The Suspect Body Count: The Death Toll in Gaza is Much Higher Than We’re Being Told
Seymour Hersh Substack Thu, 27 Jun 2024 https://www.sott.net/article/492600-The-Suspect-Body-Count-The-Death-Toll-in-Gaza-is-Much-Higher-Than-We-re-Being-Told
The number of slain Palestinians in Gaza, including those believed to be Hamas cadres, has gone through a series of public recalibrations in recent weeks, as Israel’s reshuffled war cabinet has struggled to minimize international rage at the slaughter there. The reduced body count was little more than a sideshow because the Israeli offensive is continuing in Gaza with no signs of the ceasefire that the Biden administration has been desperately seeking.
Hamas triggered the war last October 7 with a surprise attack — there is so far no official explanation for Israel’s security failure that day — that killed 1,139 Israelis and injured 3,400 more. Some 250 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage.
Comment: There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest that Israel allowed the incursion on Oct. 7th to happen and that parties unknown carried out most of the killing. This strategy fits with Israel’s decades-long goal of creating the right ‘conditions’ to justify implementing a final solution to their ‘Palestinian problem’.
The expected Israeli response began within days, with the bombing of the Gaza Strip. Some Israeli ground operations inside Gaza began on October 13, and two weeks later the expected full-scale offensive began. The war still rages, with one estimate concluding that by the beginning of April 70,000 tons of explosives had been dropped on targets throughout the 25-mile long Gaza, more tonnage than was dropped by Germany on London and by America and the United Kingdom on Dresden and Hamburg in World War II, combined.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is under Hamas control, estimated as of Tuesday that the death toll from the Israeli attacks stood at 37,718, with more than 86,000 Gazans wounded. Last month the Israeli government issued a much lower estimate of the casualties, stating that its planes and troops had killed 14,000 “terrorists” — Hamas fighters — and no more than 16,000 civilians.
The Biden administration, on the eve of the first presidential debate, has said nothing about the new numbers, but there are many senior analysts in the international human rights and social science community who consider these numbers to be hokum: a vast underestimate of the damage that has been done to a terrorized civilian population living in makeshift tents and shelters amid disease and malnutrition, with a lack of sanitation, medical care, and medicines as well as increasing desperation and fatigue.
In days of telephone and email exchanges with public health and statistical experts in America I found a general belief that the civilian death toll in Gaza, both from the bombings and their aftermath, had to be significantly higher than reported, but none of the scientists and statisticians — appropriately — was willing to say so in print because of a lack of access to accurate data. I also asked one well-informed American official what he thought the actual civilian death count in Gaza might be and he answered, without pause: “We just don’t know.”
One public health expert acknowledged: “No clear and definite body count is possible, given the continuing Israeli bombing.” He added, caustically, “How many bombs does it take to kill a human being?”
Gaza was an ideal target for an air attack, he said. “No functioning fire department. No fire trucks. No water. No place to escape. No hospitals. No electricity. People living in tents and bodies stacked up all over . . . being eaten by stray dogs.
“What the fuck is wrong with the international medical community?” he asked. “Who are we kidding? Without a ceasefire, a million people are going to starve. This is not a debating point. How can you count something when the system is biting its own tail.” He was referring to the fact that the health system in Gaza — its hospitals and service agencies — “is being targeted and shattered” by Israeli aircraft and those responsible for the counting of the dead and injured “are themselves dead.”
The expert added that the lack of better casualty statistics is not only the fault of Israel. “Hamas has a vested interest in consistently minimizing the number of civilians killed “because of a lack of planning over the years when it was in charge of Gaza.” He was referring to ordinary Gazan citizens’ lack of access to Hamas’s vast underground tunnel complex that could have served as a bomb shelter for all. In Gaza during the Israeli bombing raids, “Is Hamas going to say that Israel” was able to kill all in Gaza “because we started a war without being able to fully protect our people?” His point was that Hamas has every reason, as does Israel, to minimize the extent of innocent civilians who have become collateral damage in the ongoing war.
Comment: Hamas did not start this most recent round of mass slaughter by Israel on Oct 7th. Hamas has never provided Israel with the justification it always sought to massacre Gazans wholesale. On Oct. 7th, Israel provided itself with that justification.
A prominent American public health official who spoke to me acknowledged that he was also concerned about the numbers of unreported dead in Gaza. In a crisis, he said, “we can start with a name-by-name count, but pretty soon the numbers of killed and missing exceed the capacity of any such approach, especially when the counters are being killed and the records [are] at risk.” He said that various postwar academic studies of mortality during the siege of Mosul — when a US-led coalition fought a door-to-door fight in 2017 against the Islamic State in Iraq, killing as many 11,000 civilians — “showed the large loss of life from the use of high-velocity weapons in urban areas. So we should expect similar in Gaza.”
Other data suggest that the published death figures are seriously misleading. Save the Children, an international child protection agency, issued a report this month estimating that as many as 21,000 children in Gaza are “trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families.” Other children, the agency said, “have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza” with their whereabouts unknown to the families “amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.”
Comment: As if the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is not enough, it is highly likely that a large number of Palestinian children have been abducted by Zionist state forces, likely to be tortured and killed or otherwise used for the depraved pleasures of some of the people that inhabit that “shitty little country”.
Jeremy Stoner, the charity’s regional director for the Middle East, said: “Gaza has become a graveyard for children, with thousands of others missing, their fates unknown. . . . We desperately need a ceasefire to find and support the missing children who have survived, and to prevent more families from being destroyed.”
