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International Court of Justice Tells Israel to End Occupation of Palestinian Territories, Pay Reparations

Racism in Israel is not a flaw in the system; it is the system.

Unlike the framing commonly put forth by politicians and mainstream media, it is not “complicated.” It is not “an age-old religious feud.” And, it is not “a conflict by extremists on both sides.”

While the Biden administration continues its insincere rhetorical support for the two-state solution, the U.S. has remained Israel’s staunchest supporter, always using its veto power to shield it from accountability and prevent Palestinian statehood despite Israel’s repeated violations of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

Seventy-Five Percent of All UN Member States Recognize the State of Palestine

In an advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice reaffirmed the Palestinian right to self-determination.

By Michel Moushabeck , TRUTHOUT, July 19, 2024  https://truthout.org/articles/icj-tells-israel-to-end-occupation-of-palestinian-territories-pay-reparations/

 In a landmark opinion issued today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is in breach of international law.The proceedings came out of a UN resolution passed in December of 2022. In the resolution, the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the UN’s principal judicial organ that adjudicates disputes between member states and provides advisory opinions on international legal matters.

This case is separate from the one brought forth by South Africa last year, in which the ICJ provisionally ruled that Israeli practices in Gaza are plausibly genocidal. Following that ruling, Israel indicated that it rejects the ICJ’s findings. 

In a post on X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote, “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.”

Public hearings on Israel’s occupation of Palestine were held at The Hague on February 19 and lasted for six days, during which 52 countries participated and presented arguments. The panel of 15 judges on the court was asked by the UN General Assembly to consider “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

The hearings commenced with remarks by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, in which he asserted the rights of Palestinians to live “in freedom and dignity in their ancestral land.” He asked the ICJ to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and called on the court to “declare Israel occupation is illegal and must end it completely and unconditionally.”

Israel did not participate in the oral arguments, but the Office of the Prime Minister issued a statement saying, “Israel does not recognize the legitimacy of the discussion at the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the ‘legality of the occupation’ — a move designed to harm Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats.”

Israel’s Occupation Is Sustained by a Combination of State-Sponsored Violence and Apartheid

Israel was born of British colonialism; it was created through a mixture of state violence and vigilante terrorist acts that displaced Palestinians and dispossessed them from their homes and land; it is supported — financially, militarily and diplomatically — by Western, primarily U.S., imperialism-serving war profiteers; and it is sustained by a combination of state-sanctioned violence and a system of apartheid that denies Palestinians — who form half the people in the land under Israeli control from the river to the sea — their equal rights.

After the Nakba of 1948, the State of Israel was established on 78 percent of the land of what had been British Mandate Palestine. During the June 1967 war, Israel took over the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine, now known as “the Occupied Territories.” In 1980, Israel unilaterally formalized its annexation of East Jerusalem — a move that was condemned as illegal by the international community.

Over the past 57 years, successive Israeli governments have brutally terrorized Palestinians, demolished homes, confiscated large tracts of Palestinian lands, expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank — considered illegal under international law — and added many new ones that effectively rendered the “two-state solution” impossible. Now West Bank settlers number more than 700,000; they are heavily armed and are constantly terrorizing Palestinian residents in neighboring villages in an effort to force them to leave, as described in a report by Amnesty International.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, since October 7,575 Palestinians — of whom 138 are children — were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem by soldiers and armed settlers.

Israel employs oppression, violence, persecution, checkpoints, house demolitions, displacement, expulsion, imprisonment, land theft, torture of children and collective punishment to ethnically cleanse non-Jewish inhabitants.

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July 20, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West

Israel has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke. 

Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds. 

In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17. 

According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed. 

Middle East Eye, Jonathan Cook, 19 July 2024 

Women and children are being targeted intentionally, say Israeli whistleblowers. From ground troops to commanders, the rules of war have been shredded

hey just keep coming. On the weekend, Israel launched another devastating air strike on Gaza, killing at least 90 Palestinians and wounding hundreds more, including women, children and rescue workers. 

Once again, Israel targeted refugees displaced by its earlier bombs, turning an area it had formally declared a “safe zone” into a killing field. 

And once more, western powers shrugged their shoulders. They were too busy accusing Russia of war crimes to have time to worry about the far worse war crimes being inflicted on Gaza by their Israeli ally – with weapons they supplied. 

The atrocity committed at al-Mawasi camp, packed with 80,000 civilians, had the usual Israeli cover story – one rolled out to reassure western publics that their leaders are not the utter hypocrites they appear to be for supporting what the World Court has described as a “plausible genocide”. 

Israel said it was trying to hit two Hamas leaders – one of them Mohammed Deif, head of the group’s military wing – although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed uncertain as to whether the strike was successful. 

No one in the western media appeared to wonder why the pair preferred to make themselves a target in an overcrowded, makeshift refugee camp, where they were at huge risk of being betrayed by an Israeli informant, rather than sheltering in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network. 

Or why Israel deemed it necessary to fire a multitude of massive bombs and missiles to take out two individuals. Is that Israel’s new, expansive redefinition of a “targeted assassination”? 

Or why its pilots and drone operators continued the strikes to hit emergency rescue crews dealing with the initial destruction. Was there intelligence that Deif was not just hiding in the camp, but had hung around to dig out survivors, too? 

