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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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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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.

And now with English subtitles, thanks to @maozinon

“…the land is OURS. The whole country! All of it! Including Gaza! Including Lebanon! The whole promised land!”

We – the people seeking life and peace – are hostages trapped between Hamas and these extremists. HELP pic.twitter.com/pqYiMC76PG

— Tami Yakira (@tami_yakira) November 5, 2023

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.”

יונתן ארליכמן ז"ל בן 8 מת מדום לב 😥😥😥
לא מזעזע אתכם ? היכן הכותרות ? החקירות? כמה ילדים עוד ימותו על מזבח הזהב?
ובייחוד שיש כבר שני מחקרים מבוקרים המעידים כי חיסוני ה mRNA גורמים לבעיות לבביות. עד מתי תתחפרו ? כמה עוד תכחישו?
תזכרו שבכל רגע נתון זה יכול לקרות לילדיכם… pic.twitter.com/PUYlLN4jDr

— א.בלב Avishag Balev (@AvishagBalev) October 1, 2023

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

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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)

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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.

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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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Featured image is from Khaled Hosseini

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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.

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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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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.

Another piece of evidence that Israel is looking to ethnically cleanse Palestinians by the 100Ks. Really solid reporting from @PatrickKingsley https://t.co/XPSakD2lC9 pic.twitter.com/a3timGBYWg

— johnknefel (@johnknefel) November 5, 2023

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.

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)

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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

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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 Palestinians. The 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.

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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)

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***

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.

U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were among the groups that condemned the videos, which show armed and uniformed Israeli troops and possibly settlers beating, kicking, stomping, and dragging bound, blindfolded, and naked Palestinian men, forcing them to shout “long live Israel,” and draping them in the Israeli flag.

“The footage of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian men in the West Bank is horrific,” JVP said on social media. “The Israeli military has brutally abused Palestinian prisoners for decades. As the Israeli military wages a genocidal war in Gaza, its soldiers are no longer hiding this abuse from the public.”

@POTUS @SecBlinken this is on you.

Should we expect the standard comment from @PressSec about how Israel has a right to defend itself in the West Bank, where Hamas doesn’t govern, by carrying out torture tactics on random Palestinian farmers and students? https://t.co/E1Elg7rzyu

— Dr. Omar Suleiman (@omarsuleiman504) October 31, 2023

“Torture and humiliation [are] a tool of all repressive regimes to punish and destroy the spirit [of] anyone who challenges their oppression,” the group continued. “It’s no surprise then, that the same government that tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib is funding the same tactics on Palestinians. This is disgusting.”

JVP added: “CEASE-FIRE NOW! END U.S. MILITARY FUNDING TO ISRAEL NOW!”

The U.S. gives Israel around $4 billion in annual military aid. Last week, President Joe Biden asked Congress to authorize an additional $14 billion in assistance for Israel as it ramps up its war on Gaza in the wake of this month’s Hamas-led surprise attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis and others, with the death toll since rising to over 1,500, according to state broadcaster Kan. Around 200 Israelis and others were taken hostage by Gaza-based militants.

Watch the video clip .
Israeli soldiers continue dehumanizing Palestinian detainees, the majority of them are workers.
So Israel is not defending it self, it is defending its occupation and apartheid. pic.twitter.com/urt0didZ43

— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو 🇵🇸 (@Issaamro) October 31, 2023

CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement that “enough is enough. President Biden must end our nation’s complicity in [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly genocidal campaign of violence against Palestinian civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank.”

“Every new massacre that the Israeli government commits further stains our nation’s reputation and refutes the claim that our nation supports human rights,” Awad added. “If our leaders truly do view Palestinians as human beings worthy of life and freedom, we must stop this madness.”

Soldiers also documented themselves stripping Palestinian detainees then brutalizing their naked bodies and shared it on the world wide web. What does that say about them? They don’t even have to hide anything, because the West has written them a blank check of impunity. https://t.co/bg5OrhhfkW

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) October 31, 2023

Awad’s comments came on the same day that Israeli bombardment of the Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza’s largest, killed and wounded at least scores and possibly hundreds of Palestinians.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that 8,525 people, including 2,187 women and 3,542 children, have been killed, and over 21,000 others wounded, by Israeli forces since they began bombarding Gaza on October 7.

At least 124 Palestinians have also been killed and over 2,000 injured in attacks by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since then, a situation U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called “totally unacceptable.”

“Israel must take measures to protect Palestinians from such attacks and to hold accountable any settlers who carry out attacks, as well as any members of the Israeli Defense Forces (sic) who stand by or fail to intervene when these attacks occur,” Sullivan said on Sunday.

Israel must take measures to protect Palestinians from Israeli extremist settler violence, hold attackers accountable and IDF who standby or fail to intervene. We’ve made clear to the Israeli gov these attacks need to stop & those responsible need to be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/8lnDqDFWIn

— Matthew Miller (@StateDeptSpox) October 30, 2023

The newly published torture videos follow reports earlier this month of Israeli soldiers and settlers torturing a group of Palestinian men in the central West Bank village of Wadi al-Seeq on October 12. According to the victims, they were beaten, stripped, urinated on, and sexually assaulted.

“All the monstrous, inhumane, or immoral means of interrogation you could think of were used against us. You would have thought we were at Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib,” one of the men, 46-year-old Mohammad Matar (known as Abu Hassan), told+972 Magazine, referring to the notorious U.S. military prisons in Cuba and Iraq, two of the numerous American facilities were detainees were tortured—sometimes to death.

I’m not going to show the gruesome ones, but you have videos of Palestinians stripped completely naked in the West Bank and soldiers are taunting them, beating them, and humiliating them.

It’s Abu Ghraib 2.0. This is what US military aid is subsidizing

— Remi Kanazi (@Remroum) October 31, 2023

“They had our hands tied behind our backs, our eyes covered, our faces in the ground,” Abu Hassan said. “They stepped on our heads and said: t’Eat! Eat the sheep shit!”

“They jumped on our backs intending to paralyze us, to break the spinal cord,” he added. “They also tried to hit us on our genitals to mutilate us, 30 to 40 times. They kept taking turns to hit us.”

Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas, settler pogroms have become routine, yet this is a new low. It's happening because too many are silent. Because "now is not the time". And in silence, we stand idly by. With every silence, we give our consent. Never stay silent.

— Breaking the Silence (@BtSIsrael) October 23, 2023

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson told +972 Magazine that “the manner in which the arrest was carried out and the conduct of the forces in the field was contrary to what was expected of soldiers and commanders in the IDF.”

“After the initial investigation, a decision was made to dismiss the commander of the unit that carried out the arrest,” the spokesperson added. “In the circumstances of the matter and in view of the seriousness of the suspicions, it was decided to open an investigation by the military police.”

On Monday, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) sounded the alarm on what it called “colonial violence and ethnic cleansing” in Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 hamlets in the southern West Bank where the Israeli government in 2022 ordered the expulsion of 2,000 Palestinians to make way for an Israeli military training facility.

According to ISM:

Settler militias are terrorizing Palestinians by invading their villages during pogroms, armed with assault rifles, often wearing Israeli army uniforms and accompanied by Israeli soldiers. Palestinians and ISM activists have reported and documented cases of settlers beating up Palestinian residents, including women, children, and the elderly; settlers and soldiers shooting towards Palestinian houses… destroying water pumps and electric grids, uprooting trees, and taking up Palestinian fields, planting Israeli flags on Palestinian land and houses, and even forcing Palestinians to sing pro-Israel chants and to wave an Israeli flag while holding them at gunpoint and filming them.

ISM also said that on Sunday, “settlers and soldiers invaded the village of Susyia and threatened residents that if they don’t leave within 24 hours, they will be back and start killing Palestinians in the village.”

“A similar threat to residents of the village of Khirbet Zanuta has already resulted in the community leaving the land in order to save their families,” the group added.

The Times of Israel reported Tuesday that Israeli settlers torched a home in the Masafer Yatta village of Khirbet Asfi al-Tahta.

مستوطنون يحرقون منزل وكهف في خربة اصفي التحتا بمسافر يطا جنوب #الخليل #انقذوا_مسافر_يطا pic.twitter.com/Wvsaq5mo3r

— samahpal23 (@samahpal23) October 30, 2023

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has reported the ethnic cleansing of at least scores of Palestinian families from their homes and farms in Area C, the Israel-designated West Bank occupation zone completely administered by Israel.

“While all eyes are on Gaza… the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank could intensify further,” Israeli international law and human rights professor Neve Gordon wrote for the London Review of Books blog Monday, “with Israeli forces pushing Palestinians out of their homes and possibly across international borders.”

[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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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image: Bound, blindfolded, and stripped Palestinian men sit on the ground after being detained by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank. (Photo: Breaking the Silence/X)

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***

The wrinkled hands of an elderly Palestinian woman sifting through green olives; a young man somersaulting on a beach in Gaza; the blurry outline of a galloping peacock; blazing sunsets and rainbows descending on the Nuseirat refugee camp. 

These are the everyday images of Gaza that Palestinian photographer Majd Arandas yearned for the world to see. 

But on Wednesday, photographers from across the Middle East were in mourning after it emerged the 29-year-old was killed in an Israeli air strike. 

To those who knew him, the self-taught photographer was an adoring uncle who loved his two nieces and the Mediterranean Sea that caresses Gaza’s shores. 

Arandas tried to capture everyday life, and the moments that defined Gazans beyond the lens of Israel’s occupation (Instagram: Majd Arandas)

He was born in 1994 in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip.

In 2017 Arandas began photographing the world around him after watching YouTube tutorials and reading photography websites. 

“His photography is very gentle, it comes from a tender eye,” said Rita Kabalan, a Lebanese-American photojournalist based in Beirut who became friends with Arandas through Instagram several years ago. 

“You can tell that he was a sensitive person from his photography. It’s not jaded,” she added. “He was shooting with his instincts.”

One of Arandas’s most poignant photo series was about his late grandmother, Bahja. 

A tatreez embroidery dress belonging to Majd Arandas’s late grandmother, Bahja (Gulf Photo Plus)

Shot last year, the 86-year-old can be seen beaming as she shares her pride in the traditional Palestinian tatreez embroidery of her native town, Isdud, which she was forced to abandon during the Nakba catastrophe in 1948.

The series captures the vulnerabilities of a grandson’s love for his grandmother and also shows Bahja expressing her love for planting and nurturing trees and cooking outdoors away from the hustle and bustle of the refugee camp, where she moved after marriage in 1953. 

Arandas’s late grandmother, Bahja, was a child of the Nakba whose family was forced to leave their town of Isdud in 1948 (Gulf Photo Plus)

Before 7 October, Arandas – like most of Gaza’s residents – could not travel or pursue opportunities in the occupied West Bank or abroad because of Israel’s 17-year illegal blockade, which is part of the discriminatory system that leading human rights organizations – including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – have described as apartheid.

Unable to leave Gaza, Arandas was forced to nurture friendships beyond Gaza and establish professional connections online with people he was never able to physically meet.

Among those he connected with was Kabalan. The two became close friends after 4 August 2020, when an explosion in Beirut port killed 215 people and destroyed parts of the capital.

“There were these certain similarities between the two places that we lived that would make us laugh and bond,” Kabalan said of the electricity shortages and economic crises that have crippled both Gaza and Beirut. 

“He had this ability to make you fall in love with him, even though you never met him in person,” Kabalan said of her friend.

“I don’t know if you become capable or learn to do that because you live in Gaza. Because there’s a blockade, and because you can’t meet your friends outside of Gaza in person, so you have this capability of being vulnerable and sharing so much of yourself.”

An elderly Palestinian woman sifts through a pile of olives (Instagram: Majd Arandas)

In 2018, Arandas volunteered for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, where he photographed the work of ambulance crews as they treated the wounded in the Gaza Strip during the “Great March of Return” protest movement.

Israeli soldiers used live bullets on Palestinians protesting along the Gaza boundary, killing more than 200 peaceful demonstrators and wounding around 10,000. 

On 7 October, a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities near Gaza killed around 1,400 Israelis, the majority civilians, many of them children.

Since then, Israel has waged a relentless bombing campaign, killing more than 9,000 Palestinians, including over 3,600 children. This week it began a ground offensive.

Gaza once again became a scene of horror, with the world relying on local journalists because the international media are locked out of the coastal enclave.

Unfortunately, Arandas had been forced to sell his camera because of the crippling economic situation in Gaza, which was caused by the Israeli blockade.

However, with the onset of hostilities, he began using the camera on his phone to document the war.

“Gaza is as dark as a ghost town. There has been no electricity for days,” Arandas said in one message to Kabalan on 15 October, attaching a video showing Gaza plunged into darkness. The only light appeared from a skyline ablaze with Israeli air strikes.  

Arandas’s Instagram account is full of photos that capture everything from flowers on gravesides, women strolling on a beach in Gaza, to running peacocks (Instagram: Majd Arandas)

With the sound of warplanes and shelling in the background, Arandas often sent videos of his two nieces to Kabalan. 

“We do the impossible to distract the children so that they are not afraid of bombing,” he said in one WhatsApp message to her. “Play with them, watch YouTube, make them draw and discharge their energy with this stuff.”

Maen Hammad, a Palestinian photographer based in the occupied West Bank, described Arandas as the “kindest, most compassionate photographer in Gaza”. 

“He was a storyteller who liked showing and exploring the life that Palestinians had, by showing images of kids jumping and playing,” Hammad told Middle East Eye.

“He was an amazing uncle to two beautiful nieces, who to this point we don’t even know if they are alive. He was a human who deserved to grow old in his country, to be free in his country, to meet his colleagues, and to tell his story.”

MEE could not verify where Arandas was killed, or whether anyone else was slain or wounded alongside him. 

Two weeks before he was killed, Arandas was asked by Gulf Photo Plus, a photography centre in Dubai, to record himself speaking about his experiences as a photojournalist in Gaza for an event.

“I have documented Israeli bombs that have targeted civilian homes. Homes that are full of women, children, and the elderly,” Arandas said in the voice note. 

In one message, he described seeing the bodies of decapitated children killed by an Israeli air strike. “Oftentimes, I cannot bring myself to document these scenes because of how ugly they are. Emotionally, I am incapable of handling what my eyes see.”

The center’s director, Mohamed Somji, asked Arandas if there were any photos from Gaza that he wanted the centre to exhibit. 

“The photos were of destruction and the devastation in Gaza,” Somji said of Arandas’s initial submissions. “But then Majd wrote to me, saying: ‘Mohamed, I don’t want to share these photos. I want to share photos of resistance and life.’” 

Watching his fellow Gazans eating zaatar and cheese, charging their phones, and laughing in spite of the bombings all around them, Arandas chose instead to submit photos capturing the everyday life of Palestinians.

“So that the world can see the beauty of Gaza despite the hardships [its people] endure,” Arandas said in his voice note. 

“It’s a strange thing,” Arandas said in one of his last messages to Somji. “I saw children playing, men talking, people together. This is what happens despite everything we are going through.”

At least 36 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The majority of them were Palestinian.

In response, Somji and other fellow photographers based in the Middle East set up an informal support network online so that they could regularly check in on their Palestinian peers in Gaza and the West Bank. 

As Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip intensified amid global protests and increasing calls for a ceasefire from around the world, Arandas told Somji in one message that he felt “broken”.

“At this moment, I am alive, but I don’t know if I will survive or if my turn will come and I will be killed by the Israeli occupation army terrorists,” Arandas said in one of his final messages. 

“Throughout this ordeal, he was just so composed and humble,” Somji said of Arandas, whom he spoke with almost daily on WhatsApp before he was killed.

“He would always like all my stories on Instagram and then when that stopped, I knew that something was wrong,” Somji added.

“I take comfort in knowing that he is reunited with his grandmother.”

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Featured image: Majd Arandas’s death has been mourned across the Middle East by colleagues he was never able to meet in person (Source: MEE)

Israel’s 9/11: “The Greater Israel”, Maritime Natural Gas, and the Prospect of a Middle East Multi-Front War

By Michael Welch, Dimitri Lascaris, and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, November 05, 2023

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for all their proclaiming of upholding science, for their respect for progressive political values, still seem to be prepared to support an apparent “religious fanatic” spouting claims from the same book of the Old Testament that proclaimed that the sun stood still in the sky while the forces of the children of Israel pounded the enemy of the day.

History: Palestine, Dilemmas of Decolonization

By Stephen Sefton, November 06, 2023

At the moment it is impossible to know the political-military outcome of the ongoing fighting in Gaza, much less of the looming regional war in the making. However, many governments have defined their proposals for a possible resolution of the conflict. The majority advocate the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) Refuses to Stand with the US and Israel Against the Palestinians

By Steven Sahiounie, November 06, 2023

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia is between a rock and a hard place. The Kingdom remains dependent on the US for security, while the US is supporting and supplying the weapons for Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian civilians. Added to the dilemma, is that MBS was very close to signing the accord with Israel, which is now on hold.

The Gaza Genocide Continues. Philip Giraldi

By Philip Giraldi, November 06, 2023

Mainstream media and official government commentary on the violence in Gaza appears to have acquired a certain rhythm to make sure that everyone understands that it is the poor Israelis who are the real victims being assailed by a group called Hamas that is invariably labeled as “terrorists.”

The US Was Never About Freedom and Democracy

By Jim Miles, November 04, 2023

By its own determination the U.S. proclaims itself to be indispensable and exceptional, a mythology applied over the life times of its citizens keeping them ignorant and uninterested in the full global context of military conflicts and the exercise of military power in order to protect the power of corporations and the US$ to reign supreme over the world.

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”: Divide, Conquer and Rule the “New Middle East”

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, November 05, 2023

The name “Arab Spring” is a catch phrase concocted in distant offices in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels by individuals and groups who, other than having some superficial knowledge of the region, know very little about the Arabs. What is unfolding amongst the Arab peoples is naturally a mixed package. Insurgency is part of this package as is opportunism. Where there is revolution, there is always counter-revolution.

Targeting the United Nations and UN Officials: 23 Killed as Israel Bombs 4 UN Shelters in Gaza

By Middle East Monitor, November 06, 2023

At least 23 people were killed in the last 24 hours as Israeli airstrikes targeted four UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shelters in the Gaza Strip, the UN agency said on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

‘No Place for Joy’: Israel Bombs Gaza Wedding Hall, Kills 26 People

By Abdallah Aljamal, November 06, 2023

The place that hosted hundreds of celebrations, where joy resonated, and where smiles adorned every face, was transformed into rubble by Israeli shelling. It is now covered in blood and sorrow. 

Rasmussen Poll: A Stunning 42% of Americans Would Likely Join a Class Action Lawsuit Against COVID Vax Makers If It Were Permitted by Law

By Steve Kirsch, November 04, 2023

Rasmussen Reports has just released yet another devastating survey about the COVID vaccine. Their latest survey, released at 10:30am EST on November 2, confirms (yet again) that the COVID vaccine is a train wreck, the biggest healthcare disaster in our lifetime.

17 Questions to Challenge the Climate Change Crisis

By Paul A. Philips, November 04, 2023

Many have challenged this climate change crisis claim: It has been said that the human-led climate change crisis is a monumental lie. A deceptive Deep State tool. A PSYOP used to control the sleeping masses to get their compliance as they blindly walk into an engineered dystopia under the guise of saving the world.

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***

After its defeat in the First World War the territories of the Ottoman Empire in Syria (today Syria and Lebanon), Mesopotamia (today Iraq) and Palestine were divided in 1920 between France and Great Britain by means of the San Remo Conference, under the authority of the League of Nations. The British Mandate over Palestine incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917, under which the British government had undertaken, in a completely arbitrary manner, to establish a Jewish national state on the territory of Palestine. 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, on November 29th 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 authorizing the partition of Palestine and thus emerged the state of Israel. There was no democratic consultation process with the native Arab population of Palestine, which at that time numbered twice the Jewish population.

At the time of the vote, only 56 member countries of the UN participated, while the UN now has 193 member countries. Of those 56 countries, 33 voted in favor of the resolution, 13 countries, mainly Arab countries, voted against and 10 countries abstained. Precisely at the beginning of the era of decolonization in the majority world, the United Nations Organization, dominated by the imperialist powers, created a colonial state based on a supremacist ideology, Zionism, with a government determined to expel the Arab population to ensure a Jewish majority. Even before the end of the British Mandate on May 15, 1948, the Zionist forces had initiated an ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 people of the Arab population by applying tactics of terrorism and massacre.

ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 Photo: Public Domain

That was the context in which the neighboring Arab countries then declared war against Israel during which the Israeli forces expelled another part of the Palestinian population, more than half a million Arabs, and occupied their lands. The conquest and occupation of the Palestinian lands by the Zionists vindicated the prophetic words of Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of Haganah, the Zionist armed organization, who wrote in 1925,

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question now or in the future. If you want to colonize a land on which people already live, you need to provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf.”

In fact, the benefactors and protectors of Israel have been the Western countries who have ensured that the numerous UN resolutions and any other measures of international law in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people have not been implemented. All this history demonstrates the colonial roots of the founding of Israel and the systematic Western neocolonialism that maintains, protects and defends it, even in the face of the genocidal massacres in process in Gaza at the moment. The partition of Palestine occurred in the period of the end of the colonial era that saw the creation of independent nation-states, mostly based on colonial borders.

During the same period, the partition of many other countries was also imposed, Lebanon from Syria, Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, the partition of Korea and, until 1975, the partition of Vietnam. The legacy of 500 years of European colonialism and its gradual replacement by United States domination over the last 150 years has been decades of bloody conflicts and destructive wars. In the case of Palestine, the creation of Israel allowed the United States and its allies to have their “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the heart of a region strategic for their geopolitical interests, due to its location and its hydrocarbon resources.

At the moment it is impossible to know the political-military outcome of the ongoing fighting in Gaza, much less of the looming regional war in the making. However, many governments have defined their proposals for a possible resolution of the conflict. The majority advocate the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. That Security Council Resolution was adopted fifty-six years ago, promoting the creation of a Palestinian state on a par with the Israeli state.

As the prominent former United Nations official Alfredo de Zayas has commented

“Israel’s obligation under Security Council Resolution 242, dated November 22, 1967, is to withdraw from the occupied territories and allow the practical implementation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, [which is] inalienable and enshrined in articles 1 and 55, chapters XI and XII of the Charter of the United Nations, as well as in article 1 common to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)”.

Several observers have commented that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) reaffirmed in 2004 the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and condemned the countless violations of international law by Israel. Moreover, as the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasily Nebenzia has noted, Israel has no right to self-defense in the territories it has illegally occupied for decades. So the Palestinian resistance has full legitimacy to claim the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people in their occupied lands, including by armed resistance.

The proposal of the majority of the governments of the world to solve the protracted conflict between Israel and Palestine in accordance with international law is to create a Palestinian state. Despite this international majority consensus for the so-called ”two-state solution” there is an influential body of opinion in the world questioning its viability and advocating the creation of a single state. The reasoning of this position follows the argument of Muammar al Gaddafi who argued that the Oslo Accords of 1993 were a deception whose logical culmination would be the assimilation of the Palestinian population into a single state. The most optimistic one-state proposals raise the possibility of a unitary or federated state capable of accommodating the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians on the basis of equality and non-discrimination.

What much of the discussion of both possibilities at the international level tends to dismiss, omit or even deny is the insistence of the Palestinian people on the imperative of ensuring a decolonization process that corresponds to the profound historical injustice they have suffered. And it is instructive to compare the colonial situation and the neocolonial context of the struggle of the Palestinian people for their liberation with other revolutionary liberation struggles that achieved their goal. The examples of the anti-colonial struggles in Angola, Algeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe clarify the various dilemmas that accompany the struggle against colonial systems based on racist supremacism.

The genocide of the Palestinian people and the total annexation of their territory follows the historical practice of the colonial elites and their European governments. Simone Weil, distinguished French philosopher, once commented that the main innovation of Nazi Germany was to apply the practice of genocidal conquest by European colonialism to the European population itself. Certainly, this was the experience of the four national liberation struggles in Angola, Algeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe which went through different phases of resistance, open war and negotiation until achieving victory.

