN MOUSAVIAN, Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist, Princeton University

“Dr. Steinbock’s research illuminates what the public is reluctant to digest: Namely that Israel operates in open rebellion against international law, refusing to live in peace with Palestine’s native population and with neighboring States.”—ALFRED DE ZAYAS, Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order

“Dr Steinbock’s book The Fall of Israel is an illuminating and intelligent contribution to our understanding of the events in the Middle East.”—DR. ERKKI TUOMIOJA, Historian and longest serving Minister for Foreign Affairs, Finland, who had a prominent role as the spokesman for European foreign policy

“The Fall of Israel explains excellently how 76 years of repression and suffering for the Palestinians has been facilitated by the unconditional American support for Israelf.”—MOGENS LYKKETOFT, Former Danish Foreign Minister and President of the United Nations General Assembly 2015-2016

“Vital reading for anyone concerned with this issue, and provides perceptive insight that is sorely needed.” —JONATHAN KUTTAB, international human rights attorney, co-founder of Nonviolence International and co-founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, resources - print | Leave a comment

Israel intensifies genocide in Gaza and deepens killings in Lebanon

Mike Head @MikeHeadWSWS, 12 October 202, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/10/12/qbdw-o12.html

Armed to the teeth by the Biden-Harris administration in the US, the Israeli regime is re-intensifying its slaughter in refugee camps, schools and hospitals in northern and central Gaza, even as it expands its invasion and bombardments in Lebanon, including the centre of Beirut.

In the most recent attacks in Gaza, at least 22 people were killed yesterday in an air strike in Jabalia—the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps—in northern Gaza. Dozens were injured, with some ambulances unable to help rescue efforts due to fuel shortages.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued virtually impossible orders for residents, hospitals and healthcare centres across the area to evacuate, placing thousands of people, including healthcare workers and their maimed patients, directly in danger.

A strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah also killed at least 28 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where bodies were taken. It said several other people were wounded.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 61 Palestinians were killed and 231 were wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

Thousands of people are trapped in Jabalia as Israeli forces continue to attack the area, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said. “Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot,” Sarah Vuylsteke, MSF project coordinator, said in a post on X.

The Israeli army issued evacuation orders for residents in the camp on October 7, “while carrying out attacks at the same time, preventing people from leaving the area safely,” MSF said.

Forced evacuations and bombing of neighbourhoods are turning Gaza’s north into “unhabitable ruins,” MSF added.

Haydar, an MSF driver inside the camp, said: “We were staying at the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, but they bombed it. About 20 people were killed. I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave.”

United Nations officials voiced concerns yesterday that the Israeli offensive, as well as evacuation orders in northern Gaza, might affect the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.

Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the Type 2 polio virus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

“I am, of course, concerned about the developments in the north, and specifically with these evacuation orders,” the World Health Organization’s representative in occupied Palestinian territory, Rik Peeperkorn, told reporters in Geneva.

Peeperkorn said three attempts by the UN health agency and its partners to assist and evacuate patients from northern Gaza hospitals under evacuation orders have been thwarted this week.

This renewed Israeli offensive, combined with systematic starvation and denial of medical access, underscores the genocidal intent of the Netanyahu government. By the official Gaza health statistics, the IDF has killed more than 42,000 people, mostly women and children over the past 12 months, but the true toll may be closer to 200,000, counting the unrecovered bodies beneath the rubble.

Israel’s assault on Lebanon is widening and deepening at the same time. On Thursday night, 22 people were killed and 139 wounded in strikes in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Makati.

Videos published by local news channels showed chaotic scenes following the attacks on Ras el-Nabaa and al-Nuweiri in Beirut. The strikes hit densely-populated residential areas. Many residents left their apartments in the high-rise blocks in the area and gathered in courtyards as emergency services rushed to the scene.

Israel did not issue evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, which were the deadliest on central Beirut since the IDF offensive began last month. The area is outside the city’s southern suburbs, which Israeli forces have already pulverised.