Or how killing and maiming hundreds of civilians in an attempt to hit two Hamas fighters could ever possibly satisfy the most basic principles of international law. “Proportion” and “distinction” require armies to weigh the military advantage of an attack against the expected toll on civilian life. 

Biblical vengeance

But Israel has torn up the rulebook on war. According to sources within the Israeli military, it now considers it acceptable to kill more than 100 Palestinian civilians in the pursuit of a single Hamas commander – a commander, let us note, who will simply be replaced the moment he is dead.

Even if the two Hamas leaders were assassinated, Israel could not have been in any doubt that it was perpetrating a war crime. But it has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke. 

In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17. 

According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed. 

Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds. 

Aid agencies cannot properly treat the wounded, because Israel has been blocking the entry of medical supplies into Gaza.

Committing war crimes, if western publics have not worked it out by now, is the very point of the “military operation” Israel launched in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s one-day attack on 7 October. 

That is why there are more than 38,800 known deaths from Israel’s 10-month assault – and likely at least four times that number unrecorded, according to leading researchers writing in the Lancet medical journal this month. 

That is why it will take at least 15 years to clear the rubble strewn across Gaza by Israeli bombs, according to the UN, and as much as 80 years – and $50bn – to rebuild homes for the remnants of the enclave’s 2.3 million people still alive at the end. 

Israel’s twin goals have been biblical vengeance and the elimination of Gaza – a genocidal rampage to drive the terrified population out, ideally into neighbouring Egypt. 

Shoot-everyone policy

If that was not clear enough already, six Israeli soldiers recently stepped forward to speak out about what they had witnessed while serving in Gaza – a story the western media has entirely failed to report.

Their testimonies, published by the Israel-based publication 972 last week, confirm what Palestinians have been saying for months. 

Commanders have authorised them to open fire on Palestinians at will. Anyone entering an area the Israeli military is treating as a “no-go zone” is shot on sight, whether man, woman or child. 

After months of an Israeli aid blockade that has created a man-made famine, Israel’s military has turned the people of Gaza’s ever-more frantic search for food into a game of Russian roulette. 

This perhaps explains, in part, why so many Palestinians are unaccounted for – Save the Children estimates some 21,000 children are missing. The soldiers quoted in 972 say the victims of their shoot-everyone policy are bulldozed out of view along routes where international aid convoys pass. 

A reserve soldier, identified only as S, said a Caterpillar bulldozer “clears the area of corpses, buries them under the rubble, and flips [them] aside so that the convoys don’t see it – [so that] images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out”. The soldier also noted: “The whole area [of Gaza where the army operates] was full of bodies… There is a horrific smell of death.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… A whistleblower from the Netzah Yehuda battalion who spoke to CNN said the commanders, drawn from Israel’s religious extremist ultra-Orthodox sector, stoked a culture of violence towards Palestinians, including vigilante-style attacks…………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-soldiers-tell-story-savage-cruelty-gaza-west-gives-blessing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel using water as weapon of war as Gaza supply plummets by 94%, creating deadly health catastrophe: Oxfam

A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.

July 18, 2024, by: The AIM Network,
 https://theaimn.com/israel-using-water-as-weapon-of-war-as-gaza-supply-plummets-by-94-creating-deadly-health-catastrophe-oxfam/

A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.

The report, Water War Crimes, finds that Israel’s cutting of external water supply, systematic destruction of water facilities and deliberate aid obstruction have reduced the amount of water available in Gaza by 94% to 4.74 litres a day per person – just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.

Oxfam analysis also found:

  • Israeli military attacks have damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days since the start of the war.
  • The destruction of water and electricity infrastructure and restrictions on entry of spare parts and fuel (on average a fifth of the required amount is allowed in) saw water production drop by 84% in Gaza. External supply from Israel’s national water company Mekorot fell by 78%.

  • Israel has destroyed 70% of all sewage pumps and 100% of all wastewater treatment plants, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories in Gaza, and restricted the entry of Oxfam water testing equipment.
  • Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88% of its water wells and 100% of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed.

The report also highlighted the dire impact of this extreme lack of clean water and sanitation on Palestinians’ health, with more than a quarter (26%) of Gaza’s population falling severely ill from easily preventable diseases.

In January, the International Court of Justice demanded that Israel immediately improve humanitarian access in light of a plausible genocide in Gaza. Since then, Oxfam has witnessed firsthand Israel’s obstruction of a meaningful humanitarian response, which is killing Palestinian civilians.

Oxfam Water and Sanitation Specialist Lama Abdul Samad said it was clear that Israel had created a devastating humanitarian emergency resulting in Palestinian civilian deaths.

“We’ve already seen Israel’s use of collective punishment and its use of starvation as a weapon of war. Now we are witnessing its weaponizing of water, which is already having deadly consequences.

“But the deliberate restriction of access to water is not a new tactic. The Israeli Government has been depriving Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza of safe and sufficient water for many years,” she said.

“The widespread destruction and significant restrictions on aid delivery in Gaza impacting access to water and other essentials for survival, underscores the urgent need for the international community to take decisive action to prevent further suffering by upholding justice and human rights, including those enshrined in the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.”