Warnings about the inevitability of far more deaths among the ordinary citizens of Gaza have been around since last winter. In December, Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in the Guardian that the Gaza war was “the deadliest conflict for children in recent years” with as many as 160 children being killed daily. The surviving children do not have “the basic needs that any human, especially babies and children, need to stay healthy and alive. . . . Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population — close to half a million human beings — dying within a year.
“It’s a crude estimate,” Sridhar wrote, “but one that is data-driven, using the terrifying real numbers of death in previous and comparable conflicts.”
The New York Times and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that a new study endorsed by the United Nations found that as many as half a million Gaza residents are facing imminent starvation because of “a lack of food.” The study also said that more than one half of the surviving residents of Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.”)
One of the most avid early critics of the official statistics published by the Gaza Health Ministry and accepted by most in the American media, has been Ralph Nader. On March 5, he wrote a column in the Capitol Hill Citizen, a monthly newspaper he founded, about what he called “the undercount” of Palestinian casualties in Gaza. He quoted Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs: “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”
In my years as a journalist, I have often found an oddball story that says more with each retelling. Something like that happened in February when Al Jazeera ran an interview with a 64-year-old Gazan undertaker named Saadi Hassan Sulieman Baraka, whose nickname is Abu Jawad. He complained of working almost constantly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began.
“I’ve buried about ten times more people during this war than I did across my entire 27 years as an undertaker,” he said. “The least was 30 people and the most was 800. Since October 7, I’ve buried more than 17,000 people.” He especially remembered the day he buried the 800 dead. “We collected them in pieces; their bodies so riddled with holes it was like Israeli snipers used them for target practice; Others were crushed like . . . like a boiled potato, and many had huge facial burns.
“We couldn’t really tell one person’s body from the other, but we did our best. We made one big deep grave, probably 10 meters (30 feet) deep and buried them together.”
It could be propaganda — of course, it could. But Abu Jawad made no mention of anyone from the Gaza Health Ministry coming to collect the names of the dead. He made no mention of any government official being involved in the process at all.
Israel’s leaked plan for annexing the West Bank, explained
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s plan to annex the West Bank would see over 60% of the territory becoming a part of Israel. But Palestinian experts say it is “already happening.”
BY QASSAM MUADDI Mondoweiss
The issue of Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank has resurfaced in recent days after a leaked recording of Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed a “dramatic” plan to impose permanent Israeli control over the West Bank “without the government being accused of annexing it,” as Smotrich was recorded saying.
Smotrich’s statements, recorded by the Peace Now Israeli NGO and published by CNN and the New York Times, were made during a speech he gave to settler leaders earlier in June. Smotrich was recorded saying that he had elaborated a plan in the past year and a half and exposed it to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was “fully onboard.”
The plan centers around transferring administrative authorities in the West Bank from the Israeli army to the civil authorities of the Israeli government. Smotrich said that he oversaw the creation of an entire administrative body directly linked to the government and that members of this body were already embedded in the Israeli army’s Civil Administration.
In 1967, Israel began administering the West Bank and Gaza under a military administrative body, the Military Government, and in 1981, the Civil Administration was established in its place. Following Netanyahu’s formation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history in 2022, Smotrich was put in charge of the Civil Administration. Since October 7, Smotrich’s hardline policies pushing for settlement expansion have reached new heights, with the recently leaked annexation plan raising fears about the intentions of the self-described fascist toward the Palestinians living in the West Bank.
According to Smotrich, the administrative changes he wishes to implement represent a “dramatic change” equivalent to “changing the DNA of the system.”
Smotrich said that large budgets were allocated to infrastructure projects for settlement expansion and for “security measures” for the settlements, adding that the aim of such a plan is “to avoid the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state.”
Smotrich plan ‘already happening’………………………………..more https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/israels-leaked-plan-for-annexing-the-west-bank-explained/
Israeli Officials Hiding Data About Forced Starvation of Gaza Prisoners: Report
Former detainees say the Israel Prison Service “has significantly reduced their food rations, to the point of starvation, causing them to shed dozens of kilograms.”
BRETT WILKINS, Jun 27, 2024, Common Dreams,
Israeli prison officials are concealing information about reductions in food rations for Palestinians held in the Gaza Strip, where detainees—who have also reported horrific abuse including alleged rape and deadly torture—have been deliberately driven “to the point of starvation,” according to a report published Thursday.
Security sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) is intentionally cutting Palestinian prisoners’ caloric intake, a move confirmed by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called the policy a “deterrent.”
“The Palestinian detainees will receive the minimum rights and the minimum food, and I will ensure that this policy is implemented,” Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, said Thursday in response to a query from Israel’s Supreme Court…………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-starving-prisoners
Iran Says Cooperation With UN Nuclear Watchdog Limited to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Iran’s top nuclear official says the country’s interactions with the UN
nuclear watchdog, IAEA, are limited to the legal boundaries of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Safeguards. Mohammad Eslami
emphasized that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has no right
to demand anything beyond these limits. The statement arises amid increased
scrutiny over Iran’s nuclear activities, with international concern about
potential NPT violations.
Iran International 23rd June 2024
How Israel Became a Nuclear Power
The United States actively works to shield the Israeli nuclear weapons program from criticism as well as public knowledge.
