Global Research

United States “Facilitates” Dire Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza. Joe Biden: “Defend the State of Israel.” The True Face of Imperialism

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 18, 2023

President Joe Biden of the United States has emphasized daily that the principal foreign policy objective for Washington in West Asia and North Africa is to defend and bolster the State of Israel.

From Auschwitz to Gaza: The History of Mass Murder and Genocide

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, October 18, 2023

As I am writing, a massive genocidal assault is underway on the stateless people of Gaza. Most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza were born into this open air prison where Israel is using its absolute control over what can be brought in and carried out to deny the inhabitants food, water supplies, electricity, and fuel.

The Criminal Nature of International Justice: International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Total Silence on Israel Gaza Attacks

By Burak Bir, October 18, 2023

The systematic targeting of a civilian population, as is the case with Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, can be a “crime against humanity and the continued silence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the matter is “utterly unacceptable,” according to a legal expert.

One Palestinian Child in Gaza Killed Every 15 Minutes by Israeli Forces

By Defense for Children Palestine, October 18, 2023

More than 1,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 as surviving children suffer untold physical and emotional consequences as a result of intensive Israeli bombardment and unprecedented internal displacement.

Can Washington Simultaneously Handle Two War Theaters? Zelensky’s Failed Bid to Meet Netanyahu Signals Ending of Western Interest?

By Ahmed Adel, October 18, 2023

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to visit Israel on October 16 to express his support for the country, but Israeli authorities made it clear to him that “the time is not right,” reported Israeli outlet Ynet. This was a humiliating rejection for Zelensky, a Jew, considering other world leaders are expected to visit the Jewish State in the coming days.

Netanyahu and the Banality of Evil

By Germán Gorraiz López, October 18, 2023

Netanyahu would be cornered by the international community’s revulsion at the violation of human rights in Gaza and by the growing disaffection towards his government of Israeli society that cannot forgive the security flaws in the Israeli defense that would have led to the murder of about 1500 Israelis and the kidnapping of 200 people by Hamas.

UNRWA Warns of Unprecedented Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza

By Philippe Lazzarini, October 18, 2023

As of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance. As I speak with you, Gaza is running out of water and electricity. In fact, Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life. Soon, I believe, with this there will be no food or medicine either.  

Rushing into Catastrophe. Intense War Fever in Washington. “America Can Afford Two Wars”…?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 18, 2023

The Biden regime refuses to defend US borders but does not hesitate to rush aircraft carrier task forces and the 101st US Airborne Division to defend Israel’s borders. “We have Israel’s back,” endlessly proclaims America’ Jewish Secretary of State.  “America can afford two wars,” proclaims America’s Jewish Secretary of the Treasury. But forget protecting our own border and the burdens on American taxpayers.

Former Ambassador and Assange Advocate Craig Murray Detained Under UK Terror Laws

By Kit Klarenberg, October 18, 2023

On the morning of October 16, counter-terror police in Glasgow Airport detained journalist, whistleblower, human rights campaigner, and former British diplomat Craig Murray upon his return from Iceland. After grilling him intensively about his political beliefs, officers seized Murray’s phone and laptop. 

What the Media “Forgets to Tell You” About Israel and Gaza. Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Program. Jonathan Cook

By Jonathan Cook, October 18, 2023

The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

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GR Note: This is a carefully research video. As of approximately 40’00”, it includes statements of a religious nature which some readers might find inappropriate and/or misleading.

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The UK should suspend all weapons export licenses to Israel because there is a clear risk British arms may be used to violate international humanitarian law, two organisations have warned the government.

Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network made their case in a letter sent on Monday to Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch.

Their call comes as a reported Israeli air strike hit al-Ahli al-Arab Hospital in Gaza City where many had sheltered and sought treatment on Tuesday evening, killing at least 500 people. 

The 25-page letter lists a dozen Israeli violations of international humanitarian law committed over years, including the demolition of homes in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, the killing of protesters and journalists, and the 16-year siege of Gaza.

But it says the Israeli response since the Hamas attack on 7 October “represents very serious, widespread violence on a greater scale than anything witnessed by Gazans until now”.

“This escalation very clearly justifies a suspension of arms sales,” the letter says.

A spokesperson for the Department of Business and Trade told Middle East Eye on Wednesday:

 “At present there are no immediate plans to stop arms export licences to Israel.

“All export licences are kept under continual review, with applications assessed on a case-by-case basis against strict criteria.”

The UK government has granted weapons export licenses for the sale of a wide range of items in recent years including components for combat aircraft, military radars and targeting equipment and body armour.

According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), British companies provide 15 percent of the components for the F35 stealth combat aircraft which Israel is currently using to bomb Gaza.

Since 2016, CAAT estimates that the contract for those components alone is worth over $409mn.

The organisations which wrote to Badenoch say that all of the items sold are capable of being used in Israel’s actions against Palestinians and, therefore, licences for them should not be issued.

Lawyers representing the two groups have given Badenoch until 30 October to respond to their letter after which they say their clients will “consider issuing judicial review proceedings” before the High Court.

Dearbhla Minogue, a senior lawyer with GLAN said:

“This challenge was already necessary before the current decimation of Gaza – now it is even more urgent. 

“States like the United Kingdom are emboldening the Israeli government’s brutality – especially when they actually supply them with the means to subjugate and kill Palestinians.”

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The systematic targeting of a civilian population, as is the case with Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, can be a “crime against humanity and the continued silence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the matter is “utterly unacceptable,” according to a legal expert.

For over 10 days, Israel has been bombing the besieged Palestinian territory, with the death toll now nearing 3,000, among them at least 750 children.

Israeli attacks have targeted buildings in densely populated residential areas, which it claims were being used by the Palestinian group Hamas.

Airstrikes have also struck hospitals and schools, as confirmed by UN agencies like the World Health Organization and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Several healthcare and humanitarian workers have been killed in the Israeli offensive, along with journalists and officials of local civil and rescue services.

Adding to the humanitarian catastrophe is Israel’s decision to cut off water, electricity and other supplies to Gaza, leaving the population of some 2 million in a dire situation without the very basic needs, eliciting repeated warnings from the UN and other rights groups.

Then there is the evacuation order for northern Gaza, affecting more than 1 million people, almost half the strip’s entire population.

The order itself has been severely criticized by international organizations and rights groups, who have termed it a “forced transfer” and a war crime.

Another major violation by Israel has been the use of white phosphorus in its attacks on Gaza. The Israeli military denies that, but it was proven by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, with the latter’s investigation including photos captured by Anadolu.

Ahmed Abofoul, legal researcher and advocacy officer at rights organization Al-Haq, emphasized that Israel’s actions in Gaza are “a war crime,” while the targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian population could also amount to “a crime against humanity.”

There have been “very disturbing, genocidal statements” by Israeli politicians, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that they will be “turning Gaza into rubble,” he pointed out.

For Abofoul, who is also an international lawyer based in The Hague, the inaction of the ICC is “utterly unacceptable.”

“It’s important to note that the ICC prosecutor has the mandate not only to investigate crimes, but also to issue preventive statements, which are early warning statements that can provide deterrence,” he explained.

It is also “shameful” that the international community is not really even pushing for a cease-fire, and instead has been supporting Israel by sending weapons, he added.

Abofoul said the “collective punishment” inflicted on Palestinians by Israel through its indiscriminate attacks and total siege “could even be argued to be an act of genocide.”

“We’ve heard those statements by Israel where there seems to be a complete disregard of innocent civilian lives,” he said.

On the use of white phosphorus, he stressed that these weapons, by their very nature, are indiscriminate and always affect civilian populations.

“They know it and they use it and, therefore, it may amount to a war crime,” he said.

‘Further Squeezing the Civilian Population’

On Israel’s order for more than 1 million Gazans to move to the south, Abofoul emphasized that most of the civilian infrastructure, the main center, emergency and rescue services, and major hospitals, including the biggest one Al-Shifa Hospital, are in the northern part.

“So, effectively what Israel is doing is further squeezing the civilian population in Gaza and, in half of its space, with no electricity, no food, no properly equipped hospitals,” he added.

He pointed out that there is no safe passage and nobody knows which evacuation routes are safe.

“Nobody can trust that Israel won’t target civilians,” said Abofoul, referring to a recent attack that resulted in civilian casualties on a route that the Israeli army had designated as safe for civilians.

“People don’t know where to go and even those who want to leave. They don’t know how to leave … the UN itself announced that this is virtually impossible. So in a way Israel is asking the impossible,” he added.

He emphasized that all of this is a result of “75 years of oppression, of denying the Palestinian people their basic human rights.”

Abofoul also pointed out that Hamas emerged in 1987, 20 years after Palestinian territories were occupied in 1967.

“For 20 years, there was no peace before Hamas … so it’s important to put things into context,” he said.

Abofoul also questioned why Israel, often defined by the West as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” refuses to go to any court “as any civilized nation would do.”

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More than 1,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 as surviving children suffer untold physical and emotional consequences as a result of intensive Israeli bombardment and unprecedented internal displacement.

Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian child approximately every 15 minutes since the Israeli military unleashed a massive military offensive on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after Palestinian armed groups fired rockets toward Israel and breached the Israeli perimeter fence surrounding Gaza, launching attacks inside Israel. Israeli forces initiated a large-scale military operation dubbed Operation Iron Swords.

“The repercussions of this war will not only affect the victims we have lost, some of which are still trapped under the rubble of their homes, and not only the residential areas that have been completely destroyed, including our own homes, but the psychological impact on us civilians and our children will be catastrophic,” said Mohammad Abu Rukbeh, senior Gaza field researcher at DCIP.

The fatality and injury numbers provided by the Ministry of Health in Gaza only account for people admitted to hospitals, so at least an estimated additional 1,000 Palestinians are missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings, according to the Ministry of Interior, indicating the actual death toll is much higher.

Palestinian children who have so far survived the Israeli military’s intense bombing across the Gaza Strip are suffering in an increasingly dire humanmade humanitarian crisis, compounding existing mental and emotional traumas sustained from 16 years of siege and Israeli military offensives.

An estimated one million Palestinians in Gaza are displaced, according to the UN, including more than 600,000 people hosted in the central and southern parts of Gaza, according to UN OCHA.

Since October 11 at 2 p.m. Gaza has experienced a full electricity blackout after Israeli authorities cut the electricity and fuel supply on October 7 and the Gaza Power Plant depleted its reserves, according to UN OCHA. The lack of electricity has exacerbated the existing food crisis as refrigeration is not possible and irrigation and agricultural activity has ground to a halt. Fuel reserves and backup generators at hospitals are not expected to last more than 24 hours.

Israeli authorities cut water supply to Gaza on October 9, and since then, all three water desalination plants in Gaza have been forced to cease operations, according to UN OCHA. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza have no access to clean drinking water, and some have resorted to drinking dirty well water, raising concerns for waterborne diseases. Even though Israeli authorities claimed to resume water supply to southern Gaza yesterday, there is no electricity to operate water pumps, Israeli airstrikes have damaged many water lines, and very little water in Gaza is drinkable in the first place.

The psychological toll on Palestinian children in Gaza is further underscored by the pre-existing challenges they faced prior to the recent series of Israeli military attacks.

• One in four was already in need of psychosocial support, according to UNICEF in 2018.
• More than half depend on some form of humanitarian assistance for survival, according to UNICEF in 2018.
• Four out of five children are living with depression, grief, and fear, according to a 2022 report from Save the Children.

The trauma experienced by Palestinian children in Gaza extends beyond personal suffering. Witnessing the deaths of other children compounds their distress, leaving indelible scars on their mental well-being. Entire families are being wiped out in the blink of an eye, shattering the very foundations of these households. Children, who once found comfort in the embrace of their families, are now left orphaned. The emotional repercussions for these children are profound, as they grapple not only with the pain of the current situation in their city but also with the daunting challenge of navigating life without the foundational support of their families.

Israeli airstrikes have destroyed two of the three main lines for mobile communication in the Gaza Strip, according to UN OCHA. The Palestinian Telecommunications Company (Paltel) is still able to provide minimal internet connectivity across Gaza, but fears connection will be completely lost if there is any additional damage to the lines.

“The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in,” reservist Major General Giora Eiland told Israeli media. “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell,” said Major General Ghassan Alian, head of Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

Under international law, genocide is prohibited and constitutes the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group, in whole or in part. Genocide can result from killing or by creating conditions of life that are so unbearable it brings about the group’s destruction.

International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and requires all parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between military targets, civilians, and civilian objects. Deploying explosive weapons in densely-populated civilian areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks and carrying out direct attacks against civilians or civilian objects amounts to war crimes.

Israeli authorities have imposed a closure policy against the Gaza Strip since 2007 by strictly controlling and limiting the entry and exit of individuals; maintaining harsh restrictions on imports including food, construction materials, fuel, and other essential items; as well as prohibiting exports. Israel continues to maintain complete control over the Gaza Strip’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters.

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“In a few days,” writes Amira Hass, the veteran Israeli correspondent who has reported for decades from the Occupied Territories, “Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing,” including “military incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity… and searing humiliation.”

The Hamas-led operation against Israeli military bases and civilian neighborhoods killed more than 1,300 Israelis, along with at least 120 taken hostage. While enduring that type of violence may be routine for Palestinians, Gaza is now facing the most calamitous Israeli military assault to date.

In less than one week, as of this writing, Israel has killed more than 2,300 people, including 724 children.

Israeli strikes have hit residential buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, and fleeing civilians. Israel has intensified its already crippling blockade by cutting off all food, water, and electricity. It has ordered the expulsion of 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza, “a death sentence for the sick and injured,” the World Health Organization warns.

If Israel does not restore Gaza’s water supply, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency says, “people will start dying of severe dehydration.”

With a ground invasion looming, Israel is threatening atrocities on an even larger scale, all while espousing rhetoric that calls for ethnic cleansing or even genocide.

Justifying what he called the “complete siege” of Gaza, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant declared that his government is “fighting against human animals.” According to former Israeli Deputy Foreign minister Danny Ayalon, the Israeli plan is to force Palestinians into the “almost endless space in the Sinai desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” where they can live in “tent cities.”

Israeli president Isaac Herzog effectively declared that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, home to “an entire nation… that is responsible.” Invoking the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before and after Israel’s founding in May 1948, known as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), Ariel Kallner, an Israeli parliamentarian, said that Israel has “one goal”: a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ‘48.”

Even as the threat of regional escalation grows, the Biden administration fully endorses Israel’s blood lust. Calls for a ceasefire, the White House press secretary declared, are “repugnant.” State Department employees have even been instructed to avoid mentioning the terms “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

Biden’s stance is shared across both political parties, with only a handful of lawmakers demanding a ceasefire. As the US backs Israel’s assault, “we may be about to see massive ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, one European Union official has warned.

As in previous cases, the Western media and political establishment justifies the prevailing support for attacking Gaza by asserting that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, and has no other option against Palestinian militants who refuse to accept its existence.

As a legal matter, the former assertion is false: while Israel has an internationally recognized right to defend itself from an attack, it does not have the right to commit war crimes against a besieged civilian population.

Moreover, Israel is not “defending itself” against an external aggressor, but an imprisoned internal population that also has a recognized right to resist military occupation (but not, as is evident, to kill and kidnap Israeli civilians).

To adopt the Israeli-US narrative, therefore, requires “ignoring Israel’s structural violence and cruelty,” Amira Hass writes, “and the context of the Palestinian people’s ongoing dispossession from their land.”

That Israel is “defending itself” from a people that it has colonized has long been acknowledged at the highest levels. At a 1956 funeral for an Israeli soldier killed by Palestinians in Gaza, Gen. Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s most famed military leaders, advised the following:

Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. 

Dayan, having led Israeli forces in the military campaign during Israel’s founding in 1948, recognized that his country originated with the dispossession of Palestinians and theft of their homes.

Yet his acknowledgment was not an act of remorse. Rather than attempt to reverse or redress the forced expulsion of Palestinians, Dayan went on to decree that Israel should maintain the colonization with even more aggression:

We are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the cannon’s maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home… Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us.

Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms weaken. That is the fate of our generation. That is our choice – to be ready and armed, tough and hard – or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.

Gen. Moshe Dayan delivers a eulogy for slain Israeli soldier Roi Rutenberg — April 19, 1956.

In the nearly 70 years since Dayan spoke those words, Israel has heeded them by expanding its theft of Palestinian land and creating new generations of refugees.

As B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights group, acknowledged in 2021, this has turned Israel into “an apartheid regime” that “promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.”

A foundational moment for Israel’s apartheid regime was its 1967 conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which brought millions of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. As he did in 1956, Dayan candidly articulated what became the guiding policy:

“You Palestinians, as a nation, don’t want us today, but we’ll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you.” Under Israeli rule, the Israeli general said, occupied Palestinians will “live like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave.”

For Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, this forced Israeli occupation has confined a population of 2.3 million, more than half of them children, to what former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has described as “an open-air prison,” or what Hebrew University Professor Baruch Kimmerling called “the largest concentration camp ever to exist.”

Israel’s famed 2005 “disengagement” has been falsely described as an end to the occupation of Gaza when, in fact, it only deepened the torment. After years of defacto blockades, Israel imposed a full siege in 2007. This was Israel and Washington’s response to Hamas’ surprise victory in Palestinian legislative elections the previous year, when voters shunned the corrupt and inept Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Hamas then took full control of Gaza in a preemptive operation against a US-backed coup plot that sought to undermine its electoral gains. Hillary Clinton later lamented that the US failed to rig the Palestinian vote. “If we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she said.

Because it failed to thwart Palestinian democracy, Israel, again with US backing, turned to punishing Gazan civilians for voting the wrong way.

Controlling the flow of goods and energy to Gaza, Israel restricted food imports based on a calculation of the precise number of calories that would be needed to ravage them without triggering a full-blown malnutrition crisis. “The idea,” Israeli advisor Dov Weisglass explained, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Under Israeli control, over 90% of Gaza’s water became unfit for human consumption. In 2018, the United Nations declared conditions to be so dire that the territory could become “uninhabitable” within years. The Israeli siege has been accompanied by periodic military assaults that killed, wounded, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Israel’s commitment to enforcing the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians has also led it to undermine any prospect of the two-state solution that it claimed to support.

The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) were “founded on a neo-colonialist basis,” in the words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben–Ami.

“One of the meanings of Oslo,” Ben Ami explained, “was that the PLO was eventually Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the intifada,” – a grassroots and largely non-violent uprising against Israeli occupation – thereby “cutting short what was clearly an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence.”

Oslo’s Israeli architects, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, never “wanted the autonomy to usher in a Palestinian state.”

As a neo-colonial endeavor disguised as a “peace process,” the Oslo era saw a doubling of the Israeli settlement population in its first eight years. Israel’s so-called “generous peace offer” at Camp David in July 2000 – widely cited by Israeli officials and Western pundits as proof of an Israeli willingness to “compromise,” and a Palestinian refusal to “co-exist” – was in fact a perpetuation of Oslo’s neocolonial ruse.

As Ben-Ami, who took part in the summit as a top Israeli negotiator, himself acknowledged years later: “If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”

In 2002, the Arab League offered Israel full normalization in return for a withdrawal from all Arab territories (Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian) that it occupied in 1967; the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital; and a “just resolution” to the refugee issue.

The initiative was subsequently endorsed by Iran, which signed on to a December 2017 declaration calling for a “two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.”

The proposal would require Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and abandon the illegal settlement blocs, which carve up Palestinian land and disproportionately consume precious water reserves. Later on, the Arab League signaled that it would accept mutually agreed land swaps, as the Palestinian Authority had already done, that could keep some settlement areas under Israeli control.

But even the most far-reaching Israeli offer, presented by lame-duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008, rejected parity in any territorial exchange. As veteran Israeli negotiator Michael Herzog wrote in 2011: “No Israeli government to date has accepted the Palestinian stipulation that land swaps be fully equal in size and ‘quality.’”

Israel has repeatedly rejected the Arab League’s diplomatic initiative and even refused to accept it as a basis for further negotiations. In shunning the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, Israel has shown a less accommodating position than even what Hamas, at one point, claimed to support.

In a March 2008 interview, Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, stated that “most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders.” In 2013, Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’ deputy foreign minister, reaffirmed this stance: “We agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, within the 1967 borders, and that this would include a solution to the refugee problem.”

While Hamas explicitly rejected any recognition of Israel, its acceptance of a Palestinian state within the boundaries the Occupied Territories – about 22% of historic Palestine — constituted a tacit recognition of Israel’s internationally recognized borders on the other side.

This contrasted with Israel’s position, which nominally accepted the notion of a Palestinian state, but remained committed to keeping the large West Bank settlement blocs that would make such a state non-contiguous and therefore untenable.

Having thwarted the prospect of a two-state solution, Israel has also violently crushed any hope of non-violent Palestinian resistance. In March 2018, tens of thousands of Palestinians launched the Great March of Return, a campaign to break the Gaza siege. “Gaza is a ghetto and what’s happening… is a ghetto uprising,” veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote.

Israel responded to the ghetto uprising by gunning down at least 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, and wounding over 36,000. Western pundits who had loudly implored Palestinians to take up Gandhian non-violence fell resoundingly silent.

The Netanyahu government, meanwhile, returned to a longtime policy of propping up Hamas’ rule, recognizing that the group’s global isolation and internal divisions could be exploited to undermine the possibility of the Palestinian state that some Hamas leaders had claimed to accept.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu explained to Likud Party members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Having successfully deepened Palestinian isolation, Netanyahu’s government has intensified the oppression. The guiding Israeli policy, Netanyahu’s government declared in December 2022, is that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.”

This included Gaza, Cabinet Minister Orit Strock explained in March of this year. “I believe that, at the end of the day, the sin of the [Gaza] disengagement will be reversed,” Strock said. “Sadly, a return to the Gaza Strip will involve many casualties… But ultimately it is part of the Land of Israel, and a day will come when we will return to it.”

Tareq Bacouni, a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, summarizes how Netanyahu’s supremacist rule has recently trampled the inalienable rights of Palestinians:

Under the most right-wing government in its history, Israel has carried out large-scale invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns in the West Bank, killing and wounding scores of people.

Armed Israeli fighters have burst into Palestinian streets and homes on an almost nightly basis, often picking children out of their beds in the middle of the night to be taken into administrative detention—acts of terror that have gone largely unreported in the Western press.

The state has accelerated its expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank and expanded the construction of illegal settlements.

Settlers have waged weekly assaults on Palestinian villages, attacking and in some cases killing Palestinians, setting fire to their homes, and destroying their property, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The domestic secret police has facilitated and fomented violence against Palestinian citizens.

Senior members of Israel’s government and messianic Jewish extremists have been increasingly aggressive in their provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem. In the weeks leading to Hamas’s offensive, the state tightened the blockade on Gaza by still further restricting movement in and out.

Having always chosen occupation and supremacy over peace and security, Israel has now opted to further devastate, displace, and murder occupied Palestinians in retaliation against those who have fought back.

Zaha Hassan and Daniel Levy, former advisers for their respective Palestinian and Israeli governments, offer three points of agreement that could help end the current crisis:

First, the militant attack on Israeli civilians was unconscionable, inhumane and in violation of international law. Second, Israel’s collective punishment against Palestinian civilians and its actions in Gaza are unconscionable, inhumane and a violation of international law.

And, third, one must address the context of occupation and apartheid in which this is unfolding if one is to maintain integrity and be able to plot a strategy going forward in which both Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and security.

If we can hold these three truths, then it will be possible to prevent further casualties, secure the release of prisoners and step back from the precipice.

Hassan and Levy condition their guidance on the principle that “one accepts the humanity and equality of all people without discrimination or distinction.” Israel has explicitly rejected this principle since its founding. And with Washington’s support, Israel’s determination to enforce the dispossession and subjugation of Palestinians is yielding a new ethnic cleansing campaign before our eyes.

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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to visit Israel on October 16 to express his support for the country, but Israeli authorities made it clear to him that “the time is not right,” reported Israeli outlet Ynet. This was a humiliating rejection for Zelensky, a Jew, considering other world leaders are expected to visit the Jewish State in the coming days.

As Israeli media wrote on October 16, the Ukrainian leader had planned to travel with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. At the same time, Ynet sources stressed that Zelensky could travel to Israel later.

By wanting to meet immediately, Zelensky exposes that he is petrified of Ukraine now being ignored and sidelined as the globe’s attention shifts to the Middle East, and for this reason, he wants to link the conflict in Eastern Europe as a common struggle – something Israel is evidently not tolerating at this moment in time.  

Israel appears determined to eradicate Hamas and other extremist elements from Gaza, even if it comes at a horrific civilian cost. Due to this apparent commitment, Israel faces a multi-front war because Hezbollah threatens to intervene if a ground assault on Gaza is launched. As the Jewish state faces a potentially long and bloody war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not have time to entertain Zelensky or deal with the consequences of the inevitably anti-Russia statements the Ukrainian president will make.

For this reason, it is more practical for Netanyahu to reject the solidarity meeting request rather than reassure Moscow that Israel does not connect its war against Hamas to the war in Eastern Europe as Zelensky does.

Compounding Zelensky’s humiliation is the recent news that US President Joe Biden and likely Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are expected to visit Israel in the coming days, raising the question of why “the time is not right” for Zelensky to visit.

In addition to Netanyahu not wanting to be distracted with other foreign policy matters, especially regarding Russia, Israel does not want to share the world’s focus with Ukraine as there is now competition for foreign aid. Ukraine has dominated the world’s attention since February 2022, even to the detriment of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, and has absolutely nothing to show for it all. Meanwhile, Israel has been a major non-NATO Ally since even before Ukraine became an independent country and was always going to be an immediate priority over Ukraine.

At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on October 16 to promise support before the ground operation in the Gaza Strip and to inform Israeli authorities about his meetings with leaders of Arab states. It would be imagined that if Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had requested an official visit to Israel, the request would be declined, again demonstrating that Israel prioritises countries.

The US is obviously the world’s current greatest superpower, even in its declining state, while Greece is one of the few countries in the region that is friendly to Israel. Ukraine has no value to Israel, especially during this crisis. Therefore, Netanyahu identifies that Zelensky’s visit would only waste his time and would only bring benefit to Ukraine and not to Israel.

It is recalled that Zelensky said on October 11, when speaking of the Israel-Gaza conflict potentially affecting weapons being supplied to Ukraine, that “of course, everybody’s afraid, and I think also Russia’s counting on it, on dividing support.” For this reason, he attempted to meet with Netanyahu only days after his statement to try and link the two conflicts as inseparable – an unashamed lie and a desperate bid to ensure that Western interests, weapons, and funds continue flowing into Ukraine.

Ukraine is seeking more weapons for its troops to regain ground from Russian forces before the winter weather sets in, an unlikely task since the Ukrainian military has barely captured any territory when it launched its long-awaited “spring offensive” at the beginning of summer. However, Israel’s own ammunition concerns and the US’ previous steps to transfer ammunition from the Middle Eastern country to Kiev are fuelling growing opposition in Washington, where calls for weapons transfers to Israel instead of Ukraine are already being heard.

Such a shift of attention from the Ukrainian crisis to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis threatens to seriously undermine the ability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to continue its military campaign against Russia. This comes when Ukrainian forces recover from months of failed offensives and recent casualties in the tens of thousands. Therefore, Israel rejecting Zelensky’s request to meet Netanyahu is not only humiliating but could signify the beginning of the end of Western interest in Ukraine.

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

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***

The Israeli society of the 21st century (80% of Jews versus 20% of the Arab population), would be a melting pot of races, customs, languages and values that would only have in common their Hebrew origin and in which a silent blow would be produced by an ultra orthodox minority , the “haredim.”

Although they represent only 10% of its population, the ultra-orthodox would be a state within the state, ready to swallow all the sensitive areas of power of the Jewish state (Interior, Housing, Mossad and the IDF commanders or Jewish army) and try to impose the “Halacha” or Jewish law to more than 40% of the population that declares itself secular, segment of European filiation, immersed in Western culture and way of life and that wants to be governed by civil law as in other formal western democracies.

Einstein and Exclusionary Zionism

In 1938, the visionary Einstein warned of the dangers of exclusionary Zionism by stating:

“I would like a reasonable agreement to be reached with the Arabs on the basis of a peaceful life together as I think this would be preferable to the creation of a Jewish state.”

It is impossible to germinate in the twenty-first century given the absence on both sides of valid interlocutors to negotiate a lasting peace that implies the mutual recognition of the States of Israel and Palestine.

Thus, former President Jimmy Carter, who went down in history when he achieved the historic Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979 in his book ‘Palestine, Peace not Apartheid’, denounces the “system of apartheid that Israel applies to the Palestinians.”

Likewise, in the aforementioned book he denounces “Israel’s non-compliance with the commitments made in 2003 under the auspices of George W. Bush“, which included demands for a total and permanent freeze on Jewish settler settlements in the West Bank as well as the right of return for the nearly 800,000 Palestinians who were forced to leave Israel following its statehood in 1948 (Nakba).

This roadmap was initially accepted by Israel and subsequently ratified by Olmert and Abbas at the Annapolis Summit (2007) with the requirement of “to put an end to the policy of building settlements in the West Bank and to relax the military controls that constrict the daily life of the Palestinians to a paroxysm”.  This dystopian situation led the Jewish Civil Rights activist and Holocaust survivor, Israel Shakak to claim “The Nazis made me fear being Jewish and the Israelis embarrass me to be Jewish”.

Thus, according to the civil rights survey “Association for Civil Rights in Israel Annual Report for 2007” published by the newspaper Haaretz, the number of Jews who express feelings of hatred towards Arabs has tripled and about 60% of Israeli Jews would already oppose the equal rights of their Arab compatriots and in favor of the increase of the apartheid regime in the Palestinian ghettos of West Bank and Gaza.

In these ghettos, the Palestinian population would be subject to the military-juridical regime instead of relying on civilian power like the Israeli one, with which the vast majority of Israeli society would be silent accomplices and necessary collaborators in the implementation of xenophobic sentiment against the Arab-Israeli population.

Netanyahu and the Banality of Evil

The German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, subtitled “A report on the banality of evil” coined the expression “banality of evil” to express that “some individuals act within the rules of the system to which they belong without reflecting on their actions”.

Consequently, the use by Israel of systematic torture, the apartheid of the Palestinian people, the surgical removal of Hamas terrorist elements and other evil practices, would not be considered on the basis of its effects or its final result provided that the orders to execute them come from higher echelons, leaving the Israeli government of Netanyahu as the only one responsible to history.

Arendt helped us to understand the reasons for the renunciation of the individual of his critical capacity (freedom), while alerting us to the need to be always vigilant before the foreseeable repetition of the “banalization of evil” by the rulers of any political system, including sui generis Jewish democracy.

If we extrapolate Arendt’s reflection on Adolf Eichmann to the current situation in the Gaza Strip,

“the military commanders of the Tzahal would not present the traits of murderous psychopaths, but would be mere bureaucrats who would carry out orders without thinking about their consequences and without discerning the good or evil of their actions”.

However, according to Maximilian Korstanje “fear and not the banality of evil, makes man renounce his critical will, but it is important not to lose sight that in that act the subject remains ethically responsible for his resignation” and Israeli commanders and soldiers would be complicit in human rights violations committed in the Gaza Strip under Netanyahu.

Netanyahu would be cornered by the international community’s revulsion at the violation of human rights in Gaza and by the growing disaffection towards his government of Israeli society that cannot forgive the security flaws in the Israeli defense that would have led to the murder of about 1500 Israelis and the kidnapping of 200 people by Hamas.

According to a survey by The Jerusalem Post, 80% of those polled say that “the Government is primarily responsible for the infiltration of Palestinian militias” and 56% think that “Netanyahu should resign at the end of the current war”.

In the event that Israeli society does not react against the barbarity of Netanyahu and demands his resignation and the initiation of a criminal trial for his negligent management, we will see the strengthening of the political figure of Netanyahu which would be the prelude to a subsequent totalitarian drift.

This involution could culminate in the establishment of a theocratic regime in the Israeli State in the next five years, which will mean that large sectors of lay and urban Israeli youth will have to choose to join the list of remote-controlled settlers by the Haredim or emigrate to the West to escape the theocratic-military dystopia.

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Germán Gorraiz López is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

On October 9, two days into the current Israel-Hamas war – in which the Israeli army appears intent on semi-obliterating the Gaza Strip – the website of the New York-based magazine Women’s Health published some guidelines on “How To Cope With The Trauma Of Violent Images And Videos Of Hamas’ Attack on Israel”.

It is unsurprising, of course, that the potential for trauma has been detected solely as a reaction to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel and not to, say, the past 75 years of Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestine – the cumulative depraved barbarity of which is what prompted Hamas’s actions in the first place.

After all, Israel’s carefully crafted monopoly on victimisation and the attendant dehumanisation of Palestinians means that footage of the ongoing Israeli terrorisation of Gaza has never compelled US media outlets to prescribe “steps to protect your mental health”.

And yet the Women’s Health intervention constitutes a novel sort of twist on the victimisation theme, in which even the vicarious trauma that is allegedly intermittently experienced by US audiences trumps the unmitigated trauma suffered by the people upon whom Israel wages perpetual war.

The article quotes a clinical psychologist in New York on why it can be so upsetting to encounter violent images in one’s social media feed: “We’re empathetic people. We can picture ourselves in someone else’s shoes.”

But selective empathy is not empathetic at all. This is particularly the case when “empathy” for Israel happens to be so politically expedient in terms of justifying obscene quantities of US military aid to that country and the slaughter of folks whose existence complicates the US-Israeli vision of the world.

In the United States, my estranged homeland, the very emotion of empathy has been under sustained assault by a politico-economic system that thrives on alienation and the eradication of communal bonds. When empathy can be weaponised, however, leaders from across what passes as a political spectrum in the US come out in droves to “stand with Israel”.

To be sure, the Israeli monopoly on victimisation defies logic and reality – and casting the state of Israel in the role of pre-eminent victim is a bit like granting the status of victimhood to an assault rifle.

Recall that the foundational episode of the whole “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” consisted of Israel’s violent self-invention on Palestinian land in 1948, which entailed the destruction of some 530 Palestinian villages, the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million more.

And the bloody pattern has only continued since, with Palestinians consistently dying in disproportionate numbers even while being cast as the aggressors and victimisers. Take Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when the Israeli army killed 2,251 people in the Gaza Strip in 50 days, including 299 women and 551 children. Six Israeli civilians were killed and 67 soldiers.

In Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012, the Israeli army killed 167 Palestinians while suffering six fatalities in return. In Operation Cast Lead, which Israel launched in Gaza at the end of 2008, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, primarily civilians. Among them were 400 children. Three Israeli civilians were also killed along with 10 soldiers.

After the 2012 Israeli assault on Gaza, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy took to the pages of the Haaretz newspaper to remind readers that, “since the first Qassam rocket fell on Israel in April 2001, 59 Israelis have been killed – and 4,717 Palestinians.” Noting that this proportion was “horrifying”, Levy ventured that “it ought to disturb every Israeli”.