The war in Algeria ended with the Evian Accords of 1962, in Angola with the Alvor accords of 1975, in Mozambique with the Lusaka Accords of 1974 and in Zimbabwe with the Lancaster House Accords of 1979. All these agreements included measures to guarantee the full recognition of the national sovereignty and the right of self-determination of the liberated people, the transfer of power in a consensual, programmed way that would allow the peaceful departure in each case of hundreds of thousands of settlers. They also included measures for the due transfer of administrative functions, the orderly renewal of the national police and the armed forces and a balanced management of land and property redistribution. The agreements also included amnesties for the events that occurred before their signing, and guarantees of protection and non-discrimination against the settlers who decided to stay.

In all cases, the corresponding metropolitan governments accepted the right of their former colonies to independence. In France, President De Gaulle faced a violent right-wing terrorist rebellion against his decision to agree to Algeria’s independence in 1962. It was the overthrow in 1974 of the fascist government in Portugal by the Carnation Revolution that allowed the new Portuguese socialist government to agree on peace in Angola and Mozambique. And in the case of Zimbabwe it was the resolute support of the British government of the Labour Party that agreed to the decision to facilitate the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 despite the resistance of the rebel, racist settler regime.

For the moment, the case of Palestine is different, even more complex and challenging, because the Israeli government has the unconditional support of the US government which occupies the role of a metropolitan state sustaining the Zionist colonial regime in Israel. With the strategic defeat already suffered by the United States and its European subordinates in Ukraine, time favors the Palestinian cause. This may well explain the Israeli decision to intensify the pace of its genocidal massacres in the face of the Palestinian offensive of last October 7th.

A view from the area after Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, on October 31, 2023. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency

Whatever the resolution finally negotiated to guarantee some measure of justice to the Palestinian people, two-state or one-state, the most intractable issues are going to be of the same kind as in previous decolonization processes. Mainly these are the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination on their national territory and the recovery of their national territory from the Zionist occupation. The proposal of the Palestinian movement Hamas at the moment is for a ceasefire, the opening of borders, especially with Egypt, and an exchange of prisoners. The Palestinian leadership hopes to establish a political peace process culminating in an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and the right to self-determination.

It seems inevitable in the current historical context of the development of a multicentric world that the logic of decolonization in one way or another will prevail in the case of Palestine. It remains to be seen how profound dilemmas, for example, regarding the right of return of the millions of Palestinian families displaced for decades by the Zionist ethnic cleansing will be resolved. The Zionist settlers are going to have to accept giving up the lands they have usurped and those among them who cannot tolerate being in a state recognizing their Palestinian counterparts as equals are going to have to leave to wherever will take them, just as happened in Angola, Algeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The political and institutional changes that all parties will have to facilitate and assimilate will be enormous and profound. Among them is the colossal challenge of how it may be possible for Palestinian families to overcome the unimaginable psychosocial consequences of the pain and injustice they have suffered for more than a century. In the end, all the antecedents of decolonization show that it is inevitable that Palestine will be free, thanks, as in all struggles for national liberation, to the extraordinary strength and insurmountable resistance of its People.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia is between a rock and a hard place. The Kingdom remains dependent on the US for security, while the US is supporting and supplying the weapons for Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian civilians. Added to the dilemma, is that MBS was very close to signing the accord with Israel, which is now on hold.

On October 7, just hours after the Hamas attack on Israel, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a call for an “immediate halt to the escalation between the two sides.”

Saudi officials had warned a ground war could be a devastating blow to stability in the Middle East.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut was one of 10 senators who met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

“The Saudi leadership was hopeful that a ground operation could be avoided for reasons of stability as well as the loss of life,” Blumenthal told The New York Times.

Israel launched a horrific air attack on the civilian population of Gaza following a surprise attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7, putting Gazans under total siege and a blockade of water, food, fuel, medical supplies, and communications.

Over 8,000 Palestinian people have been killed in the conflict, including more than 3,000 children, and 1,405 Israelis. Hamas is holding about 200 hostages captured in Israel on October 7.

MBS had wanted to normalize relations with Israel, which is a key goal of President Joe Biden, and the second most important goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after taking office. Netanyahu named his prime goals were increasing illegal settlements in the West Bank, in contravention of international law, and signing Saudi Arabia on to the Abraham Accords, which was a plan initiated by President Donald Trump.

After the attack on Gaza began, MBS immediately halted its negotiations with the US and Israel over the Abraham Accords.

MBS kept US Secretary of State Antony Blinken waiting for hours for a meeting in Riyadh. Finally, on the next morning, October 15, MBS made time for Blinken. Before the delayed meeting, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement that read, in part, that

Riyadh “affirms its categorical rejection of the calls for the forcible displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza and reiterates its condemnation of the continued targeting of unarmed civilians.”

Blinken’s tour of the Middle East was to persuade the leaders to condemn Hamas’ attack and to manage their citizen’s response to the horrific loss of life in Gaza at the hands of Israel, which is fully supported by the US government and military.

The icy-cold reception Blinken got demonstrated that the US and Saudi Arabia are miles apart on the issue of Israel’s revenge attack on Gazan civilians. Biden has waved the checkered flag at Netanyahu, while MBS is mindful of international law deeming Israel’s acts as collective punishment.

In the meeting, MBS called for Israel to halt military operations “that claimed the lives of innocent people,” according to a report by the Business Insider. He also called for the conflict to be de-escalated, which means that the US aircraft carriers off the shore of Gaza are setting the stage for a regional war.

Saudi Arabia has long been among the US’ key regional allies, but in recent years MBS has sought to steer a more independent course for the kingdom, forming closer ties with China, which led to a historic peace deal with Iran.

On Oct. 18, Saudi Arabia convened an executive committee meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC, with 57 members, seeks to promote cooperation among predominantly Muslim countries in a variety of fields. With Iran in attendance, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan decried the international community’s inaction and double standards in response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

Faisal also stressed Saudi support for the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which had been presented by then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, and was an initiative of Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for Palestinian statehood.

On October 19, MBS met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who before visiting Riyadh met with Israeli leaders.

MBS “affirmed that the kingdom considers targeting civilians in Gaza a heinous crime and a brutal attack, stressing the necessity of working to protect them,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

MBS also “stressed the need to make all possible efforts to reduce the pace of escalation and ensure that the violence does not expand to avoid its dangerous repercussions on security and peace in the region and the world.”

On October 25, MBS stressed the necessity of stopping the military escalation between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip, affirming his rejection of any forced displacement of Palestinians.

His remarks came during a phone call he received from President Biden, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

“During the call, the military escalation currently taking place in Gaza and the efforts being made regarding it were discussed,” SPA said.

MBS stressed “the need to work immediately to discuss ways to stop military operations that have claimed the lives of innocent people and to reject targeting civilians in any way or targeting infrastructure and vital interests that affect their daily lives or forced displacement.”

He also stressed “the need for calm, stopping the escalation, and preventing the situation from deteriorating, affecting the security and stability of the region.”

MBS also called for lifting the siege on Gaza and adhering to international humanitarian law as well as allowing entry aid into the enclave.

Saudi Arabia is the most powerful country in the Middle East, and MBS recognizes that the issue of the occupation of Palestine is central to all Arab and Muslim people.

Biden needs assistance stabilizing the region now that there is war in Gaza, but the Saudis are unwilling to help this time. Although MBS is dependent on Washington for his country’s security, he will have to distance himself from any moves that could be seen as pro-US or pro-Israel. He will have to focus on his independence, which he has been cultivating.

MBS has a dream, and it is called Vision 2030, which is an ambitious road map to “new growth and investment opportunities, greater global engagement, and enhanced quality of life for our citizens.”

However, the plan depends on peace, stability, and networking with regional economies, which is one of the reasons MBS was willing to consider a deal with Israel. The Israeli attack on Gaza threatens the success of Vision 2030. This factor may see MBS playing a future significant role as a peacemaker if negotiations are opened to end the occupation of Palestine.

According to the UN, Israel is an apartheid state. According to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and UN human rights groups, Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity previous to the current Gaza war.

When US President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, the US Congress, Netanyahu, and the United Nations sit together to discuss the war in Gaza, they are collectively blind to the “elephant in the room”. That huge monster they refuse to look at is the brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and maintaining Gaza as the largest open-air concentration camp on earth.

American Patriot Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

Palestinians are speaking those same words but in Arabic.

This is the October 2023 Gaza War. If Israel is not forced to sit and negotiate for a lasting and just peace with Palestinians, then we will see the next war brewing now.

End the war, end the killings, end the occupation.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Duran

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***

At least 23 people were killed in the last 24 hours as Israeli airstrikes targeted four UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shelters in the Gaza Strip, the UN agency said on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

To date, 72 UNRWA colleagues have been killed in Gaza since the war began the Agency reported on the social media platform, X.

“According to the most recent UNRWA estimates, these shelters hosted nearly 20,000 combined,” the Agency added.

The Agency pointed out:

At least 23 people were killed as a result of the attacks on these four shelters, and nearly 50 UNRWA buildings and assets have been impacted since the beginning of the conflict

Nearly 10,600 people have been killed in the Gaza conflict since 7 October, including 9,061 Palestinians and more than 1,538 Israelis.

Besides the large number of casualties and massive displacements of people, basic supplies are running low for the 2.3 million residents in Gaza due to the Israeli siege.

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Featured image: A view of a United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 22, 2023 [Abed Zagout/Anadolu Agency]

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***

The place that hosted hundreds of celebrations, where joy resonated, and where smiles adorned every face, was transformed into rubble by Israeli shelling. It is now covered in blood and sorrow. 

“Israel has turned a place of joy into a site of sadness, misery, and tears.”

With these words, the young Anas Al-Hayawi described the Israeli massacre in the Tal Al-Qamar wedding hall in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the heart of the Gaza Strip.

“My uncle, Abu Iyad, hosted dozens of displaced citizens in the Nuseirat camp. He opened the door to the wedding hall he owns next to his house and tried to provide them with a place to sleep, rather than having them sleep on the streets. However, the occupation did not approve of this, and they committed a heinous crime that led to dozens of killed and injuries,” al-Hayawi stated,

Death Toll in Nuseirat Wedding Hall

After the Israeli occupation forces announced the evacuation of homes for residents of Gaza City and the northern governorate, directing them to the southern areas of the Gaza Strip, thousands of families headed to the central, Khan Yunis, and Rafah governorates located in the south of the Gaza Strip, seeking refuge in UNRWA schools. Thousands more sought refuge with relatives and on vacant lands. 

Gaza resident, Ahmed Abu Hamada, said in an interview with The Palestine Chronicle,

“Dozens of children, women, and civilians took refuge in a wedding hall in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip after UNRWA schools became overcrowded and unable to accommodate tens of thousands of displaced people.” 

“Haj Abu Iyad Al-Hiwi, the owner of the Moonlight Wedding Hall in the New Camp area in Nuseirat opened the doors of the wedding hall he owns to those seeking shelter,” Abu Hamada added.  

“On Monday afternoon, Israeli aircraft bombarded the Moonlight Wedding Hall and the surrounding houses with an incendiary belt, resulting in dozens of casualties, all of whom were children, women, and civilians. The owner of the hall and his son were also killed,” he continued,

In the same context, Gaza resident, Ahmed Farajullah explained,

“I was close to the Moonlight Wedding Hall in Nuseirat, and I was shocked by a violent bombardment with an incendiary belt on the hall and its surroundings. I rushed to the scene and was among the first to arrive at the site of the bombing. The atmosphere was terrifying, and the remains of children and women were scattered everywhere.”

“The large number of Palestinians killed and wounded, and the extensive bombardment forced us to provide first aid and evacuate the bodies and casualties using civilian vehicles. We would place 3 or 4 bodies and injured individuals in a single car and transport them to the nearby Return Hospital. This hospital would deal with simple cases and transport the bodies and the critical and moderate cases to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital,” Farajullah said,

Farajullah continued,

“I cannot forget these harsh scenes I witnessed of children and women. I did not expect Israel to continue its crimes and turn the bodies of our children and women into scattered remains, which we had to retrieve from the trees and from under the rubble. These were awful scenes that will not be forgotten.”

There’s No Place for Joy in Gaza

Gaza resident, Ahmed Tamraz said,

“The Israeli occupation killed all the members of my uncle Samir’s family and my uncle Musbah’s family in the shelling that targeted the Moonlight Wedding Hall and the neighboring houses in Nuseirat camp.”

Tamraz explained that everyone in his uncle’s house, including children, women, and the men who lived in the house, worked in trade, and they were all civilians.

The brother of Samir and Musbah Tamraz pointed out that Israel targeted the house of his two brothers who work for UNRWA, and 13 of his brother’s family members are still under the rubble.

“These are not rockets; this is a nuclear weapon that Gaza is being bombed with. There is a disabled girl named Hadeel Tamraz who is still under the rubble. We identified the wife of our neighbor by her engagement ring. It had her name engraved on it,” Tamraz said.

“A 3-month-old baby was killed by Israeli aircraft, and women and children, everyone in the vicinity of the Moonlight Wedding Hall, are civilians. More than 20 civilians were killed in the bombing,” he added emotionally.

Tamraz appealed for “urgent international intervention to stop Israel’s crimes and halt the brutal killing that Israel has been committing against the people of Gaza for 25 days.”

Gaza resident Fatma Jaber commented on the massacre at the Moonlight Wedding Hall in Nuseirat, saying,

“On the twenty-fourth day since the aggression on Gaza, death descended on the Moonlight Wedding Hall for celebrations in the Palestinian Nuseirat Camp in Gaza, and everyone inside it. Everyone inside was turned to ashes.” 

Basal Abu Awad, a child and resident of Gaza said,

“I swear to Almighty God, they were my family, my friends, my siblings, my life, and the dearest people to my heart. I used to live among them as if I were one of them, among their children, and I would address Abu Mohammad as my father.”

He continued, lamenting,

“I can’t grasp what is happening and what has happened. They treated me with the utmost kindness, and they were tender-hearted, kind, and precious. They are all martyrs, may God have mercy on them all and make their abode in Paradise. My uncle Abu Wasim, my uncle Samir Tamraz, and my dear friend and loved one, Husam Tamraz, and all the members of their family.”

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Featured image: Gaza turned a wedding hall in the Nuseirat refugee camp into rubble. (Image: The Palestine Chronicle)

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***

Global Research Editor’s Note

Outstanding and timely analysis: this article by Charlotte Greenfield documents the Taliban government’s current project to eradicate opium and implement crop substitution.

What is significant is that in the year 2000-2001, a similar project was implemented. The Taliban government –in collaboration with the United Nations– had imposed a successful ban on poppy cultivation. Opium production declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. 

Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes.

Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.

In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing  to 3400 tons in 2002 under the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.

In fact the surge in opium cultivation production coincided with the onslaught of the US-led military operation and the downfall of the Taliban regime.  From October through December 2001, farmers started to replant poppy on an extensive basis. 

Michel Chossudovsky, October 6, 2023

Update 

In recent developments, as outlined by Charlotte Greenfield (November 5, 2023) following the release of a U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report: 

“Opium poppy production in Afghanistan, previously the world’s top supplier, has plummeted since the Taliban administration banned the cultivation of narcotics last year, a United Nations report said on Sunday (November 5, 2023).

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For the entirety of the 20 year US occupation, Afghanistan was the primary source for 90% of the world’s heroin. In just over a year the Taliban has nearly eradicated Afghani heroin production, raising serious questions about the US role in facilitating the global drug trade.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly.

The Taliban Does What the US Did Not

It has already been called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history.” Armed with little more than sticks, teams of counter-narcotics brigades travel the country, cutting down Afghanistan’s poppy fields.

In April of last year [2022], the ruling Taliban government announced the prohibition of poppy farming, citing both their strong religious beliefs and the extremely harmful social costs that heroin and other opioids – derived from the sap of the poppy plant – have wrought across Afghanistan.

It has not been all bluster. New research from geospatial data company Alcis suggests that poppy production has already plummeted by around 80% since last year.

Indeed, satellite imagery shows that in Helmand Province, the area that produces more than half of the crop, poppy production has dropped by a staggering 99%. Just 12 months ago, poppy fields were dominant. But Alcis estimates that there are now less than 1,000 hectares of poppy growing in Helmand.

Instead, farmers are planting wheat, helping stave off the worst of a famine that U.S. sanctions helped create. Afghanistan is still in a perilous state, however, with the United Nations warning that six million people are close to starvation.

Data from Alcis shows that a majority of Afghan farmers switched from growing poppy to wheat in a single year

The Taliban waited until 2022 to impose the long-awaited ban in order not to interfere with the growing season. Doing so would have provoked unrest among the rural population by eradicating a crop that farmers had spent months growing. Between 2020 and late 2022, the price of opium in local markets rose by as much as 700%. Yet given the Taliban’s insistence – and their efficiency at eradication – few have been tempted to plant poppies.

The poppy ban has been matched by a similar campaign against the methamphetamine industry, with the government targeting the ephedra crop and shutting down ephedrine labs across the country.

A Looming Catastrophe

Afghanistan produces almost 90% of the world’s heroin. Therefore, the eradication of the opium crop will have profound worldwide consequences on drug use. Experts MintPress spoke to warned that a dearth of heroin would likely produce a huge spike in the use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a drug the Center for Disease Control estimates is 50 times stronger and is responsible for taking the lives of more than 100,000 Americans each year.

“It is important to consider past periods of heroin shortages and the impact these have had on the European drug market,” the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) told MintPress, adding:

Experience in the E.U. with previous periods of reduced heroin supply suggests that this can lead to changes in patterns of drug supply and use. This can include further an increase in rates of polysubstance use among heroin users. Additional risks to existing users may be posed by the substitution of heroin with more harmful synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and its derivatives and new potent benzimidazole opioids.”

In other words, if heroin is no longer available, users will switch to far deadlier synthetic forms of the drug. A 2022 United Nations report came to a similar conclusion, noting that the crackdown on heroin production could lead to the “replacement of heroin or opium by other substances…such as fentanyl and its analogs.”

“It does have that danger in the macro sense, that if you take all that heroin off the market, people are going to go to other products,” Matthew Hoh told MintPress.

Hoh is a former State Department official who resigned from his post in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in 2009. “But the response should not be reinvade Afghanistan, reoccupy it and put the drug lords back in power, which is basically what people are implying when they bemoan the consequence of the Taliban stopping the drug trade,” Hoh added;

“Most of the people who are speaking this way and worrying out loud about it are people who want to find a reason for the U.S. to go and affect regime change in Afghanistan.”

There certainly has been plenty of hand-wringing from American sources. “Foreign Policy,” wrote about “how the Taliban’s ‘war on drugs’ could backfire;” U.S. government-funded “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” claimed that the Taliban were turning a “blind eye to opium production,” despite the official ban. And the United States Institute of Peace, an institution created by Congress that is “dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible,” stated emphatically that “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world”.

This looming catastrophe, however, will not hit immediately. Significant stockpiles of drugs along trafficking routes still exist. As the EMCDDA told MintPress:

It can take over 12 months before the opium harvest appears on the European retail drug market as heroin – and so it is too early to predict, at this stage, the future impact of the cultivation ban on heroin availability in Europe. Nonetheless, if the ban on opium cultivation is enforced and sustained, it could have a significant impact on heroin availability in Europe during 2024 or 2025.”

Yet there is little indication that the Taliban are anything but serious about eradicating the crop, indicating that a heroin crunch is indeed coming.

A similar attempt by the Taliban to eliminate the drug occurred in 2000, the last full year that they were in power. It was extraordinarily successful, with opium reduction dropping from 4,600 tons to just 185 tons. At that time, it took around 18 months for the consequences to be felt in the West. In the United Kingdom, average heroin purity fell from 55% to 34%, while in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, heroin was largely replaced by fentanyl. However, as soon as the United States invaded in 2001, poppy cultivation shot back up to previous levels and the supply chain recommenced.

US Complicity in the Afghan Drug Trade

The Taliban’s successful campaign to eradicate drug production has cast a shadow of doubt over the effectiveness of American-led endeavors to achieve the same outcome. “It prompts the question, ‘What were we actually accomplishing there?!’” remarked Hoh, underscoring:

This undermines one of the fundamental premises behind the wars: the alleged association between the Taliban and the drug trade – a concept of a narco-terror nexus. However, this notion was fallacious. The reality was that Afghanistan was responsible for a staggering 80-90% of the world’s illicit opiate supply. The primary controllers of this trade were the Afghan government and military, entities we upheld in power.”

Hoh clarified that he never personally witnessed or received any reports of direct involvement by U.S. troops or officials in narcotics trafficking. Instead, he contended that there existed a “conscious and deliberate turning away from the unfolding events” during his tenure in Afghanistan.’

Suzanna Reiss, an academic at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire,” demonstrated an even more cynical perspective on American counter-narcotics endeavors as she conveyed to MintPress:

The U.S. has never really been focused on reducing the drug trade in Afghanistan (or elsewhere for that matter). All the lofty rhetoric aside, the U.S. has been happy to work with drug traffickers if the move would advance certain geopolitical interests (and indeed, did so, or at least turned a knowingly blind eye, when groups like the Northern Alliance relied on drugs to fund their political movement against the regime.).”

Afghanistan’s transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington’s actions.

Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military and terminating its presence in Afghanistan.

The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan’s opium production had soared twentyfold. Professor Alfred McCoy, acclaimed author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” shared with MintPress that approximately 75% of the planet’s illegal opium output was now sourced from Afghanistan, a substantial portion of the proceeds funneling to U.S.-backed rebel factions.

Unraveling the Opioid Crisis: An Impending Disaster

The opioid crisis is the worst addiction epidemic in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the American fentanyl problem as “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.” Nearly 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, fentanyl being by far the leading cause. Between 2015 and 2021, the National Institute of Health recorded a nearly 7.5-fold increase in overdose deaths. Medical journal The Lancet predicts that 1.2 million Americans will die from opioid overdoses by 2029.

U.S. officials blame Mexican cartels for smuggling the synthetic painkiller across the southern border and China for producing the chemicals necessary to make the drug.

White Americans are more likely to misuse these types of drugs than other races. Adults aged 35-44 experience the highest rates of deaths, although deaths among younger people are surging. Rural America has been particularly hard hit; a 2017 study by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid epidemic. West Virginia and Tennessee are the states most badly hit.

For writer Chris Hedges, who hails from rural Maine, the fentanyl crisis is an example of one of the many “diseases of despair” the U.S. is suffering from. It has, according to Hedges,

“risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of acute desperation and morbidity.”

In essence, when the American dream fizzled out, it was replaced by an American nightmare. That white men are the prime victims of these diseases of despair is an ironic outgrowth of our unfair system. As Hedges explained:

White men, more easily seduced by the myth of the American dream than people of color who understand how the capitalist system is rigged against them, often suffer feelings of failure and betrayal, in many cases when they are in their middle years. They expect, because of notions of white supremacy and capitalist platitudes about hard work leading to advancement, to be ascendant. They believe in success.”

In this sense, it is important to place the opioid addiction crisis in a wider context of American decline, where opportunities for success and happiness are fewer and farther between than ever, rather than attribute it to individuals. As the “Lancet” wrote: “Punitive and stigmatizing approaches must end. Addiction is not a moral failing. It is a medical condition and poses a constant threat to health.”

A “Uniquely American Problem”

Nearly 10 million Americans misuse prescription opioids every year and at a rate far higher than comparable developed countries. Deaths due to opioid overdose in the United States are ten times more common per capita than in Germany and more than 20 times as frequent in Italy, for instance.

Much of this is down to the United States’ for-profit healthcare system. American private insurance companies are far more likely to favor prescribing drugs and pills than more expensive therapies that get to the root cause of the issue driving the addiction in the first place. As such, the opioid crisis is commonly referred to as a “uniquely American problem.”

Part of the reason U.S. doctors are much more prone to doling out exceptionally strong pain medication relief than their European counterparts is that they were subject to a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign from Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the powerful opioid OxyContin. Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996, and its agents swarmed doctors’ offices to push the new “wonder drug.”

Yet, in lawsuit after lawsuit, the company has been accused of lying about both the effectiveness and the addictiveness of OxyContin, a drug that has hooked countless Americans onto opioids. And when legal but incredibly addictive prescription opioids dry up, Americans turned to illicit substances like heroin and fentanyl as substitutes.

Purdue Pharma owners, the Sackler family, have regularly been described as “the most evil family in America”, with many laying the blame for the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths squarely at their door. In 2019, under the weight of thousands of lawsuits against it, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. A year later, it plead guilty to criminal charges over its mismarketing of OxyContin.

