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On November 8th 2023, a virtual launch event took place for what was termed the “50-in-5” agenda.

The United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and partners of the Rockefeller Foundation are launching a campaign to accelerate digital ID, digital payments, and data-sharing rollouts in 50 countries under the umbrella of digital public infrastructure (DPI) by 2028. (Source).

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has announced plans to roll out “digital IDs” worldwide by the year 2030, and they will be mandatory for people who wish to participate in society, say Reclaim the Net, who advocate for free speech and individual liberty online,

Social Credit System

The push for DigitalPublic Infrastructure (DPI) which includes. “Digital IDs,” vaccine passports, and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) – is being championed by the globalist WEF and unsurprisingly is backed by Bill Gates along with the UN, and the European Union (EU).

The Sociable editor Tim Hinchliffe says “Advocates are adamant that DPI is essential for participation in markets and society — just like we saw with vaccine passports — only on a much broader scope and “If successful, DPI will give governments and corporations the power to implement systems of social credit that can determine where and how you can travel, what you are allowed to consume, and how you will be able to transact with your programmable money.

“Think individual carbon footprint trackers, Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ), and CBDC programmed to restrict “less desirable” purchases — all of which are being pushed by proponents of the great reset.” (Source)

The “50 in 5” Campaign

The “50 in 5” bills itself as “a country-led advocacy campaign. By 2028, the 50-in-5 campaign will have helped 50 countries design, launch, and scale components of their digital public infrastructure,” according to the official announcement. The 50 countries are designated as global testbeds, (guinea pigs) and the DPI’s will first in Africa (sub-Saharan, particularly) and India but the plan is to roll digital IDs globally by 2030 to include all citizens of UN member-states, according to Planet Today

50 in 5” campaign is also unsurprisingly a collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and Co-Develop. Co-Develop was founded by The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nilekani Philanthropies, and the Omidyar Network. The Digital Public Goods Alliance lists both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in its roadmap showcasing “activities that advance digital public goods,” along with other organisations and several governments. (Source)

DPIs are being sold as a mechanism for financial inclusion, convenience, improved healthcare, and green progress. but is is an “all-inclusive phrase applied to a looming technocratic governance system powered by three foundational components: digital ID, digital payments like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and massive data sharing.”

The World Economic Forum

WEF published a series of articles in September essentially pushing for DPI enforcement and of course, WEF is out there “thinking about the children” like the best of them, “Children’s rights around the world can be boosted by investing in digital public infrastructures,” said one caption in an article published on September the 18th, 2023, entitled

‘Two-thirds of child-related SDGs are off-pace to meet targets’: Here’s why we must invest in digital public infrastructure now.”

“2023 marks the halfway point for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs)“, the WEF reminds us, this halfway mark “is an opportunity to “assess and recalibrate” efforts to realise the rights of every child, everywhere and with only seven years to go, to the 2030 target, two-thirds of child-related indicators are off-pace to meet their targets, according to a new UNICEF report, For Every Child a Sustainable Future.

  • 1.9 Billion Children Left Behind – If recent progress continues, only 60 countries, home to just 25% of the child population, will have met their targets by 2030, leaving around 1.9 billion children in 140 countries behind.
  • The world today looks unlikely to achieve the ambitious goals we set for children in 2015.
  • Hunger – The world, is back at hunger levels not seen since 2005, and food prices remain higher in more countries than in the period from 2015 to 2019.
  • Children are Lacking Foundational Skills – While in education, data shows that 600 million children and adolescents are not acquiring foundational reading and math skills and 11 million additional ten-year-olds lacking foundational skills.

The “Solution” to the “Problem”? The “problem” the WEF says, has been the pandemic, of course, which “worsened the situation,” and the digital public infrastructure is the “solution.” as it has been identified as a “key transition required for accelerating SDG action and results for children by 2030.”

Protecting the “rights or safety of children” has been a tactic used before by the unelected globalists, while promoting a technocratic system that will actually take away the rights of all individuals, including children.

Reclaim the Net, says that essentially, “DPI is a buzzword used in somewhat interesting/alarming concord by organizations such as the UN, but also the European Union (EU), the Gates Foundation, and of course, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is never quite out of any such picture.

“What DPIs are supposed to do, in the best case scenario, is aid development in a number of ways. Those looking deeper into platitudes and “corporatespeak” coming from these organizations, however, are dismissing the term and the policy as a ruse to speed up the introduction of digital IDs and payments, with a deadline of 2030.”

They conclude, “If you’re a citizen of a UN member-state, and your government (i.e., taxpayers) are contributing to various UN efforts and, you feel either uneasy or just insufficiently informed about all this, well, too bad. They’re going ahead anyway.” (Source).

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The Weaponization of “Disinformation” Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Political Speech

November 9th, 2023 by Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

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Executive Summary

Following the 2016 presidential election, a sensationalized narrative emerged that foreign “disinformation” affected the integrity of the election. These claims, fueled by left-wing election denialism about the legitimacy of President Trump’s victory, sparked a new focus on the role of social media platforms in spreading such information.[1] “Disinformation” think tanks and “experts,” government task forces, and university centers were formed, all to study and combat the alleged rise in alleged mis- and disinformation. As the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have shown previously, these efforts to combat so-called foreign influence and misinformation quickly mutated to include domestic—that is, American—speech.[2]

To  access the Full document of the Committee of the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee click image above

The First Amendment to the Constitution rightly limits the government’s role in monitoring and censoring Americans’ speech, but these disinformation researchers (often funded, at least in part, by taxpayer dollars) were not strictly bound by these constitutional guardrails. What the federal government could not do directly, it effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex.

Enter the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of “disinformation” academics led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) that worked directly with the Department of Homeland Security and the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department, to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Created in the summer of 2020 “at the request” of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA),[3] the EIP provided a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public and lawmakers debated the merits of unprecedented, mid-election-cycle changes to election procedures.[4] These issues, like all contemporary discourse about questions of political import, were extensively discussed on the world’s largest social media platforms—the modern town square. But as American citizens, including candidates in these elections, attempted to exercise their First Amendment rights on these platforms, their constitutionally protected speech was intentionally suppressed as a consequence of the federal government’s direct coordination with third-party organizations, particularly universities, and social media platforms.[5] Speech concerning elections—the process by which Americans select their representatives—is of course entitled to robust First Amendment protections.[6] This bedrock principle is even more critical as it relates to speech by political candidates.[7] But as disinformation “experts” acknowledge, the labeling of any kind of speech is “inherently political”[8] and itself a form of “censorship.”[9]

This interim staff report details the federal government’s heavy-handed involvement in the creation and operation of the EIP, which facilitated the censorship of Americans’ political speech in the weeks and months leading up to the 2020 election. This report also publicly reveals for the first time secret “misinformation” reports from the EIP’s centralized reporting system, previously accessible only to select parties, including federal agencies, universities, and Big Tech. The Committee and Select Subcommittee obtained these nonpublic reports from Stanford University only under the threat of contempt of Congress. These reports of alleged mis- and disinformation were used to censor Americans engaged in core political speech in the lead up to the 2020 election.

As this new information reveals, and this report outlines, the federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions. This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefitted one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as “misinformation” while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors. The pseudoscience of disinformation is now—and has always been—nothing more than a political ruse most frequently targeted at communities and individuals holding views contrary to the prevailing narratives.

The EIP’s operation was straightforward: “external stakeholders,” including federal agencies and organizations funded by the federal government, submitted misinformation reports directly to the EIP. The EIP’s misinformation “analysts” next scoured the internet for additional examples for censorship. If the submitted report flagged a Facebook post, for example, the EIP analysts searched for similar content on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and other major social media platforms. Once all of the offending links were compiled, the EIP sent the most significant ones directly to Big Tech with specific recommendations on how the social media platforms should censor the posts, such as reducing the posts’ “discoverability,” “suspending [an account’s] ability to continue tweeting for 12 hours,” “monitoring if any of the tagged influencer accounts retweet” a particular user, and, of course, removing thousands of Americans’ posts.[10]

Who was being censored?

  • President Donald J. Trump
  • Senator Thom Tillis
  • Speaker Newt Gingrich
  • Governor Mike Huckabee
  • Congressman Thomas Massie
  • Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
  • Newsmax
  • The Babylon Bee
  • Sean Hannity
  • Mollie Hemingway
  • Harmeet Dhillon
  • Charlie Kirk
  • Candace Owens
  • Jack Posobiec
  • Tom Fitton
  • James O’Keefe
  • Benny Johnson
  • Michelle Malkin
  • Sean Davis
  • Dave Rubin
  • Paul Sperry
  • Tracy Beanz
  • Chanel Rion
  • An untold number of everyday Americans of all political affiliations

What was being censored?

  • True information
  • Jokes and satire
  • Political opinions

As part of this report, the Committee and Select Subcommittee are releasing all of the previously secret, archived data the Committee has obtained pursuant to a subpoena issued to Stanford University, which Stanford produced only after the threat of contempt.[11] In the lead-up to the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had the ability to see what American speech was being censored. Today, as a result of the Committee’s and SelectSubcommittee’s investigation, political candidates, journalists, and all Americans have the opportunity to see if they were targeted by their government and what viewpoints DHS, Stanford, and others worked to censor. While the EIP disproportionately targeted conservatives, Americans of all political affiliations were victims of censorship.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech” and protects “the right of the people . . . to petition the Government.”[12] The ability of Americans to criticize the government and its policies is a fundamental and sacrosanct principle of our constitutional republic. The Supreme Court has long recognized that for “core political speech” “the importance of First Amendment protections is at its zenith.”[13] Moreover, as constitutional scholars have explained: “Because the First Amendment bars ‘abridging’ the freedom of speech, any law or government policy that reduces that freedom on the [social media] platforms . . . violates the First Amendment.”[14]

The government may not dictate the type or terms of the criticism to which it is subject, even when—especially when—the government disagrees with the merits of that criticism. To inform potential legislation, the Committee and the Select Subcommittee have been investigating the Executive Branch’s collusion with third-party intermediaries, including universities, to censor protected speech on social media.

The Committee and the Select Subcommittee are responsible for investigating “violation[s] of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”[15] In accordance with this mandate, this interim staff report on CISA’s violations of the First Amendment and other unconstitutional activities fulfills the obligation to identify and report on the weaponization of the federal government against American citizens. The Committee’s and Select Subcommittee’s investigation remains ongoing. CISA still has not adequately complied with a subpoena for relevant documents, and more fact-finding is necessary. In order to better inform the Committee’s legislative efforts, the Committee and Select Subcommittee will continue to investigate how the Executive Branch worked with social media platforms and other intermediaries to censor disfavored viewpoints in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

To  access the Full document of the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, click Here

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Notes

1 See, e.g., Tim Starks, Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters, WASH. POST (Jan. 9, 2023) (“The study, which the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics helmed, explores the limits of what Russian disinformation and misinformation was able to achieve on one major social media platform in the 2016 elections.”); id. (“There was no measurable impact on ‘political attitudes, polarization, and vote preferences and behavior’ from the Russian accounts and posts.”).

2 See STAFF OF SELECT SUBCOMM. ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 118TH CONG., THE WEAPONIZATION OF CISA: HOW A “CYBERSECURITY” AGENCY COLLUDED WITH BIG TECH AND “DISINFORMATION” PARTNERS TO CENSOR AMERICANS (Comm. Print June 26, 2023).

3 Email from Graham Brookie to Atlantic Council employees (July 31, 2020, 5:54 PM) (on file with the Comm.).

4 See, e.g., REPUBLICAN STAFF OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY AND THE COMM. ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM, 116TH CONG., HOW DEMOCRATS ARE ATTEMPTING TO SOW UNCERTAINTY, INACCURACY, AND DELAY IN THE 2020 ELECTION (Sept. 23, 2020); see also Changes to election dates, procedures, and administration in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020, BALLOTPEDIA (last visited Nov. 3, 2023).

5 See Missouri v. Biden, No. 23-30445, (5th Cir. Oct. 3, 2023), ECF No. 268-1 (affirming preliminary injunction in part); Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La. Jul. 4, 2023), ECF No. 293 (memorandum ruling granting preliminary injunction).

6 See, e.g., Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 452 (2011) (“[S]peech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values”) (quoting Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 145 (1983)); Ariz. Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U.S. 721, 755 (2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted) (The First Amendment protects the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”); see also McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U.S. 334, 346 (1995) (cleaned up) (“There is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of the Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs, of course including discussions of candidates.”).

7 “The First Amendment ‘has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office,’” FEC v. Cruz, 142 S. Ct. 1638, 1650 (2022) (quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 272 (1971)); see also Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 52 (1976) (A candidate “has a First Amendment right to engage in the discussion of public issues and vigorously and tirelessly to advocate his own election.”).

8 Email from Suzanne Spaulding (Google Docs) to Kate Starbird (May 16, 2022, 6:27 PM) (on file with the Comm.); see also Kate Starbird et al., Proposal to the National Science Foundation for “Collaborative Research: SaTC: Core: Large: Building Rapid-Response Frameworks to Support Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations for Mitigating Online Disinformation” (Jan. 29, 2021) (unpublished proposal) (on file with the Comm.) (“The study of disinformation today invariably includes elements of politics.”).

9 Team F-469 First Pitch to NSF Convergence Accelerator, UNIV. OF MICH., at 1 (presentation notes) (Oct. 27, 2021) (on file with the Comm.).

10 See, e.g., EIP-581, submitted by [REDACTED], ticket created (Nov. 2, 2020, 2:36 PM) (archived Jira ticket data produced to the Comm.); EIP-673, submitted by [REDACTED], ticket created (Nov. 3, 2020, 11:51 AM) (archived Jira ticket data produced to the Comm.) (citing Mike Coudrey, TWITTER (Nov. 3, 2020, 10:13 AM), https://twitter.com/MichaelCoudrey/status/1323644406998597633); EIP-638, submitted by [REDACTED], ticket created (Nov. 3, 2020, 9:23 AM) (archived Jira ticket data produced to the Comm.).

11 See App’x II.

12 U.S. Const. amend. I.

13 Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 420, 425 (1988) (internal quotation marks omitted).

14 Philip Hamburger, How the Government Justifies Its Social-Media Censorship, WALL ST. J. (June 9, 2023).

15 H. Res. 12 § 1(b)(E). 

Featured image: A US government propaganda poster from the 1940s (Source: Multipolarista)

Do You Know What’s in a Vaccine? Chemical Ingredients

November 9th, 2023 by Health Freedom Defense Fund

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Over the last few decades, the number of chemicals added to foods and other products has skyrocketed. Chemicals are added to “enhance flavor”, make fruits and vegetables look fresh, extend the shelf life of packaged foods and for other invented reasons. A cornucopia of chemicals are also found in lotions and beauty products with the ostensible reason that these chemicals make beauty products feel, look, and smell nice. 

Along with this increase in heavily processed foods has come increased skepticism about the necessity of inserting chemical additives into everything we touch and taste. A significant and growing segment of the US population are beginning to examine the health consequences of ingesting and absorbing these chemical-laden products. 

This growing awareness about the adverse effects of ingesting and absorbing synthetic ingredients and the public’s understanding of the attendant health benefits of consuming products free from synthetic chemicals has prompted consumers to seek out organic ingredient-based items in their foods and skin lotions. 

More people are showing interest in knowing about the ingredients in their food and striving to ‘eat clean.’ This increased awareness is evidenced in the steady growth of the organic food industry and trends in the natural and organic cosmetic industry where demand is higher than ever.

This same level of concern has begun to seep into the public conscience regarding a certain medical product that has mostly avoided scrutiny – the vaccine.

Having been trained to accept that this product is a customary aspect of everyday life, most people haven’t given much thought to what’s inside the vaccine vials. Rarely will the vaccine ritual in the doctor’s office include a discussion about the ingredients which are about to be injected into the patient’s body. It’s highly likely the physicians and nurses themselves don’t know the ingredients of each vaccine.

So what’s in that vial? What’s coming through that needle?

A Partial List of Ingredients

Aluminum: Aluminum salts are used in some vaccine formulations as an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a substance added to vaccines to ostensibly enhance the immune response. Examples of aluminum salts in some vaccines are aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) or mixed aluminum salts.

In a 2011 study Canadian scientists Professor Christopher Shaw and Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic stated the following:

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”

Multiple studies have shown that the intramuscularly injected aluminum vaccine adjuvant is absorbed into the systemic circulation and travels to different sites in the body, such as the brain, joints, and the spleen, where it accumulates and is retained for years post-vaccination.

Mercury (thimerosal): Thimerosal is an ethyl mercury-based preservative used in vials that contain more than one dose of a vaccine (multi-dose vials) to prevent germs, bacteria and/or fungi from contaminating the vaccine. While in decline some flu vaccines and childhood vaccines in multi-dose vials still utilize thimerosal.

Mercury is known to be a genotoxic agent, even in minute concentrations, which can damage the genetic information within a cell causing mutations, which may lead to cancer.

A meta-analysis epidemiological study suggested thimerosal containing vaccines significantly increased the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

A 2011 study suggested there may be higher rates of blood and brain mercury levels in monkeys exposed to vaccines containing thimerosal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service (1999) published a joint statement that urged “all government agencies to work rapidly toward reducing children’s exposure to mercury from all sources.”

Gelatin: Gelatin is used as a stabilizer in some vaccines licensed in the U.S. Stabilizers are added to vaccines to protect the active ingredients from degrading during manufacture, transport and storage. 

Gelatin is a protein obtained from cows or pigs and produced by the partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted by boiling animal parts such as cartilage, tendons, skin, bones and ligaments in water. Some people might have a severe allergic reaction to it.

Certain vaccine viruses are grown on gelatin derived from the ligaments of pigs fed heavy doses of glyphosate in their feed. Gelatin comes from collagen which has lots of glycine. 

Gelatin is one of the most commonly identified causes of allergic reactions to vaccines. 

A 1999 Japanese study showed most anaphylactic reactions and some urticarial reactions to gelatin-containing measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines were associated with gelatin allergy. Based on these findings Japan removed gelatin from vaccines in 2000.

Formaldehyde: Formaldehyde is used during the manufacture of some vaccines to inactivate viruses (like polio and hepatitis A viruses) or bacterial toxins (like diphtheria and tetanus toxins).

Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen based on evidence from cancer studies in humans and is listed as aknown to be human carcinogen in the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Twelfth Report on Carcinogens(2011).

Phenol/Phenoxyethanol: Phenoxyethanol is used in vaccines and biologics as a preservative to prevent microbial growth. 

A 2010 study, The relative toxicity of compounds used as preservatives in vaccines and biologics, assessed the relative cytotoxicity of the levels of the compounds commonly used as preservative in US licensed vaccines and found that for phenoxyethanol it was 4.6-fold, for phenol 12.2-fold and for Thimerosal >330-fold.

They concluded, “None of the compounds commonly used as preservatives in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations can be considered an ideal preservative, and their ability to fully comply with the requirements of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for preservatives is in doubt.”

Case reports (here, here and here) have suggested a link between phenoxyethanol and urticaria (hives), eczema and anaphylaxis.

Triton X-100: Triton X –100 or octylphenol ethoxylate (OPE) is a surfactant (reducing the surface tension of liquids) and stabilizer present in some influenza vaccines.

OPEs are endocrine disruptors and break down relatively easily into Octylphenols (OPs), which are more harmful. Endocrine disruptors can alter reproductive function, increase incidences of breast cancer, affect growth patterns and neurodevelopment in children and change immune function.

Squalene: Squalene is a naturally-occurring substance derived primarily from shark liver oil. When combined with other ingredients it becomes an adjuvant, which, like aluminum, is added to vaccines to elicit a stronger immune response from the body.

A 2000 study demonstrated that one intradermal injection of squalene adjuvant produced arthritis in rats.

Some believe that Gulf War Syndrome was linked to the presence of squalene in certain lots of the anthrax vaccine.

Beta-propiolactone: Beta-propiolactone (BPL) is a commonly used reagent for the inactivation of viruses for use in vaccine preparations. It has recently been used in the development of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine preparation. 

Beta-propiolactone is a known carcinogen. Local sarcomas have been produced by subcutaneous injection of beta-propiolactone in rats. In the laboratory sarcomas and squamous papillomas in mice were produced  by a single subcutaneous injection of a minute amount of beta-propiolactone.

Polysorbate 80: Polysorbate 80 is present in some vaccines to stop the vaccine from separating into its component parts. In a PubMed study Polysorbate 80 was described as, “a ubiquitously used solubilizing agent that can cause severe nonimmunologic anaphylactoid reactions.”

In a pharmacological study on mice and rats Polysorbate 80 produced, “mild to moderate depression of the central nervous system with a marked reduction in locomotor activity and rectal temperature, exhibited ataxia and paralytic activity and potentiated the pentobarbital sleeping time.”

The results of that study concluded, “The results of the present study indicate that polysorbate 80 can neither be used as a solvent for isolated tissue experiments nor when considered for intravenous administration.”

Another study from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) suggested the dietary emulsifier polysorbate 80 may induce low-grade inflammation which may contribute to metabolic diseases and increase the potential for development in colon cancer.

Genetically modified yeast:  S. cerevisiae, a species of yeast, is used in vaccines in a variety of ways. It is used as an adjuvant and now through genetic manipulation it is being used to create artificial antibodies

Studies have suggested that genetically engineered yeast used in vaccines may be a contributing factor to autoimmune disorders.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): Monosodium Glutamate is used in small amounts in some vaccines to keep them stable and protect them from losing potency even when exposed to heat and light. 

In a study that looked at rat fertility and MSG consumption the authors found there was a negative impact on the rats’ fertility. 

In another study it was noted that chronic MSG intake caused kidney dysfunction and renal oxidative stress in the animal model.

Cells From Aborted Fetus: Fetal cell lines are used to grow viruses which are then collected from the cell cultures and processed further to produce the vaccine itself. 

The cell lines are propagated from lung tissue of mature aborted and used in the current manufacture of a number of routine vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella (MMRV), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio, (DTaP-IPV), Hepatitis A and chickenpox.

Aborted fetal cells are listed on vaccine package inserts as “Human Fetal Diploid Cells.” Two aborted fetal cell lines, WI-38 and MRC-5, have been grown under laboratory conditions since the 1960s. Diploid cells (WI-38, MRC-5) vaccines have their origin in induced abortions.

The use of such cell lines can be profoundly objectionable to segments of the population who hold certain religious and/or philosophical beliefs.

The Italian vaccine research and advocacy organization Corvelva released a study in 2019 regarding the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccines.

In their summary they highlighted the following:

  • The human genomic DNA contained in this vaccine is clearly, undoubtedly abnormal, presenting important inconsistencies with a typical human genome, that is, with that of a healthy individual. 
  • 560 genes known to be associated with forms of cancer were tested and all underwent major modifications. 
  • There are variations whose consequences are not even known, not yet appearing in the literature, but which still affect genes involved in the induction of human cancer.
  • What is also clearly abnormal is the genome excess showing changes in the number of copies and structural variants.

Serum From Aborted Calf Fetus Blood: The purpose for the fetal bovine serum is to provide a nutrient broth for viruses to grow in cells.

Humane Research Australia describes the process of how the blood is collected, “The blood is collected after the slaughter of a mature female cow, the mother’s uterus containing the calf fetus is removed during the evisceration process and transferred to the blood collection room. A needle is then inserted between the fetus’s ribs directly into its heart and the blood is vacuumed into a sterile collection bag. 

Only fetuses over the age of three months are used otherwise the heart is considered too small to puncture. Once collected, the blood is allowed to clot at room temperature and the serum separated through a process known as refrigerated centrifugation.”

Beyond certain ethical considerations scientists have found that different bovine tissues contain different amounts of the BSE agent. 

Antibiotics: Antibiotics are used during the manufacturing process of some vaccines to stop bacteria growing and contaminating the vaccine. 

Antibiotics found in some vaccines include neomycin, streptomycin, polymyxin b, gentamicin and kanamycin. 

Polymyxin B comes with a warning that, “This medicine has not been fully studied in pregnant women. This medicine may cause kidney problems. This medicine may cause nerve problems”, as well as a laundry list of side effects.

Similar warnings are found with streptomycin, neomycin, gentamicin, and kanamycin. 

A study out of Finland raised concerns about excessive antibiotic use in early childhood which may lead to weight gain and altered gut bacteria.

What Else Could be in That Needle?

The list above is not a complete account of all the ingredients found in various vaccine cocktails. A comprehensive manufacturers’ catalog of ingredients can be found here, here and here.

The reality is that even a complete list issued by the producer doesn’t tell the entire story of what is found in vaccines.

Using an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with an X-ray microprobe a group of Italian scientists examined 44 samples of 30 different vaccines and found dangerous contaminants, including metal toxicants in 43 of the 44 samples tested.

In the study, published in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, the researchers detected lead, chromium, nickel and other metals in every adjuvant sample tested.

Additional metal contaminants identified in 25 of the human vaccines included platinum, silver, bismuth, iron, and chromium. Foreign impurities such as zirconium, hafnium, strontium, tungsten, antimony, bismuth, cerium and were also detected in many of the vaccines tested.

The researchers commenting on their unexpected findings reported:

The quantity of foreign bodies detected and, in some cases, their unusual chemical compositions baffled us. In most circumstances, the combinations detected are very odd as they have no technical use, cannot be found in any material handbook and look like the result of the random formation occurring….In any case, whatever their origin, they should not be present in any injectable medicament, let alone in vaccines, more in particular those meant for infants. [Emphasis added]

When interviewed lead scientist Dr. Antonietta Gatti, of the National Council of Research of Italy and Scientific Director of Nanodiagnostics, explained that the discovery of vaccine impurities shocked the researchers:

Those particles should not have been there. We had never questioned the purity of vaccines before. In fact, for us the problem did not even exist. All injectable solutions had to be perfectly pure and that was an act of faith on which it seemed impossible to have doubts. For that reason, we repeated our analyses several times to be certain. In the end, we accepted the evidence.

Speculating on the potential consequences of these foreign impurities Dr. Gatti stated:

The particles, be they isolated, aggregated or clustered, are not supposed to be there… Our tissues perceive these foreign bodies as potential enemies…Unfortunately, though, the particles we found in vaccines, are not biodegradable. So, all the macrophages’ efforts will be useless, and depending on the exact chemicals involved, the particles may be especially toxic. Cytokines and pro-inflammatory substances in general are released and granulated tissue forms, enveloping the particles. This provokes inflammation which, in the long run, if locally persistent, is known to be a precursor to cancer.

Along with unlisted metal contaminants another unlisted contaminant was noted in some vaccines when a preliminary screening result from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. detected glyphosate in the childhood vaccines they tested.

Merck’s MMR II vaccine had 2.671 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate, Sanofi Pasteur’s DTap Adacel vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Novartis’ Influenza Fluvirin had 0.331 ppb, Glaxo Smith Kline’s HepB Energix-B vaccine had 0.325 ppb, Merck’s Pneumococcal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23  had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.

These findings prompted Moms Across America to send a letter to the FDA, CDC, EPA,NIH and California Department of Health requesting that they test vaccines for glyphosate and recall contaminated vaccines.

MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Seneff remarked on the route by which glyphosate could get into vaccines:

Collagen is a protein found in large amounts in the ligaments of cows, and these ligaments are often used in the production of gelatin. The MMR vaccine and flu vaccine viruses are grown as live cultures on gelatin sourced from cows fed high concentrations of glyphosate in their GMO Roundup­Ready feed.

What to Do?

Given the complex nature of the composition of vaccines and the paucity of information volunteered to the public on the manufacturing processes and ingredients that go into these products, how does one go about navigating this subject?

Conventional wisdom might suggest, “Ask your doctor.” But how independent are these doctors?

Where do you turn when you discover physicians and pediatricians, who have a legal duty to fully inform patients about vaccine risks and side effects, have ideological and material incentives to avoid presenting specific information that might cause a parent to question a vaccine?

What about educational materials and advice from the agencies tasked with protecting public health? Can we trust the FDA and the CDC to provide detailed and unbiased information when it is known that they get substantial amounts of money from vaccine manufacturers?

Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care.This includes being given a thorough account of the risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatments, the patient’s role in treatment, and their right to refuse treatment. 

Informed and individualized health care decisions about any product one puts into their or their children’s body starts with being fully informed with what is in that product.

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This article was originally published on Health Freedom Defense Fund.

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White House Orders Pentagon Airstrikes on Eastern Syria

November 9th, 2023 by Abayomi Azikiwe

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says the aerial attacks on a purported weapons storage facility follows previous actions on October 27 in response to the escalation of attacks on United States bases by resistance forces in solidarity with the people of Gaza

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As the White House continues to suggest the United States government does not want to see the current war against the people of Palestine expand to a regional conflagration, for the second time in the last two weeks Pentagon fighter jets have struck areas which they claim are utilized by resistance forces in Syria.

More than ten thousand people have died at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since the launching of Operation Al-Aqsa on October 7.

Resistance organizations and governments from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Yemen to Syria, Iraq and Lebanon have warned that they will respond to the ongoing genocidal siege of the Gaza Strip where 2.3 million people are experiencing daily bombardments. Although the administration of President Joe Biden now claims that it would like to see a “humanitarian pause” in the IDF bombing of Gaza, they have not relented from airlifting even more deadly weapons which are being used against the civilian population in Palestine.

Scenes emanating from Gaza and the West Bank where the Israeli security forces and settler militias are engaging in deadly attacks on Palestinians, have infuriated people throughout the region and the international community. From mass demonstrations to the withdrawal of diplomatic personnel as well as missile attacks on Israeli and U.S. bases have highlighted the increasing hostility towards the State of Israel and its backers in Washington. Despite the calls by millions throughout the world for an immediate ceasefire and the resumption of much-needed humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza, the Biden administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have refused to agree to a cessation of the bombings and ground incursions.

In a report published by the Associated Press on November 8, it says of the current situation:

“The U.S. carried out an airstrike on a weapons warehouse in eastern Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the region for the past several weeks, the Pentagon said. In Wednesday’s strike, two U.S. F-15 fighter jets dropped multiple bombs on a weapons storage facility near Maysulun in Deir el-Zour that was known to be used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, U.S. officials said.”

By framing the response of people throughout the region to the siege on Gaza and increasingly the West Bank as being influenced by the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Washington and Tel Aviv are seeking to build a case among their constituencies for a direct military confrontation with Tehran. However, the Iranian government has repeatedly stated that the decision to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was solely that of Hamas and other resistance movements in Gaza.

Statements of support have of course been forthcoming from Iran. Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel, by falsely blaming Tehran for funding and coordinating the resistance efforts is a blatant attempt to deflect attention away from the roles of imperialism and Zionism in fomenting dissent among the people throughout the West Asia and North Africa region.

The U.S. utilizes the State of Israel as a bulwark against the liberation movements in Palestine and revolutionary forces in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and other states. For decades, Washington and Wall Street have funded and armed Tel Aviv, empowering the settler-colonial state to engage in the forced removal and repression of the Palestinian people while at the same time attempting to place a stranglehold on the development and sovereignty of states throughout the region.

Character of the Resistance Against Imperialism and Zionism

Since the advent of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran has become a major regional force against the influence of the U.S. and the continued colonization of Palestine. Iran has built alliances with progressive forces in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

On a broader international level, the Iranian government has emerged as an important player in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and other multilateral organizations based in the Global South. A recent visit to the country by the South African Foreign Minister Dr. Naledi Pandor illustrates the growing partnership between Tehran and the African Union member-states.