Of course, “ought” is still the operative word. But to be “disturbed” by the horrifying context in which Palestinians have now existed for more than seven and a half decades would require empathy – which would in turn require an acknowledgement of Palestinian humanity, rather than the propagation of a pernicious US-backed narrative affirming the infinitely superior value of Israeli over Palestinian life.

Also highly disturbing is that, while this narrative dehumanises Palestinians to the point of effectively denying them the right to emotional and psychological suffering, Israel plays up its emotional casualties as a means of garnering additional empathy.

Following Operation Cast Lead, for example, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs broadcast a total of 770 Israeli casualties, of which no fewer than 584 were victims of “shock and anxiety syndrome”.

Similarly, following the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 that killed some 1,200 people in that country, the Israeli Health Ministry reported that out of the 4,262 Israeli civilians who had been “treated in hospitals for injuries” a full 2,773 were suffering from “shock and anxiety”.

While the Israeli state’s obsession with air raid sirens and apocalyptic discourse is no doubt useful in helping to generate general anxiety, a tally of “shock and anxiety” victims in the Gaza Strip would presumably produce a number in the vicinity of 2.3 million, the current population of the Palestinian enclave.

As former Oxfam spokesman Karl Schembri once mused:

“How can you talk about post-traumatic stress interventions in Gaza when people are still in a constant state of trauma?”

Constant anguish has been ensured by all manner of external stimuli, including the asphyxiating Israeli siege of Gaza, regular Israeli massacres, the pulverisation of apartment buildings and neighbourhoods, and the use of drones and sonic booms to obliterate any potential for even a moment of peace.

Now, as the Israeli army goes about carpet-bombing Gaza and a horrifying amount of blood remains to be spilled, “empathy” remains firmly entrenched in Israel’s arsenal – and it is a deadly weapon indeed.

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Belén Fernández is the author of Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016), and The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work (Verso, 2011). She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, and has written for the New York Times, the London Review of Books blog, Current Affairs, and Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications.

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***

As of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance.

As I speak with you, Gaza is running out of water and electricity. In fact, Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity.

If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life. Soon, I believe, with this there will be no food or medicine either.  

There is not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel that has been allowed into the Gaza Strip for the last eight days.  

The number of people seeking shelter in our schools and other UNRWA facilities in the south is absolutely overwhelming, and we do not have any more the capacity to deal with them.

My team, who relocated to Rafah to sustain operations following the Israeli ultimatum, is working in the same building as thousands of desperate displaced people rationing also their food and water.

In fact, an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes.

And already – and we should always remember that – before the war, Gaza was under a blockade for 16 years, and basically, more than 60 per cent of the population was already relying on international food assistance. It was already before the war a humanitarian welfare society.

Every hour, we receive more and more desperate calls for help from people across the Strip.    

We, as UNRWA, have already lost 14 staff members. They were teachers, engineers, guards and psychologists, an engineer and a gynecologist. Most of our 13,000 UNRWA staff in the Gaza Strip are now displaced or out of their homes. 

My colleague Kamal lost his cousin and her entire family. My colleague Helen and her children were pulled out of the rubble. I was so relieved to learn that they were still alive. 

My colleague Inas fears that Gaza will no longer exist. Every story coming out of Gaza is about survival, despair and loss. 

Thousands of people have been killed, including children and women. Gaza is now even running out of body bags. Entire families are being ripped apart.  

At least 1 million people were forced to flee their homes in one week alone. A river of people continues to flow south. No place is safe in Gaza.

At least 400,000 displaced (persons) are now in UNRWA schools and buildings, and most are not equipped as emergency shelters.

Sanitary conditions are just appalling, and we have reports in our logistics base, for example, where hundreds of people are just sharing one toilet.

Old people, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities are just being deprived of their basic human dignity, and this is a total disgrace! Unless we bring now supplies into Gaza, UNRWA and aid workers will not, be able to continue humanitarian operations.  

The UNRWA operations is the largest United Nations footprint in the Gaza Strip, and we are on the verge of collapse.

This is absolutely unprecedented.  

We keep reminding that International Humanitarian Law has now to be at the center of our concerns. Wars, all wars, even this war, have laws.  

International humanitarian law is the law of any armed conflict. It explicitly sets the minimum standards that must prevail at any, any time.   

The protection of the wounded and civilians, including humanitarian workers, is non-negotiable under humanitarian law. Last week’s attack on Israel was horrendous – devastating images and testimonies continue to come out.   

The attack and the taking of hostages are a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. But the answer to killing civilians cannot be to kill more civilians.  

Imposing a siege and bombarding civilian infrastructure in a densely populated area will not bring peace and security to the region.  

The siege in Gaza, the way it is imposed, is nothing else than collective punishment. So, before it is too late, the siege must be lifted and aid agencies must be able to safely bring in essential supplies such as fuel, water, food and medicine. And we need this NOW.

Over the last few days, we have advocated for fuel to come in because we need fuel for the water station and the desalination plant in the south of Gaza. Unfortunately, we still have no fuel.

All parties must facilitate a humanitarian corridor so we can reach all those in need of support.   

UNRWA and aid agencies must be able to do their work and save lives. And we must do so safely, without risking our own lives. 

Finally, we are also calling for a suspension of hostilities for humanitarian reasons, and this needs to take place without any delay if we want to spare loss of more lives.

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Philippe Lazzarini is Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

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*** 

US President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East was in peril on Wednesday after US allies cancelled a summit of Arab leaders in Jordan, and Iran-backed forces called for “a day of rage”, following a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital housing hundreds of wounded and displaced Palestinians.

Protests erupted at US embassies across the region on Tuesday night in an outpouring of fury at the US for supporting Israel after the blast ripped through al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City leaving more than 500 Palestinians dead.

In Beirut and Baghdad demonstrators tried to break through security barriers at US embassies, while protestors in Amman, where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was staying, denounced Biden.

Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by the strike and that “the United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict.” 

Palestinian officials and leaders across the Middle East, including Washington’s closest Arab allies, have blamed Israel, whereas Israel has said a malfunctioning rocket launched by Islamic Jihad was responsible for the blast. The group has denied the allegation.

The strike underscores how Washington’s unconditional support for Israel since the 7 October attacks on southern Israel by Palestinian fighters is breeding resentment towards the US in the Arab world. 

Such anger could jeopardise Washington’s stated desire to prevent a widening of the war.

The hospital bombing has already yielded one diplomatic casualty.

As Biden’s Air Force One took off for the region, Jordan announced it was cancelling a summit in Amman between the US president, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

King Abdullah called the bombing a “heinous war crime,” while Sisi condemned it as a “clear violation of international law”.

Even the UAE, one of Israel’s key allies in the region, said Israel had attacked the hospital.

The cancellation means Biden will only meet Israeli leaders during his visit, a move likely to further fuel criticism that the US is not addressing regional concerns about the war’s impact on Palestinians and the security complaints of its Arab allies.

“The complete siding with Israel is unprecedented,” Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister who served as Amman’s first ambassador to Israel told MEE, warning that the rage against Israel and the US in the Arab world had reached “boiling level”.

“There is anger everywhere now in the Arab world. And a sense that the US is totally insensitive to a Palestinian population under siege.”

Biden’s trip comes as Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, came out empty-handed in a round of shuttle diplomacy this week that involved trying to broker a deal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt.

While analysts say getting aid into Gaza is a priority for the administration, Biden aims to demonstrate solidarity with Israel after the 7 October attack, which Israel and its allies have compared to 11 September 2001 and Pearl Harbor in the US.

To that end, the Biden administration has thrown its full weight behind Israel.

US military aid is pouring into the country with no conditions, according to John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that the security assistance will be “non-negotiable” and continue to “flow at the speed of war”.  

In previous wars fought by Israel, Washington has stood by its ally, but then gradually nudged it into negotiations.

During the 1973 war, the US withheld military aid to Israel as it engaged in combat against Syria and Egypt to bring them to the negotiating table, laying the foundations for an Egypt-Israel peace deal

More recently, Biden came out in strong support for Israel during its 2021 attack on the Gaza Strip, but eventually nudged it into a truce with armed groups in Gaza brokered by Egypt.

To be sure, for critics of Israel, none of those US attempts have gone far enough – but they have kept a lid on simmering tensions and allowed Washington to lean on traditional Arab partners like Jordan and Egypt to help stabilise the region.

‘Eliminate Hamas’

James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador in the region who now heads the Wilson Center’s Middle East programme, said Washington’s response to this war had to be viewed differently because of the sophistication demonstrated by Hamas during its recent assault on Israel.

The group’s military capabilities caught both the Israelis and Washington off guard.

The surprise attack on 7 October left at least 1,400 Israelis dead. In response, Israel launched a devastating bombing campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip that has killed more than 3,500 Palestinians, including more than 1,000 children and 936 women.

“This is a turning point in the Middle East,” Jeffrey said.

“Hamas’ ability to overcome an entire Israeli military defence line puts this war at the level of Yom Kippur,” he added, referencing the 1973 war between Israel and Arab states that resulted in the US military going on Defcon 3 alert, the highest state of peacetime readiness.

“No recent war has threatened the US-based Middle East system so much as this, and that is how the administration views it,” he said.

“In order to eliminate Hamas, Biden has been willing to accept a dramatic risk of civilian casualties and humanitarian disaster.”

While the administration continues to back Israel, in the last few days there has been a subtle rhetorical emphasis on limiting civilian casualties from US officials, including Blinken, who called for Israel “to use every possible precaution to avoid harm to civilians”.

For most in the Arab world, that refrain is less than lip service, as Israel continues to impose a complete blockade of Gaza preventing the entry of nearly all food, fuel and water. But analysts say within Biden’s visit of support for Israel, there is a note of caution.

President’s Prestige

Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told MEE that while the Biden administration had sent a clear “green light” for Israel to invade Gaza, the trip was also a way to gain some breathing space in order to forestall an Israeli ground invasion likely to cause huge casualties on both sides.

“The White House does not want to risk the prestige of the presidency and have Biden in Israel when it launches a bloody incursion into Gaza,” Maksad said.

“In the administration’s thinking Biden’s visit buys them time on the invasion, at least three days, maybe four.”

The clearest indication that the Biden administration is looking to shape Israel’s response to the Hamas attack was Biden’s warning in a CBS 60-Minutes interview on Sunday that any move by Israel to occupy the Gaza Strip “would be a big mistake”.

“It’s remarkable that statement came out publicly,” a US official speaking to MEE on condition of anonymity said.

The official said the US is asking Israel what its plans for the Gaza Strip would be after a potential ground invasion and providing input on the hazards of urban warfare from the US’s recent experience in the 2004 battle for Fallujah and campaign to oust the Islamic State group from Mosul.

The US also wants to avoid an Israeli military response that could draw in Iran and its proxies, especially Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Iran’s foreign minister warned on Monday that it would activate its network of militias on“multiple fronts” against Israel if it continued attacks on Gaza.

Can the US Deter Hezbollah?

The exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south intensified on Tuesday. So far the skirmishes have been carefully managed to avoid escalation, experts say.

“What’s been happening is a choreographed version of peace fighting. Israel and Hezbollah are sending diplomatic demarches by rocket as opposed to courier. But that can change fast,” Jeffrey said.

If Israel is forced to fight Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north it could suck the US into a new Middle East war during an election year.

In a bid to deter Iran, the US has dispatched the USS Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean. A second carrier group, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, is also en route.

The US is sending a rapid response force of about 2,000 Marines and sailors to the eastern Mediterranean that could be deployed in a non-combat role, and is gearing up to deploy even more.

The build-up of forces in the eastern Mediterranean has been “unprecedented”, a former senior US official told MEE, and in line with US war planning of steps to take should Israel face an existential military threat.

“Prior to this crisis, the US had stripped the majority of its high-end combat forces from the region. The cruisers, destroyers and military aircraft that could deter Iran were taken out. The US has shown with a lot of speed that it can rapidly put them back in place when needed,” the official said.

But the fragility of the situation was underscored after the al-Ahli al-Arab Hospital strike when Hezbollah called for a “day of rage”. On Wednesday, the US issued a “Do not travel” alert level for Lebanon and allowed some embassy workers to leave the country.

The last time Israel fought a full war with Hezbollah was 2006. Since then the group has massively expanded its missile arsenal from about 14,000 to 150,000 analysts say. Its troops have also been battle-tested in Syria.

Mick Mulroy, a former CIA officer and Pentagon official, said the “unprecedented” US force posture “should be enough to give pause to Hezbollah,” but the Biden administration has to be willing to use it: that would mean ballistic missiles defence systems on US destroyers shooting down a Hezbollah rocket if the situation escalated.

“Bluffing does not work in this area of the world.”

Normalisation Shattered

Muasher, the former Jordanian diplomat who is now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he is less concerned that Hezbollah would escalate the conflict, and more concerned the US was ignoring the roots of the war by ignoring a two-state solution, and instead “laying the stage for a mass expulsion of Palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip”. 

Both Egypt and Jordan have framed any attempt by Israel to evict Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank into their countries as a red line. 

“That’s where the real risk of expansion of the conflict lies,” he said.

“For years, the US has publicly reduced peacemaking to normalisation agreements between Israel and the Arab world, giving the impression that regional peace is possible even if peace with the Palestinians is not.

“This argument has been shattered,” he said.

The Biden administration’s efforts to broker a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel have collapsed amid the fighting. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (known as MBS) has voiced strong support for Palestine and refused to condemn Hamas.

And instead of speaking to Israel, Riyadh is talking to Tehran.

MBS held his first phone call with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last week and on Wednesday, Riyadh convened a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Countries to address the war. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will attend the event, according to Iranian media.

All of this will weigh on Biden’s mind as he prepares to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is weighing what would be a bloody invasion of Gaza.

The White House says Biden plans to ask Netanyahu “tough questions” and discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza, along with Israel’s plans going forward in the war. 

If Biden’s visit does buy the US time, it is going to be welcomed by US diplomats. Washington needs every second.

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*** 

On Monday night, the US and its allies voted down a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza as civilians in the enclave are under a brutal siege.

The resolution was proposed by Russia and was also supported by China, Gabon, Mozambique, and the UAE. But the US, Britain, France, and Japan voted against the resolution. Six countries abstained: Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta, and Switzerland.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield slammed the resolution because it did not condemn Hamas.

“By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalizes innocent civilians. It is outrageous, hypocritical, and indefensible,” she said.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s representative to the UN, slammed the US and its allies, saying they “basically stomped” on hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza by voting down the resolution.

“We are extremely concerned by the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the very high risk of the conflict spreading,” he said.

The Biden administration has refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza as it’s strongly backing Israel. The State Department even gave instructions to its diplomats not to mention the idea of “de-escalation” when discussing the onslaught.

Gaza has been cut off from electricity, water, fuel, and food as relentless airstrikes are pounding the enclave, leaving thousands dead. Israel has not allowed any humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt despite US claims that it’s working to facilitate the deliveries.

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

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***

President Joe Biden of the United States has emphasized daily that the principal foreign policy objective for Washington in West Asia and North Africa is to defend and bolster the State of Israel.

This is being articulated by Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with all administration officials and the overwhelming number of Congressional leaders as the United Nations and other international humanitarian agencies are advocating for the opening of a corridor to allow water, food, medical services and electricity to reduce the consistent injuring and deaths among the Palestinians.

Democratic Party Senate leader Chuck Schumer visited Israel as well for the same purpose of “legitimizing” the U.S. funding, arming and coordination of the national oppression of the Palestinian people and the destabilization and domination of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. While Schumer was in Tel Aviv, hundreds of his fellow Jewish Americans were holding a vigil outside his Brooklyn home saying that they did not want to be a party to the systematic genocide against the Palestinian people. Dozens of these demonstrators against Schumer were arrested by police for their refusal to move away from his residence. (See this)

Judging from these official delegations and the statements of unconditional support for Israel by Democratic and Republican politicians, it portends much for the status and future of imperialism in this geopolitical region as well as the entire international community. Biden has ordered the deployment of two warships to the region and 2,000 Pentagon troops.

On October 16, the White House announced that Biden would travel to Tel Aviv on the 18th to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is heading a self-proclaimed unity “war cabinet”. The Biden trip is an effort to project a false legitimacy for a politico-military posture aimed at justifying the elimination of as many Palestinians as possible. Biden, by disregarding the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, cannot be considered an honest broker concerned about the plight of the Palestinians.

Biden was also scheduled to visit the Kingdom of Jordan for a meeting with the leader of Amman, King Abdallah II, and the President of Egypt, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi. The subject of this meeting, it is claimed by the State Department, was to urge the opening of a humanitarian corridor to address the worsening situation in Gaza among the Palestinians.  Nonetheless, if Biden was really concerned about the displaced, wounded and killed Palestinians in Gaza, his administration would have condemned the role of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the carpet bombing of residential neighborhoods, convoys of fleeing civilians and medical personnel. Being the largest recipient of U.S. aid, Tel Aviv would have had its assistance suspended as opposed to being increased.

After 11 days of the IDF bombing of Gaza, Biden and his administration has expressed absolutely no sympathy for the Palestinians and is more concerned with maintaining imperialist dominance than saving the lives of the Palestinians and their neighbors. The culpability for the mass carnage inflicted upon the people of Gaza can only be viewed as the by-product of the Biden administration failed foreign policy in Palestine.

IDF Bombs Hospital in Gaza

One of the worst massacres since the IDF bombing began against Gaza, was the air strikes on the al-Ahli Hospital administered by the Anglican Diocese, which reportedly killed at least 500 people on October 17. An IDF spokesman said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) earlier in the day that Tel Aviv did not have to explain to anyone the character of the military tactics they have used in the killing of over 3,000 Palestinians in the previous 11 days.

Al-Ahli Hospital medical staff did a press conference on the recent airstrike which killed hundreds of Palestinians

The bombing of the hospital was preceded by IDF strikes against a school which resulted in the deaths of many children. Al-Ahli Hospital was not only the scene of treating infirm and injured people, it was serving as a safe zone away from the relentless bombing by the IDF on residential population centers. An estimated 4,000 displaced persons had been sheltering there away from the IDF aerial bombardments taking place around the clock. This same hospital had been struck in an Israeli air strike on October 14.

In a report published by the Associated Press:

“A senior Palestinian official says President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled his participation in a meeting scheduled Wednesday (Oct. 18) with President Joe Biden and other Mideast leaders.

Abbas was scheduled to join Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi at Wednesday’s summit in Amman, Jordan, where they are to discuss the latest Israel-Hamas war with Biden. But the senior official said Abbas was withdrawing to protest an alleged Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza that Hamas health officials say has killed over 500 people. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the cancellation has not been formally announced. The Health Ministry run by Hamas said an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday (Oct. 17) hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds. If confirmed, the attack would be by far the deadliest Israeli airstrike in five wars fought since 2008. The health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said at least 500 people had been killed. Photos purportedly from al-Ahli Hospital shared widely on social video showed fire engulfing the building, widespread damage and bodies scattered in the wreckage. The photos could not be independently verified.” 

Another report from the Al Jazeera news network further confirms the horrors of the al-Ahli Hospital bombing. Any attack on a health facility cannot be justified by the United Nations or any other international humanitarian agency.

Al Jazeera said in the immediate aftermath of the air strike that:

“Hundreds of people have been killed in an Israeli air raid on a hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian authorities. The health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 500 people were killed in the air raid on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza. The Hamas group, which governs the Palestinian territory, said the attack was a ‘war crime’. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said there were no details on the hospital deaths. ‘We will get the details and update the public. I don’t know whether to say whether it was an Israeli air strike,’ he said. Images shared on social media appeared to show fire engulfing the building, widespread damage and bodies scattered in the wreckage. Since Israel began pounding Gaza from the air on October 7, tens of thousands of people seeking refuge from the bombardment have fled to hospitals throughout Gaza. The World Health Organization condemned the attack and demanded the immediate protection of civilians and health care in the Palestinian enclave.” 

The Israeli government and military rapidly changed its narrative surrounding the air strikes at the healthcare facility and shelter in Gaza City. Initially, the assertion by Israel was that they were warning Palestinians to leave the northern areas of Gaza and to head to cities in the South.

Even after people were evacuating large swaths of the Gaza Strip, convoys were bombed while en route. At the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the Israelis denied the transport of essential food, water, medicines and other supplies to be provided to the Palestinians.

Palestine Chronicle deconstructed the shifting story by Tel Aviv regarding the deadly bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital, noting:
“So far, two different positions have been declared by the Israeli government.  At precisely 9:37 p.m., Palestine time, Al Jazeera Arabic live blog, citing Israeli military spokesman, wrote:

ISRAELI ARMY SPOKESMAN: ‘We had warned to evacuate the Baptist Hospital (Al-Ahli) and 5 other hospitals so that Hamas would not take them as a refuge.’ This statement was indeed consistent with other statements made by Al-Ahli hospital administration following the massacre. It said that they had been threatened that if they did not evacuate the hospital, the hospital would be bombed…. When the news of the massacre began circulating, and gruesome images of mutilated bodies of children and civilians began appearing on TV channels and social media platforms, the Israeli position began shifting. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported that the Israeli military had changed its story. ‘The Israeli military said that the killing of hundreds of people at a hospital in the Gaza Strip (…) was caused by a failed rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in Gaza,’ Xinhua reported. But this cannot possibly be the case, for several reasons: First, no one in the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza has bombs with this kind of destructive capabilities. Second, the Israeli military had already made it clear, in its initial statement, that it was the party behind the mass killing. Third, Israel had in fact already bombed that same hospital, only a few days earlier, specifically on Saturday, October 14. The bombing then resulted in infrastructural damage. Fourth, Israel has bombed other hospitals as well, including Al-Dura hospital and the Indonesian hospital, among others. Fifth, soon before the massacre, Israeli aircraft also carried out a strike against a UNRWA-run school, sheltering civilians, in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing and wounding dozens. And finally, and perhaps even more important, is the fact that the Israeli army continued bombing hospitals, even following the news of the great massacre. One of these hospitals was the European Hospital in Gaza. ‘Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported that the Israeli occupation forces bombed the vicinity of the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip,’ Aljazeera Live Blog reported.” 

Days of Mourning and Outrage

There were immediate political responses throughout the world to the IDF bombing of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. Demonstrations erupted in Amman, Jordan; Rabat in the Kingdom of Morocco; Sana’a the capital of Yemen; the cities of Ottawa and Montreal Canada; Ramallah on the West Bank of occupied Palestine, among many others. In Lebanon, the Hezbollah resistance movement called for a “Day of Outrage” throughout the country neighboring Palestine for October 18.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands took place in several cities after the news of the hospital bombing spread throughout the globe. Iranian political and religious leaders condemned the bombing and called upon the Palestinians and all people of goodwill to resist the Israeli regime.

In the North African state of Egypt, Al Jazeera reported on October 17:

“Egyptians continue to take to the streets in the country’s capital, and other parts of the country early on Wednesday, amid simmering anger over the deadly strike in Gaza. Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting that Egyptian opposition parties led protests in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, in which several political and civic movement figures participated. In Giza, dozens went out in a night march denouncing the Israeli aggression. Egyptian activists posted on their pages on the social networking site, Facebook, video clips of a mass demonstration that began in Giza’s Al-Hosary Square, denouncing the Gaza attack, which Palestinian officials blame on Israel.” 

These acts by the State of Israel, which are backed by Washington, will make it extremely difficult for the U.S. to be viewed as a viable force for peace and security throughout the globe. People in the U.S. must reject the imperialist program of the ruling class and join with the world’s majority in demanding the liberation and statehood for Palestine.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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*** 

The Biden regime refuses to defend US borders but does not hesitate to rush aircraft carrier task forces and the 101st US Airborne Division to defend Israel’s borders. “We have Israel’s back,” endlessly proclaims America’ Jewish Secretary of State.  “America can afford two wars,” proclaims America’s Jewish Secretary of the Treasury. But forget protecting our own border and the burdens on American taxpayers.

It seems our government is captured and risks our lives and welfare in the interest of another country.

It seems everyone in Washington, Republicans and Democrats, especially Republicans, have intense war fever. While Washington quickly escalated the conflict by deploying US military forces to the area, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, blames  escalation on Iran and issues a threat: “if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you.” Graham continues with his threats, in our name, to Iran saying the US will “knock Iran out of the oil business.” Like Israel and the Jewish-American neoconservatives, Graham’s target is the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah: “I am poised to use military force to destroy the source of funding for Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Another House Republican, this one from Texas, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, says he is writing legislation for authority to commit the US military to Israel’s war on Palestine.

What we are witnessing is Republicans who are as extreme as Hamas. Is this insanity real, or is this showmanship, with political campaign funding in mind, for the US military/security complex who will greatly benefit from America “affording two wars?”

We are also witnessing the total failure of Western leadership, not only in Washington but throughout the Western world. Instead of escalating the situation by sending military forces, Washington should have used its offices to calm matters down. Why did not Washington calm the situation down instead of blowing it up?

This website speculates that the US forces accumulating in the war zone are a “war fleet,” the purpose of which is to finally bring regime change to Syria and kick out the Russians in an act of revenge for the Russians preventing President Obama’s planned overthrow of the Assad government.  

I can understand that the Biden regime’s neoconservatives want to continue their policy of cleansing the Middle East for Israeli expansion, but how safe is it to assume that Putin will run away with his tail between his legs? This would finish Putin as a leader of the dissident world and probably also finish him inside Russia. A show of Russian cowardice would certainly provoke an escalation of NATO’s involvement in Ukraine. It seems certain that a US attack on Syria would result in military conflict between the US and Russia.

The Israelis have been massacring Palestinians and stealing their country bit by bit since 1947, and no one has ever done anything about it. The UN passes resolutions, but the US vetoes them. So this final time Netanyahu expects no opposition, indeed, he expects help from the US and its empire in the commission of his war crimes.  

It is clear to me that the situation is awash in miscalculations. Hezbollah is a match for Israel. Indeed, the militia has twice defeated the vaunted Israeli Army and driven them out of Lebanon despite Israel’s air power. Syria’s army is battle hardened from fighting the mercenaries Washington sent to overthrow Assad. Like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran has fervor and a large number of missiles that can hit Israel. If, as is claimed, 5,000 missiles from Hamas overwhelmed Israel’s Iron Dome, the Iron Dome has no chance against 100,000 or 200,000 missiles.

If Israel’s army is sent into Gaza, Hamas will keep it there, and Israel risks being overrun by Hezbollah, Syria, and Iraq and Iran should they care to participate. Faced with Israel’s defeat, Washington would commit its forces with catastrophic consequences.

We are experiencing on the part of Israel and the US a total lack of judgment. The risks are being ignored. It is starting to look like the Armageddon that Revelation describes.  

The problem for humanity is that it has developed weapons that are capable of destroying all life, and these weapons are in the hands of emotional people incapable of restraint and reason.  

I have been, and continue to be, concerned about the conflict in Ukraine spiraling out of control. The situation developing in the Middle East is more dangerous. There doesn’t seem to be sufficient recognition of this danger. The war propaganda from the presstitutes is extreme and blinds people to reality. Those in office think they are in control, but they are not. 

Possibly Russia could prevent a wider conflict by raising its military presence in Syria, but Putin is not proactive.  

You tell me, where are the leaders to prevent a catastrophe?

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. 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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***

Atrocities must be reported as wide as can be. The globe’s population, East and West, North and South, must know what we are living today.

The Zionist-Israeli genocide has no borders, no limits. It is beyond anything Mother Earth has experienced in recent history.

News just in: Israel bombed the largest national hospital in Gaza, leaving at least 500 dead, and more than 600 hundreds injured. The death toll may undoubtedly rise.

This is what TeleSur reports (translated from Spanish by Deepl.com):

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning following the Israeli bombing of the Arab National Hospital.

An Israeli bombing killed at least 500 people at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and 600 others were wounded, the health ministry of the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said. 

“The massacre at the Arab National Hospital is unprecedented in our history. While we have witnessed tragedies in past wars and days, what happened tonight is tantamount to genocide,” said spokesman Mahmoud Basal.

The communication office of the enclave authorities denounced a “war crime”.

In addition, in the 10 days of the totally imbalanced war – at least 3,000 Gazan inhabitants have lost their lives.

A Call on humanity: The world must stand up against these crimes, genocide no end, and stop Israel in one way or another NOW.

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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 worked for over 30 years 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).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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*** 

The Israeli occupation carried out a massacre before the entire world as it bombed a hospital housing over a thousand civilians, killing hundreds in the process.

Palestinian media reported that Al-Maamadani Hospital was housing over a thousand people, including Palestinian refugees, patients, and media personnel.

The Government Media Office: #Israel committed a war crime, targeting the courtyard of the Baptist Hospital.

Hundreds of displaced Gazans had been taking shelter in the courtyard of the hospital thinking that it would be safe because it is a hospital sponsored by Christian… pic.twitter.com/PiZin8jqDH

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 17, 2023

Preliminary reports suggest that no less than 800 people were martyred in the Israeli aggression.

⚡️#BREAKING Spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza: More than 500 victims were killed in the zionist regime airstrike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital#IsraelGazaWar #GazaAttack #PalestineGenocide #غزة_تزحف_الى_القدس #IsraeliNewNazism #PalestineWillBeFree #Gaza 3000… pic.twitter.com/w9yqhbV1Ao

— Bachhan Pandey (@zaidlala786) October 17, 2023

The Israeli occupation forces bombed the Palestinian Hospital as Gaza continues reporting that its health sector is suffering in light of the crisis, with medicine and medical supplies being at risk of running out.

#Watch | The moment "Israel" bombed the Al-Maamadani Hospital where it committed a massacre that reportedly called no less than 800 people thus far.#Gaza #GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/bHbSD0CrFH

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 17, 2023

A video that went viral on social media showed the moment of the strike. It depicts an extremely fast object that hit the hospital in the terminal phase.

Some Israeli and pro-Israeli accounts claimed it was a failed resistance launch, in a weak attempt to shift the blame off the Israeli occupation and demonize the resistance factions. Based on the speed of the object it’s not possible for it to be a dud missile, as rockets failing to accelerate would have much lower speeds. 

The speed difference can be easily identified between gliding munition launched from the air and failing-to-accelerate dud missiles. Hence, the object that hit the hospital was most definitely an Israeli airstrike.

Despite global appeals to protect healthcare facilities from Israeli airstrikes and forced displacement orders, Israeli threats have targeted hospitals in the Gaza Strip, endangering the well-being of patients and the wounded. “Israel” demanded on Saturday that al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza forcibly evacuate its patients and staff within two hours.

Israeli warplanes also conducted airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital in Tel al-Zaatar, northern Gaza, as part of their attempt to exert pressure on the hospital and expedite the displacement process. 

In the same context, al-Durra Children’s Hospital in the east of the Gaza Strip was forced to evacuate its staff and patients after it was pounded with white phosphorus munitions.

This situation unfolds as the healthcare system in Gaza faces a severe crisis, marked by dwindling medication supplies and electricity shortages due to the total Israeli blockade.

Palestinian Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra told Al Mayadeen, on Thursday, that Gaza was hours away from essential services completely shutting down, and the health sector is in collapse.

“Medicines are dwindling and have almost run out,” Al-Qidra said, noting that only life-saving units were operating in Gaza’s hospitals due to the existing fuel shortages.

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*** 

The former diplomat’s detention is just the latest example of British terror laws being used to harass and intimidate dissidents, while brazenly prying into their private affairs.

On the morning of October 16, counter-terror police in Glasgow Airport detained journalist, whistleblower, human rights campaigner, and former British diplomat Craig Murray upon his return from Iceland. After grilling him intensively about his political beliefs, officers seized Murray’s phone and laptop. 

Murray, a proud Scottish nationalist, flew back to Glasgow after several days in Reykjavik, where he attended a popular Palestine solidarity event, and also met with high-ranking representatives of the Assange Campaign, which raises awareness about the plight of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Once his travel documents were processed at passport control, the officer informed him he would be detained for questioning. They then led him to a small backroom to be grilled by three nameless British counter-terror agents.

Murray told The Grayzone that British police warned him he would be committing a criminal offense and would be prosecuted if he refused to answer questions, answered untruthfully, deliberately withheld information, or refused to provide passcodes for his electronic devices. After his phone and laptop were seized for analysis, the interrogation began.

“First, they grilled me about the private Assange Campaign meeting,” Murray told The Grayzone. “You might think they would ask who was there, but they didn’t,” he said, adding, “my guess is they somehow knew already.”

Instead, “all the questions were financial,” Murray says. According to the former British ambassador, officers wanted to know “whether I get money for my contributions to the Campaign, if I get paid by WikiLeaks, Don’t Extradite Assange, even Julian’s family.”

“The answer each time was ‘no,’” Murray says, explaining: “My sources of income and where my money comes from were of particular interest to the officers.”

The one-time diplomat’s popular personal blog was also of interest to the officers, who reportedly demanded Murray tell them whether anyone else had access to it or could publish content on the platform, and if anyone other than himself authored any of its posts.

Strangely, Murray said he was not asked about a single article published on his website. Equally puzzling, he remarked, were the questions about the Palestine solidarity event he attended. 

Officers apparently wanted to know why Murray had attended in the first place — “a strange question to ask of someone attending a protest,” he told The Grayzone. Nonetheless, he made it clear that he had gone because he was friends with one of the speakers, a former Icelandic interior minister.

Police reportedly also demanded details on the content of various speakers’ addresses at the event — information which Murray says he could not offer as he doesn’t speak Icelandic. When asked if he planned to attend any similar pro-Palestine events in Britain, he told them, “probably.”

“The weirdest question was, ‘how do I judge whether to share a platform with someone or not?’” Murray says, adding: “I do so based on who’s organizing the event.”

In this particular case, Murray continued,

“it was [the] Palestine Solidarity Committee, so I was confident I was in safe hands.” Still, it struck the former ambassador as a bizarre line of questioning.

“My lawyer has never heard of such a question being asked during interrogations before,” Murray said, adding that “they speculate police have a surveillance photo of me in the proximity of someone they consider a ‘terrorist.’”

“I’ve no idea who that could be,” the outspoken human rights campaigner admitted. But, as he quickly observed: “If you attend a rally where 200,000 people are present, you can’t know who everyone is!”

Murray has since consulted with lawyers, who informed him that according to Section 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act — the draconian legislation under which he was subjected to the intensive questioning — he would be legally entitled to consult a lawyer if the interrogation lasted longer than an hour. 

‘A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut’

Once the hour of questioning was up, the officers sent him on his way, but failed to return his phone or laptop.

“I’m used to the idea of British and American spies having my computers,” Murray said.

On a trip to Germany at the end of 2022, two laptops belonging to Murray were stolen in separate locations. The second laptop happened to have been a locally-bought replacement for the first. He believes the thefts were “probably” carried out by “security services,” an interpretation reinforced by the fact the first laptop was stored in a bag containing a large sum of cash, along with vital heart medicine. The culprits inexplicably ignored the former, while pocketing the latter. 