The bombardments allegedly targeted Wafiq Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit working with the Lebanese government, and is therefore considered a political figure rather than a military one. That marks a heightening of the Israeli aggression.

A US-made munition was used in the strikes, the Guardian reported. The newspaper found remnants of a US-manufactured joint direct attack munition (JDAM) amid the debris of a building that was reduced to rubble.

According to the report, “JDAMs are guidance kits built by the US aerospace company Boeing that attach to large ‘dumb bombs’ ranging up to 2,000 lbs (900kg), converting them into GPS-guided bombs.”

Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese civilians not to return to their homes in the south of the country. The IDF soldiers were pushing on with their ground “incursion” inside Lebanon, as its fighter jets attacked more than 110 targets in the country in a single day.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,169 people, wounded more than 10,000 and displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon over the past year, the Lebanese government said in its daily update.

Israel’s flagrant assault on Lebanon, which it last invaded in 2006, was further demonstrated when an Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three others. That was just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, for the second time in as many days.

Two UNIFIL soldiers were also injured on Friday by an Israeli strike near their monitoring watchtower.

In the statement posted to X, UNIFIL also said an IDF bulldozer knocked over barriers at a UN position near the “Blue Line,” the unofficial demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon. 

“Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” the statement concluded.

UNIFIL has some 10,000 personnel, with Italy, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India among the biggest contributors. It was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion and was expanded after the 2006 Israeli invasion, allowing its troops to deploy along the Israeli border.

Various imperialist governments, including the US, UK, France, Italy and Spain, issued statements condemning the attacks on UNIFIL as serious violations of humanitarian international law and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ruled that UNIFIL personnel would replace the Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon.

But the same governments are continuing to facilitate and arm Israel’s barbarism.

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “ironclad” support for Israel during a 30-minute phone call with Netanyahu on Wednesday, the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, joined the call, which reportedly discussed Israel’s plans to strike Iran.

“The president affirmed Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, while emphasizing the need to minimize harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut,” the White House said.

The latter phrase is another desperate bid, in the face of widespread opposition among workers and youth in the US and globally, to cover up US imperialism’s responsibility for the ongoing slaughter in Lebanon, as well as Palestine. The US provides Israel at least $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and the Biden-Harris administration has authorised $14 billion in further assistance to its proxy to help fund the genocide and a wider war for domination over the resource-rich and strategic Middle East, directed against Iran, Russia and China.

On Wednesday, the Socialist Equality Party in the US hosted a live-streamed discussion to mark the one-year anniversary of the Gaza genocide, analysing the historical roots of the US-Israeli rampage in the Middle East and advancing a socialist strategy to stop it. 

The event, featuring SEP National Secretary Joseph Kishore, WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North, referenced the centuries of colonial rule in the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, and the brutal US wars throughout the region since 1991.

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

U.S. to Deploy Missile Defense System and About 100 Troops to Israel

The Pentagon announced it would send the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and its crew as Israel considered retaliatory attacks against Iran.


NY Times, By Helene Cooper, Reporting from Washington, Oct. 13, 2024

The United States is sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. It is the first deployment of U.S. forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there on Oct. 7, 2023.

President Biden directed Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and its crew, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement on Sunday.

The move will put American troops operating the ground-based interceptor, which is designed to defend against ballistic missiles, closer to the widening war in the Middle East. It comes after Iran launched about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 and as Israel plans its retaliatory attack.

The THAAD battery, a mobile defense system, will give the Israel Defense Forces another layer of protection to defend cities, troops and installations from short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles like those deployed by Iran in its last attack…………………………………………………………………………………

 late last month, the Pentagon said that it would send a “few thousand” American troops to the Middle East as Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, with one official putting the figure between 2,000 and 3,000. The United States also sent a THAAD battery along with other air defense systems to the region weeks after the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/us/politics/us-missile-defense-iran-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.R04.e14E.qqRr91Mg9WWs&smid=em-share—

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Israel must be expelled from the United Nations”