Iran maintains good relations with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, the major strategic adversaries to the U.S. and its hegemonic disposition. Over the last few years, Tehran has re-established diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia depriving Washington of an avenue to destabilize West Asia through the pitting of various Muslim nations against each other.

In Yemen, a state ranked as the least developed in the region, the Ansur Allah movement has gained strength after emerging from years of a war against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which was instigated by the U.S. Yemen beginning in 2015, was bombed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and its allies on a daily basis resulting at one point in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

An article published in Al Mayadeen on the outlook of Yemen said that:

“The spokesperson for the Ansar Allah movement, Mohammad Abdul Salam, stressed on Wednesday that the Yemeni armed forces will continue their operations to support Palestinians in Gaza until the Israeli aggression stops, confirming that a hostile U.S. spy plane was downed in the airspace of Yemeni territorial waters. Abdul Salam said on X that this operation reaffirms that the Yemeni Armed Forces are ready to confront any hostile actions violating the country’s national sovereignty. Moreover, the reports were confirmed by U.S. officials as cited by Fox News. ‘We can confirm that a U.S. military MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft was shot down while in international airspace over international waters off the coast of Yemen,’ a Fox News correspondent reported, citing a senior U.S. defense official.”

Lebanon, which shares an extensive border with Occupied Palestine, has witnessed the birth and growth of the Hezbollah resistance movement. Hezbollah fought two wars with Tel Aviv in 2000 and 2006 in which the IDF was halted from making further advances into their territory.

Lebanon Hezbollah elite forces (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Hezbollah has an estimated military force of 50,000 fighters with the potential of recruiting another 100,000 more. The movement has built up an arsenal of medium range missiles and drones capable of striking deep inside the Israeli occupied territories.

The Al Mayadeen news agency wrote recently about the organization saying:

“The Lebanese Resistance, Hezbollah, has proved its means to deliver on Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s capabilities to confront U.S. warships and any grave risks that could lead to any regional war, sources familiar with the group’s arsenal supply said. Last week, Sayyed Nasrallah warned Washington that his party has the necessary preparations to confront the U.S. vessels deployed in the region since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.  Sources familiar with the party’s arsenal clarified that he was referring to Hezbollah’s anti-ship missile capabilities. Washington has stated that its deployment of naval forces in the Mediterranean, including two aircraft carriers and their support ships, is aimed at deterring ‘Iran to prevent the spread of conflicts involving groups it supports, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’. But Hezbollah perceives the presence of U.S. warships as a direct threat. During his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah said that the U.S. warships in the Mediterranean ‘do not scare us, and will not scare us,’ adding ‘We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us.’”

With specific reference to the growth of the resistance forces in Gaza over the last decade, the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, has developed its own cadre of fighters which employ anti-tank weapons and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) now being utilized to inflict damage on the IDF in its ground incursion. Other resistance groupings such as Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and its military wing, al-Quds Brigades, are also engaging the IDF in the liberation struggle to free their territory.

In another report from Al Mayadeen, the news agency emphasizes in relations to the ongoing resistance to the IDF:

“The spokesperson for Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, announced that the Resistance has completely or partially destroyed 136 Israeli military vehicles in Gaza since the start of the ground invasion. In a televised statement on Wednesday, Abu Obeida confirmed that the occupation forces have suffered significant casualties during confrontations with the Resistance fighters across Gaza axes…. Meanwhile, the Resistance is inflicting heavy losses on the Israeli army despite having ‘no tanks, no aircraft, no armored vehicles, not even a mountain, hill, or difficult terrain’ to fight within. Right after Abu Obeida’s speech, al-Qassam released footage documenting losses incurred by the Israeli army in Gaza in a number of operations carried out by the Resistance fighters.”

Therefore, the Pentagon and IOF airstrikes in Syria are a response to the growing defiance against imperialism and Zionism in West Asia.  These organizations and movements are committed to the liberation of Palestine through the consolidation of an Axis of Resistance. The build up of naval warships and the potential of redeploying U.S. military forces in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and possibly Iran will only result in the mounting of casualties and the further deterioration of the image and status of imperialism on a global scale.

The antiwar and peace movements in the western states must recognize the significance of the emerging political trends extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf states. Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle will require a deeper analysis of the political trajectory of the U.S. and its allies in order to build an alternative to the imperatives of imperialism.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“You must ‘remember what Amalek has done to you,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admonished on October 28, announcing the “second phase,” a ground invasion, of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Amalek, in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), is a nation that ambushed the Israelites making their way to the Promised Land. Following the attack, which the Israelites were able to beat back, God instructed that they must never forget and must wage an eternal war until no trace of Amalek’s existence remains. Generations later, King Saul killed all but the Amalekite king, whose descendent, Haman, generations after that, in the story of Purim, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia.

Netanyahu is notoriously secular in his private life. But, ever the shrewd politician, scripture is his language of choice to sell his war to Jewish supremacists in Israel and right-wing Evangelicals in the United States.

The victims of Hamas’ vile October 7 attack come from what is referred to as the “Gaza envelope.” Heavy with kibbutzim (intentional collectives, traditionally based around agriculture), its residents are known for being secular and left-leaning.

Asked if losing his parents in Hamas’s terror attack had affected his political views, Maoz Inon, pleaded not for revenge but a reassessment of basing security “on military might.”

Likewise, Yotam Kipnis, in eulogizing for his father, said “We will not stay silent while the cannons roar, and we won’t forget that Dad loved peace. He wasn’t willing to serve in the territories. Do not write my father’s name on a missile, he wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Tom Godo, whose son lived and died in Kibbutz Kissufim, blamed the Netanyahu administration: “The fingers that pulled the trigger and murdered, the hands that held the knives that stabbed and beheaded and slashed were the loyal and determined emissaries of the accursed, messianic and corrupt government [of Israel].”

Even after spending 16 days as a hostage in Gaza, eighty-five-year-old peace activist Yocheved Lifshitz retained her belief in reconciliation. Upon being transferred to the Red Cross, she took the hand of her Hamas handler and bade him “Shalom,” (peace).

It’s not the families of those murdered on October 7, nor the families of the hostages who have been sleeping in tents outside the military headquarters in Tel Aviv demanding all Palestinian political prisoners be released in exchange for their loved ones Netanyahu is invoking Amalek to, but the ideological descendants of Kach.

The religious-nationalist Kach party was founded in 1971 by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who argued for “the immediate transfer of the Arabs,” whom he referred to as “dogs.” In 1984, the one time his party secured a single seat in the Knesset, Kahane introduced legislation to ban all Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations and revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews.

The Kach party was so violently racist that it was prohibited from running in Israel’s next election, banned entirely in 1994, and defined as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

In what could be perceived as another iteration of Amalek, in 2019, Kahane follower Itamar Ben Gvir formed the Jewish Power party, an ideological offshoot of Kach. Merging with other far-right fundamentalist parties to form Religious Zionism in 2022, they won the third-largest share of Israel’s parliament seats. This is the audience Netanyahu is addressing, but not only them.

On October 8, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which claims to represent millions, sent out an email stating that Hamas’ attack, “was not launched due to grievances over the Israeli ‘occupation’ or any real dangers to the al-Aqsa mosque.” Rather, it was driven by the ancient “Spirit of Amalek.”

On October 24, Christians United for Israel, which boasts a membership of over 10 million, raised $25 million in a single night in support of Israel (they raised and donated $100 million over the week). Standing beside CUFI’s Pastor John Hagee, who in 2008 referred to Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God “to help Jews reach the promised land,” was Israeli Ambassador to Israel Gilan Erdad.

Given their belief that when enough Jews have populated their modern state, the apocalypse will come, and “a sea of [Jewish and Muslim] human blood” will fill the land, it’s hard to think of Evangelical Zionist support for Israel as a heartfelt commitment to the protection of the Jewish people. Despite that, amid declining Jewish-American support for Israel, especially among young Jews, Israel has for years been courtingEvangelical support. However, polls are finding the support of young Evangelicals is also rapidly declining, dropping from 75% to 34% between 2018 and 2021.

Religious nationalism may be soaring in Israel, but that’s not the trend in America. Some people of faith, like Adam Strater, the senior Jewish educator for Georgia Hillels, are even reclaiming the story of Amalek as a model for Jews to reject “the evil impulse,” described in the Zohar (3:160a) and “make the moral choice to reorient the tradition towards a shared sense of solidarity, and ultimately, liberation.” Given the rapidly climbing toll of death in Gaza—over 10,000 people killed already—these changes could not be more welcome or come soon enough.

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Ariel Gold is the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA, the oldest peace and justice organization in the U.S. Previously, she was the national co-director of CODEPINK, where she helped manage the Peace in Ukraine coalition.

Arab-Iran Amity Is a Geopolitical Reality

November 9th, 2023 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The forthcoming first visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia on November 13 marks a milestone in the rapprochement between the two countries mediated by China in March. The relationship is fast acquiring a qualitatively new level of solidarity in the context of the Palestine-Israel conflict. 

This marks a shift in the tectonic plates in regional politics, which has long been dominated by the United States but no longer so. 

The latest China-UAE initiative on Monday to promote a ceasefire in Gaza was rounded off with an extraordinary spectacle of diplomacy at the UN headquarters in New York as the two countries’ envoys read out together a joint statement to the media. The US was nowhere to be seen. 

The events since October 7 make it abundantly clear that the US attempts to integrate Israel into its Muslim neighbourhood in its terms is a pipe dream — ie., unless and until Israel is willing to turn its sword into plowshares. The ferocity of the Israeli revenge attacks on the people of Gaza — “animals” —  smacks of racism and genocide.  

Iran knew all along the bestiality of the Zionist regime. Saudi Arabia too must be in a chastened mood following the wake-up call that it must first and foremost learn to live in its region. 

Raisi is heading for Saudi Arabia against the backdrop of a historic shift in the power dynamic. King Salman invited Raisi to speak on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza at a special summit of Arab states, which he is hosting in Riyadh. This signifies a profound Saudi realisation that even its willingness to be involved in the Abraham Accords under American persuasion has alienated the Arab public.  

There is a fallacy in the western discourse about a Russia-China-Iran axis in West Asia. This is a nonsensical misinterpretation. A consistent three-fold foreign policy principle that Iran pursued right from the Islamic Revolution in 1979 is that, one, its strategic autonomy is sacred; two, the countries of the region must take their destiny into their own hands and solve regional issues themselves without involving extra-regional powers, and, three, foster Muslim unity howsoever long and winding that road might seem. 

This principle had severe limitations due to force of circumstances — principally, in the conditions engendered by the colonial policy of divide and rule pursued by the US. Circumstances were even deliberately engineered, such as the Iraq-Iran war, where the US encouraged the regional states to collaborate with Saddam Hussein to launch an aggression against Iran to stymie the Islamic revolution in its infancy. 

Another painful episode was the Syrian conflict. There, again, the US actively canvassed among regional states for a regime change in Damascus with the ultimate objective of targeting Iran by using the terrorist groups that Washington incubated in Occupied Iraq. 

In Syria, the US brilliantly succeeded in pitting the regional states against each other and the result is plain to see in the ruins of what used to be the throbbing heart of Islamic civilisation. At the peak of the conflict, several western intelligence agencies were freely operating in Syria assisting the terrorist groups to rampage the country whose cardinal sin was that, like Iran, it too consistently put primacy on its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policies through the cold war and post-cold war eras alike. 

Suffice to say, the US and Israel met with great success in fragmenting Muslim Middle East by exaggerating the threat perceptions and convincing several Gulf Arab states that they faced direct threats or even attacks by Iranian proxies, as well as alleged Iranian support for dissident movements.

Of course, the US capitalised on it by selling huge volumes of weapons and more importantly, to finesse the petrodollar as a key pillar of the western banking system. As for Israel, it directly benefitted from demonising Iran in order to draw attention away from the Palestine issue, which has all along been the core issue in the Middle East crisis.

Suffice to say, the rollout of the Iran-Saudi-China agreement has reduced the hostility that existed between Riyadh and Tehran for the better part of the recent decades. Both countries sought to build on the momentum generated by the success of the secret Beijing talks with regard to their commitment to non-interference. It must be noted, however, that the relations between Gulf Arab countries and Iran had already improved significantly over the last two years.  

What western analysts miss is that the wealthy Gulf states are fed up with their subaltern life as sidekicks of the US. They want to prioritise their national life in directions they choose and with partners who respect them, eschewing any zero-sum mindset, unlike in the Cold War era, for reasons of ideology or power dynamic. 

That is why, the Biden Administration cannot accept that the Saudis today work with Russia on the OPEC+ platform to fulfil their commitment to extra voluntary oil supply cuts, while also negotiating with the US on nuclear technology, and at the same time moving on the diplomatic track with Beijing to douse the fire set ablaze in the Levant a month ago from spreading to the rest of the West Asian region. 

Evidently, the Saudis are no longer rolling with pleasure at the prospect of a US-Iran confrontation. On the other hand, Saudis and Iranians have a shared concern that their new thinking with primacy on development will dissipate unless there is regional stability and security.

Thus, it is sheer naïveté on the part of Washington to bracket Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran as one grouping — as Blinken did during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Monday — and juxtapose it with the rest of the region. The canard that Hezbollah and Hamas are “terrorist” movements is about to be exposed. Truth be told, how are they any different from Sinn Féin, which was historically associated with the IRA?  

Such naïveté underlines the absurd US-Israeli-Indian venture to create a West Asian QUAD 2 (“I2U2”), which today looks laughable — or the quixotic plot hatched in New Delhi recently during the G20 summit to get the Saudis on board the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor project, with the fond hope that it “integrates” Israel and creates business for Haifa Port, isolates Iran and Turkey, rubbishes Russia-led International North-South Corridor and shows the middle finger to Beijing’s Belt and Road. Whereas, life is real. 

Taking all things into account, it is the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s regional tour to Israel and his summit with a select group of Arab states in Amman over the last weekend that has turned into a defining moment in the Gaza crisis.

The Arab foreign ministers point blank refused to buy into any of the invidious proposals put forward by Blinken with malicious intentions to preserve Jewish interests —  “humanitarian pause” instead of ceasefire; refugee camps for the people from Gaza escaping from Israel’s horrific, brutal attacks that would be funded with Arab money but would eventually lead to Jewish settlements in Gaza; contours of a post-war arrangement for Gaza that will leave the debris to be handled by the Palestinian Authority and reconstruction to be financed by the Gulf states while Israel continues to dominate it in the all-important security sphere; preventing Iran from going to the rescue of Hezbollah and Hamas as they are put into Israeli meat grinders of American make. 

It was rank hypocrisy. The Arab foreign ministers spoke up in one voice to articulate their counter proposal to Blinken’s — immediate ceasefire. President Biden seems to see the writing on the wall, finally — although,  intrinsically, he continues to be the world’s number one Zionist, as someone once called him, and his motivations are largely borne out of his own political survival as the 2024 election draws closer. 

Be that as it may, the high probability is that it is now a matter of time before the global community insists on stopping the Israeli apartheid state on its tracks. For, when Muslim countries unite, they call the shots in the emerging multipolar world order. Their demand that a settlement of the Palestine problem brooks no further delay has gained resonance, including in the Western Hemisphere. 

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Before Israel’s most deadly and devastating war on Gaza, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued repeated reports on conditions in Israeli-occupied Gaza, warning that Israel had a long-term policy of “de-development”.

In a report released on October 25th as Israel carpet bombed Gaza, UNCTAD wrote,

“Since June 2007, Gaza suffered several military operations and has been under a land, sea and air closure. Gazans need permits to move in and out of the strip through two land crossing points controlled by Israel.

“Restrictions on the movement of people and goods, destruction of productive assets in frequent military operations and the ban on the importation of key technologies and inputs have hollowed out Gaza’s economy.

“Investment in 2022 diminished to 10.7 per cent of Gaza’s GDP — or a meagre 1.9 per cent of the Palestinian GDP. Between 2006 and 2022, Gaza’s real GDP per capita shrank by 37 per cebt, while its share in the Palestinian economy contracted from 31 to 17.4 per cent.

“The restrictions on movement also impede access to health and other essential services, as 80 per cent of Gazans depend on international aid.

“Living in Gaza in 2022 meant confinement in one of the most densely populated spaces in the world, without electricity half the time, and without adequate access to clean water or a proper sewage system.

“It meant a 65 per cent probability of being poor, 41 per cent probability of dropping out of the labour force in despair, and for those looking for work, a 45 per cent probability of being unemployed,” the report concludes.

UNCTAD is, of course, correct. But Israel’s systematic “de-development” of Gaza began with its permanent occupation. In 1995, the Washington-based Institute of Palestine Studies published “The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development” by Harvard University’s Sara Roy, who has made truth-telling on Gaza her life’s work. Daughter of two Holocaust survivors, she visited Israel repeatedly and found that neglected Gaza was the victim of Israel’s policy of de-development designed to keep its population in poverty and dependant on Israel. Roy revealed that after conquering Gaza in 1967, Israel had followed a policy of pacification, normalisation and integration.

She said pacification involved not only eliminating resistance but also depopulating the narrow coastal strip by deporting 75,000 of its residens and refusing to allow the return of 25,000-50,000 Gazans who were abroad at the time of the occupation, many of them working in the Gulf and elsewhere. Therefore by 1968, Israel had reduced Gaza’s population by 25 per cent. Israel also encouraged Gazans to move to the West Bank where agricultural jobs were available, diminishing further the number of Gazans living at home. 

Israel normalised relationships between the occupier and indigenous population by encouraging local institutions and charitable organisations to look after the local population. This enabled Israel to shrug off responsibility for Gazans’ welfare although Israel is required to assume this role by International law governing the behaviour of occupying powers.

Israel’s occupation destroyed the economy developed during Egyptian rule (1948-1967) and integrated Gaza into Israel’s economy by linking electricity to its grid, water to its system, and making Gaza totally dependent on Israel for imports and exports and employment. Gazan workers were eventually permitted to take up manual jobs within Israel itself. There was little investment in agriculture, manufacturing, and commercial enterprises, depriving the economy of growth.

There was a brief window of opportunity to change Sara Roy’s grim picture of Gaza between 1993 after the Oslo Accord was signed and 2006-2007. When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza in 1994, he based Palestinian Authority governance in Gaza, removing the strip from direct Israeli administration and control. Palestinian planners worked at developing the strip’s infrastrucure and investors built hotels, restaurants, industries and commercial firms. Political institutions were created by 1996 presidential and parliamentary election — praised by ex-US president Jimmy Carter as among the most democratic he ever monitored. President Bill Clinton formally inaugurated Gaza’s international airport in December 1998 and addressed Gazan’s elite at a gathering in the Rashad Shawwa Cultural Centre. Clinton’s visit did not lend momentum to the stalled Oslo peace process which he and then Israeli premier Ehud Barak blamed on Arafat who refused to accept the bad deal which Barak was prepared to offer. This allowed Israel to retain illegally occupied East Jerusalem, land west of its West Bank barrier, and control of the West Bank border with Jordan.

Gaza appeared to be progressing politically and economically until Israel failed to deliver an end to Israel’s occupation by 1999 and the emergence of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel never had any intention of allowing this to happen. The second intifada erupted in 2000.

As it wound down in 2005, Israel withdrew its military and settlers from Gaza. But, instead of ending its control, Israel besieged and blockaded Gaza and isolated its population. After Hamas triumphed in the 2006 legislative election and expelled Fateh’s corrupt and violent security forces from the strip in June 2007, Israel not only tightened its grip on Gaza but also waged murderous and destructive military campaigns on Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Israel’s strategy during these offensives was to “mow the lawn:” to reduce the effectiveness of the Hamas-led resistance.

During its ongoing all-out operation, Israel seeks to eliminate Hamas and is prepared to risk international opprobrium by bombing civilians and destroying homes, hospitals, roads, schools and refugee camps with the ultimate aim of driving all or most of the 2.2 million Gazans from Palestine.

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Viciousness Regnant: Humanitarianism as a Weasel Word

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 08, 2023

It may be time to reconsider the use of such words as “humanitarian” and “humanitarianism”.  There has been little of that sort evidenced in the Israel-Hamas War, marked by industrial-mechanised atrocities, enforced deprivation and starvation, orders to evacuate (read expulsion and banishment), preceded by massacres most haunting and visceral.

Enlightenment Is Successful When People’s Consciousness Can be Changed

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 08, 2023

At a time when humanity is threatened with annihilation through the use of nuclear bombs, we are more dependent than ever on independent and courageous intellectuals to enlighten people, to teach them what is truth and what is a lie. 

11 Children Ages 9-19 Had a Cardiac Arrest at US Schools in the Past Month. Some Schools Are Now Starting to Conduct “Sudden Cardiac Arrest Screening”

By Dr. William Makis, November 08, 2023

14 year old Knox MacEwen is a Western High School Air Force Junior ROTC (Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) student. On Nov. 4 he was running at a Army Junior ROTC exercise when he suffered a cardiac arrest during a 5K run and died in the hospital. His mother is recovering from a hard fought battle with cancer this past year.

Stop Drinking the “Political Kool-Aid”, America: Voting Will Not Save Us

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, November 08, 2023

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. It is the end result of a culture that is moving away from substance toward sensationalism in an era of mass media.

Israel Resorts to Nuclear Blackmail in Gaza

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, November 08, 2023

In addition to promoting genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the Zionist regime is resorting to nuclear blackmail against the Palestinians. In a controversial recent statement, an Israeli top official admitted that using atomic bombs in the Gaza Strip is a “possibility” for Tel Aviv.These words shocked the world and showed the level of unpredictability and irrationality in the Israeli government’s actions.

Over Ten Thousand Killed in Gaza as Biden Administration Transfers More Weapons to the IDF

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 08, 2023

After more than one month of blanket bombings of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the limited incursions into the territory by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the United States government has refused to even call for a ceasefire after the death tolls exceed ten thousand people.

The Historical Background of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Up to 1914)

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, November 08, 2023

The historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to 1917 (the Balfour Declaration) and the establishment of the British protectorate over Palestine (the Palestine Mandate) after WWI with its provision for a national home for the Jews, although “officially” not to be at the expense of the local inhabitants – the Palestinians. 

New Zealand Petition to Ban mRNA Agents. Will the Country Make History Again?

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, November 08, 2023

Many of us suspected from the beginning that the use of a genetic medical technology would invariably hazard alteration of the genome. Despite the assurances we were given that the mRNA in the inoculation agents could never affect our DNA, we remained dubious.

Bill Gates’s “Fake Meat” Banned by Italy Citing “Serious Health Concerns”

By Ethan Huff, November 08, 2023

Numerous recent studies show that lab-grown synthetic meat of the kind being promoted by billionaire eugenicist Bill Gates is triggering the formation of turbo cancers in humans – Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccines” are doing the same thing, by the way.

Why Israel Wants to Erase Context and History in the War on Gaza

By Ilan Pappe, November 08, 2023

There are several historical contexts for what is going on now in Israel-Palestine that cannot be ignored. The wider historical context goes back to the mid-19th century, when evangelical Christianity in the West turned the idea of the “return of the Jews” into a religious millennial imperative and advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the steps that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the return of the Messiah, and the end of time.

Japan-Philippines Moving Toward US-led Trilateral Alliance

November 9th, 2023 by Richard Javad Heydarian

CJPME Applauds Bloc Québécois Push for Ceasefire in Gaza

November 9th, 2023 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds today’s call from the Bloc Québécois for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, which was announced by Yves-Francois Blanchet in a press conference this morning. The Bloc joins the NDP, Green Party, many Liberal MPs, civil society, and public opinion in calling for an end to Israel’s military offensive, which has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians in just one month. CJPME thanks the Bloc for adopting this principled position, and urges Prime Minister Trudeau to finally withdraw his support for Israel’s genocidal war.  

“The Bloc and the majority of Quebecers have spoken clearly, the Trudeau government must call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “The progressive and humanitarian position is clear: the only way to achieve peace and security is to end the butchery in Gaza. Quebecers know Canada has a responsibility to protect Gazans from the genocidal policies of Israel’s far-right government. When will Trudeau get the message?”

The demand for a ceasefire is already supported by the NDP, Green Party, and many Liberal MPs who signed a statement from the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group. More than 200 Canadian civil society organizations have signed a joint statement urging a ceasefire, and there will be a Day of Action on November 12 to highlight this demand. Every single recipient of Canadian humanitarian aid in Gaza is also pushing for an immediate ceasefire. Yesterday, two public polls (Angus Reid and Mainstreet) showed that a majority of Canadians support the idea of a ceasefire, either full or temporary.

To date, Canada has refused to call for a ceasefire but appears to unconditionally support Israel’s military offensive with the goal of “eliminating” Hamas. On October 28, Canada abstained on a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly in support of a humanitarian truce. At most, Canada has expressed support for limited “humanitarian pauses,” a deeply inadequate demand that has been rejected by Israel. This week, CJPME issued a formal letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explaining that Canada’s failed approach is only perpetuating further human suffering. Among its demands, CJPME is urging Canada to support an immediate ceasefire, an end to Israel’s siege and occupation, and a suspension of Canada’s two-way military trade with Israel.

“Trudeau has a choice: will he side with the conservatives and continue to be Netanyahu and Biden’s lap dog? Or will he join with progressives throughout Quebec and Canada in calling for an immediate ceasefire?” said Woodley. “The Bloc has chosen to be on the side of peace and justice, we are still waiting to see if Trudeau will choose courage over convenience.”

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Featured image: Made in Israel – by Mr. Fish

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***

Only 93 MPs in Westminster support a parliamentary motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, as of 8 November. Some 86% continue to support Israel’s bombing, involving attacks on civilians which have killed over 10,000 Palestinians.

A parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM) brought by Labour MP Richard Burgon on 8 November has secured 93 signatories – just 14% of the UK’s 650 MPs. A first EDM, brought on 7 October, was signed by 95 MPs.

The EDM condemns the Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s siege of Gaza, and calls for the release of Hamas hostages and an immediate ceasefire. 

The Palestinian death toll has now surpassed 10,000, mostly women and children, amid United Nations agencies all calling for a ceasefire.  

Amnesty International has documented “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians, and a team of UN experts has said Israel’s campaign in Gaza involves “crimes against humanity”. A senior UN human rights official has declared:

“We are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes”.

Here are the MPs in our hall of shame.

Click here to see the full list.

MPs Who Have Signed EDM 1, as of 8 November

Click here to see the full list.

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Vicki Thomas is Head of Communications at Declassified UK.

Featured image: MP’s observe a minute’s silence in recognition of those who lost their lives through conflict in Israel and Gaza, 20 October 2023. (Credit – UK Parliament Flickr)

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***

Einleitung

In einer Zeit, in der die Menschheit bedroht wird, durch den Einsatz von Atombomben vernichtet zu werden, sind wir mehr denn je auf unabhängige und mutige Intellektuelle angewiesen, die die Menschen aufklären, sie lehren, was Wahrheit und was Lüge ist. 

Diese Aufklärung kann jedoch nur dann erfolgreich sein oder wirksam werden, wenn sie das Bewusstsein, das heißt, die Einstellungen des Menschen erreicht und seine Gefühle anspricht. Ansonsten bleibt sie als reine Information nur an der Oberfläche. Einige wenige Beispiele sollen das verdeutlichen. 

Ein Problem ist, dass den Menschen die individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteile nicht bewusst sind und sie deshalb auch nicht zur Verantwortung gezogen werden können. 

Um in die Lage zu kommen, diese Vorurteile aufzugeben, müssen sie durch eine Psychotherapie bewusst gemacht werden. Das ist jederzeit möglich.

Reinigung von individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen

Als Psychologe bin ich der Auffassung meines Lehrers Friedrich Liebling, der sich bereits vor einem halben Jahrhundert zum Problem der Aufklärung äußerte:

„Die Politik wir in den Köpfen und Herzen der Menschen vorbereitet; die Menschen handeln morgen so, wie sie heute denken, darum ist die Aufklärung ein Anliegen, dessen Wichtigkeit nicht überschätzt werden kann. 

Der Sinn der aufklärerischen Bemühungen ist die Reinigung des menschlichen Bewusstseins von individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen.

Die Zukunft unserer Kultur wird wesentlich davon abhängen, ob es genügend ‚Aufklärer‘ geben wird, die imstande sein werden, den bereiten Volksmassen jene Vorurteile zu nehmen, die der ideologische Hintergrund der Menschheitskatastrophen sind.“ (1)

Individuelle Vorurteile

Ein vielfach anzutreffendes Vorurteil ist zum Beispiel, dass mit den Menschen „nicht gut Kirschen essen ist“. Das soll heißen, dass der Mensch nicht gut oder sozial ist und man deshalb Angst vor ihm haben müsse. Doch diese Einstellung hat – wie viele andere Vorurteile auch – seinen Ursprung in der Kindheit. So kann eine gewalttätige Erziehung der Eltern und Lehrer dazu führen, dass sich beim Kind diese negative Auffassung vom Mitmenschen langsam entwickelt. Sie wird in der Regel bis ins Erwachsenenalter „mitgeschleppt“ und der Mensch handelt dann danach.

In Tat und Wahrheit – das zeigen die Forschungsergebnisse der Psychologie – ist der Mensch von Natur aus ein soziales, friedfertiges und vernunftbegabtes Lebewesen, dass sich gerne mit den Mitmenschen zusammenschließt. Seine Begabung ist nicht angeboren, sondern wird in der Kindheit erworben und kann deshalb zu jeder Zeit gefördert werden.

Oft sind individuelle Vorurteile auch kollektive Vorurteile.

Kollektive Vorurteile

Kollektive Vorurteile, die in einer Gesellschaft mehrheitlich anzutreffen sind und zu den Menschheitskatastrophen führen, sind aus der Zeit der Kolonialisierung, aus den beiden Weltkriegen und ebenso aus den gegenwärtigen Kriegen in der Ukraine und dem Mittleren Osten hinlänglich bekannt und müssen deshalb im Einzelnen nicht aufgezählt werden. Sie werden von der politischen „Elite“ stets als „bewährtes“ Mittel angesehen und benutzt, Kriege gegen ein anderes Volk anzuzetteln.

Bewusstmachung durch Psychotherapie

Wie bereits erwähnt, ist es ein Problem, dass den Menschen die Vorurteile nicht bewusst sind und sie deshalb für deren verheerende Konsequenzen nicht verantwortlich gemacht werden können.

Eine Ausnahme bilden Handlungen von skrupellosen mächtigen „Weltenlenkern“, denen die Vorurteile sehr wohl bewusst sind und die sie gegenüber dem Volk „gewinnbringend“ einsetzen.

Damit eine aufklärende Information nicht an der Oberfläche des menschlichen Bewusstseins ein Schattendasein fristet, ist es notwendig, dass sowohl die individuellen als auch die kollektiven Vorurteile in einer Psychotherapie bewusst gemacht werden. 

Erst wenn das seelische Empfinden, das Gefühlsleben des Menschen angesprochen werden kann, wird er seine Vorurteile, die ihm im Vertrauensverhältnis zum Psychotherapeuten zu Bewusstsein gebracht wurden, in Frage stellen und aufgeben können. Dadurch wird er seiner Natur entsprechend beginnen, menschlich zu fühlen, zu denken – und zu handeln (2).

