Monday 25th of November 2024
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god's vengeance and his chosen poodles: america and israel — and germany......

If I had lived under a siege all my life in a tiny open air prison camp – if I had no hope for the future – I too might be tempted to violently resist a brutal, unrelenting and illegal occupation, which is my right under international law.

In recent decades citizens of liberal democracies have frequently supported politically-motivated violence undertaken by the state, when it is politely referred to as “war” or “conflict” instead of the more accurate description: “state terrorism”.

 

The right to violent resistance and a false Western morality     By Scott Burchill

 

Traditionally states are said to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, but this a norm of international society, not international law nor a justifiable pretext for aggression.

On other occasions popular support is also given to violence conducted by non-state actors. Often this is contemporaneous, sometimes it grows in historical retrospect.

For example, the war against Iraq in 2003 which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was undertaken by self-defined liberal democracies until the pretexts for its initiation collapsed and victory could no longer be defined, let alone achieved. The overwhelming majority of international lawyers argued that it was illegal. Despite significant opposition and protests there was, nevertheless, sufficient popular support in the West for political elites in Washington, London and Canberra to sustain the aggression and subsequent occupation of the country for over eight years.

The same could be said for the Vietnam War (1965-75) which killed many more innocent civilians and only concluded when Wall Street pulled the plug on its financial lifeline. In both wars popular enthusiasm for violence overshadowed the illegality of the interventions until domestic political and economic costs grew too high for political elites to keep prosecuting them.

As for non-state actors, who in the West today would express inhibitions about the use of violence by those who resisted the Nazi occupation of Europe? How many people in 2023 remain squeamish about the extremely violent slave revolts in antebellum America?
In Greece, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Syria, to name only a small number of recent examples, Western governments have encouraged and backed non-state actors to violently overthrow governments with enormous sums of money and gargantuan arms supplies courtesy of their taxpayers.

Most anti-colonial struggles are drenched in violence and suffering. And for subjugated peoples who won their freedom from colonial occupation – in countries such as Algeria, Vietnam, Timor Leste, the Congo, South Africa and Kenya – those who led the armed struggles are venerated as national heroes and martyrs. In some cases they became the political leaders of their newly independent states.

The statement that “I am against the use of violence to achieve political objectives” is therefore naïve and largely irrelevant, although pacifism has a long and honourable tradition in many cultures. The germane question here is: when is the use of violence considered legitimate?

The question raises a number of curious and inconsistent answers, at least from the viewpoint of Western liberal democracies.

Ukraine is supported in its battle against territorial incursions by Russia with diplomatic support and billions of dollars of Western military aid. Its sovereignty is considered sacrosanct, whereas Syria is occupied by the United States for its oil and regularly bombed by Israel and the US eliciting virtually no interest in the Western media.

The territorial struggles of the Kurds, the West Papuans and the Western Saharans are either ignored in the West or actively opposed with political and financial support for their occupiers.

Afghanistan’s sovereignty has never been a concern for the West. In the 1980s the CIA supplied the mujahideen rebels with cash and arms, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, to help them drive the armed forces of the Soviet Union out of the country. After 9/11 the weapons were turned back on the Americans and their allies by the Taliban to ultimately expel them in 2020 after almost two decades of occupation. Those praised in the 1980s as “freedom fighters” and invited to a White House audience with Ronald Reagan were by 2002 Islamic terrorists who had to be annihilated.

Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999 as was Libya in 2011, with devastating social consequences. Since 2015 Yemen has been attacked by Saudi Arabia with crucial military support from the United Kingdom and the United States. From 1974 until today, Turkey has illegally occupied northern Cypress without facing any sanctions or pressure from the West to withdraw.

All of these violent crimes have been met in the West with either enthusiastic participation, indifference or by the principle of ‘silence means consent’. There have been few expressions of concern about the use of violence providing they achieve favourable political, strategic or economic objectives for the West.