Nevertheless, the Sacklers made out like bandits from their actions. Even after being forced last year to pay nearly $6 billion in cash to victims of the opioid crisis, they remain one of the world’s richest families and have refused to apologize for their role in constructing an empire of pain that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Instead, the family has attempted to launder their image through philanthropy, sponsoring many of the most prestigious arts and cultural institutions in the world. These include the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Yale University, and the British Museum and Royal Academy in London.

One group who are disproportionately affected by opioids like OxyContin, heroin and fentanyl are veterans. According to the National Institutes of Health, veterans are twice as likely to die from overdose than the general population. One reason for this is bureaucracy. “The Veterans Administration did a really poor job in the past decades with their pain management, particularly their reliance on opioids,” Hoh, a former marine, told MintPress, noting that the V.A. prescribed dangerous opioids at a higher rate than other healthcare agencies.

Ex-soldiers often have to cope with chronic pain and brain injuries. Hoh noted that around a quarter-million veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have traumatic brain injuries. But added to that are the deep moral injuries many suffered – injuries that typically cannot be seen. As Hoh noted:

Veterans are turning to [opioids like fentanyl] to deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual consequences of the war, using them to quell the distress, try to find some relief, escape from the depression, and deal with the demons that come home with veterans who took part in those wars.”

Thus, if the Taliban’s opium eradication program continues, it could spark a fentanyl crisis that might kill more Americans than the 20-year occupation ever did.

Broken Society

If diseases of despair are common throughout the United States, they are rampant in Afghanistan itself. A global report released in March revealed that Afghans are by far the most miserable people on Earth. Afghans evaluated their lives at 1.8 out of 10 – dead last and far behind the top of the pile Finland (7.8 out of 10).

Opium addiction in Afghanistan is out of control, with around 9% of the adult population (and a significant number of children) addicted. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adult drug users jumped from 900,000 to 2.4 million, according to the United Nations, which estimates that almost one in three households is directly affected by addiction. As opium is frequently injected, blood-transmitted conditions like HIV are common as well.

The opioid problem has also spilled into neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. A 2013 United Nations report estimated that almost 2.5 million Pakistanis were abusing opioids, including 11% of people in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 700 people die each day from overdoses.

Empire of Drugs

Given their history, It is perhaps understandable that Asian nations have generally taken far more authoritarian measures to counter drug addiction issues. For centuries, using the illegal drug trade to advance imperial objectives has been a common Western tactic. In the 1940s and 1950s, the French utilized opium crops in the “Golden Triangle” region of Southeast Asia in order to counter the growing Vietnamese independence movement.

A century previously, the British used opium to crush and conquer much of China. Britain’s insatiable thirst for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, seeing as China would only accept gold or silver in exchange. The British, therefore, used the power of its navy to force China to cede Hong Kong to it. From there, it flooded mainland China with opium grown in South Asia (including Afghanistan).

The effect of the Opium War was astonishing. By 1880, the British were inundating China with more than 6,500 tons of opium per year – the equivalent of many billions of doses. Chinese society crumbled, unable to deal with the empire-wide social and economic dislocation that millions of opium addicts brought. Today, the Chinese continue to refer to the period as the “century of humiliation”.

Meanwhile, in South Asia, the British forced farmers to plant poppy fields instead of edible crops, causing waves of giant famines, the likes of which had never been seen before or since.

And during the 1980s in Central America, the United States sold weapons to Iran in order to fund far-right Contra death squads. The Contras were deeply implicated in the cocaine trade, fuelling their dirty war through crack cocaine sales in the U.S. – a practice that, according to journalist Gary Webb, the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated.

Imperialism and illicit drugs, therefore, commonly go together. However, with the Taliban opium eradication effort in full effect, coupled with the uniquely American phenomenon of opioid addiction, it is possible that the United States will suffer significant blowback in the coming years.

The deadly fentanyl epidemic will likely only get worse, needlessly taking hundreds of thousands more American lives. Thus, even as Afghanistan attempts to rid itself of its deadly drug addiction problem, its actions could precipitate an epidemic that promises to kill more Americans than any of Washington’s imperial endeavors to date.

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“Yes, this could end up being a multi-front war. Now if this becomes a multi-front war, it is a regional war that will escalate to a global war. No question about it! The Chinese and the Russians back the Iranians.” – Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya (From this week’s interview.)

“Israel needs the United States in this fight, and the way to get the United States into this fight is to provoke a large scale attack from Iran or an Iranian proxy. That’s I think the game that’s being played right now. So, where I see this going Michael, is we are heading to a major, major war in the Middle East.” – Dimitri Lascaris (From this week’s interview.)

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“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.”

“go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” [1]

These are the statements made by the Prime Minister of the country ranked 15th in the world in total military expenditures – and a major ally of the United States. And Canada.

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for all their proclaiming of upholding science, for their respect for progressive political values, still seem to be prepared to support an apparent “religious fanatic” spouting claims from the same book of the Old Testament that proclaimed that the sun stood still in the sky while the forces of the children of Israel pounded the enemy of the day.

“Then Joshua spoke to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still [dom] upon Gibeon; and you, Moon, in the valley of Ayalon.’” (Joshua 10:12)

The dead in Gaza have now vastly outnumbered those who died in Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces have slowly begun a ground invasion of Northern Gaza.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has positioned aircraft carriers. guided missile ships, Bataan ARG ships, aerial defense and Tomahawk cruise missiles, THAAD and Patriot missiles, and 2,500 marines in the Middle East in addition to two F-16 an A10 Squadron and 20 refuelling tankers in the Persian Gulf. [2]

These developments are disturbing. Just as Russian forces parked their troops at the border with Ukraine for months before eventually charging in on the 24th of February of last year, one can only wonder what new development Uncle Sam is waiting for before the second shoe drops.

It’s been said that war is good for business, as was the case with World War I and World War II. And right now, one can see where certain elite figures might welcome and even agitate for another major financial windfall.

However, the citizens of countries around the world, including the U.S. are protesting Israel’s action in sizes growing every weekend. November 4 is expected to be the largest Palestine solidarity protest in history. [3]

The Great Plan for Gaza, supposedly to prevent any more terror attacks from Hamas, may escalate into other areas supporting Palestinians, from Lebanon, to Syria and Iran and ultimately to the United States, Russia and China. Is the epic World War III finally on the collective plate of humanity? One of many questions to be probed on this week’s Global Research News Hour.

Our first guest, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, returns to the Global Research News Hour to share one of his own analyses of the Israel-Gaza conflict, explains how the October 7 attack by Hamas was an early “Christmas present” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, talks about the disinformation surrounding the crimes of Hamas, focuses on Natural Gas as a prize for Netanyahu’s biblical crusade, and mentions how Iranian involvement could spark a horrific cataclysm.

Our second guest, Dimitri Lascaris, took a trip to Lebanon since the Israel-Gaza war was underway. He brings an assessment of how forces there could be shaping into a second front against Israel, how he sees the war escalating to a broader front, and how the people of the West wanting to thwart the plans of Israel should take to the streets and “protest like Hell.”

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He has also contributed to several other books ranging from cultural critique to international relations. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He published an article on November 26, 2022: Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”: Divide, Conquer and Rule the “New Middle East”

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, a journalist and an activist. From 2004 to 2016 he was a member of Canada’s leading class action law firm Siskinds LLP. He now works pro-bono legal cases. In 2020, he ran for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada and placed second with  45.5% of the membership. 

(Global Research News Hour Episode 407)

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Transcript of Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, October 31, 2023.

Part One

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: One thing I’d like to start off with is, you brought up September 11^th, or 9/11 as it is colloquially called. People have paralleled this, called this Israel’s 9/11. Well, you should – the audience should remember that the president of the United States, George W. Bush Jr., was very unpopular before 9/11. There was a lot of problems in the United States, and all that disappeared. His popularity went up and it was – it allowed for this new militarized foreign policy to come into play. Now, the same thing is happening with Israel, although Israel’s foreign policy has always been militaristic. And I think it’s even a misnomer to call it a foreign policy, because it’s dealing – we’re dealing with occupation here.

Second point I’d like to bring is: pardon me, but I will use some religious expressions. Christmas came early for Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu, he was under investigation by the Israeli judicial system. There is so much evidence to prove that Mr. Netanyahu was going to be found guilty.

Definitely, the courts were going to throw the book at him. His solution to this was to politicize the judicial system of Israel, the state of Israel.

So, what he was doing is basically he wanted to have control over the judicial system by changing the law and, basically, the constitutional structure of Israel. Re-wiring it, whereas the court system, which has always been independent, the judicial branch has been independent from the executive and legislative branches in Israel, the Prime Minister’s office and the Knesset. He wanted to basically subordinate it. This basically resulted in a civil war in Israel.

What do I mean by a “civil war”? I mean, that the country was divided heavily. There were protests, the rule of law was not being followed. Benjamin Netanyahu started even re-channelling security and military and police assets to Tel Aviv and other major centres against protesters, you know. Because the protesters were not letting up, they were getting stronger. He was trying to outlaw them. So, this was the dynamics in Israel, and even the President of Israel, on the records, said he was afraid there would be a civil war.

So, what this – what happened in Israel with the October 7^th, actually froze this civil war. It put it on ice. And it gave Mr. Netanyahu, I think, he thought, a gift. But in the end, he’s going to realize that this is not a gift. It’s actually going to hurt him in the end. What he has done, he has made many strategic blunders. He has blamed all the Israeli securities for what’s happened.

The second point in regards to this constellation of what I’m talking about that I’d like to make audiences think about: what happened with the Egyptians – I don’t want to segue – is they sent intelligence to Netanyahu saying that there – Palestinians are in Gaza, Hamas, and other Palestinian resistance fighters, they’re going to do something. So, a message was sent.

And even the United States government, the US Congress, Senate Foreign Affairs committee has testified that this is correct. The Israeli government knew days beforehand that something was going to happen.

Now, someone can say they were distracted, someone can say they underestimated it, and someone can say they looked the other way. It’s possible, all these are possibilities. So, this was very convenient for Netanyahu. That’s what I’d like to put forward.

Of course, there are people who are conspiratorial-minded and they think that maybe Hamas was manipulated into doing this. Maybe the Palestinians were manipulated into doing this. These are all possibilities that can’t be ruled out. But I want to talk on sureties, on facts that we know. We know that there were problems in Israel with Netanyahu. We knew that he was in legal trouble. We knew his popularity was diving. And we also know that the Israeli economy is not as robust as it was before. The handouts coming from the West, the United States, are still coming, but there’s economic problems in the West and that is also affecting Israel. And the Israelis also have their eyes on the Gaza Strip’s territorial waters where there are massive natural gas reserves.

So, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, where there was conflict between the Turks, the Greeks, Cypriots, and even Israelis over natural gas. Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip all have large amounts of natural gas, and the Israelis want this. It’s specifically Northern Gaza, just to let you know.

If you look on a map, you can find the maps. Anybody who wants to in this age of technology can find maps showing the gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean. You’ll see Northern Gaza, which the Israelis want evacuated, has a lot of natural gas.

So, did Hamas give them moral grounds to do this? Absolutely not, I disagree. First of all, I want to point out that Hamas is being typecast in the wrong way. In many ways, the situation is misrepresented. First of all, Hamas is a resistance group that is not solely a militia. It is a political party as well. It has a militia branch. The militia branch, the militants, the resistance fighters, or as the Israelis call them, and the Canadian government, terrorists. They were the ones who launched this as a joint Palestinian operation. It was not just Hamas. It was different Palestinian resistance groups. They released a letter about it when they did it. And they did not expect it to be so easy.

Why? I cannot say why it was so easy. Maybe it’s because the resources weren’t there. Maybe it’s because Israel is not as strong as people think. Maybe that they planned this so well. But the Israeli defences fell immediately. So much so, that —

Global Research: Do you think —

MDN: — civilians from Gaza were —

GR: But, sorry to interrupt. Basically, what you’re saying is: it doesn’t – I mean, they might have had foreknowledge, or they may not. But either way, I guess Netanyahu was kind of, you know, rubbing his hands together saying, ‘Okay, this is our opportunity.’

MDN: Exactly, —

GR: I mean, that —

MDN: — you hit the nail right on the head. So, this was opportunistic. So, this is the parallel with September 11^th: the United States used this as an excuse to invade Afghanistan. Geostrategically, very important placement between Pakistan, India, Iran, China, and the former Soviet Union. It used this to invade Iraq to steal Iraq’s oil. It used this as an excuse to go into other countries in the region that we call the Middle East. Longest serving prime minister of Israel.

Yeah, basically Christmas came early for him. And he used this opportunity to justify what is undoubtedly a genocidal attack on a predominantly civilian – like, almost all of these people are civilians. We cannot forget that the Gaza Strip is the most densely populated place on the Earth. That the Gaza Strip is – the distance in the Gaza Strip is less than the distance of a marathon. People who run the Boston Marathon run a longer distance than the entire length of the Gaza Strip, all right? So, you can run the Boston Marathon and that’s a longer distance of land than the Gaza Strip, that’s just to put it into comparison. And the majority of people there are children.

GR: 2.3 million people in that space.

MDN: 2.3 million prisoners, essentially. It has been called by Jimmy Carter, former US president, a man who supported Israel, he has – he basically said it was an open-air prison. Many Israelis themselves say that. The United Nations says that. How many people and how many qualified people have to say this for those people in the rest of the world who disagree and support Israel to see that this is an open-air prison and it’s unacceptable to do that.

And this is not a defensive war, this is not a war. First of all, the language, as a sociologist – a sociologist who studies power, who has throughout his life studied power dynamics and how language is used to exercise power relationships and to show them and to instruct people, I can tell you that it’s not a war. And legally, it’s not a war, it’s an occupation. And there’s a resistance to an occupation. Nobody would say anything about the Chinese in Nanking who resisted the Japanese attacks on Nanking. Nobody would say anything about the French Resistance. Now, the French Resistance did some really bad things to Nazis, or German soldiers, all right? People do bad things in war. And I’m not here to justify them. I, actually, morally think that one civilian getting killed is unjustifiable.

So, that said, Hamas has been smeared. How do I believe Hamas has been smeared? I can tell you from the first days they said they beheaded people. There was absolutely no evidence, and this type of nonsense, or propaganda, has been used many times.

Then, they talked about rape. I highly doubt that there was rape. It’s possible, but that would not be the trend. I mean, there was no – I don’t believe that there was massive rape and people were intentionally raping. I believe that there was an attack. And I believe that the light of the event will become clearer over time of exactly what happened. There still is this fog of war over what happened.

So, when I heard about children being beheaded and 40 children being beheaded, I knew immediately that’s not true. The reason I knew it’s not true, one of the reasons I knew it’s not true is because there is a history of Israel and the United States using these type of statements and then retracting them or forgetting about them, and just using it to rile people up, to work up people’s emotions.

So, they said 40 kids and now, everybody, all these politicians started talking about ‘Beheaded kids, beheaded kids.’ A gentleman by the name of Ben Shapiro started saying ‘40 kids, 40 kids,’ and then when he was asked to provide evidence, he brought a picture that later, experts said used AI. And it was just one kid and nobody third party, nobody in a position of authority even authenticated it.

The Israeli president started presenting Al Qaeda booklets – I don’t know if you’re aware – he did a press conference and he said this Al Qaeda booklet was found amongst Hamas fighters. He expects us to believe Hamas fighters within an hour were planning on building chemical weapons, and they’re using a manual in English? The front of the manual says Al Qaeda in English. That was clearly meant for a foreign audience. No Hamas fighter would have a paper manual that says Al Qaeda. It would use the Arabic language with squiggly writing. The script wouldn’t be Latin and the language wouldn’t be English. 

GR:  I’m reminded of the 1991 Persian Gulf War where they took the nurses talking about incubator baby being thrown on the floor by Iraqi —

MDN: Exactly.

GR:— soldiers. (inaudible)

MDN: Exactly. A PR company. She was trained by (Hill and Knowlton), a PR company, who was – she was pretending to be a nurse. But she was really the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter. She gave a false testimony to the US Congress, George H. Bush (SIC) used it to start war. In fact, Michael, that is exactly what I thought of when I heard “beheaded children.” I thought of that. I don’t think they went around beheading children.

These are people under occupation and I don’t think that they want to necessarily spread the same misery that they’ve been facing through an occupation that I actually, in my head, I recall biblical stories of the pharaoh, what he did to the children of Israel. And I parallel this to that. Like, you know, all those things that are described in the Bible that were done to the children of Israel, the Palestinians today are facing that from a modern Netanyahu or a pharaonic Egypt embodied in this state of Israel. The other propaganda —

GR: How is —

MDN: — was the rapes. There’s no evidence. They never provided any – I don’t believe anything unless they provide evidence. And they have not provided —

GR: (inaudible, 14:17) —

MDN: — any evidence.

GR: Going, like the Yinon Plan going way, way back, you know, in which they’re wanting to expand, you know. And that’s something that’s been happening, you know, going into West Bank and Gaza. But they’re aiming to go also to expand, at least according to articles, into Syria and into – also into parts of North Africa. I’m wondering —

MDN: Well, they have —

GR: — like, the —

MDN: — expanded, Michael. They’re already annexed Golan Heights in Syria. They already occupy the Shebaa Farms still in Lebanon. They had a plan to annex a lot of Lebanon. It didn’t work, because the Lebanese resistance was so strong with the Iranian support.

The view of the Israelis is not necessarily to physically occupy land, as you can see in Gaza. Gaza, and officially and under technical and legal terms and in practice, is occupied. But no Israeli army has been on Gazan territory. They control the airwaves, they control the borders. What is imported was exported. The finances. They control the skies, they control the seas. So, that’s how they occupy Gaza, still. There’s still legally the occupational power of who’s responsible for the civilians. Israeli is still, under International Law, responsible for the civilians. A responsibility that it has intentionally neglected.

But in regards to expanding Israeli influence, they don’t necessarily see this as physical, territorial gains. They see this as – it does include that, but they see this as economic influence. Which is why there is this normalization, the Abraham Accords. They see themselves as being the economic, I would say, gendarme of the United States.

Now, I want to also point out that the Yinon Plan is not necessarily just about Israel. It’s about Israel serving a great power’s interest in the regions. So, Israel would be the local bully, or the local policeman. I don’t want to use the word “police” because they enforce the law. So, maybe local bandit of a great power like the United States.

I have to also point this out since we’re talking about the subject: the Jewish people themselves are victims of the state of Israel. And what do I mean by this? The state of Israel thrives on anti-Semitism. It thrives on this. And in the sense that when people dislike or there’s bad things happening to them, some might turn to Israel. Some might think the only place in the world we got to go is Israel. So, it thrives on this and it gives it a raison d’etre. It uses this to justify its existence and this colonialism.

When in reality, specifically in that region of the world, anti-Semitism in terms of negative views towards Jews was not really a common thing. Most Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, as well as Jewish Arabs, and other people, ethnic people of those three faiths, got along. Jews, Muslims, Christians predominantly lived together in peace. When they say they haven’t lived together, that’s ahistorical. It’s not historically correct.

So, Israel thrives on these things and it wants the region, that region of the world, to be redrawn in a Zionist image. What do I mean by Zionist image? It wants states that are homogeneous and solely made for specific ethno-sectarian religious groups. So, a Kurdish state or a Shiite Arab state or a Sunni Muslim Arab state. It wants that. And that’s not how the world really is. People live together of different faiths and creeds – I mean, different creeds and colours. And that’s how that region really is. It’s always been a mixed region, you can look at Lebanon: Orthodox Christians, various Catholic Christians, even Protestants living together with different types of Shiite Muslims such as Alawites and Jaafaris and Sunni Muslims, as well as Druze.

Palestine was just like this before the Israelis came. Different Christians, Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, both Shiite and Sunni, the North had Shiite, as well as Druze and Jews. Palestinian Jews, until this day, there are even Palestinian Jews still in the West Bank, they’re called Samaritans. They call them Samartians. This area was a place of coexistence, and the state of Israel, the experiment of Israel, tried to erase this and create a model of a homogeneous state, although Israel is not a homogeneous state in many ways. There are many cleavages there between different types of Jews in terms of where they originate from and in terms of different sects of Judaism. As well as different ethnicities. Like, for example, there are Israeli citizens who are Palestinian, they call them Israeli Arabs. Some of them are Christian and many of them are Muslim. Twenty percent, roughly, they even have seats in the Knesset.

The Yinon Plan though, however, going back to it – sorry, I might have sidetracked a little. It wants to redraw the region in this model of Zionism in terms of just homogeneous states. And to do this would mean war and partition. Just think of what happened in India and Pakistan and the misery that came with it and the tensions between a fraternal people. Indians and Pakistanis are more or less the same people. But until —

GR: You mentioned in —

MDN: — this day there’s animosity between them.

—Intermission—

Part 2

GR: What about the other states that are going to fight back. I mean you have Hezbollah in Lebanon, you have Hamas, of course. There’s also things that Palestinians could do in the West Bank. There’s even the topic of Iran being (inaudible), a five front war against Israel. Do you think —

MDN: Okay, that’s a great subject you’re bringing up. I, first of all, I have to be very frank. I have never considered the Israelis to be this juggernaut militarily. I always thought it was an illusion. And myself being a former soldier, you know, as a former serviceman in the military myself, I always looked at how they – I mean, I always looked at generally a lot of the things that they did in their military and it was very questionable on how professional they were.

So, I mean I don’t think that this is a strong military in many ways. And answering your question, they’re very good at beating up civilians, you know? They’re very good at going at against countries that had civil wars and who have been downgraded and, you know, their military has been broken. They’re very good at sucker shots, like against Syria while there’s internal fighting and the military is worn down. Going against Lebanon after a bloody civil war when everyone is divided. They’re very good at bombing Iraq while it’s at war with Iran. So, they can do things like that and assassinations. But when it comes to an actual, conventional war, I think they’ll lose.

Now, they always – looking at what military historians talk about their success in the Yom Kippur War, for example. You have to remember, the Arab armies they fought at were also – fought with were also fledgling armies. Those Arab armies were fledgling. They were not well organized. They were young, they were new. Those states also freshly became independent. And they were not as well-armed, in many cases. So, the Israelis have used this propaganda and this image to make themselves look like this Goliath in the region, which I have never agreed with and I want to make that clear. I have always seen it as an illusion. And that’s another point I make. The Israelis are very good at casting illusions. And for them, always their deterrent power was their most prized possession. And that’s why they’re good at making illusions as deterrents.

If they fight against the Iranians, I think that the – first of all, the Israelis won’t fight against the Iranians. It would be the United States. That’s why the US Navy is there. That’s why those US Navy battle groups are there. So, the United States, ironically, calls for constraint while it funnels weapons into that region to Israel. While it stops ceasefires, while it’s there to fight. That’s some strange definition of constraint. The Iranians and the Americans are negotiations. There are negotiations going between them. As well as Hamas through Qatar. In fact, the Iranians even said there was talk about sending the Israeli captives to Iran, through Turkish or Qatari intermediaries.

So, yes, this could end up being a multi-front war. Now, if this becomes a multi-front war, it is a regional war that will escalate to a global war. No question about it. The Chinese and the Russians back the Iranians. There was an Iranian advisor who came to Beijing, government advisor, two weeks ago. More or less, when I listen to him, he said, essentially, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

So, the conflict will escalate. But it’s not because this is something that’s going to happen in the Middle East, because all these states there are at each other’s throats. I think it’s by design that the United States is trying to create a broader, three-front conflict. I’m not going to use the word ‘war’ yet, between Russia, China, and Iran. They’ve already started war in Eastern Europe using Ukraine. Now in Palestine, they’re using the Palestinians and the Israelis to create a front there. In Chinese Taipei, which is basically, more or less, a rogue province of China, as Beijing sees it, they’re arming Taipei. And there’s a connection.

In fact, the funding that Mr. Biden is sending right now is for all three of these places. Maybe Israel has priority, but it’s all three of them. There is a connection: the conflicts in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe will go to the – are being pushed in the Asia Pacific region. And definitely, the Chinese are cognizant about this. And the Chinese position against Israel on this has been very assertive. And I think, very fair in terms of International Law.

And definitely, the Chinese public, more or less, are not supportive of Israel. In the Chinese public, if you go on Weebo, TikTok, WeChat, if you look at all these, majority of the Chinese public are against Israel. And the Israelis actually have agents trying to push their propaganda and win hearts and minds in the People’s Republic of China and it’s not successful. The Chinese understand what’s at stake, they understand that this is connected to great power maneuvers. At the end of the day, the United States is – this goes back to Washington. It’s not a question of —

GR: I want —

MDN: — what television is necessarily doing.

