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By Liz Theoharis

On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said. Rare public opponents of the drive to war at the time, they wrote with level-headed clarity:

“We foresee that a military response would not end the terror. Rather, it would spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives, and new acts of terrorism… Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and cooperatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law… and work for justice at home and abroad.”

Twenty-three years and more than two wars later, this statement reads as a tragic footnote to America’s Global War on Terror that left an entire region of the planet immiserated. It contributed to the direct and indirect deaths of close to 4.5 million people, while costing Americans almost $9 trillion and counting.

The situation is certainly different today. Still, over the last few weeks, those prophetic words, now 22 years old, have been haunting me, as the U.S. war machine kicks into ever higher gear following the horrific Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and the brutal intensification of the decades-long Israeli siege of civilians in Gaza. Sadly, the words and actions of our nation’s leaders have revealed a staggering, even willful, historical amnesia about the disastrous repercussions of America’s twenty-first-century war-mongering.

Case in point: recently, the United States was the only nation to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver life-saving aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, all but a few members of Congress are lining up to support billions more in military aid for Israel and the further mobilization of our armed forces in the Middle East. These moves, experts say, may only accelerate wider regional conflict (something we are already seeing glimmers of vis-à-vis Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen) at a time of increasingly profound global instability. In the last few weeks, the U.S. Navy has “assembled one of the greatest concentrations of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in 40 years,” while the Department of Defense is readying thousands of troops for possible deployment. Meanwhile, college administrators are suggesting student-reservists be prepared in case they get called up in the coming weeks.

Amid this frenzy of American bluster and brawn, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees reports that Gaza is “fast becoming a hell hole,” riddled with death, disease, starvation, thirst, and displacement. Hundreds of scholars of international law and conflict studies have warned that the Israeli military may already have launched a “potential genocide” of Gazans. At the same time, within Israel, citizen-militias, armed by the far-right minister of national security, have escalated violent attacks on Palestinians, only worsened by the acts of armed Israeli settlers on the West Bank protected by that very military.

Finally allowing a tiny amount of aid across the Egypt-Gaza border, after shutting down all food, water, and fuel for Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made it clear just how much power the United States wields over this unfolding humanitarian crisis. “The Americans insisted,” he reported, “and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”

As Gallant implied, the U.S. could use its influence not only to demand far more aid for Gazans, but to compel quite a different course of action. There should, after all, be no contradiction between condemning Hamas for its heinous slaughter in the south of Israel and denouncing Israel for its decades-old dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people and its now-indiscriminate killing and destruction in Gaza. There need be no contradiction between decrying terrorism and demanding diplomacy over violence. In truth, the Biden administration could use every non-military tool at its disposal to pressure both Hamas and Israel to pursue an immediate ceasefire, the full release of all hostages, and whatever humanitarian assistance is now needed.

If only, rather than further militarizing the region or questioning the death toll in Gaza, the Biden administration were to focus on making this most recent and ever more ominous crisis a final turning point, not for yet more brutality, but for a long-term political solution focused on achieving real peace, human rights, and equality for everyone in the region. In this moment of grief and rage, when tensions are at a fever pitch and the wheel of history is turning around us, it’s time to demand peace above all else.

The Cruel Manipulation of the Poor

While the U.S. government refuses to use its considerable power as leverage for peace, ordinary Americans seem to know better. Unlike the days after 9/11, recent polls suggest that a majority of Americans oppose sending more weapons to Israel and support delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, including a majority of people under the age of 44, as well as a majority of Democrats and independents and a significant minority of Republicans. While Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, was made a pariah and is in the process of being censured by some of her colleagues after her plea for a ceasefire, she actually represents the popular will of a significant portion of the public.

And that, in turn, represents a generational shift from even a decade or two ago. In the wake of this country’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as dozens of other military conflicts globally, many Americans, especially Millennials and Gen Zers, see the U.S. military less as a defender of democracy than as a purveyor of death and chaos. Nearly second-by-second online coverage of the Israeli bombing campaign is offering Americans an unprecedented view into the collective punishment of more than two million Gazans, half of them 18 or younger. (Now, with limited Internet and communications, it’s unclear how word of what’s happening in Gaza will continue to get out.) Add to that the slow-burning pain that has marked life in the United States over the last 15 years — the Great Recession, the Covid-19 economic shock, the climate crisis, and the modern movement for racial justice — and the reasons for such a relatively widespread urge for peace become clearer.

Today, half of all Americans are either impoverished or one emergency away from economic ruin. As younger generations face what often feels like a dead-end future, there’s a growing sense among those I speak to (as well as older folks) that the government has abandoned them. At a moment when the Republicans (and some Democrats) argue that we can’t afford universal healthcare or genuine living wages, the military budget for 2023 is $858 billion and the Pentagon still maintains 750 military bases globally. Last week, without a touch of irony, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who claimed last year that student debt relief would hurt the economy, insisted that the U.S. can “certainly afford two wars.”

Millions of us tuned into President Biden’s Oval Office speech on his return from Israel, only the second of his presidency. There, he asked Congress to earmark yet another $100 billion mainly for American military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan (a boon to the war-profiteering weapons makers whose CEOs will grow even richer thanks to those new contracts). Just a year after Congress killed the Expanded Child Tax Credit, which had cut official child poverty in half, Biden’s speech represented a further pivot away from socially beneficial policymaking and toward further strengthening of the ravenous engine of our war economy. After the speech, the Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel offered this compelling instant commentary: “Biden tonight rolled out a version of twenty-first-century military Keynesianism. Let’s call his policy just that. No more Bidenomics. And it consigns the U.S. to endless militarization of foreign policy.”

A decision to organize our economy yet more around war will also mean the further militarization of domestic policy, with dire consequences for poor and low-income people. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once called such steps the “cruel manipulation of the poor,” a phrase he coined as part of his denunciation of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. King was then thinking about the American soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam “on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.”

Today, a similar “cruel manipulation” is playing out. For years, our leaders have invoked the myth of scarcity to justify inaction when it comes to widespread poverty, growing debt, and rising inequality in the United States. Now, some of them are calling for the spending of billions of dollars to functionally fund the bombardment and occupation of impoverished Gaza and a violent Israeli clampdown in the West Bank, not to speak of the possibility of a wider set of Middle Eastern wars. However, polling numbers suggest that a surprising number of Americans have seen through the fog of war and are perhaps coming to believe that our nation’s abundance should be used not as a tool of death but as a lifeline for poor and struggling people at home and abroad.

Not in Our Name

In a time of stifling darkness, one bright light over the last weeks has been the eruption of non-violent, pro-peace protests across the world. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, hundreds of thousands of people have hit the streets to demand a ceasefire, including possibly half a million people in London. Here in the U.S., tens of thousands of Americans have followed suit in dozens of cities, from New York to Washington, D.C., Chicago to San Francisco. No less important, those protest marches have been both multi-racial and multi-generational, much like the 2020 uprisings for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the countless other Black lives lost to police brutality.

Recently, close friends and colleagues sent me photos from a march in Washington where Jewish protesters demanded a ceasefire and held up signs with heartrending slogans like “Not in My Name,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “My Grief Is Not Your Weapon.” Ultimately, close to 400 people, including numerous rabbis, were arrested as they peacefully sang and prayed in a congressional office building, while David Friedman, ambassador to Israel under President Trump, hatefully tweeted: “Any American Jew attending this rally is not a Jew — yes I said it!” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia ludicrously claimed that they were leading an insurrection.

Two days later, my organization, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, cosponsored a pro-peace march that drew a large crowd of Palestinians and Muslim-American families. At noon, about 500 protesters, a gorgeous, multicolored sea of humanity participated in the Jumma call to prayer in front of the U.S. Capitol. The following week, folks co-organized a pray-in at New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries’s office, using the phrase “ceasefire is the moral choice.” Faith and movement leaders offered prayers from their various religious traditions and displayed the names of people killed so far.

On October 27th, as Israel expanded its ground invasion of Gaza, I joined thousands of people in Grand Central Station to call for a #CeasefireNow, one of the largest demonstrations in New York since this most recent conflict broke out. Protests continued all week. And on November 4th, there was a mass rally and march in Washington, D.C., to call for an end to war and support the rights of Palestinians, with hundreds of organizations bridging a diversity of views and voices to plead for peace.

Those marches were an inspiring indication of the broad coalition of Americans who desperately want to prevent genocide in Gaza and dream of lasting peace and freedom in Israel/Palestine. At the lead are Palestinians and Jews who refuse to be used as pawns and prop-pieces by military hawks. Alongside them are many Americans all too aware that, though they might not be directly affected by the nightmarish events now unfolding in the Middle East, they are still implicated in the growing violence there thanks to their tax dollars and the actions of our government. Together, we are collectively crying out: “Not in Our Name.”

Such marches undoubtedly represent the largest antiwar mobilization since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and are weaving together diverse communities — young and old, Black, Brown, and White, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian, poor and working-class — in a way that should prove encouraging indeed for a growing peace movement. Right now, there are new alliances and relationships being forged that will undoubtedly endure for years to come.

Yes, this remains a small victory in what’s likely to prove a terrifying global crisis, but it is a victory nonetheless.

Roses Dressed in Black

The last few weeks have resurrected traumatic memories for many Jews and Palestinians globally — of the Holocaust, the Nakba, and the long history of Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, anti-Jewish violence, and antisemitism. For many of us who are not Palestinian or Jewish, the recent mass death and violence have also triggered our own painful reckonings with the past.

I’m a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors. When I was a child growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I heard hushed tales of death marches, hunger, lack of water, barricaded roads, and harrowing escapes. Those stories remain etched into my consciousness, a mournful inheritance my dispossessed ancestors handed down.

My great-grandfather, Charles Ozun Artinian, fled his home in what is now Turkey’s Seyhan River valley after the 1909 Adana Massacre in which Ottoman militants killed 25,000 Armenian Christians. Part of his family escaped over the Caucasus Mountains into Western Europe. They then traveled halfway across the world to Argentina, because so many other nations, including the United States, had closed their borders to Armenian refugees and would only open them years later.

As he was fleeing Adana, Charles wrote a poem, one of the few surviving long-form poems from the region at the time. It begins:

“In the Seyhan valley there rises a smoke

Roses dressed in black, month of April cried

Cries of sadness and mourning were heard everywhere

Broken hearted and sad, everybody cried…”

My family taught my siblings and me that although the genocide against our people was carried out by the Ottoman Empire, it was made possible by the complicity and indifference of the international community, including the world’s richest and most powerful nations. Right now, the smoke rising over Gaza is suffocating and every additional hour the U.S. enables more bombs to fall and tanks to rumble, more roses will be, as my great-grandfather put it, dressed in black. Not only that, but with the detonation of each new American-made bomb, the conditions for the long-term freedom and safety of both Israelis and Palestinians are blasted ever more into rubble.

Let us honor the memories of our ancestors and finally learn the lesson of their many stolen lives: “Not In Our Name!,” “Peace and Justice for All!” and the pleas from Gaza, including “Ceasefire Now!,” “End the Siege,” “Protect Medical Facilities,” and “Gaza is Home!”

Liz Theoharis, a TomDispatch regular, is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist.

6 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Alex Lantier

This weekend, as mass protests escalated internationally against the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) war on Gaza, the IDF responded by stepping up bombing attacks on refugee camps and calls for the mass murder of Palestinians.