In stark contrast, the incursion into Israel by Hamas on 7 October has been met with universal condemnation by Western governments. Outrage has centred on the unspeakable, apparently inexplicable and indefensible violence of the attacks and kidnappings. Immediately they were used to justify the indiscriminate and disproportionate destruction of Gaza, which is now a charnel house where 0.5% of the population has already perished.

Omitted from the official narrative is the pre-history, and therefore the crucial context from which the attacks erupted.

Could a brutal twenty year siege regularly punctuated by murderous military assaults on a defenceless civilian population (eg. Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defence, Operation Protective Edge, etc,) be an explanatory factor? Or do the lives of the hundreds of children killed during these bombings matter so little that they should not even be remembered, let alone avenged? How many Zionists who uncritically support Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza today are even aware of these events? Or is the history, to quote George Orwell, just “carefully unmentioned”?

There is no moral equivalence between an occupier and the occupied. Nor is there any comparison between what has been done to Gaza by Israel over two decades and what Hamas did on 7 October. However, to justify Israel’s attacks, events which might explain if not justify Hamas’ breakout on 7 October, have been largely disappeared down the memory hole, especially in the mainstream media.

If I had lived under a siege all my life in a tiny open air prison camp (David Cameron) which I cannot leave, periodically bombed by people who say they are just “mowing the lawn”, had no prospects for employment, had barely enough food to eat and safe water to drink, and only rubble for a home – in other words if I had no hope for the future – I too might be tempted to violently resist a brutal and illegal occupation, which is my right under international law.

UN General Assembly resolution 37/43 was adopted in 1982. It:

“Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle … . (emphasis added)”

For the Palestinians of Gaza, it’s a choice between dying now in pursuit of liberation from a suffocating occupation, or later when the cameras have been turned off and the media’s attention has shifted elsewhere: what’s to lose?

To do that, however, would require me to imagine what life must be like for those in such desperate circumstances, an ethical facility which so many who bravely strike defiant poses from the safety of their middle class lives in the West are seemingly incapable of. Even then, I may be horrified by what Hamas did on 7 October, but am I in a position to judge them?

The civilian population of Gaza is not suffering “as a result of the conflict”. They are being deliberately targeted and punished as part of the ethnic cleansing of the strip. They may be driven from their homeland again as they were in 1948, possibly into the Sinai Desert. Or just murdered. War crimes and atrocities of this kind can never be justified and attempts to do so, including silence in response to heinous attacks on hospitals, health workers and infants is, in my view, evidence of moral depravity.

Regrettably we must accept that organised violence is the least pleasant feature of the human condition. As the distinguished historian of Europe Charles Tilly famously wrote:

“The central tragic fact is simple: coercion works; those who apply substantial force to their fellows get compliance, and from that compliance draw the multiple advantages of money, goods, deference, access to pleasures denied to less powerful people.”

Returning to the key question which confronts us: when is the use of violence for political objectives considered legitimate, at least in the Western world?

Forget consistency, principle, the norms of international society, international law or morality. Ultimately support for, or opposition to politically-motivated violence has little to do with repugnance in the face of cruelty and bloodshed. After all, across the world much of the worst violence is initiated and sponsored by the West.

Instead, the crucial factor is whether the political cause is supported. If so, it will be dressed up in high moral principles: violence is regrettable but necessary in order to slay a greater evil. The pursuit of freedom and democracy over the forces of darkness is a difficult but honourable mission, even if some innocents will occasionally suffer in the quest.

If the cause is opposed, it will be condemned in the most hypocritical, sanctimonious and dishonest tones that can be summoned and amplified by politicians and their media amanuenses. We are always the innocent victims of terrorism, never its perpetrator. We are inherently peaceful and good, they are irredeemably violent and bad. It’s always about us and them.

Ultimately, in international politics the morality of violence yields to politics.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-right-to-violent-resistance-and-a-false-western-morality/

 

THE GRüN FASCISTS RULE IN GERMANY.... THE LADY BAERBOCK IS FULL OF FASCIST SHIT.... THE GRüN PARTY SHOULD BE A PARTY OF PEACE AND NUTURE OF NATURE... UNDER BAERBOCK, THIS GRüN PARTY IS A PARTY OF DEATH....