Monther Shoblak, General Manager of the Gaza Strip’s water utility CMWU, said:

“My colleagues and I have been living through a nightmare these past nine months, but we still feel it’s our responsibility and duty to ensure everybody in Gaza is getting their minimum right of clean drinking water. It’s been very difficult, but we are determined to keep trying – even when we witness our colleagues being targeted and killed by Israel while undertaking their work.”

Oxfam is calling for urgent action including an immediate and permanent ceasefire; for Israel to allow a full and unfettered humanitarian response; and for Israel to foot the reconstruction bill for water and sanitation infrastructure.

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, water, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier

“We must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-massacres, 16 July 24

Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.

But you’d hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.

While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel’s onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a “safe zone,” as Common Dreamsreported.

Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn’t receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel’s war on Gaza.

As of Tuesday morning, Gaza was entirely absent from the website landing pages of the Journal and USA Today. The Post‘s home page buried a story about the potential for an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, while the Times‘ home page contained a piece about surging settler violence in the West Bank amid Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media coverage of developments in Gaza has not reflected the extent to which Israel has intensified its aerial and ground attacks, even as recent cease-fire talks have sparked some hope of a pause.

After a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, pictures of the former president’s bloodied ear and raised fist were plastered across the front pages of major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world while the far more numerous images of child victims of Israeli bombs—many of them supplied by the United States—faded from view.

Israel does not allow journalists with major U.S.-based media outlets to enter the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded with Israeli forces and agree to let the military vet their coverage.

Al Jazeera, a Qatari-funded outlet that Israel’s far-right government has repeatedly targeted, reported Monday that “Israeli forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them.”

One attack on Sunday, the outlet noted, “struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80. Most of the victims were women and children, said Palestinian Civil Defense.”

Reporting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud said he witnessed children “crying out in pain and agony” at the facility, which—like all of Gaza’s remaining hospitals—is under-resourced and only partially functioning.

“This is the result of incinerating bombs,” Mahmoud added.

The death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza is nearing 40,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given how many bodies are missing under the rubble that now dominates the landscape of the enclave and could take 15 years to clear.

Those who have survived Israel’s onslaught are now living amid sewage, decomposing bodies, and the ruins of their homes, shops, schools, and hospitals, with nowhere safe to flee. Famine and disease are spreading rapidly across the territory as the Israeli government continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has urged the Biden administration to cut off all offensive weapons assistance to Israel, said in a statement late last week that “while much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse.”

“We must end our support for Netanyahu’s war,” said Sanders. “Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity.”

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, media | Leave a comment

Testimonies from the Mawasi massacre: 90 people buried in the sand

“I saw before my eyes one missile after another descending next to the tents. Missiles I have never seen in my life in all of Gaza’s wars. Isn’t this internationally forbidden? Shouldn’t the civilian population be protected and not face genocide and mass killing? Isn’t this forbidden?”

The Israeli army committed another massacre against displaced Palestinians in tent encampments, this time in the coastal Mawasi area, which Israel had designated as a “safe zone.”

BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ   ,  https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/testimonies-from-the-mawasi-massacre-90-people-buried-in-the-sand/

In a crater in the ground almost larger than a schoolyard, a group of young men dig through the sand and pull out the bodies. 

“His head is there! His head is there!” someone yells. A man emerges from the hole, carrying a child.

“Who knows who this child is? Who knows his family? Where are his parents?” he calls out. 

Behind him are dead bodies and severed limbs scattered across the ground. Some poke out from beneath the sand, half-buried.

When the Israeli army struck the coastal displacement camp in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, there was no rubble. The Israeli-designated “safe zone” was little more than a sea of tents on the beach, so people were buried in the sand instead.

At 10 a.m. on Saturday, while people were starting their day, the Israeli military targeted the area with successive airstrikes, leading to a massacre that, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has, as of the time of writing, killed 90 people and injured over 300 others. Half of them are women and children, the health ministry says.

Shaima Farwaneh, 16, was near the site of the massacre when it happened. She was preparing to make breakfast for her family when the bombs fell. 

People and sand scattered everywhere, limbs that were once attached to bodies flying over their heads. 

“A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” Shaima told Mondoweiss. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.” 

Shaima describes hearing seven explosions in short succession before it was over. “What a life we ​​live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.” 

When the ambulance and Civil Defense crews arrived near a well-known crowded market for residents of the area, their vehicles were targeted as well, according to the director of the Civil Defense in Khan Younis, Yamen Abu Suleiman. Two Civil Defense workers were killed in the strike.

Abu Suleiman said that the occupation targeted Al-Mawasi with a large barrage of missiles, which led to many casualties. “The occupation targeted the area more than once to prevent us from any rescue operation,” he tells Mondoweiss, denouncing the silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross over Israel’s prevention of rescue teams from doing their work.

Israel claims that the airstrikes were an attempt to assassinate Muhammad al-Deif, the head of the armed wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the commander of al-Qassam’s Khan Younis District Brigade, Rafi Salama. The Gaza government media office denies the Israeli claims, emphasizing that they are nothing but a way of diverting the world’s attention from the reality of the massacre the Israeli army committed as part of the genocide of Gaza’s people.

According to local sources, over 80,000 displaced people currently reside in tents in that area.