The IDF bombed the al-Maghazi refugee camp on Saturday, killing at least 51 people according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency, and injuring dozens more. Mohammed Alaloul, a journalist for Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, reported: “An Israeli air strike targeted my neighbors’ house in Al-Maghazi camp. The house next door partially collapsed.” He added that two of his sons—Ahmed, 13, and Qais, 4—had been killed and his wife, mother and two other children were injured.

The IDF bombed schools that were being used as shelters in refugee camps at Al Bureij, killing at least 15, and Jabaliya, killing six—in a camp that had already been bombed three times last week, killing hundreds. UN officials warned that this might be a sign that IDF forces could bomb more of the roughly 150 UN shelters in Gaza, which are housing around 700,000 of Gaza’s roughly 2.2 million population.

IDF forces are using genocidal methods to fight Hamas militias deep inside the Gaza strip, causing horrific casualties and unprecedented levels of suffering. Over 9,770 Palestinians have been killed, including 3,900 children and 2,509 women, with 2,200 missing while at least 70,000 Palestinians have been injured in the IDF war. Moreover, Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza threatens to unleash an unprecedented food and health crisis.

The blockade has cut off all fuel, food and water supplies to Gaza. Palestinians survive on an average of two pieces of bread per day. Moreover, the Israeli blockade has largely incapacitated five of Gaza’s six waste treatment plants and most of its water desalination plants, provoking a breakdown of the sewer system and a catastrophic shortage of drinking water. Gaza officials said that nearly 80 percent of Gaza’s wells have been destroyed.

At least 95 percent of Gazans do not have access to clean drinking water. UN Special Rapporteur Pedro Arrojo told the Spanish daily El Pais that they are drinking salty or brackish water extracted from surviving wells. “Drinking this water will make you vomit, but if you don’t, you’ll be dead in five or six days,” Arroyo said.

Eman Basher, a teacher in Gaza, wrote on X/Twitter: “My kids have been suffering from stomach flu with symptoms including abdominal cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea, which I always assumed is the normal result of sleeping on the floor or change of weather, just to learn that it is caused by contaminated water we drink daily and queue for hours to get. … We’ve been drinking this water for 15 days and fighting to get it.”

The seepage of wastewater into the ground water supply also poses the threat of deadly epidemics in Gaza. “We’re incredibly concerned that if there isn’t a greater level of access to water and sanitation, which requires electricity to enable the delivery of these services to people residing in densely populated urban areas, there will be an outbreak of infectious disease,” said Michael Talhami of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Talhami warned of the likely spread of “cholera, diarrhoea, hepatitis A and typhoid” fever.

A further public health danger comes from thousands of corpses that remain buried under the rubble of buildings bombed and leveled by the IDF.

In the meantime, IDF officials are escalating the bombing campaign targeting health facilities and medical professionals in Gaza. IDF spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed that “Hamas systematically exploits hospitals as part of its war machine,” and even that it “built the Indonesian Hospital to disguise its underground terror infrastructure.”

On Friday, UN officials confirmed that 135 health workers have been killed and 58 health care facilities hit by IDF bombings. Moreover, 16 hospitals and 51 primary health care centers have stopped functioning because of the fighting or lack of fuel due to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Gaza’s main cancer hospital, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, has also reportedly stopped due to IDF bombardments and fuel shortages.

UN officials also reported that 79 UN aid workers have been killed in less than a month of the Israel-Gaza war, the highest number ever in so relatively brief a conflict.

The IDF’s genocidal operations are proceeding with the full support of Washington, abetted by its NATO imperialist allies in Europe.

US officials have ruled out even a ceasefire in talks with their Middle Eastern counterparts. As he met Jordanian and Egyptian officials in Jordan’s capital Amman, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken ruled out any halting of the IDF onslaught against Gaza. A ceasefire, Blinken said, would “leave Hamas in place to regroup and repeat attacks.”

In a series of debased, politically-criminal statements, Israeli officials made it clear that they intend to annihilate Gaza’s Palestinian populations, except possibly for those who accept relocation to concentration camps outside Gaza. These statements came after Israeli Intelligence Ministry officials proposed last week to kill all Palestinians who did not accept deportation outside of Gaza, thus completely destroying the area’s Palestinian population.

On Sunday, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said he was dissatisfied with the current level of mass killing in Gaza and supported annihilating the zone with nuclear bombs. Asked on Kol Barama radio if he supported dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on Gaza, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one option.” Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government issued a reprimand to Eliyahu for making this statement, claiming it was “disconnected from reality.”

Other Israeli ministers’ statements show, however, that Eliyahu’s genocidal statement was not an exaggeration or aberration, but faithfully reflect Netanyahu’s policies.

Galit Distel Atbaryan, a former Diplomacy Minister and now lawmaker of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, called on Israelis to use the energy they showed in protests earlier this year against Netanyahu’s government to carry out the mass murder of the Palestinians. On X/Twitter, she wrote: “Invest this energy in one thing; Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth. That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory or they will die. And their death is evil. Gaza should be erased.”

A wave of murderous violence is also unfolding by far-right Israeli settlers in the West Bank, after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir distributed 10,000 rifles and other military equipment to settlers after the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war. At least 132 Palestinians, including 41 children, have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the past three weeks.

The horrific levels of violence and the impunity with which it it is carried out by far-right forces protected by the Israeli regime and its NATO imperialist allies make one point clear. There is nothing that can be negotiated with the Netanyahu government or with its NATO backers. Halting the slaughter requires unifying the growing international protest movement of workers and youth against the war in a movement against Israel’s war on Gaza and all the capitalist governments that support it.

Originally published in WSWS.org

6 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

The Western World is saturated with false Zionist propaganda in support of genocidally racist, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel, but horrendous mortality data reveal that after one month of the latest genocidal Gaza Massacre by Israel, and as averaged over the last 16 years for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel is equal worst in the World with crime-wracked Honduras for annual killing of children per million of population, and is worst in the World by far for killing journalists.

As outlined below, I have made these quantitative estimates by including data from the Gaza Massacre over the last month. One can only hope that Western journalists who surely (a) love children and (b) feel an obligation towards fellow journalists will find the courage to expose the horrendous, World-leading  killing of  Occupied Palestinian  children and of journalists by out-of-control, neo-Nazi, genocidally racist, and serial war criminal  Apartheid Israel.

(A). Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel is equal worst in the World with crime-wracked Honduras for killing children.

On 15 June 2022 I wrote: “Apartheid Israel in its illegal and war criminal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories is among world leaders in “children killed per year per million of total occupied territory population” with a value of  25.8 as compared to 75.7 (Honduras), 53.6 (Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo), 7.6 (the World), and 2.6 (Kashmir, India). However while the killing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is being done by the occupying  military forces of the neo-Nazi Apartheid State of Israel, that in Honduras is mostly being done by criminal gangs, and that in Ituri  Province (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is mostly being done by criminal rebel gangs” [1].

However the Apartheid Israel-permitted  Breakout of Occupied Palestinian fighters from the Gaza Concentration Camp on 7 October 2023 changed this horrifying statistic for the worse, as set out below.

The UK Guardian has reported that 859 Occupied Palestinian children were killed in the period 2008-September 2023. However it also reports that subsequent to the 7 October 2023 Breakout  and as of 5 November 2023, 3,900 Gaza children have been killed and another 1,250 have been buried in bomb-blasted rubble and presumed killed, for a total of 5,150 child deaths [2].

One can then calculate “children killed per year per million of population” by Apartheid Israel in the Gaza Concentration Camp over the last 30 days = ( 5,150 deaths / 30 days) x (365.25 days/ year) / 2.3 million Gazans =  27,261  “children killed per year per million of total territory population” . This horrifying number of 27,261 is 3,587 times greater than for the World (7.6) and  360 times greater than  for crime-wracked Honduras (75.7).

This awful number is set to increase because there are 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Concentration Camp, the killing is continuing at the same horrendous level, and neo-Nazi Apartheid  has only permitted a trickle of life-sustaining aid into Gaza that from 7 October was subject to a war criminal Israeli siege involving a near-total  ban on water, food, medicine, other medical requisites, electricity and fuel.

In order to be exquisitely  “fair” to  the child-killing Israelis one should estimate  the average from 2008 onwards of “children killed per year per million of the total Occupied Palestinian Territory population”. Children killed in this period totalled 859 + 5,150 = 6,009, this giving “children killed per year per million of total Occupied Palestinian Territory population” = 6,009 Children killed / 16 years)/ (average population of 5.15 million) = 72.9, about the same as for world’s worst Honduras (75.7) but set to rise enormously in coming days, weeks. and months in the deadly absence of water, food, medicine, medical services, electricity and fuel. Indeed neo-Nazi Israeli forces have targeted 58 health care facilities in Gaza, with 132 medics dead,  25 ambulances destroyed, and 58 hospitals and 32 primary care centres forced out of service due to bombing and fuel shortage. 1 million Gazans are homeless  [3].

Another way of seeing this carnage is as Gaza child deaths as reprisals for the killing of 35 Israeli children in the 7 October Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp. One can readily estimate from data provided by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that of the 1,400  Israeli dead,  84.2%  ( 1,179) were 18-39 year old military regulars, conscripts and reservists, 15.8% (221 ) were under 18 and 40 and over, 13.3% (186) were 40 and over (most with military service for the illegal 56-year Occupation), and 2.5% (35) were children. Thus in the last month the neo-Nazi Israelis have killed 5,150/ 35 = 147 Gaza children killedfor every Israeli child killed on 7 October [4] .

However this deadly ratio is probably much higher because it is not clear how many of these  35 Israeli children – and indeed how many of the 1,400 Israelis killed – were actually killed by  Israeli forces responding to the Breakout. Thus Jonathan Cook (eminent reporter on the Middle East and author of “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books)): “Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza. To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day” [5].

(B). Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is worst in the World for annual killing of journalists per million of  population.

On 6 June 2022 I wrote: “The World  was shocked by the recent deliberate killing by an Israeli sniper of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. However over 50 journalists have been killed by Apartheid Israel in the last 2 decades. Careful analysis reveals that Apartheid Israel leads the World  by far in terms of  “average number of journalists killed per 10 million of population per year”. Self-respecting journalists world-wide must report this shocking fact… Apartheid Israel tops the ranking by “average number of journalists killed per 10 million of population per year” that  yields the following order: Occupied Palestine, over 6.164; Syria, 4.733; Afghanistan, 2.563; Israel-Palestine, over 2.190; Somalia, 1.751; Yemen, 1.278; Iraq, 0.897;  Mexico, 0.750; Colombia, 0.366; Philippines, 0.283; Pakistan, 0.152; World, 0.084; India, 0.027. On a per capita basis, the killing of journalists by Apartheid Israel in  Occupied Palestine  leads the World, and is 73.4 times greater than for the World as a whole. In contrast,  India scores 3.1 times lower than the World. The present data shows that Apartheid Israel leads the World by far for killing journalists” [6].

I have updated the death toll of journalists killed by Apartheid Israel in the Occupied Palestinians Territories since 2001 as follows. The respected Irish Times reported (May 2022): “Israel has killed more than 50 Palestinian journalists since 2001, according to the Palestinian Journalism Syndicate, and Reporters Without Borders has recorded more than 144 journalists injured in just the last four years” [7]. The number of journalists killed in  the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 2001 and May 2022 averaged 50 deaths/ 21years = 2.4 per year. Accordingly the number of journalists killed in  the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the 1.3 years between mid-May 2022 and October  2023  totals about 2.4 per year x 1.3 years = 3.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists  (CPJ) (November 2023): “As of November 5, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 36 journalists and media workers were among an estimated 11,000 killed since the war began on October 7 – with more than 9,700 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank, and 1,400 deaths in Israel” [8].