International legal expert Fabio Marcelli makes the case that, following the attack on UN peacekeepers, the conditions are ripe for a UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s expulsion from the latter

Thomas Fazi, Oct 13, 2024,  https://www.thomasfazi.com/p/israel-must-be-expelled-from-the—

Israel must be expelled from the United Nations: the conditions are ripe

by Fabio Marcelli, international legal expert, research director of the Institute for International Legal Studies of the Italian National Research Council and member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers

Originally published in Italian on the website of Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The deliberate and criminal attack on the Italian Sassari Brigade and other UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) international contingents marks a new and unprecedented stage in Netanyahu’s efforts to devastate the neighbouring peoples of Israel, threaten global peace, and lead his own country to self-destruction, which now seems closer than ever.

[Italian Defense] Minister Crosetto’s condemnation of the attack as a war crime is commendable, as is his commitment that UNIFIL will not yield to blackmail or threats and will continue to carry out its mission. His assertion that Italy does not take orders from Israel is also notable.

However, it is crucial to closely monitor the fulfilment of this commitment, especially given the contradictory stance of the Meloni government, which has consistently supported Israel’s crimes. This contradiction becomes even more apparent when Western-supplied weapons, including a significant contribution from Italy’s military-industrial complex, are used against Italian forces. Unfortunately, Crosetto’s position seems unlikely to bring about meaningful consequences, especially given the silence from other Italian leaders, such as prime minister Giorgia Meloni and president Sergio Mattarella — a silence that must be harshly criticised considering the severity of the affront to Italy and the dangers to global peace.


UNIFIL must remain on the ground and, indeed, should be strengthened and equipped with appropriate equipment and weapons to effectively respond to any potential Israeli aggression. Similarly, steps should be taken to establish a comparable military protection force in Gaza and the West Bank to ensure the safety of the Palestinian people, who have paid a huge price in blood and continue to pay it every day in terms of civilians killed, mutilated and subjected to starvation, thirst and lack of medical supplies, denied by the genocidal occupation.

At the core of the expanding conflict, which now poses a serious threat to global peace, lies the persistent violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. This ongoing crisis stems from over fifty years of impunity granted to Israeli governments that have continually defied international law and the UN — and are now brutally attacking the organisation, declaring Secretary-General Guterres persona non grata and bombing his peacekeeping forces, including the cream of the Italian Armed Forces.

Given such sustained and repeated criminal behaviour, there are grounds for Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations. According to Article 6 of the UN Charter, “a Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council”.

However, it is clear that Western states in the Security Council, particularly the United States — complicit in Netanyahu’s criminal actions — will use their veto power to block such a proposal, once again obstructing the proper functioning of the international organisation and the enforcement of international law. Nonetheless, it would be equally important for the UN General Assembly to vote on such a resolution, giving free expression to the condemnation of Israel that now comes from the vast majority of the world’s countries as well as from international public opinion.

Such a declaration of principle should be followed by the imposition of sanctions under Article 41 and, if these measures prove insufficient, it could lead to multilateral military action under Article 42. This would complete the procedural steps outlined in Chapter VII of the Charter to end threats to international peace and security.

The adoption of these measures by the General Assembly and by a large number of states represents a necessary response to the grave threat to world peace posed by the criminal policies of the Netanyahu government, determined to provoke a nuclear conflict to avoid legal accountability, as well as by the equally criminal complicity of Western nations, led by the United States, today headed by a president who is a shadow of himself and therefore the shadow of a shadow.

Moreover, there are significant precedents in international law since World War II, such as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution adopted by the General Assembly when the Security Council failed to act. Such measures must now be considered in the face of the current danger to international peace.

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Biden, Netanyahu Closer to Consensus on Attacking Iran

Netanyahu convened his war cabinet on Thursday to approve plans

by Dave DeCamp October 10, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/10/biden-netanyahu-closer-to-consensus-on-attacking-iran/#gsc.tab=0

President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer to an understanding on Israel’s plans to attack Iran during their phone call on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday.