In effect, unwillingness to commit to nuclear nonproliferation has led to nuclear proliferation.
https://antinuclear.net/2024/06/24/keep-up-to-date-on-australias-media-quagmire-on-nuclear-power/
Israel’s nuclear weapons program has been an open secret for over fifty years. Declassified documents and the wider availability of satellite imagery have largely been responsible for revealing the extent of the nation’s nuclear program. So too has the courage of whistleblowers such as Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician who exposed his country’s covert program and was subsequently drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents in Italy before being secretly tried and sentenced to eighteen years in prison in 1986.
Yet the United States and other nuclear-armed states, as well as a broad range of bodies responsible for monitoring arms proliferation, continue to maintain a policy of not publicly acknowledging the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
These norms of institutional secrecy are surprisingly powerful and far-reaching. US government employees have been fired for referring to Israeli nuclear weapons. Even Wikipedia’s page on the subject uses circuitous language to refer to their existence. (The page is locked to edits from almost all contributors.) This approach is effective: a 2021 poll suggested that more Americans believed that Iran has nuclear weapons than that Israel does, when the reality is the opposite.
This wall of silence has proven remarkably porous. During the early days of Israel’s war on Gaza, government officials openly entertained the possibility of using nuclear weapons on the battlefield, and figures within the US military think tank circuit have wondered whether Israel’s secrecy is doing it more harm than good.
Conventional wisdom about the strategic importance of possessing nuclear weapons is that there’s no reason to have one if you don’t tell anyone. Intimidation is as much a part of deterrence as use. If no one suspects you can respond to an attack with the overwhelming force of a nuclear counterattack, what’s to make them think twice?
But Hezbollah’s continued assault on northern Israel, which has thus far led to the evacuation of over ninety thousand people, gives lie to the notion that possession of nuclear weapons offers complete protection. In a recent speech, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, made it clear that if Israel were to cross what it considers to be red lines, there would be no target within the country safe from a retaliatory response. It is therefore not clear that Israel’s nuclear weapons are on their own preventing it from being attacked in a way that threatens its existence. Israel’s relationship with the United States has, however, afforded it a range of impressive offensive and defensive nonnuclear capabilities, backed up by the even larger looming threat of US military involvement, which it is actively using.
Were the US to enforce its own policies consistently, Israel’s status as a state in possession of nuclear weapons would directly threaten its access to aid. The Glenn Amendment to the US Arms Export Control Act explicitly prohibits arms assistance to and mandates sanctions on countries that have, as Israel did in 1979, tested a nuclear weapon after 1977. But the fact that its nuclear weapons program continues to command this kind of bizarre deference illuminates the forces driving nuclear proliferation around the world.
The Forces Behind Proliferation
Scrupulous nonacknowledgment of Israeli nuclear weapons in the present day is part of the United States’ general position of aiding Israeli military endeavors, regardless of the financial or strategic cost. But the reason Israel has nuclear weapons in the first place has less to do with its relationship with the United States and more to do with the geopolitical forces that have driven proliferation since America first dropped the bomb on Japan.
The program that produced Israel’s nuclear weapons is as old as the state itself. As Avner Cohen details in Israel and the Bomb, a nuclear program was discussed by Israel’s leaders practically from the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, took an intense personal interest in nuclear technologies in particular and science and technology as foundations of modern state power in general.Hezbollah’s continued assault on northern Israel gives lie to the notion that possession of nuclear weapons offers complete protection.
Already in 1949, Israel was conducting exploratory research for potential uranium deposits in the Negev, a desert region in the country’s south. When these proved inadequate, it developed techniques for producing usable nuclear material from the relatively poor resources at its disposal, before turning to the United States as the potential source of the raw materials necessary to jump-start a nuclear program.
But in the immediate postwar years, the United States was unwilling to provide the necessary material without guarantees from Israel that the country’s leaders saw as undesirably inhibiting. Israel instead turned to other small countries with nuclear programs at different stages of development: France and Norway, two of only three European countries in the early 1950s operating nuclear reactors.
Israel and France shared a set of geopolitical interests. Both opposed the government of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. The French, motivated by neocolonial idealism, took issue with Nasser for nationalizing the Suez Canal, and Israel of course felt threatened by Nasser’s Arab nationalism.
Skepticism about the possibility that the US nuclear umbrella could actually offer security guarantees also motivated nations like France to advance a Gaullist policy of strategic autonomy. This meant encouraging nuclear proliferation where doing so would secure the broader geopolitical interests of declining powers.
Nonproliferation Amid Great-Power Rivalry
In the present, the United States actively works to shield the Israeli nuclear weapons program from criticism as well as public knowledge. As with France’s hostility to a Nasser-led anti-Western order, the Israeli-US alliance is strongly motivated by fear of Iran, or any other anti-American state, developing its own nuclear program. Yet Israel’s nuclear weapons, along with the substantial, long-term support among a certain segment of the US political class for war with Iran, are two very powerful factors driving Iran to develop its own nuclear weapon.
At present, Iran does not have nuclear weapons, though experts believe that it currently maintains the capability to quickly develop them. President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal limited Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon and imposed a regime of inspections and oversight which provided assurance to other countries that it was not developing nuclear weapons. But Israel opposed the deal on the grounds that it did not go far enough to preclude the possibility that Iran might one day develop a nuclear weapon — a similar kind of all-or-nothing approach to the one that informed the Donald Trump administration’s decision to exit the agreement in 2018.
As Israel’s war on Gaza continues and expands outward into the broader region, it seems it may only be a matter of time before Iran finally does develop a nuclear weapon. After its recent large-scale rocket attacks against Israel, Iran announced that it might reverse its current voluntary commitment to not developing nuclear weapons should Israel retaliate by hitting its nuclear facilities. It goes without saying that this would make the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran much more dangerous, giving even low-level incidents the potential to escalate to dramatic and destructive new heights.