When probed by counter-terror cops about the contents of his laptop, Murray says he openly disclosed that device contained copies of leaked private emails of Stewart McDonald, a hawkish, deep state-connected Scottish National Party.

But “I’m not worried about any content on there,” he explained, so “it’s not a problem they have it.”

“I told the officers I pitied whichever poor bastard has to wade through McDonald’s emails,” he joked.

“Interestingly,” Murray notes, “one of them volunteered in response that the contents of seized digital devices are sifted electronically, rather than an individual going over the whole contents.”

“Presumably, algorithms run by keyword searches do the legwork, and whatever that throws up is studied and shared with different agencies,” he speculates.

Murray’s lawyers are now looking into the stop, with an eye on whether his interrogators told him the truth before his questioning began. 

This April, British counter-terror police detained the French publisher and political activist Ernest Moret, who had led large protests in Paris against the neoliberal reforms of President Emmanuel Macron. Moret was detained under the same powers as Murray, then arrested when he refused to hand over passcodes to his electronic devices. He was ultimately held in British custody for almost 24 hours. 

In July, a damning report by Britain’s terror legislation watchdog concluded the officers who detained Moret had made “exaggerated and overbearing” threats when they claimed that he would never again be able to travel overseas if he didn’t disclose information, as he’d be listed as a terrorist in international intelligence databases. The report also found police grilled him illegitimately regarding legally privileged conversations he had with his lawyer during the interrogation.

Schedule 7 is “powerful” and “must therefore be exercised with due care,” the reviewer said, before ultimately comparing police’s usage of the legislation to interrogate Moret to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”:

“This was an investigation into public order for which counter-terrorism powers were never intended to be used,” the report noted, concluding “the rights of free expression and protest are too important in a democracy to allow individuals to be investigated for potential terrorism merely because they may have been involved in protests that have turned violent.”

But when it comes to carrying out political detentions, the legislation in question is not the only one in British officers’ arsenal.

Absent from the report was any reference to Schedule 3, Section 4 of Britain’s 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, which was used to authorize the detention of this journalist at London’s Luton Airport this May. The provision grants authorities sweeping powers to delve into the personal and professional affairs of dissidents. According to Murray, British counter-terror cops appear to have approached him using “the same playbook” they employed with me.

Under the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, which has been harshly criticized by the UN, an individual can be said to be serving “hostile” foreign powers without even knowing or intending to — or the powers in question being aware they are. This Orwellian precept was reinforced by London’s new National Security Act, which was passed in July 2023.

Anyone who has agitated the British national security state and plans on traveling to the UK may want to be careful what they keep on their devices. As one of Ernest Moret’s interrogators boasted to him, Britain is “the only country where authorities can download and keep information from private devices” forever.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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It took place with hardly any debate, though it interested some parliamentary members at the committee stage. The Australian state of Victoria now faces laws that will lock a person up for 12 months or punish individuals with fines of A$23,000 or above if they dare enact a gesture. That gesture is giving, with intent, the Nazi salute.

Victoria had already banned displays of the Nazi Hakenkreuz last December, imposing fines of approximately A$22,000 or a period of 12 months’ imprisonment for breaching the injunction. (That notably, had no effect whatsoever.) But vocal advocates such as Dr Dvir Abramovich of the Anti-Defamation Commission always wanted more. “To see the Hitler salute, it’s as threatening as being confronted with a gun,” he explained to Australia’s SBS network. “It is a weapon in my view.  It is an unacceptable reality that in 2023, it is still legal.”

On August 29, the Victorian Premier’s office announced that, “The Nazi salute and other gestures and symbols used by the Nazi party will be banned in Victoria under new reforms to prevent hateful conduct and address the harm that it causes the community.” To aid that reformist claim, Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes duly introduced the Summary Offences (Nazi Salute Prohibition) Bill 2023 into Parliament, intending “to send a clear message that Nazi ideology and the hatred it represents is not tolerated in Victoria.”

On August 30, the Minister for Police, Crime Prevention and Racing (such a comic combination is standard in Australian States), predictably tabled a “statement of compatibility” with the state’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).  “Under the Charter, rights can be subject to limits that are reasonable and justifiable in a free and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. Rights may be limited in order to protect other rights.”

According to the Minister, Anthony Carbines, public displays or the “performance of Nazi gestures, particularly the Nazi salute, and other Nazi symbols impinges” the right of people to enjoy their human rights without discrimination. The minister specifically notes the threat to “the dignity and self-worth of groups that have been historically persecuted by the Nazi Party and targeted by neo-Nazi groups,” among them the Jewish community, LGBTIQ+ individuals and people with disability.

Across Australian territories and states, including New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and Western Australia, such measures are being enacted, though with an initial focus on banning Nazi symbols.

Ultimately, laws explicitly punishing such conduct must be judged by their effect. Blanket bans are usually the sign that the account of ideas has been overdrawn, if not closed altogether. We are told that prohibiting such symbols, and the salute, is intended to stifle the “recruitment drive” for far-right groups. “To the often alienated and angry young men attracted to far-right ideologies, photos of groups of men making the Nazi salute offer a sense of a collective and belonging,” writes the anthropologically attuned Josh Roose.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), an agency prone to sketchy assessments at the best of times, is concerned about the lowest common denominator. “Extremist insignia [are] an effective propaganda tool because they are easy to remember and understand. They also can transcend language, cultural and ethnic divides; creating and distributing them is not limited to a select few or one cultural or language group.” The conclusion, it follows, is that a ban is good to keep the thickos in check.

If that is the purpose, that it can hardly be said to have worked in a number of jurisdictions keen to stomp out the twitch felt in the arms of some individuals. In Europe, where the Nazi salute is banned on pain of various grades of penalty (Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, for instance), nationalist movements can hardly be said to have felt awe and trepidation at such regulations.

While Victoria’s parliamentarians have acted out their somnambulistic rituals in passing this reactive legislation, aided, no doubt, by the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, a sprinkling of Australian commentary has been wise to failing of such prohibitions.

Lydia Khalil of the Lowy Institute says with crisp confidence that such bans do little to “decrease anti-Semitism, the hateful targeting of LGBTQ communities or counter right-wing and fascist extremists. If anything, it may make matters worse.” Case in point: the rise of right-wing extremism in Germany, with 2021 being a particularly notable year.  In December 2022, Khalil reminds readers, German security forces “arrested more than two dozen people for an expansive plot to overthrow the state.” Those same security forces, ironically enough, are facing the threat of infiltration by neo-Nazi groups. So much for the laws against the salute.

Greg Barton, Chair of Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University, though more cautious than Khalil, is also wise to the fact that banning Nazi symbols might well “only serve to amplify the groups’ message and draw attention to their hateful cause.” Small organisations with minimal political clout and influence, such as the puny National Socialist Network, suddenly have something to talk about, if only because they are being spoken about. “Prosecuting them for symbolic action risks giving them the very thing they so desperately want: attention.” (Khalil also remarks on this same point: [I]f there’s anything that these neo-Nazi groups want, it’s a reaction.”)

The explanatory memorandum behind the Nazi Salute Prohibition bill does what so many such instruments do when a crisis is inflated and fattened by unimaginative politicians. Has Victoria seen thousands march and salute to the Horst Wessel Lied, rioting with hearty hatred? Hardly. But something must be seen to be done or, as the memorandum says, “The purpose of this amendment is to address the recent increase in the public display and performance of the Nazi salute in Victoria.” That way, the political representatives can always give the impression that something threatening and noxious is being dealt with, however large that threat is, while drawing attention to the seductive allure of doing so. That way, the problem is not solved but compounded.

In terms of symbolism and the state’s efforts to criminalise displays, the sharper tools in the box of extremist politics can always come up with another gesture, if not another symbol altogether. (Admittedly, many such characters lack imagination and would prefer to stick with the traditional staple of the salute and Hakenkreuz.) An example of such subversive responses is the use of the OK symbol in place of the salute. The normally banal can then be suffused with ideological potency, while baffling law enforcement. There will always be issues of difficulty, then, in discharging the burden of proof.

Evidently, Victoria’s authorities think they can afford to expend resources upon what would essentially be fatuous prosecutions, when existing criminal laws are already in place to achieve much the same purpose. And how fabulous it will be to see prosecutions stumble over what is accepted as satirical depiction and what is not. How the ghost of Charlie Chaplin and the working pen of Larry David must delight when such buffoonery manifests.

As for the parliamentarians themselves, having done and dusted the bill with speed verging on irresponsibility, they could then turn their minds to far worthier concerns: expressing outrage at the banning of Sprite the rescue dog from their place of work.

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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: Members of the Hitler Youth in Berlin performing the Nazi salute at a rally in 1933 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

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The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967. It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

The ‘settler’ project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: ‘Judaisation’, or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

New technology allowed Israel to besiege Gaza remotely by land, sea and air in 2007, limiting the entry of food and vital items like medicine and cement for construction. Automated gun towers shot anyone who came near the fence. The navy patrolled the sea, stopping boats straying more than a kilometre or two off shore. And drones watched 24 hours a day from the sky.

The people of Gaza were sealed in and largely forgotten, except when they lobbed a few rockets over the fence – to international indignation. If they fired too many rockets, Israel bombed them mercilessly and occasionally launched a ground invasion. The rocket threat was increasingly neutralised by a rocket interception system, paid for by the US, called Iron Dome.

Palestinians tried to be more inventive in finding ways to break out of their prison. They built tunnels. But Israel found ways to identify those that ran close to the fence and destroyed them.

Palestinians tried to get attention by protesting en masse at the fence. Israeli snipers were ordered to shoot them in the legs, leading to thousands of amputees.

The ‘deterrence’ seemed to work. Israel could once again sit back and let the Palestinians rot in Gaza. ‘Quiet’ had been restored.

Until, that is, last weekend when Hamas broke out briefly and ran amok, killing civilians and soldiers alike.

So Israel now needs a new policy. It looks like the ethnic cleansing programme is being applied to Gaza anew. The half of the population in the enclave’s north is being herded south, where there are not the resources to cope with them. And even if there were, Israel has cut off food, water and power to everyone in Gaza.

The enclave is quickly becoming a pressure cooker. The pressure is meant to build on Egypt to allow the Palestinians entry into Sinai on ‘humanitarian’ grounds.

Whatever the media are telling you, the ‘conflict’ – that is, Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme – started long before Hamas appeared on the scene. In fact, Hamas emerged very late, as the predictable response to Israel’s violent colonisation project.

And no turning point was reached a week ago. This has all been playing out in slow motion for more than 100 years.

Ignore the fake news. Israel isn’t defending itself. It’s enforcing its right to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

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Featured image is from JCB

The Kuala Lumpur declaration was initially adopted eighteen years in December 2005 as a consensus statement on the need to end all wars of aggression as a means to ensuring the survival of humanity.

“Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace. Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes. This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.”

In 2023, we are at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in World History. More than ever the Kuala Lumpur Initiative launched in 2005 by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad should be widely understood and applied.

The Pentagon, NATO and the State of Israel are the protagonists of war and war crimes. 

The US has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously, resulting in millions of civilian deaths and countless atrocities.

Bear in mind, the KL Declaration also calls for the criminalization of the military industrial complex including the so-called defense contractors as well as the science labs which conceptualize and develop advanced weapons systems: 

“All commercial, financial, industrial and scientific activities that aid and abet war should be criminalised.” 

The KL declaration also targets the corporate media as well as Hollywood which routinely glorifies acts of killing and destruction. 

Since its adoption in 2005, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) has passed two important  judgements: against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney et al for war crimes in Iraq, and against the State of Israel on charges of genocide against the people of Palestine. 

Global Research has been associated with the Kuala Lumpur initiative from the very outset in December 2005

Michel Chossudovsky, Signatory of the 2005  KL  Initiative and Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC), Global Research, February 3, 2014, June 23, 2023, October 18, 2023

 

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“The Criminalisation of War”

Text of Declaration

15 December 2005

THE Kuala Lumpur Global Peace Forum of concerned peoples from all five continents

UNITED in the belief that peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race,

DETERMINED to promote peace and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,

OUTRAGED over the frequent resort to war in the settlement of disputes between nations,

DISTURBED that militarists are preparing for more wars,

TROUBLED that use of armed force increases insecurity for all,

TERRIFIED that the possession of nuclear weapons and the imminent risk of nuclear war will lead to the annihilation of life on earth.

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Signatories of the 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration. From Left to Right: Francis A.Boyle, Helen Caldicott,  Denis J. Halliday, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck, Michel Chossudovsky, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

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To achieve peace we now declare that:

1. Wars increasingly involve the killing of innocent people and are, therefore, abhorrent and criminal.
2. Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace.
3. Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes. This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.
4. All commercial, financial, industrial and scientific activities that aid and abet war should be criminalised.
5. All national leaders who initiate aggression must be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
6. All nations must strengthen the resolve to accept the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and institute methods to settle international disputes by peaceful means and to renounce war.
7. Armed force shall not be used except when authorised by a Resolution passed by two-thirds majority of the total membership of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
8. All legislators and all members of Government must affirm their belief in peace and pledge to strive for peace.
9. Political parties all over the world must include peace as one of their principal objectives.
10. Non-Governmental Organisations committed to the promotion of peace should be set up in all nations.
11. Public servants and professionals, in particular in the medical, legal, educational and scientific fields, must promote peace and campaign actively against war.
12. The media must actively oppose war and the incitement to war and consciously promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
13. Entertainment media must cease to glorify war and violence and should instead cultivate the ethos of peace.
14. All religious leaders must condemn war and promote peace.

To these ends the Forum resolves to establish a permanent Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur to –

IMPLEMENT this Initiative.

OPPOSE policies and programmes that incite war.

SEEK the cooperation of NGOs worldwide to achieve the goals of this Initiative.

Signed by:

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Prof. Francis A. Boyle

Dr. Helen Caldicott

Mr. Matthias Chang

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi

Mr Denis J. Halliday

Dato’ Mukhriz Mahathir

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

Dato’ Michael O.K. Yeoh

Mr. Hans-Christof Von Sponeck

Second Nakba: The Start of Monumental Destruction of the Middle East?

By Peter Koenig, October 17, 2023

Israeli intel, as well as that of Egypt, the UK, the US, Brussels – EU – knew about the impending attack, planned by Israel in coordination with Hamas. A Jewish charity leader says Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to stand down for 7 hours during the Hamas invasion.

Short Introduction to Middle Eastern Studies: What Is the Middle East as a Region?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 17, 2023

Middle Eastern Studies are a multicomplex research discipline devoted to  bettering knowledge and understanding of different cultures, nationalities, and complexities of the world’s region conventionally known as the Middle East. Its geography stretches from Egypt to Iran and from Syria to Yemen.

Seventeen COVID Pandemic Lies We’ve Been Told

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, October 17, 2023

Aside from the “infodemic versus plandemic” debate, what is now certain is that much of what our federal health officials and their mainstream media mouthpieces told us during these three-plus years was patently false and untrue. 

New Zealand: “COVID Apocalypse” and the Illusions of Progress

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, October 17, 2023

Prominent and beloved and ‘benevolent’ figures like primate researcher Jane Goodall are openly espousing the virtues of depopulation, while ‘excess deaths’ are besieging us, cancers are proliferating, and the adverse effects of the Jab are being shoved under the rug and attributed to ‘long covid’, as if short covid wasn’t enough.

Postcards from a Police State: 22 Years of Blowback from the USA Patriot Act

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, October 17, 2023

Here in the United States, as we approach the 22^nd anniversary of the USA Patriot Act on October 26, we’re still grappling with the blowback that arises from allowing one’s freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security. Here are a few lessons that we never learned or learned too late.

Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Puzzling: “Hamas Fighters entered Israel without being detected.” Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 17, 2023

The Hamas attack has something of 9/11’s flavor. Just as every aspect of the US National Security State failed simultaneously on September 11, 2001, Israel’s security system, including the Iron Dome the US constructed for Israel, simultaneously failed.

Bibi Netanyahu: Israel Must “Support Bolstering Hamas and Transferring Money to Hamas”

By Ben Bartee, October 17, 2023

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s how Netanyahu schemed behind the scenes for years to promote the terrorist group he now publicly decries and postures as the savior from.

Israel-Palestine Conflict: Huge Casualties and Humanitarian Disaster. Peace Talks Needed

By Steven Sahiounie, October 17, 2023

The Palestinian civilians are trapped, and some do not support Hamas, but are caught as innocent bystanders in an armed conflict, between Hamas and Israel. Resistance to an occupation is guaranteed by international law, but the targeting of civilians is prohibited.

Second Time in 48 Hours, Israel Attacks Aleppo International Airport and Puts It Out of Service

By The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, October 17, 2023

Israeli strikes targeted Aleppo International Airport hours after it returned back to operate, putting it out of service again. This is the second attack on Aleppo International Airport in 48 hours.

China’s Middle East Ambitions Being Tested by Israel-Gaza War

By Ahmed Adel, October 17, 2023

The reason for China’s declared “neutral position” in the war between Israel and Gaza is that US influence in the region may increase, writes the Financial Times newspaper, with reference to diplomats and analysts. However, this so-called neutral position is not having the desired effect as Israel is becoming outraged in what they perceive as “pro-Palestine neutrality.”

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Middle Eastern Studies are a multicomplex research discipline devoted to  bettering knowledge and understanding of different cultures, nationalities, and complexities of the world’s region conventionally known as the Middle East. Its geography stretches from Egypt to Iran and from Syria to Yemen.

In principle, the crucial mark of the region is the predominant Arab culture with some contrasts in the cultural habits between, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Besides, the cultural features of several other ethnic and confessional groups of the Middle East give a more comprehensive picture of the region’s peoples and challenges.

The Middle East was the home of the earliest civilizations in the world’s history. The first urbanizations and literacy started there. The region of the Middle East usually covers the territories from the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea up to India in the East.

In a broader sense, geographically, the region encompasses territories of the East Mediterranean and Central Asia but many American academicians, politicians, and journalists regard as a single region the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 

In principle, the real Middle East is composed of 14 countries: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran (+ unrecognized Palestine).

These countries are bounded by six major waterways: the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and Caspian Sea (in fact, lake).

It has to be noticed here that Turkey (Asia Minor) which from the 14^th century till 1918 has been a center of the powerful Ottoman Empire that unified a major portion of the region is conventionally considered as a part of the Middle East.

However, from an academic viewpoint based on the traditional British approach, Asia Minor together with the Balkans belong to the Near East but not to the Middle East. In other words, the Balkan Peninsula and the peninsula of Asia Minor are two halves of the same bridge that connects Central Europe with the Middle East.

Nevertheless, Turkey is a non-Arab country even though its inhabitants are predominantly (98%) Muslims (Sunni) whose dominant language is Turkish. Turkey’s 82 million people are composed of ethnic Turkish majority and some ethnic minorities who speak Arabic, Kurdish, and Greek. 

The region of the Middle East is an area where geography and history are important factors in the contemporary lives of the people. There are many native peoples of the region for whom the Middle East is considered as the Arab homeland.

It refers to those lands in which the Arabic language (with all dialects) is spoken. It is, basically, a unique region in the world regarding geography, geopolitics, and geostrategy as here three continents are meeting each other (Europe, Africa, and Asia) and as the region which was a focal point of the development of the first civilizations.

Geologically, its topography was transformed after the Ice Age from a climate that supported the grasslands and waterways into vast steppes and deserts. Around 2000 B.C., the pastoral people of Aryans, also called  Indo-Iranians migrated into India and West as well as Central Asia, including today’s Iran (Persia) and surrounding countries.

Strategically, the Middle East was considered all the time to be an extremely valuable geostrategic territory as being a crossroad for trade, faith, conflicts, and cultural development.

In principle, the crucial mark of the region is the predominant Arab culture with some contrasts in the cultural habits between, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Besides, the cultural features of several other ethnic and confessional groups of the Middle East give a more comprehensive picture of the region’s peoples and challenges.

For thousands of years, many waves of migration to the region made the Middle East ethnically and culturally very multifarious: from the Semitic Sumerians from Central Asia up to present-day Korean, Indian, or Filipino economic immigrants who are searching for jobs in the oil-rich regional countries.

For instance, at the end of the last century, more than 3 million workers from India and other parts of Asia arrived in the region to build a modern infrastructure.

On the one hand, the majority of the inhabitants of the Middle East have many things in common like the Arab language and culture, the religion of Islam but on the other hand, different ethnic minorities exist in each of those regional countries while the Islamic religion is divided into two factions: the Sunni (majority) and the Shia (minority). 

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

Israel continua a adiar o seu tão esperado ataque terrestre à Faixa de Gaza. Apesar dos brutais bombardeamentos contra instalações civis e do cerco criminoso imposto ao povo palestino, as forças armadas de Israel (IDF) parecem estar a evitar o lançamento de uma ofensiva de infantaria, adiando repetidamente os planos de entrada de tropas terrestres no território palestino. Propagandistas e militantes sionistas acreditam que isto seria uma espécie de “gesto de boa vontade” por parte de Tel Aviv, mas é mais provável que Israel tenha medo dos fortes impactos que tal ataque teria sobre as suas forças.

Em 13 de Outubro, o governo israelita emitiu um ultimato à população palestina no norte da Faixa de Gaza. De acordo com o comunicado israelita, os civis da região tinham vinte e quatro horas para evacuar as suas casas. Após o final deste período, um ataque massivo da infantaria israelense começaria.

Obviamente não foi possível retirar todos os civis da zona, pois o tempo estabelecido foi muito curto. Além disso, as estradas de Gaza estão gravemente danificadas pelos bombardeamentos israelitas, tornando ainda mais difícil a fuga dos cidadãos. No entanto, após o término do prazo de evacuação, as IDF, em vez de lançar a sua ofensiva, deram algumas horas adicionais para completar a evacuação.

Não importa quantas horas ou dias fossem concedidos ao povo palestino, todos os esforços para evacuar completamente os civis seriam inúteis. Com a região devastada por bombardeamentos e más condições de transporte, tal processo só poderia ser concluído ao longo de um período de tempo muito longo – talvez semanas ou meses. Além disso, há muitas pessoas que não podem sair, como bebês em incubadoras, bem como idosos e feridos em tratamento médico. Os hospitais locais já informaram que se a evacuação ocorrer muitas pessoas morrerão, mas isso não parece suficiente para fazer Israel repensar as suas tácticas anti-humanitárias.

Esta grave situação mobilizou o mundo não-ocidental para agir diplomaticamente contra Israel. O governo russo comparou o caso ao cerco nazista imposto aos soviéticos durante a segunda guerra mundial. E, agindo de uma forma militarmente ousada, o governo iraniano alertou Tel Aviv sobre as possíveis consequências se as IDF entrassem em Gaza por terra – sugerindo que tal medida poderia legitimar a intervenção iraniana no conflito.

No sábado, 14 de outubro, Israel anunciou que a sua ofensiva tinha sido adiada por razões meteorológicas, usando as chuvas e inundações que ocorreram no país durante o fim de semana como desculpa para evitar a escalada militar. Embora seja possível que o clima tenha influenciado a tomada de decisões militares israelitas, é provável que o medo do envolvimento iraniano tenha sido a verdadeira razão para Tel Aviv repensar a sua estratégia. Um fato que apoia este argumento é a insistência israelense em adiar a ofensiva, embora as condições meteorológicas tenham melhorado rapidamente na região no dia seguinte.

Alguns propagandistas e militantes sionistas de Tel Aviv também tentam retratar o adiamento como uma espécie de “boa vontade diplomática”, mas isto não parece fazer sentido. Israel tem bombardeado e sitiado Gaza há mais de uma semana e cometido inúmeras atrocidades e violações dos direitos humanos. Não há razão para acreditar que exista qualquer preocupação com o bem-estar dos civis palestinos por parte do governo israelita – que, apesar de adiar a ofensiva terrestre, continua a impedir que água, alimentos e medicamentos cheguem a Gaza.

O que parece estar a acontecer é simplesmente uma onda de medo em Tel Aviv. Um ataque terrestre iniciará automaticamente uma guerra de atrito, que certamente será prolongada, exaustiva e perigosa para as IDF. Os estrategistas israelitas temem que as suas forças entrem num ciclo vicioso de conflito direto e violência que não terminará em breve, culminando numa guerra prolongada que afetaria gravemente a estabilidade da região.

Apesar de ser incomparavelmente mais forte que os seus inimigos palestinos, o sistema de defesa de Israel parece ser um “tigre de papel” se analisado em profundidade. O país dispõe de poucos recursos materiais e humanos para travar conflitos exaustivos. Não é por acaso que existe um sistema de recrutamento obrigatório em Israel para todos os cidadãos. Com uma população de nove milhões de habitantes, Israel precisa de utilizar praticamente todos os seus cidadãos para manter a máquina militar a funcionar com padrões de segurança adequados.

O país não possui a estrutura necessária para manter a sociedade civil funcionando enquanto há um conflito. Israel pode facilmente derrotar inimigos regionais mais fracos em confrontos de curto prazo, mas tende a ter muitos problemas em situações prolongadas. E há razões suficientes para acreditar que uma guerra em Gaza seria longa. Sem espaço suficiente para se desenvolver militarmente na superfície, o Hamas investiu pesadamente na construção de bunkers e canais subterrâneos através dos quais os seus soldados transportam pessoas e equipamentos. As IDF poderiam invadir e ocupar muitos territórios, mas ainda assim seriam vulneráveis ​​às tácticas de guerrilha do Hamas, formando uma espécie de “cenário do Vietnam”.

Além disso, o alerta do Irã é preocupante. Mesmo que não envie as suas tropas regulares, Teerão poderia ajudar os palestinos mobilizando os seus grupos proxies, como o Hezbollah (que já está de fato envolvido na guerra) e os Houthis do Iêmen, aumentando significativamente o poder de fogo dos palestinos. Há também o factor diplomático e econômico, com os países islâmicos e antiocidentais a mobilizarem-se fortemente para pressionar Tel Aviv a parar a sua agressão.

Na verdade, parece que o governo israelita se colocou numa espiral de problemas. Se invadir Gaza, haverá muitos riscos, mas se cancelar a invasão, Netanyahu ficará desmoralizado por não cumprir a sua promessa. Na prática, parece que mesmo sendo militarmente mais fraco, o Hamas está conseguindo usar o fator não militar do conflito para obter vantagem contra o inimigo num confronto assimétrico – que não é decidido na linha de frente. A Palestina está tentando vencer a guerra mesmo perdendo as batalhas.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : IDF fears starting war of attrition, InfoBrics, 16 de Outubro de 2023.

Imagem : InfoBrics

Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

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***

Countries worldwide have just covered up their own fraud about a vote that happened in the United Nations which also affects the WHO and what they deemed they are able to do to us in the future. 

78th UN General Assembly 2023: The UN tried to pass a political declaration on 20th of September 2023, which was opposed by 11 countries via a letter to the UNGA President, copying UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The UNGA’s 78th president Dennis Francis approved a ‘historic’ but non-binding political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. 

So what did the 11 countries object to?

1. No consent, lack of transparency and illegal unilateral coercive measures 
2. Unfair practices including veto, lack of inclusion, absence of balance and neglect
3. Forced consensus, bulldozing, and ignoring repeated breaking of silence 
4. Call to Action: Recall of the nature and legal standing of UN meetings

Watch the video below.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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*** 

Well, we’ve had elections in New Zealand and a whole new government will be taking the reins of power, ostensibly. Labour is out and National is in, with a coalition partner, and the freedom parties failed to unite and exceed the five percent threshold needed for Parliamentary presence. Nonetheless a seasoned politician who began to espouse freedom principles in his campaign has made the cut, so we may have a foot in the door.

As far as I have been concerned, the establishment Uniparty will do nothing to extricate our country from the crushing globalist embrace of the World Economic Forum or the World Health Organization, and if and when another phony pandemic is declared, it will be ‘interesting’ to see how ‘the people’ respond to another governmental attempt to deprive us of our inalienable rights.

Nonetheless, I have many reasons to be grateful to the covid apocalypse that beset us these past four years. The veil of institutional honesty having been rent, a vista into terrain hitherto unknown was bequeathed — the terrain of deep corruption and rot wherein trusted and revered entities revealed themselves to be thoroughly malicious and bent on reversing a millennia of progress.

Take Medicine, for example. Damn the Hippocratic Oath, dash natural immunity, don’t worry about informed consent: figure out instead ever more ingenious ways to make sure that every living mammal has some form of mRNA within its bloodstream, even if it takes genetically-engineered mosquitoes to do the dirty work which clumsy needles couldn’t comprehensively accomplish.

And when any antediluvian doctors cavil, doctors who have raised eyebrows about the headlong rush to the final solution offered by inoculation and questioned the wisdom of breath-depriving masks, make their lives hell. Launch probes, suspend or cancel licences, and threaten them with fines or even prison for the crime of voicing concerns and wondering how the very foundations of their profession could have been so thoroughly vaporized overnight.

But thanks to these past four years, I have educated myself about many aspects of medical care and the history of the pharmaceutical industry, about the climate scam being perpetrated, about the endless wars that have continued beyond the one to end all wars, and about the sheer and utter indifference of authorities, such as they are, inclusive of our representative governments in the so-called Free World, to our deaths and lives.

Prominent and beloved and ‘benevolent’ figures like primate researcher Jane Goodall are openly espousing the virtues of depopulation, while ‘excess deaths’ are besieging us, cancers are proliferating, and the adverse effects of the Jab are being shoved under the rug and attributed to ‘long covid’, as if short covid wasn’t enough.

This indifference to the well-being of the dirty masses is nothing new, but the scale is such as to give even a hardened psychopath pause. We’re being hurt, we’re being maimed, we’re being killed, and we’re being mesmerized by the Agents of the Agenda to celebrate our immolation, in numbers that are immense.

The 20th Century brought the Nazi Holocaust, the genocides of Stalin and Mao, the nuclear annihilation of inhabited Japanese cities, the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and a variety of coups and massacres. 9/11 became the pretext for further martial excursions in the Middle East and significant constraints upon individual autonomy, and with covid State-sponsored terror reached novel heights and breadth.

About a year ago, I happened to be in Wellington during a climate change march. I watched as the stream of mostly youthful humanity meandered its way through the city centre, shouting and screaming and chanting and waving signs about carbon dioxide. I thought about quietly taking a few people aside to ask some meaningful questions, but I desisted — it would have been impossible, I would never have been heard. And as I ruminated I experienced a frisson of fear — real fear, not the kind manufactured by a controlled media phalanx about an invisible and never very lethal pathogen. It was fear of a mob.

I remembered the very many who masked up and looked with hostility upon those who preferred not to; I remembered the virulence of the attacks upon those of us who refused to be injected, even from colleagues in Medicine; and I remembered the threats of politicians to hunt us down.If there is Progress it will be measured by tolerance, and thoughtfulness, and discussion and debate, and the insistence of the majority on the preservation of human freedom and choice. It will favour Peace over War, Liberty over Control, and Reflection over Impulse.

Virtually everything the authorities told us about covid has been a lie. Seeing through this Big Lie allows us to see through the long and sordid chain of others — and it allows us to prepare for future assaults upon language and history and perception as well.

No matter who sits in Parliament it will be up to us, we people on the ground, either to comply with lawless State directives, or not. It has always been this way and always will, and our free choice between doing what is good and what is ill can never disappear.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

A successful unification of the Korean Peninsula must be based on a vision for the nation rooted in both universal values and the distinct traditions of the Korean people.

If the establishment of a unified Korea as a constitutional republic is to follow the model offered by the United States, the critical step would be the drafting of a constitution that lays out the contours for that new nation’s government and the principles undergirding it.

That means selecting the best practices and policies, and the most relevant to the needs of the current age, from models for good governance found in the collective wisdom of mankind, and doing so in a manner that is inspiring for the Korean people, and that serves as a model for the nations of the world.

In this respect, the Korean dream advanced by Dr. Hyunjin Preston Moon, a visionary plan for a new nation on the peninsula that brings together the best of West and East, will inspire the drafting of this constitution.

The constitution for a unified Korea will serve as the foundation for the republic, describing concretely the institutional structures and the principles of governance that govern them, thereby establishing a common understanding of the legal process to be followed going forward, while setting limits on the authority of each branch of government that will be essential for stability over the long term.

The constitution should assure a process for understanding the needs of society, the principles of morality and the best way to implement those solutions in policy, while guarding against creeping tyranny by assuring a logical separation of powers.

The United States Constitution is a blending of varied strands of political philosophy. We can observe in the Constitution institutional precedents taken from Greece and Rome, but also from medieval and enlightenment governance in England, France and Germany. A trained eye can detect bits of the Iroquois Great Law, and even of Confucian practice as it was introduced into the Enlightenment debate in Europe on governance.

The constitution of a united Korea should also be a creative work with roots deep in our common past, a text that appeals to universal human values and morals, and that sends out sparks of inspiration to all Koreans, and to all the world, as did the American constitution in 1787.

The intellectual dynamic animating the American Constitution is powered by the synthesis of the political philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans with practical precedents in later history for deliberative democracy such as the Magna Carta of 1215, or the Roundheads’ defense of the democratic Parliament in seventeenth-century England.

We can imagine a constitution for a unified Korea that will derive its power from a further synthesis, this time between the tradition of the constitutional republic without a monarch that is put forth in the U.S. Constitution, Korea’s own traditions of good governance and ethical behavior, and the larger mansions of moral philosophy in East Asia, mainly those of Confucianism and Buddhism.

A Korean Constitutional Convention

All of the models for good governance in the Western and Eastern traditions will not mean much if Koreans are not able to hold a constitutional convention in which the greatest ethical and intellectual minds of the age come together for an open debate dedicated to addressing the spiritual and material needs of the people, not personal gain, and if the consensus of those great minds is not written up in powerful and clear language that can inspire citizens for the ages.

The constitution produced by the constitutional convention for a united Korea must have cultural depth and moral power on both the Western and Eastern sides so that it will be accepted by Koreans of the North and the South (and around the world) assuasive, authoritative and universal.

First, we need individuals who are morally upstanding, intellectually informed, dedicated to the public good, and who have a keen sense of their role in long arc of history. That moral stature must be accompanied with an openness to new potentials and eternal creativity.

They need not, should not, be individuals with identical concepts of what government should be. The convention should be a symphony in which different themes and melodies are blended together in the give and take, the debate, and the resulting harmony produced in debates, for example between those favoring a strong central government and those opposed, between those favoring individual rights and those favoring the common good, serves to create a balanced conception of the whole that will rise above the capacity of any one author.

We know that in the American case those at the convention, James Madison, George Mason, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (by correspondence), and Alexander Hamilton, articulated profoundly different perspectives on how government could realize the potential of humanity.

The Constitutional Convention went on in Philadelphia from May 25 to Sept. 17 of 1787, bringing together a group of visionary political figures who were devoted to an honest debate on the strengths and weaknesses of previous traditions of governance. It took months of concentrated debate, draft after draft, to come up with a vision for how the United States of America would be governed in a democratic, transparent, and accountable manner so as to represent the needs of the people and to protect the rights of the minority and to express that vision in a manner that was accessible to citizens.