‘No state does this’

Fawzia Sheikh Youssef, 82, was buried in the sand from the bombing but survived. She describes what she experienced during the massacre as something she had never seen in her entire life. She tells Mondoweiss that she was already displaced during the Nakba of 1948 when she was only 6 years old, coming to the Khan Younis area and staying with her family for two years in a tent. 76 years later, she found herself back where she started, but this time witnessing massacres the likes of which she had never seen even during the Nakba.

“There is no country in all the world that does this to children, women, and civilians,” she says. “This isn’t how wars are.” 

Fawzia was eating her breakfast when the bomb ripped through her encampment, demolishing her tent and trapping her underneath it. She found herself covered in sand and trapped inside but was not critically injured. She began crawling on the ground and extricated herself from beneath the tent, eventually escaping to a place far away from the shrapnel and missiles, closer to the main road.

“I saw before my eyes one missile after another descending next to the tents. Missiles I have never seen in my life in all of Gaza’s wars. Isn’t this internationally forbidden? Shouldn’t the civilian population be protected and not face genocide and mass killing? Isn’t this forbidden?”

“They killed young people and old women. They do not respect humans. Aren’t we human?” she continues. “There is nothing to protect us from these missiles. The tents fell on our heads, and I was hit with two pieces of shrapnel in my leg. I may get poisoned, and I did not harm anyone.”

“These are not humanitarian actions,” Fawzia says. “A normal state would know that children have value, and women have value. Their lives are respected. Killing them is forbidden. There are wars. Some countries fight in the world, but not like this. Not like what happens with us.”

‘I left my son and fled from the horror of the bombing’

Samah al-Farra, a survivor of the massacre, says she fled from the horror of the missiles, leaving her son behind without knowing what she was doing. She describes what she saw after the incident as witnessing the horrors of the Day of Resurrection. The sound of the explosions, the panic of the people around her, the stampede in the attempt to escape, women leaving their tents without even wearing their clothes — Samah has to live with witnessing all these brutal scenes.

“People were running. There was sand in our eyes and fire over our heads. I left my son behind me and started running. I found the world turned upside down. The bodies of the martyrs were next to us, cut into pieces. It was a massacre. The fragments, sand, and bodies flew over our heads as we ran,” Samah describes.

She says that if this density of missiles had fallen on fortified buildings, it would have destroyed them. “But what about when they fall on tents whose owners are protected only by a piece of cloth?” 

She describes the scene as a shower of missiles falling four times in a row, with more than one explosion occurring during each shower. “We saved ourselves. If we had stayed where we were, we would have been cut up and buried under the sand.”

Media reports have said that the bombs used in the al-Mawasi attack were JDAMs made in the U.S., which turn highly destructive unguided bombs into more precise missiles. 

‘The entire area was overturned‘

Aziza Abu Tahir sits in front of the devastation after the bombing. Scattered bags of flour, gallons of water, vegetables, pillowcases, and utensils litter the area. She owns an oven and sits beside it every day. The women of the camp send their dough to her to bake for a small fee.

“When they dropped the bombs above our heads, all the people were running and screaming and saying that these were incendiary bombs, and this is the first time we have heard a sound like this,” Aziza tells Mondoweiss. “We ran away, and no one knew where to run. Some people went from one direction and were bombed, and some of them went from another direction and survived. But no one knew where they were going.” 

As she speaks, a small child is hugging her, the son of her neighbor. Aziza says his mother takes care of orphans, and explains that when the attack started, his mother was bringing some dough for Aziza to bake in order to then resell to get an income for her family. “She was just here, and I baked what she wanted, and she went to sell it. As soon as she walked away, the bombing started. I don’t know where she is now, and I don’t know if she will return. The entire area she was walking in was overturned, and everything was buried.” 

Hassan Suleih conducted interviews and provided photography for this report.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia wants to fully recognize Israel in exchange for arms, nuclear facility — Biden

By JACOB MAGID,  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saudi-arabia-wants-to-fully-recognize-israel-in-exchange-for-arms-nuclear-facility-biden/ 16 July 24
US President Joe Biden says Saudi Arabia wants to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for security guarantees from the United States.

“I got a call from the Saudis — they want to fully recognize Israel,” Biden says in an interview on “360 with Speedy.”

Riyadh has not publicly gone this far, and its officials have reiterated that their country will not normalize relations with Israel unless Jerusalem agrees to establish a pathway to a future Palestinian state — a condition Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected.

Biden doesn’t mention the Palestinian condition, and instead asserts that what Saudi Arabia wants in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel is a guarantee that the US will provide them weapons “if they’re attacked by other Arab nations — one just around the corner.” He appears to be referring to Riyadh’s Mideast rival Iran, which is not an Arab country.

The US president says Washington would also establish a civilian nuclear facility in Saudi Arabia, which the US army would operate “so they can move away from fossil fuels.”

This appears to be the most detail any US official has publicly given regarding the terms of the defense guarantees sought by Saudi Arabia, particularly the nuclear component.

“That’s a big game changer in the whole region,” Biden says.

A Democratic lawmaker and a senior Republican Senate aide told The Times of Israel last week, though, that the window has closed for the Biden administration to broker a normalization deal before the November presidential election, because there is not enough time left for the Senate to hold the hearings necessary to approve the defense guarantees for Saudi Arabia.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Saudi Arabia | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Goes for Broke

In perfectly clear language, the Netanyahu government has effectively announced that its policy is to widen what is now the assault on Gaza, the IOF’s escalating aggressions in the West Bank and Israel’s provocations along Lebanon’s southern border.