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said a cease-fire in the Middle East would prevent Israel from defending itself. Speaking to DW, Baerbock defended Germany's refusal to back a cease-fire in Gaza. She also hit out at criticism of Germany's support for Israel, calling it "extremely disturbing."

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-baerbock-rejects-calls-for-cease-fire-in-gaza/video-67503186

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4As5pIOYIIo

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDjI518MLU

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/russia/587694-ukraine-zelensky-rapid-changes/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/russia/587695-ukraine-concerned-russia-talks/

Ukraine ‘concerned’ by Western push for Russia talks – security chief
The West must keep supporting Kiev if it wants to keep ruling the world, Alexey Danilov has claimed

 

 

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singing death.......

By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost

Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return. 

Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people. 

The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint. 

This is what happened at Al Shifa hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain. 

Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one the hospitals are being picked off. Soon there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.

Tens of thousands of terrified Palestinians, forced to evacuate by Israel, their homes blasted into rubble, seek refuge from the relentless bombing by camping out in and around Gaza’s hospitals. They hope the medical centers will not be targeted by Israel. If Israel abided by the Geneva Conventions they would be correct. But Israel is not carrying out a war. It is carrying out a genocide. And in a genocide, a population, and all that sustains a population, is obliterated. 

In an ominous sign that Israel will turn on the Palestinians in the West Bank once it is done flattening Gaza, armored vehicles have surrounded at least four West Bank hospitals. The Ibn Sina Hospital has been raided by Israeli soldiers along with the East Jerusalem Hospital.

Israel’s settler colonial state was founded on lies. It is sustained by lies. And now, when it is grimly determined to carry out the worst slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that saw 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed and some 50 massacres by Jewish militias, it spits out one grotesque absurdity after another. It speaks of Palestinians as a dehumanized mass. There are no mothers, fathers, children, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated. 

Watch this video of Israeli school children singing, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” in Gaza. 

Hitler Youth used to sing songs like this about Jews.

Those who embark upon projects of mass killing lie to avoid demoralizing their own populations, lull the victims into believing they will not all be exterminated and stop outside forces from intervening. The Nazis claimed that Jews packed on trains and sent to extermination camps were on work details and had good medical care and adequate food. As for the infirm and elderly, they were cared for in rest centers. The Nazis even created a mock camp for the “resettlement” of Jews “to the East,” – Theresienstadt – where international bodies such as the Red Cross could see how humanely the Jews were treated, even as millions were being exterminated. 

At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were massacred or died of exposure, disease and starvation during the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from the spring of 1915 to the autumn of 1916. The Armenian genocide was as public as the genocide in Gaza. European and U.S. consular missions provided detailed accounts of the campaign to cleanse modern day Türkiye of Armenians. 

The Ottoman government, in an attempt to hide the genocide, banned foreigners from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that lined the roads. Israel too has blocked the foreign press from Gaza, carrying out only a handful of brief and carefully staged visits arranged by the Israeli military. Israel periodically cuts off internet and phone services. At least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, many undoubtedly targeted by Israeli forces. 

Armenians, like Palestinians, were forced from their homes, gunned down and denied food and water. Armenian deportees were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert where tens of thousands were shot or died from starvation, cholera, malaria, dysentery and influenza. Israel is forcing 1.1 million Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza and bombing them as they flee. These refugees, like the Armenians, lack food, water, fuel and sanitation. They too will soon succumb to epidemics of infectious diseases. 

Talat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, told the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau Sr., in words that replicate Israel’s stance, on Aug. 2, 1915, “that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.” 

The longer the genocide continues the more absurd the lies become. 

There are big Israeli lies. The obliteration of Gaza and wanton killing of thousands of Palestinians, Israel insists, is a targeted effort to get rid of Hamas rather than a campaign to reduce Gaza to a pile of rubble, carry out mass murder and ethnically cleanse Palestinians. 