The United States actively works to shield the Israeli nuclear weapons program from criticism as well as public knowledge.
In effect, unwillingness to commit to nuclear nonproliferation has led to nuclear proliferation. This explains why Saudi Arabia has in recent years betrayed nuclear ambitions. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has stated in US press outlets that Saudi Arabia would develop a nuclear weapon if Iran did so. Yet rather than treating this open disregard for stated US policy as a serious limit on US-Saudi relations, the United States has been pushing for a so-called “normalization” deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel — including a stipulation of a “credible path to a Palestinian state.” Saudi Arabia, in turn, wants the United States to provide it with nuclear technology — ostensibly, of course, for a power program.
The dilemma for America is that whatever interest it does have in nuclear nonproliferation must be balanced against its broader commitment to global hegemony. The latter would be undermined if China, which it now sees as its key competitor, stepped in to provide technical support to fledgling nuclear programs, as it has done with Saudi Arabia. Last year, China sent one of its engineering companies to conduct surveys of the Gulf monarchy’s uranium deposits, although it seems unlikely that these deposits could support a nuclear program of any size.
Nuclear weapons experts have called for safeguards that could prevent the development of a Saudi nuclear weapons program. Yet unlike in the case of Israel’s search for nuclear material, the threat of safeguards doesn’t seem to be a deterrent to the kingdom’s openly stated nuclear ambitions. It sometimes seems that U.S. nuclear weapons policy in 2024 is based on a tacit acceptance of its powerlessness over global nuclear weapons politics. Rather than trying to prevent proliferation, America has been forced to settle for the role of being the primary nuclear patron where it can.
Existential Threats
Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons has been largely irrelevant to the ongoing war in Gaza. The country’s overwhelming conventional capabilities have granted it superiority on the battlefield, at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. But possession of nuclear weapons reinforces the worldview that underlies Israel’s political calculations (and to some extent, those of every nuclear-armed country): that its existence is constantly threatened, and it is only rational for it to possess the means of responding to such threats with unlimited force.
It is the states with the most nuclear weapons, Russia and the United States, that most assiduously cling to the logic that weapons of mass destruction are the only safeguard against existential threats. Both have consistently bypassed opportunities to deescalate the very real, immediate risks to human safety and civilization that the continued existence of nuclear weapons poses. In doing so, they’ve set a powerful precedent for every other country in the world to uphold nuclear weapons as the only real guarantor of security.
Without a real commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in global politics by the states that can certainly afford it, this de facto policy encourages nuclear proliferation. Israel’s well-defended status as a nuclear power that need not even announce itself is not an exception, but an example to other states thinking of going nuclear.
Emma Claire Foley is a writer and filmmaker based in New York. Her writing and commentary has appeared in Newsweek, NBC, the Guardian, and elsewhere.
The U.S. power structure is blindly dedicated to Israel
When the board of the Columbia Law Review clumsily censored a pro-Palestinian article it revealed the degree to which pro-Israel ideology is enmeshed in the U.S. power structure. Luckily, a generational shift is changing this before our eyes.
BY PHILIP WEISS , Mondoweiss
Recently there was an important event at Columbia Law School. The school’s law review published a piece on a sweeping legal theory of the Nakba by Harvard law student Rabea Eghbariah — and the board of the law review stepped in in unprecedented fashion to shut down the publication online. After the Intercept reported that the website had been “nuked,” the authoritarian move became an embarrassment; and the piece was restored. Though students obviously feel chilled.
This story reminds us that the U.S. establishment is firmly and blindly pro-Israel. The board that squashed the students included operators of the highest order: professor Gillian Metzger, who also serves in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; Justice Department senior counsel Lewis Yelin; and Ginger Anders, a former assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General.
We used to call people like this the ruling class. These high appointees understand what American values are, and today American values are standing by Israel even as it massacres thousands of children. These values surely have to do with the importance of Zionist donors to Joe Biden and universities, but they go beyond that to the makeup of the U.S. establishment. Pro-Israel voices — including Jewish Zionists — are a significant element of corporate culture. They are a generational force. Young progressives and young Jews are rejecting Israel. But they aren’t in the power structure…………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/the-u-s-power-structure-is-blindly-dedicated-to-israel/
Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war
BBC, 22 June 24, By Lucy Williamson, Reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border
Full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would be “a catastrophe”, the UN Secretary-General says. But to David Kamari, who lives under near-daily fire on the Israeli side of the border, it would be a solution.
Last month, a Hezbollah rocket fired from Lebanon landed in his front garden in the border town of Kiryat Shmona, cracking his house in several places and filling it with rubble.
He points out the gaping holes where shrapnel sliced through the walls, missing him by inches. And then to the hills above us, where Hezbollah-controlled territory begins.
“Every day, every night: bombs. [It’s a] problem,” he said. “And I was born here. If you live here one night, you go crazy.”
David is still living in his rubble-filled house, pieces of shrapnel entangled with the remains of his television set. Outside is the blackened relic of his car, burned by the fire that swept through his front yard after the rocket hit.
Most of the population of Kiryat Shmona was evacuated after the 7 October Hamas attacks, as Hezbollah rockets began raining down in support of their Palestinian ally.
David is one of the few who stayed. “I’ve lived here 71 years,” he said. “I won’t go. I was in the army, I’m not afraid.”