If Netanyahu proceeds to provoke his many-front war, will the Biden regime or the administration that follows it continue to offer the “unconditional support” the U.S. has extended to Tel Aviv for many decades?

The Israeli prime minister has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-and-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, 9 July, 24

It is a matter of record that the Zionist project has had extensive territorial designs on the lands known as Palestine since at least the early 20th century.

As others have argued, the Israelis’ openly racist assault on the Palestinians of Gaza is to be understood not as a sudden eruption of violence, a departure, but as an especially savage continuation of Zionist conduct for more than a century.

When history is brought to bear in this fashion, it becomes increasingly apparent that the invasion of Gaza since the events of last Oct. 7 ought not be seen in isolation. The more pathologically disturbed members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s freak-show regime — notably, but not only, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben–Givr, the finance and national security ministers — have never been shy on this point.

They are entirely dedicated to the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, the mystical Land of Israel, which, variously interpreted through the ages, could extend at the extreme from the Red Sea all the way to the Euphrates Valley.

But the crazed ultras to whom Netanyahu owes his political survival have not yet got far enough to turn their visions into articulated policy. Is this changing


This is our question, along with another: Is the Biden regime — or at this point its successor — prepared to “stand with Israel,” as American leaders like to put it, if extremist dreams of violent conquest turn into real, live political and military plans?I have been convinced for some time, as I gather that many Palestinians are, that when the Israel Occupation Forces are done in Gaza they will next turn to the West Bank. On this point I now correct myself: In my interpretation the IOF, in close collaboration with brutish Israeli settlers, has already begun its assault in the West Bank.

Attacking Hezbollah

Of late the Israelis have also been openly threatening to launch a full-scale attack on Hezbollah, the political and military movement that controls southern Lebanon. This, too, bears interpretation.
Douglas Macgregor, the retired colonel and now an energetic commentator on politico- military affairs, has no trouble putting together the 2–and–2 of this moment. Here he is last week on “Judging Freedom,” Andrew Napolitano’s webcast program:

“Whatever happened on the 7th of October, and I’m still not convinced that was not allowed to happen, … the decision then to attack had very little to do with what happened on the 7th of October and everything to do with a long-term strategic plan to begin the process of ethnically cleansing, expelling, or murdering, whatever you want to call it, the Arabs in Gaza and, ultimately, the Arabs on the West Bank.”

 This seems right but short of the emerging reality. A few minutes later in his exchange with Macgregor, Napolitano played a clip of Netanyahu addressing a table of officials, at least some of whom are American, last Friday:

The first requirement is to cut that hand [he gestures as if to cut through his right forearm], Hamas. People who do these things to us are not going to be there. We will have a long battle, I don’t think it’s that long, but we’ll get rid of them. We also have to deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis. We have to deal with the axis.

“Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war. Obviously, Hamas and Hezbollah. The Houthis, militias in Iraq and Syria. Judea and Samaria on the West Bank. Iran itself.

They’d like to topple Jordan. Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from their various fronts, coupled with combined missile bombardments. We’ve been given the opportunity to scuttle it. And we will.


The axis doesn’t threaten only us. It threatens you. It’s on the march to conquer the Middle East — conquer the Middle East — conquer. That means conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian Peninsula, it’s just a question of time. And what’s standing in their way is a small Satan, that’s us, on the road to the middle-sized Satan, that’s the Europeans — they’re always offended when I tell them that — ‘You’re the great Satan!’ And we have to stop that.”

So far as I know — and more in this line may be said regularly in Netanyahu’s closed-door cabinet meetings — this is the Israeli prime minister’s most explicit statement to date of how apartheid Israel understands the Middle East and its place in it. The danger of this vision will be immediately obvious.

In perfectly clear language, the Netanyahu government has effectively announced that its policy is to widen what is now the assault on Gaza, the IOF’s escalating aggressions in the West Bank and Israel’s provocations along Lebanon’s southern border. However much these statements reflect political pressure the extremists in his cabinet are exerting on Netanyahu, official policy is moving in their direction.

We already see this pattern, as noted, in the West Bank territories. As The New York Times reported last week, illegal settlers, under IOF protection, have stolen more land from Palestinians so far this year, typically at gunpoint, than at any time since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. West Bank sources report that up to 9,000 Palestinians have been arrested since the events of last October — mostly boys and young men, those typically inclined to organize an armed resistance movement.

In my read this is the West Bank’s version of the assault on Gaza. No F–16s, tanks, or heavy artillery this time: Deploying these would risk serious international opprobrium. No, the West Bank campaign will be waged more or less invisibly — a farm or an olive grove, a village or a murdered teenager or a kilometer of road at a time.

The US & Israeli Supremacy 


The larger war, the war beyond the West Bank, is of course another matter. Israel knows full well it is incapable of waging anything like a “seven-front war” on its own: It is failing in the Gaza Strip as we speak.

Netanyahu has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region — and so would instantly threaten to be the world’s most dangerous war — since who knows when.

We come to the second of the questions noted earlier. If Netanyahu proceeds to provoke his many-front war, will the Biden regime or the administration that follows it continue to offer the “unconditional support” the U.S. has extended to Tel Aviv for many decades?