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.   

Noten

  1. Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen! Erkenntnisse aus der Begegnung mit dem Psychologen Friedrich Liebling und seiner freiheitlichen Psychotherapie. Gornji Milanovac
  2. A. a. O.

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***

Introduction

At a time when humanity is threatened with annihilation through the use of nuclear bombs, we are more dependent than ever on independent and courageous intellectuals to enlighten people, to teach them what is truth and what is a lie. 

However, this enlightenment can only be successful or effective if it reaches people’s consciousness, i.e. their attitudes and appeals to their emotions. Otherwise, as pure information, it only remains on the surface. A few examples will illustrate this. 

One problem is that people are not aware of individual and collective prejudices and therefore cannot be held accountable. 

In order to be able to give up these prejudices, they must be made conscious through psychotherapy. This is possible at any time.

Cleansing Individual and Collective Prejudices

As a psychologist, I agree with my teacher Friedrich Liebling, who commented on the problem of enlightenment half a century ago:

“Politics is prepared in people’s minds and hearts; people will act tomorrow as they think today, which is why enlightenment is a concern whose importance cannot be overestimated. 

The purpose of Enlightenment endeavours is to purify human consciousness of individual and collective prejudices.

The future of our culture will essentially depend on whether there will be enough ‘enlighteners’ who will be able to remove from the prepared masses those prejudices that are the ideological background of humanity’s catastrophes.” (1)

Individual Prejudices

One common prejudice, for example, is that people are “not good to deal with”. This means that people are not good or social and that we should therefore be afraid of them. However, this attitude – like many other prejudices – has its origins in childhood. A violent upbringing by parents and teachers can lead to a child slowly developing this negative view of other people. It is usually “dragged along” into adulthood and the person then acts accordingly.

In reality – as the results of psychological research show – humans are by nature social, peaceful and rational creatures who like to socialise with others. This talent is not innate, but is acquired in childhood and can therefore be encouraged at any time.

Individual prejudices are often also collective prejudices.

Collective Prejudices

Collective prejudices, which are found in the majority of a society and lead to human catastrophes, are well known from the time of colonisation, from the two world wars and also from the current wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and therefore do not need to be listed in detail. They are always seen and used by the political “elite” as a “tried and tested” means of instigating wars against another people.

Raising Awareness Through Psychotherapy

As already mentioned, it is a problem that people are not aware of their prejudices and therefore cannot be held responsible for their devastating consequences.

One exception is the actions of unscrupulous, powerful “world leaders”, who are well aware of the prejudices and use them “profitably” against the people.

To ensure that enlightening information does not live a shadowy existence on the surface of human consciousness, it is necessary that both individual and collective prejudices are made conscious in psychotherapy. 

Only when a person’s emotional life can be addressed will they be able to question and abandon the prejudices they have been made aware of in their relationship of trust with the psychotherapist. As a result, he will begin to feel, think – and act – in accordance with his nature (2).

*

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Dr Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a pensioner, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and specialist articles, he calls for a conscious ethical and moral education of values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Making the results of psychological research your own! Insights from an encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy. Gornji Milanovac

(2) A. a. O.

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***

Two weeks after Hamas attacked Israel, University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill issued a revealing salvo in the war of the statements.

Like many other university presidents, she mourned the deaths of Israelis without making any mention of Palestinian loss of life. (As of this writing, over 8,000 Palestinians have been killed—including more than 2,000 children alone.) This dehumanization of Palestinians is common enough to be unremarkable. What was revealing was that Magill’s statement mentioned, and apologized for, a festival of Palestinian literature that had taken place weeks before, referencing the discomfort of some Jewish community members with speakers at the event in the same breath as Hamas.

In my role as an attorney at Palestine Legal, an organization which protects the constitutional and civil rights of people in the United States who speak out for Palestinian freedom, I advised organizers of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival that Magill mentions. (I also attended the festival.) Beyond the free speech issue—what in First Amendment parlance is called viewpoint discrimination—what struck me was the bigoted anti-Palestinian nature of the censorship campaign that sought to ban speakers or prevent the festival from taking place. Pro-Israel groups fear-mongered to local papers that the presence of speakers who supported Palestine posed a threat to the Jewish students housed nearby. At the event itself, police stationed themselves outside the venue as elderly Palestinian aunties and families with children streamed in.

And all this took place before October 7.

Since then, my office has received a tsunami of requests for legal help from people who have been fired, doxxed, canceled, censored, and physically threatened for speaking out for Palestinian freedom. No profession is untouched. We’ve received over 370 calls from lawyers, doctors, journalists, professors, teachers, students, and other workers in nonprofits, government, and the corporate world who have been fired, locked out of email accounts, questioned, or put on leave for signing open letters or retweeting material criticizing Israel or otherwise not sufficiently marching in lockstep behind Israel’s actions.

The range of targets spans Starbucks workers, Harvard students, MSNBC reporters, Pulitzer Prize winners, editors of science journals, and the Hadids. 92NY canceled a talk by Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter in the London Review of Books supporting Palestinian rights. Events promoting Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama have likewise been canceled because the book dared to humanize Palestinians. Hollywood agent Maha Dakhil was forced to apologize and resign for calling what Israel is doing genocide, though groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) have said the same. Artforum editor David Velasco has been fired after the magazine published a letter in support of Palestinian liberation.

This repression amounts to a McCarthyite backlash. The climate of censorship, suppression, and intimidation resembles the aftermath of 9/11; it is what the CCR and we at Palestine Legal have called the “Palestine exception to free speech”—the “real cancel culture,” or whatever you want to call it—in action.

At a time when Israel has ordered 1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza—the literal definition of ethnic cleansing—and continues to mount air and ground assaults, it’s important to understand that the underlying erasure of Palestinian suffering that undergirds all of this is a form of anti-Palestinian racism. In cases where university administrators have tried to support Palestinian students by expressing symmetric concern for lives lost in both Israel and Gaza, big donors and lobby groups complain that there is not enough sympathy for Israeli victims of Hamas’s attack. While universities have been swift to condemn Russia’s occupation of Ukraine and to support Black or Asian students faced with racist attacks, there is often radio silence when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians. Palestinians, and those who believe they are human beings deserving of rights, are appalled at their institutions’ double standards.

And it’s not just universities. Last week the U.S. Senate passed a resolution condemning Students for Justice in Palestine chapters for statements critical of Israel (which it called a form of “solidarity with the terrorists”). Lamenting the loss of Israeli life, the resolution said nothing about the rights of Palestinians.

Thousands have taken to the street to protest in support of a ceasefire. Students are organizing. Artists and writers, as they have done throughout history, are speaking out. These are people who have acted as our conscience in moments of grave injustice, often at great personal risk. All of this is in addition to the hundreds of regular people without a large audience who have been fired for a tweet, for condemning genocidal statements for what they are, or for simply asking their bosses to express equal concern for the lives of Palestinian civilians.

If we had truly open and informed debate, where journalists were able to accurately report this issue—where students, professors, and artists could write articles and publish freely without fear of employer retaliation—how might U.S. policy change? Would our elected officials stay Israeli airstrikes? Might we be able to stop the ongoing killing and prevent the mass tragedy unfolding before us? Free speech on behalf of Palestinian rights has never been more important than it is now.

Employment attorneys, civil rights attorneys, and First Amendment attorneys—among others—will be challenging many of these actions in the coming weeks. But the legal process is often slow, and not every bad act has a remedy in law. Every writer who is canceled should not have to sue for breach of contract; student groups should not need a team of attorneys just to hold a talk, and professors should not need to retain counsel before posting to Instagram. Even if we had an army of lawyers to represent each individual who is targeted, the chilling effect is real: people will self-censor. Combating this injustice requires social change. That means everyone—journalists, artists, students, teachers, professors, anyone with a social media account or the ability to take to the streets—using the tools at their disposal to stop the censorship campaign and the ethnic cleansing that is taking place.

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Radhika Sainath is a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. Together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, she brought a landmark lawsuit against Fordham University after it refused to grant club status to Students for Justice in Palestine.

Featured image: Students rally for Palestine at Harvard University on October 14th, 2023. (Source: Rick Friedman / Alamy Stock Photo)

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***

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that an Israeli minister’s comments about nuking Gaza raised questions about Israel’s unofficial nuclear arsenal.

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu made the comments on Sunday, saying there are no innocent civilians in Gaza and that dropping nuclear weapons on the enclave is an option for Israel.

Israel is estimated to have somewhere between 90 and 300 nuclear warheads but does not acknowledge its arsenal. Eliyahu’s comments appeared to confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons, going against the Israeli government’s policy of ambiguity on the issue.

“It raised a huge number of questions,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said about Eliyahu’s comments. “The number one question is, did we hear an official declaration that [Israel] has nuclear weapons? Consequently, the next questions that everyone had were: Where are the international organizations, where is the IAEA, where are the inspectors?”

Zakharova also asked where Israel has conducted nuclear tests.

“If this program exists and existed, where were the tests conducted, at what testing grounds? Obviously, apparently not in the region, then where? And isn’t the United States behind all this?” she said.

The US also maintains a policy of ambiguity concerning Israel’s nuclear weapons program. In 2021, Axios reported that President Biden and then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett renewed a decades-old informal agreement on Israel’s nukes.

Every US president since Nixon has agreed not to press Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and in return, Israel agrees not to declare its nuclear arsenal and operate the program covertly.

The ambiguity allows the US to give Israel aid, which is technically illegal due to the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Under foreign assistance laws, the US cannot provide aid to nuclear-armed states that refuse to sign the NPT.

*

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image: File photo provided by Wikipedia shows Israel’s nuclear-capable Jericho II missile carrying the Shavit rocket, which is used for launching satellites into orbit.

Israel Continues to Attack Hospitals in Gaza, Killing at Least 8

November 8th, 2023 by Abdelhakim Abu Riash

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***

Israeli warplanes have continued to attack hospitals in Gaza City.

After another communication and network blackout on Sunday, the Nasser Medical Complex, which has four hospitals, suffered indirect and direct hits from Israeli missiles.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least eight Palestinians were killed in the attacks and dozens were wounded.

The medical complex contained the Al-Nasser Children’s Hospital, the Rantisi Specialised Hospital, the Eye Hospital and the Psychiatric Hospital.

“The [Israeli] army called some of our staff that night and said they will create a fire belt around the hospital,” Suleiman Qaoud, a doctor at the Rantisi Hospital said.

At about 6:30pm (16:30 GMT), Israeli warplanes hit the area between the Psychiatric Hospital and the Rantisi hospital wounding 35 people, including some of the medical staff. Two hours later, the Rantisi hospital was hit as well as its southeast and northeast sides.

A children’s cancer ward is located on the northeast side of the hospital, Qaoud said.

“More than 30 children were receiving chemotherapy treatment there,” he said.

The hospital was then attacked for a third time with strikes hitting the grounds where ambulances and other vehicles were parked and where displaced families had taken shelter.

“We have between 80 and 100 patients, and 700 displaced families – that is about 5,000 people,” Qaoud said.

“The solar panels and water tanks were also targeted, meaning that the Rantisi hospital does not have a single drop of running water,” he said.

The attacks on the hospital forced Rabaa al-Radee to take her sick granddaughter, Sidra, for treatment elsewhere. Sidra has cancer and broke her leg in an accident while fleeing from Israeli bombing that hit the school where they were sheltering.

“We got to Kamal Adwan Hospital but they told us to come to the Rantisi hospital instead,” Rabaa said. “Now. the Rantisi is telling us to go to the Shifa Hospital but there are no ambulances or cars on the road.”

At least 16 of the 35 hospitals in Gaza are out of service and 51 of 72 primary healthcare clinics in the besieged enclave have shut down completely.

The Psychiatric Hospital, the only one of its kind in the Gaza Strip, is also no longer able to treat its patients.

“We would take in 50 to 70 patients a day, from those coming to get their medicine to those who came to be treated for psychological trauma due to the sound of constant bombing,” said Jamil Suleiman, the general director of the Psychiatric Hospital.

“Body wounds can heal but psychological wounds are much deeper and need psychiatric treatment,” he said.

If Gaza’s hospitals continue to be attacked, there is no need for the United Nations Security Council or the World Health Organization, Suleiman added.

“If there is no guarantee for a patient’s rights, then there is no point having an international health body just witnessing a population getting slaughtered,” he said.

“Maybe if we were animals, then we’d have our rights.”

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

The Nasser Medical Complex contains the Al-Nasser Children’s Hospital, the Rantisi Specialised Hospital, the Eye Hospital and the Psychiatric Hospital. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

A nurse inspects the rooftop of the Rantisi Specialist Hospital for children, which was hit three times along with its solar panels and water tanks. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

In addition to treating between 80 and 100 patients, the Rantisi hospital is also hosting some 700 families who have been displaced from their homes. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

Fida al-Wuheidi and her baby daughter Masa were referred to the Rantisi hospital but had yet to been seen by a doctor. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

Rabaa al-Radee said she is unable to move her granddaughter Sidra, who has cancer and a broken leg, to the Shifa Hospital due to the lack of ambulances and cars on the damaged roads in Gaza. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

Since October 7, the Israeli offensive has put at least 16 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals out of service. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

The children’s cancer ward in the Rantisi hospital was damaged by Israeli missiles. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

Jamil Suleiman, the director-general of the Psychiatric Hospital, surveys the area where four people were killed in an Israeli air raid. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

The Psychiatric Hospital treats between 50 and 70 patients per day, including those who have been left traumatised by the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Israeli targeting of the Nassr Medical complex in Gaza city

On November 6, Israeli air attacks hit the grounds of the Rantisi Specialist Hospital where displaced families have taken shelter and ambulances are parked. [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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Featured image: Dr Suleiman Qaoud surveys the damage at the Rantisi Specialist Hospital, part of the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza City, following Israeli missile attacks on November 6, 2023 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Viciousness Regnant: Humanitarianism as a Weasel Word

November 8th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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***

It may be time to reconsider the use of such words as “humanitarian” and “humanitarianism”.  There has been little of that sort evidenced in the Israel-Hamas War, marked by industrial-mechanised atrocities, enforced deprivation and starvation, orders to evacuate (read expulsion and banishment), preceded by massacres most haunting and visceral.  Its constant evocation by various sides of the conflict have given it a diminishing quality, leaving international relations stirring with cant.

Mind you, the term humanitarian had already been pipped and emptied of any solid meaning in the aftermath of the Cold War.  Humanitarian intervention became a vicious, evangelised concept, enchanting such figures as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair with its near biblical promise of saving souls and punishing the wicked in NATO’s Kosovo War.  “I saw it as essentially a moral issue,” he claimed in his memoirs.  He would also go on to claim that war was “never civilised” but could be “necessary to uphold civilisation.”

In justifying the use of heavy weaponry under the cover of humanitarianism, civilian populations could be attacked, ostensibly to prevent a manic despot or genocidal tyrant from imposing his will.  It was used repeatedly in the wars connected with the breakup of Yugoslavia, but it made a boisterous, full-throated showing in NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign, when jets became priests administering death to the unwashed and unbelieving.

The use of sinisterly named “smart bombs” and select targeting became the expressions of a war waged in order to protect a select ethnic group (in this case, the Kosovar Albanians) despite the crude destruction of Serbian critical infrastructure, the crippling of the economy, and the killing of journalists who, for the most part, did not necessarily agree with the government of the day.  Along the way, it also meant that NATO could provide exculpatory cover for the violence of the Kosovo Liberation Army against those pedestal-placed nasty Serbs who had fallen behind the very train of history that had venerated them in 1914 and 1941.  That’s humanitarianism for you.

Little wonder, then, that the right of a state to intervene in the affairs of another citing humanitarian grounds was turned on its head by that cunning, monstrous conceit we now know as the Responsibility to Protect.  Its dumpling, soft character was outlined by the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Responsibility co-chaired by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and Algerian diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun.

The commission kneaded the brutal, self-interested formula of force into a saccharine, floury mix that could be sold to bleeding hearts and stony neoconservatives.  “The Commission is of the view that the debate about intervention for human protection purposes should focus not on ‘the right to intervene’ but on the ‘responsibility to protect’.” Politicians, smelling votes and a place in posterity, could feel good about killing again.

R2P, as it came to be known by the technically minded and those sweetly watered by the conference set, has had an abysmal record. A good argument can be made that it needs urgent retirement, if not calm, steady euthanising.  It was tried, and failed, with disastrous results in the Libyan intervention of 2011 that did, at least initially, have Security Council approval.  Those applying force to protect a select, carved out number of civilians from the ghoulish, eccentric Colonel Muammar Qaddafi (the US, France, the UK) eventually decided that regime change – the very thing injuncted against in such interventions – might not be such a bad idea after all.  It was.

The Israel-Hamas War is already heralding the demise of such doctrines. The gloves are off; the weapons are being applied generously; the civilians are dying with sanguinary promptness. Hair-splitters ponder whether human shredded remains can fall within, or without the laws of war.  Dead babies rarely have much of a say at the roundtables of international law, but the Israeli Defence Force never shies away from a chance in pretending to believe that they do, especially when they are Israeli.

In such a situation, other weasel-words have made their way into regular usage, keeping company with the stretchy concepts of “terrorism” and the like.  The latest is the idea of a “humanitarian pause,” a truly cynical howler that is Washington’s preference to an actual ceasefire that would suspend hostilities.  One could only draw the conclusion that humanity’s existence is viciousness stalled by such pauses.

A ceasefire was certainly the preference of the majority who voted for it in the UN General Assembly on October 27.  ResolutionA/ES-10/L.25 titled “Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” is also part of the General Assembly’s demand for what it terms a “humanitarian truce”.  From those who voted, 120 were in favour, 14 against, with 45 abstentions.

Israel’s representative, Gilad Menashe Erdan, heatedly denounced the UN as no longer having “even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance”.  The US representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, expressed exasperation that Hamas and hostages had been omitted from the resolution. “It is outrageous that this resolution fails to name the perpetrators of the 7 October terrorist attack.”  These were “omissions of evil.”

Perhaps the most interesting observation and view in this volcanic splurge and splutter came from Pakistan’s representative, who called the resolution a “humanitarian” (that word again) text.  Attempts made by Canada to return the focus to Hamas as the cause of the whole bloody affair ignored the issue of Israel’s historical role and its occupation of Palestinian territory.  “Name both or name either.”

For Israel’s backers, an actual cessation of hostilities is frowned upon because it, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, would simply allow Hamas to regroup. This is a view pushed along by a number of Israel’s standard bearers.  It shows that the Palestinian cause is a dead feature, a deletion in the debate.  The result: massacre unrestrained.

Having decided that Hamas must be destroyed, rather than treated as a protean, ineradicable presence that alters in the face of a vicious policy that refuses to acknowledge Palestinian ills (that policy being territorial, ethnonationalist, religious, and historical), Blinken can then pretend the Biden administration cares about the slaughter of innocents and the mass expulsion of a population.

To make a distinction between combatant and non-combatant, the molten fired freedom fighter and the mindful parent, is one of those fictional games that entertains the classroom of undergraduate fantasy but proves impossible to apply in battle.  The agenda here is unmistakable: Israel, with the assistance and encouragement of the United States, is intent on burying any toothy, sprightly, worthy Palestinian resistance for the next generation.  Should they succeed, they will only do so for a few years, if that.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: A woman holding a girl reacts after Israeli airstrikes hit Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on October 23, 2023. (Source: Anadolu Agency)

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***

“We’ve got to face it. Politics have entered a new stage, the television stage. Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans—‘Time for a change’—‘The mess in Washington’—‘More bang for a buck’—punch lines and glamour.” A Face in the Crowd (1957)

We are one year out from the 2024 presidential election and as usual, the American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us.

Yet what is being staged is not an election.

It’s a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle, and “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.

We’re being duped into believing that this mockery of a choice between two candidates who are equally unfit for office actually translates to having some say in how the government is run.

To the contrary, this particular con game is part of a long-running, elaborate scam to keep the Deep State in power and leave the populace deluded, distracted and incapable of demanding accountability, transparency and decency from the government and its cohorts.

Politics is entertainment.

It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. It is the end result of a culture that is moving away from substance toward sensationalism in an era of mass media.

As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed,

“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

Politics is a reality show, America’s favorite form of entertainment, dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality and guaranteed to ensure that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.

After all, who cares about police shootings, drone killings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can be sucked into an alternate reality so emotionally charged and entertaining as to make you forget that you live in a police state.

But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.

In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, America.

The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government.

All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.

Nothing taking place on any Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.

The government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

Corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our elected representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service. Just consider: it’s estimated that more than $10 billion will be spent on the elections this year, yet not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.

And the military industrial complex will continue to bleed us dry. Since 9/11, we’ve spent more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad. Although the U.S. constitutes barely 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 40% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 10 biggest spending nations combined. Even with America’s military might spread thin, the war drums continue to sound as the Pentagon polices the rest of the world with counterterror activities in 85 countries.

Americans should be mad as hell.

Many of our politicians live like kings. Chauffeured around in limousines, flying in private jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the American taxpayer, they are far removed from those they represent. Such a luxurious lifestyle makes it difficult to identify with the “little guy”—the roofers, plumbers and blue-collar workers who live from paycheck to paycheck and keep the country running with their hard-earned dollars and the sweat of their brows.

Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.

People get the government they deserve.

No matter who wins the presidential election next year, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms, “Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.”

The Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?

Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity.

Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.

Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.

Stop buying into the lie that your vote matters. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic.

What we have is a dictatorship, or as political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term it, we are suffering from an “economic élite domination.”

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

It takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain. We must act—and act responsibly—keeping in mind that the duties of citizenship extend beyond the act of voting.

As Justice John Josephus Grant warns in the 1943 film A Stranger in Town:

“As citizens, we carry a burning responsibility. It means that when we elect men to public office, we cannot do it as lightly as we flip a coin. It means that after we’ve elected them, we can’t sit back and say: ‘Our job is done. What they do now doesn’t concern us.’ That philosophy of indifference is what the enemies of decent government want. If we allow them to have their way to grow strong and vicious, then the heroic struggle which welded thousands of lovely towns like this into a great nation means nothing. Then we’re not citizens, we’re traitors. The great liberties by which we live have been bought with blood. The kind of government we get is the kind of government we want. Government of the people, by the people and for the people can mean any kind of government. It’s our duty to make it mean only one kind – uncorrupted, free, united.”

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Tom Arthur via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

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***

According to a Bloomberg Report, thousands are reportedly lining up for the opportunity to receive a brain implant from Neuralink, the neurotechnology company co-founded by Elon Musk. This enthusiasm persists despite the invasive nature of the procedure, which involves removing a portion of the skull to implant the device.

Neuralink, established in 2016, has ambitious plans to conduct human trials, aiming to operate on 11 individuals next year and expand to over 22,000 by 2030. The company’s goals are not modest; it seeks to forge a new frontier where humans and machines can interact seamlessly, potentially allowing individuals to communicate or control games through thought alone. Initially, however, the focus is on aiding those with neurological conditions.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has greenlit Neuralink to begin human trials, a significant step forward after initial safety concerns. These concerns included the potential for the device’s wires to shift within the brain or for the chip to overheat.

Despite the risks, the allure of being at the forefront of this groundbreaking technology has garnered a wave of interest from potential volunteers. The procedure, which involves a robot inserting electrodes into the brain, represents a significant leap in neurosurgical techniques and raises questions about the future of human-computer interactions.

Musk’s urgency to advance Neuralink’s progress is driven by competition from other brain-computer interface startups already conducting human trials. His approach, characterized by a “maniacal sense of urgency,” mirrors the intense work ethic seen in his other ventures, Tesla and SpaceX. However, Neuralink’s leadership acknowledges the high stakes, emphasizing the need for caution in their pioneering surgical endeavors.

As Neuralink prepares for its first human trial, the world watches with bated breath, anticipating the potential benefits and mindful of the challenges that lie ahead in this bold intersection of technology and biology.

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Featured image: Thousands of people have expressed interest in participating in the FDA trial for Neuralink, Bloomberg reported. Photo byNurPhoto

Israel Resorts to Nuclear Blackmail in Gaza

November 8th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

In addition to promoting genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the Zionist regime is resorting to nuclear blackmail against the Palestinians. In a controversial recent statement, an Israeli top official admitted that using atomic bombs in the Gaza Strip is a “possibility” for Tel Aviv. These words shocked the world and showed the level of unpredictability and irrationality in the Israeli government’s actions.

The statement was made by the Israeli Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, during an interview with local Israeli media. Eliyahu stated that a nuclear attack against the Gaza Strip “is one of the possibilities” that Israel could use in its alleged “war on Hamas.” According to the minister, “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”, which is why all Palestinian citizens in the region should be punished by the IDF.

Eliyahu, in addition to admitting the nuclear possibility, stated that no humanitarian aid should be given to civilians in Gaza. He compared Gaza’s inhabitants to the German Nazis who killed Jews in WWII and said that the Jewish people “wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid.”

The minister’s controversial words led the government to react sharply. Eliyahu was suspended from his post by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In this same sense, his office made a post on social media “denying” his speech, “clarifying” that “Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality” and adding that Israel’s IDF is “operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents” – which is clearly untrue, as can be seen in the massacre of civilians in Gaza.

Also, Israel’s defense chief, Yoav Gallant, condemned Eliyahu and called his nuclear threat “baseless and irresponsible words.” Expectedly, Netanyahu’s opposition also spoke out on the case, with Yair Lapid calling Eliyahu an “extremist” and hardening his criticism of Netanyahu’s administration team, making the matter a dispute between the different wings of Israeli Zionism.

Internationally, there was also strong pressure as a result of the statement. Arab countries reacted by severely condemning the ministers’ irresponsible statements. For example, UAE spokespersons said in an official report:

“These statements constitute a violation of international law, as well as incitement to commit grave violations of International Humanitarian Law, such as war crimes, and raise grave concerns of an intent to commit genocide”.

The Jordanian government did something similar, releasing a statement asserting that Eliyahu’s words are a “call for genocide and a hate crime that cannot be ignored”. In the same sense, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit declared:

“Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which is an open secret (…) [The minister’s comments] confirm the truth of the racist view Israelis hold against Palestinians (…) This is the true face of the occupation government.”

Although Eliyahu has already been “punished” for his remarks, it is impossible for there to be “normality” after such declarations. There is an atmosphere of distrust regarding Israeli actions, with a real fear that Eliyahu is not the only official in Tel Aviv thinking about this type of “possibility” for Gaza. With so many war crimes committed by Israel in recent weeks and the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in a “collective punishment” plan against Gaza, it is very likely that Eliyahu’s mentality is not uncommon among Zionist decision-makers.

It is possible that the real intention behind Eliyahu’s suspension is an attempt to silence him – not for having told a “lie”, but for having said something that should not be said. Instead of simply showing that he does not think like his minister, Netanyahu could simply be responding to the pressure of criticism by suspending him. In other words, there are no real guarantees that the Israelis will not consider the “nuclear possibility” against Gaza.

From a rational and strategic point of view, it makes no sense to talk about nuclear weapons in a regional conflict occurring within such a short territorial limit. Radioactive contamination would not be restricted to the Strip but would also reach the territory occupied by Israel. However, unfortunately, there does not seem to be much rationality in the Zionist regime’s decisions.

The very initiative to launch a brutal offensive that is killing thousands of civilians seems absolutely irrational. Israel is becoming an international pariah and is being seen as a genocidal regime by a large number of countries, in addition to more and more states cutting their relations with Tel Aviv. But none of this seems enough for Netanyahu and his advisers to change their minds regarding the supposed “need” to “invade Gaza to destroy Hamas.”

Clearly, revanchism, anti-Palestinian racism and unlimited expansionism are the true guidelines of Zionist foreign policy. The decision-making process is not based on strategic calculations, which makes the situation very unpredictable and worrying. So, in practice, regardless of whether Israel is already considering using nuclear weapons or not, it is very possible that there will soon be this “demand” on the part of the most radical Zionist militants.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on November 6 the cancellation of the Ukrainian elections. His cancellation of the elections comes as more and more Western commentators highlight Zelensky’s dictatorial tendencies, which are again on display after cancelling the elections under the guise of needing to concentrate on the war with Russia, a conflict Ukraine has no chance of winning, which again, Western experts are also pointing out.

Presidential elections in Ukraine occur every five years, with the next one scheduled in March 2024 since Zelensky was sworn into office in May 2019, meaning that his five-year term will expire in the coming months. However, with the election approaching, it is evident that Zelensky has instead opted to preserve his dictatorial regime rather than risk losing an election that he will be forced to recognise because of pressure from Washington and Brussels to continue the illusion that Ukraine is a democracy.

“And finally, the waves of any politically divisive things must stop,” Zelensky said after announcing the cancellation of elections. “We must realise that now is the time of defence, the time of the battle that determines the fate of the state and people, not the time of manipulations, which only Russia expects from Ukraine. I believe that now is not the right time for elections.”

“And if we need to put an end to a political dispute and continue to work in unity, there are structures in the state that are capable of putting an end to it and giving society all the necessary answers so that there is no room left for conflicts and someone else’s game against Ukraine,” he added. 

It is recalled that Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska said in September that she did not know whether Volodymyr would run for re-election in 2024. Zelenska also said at the time that the country’s ability to organise a free and fair election could factor into whether he would run for a second term.

“It will also depend whether our society would need him as a president, if he will feel that Ukrainian society will no longer wish him to be the president, he will probably not run,” the First Lady said at the time. “But I will support him whatever decision he takes.”

Zelensky, in his announcement, also noted the importance of refraining from grandiose celebrations and divisive political themes during wartime, recognising the suffering and losses faced by the Ukrainian defence forces. He called on all relevant government authorities and structures to work together to address current challenges, including civil authorities, military, legislators, and law enforcement agencies.

“I hope that all relevant structures and authorities will provide concrete solutions to the challenges our country faces today. This applies to civil authorities, the military element of the state, government officials, the Verkhovna Rada, the Security Service and other law enforcement agencies,” said the Ukrainian leader.

In the same announcement on the cancellation of the elections, Zelensky stressed “the need to channel all state resources, budget, attention, emotions and efforts” towards the victory of his country. Zelensky called for allocating budget resources to be prioritised towards defence aid over infrastructure works, stating that this is “the correct approach” to strengthening Ukraine.

Rather, Zelensky is using the war as an excuse to strengthen his power and the regime’s stranglehold over Ukraine. Zelensky’s dictatorial tendencies are beginning to be noticed in the West, with US retired lieutenant colonel Daniel Davis saying that the current situation in Kiev is akin to that just before the collapse of the German Nazi regime.

“During the last days of World War II, Hitler denied reality and kept repeating over and over again: “We will still win.” And now, unfortunately, no matter how unpleasant it would be for us to admit it, Zelensky is falling into the same state,” he said on his YouTube channel.

The expert observes that Zelensky insists that his country’s military has a good chance of triumphing against the Russian troops, yet there are no objective reasons to believe this. Although he makes the analogy with Hitler, he does not delve deeper beyond that.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of the month, Oleksii Arestovych, Zelensky’s adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, described the Ukrainian president as a “dictator” who has become “divorced from reality.”

Explaining deeper than Davis, Arestovych said,

“First, someone behaves like a dictator and, instead of following the normal path of accelerated development, chooses stagnation. Then someone breeds massive corruption. Then someone breeds hatred for any opinion different from their own.”