Thus the  number of journalists killed in  the Occupied Palestinians Territories in the circa 22 years from 2001 to 6 November 2023 = 50 (from 2001 to mid-2022) + 3 (from mid-2022 to 6 October 2023) + 36 (7 October 2023 – 5 November 2023) = 89/ 22 years = 4.05 deaths per year. The average Occupied Palestinian Territory population in this period was 4.4 million [9]. Accordingly in the Occupied Palestinian Territory the “average annual number of journalist killed per 10 million of population” since 2001=  4.05 deaths per year /4.4 million of population = 0.92 deaths per million of population = 9.2 journalist deaths per 10 million of population or nearly 2 times greater than for the next worst entity, US Alliance-devastated Syria (4.7 journalist deaths per 10 million of population) [6].

Final comments and conclusions

As set out above, (A) as averaged over the last 16 years for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel is equal worst in the World with crime-wracked Honduras for “annual killing of children per million of population” (72.9 ad 75.7, respectively) , and (B) as averaged over the last 22 years is worst in the World by far for “annual killing of journalists per 10 million of population” (9.2 or nearly 2 times greater than for the next worst entity, US Alliance-devastated Syria (4.7 journalist deaths per 10 million of population).

Yet Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted and US-beholden Western Mainstream journalists resolutely ignore these horrendous realities that have been reported before the present genocidal Gaza Massacre [1, 6] and are apparent from applying first year High School mathematics to the latest data from authoritative sources as carefully documented here.

One naively makes the assumptions that Western Mainstream journalists (a) like other human beings love children, and (b) have human and collegiate loyalty to fellow journalists and especially to their colleagues reporting in dangerous conflict zones. However with some notable exceptions (e.g. the UK Guardian) the Silence is Deafening. The Silence is not through Stupidity (you have to be smart to land a job at the New York Times or the Washington Post) and not through Ignorance (Mainstream media have huge internal information resources as well as ready access to Google, ChatGPT, and ethical, humane and truth-telling Alternative media such as Countercurrents). One concludes that the Silence is due to a combination of unspoken entrenched racism towards non-Europeans and despicable cowardice in self-censoring to please Zionist-subverted media owners.

“Killing children” is such a fundamentally awful crime that it is not even among the Ten Commandments that inform the major historicist Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

However one notes that in the hopefully fictional Old Testament of the Holy Bible the “God” of the genocidal Biblical Israelites repeatedly orders them to totally exterminate their enemies, sparing no men, women, children or even livestock [10].  Indeed serial war criminal and mass murderer, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, in declaring ”war” on the imprisoned Occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Concentration Camp recently echoed the Old Testament and the genocidal Nazis in stating “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible” [11].  Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams: “Human rights defenders on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an “explicit call to genocide” after he delivered a televised address calling Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza a “holy mission” and invoked an ancient mythical foe whom the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded the Israelites to exterminate. Declaring the start of a “second stage” of Israel’s war on Gaza—which he described as a “holy mission”—Netanyahu said that “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose extermination was commanded by God to Saul via the prophet Samuel” [11].

In stark contrast, the wonderful  Palestinian humanitarian Jesus stated: “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea”  [12]. Likewise in the New Testament, Matthew 18.21-23: “21. Then Peter came to Him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times? 22. And Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven. 23. Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a certain king who would settle accounts with his servants” [13].

But sin one more time? Indeed a highly controversial and explicit 1964 Swedish movie called “491” was premised on the following: “It is written that 490 times you can sin and be forgiven. This motion picture is about the 491st” [14].

Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has sinned vastly more than 491 times and has so far killed about 5,150 Occupied Palestinian children in the Gaza Concentration Camp since 7 October 2023. The final death toll is likely to be unimaginably higher. This is an utterly unforgivable crime that is continuing  day after day while the World looks on.  On 27 October the UN General Assembly demanded an immediate  Ceasefire  via a Resolution  supported by 120 decent and mostly non-European countries, but opposed by 59 countries that included  a majority of European allies of pro-Apartheid America and hence of pro-Apartheid Israel [15]. Apartheid is among the worst of crimes as set out in the UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

In my own country, Australia, a nation with a shocking history of an ongoing, 235-year Australian Aboriginal  Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide and blind support for UK, US and Apartheid Israeli settler-colonialism and imperialism, the US lackey Labor Government, the Coalition Opposition, and the Mainstream media overwhelmingly support neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and pro-Apartheid America, this involving  diplomatic support for Israel and military collaboration. The core human ethos is Kindness and Truth but this is rejected by pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid  Australia that has instead substituted  support for genocidal racism and extraordinary, Orwellian Zionist lying and entrenched mendacity [16]. I fervently hope that a majority of decent  Australian are utterly revolted by the ongoing genocidal Gaza Massacre by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and will kick out the shamefully dirty Labor Government at the next election and consign both the racist Coalition and racist Labor to the sewer of history. One envisions a new Australian Government in 2025 composed of the decent Greens in coalition with socially progressive and pro-climate change action Independents.

There are 2 kinds of people in this world, those opposing the killing of innocents, and the others. Zionism is genocidal racism and Nazism without gas chambers but with 90 nuclear weapons, and one of the world’s biggest  high technology militaries and arms industries. Free Palestine! All human rights for all Palestinians! End the Occupation! From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! Ideally there must be a secular and democratic state in Palestine as in post-apartheid South Africa and involving peace, equal rights for all, reconciliation, economic justice for all, secular democracy, security, freedom of movement for all, and return of all refugees [17].

Decent people around the World  must unite against neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and its neo-Nazi pro-Apartheid supporters by (a) informing everyone they can, and (b) urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting this genocidally racist and  neo-Nazi Apartheid rogue state.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World Leaders For Killing Children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .

[2]. Emma Graham-Harrison and Jason Burke, “Gaza’s children face catastrophe as death toll nears 4,000, UN warns”, Guardian, 5 November 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/05/gazas-children-face-catastrophe-as-death-toll-nears-4000-un-warns .

[3]. Mohamed Majed, “Gaza’s death toll from Israeli assault climbs to 8,796”, AA, 1 November 2023: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-s-death-toll-from-israeli-assault-climbs-to-8-796/3040221 .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Death Ratios, Child Deaths & Palestinian Genocide Demand Immediate Cessation Of Gaza Massacre”, 30 October 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/horrendous-death-ratios-child-deaths-palestinian-genocide-demand-immediate-cessation-of-gaza-massacre/ .

[5]. Jonathan Cook, “What our Media fails to tell you about October 7”, Pearls & Irritations, 6 November 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/what-the-bbc-fails-to-tell-you-about-october-7/ .

[6].Gideon Polya, “Remember Shireen Abu Akleh: Apartheid Israel Leads The World For Killing Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/remember-shireen-abu-akleh-apartheid-israel-leads-the-world-for-killing-journalists/ .

[7]. Brendan Ciarán Browne, “Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh a fatal sign of Israel’s control. Pattern of Palestinian media bodies being attacked by Israeli policy is all too evident”, The Irish Times, 16 May 2022: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh-a-fatal-sign-of-israel-s-control-1.4878879 .

[8]. “Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war”, CPJ, 5 November 2023: https://cpj.org/2023/11/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/ .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021.

[10].”Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

[11]. Brett Wilkins, “Netanyahu Accused of ‘Genocidal Intentions’ in Gaza After ‘Holy Mission’ Speech”, Common Dreams, 30 October 2023: https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-genocide .

[12]. The New Testament of the Holy Bible, King James Version, Mark 9.42: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV2&byte=4562737 .

[13]. The New Testament of the Holy Bible, King James Version, Matthew 18.21-23: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018:21-23&version=KJ21 .

[14]. “491”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/491_(film) .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “59 Countries Invite Global Sanctions By Backing Apartheid Israel’s Genocidal Gaza Massacre”, Countercurrents, 3 November 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/59-countries-invite-global-sanctions-by-backing-apartheid-israels-genocidal-gaza-massacre/ .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Submission To National Anti-Corruption Commission: Australian Labor Government’s Lying For Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 22 July 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/07/submission-to-national-anti-corruption-commission-australian-labor-governments-lying-for-apartheid-israel/ .

[17]. “Secular, democratic, one state Palestine: https://sites.google.com/view/onestatepalestine/home .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

6 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abdelfattah Abusrour

I CONDEMN MYSELF

I would like to thank all those who
contacted me by any means to assure
their solidarity and ask about us,
I am grateful beyond limits for those who
are with us in such challenging times
Media Journalists, TV interviewers come to us, pointing fingers
and asking this endless question: Do you condemn Palestinian terrorism?
Do you condemn Hamas?
So, let’s deal with that.

I do condemn myself. I condemn my whole existence
I condemn my own birth in a refugee camp in my own country
I condemn my own birth for being a Palestinian,
while according to many, Palestine does not exist
I condemn my parents, who were uprooted from their destroyed villages
and brought me to life in a refugee camp

I condemn my own life: I had hopes and dreams to be a great biologist
and researcher who would save lives,
an amazing painter and a marvelous photographer,
a fantastic actor and talented writer who would inspire the whole world
I didn’t really search to be famous in anything I have done

I condemn myself for believing that human rights include us
How dare I think that we are even part of these values?
I condemn myself believing in international law and UN resolutions
that people under occupation have the legitimate right to resist by ALL MEANS.

How dare I consider that we are under occupation
I ask for your forgiveness
I believed that standing with the oppressed was the natural thing to do
What can I say… I am so ignorant

So, World!
I am really sorry
I didn’t realize I was misled and misinformed
Should I apologize?
Should I condemn?
I deeply apologize, World!
I apologize to you all
I condemn myself for being who I am
I apologize for not having blond hair and blue eyes
Even though some of my cousins have blond hair and green or blue eyes
I was taught that I should support the oppressed and prevent the oppressor from continuing the oppression
I was told that I should support the evil Black South Africans
against the kind white apartheid system
This was only designed to humanize them
I apologize

I was told to support the Spanish and Italians
Against the dictatorships and fascists
Germans and Europeans against the Nazis
Arabs, Africans, Irish, Scottish against British and European colonization’s
Vietnam, Latin America and Afghanistan against American invasions
I was taught to support Native Americans and Australian, Muslims in Myanmar, China and India… and so many others
Palestinians against British and Zionist occupation
I was taught to support the resistance of the oppressed against the oppressor

I apologize for not being able to forget that I am still a refugee in my own country
I condemn my stubborn reclamation of my right to return to my parents destroyed villages
How dare I do that? How dare all these stubborn Palestinian refugees claim that right of return?
I condemn my parents who raised me with, “If you are consumed with hatred,
you lose your humanity” How dare they not to teach me how to hate?
I apologize for not accepting the exile of my brother,
the imprisonment of my brothers, cousins, nephews, neighbors and so many others…
I couldn’t understand your human rights and international law.
I thought I was protected as a human being or even if considered as a human animal?
I apologize for my ignorance…

I apologize that I still couldn’t figure out how to co-exist with occupation,
oppression, dehumanization and be happy about it?
Do you have special training? I am happy to join….
Or should I just say, no thank you… I pass

We will not forget…. We will remember
We will not forget the silence, the hypocrisy, the blackmailing
We will not forget those who raised their voice and stood with what is just and right
We will not forget anything

You can continue to push for despair and we will continue to flourish with hope
You can continue to promote death and we will continue to promote life
You will continue to do your worst.  We will continue to do our best

A poem by Abdelfattah Abusrour PhD, a visionary arts educator, Winner of Stars Foundation Impact Award 2016, Ashoka Fellow – Social Entrepreneur 2006, Synergos Social Innovator 2011.