The report, which cited US and Israeli officials, said that the US had accepted Israel is going to launch a major attack on Iran soon and is only concerned that striking certain types of targets could dramatically escalate things. However, Iran has vowed it will respond to any type of Israeli attack, and the situation could easily turn into a full-blown war that would involve the US.

An Israeli official told Axios that the Israeli plans are still a bit more aggressive than the US would like. The US has been warning against striking nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, and recent media reports have said Israel will likely target military infrastructure.

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday to brief them on the situation with the US and is expected to get approval for him and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to set a timeline for the Israeli attack. The Times of Israel reported that the US and Israel will continue conversations on the plans in the coming days, signaling the attack is not imminent.

NBC News reported on Tuesday that the US was considering supporting Israel’s attack with direct airstrikes of its own, although US officials said intelligence support was more likely.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was offering Israel a “compensation package” of military aid and full diplomatic support if it only hits US-approved targets in Iran. The US has also committed to defending Israel from any Iranian response.

Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week in response to a string of Israeli escalations, including the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Immediately after the attack, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran suffers “severe consequences.”

October 14, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Jails US Journalist, Fires On UN Peacekeepers, Bombs Beirut, Kills More Kids, Etc

If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 11, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-jails-us-journalist-fires?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150080118&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I used to be able to write individual articles about the individual bad things the US empire is involved in around the world. These days I’m increasingly finding it necessary to cram a bunch of them into a single daily write-up to touch on as many of them as I can, just to stay on top of things.

Israel has arrested The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, an American journalist who had recently done some on the ground reporting on last week’s Iranian missile strikes in Israel. 

Israeli news outlet Ynet reports that the charges against Loffredo “include aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy,” which, as his fellow Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg notes, can be punished by the death penalty in Israel.

The Grayzone has further clarified in a statement that officially Israeli police are holding the reporter “on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing… the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”

Loffredo’s report on the missile strikes features footage of explosions at the IDF’s Nevatim Airbase, as well as shots of the location where a missile landed near the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Imagine if an Iranian missile landed right next to the CIA headquarters and the US said was forbidden on pain of death to report anything about this major news story, even for foreign journalists.

Interestingly, these same things have been reported on by other foreign news outlets without any arrests being made. As journalist Dan Cohen noted on Twitter, a report from Nick Schifrin of PBS News also featured footage of the blast site near Mossad headquarters, but Schifrin has not been arrested. Perhaps Loffredo is being singled out more because The Grayzone has been reporting on Israel’s lies and criminality than because of his work in this specific instance.

As of this writing, Loffredo is still jailed. 

In other news, Axios reports that the US and Israeli governments have moved closer to a consensus on Israel’s coming “major attack” on Iran, with the Biden administration accepting that this enormous escalation is going to happen despite fears that it will spark a large-scale war.

“The Biden administration accepts that Israel will soon launch a major attack on Iran, but it fears that strikes on certain targets could dramatically escalate the regional war,” writes Axios’ Barak Ravid.

A UN inquiry has accused Israel of “extermination” because of its systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system via “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

“The report found that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment,” a UN press release reads. “These actions constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination.”

If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.

Israeli forces repeatedly fired on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, injuring two UN workers by causing them to fall from a tower that was struck. Israel has killed hundreds of UN humanitarian workers in Gaza over the past year, but extending these attacks to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon is a significant new addition to the list of Israeli criminality.

Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated residential area of central Beirut have reportedly killed at least 22 people, injuring at least 117.

Israel killed at least 28 people in an airstrike on a school where civilians have been sheltering in Gaza, reportedly including many women and children as per usual. Al Jazeera reports that they’re having trouble identifying and counting the dead because the bodies are so unrecognizably shredded. Dozens more were killed elsewhere in Gaza over the last 24 hours.

And then there’s the New York Times report we discussed yesterday adding to the mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israeli forces are routinely, deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip. There is too much evidence that this is happening for anyone to legitimately deny it at this point.