I wish this were a more interesting question than it actually is. If Donald Trump retakes the White House, whatever modest restraints Washington may now feel — as the barbarities in Gaza continue — will disappear. But what about Biden, on the very off chance he runs in November, and the very, very off chance he wins? What about a Democratic successor who defeats Trump?

There is the obnoxiously pronounced confidence Netanyahu displays when describing a wider war well beyond Israel’s capabilities. And there is the power the Israel lobby exerts in Washington, not least over Biden, who has received more funds from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC — more than $4 million during his Senate years alone — than anyone else holding elected office.

Late last month the U.S. Navy made one of those quiet logistical moves that sometimes seem to reveal more than intended. It sent an amphibious assault ship, the USS Wasp, into the waters of the eastern Mediterranean off the Lebanese coast. Among its other capabilities, the Wasp is designed to manage large-scale evacuations.

But an American official told The Associated Press, a little defensively I’d say, “It’s about deterrence,” implying the deployment is part of Washington’s diplomatic effort to prevent a dangerous war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Wait a minute. Just who is the Wasp intended to deter? Neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants a war with Israel any more than the U.S. wants to see one. No need of deterrence there.

And a ship off the Lebanese coast is not going to deter Israel: It stands unambiguously to encourage “the Jewish state” in its effort to bait the U.S. into the big war for which it spoils.

While one ship near Lebanese waters does not signal any grand new commitment to a grand new war — let us not over-interpret — the message seems clear: We don’t want a new war on our hands, Bibi, but if you provoke one, well, we’ll have to be there for you, “standing with Israel.”

I have written this previously but it bears repeating now: In Israel the U.S. has a Frankenstein’s monster on its hands, and there seems little prospect of anyone in Washington having the intelligence and courage to disconnect the electrodes.

However dangerous the Netanyahu regime makes the Middle East, will be precisely the danger in which the U.S. will find itself.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored. 

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

Tracking Dissent: US Officials Who Have Resigned Over The War on Gaza

Kevin Gosztola

Until Israel’s assault on Gaza ends, this page will be a resource for tracking U.S. government officials and military officers who resign in protest

Support from President Joe Biden’s administration for the Israeli government’s war on Gaza has resulted in an unprecedented surge of dissent within United States agencies.

Several officials and military officers have resigned in opposition since the Israeli military launched a massive bombardment after Hamas fighters stormed Israel on October 7, 2023.

During the week of July 4, 2024, 12 individuals who resigned released a unified statement of opposition.

“America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza,” the dissenters declared. “This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and U.S. laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back.”

While outlining the “current crisis” and what they believe should be done, the dissenters appealed to their former colleagues to “amplify calls for peace” and hold their respective institutions accountable for the violence unfolding in Palestine.


“We recognize the systemic obstacles you face, both as you perform your work, and as you consider leaving it. We particularly embrace those of you representing America’s diversity who feel that your voices have been disempowered, ignored, and tokenized. We are with you, and we know that a better way is possible, but only when we are all brave enough to challenge institutions and outdated forces that attempt to silence us.”

The dissenters further declared, “We encourage you to keep pushing. In our experience, no decision point is too minor to challenge, so while you are in government service, use your voice, write letters to leaders in your agencies, and bring up your disagreements with your team. Speaking out has a snowball effect, inspiring others to use their voice.”

“There is strength in numbers, and we urge you to not be complicit. We encourage you to consult with your Inspectors General, with your legal advisors, with appropriate Members of Congress, and via other protected channels, to question the veracity and/or legality of specific actions or policies. There are resources, and you have advocates, including all of us, who can support you in speaking your truth,” they concluded.

Several of the dissenters are whistleblowers with firsthand knowledge of how Biden administration officials have enabled the Israeli government’s atrocities. All of them are courageous individuals, who have sacrificed their careers for peace, justice, and human rights.

Until the war ends, The Dissenter will keep this page updated and track U.S. officials and military officers who resign in protest. (If anyone is missing, please email newsletter@thedissenter.org)

Below is a list of all the people who have resigned from the U.S. government or military during the war on Gaza as of July 5 and in reverse chronological order.……………………………………………………………………………………

and more videos …………………………………………………more https://thedissenter.org/tracking-dissent-us-officials-resigned-over-war-on-gaza/

July 12, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, politics, USA | Leave a comment

‘Horrific Massacre’: Israel Bombs Gaza School Used as Refugee Camp, Killing Dozens.

“Schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery,” said UNRWA’s commissioner-general.

JAKE JOHNSON, Jul 10, 2024  https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/10/horrific-massacre-israel-bombs-gaza-school-used-as-refugee-camp-killing-dozens/

Israeli forces killed dozens of people Tuesday in an airstrike on a school-turned-refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, the fourth school Israel’s military has bombed in as many days as the country continues its massive assault on the enclave’s starving population.

At least 29 people were killed and dozens more were wounded in Tuesday’s attack, including women and children—who have made up roughly two-thirds of those killed in Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, which began following a Hamas-led attack in October. The death toll from Tuesday’s attack is expected to rise, as many of those injured were reportedly in critical condition and taken to the under-resourced and overwhelmed Nasser Hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged carrying out the airstrike—which hit the entrance of the school—but claimed to be targeting a Hamas militant “adjacent” to the complex. The IDF, whose internal investigations rarely result in accountability for atrocities, said the “incident is under review.”

