The head of the United Nations World Health Organization said Thursday that Israeli forces killed 28 healthcare workers in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours, and that 73 medical personnel are among the nearly 2,000 Lebanese killed during Israel’s bombing and invasion of its northern neighbor.

“In southern Lebanon, 37 health facilities have been closed, while in Beirut, three hospitals have been forced to fully evacuate staff and patients, and another two were partially evacuated,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. “And yet healthcare continues to come under attack. In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours.”

Tedros said the WHO “calls on urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon,” adding, “Lives depend on it!”

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abiad said separately Thursday that more than 40 paramedics and firefighters have been killed by Israeli forces over the previous three days.

Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, the acting WHO representative in Lebanon, said that “most of those healthcare workers killed in the last 24 hours, most of them—actually, all of them—were on duty.”

“Some of them were in the ambulances, some of them were in the health facilities,” Abubakar added. “They were on duty trying to help civilians who have been wounded in the conflict.”

Dr. Fathalla Fattouh, the head cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH) in Jnah, just outside Beirut, described the chaos he witnessed firsthand, including “a surge of nearly identical injuries—amputations, eye trauma, and shattered hip and femur bones—straining the hospital’s capacity to a near-breaking point.”

“We were forced to make difficult decisions,” he added. “I believe that we did our best relying on available capacities, but with the escalation of events we need to plan for the worst.”

Sara, a surgeon at the hospital, said that “there are only two hospitals in Lebanon prepared to treat burn patients, and once they were at capacity, we were left with nowhere to send the patients we received.”

“It was a feeling of helplessness that we had never experienced before,” she added.

Some doctors admitted fearing for their lives.

“It’s hard to work in fear,” Dr. Mohammad Taoube, who heads the emergency room at an undisclosed hospital in southern Lebanon, toldSky News on Wednesday. “I’m afraid first about my safety and about my family’s safety because there’s no safe place in Lebanon now.”

According to figures provided by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Israeli forces have killed 1,974 people in Lebanon—including at least 127 children—while wounding 9,384 others in recent weeks.

At least one American has been killed by Israeli bombing of Lebanon this week. Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, of Dearborn, Michigan was killed Tuesday while in Nabatieth in southern Lebanon caring for his sick mother and volunteering to help elderly, disabled, and injured patients at a local hospital.

The Nabatieth area has come under heavy Israeli bombardment. Local journalists said the city’s main hospital “came under direct Israeli fire” on Friday and that two nurses were killed.

Lebanese officials said Friday that more than 1.2 million people have been forcibly displaced amid Israel’s recent bombing and invasion of their country. The Israeli campaign comes amid attacks by the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah, whose rockets and other projectiles have killed or wounded scores of Israelis and forced tens of thousands from their homes.

Residents of southern Lebanon described the terror of coming under Israeli bombardment and having to flee for their lives. One woman, Fatima, and her 14-year-old daughter Zeinab said they were in their home preparing for a school exam when the shelling started.

“My mother told us to pack our things quickly, and we left in a rush,” Zeinab told the U.N. Children’s Fund on Thursday. “My siblings were crying. The journey was terrifying.”

“The shelling was all around us, and the sound of explosions echoed everywhere,” she said while crying. “We miss home dearly and yearn to return.”

Tedros noted that since last October, when Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, over 1 million Lebanese have been displaced, with many seeking refuge in neighboring Syria.

He also said that “since the 7th of October last year, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel, almost 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 700 in the West Bank.”

“In addition,” Tedros added, “more than 10,000 people are missing in Gaza, and 1.9 million people are displaced, while 101 hostages taken from Israel remain in Gaza.”

Hundreds of Palestinians working in the health sector have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, who have deliberately targeted medical workers. Israeli troops have also allegedly tortured doctors and other medical workers after kidnapping them from the coastal enclave.

Tedros on Thursday stressed the need for “deescalation of the conflict; for healthcare to be protected and not attacked; for access routes to be secured and supplies delivered; and for a cease-fire, a political solution, and peace.”