In the Korean case, it should be a select group of committed Koreans, from North and South Korea, and from the Korean diaspora, who are ready to devote themselves to the drafting of this constitution based on ideals and profound contemplation of the needs of the people, a group that includes people with different perspectives on governance who are capable of creative dialog and compromise.

The constitution will be accepted by the people, not on the basis of how famous its drafters are, or how much money and coverage in the media they receive, but rather on the basis of their vision of what humanity is capable of, and how they express that potential in an inspiring manner.

It is essential that the planners of the convention make room for the organic meetings of minds, take the time to read through classic books on governance and to discuss them in an unpressured environment, while at the same time avoiding imposing on the natural process by which the constitution takes form and is then drafted.

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This article was originally published on Korea Times.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The Demilitarized Zone compared to the earlier 38th parallel de facto border (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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*** 

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor

For those who remember the days and months that followed 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now once again the drums of war are sounding on the world stage, not that they ever really stopped. Israel is preparing to invade Gaza, the Palestinians are nearing a humanitarian crisis, and the rest of the world is bracing for whatever blowback comes next.

Here in the United States, as we approach the 22^nd anniversary of the USA Patriot Act on October 26, we’re still grappling with the blowback that arises from allowing one’s freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.

Here are a few lessons that we never learned or learned too late.

Mammoth legislation that expands the government’s powers at the citizenry’s expense will not make anyone safer. Rushed through Congress a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, undermined civil liberties, expanded the government’s powers and opened the door to far-reaching surveillance by the government on American citizens.

Pre-emptive strikes will only lead to further blowback. Not content to wage war against Afghanistan, which served as the base for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq in order to “stop any adversary challenging America’s military superiority and adopt a strike-first policy against terrorist threats ‘before they’re fully formed.’” We are still suffering the consequences of this failed policy, which resulted in lives lost, taxpayer dollars wasted, the fomenting of hatred against the U.S. and the further radicalization of terrorist cells.

War is costly. There are many reasons to go to war, but those who have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that have profited most from these endless military occupations and exercises. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad, including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt. That also does not include the more than hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, or the millions displaced from their homes as a result of endless drone strikes and violence.

The tactics and weapons of war, once deployed abroad, will eventually be used against the citizenry at home. The horrors that took place at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq, involved “US military personnel humiliating, hurting and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.” Adding to the descent into moral depravity, the United States government legalized the use of torture, including waterboarding, in violation of international law and in the so-called pursuit of national security. The ramifications have been far-reaching, with domestic police mirroring a battlefield mindset in their encounters with American citizens, including the use of torture tactics at secret locations such as Homan Square in Chicago.

Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society. Not only did the USA Patriot Act normalize the government’s mass surveillance powers, but it also dramatically expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens without much of any oversight. Thus, a byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We have all become data collected in government files.

News cycle distractions are calibrated to ensure that you lose sight of what the government is doing. The average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state. Whether these events are critical or unimportant, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. In this way, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles also keep them tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on their freedoms.

If you stop holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the only laws it abides by will be the ones used to clamp down on the citizenry. Having failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the American people have found themselves saddled with a government that skirts, flouts and violates the Constitution with little consequence. Overcriminalization, asset forfeiture schemes, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, warrantless surveillance, SWAT team raids, indefinite detentions, covert agencies, and secret courts are just a few of the egregious practices carried out by a government that operates beyond the reach of the law.

Do not turn your country into a battlefield, your citizens into enemy combatants, and your law enforcement officers into extensions of the military. A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the citizenry of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead? It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, we in America now find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

As long as you remain fearful and distrustful of each other, you will be incapable of standing united against any threats posed by a power-hungry government. Early on, U.S. officials solved the problem of how to implement their authoritarian policies without incurring a citizen uprising: fear. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. Most of all, they want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Once you trade your freedom for security, the terrorists win. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. And in so doing, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

It took a long time to clear away the rubble from the 9/11 attacks.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 22 years after the USA Patriot Act was unleashed on a vulnerable nation, we are still reeling from the destruction it has wrought on our freedoms.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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*** 

I am being asked about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which seems to be taking attention away from the Ukraine-Russia conflict.  People, by which I mean people who pay attention, are wondering why the Palestinians would attack Israel like this as it provides Netanyahu with an excuse to grab the remaining bits of Palestine and destroy the Gaza strip, thus disposing of  the two-state solution by conquest. Who can blame Israel after Palestinians killed Israelis and took hostages?  

I have heard the official explanation of Palestinian perfidy, but I don’t have an explanation for the attack. It seems it would have to be more than perfidy. I do agree with readers that it seems a curious thing for Hamas to do as it plays into Israel’s hands. I also agree that there is something else strange about the attack. How did drones and so many rockets, allegedly from Iran, and some say Ukraine, get into the Gaza strip, and how did the Hamas attackers get into Israel?

The Hamas attack has something of 9/11’s flavor. Just as every aspect of the US National Security State failed simultaneously on September 11, 2001, Israel’s security system, including the Iron Dome the US constructed for Israel, simultaneously failed.

Mysteriously, the Hamas fighters entered Israel on the ground and through the air and on the sea without being detected.

Mysteriously, large quantities of weapons entered Palestine through Israel without being detected.

This is too much convenient failure to be believable. It will be interesting to see if anyone in Israel is held accountable for the total security failure. In the US no one was held accountable for the security failures on September 11, which should have  told us a lot.

Not knowing, we can but speculate. We have a motive. Israel can now steal the rest of Palestine. 

Another motive might be that Israel can expand the conflict into a wider war and succeed this time in grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon. It could even get nastier with Israeli moves against Syria and Iran. 

Oil prices could go sky high causing world disruption. A victorious war and the end of the Palestinian problem would free Netanyahu from his legal and political problems. There is a lot to think about. 

But let’s move on to the security failure that made the attack possible. Why would Netanyahu enable Hamas to attack Israel by standing down Israel security? It seems a nonsensical suggestion, but isn’t as it creates the conditions in which Israel can absorb all that remains of Palestine, just as 9/11 created the conditions for the neoconservatives to launch the wars they had planned in the Middle East.

The difficult question is why would the Palestinians bring on their own destruction by attacking Israel when Hamas has no prospect of defeating Israel? 

Again, we can only speculate. It could be an Israeli operation from start to finish. Israel infiltrates Hamas, just as the FBI infiltrates Trump supporters and patriotic groups now called domestic terrorists. 

The Israeli agents play up Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu helps them along by blowing up the sacred Mosque. The agents come up with an attack plan made possible with weapons from Iran and devices from Iran to jam Israeli security. They go about this carefully, relying on the decades of anger and hurt and the prospect of release from impotence to crowd out Hamas’ reason.

I don’t say these speculations suffice as the explanation. But I would not be surprised if these speculations, if investigated, would prove to be closer to the truth than whatever official narrative emerges.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. 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.

Featured image: PALESTINIAN MEMBERS OF THE EZZ AL-DIN AL QASSAM BRIGADES, THE MILITARY WING OF HAMAS BURN MILITARY ARMORED VEHICLE BELONGING TO ISRAELI FORCES NEAR GAZA STRIP, GAZA ON OCTOBER 07, 2023. PHOTO BY STR APAIMAGES

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*** 

Bibi Netanyahu and his ideological ilk represent more of an existential threat to the continued existence of the Israeli state – and possibly the world if it gets dragged into its geopolitical melodrama — than any foreign adversary ever could hope to.

What many casual news consumers might not know, even ones who consider themselves “informed” – in large part because MSNBC/CIA-funded Washington Post would never tell them – is that Hamas is in no small measure a creation of the Israeli state.

This is not to mean “creation of the Israeli state” in the figurative, obscure sense of “Israel forced the birth of Hamas-style militancy through its Apartheid policies in the Gaza Strip,” although that is certainly true.

I literally mean to say the Israeli government actively and directly participated in creating and propping up Hamas in the service of its own political machinations.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s how Netanyahu schemed behind the scenes for years to promote the terrorist group he now publicly decries and postures as the savior from.

Via Haaretz:

“Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,’ he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

On learning that Netanyahu told his comrades this, one might ask obvious questions:

Why would Netanyahu be interested in keeping Palestine balkanized politically?

Especially when all the government publicly proclaims to desire is peace with its Arab neighbors? Wouldn’t a stable Palestinian state not obsessed with annihilating the Jews serve those purported Israeli interests?

Well, a non-militant Palestinian state might serve the interests of an average Israeli living in a village on the border of Gaza, but not Netanyahu’s interests nor those of the base of fanatical religious warmongers he caters to.

Keeping Hamas alive and well-funded, as Netanyahu explicitly called for, creates permanent instability. Instability, in turn, lends itself to either active war or the constant threat of war, not peace. And war is the health of the Israeli state.

If peace broke out in the Middle East, creatures like Netanyahu would be liable to suddenly find themselves out of a job. They might have to make an honest day’s living for once in their miserable lives.

Netanyahu feeds politically as a result of endless conflict with Israel’s regional rivals. War breathes life into his otherwise listless and deflated political ideology. What other ideas for governance has this warmonger ever had except more war?

In the immediate term, war furthermore keeps him out of jail for the time being, as he was under serious, career-threatening legal scrutiny for corruption allegations at the time of the Hamas attack. Now, as the Israeli citizenry “rallies around the flag,” the nation temporarily forgoes internal political conflict.

Netanyahu and the self-styled Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, are two peas in a pod in this regard. War is the health of their respective states, and they and their parties are the primary beneficiaries. Without it, they would be nothing but your average middle-aged, flabby slobs schlubbing their way through life.

In fact, in much the same way that there is no way Israeli intelligence was unaware of impending Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that Netanyahu and Khamenei are coordinating behind the scenes to see if they can’t finagle a potentially apocalyptic regional, if not global, war out of the current mess – and, again, if possible, drag the United States, Russia, and God knows what other states into it in the process.

Of course, neither the Supreme Leader (what a stupid title) nor Netanyahu will be doing any fighting themselves. They’re much too cowardly and physically flimsy for any of that. Those personal traits are largely why they’re politicians in the first place.

They’ll simply puppeteer the apocalypse from behind the scenes. It’ll be poor kids conscripted from dusty villages sent to the meat grinder.

How history has a way of rhyming! Back in the 1980s, in an entirely different conflict in the same region of the world, it was the United States that propped up a band of religious fanatics fighting, at the time, the Soviet Union that had “invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979”.

Ronald Reagan’s Deep State handlers went so far as to invite them to the White House.

As unstable religious fanatics who feed off perpetual war, they eventually switched allegiances and set their sights on the United States, of course.

Many people living quiet lives in New York City died as a result, but the American neocons got a whole fresh set of wars out of the deal, with fresh license to kill more poor people overseas.

Raytheon and Boeing stocks went through the roof. The Middle East was further destabilized, giving rise to ISIS, a failed state in Libya, and guaranteeing future war.

And around and around we go, pretending as if the vaunted statesmen who start wars for a living are anything other than bloodthirsty warmongers playing geopolitical chess with other people’s children. 

But they’re brave and serious leaders of resolve, and I and anyone else who challenges them are the “domestic terrorists,” per the ADL, of course.

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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.

Featured image is from IMEMC

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*** 

On October 7, shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel, PM Benjamin Netanyahu declared the offensive as Israel’s 9/11. He is right in more ways than one. The US 9/11 was a horrendous and deadly false flag, and so is the Israeli one, or the so-called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, assault by Hamas.

Both 9/11’s are meant to “justify” endless and crushing retributions. In the US, an endless and worldwide war on “terror” which means the entire world, as Washington sees fit, according to its “rules-based order.” Misbehaving nations are simply sanctioned and crushed, forced to their knees.

Israeli intel, as well as that of Egypt, the UK, the US, Brussels – EU – knew about the impending attack, planned by Israel in coordination with Hamas. A Jewish charity leader says Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to stand down for 7 hours during the Hamas invasion.

CONFIRMED: Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to STAND DOWN for 7 HOURS during the Hamas invasion.

I sat down with Jewish Charity leader, Cecily Routman, who received intel directly from her Israeli Rabbi and other top level government sources.

While I do not agree with… pic.twitter.com/2liNmdJ7fZ

— Lauren Witzke (@LaurenWitzkeDE) October 15, 2023

For Israel, it justifies a stepped-up war on Palestine, the end of Gaza, eventually forcing 2.3 million Gazans to flee through Rafah into the Sinai Peninsula in northeast Egypt.

Despite the official rejection of Israel to establish a corridor for Gazan refugees – an agreement with Israel and Washington to starve to death as many Palestinians as possible – Egypt eventually may allow to open the Rafah border for “humanitarian reasons.” It is all part of the deal. See video below.

This was planned for years.

Hamas was set up and funded by Israel and the US/UK secret services.

Hamas must do the bidding of its masters – namely periodically shooting back at aggressive Israeli attacks at Palestine settlements, mostly in the Gaza strip, and eventually launching a massive attack on Israel (on 7 October), thus, provoking an even more gigantic and deadly act of retribution – one that may not end until Palestine is erased from the map.

And then onwards – for the creation of Greater Israel, in the process absorbing one third to half of the current Middle East.

For broader understanding of the Israel-Palestine war, see also this.

Once Gaza is Off the Map

Once Gaza is off the map, next is the end of the entire West Bank. In fact, the war on the Palestinian West Bank settlements has already begun.

As all attention is on Gaza being ransacked, leveled, and “emptied” by the Israeli killing machine, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are already bulldozing villages in the West Bank, killing resisting Palestinians.

Today, reports from northern Israel, the border to Lebanon, accuse Hezbollah of firing rockets into Israel, having killed at least one Israeli. It must be understood that Hezbollah is also a creation of Israel, Mossad and allied Western secret services; with the same purpose as Hamas.

It may become an endless war for the conquest of the Middle East, for Greater Israel, an expanded home for the Chosen People. As long as the Zionist Israel – in contrast to normal Jewish Israeli – gets full support from the West in terms of weapons, money and cheers for her atrocities — Israel is on a free ascent to become the emperor’s full-fledged partner in crime, eventually exceeding that power, to rule the world. That is the “Chosen People’s ambition”.

But who knows whether this Kazarian-Zionist genocide on Palestine will go down in the West as easily as COVID did. In this case, it may backfire. There are massive pro-Palestinian protests in London, Paris, Berlin, and many more European cities, despite France’s Macron’s and Germany’s Scholz’s threat to forbid all pro-Palestinian demonstrations and to arrest and punish all perpetrators.

Other EU members are following the same dictate.

So far, they are not listening to the wannabe “new royals” of France and Germany. Immense pro-Palestinian manifestations took place in Paris and other cities of France last night; similarly in Germany.

Demonstration repression may be possible for a few hundred people, but not with tens and hundreds of thousands – into the millions.

In his explosive and informative piece, “The Nakba that Israel has started will backfire”, David Hearst describes the possible extent of destruction – as a monumental catastrophe, or “Nakba”, Netanyahu may have just started. See this.

The first “Nakba” refers to the violent mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Before the forceful, UK-sponsored and UN-decided, establishment of Israel in the midst of Palestine – no consultation, no negotiations – Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, living in harmony, including with Jewish settlers.

Things changed to the extreme. Knesset member Revital Gotliv called a few days ago on Israel to consider using a nuclear bomb on Gaza, posting on social media,

“Only an explosion that shakes the Middle East will restore this country’s dignity, strength, and security! It’s time to kiss doomsday” (David Hearst).

Maybe two decades ago, a Hindu guru who, acting as a medium for a disciple, claiming to be able to read into the future through the minds of able believers, said his devotee, in a state of trance, looking several hundred years ahead, saw the world as a harmonious clean and little populated paradise. Except, there was one region that was fenced and locked off for the rest of the world, due to dangers from war-like destruction and toxicity – that was the Middle East.

There is no proof for this story. And even if the predictions were true at the time, it does not mean that it will happen, as humans are dynamic beings with the capacity to change course.

There is no proof either the predictions took place. All links or references have disappeared from the internet. But given Netanyahu’s threats already on day one of IDF’s counteroffensive, “This is just the beginning” and “This will be a long war,” may indicate that this long-back Hindu prediction may not be far off.

No matter what prediction may be made at some point in time, and may even be true at that time, men can shape their own future. It is a question of mankind’s collective willpower. If enough people believe and work for PEACE and a harmonious future and cohabitation between different factions of populations – it is possible.

Why is this message important even though not proven?

It demonstrates at what level of total annihilation humanity has arrived. Wars everywhere, killing randomly and for more power, by weapons from the military industrial complex (MIC), bio weapons, directed energy weapons (DEW), as well as targeted weather and climate modification weapons (HAARP – High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), by geoengineering the ionosphere.

These modern weaponry developments should incite reflections on how to exit the ever more violent and destructive Matrix. The faster and the more people exit the Matrix, the better humanity’s chances to salvage our civilization, not by revising it; but by a restart – outside of any given structure or Matrix.

Oslo Accords I and II

Back to Israel-Palestine – In the 1990s, there were the Oslo accords I and II. They were a historic hope for permanent peace and cohabitation of Israel and Palestine in a two-state solution.

Oslo I – In January 1993 in Oslo, Norway, sponsored by the Norwegian Minister of Defense (later Foreign Affairs), Jorgen Holst and his wife Marianne Heiberg, the so-called Oslo I Accords were signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas, representing Yasser Arafat, then PLO Chairman.

In September 1993, US President Bill Clinton hosted a formal and famous signing ceremony in Washington D.C. The Oslo Accords were a pivotal milestone in Israeli-Palestinian relations, aimed at propelling the peace process forward and providing for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule throughout most of the West Bank.

As a first and immediate step, Israel and the PLO agreed on withdrawal of Israel’s occupation from the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

This was Step One for an Oslo-planned two-state solution which would be negotiated within the coming five years. Two sovereign nations with the same rights to live peacefully as neighbors, side by side.

Oslo II was signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. It was to set out specific territories in the West Bank to become part of Palestine.

The accords failed because the agreements were not honored by Israel, which, from the beginning, had no interest in a two-state solution. Also, because self-governing for Palestine included managing their water resources, the water on or under Palestinian territories.

Some 80% of all water resources of the combined Israeli-Palestinian territory belong to Palestine. Water being of extreme importance in this dry, desert-like part of the world, this was unacceptable to Israel.

As it stands now, Israel appropriates the water resources for her own use – and leaves some to Palestine as Israel sees fit.

The Oslo Accords did not create a definite Palestinian state. The Palestinian-American philosopher, Edward Said, described them as a “Palestinian Versailles.” [The Treaty of Versailles was the Peace Agreement after WWI. The treaty gave some German territories to neighboring countries and placed other German territories under international supervision.]

Escalation at Warp Speed. Genocide

Today, the war is escalating at warp speed. The Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused hundreds if not thousands of deaths, and driven already close to a million people out of their homes in northern Gaza, fleeing towards southern Gaza, where many of them are amassing at the Rafah border with Egypt, hoping to eventually escape into Egypt’s Sinai territory.

In the meantime, journalist Maha Hussaini, describes the situation in Gaza on her dying cellphone. See below.

Israel has cut all electricity, fuel, food deliveries, internet connection and vital water supply.

Israel has also implemented a total news blackout from Gaza. Under “humanitarian pressure” from the west, Israel has said today they will reinstate water supply for Gaza.

Journalists are in hiding, but report with the last minutes of their cellphones energy to the outside world. Then, there will be silence.

At least nine journalists, who were caught by the Israeli offensive in Gaza at home or on their way to southern Gaza, were killed, as described by Maha Hussaini. But she says, we will stay steadfast and report whenever and however we can.

There is hope, always hope, as long as the sun shines on Mother Earth. But humanity must fundamentally change. It is a question of conscious awakening. Either by the elite, pretending ruling the planet, or by the very military fighting each other – in Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia and anywhere in the world.

If they become conscious of what they are doing, engaging in wars, not only putting their own lives on the line for the interests of a small elite, and killing their brethren on the other side of the frontline; if they wake up, stop shooting, bombing and hating, and instead go home to their families, start loving their own lives, and the lives of their unbeknown enemies – all wars and killing will stop.

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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 worked for over 30 years 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).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image: A view of destroyed buildings at the Gaza Strip after Israeli airstrikes that continue on the seventh day in Gaza City, Gaza on October 13, 2023 [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]

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*** 

The reason for China’s declared “neutral position” in the war between Israel and Gaza is that US influence in the region may increase, writes the Financial Times newspaper, with reference to diplomats and analysts. However, this so-called neutral position is not having the desired effect as Israel is becoming outraged in what they perceive as “pro-Palestine neutrality.”

According to the publication, the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East could become a major test for China, which seeks to strengthen its influence in the region that is “traditionally dominated by the US.” The US continues to be the strongest military power in the Middle East, and in the current crisis, it has already “demonstrated its might” by sending two groups of aircraft carriers, the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gerald R Ford, to the Eastern Mediterranean, the newspaper continues.

Furthermore, Washington remains the “main diplomatic player in the region, despite Arab concerns that it has been disengaging” and is Israel’s biggest ally.

At the same time, China, whose economic role in the region has grown rapidly in recent decades, is on good terms with almost all players, especially Iran, the main backer of Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It is recalled that under the draft of the 25-year agreement signed in 2020, China will invest $400 billion in Iran’s economy in exchange for discounted oil.

The publication recalls that in recent years, Beijing played an important role in attracting four Middle Eastern countries – Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – to the BRICS group and contributed to the successful mediation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, something which outraged Washington.

Analysts also note that after the start of the war between Israel and Gaza, China “struck a neutral tone that angered many Israelis and western countries,” calling on both sides to “remain calm” and not condemning the actions of the Palestinian faction.

“It’s true that China can negotiate something between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but that’s not creating any great confidence on the Israeli side,” said a diplomat cited by the Financial Times. Therefore, according to the diplomat, if China does not choose a side soon, it cannot arbitrate or mediate the conflict.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Amir-Abdollahian during their meeting on October 15 in Beijing that

“the root cause… of the Palestine-Israel situation is that the Palestinian people’s right to statehood has been set aside for a long time.”

“This historical injustice should end as soon as possible,” Wang said, adding that “China will continue to stand on the side of peace and support the just cause of the Palestinian people in safeguarding their national rights.”

On the same day as his meeting with Amir-Abdollahian, Wang said in a call with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Faisal bin Farhan that Israel’s actions were now “beyond the scope of self-defence” and the Israeli government must “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

“(Israel) should listen earnestly to the calls of the international community and the UN secretary general, and cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” Wang added.

By describing the Israel-Palestine conflict as a “historical injustice” for the Palestinians, Beijing is now accused of having “pro-Palestine neutrality.” It was also noted that China’s official statements on the conflict have not specifically named Hamas in their condemnations of violence, leading to criticism in Israel.

Nonetheless, China’s special envoy on Middle Eastern issues, Zhai Jun, will visit the Middle East next week to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict and promote peace talks. Zhai also called Israeli officials last week to reaffirm that China “has no selfish interests on the Palestinian issue but has always stood on the side of peace, on the side of fairness and justice” and that “China is willing to work with the international community to promote peace and encourage talks.”

Although his rhetoric was one of a neutral third party who could mediate on the issue, Wang’s statements consolidated Israel’s suspicions that China is not neutral.

Beijing will attempt to play an enhanced role in efforts to end the war to secure its economic interests and capitalise on the Arab states’ frustration with the US. It remains to be seen if they can achieve the same level of success as they did in reconciling Saudi Arabia and Iran to establish itself as a great power in the region because this is essentially decided on whether Israel views China as a trusted mediator, which at this point in time appears doubtful.

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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 is from Silent Crow News

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*** 

On October 7, Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, launched a rare surprise attack on Israel that led to massive retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza and other punitive measures, including power outages.

Huge Casualties and Humanitarian Disaster

This new round of the Hamas-Israeli conflict has pushed the Palestinian death toll to more than 2,200, with over 8,700 injuries, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry on October 14. The Israeli fatalities since October 7 have reached around 1,300, while nearly 3,400 were injured, Israeli media reported on October 13, citing official sources.

The Israeli response has been a siege and air attack on Gaza, which holds about 2.3 million civilians who have found it nearly impossible to leave the area under the current situation. Gaza has hence been described as the “largest open-air concentration camp on earth.”

The Palestinian civilians are trapped, and some do not support Hamas, but are caught as innocent bystanders in an armed conflict, between Hamas and Israel. Resistance to an occupation is guaranteed by international law, but the targeting of civilians is prohibited.

Yet, we are now witnessing a growing humanitarian disaster. Israel has prevented all food, water, fuel and electricity from being supplied to Gaza. Israel claims this is because it is in a state of war, and it considers the people in Gaza “the enemy.” Jennifer Austin, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported they have run out of food, water and shelter for displaced Palestinians.

The current ongoing conflict in Gaza is also threatening to grow and engulf the whole Middle East. Many experts warn of an impending regional war, which may include Israel, Lebanon, Syria and possibly Iran.

Experts believe the catalyst which would spark an escalation into a broader war, might be the ground invasion planned by Israel. Israel’s military has told more than a million people living in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate, to move south in the besieged enclave, as fighting between it and Hamas continues.

Israeli military vehicles in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, October 8, 2023. /Xinhua

Spillover Effects

And the spillover effects might cause even more casualties and other consequences as well.

Israel and several Arab countries have signed a normalization agreement called by the U.S. administration, the Abraham Accords. Arab countries like UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco have signed, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in late September that it was “likely” Israel will reach a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, in what would mark a seismic foreign policy shift for both countries as they edge closer to reaching a deal mediated by the U.S.

However, Saudi Arabia has signaled that the negotiating process has ceased in light of the current ongoing conflict in Gaza. The Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had previously had a policy which supported the creation of a Palestinian State before normalization could occur, and recent negotiations were coming close to an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia; but that is now halted.

Israel has told Chevron to shut down a major natural gas field amid the latest round of conflict, which caused European gas prices to rise. Rising prices in gas and oil would reflect uncertainty over whether the conflict will widen to a regional conflict.

While the conflict so far has not impacted oil supplies, the future is uncertain. The U.S. and Israel are looking for a link between the Hamas attack and Iran. Tehran denies a link, but if the U.S. and Israel manufacture a link to Iran, then that may lead to a cut in Iranian oil output.  Experts warn that if the Strait of Hormuz was affected, the price of oil could go way above $100 per barrel.

If gas and oil prices skyrocket because of the conflict that will make inflation even a bigger problem on both sides of the Atlantic, people will be further engulfed in a cost of living crisis.

Talks and Peace Needed, Not More Arms and Violence

The Foreign Ministry of China has stated,

“the fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine.”

Although the U.S. agreed to the UN resolution which outlines the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, more peace talks, or negotiations should be promoted by the U.S.

Besides China, other nations such as Russia, and the 22 member states of the Arab League have also urged the implementation of a two-state solution as outlined in UN resolution 194. In November 2013, the newest resolution was passed 165 to 6, with 6 abstentions, with Israel and the United States voting against. The American response to the situation is to move yet another aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean.

America should not be blamed alone, as the European Union, Canada, and Australia among others have followed the directives of Washington, D.C. The so-called Western world has lined up like toy soldiers to march to the orders of the policy of the White House.

The international community shouldn’t stand idly by while watching the suffering, hunger and thirst of those who are suffering in the conflict and with nowhere to hide. The right way to advance the two-state solution is to resume peace talks as soon as possible. All mechanisms for peace must play a positive role.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Featured image: Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, October 9, 2023. (Source: CGTN)

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***

Oct. 4, 2023 – Providence, RI – Paramedic Rocio Mondragon was diagnosed with Stage 2 Breast Cancer Triple Negative which quickly became Stage 4 metastatic to the brain after chemo and radiation (treatment failure). 

Sep. 29, 2023 – Calgary, AB – Craig Nichol has been a Paramedic for 10 years. In July 2022 he was diagnosed with Stage 3B Colo-Rectal cancer (Turbo Cancer), by April he had a 10.5 hour surgery to remove as much tumor as possible but his cancer is spreading too rapidly and as of July 2023 he has Stage 4 Colorectal cancer metastatic to liver, peritoneal lesions and lungs.

Sep. 19, 2023 – Coryell County, TX – 61 year old Trent Makare was a paramedic. He died suddenly of a heart attack.

Sep. 5, 2023 – Bolton, ON – 28 year old Meghan Duca was mandated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines to keep her job She was just diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer that spread to her spine.

Aug. 17, 2023 – Baltimore, MD – 43 year old David Lee Spicer, Veteran EMT/Firefighter, Baltimore City Fire Department, died suddenly, cause of death not reported.

Aug. 15, 2023 – Scottsburg, IN – 34 year old Devonnia Tscheulin, a Paramedic and Deputy Chief for Scott County EMS died suddenly from “complications during delivery” of her third child.

Aug. 5, 2023 – Fort Erie, Ontario – 64 year old Alan Doneff died unexpectedly after a short battle with cancer.

July 29, 2023 – Franklin, TX – 52 year old Rene Ferrell, US Air Force Veteran, police officer, firefighter & paramedic died suddenly on July 29, 2023.

July 5, 2023 – James Bay, ON – 23 year old Arjanan Sivasathiyarajah, a paramedic who started working a few weeks prior in the Kashechewan First Nation, went missing from a boat on the Albany River and his body was recovered on July 5.

June 27, 2023 – Baton Rouge, LA – 28 year old EMT Kymber Nezat (who was pregnant) and Paramedic Hunter Fruge were involved in a collision with their Ambulance, Kymber died. Cause of the crash is unknown (For unknown reasons, the Acadian ambulance struck the back of a Nissan Altima, before swerving past the centerline and into the Southbound lane. Subsequently, the ambulance collided head-on with a Coca Cola truck.)

June 14, 2023 – North Vancouver, BC – 42 year old paramedic Ryan Vena died in his sleep. “The cause of this death is still unknown.”

June 8, 2023 – Johns Hopkins – 37 year old Nicholas Nick Dye, EMT, engineer, resident physician, died unexpectedly.

May 13, 2023 – Huntersville, NC – Paramedic Mark Hayes had a “medical emergency” while on duty and died suddenly.

May 11, 2023 – Toronto, ON – 53 year old paramedic Marc Salmanovitch died suddenly on May 11, 2023.

My Take… 

Sudden deaths in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated professions continue at a record rate.

Vast majority appear to be sudden cardiac arrests or heart attacks, others include:

• 4 out of 14 are dealing with Stage 4 Turbo Cancer (one died)
• 1 died in his sleep
• 1 had a medical emergency while on duty and died
• 1 died while taking time off boating on an Ontario River
• 1 died in an unusual ambulance crash (she was pregnant at the time)
• 1 died from complications of childbirth

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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*** 

Israeli strikes targeted Aleppo International Airport hours after it returned back to operate, putting it out of service again.

This is the second attack on Aleppo International Airport in 48 hours.

Earlier today, Aleppo International Airport returned to work, less than 48 hours after the Israeli strikes on Thursday afternoon, October 12, which put Aleppo and Damascus international airports out of service, while airlines continue to programme their flights through Latakia Airport “Hmaimim”, pending the repair of the damaged parts of the tarmac of Damascus International Airport, which is almost completed by the efforts of maintenance teams.

SOHR sources confirmed that striking Damascus and Aleppo international airports was warning messages to prevent Iranian aircraft from landing at the airports and was not related to the shelling of the occupied Golan.

Israel simultaneously struck Damascus and Aleppo international airports with two raids, and the strikes affected the airports’ tarmac, putting them out of service, while air defences tried to counter the raids.

Flights were turned to Latakia airport “Hmaimim”, hours after the two airports were targeted.

SOHR sources confirmed that the two targeted airports had not witnessed any arrival of the military shipments of the Iranian militias, and that the Israeli targets came only to put the two airports out of service.

SOHR documented 34 attacks in 2023: 26 airstrikes and eight rocket attacks by ground forces, during which Israel targeted several positions in Syria, destroying nearly 71 targets, including buildings, weapons and ammunitions warehouses, headquarters, centres and vehicles.

These strikes killed 72 combatants and injured 85 others.

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Protests against Netanyahu’s legal reform, which annulled the separation of powers, would have had as a side effect the appearance of fissures in the areas of Israeli Defense and Intelligence, due to the refusal of a significant number of reservists to join vital posts for the Israeli Defense, many of them grouped in the “Brothers and Sisters in Arms” block.

Taking advantage of the alleged security holes in the Israeli Defense caused by the schism between the reservists and Netanyahu, the armed wing of the Islamist group Hamas, launched the largest military offensive since 2007 with the infiltration of tens of its members in Israeli localities and the launching of thousands of projectiles against wide areas, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with the provisional result of about 1500 Israeli victims.

Netanyahu of the resounding Israeli security failure to belittle Egyptian information. Thus, according to Egyptian sources, 10 days earlier they allegedly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing a major offensive that ended with about 1500 Israeli victims and according to a survey by The Jerusalem Post, 80% of the respondents say that “the Government is mainly responsible for the infiltration of Palestinian militias” and 56% think that “Netanyahu should resign at the end of the current war.”

But the second Palestinian Nakba will be inevitable if the United States does not intervene and forces the Netanyahu government to stop the asymmetric punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip in the form of continuous bombings and the cut in the supply of electricity and water to the Gazan population.

Such asymmetrical punishment would have triggered a wave of global support for the people of Gaza, coupled with the growing disaffection of Israeli society towards Netanyahu, could lead to the resignation of his Government and the subsequent convocation of new elections to facilitate the formation of a new Israeli Salvation Government whose primary task will be to try to re-edit the Oslo Accords that allow the peaceful coexistence of Two peoples in Two States.

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Germán Gorraiz Lopez is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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***

May 10, 2023 – Pasig, Philippines – 26 year old Fatima Villaflor had her COVID-19 mRNA booster shot in April 2022 and a week later she developed fever, chills, rash and muscle pain. She was diagnosed with AOSD (Adult Onset Still’s Disease) and continues to struggle 1 year later.

Sep. 2023 – Barrie, ON, Canada – Emily had COVID-19 vaccines and was diagnosed with AOSD. Also myocarditis and pericarditis. She is still struggling 2 years later.

May 12, 2023 – Fargo, ND – In April, 22 year old Noah Rooney presented with high grade fever, severe body aches, swollen muscles, and after extensive testing was diagnosed with AOSD. His liver started failing and he was diagnosed with HLH or MAS (Macrophage Activation Syndrome) and died suddenly on May 12, 2023.

Jan. 2023 – Phoenix, AZ – Shaley Lynn (Stone) was hospitalized for 8 weeks with pain, blackouts, etc, and was eventually diagnosed with AOSD and HLH (Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis). She had a bone marrow transplant and still struggles 2 years later.

April 2022 – Canton, SD – 20 year old Logan Kuper developed AOSD 3 weeks after his COVID-19 mRNA Booster. He is doing well with Kineret (Anakinra).