GR:Yeah. Mahdi, unfortunately we’re starting to run out of time. I wanted to basically give you a chance to maybe remark on anything that you haven’t remarked on yet or maybe emphasize the things that you have. Basically, you know, say in terms of this war where, you know, there are citizens all over the place who are still determined to – who are resisting, you know, in numbers like —

MDN: Well, —

GR: — what we’ve seen since 20 years ago. What do you think we should say to the citizens to communicate the importance of this situation and maybe —

MDN: So, —

GR:— things like what you do and how to stop it.

MDN: I’m not anybody special to pontificate to other people on how to follow their moral compasses. But I do think that time is running out for a lot of innocent people. So, I believe that if you have no – if you can do something to help, do it. If you can’t do something positive to help, then at least speak about it. Speak out against that evil or negativity or darkness. And if you cannot do that, and you’re (inaudible) hate it in your heart, dislike it in your heart. What I have to say is: I think time is running out for a lot of innocent people. There is a genocide, no question about it. When you listen to Israeli media and Israeli leaders, they are talking about genocide. Like the president of Israel said this is a collective crime, all Palestinians are guilty. Hamas represents them, it’s their government, they’re all guilty. The Israeli defence minister called them “human animals.”

A few years ago, they said they would even do another Holocaust there, a few years ago. I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Bible and a people that were erased in the Bible. So, they are going to do this. And in fact, in Israel, there is a government document that has been circulated by Israeli media that calls for the ethnic cleansing, or genocide, in Palestine, where all of the Palestinians will be forced to go into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and never allowed to come back. They will never be allowed to come back. They will be kicked off the land and forced to live in a tent city in the Sinai, kilometres away from the border with Gaza. And that document actually goes out of it’s way to tell them – they want to tell them that God punished them. That’s what they’d like to tell them, that God punished the Palestinian people and that’s why they’re there. This is actually an Israeli government document from the intelligence services, that they put together.

The final thing I have to say is that I hope that peace prevails, but I think that, in the end, this is going to hurt Israel and the United States. They will be the two biggest losers from this. That is my strong belief, this will actually backfire against Israel. They are actually committing political suicide. And you can see that the whole world is waking up in this age of social media technology and realizing what they are doing. And in that sense, there is a danger for the supporters of Israel who are trying to outlaw supporting Palestinians.

So, in Europe, in France and Germany, at the start, they were trying to ban rallies in support of Palestine. And then, there are people Orwellianly trying to say if you support Palestinian rights and freedom, it means you support terrorism or Hamas. Hamas is not the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people are not Hamas. But I also think Hamas is being misrepresented, as well. I want to point that out. A lot of things you’re hearing, you should double-check. And in much of the world, they are not considered a terrorist organization in a large part of the world. They are considered a resistance group.

Whether you like their politics and their tactics and their ideology, they are considered a resistance group. So, those are some things that I want to put out there. And I hope this fighting stops, but in the end I think that we all need to speak out in whatever way we can to stop it.

---

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Notes:

1. https://www.infowars.com/posts/netanyahu-declaring-invasion-you-must-remember-what-amalek-has-done-to-you-says-our-holy-bible/
2. Avi Scharf and Anshel Pfeffer (Oct 31, 2023), ‘OSINT Shows Third U.S. Naval Group Arrives in Mideast, Countries Prep to Evacuate Thousands’, Haaretz; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-10-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/osint-third-u-s-naval-group-arrives-in-mideast-countries-prep-to-evacuate-thousands/0000018b-854f-d805-a98f-b5df147e0000
3. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/11/01/biggest-palestine-solidarity-march-in-us-history-expected-to-take-place-on-saturday/

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First published on October 16, 2023

*** 

It’s amazing how America’s thought-controlled media is able to come up with a suitable narrative almost immediately whenever there is an international incident that might be subject to multiple interpretations.

Since 1948 Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes,

has occupied nearly all of the historic Palestine, has empowered its army to kill thousands of local people, and

has more recently established an apartheid regime that even denies that Palestinian Arabs are human in the same sense that Jews are.

Netanyahu-allied government minister Ayelet Shaked memorably has called for Israel not only to exterminate all Palestinian children, whom she has described as “little snakes,” but also to kill their mothers who gave birth to them.

But when the Arabs strike back against the hatred that confronts them with their limited resources it is Israel that is described as the victim and the Palestinians who are dehumanized and portrayed as the “terrorists.”

Media in the US and Europe were quick to label the Hamas offensive breaching the formidable Israeli border defenses as “Israel’s 9/11” or even “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” to establish the context that the Israelis have been on the receiving end of an “unprovoked” attack by a cruel and heartless enemy.

Israel has responded to the attack with a heavy bombardment of Gaza that has destroyed infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, while also cutting off food supplies, water and electricity.

It has demanded that residents of north Gaza, all 1.1 million of them, evacuate to make way for a possible ground offensive but there is nowhere to go as all the borders are closed, and the United Nations is calling it a demand with “devastating humanitarian consequences.” Journalist Peter Beinart has commented “This is a monstrous crime. It’s happening in plain view, with US support.”

And the United States government is indeed typically on the same page as Israel. President Joe Biden, citing fabricated stories about dead Jewish babies, speaks of how Israel has a “duty” to defend itself, while the Palestinians somehow have no right to protect themselves at all, much less to rise up against their persecutors in a struggle for freedom.

And Washington has also unhesitatingly chosen to directly involve itself in the conflict, completely on the side of the Jewish state, asserting repeatedly that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and telling the Israelis that “we have your back” while also dispatching two aircraft carrier groups to the scene of the fighting as well as the 101^st Airborne to Jordan and increasing the readiness of Marines stationed in Kuwait.

The White House could have taken more aggressive steps to encourage a ceasefire and talks but has chosen instead to issue essentially toothless calls to let the trapped civilians escape while also backing a devastating Israeli military response.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

Israel is also hosting the worthless and brain dead Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who will be providing advice along the lines of his insightful comment that Hamas is “evil” and “worse than ISIS.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in Jerusalem, announcing that the US is there to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unity government “as long as America exists” after first saying “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

Blinken’s explicit association of his personal religion with his official role as a representative of the US government makes clear that a key element in why he is there is because he is “a Jew.” Perhaps he should recuse himself from policy making involving Israel as being “a Jew” would not appear to be a United States national interest and is likely to produce irrational responses to developing situations.

If all of this sounds a lot like Ukraine it should, except that in Ukraine the US and NATO are fighting against Russia, which is being demonized for occupying what is claimed Ukrainian territory, whereas in Palestine they are supporting the occupier of actual Palestinian territory, Israel.

Funny thing that, and the word “hypocrisy” comes immediately to mind. As it turns out, however, I am somewhat on the same page as much of the media, agreeing that the Hamas incursion is something like 9/11, though I am sure that my take would not be found acceptable to the CNN Jake Tappers of this world.

My thinking is that Israel knew in advance about 9/11 in the United States due to its extensive spying network and chose not to share the information because it was to their advantage not to do so.

Indeed, a pleased Netanyahu even stated several years later that “9/11 was a good thing because it made the United States join us in our fight.”

That the attacks killed 3,000 Americans did not bother the Israeli government as Israel has a long history of killing Americans when it can benefit from so doing, starting with the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 sailors.

So too in this case in Gaza, Netanyahu may have decided to encourage an unexpected development, making it like 9/11, that would enable him to escalate and “mow the grass” as the Israelis put it, in the remainder of Arab Palestine.

And bear in mind that the actual incident that triggered the uprising was a rampage involving at least 800 Israeli settlers in and around the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, beating pilgrims and destroying Palestinian shops, all without any interference from the nearby Israeli security forces. The rioting was clearly allowed and even encouraged by the government.

Drawing on my experience as a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.

Israel had an extensive electronic and physical wall backed by soldiers and weaponry that completely surrounded Gaza on the landward side, so effective that it was claimed that not even a mouse could get in.

The Mediterranean side of Gaza was also tightly controlled by the Israeli Navy and boats to and from Gaza were completely blocked.

Egypt tightly controlled the southern part of Gaza bordering on the Sinai. So Gaza was under 24/7 complete surveillance and control at all times. Israeli military intelligence also certainly had a network of recruited informants inside Gaza who would report on any training or movements, easy enough to do when you can approach people who are starving and make them an offer they cannot refuse just for providing information on what they see and hear.

And then there was a warning from the Egyptian government to Israel ten days before the Hamas attack, with Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally calling Netanyahu and sharing intelligence suggesting that the Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Other media accounts reveal how Hamas trained and practiced their maneuvers publicly. There were also assessments made by US intelligence, which were shared with Israel, suggesting that something was afoot. So, given all of the evidence, there likely was no intelligence failure to anticipate and counter the Hamas attack but rather a political decision made by the Israeli government that knew what might be coming and chose to let it proceed to provide a casus belli to destroy Gaza, vowing that “Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” and then go on from there. And “from there” might well include Lebanon, Syria and Iran, possibly with the assistance of the United States to do the heavy lifting. Iran in particular is already being blamed by the usual suspects as a party involved in the Hamas attack, so far without any evidence whatsoever, which is typical of how these stories evolve.

Image: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visits Al-Aqsa, 3 January (Social Media)

And Israel has moved far to the right politically to such an extent that it might appreciate a little ethnic cleansing to demonstrate its seriousness. Netanyahu and other senior government officials in his cabinet have recently been making passing references to a “developing security situation” in the country to justify the intensifying of the raids by the army against Palestinian towns and refugee camps. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He has been exploiting his position to call in particular for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza, which is precisely what is happening. Gaza might be of particular interest to Ben-Gvir and others as it uniquely shelters an armed and organized resistance in the form of Hamas, which, oddly, was founded with the support of Israel to split the Palestinian political resistance with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

There is another issue relating to the recent fighting that one would like to know the answer to, namely how did Hamas get its weapons in the first place?

Some were clearly manufactured from parts and scrap but others were sophisticated and, as Gaza is blockaded on all sides, smuggling them in becomes problematical. One argument is that they were supplied by Iran and others to be brought in by tunnels, but the tunnels on two sides would end up in Israel and on the third side in Egypt. The fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea. So how did they arrive? Is there a possible triple or even quadruple cross taking place with different parties lying to each other? And should there be concerns that after the American armada arrives off the coast of Gaza there just might be some kind of false flag incident engineered by Netanyahu that will involve Washington directly in the fighting?

And there is what amounts to a related issue that should be of concern to everyone in the US and generically speaking the “Western world” where human rights are at least nominally respected. The message from almost all Western governments is that Israel has a carte blanche to do whatever it likes even when it involves war crimes to include mass forced displacement or genocide. In this case, the coordinated government-media response which is intended to protect Israel from any criticism almost immediately began circulating fabricated tales of atrocities while also delivering a hit on freedom of speech and association. President Biden, who should be trying to defuse the crisis, is instead adding fuel to the flames, saying of Hamas that “Pure, unadulterated evil has been unleashed on the earth!”

In Florida the arch Zionist stooge Governor Ron Desantis met with Jewish leaders in a synagogue to announce draconian measures against Iran to include sanctions on companies that are in any way linked to that country. One might point out that those businesses have done nothing wrong and Desantis also called for “eradication of Hamas from the earth.” His intellectual depth was at the same time revealed when he said the US should not take in any Gazan refugees because they are “antisemites.”

And in South Carolina, America’s favorite he/she Senator Lindsey Graham is calling for a US attack on Iran as well as declaring the war against Hamas to be “a religious war” and urging the Israeli army to invade Gaza and do “Whatever the hell you have to do to” to “level the place.”

And the Europeans are equally spineless in their deference to Israel. The Israeli president declared the that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, and not long after that top European Union representatives met with him to offer their unqualified support. Meanwhile in France, the spineless and feckless government of Emmanuel Macron has sought to outlaw any gathering that expresses support for Palestinian rights.

And in the UK, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman has proposed criminalizing any protest against Israeli actions or anything in support of Palestine to include banning any public display of the Palestinian national flag, which she regards as a “criminal offense toward the Jewish community in Britain.”

She has also said that “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.” Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has also classified the use of the expression as a “criminal offense.” The manner in which most Western political elites are lining up unquestionably and even enthusiastically behind Israel and its craven leaders’ desire for bloody vengeance is truly shocking but comes as no surprise.

Beyond the issue of Gaza itself, some in Israel are arguing that Netanyahu has personally benefitted from the unrest through the creation of the national unity government which has ended for the time being the huge demonstrations protesting his judicial reform proposals. If all of this comes together politically as it might in the next several weeks, we could be seeing the initial steps in what will develop into the complete ethnic cleansing of what was once Palestine, in line with Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” So all of the former Palestine is now a land to be defined by its Jewishness where Jews are in full control and are free to do whatever they want without any objection, referred to by the Israeli government as “an exclusive right to self-determination.” And it has all possibly been brought to fruition by the enablement provided by the current developments in Gaza.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

This carefully researched article by Mahdi Nazemroaya was first published by Global Research in November 2011

**

The name “Arab Spring” is a catch phrase concocted in distant offices in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels by individuals and groups who, other than having some superficial knowledge of the region, know very little about the Arabs. What is unfolding amongst the Arab peoples is naturally a mixed package. Insurgency is part of this package as is opportunism. Where there is revolution, there is always counter-revolution.

The upheavals in the Arab World are not an Arab “awakening” either; such a term implies that the Arabs have always been sleeping while dictatorship and injustice has been surrounding them.

In reality the Arab World, which is part of the broader Turko-Arabo-Iranic World, has been filled with frequent revolts that have been put down by the Arab dictators in coordination with countries like the United States, Britain, and France. It has been the interference of these powers that has always acted as a counter-balance to democracy and it will continue to do so.

Divide and Conquer: How the First “Arab Spring” was Manipulated

The plans for reconfiguring the Middle East started several years before the First World War. It was during the First World War, however, that the manifestation of these colonial designs could visibly be seen with the “Great Arab Revolt” against the Ottoman Empire.

Despite the fact that the British, French, and Italians were colonial powers which had prevented the Arabs from enjoying any freedom in countries like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan, these colonial powers managed to portray themselves as the friends and allies of Arab liberation.

During the “Great Arab Revolt” the British and the French actually used the Arabs as foot soldiers against the Ottomans to further their own geo-political schemes. The secret Sykes–Picot Agreement between London and Paris is a case in point. France and Britain merely managed to use and manipulate the Arabs by selling them the idea of Arab liberation from the so-called “repression” of the Ottomans.

In reality, the Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic empire. It gave local and cultural autonomy to all its peoples, but was manipulated into the direction of becoming a Turkish entity.

Even the Armenian Genocide that would ensue in Ottoman Anatolia has to be analyzed in the same context as the contemporary targeting of Christians in Iraq as part of a sectarian scheme unleashed by external actors to divide the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, and the citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it was London and Paris which denied freedom to the Arabs, while sowing the seeds of discord amongst the Arab peoples. Local corrupt Arab leaders were also partners in the project and many of them were all too happy to become clients of Britain and France. In the same sense, the “Arab Spring” is being manipulated today. The U.S., Britain, France, and others are now working with the help of corrupt Arab leaders and figures to restructure the Arab World and Africa.

The Yinon Plan: Order from Chaos…

The Yinon Plan, which is a continuation of British stratagem in the Middle East, is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.

The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.

Securing the Realm: Redefining the Arab World…

Although tweaked, the Yinon Plan is in motion and coming to life under the “Clean Break.” This is through a policy document written in 1996 by Richard Perle and the Study Group on “A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000” for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel at the time.

Perle was a former Pentagon under-secretary for Roland Reagan at the time and later a U.S. military advisor to George W. Bush Jr. and the White House.

Aside from Perle, the rest of the members of the Study Group on “A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000” consisted of James Colbert (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), Charles Fairbanks Jr. (Johns Hopkins University), Douglas Feith (Feith and Zell Associates), Robert Loewenberg (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), Jonathan Torop (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy), David Wurmser (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), and Meyrav Wurmser (Johns Hopkins University).

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm is the full name of this 1996 Israel policy paper.

In many regards, the U.S. is executing the objectives outlined in Tel Aviv’s 1996 policy paper to secure the “realm.” Moreover, the term “realm” implies the strategic mentality of the authors.

A realm refers to either the territory ruled by a monarch or the territories that fall under a monarch’s reign, but are not physically under their control and have vassals running them. In this context, the word realm is being used to denote the Middle East as the kingdom of Tel Aviv. The fact that Perle, someone who has essentially been a career Pentagon official, helped author the Israeli paper also makes one ask if the conceptualized sovereign of the realm is either Israel, the United States, or both?

Securing the Realm: The Israeli Blueprints to Destabilize Damascus

The 1996 Israeli document calls for “rolling back Syria” sometime around the year 2000 or afterward by pushing the Syrians out of Lebanon and destabilizing the Syrian Arab Republic with the help of Jordan and Turkey. This has respectively taken place in 2005 and 2011.

The 1996 document states:

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” [1]

As a first step towards creating an Israeli-dominated “New Middle East” and encircling Syria, the 1996 document calls for removing President Saddam Hussein from power in Baghdad and even alludes to the balkanization of Iraq and forging a strategic regional alliance against Damascus that includes a Sunni Muslim “Central Iraq.” The authors write:

“But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the ‘natural axis’ with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula.

For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.” [2]

Perle and the Study Group on “A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000” also call for driving the Syrians out of Lebanon and destabilizing Syria by using Lebanese opposition figures.

The document states:

“[Israel must divert] Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.” [3] This is what would happen in 2005 after the Hariri Assassination that helped launch the so-called “Cedar Revolution” and create the vehemently anti-Syrian March 14 Alliance controlled by the corrupt Said Hariri.

The document also calls for Tel Aviv to “take [the] opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime.” [4]

This clearly falls into the Israeli strategy of demonizing its opponents through using public relations (PR) campaigns. In 2009, Israeli news media openly admitted that Tel Aviv through its embassies and diplomatic missions had launched a global campaign to discredit the Iranian presidential elections before they even took place through a media campaign and organizing protests in front of Iranian embassies. [5]

The document also mentions something that resembles what is currently going on in Syria. It states:

“Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.” [6]

With the 2011 upheaval in Syria, the movement of insurgents and the smuggling of weapons through the Jordanian and Turkish borders has become a major problem for Damascus.

In this context, it is no surprise that Arial Sharon and Israel told Washington to attack Syria, Libya, and Iran after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. [7] Finally, it is worth knowing that the Israeli document also advocated for pre-emptive war to shape Israel’s geo-strategic environment and to carve out the “New Middle East.” [8] This is a policy that the U.S. would also adopt in 2001.

The Eradication of the Christian Communities of the Middle East

It is no coincidence that Egyptian Christians were attacked at the same time as the South Sudan Referendum and before the crisis in Libya.

Nor is it a coincidence that Iraqi Christians, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, have been forced into exile, leaving their ancestral homelands in Iraq.

Coinciding with the exodus of Iraqi Christians, which occurred under the watchful eyes of U.S. and British military forces, the neighbourhoods in Baghdad became sectarian as Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims were forced by violence and death squads to form sectarian enclaves. This is all tied to the Yinon Plan and the reconfiguration of the region as part of a broader objective.

In Iran, the Israelis have been trying in vain to get the Iranian Jewish community to leave.

Iran’s Jewish population is actually the second largest in the Middle East and arguably the oldest undisturbed Jewish community in the world.

Iranian Jews view themselves as Iranians who are tied to Iran as their homeland, just like Muslim and Christian Iranians, and for them the concept that they need to relocate to Israel because they are Jewish is ridiculous.

In Lebanon, Israel has been working to exacerbate sectarian tensions between the various Christian and Muslim factions as well as the Druze.

Lebanon is a springboard into Syria and the division of Lebanon into several states is also seen as a means for balkanizing Syria into several smaller sectarian Arab states.

The objectives of the Yinon Plan are to divide Lebanon and Syria into several states on the basis of religious and sectarian identities for Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Christians, and the Druze. There could also be objectives for a Christian exodus in Syria too.

The new head of the Maronite Catholic Syriac Church of Antioch, the largest of the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches, has expressed his fears about a purging of Arab Christians in the Levant and Middle East.

Patriarch Mar Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi and many other Christian leaders in Lebanon and Syria are afraid of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Syria. Like Iraq, mysterious groups are now attacking the Christian communities in Syria. The leaders of the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church, including the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, have also all publicly expressed their grave concerns. Aside from the Christian Arabs, these fears are also shared by the Assyrian and Armenian communities, which are mostly Christian.

Sheikh Al-Rahi was recently in Paris where he met President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is reported that the Maronite Patriarch and Sarkozy had disagreements about Syria, which prompted Sarkozy to say that the Syrian regime will collapse. Patriarch Al-Rahi’s position was that Syria should be left alone and allowed to reform.

The Maronite Patriarch also told Sarkozy that Israel needed to be dealt with as a threat if France legitimately wanted Hezbollah to disarm.

Because of his position in France, Al-Rahi was instantly thanked by the Christian and Muslim religious leaders of the Syrian Arab Republic who visited him in Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its political allies in Lebanon, which includes most the Christian parliamentarians in the Lebanese Parliament, also lauded the Maronite Patriarch who later went on a tour to South Lebanon.

Sheikh Al-Rahi is now being politically attacked by the Hariri-led March 14 Alliance, because of his stance on Hezbollah and his refusal to support the toppling of the Syrian regime. A conference of Christian figures is actually being planned by Hariri to oppose Patriarch Al-Rahi and the stance of the Maronite Church. Since Al-Rahi announced his position, the Tahrir Party, which is active in both Lebanon and Syria, has also started targeting him with criticism. It has also been reported that high-ranking U.S. officials have also cancelled their meetings with the Maronite Patriarch as a sign of their displeasure about his positions on Hezbollah and Syria.

The Hariri-led March 14 Alliance in Lebanon, which has always been a popular minority (even when it was a parliamentary majority), has been working hand-in-hand with the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the groups using violence and terrorism in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood and other so-called Salafist groups from Syria have been coordinating and holding secret talks with Hariri and the Christian political parties in the March 14 Alliance. This is why Hariri and his allies have turned on Cardinal Al-Rahi. It was also Hariri and the March 14 Alliance that brought Fatah Al-Islam into Lebanon and have now helped some of its members escape to go and fight in Syria.

There are unknown snippers who are targeting Syrian civilians and the Syrian Army with a view of causing chaos and internal fighting. The Christian communities in Syria are also being targeted by unknown groups. It is very likely that the attackers are a coalition of U.S., French, Jordanian, Israeli, Turkish, Saudi, and Khalij (Gulf) Arab forces working with some Syrians on the inside.

A Christian exodus is being planned for the Middle East by Washington, Tel Aviv, and Brussels. It has been reported that Sheikh Al-Rahi was told in Paris by President Nicolas Sarkozy that the Christian communities of the Levant and Middle East can resettle in the European Union. This is no gracious offer.

It is a slap in the face by the same powers that have deliberately created the conditions to eradicate the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East. The aim appears to be either the resettling of the Christian communities outside of the region or demarcate them into enclaves. Both could be objectives.

This project is meant to delineate the Arab nations along the lines of being exclusively Muslim nations and falls into accordance with both the Yinon Plan and the geo-political objectives of the U.S. to control Eurasia. A major war may be its outcome. Arab Christians now have a lot in common with black-skinned Arabs.

Re-Dividing Africa: The Yinon Plan is very Much Alive and at Work…

In regards to Africa, Tel Aviv sees securing Africa as part of its broader periphery. This broader or so-called “new periphery” became a basis of geo-strategy for Tel Aviv after 1979 when the “old periphery” against the Arabs that included Iran, which was one of Israel’s closest allies during the Pahlavi period, buckled and collapsed with the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In this context, Israel’s “new periphery” was conceptualized with the inclusion of countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya against the Arab states and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is why Israel has been so deeply involved in the balkanization of Sudan.

In the same context as the sectarian divisions in the Middle East, the Israelis have outlined plans to reconfigure Africa. The Yinon Plan seeks to delineate Africa on the basis of three facets: (1) ethno-linguistics; (2) skin-colour; and, finally, (3) religion. To secure the realm, it also so happens that the the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), the Israeli think-tank that included Perle, also pushed for the creating of the Pentagon’s U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway. It seeks to draw dividing lines in Africa between a so-called “Black Africa” and a supposedly “non-Black” North Africa. This is part of a scheme to create a schism in Africa between what are assumed to be “Arabs” and so-called “Blacks.”