Today the US State Department did not hold a press briefing, which is understandable. If I were in charge of justifying the behavior of the US government and its allies, I wouldn’t want to face the press today either.

UPDATE: The Grayzone reports that Jeremy Loffredo has been released after three days in jail. Israeli police are still holding his passport and forbidding him to leave the country until October 20th while they look through his phone. Further updates to follow.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Slaughter In Gaza And Lebanon As War With Iran Approaches

And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.

Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell. 

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 09, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/slaughter-in-gaza-and-lebanon-as?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=149992165&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Israel appears to have begun its long-planned ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, with the IDF dropping bombs, issuing evacuation orders for multiple hospitals, attacking civilians with sniper drones, and besieging civilian populations in order to force tens of thousands of people to either move south or die. Israel has reportedly been dropping leaflets on the Jabalia refugee camp ordering people to leave, and then shooting anyone who tries to.

Since the seventh of October last year Israel has committed roughly 100 October sevenths in Gaza; scores of American medical workers who volunteered in the enclave signed an open letter to president Biden estimating the real death toll from Israel’s onslaught at over 118,000. Israel has also committed about two October sevenths in Lebanon during that time, with the majority of the 2,100 Israeli killings in that country coming just in the last few weeks.

As Israeli murderousness ramps up in both Gaza and Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese people telling them that they need to somehow defeat Hezbollah in order to “save Lebanon before it plunges into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

Israeli officials have been saying they’re going to destroy Lebanon like they destroyed Gaza for months. Back in December Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said, “Every person in Lebanon can take the map, the aerial photograph of Gaza, place it on an aerial photograph of Beirut, and ask themselves if this is what they want to happen there.” Now Netanyahu himself is saying this.

Notably, Netanyahu’s statement was delivered in English, with English subtitles. This wasn’t actually a plea made to the people of Lebanon, it was propaganda made for western consumption. Netanyahu does not actually believe the Lebanese people are going to take up arms against Hezbollah to stop their country from being destroyed, he’s just creating a narrative to justify what he already plans on doing to Lebanon.

And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.

And we haven’t even talked about Iran yet. NBC News reports that US military officials have been discussing directly joining in Israel’s planned attack on Iran, potentially launching their own airstrikes on the Iranian military whenever Israel begins its attack. 

Whether the US joins with Israel in its coming attack or not, Iran has already made it clear that it will retaliate against any further aggressions by Israel, and Israel has made it clear that if Iran strikes back it’s going to ramp up its aggressions and perhaps start attacking Iranian energy infrastructure. If this blows up into full-scale war, as looks increasingly likely, it’s inevitable that the US will come to Israel’s defense.

Axios and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid have a new report out on how super duper frustrated the Biden administration is becoming with Israeli warmongering. In typical Axios fashion the outlet reports that the White House is becoming “increasingly distrustful” of Israel’s planned military operations against Iran and Lebanon, but that, in typical Biden administration fashion, its American sources admit that the US “would very likely help Israel defend itself regardless” of whatever happens.

Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell. 

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s genocidal support for Israel, saying the weapons it has been giving them “allow Israel to defend itself.” She also named Iran as the number one enemy of the United States.

In an appearance on The View, Harris was asked what she would have done differently from President Biden, and she said “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Then later she added, “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me, that will be one of the differences: I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet.”

And lest you make the mistake of thinking Trump would be any better, last week the former president said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and criticized the Biden administration for not being sufficiently aggressive on this front.

“They asked [Biden], what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran?” Trump said at a campaign event on Friday. “And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I said I think he’s got that one wrong.”

Anyone who still says Trump is a peacemaker is a damn fool. Statements like this are in full alignment with the absolute worst warmongers in Washington like John Bolton or Lindsey Graham.

Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s the trajectory the US empire has us on. An active genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the threat of another extermination campaign in Lebanon, and acceleration toward a direct war of unimaginable horror with Iran.

These psychos must be stopped.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Greater Israel:” Cabinet Minister Plots Seizure of Territory from 6 Neighbors, including Lebanon

Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.