Jan. 28, 2022 (VAERS 2082404) – 33 year old Brandon Pollet from Louisiana had 2nd dose of Pfizer mRNA in Aug. 2021, 3 days later developed fever, chills – was diagnosed with AOSD with 1st Hospital stay Oct. 21-Nov. 2, 2021, then in ICU from Dec. 12, 2021 – was eventually diagnosed with refractory HLH complicated by cytopenias, polymicrobial infections & multi-organ failure, and died Jan. 28, 2022.

Cases in Literature

• 57 year old woman had 2nd dose of Moderna mRNA
• one week later developed skin rash, then referred to hospital 3 weeks later after they didn’t go away with topical steroids and oral antihistamines
• she had papules and plaques on her trunk and extremities, proximal muscle pain, and swelling in her thumbs and wrists.
• She was diagnosed with AOSD (Adult Onset Stills Disease)
• Theory: “pathogen-associated- (PAMPs) or damage-associated molecular patterns may activate the immune system in genetically predisposed patients, leading to IL-1β and IL-18 overproduction, known as a “cytokine storm””
  • The SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins are potent PAMPs, whereas the nucleocapsid proteins can block IL-1β release
  • “mRNA vaccines encode only spike protein and thus may disturb the host immune system.”

2021 Dec – Park et al – Adult-onset Still’s Disease after BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine

• 36F South Korean woman had 1st dose of Pfizer mRNA
• 10 days later developed high spiking fever, chills, sore throat
• hospitalized with joint pain in hands and ankles, mildly enlarged lymph nodes and salmon pink maculopapular rash on the trunk

2021 Nov – Jeon et al – A flare of Still’s disease following COVID-19 vaccination in a 34-year-old patient.

• 34F South Korean woman received 1st dose of AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine 9 days before presenting to ER with fever and rash
• I’m giving an AstraZeneca case to show it’s not exclusively an mRNA problem.

2021 – Yamamoto et al – Flare-up of adult-onset Still’s disease after receiving a second dose of BNT162b2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

• 37F Japanese woman had 2nd dose of Pfizer mRNA
• a few days later she started having fever, rash, sore throat and polyarthritis and presented two months later
• she had a prior history of AOSD 13 years earlier and had experienced relapses and remissions, but for 2 years prior to Pfizer she had no episodes

Literature Review

• Adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD) is the adult form of systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis which is a rare systemic inflammatory disorder that primarily affects young adults and mainly involves innate immune response.
• It corresponds to an aberrant inflammatory response whose precise etiology remains unknown.
• The role of an infectious (viral or bacterial) or non-infectious triggering factor on the ground of genetic susceptibility is generally accepted.
• The diagnosis generally remains a diagnosis of exclusion based on nonspecific clinical criteria (called Yamaguchi’s Criteria)
• AOSD is a rare, multisystem auto-inflammatory disorder characterized by fever, rash, arthritis, and hyperleukocytosis
• AOSD is 5x more frequently reported with COVID-19 vaccines than other drugs
• 144 cases with COVID-19 Vaccines in WHO VigiAccess, 15 from literature
• median age 43.4 years, female 52%, male 48%
• Time to onset ranged from 0 days to 6 months with a median of 8 days.
• 80% of AOSD occurred during the 1st three weeks and mostly with Pfizer
• Most of the cases (86.8%) have been reported as serious including 18 (11.3%) life-threatening conditions and two (1.2%) fatal outcomes.
• All cases required hospitalization
• More than 80% of AOSD had hyperferritinemia
• 12% of AOSD cases had a co-reported myocarditis or pericarditis
• 7% of AOSD cases were also diagnosed with HLH
• 2% of AOSD cases had HLH and myocarditis
• HLH (Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) also known as macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) is considered as the most serious life-threatening complication of AOSD

COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Immune System Damage 

(2022 Feb – Kim et al) give a nice summary:

• “AOSD is a rare systemic auto-inflammatory disorder characterized by high spiking fever, arthritis, an evanescent salmon-colored rash, and lab abnormalities including leukocytosis, high serum ferritin, elevated liver enzymes, and elevated acute phase reactants (APRs) such as ESR and CRP. “
• “Pathogenesis of AOSD remains unclear; however, dysregulation of the inflammasome complex with overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines(e.g., TNF-α, IL-1, IL-6, IL-18, and interferon-γ) appears to play a pivotal role. “
• “Treatment using biologics targeting these cytokines, such as the IL-6 receptor antagonist TCZ and IL-1 receptor antagonist Anakinra, has become an attractive therapeutic option in the recent years”
• COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine: “Possible pathologic mechanism is that mRNA transcribes into spike proteins which are displayed on antigen-presenting cells by molecular mimicry, leading to an acute immune response.
  • Another potential cause is that the mRNA vaccine acts as an adjuvant and stimulates innate immunity through endosomal and cytoplasmic immune receptors, such as Toll-like receptors
  • Pfizer mRNA vaccines may induce a significant increase in IL-6, IL-15, and interferon-γ, which play an important role in the pathogenesis of AOSD.

(2021 Dec – Park et al):

• Although the exact pathogenic mechanism of AOSD is not fully understood, innate immune system activation, rather than adaptive immunity, is implicated in the pathogenesis of AOSD.
• Danger signals such as pathogen-associated molecular patterns or damage associated molecular patterns are transmitted to macrophages and neutrophils via Toll-like receptors (TLR) leading to overproduction of interleukin (IL)-1β, which ultimately results in intense innate immune cell activation and overproduction of several proinflammatory cytokines, called ‘cytokine storm’.

My Take… 

• Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines severely damage the Immune System, which can cause a number of diseases
• Adult Onset Still’s Disease (AOSD) is one such disease of Immune damage
• EPOCH TIMES has an October 12, 2023 Article out called:
• COVID-19 Vaccines ‘May Trigger’ Rheumatic Inflammatory Diseases: Study
  • “A new review suggests that COVID vaccines “may trigger” rheumatic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including arthritis, vasculitis, lupus, and adult-onset Still’s Disease.”

*

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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*** 

We are outraged by, mourn deeply, and unequivocally condemn the horrific actions of Hamas. According to Israeli sources, more than 1,200 people were killed and 2,900 injured, most of whom were civilians, and over 100 individuals (including children, women, and the elderly) were taken as hostages into Gaza. 

We call for the immediate release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian political prisoners.

Tikkun magazine and Beyt Tikkun: A Synagogue without Walls partnered with others to write a joint statement that we hope can help us rise above divisiveness and division and call us to our highest selves. 

What follows is our joint statement. We invite everyone who agrees with our statement to add your name. You can read the statement below and add your name by clicking here.

Solidarity with Israel/Palestine

This statement is written and signed by Palestinians, Jews, and others who are committed to holding complex truths and striving to overcome polarization. We feel the pain of our people, identify with their pain, and need to work together to uplift our shared humanity. 

The unfolding horror in Israel and Gaza is an escalation of decades of state-sanctioned violence by Israel against Palestinians. We condemn the horrific actions of Hamas against Israeli civilians. We likewise condemn Israel’s unbridled bombing and cutting off access to all basic needs, including food, water, electricity, and medical care. Attacks on Palestinian and Israeli civilians are repugnant. 

Israeli violence against Palestinians has been intentionally hidden, slow, and steady. Contrary to what the media is reporting, this attack was not unprovoked. The Israeli and American governments have worked together to suppress and deny the inhumane acts against Palestinians that have led to this moment. There are Palestinians and Jews who have been raising red flags and warning about this inevitable outcome for decades, only to be dismissed and ignored.

The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing occupation, apartheid, and unbridled violence by settlers and soldiers in the West Bank provides the context for what is happening now. The recent Israeli government’s escalation of violence, encroachment of Al Aqsa Mosque, and its 16-year siege of Gaza has led to the current explosion.

We repeat: the brutality of Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians is unjustified. 

As we watch the violent attacks and rallying of xenophobia on both sides, we are brokenhearted. Although it feels like a time to stand with “our people,” we know this is a time to come together. This is a time of great suffering for all; a time of painful emotions. It is only by recognizing our shared fears and our shared tears that we will find our way through this nightmare. It is a struggle we need to undertake jointly. 

When we fall back into our separate and distinct identities we risk becoming part of the problem, not the solution. Both peoples suffer from ongoing trauma. We are all on high alert. The fear is palpable. And it is easy for us to objectify the ‘other.’ 

We seek a third path that neither perpetuates a xenophobic response nor sustains an unjust status quo. This moment calls us to slow down, sit with the pain and complexity, and grapple with our discomfort. It is a moment for digging deep, seeing across differences, and remembering our deep yearning for peace and justice. It is only through compassion and empathy that we will find a different way. 

We recognize and uplift the humanity of all peoples in Israel/Palestine. 

We call for an immediate ceasefire from Hamas and Israel.

We demand that basic needs be provided to Gazans. 

We demand that the United States provide only humanitarian support to Israel and Gaza. 

We support the creation of a movement that recognizes and affirms the humanity, dignity, and desire of both peoples to live in peace through reconciliation and justice.

*

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*** 

An Israeli woman who survived the Hamas assault on settlements near the Gaza boundary on 7 October says Israeli civilians were “undoubtedly” killed by their own security forces.

It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners.

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

The woman, 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat, said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave.

A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh (“This Morning”) hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, has been circulating on social media.

The interview has been translated by The Electronic Intifada. You can listen to it with English subtitles in this video and a transcript is at the end of this article:

Notably, the interview is not included in the online version of Haboker Hazeh for 15 October, the episode in which it apparently aired.

It may well have been censored due to its explosive nature.

Porat, who is from Kabri, a settlement near the Lebanese border, undoubtedly experienced terrible things and saw many noncombatants killed. Her own partner, Tal Katz, is among the dead.

However, her account undermines Israel’s official story of deliberate, wanton murder by the Palestinian fighters.

Although it no longer appears on the Kan website, there can be little doubt about the recording’s authenticity.

At least one Hebrew-language account posted part of the interview on Twitter, now officially called X, and accused Kan of functioning as “media in the service of Hamas.”

Porat also gave her account to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

However, the Maariv story, published on 9 October, makes no specific mention of civilians being killed by Israeli forces.

And in a half-hour interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday, Porat speaks of intense gunfire after Israeli forces arrived. Porat herself received a bullet in the thigh.

Treated “Humanely”

Not only does Porat tell Kan that Israelis were killed in the heavy counterattack by Israeli security forces, but she says she and other captive civilians were well treated by the Palestinian fighters.

Porat had been attending the “Nova” rave when the Hamas assault began with missiles and motorized paragliders. She and her partner Tal Katz escaped by car to nearby Kibbutz Be’eri where many of the events she describes in her media interviews took place.

According to Porat speaking to Maariv, she and Katz initially sought refuge in the house of a couple called Adi and Hadas Dagan. After the Palestinian fighters found them they were all taken to another house, where eight people were already being held captive and one person was dead.

Porat said that the wife of the dead man “told us that when they [the Hamas fighters] tried to enter, the guy tried to prevent them from entering and grabbed the door. They shot at the door and he was killed. They did not execute them.”

“They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” Porat explained to a surprised Golan in the Kan radio interview.

“By that I mean they guard us,” she said. “They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”

“They were very humane towards us,” Porat said in her Channel 12 interview. She recalled that one Palestinian fighter who spoke Hebrew, “told me, ‘Look at me well, we’re not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.’ That’s what he told me, in those words.”

“I was calm because I knew nothing would happen to me,” she added.

“They told us that we would not die, that they wanted to take us to Gaza and that the next day they would return us to the border,” Porat told Maariv.

In the Channel 12 interview, Porat elaborates that although the Palestinian fighters all had loaded weapons, she never saw them shoot captives or threaten them with their guns.

In addition to providing the captives with drinking water, she said the fighters let them go outside to the lawn because it was hot, especially as the electricity was cut.

Young and Scared

About eight hours after the start of the Hamas attack and about half an hour after Porat’s calls to the police, Israeli forces arrived and chaos ensued, Porat told Kan.

“At first there was no [Israeli] security force with us,” Porat recalled, noting that her first call to the Israeli police went unanswered. “We were the ones who called the police, together with the abductors because the abductors wanted the police to arrive. Because their objective was to kidnap us to Gaza.”

“They understand that soldiers will not kill hostages. So they want to come out with us alive and for the police to permit it,” Porat told Channel 12.

Though the Israeli captives numbered only a dozen, Porat was instructed to tell Israeli police that 40 of them were being held by the Hamas fighters, who themselves numbered between 40 and 50 men mostly in their 20s, by Porat’s estimate. They themselves were young and scared, she told Channel 12.

A fighter Porat described as a commander in his 30s asked to speak to the police and was put on with an Arabic-speaking Israeli officer.

After their brief conversation, the four dozen or so Palestinian fighters and their dozen Israeli prisoners awaited the arrival of the army, with some of the group spilling outside to the garden for relief from the afternoon heat.

Hails of Bullets, Mortars and Tank Shells

Israeli forces announced their arrival with a hail of gunfire, catching the fighters and their Israeli captives by surprise.

“We were outside and suddenly there was a volley of bullets at us from the [Israeli unit] YAMAM. We all started running to find cover, Porat told Channel 12.”

Porat said she surrendered to the Israeli soldiers half an hour into the fierce gun battle that consisted of “tens and hundreds and thousands of bullets and mortars flying in the air,” and that one of the Palestinian fighters, a commander, decided to surrender and used her in effect as a human shield.

“He starts to disrobe,” Porat recalled to Kan’s Aryeh Golan. “He calls to me and he starts to leave the house with me, under fire. At that time I yell to the [Israeli commandos] … when they can hear me, to stop firing.”

“And then they heard me and stopped firing,” she added. “I see people from the kibbutz on the lawn. There are five or six hostages lying on the ground outside. Just like sheep to the slaughter, between the shooting of our commandos and the terrorists.”

“The terrorists shot them?” Golan asks.

“No, they were killed by the crossfire,” Porat responds. “Understand there was very, very heavy crossfire.”

Golan presses: “So our forces may have shot them?”

“Undoubtedly,” the former captive responds, and adds, “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”

“After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big,” Porat explains.

Porat and the man who took her captive both survived. The Palestinian was taken prisoner by Israeli forces. But according to Porat, almost everyone else in the settlement was killed, wounded or missing, believed to have been taken to Gaza.

Porat told Kan she lost dozens of friends who had been at the rave – people she would regularly see at parties in Israel’s trance scene.

“I’m angry at the state, I’m angry at the army,” Porat told Maariv. “For 10 hours the kibbutz was abandoned.”

The joint American-Israeli effort to paint Hamas as worse than ISIS in order to justify Israel’s unfolding genocide against the civilian population in Gaza depends on the international public not seeing or hearing accounts like Porat’s.

Israeli leaders, already under intense criticism for failing to anticipate and prevent the Hamas offensive, will also not want their catastrophic failures to be compounded by knowledge that many of the Israelis who died may well have been killed by “friendly fire” in a disastrous Israeli counterattack.

Hannibal Directive?

Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas military commander, has directly addressed Israel’s claims that his fighters set out to deliberately kill as many civilians as possible.

The Israeli propaganda campaign has included lurid atrocity tales – for which no evidence has been produced whatsoever – that Palestinians beheaded dozens of Israeli babies and that women were raped.

Al-Arouri said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday that fighters of his organization’s military force, the Qassam Brigades, were under strict protocol to not harm civilians.

But al-Arouri said that after Israel’s Gaza division – the army unit that surrounds the Gaza Strip – collapsed much more quickly than expected, people in Gaza rushed to the boundary area after learning it had been opened, causing chaos. He said this may have included other armed persons who were not part of Qassam.

Al-Arouri said that this caused Qassam fighters to engage with soldiers, settlement guards and armed residents, which led to civilian deaths.

Al-Arouri also invoked the possibility Israel used the so-called Hannibal Directive – a protocol that allows Israeli forces to use overwhelming force to kill one of their own captured soldiers rather than allow them to be taken prisoner.

The rationale for the Hannibal Directive is to avoid allowing an enemy to have captives that can be used in prisoner exchange negotiations.

However in this case, if the directive was implemented by Israeli forces, it would have been used against civilians.

Al-Arouri told Al Jazeera, “We are certain that young men [fighters] were bombed along with the prisoners who were with them.”

Porat’s account, among others, underscores the need for an independent investigation, one which Israel is unlikely ever to permit.

The current propaganda narrative is simply too valuable to the genocidaires in Tel Aviv.

*

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Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

David Sheen is the author of Kahanism and American Politics: The Democratic Party’s Decades-Long Courtship of Racist Fanatics.

Featured image: Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the bloodshed at Kibbutz Be’eri, near the boundary with Gaza, says many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces. (Source: TEI)

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Transcript of the Kan interview with Yasmin Porat

Yasmin Porat: For an hour they were banging about 10 terrorists on the reinforced safe room. There were screams in Arabic and it was a very tense hour. And we felt great fear that’s indescribable. After an hour they managed to break in and they removed the four of us to a nearby house where there were already eight other additional hostages. We joined those eight and we were about 12 hostages with 40 terrorists that were guarding us. I’m keeping the story short.

Aryeh Golan: Did they abuse you?

Yasmin Porat: They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely, meaning …

Aryeh Golan: Humanely? Really?

Yasmin Porat: Yes, by that I mean they guard us. They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous, they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.

Aryeh Golan: Horrible, horrific things occurred.

Yasmin Porat: True. But after two hours briefly at first there was no [Israeli] security force with us. We were the ones who called the police together with the abductors because the abductors wanted the police to arrive. Because their objective was to kidnap us to Gaza.

[SKIP OR CUT IN AUDIO]

Yasmin Porat: Meanwhile one of the terrorists decides to surrender, the terrorist I made a connection with. Over the course of those two hours I connected with some of the abductors, those that guarded the hostages.

Aryeh Golan: Yes

Yasmin Porat: And he decides to use me as a human shield. He decides to surrender. I am not aware of it in those moments its in retrospect. He starts to disrobe, he takes he calls to me and he starts to leave the house with me, under fire. At that time I yelled to the YAMAM [Israeli commandos] when we were already when they can hear me, to stop firing.

Aryeh Golan: Yes

Yasmin Porat: And then they hear me and stop firing. I see on the lawn, in the garden of the people from the kibbutz. There are five or six hostages lying on the ground outside, just like sheep to the slaughter, between the shooting of our [fighters] and the terrorists.

Aryeh Golan: The terrorists shot them?

Yasmin Porat: No, they were killed by the crossfire. Understand there was very, very heavy crossfire.

Aryeh Golan: So our forces may have shot them?

Yasmin Porat: Undoubtedly.

Aryeh Golan: When they tried to eliminate the abductors, Hamas?

Yasmin Porat: They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. Because there was very, very heavy crossfire. I was freed at approximately 5:30. The fighting apparently ended at 8:30. After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house. Its a small kibbutz house, nothing big. You saw it on the news.

Aryeh Golan: Yes

Yasmin Porat: Not a large place. And at that moment everyone was killed. There was quiet, except for one person limping, Hadas [Dagan], in the garden.

Aryeh Golan: How were they all killed?

Yasmin Porat: From the crossfire.

Aryeh Golan: Crossfire, so it could also be from our forces?

Yasmin Porat: Undoubtedly.

Aryeh Golan: Really?

Yasmin Porat: That’s what I believe.

Aryeh Golan: Oy it sounds so bad.

Yasmin Porat: Yes. And everyone died.

Aryeh Golan: And you, thanks to that terrorist who decided to give himself up …

Yasmin Porat: Exactly.

Aryeh Golan: And you survived and all the rest were killed there.

Yasmin Porat: Except for one other woman who survived, they found her later [trails off]. The person who dealt with the event checked her or something. They found her when she lifted her head, amongst all the bodies. And then, simply …

Aryeh Golan: And your partner, who was with you?

Yasmin Porat: Killed.

Aryeh Golan: He was killed too?

Yasmin Porat: Yes. Everyone was killed there. Just horrible.

Aryeh Golan: Have you returned to Kabri?

Yasmin Porat: I returned to Kabri and then the chaos started there.

Aryeh Golan: In the north?

Yasmin Porat: Yes. So now I’m a guest. I’m being hosted in a lovely way in Kibbutz Ein Harod. And I’m here for now.

Aryeh Golan: You’re in the [Jezreel] Valley now. Alright, Yasmin, you’ve undergone a horrific experience.

Yasmin Porat: True.

Aryeh Golan: You lost your partner, you saw people killed alongside you.

Yasmin Porat: And I …

Aryeh Golan: [INTERRUPTS] What happened to that terrorist who gave himself up?

Yasmin Porat: He is still arrested, and he was just called in for interrogation to help … You know, he will be interrogated about the accused. And sadly dozens more of my friends were killed because …

Aryeh Golan: [INTERRUPTS] Dozens of friends?

Yasmin Porat: Yes because its a community, the trance scene, we go to the same parties. It means that besides my partner, I knew dozens and hundreds [CUT OFF]

*

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The Powder Keg in the Middle East Has Exploded: What Israel’s War on Gaza Means for the Rest of the World

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, October 16, 2023

Why do I believe Israel allowed it to happen? Because the Gaza Strip is one of the most surveilled areas on the planet, therefore Israeli intelligence had to know beforehand that sooner or later, something was going to happen.

The Peace of Westphalia as a Lesson in Solving Religious Wars Past Present or Future

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, October 16, 2023

In 1999, a seemingly innocuous speech occurred in Chicago that unveiled a new paradigm in world affairs that was dubbed “the Blair Doctrine”. In this speech, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that the realities of the new age of terrorism had rendered the respect for sovereign nation states irrelevant and obsolete requiring a superior doctrine compatible with the need to periodically bomb sovereign nations you don’t like.

US Official Lies to Armenians Worldwide

By Steven Sahiounie, October 16, 2023

Samantha Power’s moral compass is broken. She stood by lying and humiliating the homeless Armenians in Kessab, Syria in 2014, and she is again lying to the Armenians arriving as refugees in Yerevan.

Will RFK Jr. Running as Independent, Encourage a Democrat and Republican “Correct Scientific Course” Pertaining to COVID-19?

By Ben Bartee, October 16, 2023

One among the many impacts RFK Jr.’s run could have is forcing the Democrats — and the institutions they dominate such as universities – as well as many Republicans on the Big Pharma dole to moderate their still-extreme COVID measures, such as the pseudoscientific “vaccine” mandates at Rutgers and multiple other such institutions still in effect in 2023.

How Much Longer Will Palestinians be Martyr People?

By Eric Margolis, October 16, 2023

American-made bombs and rockets are now shattering what’s left of Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places. Israel, which suffered over 1,200 dead innocent civilians from a Hamas-led attack on a music festival and waves of rocket barrages, vows Biblical revenge on the Palestinians.

Brainwashing Techniques Used to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

By Dr. William Makis, October 16, 2023

I wish I had read this literature early on in the pandemic, to realize and understand how truly evil and psychopathic the COVID-19 Propaganda and the Psychological Warfare on the population was.

Blood on Their Hands: The West Is Arming the Zionist Regime. Israel Completes Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal, October 16, 2023

Israel’s brutal, oppressive regime calls on over 1 million Palestinians in the open-air prison of Gaza to walk to the Egyptian border in the South to increase the pressure on Egypt to open up its border crossing to get rid of another 1 million Palestinians. They will never return to the Gaza Strip if they are in Egypt.

A New Nakba Is Coming? Netanyahu and the Greater Israel

By Germán Gorraiz López, October 16, 2023

Netanyahu reaffirmed “the right of the Jewish people to build in Jerusalem”, (which would be translated according to the television channel Arutz 2 in the construction of 1,400 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, Jewish quarter of East Jerusalem located beyond the so-called Green Line) even the Palestinians know that these places will be under Israeli sovereignty under any kind of arrangement.

Gaza Is Burning in Lockstep with “The Great Reset”. Cascade of Global Chaos

By Dr. Mathew Maavak, October 16, 2023

The latest Israel-Hamas conflict was either deliberately engineered or it was the result of a remarkable concatenation of security lapses. Current affairs commentator Efrat Fenigson, a former Israel Defence Force (IDF) reservist, was among the first to concisely unpack the sheer improbability of a Hamas sneak attack on an ultra-secure Israeli border complex.

Pearl Harbour: Persian Gulf Edition – Coming Soon? Is a Broader Middle East War Contemplated?

By Gavin OReilly, October 16, 2023

Less than 48 hours following the commencement of Operation Al-Asqa Flood, the Associated Press also carried a report citing an unnamed Egyptian intelligence official who had claimed that Cairo had repeatedly warned Tel Aviv that an escalation was imminent, warnings that seemingly went unheeded.

This text was first published by Global Research in November 2013, following the indictment. 

The government of Israel headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has committed extensive crimes against humanity. President Trump in his “Deal of the Century” has endorsed this criminal agenda directed against the people of Palestine. 

World public opinion is largely unaware of the fact that in November 2013, the State of Israel was the object of a historic judgment by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT).  

“From 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel (hereafter ‘the Defendant’) carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. … Such conduct constitutes the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.”

In enforcing the so-called  “Deal of the Century”, the president of the United States is complicit in extensive war crimes.

Below are selected excerpts from the judgment. The full judgment is available in pdf. form.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad chaired the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) which led to the indictment against the State of Israel.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WAR CRIMES AND GENOCIDE

“The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.”

Please help us in this endeavour. Forward this text far and wide. The community of nations has the responsibility to endorse this  indictment against the State of Israel. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC), February 10, 2020, May 13, 2021, October 17, 2023

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The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC)

versus the State of Israel

The proceedings directed against the State of Israel were led by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC)

Members of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) are:

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (Chairman), Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Dr. Denis Halliday, Mr. Musa Ismail, Dr. Zulaiha Ismail, Dr. Yaacob Merican, Dr. Hans von Sponeck.

Working in liaison with their Malaysian counterparts,  commissioners Dr. Denis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization were present in Kuala Lumpur throughout the proceedings.

This important judicial process has received very little coverage in the Western media.  Global Research published several reports following this historic  judgment against the State of Israel.

“The perpetrators [State of Israel] had committed acts against the Palestinians, with intent to kill, cause serious bodily or mental harms and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinians as a whole or in part.”

“The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations.” 

THE KUALA LUMPUR WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
20 – 25 NOVEMBER 2013
Case No. 3 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
Amos Yaron
Case No. 4 – CHG – 2013

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
Against
The State of Israel

..

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (Tribunal) reconvened on 20 November 2013 to hear two charges against Amos Yaron (first Defendant) and the State of Israel (second Defendant). The first Defendant was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, whilst the second Defendant was charged with the crime of genocide and war crimes.

The charge against the first Defendant is as follows –

“The Defendant Amos Yaron perpetrated War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps in violation of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; the 1948 Genocide Convention; the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950); customary international law, jus cogens, the Laws of War, and International Humanitarian Law”

The charge against the second Defendant [State of Israel] is as follows –

“From 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel (hereafter ‘the Defendant’) carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.

The conduct of the Defendant was carried out with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people. These acts were carried out as part of a manifest pattern of similar conduct against the Palestinian people.

These acts were carried out by the Defendant through the instrumentality of its representatives and agents including those listed in Appendices 1 and 2.

Such conduct constitutes the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention.

It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

Such conduct by the Defendant as an occupying power also violates customary international law as embodied in the Hague Convention of 1907 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Such conduct also constitutes War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity under international law.”

The charges (together with the particulars of the charges) had been duly served on the Defendants, and were read in open court by the Registrar as these proceedings commenced.

Neither Defendant was present in these proceedings, but both were represented by the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team.

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Selected Excerpts

2 Prosecution’s Case

The Prosecution’s case against the first Defendant is that the first Defendant had committed War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide in his capacity as the Commanding Israeli General in military control of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Israeli-occupied Lebanon in September of 1982 when he knowingly facilitated and permitted the large-scale Massacre of the Residents of those two camps. These crimes were in violation of, inter alia, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, the 1948 Genocide Convention, jus cogens, International Humanitarian Law; and Articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

The Prosecution’s case against the second Defendant is that from 1948 and continuing to date the State of Israel had systematically carried out against the Palestinian people a series of acts namely killing, causing serious bodily harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction – with the intention of destroying in whole or in part the Palestinian people.

These acts constitute the Crime of Genocide under international law including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Genocide Convention’) in particular Article II and punishable under Article III of the said Convention. It also constitutes the crime of genocide as stipulated in Article 10 of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

In his opening statement, the Chief Prosecutor Prof Gurdial Singh said that the Prosecution will adduce evidence to prove the counts in the indictment through oral and written testimonies of victims, witnesses, historical records, narrative in books and authoritative commentaries, resolutions of the United Nations and reports of international bodies.

6. The Defence case

Mr. Jason Kay Kit Leon of the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that in the charges against the two Defendants, the Prosecution had listed war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Apparently the Prosecution had abandoned these charges, concentrating only on genocide.

He said that the offence of genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention 1948, whilst the OED defines it simply as “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group”.

He submitted that the charge of genocide is unique; it means that you don’t like a group, you kill them; you kill them in a grand manner. Genocide means that at the end of the act, you have a lesser number of victims than before the genocide started.

He further submitted that when one talks of “massive killing”, it is many hundreds of thousands to millions of people. To suggest that an isolated event, the unfortunate murder of 3,000 people (Sabra and Shatila) is the same as massive killing is almost disrespectful of the true horror of massive killing (as in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were killed in 100 days).

With regard to the Kahan Report, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it also identified other people as being responsible, with two other names other than Yaron still alive. The question is why only Yaron was charged? Why was Defence Minister Ariel Sharon spared?

He also submitted that the PLO had repeatedly violated the July 1981 cease-fire agreement. By June 1982, when the IDF went into Lebanon, the PLO had made life in northern Israel intolerable through its repeated shelling of Israeli towns.

On Cast Lead, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the IDF had come out with two reports. The point is if you are going to kill people nilly willy, you do not report it.

On the issue of the wall, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team submitted that the primary consideration is one of security of the Israeli settlers. The State of Israel has a duty to defend their lives, safety and well-being.

On the issue of checkpoints, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said countries have a right to immigration laws. With regard to Plan Dalet, the Amicus Curiae-Defence Team said that it is subject to divergent opinions, with historians on one side asserting that it was entirely defensive, while other historians assert that the plan aimed at an ethnic cleansing.

4. Prosecution’s closing submission

In his closing submission, the Chief Prosecutor said that he had called 11 witnesses (some of whom had testified through Skype), tendered 15 exhibits and furnished several documents and reports to the Tribunal during the course of the proceedings.

He urged the Tribunal to bear in mind that this is a Tribunal of Conscience and the case before it is an extraordinary case, which Winston Churchill used to call as a “crime without a name”.

He said that the Prosecution had provided evidence of facts which, examined as a whole, will show that the perpetrators had committed acts against the Palestinians, with intent to kill, cause serious bodily or mental harms and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinians as a whole or in part.

From the testimony of Prof Pappe (PW8) the Prosecution had shown that before 1948, before UN Resolution 47, there was already a plan in place to take over the Palestinian territory, and this plan would be activated the moment the British relinquished its mandate over the territory.

At that point in time, the Palestinians were on 94% of the land, with the Jewish population settling over a mere 6% of the land. Under the UN partition plan, more than 50% of the land was to be given to the Jews.

Plan Dalet might not legally be genocidal in form at its inception, but as it took shape the ethnic cleansing metamorphised into killing, massacre and creating impossible conditions for life for the Palestinians – either they leave or they die. The Prosecution submits this is genocide within the meaning of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.

On Sabra and Shatila, prosecution witnesses (PW1 and PW6) had testified that the Palestinian refugees in those camps had been killed by the Phalangists, aided and abetted by the Israelis who were in complete control of the two camps.

According to the Kahan Report, all of Beirut was under Israeli control, and there was clear symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Christian forces (the Lebanese Maronite Christian militia or the Phalangists or Keta’ib).

On Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the Chief Prosecutor said that the Israeli Defence Force had used all kinds of weapons, including white phosphorus – which is an incendiary weapon. The use of incendiary weapons is prohibited under Protocal III on the Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons.

As a result of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, nowhere in Gaza is safe for civilians. 1.5 million Palestinians are now trapped in despair, their fragile economy ruined. Under the Dahiya Doctrine (October 2008), the complete destruction of Gaza is the ultimate objective, the whole place must be flattened.

The Prosecution submits that the cumulative effect of the actions taken by the Israeli government, as shown by the Prosecution witnesses and the several documents tendered to the Tribunal, have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention and the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (The Charter).

Co-Prosecutor Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, submitting on the first charge against Amos Yaron, said that Amos Yaron was the commanding officer in charge of the Israeli Defence Force, in charge of the area of Beirut, and camps Sabra and Shatila. He said there were two issues which he has to deal with – first, whether or not there was a large scale massacre of the 10 residents of the two camps, and second, whether or not Amos Yaron facilitated and permitted such massacre, in violation of international law and Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Charter?

On the first issue, he submitted there was a large scale massacre, as testified by PW1. She was there, and she saw the massacre with her own eyes. There was corrobating testimony by PW6, and further acknowledged in the Kahan Report.

On the second issue, Amos Yaron was in charge, to ensure that there would be peace and law and order. The Kahan Report itself concluded that anybody who knew about Lebanon would know that by releasing the Phalangists into Beirut, there would be massacre. Surely, Amos Yaron, the General in charge, must have known that by allowing the Phalangists to go into the two camps, the massacre would take place. But he decided to do nothing.

He received the reports of the killing of women and children, but he did not check the report. He did not pass the report to his superiors. The co-prosecutor submits that by ignoring all this despite knowing the circumstances, he himself had the intention of causing the death of the people in the two camps.

10.3 Commission’s Register of War Criminals

Further, under Article 35 of the same Chapter, this Tribunal recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of the two convicted parties herein be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicised accordingly.

10.4 The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions.

10.5 The Tribunal deplores the failure of international institutions to punish the State of Israel for its crimes and its total lack of respect of International Law and the institutions of the United Nations. It urges the Commission to use all means to publicise this judgement and in particular with respect to the Parliaments and Legislative Assemblies of the major powers such as members of the G8 and to urge these countries to intervene and put an end to the colonialist and racist policies of the State of Israel and its supporters.

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First published on December 7, 2021

***

 

Israel announced December 2021 the completion of a massive barrier around the besieged Gaza Strip, above and below ground, which took three and a half years to finish.

The project includes a sensor-equipped underground wall, a counter-measure developed after Hamas used tunnels to blindside Israeli troops during their 2014 offensive against the enclave.

Israel went public with the project, which also includes an above-ground fence, a naval barrier, radar systems and command and control rooms, in 2016.

Israel’s defence ministry said the barrier, which includes hundreds of cameras, radars and other sensors, spans 65km and that 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction,

“The barrier, which is an innovative and technologically advanced project, deprives Hamas of one of the capabilities it tried to develop,” Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said, according to a defence ministry statement.

The ministry said the project’s “smart fence” is more than six metres high and its maritime barrier includes means to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system.

Barrier against tunnels along the Israel-Gaza Strip border 2019 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The ministry did not disclose the depth of the underground wall.