His solution? “War with Hezbollah; kill Hezbollah,” he says.
Israel has been striking back hard against Hezbollah, killing senior commanders and hitting targets further inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah has sent larger volleys of drones and missiles across the border this month, and threats on both sides have increased. Earlier this week, the group published drone footage of military installations and civilian infrastructure in the Israeli city of Haifa.
Tough talk has long been part of a mutual strategy of deterrence, with both sides seen as wary of all-out war.
But as the tit-for-tat conflict grinds on, and more than 60,000 Israelis remain evacuated from their homes in the north, there are signs that both Israel’s leaders and its citizens are prepared to support military options to push Hezbollah back from the border by force……………………………………………………………………………………..
As difficult as this border conflict is for people on both sides, a full-scale war would lift the crisis onto a different scale.
Some residents of Beirut are keeping suitcases packed and passports ready, in case of all-out conflict, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said this week that nowhere in Israel would be spared.
Hezbollah is a well-armed, well-trained army, backed by Iran; Israel, a sophisticated military power with the US as an ally.
Full-scale war is likely to be devastating for both sides.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said it would be a “catastrophe that goes […] beyond imagination”.
The problem for Israel is how to stop the rockets and get its people back to the abandoned northern areas of the country.
The problem for Hezbollah is how to stop the rockets when its ally, Hamas, is being pounded by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The longer that situation grinds on, the more the risks of a miscalculation increase, and the more Israel’s government is under pressure to resolve the situation.
The Hamas attacks on 7 October changed security calculations in Israel. Many of those with homes near the border – and some of those in positions of power – say the kind of agreement made with Hezbollah in the past is no longer enough.
Tom Perry lives in kibbutz Malkiya, right up against the Lebanese border fence. He was out drinking with friends when a Hezbollah rocket slammed through the front of his house earlier this month.
“I think the Secretary-General’s warning is right – [war] will be a catastrophe to the area,” he said.
“But unfortunately it looks like we have no other option. No agreement lasts forever, because they want death for us. We are doomed to wars forever, unless Israel can eliminate Hezbollah.”
Israel’s leaders lost all credibility after the 7 October attacks, he says, and don’t have a strategy to deliver peace.
“They need to quit – all of them. The biggest failure of our army and our country was 7 October, and they were our leaders. We don’t need these leaders.”
Demands for political change are likely to increase when Israel’s conflicts end.
Many believe Israel’s prime minister is playing for time: caught between growing demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, and growing support for a war in the north. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nn145p20qo
IDF Report Found Multiple Cases of Friendly Fire Deaths on Oct 7
The probe identified numerous examples of Israeli forces overreacting or failing to act during the Hamas assault
by Kyle Anzalone June 20, 2024 t https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/20/idf-report-found-multiple-cases-of-friendly-fire-deaths-on-oct-7/
A review by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) set to be released this summer will conclude that Israeli soldiers killed many of their own people on October 7, Israeli media reported. The inquiry is expected to identify multiple failures of the IDF during the Hamas rampage in southern Israel.
According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, the IDF report due to be released in mid-July found “many casualties due to our forces firing on our forces.” Tel Aviv has been accused of ordering its soldiers to kill hostages rather than allow Hamas to use them in negotiations, a policy long known as the ‘Hannibal Directive.’
The IDF’s October 7 review appears to point to incompetence rather than the intentional killing of its own civilians. However, Israeli outlet Ynet’s investigation of the IDF’s conduct found Tel Aviv had ordered troops to follow the Hannibal policy.
Still, the conclusions from the forthcoming report will amount to an official admission that scores, if not more, of Israelis were killed by IDF soldiers, not Hamas.
On October 7, Hamas launched a large-scale assault on southern Israel that left hundreds of attackers, 767 Israeli civilians, and 376 members of the Israeli security forces dead. The Jerusalem Post recently reported that many of the Israeli deaths were caused by IDF overreaction or inaction.
“According to the report, the probe will find numerous cases of friendly fire errors leading to tragic deaths, groups of IDF soldiers who were too hesitant to confront Hamas invaders (as still others rushed to fight without being formally summoned),” the outlet noted, adding that “higher-up commanders ordering some groups of soldiers to remain in a reserve second-line capacity – when they should have headed into the front, and not knowing how to handle complex battlefield questions involving a hostage.”
While Tel Aviv has denied that the Hannibal Directive was put into effect and insists it is no longer used, evidence has emerged of Israeli forces firing on homes knowing civilians were inside. One incident in Kibbutz Be’eri left 12 Israeli civilians dead.
There are multiple probes investigating the IDF’s actions on October 7, though one Israeli government-led inquiry was shut down by the country’s top court this week amid objections from the IDF and a number of senior officials.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
Can Israel defeat Hamas? Its own military doesn’t seem to think so, clashing with Netanyahu
The Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman said “Hamas is an idea” that can’t be eliminated and that saying it could be was “throwing sand in the eye of the public.”
NBC News, June 20, 2024, By Chantal Da Silva
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may still be leading the country into its 258th day of war in Gaza, but on Thursday he stood increasingly alone — and at odds with his own military.
Long criticized at home as well as abroad, Netanyahu’s approach is now the subject of a deepening disagreement with his top brass, as well as his country’s top ally, the U.S.
Netanyahu dissolved his war Cabinet this week after former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, a political rival, stepped down, accusing Netanyahu of standing in the way of “real victory.”
Comment: Four politicians resigned recently, and, over recent months, various IDF officials have resigned.