Juan Cole, 10/11/2024,  https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/territory-neighbors-including.html—

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday that Israel has no designs on Turkey, denying charges by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that “the Israeli government, which has gone mad in the Holy Land, will possibly target our homeland with its religious fanaticism after Palestine and Lebanon.”

Unfortunately for Herzog, on the same day, remarks surfaced from 2016 by Minister of Finance and Civil Administrator of the Palestinian West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, which gave credence to Erdogan’s fears of Israeli expansionism. Smotrich belongs to the Kahanaist, Religious Zionism Party, the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazism.

Herzog is a member of the center-left Labor Party, which at some points has been willing to accept a Palestinian state. Labor itself, however, has attempted to expand Israeli territory at the expense of its neighbors on some occasions, as with its seizure of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian Gaza in 1956, and again in 1967 with its seizure of the Palestine territories of Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights.

The Jordanian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the remarks by Smotrich as a “reflection of religious fanaticism.” In a television interview that has resurfaced on social media, Smotrich said that a prophecy predicted that Jerusalem would extend to Damascus. He also said that Israel would extend to the east of the Jordan River into the country of Jordan, and would have parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It goes without saying that he wanted, as well, Gaza and the West Bank. Smotrich in 2016 was a member of parliament for the Jewish Home Party (HaBayit HaYehudi), one of the components of his present Religious Zionism Party.

Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.

Smotrich is allied with Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security. Although the two are often underestimated, they appear to have a hold on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and have been central to the prosecution of the total war on Gaza and now Lebanon.

The two are advocating an Israeli military occupation of Gaza like that in the Palestinian West Bank, as well as the establishment of Israelis squatter-settlements in Gaza. They also want the Israeli army to take over the task of the distribution of food aid, though they advocate limiting daily calories available to Palestinians to what is sufficient to keep them from starvation.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Report: US Considers Launching Airstrikes Against Iran To Support Israeli Attack

US officials say Israel hasn’t briefed the US on its specific plans to attack Iran,

by Dave DeCamp October 8, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/08/report-us-considers-launching-airstrikes-against-iran-to-support-israeli-attack/#gsc.tab=0


The US has discussed the idea of supporting Israel’s expected attack on Iran with intelligence or with airstrikes of its own, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing two unnamed US officials.

The report said senior US military officials have discussed launching “very limited” airstrikes against Iranian targets inside Iran or outside of the country, though the US officials said intelligence support for Israel was more likely.

So far, no final decision on US action has been made, according to the report, and the US officials said Israel has not briefed the US on its specific plans to strike Iran in response to the Iranian missile barrage that hit Israel last week.

Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel in response to multiple Israeli escalations in the region, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. In the aftermath, the US said it would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for the attack.

The NBC report said US officials were worried that Israel could launch its attack while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Wednesday. However, after the report was published, Gallant’s trip to the US has been canceled.

Israeli media said the trip was postponed because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to speak with President Biden and wants the Israeli security cabinet to agree on a plan to attack Iran before Gallant heads to Washington.

The Israelis are considering several types of targets to hit in Iran: military and intelligence infrastructure, air defenses, and energy facilities. Based on media reports, Israel does not plan to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in its first attack, but could if Iran hits back and the situation turns into a full-blown war, which Israeli officials think is likely to happen.

October 13, 2024 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israeli retaliation threat sparks call in Iran for nuclear weapons

any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

By Afp, 11 October 2024 ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-13946359/Israeli-retaliation-threat-sparks-call-Iran-nuclear-weapons.html

With the prospect of Israeli retaliation for Iran’s missile attack looming, some Iranian hardliners want their government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue atomic weapons.

Israel has vowed to launch a “deadly, precise, and surprising” attack on Iran in retaliation for its second-ever direct strike on Israeli territory.

On October 1, Iran launched 200 missiles on Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed militant leaders and a general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

More than three dozen hardline lawmakers have submitted a letter to Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, urging it to revisit the Islamic republic’s nuclear doctrine, local media said on Wednesday.