Arestovych’s statements were made before Zelensky announced the cancellation of the 2024 presidential election. It can be expected that with the announcement of the cancelling of the elections, the domestic political front in Ukraine will experience even more fractures.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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After more than one month of blanket bombings of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the limited incursions into the territory by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the United States government has refused to even call for a ceasefire after the death tolls exceed ten thousand people.

The majority of those killed in Gaza are women and children although the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu frequently described all targeted Palestinians as members of the Hamas resistance movement.

Every speech, interview and press briefing from the Israeli administration and the IDF are placed as headlines in western corporate and government-controlled media. In these reports, Hamas is routinely described as a “terrorist” organization being characterized as such by the western imperialist states.

Even the daily statistics provided by the Gaza Health Ministry documenting each confirmed death, are treated with scorn by the Netanyahu government and the White House. U.S. President Joe Biden has stated that he does not believe in the veracity of the data being issued by the Gaza officials.

These utterances by the White House and its spokespersons along with most politicians within the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are designed to justify the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The initiation of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by the Palestinian resistance forces on October 7 is always presented by the western-based media outlets as far worse than the atrocities committed by the IDF.

Any comparison regarding the number of interviews, quotes, headlines and references between the Israeli government and those that either speak on behalf of the Palestinians or express sympathy and solidarity with their plight clearly reveal that the proponents and apologists for genocide have far greater access to the media. The representatives of the State of Israel coupled with their financial and military backers in Washington dominate the airwaves in a manner which seeks to convince the public that Tel Aviv is the victim in the current phase of this 75-year war which began with the forced removals of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948.

Gaza youth load victim into ambulances (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Therefore, as many Palestinians have said in the disproportionate time granted to them by the western media houses, the genocidal onslaught against the oppressed people of the country did not begin on October 7. The overall conditions under which Palestinian live is never acknowledged by the U.S. administration and the corporate and western governmentally controlled television and other media sources.

Weapons Continue to Flow to the IDF Amid Calls for a “Humanitarian Pause”

Although the U.S. media and most politicians either ignore or minimize the importance of the mass demonstrations domestically and internationally calling for a ceasefire and solidarity with the cause of the Palestinians, the White House and their allies in Congress have adopted the phrase of a “humanitarian pause.” Activists have ridiculed such language as a disingenuous gesture to the millions of people who staunchly object to the war against the Palestinians.

What does this actually mean in light of the illegal nature of the bombing and ground incursions into the Gaza Strip? If there is a “pause” then this implies that the same bombing operations will continue after a brief period of time. The attempts to replace the legitimate quest for a ceasefire with the notion of a “pause” only means that the White House believes that the present course in the genocidal war is correct.

This is why the continuous supplying of so-called “precision weapons” to the IDF exposes the actual intent of the Biden administration. In addition to the weapons being flown into Israel, there is the deployment of two aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean, the presence of Pentagon advisors among the Israeli troops, the enhancement of a U.S. military base in the Negev notwithstanding the diplomatic, political and media cover granted on a daily basis to Tel Aviv.

The business magazine Forbes reported on November 6 that:

“The Biden administration will transfer $320 million of precision bombs to Israel as its war with Hamas continues in Gaza, multiple outlets reported — as Israel faces pressure to agree to a pause in fighting. The agreement said Rafael USA, a weapons manufacturer, will transfer bombs to its Israeli parent company for use by Israel, an aid package that includes support and testing, according to correspondence seen by the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported that the Biden administration formally notified congressional leaders about the transfer on Oct. 31.

The news comes shortly after the White House said President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘discussed the possibility of tactical pauses’ to allow civilians to safely depart from fighting areas, amid increasing calls for a ceasefire. As recently as Sunday (Nov. 5), Netanyahu fiercely rejected calls for a ceasefire, saying there would not be one until all Israeli hostages are returned by Gaza-based militant group Hamas, adding ‘we will simply continue until we defeat them.’”

In another report published in the investigative online journal The Intercept written by Ken Klippenstein, it documents the secret weapons transfers from Washington to Tel Aviv:

“One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23 press briefing, saying that while U.S. security assistance ‘on a near-daily basis,’ he continued, ‘We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.’” 

As the ground war intensifies inside Gaza, inevitably the number of casualties among IDF troops will increase. After the first few days of the announced invasion by IDF soldiers into northern Gaza, there has not been any specific figures released by Tel Aviv on the number of Israeli troops killed and wounded as well as the disabling and destruction of their tanks and other armored vehicles.

Resistance to the War Against Gaza

The war has already taken on a regional character particularly between the Hezbollah resistance movement and the IDF. Large swaths of territory inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) on the border with Lebanon have been evacuated by the settler regime.

There are daily exchanges of rocket fire between Hezbollah and the IDF where the number of casualties continue to mount. At the same time attacks on U.S. military bases and installations in Iraq and Syria are escalating. Affiliates of the regional Axis of Resistance from Yemen, Iraq and Syria have fired rockets into U.S.-occupied areas which indicate the political assessment of these forces that Washington is the main force undergirding the genocidal war against the Palestinians.

Yemen march in solidarity with Palestine (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

With specific reference to Lebanon, the speech delivered by Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah drew international attention on November 3. The resistance movement which plays a significant role in the domestic politics and security concerns of Lebanon, fought two major wars with the IDF in 2000 and 2006 repelling Tel Aviv from its deep incursions into the southern region of the country.

Al Mayadeen news website noted from the major policy address by Nasrallah that:

“’Last Friday, Hezbollah Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, declared in a speech that the Lebanese Resistance is ready for any eventuality. All possibilities on our Lebanese front are open and all options are on the table, and we could resort to them at any time,’ he said, making a direct warning to the U.S. that ‘if war breaks out in the region, neither your [U.S.] fleets nor aerial forces will be of any use.’ Reiterating this equation, Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s Deputy Chief, warned on Tuesday (Nov. 7) of ‘serious consequences’ should Israel escalate the scope of its aggressions. In an interview with NBC News, he confirmed that Hezbollah participates ‘for the sake of lowering the pressure on Gaza. And for the sake of preventing Israel from achieving its objectives. In addition, as a clear message that if you expand there will be serious consequences.’” 

As public support in the U.S. and Western Europe declines for the unconditional backing given to the Israeli regime, the White House and Congress will suffer the political consequences of their actions. Biden, who already has faced an abysmal approval rating among the U.S. electorate over the last year, has now drawn the ire of significant sections of those who traditionally vote democratic in Congressional and national elections.

However, the Republican party harbors positions on the Palestinian question which are just as dire if not worse than the Democrats. The failure of U.S. foreign policy in West Asia and Eastern Europe is a reflection of the inability of successive administrations to develop and implement a consistent approach to resolving the issues plaguing these geopolitical regions.

At the source of these contradictions is the infeasibility of imperialism in the modern era. There is the pressing need for a new political dispensation inside the U.S. and other western capitalist states. The dependency upon militarism as the cornerstone of Washington’s foreign policy cannot sustain the insatiable need for profits among the ruling class. Therefore, the workers and oppressed peoples within the imperialist states must join together in solidarity with the Global South to ensure the avoidance of another world war while creating the conditions for greater levels of cooperation and international stability among the majority within the world today.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Khan Yunis, Gaza. Search for bodies under the rubble (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

The Historical Background of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Up to 1914)

November 8th, 2023 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

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The historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to 1917 (the Balfour Declaration) and the establishment of the British protectorate over Palestine (the Palestine Mandate) after WWI with its provision for a national home for the Jews, although “officially” not to be at the expense of the local inhabitants – the Palestinians. 

The People and the Land

Since the time of the Enlightenment followed by Romanticism, in Western Europe emerged a new trend of group identification of the people as ethnic or ethnocultural nations different from the previous feudal trends from the Middle Ages based on religion, state borders, or social strata belonging. In the course of time, a new trend of people’s identification as a product of the capitalistic system of production and social order became applied across the globe following the process of capitalistic globalization.

As a direct consequence of such development of the group identities, the newly understood nations, especially in the areas under colonial foreign rule, started to demand their national rights but among them, the most important demand was the right to self-rule in a nation-state of their own. In other words, the ethnic or ethnic-confessional groups under foreign oppression demanded the rights of self-determination and political sovereignty. 

Image: Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Since around 1900, both the Jews and the Arab-Palestinians became involved in the process of developing ethnonational consciousness and mobilizing their nations for the sake of achieving national-political goals.

However, one of the focal differences between them in regard to the creation of a nation-state of their own was that the Jews have been spread out across the world (a diaspora) since the fall of Jerusalem and Judea in the 1st century AD while, in contrast, the Palestinians were concentrated in one place – Palestine. From the very end of the 19th century, a newly formed Th. Herzl’s Zionist movement had a task to identify land where the Jewish people could immigrate and settle to create their own nation-state. For Theodor Benjamin Zeev Herzl (1860‒1904),

Palestine was historically logical as an optimal land for the Jewish immigrants as it was the land of the Jewish states in the Antiquity. It was, however, an old idea, and Th. Herzl in his book pamphlet (Der Judenstaat) which became the Bible of the Zionist movement was the first to analyze the conditions of the Jews in their assumed “native” land and call for the establishment of a nation-state of the Jews in order to solve the Jewish Question in Europe or better to say to beat traditional European anti-Semitism and modern tendency of the Jewish assimilation. Nonetheless, the focal problem was to somehow convince the Europeans that the Jews had the right to this land even after 2.000 years of emigration in the diaspora around the world.  

However, what was Th. Herzel’s Eretz Yisrael in reality? For all Zionists and the majority of Jews, it was the Promised Land of milk and honey but in reality, the Promised Land was a barren, rocky, and obscure Ottoman province since 1517 settled by the Muslim Arabs as a clear majority population.

On this narrow strip of land of East Mediterranean, the Jews and the Arab Palestinians lived side by side and at the time of the First Zionist Congress (Basel, Switzerland, August 29−31st, 1897) there were some 400.000 Arabs and some 50.000 Jews. Most of those Palestinian Jews have been bigot Orthodox who entirely depended on their existence on charitable offerings of different Jewish societies in Europe which have been distributed to them by the communal organizations set up mainly for that purpose. 

Palestine

Palestine is a historic land in the Middle East on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the River of Jordan and the Mediterranean seacoast. Palestine is called the Holy Land by the Jews, Christians, and Muslims because of its spiritual links with Judaism, Christianity as well as Islam. 

The land experienced many changes and lordships in history followed by changes of frontiers and its political status. For each of the regional denominations, Palestine contains several sacred places. In the so-called biblical times, on the territory of Palestine, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea existed until the Roman occupation in the 1st century AD. The final wave of Jewish expulsion to the diaspora from Palestine started after the abortive uprising of Bar Kochba in 132−135. Up to the emergence of Islam, Palestine historically was controlled by the Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, the Roman Empire, and finally by the Byzantine Empire (the East Roman Empire) alongside the periods of the independence of the Jewish kingdoms. 

The land became occupied by the Muslim Arabians in 634 AD. Since then, Palestine has been populated by a majority of Arabs, although it remained a central reference point to the Jewish people in the diaspora as their “Land of Israel” or Eretz Yisrael. Palestine remained under Muslim rule up to WWI, being part of the Ottoman Empire (1516−1917), when combined the Ottoman and German armies became defeated by the Brits at Megiddo, except for the time during the West European Crusades from 1098 to 1197. The term Palestine was used as the official political title for the land westward of the Jordan River mandated in the interwar and post-WWII period to the United Kingdom (from 1920 up to 1947). 

However, after 1948, the term Palestine continues to be used, but now in order to identify rather a geographical than a political entity. It is used today, particularly in the context of the struggle over the land and political rights of Palestinian Arabs displaced since Israel became established (May 14th, 1948). and imposed in the wake of the brutal expulsion of Palestinian Arabs known as the Nackba, which resulted in the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.

The Jewish Migrations to Palestine in 1882−1914

As a consequence of renewed pogroms in East Europe in 1881, the first wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine started in 1882 followed by another wave before WWI from 1904 to 1914. The immigration of the Jewish settlers was encouraged by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and very much intensified since May 1948 when the Zionist State of Israel was proclaimed and established. 

There were historically two types of motives for the Jews to come to Eretz Yisrael (In Hebrew, the “Land of Israel”):

  1. The traditional motive was prayer and study, followed by death and burial in the holy soil.
  2. Later, since the mid-19th century, a new type of Jew being secular and in many cases idealistic began to arrive in Palestine but many of them have been driven from their native lands by anti-Semitic persecution.       

In 1882 there was the first organized wave of European Jewish immigration to Palestine. Since the 1897 First World Zionist Congress in Basel, there was an inflow of European Jews into Palestine especially during the British Mandate time followed by the British-allowed policy of land-buying by the Jewish Agency which was, in fact, indirect preparation for the creation of the Jewish nation-state – Israel. In other words, such a policy was designed to alienate land from the Palestinians, stipulating that it could not be in the Arab hands. 

Even before the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Th. Herzl tried to recruit prosperous and rich Jews (like the Rothschild family) to finance his plan of the Jewish emigration and colonization of Palestine but finally failed in his attempt. Th. Herzl decided to turn to the little men – hence his decision to convene the 1897 Basel Congress where according to his diary, he founded the Jewish state. After the congress, he did not waste time in turning his political program into reality but at the same time, he strongly disagreed with the idea of peaceful settlement in Palestine, or according to his own words “gradual Jewish infiltration”, which, in fact, already started even before the Zionist meeting in Basel. 

At that time, Palestine as an Ottoman province did not constitute a single political-administrative unit. The northern districts have been parts of the province of Beirut, and the district of Jerusalem was under the direct authority of the central Ottoman government in Istanbul because of the international significance of the city of Jerusalem and the town of Bethlehem as religious centers equally important for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. A vast majority of the Arabs either Muslims or Christians have been living in several hundred villages in a rural environment. Concerning the town settlers of Arab origin, the two biggest of them were Jaffa and Nablus together with Jerusalem as economically the most prosperous urban settlements. 

Until WWI, the biggest number of Palestinian Jews was living in four urban settlements of the most important religious significance to them: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. They have been followers of traditional, Orthodox religious practices spending much time studying religious texts and depending on the charity of world Jewry for survival.

It has to be noticed that their attachment to Eretz Yisrael was much more religious than of national character and they were not either involved in or supportive of Th. Herzl’s Zionist movement emerged in Europe and was, in fact, brought to Palestine by the Jewish immigrants after 1897.

However, most of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine after 1897 who emigrated from Europe have lived of secular type of life having commitments to the secular goals to create and maintain a modern Jewish nation based on the European standards of the time and to establish an independent Jewish state – modern Israel but not to re-establish a biblical one. During the first year of WWI, the total number of Jews in Palestine reached some 60.000 of whom some 36.000 were settlers since 1897. On the other hand, the total number of the Arab population in Palestine in 1914 was of the order of 683.000.

The second wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine (1904−1914) had many intellectuals and middle-class Jews but the majority of those immigrants have been driven less by a vision of a new state than by the hope of having a new life, free of pogroms and persecutions.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

 

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***

On October 24, a statement by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres caused a sharp reaction by Israel. While addressing the UN Security Council, the UN chief said that while he condemned in the strongest terms the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, he wished to remind the world that it did not take place in a vacuum. He explained that one cannot dissociate 56 years of occupation from our engagement with the tragedy that unfolded on that day.

The Israeli government was quick to condemn the statement. Israeli officials demanded Guterres’s resignation, claiming that he supported Hamas and justified the massacre it carried out. The Israeli media also jumped on the bandwagon, asserting among other things that the UN chief “has demonstrated a stunning degree of moral bankruptcy”.

This reaction suggests that a new type of allegation of anti-Semitism may now be on the table. Until October 7, Israel had pushed for the definition of anti-Semitism to be expanded to include criticism of the Israeli state and questioning the moral basis of Zionism. Now, contextualising and historicising what is going on could also trigger an accusation of anti-Semitism.

The dehistoricisation of these events aids Israel and governments in the West in pursuing policies they shunned in the past due to either ethical, tactical, or strategic considerations.

Thus, the October 7 attack is used by Israel as a pretext to pursue genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. It is also a pretext for the United States to try and reassert its presence in the Middle East. And it is a pretext for some European countries to violate and limit democratic freedoms in the name of a new “war on terror”.

But there are several historical contexts for what is going on now in Israel-Palestine that cannot be ignored. The wider historical context goes back to the mid-19th century, when evangelical Christianity in the West turned the idea of the “return of the Jews” into a religious millennial imperative and advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the steps that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the return of the Messiah, and the end of time.

Theology became policy toward the end of the 19th century and in the years leading up to World War I for two reasons.

First, it worked in the interest of those in Britian wishing to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and incorporate parts of it into the British Empire. Second, it resonated with those within the British aristocracy, both Jews and Christians, who became enchanted with the idea of Zionism as a panacea for the problem of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe, which had produced an unwelcome wave of Jewish immigration to Britain.

When these two interests fused, they propelled the British government to issue the famous – or infamous – Balfour Declaration in 1917.

Jewish thinkers and activists who redefined Judaism as nationalism hoped this definition would protect Jewish communities from existential danger in Europe by homing in on Palestine as the desired space for “rebirth of the Jewish nation”.

In the process, the cultural and intellectual Zionist project transformed into a settler colonial one – which aimed at Judaising historical Palestine, disregarding the fact that it was inhabited by an Indigenous population.

In turn, the Palestinian society, quite pastoral at that time and in its early stage of modernisation and construction of a national identity, produced its own anti-colonial movement. Its first significant action against the Zionist colonisation project came with al-Buraq Uprising of 1929, and it has not ceased since then.

Another historical context relevant to the present crisis is the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine that included the forceful expulsion of Palestinians into the Gaza Strip from villages on whose ruins some of the Israeli settlements attacked on October 7 were built. These uprooted Palestinians were part of the 750,000 Palestinians who lost their homes and became refugees.

This ethnic cleansing was noted by the world but not condemned. As a result, Israel continued to resort to ethnic cleansing as part of its effort to ensure that it had complete control over historical Palestine with as few of the native Palestinians remaining as possible. This included the expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians during and in the aftermath of the 1967 war, and the expulsion of more than 600,000 from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip ever since.

There is also the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Over the past 50 years, the occupational forces have inflicted persistent collective punishment on the Palestinians in these territories, exposing them to constant harassment by Israeli settlers and security forces and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of them.

Since the election of the present fundamentalist messianic Israeli government in November 2022, all these harsh policies reached unprecedented levels. The number of Palestinians killed, wounded and arrested in the occupied West Bank skyrocketed. On top of that, Israeli government policies towards Christian and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem became even more aggressive.

Finally, there is also the historical context of the 16-year-long siege on Gaza, where almost half of the population are children. In 2018, the UN was already warning that the Gaza Strip would become a place unfit for humans by 2020.

It is important to remember that the siege was imposed in response to democratic elections won by Hamas after the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territory. Even more important is to go back to the 1990s, when the Gaza Strip was encircled by barbed wire and disconnected from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords.

The isolation of Gaza, the fence around it, and the increased Judaisation of the West Bank were a clear indication that Oslo in the eyes of the Israelis meant an occupation by other means, not a path to genuine peace.

Israel controlled the exit and entry points to the Gaza ghetto, monitoring even the kind of food that entered – at times limiting it to a certain calorie count. Hamas reacted to this debilitating siege by launching rockets on civilian areas in Israel.

The Israeli government claimed these attacks were motivated by the movement’s ideological wish to kill Jews – a new form of Nazim – disregarding the context of both the Nakba and the inhuman and barbaric siege imposed on two million people and the oppression of their compatriots in other parts of historical Palestine.

Hamas, in many ways, was the only Palestinian group that promised to avenge or respond to these policies. The way it decided to respond, however, may bring its own demise, at least in the Gaza Strip, and may also provide a pretext for further oppression of the Palestinian people.

The savageness of its attack cannot be justified in any way, but that does not mean it cannot be explained and contextualised. As horrific as it was, the bad news is that it is not a game-changing event, despite the huge human cost on both sides. What does this mean for the future?

Israel will remain a state established by a settler-colonial movement, which will continue to influence its political DNA and determine its ideological nature. This means that despite its self-framing as the only democracy in the Middle East, it will remain a democracy only for its Jewish citizens.

The internal struggle inside Israel between what one can call the state of Judea – the settlers’ state wishing Israel to be more theocratic and racist – and the state of Israel – wishing to keep the status quo – that preoccupied Israel until October 7 will erupt again. In fact, there are already signs of its return.

Israel will continue to be an apartheid state – as declared by a number of human rights organisations – however the situation in Gaza unfolds. The Palestinians will not disappear and will continue their struggle for liberation, with many civil societies siding with them and their governments backing Israel and providing it with an exceptional immunity.

The way out remains the same: a change of regime in Israel that brings equal rights for everyone from the river to the sea and allows for the return of Palestinian refugees. Otherwise, the cycle of bloodshed will not end.

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***

In the early days of the covid propaganda onslaught, I thought often — in fact, I yearned — for the possibility that the New Zealand government would once again establish its bona fides on the world stage by taking a sensible position. I imagined our then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressing the nation with ardent resolve not to succumb to a campaign of fear and impulse but to protect the citizenry of this small two-island country at the ends of the earth by zealously guarding our unalienable rights. I spun speeches in my own mind that would seek to calm anxieties about an invisible pathogen, rely on the strength and courage of people to follow established medical principles, acknowledge the critical role of natural immunity if and when illness made inroads, and vigorously pursue early treatment so as to avoid the lurid death scenarios depicted abroad, replete as they were with images of ventilators and overcrowded Intensive Care Units.

That, of course, was not to be.

The government instead assured us that they were the only font of covid truth and that the only way out of the pandemic to end all pandemics was via lockdowns, masks, mandates and universal inoculation with a novel biological agents never adequately tested masquerading as a vaccine. These agents, relying upon the mRNA platform, continue to be used only under provisional consent.

In a recent publication by Acevedo-Whitehouse and Bruno, concerns are raised about the risks of mRNA-based therapies. To quote from this paper’s abstract

“To date, there are no published studies on the biodistribution, cellular uptake, endosomal escape, translation rates, functional half-life and inactivation kinetics of synthetic mRNA, rates and duration of vaccine-induced antigen expression in different cell types. Furthermore, despite the assumption that there is no possibility of genomic integration of therapeutic synthetic mRNA, only one recent study has examined interactions between vaccine mRNA and the genome of transfected cells, and reported that an endogenous retrotransposon, LINE-1 is unsilenced following mRNA entry to the cell, leading to reverse transcription of full length vaccine mRNA sequences, and nuclear entry.”

Many of us suspected from the beginning that the use of a genetic medical technology would invariably hazard alteration of the genome. Despite the assurances we were given that the mRNA in the inoculation agents could never affect our DNA, we remained dubious. And, in fact, we have been correct. Nonetheless plans are afoot to ‘vaccinate’ not only every human being on the planet but also every mammalian food source.

The human genome, the very genetic blueprint of every individual which defines our health and well-being, should be an inviolable entity. 

In the past New Zealand has taken a pioneering position on the use of nuclear arms and energy within the confines of its borders, having passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act in 1987. I believe that New Zealand should now, with urgency and immediacy, ban all mRNA-based therapeutics, not only to avoid potentially catastrophic health consequences, but also to safeguard, as a matter of principle, our right to a genetic identity that should be unique and unalterable — not subject to the intrusive artificial manipulations of a State, especially since that State arrogated unto itself the criminal ‘authority’ to mandate these products.

As a consequence I am petitioning the New Zealand government, which in 1893 led the world with respect to women’s suffrage, to ban immediately and urgently all mRNA-based therapeutics.

It reads as follows:

Petition Request

That the House of Representatives ban mRNA-based vaccines and medical interventions in humans and animals in New Zealand.

Petition Reason

I believe that: mRNA therapeutics pose potentially catastrophic dangers; a recent study of the risks of mRNA vaccination shows that it can modify the human genome; many other aspects of mRNA-based therapies are unknown; the human genome is the very genetic blueprint of every individual, defines our health and well-being, and should be an inviolable entity. In the past New Zealand has taken a pioneering position on the use of nuclear arms. We should do so now for mRNA-based interventions.

The link to the petition is here.

I can think of few actions more necessary or noble for a country to take at this time.

Since any person — including non-New Zealand citizens — may petition New Zealand’s Parliament, of any age, I urge you to sign and distribute this as widely as possible.

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/ where this article was first published.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Warum fügen Menschen ihren Mitmenschen so unsägliches Leid zu?

November 8th, 2023 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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Seit vielen Jahren versuche ich als Psychologe und Pädagoge angesichts des unsäglichen Leids, das Menschen ihren Mitmenschen zufügen, im Sinne meines Psychologie-Lehrers darauf hinzuweisen, dass die Menschheit sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen müsse, um ein menschenwürdiges Leben zu schaffen und das unsägliche Leiden der Menschen in aller Welt zu beenden (1).

Erst wenn wir wirklich verstehen, wie wir durch die Erziehung unserer Eltern und Lehrkräfte in der Kindheit geworden sind, wie wir gelernt haben, ihnen und allen anderen Autoritäten zu gehorchen und indem uns bewusst wird, dass wir diese Erlebnisse als Ballast bis ins Erwachsenenalter mitschleppen, werden wir uns selbst, unsere Mitmenschen und die gesamte Gesellschaftsordnung in einem anderen Lichte sehen und verstehen, wieso Menschen ihren Artgenossen dies antun können, was sie täglich ohne große Skrupel tun.

Eigentlich hätten uns bereits die Barbarei während der weltweiten Kolonisation der vergangenen Jahrhunderte und die Schrecken der beiden Weltkriege sowie aller weiteren Kriege deutlich machen müssen, wie wir Menschen ohne Ausnahme auf die Anordnungen und Befehle der „Weltenlenker“, der so genannten Autoritäten, die vom Geiste der Gewalt durchdrungen sind, reagieren und welches Unheil sich jeweils daraus entwickelt.

Eigentlich wären wir diesem als unabwendbar erscheinenden „Schicksal“ als hellwache und vernunftbegabte Bürgerinnen und Bürger, die gerne in Frieden und Freiheit leben wollen, nicht ausgeliefert. Es ist jedoch nie zu spät, um zu dieser grundlegenden Einsicht zu gelangen, dass ohne Psychologie und unsere Selbsterkenntnis das jeweilige Unheil weiter ihren Lauf nehmen und erst im „Undenkbaren“ enden wird.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.   

Note

(1) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Sich die Ergebnisse der psychologischen Forschung zu eigen machen! Erkenntnisse aus der Begegnung mit dem Psychologen Friedrich Liebling und seiner freiheitlichen Psychotherapie. Gornji Milanovac; in Deutsch und Englisch: http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28579

COVID Propaganda Roundup: Unreal Poll Results on Jab Death Toll, the Science™ Concedes the Shots Cause Strokes

By Ben Bartee, November 07, 2023

Given that the Middle East is currently on fire and the Brandon entity and America’s regional “allies” are eager to start World War III, now is the perfect opportunity for the Public Health™ authorities and the corporate state media to quietly drop some bombshell admissions they’ve been sitting on and hope no one notices or cares — one of the ancillary benefits of generating a brand-new Current Thing™ crisis to dominate the news cycle for a few months.

History of the Second World War: Western Allies Preparations to Land in France

By Shane Quinn, November 07, 2023

By the latter stages of 1943, which is now 80 years ago, it was becoming clear to the regime in Nazi Germany that the Western Allies were going to attempt a major amphibious landing in 1944, probably in northern France, with the goals of driving the German Wehrmacht out of western Europe and bringing the region under long-term American control.

Summer of Died Suddenly: Women Ages 20-29 Sudden Deaths from June to September 2023

By Dr. William Makis, November 07, 2023

24 year old Medical Student Dr. Nicoletta Maria Manconi had stomach pain, was sent home, next morning called ambulance & went into cardiac arrest on way to hospital & died Sep. 25, 2023.

“Showboating for War”: Former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Australia’s Morrison in Israel

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 07, 2023

Banished Prime Ministers are an irritation. They clog the airwaves of punditry with their views about how things were and how things should be. But even there, degrees of severity and competence should be observed. The more noble sorts would pursue the goals of peace, even as they bag large wads of cash in stating the obvious. With former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his disgraced counterpart from the UK, Boris Johnson, the cash is being forked out for war.

Gaza, the Heroism of a People

By Manlio Dinucci, November 07, 2023

Israel claims responsibility for the attack on the Gaza refugee camp, which massacred civilians: in other words, it claims its right to exterminate Palestinians. The former Israeli ambassador to Italy Dror Eydar openly claimed this on Mediaset Rete 4, declaring that Israel’s objective is to destroy Gaza.

106 Years Ago: Russia’s October Revolution: The Legend and the Legacy

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, and Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, November 07, 2023

The October Revolution, so-called because Russia followed the Julian calendar at the time, was launched when the Red Guard took over key locations within the capital Petrograd. Twenty thousand Red Guards in the streets, backed by a squadron of seven rebel warships from Kronstadt, and trainloads of armed sailors from Helsingfors in Finland, managed to execute a nearly bloodless coup. Having taken over the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government, Vladmir Lenin declared that the government had been overthrown and that the Bolsheviks were in control.

Prior to Current Crisis, Decades-long Blockade Hollowed Gaza’s Economy, Leaving 80% of Population Dependent on International Aid

By UNCTAD, November 08, 2023

Against a backdrop of heightened political tensions, deepening dependency on the occupying Power and a stalled peace process, the Palestinian economy continued to operate below potential in 2022 as other persistent challenges intensified. These include loss of land and natural resources to Israeli settlements, endemic poverty, a shrinking fiscal space, declining foreign aid and the build-up of public and private debt. 

A Letter to the ICC Prosecutor from Israeli Jews for Decolonization

By Israelis Against Apartheid, November 07, 2023

We, Israelis Against Apartheid, a group of Israeli Jews for decolonization, representing more than 1,500 concerned citizens, call on the ICC to take accelerated action against the escalating Israeli war crimes, and genocide of the Palestinian people. For the safety and future in the region, all elements of international law must be enforced and war crimes should be investigated.

Video: A Testimony from a Doctor in Gaza. “This is the worst humanitarian catastrophe I have experienced in my career in humanitarian medicine.”

By Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, November 07, 2023

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, Pediatric Intensive Care Doctor for Doctors Without Borders, details in the video below the human suffering of the people in Gaza amid Israel’s targeted airstrikes.

106 Years Ago, The October Revolution: “Ten Days that Shook the World”

By Sergei M. Eisenstein, November 07, 2023

In documentary style, events in Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year. Lenin returns in April. In July, counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt, and Lenin’s arrest is ordered. By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to strike: ten days will shake the world.

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***

Horrifying video footage captures what appears to be an attempted assassination on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The president’s convoy came under a hail of gunfire after he disregarded a menacing ultimatum from renegade Palestinian security forces, urging him to declare war on Israel.

Abbas holds the position of Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, which governs the West Bank territory. Notably, the Palestine Authority president does not endorse the terrorist group Hamas, which controls the besieged Gaza Strip.

Local media reported that

“one of Abbas’ bodyguards was shot, and the attack was claimed by the organization known as ‘Sons of Abu Jandal.'”