There are small Israeli lies. Forty beheaded babies. Al Shifa Hospital is a “Hamas command center.” A calendar in Arabic on the wall of a hospital, according to IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is “a guardian [guard] list, where every terrorist writes his name and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.” An Israeli actor dressed up as a nurse and speaking heavily accented Arabic claims to be Palestinian doctor and to have seen Hamas use civilians as human shields. She says members of Hamas “attacked Al Shifa Hospital” and stole “the fuel and medicine.” Palestinian militants, rather than Israeli tanks, Israel says, are responsible for shelling Al Shifa Hospital. Israel struck a car full of “terrorists” in southern Lebanon, “terrorists” who turned out to be three girls, their mother and grandmother. The explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital was the result of an errant rocket fired by the Palestinians, a claim questioned by The New York Times when it discredited the video based on analysis of its time stamp. Israel said it “responded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate from Shifa Hospital towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis,” a statement Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, said was “false,” adding “we were forced to leave by gunpoint.” Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, in a video pilloried by the BBC, shows viewers a meager stash of automatic weapons in a promotional video that magically increases once foreign reporters arrive for a guided tour. The IDF later deleted it.

The lies will be written into the Israeli school books. The lies will be repeated by Israeli politicians, historians and journalists. The lies will be told on Israeli television and in Israeli films and books. Israelis are eternal victims. Palestinians are absolute evil. There was no genocide. Türkiye, a century later, still denies what happened to the Armenians.

In wartime people believe what they want to believe. The lies fill a hunger within the Israeli public that sees the conflict as a binary struggle between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The lies are a defense against accountability, for if Israel refuses to acknowledge reality, it is not forced to respond to reality. The lies create cognitive dissonance, where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. The lies make any discussion of genocide, or reconciliation, impossible.  

Israel, with the backing of the Biden administration, will continue to snuff out all systems that sustain life in Gaza. Hospitals. Schools. Power plants. Water treatment facilities. Factories. Farms. Apartment blocks. Houses. Then Israel will pretend, like the killers in past genocides, it never happened. 

The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility will eat away at Israeli society. They will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life. The lies will elevate war criminals to heroic status and demonize those with a conscience. Israel’s genocide, as with the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, will be mythologized, an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, just as we mythologized the genocide of Native Americans and turned our settlers and murderous cavalry units into heroes. The killers in the Indonesian war against communism are cheered at rallies as saviors. They are interviewed about the “heroic” battles they fought nearly six decades ago. Israel will do the same. It will deform itself. It will celebrate its crimes. It will turn evil into good. It will exist within a self-constructed myth. The truth, as in all despotisms, will be banished. Israel, a monster to the Palestinians, will be a monster to itself.

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

 

https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/20/chris-hedges-israels-war-on-hospitals/

 

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8.5km away.....

 

By Gareth Porter
Special to Consortium News

 

 

While telling the world that Hamas HQ was under al-Shifa Hospital, the IDF had already found the actual command center 8.5km away, reports Gareth Porter.

 

Although corporate news media have made it clear they don’t buy the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that al-Shifa Hospital has been a cover for a Hamas command and control center and weapons armory, Western media have failed to report a much bigger story.

The IDF and the Israeli government already knew when they launched their propaganda campaign about al-Shifa that Hamas had no military command and control facility hidden there because it had already found the complex kilometers away.

As Consortium News reported last week, for 15 years the Israelis claimed  Hamas was operating its primary command and control base from a tunnel underneath al-Shifa. After the Israeli bombing campaign against Gaza began in October, the Israeli military amplified that message to press its contention that by hiding the Hamas high command, al-Shifa Hospital had lost its immunity from military operations under the law of war, and could now legitimately be taken over by force.

On Nov. 11, IDF spokesman Richard Hecht declared that al-Shifa was the “main hub of Hamas activity;” Newsweek reported the IDF regarded al-Shifa Hospital as “Hamas’s main command post” and the Times of Israel headlined “Hamas leaders again hiding under hospital”. 

The crescendo of Israeli propaganda about al-Shifa being a “human shield” for Hamas came with a long report published by The New York Times on Nov. 14. It was based on interviews with eight present and former intelligence and defense officials, describing a vast military command complex under al-Shifa with multiple levels.