And on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman seemed to lay bare the rift at the top of the country’s leadership. The central stated goal of the war in Gaza — to destroy Hamas — was not possible, and to maintain it was meant “throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.
“Hamas is an idea. Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong,” Hagari said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 13. “The political echelon needs to find an alternative — or it will remain,” he said, referring to Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office quickly rebuffed the comments, saying in a statement that “the political and security cabinet headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu defined as one of the goals of the war the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities.”…………………………………………………………..
Hagari’s comments reflected a growing push for Netanyahu to present an actionable plan for the day after the war in Gaza…………..
The absence of a postwar plan for Gaza was at the heart of Gantz’s reasoning for quitting Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, and it has also driven criticism from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Comment: This idea of a post-war plan seems to be operating on the premise that there will be any Palestinians left in Gaza, whereas various officials have been clear that they intend to genocide all Palestinians that dare to remain.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, continuing a monthslong assault that local officials say has killed more than 37,000 people.
Comment: That estimate was valid months ago and it hasn’t increased much since then, which has led various analysts to put the number of, mostly women and children, slaughtered by Israel, at over 100,000.
……………………………………………… The U.S. sent an envoy to the region in a bid to prevent all-out war in Lebanon, but Netanyahu also sparked dismay in Washington when he accused it of “withholding weapons and ammunition.”
Comment: It seems that Israel intends to escalate the fighting between Hezbollah because it considers that as one way to drag the US into the conflict, which might be why the US sent an envoy to try to deter them (for the time being, anyway).
……………………………………………….. more https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-military-spokesman-hamas-defeated-netanyahu-war-gaza-rcna157991
Delusional Netanyahu joins delusional Zelensky in seeking total victory when none possible
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 21 June 24 https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/
Last November, Ukraine President Zelensky fired Valery Zaluzhny, his top military commander. Zaluzhny made the mistake, after the much touted Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia flopped, of suggesting the war was a stalemate that could not be won. Zelensky fired Zaluzhny, reminding him that the Ukraine war narrative was complete victory. Ukraine would win back all lost territory including Donbas, receive war reparations from Russia, and get Russia president Putin prosecuted for war crimes. Zelensky remains in delusion of achieving those goals for the past 7 months.
Just this week Zelensky has been joined in war delusion by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a stunning development, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has publicly announced, in direct contradiction of Prime Minister Netanyahu, that Israel cannot defeat Hamas in Gaza.
Reason? Hamas is an ideology, and no military, however strong, can defeat an ideology on the battlefield. Israeli IDF Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari could not have been more candid “This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear, it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public. Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people – whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”
Israel’s genocidal campaign upon the entire Palestinian population has backfired spectacularly, making Hamas stronger every day. Instead of destroying Hamas, Israel is self- destructing before our eyes. It has not only lost on the battlefield. It has lost support of the entire world outside the Biden administration in America. No matter how this ends, Israel will neither recover its moral standing in the world, nor claim Gaza for Greater Israel.
A sign of Israel’s disintegrating political position is Netanyahu’s dissolution of his war cabinet over the resignation of opposition leader Benny Gantz. Netanyahu is left surrounding himself with extreme right wing fanatics who either are as delusional as Netanyahu or are simply trapped into continuing their genocidal campaign as the only means of remaining in power.
Netanyahu and his fanatical war council are now threatening to pivot north to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such a move could militarily devastate Israel, with no chance whatsoever of prevailing. Netanyahu’s war delusions appear to have no limits.
It doesn’t matter how many standing ovations Netanyahu receives when he addresses Congress July 24, that is, if he is still in power. It doesn’t matter how many tens of billions in weapons Biden gifts Netanyahu to obliterate tens of thousands more Palestinian
kids and moms in their futile quest for total victory. Nothing can save Israel from defeat Netanyahu so delusionally set in motion.
But possibly the most delusional of all is President Biden, lusting to fling another hundred billion of American treasure to maintain two lost wars in furtherance of his preposterous belief that America still rules the world.
Climate Emergency strikes Islam’s Holy Ritual, with nearly 600 dead of Heat stroke at 124.24° F. in Mecca
JUAN COLE, 06/19/2024Ann Arbor (Informed Comment)
– As the temperature in Mecca reached 125.24° F. (51.8° C.) on Tuesday, word leaked out that nearly 600 pilgrims had died of heat stroke and 2,000 have been hospitalized for treatment. A virtual clinic treated more thousands remotely. Some 324 of the dead were Egyptians,, while dozens were from Jordan. The season of the annual Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, just ended. Some 1.8 million pilgrims participated.
Eyewitnesses said that not all the dead were elderly, that young persons died, as well.
Pilgrims carry out a series of rituals during the pilgrimage, beginning with preparing themselves and establishing their pious intention. Many of the steps involve being outside and being active. They dress in white robes. They circumambulate the cube-shaped Kaaba shrine. They run between the nearby hillocks of Safa and Marwa seven times, in commemoration of the search of Abraham’s wife Hajar for water for her son with the patriarch, Ishmael. They walk or are taken in buses to Mina and spend some nights of the pilgrimage there. There, they throw stones at satan.
AFP explains that some pilgrims try to avoid paying the hefty visa fees by just showing up unregistered. They however, then lack access to air conditioned facilities and are at special risk of heat stroke.
The number of heat stroke deaths seems to have doubled since last year. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s major oil producers, and burning petroleum to power vehicles puts the deadly heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, heating up the planet.