This objective is why the ridiculous identity of an “African South Sudan” and an “Arab North Sudan” have been nurtured and promoted. This is also why black-skinned Libyans have been targeted in a campaign to “colour cleanse” Libya. The Arab identity in North Africa is being de-linked from its African identity. Simultaneously there is an attempt to eradicate the large populations of “black-skinned Arabs” so that there is a clear delineation between “Black Africa” and a new “non-Black” North Africa, which will be turned into a fighting ground between the remaining “non-Black” Berbers and Arabs.

In the same context, tensions are being fomented between Muslims and Christians in Africa, in such places as Sudan and Nigeria, to further create lines and fracture points. The fuelling of these divisions on the basis of skin-colour, religion, ethnicity, and language is intended to fuel disassociation and disunity in Africa. This is all part of a broader African strategy of cutting North Africa off from the rest of the African continent.

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”

It is at this point that all the pieces have to be put together and the dots have to be connected.

The chessboard is being staged for a “Clash of Civilizations” and all the chess pieces are being put into place. 

The Arab World is in the process of being cordoned off and sharp delineation lines are being created.

These lines of delineation are replacing the seamless lines of transition between different ethno-linguistic, skin-colour, and religious groups.

Under this scheme, there can no longer be a melding transition between societies and countries. This is why the Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, such as the Copts, are being targeted. This is also why black-skinned Arabs and black-skinned Berbers, as well as other North African population groups which are black-skinned, are facing genocide in North Africa.

After Iraq and Egypt, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the Syrian Arab Republic are both important points of regional destabilization in North Africa and Southeast Asia respectively. What happens in Libya will have rippling effects on Africa, as what happens in Syria will have rippling effects on Southeast Asia and beyond. Both Iraq and Egypt, in connection with what the Yinon Plan states, have acted as primers for the destabilization of both these Arab states.

What is being staged is the creation of an exclusively “Muslim Middle East” area (excluding Israel) that will be in turmoil over Shiite-Sunni fighting. A similar scenario is being staged for a “non-Black North Africa” area which will be characterized by a confrontation between Arabs and Berber. At the same time, under the “Clash of Civilizations” model, the Middle East and North Africa are slated to simultaneously be in conflict with the so-called “West” and “Black Africa.”

This is why both Nicolas Sarzoky, in France, and David Cameron, in Britain, made back-to-back declarations during the start of the conflict in Libya that multiculturalism is dead in their respective Western European societies. [9] Real multiculturalism threatens the legitimacy of the NATO war agenda. It also constitutes an obstacle to the implementation of the “Clash of Civilizations” which constitutes the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

In this regard, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor, explains why multiculturalism is a threat to Washington and its allies:

“[A]s America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues [e.g., war with the Arab World, China, Iran, or Russia and the former Soviet Union], except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.

Such a consensus generally existed throughout World War II and even during the Cold War [and exists now because of the ‘Global War on Terror’].” [10]

Brzezinski’s next sentence is the qualifier of why populations would oppose or support wars:

“[The consensus] was rooted, however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the public sensed were being threatened, but also in a cultural and ethnic affinity for the predominantly European victims of hostile totalitarianisms.” [11]

Risking being redundant, it has to be mentioned again that it is precisely with the intention of breaking these cultural affinities between the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region and the so-called “Western World” and sub-Saharan Africa that Christians and black-skinned peoples are being targeted.

Ethnocentrism and Ideology: Justifying Today’s “Just Wars”

In the past, the colonial powers of Western Europe would indoctrinate their people. Their objective was to acquire popular support for colonial conquest. This took the form of spreading Christianity and promoting Christian values with the support of armed merchants and colonial armies.

At the same time, racist ideologies were put forth. The people whose lands were colonized were portrayed as “sub-human,” inferior, or soulless. Finally, the “White Man’s burden” of taking on a mission of civilizing the so-called “uncivilized peoples of the world” was used. This cohesive ideological framework was used to portray colonialism as a “just cause.” The latter in turn was used to provide legitimacy to the waging of “just wars” as a means to conquering and “civilizing” foreign lands.

Today, the imperialist designs of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany have not changed. What has changed is the pretext and justification for waging their neo-colonial wars of conquest. During the colonial period, the narratives and justifications for waging war were accepted by public opinion in the colonizing countries, such as Britain and France. Today’s “just wars” and “just causes” are now being conducted under the banners of women’s rights, human rights, humanitarianism, and democracy.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award-winning writer from Ottawa, Canada. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal.

He was a witness to the “Arab Spring” in action in North Africa. While on the ground in Libya during the NATO bombing campaign he was Special Correspondent for the syndicated investigative KPFA program Flashpoints, which is aired from Berkeley, California.

NOTES

[1] Richard Perle et al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Washington, D.C. and Tel Aviv: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), 1996.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Barak Ravid, “Israeli diplomats told to take offensive in PR war against Iran,” Haaretz, June 1, 2009.
[6] Perle et al., Clean Break, op. cit.
[7] Aluf Benn, “Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya and Syria,” Haaretz, September 30, 2009.
[8] Richard Perle et al., Clean Break, op. cit.
[9] Robert Marquand, “Why Europe is turning away from multiculturalism,” Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2011.
[10] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books October 1997), p.211.
[11] Ibid.

 

Israele rivendica la responsabilità dell’attacco al campo profughi di Gaza che ha fatto strage di civili: in altre parole rivendica il suo “diritto” a sterminare i Palestinesi. Lo rivendica apertamente su Rete 4 l’ex ambasciatore di Israele in Italia Dror Eydar, il quale dichiara che l’obiettivo di Israele è “distruggere Gaza”. Lo conferma l’attacco terrestre israeliano a Gaza: insieme ai carrarmati avanzano i bulldozer, che demoliscono ciò che ancora resta in piedi dopo i bombardamenti. Il piano è evidente: rendere impossibile la vita a Gaza, aprire quindi un “corridoio umanitario” per evacuare la popolazione. È già stato redatto da Amir Weitmann, influente membro della Knesset appartenente al partito di Netanyahu, un “Piano per il reinsediamento e la riabilitazione finale in Egitto dell’intera popolazione di Gaza”. In poche parole, il piano prevede di espellere l’intera popolazione dai Territori palestinesi, affossando definitivamente la creazione di uno Stato palestinese, a fianco di Israele, come deciso 76 anni fa dalle Nazioni Unite.

Il leader politico di Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in un videomessaggio trasmesso non da Gaza ma dal suo ufficio centrale a Doha in Qatar, dichiara: “Noi abbiamo bisogno del sangue delle donne, dei bambini e degli anziani di Gaza per risvegliare in noi lo spirito di sfida che ci spinge ad andare avanti”. Appare strano che il leader di Hamas diriga il suo movimento dal suo ufficio centrale, situato a Doha a pochi chilometri dalla base di Al Udeid, la più grande base USA in Medioriente, sede del quartier generale delle forze aeree del Comando Centrale degli Stati Uniti.

Il fatto che Hamas sia stato sostenuto da Benjamin Netanyahu viene ulteriormente confermato da quanto da lui dichiarato nel marzo 2019, a una riunione dei membri del partito Likud nella Knesset: “Chiunque voglia ostacolare la creazione di uno Stato palestinese deve sostenere Hamas e trasferire denaro ad Hamas. Questo fa parte della nostra strategia: isolare i palestinesi di Gaza dai palestinesi della Cisgiordania” (Haaretz il 9 ottobre 2023). Per anni Israele ha permesso che valigie con milioni di dollari in contanti, provenienti dal Qatar, entrassero attraverso i valichi di Gaza per essere consegnate ai capi di Hamas.

Questi e altri fatti confermano che quella scatenata il 7 ottobre in Medioriente è un’operazione analoga a quella attuata l’11 settembre con l’attacco alle Torri Gemelle a New York. Lo scopo di tale operazione non è solo quella di cancellare i Territori Palestinesi, ma di aprire un largo fronte di guerra in un Medioriente in cui gli Stati Uniti, Israele e le maggiori potenze europee stanno perdendo terreno, come dimostra la prossima entrata di due paesi finora rivali, Iran e Arabia Saudita, nei BRICS insieme a Russia e Cina. Il piano deve però fare i conti con i popoli, a partire da quello palestinese, che sta dando prova di una eroica resistenza.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO : https://www.byoblu.com/2023/11/03/gaza-leroismo-di-un-popolo/

o

Youtube :

Introductory Note

Today are thoughts are with the People of Palestine. 

Building solidarity requires confronting the crimes committed by the State of Israel from the very outset in 1948. This is the object of Felicity Arbuthnot’s article first published in 2017. According to Arbuthnot (in 2017): 

This “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) seventy years after Israel’s final founding, is ongoing   

“Nakba is ongoing” in October 2023, and the United Nations remains “Deaf Mute”. 

UN Secretary General’s Antonio Guterres’ Double Speak 

None of these issues have been raised by the U.N. Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres in his remarks to the U.N. Security Council on October 24:

“The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour. 

The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region. 

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.

At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.”

But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.  And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” (emphasis added)

As outlined by the Centre for Research on Globalization:

Guterres’s disapproval of Israel is lenient. He does not condemn Tel Aviv for the massive killings of Palestinian civilians (in the carpet bombing of Gaza) which so far have resulted in more than 6,500 Palestinian deaths, nor does he raise (in his initial remarks) the issue of a “cease fire”: 

Global Research, October 27, 2023

***

Palestine: Apartheid, Stolen Lives and Land,

History Erased, United Nations Deaf Mute

by

Felicity Arbuthnot

July 30, 2017

 

The Washington Post reports that: “All 100 U.S. Senators signed a letter Thursday asking U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to address what the lawmakers call entrenched bias against Israel at the world body.” 

The letter: “… uses strong language to insist that the United Nations rectify what the Senators said is unequal treatment of Israel on human rights and other grounds.

“Through words and actions, we urge you to ensure that Israel is treated neither better nor worse than any other U.N. member in good standing,” they stated. 

The Senators appear to be on a parallel universe. Have they reflected, in context, on the UN’s fine founding words, avowing: 

“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war … to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person … to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom … to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours … to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples …” 

Source Israelpalestinenews.org 

Israel – ever presented as the eternal victim – has not just made a mockery of the words but also of the Balfour letter of 2^nd November 1917 and trampled on both ever since. Balfour: 

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine …” (Emphasis added.) 

So much for the “rights” of the Palestinians. Between November 1947 and November 1948 five hundred and thirty one Palestinian towns and villages had been “ethnically cleansed.” (1) By 1952 it was six hundred and fifteen. (2) 

This “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) seventy years after Israel’s final founding, is ongoing.

The land grabs are illegal and violate: U.N. Charter, Article 2(4) & 51 (1945); Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations…, Principle 1 (1970). 

Settlements on occupied lands violate Geneva Conventions IV, Article 49(6) (1949). It is illegal to colonize or transfer non-indigenous people to occupied land. 

Taking land by force and claiming sovereignty violates: U.N. Charter, Article 2(4) (1945); Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations…, Principle 1. 

Forbidding civilian populations the right to return to their homes following the end of armed conflict is in direct violation of international law and UN resolutions. Geneva Convention IV, Articles 45, 46 & 49 (1949), UN resolutions 194 (III) (General Assembly; 1948) & 237 (Security Council; 1967). 

Collective punishment violates Geneva Conventions IV, Article 33 (1949); Geneva Conventions (Protocol I), Article 75(2d) (1977). (3) 

The list of breaches of international law is near endless as are the attacks on a people with no army, air force or navy, plus the decimations of 1967, 2008-9 and 2014. 

Israel’s violations of United Nations Security Council Resolutions, legally binding on Member-nations, include Resolutions – 54, 111, 233, 234, 236, 248, 250, 252, 256, 262, 267, 270, 280, 285, 298, 313, 316, 468, 476, a small sample.

The Senators would seem to have as little knowledge of the iniquities inflicted on the Middle East by foreign powers and cuckoos in the nest as their rookie President.

It is not Israel being meted out “unequal treatment” it is the Palestinians, thieved of their land, history, justice and all normality.

Notes

1.    http://www.palestineremembered .com/Acre/Right-Of-Return/Stor y432.html

2.    https://972mag.com/mapping-the -palestinian-villages-erased-a nd-replaced-with-jewish-towns/ 124847/

3.    http://itisapartheid.org/Docum ents_pdf_etc/IsraelViolationsI nternationalLaw.pdf

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The topic of this article is key in the development of our civilization, or rather in its anti-development. In my opinion, humanity is de-evolving, I consider all talk about the achievements of modern science inappropriate, science has not been able to penetrate into the nature of its own fundamental discoveries, of which there are indeed many, and many famous scientists speak directly about this.

Most modern scientific developments work to destroy humans, serving the military-industrial sector of the economy. As for the evolution of human consciousness, in this regard things are no better; its increasing degradation is an obvious fact. It is very difficult to say exactly when our development took the wrong path; history is constantly being rewritten or completely destroyed. But one fact remains obvious, and it will be discussed in this publication.

The Problem that No One Wants to Notice

A little more than 30 years have passed since the collapse of the USSR, during this short time the world has changed beyond recognition, it increasingly resembles a huge market run by traders, in this world there is only one rule: everything must make a profit! Even the death of people is viewed from the perspective of obtaining material profit.

The market mechanism is evolving; business has influenced art, sports, medicine, education and much more.

The very thinking of people is changing, it is becoming market-oriented even among schoolchildren, many parents are already openly talking about this. From an early age, children absorb the same rule for everyone: money is wealth, money is power, only money can bring freedom and happiness.

But even with all the apparent depravity of the system, people have always been, are and will be, but they, as a rule, become outcasts in the modern world. It is encouraging that there are more such people every day, and this is not an accident.

I think all the talk about the return of modern society to traditional values should not be taken seriously, at least for now. It is impossible to sit on two chairs at the same time.

In the conditions of a market economy, wild social stratification, consumption ideology and competition between people, all talk about traditional values is nothing more than propaganda, hiding the growing process of establishing digital control over a person. But still, the main obstacle to people returning to their true purpose is their faith in money.

In the Soviet Union, speculation was prosecuted by law; in the modern world, it is becoming a legal right for everyone; moreover, speculation is encouraged at the state level. It is not the creative person who is capable of creating that is valued, but the one who can sell his creation with maximum benefit for himself. The despicable huckster becomes the personification of the modern world order.

Market mechanisms have deeply penetrated the consciousness of every consumer; in fact, we are all, with rare exceptions, traders. In the concept of “ trader ” I mean not only the principle of buying and selling, the essence is much deeper.

At the heart of market thinking, a reflex has been developed that encourages the consumer to consider the whole world, including the people around him, as potential food for himself. In this thinking, the concept of altruism is completely absent, which does not correspond to the nature of the world around us and man himself; this fact is directly related to the fall in the birth rate, the loss of a sense of unity, and much more.

Observing the changes taking place in people in the so-called civilized society, today I have little doubt that a person endowed with reason, initially created in the image and likeness of his Creator, being under the influence of his own material passions and emotions, is gradually turning into its opposite. I’m not talking about individual exceptions, the number of which is noticeably increasing, I’m talking about the general trend in the development of the entire so-called civilized world. How long can a world like this last?

View on the Problem

I myself am not a historian, much less an economist, so I will present my view of what is happening based on my own experience.

The market model, like the capitalist system itself as a whole, does not contradict the biological nature of man, it is its mirror image. This explains her resilience and ability to adapt to various circumstances. The danger of the instinctive development of civilization lies in the unawareness of the consequences, both for the person himself and for the surrounding nature. We already see what a person turns into under the influence of his own passions and emotions, the same thing happens with the economy, social sphere and politics.

With the growing influence of market mechanisms, humanity naturally faced a decline in the influence of reasonable decisions in all spheres of its existence; this is the law of nature.

Only a blind person can fail to notice how various political figures, under the influence of the laws of the market, become primitive trading managers whose task is to serve the interests of big capital.

Those few politicians who realize the depravity of the system will not risk changing anything in it; they have long been its hostages. The statement of the President of Kazakhstan in this regard is noteworthy. The head of state, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, made a frank admission:

“if this or that civil servant committed a corruption crime by mistake, without malicious intent, then criminal liability should not be applied to this civil servant. Otherwise, we will paralyze the state apparatus. ”

Tokayev unwittingly admitted that corruption is an integral part of the system.

I’ll put it in my own words:

“The fight against corruption and other vices within the existing system does not mean at all that the system will become more efficient and fair, the system will simply cease to exist. Just as any biological organism deprived of its basic instincts will cease to exist.”

The established system is a living organism that, having reached the limit of its growth, begins to devour itself.

I always compare the modern market model, or rather its dependence on the growth of material profits, to a person’s dependence on a hard drug, the dose of which he involuntarily has to increase. This process does not last long, a maximum of seven to ten years, followed by death from an overdose (economic crisis, war). If you leave the dose of the drug the same, the addict will no longer receive a surge of energy, he will only get rid of the pain syndrome (recession, degradation, slow death).

The capitalist system is like a long-time drug addict who feels that the next increase in the drug dose may be his last, but he is no longer able to stop.

War and human blood are a drug for him, and the military-industrial complex is his soul.

Animal instinct pushes a drug addict to the most reckless actions; there is only one thought in his head – you die today, and I will die tomorrow.

Only the militarization of the economy can support its economic growth, and therefore extend the life of the system, even if only for a short time. In practice, this means a further increase in military conflicts and incitement of hatred between peoples.

It is no longer possible to hide the consequences of an insane policy; various economic sanctions, genocide and terror, gas pipeline explosions, bloody wars, contrived pandemics, purposeful intensification of hatred between peoples and much more, give every reason to believe that the period of unconscious development of civilization has ended.

Consciousness Is the Battlefield for the Future of Humanity

In the modern world, huge amounts of money are allocated for propaganda; the leading positions in this direction so far belong to the capitalist countries of the West. The struggle for consciousness is a natural biological process for the bourgeoisie. The effectiveness of their propaganda, like the system as a whole, is based on the weaknesses of man’s physical nature, his passions and innate instincts, which in turn, without feeling any serious internal resistance, easily penetrate the consciousness and ultimately subjugate it. The conflict in Ukraine has shown in practice the possibility of manipulating public consciousness, by controlling which one can make enemies even of people related by blood.

Today, many are trying to find those responsible for the revival of hatred of everything Russian in Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Central Asia and the West in general. No one even thinks about the fact that it simply couldn’t have happened any other way. Everything was predictable, nature does not tolerate a vacuum, having cleared people’s consciousness of the ideology of universal human values, the void was immediately filled with opposite “values”, with which the ideology of hatred and enmity between peoples is directly related.

The Nature of Consciousness

Human consciousness, despite the secret of its nature hidden from people, is of utmost importance; according to many famous scientists, consciousness is capable of changing the surrounding reality. Perhaps that is why there is a fierce struggle for influence over him. Scientific experiments in this direction were carried out back in the 60s of the last century; one of the first leaders in studying the influence of consciousness on the environment was Professor William A. Tiller. Soviet scientists also spoke about the impact of subtle energy on the surrounding world, directly linking the energy released by humans with natural disasters. Carrying out many years of careful scientific observations, prominent Russian scientists – geophysicists Alexey Dmitriev and Igor Yanitsky and their colleagues came to the conclusion that human mental energy, actively influencing the geomagnetic field, also affects the electric field of the Earth and, accordingly, all earthly processes.

Our planet is alive according to such famous people as Goethe, Chardin, Vernadsky and others, which means social tension in the global consciousness may well cause natural disasters.

The earth can no longer withstand the tension that is generated by the growing chaos in human consciousness. Scientist physicist David Bohm argues that if ten people or a hundred or more could be as a single whole, then the power of their influence would be many times greater than that of one person, and thus the awakening of the consciousness of all humanity would become possible.

Pay attention to one important fact: in all so-called democratic states, any ideology capable of uniting people is prohibited.

In all these countries, the laws of the market and competition, which divide people into different social groups, are a prerequisite.

Any unanimity in the state is considered a dictatorship, which is pressured with the help of various economic sanctions in order to democratize it.

People are persistently told that everyone should have their own opinion and their own view of the world around them; religions are divided into dozens of confessions, each of which considers only its own teaching to be true. Everything is being done to prevent the unity of people. Competition and animosity prevent alliances that might challenge the existing system.

All the problems of modern civilization began precisely from the moment when humanity ceased to feel like a single whole, including with the surrounding nature. In my opinion, we need to understand and comprehend some important things : who, when and for what purpose divided people, instilling in them the idea of God’s chosen and exceptional peoples?

Who and for what purpose separated man and nature, instilling in him that only he has a soul, and everything else is soulless, including animals and the entire world around him? When exactly did the replacement of real values with counterfeit ones in the form of gold bars and paper money take place? Even the state banking system was separated from the state itself, to which it should rightfully belong; everything that can be divided is divided. The banking interest of the financial system completed the formation of a new world, people, cut off from nature and divided among themselves, stopped responding to lies and manipulation of their consciousness, they simply went blind. Finding answers to these questions will certainly lead to the beginning of the awakening of our consciousness.

Is It Possible to Stop the Destructive Processes?

I don’t think that the growing chaos can be stopped; this is a natural result of the development of mankind over many recent centuries. But it is most likely possible to minimize the tragic consequences.

Firstly, it is necessary to completely abandon the instinctive path of development, taking the path of intelligent construction of one’s future. Free the economy from mandatory growth and maximum profit. Bank interest should be prohibited, and the entire financial sector should become a single organism of the state.

Secondly, the most important issue is the rejection of false material values and a return to the true ones, which are land and water; people should again feel one with the nature around them. As for spiritual values, their return will be inevitable in conditions of unity; we are all a society of a common destiny. I cannot say how to implement all this in practice, but it will have to be done, otherwise the wheel of history will do it, but with more tragic consequences.

All attempts by globalists to change human nature will only accelerate all destructive processes.

Those who have not yet lost contact with the mind have been feeling this acceleration for many years. It is impossible to completely subjugate the mass consciousness of people and control it; first it is necessary to subjugate the entire surrounding nature, man and nature are one. The increase in forest fires, droughts, floods and earthquakes, the growth of various diseases, viruses and much more, is largely the result of the growth of negative emotions in the human mind, which by its nature is designed to shape the world around us.

Man, unlike other biological creatures, is endowed, in addition to being an animal, with a creative principle, which means he is capable of not only destroying, but also creating like his Creator. It is difficult to combine in one bodily shell both the creative and animal principles, each of which wages a continuous struggle for the conscious “ I ” , for the consciousness of each of us. It is no coincidence that ancient philosophy claims that victory over oneself is the main victory and meaning of human life on earth. This victory is impossible without self-awareness and a sense of unity with the surrounding nature. As for the system as a whole, it is necessary to understand that it only reflects the moral state of society. “ In a moral society there cannot be an immoral economy ” I heard this statement back in Soviet times and now I completely agree with it.

Conclusion

Man and the nature surrounding him are a single whole, our ancestors knew this very well, living with it in complete harmony. The fact that everything in our world is interconnected is confirmed by quantum science. It is not at all necessary to be a scientist to see the obvious, just look at a map of the planet, which, plus or minus, is 70% covered with water, the rest 30% is earth, the human body consists of 70% water and 30% earth elements. Perhaps this is a coincidence, many will think, but for some reason I don’t think so. Any living biological matter by its nature is a continuation of the earth, and the earth is a continuation of the sky. The physical body of each of us will in due time become part of the earth, the water, having changed its properties, will rise into the sky, purify itself and again pour onto the earth with rain, filling the surrounding nature with life. This is the same eternal process of “ sowing and reaping” that Christ spoke about in his time. How can we break out of this closed cycle of our physical nature and realize the meaning of our life in this world?

The Soviet period, despite its many mistakes, gave us an important lesson that we need to deeply comprehend and draw conclusions for ourselves. For me personally, this period opened my eyes to all the strengths and weaknesses of human nature, it looked like the beginning of awakening from a dream, just before the dawn began.

As for the power of money and humanity’s dependence on it, the head of the Rothschild clan answered this question very directly: “People just need to stop worshiping the “Golden Calf” and this dependence will disappear.

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This article was translated from Russian and was originally published here.

Jaras Valiukėnas has been analyzing ongoing geopolitical processes since the early 2000s. Born in Kazakhstan in 1959 into a family of repressed people, his father was from Lithuania, his mother was from Russia. Currently lives in Lithuania, is an opponent of globalization, publishes in various media, and works on creating documentary videos.