Israel has maintained a crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007, which critics say amounts to a collective punishment of the impoverished enclave’s two million residents.

Israel prevents the importing of materials and equipment into Gaza and has imposed strict restrictions on exports, leading to a state of “paralysis” in several sectors of Gaza’s economy.

Egypt also upholds the siege, restricting movement in and out of Gaza on its border.

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A new war in the Gaza Strip should not be a surprise to anyone who understands what the Palestinians have been going through for the last 75 years. 

Many people in the West, in particularly those in the United States and the European Union are shocked and very angry with the attack on Israeli territory by Hamas.

The US mainstream media obviously has a biased view with mostly pro-Israel viewpoints on Israel’s latest conflict in Gaza especially with FOX news which so far, has not invited a Palestinian or Muslim analyst or academic to explain to its audience what led up to this recent attack in the first place.

However, I do believe that Israeli intelligence namely, Mossad knew what was about to take place so that they can move forward to “wipe Gaza off the map” which has been a long-time strategy for Israeli hardliners.

Why do I believe Israel allowed it to happen?

Because the Gaza Strip is one of the most surveilled areas on the planet, therefore Israeli intelligence had to know beforehand that sooner or later, something was going to happen.

Despite what is happening in Gaza, there is one important fact that needs to be told: it’s not just about Palestine because if Israel gets its way in this war, it will begin targeting other Arab states including Lebanon and Syria which fits into what Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist wrote in ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties’ suggesting that Israel must “become an imperial regional power” and that it “must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.” 

The strategy according to Yinon is that “the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.” Although this was written in the 1980’s, all of it is absurd and unrealistic.

Israeli hardliners and Americans especially those in the US bible belt are hoping for a Greater Israel, but that will never happen. The resistance will become stronger throughout the Middle East as more Israeli fighter jets continues to bomb Gaza day after day.

Several Middle Eastern countries and resistance groups have been prepared for the next big war with Israel and the US including Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, Kataib Hezbollah and other factions in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. 

Government officials, military top brass and intelligence agencies from the US, and NATO know that it will be long and bloody war since Israel is going full force in efforts to take more land in Gaza thus creating more Palestinian refugees in the process.

Yinon said create “small states” that will be easier to dominate just like they did in Palestine. They split the territories by turning the Gaza Strip into an open air prison, and at the same-time they created a separate territory in the West Bank. Both areas are militarily dominated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). 

However, time is not on Israel’s side. They know that the US is in financial trouble with $33 trillion in debt, so I am sure that many Israeli economists know that without the US and its financial assistance, Israel will not last since they depend on almost every penny that the US government gives them.

In the meantime, Israel is trying to somehow get the US involved in the war. For the Israelis, that’s nothing new.  Remember when Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to the US congress in 2002 that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons? 

“There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons,” he continued “Once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons.”

I would say that Netanyahu was successful in getting the US in a war with Iraq. Or how about the time when Israel attacked the USS Liberty in 1967 in the Mediterranean sea during the Six-Day War which was meant as a false flag operation to bring in the US in its war against Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.

The war on Palestine was the first step in creating an imperial Israel. On July 9^th, 1947, Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency declared at a U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry that Israel needs to expand “from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

It is also important to note that Israel has another important reason for expansion and that is to ultimately control the natural resources including oil and gas throughout the Middle East. When it comes to Big Oil, Washington and the Pentagon share similar goals with Israel when it comes to natural resources in the region.

Since the Gulf war in the early 1990s, Washington and the Pentagon along with Kurdish leadership tried to create a ‘Free Kurdistan‘ that included areas of Iraq, Iran, Syria and even Turkey to dominate the potential energy markets. In other words, the US establishment and Israel benefit in numerous ways by Balkanizing the Middle East thus making it easier to control the oil and gas fields.

Oil Resources & Facilities in Kurdish Regions of Iraq

So for the US-Israel partnership, it’s not only ideological, it’s also about the economic benefits of Zionist expansion that not only benefits Big Oil but also the US arms industry since Israel will need a steady supply of weapons for a very long time to maintain control over a Balkanized Middle East and that’s always a plus for the establishment.

So, it is fair to say that Israel needs the US military and its financial aid just as much as the US and its Big oil enterprises need Israel to continue its illegal occupation.

Meanwhile worldwide protests have taken place as the war hawks, neocons, special interest groups (AIPAC) in Washington and their media mouthpieces are already pushing for US military to ultimately attack Iran. 

The US military is already sending its naval ships to the Eastern Mediterranean in show of support for Israel according to Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III:

I have directed the movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. This includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), as well as the Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Carney (DDG 64), and USS Roosevelt (DDG 80). We have also taken steps to augment U.S. Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region. The U.S. maintains ready forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required

US ships in the Mediterranean sea? Seems like déjà vu, but the point here is that the US will most likely get involved despite losing almost every major war they started since the end of World War II. It is assured that they will face a heavy onslaught of firepower from Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and resistance groups from Iraq that can target US bases and assets.  Even Yemen can get involved in some capacity.  

Russia and China are watching events very closely as their countries are also facing Western aggression on various levels including the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine and if the US and its close allies in the Asia Pacific are foolish enough, they will start another proxy war in Taiwan.in such a short period of time. 

Russia and China can sure try to mediate a peace agreement or a ceasefire, but that seems impossible given how Israel sees the necessity and the long-term benefits of seizing more Palestinian territory with close to half of the Gaza strip in its sights and that’s their next step, stripping land away from the Palestinians piece by piece. 

The bottom line is that the US is at $33 trillion in debt with a US dollar reserve currency that is not so popular as before, so how long can the US establishment keep up its military and economic support for Israel?  No one knows for sure, but it is clear that the US and the European establishment is committed to Israel’s security, even if it means bankrupting its own citizens. 

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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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Understandably, the global heat is seriously influencing the former Soviet republics, the backyard of the Russian Federation. These republics have attained their independence since 1991 after Soviet’s collapse and consequently have the unique opportunity to choose their own political and economic directions. But that has not been the case, as Russia casts its political shadow in order to control, at least to some degree, Western and European presence in the central Soviet-Asian region.

Across the Central Asian region, Russia has not been at ease especially with the recent developments between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And it is no secret that Kazakhstan has embarked on several initiatives to diversify its economy, adopting western-oriented models of management and development.

Since the Russia-Ukraine crisis began, those Central Asian republics have kept their neutral position and are pursuing their own geopolitics without much ties to the dictates of Moscow. Kazakhstan has welcomed tens of thousands of Russians fleeing from the military call-up (mobilization) since last year. 

In September 2022, Kazakhstan even vowed to comply with the massive Western sanctions on Russia, with its leader saying Astana will not help Moscow circumvent them. Central Asian countries, which have many citizens working in Russia, have warned their people not to fight in Ukraine alongside Moscow’s forces.

The Kazakh leader has also welcomed United States efforts to expand cooperation in the C5+1 format (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the United States), noting the importance of the Astana meeting of Central Asian and US foreign policy leaders.

In pursuit of building a regional group, Russia has been making efforts to improve multifaceted relations with these Central Asian republics, for example, under the umbrella of Eurasian Union. By the stipulated guidelines, Russia and Kyrgyzstan are members, consequently both have to share common aspirations and common future.  The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) still exist in theory, as in one way or the other, the Soviet republics have political differences.

At this new stage of political developments around the world, Russia deems it necessary to balance its geopolitical interest and bilateral relations with Kyrgyzstan, especially broadening economic perspectives, and maintaining long-term security aspects in their bilateral relations in the region.

Following the sketchy review from above, on October 12 to 13, President Vladimir Putin went on an official working visit to Kyrgyzstan. The key reason was to discuss further development of Russian-Kyrgyz relations of strategic partnership and alliance in various areas, including with regard to Kyrgyzstan’s chairmanship of the CIS this year and Russia’s chairmanship of the Eurasian Economic Union.

On October 13, the President took part in a meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council. Kyrgyzstan hosted the Commonwealth of Independent States summit, and in attendance were leaders of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The CIS leaders reviewed the interaction within the organization in 2023, outlined the main areas for future activity, and exchanged opinions on current international and regional issues. Putin briefed his colleagues on the priorities of Russia’s chairmanship of the CIS in 2024.

A package of documents aimed at further developing cooperation between the CIS states in the economic, cultural, humanitarian and law enforcement areas were signed following their extensive meeting.

As already mentioned due to the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan skipped the summit. As we know from this historical development, Yerevan’s relationship with Moscow has frayed amid mutual accusations. His snub came after Armenian lawmakers moved to join the ICC, angering Moscow and potentially limiting Putin’s travel options further. 

Pashinyan has criticized Moscow for not intervening when Azerbaijan launched a successful offensive to take over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2023. Nagorno-Karabakh is a region located in the South Caucasus, covering the southeastern stretch of the Caucasus mountain range. Part of the greater region of Karabakh, it spans the area between Lower Karabakh and Syunik.

Ahead of Putin’s trip, Kyrgyzstan said it had ratified an agreement for a common air defence system with Russia. Moscow has similar deals with other allied countries including Kazakhstan, Belarus and Tajikistan.

“We are gathered here to solemnly mark a very significant anniversary: the 20th anniversary of the establishment of a Russian joint military airbase in the city of Kant in the Kyrgyz Republic. This is an important milestone for our Kyrgyz friends and us in cooperation in the area of defense and strengthening regional security as a whole,” Putin said.

Putin held bilateral meetings with Kyrgyz counterpart Sadyr Japarov and with his Belarus ally Alexander Lukashenko and other regional leaders. Putin also had a special meeting with President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

The Azerbaijani side was represented by Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, Presidential Aide Hikmet Hajiyev, Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov, and Economic Minister Mikayil Jabbarov.

Putin’s meeting with President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, on the sidelines of the CIS Heads of State summit in Bishkek, centered specifically on security problems in the region. Russia is an important strategic partner and ally of Tajikistan.

There is positive dynamism to collaboration between them in all other areas. Just similar to most of Putin’s meetings with other leaders were focused on security and economic agenda.

Of course, the number one issue is the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, and then discussed extensively structuring bilateral cooperation. In addition, both have concretely described the results as very impressive in terms of trade, industrial cooperation, and cooperation in the transport sector: there are a lot of new projects, and those involving regional and security issues. 

There are further takeaways from the summit. The establishment of Russian air defence to be placed in Kyrgyzstan, which borders Peoples Republic of China (PRC). We cannot overstate the importance of creating a Russian-Kyrgyz joint air defence system, which will be located in Kyrgyzstan. But a quotation from Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov does the trick:

“This is a joint air defence system. It is a great achievement for Russia and Kyrgyzstan. It is very important, given that Russia and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to allied relations, are still included in many joint integration associations. Of course, such common elements of security are very important.” 

On October 11, the Kyrgyz parliament ratified an agreement with Russia on the creation of a joint regional air defence system. The deputies of the Zhogorku Kengesh (Kyrgyz parliament) adopted in three readings a bill on the agreement to create a joint regional air defence system with Russia.

The agreement between the parties was signed in August 2022. In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on its ratification. The agreement between Russia and Kyrgyzstan will be valid for five years with further extension.

According to the agreement, the Russian side will coordinate the joint actions of the air defence forces, while Kyrgyzstan will be responsible for managing the joint actions of the air defence system troops in the collective security area.

A land plot of five hectares was provided for the air defence system near the Russian air base in the city of Kant. Russia has several military facilities in Kyrgyzstan. The largest of them is the air force base in Kant, which has existed since 2003. Russia annually pays Kyrgyzstan almost US$4.8 million for the lease of 58 hectares of land.

In terms of trade, Russia and Kyrgyzstan have targeted the current aspects of bilateral and multilateral cooperation between them, as they are strategic partners. Both reaffirmed strong commitment to stimulating and expanding bilateral cooperation. Evidence of this is the bilateral documents both have signed, and formally agreed to take measures to increase mutual trade and to strive for the ambitious target of US$5 billion.

Furthermore, the two parties expressed deep satisfaction with the positive results of the 10th Kyrgyzstan-Russia Interregional Conference on Industrial Cooperation. The conference led to the signing of documents and contracts exceeding US$3.5 billion. 

Russia is the biggest investor in the Kyrgyz economy. One third of all direct foreign investment in the country comes from Russia. There are some 800 Russian-Kyrgyz enterprises engaged in such key sectors as energy, mining, machine-building, agriculture and transport that are successfully operating in the republic. 

An important landmark was the 30 years of the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University. This anniversary once again emphasizes the multi-dimensional nature of the Russia-Kyrgyzstan partnership that extends to many areas, including cultural and humanitarian affairs.

It was highly noted the role of the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, which has become one of the leaders in higher education and science in Kyrgyzstan over the past 30 years. Since its inception, the university has produced a large number of highly qualified specialists now working in Kyrgyzstan, Russia and other countries.

One more ceremony was the presentation of a high state award of the Russian Federation, the Order of Honour, to the President of the Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov. Putin pointed to his commitment as a supporter of consistently advancing Eurasian integration and strengthening the atmosphere of partnership, trust and cooperation in the region.

As expected, Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov considered this award as recognition of the high level of Russia-Kyrgyzstan relations. Japarov expressed the desire to develop integration potential within the CIS, the CSTO and the EAEU.

Putin answered the Russian media’s questions following his official two-day visit to the Kyrgyz Republic and CIS summit events. In the sum up, he pointed to some detailed post-Soviet historical developments that existed among the former Soviet republics, and the evolving complicated trends now.

“As for the territory of Karabakh now, Armenia recognised that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of the Republic of Azerbaijan,” he said during the media conference. On the other hand, the Armenian side insisted on scheduling the date for the referendum and determining the status of Nagorno-Karabakh in that way.

They also proceeded from the fact that even if the referendum is held in 20 years, with the current composition of the population, the result will be obvious.

Following the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Ukraine and Georgia withdrew. Moldova has also begun the process of leaving the organization. There is also the Eurasian Union which consists of five members (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia). 

The CIS summit is to a large degree a success, despite the challenges and some disagreements among the republics with Russia. The CIS was originally formulated in 1991 as an informal successor organization for the former constituent republics of the Soviet Union. However, only Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Russia and Uzbekistan are current members. 

While the full-scale Ukraine offensive made Putin a persona-non-grata in the Western world, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruling virtually closed the door to a large part of the globe for him. The Rome Statute, a treaty requiring members to adhere to ICC rulings, has been ratified by 123 countries. 

Putin visited all five regional countries — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan — in 2022, portraying them as Russia’s core allies.

But since Jan. 2023, Putin has travelled only to Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, with his last foreign trips to Belarus and Kyrgyzstan in December 2022 — a far cry from the busy international schedule he had in previous years as president. Now, in a sign of Russia’s isolation, he plans a visit to North Korea next, as well as China. 

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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In 1999, a seemingly innocuous speech occurred in Chicago that unveiled a new paradigm in world affairs that was dubbed “the Blair Doctrine”. In this speech, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that the realities of the new age of terrorism had rendered the respect for sovereign nation states irrelevant and obsolete requiring a superior doctrine compatible with the need to periodically bomb sovereign nations you don’t like.

This new age of humanitarian bombings would be called “the post-Westphalian age”.

Recalling this speech in 2004, Blair mused 

“before Sept. 11, I was already reaching for a different philosophy in international relations from a traditional one that has held sway since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; namely, that a country’s internal affairs are for it, and you don’t interfere unless it threatens you, or breaches a treaty, or triggers an obligation of alliance.”

Blair’s original anti-Westphalia speech in 1999 was occuring at moment that a fanatical sect of neocons was preparing to usher in a “New American Century” with a new focus on a Pearl Harbor moment that would justify a new Crusade of never ending wars in Southwest Asia.

One of the principle doctrines for this age involved invoking raging fires of war and hatred between Arab and Jew which is what animated Richard Perle’s “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” as a strategic battle plan for Israel’s new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Cynthia Chung writes that the

“Clean Break policy document outlined these goals: 1) Ending Yasser Arafat’s and the Palestinian Authority’s political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism 2) Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 3) Launching war against Syria after Saddam’s regime is disposed of 4) Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.”

This hellish plan to light the middle east on fire was in many ways made possible by the 1995 murder of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin (by a radical zionist fanatic) and the American-Israeli creation of Hamas as an anti-Arafat movement which would offset Yasser Arafat’s tendency to find long term solutions with Israeli peacemakers like Rabin as witnessed by the efforts to create a two-state solution and Oslo Accords in 1993.

This tendency for peace between neighboring faiths had to be stopped at all costs.

Rules Based Dis-order vs Westphalia’s Peace Among Faiths

By now, we all know the name for this unipolar doctrine and the smoldering wave of destruction and death that it justified for the ensuing two decades.

What is less understood is the nature of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 which Blair referred to as an obsolete doctrine in desperate need of replacing.

Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia set the foundations for the later UN Charter drafted by Franklin Roosevelt and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in 1941 and since both this 1648 treaty and the UN Charter have been systemically targeted for destruction by Borg-like armies of “International Rule of Law” advocates pushing R2P and a Great Reset onto the world, let us take a moment to ask: What is the Treaty of Westphalia? How did it transform world history? And why is its defense so necessary in today’s crisis-ridden world?

The Peace of Westphalia: Phase Shift in World History

Before the Westphalian Treaty, Europe was bereft in chaos and war.

Not only did the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) eliminate over one third of the German population, but an additional century of religious war had set fire to Europe starting with the Knights Revolt of 1522 and the German Peasants War of 1524 that saw up to 300 thousand protestant peasants killed.

Before blowing up in Germany, Protestant vs Catholic wars had ravaged France between 1562-1598 during a devastating period of chaos that came to be known as “the Little Dark Age”, only coming to an end through the wise diplomatic maneuvers of King Henry IV of Navarre.

It was Henry IV, alongside his lead advisor Maximilien de Bethune (aka: Duke of Sully) who reformed France by establishing religious tolerance in the famous 1598 Edict of Nantes (removing Lutheranism and Calvanism from the list of heresies), while clamping down on corruption, banning usury, ending speculation, banning high rents and investing in internal improvements with a focus on textile manufacturing and agricultural reforms.

The burst of economic growth generated by these reforms doubled the revenues of France within 12 years and revived the spirit of the great nation-building king Louis XI turning France from a house divided in Civil War into a unified state that won the admiration of all the people of Europe (and the disdain of the financier oligarchy).

Henry IV also clearly aimed to revive the traditions of the Great Charlemagne who was the last monarch to unite all of Europe under a common principle of law, when he said that Europe should become “a Christian republic, entirely peaceful within itself”.

Sadly, Henry IV’s murder by “a lone assassin” in 1610 left a power vacuum and soon the religious wars grew once again out of control in Europe. This time however, they were concentrated in the more fertile soils of the highly fragmented Holy Roman Empire then occupying most of today’s Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Poland.

Unlike today’s Germany, the land that blew up in religious conflict during these dark years was dominated by small-minded warlord Princes and Dukes whose power was contingent on how many mercenaries they could hire and land they could steal. In total, over 350 tiny states and principalities existed along with 2000 jurisdictions which divided the Holy Roman Empire under an array of mini sovereignties with no conception of a greater whole. [see map]

To say that the 30 years war was of a purely religious nature is an over-simplified error that many are wont to make.

As outlined brilliantly by historian Pierre Beaudry, throughout the conflict, Catholic Bourbons of France often used Protestant Proxies in Germany to fight Spanish (Catholic) Hapsburgs that were territorial rivals over low countries or Poland.

Meanwhile the absence of any rules of territorial sovereignty welcomed constant infringement of factions onto each other’s lands. Austro-Hungarian Habsburg emperors constantly pushed expansionist policies and Venetian games were often played on the Baltic and Black Seas while both Venetian, Dutch and other purse strings were funding all warring sides throughout the years of chaos.

Needless to say, it was a disaster that was clearly sending Europe on a fast track towards a new dark age.

By 1609, the world’s first private central bank of Amsterdam was established along with the Dutch East India Company, which soon merged with the British East India Company and established a global maritime empire, where Venice had formerly been the dominant center of banking, world trade, controller of bullion and maritime choke points.

In reality, the same forces of Venice (and their sister “city state” of Genoa) were largely behind the reallocation of imperial command centers from the Venetian Levant Company to the Netherlands and thence to England (where the later takeover was finalized during the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the 1694 founding of the Bank of England as I outlined in my article the Art of Political Lying.)

Realizing that a profound change was required to end this slide into hell, forces yearning to revive the policies of Louis XI and Henry IV and unite Europe in peaceful co-existence were organized around France’s Prime Minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) and his young protégé Jean–Baptiste Colbert (1616-1683).

Beginning in 1642, Mazarin began a tedious process of organizing for the Treaty of Westphalia offering to serve as peace broker, lead negotiator and guarantor of religious freedoms for all parties, finally arranging the signing to occur in two locations on October 24, 1648, where protestant signators met in Osnabrück and Catholic signators met in Münster.

The Benefit of the Other

Although the Treaty that established the framework for the sovereign nation state is often taught to students of political science as a messy legal protocol featuring 128 clauses designed to respect the rights of others to be left alone and not impinge onto territory that doesn’t belong to you, something very special is often left out of the equation.

This something is a principle outlined in the first two articles which serve as a guiding preamble of sorts and which infuse vitality into the entire framework:

1) That all nations will now be guided by the concern for the benefit of their neighbors and 2) the forgiveness for all past transgressions. Since it is so rare that these articles are read in today’s world, let us review them here:

Article 1: “That there shall be a Christian and Universal Peace, and a perpetual, true, and sincere Amity… That this Peace and Amity be observ’d and cultivated with such a Sincerity and Zeal, that each Party shall endeavour to procure the Benefit, Honour and Advantage of the other; that thus on all sides they may see this Peace and Friendship in the Roman Empire, and the Kingdom of France flourish, by entertaining a good and faithful Neighbourhood.

Article 2: That there shall be on the one side and the other a perpetual Oblivion, Amnesty, or Pardon of all that has been committed since the beginning of these Troubles, in what place, or what manner soever the Hostilitys have been practis’d, in such a manner, that no body, under any pretext whatsoever, shall practice any Acts of Hostility, entertain any Enmity, or cause any Trouble to each other”

These were not pretty words on parchment applicable only to a “western European cultural matrix” as many believe, but foundational principles of natural law applicable to all civilizations and times. We need not look far to see their expression in the modern times not only in the UN Charter, but also the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in 1954 which has come alive with the Eurasian Grand Design of win-win cooperation underlying the Belt and Road Initiative today.

The Economic Developments that Gave Vitality to the Peace

In the same measure that the Westphalian principles outlined in Articles one and two of the UN Charter were contingent upon the successful implementation of the international New Deal economic programs showcased at Bretton Woods, so too was the success of the Westphalian Treaty contingent upon the implementation of great public works and economic reforms that were only partially realized across Europe in the decades following 1648.

Before his death in 1661, Cardinal Mazarin outlined major infrastructure projects for both Germany and France which were directed towards developing of the internal powers of labor of the nations of Europe through canals, manufacturing and roads, while liberating European states from reliance on the Maritime monopolies of the Venetians, Dutch, Spanish and Genoese.

As Beaudry outlines in his Peace of Westphalia and the Water Question, chief among those canal projects outlined by Mazarin included:

• the Vistule River (through Silezia, Mazovia, and East Prussia discharging into the Black Sea),
• the Oder River Projects (discharging into Baltic Sea),
• the Elbe River development (Bohemia to North Sea via Dresden, Magdeburg and Leipzig),
• the Weser River program through middle Germany and
• the Rhine River (Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands).

Some of these projects like the Rhine-Maine-Danube Canal connecting the North and Black Sea were only accomplished 300 years after the Treaty of Westphalia, although Mazarin’s key German ally Friedrich William (The Great Elector of Brandenburg) who was chosen to lead the League of Rhine in 1759 spearheaded the growth of many of Mazarin’s canals and road designs along with his son Friedrich the Great.

One of the first preconditions Mazarin had at the start of the Westphalian treaty’s negotiation in 1642 was the ending of tolls on waterways imposed by narrow minded princes and dukes who held territorial controls over sections of river systems throughout Germany which made any economic development of the territory financially unviable. In an early agreement signed in 1642, Mazarin had dozens of princes agree that

“From this day forward, along the two banks of the Rhine River and from the adjacent provinces, commerce and transport of goods shall be free of transit for all of the inhabitants, and it will no longer be permitted to impose on the Rhine any new toll, open berth right, customs, or taxation of any denomination and of any sort, whatsoever.”

In France, one of the greatest infrastructure projects in history was begun under Mazarin and continued by his close collaborator Jean-Baptiste Colbert called La Canal Du Midi (aka: Languedoc Canal). This was a 240 km canal creating a direct passage between the Atlantic with the Mediterranean eliminating a 3000 km detour around the Spanish Habsburg-controlled Strait of Gibraltar [see map].

This program took 15 years to complete and involved the construction of 130 arched bridges, 75 locks, and the largest man-made reservoir in human history at the base of the Montagne Noire.

This reservoir required new discoveries in engineering and science, lifting six million cubic meters of water to an elevation of 190 meters above sea and accumulated water from several sources including underground rivers in order to feed by gravitational flow into the Garonne and Aude rivers flowing in two opposing directions.

It was this last challenge that had caused centuries of engineers to give up on the viability of the project which had been a struggle since the days of Ancient Rome. The vast improvements of water systems around the Languedoc turned the region into a breadbasket with wheat production and wines skyrocketing.

Colbert Drains the Swamp

Finance Minister Colbert unleashed one of the greatest crackdowns on corruption by forcing public audits of the aristocracy and auditing all financial officers who were obliged to prove where all of their possessions and even titles came from.

The buying of titles was also a common practice in France as source of state revenue, and this cancerous growth of corruption was also intervened upon by Colbert who demanded an investigation into the legitimacy of all titles. By the end of this inquiry over 2000 claimed titles of nobility were deemed fraudulent whereby former nobles had to get real jobs and pay taxes.

One of the most important figures in France who faced justice under Colbert’s crackdown was the corrupt Superintendent of Finance Nicholas Fouquet who had looted France for millions over decades, even repaying himself for over six million pounds from state treasuries for loans that he had never made to the nation.

Over the course of these 1661 trials, all of Fouquet’s skeletons were brought to light and he was imprisoned for life along with many leading collaborators of France’s deep state (resulting in Colbert’s receiving Fouquet’s position).

Colbert’s New Deal

With the swamp sufficiently flushed and France’s deep state reined in, Colbert launched a series of additional reforms which included the imposition of protective tariffs against British, Dutch and Belgian dumping of cheap goods, the directing of 5 million pounds of state credit to develop textiles and manufacturing and the founding of the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1666 inviting the greatest minds of Europe to France.

The reforms also included the creation of the largest observatory in the world, the establishment of trade schools and masters programs, the boosting of national exports over imports and the extension of royal grants to private enterprises to build and manage internal improvements.

Colbert even established Europe’s first minimum hours of labor and health insurance for the 12,000 employees working on the Canal du Midi.

Colbert ended the purchasing of public offices (called “venal offices”), created a five year debt moratorium to re-organize the legitimate from usurious debt imposed upon France over the years by its local oligarchy, and passed laws that ensured that only the state could collect taxes and not private nobles.

Colbert lost no time in overhauling the bloated bureaucracy of France telling the young King Louis XIV:

“It is necessary to reduce the professions of your subjects as much as possible to those which can be useful to these grand designs… these are agriculture, merchandise [production and distribution of goods], soldiers and sailors…

“Your majesty should be working at the same time to diminish, gradually and insensibly the number of monks and nuns… the two professions which consume a hundred thousand of your subjects uselessly are financiers and lawyers.”

Colbert also drove ship-building creating one of the world’s most advanced merchant fleets competing with the Dutch, Spanish and British, amplifying France’s defenses in border regions and increased warships from 20 to 250 in twenty years.

The Westphalian Roots of the American Revolution

When formulating the principles upon which the new American republic would be founded in 1781, Alexander Hamilton demonstrated his profound understanding of Colbertism as the key to the salvation of the new republic.

When faced with the world’s largest empire which enjoyed near monopolies on manufacturing, banking, bullion and maritime trade, how would this young nation, having just emerged from the revolutionary war with no manufacturing, underdeveloped territory and unpayable debts be capable of standing on its own feet?

Writing in “The Continentalist” in 1782, Hamilton said:

“From a different spirit in the government, with superior advantages, France was much later in commercial improvements, nor would her trade have been at this time in so prosperous a condition had it not been for the abilities and indefatigable endeavors of the great Colbert. He laid the foundation of the French commerce, and taught the way to his successors to enlarge and improve it.

“The establishment of the woolen manufacture, in a kingdom, where nature seemed to have denied the means, is one among many proofs, how much may be effected in favor of commerce by the attention and patronage of a wise administration.

“The number of useful edicts passed by Louis XIV, and since his time, in spite of frequent interruptions from the jealous enmity of Great Britain, has advanced that of France to a degree which has excited the envy and astonishment of its neighbors.”

The system that Hamilton devised through his studies of Colbert’s dirigisme was outlined in his famous four reports to Congress of 1791-92 (Report on a National Bank, Report on Public Credit, Report on Manufactures and Report on a Mint) and went on to shape the minds of the greatest statesmen of both the USA and internationally for the next 240 years. It was known more clearly generations past as “the American System of Political Economy”.

This was the system that John Quincy Adams extended to a foreign policy doctrine of a Community of Common Principle. This is the conception which animated Adams’ crafting of the Monroe Doctrine that sought to promote sovereign economic development of all American nations and blocking European imperial intrigue from infusing into the western hemisphere.

Despite the abuses conducted under its name by imperialist US presidents later on, this remains the truth of its birth whether haters of the USA like it or not.

This system continued to grow under the wise guidance of President Abraham Lincoln’s economic advisor Henry C Carey, and President McKinley whose 1901 assassination ushered in three decades of crippling insanity and corruption in the USA.

FDR as the 20th Century Colbert

This was the system that again emerged onto the scene with Franklin Roosevelt’s rise to power in 1932. As I outlined in my recent paper ‘How to Crush a Banker’s Dictatorship’, FDR lost no time reviving the policies of Colbert on every level- from his draining of the swamp during the Pecora commission, the breaking up of the Too Big To Fails, destruction of the London Banker’s Dictatorship, sabotage of the unipolar League of Nations, and commitment to destroy both fascism during WW2 and more importantly British colonialism more broadly.

When one reads the Atlantic Charter, UN Charter, Four Freedoms or Good Neighbor Policy outlined by FDR between 1936-1945, it is clear that the spirit of Westphalia burned strong in Franklin Roosevelt’s grand design for a multipolar world that was sabotaged before it had a chance to breathe.

Many are quick to mock the Treaty of Westphalia for not having brought everlasting peace to Europe since wars obviously continued beyond 1648.

Many imperial geopoliticans like Henry Kissinger, Robert Gates, or Brent Scowcroft even praise the treaty, but only for the most narrow-minded reasons which actually serves to do much more damage to the cause of the nation state system than those liberal imperialists who attempt to openly attack it like Tony Blair, George Soros, Lord Malloch Brown, Susan Rice or Samantha Power.

The fact is that the Peace of Westphalia, just like the American Revolution that it inspired, and the UN Charter that served as a continuation of this march towards progress is like garlic to the Vampires of today’s Wall Street and City of London.

For just as Colbert had the financier oligarchy of Europe’s nobility to deal with, today’s sociopathic elite seek ends not divergent from their 17th century forebears who deny the inalienable rights of humankind from which the authority for law and national sovereignty is justly derived.

It is this oligarchical force now pushing an “international rules-based order” which has sought relentlessly to undo every great advance in the moral, intellectual and aesthetic progress of humankind since the Renaissance by returning society to a new feudal order with a technocratic spin which differs from the medieval dark age only by the vastly greater masses of people who will suffer and die in the 21st century.

The author recently delivered a lecture on this topic which can be viewed here:

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This article was originally published on The Canadian Patriot.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas trilogy. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Samantha Power recently arrived in Armenia to meet with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and pledged US support for Armenia in the aftermath of the armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which has left thousands of Armenians homeless at the hands of Azerbaijan. Power is the Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and had previously served as US Ambassador to the UN from 2013-2017.

Power is lying again to the Armenians. In 2014, she lied to the Armenians from the UN, and now she is again lying to the Armenians from USAID, which is an agency of the US State Department.

According to her profile in Forbes, “Samantha Power, the youngest-ever U.S. ambassador to the U.N., is considered to be the moral compass of American diplomacy” while adding, “…she has been a powerful crusader for U.S. foreign policy as well as human rights and democracy since she took office in 2013.”

Samantha Power’s moral compass is broken. She stood by lying and humiliating the homeless Armenians in Kessab, Syria in 2014, and she is again lying to the Armenians arriving as refugees in Yerevan.

Samantha Power, Presidents Obama and Biden, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken do not care about Armenia, or Armenians wherever they are. 

From her Forbes profile, Power has warned of the threat of ISIS globally. But, what the profile fails to reveal, is that Power, while part of the Obama administration, was funding, training and supporting the armed ‘rebels’ in Syria, which eventually morphed into ISIS.  In fact, the last remaining ‘rebel’ controlled area in Syria today, Idlib, is under the control of Mohamed al-Julani, formerly with ISIS in Iraq, and Al Qaeda in Syria.  Julani enjoys the protection of both the US and Turkey, and all humanitarian aid coming into Idlib goes through his hands exclusively, including from USAID.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Pashinyan received the delegation led by Power, and he said, “The process of ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh continues.”

This is the same process used by the US, and their ally Turkey, in Syria in 2014 at Kessab, which is a Christian Armenian village on the border with Turkey, north of Latakia. The village had no Syrian government buildings, nor Army posts, nor weapons storage.  There was no reason to attack Kessab, it had no strategic value for the ‘rebels’ in their war to overthrow the Syrian government. The only reason for the attack, occupation, massacre, rapes and destruction at Kessab was ethnic cleansing. The US-NATO backed ‘rebels’ were Radical Islamic terrorists, cut from the same cloth as ISIS, and their goal at Kessab was to wipe out the Christians.

“The United States of America will continue to work with both your Government and the government of Azerbaijan to bring about lasting peace between the countries, also considering the profound economic dividends and stability it will bring for the Armenian people,” said Power to Pashinyan recently.  

Power delivered the real message from Biden: the US is pleased Azerbaijan has won, and the Armenians are forever defeated, because the US values its relationship with the oil rich Azerbaijan. The Biden administration’s message to Pashinyan is: the EU gets their winter gas supplies from Azerbaijan, and Armenia has no economic resources to be exploited by the US or the EU, therefore, Armenia is of no value.

Power said in Yerevan, her mission was to mobilize resources, to support local authorities in finding places to stay, and other means of support, but also get other countries to do the same. But, the US never helped any of the 2,000 Armenians made homeless and destitute in Kessab in 2014. The US never even sent one loaf of bread, and because of US-EU sanctions on Syria, even the Armenian churches in the US, and other charities, were prevented from sending even one dollar to Kessab. The millions raised in USA, with Kim Kardashian sending 1 million herself, was sent to the Armenian church in Lebanon, and has never been distributed to Kessab. The US sanctions prevented even other Arab countries from sending aid to Kessab.