This group is alleged to have operated within the Palestinian security establishment in the West Bank. They had previously given President Abbas a 24-hour ultimatum to initiate hostilities against Israel following Israel’s military actions in Gaza, a separate Palestinian territory.

If the attack indeed targeted the president’s life, it signifies an escalation in internal conflicts among Palestinian factions.

International media has shared graphic footage suggesting that a bodyguard was fatally shot while the remaining individuals engaged in a firefight against the attackers.

The ambush strike is believed to be a possible assassination attempt, as reported by the Turkish outlet Turkiye Newspaper.

According to the report, “Sons of Abu Jandal” claimed responsibility for the attack, and it is alleged that this group operates within the Palestinian security establishment in the West Bank.

Previously, the same group had given President Abbas a 24-hour ultimatum to initiate a conflict against Israel following Israel’s military actions in Gaza, a separate Palestinian territory.

The ‘Son of Abu Jandal’ has ordered the president to declare a “global war against the Zionist occupation”.

It comes just a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took his diplomatic push on the Israel-Hamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, trying to assure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Biden administration was intensifying efforts to ease the plight of Gaza’s civilians and insisting that Palestinians must have a main say in whatever comes next for the territory after the conflict.

Blinken’s meeting with Abbas in the West Bank came on the same day that Israeli planes bombed two refugee camps in Gaza, killing at least 53 people, according to health officials in Gaza. An Associated Press reporter saw the dead bodies of eight children brought in to a nearby Gaza hospital after one of those strikes.

Israel’s military announced its forces had effectively split the Gaza Strip in two before an expected escalated assault on Hamas targets in the north.

As word spread of Blinken’s arrival in Ramallah, Palestinians turned out to protest US support for Israel’s war. Demonstrators held signs showing dripping blood and with messages that included, “Blinken blood is on your hands.”

Neither Blinken nor Abbas spoke as they greeted each other in front of cameras and their meeting ended without any public comment.

The Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has not been a factor in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when Hamas seized control after winning in elections there a year earlier. Abbas himself is unpopular among Palestinians.

Blinken said in Baghdad that the Palestinian Authority “is playing a very important role right now in the West Bank in trying to keep stability there. That’s hugely important because no one wants another front in the West Bank or anywhere else, and they’re really stepping up under very difficult conditions to do the necessary work.”

He said that “what we all agree” is that in shaping a future for Gaza, the West Bank and “ultimately” for a Palestinian state, “Palestinian voices have to be at the center of that. The Palestinian Authority is the representative of those voices so it’s important that it play a leading role.’’

Abbas, however, said the Palestinian Authority would only assume power in Gaza as part of a “comprehensive political solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the Palestinians’ official WAFA news agency. He also condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as a “genocidal war” and urged Blinken “to immediately stop them from committing such crimes,” the news agency reported.

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Featured image: An organized attempt to assassinate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took place on Tuesday (Image: X)

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***

The latest report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on its assistance to the Palestinian people says 2022 was another bad year for Palestinians.

Read the full report here.

Against a backdrop of heightened political tensions, deepening dependency on the occupying Power and a stalled peace process, the Palestinian economy continued to operate below potential in 2022 as other persistent challenges intensified.

These include loss of land and natural resources to Israeli settlements, endemic poverty, a shrinking fiscal space, declining foreign aid and the build-up of public and private debt.

Economy Still Reeling from COVID-19 Shock

Even though the Palestinian GDP grew by 3.9% in 2022, per capita real GDP was still 8.6% below its 2019 pre-pandemic level. In Gaza, real GDP was 11.7% below the 2019 level and close to its lowest level since 1994.

Unemployment remained high at 24% across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 13% in the West Bank and 45% in Gaza – with women and youth hit hardest. Poverty increased, rendering 40% of the population in need of humanitarian assistance.

With the rise in global food and energy prices, poorer households suffer disproportionately because food accounts for a greater share of their total expenditure.

Three decades after the Oslo Accords, the hoped-for convergence between the Palestinian economy and Israel’s remains obstructed by occupation policies. Instead, the two economies have diverged, with the Palestinian per capita GDP currently standing at just 8% of Israel’s.

Forced Economic Dependence

The report highlights the Palestinian economy’s forced dependency on Israel. Excessive production and transaction costs and barriers to trade with the rest of the world have resulted in a chronic trade deficit and a pervasive, lopsided dependence on Israel, which accounted for 72% of total Palestinian trade in 2022.

Meanwhile, lack of a national currency and reliance on the Israeli shekel leave little space for monetary policy while the strong shekel exchange rate undermines the already impaired competitiveness of Palestinian producers in domestic and foreign markets.

The dearth of jobs forces many Palestinians to seek employment in Israel and settlements. In 2022, 22.5% of employed Palestinians from the West Bank worked in Israel and settlements, where the average wage is higher. But broker fees and other associated costs account for 44% of gross pay, wiping out the premium over the average domestic wage, which indicates that search for employment in Israel and settlements is largely driven by limited employment opportunities in the domestic economy.

Over-reliance on precarious employment in Israel and settlements exposes the Palestinian economy to shocks in a volatile environment characterized by frequent crises, while lack of monetary and fiscal space leaves little room for effective policy response to shocks and crises, the report warns.

Since its birth in 1994, the Palestinian government has coped with unique and complex economic, political and social responsibilities far greater than the political and economic resources at its disposal. 

In the past, donor aid helped soften the impact of occupation. However, in 2022 the Palestinian government received just $250 million in donor budget support and $300 million for development projects. This is a steep decline from a total $2 billion, or 27% of GDP in 2008, to less than 3% of GDP in 2022. 

Gaza: A Decade and a Half of Suppressed Development

Since June 2007, Gaza suffered several military operations and has been under a land, sea and air closure. Gazans need permits to move in and out of the strip through two land crossing points controlled by Israel.

Restrictions on the movement of people and goods, destruction of productive assets in frequent military operations and the ban on the importation of key technologies and inputs have hollowed out Gaza’s economy.

Investment in 2022 diminished to 10.7% of Gaza’s GDP – or a meagre 1.9% of the Palestinian GDP. Between 2006 and 2022, Gaza’s real GDP per capita shrank by 37%, while its share in the Palestinian economy contracted from 31% to 17.4%.

The restrictions on movement also impede access to health and other essential services, as 80% of Gazans depend on international aid.

Living in Gaza in 2022 meant confinement in one of the most densely populated spaces in the world, without electricity half the time, and without adequate access to clean water or a proper sewage system.

It meant a 65% probability of being poor, 41% probability of dropping out of the labour force in despair, and for those looking for work, a 45% probability of being unemployed, the report concludes.   

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Los objetivos de Israel ante Gaza

November 7th, 2023 by Olga Rodríguez

Today November 7, 2022 is the 106 years anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7, 1917.

We bring to the attention of our readers Sergei Eisenstein‘s masterpiece:

“Ten Days that Shook the World” (1928) (1’43”)

In documentary style, events in Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year.

Lenin returns in April.

In July, counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt, and Lenin’s arrest is ordered. By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to strike: ten days will shake the world.

While the Mensheviks vacillate, an advance guard infiltrates the palace. Antonov-Ovseyenko leads the attack and declares the proclamation dissolving the provisional government.

 

A Film by Sergei M. Eisenstein

Directed by Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein

Writing Credits: Sergei M. Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov, Boris Agapow (intertitles), John Reed (book)

Music by Edmund Meisel, Dmitri Shostakovich

Cinematography by Eduard Tisse

Cast:

Nikolay Popov as Kerenskiy Vasili

Nikandrov as V.I. Lenin

Layaschenko as Konovalov

Chibisov as Skobolev Boris

Livanov as Terestsenko

Mikholyev as Kishkin Nikolai

Podvoisky as Bolshevik

Smelsky as Verderevsky

Eduard Tisse as German Soldier

  • Posted in English
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***

By the latter stages of 1943, which is now 80 years ago, it was becoming clear to the regime in Nazi Germany that the Western Allies were going to attempt a major amphibious landing in 1944, probably in northern France, with the goals of driving the German Wehrmacht out of western Europe and bringing the region under long-term American control.

The US and British planning for their invasion of western Europe was made much less arduous by the fact that Soviet Russia, almost entirely on its own, had effectively won the war in Europe by the end of 1943. More than two years after Adolf Hitler (on 22 June 1941) launched his brutal and unprovoked invasion of Russia, the Soviet Army had inflicted heavy damage on the Wehrmacht, and the latter was in retreat across the frontlines as 1944 approached.

In Western historical works, school books and films, the Allied landings in Normandy, France on 6 June 1944, referred to as “D-Day”, are often portrayed as a turning point in World War II and which resulted in the Third Reich’s demise. This ranks as a serious distortion of history. It was obvious as 1943 was drawing to a close that Russia had achieved an unassailable position in the conflict versus Nazi Germany, many months before the Anglo-American divisions arrived in western Europe. Had the American-led landings not occurred, the Russian forces would undoubtedly have still advanced to the centre of Berlin to overthrow the Nazi regime and demilitarise Germany.

Hitler, however, could not simply ignore the likelihood of an Anglo-American invasion of western Europe. In any case he was determined to cling on to as much of Nazi-occupied territory as possible. Hitler’s desire to preserve Nazi hegemony was shown by his insistence, against the wishes of many of the Wehrmacht’s commanders, to maintain German soldiers in North Africa through 1942 and into 1943; including after the German strategic position had become tenuous in North Africa.

During the period of the largest expansion of Nazism, in 1940 and 1941, little thought was given in Berlin to strengthening German defences in western Europe. It was only after late 1941, when a Nazi victory in Russia was increasingly uncertain, that Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command began to focus some attention towards fortifying the western European coastlines against the American and British threat.

An American-led invasion of western Europe was partly related to defeating the Nazis there but, as briefly mentioned, it was also concerned with spreading US hegemony throughout western Europe. The US is an expansionist power that has long sought to control and intimidate other states.

According to historian Evan Mawdsley, at the end of January 1942 Hitler told his inner circle that Germany might not succeed in its war against Russia. Perhaps looking for welcome distractions elsewhere, that same month, January 1942, Hitler appointed Major-General Kurt Zeitzler, who was thought in Berlin to be a genius at logistics, to a Chief-of-Staff role in Nazi-occupied France. Organisation Todt, the Nazi construction and labour force, promptly increased the amount of concrete threefold that was poured into building and strengthening German defensive fortifications on the western European coastlines.

On 23 March 1942 Hitler issued a new directive relating to military affairs. This directive was concerned mainly with overcoming a huge enemy amphibious landing in western Europe, and organising and fortifying German defensive lines there, known as the Atlantic Wall, which would cover the western and northern coastlines of France, and the coastlines of Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. The Atlantic Wall would consist of bunkers, mortars, artillery and minefields.

Hitler stated on 23 March 1942, “Particularly grave dangers will arise if the enemy succeeds in taking our airfields, or in establishing airbases in the territory that he has captured. Moreover, our military installations and war industries that are in many instances located along or close to the coast, and which in part have valuable equipment, invite local raids by the enemy. Special attention must be paid to British preparations for landings on the open coast, for which numerous armoured landing craft suitable for the transportation of combat vehicles and heavy weapons are available. Large-scale parachute and glider operations are likewise to be expected… An immediate counterattack must annihilate landed enemy forces, or throw them back into the sea”.

Less than five months later, on 13 August 1942 Hitler ordered the western coasts of Nazi-occupied Europe to be turned into an indestructible fortress. Six days afterward, on 19 August two Anglo-Canadian brigades consisting of just over 6,000 men made a landing at the port of Dieppe in the far north of France. The German soldiers at Dieppe, under Major-General Zeitzler’s command, reacted strongly to the Allied incursion. The Germans inflicted debilitating casualties on the enemy, especially against the Canadians who outnumbered the British, and the Allied landing was defeated within a day. Those Canadian and British troops who were not killed, wounded or captured on the beaches, were forced to retreat out to sea in whatever vessels remained operational.

Hitler wanted up to 20 manned defensive positions to be erected for every kilometre of coastline in western Europe, where 300,000 German soldiers were to be positioned, supported by 150,000 reserve troops. Hitler believed that, between 450,000 to 500,000 well-armed men stationed in fortifications, could hold the Atlantic Wall against anything which the Western Allies could throw at them. Hitler outlined of the Atlantic Wall concrete defences in the March 1942 directive, “Fortified areas and strongpoints are to be held to the last. They must never be forced to surrender because of a shortage of ammunition, rations, or water”.

Organisation Todt, lacking the personnel and building materials needed, was worried it would not be able to meet Hitler’s demands for the construction of fortifications. Their concerns would prove well-founded. In addition, Hitler actually directed little attention towards the open beaches.

Instead he was to grant top priority for the protection of U-boats when they were stationed ashore, followed by harbour defences for coastal traffic, harbour defences against enemy landings, and the defensive works in the German-held Channel Islands such as Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, located a short distance off the coast of north-western France. Last priority was given to the defence of the beaches, where enemy troops were to eventually land in big numbers.

Despite Hitler’s praising of the apparent greatness of the coastal fortifications, he did not attach primary importance to the structures. The Atlantic Wall would prove of scant use to Nazi Germany as its soldiers were being defeated by Russian armies in eastern and central Europe.

Regardless of that, after the Anglo-Canadian Dieppe landing of August 1942 seven combat-ready SS divisions were transferred to France. The following year, with the threat of a Western Allied invasion growing, on 4 November 1943 Hitler appointed one of the Wehrmacht’s best known commanders, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, to the post of Inspector General of the Atlantic Wall.

Rommel was inclined to believe the glowing Nazi propaganda reports about the Atlantic Wall. He began his inspection of the fortifications on 11 December 1943 in Copenhagen, the Danish capital city. Rommel then travelled along the North Sea coast, analysing the German defences there before finding himself in southern France, beside the Pyrenees whose peaks were covered in snow.

Rommel finished his inspection of the Atlantic Wall in late December 1943. He said the Nazi propaganda claims about the wall were an “enormous bluff” which had been concocted “more for the German people than for the enemy”. Rommel was disturbed by what he saw. He learnt the Wehrmacht troop numbers along the Atlantic Wall were “barely adequate” to put up a strong defence against an Anglo-American landing, that there were not enough fortifications or minefields in place, and the German Navy and Luftwaffe were too weak to be of much assistance.

The Germans had no proper defence plans except around the large ports on the western European coastlines. In the port areas, Rommel discovered that not all of the defensive measures had been carried out. The Wehrmacht was hindered by a lack of smooth transportation routes along the coasts, and there was an ongoing shortage of land mines. Rommel found that almost every German commander he came across had different ideas about how to thwart an enemy landing. There was no overall policy in place to guide each commander.

Rommel believed that no matter what defences were constructed the coastline fortifications would, in the end, not be enough to decisively defeat a major enemy landing. One glaring problem was the open beaches. If the Anglo-Americans were allowed to gather on the beaches armour, troops and guns in growing quantities, then western Europe would be lost to the Germans. This evidence of German weakness was again due to the fact the Russians were destroying the vast majority of the Wehrmacht’s manpower and military equipment.

Rommel proposed that the correct strategy to overcome a Western Allied invasion, was to defeat the enemy soldiers on the beaches and then to disperse them out to sea. Author Samuel W. Mitcham noted that Rommel “did not believe the coastal defenses would hold. He felt that after the coast was penetrated, only a rapid counterattack by the mobile infantry and panzer divisions could defeat the Allies and throw them back into the sea. These units would have to be moved close to the coast, Rommel wrote, so that they would be in position to deliver the decisive blow”.

Pertaining to the critical subject on how to neutralise a Western Allied invasion force, both Rommel and Hitler were in full agreement, initially at least. It seems very likely that the necessary strategy was to engage the enemy on the beaches and at the fringes of the water; to defeat them there by an overwhelming counterblow and before they could reinforce their tentative bridgeheads.

In the event of the Western Allies consolidating on the beaches, the primary obstacle before them was the Atlantic Wall. Should the wall be breached, beyond that the terrain in northern France is on average quite flat, open and suitable for military advances. The Western powers had the advantage of choosing the best landing sites, where the geography inland was beneficial to armoured progress. They could pick the time of year best suited to a landing when the ground would be mostly dry (summer time).

In 1943 and 1944 German troops overall were still of superior quality to American, British and Canadian troops, but the Western Allies had a significant advantage over the Wehrmacht in war matériel. Rommel had experienced Allied aerial prowess in the North African deserts, and the crucial role that a strong air force can have in modern warfare. American and British aircraft would inevitably become more influential in western Europe, should the Allies be allowed to gain a foothold on the beaches and beyond.

Rommel, on paper, was not the Commander-in-Chief of all German forces in western Europe in 1943 and 1944. That title was held since 8 March 1942 by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, one of the most senior officers in Nazi Germany who by 1942 had served in the military for half a century.

On 22 June 1941 Rundstedt commanded Army Group South in the Nazi invasion of the USSR. He was dismissed by Hitler from that position on 30 November 1941 for disobeying orders. Mitcham wrote that Rundstedt disagreed from the outset with Hitler’s decision to attack Russia. The field marshal felt that invading Russia was too risky with Britain yet to be knocked out of the war, and that Nazi Germany could in future be faced with fighting on separate fronts.

Rundstedt’s close colleague, General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, who was considered by the Nazis an expert in armoured warfare, said that Rundstedt lacked knowledge when it came to this type of combat. General Schweppenburg stated in 1947, “Of all the German generals, Field Marshal von Rundstedt knew the least of panzer tactics. He was an infantryman of the last generation [First World War]. He and his staff were armchair strategists who didn’t like dirt, noise and tanks in general – as far as I know, Field Marshal von Rundstedt was never in a tank”.

Schweppenburg’s comments are incredible considering that Rundstedt had commanded one of the three army groups which invaded Russia in the summer of 1941. In late 1943, as Rommel settled down in northern France, he was shocked by the lethargic attitude of Rundstedt and his staff. Nor was he encouraged by the feeling of discontent that many German troops were displaying in western Europe. “To me things look black”, Rommel said.

By 1944 Rundstedt himself was worn out by over 50 years of unbroken service in the army and needed to recuperate. Of greater significance, his opinions on how a Western Allied landing should be defeated were contrary to Rommel’s views. Rundstedt believed the key battles in France should be fought inland, far away from the beaches, around a week or more after the Allies made their landing; but Rundstedt had yet to witness Anglo-American aerial operations at work.

Mitcham wrote, “Unlike Rundstedt, Rommel wanted to fight the decisive battle at the water’s edge, correctly believing that Germany would never defeat the Western Allies if they were allowed time to consolidate their initial beachheads”.

After January 1944 Rommel became the most powerful military figure the Wehrmacht had west of Berlin. Rundstedt, recognising Rommel’s greater energy and drive, left the details of the upcoming conflict in western Europe to Rommel. The “Desert Fox”, as he was nicknamed in North Africa, possessed an ability for instilling fighting spirit into the troops under him and for restoring confidence. Rommel was also an offensive-minded risk taker whose risks had not always come off.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., The Desert Fox in Normandy (Praeger Publishers; 1st edition, 28 May 1997) 

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 February 2007) 

Peter Caddick-Adams, Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasions and the Liberation of France (Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition, 20 May 2019) 

Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 August 2009) 

Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Hitler’s field marshals and their Battles (Leo Cooper Ltd. edition, 1 February 1988) 

Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)

Featured image is from Geopolitika.RU

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***

For many years, as a psychologist and educationalist, I have been trying to point out, in the spirit of my psychology teacher, in view of the unspeakable suffering that people inflict on their fellow human beings, that humanity must embrace the results of psychological research in order to create a life worthy of human beings and end the unspeakable suffering of people all over the world (1). 

Only when we truly understand how we have become through the education of our parents and teachers in childhood, how we have learnt to obey them and all other authorities, and by realising that we carry these experiences as ballast into adulthood, will we see ourselves, our fellow human beings and the entire social order in a different light and understand why people can do to their fellow human beings what they do every day without much scruple.

Actually, the barbarism during the worldwide colonisation of the past centuries and the horrors of the two world wars and all other wars should have made it clear to us how we humans, without exception, react to the orders and commands of the “world leaders”, the so-called authorities, who are imbued with the spirit of violence, and what disaster develops from each of them. 

As wide-awake and rational citizens who want to live in peace and freedom, we should not be at the mercy of this seemingly inevitable “fate”.

However, it is never too late to come to this fundamental realisation that without psychology and our self-awareness, the respective disaster will continue to take its course and only end in the “unthinkable”.

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Dr Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educational scientist and qualified psychologist. After completing his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a pensioner, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and specialist articles, he calls for a conscious ethical and moral education of values as well as an education for public spirit and peace.

Note

(1) Hänsel, Rudolf (2023). Making the results of psychological research your own! Insights from an encounter with the psychologist Friedrich Liebling and his liberal psychotherapy. Gornji Milanovac; in German and English: http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28579 

Featured image: Syrian families suffering at Rukban Concentration Camp run by US occupation forces

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***

Sep. 30, 2023 – Scotland – 26 year old Youtuber Nicole McGuire died suddenly and unexpectedly on Sep. 30, 2023. No cause of death reported.

Sep. 29, 2023 – Bolivian model, 28 year old Mayra Copas, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October 2022. She died 11 months later on Sep. 29, 2023.

Sep. 28, 2023 – Cookeville, TN – 24 year old Autumn Rhea Brown had difficulty breathing and died unexpectedly from a blood clot in her lung (pulmonary embolism) on Sep. 28, 2023.

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Sep. 25, 2023 – Cagliari, Italy – 24 year old Medical Student Dr.Nicoletta Maria Manconi had stomach pain, was sent home, next morning called ambulance & went into cardiac arrest on way to hospital & died Sep. 25, 2023.

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Sep. 23, 2023 – Germany – 21 year old Lea-Josephine Schilling had a cardiac arrest on August 15, 2023 and died in the hospital on September 23, 2023.

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Sep. 22, 2023 – Union, OH – 27 year old Lacey Hite (Medical Lab Technician) mandated to take COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines by her employer, collapsed hours before her wedding and died suddenly on Sep. 22, 2023.

Sep. 20, 2023 – UK – 27 year old Maddy Cusack, English professional soccer player, died suddenly on Sep. 20, 2023. Cause of death has not been released at this time.

Sep. 18, 2023 – Australia – 29 year old Taylor Johnston delivered a girl on May 19 and midwives discovered a polyp on her cervix which was confirmed to be a cervical cancer, that spread to bone marrow, didn’t respond to treatment and she died 4 months later on Sep. 18, 2023.

Sep. 17, 2023 – Philippines – 20 year old missionary Taylor Erin Maw of Snoqualmie, Washington died suddenly on Sep. 17, 2023 due to an “undetermined illness”.

Sep. 15, 2023 – Cala Rossa, Italy – 28 year old kindergarten teacher Ambra Deledda died in her sleep on Sep. 15, 2023. She was found dead in her home by her partner.

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Sep. 10, 2023 – Longford, Ireland – 20 year old CiaraMcKenna died suddenly on Sep.10, 2023. “Local community were still at a loss as to the sudden passing of a young woman”.

Click here to read the full article.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Where Are the Tears that Should be Cried All Around?

November 7th, 2023 by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

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***

When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasts of “hellfire” being rained down on Gaza, he is correct. “Hellfire” has rained down on Gaza, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. But what Israel’s prime minister gets wrong is that this crisis dates back long before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Hell on earth has been the reality in Gaza since 2005, when the territory’s population of more than 2 million had its movement and freedom restricted as the Israelis began a blockade of the land that limited the amount of fuel, food, medicine, and water that the Gazans could access.

The result has been that for nearly two decades, Gaza has become what many now refer to as the largest open-air prison in the world. The depth of the crisis cannot even be imagined by those not living in Gaza; even more perverse is the way so much of the world refuses to even try to understand the historical reality or contemplate the true scope of this crisis. They prefer instead to treat the events since October 7 as the start of a conflict rather than the latest installment in a decades-long struggle for Palestinian survival against one of the world’s most powerful nations.

According to a UN Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTaD, report from 2022, two-thirds of Gaza’s population was living in poverty, while its unemployment rate of 45% was one of the highest in the world. Living standards—as measured by gross domestic product per capita—were 27% lower than they were in 2006. An Amnesty International report in 2017 stated that 90-95% of Gaza’s water supply is contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

This is not to dismiss Hamas’s horrendous slaughter of civilians on October 7. We grieve and mourn the loss of 32-year-old Hayim Katsman, gardener, scholar, and anti-occupation activist killed in Kibbutz Holit on Oct. 7. We grieve all deaths. We grieve for 12-year-old Ayham Mohammad Talal Al-Shafi, shot and killed by an Israeli soldier firing live ammunition on Nov. 2 in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh. We grieve and mourn the almost 4,000 Palestinian children killed by U.S.-made Israeli bombs, pulled out from under the rubble of fallen buildings, their hair white from the dust of fallen concrete, their bodies limp from death.

We also grieve with lamentations, all the tears that were not shed, the outrage that was not felt or expressed for the many Palestinian lives in lost in the years and decades before Oct. 7. Is our humanity as people, nations, the world lost?

The colossal proportions of this catastrophe that is Gaza both before and after Oct. 7th can only be addressed when the world community grapples with the humanity of Palestinian people, and begins to understand the length, breadth, and dimensions of the damage done to Gazans since 2005, and overall, against Palestinians for 75 years. That would require a profound act of imagination that much of the world seems incapable of making.

It would require putting ourselves in the experiences of a person living in Gaza for just a second, and try to imagine what the blockage of food, medicine, water, and fuel would feel like.

Imagine how it would feel if the basic necessities of life—healthcare, clean water, education, sanitation–were denied your family and community, not because of any fault of your own, but imposed by the bullying of a powerful and connected neighbor. I am sure that the situation would be defined as abusive and threatening to your very existence.

Imagine that you were one of the 70 cancer patients getting treatment at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—the only hospital offering cancer treatment in the Gaza Strip—which has just been closed due to lack of fuel. Or perhaps your child was one of the nearly 400 children denied permits to go to the West Bank in the first six months of 2023 for critical healthcare. Approximately two children every day over that time were unable to access to life-saving surgery or urgent medication.

Imagine someone having control over the flow of water into your home, and able to cut it off at their whim.

Imagine what it means to scrounge for food to feed your family.

The movement of Gazans has been restricted and control on land, sea, and air beyond its borders. The media, politicians, and other leaders rarely describe this experience or this history in ways that would help the world understand and enable others to feel the absolute inhumanity of this predicament.

Instead, political leaders in the U.S. and Israel are seeking to camouflage the history and damage of the blockade, and the carnage that Israeli missiles and bombs are raining down on civilian populations. How else can we explain the Israeli government’s attempts to shut down Al Jazeera’s office in Israel or Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken’s request to the prime minister of Qatar to tone down Al Jazeera’s rhetoric on the war in Gaza? When the current situation is billed as Israel against Hamas, or the Hamas War, it avoids the real facts of the dimensions of death, destruction, and displacement that Gazans are really experiencing on the ground. But this is only the latest version of the deadly collective punishment that has been inflicted by Israel since the start of its blockade and imprisonment.

To date, there have been more than 8,000 deaths in Gaza. Women and children make up more than 62% of the fatalities. The numbers of civilians killed in Gaza grows radically higher every day. Yet, Netanyahu and his government respond:

“This is war!” President Joe Biden, with a cavalier wave of the hand, says he has “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

He continues,

“…I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”

War does not excuse ethics or morality when children and civilians are bombed and killed. Israel, funded by the U.S., callously brushes off the accusations of its war crimes and the grave humanitarian crisis that their continuing tactics have created.

Is this President Joe Biden morally apathetic to the death, dying, and suffering where one group is more important, noteworthy, or “strategically valuable” than the deaths of another group of people? Where is the empathy and compassion? Where are the tears that should be cried all around? Where is the outrage for not only the victims of October 7th, but also for the long-suffering of Palestinians? Where have the voices of moral outage been for 75 years of malignant Israeli apartheid, or the years of containment faced by Gazans.

We implore the President, political leaders in the U.S., world leaders, and all people not just to value the lives of people killed in Israel, but also the innocent Palestinians killed by Israeli policy since 1948 and continues at this very moment in Gaza.

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler is an advisor with FOR-USA and the founder and president of Faith Strategies USA. Until retiring from his position in 2022 Hagler was Senior Minister at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.

Ariel Gold is the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA, the oldest peace and justice organization in the U.S. Previously, she was the national co-director of CODEPINK, where she helped manage the Peace in Ukraine coalition.

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***

The UK military and intelligence services may be aiding Israel’s attack on Gaza in at least seven ways. It is vital the International Criminal Court question Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly and Grant Shapps about this support.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the only permanent global court to have jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, has said the court has “active investigations ongoing” in relation to Gaza and the West Bank going back to 2014.

During its current campaign against Gaza, Israel has violated Article 31 of the Geneva Convention on Protection of Civilians by imposing collective punishment on 2.3m people by withdrawing all water, food and electricity. 

By targeting civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, Israel has also violated the same convention. Amnesty International has referred to Israel’s “killing of civilians on a mass scale” and documented “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians. 

A team of UN experts has said Israel’s campaign in Gaza involves “crimes against humanity”.

The ICC prosecutes individuals and any cases brought over Gaza should look at Israel’s international accomplices. British prime minister Rishi Sunak, foreign secretary James Cleverly – who oversees the UK’s foreign intelligence services – and defence secretary Grant Shapps – who oversees the Ministry of Defence (MoD) – could all be vulnerable to prosecution. 

British ministers have provided strong diplomatic support for Israel’s military operations, including vetoing a resolution calling for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. 

Sunak has defended in parliament Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza and its evacuation order to move over a million people from the north of the territory. He said the latter was “absolutely right”, claiming this was about protecting civilians.

But the UK’s support goes further and should concern the ICC. Britain may be more directly participating in Israel’s crimes in Gaza with its military and intelligence assets.  

However, the British military and intelligence relationship with Israel remains shrouded in secrecy. ICC investigators may be interested to investigate seven areas of potential UK support to Israel. 

1. RAF in Eastern Mediterranean

The UK announced it was sending military assets to the eastern Mediterranean on 13 October to “support Israel” as it bombed Gaza.  

This included maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft whose tasks include looking for covert transfers of weapons to Palestinian militant groups. A Royal Navy task group was also moved to the eastern Mediterranean.

The military package also includes two Royal Navy ships, three helicopters and a company of Royal Marines, who will “be on standby to deliver practical support to Israel and partners in the region”.

The UK has a huge air base at RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, 230 miles from Gaza. In recent years the base has had seven Typhoon fighter jets stationed there. It has also been central to the British war in Yemen. 

BAE Systems-operated flights stopping at Akrotiri provide logistics support for UK-supplied aircraft and bombs used by the Saudi Air Force to strike Yemen. 

The ICC would want to investigate the precise role that these UK military assets have played in Israel’s Gaza campaign. 

2. Secret Agreement 

In December 2020, a military cooperation agreement was signed by Britain and Israel. Despite the UK MoD describing it as an “important piece of defence diplomacy” which “strengthens” military ties, the British parliament and public has never seen what is in it. 

The MoD has refused to publish it and has only briefly mentioned it in parliament once, in a response to a direct question from an MP.

The agreement was signed by then chief of the defence staff Sir Nick Carter and his Israeli counterpart chief of general staff, Aviv Kohavi. 