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***

The world’s attention has turned to the slaughter in Gaza as the Israeli military-political system enacts its brand of ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Palestinian people.  The U.S. pretends to be standing by in order to ensure the conflict does not spread into a regional conflagration, a pretext rationalizing and disguising their desire for such a conflagration in order to destroy Iran and Syria as they have destroyed Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan in recent wars.

By its own determination the U.S. proclaims itself to be indispensable and exceptional, a mythology applied over the life times of its citizens keeping them ignorant and uninterested in the full global context of military conflicts and the exercise of military power in order to protect the power of corporations and the US$ to reign supreme over the world.  This has caused numerous violent military actions globally over the last century or more as well as creating larger geopolitical problems that should and could be resolved peacefully if not for the bellicose nature of U.S. foreign policy.

Background Precis

Israel originated in the minds of British and U.S. Christian Zionism in the early 1800s but did not become a global factor until Theodor Herzl, Chaim Wiezmann, Ze’ev Jabotinsky began promulgating their theories of Zionism within the European political sphere.  Britain became the leader in promoting this brand of Zionism for several reason: control of Middle East oil, mostly in Iran at the time; control of the Suez Canal and its trade route to colonial India; and although Britain had some prominent “assimilated” Jews, did not want any more emigres from Europe.

The Balfour letter in 1917 from Lord Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, promoted the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. While this was only a letter of intent, it became British policy and after the disastrous Versailles Peace agreement it became official League of Nations policy. After decades of fighting against the Jewish Haganah and Irgun militias (then declared terrorists), Britain walked away from its mandate in Palestine.

Even before they had walked away, the Jewish militias had already started their ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages and towns. When Britain exited, the new Israeli state announced itself, and using military power created itself as a state. The holocaust had already occurred but had not yet become the rallying cry as the ‘raison d’être’ for Israel’s existence.

U.S. Evangelism

The U.S. was already embroiled in the region with its overthrow of the duly elected Mossadegh government in Iran. The pretext was freedom and democracy versus communism, pretexts that were to extend militarily around the world as the twentieth century progressed: Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Cuba, Congo/Zaire, among others. Not until the 1967 Six Day War did the U.S. become fully involved with supporting Israel, highlighted by the attacks on the USS Liberty that the U.S. government under Lyndon Johnson kept out of the public eye.

That brings this brief historical summary back to the U.S. Zionists, or more correctly understood, the Christian fundamentalist evangelical prophecies about Armageddon and the second coming.  It is quite ironic that within this belief system, all the Jews are to be gathered in Israel so that when the messiah returns, the Jews will either die or convert.  From that strange argument billions of dollars of U.S. money has flowed into Israel to support settlements and Jewish civic and military functions. The big money began after the Yom Kippur War and the resultant peace agreement with Egypt being bought with billions of dollars doled out to each in subsequent years.

Peace lurked in the background, with meetings being held in Madrid, to be sabotaged by the Oslo accords, that in their true function simply provided Israel with the time to extend their hold on Palestinian lands through increased settlements and, after Arafat’s removal, the assistance of the quisling Abbas’ government in controlling the Palestinians. The U.S. has long since shown itself to be “agreement incapable.”

Along comes Hamas, an Islamic organization supported by Israel mainly in order to weaken the power of the PLO/Fatah governance. At first mainly a social/civic organization providing support for the Palestinian people through education, medical assistance, and other civic organizations, it morphed into today’s power center in Gaza as a result of its resistance to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing and denial of Palestinian rights in all aspects of society.

U.S. government foreign policy for the Middle East has been captured by Israel. It has been argued that Israel controls the U.S. government through AIPAC, and that certainly seems true when considering actions in the Middle East and North Africa. Underlying it all still are the Christian fundamentalist believers in the existence of Israel, perhaps not so crudely stated as being part of their fundamentalist Armageddon beliefs, but who support members of Congress who are rabid about Israel.

Oil and the US Dollar

As for the U.S. state itself, it borrows on this money and energy in order to support Israel both for the domestic vote and for the power and control it can exert over the Middle East. In the contemporary context, this includes attempting to exclude Russian influence (and increasingly Chinese investments), but above all wanting to control the ownership of the oil and gas resources of the region.  The two are related as Russia is one of the world’s largest oil and gas suppliers, the Saudis are supporting OPEC+ with cuts in oil production as well as selling oil to China outside of using the US$ and thus avoiding the SWIFT payment system and its control by the U.S.

Without control of oil pricing, not the oil itself, the US$ will undergo a dramatic failure. This is the U.S.’ bottom line – to control the financial aspects of the world, to retain the petrodollar as the global reserve currency. From that, they control the governments of the world through financial manipulation (interest rates, IMF/World Bank usury, SWIFT, and many sanctions) with the backing of the U.S. military to keep other governments aligned with their system of dominance.

It has nothing to do with peace, freedom, and democracy. U.S. support of the current Israeli attacks on Gaza has nothing to do with peace and stability other than the stability ordained by the power of U.S. and Israeli missiles, bombs, and other weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s extreme hard right positioning and its attempts to ethnic cleanse or commit genocide on the Palestinian people is of little concern for the U.S. government, or its sycophantic minions in Canada and the EU.

The U.S. has never been about freedom and democracy, and its current actions/inactions in the Middle East fully demonstrate its desire for power and control in order to sustain its financial wealth for its own corporations and oligarchs. It is encouraging to see the global mass demonstrations supporting Gaza and defying Israel’s desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza. A significant divide has occurred in global geopolitics, and the U.S. arguments for indispensability, exceptionalism, freedom, and democracy are ringing hollow to most of the citizens of the world.

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

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***

We are forever getting told of a forthcoming major climate change crisis. How we are destroying our planet by unwittingly contributing to potential catastrophic famines, flooding and heatwaves… through our negligence to climate change.

Many have challenged this climate change crisis claim: It has been said that the human-led climate change crisis is a monumental lie. A deceptive Deep State tool. A PSYOP used to control the sleeping masses to get their compliance as they blindly walk into an engineered dystopia under the guise of saving the world.

In reflection of this, here are 17 truth seeking questions to challenge the climate change crisis claim and its related implications that something desperately needs to be done to prevent the so-called predicted catastrophic events.

Q1. If climate change was for real then how is it that related disaster scenario predictions never came true?

Here are some of those predictions.

• Starting with so-called climate change expert James Hansen. He said in 1988 the west side highway parallel to New York’s Hudson river would be immersed in water in about 20-odd years. -You can see from Google images that this is still dry.
• The Independent newspaper (anything but independent!) made the failed prediction in 2000 that snow would be no longer.
• Another mainstream newspaper with its fanfare and fearmongering claimed in 2004 European cities would be disappearing as they would be submerged under rising sea levels by 2020.

Another so-called climate change guru Al Gore in 2006 in his documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” claimed that:

• In ten years (2016 – post-documentary film 2006) there will be no Kilimanjaro snow. Yes, it’s still there.
• Gore went on to say, come summer 2013, the North Pole may be ice-free.
• Through melting, ice sea levels could rise by 20 feet…
• A NASA scientist in 2008 predicted that Earth will be devoid of any ice.
• Then there’s this Tweet from Greta Thunberg which she later removed:

Climate Change Crisis – Alarmist Reports

Q2. Given that there have been quite a number of alarmist reports, stories over the years scaring us into believing that climate change is the culprit, but later these stories were proven to be untrue, as with the above false predictions, is this another case of using fake climate change as a World Economic Forum control tool for imposing dystopic change?

Here are a few examples of those untrue alarmist report stories.

• A report from the BBC told us that fast melting Antarctic ice was causing a dramatic reduction in ocean current speeds which “could have a disastrous effect on the climate.” What they didn’t tell you in this hidden agenda net-zero endorsing fairy tale scare-story was that NASA research had found the opposite of the claim. That the Antarctic ice was in actual fact in balance and not melting.
• There was a story going around in the mainstream media that polar bears were under the threat of extinction due to climate change. However, zoologist Susan Crockford did a demolition on this fake story telling us with her research that polar bears are in fact thriving.
• Then there was the misleading Netflix film with David Attenborough’s bogus claim that there were falling walruses due to lack of ice and climate change…
• As with untrue stories there have been numerous gross exaggerations regarding climate change to the point of fantasy. This is done in a desperate attempt to persuade us that the claims are for real. Take for instance an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report telling us that “Global Temperatures Are Highest for 125,000 Years.”

This has no settled science, but since when has that ever bothered those receiving plentiful funding to go along with the narrative?

Q3. Following on isn’t real science showing there is no climate change crisis or emergency getting ignored, censored or even demonized because it goes against globalist billionaire’s political agendas for world Orwellian takeover?

Q4. Doesn’t the undemocratic acceptance of 15-minute, ludicrous net-zero carbon, “smart” cities… and its implications simply mean that you’d be agreeing with your own imprisonment?

Q5. On similar lines to the above what about the UK demands to close all airports by 2050 and what about other countries considering the underlying motive and implications?

Q6. Why demonize carbon (carbon dioxide) when it is a life-giving gas and ALL life depends on its cycle?  Politically driven agendas such as the aimed for low CO2 levels will not be good for us. In effect, the UN target will lower the average temperature by 10 degrees centigrade.

Q7. As with other officialdom declared “crises,” doesn’t the handling do more harm than good?

Take look at this eye-opening video:

Climate Change – Activists

In recent times there have been growing concerns over the increasing numbers of climate change activists and their extremist behaviour. These activists are also gaining more public support while some are funded.

In the knowledge of this here are some follow-on questions focussing on climate change activists and their activism.

Q8. While wanting to stop or block oil and gas projects, even in transition to alternative energy forms, wouldn’t fossil fuel engines still be needed to take care of transporting essentials such as hospital and food needs…?

Q9. Further, where will all the alternative energy materials; wind turbines, steel, battery sources for electricity… come from without the use of fossil fuel driven operations?

Q10. In reflection of the above, isn’t it clearly a case of activists shooting themselves in the foot wanting to stop or block oil and gas projects?

Q11. In relation to extinction rebellion activism, what about all the policing, criminal damage and disruption costs related to activism?

Q12. How do activists deal with contradictory evidence challenging climate change assertions?

Q13. What percentages of carbon dioxide and methane do you think is causing climate change?

Q14. How much of an effect on climate change do you think the following has: Changing solar patterns, grand solar minimum over tens or thousands of years in respect to the bigger picture…?

Q15. With respect to Q7, what about considering the ups and downs of climate change when fossil fuels did not exist?

Q16. What about the corporate-owned and controlled MSM (mad stream media) reporting on all this, with their propaganda, lies, coverups and distortions of truth; instead of it being a case of ‘settled science’ isn’t a more like ‘settled funding,’ telling the public anything their corporate lords and masters instruct them to report regardless of truth for a good price?

Q17. While activists get funded, who gains?

Climate Change Crisis – In Summary

Although the masses are waking up there still remains an ‘epidemic of incuriousness.’ The masses still continue to blindly accept authority and go into unquestioning agreement with the general consensus to which the Deep State and their associates rely on to advance their imprisoning agendas based on PSYOPS and false circumstances.

As the saying goes: Question everything. Break the spellbinding disinformation spun by the mainstream media…Many claim that it’s never been about climate change. It’s really about dystopic world takeover.

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***

The situation in Haiti — which will now see an unprecedented foreign intervention aimed at quelling the bedlam that’s gripped the country the past two years — is an awful, bloody mess, and one without any satisfying immediate solutions. But we can say two things for sure.

One is that while Haiti’s current turmoil is largely presented as just another misfortune plaguing a seemingly cursed nation, getting to this point has involved a series of typically underpublicized decisions by Washington and its partners. The other is that the entire saga is a perfect illustration of how little-known US foreign policy decisions stack on top of one another until military intervention seems like the only possible choice.

Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council approved what it called a “historic first” decision to send a Kenyan-led international security force to Haiti, which has been engulfed in chaos since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and is now buckling under a cruel combination of a cholera uptick, skyrocketing inflation, dire shortages, and violence at the hand of gangs that reportedly control half the country and most of its capital.

The military forces are being sent at the request of the country’s acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, who had asked for international assistance last October, and the situation is so bad, it’s apparently led some ordinary Haitians — many of whom had vehemently opposed foreign intervention as late as last November — to reluctantly back the idea as the best hope for getting things back under some semblance of control.

Though it’s not as if everyone in Haiti is calling for foreign intervention, it’s understandable that increasing numbers are given the havoc that currently reigns there, with rampant kidnappings, widespread school closures in the face of violence, and a 30 percent annual inflation rate. But as usual, as you read about whatever turn the tragic events in Haiti take next, what you won’t hear is all the different paths that could have been taken to prevent any of it from happening in the first place.

US Meddling

Let’s start with the event that precipitated all this madness, namely Moïse’s assassination. At least seven of the Colombian former soldiers accused of being involved in killing him, or roughly a quarter of the assassin squad, received US military training as part of Washington’s long-standing support for often-repressive Latin American security forces. This distinguishes the disorder in Haiti as one of at least a dozen cases in recent years where US-trained soldiers have ended up violently toppling a government somewhere in the Global South, usually in West Africa.

But the US role in the assassination could go even deeper. According to two separate New York Times reports (both of which buried the information paragraphs and paragraphs down), conspirators were told that the plot to kill Moïse was a “C.I.A. operation” and that it “had the full support of the United States,” which was nervous about the late president’s alleged links to various ne’er-do-wells. These claims are by no means confirmed, so we should be careful about jumping to conclusions, but it suggests that, at minimum, the US government is indirectly responsible for the central triggering event that led to the current situation, and at worst, should more evidence come to light, that it was directly responsible for it.

Once Moïse was dead, the US government and the “international community” it leads steadfastly backed acting prime minister Ariel Henry, who only holds the office because he was chosen by the United States and its European allies, not Haitians themselves.

Since then, he has postponed an election he knew he would lose, meted out repression, and generally clung to power without a constitutional mandate, popular legitimacy, or a full parliament, with the terms of its last elected officials having expired this year. Evidence has even surfaced that Henry himself was involved in Moïse’s assassination. While Henry has ostensibly requested foreign intervention to deal with the gangs, his pleas were also triggered by a wave of popular unrest against his September 2022 announcement that the government would no longer subsidize fuel.

At the same time, Washington and its partners have ignored alternative, Haitian-led proposals for resolving the political crisis, which has wound up allowing Henry to stay in power and prolonged Haiti’s state of lawlessness, which in turn gave the gangs more time and ideal conditions to establish their control over the country. Most prominently, more than 650 Haitian organizations and figures — including its major political parties, labor unions, human rights and activist groups, churches, and even businesses — backed the August 2021 Montana Accord, which laid out the timeline and structure for a two-year-long democratic transition; a way out, in other words, from the current impasse.

The US government has simply ignored it, choosing instead to offer unquestioning support to the hated Henry. As no less than the Council on Foreign Relations has put it:

“A lack of robust support for the most credible Haitian plan on the table promotes the belief that foreign actors support an interim and future government only with Ariel Henry in the lead, rather than one led by civil society through its transition plan.”

In fact, Washington and the UN have backed an alternative, government-proposed accord from last December, which most of the country’s major parties did not sign, and which has been criticized as simply propping up the prime minister.

Foreign Fingerprints

Several of the crises making up Haiti’s perfect storm have been exacerbated or were directly caused by past US policy choices. Take Haiti’s crippling fuel shortage. For years, Haiti was one of a number of poor Caribbean countries benefiting from Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program set up under the late president Hugo Chávez, which allowed them to purchase cheap oil on an extremely low-interest, twenty-five-year-long payment plan. The collapse in oil prices in the first half of the 2010s that dented the Venezuelan economy undermined the program, and then it was killed entirely by the Donald Trump administration’s sanctions, all of which fed into Henry’s decision last year to hike fuel prices, as well as the government’s inability to overcome the gangs’ blockade on fuel sources.

The foreign fingerprints are especially visible when it comes to the ongoing cholera outbreak. Cholera was first introduced into Haiti in 2010 by UN peacekeeping forces sent into the country as part of an earlier foreign military intervention. That legacy, along with the rampant sexual assault committed by UN forces, is among the reasons why many Haitians, even now, fiercely oppose more overseas military meddling. They fear, very credibly, that a foreign intervention won’t make things better, but rather the exact opposite.

As Amnesty International has pointed out, Kenyan forces don’t exactly carry a sterling record of safeguarding human rights, having been accused of excessive force, arbitrary arrests, and the killing of protesters and children, among other things. The fact that they don’t speak the local language in Haiti makes confusion and misunderstanding all the more likely, raising the risk that forces will fail to distinguish between gang members and ordinary civilians.

This is among the concerns listed by former US ambassador to Haiti Daniel Foote — who resigned in protest from the Biden administration on September 21 — alongside the possibility that international military force will end up being viewed as foreign invaders entrenching Henry’s rule, which could spur violence against the UN-authorized troops. Foote argues that, like previous interventions into Haiti, the present one will at best stabilize the situation in the near term, while leading to much worse circumstances in the long term. Haitian-American groups have called on Joe Biden to instead withdraw his support for Henry to force him to seriously negotiate with the political opposition.

Maybe the worst fears of Foote and other detractors won’t end up coming true and the pattern will be broken. But whatever happens, keep in mind that what we’re seeing now in Haiti was far from inevitable, and that the road to the place where foreign intervention appears the only viable solution is paved with countless decisions that much of the public probably never heard about — which is exactly the point.

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Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Featured image is from Silent Crow News

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***

Executive Summary

Rasmussen Reports has just released yet another devastating survey about the COVID vaccine.

Their latest survey, released at 10:30am EST on November 2, confirms (yet again) that the COVID vaccine is a train wreck, the biggest healthcare disaster in our lifetime.

The key conclusions:

1. 47% personally know someone who was killed by the COVID virus
2. 24% personally know someone who was killed by the COVID vaccine.

3. 42% said it was somewhat likely or very likely they would join a major class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies for vaccine side effects. That would make it the largest class action in US history by a long shot.

The implications are stunning:

1. 56% of people who got vaccinated are or were vaccine injured in some way. This is because 42% want to sue but only 75% were vaccinated. So 42/75=56%. That is is unprecedented; a complete train wreck for a vaccine that was touted as “safe and effective.”
2. If you believe 1M people died from COVID, then this poll suggests that 500K people died from the COVID vaccine (computed as 24/47×1.1M killed from COVID virus using the two numbers above from the survey).

When the 911 terrorist attacks killed almost 3,000 people, it was major news. When the US government kills 500,000 Americans, there are no headlines and no investigations. This is the biggest story in America today.

Bottom line: Heads should roll. Now. Let the finger-pointing begin!

Introduction 

Earlier this year, I suggested to Rasmussen that it might be interesting to take a second look at COVID vaccine injuries.

They did.

Why? Because they are one of the few honest polling firms in the US. Nobody else wants to know about vaccine injuries and deaths. Fact check that one.

And the results are stunning as you’ll see below.

Survey Result Data 

The full results (Excel spreadsheet which includes cross-tabs)

Note how the answers are very consistent regardless of demographic (scroll horizontally).

Charts

Nearly half the people surveyed knew someone who died from the COVID virus

24% knew someone who died from the vaccine. Vax deaths are more often reported by unvaccinated people (only about 30% of vaccinated people are able to recognize a “vaccine death”). So if everyone was equally aware of these deaths, the numbers would be over 50% which is comparable to the number of deaths from COVID.

This is stunning. 42% were likely to join a class action lawsuit. This is a train wreck. This would be the biggest class action in US history. How can this happen with a vaccine that people were brainwashed into believing was safe and effective?

Implication to Pfizer and Moderna Stock 

I think this is more likely than not to eventually cause Moderna stock to crater.

The #1 reason: 42% want to sue the drug companies if they could. It would be the largest class action in US history. But Congress, whose job it is to protect the drug companies, forbids it. But Aaron Siri believes he can unravel the protection and has filed a lawsuit to make that happen. Siri doesn’t waste his time on cases he cannot win.

Here’s is a summary of the reasons:

Class action lawsuit is a stronger influencer than trust

This is likely much closer to the truth

36% of people who got a shot were injured! This aligns closely with the 42% who would join an injury lawsuit in the Rasmussen poll.

And apparently I am not alone in thinking that Moderna stock is headed downward:

X follower opinion on where Moderna is heading

Therefore, I have established a large short position on Moderna stock because I believe in putting my money where my mouth is, i.e., where I lose if I got it wrong.

And I dare anyone to invest a large sum in Moderna now. Who would with 42% of your customers livid about the product.

Financial markets have a way of exposing the truth, don’t they? All you have to do is look at Moderna’s stock price to determine whether the Rasmussen poll is reflecting the truth or not.

The very sad reality is much worse than Rasmussen’s poll indicates because around half the respondents couldn’t see a vaccine injury even if it hit them in their own family just like it did to Congressman Sean Casten whose 17 year old daughter Gwen tragically died unexpectedly in a manner 100% consistent with a vaccine death. See this article and this article. Did they ever rule out the COVID vaccine in Gwen’s death. No. They didn’t even test for it. They didn’t want to know. Why don’t they want to know? They urged their daughter to take the vaccine that killed her. They wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they learned the truth. So they didn’t look.

Even worse, I called Sean Casten’s office to find out the date Gwen was last vaccinated in order to expose the truth so the speculation would be over.

They said it was “Confidential.” Really? Why is that??? If she wanted to go to a restaurant, she’d have to show her vaccine card.

Why is it suddenly confidential now after her death??

The Last Survey 

This is from Rasmussen’s earlier survey which was nearly 1 year ago. Do you see how the results match up?

A good scientific study produces repeatable results. And that’s exactly what we have here. A repeatable result.

The inescapable conclusion is of course that the vaccine killed at least half as many people as COVID did.

Which means the COVID vaccines have killed at least 500,000 Americans if you accept the 1M dead from COVID. Meanwhile the CDC still thinks only 9 people or so have been killed by the mRNA vaccines.

But the alternate math is that over half actually know someone who died from the vaccine, but only around half know how to spot a vaccine death (and it is near 0 if you are a member of the press writing about a death). So that means that vaccine deaths are at least comparable to COVID deaths. But COVID deaths were inflated by at least 2X (because hospitals got paid when they reported a COVID death because the government was trying to encourage hospitals to kill people so they labeled everything they could a COVID death to maximize revenue). So we’re realistically looking at around 500,000 deaths caused by the vaccine if we put on our red pill glasses.

If that is true, how can these results be so consistent one year later with a completely different population sample?

Someone is lying to you. But the mainstream media and medical community do not care to know who is telling the truth. They basically follow whatever the CDC says, even though it is disconnected from reality and even though the CDC refuses to allow anyone to challenge them. When I tried, I got ghosted very quickly.

This is from almost a year ago. Compare with the current results. They are very close. It means that around 500,000 people were killed by the vaccine.

Limitations of the Survey 

75% of the public is vaccinated. Vaccinated people are relatively poor in assessing vaccine deaths. The 25% figure is thus under-reported and it is more likely that the vaccines have killed at least as many people as COVID if not more.

How Credible Is the Study?

Very. The 25% matches the 28% polled nearly 1 year ago. So the results are repeatable.

The poll is subject to the ability of people to assess a vaccine injury or death which means it undercounts vaccine injury.

Click here to read the full article.

Here is the link to the Rasmussen Report.

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Author’s Introductory Note 

Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War.” A complete blockade on the Gaza Strip was initiated on October 9, 2023 consisting in blocking and obstructing the importation of food, water, fuel, and essential commodities to 2.3 million Palestinians. It’s an outright crime against humanity. It’s genocide. 

Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack”?

Was it a “False Flag” Attack by a faction within Hamas (supported by Mossad and US intelligence) which was intent upon justifying Netanyahu’s all out war against Palestine? That Hamas faction was co-opted and bribed by Mossad.

In the words of Netanyahu: 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas, …this is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

(Benjamin Netanyahu, statement to his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “quoted by Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

At this stage we have scanty evidence regarding who was behind the Hamas attack. False flag agendas are carefully planned intelligence operations. 

The following article, which is of relevance to the Hamas Al Aqsa Storm attack, examines the logic of a “false flag agenda” formulated in 1962 by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as a means to justify an invasion and all-out war against Cuba. 