October 14th, 2023

Sourrce: forsea.co

By Tom Suarez

For 75 years, Israel has been terrorizing Gaza, attacking and bombing the very people it ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948. When finally on 7 October the Gaza concentration camp blew wide open, the ‘West’ feigned outrage — and blamed Gaza. Herewith a crash-course for the media and US presidents…

What is Gaza?

● Gaza is an ancient region of Palestine. But the world now knows it as the Gaza strip, a specific area severed from the rest of Palestine by Israel’s acquisition of territory by force.

Who are its people?

● Although Gaza has been home to Palestinians since ancient times, most of Gaza’s people today are originally from land now under Israeli control, ethnically cleansed by Israel because they are not Jewish. Israel continues to block them from returning home for that singular reason, sealing the “strip” as a ghetto for non-Jews.

Certainly they can at least get to the West Bank to escape the carnage?

● No. Already in 1948, Israel began shooting Palestinians attempting to cross from Gaza to the West Bank. In 1967 Israel created bantustans out of the Palestinian land it seized in the Six Day War, and assigned all non-Jews ID cards for one bantustan or another.

But today this has to do with Hamas, a terrorist organization

● The word ‘terrorist’ has lost all meaning in political parlance. Terrorism is deliberate violence against civilians to achieve a political end — precisely the tactic Israel was born by, and continues to exist by. Palestinian violence, terror or not, justifiable in means or not, is in self-defense against Israeli terror.

● Israel uses terror to achieve its goals because those very goals constitute crimes against humanity. Palestinian goals are those of human rights, equality, and freedom, but we, the ‘international community’, have for 75 years denied them any conventional means of defense, while empowering their tormentors.

● Hamas’ breach of the Gaza ‘fence’ on October 7 was not in itself an act of terror — as the elected government responsible for the Palestinians’ security, it had the very obligation to breach the concentration camp walls.

But Hamas killed 1400 Israelis, took 200 hostages, and committed atrocities

● Hamas’ capturing or killing of Israeli soldiers enforcing the concentration camp is legitimate self-defense. Hamas’ killing of civilians is not. But if we are to be reduced to argument by body count, even just a single Israeli massacre against Gaza (2014) killed twice as many civilians, and the US Congress applauded it.

● The “1400” figure is repeated despite substantial evidence that the IDF, not Hamas, was responsible for many of those deaths, whether through indiscriminate fire or because of the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ in which Israel deliberately eliminates captives to avoid hostages.

● Hamas did indeed take civilian hostages. Yet Israel holds at any time five-to-ten thousand Palestinian kidnapped civilians, many of them children; but instead of calling them hostages, calls them ‘prisoners’, and we go along with it.

● As regards Hamas atrocities, surely Israel would have documented them? Forty beheaded babies and not even a photograph for war crimes trials? We have instead only words parroted by the media and US president. This is not to say that atrocities could not have occurred; yet the few survivors whose accounts have been made public speak instead of being well-treated, even respectfully treated, despite the inherently terrifying situation.

Antisemitism is through the roof

● It is an offense against common decency — and indeed against Jewish identity — that the cloud of antisemitism is raised to smokescreen genocide. Contrary to the spin of US politicians, Hamas did not attack Israel because it hated Jews. This exploitation of antisemitism to cover Israel’s ongoing crimes should be condemned, not obeyed.

● Ironically, those bigots who indeed blame ‘the Jews’ for the carnage against Gaza are merely taking Israel at its word — that Israel acts in the name of Jews, as Jews.

● The organizations supplying the ever-rising antisemitism figures repeated by the media use a fictitious definition of antisemitism (IHRA) that was specifically engineered to smear voices critical of Israel as antisemitic. Even my pointing this out adds another tick to their tally.

There is no answer to this ‘conflict’

● There has always been an answer: the end of apartheid, equal rights for everyone river-to-sea in a secular state. Israel blocked this in 1947, and continues to block it today, because the end of apartheid means the end of Israel. That is and always has been the cause of these decades of misery.

● Thus the end to this 75-year catastrophe lies entirely in the hands of Israel and its benefactors. There are no ‘two sides’ to this. No Palestinian has ever occupied Israeli land, placed Israelis under apartheid, ethnically cleansed Israelis, or blocked Israelis from going home or getting medical treatment or going to school or pursuing their dreams. The present horror is not the result of evolutionary events, but of the singular goal of the Zionist movement for well over a century: a messianic state based on racial supremacy and ‘purity’, achievable only through the dehumanization and elimination of another people.

Tom Suárez is a London-based historical researcher as well as a professional Juilliard-trained violinist and composer.

4 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

Unmasking the US/Israel rhetoric of war, human rights, and geopolitical strategy in Palestine.

By Marwan Bishara

Watching the United States deploy two aircraft carriers and a major naval strike force to the Middle East to threaten nemeses and help Israel sow death and destruction in Palestine, I am reminded of a story told by St Augustine about a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him how he dared to molest the sea. “How dare you molest the whole world,” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief. You, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.”

Indeed, after two decades of imperial US wars that molested the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s administration is at it again, issuing threats and ultimatums to Palestinian and other resistance groups while shielding its client state, Israel, as it bombs Gaza and reoccupies the rest of Palestine; history be damned. As if millions of US/Israel war casualties were not enough, the American administration is now an enthusiastic accomplice in Israel’s unravelling genocide against besieged Palestinian Arabs in Gaza.

Like other empires, old and new, America is careful to speak of human rights as it helps decimate human life. It claims to respect the laws of war but continues to provide justifications for the Israeli murder of thousands of Palestinians. The benevolent empire expresses sorrow at the sight of a single dead infant but provides the deadly weapons and the political rationale to slaughter thousands of women and children. Its diplomats preach peace while propagating war.

For decades, America and Israel have been waging asymmetrical wars in the Middle East, where they devastate countless communities and displace millions of people under the pretext of self-defence. They demonise their enemies and dehumanise their victims to justify massive and disproportionate use of firepower, causing as much harm and suffering as possible.

After decades of war, the US and Israel have developed a comprehensive lexicon of newspeak and media guides that highlight the “righteousness” of their cause and the “evilness” of their enemies. They claim, for example, that the Israeli armed forces are “trained, tasked and operate to ensure that Palestinian civilians remain safe”, never mind the countless Palestinian civilian casualties so far in Gaza.

Despite the huge difference between Hamas and al-Qaeda, the fearmongering that followed the 9/11 attacks on the US, which shut down debate and led to catastrophic failures in the following two decades, has been replicated as if nothing has changed. Soon Hamas, a native Islamist resistance movement born out of, and marked by, oppressive occupation, came to be seen as ISIL (ISIS) incarnate – evil, fanatic and brutal – that must be annihilated at any cost.

The American and Israeli narrative is the same; it is as consistent as it is deceptive. Their fight is “on behalf of civilisation against barbarity”, of “good against evil” and “with moral clarity against moral bankruptcy”. Their fight is always in self-defence, their wars always just, their intentions always noble, even altruistic. They fight for democracy and freedom against totalitarianism and terrorism. If their allies are terrorists and dictators, as is often the case, they are swiftly rebranded as freedom fighters and moderates.

Such righteousness would be worthy of respect if only it was honest or true.

The American-Israeli strategic liaison, born during the latter’s 1967 war and occupation, has been the main engine of instability and violence in the region ever since. As the US replaced Europeans as the leading imperial power in the region at the height of the Cold War and became Israel’s patron, it paved the way for an imperial colonial alliance that occupies and subjugates the peoples of the Middle East as well.

The United States designated Israel as a regional policeman in the 1960s, a regional influencer in the 1970s, a strategic asset in the 1980s, and it has since been viewed as being at the forefront of the US war on terrorism. Paradoxically, almost every time Israel rejected an American peace initiative, it was somehow rewarded by a new Pentagon deal and greater military assistance, latest of which topped $38 billion.

For decades now, the US and Israel have demanded that the Arabs choose between Good and Evil and told them they are “either with US or against us” as they wreaked havoc in the region. In 1958, the devil was Egypt’s pan-Arab leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser; in 1968, it became Palestinian guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat; in 1978, Iran’s ayatollah; and when all three were no longer threats, Saddam Hussein emerged as the new devil. Predictably, after Saddam was “contained”, Osama bin Laden became the devil of all devils, until Saddam emerged once again as the chief devil. And since 2008, Iran-supported Hamas and Hezbollah have become the new regional devils that must be defeated once and for all.

This came into full view in the latest Gaza war when the United States redeployed its armadas to the region last month to shield Israel from any potential regional retaliation from the likes of Lebanon’s Hezbollah to allow it to carry out its genocide against the Palestinians in response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Before looking for their next “evil” enemy in the Middle East, and plunge the region into more chaos and violence, the United States and Israel may want to look inwards, for a change, and save us all another horrific war.

Ten thousand dead and tens of thousands of wounded Palestinians later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the Middle East in an attempt to turn Israel’s war crimes into a diplomatic and strategic successes. Expect the modern-day imperial emissary to coerce the Arab regimes into joining a new Pax Americana revolving around colonial Israel.

Marwan Bishara is an author who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs.

3 November 2023

Source: aljazeera.com

By CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Guest contributor

Maung Zarni

I was barely four-years-old when the Six Day War broke out between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, namely Syria, Jordan and Egypt in June 1967.

The end of the war saw Israeli seizure – and what turned out to be permanent occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, Jordan’s West Bank with East Jerusalem as a part of it, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on June 8, and Syria on June 9, and it was signed with Israel on June 11. The war resulted in more than 20,000 Arab casualties while Israel suffered 1,000 deaths.

Three decades after the war, on the ABC News with Ted Koppel, Nelson Mandela – a supporter of Palestinian liberation struggle and by then the iconic anti-apartheid leader – demanded that Israel return the occupied territories to the indigenous population of Palestine.

The war – known as the Six Day War (as it lasted only six days) – was too far away from my hometown of Mandalay, Burma. I was too young to take an interest in matters that did not involve sweets or plays or singing nursery rhymes. I knew absolutely nothing about the war, the context, the immediate trigger, nor the loss of lives from all sides or the territorial annexation.

But I was 10-years-old when the 1973 war (the fourth such war), between Israel and its Arab neighbors broke out on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur on Oct. 6, 1973 (the tenth day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan).

I already had a rudimentary knowledge of history and current affairs both through my elementary school textbooks, and my extended family with an interest in global affairs. I learned with a deep sense of horror about the Nazi genocide of the Jews, the Second World War, the Burmese liberation struggles against the British rule and the Japanese fascist occupation of my country for a combined total of 124 years. My mother was a trained historian, who picked history books for me to read for leisure, and my paternal step-grandfather was an avid newspaper reader.

During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Burmese state newspaper outlets, like the Working People’s Daily, would print the Arab-Israel war news and analyses, with pro-Israel spins.

I even remember the news reportage of the visit to Rangoon’s landmark Shwedagon Pagoda of Israeli war hero General Moshe Dayan. Decades later I learned that the celebrated visitor was our dictator’s good friend.

“Bogyoke, or general, and Moshe Dayan were quite close,” recalled the late June Rose Bellamy, the wife of General Ne Win, whom I called Aunty. When I was researching about the general and the military affairs, I would visit Aunty in Florence and we became close friends in the final decade of her life in Italy.

Back to 1973 

With newspapers lying around in our living room after my grandfather had read them, I would leaf through the pages, looking at the infographics filled with troop strengths, casualties, maps, and other usual war-related information.