“The best medicine,” he said, “is peace.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/lebanon-health-workers-killed

 

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Live: Netanyahu says 'shame' on Macron for urging halt to weapons supply to Israel

French President Emmanuel Macron brought “shame” on himself by calling on countries to stop providing Israel with weapons for use in Gaza, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday. Earlier, Macron said that France will host an international conference in October to boost support for Lebanon, which is currently embrioled in a conflict with Israel. Follow our liveblog on the conflict in the Middle East. 

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20241005-%F0%9F%94%B4-live-hezbollah-fighters-clash-with-israeli-troops-in-lebanon-border-area

 

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After being hit by some 200 Iranian missiles Israel has not yet dared to response to to the strike. It instead has launched new air attacks into the center of Beirut and its southern area known as Dahiyeh (which simply means suburb) with its predominantly Shia population.

Israel seems to have forgotten what attacks on Dahiyeh mean:

Hizbullah asserts that it has established a new deterrence equation: an Israeli attack on the al-Dahieh neighborhood in Beirut will be met with a retaliatory strike on Tel Aviv.
…
According to Hizbullah, the new equation established by Hassan Nasrallah is that any attack on Tel Aviv will be the response to Israeli actions taken in the al-Dahieh district in Beirut.

Hizbullah’s new leadership will certainly adhere to that doctrine.

That Hizbullah has not been degraded by Israel’s strikes at is leadership could be seen by yesterday’s incursion attempts by the Israeli army into south Lebanon. Its special forces was immediately ambushed by Hizbullah forces. Eight of its soldiers were killed and many more wounded. Additional casualties were reported today.

Israel is now tempted to risk an all out war with Iran. There is little chance that such a war would achieve anything but an all out war in the Middle East, a rapid increase in oil prices and a severe hit on the Democratic chances in the ongoing election campaign.

Iran, who’s ballistic missiles had no problems in passing Israels air defenses, has threatened an all out attack on Israel’s infrastructure – electricity and gas installations as well as harbors – should Israel attempt to take revenge against Iran.

U.S. media still spreading the myth that the Biden administration is trying to hold back Israel.

The Washington Post for example headlines:

Biden works to limit conflict as Mideast edges closer to all-out war

However the piece admits that some views disagree strongly with its headline:

American officials say they are encouraging Israel to respond in a measured way, but U.S. allies in Europe are concerned that Washington is not putting sufficient pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Our understanding is the Americans are not holding them back,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.

Further down it comes to the heart of the issue:

Biden has been unwilling to use the most significant source of U.S. leverage — conditioning or suspending military aid to Israel — to try to change the dynamics of the war, as Israel has repeatedly rebuffed U.S. advice and counsel.

Not for one moment has Biden tried to limit Israel’s ability to strike on its neighbors. A headline in the Times of Israel even proclaims that Biden is urging Israel to launch a new strike:

Biden: US opposes Israel hitting Iran nuclear sites, response should be ‘proportional’

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Biden urged Israel to respond “proportionally” to the attack. Asked whether he backs a strike on Iranian nuclear sites, Biden responded: “The answer is no.”

Yves at Naked Capitalism correctly notes that:

Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran

Yves shows that its was U.S. treachery that preceded the Israeli attack on Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

We now learn that Nasrallah had agreed to the ceasefire shortly before he was assassinated and Israel or the US was affirmatively duplicitous, as if that comes as a surprise. Antiwar summarizes a CNN interview with the Lebanese foreign minister:

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has said that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah agreed to a US and French-proposed 21-day ceasefire with Israel right before Israel killed him.

Habib said the US and France told Lebanon that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also agreed to the ceasefire proposal.

“They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this, and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And, you know what happened since then,” Habib told CNN host Christiane Amanpour.

I would put my bet on the misrepresentation being US doing, to secure agreement from Hezbollah and then hope they could use that to browbeat Israel into what it would contend was a short pause. Recall that the US has presented ceasefire proposals as originating with Israel and later ‘fessed up that they came from Biden.