“The United States is deeply concerned about reports on the humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for unimpeded access for international humanitarian organizations and commercial traffic,” said Power in Yerevan.

She wants to send food and medicine to Yerevan, but refused to allow even one bandage or one blanket to be delivered to Kessab in 2014, where the mountainous terrain is blanketed in snow each winter.

On social media formerly known as Twitter, Power wrote recently:

“I’m here to reiterate the U.S.’s strong support & partnership with Armenia and to speak directly with those impacted by the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Azerbaijan received tremendous military aid and support from Turkey, a US ally, and fellow NATO member.  Armenia received no military help from the US. Of course they lost their territory to the stronger, wealthy and heavily militarized Azerbaijan, who are allied with the EU and NATO member Turkey.  Now Power is going to oversee sending Armenians some bread crumbs.

Kessab 2014

According to the Syrian Bureau of Statistics, Kessab had a population of 1,754 in the 2004 census, and with the surrounding villages, had a total population of around 2,500 predominately Armenian Christians which date back to the medieval ages there.

The high elevation and pine covered mountains sloping down to the Mediterranean Sea made Kessab a favorite summer vacation resort. 

Some feared that the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) might perpetrate genocide against the inhabitants. In August 2013, in the mountains near Latakia, at Ballouta, the FSA had massacred hundreds of unarmed civilians sleeping in their own homes.  Men, women and children were killed, along with a pregnant woman who was cut apart, and her unborn fetus was hung in the trees. That community was also a religious minority targeted by the FSA.  General Salim Idriss, the commander of the FSA, had been visited by Senator John McCain, (R. AZ), and McCain had lobbied vigorously in Congress to keep the money and weapons flowing to the FSA in Syria.

In the early hours of March 21, 2014, Kessab was attacked by FSA and their allies coming from Turkey over the border.

Residents of Kessab fled to Latakia where they sheltered in a church; however, 36 very elderly and immobile residents were left behind and were later kidnapped by the FSA and taken to Vikifly, Turkey. While in Vikifly, the US Ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Riccardone, Jr. and his wife visited the kidnapped Armenian hostages, and the elderly begged him for help to get to Latakia and rejoin their family there. Riccardone refused to help them, even though his wife was the translator of their pleas to him, and captors were under US support and control.

On April 1, Ahmad Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), visited the FSA front-line in Kessab to congratulate his troops on their victory and the occupation of Kessab. The FSA was the military wing of the SNC, which were supported completely by the White House and Congress.

While in Kessab, the FSA and their allied terrorist groups, burned three churches, dug up graves looking for gold rings, looted every home and shop, burnt the cultural center, raped elderly women because they could find no girls, and murdered a 21-year-old man in front of his parents. When the parents begged to be able to bury him, the FSA refused, saying they wanted the dogs to eat him because he was a heathen.

On April 2, during a hearing before the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Adam Shiff (D. CA) asked the UN Ambassador Samantha Power about Kessab.

“Most of the [UN Security] Council members raised the issue of Kessab, calling on the UN to do more, to try to meet the needs of these people. […] I would note that, unfortunately, the extremist group that appears to have taken hold of that town is not one that the United States and the United Nations overall has a great deal of leverage over. And so, our emphasis now, is on supporting the moderate opposition in Syria that is taking on those extremist groups and making sure that the UN has the funding it needs, and the resources of all kinds that it needs to accommodate […] in this case, the Syrian Armenian community, as you said, an internally displaced population flow.,” said Samantha Power.

Samantha Power lied to the US Congress, and to the Armenian people. The FSA were in Kessab, as evidenced by Jarba’s personal visit to Kessab.  The FSA and their political wing SNC were directly supported, funded, trained and directed by the Obama administration. President Trump cut off the funding of the CIA program Timber Sycamore in 2017, which shut down the US support of the FSA. Power called the FSA the ‘moderate opposition’, and continued to support them even though they had committed war crimes and atrocities in Kessab.

On April 3, Ruben Melkonyan, deputy dean of the Oriental Studies department at Yerevan State University, said that the Armenian community of Kessab was unlikely to recover and that what had happened were “crimes that make a genocide”. As of 2023, Kessab is almost a ghost town. Residents have not all returned, as they had no funds to rebuild homes, farms, and businesses. 

On June 15, 2014, the Syrian Arab Army entered Kessab and retook control over the surrounding villages and the border with Turkey.  The massacre at Kessab was reminiscent of the Armenian Genocide, which took place about 100 years ago, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Gennady Gatilov, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, condemned the attack on Kessab and the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Syrians in Latakia. He accused Turkey, the US and Europe, and the Persian Gulf states of supporting terrorism in Syria and called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the situation. The UN Security Council declined Russia’s meeting proposal.

On May 13, 2014 US President Barack Obama, met with Ahmed Jarba of the SNC in the Oval Office after Jarba left his troops in Kessab raping and looting.

“President Obama welcomed the Coalition’s leadership and constructive approach to dialogue, and encouraged the Coalition to further its vision for an inclusive government that represents all of the people of Syria.  President Jarba thanked President Obama for U.S. non-lethal assistance, which totals $287 million and supports the Coalition, local communities inside Syria, and the moderate armed opposition.  He also thanked the United States for being the largest donor of humanitarian assistance.  The $1.7 billion committed by the United States goes to those in need inside of Syria and in neighboring countries,” according to the White House.  But, they failed to mention that not one dollar of the $1.7 billion went to Kessab to rebuild from the US sponsored attack and occupation.

Samantha Power is a high ranking US government official, and well aware in 2014 that the Armenian government had sent soldiers to fight the US sponsored FSA in Kessab. Power was lying in 2014, and is still lying to Armenia.

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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. 

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*** 

News broke recently that noted “conspiracy theorist” and “anti-vaxxer” (smears applied to anyone who challenges the Public Health™ narrative surrounding COVID), RFK Jr., is now running his campaign as an independent rather than a Democrat. I covered the exciting development at Armageddon Prose.

The potential seismic impacts of this move by RFK Jr. are hard to overestimate on many fronts.

In my opinion — if he has the Herculean fortitude to see it through to the end and isn’t assassinated like his father and uncle and manages to get ballot access in fifty states, all admittedly big ifs – this could be a game-changer for mainstream political discourse and public policy regarding COVID-19.

One among the many impacts RFK Jr.’s run could have is forcing the Democrats — and the institutions they dominate such as universities – as well as many Republicans on the Big Pharma dole to moderate their still-extreme COVID measures, such as the pseudoscientific “vaccine” mandates at Rutgers and multiple other such institutions still in effect in 2023.

RFK Jr. has been singularly vocal as a national-level political candidate on the unproductiveness and, frankly, cruelty of vaccine mandates for schoolchildren and university students, who statistically have no risk from the virus.

Unfortunately, in 2022, despite the scientific data available to anyone willing to look beyond the corporate state media firewall, as much as half of the American public in polling still endorsed vaccine requirements for such institutions – arguably in large part because of the dominance of the pharmaceutical industry’s narratives in political discourse.

More contemporaneous polling from September of this year, on the heels of the most recent COVID terror campaign to push Pfizer’s new booster, shows that 76 percent of Democrats support mask mandates.

The injection of RFK Jr.’s unique and morally authoritative voice outside of the traditional two-party paradigm could potentially reverse, to some degree, support for mask and shot mandates and offer a real alternative to disillusioned voters whose angst over the unpunished and uncorrected COVID abuses of the past several years go largely ignored by other candidates.

It should be obvious by now to anyone paying attention that, unless they are forced by electoral anxieties to change course, the corporate state media– mouthpiece of the pharmaceutical industry, the Public Health™ bureaucracy, and the Democrat party – will simply continue to roll out new terror strain after terror strain of the ever-evolving SARS-CoV-2 virus so as to drive sales of an endless series of boosters. College vaxx mandates are just part of the collateral damage of Pfizer’s profiteering.

We saw this process play itself out yet again with the recent hand-wringing over the “EG.5” variant, which conveniently coincided with the rollout of Pfizer’s latest “booster” shots.

Again, the salient point here is that while RFK Jr. was still cloistered harmlessly in the Democrat Party fold, where the party leaders would never allow him to gain any serious traction against the anointed candidate Biden, it seemed that, come November 2024, the voters’ choice would come down once again to Biden vs. Trump – with, perhaps, the option of gadfly Cornel West, who has refused to address meaningfully vaccine mandates or any COVID issues.

The vast majority of said voters would have likely held their noses and voted for Biden or Trump, even if they didn’t particularly like either of their COVID policies because one better represents, in their view, the far lesser of two evils. This is a microcosm of the ultimate evil of the two-party duopoly, which forces voters to compromise on deeply-held beliefs for the sake of defeating whom they perceive as the greater evil.

Vis a vis COVID lockdowns/forced-masking/forced-vaxxing, RFK Jr. offers an alternative vision that they may be able to get behind. And it might force the other candidates to reconsider their either full-throated or tacit support for these brutal policies – not for high-minded moral reasons, but base politicking ones.

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This article was originally published on No College Mandates Newsletter.

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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Israel continues to postpone its long-awaited ground attack on the Gaza Strip. Despite brutal bombings against civilian facilities and the criminal siege imposed on the Palestinian people, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) appear to be avoiding launching an infantry offensive, repeatedly postponing plans to enter ground troops into Palestinian territory. Zionist propagandists and militants believe that this would be a type of “gesture of goodwill” on the part of Tel Aviv, but it is more likely that Israel is afraid of the strong impacts that such an attack would have on its forces.

On October 13, the Israeli government issued an ultimatum to the Palestinian population in the north of the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli statement, civilians in the region had twenty-four hours to evacuate their homes. After the end of this period, a massive Israeli infantry assault would begin.

Obviously, it was not possible to remove all civilians from the zone, as the time established was too short. Furthermore, Gaza’s roads are severely damaged by Israeli bombings, making it even more difficult for citizens to escape. However, after the evacuation deadline ended, the IDF, instead of launching its offensive, gave a few additional hours to complete the evacuation.

No matter how many hours or days were given to the Palestinian people, all efforts to completely evacuate civilians would be futile. With the region devastated by bombings and poor transportation conditions, such a process could only be completed over a very long period of time – perhaps weeks or months. In addition, there are many people who cannot go out, such as babies in incubators as well as the elderly and injured undergoing medical treatment. Local hospitals have already reported that if the evacuation takes place many people will die, but this does not seem enough to make Israel rethink its anti-humanitarian tactics.

This serious situation mobilized the non-Western world to act diplomatically against Israel. The Russian government compared the case to the Nazi siege imposed on the Soviets during the WWII. And, acting in a militarily bold manner, the Iranian government warned Tel Aviv about possible consequences if the IDF entered Gaza by land – suggesting that such a move could legitimize Iranian intervention in the conflict.

On Saturday October 14, Israel announced that its offensive had been postponed for weather reasons, using the rains and floods that occurred in the country over the weekend as an excuse to avoid military escalation. Although it is possible that the weather influenced Israeli military decision-making, it is likely that fear of Iranian engagement was the real reason for Tel Aviv to rethink its strategy. A fact that supports this argument is the Israeli insistence on postponing the offensive, even though the weather conditions improved rapidly in the region the following day.

Some Tel Aviv’s propagandists and Zionist militants also try to portray the postponement as a kind of “diplomatic goodwill”, but this does not seem to make sense. Israel has been bombing and besieging Gaza for over a week and committing countless atrocities and human rights violations. There is no reason to believe that there is any concern for the well-being of Palestinian civilians on the part of the Israeli government – which, despite postponing the ground offensive, continues to prevent water, food and medicine from reaching Gaza.

What appears to be happening is simply a wave of fear in Tel Aviv. A ground assault will automatically start a war of attrition, which will certainly be prolonged, exhausting and dangerous for the IDF. Israeli strategists fear that their forces will enter a vicious cycle of direct conflict and violence that will not end soon, culminating in a protracted war that will severely affect the stability of the region.

Despite being incomparably stronger than its Palestinian enemies, Israel’s defense system appears to be a “paper tiger” if analyzed in depth. The country has few material and human resources to engage in exhausting conflicts. It is no coincidence that there is a compulsory conscription system in Israel for all the nationals. With a population of nine million inhabitants, Israel needs to use practically all of its citizens to keep the military machine functioning at adequate security standards.

The country does not have the necessary structure to keep civil society operating while there is a conflict. Israel can easily defeat weaker regional enemies in short-term confrontations, but tends to have many problems in protracted situations. And there are enough reasons to believe that a war in Gaza would be long. Without enough space to develop militarily on the surface, Hamas invested heavily in the building of bunkers and underground channels through which its soldiers transport people and equipment. The IDF could invade and occupy many territories, but would still be vulnerable to Hamas’ guerrilla tactics, forming a kind of “Vietnam scenario”.

Furthermore, Iran’s warning is worrying. Even if it does not send its regular troops, Tehran could help the Palestinians by mobilizing its proxy forces, such as Hezbollah (which is already de facto involved in the war) and Yemen’s Houthis, increasing the Palestinians’ firepower significantly. There is also the diplomatic and economic factor, with Islamic and anti-Western countries mobilizing strongly to pressure Tel Aviv to stop its aggression.

In fact, it appears that the Israeli government has set itself into a spiral of problems. If it invades Gaza, there will be many risks, but if it cancels the invasion, Netanyahu will be demoralized for not fulfilling his promise. In practice, it seems that even though it is militarily weaker, Hamas is managing to use the non-military factor of the conflict to gain an advantage against the enemy in an asymmetric clash – which is not decided on the front lines. Palestine is trying to win the war even though it loses the battles.

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

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*** 

 

 

 

This is not politics; this is blackmail.

Ben Shapiro:

“If Hezbollah gets in, Israel will have no choice but to unleash the air force… If Israel is forced to the wall, the possibility of nuclear exchange is extremely high… That is why it is very important that the United States provide the material aid to Israel.”

“If Israel is forced to the wall, the possibility of nuclear exchange is extremely high.”

Today Ben Shapiro told his audience that unless the United States provides material aid to Israel, it could find itself in a scenario where it’s nuking its neighbors. pic.twitter.com/5MBYRj7Bb4

— Patrick Casey (@restoreorderusa) October 13, 2023

Notice that the propagandists no longer try to offer elaborate, tortured geopolitical explanations for why Israel deserves to be forever propped up by the United States with no tangible benefit to the average American. They now skip straight to the threats of nuclear war.

Benevolent Americans have permitted for decades the foreign Israel lobby via AIPAC and other groups to systematically bribe American politicians so as to perpetually guarantee unconditional financial and political cover for Israel.

We permit the IDF and Mossad to promulgate the most outrageous, propagandistic lies, repeated uncritically throughout the corporate state media and at the highest levels of government, in the service of the same.

Meanwhile, criticizing the Israel lobby is framed as tantamount to something called antisemitism. Its proxies, like the ADL, censor and economically punish Americans who challenge the status quo under the guise of fighting “antisemitism.”

Now its apologists like Ben Shapiro are threatening to drag the United States into nuclear holocaust if it asks basic questions like: “why exactly should we send more American money to Israel for war when we already give it $4 billion annually, all while Americans sleep on the streets and infrastructure crumbles?”

This is not the behavior of an ally, much less that of “America’s best friend.” 

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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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*** 

It’s not a real war. The bloody carnage in Israel and Palestine that we now witness is a large prison uprising being crushed by Israel’s military might.

M-16 lightweight rifles against Merkava tanks; home-made rockets (little more than flying pipe bombs) versus US-state of the art F-15 and F-16 fighter bombers; a few thousand Hamas fighters versus 600,000 or more Israeli soldiers and police backed by drones and heavy artillery.

American-made bombs and rockets are now shattering what’s left of Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places. Israel, which suffered over 1,200 dead innocent civilians from a Hamas-led attack on a music festival and waves of rocket barrages, vows Biblical revenge on the Palestinians.

Interestingly, the US supplied warplanes, bombs and rockets pounding Palestinian fighters and civilians are being used in contravention of the US Arms Control Act which forbids use of American arms against civilian targets.

Heedless of US law, the Biden administration is in full pro-war hysteria over Gaza. The next US elections are getting closer. The US state-guided media is also in full war mode, portraying events in Gaza as an attack on the United States.

The war party in Washington is baying for war against Iran which, as far as we know now, had no primary role in the Gaza attacks. One will likely be found or manufactured by Israel’s right-wing militants and Fox News.

I have been watching and writing about the agony of Palestine for some 70 years. I’ve watched what was to have been a small Jewish enclave grow into a powerful Sparta with some 200 nuclear weapons and unprecedented control of the US Congress and media.

Gaza, this miserable, squalid human garbage dump, is a giant open-air prison packed with 2.2 million Palestinian refugees driven from the newly created state of Israel in 1948.

Israel and its close ally Egypt keep Gaza bottled up on its land and sea borders. Palestinians are only allowed to fish along the shore. Coastal gas and oil reserves have been expropriated by Israel and Egypt.

The United States, Israel’s patron and financier, reveled in the move of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move seen by Bible Belt religious fundamentalists as a key step to the return of the Christian Messiah and Armageddon in which the rest of us, Jews included, are fated to be burned alive. The American Republicans, who have become a far-right theocratic party, cheered this good news.

Gaza’s two million people subsist on the edge of starvation. Israel openly boasts that it allows just enough food into the enclave to prevent outright starvation. Chemicals to treat water are banned. Electricity runs only a few hours daily because the power plant was bombed by Israel’s US-supplied air force. Hospitals have almost no medicines. In short, wartime conditions in the open-air prison. Even the wretched animals in Gaza Zoo are starving. Hamas fighters have reportedly even killed cats and dogs.

The intensive punishment of Gaza, a crime under international law, began after its people voted in a free election for the Hamas movement over the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which is more or less run by Israel and the United States. Israel helped found Hamas in 1987 to split the PLO, but then sought, with the US, to destroy the organization, branding it ‘terrorist.’

Israel has extensively used US-supplied arms and money to fight Hamas in Gaza, a clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 that bars the use of American weapons against civilian populations.

The question remains, where did all the Palestinians come from? Israel long claimed there were no such people, or a made-up nationality. This was a pretty rich claim coming from Israelis, many of whom hailed from Russia, Poland and Eastern Europe and who had assumed biblical identities and asserted a direct link to the Hebrews who had lived two thousand years earlier in the Levant.

When Israel was created by the US and UN (with Soviet support) in 1948, from 750,000 to one million native Palestinians were driven from their ancestral home at gunpoint or panicked to flight by massacres and ethnic cleansing. Their villages were bulldozed.

When Israel conquered and annexed the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, another 500,000 Palestinians were made refugees. Some 50,000-250,000 Syrians were driven by Israel from the strategic Golan Heights. Bedouins were driven from Israel’s Negev Desert.

There are only two ways out of this bloody mess. Either drive millions of Palestinians into the desert in an act of genocide or create a long-delayed Palestinian state mandated by the United Nations but which has been long blocked by US vetoes and Israel resistance.

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This week, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued a statement on the “terrorist attacks in Israel” and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) released a similar response to the “recent attacks and acts of terror in Israel”.

As they currently stand, these are disappointingly one-sided condemnations and fail to address Israel’s 75-year-long occupation of Palestine and numerous atrocities committed against Palestinians throughout this period.

While the APA portrays Palestinian resistance as antisemitism and terrorism, an occupied people’s right to resist is both legal under international law and, like mental health itself, a basic human right.

The appalling imbalance in the stated positions of the APA and the AACAP reflects a dangerous lack of awareness or wilful ignorance of the physical and mental health effects of the occupation, particularly the Gaza siege, on Palestinians.

By failing to address the long-term suffering of Palestinians and unequivocally siding with the occupier, the APA and AACAP have violated their own principles of impartiality and neutrality and exposed their lack of commitment to addressing the mental health needs of all people.

Unequal Lives

The statements by the world’s leading psychiatric associations neglect the historical context and cast a blind eye to the besieged population in Gaza, half of whom are children. They make no mention of the horrific bombardment of the tiny enclave or what many rights groups are now calling a genocide against Palestinians.

By the same token, the statements totally ignore the psychological impact and trauma of the occupation. Rights groups have documented the inhumane conditions for years, including reports by Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Save the Children, among others.

In its brutal campaign of collective punishment, Israel has cut off food, fuel, electricity, water and medical supplies, and in what is being described as a second Nakba, has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes.

One-third of the more than 2,200 Palestinians killed and the nearly 9,000 injured so far in Gaza are children, yet their lives were apparently unworthy of mention by the AACAP.

Even in its half-hearted statement on the current “crisis” in Gaza, the AACAP cannot bring itself to “mourn” the children killed, expressing nothing more than a vague concern for potentially distressing “imagery” to which the children may potentially be exposed.

It is as though young teens were not forced to endure five Israeli wars on Gaza, with massive civilian death tolls, during the last decade and a half.

Beyond the horrific violence, Gaza has been depleted by a crippling 16-year blockade, described as an open-air prison with the highest population density. In the last few days, more than one million people have been ordered by Israel to leave their homes with nowhere to go.

It seems obvious that mental health professionals’ concerns should extend to all people equally. Who better than psychiatrists to understand the importance of freedom for human beings – for Palestinians and Israelis alike? Otherwise, the only explanation for such clear double standards is that the APA and AAPAC have adopted wholesale the official Israeli narrative and are unable to see Palestinians as humans.

Dangerous Propaganda

The statements further dehumanise Palestinians by ignoring their enduring mental health challenges and collective trauma, resulting from decades of oppression, ongoing violence, humiliation and injustice inflicted by the occupation.

The bombing of Palestinian schools, ambulances and hospitals – including the only psychiatric hospital in Gaza, which took place on Friday morning as I learned from its director and my colleague, Dr Abdullah Aljamal – is but one instance of these chronic harms.

Such statements from medical organisations, which are allegedly not a political lobby, further inflame public sentiment and reinforce dangerous propaganda supporting Israel’s genocidal actions towards Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, the APA and AACAP could have done better to confront the vicious lies spread by the US government and media, including the horrific, and since debunked, “beheaded babies” smear.

If these organisations were truly concerned for the well-being of civilians or children, they could have confronted the massive arsenal of US military aid to Israel, which assists Israel in implementing its murderous plans against Palestinians.

Hubristic Attitudes

The APA and AACAP would better serve the people of Israel by helping them to shed their hubristic attitudes and sense of entitlement. They could help stem future violence by recognising the legitimate struggle of Palestinians to live in freedom and dignity and recognise that wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance.

A more balanced and empathetic approach is essential, one that acknowledges the mental health struggles on both sides and advocates for a just and peaceful resolution for both peoples. A principled resolution must be based on human rights and international law.

Mental health as a fundamental human right was the theme of the latest World Mental Health Day on 10 October. Working towards global mental health demands a comprehensive and inclusive perspective that truly supports all those impacted by this longstanding and ongoing crisis.

Palestinian psychiatrists and mental health professionals call upon all colleagues, and health and mental health organisations globally, to uphold the ethics of our professional role and not be corrupted by political ideology.

We must push back against the APA and AAPAC and any other professional organisations that contribute to hateful and negative representations of the Palestinian people. Such dangerous statements make them accomplices of the oppression and killing of Palestinians.

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Dr Samah Jabr is a psychiatrist and the head of the Mental Health Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

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*** 

 

Papers Reviewed: 

• 2023 Jun – Steffens et al – “Testing persuasive messages about booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines on intention to vaccinate in Australian adults: A randomised controlled trial”
• 2023 Apr – Kleitman et al – “The Psychology of COVID-19 Booster Hesitancy, Acceptance and Resistance in Australia”
• 2023 Mar – Limbu et al – “Why Some People Are Hesitant to Receive COVID-19 Boosters: A Systematic Review”
• 2023 Jan – Fisher et al – “Impact of a physician recommendation on COVID-19 vaccination intent among vaccine hesitant individuals”
• 2021 Dec – Erin James et al – “Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions”
• 2021 Sep – Kachurka et al – “Persuasive Messages Will Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance” (Polish people say fuck you to propaganda)
• 2021 Jun – Scott Ratzan et al – Missing the Point — How Primary Care Can Overcome Covid-19 Vaccine “Hesitancy”
• 2021 Feb – Stacy Wood et al – “Beyond Politics — Promoting Covid-19 Vaccination in the United States”

2023 Jun – Steffens et al – “Testing persuasive messages about booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines on intention to vaccinate in Australian adults: A randomised controlled trial” 

• Four propaganda messages were tested:
  • 1. Personal health benefits – booster gives you protection
  • 2. Community health benefits – booster reduces your risk of giving virus to your family, or people in the community who could get sick and die
  • 3. Non-Health Benefits – travel, go to weddings, see family and friends, getting a booster reduces chance that restrictions will return
  • 4. Personal agency – getting booster is a personal choice that give you control of your health and lets you protect people you care about.
• RESULTS:
  • “messages emphasizing non-health benefits of getting a COVID-19 booster dose, like travelling, enjoying family occasions like weddings, and seeing family and friends, may increase intention to vaccinate, especially in hesitant populations.”
  • “At the time, the Australian population had endured almost two years of public health restrictions, including lockdowns and international and domestic border closures. Being able to live more normally, free from restrictions, may have been top of mind, and hence what participants found the most persuasive.”
  • “messages emphasizing personal agency may have negative impacts, especially with hesitant individuals.”
  • “Hesitant individuals may have reacted negatively (psychological reactance) to suggestions about how they ought to behave, and what others approve or disapprove of regarding vaccination decisions”

2023 Apr – Kleitman et al – “The Psychology of COVID-19 Booster Hesitancy, Acceptance and Resistance in Australia” 

• Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) identified three subgroups: Acceptant (61%), Hesitant (30%) and Resistant (9%).
• Hesitant and Resistant groups were less worried about catching COVID-19, used fewer official sources of COVID-19 info, checked the news less, were lower on the agreeableness personality dimension and reported more conservatism, persecutory thinking, amoral attitudes and need for chaos.
• Hesitant group (30%) also reported checking the legitimacy of information sources less, scored lower on the openness to new experiences personality dimension and were more likely than the Resistant and Acceptant groups to report regaining freedoms (e.g., travel) and work requirements or external pressures as reasons to get a booster
• Resistant group (9%) were higher on reactance, held more conspiratorial beliefs and rated their culture as being less tolerant of deviance than the Hesitant and Acceptant groups

2023 Mar – Limbu et al – “Why Some People Are Hesitant to Receive COVID-19 Boosters: A Systematic Review”

• COVID-19 Booster Vaccination Hesitancy Rate:
  • North America is highest at 41%
  • Europe 35%
  • Asia 28%
  • South America 28%
• younger people more reluctant to take boosters
• single or never married adults were more likely to be booster hesitant
• research on education and men vs women is mixed
• Compared to other occupations, health care workers, allied health professions, housewives, administrative staff & service workers were more likely to be booster hesitant.
• Vaccine Adverse Events were the most frequently reported predictor of hesitancy
• Reduced booster hesitancy: government mandates, booster recommendations from family or health care and community workers
• Increased booster hesitancy: when social networks or social media served as an important info source, or other factors:
  • political messages discouraging boosters
  • belief in natural immunity
  • boosters are unnecessary
  • personal health is in God’s hands
  • COVID-19 is similar to seasonal flu
• “interventions that can harness normative social influence should be powerful. For example, information campaigns that rely on recommendations from celebrities, political figures, or groups trusted by the target audience should be more effective at reducing hesitancy”
• “Additionally, campaigns can explain how to overcome booster hesitancy among family and friends by providing information and strategies for effective normative influence on the booster hesitant from those close to them.”

2023 Jan – Fisher et al – “Impact of a physician recommendation on COVID-19 vaccination intent among vaccine hesitant individuals”

• Physicians and other healthcare providers are the most trusted source of information about the COVID-19 vaccine
• Recommendation from a physician has consistently been associated with higher rates of vaccine uptake for other vaccines such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) and influenza vaccines
• strong recommendation from a physician or healthcare provider may be influential in increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake and an important tool in fostering COVID-19 vaccine acceptance
• A presumptive style recommendation (e.g., “you are due for a flu shot”) is associated with increased vaccine uptake compared with a participatory style recommendation (e.g., “are you interested in getting a flu shot?”)
• Results: 33% became less hesitant following a doctor message
  • 39% “as safe as the flu shot” message was most effective in reducing hesitancy
  • 36% “I acknowledge your concerns, I’ve reviewed the studies” messag
  • 35% “protect others” message
  • 34% “I recommend that you get it”
  • 20% “What do you think?” message was least effective in reducing hesitancy
• Conclusion: “Encouraging physicians to provide an explicit recommendation is a promising means of increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the US”

2021 Dec – Erin James et al – “Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions” 

• “Vaccination is both a self-interested and pro-social action – people protect themselves, but they also reduce chance of spreading disease to others”
• “people view vaccination as a social contract and are less willing to cooperate with the unvaxxed”
• “highlighting the reputational costs of choosing not to vaccinate could be an effective strategy for increasing uptake”
• “appeals to herd immunity and the pro-social aspect of vaccination have been shown to increase uptake”
• “messages that explain herd immunity increase willingness to receive a vaccine”
• “effective public health messages would also increase people’s willingness to encourage those close to them to vaccinate and to hold negative judgments of those who do not vaccinate”
• “by encouraging those close to them to vaccinate, people are both promoting compliance with social norms and increasing their own level of protection”
• “by judging those who do not vaccinate more negatively, they apply social pressure to others to promote cooperative behavior.”
• “free riders should be punished or ostracized for their past actions, to encourage pro-social outcomes” (a FREE RIDER is an unvaxxed person who is getting a “free ride” by getting protection from herd immunity that was created by the vaccinated around them who did the right thing”)

The Experimental Propaganda Messages

• baseline info = to end COVID-19 outbreak, must get jabbed, stops transmission, safe and effective, save millions of lives
• self-interest = reduces your risk of getting sick and dying, or long term disability
• community interest = reduces risk that members of your family and community could get sick and die (vaccination is a cooperative action to protect others)
• community interest + guilt = how guilty would you feel if you didn’t jab and gave COVID to someone you care about? (invoke emotion)
• community interest + embarrassment = how embarrassed and ashamed would you be if you didn’t jab and gave COVID to someone you care about? (emotion)
• community interest + anger = how angry will you be if you didn’t jab and give COVID to someone you care about? (invoke emotion)
• not bravery = military, doctors, firefighters risk their lives to serve others, that’s bravery. Not getting jabbed is reckless, you risk health of your family, friends and community. To get jabbed is to show strength. (reputation, social image concerns)
• trust in science = unvaxxed are ignorant or confused about science, and you’ll show others how ignorant or confused you are (reputation, social image concerns)
• personal freedom = unvaxxed increase risk we lose our freedoms or govt lockdowns will return. We all keep our freedom by getting jabbed.
• economic freedom = unvaxxed increase risk of govt lockdowns returning, getting jabbed means we all keep our ability to work and earn a living.
• community economic benefit = getting jabbed strengthens national economy

Most Effective Brainwashing Techniques 

• to increase your willingness to jab: embarrassment, community, not bravery
• Guilt and embarrassment were most effective to increase your willingness to advise a friend to vaccinate
• Not bravery message was most effective to increase your negative judging of the unvaxxed.
• women responded more to the Trust in Science and Embarrassment, than men
• men responded more to the Not Bravery and Community Interest (without embarrassment) messages.
• Democrats were most easily brainwashed and responded to all messages
• Republicans appeared to react only to Community Interest, embarrassment
• Those high in vaccine confidence responded to all messages (all types of brainwashing)
• those low in confidence responded only to the Community Interest messages
• CONCLUSION: Experiment findings support the “idea that vaccination is often treated as a social contract in which people are expected to vaccinate and those who do not are sanctioned”
• “messages that invoked reputational concerns were successful at altering judgment of those who would free ride on the contributions of others”
• propaganda must be tailored to target women differently than men

2021 Sep – Kachurka et al – “Persuasive Messages Will Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance” (Polish people reject propaganda)

• 6000 Polish internet users were sampled
• Propaganda Messages tested:
  • reputation of vaxx makers: they’re American Pfizer and German Biontech
  • efficiency: over 90%
  • safety: European Medicines Agency confirms they’re safe, mild side effects
  • others want it: 75% of people want to get jabbed as soon as possible
  • Science authority: scientists say it’s the only rational choice
  • vaccine passport convenience: vaxxed will be able to travel, not wear mask, not quarantine, will make everyday life easier
  • scarcity: not enough jabs for everyone
  • thoroughly tested: over 100,000 people were tested in clinical trials
  • Price (they show you one): jab is free, free and you get 15 Euro, costs 2 EUR, costs 15 EUR
• RESULTS: 45% of respondents were unwilling to get vaccinated
  • none of the messages were effective in reducing this hesitancy
  • politically aligned left or center meant 60-80% were willing to get jabbed
  • politically right or “ultra-right” or “none” or “other” 30-50% were willing to get jabbed
  • up to 70% said they didn’t trust the government.

Authors suggest methods to increase vaccine uptake:

1. Focus on individual reasons – have their doctors try to convince them.

2. Turn those willing to be jabbed into “champions of the campaign” – through facebook stickers and physical stickers – and encourage them to talk to family and friends

3. Use reminders to ensure those who want to vaccinate actually follow through.

2021 Jun – Scott Ratzan et al – Missing the Point — How Primary Care Can Overcome Covid-19 Vaccine “Hesitancy”

• Among unvaccinated patients, there is a spectrum of vaccine “hesitance,” ranging from being “vaccine ready” to “vaccine neutral” to “vaccine resistant
• “vaccine ready” – must have ready access to vaccine to get them vaccinated
• “vaccine neutral” – may accept vaccination when seeking care for other problems, if vaccine is available and they get a “nudge” from a trusted clinician
• “vaccine resistant” – they must have “regularly scheduled doctor visits” – family doctors have a “core responsibility” to make preventive services including vaccination available, and persuade patients.
• “Primary care clinicians and trusted health care organizations often have the working relationships with community leaders to create solutions that fit local needs and preferences.”
• when boosters come, must put more focus on doctors, nurses, and community leaders who know how to create access, convey persuasive messages, and deliver care.