But something quite unexpected had happened during this new round of press stories on al-Shifa that completely demolished the entire IDF story line: the IDF had gained control of the real Hamas command and control center in an area where the Hamas leadership had previously had their above-ground offices in the Al Atatra neighborhood, in the extreme northwest of Beit Lahiya city, 8.5km away from al-Shifa.

After that office building was demolished, the IDF discovered a major tunnel facility that was quite certain had been the central headquarters for the Hamas high command — the command and control center for the entire war.  

As the IDF leaked to The Jerusalem Post in a story published Nov. 14, the discovery was made “several days ago” of a tunnel with an elevator that reached thirty meters underground, compared with only five meters underground in other tunnels.  Furthermore it had been equipped with oxygen, air conditioning and more advanced communications than seen anywhere else.

Discovery of Real Hamas High Command Bunker

That major IDF discovery, made on or before the Nov. 11 false stories about al-Shifa, threatened to undermine the Israeli political campaign to justify the IDF’s takeover and destruction of Gaza’s hospitals on the grounds that they were “human shields” for Hamas. 

Al-Shifa Hospital was the centerpiece of that campaign, based on the claim that it was hiding the high command of Hamas in a tunnel underneath it. Obviously the IDF and the extreme right-wing Israel government would want to stop all further publicity about the discovery of the actual Hamas high command’s underground base.

No story about the discovery of the real Hamas high command bunker has been published inside Israel or elsewhere in the nearly two weeks since the detailed Jerusalem Post piece on Nov. 14. Somehow the Israeli government and media have been able to completely suppress the discovery of the Hamas headquarters, despite the fact that a number of foreign news media have offices in Tel Aviv and the story is still available on the internet.

Instead of forcing a major climb-down by the IDF and the Netanyahu and the Biden administrations, the discovery of the real Hamas underground high-command center merely brought a slight revision in the wording used to refer to the issue.

Sullivan Revises Wording of Issue

That slight nuance was introduced not by the IDF, but by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Nov. 13, when he said:

“You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command and control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.” [emphasis added.]  

And a U.S. official familiar with “U.S. intelligence” who may also have been Sullivan, commented that Hamas had a “command node” under al-Shifa Hospital, using a term that Israeli officials apparently adopted in light of the new discovery of the actual high-command bunker.

Thus the IDF arrived at al-Shifa late at night on Nov. 15, a day after The Jerusalem Post story, to begin the process of the Israeli takeover with a propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the American public in particular that Hamas had been inside the hospital.

Several hours later that morning, in a seven-minute video inside the MRI building, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus showed “grab bags” of military gear with AK-47s, grenades and uniforms neatly arranged on the floor. He insisted that Hamas had used the MRI room to store weapons and military gear.  He also  produced one computer, which he suggested had been found to contain “incriminating evidence” of military relevance.

The most obvious problem with this seven-minute video, however, is that it showed nothing that could not have been easily brought into the building by the IDF itself. The more serious problem with the presentation is that it offered no plausible reason for Hamas to have hidden a few dozen small weapons and other military gear in the MRI room of a hospital and then supposedly having left them there when they departed.

There was simply no need for the Hamas to store weapons there.  After all, Hamas is estimated to have 150 to 300 miles of space for such storage in its vast tunnel network.

Hagari Video Deleted

A much bigger problem for IDF credibility on al-Shifa is that on Oct. 27, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari presented an artist’s conception showing that Hamas had taken over parts of five different buildings at al-Shifa Hospital and was using all of them to plan and coordinate its military activities.

He also showed a drawing of the structure of the main building, which he insisted was based on Israeli intelligence, showing that an underground floor of the main building was completely controlled by Hamas. He also insisted that there was an entrance within the hospital to that underground floor.

The Hagari presentation came before the discovery of the actual Hamas high-command bunker underneath the above-ground Hamas high-command office in Beit Lahiya. The IDF has now eliminated the entire video of that long, detailed and illustrated presentation by Hagari from its website, because it would become a major embarrassment to the IDF once the full truth is known.