It was this ceasefire lie by the Biden administration that enabled the Israeli strike which then prompted the moderate Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian to change his course. As I noted yesterday:

Pezeshkian noted rather bitterly that the order by the Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahoo to kill Nasrallah had been given from New York:

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the international community will not forget that the order for Israel’s terrorist act to assassinate Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was issued from New York.
…
In a message of condolences on Saturday, Pezeshkian said the United States cannot absolve itself of complicity with the Zionists in the terror attack against the Hezbollah chief.

The assassination of Nasrallah demonstrated that Pezeshkian’s politics of moderation had failed.

After arriving back in Tehran Pezeshkian’s tone had changed: …

In a second point Yves presents evidence that the Iranian attack on Israel has caused significant damage and likely disabled significant parts of Israel’s F-35 fighter forces.

She then quotes a Code Pink piece which concludes:

Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden’s coat-tails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.

Meanwhile, pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq warn that, if the U.S. joins in strikes on Iran, they will target U.S. bases in Iraq and the region.

So we are careening toward a catastrophic war with Iran, with no U.S. diplomatic leadership and only Trump and Harris waiting in the wings. As Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft, “If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here — avoiding war.”

The U.S. has many indefensible assets in the Middle East. Its troops in Iraq and Syria are few and in precarious positions. Its bases in the Gulf states have no defense against attacks from Iran and its navel forces in the Middle East lack the ability to refuel the fleet.

Should Israel be allowed to strike Iran the security of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, the energy infrastructure of the whole region and the global oil supplies will be in danger of imminent destruction.

It is high time for someone to wake the White House up to those facts.

from Moon of Alabama.

 

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THE KIDS  IN GUS'S TOON AT TOP CAME FROM THIS SOURCED IMAGE...

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202408/15/WS66bd3f67a3104e74fddba072.html

 

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The documentary film The Bibi Files – on screen and in reality     Viktor Mikhin

 

For the past eight years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has been under continuous investigation on charges of serious corruption. His brazen but fruitless attempts to avoid legal action have dramatically shaken Israel’s stability, both domestically and internationally.

A new documentary film The Bibi Files about his disreputable dealings, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, held in Toronto, Canada, on September 9 and 10, is an urgent journalistic exposé based on previously unreleased footage and new interviews with key figures in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Netanyahu spokesman Nir Hefetz, former Shin Bet leader Ami Ayalon and investigative journalist Raviv Drucker. The film details the serious corruption that resulted in Netanyahu being rightly indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud in 2019. His wife Sara and son Yair are also involved in these cases. In the past, Israeli leaders facing corruption charges have resigned, but Netanyahu has been able to cling onto power forging alliances with far-right loyalists who now hold most of the key positions in the current cabinet. He has also attempted to assert control over Israel’s Supreme Court, a move which leading to widespread street protests from January through October 2023.Israel’s powerful lobby in the US and certain Western leaders are acting like puppeteers pulling strings from behind the curtain

Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu’s attempts to delay his own trial are the key to understanding all recent events, from his endorsement of the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, his controversial approach to negotiating hostage releases (in effect, a refusal to negotiate), and his military decisions that have created a dangerous situation that the UN Secretary General has described as “a moral stain on us all.”

Political maneuvering

The film The Bibi Files, which has debuted at a Canadian film festival, for the first time lifts the veil on leaked videos of Netanyahu’s interrogations by police, and appears to be a strategic “chess move” by the West, as part of a wider campaign to manage public opinion should Netanyahu be forced to abdicate. Israeli media had already published compromising evidence in the form of these interrogation videos, and thus the film does not reveal any new information. Western countries, particularly the United States, have been criticized for constantly “fueling” Israel’s military machine in Gaza by providing the regime with unwavering military support in addition to huge political and financial assistance. In recent months, there have been large-scale protests in the United States, Canada and European countries against the war in Gaza and the West’s support for the offensive.
Moreover, Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, or, to put it more bluntly, the massacre of Palestinian civilians, have exacerbated the regime’s international isolation. The UN International Court of Justice has accused Israel of genocide, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on charges of committing war crimes and atrocities against humanity.
Israel’s dissatisfaction with Israel and the regime’s growing isolation have caused deep concern among its Western allies. They fear that growing anti-Israel sentiment will pose a serious threat to the existence of the Netanyahu regime. There is now no doubt that all Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, as well as the regime’s Western allies, have the blood of Palestinian civilians on their hands. But the West seems eager to turn Netanyahu into a sacrificial lamb or scapegoat for the heinous crimes the regime has committed.