With my nascent racial consciousness – I must hasten to add, with growing elements of anti-Arab, anti-Indian and anti-Muslim racisms – I would delight in the news of Israeli military victories over the “hooked-nose and deceptive” Arab invaders. My perception and attitude towards “the Arabs”, whom I presumed – obviously falsely – were all Muslims, was beginning to crystalize.

Based on my own country’s anti-British and anti-colonial history, at least among the Burmese Buddhist majority with deep family ties to our national armed forces – known as the Tatmadaw – I was opposed to any foreign invaders to any sovereign nation. As a 10-year-old beginning to experience nationalism, I thought that Israel, a sovereign state, was great at repelling the “crooked” Arab invaders. I cheered on quietly reading how Israeli troops and the air force had dealt the enemy blow by blow. Reading the war news then was like watching your favorite football team scoring multiple times against their opponents.

But 50 years had flown by since the Arab-Israel War – and the word Palestine – registered in my Burmese consciousness. I had un-learned a great many things – for better – including my Pavlovian Burmese patriotism, militarism, categorical racism towards Muslims and the Arabs, and, above all, my admiration for Israel and love of all things West.

And I also learned how to dissect imperialism in all its manifestations, historical, cultural, economic, psychological, military, political and ideological. Now age 60, my heart no longer beats with excitement when Israel is beating back what in the West is designated as Muslim terrorist organizations – namely Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) that effectively breached Israel border walls and launched surprise attacks on Israeli communities and slaughtered 1,400 Israelis and took over 200 hostages.

It bears pointing out that Israel is unconditionally supported by the U.S. and Europe, including Germany and the U.K., as well as virtually all sectors of the Western Establishment, from corporations and cultural institutions, high education industry, state and corporate media outlets, and so on.

Unlike the 10-year-old Burmese boy, with rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments half-of-a-century ago, I now see Israel as the Zionist implant by the British, and subsequently armed and financed by the U.S. “in the sea of (anti-imperialist?) Arabs” for their own geopolitical and economic interests.

In these ensuing decades I nod along reading the letters critically of the “terrorist organizations” – and “their misled and criminal people” – that founded the independent state of Israel, published in the year the Zionist state was founded, by the likes of Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectual leaders and thinkers like Hannah Arendt.

With or without any “likes”, I use social media to break taboos about the Holocaust, where non-Jews are made to feel they must take extreme care before they say or write anything critical of Israel, its permanent and colonial annexation of the land, the homes, the orchards, the business, which originally belonged to the residents of Palestine.

I now feel extremely repulsed by both Israel’s all-too-obvious sinister manipulation of the memories and tales of the Holocaust, and equally, the systematic attempt to stigmatize and criminalize any critics and criticism of Israel’s Zionist policies of Palestinian displacement and group destruction as “anti-Semitism.”

Since I became fully occupied with my own concern, study and activism around the Burmese genocide of our own national minority, the Rohingya, in Myanmar over a decade ago, I have sought to deepen my understanding of genocide anywhere in the world.

My work has taken me to Cambodia multiple times, Bosnia’s Srebrenica and other sites of mass killings, including Nazi death and slave labor camps in Poland and Germany. I even led the study tour of Auschwitz, taking with me a group of 20 Burmese, Rohingya, British and American activists and genocide scholars on the eve of Poland’s COVID-19 lock-down in 2020.

This resulted in an educational film “Auschwitz: Lessons Never Learned,” directed by my Uzbek-Jewish director friend Shahida. Genocides are a crime against humanity, an affront to all of us, who take genocide seriously.   My stance on genocide is straightforward, uncomplicated and solely morally driven.

I hold the uncompromising view: genocidal destruction of one human community is the destruction of a piece of us. “An attack on one is an attack on all” so to speak. Like NATO’s strategic paradigm except it is not based on military or ideological or geopolitical self-interests. It is based on the love of and concern for fellow humans as a part of a single family, whatever the perpetrators’ names, or the victims’.

I visited Auschwitz four times in the last six years, for a variety of reasons, including educational discussion with the museum experts and officials and as a genocide-concerned “consumer” of “dark tourism.” I have heard tales of genocide victims, set foot on the soils they perished at the hands of their monstrous – and typically sadistic – executioners, seen the material remains of millions of victims, and read the curatorial lines in these killing field exhibits, and gravestones at Ravensbrück, Dachau, Sachsenhause, Neuengamme, Auschwitz, Srebrenica or Phnom Penh’s Choeung Ek Killing Fields.

My heart feels this piercing pain every time I step into these dark sites.

Touching the bunk beds covered in layers of dust at Auschwitz-Birkenau’s barracks where 1.5 million Jews and other victims of the Holocaust were mass-exterminated, or seeing the very visible marks on the tropical trees against which Khmer Rouge’s teenage executioners smashed the tender heads of their baby-victims whom they held by the latter’s feet, induces exactly the same humanly sensations of indescribable pain, sorrow, incredulity and disdain (towards the killers).

To my deep dismay, I see many of my fellow Myanmar cheer gleefully on in multiple social media sites – particularly Facebook – when Israel launched its vicious “revenge” attack on the residents of Gaza, killing over 3,600 Gaza children – at the rate of roughly one child every 10 minutes, in 25 days, dropping over 12,000 tons of U.S. manufactured bombs over densely populated Gaza, and subjecting the population to textbook genocide of creating conditions deliberately designed to destroy physical existence of the 2.3 Palestinians – half of whom are children.

I see on social media my fellow Myanmar invite others to pray for Israel.  All this genocide cheerleading makes my blood boil. Aren’t they capable of humanity? Or of hearing the cry of despair and pain coming from beneath the rubble of over nearly 4,000 Palestinian children?

Myanmar has several different ethnic groups, but most of this cheerleading comes from either Buddhist of Christian backgrounds, judging by their profiles. I also realize that this is the same Myanmar crowd who partook, as cheerleaders and supporters of Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide seven years ago. Their continual lack of knowledge, reflection, and their own anti-Muslim racism makes it even worse. For they continue to be misled by the pro-Israeli imperialist Western mass media which portrays Israel as the one defending its own people, existence, civilization.

And conversely, the same western media, with global influence, portrays Hamas militants – and by extension – all Palestinians – as “savages” “terrorists” “invaders.” As a people from a former British colony where our ancestors were terrorized – “pacified” – into submission and subjugation and subsequently lived as subject peoples for over 120 years, aren’t these Myanmar capable of seeing the parallel colonial British narrative of Myanmar resistors as “dacoits and robbers” and the colonizers as “civilizers”?  As George Orwell summarized it bluntly, the British rule in Burma was an act of theft, governed by the colonial officials sitting behind desks, armed with one million bayonets.

Little do they know all genocides are perpetrated on the logic – and pretext – of self-defense. All colonial narratives are anchored in the threat and acts of genocidal pacification. As such, they are inherently Orwellian. That’s what Israel is doing – except it has declared its genocidal intent, unequivocally, and most despicably in the year 2023.

When Hitler and Nazis were building death camps and gas chambers, and inducing the forced mass displacement and forced migration of the Jews in the 1930-40s,  they justified the heinous racial acts as defending the Aryan nation against “racial contamination” by inferior races, especially the Jews, which Kaiser Wilhelm II dubbed, in writing in 1919, “mushrooms (that is, parasites) which grew on the German Oaktree.”

When my own country Myanmar was carrying out its slow-burning genocide, with its final wave of genocidal destruction against the Rohingya in 2017, we were told that the military was conducting “security clearance operations” against Muslim terrorists supported by two million “illegal Bengali” who don’t belong in Myanmar, but belong across the border in Muslim Bangladesh.

As a Burmese, I for one will continue, out of a felt sense of universal fellowship of humans, to oppose the colonizer, occupier and genocidal killers, whatever their name is. When U.S. President Joe Biden told Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Your country and ours share a set of principles” – unlike the terrorists of Palestine.

Biden was nothing short of Orwellian. Neither Israel nor the U.S. is in a position to tout any humanistic or civilizational values when both are in a genocidal symbiosis, breaching all international law, criminal and humanitarian. One is openly perpetrating genocide against the entire population of Gaza as a Nazi-esque “collective punishment”. Israel’s “moderate” President Isaac Herzog declared: “There is no one in Gaza that is innocent.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is touted as “the world’s most moral military.” It is slaughtering children, bombing refugee camps and hospitals.   For in the eyes of the genocidal regimes, no member of the population marked for wholesale destruction is “innocent.” From the Khmer Rouge and Nazi SS, from ethnonationalist Myanmar to Zionist Israel, these regimes don’t spare babies, pregnant women, children, the sick and the elderly.

Israel has exploited the Holocaust since the closure of Auschwitz in January 1945. Instead Israelis have proceeded to commit a full-blown genocide, while crying out loud “Never again! is now!” as Netanyahu did in his last press conference. There is little wonder that Albert Einstein refused to associate himself with “the misled and criminal people” who were building Israel with their “terrorist organizations.” For the great scientist and pacifist foresaw “the fascist character” of the state that was then in its foundational year.

This coming Saturday I am teaming up other fellow rights defenders and anti-genocide campaigners to host a marathon rally and concert for a Free Palestine on YouTube Live – entitled “A Warning to Humanity: A Twenty-Nation Solidarity Rally against Israel’s Gaza Genocide.”

It will be kicked off by Palestinians themselves in the occupied territories. We will be joined by our brothers and sisters from over 20 countries, including Myanmar and neighbors such as Bangladesh, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, and Indonesia.

Maung Zarni is the co-author of Essays on Myanmar’s Genocide of Rohingyas (2012-18). He is a UK-based Burmese exile with over 30-years of first-hand involvement and scholarship in Burma affairs.

DVB publishes a diversity of opinions that does not reflect DVB editorial policy.

3 November 2023

Source: english.dvb.no

By Justin Podur

The genocide proceeds. In Jabaliya, Israel dropped six tons of bombs on a refugee camp a week after bombing a number of hospitals. Westerners are being conditioned gradually to accept higher and higher numbers of daily Palestinian deaths in more and more obviously genocidal ways – gathering sites, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, refugee camps.

The US has placed naval assets where it safely could in the region and is deploying antimissile systems on the ground all to try to deter the military intervention of regional powers to stop Israel’s genocide. There is daily contact and exchanges of missiles and other fire on the Lebanon-Israel border, missile and drone attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, Yemen has declared war formally and fired missiles, and of course continuing fighting across the fence and now within Gaza.

Pointing out the criminality of what Israel is doing can have no effect when the enforcers of the law are the imperialists themselves. International law will play no role in stopping this genocide. So, this presentation of the facts is not done in the hope that facts can change the West’s position on this genocide or to lay the foundation for the war crimes trials of the future. Still, since the events of October 7 are the pretext for the ongoing genocide, they must be examined.

The feelings of October 7

Most of the discussion in Western media of what happened on October 7 is based on feelings, not facts, evidence, or the relevant laws of war that would apply, if Israel or the US were subject to such laws (they are not). Based on such feelings, progressive pro-Israel writers could assure their readers that it was a massacre; or that “animals isn’t even an appropriate term for the crimes committed by the Hamas invaders” oof October 7. Squeamish feelings indeed, the preciousness of life emphasized, and the barbarism of those who would kill the innocent.

For tough talk about the harsh realities of war, you need to look to the way Americans like John Kirby talk about Palestinian deaths – present at, at the time of his speech, future as well. “I wish that that wasn’t going to happen. But it is. It is going to happen. And that doesn’t make it right… But that’s that’s unfortunately the nature of conflict.” As one commentator noted about Kirby’s speech: “this is the kind of statement people in Serbia and Rwanda got played back at them while they were sitting in a glass box in the Netherlands.”