It was described as an “organising mechanism for our relationship” which “formalises our defence relationship”. It provides “a mechanism for planning our joint activity, allowing collaboration on a number of areas”.

It is suspicious that the agreement is being kept at a high security classification. It is possible the accord “strengthens” the relationship between the two militaries to the degree that it places some obligations on the UK to defend Israel, through the provision of information, intelligence or material support.

The ICC should want to see a copy of the agreement to assess the UK’s military role in Israel’s campaign in Gaza. 

3. GCHQ in Cyprus

Britain’s so-called Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) in Cyprus are home to important sites for the UK largest spy agency GCHQ. Its communication interception facility at Ayios Nikolaos in the Eastern SBA, Dhekelia, hoovers up calls, texts, and emails from across the Middle East, and sits 220 miles from Gaza. 

GCHQ has a central role in UK warwaging and has explicitly said that “wherever and whenever the military have deployed over the years, we have supported them”. 

GCHQ also has a close relationship with Israel. Documents revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 showed the US National Security Agency was providing data to its counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU), which monitors and targets Palestinians.

A key partner of the NSA and ISNU was GCHQ, which fed the Israelis selected communications data it collected. In 2009, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that left nearly 1,400 people dead, including 344 children, this involved sharing information on Palestinians, the documents showed.

The then director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, said in 2017 that his organisation had a “strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals intelligence” and that “we are building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of Israeli bodies”.

It is unclear what this amounts to. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 2017 BBC interview that there was “intense cooperation between our security intelligence agencies” which “has saved many lives”. 

The ICC would want to assess the degree of GCHQ intelligence sharing with Israeli counterparts as part of its current Gaza campaign. 

4. SAS in Gaza

The Sun reported on 27 October that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS), an elite special forces unit which is completely outside of democratic oversight, is now on “standby” in Cyprus to – it was claimed – rescue British hostages held captive by Hamas and Britons who are trapped in Gaza.

The leak of this information is likely to have come from the UK military, which carefully manages its media profile. It is possible, however, that the SAS may also have an advisory military, or even combat, role in the region, in support of Israel. 

British covert forces recently operated with Saudi Arabia in a secret war in Yemen. 

The UK military’s “D-Notice” committee, which seeks to stop the media publishing information it claims would damage national security, requested on 28 October all media editors to not publish information relating to SAS operations in Gaza.

The only media outlet which publicised and defied the D-Notice was Socialist Worker, a small weekly newspaper. It is assumed the rest of the British media has acceded to withholding information related to UK special forces’ involvement in Gaza. 

The ICC would want to request information from the British government about the role played by its special forces in Gaza and the immediate region. 

5. US Spy Force on British Cyprus

The US Air Force has had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size was long kept secret from the public on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Declassified recently revealed that the US is expanding its deployment on RAF Akrotiri to 129 airmen and building a new 147-room installation across 1.5 acres to house its personnel.

Declassified also revealed that a US spy force, the 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron (ERS), is permanently deployed at the British base despite Pentagon claims it only has one airman on Cyprus. 

This squadron is the US military’s oldest flying unit and responsible for training all high-altitude intelligence and reconnaissance aircrew for the U-2 spy plane, which was originally operated by the CIA. 

The ERS, which is headquartered at Beale Air Force Base in California, also flies 2,400 hours of “combat support” missions annually with the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a surveillance drone manufactured by US arms company Northrop Grumman.

This US squadron is based 230 miles from Gaza and could be supplying intelligence and “combat support” to aid Israeli military operations, given the US is Israel’s most important military ally. 

The UK MoD refuses to disclose the number of US military personnel on British territory. A Cypriot working on the UK base area told us last year: “There is a big US presence, I don’t know how that works or why.”

The ICC would want to request information from the British government about the potential role of this US spy force operating on British territory in the Gaza campaign. 

6. NSA in Cyprus

Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013 revealed the extensive US National Security Agency (NSA) presence across the British territories on Cyprus. A top secret GCHQ document noted: “Cyprus hosts a wide range of UK and US intelligence facilities”.

These facilities were said to include the communications interception facility at Ayios Nikolaos in the Eastern base, Dhekelia, which also hosts a measurement and signatures intelligence, or MASINT, component. This highly technical field detects and describes the specific characteristics of target objects and sources.

Two more MASINT locations operating in partnership with the US are found on the Western base, including an unmanned facility at Cape Gata, just up from RAF Akrotiri.

At RAF Troodos, a British “retained site” near the border with northern Cyprus, the US operates another listening post, which utilises covert electronic intelligence gathering. The Troodos site, GCHQ noted, “has long been regarded as a ‘Jewel in the Crown’ by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North Africa, and Turkey”.

The document added: “Weapons-related collection from Troodos is used to support technical [signal intelligence] analysts in the US and UK.”

The ICC would want to investigate whether the NSA on British Cyprus is sharing intelligence with the Israelis regarding their campaign in Gaza. 

7. UK military in Israel and West Bank

The UK government has said it has three permanent military personnel in Israel, all based in the British embassy in Tel Aviv. The MoD has said they “carry out key activities in defence engagement and diplomacy”. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has five personnel on duty in Britain for liaison and training purposes, according to the MoD. 

The MoD is also a key player in a multimillion pound British aid project in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – called the Middle East Peace Process Programme – to develop “more capable” Palestinian security forces who can prevent the “potential overspill of violence into Israel”.

The project is funded through the £1.3bn Conflict, Security and Stability Fund, which a parliamentary committee has compared to a “slush fund” for financing projects that do not “meet the needs of UK national security”.

A funding breakdown of the programme shows the MoD received £2.3m in 2017-18 for the “British Support Team” based in Ramallah in the West Bank, through which the training of Palestinian forces is organised.

The MoD has refused to disclose the location and numbers of these UK military personnel for security reasons.

But Declassified has revealed the team consists of seven British military personnel drawn from the army and air force and is led by a brigadier.

The ICC would want to investigate what role the UK military personnel in Tel Aviv and Ramallah play in Israeli operations. 

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Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt

Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

Featured image is from Craig Murray

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***

 

 

 

What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It is a genocide, accompanied by an ethnic cleansing campaign against the mostly refugee population in that besieged enclave. 

The process is targeting other Palestinian communities surviving under Israeli settler-colonial and military domination between the river and the sea.

No one is spared from Israel’s killing machines: children, women, elderly people, journalists, doctors, paramedics, fire fighters. Nowhere in Gaza is safe: residential buildings have been levelled, UNRWA schools sheltering the displaced have been hit.

Hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, universities, ambulances, too. My parents and extended family are amongst over a million people who have been forcibly displaced – nearly half of Gaza’s entire population.

They have fled to Al-Nusairat refugee camp, which is “south of Gaza river” according to Israel’s criminal military order, but they are at close encounters with death every day amid relentless Israeli bombardment.

There is no time to process all the horrors of the past four weeks, but my family survivors keep stressing that “time passing means more bloodshed”.

On 23 October, my cousins and their little angels were amongst 23 relatives killed while asleep at their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp.

My family’s survivors couldn’t give a goodbye or a proper funeral as Israel’s killing machines have haunted them. My auntie’s son Khalil is the only survivor of his family.

The lifeless bodies of his wife Heba (35) and children Leen (12), Jihad (10) and Sham (5) were pulled from under the rubble after six hours.

Heba, a skilled nurse at the Indonesian hospital, and her children had left their home and sought refuge at the home of another cousin Rana, who is married to Heba’s brother Jawad.

Jawad survived but Rana (40) was killed, alongside two of her five children, the little ones, Mohammed (5) and Naama (7), while the twin girls Jana and Jinan (12) and Husni (10), survived with wounds.

Children of the author’s cousins who were killed in Israeli’s bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp on 23 October (Photo supplied)

On 1 November, my dear cousin Yousef Marwan Abusalama succumbed to his wounds at the Indonesian hospital. Four days before, on 27 October, Israel bombed nearby, destroying homes and killing over 22 of our neighbours and injuring many including him.

Yousef’s only fault is his Palestinian refugee identity. He was sitting outside his home in Jabalia refugee camp, originally my grandparents’ where my older siblings Majed and Majd and I were born.

Israel bombed nearby, destroying homes and killing over 22 of our neighbours. Yousef joined them in heaven after the shrapnel in his spine had caused infection and unbearable pain. The doctors took him for an operation at 1am. He left the surgery room at 6am and cried to death.

This caring, handsome, young and strong man clung to life for four days fearing he’d break our hearts. He truly did.

Jabalia refugee camp is where my grandparents who are Nakba survivors from Beit Jirja and Ashdod waited to return. Israel banned their internationally-recognised right of return, sentenced them to a life of oppression in Gaza, then bombed their grandchildren to death.

I spent many hours of calls with Yousef during this genocidal war, bringing us closer than ever. He kept me informed about my uncle Marwan’s family whom I love so much, and our home at Al-Saftawi which hosted Yousef during his final years.

I was sitting with my cousin Yousef on the messenger app the night before his injury, collecting pictures and making a list of the names and ages of 23 relatives who were killed on 23 October. He didn’t want our martyrs to be forgotten and reduced to numbers.

I called my family a thousand times desperate to cry with them but failed miserably amid the blackout. I am grateful, however, I managed to speak to my dear uncle Marwan and auntie Haniyya, Yousef’s parents, whom I love dearly as well as all his siblings.

It was heartbreaking hearing them comfort themselves, in tears, that Yousef is better than us, a martyr. They are convinced that he could have lived if Israel didn’t push hospitals in Gaza to a breaking, catastrophic point.

While Yousef had a bed, his parents saw doctors treating the wounded on the floor, and were shy about calling for medical attention as they saw them overwhelmed, racing against time to save lives.

In grave violation of international law, Israel has placed Gaza under a total siege, cutting off electricity, fuel, water, internet and food. My family survivors reported that they’re hungry, and they’re alive but dead inside.

They’re mostly hungry for the world to finally recognise their humanity and their rights to freedom, justice and equality, denied for 106 years of successive British and Israeli colonial domination.

Britain is aware of our grievances as they hold the historic responsibility for facilitating the culmination of the Zionist enterprise into the Jewish state of Israel on the ethnic cleansing of our grandparents.

We cannot forget the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917 that initiated three decades of British colonial rule in Palestine during which apartheid between native Arabs and Jewish settlers was established.

This only ended the day before the new-born settler nation of Israel set off to dominate the Palestinians to this day, indefinitely.

There is no ending to upsetting news flowing from Gaza, or to emotions of alienation and abandonment as I see the whole world failing to save our survivors and push for a ceasefire.

It seems Israel is deploying the talking points of Hamas and human shields so successfully that world leaders have given an unequivocal green light for an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians, undermining international law and human rights conventions which have proven futile when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

When looking at the crackdown on the occupied West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel that goes hand in hand with the genocide in Gaza, it’s clear Israel’s target is not Hamas, it is the elimination of the Palestinians, a consistent thread running throughout our horrific encounter with Zionism.

Like Zionist leaders who historically repeated their need for “a land without Arabs”, Israeli leaders have voiced and keep reiterating their intent to “destroy Gaza” before proceeding to inflict this horrific terror with no concern to Palestinian civilians.

Yet the international community is competing to justify and downplay Israel’s relentless crimes as if history began on 7 October.

Meanwhile, Israel, backed by Western leaders and mainstream media, are deflecting from this genocide by attempts to cement the construction of anti-Zionism as antisemitism to protect Israel and its allies from accountability.

Zionists and racist British citizens feel encouraged by the political establishment that is showing unwavering support to Israel and are reproducing their anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic propaganda that turns myths into facts and the bully into the underdog.

Invoking the holocaust is not an excuse to unleash a genocide on the Palestinian people whom they have expected to dominate and repress for 75 years without any resistance.

I don’t know what other disasters need to happen before a ceasefire is enforced with steps towards accountability for all those genocide cheerleaders.

There needs to be a serious reflection on Israel’s inherently-criminal nature; a safe Jewish-only haven dependent on the oppression of the Palestinians is not sustainable.

[In the hours since publishing this article we have learnt that another member of Shahd’s family has been killed, bringing the total to 24 dead.]

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Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian academic born and raised in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, and is currently based in London. She recently got a PhD from Sheffield Hallam University.

Featured image: The author’s brother, Mohammed, and cousin, Yousef, who was killed in Israeli’s bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp (Photo supplied)

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***

Banished Prime Ministers are an irritation. They clog the airwaves of punditry with their views about how things were and how things should be. But even there, degrees of severity and competence should be observed. The more noble sorts would pursue the goals of peace, even as they bag large wads of cash in stating the obvious. With former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his disgraced counterpart from the UK, Boris Johnson, the cash is being forked out for war.

That Israeli authorities thought it suitable to invite these two men to bolster their war against Hamas shows a degree of deep desperation. Johnson, a serial rule breaker when it came to his own government’s pandemic regulations, was forced to resign as PM by his own Conservative party in June this year.  He proved to be persistently and pathologically mendacious, a ragtag mix of contemptuousness and buffoonery.

Only Australia’s own Morrison could have possibly kept up, secretly commandeering, without knowledge of his own Cabinet, up to five different ministries in addition to his own. Despite losing the May 2022 election to Labor’s Anthony Albanese, he remains a sitting federal member, when not avidly think-tanking for anti-China causes and the US imperium.

As Gaza City is being systematically liquidated, pulverised, demolished and destroyed by Israeli firepower, these two men have decided to cheer matters on with their equivalent of pompoms and drums.  The Israeli Defence Force needs all the help it can get in destroying any vestige of Palestinian political power in the small settlement, and history lessons are not what interests them.  While Johnson is infinitely more informed about history than Morrison, both were united in their cheap showboating exercise.

Their Israeli hosts, assured that they would never be questioned, took the men to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the place where 100 residents met their fate at the hands of the al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, on October 7. Here was a chance to compress and cleanse history, to give it that ethical clarity Morrison and Johnson always resisted as prime ministers. It was Johnson’s wish that the world would be able to see what had taken place “so people could be under no illusion about the savagery, the sadism, the lack of humanity of Hamas terrorists.”

That word, again: humanity. The humanity exorcised from any assessment of Palestinian worth, sovereignty, liberty. A humanity reserved for a certain type of privileged victimhood, one rarified in the cool atmosphere of exceptionalism known as God’s chosen people drawn from a document part fiction, part history. It follows that the retaliatory steps taken in prosecuting any response will be justified. “Of course,” Johnson emphasises, “it is right for Israel to take the necessary steps… to stop that happening again.”

On Channel 12 news, Johnson stressed the need to keep the moral compass steady and free of any regard for the Palestinians or their cause:

“[S]ince that appalling massacre of October 7, you’re seeing a kind of fog descend, a moral fog, and I just want to remind people of the absolute barbarism of what took place and to make it clear that Israel has the right to defend itself.” 

With emphasis, he stated that,

“There can be no moral equivalence between the terrorism of Hamas and the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces.”

When given the chance to talk about pursuing a ceasefire in the name of ecumenical grace, Johnson was curt. Think of those 240 hostages held by Hamas.

“[W]hen you have a crime of this scale, and when there’s the possibility of it happening again, I don’t think it’s the business of the world to tell Israel to stop.”  

Forget international law, humanitarian restraint on the use of force, proportionate response, and conduct might just find itself within the margins of the tolerable.

Morrison, for his part, saw the trip as “an opportunity to understand firsthand what is occurring on the ground, honour those who have been lost, show support for those who have suffered and are now engaged in this terrible conflict and discuss how to move forward.” He also argued against a ceasefire, as this would only “advantage Hamas to be able to strengthen their positions and make this war go on for even longer”.

As for the matter of making sure the attacks of October 7 are never repeated, the point is all too obvious. It will keep happening again with dreary, bloody predictability. If not next year, then the next decade. Or generation.  Eliminating Hamas will simply be a bloody pruning exercise verging on genocide, allowing fresh vegetation to thrive. The forest of vengeance will continue to grow; the thousands of children who survive will never forgive the IDF for what they have done and continue to do. Each dead family brings with it a family of converts for the Palestinian cause. Israel’s publicity relations wonks would be best advised to pay Johnson and Morrison and wish them on their merry way.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: Entire neighborhoods have been leveled in the Israeli bombing campaigns. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, Palestine Chronicle)

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***

The rabbi at an Israeli military training base celebrated Israel’s actions in Gaza with messianic fervor and exulted over Israel someday controlling a swath of territory from Lebanon to Gaza in a video that went viral on social media Sunday. The military said he had been summoned to meet with superiors and explain himself. 

Rabbi Amichai Friedman, the rabbi at the Nahal Brigade’s training base, addresses a group of young soldiers in the video. He tells them that when he daydreams and imagines that “there are no murdered, no hostages, no injured people,” he’s left with “maybe the happiest month” of his life.

He explains that

“we have reached the point where the people of Israel are moving to a higher level. We were born 75 years ago as a new people. 

“We built a foundation, we started working on our bodies, and we grew, finding our identity and what we wanted to do with ourselves: what is good, bad, evil, and impure and what we want to preach” to the world, he continued.

As the soldiers chant and cheer, he concludes that “the whole country” is “ours,” adding that he means “all of it … including Gaza, including Lebanon!

“The entire promised land!” he says. “We’re returning to it big time! Gush Katif” – the former Jewish settlement bloc in Gaza evacuated in the 2005 disengagement – will be tiny compared to what we’ll achieve with God’s help!”

He concludes by saying that Israel teaches the world “what goodness and justice are and what morality and values are” and vowing that Israel “will eliminate evil and uproot Hamas, we will destroy our enemies, destroy all of them.”

Click here to read the full article on Haaretz.

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Featured image: Rabbi Amichai Friedman at the event with soldiers.Credit: Screenshot from X

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***

Given that the Middle East is currently on fire and the Brandon entity and America’s regional “allies” are eager to start World War III, now is the perfect opportunity for the Public Health™ authorities and the corporate state media to quietly drop some bombshell admissions they’ve been sitting on and hope no one notices or cares — one of the ancillary benefits of generating a brand-new Current Thing™ crisis to dominate the news cycle for a few months.

I have previously termed this phenomenon a “media fog of war” in which a large news story that dominates the cycle provides cover so that less-sensational news that might otherwise generate scandals can be disseminated with fewer consequences.

COVID Shots Cause Strokes, The Science™ Concedes

The conspiracy theorists were, once again, merely a few years ahead of The Science™.

Via ABC News 

“Older adults who received last year’s COVID booster and a high-dose version of the flu vaccine in the same visit may have a potential increased risk of stroke, according to a new FDA-funded study.

Experts urged that the results were preliminary and may be explained by other factors such as the fact that older adults are already at a higher risk for stroke due to their age.

“There is no need for panic, and emphatically no need to stop giving COVID and flu shots at the same time to older adults,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, while he reiterated that more research is needed.”

Via the referenced study:

“The stroke outcomes were non-hemorrhagic stroke (NHS), transient ischemic attack (TIA), a combined outcome of non-hemorrhagic stroke and/or TIA (NHS/TIA), and hemorrhagic stroke (HS). Persons who had both NHS and TIA contributed only their first event to the combined NHS/TIA outcome. Incident stroke outcomes were defined as the first recorded stroke for an individual during the observation period following the exposure, with no previous outcome identified during a predefined 365-day clean window.

Additionally, outcome-specific exclusion criteria, such as trauma codes were applied to eliminate stroke cases determined to have causes other than COVID-19 vaccination. For the primary analysis of the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine, patients diagnosed with COVID-19 within 30 days prior to the outcome were excluded. Stroke outcomes were identified using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes. All outcomes were captured in inpatient (IP) care settings, and TIA cases were additionally captured in the outpatient emergency department setting (OP-ED).”

Eight-year-old Israeli Vaxx ‘Poster Child’ Now Dead from Cardiac Arrest 

Of course, dead Israeli and Palestinian children pulled from rubble and mutilated beyond recognition make the headlines, but Pfizer will see to it that no one sings any swan songs for their own child-victims.

In fact, it’s amazing this story ever saw the light of day at all.

Via Slay News:

Yonatan Moshe Erlichman from Israel died unexpectedly after suffering cardiac arrest while taking a bath.

The boy reportedly slipped under the water after his heart suddenly stopped, causing him to drown.

He was rushed to Hadassah Hospital in Mount Scopus in serious condition but died a few days later on September 28 after being kept alive on life support.

Yonatan Erlichman was the grandson of a respected doctor in Beit El, Dr. Mati Erlichman.

Yonatan appeared in a video produced by the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council in 2020 when he was just 5 years old, according to reports.

The video was part of the government-run program called “Shushki in the Land of Binyamin,” which sought to “educate” children about vaccines in a kids’ TV show-like format.

In the video, Shushki, a friendly puppet “child,” prompts real people to respond with educational answers.

Yonatan Erlichman’s role in the Covid vaccine promotion made him a “poster child” for children’s vaccinations.

The film emphasizes that children have no choice when it comes to getting the mRNA shots.”

Poll: ¼ of Americans Know Someone Killed by COVID Shots 

These are shocking numbers – almost as shocking as Rasmussen going through publishing this poll itself. Rest assured they’ve heard from Pfizer lawyers and the Warlord Fauci Public Health™ faction for this one.  

Via Rasmussen:

Nearly a quarter of Americans believe someone they know died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and even more say they might be willing to become plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 24% of American Adults say they know someone personally who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. Sixty-nine percent (69%) don’t know anyone who died from being vaccinated against the virus…

Forty-two percent (42%) say that, if there was a major class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies for vaccine side effects, they would be likely to join the lawsuit, including 24% who say it’s Very Likely they’d join such a lawsuit. Forty-seven percent (47%) aren’t likely to join a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers, including 25% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 11% are not sure.”

In the coming month and years, wave after wave of crisis, one after another, will befall the planet in what the multinational corporate state conceptualizes as the “permanent emergency”; the Gaza genocide, which may very likely result in regional and possible world war, is just the latest shoe to drop.

If we let the COVID crimes fade into history, unpunished, the message is clear: there is no abuse of state power too excessive that the population, with its goldfish memory, will not tolerate and soon forget about it.

Nuremberg II now. Anything less is an abdication of moral responsibility.

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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***

Update on Israeli military operations in Gaza for November 4, 2023:

  • Israel competes encirclement of Gaza City;
  • Israel is not responding to the October 7 Hamas raids in a bid to eradicate the organization, but rather using Hamas as a pretext to eradicate Palestinians from northern Gaza;
  • Israel admittedly maneuvered Hamas into power specifically to prevent a two-state solution. The current Israeli administration is openly adverse to a two-state solution;
  • Hamas’ relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its actions in recent history have made it difficult for Gaza’s resistance movement to attract broader and deeper support from the region and beyond;
  • Rather than the October 7 raids being “blowback” regarding this policy, it presents the perfect pretext to not only delay negotiations for a two-state solution, but to eliminate its possibility altogether by eliminating Gaza itself;
  • Current Israeli operations may be paced at a slower tempo than previous operations to create a sustainable blockade of northern Gaza to wait out rather than find and fight Hamas fighters inside build-up urban areas;
  • Israeli warplanes have leveled entire blocks before armored bulldozers clear open spaces giving Israeli long-range heavy weapons like tanks and armored personnel carrier armaments an advantage over more lightly armed Hamas fighters;
  • Hamas is leveraging its tunnel network and knowledge of the terrain to ambush Israeli forces creating a mounting cost in manpower and equipment;
  • Israel, as it has in previous operations, is racing against multiple clocks including domestic political patience, international political pressure, military logistics, military losses, and economic pressure;
  • Hamas will be racing against their own material limitations to inflict a high enough cost on Israeli forces before becoming depleted and vulnerable to a final Israeli clearing operation;
  • As with other US proxies including Ukraine, decision makers in Israel may not be making decisions in favor of Israel’s best interests, but rather in favor of advancing US foreign policy objectives in the region;
  • The erasure of Gaza is designed as the ultimate provocation for regional states including Iran but also Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

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Featured image: Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war, 10 October 2023 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gaza, the Heroism of a People

November 7th, 2023 by Manlio Dinucci

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Israel claims responsibility for the attack on the Gaza refugee camp, which massacred civilians: in other words, it claims its right to exterminate Palestinians. The former Israeli ambassador to Italy Dror Eydar openly claimed this on Mediaset Rete 4, declaring that Israel’s objective is to destroy Gaza.

The Israeli ground attack on Gaza confirms this: together with tanks, the bulldozers advance, demolishing what is still standing after the bombings.

The plan is clear: to make life in Gaza impossible, then open a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the population. A Plan for the resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza has already been drawn up by Amir Weitmann, an influential member of the Knesset belonging to Netanyau’s party. In short, the plan involves expelling the entire population from the Palestinian Territories, definitively scuppering the creation of a Palestinian State, alongside Israel, as decided 76 years ago by the United Nations.

The political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in a video message, broadcast not from Gaza but from his central office in Doha, Qatar, declares:

We need the blood of the women, children, and elderly people of Gaza to awaken the spirit within us of challenge that pushes us to move forward. 

It seems strange that the Hamas leader is directing his group from his central office, located in Doha a few kilometres from the Al Udeid base, the largest US base in the Middle East, to the headquarters of the United States Air Forces Central Command.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu supported Hamas is further confirmed by what he declared in March 2019 at a meeting of the Likud party members in the Knesset:

Whoever wants to hinder the creation of a Palestinian State must support Hamas and transfer money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians of Gaza from the Palestinians of the West Bank (Haaretz October 9, 2023).

For years, Israel has allowed suitcases containing millions of dollars in cash from Qatar to enter through Gaza crossings to be delivered to Hamas leaders.

These and other facts confirm that the operation they unleashed on October 7th in the Middle East, is a similar operation to the one implemented on September 11th with the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

The aim of this operation is not only to erase the Palestinian Territories but to open a broad war front in a Middle East in which the United States, Israel, and the major European powers are losing ground, as demonstrated by the forthcoming entry of two countries hitherto rivals, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in the BRICS together with Russia and China. However, the plan must deal with the people, starting with the Palestinians, who are demonstrating heroic resistance.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

A Letter to the ICC Prosecutor from Israeli Jews for Decolonization

November 7th, 2023 by Israelis Against Apartheid

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***

 

To Karim A. A. Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,

We, Israelis Against Apartheid, a group of Israeli Jews for decolonization, representing more than 1,500 concerned citizens, call on the ICC to take accelerated action against the escalating Israeli war crimes, and genocide of the Palestinian people. For the safety and future in the region, all elements of international law must be enforced and war crimes should be investigated. We appreciate your deep concern for the lives of Palestinians, Israelis and others, and are encouraged by your determination to conduct a thorough investigation into the ongoing violations of international law.

As Israeli anticolonial activists, we have joined our voices to the voices of Palestinians for decades warning on the dangerous course of action pursued by the Israeli State and repeatedly called for international intervention. 

Persistent impunity has created the conditions for the consolidation of the Israeli Apartheid regime, which is intent on committing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the indigenous Palestinian population. The acute deterioration in basic conditions of life that we are now witnessing could have been avoided if Israel had not been continuously granted impunity for its ongoing crimes. 

We are grateful for your statements from the 29th of October pointing out that impeding relief aid to Gaza may be a crime under ICC jurisdiction and that Israel must make “discernable efforts, without further delay, to make sure civilians receive basic food, water, and medicine”. The immediate delivery of aid to the residents of Gaza is essential to preventing human-made atrocities of famine and thirst among the occupied Palestinian population. 

In April 2018 following the systematic killing of unarmed protestors during the Great March of Return, your predecessor, Fatou Bendousa, warned: “Violence against civilians, in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.” We implore you to announce your office’s responsibility to issue arrest warrants and hold the perpetrators of these criminal acts accountable.  

The current escalation, after the Hamas attack on Israel, and the incursion by Palestinian armed groups on 7 October 2023, in which over a thousand Israelis were killed and over two hundred taken hostage, has resulted in a surge of violence and incidences of war crimescommitted by the state of Israel. We believe it is critical that the pace of the investigation be accelerated accordingly. We applaud your statement that the institutions established to safeguard the civilian population must investigate these potential crimes and expect you to act as swiftly as you did in the case of Ukraine, to ensure that justice is served and innocent lives are saved. 

We are extremely concerned by the Israeli institutional calls for genocide that are being loudly and clearly voiced in Hebrew and believe that they should be seriously taken into consideration as thousands, if not millions, of lives are at stake. On the 29th of October, 2023, Binyamin Netanyahu made a public declaration referring to the Palestinian people as “Amalek” and quoting  the Bible: “to utterly destroy all that Amalek have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman and infant…”.  

Israeli military personnel and journalists are now openly calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is evident that Israel is disregarding the lives of civilians in Gaza, ordering them to evacuate vast areas even as there is no safe place in Gaza to which people can flee. Nor should they be forced to leave their homes: on the contrary, UN Resolution 194 promises them the right to return to their original homes, in what is now the State of Israel.

We deeply regret that, despite the opening of an investigation, followed by the Pre-Trial Chamber I’s 2021 decision that the Court may exercise its criminal jurisdiction over the Situation in Palestine, you have so far failed to take concrete action to stop the tragic trajectory of events in our region by holding Israel accountable. 

Palestinian, international and Israeli organizations have made numerous calls on your office to take action on the systematic violations of international law, ongoing war crimes and widespread disregard for the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people. 

Israeli War crimes are systematic and ongoing and they are increasing. Clear, well-documented evidence of them  has been submitted to your office for years. We urge you to take immediate and concrete action.

With regard to the intensification of violence and in the goal to save as many lives as possible, we urge you to:

  1. Issue immediate arrest warrants against Israeli political and military-security leaders who are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity;
  2. Accelerate your investigation into the ongoing crimes being perpetrated at this very moment by the State of Israel, its military forces, and armed Israeli citizens under military protection; and
  3. To be a validated and balanced platform for alleged crimes arising from the current situation, rather than making reference to unvalidated and unverified claims.

Annex: Calls for Genocide/Justification of Genocide 

A few examples of evidence of Israeli officials calling for genocide:

  • On Friday, October 13th, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel and that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza: click here. A compilation of such calls from Israeli public figures: click here
  • On Wednesday, October 25th, Sderot Mayor, former MK (No. 3 in Naftali Bennett’s party) Alon Davidi said: “Every inhabitant of Gaza is ISIS. They must all be hit. … I have no pity for them.  Those who live there, two million people, are Nazis. It’s an area of ​​Nazis and ISIS that gives total support to Hamas and Jihad and, as far as I’m concerned, every resident of Gaza is Hamas and ISIS and we need to hold them accountable.” Davidi points out that this is the feeling shared by all residents of the South with whom he talks: “People want and say clearly: it’s either us – or them.” See this.
  • Former MK Moshe Feiglin called for the complete destruction of Gaza, like Hiroshima (without nukes). See this.
  • Former Israeli UN ambassador Dan Gillerman called Palestinians “horrible, inhuman animals”: see this
  • An Israeli government think-tank recently  laid out a blueprint for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. See this.

Public Figures or Organizations:

  • Eyal Golan, a popular Israeli singer, repeated on Israeli television the characterization of the people of Gaza as ‘human animals’ adding: “We must erase Gaza and not leave a single person alive there.” See this.
  • An ad widely distributed on Social Media by a Right-wing movement with the heading: “This time we win – End Gaza” spells out its purposes for the Gaza Strip: “Flattening, Occupying, Settling.”