The fundamental premise of Operation Northwoods was to trigger civilian deaths in the U.S. as a justification for military intervention (“on humanitarian grounds”). That same diabolical “false flag” premise largely characterizes Netanyahu’s all-out war against Palestine. 

Operation Northwoods was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the support of US intelligence. The logic of this false flag plan was

“to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba”. 

“Casualty Lists Would Cause a Helpful Wave of Indignation”.

President John F. Kennedy refused to carry out “Operation Northwoods.” That happened a year before his assassination in November 1963.

The secret documents pertaining to Operation Northwoods were declassified more than 15 years ago.

Read them carefully. Netanyahu’s war on the People of Palestine is a “copy and paste” of “Operation Northwoods.”

While the implementation of Operation Northwoods was shelved, its fundamental (diabolical) premise of using civilian deaths (described by the Pentagon as a “massive casualty producing event”) as a justification for military intervention (“on humanitarian grounds”) remains of utmost relevance.

This article was first published in 2016.

We are solidarity with the People of Palestine. Our thoughts are with the people of Palestine and Israel who are the innocent victims of the Netanyahu government’s treasonous and criminal agenda. 

Michel Chossudovsky, October 11, 2023 

***

Under a secret 1962 US Joint Chiefs of Staff entitled Operation Northwoods, civilians in the Cuban community in Miami were to be killed as part of a covert operation. The objective was to trigger a “helpful wave of indignation in US newspapers”.

The killings and “acts of terrorism” were then to be blamed on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

The objective of this sinister plan –which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and  President J. F. Kennedy– refused to carry out, was to drum up public support for a  war against Cuba.

“In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. 

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and,“casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.” 

…. The documents show “the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,” writes Bamford. (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba – ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted (See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001)

It was a false flag operation: kill civilians in US cities and blame it on the communist government of Fidel Castro with a view to providing a pretext to invade Cuba on humanitarian grounds.

Do the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris have a similar logic?  Civilian death used to buttress support for the implementation of police state measures against ISIS, an illusive enemy based in Raqqa, northern Syria?

 

The Northwoods 1962 document was titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”. 

“The Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

These proposals – part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose – included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, 

developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),”

faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.” (National Security Archives, pdf, emphasis added)

(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf, To access all the declassified documents of Operation Northwoods click here

The underlying premise still prevails under the US sponsored war on terrorism.

While the implementation of Operation Northwoods was shelved, its fundamental (diabolical) premise of using civilian deaths (described by the Pentagon as a “massive casualty producing event”) as a justification for military intervention (“on humanitarian grounds”) or the implementation of far-reaching police state measures is still of utmost relevance.

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Beneath the “shock and awe” geopolitics of the Bush- Blair “humanitarian crusade”, Felicity Arbuthnot reflects on the indescribable barbarity of the 2004 Fallujah massacre, resulting in countless deaths and destruction.

And it has happened ever since. They are killing our children. Ask Madeleine Albright. It’s called “Responsibility to Protect”:

“We’re the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman’s war here …”

This article was published almost 12 years ago on September 27, 2011

***

“When words fail us, we need to look in to the silence in order to find the answers.” May Ayres.

Sometimes a poem is a soul on a page, sometimes a scream. May Ayres sculptures are also both.

“God’s Wars”, her first solo exhibition since 1985, in a historic East London church: “presents meditations on war and peace, selected from her ‘War of Aggression’ series, which has been created out of anger over the last seven years.”

Only the obtuse would ask where the title came from for these searing “ceramic pictures”, displaying towering compassion for the battered, broken, degraded victims – the face of indescribable barbarity generated by the “we pray together” Bush and Blair’s “Crusade.”

“Demonic Principles”, is the tooled up US soldier, standing over a piles of small, naked forms, buttocks facing the viewer, feet twisted, each body seemingly foetal curved, utterly vulnerable, perhaps attempting helpless self-protecting. The soldier is two headed, one a fanged demon. Abu Ghraib brought to account – in a house of God.

“A Gentleman’s War”, is a quote taken from US Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, Commander of a Marine battalion, in Fallujah’s 2004 massacre, which destroyed seventy percent of homes in the ancient, western Iraq city: “We’re the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman’s war here …”

The bombing of Fallujah

Ayres’ response is a woman (46 cm) her grief palpable, touchable, one hand over her face – the other holding a tiny severed hand in the palm.

An infant form, with little hands of exquisite perfection, seemingly huddled in a damaged pot, urn, or maybe even returned to the womb – the latter, a theme of protection depicted by another of sculptures greats, Iraq’s Mohammad Ghani Hickmet, during the bombings and embargo – is entitled: “Even the Children.”

An eloquent riposte to then US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who said of Fallujah:

“Innocent civilians have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting in to trouble.”

The assault on Fallujah has been compared to Guernica, Dresden, even Hiroshima, given the horror of the weapons used and their lasting genetic and cancer causing legacy. What is certain, is that there was no place to hide.

“Indifference”, is a casual, slouched group: Condoleezza Rice, possibly General Mark “it is not productive to count Iraqi lives” Kimmit, and including one not unlike Hillary Clinton.

An army boot is in danger of, un-noticingly, stepping on an infant’s face. Ms Rice, seems to have grown a gargoyle-like witness, from her shoulder. The title is inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s quotation: “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”

“We think the Price is Worth it”, is entitled for the then Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who opined that the lives of half a million Iraqi children, were just that, on “60 Minutes” (12th May 1996.) The response is a figure beyond despair, her face in her hands (46 cm high) a figure visitors to Iraq over the years, know so well – so helplessly.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, QC., has a special place. He is kneeling, hands clasped, in immaculate black dress dinner suit, white shirt and bow tie. Appropriately, two faced, one pious, smug, the other manic, demonic. He kneels on a wasteland of bodies, faces, despairing, reposed, bewildered, entombed, enwombed – dead.

Behind him, from an ancient iron stairwell, fixed to the hewn stones, silent witness to near two centuries, hangs a noose.

The title is: “ … and by the way. God Bless you all …”

The young man, stripped to the waist on a near Mesapotamian plinth, doubled over, has his arm twisted behind him, by a vast American soldier, speaking not his language, without knowledge of his culture. The viewer has to stand underneath and look up, to see his youthful, bewildered face.

Amal’s damaged, beautiful, vulnerable, face, slender body, has crept in from Palestine and December 2008-January 2009’s assault on the Gaza Strip’s population, walled in and massacred by a people who were donated by Arthur Balfour: “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … ”

Not permission for destruction of the Palestinians, their homes, rights, brains, lives..

“Operation Cast Lead”, left her, as diagnosed by an Israeli doctor, having to:”… learn to live with the shrapnel in her head.” Amal means Hope.

 

The sinister figure of John Negroponte, allegedly having been responsible for unspeakable atrocities as US Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980’s and whose arrival as Ambassador in Iraq in 2003 coincided with them there, slumps, pointy faced and dead eyed in the foyer, as the worn, ancients steps are mounted to the exhibition.

Just one plinth is temporarily empty. It is of: “Barbarity”, a tiny figure to touch any heart, unless stone. A broken headed baby, shrouded, each shred of which has a carefully written scream of wars’ crimes, illegalities and inhumanities.

It is being displayed in a tribute to Mohammad Ghani Hikmet, who died, exiled by liberation, the day after the 11th September commemorations this month.

“Confrontational, eloquent and devastatingly human, the finely crafted depictions of barbaric acts of oppression in her hybrids of sculpture, drawing, portraiture and caricature express her attempts to address some of the costs of war cut adrift by conventional news narratives.”

These remarkable works are from the hand of humanity, to humanity itself. Departed, dispatched, or struggling to survive under imposed “freedom.” From Earlier duplicities in Central America, to Palestine and Blair’s deviant Christianity. A searing compassion and anger shines from these figures. A wake up call which should be the conscience of nations.

For those in, or visiting London, until 7th October, Saint John on Bethnal Green ( moments from Bethnal Green Undergound.)

Veteran War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Associate Editor of Global Research

Notes

http://www.stjohnonbethnalgreen.org/arts/belfry.html  

http://www.mayayres.com/  

Barbarity : http://www.mayayres.com/aggression2-barbarity.html

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***

The BBC’s Lucy Williamson was taken once again this week to view the terrible destruction at a kibbutz community just outside Gaza attacked on October 7. As we have been shown so many times before, the Israeli homes were riddled with automatic fire, both inside and out. Sections of concrete wall had holes in them, or had collapsed entirely. And parts of the buildings that were still standing were deeply charred. It looked like a small snapshot of the current horrors in Gaza.

There is a possible reason for those similarities – one that the BBC is studiously failing to report, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources, including the Israeli media. Instead the BBC is sticking resolutely to a narrative crafted for them, and the rest of the western media, by the Israeli military: that Hamas alone caused all this destruction.

Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.

Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?

And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?

A separate question that good journalists ought to be asking is this: What was the purpose of such damage? What did the Palestinian militants hope to achieve by it?

The implicit answer the media is supplying is also the answer the Israeli military wants western publics to hear: that Hamas engaged in an orgy of gratuitious killing and savagery because … well, let’s say the quiet part out loud: because Palestinians are inherently savage.

With that as the implicit narrative, western politicians have been handed a licence to cheerlead Israel as it murders a Palestinian child in Gaza every few minutes.

Savages only understand the language of savagery, after all.

Brutal Tango

For this reason alone, any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be increasingly wary of simply repeating the Israeli military’s claims about what happened on October 7. Certainly, they should not credulously regurgitate the latest agitprop from the IDF press office, as the BBC is so evidently doing.

What we know from a growing body of evidence gleaned from the Israeli media and Israeli eyewitnesses – carefully laid out, for example, in this report from Max Blumenthal – is that the Israeli military was completely blindsided by that day’s events. Heavy artillery, including tanks and attack helicopters, was called in to deal with Hamas. That appears to have been a straightforward decision in regard to the military bases Hamas had overrun.

Israel has a long-standing policy of seeking to prevent Israeli soldiers from being taken captive – chiefly, because of the high price Israeli society insists on paying to ensure soldiers are returned. For decades, the military’s so-called “Hannibal procedure” has directed Israeli troops to kill fellow soldiers rather than allow them to be taken captive. For the same reason, Hamas expends a great deal of energy in trying to find innovative ways to seize soldiers.

The two sides are essentially engaged in a brutal tango in which each understands the other’s dance moves.

Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza.

To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day.

Charred Bodies

But what about the situation in the kibbutz communities? By the time the army arrived and was in position, Hamas was well dug in. It had taken the inhabitants as hostages inside their own homes. Israeli eyewitness testimony and media reports suggest Hamas was almost certainly trying to negotiate safe passage back into Gaza, using the Israeli civilians as human shields. The civilians were the Hamas fighters’ only ticket out, and they could be converted later into bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

The evidence – from Israeli media reports and eyewitnesses, as well as a host of visual clues from the crime scene itself – tell a far more complex story than the one presented nightly on the BBC.

Did the Israeli military fire into the Hamas-controlled civilian homes in the same fashion as it had fired into its own military bases, and with the same disregard for the safety of Israelis inside?

Was the goal in each case to prevent at all costs Hamas taking hostages whose release would require a very high price from Israel?

Kibbutz Be’eri has been a favoured destination for BBC reporters keen to illustrate Hamas’ barbarity.

It is where Lucy Williamson headed again this week. And yet none of her reporting highlighted comments made to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper by Tuval Escapa, the kibbutz’s security coordinator. He said Israeli military commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages”.

That echoed the testimony of Yasmin Porat, who sought shelter in Be’eri from the nearby Nova music festival. She told Israeli Radio that once Israeli special forces arrived:

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”

Are the images of charred bodies presented by Williamson, accompanied by a warning of their graphic, upsetting nature, incontrovertible proof that Hamas behaved like monsters, bent on the most twisted kind of vengeance? Or might those blackened remains be evidence that Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters burned alongside each other, after they were engulfed in flames caused by Israeli shelling of the houses?

Israel will not agree to an independent investigation so a definitive answer will never be forthcoming. But that does not absolve the media of their professional and moral duty to be cautious.

‘Hamas as Savages’

In the case of Al-Ahli, the media were only too ready to cast aside all the evidence that the hospital had been hit by an Israeli strike immediately Israel contested the claim. Instead journalists hurriedly amplified Israel’s counter-allegation that a Palestinian rocket had fallen on the hospital. Most of the media moved on after concluding “The truth may never be clear”, or even less credibly, that Palestinian militants were the most likely culprits.

In telling contrast, the western media have not been willing to raise even a single question about what happened on October 7. They have enthusiastically attributed every horror that day to Hamas. They have ignored the reality of utter chaos that reigned for many hours and the potential for poor, desperate and morally dubious decision-making by the Israeli military.

In fact, the media have gone much further. In advancing the narrative of “Hamas as savages”, they have promoted obvious fictions, such as the story that “Hamas beheaded 40 babies”. That piece of fake news was even taken up briefly by US President Joe Biden, before it was quietly walked back by his officials.

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***

Craig Mokhiber, a top United Nations human rights official who stepped down at the weekend over the organisation’s response to the war in Gaza, has called on the UN to attach the same standards to Israel as it does when assessing human rights violations in other countries around the world.

Mokhiber, who was the director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in his October 28 resignation letter that Israel’s military actions in Gaza were “textbook genocide” and accused the UN of again “failing” to act, referring to previous genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Myanmar.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights disputes Mr. Mokhiber’s characterisation that he resigned. It claims he retired.

Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer, had been with the UN since 1992 and worked previously as a human rights adviser in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories.

At least 8,805 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7 after the armed group Hamas launched a surprise assault on Israel, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 people captive.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial-settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt,” Mokhiber said in his letter to the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the UN, Gabriel Elizondo, sat down with Mokhiber in New York.

He asked him about his assessment of the situation in Gaza and the chances of a two-state solution.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Al Jazeera: Why did you come to conclusion that the situation in Gaza amounts to a genocide?

Craig Mokhiber: Usually the most difficult part of proving genocide is intent because there has to be an intention to destroy in whole, or in part, a particular group. In this case, the intent by Israeli leaders has been so explicitly stated and publicly stated – by the prime minister, by the president, by senior cabinet ministers, by military leaders – that that is an easy case to make. It’s on the public record.

It’s important that we start using the language that the law sets out, just as you know, in recent times, every major international human rights organisation, Israeli human rights organisations, Palestinian human rights organisations, United Nations human rights mechanisms, independent mechanisms have found that the situation in Israel Palestine amounts to the crime of apartheid.

The UN needs to get used to addressing these particular violations, just as we have in other situations.

Al Jazeera: When we asked the secretary-general and his office about genocide, he won’t use that term. He says a previous secretary-general said that that is for courts to decide. Do you think that the secretary-general should start using the term ‘genocide’ when it comes to what we’re seeing in Gaza?

Mokhiber: If we can allege that we see war crimes, crimes against humanity, as we have often done, there’s no reason to exclude, where we see very strong evidence, the possibility of genocide being committed, and I think you’re going to be hearing that term more and more in connection with what we’re witnessing in Gaza.

But institutions, of course, have to go through the necessary steps before they can make that pronouncement. As of today, I am an independent citizen, not carrying the institution on my shoulders. And I feel quite confident as a human rights lawyer in saying that what I see unfolding in Gaza and beyond is genocide.

Al Jazeera:  [US President] Joe Biden has recently said that after this conflict is over, we need to get back to a two-state solution. In your letter, you say the mantra of a two-state solution has become, and I quote, an open joke in the corridors of the United Nations where we are sitting right now. Is it really an open joke in the corridors of the United Nations?

Mokhiber: Yes, and it has been for quite a long time, if you ask somebody in their official capacity about the two states, and they will repeat that phrase over and over again as the official position of the United Nations. Indeed, that is the official position of the United States. But nobody who follows these circumstances either from the political side or from the human rights side believes that a two-state solution is possible anymore.

There’s nothing left for a Palestinian state that would be sustainable or just or were possible in any respect, and everyone knows that.

And secondly, that solution never dealt with the problem of the fundamental human rights of Palestinians. So for example, it would leave them as second-class citizens without full human rights inside what is now Israel proper.

And so when people are not talking from official talking points, you hear increasingly about a one-state solution.

And what that means is beginning to advocate for the principle of equality of human rights instead of these old political taglines, that would mean a state in which we’ll have equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews, based upon human rights and based upon the rule of law. It is what we call for in every other circumstance around the world. And the question is, why is the United Nations not going for that in Israel and Palestine?

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***

Fears are mounting that Gaza’s hospitals, many already on the brink of collapse, may come under intensified attack as the Israeli military moves deeper into the enclave.

In recent days, Israeli warplanes have been circling closer to two hospitals in Gaza City – al-Shifa and al-Quds – bombing areas in their immediate vicinity. Both hospitals have received orders by the Israeli military to evacuate, a demand that doctors and independent experts say is impossible to fulfil, given the large numbers of patients in their wards, including patients on life support.

The looming threat comes as hospitals across the besieged enclave, deprived of essential fuel and medicine, are collapsing. Sixteen out of 35 are no longer functioning. Hospitals that are still running warn that once generators shut down, they will be unable to keep ventilators, incubators and dialysis machines working and will effectively turn into morgues.

What is happening to Gaza’s hospitals? To what extent are they protected by international law?

Which Hospitals Are Under Threat in Gaza?

In recent days, al-Quds and al-Shifa hospitals in Gaza City and the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza have seen attacks in their immediate vicinity. They are just three of 13 hospitals across the strip that have been repeatedly ordered to evacuate despite treating thousands of patients.

Speaking after the attacks near al-Quds, Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, told Al Jazeera:

“Evacuating them means killing them.”

The World Health Organization said striking the hospital, which is treating hundreds of patients and houses 14,000 displaced Palestinians, would be illegal.

Al-Shifa, which means “house of healing” in Arabic, is the largest hospital in the strip, currently treating thousands of patients. The Israeli military has alleged Hamas has built several military complexes under it. Hamas has rejected the allegation.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “there is nowhere safe for these patients to go”. Any evacuation would, it said, “be a death sentence”. Hospitals are also sheltering about 117,000 displaced people whose houses have been bombed.

Last week, Israeli bombs damaged part of the cancer ward at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. On Wednesday, the hospital announced it had been forced to close.

“We tell the world: ‘Don’t leave cancer patients to a certain death due to the hospital being out of service,’” hospital director Subhi Sukeyk said.

Has Israel Said It Will Attack Hospitals?

“What we see is they are preparing the public for [the] bombing of hospitals,” Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

On Monday, in what appeared to be a preemptive deflection of anticipated criticism, the Israeli military released a video alleging that al-Shifa was a Hamas command and control centre, acting as “one of the headquarters” of the group’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades. Last week, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari presented a 3D map of alleged Hamas centres and tunnels beneath the hospital.

The latest onslaught on Gaza’s hospitals follows last month’s explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, which has yet to be independently investigated. Palestinian authorities said the blast killed nearly 500 people, and they pointed the finger at Israel.

Israel blamed Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but its evidence, including footage of a missile filmed 40 minutes after the blast and a verifiably doctored recording of a purported conversation between Hamas operatives that linguists found to be syntactically unusual, has cast doubt on its claims.

Al-Ahli had also received multiple warnings to evacuate before the blast.

To What Extent Are Hospitals Protected by International Law?

International humanitarian law is based on the 1949 Geneva Conventions, signed after the horrors of the Second World War. Under the conventions, hospitals are considered “civilian objects” and receive de facto protection, said Srinivas Burra, associate professor in international humanitarian law at South Asian University in New Delhi.

The 1977 Additional Protocols to the conventions set out specific provisions for hospitals. Article 12 clearly states: “Medical units shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack.”

However, Article 13 then goes on to outline exceptions, stating that medical units shall cease to be protected if “used to commit, outside their humanitarian function, acts harmful to the enemy”. In such cases, it says, warnings and “a reasonable time limit” should be given.

“The law avows the protection and then disavows it,” Gordon said. He said hospitals could lose their entitlement to protection in cases in which they are used to shield fighters or store arms or if they are located close to legitimate military targets.

There are also questions of proportionality, whether the military aim justifies the harm caused.

As Gordon put it, “the higher the value of the military target, the more people you’re allowed to kill.” Hamas’s headquarters would, in his view, be considered a high-value target.

“You can inflate a military target and you can deflate the damage you create,” he said.

“The protection of hospitals is not absolute. It can be compromised if it is being used for military purposes,” Burra said.

However, he pointed out that it is it not sufficient for an enemy to warn an entire hospital treating the sick and wounded to evacuate.

Warnings would have to be issued directly to combatants, allowing sufficient time to comply and proving they were still present before attacking.

“In the current situation, it looks like no such warning has been given,” he said.

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Featured image: Palestinians who fled their homes gather at al-Quds Hospital after Israeli air attacks on the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City on October 31, 2023 [Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE]

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***

 

A GP with an unblemished career has been suspended for six months over ‘vitriolic’ comments she made about Covid and vaccines. 

Londonderry-based Dr Mary McCloskey claimed the pandemic was a ‘figment’ of the media and the Government and that jabs don’t work and were killing people. 

She also claimed tests and face masks were being used as a psychological weapons to spread fear and experts were ‘laughing’ at the public via how they named variants of the virus. 

In one of her most inflammatory statements on Covid vaccines, she claimed parents were being ‘told to line up our children to get something that might kill them, to protect them from something that can’t kill them’.

Dr McCloskey, who also goes by her middle name Anne, made the comments in a series of videos uploaded online between August and November 2021.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing held late last month heard how, in a video on August 21, she claimed the dangers of the pandemic had been invented and promoted to the public. 

‘This whole hype has largely been a figment of the media and the government and their lying scientific advisers’ deceptions,’ she said. 

In another she claimed Covid vaccines weren’t being used to protect people’s health but instead harm them. 

‘Let people see that these injections are killing people; they are harming people; they are not preventing sickness and they are not about health,’ she said.

The 66-year-old also claimed people who received Covid jabs had done so under duress being ‘coerced, bribed or bullied’ to have the injection. 

Click here to read the full article on Daily Mail Online.

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Featured image: Londonderry based GP Dr Mary McCloskey has been suspended for six months for a series of ‘vitriolic’ comments made in videos shared online that a tribunal said had the potential to undermine public health advice, other medics and discourage people from getting Covid jabs (Source: DMO)

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***

 

 

 

 

Settlements in the region of Gaza date back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, noted a Jordanian archaeologist, highlighting that the Early to Middle Bronze occupation was documented at Tell es-Sakan and Tell el-‘Ajul.  

“During the 14th century BC, Gaza was Egypt’s administrative capital in the Levant. Later on, during the Iron Age [2nd-1st Millenium BC], Gaza had become one of the five Philistine cities known as Pentapolis,” noted Mohammad Najar, who received a PhD degree in History and Archaeology at Moscow Institute of Archaeology.

The region continued to be important during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Nabataean, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods. 

Furthermore, Gaza was an important trade hub between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, and during the Roman/Byzantine period, Gaza became a Christian bishopric.

“The region had become part of the Muslim Empire in AD638,” Najjar said, adding that the most of the known sites are located to the north of Wadi Gaza, the area that has been exposed to severe and systematic destruction by Israeli occupying forces. 

The significant sites include a necropolis dated to the Roman period, Tell Umm-‘Amer (St Hilarion monastery), a local saint who lived between AD291 and AD371.

“St Hilarion and St Porphyrius were credited for the conversion of the southern Palestine into Christianity. Three churches, among them St. Porphyrius had been already targeted along with 47 mosques, hospitals and thousands of homes and civilian targets,” Najjar underlined. 

The relentless bombardment had already destroyed countless homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, putting many archaeological and cultural sites of Gaza at a severe risk and threatening them with the total destruction, Najjar said.

Because of the continuing Israeli aggression on Gaza, Najjar thinks that the world should step up and voice its discontent.

“Heritage communities in the Arab World and the world at large should speak up against the destruction of these heritage sites, and above all, unspeakable atrocities against Palestinians, the custodians of this heritage,” Najjar underscored.

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Featured image: A mosaic at the church of St Stephen at Umm at-Rasas in Jordan depicts ancient Gaza (Photo courtesy of Mohammad Najjar)

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Israel has started a ground operation, albeit limited, in the north of Gaza.

This was a red line for pro-Iran resistance groups, and the results are starting to come.

Pro-Iran Hezbollah in Lebanon began hitting Israeli troops on the border, pro-Iran Houthis in Yemen started launching missiles, and pro-Iran resistance groups in Iraq and Syria started hitting US bases from the air.