In recent days, the IDF has fixed the world’s attention on a tunnel, the opening of which was discovered very close to the outer fence of al-Shifa Hospital grounds. The tunnel was found by the IDF to be 10m deep, compared with the 30m deep abandoned high command tunnel. 

On Nov. 21, the IDF announced it had breached the heavy blast door of the tunnel, meaning that it could now determine what lay on the other side, if anything. But given that the IDF has already discovered the real Hamas command bunker elsewhere — and the absence of evidence of a connection from  hospital buildings to a tunnel — the IDF is unlikely to find such a connection from the tunnel to the hospital.

The real story of the Israeli effort to sell its argument that Hamas took over al-Shifa and other hospitals to coordinate attacks is the massive deception aimed at U.S. media and public opinion in order to justifying Israel’s war of obliteration of the population of Gaza.

That campaign of deceit has had the full-throated support of the Biden administration, which stands equally guilty of misleading the American people in its support for an illicit Israeli war.

The failure of the Israeli propaganda campaign has been so decisive that most major media organizations have explicitly distanced themselves from the Israeli claims about al-Shifa, and several have shown either field reporters or analysts in the studio declaring explicitly that the evidence displayed by the Israelis had not proved their case at all.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on U.S. national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/23/idf-knew-real-hamas-hq-while-lying-about-al-shifa/

 

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ceasefire.....

 

BY SCOTT RITTER

 

The recently announced ceasefire is a blessing for Palestinians and Israelis alike—a chance for prisoners to be exchanged, humanitarian aid to be distributed to those in need, and for emotions on both sides of the conflict to cool down.

While the ceasefire, negotiated between Israel and Hamas by Qatar, was mutually agreed between the two parties, let no one be fooled into thinking this was anything less than a victory for Hamas. Israel had taken a very aggressive position that, given its stated objective of destroying Hamas as an organization, it would not agree to a ceasefire under any conditions.

Hamas, on the other hand, had made one of its primary objectives in initiating the current round of fighting with Israel the release of Palestinian prisoners, and in particular women and children, held by Israel. Seen in this light, the ceasefire represents an important victory for Hamas, and a humiliating defeat for Israel.

One of the reasons Israel eschewed a ceasefire was that it was confident that the offensive operation it had launched into northern Gaza was going to neutralize Hamas as a military threat, and that any ceasefire, regardless of the humanitarian justification, would only buy time for a defeated Hamas enemy to rest, refit, and regroup. That Israel signed on to a ceasefire is the surest sign yet that all is not well with the Israeli offensive against Hamas.

 

This outcome should not have come as a surprise to anyone. When Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, it initiated a plan years in the making. The meticulous attention to detail that was evident in the Hamas operation underscored the reality that Hamas had been studying the Israeli intelligence and military forces arrayed against it, uncovering weaknesses that were subsequently exploited. The Hamas action represented more than sound tactical and operational planning and execution—it was a masterpiece in strategic conceptualization as well.

One of the main reasons behind the Israeli defeat on October 7 was the fact that the Israeli government was convinced that Hamas would never attack, regardless of what the intelligence analysts charged with watching Hamas activity in Gaza were saying. This failure of imagination came about by Hamas having identified the political goals and objectives of Israel (the nullification of Hamas as a resistance organization by undertaking a policy built on “buying” Hamas through an expanded program of work permits issued by Israel for Palestinians living in Gaza.) By playing along with the work permit program, Hamas lulled the Israeli leadership into complacency, allowing Hamas' preparations for their attack to be carried out in plain view.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231123/scott-ritter-hamas-winning-battle-for-gaza-1115160045.html

 

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butchery.....

https://www.legrandsoir.info/

 

Le Monde of November 22, 2023: “Live, Israel-Hamas war”.

Let’s say instead: “Israel-Palestine War”. Hamas is not a country. And 99% of the dead are not Hamas fighters.

Likewise, one should not say “Palestine-IDF War”. The IDF is not a country but an immoral industrial butchery.