An “Ethics Code” widely circulated to civilians and soldiers by the Right-wing Israeli “human rights organization” “Btsalmo” leaflet calls for genocide:

“Code of ethics for the army of Israel”: 

  • I am willing to give my soul to save the Jewish people. 
  • The enemy should be eliminated rather than neutralized. 
  • A population that supports terror is the enemy. 
  • An order to risk the lives of civilians or soldiers in order to  protect the enemy is blatantly illegal. 
  • Eradication of evil is a moral edict and for the good of Humanity. I shall pursue my enemies and reach them and will not turn back before their demise.”

Signed: Israelis Against Apartheid.

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[Our thanks to BBC News for this clip.]

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, Pediatric Intensive Care Doctor for Doctors Without Borders, details in the video below the human suffering of the people in Gaza amid Israel’s targeted airstrikes.

“The entire hospital healthcare system collapsed almost a week ago, it was announced on TV for the whole world to see. In that week, there has been indiscriminate bombardment, it’s targeting healthcare facilities, ambulances, churches, mosques, schools, densely-populated refugee camps — wiping out entire families in a second. There are almost 1,000 families in the Gaza Strip who have at least two members of their family killed in the last three weeks.”

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If Western Europe, if Canada had achieved a high degree of social as well as political democracy first after the First World War and secondly after the Second World War, it was in many ways because of the influence of the Revolution, because of the fear of revolution.” – Dr. Jacques Pauwels (from this week’s interview).

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Published 6 years ago on November 7, 2017

 

Tuesday November 7 marks the 106th year anniversary of one of the most pivotal events in modern world history.

The October Revolution, so-called because Russia followed the Julian calendar at the time, was launched when the Red Guard took over key locations within the capital Petrograd. Twenty thousand Red Guards in the streets, backed by a squadron of seven rebel warships from Kronstadt, and trainloads of armed sailors from Helsingfors in Finland, managed to execute a nearly bloodless coup. Having taken over the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government, Vladmir Lenin declared that the government had been overthrown and that the Bolsheviks were in control. [1][2]

The Bolshevik government, under the leadership of Lenin, ushered in an end to Russia’s involvement in the War in Europe, the abolition of all private ownership of agricultural land, and established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the world’s first constitutional socialist state. [3][4][5]

Anti-Bolshevik elements formed the so-called White Army and rallied against the Bolshevik Red Army in a five year civil war. Despite the White movement receiving backing from Allied powers including the United States, France, Great Britain and Japan, the Reds would emerge triumphant.[6] [7]

Following the civil war, Lenin announced a New Economic Policy, allowing peasant farmers to sell their produce on the free-market after they had paid a tax in kind to the Soviet State. Communist Party Representatives of the Russian Soviet Federative Republic along with three neighbouring republics would sign articles of union leading to the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which would remain in place until its dissolution in 1991. [8]

The October Revolution not only turned a backward European State into a superpower, it also inspired revolts around the world, including in Mao Tse-Dung’s China and Hoy Chi Minh’s Vietnam. For capitalist powers, especially the United States, it would set the stage for a Cold War which would cast a shadow over virtually all international relations in the twentieth century and ultimately lead to a nuclear arms build-up that would, and still does, imperil the future of the planet.

This week’s Global Research News Hour is devoted to Russia’s October Revolution. The program explores the forces that brought it into being and the outcome which shaped political events of the century to follow.

In our first half hour, Dr. Jacques Pauwels, scholar of the twentieth century, and the first two world wars, examines the interplay between World War I and the Russian Revolution. He discusses some of the key events in the lead up to the October Revolution and provides his assessment of the Revolution’s legacy to today.

In the second half hour, Professor Michel Chossudovsky speaks to the push-back from the United States and other capitalist powers as well as highlights of the post-Revolutionary period, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Finally, we hear from Dutch writer and thinker Kees Van Der Pijl about his theory of the Permanent Counter-Revolution as it applies to Russia, and how developments in the last decade and a half, and particularly since the economic crash of 2008, marks a shift of counter-revolutionary tendencies away from previous progressive forms to more neo-fascist aspects.

Dr. Jacques Pauwels is a Belgian-born Canadian historian. He is the author of The Great Class War of 1914-1918 (2016). His articles appear regularly on the Global Research website.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization and its website globalresearch.ca. He is Professor (Emeritus) of Economics at the University of Ottawa and the award-winning author of 13 books including America’s War on Terrorism (2005), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011) and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015.)

Kees Van Der Pijl is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the University of Sussex and former director of the Centre for Global Political economy. He is currently active with the Dutch anti-fascist resistance, having served as its president. He is the author of a paper: The Theory of Permanent Counterrevolution which served as the theme of his keynote lecture at a conference sponsored by the University of Manitoba’s Geopolitical Economy Research Group.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

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Notes:

  1. Alan Moorehead (1958), p. 247, “The Russian Revolution” published by Harper & Brothers,New York
  2. Leonard Schapiro (1984), p.133, “The Russian Revolutions of 1917” published by Basic Books Inc., New York
  3. Moorehead, op. cit., pg. 252-3, 277
  4. Schapiro, op. cit., p. 167
  5. Article Two Chapter 5 (10) , The Russian Constitution, Adopted July 10, 1918, Reprinted from the Nation of Jan. 4, 1919; http://debs.indstate.edu/r969r87_1919.pdf
  6. Christopher Lazarski, “White Propaganda Efforts,” 690; https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4211088.pdf
  7. Schapiro, op. cit. Pg 181, 184
  8. ibid., pg 198, 202, 207

“Breakdown of Basic Rights”. We Are “The Resistance”: “Every Day We Should Fight for Peace.” Julian Rose

By Julian Rose, November 06, 2023

As one attempts to make sense of the horrors of war that the global media flashes across screens and newsprint, day and night 24/7, one can feel a numbing sensation closing down one’s ability to respond, as an organic human being should respond.

Palestine: Denying the Security of the Oppressed Imperils the Security of the Oppressor

By Kim Petersen, November 06, 2023

Presumably, if Israeli Jews were not occupying the majority of historical Palestine, laying siege to Gaza, oppressing, humiliating, dehumanizing, liquidating, and refusing statehood to the Palestinian people that Hamas, a Palestinian resistance, would not have been driven to launch an attack on Israelis.

Gaza: US and the West Support Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity

By Peter Koenig, November 06, 2023

Israel’s PM Netanyahu is a war criminal and should be held accountable for war crimes throughout his PM-ship of Israel, according to the 1945 / 1946 Nuremberg trials criteria. His crimes against humanity, against a defenseless Palestine are comparable to the Holocaust.

Australia’s Secret Support for the Israeli Assault on Gaza, Through the U.S. Pine Gap Surveillance

By Peter Cronau, November 07, 2023

The Pine Gap US surveillance base located outside of Alice Springs in Australia is collecting an enormous range of communications and electronic intelligence from the brutal Gaza-Israel battlefield – and this data is being provided to the Israel Defence Forces. 

Diplomats Tell New York Times Israel Privately Pushed to Expel Gazans to Egypt

By Jessica Corbett, November 07, 2023

A month into Israel’s war on Hamas, Sunday reporting from The New York Times is bolstering fears of Israelis using the devastating war to ethnically cleanse the besieged Gaza Strip of Palestinians.

Israel-Palestine War: Israeli Minister Says Nuking Gaza ‘an Option’

By Nadda Osman, November 07, 2023

The minister made the comments in a radio interview during which he maintained that “there are no non-combatants in Gaza”, adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute “a failure”.

Volodymyr Zelensky Is in a Sea of Troubles

By Ted Snider, November 06, 2023

One of Zelensky’s “closest aides” said that Zelensky “deludes himself.” The aide complained, “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.” Zelensky’s ossified position “some of his aides say,” has hurt his administration’s ability to be flexible and adapt their strategy to the changing reality. For Zelensky, negotiating a diplomatic settlement with Russia remains “taboo.”

False Claims that Iran Is Developing Nuclear Weapons: US House Quietly Passed Resolution (H. RES. 559) that Allows Using Force Against Iran

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and U.S. House of Representatives, November 06, 2023

False claims that Iran is  developing nuclear weapons, like the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, can be used to legitimize an attack on Iran.

Israel Declares Most of Humanity Illegitimate and Irrelevant

By Ann Garrison, November 06, 2023

After 120 members of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Israel demonstrated its increasing isolation by declaring the UN illegitimate and irrelevant.

‘Abu Ghraib 2.0’: IDF Torture Videos Spark Renewed Calls to End US Military Aid to Israel

By Brett Wilkins, November 06, 2023

Human rights defenders on Tuesday renewed calls for the U.S. government to end American complicity in Israel’s “horrific war crimes” after the publication of videos purportedly recorded and shared by Israeli soldiers showing the torture and dehumanization of Palestinian men, some of them naked, in the illegally occupied West Bank.

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***

The Pine Gap US surveillance base located outside of Alice Springs in Australia is collecting an enormous range of communications and electronic intelligence from the brutal Gaza-Israel battlefield – and this data is being provided to the Israel Defence Forces. 

Two large Orion geosynchronous signals intelligence satellites, belonging to the US and operated from Pine Gap, are located 36,000 kms above the equator over the Indian Ocean. From there, they look down on the Middle East, Europe and Africa, and gather huge amounts of intelligence data to beam back to the Pine Gap base.

After collecting and analysing the communications and intelligence data for the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA), Pine Gap is providing it to the Israel Defence Forces, as it steps up its brutal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza enclave.

“Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources, and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel,” a former Pine Gap employee has told Declassified Australia.

David Rosenberg worked inside Pine Gap as ‘team leader of weapon signals analysis’ for 18 years until 2008. He is a 23-year veteran of the National Security Agency (NSA). 

Pine Gap–controlled Orion SIGINT surveillance satellites, showing collection coverage over the Middle East.  (Image: Desmond Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter, “The SIGINT Satellites of Pine Gap: Conception, Development and in Orbit”, NAPSNet Special Reports.)

“Pine Gap has satellites overhead. Every one of those assets would be on those locations, looking for anything that could help them.”

“Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources, and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel.”

Rosenberg says the personnel at Pine Gap are tasked to collect signals such as ‘command and control’ centres in Gaza, with Hamas headquarters often located near hospitals, schools, and other civilian structures. “The aim would be to minimise casualties to non-combatants in achieving their objective of destroying Hamas.”

Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed over 1,400 Israelis, both military and civilian, the Israel Defence Forces has bombed hundreds of targets inside Gaza, killing far more than Hamas militants. An estimated 9,000 people so far have been killed, including most shockingly 3,600 children.

United Nations agencies have deplored the nearly four week Israeli bombing campaign saying, “Gaza has become a ‘graveyard’ for children with thousands now killed under Israeli bombardment, while more than a million face dire shortages of essentials and a lifetime of trauma ahead.”

Pine Gap Base’s Global Role in Fighting Wars for US and Allies

The sprawling satellite ground station outside Alice Springs, officially titled Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), has been described as the United States’ second most important surveillance base globally. 

About half the 800 personnel working at the Central Australian base are American, with Australian government employees making up fewer than 100 of the increasingly privatised staff. 

The base is no mere passive communication collector. Personnel at the Pine Gap base provide vital detailed analysis and reporting on SIGINT (signals intelligence) and ELINT (electronic intelligence) it collects. 

As well as surveillance of civilian, commercial, and military communications, it provides detailed geolocation intelligence to the US military that can be used to locate with precision targets in the battlefield.

This was first conclusively documented in a secret NSA document, titled “Site Profile”, leaked from the Edward Snowden archive to this writer and first published by ABC Australia in 2017:

“RAINFALL [Pine Gap’s NSA codename] detects, collects, records, processes, analyses and reports on PROFORMA signals collected from tasked target entities.”

These PROFORMA signals are the communications data of radar and weapon systems collected in near real-time – they likely would include remote launch signals for Hamas rockets, as well as any threatened missile launches from Lebanon or Iran.

“Pine Gap detects, collects, records, processes, analyses and reports on PROFORMA signals collected from tasked target entities.”

This present war in Gaza is not the first time the dishes of Pine Gap have assisted Israel’s military with intelligence, including the detecting of incoming missiles, according to this previous report.

“During the [1991] Gulf War, Israeli reports praised Australia for relaying Scud missile launch warnings from the Nurrungar joint US-Australian facility in South Australia, a task now assigned to Pine Gap.”

During the early stages of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the NSA installed a data link to send early warning of any Iraqi missile launches detected directly to Israel’s Air Force headquarters at Tel Nof airbase, south of Tel Aviv.

Israel’s Access to the Jewels of the Five Eye Global Surveillance Network

The NSA “maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU),” according to documents published by The Intercept in 2014. The documents show the NSA and ISNU are “sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting”.

“This SIGINT relationship has increasingly been the catalyst for a broader intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel.

“The Israeli side enjoys the benefits of expanded geographic access to world-class NSA cryptanalytic and SIGINT engineering expertise.”

It’s thanks to the Pine Gap base, with its satellites so strategically positioned to monitor the Middle East region, along with its targeting and analysis capability, that Israel is able to make use of these benefits.

Another leaked document, a targeting exchange agreement from the UK’s surveillance agency, GCHQ, reveals one of the “specific intelligence topics” shared between the NSA, GCHQ and ISNU was “Palestinians”. The document states that “due to the sensitivities” of Israeli involvement that particular program does not include direct targeting of Palestinians themselves. 

The NSA considers their intelligence-sharing arrangement as being “beneficial to both NSA’s and ISNU’s mission and intelligence requirements”. 

This wide intelligence sharing arrangement potentially opens up to the Israelis the ‘jewels’ of the Five Eye global surveillance system collected by the NSA global surveillance network, including by Australia’s Pine Gap base. 

Declassified Australia asked a series of questions of the Australian Defence Department about the role of the Pine Gap base in the Israel-Gaza war, and about the legal protections that may be in place to defend personnel of the base should legal charges of war crimes be laid. No response was received by deadline.

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Peter Cronau is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentaries have appeared on ABC TV’s Four Corners and Radio National’s Background Briefing. He is an editor and cofounder of DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA. He is co-editor of the recent book A Secret Australia – Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposés.

Featured image: Pine Gap, here seen from the south-east, is a sprawling US military base sprouting some 40 satellite dishes and radomes. It is jointly run by the US and Australia, and forms part of the Five Eyes global surveillance network. (Photo: Felicity Ruby)

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***

A month into Israel’s war on Hamas, Sunday reporting from The New York Times is bolstering fears of Israelis using the devastating war to ethnically cleanse the besieged Gaza Strip of Palestinians.

According to the Times:

Israel has quietly tried to build international support in recent weeks for the transfer of several hundred thousand civilians from Gaza to Egypt for the duration of its war in the territory, according to six senior foreign diplomats.

Israeli leaders and diplomats have privately proposed the idea to several foreign governments, framing it as a humanitarian initiative that would allow civilians to temporarily escape the perils of Gaza for refugee camps in the Sinai Desert, just across the border in neighboring Egypt.

The proposal has been rejected by not only Palestinians but also “most of Israel’s interlocutors—who include the United States and Britain—because of the risk that such a mass displacement could become permanent,” the newspaper noted.

Spokespeople for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi declined to comment, though the latter delivered a mid-October speech in which he forcefully opposed any relocation.

At least two separate Israeli plans to permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt have circulated during the war. One, reported by the Israeli business daily Calcalist, came from Israel’s intelligence minister, Gila Gamliel. Another, reported by Middle East Eye, was authored by Amir Weitmann, who chairs the Libertarian faction of Netanyahu’s Likud party, and published by the Israeli think tank Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.

Recent comments from Israeli leaders have also stoked fears of “a second Nakba,” or catastrophe—a reference to when more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 1947-48 during the creation of the modern state of Israel. For example, Ariel Kallner, a Likud lawmakers, last month called for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48.”

Ameed Abed, a 35-year-old resident of Jabaliya—part of northern Gaza, from which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have told civilians to evacuate to the south—suggested in a phone interview with the Times that forced relocation to Egypt would be another Nakba: “As a Palestinian, I won’t renew the Nakba again… We will not leave our homes.”

Allegations of genocide and war crimes have mounted since Israel declared war on Hamas in retaliation for the Palestinian militant group leading an attack on October 7. Netanyahu has been accused of an “explicit call to genocide” due to a Biblical reference during an address last weekend in which he also described Israel’s invasion of Gaza as a “holy mission.”

The prime minister on Sunday indefinitely suspended Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu for publicly suggesting that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was on the table. Israel is one of the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations.

As Politico detailed:

A member of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, Eliyahu earlier on Sunday claimed in a radio interview that since there were “no noncombatants in Gaza,” using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave was “one of the possibilities.”

Eliyahu later sought to rectify his statement, saying it was “clear to all sensible people” that his reference to nuclear weapons had been “metaphorical.”

Netanyahu said that “Minister Amihai Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory.”

According to officials in Israel, over 1,500 Israelis have been killed in the past month and Palestinian militants still have around 240 hostages. The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that the Israeli assault has killed more than 9,400 Palestinians, including 3,900 children. Another 144 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, where Israeli settler violence has surged.

Some Israeli settlers in recent weeks have tried to scare Palestinians into fleeing the West Bank with displays of dolls covered in blood or a substance meant to mimic it and leaflets with messages like, “Run to Jordan before we kill our enemies and expel you from our Holy Land, promised to us by God.”

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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***

Dear God. And he clearly hasn’t noticed that he, his family, colleagues, friends, country’s nationals, as other nations, inhabit the same land. That the destruction, radiation, carnage doesn’t stop at borders. Tel Aviv just 73 kms – 45 miles — away.

Felicity A., Global Research, November 7, 2023

***

Israel‘s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Sunday that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip is “an option”, according to Haaretz.

The minister made the comments in a radio interview during which he maintained that “there are no non-combatants in Gaza”, adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute “a failure”.

Eliyahu was then asked if, since there are no non-combatants in his view, a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip is an option. “That’s one way,” he responded.

When asked about the fate of Palestinians, he said:

“They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

He also said the Gaza Strip has no right to exist, adding that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth”.

The remarks were heavily criticised online, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later saying they were “detached from reality”.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid also lambasted the minister for his comments, stating it was “a horrifying and insane remark by an irresponsible minister”.

“He offended the families of the captives, offended Israeli society and harmed our international standing,” he added. 

After making the comments, the minister took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to say that his comments were “metaphorical”.

He added:

“However, a strong and disproportionate response to terrorism is definitely required, which will clarify to the Nazis and their supporters that terrorism is not worthwhile.” 

The minister was later suspended from government meetings indefinitely, Israeli media reported, citing a statement by the prime minister’s office.

Firing Is ‘Meaningless’, Ministers Say

However, Israeli government ministers reportedly said that Netanyahu’s suspension of Eliyahu is “meaningless”, Israeli media reported. 

“This is a joke, there barely are any cabinet meetings anyway, and most of the work is being done in rounds of votes by phone,” an unnamed minister is quoted as saying by the Ynet news site.

A cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday has been cancelled, with no alternative date set.

This is not the first time Israeli leaders and ministers have deployed dehumanising and incendiary rhetoric in public and used the language of collective punishment when describing their military response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israeli southern towns on 7 October.

Palestinians have been described as “human animals” and “beasts”, with one former Israeli general saying his military “must create an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Gaza”.

At least 9,488 people have been killed, including 3,900 children and 2,500 women, since Israel started its most aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza since the start of the war.

The Israeli military has decimated entire neighbourhoods, and continuously targeted hospitals, bakeries, civilian infrastructure, mosques, and schools sheltering thousands of displaced people. It also laid a total siege on the already-blockaded enclave.

Netanyahu and other politicians have spoken in apocalyptic terms about enacting revenge.

“We will destroy them and we will forcefully avenge this dark day that they have forced on the state of Israel and its citizens,” Netanyahu said on 8 October.

Around 1,400 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s attack, and at least 200 people were taken hostage.

Condemnation

The Israeli minister’s comments have drawn widespread condemnation. 

Saudi Arabia condemned Eliyahu’s remarks “in the strongest terms”, saying such statements show the spread of “extremism and brutality” among members of Israel’s government.

Palestine’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the comments, saying that “these remarks are a translation of the genocidal war that Israel has been waging against the Gaza Strip for 30 days.”

According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the start of its large-scale war on 7 October, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

According to the Geneva-based human rights organisation, the Israeli army has admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip, with a record tally of bombs exceeding 10 kilograms of explosives per individual.

Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the weight of the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II in August 1945 was estimated at about 15,000 tons of explosives.

“Due to technological developments affecting the potency of bombs, the explosives dropped on Gaza may be twice as powerful as a nuclear bomb,” the monitor said.

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Featured image: Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said nuking Palestinians was an option (Screengrab/X)

Un mundo en guerra y una ola de olvido

November 7th, 2023 by Alejandro Marcó del Pont

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***

Presumably, if Israeli Jews were not occupying the majority of historical Palestine, laying siege to Gaza, oppressing, humiliating, dehumanizing, liquidating, and refusing statehood to the Palestinian people that Hamas, a Palestinian resistance, would not have been driven to launch an attack on Israelis.

Placing the Palestinians under oppression, occupation, and siege was an undeniable denial of security for Palestinians.

Thus, by denying the security of Palestinians, Israeli Jews were putting their own security at risk by fomenting a justifiable resistance. The Ukrainians and NATO are aware of this as well now. By threatening the security of the Russian state, Russia was forced to react. Hamas was also forced to react.

The choice was stark for Palestinians: continue to live with bowed head and on bended knee or risk their lives resisting oppression. Hamas refused to live on bended knee.

Now Jews elsewhere are incurring a backlash as a consequence of the self-designated Jewish State carrying out open genocide. As the JTA laments, “Dutch Jews are afraid to show their Jewishness right now.” Feelings borne of insecurity.

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Former US marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter has come to realize the dark criminality of the Israeli state. Ritter deserves commendation for switching his stance, as all morally based thinkers do, when their previously held position was found to be based on inaccurate information or was untenable for whatever reason.

Nonetheless, from a 1 November 2023 interview, I will quibble with some of the interview with Ritter. First, the interview begins by terming the warring between Israel and Hamas as a “conflict” which is grossly misleading.

The term “conflict” originated with the interviewer. Ritter did not challenge this, and he also referred to it as a “conflict” himself but put it in a proper perspective.

Genocide is not a “conflict.” It is a monstrous war crime.

Second, Ritter states that Israel made a mistake by not recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Fine, when considered solely from the Zionist perspective.

However, in a previous interview together with journalist Eva Bartlett just a few days earlier, Ritter agreed with Bartlett humbly confessing,

“I was late to the [pro-Palestinian] movement and shame on me for articulating support for a two state solution.” [around 59:30]

To be fair, Ritter did not articulate support for a two-state solution, but he did argue that it would have been in the best interests of Israel.

Too often one hears and reads about progressives — for example, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky — speaking in favor of the two-state solution, a solution that rewards the oppressors. In April 2023, Chomsky said,

I understand the reasoning of the one-state advocates, but I think … it’s almost inconceivable that Israel will ever agree to destroy itself and become a Jewish minority population in a Palestinian-dominated state, which is what the demography indicates. And there’s no international support for it. Nothing. So my own personal feeling is the real options are ‘Greater Israel’, or move towards some kind of two-state arrangement. [emphasis added]

Finkelstein echoes Chomsky to a large extent in criticizing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement:

“They don’t want Israel,” Finkelstein declared, “They think they’re being very clever. They call it their three tiers… We want the end of the occupation, we want the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever, because they know the result of implementing all three is what? What’s the result? You know and I know what’s the result: there’s no Israel.”

Finkelstein demanded that Palestinians drop this programme, “Because, if we end the occupation and bring back six million Palestinians and we have equal rights for Arabs and Jews, there’s no Israel.”

Having “equal rights for Arabs and Jews” in Israel/historical Palestine! How terrible is that?

It seems these two gentlemen do not first and foremost seek justice for Palestinians, but instead they prioritize preserving a state for Jews.

Even if it were to be a two-state solution, what would the two states look like? Chomsky and Finkelstein advocate for the 1967 borders — again rewarding the Jewish land grab over and above the land granted by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947.

Since Chomsky and Finkelstein are both anarchists, they might both emulate John Lennon and propose a zero-state solution.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for

—John Lennon, “Imagine”

*

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Children from Aida Refugee Camp carry keys symbolizing the right of return toward the Israeli separation wall during a Nakba commemoration event, Bethlehem, West Bank, May 14, 2014.

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***

 

 

 

 

As one attempts to make sense of the horrors of war that the global media flashes across screens and newsprint, day and night 24/7, one can feel a numbing sensation closing down one’s ability to respond, as an organic human being should respond.

The breathtaking volume of bombs, blood and brutality that form the centrepiece of the devastation in Gaza, comes on top of the seemingly interminable hostilities playing-out their realities in Ukraine.

In all of this, any sign of a credible, reasoned and rational intervention is lost beneath a sea of soulless, hypocritical statements from those in positions of ‘authority’ on the world stage.

National/ geopolitical ‘positions’ taken by rolled-out representatives of the status quo, are held to be more important than responses that have some link to heart felt emotions.

Scenes of mass genocide and ethnic cleansing are condoned as ‘acceptable’ if those responding to the bloodbath see some political or geopolitical advantage in backing the cause of the chief protagonist.

Those who for long periods of their lives are deeply repressed and isolated, seek reprisals if ever the chance comes their way to breakout of slavery. This is, under permanent conditions of inhuman containment, an almost inevitable reaction.

One cannot judge behaviour patterns of those suffering under conditions of persistent repression, as being in any way comparable to what are considered acceptable behaviour patterns in times of relative peace and freedom.

The human struggle for a basic degree of liberty is forced into taking the form of a violent struggle when no other support intervenes to bring justice to bear.

This lack of coordinated intervention to end a massacre is the most perilous aspect of the Israel/Hamas conflict, and it the most telling indicator of the bankruptcy of what is considered to be ‘civilised society’.

A fear of going against the dogma of what constitutes the pecking order of the global power pyramid, appears to paralyse nations from coming together to enforce a humane path of conflict intervention and resolution, however tenuous that might initially be. 

But the truth is, that behind this implausible state of impasse, is a small anti-life global cult that wishes to prolong the pain and destruction for its own ends, and covertly backs both sides of the conflict in order to produce the maximum disruption, chaos and death.

Yes, this is pure evil in action. It is the manifestation of a long standing, once covert, but now overt “demonic” ambition – whose roots go far back in human history – and which has recently emerged as the chief protagonist of disruptive chaos and division now manifesting at the foundational level of our daily lives.

The problem for all of us who are determined to resist the manifestations of such dark actors, is that this cult is very clever, highly deceptive and well disguised. It’s main agents wear a fixed smile, a pressed shirt and are very well rehearsed in powers of communication. Psychopaths in a suit.

One would never guess that they harbour an abiding hate for a creative, loving humanity. But they do.

Drawing back from the carnage of the battlefield into the intimacy of our own personal lives, it seems almost impossible to imagine that things could ever descend to such a state of brutality and disrespect for human life. 

Yet, as I barely need to point out, a commitment to maintaining some form of civility, humanity and justice, in this fast moving aggressively competitive ‘Westernised’ world, runs only skin deep – amongst far too high a percentage of human beings.

Just under the surface one can’t fail to recognise the same symptoms of the degradation of fundamental human values which become explosively magnified in war time confrontations.

Holding the line of decency, respect and basic social justice – is not just an important aim for every feeling individual in this precarious moment of human history – it is an absolute imperative.

At a time when the political status quo is riven through with hypocrisy, immorality and arrogance, we have a very real war on our hands right here in our own backyards.

That which can turn into full blooded fascism at any moment, has its origins in a breakdown of the basic rights, freedoms and values of a sane society. That breakdown is already well advanced under the corporate, banker, military dictatorship that heads the dominant global power structures of today. 

Let us not hesitate to recognise that ‘we the people’ who are possessed of warm hearts, courage and a deep sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden, are the resistance. We carry the flag of human honour.

Let us sever any lingering illusion that some existing political institution, or ‘fake saviour’ will come forward to bring dignity and basic equality back to human, animal and ecological life. 

We must be fiercely realistic. With very few exceptions, those who politically represent their constituencies in the fake democracies of the world, are there to do the jobs the hidden deep state cabal has consigned them to fulfil. 

We who refuse to be slaves to these puppets – and refuse to be sucked into their WEF led digital, hive mind artificial intelligence control programme – whose technological dictatorship is sucking-in all but the most determined freedom fighters – we are the ones who must carry forward the great struggle for human emancipation.

There is an unseen universal vibratory energy field which connects all those who share a deep aspiration and determination to bring about a better world.

It supersedes the primitive and polluting WiFi EMF radiation grid and cannot be brought under ‘surveillance’ programmes of central control.  It is a common wavelength which connects-up spirit warriors wherever they are in action in the world.

We are being empowered to lead, initially on an individual by individual basis, but increasingly as an interconnected force of irrepressible positivity and power.

Know that you, who are reading this article, belong to this tribe.  Have faith in your as yet untested powers and joyously step forth to be part of that unique fight for victory which will, one day, completely transform the face of earthly conflicts.

We are the resistance. And in our hearts we know, that to be unified within such an army means that we will also emerge as the most qualified arbiters of a universally longed for state of peace.

Peace, in my language, means a dynamic state of shared equilibrium. Every day we should fight for peace. It has nothing to do with ‘passivity’ which should be recognised as the most pervasive social sickness afflicting mankind at this pivotal moment of history.

Just around the corner there is a whole new world longing to be born. Will we ever find a more meaningful challenge than to bring it to birth?

*

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farmer, a writer, broadcaster and international activist. He is author of three books, the most recent of which is ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’. Go to his website for further information www.julianrose.info 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: “Peace Dove” by Jose Trujillo

Volodymyr Zelensky Is in a Sea of Troubles

November 6th, 2023 by Ted Snider

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***

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing two troubles on the foreign front that have received a lot of media attention.

The first is that his country is actually receiving much less media attention. For the past month, international attention has been drawn away from his war to another.

The second is that he is confronting growing resistance in the U.S. House of Representatives. President Joe Biden’s plan to tie aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel together is both a tactical maneuver to ensure continued congressional support for Ukraine and an admission that that support can no longer be taken for granted.

But the fact is that Zelensky is facing a sea of troubles, not only from foreign shores, but from domestic ones as well. That sea change comes from his inner circle, from the citizens of Ukraine, and from the battlefield.

A small number of current and former members of Zelensky’s inner circle have gone public with concerning criticisms of the president.

Time magazine reports that in the face of “setbacks on the battlefield”—an understatement for the disastrous counteroffensive—Zelensky’s “belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers,” saying, concerningly, that it “verg[es] on the messianic.”

One of Zelensky’s “closest aides” said that Zelensky “deludes himself.” The aide complained, “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Zelensky’s ossified position “some of his aides say,” has hurt his administration’s ability to be flexible and adapt their strategy to the changing reality. For Zelensky, negotiating a diplomatic settlement with Russia remains “taboo.”

Cognizant that the lifeline of weapons from the political West could dry up over time, Zelensky has “ramped up production of drones and missiles,” as if Ukraine could stand up to Russia on their own without the United States and its partners. All this while Zelensky simultaneously admits that without U.S. aid, “we will lose.” He recently insisted that the Ukrainian armed forces move 500 meters to a kilometer forward every day in defiance of battlefield reality.