In the end, the West doesn’t really need the facts of what Hamas’s armed wing did on October 7. What the West needs for its genocide propaganda is to generate a feeling around what happened. That it was uniquely savage, uniquely atrocious. Armed with this feeling, there can be no minimizing these Israeli civilian deaths as “collateral damage” incidental to the objectives of the Palestinian Resistance (“Hamas”) operation, the way there would be if Israel had done it to the Palestinians.

In the West, what the Palestinian Resistance did on October 7 was not a crime – but worse than a crime. Pure evil. Counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. Bad enough that Palestine’s leadership is tarnished forever, forever illegitimate.

Bad enough that any antiwar movement that wants the genocide to stop is also illegitimate, for by their failure to condemn these uniquely savage crimes, they have turbocharged Israel, lost credibility.

Bad enough to justify everything Israel did since 1948.

Bad enough to justify genocide.

Through lurid descriptions of the events of October 7, the Palestinian Resistance is defined outside of humanity. Anyone who expresses support or solidarity is defined as a supporter of inhumanity, a committer of a criminal speech act, unprotected from libel and whatever penalties can be applied from there.

Genocide is justified, solidarity is criminalized, through such feelings. It is hard to imagine that Western countries could be moved away from this structure of feeling.

What happened on October 7?

Still. Even if the West will not use the facts in any future legal proceeding, even if the West ignores them, even if the West is morally and politically incapable of calling the genocide off, as fact-mongers, we still have for some reason to try to find out what actually happened. What are the facts? What can we put together about what happened on October 7?

In doing this we have a finite number of sources. The Haaretz list. The guided tour of Kfar Aza. Several eyewitness accounts. On the other side, we have Hamas’s statements. We have to analyze these carefully. Each piece has to be assessed according to the source, its previous record, its interest in releasing the information, and its biases.

US spokesman John Kirby assesses the Palestinian Ministry of Health as a source in this way: “The Gaza Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas … a terrorist organization … We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called ‘Ministry of Health,’ at face value.”

The same could be said, from the reverse perspective, of all mainstream Western and Israeli sources, which are “just a front for [the Israeli military]”, which is currently committing genocide and whose utterances cannot be taken at face value.

But such are the sources we have. If we cannot depend on any of the given sources to tell the whole truth, we can perhaps depend on the Western sources to present Palestinians in the worst possible light, and on Hamas’s accounts of what happened to present themselves in the best possible light, and use the sources while keeping these biases in mind.

Quantitative Analysis of the October 7 attack: The Ha’aretz List

For a quantitative sense of the scale of deaths on October 7, we rely on the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, where the death count is currently being updated and which has published 902 names as of October 26, 2023. The Ha’aretz list includes both civilians and military personnel and includes those killed after October 7 – the number rises as Israelis killed in the Gaza invasion are added to the same list. An earlier list with 308 names of Israelis killed was analyzed by one commentator, who counted 171 Israeli military personnel among them.

An article in The Cradle with a similar goal as the current one – of determining what is known about what happened October 7 – published an age distribution of those killed and concluded that 16 of the 683 on the list to that date were children, the rest adults; and around half of the 683 on the list were combatants.

The Cradle contrasts this with the 5,790 Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza by Israel since October 7, 2,360 of whom were children (at the time Cradle published; we are now over 9,000 Palestinians killed and around half children, with several huge massacres like the dropping of 6 1-ton bombs on Jabaliya camp on October 31). But the Cradle doesn’t understand that Israel and the West expect a far higher standard of Hamas than they do of themselves. It is impossible to imagine what a commentator like Gideon Levy would call Palestinians, what Guardian columnists would say to the antiwar left, if Palestinians were to kill 10,000 people and 4,000 children in indiscriminate bombing.

On October 26, the Ha’aretz list had 902 names (515 of whom had photos) and categorized 556 of these as civilians, 59 as police, 14 as rescue, and 273 as soldiers (10 Nepali students and 14 Thai workers are included as well).

For 635/902 of these, no detail is provided about where the deaths happened. The largest single death toll in this list is the Re’im music festival, where 195 Israelis were killed according to this list.

The proportion of adults killed was 498/540 of the dead who have an age indicated. The October 26 list includes 20 children in total: 8 children ages 4-9 and 12 children aged 11-16. Five of these children were killed in in Be’eri, 4 in Nir Oz, 4 in Kukhleh (last names Alkra’an and Abu Sabaakh), 2 in Dimona, 1 in Arara (last name Abu Jama). Four were 17 years old, and the other 498 were between 18-65 years old. Eighteen of the dead with age indicated were senior citizens over 65.

The Battle of Nir Am: The Economist

An episode of the Economist’s podcast, the Intelligence, called “The Day Hamas Came”, describes what a battle with the Qassam fighters looked like from the point of view of Adam, a dual-pistol wielding Kibbutz dweller from Nir Am who “knew how to fight”.

The same story was written up here for the magazine. In the story, Adam describes his kibbutz, Nir Am, as a militarized fortress with a gate strong enough that a truck could not be driven through it if closed.

The kibbutz has its own militia, the KK, and its own armory. When the attack started, Adam went to the KKK commander and then to the armory, and organized the defense of the kibbutz. He personally shot one of the Palestinian fighters three times in the body and delivered the coup de grace with a shot to the head. Some of the kibbutz’s agricultural laborers, Palestinians from Gaza, were killed in the crossfire. The kibbutz’s defenders held off the Palestinian fighters until the Israeli police and army arrived. According to Adam, while the kibbutz lost people, virtually all of the attackers were killed.

In summary: this account from a survivor describes an attack on a fortified community, a two-way battle between armed groups, concluding with the death of all the attackers.

The Battle on Kibbutz Be’eri, described in the NYT Daily

The New York Times’s podcast, the Daily, featured another kibbutz survivor of the October attack, this time from Kibbutz Be’eri. 44 year old Golan Abitbol who describes his community as one of 1,000 people. Like his dual-pistol wielding compatriot Adam, Mr. Abitbol heard the alarm in the morning and immediately got his 9mm pistol, locked his family in the shelter, took a firing position in the front of his home. Soon he was exchanging gunfire with a group of Palestinian fighters. “You don’t think,” Mr. Abitbol said. “You act like a warrior.” The enemy moved on to the next house, and Mr. Abitbol saw them a house on fire. As in kibbutz Nir Am, the Israeli military eventually came to the rescue with some heavy armor. When Mr. Abitbol came out of his house, he saw a tank parked on the street. “They told us to close the eyes of the young kids so they won’t see the dead bodies of the terrorists lying outside,” he said. His fortress, kibbutz Be’eri, had been burned he estimated that one hundred people had been killed: “I don’t know how many. I couldn’t count… 1 out of 10 is dead,” he said, in his community of 1,000.

Mr. Abitbol provided his assessment of what happened and of the attackers – they were “not human beings”, he said, but “vicious killers”, “evil”, “animals”, and the attack was a “second Holocaust”. What he described, however, was not a death camp but a battle between armed attackers and armed defenders during which civilians were killed and other civilians taken captive.

Friendly fire, crossfire in Israeli media

Mondoweiss published on October 22 a review of evidence available at that time of possible “friendly fire” deaths in which Israelis died as a result of Israeli military action. One major piece of evidence reviewed was an Israeli interview, republished by the Electronic Intifada, with Yasmin Porat, another survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri, who witnessed the Israeli retaking of the kibbutz. She said the Israeli army “eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire.” Another article cited is from the Guardian by a journalist who went on an Israeli-Army guided tour of kibbutz Be’eri on October 11, who described the destruction: “Building after building has been destroyed, whether in the Hamas assault or in the fighting that followed, nearby trees splintered and walls reduced to concrete rubble from where Israeli tanks blasted the Hamas militants where they were hiding. Floors collapsed on floors. Roof beams were tangled and exposed like rib cages.” A military commander told Ha’aretz that his unit “fought inside the kibbutz, from house to house, with the tanks.” “We had no choice.”

Mondoweiss cites an October 20th Ha’aretz article going into more detail about the Israeli counterattack: “…only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of  the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”

A survivor’s account from the kibbutz of Nir Oz describes fighting, Palestinian attackers burning houses, followed by looting, and finally an attack by an Israeli attack helicopter when one woman died – possibly from Israeli fire. Some snippets of a WhatsApp group chat from residents of Nir Oz were published in an Israeli newspaper and and show residents chatting with one another awaiting the Israeli military, describing terrorists walking around outside speaking Arabic. Another video shows what appear to be crossfire incidents at the Re’im music festival.

Another inquiry into the deaths on October 7 was published by Max Blumenthal in the Grayzone. In addition to the damage at kibbutz Be’eri characteristic of high explosives fired from tanks, Max also shows how footage of charred remains of victims at the music festival were characteristic of Hellfire missiles fired by Israeli helicopters.

Military analyst Scott Ritter believes (discussed at 1:06 of this video) that most deaths were friendly fire:

“Israel’s lying to itself and the world because Israel doesn’t want the truth to come out about October 7, the absolute failure – political failure, military failure. And they definitely don’t want to talk about October 8. That’s the day they really don’t want to talk about. Because that’s the day that this undisciplined mob of Israeli Defense Force poured back into the settlements and slaughtered the settlers that were there… if they release the autopsies of all the bodies they picked up, you’ll find that the majority of them, more than the majority, were killed by 5.56mm rounds fired by Israel. There’s enough eyewitness testimony that supports this. And Israel doesn’t want to talk about this.”

Urban warfare and civilian casualties

For a comparison of the methods used by armed organizations and civilian casualties, the Palestinian attack on October 7 could be compared to the battle of Shuja’iya in 2014, described by Israeli participants in the battle in the report by Breaking the Silence, This is How We Fought in Gaza.

Scott Ritter, on the program DD Geopolitics, described how the various decisions by Hamas’s armed wing could have been made. He compares October 7, 2023 with the World War 2 Normandy campaign and the battle for Cannes. The British and Canadians had hoped to seize the city in a day, but the Germans moved three divisions into the city and it was a “bad battle” in which tens of thousands of French civilians lost their lives. The British and Canadians, Ritter said, would “go in, throw a hand grenade, oops, family of six, sorry, too bad so sad, wrong place wrong time, keep going. Because if you pause and cry, you get killed.” Like the allies in Cannes, the Palestinian fighters were “being actively resisted – Israeli forces were surging into the area, they were making contact with Hamas, they met Hamas in the kibbutzim. It’s an active war zone. A lot of people died. And a lot of them were civilians caught in the crossfire.”

On the question of the civilians captured by Hamas, Ritter elaborated. “Why did they remove the women and children?” Ritter described a mission, Operation Eagle Claw, when Delta Force attempted to rescue hostages held in Iran. As they were setting up, “a busload of religious pilgrims drove through the site after we had landed. We captured the bus. We couldn’t let them go. So we put them all on a C-130… we took them hostage for operational security reasons. Do you think it’s possible Hamas had these women and children and thought if we keep them alive they’re going to make a phone call, we’ve got to get them out with us. Do you think that could have happened? I don’t know… I’m not saying Hamas didn’t commit any atrocities. I’m not in a position to know. The Israelis have a lot of footage of Hamas fighters turning corners and shooting people. Is that terrorism? Is that terrorism or are they assaulting a military position, from their standpoint?”