In fact, Yemen, under the rule of the Houthis, became the first Arab country to declare war on Israel since the Yom Kippur war in 1973.

Sheikh Ekrem Al Kaabi, Secretary General of the pro-Iran Al Najaba Movement in Iraq:

“Iraqi Islamic resistance decided to liberate Iraq militarily, this issue has been resolved, thank God for the mujahideen. He declared war against the USA, saying, “There will be no stopping, no ceasefire, no withdrawal.”

The speech of Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, which is Israel’s biggest nightmare after the heavy slap it received in 2006, will be made at 3 o’clock on Friday, is eagerly awaited.

The first bits of information are that Hezbollah will officially enter the war.

See what Mideast Spectator says:

“Anyone who has been following the war since October 7 knows that all parties are anxiously awaiting the next move of the resistance axis groups, especially Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, which pushed Israel out of Lebanon in the 1980s and defended the South against another invasion attempt in 2006, is a much stronger and more capable enemy for the Israeli army than Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Since the beginning of the war, unofficial statements and media reports have been circulating claiming that Israel’s ground intervention in Gaza would be considered Hezbollah’s red line.

Although these statements are not official, many of you wondered when Hezbollah would actually step in.

Hezbollah has been attacking IDF positions on the Lebanese border every day without exception since October 8. Nearly 50 martyrs have been announced, and we are curious about the number of Israeli casualties (IDF announced that 11 of its soldiers died only yesterday). In addition to the deaths, many Israeli army vehicles and tanks were also destroyed.

But there are hints that something else is brewing.

Something bigger.

It’s unprecedented.

Every day for the past 24 days, Hezbollah has consistently and successfully targeted Israeli surveillance and surveillance equipment along the Lebanese border.

Dozens of radar stations, night vision cameras, infrared sensors, long-range communication towers, telescopes and antennas have been destroyed by the Lebanese group in the past few weeks.

By disabling most of the IDF’s observation network, these operations effectively blinded the Israelis in the north, especially in Metula and surrounding settlements.

We may begin to wonder why Hezbollah places such emphasis on this modus operandi, rather than simply killing soldiers or destroying tanks.

Now that the IDF has dedicated the majority of its forces to urban combat operations in Gaza, a unique opportunity arises in the north.

A project that can shape the future of the region. Hezbollah knows this and has been waiting for this moment for 17 years.

The North is now a complete blind spot and, based on current information, it is very likely that the real event is yet to come.

The only thing we can do is wait for Nasrallah’s speech on Friday (at 15.00), but there may be some surprises waiting for us. “All the signs are there.”

Yes, a big event is coming, its name is a regional war.

So what does the one-man regime in Turkey do?

Apart from rallies and demonstrations, that is!

The radar base in Kürecik, Malatya, which is responsible for monitoring Iran for Israel’s defense, is fully operational.

Just yesterday, two US B-1B bombers from Germany landed in Incirlik.

These giant planes are used for massive bombing raids.

The reason for the planes’ arrival was announced as refueling.

The real reason is the war against Lebanon and Syria.

And for now…

Then maybe Iran is the target, we will get there soon.

As you know, the USA has a huge naval fleet stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The one-man regime in Turkey continues its membership in NATO, amid slogans of Mehmetçik (epithet of Turksh soldier) to Gaza.

This could be the only reason for not making peace with Assad in Syria.

Especially in a period like this, when a major war is approaching again on our borders.

But the real danger lies in a possible war with Iran.

How? Let me explain.

In his statement on October 28, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Spokesperson Ramazan Sharif warned that the war started by Israel in Gaza could include US forces and said,

“All US bases and flights in the region are under observation and control. The military support operations provided by the US to the Zionists “We are watching and following,” he said.

This was perceived as a veiled threat.

Although later, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, called for economic sanctions instead of war and asked all Muslim countries to sanction the Tel Aviv regime and stop oil and goods exports to the occupied regions.

Iran softens initial harsh statements.

He says that he will not go to war for other nations.

However, things are very complicated in the field and it is not clear what will happen.

For example, the spokesman for the pro-Iran Ansarallah movement in Yemen claimed that United Arab Emirates warplanes carried out attacks on Gaza.

China and Russia support Palestine and declare that they will stand by Syria and Iran.

Russia certainly has a score to settle with Israel, which supported Kiev in the war in Ukraine.

China, on the other hand, is happy that the war has moved to West Asia instead of Taiwan and the South China Sea.

It has already started the negotiation process with the USA, which is in a difficult situation and cannot wage a war on three fronts.

But he is making statements assuring that he will support Iran and that its territorial integrity will not be damaged. These are different from previous middle-of-the-road diplomatic discourses.

The danger lies here: What will be the consequences, even if there is a small possibility, if a war breaks out and the US and NATO start using bases in Turkey and Iran is also targeted?

Suppose Iran hit Incirlik.

Russia and China also stepped into the field against the USA or provided the necessary weapons to pro-Iran supporters.

US pressure on Türkiye increased and the opportunity was seized to break Montreux agreement which protects Blacksea from NATO invasion.

Moreover, the Caucasus is already tense; Azerbaijan-Israel relations are known, Iran also supports Armenia.

What happens if Turkey and Iran eventually come face to face and Turkey is assigned the role of Iraq in 1980 and Erdoğan is assigned the role of Saddam in 1980?

The consequences of this would be catastrophic.

Nearly 2 million people died in the Iran-Iraq war in 8 years, the borders did not change, but Iraq was completely doomed to the USA.

As a result, the weak Iraqi carrion crow became a victim of US imperialism and breakaway puppet state Kurdistan was established.

Shouldn’t we look at history and learn from it?

However, the 1998 Adana Agreement and the 2017 Astana Process were always carried out in cooperation between Iran and Turkey against terrorism, and very important results were obtained.

The most important thing for Turkey to do is to prevent the use of imperialist bases on its territory against its neighbors and regional countries and to make immediate peace with Damascus.

This is the only way to support Palestine.

Unless he does this, what happens will be nothing but empty words.

*

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NAFLD is characterized by excess fat buildup in your liver. Without proper treatment, it can lead to serious liver problems including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring of the liver. NAFLD also increases the risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease

The first documented cases of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) didn’t come about until 1980. Today, NAFLD affects 32.4% of people globally, and it’s the most common cause of liver transplant in adults under the age of 50

NAFLD also affects up to 9.6% of American children aged 2 to 19, making it as common as asthma. In 15- to 19-year-olds, prevalence is as high as 17.3%. Prevalence among children 0 to 17 has risen 168.3% since 2017, with a particularly precipitous rise starting in 2020

The dramatic rise in NAFLD in early 2020 may in part be due to the COVID lockdowns, which had the effect of raising childhood obesity rates by 8.3% to 13.4%, depending on the age group

Maternal obesity and high consumption of diet soda and/or junk food during pregnancy have both been linked to NAFLD in offspring, and one theory is that artificial sweeteners may be programming the metabolism of the fetus to favor fat storage over energy production

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Fatty liver disease used to be a disease seen almost exclusively in the elderly, primarily heavy drinkers. The first documented cases of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) didn’t come until I was in medical school in 1980.¹ At the time, the researchers described it as a “hitherto unnamed liver disease of unknown cause.”

In June 2023, scientists proposed rebranding NAFLD to “metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease,” to highlight its relation to other metabolic conditions such as diabetes. What connects all metabolic conditions is that your body is not converting food to energy in an efficient manner.

In the video above, independent health researcher Jay Feldman investigates the true causes of NAFLD. This is Part 2 of an eight-part series. It’s like a master’s course on NAFLD, as he goes over virtually everything you could possibly want or need to know about it. If you or someone you know is currently struggling with NAFLD, I strongly encourage you to view all eight episodes.

In the featured episode, he explains why fructose is NOT the main culprit as commonly thought, how your liver produces fat from both fructose and dietary fats, and how impaired energy production in your mitochondria results in NAFLD.

What Is NAFLD?

NAFLD is characterized by excess fat buildup in your liver. Without proper treatment, it can lead to serious liver problems including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring of the liver.

NASH may lead to cirrhosis, which increases the risk of liver cancer, and end-stage liver disease. NAFLD also increases the risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, which is the No. 1 cause of death in people with NAFLD. NAFLD often has no symptoms, although it may cause fatigue, jaundice, swelling in the legs and abdomen, mental confusion and more. 

Your liver carries out more than 500 functions that are essential for health. This includes the production of bile (which breaks down dietary fats and carries away waste), converting excess glucose into glycogen, and regulating amino acids in the blood. It’s also important for detoxification, helping to clear your blood of toxins.

The good news is that your liver, more than almost any other tissue in your body, has phenomenal regeneration capabilities. Even if 90% of it has been removed, it can regrow to its normal size. NAFLD can also be successfully reversed in its early stages via lifestyle changes, like healthy eating and exercising.

NAFLD Prevalence Has Skyrocketed

Today, NAFLD affects 32.4% of people globally,² and it’s the most common cause of liver transplant in adults under the age of 50.³ NAFLD also affects up to 9.6% of American children aged 2 to 19,⁴making it as common as asthma.⁵ In 15- to 19-year-olds, prevalence is as high as 17.3%.⁶

What’s particularly strange is that the skyrocketing prevalence in children and teens is quite new. As illustrated in the graph below from Trilliant Health,⁷ prevalence of NAFLD has risen 168.3% since 2017, with a particularly precipitous rise starting in 2020.

Obesity Is a Primary Risk Factor for NAFLD

As reported in a March 2021 paper on pediatric NAFLD:⁸

“The largest risk factor for NAFLD is obesity. Obesity and NAFLD in children are often associated; however, they are not concomitant.

In a 2019 study in 408 children with obesity using whole liver magnetic resonance imaging–proton density fat fraction, the prevalence rate of NAFLD was 26.0%, or roughly one in every four children. In the Teen LABS study of adolescents with obesity severe enough to warrant weight loss surgery, the prevalence rate of NAFLD was higher at 59%.”

The dramatic rise in NAFLD in early 2020 may in part be due to the COVID lockdowns, which had the effect of raising childhood obesity rates by 8.3% to 13.4%, depending on the age group.⁹

Artificial Sweeteners May Impair Metabolism

That said, NAFLD also occurs in an estimated 8% of normal weight children.¹⁰ Inherited predisposition may be part of the problem. But the environment in utero can also influence a child’s risk of NAFLD,¹¹ and this is a far more likely explanation for the recent explosion in prevalence among children.

Maternal obesity and high consumption of diet soda and/or junk food during pregnancy have both been linked to NAFLD in offspring, and one theory is that artificial sweeteners may be programming the metabolism of the fetus to favor fat storage over energy production.¹²

Babies are also routinely fed unnaturally high amounts of sweeteners in infant formula and baby food. In recent years, the baby formula industry has started marketing formula made with corn syrup solids instead of lactose from cow’s milk. It’s said to be better for babies with sensitivity to lactose.

However, recent research¹³ suggests formula made with corn syrup solids significantly increases your child’s risk of obesity by age 4, and by extension NAFLD, and those who consume the highest amounts of formula have the highest risk.

So-called “transition formula” and “toddler milk” also contain higher amounts of sugar than regular cow’s milk. Both products are pure marketing inventions that have no nutritional basis. Meanwhile, research¹⁴ has shown that consumption of unsweetened cow’s milk is associated with a lower risk of NAFLD.

The Role of Diet

Indeed, our modern diet is probably the most important driver of this condition. As reported by The Washington Post:¹⁵

“… many doctors believe that our modern lifestyle — diet, the increase in sedentary activities related to technology and environmental exposures — is to blame. One of the liver’s jobs is to filter toxins, and when something in the body is out of balance, the organ can become damaged and fail …

A little fat in the liver is normal, but when more than 5% of its cells contain fat, the organ’s ability to do its job is impeded, and pediatric specialists say some children they treat have livers with 30 to 40% or even as high as 60% fat …

Some pediatric experts theorize there’s a mismatch between our genetics and the highly processed and sugary foods that have come to dominate childhood diets.

Nutritional surveys show that meals eaten by kids changed radically in a generation, going from very little ultra-processed foods in the early 1980s … to more than 67%¹⁶ in recent years. Such diets lead to hormonal changes and other stresses on our bodies.

‘It creates a time bomb, and it is killing our kids,’ said Barry M. Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”

The Washington Post goes on to cite a January 2022 systematic review¹⁷ that found “a parallel but delayed rise” in noncommunicable diseases with rising prevalence of ultraprocessed foods.

Between 1800 and 2019, processed and ultraprocessed foods rose from less than 5% to more than 60%. This radically altered the macronutrient content of our diets. Sugar and seed oil (or “vegetable oil”) consumption rose dramatically, while saturated fat from animals dropped.

Ditch the Fast Food to Protect Your Child’s Health

Of these, I believe the transition from saturated animal fats to seed oils has played the biggest role. As detailed in “Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet,” seed oil is the primary source of linoleic acid (LA), which destroys your mitochondrial function.

I’m convinced excessive LA consumption is the biggest contributor to chronic disease in the Western world, including NAFLD. To understand how LA undermines your health, and that of your children, please read through that article and watch the video included in it. Both provide a comprehensive overview of how LA drives chronic disease of all kinds.

To avoid LA, you’ll need to avoid processed foods, fast foods and most restaurant foods, and focus on real, whole, organically grown foods instead. Processed foods are also routinely contaminated with glyphosate, which can contribute to liver problems. Disturbingly, recent testing revealed 95% of school lunch items had detectable levels of glyphosate,¹⁸ so, if at all possible, provide your child with homemade lunches.

A shocking 100% of meals also contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Meanwhile, most of the meals were “abysmally low” in essential nutrients.

Fast food also contains extremely low amounts of essential nutrients, especially B vitamins. In fact, zero amounts of vitamin B9 or B12 were detected in the top 10 fast foods sampled.¹⁹

That’s rather remarkable, considering B12-rich foods include beef and chicken, both of which are staples in fast food, yet fast food beef and chicken provide no B12 at all! If that doesn’t convince you that fast food meat is nowhere near the same as grass fed organic meat, I don’t know what will.

Fatty liver can also be driven by excess sugar when, in addition to seed oils, you are consuming more than 35% or so of your calories as fat. This is likely why this condition is now found even in young children.

Nutrients That Help Combat NAFLD

Upping your intake of specific nutrients can also be helpful if you have NAFLD. Examples include:

Choline — Choline is important for normal liver function and liver health by moving fat out of your liver. It also helps maintain membrane integrity and manages cholesterol metabolism, including low density lipoproteins (LDL) and very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL). Choline deficiency has been shown to enhance abnormal fat deposits in your liver, causing NAFLD.²⁰

In fact, some experts believe NAFLD is largely the result of shunning choline-rich foods like liver and egg yolks,²¹ which is then worsened by consuming too much LA. You can increase your intake by consuming more choline-rich foods, such as organic pastured egg yolks, grass fed beef liver, wild-caught Alaskan salmon and krill oil. Arugula is also an excellent source.

Vitamin B12 and folic acid may also be protective and have been found to decrease the progression of NASH.²²

Niacinamide, also known as nicotinamide (NAM) — Niacinamide is a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a vital signaling molecule that’s believed to play an important role in longevity. Supplementation has also been found to decrease oxidative stress and prevent fatty liver.²³

N-acetylcysteine (NAC) — NAC is a precursor needed for glutathione biosynthesis. It’s used as an antidote for acetaminophen toxicity, which causes liver damage by depleting glutathione. Research published in Hepatitis Monthly has shown NAC supplementation helps improve liver function in patients with NAFLD.²⁴

Milk thistle — This herb contains silymarin and silybin, antioxidants that are known to help protect your liver from toxins and even help regenerate liver cells.²⁵

CoQ10 — CoQ10 keeps your mitochondria healthy and plays a crucial role in the production of ATP, the cellular energy required to keep you alive. Supplementing with CoQ10, or the natural form called ubiquinol, has been shown to improve NAFLD by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation.²⁶

Remember that supplements should always be used in combination with a healthy lifestyle, including eating right and exercising. If you’re overweight, losing 7% to 10% of your body weight can improve NAFLD, including lowering liver fat content, liver inflammation and fibrosis.²⁷

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Notes

^{1, 5, 7, 12, 15} Washington Post October 3, 2023 (Archived)

² The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology September 2022; 7(9): 851-861

^{3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11} Clinical Liver Disease March 2021; 17(3): 196–199

⁹ JAMA 2021;326(14):1434-1436

¹³ American Journal of Clinical Nutrition October 2022; 116(4): 1002–1009

¹⁴ Frontiers in Nutrition 2023; 10: 1119118

¹⁶ JAMA 2021;326(6):519-530

¹⁷ Frontiers of Nutrition January 13, 2022

¹⁸ Moms Across America September 28, 2022

¹⁹ Moms Across America October 18, 2023

²⁰ Oregon State University Linus Pauling Institute

²¹ chrismasterjohnphd.com November 23, 2010

²² Journal of Hepatology, 2022; doi: 10.1016/j.hep.2022.06.033

²³ The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry May 21, 2022

²⁴ Hepatitis Monthly, 2010; 10(1):12

²⁵ Indian J Biochem Biophys. 2006 Oct;43(5):306-11

²⁶ Journal of Prescribing Practice. 2020;2(4)

²⁷ Curr Obes Rep. 2019 Sep; 8(3): 220–228

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***

Going in the opposite direction to the wishes of US President Joe Biden, the House of Representatives will vote this week on a financial and military aid bill for Israel, said Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson.

His statement was said a day before Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu revealed that the Ukrainian military have suffered more than 90,000 casualties since the counteroffensive began.

“We are going to move a stand-alone Israeli funding bill,” Johnson said on October 29 in an interview with the Fox News network.

“There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address, and we will, but right now what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention, and I think we’ve got to separate that to get it through. I believe there will be bipartisan support for that, and I’m going to push very hard for it.”

Since returning from the Middle East, Biden has been trying to approve a bill for $106 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, and national defence projects. In the president’s document, around $61 billion would go to Ukraine, while $14 billion would be allocated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So far, the US Congress has approved $113 billion in resources for Ukraine, but opposition from the Republican Party has grown stronger since then, and many no longer want anything to do with financing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the conflict in Ukraine. Johnson believes the Israel-only funding bill will gain strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. 

In the same light as Johnson, it is recalled that Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Senate Democrats and Biden are “playing games with Israel funding” during an interview on October 22 with FNC’s Maria Bartiromo.

“I think it’s a big mistake. I don’t know if it’ll pass,” Cruz said about the Israel/Ukraine aid package. “The hostages are not just being held by Hamas. The hostages are also being held by the Biden White House, because he’s taking Israel and saying, you can have Israel military aid if you pass everything I want on Ukraine, if you pass Biden’s funding.”

Evidently, a week later, greater pressure is mounting for Biden to back down from linking aid to Israel with Ukraine. There is a humbling realisation in Washington that Ukraine has no chance of winning the war against Russia, but there remains a stubbornness in the Biden administration from deviating from its failed policy.

Shoigu said at the 10th Xiangshan Security Forum on October 30 that since Kiev launched its counteroffensive in June this year, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered more than 90,000 casualties (dead and wounded) without achieving any significant success on the battlefield. 

“Just since June 4 — that is, since the start of the widely publicised and generously Western-sponsored Ukrainian counteroffensive — Kiev has lost more than 90,000 soldiers killed and wounded, around 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armoured vehicles of various types,” Shoigu said.

News of the catastrophic loss in the Ukrainian military will only further fuel calls to end financing Kiev’s hopeless efforts against Russia.

To put the 90,000 figure in perspective, the British Army has 76,220 active personnel, demonstrating how Ukraine has lost more soldiers in a few months than the size of an entire army of a supposed superpower.

At the same time, Shoigu expressed confidence that the Russian Armed Forces will continue to “methodically and confidently perform the tasks assigned to them and ensure the safety of civilians.”

Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin had already stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had no results. At the time, the Russian leader emphasised that Russia was moving forward calmly to complete its objectives in the special military operation.

This is the grim reality of the war in Eastern Europe – Russia has destroyed the Ukrainian military without even going on the offensive yet. It is for this precise reason that Johnson wants the US to shift focus away from Ukraine and onto the Middle East as a priority since Washington’s interests have a chance of being preserved or advanced, unlike in Eastern Europe, where Moscow has successfully countered NATO’s plans.

“My intention is not to use this for any partisan political gamesmanship. This is a very serious matter,” the US House speaker said, adding: “We have got to address this now. We should not waste any more time. And I think we will get it through the House this week.”

Once the bill is passed, it will officially confirm that Ukraine is no longer the top foreign issue for Washington to deal with, marking the beginning of the end of blind Western support for a lost cause.

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

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in an impromptu private meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)

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***

In the latest publicity stunt of its kind, with rapidly diminishing returns, the representatives of the Israeli state at the United Nations have taken to appearing with the gold star on their lapels reminiscent of those used during the Nazi persecution of European Jews in the 1930s.

“Never Again” was inscribed in the center.

The accompanying explanatory speech given by the ambassador ran along those central talking points, referencing the Holocaust over and over and likening it to the Hamas attack on October 7^th.

The rhetorical implication is clear: political opposition to Israel is antisemitic. Subtlety is apparently not a priority of Israeli diplomats.

In a similar vein, the ADL, while it’s running its censorious political operations in the United States, routinely conflates legitimate political speech with antisemitism and all other manner of verboten -isms.

It’s time we stopped playing these semantical games. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are two distinct concepts:

• “Antisemitism” is defined as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group”
• “Anti-Zionism” is defined as “opposition to the establishment or support of the state of Israel”

The former is a millennia-old religious/ethnic prejudice; the latter is a political ideology in opposition to a political entity called Israel.

Opposing the activities of the Israeli state is not tantamount to hating Jews any more than opposition to the Kremlin is to anti-Christianity. Indeed, a large contingent of Orthodox Jews — although they do not receive much corporate state media coverage due to the obvious narrative difficulty they present — oppose the state of Israel on religious grounds.

Again, the point must be emphasized: these anti-Zionists are not just Jews, but among the most hardline, dogmatic, fundamentalist Jews on the planet. No one in their right mind, even if they think their political views on Israel are misguided, could honestly conceive of them as antisemitic.

This is basic stuff, such that a child could easily understand.

Of course, it’s not that the purveyors of this conflation don’t understand it; they cynically weaponize the memory of the Holocaust to use as political cover for the activities of the state of Israel.

There are many relevant ironies.

First of all, the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism places Jews who live outside of Israel and have no political affiliation to Israel in a disadvantageous position. Why should an American Jew be necessarily, by virtue of their ethnic or religious identity, tied to a state thousands of miles away in an entirely different region of the world, which they may or may not support?

The second notable irony is that the “anti-colonial” so-called progressive ideology that has gripped the Social Justice™ left was very much fostered by the likes of the Anti-Defamation League — which has, by the way, also consistently smeared any critics of its social engineering programs as literal Nazis.

As frequently occurs, the Social Justice™ beast loosed on the West has turned on the group that fostered it, and the ADL’s tired retort of “shut up, Nazi” to any deviation from neoliberal state orthodoxy has failed to produce the desired neutralizing results.

This was the central lesson of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” – one that, again, a child could grasp.

Further, the pro-Israel talking points employed by groups like the ADL and AIPAC to maintain American and European political support for Israel are themselves confused and convoluted.

Is Israel a modern, secular liberal Democracy™ in the mold of the West (“the only democracy in the Middle East,” as Americans are constantly reminded, in intended juxtaposition to the unwashed hordes of Islamics surrounding it) or is it a theocratic ethnostate as the “home of the Jews”?

The answer depends on which narrative is most advantageous to Israeli interests at any given time.

If it’s attempting to justify its military exercises using the Holocaust as political cover — “Never Again” – then Israel is a theocratic ethnostate. If it’s trying to appeal to secular people and institutions in the West – including secular Jews – then Israel suddenly becomes a vibrant oasis of Democracy™ in the otherwise autocratic Middle East.

These are, again, childish semantics games with transparent political and social engineering applications that all of us should be able to see through and discard if we’re ever going to have a serious conversation about the devastating state of affairs in the Middle East for all parties involved.

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

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.

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Shahid Bolsen puts out the challenge to the people of Israel to move away from the culture of an ill-conceived American exceptionalism and try something different.

Bolsen’s proposal is worthy of serious consideration. (Prof. Anthony Hall) 

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