Video footage posted to social media shows displaced Palestinians playing in the schoolyard when the airstrike hit, sparking panic and chaos. [Video on original –Warning: The footage is graphic]

Citing witnesses, the BBC reported that “the area was teeming with displaced people at the time” of the airstrike, which “resulted in widespread destruction and the deaths of women and children.”

“Body parts were scattered across the site and many people staying in tents outside the school were also injured,” the British outlet reported. “Ayman Al-Dahma, 21, told the BBC there had been as many as 3,000 people packed into the area at the time, which he said housed a market and residential buildings. Describing the number of casualties as ‘unimaginable,’ he said he had seen people whose limbs had been severed by the blast.”

Tuesday’s attack marked the fourth time in four days that the IDF has attacked a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Agence France-Presse. Over the weekend, Israeli forces killed more than a dozen Palestinians in an attack on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza.

Most of Gaza’s education infrastructure has been damaged or completely destroyed by Israeli forces, and the schools still standing are being used to shelter those displaced by the IDF assault, which is now in its 10th month. The United Nations estimates that 90% of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced since October, with some displaced up to 10 times.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East called the IDF’s latest attack “a horrific massacre,” adding, “Annihilation is the point.”

“Nothing can justify Canada’s failure to act,” the group wrote on social media.

Canada is one of a number of major countries that have supplied weaponry to the Israeli government as it has carried out its utter devastation of the Gaza Strip, nearly all of which is now uninhabitable.

The United States and Germany together provided 99% of the arms Israel imported last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Germany’s Foreign Office called Wednesday’s attack “unacceptable” and demanded a swift investigation.

“People seeking shelter in schools getting killed is unacceptable. Civilians, especially children, must not get caught in the crossfire,” the foreign office said. “The repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop.”

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Wednesday that “schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery.”

“Nine months in, under our watch, the relentless, endless killings, destruction, and despair continue. Gaza is no place for children,” he added. “The blatant disregard of international humanitarian law cannot become the new normal… Cease-fire now before we lose what is left of our common humanity.”

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

US says not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under Pezeshkian

Iran International 8 July 24

The Biden administration is not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under the new president, the White House national security council spokesman said Monday.

In his presidential campaign, Iran’s president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian advocated engagement in constructive talks with Western powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) and to lift the sanctions that he says have crippled the Iranian economy since the withdrawal of the US from the agreement in 2018.

Asked whether Pezeshkian’s election will change the US negotiating position, the White House’s John Kirby offered a blunt “no”…………………………………………….more https://www.iranintl.com/en/202407084339

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more

Maktoob Staff, 8 July 24,  https://maktoobmedia.com/gaza-genocide/the-lancet-study-estimates-death-toll-in-gaza-186000-or-even-more/

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death reported in Gaza, a new study published respected medical journal The Lancet said it is “not implausible” to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the genocidal war in  Gaza.

The paper titled ‘Counting the dead in  Gaza: difficult but essential’, published on 05 July, stated that using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, the estimated death toll would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the besieged enclave.

On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that at least 38,153 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 07 while more than 87,828 have been wounded in the besieged enclave. 15,983 of them are children.

The study by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, used the data from June 19, with the official death toll of 37, 396. The official record maintained by the  Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t include over 10,000 people missing or buried under the rubbles.

“The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the  Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35,091 deaths were unidentified,” observed the paper.

It also pointed out that armed conflicts have “indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence”.

“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases,” the paper read.

A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.

The interim measures set out by the International Court of Justice in January, require Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of … the Genocide Convention”.

“An immediate and urgent ceasefire in the  Gaza Strip is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs,” the paper read.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Gaza deal must allow Israel to keep fighting – Netanyahu

 https://www.sott.net/article/492916-Gaza-deal-must-allow-Israel-to-keep-fighting-Netanyahu 8 July 24

The Israeli prime minister’s statement comes after Hamas accepted a key part of a ceasefire proposal

Any potential ceasefire deal in Gaza must allow Israel to resume fighting until all of its war objectives are met, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. One of the main goals repeatedly voiced by the PM is the complete elimination of the Hamas militant group.

Netanyahu’s statement comes after Hamas approved a US proposal for a phased ceasefire deal, dropping a key demand for Israel to first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the deal, according to a Reuters source.

Hamas expects to end hostilities through talks during the first six-week phase of the deal aimed at settling the conflict in Gaza, the outlet said.

However, the Palestinian militant group wants written guarantees from international mediators that Israel will continue to negotiate a permanent ceasefire when the first phase of the deal comes into effect. The hostage issue will also be addressed after the first phase is implemented.

Hamas officials have said they are awaiting Israel’s response to the latest proposal. Netanyahu insisted on Sunday, however, that any deal must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”

According to media reports, Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations on the next steps, but his latest statement has hindered the deal’s momentum.

“The plan that has been agreed-to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war,” Netanyahu insisted.

Talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US have so far failed to secure a truce in Gaza or the release of hostages since a weeklong ceasefire in November resulting in the freeing of 105 hostages from Gaza and 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel began its operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Some 116 captives are believed to be still held in Gaza.