As Israel has been bombing part of Palestine for decades, with unprecedented violence since October 7, we must say: “Genocidal war against a people without an army”.

The choice of words is important. For example, I know some stupid people who say: “Israel has the right to defend itself” by confusing the verbs “to defend” and “to expand”. It is in fact the only country in the world whose surface area is increasing.

Terrorists. The use of the word is controversial. I don't have the space here to enter into the debate. But I tend to think that those who indiscriminately kill 16,000 civilians, most of whom were crushed in their homes, who liquidate more than 5,000 children, including babies in their incubators, are terrorists.

Anti-Semitic. The word designates those who incite hatred of Jews by creating confusion between Jews and the Israeli government, Jews and the Israeli army. Examples: Netayahu, Habib Meyer, Julien Dray, Manuel Valls...

 

Theophrastus R., Islamic-leftist-red-brown linguist, future author of the almost Hitlerian book: “Palestine has the right to defend itself”.

 

 

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light and darkness....

Israel’s Genocidal Antisemitism Against the Arab Civilians of Gaza
Netanyahu's right-wing government has unleashed a “unifying” genocidal war against every child, woman and man that comprise the 2.3 million population of Gaza.

 

BY 

 

“It should never have happened,” an elderly Holocaust survivor of a Nazi death camp told the New York Times. He was referring to the colossal failure on October 7th, of Israel’s touted high-tech military and intelligence operations that opened the door to Hamas’ attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians. In many parliamentary countries, the government ministers who are responsible for this kind of failure would have immediately been forced to resign. Not so with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ministers.

Instead, Netanyahu’s coalition of extremists, who know that the Israeli people are enraged about their government’s failure to defend the border, has unleashed a “unifying” genocidal war against every child, woman and man that comprise the 2.3 million population of Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. … We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly” was the opening genocidal war cry from defense minister Yoav Gallant to defend the onslaught that massive military forces are implementing against the long-illegally blockaded Gazan population.

Israeli leaders declare that there are Hamas fighters possibly in and under every building in Gaza. Israel has long made computer models using their unprecedented surveillance technology (see Antony Loewenstein’s interview in the November/December 2023 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen). Nothing and no one is off limits for the Israeli bombing.

Palestinians cannot escape their blockaded prison. They cannot surrender because the Israeli army does not want to be responsible for prisoners of war. They cannot burytheir dead, so their families’ corpses pile up, rotting in the sun being eaten by stray dogs.

Keep in mind that Israel is an ultra-modern military superpower, with hundreds of thousands of fighters on land, air and sea, going after the few thousand Hamas fighters who have limited supplies of rifles, grenade launchers and anti-tank weapons. Moreover, all of Israel’s supplies are being replenished daily from the U.S. stockpiles in Israel and new shipments arriving by sea, compliments of President Biden. The invasion is a “piece of cake” an experienced U.S. government official told reporter Sy Hersh.

Contradictions abound. First, Netanyahu has always referred to Hamas as a “terrorist organization.” Yet he told his own Likud party for years that his “strategy” to block a two-state solution was to “support and fund Hamas.” (See, the October 22, 2023 article by prominent journalist Roger Cohen in the New York Times).

If Netanyahu believes dropping over 20,000 bombs and missiles on the civilian infrastructure of this tiny crowded enclave and its people, nearly half of whom are children, is so restrained, why has he kept Western and Israeli journalists out of Gaza, other than a few recently embedded reporters restricted to their seats in Israeli armored vehicles? Why has he ordered four nightmarish total telecommunications and electricity blackouts, with excruciating consequences, over the whole Gaza Strip for as long as 30 hours at a time?

None of this or international laws matter to the prime minister whose top priority is to keep his job, with his coalition parties, as long as the invasion continues. And before an outraged majority in Israel ousts him from power for not defending their country on October 7th from some two thousand urban guerrilla fighters on a homicide/suicide mission.