The Bibi Files, despite its topicality and relevance, is consistent with this trend. In fact, the documentary demonizes its main subject in order to maintain the power structure in Israel. Israel’s powerful lobby in the US and certain Western leaders are acting like puppeteers pulling strings from behind the curtain. By focusing on Netanyahu, they hope to placate the growing opposition to Israel’s barbarism and whitewash its atrocities in the Palestinian territories, particularly during the Gaza war.

Films like The Bibi Files use cinematic storytelling to protect the real villains. But when the curtain falls and the lights come up, the audience realizes the fact that the masterminds have sacrificed the main subject of the film to protect themselves. The Bibi Files ends with Benjamin Netanyahu’s late July speech to a joint session of the US Congress, where he was met with thunderous applause. Weaving a web of deceit and playing the innocent, he tried to justify his army’s bloodbath in Gaza. When Netanyahu returned to Israel, he killed more Palestinians, including women and children.
Now Bibi’s American masters have concluded that the “butcher of Gaza” must be sacrificed to ensure that apartheid and the Israeli regime will continue to exist in the future, and can continue to simply exterminate Palestinians under various pretexts.

The main idea of the film

The documentary, directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Alex Gibney features hitherto unseen footage of police questioning of Netanyahu, his family and his inner circle on corruption charges. The questioning on the bribery charges was recorded between 2016 and 2018 and have never been made public in Israel due to privacy laws. According to Variety magazine, recordings of Netanyahu’s questioning by police between those years were leaked to Bloom in early 2023. When he obtained the recordings, Israel was witnessing mass demonstrations against Netanyahu’s push for controversial judicial reforms. The recordings consist of thousands of hours of interviews. The documentary portrays Netanyahu as a leader facing several criminal charges, including bribery, and how his actions after his indictment have influenced his decision-making, particularly his response to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, Hamas’ surprise military attack in southern Israel on October 7 last year. Benjamin Netanyahu, is on trial for fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases filed in 2019. These cases are listed as 1000, 2000, and 4000, and include bribery charges. Netanyahu’s first trial was put on hold because of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm and the ensuing Israeli war of genocide in Gaza. Israel’s prime minister has categorically denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the allegations as a complete fabrication and a witch hunt.

From the beginning, the Bibi Files does not shy away from exposing Netanyahu’s manipulative tactics. It demonstrates his chilling skill at inciting fear, his calculated use of divisive rhetoric, and his cynical exploitation of the media to create an atmosphere of constant crisis, all aimed at consolidating his own power.

The movie debunks the myth of Netanyahu as a strong man, revealing the hollowness beneath his image as a determined leader. It exposes his willingness to sacrifice unity on the altar of political expediency, turning a society once advertised as a “vibrant democracy” into a fractured landscape of distrust and suspicion.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an unfinished saga that continues to make headlines every day and has been the subject of many films . ЁFive years after numerous corruption charges were leveled against him, Netanyahu is still in power. Mass protests against Netanyahu have erupted regularly, with demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and a deal to swap Israeli hostages for the many Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Netanyahu’s corruption trial continues, as do the US arms shipments to Israel, which are contributing to the killing of Palestinian civilians. The war in Gaza has drawn attention to US ties with Israel, and the Bibi Files gives a clear picture of how the “special relationship” between the two nations works on multiple levels. Some of the most sobering conclusions of the former senior Israeli officials interviewed in the documentary relate to the responsibility of influential and even ordinary US citizens.

 

Victor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

 

https://journal-neo.su/2024/09/27/the-documentary-film-the-bibi-files-on-screen-and-in-reality/

 

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