The parliamentarians also called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

“Today, neither the international organisations nor… European countries or America can control the Zionist regime which commits crimes at will,” lawmaker Hassan Ali Akhalghi Amiri said, citing this as his reason for supporting the call.

Another lawmaker, Mohammad Reza Sabaghian, said “building nuclear weapons is Iran’s option to create deterrence”, according to the Ham Mihan daily.

On Tuesday, state media reported that parliament had received a bill on “the expansion of the country’s nuclear industry”, without elaborating.

The Islamic republic has maintained its policy against acquiring nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.

– ‘Red line’ –

Iran has been drawn into the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, with Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militants on the front lines of two wars with Israel………………………………………………….

US President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposed striking oil installations.

Iran has warned that any attack on its “infrastructure” would provoke an “even stronger response”, while Revolutionary Guards General Rassul Sanairad has said an attack on nuclear or energy sites would cross a “red line”.

– Message to the West –

Iranian political commentator Maziar Khosravi said the lawmakers’ letter is “rather a strong message addressed to Western supporters” of Israel “so that they try to control” it.

Ultimately, he said, any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader, and “is not linked to the will of the MPs”.

It is far from the first time that Iran has seen debate over whether it should revisit its nuclear doctrine.

Shortly after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel in April, Kamal Kharazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said the Islamic republic was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

But “if Israel dares to threaten Iran with a nuclear weapon, we may reconsider our nuclear doctrine”, he said in an interview with Al Jazeera at the time.

For Khosravi, it remains unlikely for Iran to change its doctrine in the meantime.

But “if Israel attacks the nuclear facilities, what seems likely to me at this stage is the withdrawal of Iran from the NPT”, he said, referring to the United Nations treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian who took office in July has sought to revive a landmark 2015 nuclear deal to ease the country’s isolation and offset the economic impact of US sanctions.

The deal granted Iran sanctions relief in return for accepting curbs and monitoring that were designed to ensure it could not develop an atomic weapon covertly — a goal Iran has always denied having.

The accord has been hanging by a thread since the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.

Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities.

“We want to tell the world that we are not after a nuclear bomb,” said Pezeshkian in an interview with CNN in New York last month.

“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” he said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel: Simply no red lines at all


SOTT. Craig Murray, craigmurray.org.uk, Fri, 11 Oct 2024

There is literally no act so vile that the UK, US and Germany will not support if perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel.

Yesterday Israel:

  • deliberately attacked UN peacekeepers in three separate bases;
  • bombed residential central Beirut killing and maiming hundreds;
  • abducted, beat up and held an American journalist;
  • slaughtered 30 Palestinian refugees in an UNRWA school;
  • was found by an official UN Commission Report to be guilty of the crime against humanity of “extermination” in Gaza.

Any single one of these outrages would be roundly condemned if committed by any country at all except Israel, and would lead to repercussions.

But Israel can commit them all in a single day and suffer not one word of obloquy from the leading Western powers (although it does appear that the attack on UN peacekeepers may have snapped Macron’s subservience – whether it’s just a blip remains to be seen).

The UNReport of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, dated 11 September but released yesterday, is incredibly damning and will be a key document for the ICJ Genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa et al.

It notes 498 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza strip and – much less known – 500 attacks on healthcare facilities in the West Bank, although individually less severe.

Here are some highlights of the report:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.sott.net/article/495403-Israel-Simply-no-red-lines-at-all

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Israeli Protesters Call for Ceasefire in Anti-War Demonstrations

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US-Backed Israeli Military Forces Have Executed Numerous Journalists Since October 7

The Israeli military’s campaign of genocidal violence, carried out with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, has killed 138-175 journalists.

thedissenter, Kevin Gosztola, Oct 7, 2024

On October 6, Israeli military forces reportedly targeted and killed Hassan Hamad, a 19-year-old Palestinian journalist in Gaza, in his home in the Jabalia refugee camp. 