As the slaughter of defenseless babies, children, mothers, fathers and grandparents in Gaza continues to drive the death, injury and disease toll to higher numbers each day, the observant world wonders what the Israeli government, which regularly blocks humanitarian aid, intends to do with Gaza and its destitute, homeless, starving, wounded, sick, dying and abandoned civilian Palestinians.

After all, Gaza has only so many hospitals, clinics, schools, apartment buildings, homes, water mains, ambulances, bakeries, markets, electricity networks, solar panels, shelters, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and the clearly marked remaining United Nations’ facilities left, to bomb to smithereens. Endless American tax dollars are funding the carnage. Israel has also killed over 50 journalists, including some of their families, in the past seven weeks – a record.

Why will it take months to clear out the tunnels? Not so, say military experts in urban warfare. Flooding the tunnels with water, gas, napalm and robotic explosives are quick and lethal and would be deployed were it not for the Israeli hostages.

In addition to the reality that all Gazans are now hostages, over 7,000 Palestinians are languishing in Israeli jails without charges. Many are youngsters and women who were abducted over the years to extort information and to control their extended families in Gaza and the West Bank. What’s holding up an exchange, as Israel did twice before in 2004 and 2011? Again, the Netanyahu coalition stays in power by postponing the pending official inquiries into their October 7th collapse, that Israelis are awaiting.

Meanwhile, the hapless Joe Biden dittoheaded the previously hapless presidential pleas for a two-state solution. The dominant politicians in Israel have always sought “a Greater Israel” using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” meaning all of Palestine. Year after year Israel has stolen more and more land and water from the twenty-two percent left of original Palestine, inhabited by five million Palestinians under oppressive military occupation.

With Congress overwhelmingly in Israel’s pocket, Israeli politicians laugh at proposals for a two-state solution by U.S. presidents. Recall when Obama was president, Netanyahu went around him and addressed a joint session of Congress whose members exhausted themselves with standing ovations – a brazen insult to a U.S. president, unheard of in U.S. diplomatic history!

Day after day, the surviving Palestinian families are trapped in what is widely called “an open-air prison” being pulverized by Israel and its aggressive co-belligerent, the Biden regime. A regime in Washington that urges Netanyahu to comply with “the laws of war,” while enabling Israel with more weapons and UN vetoes to violate daily “the laws of war” and the Genocide Convention. (See our October 24, 2023 Letter to President Joe Biden and the Declarations from genocide scholars William Schabas and other expert historians).

The Israeli operation precisely fits the Genocide Convention’s definition by “intentionally creating conditions of life calculated to physically destroy a racial, religious, ethnic, or national group in whole or in part.”

Consider the plight of these innocent civilians, caught in the deadly crossfire of F-16s, helicopter gunships, and thousands of precision 155mm artillery shells. Whether huddled in their homes and schools or fleeing to nowhere under Israeli orders, the IDF is still bombing them.

Palestinians cannot escape their blockaded prison. They cannot surrender because the Israeli army does not want to be responsible for prisoners of war. They cannot bury their dead, so their families’ corpses pile up, rotting in the sun being eaten by stray dogs.

They cannot even find water to drink, since Israel has destroyed the water infrastructure – another of its many war crimes.

For years under Israel’s occupation law, collection of rainwater with rainwater harvesting cisterns has not been permitted. Rain is considered the property of the Israeli authorities and Palestinians have been forbidden to gather rainwater!

The Israeli armed forces will soon control the entire Gaza Strip. Under international law, Israel would become responsible for the protection of the civilian population as well as the essential conditions for Palestinian safety and survival. Will they at last abide by just one international law? Or will they establish obstructive checkpoints to restrict humanitarian charities trying to save lives while Israel continues to push the Gazans into the desert or neighboring countries?

The Israeli operation precisely fits the Genocide Convention’s definition by “intentionally creating conditions of life calculated to physically destroy a racial, religious, ethnic, or national group in whole or in part.” Netanyahu’s regime further incriminates itself by defining the targets for annihilation as being between 21st-century progress and “the barbaric fanaticism of the Middle Ages” and a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness.”

 

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-s-antisemitism-gaza

 

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