The G20 Climate Risk Atlas writes, “The science shows that Saudi Arabia will experience devastating climate impacts if it follows a high-emissions pathway. Without urgent action, Saudi Arabia will see an 88% increase in the frequency of agricultural drought by 2050. Heatwaves will last more than 4,242% longer and the combination of sea level rise, coastal erosion and fiercer weather will cause chaos for Saudi Arabia’s economy, which stands to lose around 12.2% of GDP by 2050.”……………………………………..more https://www.juancole.com/2024/06/climate-emergency-strikes.html
Former Official: Biden State Department Bending US Law to Send Israel Weapons
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had determined that there were four Israeli units who had committed human rights violations,.. ………….only receiving three months of community service as a result. Though these units committed violations, the State Department determined that they were still eligible for U.S. assistance and required no further remediation.
“The bottom line on Secretary Blinken’s actions is this: there are no ineligible Israeli units, and therefore no list to Israel,”
State officials have carved out an entirely unique vetting system for Israel in US foreign assistance law.
By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT, June 18, 2024
The Biden administration is in “non-compliance” with a U.S. law regarding foreign military assistance in allowing Israeli forces to dodge scrutiny over their brutality against Palestinians and otherwise, according to a new, scathing analysis by a former top State Department official.
A report written for Just Security by Charles Blaha, who retired from his position as the director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights last year after seven years in the role, says that top State officials have purposefully carved out an entirely unique vetting system for Israel’s compliance with human rights guidelines and eligibility to receive U.S. arms under the Leahy Law.
This system appears to be specifically designed to allow Israeli military units to commit gross human rights violations with little scrutiny from the U.S., and to allow U.S. officials to continue sending Israel weapons unconditionally. If Israeli units were found to be in violation of the Leahy Law, it would require the State Department to prohibit said units from receiving U.S. arms.
Blaha explains that the process undertaken by the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF), which first met in 2020, to vet incidents by Israeli forces is extremely slow compared to the process for other countries. It requires in-person meetings involving higher-level officials and for allegations against units to undergo a request for information about the unit to the Israeli government.
“Department officials insist that Israeli units are subject to the same vetting standards as units from any other country. Maybe in theory. But in practice, that’s simply not true,” Blaha wrote. “[I]n actual ILVF practice, the standard for ineligibility is almost impossibly high. Information that for any other country would without question result in ineligibility is insufficient for Israeli security force units.”
Further, even if a determination is made by lower-level officials about a violation by an Israeli unit, the final decision about a unit’s eligibility lies with the Deputy Secretary of State. “This is true for no other country in the world,” wrote Blaha, who oversaw an office that is key in making determinations under the Leahy Law………………………………
The exception carved out for Israel is evident in recent determinations made by the Biden administration.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had determined that there were four Israeli units who had committed human rights violations, including one involved in an incident in which an Israeli soldier shot and killed a Palestinian man on the side of the road in the West Bank, only receiving three months of community service as a result. Though these units committed violations, the State Department determined that they were still eligible for U.S. assistance and required no further remediation.
In a fifth case, Blinken determined that a unit involved in killing a 78-year-old Palestinian American man, Omar Assad, would still be eligible for assistance.
This is despite the fact that Assad was killed in a brutal way — stopped by Israeli forces at a checkpoint, dragged out of his car, bound, blindfolded, and then left on the ground overnight. He died after having a heart attack; the soldiers abandoned him to avoid scrutiny after discovering he was dead.
As Blaha points out, Blinken said that the department would work with the Israeli government “on identifying a path to effective remediation” for the unit responsible for Assad’s death — something made up by Blinken to give the unit a pass.
“This language appears nowhere in the Leahy law; it appears invented to avoid finding this Israeli unit ineligible,” Blaha said. “For any other country, a unit found to have committed a violation is immediately ineligible until remediation is complete.”
“The bottom line on Secretary Blinken’s actions is this: there are no ineligible Israeli units, and therefore no list to Israel,” Blaha continued, referring to a list of ineligible Israeli units that the State Department is supposed to report to Congress under the Leahy Law. “Even a unit responsible for the death of an American is eligible for assistance. As long as this remains the status quo, the department remains in non-compliance with the law.”
Blaha’s report is a show of how far the Biden administration is willing to go to continue sending weapons to Israel as it continues its extermination campaign in Gaza and severe repression of Palestinians in the West Bank.
The administration has reportedly spent the last months covertly pressuring members of Congress to approve sending yet more military assistance to Israel.
Two Democrats in Congress, Rep. Gregory Meeks (New York) and Sen. Ben Cardin (Maryland) recently signed off on advancing a sale of F-15s and munitions, including JDAMs, to Israel after pressure from the administration, The Washington Post reported on Monday. Meeks and Cardin, the top Democrats of their chambers’ respective foreign relations committees, had held up the sale for months, both citing human rights concerns. https://truthout.org/articles/former-official-biden-state-department-bending-us-law-to-send-israel-weapons/
Blinken made secret weapons promise to Israel – Netanyahu
https://www.sott.net/article/492412-Blinken-made-secret-weapons-promise-to-Israel-Netanyahu 18 June 24
The Secretary of State said the White House “is working day and night” to resume all arms shipments, according to the PM.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed to have pressured the United States over arms supplies that his country needs in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The US paused delivery of weapons to Israel in early May amid calls for it to scale back its assault on the densely-populated city of Rafah in southern Gaza. The shipment reportedly included 3,500 bombs for fighter jets. The Jewish state’s offensive on Rafah has left thousands of Palestinians dead and injured, according to the local Hamas-run authorities.