2021 Feb – Stacy Wood et al – “Beyond Politics — Promoting Covid-19 Vaccination in the United States”

• “Any successful marketing strategy will be multifaceted”
• “Consumer research and behavioral economics suggest 12 key strategies for an effective vaccine-promotion effort”
  • 1. Segment public by identity barriers – must tailor propaganda to various groups (some incorporate masks into self-image as symbol of community responsibility, others see wearing masks as cowardice or weakness)
  • 2. Find a common enemy – try to make the virus threat the common enemy
  • 3. Use analogy – “war against COVID”
  • 4. Increase observability – make vaccine status observable – vaxxed should wear tokens, bracelets, stickers, pins (like those given to voters), or “DIGITAL BADGES” – such as frames or banners for one’s social media profile photo – consumers’ ability to observe others’ choices can increase rate of adoption
  • 5. Leverage Vaccine Scarcity – frame early access to vaccines as a mark of honor or respect for people we want to protect (first responders, older Americans, medical staff, teachers, essential workers). First responders who are healthy – getting vaccine priority is a sign of respect awarded to them.
  • 6. Predict Negative Attributions – delays can be seen as govt incompetence, deployment in poor neighbourhoods can be seen as “experimentation” – must address these
  • 7. Prompt Anticipated Regret – push fear that someone you love will die from the illness, potential guilt of losing a family member, or guilt of getting Long COVID
  • 8. Avoid conveying piecemeal risk info – get bad info out there in one piece, instead of an ongoing trickle of information
  • 9. Promote compromise options – coffee shops use three serving sizes because consumer research shows it helps people make decisions – make vaccination a three option choice to avoid depicting jabs as the most extreme of two.
  • 10. Create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) – employees can offer incentives like a day off, Universities can offer tickets to sports events or cultural events, tax benefits, insurance rebates, etc. Create “fear of missing out” on perks and benefits.
  • 11. Combat Uniqueness Neglect – many people believe they’re unique, so a once-size-fits-all option to mass vaccinate may not appeal to them – train medical professionals to identify these people, offer them unnecessary modifications to vaccine delivery (create “special treatment” to trick them into vaccination)
  • 12. Neutralize the Case versus Base-Rate Heuristic – people put more weight on anecdotes, especially on vaccine injury – force medical personnel to counter this with their own anecdotal stories (the pregnant woman who died because she didn’t get vaccinated, etc)

My Take…

I wish I had read this literature early on in the pandemic, to realize and understand how truly evil and psychopathic the COVID-19 Propaganda and the Psychological Warfare on the population was.

From the brainwashing techniques outlined here, some of my observations:

• The appeal to “protect the community” was probably the most effective brainwashing technique – mainly to protect family, friends, the community, the healthcare system – they knew that this would pressure many vaccine hesitant to get the shots (especially concern about family members with medical conditions)
  • this worked even better then they attached an emotion to it
• “The increased observability” was the most effective brainwashing technique to get people to adopt a brand new technology (LNP/mRNA), a technique that was used by Apple and its Ipod – and this was employed via “DIGITAL BADGES” on facebook that we now use to identify vaccine status of the thousands who are dying suddenly from COVID-19 Vaccine injuries.
  • This also involved “PHYSICAL BADGES” which were in the form of vaccine cards that people proudly photographed and displayed on social media
• Finding a common enemy – went from a “novel Coronavirus” to the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and this was tied in with:
  • judging negatively those who refused to be vaccinated, the “free riders” who benefited from the herd immunity created by the vaccinated
  • the unvaccinated once identified as “the common enemy” were punished and sanctioned by being excluded from society
  • the poor treatment of the unvaccinated undoubtedly forced some to get vaccinated to avoid such a fate
• reputation concerns – doctors and scientists who did not conform to the Propaganda had their reputations smeared and destroyed and were made examples of by mainstream media to keep other doctors scared and sticking to the narrative, even at the cost of their or their own patients’ lives
  • Justin Trudeau created a smear campaign of the unvaccinated, calling them names such as “fringe minority” and claiming that they were racists and misogynists
  • thus “reputation destruction” was a strong brainwashing tool that probably forced some to get vaccinated
• vaccine scarcity was leveraged as first responders were given “hero” status and were the first ones lined up to get the vaccines as a sign of honor and a reward
  • they were basically held up as examples for the rest of the population to follow
• REWARDS – ability to travel, go to restaurants, go to stadiums, concerts, participate in physical activities and sports – that, for a time, were only given to the vaccinated as “rewards” for being “good citizens”
  • donuts, burgers & fries, ice cream for kids – predatory behavior
  • $100 incentive or entry into a million dollar lottery
• PUNISHMENTS – vaccine mandates, employment termination, removal of unemployment benefits, decreased ability to travel, inability to find new employment, etc.
• Fear of loss of freedoms – this was another major driving factor, people didn’t want to lose the freedom to travel, the freedom to enjoy life (restaurants, concerts, sports, stadiums), the freedom to take care of loved ones
  • this is now being contemplated as one of the key fear tactics in getting people to take COVID-19 boosters again.
  • people will be reminded of lockdowns and the message will be: “you don’t want us to bring lockdowns back, do you? Then get vaccinated”
• Brainwashing by a trusted doctor – this is currently seen as one of the few plausible avenues to bring the COVID-19 vaccine hesitant back into the fold and get them to start taking mRNA vaccines regularly again.
  • There will be huge pressure on doctors to get COVID-19 vaccine uptake up to 85% again
  • this will be tied to regular doctor visits, physicals, annual doctor visits, etc.

In the next part I will closely examine the DIGITAL BADGES that were used as propaganda to convince and pressure others into getting COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated.

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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There is still no proof that Hamas militants beheaded 40 babies at an Israeli kibbutz last Saturday. There is no physical evidence, no forensic evidence, and no photographic evidence. Zilch. The entire story is based on the unverified claims of an “Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village.” (Max Blumenthal)

Naturally, one would expect that a professional journalist would question the credibility of a witness whose bias was so transparently obvious. But that is not the case with i24NEWS reporter Nicole Zedek who regurgitated what she had been told as if it were the Gospel Truth. In fact, Zedek still sticks by her story today despite the glaring lack of evidence and the testimony of a person who has a clear motive for distorting the truth. Here’s part of Zedek’s report from the kibbutz where the incidence is alleged to have taken place:

“David, it’s hard to even explain the mass casualties that happened right here, in fact, the Israeli military says they still don’t have a clear number. But I’m talking to some of the soldiers and they say that what they’ve witnessesd as they’ve been walking through these different houses and communities; babies, their heads cut off. That’s what they said.

“Families completely gunned down in their beds. You can see many of these soldiers right now, comforting each other… Many of them are reservists who jumped into action, leaving their own families behind as well, not knowing the sheer horror they were about to come to….They say they’ve never experienced anything like this. This is nothing anyone could have imagined….” @vtchakarova

It’s worth noting, that Zedek never saw any of the beheaded babies nor did she make any effort to see them. Nor did she record the testimony of any of the other soldiers or villagers who could have confirmed or denied that the beheading actually took place. Instead, we are expected to believe the dubious account of an Israeli extremist whose credibility is greatly in doubt.

But, the credibility of Zedek’s coverage is only half of the story. The other half involves the role of the mainstream media that eagerly picked up the story and republished it without making any effort to verify the allegations. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were more than twenty articles at Google News reiterating the gruesome details of the barbarous murder-spree that, in all likelihood, never happened. Here’s a sample of the headlines that appeared in Wednesday’s newsfeed:

• At least 40 babies, some beheaded, found by Israel soldiers in Hamas-attacked village, Fox
• Hamas kills 40 babies and children — beheading some of them — at Israeli kibbutz: report New York Post
• At Least 40 Babies Killed In Israel-Hamas War: Repor, NDTV
• Hamas terrorists ‘beheaded babies during kibbutz slaughter where 40 young children were killed’, Daily Mail
• Hamas Slaughters 40 Babies, National Review

As we have seen countless times before, facts don’t matter (to the media). What matters is whether a particular narrative advances the political agenda of elites.

Case in point: Check out this brief excerpt from a piece by the Daily Mail that gives a breathless account of an event that never took place:

Hamas terrorists massacred at least 40 babies and young children before beheading some of them and gunning down their families in a small kibbutz in Israel, horrified Israeli soldiers have claimed….

The bullet-riddled bodies of Israeli residents now lay in the grounds of the kibbutz among burned out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars. Solemn Israeli soldiers today went from house to house to take away the scores of people massacred there…..

Outside the destroyed homes, the soldiers told i24News correspondent Nicole Zedek how they saw the bodies of babies next to their cots, their heads chopped off, in a sign of the depraved acts committed by the terrorists since they attacked Israel on Saturday…..

‘You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre, it’s a terror activity,’ said Israeli Major General Itai Veruv from the horrific scene. (Hamas terrorists ‘beheaded babies during kibbutz slaughter where 40 young children were killed’, Daily Mail

Once again, there is not a shred of evidence that the Daily Mail‘s account is in-any way accurate. There are no decapitated babies, which means that the emotional cornerstone upon which this version of events rests, is pure rubbish. And that suggests that there is an alternate motive for promoting the story. In other words, the author is compromising her credibility in order to dehumanize a group the Israeli government has marked for annihilation. Here’s more from an article at The Grayzone:

The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.”

He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.” The Grayzone

Blumenthal confirms that the overall credibility of the story should have been in doubt from the very beginning (if Zedek did her homework like she should have.) Here’s a 15 second clip of Mr. Zion who is the source of the decapitation fiction:

"They chopped heads of children and women," says David Ben Zion, Deputy Commandee of Unit 71 to our @Nicole_Zedek, while reporting from the massacre in Kfar Aza in southern Israel pic.twitter.com/IHSB0ywMbF

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023

According to the Grayzone:

Zedek’s report has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter and promoted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry – which underwrites her network.

…. the unverified tale quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman stated unequivocally that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated,” while President Joe Biden himself vaguely gestured towards “stomach-churning reports of babies being killed.” The Grayzone

To their credit, the Israeli military refused to confirm the story which suggests that they didn’t want the reputational damage of affixing their name to fake news. But if the IDF knew it was baloney, then Zedek must have known as well, which means she must have had an ulterior motive for her actions. But what would that be?

The logical conclusion is that Zedek was deliberately spreading lies in order to fuel the hatred that is clearing the way to a massive ethnic cleansing operation that could be just days away. Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Middle East News:

Israeli newspaper Haaretz previously reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was indicted on several corruption charges, has leveraged the issuance of a broadcasting license to i24 in exchange for favorable coverage.

The channel — which broadcasts in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic — is known for making unfounded claims on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

British-Iraqi activist Kareem Dennis of MintPress News, an independent US-based watchdog journalism organization, claimed that i24 “has employed at least 35 veterans of the Israeli occupation forces as staff.”

He then went on to list various names and their ties to the Israeli military.

“Channa Rifkin is an i24News correspondent who transitioned from the channel’s Social Media editor to the Israeli military, then returned to work for i24News.”

“David Matlin, the host of a daily flagship show on i24News, is a former Israeli military sergeant and the regional director for Israel lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).” Matlin is also a founding member of the channel.

“Eyal Pinko, who was the head of intelligence in the Israeli Navy before becoming the head of division in the Israeli prime minister’s office, is another correspondent for the channel,” Dennis said in the X thread.

He also mentioned Daniel Tsemach, a former i24 journalist who joined the channel after serving as a social media manager for the Israeli military. Tsemach recently left his position at i24 to join Israel’s state-owned defense company, Rafael.” Middle East News

Got that? So, the news organization that produced the “beheaded babies” story is comprised of ex-military, ex-Intelligence, ex-social media proles and the regional director for Israel lobby group AIPAC; all of them assisting in the task of obliterating Gaza and pushing 2 million Palestinians into Egypt. Is that the Endgame?

It is. And in order to execute such a savage attack, the Palestinians must be viciously demonized and dehumanized so the perpetrators can feel morally justified in flattening their cities and killing their children. Regrettably, Zedek’s report helps to achieve that ghastly objective.

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Israel’s brutal, oppressive regime calls on over 1 million Palestinians in the open-air prison of Gaza to walk to the Egyptian border in the South to increase the pressure on Egypt to open up its border crossing to get rid of another 1 million Palestinians. They will never return to the Gaza Strip if they are in Egypt. Israel will never allow one so-called refugee to return to their homeland, although most of these people have been ethnically cleansed by the Zionist regime in 1948.

Their land is in historic Palestine which Zionist settler colonialists have conquered. There are voices in Israel calling  “to finish the job,” which means that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 hasn’t been completed. Now, it’s time to get the job done.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu compared the attack on Israel by “Hamas freedom fighters” to Pearl Harbor, which is historically not only totally off the mark but also intended towards the Biden regime to give Israel carte blanche in crushing the Palestinians’ freedom and independence fight forever.

So far, Israel has killed over 2200 Palestinians during its bombing raids, basically civilians and many children. None of the representatives of the so-called “value West” had the guts to condemn Israel’s rampage or call for restraint. The Netanyahu regime acts like a colonial power gone wild.

CODEPINK asks its supporters to intervene on Capitol Hill to call for an immediate ceasefire. The Zionist regime ordered the Palestinians to evacuate their healthcare facilities. This order is a “death sentence” for the patients. Instead of sending deadly weaponry to the Apartheid and occupation regime in Israel, the US should force Israel to behave like a “civilized” nation.

Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians “human animals”; however, Israel’s former UN ambassador Danny Danon doubled down on BBC’s “HARDtalk” calling the Palestinians “barbaric animals”. Interviewer Steven Sucker didn’t object to this blatant racism and Nazi terminology. 

Every sacrifice is one too many, and the attack on civilians by Hamas can’t be justified, but also, can’t the deaths of civilians by Israel through the most sophisticated US weaponry be legitimized?

The US has also blood on its hands because they have been arming the Zionist regime to its teeth. Also, the European Union, especially Germany, is guilty of delivering submarines to Israel, partly as a gift, which can be equipped with nuclear weapons, of which Israel has over 200 warheads. Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock are supporting the Netanyahu regime unconditionally.

However, Germany’s lesson from the horrific Holocaust and role in international relations should instead be a moderator and admonisher and not a supplier of deadly weaponry for an occupation regime that has been suppressing the Palestinian people since it came into existence. 

Under the government of Scholz/Baerbock/Habeck/Lindner, Germany has lost its moral compass. It supports the Nazi regime in Ukraine unconditionally to the detriment of the people in Germany and gives Israel a blank check for the destruction of the Gaza Strip. It appears that Germany hasn’t learned the proper lessons from the Holocaust.

The lesson for any decent people should be to resist and repudiate the endless propaganda by Western media outlets. The people should know well what happened since 9/11. US Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to the UN about the fake nuclear weapons of Iraq, which led to millions of deaths.

When US President George W. Bush declared the so-called “war on terror,” Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen became chaotic. Resistance to the brainwashing of the public and the fight against the war-mongering propaganda by Western media should be a top priority.

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*** 

The foundations of the greater Near East were laid in the Quincey Pact (1945) following the doctrine of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Franco-British Accords that favoured the regional division of power into zones of influence and supported by the US-Egypt-Saudi tripod. This doctrine consisted in the endemic survival in Egypt of pro-Western autocratic military governments, which ensured the survival of the State of Israel (1948) and provided the US Navy with privileged access to the Suez Canal, crucial shortcut for direct access to the Arab Emirates, Iraq and Afghanistan, remaining a firm bastion of US geopolitical interests. in the area, especially after the fall of the Shah of Persia in 1980.

The other pillar of the agreement was US privileged access of oil from Saudi Arabia in exchange for preserving its autocratic regime and promoting the spread of Wahhabism (doctrine founded by Mohamed Abdel Wahab in the mid-18th century with the aim of becoming an attractive vision of Islam and exportable to the rest of Arab countries), with which the Saudi theocracy became a regional power providing the US the key to energy control while serving as a retaining wall for socialist and pan-Arabist currents. Finally, after the Six Day War (1967), the geostrategic puzzle of the Middle East was completed with the establishment of autocratic and pro-Western regimes in the countries surrounding Israel (Libya, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran), with Palestinians confined to the ghettos of the West Bank and Gaza.

Netanyahu and the Greater Israel 

Netanyahu reaffirmed “the right of the Jewish people to build in Jerusalem”, (which would be translated according to the television channel Arutz 2 in the construction of 1,400 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, Jewish quarter of East Jerusalem located beyond the so-called Green Line) even the Palestinians know that these places will be under Israeli sovereignty under any kind of arrangement.

Consequently, the Netanyahu Government aspires to resurrect the endemism of Greater Israel (Eretz Israel), an entity that would try to unite the antithetical concepts of the atavism of Greater Israel (Eretz Israel) and that would have as main champion Isaac Shamir defending that “Judea and Samaria (biblical terms of the present West Bank) are an integral part of the land of Israel.” They have not been captured and will not be returned to anyone, “a doctrine on which the current postulates of the Likud party led by Netanyahu would be based,” which aspires to make Jerusalem the “indivisible capital of the new Israel” after the invasion of its eastern part after the Six Day War (1967), a thesis reinforced by the announcement of the Trump Administration to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, which marked the first milestone on the Greater Israel road map.

A New Nakba Plans on Palestine?

The former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, (overthrown for his refusal to install American bases on Egyptian soil), revealed in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper El-Fagr the existence of the alleged plan to divide the entire Middle East region, consisting in the establishment of the aforementioned “constructive chaos” through the successive destruction of the autocratic regimes of Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Iran and reserving for Jordan the role of “new homeland of the Palestinian people”, for which the U.S. would use Takfiri groups.

Such a process of balkanization of the area would have its embodiment in countries such as Iraq (turned into a failed state and bled to death by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish fronts), in the endemic Palestinian division between the Hamas and PLO factions; in the prevailing anarchy in Libya with Salafist Wahhabism established in Tripoli while takfiri groups (al-Qaeda satellites) tribal dominate the interior of Libya and in the application of Sunni jihad against the secular regime of al-Assad and its Shiite allies, Iran and Hezbollah that by mimetic effect would have already turned Lebanon into a country divided and ready to be fagocited by Israel, leaving the Shiite regime of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as the only area still impervious to the Balkanization strategy of Brzezinski.

However, after the approval of the US Congress and Senate of a statement prepared by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Robert Menéndez that states emphatically that “if Israel is forced to defend itself and take action (against Iran), USA will be at his side to support him militarily and diplomatically”, we will witness the increase of pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby of the U.S. ( AIPAC) to proceed with the destabilization of Iran by expedited methods.

This war will be a new local episode that would be framed in the return to the recurrent endemism of the US-Russia Cold War and will involve both superpowers having as necessary collaborations with regional powers (Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran) encompassing the geographical space extending from the Mediterranean arc (Libya, Syria and Lebanon) to Yemen and Somalia and whose outcome could have as side effects the design of a new cartography favorable to the geopolitical interests of the US, Britain and Israel with the implementation of Great Israel (“Eretz Israel”).

This would entail the restoration of the Balfour Declaration (1917), which drew a State of Israel with a vast extension of about 46,000 square miles and extending from the Mediterranean east of the Euphrates to Syria, Lebanon, north-eastern Iraq , northern part of Saudi Arabia, the coastal strip of the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and Jordan, which would be renamed Palesjordán after being forced to host the entire Palestinian population of the current West Bank and Gaza forced into a massive diaspora (new nakba).

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Germán Gorraiz Lopez is a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 (Photo: Public Domain)

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*** 

July 15, 2023 (above) – Tarpon Springs, FL – Tarpon Springs Police Department Major Michael MIke Trill died on July 15, 2023 after suffering medical emergency at home. 

Aug.30, 2023 – Campania, Italy – 53 year old Judo Master Vittorio Raia, died suddenly on August 30, 2023. He was also a police officer.

Aug. 25, 2023 – Saskatoon, SK – 37 year old Christopher Sedgewick police officer died suddenly on August 25, 2023. He leaves behind two small kids.

Aug. 22, 2023 – New Zealand – 36 year old Police Constable Mark Arthur Simonsen died suddenly on August 22, 2023. “Sudden passing” Cause of death unknown.

Aug. 22, 2023 – Chicago, IL – 49 year old Michael Spanos, Rolling Meadows police commander died suddenly on Aug. 22, 2023 from cancer.

Aug. 20, 2023 – Clackamas, OR – Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeff Burlew died suddenly on August 20, 2023 after “battling a sudden illness.”

Aug. 18, 2023 – Seguin, TX – 51 year old Police Officer Clay Brandon Carter died suddenly Aug. 18, 2023 “Natural causes at his home.”

Aug. 14, 2023 – Lakewood Colorado Police Department officer Fred Saforo died at age 26 after “brave battle with an illness.”

Aug. 11, 2023 – 46 year old New Zealand Police Officer Jamie Harvie Ure died unexpectedly on August 11, 2023.

Aug. 10, 2023 – Battle Ground, WA – 54 year old Battle Ground Police Department Sergeant Richard Kelly died in the line of duty on Aug.10, 2023 after suffering a medical emergency.

Aug. 10, 2023 – UK – 42 year old Sam Young, a Met Police Officer, died suddenly at home on Aug. 10, 2023.

Aug. 8, 2023 – Plainfield, IN – 49 year old Indiana Deputy Sheriff Timothy J. Guyer suffered a heart attack after completing mandatory physical training at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

Aug. 6, 2023 – Starke, FL – 16 year old Laci Laycock died suddenly on Aug. 6, 2022. She was a Bradford County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant in their Explorer Program. She was being treated for inflammation in her spine, was about to go home but collapsed and died.

Aug. 4, 2023 – Carroll County, VA – 37 year old Deputy Sheriff Todd Gwynn suffered a medical emergency and died suddenly at his home on August 4, 2023 “Paramedics worked diligently to revive Deputy Gwynn but were unsuccessful.”

Aug. 4, 2023 – Bradford, PA – 62 year old Bradford Township Police Lieutenant Jeffrey Shade suffered a massive heart attack at 2am at the station while on duty He died on August 4, 2023.

Aug. 3, 2023 – Citrus Heights, CA – 40s year old Police Officer Katie Vryheid, a mother of 4 died unexpectedly due to a “medical issue off duty.”

Aug. 2, 2023 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 34 year old police officer Renan da Silva Tonetto, died suddenly on Aug. 2, 2023 while playing in a local soccer match in Vila Velha.

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*** 

The latest Israel-Hamas conflict was either deliberately engineered or it was the result of a remarkable concatenation of security lapses. Current affairs commentator Efrat Fenigson, a former Israel Defence Force (IDF) reservist, was among the first to concisely unpack the sheer improbability of a Hamas sneak attack on an ultra-secure Israeli border complex.

Excellent set of questions. They popped into my mind as soon as my relative abroad alerted me to this farce. https://t.co/q1WCGylqo6

— Dr. Mathew Maavak, PhD (@MathewMaavak) October 7, 2023

While many commentators focused on the panoply of sensors and other safeguards along the Israel-Gaza border, there was also an aerospatial security dimension involved here.

The Gaza strip is monitored 24/7/365 by an array of Israeli satellites, drones and military balloons. Multiple redundancies are inbuilt into the Israeli border security infrastructure to ensure that failure in one system will be compensated by the operational continuity of another.

And let us not forget the sheer number of informers and other HUMINT (human intelligence) assets in Gaza and the entire Islamic world. In fact, a senior Hamas operative was outed as an Israeli intelligence operative just a few weeks before the terrorist organisation “surprised the world” with its “daring” cross-border assault.

Hamas was in fact created by the Israeli intelligence community to divide the Palestinian liberation movement. As an Israeli blogger, echoing numerous leaks from the global intelligence community, noted:

“Due to the short sidedness of the Rabin administration and later Begin there was an idea to bring about a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood into Gaza and the Palestinian territories to counter balance the strength and popularity of the PLO.”

Have the Israeli-hatched chickens finally come home to roost in Gaza? Or was this just another false flag? 

Egyptian intelligence services had forewarned the Israeli government of an impending Hamas terror attack but the warnings were apparently ignored. Instead, according to the mainstream narrative, Hamas had planned these attacks under the cloak of complete stealth. This included extensive weapons training, including the mastering of motorised paragliders, in the open space of Gaza. Now, if you believe that, you will believe anything!

Hamas released a video on how they prepared/trained to infiltrate Israel. This was all happening in front of us before the invasion took place.

How could this be missed? I have so many questions. pic.twitter.com/jtgAossrXx

— India Naftali (@indianaftali) October 8, 2023

As the death tolls rolled, so did the time-tested trope of “dead babies” on either side. This ruse worked in WW1 when British intelligence blamed German “Huns” of impaling Belgian babies. It worked decades later when a fictitious Nurse Nayirah reeled off an equally fictitious tear-jerking testimony before members of the US Congress. Her testimony supposedly clinched the course of the first Gulf War. Claims of babies being killed in hideous fashions always take a life of their own, pardon the pun. Remember the time when US President Donald Trump launched a missile attack on Syria after he pinned an ISIS-perpetrated chemical weapons attack on the Damascus government? Trump, who was staunchly anti-interventionist during his first presidential run, allegedly had a Damascene experience when his daughter plucked images of dead “beautiful babies” out of some rear orifice.  

In the matter of infanticidal culpability, I had posed a very simple question on X.com: “So, who killed more Israeli children during the past 2+ years – the Israeli Government or Hamas?” You can see the feedback for yourselves. 

So, who killed more Israeli children during the past 2+ years — the Israeli Government or Hamas?

— Dr. Mathew Maavak, PhD (@MathewMaavak) October 11, 2023

Dissident Israeli medical experts, who once repeatedly condemned their government for endangering lives via untested Covid-19 vaccines, are now rallying behind the same regime that had supposedly perpetrated the “New Holocaust.” As for the correlation between vaccines and the mortality surge in Israel (and other hyper-vaccinated nations), take a gander at this simple statistical juxtaposition. 

Here is another chart if you are still unconvinced over the real-world consequences of the Covid-19 vaccines and similar ones in the pipeline. 

By the way, if you are still worried about Covid-19 or any other pandemic, do not fret. All viral variants are magically on furlough until the dust settles in Gaza, if it ever does. You cannot have too many global crises at the same time – not until the Global Soviet (aka Global Oligarchy) perfects its depopulation blueprint down to the finest detail. 

Malaise of the Islamic World

Before gaming out the ramifications of this latest crisis, it is important to note another kind of pandemic in the Islamic world, namely their inability to provide fundamental basic security (i.e. food to medicine to quality education) to their citizens. For example, nearly 85% of halal foods consumed by 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide – representing nearly 25% of the global population – are generated from non-Muslim nations such as Brazil, India, United States, Russia, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.  

Even as the Islamic world cannot adequately feed itself, it gets easily deluded by Western “scientific” projections over its supposed ability to lead global innovation. One can witness this paradox whenever World Economic Forum (WEF) chairman Klaus Schwab peddles techno-fantasies before Arab movers and shakers while his top ideologue Yuval Noah Harari – an Israeli Sodomite no less – promotes the global depopulation agenda before a more intelligent audience. And when I mention “movers and shakers”, I mean Muslim leaders and influencers who are routinely moved and shaken like tawdry marionettes in a macabre globalist pantomime. The Islamic world should collectively look itself in the mirror and answer this most unpalatable of questions: If all 1.8 billion of them were to be magically teleported to Mars overnight, would the world really be missing them? The biggest problem with the Islamic world is its self-destructive tendency to shoot informed messengers when it is not throttling native ideas, innovation and talent. How many Muslims have won the Nobel prize in the physical and biological sciences over the past 120-odd years? 

Warning Muslim leaders of the manifold perils ahead is a thankless task. History offers plentiful anecdotal examples. When the former prime minister of Egypt, Ismail (Ahmed) Sidky Pasha, casted doubts on the readiness of Cairo’s military on the eve of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he was summarily dismissed with the scornful nickname of “El Yahud” (The Jew). The delusion of invincibility and the perennial lack of long-term foresight is an intractable malaise in the Islamic world. Coupled with rampant corruption, nepotism, religious fundamentalism and systematic discrimination against industrious minorities, the fate of 1.8 billion people falls within Harari description – and more ominously his prescription – of “useless eaters”. 

Temple of the Great Reset 

If the current conflict escalates beyond the point of no return, the Temple Mount, which hosts the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque – Islam’s third-most holiest site – might be destroyed amidst the fog of war. It is no secret that Israel intends to replace the Islamic structures with a Third Jewish temple. Every brick needed for its construction and every ceremonial vessel needed for its “consecration”, has supposedly been readied by the Temple Institute of Jerusalem. 

The destruction of the Islamic structures might be conveniently blamed on Iran or its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah in a pathetic attempt to create a Sunni-Shia fratricide. But if the internecine ruse fails, and Muslims instead revolt against their leaders, Disease X can be magically introduced to lock down societies. If so, expect a mega-sequel to the “Wuhan flops” which had its world premiere in early 2020. 

The Third Temple, or the Temple of the Great Reset as I sometimes call it, has the ardent backing of segments of “political Christianity” aka Mystery Babylon. Scriptures which clearly establish the consecrated physical body to be the true temple of God means nothing to this warmongering lot. Any other entity that substitutes or vitiates this personal connection with the Divine would be the proverbial “abomination that causes desolation” (Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:15–16). 

Cascade of Global Chaos

Even if the present conflict in Gaza is somehow dialled down, new sets of risks are mushrooming across global systems. On the geopolitical front, expect tensions to escalate along the Korean peninsula, Taiwan Straits and Ukraine. One long-anticipated global risk is the possible sinking of an ultra large vessel along the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca or the Suez canal in order to disrupt global shipping and supply chains. The global financial system, in the meantime, has crossed the point of no return. This is why the global oligarchy needs a manufactured systemic crisis soon. 

While the Islamic world has been briefly reanimated by the recent chaos in Gaza, it no longer holds any trump cards up its sleeves. Apart from oil and other natural resources, this religious-geopolitical compact does not generate anything irreproducible. Its substantial revenue flows have perennially enriched a tiny elite; whatever remains end up subsidising fuel, food and other essential items for its restive populations. The Arab Spring of 2010-2012 revealed how quickly this parasitic model can unravel. Globalist-dictated Covid-19 policies have also left giant deficits in the healthcare coffers of the Islamic world. Any attempt to blackmail the world a la the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 will only backfire as major powers have since built up vast strategic petroleum reserves.

Furthermore, oil embargoes will only play into the hands of the globalist oligarchy. 15-minute city enclaves might be made mandatory worldwide in order to conserve fuel. Digital IDs may be made mandatory in order to ration food and other essential items. Massive pro-Palestinian protests in Western cities, and jihadi false flags orchestrated by Western intelligence agencies, will serve as the perfect pretext to introduce martial law and wholesale suspension of civil liberties. Western police forces which looked the other way during the farcical Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots are now actively clamping down on pro-Palestinian protestors. There is a good reason why the West adopted an open door policy for illegal military-aged male immigrants from the Third World.

Whatever happens in the next few weeks or months, make no mistake: Our perishing world is marching in lockstep with the WEF’s Great Reset. 

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Dr Mathew Maavak’s research interests include systems science, global risks, geopolitics, foresight and governance. Follow him on Twitter @MathewMaavak or read his latest articles here: https://drmathewmaavak.substack.com 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Members of the Hamas al-Qassam Brigade at an event marking the anniversary of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza (EPA-EFE/Mohammed Saber via Euractiv)

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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*** 

Last Saturday, the world looked on as the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, launched Operation Al-Asqa Flood, the largest military incursion into the state of Israel since the 1973 October War, the 50^thanniversary of which had occurred just one day beforehand.

Though lauded by many as a legitimate military response to the Israeli occupation, many could also not help but wonder at how Israel, an entity possessing state of the art surveillance equipment and which receives annual funding from the United States to the tune of billions of dollars, could seemingly be ‘taken by surprise’ by militant Palestinian groups to such a devastating extent.

Suspicions were further aroused when it emerged that Universal Paralello, the electronic music event held on the border of Gaza and which has been the focus of global media attention following the Palestinian incursion, had only changed its location two days beforehand following the falling through of a site in southern Israel near the Egyptian border. The idea that there were no serious insurance or security concerns over the holding of a music festival on the border of a location where violent clashes between the Al-Quds Brigades and Israeli Forces had taken place only last Summer, is simply unfathomable.

Less than 48 hours following the commencement of Operation Al-Asqa Flood, the Associated Press also carried a report citing an unnamed Egyptian intelligence official who had claimed that Cairo had repeatedly warned Tel Aviv that an escalation was imminent, warnings that seemingly went unheeded. Two separate reports on Friday, one from the New York Times and one from CNN, both outlining warnings given by US intelligence officials to Israel in the days prior to the attacks that Hamas was preparing a large-scale operation, appear to corroborate the idea that Israel had foreknowledge of what was about to take place.

The first question that comes to mind, is to what benefit it would it be to the Israelis to allow such a devastating attack to occur?

Saving the political career of Benjamin Netanyahu, currently mired in a corruption scandal, would be a theory that appears to not have any grounding, with opinion polls following Al-Asqa Flood appearing to indicate that the exact opposite will occur.

Using the Al-Asqa operation as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing of Gaza, appears to have strong evidence to back it up, with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announcing a complete siege of Gaza following the attacks, cutting off food, water and electricity supplies to the besieged strip, and describing enemy combatants as ‘human animals’; language and behaviour that couldn’t be described as anything less than genocidal.

Indeed, such a scenario was envisaged by hardline Israeli Minister Orit Strock in March of this year, a move that Strock herself admitted would ‘involve many casualties.’

Another theory put forward is that Al-Asqa Flood and the ensuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza will ultimately be used as the catalyst for a wider war with Israel’s arch-rival Iran, a long-time opponent of the Zionist state since the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw Ayatollah Khomeini come to power.

Indeed, in a move which drew little attention amongst the media coverage of the current hostilities, Israeli airstrikes were launched against Damascus and Aleppo airports on Thursday; Syria being a key regional ally of Iran, with Tehran and Hezbollah coming to the Arab Republic’s aid in countering the US-led regime change operation launched against it more than a decade ago, in which Israel itself played a key role.

Despite the extensive military capabilities of the Zionist state however, Israel would undoubtedly face a challenging situation in a direct military confrontation with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. With a distance of more than 1,000km between Israel and Iran, launching air strikes against the Islamic Republic, and having to travel through the hostile skies of Syria and Iraq to do so, would prove next to impossible without the assistance of the United States and its allies, which leads to a grim possibility – a deliberately provoked or staged attack on American forces, intended to galvanise US support for entry into what could quickly become a global conflict.

Indeed, a historical precedent exists for such a scenario.

Following the outbreak of the second world war in 1939, France was overwhelmed by Germany in the space of nine months, leaving Britain isolated and in a perilous situation. In the United States however, no popular support for entry into what was widely seen as a European civil war existed, especially coming only two decades after WWI.

This would change radically however on the 7^th of December 1941, when Imperial Japanese Forces, in response to a trade embargo imposed by the United States, launched a devastating attack on the US Naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Washington would officially declare its entry into the conflict the following day.

Strong evidence would later emerge that, similar to last Saturday’s ‘surprise’ attacks on the Israeli state, both British and US intelligence officials at the time were aware that an attack on the US Pacific Fleet was imminent.

Now, with the provocative deployment of US and British Naval Destroyers to the Mediterranean amidst the current hostilities, the recent build-up of US Forces in the Persian Gulf, and Israel’s history of involvement in false flag operations intended to incite a US military response, from the USS Liberty to 9/11, it appears that the stage is now being set for a deliberately provoked or staged attack on US Forces in the region in order to draw Washington into a wider conflict with Iran, and the catastrophic consequences that will follow.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon. 

Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: Middle East Eye)