Over 38,000 people have been killed so far and more than 87,000 others have been wounded in Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Comment: What kind of ceasefire is this if it must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”?!
See also: Best of the Web: The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more and the reflections in SOTT Focus: The Burqa Ban Question

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Masoud Pezeshkian: Iranian reformer who wants to end Tehran’s nuclear stand-off

Heart surgeon turned president pledges reform of system millions of his compatriots believe cannot be changed

Ft.com Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran, 7 July 24

Only four months ago it was unclear whether reformist Masoud Pezeshkian would even be allowed to run for Iran’s parliament: hardliners controlled all the centres of power, with other factions consigned to the political wilderness.

But now Pezeshkian is set to become the Islamic republic’s first reformist president in two decades, after pulling off an unexpected victory in Friday’s election run-off. The 69-year-old defeated his hardliner rival, Saeed Jalili, with promises of change to Tehran’s domestic and foreign policies.

Pezeshkian’s electoral success has rejuvenated the marginalised reformist camp, which was initially amazed that the leadership approved his candidacy following a string of elections in which other reformers were barred………………………………………………….

During the campaign, Pezeshkian vowed to re-engage with the US and European states to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear stand-off with the west, and to secure sanctions relief to help the economy……………………………………………..

As president, his ability to push through change will depend heavily on his relations with Khamenei, analysts said, as Pezeshkian is expected to encounter stiff resistance from hardliners elsewhere…………………………………… more https://www.ft.com/content/5e7e80b3-4b46-4cce-a762-c95705201753

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

Tensions with Iran spotlight Israel’s hidden nuclear arsenal

Business Insider, Paul Iddon , Jul 4, 2024

  • Israel is one of the world’s few countries armed with nukes and multiple means to deliver them.
  • An Israeli aerospace official recently broached these “doomsday weapons.”
  • “Israel’s triad remains remarkably powerful for a country its size,” an aviation expert said.

The prospect of a full-scale war between Israel and the powerful Hezbollah militia in Lebanon has sent tensions spiking and briefly highlighted the power of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons.

Israel is one of the world’s few countries armed with nukes and multiple means to deliver them, a capability recently referenced by an Israeli official with a leading government-run aerospace manufacturer.

“If we understand that there is an existential danger here, and that Iran, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and all the countries of the Middle East decide that it is time to settle against us, I understand that we have the capabilities to use doomsday weapons,” Yair Katz, chairman of the Israel Aerospace Industries Workers’ Council, reportedly said on Saturday.

He was speaking a day after Iran’s United Nations mission warned that “an obliterating war will ensue” if Israel commits “full-scale military aggression” against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also declared that in this scenario, “all options” are on the table, including “the full involvement of all resistance fronts,” a clear reference to Iran’s militia proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, the other countries Katz specifically mentioned.

By invoking doomsday weapons, it was clear Katz was alluding to Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal — an arsenal over which neither he nor IAI have any command-and-control. But his use of the word “capabilities” is a reminder that Israel has ground, air, and sea-based delivery systems for its nuclear weapons. In other words, a complete nuclear triad……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“The true second strike threat for Israel is the United States itself, which in a theoretical nuclear war scenario would almost certainly retaliate on Israel’s behalf should it ever suffer a first strike from a nuclear rival,” Bohl said. “This makes it so that a second strike capability is important in terms of deterrence for full-scale escalation from a power like Iran.”

“But from a strictly tactical perspective, it would be the United States that truly serves as Israel’s most effective second strike system.”  https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-hezbollah-israel-hidden-nuclear-weapons-arsenal-2024-7

July 6, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Has Forcibly Displaced 1.9 Million Palestinians in Gaza

Israel’s assault has displaced over 1 million people just since May, a UN human rights official said.

SCHEERPOST, By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT, July 2, 2024

srael’s ongoing assault in Gaza has now forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, a UN humanitarian official reported on Tuesday as Israel forced another round of evacuations for hundreds of thousands of people across southern and central Gaza.

Israel’s brutal assault and humanitarian blockade has turned Gaza into an “abyss of suffering” and a “maelstrom of human misery,” said Sigrid Kaag, UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza, in an address to the UN Security Council.

“Following the Israeli offenses against Rafah, since the sixth of May, over 1 million people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety,” said Kaag. “One point nine million people are now displaced across Gaza.”

This amounts to over 86 percent of the 2.2 million person population of Gaza displaced — though the proportion may be larger when the number of Palestinians who have been killed, are missing under the rubble or have died in ways that officials aren’t recording are subtracted from the population estimates. The number of displaced people is up from 1.7 million Palestinians who UN officials said had been forced out of their homes in earlier estimates……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Meanwhile, Israeli forces are also fiercely attacking Gaza City in the north. This has sparked an “exodus” from the eastern part of the city, the UN reported, after days of intense bombardments and tanks entering the region.

According to the UN, about 84,000 Palestinians have been displaced by this massacre, with most families having already fled areas multiple times, their supplies and energy dwindling amid Israel’s intensified famine campaign.

UNRWA’s communications head Louise Wateridge reported from a recent trip to Gaza that the region is “apocalyptic — most people have lost their homes, either completely or partially, and have to flee with very few belongings; essentially what they can carry in their hands.”  https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/03/israel-has-forcibly-displaced-1-9-million-palestinians-in-gaza/

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

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