Reports of atrocities all source back to the Israeli military

Reports of atrocities all trace back to the Israeli military and are rejected by Hamas categorically. The worst reports – of sexual violence, decapitated babies, burned babies – are all sourced back to the Israeli military and reported by the corps of pro-genocide Western reporters. These include a report in the Daily Mail based on testimony from a pseudonymous morgue worker named Shari who said it was “worse than the holocaust”, a visit by a journalist to a forensic pathology center showing photos of hands, plastic bags, and unidentifiable burned remains, a screening of Go Pro footage to 100 pro-genocide reporters, and the like. In all of these, specifics are removed, ostensibly out of either respect or simply because the horror is too great – the result is to maintain the mystique of acts that are beyond human comprehension. Acts that also, according to these sources, took place during active battles with the Israeli military.

As far as footage that does not trace back to the Israeli military: There is video footage – from cellphones, security cameras, etc. – of Palestinians looting and even engaging in undisciplined attacks on civilians. The men in these videos do not appear uniformed or equipped as Hamas’s armed wing or any of the other factions. There were men who left Gaza through the fence once it was destroyed and were caught on video engaging in crimes. It is possible that these individuals were responsible for the crimes that occurred, and not Hamas’s armed wing who were engaging with the Israeli army and police.

Conclusion: What is known about October 7

Gathering these Western and Israeli sources: there were a series of attacks on October 7 by Hamas’s armed wing on military bases and fortified kibbutzes that resulted in gun battles in which many armed personnel and many civilians died. Many Israeli military personnel and civilians were taken captive. Hamas has said the civilians will be released unconditionally (and some have been) and the military personnel will be traded for Palestinian political prisoners in a prisoner exchange.

The Israeli army also claims that Hamas’s armed wing committed atrocities, claims which Hamas rejects. There is footage from sources other than the Israeli military suggesting both that many Israelis died in crossfire and friendly fire incidents and that Palestinians who escaped from Gaza once the fence was breached committed looting and other crimes.

Meanwhile the Kirbys and Bidens deny Palestinian casualty numbers.

We are approaching complete polarization: soon no claims made by Palestinians will be believed by the pro-genocide Western bloc and no claims sourced to the Israeli military will be credible to the anti-genocide bloc. There will be no reason to talk to one another and no desire on either side to do so.

It is too obvious to say, but this bodes ill for solutions based on dialogue or negotiation.

The Israeli military’s claims of extraordinary and unfathomable atrocities on October 7 have become the principal justification for the current genocide, which is no exception to the historical rule that genocides are not built on facts, but on lies.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. You can find him on his website at podur.org and on Twitter @justinpodur.

2 November 2023

Source: counterpunch.org

By Countercurrents Collective

The Israeli government is willing to kill large numbers of civilians in order to defeat Hamas in Gaza, and told Americans this in “private conversations” reported  the New York Times.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration continues to support Israel but has become “more critical” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to Hamas, due to the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” according to a news analysis the outlet published on Monday.

“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” the New York Times claimed, adding that Israeli officials brought up the “devastating bombings” – including the use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki – that the U.S. has employed against Germany and Japan during World War II.

The Times included the story in Tuesday’s print edition, where it caught the eye of lawyer and activist Steven Donziger.

“This might help explain the massive scale of civilian and child death currently taking place in Gaza,” Donziger noted on Instagram. “This mentality also might explain why Israel just dropped a huge bomb on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and why it appears to be targeting civilians.”

Focusing on Washington, the New York Times article revealed how the Biden administration initially believed it could get support for Israel just as they had for Ukraine, given the level of Hamas atrocities on October 7, but soon realized this would be “impossible.”

“If anything, countries around the world, especially developing nations, are moving the other way as the Palestinian death toll grows. Even European allies of the United States are divided on Israel’s war,” according to the outlet.

U.S. officials also believe that Netanyahu has “no plans for what to do with Gaza” after Israel Defense Forces ground troops take “some or all of it.”

Last Wednesday, the Pentagon reportedly asked Israel to delay the ground attack, in order to give the U.S. more time to deploy air defenses in Iraq and Syria and buy time for negotiations to free some of the estimated 200 hostages held by Hamas.

The ground invasion began last Friday with a complete communications blackout of the Palestinian enclave. On Wednesday, the IDF said 15 of its soldiers have been killed in the ongoing operations.

Israeli Attack On Refugee Camp An Atrocity, Says UN

Israel’s bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza is just “the latest atrocity” to befall the Palestinian people living in the enclave, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths has said.

Hamas reported on Tuesday that as many as 400 Palestinians had been killed or injured by an Israeli attack on the densely populated Jabalia camp. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson later confirmed the attack, stating the airstrikes had targeted a “very important” Hamas commander and his unit. The IDF representative called the civilian casualties a tragedy, but ultimately blamed their deaths on the Hamas leadership, saying it had “embedded itself among the civilian population.”

In a statement published on Wednesday, following his two-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Griffiths surmised that the fighting in Gaza has entered “an even more terrifying phase, with increasingly dreadful humanitarian consequences.”

“October 7th and its aftermath will leave indelible scars on the lives of millions,” Griffiths said, referring to the initial attack by Hamas militants on Israeli territories near Gaza, which claimed the lives of 1,400 people, and Israel’s response which has so far seen as many as 8,600 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza health authorities.

“This cannot go on. We need a step change,” stressed the UN official. He further called for all hostages captured by Hamas to be released immediately and unconditionally, for both sides to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and to stop targeting civilians.

Griffiths concluded by calling on “those with influence” to work towards a de-escalation of the conflict, warning that “failure to act now will have consequences far beyond the region.”

On Tuesday, the director of the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) in New York, Craig Mokhiber, described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “text-book case of genocide” and resigned from his position, stating that the UN had “surrendered to the power of the US” and failed in its duty to prevent the killing of Palestinian civilians.

The U.S. has so far shown little intention of pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and has instead pledged its unending support for Israel and its right to “self-defense.” US Senator Lindsey Graham has even suggested that Washington would stand by Israel regardless of how many civilians are killed in its fight against Hamas.

Iran Calls For Oil And Food Embargo On Israel

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has urged Muslim nations to impose an oil and food embargo on Israel to stop its military operation in Gaza.

Speaking to students in Tehran on Wednesday, Khamenei said, “What Islamic governments must insist on is the immediate cessation of crimes in Gaza,” suggesting that Muslim countries should “block the export of oil and food to the Zionist regime,” as quoted by the state-run IRNA media outlet.

He went on to claim that Israel is “now in a state of shock and desperation and does not know what to do,” while pointing out that the events in Gaza have prompted people to take to the streets and denounce Israel’s actions, not only in Muslim-majority states, but also in the US and Western Europe.

In mid-October, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, had made a similar call, asking Muslim nations to impose an “immediate and complete” oil embargo on Israel.

Last week, Libya’s House of Representatives (HoR, Majlis al-Nuwaab), which is located in the eastern city of Tobruk, controlled by General Khalifa Haftar, also demanded that the government halt oil and gas exports to countries supporting Israel if the “Israeli massacres” do not cease. The lawmakers also called for the expulsion from Libya of the ambassadors of the countries that back Israel.

It is worth noting that the Tobruk-based authorities do not control the whole of Libya, with a rival government operating from Tripoli.

Also last month, the Associated Press quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as warning that supplies of Middle Eastern oil to international markets could potentially be disrupted if other nations join the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Iran, aside from being the world’s eighth-largest oil producer, could also potentially block the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The route is used to transport approximately one-third of the world’s seaborne oil shipments.

Back in 1973, an oil embargo imposed on the US and Western countries by Arab nations in response to their support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War led to a severe deficit and an ensuing economic slump.

White House Rules Out Sending U.S. Troops To Gaza

U.S. soldiers will not be deployed to Gaza during or after the current conflict with Israel, the White House has said, dismissing reports suggesting US troops could be sent on a peacekeeping mission.

During a Wednesday press briefing, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked whether U.S. forces would be used to “stabilize the situation” in Gaza.

“There is no plan or intention to put U.S. military troops on the ground in Gaza, now or in the future,” he said. “But we are talking to our partners about what post-conflict Gaza should look like.”

Kirby went on to say that officials were considering “some sort of international presence” after fighting winds down in Gaza, but noted that no decisions on the issue had been made.

The spokesman’s comments came after Bloomberg reported that Washington and Israel were discussing whether to grant “temporary oversight to Gaza to countries from the region, backed by troops from the U.S., UK, Germany and France.” The outlet stated that the plans were still in an early stage, however, and said at least two other options were also being considered, including involvement by the United Nations.

While Kirby rejected the idea of a U.S. peacekeeping mission, he echoed previous comments from the White House that Hamas “cannot be the future of governance in Gaza,” voicing support for Israel’s military operation to eliminate the militant group. Asked about what comes next for the Palestinian enclave, the spokesman said officials “do not have all the answers to that,” but insisted “Whatever it is – it cannot be Hamas.”

The latest bout of violence erupted following a deadly Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, which claimed the lives of some 1,400 Israelis. Israel has carried out heavy air strikes on Gaza in the weeks since, and subsequently launched ground incursions, killing more than 8,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza officials. The Israeli military has said its operation could go on for months, despite warnings of a dire humanitarian crisis from international aid groups.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the country was “at war” and promised retaliation against Hamas that they “have never known before.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by sending warplanes to strike targets in Gaza, ordering a blockade of the Palestinian enclave, and announcing plans for a ground invasion of the densely populated territory.

Israel Strikes Lebanon

The Israel Defense Forces said in the early hours of Thursday that it carried out air and artillery strikes on Lebanon after its drone came under a missile attack. It added that the UAV was unharmed.

According to the IDF, projectiles were also launched from the Lebanese territory towards the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon areas. The Israeli army responded by hitting the “source of the rocket fire” with artillery.

11 Bakeries Destroyed In Gaza

Eleven bakeries have been struck or destroyed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its daily update on Wednesday.

It added that only nine bakeries remain operational and are supplying bread to shelters, mainly in the southern and middle parts of the Palestinian enclave. “Hours-long queues are reported in front of bakeries, where people are exposed to airstrikes,” the agency warned.

Biden Heckled

U.S. President Joe Biden was heckled at a fundraiser in Minneapolis by an audience member who demanded that he “call for a ceasefire right now.”

“I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out,” Biden responded, according to The Hill.

The White House previously argued that a ceasefire would only benefit Hamas, echoing the stance taken by the Israeli government.

Israel Publishes Intercepted Call Of Hamas

The Israeli army published what it said was an intercepted call involving a senior Hamas commander and the director of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza. The IDF described the recording as evidence that the Palestinian militants were “stealing” fuel reserved for medical facilities.

“The representative from the ministry said so, in the night he told me to fill up 1,000 liters,” a person described as a hospital manager is heard saying in Arabic.

The UN previously warned that fuel shortages were impeding the efforts to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Tax Funds

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that the Jewish state’s government should transfer frozen tax funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, in comments that could be construed as a criticism of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s decision to freeze Palestinian tax revenues to the PA.

Smotrich had on Sunday announced the step to pause the payments, claiming that Ramallah had supported Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7. Israel collects tax revenue from the West Bank, which it then transfers to the PA monthly, with the payments making up nearly 65% of the Palestinian annual budget.

Gallant said that the outstanding funds should be transferred to the PA “immediately” and that they “will be used by its forces that help prevent terrorism.”

Crime Of Genocide, U.S. Complicit

The U.S. is complicit in the deaths of children in Gaza, according to rights group Defence for Children International-Palestine “constituting the crime of genocide,” it said.

“President Biden’s statements over the last few weeks suggest he is completely unconcerned by the scope and scale of Palestinian civil harm – including the killings of 3,650 children – as a result of Israeli military attacks in Gaza,” the children’s rights organization said in a statement.