Maha Hussaini, a Middle East Eye reporter in Deir al-Balah in the occupied Palestinian Territories, reported that Hamad had received threatening phone calls and text messages months ago. 

Hamad had been covering an attack by Israeli troops on a residential home when he returned to his bedroom around dawn. “It’s clear [a] shell was fired directly and specifically at Hassan’s bedroom to intentionally target him,” said Ashraf Mashharawi, who manages the Media Town Production Company where Hamad worked.

As Mashharawi told Middle East Eye, his colleague had taken many photos and videos that had made headlines. “Apparently, this bothered [the Israelis]—the fact that his coverage gained attention.”

Barry Malone, the deputy editor-in-chief for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, responded, “Just saw the remains of [19-year-old] Palestinian journalist Hassan Hamad reduced to a plastic bag and a shoebox. According to a fresh tally from CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], 123 journalists have now been k

Record Number of Journalists Killed, Several Of Them Targeted For Execution

Over the past year, the Israeli military has carried out a campaign of genocidal violence with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, including a seemingly unlimited flow of weapons. Officials from the U.S. and Israeli governments ask the world to excuse the carnage because Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an attack on October 7, and to them, Hamas must be entirely eliminated. 

Yet a coalition of American medical professionals who have volunteered in Gaza estimate that “the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.” That estimate includes a record number of journalists killed, making it the deadliest conflict for members of the press. illed in Israeli strikes. If you’re a journalist and you’re not speaking out in solidarity…why?”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Highest Number Of Detained Journalists In The World’

The Israeli government has also detained at least 69 Palestinian journalists, with 43 still in detention, according to CPJ. Most of the journalists detained are from the West Bank, and ten journalists have been confined under an “administrative detention law” that allows for “indefinite renewal of detention orders.” At least five journalists have been allegedly tortured and abused. 

CPJ reported, “On a per capita basis, Israeli authorities now hold the highest number of detained journalists in the world in a given year over the past two decades, followed by Turkey, Iran, and China.”

A censorship regime imposed by the Israeli government has prohibited nearly 4,000 journalists from entering Gaza to report on the war, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged, the country’s legislature passed a law to ban foreign media organizations that are deemed a “national security” threat. 

The most prominent media organization to be banned was the Arabic news media organization Al Jazeera. In September, Israeli soldiers illegally raided Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau and shut it down. But Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen TV, Radio Dream, a local radio station in Hebron, and the West Bank-based J-Media were all ordered to cease their operations. 

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who was behind the media censorship law that targeted Al Jazeera, threatened to sanction the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for “false propaganda” The Times of Israel reported that Karhi proposed a government resolution to block “any new commercial agreements with the newspaper, halt all advertising in it even if it has been paid for, and halt any outstanding payments from being made.” But Karhi backed away from his proposal after it was denounced. 

Destroying All Media Institutions

“Since October 7, 2023,” according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), “Israeli forces have destroyed all media institutions in the Gaza Strip. Airstrikes have demolished 73 media facilities, including 21 local radio stations, 15 local and international news agencies, 15 TV stations, 6 local newspapers, 3 broadcasting towers, 8 printing presses, and 13 journalistic service institutions.”

PJS additionally recalled, “In the early days of the genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli military targeted most of the high-rise buildings in Gaza that housed both local and international media offices. For example, the Al-Shawa and Al-Haseeri towers in Gaza City, which contained 15 floors of media offices, were completely destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on December 18, 2023, causing extensive damage to the surrounding area.”…………………………………………………………………………………….

IFJ Secretary General Anthony Bellanger concluded, “The vast majority of the world’s media are effectively cut off from a huge news story whose daily horrors pass them by. Their only available sources are the journalists who are members of the PJS and the IFJ, who take all the risks to film and photograph with their phones.”

“Gazan journalists are determined to tell their story, and for so long as that is the case, it is the IFJ’s duty to support them doing this in whatever way we can.”  https://thedissenter.org/us-backed-israeli-military-forces-have-executed-numerous-journalists-since-october-7/

October 12, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, media | Leave a comment

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