In a second story that received less attention, former Minister of Internal Affairs and ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko told Germany’s Die Welt that, despite being a “successful president” and a brilliant campaigner, no one talks about the reality that in the supposedly democratic Ukraine, “Zelensky rules as a sole decision-making autocrat” who “makes decisions alone.”

Lutsenko says that “freedom of speech and freedom of the press are very seriously limited.” He says that censorship applies, not only to matters of defense and security, but to “political debates…Many voices are simply not allowed to be heard on television screens.”

Zelensky may also be facing weakening popular support for the first time. A recent USAID funded poll conducted by the International Republican Institute found that 42% of Ukrainians strongly approve of Zelensky compared to 58% in April.

And bad news is coming not just from his inner political circle and from popularity polls, but from conflict with his generals.

Zelensky’s aides told Time that, before winter, there would be “major changes in military strategy” and that at least one “senior general in charge of the counteroffensive” would be fired. Zelensky is reportedly in conflict with his generals, including his top general, Valerii Zaluzhny, over demands to defend Bakhmut and Avdiivka at all cost. Military leadership sees the defense of these towns as a strategic mistake that will devour soldiers, artillery, and equipment.

A close Zelensky aide told Time,

“Some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President.” A senior military officer defended the front-line commanders, saying they have no choice since “orders from the top” are, at times, disconnected from the battlefield reality. In October, Zelensky demanded the capture of the city of Horlivka. The field commanders asked, “With what?” They objected that “they don’t have the men or the weapons.”

And that is the fourth wave of troubles for Zelensky. The war is not going well. It is not just that the counteroffensive—in which everything was placed—has failed, but that Ukraine may now be facing a Russian counteroffensive. The Russian strategy of fighting from the defensive and devouring troops and equipment has left a depleted Ukrainian armed forces vulnerable to a Russian counteroffensive. That counteroffensive may have already begun.

Russia is now gradually gaining ground on many fronts; none more important than the town of Avdiivka, a massively fortified town just north of Donetsk City that Ukraine has defended since 2014. There are reports that the loss of Avdiivka to Russian forces may be imminent. It is now confirmed, including with reluctant acknowledgment from Ukraine, that Russia has solidly captured an elevated piece of land called the Slag Heap, a strategically important position that grants Russia artillery control over the town and Ukraine’s main supply route.

As in Bakhmut before, Ukraine is now suffering staggering losses in Avdiivka. Against his generals’ advice, Zelensky is going all in in its defense, even redeploying troops from the southern front to Avdiivka, weakening Ukraine’s counteroffensive elsewhere. This commitment has led some analysts to conclude that Avdiivka could be the pivotal and defining battle of the war. If Russia succeeds in taking it, they say, it could be the beginning of the end of the war.

The capture of Avdiivka could cause the collapse of a thirty mile line of the front. The entire Donbass front could “shatter like glass,” allowing Russian forces to advance further into Donetsk and firm up its borders of the annexed territory.

The war has turned so severely against Ukraine, and the losses have been so great, that a close Zelensky aide told Time that even if the United States gave Ukraine all the weapons it needed, they “don’t have the men to use them.”

The loss of life has been matched by the loss of equipment. Forbes reports that Ukraine has lost six Leopard tanks in just the past week. They had already lost at least six before that, accounting for, according to Forbes, a fifth of the Leopards they were given. The past few days have also seen a massive loss of aircraft. On October 25, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russia had shot down twenty-four aircraft in the past five days alone. Military analyst Stephen Bryen says that unconfirmed reports from Russia are that Russia shot down twenty fourth generation MiG-29 jet interceptors in October.

While the world is looking away from Ukraine, Zelensky is facing criticism and drawbacks from all angles at what may be the most decisive moment of the war.

*

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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

Featured image: VILNIUS, LITHUANIA. 11th July 2023. Volodymyr Zelensky (Source: TLI)

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***

Amichai Eliyahu, an Israeli Heritage Minister has admitted to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons ready to be used on the PalestiniansThe Times of Israel reported that

“Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, in comments that were quickly disavowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also suspended the minister from cabinet meetings.” 

Surely, Netanyahu is angry with Eliyahu’s comments since the Israeli government never confirmed nor denied that they have nuclear weapons, so Eliyahu got himself suspended.

Eliyahu was asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama “whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the enclave” and he responded with “This is one of the possibilities.”

Eliyahu is a far-right politician who rejects humanitarian aid into Gaza by saying that “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” and that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.” He also advocates efforts to retake the Gaza Strip and rebuild Israeli settlements before his government decided to unilaterally withdrew in 2005. Eliyahu was also asked about what would happen to the Palestinian population in the aftermath and he said that “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a Moroccan-born Israeli citizen, a former nuclear technician exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons factory located in the Negev Desert, not far from the city of Dimona to The Sunday Times of London in 1986.  Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents while in Rome and spent more than 11 years out of 18-year prison sentence in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. 

In 2005, The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published ‘The Release of Mordechai Vanunu and U.S. Complicity in the Development of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal’ which revealed an important fact that Vanunu’s revelations about how Israel’s nuclear program is “offensive in nature”:

A former strategic analyst at the Rand Corporation observed that Vanunu’s revelations about Israel ’s nuclear program demonstrated that: “Its scale and nature was clearly designed for threatening and if necessary, launching first-use of nuclear weapons against conventional forces.” Prior to Vanunu’s revelations, many suspected that Israel ’s nuclear program was limited to tactical nuclear artillery and naval shells

Mordechai Vanunu exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program so he is considered a traitor but to Vanunu’s own observation, he sees it differently,

“Five million Jews are regarding me as a traitor, but six billion people around the world think me as a hero and a good man who bring the message to all the human beings that we should survive and prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to prevent the nuclear preparations and to prevent nuclear war in the future.” 

Israel says that Iran is building a nuclear weapons program which Tehran has repeatedly denied, but it is Israel who has been exposed for having an arsenal of nuclear weapons ready to be used against the Muslim world. 

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour M. Hersh wrote, ‘The Sampson Option; Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and America’s Foreign Policy’ and concluded that “America’s policy toward the Israeli arsenal, as we have seen in this book, was not just one of benign neglect: it was a conscious policy of ignoring reality.” 

Hersh warned about Israel’s nuclear capabilities including the production of low-yield neutron warheads to exporting nuclear technology:

By the mid-1980s, the technicians at Dimona had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel’s arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force. Israel also has been an exporter of nuclear technology and has collaborated on nuclear weapons research with other nations, including South Africa.

In September 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit, bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a satellite intelligence capability—no more Jonathan Pollards would be needed to steal America’s secrets. Scientists at Z Division concluded that the rocket booster that launched the Israeli satellite produced enough thrust to deliver a small nuclear war- head to a target more than six thousand miles away.  Israeli physicists are still at the cutting edge in weapons technology and involved, as are their American and Soviet counterparts, in intensive research into nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, hydrodynamics, and radiation transport—the next generation of weaponry.

None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end

So, would the Israelis be willing to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran? There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb.  

If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel and that is something Tel Aviv and Washington is not prepared for.      

Hersh concluded that

“the basic target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again. The Samson Option is no longer the only nuclear option available to Israel.” 

*

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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***

False claims that Iran is  developing nuclear weapons, like the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, can be used to legitimize an attack on Iran.

House quietly passed resolution that suggests using force against Iran:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives declares it is the policy of the United States—(1) that a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran is not acceptable;

(2) that Iran must not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon under any circumstances or conditions;

(3) to use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; and

(4) to recognize and support the freedom of action of partners and allies, including Israel, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Source: Congress.gov

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Six days after she gave birth to her first baby, Salma Radi* was forced to evacuate her home in northern Gaza to flee Israel‘s relentless bombing and seek refuge in the central Gaza Strip, where she and her husband are now staying in a small apartment with 43 other people.

Displaced, scared, and in bad health, Radi is struggling to take care of the baby, Omar, she had following two IVF attempts.

“I was still bleeding badly after having given birth when we had to evacuate our home, leaving everything behind. I carried my son and one bag and ran with my husband in the dark for around one hour until we found a taxi,” Radi, 28, told Middle East Eye.

Before dawn, at 4am, that day, the couple had received a recorded phone message from the Israeli military, ordering them to evacuate ahead of imminent bombing on Gaza City.

“We started running around the house not knowing what to do. We took our official papers and money and left everything else behind – the piles of canned food we had bought at the beginning of the war, our clothes, the beautiful bedroom and the things we had bought for Omar over the past year,” Radi said.

Radi had not brought milk for her son since she was still nursing. But a few days after they were displaced, her son stopped breastfeeding.

“He started crying hysterically whenever I tried to breastfeed him. He spat out the milk and refused to have it. He remained about a whole day without food. I didn’t know what to do or why he was refusing to breastfeed,” she said.

After many phone-call attempts on the severely damaged communication networks, Radi finally managed to reach her doctor. She was told that anxiety and fear change the taste and texture of breast milk, and that is why her baby has been refusing it.

“I also do not eat well, and thus cannot produce enough milk. Honestly, in the past years, I was yearning to have a child. I cried and prayed day and night so that God would grant me a baby. But now I regret all of it,” she said.

“I regret having a baby, and I feel guilty for bringing him to this world where he is already suffering and will continue to suffer for the rest of his life as long as he is Palestinian.

“I do not say this to my husband, but I truly regret all the days when I prayed to have a child.”

No Safe Road Home

When Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack on 7 October, Radi’s husband, Mahmoud, rushed to the supermarket to stock up on food, bread, drinking water and medicine. But when they had to flee their home, they did not manage to take any of it with them.

Today, Radi and her husband are unable to go back home to get the much-needed food they had bought, after Israel cut off the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City from the central and southern areas by bombing the roads linking them.

“The only way left for us to go home now is al-Rasheed Street, on the coastal road, but whoever drives there gets targeted by Israeli gunboats and tanks,” she said.

On Friday, Israeli forces targeted a group of internally displaced persons who were driving on al-Rasheed Street on their way to the southern Gaza Strip, which the Israeli military had warned people to move to for their “safety”.

At least eight people, including children, were killed.

A few hours later, a group of ambulances transferring a number of wounded people to the Rafah border in the south were also targeted on the same street, although the Palestinian health ministry had coordinated with the Red Cross before transferring them.

An ambulance driver was wounded, and the ambulances returned to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

At least 9,448 people have been killed, including 3,900 children and 2,500 women, since Israel started its most aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza on 7 October, when Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israeli towns.

‘Our Worst Nightmare’

With Israel cutting off water and food supplies to Gaza, owners of grocery markets say they will not be able to restock the emptying shelves until Israel lifts its siege of the already-blockaded enclave.

In Nusairat refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the central Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of residents have sought refuge from the bombing in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.

With few markets and bakeries still open, residents and displaced people struggle to get food and bread.

“With around 44 people, half of them children, staying together in one house, we need food and running water all the time. Children finish their breakfast and 30 minutes later they start asking for lunch or a snack because they do not get enough food in each meal,” Radi said.

She added that the children, who usually need one load of bread for breakfast, now only get a quarter of that and a few pieces of cucumber.

“In order to get a bag of bread, we have to wake up at dawn and walk for around 60 minutes to reach the only bakery that still has not been bombed in our area,” she said.

“We wait in a queue where hundreds of people, who had come from all districts around the Strip, stand, and after around two or three hours we finally get one bag of bread.”

Due to the lack of flour, water, and fuel needed to run the machines and bake the bread, bakery owners now sell each person only one bag of bread to cover the needs of as many families as possible.

Families that need more than one bag have to send several members to stand in the queue outside the bakery and buy one bag each.

“Of course, we do not cook because we do not have cooking gas and enough water and vegetables. So we mainly rely on canned food. But canned food needs a lot of bread, so we are always in an endless dilemma thinking what to eat and what to feed the children,” Radi said.

“And of course, because there is no water, we are bathing the children with wet wipes only. They are starting to have allergies and skin infections due to the lack of sanitary conditions.

“Every day we say this will end soon, but it only gets worse. Every day we say they will not target places around us, but they are bombing more homes in our neighbourhood.

“We did not expect to live this in our worst nightmares.”

*The name has been changed upon request.

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Analysis with foresight by Peter Koenig, first published on May 20, 2021

***

“I said we would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups, and we are doing so and will continue to do so with great force,” Netanyahu said in a fiery video address.

Israel’s PM Netanyahu is a war criminal and should be held accountable for war crimes throughout his PM-ship of Israel, according to the 1945 / 1946 Nuremberg trials criteria. His crimes against humanity, against a defenseless Palestine are comparable to the Holocaust.

In 2016 Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu had been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial is ongoing but has temporarily been “suspended”. Netanyahu has dismissed the charges as hypocritical and acts as if they didn’t exist. Even though he lacks the majority to form a government, he acts with impunity, because he can – he can because he has the backing of the United States.

More importantly, Israel has been accused before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestine.

The prosecutor of the ICC, Ms. Fatou Bensouda, said on 3 March 2021 that she has launched an investigation into alleged crimes in the Palestinian territories. She added the probe will look into “crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed” since June 13, 2014, and that the investigation will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.”

In a quick response, PM Netanyahu accused the Court of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. Of course, the quickest and often most effective defense and counter-attack is calling any accusation, no matter how rightful it is, as anti-Semitism. Calling someone an anti-Semite shuts most people up, no matter whether the accusation is true or false. That explains in part why nobody dares to even come forward with the truth about crimes committed by Israel.

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Imagine, Jews were the chief victims of the German Third Reich – a Nazi Regime, and today the political leaders of Israel,  many of whom are descendants of the Jews, persecuted and slaughtered in Nazi-concentration camps, have allowed the transformation of Israel into a Zionist Fourth Reich, executing Palestinians Holocaust-style. They have done this with impunity for the last 73 years, with the current massacres reaching unheard-of proportions.

Pro-Palestine protests take place around the world – and especially now, finally, throughout Europe. Workers and young people joined protests across Europe on Saturday, 15 May, including in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid, to oppose Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian population in Gaza. The demonstrations coincided with the Palestinian Nakba(Catastrophe Day, 14 May 1948)—marking the founding of the state of Israel, through the forced expulsion of 760,000 Palestinians from their villages.

Here is what one protester, Khalid, in Manchester, UK, had to say. Khalid held a placard reading “Lift the siege of Palestine-Stop bombing Palestine”. He said,

“Israel should know better. They know how it feels to be exterminated. They had no homeland and came to Palestine as guests and now they have taken the Palestinians’ homes and are trying to throw them out. The Palestinians have no water, they have no food. You have got people like [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and presidents colluding with Israel and giving them money to destroy human life” – (See this)

Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, always take place with the unwavering support of the United States. No US presidential candidate has a chance of being “elected” to the empire’s highest chair, the Presidency, without having proven his or her unquestioned support for Zionist-Israel. Without that western support, Israel’s war against and oppression of Palestine would soon be over.

Palestine could start breathing again and become a free country, an autonomous, sovereign, self-sustained country, what they were before the forced UN Partition Plan for Palestine, and as was foreseen by UN Resolution 181 II of 1947. This genocidal conflict situation has lasted almost three quarters of a century – and has little chance to abate under the current geopolitical constellation of the Middle East and the world, where obedient submission to US-Israeli command and atrocities is the name of the game.

Background

The conflict started basically with the creation of Israel. The UK, since the end of WWI and the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, occupier of the Palestine Peninsula (Palestine and Transjordan, see map), proposed to the UN as a condition for UK withdrawal, the creation of Israel in the western part of what was then known as Palestine and Transjordan. The so-called UN Partitian Plan for Palestine, was voted on 29 November 1947 by the UN General Assembly, as Resolution 181 (II). The then 57 UN members voted 33 (72%) for, 13 against the resolution, with 10 abstentions, and one absent. The Palestinian Authority was never consulted on this proposal. Therefore, for many scholars the UN Partition Plan’s legality remains questionable.

The Plan sought to resolve the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism. The Plan also called for an Economic Union between the proposed two states, and for the protection of religious and minority rights.

However, immediately after adoption of the Resolution by the General Assembly, a civil war broke out and the plan was not implemented. The remnants of this civil war, the non-acceptance by Palestine of this UN Resolution 181, for which the historic owners of the land were not consulted, are lingering on as of this day.

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After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a “National Home” for the Jewish people, with the prerogative to carry it out.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War, announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The question is still asked today: How legitimate was that declaration in terms of international law? Many academics see this declaration still today as a unilateral move and a breach of international law, as no consultation of the Palestine Authority ever took place.

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In the November 1947 UN General Assembly vote, the US was among the 33 countries voting FOR the Partition Plan. Interestingly, though, President Truman later noted,

“The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders—actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats—disturbed and annoyed me.”

This Zionist pressure was to set the bar for what was to follow – up to this day.

David Ben-Gurion, Zionist statesman and political leader, was the first Prime Minister ( 1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to “possession of the land as a whole” (emphasis added by author).

As of today, seventy-three years later and counting, the conflict is not resolved. To the contrary. It has become the longest lasting war, or aggression rather, in recent human history. A war it isn’t really, because a sheer oppression and literal slaughter against a perceived enemy, like Palestine that has no weapons to speak of, being bombarded and shot with the most sophisticated US-sponsored weapons systems, cannot be called a war. It is sheer genocide. The Palestinian weapons of choice are mostly rocks; rocks thrown by Palestinians at the Israeli IDF invaders, who then mow them down with machine guns, mostly civilians, women and children.

The Israel armed-to-the-teeth Defense Forces (IDF), invade Gaza and Palestinian West Bank areas with the most sophisticated machine guns, bombs, white phosphorus, practicing indiscriminate killing. The IDF destroys Palestinian living quarters, administration buildings, schools, shops, the little manufacturing industries that makes up their economy – destroying a people already teetering at the edge of extreme poverty and despair. No mercy. What does one call people who are committing such unspeakable crimes?

What does one call this style of aggression? – Literally killing hundreds, thousands of people without defense, in the world’s largest open prison – Gaza – home to more than 2 million people, living in misery, housing and infrastructure constantly destroyed, painfully partially rebuilt – just to be destroyed and bombed to pieces again. Those who don’t die from Israeli direct aggressions, may die from the indirect effects – famine, misery, disease and suicide – of this constant, abject hostility perpetuated upon what was supposed to be, according to the UN Partition Plan, an autonomous Palestine home of the Palestine people.

It is an ongoing – seemingly never-ending conflict, ever since the first Intifada beginning in December 1987 (Intifada in the context of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a concerted Palestinian attempt to shake off Israeli power and gain independence).

The Oslo Accords I and II are a pair of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), of 1993 and 1995, respectively, sponsored by Norway in an attempt to achieve peace between the two parties. The Oslo Accords failed bitterly, over the issue of Jerusalem that was to become the religious capital for both countries, but Israel refused, claiming Jerusalem as her own, making the holy city to Israel’s capital. The first foreign leader recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, was US President Donald Trump on 6 December 2017.

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There was, however, another, less talked-about but equally important issue – an issue of survival – within the Oslo Accords: The fair sharing of the water resources. Israel never agreed, as about 85% of all water resources of what used to be the Palestinian Land, falls currently within the borders of what was defined by the Partitian Plan as Palestine. This is based on a World Bank study, in which I participated. On the insistence of Israel, the US vetoed publication of the study. Hence, the report was never officially published and publicly available.

Subsequent, so-called Peace processes, mostly US-sponsored, failed as of this day, because both Israel and the US have no interest in finding a peaceful solution. Neither one of the two nations have an interest in a Peace Accord, as the US needs the conflict to keep control over the Middle East, while Israel has no intentions to give up (slave)-control over Palestine, as her wellbeing depends on the overall control of what used to be Arab-Palestinian territory, and especially Palestine’s water resources. Without them, Israel would be a dry and unproductive desert.

There is a purpose behind these illegal, but ever-growing number of Israeli settlements on Palestine territories: Control over water. The settlements are usually over or near underground water resources. This is one way of controlling Palestine’s water. This happens not only in the so-called West Bank, but also in Gaza, where water resources are really scarce. Gaza is the world’s per capita water-scarcest area. The few Gaza water tables are super-posed by Israeli settlements.

This totally illegal and often UN-condemned Israeli Settlements strategy – also totally ignored by Israel – gradually reduces Palestine land and increases Israel’s control over crucial Palestinian water resources. See map.

The impediment of being able to manage their own water resources, therefore increasing their food self-sufficiency through their own agriculture, makes out of Palestine an Israeli slave-state.

In addition, Israel has a handle on opening or closing the Gaza border, letting at will minimal food, medication and other life-essentials into Gaza, as well as allowing exactly the number needed of low-paid Palestinians (literally slave-labor) cross the border in the morning to work in Israel, and having to return at night to their Palestine homes. It is sheer Apartheid exploitation. Furthermore, Israel does not recognize Gaza’s territorial Mediterranean waters which would be a means towards Palestinians self-sustention and economic industrial activity.

According to an OECD report of 2016, Israel ranks as the nation with the highest poverty rate among OECD countries, i.e. 21% of Israelis are living under the poverty line. This is more than Mexico, Turkey and Chile. The OECD average is about 11%. This figure (21%) may be slightly exaggerated, given the relatively large informal sector and transfer payments to Israel from Jews abroad, as well as from international Jewish organizations.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel is economically not autonomous and needs Palestine to survive, both in terms of confiscated Palestinian water resources, as well as Palestinian slave labor. Therefore, there is hardly any hope for the UN-planned two-state solution to eventually materialize. There is little hope that this situation will change under the current geopolitical conditions. The US wants to dominate the Middle East and needs Israel as a garrison state that will be armed to the teeth for the US – to eventually grow and become Washington’s proxy ruler of the Middle East.

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A question that is rarely asked, if ever: What is Hamas’ role in this never-ending Israeli-Palestine conflict? Since 2007 Hamas is officially governing the 2-million-plus population of the 363 square kilometer Gaza Strip. Hamas is also the Palestine paramilitary or defense organization. Hamas is said to be funded largely by Iran. Is it true? And if so, is Iran the only funder of Hamas?

It is odd, however, that ever so often, Hamas attacks Israel by launching unsophisticated rockets at Israeli cities, rockets that most often are intercepted by the IDF defense system, or cause minimal damage. But they cause, predictably minimal damageagainst an IDF which is US-equipped with the latest technology weapons- and defense systems.

Yet, a Hamas attack on Israel prompts regularly a ferocious retaliation; bombardments, not so much aiming at Hamas, as Netanyahu intimidates, “We would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups…” , but at the civilian populations. The heaviest casualties are civilian Gaza citizens, many women and children among them, after an Israeli “self-defense” retaliation. This is of course no self-defense. The Hamas attacks usually follows an Israeli provocation.

Why would Hamas hit back, knowing that they won’t wreak any damage on Israel, yet they will trigger each time a deadly massacre on the Gaza population? – At the outset, Israeli provocations look like “false flags”. Could they be false flags with the willing participation of Hamas? If so, with whom does Hamas collaborate?

These are questions which certainly do not have an immediate answer. But the 14-year pattern of repeatedly similar events begs the question – is there another (Hamas) agenda behind what meets the eye?

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What is nearly as criminal as the IDF’s aggressions, is the almost complete silence of the west, and the world at large, vis-à-vis Israel’s atrocities committed on the Palestinian population. It is an unspoken tolerance for the carnages Israel inflicts on Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison.

For example, the political UN body, despite hundreds of Resolutions, condemning and flagging Israel’s illegal actions against Palestine, including the ever-increasing number of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestine territories, seems to be hapless against Israel. Weak condemnations of Israel, calling both parties to reason – leaves Israel totally cold and undisturbed. There is no punishment whatsoever, not from the UN system, not from the western allies, most of whom are Washington and NATO vassals.

The Biden Administration has taken the usual imperialist position of cynical neutrality, like it was an uninvolved disinterested player, while painting up Israel as being some kind of victim instead of the brutal Zionist apartheid state that it is. It is important to remember that the creation of Israel was so that the US had a garrison state to protect her interests in the Middle East.

Take the UN Secretary General. Instead of condemning Israeli ruthlessness and demanding accountability, the spokesman for UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, merely called on the Netanyahu regime to “exercise maximum restraint and respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.”

The Secretary General himself reiterates his commitment, including through the Middle East Quartet, “to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.”The Quartet, set up in 2002, consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Its mandate is to help mediate Middle East peace. As of this day they have not achieved any tangible results.

Because they do NOT WANT to achieve any peace. For the reasons mentioned before, Peace is not in the interest of Israel, nor in the interest of the West, led by the United States. To keep the conflict burning, sacrificing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives is not important. It’s just a collateral damage of a larger agenda – control over the Middle East and her riches, a step towards controlling the entire world.

Time and again, Guterres disgraced himself and the office he holds by failing to denounce US/NATO/Israeli aggression and demand accountability for high crimes too serious to ignore.

If the UN is incapable or unwilling of assuming the responsibility of reigning in Israel, perhaps the Group of 77 (by now more than 120 UN member countries) should take a joint stand, exerting pressure on Israel, asking as an intermediary for outright negotiating with Israel and Palestine to reach a sustainable peace settlement, including the original two-state solution, back to the pre-1967 Israeli-Palestine borders. Let us, the UN, become pro-active in seeking and finding a permanent solution for the stressed-to-death, starving and tortured Palestinians, especially those from the Gaza Strip.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

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After 120 members of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Israel demonstrated its increasing isolation by declaring the UN illegitimate and irrelevant.

Both the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly continue to grapple with the Israel/Hamas War, also known as the Gaza War, with the Security Council deadlocked and the General Assembly demanding an immediate ceasefire.

On Tuesday, October 25, Russia, Sudan, and Venezuela introduced a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The US introduced a competing resolution which called for humanitarian pauses to let aid into Gaza, but not for a ceasefire.

The Russian resolution failed because it did not win the two-thirds majority required to pass, and the US resolution failed because Russia and China, both of which have veto power on the Council, voted against it, as did the United Arab Emirates.

After the US resolution failed, China explained that it had voted against it because it considered it a green light to Israel. This is an English translation:

“The draft resolution is evasive on the most urgent issue of ending the fighting. And it has never been able to call for an immediate ceasefire in clear and unambiguous terms. At this moment, ceasefire is not only a diplomatic term, it means the life and death of many civilians. If a resolution from the Security Council is ambiguous on the issue of war and peace, it’s irresponsible, and it’s also extremely dangerous. It is tantamount to paving the way for large-scale military action and giving the green light to further escalation of the war.”

China also objected that the US resolution denied Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine, and that it:

  • did NOT condemn the indiscriminate and asymmetrical use of force,
  • did NOT call for a full, independent investigation of the bombing of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza,
  • did NOT call on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, and
  • did NOT call on Israel to rescind its order to Northern Gazans to evacuate to Southern Gaza.

Does Palestine Have a Right to Defend Itself?

The week before these two resolutions were considered, the US vetoed a Brazilian resolution calling for humanitarian pauses—even though it condemned Hamas—because it did not assert Israel’s right to defend itself.

In its own failed resolution, the US “reaffirms the inherent right of all States to individual and collective self defense,” and the US and its vassals constantly reiterate that Israel therefore has the right to defend itself. They don’t add that Palestine is not a UN member state, that it’s simply a “non-member observer state,” so the UN Charter doesn’t clearly guarantee Palestine’s right to defend itself. That is the implication, but it wouldn’t sound good if spoken out loud.

UN General Assembly Votes for an Immediate Ceasefire

On Friday, October 27, the U.N. General Assembly reconvened the “Tenth Emergency Special Session on Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” that was first convened in 1997. “Emergency sessions” are convened when the Security Council deadlocks on matters of international peace and security, with one or more of the five permanent members exercising their veto power. UN member states can then ask the General Assembly President to convene or reconvene emergency sessions to make recommendations for collective action.

In other words, they can let the Security Council know what the rest of the world thinks, and in this case the rest of the world’s representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The vote was 120 votes in favor, 14 against, with 45 abstaining.

The resolution, introduced by Jordan speaking for the Arab Group, blamed neither Israel nor Hamas for starting the current conflict in the interest of winning broad support. It was co-sponsored by 40 nations, including 27 of the world’s 50 majority Muslim nations. All except Russia were from the Global South:

Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Egypt, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Yemen, Zimbabwe and [the non-member] State of Palestine.

Canada introduced this amendment that blamed Hamas:

“[This resolution] unequivocally rejects and condemns the terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting on 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages, demands the safety, well-being and humane treatment of the hostages in compliance with international law, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.”

The Canadian amendment was voted down with 85 in favor, 55 against, and 23 abstaining. Before the vote on the amendment, Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram eloquently explained his opposition to wide applause.

After the ceasefire resolution passed, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan confirmed Israel’s increasing isolation by delivering a tirade, claiming that “the UN no longer has even an ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

Erdan nevertheless reappeared when the UN Security Council reconvened on October 30 but still failed to take decisive action, despite urgent pleas from humanitarian agencies UNICEF, UNRWA, and OCHA. This time Erdan and the rest of the Israeli delegation pinned yellow Stars of David to their sleeves and swore to wear them until the Security Council condemned “Hamas Nazis.”

On October 31, the UN General Assembly reconvened its emergency session where, with no end in sight, member states renewed their call for an immediate ceasefire.

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Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann(at)anngarrison.com. Please help to support her work on Patreon.

Featured image is from BAR

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More than 40 per cent of Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet has been funded by pro-Israel groups, a new report revealed today.

According to an investigation by Declassified UK, 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funder.

Donations have been received by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and shadow international development minister Lisa Nandy.

More than half of the cabinet are listed as supporters or officers of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

According to Declassified UK, the donations were provided by LFI and Sir Trevor Chinn, a “philanthropist” active in numerous pro-Israel organisations such as the Joint Israel Appeal.

Sir Trevor donated £50,000 to Sir Keir’s 2020 leadership bid, and a total of £200,000 to the shadow cabinet.

While LFI does not publicly reveal its funders, a 2017 Al Jazeera documentary exposed its close ties to the Israeli embassy. It is known for taking MPs on “fact-finding” trips to Israel.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves received some £17,000 to travel to the country.

Declassified UK noted that only four of the 79 MPs who are listed as LFI supporters have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling for “an immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities.”

No members of the shadow cabinet signed the motion.

In June, it was also revealed that Gary Lubner, a South African auto glass tycoon and supporter of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, donated £5 million to the party.

Since October 7, Sir Keir has opposed a ceasefire to Israel’s relentless bombing of Palestine, even going as far as to suggest that Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza before rowing back on his comments nine days later. The move has sparked a wave of resignations from Labour councillors.

Andrew Feinstein, director of Shadow World Investigations, accused Sir Keir of undermining his own constituents.

He said:

“The reality is that politicians are first and foremost, not going to represent the people who elect them, and in my case, this includes Keir Starmer, who’s my local MP.

“But they represent the people who are funding them.”

On Sir Keir’s refusal to back a ceasefire, Mr Feinstein said:

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if that was because he realises that his key funders demand that he provide unqualified and uncritical support to Israel.

“What we’re seeing is that Starmer is a politician who can be bought.”

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Featured image: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, with Angela Rayner (left) and Rachel Reeves, arriving with his shadow cabinet in central London for their first meeting. Picture date: Tuesday September 5, 2023. (Source: Morning Star)