It added that Biden is “actively becoming ever more complicit in an Israeli military campaign where Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children with impunity, constituting the crime of genocide.”

Telecommunication Blackout

Cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks has confirmed a telecommunications blackout in Gaza after the Palestinians’ largest provider, Paltel, said earlier today that there had been “a complete interruption of all communications and internet services” in the enclave.

It is the second such blackout since the start of Israel’s ground offensive, meaning that much of the territory’s more than two million residents are experiencing “a total loss of telecommunications,” Paltel said.

Paltel also stated on social media that its services were offline “due to international routes that were previously reconnected being cut off again.”

Thousands Of Children Killed

The UN’s children’s rights committee has said that violations against children in Gaza are “mounting by the minute” amid Israel’s bombardment of the coastal enclave, and has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

“There are no winners in a war where thousands of children are killed,” it said in a statement.

The UN committee added that “there have been devastating reports of acts that are forbidden by international humanitarian law, including maiming, injury, abduction, forcible displacement, deprivation of medical care, food and water.”

Safe Passage Of Wounded Palestinian

U.S. President Joe Biden has commented on social media about the opening of the Rafah border to Gaza earlier today.
“Today, thanks to American leadership, we secured safe passage for wounded Palestinians and for foreign nationals to exit Gaza,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We expect American citizens to exit today, and we expect to see more depart over the coming days.”

Biden added that his administration “would not let up working to get Americans out of Gaza.”

Jordan Recalls Ambassador From Tel Aviv

Jordan has recalled its ambassador to Israel, its foreign minister Ayman Safadi has confirmed. In a statement, Safadi said the diplomatic measure was being taken “as an expression of Jordan’s position rejecting and condemning the Israeli war raging in Gaza.”

Safadi also stated that Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, who is not presently in the Middle Eastern country according to the statement, is not currently welcome to return.
Safadi added that the Israeli ambassador would be permitted back only “upon Israel ceasing its war in Gaza, halting the humanitarian disaster, and refraining from actions that deny Palestinians their basic rights, including access to food, water, and medicine, as well as as a secure and stable life on their national soil.”

Vienna Jewish Cemetery Torched

The Jewish section of a major cemetery in the Austrian capital was set ablaze and marred with swastikas, according to a religious leader in the city. The attack comes amid a surge of anti-Semitic incidents across Europe.

Oskar Deutsch, a leader in Vienna’s Jewish community, reported the vandalism and arson in a social media post on Wednesday, saying areas of the city’s central cemetery were severely damaged in the blaze.

“During the night a fire was set on the Jewish part of the central cemetery,” he wrote. “The anteroom of the ceremonial hall [was] burned out. Swastikas were sprayed on exterior walls. No people were injured. The fire department and police are investigating.”

Deutsch shared photos of the aftermath, showing firefighters inspecting a heavily charred and smoke-filled ceremony hall. What appear to be crude swastikas were also seen scrawled in fluorescent paint on a wall outside.

A spokesperson for the local fire service, Gerald Schimpf, told the Austria Press Agency that the fire seemed to have broken out sometime on Tuesday night, but had mostly died out on its own by the time firefighters arrived the next morning.

The Vienna State Police later confirmed that the episode was being “intensively investigated” by Austria’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. While the authorities have stated that the exact circumstances of the fire “are not yet known,” local media reports said police suspected arson, noting that flames appeared to have ignited in more than one location.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer also “strongly” condemned the incident in a statement, declaring that “anti-Semitism has no place in our society and will be fought with all political and legal means.” He went on to voice hopes that perpetrators of the cemetery attack would be “identified quickly.”

The incident in Vienna follows a string of similar reports across Europe in recent weeks, amid renewed fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. Fears of violent reprisals against Jews have prompted evacuations and closures at a number of religious institutions, with several Jewish schools in Paris reportedly forced to clear out following bomb threats earlier this week. Jewish organizations have also warned of a rise in anti-Semitism in the US, where the Anti-Defamation League has reported a nearly 400% spike in such incidents this month.

Jewish Schools In Paris Evacuated Over Bomb Scare

Several Jewish schools around Paris have been evacuated following a bomb threat, triggering “panic” among parents, according to sources cited by the Jerusalem Post.

Police launched a sweeping search of multiple schools on Monday after an anonymous suspect warned that “bombs would blow up in 20 different Jewish schools in the Paris area,” the outlet reported, citing “senior sources in the organized Jewish community.”

“There was a bomb threat towards many Jewish schools. Some of these schools have been evacuated. In most schools, parents were asked to take their children home,” one of the sources said.

They added that French security services had begun a search for bombs in the schools in question, but had yet to discover any explosives. “Even though everyone is okay, this event caused panic among parents. We’re going through a rough period and the situation in Israel has its effect on us as well,” the source continued.

French authorities have been on high alert amid the latest round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. A surge in anti-Semitic actions has been seen across France in recent weeks, with the Interior Ministry stating that reports of such acts had quadrupled in that time.

Anti-Jewish graffiti on schools and other similar displays have stoked fears of violent reprisals, with some Jewish residents telling local media they are afraid to leave their homes.

The bomb threat against schools around Paris is the latest in a series of such incidents in France this month, with the historic Palace of Versailles forced to clear out on four separate occasions. While no bombs were found in each case, similar false threats have also resulted in evacuations at 15 airports and 130 canceled flights, according to the Associated Press.

On October 19, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said a probe into the threats was well underway, and confirmed that 18 suspects had been detained as part of the investigation – most of them minors.

The minister added that “enormous means” were being deployed to find and arrest the pranksters, declaring “We tell those listening: We will find everyone.”

French Justice chief Eric Dupond-Moretti said the string of bomb threats were made by “little jokers” and “clowns,” and went on to warn of three-year prison terms and fines of up to €45,000 ($47,000) for those found guilty.

Netanyahu Ignored Warnings From Security Services, Says New York Times

Israeli security services warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months that his domestic policies were fueling dangerous political turmoil, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Sunday. Officials reportedly stressed that internal discord was weakening the country’s security and strengthening Israel’s enemies.

The report was part of an examination of what led up to the latest hostilities between Israel and Gaza. At one point in July, the prime minister even allegedly refused to meet with a senior general who was trying to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence.

At the same time, the NYT assessed that Israeli security representatives themselves continuously misjudged the threat posed by Hamas, including in the weeks leading up to the October 7 attack on Israeli territory which resulted in the deaths of up to 1,400 people.

The newspaper reported that Israeli military intelligence had believed since May 2021 that the militant group was not interested in any large-scale attacks from Gaza, but was instead plotting an attack in the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas.

The report also claimed that both Netanyahu and top Israeli security staff had underestimated the threat from Hamas and did not devote enough resources to countering it, because they believed that Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah posed more of a danger to the Jewish state.

In September, top Israeli officials came to the conclusion that Israel could be attacked on several fronts in the coming weeks or months by Iran-backed militia groups. However, there was no mention of a possible attack from Gaza at that time.

Another reason for the success of the surprise assault earlier this month, according to the outlet, was the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies had largely stopped tracking the group, believing that Israel was managing the threat it posed.

While many senior Israeli officials have accepted responsibility for their lapse in judgment, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been reluctant to do so, instead repeatedly pointing the finger at his military and intelligence chiefs for failing to predict and warn him about Hamas’ plans.

On Sunday, he published yet another post on X (formerly Twitter) blaming his cabinet for failing to prevent the October 7 attack. However, after receiving backlash, Netanyahu deleted it and posted another message stating “I was wrong” and vowing to fully back the heads of Israel’s security agencies.

Civilian Casualties In Gaza Do Not Matter, Says Top U.S. Senator

The U.S. should stand by Israel in its campaign against Hamas no matter how heavy a toll it takes on the civilian population in Gaza, Senator Lindsey Graham has argued. He likened Israel’s military operation against the militants to the allies’ struggle against Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Graham was asked if there was a “threshold” for him, after which he would start questioning Israel’s tactics. The Republican replied in the negative, saying there is no limit as to “what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews.”

“This idea that Israel has to apologize for attacking Hamas, who is embedded with their own population, needs to stop,” the senator insisted, adding that it is Hamas that is “creating these casualties – not Israel.”

Graham noted that Israel does need to “be smart” by trying to “limit civilian casualties.” The lawmaker also called for the delivery of humanitarian aid to “areas that protect the innocent.”

During his visit to Israel last month, U.S. President Joe Biden assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “as long as the United States stands, and we will stand forever, we will not let you ever be alone.”

Soon after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel last month, Washington scrambled to provide its long-standing ally with additional defense aid worth billions of dollars.

The U.S. has also deployed two aircraft carrier groups and other naval assets, a squadron of F-16 fighter jets, air-defense systems, and 900 troops to the Middle East, saying this increased military presence should serve as a deterrent to other states tempted to join the conflict.

On Tuesday in Geneva, a spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), James Elder, claimed that “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” and a “living hell for everyone else.” He called for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.

The conflict has so far left more than 1,400 Israelis and over 8,000 Palestinians dead, with thousands more injured.

Bolivia Breaks Diplomatic Ties With Israel

Bolivia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani told a press conference broadcast by national television that “Within the framework of its principled position of respect for life, Bolivia has decided to break diplomatic relations with Israel, in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive being carried out in the Gaza Strip.”

He called for a cease to the current attacks and of the blockade that prevents the entry of food, water and other elements essential for life, violating international law and international humanitarian law.

Mamani joined Minister of the Presidency María Nela Prada from Government House in La Paz to communicate the decision, which will be officially notified through established diplomatic channels between the two countries, they said.

The tweet reads, “Bolivia breaks diplomatic relations with Israel in rejection of the crimes against humanity it commits against the Palestinian people: María Nela Prada, Minister of the Presidency of Bolivia.”

For her part, Prada said that Israel’s actions are “crimes against humanity,” and demanded “an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip, which have already claimed thousands of civilian lives.”

The day before, Bolivian President Luis Arce held a meeting with the Palestinian ambassador to the South American nation, Mahmoud Elalwani. The president expressed his rejection of the war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as his solidarity on behalf of the Bolivian people for the suffering of the Palestinians.

Regarding this meeting, the Minister of the Presidency said that Arce “called for a definitive solution and for Palestine to exercise its right to self-determination, to its territory without illegal occupations and to consolidate its own free and independent State, within the framework of its established borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Prada also urged “dialogue and structural solutions” to avoid “a further escalation of the conflict around the world.” She called on “brotherly countries” and the integration processes in which Bolivia participates to “produce a collective action” to achieve pacification in the region and “avoid genocide.”

Furthermore, she said that Bolivia will send humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and that the Bolivian Embassy in the Netherlands will assume the concurrent function with Palestine.

Venezuelan Prosecutor Criticizes Inaction Against Gaza Genocide

On Tuesday, the Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab criticized the inaction of international human rights organizations in the face of the ongoing genocide that Israel is committing against the people of Palestine.

Through the social media platform X, he lambasted the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Türk, and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, for failing to take effective measures to halt the genocide.

“It deeply saddens me to observe how the international organizations you oversee have not made any significant efforts to put an end to this heinous slaughter, the most atrocious holocaust in recent human history, a systematic extermination of women, the elderly, and children carried out by Israeli Zionism for the past month,” Saab stated.

“As a man born into a home of Lebanese Arab immigrants who planted their roots in our Venezuelan homeland since the 1950s, I feel the spilled Palestinian blood deeply,” he added.

2 November 2023

Source: counterpunch.org