In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Netanyahu said in English that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has assured him the White House“is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks,” referring to arms supplies.
The statement confirms the latest media reports that during a meeting with Blinken last week in Jerusalem, Netanyahu had demanded the removal of barriers to the flow of munitions.
Netanyahu stated:
“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the US has given Israel from the beginning of the war. But I also said something else, I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”
The Israeli leader stressed that an increased flow of US weapons would help bring the end to the struggle with Hamas.
“During World War II, [Winston] Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”
Comment: When Israel demands, US complies.
Netanyahu has reportedly told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other high-ranking officials to make sure that arms transfers are fully resumed during upcoming meetings with American counterparts in Washington this week.
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned Israel he would halt arms shipments over the situation in Rafah, but despite those warnings his administration had reportedly kept weapons and ammunition flowing. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the US proceeded with a transfer of $1 billion worth of ammunition and vehicles for Israel in May, the same month it stopped the delivery of bombs.
On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the White House had successfully pressured Democrats in Congress to support a major arms sale to Israel that includes 50 F-15 fighter jets worth more than $18 billion.
Israel declared war on Hamas after militants killed around 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostage in a surprise attack on October 7. More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the months of fighting that have followed, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s health ministry.
Comment: Regarding his recent reticence, Biden is roleplaying for the masses in an election year. He supports only one outcome: fulfilled, unimpeded.
Top lawmakers sign off on massive US arms sale to Israel
The approval of the F-15 sale comes the month after US President Joe Biden promised to hold off on arms to Israel if it chose to expand the assault on Rafah
The Cradle News Desk, JUN 18, 2024
Two Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress have signed off on a massive arms sale to Israel, which will include $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets, the Washington Post reported on 17 June.
Representative Gregory Meeks and Senator Ben Cardin agreed to the deal after months of holding up the sale due to concerns over Israel’s conduct in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
“Any issues or concerns that Chair Cardin had were addressed through our ongoing consultations with the administration, and that’s why he felt it appropriate to allow this case to move forward,” Eric Harris, Communications Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Post……………………
The end of the informal consultation process will allow the US State Department to move ahead with officially notifying Congress of the arms sale, marking the last step before the deal is fully approved.
The State Department has declined to comment on the arms sale to Israel, which was one of the largest in years……………………………………
The Biden administration has already approved over 100 US arms sales to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza in October. https://thecradle.co/articles/top-lawmakers-sign-off-on-massive-us-arms-sale-to-israel
Leaked doc reveals Israeli military KNEW of Hamas plan to raid and take hostages 2 weeks before Oct 7, Israeli news reports
SOTT, Grace Eliza Goodwin, Business Insider, 2024-06-18
The Israeli military knew about Hamas’ plans to attack southern Israel weeks before October 7 — even how many hostages the militant group planned to capture, according to a report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
The Israel Defense Force’s Gaza Division reportedly distributed an internal intelligence document on September 19, 2023, outlining the details of Hamas’ planned raid, according to Kan.
The document, which Kan reportedly saw, states that the IDF had observed Hamas conducting a series of trainings where militant fighters practiced attacking both Israeli military stations and civilian kibbutzim communities.
The IDF also knew, according to the document viewed by Kan, that Hamas trained its units on how to capture hostages and how to guard them once they were taken back to the Gaza Strip.
Comment: The following is a AI dubbed translation of the report: English dub of an Israeli news report about a document the IDF distributed internally on September 19th, 2023, titled “Detailed End-to-End Raid Training” — it described the impending 10/7 attack in close detail, down to the number of hostages and how Hamas planned to handle them. https://x.com/BoltzmannBooty/status/1802780095934796125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1802780095934796125%7Ctwgr%5E03c00f0d7a7896eeb5714ea82f7f7840b511a996%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sott.net%2Fembed%2FrqC_5-5FwJyE6YzTfNGB8znT2Ak
The IDF’s Southern Command and Gaza Division also wrote in the document, according to Kan, that they expected Hamas to take between 200 and 250 hostages. The officials even had intel on how Hamas intended to treat the hostages in certain extreme circumstances and what rules Hamas set for executing hostages, Kan reported.
Comment: The recent hostage ‘rescue’ (and ensuing massacre) reveals that Hamas has been treating the hostages very well.
Israel mistakenly believed, the Times of Israel reported, that Hamas would never be able to get past its high-tech border security — an “Iron Wall” composed of concrete, tunnels, and razor wire, complete with remote-controlled machine guns, that was installed two years before the attack.
That oversight prevented top Israeli intelligence leaders from doing anything about the internal report detailing Hamas’ plans, Kan News reported.
And it wasn’t just a few weeks before October 7 that Israel reportedly knew about Hamas’ plans.
More than a year before the attack, Israel had a 40-page document detailing, play-by-play, exactly how Hamas would attack the southern border, The New York Times reported last year. But, Israel never took Hamas’ plans seriously, assuming the militant group would never get past Israel’s defenses, the Times reported.
Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, many of whom are still being held in captivity.
The exact number of hostages Hamas took is unclear, but Israel has estimated it was around 240, with about 116 still in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Israel’s subsequent airstrikes and war against Hamas in Gaza have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, many of whom are women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities…………………………………https://www.sott.net/article/492398-Leaked-doc-reveals-Israeli-military-KNEW-of-Hamas-plan-to-raid-and-take-hostages-2-weeks-before-Oct-7-Israeli-news-reports
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14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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